the lager beer pecking order

Leffe Blond.. 6.6%, 3 and I'm rockin'

yeh i think it would be carlsberg. i used to drink it draft in a pub where carlsberg was the other lager. after a while they dropped it. probably to make people have carlsberg. didnt know carlsberg took over brewing it. or not, as appears to be the case.

and what happened to harp,haven't seen that for years

All lagers are pi$$. Drink proper beer ffs.

Lager is proper beer.......just leave it to continental Europeans, know what they are doing.

I've now reached the age where I've ditched lager for beer,tastebuds needed a change I think.
somebody please shoot me if I start drinking it out of a tankard though

hatchback Keith here close enoghh & i chew me food 23 befor swallow

Stella Artois used to be up there when it was 5.2abv.

Then it went down to 5% - the taste remained and the 0.2% was only slightly missed.

Now it's 4.8 and is approaching Tennents

Heltons Lips (5%) and 1664 (5%) is still good cargo.

Wherever does some silly Muckle Flugga get it into his head that less %age is good for the population?

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND!  unless his name is alex salmond

castlemaine,fosters,carlsberg,carling...ych y fi

Yup, Holsten's good kit all right.

I brew my own.

The word lager means store room and requires cooler temperatures to brew along with a bottom feeding yeast.

Best beer I ever had was in a pub called http://en.ufleku.cz/ in Prague. They only sell 1 type of beer, brewed in house. It's a dark lager, quite unique and like nothing available in the UK. I've since reproduced that beer and was my sole reason for brewing my own. I just tweak my recipe each time but I've never got it quite right although close enough.

Most of the top selling beers don't have complex ingredients. Carlsberg is a simple 1 malt, 1 hop, 1 yeast type. Guinness only has 3 or so malts so the best selling beers are also the simplest.

Brewings not hard btw even from raw ingredients. You could brew 10 pints of your own easily with much of what you have at home.

Luckily at the start of my journey a local brewer was making the upgrade and gave me his old Peco Boiler. I brew the Beer in a bag method but I began all grain by following this guide:

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=51779

The only things you won't have are the grains, hops and maybe a thermometer you will need a big pot but as you see in that guide, the guy split his brew into 2 small ones. I am forever grateful for that guide, I would never have tackled all grain until I read the thread.

Use a 5L water container (£1 Tesco's) to brew in and your good to go. Get a couple of 5L brews (10 pints) under your belt and decide if you want to keep going or upgrade to a 40 pint kit. A decent set up will cost £200+ but once you have it it will repay itself in no time. The folks over at Brewdog actually started their company using these: http://www.geterbrewed.com/the-grainfather-the-grain-father-all-in-1-brewing-system/

You could of course just buy a kit but all grain is much more satisfying, knowing your doing it all from scratch.

Grains: http://www.geterbrewed.com/irish-ale-malt/        get 1KG crushed.
Hops: http://www.geterbrewed.com/bobek-hop-pellets-2014-6.5/

That's only a couple of pounds for 10 pints. If you've a local home brew store even better as you will save on postage.

Use an old(washed) pillowcase for your bag and follow that guide.

I can do 40 pints for under £10 but once you get the hang of things you can experiment with different hops and grains and maybe try out that Brew Dog recipe book. Stick to ales because lagers require a fridge imo.

Hope that helps Jack.

I have similar to this Jack: http://www.geterbrewed.com/get-er-brewed-all-grain-starter-kit/

but purchased in stages. There are some people that have DIY'd their boiler using a large bucket and the elements from 2 cheap Tesco Value kettles for around £20 in total.

That Grainfather is the bees knees but you don't need expensive equipment to brew. I'm about to bottle a kit today but I'm using reused 3L Pepsi bottles.

They started with 2 or 3 machines and expanded from there. Their a multi million pound company now and releasing their recipes was ingenious. I hardly knew about them until then but I now sample their odd bottle because they know as a home brewer I may tackle that recipe some day. I'm sure sales have soared from it. A guy on that forum has just released a "DIY Dawg" app. I'd download it now as I think it will be removed due to copyright issues.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brudawg.diydawg

Someone done a cost calculation v's pub pints and it easily pays for itself if you have a couple of pints per week. I've brewed some great and some not so great beers but each one has been unique. That dark style of lager and stouts are now my tipple of choice. I've a house stout that I tweak every time, really simple recipe which I'll pass on if you like.

You'll also need some yeast for the above which will cost £2 ish. Safale S04 or 05 work really well.

All lager tastes like sh1t. We don't drink it for the taste, flavour.  Altho, admittedly some are nastier tasting than others - Carling in particular imo, but everyone's taste buds different.

http://www.geterbrewed.com/hops/

Hops aren't hard to get hold of, some people grow their own.

Dark Lager is very nice. One of my favourites. But mass produced lager is just for getting p1ssed. Stella is fairly good. Fosters and XXXX? I can't believe that stuff is even sold anymore. Fosters hasn't been here since the early 80s.

Mark Waugh's wife.

the lager beer pecking order
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Woodpecker ,surely ?

prefer a nice strong cider  -  i'd recommend Aspalls Cider - a great drink ,plenty of kick in it .