One for the theologians

Having managed to drink a light mild AND a dark mile on the last day BEFORE May I wonder if this might be taken into account in the beery month of obligation?

CPD and networking at the GBBF 2019

This year's Great British Beer Festival seems to have been universally praised as a vintage year by my fellow beer nerds. I've been a bit under the weather myself, so though I can't deny I had a great time I should probably have been taking it easy rather than having another big day out. Still, I was there for the networking and CPD, not enjoying myself, and these things have to be done.

This years IBD lecture had been billed as a debate on whether cask beer should be served colder, though that's not quite what we got.

First up was someone from Brewfit touting their under bar cooler.

The cask connection was that it could be used to cool cask as well as keg beers. Most people would prefer their cask beer cooler, and most is served too warm.

It was a neat bit of kit, 18 m of cooling coil holding only 40 ml of product apparently.

They're made of laser welded 316 stainless steel and a single unit goes for £140.

I couldn't help but think though that with cask beer the cellar is too warm the beer will be lacking condition and cooling it down on the way to the bar won't help.

The second speaker was from Cask Marque, the cask beer quality accreditation service.

He talked of how they score beer for temperature:

And how a lot of cask beer is served too warm:

Most people would actually happy with the temperature if it was actually in spec. though (11-13°C)!

Cask Marque are also expanding their areas of operation under the name of Beer Marque, to include all beers and quality from cellar to glass.

It all sounds good stuff, but I've yet to find a beer geek have anything good to say about Cask Marque so if their efforts are having any effect they're not appreciated.

It was back to the networking after that, and it was another well deserved winner for the Champion Beer of Britain with Surrey Hill's Shere Drop winning.

Here's Ross with some other guy

I didn't have a pint as it's permanently on at my local. It is CAMRA Surrey Pub of the Year after all.

I did when I was there on Friday though, which must make it the easiest CBoB to track down for a long while.

May is the month of mild

May is the month of mild,
Month we all love so well;
Mild is god's own beer,
Gladly it's praise we tell

I was starting to panic about this year's Beery Month of Obligation. Well over half way through it I'd not seen a drop of mild and I didn't know where to look. Fortunately for me a tweet from Lars Garshol helped me track down mild to the Royal Oak in Borough. So with a slight detour on the way to a home brew competition success, and spiritual well being, were mine.

In fact this year I'm feeling positively virtuous as they had both light and dark mild on.

The light wasn't that light mind.

But the dark was properly dark and the one I preferred. If I saw it more often I'd drink a lot more of it. Sadly though as Harvey's are supporters of the Small Brewer Duty Reform Coalition there's no chance I'll be seeing it in my local.

CAMRA: the next generation

As CAMRA's Revitalisation Project finally grinds towards its conclusion I must confess I find it hard to generate much interest in the whole thing. Fortunately my favourite nephew Tom is full of youthful enthusiasm and has been paying close attention so I was able to get the low down from him.

Awesome Lamborghinis #LOL

He has long been a craft beer enthusiast and was delighted to see Brewdog burst onto the beer scene. "Real ale had become stuck in a rut" he said. "The innovation of the craft beer scene has made this a far more exciting time to be a beer drinker than when bitter or mild were the only beers you'd find. It's high time CAMRA acknowledged this and accepted that modern craft beers are quality drinks, whatever their dispense methods".

He does however, still think Real Ale is something worth defending and has no problem with it being seen as the pinnacle of the brewer's art. "Strong beers with high hop rates can hide a lot of faults that would be obvious in weaker, more balanced beers. Similarly it's been said that with pilsners there's nowhere to hide, but making a lightly flavoured lager that's filtered, pumped full of extraneous CO2 and served at close to freezing temperature is more a technical challenge than anything else. Making a cask ale at less than 4% ABV that's packed full of flavour and gets better with each pint shows real art."

So it's a thumbs up for the revitalisation proposals from Tom and I'd like to thank him for his considered insight into it.

Back at Shepherd Neame's.

I was back at Shepherd Neame's brewery last night for a CAMRA award ceremony. As once again I was driving I had limited drinking opportunity, which is a shame as free beer always tastes better and the 9.2% barley wine they'd made on the pilot plant seemed to be very popular.

The main even was held in the new visitor centre/museum where some interesting pictures caught my eye. It seems Shep's once had a particularly strict version of the reinheitsgebot as their advertising slogan.

And at one point were keen to promote the regular drinking of Belgian beer.

The Great British Beer Festival 2011

I was at the trade day of the GBBF on Tuesday. I managed to meet up with loads of people: brewers, bloggers, boozers and er... publicans. I couldn't think of a 'b' for that one. Bar managers? That might have worked.

The lovely Lisa was making her hajj, having never been before. She shall now be known as El-Hajj Lisa. Or maybe not. Despite the beer list being available in advance we hadn't worked out a plan of action. There were just so many beers it seemed overwhelming. This lead to us wandering round aimlessly, feeling even more overwhelmed now we could actually see all the beers, stopping to refill our glasses as needed. It's quite knackering doing it this way, and I'm sure we didn't get the best of the beers available, so I really must try harder next time. Having the next day off work to recover wouldn't go amiss either!

I myself had a first as, twenty years on from my first GBBF, one of my own beers was being served. Let's hope this is a regular event.

We missed the announcement of which beer had won the Champion Beer of Britain as it started off with some MP droning on which isn't really my thing, and then the Betty Stoggs marching band started up again which meant we couldn't hear anything except drums anyway. I was pleased when I found out later that Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde Mild had won. This means I'm ahead of the curve as far as beer nerdery goes, because thanks to a recommendation from young Rob I'd sought it out last year and been suitably impressed. So impressed I'd even bought a half this year before it was announced it had won.

What with the 12 noon start and the constant wandering we were flagging by the time the doors were opened to the public at five. We thought that was a good time to call it a day. It wasn't though as were were soon suffering the stifling, crowed commuter train home. We'll just have to stay later next year.

Thanks to all the CAMRA volunteers for giving up their time to make this festival happen.

Strange things happen at beer festivals