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.