There’s a man in a pirate outfit

It must be a beer festival as there’s a man in a pirate outfit on the stage where bands normally play in the bar at Exeter City FC; the stage is small and there are about four tables and chairs arranged upon it. The pirate and his equally buccaneering companion are on the table that is directly opposite the small stairs that lead onto the stage — this means that if you want to get onto the stage then you cannot miss the pirate and his missus. It must also be a beer festival as at the other end of the stage there’s a lonely looking man on a small table on his own, with books stacked in front of him. He’s got a pen in his hand and looks so relieved when a man climbs up the small stairs, passes the pirate and crosses the stage and asks to buy a book and yes he’ll have a signature. I, Ghent-loving reader, was the writer at the other end of the stage to the pirate, the lonely man sitting at a table looming gently over a bobbing, hob-nobbing crowd of drinkers at the Exeter beer festival last Saturday. Yet I always enjoy this sort of thing. Who wouldn’t? You get to chat and drink at the same time.

Book signing is the slap on the back, the ego booster, the brief spot in the sun, the this-wouldn’t-happen-if-I-was-a-subeditor moment of journalism, which I have always enjoyed, but then I like the sound of my own voice (though I’m not always sure on the accent); so there I was on Saturday lunchtime with a glass of Coastal’s Erosion and then one of Penzance’s Scilly Stout, finding something fascinating about a piece of paper I had found in my pocket, looking at my pen with a new sense of admiration, and willing more people to come up on the stage (and let’s not forget they had to pass the pirate, who at one stage at my public exile on the stage poked a — I presume — plastic sword at a balloon above his head).

I have always enjoyed Exeter’s festival of winter beers: they’re strong and I like beers that have the ability to place themselves in the front row and grunt and groan as if pain was a word that involved more than mending windows; I see people I have known for years there; this beer festival also gives me a nostalgia for a time when I used to visit quite a few, not travel the country you understand like some folk did and presumably still do, but they would be ones I would go to if I was in London or there was one on a farm or in a village near where we lived before moving to the beyondness of Exmoor (which we hope to escape this year to more benign surroundings). 

These were times when I used to search out beers with names that resonated with me or they were from parts of England that I loved (usually East Anglia, where I lived for six years); I don’t think that I bothered much about beer styles, even though I was reading Michael Jackson and in love with Bavarian Weiss (I do remember ramping up on the Rauch once though); it was fun, it was beer, it was getting drunk with a friend or two or sitting in a corner with a good book, but it was never about education (alright a few tasting notes, but they were more like the autographs my mother collected from friends when she was a kid) and it was certainly never about ticking; it was about inebriation, sociability and a vague link with landscape. Those times are all gone and I don’t think I miss them, apart from a brief moment on the stage, looking at the glass of Coastal’s Erosion in my hand and thinking about big waves hitting some Spartan slice of Cornish coast. Time passes and the drunken man continues to look at the thistle.

So why do you go to a beer festival?

Do you go for the beer or the companionship or the architecture or the place where people go for beer? Or do you go with a piece of paper on which you bring to life words that will remind you in later years that you went to this beer festival and wrote down words that would remind you in later years about this beer festival? Or do you go to look at the people about you and thank heavens that you are not like the people around you or you have a higher more nobler intent in going to the beer festival even though you might think you could lose some weight and stop talking in such an excited voice when you have had too much beer? Or do you go to a beer festival to meet friends you see once in a blue moon, who are friends even if you rarely see them except at beer festivals but you have been seeing them at beer festivals for a few years now and you regard them as friends? Do you go to a beer festival at the local rugby club that has been organised to raise money and features the usual round of beers that you see in your local pubs, but you go because it’s a good cause and anyhow you weren’t doing anything that day? Do you go to the beer festival because it has been organised by the local CAMRA branch and you know that there will be some interesting beers there, well you hope there will be? Do you go to the beer festival to meet that special someone who will share your love of beer and with whom you might be able to set up home with one of these days? Do you go to a beer festival to drink beer and sit in a quiet corner, getting socially sloshed with a smile on your face and spend time flapping through the book you don’t have the time to read at home because of work/child/DIY pressures? I went to the Exeter Beer Festival on Saturday to sign copies of Great British Pubs, to see some old friends, to drink a couple of beers and swap Exmoor for a bit of time out in Exeter. Why do you go to a beer festival?

A beer festival in Exmoor

If you’re out and about on Exmoor this weekend why not come down to Dulverton where the Bridge is having its annual beer festival to coincide with an equally annual folk festival. Landlord Kenny has got together a small but perfectly formed beer list that I shall be making inroads into as soon as I return from a school meeting on Friday afternoon (cue asking teachers if they can hurry up as I need to get on the beer). If you’re a habitual user of the new craft beer scene in London, Manchester or Leeds then you might say so what, but this is the west country, where as Boak and Bailey noted this week here, brown beer is very much in the ascendency — anyway, if you do decide to pop over here’s what you might see: Otley 05; Moor Illusion, Merlin’s Magic, Northern Star; Bristol Beer Factory’s Bristol Stout; Thornbridge Kipling, Jaipur (last year a cask was drained in two hours); Castle Rock Harvest Ale; Skinners Porthleven along with the usual regulars. No BrewDog this year sadly — we were hoping for Hardcore, but it’s not to be. Oh and there’s Orval, Flying Dog, Brooklyn and Westmalle in the fridge. I shall be the man with the broken guitar and sawn off bongos. 

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.

Here be beers that make me want to illuminate books in a monastery

Beer festival frolics approach with GBBF, but a couple of weeks ago I visited my first US beer festival— the Vermont Brewers Festival, which was held within the well funky city limits of Burlington (Zero Gravity Tap and Vermont Pub & Brewery produce stunning beers). Even better it was out in the open, on a green space next to Lake Champlain — I shall never forget my elation sitting on a wall overlooking the lake, gazing out across to the mountains of New York state as the evening light crumbled, a glass of Rock Art’s majestic Vermonster to hand, a 10% leviathan of barley wine richness leavened by an extravaganza of dry hopping. As many beerios know, you get smaller samplers at US fests  — 3oz in this occasion. Ok there’s a better chance of trying more beers, but when I found something that made me want to enter a monastery and illuminate books that future generations would drool over, such was its sublimity (step forward Your Mother and take a bow you gorgeous creature), then I would have liked more, but as the evening progressed the queues for each brewery station got longer and longer. I tried pretty much everything I wanted, apart from Dieu Du Ciel’s Isseki Nicho, which was termed as an Imperial Dark Saison, and was not disappointed. What struck me was the amount of youngish folk, both male and female, strolling about, supping their Wolavers Oatmeal Stout or getting all righteous about Ray McNeill’s Dark Angel Imperial Stout (McNeill is a legend according to several beer folk in that part of the world and his bar is an austere but welcoming place where great beers can be sampled). Some good food (Mr & Mrs Jerky were very popular apparently, though my inner small boy couldn’t help smirking at the name) and a mellow vibe and I got a pretty damn good introduction to US beer festivals, which won’t be my last — I’m currently thinking about this one.

St Austell’s swagger of a beer festival

There’s a queue outside St Austell’s stern stone-faced brewery at 10.40am, 20 minutes before opening time. I arrive before midday and the top bar (the old wine cellar) is no place for a claustrophobic. The crowd is dense and a lifetime’s knowledge of dodging and jinking to get to the bar comes into play. In the bottom bar people are singing along to Definitely Maybe as a band limbers up. Beer is everywhere and everyone is drinking it.

St Austell’s annual Celtic beer festival is underway. CAMRA men, Cornish lads, beer girls, old fellas, sporty types, beer-bellied men, young lads who look like Pete Docherty, young girls with a pint in their hand all swirl about — this is beer as a common currency, a democracy, a gathering, a moot of the senses, and like Brigadoon it only appears once a year.

Watching a young band go through their retro 80s indie-disco set it occurs to me that this festival has the sort of swagger that you would normally associate with some sort of unbearably hip rock star; it’s also an inventive event at which St Austell’s head brewer Roger Ryman tries his hand at all sorts of things — amongst the 29 beers from his brewery along there is a crisp and refreshing Proper Pilsner, a well-made Belgian style Dubbel and Triple, a chilled IPA, a chilli chocolate stout, an oyster stout, a double IPA and his attempt at a Flemish style sour red, which sadly I didn’t get to try.

Taunton Alan lifts his glass when I join some friends and says ‘Bastard’. I beg your pardon. He’s on his second pint of Arrogant Bastard and it’s not yet 12.30pm. As soon as I hear the news, I head straight for the world beers selection, where alongside Arrogant Bastard, there is Ruination, Sierre Nevada Harvest and Pale on tap — plus beers from Brittany and some crowd-pleasers such as Maisels Weiss, Leffe Blonde and Gaffel’s Kolsch. Meanwhile the cask ale crowd get over a century of ales, including ones from Wales and Scotland plus a selection of southwestern breweries (I didn’t get to try Sharps’ grand Imperial Porter sadly, I hope there is some left when I go up there to brew next month); and if that’s not enough there’s a selection of St Austell’s fellow family brewers.

There’s a lot going on in the Cornish brewing scene, as amongst the flood of Tributes and Doom Bars we see both Ryman and Sharps’ Stuart Howe looking to other countries for their inspirational one-off beers, playing with making beers that don’t just fit into the pigeonhole of real ale. Later on before getting the train, wet and soaked, I sit in the White Hart in town for a quiet contemplative pint of Tribute. I mention the festival to the young girl who serves me at the bar, ‘I’m looking forward to going there later,’ she says. St Austell are doing a good job.

Life is full of too many choices and Saturday November 28 is a prime example

Modern life has too many choices, low-fat, skimmed, free range, organic, biodynamic, cold-filtered and so on — I don’t like it but come Saturday November 28th I will be faced with two choices too many. First of all this is the day of the St Austell Beer Festival, a roisterous and rumbustious celebration of beer and Cornishness at the old Victorian brewery that overlooks the town — over 100 real ales, with nearly a dozen of then brewed especially by Roger Ryman, will be available. When I say especially brewed, we’re not talking the meek and mild — in previous years there has been a coffee stout, a Czech dark lager, a Kolsch style (the prototype which I helped to brewed in the small brewhouse several years ago), a mango beer, Tribute Extra (Tribute beefed up and put in a whisky cask) amongst others. Beers from Cornwall, Wales, Man, Scotland and Ireland celebrate the Celtic nations (plus beers from hardy perennials like Woodfordes etc), but what also makes this festival special is that it has selections of foreign keg beers from California (Sierra Nevada last time I looked), the Czech Republic and Cologne; furthermore you can get Guinness, Carlsberg and several other regulars, which means that you see groups of mates going along, with none of that division you might get at ale fests. Also, I note that Sharps are supplying a couple of special beers, one of which is a 11% Imperial Porter — the two companies might be rivals in the real world, but in this fairyland of beer come Saturday the 28th they’re all pulling together. On the same day, it’s the second day of the White Horse’s Old Ales weekend festival, a righteous rite of passage for the cold months ahead. I have never ventured out to it sadly. I can still remember first reading about it in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion, but the nearest I got was being at the pub several days after the event and as a reward been offered some Bernardus 12 straight from the cask (my journey back west was a bit hazy). This year, I am told that beers from Le Baladin, Birra del Borgo (I am desperate to try their Imperial Pilsner), as well as Duchesse de Bourgoyne in cask will be highlights, plus various old ales, barley wines and dark beers from the UK. So there you have it, a dilemma to challenge the greatest of philosophers, especially given that train times between Taunton and Paddington or St Austell are roughly the same. I can get the 7am bus out of Dulverton, a train after nine and be propping up the bar by midday, and back in Taunton in time for the 8pm bus home. At the moment inclinations are for St Austell (I don’t like London on Saturdays), but the White Horse is coming up fast. As I said too much choice.
The pic shows one of the beers from the 2006 festival.

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.