Beer of the Day: Adnam’s Broadside
Beer: Broadside Strong Original
Brewery: Adnams
Alcohol: 6.3%
Pros: 6.3%!!!
Cons: Hippies.
I confess. It was the alcohol content that caught my eye on this one. But it was a nice dark red color, so it went in the basket.
Adnam’s brewery is in Southwold, a little fishing village up the coast from London. Well, it was a little fishing village. Now it’s a little yuppie village, I gather. The first record of brewing at the Swan Inn dates to 1345, when Johanna de Corby was fined for selling beer in unmarked measures (weights and measures legislation in the UK goes back kzillions of years; she was probably selling unmarked buckets o’ beer).
The whole town burned to the ground in 1659 and the Swan was rebuilt the following year. So it’s kind of the New Swan. The brewery is still in the yard behind.
A Google search for Adnam’s turns up their site with the phantom description: “A traditional brewer of classic English beer, with a very modern web site, with more style than substance (the beers have both).” That odd sentence must have been from an early “holding” page before the site went live. Bad idea.
The actual web site is worse. It’s a great smelly load of hippie marketing bollocks. Like, the Our Values page, which shows a row of pebbles with words like “sustainability” and “diversity” and “community” embossed on them, and you click the pebbles to learn that “we want fulfilled customers and employees, whose lives are enriched by their involvement with Adnams” and “we aim to manage our impact positively on the social, natural, and built environment.” The built environment. That’s a new one.
Then there’s their Too Much of a Good Thing campaign.
Confident that great beers and distinctive wines enhance the quality of life, we are determined to promote their sale in responsible ways. Our aim is to encourage more people to drink Adnams, not for individuals to drink more – and all our marketing is consistent with that approach.
During the past year we have also worked closely with local organisations and young people to produce informative ‘alco-cards’ and an educational video (partly financed by a grant from Arts & Business), undertaken widespread staff training, held discussions with our pub tenants and the police, produced clear and informative leaflets and devised a subtle variant on our ‘Beer from the Coast’ campaign.
Further work is in hand to improve the clarity of information on the back labels of our beers and wines. All of which is brought together with a simple strapline – ‘Remember, you can have too much of a good thing’.
Informative alco-cards. Sweet Jesus, I need a drink.
The beer? Oh. Strong, very bitter. I liked it. I don’t know why I keep buying a beverage called “bitters” and reacting with shock, “hey, this stuff is bitter!” I would have given it three and a half drunken weasels, but I took half a drunken weasel away because…you know. Hippies.
three drunken weasels.
May 22, 2007 — 7:49 am
Comments: 10
Up in flames
The Cutty Sark.
Which is not my charming way of telling you I’ve killed a bottle of cheap hootch this morning. The great ship Cutty Sark caught fire today. She was in the process of major renovations so much of the planking was off-site, but most of it was there and is very severely damaged.
The Cutty Sark was the most famous tea clipper ever built and the only one still afloat. Well, afloat in a special dry dock built for the convenience of 13 million tourists and one weasel. We went to see the Cutty Sark on my very first trip to London in 1997. I’ll never forget it, because…well. London! Greenwich! Cutty Sark!
She was launched in 1870 and traded tea with China. Then wine, spirits and beer. She plied the wool trade to and from Australia from 1885 to 1895, setting speed records from Sydney to London every year. She began losing money and was sold to the Portuguese, where she ran between Rio and Lisbon. She was in London for a sprucing up in 1922 when an Englishman saw her and bought her back. She finally retired after WWII and was towed Greenwich, where the dry dock was built.
The name Cutty Sark comes from Burns’ poem, Tam O’ Shanter. There’s a beatiful witch in it wearing a short (or cut) shirt — “cutty sark” (the Portuguese crews called her “Pequina Camisola”). That’s the witch, up there on the figurehead, though why she’s clutching a horse’s tail or a hunk of hair or whatever, I do not know.
I haven’t heard whether she survived the fire.
May 21, 2007 — 6:55 am
Comments: 17
Beer of the Day: Fursty Ferret
Beer: Fursty Ferret
Brewery: Hall and Woodhouse
Alcohol: 4.4%
Pros: It has ferrets all over it!
Cons: Tastes distinctly of ferret.
I had the t-shirt, time to sample the beer.
Have you ever picked up a product and suddenly felt the warm throb of a marketing drone humping your shin? Such a product is Fursty Ferret. Here’s the back label:
When in decades past the idyllic country home of Miss Rose Gribble became a local inn, legend has it that the inquisitive local ferrets frequented the pub’s back door on a mission to sample its own reputed brew. In their honour it was named Fursty Ferret, and today it’s brewed in greater quantity — so now you can enjoy the celebrated ale that still eludes the ferrets of Gribble Inn.
I think I just fwowed up a little. England is an exotic land, but insufficiently exotic to support roving bands of alcoholic ferrets congregating behind hotels to cadge beer. More’s the pity. Still, my favorite beers are dark red bitters, and this one looked like Mr Goodferret.
The label describes it as sweet and hoppy. I found it bitter and skunky. Which is, I suppose, entirely appropriate.
“Skunking” is what it’s called when light strikes beer and transforms some junk in the hops with a big chemical name into a sulfur compound very similar to eau du skonk. Skunking can happen in less than a minute in clear glass bottles exposed to sunlight; it happens in dark brown bottles exposed to fluorescent light, too, but it takes a few days. Which means that pretty much every import you’ve ever drunk from a glass bottle is at least a touch skunked. It might even be fair to say that a whiff of pong is a proper and intended part of the bottled beer experience.
Well. It’s not like I was going to pour it down the sink. I give it:
two and a half drunken weasels.
— 1:00 am
Comments: 1
Friday, May 18
May 18, 2007 — 8:10 pm
Comments: 4
B-b-birthday b-b-b-banjo
Happy Weaselfest! I nominated today, first sunny day of the trip, as my pretend birthday.
In the morning we walked through town and picked up some shopping (Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top on sale! How’s that for coinkydink?) and visited Mr Whippy. Because I’ve been very, very naughty. And it’s my pretend birthday.
Then we drove out to the country and had a walk along a public footpath. The whole island is criss-crossed with these footpaths. They’re ancient, traditional rights of way for foot (and sometimes horse or vehicle) traffic. The libertarian in me is horrified that landowners have to put up with — and maintain! — a network of paths across private property to accomodate a steady stream of trespassers. The bunny hugger in me considers them a national treasure. Even if I did put my hand in a stinging nettle.
If ever you visit this country, make sure you somehow wangle a drive away from town. The Brits have done a remarkable job not crapping up their countryside. It’s a lush green sheep-encrusted rolling treefest, especially in May, punctuated with 11th Century pubs and shepherd’s huts and thatched cottages and ruined castles. I’m pretty sure they got the Disney guys in for the preliminary design.
Then it was back home for the traditional Showering of Gifts. I got such a lot of excellent loot this year; the surprise hit was this sporty little traveling banjo. Now everywhere I go, I can carry with me the beautiful, evocative sound of tomcats flossing their anuses with razor wire. Why anybody would voluntarily hand me this loaded weapon, I do not know. Mr Whippy could probably tell you.
Then it was out to my favorite restaurant and home to a nice brew and…I’m pretty sure I’ll fall down the something and break my something later. This is just way too good.
— 7:35 pm
Comments: 16
Four bottles of fizz and the world biggest chocolate Easter bunny
Right! We made it! And I got my wifi working!
To kick off Weasel’s Birthday Fortnight (yes, my actual birthday was toward the beginning of the month. This here’s the celebration), I was presented with this fucking ginormous Lindt bunny and several bottles of excellent champers.
The hooch on the far right above is, I think, my favorite. It’s Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top. It was the official champagne of the maiden voyage of the Titanic (which, as you may have heard, was the only voyage of the Titanic). I didn’t know this when I decided it was my favorite, so it’s…fate, not posturing.
Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top is kosher. And not plain old kosher for Passover, but extra specially jewy kosher. I’m a little unclear what that means, but you’ll find the exhaustive account here. Me, I’m only Jewish when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come ’round. I was christened a Presbyterian.
In 1916, a Heidsieck-laden ship bound for Russia was torpedoed by the Germans in the Gulf of Finland. It turned up again in 1998 and over 2,000 bottles of vintage 1907 fizz have been salvaged from it. The water’s cold, the bottles are apparently still drinkable.
This isn’t one of those. It’s an ordinary bottle from the supermarket, but it sure am fine.
And there. That’s the last drop.
Meanwhile, I see you knuckleheads have been writing haiku and trying to trip Akismet. None of it made it into the spam filter, but I suppose you know that by now. It doesn’t seem to care about naughty words. I think it hones in pretty exclusively on links. More than two are guaranteed quarantine.
But, hey, knock yourselves out. You’re welcome to post any wirty dords you like and see what sticks. (You know, I don’t think “wirty dords” really works all that well in print).
May 17, 2007 — 8:03 pm
Comments: 8
Talk me some Knowledge
We took the train into London for a guitar gig tonight, which was nice. We treated ourselves to a cab from Victoria Station, which was very nice. A cab here is an expensive treat.
The black cabs of London are famous. Only licensed black cabs (which aren’t always black, but are always blocky square things — notably Fairways) may legally pick up passengers in the street in London (notice boards encourage you to narc on cheaters). And getting a license here is more difficult than in any other city in the world. Drivers are required to have an intimate familiarity with roads throughout the city and be able to route around traffic hotspots on the fly. This is called The Knowledge. Google it! A driver will typically study for several years before he first attempts the oral exam, and it usually takes it a dozen tries before he aces it.
The Knowledge has been a requirement since the hackney cabs of the middle 19th Century. Seems a little superfluous in the GPS era, but the cabs are clean spacious and have cool stuff like TVs and credit card swiper dinguses. And, traditionally, talkative drivers. Ours chattered through an intercom at us about the difficulty of making a living where rich people prefer their own drivers. London is a real class envy sort of town.
No, the Colgate ad is not a Photoshop job.
Anyhoo, it’s almost 2 in the am here and I’m on the sleepy side of a bottle of fizz. Still haven’t got the wifi going. Tomorrow we head for the coast, so now for a sammich and bed and better luck with that tomorrow.
May 16, 2007 — 7:57 pm
Comments: 11
Incoming!
Hi! It’s me! Unless things have changed, Logan airport charges for wifi access, so I wrote this Saturday and I’m timeshifting it forward. WordPress software has this neat feature where you can publish a post with a future date and it won’t appear until the timestamp is good. I don’t use it much; it isn’t often I have anything prepared ahead of time.
I’ve thought about using this function to play a cruel trick on myself. Like future post, “you people suck and my phone number is 401-331-XXXX!!!” to go live at, say, three in the morning. Then stumble off to bed drunkenly and see if my paranoia is sufficient to wake me out of a comfortable stupor in time to stop it. I guess this is what happens when you have sadistic and masochistic tendencies: you are amused at the idea of pwning yourself.
Anyhoo, I thought it would be cool to date this for 9am Tuesday, when my plane is supposed to take off. Then if we have engine trouble and go down in Boston Harbor, y’all can be, like, “oh my god! Stoaty’s last post ever appeared at the very moment the plane went down!”
If I survive, catch you tomorrow from Londinium. If not, feel free to phone in to the networks and claim to be my best friends ever. Somebody might as well enjoy my screaming arc of death.
May 15, 2007 — 9:00 am
Comments: 22
Londinium or bust
What does the “or bust” construction mean, exactly? “If I do not reach my intended destination, I will physically explode in some way”? I don’t know. I’ve never known. Forget I said it.
I had hoped work would be a leisurely stretch before my holiday, but some stupid piece of shit job blew up in my face this morning and I chased it the rest of the day. Oh, well. A quick note before I retire, then.
Most Boston-to-London flights are overnighters, arriving right in the teeth of the London morning commute. That sort of flight is easier to catch on the Boston end, but hell on the London end. I don’t sleep well on planes; I showed up punchy and fizzy and spent the whole first day hoping that more than usually tactless things don’t come out of my mouth. Tactlessness is, as you might imagine, a problem for me.
Finally, we found a flight that leaves in the morning and arrives at Heathrow around nine at night. Perfect — just enough time to drive home, settle in, drink a bottle of fizz, eat a meal (toad in the hole. My favorite!) and fall into a deep, weaselicious dream.
But the Boston end? Not so nice.
Still, I prefer to front-load my pain. Who was it said that drunkenness would be moral if you could endure the hangover first? It wasn’t me, but I fundamentally agree: payment first. Then pleasure.
My flight leaves at nine. Not bad. But I have to get a bus to the airport, per their schedule. And I have to get a cab to the bus. And the cab company won’t let me pre-book because it’s a short trip, but they won’t guarantee me a cab because I don’t pre-book. (Yes, I have friends. I wouldn’t dream of waking them in the wee hours to drive me, which is partly why they’re still my friends. Despite that whole tactlessness thing).
So here’s how it goes down: alarm goes off at three in the morning. I get dressed, pack my toothbrush and call a cab for 4:30. The cats begin acting especially cute but very sad, the knowing little bastards, so me and my luggage move out onto the lawn to wait. The cab is late. It is always late. They didn’t take my number, so there’s no way I can know if the cabby is lost and I’m screwed. This is — this ALWAYS is — the low point of the day. I treat myself to a dram of stomach acid. And possibly half a milligram of Xanax.
The cab arrives and drives the short hop to the bus station. (A cab ride all the way in to Logan would add several hundred bucks to the round trip. I could do it, but it would hurt). The bus station is dark. There’s usually a moon. And a pair of young lovers, or a very old lady, or scruffy college students, or all of these things waiting for the Logan bus. It feels poetical. I miss my stupid cats.
The bus ride into Boston is dark but sparkly. I feel like That Girl. I take a lot of artsy, blurry photos out the window. The line at the ticket counter…well, this isn’t Christmas, so maybe not so bad this time. I’m starting to enjoy myself, but I miss my stupid cats.
I saunter around the Gate 33 area. Have a nasty cup of Starbucks airport blend. Borrow a cup of electricity from Massport to charge up all my shit, if I can find an empty outlet. Start to get excited. Miss stupid cats.
The flight East is magic: you fly into the planet’s rotation. The flight is six hours, but the clock says twelve. So the whole day is compressed into cartoon time. They feed us a lot; keeps us quiet. So we go from the rosy fingers of dawn to the scarlet imprint of twilight in less time than it takes to work the morning shift.
Get me! I’m a jet setter!
Miss my stupid cats already.
This is going to be great!
May 14, 2007 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 7
Friday, May 11
Next week, Weasel goes back to Angle-land for a couple of weeks. But it’s okay. They have the Internet there now. You know, that thing is getting to be like…some kind of … international network or something.
May 11, 2007 — 4:31 pm
Comments: 23