While “geek” annoys me from a purely bitter-grapes point of view (being untouched by the prosperous tech fairy) I still use it to describe behavior in myself or another beer lover– where we are fixating on some specific aspect of a beer that other people who weren’t so into it would just be bored by the details.

I was really surprised to find that in the UK, loving real ale meant you were a fusty, bearded freak. In cosmopolitan parts of America it’s hip to love real beer (albeit with the aforementioned geek set) so the use of “geek” there is really ironic and slightly self deprecating.

Lew, Random answer to one of your random thoughts:

Connoisseur is more pompous than aficionado because is a French word hehehehe.
Maybe you are right, aficionado, as a foreign term in English is quite pompous but I was talking about the sense it has in Spanish when used applied to, for instance, this matter.

Definitely Beer Enthusiast, beer lover and beer dog are the best and I’m a “much” of the three…
Haya Salud

I wrote that post because people kept giving me hell for using “beer geek” in my writing. They want me to come up with something else.

I agree with Stonch: “beer geek” doesn’t seem to have the baggage in the UK that it does in the US.

Pattinson’s a pisshead. I might be too.

I am at a loss to see why connoisseur is pompous and aficionado isn’t.

I like “beer dog.” I could call myself a beer dog.

It bothers me a little that being a whisky geek is somehow considered classier than being a beer geek. And let’s not even get into the wine aficionoisseurs.

And if anyone’s a nerd…I was a librarian, a Novell network technician, and I played Dungeons & Dragons before I took up my new career. Beer geek is a step up.

It’s a very interesting point about “beer geek” not being applicable to the UK because there’s already a culture of beardy beer neepery particularly associated with CAMRA sterotypes.

Whereas here in Ireland there is no such culture and, despite using basically the same vocabulary as the UK, we have readily adopted “beer geek” because we have no words of our own for it. Though it may also have something to do with the fact that a lot of Irish beer geeks work in the IT business.

I would make the point, however, that it’s impossible to be a beer geek and a real ale purist. Proper geekery is all-encompassing and doesn’t depend on sources of carbon dioxide. Discusses it, at length, but doesn’t depend on it.

I AM A GEEK!

Quickest blog post I’ve ever written is that one. Pure stream of consciousness. Joyceian.