I have spent more than thirty years supporting English beer (even Welsh and Scottish on occasion), and have nothing but respect for most of its brewers, who on the whole are the salt of the earth and do an excellent job. However... if I drink English beer I want to drink it as the brewer intended. Which means: by the pint, hand pumped or served by gravity, in good condition and at the correct temperature, and most certainly not abused with a bloody sparkler. And I want it locally. I'm sick of spending an hour each way on public transport just to get a pint worth drinking. Especially when even then it often isn't.
It is the impossibility of getting a reliably decent pint at a fair price that has led me to embrace Belgian beer culture. I don't blame English brewers for that - but those peanuts in Westminster, and almost all the English pub trade*, have a lot to answer for. I persevered for a very long time, but have been ripped off too often and my patience is now exhausted.
Rochefort 8 at E1.20 for 33cl, with 10c back on the bottle? And the memory of a pleasant day, every once in a while, spent bringing it and its friends here from beer paradise?
Or a pint of generic-tasting muck, usually too warm or too cold, either squirted violently into the bottom of the glass so as to have a (hawk, spit) "tight head" or else completely flat, served by somebody who doesn't give a toss and then taxed till the pips squeak?
Not much competition, is there?
Having spent a lifetime cycling, walking and using public transport to get around, I have every intention of continuing to use my carbon ration developing my knowledge of a splendidly bonkers country and its panoply of first-class beers! So there!!
*with the notable exception of the landlord of the Fat Cat in Norwich, who should be made a bishop or something
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