Independent Drinking

Yesterday was the 4th of July here (it was the 4th of July everywhere, I suppose) so like true Brits we got together with some fellow expats to celebrate. It's not that we have a big desire to remember the Americans' lucky defeat of the English (with help from the tossbag French, who still can't stop sucking off the Germans, even though we've had to bail them out in two world wars already) but it's an excuse for a day off, and besides, if America was run by the the same twats who run the UK the whole place would be considerably more fucked up than it is today.

So we wandered down the road for a barbecue and some beer. Obviously I took some beer with me and, since our hosts were English, it was important that said beer was not of the "weak, tasteless urine" variety so loved by some of my American friends. The local supermarket doesn't have a lot to offer outside the "urine" category but it does have Boddingtons, in bright yellow one-pint cans, with the widget, so you get that "draught poured" effect. Now that is a beer you can show up with and not be viewed as an instant cunt.

There was other beer in a cooler, which I ended up drinking as well (since it would definitely be a cunty thing to have drunk all the Boddingtons myself) and it was of the "more flavorful" US type, such as Schlaflys. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't Boddies either, which got me wondering why the locals have such a love for weak yellow tasteless piss rather than appreciating real beer. It's not as though there's any doubt here - Boddingtons is a fine beer but also very easy to drink. I could understand my American brethren having a hard time with something more exotic, like Theakstons OP, or a piss-head lager such as Special Brew, but a pint of Boddies is so dramatically superior to ANY product from Anheuser-Busch that it's a wonder that company is still in business.

We served it as nature intended, i.e. cooled to "cellar temperature" but not iced down so that it became tasteless. The reason that beer is served in iced glasses over here is very clear: when you're imbibing urine the less you can taste it the better, but serving a good pint that way would be like pouring a fine Islay malt over ice. Now that would make you a cunt.

There's a lot of whining going on in St.Louis about the potential sale of locally-headquartered Anheuser-Busch to InBev but it's hard to see the problem, unless it's that much-needed efficiencies would lead to a loss of local jobs. Budweiser in all its manifestations is tasteless piss. I've heard it said (by local friends who probably realize it's piss but are trying to find a redeeming feature) that at least it's good to drink cold, after physical activity, but that seems to result purely from it being a cold liquid with little flavor that can be drunk when you're thirsty. The same could be said of Gatorade, for fucks sake. And anyway, with all the gas in it, it's the last thing I'd choose to drink if I was thirsty. That first pint of Boddingtons last night slipped down so quickly it amazed me, but there was no gas in it, and no need to ritually belch the alphabet in order to make room for the next one. (Not that I would discourage anyone from doing this on a purely recreational basis, you understand.)

If InBev gets hold of Anheuser-Busch, little will change. The company will still produce pissy beer because that's what its customers want. It's what they're used to, and nothing can beat the Midwestern United States for sheer conservatism and resistance to change. Trying to point out that their beer has no taste is like telling them the Emperor has no clothes on. They're busy debating the relative merits of Bud and Miller without realising that it's like comparing two varieties of donkey urine - it doesn't matter which is "better".

Just to put the icing on the cake, imported Boddingtons sells here for $6.45 for four pints, compared with $6.99 for six small bottles of some of the better "craft brewed" beers in the supermarket. It's cheap, especially if you convert it into UK pounds (about 80p a pint), so there's no excuse for picking up something that doesn't taste as good is there? The only shame is that there are at least fifty other decent British pub beers that I'd be happy to see gracing my supermarket shelves, such as Marstons Pedigree, Brains Red Dragon, Whitbread Best Bitter, Bass, Abbot Ale and John Smiths. (Insert your favorite here.)

Ironically, although I'm happy to join in the celebration of American independence, I have to use imported British beer to do it because the local stuff is so fucking awful. It appears that the famous Declaration must have had some small print about "liberation from standards of taste in beer". Pity really...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison