Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’

Yeastie Boys 'Fool's Gold'
Yeastie Boys 'Fool's Gold'

Given its provenance, I think it’s safe to assume that the name here is more a Stone Roses reference than an Iron Pyrite one. But hey; you never know — just when you think you’ve got their naming scheme figured-out, they do go and change things on you.1

If you’re me — and I am, if you think about it — the name works especially since it combines my fondness for golden ales with the fact that my nieces have long called me “Uncle Fool”. I don’t know whether it started from classic two-year-old language-mangling or from a particularly-early activation of the Cook Family Bastard Sarcasm gene. But it passed from Niece I to Niece II, and will probably become part of Nephew I’s lexicon, once he starts finding his words. I kinda like it, I must say.

Meanwhile, the value of t has embiggened itself embarrassingly, thanks to recurring computer issues and a particularly vicious visit from an hospitality-worker winter lurgy. So this is fast drifting into the dark recesses of my already-enfeebled memory, but I can say that I absolutely loved it — short on particulars why as I admittedly am.

But it all makes sense, in a weird sort of way; I was at Hop Garden again just yesterday (for their absurdly-sublime burger, which had Yeastie Boys ‘PKB’ as an ingredient, no less) and something about the absolute depths of a stupidly-freezing winter night does make at least part of your mind turn back to warmer days — even if you are famously fond of colder weather and are basically-obliged to think back that far anyway, since you’ve become so far behind in uploading your Beer Diary.

As I say, I’m always up for a good golden ale — they’re the warm-weather obsession which matches my winter fondness for oatmeal stouts — and this was a nicely punchy one that suited a snackfest of Hop Garden’s big-fat-fries and salt-and-pepper squid (the latter matching unusually well, with its higher-than-usual pepperiness). To me at least, Fools Gold straddled the line between your modern light-and-lush golden ales and your more-classic paler-than-pale English pale ales; different, but still delicious. I only managed to have a couple of pints before it was gone from the City’s taps, so I presume I wasn’t the only one who found it a charming little uncomplicated and worthy thing. Peter and I were just mooching around town in honour of the fact he was finally free of his University responsibilities — and, given my nearly-interminable history with those places, I have complete sympathy with the need for a pint or several to mark the ending of such things.

Yeastie Boys 'Fool's Gold'
Diary II entry #106, Yeastie Boys 'Fool's Gold'

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Fool’s Gold’ 31/5/11 on tap @ HG, with Peter, who is now free of Uni, and with fries + salt-and-very-pepper squid. Apparently 4%, which is marvellous. Pitched as “pale ale”, it’s a nicely punchy golden. It was handpulled @ HZ, but I always prefer these bubbly. Goes gangbusters with “dinner”, such as I have. More forceful than a lush Three Boys Golden; but just different, not remotely ‘inferior’.


1: Personally, I’m really hoping it’s actually a reference to a Fool’s Gold Loaf — a sandwich (I use the term oh-so-loosely) popularised by none other than Elvis Presley. Fittingly, it’s a hollowed-out whole loaf, crammed with a jar of peanut butter and a whole ’nother jar of grape jelly — and a motherfucking pound of bacon. I’m seriously tempted to make one and maybe go on to produce a whole series of Elvis Meal Time videos.

5 thoughts on “Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’”

    1. Ah, so it is more of a Pyrite reference..? Something that looks like a golden ale, but isn’t? Some sneaky way to push fans of the newfangled golden ales towards a proper old-school pale?

      Something similar could be going on with Lady Marmalade, too. That’s expectation-straddling enough that it could be a style-to-style gateway beer for quite a few people.

      1. No but that is a good enough background story to be worth me changing me mind. Can we change the reference point after the fact? 😉

        The clue is that the real name, as we write it, has no apostrophe.

  1. Ah, gotcha. I did notice that when I was looking up the song — big typography nerd, after all (I even made sure to do the dotless-i and umlauted-n when referencing Spın̈al Tap on the Twitterthing, yesterday) — but never saw the name of the beer written down. I’ll make the appropriate edits…

    And you have always described yourselves as postmodern brewers, yeah? That does let you play basically as fast and loose with references as you like — although, equally, I suppose the \meaning\ was out of your hands entirely as soon as you released the brew. Or something. Trying to figure out what the World’s various postmodernists were actually claiming always did my head in, older-school nuts-and-bolts philosopher as I endeavoured to be, instead.

  2. I’m old school in may day job… predicate logic and set theory rule my world. It’s nice to drop that when I’m moonlighting.

    Funny you mention this as I’ve just had a conversation with a beer geek friend in Melbourne about Rex. He proposed that it was an artistic statement as a beer, and that beer should really just be beer. But I say it is just a beer that people have taken to be an artistic statement. I can see why… and perhaps, subconciously it is, but the beer was the most (the only) important thing when developing it. I’d be interested to see what he thinks of Cantillon…

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