Friday Night Beers

It’s Friday and the week is ending which means beer o’clock looms – sadly no chance of a cold UB tonight in Shanghai (though if you trace the mergers and acquisitions of the brewery over more than a century you do arrive at Kingfisher beer which is available in an Indian restaurant or two around town. UB was initially founded in 1857 by Thomas Leishman, a Scotsman, who started the brewery in southern India. Being east of Suez UB’s brews were popular in British influenced spots across the Far East including Shanghai. The major market for UB was British troops across Asia and it was shipped around in vast quantities (British soldiers reputedly liking a drink or two) in huge barrels called ‘hogsheads’. Not sure today’s lager lovies would have enjoyed a pint of UB as it was more of an IPA  I think and wouldn’t perhaps have appealed to the hordes who like a pint of fizzy keg or something in a bottle with a lemon in it of a Friday night. This ad ran in the North-China Daily News in 1936.