a couple of months ago i started to learn a bit about beer. before that time i was very much in both the "i'll have a pint" and "i don't really like beer" camps... which makes no sense. what made sense is that people like beer, so i too will like beer. even if i didn't actually like beer. well, i've started to understand it's not necessarily "beer" i don't like, it's "pints of piss on tap" that i don't like, and there are many lovely beers out there that i do really like. so, when the opportunity to attend the london craft beer festival presented itself a couple of weeks ago, i knew i'd be a fool to say no.
well we certainly put some effort in sampling all the beers so we could definitely pretend we knew what we were doing, but with the "sample size" occasionally looking like a quarter pint, things started to get a little hazy after the first few. i do remember one particular beer called the 'bearded lady' by magic rock brewery, which i suppose was named as such because it was so thick and dark it could have been mistaken for my beard as i was drinking it. or, throwing it away.
my highlights were the kernel brewery's london sour raspberry, which was sweet and fruity and tasted more like a yeasty cider than a beer, and two incredible brews from beavertown - the gamma ray (i think), and a magical blend of coffee, whisky and hopps called 'spresso'; the coffee lovers' dream, according to all reports. it was a stout, yes, but it was the kind of beer you want to start your day with. in a total not-alcoholic kind of way.
anyhoo, no two of those beers were the same 'kind' of beer, so i am still none-the-wiser when it comes to beers i like. although, according to little shaun - a beer nut, so to speak, i like a hoppy beer and i should choose an ipa when i'm deciding what to drink at the bar. or, you know, stick to gin.
with five or so samples under our belt. we decided it was time to eat. with not a lot of variety of food on offer at the festival, we decided to head elsewhere but not before checking out the libertines alley which we'd walked past on the way into oval space. there, we figured it was only right that we performed our very own fashun bloggah shoot with my new instax mini8* - problematically using up an entire roll of expensive film just working out how to use the camera. whoops!
satisfied with our wasteful adventure, we went off to find burgers to help dissipate the early on-set hangover that was threatening to ruin our sunny afternoon. burgers solve everything. hooray for burgers!
