Branch Contacts

Steve Pullan - Social Secretary & Pubs Officer

Click here to email Steve

My formative drinking days were in the Blue Lion in Bracknell and my alcohol intake consisted mainly of keg JC (John Courage) and rum and blacks. A University education in Leeds followed which turned out to be an education into ale. In the late 70's/early 80's the Leeds pub scene was dominated by Tetley with small amounts of Webster's and Sam Smiths...and then there was The Eagle in North Street. It was a CAMRA Investments pub (yes CAMRA owned/leased four pubs in those days) and The Eagle was an oasis in that Tetley desert. 10 real ales including three or four of Timothy Taylor's finest ales helped to convert me into a fully fledged real ale drinker (not that I took much persuading).

I joined CAMRA "officially" after leaving University and also got a job with a Market Research company in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire in 1984. I became active within the Mid-Chilterns branch of CAMRA shortly after. In 1988 I got married to Sharon (my non-beer drinking wife!) and we moved to Houghton Regis where we have lived ever since.

I became active within South Beds CAMRA and one of my first introductions to South Beds CAMRA life was the last Beer Festival held at Luton College. My only memory of that event was straining vast yeast lumps from the Blue Anchor Special through a J Cloth - needless to say we never served it to customers but it tasted fine! I have worked every Luton Beer Festival since.

I joined the committee as Membership Secretary sometime in the mid 1990's, and in 2005 switched jobs to become Newsletter Editor, replacing Dave Francis who had occupied the post for many years (even though he'd moved back to Wales in 1999!). I'd never written a newsletter before, but even though it took a good amount of time to produce it, I strangely and masochistically quite enjoyed it.

I'm now the co-ordinator of our social diary aka Social Secretary and a key part this job is to organise our weekly Thursday 'socials' where we visit a pub or two in various parts of our branch. I've also introduced CAMRA walks and have even co-organised our "Cyclotours" in the last couple of years where we have cycled 50 miles with a theme such as the current Bedfordshire CAMRA branches Pubs of the Year.

I am keen on Belgian Beers and in particular the Lambic family of beers (Cantillon Kriek is possibly my favourite beer) and have previously organised eight local CAMRA beer trips to various cities in Belgium and for the past few years have run the Foreign Beer Bar at the Luton Beer Festival. I'm also starting to get a taste for the very hoppy American IPA's.

Outside of CAMRA I enjoy holidays and seeing the world and next year I will fulfill a lifetime's ambition to visit Machu Pichu in Peru (for my 50th birhday). I also a keen Arsenal fan, but sadly mainly of the armchair variety.