My favourite alcoholic beverages.

I have many favourite alcoholic beverages that I like to drink. The thing is at different time I like a different drink and not always the same for the same reason.

On a warm bay a cold lager out of the fried is refreshing or a cider. If I am on holiday a nice cold beer and the warm sun looking over the marina as the people start to walk the promenade is grate. Or at the end of a working day a gin and tonic with lots of ice and loads of lemon. Or with a meal a glass of a good wine all depending on what it is that I am eating , but for me normally red if I can . Or on a cols winter night when the snow id on the ground a malt whisky.

But if I had to chose one drink from all of the others. If I was asked to make that choice and that I had to have. I would not choose a wine or a spirit, I would choose a beer. But not any normal kind of lager beer that is mad all over the world. For me it would have to be a pint of British Best bitter.

There is some thing about the character of the best bitter that is just well perfect. There are many different kinds and they are all different and distinct from each other. It should be a dry and distinct taste of hops in it.

It must come from a hand pulled pump not electric. If possible from a wooden barrel but that is very rare today. As it is pulled it should be cloudy and then as it clears you should see the beer clear as crystal threw the glass. You get the creamy head and the clear red amber colure and it sparkles as the light hits it.

Once this drink was threatened with extinction. The commercial pressure and ever growing power of the big breweries made them look for a cheap and more economically viable to produce and keep beer. Then the campaign for real ale saved it. And now it is being brewed by more and more small brewery all of the country.

And it does not matter if the weathers hot or cold, with or not with food, at the end of a day or the beginning of your lunch time it is a civilised drink to have. It is respectable and established, a bridge between rich and poor alike who can have a pint of best bitter. Intellectuals drink it along with labourers. It has the Rudyard Kipling poem “If.” running threw it as it can “Walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch” . It is more than a drink it is part of my national identity and what I am.

So for me a pint of your best bitter please.