You see this hanging from a wall in the Wallonian town of Tournai and you look around to see if the Tardis is lurking about. Never drunk the stuff myself (was on lemonade and Robinson’s Crush in its heyday) but the legends linger — was it really as bad as everyone says? Was it the spam (the meat not the offers of millions of quid from some dodgy individual) of beer? How we laughed about it in school, though didn’t know why and when it was time to step up to the plate of heroic drinking Red Barrel had vanished in a puff of smoke, like a baddie in a fairy tale. Which makes it all the more intriguing to see this sign in this beautiful town in the centre of saison county (discovered a new favourite, Tournay Noire from Cazeau, who also produce an elderflower-infused saison — at a speciality beer bar populated by Goths and metallers…).
Is Watney’s Red Barrel still available and if so could it spark off the same retro-beer movement that over in the US has drinkers, the sort you would normally expect to linger over their craft beers, ordering the corn-fed Pabst Blue Ribbon as a sort of act of rebellion or defiance against the accepted order of things?
I'm pretty sure you could get British-brewed export Red Barrel in the US until quite recently. No Idea who made it. I'm positive I saw bottles of the stuff in New York in 2001 or 2002.
ReplyDeleteDon't know the cultural landscape over there well enough really, but that US phenomenon you just sounds like crap student irony rather than 'rebellion or defiance'! You wouldn't expect me to be drinking this now would you but aahhhh...
ReplyDeleteTIW just come across Watneys Scotch ale on the beers of Europe website, elsewhere read it is brewed Alken-Maes.
ReplyDeleteSam isn’t that the way of student life, I’m not doing what my dad does.
...And i'm too young to have ever enjoyed it, ironically or not!
ReplyDeleteJust saw Watneys Scotch on draft at a café in Tongeren over the weekend. Having fallen for similar tricks from Alken-Maes before, I skipped it.
ReplyDeleteI drank Red Barrel in around 1985. It was $2.99 for a 2 liter bottle. I thought it was good beer.
ReplyDeleteYou could also buy Tolly Cobbold for $2.99 a six pack. I believe that was brewed in Suffolk somewhere.
Joe — wise move
ReplyDeleteWhorst Tolly Cobbold was brewed in Ipswich used to drink it at the Dewdrop in Gwydir Street, Cambridge, now the Cambridge Blue, damn fine pint.