beer

[calimac]

Beer has never appealed to me, whether the lowest swill or the finest imported brew. The problem with it is that it tastes like beer. Every decade or so I visit a fine brewpub and try one of their offerings, so exquisitely and tenderly described on the menu, to see if beer still tastes like beer. It always does.

When I first visited England, I was cajoled into trying cider, the apple-based drink with the same alcoholic content as beer, that's so common there (and quite different from anything by that name to be found over here, unless imported from there). I found I liked it, and that's been my sole alcoholic drink of choice ever since. Wine choices are more complicated than I can understand, and anything with hard liquor, whether neat or mixed, is right out as far as my tastes go, though I don't mind it used as flavoring in food.

The one question that nagged at me for a long time, though, was, what about ale? Another term rarely seen west of the pond, ale seemed to be considered in England something different from beer, and there were all these connoisseurs conducting a Campaign for Real Ale. I was comfortable in a strange country with my cider, though, which was always reliable, and I was rarely sure if I was in a pub that served Real Ale or not, so I never tried any.

Eventually I found an imported bottle in a liquor store near home. It reeked of authenticity, starting with the bottle itself, which was a replica of an 18th-century model, and the name, which was English Ale. The brewery was a converted medieval hall deep in the East Anglian countryside, and it used organically certified hops and barley, yadda yadda.

So I bought it, took it home, tried a few sips. It tasted like beer. I thought of throwing it away, but I have a chili recipe I occasionally make that calls for an optional half-cup of beer. So I put it in the fridge and, over the last few years, have been using it up. Yesterday I finally finished it, so perhaps I'll buy another one.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Beer is also delicious in Cuban rice and chicken (with saffron)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

There was a time when there was a difference- beer contained hops and was a foreign nasty and ale did not and was English to the core. Henry VIII loathed 'the pernicious weed hops' and tried to ban it from brewing. He failed and since then, beer and ale have been pretty much the same thing.

The county of Kent where I live was once the biggest hop growing area in Europe.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As it's my understanding that hops are what give beer its particular uric reek, I must add Henry VIII to the anti-tobacco James I on my list of bad kings with good taste.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The young shoots taste good in a salad though and I've seen them used an an addition to sausages.

[margdean56.livejournal.com]

To me, all alcoholic drinks taste like alcohol; therefore my abstention is pretty much purely a matter of having a low bitterness tolerance!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Ale is just beer times four if you ask me. I have never cooked with it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You have been using the same bottle of beer for several years? I assume that at some point it became vinegar. Still good in its way, but not for drinking.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Didn't smell like it.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I like beer, in various forms, under varying circumstances. Sometimes when it's hot, beer is just the thing: Not too alcoholic but enough to keep the mosquitos at bay while my thirst is being quenched.

The rise of microbrews and seasonal beers has been interesting. While I despair over most of the common commercial beers, there are good ones (to my taste). Lately, I've had two beers made by completely different companies that taste like... pineapple. Not bad, but not really what I want from a beer.

Oh well.

I also like hard cider. The tarter the better.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I like beer myself, presumably because I like the bitter taste of hops. I like a wide range of beers, too, from light crisp lagers to fruity Belgian lambics to dark stouts.

Several hard cider varieties are readily available at Whole Foods and other upscale (or striving to be upscale) markets. Crispin is American; they make several hard ciders, using different apples and added sugars. Samuel Adams, out of Boston, makes a hard cider. I've seen both English and French hard ciders around, too.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

We appear to be living through a revolution in cider production in the US right now. Lots of new ciders available on the shelves in Seattle. On the other hand you'll probably want to avoid the ones that are using hops. (I'm not fond of those myself.)