Beer beer beer beer, beer beer beer beer

I had the good fortune to be invited along to a pub crawl last weekend. Though I was informed it wasn't a pub crawl in the normal sense, with it's negative connotations, but some refined gentlemen tried the beers in several pubs across Lincoln.

Apparently this little group of real ale enthusiasts do this on a regular basis, every couple of months one of their number is responsible for organising a trip to a town basically go around trying some quality beers.

Sounds like an excellent idea to me!

So this trip was down to my old school chum Eddie and he asked me a while back if I'd like to join them. Me like beer, so I was totally up for this. For some reason I'd envisioned a younger group and a later session, so the fact that it was an afternoon thing and they were getting trains back about half 6 in the evening caught me by surprise a little, so sadly I didn't get out to them till about 4. And there I found some guys in their own group T-shirts! They have their own logo! This I liked, not only was this a group of guys who were clearly passionate about their ale, but they were passionate enough to have an official club with a name, logo and t-shirt! My feeling is that real ale enthusiasts are basically nerds who love beer.

What was even better was what a welcoming group it was. You know what it's like when a friend asks you to join his other friends who you've never met for some drinks, you can feel like an outsider a little bit. Even more so if the other guys have a little group thing going on. Not the Pint and Puffin group, they were all friendly and welcoming as soon as I arrived. (This may have something to do with the fact they'd been at the ale for a good few hours by then. Though if this were true, I had none of the normal isolated feeling of a sober man among inebriated folk either.)

And I found them to be a lovely and interesting bunch. They were all, as I'd said, clearly very passionate about their ale, which is something I can relate to, but they all had their interesting tales too. I was treated to tales about table tennis, banks IT and the origins of the group and their name amongst other conversations, a lot of which revolved around computers as well.

By the end of the afternoon, I was heading on home, having tried some excellent beers and had a thoroughly enjoyable few hours. Plus, there'd been numerous mentions of getting me onto future trips, which just goes to show that either I'd made a good impression, or they were all really really drunk.