We chose to drink beer not because it's hard but because it is easy. (My Top 5 Favourite Beers)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	My Top 5 Favourite Beers
Date:	18/07/09 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Get em in

Disadvantages: Get em in

I once worked in a backpackers bar in South Africa and to kill time (and meet girls) we used to do this challenge where we would take the five top four draughts beers there, and a Guinness, blindfold the guest and let them try and guess which is which. Now you wouldn't expect them to know the difference between Castle and Lion Lager, their top two beers, as was the case, but they couldn't even tell a Guinness from lager most of the time saying the Guinness was Castle. The point is the beers are much of the same and it's the only advertising that makes you think there is a difference. If they can convince you their beer is better you will pay more and they will make more money than the other brewery. Advertising is purely about making you feel inadequate and so creating a gap in your life that's probably not there so they can fill it with products. With beer they can make you feel more middle-class and so classier because you quaft Grolsch from a fancy bottle, rather than guzzle Carling from the can like the 'proles', the working-class guzzling Carling so they can be even more working-class.

The only distinct generic shelf beer in the U.K for me is Beck's, the bottled version as tangy as the pint, a good head and shoulders above the rest, and my staple bottled beer in the pubs. Its Germaness is roar and I believe it's actually brewed in the country of origin for once, unlike most of our supermarket brands. I know the so called Aussie tipple of Fosters is brewed in anywhere but and is made in Warrington from hops picked in anywhere but the Outback. Smirnoff Vodka is made in Doncaster, a brew the Fosters people also own.

In my dads day he would drink the Watneys Party Seven, which could be bought from the little take-out window the pubs had in the good old days, seven pints of ale jammed into the one can with huge ring-pull. Whatever brewery the pub was affiliated to you could get seven pints of their ale in these cans to take home. The other ales I remember dad would bring home were the Worthing E and Double Diamond barrels, which he would soon polish off.

As kids we could take back bottles and cans to the pubs and shops and the party seven one would earn threepence! R Whites lemonade one litre bottles would be worth a whole 10p! But my fave was the Fosters5, five pints of the amber nectar in the same tin. Even in the early 80s you would see dusty ones in the Asian newsagents squeezed between the Blue nun and the Babychams.

Tiger beer is cool; the choice booze of US pilots no less, which could explain a lot. 'It's an Iraqi funeral party? My mistake. Well it's a funeral now pal! Yeehaaaaaaaaa! Tiger Beer is nice because it has that Asian beer tang, which in cider, of course, is called urine. You want your beer to be different from the others and Tiger has that quality. It's also rarely on offer in the supermarket as it's too cool to be reduced, 330 ml of pure heaven.

Duff Beer, although the fictional tipple of Homer Simpson was based on Miller Lite, apparently, Miller Americas most derided brew. Boots the Chemist sold one of those novelty Christmas six packs with whacky unknown brews in it with bright labels and they had a Duff of their own and it was really nice. I never got to find out where it came from but why doesn't the TV show sanction a Duff beer to go on sale over here? I reckon it would do great business on novelty reasons alone. I would love to supp Duff Beer at the test match and wait for 'Duffman' to come on to the terraces and pump it down our throats from one of those backpacks he has, the Duff that is.

My favourite lager of all time had to be Fosters Premium, which only lasted about a year here but was bloody lovely. I think they bought it out for the World Cup in 2002 if my memory serves me right. Carling also bought a similar one out but it again flopped, perhaps seen as too gassy and American in beer proud Australia. They are very loyal about their brews and each state sticks religiously to brands brewed on their territories and woes betide if you drink out of state brew! Western Australians, though, have a pact with New South Wales dongas to share loyalties over Tooheys...
* New South Wales: Tooheys; Victoria Bitter
* Queensland: XXXX; Victoria Bitter; Tooheys
* South Australia: Coopers; West End
* Tasmania: Cascade Draught; Boags Draught
* Victoria: Victoria Bitter; Carlton Draught; Melbourne Bitter
* Western Australia: Swan; Emu; Tooheys
European brews often make your holidays, especially in central Europe. The less said about the Iberian beers the better. German beers are crackers but the one I recall was Tuborg, a Danish treat, but brewed near the Germany/Denmark border. I like it because it reminded me of my first real holiday romance, a Zell-Am-Zee skiing holiday in the mid 80s. It was fresh and crisp and served in one of those curvy beer glasses the continent love and I remember the waiter skilfully weaving across the busy lakeside road to bring it to us on our regular bar encounters before our romantic walks in the foot hills of Austria. In the clubs there, just as you can buy those huge slabs of chocolate, you can get similar style measures of ale, she challenging me to drink a huge three pint glass full in front of the hotel guests to impress her. It was there I realised German girls were not for me, my first gift to her if we had of been an item a Ladyshave for her armpits as she, and not me, gleefully guzzled the full measure down in ten minutes.

Summary: Our national sport..