Friday, June 15, 2007

Shameless Volte Face on Fruity Malt Beverages

Regular readers of our blog will have read my thoughts on the pineapple beer in China. Well, much like one pines for a lover and glosses over their bad points after a long time apart - my tastebuds have become addled by 6 weeks without alcoholic beverages (with a handful of lapses in people's homes). Iran is awash with malt beverages that proudly proclaim "non-alcoholic!". There are some brands that do the pale imitation thing better than others - unsurprisingly "beers" that come from places that produce real beer (like Turkey and Russia) fare marginally better. Inevitably though one is always left with a sense of profound disappointment after the initial malty rush has subsided from one's tastebuds.

In this crazy climate of no public alcohol, I have formed quite a dependance on a local malt beverage called Delster. Delster comes has several common flavours (apple, peach and lemon) and two much rarer types (stawberry and pineapple).

In fact, I have now started a Daily Delster consumption campaign, and have got to know some of the delivery drivers on first name terms:

As most of you will know I am not the biggest drinker - but going without alcohol for so long has been surprisingly tough. In the current atmosphere of potential sanctions on Iran, Anth and I have been thinking about the toughest sanctions you could impose on countries that would attack something fundamental to their culture, and we came up with the following list:

  1. Australia - beer
  2. Cambodia - Khmer rice (a no-brainer!)
  3. Iran - soft serves (see Anth's post here)
  4. UK - tea
  5. USA - doughnuts
  6. Canada - pancakes and maple syrup

Any other thoughts?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Try banning Guiness in Ireland, but not becasuse the locals love it so much but because the tourists drink such huge quatiities of the foul ale, that a ban would sink the local economy.

Anonymous said...

I enjoy a good stereotype as much as the next fellow but a more realistic reason for Canada to delcare war would be to deprive us of Tim Horton's coffee.
They are larger than McDonald's in the food distribution industry up here and people are positively addicted to thier product line.