A few years ago – perhaps even less than that – craft beer was something for the hobbyist beer geek. Then, quickly, more people started getting interested – and not just the East London hipsters we love to mock. A recent Mintel report shows that 13 million people – a quarter of all British adults – have drunk craft beer in the last six months. Much to everyone’s relief, there simply aren’t that many hipsters or beer geeks around.

Never has a gift been so compromised by the manner of its giving. There was delight in beer circles the other day when George Osborne announced not only the end of the hated alcohol duty escalator, but also a further penny cut in the duty of beer. And then Grant Shapps put out that tweet.

In my last column I talked about cider: a drink that most people think is made of apples, and showed often, it isn’t. It’s a familiar story in food and drink: if you want to make sure what you’re putting in your mouth is what you think it is, you’re better off going for smaller producers who haven’t been compromised by the pressures of producing to the demands of our all-powerful supermarkets.

There’s no easy way to humblebrag this so let me get it out of the way and move on: I just got back from Chicago, where I was flown and accommodated for a week mainly so I could drink cider. Well, it was one way to celebrate the end of Dry January.

How much is too much for a beer? £4 a pint? £5? How about £12 for a large bottle?  If your answer to the above is anything other than “Well, it depends on the beer, doesn’t it?” then good news! Broader horizons and untold pleasures await you.

Ever since we’ve been able to make tools and use language, we’ve understood that the year is cyclical. Behaviour that’s acceptable at one time of year is considered wrong at another. Throughout the history of civilisation – any civilisation – we keep a lid on some of our desires and urges so that we can get on with each other without things descending into anarchy. And in every civilisation, there’s always a pressure valve that allows us – within a confined space and time – to cut ourselves loose, to party. Whether that’s Mardi Gras, Mexican Day of the Dead or the Glastonbury Festival.

“One day I’d like to retire and run a pub.”

It’s a dream many of us have. Ditching the grind of the nine to five – or eight to eight for most LondonlovesBusiness.com readers – in favour of standing behind the bar, master of all you survey, polishing the brass while waiting for the regulars to arrive, then fulfilling your pleasant obligations as Mine Host, dispensing wisdom, confidences and kindnesses with the food and drink.

We’ve all propped up the bar of a pub somewhere in London that has a magnificent stone eagle perching above the door outside, or has the words ‘Truman, Hanbury & Buxton’ running under the eaves. Or we’ve looked at that magnificent chimney looming over the building still known as the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane.

Only a heartless moron could hate the London pub.

Pubs in London are grittier than the undeniably charming and cosy thatched roof country pub.  They possess a faded glamour and an ‘I’ve still got it’ bravado that’s missing from other boozers in other town centres.  Despite the inevitable creep of faceless chains run by people who don’t care about pubs and look down on people who drink in them, the vast majority of the capital’s drinking dens still carry an individuality and swagger you don’t really find anywhere else.