to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

some drinks in moderation are good, and we are all bad

Aimless... he drinks a bitter tonic

I am an aficionado of thread topics even more than an aficionado of alcoholic drinks. As a drinker, I am unreasonably forbearing. As an ilxor, I am uncompromising.

Radlers and Shandys seem like Orangina to me, in that they are better when made at home from the basic ingredients (lager and OJ, or lager and lemonade, etc, or OJ and soda water, if you need me to explain the Orangina connection). No way I'm paying extra for that stuff in a can when I have all the necessary ingredients at home as part of my basic grocery bill.

Aimless wrecking shop, new display name results

Bars frown on me bringing my own supplies, though.

Does Bartles and Jaymes still exist? Zima's back, and flavored malt beverages are doing well. Time for a full on revival of bad drinks, countered by a more contemporary dedication to good drinking.

tbh the bitter truth embodied in thread title is at some point, there is just drinking

I understand the bar camaraderie idea, and the local where you drink shots and sip your beer and socialize like a living room that's more than furniture and maybe a tv. Sneering at malt beverages is like sneering at single malt scotch or well-crafted beer or whatever else -- even if you're optimizing an idyll flavor profile, or seeking out rare liquor, every few people are going to have a tiny drink that gives you no intoxication -- we like some level of intoxication. And we might say it is cleaner or well-honed, or even a different experience due to economic disconnect but you like to drink.

i guess so - maybe he wanted people to get the satisfaction of buying him a drink? or perhaps he was just a sociopath.

If you want white whiskey, you need to get some real stuff 'apple pie'. Make sure it burns blue. Put it in the freezer and have fun.

"Session beer" is a British term I believe, although not an especially old one, probably reflects the fact that we start drinking several hours earlier in the day than you do and if you're settling in for a good long session in the pub then you don't want to kill yourself too early on. It's at least partly a marketing team, a session beer will sell to people who wouldn't buy something sold a light beer.

For most of my adult life, beer in the sub-4% range in Britain has (with some honorable exceptions) been pisswater. One of the best things about the whole craft beer thing has been a proliferation of beers at around 3.5% that actually taste of something.

Oh god yeah, reading in pubs is wonderful and something I would never give up. You can't really have more than a couple of drinks in that situation though, and it's more of a winter thing. You need the right pubs around you as well.

i generally agree about it being a winter thing, but i've gone to my local on one or two hot sundays recently, days when there's nobody around or i don't want to do much other than be alone, and sat in their beer garden reading and sipping a pint - there's a peace there you can't always find at home.

Going offthread even more, but I do miss the days when you could go into any pub and get a pint of mild on tap.

I choose my pub reading carefully because some bartenders/bar patrons interpret a book propped up against the condiment caddy differently. Some, correctly, understand a book to mean "I will be cordial about refill requests but would otherwise prefer to be left in companionable silence."

Others view it as a potential conversation starter. I normally dread the question "Watcha readin'?". The asker either doesn't really care (in which case I may as well answer "midget-based erotica"), or (perhaps worse), the asker IS very interested in the author or the topic. In which case they are likely to want to discuss it. Look, pal, if I wanted to discuss Faulkner with people, I would have stayed in graduate school.

a pint of mild on tap

I think up North you maybe still can. I went in a pub across the road from Macclesfield station a few years ago and they had Banks's Mild on tap. It appeared to be a standard option, not a guest ale or something like that. I see Banks's is now owned by Marston's, and if I recall this was a Marston's pub, old-fashioned, plain, not geared to ale enthusiasts.

I used to drink Banks's Mild sometimes when I was a teenager but tbh I think that was more down to it being 99p a pint vs £1.40 for Best Bitter than anything else. Kinda want a pint of it now you mentioned it just to see what I think of it as a more experienced beer drinker.

I had a pint of it in that pub I just mentioned. It was okay. I like mild anyway, one of my favourite kinds of beer. I see now from the Marston's Wikipedia page that mild is more of a Midlands than Northern thing, Macclesfield being more or less on the cusp of the two.

re: britishes drinking earlier.

I've personally never felt the pull of restrictions like "no drinking except on weekends" or "no drinking before X:XX" or "no drinking alone."

A drink is just as alcoholic - and just as desirable - at 5:01 PM as it was at 4:59. Or, for that matter, 11:59 AM.

It makes as much sense as saying you can only have sex on weekends, or only at night, or only with someone else.

Wasn't there something about the pubs closing too early or something, so people getting a head start? Or did that get reversed?

In my adult life, I've seesawed from drinking pretty much every night to teetotalerism. I've been in the 'lucky if I get through an entire six pack in a month' phase for a while, but I kinda feel like alcohol may become a more central part of my life in days to come.

Josh, I always heard that the session thing was from Britishes worker shifts (possibly during wartime manufacturing efforts) where you needed a beer you could drink before going back to work. But that could be spurious; I dunno.

Josh - I think the story is they started licensing hours during WWI to improve worker productivity by shutting pubs at 10:30pm, and also closing during the day between (I think) 3pm and 7pm. This stayed after the war finished and at some point 10:30pm got changed to 11pm except on Sundays. Then the afternoon closing went in the 80s apart from Sundays, which was changed in 1995 (I know that one is correct). So yeah the received wisdom is that Brits chug so much beer down so they can get drunk before the early closing time.

Licensing laws were relaxed some time after 2000 but a lot of pubs still close at 11.

I love stuff like this btw

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/presidential-drinking-habits-washington-jefferson

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-the-pilgrims-wore-beer-goggles/

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/152901/rabbi-wolpes-picks-revisiting-prohibition

There's some book I read years ago about drinking that I loved but I cannot remember the title or the author for the life of me right now. I think it had a cider recipe in the back. It was by a woman.

Didn't it used to be customary to have Friday lunch down the pub with your officemates?

Oh, "The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland. It's good. She's dead now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/09/the-author-who-brought-us-the-joy-of-drinking-a-tribute/63259/

xp still is at some places I've worked. Not where I am now unfortunately not that I would get into any trouble if I did go for a pint, we do very occasionally.

Lincoln excepted, our teetotaler presidents have been disasters.

Didn't it used to be customary to have Friday lunch down the pub with your officemates?

Still reasonably widespread.

My current office quite often puts beers out late on Fridays, which they have just sent an email out about but I work from home on Fridays so no free beer for me. I just made a coffee anyway so I'll live.

was thinking of this thread as i went out for "a drink" for a colleague's leaving do - went on to another pub which had a free beer as a recruiter was hosting some kind of networking event for people who do my job, colleagues left so i met a bunch of other people, stayed till latest possible time. dying today.

a free bar rather than a free beer - multiple free beers.

"The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland. It's good. She's dead now.

Teetotalers be like: "SEE? Drinking kills!"

My life does not revolve around alcohol at all. It probably did for a couple of years in my teens but I grew out of it rather quickly.

I was a teetotaler for much of my twenties then became a social drinker.

Exercise and other, boring responsibilities limit the times I can drink. I try to drink a couple of beers or small amounts of whisky once a week, though. I tend to do it to enjoy the taste and social bonding aspect of it.

Those are the things most celebrated in Holland's book, IIRC.

I also found this piece fascinating, despite the author:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/02/15/drinking-games

prob not new for many of you but this is in the spirit of the kingsley amis book, a v enjoyable piece:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/a-few-too-many

That's a good one. There's a decent book I've read on that topic too, which is easy to remember because its title is THE WRATH OF GRAPES

I love "carpenters in the forehead"

yeah that is amazing indeed.

My contact in Calcutta said buttermilk [as a hangover cure]. “You can also pour it over your head,” he added. “Very soothing.”

^^^my favorite

I prefer to pour kerosene on my head, put on Al Stewart, and pull out my lighter.

feel like drinkin' alone is better than listening to billy joel track-by-track

Is it any wonder Billy likes to imbibe?

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/08/a-study-says-heavy-drinking-is-now-a-public-health-crisis.html

Mookie otm

I divide the cash in my wallet into denominations that can or cannot be used to buy a pint

re: mild ale, I was back in the midlands this week for a couple of days and popped in to one of the pubs I used to go to as a teenager while I was in town, but alas they only sell Banks's Amber Ale nowadays, no mild.

for whatever reason I think that story I just linked to might be the tipping point that makes me strictly a social drinker who tries to stick to seven or fewer drinks per week. we'll see how that turns out.

Could also have posted this to the Billy Joel listening thread

https://healthfoodsoul.com/spiritual-consequences-alcohol-consumption/

In the words of writer and health enthusiast, Jason Christoff – “In alchemy, alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its’ use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies (why do you think we call certain alcoholic beverages “SPIRITS?”). That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul (we were sent here with) leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage. Our bodies are cars for spirits. If one leaves, another can take the car for a ride. Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity.”

Can that be used as a legal defense?

"Sorry, your honor, my body was possessed by another entity at the time."

As a matter of fact your honour, I believe he was called jack daniels