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Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

Homogenisation. Pasteurisation. Cold Flow. Extra Cold. Ice-Cold even. Ice cold?

There was a time, when if served a pint that seemed a bit cold, you and your 5 friends would walk out in protest and go to the next pub, taking 40 imperial pints of business with you. It was a quiet Monday you understand.

But that was the transition days. The time when Guinness was taken from us the loyal drinker that would suffer all form of abuse from our love just so that more could join our gang.

And how loyal we were. At times during the 1980s I knew several people who ordered something other than Guinness because, “it’s a bit warm out”, or “I’m only doing it for the summer”. It didn’t matter that you’d known these people since before they could legally drink, or for that matter before they actually drank. You dropped them as friends.

It would be like sharing a pot of tea for years (we’re talking a big pot) when one of your co-drinkers announces he (for it is always a he) is not going to partake of the pot but rather has brought his own sachet of Rose Hip Replacement Tea. Not calling it the infusion that it really is and robbing the name of tea is enough reason alone to kill him. And dump his body in a large lavender sachet. Before waking him with pot after pot of actual tea.

And so just like with tea, but more so, for Guinness, for love, I have been dropping friends without remorse. Just because they thought stout was something to be trifled with. And why they would think this I have no idea, especially since trifle itself is not to be trifled with.

But they were the transition years. 55% of all beer drunk in Ireland was stout. 95% of that was Guinness. Nowadays neither statistic holds but worse is another statistic of a people drinking wine instead of beer. Back in the days of the transition from non-cold Guinness to stupidly-cold Guinness, wine was something that came off a boat and came in a box. And it was free of duty. Wine didn’t have a name; it was merely red or white much as your dog was a bitch and it didn’t matter if she was a springer spaniel. Because all wines were mongrels. Or at least we thought they were.

In such times we really did enjoy the wait when it came to ordering that first pint. I remember wanting to tell my friends in England exactly what we suffered through, and happily, when waiting for that first pint. So I timed barmen. 8 minutes.

With no other distractions, if I walked into a pub alone - and I did, for all my former friends drank Australian muck for the summer - and ordered a pint when there were no other customers around - and there weren’t, for it was too warm and I was only there because I was undergoing a scientific and social study on stout - the pint took 8 minutes from the beginning of the pour until it was ready to touch my lips. Obviously if we were talking about a person and not a drink, it would have been about 8 years before they would be ready to touch my lips. But enough of Irish male digression…

It was a glorious 8 minutes too. A time of reflection and anticipation, because you really were going to get that pint. The final act before the first sup, was the adjustment. Barmen who had served their time, who had worked for decades losing hair behind bars from Cavan to Dublin, were never quite so good as to know to the millimetre where in front of you to place your pint. You nodded, maybe you said thanks, but always your hand came and adjusted the position of the pint.

It was a mixture of art and mathematics that dictated the correct location of your pint on the bar, and no barmen ever placed a bullseye. Sometimes, say for example you didn’t really like that baldy little man from Cavan, you adjusted the position of the pint by as little as one eight of an inch, showing the hairless Ulsterman that he was so close to being the Nadia Comaneci of the pint pulling world. 8 minutes.

The genius of Guinness’ marketing over the last 15 years or so of getting people to enjoy the wait is that they’ve done the opposite. The wait is a very quick time now; you’d wait longer for your toast to pop up. As they boast about how much time it takes, they produce a product that gets closer and closer to the instant drink that the consumers of England and North America have wanted all along.

Two pours they talk about. Once. Twice. A pint. Yes, a pint of slop frequently. With less character than a springer spaniel.

We didn’t used to count and wave the number on a flag, but if you did, it took what it took. Once. Twice. 3 times. Could that head be better? Yes it could so the barman would work on it and go a 4th time, only giving it to you, albeit in the wrong place, when it was ready. And you didn’t push him. You didn’t glare at him. And you didn’t want him to draw anything on it.

But now it’s 2 pours. As if it’s a good thing. When it’s frequently a bad thing. In those days of perfect pints, you would go great distances because so and so’s had great pints. Today you’ll go great distances because so and so’s don’t slop up pints at you too badly.

But once upon a perfect time there was such a legendary thing as a “bad pint”. Grown men would talk of their experience, actual or close shave, with the fabled “bad pint” as if it were a dragon that preyed rarely but only on pint drinkers.

-I heard Willie Joe once had a bad pint up in that place
-No way!
-Aye, it was years ago now but he’s never been back since

-And do you like Tipperary, you do?
-I do yes, but you say it as if I shouldn’t?
-No, well, it’s just that I had a bad pint there in ‘74

I can’t remember what took me to deepest Meath one day in the mid 1980s - it was either to watch Dublin play at Páirc Tailteann, or else I was watching grown men race around on bicycles - but by the time I returned to Dublin that evening I was for years able to say,
-I had a bad pint up in Navan once

That was my meeting with the dragon, and as sickening as the experience was, its rarity was such that the recount of the meeting, of your very own slaying, was also an honour.

But as I say that was once upon a time. Now, however, the land of pint drinkers is smaller. Much smaller. And it is ruled by dragons. For it is their time. Bad pints are everywhere.

Or in other words, I had a bad pint on Saturday.

You’re just not supposed to get pints like that, not when you’ve just drunk 7 rather tasty ones. Or was it 9? You’re meant to be in a good place. You’re positively disposed towards everybody and everything. As long as they don’t try and hug you. And yet your pint is sickeningly foul.

It was so bad I first thought it must have come from Cork.

More on Irish Pubs and the Pint:
   • History of an Irish Pub in America
   • The Worst Pint of Guinness in America
   • The Closing of Irish Pubs in Kansas City
   • Open an Irish Pub in America

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 2:28 pm and is filed under 1-eolai, Food & Drink, Ireland. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.