Agnes in St Andrews: A Pretentious Pint Problem

As I enrolled in my semester abroad, I was prepared for a wide range of unpredictability, anticipating the same strange, unique eccentricities that seem to infiltrate every university town. However, I was relying on the one tradition I thought was truly universal: the student beer-and-coffee routine. 

It goes something like this: You walk up to the bartender, flash your student ID, announce, “One beer, please,” and a fresh pint of their cheapest beer is handed to you. Each time you order another, one word is ripped away: “One beer” simply turns into “beer,” until you finally signal your order with a pointed finger. The next day, you wake up dehydrated and drag yourself to your local café. You walk up to the barista and quietly utter the words, “One coffee, please,” and a big cup of black filter coffee is immediately handed to you. It is probably sour after brewing in the same container for hours, and sprinkled with some coffee grounds, but it is just what you need — paired with a cigarette (or some anxiety), it will surely get your stomach going. 

But clearly, St Andrews has missed the cardinal rule of student drinking. “One beer, please,” will likely result in this response: “We have 25 active taps available! Could I interest you in a Yippieyappie light beer with a raspberry flavour? Or, for an extra £4, perhaps a pint of our newly-imported dark Belgian bumblebeer?” Decoding the menu will sober you right up.

Even more shocking is the lack of regular coffee. The queues at Rector’s Café and Taste feel endless, as each Italian-named milk and espresso recipe takes about ten minutes. Say, “One coffee, please,” and you’ll get a confused barista — and the realisation that most cafés in town don’t even serve a classic filter coffee. 

Somewhere between the oat milk and the IPAs, St Andrews’ brewing culture lost me. My student life is already a blur of inconsistency — sprinting between modules, part-time jobs, and social cliques in a rapid fire. Coffee houses and pubs used to be my sanctuaries of simplicity, but now every drink is foamier, sexier, and somehow less satisfying than the last. The tried-and-true rituals of the three-word order are drowned in a sea of unnecessary conversation and decision anxiety. And anyway, isn’t student drinking supposed to be about quantity over quality?