Beer Viking

Well its been almost 3 weeks since the BeerViking crew raided the La Gothique pub for the Wandsworth Common Halloween Beer Festival. Better late than never – here’s our report…

Over 2000 people attended this excellent beer fest – which ran for 3 days. We ran into Steve from Beer Justice and some of the Shepherd Neame team as well… We guestimate that over 125 casks were consumed. The ratio of girls to guys was high with over 40% of the attendees being female. This is a sweet great result for the 2nd beer festival at this venue – a younger, hipper and more female crowd than your average beer fest. This may also have been the 1st festival to have Meantime London Pale Ale on Cask (at a beer festival that is, its on tap at many fine pub around London) – Meantime were one of the event sponsors, btw… Be sure to follow BeerViking on Twitter as there will be more beer and maybe even wine related events on Wandsworth Common coming up soon.

Here’s what we drank…

1. Shepherd Neame Faversham, Kent: Tipping the Admiral 4.0%, October
brew to celebrate Nelsons victory in 1805. Brewrank 10 – not so nice,
but drinkable.

2. Buffy’s Brewery of Tivetshall St.Mary’s, Norfolk: Norwich Terrier
3.6%, Amber coloured with grapefruit notes. Styrian, Mount Hood hops.
Brewrank 12 – reasonable brew.

3. Dark Star Haywards Heath, Sussex: Ocktoberfest 5.2%, Using German
malts and hopped three times. Brewrank 15 – NICE! Dark Star rock.

4. Downton Salisbury, Wiltshire: Pumpkin Ale 4.4%, Special dark version
of Downtons Halloween Brew for this festival. Brewrank 13 – nice
stew like taste of pumpkin.

5. Twickenham Fine Ales Twickenham, London: Strange Brew 4.1%, Dark
golden ale. Hint of spice. Five different hops. Brewrank 15 – golden
syrup with a hint of lime.

6. Wolf Attleborough, Norfolk: Werewolf 4.5%, Red-brown with
pronounced malty bouquet. Brewrank 6 – yuck!

Beers 7+ (maybe it was 12 in total?)… After this the rating notes seemed to have vanished. Well it was Halloween. But I know we drank some Downton Quadhop, Moorhouse Black Cat, More Dark Star Octoberfest (nice!), Japanese Asahi Ale (smooth) and Triple fff Stairway to Heaven (tasty).

Beyond this it did get a bit crazy and we mainly drank dark beers as I recall… Below is our random photostream of people enjoying the Halloween WCBF on Friday Oct 30th. Video of the winner of the Meantime case coming out next.

Halloween WCBF on Friday Oct 30th: