Tag Archives: nottingham

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Nottingham (Robin Hood) beer festival, 800 beers, my top tips!

So the Nottingham beer festival is confirmed at having around 800 beers, toppling the already heady heights of last years 700, now that’s a lot of choice…

So here are my runners and riders for the festival, after-all horse racing and beer festivals are very much alike, they’re always full of stupid people who don’t really know what they’re doing, and some mare always ends up on its back.

Nottm

I’ll get the obvious one out of the way first, if you’re not from Nottingham, or if you are and have been living under a rock (maybe castle shaped) you need to try 3 Castle Rock – Harvest Pale it wasn’t made supreme champion of Great Britain for a laugh.

So, if you’ve not tried any of the below, here are my home bankers for a decent drink,

104 Blue Monkey – Evolution 4.3%
132 Derventio – Venus 5.0%
261 Loddon – Ferrymans gold 4.4%
263 Loddon – Hoppit 3.5%
344 Potbelly – Potbelly best 3.8%
361 Nottingham – James Morton’s legacy 3.8% (although I think it’s supposed to be James Fellows of Fellows Morton & Clayton)
382 Rebellion – IPA 3.7%
418 Steel City – Masters of the spooniverse 4.2%
431 Thornbridge – Hopton 4.3%
432 Thornbridge – Jaipur 5.9%
433 Thornbridge – Kipling 5.2%

Bandstand Area

620 Brewdog – 5AM Saint 5.0%
623 Brewdog – Punk IPA 6.0%
647 Fat Cat – Cougar 4.7%

Beers on ‘reserve’ status,

RES Leila Cottage – Ace Ale 3.8%
RES Oldershaw – Caskade 4.2%

If you like the dark stuff it’s hard to see past,

101 Blue Monkey – 99 Red Baboons 4.2%
399 Sarah Hughes – Dark Ruby 6.0%
712 O’Hanlons – Dry Stout 4.2%

Of course, the real point of a beer festival is to try beers new to you, so don’t forget to do some blind shooting and choose some randoms! drop a comment below of any tips of your own.

The Nottingham / Robin Hood beer festival opens Thursday at 11am and ends Sunday 3pm, we will of course be updating live so check back for more beer suggestions, and again leave some of your own. official website

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Nottingham beer festival preview.

October sees Nottingham castle open its grounds once again for the Nottingham beer festival, so let’s take a look back to 2009; and on to what we can expect for this years even bigger 2010 festival.

Nottingham beer festival Thu 14th to Sun 17th October 2010, official website

Thursday October 8th 2009 I was in London drinking in Dirty Dicks (it’s a pub, look it up) an amateur mistake for on my return to Nottingham on the Friday I was greeted at 4pm with a lot of the ‘well known’ (Thornbridge being a prime example) fantastic beers empty, already! This happens every year, and no matter how hard the organisers try with 700 beers it’s nigh on impossible to predict sales patterns, you could argue that they should increase the number of beers with a reserve barrel, but no doubt this comes a the cost of variety.

700 is now the benchmark, if you want to try the well known best beers without disappointment ensure you get down on the Thursday, but remember beer festivals aren’t all about the big boys, what about the little known brewer with an absolute gem? or the darkhorse that slipped under the radar? check back in the coming weeks for our ‘top tips’ before the festival, and any gems we unearth whilst there.

nottm

The Nottingham beer festival takes some beating, I would go as far as saying the only thing that can realistically beat the 2009 festival, is the 2010 festival. It seems finally that some of the stereotypes are being shaken off, you could see this in 2009, it was a huge mix of young and old, the pull perhaps is that it’s not all beer, there’s a ton of cider, fruit wines and fruit beers, and if you really want to tread carefully there are lagery type concoctions dotted around, but don’t expect to find a Carling tent, this isn’t Donington. (though the toilets are comparable)

 

Stick with us on the run-up, it’s going to be huge.