Cheers lads. Image Credit: Getty
Over the past couple of years, craft beers have got massive here in Britain. If you had a look around any beer garden over summer you'll no doubt have clocked loads of lads drinking micro-brewed bevvies, IPAs and wheat beers - rather than bitters and lagers.
Meet the beer hipsters, the so-called connoisseurs. The drinkers of artisan brews that are supposedly crafted with the kind of love that standard bevvies like Carlsberg and Tetley's aren't.
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That's the appeal of these 'special' and 'local' brews to lots of people. But personally I don't buy the marketing one iota - and I think it's time we reclaimed lagers and bitters as the proper pub choice they should be.
I'm not saying I have anything against you if these soap-tasting pints of piss are your tipple of choice, but what I would say is that there are lots of blokes who have only got into it since it became trendy - when deep down inside they'd rather be drinking a pint of Kronenberg or Bud.
Kim K gets a drink in. Image Credit: Getty
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It has got to the point where lager drinkers are being thought of as 'unsophisticated'. The fact is lager is better than most of the micro-brewed beers out there - it's cold, its smooth, it tastes great and you can drink 10 pints of it without feeling bloated.
The main thing driving people to buy micro-brewed ale is snobbery. It's a way for smug, self-satisfied wankers to say 'I'm better than you'. It's a bullshit intellectualisation of pints, a way of them saying: 'I think about the beer I put in my body, why don't you?', it's the same people who act as though eating ready-meals and takeaways makes you thick.
Ale wankers are a cancer to British drinking culture. Beer has always been the drink of the people, something drank by all and for a singular and unifying purpose: getting pissed.
Unlike wine or champagne, beer has never been about the drink itself. I mean, is there anyone duller and more boring than the mate who wants to spend the entire sesh talking about what they're drinking? Who cares what we're actually drinking, people come to pubs for the chat and the banter.
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In the past, beer was just a way to relax while you talked about the football, politics or anything else going on in your life. These absolute dullards want to act as though craft beer makers are artists that deserve to be appreciated like Picasso or Van Gogh.
Lads back in the day shout lager, lager, lager, lager. Image Credit: Getty
But it's not art - it's just fucking beer. It gets you drunk. It tastes good. It's perfect with a fag.
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There's been an annoying hipsterisation of beer and I can't abide it - it stems from the same mentality as people who prefer boutique stores to the high street and farmers markets to the supermarket. In other words it's part of that middle-class narcissism that say 'smaller' is always better - and that 'because I don't drink what everyone else drinks I'm better than you'. It's fundamentally about feeling better than the 'ordinary' drinkers of proper beer.
Can you imagine a lager drinker finally getting served at a busy bar and requesting and taking five minutes sampling every lager on offer, before finally settling on two half-pints of Carlsberg. They'd be laughed out of the pub. Yet I've watched ale wankers do it time and time again. Let's get real. It's a busy bar, everyone's waiting, stop pissing about and get a decent round in.
Fosters and Carling are sold by the 'major breweries' and mass produced for everyone to enjoy for a reason. And there's a reason that 'Iron Lung Wolf 3.95%' ale, or whatever ridiculous pseudo-creative name they give the 'microbrew', is being brewed up by a nerd in their basement.
Here it is, lads. Image Credit: Getty
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I'm not the only journalist to have noticed this trend and seen it for the load of shit it is, as Brendan O'Neil has previously put it in a Spectator column: "I can forgive most hipster sins. But so long as I live I will never forgive the hip for what they've done to beer.
"They've spiked this most democratic drink with snobbery. The craft-beer movement, manned by middle-class pseudo-blokes who would rather go to Raqqa than step foot in a Wetherspoon's, has brought the fussiness of the wine-sipper into the unfussy world of the beer-drinker."
He gets it.
Proper lads know that getting pissed isn't about having a pissing contest about who knows the most about whatever microbrewery is trendy at the moment. It's about having a good time - even if the 9-5 is draining the shit out of you. It's about having a laugh with your mates, and getting an easy round in where everyone gets the same drink. It's about going down the fucking pub and knowing there will be Carling on tap.
So let's raise a glass to ordinary beer. Here's to Foster's. Here's to Stella. Here's to Budweiser. Here's to Heineken. Here's to Tetleys. Here's to Carlsberg and all the rest.
Now drink up lads, who's getting the next round in?
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