Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Ice Cold In E11


Last friday I constructed a wardrobe. It's a massive, hugely heavy thing and looks like a coffin for a couple of obese giants. I even had to affix battens to the wall to keep the beast from falling on us, which given my DIY 'skills' is the equivalent of a caveman making fire. It took me about nine hours and was like wrestling with the Ark Royal. By the evening I could barely walk. I needed a beer. The one I reached for was a Tsingtao that Mrs Wheels had put in the fridge two days earlier. Yes, that adjunct-heavy Chinese lager which invariably gets a hammering from all corners of the beer blogoshire for (among other things) its uncompromising lemony blandness. You see, I have a soft spot for the stuff, which provided one of the milestones on my 'journey' to becoming a beer nerd.

Some years ago, I walked eight miles of a lesser-visited and more or less unrestored section of the Great Wall of China, with 80-degree vertical climbs in some parts. It was a quite incredibly hot day. The hottest i'd ever experienced, and despite the guerrilla water sellers in some of the watchtowers, very difficult to drink enough fluids to keep off a raging thirst. At the end of the hike I staggered into a 'bar' - really a collection of plastic garden chairs with an enterprising local flogging drinks from an oversized coolbox. In all my years as a beer drinker, nothing has ever come close to tasting as good as the ice cold can of Tsingtao I glugged down that afternoon in Simatai. I'm pretty sure steam was actually coming out of my ears.

6 comments:

Beeron said...

Wish I could have got to Simatai, I just saw the crappy Badaling bit. You have to walk miles there to get away from the Karaoke music and hordes of day trippers.

TIW said...

I was with a group of about eight others - and that was it, apart from the odd water seller. It was actually pretty dangerous in some bits. I have heard that the Chinese authorities are "restoring" the Simatai-Jinshaling stretch, which could be bad news.

Affer said...

Confucius, he say, "There is no such thing as bad beer. Only good beer and better beer."

TIW said...

He was always right, that Confucius, although to be fair he probably never tried Friaoch's utterly disgusting Heather Ale.

Mark, Real-Ale-Reviews.com said...

What a snapshot, love it. That's beer in context in action. The 'Mythos' effect. Hoping Hadrian's Wall and an 80/- ale will be as good next year for me!

TIW said...

Hi Mark - this blog has moved! find the new one at http://teninchwheels.wordpress.com/