ESB and Golden

I was eavesdropping on a conversation whilst I was behind the bar one evening. A customer was talking about this drink he used to have 'back in the day', it was half a pint of Fuller's ESB with one of the small bottles of Fuller's Golden Pride. He said he couldn't remember the name but said it was a fairly old fashioned drink that all the Fuller's regulars would know. It is a similar idea to Young's not as good version Ram Rod and Special, half a pint of Young's Special and a small bottle of Young's Ram Rod strong ale only it is a lot stronger and dare I say.. nicer. (I work in a Young's pub)

Around the corner from the pub I work is a quaint old man's back street boozer, it is a Fuller's pub called 'The Wych Elm' on Elm Rd in Kingston Upon Thames. It was there that on one of my few days off I ventured to go for the beer I'd heard so much about. I immediately ordered a pint of Fuller's ESB and a bottle of Golden Pride with the intention of drinking roughly half the pint then topping the rest up with the bottle. Bearing in mind I hadn't eaten anything substantial other than several milk chocolate coated digestives with my morning cup of Earl Grey tea.

I don't know why I do this and I'm sure there are a lot of people who also do it, drinking the first pint or sometimes other alcoholic drinks incredibly quickly, so fast that your mind barely has any time to take in all the flavours and feelings of the drink.

It wasn't long before I'd drunken more than half of my pint, it was time to add the bottle of Golden pride. When I began slowly pouring it into the glass, the different beers swirled around each other then mixed and the carbonated Golden Pride gave the still deep tawny beer some life and bubbled away. Sitting there looking at it I felt like a young boy again waiting impatiently to open up my Christmas presents, I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest. It's odd but I hadn't felt that much excitement for anything in ages. I gently lifted the glass closer to my mouth, I could feel its presence and smell the powerful aroma of a rich a flavourful beer.

The Golden Pride transformed the ESB into something that one can only taste, to describe it would be wrong, it needs to be tried for oneself. All I can say is no matter how tolerant you are of alcohol, on an empty stomach just one of these will begin to take effect, one more will most certainly tip you over the edge. I had two and was pretty wasted and I drink a hell of a lot of beer a lot/most of the time.

The drink is know as ESB and Golden if you hadn't guessed by the title.