Ealing Beer Festival

Believe it or not, but 80% of the people in the above photo are freaks

As mentioned on Friday afternoon, I took advantage of my CAMRA membership to gain free access to the Ealing Beer Festival. For some time now I have considered this to be the only CAMRA event worth going to but now I am reconsidering this position. We arrived in the afternoon to find that only CAMRA stereotypes were present. That's right, the crowd was mainly middle class older gents with beards and belly's who liked to wear fishing vests. There were a few other people who I would describe as socially eccentric there as well but I won't rip on the mentally disabled. We can learn a lot from all people in society (including the disabled and handicapped)- except real ale freaks. Actually on this point I should note that many of the CAMRA volunteers were amputees. I have nothing further to say on that, just stating my observation.

Anyway enough of the crap lets talk about the beer. From memory I had Thornbridge Jaipur, Fuller's Vintage 2008 (which was infected), Phoenix West Coast IPA, Ascot Alligator Ale, Harviestoun Schiehallion, Thornbridge Blackthorn and a few others (OK it wasn't a particularly long session and I was drinking with some pace. This affects the memory!). I only had the Harviestoun beer to see what the fuss was about. Apparently because it's a cask conditioned lager it's fine for CAMRA consumption. Well basically the beer is nice, but it could be mistaken for a bitter. I don't think there is any particular 'lager' like flavour that jumps out and grabs you. Anyhow this was the last CAMRA event I will ever go to. I'm not particularly sad about the fact either. Somehow the thought of never hearing about the game of table skittles and having to make small talk with the fellow below is rather appealing. Where do these people come from?

A bit of catch up

Life has been hectic lately and my regular lunchtime posts have become ever more irregular. Luckily, today is ticker Tuesday so I can eliminate my backlog in pretty much one bludgeoning swoop. To keep it interesting I won't go on about my pub binges with Peter and Co. at The Gunmakers, or my adventures at The Parr's Head and The Havelock- they were standard pissup affairs.

Interesting beers;

Thornbridge Halcyon (7.7% abv) - this hop monster IPA uses fresh green hops as opposed to dried stable hops. Judging by the hop haze this beer had, I will assume there were a lot of hops added as well. I won't go into too many details, but Darren over at Blog o'Beer posted some good stuff here.

Dorothy Goodbody's Golden Ale (4.2% abv) - This gem from the Wye Valley Brewery has a strong wheat malt taste which I don't really appreciate. It's an easy quaffing beer though and I have a bottle of the stout at home still to get through which should be more to my taste.

Casablanca Premium Lager Beer (5.0% abv) - The wife and I met up with some friends in Kew and went to a new Moroccan restaurant (Tangine) that has just set up shop. It was a warm day and I had worked through a couple of pints of Staropramen and a summer ale from Hog's Back before getting into this beer. It's your standard malty premium lager affair and probably the tastiest alcoholic beverage to come out of Morocco. The food was pretty good too. I had the lamb shank.

Sam Smith's Pure Brewed Lager (5% abv) - One of the best lagers brewed in the UK. This beer really suits the the warmer weather and went down a treat. I should drink this more when I visit Sam Smith's pubs. I have suffered with and been let down by Old Brewery Bitter for way too long, and I usually opt for Alpine Lager in the lager stakes. Could this be the most under-rated beer in Britain?

Ben Nevis Organic 80/- (4% abv) - A beer I really enjoyed.... malty and full of melanoids with minimal hopping this beer went down a treat. I am not really that big a fan of 80/- beers in general, but like any beer style when you get a good interpretation of the style you get a good beer. Anyhow, it's brewed by Bridge of Allan Brewery somewhere in Scotland.

Well that sums up the most interesting beers from the last week. Instead of the usual Nokia quality photography, I have offered you the reader a nice collage for the first time ever. I also went to Krakow over the bank holiday weekend so I guess I will be ramming the virtues of Polish beer down your neck for the remainder of the week!

I am also running a poll and I would like to solicit your opinions.