Ah, the bin of ruin! Some of us have visited the bin so many times we could get our own Bin Passport and live there for ever.

BUT! If you’re permanently in the bin, what do you do when you sober up?

There are currently two exciting things occurring in Adelaide, South Australia: 1) the Australian Olympic Swimming Trials 2) Beer In A Bin, a company that will deliver a wheelie bin full of beer or other alcoholic beverage to your door!

This looks lethal amazing – all that remains is to combine it with the self-propelling Pedibus pub (which is lots of fun, especially if you put 80s pop-rock on the ipod).

So if Ian Thorpe (miraculously) manages to squeeze in for that 6th spot on the 4x200m free relay squad he can celebrate with 50 litres of Coopers Sparkling Ale! Or if he (more likely) fails to squeeze in for that 6th spot on the 4x200m free relay squad he can drown his sorrows with 50 litres of Coopers Sparkling Ale!

1) The music is SO BAD I think to myself ‘I can do way better than this’ (aka the ‘Free Trade Hall‘ rule).
2) The dudes on stage look like they’re having fun, which temporarily blots out the memories of driving a hire van 800 miles in three days and not being able to find .012 gauge strings ANYWHERE in Nottingham on a Sunday morning.
3) The musicians are making excellent music in an achievable (for me) fashion, e.g. pressing buttons on a laptop, playing rudimentary chords or basslines, saying words in a monotonous voice (aka the Elastica rule).

I don’t get the same trigger when seeing an elaborate guitar solo — I know I’m never going to be able to do that! I will never be able to do a backflip like Britney does at the end of the ‘Baby One More Time’ video and I will never be able to belt out a power anthem like Kelly Clarkson. It is highly unlikely I will learn to beatmatch as well as Magda or Jeff Mills as my key 10,000 hours were wasted learning Red Dwarf scripts off by heart.

There’s often a big jump between learning the rudiments of a subject and becoming an expert (see all X Factor series ever). Most dudes who enjoy listening to music know how to hum a tune or can play a few notes on an instrument. How do you go from that to producing a complex pop song like “Single Ladies”? Somewhere in the middle there’s a big box with “???” written on it before you can get to the “profit” stage. Perhaps it involves… mastering?

Analogy time! Most of you reading this will know the basics of a computer desktop, moving things from one window to another with a mouse, using software like Word or Firefox or whatever. You probably also know that all computery things are made up of zeroes and ones. How do you get from one to the other?

While studying Computer Science at A-level, I was genuinely excited to learn how those zeroes and ones were turned into an extremely basic programming language. Once you have that basic programming language, you can use it to create a complicated programming language and thus write a text adventure where the evil wizard has the same name as your Pure Maths teacher. Great! 10,000 hours and several ??? boxes later, I am writing my own web applications for a living, with little shopping basket buttons and everything. There’s still many parts of the process I don’t understand (such as why there are 5 different iexplore.exe processes in my Task Manager when I’m not even running Internet Explorer) but at last I have a good handle on what goes where, and thus I can make a professional end product.

Anyway my point here is that I thoroughly enjoy gigs by brilliant performers, but usually I am too fully aware of my own limitations to be immediately inspired to emulate them. Discovering the contents of the musical ??? box requires either unlearnable talent or immense amounts of hard work (and petrol). Now I’m content just to listen and dance and program instead.

…And then I saw Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards play the Scala in 2010. She was slightly older than me, and was wearing no makeup except for an Adam Ant stripe across her face. She carefully built up drum and vocal loops piece by piece: each part sounded off-beat or off-key on its own, but eventually they came together to make a full drum break or a burble of backing vocals.

It reminded me of Mum’s barbershop learning tapes, which would have the same song on both sides, the A side with just her baritone part (i.e. the harmony) and the B side with the other three parts turned up (with the baritone still high in the mix). The baritone part on its own never failed to sound like a dying cat, but mixed in with the bass, lead and tenor it made sense and gave it a distinctive sound.

Over the top of her loops, Merrill played an amped-up ukelele and sang very complex melody lines over a huge range, clicking the loop pedals on and off as desired. Her only other assistance was from a bassist and a couple of dudes alternating between horns and percussion, taking their cues from her nods and smiles. Tune-Yards obviously aren’t the first or last people to make music in this fashion, but prior to that Scala gig I had never seen it executed so well (in particular I have a dreadful memory of some dude looping improvised sitar riffs for half an hour – not my cup of tea).

The amount of organisation going on in Merrill’s head was a talent all on its own, clearly awesome and something I’d never be able to manage (I can’t even sing and play the guitar at the same time). But there was a key difference to this performance: each step was difficult, but seeing her demonstrate how they fitted together showed that at least it was possible without magic. The contents of the ??? box were revealed. PING! A little voice popped up at the back of my head saying “Why don’t you do this? She’s your age. Maybe you do still have a shot at being a rockstar?” I was just about to leave my job for a few months of ‘creative pursuits’ and this was excellent motivation, though as you can probably infer I did not subsequently become a rockstar or amazing bedroom producer (my fault, not Merrill’s).

When the W H O K I L L album came out in 2011 I felt rather underwhelmed. I remembered the songs I’d heard a few months before and enjoyed hearing them again, but it was too late: I had seen behind the curtain. I knew exactly how those loops and layers had been built up. Except now I couldn’t see it happening right in front of me! An unexpected downside to the demystification process.

Fast-forward to last Wednesday, when I was watching Tune-Yards at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Well, I say watching, the gig was a sell-out and I was crammed in to one side, behind all the people in the venue over 6ft tall. If I shifted my weight to one leg I could just about make out Merrill’s face, framed like a postage stamp between the hairstyles of hipsters in fake glasses. I couldn’t see her ukelele, let alone her drums or pedals. I was tired after a long day at work and my bag seemed very heavy.

From my admittedly poor viewpoint and unenthusiastic state of mind, it seemed Merrill was concentrating too hard to have fun (she later relaxed and allowed herself a few moments to breathe and dance while her saxophone backup took over). I couldn’t see the machinations behind the songs and once again, I felt disappointed. It wasn’t Merrill’s fault of course, but I was getting no more joy out of it than I was of the CD. My mind started wandering and I started to question whether I actually liked any of the songs unless I could see them being made in front of me! Just two days into my thirties, I felt like an old woman among all those cool kids. I certainly had no thoughts of creating my own indie/techno opus.

Thankfully things eased up after The Hit Single was played and a bunch of said cool kids buggered off home. Merrill held up her ukelele to the mic where I could see it, and started hitting it with her drumstick until it distorted like the Rank dude banging his gong. I started to think about how awesome it was during the last module of my degree in which I finally learned the theory behind creating a graphical user interface for a desktop. We’d already learned how to talk to hardware (like disk drives and keyboards), how write our own simple operating system to manage multiple programs at once, as well as writing software to write the programs themselves.

All this had been done through a black and white terminal screen – now came the final piece of the puzzle. Each pixel on a display screen continually refreshes, and I learned how to tell the computer which window should be on the top of the pile in each of those split seconds, or whether it didn’t actually need to refresh at all. It felt like I was finally getting to the true nuts and bolts of how a proper modern computer worked, and it was (almost) as simple as drawing a line with a blue felt tip pen for 400 pixels, then swapping to a white felt tip for another 100px before going back to blue again. AT NEARLY THE SPEED OF LIGHT HURRAH.

That kind of put things in perspective a little and I finally started to enjoy myself. Although I know the theory behind all (OK, most of) the parts of a computer system, it’s not practical to make all of those pieces by myself. Sometimes knowing how to use a piece of software properly is more useful and more enjoyable than being able to create it. Tune-yards need an audience just as much as they need Merrill’s operating system brain, but it’s more fun when you can see how everything fits together.

Its a real privilege to reveal to you that this top ten is entirely female, so much so that I might be inspired, much like Whoopi Goldberg inspired me in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit to make a comeback and win next year. I’ve got a soup tureen full of Grammy’s you know.

10. Nicola Roberts - ‘Lucky Day’

For chrissakes put some trousers on woman:

9. tUnEyArDs - ‘Bizness’

I’m listening to WhoKill as I’m typing up this list, and “Bizness” is definitely the best track on it. Well done, voting public! If you haven’t heard any tUnEyArDs yet then watch the video, it’s a corker.

8. Nicola Roberts - ‘Beat of My Drum’
Along with Gaga and Katy B, Nicola suffered badly from a split vote across many songs, though I’m sure Team Ginge will be consoled by having two songs in the top 10. Video AGAIN features inadvisable fashion choices but at least those are sensibly shaped pants she’s got on:

7. Beyonce - ‘Countdown’

This year I watched Beyonce’s 90-minute Glastonbury set, enthralled, but it was only later that I really appreciated how good it was. Not only can she holler and dance at an unbelievable level, she can do it while she has morning sickness. I am starting to think Beyonce may actually be a new evolved species of superhuman.

6. Robyn - ‘Call Your Girlfriend’

FT Reader Favourite Robyn was in the lead during the early stages of voting, but eventually had to be satisfied with 6th.

5. Nicki Minaj - ‘Super Bass’

If Nicki hadn’t released this song then she probably would have been relegated to Guest Rapper status for the rest of eternity. Thankfully this has been avoided!

4. 2NE1 - ‘I Am the Best’

Tireless efforts by Frank Kogan and the Singles Jukebox crew have finally made Korean pop much more than a curiosity for us ignorant westerners this year. Non-ugly girlgroup 2NE1 have only been going a few years but they are the cream of the K-pop crop and BLIMEY don’t they know it.

3. Nadia Oh - ‘Taking over the Dancefloor (Kate Middleton)’
My personal favourite! If you’ve not heard or seen anything of Nadia’s before, have a look at this. Go on, it’s only 90 seconds long. What’s the worst that could happen?

2. Lana Del Rey - ‘Video Games’

‘Divisive’ might be one word to describe Miss Del Ray this year, but it seems that plenty of you lot are fond of the ol’ Pong (or Playstation, whatever).

1. Azealia Banks - ’212′

Well clear of the field with 199 points to Lana’s 149 and Nadia’s 147 we have sweet little ‘street urchin’ Azealia Banks, who has done alarmingly well considering ’212′ only fully emerged in the last few months of the year. Here she is – make sure the kids are out of the room…

There we go! Thanks again to everyone who voted – see you next year!

I’m sure it won’t Miley. Let’s have a look at entries #20-#11:

20. Rihanna ft Calvin Harris - ‘We Found Love’

RiRi is in the bath with her Docs on. That’s an extreme measure, especially when taking a hammer to them will usually do just fine.

19. Gotye ft. Kimbra - ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’

New to me! Video features a indie schmindie dude in the buff who could be either Gotye or Kimbra but whoever it is they could do with a haircut (I need a haircut myself so I know what I’m talking about).

18. PJ Harvey - ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’

Soldiers falling like lumps of meat! I wonder if Polly paid a visit to erstwhile carnivore sanctuary St John before composing this cheerful ditty. Try the sweetbreads, they’re delicious.

17. Emeli Sandé - ‘Heaven’

Not a DJ Sammy cover alas. Instead there’s more than a whiff of ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ about this tune, i.e. it is quite good.

16. Pistol Annies - ‘Hell On Heels’

Miranda Lambert has acquired some chums who are just as drunk as she is, and the results are excellent.

15. Adele - ‘Rolling In The Deep’

Well, it had to be in here somewhere, didn’t it? Here’s the Jamie xx remix which someone nominated instead:

14. Katy B - ‘Broken Record’

Plenty of love for Katy B all over the place including your votes. This track has come out the top of her five (5) nominations in this poll and weirdly enough does NOT feature a dubstep breakdown.

13. Diddy/Dirty Money ft Swizz Beats - ‘Ass on the Floor’

Also known as “WhennyrrinnurclurrbgeyerrASSonnafloor”, this is epic even by Last Train To Paris standards. Despite the title it is not really about The Club at all as Diddy promptly scarpers from the dancefloor in hot pursuit of a Mystery Lady.

12. Labrinth ft. Tinie Tempah - ‘Earthquake’

This partnership was the other way around for most of 2010 but now Tinie has returned the favour. Stick with the video until 2.23 where Labrinth and his Jedi clones do a bit of choral evensong for your listening pleasure.

11. LMFAO ft. Lauren Bennett & Goonrock - ‘Party Rock Anthem’

Sometimes big pop hits are undeniable! Sometimes everybody appears to be shuffling! Sometimes one cannot apologise for party rocking. In any case, earlier this year I turned on 4Music for the first time in about 6 months and this was the first song that I encountered = SIGNIFICANT.

Top 10 tomorrow!

Cheers Kanye. Tracks #30-#21 under the cut!

30. Florence and The Machine – ‘Shake It Out’

Well done FT readers for not picking the r4c1st single! ‘Shake It Out’ sounds like Animal Collective to me which may or may not be your cup of tea, but whatever it sounds like at least you can rely on Flo for some big hand gestures and billowing robes.

29. HyunA - ‘Bubble POP’

The long version: HyunA is a non-ugly Korean lass who has launched her solo career after being in a successful girlband blah blah blah whatevs. The short version: STUPID DUBSTEP BREAKDOWN.

28. Avril Lavigne – ‘What the Hell’

‘Girlfriend’ Part 2 (not really) sees an increasingly glassy-eyed Avril shrieking her way through a series of irresponsible actions, i.e. it is awesome. Fans of anti-ageing creams/magic potions dished out by Isabella Rossilini may wish to note that Avril Lavigne is ‘only’ 27 years old.

27. Metronomy - ‘The Look’

I fell for The English Riviera completely this year, and didn’t help matters by going on holiday to Cornwall. Anyway, this is rather good considering it’s indier than Noddy Holder’s sideboards and the video features pigeons.

26. Patrick Wolf – ‘Together’

In this video Patrick has placed a stuffed fox upon each of his shoulders. Cue a wibbly-wobbly Werther’s Original moment of when I menaced Nicola Roberts with a stuffed fox at the Popjustice £20 Music Prize a few years ago [sniiiiip - Ed]. Where was I? Oh yes, if Robyn was a dude she’d be Patrick Wolf innit. And she would have robins on her shoulders instead of wolves oh wait.

25. Fucked Up - ‘Queen of Hearts’

Brace yourselves – it’s some Indie Rock with people shouting! Fairly sure Lauren Laverne says ‘effed up’ when announcing this on 6Music. File the video under ‘hein’.

24. Metronomy - ‘The Bay’

The big disco number off the album! The small-town seaside psychodrama is still present and correct but here Metronomy are imagining what it’d be like if they ever managed to leave Torquay, e.g. going to see The Rapture at Exeter Students Union.

23. Britney Spears – ‘Till the World Ends’

With Dr Luke, Max Martin and Ke$ha on the credits, Britney hardly needed to turn up, but the end result is somehow more uplifting and life-affirming than most of the Just 17-problem-page stuff we had last year (hello ‘Firework’). Not bad considering it is inherently another Apocalypse Sh4g track.

22. Adele - ‘NEVER MIND I’ll find SOMEONE LIKE YOOOOOOOUUU’

Title written EXACTLY as it was nominated, there. Foghorns ahoy for the biggest selling single of the year in the UK (over a million copies between January and July 2011). It only got to #55 in Japan though – suck on that, Adele!

21. Ms Dynamite - ‘Neva Soft’

It’s so nice to have Naomi back in full effect! This track has a strange old mix of beats but she lassoes it all together perfectly. Here seems a good place to link to the full list of members of So Solid Crew, sadly taken down from Wikipedia.

Coming up later today: into the teens!

Thanks for that Will. Poll results #40-#31 under the cut!

40. Big Freedia - ‘Y’all Get Back Now’

An absolute 100% no-messin’ banger from the New Orleans bounce scene, much beloved by The Singles Jukebox crew (check the comments thread for a cameo appearance by Freedia’s DJ!). I totally underrated it at the time but its infectiousness soon got the better of me.

39. Laurel Halo - ‘Aquifer’

Time for the token techno entry! If you know your techno you’ve probably heard this already, if you don’t then I’d say it’s more on the ambient pitter-patter end of the spectrum rather than the mechanical or vworpy ends (i.e. more Orb than Orbital) (and yes it’s a multi-dimensional spectrum).

38. St Vincent – ‘Surgeon’

I keep reading the song title as ‘Sturgeon’ but I can confirm that St Vincent is not the patron saint of fish nor is this song about fish. Unless there is some hidden subtext I’m missing amongst her woozy burble? We had to dissect a fish in Biology once so perhaps that’s it.

37. Swede Mason - ‘Masterchef Synaesthesia’

Even Masterchef-haters can appreciate the time and effort that’s gone in to making this. Gawd bless the Great British Public – they managed to get it to #37 in the charts.

36. DJ Fresh ft. Sian Evans - ‘Louder’

Last year DJ Fresh did awesome skipping, this year things have gone a bit Rastamouse and the kids are all on skateboards and rollerskates. If one was being cynical one might say that this tune was constructed purely for use in pre-Olympic sporting hype montages.

35. Wiz Khalifa – ‘Black and Yellow’

This one popped its head up above the parapet last December and as such was a bit of a grey area (it made a number of 2010 lists, but only entered the UK chart in March 2011). Anyway it’s great so have another listen.

34. Lady Gaga – ‘Scheiße’

Belgian hoover-rave has never sounded so hormonal! Gaga describes the terrible fate of many women across the globe who get constipated around that time of the month.

33. Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo, Afrojack, & Nayer – ‘Give Me Everything’

Despite a fairly dodgy premise (Ne-Yo basically sings “hey the apocalypse is about to happen, let’s sh4g”) this song finally wore me down by December. According to Wikipedia, Pitbull’s vocal range spans from G to B♭, with the title melody is a short tonic expansion utilizing the pitches E♭–E♭ major/D–E♭–A♭. I’m a sucker for all that.

32. Lady Gaga – ‘The Edge Of Glory’

Stefanie cracks out the saxophones and studded leather for possibly the worst episode of Sesame Street you’ll ever see. Amazingly this is her highest entry in the list but let’s face it she’s had plenty of ‘em.

31. Rebecca Black – ‘Friday’

R! B! Rebecca! Black! The most controversial song of the year is much lower down the list than I was expecting but perhaps most of you are sick of bowl and cereal by now?

#30-#21 coming up tomorrow (hopefully)!

50. PJ Harvey – ‘The Last Living Rose’

She won an award you know! I am the only person on the internet who doesn’t like PJ Harvey’s voice so I shall just post the video and be done with it. The walls of her house appear to be made out of Stilton.

49. Diddy/Dirty Money ft Skylar Grey – ‘Coming Home’

Probably the most successful of the billion singles released off Last Train To Paris, this is the one where Diddy slags off Smokey Robinson then decides he’s alright really.

48. Wild Flag – ‘Future Crimes’

Indie supergroup ahoy! It’s her out of Sleater-Kinney and her out of Mary Timony. This is one of the few tracks in this top 50 that I hadn’t heard beforehand. It’s not bad, is it?

47. きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ(Kyarypamyupamyu) – ‘PONPONPON’

Your guess is almost certainly better than mine! If you can make it to the end of the video without getting a headache then you win a gold medal.

46. Jessie J ft B.O.B – ‘Price Tag’

Love her or hate her, she’s not going away any time soon. If it’s all a bit much just skip to 1.05 and enjoy the terribleness of LACY JUMPSUIT and LEOPARD TROUSERS in quick succession.

45. Cher Lloyd – ‘With UR Love’

Malvern’s tiniest pop imp sets aside the swagger for a second and gives us a rather sweet teen mid-tempo-er (we need a better word for that).

43. & 44. Nero - ‘Guilt’ & Nero – ‘Promises’

Same points, same number of voters, same vworp-rock with a bit where the synth goes ‘BSSHHHP-BPP-TSZZZ’ and a bit where the lass goes ‘OOOoooOOHHHoHHH’. Nero tested my spreadsheet to its very limits – distinguish between these songs at your peril!

42. Dev ft Cataracs – ‘Bass Down Low’

‘Get your mitts in my oven’ indeed. Anyone would think that the levels of DECENCY and PROPRIETY in our society were no more than antiquated concepts. Nice tattoo though.

41. Alexandra Stan - ‘Mr. Saxobeat’

Here I would like to quote my darling other half’s opinion of ‘Mr Saxobeat’: “On hearing the first few seconds of this song I wanted to stick forks into my eyeballs.” Possibly a little harsh but no more harsh than me referring to PJ Harvey as ‘the pop equivalent of a mad cat lady’. Anyway, if you liked Moldova’s Eurovision entry from 2010 you’ll like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS76eS34Y0c

Coming up soon: #40-#31!

As per last year, here is a big list of lower reaches stuff (tracks that got more than one vote) to get you started – #50-#41 coming up later today!

97. Mary Mary - Walking
96. Lykke Li - Sadness is a Blessing
95. The Joy Formidable - Whirring
94. Nero - Crush On You
93. Rihanna - S&M
92. Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)
91. Lady Gaga - Judas
90. Lloyd feat. Lil Wayne & Andre 3000 - Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)
89. Example - Changed the Way You Kiss Me
88. Maroon 5 ft Christina Aguilera - Moves Like Jagger
87. Gang Gang Dance - Mindkilla
86. Nicole Scherzinger - Right There
85. Kasabian - Velociraptor!
84. Mazzy Star - Common Burn
83. Olly Murs feat. Rizzle Kicks - Heart Skips A Beat
82. Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets
81. Frank Ocean - Novacane
80. Coldplay - Paradise
79. Katy B - Witches Brew
78. Mann ft 50 Cent - Buzzin
77. Eric Saade - Popular
76. JoJo - Marvins Room (Can’t Do Better)
75. John Maus - Believer
74. Nicola Roberts - Take a Bite
73. Martin Solveig & Dragonette - Hello
72. Toddla T - Take It Back
71. Björk - Crystalline
70. Little Dragon - Ritual Union
69. Tom Waits - Last Leaf
68. Todd Terje - Snooze 4 Love
67. Kreayshawn - Gucci Gucci
66. Lady Gaga - You And I
65. Miguel - Sure Thing
64. Cold Cave - Confetti
63. Bobby Brackins feat. Dev - A1
62. Lady Gaga - Born This Way
61. Joe Goddard featuring Valentina - Gabriel
60. Metronomy - Everything Goes My Way
59. Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me
58. Tom Waits - New Year’s Eve
57. Wild Flag - Romance
56. Kelly Rowland feat. Lil Wayne - Motivation
55. Patrick Wolf - The City
54. Katy B - Easy Please Me
53. GD&TOP - High High
52. Chase & Status - Blind Faith
51. Diddy/Dirty Money - Sade

(If anyone wants to make a Spotify playlist out of these they’re more than welcome!)

Send your top 20 tracks of 2011 to poptimistspoll2010@gmail.com* by 1am GMT on 30th December and we will post the results during the first week of January.

- ‘Tracks of 2011′ can mean something released as a single or on an album this year, or a track that emerged this year on the internet or a young person’s trendy mixtape, or singles taken from a 2010 album released this year. To be honest I will be pretty lenient about the whole business so put whatever you like.

- The order of your top 20 is important! Your #1 will be allocated more points than #20.

- If you can’t think of 20 songs then 10 or 14 or 2 is just fine.

- As per last year we are running this poll in conjunction with the Poptimists LJ community, so if you’ve already sent me your 2011 list over there, there’s no need to do so again.

That’s it! Get voting!

*Yes yes I know it’s last year’s email address. A big ‘whatevs’ to you too :)

The Brittas Empire blessed us with not one but TWO Christmas specials. The first (1994) took advantage of the break in format to do some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey nostalgia and show what they are all doing MANY YEARS in the future while also remembering their PAST.

Carole is now a concert pianist, Tim’s boyfriend (er… Derek?) is running for parliament and Gordon Brittas is a UN Peace Envoy. Of course! However most of the episode is a baffling yet harrowing tale of starvation, survival and costume drama dress-up:

Youtube for Brittas Wobs #1

The second 1996 special has a similar survival-against-the-odds theme. The gang go on a team-building course in rural Wales, where Brittas’ wife Helen goes on a murderous rampage! I am quite pleased that Helen seems to have exactly the same wardrobe, haircut and facial expression that I have currently:

"Noes hair straighteners won't be invented for another 8 years D: "

Youtube for Brittas Wobs #2

But what if your brother was a superhero from another dimension? And he had to fight this?


The He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special hand-waves over the fact that Christmas doesn’t actually exist on the twins’ home planet of Eternia by a) ‘reminding’ us that their Mum is human and b) ‘accidentally’ zapping in some Earth children for bonus empathy points. Sample dialogue:

He-Mum: These birthday celebrations totally remind me of CHRISTMAS!
She-Dad: Christmas? What’s that? An Earth holiday?
He-Mum: A VERY SPECIAL Earth holiday!
She-Dad: Does that mean more booze than usual?
He-Mum: DEAR GOD YES

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzH7hztIHeg
He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special (Youtube link if the embed doesn’t work)

She-Ra gets most of the action in the episode, buggering off halfway through to a completely different planet where she fights some tentacle monster or other and then escaping from some robots. But most surprising is that Skeletor’s icy Scroogey heart ends up MELTING when he ends up looking after the Earth moppets viz. protecting them from an evil Yeti! The holidays do bring out the best in some people!

After the success of last year’s Imperial Stout Orgabooze, we thought that this year we’d try out a different style of beer. India Pale Ale (ha! And you thought we were talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet) traditionally had a bunch of hops shoved in it to help it survive the voyage to India in the 19th century. For the purposes of this tasting a beer counts as an IPA if:

1) It says ‘IPA’ or ‘India Pale Ale’ on the bottle

AND/OR

2) It’s a pale ale with a name that has something to do with India, e.g. Proper Job, which apparently is named after the ‘proper job’ a Cornish regiment did in putting down the Indian Mutiny (despite the the queasiness that such associations may induce).

15.30pm Intrepid tasters arrive. We count around 40 different beers available for our delectation, from a global-trotting three (3) countries. There is some apprehension regarding the Sierra Nevada Hoptimum (which claims to contain an entire hop plant) and the Mikkeller IPA which has an ‘IBU’ (International Bitterness Units) rating of 1000 (the next nearest beer is estimated to be around 100 IBU). As per last year, wall charts are available for tasters to scribble down their thoughts in case your correspondent fails to type everything down. This year’s hashtag is the functional but less-than-creative #IPAtasting.

15.50pm IT BEGINS. We start with ‘a gateway beer’, one that started many of us on our real ale lovin’ journey:

Caledonian Deuchars IPA (4.4%)
Pete says this is “traditional and solid, nothing wrong with it but nothing exciting either.” He gives it 5/10. Sarah has no complaints and goes higher with a 7, as does Kat, who has a fond Proustian recollection of drinking this in the Lord John Russell.

Other comments: “WET.” “Tastes like beer.” “Fizzy.” “Pissy in a good way.” “Solid, good breakfast beer.” “Yes!” “If this was on in a pub on a hot day at lunchtime I would be happy with my purchase.” Overall Score: [6.5/10]

The non-beer drinkers present fail to agree that this is a gateway beer and get some wine out of the fridge. Next up it’s a local favourite and relative newcomer:

Thornbridge Jaipur (5.9%)
Ciori, one of the more adventurous non-beer drinkers, says it’s lovely and gives it 9/10. “I can imagine this with Indian food”. Graham says there’s a “somewhat spicy tang to it” (7/10), Rob says “om nom nom” for 8/10. “Hoppy but smooth, it tastes as strong as it is – this is a good thing”, says Pete (8/10).

Carsmile, who has been known to drink several pints of this down the Jolly Butchers and get quite sozzled, agrees. “It remains the king of beers.” Others get a whiff of the Emperor’s new beer, and think that it’s ‘over-rated’, and ‘a bit Stoke Newington’ (the latter is definitely a fair comment). Sarah announces that Jaipur is the “Tumblr of all the beers”. Rick lives in Stoke Newington but doesn’t have a Tumblr. He thinks it’s fizzier in bottles than from keg but that’s fine: “It’s more straightforwardly bitter and sharp.” Jo is an enthusiastic beer novice – she’s carefully jotting down her thoughts in a notebook: “It’s nice.” Overall Score: [8.5/10]

16.11pm. Some chat about the royal wedding, despite best efforts of all. Kerry and Ciori join forces against wedding h8tas.

16.15pm. Dani arrives! She announces her dislike for Jaipur to much furore. All begin sampling the cheese, which has been recommended by the dude at Neal’s Yard Dairy to go well with IPA.

16.20pm. First belch of the day from Kat! Juliet arrives, just in time for:

Greene King IPA (can) (3.6%)
Pete says it is “Tongue-shrivellingly poor”; SteveM agrees giving it 0/10. “Honey flavours, metallic on the nose” says Ewan in a vain attempt to be poncey about the beer. He then claims he doesn’t like honey flavours and gives it 4/10. “It’s like someone ate a lot of asparagus and pissed in a can,” says Graham. He does however try to find a silver lining: “good colour though!” Sarah gets licorice notes – she hates licorice (4/10). Kat thinks it tastes like apple juice, Juliet agrees. Jo rates it in her notebook as ‘alright’, rather than nice. Ewan says the cheese overwhelms the beer (which is a good thing), and downgrades his mark to a 3.

Other comments: “Stale tires”, “just crap bitter”, “pernicious”, “flat and dull”, “not nice… not even close”, “w/ev”, “the David Cameron of the Group”. Overall Score: [2/10]

16.30pm. Time for the first of our beers obtained from the friendly “Druid of Druid St”, Evin O’Riordain. It looks like a porter but tastes like an IPA! It must be:

Kernel IPA Black (6.8%)
Kat tried this a few months ago and was extremely pleased with it. Today it’s still good but tastes different than before – more grapefruity. This is possibly because of having some Greene King IPA beforehand. Juliet thinks ‘citrus’, Jo says ‘pineapple’.

Kerry thinks it is delicious, and wishes she could drink it every morning when she wakes up. “It’s like going camping with my family – in a good way!” However she doesn’t think it’s as good as Jaipur so it only gets a 9.5. Pete thinks it’s oddly fatty, very tasty, but not quite as good as Jaipur. It has a whiff of stuntyness about it. For a black IPA? Surely not! Sarah isn’t sure about this one, but after a while she declares that it goes better with the Lincolnshire Poacher than she initially thought.

“It looks like mud pond water, very sedimenty”, “Marshmallows roasted in hops”, “smooth but oddly fatty, nice”, “this smells like pineapple”, “don’t drink the sediment – you’ll not be able to taste anything else of ages. Otherwise nice.” Overall Score: [7.5/10]

16.42 Kat, Sarah and Juliet are looking at pictures of dogs on the internet.

Fullers Bengal Lancer (5.3%)
Kat is enlightened about her ignorance regarding this beer, which is not in fact named after some sort of military dog used by the Gurkhas. Oh dear. Ewan loses 10 points by uttering the dread word M**THF**L.

“Dry but with a honey front-loading-ness,” says Rob. Jo finds it a bit boring. Kat has another Proustian smell-mory of the church hall where her playgroup was held. Sarah is not a fan of this: “BLEURGH TOO BITTER – The Twitter of all beers.” Dani likes it though – she thinks it’s a nice contrast to the Kernel Black. Passion pops? “There’s no back to it,” says Rick. Carsmile finds the Lancer has a champagney fizz, Juliet thinks it’s “bouncy”.

Other comments from the wall chart: “BUCKFAST, though too fizzy?”, “Tonic wine – herbal”, “very sweet to start with but it goes away”, “tastes like it could be session but isn’t”, “Bucky start/dry bitter finish” “sweet honeyed nose [someone has written 'haha' under this], light with medium finish” “Sarah hates this beer.” Overall Score: [6/10]

Next up, we head to Suffolk:

Adnams American Style IPA (6.8%)
We have three bottles of this, and it turns out there’s quite a variation in taste between them. This is possibly because they have been hanging around Stoke Newington for nearly a year before being opened.

“Fizzy,” surmises Jo. “That’s all I have to say about it.” She’s not wrong though – others comment “this is fizzy and nothing else”, “Bizzy with the fizzy – otherwise dull”, “overwhelmingly fizzy”. Non-fizz related comments include “nice at a BBQ, damning with faint praise?” and “deceptive, sly”. Kat likes it, as does Dani – in fact she likes it a lot and doesn’t always like Adnams stuff. Carsmile isn’t sure how ‘American’ it is, but Pete says he has drunk stuff like it in America. He also says it looks like lucozade. [No marks out of 10 given]

17.17pm It’s time for an American IPA, rather than just an American-style IPA. But which one? Debate ensues as to what the hell 1000 IBU could possibly entail for our taste buds, and we decide to leave the Mikkeller until later. In any case, it’s Danish.

17.20pm IMPROMPTU PIE DEBATE: cold fingers are deemed better for pastry. Steve has cold fingers. Rob has hot fingers. Rob keeps a bowl of ice water handy when he makes pie crust. Kat has clammy hands and avoids making pastry at all if she can possibly help it. Pete says something incomprehensible about physiology.

17.21pm Ewan has confessed to possessing a TICKER APP. It is warning him about drinking too much.

17.23pm Kris Wines is toasted metaphorically, viz Rick waxing about his (Kris’) sideboards. We crack open one of the purchases from said shop, viz:

Stone Cali-Belgique (6.9%)
“It’s sweet except… it’s not,” says Juliet. Sarah thinks it’s better in the nose than the Bengal Lancer. “Welcome back Sonatogen Tonic Wine, my friend!” However the taste is all carbonated. This leads to Sarah’s first burp of the day. “The back end is worse than the front end.” Carsmile is worried that his ‘mouth has gone strange’. He’s not particularly sure he likes it. Rick is confused: “I thought I knew exactly what it would taste like when smelling it, but it doesn’t taste like that at all’. He gives it 5. Dani threatens to give Rick more and he runs away into the kitchen. Dani doesn’t like it – she makes a URGGGH face to show its sourness (2/10). Graham says it is “a 6 series BMW” and gives it 4/10.

Jo mentions that it smells of swimming pools, and Kat immediately starts paying attention and becomes very enthusiastic, then has some of the beer and makes a face like Dani did mere seconds earlier.

Other comments: “Leffe-like”, “toilet cleaner”, “unexpected nose”, “Leffe & Slimline Tonic” “Juniper taste, a bit thin and lacking depth” “Yuck [underlined twice]” “Ewan thinks this is defensible”, “belgian, v citrusy”, “Please don’t make me drink this again. Hate u Belgians” Overall Score: [4/10]

Straight onto another US beer:

Ballast Point Big Eye IPA (7.0%)
Sarah thinks all the beers are starting to smell nasty. She decides to rinse her glass and see if this helps. It does! “This is delicious amber nectar compared to last beer, and it goes well with a chocolate jammy dodger.” It’s got a nice ‘taste’, more like an IPA. She ranks this the same as Deuchars (7). SteveM says this is ‘paint-y’. Watercolours or pastels? We will never know. Pete is very insistent that the following comment be recorded: “the relationship that this beer has to a British IPA is the relationship between Donald Duck and Duck Tales.” Ciori would drink this if it were in Leffe bottles. Jo says it’s not bland enough for her.

From the wall chart: “Citrussy with a hint of paint stripper”, “caramel, burnt banana”, “Super fruity!” “I has a flavour”, “really bitter after a caramel nose”, “puts the big eye in IPA”. Overall Score: [6.5/10]

17.45pm SteveM suggests Real Ale Jukebox akin to The Singles Jukebox, with scores out of ten, random Americans etc.

Carsmile predicts the following beer will be shite:

Wadworth Henry’s Original IPA (3.6%)
Could this be the session IPA? It has a similar taste and colour to Greene King, but nicer (obviously). “It’s that Candied Nose,” says Carsmile repeatedly. Others say “MEH!” “Most meh of the tasting.” “Would work really well as a shandy and there’s a moment for that.” No-one is convinced of the ‘originality’ of this Original IPA. Everyone is shouting ’3.6′ like it means something. “3.6 out of 10 more like,” says SteveM. “It’s like drinking some water after something heavier.” Pete says it’s a watered down version of Bengal lancer. Rick says it’s greasy, Kat thinks it’s swiggable but not very interesting. “It would be good for 2am at a party when you’ve already had 3 random bottles of beer – no surprises and perfectly serviceable as a thirst quencher.”

Magnus says “OK, fine, works”, which is impressive as he hasn’t arrived yet. All marvel at his time-travelling abilities. “Only a bit more honest than GK IPA,” says Pete. No-one knows what the hell he’s going on about. “It’s the Red Stripe of all the IPAs,” says someone. “It’s a bit best-y for an IPA.” SteveM says it is the ‘Carling of IPA’ which everyone goes ‘oooo’ at. SteveM clearly has beef with this beer. Overall Score: [3/10]

17.50pm Kerry, Ciori and Meg have gone outside to do something mysterious involving BRAS. Pete says ‘titknack’ for no good reason. Everyone choruses ‘fucking hell it’s Fred Titknack’, with the correct placement of BRACKETS. Sarah asks if she can borrow the laptop to buy HMHB tickets.

17.55pm Knock knock jokes commence. Sea Weeed, Knock Knock Who’s There? Ans: Pants. (pants pants pants). “Drawers! Justin Bebo belly-bum-drawers.” Moving swiftly on, it’s a Scottish beer that is probably too clever for its own good:

Brewdog Punk IPA (330ml can) (5.6%)
Most of us have had this in bottle form before, but never in a can. Dani promptly decides “it tastes better in a bottle”. “It smells funny,” says Jo. She gives it a 6. Rick thinks it’s a bit objectionable (4/10). It reminds Sarah of one of those lemon things you put in your fridge to stop it smelling. “There’s a definite soapy backwash.” It’s ‘too lemony’ for Juliet; Carsmile agrees: “lemon washing up liquid”.

The wall chart says: “Our new canned overlord”, “Germ free adolescents [anarchy symbol]“, “Maybe better than Henry’s :O”, “smells like hayfever”, “with another 10% of lemonade it would be a shandy”. Overall Score: [6/10]

17.59pm SteveM hasn’t had any hayfever this year, because he hasn’t been outside for a long time.

Great Divide Hercules Double IPA (9.1%)
This is a toasted, sweet beer that’s “easy to drink, therefore dangerous”. Ewan thinks it’s comparatively subtle, and that it would go well with cheese if he could be bothered to get up and have some (9/10). Kat thinks it smells like sweet and sour sauce (but tastes like malted milk biscuits). Dani thinks it’s too strong, Rick says it’s more of a barley wine (or “barley whine” as someone has written on the wall chart*), whereas SteveM thinks it’s “getting a bit syrupy”. Graham thinks the beer has a good balance of flavour and masks its strength dangerously for 9.1%. “You can’t drink this quickly,” says Pete. “Well, you can, but you shouldn’t.”

At first Sarah can’t taste any difference between this and the previous beer, then realises she is in fact still drinking the previous beer. Once this is rectified, she says the Hercules Double smells like a friendly festival – not Latitude or Glade, but “a nice day at Glastonbury”. All agree that it tastes of Strawberry Crusha, though ‘this might be pissedness talking’. Overall Score: [8/10]

18.13pm Pete declares that “Teresa May has wooden teeth – Ms Dynamite told me so”. Sarah says that apparently Melvyn Hayes once got stuck in a ticket barrier at Euston station.

18.19pm Rick is talking some sort of beery bollocks. This must mean it is time for some Royal Wedding beery bollocks! Dedicated republican Juliet leaps up from her seat for some of this:

Ascot Royal IPA (4.6%)
“It’s quite nice actually!” says Juliet in surprise. Others are less keen: “not terribly exciting”, “Boring & forgettable – like Katie Middleton”, “Boring & forgettable – like Prince William”. Carsmile says it’s nothing like the cask version, and Pete says it’s not really an IPA at all. Someone says it smells like plants, “but not herbal and tonic-y”. Dani lets out a marvellous burp. [No scores out of ten are given, possibly because Kat is too busy drinking the rest of the Hercules Double to ask people for them.]

(approx) 18.30pm Moggy and Magnus arrive. Proceedings become a little more ‘free-form’ at this point, with several beers being opened at once (as there isn’t always enough of each one to go round).

White Shield IPA (5.6%)
SteveM finds its blandness strangely appealing, while Kat agrees it’s not very interesting, she finds it quite comforting. Graham doesn’t look too impressed, and Ewan gets a nasty aftertaste. Pete is getting an acetone-y degree of nail varnish remover. Ciori thinks that everyone is too drunk to appreciate this one properly. Carsmile appears to be drinking a completely different beer from everyone else. He says it’s completely different from the cask version (which had a lambic edge) but “this is lovely – prickly, spicy and fun.” He gives it 10/10, possibly in jest. “Zingy, pingy and full of ketone life.”

A rather curious comment on the wall chart says: “Jiggly Jiggly Puff (= properstuff A+ 8/10)”. Overall Score: [7/10]

18.51pm Samosas and bhagees have been brought out at some point, to fit with the Indian theme,;also coronation chicken sandwiches (with mango chutney). The food vanishes almost instantly. We move on to a beer from Greenwich that seems to be everywhere these days:

Meantime IPA (7.5%)
“This is, indeed, a beer,” writes a sharp observer. Pete thinks it’s “interesting but has no proper character”. It’s not demanding that he attends to it, given its strength. Rick finds it “astringent, but otherwise nothing there”. Ewan is similarly underwhelmed: “Perhaps following the others hasn’t helped it?” It does however improve after eating spicy food – it takes the top edge off. Other comments: “Smoked cheese”, “A conventional summer companion.” [No marks out of 10 given]

18.54pm Magnus proposes the theory that we are all inside Kate Middleton’s dream in 2003, watching Wills play hockey. It’s all gone a bit St Elsewhere. Rick makes a dreadful noise when trying to get up off a chair. Time to crack open a huge imposing bottle:

Moor’s JJJ IPA (9.5%)
This is the strongest beer we’ve had so far. Pete makes laboured joke about an Australian radio station that no-one gets. “The initial taste is very strong, but then it goes,” says Ewan. “It’s insane, but a good insane – I can’t drink too much of it.” Kerry really likes it: “Recursive beer! It tastes like other beer only more so – beer squared.” What sort of beer? “Beer! It tastes like American beer, only more so. I could happily drink this all night then fall asleep 45 mins later.”

Pete gets a hint of gueuze. “This doesnt help with spicy food at all, but it’s lovely, really nice. Very different to the double IPA – smoother and strong.” He gives it 9/10. SteveM likes it too. “It’s better than the other strong one – crisper.” Juliet thinks it has a good front taste, but the aftertaste gets bitterer and bitterer. She would like it if she didn’t have to swallow it (hur hur hur). Kat doesn’t like it at all – it makes her mouth go HYLUP. “Behold the firestorm,” says Magnus cryptically. Carsmile is impressed that it is 9.5% without being too barley-y. “It’s hoppy without being stupid, and quite licorice-y at the end.”

Other comments: “Peachy!” “A wonder – strong but Pazow!” “Bit too much really innit – needs sipping like whiskey.” “Yes, it’s, mmm, yes. Yes. Strong.” [No marks out of 10 given]

Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA (7.2%)
“Oh, it’s only 7.2!” cries Magnus. “An awesome session waiting to happen.” Kerry starts cradling the glass like it was her firstborn. “It’s like the platonic ideal of what an IPA should be.” Kerry is very insistent that the following be recorded: “It’s very difficult to find an IPA that isn’t top heavy or bottom heavy but MEDIUM heavy, which is what an IPA should be. The earlier ones were all ‘top of the palate’.”

Kat likes it, but it is making her tongue cramp up. Pete lowers the tone as usual: “there’s no p43do like a Torpedo.” Other comments: “Delicious! The bottles are not large enough – full and deep taste that inspires IMMENSE THIRST. Would get hammered on this.” “Every IPA should aspire to this.” “All beers are like this but less so.” [The only recorded score out of 10 is an 11 from Kerry, but everyone seems positive about it]

Next, we try an American beer with a cartoon monkey on the label:

Left Hand 400 Pound Monkey (7%)
Much mockery occurs due to this beer’s claims to be an ‘English style 7% ale’. It does not taste like any English IPA we can think of. Moggy has just had some jalapeno crisps though, so she cannot confirm this. She does however say: “this is something I buy in a cornershop because I am already pissed and it has monkey in the name, to utter ruin.” Despite being a ‘big fat lie of a beer’, Pete likes it. Ewan agrees that the grapefruit bitterness is definitely American, however “it’s not bad – for an American IPA it’s quite good.” [No marks out of 10 given]

19.25pm Rick denies paralyticness. “He hasn’t even really entered Yorkshire yet”, says Moggy.

19.28pm Magnus and Moggy comment on your correspondent’s typing style. “It’s like you’re playing the piano.” More American beer next, this time with a (rather gruesome) cartoon dog on the label:

Flying Dog Belgian Style Raging Bitch IPA (8.3%)
Ewan confirms that it is indeed very Belgian. “It tastes like Leffe.” Mog thinks it’s good: “This is delicious, I wish to drink it in expensive half pints.” Pete says there’s a ‘manageable nose’ and a peppery taste. “A little bit too bitter on the end but nice, peppery and rounded. Could do with being a bit colder.” He gives it 8/10. Graham thinks it’s “quite tasty”, with loads of flavour. Kat and Sarah are drinking cups of tea, but Sarah takes time out to contribute “o rly” and “bukkit” to the forum. Overall Score: [7.5/10]

19.33pm Hoo and Haa occurs, because Carsmile tells Pete to ‘calm down dear’ and Pete calls Carsmile ‘David Cameron’. In other news the masala mung daal snacks have not gone down well, because they smell of sulphurous caves. Sarah gives 9/10 for her cup of tea – it would be ten but there was only semi-skimmed milk.

19.39pm Carsmile, Pete and Ewan are talking about beer and its relative strengths – US beers seem designed to be served chilled. Unfortunately none of the beers we are sampling have been chilled. Let’s try another room-temperature US beer and see how it fares:

Odell IPA (7%)
Kat likes this a lot! It’s very hoppy and goes well with Lady Grey tea. It’s softer and more mellow than most super-hoppy beers. She gives it 9/10. Pete likes it too: “it doesnt touch the sides – nice.” Graham says “very different from the Raging Bitch, softer and more summery.” Rick thinks it’s lovely – good, chuggable and strong. “I can imagine myself sitting in a bar in Portland drinking this in pints and having to be wheeled home. Just a really nice beer.” Rick also makes a very good point that it’s not excessively grapefruity, unlike some of the other hoppy American IPAs.

Wall chart comment: “Probs needs not to be drunk from a mug.” Overall Score: [9/10]

19.47pm Magnus eats some crisps. All berate Kat for not paying attention to beer discussion and looking at shit on twitter instead.

St Austell Proper Black & Proper Job (6% & 5.5%)

First up, the Black: “Tastes like a gorgeous Black Russian OM NOM!” “Doesn’t taste anything like normal ‘Proper’ Proper Job”. “Nicest yet.” Pete says it’s “like licking a slice of burnt toast. The hops are overroasted, which is good but it tastes of carbon.” Some discussion of chewing pencils/licking coal/snorting coal dust. All these seem like ‘ludacris suggestions’. Kat hates it because it’s smokey but not bacony, and this feels like a missed opportunity: “Waaaaah.” Magnus says “smoke on the water”.

Now for the Job: “all a bit forward, tastes a bit sweet.” Moggy sums it up as “Like an IPA top – alright but too sweet for the name.” Others agree that it’s too sweet, despite its murky naming origins: “sweetly downable but politically unacceptable. A dilemma.” Carsmile defends it – “if you go to Cornwall (or Glastonbury) and get it straight out of the keg then it’s bluddy lovely.” After some thought, Rick gives his opinion: “W/evs, basically”.

19.54pm It appears we are ‘living in an age of beer revolution’ regarding black IPA (cf the Kernel etc). The back of the Proper Black label states some nonsense or other on this subject. Consumption of the Proper Black has evoked hip thrusting dancing (quite disturbing) and ‘ooooOOOOO’ noises (no less disturbing).

20.00pm Dani swigs a mystery drink: “subtle caramel tones, quite fizzy, a bit of a head, very sweet. Caffeiney, cough mixtureish, yet a refreshing mouthfeel.” It is COCA COLA do you see. Over half the attendees have gone outside ftb drunk. Eventually everyone comes back inside for more beer, Ewan wants something insane. Rick suggests the Yellow Snow. Ewan wants to do the 1000 IBU Mikkeller ‘before we’re dead’. Mogs unwraps the delicate covering of the Mikkeler, we all go blind, triffids take over the planet etc.

20.13pm Ewan shouts out ‘Cumberbatch Penis!’ I take a photo of him opening…

Mikkeler Barrel Aged 1000 IBU (9.6%)
Everyone laughs as they taste this beer. “It’s LOVELY,” says Kat, who gives it 9/10. “Smokey good, with more bacony Liquid Smoke going on.” Pete also gives it 9 – he would like to drink this with a wedge of lemon in it. “Lovely sweetness at the front.” Graham says it’s like “fine port that you might sip”. Rick says there’s no way this is ten times more bitter than other beers (for a comparison, the Odell IPA is 60IBU). He agrees that it is however “incredibly smokey”. Ciori says it’s like Earl Grey, with some burnt malt (rather than normal malt). Ewan says it’s “really good for that kind of beer”. Carsmile laments that the only problem with this 1000 IBU bitter is that it’s not bitter enough! Magnus is “stricken”.

Other comments: “A beer you have to exhale.” “Bukkit” “The 1974 Netherlands of World Cup Ale” “Alcoholic Liquid Smoke” “Mmmmm…Bacon!!” “Not so much smoked as burnt; nice though…” “…but couldn’t drink a whole half.” Overall Score: [8/10]

Rogue Brutal IPA (6.2%)
“Not metal”, says Moggy, although she “can see Iron Maiden fans drinking that”. She is referring to her mum. Other comments: “Rogue are a bunch of pussies.” “trooper”, “fruity”, “I just drank Mikkeller 1000 IBU. Sorry, Rogue, this is not brutal”, “tumbleweed”.

20.20pm Several beers are currently doing the rounds, and it becomes difficult for your correspondent to keep track of what everyone’s saying AND type it all out at the same time. Therefore the following comments may be slightly inaccurate:

Kernel IPA Citra (6.2%)
Moggy says this is “delicious like a mango beer”. Someone else (presumably Pete) says “like a lovely mango beer but I can get that in the Swimmer”. Kat has figured out how to do a ‘ß’ on the laptop keyboard: “Grußdiche!” Magnus waxes lyrical: “how this dances over the tastebuds! The blend ooff Ooff smooth filter blend lemon tang”. Wall chart comments: “I am bored of Citra as a hop already”, “co-sign”, “pot pourri much?”

Pitfield 1837 IPA (7.0%)
This beer has been in the cupboard for a while. Moggy says it’s “too fucking Stoke Newington.” Kat says it’s “a bit bland after everything we’ve had.” Rick is disappointed with how fizzy this has become – all the floral notes have gone. “Too bitter, too fizzy, too farmer’s market (even for me!)”

20.24pm Carsmile announces that, after a 5 minute conversation, it has been decided that “bitterness is subjective, however, fuck it let’s drink something nice”. Your correspondent DISAGREES. However your correspondent has also kinda lost track of what the hell is happening.

20.28pm Someone has uttered the words ‘Tadcaster’. A Sam Smiths adventure surely can’t be far away. Graham shows Kat a whole Facebook group dedicated to Princess Beatrice’s Valentino haut-couture hat, which Kat thinks should have had a picture of her dead aunt Pritt Stick-ed in. Sarah writes ‘jiggly jiggly jiggly’ on the wall chart. The culprit is revealed!

Double American IPA (9.2%)
This is actually a Brewdog beer made for the Tesco Finest range. No, we don’t know either. Rob says it “tastes exactly like an American IPA”. Rick says it’s ok, but it’s too much of a barley wine than an an IPA. Rick and Moggy decide it is “the Barley wine Kanye West”. Magnus says “Think not of what you can do for ale. Think only of what this ale can do for you. Which is leave a bitey but quite pleasant after taste.”

20.40pm SteveM says “we are in the post-meme malaise”.

Brewdog IPA Is Dead (7.5%)
More Brewdog – this time we have 4 bottles of 7.5% IPA, all with different single hops as bases:

#1: Sorachi Ace Last weekend (at Mason & Taylor’s Single Hop Beer Festival) Rick had another beer made from this hop – then, on the first sip he thought ‘this isn’t even beer’, but by the time he’d finished it ‘it was a new future for beer’. Now he thinks “this is fucking horrible”. Ewan says it’s too buttery: “least favourite hop, it can hop off”. Pete adds “some hops shouldn’t be allowed on their own”. Someone says “The Jimmy Saville of real ales – likeable but a bit odd”. Dani replies saying it’s “the Retsina of real ales – unlikeable, just as Retisna is the most unlikeable of wine”. Wall chart comments: “Not a real hop”, “bonkers mod”, “It’s beer Jim but not as we know it (damn it Jim, I’m a doctor, not a brewer).”

#2: Citra “Nice, fresh and lively but tastes just like the Kernel Citra,” says Ewan. Moggy thinks it’s perfectly nice but it didn’t compare to the Kernel Citra in terms of fruitiness, and would never drink it in more than a half measure. “It’s almost like mimosa/prosecco cocktail, ideal for a breakfast drink.” Magnus approves (“Ooh! Nice”); SteveM likes it very much “a definitive citra for our age”. He makes a flamboyant hand gesture and gives it 8/10.

#3: Bramling “Ham in a glass,” says Moggy. “Quite nice and significantly better than the Sarachi Ace”, say Carsmile. Ewan says it’s ok. Wall chart comment: “It’s super and tastes like smoked ham or gammon or bacon or (snip)”

#4: Nelson Sauvin Moggy says its nice and plummy. “And French!” “Intense and grapefruity.” An 8/10 from Ewan, not just because it’s from New Zealand (and Scotland). Or France. “Sour shower flower power,” says Magnus.

21.11pm Your correspondent has brief interlude upstairs as she feels a bit ‘giddy’. Much better after 10 min lie down! Meanwhile:

Sam Smiths India Ale (5.0%)
Carsmile: “Pretty much like Greene King.” Other dudes: “All dayer – good with a spicy pizza”, “Super duper bland.”

21.21pm A strange smell of drains appears. It is deemed an appropriate time for another Rogue beer, this time one with a dog on the label:

Rogue Yellow Snow IPA (6.2%)
Rick finds this quite boring. Kerry feels patriotic as this beer is brewed within 20 miles of her hometown: “It would be delicious if it were refrigerated, but since careless people failed to do this it has ended up as a middle of the road boring type thing. If it were refrigerated people would truly appreciate it for the Mental Juice it is.” She strikes a dramatic pose. “Don’t eat the yellow snow,” warns Magnus. “Do drink this though.” Other comments: “Why do this brewery only make fruity beer and then give it a Soviet label?”

Next we have the beer with an entire hop plant in. It also contains All The Booze.

Sierra Nevada Hoptimum (10.4%)
The Tenants Super of IPA! Moggy says it reminds her of a documentary about substance abuse in Bristol. “I drunk 2 cans of Super Skol so had to get a bag of heroin.” “The means to a very messy end,” says Graham, who gives it 1/10. “It’s just not right. I would rather drink vodka and tonic instead.” Kerry rates this as one of her top 3 maddest IPAs ever (in a good way). The other two are unsurprisingly from Oregon: Ninkasi Total Domination and Bridgeport Hop Czar.

Other comments: “MEH! Really MEH!” “Oh this is just silly now isn’t it?” “The hops have been differentiated to find the point of inflection.”

21.38pm Minor disagreement betwixt Graham and Kerry re: the relative merits of vodka versus IPA. It’s all very good natured, though slightly less coherent than it could be. Eugene is apparently ‘a place’. Rick has put on ‘Spectre vs Rector’ by MES & His The Falls. Unclean!

WJ King’s IPA (4.8%)
“Very interesting and surprisingly tasty for a 5% UK Sussex beer,” says Carsmile. Sarah says she could continue drinking this for several pints: “Lovely and smooth, but not buttery or margariney or indeed olive oily. Smooth but good!” Rob agrees on the smoothness front. “Not what I was expecting from an IPA”.

Saranac Imperial IPA (8.5%)
SteveM thinks this is nice as well. The wallchart agrees: “Oh hello, I am an American IPA. I am okay.” “A bit like Brains 45. I miss Brains 45 :(”

Durham Magic IPA (7.0%)
Carsmile perks up. “It be why aye like! Quite grapefruity, very citrusy.” Rick says it’s nice, but it tastes like IPA (???). “Never believe it’s not so,” says Magnus.

Kernel IPA C.S.C. (7.1%)
This has three different kinds of hop in it – Centennial, Simcoe and Chinook. Pete says it “doesn’t smell of dope – it smells of changing at Crewe.” Alexandra or the railway station? This is unspecified. “Nice though!”

22.06pm Ewan and Kerry depart. SteveM says he has enjoyed the blue cheese. Some debate as to who has been using the orange pen – turns out to be Moggy. SteveM is more pissed than this time last week and says he is going to go home and tweet, though he doesn’t actually do this.”This is proof that IPA is better than cider.” Your correspondent would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we at Freaky Trigger promote responsible drinking.

Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA (7%)
This beer is from a place called BOONVILLE, like that dude what died out of Lost. SteveM says this is “crisp, comfortable in its own skin.” Moggy thinks it’s really nice. “Standard IPA, with the good aspects of an US one, but doesn’t need to be cold to drink and isn’t overflavoured.” Magnus says that “this is full on fineness. Family name honoured.”

22.19pm SteveM is ‘bollocksed’. Rick is spouting nonsense to Mog at the sink. People are talking about CATHOLICISM and its many flaws but we still love it anyway for some reason.

Brooklyn East India Pale Ale (6.9%)
“Nice.”

22.25pm Rick appears to have put two records on simultaneously. We open some non-IPA beers including the Kernel Export India Porter (“this man has dominion over the sun and the sky. And the hops”) and the Leek Dark Peak Extra Strong black stout (“extra-minging more like”).

22.40pm Someone has put THE MANICS on the stereo. Kat denies all knowledge of how that copy of The Holy Bible got on the CD shelf.

22.54pm Kate Bush is now on the stereo, much better. SteveM is doing an impression of her funny voice by saying ‘ThE WEEddiNg lEEst’. People are still drinking things aren’t IPA despite the fact that we have several unopened IPAs on the table: the Wobbly Badger smells of Mini Eggs. “When my life has reached its platonic state I shall ask for this to be poured on my pancakes”.

We arrive at the end of the evening with an important question that has plagued the thoughts of mankind for centuries: how much vitamin C is there in an orange Revel?

CONCLUSION

Our final top 10:

1. Odell IPA (US)
2. Mikkeller (DEN)
3. St Austell Proper Black (UK)
4. Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA (US)
5. Thornbridge Jaipur (UK)
6. Great Divide Hercules Double IPA (US)
7. Moor’s JJJ IPA (UK)
8. Flying Dog Belgian Style Raging Bitch IPA (US)
9. Kernel IPA Black (UK)
10. WJ King’s IPA (UK)

Least favourite beer: Greene King IPA, with Brewdog’s Sorachi Ace close behind.

Deferred beers: Marstons Old Empire (5.7%), St Peters IPA (5.5%), Hardknott Infra Red (6.5%), Marble Lagonda IPA (5.0%), Southwold ‘M&S’ Winter IPA (6.7%), Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (6%), Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (9%), Smuttynose (6.6%). We are all very disappointed that we forgot to try the Smuttynose.

Full list of beers, A-Z:

Adnams American Style IPA
Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA
Ascot Royal IPA
Ballast Point Big Eye IPA
Brewdog IPA Is Dead (Citra, Bramling, Nelson Sauvin, Sorachi Ace)
Brewdog Punk IPA
Brewdog/Tesco Double American IPA
Brooklyn East India Pale Ale
Caledonian Deuchars IPA
Flying Dog Belgian Style Raging Bitch IPA
Fullers Bengal Lancer
Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
Greene King IPA
Kernel IPA Black
Kernel IPA C.S.C.
Kernel IPA Citra
Left Hand 400 Pound Monkey
Meantime IPA
Mikkeler Barrel Aged 1000 IBU
Moor’s JJJ IPA
Odell IPA
Pitfield 1837 IPA
Rogue Brutal IPA
Rogue Yellow Snow IPA
Sam Smiths India Ale
Saranac Imperial IPA
Sierra Nevada Hoptimum
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA
St Austell Proper Black
St Austell Proper Job
Stone Cali-Belgique
Thornbridge Jaipur
Wadworth Henry’s Original IPA
White Shield IPA
WJ King’s IPA

*Someone has written underneath “#kitteninnaflatcap”, included a small drawing of said flat cap, then added “not v flat :(“.

- attitude of complete indifference to all events
- inside-out knowledge of everything that happened on telly last night, especially Friends
- Rimmel Black Cherry lipstick
- copy of Sugar magazine (RIP :`()
- some trendy jeans

Wearing the WRONG SORT of jeans would mark you as an outcast forever. Pepe Jeans? No. Lee Jeans? HELL NO. Levi’s was the only option, and Levi’s 501s at that, even though they looked terrible on most girls. I suppose having ’501s’ at the end of ‘Levi’s’ makes one more comfortable about Levi’s inconsistent use of possessive apostrophe. I wore Reebok tracksuit bottoms for most of the decade not because my coolness levels were already so stratospherically high I didn’t need them (which of course they were) but because Mum, anticipating a Hulk-style growth spurt at any second, was understandably reluctant to fork out for expensive jeans which I would shortly render as useless as Bruce Banner’s. However my adolescent body refused to ‘spurt’ in any way (easy now), choosing instead to remain steady in its progress and jeansless in its covering. By the time I’d reached my final height I had to buy my own clothes, and anything costing more than a tenner was unthinkable when there were CDs queuing up to be bought. To this day I have never owned a pair of expensive, unflattering Levi jeans. THANKS MUM.

The thing is, by the time Flat Eric turned up in 1999, the cool kids weren’t wearing jeans either. A couple of years beforehand, Steps discovered that wearing an apron over the top of your trews was a good way of concealing that said trews were in fact from Tesco, and All Saints realised that if you were going to cover up the label of your jeans you might as well wear combats instead. Even Levi’s seemed to stop bothering with major advertising campaigns for a while – perhaps because of the disappointment of ‘Underwater Love’ by Smoke City only getting to #4 after the excellent chart-topping work done by Shaggy, Jas Mann et al.

Obviously something drastic needed to be done. Levi’s decided to base their ‘Sta-Pressed’ advertising campaign on a cult puppet belonging to French DJ/film-maker Mr Oizo. Flat Eric was neither flat, nor called Eric, and I don’t know of a single person who bought a pair of ‘Sta-Pressed’ jeans. This last ditch effort may have regained a brief glint of chart supremacy, but the last ten years have not been kind to Levi’s. Apparently are now millions of pounds in the red, as 501s aren’t skinny or elasticated enough for the kids of today who can’t even be arsed to read Sugar magazine. If they did, they would discover in the final issue under the ‘Hot or Not?’ section the new rules of cool: ‘must listen to French techno at all times, preferably accompanied by amusing Muppet video on Youtube’. Flat Beat kills both birds with one stone!

See also: Eustace the dragon makes a sandcastle while he’s waiting for a lift and Reepicheep advertising sun lotion.

Length: 55:34 Played: 805

Join UCC and their showbiz chums at the Horse Bar tonight from 7pm!
124 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7RW.
Nearest tube Lambeth North, or a short walk from Waterloo.
FREE ENTRY!

Radio 4’s Today programme was recently discussing how Kate Barker, the single female on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had stepped down, and had been replaced by a man, Dr Martin Weale. A quick catch-up for those of you not fluent in finance: the MPC makes decisions on interest rate levels and tries to control inflation. The results affect pretty much everyone and so ideally the committee’s decisions would reflect the interests of the country as a whole, especially as the credit crunch has made the financial sector appear alarmingly out of touch with ordinary people.

Getting annoyed at the MPC’s gender imbalance may seem like an argument for positive discrimination, or even worse, imply that women are needed for their ‘social outreach’ abilities (displaying a warm, friendly face that the public will trust). The women that appeared on Today dismissed both these trains of thought, and agreed there are plenty of top-class female economists — Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize for Economics last year. But only 4 of the 38 candidates for the empty committee seat were women. Why are female economists shunning the MPC?

The evidence shows that most female economists at this level tend to come from an industry background, with practical experience in the markets. MPC members on the other hand almost entirely have their background in academia. The MPC favours the application of macro economics, which (roughly) involves attempting to find umbrella trends throughout the entire economy. Unfortunately, the business-orientated female economists generally agree that macro economics doesn’t actually work in real life. Former Independent economics editor Diane Coyle (one of the Today guests) didn’t actually say “women think macro economics is a load of old bollocks” on the radio but she came fairly close.

So how is this a tenuous metaphor for music criticism? Well, despite the appearance of a male-dominated culture, there is no shortage of female music critics either. However many of them tend to avoid traditional review-based music journalism that marks songs out of 10 and constructs all-time top-100 lists, preferring conversations and long-form pieces that leave numbers out of the equation. List-making is the macro economics here: satisfying in theory, but many female writers think it’s just not worthwhile bothering with in real life.

Does gender really matter when talking about music? Could women necessarily contribute something that men couldn’t, just because of their ovaries? Our passive music consumption is certainly over-gendered: not the CDs we buy or the websites we visit, but the songs heard while clothes-shopping, or on adverts for computer games (products aimed at both sexes, but compare Girls Aloud cooing at their Nintendogs to Eminem’s bilious ranting over footage of Call of Duty 2). Alexandra Burke is currently flaunting her perfect armpits for Sure and you can set your watch by how often Muse turn up during Formula 1 racing coverage. Music remains firmly targeted at demographics whether those demographics like it or not, and so men and women who are equally passionate about the same music will probably bring different experiences of it to the table.

These days we don’t need critics to tell us what a song sounds like — if we bother to read a music blog then it’s likely that we are interested in the writer’s opinion, formed by how they relate to the artist or the music. This obviously affects the kind of music that gets covered in the first place: to construct a rather stereotypical example, who would be best qualified (and willing) to write competently about a member of S Club Juniors who had chosen to release a song about the devastating social impact of My Little Pony? Someone who has experienced the horror first hand, of course — be they male or female. Without that background Calvin’s magnum opus likely wouldn’t be written about at all.

The experts interviewed on Today agreed that although gender was largely irrelevant to economics, there should be a mixture of both business and academic backgrounds on the MPC, not least to avoid the reinforcement of bad habits and general risk-taking idiocy. Similarly, to avoid becoming obsolete, the world of music criticism needs a balance between in-depth debate, top 100 lists, and developing mad macro-critical theories to prove how Lady Gaga’s lobster outfit is somehow linked to the new Belle & Sebastian album. Exploring our different musical experiences may not be as vital to the world as economic stability, but if we’re going to bother at all then we must make it as rich and varied as possible.

1. Royal Lochnagar 12 yo + Gorwydd’s Caerphilly (Cheesy Lover #88)

“Oh Crumbs!” says Sarah about the Caerphilly. “It absorbs all taste of whisky that’s just gone in my mouth. Once it’s finished face-punching the whisky, it tastes nice.” Juliet agrees: “the cheese smacks whisky out of the park”. Ewan is unsure of the rind.

Kerry says the whisky is very smooth and creamy, almost vanilla and cinammon-y. Katie thinks it tastes like artificial sweeteners rather than sugar, Pete G says there’s a bit of a herbal note, to which random shouting breaks out: “Pear!” “Shrub!” “WHEN CHEESE GOES WILD!”

Kat doesn’t like the Lochnagar but thinks the cheese is good – fatty and crumbly. Rick says the whisky is quite drinkable but not very exciting, Katie thinks it tastes sweet after the cheese. Marna doesn’t like it very much at all, but Mark thinks everyone is being a bit mean about it (“it would go down easily for quite a long time”). Ewan has read a children’s book called the Old Man Of Lochnagar [see left]. Mark suspects the Old Man of Lochnagar drinks whisky all day long.

Marna responds to queries concerning the whereabouts of the remaining Kraft Cheese Slices left over from April with narrowed eyes and scowled mutterings about ‘the bin’.

2. Glenrothes 13yo + 2 goat cheeses: Stawley (geo rind, CL #27) + Sleightly (ash rind, yet to be reviewed)

The Glenrothes has a rather strong whiff. “This one comes to meet you!” exclaims Mark. “Sticky toffee pudding”, says Kerry. Rick says it’s like banana toffee, but not in an aggressive banana cake way (Rick does not like banana cake as he is a FULE).

Most agree that the Stawley makes the whisky taste bitterer, and not in a good way. Pete G: “the geo and whisky combination tastes like vom – surprisingly unpleasant.” Sarah says it tastes congealed, “like that cocktail with baileys in that curdles”. However Roswell the cat likes the Stawley – she is licking it and her tail is swishing. This may be because Roswell has not drunk any of the whisky with it.

The Slately fares much better: “sharper”, “makes your tongue fizz”, “lots of gentle flowers that you cannot taste because you’ve just drunk some whisky”. Sarah and Katie say the Slately is delicious: “it tastes like A FOREST by the Cure!”

Katie does a burp and announces that it tastes of goats cheese, to general approval of the room.

3. Bowmore Dusk + Cardo (washed rind toffee, CL #26)

This whisky is an old favourite of many present, and we are very sad that they have stopped making it. There’s not much left as a lot of it was drunk last New Year’s Eve. Kat didn’t like whisky at all before she tried this last year. Katie says it’s “like a finger of fudge that has been smoked like a kipper”. Mark says it is “clinical and lovely, like a hospital”. Rick agrees that it smells more hospital-y than when he first opened it. “It tastes sharp but there’s a real thickness to this whisky.”

Katie doesn’t like the cheese, but “the whisky is very good at taking away the taste of it”. Sarah pronounces the rind on the Cardo “amazing, quite different from the rest of the cheese”. She doesn’t want to describe it as sparkly as that would be confirmation that she is in hock to a certain vampire franchise, however there are definitely seaside sandy bits. “It’s texturally like the powder that’s left in the bottom of the pork scratching bag.”

Ewan is getting flashbacks from New Year’s Eve, when he helped deplete the contents of the bottle with some rather unsavoury after-effects.

The Cardo is proving rather ‘potent’, however Rick says the Bowmore “stomps all over the cheese, which is a good thing”. Pete G makes the first mention of the word ‘mouthfeel’ and wins 10 ponce points: “The cheese is a creamy coating for the mouth, and the whisky cuts through it – a pleasant sensation”.

Robin makes bad pun about ‘peat’ and ‘Pete’.

4. Ledaig 10 yo + Isle of Mull Cheddar (CL #77)

There’s a general consternation in the room – this whisky smells of cheese already! Smoked Austrian cheese, to be specific. Could this be the mythical Sausage Cheese? No, it’s a cheddar!

“Bloody hell!”, Rick says about the Ledaig. “It goes FLUMP in the back of the mouth after a bit; it tastes sharp after the Bowmore Dusk.” Katie disagrees and thinks it tastes ‘phat’. “The whisky doesn’t taste anything like it smells – it’s delicious and mellow when you drink it.” Mark says “there’s something spectral about this – it’s insubstantial but not in a bad way. There’s a bit of a burnt taste, like ashes.” Sarah says this is the first whisky she can swill round her mouth without it burning. She tries to anthropomorphise the whisky: “if it was a pop star it would be The Nolans”.

Juliet thinks the whisky and cheese go well together, doop thinks that the cheese sets off something different about the whisky that isn’t there separately. Katie finds Rick amusing after he says his tongue has been Activated. Pete B asks if everyone’s getting a lot of saliva.

The room takes a roast potato break and there is talk about ocelots.

5. Springbank Claret Wood 12 yo + L’Etivaz (CL #90)

This whisky overwhelms everyone at first as it’s a bit strong. “Woooph!”, “orange blossom, very fruity”. doop can’t help but think of his chemistry teacher when he smells this. “It clears your head in an anti-chlorophorm way.”

Mark declares that it tastes of biscuits. Any specific biscuit? “ALL biscuits!” Katie wonders whether the claret business is making it go well with cheese. Rick replies that it’s a bit woody and oaky, but mainly in the aroma rather than the taste. Pete G adds that there’s a bit of spicy vanilla that you might associate with wine. All agree that adding a bit of water changes it dramatically.

The L’Etivaz is pronounced “bloody lovely, om nom nom!” It is indeed a lovely cheese. Is the rind edible? Marna doesn’t think it’s worth eating but everyone does anyway. Rick says it’s like oatcakes.

Popstar comparison: Marillion (with Fish) – bombast, trying very hard, lot of stuff going on, high peaks and low troughs. Sarah however doesn’t think the cheese is as good as “Kayleigh”.

The general cheese/whisky combination is thought to be tick vg thumbs up (“good cheese, good whisky, good cheese and whisky”). The dryness of the whisky is complemented well by the cheese.

6. Caol Ila 18yo + 2-beast barrel aged Feta (yet to be reviewed)

Mark says the Caol Ila smells of paper: “Lovely, lovely cardboard.” Kat can’t smell anything until she puts her nose right in it and goes “URGH”. doop also says paper, Marna says “parchmenty mouthfeel” for even more ponce points. “It’s slightly greasy.”

Rick sniggers: “I’ll tell you what, that’s bloody lovely in the mouth.” Sarah feels like she’s had 50 cigarettes but hasn’t watered it down yet. Katie has watered hers down too much, her mathematical skill is called into question by Mark and Rick.

All agree that the feta might be a bit strong for the whisky, Kat likes it a lot though. Popstar comparison: Sly and the Family Stone – “a lot of the time they are quite boring.”

Pete says something that provokes all to put him in the bin (not sure which Pete this refers to or what the bin-worthy utterance was).

7. Laphroaig 10 yo + Persillé de Malzieu (CL #13)

Some tasters are doing Crazy Frog impressions. This is the classic ‘smells like TCP’ whisky.

“This cheese is a really salty sea-cheese.” doop says it tastes more like the sea than the sea does, and not just any sea: “the Mediterranean!” Katie says the cheese makes the whisky tastes like Ribena (or possibly Robinsons fruit juice), and that it is the cheese that’s burning on the way down, not the whisky. “It’s not a cheese, it’s a health hazard!” She wouldn’t eat it for pleasure. Mark asks if she would eat it for a bet?

The cheese has made Robin’s tongue go numb, Ewan says it’s the only cheese that could make Laphroaig taste bland. Pete B says that the cheese has the saliva producing effect of szechuan pepper. Sarah says it’s all happening around the epiglottis, or possibly the glockenspiel, and that there’s an incredibly bitter aftertaste.

Herb watch: Rick says the cheese makes the whisky tastes like rosemary, Pete G thinks lavender, Marna thinks thyme. We all nod sagely.

Marna is having trouble cutting the cheese in to proper pieces; everyone else is having trouble forming proper sentences.

The formal whisky and cheese pairing ends and havoc ensues, namely dipping cheesy wotsits into glasses of Japanese whisky (“it tastes like raspberries”), waving bits of M&S cranberry stilton and Babybel around and listening to The Best Prog Rock Album In The World… Ever!, which is found to be mostly about bvmming.

CONCLUSION: Pairing cheeses and whiskies is quite difficult unless the cheese is hard and cheddar-like and the whisky isn’t utterly insane.

LovePork claims that “there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world of pork”. So what’s the porky story this time then? Well, aside from the ‘pig-nics‘ campaign and Bacon Connoisseurs Week it seems that the powers that be are trying to encourage WOMEN to eat more pork. But HOW?

LovePork have introduced ‘The Girls Guide To Grilling‘, i.e. getting Kate Walsh off the Apprentice to show us feeble women how to barbecue meat while the men are watching the football (yes this press release is a month old, sorry). And of course this ‘female barbecue revolution’ is in a fetching shade of pink.

Here are some of Kate’s top tips:

Much like us on a night out, BBQs take time getting ready. We know the boys love the ‘throw it all on’ approach, but if you start grilling too soon you’ll have meat with a burnt outside and raw inside…not quite what we want to serve up!

You may have seen the guys using one cloth to wipe everything…but this is not a habit we want to get into! And make sure you pop an apron on – messy stains are hardly a covetable accessory!

Kate Walsh doesn’t actually appear in any of the videos, having been usurped by friendly stand-in Andrea, a more-than-capable lass who claims to have ‘never used a barbecue before’. However Andrea is using a GAS-POWERED BARBECUE! What madness is this? The whole beef (o-ho) with using barbecues in the first place is that they are a bugger to light and get hot enough to cook stuff on. This is why ovens were invented, dudes! The actual cooking of the meat is usually a straight forward endeavour: put on barbecue, wait until cooked. Andrea may have never used a barbecue but she has probably used a gas hob before! I am more bothered about this than the painful gender stereotypes to be honest.

Also another sign that I should probably hand in my feminist membership card: I deeply covet an apron like Andrea’s that says ‘PORK’ on it in big letters.

The book contains 253 questions about all things Hanson. General band facts, who-said-what, questions about specific brothers and terminally dull co-writing credits – it’s got pretty much everything covered. In fact the compiler Matt Netter knows so much about Hanson that he’s already written another book, Zac Hanson: Totally Zac! And that’s not all – Matt’s friend Nancy has written Taylor Hanson: Totally Taylor! and Isaac Hanson: Totally Isaac! Anyway, back to business: each chapter has a little extra factlet underneath it, e.g.:

The combined ages of Isaac, Taylor and Zachary add up to about forty-four. That’s still younger than many of your teachers! It’s no wonder that, when it comes to Hanson, they just don’t get it.

Haha teachers are so mockable! A fine example of the charm and warmth emanating from each page. But the publishers have made a shocking error by giving some of the answers on the back page without any warning at all:

As well as straight-forward trivia like “What are Hanson’s parents’ names?” and “What date was the Christmas album released’, we have more open ended queries such as:

The “I Will Come To You” video is special for 2 reasons. What are they?

A quick squidge at said video makes me think the answers are likely to be that 1) Taylor has eaten his Reddy Brek 2) Isaac looks a lot like Chad Kroeger from Nickelback when he does his guitar solo, but apparently that’s not the right answer:

(1) Fans in the audience got to be in the video, and (2) it was part of a performance that was featured in Tulsa, Tokyo and the Middle Of Nowhere.

Oh dear. How about this one?

Which of the following bands did not join Hanson for the Y-100 Wing-ding benefit concert in south Florida:
a) Bush b) Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers c) 98° d) Duncan Sheik

Well it might be obvious to *you*, but it had me scratching my head! I guess I’d better get revising. I did a lot better in the final section, which is named “New and Upcoming” and features questions about stuff that HASN’T HAPPENED YET omg. Let’s see if you can answer the following questions correctly (I’ve written the answers in the white box below – highlight with your mouse to view – bear in mind this might not work in Netscape Navigator 3.0):

1) Will they make a movie about their lives?
2) Who is the movie’s producer?
3) Who has been signed on to write the screenplay?
4) Can we look forward to the sale of Hanson dolls?
5) Will any new Hanson merchandise be coming out soon?

I got all of the above right first time! How did you do?

After your brain has turned to mush the questions have finished there’s a chapter telling you how to calculate your score (“Fewer than 50 correct? You probably know a few of their songs, but they’re not your favourite group. Maybe the next album will get you hooked on Hanson!“), and then – this is the whole point of my typing this article in the first place – a full list of all websites about Hanson. ALL OF THEM. As well as the band and record label sites, there is a list of around 90 ‘unofficial websites’, most of which do not have the accompanying URLs shown.

I guess if we want to find Hanson and Metallica: Thinking Of You Nothing Else Matters on the world wide web, we’ll just have to bung it into AltaVista and take our chances. Luckily the book gives some comma-filled tips when searching:

Keep in mind, that if you use “Hanson” as a key word, you’ll call up some sites that have nothing to do with the band. One thing you’ll see pop up often is a Florida area real estate company. After all, the brothers are not the only ones with that last name! To avoid this problem, narrow your subject search to music only.

You may, at some point, check out the official sites and find that they have’t been updated in a while. This happens sometimes, because the creators of those sites work with Hanson and are therefore just as busy. On those occasions, surf over to Hanson HITZ for informative, up-to-the-minute Hanson news. If you’re a Mac user, however, one downside to this site is that the screen comes up with a blue background and can sometimes be difficult to read.

Hanson: The Ultimate Trivia Quiz Book also mentions the existence of 25 ‘anti-Hanson’ sites. As a newly-online teenager in 1999 I remember ‘anti’ sites well – made by equally fervid youngsters with Geocities accounts aplenty and too much time on their hands. Such bile! Such insecurity! I bet they loved Hanson *really* and were just jealous that The Hanson Power Page had an animated gif. Luckily there is an Official Anti Anti-Hanson page which cancels them all out! Thank heavens for that. I’ll leave you with some wise words from OAA-H creator Nick:

For the cool people out there, why don’t you visit these idiots’ sites, and send them email, cussing at them and telling them that they are really stupid!

Jonas Brothers “get trapped in a lift”
Justin Bieber “walks into door”
Miley Cyrus “stuck on Victoria line due to passenger action”
Ashlee Simpson “steps on rake”
Paris Hilton “oversleeps”.
Lindsay Lohan “[redacted]“
Pixie Lott “turns round too quickly when holding plank and hits Daisy Dares You”
Chipmunk “lost pound coin through gap in floorboard”
Tinchy Stryder “accidentally wees on own shoes”
Ellie Goulding “missed connection at Clapham Junction, must wait 17 mins for next train”
Demi Lovato “bangs head on open cupboard door”
Soulja Boy “moves sideways and falls into open manhole cover”
R-Patz “held up by ticket barrier telling him to SEEK ASSISTANCE”
Tinie Tempah “can’t find a pair of matching socks” (possibly due to leaving said socks at aunt’s house)
Alexandra Burke “loses internet connection while buying festival tickets”
Ortise from JLS “cannot find old 99 Problems thread on FT”
JC Chasez “left Oystercard in other jacket”
Usher “runs into outstretched frying pan while chasing mouse”
Rihanna told “you’re not going out dressed like that” by mother
Ke$ha “draws excellent giraffe”

*Includes celebrities clearly old enough to know better.

The London Borough Orgabooze is a semi-competitive points-based race around London, whereby teams of up to 4 people visit drinking establishments in each of the London Boroughs using public transport and walking only, picking up points for difficulty (e.g. Islington and Hackney are central so score 1pt, Hillingdon and Havering score 5pts with a bonus for getting both). We are commencing today at 12noon in the City of London, and finishing up in the City of Westminster at 10.30pm. If we don’t make it to the final pub in time all points are lost! You can follow all the ruinous action on Twitter (hashtag #borocrawl).

Although drinking alcohol is not mandatory on this FT adventure, its probably wise to hear a few words of caution from Pop World Cup striker Umek, who has teamed up with the President of Slovenia to bring you this mind-blowing ‘trading places’ skit with an important message.

Clearly it’s ok for them to toast their success as they are responsible adults and would never sick up on the front steps of Ljubljana University after a pub crawl. Oh no.

We decided not to liveblog it – lest the laptop fell into the Wrong Hands – however be assured that the following comments are a true and accurate representation of the tastes and terrors that befell us.

14.58pm. A list of beers is stuck up on the wall to allow the recording of comments by drinkers still possessing the requisite i) motor skills for pen-holding and ii) mental skills for cogent thought (and for everyone else as well). 34 types of imperial stout and porter will be available to drink during the session, however some are different varieties of the same beer (e.g. four different versions of the Dark Star Imperial Stout with bottling dates ranging from 2006-2009). See the end of the post for a full list.

15.30pm. The first arrivals discuss the acquisition of stout from various London emporia. Special mention must be made to Kris Wines in Holloway who supplied a large number of the stouts present. Several tales of woe are heard, passed down from mysterious shopkeepers warning that previous purchasers were Never Seen Again/There Bain’t Be An Offy Here for Twenty Year.

15.36pm. Nearly forgot the beer bottle openers! Disaster averted.

15.42pm. Two of the party make expedition over the road to buy more beer. This may seem unnecessary given the presence of over 40 bottles of beer, but bear in mind that none of said bottles contain liquid under 6% ABV. Thus the purchase of Quaffing Juice is deemed appropriate.

16.00pm. IT BEGINS. The catchiness of the official Twitter hashtag is in question – #imperialstout is swiftly replaced with #istout2010, a modern catchy zinger of a hashtag. As with most modern catchy things it fails to take off and everyone sticks with #imperialstout.

16.02pm. Rick explains the strategy. Thanks to finding a chinagraph pencil in the art shop down the road, all glasses have been marked with a line at 100ml to give everyone a fair measure. We’ll start off all tasting the same beer (from the bigger bottles) then just take our pick of what we fancy.

The first stout to be sampled is the originator of the whole project, purchased from the nice man at Stoke Newington farmer’s market:

Pitfield 1792 Imperial Stout (9.3%, UK, two bottles – one best before 2010, the other 2011) (website)
First impressions: “Very frothy – a froth that won’t quit!”
Aroma: “Christmassy”, “Galloway’s sore throat expectorant”, “Vicks vapour rub”, “Savoury”, “if you inhale too hard it makes your eyes water a bit”.
Taste: “Cheers! Hwor that’s good”, “Plus one!”, “Dryness”, “fizzy”, “charcoal but doesn’t taste like a bbq”, “HEAVY METAL”, “It’s quite alcoholic isn’t it?”, “The older one is much sweeter than the other one”, “the burnt toast one is nicer”, “on a scale of 1 to beer this is beer”, “grapefruit, cocoa powder towards the finish, bright sparky notes”, “a remarkably likeable beer – I’d take it to lunch, I wouldn’t buy it pudding”.

Swiftly on to the next one!

Ridgeway’s Foreign Export (8%, UK, best before 2011) (no website)
First impressions: “It’s not very nice is it?”
Aroma: “wet bracken/heather and the odd berry”, “leaf litter”, “countryside”, “less aroma than the Pitfield”
Taste: “lemonade”, “compost/grass”, “tastes like leaf litter as well”, “the notes on the back are complete shit”, “this is what the yeast goes and drinks while it’s rising the bread”, “nettles, or something”, “thin fizziness”, “liquorice that you used to dab in sherbet dibdabs”, “a strong middle, maturing like a 13 yo stroppy child – it’s the Kevin the Teenager of beer”, “tastes a bit like plantfood”.

16.20pm. Pete says we are on the cusp of an alcopop revival! Popular flavours are apparently passionfruit or lychee – could this pave the way for alcoholic Rubicon? One example is meant to be served in a champagne glass – and is called EVE.

16.29pm. First belch of the day from Ewan! This announces the tasting of the four different Dark Star bottlings. Everyone has a sip of the 2009 batch (as we have loads of it), we then split into groups for the other years.

Dark Star(s) (10.5%m UK, best before 2 yrs after bottling) (website)

2009
First impressions: “Alarmingly boozy.”
Aroma: “Love Hearts or similar fizzy sweets”, “you can smell it from inside your mouth”, “english mustard”
Taste: “the strongest one so far”, ” would go well with sausage and mash”, “marmite but that’s not quite right – more vanilla/ice creamy”, “yum”, “delicious”, “like drinking spirits”, “nice and smoky and bitter”, “burnt toast :)”, “looking forward to the next one”, “would drink again”.

16.30pm. Subway vs Nandos – taking sides! Nandos wins with only 2 votes for poor old Subway. Kat mentions that world champion swimmer Liam Tancock celebrated his recent win at the British Championships by going for a Nandos.

2008
First impressions: “not as alcoholic as the 2009″
Taste: “sweet vanilla”, “has mellowed in comparison to the 2009″, “lack of whack”, “fudge!”.

2007
Aroma: “chocolate cake baking”, “much sweeter”, “floral”
Taste: “unbearably sweet – trickly and horrid”, “medicinal”, “yuk”, “interesting but not ‘nice and interesting’”, “fneh”.

2006
Aroma: “olive oil”, “eyewatering vietnamese coffee with condensed milk in it”, “Covooooonia!”
Taste: “medicinal”, “sublime!”, “potent and punchy”, “nice warmth”, “gravy – beefy oxo cubes and bovril”, “a flat mouth-feel, but OPEN like the praires of Wisconsin – with gravy on them”, “treacle”.

Ewan prefers 2009 to either 2006 or 2007. Pete’s favourite is the 2008 because it’s less alcoholic than the 2009, Sarah likes the 2006. No-one really likes the 2007, most people agree that the 2009 is the best.

16.46. Any sense of structure or decorum is now flung aside in favour of a general free-for-all.

Great Divide Yeti (9.5%, USA, best before Dec 2010) (website)
Aroma: “fruit polos”
Taste: “liquorice and sticks”, “bright and fruity”, “Jamaica Ginger cake”, “Refreshers”, “very sweet at first but very bitter once you’ve swallowed it”, “Christmas mincemeat”, “lovely”.

Acorn Gorlovka (6%, UK, best before June 2010, named after a town in Ukraine that’s twinned with Barnsley) (website)
First impressions: “almost certainly the people of Gorlovka are unhappy about this”
Aroma: “roasted chestnuts – though that might just be the name making me think that”
Taste: “spicy”, “I’d stick holes in some jamaican ginger cake and pour this in as a marinade!”, “cake”, “buttercream frosting”, “better than average but not something I would order again and again”, “boring, bland, and not an imperial stout”, “not awful but lacking in body”, “MEH!”, “sensible but nice”, “fizzy then dull”.

Brew Dog Paradox Smokehead (10%, UK, best before Oct 2010) (website)
First impressions: “completely nuts”
Aroma: “a chimney peat monster”
Taste: “someone’s dug up a bit of a bog and put it in a glass”, “imperial stout with tcp in it”, “whisky”, “stunt!”, “but what a stunt, after dinner joy!”, “odd and interesting”, “not good for sustained drinking”, “stupidly smokey but pleasantly so”, “feels like drinking 2 different drinks at the same time but not 100% awesome like you’d expect that to be”, “I really like it but I like smokey whisky”, “is this the one that smells like whisky? It *really* smells of whisky”, “the novelty is starting to wear off – I’m now bored of it”.

Rogue XS Imperial Russian Stout (11%, USA, best before Jan 2010 – bottled in 2005) (website)
First impressions: this features a hard-working member of the proletariat on the label, the beverage appearing to give him strength and radiance.
Aroma: “er… like all the other ones?”, “indistinguishable from other stout”
Taste: “this is clearly Imperial Stout”, “little bit fruity and middle aged – like the city of portland”, “bitter”, “very active and very strong”, “not bad – there’s earthiness that I quite like”, “what were you thinking?”.

17.00pm: Marna brings out some cheese for everyone to try! This will be blogged separately.

Mikkeller Fra Til (8%, Denmark, Best before 2012) (website)
First impressions: this arrives in a large bottle with a very basic label upon which one can write the recipient’s name (‘Fra/Til’ means ‘From/To’ in Danish)
Aroma: “I don’t know!”
Taste: “after the bonkers Smokehead this is really nice and huggy and mellow, almost milky “, “typical stouty chocolate tobacco”, “syrupy and spicy”, “absolutely beautiful – a tart boozy tang”, “clovey”, “browner rather than black”, “spicy and fruity”.

Marble Beers Organic Decadence (8.7%, UK, best before Dec 2010) (website)
Aroma: “tar”
Taste: “like a bonfire in a good way”, “it’s VERY NICE”, “surprisingly bitter”, “like a Kitkat”, “roadworks”, “puts the ‘plain’ into a pint of plain…”, “it is confusing with cheese”.

Kleinduimpje Imperial Russian Stout (8.5%, Netherlands, best before Nov 2010) (website)
Taste: “total bog standard stout”, “half Belgium beer”, “taste doesn’t stay in the mouth”, “ephemeral”, “dusty – not in Memphis”.

Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout (10%, USA, bottled Dec 2009) (website)
First impressions: “like I just picked up some pebbles from brighton beach and sucked them”
Taste: “salty ozone seaweed iodine”, “quite nice”, “marshmallows”, “fvcking alcoholic”, “cheeky, chocolatey”, “7/10″.

17.35: All stout has now turned into human blood, according to Katie. Others judge that her vitamin B6 content is lacking! She moves onto Blandford Fly.

t Smisje Catherine The Great Imperial Stout (10%, Belgium, best before 2013, has a very silly label on the bottle viz. Catherine The Great’s horse ready and waiting in the harness ) (website)
First impressions: the lightest-coloured beer we’ve had so far, also very frothy.
Taste: “very clearly Flemish”, “it’s a triple that’s got carried away”, “basically just a triple”, “a good triple but not an Imperial Stout”, “delicious! Not a stout though”, “we should do a guerrilla raid on Belgium – BEER BEER BEER”.

Ascot Ales Anastasia’s (8%, UK, best before 2011) (website)
Aroma: “good noseyness”
Taste: “nice but no distinguishing features”, “regular stout with extras rather than having imperial ‘all over it’”, “quite thin for the strength”, “a session imperial stout”, “tastes of pigskin – or that might be the pigskin I am eating”.

18.03pm. After 2 hours everyone is well sloshed despite being VERY SENSIBLE and NOT CONDONING BINGE DRINKING.

Dolle Brouwers(9%, Belgium) (website)
Taste: “A slightly more stouty triple, but still a triple. BELGIANS.”

18.15pm: Telly is switched on.
19.40pm: Telly gets switched off again.

Flying Dog Wold Dog (9.3%, USA, best before Dec 2010) (website)
Taste: “orangey”, “oaky, like fruit gums”, “nice but not my favourite”, “zing”, “citrus orange peel”, “oaky, dry old wood”.

Victory Storm king (9.1%, USA, best before Dec 2014) (website)
Aroma: “an old library vellum and dust paste”
Taste: “quite sour, undercurrent of biscuity malt”, “fizzy and spicy”.

19.50: Time to (almost literally) crack open the Harveys – this one has a CORK in it which proves difficult to extract. It is also the OLDEST in the collection and possibly the most divisive.

Harveys (9%, UK, best before 2009, bottled 2003) (website)
First impressions: “looks like oil”
Aroma: “Worcester sauce”, “cheap 10p fudge”, “gone off raisins”, “sake”, “sherry”, “that smell is to sherry as the old doctor is to the new one, i.e. close, but with a foot for a face”
Taste: “wine”, “thick mouth-feel, quite bitter, dark chocolate easter egg”, “sherry AND orcester sauce”, “AWESOME”, “not as mental as it smells”, “a CHEAP milk choc easter egg”, “dirty old shoe leather, not nice at all”, “shouting wine”, “cough candy and shit”, “definitely not shit”, “adjectivising”, “balsamic vinegar and cocoa powder”, “condiment-tastic (mushroom soy)”, “cup of coffee made yesterday with dust on it”. Pete says something about Estonia and cocks then proceeds to tell a dirty story from the back of the bottle.

Sam Smiths: (7%, UK, 2 bottles with best before dates of 2009 and 2010) (Wiki)
Taste: “bog standard but GREAT”, “lovely but boring – in lovely way”, “sweeter than the Decadence”, “Sam Smiths is too familiar – is this is the same as straightforward?”

Brew Dog Paradox Springbank: (10%, UK, best before 2011) (website)
Aroma: “cola bottles”
Taste: “fizzy, drinkable for a stunt beer”, “lighter, fizzier and smoother than the Smokehead – works well”, “impossible to mark”.

Brodies Romanov Empress Stout (12.1%, UK, best before Dec 2010) (website currently broken)
First impressions: Exploded upon opening (apparently Kris from Kris Wines had given us prior warning of this which we FOOLISHLY IGNORED)
Taste: “horrible gritty banana”, “the aftertaste of Marmite”, “nice banana”, “banana antibiotics”, “I recently ate some fried eggs that tasted like banana – the sweetie not the actual egg”, “cold coffee”, “3/10 and only because I liked chemistry at school”, “banana out of 10″, “when I said Marmite I meant Bovril”.

20.15pm: Carsmile, Pete and Katie have concocted a rhyme:
Brodies, Brodies, imperial stout
Horrible gritty banana!
It’s Brodie
It’s Grody
It is really quite explodey

Left Hand Imperial Stout (10.4%, USA) (website)
First impressions: “a really sloppy snog of a drink”
Aroma: “lovely”
Taste: “I’m not exactly sure what to make of this”, “it’s like someone’s taken the milk stout (also brewed by Left Hand) and shoved a load of vodka in it”, “nice coffee from costa w/ hazelnut syrup in it (left overnight)”, “milkshake”, “Nesquik cereal”, “Quality St coffee creams & milk bottle sweets – until you swallow, then its corner shop vodka (Kiroff to be specific – £9/bottle)”, “a bit too sweet”, “9.999 tasty goodness out of 10″.

20.35. Sarah’s water tastes ‘delicious’.

Durham Temptation (10%, UK, best before 2016, bottled 2010) (website)
Aroma: “buttery”
Taste: “don’t like it”, “very sweet – an attempt at bitterness but it’s not convincing”, “not so coffee-like as previous beers”, “gueuze concentrated sourness”, “if it was a planet it would be boiling sulphur like Venus”, “thickest one so far”, “liquorice”, “quite nice, sweet, whatevs, not anything hugely interesting”, “vortex of dull”, “treacle toffos”, “I can’t believe it’s not butter”.

20.57: Heated discussion concerning Opal Fruits. “Strawberry was the best one” – “no it wasn’t”. 3 votes say strawberry, 12 say other citrus flavours (personally I think orange was best). Pete claims to have loved vinegar sweets as a child, all denounce this as FALSEHOOD. Also there was NEVER a gin wine gum and DEFINITELY no chambois. Brandy tastes of bran though.

Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (9.2%, USA, bottled July 2008) (website)
First Impressions: “it has a purple head – hur hur hur”
Aroma: “washing up liquid”
Taste: “too scared to taste it”, “ashtray – but I really like it”, “doesn’t taste of porridge at all”, “dusty chocolate wrapping paper”, “coffee-ish”, “chocolate-Marmite mashup”, “they’re all starting to taste the same”.

21.12: Mark S admits Anthrax’s influence on his facial hair. This makes it 22 years old.

21.24: Theseus is the one with the menopause. Minotaur. Definitely not the same as Perseus.

Thornbridge St Petersburg (7.7%, UK, best before Dec 2010)
Aroma: “fizzy”
Taste: “thumbs up”, “spicy tobacco”, “Heston Blumenthal’s coconut tobacco”.

21.30: Everyone is singing ‘Aqua Marina’ from Stingray. Apparently the dude famous for taking the tennis scratchy bum arse girl photo died yesterday. We’re all upset and showing our grief through laughter.

21.45: Rating countries on ability to run across them in the quickest time, i.e. Vatican is the winner. England would take slightly longer.

Pitfield Night On Mare St 2 (14.2%, UK, best before Dec 2010, bottled 2007) (website)
First impressions: mostly reverence for this infamous local barley wine
Taste: “a bit stale, a mix between sweet and gueuze”, “plum cake”, “a weird sweetness that hits a gueuzeyness”, “satisfying aftertaste”, “off sherry”, “black treacle”, “xmas pudding mix w/ flavour of brandy”, “treacle at the back of the cupboard”, “I love you barley wine – well worth the wait”.

22.24: Busted’s 7th single ‘Who’s David’ is revealed to be about popular soon-to-be-illegal drug mephedrone. ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ may well be the best movie-tie-in of the 2000s that mentions the movie title in the song title. Goldfinger is probably the best of all time viz “COLD FINGER”.

Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout (9%, Norway, best before 2014, bottled 2009) (website)
First impressions: “the strike through the O makes it MORE METAL”
Taste: “it missed my tongue! Nice though”, “like a mousse”, “little blast of choc then it’s gone”, “hits the right notes but doesn’t linger at all”.

22.42: A question for the floor: how many types of booze are there? The correct answers are: cherry brandy, avocaat, beer, wine, Special Brew. Any others are FOLLY.

22.46: Pete is miming Mrs Pepperpot’s suspected actions towards her normal-sized husband viz hugging a huge invisible cock – “milking it for all its worth”. Pete is directed INTO THE BIN.

Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter (7.8%, USA, best before 2011, has Hunter S Thompson-style drawing on the label) (website)
First impressions: Pete’s favourite bit of Gonzo trumpet playing is where he goes ‘pfffffff’ but not ‘bmffffffff’.
Taste: “it’sssssstout”, “nice enough porter but nothing distinctive”, “it’s fine”, “one of those beers that i intend to get a half of at a beer festival but then i get a pint but I don’t realise that what i’ll get in return is STOUT when actually i fancied LAGER”, “it is ACTUALLY a porter, and manages to maintain its porterness”.

Stone Imperial Russian Stout (10.5%, USA, Bottled 2009, label features Satan wearing a Russian hat) (website)
First impressions: “there is no metric measurement upon the bottle therefore it is bottomless”
Aroma: “Borribles are real, but only from the 2nd book onwards”
Taste: “The recent Mastodon album is somewhat of a departure from their earlier work”

Pitfield Imperial Stout (i.e. not the 1792 one) (9.3%, UK, best before Jan 2009)
Taste: “The paint stripper of beers”, “a different kind of purity”, “devil on the floor”, “sometimes, y’know, you just go ‘i’m drinking imperial stout’”.

approx 23.00pm: Agree that champagne & stout cocktail construction that was mooted before tasting commenced is probably best left untested. However a good sticky drink might work better with the dryness of champagne than normal Guinness. The Left Hand is suggested as a possible future option for this.

CONCLUSION

Our final top 10:
1. Left Hand Imperial Stout (USA)
2. Dark Star 2009 (UK)
3. Pitfield Night On Mare St 2 (UK)
4. Dark Star 2006 (UK)
5. Brewdog Paradox Springbank (UK)
6. Marble Organic Decadence (UK)
7. Mikkeller Fra Til (DEN)
8. Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (USA)
9. Pitfield 1792 Imperial Stout (UK)
10. Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout (NOR)

Least favourite beer: Acorn Gorlovka (UK).
Most controversial beer: Harveys Imperial Stout (UK).

Deferred beers: Nigerian Guinness (we’ve all had it before), Night On Mare Street 1 (Carsmile took his ball home with him).

More photos can be found here.

Full list of beers, A-Z:
Acorn Gorlovka
Ascot Ales Anastasia’s
Brewdog Paradox Smokehead
Brewdog Paradox Springbank
Brodies Romanov Empress Stout
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
Dark Star 2006
Dark Star 2007
Dark Star 2008
Dark Star 2009
Dolle Brouwers Special Extra Export Stout
Durham Temptation
Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter
Flying Dog Wold Dog Barrel Aged Imperial Porter
Great Divide Yeti
Harvey’s Imperial Extra Double Stout 2003
Kleinduimpje Imperial Russian Stout
Left Hand Imperial Stout
Marble Beers Organic Decadence
Mikkeller Fra Til
Nigerian Guinness
Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout
Pitfield 1792 Imperial Stout
Pitfield Imperial Stout
Pitfield Night on Mare St
Pitfield Night on Mare St 2
Ridgeway Foreign Export Stout
Rogue XS Imperial Russian Stout
Sam Smiths Imperial Stout
Stone Imperial Russian Stout
Stones Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Sout
t Smisje Catherine the Great Imperial Stout
Thornbridge St. Petersburg
Victory Storm King Imperial Russian Stout

Both are also top seeds in their brackets for Fug Madness, the annual competition run by Go Fug Yourself to find the worst dressed person of the year. GFY is a light-hearted website that lovingly mocks the sartorially afflicted and celebrates the celebrities who successfully navigate the precarious world of fashion. It’s always an enjoyable read, not least because the two women behind it are witty, forgiving, and completely aware of how ridiculous the whole fashion business is. But the key to the site’s appeal that it’s always the subject’s choice of clothes under scrutiny, not women’s body shape or physical flaws. When Britney was undergoing a bout of mental illness a few years ago, they refused to post paparazzi shots of her looking overweight in pyjamas, preferring pictures of attention-hungry celebs on red carpets who were dressing to ‘impress’. The only time a woman’s body comes under fire from GFY is when she has obviously undertaken some hideous plastic surgery – a ‘choice’ of sorts.

Yet plenty of women feel that it plastic surgery is not a choice at all, but a necessity. The hilariously-acronymed British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reported that 36,482 cosmetic surgical procedures were carried out in Britain in 2009 (97% of the patients were women). A drastic option indeed, but millions of women spend time, money and effort trying to attain an impossible perfect ideal every day, an ideal that saturates the media surrounding them, not least in the world of pop music.

I don’t want to delve *too* deeply into general women’s image issues, as this particular can of worms has been opened and stirred up by many others (including this excellent Penny Red article). However, a quick word to any men are reading this who are thinking ‘but I too am under pressure to look perfect! It’s even worse for gay/black/disabled/[insert minority group] people!‘: I’m sorry to hear that and I know that there are many inequality issues in the world. However today I am writing about image problems for female popstars in particular. Please think carefully before commenting about how equally dreadful it is that Peter André constantly has to touch up his six-pack with eyeliner pencil.

Rihanna is certainly a candidate who fits the perfect ideal woman, at least by the standards of the male-targeted media: in 2009 Maxim magazine rated her ‘the 8th sexiest woman on earth’. Underneath the Grace Jones hairdo and David Bowie makeup, she’s a smiling, 22-year-old Bajan girl with a clear complexion, a pearl-white smile and whose body weight falls just within in the healthy guidelines for her height (according to the NHS website).

Lady Gaga did not appear in Maxim’s Hot 100 list. Without her shield of sartorial insanity, she probably would not be able to get a job advertising bathroom cleaner let alone Estée Lauder makeup, due to her slightly crooked mouth and short stature. Apart from looking skinny enough to snap in two (likely due to her exhausting work schedule), Lady Gaga is really rather ordinary-looking, and has decided to distort her own image even further from the media ideal, to make herself look unconventional and memorable. Ace Terrier mentioned on his Tumblr: ‘I can’t think of many pop stars this side of Marilyn Manson that have worked harder to project their physical self as fundamentally unpleasant.‘ Brian Warner is also very ordinary-looking when he takes out his contacts and washes off the grease paint (if you overlook his lack of eyebrows, that is). Like any popstar trying to connect with their public, Manson and Gaga’s consistent message is vital: I am the Mad Person. If you don’t recognise them from the Kermit coat or wonky contacts, then the relentless output of razorblade sunglasses and showers of blood should make a lasting impression.

One criticism foisted upon the recent parade of British female soul singers was that they lacked any key distinguishing features (musically and visually). Faced with a judgemental media, Adele (or maybe her record label) understandably didn’t want to make her weight her defining feature – keeping all her videos and press shots from the shoulders up only, with neutral make-up. The consistent message here was that Adele wasn’t worth looking at, so you might as well shut your eyes and listen to her sing. From an artistic (and feminist) point of view this was all right and proper, but from a realistic marketing point of view Adele was not going to sell t-shirts, mobile phones or beauty products. Adele will never make it into the heats of Fug Madness because her image is not just boring, but non-existent. And so her ability to reach new fans and sell pop records is that much lower than Rihanna’s or Lady Gaga’s.

Or is it? Are visual images essential for pop success? It is certainly possible to detach the music from a physical image and still make interesting pop: The Knife wear masks in their publicity photos and only agree to play gigs if they can do so behind a screen. The members of Daft Punk may resemble Johnny Depp or John Merrick for all we know, and while Gorillaz may have finally made it into 3D they remain cartoon avatars. In these cases, a consistent message of ‘no message’ serves just as well as a horizontal white stripe painted across the face. Look for the stripe, not the face underneath. But for a success-hungry popstar, it must be extraordinarily tempting to take advantage of the publicity that getting your real face on magazines, music videos, chat shows and yoghurt adverts can provide. Amy Winehouse’s first album was just as full of her unique personality as Back To Black, but it was only after she lost 3 stone and permanently embraced her ragged beehive that she became an instantly recognisable international megastar and popular Halloween costume.

The main problem is that if you are a woman, taking the plunge into the sexist media circus immediately leaves you vulnerable to attack if you fail to constantly attain the perfect physical ideal – or at the other end of the scale, you become totally objectivised so that your primary purpose is that of wank material for Maxim readers. No matter how good your music is, if you’re a pretty girl then 90% of critical respect goes down the dumper. Bimbo! Clothes Horse! If you’re not so perfect-looking then you are accused of secretly possessing a penis. And what if you want to change your message? 25-year-old divorcee Avril Lavigne seems destined to be stuck as an emo teenager for the rest of her career, but perhaps that’s better than fading into the background like Adele. Suddenly hiding behind a robot suit sounds rather appealing! Even Madonna, the queen of image manipulation, isn’t immune from taunts about her appearance. She undoubtedly has a thick skin and doesn’t give a shit about what some dude from Loaded thinks about her forearms, but if a pop star relies on the media to promote/sell records, they must play by the rules.

Thankfully Gaga, Rihanna and Florence Welch are starting to bend those rules a little. One day I hope that the ideal image of a female pop star is one triumphantly wearing giant Mickey Mouse ears astride a pink Panzer.

Here’s ‘Cubis (I Love You)’: a rollicking jumble of disco punk recorded in Trevor Horn’s garden shed*. Manda and the boys are as confused as we are regarding their affection for the schoolmarmish lass from the Special K advert.

data Panik – Cubis (I Love You)

In true ‘Two Tribes’ style there is an extended bosh mix here.

Coming up: what are BIS’s favourite BIScuits?

*Citation needed.