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Those days were even still around when I first moved to Cardiff. 90% of pubs only served Brains beers, which are...average at best, and lagers. It was so bad th
by robotmay 7y ago
Those days were even still around when I first moved to Cardiff. 90% of pubs only served Brains beers, which are...average at best, and lagers. It was so bad that the Cardiff morris dancing side has had a 30-40 year tradition of piling on a bus and going for drinking tours up the South Wales valleys just to find good beer.
I must admit that I am partial to asking the bartender to take the sparkler off the cask tap when pouring a pint. I grew up with flat beer and sparklers seem to be an industry way of trying to sell bitter to people who expect beer to be fizzy.
Thankfully it has changed for the better, but I am worried about the effects of the lockdown on the upstart good-beer pubs. My local had finally given into my nagging and was permanently keeping a dark beer on tap, which is a rare find here; IPAs and the like are much more popular :D
- Nursie 7y agoInteresting. Down here in Southampton there aren't often sparklers on ale taps. Apparently in England (can't speak for Wales) there's a regional divide - Us southerners like a relatively flat ale, with no real head. In the north a beer ought to have a bit of fizz and hold a foamy head. Yeah I wonder if the lockdown is going to kill any of the local industry. There are three or four decent ale and craft bars in walking distance of my house, and I'd like to keep it that way.
- robotmay 7y agoYeah that's pretty much my experience as well. Wales seems to follow the north in liking sparklers, although there's fewer darker beers/bitters over here. I grew up in the Cotswolds with nice flat bitters, so I struggled when I first moved over here :D
- Nursie 7y agoAll this talk of beer, could murder a proper pint in a proper pub right now! Still, have to wait I suppose.
- stuaxo 7y agoA local pub near me is giving away their beer, I think a lot will as it will go bad otherwise.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoI wondered about that! Restaurants all over town have signs on them, advertising bottles and cases for sale.
- robotmay 7y agoMy local is actually doing takeaway beer (they had a license for it before this), and it has been so popular that they keep running out of cartons.
- arethuza 7y agoMaybe someone could do a VR "proper pub experience"? ;-)
- ItsDeathball 7y agoThat's most Saturday nights in VRChat, even before COVID-19.
- audiometry 7y agoWhat's a 'sparkler'? From the context, it sounds like some sort of supplementary carbonation system.
- robotmay 7y agoIt's a small plastic attachment which the beer is forced through, causing it to froth up with tiny bubbles. Allows you to form a head on a pint of bitter without having to add any gas and in theory makes it taste a bit thicker. Reference image: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.auto-tilt.co.uk%2Facatalog%2F0_65_3627-Beer-Sparkler1_170368.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- gerdesj 7y agoThat sounds like a "widget" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(beer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(beer)
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoA widget goes in the bottom of a can, and IIRC, releases nitrogen when you open the can forming lots of microbubbles in the beer, creating a smooth head on pouring. A sparkler is like the aerator on a hand washing tap, it screws on to the beer dispensing tap (the one fixed to the bar, not a keg tap). It aerates, or they used to. Beer technology has moved on a lot in the more-than-a-decade since I was the wrong side of the bar.