Back in the Seventies there was no social lubricant more potent than the Watneys Party Seven. A giant can of ale that required extensive mechanics involving a screwdriver and hammer to gain access to its pungent contents – in the teenage world in which I moved, this was the very passport to popularity. A Party Seven was the key that would open any suburban front door, with or without an invite. Or at least that was the theory. 

I remember one Saturday night meeting up with a group of mates one of whom knew of a house party being thrown locally. None of us were closely acquainted with the party giver, but that didn’t matter, he reckoned; if we took along a Party Seven we were bound to be let in.

So we all chipped in the hard-earned earnings of our Saturday jobs, collected the full £1.50 required, and sent the oldest looking amongst us into the local off licence. Suitably armed, we headed off to the party, flares flapping in the wind. 

When the four of us arrived we rang the doorbell. And a bloke a couple of years above us at school opened the door, took one look at the Party Seven and his eyes widened. 

“Hey, cheers lads,” he said, grabbing the can before slamming the door in our faces. 

For those of us experimenting for the first time with alcohol in the mid 1970s the market was not what might be termed sophisticated. Wine choice was largely restricted to Hirondelle, Mateus Rose or Blue Nun liebfraumilch. As for beer, well if you wanted to drink at home there was the Party Seven, which became a national institution almost from the moment it was introduced 1968. A hefty industrial can, filled with seven pints of Watney’s ubiquitous draft bitter Red Barrel, it was a staple of parties, pop festivals and football special trains for a decade. 

Though quite why was anyone’s guess. It tasted as if it had been brewed in a vat that had previously contained industrial effluent. Sour, acidic, chemical, leaving an aftertaste not unlike you might imagine the consequences of gargling with bleach, it could only be drunk by those with absolutely no clue about beer. Like us. 

Plus those giant cans took some getting into. It required a brisk assault by something strong and sharp. The opening of the Party Seven at parties would involve an esoteric ritual of everyone evacuating the kitchen while one brave soul would cautiously approach the can in the manner of a bomb disposal expert. And full access was generally preceded by an explosive arc of pressurised liquid vomiting out at high speed, arcing across the room, leaving a trail of sticky mulch in its wake.

The moment it was opened, cheers would ring out and a line would form of youngsters holding jam jars, each harbouring the secret hope that the thing would have emptied by the time they were at the front of the queue. 

Not surprisingly, the Party Seven disappeared from view the moment the ring-pull was invented, when it was surpassed as the gate-crasher’s golden ticket by the six pack. Now it is back, revived by a beer collective in Liverpool, hoping both to capture the nostalgia market and find a method to deliver their product after lockdown curtailed pub sales. Though these days not only is Party Seven shorn of its semi-industrial after taste (the beer inside is proper craft ale), it also comes with an easy access tap attached. 

Which would have been something that party giver back in the Mancunian suburbs in the Seventies would have more than welcomed. Because as we walked disconsolately away from the house having been both rejected and relieved of our peace offering that night, the mate who had been carrying the can pointed out one minor consolation. He had taken the precaution of shaking the barrel vigorously as we approached the party. 

“It will be all over the ceiling about now,” he said, smirking.

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