Exilian
Off-topic and Chatter: The Jolly Boar Inn => General Chatter - The Boozer => Food Discussion - The Jolly Boar Kitchen => Topic started by: Glaurung on October 08, 2016, 12:51:22 PM
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I've been meaning to start this for a while. Beer is a drink that a lot of like; it's been around for millennia, and it comes in a very wide range of styles and flavours.
I like all sorts of different beers, from different countries: dark, malty stouts and porters (Britain), Belgian sour ales and lambics, German wheat beers, Czech lagers. Which beers have you tried? Which do you like?
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Guinness. :)
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For me, the best one locally is potbelly's Lager Brau. I'd say it was a Gold Ale but I'm not great at judging these things.
Although I believe we have different tastes :)
More well known beers I like are Wychwood Brewery's Goliath which I can never find anywhere locally for some reason (https://www.classicales.co.uk/Products/Wychwood_Goliath/65 (https://www.classicales.co.uk/Products/Wychwood_Goliath/65)) and Samuel Adams Boston Lager.
Otherwise it's mostly Lagers and Guinness. Which this thread should probably not discuss, unless through thinly veiled sarcasm.
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A nice warm lager and a packet of crisps. :)
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I don't seem too keen on beer anymore.
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I feel like I should learn to drink beer, but almost invariably still seem to enjoy cider more. I did introduce Bigosaur to his first British pub (specifically the Wellington in Birmingham) recently - he got a pint of Penny Porter or some name like that, which seemed to go down well.
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Samuel Jackson beer is also really good.
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Moved to the Boozer, as the food & drink forum is now archived.
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Moved back to the food & drink forum, now that it's been un-archived.
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My go-to is a local Australian lager called Great Northern. It's easy drinking, a real hot summer kind of lager. I'm definitely more a fan of a malty beer rather than the more floral or tropical kind of flavours you get from most of the Australian ales. (Pale ales are becoming very popular in this small corner of the world, and I have to say, I'm not really a fan)
I have enjoyed the Mountain Goat Hightail though, which is an ale with some toffee, coffee and caramel notes. Not exactly my normal wheelhouse, but it is really nice.
Also enjoy a good stout or Irish ale as well. The Kilkenny copper ale is a favourite too.
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I'm definitely more a fan of a malty beer ...
Also enjoy a good stout or Irish ale as well. ...
If you ever visit the UK, we should go drinking together: our tastes sound quite similar, and there's a lot of beer here you'd like.
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I don't drink beer or ale, but I like unhopped cider.
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It amuses me when people come to Vienna from some countries that have less of a varied beer culture and get confused ordering in pubs as a result of mutual incomprehension as to whether beer is a single thing or not.
Recently at the writing group, a Belarusian was ordering and the exchange went:
"I'd like a beer please."
"Sure, what kind?"
"...a large one?"
:)
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I don't drink beer or ale
What's the distinction between "beer" and "ale" for you? For me, "ale" is a subcategory of "beer", implying some details about the fermentation process used, and hence probable characteristics of the resulting product.
I like unhopped cider.
Is there such a thing as hopped cider?
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In the distant future, I am told that barbarians beyond the upper sea began putting a plant called hops into ale, creating a drink called beer which could be stored for months or even years in wooden jars called barrels and tuns and shipped by boat rather than being made by any woman looking to earn some money and drunk immediately. But stories from distant lands are unreliable.
I thought Strongbow has hops in it, it is not sweet like Kootenay cider or Stibitzer or Somersby.
The Bavarians escape the chains of the Reinheitzgesetz by visiting Tirol and drinking craft beer.
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In the distant future, I am told that barbarians beyond the upper sea began putting a plant called hops into ale, creating a drink called beer which could be stored for months or even years in wooden jars called barrels and tuns and shipped by boat rather than being made by any woman looking to earn some money and drunk immediately. But stories from distant lands are unreliable.
Hmm. My structure is a bit different:
- beer is a drink made by extracting sugars and other contents from grain (usually malted grain) into hot water, and then fermenting the resulting solution. Hops are almost always added - originally (from maybe 1200 CE onwards) as a preservative, nowadays for the familiar flavour.
- ale is any type of beer fermented with yeast that works best at around room temperature. Usually this means the yeast floats on top of the beer while it's fermenting, so they can also be called "top-fermented", but not always. All the traditional beer styles of the UK are ales.
- lager is any type of beer fermented with yeast that works best at low temperatures, typically 5C or lower. It's from the German, meaning "store", because the low temperature means the fermentation process takes much longer than for ales, and so the beer is "stored" while this happens. Low-temperature yeasts tend to sink to the bottom of the fermentation vessel, so lagers are often described as "bottom-fermented", but again I think not always.
The confusion is not helped by English (as so often) having multiple words from different language families for what were originally the same thing: "ale" from Norse languages and "beer" from Germanic ones, judging by where the cognate words are now. I suspect that "beer" and "ale" were pretty much synonymous for centuries, and it was only when the lagering process was perfecting in the nineteenth century that the need for different words emerged.
I thought Strongbow has hops in it, it is not sweet like Kootenay cider or Stibitzer or Somersby.
I could be wrong, but I thought the spectrum with cider is sweet - dry, in the same way as wine, with sweet ciders having a lot of the original sugar left, and dry ciders having it mostly fermented out, or starting from less sweet apples. Hops produce bitterness and a distinctive flavour that I suspect would sit rather oddly with cider.
The Bavarians escape the chains of the Reinheitzgesetz by visiting Tirol and drinking craft beer.
That's a bit disappointing: you ought to be able to do a lot of interesting things even within the constraints of the Reinheitsgebot - I'd have thought most British ales would qualify, for example, and there's an amazing variety there. And it's not like the Reinheitsgebot is actually a legal restriction any more - I suspect it's just that none of the breweries are willing to test the market by putting out something where they couldn't have the magic words on the label.
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If I'm wanting to treat myself to a nice beer, then I am partial IPA and APA's that are quite easy to get in shops these days. If I had to pick on then I'll go with Neck Oil, which has the benefit of being tasty and session (<4.5%)
(https://i.imgur.com/fLLEpb7.jpg)
If I am in a pub I do like a nice nut brown ale from time to time as well.