DEATH TO JOHN BARLEYCORN!

There is a song about the death of John Barleycorn, describing the poor bugger being cut, thrashed and generally mammocked.  But up he springs again!  Now, I understand that he held sway in Europe until, under the name of Silenus, until Bacchus rolled in from the East.  Prior to that he ruled jointly with the apple, the gathering of which did not entail annihilation, as with barley.  How did wine gain a superior position, maybe classwise?  Maybe the new bosses rolled in complete with Bacchic cult, for if wine can take you into space, heaven knows beer can ! (I cite Newcastle Brown, poor mans journey into space)  Silenus thereafter acquired the image of potbellied old man, maybe rustic.  This persists, for wine in bed is sybaritic, beer in bed is gross, as with my memory of  a bottle of Newkie embedded in someones spotty fizog, in Newcastle.  Can beer ever look dainty?

The making of wine involves the plucking of the fruit, as does cider.  The parent remains, alive for the next year, and many more.  Beer, though entails complete annihilation, as, by the way does its most popular flavourer and clarifier, the hop. the hopvine can remain, its corpse to be seen through the winter, like the gamekeeper's warning crow or magpie, hung on a post.  The resemblance of the hop leaf to the grapevine leaf is curious, with the unstoppable advance of the hop once it gained currency.  This may be food for thought, or it may be as a rice cake to the nourishment of the intellect...

Rambling on from John Barleycorn to whatever deity governs the hop, I note that it is botanically akin to cannabis and the elm.  That the former is narcotic is unquestioned, but the only consciousness-altering effect known of the elm is its habit of dropping the odd branch onto the heads of boy scouts encamped beneath.

To return from my ramble, let us celebrate the generosity of John Barleycorn in dying to assuage our troubles, and his eternal rebirth.  By getting somewhat, or totally,  out of it.

Down Below, or Out the Back

Foaming brew lands in your glass, hopefully not having been murdered by a 'sparkler', but how?  Derr - barman pulls a pump-handle.  Or better, brings it out of the taproom.  I remember, while I was working in a London pub, having a staff drink after the work was done, a pint of London Pride straight from the barrel. Beautiful!  All the life was there, so I reckon that if you do anything more than opening a tap you lose something.  Of course you have to make some compromises in business, drawing beer up through pipes by handpump.  Trouble is, there are now some pernicious regulations in force now.

There's a law against putting slops back into the barrel, slops being overflow from pints poured, never customers' leftovers.  Unhygienic?  Pubs were never notorious plague- and death traps, clientele besides.  First, I did as much myself, in a pub with a high consumption of the staple beer.  Two barrels on the go, can't squeeze slops into a fresh one, can into one that is anything up to halfway down. More than halfway, no go.  Of course it needed some common sense and a cellarman who drank the stuff himself.  Result, some variety of beer from pub to pub, and a good set of locals would ensure some quality.  Now, though, you can't do this.  result, more to pay for a pint.  In washing the pipes through you have to pull the beer in them through and out. Slops, so to be thrown away, to be paid for somehow.  Further to this small-bore pipes are now installed to minimise waste.  this hits the quality, passing the beer over more surface area and knocking some of the life out of it, making it tamer, less tasty - less to go up your nose.  So, if you want to taste the best it's off to a pub with a taproom. like the Bridge Inn, on the River Clyst, Topsham, Devon... dreams beside, to a place full of beery types.

Maybe breweries are tweaking the balance of beer to allow for this.  I have an idea about the current prevalence of bitter over mild.  Maybe mild matched the old, fruity pong of  horse-filled streets outside. Now the air is laden with the sharper smell of burnt petrol.  And don't forget other fragrances, for Friday night used to be bath night, and the average woman up until the sixties owned two pairs of knickers.  Oh dear, I'm digressing in a big way.