Wonderful country just lacking beer

Really, our local Leclerc and Intermarche has a huge range of UK, American and French IPA’s.

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Haha, cider is what you drink when a pub just has terrible beers! Nice to see you are a real ale’ person, that’s why I was checking CAMRA. Their beer festivals can be really good.

The thing about France is that I don’t come across cask ales (for others, cask is where the ale continues to mature in the barrel) but there seems to be, as people mention, plenty of microbreweries - I haven’t checked them all out (yet) but would not be surprised if they are brewing ‘keg’ ale, i.e. where the ale in the barrel has finished brewing and is kept fresh with carbon dioxide. Figeac seems to be a hive of activity!

If people can point me to cask ale in France that would be great. Cask is what Camra deemed ‘real ale’ however they do now seem to embrace the many UK ‘keg’ ales too. Cask is best in my opinion, unless it’s a really bad one when a keg could come to the rescue of one’s thirst.

Then there’s the bottled beers - sometimes Lidl seem to have some, once I found some Belhaven Stout in Lidl.

The best on draft I have found in my limited searching is Vedett IPA but it seems to me quite pricy at €4.30 a Demi…

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There are a number of micro-breweries in the villages around us and they have a very good reputation. If I was into beer I’d definitely be working my way around them!

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Un pasterurised?

I used to live in Herefordshire and in Worcester. The draught ciders were at least the equal of cask ale in my opinion and unbeatable on those rather rare hot summers days.

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We are lucky plenty of microbreweries here and the local Auchan stocks Spitfire and a few other beers from my local Brewery in the UK.
These are a few that have internet sites

https://www.artisan-brasseur.com/annuaire-brasseurs/brasserie-de-la-canoterie-clamecy/

https://m.facebook.com/microbrasserieodiletenbrasse/

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Our daughter lives in Munich and I like the beer, but not the Weissbier!

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For me these are 2 plus points! :laughing:

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Granted! (I did mention it’s only if the beer is terrible!). But probably the cider in Essex wasn’t a patch on the West Country…

Possibly, I think the gas in the bottle keeps it from going off, and you’ve reminded me there are some ales which are ‘bottle conditioned’ i.e. the fermentation carries on a bit in the bottle - there will be some degree of sediment at the bottom. St Austell proper job is an example.

Weissbier is ‘unfiltered’ and is designed to be drunk with the bits which make it cloudy, which I believe is what gives it its banana type flavours. I’d certainly drink it in Bavaria - and some of the brewery glasses are lovely!

There’s also ‘dunkel’ which is dark.

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We are regular visitors to Poland - Gdansk and I usually drink wheat beer there - sometimes from Lithuania.

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Or you can go on the hunt for scrumpy. Time was, growing up, we’d get it in a gallon plastic container from the local farmyard - those days are seemingly gone now sadly.

“Scrumpy and gin, now that’s a lovely drink, mild as mother’s milk it is, but it takes your legs away sudden” needs to be said in the beautiful Dorset accent I was told this by someone who’d be pushing 130 by now.

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I remember at the base of Porlock hill is a pub that served local scumpy. They had a yard of scrumpy competition, this loud mouth American passed out as the ball rushed up and hit him in the face :joy:

I used to walk up a 1 in 4 hill called Cefn Llan in Aberystwyth every day on my way to work. Thankfully it was only about 250m long :hot_face:

Sitting at the pub garden you could see the brown clouds of brake dust coming from the vehicles of those not selecting a low gear, in those days that was asbestos pads!

That’s what I miss more than the beer. Especially now the weather is getting nice again. We had some nice country pubs back home. French bars just ain’t the same.

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What I don’t get is how young french men manage to make a demi last for hours!

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Basque cidre is good.

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Because it tastes so bad, perhaps…? :smiley:

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