Scoopies 2008

You know your Christmas experience is incomplete. Turkey, pudding, presents, New Year party, pools of vomit and bitter recrimination. You've had all that but you haven't had the awards ceremony that really matters. It's the Scoopies!









No obvious order, no cogent process, just me and my beers and the occasional ASBO-inducing memory.



The 'It's Just Gone' Award for Pissing Off Scoopers - Derby CAMRA

For the beer choice in the Darwin Room; if its name isn't up on the washing line it ain't on and you can't have none. Make 'em sweat! Make 'em wait! And mucho kudos for putting the Brewdog beers on for the Thursday night at last year's winter fest. Saw them, drank them, had interesting sick in my glass all along the Morledge.

The 'Aintchasickofit' award for Stupid Drinking In A Decent Ale Pub - every twonk who ordered Landlord instead of a 'house-brewed' beer at the Brunswick or the Royal Standard in Derby.

Like lager, buy lager, no problem. Like cask beer, have up to eleven other beers to choose from, still order Landlord? Please report to Pork Farms immediately - your brain has been reserved for sausagemeat.

The Jobsworth Award For Services To Ruining A Good Day On The Ale - Trent Barton Buses

OK, not Trent per se, just the grumbly bogger who NEVER drops us off by the bus garage on the way into Derby - the garage that's next to the Smithfield pub. "I'm not supposed to stop there," he says, despite there's a bus stop / a fecking BUS GARAGE / no-one on the bus would give two shits if you stopped. May the erotic itch you experience late at night turn out to be chlamydia.

Pork Pie of the Year - Lanes of Leicester

A real shock, this one. Walter Smith's proved to be uneven, Bailey and Sons of Upper Broughton was almost superb, but Lanes takes the Scoopy for that combination of squidgy flat top and sumptuous jelly. Easily the best food at the Leicester beer festival.

Landlord of the Year - Timothy Taylor.

Only joking. It has to be Graham Yates of the Brunswick Inn, Derby. For being grumpy, engaging, caring and curmudgeonly. Usually all in the space of ten minutes. And for staying out of the brewery and letting James get on with it.

The 'OhMyGodILoveBeer!!!' Moment of the Year

Nottingham CAMRA 1st Robin Hood beer festival. Sat by the castle wall, looking out over the southern shire, drinking Potbelly Crazy Daze whilst the Castle's Union flag snapped in the sharp breeze.

Ratebeer Moment of the Year - At The Bear, Oxford Crawl

The smallest pub ever, already rammed full of diners debating whether to have peas with their sausage and mash, when a dozen or so Ratebeerians turn up. A line to the bar and out of the door was formed, pints of Hooky passed over heads already scraping against the ceiling, out into the street where we then sat by the bins as tourists took photos.

Surprisingly Good Pub of the Year - The Star, Godalming

I washed up into Guildford on a training course, a town stuffed with tepid continental lager and hilarious WAG-wannabe bars. Taking the train down to the next stop one night was a calculated gamble but, boy, did it pay off. The Star has it all; candlelight and bustle and a local's bar they didn't mind me invading. Proper perry and decent ales and the best pint of Harvey's Best that I've ever had. And those in the know drank that 'til the barrel ran dry.

Pointless Bar Snack Of The Year - Pickled Onions.

Barman! I'll have a pint of your finest balanced IPA.... and a vinegar-infused bull's gonad to complement it. There's a time and a place for pickled onions - the twelfth of never, over the nearest event horizon.

Best CAMRA festival of the year - Nottingham.

I still can't believe there was a better fest than Worcester with its paella and Blue Bear Uproar and Pictish Corn Dolly and Oz & James and Olivers Blakeney Red. But there was. The first Robin Hood Festival was - wow. I know some people had issues with the hot food, the queues, the beer availability on Saturday. But I had hot food in town, got there early and didn't go on Saturday. The full write-up is here but let's just say this: an A-Z of fantastic cask beers, fresh seafood, stunning vistas, good friends and the unalloyed joy of all those things segueing together.

Best non-CAMRA festival of the year - Barrow Hill Rail Ale.

For you poor unfortunates who haven't heard - this is a beer festival in an engine shed. You get to buy beer and go take a train ride. You get to be almost run over by reversing locos. How could it not be fun? You get to watch tickers cum in their corduroys at the sight of steaming engines and rare beers. OK, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. This is - Abbeydale Black Mass. Bottle Brook Imperial Russian Stout. Falstaff Wilko. White Shield No.1 and P2 Imperial Stout. Those last two in the same glass. Cheers, Mes :-) For a fest chock full of high ABV beers and trip hazards, there was none better.

Best cider or perry as judged by Mrs Reluctant - Severn Sider Whisky Cask Perry Or Something Like That.

Let's face it, you can't even take what the cask end says as gospel. But my little nest of vipers loved the subtle whiskyness and the easy going perry nature - Blakeney Red, perhaps? Whatever, it made Burton Spring fest a whole lotta whiskyperry fun. (FWIW I thought Whin Hill's Browns, their blushing rose cider, was gobsmackingly wonderful. But let's not kick off a domestic)

Best bottled beer - Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast

So good that I've dared not write about it yet. Oats and coffee and chocolate doesn't even come close to describing how effortlessly superb this beer is. A proper write-up will feature in the next few weeks - when I first tried it, I was as excited as a schoolboy who'd just been touched in the gentlemen's area for the first time. Don't believe it could be this pant-expandingly good? Then don't visit beermerchants.com to see if they have any left.

Best cask beer - Thornbridge Katipo.

I thought picking a best bottled beer was tough. There's been some WORLD CLASS cask down my gullet in 2008 - I say WORLD CLASS because sometimes we forget in Merrie England that we brew some of the best, freshest, flavoursome beers that can be had. Hobson's Mild, Bottle Bridge Double Chocolate Porter, McGivern Mild, Potbelly Crazy Daze, Pictish, Headless, Marble, Hopshackle....

But there was only one beer that made me thoroughly Reluctant and insisted that I drank it at every given opportunity. Katipo was one of those rare beers where I felt glad to be in a pub just because it was on; to buy it for total strangers, to feel my heart flutter at the sight of a pumpclip, to be evangelical with glass in hand, to sit with eyes closed and let raspberries dance on my tongue.

And the pronunciation. Car-Tea-Paw. I want a half of Car-Tea-Paw. No, Car-Tea-Paw. Well, actually, NO, its NOT called Catty-po, Cart-Heep-Pow or Katy-Poo. Honest, the brewer told me it's called.... ah, sod it. Give me half of number 344. Yes, the Catty Paws one...

To Kelly 'Tigger' Ryan - brew more. Just Brew More. Beer this good has earned the right to be brewed and drank until it bleeds out of the eyeballs of acolytes.



So, there you go. Winners are entitled to hand-inked certificates. Let me know if you want one, all you have to do is gurn for the camera and buy me beer.

And, for everyone who didn't have a pint of the unusual last year - I salute you.