The art of mixing and matching
The British used to be great mixers of beer. At the start of my journalistic career - neatly coinciding with my drinking career - I regularly ordered a pint of Whitbread's brown and mild in the Old King Lud in London's Fleet Street.
Why on earth did I mix the bottled version with the draught? It was simply a habit inherited from older, allegedly wiser, drinkers.
When I moved on to bitter, it was
fashionable to order light and bitter, again blending draught and packaged versions of the same thing. Apparently, drinkers liked bottled beer's carbonated kick, which helps explain keg beer's success a decade later.
A mixture of brown and mild was known as a boilermaker, while light and bitter was dubbed a lightplater - I won't enquire too closely about reasons for the latter's name.
Black and tan - a mix of Guinness and bitter - was perhaps the most famous, while a blacksmith was Guinness with barley wine. Guinness conjured up the most amazing blends: black velvet with Champagne, if you could afford it; blackcurrant, lime, orange, Coca-Cola, tomato juice, Vimto, Pernod and even - God help us - advocaat were also used.
A mother-in-law stood for old and bitter, granny meant old and mild, while M&B was a mix of mild and bitter - not the name of a pub group. A notorious blend recorded in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers was the dog's nose: warm porter, moist sugar, gin and nutmeg.
I'm ashamed to admit that several decades ago I spent an evening drinking lager and lime in Leeds - to think I passed up the possibility of consuming hand-pulled Tetley's in favour of such a vile concoction! My excuse was that I fell among bad company - namely a Scotsman.
Mixing and blending beers seems to have gone out of fashion - no bad thing in most cases. But I have recently encountered a new craze - mixing the Czech lager Budweiser Budvar with its companion, Budvar Dark.
I am always fascinated by the way some products take off with scarcely any promotion while massively-funded innovations fail.
Take dark lager - can you imagine the
global brewers' marketing departments contemplating such a brew?
Yet Budvar Dark became the talk of the Great British Beer Festival when it appeared at Olympia a few years ago.
Officially launched in bottle in Britain last year, it is available on draught in selected pubs and bars, alongside the golden original.
Mixing the two beers has become such a fad that Alex Dvorak, brewer of both beers in the Czech Republic, has been asked - in the manner of 'which goes first, the tea or the milk?' - to rule on whether golden or dark should be poured first. He favours the gold.
As Alex wears army uniform and drives military vehicles in his spare time, it seems wise to follow his lead.
It is important to get to know both beers in unblended form - the golden lager has a divine aroma of biscuity, slightly-toasted grain, vanilla and gentle hop resins. Juicy malt, tangy hops and a hint of apple fruit fill the mouth, while the finish is bitter-sweet and then dry.
Brewed with roasted malts, the dark beer is deeply complex, with an entrancing aroma of burnt grain, bitter fruits, nuts and liquorice. Sweet grain and tart fruit in the mouth are balanced by good hop bitterness, while the finish becomes bitter and dry with biscuity and fruit notes.
The blended result is a deep bronze beer dominated by a toasted grain aroma, a good blast of hops and biscuity malt in the mouth and a dry, smooth, bitter and refreshing finish.
It's a fascinating blend - and it sure as hell beats Guinness and Vimto.
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