It's not you, it's me

I've been wondering for quite a long while whether old favourites in the beer world are getting worse, or has my taste changed.

Back when I started drinking beer (ooh, now that was nearly 30 years ago, I guess) I would have been in paroxysms of joy if I'd found a pub with four handpumps of well kept real ale of ANY stripe.  Finding Marston's Pedigree, Bass, Sharp's Doom Bar, Wadworths 6X, Fuller's London Pride, or Timothy Taylor Landlord would have seen me squealing in a very uncool fashion.

I can even list some of my favourite "rarer" beers that I used to get a polypin of at Christmas from the Off License (called the Brown Jug) around the corner from my first house:

Archer's Golden
Exmoor Stag
Exmoor Gold
Ringwood 49er

Add in a whole bunch of localish brewers' beers (to the West Country, that is) - Otter, Butcombe, Bath Ales, Abbey Ales and I can honestly say I've liked a lot of beers in my time.

Thing is, with few exceptions, these are not the beers I drink now if I have any choice in the matter.

We've remarked for a while that whilst Harvey's is a really good old fashioned brewer - there's only so much of it we want to drink these days.

Even Everards (which used to be something I really liked when travelling in the Midlands) has fallen into that category.  It was on at the Buccaneer at the weekend and S had a pint - and he was in the Midlands last night and tried some in its homeland but just wasn't keen so switched to something a bit newer.

It can't possibly be that all these perfectly good breweries have become rubbish over the last 20 years or so.  So - it would seem that even us dyed-in-the-wool real ale drinkers whose drinking spans far longer than the age of some of the newest members of the non-lager-drinking society are not quite as "traditional" as we might think.

I can't pin down precisely what it is about newer style beers that usually appeal more to us.  They're not all gold and hopped to f*ck and back - there are some really well balanced darker and deep beers we've tried in the last few years that have really urged us to drink more.

Whatever it is, we have exciting times to enjoy - it's almost like rediscovering beer all over again.  How fantastic is that?

Mind you - if you offered me a pint of Timmy's right now...I'd bite your hand off