Moaning about Beer Culture: History Repeating

“I like Double Diamond, and Worthington E, and Younger’s Tartan and Watney’s Red, and Whitbread Tankard…You seem determined to inflict on beer drinkers the snobbery that has always bedevilled the casual enjoyment of wine.” Letter to the editor, R.G. Oliver, The Guardian, 01/11/1973

“Already gone are the long benches and white scrubbed tables. Gone is the oak bar polished with loving care, the sawdust, brazen spittoons and ruddy faced landlord who would quaff a quart in a couple of draughts. This pleasant scene has now been replaced by the ‘contemporary’ setting. Plate glass, chromium fittings, air-conditioning and taped background music is the order of the day, and the anaemic pinstripe-trousered barman in his impeccable white coat clinically serves a pint by pressing the button of a gleaming automatic machine which dispenses a liquid that is a travesty of brewing.” Letter to the editor, D. Gordon, The Financial Times, 14/12/1963

“Pubs have long since ceased to be places where working men went to get away from their slatternly wives and squabbling children — the New Pub is not only for all the family but particularly for the young, free ‘teens and twenties’, those as yet unburdened by H.P. agreements and small babies.” Derek Cooper, The Beverage Report, 1970.

“At times it has seemed Camra’s sole interest was means of dispense. It has been said that some members would drink castor oil if it came from a hand pump, and would reject nectar if it had no more than looked at carbon dioxide. Naturally they are at liberty to entertain whatever notions, and carry whatever motions, they like, but they have often denied themselves excellent beer in the process.” Richard Boston, Beer and Skittles, 1976

Sadly, we failed to find a nice, neat single quotation neatly summarising the endless debate about how to define ‘draught beer’….