Thursday 30 April 2009

Dirty and Ashamed Again


Yes, you guessed it – I set foot in a Wetherspoons again.

Having a few minutes to kill while I waited for a lift I popped into the Railway in Barrow-in-Furness. I was lured by the siren-call of "The World's Biggest International Real Ale Festival".

I was drawn to "Welton's Rauchbier" and my heart beat a little faster, my tastebuds roused from slumber.

Oh the disappointment, it's "available soon".

"Available soon" is a mendacious euphemism for "NOT AVAILABLE", and it made my blood boil. Hopes raised and dashed in seconds. I despise the way Wetherspoons do this.

I went home and took several showers scrubbing myself with a yardbrush and carbolic soap to rid myself of the Wetherspoons taint.


Thursday 23 April 2009

Blast from the Past?

A couple of days ago I was invited to a quiz held at a pub I would normally pay to avoid. The Bay Horse in my hometown of Barrow-in-Furness is a purpose-built pub on a prissy sixties estate inhabited by beige-wearing Daily Mail readers desperate not to be thought of as working class. Entirely predictably cask ale or any other form of agreeable beer is conspicuous by its absence.

Scanning the bar a large font was impossible not to notice – Toby Light. I had no idea the brand still existed. I remember it in the eighties when it seemed to pollute about half of the pubs in the town. It's now so obscure (it doesn't have an entry on Ratebeer), somewhat masochistically I felt obliged to give it a try.

It was a spectacular triumph of non-flavourfullness with a creamy [how I hate that word] nitrogen head. It was selling rather well.

We didn't win the quiz. I won't be going back in a hurry.

Monday 6 April 2009

Big Cringe

Admirable though a generic "British Beer Needs You" campaign may be, does such an endeavour need the image of a bloody great effin' goblin? Not for me it bloody doesn't.

I hate goblins!