Tag Archives: alcohol

Oh crumbs, two posts in one day. Sorry, but this just had to be highlighted.

I have just returned from our local Tesco supermarket where I thought I would investigate the price of their gin. Ours seems to keep evaporating from the cupboard though I’ve no idea why that might be. I don’t like paying full price so I keep my eyes peeled for special offers and stock up when it is less unreasonably priced. Bombay Sapphire is very good but rarely on special. Gordon’s is pretty good and a reliable standby. I began to think I was in luck when, beneath the line of Gordon’s 1 litre bottles, was bright yellow ticket emblazoned:

Special Purchase – £16.00

For the benefit of those mentally challenged, the special purchase ticket also went on to explain that this price was equivalent to £16.00 per litre. Well done!

I glanced to the left at the line of regular (70cl) bottles of Gordon’s. The price label beneath them proclaimed £11.00. Wait a minute, whilst I can instantly calculate that 1 litre bottles at £16.00 is equivalent to £16.00 per litre, my mental ability to divide £11.00 by 7 was suffering, probably as a result of drinking too much gin, but it looks pretty darn close.

Sure enough, The 70cl bottles’ price label went on to explain that this price was equivalent to £15.72 per litre.

Thanks a bunch, Tesco – some “special purchase”.

[Ed: well, I suppose it had to be done.]

The first thing to note about a town called Beer is that every business starts to look like a public house: “Beer Greengrocers”, “Beer Yacht Club”, “Beer General Stores”. But, I’m getting ahead of myself …

Although this has been basically a Dorset trip and is categorized as such, Our excursion into Beer today took us into Devon. We drove in and instantly formed a dislike for Devon’s car parking strategy: the cheeky b******s wanted £1.00 an hour ranging over a 24-hour clock in many places. I don’t mind paying a couple of quid to walk the Coast Path but I object to having to pay £5.00. About 200yds from the extortionate cliff-top car park in Beer we found a residential side road with an unexpected absence of yellow lines and bailed out to don our walking boots.

We set off along the Coast Path towards Branscombe passing the very picturesque Sherborne Rocks. Today was another very hazy day so it wasn’t really a day for landscape or seascape photography but the rocks looked as if they’d fill the frame quite well, regardless. (Carol is on the path at the bottom of the frame giving some sense of scale.) The Coast Path here snaked between the rocks and, with vine-like undergrowth felt strangely un-English. Most enjoyable.

Branscombe had been advertized (in the National Trust book) as being “chocolate-box-like”. It wasn’t. There was certainly some thatch but we’ve seen many more picturesque villages on our travels around Dorset. We did find a decent pub with some well named local Branscombe ale for refreshment; the ale was called “Sum A’That” – “I’ll ‘ave Sum A’That, thanks.” Good stuff!

Having had one beer, we made our way back to Beer to have another beer in Beer. We found two pubs only one of which had any seats in the sun. I’d have preferred the other pub (Free House, Real Ale) but someone didn’t want to sit in the shade. The someone in question wanted a coffee. I went to the bar of the pub with the sunny garden overlooking the coast. My heart sank a little. The only beer of any note (i.e. strength) was Greene King Abbot Ale which comes, I think, from Biggleswade in Hertfordshire. Hmmm. I’m in Devon which makes its own cider. In addition, Devon is surrounded by other excellent local cider-making counties: Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset. Where did the draught cider in this establishment hail from? Suffolk! Don’t get me wrong, Greene King Abbot is fine beer and Suffolk cider is perfectly good cider. By all means offer distant imports but please give me a local choice as well.

To cap it off, could I get both a coffee and a beer from the bar? No, I had to get the beer from the bar then go and join another queue for the coffee. Ye Gods!

I’m clearly out of step. Most folks in the sunny garden seemed to be drinking either various brands of Euro-fizz or Magners Irish so-called cider which, in this writer’s opinion, is expensive, over-hyped and relatively tasteless.

The clear skies free of clouds continued. The clear skies free of all commercial air transport also continued to the chagrin of those poor souls trying to get somewhere. With our modern transport systems disrupted by unseen volcanic ash lurking about in our atmosphere, we decided to try an altogether more atmospheric form of transport.

Running from west to east (or east to west?) across southern Dorset is a curious narrow ridge of high ground reaching about 600 feet. It is curious because there is an unexpected (by me, anyway) short break in the ridge at Corfe Castle. More accurately, Corfe Castle is at the break in the ridge since the break in the ridge is the reason for Corfe Castle’s existence; the  castle was built to guard the gap. The ridge runs towards Swanage on Dorset’s coast, just below Poole harbour, where it dives beneath the waves to re-emerge as The Needles formation on the Isle of Wight (it says here).

We made a reasonably early start and grabbed one of a few free parking spots directly beneath Corfe Castle. from here we climbed up onto the eastern part of the ridge, known as East Hill. After admiring the views of Corfe Castle from this high ground, we made the approximately 5 mile trek along the ridge and down into Swanage.

Although we were quite capable of retracing our steps and walking the 5 miles back to our car, we were particularly keen to treat ourselves to a ride on the Swanage Railway. The Swanage Railway Trust is a charity staffed by volunteers and runs a steam locomotive service between Swanage and Norden, just west of Corfe Castle. At this time of year, every other train is actually pulled by a diesel locomotive but it is naturally the steam loco that is the big draw. With broad smiles on our faces, we purchased two singles back to Corfe Castle.

We had an hour to wait until the next steam service so we went down onto the front and indulged in some more childhood memories by buying a plate of cockles (Carol’s choice) and a plate of whelks (my choice). More smiles.

Returning to the platform we found the waiting steam locomotive ready to pull a train of various mixed carriages; one was a corridor carriage looking like something out of an Hercule Poirot adventure. No contest. We nabbed a compartment in the corridor carriage and began playing Hercule Poirot. Shortly a smiling ticket inspector arrived and punched our tickets for Carol, also smiling broadly. Everyone on the train was beaming. I don’t recall the last time I’ve seen such a large percentage of humanity smiling so much. For that elusive “feel good factor” in times of recession, bring back stream trains.

The journey was great fun, though I’m not entirely convinced that the type of motive power makes a great deal of difference ensconced in a passenger carriage. Much of our relatively brief journey was spent outside the Hercule Poirot compartment, leaning out of the window snapping away and getting the occasional speck of ash in the eye. This ash came from the stream loco rather than from Iceland’s irritating volcano. So, maybe the choice of motive power does, indeed, make a difference.

We rounded off the afternoon with another trip back in time to the Square and Compass public house in Worth Matravers. A passing local in Wareham had recommended it to us declaring that it hadn’t changed in  hundred years. I can believe it; it had no bar, as such, just a counter at which orders were taken. Lurking somewhere in the dark depths was a staggering array of mostly ciders, with three token beers also being on offer. I enjoyed a pint of a cider rejoicing in the name of Port Wine of Glastonbury, and a pasty. More smiles.

1. Send out geologists to explore the world and find oil fields.
2. Erect expensive drilling rigs and send down a few test holes.
3. If the field is viable, erect lots more rigs and start drilling in earnest.
4. Ship the oil half-way around the world in vast, unbelievably expensive super-tankers.
5. Process the crude oil in high(ish) tech, purpose built industrial plants.
6. Distribute the resultant petrol in fleets of lorries to petrol stations throughout the country.
7. Sell the petrol for about £5.00 a gallon, ~62.5 pence a pint.

People bitch about the price, most of which is government tax.

1. Gather apples from relatively local orchards.
2. Send these to a local pressing plant.
3. Extract the juice in a low tech press.
4. Add a smidge of yeast and leave it for about a week to ferment.
5. Bottle or keg it.
6. Distribute the bottled/draught cider to moderately inexpensive off-licenses and pubs throughout the country.
7. Sell it for £3.45 a pint, or a whopping £27.60 a gallon.

It’s a very similar, simple story with beer. There’s still a serious amount of kill-joy government tax. People relatively happily, it appears, hand over the cash.

Which seems more exorbitant?

I would be the first to admit that, for some unfathomable reason, the Brits cannot make lager properly. I don’t understand why one the world’s finest brewing nations (the Belgians beat us into second place, I’m afraid) can turn out the world’s finest real ales whilst producing some of the most miserable lagers available, even when we are using someone else’s recipe. Having said that, since I rarely go to a pub, I settled upon good ol’ Stella Artois as my canned brew of choice for home consumption.  The stuff in the UK is brewed under license and is a pale shadow of the genuine Belgian article, since it has been brewed by the aforementioned lager-ruining country, but it was OK.

Recently, my erstwhile trusty Stellas didn’t seem so stallar; they just didn’t seem to be tasting as they should.  I blamed my taste-buds. Wrong! A swift glance at the information emblazoned upon the side of the can revealed the problem: the alcohol content has been cut from 5.2% to 5.0%. My taste-buds are vindicated. A swift trawl of the Internet found a claim that Morlands had reduced their formerly excellent Old Speckled Hen from 5.2% to 4.5%, though I haven’t yet managed to verify this myself as yet.

All the media hype about 4% so-called beers (Artois Petersen, Becks Vier) seems to be affecting the real thing. Despite our media banging on misguidedly about so-called cheap alcohol, the price is going up while the alcohol content seems to be dropping. I’m used to the thieving bankers slashing my savings interest rate but now the blasted brewers are cutting the alcohol rate as well. Is this interference by the nanny state?

I wish we could buy the genuine Belgian products without resorting to a “booze-cruise”.