As the Halls are out of action for renovation and repair, Norwich Beer Festival is split into three separate events this year, at Redwell Brewery, the Waterfront and Castle Social. It might not be the same, but it’s great to still do something and there are lots of fringe events also taking place.
There’s Craig at the bar before we opened, he’s in charge of organising everything. He’s good at that and he’s agreeable (unless commenting on pastry sours) so people like helping.
There was ten minutes to opening by this point.
Assistant to the regional manager 🙂
The keg selection.
Soon after opening.
Here’s Ivan (photographed in between his many breaks, but I didn’t comment) adding black pepper and Tabasco to my Bloody Mary beer. Ivan revealed that he turned up at 09:00 to drink the beer, but I didn’t like to say anything. Ivan, who is the resident cellar manager expert, also did a breakfast time interview with BBC Radio Norfolk which I think went well.
Thanks Jen! Chicken bakes are good for the soul. Jen was top notch at providing lifts and snacks, so Roy and I have decided she will be allowed back.
Having a drink to celebrate ITV featuring us live on their news programme.
Ian doing the interview in his role as chair of Norwich CAMRA.
Thanks to CAMRA for supplying us pizza. Well, and beer.
Some Morris dancers performing outside.
Ah, crisps and beer. A healthy and well balanced diet such as this is why I’m able to walk such long distances.
Lucy making Roy appear in one of her training videos. You can see how surprised and delighted he was. Roy is the very competent, and hugely laid back, manager of glasses and tokens. I could genuinely accidentally destroy every glass and he’d calmly find a solution. I hope that I keep up with his beer deliveries during the three days.
Oli dancing to the band on Sunday afternoon. There’s a video of this appearing in the next post.
And my favourite beer of the first part of the festival, the Corporate Conference from Left Handed Giant. A delicious and decadent pastry sour, 6.5% of mango fruitiness, this was thick and tasty. Craig had purchased a lot of beer and he wanted me to taste all of them (twice on some occasions), so I’ll let people look through my Untappd account if they want more details about the beers.
And the lovely Oli after her dancing. It was all a bit raucous for me, I had a pizza and beer instead.
Huge thanks to everyone at CAMRA who has organised this, I thought it went really well and every customer I spoke to enjoyed it. There are a lot of planning meetings and huge amounts of work behind the scenes, the organising committee deserves a lot of praise in my humble view. I ignored the comments from Craig and Ian about my beer choices (such as the “Julian seems to like all beers that don’t taste of beer”), I can’t be limited to just twiggy stuff, my life needs pastry sours, rich porters (preferably with fruit) and beers with ginger and cinnamon in. A great success I think and I’m looking forwards to the next part of the festival which is as the Waterfront from Monday 27 October.
And here’s a couple of videos from the event.