Wanna Judge Beer? - Update

Here's the list of beers to be judged on Thursday 1st March for the Lancashire Cup. There will be others (including keg lager!) but being from outside Lancashire they don't qualify for judging.

Could those people who indicated via the comments on the previous post that they might like to judge please contact me by email to confirm? Thanks.

Bank Top	Gold Digger	4%
Bank Top	Dark Mild	4
Barngates	Red Bull Terrier	4.8
Barngates	Pride of Westmoreland	4.1
Coniston	Blacksmith's Ale	5
Coniston	No9 Barley Wine	8.5
Coniston	Infinity IPA	6
Coniston	Special Oatmeal Stout	4.5
Coniston	Bluebird	3.6
Cross Bay	Zenith	5
Cross Bay	Winter Moon	3.6
Cross Bay	Dusk	4.5
Cross Bay	Witching Hour	4.4
Cross Bay	Sunset	4.2
Cross Bay	Nightfall	3.8
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Langdale	4
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Loweswater Gold	4.3
Fallons	Hex Original	5
Fallons	Angelic War	3.8
Fuzzy Duck	Cunning Stunt	4.3
Fuzzy Duck	Pheasant Plucker	4.2
Greenodd	Best Bitter	4.1
Greenodd	Citra	4
Hopstar	Smokey Joes Black Beer	4
Hopstar	Dizzy Dannyale	3.8
JW Lees	The Governor	3.8
Kirkby Lonsdale	The Dark Arts	4.7
Kirkby Lonsdale	Stanley's	3.8
Lancaster	Red	4.9
Lancaster	Black	4.6
Lancaster	Blonde	4.1
Lancaster	Amber	3.7
Mayflower	Lancashire Stout	4
Mayflower	Lemon Head	3.9
Moorhouses	Blonde Witch	4.5
Moorhouses	Premier Bitter	3.7
Prospect Brewery	Nutty Slack	3.9
Prospect Brewery	Blinding Light	4.2
Rossendale Brewery	Halo Pale	4.5
Rossendale Brewery	Glen Top	4
Rossendale Brewery	Floral Dance	3.8
Stringers	No2 Stout	4
Stringers	The North Will Rise Again	4.9
Three B's	Stokers Slate	3.6
Three B's	Bobbins Bitter	3.8
Thwaites Brewery	Lancaster Bomber	4.4
Thwaites Brewery	Wainwright	4.1
Thwaites Brewery	Triple C	4.2

Beer List

In the previous post I hyped up a pub beer festival I've had a hand in organising.

The good news is: it's going to be great anyway.

The bad news is: due to the remote location and short notice we haven't been able to get as many of my wish-list beers as I would have liked.

Here's the list (updated in real time as more info comes in. If anyone can provide any info on the blank bits please comment):

When is a beer festival not a beer festival?

When it's the Tynemouth Beer [sic] Festival.

My brother, some friends, and I arrived at the Tynemouth Cricket Club shortly before 8pm on Saturday evening. There was a short queue to a ticket booth where each relieved of £10 for 8 half-pint vouchers.

We sallied forth unto the marquee.  A long bar down one side carried about fifty handpumps. Strangely, there seemed to be very few pumpclips. In fact there were four pumpclips. In fact there were only four beers available – and they ran out by about 8.20pm.

A beer festival running out of beer on its final night is not unheard of. No beer festival organisers have the psychic ability to predict the exact amount of beer to stock, and having local breweries on standby to deliver some bright casks is often a sensible policy.

We could accept the lack of beer but what annoyed us was that weren't informed that supplies were drying up when parting with our cash. 

Moving out of the marquee to get away from an awful rock covers band whose drummer had a flamboyant attitude to time-keeping, we observed that people were still being sold vouchers for non-existant beer until well after 9pm. There was a growing number of obviously annoyed people milling around. Some, like us, reluctantly explored the small cider and perry bar (does perry often taste of UHU? does cider often smell of fried eggs?) Some hardy souls even used their vouchers in the pavilion for John Smith's Smoothflow and Fosters.

The Queue

Only an hour or so after the beer-zero hour did we see newcomers being informed of the crisis.

I spoke to the organiser. I was struck by his cavalier attitude to the number of unhappy people. He actually seemed overjoyed that the beer had only just lasted into the third of three sessions. No doubt his spreadsheet would indicate a roaring success. 

His last comment was "I have created a monster". You said it pal.

On a brighter note – an early departure allowed us to go to the Tynemouth Lodge Hotel where we found the Mordue IPA to be utterly tremendous.

Innovation at Beer Festival!

Here you see last week's Ulverston Beer Festival with its featured entertainment "Live Spreadsheet Updating".

Yes folks, Microsoft Excel made a guest appearance at a humble Beer Festival!

Beautifully British amateur inventiveness at its best. 

"The venue's got a big screen and a video projector – click! – I know; if I spend the festival sitting upstairs in the techie room away from the action I can plug in my laptop and display a constantly updated list of available beers! And as a bonus people may admire my Excel technique (including formulas)!"

Peculiarly, punters seemed to be ignoring the ever-updating spreadsheet and using the old-fashioned luddite techniques of looking in the programme, and looking and asking at the bar.

B.T.W. Ulverston Brewer's new beer "Flying Elephants", a 3.8% pale hoppy thirst-quencher, was rather good and could well be the beer that puts them on a wider map. 

What's so "Festive" about an airless dungeon?

In the past couple of years I've been to one or two British beer festivals that I thought were quite good - pleasant environment, a good mix of people and reliably good beer. The 2007 GBBF and Keswick Beer Festival spring to mind. I'm starting to think that beer festivals are improving.

All of a sudden, along comes a BF that shatters my fragile hope – Newcastle Beer Festival.

The location is the basement music venue in the university Students' Union building. The walls are painted matt black and the lighting is harsh chucking-out-time flourescent. The seemingly unventilated room is warm and clammy. An improvised bar dominates the centre of the room; apparently un-cooled casks lurk within.

My brother, two friends and I race in and pick some beers: hmm, so-so. Nothing blatantly "off" but nothing blatantly enjoyable either. All the beer temperatures are above the ideal and all the beers are lacking condition. Flavours are dull and lifeless - "brown". We put it down to luck of the draw. The second round is the same. As is the third. Rob says "sod this" and goes home. Round four provides John with an excellent Timothy Taylor's "Ram Tam". Round five is a write-off.

Dismayed by this dismal hit rate we head upstairs for a cider palate-cleanser, hopefully something gueuze-like. The man who serves us is wearing shabby carpet slippers, and some of the cider tastes something like that. Fortunately Mr Slippers is quite forthcoming with samples and we find some bracingly agreeable dry cider to finish the evening.

Although we didn't specifically see any "showcase for real ale" blurb on  this occasion, this kind of cant is usually attached to beer festivals. Presumably the desire to showcase "real ale" played a part in the motivation behind Newcastle BF like all other similar events. Sadly, it failed dismally in this presumed aim.