#so my year round favourite is Mirage chocolate bars!!

[sun-ea-sports]

Alr vro tell me what ur fav candy is /nf + silly

I love candy corn sm br/silly

[beerandpresentdanger]

Great Scots

Everyone in Edinburgh looks like a solicitor.

Something about the serious grey-black stone of the buildings, the weight of the masonry or the angle of the streets -  whatever it is, it seems to cast everyone in a suit and tie, smart glasses, a briefcase stuffed with case files and legal briefs.

It can’t be true, of course. Edinburgh is a bustling city, full of bus drivers, footballers, street sweepers and accountants - some solicitors, sure, but not nothing but solicitors. The solicitor thing is a mirage, a sense impression, a residual feeling that arises from the seriousness of the city - a city of statues and statutes, museums and monuments, colleges and kirkyards. There’s an elegance to Edinburgh, a certain refinement. Maybe that’s only shown off to tourists like me - Trainspotting would suggest that it’s not all Georgian architecture and Harry Potter tours - but there seems to a be a dignified streak that runs through the capital, as wide as the Royal Mile.

The Stockbridge Tavern

There are still pubs though. Some might have distilled the elegance of the city they inhabit, but lots are just pubs, a place beyond elegance, where what matters is proper patter - and beer of course. I had a couple of days in the city to try and explore some of city’s beer. For most of it I was accompanied by an energetic toddler, which did prove to be something of a spoiler. The first few places I tried to visit - on a sunspolied, taps aff Friday afternoon - didn’t allow children (I’m not writing this to complain - I understand why pubs may want to be child-free) so I had to skip a few spots through my compiled list of best places to drink in town. Thankfully, a place at the top of many lists - The Hanging Bat - was happy to let me stow a pushchair in the corner, and I was glad they did. A few choice lines of local cask ales and a DEYA tap takeover of the keg lines meant this was a fine place to spend some time. It’s cosier than your average modern beer bar, with deep red sofas and lots of wood - a nod to the city’s elegance, but filled with edgier delights.

Trekking back to the hotel, arcing around the city’s central cliffside, thrusting its castle aloft like Simba atop Pride Rock, I impulsively stopped at the Innis & Gunn taproom I passed. It’s been years since I drank their “barrel-aged” ale, though there was a time, pre-craft revolution, when I loved it. At the bar, I got drawn in by the tank-fresh lager, but I should have gone old school - the lager was bland, fizzy, freezing cold. I saw four-packs alongside Tennent’s in every supermarket, and I’d choose the Tennent’s every time (and indeed, I did). Still, they had high chairs, which I appreciated.

Fierce Beer Bar

A bit later, I was able to sample some places sans toddler, which gave me a slightly deeper appreciation for Edinburgh’s pubs. I got the range too, starting in the Stockbridge Tavern, a sunlit corner pub filled with a Friday night post-work crowd, a real mix of ages and genders and beverages crowded around well scrubbed tables and a bustling bar. I’d planned to drink local, but when I saw North’s Transmission on cask, a 6.9% west coast IPA, I couldn’t resist, and I didn’t regret my lack of impulse control. It was a proper “wow” pint, with huge citrus rolled around a subtle cask haze. I almost had a second, when I spotted a Cross Borders Heavy on keg, and knew I had to oblige - it was everything I expect a heavy to be, bristling with toffee apple brittleness.

I finished the evening with a quick visit to the newly opened Fierce Beer Bar in the New Town. A third of Barrel Aged Very Big Moose - 12.5% and wearing it well - was a lovely way to round out an evening, still warm and light enough to sit out past 9pm.

And so to Glasgow. It wasn’t until the train slunk through the city’s grey and rainy edgelands and the carriages began to fill up with men in green and white shirts that I realised it was a match day (Celtic and Hearts - plus a rugby game to boot), but luckily I hadn’t been planning to hit the pubs - or sit atop a traffic light getting cans lowered down to me. As it turned out, we couldn’t have gone out if we wanted - when we tried to walk into Shilling Brewing Co, we were met with another “no kids allowed” (as an aside - is Scotland particularly adverse to letting kids in drinking establishments, or is London the outlier in letting them in?)

The Wellpark Brewery from the Necropolis

For the first evening I sampled some supermarket staples instead, with a couple of Williams Bros beers. Joker, their IPA, was bland and unfocused - perhaps it had lost a little something on a warm shelf, perhaps it never had it. Caesar Augustus, their IPL, was a more intriguing affair, with a brash, grassy nose, and a pleasing floral flavour.

The next day, after wandering the coal-smoke scented galleries of the Kelvingrove museum, I popped into Grunting Growler (again, no kids allowed, except to watch me choose something from the fridge - Tempest Mexicake, a vat of red chilli flakes, powdery chocolate and moist sponge - to take away). In the end, it was BrewDog which was happy to host the whole family, and a pint of Zombie Cake, with it’s neat nutty nose, was a nice way to break the duck.

Scotland’s favourite beer

On the last day, we walked out to St Mungo’s Cathedral and the Necropolis, that glowering townscape of tombs that overpeers the beloved Wellpark Brewery, the source of every golden drop of Tennent’s. It was hard to imagine, on a rainswept day, watching the facility contribute its own clouds to the crowded sky, that the Necropolis didn’t have some strange relationship with the brewery; that the rain water didn’t flow down through the burial mounds and terraces, through the dark, stony earth, and into the deep, unseen spring that gave Wellpark its name, and impart something particular into the water - not just the minerals and nutrients and pH level, but a distinct spirit and character - the very atoms of William Motherwell and Archibald Douglas Monteath, Walter Macfarlane and Andrew McCall, all the authors and lawyers and engineers and explorers that made Glasgow and Scotland the engine of an Empire. They don’t put this stuff on the Tennent’s marketing copy, but maybe they should.

Nightmare of Cake

Escaping down the hill we took shelter in the Drygate Brewery, an offspring of Tennent’s and Williams Bros, focussed on modern beers alongside a good menu and comfortable taproom slash restaurant. It was an impressive set-up, and the beers stood up well for the most part. Crossing the Rubicon, an IPA, was an overly sweet candied mess, but the Seven Peaks session IPA was much better, dry, and with a peach-driven Mosaic character. But the real standout was my third “cake” beer of the weekend, Nightmare of Cake, a gloopy, unctuous mess of a beer, overstuffed with marshmallow and raspberry and milk chocolate and all things nice - “Made from chemicals by sick bastards” as the menu had it, and every ridiculous element from each corner of the periodic table only made it better.

Perhaps it had some dead Scottish solicitors in it too. The quest for pastry stout novelty continues.