Wikio - Top Blogs - Wine and beer The Real Ale Girl: September 2011

Wednesday 21 September 2011

A most dull blogpost.

10 beer related things to do when you are off sick.

  1. Read beer blogs. I caught up with Boak and Bailey and their trip to Exeter, Beer Justice’s honourable work curating the Art by Offenders , Beer Birra Bier’s dream beer festival line up (prompting me to think about my own) and Tandleman’s thoughts about the idea of the Campaign for Really Good Beer.
  2. Go through your twitter account. I found a few new people to follow and stopped following some beer folks who actually only talk about transport difficulties.
  3. Find yourself on the internet. I found a picture of me, Real Ale Bro and Real ale Husband on the St Alban’s beer festival flyer thanks to a twitter tip.
  4. Search ‘beer’ on the BBC news website. The most recent mention (15th September) was a US Marine being awarded a Medal of Honour after sharing a beer with Obama, followed by a far more interesting story on the same day about West Yorkshire brewing more beer than any other county, according to CAMRA.
  5. Try to get to the kitchen and look at what beers are in the house while waiting for the kettle to boil. I found a bottle each of Badger Hopping Hare, Sharps DW (75cl), Kernel Suke Quto Coffee IPA, Brewdog Hardcore IPA, 2 rogue cans of Carlsberg and a mini bottle of Kronenberg. Not sure where they came from.
  6. Wonder when you will be well enough to drink what you have found. Even the tea didn’t go down well.
  7. Admire your shrinking beer belly- one of the few plus sides of a messed up digestive system.
  8. Try to spend your CAMRA online shop vouchers. Tricky. All the clothes are designed for old men and all the books are already on my bookshelf. I don’t have much use for either a CAMRA tie or pub food tea towel.
  9. Make a tweet cloud. My most written word was beer, obviously, followed by thanks, night, London, stout. I’m quite pleased. Last time I made one it featured the words fabulous, blimey and Wetherspoons.
  10. Look at your blog stats. I have quite a large readership in South Korea, apparently, and someone in Indonesia read my blog today. Hello, and thank you!

Saturday 10 September 2011

Here come the (beer-drinking) girls

Every now and then I have a moment when I realise that being a beer drinking girl isn’t that weird anymore, and yesterday, on a normal Friday night out, I had several.

We went to some friends’ birthday party in Katzenjammers, a Bavarian Bier Keller style bar near London Bridge. An Oompah band play disco and pop tunes (a genius combo- I wonder how many people here have ever danced to a French Horn on a night out before) and everybody drinks beer. The novelty of steins in London means even those who say they don’t like beer drink it anyway, including the girls. Those people drinking wine or spirits stuck out like Jedward at Glyndebourne. After the Paulaner Dunkl, which wasn’t very dunkl but still very lecker nonetheless, I ordered a bottle of the 8.2% Schneider Aventinus which the barmaid assured us was the darkest beer available. It got a rapturous reception from a friend who was bored of Paulaner Hell lager after necking more beer than she had drunk all year. Yet more evidence for my mounting campaign on the success of getting girls into beer through dark, malty, roasted flavours rather than pale, hoppy ones. This was the perfect dark what beer, tasting just like barbequed bananas.

It continued on the way home. We walked past the All Bar One which lurks in the shadows of the ever growing shard, and there was a girl outside drinking London Pride from the bottle with a bloke who had a glass of rose. I love stereotype reversal!

On the train, some girls were continuing their evening with Marks and Spencer’s Cherry Wheat Beer. Which is housed in their station Simply Food next to the single serving bottles of wine and cans of Gin and Tonic.

Its all happening, lasses are exploring a wider range of beer styles and I am very excitexd to feel not quite so weird anymore.