A small Staffordshire brewery called Slater’s Ales has received some welcome publicity following a small spat in Westminster over whether or not it’s brew should be on sale in The Stranger’s Bar. The beer is called Top Totty and The Stranger’s Bar is one of four such establishments in the House of Commons where thirsty MPs can get a drink. It’s also the only one in which MPs can entertain guests.
Top Totty is described by Slater’s Ales as a “stunning blonde beer, full bodied with a voluptuous hop aroma“. More prosaically it has “a ripe and generous fruitiness, with deep and complex hop notes and rich malt.”
Top Totty was the subject of a complaint by the Shadow Equalities minister Kate Green who said she was”disturbed” to find that the brew was on sale in the bar, particularly as the label on the tap showed a “nearly naked woman”. Actually it looks more like a girl with a bikini and a bow tie on, serving a couple of drinks.
Top Totty
Ms Green may have a slight point but it does seem like overkill to remove a popular beer just because of the label on the tap; who looks at that picture anyway? The usual suspects were dragged out to have a moan about the affair; someone called Mike Nattrass from UKIP said that “….this sort of knee-jerk Puritanism does more to damage to the cause of equality than a thousand beer labels“, but the Conservative MP who brought the beer to The Strangers’s Bar to start with, Jeremy Lefroy, apologised for any possible offence.
It appears that Kate Green may have been in a very small minority, possibly even a minority of one in complaining about the brew; another female MP, Conservative Tracey Crouch, sent out a tweet suggesting that a more offensive name would have been “middle-ranking totty” and that there was nothing wrong with the Slater’s Ales brew.
Whatever, it’s gone now but perhaps it could be replaced by Pagosa’s Nipple Mountain Nip or Sweetwater’s Happy Ending Imperial Stout.
