The Beer Guide
As any hardened film watcher will tell you, you cannot enjoy a good film without a good beer. So to highten your viewing pleasure, and at great personal risk of alcohol poisioning, I have compiled a list of the best and worst, fizzy brown alcoholic beverages. I came across this idea after having been drinking almost solidly for 12 hours. I had some friends over and we opened the beers and stuck the TV on when it suddenly hit me that I was drinking Norseman Lager, which did not fit in with watching the box at all, in fact Norseman does not fit in at all, and I suddenly thought I need to tell people what to drink to save them from a serious embarrisment in front your friends and reletives.
For reasons of simplicity I have divided them up into four section, Lager, Bitter, Stout and Miscellaneous.
Lager - first of all lager is the lowest alcohol content and so is good for just sitting around and watching a movie and not getting completely hammered.
1) Stella - Stella is one of those lagers that are drunk by Kevs outside stations at 1o'clock in the morning between flobbing on passers by. It has a sour after taste and a pathetic colour, verging on urine, and it doesn't taste much better either. 3/10
2) La Facon - This is as far as I can see sold exclusively in Tesco's. It actually isn't that bad it comes in 25 cl bottles and have to be opened with a bottle opener. It's not one of the nice new screw tops. The bottle is a disgusting colour of brown with a picture of a french farm land...(sigh). Of course they neglect the angry french truckers or the thounsands of 2CV's that roam the French countryside, but no one's perfect. 7/10
3) Budweiser - Oh my god if you want beer buy this. Not only is Budweiser smooth and has nearly no nasty after taste, which is oh so common in lager, it also comes in four different sizes, canned, bottle, slightly larger bottles and the Don of all beers, The Big Bud. That is no exageration it has just under a pint in each bottle and although the cans also contain about the same amount, they tend to taste a bit metalic, bottled beer has always only been second to draft beer. The Big Bud is possibly the greatest innovation known to man. As it only costs £1.49it is worth it, 4 gets you nicely drunk, 5 drunk, 6 slurred speach, 7 crawling phase, 8 paraletic, 9 Are you Scotish or something. 9.9/10 (nothing can be perfect, although Budweiser comes very close)
4) Castle Lager - I discovered this strange form of liquid refreshment while on safari in Africa. From what I can see it is Zimbabwe's national drink. I didn't really get a chance to see its effect on me while watching films as TV sets are rather hard to come by in the Zimbabwe bush lands. However it has a clean, crisp taste, but is unfortuneatly let down buy its colour, abit similar to Stella in that respect. Also it is supposed to be made with water from the Zambezi river, probably with a tinge of monkey excretia as well anyway speaking as someone who has watched mad New Zealanders Boggie Board down the rapids of the Zambezi and bleed into the water I would rather not drink the water at all thnk you very much. It also has possibly the worst advertising I have every heard. I only heard the radio add but it went something like 'mmmmmm I love that Castle Lager' and that was basically it. If you can find this beer and you like that close to nature feel then by all means go and buy it, its not that bad. 6/10
5)Heineken - Well what do I say about this beer, well I suppose it goes like this, urrrrgggg, paaaaaa, agggggghhhhhhh, nooo, please don't make me drink this bubbling urine coloured mank in a can. That pretty much sums it up. It is served in both draught and cans. Unless you can get yourself a barrel of Heineken and some sort of draught system then do not buy this beer, basically it is an even cheeper version of Stella. Although there is redemption for the skank that is know as Heineken in the form of Heineken Export. Export is actually not a bad beer at all, in fact its rather good, it is bottled and so tastes good and has a higher alcohol contect which means you actually get some kick behind that crisp taste. Heineken 4/10 (cheeper than Stella so has to be better) Export 8/10
Bitter - Bitter is not my favorite drink, in fact I think that I would rather eat my own testicals than drink a pint of that horse piss flavour liquid hell known as bitter and so the next section has really been what I have picked up from conversations with those few twisted people who actually drink Bitter regularly.
1) Boddingtons - Well from what I gather this is a favorite amonge the bitter drinking comunity. It has a dark brown colour and comes in a yellow tin it is primarily bought in pubs, and so it should be, where it is available in draught. There is also a new incarnation of Boddies, Boddingtons Gold, basically it means that it actually looks golden, they haven't really done any thing to the flavour to make it any better, it just looks nicer to drink. Ok basically I don't go in for bitter but if you do then this is probably quite a good buy as it is fairly cheep and it comes in four packs, which are good to have while watching TV as you can have all you beers nicly arranged into blocks, which enhances the viewing pleasure, well it doesn't really but I have to find a way to make this sound nice incase anyone from Boddingtons is reading this. 7/10
2) 6X - From what I can see this fairly new, It looks like it is trying to make drinking bitter as popular as drinking lager, notice the oh so naughty title, 6X, meaning it to sound like sex, or they have some sort of strange spelling dissorder. Anyway not having tried it myself I can't tell you what it's like but I can say that I will not be trying it. I used to work in a pub and Boddies sold almost three times as much as 6X, the only reason I can see for this is that 6X is really rather disgusting. So I haven't tryed this so I can't comment on how good or bad it is, I don't even know if it comes cans or if its just draught. Unknown score.
3)Bass - Having only tried a Bass shandy when I was about 10 years old I can't really comment on how good/bad it is but I will say that it put me off bitter for life. 4/10
4)John Smiths - " Widget it's got a widget, a lovely widget, a widget it has got. " I'm sure we all remember that charming advert staring Jack Dee and those women dressed up as lady birds and showing off their areses, which led to the No Nonsence, advertiseing that has been going for some years now. As bitters go John Smiths is not all that bad it has a slighty less bitter flavour than the rest and a better colour can, after all presentaion is everything. If your going to buy a bitter, which I do not recomend, then buy this if only for the fun you can have with the widgets, which can be turned in to a leathal weapon with the proper knowledge.
Stout - incase you don't know stout is that black mank that is only really ever drunk by crazy Irish people.
1) Guiness - This is the only type of stout that people really know about. As drinks go its not bad, it's smooth and creamy and has enough iron in it to float rocks, which I think has actually been done. Guiness is basically a meal in a pint glass, the average pint of lager has about the same calories as a Mars bar, Guiness has about the same calorific content as your average Sunday lunch. Making it very fattening. In case you didn't know people use to think that Guiness was good for you and they even encouraged people to drink it by making adverts saying just that 'Guness is Good For You'. Ok it is good for you in the way that one pint will supply you with enough iron to see you through to old age. I don't think this is very suitable for TV viewing because it's expensive and very filling, not leaving any room for munchies, which are so very important while watching videos or in fact TV in general, but it is still worth buying as a nice thing to drink. 7/10
2) Murphies - It's not bitter and so can't be that bad but it is not up to Guiness standard in the stout market. Still if you like stout you'll like this. 6/10
Miscellaneous - This is where all of the minority groups are things like Alcopops and Bacardi Breezer, these make me sick even thinking about them and so please forgive me if I sound a little cynical while I am typing this.
1) Calders - I do not understand this drink, it trys to be lager, bitter and stout in one drink but all it seems to acomplish is to be a thing that is not dark enough to be bitter but is too dark to be larger, it is sort of creamy but not Guiness creamy, Guiness would be really high fat, 'coronary atery desease on a plate' double cream, and Calders is sort of Tescos low fat single cream. I don't know why but it only really taste of mushrooms, this worries me as there shouldn't be any mushrooms near it and so I wonder how it got there. Anyway if you like strange mushroom flavoured mank than please drink this, but not when watching TV. 4/10
2) Alcopops - Alcopops are basically alcoholic soft drinks. When these first came out the public thought that alcopops would encourage teenage drinking. Personally I don't see how I mean I've been doing it for years with some Tango and a bottle of Vodka, thats making my own alcoholic soft drinks, not encourging teenage drinking. The most famous alcopop is Hooch, originally alcoholic lemonade but now they've branched out into all types of fuity drinks, the latest being blackberry I think, anyway this is another Kev drink and should be treated with the disrespect it deserves. Alcopops have been around for a few years now, when they first came out I could sort of understand the flavours, lemonade and apple, but now they are just taking the piss, we now have Moo or something like that, that is alcoholic milk drinks, is it just me or is that completly pointless, who would drink it in the first place. But I have to say that, appranetly if you are a woman they are quite good a favourate being Bacardi Breezer, sort of up class alcopops. But as women only watch slushie romantic comedies they do not need to really have proper drinks like lager. Anyway on the whole alcopops are pretty crap with, some exeptions e.g. Smirnoff Mule and Metz but like I say they are mostly cack. 5/10