On Friday, November 9, 2018 at 8:51:30 AM UTC-5, newshound wrote:
On 09/11/2018 03:23, alvey wrote:
On Thu, 08 Nov 2018 22:03:13 -0500, Tony Cooper wrote:
[...]

I've been to the UK several times, but always had a problem knowing
what beer to order. When I found one I liked, the temptation...

It's difficult to find a bad one.

In general, what is 'bad' is usually something of a particular style
that one doesn't care for...although this can include stuff that's
just plain "too plain" (including many American 'Lite' beers).

On one trip I was (mostly) there for 3 months and set a goal
of trying 100 different beers. Made it to 97 ...

Had a business trip where my wife joined me for a long weekend before
my meetings; IIRC she got to experience around 25 beers in ~4 days.
That's 3 beers/day that she ordered, plus a sip of 3/day of mine.

and only had two that were ****e; Wandsworth 6X and something
that I can't recall but do remember returning it orally to where
I suspect it originated, the Shipping Canal in Manchester.

A complication for the UK beer drinker is that the *proper* draught
stuff is unpasturised and un-filtered, so that there is much more chance
of infections causing "off" flavours if either the brewery or the pub
landlord are not sufficiently careful. This also means that unless a pub
has sufficient turnover, you may well get a pint that is past its best
even if it hasn't reached the stage of having a detectable vinegar aroma.

A good point, as there's also this reality of beer getting old/stale
and/or "skunky", which makes it not representative of what it tastes
like when fresh.

When I started drinking 50-odd years ago, if three or four lads went
into a pub, even their "local", they would each start with a half of
something different, to decide which was the best on the day.

Visiting a strange pub, the experienced drinker will try to figure out
what the locals are drinking before ordering. It's not wise to ask the
landlord what he recommends, because that will often be a barrel that is
moving slowly.

In the old days, a bad pint of Wadworth's 6X was virtually unknown,
because it was produced by a relatively small Somerset brewery and not
shipped very far.

I was fortunate enough to have encountered it this way, back in the
1990s (and really enjoyed it) when it was reportedly still delivered
only by mule drawn wagon...I believe that I was in the city of Bath.

Now it is produced by one of the big brewers, and
afficionados do not consider it to be the same thing. I still fondly
remember my first pint of 6X, not least because the landlord actually
apologised because it was "from the wood", this being in the days when
"keg" beer (i.e. pasturised and filtered and shipped in metal barrels)
was considered modern.

I think there is less "bad beer" around now than there was "back then"
because standards have risen. But I'd still consider about one pint in
ten to be unsatisfactory.

Less beer is being drunk too. In the old days many breweries would
deliver to their local pubs in 36 gallon barrels, and these would be
drunk in a couple of days. Now, you only sometimes find "18s" and a lot
of beer is delivered in "9s". (These used to be known as a barrel, a
kilderkin, and a firkin respectively).

The English gallon is of course larger than the American one, at 4.6 litres.

In the USA, a similar example of this can often be found with the
kegs of Guinness Stout, where probably 99% of it is consumed around
St Patrick's Day in March. Unless a place has a regular Guinness
clientele, a keg that's still not been finished in May is going to be
quite noticeably a different note.


-hh