smallbeer

Other commenters reference all these worse corruptions under Bush, except, upon examination they turn out to be smallbeer.

The Volokh Conspiracy » A Sandy Burglar Comeback? 2007

If the delicacy of the reader's imagination be a little hurt at imagining the elegant Titania in the disguise of a stout woman, a heavy burden for a clumsy bench, drinking what at Christopher Sly would have called very sufficient smallbeer with a peasant's wife, the following description of the fairy host may come more near the idea he has formed of that invisible company: -- Bessie Dunlop declared that as she went to tether her nag by the side of Restalrig Loch (Lochend, near the eastern port of Edinburgh), she heard a tremendous sound of a body of riders rushing past her with such a noise as if heaven and earth would come together; that the sound swept past her and seemed to rush into the lake with a hideous rumbling noise.

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft 1885