Earl's Court.
Hat Day - on the Thursday of the Great British Beer Festival, the organisers encourage everyone to wear a silly hat. I went in my UNIT beret (thus continuing the Doctor Who and beer theme) and Mark went in an Indian embroidered fez - because Fezes are Cool.
Mark headed for the Welsh stand first - he always starts off with a Brains Dark, which he can't get easily where he is. Sadly, there was no beer from Breconshire Brewery there, though Wye Valley was there with IPA and some bottled Dorothy Goodbody.
My first port of call - well, I started off with some Chocolate Marble, from the small Manchester brewery, but I was actually searching for the East Anglia area, so I could have some Woodforde's Wherry. I was wearing the Wherry t-shirt, after all.
Another essential stopping point was the Thornbridge brewery stand. Mark tried the Jaipur, and agreed with me that this is a very special beer. I went for the Kipling - which is actually alcoholic grapefruit juice! That's what it tastes like, anyway - and the Raven stout was just a little bit odd.
More old favourites were Hook Norton's Old Hooky and Moorehouse's Black Cat, and for Mark Bushy's Shuttleworth Snap (from the Isle of Man).
I also had a Sierra Nevada Porter, experimenting with some of the American brewers. It was very good, and I noticed at Open Mic night this week that Kilvert's have three different Sierra Nevada bottled beers in their fridge. I tried the Glissade, which was very pleasant (but not cheap!).
On the tube on the way home, I was singing. Gilbert and Sullivan. It wasn't entirely my fault. The tube line we were on went through Sloane Square, South Kensington and St James' Park. In Iolanthe, all these stations are mentioned. In the Nightmare Song, the Lord Chancellor sings of his friends and relations: "They're a ravenous horde and they all came aboard at Sloane Square and South Kensington stations", and when Strephon meets his mother Iolanthe, the peers who are spying on them sing "I heard the minx remark, she'd meet him after dark, outside St James's Park and give him one!" So that's my excuse.
The winner of the best beer of the Festival, by the way, was Mighty Oak's Oscar Wilde Mild.
Walking the dog this morning, I met a friend whose comment was: "There's more to do in London than drink beer, you know."
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2 comments:
Really? They do surprise me..
Gilbert and Sullivan - sound like good beer drinking songs.. Must look them up..
I was taken to see Gilbert and Sullivan done by the d'Oyley Carte Company when I was a kid, in the great days of John Reed, who was the master of the patter songs (of which the Nightmare Song is one), and I was in Iolanthe twice at Sixth Form College and University - once as a peer because there weren't enough men, and once as a fairy!
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