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Bitter - This would be your basic British beer. When you go up to the bar and order a pint, this is what you'll get. It's about 6 – 7% alcohol, so it packs a bit more of a punch than American beers, plus you get fed it 16 oz at a time, so four pints of bitter will do considerably more damage to your inhibitions than four beers in an American bar.

Black and Tan - Beer and stout layered like a stratigraphic representation of the Earth's crust, the sort of thing you are likely to notice when your chin is on the bar and you are at eye level with the glass and your brain is lazily picking up bits and pieces of your almost entirely forgotten college education and tossing them to your consciousness for one last think before it dumps them altogether.

Black Velvet - Guinness beer & Champagne. A great way to give a heavy, dark beer a bit more fizz, a tickle in your nose, and a yodel in your throat (no, I don't know what that means, but it sounds good).

Bucks Fizz - A mimosa, though with all the meals and teas the Brits fit into their waking hours, I just don't see how they're going to squeeze brunch in as well, which by ancient French law, is the only time they'll allow fine champagne to get anywhere near the Tropicana.

Cider (also: "scrumpy") - One of my all-time favourite drinks that is thankfully starting to make some in-roads in the American market (particularly thanks the Woodchuck Cider Company in Vermont). It is a fizzy apple drink that tastes a bit like you'd expect apple soda to taste, only lighter. You can order it sweet or dry, but whatever you do, do order it. The one problem I have is remembering that it is not just a glass of juice. Although the stuff is around 5 – 7% alcohol, you can't taste that part at all, and before you know it you may find yourself dancing on the bartop or going home with entirely the wrong sort of person (a fact which probably will not become evident until the next morning).

Mead - Liquid gold. This is that stuff that Beowulf and other ancient and medieval heroes are always getting fantastically, roaringly drunk off of. It is fermented honey, and if that's not enough to make you drool, I don't know what is. You actually don't find it much in regular liquor stores, but it is often on sale in gift shops at tourist attractions (personally, I prefer the Edinburgh Castle bottles to the Tower of London vintage. I find it has more body and less of a watered-down taste). I've also found "mead" in America a few times, but almost always mixed with the juice of some berry or fruit and much diluted and thin tasting (not that mead has a high alcohol content-it's classified as a wine, which means 10%-14% or so).

Shandy - Beer and carbonated lemonade. Sort of a somebody-spiked-the-punch kind of drink.

Snakebite - A happy marriage of cider and lager. This drink is so good that many American bars have begun serving it (even ones that never served cider before.) I prefer my cider straight up, as it were, but if you just gotta have your beer, too, this is perhaps the best way to do it.

(Scotch) Whisky - Gin may be the English liquor of choice (with tonic, of course), but Whisky is the definitive Scottish spirit (The Irish and others spell it "Whiskey," but the Scots leave out the "e;" plus, in Scotland, it is a bit redundant to say "Scotch Whisky," so don't bother. It's all Scotch north of the border). "Single Malt" means what's in the bottle came from a single distillery and so a connoisseur will know ahead of time its level of quality. "Blended" means they don't know where the hell it came from, possibly Detroit, but it tastes just about as good to the layman, and it's cheaper, too.

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