ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Quality control? What's that?!

Real Ale in a refrigerator! No! no! niddle-naddle-noddle noo! cluck! cluck!
Carefully conditioned in oak casks, kept in a cellar at 51F. Low gas, so you can drink pints of the stuff without inflating the stomach with CO2. Aquired taste of course, not to everyones' liking. A 'Lucas' refrigerator, would keep the flies out I suppose, (provided the door hasn't fallen off yet), even if the chiller is busted. And I can get the real stuff here- got an English brewery just up country!
Alan

Is not it better to just rely on Ricard and good wine, round your part of the world? Leave the beer-making to Belgians and you won't need to worry about it any more

It would be churlish to disparage those good Belgian beers, I'm sure they are quite excellent. I believe I once saw a raspberry-flavoured one. However, what could compare with a Summer's Afternoon, a pint of Golden 'Olde Stun'em' in hand, following play at a village cricket match. Fourteen white-flanneled men on the field. You could count all twenty eight of 'em after a few good pulls. 'Stun 'em' was the finest and deadliest brew in all of Gloucestershire, taking the enamel off your teeth and the varnish off the bar, yet tasting innocuous with its hints sunlit-orchards, malt and finest hops. Two pints of 'Stun'em' was enough to send hardened drinkers at 'shut-tap' reeling towards home backwards, usually to pass the rest of the night peacefully unconscious and upside-down in a hedge. To ask the Landlord, Jummy Simmons, of the 'New Inn' at Shortstanding, for a Second Pint was to elicit a Strong Warning. "Thou's 'ad One. Thic be Strung stuff, old buttee!" 'Stun'em' also got your legs inebriated first. In your Windsor-chair by the fire in the Snug, sober as a judge, up you get for your round. Suddenly your legs are off in another direction entirely, driving you relentlessly into a wall or the coat-rack.
Oh, to be in England now the cricket has started!
Alan