If anyone can tell me how to add a pdf directly to the post I will do to save you scrolling the webpage.
Slightly more beers than recent fests (up to 40). Usual brewers & beer styles; people might be interested in ticks from Jersey/Surrey/ East Sussex/ Shropshire/ Merseyside to make your maps bluer?
I only have two spoons near me, one walk-able the other bus-able, otherwise it’s a train journey and I’m not that bothered enough to catch a train, as walking and buses are free for me.
Starts tomorrow, I have had at least three of the beers before, but I will be taking the bus into Telford for a look at what’s on, before busing back to Wellington and my ‘local’ Spoon’s. I will report back with my findings and thoughts!
I have added all the new beers to the website. A very high proportion were new to the site so there should be plenty of ticks all round. The Titanic and Mad Squirrel ones are a slightly different strength but probably not different enough to make them new entries so haven’t added those again.
Arrived at the Thomas Botfield (Telford Town Centre) at 12:00 on the dot! Ordered a pint of Belhaven Barn Dancer; only to be told it was off, they had put it on last night and “it was popular” according to the duty manager!
It was replaced by the Alesmith/Shepherd Neame Nut Brown; it was fine, but it’s no ‘Speedway’.
The other two pints I had were Arkell’s 3B, a beer we don’t see up here in Shropshire, followed by the Mash Challenger English IPA (Hook Norton, with Aussie brewer Brad Nolan involved).
Wellington (Shropshire) Spoon’s was next up: only two bloody fest beers! Luckily I like Nethergate Old Growler, which just happened to be on, plus they had a new rate from Lymestone for me.
The fest beers were both in good condition; Adnam’s Cashmere and Exmoor’s Barista.
Will now leave it until Saturday or Sunday before venturing to a Spoon’s again.
It’s £1:99 a pint up here: minus 50 pence with my CAMRA vouchers; so £1:49 per rate, not too shabby!
It’s the age-old conundrum of “When will Festival beers actually appear in my local Spoons?”.
Yesterday, first day of festival, one of two local Spoons, the Wibbas Down, Wimbledon, had no festival beers on at all when I visited at 3.00 pm. This is an enormous pub with 18 cask lines and numerous keg lines. Difficult to understand how they could not get any festival beers on by mid-afternoon on day 1, although they did have vast numbers of the festival beer tasting notes distributed around the pub.
Over the years, the Wibbas Down has see-sawed from zero festival beers on day 1 to mega numbers of festival beers on day 1. In some years, they have added extra physical bar space during the festival and served beers on gravity in addition to the cask lines. But it is anyone’s guess which of these scenarios will apply at any festival. Presumably it reflects changes in management year on year or alternatively one very confused manager.
So, left the Wibbas and journeyed to the Edward Rayne, Raynes Park. The Ed Rayne is smaller than the Wibbas with 9 cask lines. As expected, 4 of these had been kept for the non-rotating beers, GK IPA, Abbot, Doom Bar and London Pride, leaving 5 lines available for rotating beers. These 5 lines were all occupied by festival beers, including 2 of the International beers. Excellent.
This does seem to reflect some inconsistency across the Spoons estate. Some staff and punters appear to take the “World’s Biggest Real-Ale Festival” seriously and others don’t.
The Shrewsbury Hotel is similar in that (with managerial changes) it has had an extra ‘gravity poured’ area once and a can’t be arsed bar line other years.
Went into a Spoons in Cheltenham on Friday, 1 festival beer on saying they wanted to run the regular stocks down. A pump came free during our visit, they put on Doom Bar! What!
