Beer!

[Pingu]

We seem to be close to Samo Pivo (1st bar on this list) so looks like we might go for a nosey in there tonight.
http://jetsettingfools.com/5-craft-beer-bars-belgrade-serbia/

Git 

[ElyDave]

Baku - don't bother.  A pale imitation of beer

[Jaded]

In the Black Isle pub, about to start my second pint of Club Tropicana.

I may not be able to post soon...

[Hot Flatus]

Clwb Tropicana from Tiny Rebels?

After Cloudwater DIPA its mh favorite beer.

[Jaded]

Looks like it. 

[Pingu]

Nom 

[Mr Larrington]

Club Tropicana, drinks are free?

[Hot Flatus]

Ive stopped going to my local of 20 years. Its now shit. The beer is now shit and the landord has turned the pub into a shrine to his own ego, with photos of him next to famous rugby players or racehorses (no idea if famous). When you go for a pee there are hand drawn comedy caricatures facing you. Of him.Plus, when I go in he comes up and sticks his big ugly face in mine, shakes my hand for six times longer than is necessary and says "How are you?" like an insincere acquaintance addessing a bereaved person at a funeral

Ive started going to the Kings Head on the other side of the valley. Beer is great and the landlord stays the fuck out of my face.

[Jaded]

It is weird seeing photos of odd horses and last century rugby players on the walls of a hundreds of years old pub.
In better news the Club Tropicana was immense.

[Hot Flatus]

Now you just need to get yourself to the Cloudwater barrel store in Manchester.

Told you this stuff is good. There is also Deya brewery in Cheltenham and Lost and Grounded in Bristol. Fancy a trip down there in my van?

[ian]

Mmmm, Cloudwater.

I didn't come close to doing San Diego justice. Too much awesome to contend with. Looking at the paltry twelve taps back home at the weekend, even the tiniest bar managed 22 (the rather nice and local Hopping Pig on 5th). Not to mention the Lost Abbey's Deliverance which was my favourite beer. Even the hotel boasted more beer on tap than I could try. It's not often a brief evening perambulation can take in Modern Times, Mike Hess, Belching Beaver, Rip Current...

[ian]

My wife ran away to hobnob with oncologists in Chicago (she gets cancer, I get ebola). But she forgot that she's left two bottles of Prairie's absolutely fucking awesome Bible Belt* in the fridge. O sweetly diabolical temptation. Must. Resist.

*Prairie Artisan Ales and Evil Twin Brewing have joined forces again on a variation of their first collaboration. The new beer is Barrel-Aged Bible Belt, a 12 percent ABV imperial stout brewed with cacao nibs, chili peppers, coffee and vanilla beans before being aged in Heaven Hill whiskey barrels for between seven and nine months. As the name suggests, the base beer is Bible Belt, a 13 percent imperial stout first released in 2014 that combines Evil Twin’s Even More Jesus imperial stout (12 percent ABV) and the same spices and other adjuncts that are used in Prairie’s Bomb! imperial stout (13 percent ABV.)

[Feanor]

A local brewery in Zion National Park, Utah has beer names taking the p*ss of the Mormons

[Basil]

Must. Resist.

Are you mad?  Good luck with that.

[ian]

A local brewery in Zion National Park, Utah has beer names taking the p*ss of the Mormons

Well, the common name for Utah beer is 'Mormon Piss Water' owing to the fact the strongest stuff they'll serve on draught is 3.2% boozahol. Mind you, at least they let you drink it these days, I remember the first time I dolled up in Salt Lake City and settled in the bar for a drink. You have to be a member, sir. OK, we're do I sign up. He gives me the membership form and I fill it in and hand it back. OK, come back in 24 hours, says he. So I murdered him and helped myself to as much Mormon Piss Water as my bladder could hold.

Must. Resist.

Are you mad?  Good luck with that.

I'm not. My wife would be, it's rare and prized stuff. I discovered it on tap in the excellent little brasserie by Gare de Lyon in Paris of all places (apparently Jean Reno's local).

[Hot Flatus]

She's forgotten you say?

Only a cad would remind her...

[ian]

She's not forgotten they're there, she's just forgotten she's left the fridge door to temptation open. Of course, if I drink them and there's no more supply (these were a fortuitous find and only £9 a bottle so I think we bought them all) I'll have to fly to Oklahoma to try and obtain more, which is a bit extreme. Or risk being killed to death and then resurrected through some voodoo ritual and killed some more. You don't mess with girls from Southend-on-Sea.

[Hot Flatus]

Carefully prise off the metal cap. Decant contents. Drink. Enjoy.

Then refill bottle(s) with Brewdog, doesnt matter which one. Carefully replace cap and put bottle(s) back in fridge in exact position they were found.

When the time comes, ruefully observe that, like so many things, 'milieu' is clearly important to the appreciation of Prairie's Bible Belt

[Mrs Pingu]

I'll just leave this here...

2017-02-08_06-52-21 by The Pingus, on Flickr

If you're wondering why the choice on my side of the cupboard is a bit shit, it's because someone drank the good stuff.

[ian]

It survived unscathed. Mind you, she's not back for another week... I could swap it out for some Tennent's Super laced with vimto (that's not a product idea, InBev – I think and hope I hallucinated it, but I'm sure I saw an advert for 'fruit lager' on a passing bus the other day). I settled for a can of the excellent Magic Rock Cannonball instead. I may have to visit the beer shop and stock on alternative forms of temptation.

[SteveC]

I'm sure I saw an advert for 'fruit lager' on a passing bus the other day

There was some in our local Morrison's this morning. I did not investigate.

[ian]

I googled and oh god, it's true. Lemon and lime lager. I suppose it's the old lager and lime that had some vague appeal as a teenager, mostly because it cut the taste of the rancid lager with a good half bottle of Rose's lime cordial. The reviews seem to agree that it's a 'shitbrew' and in Finland, simply and aptly "yäk". I've nothing against fruit beer, I have in front of me a gooseberry gose (Magic Rock Salty Kiss) which is perfect refreshment after a day pootling around on a bicycle). Recreating it with chemicals, yäk indeed.

I may have acquired additional beer on my travels. If you saw the bloody hill I had to haul it up, you'd understand that I've earned every single bottle and can.

[ElyDave]

I have a trip to Covington, LA in July. Anyone know if I can buy any decent kind of beer around there?

[Mrs Pingu]

Mmm, Magic Rock Salty Kiss is indeed, magic.

Covington, that where the Chevron office is? Can't tell you anywhere there but if you go to New Orleans I can recommend eating in SoBou, their Cherries Jubilee bread pudding is amazeballs.

[ian]

I drank a can of Grolsch at the weekend. We'd been on a long hike (about 30 miles, so refreshment was necessary for the hour or so train trek home) and it seemed the least worst of the uninspiring selection in the petrol station off-licence near the train station.

God, was that foul. And to blame it on God, seems – for once – unfair, I'm sure he'd have nothing to do with it. Tasted of corrosion and chemicals, no malt, no mouthfeel, a bad chemical simulacrum of hoppiness, and a mouth slap of harsh surgical spirit to finish on. Surgical spirit that I suspect had been used to clean out an abscess. I've no idea if proper Grolsch brewed on the continent is any better, vague memory says yes, but this must have been made out of packets and concentrates, probably diluted with urine. Passionless and pointless, and it made my taste buds depressed. The kind of beer that after your first mouthful makes you check the sell-by date.

Fortunately better stuff at home. And Verdant Headband pale ale yesterday, which is what beer ought to taste like.