Good beer comes to town!

Once upon a time, on a Friday night about 3 years ago, we had no plans (a rare phenomenon, one which leaves us feeling quite discombobulated). We decided to go on a pub crawl along one of the local main roads, which had, at that time, 5 pubs along a walkable stretch. Now, please bear in mind this was a few years back, we were young and delirious with Friday night euphoria and keen to get just a bit merry. So we banned any drink that we normally order, ruling we must choose the weird, the unusual and the usually downright avoidable. This was also because we knew there would be no decent beer available in any of these pubs, having stood at their bars with a choice of Carling, John Smiths or Guinness on many occasions. Therefore, we consumed WKD blue, Archers and lemonade Malibu, pre-mixed Sex on the beach and Snakebite. The hangover was hell. But we had a lot of fun, met some pleasant landlords and played the most despicable game of pool ever. But the sad part of this tale is that we were not alone in our weird drinking- we were among many drinking WKD that night. There wasn’t a lot of choice, to be frank. Good beer was hard to come by in Lewisham in 2008.

We had a similar night last week, but this time round, we tried no less than 11 different cask ales across three pubs all within a mile of our flat. Ok, two Wetherspoons in the midst of their ale festival featured , but I know of at least four more local pubs where we could have had more, had we had more time (and weren’t quite so drunk already).

The current popularity of cask beer is well documented and much discussed, but I can’t pretend I didn’t feel more than a little bit excited being able to stroll into The Ravensbourne Arms at 11.20pm and see delights from Daniel Thwaites, Brewdog, and Redemption on the bar. Within walking distance! A mere 0.8 miles from my sofa. A sofa I will be spending very little time on now that we have local pubs rocking good beer.