The perpetual photography thread

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Its more fun tiring the beers in Belgium, I was over there 10 years old plus I had the opportunity to visit a brewery in Brussels, can't remember much of the brewery trip as I sampled a hell of lot of there good stuff that day in the brewery in & in back street bars just off the Grand Place with the locals as way from the tourists. In one bar I had a great chat with yank guy who worked the US Embassy he given be a drive back to my hotel as I drunk out of my head

First point: all ale is beer, but all beer is not ale. By far the most popular style of beer worldwide is, of course, lager. Even in countries like the UK real ale (whether bottled or on cask) is a minority product. It is said that cask ale is responsible for about 10% of all beer sales in this country and as such is vastly outgunned by cheaply-made industrial 'cooking' lager.

When people refer to lager in this country they're usually referring to the gassy, unrefined, tasteless muck that's similar as the major brands in Canada. Most 'foreign' lagers that the mass-market drink here are actually brewed here in the UK and not in mainland Europe, which is where they mostly originally hailed from.



It depends. Most non-'craft' brews tend to weigh in at about the 5% mark like Continental European pilseners and so on. British beer is considerably weaker than that - many people won't drink a beer if it's much over 4%; 5% is considered 'strong'. People generally drink in quantity (although we drink much less than in places like the Czech Republic, where the drinking rate is extremely high).



Such beers are pretty rare here in the UK. I can think of perhaps four or five breweries in the whole of the UK that produce beers like that - BrewDog; Durham (visited); perhaps somewhere like Thornbridge…

British beer is generally very mainstream. We've got 3,000 breweries but largely the beers are all fairly similar to one another so they'll produce bitters that often aren't that different in character to one another.

Most British beers are around the 4% mark, with some less and some a bit more.

There is a tendency by the prohibitionist lobby to want to hammer ABV down even more, though. It's pointless and harmful to the pub industry, which is slowly but surely being wiped out. There's very few places that are "traditional English pubs" these days. They've had to diversify to stay alive.

Bear in mind that in Wales, Scotland (and especially Northern Ireland) real ale is often rarer.





They're not taps, they're cask handpumps which 'force' the beer up from the cellar.

In the past couple of years though I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the blandness of real ale. National real ale brands often predominate and what that generally means is that you get a pint that is OK… but uninteresting, and certainly nothing you'd really want to sit there drinking. The 'goal' if you like of a good pint is the sort of beer that you just want to sit there drinking and can't get enough of.

If one gets the same style of beers all the time then one gets bored of it. Especially if the same kinds of beers are being sold all year round. It leads to wanting to avoid the pubs (drinking at home is considerably cheaper) instead, and you don't have to deal with hassle from idiots.

Theakston's Old Peculier is made in Masham in North Yorkshire, not that far away from Ripon. I've been to the brewery.

Bowland Bowland Dragon is produced about eight miles from where the photo was taken.

The Coach House Gunpowder is brewed in Cheshire.

lol I know were Therakston's is brewed, personally Black Sheep brewed in Ripon tasted better that Theaskston's imo.
Coach House is brewed in Warrington I just looked it up as I haven't hear of them before now.
Didn't Bowland Dragon get Silver Medal at last years SIBA North?

The only editing I did with this is reducing the size and giving it a white border. I do have an edited version which is definitely more "goth".

Last edited by idiocratik on 02 May 2011, 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes, there are lots of breweries in the Cumbria/Lake District area. Kirkby Lonsdale, Hawkshead, Jennings, Coniston etc.

we really never use the word lager in Canada at all (though the label will have the word on it, we don't refer to anything by that name). if the beer has the word "ale" in the name or description, we call it ale, otherwise everything else is referred to as beer. we are not very cultured or educated in the ways of the brew!


ahhh interesting. i think American beer can sometimes be a little weaker. i have heard that we have a bit of a reputation in Canada in comparison to the States because our beer is stronger, the uhhh "dancers" in certain kinds of "clubs" can get completely bare (even the male ones), and the drinking age is 19 (or 18, even).


our microbrewery beers are very popular here, and the flavours vary widely. i think it is a reaction to the Canadian mega-breweries that make uniform tasteless swill.

there is the very early beginnings of a "real ale" movement in Canada too, but my province doesn't have a single pub with anything like that.


a handpump is a form of tap. so there. lol. i get what you are saying though.

I just did a quick search theres Canadan branches of UK's CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) might be worth checking them out as like me you hate mass produced nats piss that others think is 'beer'

Out of the Scottish & Welsh brews Brains, Caledonian & Harviestoun (I talked about this Scottish brewery in a past post) a good brewers

Two Scottish brews won gold in Champion Beer of Britain in back to back years.
Caledonian Deuchars IPA in 2002, & Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted in 2003.

The term is German for storage, I think.



Even if it's actually lager? OK.

Some people do this in Britain with, say, Greene King IPA. It's not an IPA (although it says so in the name), it's a middle-of-the-road, very uninspiring malty brown 3.6% bitter. Most proper IPAs are 5%+ at least.

Another case of misnomer I can immediately think of is perhaps something like Australia's Victoria Bitter, which you can get here, which isn't a bitter at all but a pale lager. I've had it and it's terrible.

The problem is though that Australia does have a couple of very good microbreweries that produce some excellent stuff… but we in Britain never get to hear about them.

One of the most famous 'Australian' beers in Britain is Foster's - "the amber nectar" - it's 4% and almost entirely tasteless. The advertising campaigns here big it up as a typical Australian beer but it's pretty unpopular in Australia itself!

Out of the most well-known Australian beers the one I'd most like to try is Tooheys Old. A 4.4% mild/old ale.

If you get the chance when you're in Canada, make sure you try a proper British mild. They're almost always dark (almost black) and under 4%. They make great session beers too, if you pick a good one.

In which Canadian province do you reside? I've only been to Toronto, Niagara Falls and Stouffville in Ontario so don't know about anywhere else.

ahhh interesting. i think American beer can sometimes be a little weaker.



The Americans have a huge craft beer movement though and far, far more diversity in what they produce than here in the UK. In fact there tends to be more of a problem in finding sessionable craft beer bars as most of the craft style ones are very strong! (Starting at 6% - too strong for a session.)

Tequila make an ale thread will you as I'll gas bag about beer all day long

The Ozzies make crap beer, Tooheys Old (I tried it in an Ozzie pub). imo is rank mouthwash.

.o0(Note to self buy a few bottles of great ale today )

You do know we only export our swill. Try something like Cooper's stout or Cooper's Vintage. They are good drops. Cooper's Sparkling ale is what most of the pom's i know drink.

We then have great artisan beers like Beez knees, which always makes me quote the drew carrey show.


I miss drinking beer.

i'm in deadmonton, alberduh, canaduh. oh FINE, i'm in edmonton, alberta, canada

here is proof we have a sense of humour. it's our new recycling campaign, Don't Be A Tosser:



i imagine the phrase spoken with a british accent, because we don't really say "tosser" or "bin" in canada.

Ha ha, tosser over here means a w*ker, a banker or a member of the Tory party

yes, it is actually *intended* to have the double meaning. we are saucy over here. this poster was in the subway.

Yoko Ono's My mummy was beautiful, back in the 2004 biennial comes to mind. Can't show there pics on here as there too adult plus theres were on show in there streets on my city