Well, you’ll all be pleased to hear that my abject failure to keep this blog even slightly current hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for writing stuff. Despite the six month gap, I plan to press ahead undeterred. I’m hoping that if I just pick up where I left off, nobody will notice too much. Well, obviously you’re going to notice now because I’ve drawn attention to it. Maybe skip this paragraph. Anyway, onwards. This is part 2 of 2 of the entirely unanticipated ‘post-barbecue fridge crimes’ series. Unbelievably, I still have crap in my fridge from six months ago waiting for exactly this moment.
For those reading internationally, some background. As with I suspect many corners of the world, the South Island of New Zealand carries a special sort of national stereotype, sort of a bit like a colder equivalent of Crocodile Dundee; the Southern Man. So how does one spot a Southern Man? There is a handy identification chart next to the toilets in the Bristol Arms with about fifteen points to notice, none of which I can actually remember. But I think the key ones are something like
- Owns a truck that has done at least 500,000 miles
- Rides a horse
- Owns wire
- Wears a cowboy hat
- Hangs around in the cold
- Has skin like Clint Eastwood
And so on. This is a rugged character; taciturn, inventive, immune to weather, happiest when cooking sausages on an open fire and punching cattle. One might ask why my local pub carries a big chart to help you identify such a character (surely he should stick out like a sore thumb in most company). The reason is that this is what you turn into if you drink Speights.
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| Max jumped fearlessly from the train, hot bullets whizzing past his head |
Speights is one of those New Zealand drinks that you can only buy in New Zealand. It’s probably something you might accurately refer to as a ‘New Zealand draft’, a sort of weird lager-ale hybrid thing that’s brown but made with a lager, or possibly suspended, yeast. The bottle claims that this stuff is a ‘Gold Medal Ale’, which appellation Wikipedia immediately reveals as bullshit of the highest order (there’s nothing like an ale yeast involved in its production). This doesn’t surprise me, as New Zealand brewers seem to have a cheerfully liberal approach to labelling beers with whatever random collection of words leaves the best impression in the mind of the drinker. I’m not sure which gold medal this stuff won, but I would like to have a quiet word with the judges at some point.
In fact, I have been led to understand that the good people of Speight’s used to produce a ‘craft’ range, subsequently discontinued and much missed. I have the vaguest of race memories of consuming something called a Distinction Porter around five years ago, which I don’t think was too bad, but you know what my memory’s like. Either way, you can’t get it any more, so we’re left with the single bottle of ‘ale’ taking up good space in my fridge.
So. Trying to get myself into the spirit of the whole shenanigans, I imagine myself as a fabled Southern Man. (This is quite a leap of the imagination, as I am naturally sedentary, soggy and cack-handed, but bear with me). So I’ve just spent a day wading through 30 miles of a six-foot snow drift to rescue a sheep and do something with wire. I have eaten a light lunch of pebbles and hay, and decided to save on petrol by pulling my truck the ten miles home with a piece of garden twine. Needless to say, my face is so craggy you could grate cheese on it. I walk slowly into my local pub, briefly incline my chin towards the barkeep, and he serves me up a pint of…
Well, what would you want after a day like that? I would say either about four milds back-to-back to rehydrate me, or something like a scotch ale or a decent oily stout to fortify myself against the inclement weather and lack of basic nutrition in my diet. Instead, my taste seems to incline towards something that one could charitably categorise as a middle-order shandy.
For those who aren’t familiar, shandy is a mixture of beer and lemonade. It comes out a bit like a beery soft drink. Schoolchildren drink it. It’s sugary and malty and thoroughly inoffensive. It’s an acceptable alternative for old people at the pub in the UK if they don’t fancy a port and lemon. Your great aunty might drink this stuff.
And this, friends, is exactly what Speights tastes like. There is nothing on the nose (I mean, seriously, nothing), and a vague sugary maltiness in the mouth. It’s sort of like cold watery Horlicks. In fairness, it’s not horrible exactly (although it does have a strange chemical aftertaste). It’s more… well… pointless. Why on earth would anybody drink this? It doesn’t even have the limey bite that Corona has when you put lime in it. Well, I suppose it’s cheap and about as easy to drink as water. In fact, I’d hope it’s cheap, as it’s clearly a combination of malt sugar and a few gravy browning crystals. Do you know, it’s that watery, I don’t even know whether they’ve used corn syrup. Now that’s a bad beer.
And do I feel any more Southern? Not even slightly. I’m starting to think that this whole Southern Man myth is a bit daft. Why I may be in my real life Olympic-grade useless when it comes to wire, at least I’m not the type to quiver ‘…oooh …that’s a bit strong…’ before settling in with a quiet half a shandy and maybe doing a bit of knitting or something. This beer is extreme, desperate, boredom distilled down into a lifeless simulacrum of something that makes other people run, shout, leap, dance and embrace their lives to the fullest. It’s certainly not the drink of a rugged, seasoned adventurer.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll re-state it here for the record. Life’s too short. Every Speights ‘Gold Medal Ale’ that is drunk is another pointless excursion into slightly flavoured water, and a missed opportunity to experience craft, flavour, diversity and general joy. I mean, crikey, at 4% it won’t even get you pissed. The sooner this scourge evaporates from the planet, the happier we’ll be as a species.
So that’s me. Next time, I might actually review a decent beer. That’d be a turn-up for the books.
