I love beer. I love it almost as much as I love tea. But not quite as much, obviously. I miss London Pride and I miss Timothy Taylor Landlord on tap, but I can buy both in bottles here in NYC. I am now a regular visitor to City Swiggers, which is a great beer shop cum pub, with 14 beers on tap every night! You can buy a 2 pint bottle called a ‘growler’ and ask them to fill it up for you. We now own two of these and they make a regular visit on a Friday night, I think the guy behind the bar is starting to recognise me. Unfortunately most of the beers are undrinkable as they are 7, 8, 9 or more per cent alcohol beers. However, I have, through my weaker beer tastes of less than 6 per cent, discovered a world of IPA. To the uninitiated this means India Pale Ale. It’s a bit of a girl’s beer, but it tastes lovely. Fruity and fresh and goes down very easily on a hot summer’s day.

I had intended to write about our visit to the NYC Craft Beer Festival a few weeks ago, but failed to do so. Such a shame, because it was fantastic and introduced us to a whole new world of US beers. We drank beer from Hawaii complete with free flower garland around our necks; blueberry beer, beer from California, Oregon and many other states. Along with a fine sausage roll, it was a heavenly night.

And on our return, I took my free beer mats and new beer knowledge to City Swiggers and could finally make some sense of the wall of US beer! Hurrah! No more Corona for me. Can I recommend a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale? Perhaps a Dogfish Head ‘the continually hopped’ IPA from Delaware or even a Coney Island beer – but be warned they have a very scary looking clown face on the neck of the bottle, drink it facing away from you.