The beer event of the year is upon us – the 36th Cambridge Beer Festival. I love this festival; it is held around the same time every year (18th-23rd May this year) on Jesus Green in a series of large marquees and has a wonderful outside area with lots of grass, chairs and tables, and several food stalls (Thai, curry, veggie, etc) for when you inevitably get peckish after sampling lots of fine ales.

There are over 200 real ales on offer during this festival, as well as ciders, perries, foreign beers, wine and mead. Every year I say I must try some real cider, but with so many fantastic beers on offer I never seem to get round to it. This year the festival is focusing on local ales from local brewers, although there are many ales available from far and wide.

So, so far I have been to two sessions of the festival, and tried some great ales. At the moment, Buntingford brewery is coming up tops for me – this has to be one of my favourite breweries as all the beers I try from them are somehow fantastic. Yesterday I tried Golden Plover (3.8%), which was golden and light with a fresh smell, and went down well. My favourite so far is Polar Star (4.4%) – I shouldn’t advertise this as I don’t want it to all go before I get to try some more of it, but the sherbet smell and citrussy flavours blew me away.  Very similar to Western Musketeer, my beer of the festival last year. Buntingford are great.

I tried some Cambridge Moonshine beer, the 800 Years of Engagement (3.8%), after reading the tasting notes that mentioned it was a ‘fruity, floral and light session bitter’. It isn’t. It was slightly eggy, a vanilla hint, and didn’t go down as smoothly as I would have liked – not a session beer. I think I will stop trying Moonshine beers as I am finding they are just not to my taste.

I really enjoyed Oakleaf’s Hole Hearted (4.7%), brewed with 100% Cascade hops – lovely! My sort of beer. Adam had some Essex Boys Bitter (3.5%) from Crouch Vale, being a fan of Brewers Gold, but it was just ‘boring and brown!’ – I tasted no hops whatsoever and no taste to speak of. It was just… well, brown.

I also tried some Spingo Jubilee (4.5%) from Blue Anchor in Helston, having been to the brew-pub myself and got myself  into a bit of a state after too much of some of their extra-strong Spingo beers (can’t remember which ones for some strange reason..). Anyway, I was slightly disappointed with the Jubilee, slightly bitter and not particularly hoppy, even though described as such. I was eager to finish it and move onto the next beer.

Everards Sunchaser Blonde is a pleasant, hoppy, light, golden beer at 4% – it went down quite nicely thank you! Adam enjoyed some Stonehenge Sign of Spring (4.6%), which instead of coming out as a nice blonde ale as we expected, it was green! Very interesting, and a nice flavour of hops and malt.

Green beer!

So that’s about it for now – roll on Cambridge Beer Festival 2010!

55 – Storm Hurricane Hubert (4.5%) – 7, smooth and a touch malty

56 – Millstone Three Rivers (4.0%) – 6.5, pale, drinkable but unremarkable.

57 – Hyde Bells and Whistles (4.1%) – 5.5, not great, weak with a lot of sourness

58 – White Horse Flibbertigibbet (4.3%) – 6, warmish flavour, a bit thick and generally bland

59 – Everards Tiger (4.2%) – 9.5, as close to perfection in a bitter as you can get. If you can find better, tell me

yay, so we finally get Brawl over in the UK. It’s long overdue, but before shoving it into the Wii, some pointers on the beers I had today, mostly from the Calvert’s Court in Stockport, but the last was at my local as all the beers I had yesterday were still on so they didn’t have anything new, unfortunately.

6 – Hanby Cascade (4.5%) – 7, nice and smooth, initially tasted weak but got better later

7 – Springhead Roaring Meg (5.5%) – 7, was very cloudy to start with which is normally not a good sign, but this was an exception, somewhat pale with very subtle hints of fruit, smooth throughout. One of the better strong beers.

8 – Everards Sly Fox (4.0%) – 5, really disappointing. Bland and watery, with the advertised hints of ginger somewhere between distant to non-existant. Probably the worst thing I’ve drunk of theirs.

9 – Moorhouse Pride of Pendle (4.1%) – 7, solid full flavour, decent session beer albeit a bit mundane, probably due to continual drinking of the thing as it’s my locals’ regular “guest” beer.

The Ship Tavern Stained Glass, originally uploaded by currybet.

On Sunday I was wandering around Covent Garden with friends and we found ourselves in Holborn. There is only one pub I know there and they are usually closed on Sundays but we tried anyway and– wonders– The Ship Tavern is now open on Sundays. This tiny back street pub is over 400 years old, but it’s not resting on its history or pandering to tourists (even though it seems to be featured on a “Haunted London” walk– I’ve never seen a ghost there, or a throng of tourists for that matter, but apparently during the reign of Henry VIII it was a place where clandestine Catholic mass was held. Some of the priests were found and executed in the tavern).

The people working the bar there are always friendly. Sunday they had on four real ales which the landlord offered for us to try. I fell or the Everards Sunchaser– very light and delicately hoppy, served a little cooler than cellar temperature, it was perfect for the rather hot day, as was the dark, cool pub which was lit with candles. We sat in a both that was stocked with lovely old books. The place was quiet, just my friends and two deaf women signing to each other. On the stereo Nina Simone and Dawn Penn made it feel like a home-away-from-home.

Eu não faço pesquisas e nem trabalho com isso, por isso não sei o motivo que leva as mulheres a consumirem menos cerveja do que os homens. Mas tenho uma leve desconfiança que isso acontece pelo sabor da bebida ser um pouco amargo, e normalmente as mulheres preferem bebidas mais “docinhas”.

Acho que foi pensando nisso que a Cervejaria Everards fez uma cerveja Ale sabor chocolate. O sabor do chocolate é dado graças a adição de cacau no processo de fabricação. Dá prá imaginar o quanto essa cerveja deve ser boa, não é mesmo? Eu que sou chocólatra quando vi a notícia fiquei empolgadíssima, mas sinto lhe informar que a cerveja foi fabricada para venda sazonal (será vendida durante o mês de maio) e só será distribuída nos Everards Pubs no Reino Unido.
Enquanto isso, se você é mulher e não gosta de cerveja, melhor continuar tomando caipiroska.

Fonte: Everards Brewery

I got a whole case of ales suitable for the season just before the Xmas holidays, but because they are all bottle conditioned and had been jiggling around in a delivery van on their way to me they needed a good few days to settle. To make up for this we made a trip to the Turf Tavern in Oxford to see what their selection included and were chuffed to find a few we had not previously seen.

Unfortunately one of these was resting, but we got to drink Grainstore’s Three Kings (the best of the bunch), White Horse – Rudolph the Red Nosed White Horse (!) and Hopback’s Red Ember.

We also re-sampled Beartown’s Ginger Bear (v.unusual) and Greene King’s Rocking Rudolph (not very anything at all)