28th October 2011 - Birmingham Beer Festival

Day off today with the prospect of Birmingham beer festival with GP and several others to look forward to.

After an excellent "Full monty" breakfast at a  cafe on Birmingham market, I arrived at the Second City Suite to find some of the party already there and as I greeted them I noticed the cider and perry stand.

As with last year, the locale bar was downstairs with those from further afield on the first floor.

I'd previously researched the beer list and noted a specific perry I wanted to try but alas it wasn't there so instead my first drink was Merrylegs Pyder (6%) after which i joined the party.

250 beers means it can take time to decide what to go for so I opted to stick to thirds of the lower priced beers from there on.

Merry Miner is probably the most local brewery to me so I went next for two of their beers, Ghost Train (4.2% golden ale) and Going Underground (4.4% bitter.)

Time to go further afield (upstairs) from where Saltaire Blackberry Cascade was selected (4.8% with the cascade and Cenntennial hops well balanced by the fruit.)  Me and JF spotted the posh chocolate stand and tried some samples - the xtra hot chilli was interesting but didn't mix with the beer.

"Right GP - give me a number and that will be my next beer" - 222 was the answer so it was Southport Dark Night - 3.9% mild and a good beer as well that also fitted the pricing plan above.

Can't recall why, but the next beer I went for was Newmans Autumn Valley Flower (4.4%) - this would turn out to be my favorite of the day and I voted it as my beer of the festival choice.

Enough of using the stairs, so next a new local brewery for me I believe - Angel Banafyre (a 5% dark chocolate stout with an intense chilli finish that sort of sneaks up on you and then make you go "kin eck!")

Time for GP to give me a number again and this time it was 26, so another local beer - Bird's Dark Matter (5% complex dark ruby bitter.)

Back upstairs next for Amber Almond Dark (4.4% stout with an almond flavour.)

Thinking next about the theme that emerged over the last few weeks of run of the mill stuff,. "give me a bland beer" was my next request for GP - "Davenports!" was his response - "anything from there will fit the bill!"  Highgate Davenports IPA was thus selected - sure enough its a gentle 4% session beer with not much hopping that IPAs should have these days.

I've got enough left on the token for a final third and Hobsons Mild was close by so that fitted the bill perfectly.

The others still have money to spend so I went to the bottle beer stand and after much deliberation noticed an American  pumpkin beer not in the programme so it was I sampled Saranac Pumpkin ale (really excellent - so much so I've since emailed the brewer tio say well done.)

At this point we left the festival and headed over to the Big Wok for some food - I had a Chinese Lager (Tsing Tao.)