Whither Le Stubby? Cheap thrills inside

🌙 Last time, we examined nightcaps, the drink you have after the last drink of the night.

🇫🇷 This time, we look at the classic stubby bottle of French lager you buy in packs of 10 at the supermarket. Great format. Shame about the beer?

💎 I also have two exclusive interviews for you:

📚 The first is with craft beer YouTube supremo and prize winning author Jonny Garrett. You can buy Jonny’s book here.

🍻 The second is with Reece Hugill, Owner and Head Brewer at Donzoko Brewing.

🎨 This post also contains specially commissioned lino prints by the talented Laura Hadland. I don’t have the budget (yet?) to do this all the time but I wanted images, and I didn’t want to use AI to steal work from fellow creative types, so this time I’ve put my money where my mouth is. If you like them, share the love.

My late father was a wine guy. In fact I’ll go further than that: he was Mr Wine Society, through and through.

So when my parents decided to buy a French getaway (it was the 90s), what we ended up with was a farmhouse in the tiny rural of village of Fressin.

The area around Fressin, known as Les Sept Vallées, is nice enough in a damp kind of way, but it’s not exactly what you picture when you hear ‘holiday house in France’.

It soon became clear Dad had chosen it just to be close to the Wine Society’s outpost in nearby Hesdin.1

Still, when I think back to my visits there — which took me from callow teen to knackered young dad myself — what I remember drinking with Dad was beer. Or stubbies, to be precise: little 250 ml bottles of Kronenbourg, bought dirt cheap by the slab from the local hypermarché.

The quiet comfort of a stubby

These teeny bottles have a nostalgic pull for many beer lovers. They were a supermarket staple for many years, cheap and reliable, and they somehow retained a hint of continental cachet even when their French connection was a bit more strained.

Take Tesco’s Biere D’Or.2 In the introduction to his Fortnum & Mason Award-winning book The Meaning of Beer, Jonny Garrett tells the story of his dad drinking a stubby — just the one — of this own-brand lager every day after getting home from work.

It was the routine; his signal that the work day had ended — as vital as the meal he had it with, as the kiss for my mum, as the begrudging communication from his heirs. For such an important moment — maybe the best moment of the day — he didn’t invest much in it.

This ‘French Piss’ soon worked its way into Jonny’s life too.

My dad’s green stubbies became the lubricant for many drunken barbecues and illicit house parties as I pinballed my way through my teens, and Biere D’Or now holds a very special place in my heart. When I visit my parents these days, I insist that there’s a stack of French Piss in the fridge ready for my arrival.

We'll hear a bit more on stubby nostalgia from Jonny later, as well as Reece Hugill of Donzoko Brewing for a brewer’s take on putting something better in those little green bottles — maybe a good lager, maybe even a nice refreshing cider. First, though, here’s a gander at the stubby as it exists today.

Where the stubby really stands

A quick walk around some local supermarkets confirms what I thought: the stubby has largely gone underground. The physical shelves these days are home to ‘Spanish’3 lagers rather than French ones, offered in 330 ml bottles and 440 ml cans. To find your stubbies you have to go online. Here’s what your money gets you.

The main message this data wants to give us is stubbies are cheap. Little wonder so many of us remember drinking them when we were young; most of us were also skint. Or we were drinking into our parents’ booze budget and provided with supplies priced accordingly.

You might also tease out another message: stubbies average one unit or less per bottle, which is good for steady but not silly drinking. There are no strong ABVs in play down at this end of the market.

For a formative beer drinker not yet accustomed to bitterness, a stubby isn’t too much of a commitment. Plus the diminutive format means that the beer stays cold and fizzy all the way to the bottom. Stubbies were — are — a great option for an inexpensive quick fix of refreshment.

It’s just a shame the beer’s so shit. Still, rather than dream of what could be perhaps we should make peace stubbies as the idiot child of beer and simply love them for what they are.

“Little bottles of piss is fine as long as everyone understands they're little bottles of piss,” says Reece (from whom there’s more below). “You're not selling artisanal piss, you know what I mean? And then you're like: this is just a tiny bit better, but it's five pounds a bottle. No, thank you. I'll stick to having a nice expensive pint in the sun at a pub, and if I'm out fishing or camping or whatever, I'll take the little bottles of piss.”

What’s your take on le Stubby? Do you have fond memories?

Why the stubby still feels right

How to describe the taste of a typical stubby? Slightly malty, not especially bitter, and quite firmly fizzy. “It was a bit like drinking water that got you drunk. And yeah, that was dreamy for a 17 year old kid,” says Jonny.

For him, and many others no doubt, a lot of the appeal is about the bottle itself rather than its contents. He remembers its tactile nature as irresistible compared to a can. “They just feel really wholesome to have in your hand, whereas a can, even with the craft beer revolution, can still feel a little bit tacky.”

The stubby by contrast can seem almost innocent. Jonny recalls being given his first taste of booze by an older brother. “If he'd handed me a 440 [ml can] of Carling I'd have really struggled with it, but because it was this small bottle that didn't taste of much — but also reminded me of what my dad drank, what my holidays were like — it became a much smaller barrier. Being given that first bit of alcohol in my life was a huge step and yet this little stubby was such a friendly way of it happening.”

You don’t buy stubbies for the beer, you buy them for the vibes. Still… could the beer be better? Jonny thinks so: “There's an opportunity for a brand out there to use that stubby nostalgia to release something that maybe is a little bit higher quality, but still isn't challenging. I'd really hope that somebody would jump on it,” he says.

What’s really in the bottle?

If you’re a stubby connoisseur, you might be wondering how come they all taste the same. Turns out they’re all brewed at the same place, pretty much — the Brasserie de Saint Omer in northern France.

In fact the reality of how these beers are brewed may be somewhat like the Simpsons joke where a single brewery pipe simultaneously fills up tanks of Duff, Duff Lite and Duff Dry.

“I believe they're all basically the same beer just liquored back to different ABVs,” says Reece Hugill. “I can't be sure, but I imagine that's how it's done.”

The beer is (beers are?) most likely made from sugar (and maybe a bit of malt) plus hop extract, brewed as efficiently as possible.

And why? It all comes down to price. Stubbies are so cheap that brewers can only profit when they brew them at scale. For one thing, the ratio of glass to beer just doesn’t add up. (And that’s not even taking Extended Producer Responsibility into account.4) “Shipping glass around, it's also not really great for the world, to be honest,” says Reece.

Switching to an all-malt brew and real hops would up the costs. Maybe not by much, but maybe by enough to make filling a stubby with a decent beer prohibitive for smaller brewers.

Does it have to be beer though? When I suggest to Reece that a stubby cider might be a good option he’s quick to agree. “That would work, I think. Especially if it was something like Cidre Breton, where it's like interesting enough, just kind of bready and appley and zingy. If it was a bit funky, maybe it wouldn't work so well, but if it was something relatively accessible I think that actually would work rather than a beer.”

Pouring one out

Ultimately it’s about the occasion. Lots of us love a 10-pack of stubbies because it’s great for sharing with your mates at a barbecue. I enjoy them because 250 ml is a perfect little thirst quencher when I’m cooking. And yes, I also love them because they remind me of my dear old dad. A drink isn’t always just a drink, is it?