Saturday 22 October 2011

Tax me I'm sick

The cleaner spilt my tea on my lap top and fried my hard drive so I have a shiny new PC. I used to think my old Synaptics touch pad was crap until I tried to use the improved version. I am aware that people in Africa can’t find enough water to survive but I still feel hard done by and incandescent with rage when something which costs a load of money and is supposed to be an improvement causes me to lose half an hour’s work. It is clear to me that Synaptics and the gas monitor company Crowcon are run by an evil genius responsible for all thirst, famine, pestilence, shitty touchpads and personal CO2 monitors which continually fail to calibrate.  Shame on you!
Aside from my battle with the forces of evil it has been a customarily full week. The first of our new range of bottled beers (Massive Ale) is now enjoying a worryingly-leisurely secondary fermentation in CT17, steadily nibbling away at the 10% ABV target in the midst of 20 sacks of dry aroma hops. The customs men, I am sure are salivating at the prospect of their pound of flesh from the strong beer tax.
On Thursday I popped (70 mile round trip) into the Falmouth Beer Festival to enjoy a few good beers swimming in an ocean of hazy beers with more off flavours than an effluent sample. I know that the staff at the festival know what they are doing when caring for the barrels and all of my beers were as I would have wanted so I would discount this as a source of the faults. I do have an extremely sensitive nose and very little tolerance for haze but some of what was on offer was what is technically known as toilet. Whenever I try beers at festivals I tend to put myself in the shoes of the new drinker who is encountering beer for the first time. If the beer is unintentionally not bright, smells of drains and/or is astringent I suspect that the first time drinker is liable to head to Tesco for a cheeky bottle of Echo Falls. Even if they are not as picky as me I wouldn’t expect that the smell of farts and sour milk will be welcome on a drink.   
Does rotten egg, butterscotch and haze where it is not intended put you off a beer or do such ‘idiosyncrasies’ add to beers’ rich tapestry?  

2 comments:

The Puffin said...

One word. Mouse.

MartinG said...

I have to say that I go to beer festivals more for the craic than the hope of enjoying good beer. The Great British beer festival is probably the exception but the good and great tend to dominate such events.

I drink in a pub called the Engineers Arms in Henlow Village, run by Kevin and his wife in such a way that it is the centre of the local community. An excellent pub in almost every way except that Kev runs the pub like a creche for Camra. Now to be fair Kev has set his stall out and stocks only those beers popular with Camra and its offices; that is beers that only no one has ever heard of and probably wouldn't want to after sinking the first pint of "Dirty Slag".

I got short shrift when I suggested that he get in some Doom Bar and or Old Hooky, being told that you can go anywhere and drink those beers.

I think Kev missed the point, I wanted to drink excellent real bear in excellent surroundings (ie his pub) with people that in general I love being around.

Oh well you can't have everything I suppose.

Post a Comment