When I was backpacking/pub crawling in the UK over Christmas I discovered that the Poms really enjoy their ales, and for some reason Fosters
They even have an organisation, CAMRA, that reviews ales and pubs. They have 2 types of pubs the more modern chain owned pubs and the real gems called "Free Houses". Free Houses are independent pubs that are very traditional, and very welcoming. Because they are not allied with any one brewery they serve ales from small or local breweries. I was lucky enough to visit one or two of these pubs, ok pretty much every one in the country, and sampled/indulged in local beers and ales.During the couple of weeks before Christmas until New Years the pubs serve beers that are not available at any other time of the year. At this time we stayed in Wolverhampton and visited a Free House around the corner from a mate's place. This pub must have had at least 15 taps, each one with a different ale. One that I tried, "The Last Rites", had 11.5% alcohol content! After trying a couple of pints of this potent brew I was, not surprisingly, as crissed as a picket. There were also ales with strange flavours, chillies and varying alcohol contents. I tried my hardest to taste all of them, and from what I remember did an admiral job of it!
My question is how would they have got the alcohol content so high? Does adding more sugars/yeast at the start do it or would it have been fortified? And can I produce an ale, or preferably a lager, at home with this alcohol level? It must be said that as an ale I gave it about a 6/10 for taste, but after the first pint the taste seemed to get better!
If anyone is lucky enough to get to Old Blighty give the big bars a miss and hit the little local haunts. I found the barkeeps and the punters to be friendly and always up for a party and they love Aussies there. The one chain I did frequent was Weatherspoons, but they are a Free House officially and served good tucker.
Now if we could only teach them that Fosters (brewed in Scotland) is so crap no Aussie really drinks it.
we found some in an obscure liquor store and he loved it, must drink crap in the states, he also wanted to take pictures of the croc's in the swan river I might add 
Years down the track he realizes that we don't have kangaroo's bouncing down st georges tce, no crocodiles in the swan and the whole crocodile dundee thing was a crock of shit (pardon the pun) and so is fosters, he can't beleive he actually thought it was good
