Quote Originally Posted by sheffield hatter View Post
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...
A De Molen beer as well, shame the St Bernardus isn't the Prior 8. Send me the glass if you like, it's sure to become as much a collectors item as the 1974 GBG "Avoid like the plague" version.