Improving the quality of on-board beer on trains
Perhaps I shouldn't post this, but one of the joys of beer festivals is smuggling your last pint out of the venue and drinking it on the train home.Well, if trains sold draught real ale, straw-coloured and sparkling in the sunlight, cold as a mountain stream with an intense hop bitterness and beautiful grapefruity aroma, we wouldn't be forced into such desperate measures.
Maybe Fast Cask will improve things in this respect, but I rather doubt it.
I've had Traquair house ale and Duvel on trains so it's not all bad.
ReplyDeleteIf they can't be bothered to carry a few basic bottles, they're not going to bother carrying a cask, even an easy-to-handle one. (The fact that they don't serve even nitrokeg on draught should be the giveaway.) This is as much a CAMRA fantasy as 2% beers as the saviours of rural pubs and panacea for "binge-drinking" and alcohol-related violence.
ReplyDeleteWhilst we may be living in a slightly different world here pubwise (Protz claims that 46% of pubs in the UK serve no real ale; at a guess, I'd put that at at least 90% in Scotland, and 98% outside of the major cities), things are no different on trains Down South. It's canned Carling, and you can like it or bring your bloody own. Which I do, and which I'd imagine is a hell of a lot less trouble than trying to pursuade a national train-operating company to invest in untried technology for the benefit of the tiny proportion of their customers who give two flying fucks what alchoholic berverage they throw down their throats before berating me on their well thought-out views on Muslims, the Bilderburg Group and their revolutionary new method of making wine in two weeks.
Normally I'd agree that the train companies don't have the imagination or the incentive to supply better beer – my Fast Cask comment was sarcastic, but look at this: http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/article/87338
ReplyDeleteSeems they have actually tried it on a train (though I'll still eat my hat if they roll it out).