16th May 2009 - Midlands Craft Brewers Meeting

For the first time for a few years, attended the CBA meeting which this time took place at the Bartons Arms in Newtown, Birmingham.

Ahead of, and after, the meeting took chance to sample several of the Oakham beers available there. During the meeting several craft brewed beers including my own Taking a Liberty beer were sampled (its a clone supposedly of Oakham JHB but with different hops). Well received and GP tells me it tasted better now that when breqwed about a year ago (been stored in a shed through the winter so must have lagered).

An interesting part of the meeting was a blind tasting of 7 beers made to same recipe but with hops added at different times. Amazing the different tastes that resulted! One thing it showed was what the difference between bitterness and flavour when it comes to beer.

After the meeting, back into town for a quick one in the Wellington (on this occasion went for Banbks and Taylor's Mild.

13th May - Day at a brewery

Thanks to Luke of the Burton Beer circle, today finds myself and GP helping at Mulson Coors brewery in Burton where we helped their German student brewing a batch of White Shield.

Lunch was spent at the Coopers where we sampled Castle Rock Harvest Pale.

En route to the station for the train home it was into the Burton Ale House (AKA the Roe Buck) where my chice was Burton Ale (Bass, Pedigree and Abbot Ale were the other possibilities).