Fest of fun: Leicester

Time for my first 'major' festival of the year, one where I'm more than happy to put in several appearances. Leicester festival has a reputation for fresh local brews and beers from new breweries nationwide.



It's held in the Charotar Patidar Samaj, a sizeable venue close to the bus station and a shortish wobble from the trains. One of the reasons why I love it is the straightforward setup here. One room with the booze (a LocAle bar, rest of the beers set out A-Z, Everards, cider and bottle bars). One room with *plenty* of seating round tables, a cob+pork pie stall, a trough to wash your glasses out and a kitchen that prepares a fair curry.

I visited twice this year:

Wednesday night: even though Network Rail tried their damnedest to stop me, I still made it over to Leicester for the opening night. And it was busy enough - another reason why I like it here is that the people who want to stand and drink can do so by the bar, those who want to sit down and have a chat/read he paper are equally well catered for.

Judging for the Harry Cragg beer of the festival was well underway (but I never did find out the results). A Lane's pork pie and a Stilton cob (excellent cheese from Webster’s at Saxelbye) were the perfect accompaniment to these beers:

Grainstore Osprey - started farty, turned into a solid golden ale.
Church End Tekute Zlato- flat lager with real body and a spit of sweetness
Caythorpe Dark Gem - WOW! This is a fantastic mild! Full of ash and roastiness and yummy stuff.
Full Mash Sence-less - Hmmm. Rather nondescript
Leadmill New Jersey - Jaipur's older, uglier brother. Flat, harsh.
Potbelly Beijing Black - still a good beer, but Dark Gem was better.
Thornbridge Hall Gildas - Sheer quality. Off copper body, frothy scant head, spicy nose. Like through walking through jasmine fields on a warm afternoon.
Brewdog Paradox Cask 006 Caol Ila - It's Brewdog. It's Paradox. It's been aged in a cask of my favourite whisky. Is it any good? It's fecking superb.

Thursday: up for a full day sesh with my old ratebeer.com mucker Mark and those Brunnie regulars John and Brian.

The latter are festival stalwarts, regaling me today with tales of their recent jaunts. Mark is a keen ratebeerian and beer blogger whom I'm always happy to share a beer with. Literally, in this case: today I scooped with only a little reluctance and 'doubled up' with Mark (the sharing of beers so you get to drink twice as many for the same volume consumed).

That led me into something I've not done too often in the recent past, try a number of beers from new breweries. Some weren't too impressive (Irving's Invincible springs to mind), most were solid and average (such as Larkrise and Cropredy Bridge, the two beers from Northamptonshire newcomers Cherwell Valley). But some were real standouts: Golden Bud from yet another Derbyshire brewer, Brampton, was an itchy, oily hopped lipsmacker. And from the newest newcomers, Bees of Queniborough, a superb stout called Wobble -as smooth as a black cat rubbing against your ankles. We even found time to fire up the laptop an add some reviews onto ratebeer.com
























Now, all scoopers reluctant or otherwise have a list of beers they want to knock off at a fest. Mine usually was lots of old faves that I don't see in the Derby pubs, Mark's was chock full of new breweries. Once the new brewers wares had been exhausted, I turned to buying odd bod beers that I wanted to gauge Mark's reaction to. These included the Church End Czech lager from yesterday, a new wheat beer from Everards called Hazy Daze and one of my favourite English fruity beers, Milestone Raspberry Wheat beer. He seemed quite keen on them - which is reassuring for me, as some of the old-school drinkers I know tend to turn their noses up at the very mention of 'lager' or 'fruit'. Brian and John, incidentally were happily quaffing all manner of cask lagers - and they're both over retirement age!


Plenty of time was found during the day for food; a tray of samosas was chomped through early on, the veggie curry was welcomed later, with pork pies all round as a mid-session snack as you can see here - and thanks to Brian for his chipolata-finger QVC pointy action in this photo.


Now, it wouldn't be fit and proper for Mark and I to attend a fest and not try a cider or perry or both. We sampled Eve's Wilding Cider - I found it a tad gluey to begin with but eventually warming into tarter stuff. Mark was more impressed - given that it was a Northants cider, I'm not too sure if local bias was in action there...

Lots of other good beers along the way as well today, Morton Jelly Roll (which I enjoyed immensely on a recent trip to Nottingham), Grindleton Ribble Bitter (superbly balanced session bitter) and Fugelstou Sledgehammer Stout were perhaps the best of the rest of the bunch.


Having blagged a lift back to the middle of bog nowhere - I mean, home - Mark departed reluctantly early as I was getting stuck into the perry. Well, actually it was pyder; Oliver's seemingly running out of something along the way and so blending cider and perry together. It's still good tasting - Oliver's don't do crap - but a strangely unsettling aroma and taste.

John and Brian beat the retreat a little later on leaving me last man standing. Time then for another glass of Brewdog Paradox and an entertaining chat with a CAMRA man (Ron Rideout?) who regaled me with tales of dole cheats in Bangkok and what not to eat out of a packet when in Tallin.

Having then bought a stilton cob and a pork pie for the journey home, I reluctantly made my way back to the station, via Out Of The Vaults and an excellent pint of Beowulf Fin's Hall Porter.

So, an all round top-notch festival. Beer of the fest has to be Brewdog Paradox Caol Ila, though Brampton Golden Bud pushed it close. And special mention of Bees Wobble, one of the finest new-brewery beers I've been lucky enough to try.

Leicester festival gets it right; an excellent beer selection, good quality and conditioned beers, well laid-out venue, decent and fair priced food and a good atmosphere for both tickers and vertical drinkers alike. I always like to track down Andy Sales (festival beer co-ordinator) to say thanks - it's richly deserved.