The stale leftover
beer in the pint glasses of the local pub, collected up and put back into the barrel to resell the next day.
Many moon ago in yesteryear, when local publicans at your nearest watering hole were less honest than a Politician on polling day, pubs in the UK used to only serve up foul mess labelled lager - not your craft wonders and
fruity ales of today's youthful world.
To put
money back in the till at the end of a torrid evening of sales, the landlord of public houses would collect up the 'slops' left at the bottom of everyone's beer glasses and return this stale beer back to the barrel.
As most
people would be only drinking a choice of 2 lagers, it didn't really matter what barrel they went back into, nor that they made the
beer taste rancid. As they never cleaned the
beer lines, you couldn't tell if it was that making the beer rank, or the slops from old Coughy
Jack's leftovers being the cause for the slightly chewy beverages.
Dave: 'Err Mike, does your pint taste
rank there
mate?'
Mike: 'That swine landlord been filling the barrel with slops again. Think I've got one of coughy
Jack's teeth floating about from his pint last night!'