GABF versus GBBF

*TICK*

That’s my pencil scratching off a beer-thing that I’ve wanted to do for years: the Great American Beer Festival.

Held in Denver, Colorado, every year, it’s an outrageously big celebration of American brewing. In 2012 the festival numbers were record-breaking: 578breweries pouring 2,700 beers to 49,000 attendees. I was there judging the competition which was also record-breaking: 4,338 beers submitted by 666 breweries and tasted by 185 judges across 84 style categories.

But what’s GABF like compared to GBBF?

GABF runs four four-hour-ish sessions. GBBF runs for five days, 12-10pm.

GABF tickets are $65 a session (there’s a members only session at $55) while GBBF are £10; GABF’s cost includes all the beer you’ll drink whereas you pay for each beer at GBBF.

Measures at GBBF are one-third-pint, half-pint and pint. GABF is a 1oz pour. This is an interesting one as I thought that a 1oz pour would suck, but it doesn’t. Sure, there’s no time to sit back and relax by sipping on a half, but it gives the opportunity to taste a lot of beer and 1oz isn’t really that small when you’re there and doing it. Plus, if you like the beer you can just order another one and another until satisfied. And if you don’t like it then there’s only a mouthful to drink or dump – at GBBF I’ve had many beers which I’ve bought and then dumped because they aren’t what I wanted.

It’s worth lingering on this point because it’s important. I liked being able to taste 50, 70, 100 beers, or whatever it was, in four hours. And it is about tasting, not drinking (though it’s very possible to get very drunk if you go hard). With so many beers being poured, most of which I’d never had or even heard of, I wanted to drink as many as possible, jumping from IPA to pilsner to saison to stout to sour beer to whatever was on the next table. But there is a downside to this: the whole thing feels frantic as if there’s a rush to get the next beer and the next – there’s a casual, sit-down-and-enjoy-it feel to GBBF while GABF feels like a race.

I like the layout of GABF: it’s broken down geographically but then each brewery has their own space, compared to the large regional bars at GBBF (which require cartography lessons to navigate). Brewers can pour their own beers at GABF, which is great, though Andy Crouch would like to see more brewers there and I’d agree. This also means that breweries can put things out on their bars – beer info, POS stuff, whatever. I think brewers pouring their own beer at GBBF would be a great thing, as would more information about the beers we’re drinking, though this would involve a complete change in how things are done (similar to what was achieved at the awesome Independent Manchester Beer Convention).

This layout also creates a situation where drinkers line-up for specific breweries. Over the four sessions, a handful of breweries consistently had lines of people waiting to try their beer – Dogfish Head, Cigar City, Russian River, Crooked Stave. I have never seen a line at GBBF waiting to try the beer from one brewery, instead it becomes a big bundle at the bar as drinkers gun for the Champion Beer of Britain or some geek treat on the foreign bar. The queuing was actually a good thing, I reckon – there’s a buzz that comes with that.

The size of GABF kept on surprising me: it’s huge (just look at the map). Overwhelmingly big, in fact. But at the same time that’s good – it shows the sheer, exciting scale of American craft beer.

Olympia is a nicer place to drink than the Denver Convention Centre.

The beers: 2,700 beers at GABF and around 500 beers at GBBF. When I go to GBBF I spend most of my time at the foreign beer bar. Imagine that multiplied by about 300 and that’s what GABF was like for me. It’s not fair to compare the volume (500 is, after all, more than I could manage over five days anyway), but the range is more relevant to compare: there was simply more variety at GABF – you name it and it was there.

Like at GBBF, at GABF some breweries can choose to take up bigger bars. This gives them more presence, means they can pour more beer and can put more personality into it. At GBBF we get regional breweries and sometimes they excite and surprise with what they pour – this year at GBBF Twaites had a couple of crackers, Fuller’s had the superlative Fuller’s Reserve, Greene King poured 5X. At GABF it was bigger breweries who took these corner plots but still ones which most drinkers want to get to: Odell, Oskar Blues, Dogfish Head, New Belgium, Bear Republic, Anchor, Sierra Nevada...

Food at GBBF is normal stomach-fillers like pies, pasties and burgers, plus the wonderful pork scratchings. I expected good food at GABF but I didn’t see it: pizza was pretty much all you got.

Pretzel necklaces. These are a curiosity. For three days I saw people walking around with a necklace of pretzels hanging on their chest. I’d seen photos of these before and assumed there’d be a stall inside selling them. There isn’t. This surely means that all those thousands of pretzel chains were homemade. How the hell did that craze start?!

Photo from here

The dropped-glass cheer. I figured this was a unique British element of GBBF: the chime of broken glass which sends a wave of cheers through the huge hall. This is not unique to GBBF and it also happens at GABF. Both are funny in their own ways: at GBBF a glass costs £3 so the butter-fingered drinker has to go and buy another one at the expense of three more pounds and the laughter of their mates; at GABF three of the four sessions use plastic glasses which, when dropped, bump around like a rugby ball and bounce in all sorts of different directions as their owner scrambles to catch it while everyone around them cheers. 

Award-winning beers. At GBBF there’s always a hush as the Champion Beer of Britain is announced, this is often followed by some ‘what the fucks’ which is then followed by people casually, but at great speed, heading to find that beer and drink it. After the awards are announced at GABF (which this year happened on Saturday morning before the final two sessions), lines increase to try and find medal-winning beers while brewers walk around with medals hanging proudly from their necks. One interesting distinction is that it feels like the medal winners at GABF are celebrated whereas GBBF winners are denigrated (unless you know the brewery and love the beer). I definitely think there’s a lot of work needed on the competition side of things in Britain with more transparency and information about how these things are decided, perhaps creating a bigger GABF-style competition.

Atmospheres at both are similar. Huge halls of drinkers create their own backing track of humming conversation. At GABF there’s also karaoke and a silent disco sponsored by Oskar Blues – can you imagine if GBBF had a silent disco? I’d love to see that!

There was a much younger demographic at GABF.

And then there’s one final thing: the stuff which happens outside of the festival. Things start on the Monday of GABF and lead around until the Saturday it finishes. Every day there are breakfasts, lunches, evening events and after-parties; there’s beer launches and rare beer tastings; paired beer dinners; you name it, it happens. Plus, all of the many bars and breweries in town are open and packed with drinkers. What’s impressive is that the 49,000 attendees pump $7 million dollars into Denver over the duration of GABF and that’s outside of seven-figure ticket sales. At GBBF there’s so much focus on the festival itself that nothing happens outside of it. Perhaps it’s the fact that drinkers at GBBF can stay all day, I don’t know, but it’d be brilliant if London could embrace the festival and turn it into a city-wide event that can bring in visitors for an extended stay.

I love both festivals and if you love beer and haven’t been to GABF then you must try and go sometime; if you haven’t been to GBBF then you should go to that.

Fast Selling Fruit and Chocolate Beer

The first beers to sell out at beer festivals often contain fruit or have the word chocolate in them. Has anyone else noticed this? Walking around GBBF on Thursday evening and seeing stuck-on sold out signs over lots of different beer names it became more obvious: Cherry Blonde, Chocolate and Vanilla Stout, Grapefruit Beer, Blueberry Bitter, Chocolate Cherry Mild (a double-whammy right there), Raspberry Wheat and Triple Chocoholic.

While some people at beer festivals (any beer festival, anywhere) know the difference between a UK and US IPA, know their brown ales from their porters, the wheats from the wits, I think many beer festival goers are just there because they couldn’t resist the big sign outside that says ‘Beer Festival’ and it’s an excuse to drink a lot. Most of them probably don’t even drink real ale as their everyday pint. They probably don’t even like it.

Seeing 100 different beers around a room is therefore pretty daunting. What shall we order first? Having beers with cherry, chocolate, blueberry or blackcurrant in them gives drinkers a point of reference which they know and understand and so feel more comfortable ordering them. There’s also an assumption that it’ll be sweet and fruity rather than dry and bitter, which is an attraction to someone new.

I know when I first went to beer festivals I’d scoop up these beers first and never did a beer with cherry in its name get by me; I didn’t enjoy bitter beers much so these fruity options suited me well. We would also always work up to the strongest beer there, though we’d often get there too late and miss out. So along with fruit and chocolate, the strong ones also empty quickly. Is this so that people can tell their mates on Monday that “I drank I pint of beer that was 8%!”?

I hardly ever order beers with fruit in their name anymore (usually because if it doesn’t say IPA or Hops in the name then I don’t order it), probably because the idea of an extract or syrup puts me off, though I definitely see the appeal and if I had a brewery then a cherry chocolate mild (rich and silky and chocolatey and just livened with a kiss of cherry extract – gorgeous!) would be high up the to-brew list.

Fruit, chocolate and the strongest beers usually sell quickly at beer festivals. They are approachable starter beers or bragable big ones. If these beers attract new drinkers then that’s a good thing because hopefully after their fruity fill they will try a few other beers at the festival or on the bar and maybe find that one beer that changes their drinking direction forever.

Are there any really good beers made with fruit in the UK? What are the top chocolate brews? (Saltaire’s Triple Chocoholic is good but I can only manage a half). Do you order them or stay clear of them?  

Did you know that Wells & Young’s Banana Bread Beer actually contains fresh bananas? How about that. I’ve also just read Patrick McGovern’s Uncorking the Past and there is such a thing as banana wine. Banana wine! If I remember rightly it was mentioned on the same page as a sausage tree. A sausage tree! Imagine my excitement when I read that.

Cheers for GBBF 2011!

It’s here! I couldn’t sleep last night because I was so excited and then when I did sleep I had weird dreams about beer. The Great British Beer Festival is the best beery British week of the year.

Last year I wrote a post about The Cheer. I’m re-posting it again because I like it a lot.

A rainbow of people, colours and sounds, all holding glasses filled with golds, blacks and browns. A chatter purrs happily, an ebb and flow of conversation, laughing, rising and falling as you pass through the groups. “Have you tried this one?!” Someone excitedly bursts out thrusting a half of something under his mate’s nose. “What do you want next?” Around a corner drinkers are three deep at the bar, stretched all along, looking up and down, all around, a constant passing back and forth of glasses, money and beer; an empty here, a pint of stout there, a half of pale ale, a fiver, another empty, another half, a couple of quid change. Another corner and the smell of food strikes. Another corner and it opens into a line of bars and a huge seating area, so big you can barely see the other end, a rock star stage in between. People everywhere drink their beers, they talk about their day, their week, the weekends ahead; they gossip, talk about the news, cinema, sport; they talk about what they drank earlier, what they’ve got now, what they’ll order next; they say this is good, this isn’t, this is great, this is incredible, this is insane, this is… All around are the interested eyes of friends in conversation; the glazed-eyes of seven hours of being there; the eager eyes of the newly arrived; the crosshair focus of the poacher eyes of the ticker. And then it starts. It begins later in the day, five hours in, maybe six. The grip loosens, the excitement fails the hand. We don’t hear the shattering tink of glass on hard floor, what we hear is the cheer. The ‘whay’ which grows and spreads throughout, getting louder, building like a wave as everyone joins in, passing it on, the growing smiles and whoops and then the laughter and then back to where we left off, talking about this or that. Then later, nearer the end, it happens more, a constant flow of crash and cheer breaks conversations for a moment to join in - a second to drop everything and shout with the crowd.

That cheer is the uplifting soundtrack to the beer festival. It’s more than laughing at the loose fingers of someone unknown and unseen, it’s about having a chance and a reason to stand up and just cheer and let it all out, to call out because you are having a great time, to express the joy and belonging and spirit of carefree drinking fun that we are all feeling, and to do it in the simplest, most primal of ways. It’s a shared, united ‘cheers’ to our fellow drinkers, a way of chinking your glass with a thousand other merry men. The cheer is not for the broken glass, it’s for the full ones about to be emptied and then refilled - it’s for us. I’ll drop my glass to that.

Last year I also wrote a survival kit for GBBF and this year’s is almost exactly the same (this is a fairly lazy blog post, as you’ve probably noticed already...).

1 x beer list (so I make sure I try everything I want to)

1 x notebook (to remind me what I drank and how it tasted)

4 x freshly-sharpened pencils (to write in the aforementioned notebook)

1 x pencil sharpener (in case I write a lot, which never happens because I’m too busy drinking)

1 x Blackberry (to tell twitter what I’m up to and to take pictures)

1 x bottle of water (stay hydrated!)

1 x lots of bubble wrap (safety first for bottle purchases)

1 x pack of milk thistle (look after your liver)

1 x pack of paracetamol (the morning after)

Lots x bananas (potassium, magnesium, vitamin B6, energy and hangover relief)

1 x isotonic sports drink (to replace sugars and salts; to give energy; to help the hangover)

1 x pack of bacon (essential)

I’m all prepared so bring it on! I’ll be there all day Tuesday and then Thursday from late-afternoon. If you are there then say hi.

Here’s to GBBF and may it be an awesome week!

Beer Festival Fortnight

Is there anywhere which isn’t having a beer festival in the next two weeks?! (Just look at this list on Ale Talk) Our livers are likely to be pickled come the end of the British bank holiday bonanza that’s between Easter and May...

My favourite beer festival (outside of GBBF, obviously) is Planet Thanet and that always starts on Good Friday. It’s got that great mix of good venue and atmosphere and an excellent selection of beers, including stuff from most Kent breweries. It’s an unmissable festival, I think, and a direct train from London will get you to the seaside in two hours.

Some others which have caught my eye are: The White Horse, Parsons Green, are holding an Over the Hop festival (a festival of IPAs and hoppy beers!); the Thatchers Arms are holding a 12-day-long festival with a London focus; Egham Beer Festival has a good list – it’s also where I went to university and they only started the festivals after I left; a little further around the M25 is the Reading Beer Festival which always looks great. And these are just the ones that aren’t miles away from me; there are so many others, some in pubs, some big CAMRA fests.

What beer festivals have you got pencilled in for the next few weeks?

GBBF Week: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good: The beer (obviously); the pork scratchings (obviously); seeing friends, old and new; third measures; the volunteers who deserve a standing ovation each evening; the location (big, brilliant); the speed to enter is incredibly good if you have a ticket; despite the hoards of people, the gallons of beer and mountains of food, it somehow never seems dirty or messy in there; the waves of Cheers which growl around the venue as the days progress.

The Bad: I think water should be freely available and encouraged, perhaps on a free water bar; on Saturday there was no cask US beer left and much of the other beer was sold out by 5pm (good for the festival, not so good for the drinker who can only attend on Saturday); and does anyone really listen to the music? (these are all minor - there's little to complain about, in my opinion)

The Ugly: The gents’ toilets towards the end of the day (a long time queuing followed by standing swaying-shoulder to swaying-shoulder with two other guys, aiming with considerable difficulty into the white hole surrounded by a frog chorus of farts and barely-stifled giggles).

The Best Beers: Portsmouth Brewery Bottle Rocket IPA was my favourite overall beer, a fruity, tangerine-juiced IPA, so deliciously good that it’s got my tongue doing excited somersaults just remembering it; the Portsmouth Oatmeal Stout was also exceptional and the smoothest mouthful of beer of the week; Fyne Ale’s Jarl was the best UK beer I had, its bright flavour blinds its bland 4% peers, firing out fruity hops and pithy bitterness; a passing gulp of Birrificio Italiano Tipopils was excellent and I’m glad I picked up a bottle to bring home; Fuller’s Chiswick and ESB were both in remarkably good condition and reaffirmed to me just how good their beers can be, while the Brewer’s Reserve No.2 showed the other side of Fuller’s, a side worthy of considerable attention (Kelly Ryan writes this great piece about it); Durham’s Hopping Mad, Arbor Beech Blonde, Marble Manchester Bitter, Thornbridge Kipling and Moor’s Revival all really hit the hop spot, vibrant and full-flavoured UK ales; Opa Opa King Oak Milk Stout was a great example of a style I don't drink often enough; a few good lagers were served to me by Tandleman, all excellent and cool with crisp flavours and just what I wanted as a little refresh from the US hops, even if I can’t remember what they were (there was a Zoigl and an unfiltered Kolsch among them...); De Molen’s Tsarina Esra Reserva was ridiculously delicious and dangerously good.

Photo by Jonas Smith

The Other Memorable Beers: Saltaire Triple Chocoholic really is a cocoa lover’s dream; four bottles for 50p each, two unlabelled, one from 1980 and one from 1981, all perfectly drinkable, all showing the results of careful aging, all interesting to try; Revelation Cat’s Single Hop Lambic was unforgettable in a bad way, clashing sour with big, citrus hops; Rogue’s Chipotle Ale had three of us all exclaim ‘smoked paprika’, which, while it may be my favourite spice in the kitchen, is not something I want in my beer (this was one of three bottles which Mark writes about, which had us talking for an hour about beer and food pairings for three out-there beers).

GBBF week is done. It’s a crazy, intense and brilliant week. It’s a time for meeting up with friends and drinking good beers, just because we can. If you went, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly?! The best beer you had was...?

I got the images from the CAMRA website.

The Cheer

A rainbow of people, colours and sounds, all holding glasses filled with golds, blacks and browns. A chatter purrs happily, an ebb and flow of conversation, laughing, rising and falling as you pass through the groups. “Have you tried this one?!” Someone excitedly bursts out thrusting a half of something under his mate’s nose. “What do you want next?” Around a corner drinkers are three deep at the bar, stretched all along, looking up and down, all around, a constant passing back and forth of glasses, money and beer; an empty here, a pint of stout there, a half of pale ale, a fiver, another empty, another half, a couple of quid change. Another corner and the smell of food strikes. Another corner and it opens into a line of bars and a huge seating area, so big you can barely see the other end, a rock star stage in between. People everywhere drink their beers, they talk about their day, their week, the weekends ahead; they gossip, talk about the news, cinema, sport; they talk about what they drank earlier, what they’ve got now, what they’ll order next; they say this is good, this isn’t, this is great, this is incredible, this is insane, this is… All around are the interested eyes of friends in conversation; the glazed-eyes of seven hours of being there; the eager eyes of the newly arrived; the crosshair focus of the poacher eyes of the ticker. And then it starts. It begins later in the day, five hours in, maybe six. The grip loosens, the excitement fails the hand. We don’t hear the shattering tink of glass on hard floor, what we hear is the cheer. The ‘whay’ which grows and spreads throughout, getting louder, building like a wave as everyone joins in, passing it on, the growing smiles and whoops and then the laughter and then back to where we left off, talking about this or that. Then later, nearer the end, it happens more, a constant flow of crash and cheer breaks conversations for a moment to join in - a second to drop everything and shout with the crowd.

That cheer is the uplifting soundtrack to the beer festival. It’s more than laughing at the loose fingers of someone unknown and unseen, it’s about having a chance and a reason to stand up and just cheer and let it all out, to call out because you are having a great time, to express the joy and belonging and spirit of carefree drinking fun that we are all feeling, and to do it in the simplest, most primal of ways. It’s a shared, united ‘cheers’ to our fellow drinkers, a way of chinking your glass with a thousand other merry men. The cheer is not for the broken glass, it’s for the full ones about to be emptied and then refilled - it’s for us. I’ll drop my glass to that.

The Hop Press: The Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation

I've written about the Weekend of Spontaneous Fermentation on my Hop Press blog. It really is a unique and wonderful beer festival. You can read the full post here.

The Hop Press: Planet Thanet Beer Festival

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind the last few weeks and the blog seems to have been buried underneath a pile of other stuff. Thankfully I’ve still had time to go out drinking. I posted this little thing on the train home from the beer festival on Friday, but here’s a more detailed re-cap of my day at Planet Thanet.

A Good Friday

Planet Thanet beer festival at the Winter Gardens in Margate. It's one of my favourite festivals of the year, no doubt. Good friends, good beer, good location; it's got all you want and need. This year Gadds' Uberhop (a traditional hopped-up lagerale) rocked it; Tryst Corronade IPA was bitter, apricoty, light, dry; Millstone Tiger Rut was a glass of fruity tangerine, floral and oh-so-drinkable - awesome. Some dark beer - Gadds' Black Pearl and Elland 1872 - rounded us up and some more Uberhop and Tiger Rut finished us off.

It was a Good Friday. I love Planet Thanet beer festival.

Hop Press: A London Drinker

I went to the London Drinker Beer and Cider Festival and I drank... This week’s post is about that festival, a mention of the forthcoming Wetherspoon's International Real Ale Festival (the signs are up outside mine already) and a happy endnote about the current and future state of beer and brewing in London.

The full post is here.

I've had some great beer recently

I’ve had a lot to drink in the last few weekends with the Old Ale Festival, some London drinking, the Pigs Ear and some bottles at home. Here are some of the highlights...

Birra del Borgo’s Re Ale Extra (cask). Italian IPA, hoppy, fruity, bready, toffee, bitter, easy drinking. Just a perfect example of crisp, cool and delicious Italian beer.

Bear Republic’s Racer 5 in The Rake (keg). As above with MORE. Tropical fruits, mangoes and oranges, bitterness, body – just more American-ness. I’d been waiting to try this one for ages and managed to drink in on Thursday and Friday last week. Fantastic. More beer should be like this (most beer should be like this).

De Molen’s Amarillo (cask, I think – definitely draught). The colour of peach flesh, bright and so incredibly fruity with peaches, apricots and mango, full bodied and sweetly delicious, punching bitterness adds an easy drinking and more-ish quality. After we’d left The Rake earlier in the day I had a string of disappointing beers and probably sounded like a broken record repeating the words ‘I want a Racer 5’ but then I had the Amarillo and Oh My it’s awesome (and like a completely different beer to the bottle).

De Molen’s Lood & Oud IJzer (bottle). A Pigs Ear festival special mixing Rasputin and Amarillo in a black-and-tan-in-a-bottle. My mate Matt bought this for us. Just an awesomely good beer. You know, one of those beers that you want to bathe in, that you want to drink for hours just to keep tasting it and experiencing it’s fruity hops, the roasted malt, it's stunning balance. It’s understated considering it’s mixing two big beers and it’s constantly interesting. I probably should’ve bought a bottle for myself to take home.

Durham Temptation (bottle). A brewery and a beer I’ve heard lots about. This was great. Dark fruits, bitter chocolate, vanilla sweetness, smooth, big (this was late in the day after starting at 11.30am so I can’t offer more than Gordon Ramsay-style brevity with my notes).

And a bottle of Goose Island IPA (bottle) on the Saturday with a takeaway curry because I couldn’t be bothered to cook. I forgot just how good this beer is. I need to buy more of it. So easy drinking, fresh, vibrant, fruity, delicious. I will never fully understand why anyone buys and drinks bottles of lager when they can have something like this.

I'm thirsty now and it's early in the morning. I'm craving the fruity hops in the Amarillo and Racer 5 (my on-going hop love affair is showing no signs of abating, even in this cold weather). Bear Republic is on my list of places to visit next year. I guess De Molen is too. And Birra del Borgo... It's a long list. A long, expensive list...

The 2 Kents Beer Festival

Question: What do you get if you take the Kent pub of the year, the Kent club of the year and add a shuttle bus and 60 casks of beer? That was the deal for the 2 Kents Real Ale Festival over the weekend (I posted the beer list here).

I started at The Bull. Lauren and I went up there and met Brad, Pete, Pete’s girlfriend Heather and Shaun. Unlike Pete and Shaun, who went straight for the 9-month aged Dark Star Imperial Stout (10.5%), I started low, requesting something pale and hoppy. I got Whim’s Arbour Light, a little 3.6% hoppy treat. I threw this one down as a stomach liner before following Beer Festival Rule Number 1: If it’s on and you want it, drink it. There have been too many times where I’ve seen a beer and thought, ‘yes, I have to drink that but I’ll get it next’ only to see it finished before I get there. So, my second beer was Moor’s JJJ IPA (9%). I loved the bottle and the cask was great too; big, earthy, full-bodied, bitter. It tasted much more barley wine-like in the cask compared to the bottle, which made it great by the half, but not really one to order by the pint.

Then came a succession of Tryst’s, another one of those Scottish brewery worth shouting about (there are a lot of them now and I stand by my claim that Scotland is one of the best brewing places around right now). Blathan (4%) was pale, hoppy (most things were pale and hoppy...) with a great floral and citrus nose, just delicious, follwed with Corronade IPA (4.2%) a zippy-citrusy US IPA. Then the Brockville Pale (3.8%), hoppy, fresh, clean; a great session beer. And Raj IPA (5.5%) which immediately reminded me of White Shield with a sweet bready nose and lots of earthy hops. Very nice. There was also a cask of Brewer’s Swansong (6.9%) but (and this is morbidly ironic, I know) it hadn’t dropped so wasn’t ready. This beer has a good story behind it so I hope to try some. Before we jumped on the bus to Dartford Working Mens Club there was time for another quick half, this time it was Moor’s Revival (3.8%). My notes simply say: ‘Pale, hoppy, tick.’

In Dartford I started on Marble Brew No.1 (4.1%). Marble Pint (3.9%) with a little extra oomph. Another pale and hoppy but better than all the others. Fruity, clean, deliciously bitter, luminescent in the glass. I tried it alongside Pint and that was on brilliant form too. Then came Brewdog zeitgeist (4.9%), one of my favourite cask ‘Dogs, which wasn’t as good as I’ve had it before but still a great beer. Brad had a Pictish Samhain Stout (5%) which everyone agreed to be spectacular - chocolatey, full bodied, roasty, as perfect a British stout as you’ll find. Then a Marble Ginger (4.5%), which may have fully converted me to ginger beers.

I tried the 2 Kents (5%) beer which the two landlords brewed at the pilot brewery of Shepherd Neame. Hopped with Amarillo and Cascade it was a really nice brew. I like that Sheps are brewing these little side-project micros, it’s a good thing, and having tasted this one, Dambuster and Grumpy’s Pale Ale, the beers are pretty good too. There was some Oakham Attila (7.5%) which reminded me of a cross between a US pale ale and barley wine, pale but full and malty and citrus hoppy. I had some of Pete’s Paradox Isle of Arran (10%) which seemed to have much more body and punch than the bottle. Then my final beer in Dartford, York’s Centurion’s Ghost (5.2%), another Great British stout, flavour throughout (how many stout have I had that just fall flat and thin in the middle?), sweet candy nose, chocolate, smoke, bitter roast.

I also had two hog roast rolls which were completely delicious and utterly essential at that stage of the drinking.

Then back to The Bull. There was some Dark Star Imperial Stout which was just too much for me, too big, too bitter and too boozy for that stage in the drinking and there was some Punk IPA which was kicking ass. And then it was time to go. The Bull pulled it off again. Great beer, great place, great people, great time. It was good to try some different beers from different breweries; breweries I wish I could get more often. Tryst are definitely one I’ll be looking out for, along with Whim and of course Marble.

The landlords at these two places really know their stuff and the beers selected were seriously good. Rarely have I been somewhere where all the beers were of this quality. Great British beer is great.

I've just remembered a couple of others but instead of trying to thumb them in somewhere I'll add them at the end. There was an unremarkable Dark Star Oktoberfest (5.2%) and a remarkably roasty but unchocolatey Chocolate Stout (4.7%) from Abbeydale. And no, I didn't drink all of these myself. Thankfully we were all happy enough to pass our glasses around, sharing the great beer.

The Bull and Dartford WMC: 2 Kent’s Dual Real Ale Festival

There are three different beer festivals coming up in the next three weeks. On the 26-27 November is the White Horse’s Old Ale festival, from the 1-5 December it’s the Pigs Ear in Hackney (I'll be going on the Friday - anyone around after BGBW dinner?) and this weekend, the 20-21 November, it’s the 2 Kent’s Dual Real Ale Festival held between The Bull, Horton Kirby and Dartford Working Men’s Club. The 2 Kent’s will be split between the two venues with 30 beers on at each place. There will be a shuttle bus running back and forth between the two, so you can (must!) visit both, and a great selection of food will be at each - hog roast at the WMC and the famous curries at The Bull. The beer list is below and it’s fantastic, I think, for two small pubs in Kent to get such a brilliant line up. Included in it are some rare cask treats, including a special beer brewed with the two landlords at Shepherd Neame (I’ve heard it’s a C-hop bomb). This beer list is taken straight from their facebook page.

BEER AT THE BULL

Abbeydale

Chocolate Stout (4.5%)

Blue Monkey

BG Sips (4.0%)

99 Red Baboons (4.2%)

Boggarts

Jamaican Ginger (6%)

Brampton

Golden Bud (3.8%)

Impy Dark (4.3%)

Wasp Nest (5.0%)

Brewdog

5 AM Saint (5.0%)

The Physics (5.0%)

Punk IPA (6.0%)

Dark Star

Russian Imperial Stout (10.5%)

Kelham Island

Easy Rider (4.2%)

Moor

Revival (3.8%)

Merlin's Magic (4.3%)

Peat Porter (4.5%)

Triple JJJ IPA (9.0%)

Osset

Pale Gold (3.8%)

Silver Fox (4.1%)

Silver King (4.3%)

Roosters
Yankee (4.3%)

Cream (4.7%)

Shepherd Neame

2 Kents (5.0%)

Tryst

Brockville Pale (3.9%)

Blathan (4.0%)

Carronade (4.2%)

Raj I.P.A. (5.5%)

Whim

Arbour Light (3.6%)

Hartington Bitter (4.0%)

Hartington I.P.A. (4.5%)

Flower Power (5.3%)

BEER AT DARTFORD WORKING MENS CLUB

Batemans

Miss Germany (4.1%)

Brewdog

Trashy Blonde (4.1%)

Zeitgeist (4.9%)

77 Lager (4.9%)

Paradox (10.0%)

Dark Star

Hophead (3.8%)

American Pale Ale (4.7%)

Porter (5.0%)

Oktoberfest (5.2%)

Hopstar

Dizzy Danny Ale (3.9%)

Leatherbritches

Ginger Helmet (4.7%)

Marble

Pint (3.9%)

Brew No. 1 (4.1%)

Ginger (4.5%)

Millstone

Autumn Leaves (4.3%)

Oakham

Atilla (7.5%)

Osset

Light Ale (3.6%)

Big Red (4.0%)

Turning Leaf (4.5%)

Revolution IPA (4.8%)

Pictish

Brewer's Gold (3.8%)

Samhain Stout (5.0%)

Roosters

Bangtail (3.7%)

Special (3.9%)

Rudgate

Carouse (3.7%)

Cuckoo (4.1%)

Shepherd Neame

2 Kents Festival Ale (5.0%)

Westerham

House Beer (4.0%)

White

Brighton Rocks (4.0%)

York

Centurion's Ghost (5.2%)

And... In addition to all that, they have a number of casks waiting in the wings at The Bull, including:

Brampton

Speci-ale (5.8%)

Kelham Island

Riders On The Storm (4.5%)

Roll Away The Stone (5.0%)

Pale Rider (5.2%)

Rohrback Scotch Ale (5.5%)

Moor

Hoppiness (6.5%)

Slow Freddy Walker (7.3%)

O'Hanlon's

Port Stout (4.7%)

There we go. Not bad, eh? I’ll be there on the Saturday. It’s very tempting to head up on the Friday too... Anyone else going? It takes just over 30 minutes out of London (the train to Dartford goes from London Bridge too, so if you are there to drink BrewDog at The Rake then come down after!). I know the beers I want to try across the two places, but which of these are unmissable?

Weathering the ‘Spoons Beer Festival

Tonight I’m on location in the pub for a spot of gonzo blogging. The picture above is my view (although my eyes, thankfully, are a little clearer than that). I’m here because it’s the first day of the Wetherspoons Real Ale Festival and I’m actually quite excited by a few of the beers that are on between now and 15th November. I’ve got two here with me now - Dambuster by Shepherd Neame and Purkmistr Bohemian Schwarzbier – while I wait for my sausage, chips and beans to arrive.

The pub isn’t too busy tonight, but it’s a big place so it’s probably-definitely the busiest bar in town. It’s the first time I’ve dared bring the laptop out through fear of being accosted. And what was the first thing that happened as I sat down and placed by shiny new kit down? I was accosted (by accosted I actually mean spoken to politely). By a semi-drunk, friendly old chap who was impressed by my ‘graphics’ and who said to me, when I told him I was going to connect to wifi, ‘I’m going for a piss, I bet you’re not on when I get back.’ He was quick, I’ll give him that, but I was quicker. In your face semi-drunk, friendly old chap who pees at speed.

[Dinner arrives. Here comes a short interlude while I eat my sausage, chips and beans...]

[Update: This is cheaply delicious. £2.99 well spent.]

Now the beer. I went for the Shepherd Neame to see how they fare with pale and hoppy ale using just Cascades. To be honest I didn’t expect much but I’m totally, pleasantly surprised – it’s good! It’s pale and crisp and an ode to the English(?) Cascade – citrus, floral, sweet tobacco, earthy, pithy, great come-get-me aroma and really quenching. It reminds me of the Cascades I used for the Smoking Hops experiment. I only had a half but I want more now.

And the Schwarzbier (brewed at Marston's), which I’ve just finished. I now have a dirty plate and two empty glasses next to me. Where’s the service in this place? The beer was another good one. Really good actually. Chocolate, smoke, liquorice; good body, great looking. Nice one. Two good choices so far.

The next challenge: get to the bar, buy more beer, don’t get laptop stolen. Question: How does one do this...?

Answer: Safety first. Close laptop, slide into bag, go to bar, order more beer, return to seat, get laptop back out. It doesn’t get stolen (incidentally, I don’t have this trouble getting a new beer at home...).

I’ve got the New Zealand beer now – two international ones on for opening day, good stuff Humphrey – Galbraith’s Mr G’s Luncheon Ale. It’s copper coloured, it tastes okay, it’s a little hoppy but a little middle of the road and forgettable – not bad, just not as good as the others.

I’m impressed with the festival line up and there are a couple of must haves – Thornbridge Pioneer, Toshi’s Amber Ale from Japan and Grumpy’s Pale Ale from Tomme Arthur from Port Brewing/Lost Abbey (brewed at Shepherd Neame) really stand out. Luckily, as I work and live so close to this place I can pop in every day to see what’s on. This means the next three weeks will mainly be spent nipping in and out of here. I think I can cope with that.

[Back to the bar...]

[Another Dambuster. And damn it’s good.]

I haven’t talked about Wetherspoons properly before in a blog. I really must. I have plenty of stuff to say about them. I guess by spending every day in one for the near future I’ll be flooded with inspirational words. At least the wifi works. And the beer is good tonight. And there aren’t too many chavs around.

It’s probably worth noting that writing ‘At least the wifi works’ was a kiss of death. I now have no internet you fickle fiend.

So yes, this post was finished and published back at the flat. So much for on-the-spot, in the thick of it ‘live action’ stuff - at least I wrote it all in the pub.

If you had to...

I thought I was done with the beer festival stuff for a while but there’s one more thing to ask and it only feels right to do it in my own favourite way: An If you had to…

Imagine the most recent beer festival you went to, whether it was the GBBF or a small local one. If you are like me you probably checked the beer list online before turning up. There are familiar names and unfamiliar ones. Some make you shout ‘I gotta get some of that’, others don’t even register. You plot out a little route through the beers you want, starting there, then that one, then that or one. You get there. You see the lines of silver casks, see the printed cards telling you the brewery, the beer name and the ABV. There are as many casks as you’d want or expect depending on the size of the place. But at the far end is a new bar, one not advertised online. This is a special bar with three last-minute additions. But, and this is the question, If you had to choose, which three beers would you want to see on cask sitting behind that bar?

Any three beers from any where. These are the three dream beers that you’d want to see right now. This is total fantasy stuff but it doesn’t have to be super-rare or one-off, it can simply be a favourite beer that you’d love to see at every beer festival you go to. What do they have? And, for a little extra fun, if this Friday begins to drag, who would be the person serving the beer to you? Anyone, male or female, dead or alive, a hero or just someone really fit.

GBBF Take 2

Yeah I’m still riding this wave but this’ll just be a post focusing on the beer I drank on Saturday at the GBBF with my mates Lee, Matt, Sean and Dave. The intention was to spend Tuesday on the US stuff and Saturday on the UK stuff. Here’s what I managed.

I arrived just before midday and sped to see what was left of the BSF. I saw nothing but silver shelfing and an empty fridge. But as I looked further along there was a huddle of people and I saw one, single cask being dispensed. To my delight it was Stone’s Pale Ale, a beer I’ve never had before. Result! It was pretty good, it tasted a little beyond its best but all the essential pieces were in place and it made for a decent starter beer. I also clocked the fridge still-full of US bottles and eyed that up for later…
On a quick warm-up lap I saw Moor’s Revival (a finalist in the Champion Beer of Britain 2009) and knowing how I loved and waxed lyrical about JJJ I had to try it. It was lovely; really easy drinking and quenching with dry, fruity-floral hops. This is just the sort of hoppy, full-flavoured, sub-4% beer that I’m loving right now (these are the future, I tell you!). Next, because I read a tweet from Steve saying it was on, came Fuller’s 2009 Vintage. I real scoop. It’s caramel coloured, bready, malty and clean and then it goes into fresh, grassy and green hops. It was great to try it from the cask but for me I love these with a couple of years under them when the hops fade down and the dried fruit and brandy flavours ease through. The 2004 I tried here is still one of the best beers I’ve ever had.

Fearing the fridge would clear-out I grabbed some bottles: Ballast Point’s Big Eye IPA (which I also bought on Tuesday and brought home – see the video below!) and Deschutes Black Butte Porter (I also wanted some lagers but the queue for this was almost unending!). The Big Eye IPA is 100% Centennial which was exactly why I had to have it. At GBBF it tasted a little sticky, a little tangy with lots of tropical fruit and a great big bitter finish. I’ve opened the bottle at home and it was stunning: a big bowl of oranges, bitter, juicy, fruity and just all-out-awesome. The Black Butte Porter was classic new-skool porter: full-bodied, chocolatey, smooth, sweet, nutty and very good indeed.
Dinner followed and I had to have another chicken balti pie because it was amazing on Tuesday. It was amazing again on Saturday. I went to the Cains stand for this beer and went for the Dark Mild (not as an intended FAB POW! just to have a beer to wash it down) which was a solid mild. It didn’t match the pie but it was super with some pork scratchings (oh the beautiful pork scratchings!). I also had some Cains Fine Raisin Beer which I loved last year and really enjoyed again this year, in a guilty-pleasure kind of way.

Then Woodland’s Midnight Stout an oily, smoky, full-flavoured stout and a total surprise of a brew. And it was similar in many ways to Cairngorm’s Black Gold which is super-smoky, meaty, roasty and chocolatey. Excellent UK stouts like this are great to find. Following this was DarkStar’s Espresso Stout which was all coffee-bitter and dark and mouth coating; another cracking dark beer from the UK. Smiles all round.

HSB was on and we had to have that one. Matt and I used to go to a pub near university and drink four pints of this while doing the quiz each Thursday. It was £2.50 a pint and just fantastic. The beer is still great and a taste of a memory (see Matt again in this post as well as Lee), although I’m sure it used to be 5.2% before Fuller’s took over the brewing of it?

I love Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout so went for the Wye Valley Bitter which was fruity with a dry hoppy finish but ultimately a bit boring. To compensate for this I had a Montegioco Mummia, one of the beers I most enjoyed on Tuesday. I could drink buckets of this stuff, it’s that good (although none of my mates liked it?!).
More bottles followed… Birrificio Lambrate Ligero which was floral and fruity, quenching and biscuity then into a slightly sour fruit note and a dry, bitter finish. It took us a few sips to get out heads around this one but it was great. Then came a Big Sky Scape Goat Pale Ale which we all decided we would buy a lot of if it was available in the UK: citrus, pineapple, pine and then a cakey sweetness; loads of flavour and all very easy drinking - a lawnmower beer with bite. There was also a bottle of De Molen Vuur and Vlam which my notes tell me is like Orval without the brett. It’s spicy, dry and tangy with peppery hops. Excellent but it took a while to wrap my mouth around it. And there was some Hogs Back A over T too which was smooth, boozy and tasted like brandy and strawberries.

There we go. Another busy drinking day. I had the intention of drinking all UK but got distracted by the US and Italian bottles. I was very impressed with the UK stuff that I did drink but then I pretty much only shot for the names I knew. There were disappointments and there was great surprises and overall I was very impressed by the quality of the UK beers on show throughout the festival.

So that’s GBBF 2009 done. What a festival. It was so much better than I anticipated.

Oh and here’s the video of me drinking Ballast Point Big Eye IPA. It’s one seriously good beer.

GBBF Take 1

It started early, being woken by the blare of Balham High Street and the head-thumping effects of the British Guild of Beer Writers 21st Anniversary bash the night before. From there came a fry-up and a detoured tube journey to Earls Court where I met Brad outside. Like most I went with the vague and vain plan of starting on a few moderately alcholed brews – something in the 4s, perhaps – but that was immediately forgotten as I ordered a cask Stone IPA to start the day. This was a wise and important choice. The first beer of the day is incredibly important: choose wrongly and the whole day can be ruined in a game of catch-up and no one wants that. The Stone IPA was C-hop-eautiful.

Next I had a Bridgeport IPA which I found uninteresting, but Pete Brown loved the stuff. Then I went for a Victory HopDevil, having been disappointed with the bottles. The cask was much better and I’m sure I got that tangy smack of Nelson Sauvins with even a hint of chocolate orange. Solid stuff but not spot on. Then I threw caution to the wind plumped for Allagash’s Interlude, a 10.5% beer with Brett and aged in wine barrels. Astonishing stuff. Impy Malting – who I was really excited to finally meet! - loved it. Lemony, brett, boozy and big, spicy, woody and just pretty damn cool, although I found it a challenge to get through, to be honest, but that may have been because it was barely the afternoon and I was eager for more, more, more hops!
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA followed and I attempted some gonzo food and beer pairing with a chicken balti pie. The beer, for me, was lacking pizzazz and was better bottled. Then I had the Sierra Nevada Stout which I found uninspiring and was eclipsed by Rogue’s Chocolate Stout which is hard to describe without saying awesome. It was a glassful of pure cocoa, so full bodied, so much fun to drink. My olfactory gland was pointing to twelve.

Fearing a vicious backlash anytime around three, I dropped down to some weaker beers to attempt to plateau my buzz. I find dark beers with cherries almost irresistible and the Dunham Massey Cherry Chocolate Mild was really interesting and easy drinking. Vanilla chocolate covered cherry drops. I enjoyed this one at the Irish table with Ally, Boak, Laura, Thom and the ever-smiling Beer Nut; a whole bunch of people I’d been wanting to meet. That was a fun table!

Next I went Italian with Montegioco Mummia, a 4.8% sour with a wine character and a smooth, balanced, almost-savoury middle after the tart beginnings. One of the best beers I tried. Keeping on the same lines I went with The Tap’s Beerstand Berlinner Weisse a 3% cloudy, pale beer with a lemon grove nose and a crisp, biscuity flavour. A proper palate cleanser.

We were sitting with Jeff and Jo, a couple of regulars from The Bull (Garrett and Lynne, the landlord and lady were also there), and each beer run returned four third-pints so there was plenty to try. The best was White Shield Czars Imperial Stout which had one of the best noses of the day and a great, thick body of roast malt. Then came another star: Portsmouth’s Milk Coffee Stout which was smooth, sweet, roasty, chocolatey and then flows into a wonderful orangey finish that was just gorgeous. More beers should taste like this!

And next was the star of the day for me: Captain Lawrence’s Captain’s Reserve IPA, a 9%er overflowing with the green grenades and peaches and apricots and a marvelously fresh and bitter finish. If there hadn’t have been 450 other beers to drink I would’ve sat down with quite a few glasses of this. Then another star: a bottle of Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA. I’ve had this before and was disappointed because it totally lacked bitterness but this was totally excellent and lived up to its hype. More US hops next (would you believe?!): Lagunitas IPA which was caramel, piney, pithy hops, pineapple, peach and tropical fruits - yum o’clock.
Then some more dark stuff. De Molen had two giant casks handsomely standing behind the bar. I had no idea what was in them but there was no way I was going to miss out on whatever it was! They were special beers. And while we’re on barrel-aged big ones I tried some Cambridge Brewing Company's YouEnjoyMyStout which was like liking the inside of a bourbon barrel that’s been painted with dark chocolate. If you like that kind of thing then it’s wicked. I like that kind of thing.

Finally I grabbed a Galway Hooker right at the end to raise my glass to the then-departed Irish folk. I think my enjoyment of this suffered thanks to a too-hot Cornish pasty scorching my tongue, a fatigued palate and a day on big hops. I did enjoy the beer though and can imagine sinking a few of them on a hot day.

So the beers were good but all of these beers would’ve meant nothing if it hadn’t been for the people I was drinking with. It’s been mentioned here, here, here and here but it’s massively important - it’s the beauty and the soul of these festivals. The joy is in sharing beers and hearing what is good and what can be missed and for all those offering their glass my way and saying those wonderful words: try this!

I either mention everyone or no-one and I’ve decided to go with everyone… here goes (I hope I remembered everyone!). Beer writers on Monday and Tuesday: Zak Avery, Pete Brown and his lovely wife Liz, Jeff Pickthall, Adrian Tierney-Jones, Phil Lowry and Colin from Beermerchants, Melissa Cole, Jeff Bell and Dave who I shared a few fantastic bottles of Harvey’s Imperial Stout with on Monday; also at the BGOWB do was Greg Koch, Steve Williams, Roger Protz (just a handshake and a hello), Jeff Evans and Podge (the Hairy Bikers were also there but I didn’t speak with them). Then at GBBF with Simon who didn’t seem reluctant in his scooping, Barm, Maeib and too-briefly there was Tandleman, along with the other bloggers already mentioned. And then some brewers - Kelly Ryan and Dave from Thornbridge, Justin from Moor Beer, Stu from Crown Brewery (I need to try some of your beers!), Tonie from Hopdaemon (Skrimshander IPA is a local favourite of mine) and Steve from Ramsgate Brewery and Saintsandsinners.

If it wasn’t for the people, for new friends and old ones, then the GBBF would be nothing but a vacuous shell full of casks of beer and solemn faces. Thankfully it was beaming smiles, belly laughs and talking shit in between swigs of some really great beers. If only all beer festivals could be like Trade Day at the GBBF.

Oh, and I bought some bottles home too.

FYI: Adding all those links took for-bloody-ever!! I need a beer after that. And this post is called Take 1 because I'm going back to GBBF for seconds/leftovers on Saturday!