And just when I promised to play nice

Now the Village Voice has a list, Our 10 Best Beers. Great fodder — they include a “plebian” list and a “connoisseur’s list” — but a promise is a promise so nothing snarky from me.

Instead I’ll take it out on . . .

An opener for screwcap wines. Did some wine drinker miss the memo? They’re screwcaps. Granted, there is a legitimate use for people with arthritis. But “keeping the romance alive?”

Now back to be the nice guy who buys the next round and a link that should have you smiling right into Happy Hour.

Pete Brown celebrates. As far as I am concerned this paragraph alone makes him worthy of Beer Writer of the Year:

I fucking love beer. I love the taste and appreciation of it. I love the society and culture that surrounds it, and the way it influences society and culture more broadly. I love the history of it, and what that history tells us about ourselves. I love the way it’s an international standard, a universal signifier of unpretentious sociability. I love the fact that I’ve made scores of genuine new friends through it – many of whom I’ve yet to meet physically. I love the way it inspires and intoxicates me – both in a physiological sense and an intellectual one.

But wait, there’s another.

Today I’m going to write my final column of the year for the Publican and then I’m going to a beer festival and/or a bar and I’m going to exceed the recommended daily guidelines of alcohol unit intake. I’m going to get drunk. I’m going to get shitfaced, sozzled, pissed, bladdered, cunted, wankered, soused, and most of the other 1346 words for inebriation I’ve collected over the years. I’m going to have a good time doing it, and the people who are with me are going to have a good time too – a better time than they would if they stayed in and watched the telly. And when I come home with The Beer Widow and a few mates, I’m going to share with them a bottle of Bass Kings Ale, brewed in 1902, which cost me over a hundred quid, and I’m going to marvel at the miracle of beer all over again.

The nice thing is this evening we’ll be drinking something local, maybe on cask, and it will be part of the same miracle.

 

4 thoughts on “And just when I promised to play nice”

  1. I’m not sure what’s more rediculous. A screw top opener. or the fact that Kid Rock the figurehead of the Maximally Slamable American Baddass, is on the cover of Tasting Panel Magazine. Actually I know which one is more ridiculous, nevermind.

    I think we need to elevate the beer opening experience. Lets invent an over complicated crown cap remover. Something with lots of knobs and levers. Oooh ohhh and blinking lights.

    Ok, that is enough Monday morning snark, I’m just angry at the world for allowing the Steelers to lose 4 in a row.

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