A Review of British Beer

During our stay, we've stopped in a lot of pubs, and tried a lot of different beers. Or, should I say, we've tried the same beer made by a lot of different breweries. English Cask Ale is served at cellar temperature, and lightly carbonated, with most of it coming from a hand pump. The basic ale on offer is malty, with grassy hop notes, and around 4% ABV. This is probably why English people looking to get wasted tend to drink something like Stella Artois (in contrast to the US, where they try and sell it as a classy alternative to Budweiser). What I'm going to do instead is review the style, and then list the beers I've had, in order of preference.

Beer #33: Ordinary Cask Bitter

Appearance: Everything from golden to amber.

Aroma: A little grassy from the English hops, a little malty. May or may not be biscuit like depending on how dark it is.

Mouthfeel: The lack of carbonation and low ABV means this stuff is really creamy, and goes down very easily. It's a good thing that this stuff is as low alcohol as it is, because if it were strong, you'd be in a world of hurt very quickly.

Taste: These are generally more malt-forward beers, but the trick is getting a good hop balance. Too much, and it tastes like lawn clippings or something (Greene King 1730, though Alecia enjoyed this one). Too little, and it's too sweet (Fuller's London Pride). To be quite honest, only Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter is better than the English Pale Ale made by Civil Life, but that stuff is fairy juice.

Overall: Definitely enjoyable, but you do need to have a long session if you're looking to tie one on. Or just drink Stella and be a piss head.

Ranking:

1. Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter
2. Sharp's Doom Bar
3. Greene King London Glory
4. Fuller's London Pride
5. Sharp's Atlantic
6. A bucket of dirty dish water
7. Greene King 1730.

Beer #34: English Cask Winter Ale

Appearance: These are all dark amber.

Aroma: Maltier and fruitier than Bitter

Mouthfeel: Almost identical, but a bit warmer from the higher abv

Taste: Marginally higher alcohol means more malt flavor. There's a bit of fruitiness to them, probably from the yeast.

Overall: Pretty solid. I've only had Fuller's Jack Frost for this that I can name, but I did have a different one somewhere.

Beer #35: Samuel Smith's Extra Stout

Appearance: Black (duhhh)

Aroma: Roasty. Very roasty.

Mouthfeel: Creamy and smooth, like all cask ales.

Flavor: Like a Guinness that has been cranked up to 11. It's about as strong as Guinness, but with loads more flavor. Naturally, Samuel Smith's doesn't export it.

Overall: Can Samuel Smith's just open a pub down the street from me?

London, Revisited

Conventional wisdom has always held that London is horrifically expensive. So far this trip, I don't think that holds up anymore. There are two reasons for this.

First, the last time most Americans went to London, their cards didn't work. We used mag stripe, which is for feeble minded idiots who hate change more than they hate credit card theft, and they used chip and pin, which is actually safe. This meant that we needed to use money changer services. These assholes do nothing but rip you off. Today, they would sell me a pound for $1.36. If you can use your normal bank credit card, your rate is $1.27,  and your debit card hits you with a flat fee that may add a cent or two if you get a lot of pounds out at once. That's a substantial savings.

More importantly, the pound has cratered in the past two years. When I was here in 2014, it was $1.66 at LIBOR, and the money changers were selling pounds at closer to $2. That turns a £4 beer into an almost $8 beer. Yikes. But today, I bought all my pounds at $1.27. That £4 beer is now $5.08. That is cheaper than getting a beer in STL once you add the tip. Dinner for two plus two pints was $43. The fiscal hurt just isn't there anymore.

Another way to save your money is to do all your drinking at Samuel Smith's owned pubs. In England, many pubs are "tied houses", where they have a deal with a brewer like Fuller's or Greene King to sell only their beer. Samuel Smith's tied pubs are the cheapest we've seen in London, they have the best beer, and they have some unbelievably historic pubs. Near the British Museum, the Princess Louise is a Victorian era "gin palace" of dark wood and etched glass, prettier than any bar stateside. On Fleet Street, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese dates to 1667, and men like Dickens, Twain, Ben Johnson, and countless literary giants sank pints there. These would be tourist traps anywhere else, but the fact that they will hand you a pint of Old Brewery Bitter for £3.10 ensures that locals come to these bars just as often as the tourists.

London's subway is still more expensive than most anywhere at £2.40 one way, but man do they get what they pay for. There's a stop within a few blocks of everywhere, and almost no waiting. If smaller systems get trapped in the vicious cycle of "doesn't go anywhere so nobody uses it so there's no reason to make it go more places", then "The Tube" is an example of the virtuous cycle. It makes traveling around the city easy.

Trip 3: London Calling

Another year has come to a close, which means it's once again time for me to flee the country in anticipation of the Trump regime travel abroad with Alecia. While the rising international trend towards anti-establishments did bring us an apricot with cotton candy hair as a president-elect, it hasn't been entirely bad. Those same sentiments brought us Brexit, which brought us a 15% drop in the value of the Pound Sterling. London is cheaper than it's been in 30 years! We were strongly considering a trip to some quiet fishing villages in Oaxaca Mexico to eat tacos and lounge around on the beach (an option that seems all the more appealing after a weekend of ice storms and single-digit temperatures), but when a sale like this pops up, you take it. Once again, we will be keeping two blogs. The blog with all of the important pictures and write-ups on what we do is going to be http://adamandalecia.blogspot.com/. This blog is the "R-rated" companion. This is where all of the beer reviews will be (it helps that I've already reviewed several beers in London, and I can now go back and re-review them with two years, and several hundred other beers under my belt), as well as theater reviews, and probably a few think pieces as well (for instance, I'll probably write something about public transit and gentrification that may verge slightly into a screed about how much I've grown to hate West County and the further afield suburbs).


So yeah, hold on to your poofy tall black hats, because we're going to London.

Some More Thoughts About Spain

The following is the closest I will get to politics here.

In the US, we are having a debate about giving the cops military style gear. In fact, our police are lightly armed compared to the Spanish police. Seeing a guy wearing a bulletproof vest with an assault rifle or an SMG is commonplace around here. The difference is entirely in their demeanor. Anybody can ask their officers a question, they never try and look threatening, and they don't actually use those weapons. Our police don't need less weapons, they need to be held accountable for their violent and nonviolent aggressive behavior.

On a lighter note, nobody does tapas right outside of Spain. In St. Louis, the two tapas places I know (Modesto and BARcelona) make these highbrow small plates, and if you get 3, you'll be out about 60 bucks before you start drinking. We hear from a girl from New Zealand that this is much the same there. This is entirely wrong. In Spain, tapas are drinking food. They're things like potatoes in zesty garlic sauce, fried bechamel sauce balls, or baguette slices topped with ham, calamari, or Spanish omelette, and they are frequently free or discounted with your drinks. The place we went in Madrid was €12 for all the tapas we could shove in our faces, and a glass of sangria. Refills were €3.50, and shitty beer was more expensive. Maybe I should open a real tapas bar in STL.

Other Thoughts I Have About Barcelona

Can somebody ask RiFF RAFF where I go to shake dice with Larry Bird, and where I rent a time travelling slab to three wheel through the Olympics?

I've had much less wine in Barcelona, because unlike Madrid, they have some decent craft beer here. I'm going to go enjoy some more cheap wine tonight, because two buck chuck is only going to be tolerable as tinto de verano.

Eixample is one of the few gridded areas in Europe, but it's a bit different than our right angled streets. Each intersection is sort of beveled at the corners to make a square plaza turned 45 degrees from the intersection. This creates a lot of street parking (but still not enough for a city), but is a pain in the ass for pedestrians, who have to zigzag through the neighborhood. It's also really boring compared to the old city or Barceloneta. Stay in there if you can. Just don't use AirBNB. You might catch a paella pan to the dome.

The Perils of Being a Cool City

In 1992, Barcelona hosted the Olympic games. Billed as the city opening up to the world again after decades of neglect by Franco, it sparked tens of billions of dollars in renovation, new construction, and public service expansion. So successful has it been that Barcelona I'd often referred to as a model for urban renewal. But this renewal has come at a price. Where once tourists didn't come, today they come to Barcelona more than anywhere else in Spain, and this brings some unwanted changes if you are a local. Aside from the legendary pickpockets and purse snatchers, you get hordes of migrants attempting to sell various knockoff items all over the sidewalks, which just increases congestion, and puts money in the hands of the people who got them to Europe in the first place (read: organized crime). Hotels and international boring chains like McDonald's and Apple and H&M spring up to cater to the hordes, driving out the apartments and mom and pop stores that live there. People realize they can buy an apartment or two in a neighborhood near the old city and make good money renting it out on AirBNB, and the next thing you know, half the people in your building on any given day are strange faces. But this isn't the worst problem.

The big issue is that a lot of people who travel are fuckheads who should never be let out of their own country. This means you, guy carving your name on the towers at Sagrada Familia. You too, drunk -ass Aussie pounding San Miguel tallboys on the street. I know Barcelona has good clubs, but so does Ibiza, and the entire point of that island is clubbing tourism. People in Barceloneta have real jobs, and hate it when you puke or bang in their stairwell at 4AM and then leave. Sex tourist, go fuck yourself. Prostitution isn't legal here, there's just a few places where they don't really bother enforcing the rules. It's not the same thing. If you want to pay for some action, Amsterdam is a Ryanair flight away, and they'll even throw in a wooden shoe full of weed and tulips.

Barcelona has started to fight back, and will continue to fight. For instance, the guidebook I got from 2009 said that tourists could use Barcelona's public bike share, which is the best I've ever seen. This has changed to be only for locals. They've got a ton of bikes, but for high season, they'd need a ton more if tourists could use them. An AirBNB ban is being pushed by some on the city council, and unless the site is willing to work to prevent abuses, it's going to work. But this is the other danger for cities who are working hard to bring more tourism dollars. Some tourism is good. Too much, and it starts to permanently alter your city and embitter your locals. When that happens, you lose the charm that drew people to your city in the first place, and become like Paris.

Appropriately Timed Thoughts On Madrid

I've been here for 3.5 days worth of activities now, so I think I can have some opinions that aren't based on first impressions.

During the walking tour, our guide mentioned that something would happen to her about once a week. She called it "getting drunk by accident". She would go out to meet a friend for a tapa and a drink, and the next thing she knew, she was salsa dancing at a gay bar at 4AM while hammered. This sounded like a personal issue when she said it, but the more time I spend here, the more I see why this isn't abnormal. This city is like that one friend you have who is a total shit show and gets you to act a fool. You know the one. They wake up at 10, deal with a hangover, get going a but before noon, have lunch at 4, eat dinner at 10, and go get wasted and pass out in the wee hours of the morning. That's Madrid's schedule even if you don't drink. And Madrid insists you fucking drink. Lunchtime? Madrid insists it come with a free wine (or shitty beer), and you will linger long enough to have a few. Tapas? Best deal involves more booze. You can easily get a buzz going without trying, and then you're quite open to suggestion. If not for the need to be functional and see things, I'd be drunk a lot too.

Perhaps another thing keeping me soberish is the beer here in Spain. My guidebook said that the Spanish love beer. The guidebook was clearly written by somebody who never actually bothered going into the cervecerias that are everywhere. The Spanish love drinking. They tolerate beer. If they loved it, there would be more than 4 different brands, and they wouldn't all be godawful macro style pilsner. Even in my girlfriend's home town of 3000 people, where the one bar is full of taxidermied varmints shot by the clientele, there are 6 varieties of beer now, and several are craft beer. Madrid bars have one tap, and the standard serving is about 12 oz. "The Spanish love beer" my ass.

The 15000 step a day estimate I gave was way off. It's actually closer to 20000. My feet are a bit sore now.