Beers 17-22 - here we go, here we go, here we go...

Fully recovered from my brush with the law, I decided to stay closer to home in order to embark on the second half of COGH. A return visit to Trafalgar Wines, Brighton elicited the following purchases:- (n.b. James has bought Netherlands and re-purchased Mexico (Beers 16 & 17), and a post detailing this will doubtless appear in the fullness of time, and the next post will be more arthouse, with pictures of the beers in their natural habitat and exclusive footage where we get up close and personal with the contestants.)

BEER#17 Spain - £2.00

Alhambra Mezquita has an ABV of 7.2% - stacking up yet another COGH beer that is to be treated with maximum respect. Should be a strong contender in the group games.

BEER#18 - Chile - £1.80

The Chileans don't export their beer, and steps will / may be taken to get hold of these rare countries, but in the meantime a little punnery got us as far as Chilli Beer. Ahem... Apologies to purists here - and I doubt it will be the only one during the course of this post.

BEER#19 - USA - £1.99

Apologies to purists for this. Despite appeals to go for a US microbrewery, we've plumbed for Budweiser. Is this an anti-American bias creeping in? Na... it's because this 'can' of Bud has got a picture of the World Cup on it. Sucker.

BEER#20 Slovenia - £2.00

Again, Slovenian beers are like hen's teeth over here, and I've been in enough Eastern European shops lately to be a chicken dentist. Fortunately many UK beers are made with Slovenian hops and Adnams is one such brewer. Broadside is a lovely example of the breed, so I decided to bring it into our kennel of beer. I think that's enough metaphors for now. Could well do better than the actual Slovenian team considering the weak competition in Group C - and no we haven't fixed it. This is scientific don't you know.

Ooh - look at the reflection on that bottle...

BEER#21 - Honduras - £2.40

According to the experts, Honduran beer isn't going on. The man in Trafalgar Wines sadly shook his head and said there hasn't been a World Cup like it - maybe there's a PhD in looking at the best World Cup for COGHing. Maybe not - they'd never get that through the budget cuts. Still, that said, bananas are the top export of Honduras, and I really like Banana Bread Beer. That completes Group G, the second quartet we no longer have to worry about.

BEER#22 - Ivory Coast (again) - £1.79

Bought another bottle of Tusker after Saturday's debacle to represent the highly fancied Ivorians. Yes, my ipod is still dead, and yes - am still fuming about the conduct of the Metropolitan Police on Saturday. Nuff said before I go off on a diatribe...

On a brighter note, we have a new recruit for the latter and most important stages of COGH - the tasting. In a deal reported to be worth approximately ten beers we have enticed top international blogger Danny Last of European Football Weekends. For the uninitiated here he is in multilingual mode:-

Danny will help us record the momentous events and be our illustrious guest taster when the action kicks off in the next couple of weeks. Welcome aboard mate.

Before that happens, we have ten more beers to acquire. Five of these are easy... France, England, Germany, Italy and Denmark (again).

And five fiendish ones... Ghana, Serbia, Cameroon, Slovakia and the dreaded North Korea. Any help / suggestions in rounding up these would be fantastic... In the meantime signing off for now - more than 600 views so far and counting. Thanks for your interest in our noble yet slightly silly quest...

PS