Fuggled Beers of the Year: Pale

It's that time of the year, the Winter Solstice is upon us, and what better to do than to review a year's worth of drinking? As has become my own tradition, I will break this down into multiple posts, one for pale beer, one for BOAB ("between orange and brown", and dark, and then an overall beer of the year, as well as one for Virginia cider of the year.

As I have done for several years now, I will highlight beers from Virginia, the rest of the US, and the rest of the world before crowning each category winner, so on with the show...

Virginia

• Spoolboy 10° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Chain Stitch Helles - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Coat Czech 12° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Honorable mentions: Ten - Sojourn Fermentory, Suffolk; Pylon Pilsner - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Voda Czech style Pilsner - Caboose Brewing, Vienna; Vested Interest - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville.

A clean sweep for the brewery I visit far more than any other, but in my defense, Josh makes beers that are simply delightful and would grace any kneipe, keller, hospoda, or hostinec throughout Central Europe. I didn't write my annual Top 10 Virginian Beers this summer, but it would have been overwhelmingly Selvedge Brewing products. All that said, even choosing one from the three mentioned is a monumentally difficult task as on any given time I am at Selvedge at the moment it is pretty much a given that I will be rotating through the three of them. Even so...I can only choose one, and that is the one that both Mrs V and I pretty much immediately order when we sit down, the one that both of us have raved about to friends, acquaintances, and anyone within earshot willing to listen, the one that takes both of us back to our spiritual home in Czechia. Spoolboy, the most perfect desítka imaginable, and one that I wish I could sit and drink with Evan, Max, and co back in Prague.

Rest of the USA

• Notch Pils - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA
• Gold - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX
• Urhell - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC

Honorable mentions: Bavarian Pilsner - Von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT; Pilsner - New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO; Captain Jack Pilsner - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC; Pilz - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX; Kirkland Lager - Deschutes Brewing, OR

Despite being an abysmal beer tourist, as I have mentioned many a time in the past, when I do get to travel for work, I always make sure to find some time to unwind in a local brewery with a decent lager selection. I am sorry folks, but if you haven't worked out that pale lagers are my go-to beer style, and have been for many years, you simply haven't been paying attention. Probably my favourite annual trip to to a conference in Austin, Texas, that gives me the opportunity to get to Live Oak Brewing. So it was this spring, myself and colleagues rolled up and spent an excellent few hours in the tap room enjoying the many fine beers on offer. It was much to my delight that they had just tapped this year's batch of Gold, a Bavarian style pilsner that is, in my as ever unhumble opinion, the best pilsner that Live Oak brews. Yes I love Pilz, but Gold is just a nose ahead in my mind, and so I enjoyed plenty of it.

Rest of the World

• La Fin du Monde - Unibroue, Canada
• Jura - Pivovar Chroust, Czechia
• Tannenzäpfle - Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus, Germany

Sadly no foreign trips this year for me, so my international drinking has been limited to whatever I could find in the store, or in the case of the winner, something new and exciting that I hadn't expected to see at ChurchKey on a business trip to DC. Also, a fun fact, the beer in question comes from a part of Prague that many, many moons ago, I actually very close to, as in just one metro stop away. Obviously then the international pale beer of the year is Jura from Pivovar Chroust in Prague. As I say, I was sitting in ChurchKey, perusing the beer list and my eyes were drawn to the word "Jura" partly because I had just bought a couple of bottles of Jura whisky and was surprised to see that collection of letters in a beer list. What followed was a fantastically bracing, bitter 12° Czech pale lager that was an exceedingly happy surprise.

Three fantastic examples of Central European pale lagers in the Plzeň tradition, but obviously I can choose but one. That one will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me, or follows my Instagram, it is the one that come the end of this week I will be drinking having finished work for the year. Yes, then the Fuggled Pale Beer of 2025, a prize still unencumbered with the grubbiness of filthy lucre and commercial considerations is Selvedge's magnificent Spoolboy 10° Czech Pale Lager, a beer I will miss deeply when this batch is gone, and then I will begin my campaign to bring it back as soon as possible.

1895 - The Year of Pilsener?

It was only within about 50 years of its creation in 1842 that pale lagers from Plzeň were under attack in the learned press of the day. We all know the story of how Josef Groll's golden lager swept continental Europe, inspiring imitations in Munich, Dortmund, Strasbourg, Leuven, Glasgow. You name a major brewing city in Europe in and around 1895 and you likely have a pale lager, vaguely in the style of "pilsner", being brewed, though of course there were hold outs like London, Burton, and Dublin.

Recently though in one of my trawls through the newspaper archive of the Austrian National Library, it really is a fascinating resource that I keep coming back to, I learnt that certain beers being brewed in the recently established German Empire were considered better than the Bohemian original, in particular the "pilsener" lagers of northern Germany and the Dortmunder.

According to one Doctor Wilhelm Windisch, writing in "Wochenschrift für Brauerei", Pilsner and Dortmunder are both "light beers" but of "very different types", and Dr Windisch poses the question "which is the nobler of the two"? Windisch then goes on to sing the praises of the Dortmunder, saying (and here I am relying on the veracity of the quotation in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer in August 1895 above) that Dortmunder is "always clean". The German here is "es stets blank", "blank" can translate into English as "bare", "shiny", or "pure", though a Czech possibility is the word "čistý", which in English can translate as "clean". Given the context of later in the quote about a yeasty flavour, I think Dr Windisch is talking about the classic clean flavour that we associate with lagers in general.

Dr Windisch goes on that Dortmunder has "a better hop taste than the Pilsener" arguing that in pale lagers from Plzeň "the taste of hop oil is sometimes very strong". His final accusation as to the inferiority of Pilsner, from Plzeň, when compared to Dortmunder is that it has "almost without exception...a peculiar yeasty taste" which he then claims "is not fresh, but a peculiarly old one, like the one imparted to beer by dying or dead yeast". From this he would seem to be claiming that in the Bohemian pilsners of the 1890s you could taste the autolysis of the yeast as it dies.

Moving on from comparing Dortmunder and Bohemian Pilsner, Windisch further extols the virtues of the "Pilsener" style being brewed in Northern Germany, noting that they are "light in colour and...they have a more pronounced hop taste". He points out that this additional hop flavour is due to in part to using more hops in the boil and a slightly different hopping schedule in Northern Germany than in Bohemia. Windisch then goes on to drop the mic, by declaring that Northern German:

"so-called "Pilsener" beers are much more similar to Dortmund beer, and we really didn't need to borrow a beer type from abroad, especially since Dortmund beer has long since acquired an excellent reputation"

leaving us with this question:

"as far as wholesomeness and digestibility are concerned, the question still needs to be decided, whether our light, clear, and not excessively hopped so-called "Pilsener" beer or the Dortmund-style beer isn't even "healthier" than the cloudy, yeasty, strongly hopped Pilsner beer"?

Despite this, Windisch notes that the "importation of Pilsener and other Bohemian beers is steadily increasing and has become very important". As a result of this growing competition from the east,  Munich breweries were forced into action, particularly Spaten and their the recently created helles lager that he notes is "similar to Pilsener beer". So conservative though were Munich drinkers that it had been market tested far from the Bavarian heartlands at the Café Ronacher in Hamburg's Savoy Hotel. As a result of the success of the trial, Spaten started full scale production of their pale lager. The coming of pale lager to Munich, whilst seemingly ignored by the Munich beer press, was declared "notable progress" in the popular press, and in the mind of Windisch himself "a beer-political event of the very first order".

Having quoted Dr Windisch at length, the author of this article in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer gives short shrift and is quite acerbic in his response claim that:

"you have to get used to the fact that "Pilsner" is making more friends in North Germany because of its excellent properties, is spreading as a result of North German breweries borrowing this popular beer type from Bohemia! The fact that the people of Munich are now also brewing a light beer in the "Pilsner" style doesn't come as a surprise either; already in the 16th Century people set a good example there, in that a brewing method that originated in Bohemia - to produce weisses Weizenbier - was made native in Munich, as can be seen from the brewing regulations of 1616."

Boom from the Bohemian, who signs off as "Ein echter Pilsener". He is basically saying, yes Mr Windisch it is no surprise that people are jumping on the "Pilsener" bandwagon because it is popular, and points out that we have seen this in beer history before, when Bavaria copied the Bohemian "bilé pivo" (white beer/weissbier) and made it is own.

What I found particularly interesting about this little article, which feels like an editorial, was not the history as presented by Dr Windisch, though yes that was fascinating, but rather the response of the "echter Pilsener". Rather than engage with the learned professor on the merits of Bohemian brewed pilsners when compared with those of norther Germany, Dortmund, and Munich he choses the route of rather nationalistic bombast. His argument is essentially, "we're popular and that's why people use the name pilsener", a brewer's "yah boo sucks to you" response basically.

Though putting this in context a little, at this point, if I have understand the other German language stuff I have been reading lately, the definition of what constituted a "pilsner" or "pilsener" in the German Empire, as opposed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had not been settled. As late as 1909 the "Böhmische Brauhaus" in Berlin was using the term "Pilsator" for their pale Bohemian style lager. What we are seeing here is the beginning of a battle that in some ways rages on to this day, what exactly even is a "pilsner"?

Going for An English - Lager Edition

Pale lager, it's just my thing people.

Whether it's a pilsner, of German or Czech extraction, a Helles, a Maibock, or a Kellerbier, if it's pale and lager I'll give it a bash. Some might draw the line at drinking mass produced pale lagers, but I have a soft spot for Tennent's (if anyone fancies sending me a slab of those beautiful yellow cans, feel free), and from time to time I quite like a Budweiser, not Bud Lite, proper Bud.

English lager is not really a common sight over here in Virginia. Once upon a time our local Wegmans stocked Charlie Wells Dry Hopped Lager, which was ok, but more recently they have started stocking Pure Brewed Lager from that bastion of ale brewing, Samuel Smiths. In one of those spur of the moment things, I picked up a four pack as I had no recollection of ever having tried it, though I did recall that the Tadcaster brewers used to brew under license for Ayinger, so I guess they know what they are doing.

The cans themselves don't really give much away in terms of style, but the beer has an abv of 5% and won a gold medal as an "International Style Pilsner" at the US Beer Open in 2018. In a rare moment of brand consistency, I poured the 16oz can into one of my several Samuel Smiths pint glasses...

Pretty looking beer there, I think you'll agree. However, I have a minor gripe, nucleated glassware often does my head in, you know the kind of thing, glasses with laser etchings on the base that ensure the head is constantly refreshed, I am just not a fan. Next time I try it, I will use one of my standard German beer glasses to get a better sense of actual, unaided, head retention.

So, yes, top marks for looking exactly as a pale lager should do, suitably golden, crystal clear, and all topped off with white foam. That anything in the aroma made it though that mass of foam is a wonder, but there was some lovely floral notes, some grassiness, and the very subtle toastiness of a Vienna malt. The breadiness was evident in the drinking as well, with a lovely lemoniness that firstly put Tettnang hops in mind, but then made me think of lemon curd on toast, minus most of the sweetness of the curd though.

Overall, a very respectable pale lager that put me more in mind of a Helles than that grab bag of naff that is the "International Style Pilsner". Assuming that the 4 pack I snagged at Wegmans on Saturday wasn't the last they will ever have, I still haven't forgiven them for no longer stocking Black Sheep Ale, then this might just become a frequent visitor to the Velký Al beer fridge.

A Perfect 10

A pub. Green tablecloths draped over dark wooden tables. Beermats propped up between the salt and pepper shakers. Above the wooden wainscoting, black and white photos of the pub being on the front line of a rebellion against the Nazis, or the Communists, who knows? Working men, smoking, talking, drinking. The barman taking minutes to pour each glass of beer, the server whisking them to tables, seemingly without being asked. The beer, slightly hazy yellow, topped with a solid white foam, gone in four mouthfuls, replaced by the server with a fresh one.

The pub I am thinking of here is U slovanské lipy, in the Žižkov district of Prague, as I remember it before leaving the Czech Republic for my current sojourn in Virginia. U slovanské lipy was, at the time, probably my favourite place to drink, utterly unpretentious, down to earth, and serving what I, to this day, think of as the height of Czech pale lager, Kout na Šumavě's magnificent desítka, or 10° lager.

All of those memories came flooding back last Saturday while I was at Devils Backbone brewing up the 16°polotmavé, which we decided to call 'Granát', and sampled their new beer called Czech 10, which as the name suggests is a Czech style 10° pale lager.

Brewed to 10° Plato, obviously, this delight of a beer has an abv of 4.3%, and if memory serves me rightly 35 IBUs of pure Saaz joy. So painfully simple, so perfectly done, just this one half pint from the lagering tank was a joy. A billowingly soft, almost pillow like, malt characteristic dances like Fred and Ginger with the lemon and hay of Saaz, coming to a firm crisp snap of a finish.

It is a mighty fine beer, and it is being release on tap today at the Devils Backbone Basecamp brewpub, so I am sure you can guess where I will be this afternoon, filling growlers.

A Most Excellent Lager

It had been a while since Mrs V and I had gone hiking with our friends Dave and Allie. There are mitigating circumstances though, mainly revolving around Mrs V and Allie being pregnant. We decided though to go on a short hike of only 3 miles yesterday up a mountain called Spy Rock, which has some wonderful views once to you get to the top, having scaled a near sheer rock face to do so, an interesting logistical challenge with 2 pregnant women and 2 dogs.

One of the appealing features of choosing Spy Rock was it's proximity to Devils Backbone for a couple of post hike pints, and I was looking forward to sinking a couple of Meadow Biers in short order. Unfortunately when we arrived they didn't have it on tap, though Jason tells me that they recently brewed another batch, so I'll be heading down with growlers to fill for that. They did however have another pale lager that sounded like it would do the trick.

Do the trick it did. The beer is called Excel Lager, and as you can see from the picture is a beautiful golden colour, had a nice white head, though slightly diminished by the time I took the pic. In terms of flavour it was everything you would expect from a central European lager; a perfect balance of grain and hop, nicely medium bodied, light honey notes in the background, and a firm but unobtrusive bitterness that demands another mouthful. Both Dave and I polished off our first pint in about 5 minutes.

Best of all with this absolutely stunning beer was that it has an ABV of.......2.6%. Yes, you are reading that number correctly, 2.6%. Using a method I learnt in Prague of multiplying ABV by 2.5 to get the approximate starting gravity, I was drinking a 6.5-7° Plato lager, the like of which I could imagine being brewed in a northern Bohemian glass works as refreshment for the workers.

To put this beer in a bit more context, I spent Saturday up in Northern Virginia judging for the Virginia Craft Beer Cup and was handed the Czech lager category. This sedmička would have easily made the top three beers we judged, and would have been a very strong contender for first place, it is that good. However, since Devils Backbone are no longer permitted to participate in the competition by virtue of being owned by Anheuser-Busch, this beer will likely not get the praise and credit it deserves.

I have said it many times, anyone can throw boat loads of hops into the kettle and get something the lupulin loonies will lavishly laud to the heavens, but it takes a true master craftsman to create a 2.6% beer that is refreshing and flavourful. Jason Oliver and the crew at Devils Backbone are such masters of the craft.

Lagerboy Pride!

If you have been following Fuggled for a while now, you will doubtless know that I am a devotee of the lager arts.

Whether pale, amber, dark or pitch black, most of my favourite beers will have been cold fermented and then lagered before packaging. I am quite happily what some breweries like to disparagingly call a 'Lagerboy'. It therefore seriously pisses me off that 'lager' is used as shorthand for lowest common denominator beer.

Lager, as I have said many times before, is a labour of love from beginning to end, especially if a brewer is going to do a decoction mash, which makes the brewday longer. Then there is the lagering of the beer itself, tying up the brewer's capital for a long period of time, whether it be 4 weeks or 90 days - did you know that a batch of 12° Budvar takes 102 days to make, 12 days in primary fermentation followed by 3 months lagering? In a world that seems to love talking about beers being made with 'passion', it takes real passion and dedication to doing things properly and give your lager the time it needs to be ready.

I have said it before, and will continue to bang the drum, but a well made lager is, in my unhumble opinion, the height of the brewers' craft. Sure you can make your triple black IPA aged in soured gorilla snot barrels, but if a brewer is incapable of making a clean, crisp, refreshing and flavourful pale lager then are they really all that great, despite the ravings of those advocating the rating of beer?

Using the term 'lager' as a cover all for the lowest common denominator brews churned out by multinational breweries does a disservice to a family of beers as diverse and varied as ales. Whether drinking a Bohemian Pilsner packed with the flavours and aromas of Saaz, downing a pint of Schwarzbier with its clean roastiness, or supping gently on a powerful yet balanced Baltic Porter, there is little in life as satisfying as well made lager, where the brewer has nowhere to hide flaws.

So brewery marketing departments, cut it out with the lager hating, beer geeks, cut it out with phrases like 'it's good, for a pilsner'.

To paraphrase a cliche from self-help groups....my name is Velky Al, and I'm a Lagerboy.

Drinking a Shiftload

Friday afternoon was a case of finish work, swing by the old apartment to pick up some bits and pieces in preparation for having satellite internet installed and then a quick jaunt to the store to buy ingredients for baking as Mrs V had the urge to make cupcakes.

As is my habit I went straight for the beer aisle, which is reasonable in the Giant we shop in, and will continue to shop in as it is on the way home. Their selection is pretty diverse, serveral Samuel Adams' products, a couple of Sierra Nevada, plenty of Starr Hill, nothing that would have the hardened hophead racing over, but plenty for those of us who like to drink good beer whilst avoiding the de riguer tongue rape of whatever colour and multiple of IPA we are on these days. Nestled in amongst the selection are a few brands from New Belgium, the ubiquitous Fat Tire, Ranger IPA and as a four pack of cans, Shift Pale Lager. The choice was easy.

Lager, as I am sure you well know, is my thing. I love lager, I think the best brewers are the ones that make tasty lager, and thankfully in this neck of the woods we have 3 brewers of very fine lagers. I knew what I was getting into with Shift because on the day we closed the contract for the house, Mrs V, myself and Mrs V's running partner went out aboozing to celebrate, and the bar we went to had Shift in cans, so I had a few.

One of the things I liked straight off the bat with Shift was that New Belgium weren't trying to pass it off as a Pilsner, but I also liked the firm hop bitterness which subtley avoids being harsh and reminded me of the best Pilsners. You realise by that by "best" I mean "Czech"? Of course you do, you are a suave, sophiscated, worldly person, whatever was I thinking? The hops in question are Target, Nelson Sauvin, Liberty and Cascade, and they work wonderfully well together.

According to the marketing waffle on the packaging, which was cardboard rather than those duck strangling plastic things, Shift is the beer the guys at New Belgium drink when they come to the end of their alloted hours of employment. While I wouldn't call it a session beer, at 5% it is just a touch outside the boundaries for that, it is definitely a beer you can sit and have a few of. Just an aside, when I say "session" I am thinking of having at least 6 imperial pints, 3 pints is popularly known as "lunch".

I can see Shift becoming something of a regular in the fridge, especially for unwinding from a week of work on a Friday evening, preferably when it isn't hotter than Satan's horns outside and we can sit on the deck without developing a case of sympathy with the pains of the fried egg.

A Gap in the Market?

A couple of Saturdays ago I was working in the Tasting Room at Starr Hill Brewery. To cut a long story short, one of the visitors to that brewery that day was someone I went to school with in the Outer Hebrides - he was a couple of years ahead of me but it turns out we share a few Facebook friends, and he is in the USA for a few months. Needless to say I was flabbergasted, you really don't expect to meet people from South Uist when you are doing your one day a month stint behind the Tasting Room bar.

Over the weekend just gone we met up a couple of times for beer, on Friday night we went to Beer Run and then yesterday afternoon we were out at the Timberwood Grill. Naturally we talked about the beer that he liked, and the pubs he ran when he lived in London, and those conversations got me to thinking that there is a very obvious gap in the craft beer industry, non-premium lagers. Essentially, very few of the up and coming craft brewers, and even fewer of the older microbreweries make low alcohol, session lagers (interesting thing to note, the term "craft beer" meant nothing to my friend, but microbrewery was instantly recognisable).

Of course in countries like the Czech Republic, lager isn't really all that strong to begin with. Pilsner Urquell for example fits very handily in Lew Bryson's definition of a session beer, at 4.4% abv. Many of the standard everyday lagers of Bohemia and Moravia are 4%. The fact that a pale lager with less than 4.5% abv can be tastier and more satisfying than something like an "Imperial Pilsner" (a total sham concept) is only noteworthy to those who have no real appreciation of the golden drop.

So where are the craft session lagers? Samuel Adams does a reasonably drinkable light lager which weighs in at a mere 4.07% and for widely available craft lagers, that's about it really. I am not sure about the lager scene in the UK, though I believe there are a few breweries making session strength lagers.

For all the growth in the craft beer industry, and the stagnating of sales for the macros, the fact remains that the most commonly drunk beer on the planet is pale, session strength lager. Bud Light, regardless of your opinion on the taste, is the best selling beer in the US, with 16% of the market, for a comparison, Samuel Adams has just 0.9% of the market when you add together all their brands.

There is a huge thirst out there for pale lagers but where are the craft pale lagers, the craft pilsners which are less than 4.4% abv? It's all good and well to be self-congratulatory and be "sticking it to the man" by drinking your 10% imperial stout aged on your grannies corset strings or some such, but if the big boys are truly going to be afraid of craft brewers then perhaps taking flavourful pale lagers to the guys sitting in the pubs and bars is the way to go?

Oh for crying out loud!!

Love 'em or hate 'em, beer styles are part and parcel of life for the beer aficionado. Styles should be a product of a communal consensus as to what makes, for example, a stout a stout rather than a porter, and while I sympathise with those who see limited value in styles, they do give a frame of reference, a sitz im leben if you want to get hermeneutic, for what are the accepted parameters for a beer.

The one thing though that makes me rant and rave about beer styles is when beers are misplaced within the beer category world. Take for example the current edition of All About Beer, which I pick up from time to time at my local Barnes and Noble. This edition has a "Buyer's Guide for Beer Lovers" about the many varied strains of lager out there on the market place, such styles as "pale lager", "pilsner" (I promise not to get into provenance and authenticity here), as well as a few bock variants.

Gripe number 1 is putting Primátor Premium Lager in the pale lager category, while Staropramen Lager apparently belongs in the pilsner category. Now, those of us who know something of the Czech brewing scene, and if I am mistaken I am sure emails will be arriving fairly quickly, will know that when a brewery from outside Plzen labels their beer "premium", then you can be fairly sure that it is their 12º version of the original, especially when said brewery also has a lower gravity lager available.

Gripe 2, when giving a history lesson, please, please, please get your history right. When describing the Baltic Porter category, apparently "traditional lager-making breweries along the export route [from the UK to Russia] developed their own version of the style". Firstly, the style was developed in the UK and was picked up as a top fermented beer in the 18th century by brewers on the route. It wasn't until many breweries switched over to bottom fermenting in the second half of the 19th century that Baltic Porter became a predominantly "lager" style beer, though some places still make it as a top fermented ale, mostly in Sweden.

Gripe 3 - this is a quote from a review for Colorado Kölsch, which describes kölsch as being a "response to the popular pilsners being produced in the Czech Republic in the 1840s". Historically speaking, bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks. There was only 1 pilsner being brewed in Bohemia in the 1840s, strangely it was a beer called Pilsner, from the town of Pilsen, to use the name of the city at the time. There were no doubt other lagers aplenty, but only one pilsner. Secondly, there was no Czech Republic in the 1840s, there was Bohemia, a multi-ethnic part of the Austrian Empire (the Austro-Hungarian bit turned up in 1867), the Czech Republic however didn't exist until 1993 to be strict about these things.

My last gripe, or rather the last gripe that I will share with you good people, came from the regional winners of the USBTC winner for the "Bitter/ESB" category in the Mid-Atlantic/Southeast region. The beer in question is one I have written about before, Starr Hill's Pale Ale. Now, Starr Hill Pale Ale is a perfectly decent pale ale, it has plenty of the citrus hoppiness you would expect from a pale ale made in the US - anybody else seeing my issue here? If I were to put Fuller's style defining ESB next to Pale Ale, they simply would not be considered expressions of the same style. Whoever decided to label this beer a Bitter/ESB (and don't get me started on the differences between Bitter, Best Bitter and ESB), really needs a trip to the UK to discover the glories of Bitter in its natural environment.

Here endeth the lesson. The lesson being "get your bloody facts right!"

Now that I have calmed myself a bit, I am planning which beer to have this evening as the doctor says I can have a beer a couple of times a week - will it be homebrew, Budvar or a nice hoppy American IPA?

The agonies of choice.