Old beer - tasty treat or dodgy laxative

Warning : you may encounter French language beyond this point.

Il ne devrait pas tout le temps sursauter au bord des précipices... (F'murrr)

Laurent Mousson, Berne, Switzerland

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003 18:39:46 +0100, blokedownpub wrote (in message ):

Don't drink them put them on ebay.

In article , blokedownpub writes

I was given a couple of cases of this and also Courage's Queen's Silver Jubilee Ale some years ago. They were over 20 years old at the time, but were absolutely wonderful - rich and smooth with a fine bead, rather like a mature sherry. They had all thrown a deposit which I thought at first was yeast but which turned out to be precipitated protein. I have one left.

I think it is a fallacy that only bottle-conditioned beers will mature and stay drinkable. All these commemorative ales will have been brewed to a pretty high gravity, which helps to preserve them. The exception might be the Hook Norton Royal Wedding Ale at an O.G. of only 1036.

Go ahead and try them - you may be very pleasantly surprised. If you don't want to take the risk and you are within striking distance of Newbury, I'll take them off your hands at cost!

More to the point, there's a massive collectors market for royal junk, er, I mean souvenirs particularly Diana stuff.

I recon "blokedownpub" is on a nice little earner.

JP

I've just noticed one of the beers is "Prince of Wales Special Brew". There's an image to conjour with.

JP

In article , Steve Pickthall writes

The eBay rules state that you can't sell alcohol, except as a collectors item - the stuff mustn't be intended for consumption...

:-)

I'd agree. Certainly don't drink them as I fear you will be disappointed. I started going through my collection about five years ago as an answer to clearing some shelf space and not one was anywhere near drinkable. This included some quite strong Bottle-conditioned beers.

I now take the views of anyone who proclaims bottled beers improve with age with a large pinch of salt.

Beers are meant for drinking and enjoying.

Of course you could always keep them in case your drains ever get blocked.

John B

Hey! I resemble that remark sort of. Here in the US we have the nastiest tasting beer in the world (yes, worse than Budweisser!). It is called "Ed's Cave Creek Chilli Beer". It is a beer in a clear bottle with a hot chilli pepper inside of it (not sure if it is an ale or lager as I couldn't even swallow one sip of it). About 10 years ago I purchased a bottle for a friend of mine to try (he's a lover of extremely hot Mexican food). Even he couldn't stand it. We ended up dumping more than half of this beer down the drain as it was undrinkable. A few months later I was given a bottle of the chilli beer as a joke Christmas present. It has sat on display my other beer memorbilia ever since. Watching the beer and the chilli pepper change colors over the years is about all the pleasure that beer ever gave me.

Curiously enough, a year or two back I was amazed to find out this sh*t is still being made. Either there are some people who actually like it or there are a lot of bottles out there decorating mantle places.

Bruce CAMRA member from New Jersey

In message , Bruce writes

I almost enjoyed the last chilli beer I tried ('almost' because it was a dodgy lager, the chilli aspect was OK). Can't see it keeping well though ;)