MOCKED as the alcoholic beverages of choice for builders and bus-stop pissheads, these drinks are ripe for gentrification in Shoreditch pop-up bars:
Newcastle Brown Ale
As the brand your visiting uncle insists you have stocked for him to stagnate with in a corner chair, it’s neither pretentious or likeable enough for any sort of CAFRA credit. Which puts Newkie Brown right in the danger zone for wankers colour-matching its worrying rouge glow to green wellingtons and autumnal gilets for slumming at the dog track.
John Smith’s
The best-selling bitter in the country, as North Yorkshire is oddly big and an oddly big fan of drinking foul shit. This forgotten gem is a contender for a TikTok challenge to down it in one, ignoring its shredded wheat cereal musk, Gen Z necking it like it’s nothing to them. Which it isn’t.
Babycham
Chasing clout by calling itself ‘the happiest drink in the world!’ like it’s liquid MDMA. A drink with its own hoodie merch featuring its ghastly cartoon mascot that’s maybe a deer? Selling varsity jackets alongside for a new hipster generation gentrifying the idea of a disastrous night out in Southend is a future we can all fear.
Boddingtons
Who cares about the slosh when the logo looks like a badge you can appropriate faster than you did a Czech second-tier football club? To to remove any perception of you being a Manchester bricky and not a corporate marketing assistant, pour it into a glass for a perfect milky head. Just another split the G-style drinking trick for utter twats.
Blossom Hill Rosé
With a strawberry hue this artificially ghastly, it’s tipped over into camp and kitsch which makes it ripe for a consumer base turning chav booze into an ironic statement by chugging pink shit by the bottle on trains. Growing interest could put post-midnight offies back on the map, at least.
Tennent’s
Many are put off by Tennent’s simply being Scottish, but that’s never stopped knobheads wearing kilts at weddings. They’ll have no actual ties to this beverage either but will claim to recall the distinctive taste of Loch Katrine’s water from a boating holiday with boarding school, which is what poisoned them into thinking that anyone cares.
Frosty Jack’s
The ultimate in underclass cosplay, toting a two-and-a-half liter bottle of FJ into your party is an act of social one-upmanship that can’t be beat. What could be a bolder statement, while the rest of the party’s sipping Negronis, to proclaim with your choice ‘I drink to get pissed, and I’m not hiding it?’ Expect to be on the cover of Italian Vogue by the end of the summer.
