Fancy a fruity blonde?

I love beer, me. Mind you, I won’t say no to a glass of chilled white wine or a deep and sensuous red either. But when it comes a choice of drinks in a pub and that choice is between fizzy over-priced lager with an after-taste of gun metal, or some flowery, fruity real ale, I’ll go for a glass of proper beer every time. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) do their best to promote beer as a decent drink for us ladies but the image of the organisation is still, I’m sad to say, that of beer bellied fat men wearing sandals and smoking a pipe. Well, I can assure you dear reader that I’m neither fat nor a fella and I’m not wearing sandals today. As for the pipe, that only comes out on a weekend.

So, where to start if you’re a beer virgin and you want to give it a go in a pub? Bars and pubs selling real ale offer a confusing array of beers with names that might as well be Ye Olde Sheepdip, Bathplug Liquor and so on and it’s hard to know what to try. My rule of thumb, and beer experts up and down the land will be guffawing into their Gueuze as they read this, is this – I go for the one with the nicest sounding name. I know, it’s ridiculous, but it’s how I got into drinking beer and it’s served me well so far. How wrong can my rule of thumb be when it’s taken me to such delights as Summer Lightning, Fursty Ferret, Yorkshire Terrier and my personal favourite, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.

Fruit beers, blonde beers and wheat beers are usually the ones aimed at laydee drinkers as they’re light and summery and easy to quaff. There’s even chocolate beer aimed at female drinkers but I’ve deliberately avoided that one so far. I’m a female beer drinker, not an advertiser’s idiot dream. And did you know that there’s a beer called Bitter & Twisted which sponsors Harlequin Ladies Rugby Football Club

[Originally written for Dollymix]