Beer with Friends.

Met a couple of new beer mates last night at work. And, as it has done so many times before, beer managed to make the world a slightly smaller but greatly friendlier place to be. I don’t really know what it is about beer but you get a couple of blokes talking about beer and all of a sudden Iraq seems a million years ago, David Hicks is still just a dickhead in orange pants and Big Brother was just a concept in a novel you had to read for school.

My new friends – for privacy lets call them Fred and Barney, though their real names are Tim and Scott – had a real appreciation for the gold stuff and an even greater appreciation for my appreciation of the gold stuff. And for the specially badged glassware that I poured their beers into. We got to talking about Belgium Beer cafes and drinking Guinness in real Irish pubs and beers you can buy in one place but not another and all sorts of beer related stuff.

And as for the world becoming a smaller place, these two, it turns out, were regulars at another drinking hole that I used to oversee many moons back so as well as beer we got talking mutual friends and caught up on who’s up who and who’s not paying and all that sort of stuff. You probably won’t get blokes talking about wine in the same way. Except Marketing types or Lawyers maybe. But I’m talking about real people.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that beer brings people together in a way that neither wine nor The United Nations can. In fact, I’ll go so far as to postulate that if more Muslim countries would get on the piss and start sharing stories over a couple of quiet ales – or even noisy lagers – the sooner the Islamic and Christian worlds would stop a fussin’ and a feudin’, find peace together and we then can all concentrate on vanquishing the scientologists. There just not right in the head.

Welcome to the world of The Beer Blokes, Tim and Scott.

Prof. Pilsner.