What wouldn't you drink?

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Absinthe.

[andrew_s]

I won't touch malty stuff like Ovaltine or Horlicks, and a trip to the US about 9 years ago put me off tins of fizzy (coke/pepsi/orange etc) enough that I've drunk about half a dozen since, even though british fizzy doesn't have the flavour of high fructose corn syrup that every last can in America does.

One of the finest brews I have ever tasted was cask Castlemaine XXXX from the wood, drawn by gravity, at the Breakfast Creek Hotel in Brisbane.  

You are kidding yourself.
A tap like that on a cask is a dead give-away for a cask with a pipe in the back fetching the beer up from the cellar. If it's on gravity, you have a small tap with a flat bit on the end to hammer it into the bung with.

[bobb]

Whilst on the subject of crap Australian booze - Bundaberg rum. Never had any nasty experiences with it, it just tastes like shit. It tastes like no other rum I've drank and even the locals affectionately refer to it as "Petrol" which, if you've never tried it goes some way to explaining how rough it is.

I brought a bottle back with me to give to some friends. In house occupied by four lads who are all keen piss heads, the Bundy lasted about two years before they finally finished it off. They only ever drank it when they really couldn't be arsed to go to the offie.....

[Jakob]

Don't really like Australian/Californian wines.
Can't drink raw milk.
Carrot juice.Eurgh.
Tomato juice when it's not part of a bloody mary.
Cheap bourbons. (Southern Comfort, Jack D, etc)...well, cheap whiskeys in general!

[Gattopardo]

Nothing much but should not drink alcohol.  One is both too many and not enough.

Sugary drinks I suppose.

[Charlotte]

The first time I ever got properly ratarsed was on my fifteenth birthday.  My parents had gone out for the evening and left me and some of my friends to have a bit of a shindig in the family pile.  Looking back, this was neither their best parental decision, nor really my finest hour.

Most people had bought booze with them, but a friend of mine had come equipped with a bottle of Southern Comfort, which she proceeded to persuade me to consume with her, punctuated by swigs from various cans of wicked strength lager.

By the time my poor mother and father had got home, most of my friends had been collected by their own parents and when they came looking for me, I was in the bathtub, which had been adjudged to be the safest place to leave me, following a spectactular series of decorative projectile vomits.

Even to this day, I cannot abide even the slightest whiff of Southern Comfort.  It is, for me, Eau de Chunder and I'm likely to blow chunks if you waft it under my nose.

The sadness of this tale is that I subsequently repeated the experience with a whole host of other awful beverages, including (but sadly not limited to) Jim Beam, Tabboo/Mirage and that weird stuff that people used to bring back from Ibiza with twigs in it.  I think I might have actually seen bits of my own stomach lining that night.

[bobb]

 

What is it with Southern Comfort and bad, first time teenage drinking experiences?! Mine was SC too. Although plenty of other stuff as well.

Someone at school (I guess we were about 15 or 16) had booked the function room at the local rugby club for a party. (Fuck me, back then it was sooo easy to be an under age drinker!)

The evening was doomed as soon as it started. Me and a few mates went to the offie to get a few lagers in. It was quite a long walk to the rugby club and this stray dog followed us for ages. It went from being all nice and doggy to randomly attacking us at any time. We eventually found some road works, ripped off the tape marking the fact that there was a large hole in the road and tied the dog up with it and legged it!

We went to loads of pubs on the way before arriving at the party. Hammered.

A good mate of mine was sitting at the bar looking all suave. He kinda fancied himself a bit, but was clearly more worldly wise than I was as he was sipping Southern Comfort. His dad had obviously been far more generous with his cash than mine had, so Nigel proceeded to buy me glass after glass of SC.

Things then got even worse. The girl who I'd lusted after all my life (A bit like Simon and Carli from the inbetweeners) turned up and I reckoned I was in there! Wrong. She was not impressed when I vomited all over her shoes.

Things just went from bad to tragic.

A friend of mine's older sister had said she'd pick us up and take us home at midnight on the dot. She turned up alright, but wouldn't let me in her car because I was vomiting almost constantly.

So I was left on my own, vomiting at a now deserted rugby club several miles from home.

I'm guessing mate's sister had called my parents and I endured my first real "Oh shit!" moment when I looked up from my pile of vomit and saw my mum and dad in their shitty Vauxhall Viva looking at me shaking their heads.

They got me home. I vomited again. All over the landing carpet which my mother spent ages cleaning up.

The next day was bad. I felt rough but had to go to work at a well known high street store for my Saturday job. Terrible, terrible day!

Oh, I forgot to mention - at some point I lost my trousers! I have absolutely no idea how. So I'd spent much of the evening vomming around in my pants

[mrcharly-YHT]

My SC experience was in Austria. On a skiing trip with Young Farmers (cousins of mine).

Bored out of our skulls, on the last night I cracked open my duty free litre bottle of SC and started a drinking game (I think it might have revolved around coin tossing). An hour later I'd finished the bottle and decided I should go to bed.

Young Farmers headed out into to the bars.

Apparently, I turned up at the bar some time later, clad only in my underwear (remember the bit about 'skiiing trip'? Yes, it was winter in the alps). So, being nice, responsible guys, my mates escorted me back to the hotel before I got hypothermia. Like f*k they did. They went back and got the video camera.

Thankfully, I have absolutely no memory of that night. I'm told there is still a copy of the tape somewhere.

[Jaded]

Guinness. There was a mouse in a bottle once. Of course, being Guinness, that was only discovered at the end of the bottle. I threw up a lot and I have never, ever, ever, ever had such spectacular wind the next day.  Glorious, voluminous, noisy, gagging, room emptying wind. Excellent.

[spesh]

Tequila.

The last few times that I have been ill have been after, or during, parties where the noisome stuff has been inflicted. It reacts very badly with whatever else I have consumed at the time.

I have used paintbrush cleaners that have smelt better.

[Hummers]

Excellent.

At last, a thread where I can apply a life's study and share the results of my experimentation (in a cordoned off, private area) with those who have similar tastes and experiences.

In order of offences against drinkers:

Known nos

Southern Comfort: An association with the only time I have woken up and thought I had turned blind, had wet myself and had my shoes stolen. To be fair, any one of these have happened on their own, any number of times in the last 30 years but not all of them at the same time, other than one night in May, back in 1980. After a heavy lunch time, I had fallen asleep on Plymouth Hoe and in the 8 hours I was out for the count, it had rained, it had got dark and I had kicked off my shoes and abandoned them to a fate unknown. I had to walk the 4 miles home barefoot. Therefore Southern Comfort = never again.

Dark Rum and xxxxx: Some years ago, I used to do voluntary work for an organisation that owned a chalet/hut on Polhawn cliff in Cornwall. After a hard day digging drain aways and painting, our favourite activity was to go down to the pub in Cawsands, buy up a huge number of raffle tickets and drink the winnings on the way back to the hut. This time, we exceeded all expectations of tombola excess and ended up getting so drunk that we, sorry, I ended up misjudging the path and fell down the cliff. Thanks to the the anaesthetic effects of alcohol, I survived the fall, picked myself up, climbed back to the hut, into my sleeping bed and into the arms of Morpheus. The next morning, I sort of woke up, vaguely aware that all was not well with corpus Hummers; I couldn't move my left leg and couldn't lift my head off the chipboard shelf I was sleeping on. Worse than this, I was aware of a sweet smell that was somewhere between Rum and Black, Rum and Peppermint and another smell I couldn't quite place. The Rum and xxx smell was my mate Alf's vomit that had dripped down between a gap in the boards above me to form a pool somewhere to the left of me but within whiffy distance.  The 'other smell' was my own blood from a two inch gash in my scalp which had clotted to effectively glue the back of my head to the chipboard, preventing me from moving away fast enough to not vomit over my own face. Therefore, by proxy, Dark Rum is not a drink I can tolerate the smell of.

Newcastle Broon: It would seem that just two pints of this stuff unleashes a violent and aggressive persona that I cannot identify with and have no time for. Therefore, I would rather drink my own piss than this stuff. Actually, I would rather drink anyone's piss than this stuff as your own stuff is not that bad (unless you have been eating Asparagus, drinking coffee or smoking cigars).


Once tried, forever fried

4 Pints of Scrumpy with a scooner of Sherry on the top: It was fun while it lasted but it is possible that me riding pillion on the back of a Honda Kamino through the pedestrian shopping precinct of Plymouth's Cornwall Street shouting 'Vote Labour' at the top of my voice condemmed us all to another 5 years under the heel of the Tory jackboot back in the 1987 elections. Sorry.

Scrumpy: Two pints of the stuff at the Highway Man's Inn, Sourton, had me sat on the back seat of Mike Sweet's car with my feet out of his dashboard, giggling all the way back to Exeter. It wouldn't have been so bad had I not have been driving at the time.

Cheap Cider: Elation and all of the above but swiftly followed by a massive crash into depression and the onset of morbid self loathing; possibly linked to the election results of 1987 and the terrible burden of guilt.

Courage Best: Is it possible to build up an intolerance to beer? I would have hoped this wasn't the case but my sphincter tells me otherwise. I can't say I am that sorry to now be living in a non-Courage dominated drinking area. Fortunately, Bass, London Pride and Hole Hearted all seem to be hypoallergenic.

Tequila: How can celebrating my mother's 80th birthday leave me feeling (the next morning) that I have succumbed to a date-rape drug? The answer is Tequila, bought from the Co-Op at £7.50. She had never tried it before (Tequila, that is) so I thought it would be a good idea to introduce her to shots and slammers. Did I say 'good idea'? Mum had half a shot glass, myself and the offspring slammed our way through the rest. Oh dear.

Tempus edax rerum nunc est bibendum

H