Or “To put it another way…”
Our post in which we asked people to choose pubs based purely on keg/cask beer selection generated plenty of comment and — as we’d hoped — gave us plenty more food for thought. So, here are a few further observations, as the dust settles.
1. Craft beer’ and ‘real ale’ aren’t just about beer: they can’t be separated from all the cultural gubbins that surrounds them. That’s why several commenters questioned the very basis of the post, and why Simon “Reluctant Scooper” Johnson’s sarky aside about pork pies and topless barmaids is valid.
2. We don’t want to be pushed into taking sides in an imaginary battle between ‘real ale’ and ‘craft keg’. There’s room for complexity in this conversation, and absolutists on either side are in a minority. They’ve got a place in the conversation, too, but it’d be a shame if it was all about them chucking bricks at each other over everyone else’s heads.
3. Whether it should or not, this conversation makes people defensive and emotional. (Even we ‘threw our toys out of the pram’ this time which happens fairly infrequently.) Isn’t that bonkers? As we’re sure someone will point out before long, it’s only beer. (“Oh no it isn’t!”)
4. Finally, if we could choose from all four pubs, we’d be in the Bird in Hand, the pub with the interesting cask ale. We’re Real Ale Twats at heart. Others might well choose the ‘craft keg’ pub, the Red Lion, and we wouldn’t think any less of them for it.
Tags: craft beer, pubs
Buy me a half in the Bird in Hand and I’ll see you after for a half on me in the Red Lion. We’ll get the pickled egg in which ever pub has ‘em
In some ways this seems to me to be an artificial debate. If you were to be really cynical it’s just to generate a conversation that spills into just about every UK beer blog, thus getting your brewery mentioned (again).
Surely you’d have to have had a nasty accident involving acid on your whole nose/throat area to suggest that the best beers available, now, here in the UK, come exclusively from kegs. Or, conversely, to suggest that nothing good EVER comes from a keg.
Your hypothetical pub situation summed it up well, and most reasonable people would, I think, agree with you. The absolutists can carry on their rock-throwing but I reckon the rest of us should just carry on enjoying BEER, in all its rich and varied forms.
Me? Sarky? Never!
And for the record, I’m not too fussed by topless barmaids. Anymore. Once you’ve seen a chapped nipple dipped into your pint, the novelty value soon wears off.
One thing I have been thinking more about, though, is context. Why I visit the pubs that I do. Because, increasingly, it’s not for the beer per se. Tasty beer is the given.