Drinks onboard Queen Victoria - with particular reference to beer

Welcome back to England and welcome back to the blog as well. Our cruise ship docked at Southampton at around 7am on Friday morning, although it wasn’t until a couple of hours later that we were able to leave the vessel that had been our home for almost 3 weeks. To say it was chaotic in baggage reclaim and then taxi rank would be an understatement, but eventually our pre-booked taxi arrived after fighting its way through the traffic, and we were heading for home.

Recent efforts at blogging have been a bit hit and miss, due to difficulties posting from remote locations and reliance on decent Internet connection. The post before this one was all typed out and transferred across to blogger, but when I tried uploading the photos something went wrong. Despite my best-efforts, and numerous attempts, I was unable to connect to the Internet. At first, I thought it was a local error, but after arriving home I tried my laptop again, with the same result. I couldn’t understand why I was unable to connect to the World Wide Web, especially as my device had been working during the majority of the cruise.

Thinking I would have to seek assistance from one of my more tech-savvy work colleagues, I discovered, quite by accident, that by switching to a different browser - Microsoft Edge, I was able to get online without any problems.  I've no idea why this should be, so despite my dislike of both Edge and Bing I will have to use these Microsoft products when using my laptop. If you want to know the reason for my problem with Edge, look no further than the sites reliance on news feeds from the Daily Express, surely the most God-awful “newspaper” ever!

Enough said, but before getting back to business, I felt that followers of the blog deserve an explanation, especially newcomers such as Volvo Cruiser and Aloha Harry. This is despite the latter’s expectations of reports about on-board swinging parties and geriatric orgies! Of far more interest to my regular audience, are the sites main focus on good beer, plus new and novel places in which to drink it. The person most deserving of an explanation is Stafford Paul, who tasked me with discovering how the two hand pumped beers available at the Golden Lion - Queen Victoria's pub, were cellared and delivered to the bar.

After several attempts I ascertained that these beers are kept in unpressurized kegs and are delivered to the bar purely by the suction generated when the hand pump is pulled. In other words, no CO2 lines are connected to the keg. Furthermore, Cunard Red Ale appears to contain yeast sediment, as does the Cunard Gold Pilsner, even though the latter is served chilled, from a pressurised tap. It follows that Cunard Black - Biscotti Stout, is also naturally conditioned, although it is far too dark and opaque, for any sediment to be visible. I drank far more of this beer during the cruise than any other beer, but every pint in the Golden Lion, was cool, without being overly chilled, well-conditioned and highly satisfying.

All three Cunard beers are available in Queen Victoria’s other bars as well, but in canned form only. A good place to enjoy these beers, was on Deck 10, on the forward starboard side of the ship. This happens to be one of a handful of areas where smoking tobacco is permitted. Mrs PBT's is a former smoker, who now uses a vape for her nicotine fix. We therefore spent quite a bit of time up on Deck 10, in the company of other nicotine addicts - mainly couples, plus the odd solo passenger who, without exception proved excellent company.

This “smoking area” is adjacent to the Commodore Club– a stylish and comfortable lounge style bar, with a large forward-facing windows, offering panoramic views of where the ship was heading. Drinks were also available out on deck, from the club, served on a silver tray by an immaculately dressed waiter. Gino, a boyish looking lad from the Philippines, was the star of the show, and brought many a can of Cunard Black for Mr Paul, plus the odd Fentimans Ginger Beer for Mrs Eileen. It's worth noting that several other beers were available from the Commodore, including bottled St. Austell Tribute, or draught Moretti for lager drinkers. A wider selection of bottled beer, such as Broadside, Bombardier, Doom Bar, Hobgoblin, plus Old Peculiar, and for wheat beer afficionados, Erdinger Weiβbeer and Blue Moon Belgian White, was on sale in the Golden Lion.

We’ll leave it there for the time being and move on next time to describing a few of the ports of call and places visited on what for Mrs PBT’s and me was our longest and most exciting holiday ever.