Twitter beer-face

Beer has been bringing people together to socialize for centuries, and today’s technology is making that even easier.

A group of Twitter-using beer lovers who go by the hashtag #SpoBU – which stands for Spokane Beers Up – meets every Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. at a local watering spot.

The idea grew out of a similar group that gathers for coffee, says founder Josh King ( @kingylingy ), a marketing consultant. “I kept going to the coffee tweetup, and I thought, ‘I like beer as much as coffee,’ ” he says.

The beer group began meeting at The Onion downtown in spring 2013, and has since branched out. They now hit the same place each week for a month – in November, it’s South Perry Pizza – except for the last Wednesday, when they go to a brewery.

In October, that was River City, in conjunction with Yelp Spokane , a collection of local people who post online reviews at that site. This month, on Nov. 26, they’ll both be down the street from the pizza place at Perry Street Brewing .

These aren’t beer snobs. King, who keeps Miller High Life in his fridge, jokes that his two favorite beers are “cheap, and IPA.”

Unlike the coffee group, which is large and involves a fair amount of business networking, #SpoBU has stayed small – partly by design – and low-key.

“You’re not here to get a bunch of new clients for whatever it is you do,” says Ryan Wilson, another original member.

King has some 75 names on his e-mail list . About 25 are considered regulars, he says, though not all of them always show up; attendance can range from a handful to a roomful. “The colder it gets, or the hotter, we have some of our best crowds,” King says.

The potential is enormous, he says, with some 24,000 people citing Spokane as home in their Twitter bios. “I don’t think Spokane marketers have figured out how many of us are on Twitter,” says King. “It’s a huge number.”

And numbers aside, whoever shows up, he says, “It gives people an excuse to drink beer at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday.”