Just the job: a sparkling, cool, yellow lager on a warm London afternoon.  The stream of bubbles rise in the glass in a continuous effervescent plume, as though from some hydrothermal vent deep on the ocean floor.  Crisp, clean taste, 4.9% ABV; perfect for a hot day in the city.  Which makes this lager’s name all the more surprising: Fur Trapper.

Fur Trapper for me conjures up images of being clad in a thick bearskin overcoat, a Davy Crockett skunk hat pulled down low on my forehead, the continual pursuit of beaver on my mind.  I’m pushing back the heavy, wooden door of my log cabin, stepping out into knee-deep snow, and heading out into the Montana wilderness, with nothing to protect me from harsh nature except my trusty Lee-Enfield hunting rifle and my wits.

As an image, it can scarcely be further removed from my reality where, still dressed in my stretch-legging jim-jams, last night’s mascara a Miro across my face, I push open the cheap pre-fab door of my Somers Town Housing Association flat, in order to hunt out a microwave-in-the-package jacket spud from the nearest convenience shop, with nothing to protect me from the harsh urban jungle except my giro and my wits.

Now that is a properly evocative name for an English urban lager: Giro Chaser.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue can picture herself as a bit of a frontierswoman.