Mixing it. I have long entertained the theory that Snakebite was frowned upon by the landlord community neither for legal reasons nor for tap-contamination reasons, but for pub contamination reasons. That is to say, they don’t want their pub contaminated with snakebite-infused sick. In my recall snakebites are readily available in Students’ Unions, often made even less bearable with the unspeakable ‘black’. So, as BDP might ask, why is that?
Well, the point of drinking snakebite (rather self-evidently) is drunkenness as quickly and cheaply as possible, but anyone who has made use of the noxious mixture in question know that it brings with it the danger of accidental vomiting. None of the above, surely, can be seen as positives from a landlord’s point of view. Compare and contrast with Students’ Unions, which are organisations geared precisely to enabling swift, cheap and extreme drunkenness (yes yes, amongst other things, I know). Furthermore, those who make the policies for the bars at SUs are very rarely the same people who do the cleaning of the lavatories.
As for Mackesons and / or light ale, surely these are exclusively bottled products? If Mackesons is available on draught somewhere, I’d like to know about it, so I can be sure to avoid the area. There can be no contamination issue with a light and bitter because it consists simply of a half of bitter in a pint glass, accompanied by an opened but unpoured bottle of light ale.
Talking of which, I fear the light and bitter is dying out, because the only people who ever seem to drink it are old giffers (and me, occasionally). It appears to be slightly less fashionable than the glorious cider armadillo (q.v.). It’s a shame because it’s an ideal starting pint the lunchtime after the heavy night before. Quite often I have to explain the make-up of the L&B to inexperienced bar-whelps who should know (light and) better.