Cooking Lager - The Pub Men of Erlangen
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A fact unknown to most beer communicators is the “The Tandleman” is not in a fact just a beer blog or communicator or a blogger but a title given to the first beer communicator that first wrote about the Inns of England in Roman times when they first sprang up along the Roman roads of England. Back then of course beer communication was done on parchment, not the internet and contained lots of “ye olde ale was ner sparkled and ye gods did thee not drinketh it with anythee joy, but necketh it I did”
Over the generations the title has been handed down from Tandleman to Tandleman in a ceremony shrouded in mystery and esoteric mystic practice among a group known as “The League of Tandlemen” that both appoint & anoint the next beer communicator. Think not so much like a new Pope being invested but if any of you are familiar with the Frank Herbert book “Dune” it is an unacknowledged fact of literature that the practice of appointing a new Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother written in this book was based on rumours he had heard of the League of Tandlemen and the mind-altering effects of extreme bitter consumption.
Pongy old man bitter has an effect if you truly pickle yourself in it so it becomes the very liquid that you sweat. When consumed to that degree it is said that you can transfer memories from one Tandleman to another so the line of memory and consciousness in regard to dumpy pubs and pongy bitter goes back to those first pints of substandard ale in that Roman Tavern that was too warm and cost too many groats. It is said that current Tandleman holds the memory as a real lived experience of that first pint of unsatisfactory murky unsparkled ale drank in the very first pub that ever existed.
I have been trying to join this esteemed body for many a year but unfortunately if you don’t go in pubs enough or drink enough old man bitter they don’t let you in. They let you knock about with them occasionally when you run into them at beer festivals and they are not a bad bunch but never will you get the desired accolade "Pub Man".
To make my case for entry into the esteemed League I thus met up with one of its American members, Erlangen Nick, who when he isn’t bullying people in a sexist manner over the internet goes in a lot of pubs, drinks a lot of ale, mucks about on twitter and lives a few miles up along a train track from where I am, in a town called Erlangen.
Meeting people you know from the internet & twitter can always be a bit of an unknown. What if they lure you into a sex dungeon and lock you up for years in a basement with no lager? I had met Nick a couple of times before in Manchester & the Tand had assured me he wasn’t as far as he was aware a serial killer so it was off to Erlangen for the day and to discover how membership of the League can be maintained via necking lager.
So off we start on an afternoon of the lout. A nice one too this one but from the off I am informed of official League practice.
League members always measure the temperature of the lout and record it. Why? It’s just what they do. To join the league, you must too.
If in any doubt you can be assured it becomes habit. A natural thing to do when heading out to Pub Man it
But how can you truly seep yourself in old man bitter, if you neck mainly lager? Here was a truth revealed. Not all lager is golden & fizzy. Some of it is brown and what not, and so long as you neck enough of the brown stuff it has the same mental effect on you as if you necked brown old man bitter. Hence you can be considered a pub man.
It really is all about drinking enough brown liquid in pubs wherever you are in the world. That is the key to entry into this mysterious league that meet in secret, practice weird esoteric pub based ritual & ultimately once in a generation select the Tandleman.
How do you know when you finally attain League membership? When in the comments you are told "You are a proper pub man"
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