Strathclyde’s SU President has drank over 1000 types of beer

And you still struggle to chin a Fosters

brewdog craft craft beer fosters freshers ipa lager microbrewery president real ale stella strathclyde

A thirsty union president claims he’s sunk over 1000 beers from all over the world. 

Unquenchable Gary Paterson is a renowned beer connoisseur. His timeline is a colourful tapestry of pints, replete with hundreds of reviews of obscure brews, beer festivals, and generally All Things Pints.

Loves it

Over the past few years he reckons he’s sunk over 1000 kinds, calling the growing popularity of craft beers and micro-breweries a “revolution.”

If it is, he’s in its vanguard.

“There’s nothing I love more than going into a bar and seeing rows of taps I’ve never had before, then you know it’ll be a long night.” he says. “It’s an interest you can enjoy anywhere, I mean you can now go into a Wetherspoons [where we’re seated] and they have 20 different beers on tap.”

Forbes recently reported craft beer is now America’s hottest start-up business. And who hasn’t noticed the now ubiquitous BrewDog, and steady expansion of fancy beers?

Cask beers, pale ales, stouts, porters, red ale, fruit beers and saisons have all crept into our vocabulary.

Yeah obv

He laments he’ll never be able to drink them all as so many small breweries are churning out hundreds of unique, limited edition batches, adding: “Recently after the election I drank a sour Belgian fruity ale called ‘utter cant’ which was just a one-off. ”

Nigel Farage. Sour. Belgium?

He was just like you before, dimly “drinking Tennent’s, Fosters and Stella,” but then: “A friend gave me a bottle of Franziskaner Weissbier, and I just thought this is completely unlike anything I’ve ever had before. It was well-bodied, sweet and so flavoursome.”

The German gateway was revelatory: “I then started drinking ‘old-man ales,’ cask beers, and got into IPA’s (Indian Pale Ale) big time. I was hooked.

Careful mate

“Then I started going to beer festivals, the first in Paisley but I’ve been to festivals in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium as well. I was at an Amsterdam festival where they put Naga chillies, one of the hottest in the world, into a stout.

“A guy I know, when one of his batches was ruined, stuck Jellybabies and Oreos into it to see what would happen, I had a taste and you know what, it was…interesting. Even though the purists might raise an eyebrow!”

“But it’s part of the excitement thinking, what are these guys gonna come up with next?”

He’s such a self-confessed beer geek that he will “generally tend to judge the merits of a destination by what kinds of beer you can get there. That was why I shot down my mates suggestion of Paris for a holiday, there was no way I was going.”

Fuck the Ark – ¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!

He relays something striking about that most eminent and esteemed of lagers: Tennents Super. It’s 9% alcohol, and in Britain cans are most often seen crumpled in the clutches of tramps and drunks.

But in Italy it is seen as a high-end, upmarket drink, on draught and in bottles, with more sold in Italy than in Scotland.

He says: “In Rome I saw all these Italian men in nice suits, smoking cigarillo’s with their pints of Tennent’s Super. Nothing prepared me for it, young professionals in designer clothes knocking back Super was very disconcerting and a real culture shock. Where I’m from it’s seen as, you know, a bit of a drink.”

When in Rome

He even has fan art.

“It’s the sense of community that I really love about the Real Ale movement though, it cuts through borders because a beer tastes as good in Belfast as in Berlin. I’m going for the third time to the Borefts festival in the Netherlands this summer, which I have to say is probably my favourite of all.

“I’ve got friends in their 50’s who’ve drank probably around 10,000 types of beer, which I fully plan on bettering.”

You wouldn’t bet against the boy.

As we sink our fourth pint there is even hazy talk of a bespoke Strathclyde brew in the pipeline for the start of next term. If so, then we’ll be able to down, chin, sink, drink and bleed, maroon.

Cruising for a reviewing