As a licencee you need to pass a test. Never fear, as a multiple choice ragbag of fifty facts about pubs, you are likely to get them right if you have ever been in a pub up to closing time. One of the slightly more arcane parts however is the alcoholic strength of drinks. Namely, what does that percentage by volume mean? (If interested it means the percentage of the liquid that is alcohol, unsurprisingly). There are also sums to work out how pissed someone will be after a couple of pints of Stella and a double Brandy.
An additional fact comes in on labelling laws. In the UK a drink is allowed to be sold as non-alcoholic if it has 0.5% or less alcohol by volume. Hence finding Fentiman’s in the unlicensed sweet shop. However there is another subdivision, that of Low-Alcohol Beers, between 0.5%-1.2%. I have never willingly drunk any of these, barely strong enough to give you a giggle, they still do have some alcohol in them. And if I’m off the bouze, I’m off the weak bouze too.
For a thorough list of these brews, see here: a German website enamoured by them (and the science in some sort of Campaign For Low Alcohol Pop, or CLAP way). Some tremendous claims are made for some of these beers, Whitbread White Label being less gassy than other canned lager, Maxim Low, you’d never know. There is even a Low Alcohol version of Belle-Vue Kriek, which surely is indistinguishable from Panda Pops Cherryade.
Nevertheless for the puposes of this Advent Calandar, we need to choose a beer: and that honour has gone to Tennants L.A. Firstly for imagining the scenario when a man of the road gets so pissed that his next purchase goes slightly wrong and he settles for LA instead of Super. But mainly for this tremendous piece of copy on the back of the can:
“Scientific tests prove that even when large quantities of Tennent’s LA are consumed it has remarkable little effect on the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. The effect of drinking Tennent’s LA is much less than you would expect given its alcoholic strength’. It’s 1.2%, your bloodstream frankly is not going to notice.
This piece will be updated when I get to drink some.