Beers Of The Festival Awards

We get a similar feeling every year at the end of Tamworth Beer Festival – pack up the kit, reflect on successes and occasional failures, and look forward to a break before it all begins again the following year. But one pleasurable duty remains before we take our eye off the ball – delivering our prizes for beers of the festival!

These days out never fail to please – we usually get to go somewhere new or interesting, we are invariably treated with generous hospitality, and best of all we get to meet friendly, interesting folk at the breweries. Our critics have been known to say that the award trips are just flimsy excuses for piss-ups, but this is demonstrably false – whenever have we needed an excuse?

We were particularly pleased with 2011’s crop of winners, reflecting the interesting, high quality beers being turned out by micros across the land. Typifying this was our Gold prize winner, the IPA (also known as Maverick) from Brightside Brewing of Bury. The big brewers often turn out ‘IPA’ which is simply insipid pale ale, but turn to Brightside’s for an example of the real thing – fragrant and juicily hoppy. This went down so well at the festival that we fretted that pesky customers would drink it all before the staff had a chance! Pictured above are Martin Watts (right) presenting the certificate to owner Neil Friedrich (centre) and brewer son Lance (left). The brewery involves the whole family, with daughter Carley looking after sales, and wife Maxine “holding it all together,” to quote Neil’s words!

The compact 10-firkin brewery is tucked away at the back of the family bakery business. They’ve been running the bakery since 1985, and despite its success
they’ve decided to move on to a new challenge – brewing! Having satisfied themselves that they can make top quality beer – amply demonstrated by our award – the future will see them move to a different location, quadrupling the size of the brewing kit at the same time. The future may also see the production of a German style lager – as you may have guessed from the name, Neil has a German heritage, and apparently his father’s uncle was a brewmaster back home!

Having presented the award, it was time to adjourn for some sampling. We moved on to the excellent Trackside, the railway-buffet-bar adjoining the heritage East Lancashire Railway in the centre of Bury. Amongst the beers on offer were the fabulous Stout and Solstice from Brightside. We thoroughly enjoyed our time chatting with the family, and wish them all the very best in their endeavours; we expect to be hearing more of their
success in the future!

For the Silver award, it was off to the other end of the country. West Country Brewery started up in 2010, re-using much of the equipment from a previous brewery. Located some miles west of Salisbury – our route took us past Stonehenge – the brewery sits in an industrial
unit, out in the countryside near Dinton. The set-up is very spacious; even the cold storage room is bigger than the total size of most of our local micros! The operation
is headed up by brewer Rod Macdonald, with Mark Jacobs as assistant brewer. Mark (centre) and Rod (right) are pictured below receiving the award from editor Adam Randall.

This was an excellent opportunity to re-sample the English Ale, a beautifully gutsy copper-brown ale with a great balance of clean malt and fruity hoppiness. Rod thinks it still needs a bit of tweaking to enhance it further; the ABV will be tweaked up a little from the existing 3.9% to 4.1%. This will also distinguish it from the other ale in their main portfolio, Somer, which
will stay at 3.9%. Rod has a long CV in brewing, from helping to set up Exmoor Ales, as well as spells at Hall & Woodhouse, Cotleigh, and the Theakstons State Brewery in Carlisle. Rod joined us later in the evening on our little crawl of Salisbury. The city has some ex-
cellent Good Beer Guide pubs, but Rod was also able to point us at two great pubs which must be strong contenders for next year’s GBG: the Wilton (SP2 7ED), a cosy wood-fire heated local featuring three micro ales (including the English Ale!), and the nearby Duke
of York (SP2 7AS) with four interesting ales (such as Dark Star Hophead) and a couple of real ciders. We would also have missed the lovely old Haunch of Venison, which dates from 1320, and offers Hopback beers in good nick. So ta for the tips Rod! 

Church End picked up the Bronze award for their lovely Meaty Peaty Mild,a cracking mix of Gravediggers Ale and
Laphroaig whisky. We thought it appropriate that our secretary George (pictured left below) should present the award to Karl (right) from the brewery. George just cannot get enough Laphroaig, and similarly Karl cannot wait until Tamworth Beer Festival comes around, so that he can get going on all the fruity beers that we ask him to make. So much more interesting than beer-flavoured beers!

2011 Tamworth 2011 Beer Festival Report

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