Tuesday 24 January 2012

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?

16 comments:

  1. I went to the Colchester CAMRA Beer Festival last week to get Dylan out of the pub for the afternoon and to let him have a hog roast. It might not be the most traditional of Dog Walks, but it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...
    Mitch

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  2. Hi Mitch
    you’re lucky being able to get a dog into a festival, my experience has been guide dogs only

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    1. Both Colchester CAMRA Beer Festivals and The Chappel Beer Festival allow dogs, and Dylan always enjoys a nice Hog Roast while I sample a couple of cheeky halves...

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  3. I have an irrestible urge to attend. Maybe I'm drawn by the black hole of middling cask to cross an event horizon staffed by surly staff in ill-fitting day-glo jackets. Maybe I feel the need to prove myself, leaping majestically like a lithe salmon back to whence my beery life began. Except I don't spawn all over the bar then die. I probably wouldn't get a trade ticket for next year if I did that.

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  4. I have to admit that I am not much of one for beer festivals, having attended a meagre 3 in my life and 2 of those back in the Czech Republic. Even though they were described as "beer" festivals they were both more or less a "drinking" festival, which suits me fine. Sitting around with mates drinking stuff you didn't normally see in the pub is my idea of a good beer festival, and Plzen's Slunce ve Skle is probably the epitome of such an event.

    The festival I went to in the States was a small local one here in Virginia, with only Virginia beers. It seemed to me that most people came, had their allotted 14 2oz samples and went home. Perhaps it is because, to use a friend of mine coined for me, I very much a "pubcentric" drinker, I fail to see the point of a beer festival as glorified tasting room.

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  5. Simon — it’s a frightening image
    Velky — some festivals can be pubcentric, the one in Exeter was in the social of Exeter City FC and very much worked on that level, but I have in the past been to soullness town halls and the like
    Ron — of course!

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  6. it tends to be habit forming, I went to a few and joined CAMRA at GBBF in Leeds many years ago. Since then I've worked regularly at festival, both local & National.
    I've almost exclusively worked on the International Beer Bars, running BSF for several and meeting lots of interesting people, made friends with other volunteers from as far apart as USA, Sweden, Guam, Taiwan and Japan and all points in between. Sharing a common love of beer and having the opportunity to pass that enthusiasm for beer on to others. Helping to spread the message that there's plenty of good beer around the world.

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  7. I go in search of the Holy Grail of all Beers, I am sure I will never find that one Beer that tops all Beers but it is great fun looking!

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  8. Ian — always loved the work you and others have put into the foreign bars
    Chris — what will happen if you find that holy Grail, will you stop drinking?

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  9. I go to beer festivals for a bit of relief from reading solid blocks of text with no paragraph breaks ;-)

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  10. Ed — I will remind you of that when I meet you at a beer fest and do a reading without any breaks (or until my oxygen gives out)… ;-)

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  11. I go to beer festivals for the majority of the reasons you suggest above. Sometimes to work, sometimes just to be there.

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  12. 1. To try beers that I may not normally be able to get to try.
    2. As a purely social event; round up a few buddies, have a laugh.

    That's it!

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  13. Several things, but the people is what stands a bit above the rest.

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  14. I go for the appreciation of a good well served pint. To try beers that are not necessarily available in my part of the country. Brewries that i've never heard before will often have far better beers than some of the main stream ones.

    The atmosphere... I've been to many beer festivals and i've never been to one where i have felt unsafe. People go their to enjoy themselves not fight and drink as much as they can.

    I work at my local one beer festival and enjoy every moment of it too.

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