Tomorrow is the 2nd day of the Ascot Beer Festival – which is held at the racecourse. We go most years, and as usual we’ll be joined by a few friends, and to top it off it looks like it’ll be the best weather we’ve ever had at this festival!
We don’t go to work at this one, just to drink. And since there’s also racing going on, a few bets will be placed… wonder if I can keep my record of leaving Ascot in profit for the day..?
Beer and gambling – what can possibly go wrong??
The Great British Beer Festival runs from Tuesday (which starts with the Trade Session) until Saturday evening at 1900. The beer is bought in advance, so what’s there are the start is pretty much all there is (unless some of the brewery bars bring more in if they’re running low, which wouldn’t surprise me). Since it ends at 1900 on Saturday, the beer buyers are, of course, aiming to have nothing left to sell by that time – otherwise it’s basically wasted.
So what does this mean for the visitor? Well, if it’s your first time visiting the GBBF and you come on a Saturday hoping to drink the award winners, you’ll be out of luck. You may not even get your first choice any time you visit a bar all day. And if you don’t arrive until late afternoon, and all you like to drink is on the golden end of things, you’ll be unhappy to find that your choice is largely limited to the dark end of the beer spectrum.
I did have one bloke during the late afternoon who had clearly only just arrived (given his pristine glass), and when asked what sort of beers he liked, replied “lager”… not an awful lot of suggestions came to mind, though I did point him in the direction of one of the Bières Sans Frontières bars.
And it’s a real shame. From what I could see the Saturday visitors were less likely to be “CAMRA types” (if you know what I mean), and far more likely to be people who’d never visited a beer festival before, some foreign tourists who had come along to see what it was all about, and plenty of other people who simply aren’t likely to drink real ale at any other time. People who wouldn’t take a day off work to go to a beer festival, but who would wander along at the weekend to give it a go.
And, basically, we didn’t have much left to sell them that they were wanting to try. I think I made a few converts to Riggwelter and Old Peculier, and we did at least have Wensleydale’s Semer Water left for most of the afternoon for those that wanted something lighter (and it was a nice pint!), but we probably left far more people disappointed that they couldn’t try the raspberry wheat beer, or the elderflower ale, and so on. And aren’t these just the people that CAMRA are trying to persuade to give ale a chance?
The Reading Beer Festival at least has the advantage of not closing until the Sunday, so if you arrive on the Saturday then until fairly late in the day there’s normally a very good selection left. You probably won’t the get the award winners, of course, but we stand a far better chance of being able to suggest something to you that you’ll enjoy drinking.
I guess (and that’s all it is – I’d be interested to know if I’m right) that since Reading is always held on the May Bank Holiday weekend that we can open on the Sunday and the next day is still a bank holiday and so we a) get the attendance that we maybe wouldn’t get if the next day were a normal work day, and b) the volunteers have the next day off so it’s easier to get the staff to start taking the place back down again. The GBBF doesn’t have this luxury on its week, so perhaps that’s why the last day is the Saturday.
I still think they’re missing a trick, mind you.
And if you want to drink the best of the festival, take the day off and visit on one of the week days.
Last week my wife and I were at the Great British Beer Festival from Thursday to Saturday. We’ve volunteered at Reading Beer Festival the last couple of years, and since we enjoyed that we decided to do so at the GBBF as well.
We worked the Thursday and Saturday day shifts (10am to 5pm), both times working behind the W1 “Lawrence” bar, which served beers from Norfolk, North Yorkshire, and Northern Ireland, so if you were there during either of those times then we may have served you!
I didn’t get to sample that many of the ones we were serving (just too busy!) but of the ones I did, I really liked Cropton’s Yorkshire Warrior, Rooster’s Yankee, and Wensleydale’s Semer Water.
Of the ones I didn’t try, customer comments would suggest that the Clanconnel’s McGrath’s Irish Black and Rudgate’s Ruby Mild were also on very good form (but then the latter did win silver in the Milds category of the Champion Beer of Britain).
To be honest, I didn’t hear a bad word about any of the beers on the bar, so maybe they were all good.
The Thursday was horribly hot and humid, though, which wasn’t helped by dashing up and down the bar pulling pints all afternoon. The GBBF had everything on hand-pull, which meant that you basically covered the entire bar all shift, where at Reading most of the beers are on gravity dispense from the casks so you tend to stay more in your bay and don’t spend as long moving around the place. Saturday, though busier, was a bit easier to work as it had at least cooled off somewhat.
We were back to drink with some friends on the Friday, which meant I had a chance to sample a fair few brews – it was great to see that Thornbridge had their own stand, as I do love their beers (my take on Kipling is about ready to bottle). I also grabbed a few bottles on the way out from the BSF bar – all American IPAs (Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA, Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA, and Goose Island IPA), and all rather good.
By the time we opened at 1100 on Saturday (in fresh Theakston’s t-shirts, to replace the staff t’s we’d been wearing on Thursday, which was probably a good idea) our bar was probably down by about half a dozen beers out of the 28 we started with, so maybe 22 or so left on. By the time we finished at 1730 we were down to half a dozen left on, with at least three of those being very close to the end. As we were walking out of the hall to leave at around 1830 our bar manager shouted to us that they were down to their last one, so pretty well planned for the close at 1900.
I think most of the main bars were like that – though I think the brewery bars probably had enough left to last until closing.
This was our first time volunteering at the GBBF, and we’ll definitely do it again. We had a great time (if hot!) working behind the bars, it was a pleasure to serve so many people such good beer and, with luck, maybe have helped convert a few people to the pleasures of a pint of real ale. The fact that our bar manager seemed so keen on telling us to come back next year and ask to work on his bar again also gave a happy inner glow!
As staff you’re treated very well – if you sign up in time you get your staff t-shirt, there’s a subsidised canteen in the volunteer village area, there were cheap beer vouchers, discounts on some of the stalls, free (or subsidised) accommodation, and the magnificence that is the Volunteer Arms staff bar. And, of course, you get to attend the GBBF itself.
So, if you even have the slightest interest in volunteering (and, of course, you’re a member of CAMRA), then you really should give it a go!
Actually, don’t – it ended up being long enough that it justified its own blog post – see the next thrilling instalment for my thoughts on visiting the GBBF!
A colleague asked me why I brew my own beer rather than just buying it. It struck me as a slightly surprising question at the time, rather like asking why I cooked dinner rather than ordering in takeaway or going out for dinner.
I homebrew because I like good beer and get great satisfaction from making it myself, especially now I seem to have settled in to all-grain brewing and am consistently making stuff I really enjoy drinking. The fact that it’s considerably cheaper is obviously a huge bonus!
But, just as we go out for dinner, so we also go out to pubs, so this article on the Allgates Brewery blog struck a chord, so I thought I’d share it. Some of the more significant points:
The figures are staggering, the majority of these been taken from a submission to the Treasury, by way of written evidence, by the BBPA in March 2011.
1. The continuation of the beer duty escalator saw a 7.2% increase in beer duty in this year’s Budget. Beer duty has now risen by a staggering 52% since 2004 whereas beer duty revenues have only risen by 8%.
[…]
6. Since 2004 beer sales in pubs is down by over 30% (or 5 million pints per day). One-fifth of the total UK beer market has disappeared in just six years. Pubs closed at a rate of around 30 per week in 2010.
[…]
9. A 2009 PwC study concluded that considering overall tax revenues from beer: “.the current duty rate is almost at the revenue-maximising level and any further significant increase would result in a reduction in the tax revenues obtained by the Government from the brewing industry”.
10. A duty freeze could have saved over 10,000 jobs in 2011/12 alone. The decline in duty revenue (£61 million) would have been more than offset by other tax revenues. Beer sales would decline by nearly 775,000 barrels less than will now be the case. Scrapping the beer duty escalator and freezing beer duty over the next three years would save over 27,000 jobs.
So, basically, the government is taxing our pubs out of existence, and has reached the point where the increases in beer duty result in decreases in revenue. Do we think that they might actually realise that this is a rather stupid thing to do?
We’re now only 3 weeks away from this year’s Great British Beer Festival at Earls Court. My wife and I have decided to volunteer for the first time this year, since we enjoy working at Reading. We’re working on the Thursday and Saturday day shifts, and will be there for the drinking on Friday. No idea where we’ll be working, but I hope to be behind a beer bar.
It seems that the Central and District lines will be shut between Paddington and High Street Kensington, which is a bit of a pain for us – don’t know how best to route around it!
The next beer festival after that to which we normally go is Ascot, which is the weekend of Saturday 1st October. Not working at this one, just drinking and betting on horses (an ideal combination..!)
Tickets have now gone one sale for this year’s Great British Beer Festival. Like the last few years it’s being held at Earl’s Court, and will be running from the 2nd to the 6th August.
The 17th Reading Beer Festival has also been confirmed for Wednesday 27th April to Sunday 1st May 2011. We’ve volunteered already to work for a shift on the Wednesday, with the intention of returning on the Thursday to drink…
The 4th Ascot Beer Festival is being held this weekend at the racecourse, and we’re going tomorrow. It’s been good the last few years, though the first one was held in March and was bitterly cold. September is definitely a better choice, even though it’s looking a bit wet.
The racing schedule is here, and here are the beer and cider lists.
Also, with regard to the 2011 Good Beer Guide, I was rather surprised to see that a pub in Reading, The Jolly Anglers, was given a write-up in the colour section at the start of the guide, but wasn’t actually listed in the guide itself. It’s a bit of a success story – a pub closed by the brewery, which has now been rescued – but I thought it odd that they should draw such attention to it if it wasn’t good enough to include in the guide itself. So, I asked the question in the CAMRA website’s feedback form, and got a reply from the Publications project editor:
Thank you for your comment. The Jolly Anglers would not have been selected for the 2011 Good Beer Guide as it only re-opened in March, and all pubs for inclusion in the 2011 Guide had to be submitted by 1st March this year – before the pub was operational again. However its reopening as a result of campaigning by local CAMRA members and others was considered a success story worthy of highlighting – especially as its closure and the campaign to save it were noted in the 2010 Good Beer Guide.
The fact that the Jolly Anglers is not listed in the 2011 Guide should not be taken as a comment upon its merits as a pub, and we hope to see its re-inclusion in future editions of the Guide.
That answers my question – the only reason it’s not listed is because it re-opened too late. I really must get around to visiting it!
| I’m a member of CAMRA (no, I don’t have a beard), and one of the perks is a (slightly) cheaper copy of the Good Beer Guide. The 2011 edition arrived a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday they released it as an Android app.
For those with Android phones and the barcode scanner app installed, here’s a QR code for the app. The app is currently £4.25 in the Android Market. There is an iPhone app as well, which I assume to be very similar. It’s not (for me, anyway) low enough to be an impulse purchase price, but given the price of the paper guide, and given the app’s usefulness, I’m happy enough to pay for it. Compared to the Cask Finder app (from the Cask Marque people), and in an area where I do know the pubs rather well (!), it returns a far better list of pubs. Better in the sense that the GBG pubs are ones I’m happy to drink in, where some of the Cask Finder ones I wouldn’t set foot in, and a number of the GBG pubs simply weren’t listed in the Cask Finder, and I would expect, if anything, for the Cask Finder list to be a super-set of the GBG list. First impressions of the app are quite good. You can search for pubs near you, which uses Android’s knowledge of your location (either based on your cell tower, or GPS if it’s enabled), by address or postcode, and by tube station (London only, of course). It returns a set of the 25 closest pubs. The results are initially shown as a list, sorted by distance, showing the name of the pub, its distance from your location, the town the pub is located in, and the same set of icons that the paper guide uses to show the facilities at the pub (such as opening times, if food or accommodation are available, and so on). If you click on a pub you get more details. There’s what always seems to be a CAMRA logo in the top left of the display – maybe this will be a photo of the pub where one is available? You’re also shown the address, opening times, telephone number, and website. The latter two are linked so that clicking will open the dialler and browser, respectively. It would be good if the address did the same: to add it as a contact, or maybe as a destination in Google Maps/Navigation (though the latter can be done from the map view, as described below). There a few other pages of information, which contain the review of the pub (the same one printed in the paper guide), a list of the features shown by the icons on the list view, a list of the beers stated as available in the pub (including notes on the beers – see later), and finally a page that shows a Google Map with just that pub shown as a pin. If you click on the pin you get a message box asking if you’d like directions. If you say “yes”, it determines your location, then opens the Google Maps app to give you directions to the pub. Possibly since you’re going to the pub, it chose to give me walking directions as a default rather than driving directions. From the list of pubs you can also open a Maps display which shows all 25 results, with a pin for each. When you click on a pin in this display you get a choice of the getting directions again, or being taken to the details of the pub. The map display doesn’t open with the display scaled to show all the pubs in your list, but rather at your previous zoom level. I tried a search for Ullapool (on the west coast of Scotland), and the 25 closest pubs went out as far as 62.5 miles and included Inverness and the Isle of Skye (though I can personally attest that all the ones I’ve tried from its list are excellent!), but when the map opened it was only showing the 2 pubs in Ullapool. A search for pubs near Covent Garden tube station, on the other hand, returns 25 pubs within 0.9 miles, but still opened at what appeared to be the same level of zoom. It would be nice to have it a bit more intelligent, scaling to show all the pubs in the list, though allowing the current behaviour as well based on your preferences. When you’ve found a pub in the list you can add it to a list of your favourites – which might be handy for finding a pub again when you’ve discovered a gem in an area you don’t know. The app also provides a list of the UK’s breweries, from the smallest microbrewery to the largest giant manufacturer of bland swill. The brewery information includes the same address, phone, website info that the pubs have, and adds email, shop opening hours, and the availability of tours. For most of the breweries there are also descriptions of their regular ales. These are the same descriptions shown when looking at the list of a pub’s beers. A couple of years ago I downloaded the GBG2009 POI file for use on my SatNav. Since I got my Android I was toying with the idea of developing something that would display that POI file overlaid on Google Maps – strictly against the Ts&Cs for the POI file, but I wasn’t intending to publish it anyway – but I never got around to it because I spend quite enough time writing code while I’m at work that I find it rather hard to muster up the enthusiasm when I’m at home! Anyway, one thing that I had thought might be a great touch are a couple of widgets: a 1×1 that silently updates every so often to keep an eye on your closest pubs, and to show a compass needle and distance to the nearest pub. And a 4×1 (or more) to list your nearest pubs with a click to immediately “navigate to”. Wonder if they’re intending to continue development, or just leave it as it is? They could add some very cool features if they keep going, so I hope it wasn’t just a one-off development for CAMRA, but rather an on-going project. Hell, the current flavour of the month is social networking, so you could do a foursquare-like thing. Or update Facebook with which pub you’re in. Plenty of possibilities! And it strikes me that it could help with CAMRA’s ongoing campaign to keep raising the profile of real ale with the public, and especially with younger (and, consequently, connected) people. The only real limitation of the app is that it’s 2.7Mb when installed, but you can’t install it to the SD card. That’s, frankly, unacceptable in a new app, and should be rectified as soon as possible. Update 2010-09-21: You can now move the app to the SD card. A firm 4 stars. |
    
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