But is it beer?

One of the many things that irritates me these days - as an increasingly irritable middle-aged man who finds lots of stuff irritating as he gets older - is going into a pub and being confronted with lots of beers that are very similar to one another.Sometimes I'll go for a long session consisting entirely of beers I've technically never had before, but which seem suspiciously familiar.Drinking mostly cask, as I do, this will typically take the form of a 4.2% pale golden ale, moderately hopped with New World varieties. Accessible, easy to drink, and, to borrow a phrase from my late Grandmother, common as muck.I don't dislike them - they're generally good beers from good brewers. But they really are hard to tell apart at times. Given a choice between sticking to a formula or taking bold risks, the brewers chose the option that involved minor tweaks to an existing recipe and possibly having to come up with a quirky name! Same old story This isn't a new issue, nor is it confined to cask…