News in Brief #21

Raaaaaaare

Beer Blogger Dislikes New Limited Edition

This week, Random Brick Brewery unveiled their new special edition beer, Here Come The Bees, a honey and goji berry imperial saison. In a typical effort to drum up viral publicity, they sent cans of it out to various favoured bloggers.

One recipient was 26-year-old craft maniac Alanis Hash-Tagge who announced on Twitter the time she was going to pour her beer out for a live tasting. "I waited, like, hours for my can to reach optimum temperature in the fridge. I used to time to source the exact right glass for this beer. I went for my thin-stemmed quarter pint chalice"

She continued "When I finally opened it up, I instagrammed and Facebooked two dozen photos of the bubbles progressing up the glass. Then I bombarded Twitter with #herecomethebees to make everyone, like, aware. Made sure I put my vlog of the whole thing on YouTube too."

"After I'd taken two hours to do that, I tasted the beer. But it was, like,  warm and flat.  Not what they said at the brewery it was like."

"Still gave it a positive review though, as I did PPE at Oxford with the brewer and didn't want to upset him."

"After this runs out, it's the John Smiths, I suppose"

Primatologists Observe Alcohol Consumption

Scientists from the University of Warwick this month filed their latest field report on primate behaviour to the Royal Society, namely on the subject of drinking booze in the wild.

"It was 8am when it started." reported Dr. PG Tipps "A large group of the biggest, hairiest, and most pot-bellied individuals scooped up their drinks and began imbibing in massive quantities"

"This wasn't a drink as you or I would know it. Rather it was a primitive brown brew, varying between 3% and 7% abv. After a couple of litres were drunk, the observed individuals started exhibiting the signs of inebriation. They began screeching, beating their chests and urinating involuntarily. After they had a massive fight to work out the dominance hierarchy of the group, they collapsed into a comatose slumber."

"But by this time it was 11am, and we had to leave the Heathrow Wetherspoons in order to catch the plane to Africa to study some chimps."

Soooo different

CAMRA Pub Changes Beer Lineup

The South East Grizedale CAMRA branch has been up in arms this week after their favoured local switched beer supplier.

Greg Steakbake, Branch Treasurer exclaimed to us in an email "It's true the Pewter Tankard doesn't have the best selection of cask ale. In fact it has only one handpump. But CAMRA members do get £1.20 discount on a pint. Won Pub Of The Year since 1999, oddly enough."

"Anyway," he went on "last Tuesday we went for our Committee meeting and found found the Thwaites Original had been changed for Moorhouse's Black Cat."

"Our Chairman told the barman it was an outrage, and the members would be confused and scared by change.  The fact that beer could taste different to bitter could make reality collapse before our eyes."

"It was awful. We had to have the Guinness in the end. It was either that or go to another pub. But we'd already given them the POTY for 2015. We did negotiate our discount though."

"Don't tell anyone we drank the keg. Please."