...which is named after a Drum & Bass track from the late 90s, pop pickers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
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...which is named after a Drum & Bass track from the late 90s, pop pickers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
Yes. I've only been to one festival, around the late '80s at Olympia. The entrance cost, cost of the 'souvenir' glass and beer price - my friend thought the entrance fee would mean cheap beer - was, for me a deterrent. We had a couple of halves and then decided to go to the pub, ironically.Quote:
Originally Posted by london calling
I think that pubs and beer are inseparable. Given the choice, I'd rather forsake both rather than do one or the other.
Much made about the cost of the glass, which is usually (always?) refundable on exit if you don't want to keep it, and I can't remember feeling too aggrieved at pricing at the few festivals I've been to.
That said, I concur that a tour of pubs in a good beer town is far preferable to a single location festival, even when the number of festival beers on offer is greater than you could sample in month of Sundays.
Thing is, good beer festivals tend to be in good beer towns (Reading, Nottingham, Derby - have they got winterfest now?) so the dilemma is always the same. A bad beer town tends not to have a central beer festival...
The Robin Hood fest was a good prequel for mini-Nottingham tour in the past, then full Beeston the following day. Perfect!
This was a conversation best had before joining the queue. What you ended up with was a self-fulfilling prophecy: it looked like it was going to be pricey, but leaving after two halves made it so. (Bet the beer wasn't any cheaper in the pub, either!)Quote:
Originally Posted by Tris39
I consider myself educated, I know nothing of the ways of Drum & Bass, a good beer though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Komakino
The beer was certainly more expensive than the pub but undoubtedly of better quality. Bach then though, I was probably more interested in getting drunk cheaply rather than educating my palate.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheffield hatter
Well, it's bad enough that the design "celebrates" the virus, but in my view it's also a very bad design. What were they thinking of?Quote:
Originally Posted by hondo
Received my beers and glass today, plus a free packet of crisps. The glass looks even worse than I thought, like one of those Christmas highball glasses with snowflakes, for people who only drink once a year.
When you stop and think about how much damage this virus has done, in terms of deaths, permanent or long-term after-effects, anxiety, loneliness, loss or potential loss of jobs and/or homes, lost time in school and university, and general disruption - including diminishing use of public transport when the climate crisis means we should be moving from cars to less damaging ways of getting around - the last thing we needed was a souvenir beer festival glass.* OK, it doesn't actually celebrate but rather comemorates the advent of these strange times, but really, did no one at Camra have second thoughts before pressing SEND?
* Forgot to mention pubs closing, and other businesses going to the wall as a result of lockdown and home-working.
See photos below for the glass and the 11 beers.
Festival beer selection:
Eyam Plague Stout 4.4%
Oakham Citra Session IPA 4.6%
Grey Trees Afghan Pale Ale 5.4%
XT 15 English IPA 4.5%
Drone Valley Candleriggs Strong Mild 5.8%
Foreign Beer selection:
St Bernardus Pater 6 6.7%
Kiuchi Espresso Stout 7%
Fruh Kolsch 4.8%
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier 5.1%
De Molen Hop & Liefde American Pale 4.8%
Maredsous Brune 8%
These will all be new to me, except for the rauchbier, which is an old favourite (and I've even drunk it at the tap in Bamberg). The kolsch and the citra are known to me as beer types but not had these examples before (though I don't know how I've managed to swerve the Oakham for so long). Not sure I'll be tuning in for the "live" tastings, though. I mean, it's one thing to "taste" a beer at a festival - you just have a half or a third and if you don't like it you just shrug and move on. But opening five or six bottles or cans and having a taste leaves you with an awful lot of beer to either drink or throw away. An awful lot of rather expensive beer...
Agree about the rauchbier .Favourite of mine. cheersQuote:
Originally Posted by sheffield hatter