I really fancied a chilli this week. So I really fancied a lager to go with it. Something to take the edge of the heat, to put some bready sweetness back onto a fiery palate.

So I had a bottle of Czech lager. Which one, I hear you ask? Dunno. It was in a bottle that said "Czech Pilsner Lager" on the label. Actually, it also says "Brewed in Prague". Twice.

On the back label, in the small print, it says it's brewed by Pivovary Staropramen. Ostravar-ish, maybe? More likely to be Vratislav-like?

But the question is - who cares? If I'm paying £1.35 a bottle for what is essentially a palate-quencher, do I care about a beer's parentage? If it hits the spot, should I then be bothered if it's a rebadge or a variant or a new brew?

If it cost £10 a bottle, would I care more about where the hops and malts were sourced, where the brewery was based, what the head brewer's name is? Would you care more? Should you? Why? Because you expect to know more at that price point?

If beer does the job that you ask of it - in this case, be cold, wet and refreshing - who cares where it came from?

Not me, for one.


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#4: Good lager is where you find it

You’ve just walked from one end of the National Exhibition Centre to the other, both halves seemingly in different postcodes. You’ve got a throat dryer than the Atacama. You’ve free access to a fridge chock full of beers – Trappist ales, Belgian bruins, double IPAs. What do you satiate that itching thirst with?

Lager, of course.

Nothing – and I do mean nothing – is as refreshing as a cold lager on a parched palate. Those flavours you’d usually savour in a hoppy beer would be too sticky. Maltiness would just clag the gap left where your tonsils were whipped out. You need something crisp, something cold.

We were pouring samples of two great lagers. Moritz is a clean, soft Spanish pils sprinkled with Saaz. Rothaus Tannenzäpfle is a South German pils with echoes of pine needles; there’s a herbal edge to its sweet malt base. I loved them both and drank them deeply all day.

There’s an awful lot of shit lager in the world. But there’s some well made, carefully crafted, thoroughly enjoyable examples out there too.

Remember – pils is not a four-letter word. >

So many things to see and do. Planned an article on this yonks ago. Now all I have is a fridge full of supermarket pale fizz, a few dirty secrets to spill and the insatiable desire to throw my hands in the air and chant "let your feelings slip boy/but never your mask, boy". Confused? Good. Open this in a new window and read more where it tells you to...



Let's be honest: lager is shit. It's a pitiful excuse for alcohol. Drunk from tins, drank by neds, sold in slabs, made in labs. It may have a rich history but it's been forcibly abducted by the English and had up the chuffer. There are amoeboids avoiding osmosis with passing cells just in case it involves this fizzy pizz of stuff.

But - you'll never guess. I love it. I fooking love it. There's my first big dirty secret smeared all over t'internet. I will happily cock my pinkie in the air and sample an oak-aged imperial stout with the best beer wankers of the world. But - sometimes - nothing compares with a pint of larger and a bunch of mates down the golf club.

Are you still reading? I'm serious. I love beer. If you've been around the site, you'll know that. I love artisinal brews, I love festivals with rare cask ales, I love bottles from far flung continents in outrageous styles.

Yet there's something ingrained in my beer history. Lager is the beer that was my first love, my reluctant partner and my wayward mistress. Ayingerbrau as a child turned me to cider. Whatever ended up in the snakebite as a student brought me half way back. Stella gave me an opportunity to piss my hard earned wages up a porcelain wall.

I've never been to Plzen. For me, lager is a big chemically mess. And I love it for that.

For me, this Session is about accessible lager. So I popped round to the three supermarkets within a mile of home and picked up a bottle from the shelf. Here, my dear topers, is the result:

#1: Czech Lager, Co-Op. "Premium lager brewed in Bohemia". An InBev clone. Worringly, "cleared using polyvinylpolypyrrolidone". This may make it suitable for vegans, but this "most interesting derivatives of acetylene chemistry" is somehow scarier to me than using bits of fish to clear a beer. But you know what? This gets the job done. Sweet bready nose, just a bit cardboardy, it still has a hop and a crunch in the end. Like the lingering granny who never left you alone in the lounge when you were trying to finger your first girlfriend, I hate this beer right now yet respect it for what it teaches me.

(Some would say it teaches you to drape a pillow over your granny's mouth and then Apply Some Pressure. I couldn't possibly comment.)

#2: Czech Premium Lager, Adsa. Looks like the last one except this has more floaty mould on top. I have to be honest - cats have left better odours behind in litter trays. It's unearthly sweet. Sweet, sweet cardboard. Perhaps I under-geared the aroma - it's cardboard with a diabetic urinary issue. The only good thing about this beer is my vicinity to a drain into which I can swill this effluent down. It's THE most unpleasant beer I've had in recent memory, And that includes Greene King IPA. Da truff, dog.

#3: Ostravar, Somerfield. Ah, the joys of non-supermarket-branded lager. No cheating, mind (what's all that noise, we'll have no cheating round here), Somerfield can't afford own brand and FFS THANKS because Ostravar is, ladeez en gintelmen.....

Lawnmower Lager.

BTW - as Katie White keeps suggesting to me, I do imagine all the girls, the boys, the strings and the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums.

Sweetbready yet still hoppy. Creamy and hoppy. Dry and hoppy. This does the job. Just like lager #1, here's 5% shit that makes you fuzzy whilst giving your taste buds something to toss off to.

And now we get to the real dirty shit. I love lager - that much is true. When I go to one of my favourite bars, a bar with three handpulled ales, including the sublime St Austell Tribute, I drink... Stella Artois. Now served in a vase with a stem. Want to know why I have it? Well, the cask beers are good, and I mean GOOD; well kept by someone who knows what they're doing and turns over enough to keep it fresh. But Stella... I've been drinking it here for years and it just... works! I arrive, go to the bar, don't have to order it coz it's being poured for me, sit back, relax, enjoy. I've had days on the ale (only miles away to brewery taps offering 16 beers) and then ended up here for one of their killer burgers and lashings of Stella.

Ostravar is - to be honest - the poor cousin of Stella. But, to be blunt, it's still a fuckign tasty bottle; I'd give my left testicle for something this good at the clubs I've been to recently for gigs.

So, there you go. Lager. Shit yet lovely. And I didn't even get around to trying Derbyshire's finest (er, only) county-brewed lager, Moravka. But that's what weekend rambles are for, eh, peeps?

Last words go to Underworld (although we all know that no words are necessary: NUXX is over-rated but still ingrained into our psyche):

"I just come out of the Ship/Talking to the most blonde I ever met
Shouting lager, lager, lager, lager/ Mega mega white thing"

And here endeth the lesson.

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