ot Pacifica

I remember driving on Highway 1 years ago. It's hard to imagine sailors in old sailing ships crossing oceans. Those things were only 100 feet long or so if I remember right.

Smaller than that

I regularly see a replica of "the ship that put North America on the map", John Cabot's caravel "Matthew", 1497.

Here's a picture so you can see the scale relative to a human

If you get the chance, it is well worth visiting a "tall ship" such as a tea clipper. This 1928 short video is worth skipping through to see what it meant to round Cape Horn. Not for the fainthearted!

Thanks for the caravel photo. Now I know what I am driving around in civilization game.

Wow. The narrator is good. There's no substitute for being there. The part about the ship's captain saving a couple of his guys by jumping overboard shows real bravery. Plus, he was strong enough to pull one man out by the hair and with one hand.

Even as a former Mancunian I find it hard to get excited about Boddington's beer or their bees (which Manchester have adopted). The other ones are mass market churned out of chemical plants.

We like the lighter, wheatier beers. The canned Bod is a bit muddy to our taste, but the draft at Camelot was very different and really tasty. They were out of Harp or we'd have had one of those.

Sometimes the local versions of furrin' beers are actually locally brewed, subcontracted, so may not be the same as in the old country. Sometimes the brewery changes and you can tell the difference.

In that case try and find Marston's Pedigree (it is available in cans and bottles and a passable version of the real thing on draft).

My recollection of US beers is that they are typically served ice cold.

Yes. If you don't like cold beer, wait a bit before you drink it.

Lately our house beer is Anchor Steam; the brewery is a short walk from where we work. Nobody seems to know exactly what "steam beer" means.

It's not John Cabot. His real name was Giovanni Caboto, and Italian navigator. I always read he was lost at sea during a storm on his return trip. Now they're saying he died in Venice.

That's quite passable.

I second the suggestion of Marston's Pedigree and will add Greene King's Abbot Ale (preferably bottled).

Harp is, IIRC, a lager not a beer. I think I had /one/ once as a student.

I think Abbot might be a bit rich for American tastes - their IPA might be a nearer match. BTW do they still do Christmas Ale this time of year?

Copper dragon is another fun smallish brewery in Yorkshire that does some nice beers of various shades if you happen upon a pub that has it.

It had that advert that was sort of true (but not quite how they meant): "Harp, stays sharp ... to the bottom of the glass"

Rather a nasty acidic thin lager product for getting drunk on but with no other redeeming features. Best consumed ice cold to mask the taste.

Stella Artois was a much better product for that purpose once you discovered it as a student (and cooler as a Belgian beer).

I wonder what the left pondians would make of Belgian beers :)

Quite.

I'm told that nowadays cheap cider is the preferred source of inebriation amongst the chavs, but the principle is the same.

I can't remember ever having Stella, but I do remember Coors because it is a very close approximation to gnats' piss.

Chimay is great stuff, especially if you can find it on draft.

The Coors motto is "It's The Water", from which omit "The."

Stella is a lot like Coors, or even Coors Light. If you were lost in the desert and dying of thirst, you might possibly consider them.

The old joke about Coors, Rolling Rock, etc. is that the reason it goes through you so fast is that it doesn't stop to change colour.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

You don't buy beer, you only rent it.

We made an analytical ICPMS machine for water purity analysis for Coors once in the dim and distant past. The guy brought crates of Coors beer with him to sit on whilst watching the acceptance tests on a dry site!

Customer is always right so we were told that if offered we could accept precisely one can from him provided we didn't do anything dangerous for the rest of the day.

On Friday lunchtime we took him out to our local pub and he insisted on having a half of everything on the bar (about a dozen beers). He never made it back to the factory and his hangover lasted most of the weekend.

At 4% it might well be fatal in a desert. Better than engine oil though.

All beer in this pub has been passed by the management.

And, like London's water, has been filtered by kidneys before you drink it.

I do beer brewing (and wine making) from grain as one of my hobbies. In the groups/clubs I participate in, the acknowledged definition for steam beer is that it is fermented with lager yeast but not at lagering temperatures. Generally for lagering, the procedure is to pitch the yeast at temps of ~50 degrees F and as fermentation proceeds to gradually lower the temperature in steps. The time and duration of the steps is part of the 'secret sauce' recipes. Generally acknowledged that most lager yeast strains do well between 48-55 degrees F but there are differences based on the type of brew being produced. Final gravity is arrived at in 1-2 weeks, then cold storage at about 32 degrees F to 38 degrees F. Lagering at more than 8 weeks tends to have bad effects. In some lager recipes, a diacetyl rest is used to accelerate the fermentation, then the temp is gradually reduced. Again, depends on the strain and type of beer being produced.

For steam beers, the yeast is pitched at ale temps (~ 65 degrees F) and fermentation continues at that temp (approximately) until the final gravity is reached. Some people will try to temperature control the fermentation at 60-65 degrees F in refrigerators as fermentation generates its own heat, about 2-4 degrees F. Cold stabilization is generally not done with steam beers. Prost! Also, if you want a good French wine, try California... J