AT 10.30 on September 27th I went to the offices of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in Clarges St, Mayfair and, thanks to the luck of the draw, was the first of four people that day to sit for an interview.
I'm happy to say I passed and consequently I am now entitled (having previously fulfilled the body of evidence requirements) to call myself a Beer Sommelier.
I'm very pleased and proud to be one of the first in the UK as I feel that beer needs its champions in this country. There are precious few of them (and no, the Campaign for Real Ale does not count). We have a peculiar bias in this country. 80% by volume of all the alcohol consumed in the UK is beer. 99% of all the positive press coverage about alcohol in this country is about wine. Our national newspapers employ people as 'drinks writers' who write exclusively about wine, and often demonstrate why they are wise to do so(Malcolm Gluck invariably makes himself ridiculous whenever he strays outside his field of expertise).
We are a nation of beer drinkers and our culture of drinking is rooted in the very fibre of our nation's soul. Instead of being ashamed of this we need to rejoice in it. Only then can we embrace it and raise the quality and standard of what we drink and the way we drink it. At present all official attitudes and policies towards drink in this country are stupid, blinkered and wrong; debate is absent, informed comment unwelcome.
As a Beer Sommelier, with a respectable smattering of history under my belt, I am looking forward to changing attitudes by explaining all the great things beer has to offer us as a people, not least of which is an appreciation of what beer has done for Britain.
In the words of Sydney Smith (1771 -1845) 'What two ideas are more inseprable than Beer and Britannia."
