With over twelve hundred beers on offer, many scoopers saw 2012's Nottingham Beer Festival as a tortuous paradise. One where they could not possibly try every beer they 'needed', not even with third-pints and bottling cartels in full swing. I'd no intention of scooping wildly; after a day of drinking North to South on Thursday, I needed a Friday plan.
That plan: to have no plan.
Instead, graze around and try a few beers from brewers that had crossed my horizon. And stick with them for as long as I dare. Here's three of the best. Albeit there's only one beer.
First up: Tiny Rebel. I first got to know about them via the Tweets of Glyn Roberts, everyone's favourite Womble. Their IPA, Urban, sounded like it would be right up my boulevard. And indeed it was. Sticky fruit salad, bittery biscuits, sweet start segues to dry finish. I had several of these. Several halves. And there was a point where (almost) every man jack in our posse of Men Too Fat And / Or Old To Be Seen Sat On A Wall Drinking Beer In What Is Obviously A Kiddies Play Area was drinking it.
Now, I like cider. I like dry cider. And when I say dry cider, I don't mean "really sweet but less sweet than the sugar suspension that we call our medium cider". So I'm wary about buying dry ciders that I know little about. Sometimes I'll ask for a taster. But a third-pint is basically a decent taster. And in the case of Salt Hill Urban Fox, it was more than bloody decent. Sharp flavour from the eaters/cookers mix. Sandpaper-itchy dry. Was worth more than one taster. Of the half-pint variety.
There comes a point at every festival where I end up choosing a drink based on its name. I try to kid myself that it's a cunning exercise is marketing analytics, comparing customer expectation with product deliverables. But it's actually because I've had a few drinks and I can't be arsed to choose anything any other way. Which is how I ended up becoming pleasantly surprised by Lustonberry Perry. Produced by the Marches Cyder Collective, it's another finely-dry drink with a plump pear flavour and an almost perfumed aroma.
Three drinks I learned to love over the course of a windblown festival afternoon. I drank a fair few glasses of each. Because I don't know if I'll ever see them again. I've never seen a Tiny Rebel beer in a pub in the Midlands / Yorkshire and the ciders / perrys are so vunerable to poor crops this year that the volumes produced for 2013 may be critically low.
My advice as always: if you like what you drink, drink it more. Enjoy the shock of the new; it may never get the chance to grow old.
Thanks to Ray Kirby and Nottingham CAMRA for the gen on Marches Cyder Collective. If anyone knows any more about them, I'd be interested to hear from you.
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I'm never too sure as to exactly what the Oread Mountaineering Group actually do in the function room of the Royal Oak, Ockbrook, Derbyshire, between October and April. Maybe they're fairweather climbers and just lounge around drinking great beer and look back on their summer escapades. Maybe they take the opportunity on that first Tuesday of every month to plan some fantastic adventure up a forgotten crag. Maybe they just climb Pythonesque around the room.
Well, if they rappelled into the room tonight, they'd find a beer festival.
Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Hop counties - just. And from them, some twenty brewers represented alongside a smattering of cider. All held up on a three-tier stillage down the end of the room that's often housed an am-dram stage.
A steady drift of locals for its opening night. Some hold court at the bar, some chance another pint whilst their beer widows feign interest in the finer detail of a brewery's proximity to the Welsh Borders. Some gruff at you for 'jumping in me grave' when you sit in their seat.
I love the way Steady Steve chooses a county or two. There's the good:
Teme Valley have that sessionableness that I long to find in a beer after a long country walk.
This has just enough floral bitterness. Hop Nouveau sidesteps the oft-tasted green-hop vegetal backfire and delivers, well, a bit more than This.
There's the bad: Shoe's Green Hop is a masterclass in how many beer faults you can fit into one glass.
There's the ugly: if
Ledbury Gold is supposed to be a brownish Caramac-infused beer then they need to rethink. If it was their bitter mislabelled... they still need to rethink. And I'm surprised just how many people on Twitter remember Caramac. And was scared to find you can still buy them. One of the few chocolate bars that made me want to vomit half-way through eating it.
But there were gems everywhere; Friday Beer's Pinnacle Ale had a great rye edge that slashed through pithy hops;
Wye Valley Hop 101 was elegant in its simplicity.
Barely an hour at a festival is not really long enough. Especially when you're sat near the kitchen with the waft of pan-fried haddock making you feel hungrier. It's a shame to say I can't re-visit this weekend, a pub that's only five fields walk from my front door. Such is the overly-hectic life of this reluctant scooper. So if you happen to be east of Derby this weekend, drop by. And if Mayfield's Hop Picker's Glory is on, let me know. I really fancy trying it and will be tempted to manipulate social expectations so I can score a pint of it.
More detail about the Royal Oak, Ockbrook can be found on their
website and
Facebook page.
Nottingham Beer Festival 2012: over one thousand beers by over three hundred breweries. An afternoon session. Third-pint measures. A plan.
Drink my way from the north-east to the south-west of England.
How hard can it be?
Northumberland: Anarchy Sublime Chaos, 7.0% Soft coffee, liquorice twang, silky finish
Durham: Sonnet 43 IPA, 4.4% Citric kick, punches higher than weight
North Yorkshire: North Riding Man In Tights, 4.0% Pale, hoppy, that's about it really
West Yorkshire: Mallinsons The Five Hundred, 3.9% Like most Mallinsons beers: pale gorgeousness
South Yorkshire: Sheffield Festival IPA, 5.2% Warm glue, tacky citric, chucked it
Derbyshire: Thornbridge Evenlode, 6.2% Hedgerows and toffees and roasty cocoa
Staffordshire: Morton Jelly Roll, 4.2% Orange nose, dry sweetness, massively under-rated
Warwickshire: Tunnel Trade Winds Not the Cairngorm one. Bugger. Tasteless
Gloucestershire: Cotswold Lion Shepherd's Delight, 3.9% Dull. Really, really, ball-achingly dull
Somerset: Ordnance City Mark II, 4.0% Anonymous with a hint of twigs
Devon: Tavy Best Bitter, 4.3% Achieves what best bitter should: balance
Cornwall: Rebel Managh Monk, 5.2% Cloves, spice, hops? Tastes like... victory
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"All Real Ales Outside £1 a Pint".
The runt end of a too-long Bank Holiday. Outside, the beers are cool; the punters are colder. Three lads in over-optimistic shorts head inside. A few hardy wax jackets and pork pie hats stand fast by the bar. Flustered bunting scratches at slab-grey clouds.
They may run flat, but the beers are still full of flavour. Ascot Ales' Alligator has lost none of its Cascade bite. With bitter orange and soft malts, Old Slewfoot's Orange Blossom Special has a breakfast-tray tang that makes me think of warm duvets and weekend papers. Rather than drinking by the recycle bins in the mizzle.
It becomes difficult to read the screen of my phone as I type. A lazy exodus from beer garden to bar fireside begins. The lads in shorts begin bantering about warmer times. One of the old guard can't be tempted away from his Smoothflow by the offer of a cheaper pint. Someone's beer widow is confused as to how a pub can "run out" of latte.
Back outside, the bar area itself under cover, a knot of new arrivals drip onto the flagging and look warily at the bargains. I buy Barista by Summer Wine which fountains into a glass. I can almost smell the coffee in it from this side of the bar. But it's a bittersweet sight, a cask this full on the last day of a festival. I wonder why as I drain the pint slowly. I wonder more as I drain another four over the languorously overcast afternoon.
Sat on his usual stool by the back bar, Eddie says "It's madness!" I'm not sure whether he means the festival still running on the Tuesday or the Jubilee in general. My bus is due. I wobble off. Happy and glorious.
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There's often a problem with food at beer festivals. It's often shit. Over-priced, under-flavoured, freshly-microwaved slop in those dull municipal kitchens. Burgers from outdoor vans that seem to be selling leftovers from last month's Sunday market. Where's the festival organisers' love for great food, sourced locally, made and presented with the same passion demonstrated by the great beers on offer?
I'll tell you where it is, in spades. Nottingham.
Even for a CAMRA festival offering over 900 cask beers, food has never been an afterthought whilst they've been in residence at the Castle. With so many beers, it can be difficult for a toper to keep eating- after all, there's so many beers, so little time. So many beers... so I needed a plan. And one plan led to another.
I'd eat my way around the festival, find a decent beer match for each meal and keep going until even my solid constitution began to complain. So, where to start? Breakfast.
#1: Jukebox Café sausagemeat and tomato cob, Redemption Trinity
I've never been to this caff, with its award-winning builder's breakfasts, a free-play jukebox and a parrot called Forest. On the strength of their stall here and this cob - sausagemeat split from the skin and cooked on a hotplate before you, plenty of peppery spice - I'll be making a bee-line there soon. Worked well with the feisty, zingy 'mild' by Redemption - sweet malts well tempered by shouty hops.
A swift half of Amber Jasmine IPA proved to be a suitable amuse-bouche. And then it was lunchtime.
#2: RoundHeart roast pork cob with spiced apple slices, Thornbridge Lord Marples
Sister pubs Hand In Heart and Roundhouse joined forces to put on pork and beef both roasted in their house ale, RoundHeart, brewed for them by Dancing Duck. Plenty of juicy meat, wonderful spiced apple, rubbish photo by me. And, yes, maybe I should have had the RoundHeart beer as well, but Lord Marples is an excellent bitter for roast pork, all soft and nutty, liquid bread to envelope chocking great lumps of meat.
Five Towns Guero, 2.9% and stacks of New Zealandish zing, was a classy palate cleanser. Now, what better next than a piece of cheese? Or three...
#3: Cheese Shop mixed platter, Buxton Wild Boar.
I wasn't too sure about the cheeses until I realised it was a deep platter. And that the soft one was so soft you could spread it on the crackers. And that the harder one had a lovely nutty depth. And that the blue one had an outstanding fresh barnyard feel to it. And that Wild Boar was man enough to take on these bold flavours, restrain them but never overpower them.
More IPA required - Five Towns Peculiar Blue added an almost pickled mango flavour into the mix. And having tried two IPAs, I needed another. With something spicy.
#4: Mirch Masala samosa and bhaji tray, Hopshackle Resination
The more vegetarian Indian food I eat, the more I love it. And this was sublime. A bhaji that was all light and airy yet packed full of soft, billowing spiciness. Samosas that had a shattering crust and proper, chunky, damn-good-looking veg. With what is maybe the finest cask IPA in England that you never really hear about, unless it's me banging on about it yet again. Resination is riven with US hops, brewed straight outta Market Deeping and didn't spar with the samosa/bhaji tag team - they just had a big spicy hug and got along tremendously.
More IPA? Why not? Full Mash Bhisti was a bitterer thing than the others only with a calming pear effect. And then it was time for a change in direction. I was feeling full but... no guts, no glory.
#5: Faggots, peas and gravy by the 24th Nottingham Scouts, Hopshackle Aniseed Porter
Now, that's what I call beer and food. Properly-seasoned faggots, the right amount of fat to keep it moist, plenty of mushy peas, robust gravy to round it all up. A dark porter, the aniseed not overpowering, working with the herbs in the faggots to give the whole dish a new depth of flavour.
Burp. Time for a waffer theen meent. Or the nearest equivalent.
#6: Merry Berry chocolates with Blue Monkey Guerilla
No photo. Let's just say these three things: Merry Berry aren't afraid to play with flavours that you can taste (chilli, lime and ginger was good, cracked black pepper even better); Blue Monkey Guerilla ought to be mandatory in every pub over autumn and winter (please, put some in kegkegs, it'd be a killer keg beer); I'd finally eaten my fill. And I forgot to buy some chocolates to bring home for Mrs Scoop. Mistakes like that are not tolerated in this organisation...
All in all, a superb festival enhanced greatly by the fact that the organisers take the opportunity to source food as diverse and tasty as the beer.
And one last toast - a whisky-infused bitter named in honour of the man who for many was Mr Nottingham CAMRA. For Spyke Golding, the former branch chair and newsletter editor who passed away last year, this drink's for you. Cheers!
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What I expected at the Nottingham CAMRA beer festival: excellent beer, excellent food, dodgy cover bands, sun splitting above the mansion house and casting jagged shadows all over the southern slopes down to the Trent Valley.
What I didn't expect: Gabriel Van Ingen taking portraits for a wet plate collodion project.
A full write-up of Nottm's beer and food and food will follow. As will more photos.
But, for now, here's a pic of Gabriel's pic of me developing. It had to happen sometime...
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'Steady' Steve Hornbuckle makes it easy to love a beer festival. Perfectly stillaged beers in the function room of the Royal Oak, Ockbrook. Attentive, enthusiastic staff. Cheese platters and pork pies on sale.
And those beers - every year he sources casks from a specific English county to showcase every brewery there, whether its a brewpub or a regional powerhouse. This year it's Lancashire's turn (non-metropolitan, not ceremonial). Truth be told, beforehand I was hard-pushed to name anything from there with the exception of Thwaites. But tonight has been insightful.
Deep tropical fruit in Burscough's Priory Gold. Some slight-yet-moreish bittersweetness around Lytham's IPA. The sheer glubbability of Moonstone's Black Star Mild. Sharp wit-ness with a bubblegum chomp at the end of Blue Buzzard's White Dwarf.
I only had ninety minutes so hardly dinted the beers on offer - gravity in the back room, handpull on the bar. Swift halves were called for. So I'm looking forward to going back on Saturday, early doors, for a few pints.
Early doors being 0830. For England v France in the Rugby World Cup on the big screen. In that function room. Full of festival beers. With a full cooked breakfast at half time.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Bit late with this one. Let's rip through the write-up; six reasons to be cheerful about Peterborough Beer Festival, ten beers reviewed in three words each, four questions I quizzed CAMRA about and one declaration.
Reasons to be cheerful:
1) It didn't rain on Thursday. If it has rained previously, there was no Somme-like gloop pervading the tents.
2) Beer quality was spot-on.
3) Beer range was spot-on.
4) There was Northamptonshire skittles, dodgems and a caricaturist. None of which I got to experience coz I was too busy drinking (see points 2 and 3 above).
5) Grasmere Farm knock out a very generous hog roast.
6) AlcofrolicChap and Lupulucy are fun people to share beer and banter with.
The beers:
1) Summer Wine, Resistance Mild - Kevin loved it
2) Adnams, Ghost Ship - Smooth citric drinking
3) Arbor, Oyster Stout - Tangy roast chocolate
4) Blue Ball, The Smoker - Smoked Fruit & Nut
5) Fuller's, Brewer's Reserve No. 3 - Figgy vanilla whisky
6) Fyne Ales, Sublime Stout - Seriously easy drinking
7) Hopshackle, Lonestar TPA - Hoppy? Definitely maybe.
8) Northcote, Jiggle Juice - A tangerine dream
9) Summer Wine, 7 C's of Rye - Bittersweet bittery bitterness
10) Thornbridge, Geminus - O.M.G.
And Oliver's Perry. The lodestone of any half-decent cider & perry bar.
The questions:
1) Plans to introduce a third-pint glass / measure? - raised by a number of punters and is to be discussed at the festival 'wash-up' meeting in October.
2) Bottles bought to be taken away from the foreign bar had to be collected from the CAMRA membership stand - why not over the counter like GBBF? -process seemed convoluted, trying to discourage people from walking around with bottles.
Here's hoping for a third-pint measure in 2012; other CAMRA fests with cash bars manage this well. As for the bottle takeaway... I'm not sure. I can't see many being dumb enough to buy takeaway beer and the wander round swigging from the bottle. As all onsite bottled beer was poured into your glass, there were no bottles knocking around and you'd stand out like a sore thumb if you were necking one. Maybe the takeaway could be bagged, taped-up duty-free style and then handed over?
As for discouraging people wandering around with bottles, several thousand punters were wandering around with glasses... unless they were polycarbonate???
I didn't ask about the lack of seating because, er, I got one. My advice for seating at tented fests? If you want one, get there early or take your own - I saw several Nottingham CAMRA members with camping chairs (they learn from experience).
All in all, probably the best Peterborough CAMRA festival I've been to. Numbers may have been down on last year - maybe not surprising in our straitened times when non-CAMRA members had to shell out nine quid entry, although the three quid glass rebate may have gone un-noticed by many.
Still, there were 26,000 punters who drank 97,452 pints of beer, 13280 pints of cider, 10,755 bottles and 6,500 glasses of wine. As this picture shows, one bearded Kevin seemed to enjoy himself...
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It goes a little something like this.
Sit on a train full of stinking wet-dog tickers. That's running late. Again.
Wade across the kind of mud that you expect to see medieval soldiers buried in, arteries spurting.
Buy a beer. Sit by the bins near the stage. Wonder out loud why you ever bother coming to Peterborough beer festival.
Because the choice isn't go / don't go. The choice is; miserable journey, sit by the bins, don't get to drink the beer you wanted, get accosted by rabid ticker, wade through gloop, sit by stinking ticker on the train, go home.
Or;
miserable journey, sit by the bins, drink the beer you wanted, get accosted by rabid ticker, wade through gloop, sit by stinking ticker on the train, go home.
One year I experienced the strangest thing. Call it... fate, call it luck, call it karma. The trains ran on time and were clean. I got a seat at a table. Most of the beers were tasty. I caught a train home with a smile on my face.
But in the Venn diagram of Peterborough beer festival experiences of good times, good beer, good company, 2008 was an infinitesimally small cross-hatched patch.
Let it never be said, however, that this toper doesn't rise to the challenge.
If it doesn't piss it down, if the trains don't experience the wrong sort of bull semen on the line, if I don't the liver bored out of my by some bastard ticker who recognises me and wants to know why I have a problem with corduroy, then...
... I will be at the Peterborough CAMRA beer festival this year.
Why?
For Blue Monkey and Brewsters and Fuller's and Hopshackle and Magic Rock and Northcote and Oakham and Summer Wine and Thornbridge and everything else that a cursory glance at the beer list missed.
It's possibly the best cask beer offering at a CAMRA fest apart from Nottingham. And I want to be front and centre for it.
Besdies, there's always Cantillon, Boon, Rochefort and Orval on standby...
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For years, I was at the head of the queue. Spare government-stamped, half-pint-lined glass. Notes with target beers highlighted in different colours according to new brewery / new beer status. Last-minute gen on no-shows and no-drops scribbled as marginalia.
And then I tuned in, dropped out, stopped giving two shits about beer festivals and really enjoyed myself.
The last day of the fest was for losers. If you wanted the beers, you moved hell and high water to be there at the start. Last days were random; all the good beers supped, the slow-sellers and late-replacements littering the stillage.
What the last day is really about, what a festival in its death throes actually delivers, is a challenge. Bust the fest out. Take down those last straggling casks. And, just maybe, find a beer that surprises you along the way.
My local, the Royal Oak at Ockbrook, has been running a fest since half-past nine on Friday morning. Full cooked breakfasts, royal wedding coverage and 30+ beers. The pale and hoppy ones sold out quickly. The Thornbridge duo, Chiron and Colorado Red, sold fast despite their >5% abv. The Three Cats cider, first of this year's batch, sold out by 2pm on Friday.
So, what's going to be left by Bank Holiday Monday? Not a lot. Derby Brewing's 'I Do' sludged its way to an end. Cottage 'Celebration' held on valiantly for another half hour. Last cask standing was Slater's 'Roy Ale' - a brewery I've never been fussed with but this offered a fair old fruity snatch.
And like that, it was gone. Glasses moved up into the loft until the autumn festival. The stillage deconstructed to make way for the next event in the function room. Still plenty of good beer on the bar, though, to take outside and watch lumpy butterflies fall into walls. Rooster's Leghorn - good. Falstaff John Dillinger, first mild of May for me, even better.
I can understand how some people get annoyed on the last day of a fest. When they've travelled far. When the beer they expected to be on has gone. But, let's be honest. These people are arseholes. There are no guarantees in life. At a beerfest, hope for well-kept beer and revel in it when you get it. The Butcombe Stout may have busted out, but that last cask which you didn't give a first glance to may just be suprisingly good.
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There's a certain something about a CAMRA beer festival. The best of beer, the worst of beer. Venues that make you feel welcome, well-cellared beer, interesting food. Or municipal shit-holes, staff with body odour, rank ale, stale sarnies.
When one of your tried and trusted local fests shifts venue, you've got to give it a go. Truth be told, there can't be many members sad to see the Derby Winter festival move out of the Darwin Suite in the Assembly Rooms. A titchy venue, beers appearing at random due to lack of bar space, almost zero seating. This year; new broom, new room - and, boy, what a room.
The Roundhouse defies photography. Well, that's my excuse. It used to be a loco shed; it's now where college students get parked during term-time as a common room. It's large. It's round. Get the picture? No? Tough. I could show you pics like this:
or this:
or even this:
... but I don't think they're fair representations.
In summary: great beer on the Friday, some of which alcofrolicchap poured over other people. Great beer and cheese on the Saturday; most of the beer being totally random replacements as almost all of the advertised beer had run out on Friday. When the random beer comprises the likes of Liverpool Organic Kitty Wilkinson (proper chocolate & vanilla) and Brewdog 5am Saint (stupendously-Nelson-Sauvin-ed amber ale), then I'm a happy camper.
But this was supposed to be about IPAs. There were several, but there's no point in discussing all of them. There was only one worth talking about.
Buxton Axe Edge.
For, once upon a time, a brewer called James Kemp did move to Buxton and did wonderful things. In particular, he dumped a shed-load of Amarillo, Citra and Nelson Sauvin into Axe Edge. And, lo, amongst the topers of Derbyshire there was much rejoicing.
There are two schools of though about beer-festival drinking. One is that you should start at low ABV and work your way northward. The other says you should start on the beer you really want to drink, regardless of strength, because you never know how long it'll be on for.
Which is why I drank Buxton Axe Edge like a loon on the Friday. And, amazingly, on the Saturday as well - albeit for just three blissful halves.
So; props to Geoff and JK at Buxton. And to Ralf for putting on a Derby Winter fest in a superb venue, albeit the only one I've known where the queue for the gents was longer than the queue for the ladies by a factor of 30 to none. And to the various drunkards I spent time with. And to my wife, who did what she had to do to ensure no-one else got to drink as much Oliver's Medium Perry as her. And to Morgan's of the Eagle Market, Derby, for the best cheese platter ever seen at a beer fest.
Today's Obviously Made Up Fact About IPA:
Hodgson invented IPA in 1744 when he had a dream about exporting a pale ale.
Sadly, he forgot the dream and had to wait many years for severe déjà vu to take hold
before he could recapture the recipe.
Thanks to Richard Mackney for letting me steal that first photo
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I don't usually do event announcements but there's a couple coming up in February in various Midlands cities that are well worth making the effort to get to.
SIBA are running their first ever keg festival on Tuesday 8th February at the Canalhouse, Nottingham. Kicking off at 5pm, straight after the Champion Keg judging, over 50 beers will be on offer from the likes of Brewdog, Freeedom, Fuller's and Harviestoun. A full list can be found over on Ed's Beer Site.
The Brewing Industry International Awards return to Burton-upon-Trent and features the International Festival of Beer at the National Brewery Centre from Friday 11th to Sunday 13th February. Not sure what beers to expect but with entries from places as far-flung as Belarus, Japan, Laos and Tanzania it'll be a surefire way for me to tick off a few more countries on my world beer list.
And the Derby CAMRA Winter Festival has a new time and place, Thursday 24th - Saturday 26th February at the Derby College Roundhouse. It's a converted rail shed slap bang next to the railway station; shuttle buses will run from the city centre. The only problem with this fest in the past had been the cramped venue; the Roundhouse looks very impressive and I'm sure the festival organiser (and new Alexandra Tavern landlord) Ralf Edge will have plenty of good beer on offer.
So, that's a unique UK keg beer festival, a comprehensive world-beer festival and an ever-impressive CAMRA winter beer festival. If you haven't been to Nottingham, Burton or Derby before - and goodness knows why not if you love beer - then get these dates in your diary. I'll be around at all three. See you there.
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The December / January issue of Nottingham CAMRA's magazine, 'Nottingham Drinker', is out and features a piece by me about the trials and tribulations of SIBA judging. I've reproduced the whole article below, including the last few lines that seem to have got lost in publication.
You can download the magazine in PDF format here.
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I know what you’re thinking. Beer judges have a charmed life. All sat round a table, having a good gossip, drinking free beer that’s brought over to you. Then noshing a free launch before enjoying more free beer. How hard can that be? Well, this year I was given an opportunity to find out. And it’s not all just drink, drink, drink…
Many CAMRA festivals choose a champion beer, perhaps by public vote or a tasting panel. Nottingham is a little different in that it hosts the Midlands round of a national competition for brewers who are members of the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA). Beers are judged in eight categories, the winners of each then being judged against each other to choose a Supreme Champion.
So, who is it that gets to decide? A wide range of beery people. Brewers, publicans, technicians, retailers, writers… all sharing a love of great cask beer. Yes, there’s banter around the table with certain characters unafraid to give trenchant opinions. But the winners aren’t decided by round-table waffle; each judge awards marks in secret on a numeric scale against characteristics such as aroma, appearance and flavour. And remember, the judges don’t know the beer’s name or the brewer, they’re just referred to by a number.
Of course, with hundreds of beers entered into the competition you don’t get to judge every single one. Beers in each category are divided up between groups of judges so being able to arrive at a concise judgement from a small sample is key. After all, with perhaps 9 - 12 beers for your consideration, you’re not going to be taking your time over a half-pint of each. The glasses of water and plates of crackers provided as palate-cleansers aren’t an affectation, either - they’re a necessity. As a judge, you need to give each beer an equal chance to impress.
I was happy to have been allocated the categories that I wanted to judge. Both showed me just how challenging this judging malarkey can be. Speciality beer was rather a catch-all – it could be the use of adjuncts such as oats or wheat or a flavouring such as fruit or spice – but the beer needed to be appealing first and foremost. A poorly-brewed beer with a ton of spice dumped into it is still a bad beer.
The other category I judged, the milds, proved to be a real eye-opener with a huge range of colours (light gold to bruise-black) and flavours (lactic sourness to roast and hops). This variety provoked a healthy discussion around the table – should the mild ‘style’ be prescriptive or should we embrace the wide range of interpretations?
With the final forms submitted, the judges could go and buy a beer for themselves. To be honest, not knowing which beers you’d just judged was almost annoying. When you’ve sampled a couple of excellent beers, you want to go and, ahem, try a larger sample. But there’s a great feeling when, once the results were announced, I bought a category-winning beer and realised not only was it one that I judged but it was the one I liked the best.
If you fancy an afternoon of thinking whilst drinking, try and get involved in beer judging. It may give you a wider insight into the substance behind a beer style. And it’ll certainly give you plenty to argue about later on in the day!
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As I’m in a slightly-tinkerish mood this morning, I couldn’t resist blogging about a blog that blogs about another blog even if blogging about blogging is dangerously close to joining in on the scene that celebrates itself by narcissistic blog linking.*
The Tigger of Thornbridge, Kelly Ryan, writes today that he’s one of the contributors to the J D Wetherspoon Real Ale Festival blog. Alongside James Watt (Brewdog’s Head Of Stuff) and David Grant (Managing Director of Moorhouses) Kelly will be sharing his words of wisdom with the JDW readership.
Like the fest itself, I think the blogs are a great idea. There’s every chance that drinkers may experience their real ale epiphany at a Spoons fest – finding the beer that finally convinces them that there’s a whole new world beyond the bland. If it also then spurs them into exploring the fest website, reading the guest blogs and finding a wider world of incisive, interesting beer writing on the tinternet – that’d be fantastic.
Here’s hoping that the JDW fest blog will also include some guest posts from the international brewers and maybe even from a Spoons manager on the challenges they face.
* Kelly: that’s seven mentions of ‘blog’ in one sentence. In your face, sucker!
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When it's at the Coach and Horses, Dronfield, Derbyshire.
When the pub turns itself inside out, nearly all the tables and chairs ending up outside.
When it then buckets down with rain but everyone's still smiling under canvass.
When the music isn't a dodgy tribute band but some of the freshest and finest acts from the UK blues scene.
When the food isn't a burnt burger but a Southern-states BBQ smorgasbord of wings 'n ribs 'n jambalaya.
When the beers aren't random blends with daft names but some of the most inventive casks from the UK's most progressive breweries - Thornbridge, Brewdog, Fyne Ales, Williams, Dark Star, Marble, Hawkshead, Roosters.
When locals and tickers and Tweeters and brewers sit round tables and have a riotous time.
Last weekend was more than a beer festival. It was living, breathing proof that good beer is enhanced dramatically by good people in a good location having a good time.
Huge thanks to Cat and the team at the Coach for making the weekend a highlight of my beery summer so far. And props to Darth Kiwi - I mean Kelly Ryan - for his unstinting energy and enthusiasm.
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#1: Broughton's Pies. Not a tinfoil-thrice-baked pie. Or a slop-in-a-dish-with-puffy-stuff-floating-on-top pie. Just huge slabs of meaty goodness, encased in shortcrust pasty, hewn from a pie several feet wide. With chips. And mushy peas. Proper festival grub.
#2: Tony's Pork Scratchings. Legendary. They curl, they have bristles on, they are shrapnel-hard on the outside and gooey-soft on the inside. I swear that some of them are whole eyebrows. That wink at you from inside the packet. Never have cholesterol-ridden offcuts tasted so good.
#3: The posh seats. Hosted in the Town Hall, upstairs there are cinema-style seats that give you a panoramic view over the carnage beneath. You get to see the stained glass and wrought ironwork ceiling supports close up. But you don't throw pork scratchings at the topers below. That's how you get ejected. And an ASBO.
#4: Martin Atterbury. At lunchtimes, the WurliTzer leaps forth onto the stage and Marty plays all the tunes. Dambusters. Rule Brittania. Coconut Airways. Too Drunk To Fuck. Possibly not the last two. But he does often wear a salmon-coloured suit and he wears it well.
#5: Public transport. It's five minutes from the bus stop serving Derby. And it's five minutes from the railway station that's opposite that very same bus stop. And thanks to Cross-Country trains, you can get to Burton from all over the country. Mind you, thanks to Cross Country Trains there's no guarantee which station you'll end up travelling via on your way home.
#6: Beers. They have a habit at Burton. They like to put on really good beers that people want to drink. As opposed to beers that thirty people want to tick. So, there will be beers from the likes of Dark Star (Espresso, APA), Brewdog (Edge, Trashy Blonde, 77 Lager, Hardcore IPA), Thornbridge (Seaforth, Jaipur, Epic Halcyon) plus a whole heap of other great stuff.
#7: I'll buy you a beer. All you have to do is approach me with a rolled-up copy of What's Brewing and say "You are the Reluctant Scooper and I claim my free half!".
All the gory details can be found here
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I'm guessing that most branches of CAMRA run a beer festival. As branches vary in size, tradition and ambition, so do the venues and scale of those festivals. I've drank in a Melton cattle shed, the Town Hall in Burton and marquees on the castle lawn in Nottingham. Larger venues can offer more choice; more punters mean more footfall, more beer sold, more stalls and food outlets etc.
So why not have regional CAMRA festivals? I'd like to see festivals that could manage the expense of stocking more US/continental bottled/cask beers. More festivals offering a variety of food, seating areas, entertainment. Festivals where the emphasis is on beer but the venue isn't just a long bar with a burger stand on the end. Areas for tutored tastings, demonstrations, presentations...
I'm not suggesting that every CAMRA 'region' hosts an uber-fest; the size differential of those regions is too great. And a regional event shouldn't be at the expense of smaller branch fests. But I think there's potential for a couple of 'festival+' gatherings through the year, perhaps each point midway between National Winter and GBBF. The potential economy of scale delivered by large festivals could enable them to be innovative and still profitable for the region... and maybe even help to subsidise those branch fests...
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LocAle is one of the most significant CAMRA campaigns they've ever run. It promotes pubs that sell locally brewed real ale, which benefits not only themselves but their customers, the local brewers, the local economy and the environment.
Every CAMRA branch ought to be supporting LocAle. And what better way of promoting the campaign than having a LocAle bar at every local CAMRA beer festival? Not just a few local beers scattered around the venue. A dedicated section of the stillage with banners and beermats covered in the logo. The distance from festival to brewery in miles advertised on the cask end. Perhaps a sampler tray placed out at set times when it's quieter.
LocAle has the potential to engage casual drinkers into CAMRA campaigns. Every CAMRA festival should make a LocAle bar a high-visibility priority. Take pride in your own campaign; promote it with vigour, shout about its success. Then licensees will be more convinced to adopt it.
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Unchuffed by the selection and prices at the Derby CAMRA festival, I thought I'd trawl round a few of the city's choicer pubs to see what they had to offer.
Brunswick - 12 beers, tried Westerham British Bulldog, a sparklingly well-balanced bitter
Alex - 8 beers, tried Holden Midsummer Witch, sweet malts aren't really my thing sadly
Smithfield - 8 beers, tried Abbeydale Belfry, chock full of tangy hops and cool toffee notes
Royal Standard - 8 beers (some pumps were dry), tried Derby Hop Til You Drop, flatter than a very flat thing with some hops leaking out
Silk Mill - 8+ beers (didn't count properly), tried Harviestoun Schehallion and Thornbridge Kipling, both in good nick, the latter being 40p cheaper here than at the festival.
Flowerpot - 30 beers... so many it was tricky to read the board. Tried Lymestone Ein Stein, lots of fresh hay and fat pears.
So that's seventy-odd beers, most in decent condition, plenty of variety, plenty of ticker-tastic stuff and local favourites. And keenly priced, too.
Yet.... with grinding inevitability, I ended up in the fest. £1.80 was just worth paying for half a Fullers Vintage Ale. £1.60 was still too pricy for Kipling but I couldn't resist (and I was also buying it for a fellow Tweeter who'd never tried it before).
Verdict? The pubs win on range, quality and price. - the Flowerpot alone is worth travelling to Derby for. It's a real shame that the festival this year for me is just an average barstop rather than an exciting centrepiece of a grander Derby crawl.
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