Once you reach this small town and island there are plenty of coastal walks to be had and pubs to visit but for the beer purists there’s a very small vineyard and brewery a few miles to the east of the town itself.  To get there just cross the causeway and take the left turn at the end, follow the road for a couple of miles and watch out for the turn off to the brewery and vineyard on the right.

While we appreciate an occasional glass wine we’re really here for the beer and the Mersea Island brewery doesn’t disappoint; we’ve visited many larger breweries with only a fraction of the selection available here and this is what’s available:

Bottled Beers

• Island Pale Ale (3.9%) – a light bitter ale with a hoppy flavour.
• Island Gold (4.5%) – a personal favourite and lighter, summery flavour.
• Island Skippers (4.8%) – a dark, malty bitter brewed with Fruggles hops.
• Island Monkeys (4.5%) – a liquorice flavoured stout with a bitter after taste.
• Island Oyster (5.1%) – the strongest bottled beer, it’s a mixture of light and dark malts and includes Mersea Island’s very own oysters.

Cask Conditioned Beers

• Yo Boy (3.8%) – a combination of the following hops: Fuggles, Phoenix, Challenger and Cascade, it’s a bitter with a long-lasting aftertaste.
• Skippers (4.8%) – this is a ‘best’ bitter and a dark one at that; malty flavoured from five different malts plus the Fuggles hops.
• Lion Bitter (3.9%) – an interesting pale bitter flavoured with nut and caramel, and six malts.
• Gold (4.4%) – if you like Island Gold you’ll like this brew; a summery taste made with Lager Malt and Hops.
• Oyster (5.0%) – another brew containing Mersea’s legendary oysters plus oats and a mixture of light and dark malts.

Things change of course and now it is quite normal to sit down at a game of poker or take a seat at the roulette table with a glass of beer.  Even better, there are a number of local breweries that offer casinos the chance to sell a beer that is a cut above the usual corporate offerings.  You can read about them in this article but today we’re going to concentrate on one that appears to be the perfect marriage for beer drinkers – Barley’s Casino and Brewing Company.  It’s not actually in Las Vegas but is situated in Henderson, Nevada, not far from Vegas and as far as we can tell appears to be the only one of its kind.

Barley's Casino and Brewery

Barley’s Casino and Brewing Company opened about 15 years ago, just predating some of the other breweries that began to open a few years later.  It seems like such an obvious solution now – open up a huge slots-based casino and produce the refreshments yourself.  It will prove more profitable in the long run, especially if your brews get a good name for themselves and perhaps new and returning customers will come and play your slot machines and video poker purely because they know they can get a good beer there.  If you don’t sell your beer outside the casino, beer aficionados will head to your venue just to try them out.

The casino itself is not gigantic but it’s not small either.  Slots and video poker are the main focus here (more than 200), there’s no poker or blackjack and you can’t test out your roulette skills here, but you can also use the sport betting facility if that’s your thing.  Or why not order yourself beer while at the Brewer’s Cafe.

The beer has always been decently reviewed and includes brews such as Boulder Cold, Black Mountain, Red Rock and Blue Diamond.  Slots fans and beer fans – give it a try.

Of course many of those poker players, roulette wheel spinners and blackjack aficionados also want to enjoy a beer with their favourite pastime and not all of them are happy with the standard low quality, bottled beverages served up by the big companies.

Help is at hand however; Las Vegas hosts a number of micro-breweries which produce some fantastic beers so the following selection are some of our favourites:

Barley’s Casino and Brewing Company

Now this place always counts as one of our all-time favourites as it combines two of our favourite pastimes – drinking and gambling.  While one should be careful about combining the two with too much enthusiasm, it seems appropriate here.  There’s a huge variety of slots, video poker and progressive machines here and a great variety of beers to refresh you, including Blue Diamond, Red Rock, Black Mountain and Boulder Gold.

Barley’s Casino & Brewing Company

Sin City Brewing Co.

Sin City Brewing Co. opened it’s doors in 2003 and local resident and proprietor Rich Johnson says it was the first to do so.  Johnson is a beer brewing fanatic who makes sure all his offerings adhere to the 1516 German beer purity law known as the Rheinheitsgebot.  Sin City’s beers include Sin City Weisse, Sin City Light, Sin City Amber and Sin City Stout so there’s something for everyone.

Tenaya Creek Brewery

Originally a restaurant and brewhouse which opened in 1999, Tenaya Creek made the decision to focus on brewing exclusively in 2008.  This proved to be a wise decision and the brewery expanded in 2010 to take advantage of a growing market for beer in this casino city.  It’s offerings are now sold in several U.S. states and even north of the border in Canada.

Tenaya Brewery produces a range of 11 beers of which some of our favourites are the Pilsner, the mega-strong Imperial Stout and the Calico Brown Ale.

You might surmise that this slightly unusual topic is based on real life experience and you would indeed be correct.  On a recent visit to a northern (UK) location I was taken by some friends to a couple of the city centre casinos so we could spend a few hours spinning the roulette wheel, relaxing on the slots, playing some blackjack and cautiously bluffing at the poker table.

Of course, like everyone else, the first thing I do when I get inside a venue such as this is to head for the bar.  What am I looking for?  Nothing unusual – perhaps a guest ale from one of the local breweries of which there are many.  Wharfebank, Ridgeside and the Kirkstall Brewery Company are just three of the popular choices in the area.  What do I find?  The usual array of tasteless lager on tap and a range of expensive, bottled pop.  What do I end up with?  A mediocre brown drink in a pint glass that, when it was a small regional brew, tasted good, now it’s just average.  It’s from Manchester, you know the one I mean.

Too much to ask…..?

Anyway, after checking everything out the I get on with the poker. I enjoy my poker so the lack of any decent real ales is just a minor thing really.  As usual I break even at the table but lose a bit of money playing roulette (those systems just don’t work).  The slots just take my money with barely a nod of appreciation but that’s hardly unexpected either.

To get back on track though, would it really be that difficult to install a keg or two behind the bar to provide us real ale fans with something to drink.  It might even persuade us to stay a bit longer and lose a bit more money at the tables.

But this post is about poker and about how long you should play for proportional to the amount you are drinking.  Roulette players may disagree, but that pastime does not require any skill; the same goes for playing a slot machine – poker on the other hand is a tough mental workout and one that should not be attempted after too many beers.  It’s a recognised game of skill upon which real money is wagered – that’s a combination which, when added to an evening of alcohol consumption, can end in tears.

Be careful…

I can personally attest to this.  I’ve been playing poker a long time and I’ve also been drinking beer a long time.  Rarely do the two activities come together but read on to find out what happens when it does, with tragic and expensive consequences.

Being on holiday in Thailand probably had something to do with it – at home I know exactly how many pints to drink (two) before my ability to play poker begins to diminish.   Late at night in the south-east Asian heat and humidity, I just continued to down the small bottles of Singha beer until I’d had far more than the two pints I can cope with.

It was fine to start with – up to about four bottles my play was fine and I was hovering near the top of the chip lead.  That soon changed as my vision began to blur and I started to realise that I was calling and raising where I should not have been and folding where it was unnecessary.  My chip stack began to shrink accordingly.

Here’s the thing though – everyone else was drinking as well.  This meant that the final stages of the game degenerated into a crazy series of raises and all-ins, with no-one exhibiting any skill and luck becoming the key factor.  I lost my cash and have no idea who won.  When you’re playing poker, know you’re limits.

P.S.  Gambling is illegal in Thailand so this story may be fictitious.

Asahi Brewery, Tokyo

With that in mind, any visit to Japan is not complete without sampling Asahi beer.  In fact you don’t need to go to Japan, for years now this refreshing brew has been available pretty much everywhere in the developed world.  Asahi Breweries Ltd is the current name for what is a very old establishment.  It began life in 1892 as the Osaka Brewing Company and it was an almost instant hit.  By the end of the century it had won the Grand Prix at the Paris World Expo (so much for Japanese insularity) and by 1906 it had merged with the Japan Brewing Company and the Sapporo Brewing Company to become Dainippon Beer Company Ltd.  That lasted until 1949 when Dainippon was split into the Sapporo Brewery and Asahi.

That’s where we are today and over the years the brewery has broken new ground in Japan.  Innovations such as the first canned beer (1958) followed by the first aluminium canned beer (1971) were both Asahi’s.

Let’s check out the beers then and this is not a company that believes in producing different beers for the sake of it.  The two brews are as follows:

• Asahi Super Dry – the subtle taste of Super Dry has made it Japan’s most popular beer and ensured it’s popularity in more than 50 countries around the world.  It’s relatively high 5% abv has ensured a loyal European following while it’s lager-like taste means it’s the U.K’s best selling Japanese beer.

Asahi Super Dry

• Asahi Black – while Asahi Black may be the colour of an English bitter, the taste and the brewing method are completely different, Asahi Black’s sweet, rich flavour and 5% abv mean it’s unlike most other beers from this region (or any other).  It’s not as widely available outside Japan as Super Dry is but hopefully it will be soon.

Asahi Black

Top Totty is described by Slater’s Ales as a “stunning blonde beer, full bodied with a voluptuous hop aroma“.  More prosaically it has “a ripe and generous fruitiness, with deep and complex hop notes and rich malt.”

Top Totty was the subject of a complaint by the Shadow Equalities minister Kate Green who said she was”disturbed” to find that the brew was on sale in the bar, particularly as the label on the tap showed a “nearly naked woman”.  Actually it looks more like a girl with a bikini and a bow tie on, serving a couple of drinks.

Top Totty

Ms Green may have a slight point but it does seem like overkill to remove a popular beer just because of the label on the tap; who looks at that picture anyway?  The usual suspects were dragged out to have a moan about the affair; someone called Mike Nattrass from UKIP said that “….this sort of knee-jerk Puritanism does more to damage to the cause of equality than a thousand beer labels“, but the Conservative MP who brought the beer to The Strangers’s Bar to start with, Jeremy Lefroy, apologised for any possible offence.

It appears that Kate Green may have been in a very small minority, possibly even a minority of one in complaining about the brew;  another female MP, Conservative Tracey Crouch, sent out a tweet suggesting that a more offensive name would have been “middle-ranking totty” and that there was nothing wrong with the Slater’s Ales brew.

Whatever, it’s gone now but perhaps it could be replaced by Pagosa’s Nipple Mountain Nip or Sweetwater’s Happy Ending Imperial Stout.

We’ve known for some time that wine has certain benefits for the health of some people, specifically wine drinkers of course.  Drunk in moderation, wine can help prevent certain cancers, reduce the risls of heart disease and slow the onset of some neuroligical degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s.

Until now those pesky wine drinkers have has the upper hand in the ‘healthy drinks’

Beer vs Wine - the health benefits

stakes but a recent study by the Research Laboratories at the Fondazione di Ricerca e Cura has apparently shown that beer can match wine in certain aspects of health benefits. Specifically both wine and beer have the effect of decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease by up to 31%.

Two glasses of wine or slightly more than one pint a day will do it for men while one glass of one is enough for women.  The more one drinks, the more the decreased risk evaporates until a level is reached when the risk actually starts to increase.  There are also other conditional factors; women of child bearing age for example can slightly increase the risks of some varieties of cancer.

What does seem to be the conclusion of the researchers is that even though the benefits appear to be proven, the reason why beer can be as beneficial as wine is still a bit if a mystery;  the researchers admit that the only obvious early conclusion is that both contain alcohol – there is no similarity between the ingredients or the brewing processes.

We should mention that studies have been performed into the health benefits of beer before, resulting in the following useful pub facts:

• Beer can help reduce blood pressure
• Beer contains flavanoids, natural oxidants which the body needs to protect against disease
• Beer can help prevent kidney stones
• Beer can lower levels of insulin in the blood
• Beer contains Vitamin B6 which promotes the manufacture of haemoglobin
• Beer raises the levels of the blood’s anti-oxidants
• Beer helps with relaxation and promoting good sleep

Frankly we’re not sure about the last one, from a scientific point of view anyway, but the researchers surely know best.

12th Belfast Beer & Cider Festival

The 12th Belfast Beer and Cider Festival deserves a quick mention this week, if only because it’s something of a celebration of the rise of the micro-brewery in Northern Ireland and the spectacular success of this event over the last twelve years or so.

Over the years since it’s inception it has grown steadily and now features around 100 real ales and 20 or so varieties of cider.  Most of the brews are local but an increasing number originate abroad, ales and breweries which are trying to fight their way into the local market.

Ulster Hall, Belfast

It takes place over three days, beginning on the 17th November and running until the 19th.  Beer may be the main attraction but it’s not the only one; there will be plenty of live music as befits any Irish occasion so if you’re in the area, head won to the Ulster Hall for a good weekend.