Fuller's - Golden Pride

To me Fuller's will always be the crazy old man at the end of the bar telling shaggy dog stories about how he saved Churchill during a war he wasn't even old enough to be a part of, how he killed off the last of the dragons with only a cocktail napkin and a set of playing cards and how he invented toothpaste but originally intended it to taste like garlic and crushed narwhal horn. They will always be that guy to me, but with a twist. Fuller's have been there and done that... Wherever 'there' is, they've been there and 'that' is a horrible nickname for YO MOMMA! Let's not beat around the bush for MUCH longer, Fuller's are the big boys in the brewery playground and they don't need to take your lunch money because you are required, by many unspoken laws, to present it to them as tribute.

So it is that I finally come to the biggest boy in the gang, Golden Pride, an 8.5% behemoth that, unapologetically, comes in a pint bottle. Nope. No pussying out of this one. You're in for the long slog if you pop the cap on this bottle of brutality. It smells like the bastard child of a loaf of bread and a promiscuous grapefruit with an underlying threat of horrific alco-booze! It looks as dark and threatening as... Oh... Apparently what I was going to say was rather racially insensitive, so let's say it looks as dark and threatening as a hedgehog holding a detonator and a picture of your favourite sofa.

The first thing I like about this beer is that the pour is like an idiots guide to pouring. I'm sick as a dog at the moment and I'm too tired to do things properly so I just opened the bottle and poured in the general direction of the glass. "PERFECT POUR!" Announced Golden Pride triumphantly. I stared at the glass, amazed, as Golden Pride bellowed "Top Score! You must be some sort of KING!"

I am, I thought to myself...

It tastes like the London philharmonic would sound if they were only allowed to play instruments they had crafted from fruit and bread. It is balanced, drinkable and warming all at once, giving you hits of fruit, bread, malt and even a little hint of liquorice and there is precisely no hint of the 8.5% content. This is going pro at being a super-badass ninja because it even lulls you into a false sense of security by letting you win at the pouring game, patting you on the hand and telling you that you've got massive man parts... Even if you're female. Then BAM! Welcome to being drunk under a table! Stop being such a cliché you freakin' mess!

You want a rating? Go to a site where many idiots make tiny reviews about beer and then claim to be experts. You didn't come here for the rating, you came here to know what a good beer actually does to the working brain of a normal human being... I wouldn't know.

Drink Fuller's Golden Pride, because not drinking it would make you a lame. Now that's a review you can take to the bank!

Food suggestion: I'd love this with some sort of Morrocan tagine. A lovely hot, sweet, sticky, bowl of meat and sauce. GET IN MY FACE!

Drink this if you like: Staring into the eyes of a dead god and seeing who blinks first. He did. You win. FATALITY!