Welcome to the inaugural post on BeerJacket. Brought to you by Andrew Downs and Chris Haining, two chaps, united in a common appreciation of alcoholic beverages that typically come served in 568ml jars. He’s Andy, I’m Chris, he’s a computer programmer, I’m a reformed car salesman who’s now going nowhere fast as he tries to make it in the field of journalism. We live about half a mile from each other and I’m in a relationship with his sister. Despite this, we get on well.

 

So, how did we get into beer? Well, I can only vouch for myself.

 

I suppose I must have been a pre-teen. I remember a summer afternoon at my grandparents house. It was probably the best part of twenty years ago and Nan and Pops were still as mobile as I always remembered them being. They also had the biggest garden out of everybody in my family, so theirs was the venue of choice for balmy summer barbeqeues. They even had their own brick-built barbecue grille built into the garden wall.

The burgers flowed freely, and so did the beers. Now, as if to show themselves as connoisseurs, Nan and Pops would make sure they had bitter and lager available for guests. Typically it would have been whatever was on special offer at the supermarket at the time, usually something like Stones or McEwans, Fosters or Carling. Hardly ground-breaking stuff; we didn’t really do ground-breaking in Frinton-On-Sea.

And anyway, I was 11; what did I know? Well, the truth is, even less than I know now. I was much happier with an endless supply of coke or a cold glass of orange squash with an ice cube. Yet, somehow, I ended up with a glass of beer in my hand. I can’t say I liked it, in fact I can’t say I understood, at that point, why anybody would like it. The important thing, though, was that I was drinking the same stuff as the grown-ups.

Don’t fear, that wasn’t the first step on the slippery slope of alcoholism, in fact I’m still not quite on that slope yet at the age of 30. Nor did it herald my descent into a teenage life of petty theft, joyriding and promiscuity. No, all it meant was that, on what were deemed as special occasions, I would be allowed a beer. The following Christmases I would help the adults with their drinks, and then ended up with one of my own. That I didn’t particularly like it was neither here nor there.

Soon enough, though, there came a time that I did like it, and for me it started with Lager. My first memory of drinking beer in anything more than parental-discretion servings was when I was on holiday in Cornwall, in 1994. I would have been thirteen by now, and was staying in a static caravan in Polzeath. My second cousins came to visit us (it was their caravan) and they brought with them several cases of what I would soon come to know as “stumpies”.

These little bottles, way less than half a pint in each, were an unexpected high-point in my holiday. Typically filled with some kind of obscure French lager, and coming either from the local supermarket or from some “early days of the tunnel” trip to France, I don’t imagine that they’d be up to much if I were to try one again today. Coincidentally, too, there was almost always a barbecue smoking away nearby whenever the stumpies were out. Perhaps this should have been a serving suggestion.

As a middle-aged teenager, I had progressed to a point where lager was my tipple of choice. I will now guiltily reveal, and I only did this once, that I remember coming home from school on the bus one afternoon, getting home and immediately stealing a can of Fosters from the garage. I wasn’t addicted; far from it. I just had a craving for that cold, sweet liquid and the tangible feeling of light-headed relaxation it provides. The perfect antidote to a day of trigonometry and bullying.

My relationship with lager ended abruptly when I was at university. I remember the exact night, in fact; we had all gone around to Colins house and were playing Risk; the strategy game. Only we were playing it as a drinking game. Well, clearly the turn of the cards was against me, and I ended up consuming a good deal more lager than the others. It was Fosters again, and this time it got its own back for my teenage indiscretions. The horrible, pale fizzy liquid proved too much for me after the n th can, and I was noisily and copiously sick.

Truth be told I had been off lager for a little while before then, it just so happened that it was Fosters or nothing that evening; the corner shop had been none-to-well stocked. I had moved away from the watered-down excesses of the student union, to the overpriced imports and licenced replicas of imports that we found in Coventrys many bars and clubs. Budvar, Tiger, Peroni, Corona, Asahi, Miller, the list went on, and yet I never acquired any great appreciation of them. They were just drinks, just something to do with my right hand while I stood around the dance floor trying to avoid drawing attention to myself for the wrong reasons.

In 2005 I took a trip to Holland to meet my best mate; he had sailed his yacht over a week earlier (when I had been in Jersey) and invited me to join him and add to the crew for the passage home. I will never forget the short ferry trip we took from Vlissingen in Holland to Niewpoort in Belgium, it was a ridiculously hot day where the sun felt like it was prodding you with forks. We had little refreshment on board, that beer we did have in the lockers had become superheated and would have tasted poisonous had we balls enough to try. No, we went ashore and visited the first bar we found. We knew not what they served, asking; in pigeon French, for trois bières . Duly, three ice cold glasses arrived, whitened with condensation and with a brief, alluring head. We sipped and savoured them. Up to that point it was unlikely that either of us had ever been so refreshed. As the beers warmed up in the onslaught of the sun, the condensation thinned revealing a name on the glass. It read Hoegaarden.

I was receiving education, there and then. I had discovered that there was more variety out there than I was ever going to be exposed to in urban bars and corner shops. It was a godsend that supermarkets would soon begin to stock beers from brewers I had never heard of, but which were soon to have considerable impact on my life. Names like Badger, Skinners, Shepherds Neame. Names that I had seen on beer pumps in pubs but had never really paid attention to before.

I’m now thirty, and a confirmed fan of real ale. I’m almost ashamed that I only attended my first beer festival just over a year ago; I joined CAMRA that very day, so impressed was I by the rich variety and sheer quality of beers available. I know far less than I want to, but am already developing a specific taste and can imagine, quite tangibly, what my dream pint would taste like.

I invite you to join Andrew and I in celebrating the complex, changing world of beer. Whatever your experience before, whether you’re a seasoned drinker or only now waking up and looking around, bleary-eyed and in wonderment.