Beer – There’s No Better Breakfast. (My Top 5 Favourite Beers)

Member Name: fruitcake

Product:	My Top 5 Favourite Beers
Date:	02/04/01 (454 review reads)
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Advantages: These beers have made it into the hit parade for a variety of reasons, mostly because of the way they taste, though I often use one very ordinary brew as a benchmark against which all others are tested and it’s found here because of it.

Disadvantages: The following five are representative of what I believe to be an essential food group, but in spite of exhaustive research into the properties of innumerable beers, there are many more that have had to go un-investigated.

It’s a curious fact that most mass-produced beers have a following of sorts – how else can the survival for so long of such shuddersome (I know it’s not a word – it’s just been invented by myself with the help of ‘Labatt’s, urgh!) brews as ‘Heineken’ and the lesser known ‘Saxon’ be explained? As one who grew up drinking home-brewed beer since before I could walk (and as a consequence sometimes look back and wonder how I managed to walk at all), I’d find it impossible to list my favourite beer in a commercial top ten. But if you’re unable or unwilling to brew your own, there are some very good beers around, though for various reasons what’s terrific out of the tin today might not seem so hot at the hostelry tomorrow. One man’s Mead is another man’s Pilsner, and with that in mind, I invite you to take a look at what’s currently Top of the Hops in the boozy world of ‘fruitcake’…

Holding fast at number five this week are Carlton & United breweries, with ‘Fosters’ - a 4.6% by volume ‘Australian’ lager, actually made bottom-fermented German style. This one may seem a strange choice for anyone’s top five, as it’s such an ‘average’ beer, but therein lies its beauty. Whenever I’m in a boozer that’s new to me, I’ll always start with a pint of Fosters, because there’s no better clue to the way a landlord keeps his cellar than the way he keeps this bog-standard beer. While factory techniques ensure the quality in a can never varies, a lot can happen to a beer between its arrival at the pub in a barrel, and its appearance on the bar in a pint glass. If your Fosters tastes like a skunk dropped dead in it six weeks ago, the chances are that the landlord is not very particular with his pipes, and the best beer in the world will taste no better. If you’re very lucky, and find the
pint of Fosters that tastes like its been made with solid gold hops, you’ve just found a boozer’s Nirvana.

Pausing just long enough to emit a very unladylike belch (excuse me), Finnish brewery Sinebrychoff stumble into fourth place with ‘Koff’. Another lager, this has more outfits than Liberace’s tour wardrobe, and in most of them the effects are just as unfortunate. The flattering 4.5% ‘Koff III’ red label, however, gives it the kind of body I’m not averse to tackling in a beer. I first came across this stuff when given six ‘surplus-to-requirements’ trays by someone who erroneously believed it wasn’t possible to drink them all before a sell-by date that loomed some two weeks away, and for a canned beer, it was surprisingly good, with a strong, rounded taste that belied its reasonably low alcohol content. Since then I’ve put quite a few more on board, and while ‘Koff III’ red label has yet to disappoint and would have found itself further up the list if more widely available, Koff in all its other guises has so far proved uninspiring.

Leglessly falling down a place to the number three slot are Belgian hop-sloppers Stella Artois, and their ‘reassuringly expensive’ 5.2% volume lager. You can do a lot worse than Stella, it’s true, but in my view you can also do a lot better. This faintly wheaty tasting brew is handy to have lying around in the fridge (if you’re one of those unusual people who can actually leave beer lying around *anywhere* for very long!), as its very blandness allows the taste of any food it might be served with to surface, and the above average alcohol content kicks in quickly enough for most people to be too happy to worry that in reality, they’re drinking something quite mundane. I think Stella probably owes its reputation more to a marketing campaign that’s persuaded people they’ll be perceived as stingy
philistines if they don’t cough up for this ‘ridiculously extortionate’ brew, than to the production of an exceptional beer that’s worth the money, but if you just want to get ‘off yer face’ in a hurry, it’s ideal.

Straight in at the bar to grab a packet of Cheddars and a position at number two, the much-maligned ‘Carling’ is a comparatively puny (4.1%) lager brewed in the UK by a company of the same name under the umbrella of the mighty ‘Bass’ corporation. It takes a bit more of this to get people in the same state of contentment as that produced by Stella, but they’re usually smiling a lot sooner on account of the fact that it actually tastes of real beer, and you can smell the hops in it too. As an added bonus, just as at any given time a child is probably being born somewhere in the world, at any given time Carling is probably on Special Offer in a supermarket near you. A pretty good all-purpose number for parties, family barbecues and, erm… intimate evenings down the garden in the greenhouse, etc.

And at number one?

Holding fast at number one this week are the Gibb’s Mew brewery, with the rockin’ 6.5% by volume ‘The Bishop’s Tipple’. This has long been a favourite of mine – darker than a lager, it’s not bitter and it’s certainly not mild - I’ve yet to categorise this one. It’s got a taste not unlike home-brewed beer, which is probably the draw for me, and a gorgeous malty smell that would put Calvin Klein out of business within days if all men were to start splashing it all over. It does have a downside, in that where it possesses the similarities in flavour of home brew, it’s also capable of inflicting a comparable hangover. The alcoholic strength is obviously a factor here, but there is an enormous difference between the ‘near death experience’ that’s produced by beer you m
ake yourself and the hangover produced by the chemicals added to substances sold to the public as ‘beer’. Having been daft enough to suffer from a few of both in my time, I’d say that a ‘Bishop’s’ hangover felt decidedly like the former. If I didn’t usually have to do the ‘save face and try to act sober for the babysitter’ routine whenever I get home after a night out, I’d be drinking this stuff a lot more often though – it’s *that* good. As for the bishop, if he’s on his knees it’s hardly surprising, and it’s not because he’s praying…

And there it is, for better or worse, the ‘fruitcake’ top five. As I’ve already said, commercial beers on tap in their natural environment (The Great British Boozer) will always vary wildly from one bar to another, but there are ways of helping to ensure that the captive (in your fridge) species maintain a quality equal to those that live in the most conscientious landlord’s cellar. Always pour your beer straight from the can into a glass – that bit of extra washing up the morning after the night before is easily offset against the rancid tang that develops in a canned beer soon after the air hits the tin, though it’s necessary to make sure that your glasses are free from traces of grease or detergent as these will flatten the beer. The best beers are actually sold in bottles rather than cans, with one exception. The unique flavours and strengths of even the most potent and delicious brew will be lost to the effects of sunlight before it even hits your beer belly if it’s been bottled up in clear glass, so avoid at all costs.

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