retiredmartin

Sod Mikkeller (till tomorrow), sod strict chronology.  I’m taking a short break from “foreign correspondent reporting” to tell you how wonderful Carlsberg is, when you get plied with it for free. A fuller review of Latitude can wait till tomorrow, but here’s all you really need to know about that ;

If you’re living in Southwold or Halesworth you’ll be able to hear the last 3 hours of Latitude from your garden (we escaped tonight before Fleet Foxes); you can see the face paint from space. Nice sunset as you leave, anyway.

Mrs RM’s Sunday highlight was Katherine Jenkins emerging from a boat on that lake to sing “We’ll Meet Again“; she remembers the original from the war.

I favoured Carlsberg’s beer and food matching with Brew Master Bhavya Mandanna and the folk from Snaps + Rye.

I’m not sure we’d actually booked a place on this (OK,we hadn’t) but Mrs RM seemed impressed as I just nabbed a space closest to the smorgasbord and tiny glasses of what I hoped weren’t beer samples.

Astonishingly, we’d failed to do Carlsberg World on our Copenhagen trip last week, so this was redemption, of a sort.

Bhavya was an excellent ambassador for the fizzy liquid, giving us a ten minute run-through of the brand and the contents of beer (mainly beer, I think).  Two of their craft range, Carlsberg and Carlsberg Export were supplied to wash down some gorgeous herring and salmon on rye bread, with schnapps introduced to show the changing effect on the taste of the beer when you vary the food and add a chaser.

Scarily, it sort of worked for me.  I quite enjoyed both lagers.  I don’t think I’ve ever drunk Carlsberg before. Mrs RM played along, offering quotes like “It brings out the strength and subtleness of the beer“, possibly in the hope of getting more free stuff. That failed, but at £5.50 for nearly a pint of Export we were still quids in.

We then had some spiel about Carlsberg’s re-launch of taps, cans and bottles; Mrs RM complimented them on the “clean lines” while I was rather taken by words like 10mm head and optimal lacing.

I didn’t get a chance to ask Bhavya what she thought about Mikkeller. Or Northampton, where I presume the standard lager comes from.

Thanks for the free beer, Carlsberg.  It was very good (really). Shame your Brew Master couldn’t have brought over a few bottles of Elephant.