Tuckers Maltings

Drink beer, beer drunk. More beer please. Man on his stag do passes by dressed as a cock. A lot of balls that takes, says man to my right, repeats it once more just in case the world and its mum hasn’t digested his bon mot. Drink beer. At the Tuckers Maltings SIBA Festival (winners here) on the afternoon of a Saturday that sees the sun place its broad brimmed sombrero on its delightful little head and bring forth a resounding yell of hip-hip hooray. Folk stream down the street, past the Teighworthy Brewery and into the historic floor-maltings that each year is put aside, swept clean, and filled with row upon row of beers on stillage. Colin, friend of mine, is bar manager and says straightaway what I should be drinking. Arbor Ales, Bristol Beer Factory. Hold on let me try the winner, I reply. Handsome from Forge. Litehouse from the same brewery won top banana last year. You probably won’t have heard of them but you might do so more in the future. Handsome was peachy skin, warmth of the sun hastening ripening; a fattish body that reminded me of Chardonnay without the poncy notes; dry and crisp in the finish, another one please. Arbor Ales. I visited their ace tap in Bristol a couple of months ago and enjoyed their Oyster Stout. Yakima Valley IPA was a love bomb of citrus, deep ripe apricot skin, grapefruit, hop sack and a big swagger of character. Their Breakfast Stout, up next, was creamy, roasty, mocha, alcoholic and delicious. I can still taste it now. Two hours was all I had, hence no mucking about with milds or bitters. I wanted big bold flavours, which I think I discovered — I stayed with four beers (BBF’s Southville Hop was the other delight). So I found beers I liked and stayed with them — when I go to beer festivals I go to discover beers that I enjoy and once I find them I find them compelling company (I had a similar moment with a Löwenbräu Buttenheim beer at the GBBF several years back). The estimable Zak Avery recently asked why go to beer festivals? My yearly quota has slacked off, but after Saturday I know why — I go to beer festivals to drink great beer, in the company of great people (friends and brewers last Saturday) and in a lush environment. Not every beer festival works (the Pig’s Ear at Stratford Town Hall was a case in point — it had all the charm of a station waiting room in somewhere like Lille), but when they do work the memory lasts and lingers and sticks around, hands in pocket, eager face upturned, asking: will you come back? Tuckers Maltings: of course I will.

It’s all about the beer, stupid

Beer festivals and I have grown apart. There has been a parting of the ways. The tyranny of choice is the main reason for this; too much beer, too little time and then some of the beers don’t feel at their best. I used to have a calendar of beer festivals: Exeter Winter Ales, Tuckers Maltings, the Newt Festival near Bridgwater, GbbF, maybe the odd pub one in the summer, Somerset CAMRA at Minehead railway station and then the Pig and Whistle which was always a guilty pleasure, given that its former location at Stratford was for a former North London person like myself the very end of the world (and it was municipal, bleak and full of people, no let’s be honest, mainly men, who peered intently at their beer lists, pens poised, lips licked, samples salivated over and wandered aimlessly about the hall until their bladders forced them to vacate, though I remember one chap in about 2003 whom I passed on the stairs — he was so drunk that the stains on the front of his trousers suggested that he had forgotten to open the zip whilst answering the call of what obviously was a very savage call of nature). But hey, I shouldn’t be judgmental, I was also there, looking at my beer list, looking for interesting beers, letting beer from other parts of the country do what it always has done to me, take me to these places, for a moment, for a few sips, turning back time, taking me to a pub when gastro meant something wrong with your stomach and the old man in the corner could tell you tales of old England and the rolling road the drunkard made. Because I lived for six years in Cambridge and also love Suffolk with its flat fat tire-friendly roads, heavenward pointing churches, with the sea in prospect and for me the prospect of a pint of a beer that I still count as one of my great loves —it’s grown old with me, Adnams Best Bitter — then because of all this East Anglia intrigues me still. But I digress: the whole point of this post was a visit to Tuckers Maltings Beer Festival last Friday, at one of the very few floor maltings left in the UK, a place where beer begins its journey to our glass. The event is organised by the southwest arm of SIBA and — you know — it’s not a bad event. I used to judge but found myself tired and jaded by the time the place opened and rarely able to enjoy the beers. Now, as I sat on a tyre of a trailer (don’t ask) in the sun, with a glass of RCH’s sublime East Street Cream in my hand (it was the beer of the festival) I thought what a wonderful thing a glass of beer is. People were friendly, the sun was shining, the beer was good in my glass — surely at the end of the day that is all we want. There’s a lot of chatter about beer with food, beer for women, beer for youngsters, beer styles, pub closures, pub companies, fat ugly blokes looking like Mr Toad with notebooks in hand (there was one at Tuckers and one of the first aromas I detected at the bar was more halitosis than hallertau but hey), but I remember from this glorious day was that it was all about the beer, an emotion that inspired me to make what seemed (and sometimes still seems) a pretty stupid career decision to move to writing about beer.