Beer

[Matt2112]

A great day with some good beers - I recall that Vocation's 'Chop and Change' was a bit of a standout. I like anything hopped with citra, so it hit the spot nicely!

Vocation Brewery is a gem in the Calder Valley crown - Heart And Soul is a particularly outstanding beer of theirs.

[Nick]

Oh to sit in a sunny beer garden.

[Slim]

After feeling a bit ashamed of myself for drinking a bottle of whisky in less than a week, I decided to take some time off the sauce. Ten days in now. I am a moderate drinker these days and I often go a few days without drinking without thinking about it, so it's been easy enough. But definitely worth doing, I'm really enjoying the break.

But since the weather's so nice today I picked up a six-pack of Leffe 0% alcohol at Tesco earlier. And I think these are the best alcohol free beers I've tried yet - really quite nice. They have a pleasing hint of bitterness that's sometimes absent from zero / low alcohol beer.

[Matt2112]

I've tried a couple of zero alcohol drinks, mostly out of curiosity, sometimes out of necessity: Guinness's was surprisingly quite good, whereas Heineken's is absolutely rank.

[David L]

Guinness 0 is OK

[Slim]

I seem to remember that the 0% Becks in the red bottle is alright. Sometimes on a night out in Derby in the '90s I'd intersperse an occasional tactical Swan Light into the sequence of Red Stripes or whatever else I'd be drinking and that was fine, but it was "low alcohol", 1% or something like that.

There was a particularly horrible one that tasted like sickly honey somehow but I've forgotten which one. Clausthaler maybe?

[The Picnic Wasp]

Read good things about Brewdog Lost Lager recently and as I am feeling slightly better today after the COVID saga I thought I'd give it a try. I'm having to be quick as I was bitten by a tick today, so have a couple of beers for the first time in a couple of months and before Lyme disease maybe kicks in. I have to say it's my kind of beer. Beautifully light, slightly citrus at first with just enough back of the tongue hoppy finish. 4.5% ABV. Very, very drinkable and I think this is going to be a regular from now on, or at least as regular as this creaking body will allow.

[The Picnic Wasp]

My first Moretti Sale Di Mare. An unfiltered beer. First impression was the bouquet. A faint electrical smell like the dodgems or a hot Scalextric car. Drinkable like so many other new fangled IPA types, but not for me really. Didn't get the salt.

[Slim]

This is Tesco's cheapest 0% beer option so I gave it a go.

It's a bit lacking in taste, but quite refreshing when it's warm (the weather that is, not the beer).

[Slim]

In the last couple of weeks I've also tried Guinness 0, Heineken 0 and Stella 0. I agree, Guinness 0 is nice, probably my favourite along with Leffe. Stella is OK.

I only intended to stop drinking for a couple of weeks but I'm really enjoying being alcohol-free. Will keep going. Nearly 8 weeks in.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Glad to hear that I'm not alone in trying to abstain for a while. Three weeks now and feeling good. I find myself being much more active and keener to tackle things needing done such as taming an overgrown hedge at long last. It's too easy to have a drink whenever I feel like it now I no longer work, but I have to say it's also less enjoyable, maybe because it's less of a treat. I'm keen to try the Guinness 0 as I'd heard good reports about it.

[Nick]

Just over a week off the sauce for me but also no chocolate or crisps. Been drinking fizzy water/coconut water and using nuts and dates to replace the crap, I'm feeling good for it.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Just over a week off the sauce for me but also no chocolate or crisps. Been drinking fizzy water/coconut water and using nuts and dates to replace the crap, I'm feeling good for it.

That's my next step and is a bit overdue. Whenever I no longer have a beer to look forward to, my sweet tooth kicks into overdrive. I've consumed a ridiculous amount of chocolate and biscuits in the past few weeks. I've developed quite a taste for a new Tesco range of large chocolate bars which have additional ingredients like fruit and biscuit, salted pretzel or crunchy caramelised almond. I don't usually like my chocolate to be corrupted in any way but these are particularly nice. I also bought a large Lindor bar at the weekend which had half the filling missing. Disaster! It has to stop today.

[The Picnic Wasp]

The weekend saw me enjoying a few beers after a couple of months of abstinence. I'm now seriously weighing up whether the very few hours of relaxation and enjoyment is worth the resulting aftermath of depression and general malaise. It's a no brainer really. Quality of life is so much better without it now and I'm looking forward to the return of the enthusiasm for the mundane things in life. I wonder if there is an age cutoff boundary for alcohol being rewarding.

[Slim]

I had a couple of JD miniatures last night and today I'm wondering if it's worth it, really. I wouldn't say I was hung over but I do feel very subtly debilitated.