In praise of the 1/3 pint

The worst thing that happened to me over the pandemic was I got ‘really into beer’. I was already into it in the most straightforward way: I liked drinking it and I liked getting drunk. I liked the ceremony of it: walking into the pub, ideally at noon on a balmy Saturday, inhaling that rich carpeted smell, ordering a simple fizzing lager and taking that first perfect big sip. Ah!

But then I got into buying expensive boxes of IPAs and NEIPAs, things that self-describe as ‘hazy’, and huge heavy stouts with double-digit ABVs. I’d prowl the length of the taps, head low like a predator, asking: ‘Sorry could I just – yeah sorry could I just get a little taste of that?’ Then I’d just order the first one I tried. This started to affect my friendships. The pub order is now: ‘Three Guinness, and Joel can sort himself out. I don’t want to be seen with him while he’s doing that.’ I am starting to think they might have started an offshoot WhatsApp chat without me.

The slouch from April to May is its own season: not quite spring, definitely not summer, but we’re far enough away from winter that you can feel reasonably safe putting your heavy coats in storage. There is not really much to do – you can’t comfortably have a picnic, can you? What some people do to sidestep this state of limbo is to erect a marquee, generate the worst logo you have seen and hold a craft beer festival. And when they are there, they drink out of ⅓-pint glasses.

The logic behind the ⅓-pint glass is threefold: the first is, once you start drinking craft beer, you have a strange compulsion to try as much of it as possible, to say yes to the ‘Whirly Whippet’ and the ‘Captain’s Hand’.