Krispy, Web Guru & Brewer

My latest website open

My darts fansite

I’ve just ‘opened’ my latest website – which I started on only three days ago!

“Darts, Beers & Cheers”  (http://www.pdc-darts.co.uk/) is a fansite for the great sport of darts (yes it is a sport – and that is OFFICIAL!).  I have created it to be a resource to all the fans of the PDC (Professional Darts Corporation) – with news, views, and reviews of players and darts tournaments.

Only two days in I’ve created a look n feel that I’m happy with (totally custom Wordpress theme), some content, and even a world exclusive interview with one Wayne Mardle (top PDC darter).  I’m hoping the site will become one of THE resources for fans of the game.

Day at the Darts 2010 Championships

Another long, tiring, and fun day at the darts is over – and I’m sitting at home watching todays games while writing this – Darts isn’t just for Xmas, its for the new year too!

The three of us set off at 9am, and after a traffic free drive arrived at Alexandra Palace about 10:45am – plenty of time before the noon doors open.  Luckily we are now old vets of the worlds, and knew to get ourselves to the 180 bar on the outside of the Ally Pally, for a pint and some grub.

It's breakfast time - plus our first beer of the day

One cracking breakfast bun later (top notch), we settled down in the only seats in the bar to savour our pints and watch the darts fans roll in.  This was the calm before the storm

Ross with a 4 pint pitcher of beer

We made our way in through the hallowed doors just after noon – and as luck would have it, there were no queues to speak of.  First things first, we found our seats – claiming out table 1, row G, seats 1,2 and 3 best seats in the house   If anything it’s a bit close, as you can’t see the board because the players are in the way.

The beer came in 4 pint pitchers – and even better there were ‘beer people’ walking round with beer kegs on their backs serving top ups, quality!  I think we got through about 3 of them during the morning session – not bad as only two of us were drinking

Lee chilling by the stage next to our front row seats

180 cards at the ready, room filling up with fans

We wrote out our 180 cards (a benefit of turning up early is getting your hands on the cards) – the usual rubbish to try and catch the camera’s eye.  The crowd filled up quickly, but luckily it wasn’t too hot (although it heated up in the evening – getting uncomfortably hot as it often does).

First game up, Andy ‘The Hammer’ Hamilton vs.  the veteran Steve ‘The Adonis’ Beaton.  It felt like neither player were at their best, but the hammer was too strong. Being right at the front we managed to catch Andy’s eye as he celebrated, and he threw his darts flights in our direction, and Lee managed to catch one before the scrum descended.

Andy 'The Hammer' Hamilton

The second game was between crowd favourite, Terry ‘The Bull’ Jenkins, who really seems like a nice bloke, vs. American Darin ‘Big Daddy’ Young.  The crowd really got into this game – with a lot of ‘Eng-ger-land’ chanting going on.  Darin seemed to take it in good humour – especially

Darin Young, definitely a big daddy!

when the humour turned to question if he had any relationships with Tiger Woods… Darin shouted back at the crowd; “He’s slept with everyone in America” which got a good laugh.

Jenkins was far too strong though, and Darin looked a bit crestfallen as he was soundly beaten.

Jenkins shows us why he is 'the bull'

One of the highlights of the darts is of course the walk on girls (well it is if you’re a red blooded guy!   ).  Luckily we were treated to PDC favourite Nicola Cowell, and the just as lovely Sarah Tunnicliffe.  They looked cracking in their outfits – quite classy dresses too, and to be honest, thank god the dancers weren’t there – I wasn’t a fan of them prancing about.

Nicola Cowell adding some much needed glamour to the show.

Last game of the morning session was Wayne Jones vs. the Aussie Simon Whitlock – a real dark horse!

Simon Whitlock and Wayne Jones shake hands

We ignored the betting odds giving us a clue, and bet on Wayne, as the odds were good for any sets win.  We thought it would be closer than it was – but Simon Whitlock was on top form – he really concentrates with a full on intensity.  His doubles and accuracy is breathtaking at times.  (note: he’s gone on through the next round too!  Joining the UK circuit next year).

The session ended in good time – by 5pm, so we got some EXPENSIVE chips from the van outside (£7.50 for fish n chips?? they were having a laugh), and sat in the car for an hour to get out of the rain.

Doors re-open at 6pm, so we rushed back – ready for a big evening.  The morning session had felt a little disappointing – the games were a bit one sided or lacking in quality – but we had high hopes for the later games.

Van Gerwin vs. Wade kicked off, and we swapped to pints of cider to pick us up too.  If you are going along – I recommend the pies – the chicken balti was a cracker    As we thought, Wade was too good for the dutch player – it’s a shame that Mighty Mike hasn’t yet had the results that was expected of him when he first joined the PDC.

James Wade salutes the crowd

I thought James Wade had the best reception at a worlds yet – the crowd on the most part where cheering him (I’ve seen him booed a fair bit previously) – and I think he appreciated the support.

Clearing the throat to announce THE POWER

Then it was time for the big one – and the room was really buzzing as Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor made his entrance.  To be honest the wall of sound and singing of Phil’s name really appeared to daunt his opponent, Robert Thornton.  You here the commentators say that a player is beat before they throw a dart, and it really looked that way.

Phil Taylor stalks while Robert Thornton throws

It can’t be easy playing a legend on top form, especially when the entire crowd is against you (more ‘Eng-ger-land’ chants to annoy the Scottish Thornton).

My feeling was right, and Phil won quite easilly – showing everyone that he is still determined to win his 15th world championship!  The ‘winter wonderland’ song filling the hall.

Then onto the last, and I think easily the best game of the night, Adrian Lewis vs. Kevin McDine.  I predicted a lot of 180’s to my brother, and wasn’t wrong!  Not sure how many there were, but I think there was at least 12 by Lewis.  The atmosphere was fantastic, the crowd roaring and filling the room with sound.  Lewis really was on top form, at one point we could see he’d got to an average of 108+!!   The standard dipped later on, possibly due to the crowd ‘going nuts’ – singing a tune over and over again – thumping on tables the works.  It did annoy Lewis – possibly because he thought it was aimed against McDine and was dis-repectful, but nothing he could do would stop the crowd enjoying itself.  Lewis plays Phil next – who knows what will happen (Lewis will lose unless he realises he CAN win).

Lewis and McDine enjoy the crowd (to begin with)

So all in all another great day at the darts.  Beer, darts, girls (walk on variety), and a great party feeling.  Bring on 2011!  … although my next visit to the darts is the PDC Players championship at the Circus Tavern, only a month away…

World Darts again!

It’s that time of year – the Xmas dinners eaten, the booze has been drunk (well not all of it  yet!), and the PDC World darts championship is on the TV again.

I’m off to watch in person tomorrow (29th Dec), with the BEST tickets for the afternoon session (front row, just behind the players to the right, which is the prime being spotted by the cameras seats ) .  They are actually exactly the same seats we had last year, and loads of people saw me on TV.

I get to see Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor again for the third or forth time – a true sporting legend.  Love him or Loath him, you can’t deny his dedication and winning nature. If only we could bottle his winning attitude and give it to the footy and cricket teams!

Heading off at 9am for the drive down – three of us on a darts watching marathon. Pictures to come!

Oh and I’m talking about the PDC Alexandra Palace world darts championships – not the (now very noddy) BDO worlds.  All the best players have finally moved across to the PDC now – it’s got the money, and the televised events, which the older and some would say old fashioned BDO just can’t match.  The difference between the two events (apart from the quality of play and prize money) is that one feels like being at a big derby game at a big footy match, while the other is like.. well going to watch old men in cheap gold jewelry play in front of a snooker crowd. 

(PDC darts website can be found here)

Rage against the X-factor

UPDATE: 21st December 2009 – WELL DONE EVERYONE (who took part in the facebook group and bought the single) – RAGE WON THE XMAS NO. 1 SPOT   what an amazing acheivement, it warms my heart to know that there is still some rebellion in music, after years of bland and fake music in the charts.

I’ve seen a great movement on the social networking site Facebook.  In a reaction to the fake and ‘evil’ X-Factor program, a group has grown up promoting an idea – the idea is to buy a Rage against the machine track from 13th-19th December (2009) to try and take the coverted Christmas no.1 spot from whatever cover the eventual winner of X-Factor will churn out.  The track can be downloaded from iTunes etc for it to count towards the Brtish charts (see the link below for full list of download locations). 

Even Santa knows xfactor is evil

X-Factor makes me feel queasy – people bang on about how good or talented some of the people are – but to me it misses the point.. anyone who prostitutes themselves to a contract with Simon Cowell are selling their souls – and the one thing about great music, it has soul… and if they are so fecking good, go out there and play the pubs, do the graft, earn the respect of your peers, and do it the proper way.  If you can’t make it, you haven’t got it – and can only sell a few records because of the huge publicity machine behind you.

So good on the facebook group, and here’s to RAGE AGAINST X-Factor – you can take a look here; http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228594104 and as they say, don’t by the track ( ‘KILLING IN THE NAME’  by Rage against the machine) until 13th Dec, else it won’t have the same effect.

YouTube publicity video; Rage against X-Factor

UPDATE: it’s past the 13th Dec, and you can now start buying the track…  Amazon is OK – there was some worry as they are only 29pence, but it’s ok, they have confirmed their tracks at 29p do count (they loss lead with them, and do pay the 40p a track required), also Play.com, iTunes, Tescos etc all ok. 

Another brew: Krispy Golden Hoppy ale…

Well I thought I’d be able to squeeze one more brew in before Xmas.. and bizarrely, I thought I’d try a ’summer ale’ – as I might as well try and nail a good session ale.. plus I’ve now got two very strong beers bottled and maturing, so I need a lighter session ale to wash em down with.

I’ve not boiled yet – just made up the yeast starter tonight.  My planned ingredients are;

• 1.5kg light malt extract (liquid)
• 1kg (2x 500g) light malt extract (dry)
• 500g wheat extract (dry – that’s a barley/wheat mix)
• 500g Carapils malt (very light grains)
• Wyeast American ale yeast
• Challenger and Cascade hops

I had in mind a hoppy and light gold ale such as Oakham Ales Bishops Farewell.  If anyone from Oakham ever reads this – please feel free to contact me and correct my mistake   (I live local, happy to accept some of your yeast )

I plan to dry hop some of the cascade – I’ve read that it’s a very distinctive and very strong aroma hop.. we shall see!  The recipe below is approx what I’ll try… (click on it to read.  Free web calculator I use found HERE)

krispy blond ale - extra hops

UPDATE 21/11/2009: Well I didn’t make the beer when I thought – as the yeast starter never really took off as I wanted – so I didn’t trust the beer to the yeast which looked possibly dead (I left the start 3 1/2 days.. and no real activty.. plus after 2-3 days you can usually smell the alcohol and yeast, but I had nothing other than malt).

So I ordered some cheaper dry yeast (American style) – and did my boil today, while listening to my local footy team lose yet again on the radio.

All in the fermenter now – I will dry hop (* see latest update about hop tea!) with 25 grams cascade once the main fermentation is through (3 days.. depending on how it goes).  I’ve read that you can add the hops to the fermenter straight away – but I thought I’d wait until there is alcohol in the mix to kill any stray germs – and also I’ve read that the heavy CO2 production etc can lose some of the hop oils and aroma’s if you add during primary fermentation.  So I’ll boil up a muslin bag and add my 25g hops to it, and get it in the fermenter on tues/weds night, and leave it there until I bottle.  What I might do is thread the bag with nylon thread, so I can pull it out just before I bottle, so it doesn’t disturb the yeast sediment (it will float, rather than sink).

The colour looks spot on – a nice golden colour, and the taste wasn’t bad – I can definitely taste a fair bit of hop, but still missing that aroma I’m looking for, so hoping the dry hopping does it.  Also about spot on OG too, about 1052, so I’ll probably get about 4.6-5% with the yeast I’m using.

Update 23/11/2009

The fermentation is going very nicely now 2 days in I have a 2-3 inch krausen formed, and the yeast is the usual very active swirly snowstorm (the best way I can describe it) – see through fermenters are great

I have decided to try a ‘hop tea’ for this beer, and if that works well, go with it every beer where I want strong hop flavour and aroma.  I will take a picture when I do it, but a hop tea is another way to add hop – I guess wet dry hopping (if that makes sense).  So instead of adding the hops to my fermenter (in a muslin bag), I may instead (or as well as…), take my 1-2 ounces of hops, add to recently boiled water, and steep for 10-15 mins.  Then take this tea and add to the fermenter (and the beer obviously!).  I’ll do this once it’s calmed down, as some of the oils and aroma will be driven off by the CO2 being expelled during the yeast’s busy period.

To help keep the hop leaf from the beer, I’m going to use a coffee cafetiere (American’s call them a ‘French Press’) – those glass jars with a fine metal mesh you push down on to strain coffee grounds from the water.  I can use the same idea to strain and squeeze the hops out of the ‘tea’, getting all the goodness and flavour without the bits.  That’s the theory.

Even using the hop tea method, I MIGHT add hops directly too – just to make fully sure

New brew: Belgium strong ale

Another brew for Xmas; “Krispy Belgium Strong Ale” is now in the fermenter, and is still bubbling strongly 3 days later.

I wanted to have a couple of strong (8-9%) ales for Xmas, all bottled in my new green 1 litre bottles – better than 2 litres I had been using, as a) you can control how much you drink easier – without having to leave half opened stuff), and b) less chance of yeast mixing, as you probably only pour twice, rather than 4 or 5 times with a two litre, each time mixing more and more yeast in.

Some of the ingredients in my 'brew box'

Ingredients for this brew were (as my previous 2 beers, no recipe – just my own decisions);

• 2 x 1.5kg of light malt extract
• 1.5kg of belgium candy sugar
• 300g of extra light dried malt
• 250g of Belgium ‘Special B’ malt grains
• 300g of light crystal malt grains
• 50g Brewers gold hops (fairly high acid bittering hops)
• 50g Saaz hops (famous continental ‘lager’ flavour/aroma hops)
• Wyeast Belgium Abbey ale liquid yeast (1214)
• 5g of irish moss (add last 15 mins boil to help clear proteins)

The candy sugar is in there to give the beer the strength, without making it too full bodied – belgium beer is often very strong but not over malty – they use sugar to add alcohol without dominating the beer with malt making it heavy).

Yeast Starter (brewing technique helper)

I have used another liquid yeast, as while they are expensive, they are meant to be very true to type giving better results than dried yeast.  They do recommend making a ‘yeast starter’ though – as the 25 billion yeast cells are not quite enough to really get your fermentation going quickly (for a standard UK 5 gallon batch).  To make a yeast starter, I did the following;

Yeast starter

• Prepare liquid yeast (smack the pack 3 hours before as instructed, to mix yeast with nutrients, and leave in warm (25c) place.
  • If doing this with dried yeast, rehydrate, add yeast to cooled boiled water and leave covered for 30 – 45 mins, stirring only after first 15 mins.
• sanitise a small container – I’m using a £5 glass jar which just about takes 2 litres of liquid.
• get a medium saucepan, and too it;
  • add 150-200g of dried malt extract (better than sugar as closer to what the yeast will be eating in your main brew)
  • add 1.5-2 litres of boiling water (I don’t want to completely fill my container!)
  • Boil for 10 minutes
• Pour the boiling liquid malt into the glass jar
• COOL!  (I carefully put the glass jar in a sink of cold water)
• Once down to between 21-25c;
  • Seal container, and SHAKE!  You want to get a lot of oxygen into it – but be careful not to make a mess!
  • add the yeast (from smack pack or rehydration container)
• Leave in a warm dark place for 2-3 days!
  • for my belgium yeast between 20-24c)

The yeast will ferment the mixture, eating up all the sugars in the malt, and multiplying out in the oxygen rich wort.  This will give you upto 2 litres of yeasty mixture!

For this brew I was using a new thermometer – as I managed to break my previous one!  This time it was a probe and electronic unit one from Lakeland – and it’s really the business.  The probe is on a fairly long wire to the unit, and the unit acts as a timer, and readout, and also you can set max / min temps in it to monitor for, and it will beep when they are reached.

Monitoring temperature with new gizmo

So during the making of the beer, after adding the water and grains to the boiler, I set the upper limit alarm to 65c, and turned the heater to full.  I went off to read, and when the ideal steeping temp is reached, the alarm went off, and I could then set the heater back down to 2-3, to just maintain that 65 temp.  I then set the timer to 20 mins, and left it like that… alarm told me it was time to remove the grains and turn up the heat!

I then added the 2 cans of malt extract (which i had in boiling water for 20 mins to soften up the mixture inside), the 1.5kg of candy sugar (bit by bit as the water kept heating, stiring it in to help it disolve!), and some dried malt extract too which I had left over.

Once the wort was reaching close too boiling, I added 50g of my bittering hop (brewers gold – a popular German lager hop), and boiled for 75 mins.  I then added my wort chiller to sanitise, and 5g (one teaspoon) of Irish moss.  After 5 mins, the first 40g of Saaz hops for flavour, and then 9 mins later 10g more Saaz for a bit of hop aroma.  Heat off 1 min later (for a total 90 min boil), and then cold water turned on to chill the wort down.  I could use my new temp probe to tell me when it had reached 25c – very handy.

So once chilled, my wort is ready.  I quickly took a hydrometer reading – doing it now as there isn’t any foam on the surface – 1080 original gravity – good strong stuff!  I used a new stainless steel funnel (with strainer inside, I think it’s for jam making) to help me transfer the wort from the boiler tap to my clear fermenter – allowing the beer to drop a good distance to help get as much oxygen into it at this stage as possible.  The only problem is it gets so much oxygen, it foams right up – so I have to keep mopping up during the transfer.  Half way through I add in the yeast, just pouring all 1.5 litres of yeast/wort starter in.  Then top up with the last of the wort, some 19-20 litres.  I capped it off with a blow off tube (some tubing which is fed into a container of water – in case the fermentation foams up so much it would blow through a normal airlock causing possible contamination.

All in fermenter, my stout in barrel to the side

Because it’s in a clear fermenter, I can see the yeast getting to work – and within 12 hours it’s really going mad!  84 hours later it’s calming a little, but still bubbling strongly.  I’d expect it to stop the main fermentation soon – 3-4 days later (as my yeast is so strong after using a starter).  I’ll probably bottle after 2 weeks – but if it’s clear sooner than that I’ll change my mind.

Yeast going mad - it's like a snowstorm

New brew – “Krispy Stout”

I’ve been busy and have brewed up another beer – Krispy Stout this time, and it’s in the fermenter bubbling away as we speak.

You can click on the image below to see the recipe – ignore the bitterness figure though – it seems not to be working correctly!  I used both pale chololate malt and roasted barley to get the flavours and colour of a stout – using a bit of spare crystal malt just to add to the layers of flavour.

My Krispy Stout recipe

I used a whyest liquid yeast this time – a ‘proper’ Irish ale yeast to try and get the beer as close to type as possible.  Unusually for me I’ve kept to ‘normal’ beer strength, rather than try and hit the more old school 8-9%’s of some of my IPA style beers.  I also added a couple of large spoons of black treacle, just to add a touch of ‘toffee’ to the mix – the wort pre yeast tasted really nice; big flavours of coffee, chocolate and malt.

I made sure the liquid yeast would do the job by adding it to a wort starter 3 days before I needed it – by boiling up 2 litres of water with 200g of dried pale malt extract for 10 mins, then letting it cool in a steralised glass jar, and adding the liquid yeast.  Cover with a foil ‘lid’, and leave in a warm n dark place.  3 days later the yeast is going mad, like it’s fermenting a beer (which it is in reality, just a small batch).  Then pour that 2 litres of starter into the cooled wort in the fermentor, and stand back

Update 11th October 2009
Well I’ve barrelled the Stout, as I decided because Stout doesn’t need to be to fizzy, or cold, that a barrel would be the better option for it (pressure barrels cannot actually handle the pressure needed for highly carbonated drinks).  So I mixed up about 120 grams of dry light malt extract, and about 30 grams of brewing sugar, with about 2/3rds of a pint of boiling water.  That was added to the freshly steralised barrel, and then the stout siphoned out carefully into it, mixing with the sugars.

One little tip – I put the lid on the barrel (not screwed on!) then use my soda stream CO2 (with brass adaptor) in the lid inlet to fire some CO2 as a blanket over the beer, before screwing the lid on properly.  That way I know I’ve pushed some of the oyxgen out, putting a carbon dioxide ‘cap’ onto the beer to help protect it from oxydising (not good at this point).  Then I’ve used the heat belt (you plug it into the mains, and it warms up to keep the ale warm) to keep the temp up for the first week (not leaving it on all that time, as I’d end up with hot soup) – just now and then when it felt a little cool.  So hopefully the yeast which is left in the beer will eat up the sugars and the gas will stay in the beer to carbonate it.  After a day I used the soda stream gas again in anger, to try and raise the pressure up in the barrel so to help keep the naturally fermented CO2 in the beer.

I did try the beer during the transfer (pop a bit in a clean glass) – it was very flat (more so than I’ve noticed before..) but did taste spot on – probably the best or most authentic flavour I’ve managed so far.  Let’s hope the barrel fermentation works well and I’ve not just ended up with sweet flat stout!  I’ll give it another two weeks before I tap a trial glass…

Brew day in pictures – brewing ‘how to’

Here’s the log of my most recent brew, my first of the autumn, and again it’s kinda my own recipe, for an IPA.  I bought the ingredients based on what I’d been reading, and then used an online calculator to just check my thoughts and timings.  Click on the image below to see what I’m pretty much aiming for – I’m using the traditional high quality fuggles and golding hops – for hopefully a quality ale.  (you can find the calculator here)

my IPA recipe.. strong an hoppy (I hope) - click image to view

So generally this is going to be a STRONG ale – I should think it will reach between 8-9% when done!  But that’s still within the range of a good old style IPA, so I’m not worried.  Plus it’s for Xmas, and brews need to keep you warm

The main ingredients - minus the water!

So going into my brew was the following;

* three 1.5kG tins of finest pale malt extract (so 4.5kg in total.. hence the strength!)
* 250g of pale malt grains (I wanted to add some fresh malt flavour and depth)
* 250g of crystal malt grains (for a bit of darker colouring and flavour)
* 100g of Kent Golding hops
* 100g of Fuggles
* 5g of irish moss (to help take out some of the protein during the boil)
* few g of yeast nutrition (can’t hurt)
* Nottingham dried yeast (yes I know liquid is prob better, but the beer was already costing me lots!)
* 22 litres of charcoal filtered tap water (just be patient with a normal water filter jug!)

The water I took time filtering and adding to a spare fermentation bucket (which I just use to store water etc now).  Once I had about 22 litres (I was only going for a 19 litre final brew size) I added 1/2 a camden tablet and left alone (the Camden tablets are meant to remove all the chlorates I believe).

My brew project plan - know what you're doing when!

I cleaned and soaked my fermenter and bits n bobs in cleaner overnight, and gave my boiler a bit of a clean up and quick sanitize.

I then drew up a bit of a simple project plan – well a timeline starting from ‘grain steeping’, through the 90 min boil, the cooling, and into the fermenter.  It makes sense to list what you’re going to do, and when – so you don’t mess up the brew with something simple missed (like adding hops at the ‘flavour stage’ – something important I messed up last time).

So I’ve got everything I’m going to use sterilized and clean, and all my ingredients to hand – ready to start!

Read the rest of this entry »

Brewing season on the way

Well it’s getting cooler outside (and inside my house) – so ‘brewing season’ is about here.  As yeast needs to be between 23-18 or so (depending on beer and yeast obviously) when fermenting,  I have not way to brew in the hotter summer months really.  Plus there’s a lot more airbound bacteria when it’s warmer, which makes getting a brew done even tougher!

I’ve already bought some supplies.. and I intend to try again at a very strong (to original type) IPA – my last one failed (although it is a nice ale.. just not hoppy at all!).

This time I’ll try and get the flavour hops in at the right time (I went too early last time and they would have lost all the flavour in boiling off).  Plus i’m going to boil for longer overall now – from 60 to 90 mins as per the books I’ve been reading.

I’ll take pics of the kit and ingrediants and as I brew again – I’m going for 4.5k of liquid pale malt, two types of grain (crystal and pale malt), two types of hop (fuggles and goldings for traditions sake), got my irish moss this time (didn’t realise I needed it previously!), and 20+ green litre bottles for bottling later on.  the 2 Litre pop bottles I had used aren’t a good idea, mainly because of how much beer you need to drink in one go, and also the amount of yeast that gets stirred up from pouring multiple times!

More to come!

Beerfest day 3

My last day at this years beerfest – I decided against going again Friday, as my body couldn’t take it (and the Mrs was pleased to see me one night!).

some of the food tents - and the sun is out

A full thurs enjoyment – we got there about 2pm, and stayed until closing at 11pm.  Many, many ales tried – and some old favourites re-visited.  The great news was it was a really good day – the weather was on our side, and the sun was out.  It was the first festival in several years where the ground was rock solid and not all muddy and churned up.

Casks of beer... mmm

I ran into quite a few old friends – which is always a highlight of the festival!  It was also the ‘big night’ for work – so I wasn’t short of friends.  I also managed to spend more time in the music tent, as there’s always something great about live music and a large crowd.

Workmates enjoying the beer n sun

The only disappointment was that Oakham had rotated out their festival special (and my beer of the festival) – to save it for Friday and Saturday night.  I do hope they make it a permament feature of their ale selection!

Pboro Beerfest beerguide - showing my beer of the festival

Hats off to CAMRA and all the volunteers who run the who event – I did get tempted to help out myself this year – but it’s so much fun being a visitor – it’s very hard to see how I’d give that up.  Maybe next year…

Some of my favourites – those remembered anyway – if you see any of these in your local pub, why not give em a try?

Tar Bar’l (Allendale of Allendale) – a nice dry stout – which taste seem to grow in the mouth.
B.G. Sips (Blue Monkey of Ilkeston) – a really intense hoppy bitter – I love my hops. Tasted more like an IPA should, but bitter strength.
S.A. Gold (Brains of Cardiff) – you can get this in bottles in supermarkets – and why not?!
Punk IPA (Brewdog of Fraserburgh) – fantastic IPA – good and strong too (6%) so truer to style than many commercial IPAs.
Armada Ale (Harveys of Lewes) – a great easy drinking bitter.
Norfolk lager (Iceni of Norfolk) – a pleasant surprise this – REAL lager – and pretty damn good.  One for those who think they don’t like beer
Golden drop (Ufford ales) – great golden hoppy beer – anyone would like this.
Hop twister (Salopan of Shrewsbury) – hoppy bitter with a nice citrus flavour.
Hop devil (Rockingham of Blatherwyke) – six hops!? in this – only 3.9%, but plenty of flavour.

More mates enjoying the music ... and beer