We shouldn't be talking about ale at this time in the morning. I've suddenly become all thirsty. Not to worry. Three hours and Les will be unlocking the office front doors.

Snobbery happens all the time.
There was a thread a while back and we got snobbery over coffee shops and coffee itself.
I'm not having a go at anyone BTW as I have been guilty of it my self in the past.
I build my own PC's (No qualifications all self taught). In the past I have been know to pipe up with 'Why have you bought that graphics card? It's poor you should have bought this one. Or that CPU is awful'
Does it get annoying? Hell yes but as I say most of us do it now and again.

Even if it does take you 33 minutes to get served.


Still bitter.

I hate snobbery too! it reminds me of my dear trainer when i was an apprentice and still wet behind the ears. he once invited me to his house for a 'drink', when he called off at the shops for a 24 box of carling. i thought wow thats alot between us. got to his house where he turned his gas fire on. it was mid summer. he then opened all 24 cans and lay them in front of the fire for 20 minutes where he then showed me around the house, came back, nd then started to drink all the cans to himself warm and flat.... i had a cup of tea. true legend of the drinking world.

You quickly learn which pubs keep a decent cellar and which don't. One pub in town is terrible, despite it's fancy claims. One a gentle lob of a stone away from it makes no claims and concentrates on the beer. That is where I go.


Fair enough, but you also know you're getting ice-cold, flavourless (at best) crap. If you're happy with that, fine. I'm not.
I agree with your point, to an extent, about beers made specifically to be different. I'm no fan of strong beers made solely for the reason of being strong. If it's strength comes as a result of the way it's made, i.e. with flavour in mind, fine. Same with the heat in curries. Also, I'm fed up of the current trend to very light, over-hopped beers which everyone seems to be making. Whatever happened to a nut-brown ale? But not everyone is the same and long may that continue.

I'm not sure why some people keep revolving the issue of "snobbery". What has this got to do with it?

If a person, friend or stranger, tries to help you to sample a better and tastier product, surely that's a good thing?

Most drinkers of nitrokeg have no idea about the diference between what they are drinking and how it's produced, and what they could be drinking. If you are so precious and touchy that you don't want any friendly advice and conversation about the subject you're indulging in, then so be it, but why get all on the defensive? Many thousands of people have eventually recognised the facts, and that is why among all beers only cask ale is increasing in sales, craft breweries are burgeoning, and CAMRA has record membership.

The facts that (a) some people might be like Dally's imaginary mate, and (b) not all real ale sold is of a high standard, doesn't detract from the fact that nitrokeg is an inferior, bland, tasteless (comparatively), overchilled concoction of sterile liquid mixed with a cocktail of gases. If someone points this out to you, it's almost always because they want to spread the good word. "Snobbery" has nothing to do with it; a "snob" is a person who believes that their tastes are superior to those of other people. I don't, I actually know that real ale is superior to nitrokeg, and I've givven a potted explanation of exactly why that is. Dally, or anybody, could make the same discovery if they chose to do so and nobody who has gone on and done it that I know of has ever looked back. We just want to share our experience, as well as (in my case at least) seeing each extra pint of real ale sold as a poke in the eye for the big, profit-driven multinational mass-producers of pap masquerading as a quality drink.

I like that story.
I lke it a lot.

Reminds me of my mates old man on our old council estate.
Used to brew his own lager in the cupboard under his stairs.
Plenty of sugar in so it was super strength and always made sure me and his lad had a couple of pints before we set off for school.

Nail on the head.

Amongst which is Guinness.
How people can venerate such pap is beyond me.
Even the slow inefficient serving method is held up as some sort of bloody worship.

Still a world record, Norris McWhirter, everything.

Spot on... and the reason that people drink this muck is because of all the hype and mass advertising brainwashing that goes on. The suits tell you it tastes good and is macho, and the gullible believe it. Let the taste buds do the talking!

Served as cold as possible to reduce the risk of tasting anything.
Got more into my stouts and porters lately. A whole world of fun to be had, even if it's goes against JerryChicken's mantra of "never drink owt you can't see through".

Incidentally, on the back of my increased appreciation for and consumption of rum, I got accused of turning into you t'other night.

I was in Dublin once, a few years back, and drinking in company which included a guy who'd previously worked a long time at Guinness. Now I'd heard that the Guinness over there could be a different proposition, but not really given it much thought. We were in O'Donoghue's, which is some place. But I digress. I tasted the stuff, and it was bloody lovely. Went through some that weekend, I can tell you. Amazing drink. At one point I asked Gerry if he could shed any light on why it was a different drink altogether, and he explained that everything they ship out is first sterilised, but the stuff they supplied to the nearby outlets wasn't, as there was no point, as it didn't last long enough and so, it was the real deal, living, breathing beer.

Which does reinforce the point I was making.

Brother dotcom, over on Southstander, is also a convert to the cause.

I don't know how far your career in rum drinking has progressed but a rough rule of thumb is that if it's made on a French-speaking island, it's probably made from fresh cane juice rather than molasses.
Imparts a slight "grassy" flavour to the finish.
My favourites are from Martinique ( I have visited (or peered through the gates to see if I could visit) every distillery on that beautiul island), Guadaloupe or Marie Galante.
They call cane-juice rum "Rhum Agricole", and it's usually (maybe always) a single-estate bottling and as close to a "single-malt" in the rum world as you're going to get.
It's even got Apellation Controllee status ... unique outside the French mainland.
Molasses rum gets the moniker "Rhum industrielle".

I recently discovered "Masters of Malt" online.
They do tiny sample-size bottles of rum (as well as the usual Scotch whisky), it's a bit expensive per cubic centimetre ... but a way of trying a larger number.

Quite far, to be truthful. You know me - never one to do things by halves

During my sojourns to Barbados when I had a contract out there I grew accustomed to popping into the roadside run shacks that exist there, especially away from the west coast, or rather the chap who owned the hotel that I worked at got into the habit of taking his contractors out on sightseeing trips in his car which were really his excuse to visit as many rum shacks in an afternoon as was humanly possible.

When I say "rum shack" I really do mean something that looks like an old garden shed at the side of a dirt road with a Bajun asleep on a stool outside, one side of the shack hinged down into a counter affair - you just ask for rum, you get given a decent sized slug from a bottle that is unmarked and you haven't a clue what it is you're drinking other than the fact that its virtually guaranteed not to be Mount Gay Rum - I don't know how we got back some days but god bless the Bajun police who live up to the folklore that if you see a police car parked at the side of a road then the police officer will be in the rum shack around the corner.

You should pay a visit to "the Twice Brewed Inn" near Hexham. A selection of over 50 rums of varying prices plus some very nice real ale. I had several glasses of something very nice - I can't remember the name because I can't remember much of anything! I do know the barman said it should be drunk with half a lime squeezed into it which as far as I can remember worked very well.

I had a bottle of Ron Palma Mulata de Cuba Anejo Gran Reserva at Christmas - very nice. I'm a big fan of malt whiskey but from now on I'll sample some rum too.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-21614304Maybe they should consider using this type of "water"[/url

I've just discovered Fullers Black Cab stout. Not quite Marstons Oyster Stout, or even Titanic, but very nice indeed... Coffee with a hint of toffee.

Tonight though, I am drinking lager. A Czech Pilsner from the Flat Cap Brewery.
And rather nice it is too.

Good ale is a fast growing market in Aus, still miles behind Europe though.

If anyone's in sydney check The Lord Nelson out.

I forgot to give the story behind the Flatcap beer, but as I love companies that go above and beyond the call of duty...

On Monday (Tuesday afternoon? Whatever) FCB posted on Facebook that they'd won a contract to supply the Booths supermarket chain. Now, living in Shorpe, you may be surprised to hear we don't have this somewhat upmarket chain, but I'd been beer hunting in one in Clitheroe on the Friday and hadn't noticed their beers there.
I commented this and got an immediate question as to where I was living, followed by one for my precise address.

This morning a courier firm brought me the beer and a branded glass... Free and for nowt.

And it was comfortably one of the best two or three lagers I've ever had, if you see it - It's called 'Otto' - give it a go.

Very impressed with their beer, but even more with their customer service.

I've noticed that too, not a fan of them tbh.

Me and my mates would often go to a pub in St. Helens that's well known for real ale at the start of a night out a couple of years ago. Trouble is we'd be drinking various beers as if they were Tetleys and pretty much necking them. By the time we'd got out of there to hit the main bars we were p1ssed. Then we'd only be able to get your usual Greenalls/Tetleys/Boddies nitrokeg stuff so there didn't really seem much point in starting on the proper stuff in the first place.

One of the relatively large number of real ale pubs in Huddersfield has a festival every season and, naturally, winter sees a lot of the dark beers. I can't quite remember which breweries they were, but someone did a Black Forest stout (might have been Mallinson's, that, which is odd as I'm not generally a fan of their stuff) and someone else a blueberry porter. Both were utterly sensational.

You left to go "hit the main bars" ... that is where you went wrong.

In your early 20's, single, on a Saturday night you don't really want to be spending full night surrounded by beards and beer-bellies if you know what I mean.