Me personally? ¡Negro Modelo!

Now that’s dedication.

As dsquared says (94) there’s a genuine north-south beer divide

There are at least two divides. Yes, north of the Wash you’re more likely to get a head on your beer – vivid memories here of drinking in Cambridge and watching the last few bubbles on the top of a pint of Greene King wink out – but there’s also the “pale and hoppy”/”tawny and malty” divide, which essentially sets South Lancashire and West Yorkshire against the rest of the country. (Lucky rest.)

English beer north of Burton tends to be fizzy and not very good. Better to stick to the south and west.

Where the beer is flat, served warm and has no head? Really, that’s borderline trolling, Chris.

As dsquared says (94) there’s a genuine north-south beer divide—S&N sold a beer called “John Courage” in the US for a while, which was amusing, since John Smith’s and Courage are very different entities—and I never got to the point of getting on with a pint of Young’s. On the flipside, Sam Smith’s is really not that popular a beer in the north: tolerable in its tied pubs, but really seems to focus on providing southerners with the cheapest beer in town and Americans with bog-standard bitter in bottles.

That’s the clue. Ayingerbrau was – until 2006 – the name used for Sam Smith’s house lager; it doesn’t have anything to do with der Brau von Aying, except that Sam Smith’s had the right to use the name. Apparently they now call it Alpine Lager.

A friend has just reminded me of Ayingerbrau, who do lager in three styles (strengths) of which the weakest, actually called Ayingerbrau, is the best tasting, and still not watery @ about 4.5 IIRC - it tastes like a ‘premium’ lager. The strongest (can’t remember what its called) is pretty brutal – not by the standards under discussion above, but certainly a bit too strong for extended drinking sessions if you’re accustomed to 5-and-a-little-bit. Think it’s approaching 7%: the extra %age point or two soon adds up, and more importantly gives a steeper gradient. In any case it’s also unpleasantly dark, syrupy and grim-tasting.

The 4.5 one is not bad-tasting – maybe comparable to a slightly rougher Budvar – but the really memorable thing is that it’s staggeringly cheap (pun intended) – about a quid/pint cheaper than comparable lagers IIRC. I only know of two pubs that serve it – the Chandos in Traf Sq and the Lyceum on the Strand. I think I may have come across a couple of others – if so they would have been in London too, cos I know I’ve never encountered it elsewhere. In any case there must be more, presumably based on brewery affiliation.

“Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”

Luckily there are no quarrels over the merits of different varieties, labels or vintages of wine.

I’m not sure how the second sentence necessarily follows from the first, but then again I’m not the one with any claims about the beers or your test so it doesn’t matter.

I think it is just another sign that Obama is pretty self-aware that he choose Bud. It really is about as good as any other beer.

So what shall we discuss that is highbrow enough for you Dex? Post modern literature? early modern painting? I can talk about either, but having a good beer on hand helps the conversation flow better. Something hearty and dark, like a lager goes well with literature, pomo or otherwise, while modernism is best discussed by the light of a summer IPA.