Our local brewery (Beartown) is producing more variety than it used to, the number of different beers in its range is quite a bit bigger than it was a few years back. Some of them are very good. It's putting its beer into a lot more territory too - I've drunk its beers in pubs in Edinburgh (250 road miles away) and London (180 miles) in the last year or two, and was surprised because I always remembered it as restricting sales to close to here (maybe 20 miles radius). It's good social beer (not falling down juice) - a bunch of us computer types (software engineers and developers and sysadmins and whatever) regularly drink the stuff for a two and a half hour social session (two to five pints per head, depending on the individual heads) and still talk intelligibly on technical computer topics and recreational maths puzzles at the end. Not sure whether anyone one will see it in all the distant places of people who populate (or don't, given the message rate) this topic, but in case you do I recommend trying Beartown's Bearskinful and Bearass (both English style bitters) and Kodiak Gold (a good non-gassy and non-fizzy yellow ale, presumably technically a lager but it can't be an English lager because all English lager is gassy c**p).

This topic is very quiet, as the last poster pointed out. It's 7 months since he did so, and that was 8 months after the previous post. I guess DBAs don't have much to say about beer, perhaps instead of talking about it they drink it. (I'm not a DBA, but even I drink a beer now and again.)

Warning: what follows is definitely off topic (and is at least partly due to the topic).

"Beartown" above is not a typo for "Beertown". When I first came here "Beertown" might have been an appropriate name for the place, but since then more than half the pubs have gone out of business so it wouldn't be appropriate today. The town is known (unofficially) as "Beartown" because the people in neighbouring villages called it that to tease the inhabitants about their excessive demands for a bear - - at some point back in the 17th (or maybe the 16th) century, when books were very expensive, the town's burgesses sold off the town's bible to buy a bear to pacify (both by being baited and by dancing?) the populace who were somewhat annoyed about the lack of circuses or other entertainment; apparently there was a risk that the people would become rebellious.

I almost wrote "revolting" instead of "rebellious", but it wouldn't have been appropriate: the view taken by the burgesses was that the plebs already were and always had been revolting and that could be dealt with as it had been for centuries by carrying spice bags, scent bags, and strongly perfumed kerchiefs whenever one went any where near them, but rebelliousness needed far more expensive treatment. Although a bear cost more than a lavender bag or two it would cost less in the long run than hiring two companies of pikemen to keep the people happy (or at least keep them frm burning the town down or stringing up the burgesses) until some entertainment appeared (by magic?) from elsewhere.

I think the importance of circuses in this town would have made it the natural successor to Rome if only bread had been important too. Just think, an empire lost just because the local bigwigs didn't make their people totally dependent on them for food!

The reader is invited to insert emoticons above as (s)he thinks fit - I'm too lazy to do it for you.