Necking it

I was a touch surprised recently to read that one beer blogger (some young whipper-snapper, I think) was occasionally in the habit of drinking his beer straight from the bottle. So I thought I would run a poll to establish exactly how prevalent this practice was. This has now closed, with 71 responses, and the results were as follows:

Do you drink beer straight from the bottle or can?

Never: 29 (41%)
Rarely: 26 (37%)
Fairly often: 10 (14%)
Usually: 6 (8%)

Good to see “Never” had a small lead.

Now, I suppose if one was in the habit of frequenting nightclubs and rock concerts, one might occasionally be found necking a bottle of beer on the grounds of “when in Rome…”

But, on the other hand, surely a major part of the appreciation of beer lies in pouring it out into the glass, seeing the head and body separate and admiring its colour with the light shining through.

As I wrote in the past,

In his excellent CAMRA Guide to the Best Pubs in Yorkshire, Barrie Pepper rightly praises the licensee of the Mother Shipton Inn in Knaresborough for refusing to hand bottles over the bar. "Like me", Barrie writes, "he detests the obnoxious practice of drinking straight from the bottle. Ugh!" It's a great pity more pubs don't follow this licensee's example.

Would any self-respecting wine drinker guzzle it straight from the bottle? No, I thought not. Although, on second thoughts, I’m sure I’ve seen the late, great Keith Floyd doing it during a cookery demonstration.