Texas Tea

I had considered ranting about the current anti-booze hysteria - bad even by British standards - that is gripping our MPs and media, but it's frankly too depressing - maybe some other time. Pete Brown frankly does a much better job of demolishing their arguments anyway.

Much as I love beer, we do sometimes have our issues - namely the way it can sneak a hangover onto you without warning. I don't mean the 'God I wish I was dead' feeling after a night over over-indulgence - that I can accept. No, I mean the crafty bad head and delicate belly that sometimes comes despite not having drunk as much as you might normally without ill-effect.

Such was the case last Sunday, after a restrained night out. A visit to Nottingham's Forest Tavern saw me sampling Castle Rock's Black Gold, as part of my 'new beer a week' mission for 2010. Black Gold, as you might expect, was a dark ale, which is my personal colour of choice for a beer - blacker than a pirate's heart ideally. The 3.8% beer was smooth and tasty, and so I had five pints several hours- enough to make me merry, but hardly the stuff of illness. I won't blame the beer... yet. Clearly, Black Gold and myself need another encounter.

For this week's new beer, I was tempted by Auld Aquaintance in Wetherspoons today, but I'd trying to avoid daytime beers when possible, so stuck to coffee (tempting as the 'haggis and a pint for £3.99' looked). The likely winner instead looks like Adnams Broadside, a fiesty looking brute that promises "fruitcake aromas, almonds and conserved fruit" - wonder how much of that I'll pick up on? It was £1.59 for a 500ml, 6.3% bottle from Tesco, and I can almost hear the politicians and BBC hacks grinding their teeth in disgust.

CAMRA 4 LIFE

In my first posting on this blog, I explained that I'd joined CAMRA during a drunken moment, and was planning to cancel my membership before the money left my account. That was the plan. Sadly, a miscalculation with dates meant that they'd debited the twenty quid before I could stop it. Oh well.

So I am - for the next year at least - a card carrying CAMRAite. At least this means that, alongside fellow drunken signees, I can attend meetings and make a nuisance of myself, as well as no doubt finding much to moan about here within the pages of their monthly rag.

Still, could've done with that twenty quid...

New Year, New Beer

I gave up on New Year Resolutions a long time ago, realising that they were pointless, usually health based pipe dreams that would quickly be forgotten. Instead, I have goals for a year - things I WANT to achieve. Some of these are big, some not so big.

One goal this year that should be achievable is to drink a new beer every week. By new, I mean something I've never had before.

I've probably drunk a wider variety of beer than most people, but that's not much of a boast in a world where most people doggedly stick with big name lagers - Stella, Carling, Carlsberg, Fosters, etc - and probably think they are being adventurous by ordering a San Miguel on tap.

It's an easy trap to fall into, and even with real ale, you can find yourself sticking with what you know. So, I'm deliberately going to avoid it. I started out this week with a bottle of Wychwood's Goliath, a drink that I'd somehow avoided previously. A decent, solid ale that went nicely with the mature cheddar and rubbery Jarlsberg that accompanied it.

A new beer a week (and no, two new beers in one week doesn't count for the next)should be the easiest goal of 2010, and I invite everyone to join me on this important mission.

And if you are up for more 2010 challenges and are on Facebook, check out The 100 Pubs of 2010 -where you are encouraged to visit (wait for it) 100 pubs during the year. I'm on 4 so far, which is pitiful.

Here We Go

Why another beer blog? Good question. It's not as though there is a shortage of people out there banging on about beer, after all. But I can't help thinking that there is room for more. And here's why.

Back in November, I joined CAMRA. What can I say? I was at a beer festival and drunk. The idea of a free Pub Guide and £20 worth of Wetherspoons vouchers suckered me in.

I'd had my doubts about CAMRA for a long time. Much as I love Real Ale, CAMRA always seemed a bit... well, a bit narrow-minded. I had no intentions of signing up as a member - but, drunkenness, free book, vouchers and time to cancel my subscription combined to do their dirty work.

So here I am, a few months later, about to cancel my membership. And the reason is simple. I've been reading CAMRA's membership newspaper What's Brewing, and finding it all a bit anal. It seems CAMRA is less about Ale as it is about Tradition. And while there is nothing wrong with preserving old pubs - no matter how grotty, unwelcoming and unpleasant many of them actually are - I'm just as happy to drink my beer in a fashionable bar, should the beer, the company and the location be agreeable. For CAMRA, it seems that Old is Good, New is Bad. That's probably why they have so much coverage of cider, which - last time a checked - isn't an ale, 'real' or otherwise, while at the same time never missing a chance to sneer at the lager drinkers.

The final straw, though, was reading the blog of CAMRA bigwig (well, he has his own column and edits the beer guide) Roger Protz. The first thing I saw on Beer Pages was a nasty, vicious attack on Brew Dog, titled 'BREW DOG GO BONKERS'. Protz opened his piece by stating "BrewDog have surpassed themselves with their over-inflated egos and naked ambition" and went on to attack their latest brew, the 32% Tactical Nuclear Penguin as irresponsible and - of course - not a real beer, because it was finished with wine or champagne yeast. When blog readers attacked Protz for his Daily Mail attitude, he posted a whiny response, which seemed to consist mainly of his expert credentials and a plea for everyone to be civil. A bit much from someone who'd previously said Brew Dog should "grew up and stop.. behaving like a couple of precocious teenagers standing on a street corner with back-to-front baseball caps screaming for attention" and called them "idiotic" and "ego-maniacs". And to make it worse, they are not even members of the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), so can't be "taken to task ... for activities that do great harm to the entire brewing community".

Now, I have no great love for Brew Dog. The only ale of theirs that I've had is Punk IPA, which I found a bit nondescript. But I'm all in favour of people pushing the limits of beer, and would love to sample TNP (at £30 a bottle, I probably never will). I'd also like to sample their 18.2% Tokyo, and will be making an effort to catch up with their other, more affordable beers soon.

But Protz's holier-than-thou attitude towards anyone pushing the boundaries and sticking two fingers up at the anti-beer authorities (in which I'll include everyone from the government to the media to the Portman Group) left a bad taste, as did CAMRA actually SUPPORTING minimum pricing on alcohol - because of course, that would only affect the pissy lagers sold in supermarkets (and the hoi-polloi who drink them).

So that is why Bucketful of Beer (or BOB for short) exists. Because we love beer, love pubs and love innovation. And we love all beer. Not just ales from small breweries. Of course we support them, but we also drink - hold onto your hats - lager. Sometimes because that's all there is, sometimes because that's what we fancy. Last summer, I felt more inclined towards Coors Light than any real ale, simply because it went down well on a hot day. That's just how we roll!

So, don't expect us to sneer at anyone for not drinking the correct brews (even if it's Carling!). And don't expect us to wax overly lyrical about how a beer has hints of whatever in it - when we review a beer, we'll say if it is tasty, nicely presented and does the job (whatever that might be) but we probably won't be suggesting which meal it should accompany - unless the food we had it with in the pub is worth mentioning. Because we're not experts. Just connoisseurs.

We will also bang on in opinionated fashion about whatever beery topics take our fancy, as and when we feel like it. We're against licensing restrictions, minimum pricing, the ludicrous 'look 25' rules imposed by so many shops (25? That's seven years older than the legal drinking age!) and the demonisation of alcohol by (hypocritical) newspapers, broadcasters and politicians, not to mention the pathetic restrictions of the Portman Group, who seem to take great pleasure in banning any innovative promotional ideas that somehow suggest that drinking is in any way a pleasurable experience.

Oh, and just to confuse everyone, we might even write about non-beer based booze from time to time. As well as related things every beer drinker should like - cheese, for instance.

Which reminds me, where's that bottle of absinthe gone...?