Caterham Beer Festival

A new beer festival just around the corner from our mates home so it would have been rude not to go along to this. Organised by the local Round Table and extremely well organised at that, with ticket presales which allowed them to work out beer needed for each day and very helpful friendly staff! It was held at what used to be the local council house, saved for the community by a group of businesses when the council were looking to sell it off. Lovely venue for the festival. They focused on a lot of local breweries and beers, a nice touch as many aren't seen in the local pubs so this is a good showcase for the travelling beer drinker.

As the glass sponsors were local accountancy firm I thought it amusing to have Audit Ale as my first beer, one of the strongest beers at the festival at 6.2%, according to the festival tasting notes it was brewed to the 1938 strength and using the same ingredients as the original best selling bottled beer of the Black Eagle Brewery. It is a sweet beer, reminding me of a barley wine, gorgeously morish which is a tad dangerous at that strength. After this one I went for a weaker beer in the shape of Pilgrim Brewery's Porter at 4.1%, fantastic porter with more flavour than some stronger beers and their Moild mild (3.8%) was also very very good. I'm hoping to try some more of their beers soo.

Old Dairy Brewery's Gold (4.3%)  and Blue (4.8%) tops didn't disappoint either, hoping one day to see their imperial at a festival but these two were lovely, Blue Top disappearing before the bell at 5pm. In fact Kent was very well represented at the festival with beers from Westerham and Tonbridge.

Cronx, a new brewery in Croydon had two beers at the festivals, one was their bitter called Standard (3.8%) which would be a fantastic session bitter but Nektar (4.5%) was the second beer we had to throw, some may enjoy it but personally it just didn't work at all although it did smell of blackcurrants as per the tasting notes but just tasted plain weird. Looking forward to trying some others of theirs, hoping for more like Standard than the other.

All in all the festival had some crackers, a couple of pourers but that's the way of it. Hoping the Round Table put this on again.

Wandsworth Common's Halloween Beer Festival

I missed the last one of these sadly due to work pressures but it was great to go back, the festival beers were better organised so that they had run out of interesting beers on the Saturday. Saturdays for this festival get very busy indeed, whilst there were a few missing beers there was a heck of a lot of choice still.

Sadly Fuller's Imperial Stout had gone on the Friday night so I didn't get to try that but the bar inside had a hidden treasure from Fullers. A cask of their Vintage Ale... It was interesting to later see tweets with people mentioning it and others going "Really? Where!", for my part it was a great beer to try on tap. I actually far prefer it on tap to bottle same as with Golden Pride to be honest. It was everything you could hope for in a strong winter beer, sweet fruity notes balanced with just enough sweetness and bitter. Thomas Sykes, the barley wine from Burton Bridge just didn't live up to it normal self, it was extremely sweet and cloying which made me wonder if they had stopped fermentation too soon? Not sure as I'm not a brewer but it just wasn't the barley wine I have had in previous years, I will try it again next year this could just be a blip and I only see it at this festival so...

From the Highlands, Orkney and Cairngorm breweries impressed with their two beers, both warming and morish for winter. Moorhouse's Ruby Witch was delightful with its toffee spice and their Black Cat which is a firm favourite of mine didn't disappoint at all. Robinson's had provided a cask of Old Tom, again I much prefer this on cask to bottle, the chocolate and port flavours seem to meld better this way to me.

Unfortunately again we missed out on Snowflake from Sarah Hughes brewery but then we weren't surprised, CAMRA tend to hit this festival on the first couple of days so we knew this would have gone alongside Fullers Imperial Stout, we were surprised to find out that they actually died on the Friday, good planning for the beer lifespan by the organisers I felt!

Windsor and Eton provided their Conqueror 1075 which was an odd beer, it had a salty after tang to it which just seemed to really work. The biggest surprise of the festival was Downton's Roman Imperial Stout, it was everything you want in an imperial, rich chocolate married with warm roast coffee and that thick comforting mouth feel... And it was a Downton's! Normally we as a group at Festival, with the exception of my partner who really likes their beers, avoid this brewery as there is usually a weird aftertaste that we just don't like but that wasn't there and to my partner great joy then found we also like Nelsons Delight by them too. Ok, it didn't match the notes description but it was a very good beer and we will be trying their beers again now.

Guinness & How To Do An Advert Right

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxwndLOKQTDs The latest Guinness advert certainly shows how to do advertising right, the beer is as usual for this brewery advertised right at the end but the whole advert is based on showing friendship rather than a mock up of hells chorus with overblown 'obstacles' to get around or oneupmanship against your mates. Ok, Guinness isn't my favourite beer by any means but I have to give them credit for this.