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Well, I´ve never heard an English speaking person saying ´going out with acquaintances to a pub´ or so, they are always with ´friends´. Only when I ask more I find out in my language it are acquaintances.
I guess in English there are several meanings to the word "friend" depending on the context, which of course may take more conversation to determine. No, I would never say "going out with acquaintances to a pub", but then I wouldn´t really socialise with people I classify as acquaintances. Another example would be a social event with work colleagues. Some of these I may class as friends and others as acquaintances, but if I was telling someone in conversation about the event I would say "friends from work". Another example would be "I´m going out with friends from UNi" or "my Badminton club" etc. I think there are different categories of "friend" and this may be determined by the conext in which the word is used (or not as in your example when you had to ask more questions). I guess this may seem confusing to non native English speakers, yet as a native English speaker I would not ponder too much on the extent of a friendship if someone told me they had gone to the pub with friends. I would take it at face value.
This is just my opinion based on my own experience of course.
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