New experience at half a pint a go

I went to a beer festival for the first time this weekend- The Hitchin Beer Festival. My idea of a beer enthusiast of the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) variety is someone with a beard, male (40-plus), possibly sandals, but definitely with a t-shirt or sweat shirt emblazoned with a pub, brewery or beer. That aside, if you want to try a wide range of beers – if you are sensible in a half pint glass – then a beer festival is for you. I tried a handful of interesting beers, ranging in colour and consistency, but mostly sub-4% proof. Not for me the 5% stuff. What was disturbing about this event was the supposed antics of the real ale anoraks who come equipped with test tubes to take the beer away and really analyse it in the comforts of their own (I would presume) grimy bedsit in North London or wherever. At this point, I started to feel less enthusiastic about my first beer festival, not wishing to be roped in with refugees from a 1970s school staff room. But then I consoled myself with the knowledge that like those I was with, we were not applying lab-technician terminology to each and every beer. It was either worth swilling down or not. I will be back next year, one year older, but I am determined that I will never have hair growing out of my ears like alfalfa and I will certainly never don a t-shirt with “The Carpenters Arms, Lower Finchampton” across my chest.