The World’s best drinks

Geoff, anything involving hops are remarkably sensitive to temperature and time since brewing - super fresh pale ales taste very different to those even a couple of weeks old. Cloudwater are now using their own cold chain vans to ensure freshness. A month plus from brewing and they really lose their vibrancy. Also certain recipes don’t scale up well.

I think your latter point is something I wish more breweries would think about. Cloudwater beers are no way near the same quality as they were in 2017 before they were properly discovered. Nowadays I only focus on tiny breweries if it's a proper hops forward american IPA I want - fortunately I have a few locally that are superb, but have also had success with Vibrant Forest and Pressure Drop. I fear the latter is moments away from hitting the scaling issue.

I think a very fresh New England IPA is up there for me when thinking about the title of this thread - a bottle of Maine Beer Co.'s MO straight off the truck is about as good as it gets, and something I really miss from the U.S.
 
At a tourism dinner in Sydney for Portland, Oregon, I sat next to a brewer they'd flown out. He told me that at the microbrewery where he worked they were starting to make small-batch "single-vineyard" beers - rather than blending hops from different producers, when they got hold of a particularly good/interesting batch of hops they would make a limited edition beer using only those hops.
 
Milk, ice cold.

Although there is certainly a school of thought that has it down as the liquid equivalent of the Lord of the Rings - the best thing ever as a child but rather worrying if you still think that in middle age.
 
Travelling around India in my early 20s I have vivid memories of unbearably long and uncomfortable bus journeys. These were always punctuated by roadside stops in the early hours of the morning for a warm cup of chai spooned out of a concoction brewing on the side of the road. It was always extremely good - just enough sweetness, milk and spice to revive and refresh after all the bumps and no sleep!
 
The version enjoyed by my colleagues in the office in the UAE was made by boiling 25 Lipton tea bags in a large kettle for ten minutes, along with two jars of rainbow milk (the version that was allegedly not able to be imported to Europe) a handful of cardamom pods and two of sugar.
 
Travelling around India in my early 20s I have vivid memories of unbearably long and uncomfortable bus journeys. These were always punctuated by roadside stops in the early hours of the morning for a warm cup of chai spooned out of a concoction brewing on the side of the road. It was always extremely good - just enough sweetness, milk and spice to revive and refresh after all the bumps and no sleep!
Chai made in Himachal Pradesh by boiling tea leaves and cardomom in fresh buffalo milk, amazing
 
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