Well it was a great success, the Local CAMRA branch do a great job each year.
there were 220 real ales to try with a few cask lagers too and over 20 ciders and perrys, im not a cider lover at the moment so i stayed clear of that end of the Crypt!
i mostly sampled stuff from the local area and yorkshire as i mentioned before. for some reason just about everything i picked up seemed to be a more pale ale, i prefer slightly darker ones normally. i had a few nice halfs but honestly i think the quality was down from last year, not sure why but some of the lighter coloured ales were very weak in flavour. my personal faverourites of the night were "Cambrinus Endurance" and "peerless brewery crystal maze" the entertainment was a local jazz band who were quite good and better than the string quartet from last year, no offence to them they were great but it seemed very out of place. the food was lovely this year. I had a nice steaming bowl of scouse
now some of you will look at that and probably think it looks like a bowl of dog food well scouse is a stew its supposed to look like that read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouse_%28food%29 there were also some delicious looking home made pies from some one on the wirral and a local cheese shop had a wide selection available.
sadly it was kicking out time at 11 and i got what was left of my paper tickets traded back in for cash and gave the pound i had left to festival chairty. but the night was still young :mrgreen:
myself and another brave friend trundled off into the liverpool night in search of another boozer. we got into "the Phil" or philharmonic dining rooms as its correctly called and had a pint of thwaites best bitter, then on to the grapes which is a great gem of a pub, if it gets more than 10 people in its rammed. and there was 15. luckily most were leaving as we were entering. we managed 3 more pints before we had to call it game over a pint of Liverpool Craft Brewery Viking bitter, Higsons bitter, and a pint of Brimstage Road island red.
if your into real ale where you live i strongly suggest you annoy your local landlords to get some beer in from either Liverpool Organic or Liverpool Craft brewery respectively as they are mighty fine
if you have never been to a beer festival in britain i strongly recommend you do, even if your in to just lager you can find some craft and cask made lagers which will be much nicer than what comes out of the tap in most places also try a few ales you might be surprised.
Jeremy clarkson would probably say CAMRA members are blokes with beards and twigs in their pints. there was a large ratio of beards last night but no twigs, and there were a massive mixed bag of all ages and genders, some nice phillies too!
get yourself to a local beer festival you wont regret it
well you might in the morning hurr hurr.....
and if you ever come to liverpool and want to know any good pubs just ask me.
