Recently in Review: Booze Category

Strength: 37.5%
Form: 750ml bottle
Price: Unsure, around £9 (Threshers, Wimbledon)

Those of you who have read Eric Blair's excellent documentary “Nineteen Eighty-Four” will have heard of Victory Gin. Early in the story (page seven of my Penguin edition) Winston is already feeling somewhat down about the dystopian society he lives in and turns to the bottle to numb the pain:

“He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine. Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club.”

Victory Gin, along with Victory Cigarettes, are evidently intended to be fictional brands for the purpose of the book. However, extensive research (i.e. two minutes with Google) reveals that Victory Cigarettes is a not uncommon brand name. Previous random Googling had also revealed that Victory Gin was a Threshers exclusive brand, so a trip to buy a bottle was in order so as to see how faithful it is to the book.

Most disappointingly, the oik behind the counter in Threshers apparently hadn't heard of the book. Kids of today, eh? An attempt to explain and improve his knowledge was rebuffed, which is the kind of attitude that ensures there's no career progression from checkout operator.

Victory Gin comes in a plain screwtop green glass bottle with a white label bearing silver trim, the caption "Victory Gin" in large print, "London Dry" in less visible cursive printing, plus the usual statutory bumph.

The liquid within is indeed colourless. Gingerly smelling it revealed not much of a smell, mainly because I had had the foresight to leave the bottle lurking in the freezer for a few months. It smelled of frozen gin, possibly the usual juniper and other botanicals, so not really like saki at all. Leaving it to warm up revealed a new aroma, tape head cleaner. A treat awaits.

For the tasting, the gin was prepared in two ways. Firstly, there is the standard method of serving in a glass with tonic, ice and a slice. It turned out to taste mainly of cold lemon tonic water with a bitter indefinable aftertaste that might be gin if you use your imagination enough.

The second method of preparation is more befitting of my upbringing. I took a healthy swig of neat spirit from the warmed-up bottle. Alas, no mirror was available to check my facial colour or expression, but although my eyes didn't water, a rasping sound and a rude word did emerge from my throat.

On the whole, it's not an exceptionally good gin, but not particularly a bad one either. I would certainly drink it in preference to Gordon's, but I wouldn't have either if there was a choice.

So, basically, this is cheap no-nonsense cooking gin. Anybody got some good recipes involving gin?

Rating: 6 out of 10
Reviewed: 2007-03-24

London Porter
Fullers, London W4 2QB

Strength: 5.4%
Form: 500ml bottle
Price: Unsure, around £1.70 (Sainsbury's, Colliers Wood)

That it came from Sainsbury's rather than my usual supplier shows it's a mass product. I've also drunk more than a few pints of Fullers that appeared to have been made by Sarsons. I must have been drunk, desperate, insane or a combination of all three to pick this one up.

This beer comes in a pleasingly-heavy brown glass bottle, an ideal item to have to hand for if you're daft enough to go out drinking in Colliers Wood. The cap was a struggle to remove, but this was possibly as much due to it not exactly being the first in a quiet Sunday in on the pop. (Its predecessors were a Leffe and a double of "Slider" from Borough Market.)

Pouring it into a glass shows a very dark ale with a dirty brown head. Gingerly sniffing it revealed a pleasing sweet mocha aroma. Perhaps it's not that bad after all.

Quaffing it reveals a quite drinkable ale. The strength provides a pleasant sweetness which goes well with the chocolate flavouring. There's a slight bitter taste that lingers on the tongue and demands another mouthful. The pleasing chocolate flavour isn't just an initial hit that teases and then quickly evaporates, but continues towards the bottom of the glass. The final sip leads me to look wistfully at the empty glass.

Now, if they could only work on making London Pride drinkable...

Rating: 8 out of 10
Reviewed: 2006-11-26

Various beers, see text

(This review was prepared based on sketchy notes made on 2006-09-30, expanded 2006-10-29.)

Primus: Anchor Steam Bitter, Anchor Brewing Co., San Francisco

Importer: James Clay & Sons, Elland.
Strength: 4.8%
Form: 355ml bottle
Price: £1.65 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

While this beer does not specifically call me to scream from the rafters, it is an accomplished and quite drinkable bitter that the British really should take note of. I would have had a second had I not just drunk the last.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Secondus: Rhatas, Black Dog Brewery/Hambleton Ales, North Yorkshire
Strength: 4.6%
Form: 500ml bottle
Price: £2.15 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

This is a somewhast cloying bitter and completely unexciting as British bitters go, where the bottom of the bottle failed to arrive soon enough. While I'd happily drink one, a second is out of the question.

Rating: 5 out of 10
Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Tertius: Coffee Meantime Beer, Meantime Brewing Co., London.

Strength: 4.0%
Form: 330ml bottle
Price: £1.69 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

Why not just give me crack and be done with it? I love coffee. The thick creamy coffee flavour is just oozing from the head even before I hit the beer. The actual underlying beer is hard to taste - a bit sticky and probably not worth bothering with if it wasn't coffee-flavoured - but that's not really the main feature of the beer. I would most happily drink a second, and probably a third.

(And gosh, a drinkable London beer? Can this be so?)

Rating: 9 out of 10
Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Quartus: Delirium Tremens, Brasserie Huyghe Brewery, Belgium

Strength: 8.5%
Form: 330ml bottle
Price: £2.29 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

This is a rather famous beer, bought on that basis. It turns out to be overly sweet for my liking as many strong beers are, and thus I lose the subtleties it might have. It certainly doesn't taste 8.5%. While a perfectly good beer, it's just not me.

Rating: Unfair to give a score, 7 out of 10 if you insist.
Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Chili Beer
Cave Creek, Australia

Importer: Pierhead Purchasing Ltd., Belvedere
Strength: 4.5% ABV
Form: 375ml bottle
Price: £1.40 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

As a chaser to the Cooper's Stout, we have this stuff.

No head on pouring, but a good bitter colour, albeit the colour of a flat pint.

Sipping it, all I can taste is offensively-strong chili. I love chili, but while this is not enough for a British Curry or chili, it overpowering and just too much in a beer. It is, in fact, destined for the drain.

Attempting to taste through the chili, I'm not detecting a good beer. Nasty reminders of VB show through. No bloody wonder they went for dumping a chili in there to take the taste away. One should at least be thankful that only the chili, and not the beer, hits you.

A rather fun novelty, but just completely fails to work due to the heat and no decent beer behind it.

Rating: Unfair to give a score, but 4 out of 10 if you insist.
Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Best Extra Stout
Cooper Brewery, Australia

Importer: Pierhead Purchasing Ltd., Belvedere
Strength: 6.3% ABV
Form: 375ml bottle
Price: £1.49 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

This one isn't being reviewed to the usual standards, I'm afraid. The warmup (which, given the lack of actual food in the flat, is also called “breakfast”) was three doubles of Bombay Sapphire and Schweppes tonic. So, I'm perhaps not entirely 100% to start with. The palate wanted something different, and this was selected at random from the random booze stash. Well picked, intuition. (To clarify, it was 1pm, rather than 9am. British slobs getting up in the afternoon, I don't know...)

This was cracked open with Psycho Bottle Opener which lifted the cap clean away. This doesn't bode well. It was poured into the dregs of the Bombay Sapphire, i.e. a few half-melted icecubes that were dampened with gin. A rather encouraging brown foamy head formed, although it dissipated fairly quickly.

I don't have much faith in Ozzie beer. An Ozzie of my acquaintance tells me that British Fosters is much more drinkable than Australian Fosters, which is impressive given that British Fosters is corrosive undrinkable shite. A previous review of VB confirmed that they couldn't brew beer if their life depended on it.

... and then there's this stuff.

This one leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. While I'm quite convinced that Australia can only brew piss and good old Blighty is the only place that can make drinkable beer, this one's not actually all that bad. Unlike VB, that claims to be a bitter but is some sort of piss-poor lager that pissed-up British lager louts would quite rightly avoid, this is indeed a stout. And “Best” is fair game.

Your Humble Narrator's palate is already sufficiently tainted to be able to do it justice, but it is quite happily hitting the spot and I fear that when the bottom of the glass is hit, I will be mourning its loss. Its more-ishness is, well, more-ish.

That it's 6.3% may have something to do with it. But it's still quite drinkable. The British refererence - Guinness, never mind that it's Irish - is complete shite in comparison. (Well, actually, it's complete shite, full stop.) I also have a soft spot for stout and will pick it in preference to unknown bitters. Coopers Best Extra Stout actually matches British stouts.

I salute you, Australia. You've finally proven you can make something not only quite drinkable, but even more-ish.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Reviewed: 2006-10-29

Importer: FBI Ltd., Twickenham.
Strength: 4.9% ABV
Form: 375ml bottle.
Price: £1.25 (Nelson Wines, South Wimbledon)

Firstly, let me tell you about an American beer I drank once. It was sniffed with much trepidation, for good reason. A pinched nose, a sip, and it's gone down. Hang on a minute, what was that? Flavour? A double-check of the label to confirm its origin, a surprised expression, a shrug, and then a rather pleasant drink afterwards. The maker: Anchor Steam.

The interesting thing about that beer is that it had the complex flavours of bitter without the nasty aftertaste sme leave, and the palate-cleaning sensation of lager without tasting like it had just stepped out of a chemical factory. I've just picked up another bottle.

Now to VB. To fully-appreciate a drink, it has to be served in the right glass and environment. Whisky in a tumbler with a splash of water and MOTAS at your side, White Lightning from a paper bag on a park bench, and VB in a chipped Redditch CAMRA glass and a bottle of mouthwash.

Noseplugs at the ready, and I crack open the bottle. The psycho bottle opener is quite effective at working out which beer is worth drinking, and will typically wrench the lip off the bottle and deposit tiny glass shards into the beer. It didn't find it necessarly to make this stuff any less pleasant to drink and the cap came off cleanly.

The first sip of an unfamiliar beer is never great. The flavours are new and the remnants of the previous are still on your tongue. It usually takes a couple of mouthfuls before it can be determined whether or not the beer is actually any good. VB's impressive achievement is that it manages this right to the bottom of the glass.

VB seems to be going for a somewhat similar hybrid approach to Anchor Steam, but unfortunately fails to manage to taste nice. You get the bland flavour of lager with an impressively bad bitter aftertaste. It's somehow sticky so that the nasty flavour needs to be scraped off the tongue.

I think I'll just tip it down the drain, rinse the glass, and pour myself a nice mouthwash...

Rating: 3 out of 10.
Reviewed: 2006-07-15.