Meantime brewery
‘Meantime’ craft brewery playing cards, United Kingdom, c. 2000.
This might perhaps be called a modern, non-standard no-revoke pack. All the cards have a black background and the pip cards in each suit are in white. The aces and court cards display one of the range of craft beers made by Meantime Brewing of Greenwich. The four aces (green index) show a bottle of London pale ale; the four kings (yellow index) show a bottle of London lager; the four queens (also green index) display a bottle of India pale ale, and each of the jacks (red index) show a bottle of the Meantime Yakima red ale.
Above: ‘Meantime brewing’ playing cards, Greenwich, United Kingdom, c. 2000.
Meantime Brewing Co was founded by Alistair Hook in 1999 in a Greenwich flat. It brews a number of limited-edition beers a year and there is a fully kitted out brewery shop.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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