Saturday 10 April 2010

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.

3 comments:

  1. Bottle drinkers ???????
    To their credit (and am I loathe to give it)even the rug wearing,
    stick clicking CAMRA covens usually sup from a pot however strenuous that must be for the poor dears.
    If only bottle suppers knew what licked the bottle tops in transit
    and what cocked their legs in the
    brewery yard........nice.


    Black stuff once a week

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's drinking as a pose and nothing more - appreciation of the beer doesn't come into it. I have been told that drinking from the bottle prevents drinks from being spiked in clubs, but I'm not convinced, because (from experience) if you keep hold of your glass in a club, it's safe. And besides, how are bottles immune from being spiked?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not something I would reccommend either way - you're missing all that aroma, for a start!!

    ReplyDelete

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