“Lao Khao” – rice whiskey – is the Thai-in-the-street’s tipple of choice. He’s in the street because he can’t crawl into the shade. Because he’s in the delerious process of killing himself with this dirt cheap high-octane beverage. It’s made for one reason only – to reduce the human being to a state of vegetable decay in the shortest time, at the lowest cost. It’s brutally effective. In spite of some internet opinion to the contrary (“it’s actually okay”, slurs one blogger) it’s undrinkable for anyone with a taste bud left in his mouth and/or a brain cell left in his head. It is vile stuff.
What’s the worst drink you’ve ever drunk?
http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t642/burtkocain/images_zps7ozyo6mf.jpg
H.P. Saucecraft says
Cheers!
garyjohn says
Scotsmac, it was called. A blend (ha) of British wine and cheap whisky. Marketed as ‘The Whams Dram but generally known as The Bams Dram. What’s to not like?
H.P. Saucecraft says
A “blend of British wine and cheap whisky”? On paper, this sounds like the worst drink in the history of worst drinks, but I think my rice wine tastes worse. I can’t even lift it to my mouth without a reflex spasm rejection.
Archie Valparaiso says
That sounds suspiciously like the evil Clan Dew. Was it perhaps rebranded for the Caledonian market?
garyjohn says
Don’t know Archie, think there were certain unspecified differences. Scotmac is still available – unsurprisingly – from Lidl and Netto.
Archie Valparaiso says
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii189/visionspan/Clan%20Dew_zpsasudb5v9.jpg
Hawkfall says
Clan Dew is the only Scottish clan whose tartan features diced carrots.
ianess says
‘Scotsmac’ was a brilliant drink! A small bottle (50p IIRC) could get a teenager riotously hammered.
Vulpes Vulpes says
This concept has now been cloned by the Irish, who market something called “Irish Meadow”, a bottle of which we received as a Christmas present a while back. The bottle has languished in the fridge ever since, as we are afraid to bin it in case our neighbours, who gifted it to us, spot the empty in the recycling and ask if we liked it. We are also afraid to even try it, as the very concept makes us giddy with fear. One day I will hate someone enough to pass it on as a Christmas present.
Jackthebiscuit says
Irish meadow is nothing more than a cheaper/wannabee Baileys. Bearable in its own way, but IMHO, much nicer with a decent drop of whisky in it.
Steerpike says
Never mind Rice Whisky HP, in China one can imbibe Mice Wine – a tempting cocktail in which baby mice are left to ferment in a jug of rice wine. One drinks the wine and then munches on the mice. As drinking rituals go, it sure knocks passing the port to the left into a cocked hat.
As for me the worst drinks have been those awful cocktails with names like cement mixer where alcohol is mixed with something which immediately curdles, like cottage cheese or summfink.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Mice Wine, I think, beats my Rice Wine, by some way. I can’t see how adding a baby mouse (the heartless bastards – I’m sure they’d used a human fetus if they could squeeze it into the bottle) can add to anything but the sum of human misery.
Cocktails? they can be the best drinks in the world, such as a properly-made daiquiri, so we have to be specific.
Steerpike says
Ah yes. A Singapore Sling with the crunch of peanuts shells underfoot. A Vodka Martini in the cool of a Bahamian evening, the exquisite tang of snake bile wine …
hubert rawlinson says
or you could try the Rawlinson End cocktail
Southampton red rum. A brainstorming cocktail involving a large port, vodka, rum and horseradish sauce..
aging hippy says
Surely there must be a Lice Wine originating in China or Japan?
Ahh_Bisto says
My nephew told me about a shooter called Smoker’s Cough:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz. Jagermeister
1 tsp. Mayonnaise
Instructions:
Pour into a shot glass and add a spoon of mayonnaise.
hubert rawlinson says
Back in the sixties/seventies there was a dial-up drink dispenser. If you changed the dial whilst it dispensed then you could mix your soft drinks together, lovely.
Tried with the hot drinks tea; coffee; hot chocolate and a soupçon of soup was not a qualified success.
davebigpicture says
We had a vending machine like that when I was an apprentice. You won’t be surprised to learn that it shouldn’t have mixed everything together but all options were dispensed from the same pipe.
Beany says
Whenever my youngest daughter would go anywhere exotic on holiday she would bring me back a token bottle of something alcoholic for looking after her mutts. Not wanting to splash out on the dosh she brought back a cheap bottle of kiwi fruit liqueur. I did attempt a sip of this loathsome drink but is was quickly despatched to the bin shortly after. The only fruit-based drink I can imagine worse than kiwi fruit would be durian. Do they make that?
H.P. Saucecraft says
This so very you, Beany. I can see you sipping at it while relaxing to some exotic tiki sounds from Hans Wunderlich.
H.P. Saucecraft says
*still waiting for correction from Beany*
Beany says
Delayed ‘cos I was in the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room listening to my Sounds From Disneyland CD.
H.P. Saucecraft says
So that’ll be Klaus Wunderlich, then …
Beany says
Could have been Freddie and the Dreamers.
chiz says
A bottle of šljivovica in Serbia in ’93. Booze was hard to come by in those troubled times so everyone distilled their own. When they handed me an old lemonade bottle full of the stuff, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to drink it or stick a flaming rag in it and hurl it at a tank. Throwing it away at tremendous velocity would actually have been the right course of action, because it tasted like dead rat. Its nose was cow dung with overtones of Domestos, and it had the mouth feel of Nitromors and hints of piss. I still have some in a cupboard somewhere.
Steerpike says
You should never mix your drinks
ianess says
Is that the same as slivovic, the plum brandy, that they used to sell in old Yugoslavia? I was on holiday in Korcula decades ago and had a roaring night with the hotel staff on the back of that dynamite, liberally mixed with beers. Ended up with the hotel manager being hoisted on our shoulders and marched round the dance floor. Great evening – like a combination of New Year’s Eve and a football riot.
chiz says
That’s certainly what they were aiming for but I think they missed out some of the ingredients, like the plums and the brandy.
ianess says
They used to make a hooch in the Mozambican countryside from peanuts. I was offered it once, but declined. It wasn’t the alcohol content I was worried about – it was the risk of catching dysentery from the bottle.
SteveT says
I had a similar night in Lake Bled now Slovenia then Yugoslavia. Slivovic – tasted foul at first, after a few local beers it tasted like nectar. The next morning my head was fucked.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Having your head fucked as a result of getting drunk is one of the better options.
davebigpicture says
I was listening to the latest Word podcast with Paul Du Noyer yesterday. Hepworth was saying that Du Noyer would say he was “wearing the iron hat” when hung over. I won’t spoil the follow up line here but it had me in stitches.
Vincent says
I continue to find warm Carlsberg Special pretty revolting. Cans of lager at parties with dog-ends in them are rough, too. I have a bottle of snake wine from China (complete with snake in the bottle). I’m keeping it for when times get rough, and a drink is called for.
JQW says
Garlic beer. Yes, that’s right, garlic beer.
Back in the 1990s I used to frequent a local real-ale pub who served beer from dozens of different breweries scatter all over the UK. One such brewery, long since defunct, specialised in beers with added fruits or vegetables.
One of their concoctions was this beer with added garlic. Not only did it taste absolutely disgusting, but it took the landlord a long time to purge the taste of garlic from the pump he used to serve it.
The brewery in question, whose name escapes me, went out of business soon afterwards.
garyjohn says
I can’t remember the name but it was an Aussie rural version of a tequila shot. You squeezed the lemon in your eye, hoovered the salt up your nose and skulled the tequila.
garyjohn says
Just remembered: Tequila Suicide.
Pessoa says
Was that pub the Evening Star in Brighton, by any chance? I have had a sudden flashback to some awful garlic beer, and other quite ridiculous brews, as guest ales there.
JQW says
No, this was up here in North Yorkshire.
I’m sure the same brewery also tried an onion concoction, which was equally dire, which probably explains why it was called ‘Orrible Onion.
hubert rawlinson says
A friend attended a pub quiz at a local hostelry.
One of the questions was, what drink do you get from onion water?
Much scratching of heads
The answer was mead
Much shouts of abuse about poor diction.
Charlie Gordon says
Chibuku. Southern African “beer” that has the look, feel and texture of curdled milk with alcohol. Often spruced up with chocolate milk or Coke.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/TFJkGQU.jpg[/img]
Charlie Gordon says
Can’t seem to post the picture.
I’ll try again.
Junior Wells says
Chibuku shalke shake (coz you gotta shake it)That brought back some hangovers. Arguably healthier than clear beer but hard to drink. It reminded me of a pic of a more Junior Junior on the way back to Harare after a big weekend with my late good friend Godfrey Dzvairo.
Junior Wells says
err bit bigger than intended
H.P. Saucecraft says
That’s a great picture, Jr.
Junior Wells says
thanks HP
interesting where our lives lead – the bloke on the right
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/feb/10/zimbabwe.andrewmeldrum
H.P. Saucecraft says
So he’s out now?
Junior Wells says
Sadly passed away. Was a set up according to him -routine background briefing but intenral power struggle. He remembers telling me how, when sleeping, they would all have to turn over in their cell at the same time due to the lack of space. Got to know mercenary Simon Mann very well. Eventually released after 7 years and before his appeal was to be heard.
Died of a heart attack a couple of years ago.
Charlie Gordon says
Sadly a rather familiar story in Zim.
Love the picture. My memories of Chibuku are that the local beer hall had it ‘a la pression’ and the barman would regularly climb up a ladder on the side of the Chibuku vat to stir it with a large paddle and to mix in the layer of flies.
Their marketing is not getting much more sophisticated.
H.P. Saucecraft says
This picture is wonderful!
Diddley Farquar says
The worst drink I ever drank? Aftershave. Kouros I think it was. None of your cheap rubbish. I poured the rest into a waste bin and set light to it. As you do. Somebody had put something in our food. Myself and my flat mate went to bed (separate rooms) and lay awake laughing hysterically to ourselves for hours. Never been the same since. Explains a lot I suppose. Still could taste the bouquet of the perfume the next day.
Hannah says
Does anyone actually enjoy drinking Bovril? It tastes of hot misery.
Hawkfall says
They have Bovril over here in Singapore, but its labelled as a vegetarian drink. What madness is this?
Vulpes Vulpes says
Oh God I LURVE drinking Bovril – deliciously, addictively salty, and best really hot when you are within a degree or two of gum blisters.
Uncle Wheaty says
Bovril is best served on hot buttered wholemeal toast or in white bread sandwiches with mature cheddar cheese.
Drinking it is not an option for me.
Black Celebration says
You’ve got to be outdoors on a freezing cold day. Otherwise it’s horrible.
Clive says
Much like Special Brew.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Hannah usefully broadens the remit here to include non-alcoholic drinks. I’d forgotten you could drink Bovril!
Pilleus Jr says
When on safari, in Tanzania, a tour guide gave me some Konyagi. This is the local spirit. It came in a plastic sachet, a bit like a portion of tomato ketchup. Because I am Scottish, the guide wanted to know how I rated it compared with Scotch. I drank it, as recommended, down in one straight out of the sachet. Luckily, any potentially hurt feelings about my comparing it to whisky were avoided by my inability to speak for a surprisingly long time.
Hawkfall says
Have you noticed that the quality of a country’s cuisine seems to be inversely proportional to the quality of its hooch? Thailand gives you rice wine and Phad Thai while Scotland gives you single malts and deep fried maltesers.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I can’t think of another pairing that backs up your theory, though. Italy: best food and best wine in the world in space. South Africa: great in both departments. France: not as good as they think, the sniveling twats, but not bad either. Oh, hang on; Germany – worst food, best beer contender.
ianess says
I had a bottle of hot Chinese sake once in a restaurant just outside Brussels. It proved nigh on impossible for me to drink it, despite my absolute raging alcoholic thirst at the time. For whatever reason (possibly self-preservation) my brain refused to pass the message to my hand to put the cup to my lips. It would stop, agonisingly, just before my mouth as the stench of what appeared to be ammonia assailed my nostrils. I would then gag and have to put it back on the table.
Needs must, so I pinched my nostrils shut, closed my eyes and rapidly poured it down my throat. Never had this experience before or since.
mikethep says
I had what might have been the best hangover of my life after getting hammered on sake. I felt fantastic, but when I tried to get out of bed I found that my legs didn’t work – I just sank gracefully to the floor, giggling fit to bust. Of course it’s possible I was still drunk.
H.P. Saucecraft says
How wide were your eyes at the time, Mike?
mikethep says
Eyes wide shut, Mistah S.
ivylander says
A good friend does a fair bit of business with the Chinese and travels there a couple of times a year. Returning from one such occasion, he brought a gift bottle of something called maotai – which is apparently quite the expensive thing, something served at state dinners. A bottle sells for something approximate to the down payment on a suburban home. So, filled with anticipation, he and I cracked opened the bottle and drank as directed. Although the internet insists that it is made from sorghum, I strongly suspect that it was, in actuality, nothing more than charcoal-filtered, triple-distilled, lovingly aged barf.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Father in law went to China on business once. “Whatever you do” he said handing it over to me “don’t drink it. I am sure those bastard Chinese use it to torture Western businessmen they don’t like”
So, late one Saturday night all the booze gun except maotai. Jesus, the taste lingers on twenty years later. Unbelievably and irredeemably foul.
H.P. Saucecraft says
The Chinese have form, don’t they?
Red Lodge says
I have terrible memories of maotai. Had to drink a fair bit of it while living and doing business in Shanghai, always to celebrate something or another. I was told that to refuse might caused the host to lose face.
One night after a successful business dinner, a bottle of the stuff was bought to the table, poured into the glasses, then a waiter came out from the kitchen, sliced a big snakes head off at the table and poured the warm blood into the glasses.
The memory still causes shudders.
ianess says
I have it on good authority that the drinks companies will always test market a new concoction in Glasgow first. The Weegie drinker is well known as an ‘adventurous’ consumer and will eagerly try any new motorway to oblivion.
Anyone else ever drink ‘Four Crown’. It was ‘wine fortified by spirits’. Could get a whole bottle for less than a quid. Guaranteed memory loss which was a blessing as it meant that at least there was no remorse when one woke up in a hedge many hours later. Talk about bang for your buck. My mates and I once quaffed a bottle each one Saturday afternoon after a few breakfast liveners. That was the last drink we had that day. Came home at 1 in the morning still hammered.
H.P. Saucecraft says
This seems more to qualify as Best Drink In The World, according to your description. I’m sure it would export healthily to Siam.
ianess says
Four Crown? We loved it. Our parents? Not so keen on its medicinal properties. That Saturday afternoon, when, despite warnings from my sister, I made a regal entry to my home around the 6 o clock mark (I’d already been barred from a pub after 10 minutes due to being unable to hold a pint glass in my hand without it crashing to the stone floor), my mother genuinely thought I’d just crawled out from an horrific car crash.
H.P. Saucecraft says
You still have that look. It suits you.
ianess says
‘Elegantly wasted’.
Hawkfall says
I like the fact that the cheap Scottish drinks tend to have regal names, as if they’re fooling anyone. Clan Dew, Four Crown. I remember a Herald lager too back in the day. Over here, the cheap Scottish whisky is called King Robert, presumably because after a few glasses you end up in a cave watching spiders.
garyjohn says
Four Crown was upmarket compared to a sherry like concoction a licensed grocer round our way used to sell, straight from a plastic barrel. You brought your own bottle. It was called ‘Armadillo’, renamed ‘Tarkus’ after the self same album. And yes, like the LP, it was vile.
However, it did the job.
Dodger Lane says
Ovaltine when I was a nipper, bloody disgusting and I’m amazed it’s still going.
Italian milk, horrible.
In my tour guiding days, bought a bottle of poteen from some rogue who jumped out from behind a wall as we were doing the ring of Kerry route. My group had better judgement than me. I had a blinding headache for days and god knows what it did to the pipework when I flushed most of it away.
Mekhong whisky didn’t do much for me, left me feeling sick. Mind you, it could have been the water or some other stuff I had mixed in with it. Can’t remember now.
Kid Dynamite says
In a moment of dairy crisis I once made White Russians with whipping cream instead of milk. Tasted alright, but considering we had to consume them using spoons they were rubbish as drinks.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Holy foolishness and inventiveness were the other ingredients. Brilliant.
davebigpicture says
Schnapps from the Norwegian Club off Trafalgar Square. The first spirit I encountered that was still liquid after 6 months in the freezer. Absolutely vile.
Milkybarnick says
A girl I knew at University brought some South American spirit along to a gathering I had in my room once. Some friends of mine had already tried a fair amount of it, leading to them being quite ill. It stayed in my room (I don’t think anyone claimed ownership of it) and is, I think, still at the back of a cupboard at my parents’ house.
I had a couple of sips and it was of the gut rot/rocket fuel school of alcoholic drinks. I have no idea what it was called. If it’s still there I’ll dig it out when I’m next there and update this thread. It may have course been tipped down the bog (if it was, it would have cleared any known blockage).
ianess says
Was it called ‘Pisco’? The first consonant is a clue.
Milkybarnick says
Not sure @ianess – it may be, but I seem to remember it having a longer name. Pisco sours can be quite nice, although it’s a bit odd having something with egg white on top of it. Don’t think I’d want to drink it neat, mind.
Charlie Gordon says
Can’t be…Pisco is a great drink. Pisco Sour along with a plate of ceviche is one of the reasons to visit Peru…or Chile.
Milkybarnick says
Just had a quick Google – it may have been a type of Aguardiente. That name rings a bell…
ianess says
Can’t be Pisco then. My sister used to work in Peru and brought a small bottle back. IIRC, the bottle was in the shape of an Aztec. It was foul.
BigJimBob says
I am a connoisseur of crap alcohol. Kenya produces Busaa which is the E African equivalent to S African Chibuku mentioned above. Every one drinks using straws from the same pot. The real Literal) killer is the home distilled chang’aa. About £1 for Treetop squash bottle full. Which is enough to kill you:
http://www.economist.com/node/16018262
The Romanian plum brandy called Ţuică (known as pylinka in Hungary) can be really nice, but often it is pretty much high octane paint stripper. Once given some Ţuică coloured with caramel passed off as Dracula’s own Vampire brandy – still have 2/3 of a bottle 20 years later.
Brennivín is Icelandic caraway flavoured schnapps. Apparently the name means something like BOOZE in Danish. Actually, it is pretty good.
The most potent stuff I have had was some potato-based Irish Poitín. Cooled your hand by evaporation when spilled. A good couple of shots produced a memory wipe.
ratbiter says
Have you tried changaa? You’re a braver man than I if you have.
From wikipedia:
Illegally brewed changaa could be purchased for around US$0.15[3] to $0.25[1] per glass. The drink is sometimes adulterated by adding substances like jet fuel, embalming fluid or battery acid, which has the effect of giving the beverage more ‘kick’.[1][4] Drinkers have suffered blindness or death due to methanol poisoning.[3] In Nairobi slums like Korogocho, the water used to make the drink is often contaminated with feces, and women’s underwear along with decomposing dead rats have been found in the drink during police raids.[1]
H.P. Saucecraft says
Having read the description, it seems that changaa wins the jury’s Gold Medal at this prestigious Afterword tasting. Even reading about it makes me ill. What could be worse?
rabtdog says
…that the rats are still alive?
BigJimBob says
Yeah, shared a tree top bottle with a couple of guys after they took me to the illicit still where it was made. Turns out the still was contraption built from a few massive saucepans put together like a Russian doll. The guy making it was a very olf bloke. We had to spill some of the distillate on the floor as a drink for his ancestors who helped him out…
H.P. Saucecraft says
“I am a connoisseur of crap alcohol.” – Afterword t-shirt.
retropath2 says
Cyprus has a healthy tradition opf allowing home-distilling, and the local pastis/raki/ouzo is evil stuff. Zivania, used equally a as a poultice, lice cure, liniment as well as an old fashioned gutrot.
ivylander says
I once was with a group of travel ‘journalists’ In Cyprus. One fellow in our group took to calling zivania ‘ding-dong’, because that’s the sound it made in his head every time he took a shot. I have to confess a mild liking for it. It’s like grappa, but a bit more unruly.
SteveT says
Not a drink to recreationally imbibe but bear with me. A few years ago my wife and I were shopping in Birmingham Bullring and went past a Chinese herbal remedy shop. My wife had a persistent dry cough for several weeks but had never smoked in her life. I suggested going into said store and to see if they had a natural remedy that would cure this cough. Of course they did.
They gave us 7 bags of assorted but different twigs, branches, bark etc and relieved my wife of about £38.00. Take a piece from each bag she was told, put them in a saucepan with a pint of water, boil the contents and then drink the ‘tea’ twice a day.
My wife tried and failed miserably – it tasted like nothing on earth and was about as unpleasant as drinking a cup of rats piss. I told her that it wouldn’t work unless she took the entire course.
She asked me to taste it – fucking awful. The upshot is she took the contents back to the store and asked for a refund. they refused until she had stood outside the store for 15 minutes telling everyone about to enter the shop that they were conmen. We got our money back.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Our friends the Chinese again, doing what they do best.
JustB says
I had a Korean drink called, I think, soju, once. Just the once.
A sort of rice spirit.
(Assuming by “rice” you mean “rice boiled in slurry and then used to marinate a dog carcass”. And by “spirit”, you mean “something flammable from the shed”.
chiz says
Soju is not the worst drink ever – not while there’s Stella in the world – but the etiquette of drinking it at business dinners is deadly. You’re assigned a young executive whose Seoul (geddit?) job is to ensure that a) Your glass is never empty and b)Whenever your glass is full you toast each other and down it in one. It soon dawns on you that a) and b) together make for a rapid collapse. Fortunately you eat sitting on the floor, so it’s not far to fall.
aging hippy says
Seduced by Dury’s “Sweet Gene Vincent” I once tried Thunderbird Wine and toasted my own decline.
Black Celebration says
I don’t know if they still do it but there was a lethal 10%ish alcohol lager in a brown can called HSL which stood for High Strength Lager. It was reassuringly cheap and given the price, branding and distribution (only in Lidl etc) I suspect it was directly marketed at Gentlemen of the Road.
Harry Tufnell says
Madagascan grey wine.
GREY wine, need I go on?
Milkybarnick says
An aperitif-o?
H.P. Saucecraft says
I think you do. After reading about changaa, I think we’re ready for anything you can throw up at us.
moseleymoles says
The medicinal and digestive efficacy of a famous German ‘digestive bitter’ made from a secret recipe of herbs has completely passed us by and all agree here at mole towers that Underberg is one of the most disgusting things we have ever drunk. Instantly sucks up all moisture from your mouth replacing it with the taste of soil.
NigelT says
Can I just say I have not laughed so much in ages…? The posts above are pure genius – I was reading some out loud to the GLW and was literally crying with laughter – thanks!!
JustB says
I’d just like to say that this is the funniest thread in ages. Top work, all. Except Burt, whom I diskard uterly.
H.P. Saucecraft says
If you’re in one of the less attractive parts of the Midlands next week, we can crack a Party Seven, stir in some Wincarnis, add a handful of rat scrotums and toast each other. This offer is open to anyone.
mikethep says
Speaking as someone who used to think that Watney’s Red Barrel was the dog’s bollocks (come to think of it, it probably was), I’m rather amazed that I seem to have spent most of my life avoiding the abominations mentioned above. Now that I’m TT, though, I can state with some authority that the worst drink in the world is kale juice.
Locust says
The Hungarian wine Tokaji is vile, tastes like something that’s been siphoned out of a fuel tank.
In my mis-spent youth we used to drink something called “Geting” (“Wasp”) – if I remember correctly it was vodka mixed with banana liqueur and ginger ale and I soon found that I would rather drink the vodka straight than subjecting myself to that concoction…the words “sickly” and “sweet” comes to mind as well as “poison”.
Also, every country seems to have a liqueur invented by monks using everything they found in their herb garden, these are always worse than cough syrup and should be avoided.
Clearly monks will drink anything to forget how dull their lives are…
H.P. Saucecraft says
Cod liver oil. You “drink” it, so it must count. Made me the strapping young man I am today, so thanks, Mum!
Junior Wells says
cue foulest tasting medicine thread
Hawkfall says
I think we should open a sub-thread here for cider, given that no one seems to have mentioned it yet. When Diamond White came out in the late 80s I was exactly the right demographic – skint and teenage. I got drunk on it once, but not twice. What a hangover! Anyone else want to share their “I got really drunk on white cider” memories?
Steerpike says
When I worked in pubs in Kent in the early eighties, Biddenden’s – a local cider on draught from a red plastic cask – would transform mild mannered gentlefolk into raging psychopaths, offering others outside for as little as a strange look.
Hawkfall says
Oof! That’s the stuff! Did the red plastic cask have chemical warning labels on the side?
Gatz says
I lived in Somerset briefly in the late 90s and was puzzled that no-one I knew drank cider in pubs, as I assumed that this would be the local drink of choice (this was well before its reinvention as a trendy drink).
Then I noticed how many baskets in the supermarket would contain a couple of bottles of white cider, and, probably not coincidentally, how many people I saw of an afternoon engaged in fierce arguments. With themselves. Arguments which often extended to physical violence.
H.P. Saucecraft says
When I were an ‘ippy, we (the beautiful people from Lanchester Art College) would summer up on’t Yorkshire moors, Greenhow, near Pateley Bridge. Someone bought a couple of those big glass (aye, real glass in them days) carboys of battery acid passed off as cider. We got so ill we were convinced we were going to die, and lay in the grass for, yea, two days and a night, groaning and soaked by dew and urine. Since those days I’ve not been able to even smell cider without a black wave of nausea sweeping over me. ‘Appy days!
H.P. Saucecraft says
I forgot to mention the bile. Heaving up great thick ropes of white/green bile from an inner pit of foulness heretofore undreamed of.
garyjohn says
Excellent suggestions Hawkfall. I’ve imbibed and ingested various stimulants, depressants and concoctions over the years, but 4 pints of cider in a country pub in Tavistock, rendered me, for the one and only time, unconscious with no memory of what happened until the following morning. 4 pints! Fucking lightweight, you say?
Kaisfatdad says
If we’re talking about cider, I must mention Legless but Smiling. It certainly delivers on the first part of its name.
Hawkfall says
I’m no horticulturalist, but I find it strange that the apple can be responsible for Diamond White, Scrumpy Jack and White Lightning while its close relative the pear gives us Babycham. What’s all that about?
H.P. Saucecraft says
The pear is gay.
Vulpes Vulpes says
The Jolly Porter, opposite St. David’s Station in Exeter, used to sell its own scrumpy. 15p a pint when beer was around 30p. Translucent at best, lumpy at worst. Five of those and you’d be lucky to make it back to the campus. Full of students most nights during term time. Muntered for a quid and enough left for a couple of packets of Custard Creams and some crisps from the garage on the way home, for munchies later on. Ah, further education, you can’t beat it.
retropath2 says
As a young coy lad I was seduced in a Devon pub, marvellously called the Thirsty Farmer, possibly still there, by what they described as their local scrumpy, supposedly brewed in a permanently fermenting barrel, into which dead rodents frequently fell, and, according to tradition, the occasional cellarman. Come to think, the rodents and cellarmen were probably alive when they fell in. But not for long. I was barely alive by 5, it being a lunchtime session. Dreadful days.
On a cider related note, these vile other fruit flavoured pink and red ciders, so coloured so you don’t realise it’s blood when it comes back up, what are they all about? It has got so bad that I now see a manufacturer now labels a drink as apple cider, as if that’s a novelty. (Mind you, how many apples have been near Hawkfalls diamond white?) The worst one of those went by the name of Frosty Jack, mainly as it came in handy 3 litre blue plastic bottles for those in need of a breakfast pick-me-up
Hawkfall says
I think there’s a great short story to be had from that first paragraph, retro. Imagine: a couple of American hitchhikers in Devon come across a remote pub where they’re given lodgings but told not to be out after midnight because they might meet “The Cellarman” and his army of hooched-up zombie rats. It’d be like Steven King meets M.R. James. Plus scrumpy.
ganglesprocket says
This has come a long way without any mention of the dreaded Buckfast. As an escapee of the legendary Buckfast Triangle in Scotland I can assure you all that it was nigh on impossible to reach adulthood without at least trying the stuff once. And I did. Two glugs and it ricocheted right back. It tasted like alcoholic cough medicine, truly revolting stuff. And perfectly nice bottles of red wine were cheaper. I just didn’t get it.
I used to watch friends having “Buckfast Races” where they would attempt to down bottles in one go. It never ended well.
Although this chap seems fine…
Five minutes later…
hubert rawlinson says
Didn’t Buckie have the nickname ‘Electric Soup’?
garyjohn says
100 pre Buckie responses. Truly amazing. And still nothing of Eldorado or Lanliq
Black Celebration says
I seem to recall small cans of Barley Wine in Fullers pubs. I think it was awful – but very strong. I think the idea was to mix it in with your pint so that you could appear to me a normal member of society but inwardly you guts would be fizzing and your brain screaming.
garyjohn says
Anyone (Scots probably )remember ‘Fowlers Wee Heavy’? Like an earlier, smaller version of Carly or Tennents Special, it was a bottle of rocket fuel, you added to a half pint of ‘heavy’. (So as the Polis windy lift ye’ – Copyright Lex McLean).
Sort of sweet and syrupy as most Scottish serious (cheap) bevy alway was. Known in a pub I served in as a student as ‘a Happy Day’.
Hawkfall says
I think if we Scots were as innovative in other fields as we are in the areas of alcohol and deep-fried cuisine then we’d be richer than Silicon Valley.
H.P. Saucecraft says
You invented the steam train and the aeroplane. Those are laurels to rest on. While you get pissed.
Harold Holt says
Ohhhhh goooooooddddd.
Southern Comfort – after one particularly stupid night I still can’t even smell it without the urge to vomit.
Chinese Rose Wine/Whiskey which we spent drinking at a business dinner in Beijing, paid for by mine hosts- that was a hanghover that still hurts 20 years later and another smell that will set me off. I was over there to present a session at 9am the next morning, which was crossed buttocks and deep breaths for a couple of hours. Thank god for the interpreter and long gaps between sentences.
The glass of straight Bundy rum I got from an Australian psycho in London as a dopey student in the late 70s, straight back down the toilet from where it tasted like it came.
davidks says
I have a similar reaction to Southern Comfort, a Co-op Xmas night out. I had to go to school the next day. Just avoided throwing up in my Maths class.
Carlsberg Special Brew – “gut rot”
rich says
Retsina…
H.P. Saucecraft says
Yup. Pre-tty ba-ad. But the worst?
I was once given a drink in a hole-in-the-wall bar at the foot of the Acropolis. The bar was, kwai lidrally, a cave carved into the rock. The owner had a sack of postcards sent to him by fond customers, and he showed me a few – one was from Loudon Wainwright – he’d never heard of him. This would be early “Red Guitar” days. There was a regular drunk in the corner, called, very improbably, Nic the Greek, who wore a crumpled business suit with a harmonica in the top pocket. Nic’s favourite beverage was something nameless, not ouzo or retsina, a clear spirit in an unlabelled bottle. He poured a very little into a tin ashtray and dropped a match into it. It exploded in blue flame. Vvoooomp. Then he filled two thimble-sized glass and gave one to me. The fumes, even at arm’s length, made my eyes sting. As Nic threw his down his throat I managed to spill mine on its way to my mouth – even the residue made me hack uncontrollably.
I sent the bar owner a postcard from Turkey, and wonder from time to time if ever I got in the sack with Loudon Wainright. So to speak.
rich says
…Raki or Oghi maybe…?
H.P. Saucecraft says
Raki rings a very cracked bell …
chiz says
I had some Chang, a home-brewed Tibetan rice beer, in Ladakh earlier this month. I’ve never come across a drink with such a strong instinct for self-preservation. If the milky orange piss-and-jizz colour, the stench of wet bat or the smoker’s phlegm texture doesn’t put you off, it will do the same thing to your tongue as salt does to a slug. This will make you instantly spit it back into the cup.
The total amount of Chang in the world therefore never diminishes – every cup ever poured is still out there, somewhere – but rather like The Silence in Doctor Who, it has the power to make you immediately forget how traumatic it was, and you take another sip. You spit that one out too, but a little of the alcohol gets absorbed. Alcohol plus altitude (it’s over 4000m) is not recommended at the best of times, and this stuff is no ordinary alcohol. I think they make it by extracting the ethanol from petrol, and then drinking the residue rather than the distillate.
H.P. Saucecraft says
We ought to form a club – Crap Alcohol Of The Month. Every month, members recieve a bottle of awful stuff together with an informative pamphlet and a health warning. Full-page ads in the Radio Times.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Receive. Whatever.
chiz says
It’s been done. It’s called The Tesco Wine Club. Berdum tish.
Dave Ross says
Late to the thread as usual but I’m going non-alcoholic and give you the Costa Black Forrest Hot Chocolate. Try one this Christmas. It was so sweet and rich that I couldn’t eat anything else for a week. It’s foul in its syntheticness, and imposible to finish. I imagine it’s similar to swallowing Willy Wonka’s mess without the kudos or the free Chocolate Factory
SteveT says
Late seventies, early eighties the breweries had been on strike in Birmingham so there were no draught beers available. Ordinarily 5 pints of draught bitter would seem e mellow but fully in control of my senses. The canned beer that I drank that night was Colt 45 – I had 5 of them and I was tripping the light fantastic. Never been so ill in my life – don’t know what was in that beer but it was like liquid LSD.
SteveT says
Actually my memory failed me – it wasn’t Cole 45 it was Breaker. Foul stuff.
ganglesprocket says
Breaker? God I remember that *shudders.* In my trainee drinking days in the early 90s me and my friends used to pride ourselves in getting through a six pack of beer. However given what we tended to drink was Budweiser or Schlitz (urgh) this wasn’t necessarily a huge achievement.
Then one day our beer buyer got us Breaker…
retropath2 says
Willy Wonkas mess……. Yeuch. Milk, lemonade or chocolate mess?
goodfella says
If we’re talking non-alcoholic then it has to be Dandelion & Burdock. Truly rank.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I liked this as a kid. Mind you, I also liked that rock-hard sliver of “bubble gum” you got with Civil War gum cards.
hubert rawlinson says
There was also a drink that you could get at the local ‘chippy’ called Space Special, a bright blue fizzy concoction. Can’t remember the taste but probably ‘synthetic’
bricameron says
‘Diesel’. 1 part lager. 1 part black currant cordial. Mix together and churn. Literally.