The journey is the reward

The world of beer blogging is alight with the fire of lager at the moment. Beer styles, CO2 dispense methods, the point of CAMRA; it’s all exciting stuff, the sexiest of which I enjoyed here. But cooking lager isn’t a political movement, isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a love. A great love that if you’re lucky will span a lifetime. It isn’t a journey to a different beer place, of new and exciting beer; it’s an acceptance of where you are, what you are doing, and who you are.

A great philosopher once said that before enlightenment the world is just the world. During enlightenment the world is no longer the world, and after enlightenment the world is just the world. That is cooking lager. Lout is lout, Life is life, and getting pissed for next to nowt is not only our birthright but our duty, whilst we take the journey all living things take to the same destination.

Upon this journey, yesterday evening, I purchased the cheapest box of grog I’d bought in a while. 18 bottles of Becks 5% 285ml for, now wait for it, £2.74. Yes folks that’s right. The whole box for less than the price of a pint. How did I manage this?

Well in part because I am a gracious and modern gentleman that accepts the joy of joint nectar card point’s accumulation. This means the points on the nectar card accumulate rapidly with every bit of tat the lady squeeze buys from the supermarket. You know, milk, bread, food, all the none essentials of life. Then every so often there it is a free fiver to spend. Combine that with a half price box of lout offer and Bob is your proverbial Aunty. Grog for next to nothing.

Now you might think there is a little friction in using up all the nectar points on cheap grog, and you could be right. But this is where the cooking lager enthusiast uses his extensive knowledge of female psychology to ease the path of wholesome and healthy cooking lager enthusiasm. The trick with the lass is to keep her sweet. I don’t really pull my weight around the house. I’d be lying if I said I did. But you see, thats what makes it exceptional when she comes home from work to see that I’ve cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and hoovered the stairs and around and stuff and even had time to do some shopping and prepare a meal. It’s a nice and unexpected surprise. If it happened daily it wouldn’t be so sweet. How is she to complain, seeing all that and then moan about more yet cheaper lout and the card points used up?

Cheap lout, happy lady squeeze, life is sweet. The only cloud on the horizon is the lady squeeze’s own enthusiasm for celebrities in the jungle. Might be worth texting a mate and suggesting a visit to a local grotty pub after all. What was I saying about pubs being for losers? When celebs are in the jungle we are all losers.

Chemical Piss

One of the most heart-warming features of the beer blogosphere of recent days has been the emergence of arguably the better halves of bloggers. Here and here. Not to be left out I asked the lady squeeze whether she would pen something under the name Mrs Cooking Lager. Now that was a mistake. “Mrs Cooking Lager?” she responded, “Is that a proposal of marriage?”

“More a proposal that you tell the world what is it like to be shacked up with a cooking lager aficionado and all round love monster. The highs, the even greater highs, all that”

“So you don’t want to marry me?”

“Umm, well I do, you know I do, but what’s the rush, treacle, you’re not knocked up are you?”

Potential ring on finger crisis averted, she looked sceptical and said she would rather have teeth pulled than and I quote “talk to nutters, sexual perverts and social inadequates on the internet”. When I explained that the world of beer blogging has relatively few sexual perverts, only harmless nutters and nice people who you could never describe as social inadequates her only reply was “you mean apart from you”

So that’s that. No Mrs Cooking Lager explaining why it’s the best thing ever to be stepping out with a cooking lager enthusiast. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s pretty much as good as it gets, if you’re a lady, to have a chap that knows his way around the cheap lout aisle of all the local supermarkets.

Talking of cheap lout, this weekend I actually drank some bona fide chemical piss. An unfair, inaccurate and snobbish criticism often made of cheap lout is that it is chemical piss. It isn’t. It’s just mass produced bland grog of perfectly natural ingredients. The world of cider however is different. Cider is by and large undrinkable without chemicals, as anyone who has drunk real cider will attest to. Real cider, unlike real ale which by and large I don’ mind and sometimes like, is absolute nasty and foul bog water.

Thank god for chemicals that makes it drinkable. I was necking strongbow, a 5.3% cider made with bitter sweet apples and containing sugars and sweeteners to make it drinkable and remove the gag reflex that drinking the real stuff will give you. The main chemical in this grog is saccharine, a sweetener, and the grog is all the better for it. A couple of cans of this fizz and I’m nicely mellow. At 40p a can a nice way of relaxing.

Even if drinking cider has too many connotations of tramps and under aged drinking. Cider remains for me the drink of tramps and kids with asbos. It’s post Magners reinvention as an expensive and exclusive trendy drink has been lost on me by and large because I don’t really do either trendy or expensive.

But as far as cheap piss goes, Strongbow has a lot going for it. Difficult to drink a lot of, with a nice appley belch if you swig it too quickly, it gets the thumbs up as a cooking cider not for tramps, though possibly for asbos.