Real Ale (& Other Beers) Message Board

Hello again Andyl. I just joine your cricket group. We are also in Science ficion fans, fantasy fans, purely programers, brits.

Yesterday a search on real ale only gave me the boifiction group, and I havn't worked out why.

I guess there are a few shared likes. I actually haven't got that many books on beer (I get have got rid of my old Good Beer Guides but I do love drinking it and am a member of CAMRA and sometimes volunteer at my local beer festival (Peterborough).

andyl, ringman - you two are going to think I'm following you around as well! Is there some archetype at work here, the British, real-ale drinking, science-fiction reading programmer?

Hey Floppy, I'm not actually British, despite what my Holt/Pratchett/Rankin collection might imply. Nor do I work as a programmer (though I did get a comp-sci degree)!

No, I didn't mean that the archetype applied to everyone in here, just to a particular set of us who seem to be joining all the same groups :)

It would be interesting , though, to see some sort of venn diagram for a selection of groups. I reckon that might show up some interesting overlaps and commonalities...

Anyway, beer. Theakston's Old Peculier, best beer in the world :D

With the name Angharad, you may not be british, but surely there is some Welsh ancestry?

Curiously though I have lots of Pratchet and Holt, I have more by Ian Rankin then Robert.

Right now my favorite brewery is one local to where I grew up, Delaware, called Dogfishhead. They make many a tasty brew including a mead-based one called Midas Touch. Any other favorite microbrews out there (American or at least available in America)? I live a block from a pub with a 300+ rotating beer menu, so I'm always on the look out for new beers.

I guess those 300+ aren't cask ales then unless it is a rather large pub with lots of drinkers.

My local pub is The Palmerston Arm's in Peterborough which always has 10 beers on gravity dispense plus a couple of ciders. I am of course looking forwards to the Peterborough Beer Festival at the end of the month and hope to pick up something interesting to read there.

I might just be a fantasy fan (Prydain, Robin McKinley)… Who can say?

That pub, the Sunset Grille, has about 100 on tap, plus 2-3 cask quality at any given time, 200 or so bottled. Their basement keg room is a beautiful thing.

I seem to fit in here - can't help on the programming front, but seem to match the otehr requirements.

My local's one of the outlets for the Beartown brewery, so I'm always assured a decent pint,AND the pub has draft cider and perry so the OH can keep me company without complaining.

I had some of their Bear Ass the other day and thought that was OK but not quite a clean enough taste for me - but that could be how it was kept. I would like to try some of their others including Polar Eclipse so I hope they are on at the next Beer Festival as I have no real reason to visit Congleton.

I think they are going to be at the National Winter Ales festival in Manchester city centre in January. My favourite is their Kodiak gold (pale and hoppy), and Bearskinfull which is a loverly full flavoured pint.
They have done a seasonal blackcurrent stout which is very fruity - a bit sweet for my palate but definetly worth trying. I can't remember the name now though.

Sigh. Another Brit who's a science fiction-reading ex-programmer here. And my arrival seems to have pushed the Peak District maps up the shared books list, as well, as it has elsewhere.

My Friday-lunchtime real ale pub in Farnborough has just been turned into a gastro-pub. I did get a nice pint of Doom Bar there, but sadly that's probably going to be the one and only visit, with a car journey necessary for future lunchtime trips.