. Favourite Beer of The Week

Today I cleaned the fridge. It's a big fridge and it takes a long time to clean.

While I was cleaning it, Nif was at the Berkeley Bowl grocery store buying beer (and some other stuff).

She was in the chutney aisle, examining chutneys, when some criminal type stole her shopping cart. She found it much later, two aisles away, recklessly abandoned beside the organic Zinfandels. Only when she got home did she realize that the perpetrator had made off with the bottle of Grand Teton Sheep Eater Scotch Ale that she had very kindly picked up for me. Grand Teton make "Howling Wolf" which as I'm sure you will recall, was my favourite beer on last year's favourite things of the year list.

Fortunately, the dirty shopping-trolly joy-rider did not rob the bottle of BrewDog Punk IPA that Nif had also picked up.



BrewDog is a Scottish brewery that make the 41% abv "Sink the Bismark IPA," a beer recommended to me by our good friend Erik Marr, who also promised to visit us this summer with his lovely family. Let's hope they follow through on that promise and don't leave us lonely and disappointed.



Punk IPA is a welcome change from all the strong beers I've been drinking recently. It's only 6% abv. But very flavourful. And very colourful. And very lacy, as they say in the beer world when they are describing the frothy bits that stick to the side of the glass, I think.



It came third in the Scottish division of the supermarket chain-store Tesco's 2008 World Beer Cup.


These days Tesco owns most of Britain. One pound in every seven spent in UK retailers is spent in Tesco. That's £1,117 every second.

Three years from now, Tesco plan to expand into Denmark.




Also today, I made Moussaka.


I've never made it before, and I think it came out okay. We didn't have any arrowroot powder for the pine-nut cream topping, but cornstarch seemed to do the trick. I think arrowroot might be cornstarch for the rich and famous.

You can find it in the baking aisle of a Tesco near you.

Just keep an eye on your cart.

And clean your fridge. It's filthy.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Be careful of this beer.


It's another Mikkeller from Daneland.

This one's an Imperial Stout. It's thick like oil. And sweet like chocolate. And strong like a pint of port.

You've got to sip it slowly.

The day after I drank it I had a cold which lasted a week.

I'm not blaming the beer.

Just be careful.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

This morning we went to see the friends and family screening of DreamWorks super new animated 3D glasses movie "How To Train Your Dragon" with our friends Ellen and Andrius.

The movie is all about Vikings (with curiously Scottish accents) so to stay in the Scandinavian spirit of things I am drinking a beer by Mikkeller - a small Danish brewery from Daneland.


I found it in the great big Berkeley Bowl beer aisle.


The woman stacking the shelves was raving about it to a friend, so I waited for her to bugger off and then grabbed one (beer, not friend).


It is called "Big Worst" and it is another Barleywine style ale, 17.6% abv. I am enjoying it with a sensible snack of carrot-miso-tahini dip (plus celery sticks and multigrain crackers).


Vikings were big in my home town in the 9th century.


They made York the grooviest place outside London for several decades. It's clearly where I inherited my red hair and large brutish physique.


In the early 1980's someone in York knocked down a chocolate factory and found 40,000 Viking remains under it. And there they built the Jorvic Centre - a museum of Vikings, complete with the authentic smells of toilets, dead fish, and pig shit.


The last Viking to rule York was a man called Eric Bloodaxe. He was driven out in 954 AD by this man:


which must have been quite embarrassing.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

On Sunday I made a shopping list and went to the grocery store and when I got there I found that the shopping list was still in the kitchen, so I had to go up and down every aisle to try and remember what was on the list, and so eventually I found myself in the beer aisle looking at a bottle of Lagunitas GnarlyWine.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

GnarlyWine is a barleywine. A couple of weeks ago, my good friend Fuzzy Nuggz had some complimentary things to say about a barleywine he drank at Magnolia on Haight Street. I didn't even know barleywine was beer. I thought he had ordered a wine, which was strange. So I guess I've learned something this year. And it's only March!

Apparently barleywine is called barleywine because it is as strong as wine, but it's made from barley.


This one is 10.85% abv. It's a very pretty copper colour, and it tastes very tasty, and a bit thick in the mouth (for a liquid), and quite alcoholy, but not too much.

I would take this beer to a party if it was the kind of party where you can be sure no one else is going to steal your beer, and you can have it all for yourself, or share it with the people at the party that you genuinely like, or would genuinely like to impress with beer. Alternatively I would drink it at home on a Sunday afternoon, because let's be honest, I only go to about three parties a year, and Sunday afternoon is the time I do all my cooking for the week, and sometimes I need a little incentive.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Whenever I go grocery shopping by myself, people talk to me. I don't know why. It's not like I go around making eye contact or anything. Old ladies will stop me in frozen foods wanting to know the location of tinned soup. Teenagers will appear by my side while I'm loading up on bulk bath products and tell me their entire medical histories.

Last weekend I went to the new Whole Foods in Noe Valley. I was perusing the beer selection, wondering what to try next, when an old man about my age sauntered over and said, "They have a lot of beer here."

I said, "Yes they do."

He said, "What are you looking for?"

And suddenly I felt like Mary Ann Singleton in the melon section of the Castro Safeway at the beginning of "Tales of the City".

"Um... this." I said, picking up a small bottle of something close at hand.

And that is how I happened to try Harviestoun Brewery's "Old Engine Oil." A fine stout from Scotland.


It's very nice. You should try some. It tastes a bit like licorice. But more like beer.

Noe Valley Whole Foods also sell Dorset Cereals "Berries and Cherries." A fine muesli from England.

You should try that too.

. SF Beer Week

It's Beer Week here in San Francisco, so we took the bus up Haight Street, past the long line of people queued round the block to get into the Toronado, and went to Magnolia instead.

They had "strong beer and cheese pairings." Here is our in-depth report on the situation.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Primator Double Bock is the most alcoholy tasting beer I have ever tasted. At least, I think it's the alcohol I am tasting. It's 10.5% abv for goodness sake.



Its rich and malty and very, very sweet. Hang on, I'm going to ask Nif to try it. Nif doesn't like beer.


Nif says, "It's not bad. It tastes a bit like port."

She's right. That's exactly what it tastes like.

"And Pu-erh tea. It numbs the tongue like pu-erh tea."

I'll take Nif's word on that. I don't like tea.

Bock Beers were orignally brewed in the 15th century by Italian monks who were required to fast during Lent, so they drank this "nutrient-rich" beer instead. I'm drinking it with a sensible snack of celery and humous, and I'm still getting drunk. Those monks must have been off their tits.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Coffee in the morning and wine in the evening and everything else is boring boring.

That's what indie pop diva Lisa Germano sings on 'Bruises', the third track of her 1996 album 'Excerpts from a Love Circus' (the one before her record label dumped her and she joined the Smashing Pumpkins and got fired immediately and worked in a Hollywood bookstore and got signed again and released three more albums).

And she makes a good point.

Until you consider Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout. Is it a coffee? Is it a delicious alcoholic beverage? Is it both?

What would Lisa Germano think?


I think it's rather nice. It's not as coffee-ish as Hitachino Espresso Stout. But then cappuccino is not as coffee-ish as espresso. So that makes sense.


Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout was recommended to me by our good friend Erik Marr, who knows all about beer, and has a spinning cat.



Lisa Germano loves cats. Her latest album, Magic Neighbor, is all about them.

Coffee in the morning and wine in the evening and everything else is boring boring, except maybe a cocktail-hour cappuccino stout.

And cats.

. Favourite Beer of the Week - special Christmas edition

Trois Pistoles is one of those Frenchy-Canadian Unibrou beers that come in the big corked bottles with the jolly high abv.

It looks like this:



and it is named after a town that looks like this:


that has a building that looks like this:


which on the beer bottle label looks like this:


and is the setting for the "Legend of the Black Horse", which I could only find in French, so I ran it through a google text translator, and it said this:

The mysterious animal appeared without anyone knowing where he came from and was used to transport the stone from the church down to the coast where they erected a new building. But it was the devil himself that one should never remove his bridle. Unfortunately, someone ignored the recommendation and the horse disappeared, work not yet completed. And that is why there is still a stone missing, as can be seen when visiting the village church in Trois Pistoles.

Crap legend. But it's a nice beer. It tastes like all the other Unibroue beers - rich and thick and sweet and malty. I drank it on Christmas Eve while I was making leek and artichoke crepes, except the cans of artichoke hearts I had bought turned out to be cans of 'heart of palm', which looks quite strange, like this:


but taste fairly similar to artichokes once you've added leeks and cheese and mushrooms and nutmeg and stuff.

And then it was Christmas.

Amen.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

In the olden days of Germany (which were before the 15th century) the Germans used rye to make their bread and their beer. Then one day there wasn't enough rye to go around, so they passed a law banning rye in beer, and the Germans started drinking Pilsner instead. The law was repealed in 1987.

In the olden days of America (some time in 2001) the Americans started sticking rye in their I.P.A's, and they called it rye P.A.

Bear Republic's Hot Rod Rye (the first rye P.A ever) was recommended to me by our good friend Erik Marr, who runs a small maggot ranch in Austin, Texas:



To be honest, I can't tell the difference between rye P.A and IPA.

I can tell you it goes very well with chocolate cake and several games of Bananagrams.

Nif tried not to win every game of Bananagrams, but she couldn't help herself, except for the very last game which was a draw. This was me -


For some reason I forgot to photograph Nif's tiles.

. Least Favourite Beer of the Week

The Telegraph Brewing Company describe their Reserve Wheat Ale as "Not for the faint of heart." Fortunately they also note that it is "Available in extremely limited quantities," which hopefully means I won't have to drink another one. Yuck. It's like a really nice Wheat Beer that someone mixed with the sourest lemons they could find, shook it all up, and put in our fridge. I think it's supposed to be refreshing or some such nonsense. It's just nasty.

I thoroughly do not recommend this beer to you while you cook Peppered Mushroom and Cheezly Pie with roasted rosemary onion potatoes and a green salad on a Saturday afternoon while Nif is out at trapeze class and your friends have all gone to bed because of that annoying eight hour time difference and your other friends are down at Delores Park with four thousand other people merrily burning their collectively exposed regions and you can't find your sun block because it's not in the bathroom and it's not in the car and it's not in your bag (it's in your coat pocket) and in situations like this, cooking pie is what you do best.

But not with this beer.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Sam Smiths Imperial Stout was originally brewed (ten miles from where I grew up) for the fancy Russians of the Czarist courts. It was apparently made high in alcohol so that it would survive the trip to Russia, although I can't help thinking that might be a load of old crap like the claim that IPA's were high in hops and alcohol to survive the trip to India. I've been fooled by these beer historians before.

Trust no one, is my advice to you.

And get 'em in.

I recommend drinking this beer around 5 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon while cooking Black-Eyed Pea Fritters with Spiced Coconut Sauce and Turmeric Basmati Rice.

However, I do not recommend cooking black-eyed peas for Nif. They creep her out. Something about their eyes. If you have a cupboard full of black-eyed peas and don't feel like eating them all yourself then try mixing them with other foods of a similar nature (such as cannellini beans). And then blend them in the blender until their eyes are all mashed into pulp. That seems to do the trick.

The coconut sauce had star anise in it. I had never cooked with star anise before. It is very pretty.



Oh, and the beer is jolly nice too.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

As you know very well, I am not a religious man. And I suspect neither is the geezer on the label of this bottle of Brother David's Double Abbey Style Ale. He is wearing a habit, and appears to be a monk, but he looks like the kind of monk you'd run into in the middle of Resident Evil 4 whose head would split in two and dirty great tentacles would come out and slap you about before you shot him to death with your magnum.

On Sunday we walked down to the Mission for a reason I have forgotten, and it was all closed off to traffic and people we're dancing in the streets as they do in California, on roller skates . We had some lunch at Herbivore, and when we left the dancing was over and the traffic had returned and I tried to buy a hat but it's hard when your ears are as big as mine, and then we walked home and had a bit of a sit down and a Brother David's Double Abbey Style Ale, which was recommended to Nif by some guy at Rainbow Grocery (the best grocery store in San Francisco for dirty hippy vegetarians) so she bought it and put it in the fridge and now it is in my fat belly.

It is a jolly nice beer. It looks and tastes a bit like a Chimay. Maybe a bit less carbonated, which is good because I don't like a lot of carbonation in my beer as it makes me burp, which isn't nice for anyone.

It is made at Anderson Valley in Boonville, which is a small "unincorporated community" in Mendocino that has its own language - "Boontling", and is apparently the setting for the novel "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon, which I tried to read twice in my 20s, and failed both times, due to it being a bit shit, despite what they tell you on the back of the book.

And it is 9% alc/vol which is the kind of alc/vol I like on a Sunday evening when I am trying very very hard to not think about going back to work on Monday.

Now let us pray.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Sam Smith's India Ale is not the best IPA I have ever tasted. No sir. It's okay, just not great. It's rather bitter and not much else. It achieves the status of favourite beer of the week purely by the fact that it was drunk on our back deck on a Friday night after a healthy romp around Mt. Davidson.


Maybe it's nicer in Yorkshire before they stick it in a bottle and ship it over here. I know I was.

Or maybe my tastebuds have been ruined by brash and gaudy American IPAs with their in-your-face over-the-top hops. Who knows? Who cares? It's Friday!

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Sam Smiths Brewery Pale Ale is nice pint of olde worlde Bitter. Perfect for washing away that annoying sense of ennui you get from another work-week of creeping failure.
Yum!



For maximum effect follow swiftly with a glass of 12 year old Balvenie and season 3 of the Mighty Boosh.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

On Saturday night we were going to a dance performance at Dance Mission and we were meeting Diane first for drinks and food and Nif said where shall we go? And I said why don't we go to that place that used to be Radio Valencia at 23rd and Valencia because that's close to Dance Mission and so we went there and it was only 6 o'clock so we got a great table in the corner by the window and we had some eggplant antipasti thing and a mushroom pizza with vegan cheese, and wine and beer. Nif had the wine, I had the beer. Diane showed up later, because she had to hike and stuff.

First I had a Maudite, and then I had a Hitachino Espresso Stout, which tasted of coffee and chocolate, like a beer-mocha. Sounds disgusting I know, but it was actually rather nice, especially after the pizza, as a kind of dessert. I thought at the time that it would be a good beer to share with someone else who likes beer, but then when I was half way through it I was quite happy that Nif and Diane do not like beer at all and I had it all to myself.

Beretta (the place we were in) also serve Hitachino Espresso Stout in an icecream float. Not sure how I feel about that.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Ginger beer for ginger beardies.

This is one of those Kiuchi Hitachino nest beers (like this one and this one). This one is the "Real Ginger Brew" and it has ginger in it, and tastes a bit gingery. Very good on a Sunday when you're in the middle of an awfully long recipe like Mushroom Wellington with Madeira Sauce and it's 4 o'clock and the guests aren't arriving til 6:30 and it's too soon to get into the wine but you need a little something. But then afterwards you start to get tired and your wife has to finish the recipe and now it's 5:30 and you're at the computer and thinking of having a shower when you really should be helping in the kitchen and you have totally forgotten to make the mashed potatoes.

Oh dear.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Like the previous Kiuchi Hitachino nest beer I tried, XH produced a big old frothy head which hung around for quite a while and gave me plenty of time to find the camera and take a picture of it.

The beer tasted a bit odd, kind of sour-ish, perhaps. It says on the back of the bottle that XH is fermented in old sake casks, so maybe that's it. Anyway, I liked it. I liked the taste, and the cute stumpy bottle, and the owl picture on the bottle top, and the bright orange colour of the beer, especially when back lit by last year's Christmas lights that we still haven't removed from the kitchen.

When should you take down Christmas lights? Ehow.com have a fascinating and highly informative six point instructional fact file on the matter. As with all of Ehow.com's tens of thousands of "How to" documents, "How to Tell When to Take Down Your Christmas Lights and Decorations" is a priceless resource for such a challenging subject. They have the problem catagorised as "moderately easy", which is more demanding than "easy" but not as difficult as "moderate". Here is a small excerpt:

"Take down your Christmas lights and decorations if your lights go out after Christmas. If your lights go out before Christmas, you’ll probably want to fix the problem. However, if they go out sometime in January, you should probably just take them down and either try to fix them next season or just buy new lights."

Thanks Ehow.com. You are great.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Kiuchi Brewery is in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. Ibaraki is famous for making Natto which consists of sticky fermented soybeans and tastes like old socks. Do not under any circumstances let anyone trick you into eating natto. It is good for your health, and will prevent blood clots and heart attacks, but it bares very little resemblance to food and should be avoided at all cost.

Instead, why not have yourself some Kiuchi Hitachino nest beer? I had a bottle of the special "Commemorative Ale" which contains vanilla beans, coriander, orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, and 9% alc/vol to make it (and you) festive. It is strong, full bodied, and probably not the kind of beer you want to be drinking every day, because the spices are pretty up front, plus you have to wait 20 minutes for the froth to go down before you can drink it (even if you pour it super carefully down the side of the glass) and who's got 20 minutes a day to wait for a beer to calm down?

Not me.

Also, it has a cute owl logo.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Schneider Weisse was first brewed in 1872 by this man. Today it is brewed by this man. It is a Hefeweizen, which is German for "yeast wheat," which means it is cloudy and there might be bits of stuff in it. If you want a clear wheat beer with no danger of bits in it, have yourself a Kristallweizen instead. I don't know if you will like it as much. I have never had one myself.

I recommend this beer to you for drinking with food or without food, among friends or on your own after you get off the treadmill and instantly undo all the good work you just did, because you deserve it, you fat bastard.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Damnation was recommended to me by our good friend Erik Marr, master brewer and father of Abby Marloh, who pees like a man. It is a Belgian style "Golden Ale," and it is made by Russian River, who also make Pliny the Elder.

I shared my bottle of Damnation with my good friends Fuzzy Nuggz and Moldy Chestnuts. Below is a transcript of their review:

Fuzzy: It's got a sweetness yet a sourness.

Moldy: It reminds me of a Unibroue Beer, but with less flavour. There's a bitter aftertaste to the IPA side, but with aspects of Fin Du Monde.

Fuzzy: It reminds me of a Belgian White. It has the Wheatiness to it. You can't taste it properly. Your mouth is full of chestnuts.

Moldy: I took two sips to taste it, and then ate a chestnut.

Fuzzy: You're a moldy chestnut.

. Beer and Ice Cream

This movie is rated J for Juvenile.

. Favourite Beer of the Week (again)

This weekend we met Bryce and Cory at the Monk's Kettle which is a "gastropub" on 16th Street between Valencia and Guerrero. Normally it is too busy and we walk straight past and go to Casanova's instead with all the booby paintings on the wall, but on Saturday afternoon we were able to get a table (a booth in fact) by carefully positioning Nif next to people who looked like they might leave until some of them left.

Monk's Kettle's selection of beer is far too large to think about without a beer, so we ignored most of the menu and stuck to what was on tap. The bar tender recommended the Pliny The Elder, so that is what I had, and it was really very good indeed. Even better than the bottle of Pliny I left for too long in the fridge and drank just last week. Possibly the best IPA I ever drank. And I have drunk at least seven. Here I am in a photo with another one:


It's a Double Daddy by the Speakeasy brewery in San Francisco. It was also very good. And cheaper. And smaller.

Afterwards we went to Bi-Rite for ice cream. And then to the Indian grocery store for Asafoetida (also known as Devil's Dung) which stinks to high heaven but is nice when cooked, apparently.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Pliny the Elder was a Roman who wrote a great big book of Natural History, invented the word “hops,” and died while watching Mount Vesuvius erupt in AD 79. At least, that’s what Pliny the Younger said. Whether or not you trust his version of events is entirely up to you.

Pliny the Elder (the beer) was brought to our attention by Erik Marr, master brewer and expert Tater-Mater pie maker, who lives in Texas where Pliny the Elder (the beer) is unavailable, and who requested that we bring some into the state with us, despite it being highly illegal to bring your friends beer in Texas. As the holder of a Green Card I have no legal rights whatsoever, so my plan if caught was to shoot myself in the foot (unlike beer, guns are actively encouraged in Texas) and then sneak over the border to Mexico where I would live out the rest of my years undetected amidst all the other pale-skinned ginger-haired types. Fortunately, our packing skills were way too smart for Walker and his Texas Rangers who never once thought to stop us and search between my underpants for hidden beers, and so Pliny and I made it to Erik’s house completely undisturbed. I do not know if Erik liked the beer. He never said. But then I never told him that it had been packed in underpants.

Anyway, this was all back in September, and my own bottle of Pliny has been sitting in the fridge since then, and on its label I just noticed the phrases “Do not save for a rainy day.” “Age your cheese, not your Pliny.” And “Consume Pliny fresh or not at all!”

Now, you know I’m not going to throw out a bottle of beer just because it tells me to, so I drank it. And I liked it a lot.

Pliny is an IPA, which stands for India Pale Ale, which stands for the beer the English shipped to India so they’d have something nice to drink while they abused the entire subcontinent for a couple of centuries. IPAs were made high in hops and alcohol so that they could survive the long sea journey from England to India. At least that’s what Erik Marr said. Whether or not you trust his version of events is entirely up to you. My own research has proven that beers of all kinds made it to India just fine, and were enjoyed by the English in equal measure as they merrily rode around on elephants while ten million Indians starved to death. God save the Queen.

As a fascinating side-note - the world’s first IPA was brewed by the Hodgson brewery, although customers were eventually alienated by Hodgson’s dodgy business practices, and also by his pale skin and ginger hair.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

It was my idea to get Hoegaarden. Bryce was going to get a Chimay. But the Hoegaarden was on tap, and Bryce always makes the wrong choices when we eat at Fritjz, so he followed my lead. See how happy it made him. If only more people would do what I say, the world would look like Bryce.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Don De Dieu, meaning "Gift of God" is the last bottle of the fantastically strong 'Unibroue' beers given to me for my birthday by the fantastically strong Canadian, Eric Lessard. This one is named after a boat which arrived in Quebec (a dirty Canadian shantytown famous mostly for Eric Lessard) on my birthday (June 3rd) in 1608. It has been said that such beers (of 9% abv) should be shared amongst friends. Sadly, the Lessards have now returned to Canadia, so I have been forced once again to drink the whole 1pt 9.4fl.oz myself, while my wife labours tirelessly in the kitchen to prepare some beany tomato thing that will no doubt be frickin fantastic.

This beer is creamy and sweet and hoppy and malty and yeasty and seriously I know bugger all about beer but this one is really nice.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

This is one of those cloudy Belgian-style saison beers that you're supposed to pour slowly or decant into something else first to avoid drinking the bits in the bottom. Whatever.

The label claims that it is both 7.5% ABV and 8.5% ABV. I suspect it is the latter as I was home alone and forced to drink it all myself and became quite inebriated.

It has possibly the ugliest beer label I have ever seen, and it's not even Belgian (it's made in New York) but it makes up for this dirty lie by having a cork like those Canadian beers. Corks are fun! It tastes similarly rich and hoppy to the Unibroues I have had, maybe a little crisper, and the froth on top is not as thick. And it's 1Pt 9.4 fl.oz. And that is all.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

Sam Smiths' Organic Ale is made in Tadcaster which is just off the A64 between Leeds and York where I am from. Like most things in Yorkshire, the brewery has been there since 1758. Sam Smith's more famous uncle, John Smith, made his beer next door to Sam, and liked to hide in his shed and lick magnets, apparently.

This bottle is 1 pint 2.7fl oz, 5% Alc by vol, or ABV as it shall now be known.
Slightly malty, slightly fruity.

Goes great with Sushi with Susan.

. Least Favourite Beer of the Week

My least favourite beer of this week was the second beer I drank while watching Batman Dark Knight at the Sundance Kabuki. I did not know it was such a long movie. And I have never needed to pee more in my life. I seriously thought I was going to damage myself.

. Favourite Beer of the Week

St Peter's English Ale is known in England as St Peter's Organic Ale, because everyone in England already knows that St Peter was English, like Jesus. It is brewed in an old Hall made of bits of a nunnery that Henry VIII destroyed while he was killing nuns for doing things all wrong.
And it tastes like beer.

Goes great with scalloped potatoes and grilled asparagus and salad which I have forgotten to make salad dressing for. Damn. And season one of Comic Strip Presents... Five Go Mad in Dorset.