My friend Simon mentioned last year about going to the London Craft Beer Festival, but I wondered if it was a bit expensive and so I didn’t get a ticket to join him. By chance, he mentioned last week that he knew someone selling a ticket at a much lower cost of £30, so I was there without much hesitation. Here’s the walk to Magazine, where this year’s event was being held.
There’s Susie and Simon, with the former’s efforts somehow getting us to the front of the queue. I hadn’t let myself get too excited about the event in case the ticket didn’t come to pass, but all was well and it’s fair to say that the excitement soon started when I had the wristband safely around my wrist.
Well, that’s exciting straight away.
The first beer of the day. The concept here is that all beers are free of charge and I won’t list here what I tried, but I did ensure that my Untappd remain updated for anyone who is interested.
We grabbed a table outside, but it soon became apparent that there was large amounts of seating, so this wasn’t an issue. Inside there were also fans and air conditioning, they didn’t want their beer drinkers over-heating, and I was happy to drink to that forward-thinking philosophy.
One of the two internal halls.
This was all so much bigger than I expected. There were some issues with the delayed opening where we left in the sun and that was sub-optimal, but once the event got going, it all felt well organised. There were maps dotted around of where all of the breweries were, but I’d need more than one afternoon to really visit every one that interested me.
I was impressed that there were no real queues at any of the brewery stands, you could get served nearly immediately.
There was a separate American beer bar and the list of options here was much wider than I had expected. As I’m not planning to visit the US for a while, this was an opportunity to tick some beers off.
One of the bar staff modelling a bottle of beer for my Untappd photo.
There was free water available of the sparkling and still options.
That path was what Liam and I walked on the Capital Challenge a few weeks ago…..
There’s Simon chatting away about Brazilian beer. I was pleased that the glasses were made of plastic, rather than, er, glass. So we had branded plastics, which means I could keep it without fear of it getting broken on the aircraft. Susie picked up a heap of free merchandise, which I’m merrily carrying around Portugal now, including baseball hats, t-shirts, lanyards and stickers.
I like a bit of Vault City, I should be visiting their new tap room later in the year.
A free ice cream and a beer slushie from Vault City which made me love them even more.
Simon wanted to go to the Vault City tasting, which was a marvellous idea, and this beer was handed around at the end of the session before.
One of the beers from the Vault City tasting.
Overall, I really enjoyed this evening and the atmosphere was informal and friendly throughout. There were no issues of anyone over-indulging, despite the large amount of free beer that was available. The organisation was better than I had expected, the scale of the event was broader than I had realised and the speed of service was faster than I had anticipated. I was very much surprised and delighted, so I think that I might just be back for next year’s event….