And finally... BEER!

[mrph]

So, the beer festival... unsurprisingly, it was a great deal of fun. Spent most of the time chatting to cyberinsekt, beaupepys (who seemed to have a knack for choosing excellent dark beers tonight...) and juudes, and also ran into tya and rayp.

Surprisingly, I actually won the brewery game this time. Twice. For those who haven't seen it, this is how it works: you pull a folded piece of paper out of the box. Each piece of paper has a brewery name printed on it - and if the brewery isn't defunct, you win a prize.

I always find the long list of 'dead' breweries a little bit depressing... but this time two of my five were winners. So I'm now the proud owner of a CAMRA cook book and fifty or so collectable beermats... :)

As for the beers themselves, between us we tried the following:

Arundel Old Knucker - "Malty dark old ale", 5.5%. Absolutely gorgeous stuff, and probably the best of the bunch.

Atlas Latitude - "Dry summer lager with grapefruit flavours", 3.6%. Inoffensive enough, but nothing special - and I didn't really notice the grapefruit.

Broadstone Priorswell Porter - "Well hopped dark ale, not too heavy", 4.0%. One of only two porters available this time, and this one wasn't terribly impressive. It's got session beer potential, though, as it definitely improves as you go.

Church End Chocs Away - "Chocolate flavoured dark beer" 3.8%. Ok, so Church End are our local brewery and I think they can do no wrong. I still think this was gorgeous stuff, and a great way to start the evening.

Cotleigh Peregrine Porter - "Smooth and dark with well hopped finish" 4.4%. Now, this is what I call a decent porter... lovely stuff. :)

Dent, Aviator 4.0% - "Medium bodied, hoppy amber ale". And very nice too. Quite sweet, iirc - I think I could drink a lot of this one...

Facers Landslide - 4.9% "Golden brown with malt flavours". Quite nice but nothing special.

Highwood Bomber County 4.8% - "complex coffee, hop and caramel". Dark, slightly smoky and nicely understated. Mmm.

Houston Warlock Stout 4.7% - "smooth, strong and dark". And damn good too. The other definite hit of the evening...

Weetwood Oast House Gold 5.0% - "sweet golden bitter". Very sweet, inoffensive and pleasant without being exceptional. You really wouldn't suspect it was 5% though...

Wold Top Mars Magic 4.6% - "Red hued beer inspired by the planet". Guess the planet can't be that inspiring, then. It wasn't bad, with a slightly dry nutty taste, but it really didn't stand out.

I should also mention Church End's Sky Blue Bitter - the "Sky Blues", for those who aren't local, are the Coventry football team. And the festival was held in their stadium. So it's a shame that the special blue beer Church End brewed for the occasion was...er... green. Very green, in fact. Would have gone down a treat on St Patrick's day. Ooops. :)

Comments

[juudes.livejournal.com]

I only won the Brewery Name Game once this time round, and I won a couple of free halves, which was unfortunate as I'd decided I'd had enough by then! So I erred on the side of caution and had a half of the lightest beer there - something called 'Lunchtime Special' at something like 2.5%. And very nice it was too - light and hoppy and with a good flavour. Why can't more people sell really light beer? It doesn't all have to be so strong!