A few hours ago John tweeted his roundup for The Session #25: Lager Love is about half finished. Meanwhile he directs us to the reluctant scooper’s tome on the topic.
Why? Here’s one paragraph: “Let’s be honest: lager is shit. It’s a pitiful excuse for alcohol. Drunk from tins, drank by neds, sold in slabs, made in labs. It may have a rich history but it’s been forcibly abducted by the English and had up the chuffer. There are amoeboids avoiding osmosis with passing cells just in case it involves this fizzy pizz of stuff.”
This guy just got added to my feed reader.
Oy. Not that old, ignorant rant again. It’s this sort of perspective that seems to be creating big gaps between the ale and lager camps in the beer community. I wish some beer drinkers wouldn’t use such a broad brush to paint styles — especially since there are so many widely diverse characters in beer.
I haven’t gone over to read the full post yet, but I’m honestly hoping that it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek and/or mostly directed at, as he says, the “forcibly abducted” swill that calls itself lager and not the good stuff that’s really out there.
Okay, so I read it — and while his prose is very well crafted, his inspiration and research leave me shaking my head and thinking he’s being a rebel for the sake of the thrill.
“For me, lager is a big chemically mess.”
I think there are posts after posts by many with chemical backgrounds who have disproved this theory at RealBeer — and they were talking about the US big 3, not Ayinger.
Someone, Stan? Take this poor soul to Southern Germany, even southern Wisconsin!
Steve – It is totally rant and not at all education. A lot easier to enjoy if you view it that way. Plus is probably tells us something about the usual lager selection in the UK.
Me? The sake of the thrill? I should coco.
Average English lager is woeful. Average stuff imported into England isn’t much better. Over here, a pint of lager often equates to a pint of Carling which is one of the most mealy-mouthed excuses for alcohol that I know of.
Like Steve says, it’s a rant at the usual lager scene here and a sly dig at the real-ale-weirdies who see lager as evil incarnate.
“…it’s a rant at the usual lager scene…”
I haven’t had a chance to peruse the rest of the BLOG (and I will at Stan’s suggestion), but I have to wonder if there is an alter ego to this rant that promotes the less-than-mealy lagers that defy stereotype.
On my trip to London my friends and I did our best to drain the city of the great real ale available, but in the midst of the trip a cohort and I spotted an Ayinger font at one pub and just had to veer from course a little. It was Helles; fresh, sweet, delicious — a nice style counterpart to our main mission.