Brownie Points

Got in the lady squeezes good books this week by way of fixing her car. It wasn’t difficult, merely jump started it and took it for a run to charge it up but to the lady friend such things are a mystery. As far as she is concerned cars either go or they do not and when they do not it’s a bill off a mechanic. What this little endeavour earned me was brownie points. Brownie points are an important factor in human relationships. They are a form of a type of relationship currency that can be traded in the relationship. I spent my Brownie points on cheap grog.

Whilst I was in the good books I suggested Tesco for the weekly shop knowing they had an offer on 24x440ml cans of the following. Carling, Foster’s, Carlsberg, Boddingtons and Strongbow. The nirvana is back. 24 for a tenner. I was starting to think 15 for a tenner was here to stay, but as we approach xmas the game is on. The game being to buy grog as cheaply as possible. Check it out here.

As you can see from the picture I didn’t go for the Foster’s and Carling. Time for a change. Thought I’d have a cooking cider and cooking bitter to compliment a cooking lager and provide over the next few weeks some new and exciting beer reviews to give the world of beer blogging the perspective of cheap grog.

Now I could go on, as to what I spent the rest of my brownie points on but they involved chucking a glass or two of Merlot down her and suggesting an early night. You don’t need the details.

Lager related fun

I’ve been holed up for a week in bed with man flu. Not the swine flu, I’m still alive, but a far more deadly illness, the man flu.

People of the opposite sex would have you believe that the man flu is nothing other than a cough and cold and that other people take a lemsip and carry on. However female partners of the opposite sex simply have no idea how bad man flu is.

There is only one cure for man flu. Bed, hot drink, remote control and watching Jeremy Kyle, catching up with toss you recorded, and hoping for a good Rockford Files, Columbo Or Quincy, and hoping to god it’s not an afternoon of Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder or other such lame detection.
Another advantage of being ill is that you have a legitimate excuse to avoid not only work, but also your friends. Avoiding your friends can occasionally be a mistake. I say occasionally, more often than not it’s the wise choice.

However one mate had bought me a present. A beer related present. He’d been abroad and bought the lads lager related fun. Now those sorts of mates are the mates you need in life. Something cold and refreshing for when my health returns. Which might be as soon as the improbably large can is cold enough. Ummm Lager.

The parts other beers cannot reach.

A glorious weekend, that’s all there is to say about it. I did nothing and went nowhere. The entire weekend was spent in my jogging pants swigging cooking lager and scratching my balls. Found a six pack of Heineken on the special for £4, around £1 a pint and whilst I don’t usually spend that sort of dosh, thought I’d treat myself. And treat you, for it means a beer review.

Needn’t have bothered, as to be honest I didn’t like it that much. The last time I drank this it was called Heineken Export and if I remember correctly I didn’t much like it then. But enough time had passed to try again. It has a cloying aftertaste. The first hit I found pleasant, but there is sweetness in the note of the aftertaste that got a bit on my tits. It was a struggle to finish all six. On a positive note it did create some fantastic belches, which I did enjoy. The type that has the lady squeeze looking at you in disgust. Always a winner. The parts other beers cannot reach. For all malt 5% grog I was surprised I didn’t think much of it. I usually like that sort of thing, but heh. That’s the way it goes.

Heineken is one of the big global brands of beer. A premium brand in most of the countries of the globe, but in the UK it still has a reputation as cooking lager. It reminds me of a dodgy film call Blue Velvet where Kyle MacLachlan drinks Heineken, and it becomes an excuse for Dennis Hopper to thump him, as our Den prefers the patriotism of drinking the domestic piss. Drinking leads to violence, obviously. It if wasn’t for the grog world peace would arrive and we would all have flowers in our hair.

The beer used to be 3% piss brewed in the UK, but when Stella took off they figured the UK market was now appreciating genuine continental strength lout and introduced Heineken Export as a version of the beer available globally. People still viewed it as piss with added alcohol so they rebranded it, dropped the “Export” moniker, imported it rather than brew it local, and renamed the regular 3% piss as “cold filtered” before canning that brand completely. They now expect us to think like the rest of the world? Since when has blighty thought like the rest of the world? What makes this country great is that we think different and we are right and the world is wrong.

The brand is on rarely in the bargain bin, so finding it there was a surprise. The big kegs (party 7’s as older people call them) are often discounted but I suspect they don’t shift due to the total impracticality of chilling a big 5 litre keg. The 6 330ml cans are nice portion amount, though. Twother size more or less is you accept a third of a litre being as close as dammit to two thirds of a pint. I remember a bird I used to date bought these kind of dinky cans when she bought beer, so maybe there is something in the notion of a girl’s portion. I could make a joke now about how the girl liked a portion, but I am above being disrespectful to ladies I used to date.

A better lout at the moment is Carlsberg Export, £7.49 for 18 275ml bottles at Sainsbury’s. Pound fifty cheaper than when the missus bought it a while back and coming in at 80p a pint. Bargain.

However the days of cooking lager enthusiasm are in peril. The zeitgeist is that cheap grog is destroying society. A financially (and morally) bankrupt government of any colour will see the pop as a tax revenue source, so enjoy cheap grog whilst you can. The days of wine and roses may be short lived.

When cheap grog ends I’ll have to find a new hobby. Maybe football. Much has been said about the England game nobody watched, including a number of publicans moaning (do they do anything else?) about not having access. I think we saw a glimpse of the future for the delivery of sporting content to viewers, something that will find its niche when TV’s across the land become web enabled PC’s. I also think it would be good for customers. Why pay £50+ a month to subscribe to sporting channels through a proprietary network when you really are only interested in a few games? When the big clubs cotton on the fact that they could sell their own games direct to punters, rather than through Sky, and make more dosh that way then like garlic bread before it, it will be the future.

Predictably I didn’t pay to watch it though, because I’m tight, could not be bothered, and not into football enough to pay money for it. Howay.

Class will out

One of the key aspects of beer blogging what I’ve learned is that there is always mileage in a booze related story in the press, and that one’s perspective ought to be squewed towards the lot of the drinking classes and not those puritan barstools that want to live in a decent and civil society.

I thus had to chuckle when I read this. Good god, you might think. Benefit scrounging dole scum necking cans of Stella whilst dropping the kids off to school, what’s the world coming to? But, you see, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re wrong because it’s a free country innit? And that basic freedom and liberty is obviously more important than being a puritanical spoilsport. Never mind the welfare of the kids. I’m sure they have just the same life chances as middle class kids. Nah, who am I kidding. It’s a disgrace alright. The kids don’t stand a chance.

It reminded me of a lass I used to date at university. Posh catholic bird with a cracking chest on her. She thankfully did believe in sex before marriage and was the recipient of the one and only poem that I have ever wrote. Thank god the current Mrs Cooking Lager doesn’t read this tosh. Anyway, I’m still in touch with the lass that gratefully received my innocence all those moons ago and she’s now a working mother with a kid. She was always dead set against faith schools, private education and was a bit of a leftie. She dropped her kid off at the local comprehensive, noticed the other mothers dropping kids off whilst still in dressing gowns, fags in mouths, and promptly enrolled her kid in the local catholic school because “at least they bother to get dressed of a morning”. She’ll be voting Tory next. Gotta laugh. Class will out as they say and we are all hypocrites.

British education, you gotta love it. Of course those that figure the so called chav underclass to be a disgrace will point out the giveaway prices of booze in the supermarkets. Well reading this, it’s pretty clear that the booze related social problems in society are more on trade than off. We cooking lager drinkers don’t need your taxes to get a lift home, under threat of having a fight down your street. We also don’t piss in the street, as some on trade customers enjoy. Oh and we don’t stand at a bar for an age, looking like muppets, in order to hand over £3 to some surly bint for the privilege of a pint, like mug punters do, we simply open the fridge. This copper is clearly taking toss.

Can you blame us for not wanting to take our pyjamas off? Crikey, I’d stay in the jimjams 24/7 if I could, can of lout in hand. It would be a nirvana. My own personal cooking lager lout chav nirvana. Bring it on

Hands off our cooking lager !

Do the hippies have no shame? For years the sandal wearers were content to swig “artisan” products limited to pongy ale, leaving normal well adjusted people to neck clean crisp industrial fizzy cooking lager to their hearts content. Now the're claiming lager to be an “artisan” product and trying to lure people into it. See here. Hands off our cooking lager, I say! Say no to LOBI!

I want cheap, clean, crisp grog I can neck gallons of, not pay through the nose for “interesting flavours”

With the real reasons for the death of the pub industry revealed here, it’s no wonder sane sensible people stay in with a few cans of delicious and refreshing lout. Do we want lager ruined by the hippies? Do we want to have to sit and listen to people commenting on its rich depth of flavour, excellent nose, and rich heritage and tradition? No we want to sink a few and get sloshed for tuppence whilst watching a footie match on the telly.

Just look what's been done to an honest pint of bitter, by these types of people. You now see rows of ale offerings in some pubs, and not a cheap honest pint of bitter among the pongy rot offered. Don't let them do it to lager.

Hands off our cooking lager, beardie weirdies, Say no to LOBI!