August 31st, 2009FletchtheMonkeyContinental Lager

Another quick post about my holiday (sorry!).

In an effort to do something more than laze in the sunshine in our small, quiet resort of Kriopigi in Halkidiki, we explored a little further around the Kassandra Peninsula on two evenings, once to the bustling resort of Hanioti, and the other a little less further, to the the last remaining plate smashing restaurant in our area.

Now, the whole evening was lots of fun, although the plate smashing was reserved mostly for the children. The waiters were crazy, everyone danced on the tables and we finished by drowning (literally!) in Metaxa from the largest bottle of spirits I’ve ever seen sprayed over grown adults (thanks to a very enthusiastic proprietor and a bottle of liquor with a tap on it!)

But it wasn’t the scariest large drink of the night, as I found myself trying to defeat a gigantic 2L glass of my favourite Greek tipple, Mythos. I’m not quite sure I’d read the menu probably because I was not expecting this!!!

I’ve had beers larger than a pint before, most notably the formidables of Lourdes in France (1L glasses) and once, when I was much younger and much, much more immature, a yard of ’snakebite and black’ topped with gin and other ill-mannered liquids on a night out with some rugby lads (I’ve never ever played rugby!).

But I wasn’t quite prepared for the embarassment of been the only person in the restaurant to be sitting at his table with a whopping 4 pint glass that was about as wide as my torso! The embarrassment didn’t last long, as other, older and more mature fellows soon followed, and received considerably more abuse from their better halves than I did (in fact you’ll see Sarah had quite a sip herself!)

But as I was loosening my collar and slowly, very slowly, draining my gargantuam thirst quencher, and with the furore and fuss around BrewDog’s Tokyo still ringing in my ears, I wondered about responsible drinking.

There’s no doubt that this 2L Mythos is intended to be drunk in one serving , specifically over one meal sitting, lasting approximately 3 hours,  so does that make me irresponsible? What’s “worse”, one bottle of 18.2% Tokyo* sipped slowly or a 2L glass of 5% Mythos with your dinner?

I think I can predict the swift and immediate damnation if anywhere in the UK tried to serve one of these (unless somewhere does I’m not aware of?!) and in most situations, with “our” collective British attitude to drinking, that’s probably appropriate.

But anyway I don’t want to get into a big binge drinking debate (not until later this week when I might get round to posting some brooding thoughts that the Tokyo* thing has ruffled up), just wanted to share a fun holiday experience involving beer that as you can see provided me with a nice (although not thoroughly responsible) potential profile picture!