Fest of fun: Worcester

With last year's festival lost to the floods, it was a welcome return to Worcester for me. The combination of fine beers, superb bottled ciders and a spot in the shade of the huge marquee makes it one of my few 'must-attend' CAMRA festivals of 2008.




Another attraction of this fest is that it's a relatively easy trip down on the train, with a mercifully short change at the gloomy Birmingham New Street. Though, to be fair, there's impressive plans afoot to improve the place - and as you can see, even Derby's getting new canopies and (dare I say it) lifts as well as stairs (the 20th century finally arrives at Derby just a few years late...)

I let the ticker hoardes surge their way down to the fest as the train pulled into Foregate Street station, it seemed a shame to come all this way and not see any more of the town than a beer tent. After a short riverside walk, though, the call of the mild (etc) was too strong and I set off over a decidely boggy racecourse to reach the main marquee.

The fest has a good setup; one large marquee with a central bar, another to the rear to accommodate the live music, another off to the side for the cider and perry bar. Plenty of room outside, too, with food stands off to the right and loos away to the left. The muddy patches tended to be at the marquee entrance points; staff were working hard all day to lay wood chippings and boards to make these high-traffic areas less gloopy. Mind you, not a great deal that they could do about the smell of that mud; the train home that I got stank like a diarrectic cattle truck. Or was that just the natural 'eau de odour of ticker' ;-)

Of course, I had a cunning plan that - being a Reluctant Scooper - wasn't related to simply scoring new breweries and/or new brews. No, my masterplan was to work my way from the north-east to the south-west of England, daisy-chaining the counties together with a beer from eleven counties from Northumberland to Cornwall. Sadly, this plan (like countless festival plans before it) went base over apex at the first beer hurdle with the lack of the promised Northumberland beer from Allendale.

I decided then to start in the south-west and work my way up-country until the novelty wore off. Which was almost as soon as I started - plumping for a brewery scoop, I tried Blue Anchor's Spingo Middle and soon wished I hadn't bothered. It wasn't bad.... just really plain, a rough-at-the-edges bitter which failed to deliver any of the promised fruity aroma, peppery notes, nutty palate or complex bittersweet as promised in the programme.

With the beer about to be the first 'field-pour' of the day, an announcement came over the p.a. to say that a TV crew were about to start filming in the rear marquee. James May and Oz Clarke were making a series about brewing beer (perhaps James' riposte to Oz's wine antics?) and the judging of their labours was taking place here today! This was an unexpected extra, so I mooched off to take some photos of a) James May looking perturbed and b) Oz Clarke looking constipated

I won't give the result away here; suffice to say, the more adventurous-sounding beer won the day. The judges said both beers really needed more conditioning, so another four to six weeks might have made all the difference to the result, methinks. Insults were traded for the cameras, allegations of hop theft, kitchen shenanigans and hosiery-wearing were all par for the course if you've seen this pair in action before.

After that diversion, I really needed a decent beer. Sticking with the general scooping direction, I decided to keep the faith and go for a Devonian beer. Not too reluctantly, I went for something by Red Rock; I'd tried beers from the likes of South Hams before and been fairly underwhelmed.

A half of Dark Ness was bought, a spot in the shade outside was secured and I found myself enjoying a dark beer on a sunny day. And, boy, was it good - superbly smooth, deep dark chocolate malts, faint hoppiness in the nose, halo thin head and a sustained dry finish. So good that I took two long sips, balanced the grass precariously on the grass and a pasisng spider knocked it over. That's my excuse, anyway. Ho hum - almost tempted to buy another one, but my scooping today is a little less reluctant than usual.

Tucker time next. I like to get some authentic local food at a beer festival and here was no exception. Cooked by the team from a local pub (The Walter De Cantelupe), I enjoyed a substantial tray of... paella. They run paella nights at the pub and when it's this good I can see why. Plenty of chicken, chorizo and prawns in there as well as a couple of mussels.

The food was certainly more impressive than my next beer. Initially recorded in my notes as 'something beginning with A.... based on Exmoor beer?', a detailed inspection reveled it to be Adkin's Alfred's Golden. Very loosely based on Exmoor Gold, apparently. Very loosely based on beer, actually - I'm all for a light golden ale, but this stuff bordered on being coloured water, such was the lack of any substantive malt and hop presence.

With the thought of a geographical-based scooping session diminishing rapidly, I thought I'd stuff the idea into a cocked hat and go continental instead. Not on the initial list was a draught beer, confusingly billed as 'Browerij de Ryck Girardin Krieklambik'. I'm hoping it's the latter part they got right, for this was a subtle so-so fruity beer with a sour bite snagging late on in the flavour. Never as harsh as lesser lambics, this was actually quite easy going on the funky front and was potentially quaffable by the pint.

Time for more beers at random. Next up, one of my favourite brewers, Pictish. Their seasonal beer Corn Dolly had a lovely fruit-smoothie feel with plenty of wet malts in the nose and a balanced palate. A lively pourer as well, just like the Green Bullet sampled in Newark earlier this year.

That made me crave for hops, so the logical step was to Dark Star Hophead Extra. Like a mosquito in training, this bites yet fades before the job is fully done. Perhaps I've spoilt my palate with too much Mikkeller All Others Pale over the last few days (more on that beer in Bottled Up soon). Only later did I get that lingering hop lick.

I thought I ought to try a Worcester beer whilst I'm here so I reluctantly scooped a new brewery for me, Blue Bear. Now in a summery mood, I went for the 5% pils, Uproar. Well, it's lager-y... crisp yet creamy, wafts of perfumed Saaz, simple bittered finish. Now learning back against the marquee, the wind was buffeting the sides and punching me in the back like a recalcitrant nephew when you're trying to sleep off a boozy lunch on the beach.

I'd toyed with the idea of buying a shooting stick earlier, but decided against it as the inherent danger of spiking it through my foot after a few beers was too great. And of not being able to retain my balance on it. And of having to carry it around. And of looking like a complete tool if I did finally manage to perch on it. And not being anatomically suited to squeezing my Hugh Jarse onto a wafter thin piece of leather. As Martin Clunes once said about uncomfortable sports cars, 'it had Recaro seats, but I don't have a Recaro arse'.

So, the weather's lovely. Families are having picnics, kids are missing frisbees thrown by over-enthusiastic fathers. I want to tell the woman sitting a little way away from me that a white bra with that black top doesn't really work. And the same to her friend, who's wearing a pale blue bra with a black top. Perhaps it's not blue, perhaps it's gray. Perhaps she washes her smalls with the rest of her gloomy goth clothing. Perhaps I ought to go and get a drink and stop staring at women's over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders...


Ah. feck. It MUST be cider time. I was going to resist the draught stuff and just take a few bottle home, but the weather's placid and I'm feeling like a mellow fellow. I've more than a liking for Burrow Hill - I shall be taking a bottle of their superlative sparkling Stoke Red home with me - and I don't see their stuff on draught too often so I was practically forced to endure a half of their dry cider. Can I use the word superb too many times? This was.... ah, you can guess. I could say it was better than snorting coke off a Playboy model's breasts and then finding last week's winning lottery ticket between her thighs. But it wasn't *that* good - it was only cider ;-)

Though it was so good that I went to the bogs (unisex, clean, no queues), was eager to get back to the bar and buy more, left my glass in there, realising that just after a lady went in and locked the door. So, I waited patiently at a distance that hopefully didn't worry her husband into thinking I was a stalker.

With glass retrieved, perry was obtained (Olivers Blakeney Red) and I took up residence outside against the marquee again. Now, I'm usually easily annoyed by kids doing what kids do - chattering, running about... breathing in the same room as me. But it's hard to be a curmudgeon when you can remember being on your holidays and doing the same things - standing on your football, getting bored playing frisbee and wandering off, knocking a drink over and blaming it on your sister...

Anyoldhow, that perry. It's got a light lemon in body, carries a creeping sweetness, never a harsh edge, always holding a light yet keen pear flavour. I could drink this all day, but that way unconsciousness in a pool of pear vomit lies.

So instead I had, er, Orchard Blakeney Red perry. A plain pear flavour with a hint of spiciness, although that could have been from the airborne feculence in the tent. Slugs of raw pear penetrate later with a throaty, latent sweetness unexpected.

The last drink of the day at a fest isn't really the best time to have a cider that isn't on the programme list. My extensive notes reveal it to be made by Allen Robert, 7%, but I can find precious little info about them. I just wrote 'fruity'; those superlative perrys had exhausted my adjectives.

That left one last task - buy some ciders and perrys to take home. No own-bottling here like a trolley-wielding ticker, Worcester fest has the best range of bottles on sale that I've ever seen. I picked up a bottle of Orchard cider with a whisky finish, some from Brook Apple farm (a producer I hadn't heard of before), an Olivers sparkling perry and the sublime sparkling Stoke Red from Burrow Hill which my wife and I will have instead of champagne on our wedding anniversary.

A truly excellent festival, this. The weather was kind and, truth be told, made a huge difference. Crowds inside would have churned up more of that foul-smelling mud and made the day far less fun than it was. The drinks were in good condition, even if some of them were a little bland. The paella was great, though I didn't see much in the way of sarnies and lighter bites. Loos were clean and queue-free whilst I was there. But it was the atmosphere that made it, not a gloomy room full of overly-serious tickers, more of a real 'festival' vibe where the drink was an important part of the day but (perhaps perversely) not the be-all and end-all.