Beer, how do I love thee?

It’s August in an even year and so I’ve been to CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival at Earl’s Court. Not that it only runs alternate years, just that I seem to go in 2004, 2006 and now 2008. So, I spent Tuesday evening with my old boss, a real Scotsman and a pretend Scotsman supping pints of real ale from around the country, snacking on strips of deep-fried pig skin, in somewhere which by resembling a sixties brutalist car-park has absolutely none of the ingredients which make a good pub.

Except for five days a year where it has the best selection of beer anywhere in the country.

Good old concrete hell Earl’s Court. Even it can’t spoil the joy of discovering a different micro-brewery or the fun to be had watching the bemused expressions of foreigners wandering through the hall. The GBBF, as it’s pointlessly known, has no entertainment other than to drink beer. Even the Germans like an oompah band whilst getting intoxicated.

It’s not all wrong side of middle-age men with pot bellies and beards, although there’s an unusually high quota of them, there’s also a surprising number of young women, city types and people wearing hats made from balloons. One of whom I ended up talking to, or rather listening to, was a public defender and despite having to be in court for nine o-clock the following morning was hitting the cider and perry stand pretty hard.

“But, you know, he’s probably guilty, so fuck him, yeah?” she cackled.

(Perry, incidentally, what’s that all about? Twelve months ago nobody drank perry. Re-brand it as pear cider, give it an advertising campaign with an Oirish voice-over and some cock and bull story about how the old cider makers used to save the pears to make their own special drink to keep, and every bugger’s drinking the stuff.)

Anyway. Beer. Pubs. Love them.

I talked recently about my romantic devotion to the perfect pub, or indeed the imperfect local, but it’s the beer as much as anything that gets me excited.

“Ah, come on, man,” says the Greek guy who works behind the bar with me. “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.” But then when someone offers to buy him a drink he takes a bottle of Bud - and I mean crappy imitation American Bud not the real Czech stuff.

“It’s all in the water,” I try to explain. “The great thing about British beer is it tastes of the land it comes from. Regional brewing is dictated by the hops and the water where the brewery is based.”

“Like Stella is Belgian?”

“Well, no, because that’s brewed in Cardiff.”

I guess you can’t explain it, and even going to a festival, isn’t the same as actually travelling around the country and trying them in their homesteads.

I could go on about all the wonderful beers I’ve tried and loved. About how the Midlands is the spiritual home of brewing, but the best beers probably come from Yorkshire. About how I’m becoming a little obsessed by beers from Cornwell and Norfolk, but don’t worry.

I won’t.

Instead, I think we’re back to romanticism.

It’s the same with my ideas about pubs. The history, the flavour, the sense of tradition that comes from good beer. You never get that with Carling. But it’s also partially a romantic invention of the drinker. It is, at the end of the day, just water hops, sometimes malt, sometimes barely, occasionally other bits and bobs. The context is imposed by the drinker and the brewer alike.

Certain men find the idea of sitting alone in the pub, reading the paper or just thinking somehow a noble past-time. Just stopping off for a quick pint and to set the world to rights and perhaps bump into an like-minded soul and with whom to pass the time of day in suitably manly fashion.

This is, alas, romanticising drinking and I, like many, am guilty.

Usually when I’ve already had a couple.

A few times recently when I’ve been out in town, everyone’s disappeared into the public transport network, and I’ve missed the 2305 and so rather than hang-around Charing Cross until the 2345 I think I’ll have one more and read my book for twenty minutes. Fortunately, contrary to the Daily Mail’s opinion that city centres are no-go areas because of marauding twenty-four hour drinkers swirling aluminium chairs above their heads, it’s surprisingly difficult to get a pint after traditional opening hours in central London.

So, I think it, but don’t necessarily do it.

Tuesday, on my way home from the beer festival and I miss the 2323 at London Bridge by seconds which means a thirty-five minute wait. I go for a bit of a wander around and come across a pub, The Bunch Of Grapes, still very much open. Despite whole weeks of my life (probably) spent hanging around London Bridge I’ve never spotted this pub before and I’ve got that ‘a-bit-tipsy-but-feeling-really-sober’ feeling going on and think that I could happily handle one more.

I glance at my watch, it’s now 2336. To be sure I’m on the next train I’d really need to leave no later than 2350.

I stand in the doorway for a moment. It looks an okay pub. So-so, but not great. Young’s on tap, which despite relocating the brewery to Bedford and selling the Wandsworth land for housing is still quite a good pint.

(You see? Context.)

2337.

No. This’d be drinking for the sake of drinking. There’s nothing noble or dignified or romantic in it; it’s just being a bit pissed.

I head back to the station.

The irony in all of this comes Saturday night. I do an evening shift during which some Australians come in and ask for ‘proper English beer.’ I do the whole waxing lyrical thing about the Greene King IPA and Abbot Ale, which whilst not bad beer, are hardly amazing. They opt for one of each and for the second round switch to Fosters and a Guinness respectively. It’s seriously hot in the pub, though, so when I get home I have a cold lager simply to cool down. After all my adoration for the merits of ale, I have a bottle of Carlsberg.

“God, you drank that quick,” says Beck as we head for bed.