MCKEWAN’S BEST SCOTCH
Scottish & Newcastle
UK, 3.6% ABV
A Scottish & Newcastle staple for as long as anyone can remember, the good old McEwan’s Best Scotch pump was a bar top necessity across the North East of England well before the onset of drinking as a fashionable pastime. But getting the young punters in meant getting the old ones out, and nowadays McEwan’s Best Scotch has been relegated to grubby granddad bars and working men’s clubs. Southerners know Northerners like a drink, but are still shocked when they overhear them asking for ‘a pint of Scotch’. But huge whiskies are not the order of the day – in fact Scotch refers to the method of brewing that gives this beer a very dark chestnut hue. It is generally served with an inch-thick head of foam – easy drinking and malty, with a peaty blandness, the old folks still lap it up. Billed as ‘the one you’ve got to come back for’ during a long ad campaign in the 70s and 80s; one of the TV commercials depicted a just-returned, homesick Geordie supping a pint of Scotch in his local, regaling misadventures at the Munich beer festival with flashbacks of clinking beer steins, lederhosen-clad men slapping each other. When asked by his local barmaid what the women were like, he simply replied, ‘Ahhh man, giz a bag o’ crisps!’ It’s a real shame; time is running out for this brew, its aging customer base will disappear within a generation and with them the legend that blokes up North sup whiskey by the pint. GT
