Born and bred in the brewing town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk the premier brewing county in England, I was virtually weaned on good ale. Due to a lack of any other form of entertainment, and an early love of public house culture, I started frequenting them at the tender age of fifteen. No one was too bothered that you were underage in the early 1970s. In those early pubescent imbibing days, my beer of choice was Greene King Harvest. A dark brown sweet ale, beloved of middle-aged ladies. It also suited my immature palate.

As time went on I learnt to love real-ale bitters, although the term real-ale hadn’t passed into the vernacular of the four-ale bar quite at that time. I started going to beer festivals in the late eighties, joining CAMRA for the first time in the early nineties. My interest in beer went up a gear after I watched the infamous Beer Hunter series, featuring Michael Jackson. I realised there was more to beer than just necking a few pints! In 2003 I started blogging as The Ale Fan, writing about beer, pubs, festivals and life in general (pretty narrow really!). A year later I set up www.real-ale.net, a real ale ISP and news site. In the same year and with the help of my partner Ginny we set up Beer2go, a specialist beer shop. Sadly we soon got tired of humping beer and called it a day eighteen months later. I now have a day-job in the heady world of Packaging Machinery and write about beer and other stuff in my spare time.