My Passion with Matthew Grant: CAMRA puts the brewing of traditional beers in the picture

LIKE many young men, when I started drinking socially I was initially attracted to the national brands which sponsored football.

For a while, I was even a member of Club Carling. However, inevitably living in York, I started to visit some of the more historic pubs which date back hundreds of years, and through this became interested in traditional ale and how it is brewed.

It was while visiting one of these pubs that I picked up an edition of the York CAMRA publication, The Ouse Boozer, which opened my eyes to the fascinating world of traditional ales and the expertise which goes into creating them.

One of my first drinks of real ale, or at least one of the earliest and most memorable, was a pint of Caledonian Deuchers India Pale Ale in one of the more traditional pubs in Monkgate, opposite what was then Garbutt & Elliott's headquarters in York.

The York branch of CAMRA was among the first to be established in the UK, in the early 1970s. It is also one of the largest, stretching to Blakey Ridge in the North, Pocklington in the East, Selby in the South and Tadcaster in the West.

I became actively involved about five years ago, joined the ten-strong committee in 2008 and became chairman in 2009. An added dimension to the enjoyment is that we produce The Ouse Boozer quarterly magazine with a 6,750 print run, paid for by advertising. This is distributed through real ale pubs throughout our membership area.

Since 1974 we have also held a beer festival. In 2009, because we were unable to find a venue, we held it in marquees on The Knavesmire, York, and it was a tremendous success attracting 4,400 visitors. We did the same last September and attracted 6,000. The festival featured 250 casks of different traditional ales, 50 ciders and perries as well as foreign draught and bottle beers. We signed up 33 new members.

It is important to stress that, in spite of the amount of alcohol sold during the two-and-a-half-day festival, not one incident of drunkenness was reported. This touches on what is crucial for me about CAMRA. It is not a drinking club but a means to bring people together for the enjoyment of real ale which is quite different to drinking recklessly or in volume.

Being part of CAMRA is a hobby inextricably linked to the history of one of Britain's oldest industries – brewing – which is currently undergoing resurgence with new independent breweries opening every year. Supporting them by buying their products also means we are helping British arable farmers who grow the hops and helping keep people in jobs.

This means that every pint of British-brewed traditional beer goes a small way towards helping part of British industry.