Kmflett's Blog

Nairn’s London at 50: London beers in 1966

LRB

It is the 60^th anniversary of the classic London guide by Ian Nairn (in print as a Penguin Classic).

Nairn liked beer and he included a brief postscript on London beer as the Capital saw cask beer give way to the Watney’s Red keg ‘revolution’.

Nairn was a fan of cask beer noting ‘the old small breweries have been largely swallowed up and their individual tastes have been replaced by mass produced flavours, which in London tend to be unpleasantly tinny, without any bouquet’.

This pre-dated the founding of CAMRA by around 5 years.

What ‘draught beer’ did Nairn like?

Whitbread bitter

Fullers

Draught Bass & Worthington E

He goes on to note ‘if you are forced into drinking keg which is a kind of bottled beer in big cans’ he suggests:

Bass/Worthington E

Flowers

Guinness

Nairn came to like beer a little too much and died far too young at 53 but the book remains an incomparable guide to London and it doesn’t overlook pubs or beer.