From a bored Tuesday night wondering what we could do that was better than sitting on our arses, to writing for thousands of visitors each month, we’re pretty proud of our little hobby and we spend most of the time thinking about how we can make it better (unfortunately the day job prevents that from actually happening!).

We've come along way baby...

...from the days of cocktails and Mythos!

We don’t always write posts as much as we’d like too and we don’t always write about things as quickly as we’d like to (nothing like a blog post once the ship has sailed eh?!). And despite the out of date ‘About’ page it’s all worth it when we get nice comments or bump into people at beer festivals who tell us how much they enjoy reading our musings.

So it’s great to be able to get involved with a project that aims to bring together the beer community and hopefully contribute something useful for other people who want to find out about beer or write about it.

In late May we’ll be attending the European Beer Bloggers Conference and little me will be sitting on a panel entitled “Do’s and Don’t of Beer Blogging”, designed to provide an answer to the questions about beer blogging that Google just can’t answer. Think of it like a beery search engine that’s drunk waaaay too many beers and might not provide coherent answers.

European Beer Bloggers Conference

I’ll be joining author Pete Brown and journalist Melissa Cole to give you the chance “to learn a few new tricks, discuss important issues, and ask a question you have never had answered”.

There’s currently plenty of spaces left for the conference which starts on 20th May (although expect some drinking in London from the night before!) and you can sign up here.There’s also the chance to win a free conference pass.

The conference in the UK is organised by Mark Dredge who’s probably got enough enthusiasm for beer to give everyone at the conference a lethal dose and still have more than enough for himself! So it should be a good event!!
You don’t have to be a blogger to attend and it should be a fantastic weekend in London for anyone who wants to find out more about the history, science and commerce of beer, pairing your favourite brews with food and drinking lots of malty beverages at some great beer locations in London.

P.S. Watch this space as we update the blog to celebrate our 2nd birthday – plus we’re looking for passionate and talented new contributors too. Email mark(at)real-ale-reviews(dot)com for more information on joining the team…

Wils Swan was £1.49 a pint whilst the footy was on - and I had one for each Leeds goal (plus our penalty save!)

There are arguably too many moments I cringe at to call myself a responsible drinker with any real level of conviction. The ones that came in the gap year before I university are mostly classified under the ‘regrets’ section of my brain. As year one of university unfolded the balance of ‘I never want to remember doing that’ versus ‘I’m pretty pleased with myself’ was evenly weighted and shifted towards to positive end of the spectrum as I matured, with a few ‘we’ll laugh at that in a few weeks’ moments thrown in for good measure.

But at 26 I thought I’d stopped doing things like singing Leeds songs in rowdy northern cities not called Leeds and waking people up in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately Saturday’s combination of Jermaine Beckford’s 95th and a half minute equaliser and Stone Ruination IPA being on draught (or draft should I say) at the last pub of our #twissup crawl, ensured the night was one that would bring back some of those youthful moments of folly.

Returning to the Hillsborough Hotel after a skinful of cask conditioned Wild Swan and a liquid supper of fancy beers from the newly opened Sheffield Tap, a bunch of bedraggled beer bloggers struggled to open the blue painted door at the front of the pub. Having no qualifications in door opening and a more general problem with late night coordination turned out not to be a career changing combination as the shiny Yale key duly snapped in the lock leaving the burning eyes of my beer chums planted firmly on my back.

I’m sure the night slowed down for a moment and the consequences of my blunder flooded through my mind: budding friendships lost, a hole in my credit card and not much chance of being welcome at the hotel again in a hurry.

Ruination IPA was a bit of a hit, despite being twice as expensive as the Wild Swan for half the measure (pic by Matt from Hopzine.com)

After suffering a torrent of despair from the group we eventually found our way in the side door and out of the cold Sheffield night. And on the landing the world came crashing down again as Pete Brissenden tried to open the room he was sharing with Mark Dredge. Of course I’d snapped his room key in the door and with that all the frustration of several countries manifested itself in Pete’s face.

I could feel Mark sharpening his pencils into makeshift darts and all the hope drain from Pete’s face as he slumped to the floor, back against the fastly locked door. At that point I was scared Pete might actually attack me with the bottle of Skrimshander he’d saved for a nightcap.

All the analogies are appropriate: floor sucking me up, ostrich head in sand. There isn’t enough analogies for the way I felt when Woolpack Ann came out to ask us all to shut up and sort out our sleeping arrangements before Woolpack Dave came out and sorted us out new… you get the picture.

Despite my restless sleep – involving a fight with myself a four in the morning apparently – it was all resolved in the morning and I can’t thank everyone enough for letting me off the hook with only gentle jibing and the acceptance of the first round at North Bar later.

There’s a moral to the story – don’t trust beer bloggers* with keys.

The broken knees refer to one bloggers intimate meeting with a hard floor earlier in the evening thanks to an involuntary tumble (too much Carling I guess!). You can’t trust beer bloggers with bus travel either…

_{*This beer blogger}

I knew I’d taken a group photo at some point, I clearly remembered balancing my camera on a precipitous ledge in the Wenlock Arms, but for the life of me couldn’t find the resulting image.

Until now! And it made me smile and remember how great it is to meet up with like minded beer folk and talk beer and drink beer.

Beer bloggers unite over a pint or three in the Wenlock Arms

To good times, sláinte!

From left to right: Ally Shaw (FeralStrumpet), The Beer Nut (John Duffy), Knut Albert, Mark Dredge and me, FletchtheMonkey (Mark Fletcher, Real Ale Reviews).