After the excitement of Warsaw Beer Festival, I thought I’d do something different for a change and so I went to help at Beer Con in Norwich. I accept that it’s quite similar, but it’s a different country so that’s enough variety. Lucy from Norwich CAMRA had recommended a few talented volunteers from the beer festival to help out, as well as me although I come with just slightly less talent. But inclusion is important.
The event, organised by Boom Towers, was held at St. Mary’s Works in Norwich which was formerly a shoe factory operated by Sexton, Son & Everard.
More on the volunteering arrangement on my third day post (yes, it is going to be that exciting I’m stretching this to three posts, so that’s both blog readers already besides themselves with excitement), but just to note now that Bailey and Leanne offered a very friendly welcome and were supportive, visible and positive for the whole event. I’d add that the other Boom Towers staff were also friendly, but I’ve forgotten their names and two is enough to mention otherwise it looks less sincere anyway.
The keg wall.
The cask and cider bar where I was located for the trade session.
The cask selection. There was a really decent selection of over thirty cask beers between this and another bar at the event, covering a range of beer styles. I won’t meander on with stories of individual beers from this section, but it would be wrong not to mention Chubbles from Cloudwater and the All Calls Diverted to Answer Phone from Pomona Island. Always a delight to see beers from Deya, Verdant, Burnt Mill and Ampersand to name just a few. If anyone wants more details, they can pop to https://untappd.com/user/julwhite and unpick things from there.
I thought that this looked like my friend Richard’s parking, but I didn’t message him anything as I don’t like to cause offence.
Bar snacks for when I had a little rest. I was, by chance, put on the cask beer bar in the morning with Terri, one of the Artichoke Hearts bar billiards team, so that was a bonus. Always good to get (well, share) some gossip and the above average Jen was around to assist with that further.
In the evening I moved to the wine selection. I was able to show off my knowledge of white, red and rose wine to an impressed audience. Although that is the limit of my knowledge, that there are three types of wine and an orange one. Being able to enthuse about the four primary colours of the vineyard is probably as far as I’m ever going to go, despite attending countless wine tastings where its discovered I only really like dessert wine or barley wine (which isn’t a wine).
Ivan proved very useful with a little incident, so he was very much in my good books all evening. Ivan is a cellar expert with no qualifications but an ability to do things in the cellar, whereas I’m a cellar expert with qualifications and little ability to do much in the cellar of use. Well, I can rearrange casks and keg in order before they go on, but that’s of limited use to a cellarman (or cellarwoman).
Actually, there’s probably a debate to be about the contrast between a qualified expert with no ability and an unqualified expert with all the ability as I sometimes wonder whether that’s the very foundation upon which the British hospitality industry is built.
And a reward for my efforts. The pork pie was delicious but I picked the jelly out. I ignore those who say that it’s the best bit as it evidently isn’t.
I was going to go home after my busy day, but then I got muddled up and walked to the White Lion. I thought that was a nice treat for landlord Oscar though and he recommended this little number from Ampersand, which I was prepared to try as I’m good like that. And with that, I got muddled up again and went to the Artichoke which was a nice treat for landlord Julian (wiser one).