Ale is the True and Proper Drink of an Englishman

My last night in England for a while...
I was staying in Duxford with Nasim at one of her aunt's houses and just around the corner, we'd been informed, exists a very traditional english pub. That's right, the kind that closes at 11PM on Friday night. A bunch of cask ales on tap, English grub, low ceilings, and the works. This is a locals-only joint. Anyway, we trotted down there in the rain and sat for the last couple rounds of the evening. I had to get in my last,last,last fill of english ales before getting to continental europe where I'm having a much harder time finding ales. Kölsch bier is a slightly different story, but I'll get to that in good time. English ales, on the other hand are all very weak. Apparently, IPA to them means 3.8% alcohol. If you go to a microbrewery in the United States and you get a beer with less than 4% alcohol, chances are you're drinking "light" beer. The food is heavy, the beer is thin, I guess that's why they say the english drink so much. In order to get drunk off of english beer, you really have to exert yourself. I also suppose they've kept it that way since ale did save england from the plague. I guess I have no room for complaint.

As we were stepping out of the place at the late hour of 10:55 PM (I should rather say, "ducking out") I saw a cross beam at eye level with the words "Ale is the true and proper drink of an Englishman" painted in fading yellow letters. This made me very happy. I greatly enjoyed traveling around the British Midlands drinking lots of weak ales pulled from the cask. I shall return to England again and again. It is a wonderul thing that the beer renaissance has come back to europe. It's no longer American brewers who are looking toward the future and the past to make good beers.
If ale is in fact the true and proper drink of an englishman, then you might as well sign me up for being an englishman!