Turn up the heat

I know of only one Indian take-away in Dublin that has phall on its menu. It's a stupidly hot curry, invented in England to give macho arseholes something else to be obnoxious about, and though I lack a peer group made up of braying idiots, I'm not above a bit of chilli-based machismo. So phall it was.

This prompted a bit of a crisis: curry requires beer, and it was exceedingly unlikely I'd be able to taste much of what I was drinking. With no expendable beers in the house, I needed a curry lager, one where I wouldn't mind not tasting much of it, which is to say: cheap. I came up with a couple of cans of Pražský, a Czech lager by A-B InBev and one which is very popular in Ireland among less discerning drinkers. I recall someone (Evan? Al? Max?) saying this is one of the Staropramen range re-badged -- at 4.2% ABV I'd assume the světlý.

There's really not a whole lot going on with it -- it's watery and with a big hollow where the flavour is supposed to go. The one distinguishing feature is a slight sickliness, presumably caused by the use of corn syrup. And yet, when put next to a curry onslaught, all those problems go away and it just becomes a boring lager like any other.

Here's to the transformative power of the chilli.