You hear about the fella who searched for 32 beers – one from every World Cup country?
After the lingering, wine-induced Parisian hangover, we now accept we will not be in South Africa tonight when the champagne bottles pop.
The party is about to kick off with all the cool kids already inside, while we wait at home – the now forever-famous 33rd team – constantly glancing at the phone, willing that text to pop in from Sepp.
Well that’s not going to happen. Unless Australia launches a thermo nuclear attack on New Zealand over the weekend and they’re both kicked out, we’re on the couch for the month with only the warmth of England’s unlucky exit to keep us warm.
So how are we to supplement the football?
Archimedes had his eureka moment in the bath; most of mine come in the pub. Quietly sitting at a bar counter, idly trailing my finger around the rim of a glistening tulip glass of imported, frothy wheat beer it occurred to me that we should use beer – responsibly – to wet our World Cup whistle. There began a journey to collect a beer from each participating country and play them off against each other; a voyage so epic and circuitous that, at one stage, the BBC insisted I take Ewan McGregor on a Harley Davidson to the next off licence.
Some were, of course, pretty easy to source. I would’ve been happier, I’m almost ashamed to admit, if I flicked on Sky News last week and found that Angela Merkel and a few brickies had reconstructed the Berlin Wall, meaning both East and West Germany would be heading to South Africa. In short, there is hundreds of what Jamie Redknapp would call top, top German beers on the market. Australia too has exported almost as many lagers as it has bar workers to these islands. But not quite.
The USA also offers a wide variety of beer that reflects the enormous span of their country. Clear, crisp offerings from high in the Rockies or a sweeter, dryer tipple from its yawning southern gulf. Along with Italy, Spain and – spit – France, that was an easy early round.
But try getting your hands on an Algerian beer. Or a pint of Ghana’s best. Or even a Honduran.
Like Jimmy Breslin, the renowned New York columnist, used to say “do what all good reporters do: hang out”. So I hung out. I’ve spent more time in pubs than Bet Gilroy.
I left a message on a Serbian immigrants’ message board soliciting help; one gent named Aleksander has his mother bringing in a few bottles on a Ryanair flight – but it hasn’t got here yet. I bet she was glad she answered that phone call.
The South Korean embassy in London put me in contact with a little restaurant in Dublin, where I took receipt of two kinds of bottles this week after an extended period of phone calls where my charming Leeside lilt was evidently an obstacle. Nevertheless, we got the goods – and as North Korea refuses to export ANYTHING – I’m repatriating one South Korean brand to Kim Jong Il’s barmy army, for our purposes this month.
We had some of our correspondents in France and England and friends in New York, peek into ethnic shops and ask stupid questions. I’ve learned that Czechs and Slovakian barmen don’t like answering queries about Slovenian beer.
I bought a crate of Cypriot beer from a Greek restaurant in Malahide on Tuesday night, and they assured me it’s very popular ‘on the mainland’. I had it once the night before Cork City played in a Champions League game there and can confirm it’s from the Greek side of the island. Under FIFA rules, I’m counting it.
The excellent Bier House in Cork sourced lagers from as far away as Japan for us and hosted our sit down. Irish Examiner columnist Allan Prosser – our English representative – arrived with two bottles of Spitfire pulled from his own fridge. That’s the do-it-yourself spirit that built empires, ladies and gentlemen. But I’m not sure if his country’s ‘special relationship’ with America will survive his remarks on the Californian pale ale we sampled.
In the other corner, we had Rory Bevan, a man who spent 25 years at Beamish and Crawford’s before ‘moving with the furniture’ across the river to Murphy’s brewery and Heineken in recent years. His knowledge – on things like oxidation to bottle-readiness – flowed as much as the dozens of beers.
Watching sport – particularly the football over the coming month, maybe – we like to think we’ll earn a deeper look at a country’s psyche and personality.
The Argentine people’s idiosyncrasies are betrayed by the rough magic of their wonderful players; Germany’s functional and hard-working Mannschaft allows us to file them neatly under efficient; the Australians’ athletic and brash outfit reflect the competitive, up-front Aussie people, perhaps. Pop-psychology played out on a pitch.
Hopefully, now too we can add another prism to how we view the action: beer. Everyday we’ll take a look at one from each of two competing teams and play them off, before deciding who wins. It’s not that scientific – apart from the chemistry that goes on behind the curtain to produce these drinks – but it, certainly, is fun.
Cheers.
* adrian.russell@examiner.ie; Twitter @adrianrussell
