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.