Festival Story

a piture of barbequed beer can chicken, for no other reason than a picture is needed for this post, and I don't have a relevant one

We went to a festival one Saturday a couple of months ago. A festival that shall remain un-named, in an un-named suburb of an un-named town – just to protect any un-named people involved from embarrassment.

It sounded like a good idea; meet some friends in the afternoon, take the babies, potter around, get something nice to eat, drink some nice beer… because I thought it was fair enough to assume that, the way things are these days, there’d be a craft beer stall, or at least a number of bars. For the record, the food was good. Mrs Cake and I shared a couple of very nice fresh pizzas. But the drink; oh dear, oh dear.

“Is that the bar, over there?” said I to my friend Phil, as we crested a hill with our buggies and sought out something to drink.

The bar was quite large, and well-staffed with 9 or 10 servers. There was no one queuing for service though. I suppose it was only shortly after 2pm, and overall attendance at the festival seemed quite low. I put this down to the fact that it had been absolutely tipping it down for most of the day. As we approached the rope cordon for the bar though, it started to seem weird.

We barrelled on, and I offered a greeting to the 9 or 10 eager faces, willing to exchange alcoholic beverages for money. They explained that they had Amstel and Thatchers, and those didn’t interest me, but I noticed a pump with some artwork I hadn’t seen before and the name of an unfamiliar beer.

“A pint of this one, please” I said.

“Pint of Amstel?” said the barman.

At this point I realised that they had been telling me that all they had was Amstel and Thatchers, and nothing else.

“Oh, I don’t want Amstel,” I said turning to go, “So that’s why there’s no one ‘ere. Thanks anyway”.

Now, the funny thing is: I actually don’t mind Amstel, but I hadn’t come to a festival to drink it. In fact, for no reason other than we had been invited to the event by a beer enthusiastic food blogger, I had gotten it into my head that there would be interesting beers available, and I now realised this was not going to be the case. And rather than have a normal but perfectly acceptable Eurolager, I would have nothing.

Not strictly true, I suppose. Phil and I ended up going to the local Rhythm and Booze, and picking up a selection from there. In all fairness, what I got wasn’t much more interesting than Amstel, but they don’t tend to keep the most interesting beers in the fridge. So I got 4 cans of XJ Premium, which was ok, but at least it was also a Distinct Beer.

I suppose the moral of the story is, if you don’t like what’s on offer, you don’t have to have any. And if you’re putting on a festival, make some more interesting drinks available. It’s possible that I’m being too picky these days, expecting too much, but what’s the harm in that?

Berlinsterdam... part 1

As the days grew short and the light grew dim on 2014, it was time for Mrs Cake and I to make one last booze tourism adventure – or “holiday” as most people call them. This time it would be a combination of stays in Amsterdam and Berlin – Amsterdam because Mrs Cake’s father and wife (there’s no un-clumsy way of describing that particular relationship) were rounding off a European river cruise and wanted to meet us there, and Berlin because I had promised to take Mrs Cake many months earlier in the year. I wasn’t that fussed about the Dam, having been there twice already, but that’s fine; it actually turns out to be cheaper to fly from Manchester to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Berlin, and finally from Berlin back to Manchester than it is to just fly from Manchester to Berlin and back again. And you get to take in three separate Duty Free opportunities that way… but more on that later.

As ever, I made use of a little idle time in advance and determined there were some interesting things I could look out for in these destinations – jenever in Amsterdam and absinthe and brandy in Germany.

Just to keep this focused on booze, as it should be, I’m not going to start at the beginning and take you through the whole holiday. Instead I’ve decided to split it into 3 sections - beer, spirits and duty free. Let’s get started.

Stories of Beer and Various Bars

I tried a lot of beer on this holiday – 27 distinct ones in a week in fact, which exceeded my monthly average at that point by 10 and (combined with the Salford Independent Beer Festival that I attended, and started but didn’t finish writing about) brings that average up to 20. I considered writing a song, from the names of the various beers, based on Johnny Cash’s I’ve Been Everywhere… but I simply don’t have the time or talent to shoehorn a plethora of dutch and german words I can’t even pronounce into the song structure. I’m also bored with the prospect of going into detail in regard to all the various beers we were able to partake of. Instead, I think we’ll go with some general observations and comments.

Amsterdam

The stay in Amsterdam was more of a sedate affair than Berlin was destined to be, and than it had been on my previous two visits when I was more than 10 years younger  – mostly because we were there with parental figures and while alcohol was very much on our collective menus, getting smashed was not.

 So of course Grolsch and Amstel were part of the experience, but not Heineken. Mrs Cake had suggested the Heineken brewery as a possible destination while we were there, but the thought of it bored the shit out of me. I think what sealed that was that the website described it as a brewery tour followed by the chance to have “a beer” in the bar. A fucking Heineken in a bar. Careful you don’t explode with excitement at the prospect of that.

Fair enough, the tour might be good, it might be worthwhile, but whatever. If you’re going to entice me to a brewery tour, you’re going to have to promise a tasting of several samples with a few free bottles to take home. Otherwise I’m not going.

There are of course more interesting beers available in Holland; wheat beers, bocks, various types of beer from all over Europe – including a Fuller’s Chiswick, which I  swear said in excess of 5% on the label, but only around 3-4% on Untappd. We even stumbled across de Bekeerde Suster, which is a brewery and a bar, where I tried a beer called De Blonde Barbier, though I only scored that one a three out of five.

The highest scoring beers in Amsterdam were Grimbergen Blonde (which is actually Belgian) and Amstel, both of which scored a 3.5. Not astounding scores then, but I’ve come to realise I rarely score more than a 3.5 and the vast majority score 3-3.5. It doesn’t mean I don’t like beer, it just means it’s all all right and not much of it is amazing.

Berlin – What would Pablo and Veronica do?

There was much more beer drinking going on in Berlin, though for some reason we struggled to find bars. We’d been given a list of great places from a friend of mine, but we didn’t manage to find any of them. Elsewhere, nowhere really looked like the kind of place you’d just go into to drink. That may be down to our perceptions, expectations and lack of experience in German things, but rightly or wrongly, it is indicative of what happened. We certainly didn’t find any of those stereotypical beerhalls where buxom wenches with plaits and pigtails serve steins while everyone sways and sings. Maybe we just didn’t know where to find it, but find it we didn’t – that’s more of a Bavarian thing, I’m told.

On the first night in Kreuzberg we found a rock n’ roll bar, which was good, but it had two rooms and both were showing football matches. That, at least, was recognisable to us as a pub.

One night, also in Kreuzberg, we were looking for a particular restaurant when we heard loud punk music coming out of one of the bars. Having previously chided ourselves for not being adventurous enough, we turned around and went in – it’s what Pablo and Veronica would have done. We were greeted by a 6 foot transvestite belting out tunes from just inside the door, and the rest of his ageing band that included a Vic Reeves lookalike on bass. The room was packed and it was jumping with similarly ageing punk rockers. And it was awesome. I couldn’t see the beer taps, but ordered a beer based on the insignia on other peoples branded beer glasses – finally I’ve found a reason for them. We left at the end of the set, satisfied and pleased we’d done something we hadn’t planned in advance. We followed it up with traditional fried chicken, more beer and schnaps at Henne, a restaurant that had been recommended in our guidebook.

cool beer label

The highest scoring beers in Berlin were Schofferhofer Kristallweizen (which I have since seen available in Aldi), Unertl Weissbier, Frankisches Landbier and Andechser Doppelbock Dunkel, all of which managed an impressive 4 out of 5. I’m pretty sure that all of these with the exception of the Unertl were picked up from a supermarket with five other fancy beers for around 10 euros.

It is notable that, while I consider a beer scoring 3 to be decent, anything below that is sub-standard and I did come across a few examples of unpleasant beer – the worst of which was Meckatzer Weiss Gold at a Christmas market. Hofmuhl Hell and Berliner Kindl fared slightly better than that but don’t escape a naming and shaming on these pages.

Generally though, there was a good selection of beers to be had. One thing that did confuse me though, was that every time I ordered a weissbier, the waiter would say, “that’s a white beer”, as if it wasn’t generally considered something I should be ordering, like: “are you sure?” Is there something I should know about weissbier? Well, from Wikipedia, it appears everything is above board. I already knew I liked weissbier anyway.

I think we’ll leave it there for this week. I don’t want you getting put off by the sheer volume of words. Next week I’ll be back to talk about the search for German and Dutch spirits, and it should be quite a bit more interesting than this has been. Join me then.

Golfageddon

In a change to this week’s planned post that I did myself the favour of not advertising in advance, I’m going to take you back now to some “research” that I did in July of this year. And by “research”, I mean drinking heavily and playing golf in Spain - an event that we chose to christen Golfadeggon. San Javier in Murcia, was the location, where there are more British per capita than there are in Manchester. That’s not necessarily a fact; it’s just intended to give you an impression of how many British people live and visit there. You don’t need a word of Spanish, but I found that you can mightily impress the locals with just a tiny bit – one taxi driver was bowled over when I handed him a two euro tip and said, “para ousted.”

“Oh-ho-ho! Speak Spanish!”

“Uh… un poco.”

With our flight at around 3pm, plans were made to meet at the airport at 12.15 – for ‘a few scoops’. When I got that message from Chris, I thought he meant he wanted to play golf before we went (if you knew him, you’d understand), so I said, “no, I’d best not; I don’t want to mess up my game before we even get there.”

A couple of days later I asked what time he wanted to meet at the airport, and he asked if I’d been drunk the other night, since he’d already told me – 12.15.

I wasn’t, as it happens, but now I understand what “a few scoops” is; it’s a few drinks. I suppose that should go in the Booze Terminology section…

So it came to pass that the four of us – myself, David, Chris and John – met in the upstairs bar in Terminal 1 of Manchester Airport, where they actually have some interesting beers on tap. I stuck with Amstel – little did I know it would be wall to wall Amstel in San Javier, where it was an astonishing 2.2 euros per pint up and down the strip.

One night I asked if they had any Spanish lager, whereupon the English waiter said, “Amstel”, to which I replied, “Amstel isn’t Spanish” and Chris chimed in with, “It’s Dutch.”

“Is it?” said the waiter. “I literally had no idea that was the case.”

Amstel it was, then.

We did pick up some Estrella in the supermarket, but it wasn’t the red kind you get in Barcelona. Instead the cans were green, and looked to have been brewed in Murcia. Later, at the airport, we found some red cans and discovered that the red variety is a noteworthy 5.4% ABV, while the green is a disappointing-but-still-not-to-be-sniffed-at 4.8%.

Unfortunately, the green one isn’t as tasty as the red.

I was a little disappointed at the beer choices because I like Spanish lager; Estrella, San Miguel, Cruzcampo, Alhambra, Mahou… they’re all good. I suppose that’s what you get for going to a largely British resort. Still, at least it wasn’t a choice between Carling and Fosters.

Since we were staying in an apartment on the golf complex – as far from both the course itself, and the actual town as it was possible to be… we made it top priority to get supplies in on the first night. I knew that soft drinks, beer, bacon, eggs and bread would all be essential, but was surprised to see everyone else’s baskets piled high with biscuits, sweets and chocolate. I didn’t even pick up a basket because all I wanted was beer, whisky and perhaps aguardiente de orujo.

DYC 10...

...and in the shower

John had located a Spanish single malt, DYC 10 year old, while I was still seeking out the booze aisle. “I want that. Where did you find it?”

I hotfooted it off to get one of my own. It’s packaged in a chunky Bruichladdich style bottle, weighs in at a standard 40% and cost under 15 euros.

That very evening I cracked it open, eased out the oversized cork, and sampled the malty goodness. I had actually been looking for the DYC 8 year old blend that scored a remarkable 90 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible [clean and cleverly constructed, he says, “Just so enjoyable!”]… but they didn’t have that. I figured a 10 year old single malt must surely be even more interesting, though I didn’t recall reading anything about it in the guide. Well, we all liked it anyway. Light-bodied and easy-drinking, we would get through three bottles of this between us over the course of the week.

David also bought a Spanish blended whisky called John Cor. That one was under 5 euros, and John confessed to preferring it over the DYC.

I uh… don’t remember too much about the John Cor. It certainly wasn’t bad – for 5 euros – but I don’t think I’d want to pay too much more for it. Spirits are so cheap in Spain as a matter of course that you don’t ever need to buy anything that cheap. It becomes more the sort of thing that you go, “well, if this is only 11 euro, I may as well also get this at 5 euro”, because it’s still cheaper than a bottle of Bells at home, and you’re getting two interesting new bottles.

Chris' Johnnie Walker Red (after a day)

Chris went for a Johnnie Walker Red, which he finished off in a little over two days – with coke, I might add – but he can’t drink beer like the rest of us and cider can be hard to find in Spain, so he had to have something to rely on.

As a result of all this freely flowing booze, my poor hipflask didn’t get a look-in. One swig on the first day was all it got, and ever after it was just sat on the kitchen counter. I had considered taking it on a round of golf with me, but the need to maximise my performance asserted itself from day one, and by the 5^th of the 6 rounds I had started playing the best golf of my life and didn’t want to jeopardise getting a great score.

I did get my best ever score for the course we played (which I had played 5 times previously, two years ago) – 118, but it still wasn’t a great score. And that wasn’t even on the days when I was playing my best golf! On the best days I was striking the ball beautifully, but hitting all the hazards and getting some rotten luck. Still, I now feel great about golf again – no doubt until my next round, when I’ll realise I’ve forgotten the technique that started working so well for me.

Our general routine for the next week revolved around golf, booze and food. If we had a morning round it would be up and out, a breakfast of Coca-Cola and chocolate, followed by lunch and a couple of pints at the clubhouse after the golf, before swimming, cans, possibly a snooze, and a shower at the apartment before heading to the main drag where the evening would be spent eating and drinking at the various bars and restaurants.

We took in some of the entertainment, which was limited to one-man tribute acts singing to recordings, and in one place for which we had free drinks vouchers, a Michael Jackson act that was a guy dancing to a live Michael Jackson video… Chris spent about an hour at the bar trying to get our free mojitos in there.

If we had an afternoon round, it would be a lie in, followed by lounging around, golf, a couple of pints at the clubhouse, a shower and straight out for dinner and more drinks. I tried to take a whisky into the shower with me every day, as any good alcothusiast should. 

We got a couple of games of poker in, using lightweight Monopoly money instead of chips, but I was having no luck. I think we were all pretty smashed by the time we got down to it anyway, so there was far less caution and far less tension that there usually is.

Time at the clubhouse and on the strip was invariably accompanied by an opening period of silence as everyone got onto the various free wi-fi and played Super Stickman Golf 2 and Wordfeud – intermittently glancing up to watch for passing freaks and ghouls. The pints go down easy, and the food, while unadventurous, is good. Being lads, we nary saw a vegetable the whole time we were there. It was pretty much meat, chips and bread all the way.

So 108 holes of golf, and seven days after arrival, the day of departure came. It was beer for breakfast for me, as we still had a few cans left. We followed that up with an afternoon sat in a bar on the strip, eating chicken wings and drinking beers until it was time to get to the airport… and Duty Free – one last thing to look forward to.

I had decided to get at least one purchase in before the airport because I figured there was a risk – with Murcia Airport being tiny – that there wouldn’t be much choice on offer. I’d been hoping to get one of those exclusive to international travel Highland Park expressions, but knew the chances of this would be low.

I called at the supermarket a day or two early then to pick up a bottle of the standard Cutty Sark blended scotch (40% ABV). It’s readily available throughout Spain, but much harder to find in the UK. It features in my 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die book, and at 11 euro, is perfect for a casual purchase, leaving room for further acquisitions later on. It was tempting to get something else at this time too, since you can nearly bring back as much as you want, but I was worried about the possibilities of breakages within my golf travel bag. The stingey weight allowance on Jet2 of 20kg doesn’t allow for much clothing alongside your golf clubs to pad out the contents.

 I wrapped the Cutty Sark in a towel, stuffed it in one of the larger pockets of my golf bag, and stuffed a few more clothes on either side.

Duty free was slightly disappointing, but there was still enough there to choose from. There are two shops selling booze, but from what I remember, the only scotch on offer is the standard Glenfiddich 12. Instead I focused on the Spanish stuff, where in the second of the two shops I found the DYC 8 (40% ABV) that I had been looking for. It was only 14 euro, so I figured I may as well get something else as well, and went back to the first shop to get some Gran Duque D’Alba Solera Gran Riserva brandy de Jerez that was 20% off at 21 euro. The Cardinal Mendoza was there too, but I decided to try something different this time.

A good haul really, and one that leaves me with 6 unopened bottles of spirits back at the old homestead. I’ve decided to finish one or two before I open anything new, but with me, you know that’s not going to be long.

It wasn’t all good outcomes. Despite a lovely enthusiastic welcome from Mrs Cake, we discovered the week long alcohol abuse has left me with a vastly inflated belly. I’m hoping that works itself off naturally, since with my back, sit-ups are out of the question. On top of that, because of all the holiday cigars, I just felt so dirty – and not in a good way. At least, not just in the good way. I mean, I always have that general background feeling of dirtiness anyway. That ain’t going nowhere.

So, let me see, were there any particularly funny moments? I don’t remember anyone falling over in a comical manner or anything like that but… Chris’ profligate swearing through the various rounds of golf had us all laughing. One time he exclaimed, “You son of a fuck!” which we soon transposed into “Son of a fucking fuck” and rode on for the rest of the week.

There was one time on the course where David had a particularly tricky bunker to get out of, and hit two or three shots before the ball jumped out into the heavy rough just in front of the bunker. On his next shot the ball jumped right back into the bunker where it began. Oh, I howled with laughter. I don’t think that’s considered good etiquette on a golf course, but it lightens the mood, and I’d prefer people to laugh at me when something like that happens, than they remain po-faced.

There was definitely a lot of laughing, but those are the instances of note that I recall.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify tagging along next year too with further booze tourism adventures already in the planning stage, but definitely the year after that.

Gran Duque d'Alba

So I hope you’ve enjoyed the brief travelogue and have had a terrific weekend so far. I’ll see you next week with something else, hopefully.