Fest of fun: Derby, July 2007

Being able to have a lie-in, taking the bus to and from, bagging the best seat, spending more time there. Ah, the joys of hometown beer festivals :)


Derby CAMRA hold their festivals in the Assembly Rooms, a pug-ugly building with a fairly chaotic layout inside as well.

But the upside is that there's usually plenty of room; most beer in the (air conditioned) Great Hall, more rotating beers (on handpull) in the Darwin Suite and plenty of places to sit down (just not in the Great Hall itself).

I managed four sessions this year:

Wednesday evening: a few glasses (third-pints!) with my drum teacher Andi Evans of Endorphin Rush. A quiet session in the Darwin Suite, where the twelve handpumped beers were reason enough to not go trekking off to the Great Hall.

Beer of the session had to be Brewdog Punk IPA, a great fruity feel with biting bitterness. Brewdog are making some of the most exciting UK cask beers at the moment, so it's always a pleasure to sample them.

Thursday lunch: A session with these two dodgy-looking geezers:

Mark (on the left) runs a great beer blog and Neil interrupts his drinking on occasion to present his radio show under the moniker of DJ Monarch.

Both are stalwarts of RateBeer, the, um, beer rating website of which we three (and Andi) are all members.

We set up camp in the Darwin Suite, with frequent forays out to the Great Hall (just as long as the band weren't murdering their instruments at the time). Plenty of Scottish beer was had (a theme for the fest this year).

My beer of the session was Inveralmond Sunburst, a superb gold and grassy ale that I first sampled at Worcester Beer Festival last year.

Friday lunch: A meet-up with some of the regulars from the Alexandra and the Brunswick.

Plenty of beer on the table and a good chinwag made for an entertaining session. Douglas, Ray, Dave, John, Bernie, Mitch, Brian and Andi all enjoyed lashings of local and Scottish ales along with piles of home-made sarnies.

Beer of the session is a close call, so I'll make two awards: best cask beer was Flash from Leatherbritches and best bottle was the ever-wonderful Oerbier from Belgian brewers De Dolle (and what a fantastic website they have as well).

With the festival closing at four, there was time for Andi and I to have a swift couple up at the Flowerpot before heading off.

Saturday lunch: Just time for a few quick beers before I went shopping on the market. More Brewdog, of course; this time the Peroxide Punk. Like 'Punk IPA lite', it's got plenty of flavour but not the mule-kick bitterness. But beer of the short session had to be Heather Ales Ebulum. Fermented with elderberries, it's a fantastically smooth ale with some lovely roasty notes.

Overall, a good festival. Major plus points have to be the third-pint glasses, the cask Scottish beer and not having to cram the drinking into one afternoon. Let down slightly by the early kick-out each day, but if CAMRA members are happy to get in for free but not volunteer to work a shift, what can you expect? Guilty as charged, m'lud!