After paying a heating bill that cleaned out my bank account, I was certifiably in need of a beer. However, the heating bill was high because it’s a booger-freezing 6-degrees outside and the thought of wrapping my hands around a chill pint of pale ale gave me the shivers. And then, because my memory is sorted alphabetically by beer, I remembered going to a convention of “real ale” brewers near Boston in early spring one year. NERAX (New England Real Ale eXhibition) promotes the drinking of “real ale,” an attribute of which is its warmer-than-average-US-beer temperature. And I can assure you, I was a warmer-than-average-Boston-spring-evening temperature on my walk home that night.

NERAX is sort of like the New England version of the perhaps more infamous group, CAMRA. CAMRA, or Campaign for Real Ale, is a British organization (or organisation, if you will) founded in 1971 to “campaign for real ale, pubs, and drinkers’ rights.” They formed as a reaction to the big beer companies mass-producing weak, bland beer. They advocate real ale and community-based pubs and they use language like “traditional,” “social cohesion,” and “under threat,” in their literature, making them sound wee bit like an alcoholic IRA. (Let’s keep that joke inside your head.) Continue reading →