7 Reasons Why You'd Be An Idiot To Miss The Burton-upon-Trent Beer Festival
#1: Broughton's Pies. Not a tinfoil-thrice-baked pie. Or a slop-in-a-dish-with-puffy-stuff-floating-on-top pie. Just huge slabs of meaty goodness, encased in shortcrust pasty, hewn from a pie several feet wide. With chips. And mushy peas. Proper festival grub.
#2: Tony's Pork Scratchings. Legendary. They curl, they have bristles on, they are shrapnel-hard on the outside and gooey-soft on the inside. I swear that some of them are whole eyebrows. That wink at you from inside the packet. Never have cholesterol-ridden offcuts tasted so good.
#3: The posh seats. Hosted in the Town Hall, upstairs there are cinema-style seats that give you a panoramic view over the carnage beneath. You get to see the stained glass and wrought ironwork ceiling supports close up. But you don't throw pork scratchings at the topers below. That's how you get ejected. And an ASBO.
#4: Martin Atterbury. At lunchtimes, the WurliTzer leaps forth onto the stage and Marty plays all the tunes. Dambusters. Rule Brittania. Coconut Airways. Too Drunk To Fuck. Possibly not the last two. But he does often wear a salmon-coloured suit and he wears it well.
#5: Public transport. It's five minutes from the bus stop serving Derby. And it's five minutes from the railway station that's opposite that very same bus stop. And thanks to Cross-Country trains, you can get to Burton from all over the country. Mind you, thanks to Cross Country Trains there's no guarantee which station you'll end up travelling via on your way home.
#6: Beers. They have a habit at Burton. They like to put on really good beers that people want to drink. As opposed to beers that thirty people want to tick. So, there will be beers from the likes of Dark Star (Espresso, APA), Brewdog (Edge, Trashy Blonde, 77 Lager, Hardcore IPA), Thornbridge (Seaforth, Jaipur, Epic Halcyon) plus a whole heap of other great stuff.
#7: I'll buy you a beer. All you have to do is approach me with a rolled-up copy of What's Brewing and say "You are the Reluctant Scooper and I claim my free half!".
All the gory details can be found here
#2: Tony's Pork Scratchings. Legendary. They curl, they have bristles on, they are shrapnel-hard on the outside and gooey-soft on the inside. I swear that some of them are whole eyebrows. That wink at you from inside the packet. Never have cholesterol-ridden offcuts tasted so good.
#3: The posh seats. Hosted in the Town Hall, upstairs there are cinema-style seats that give you a panoramic view over the carnage beneath. You get to see the stained glass and wrought ironwork ceiling supports close up. But you don't throw pork scratchings at the topers below. That's how you get ejected. And an ASBO.
#4: Martin Atterbury. At lunchtimes, the WurliTzer leaps forth onto the stage and Marty plays all the tunes. Dambusters. Rule Brittania. Coconut Airways. Too Drunk To Fuck. Possibly not the last two. But he does often wear a salmon-coloured suit and he wears it well.
#5: Public transport. It's five minutes from the bus stop serving Derby. And it's five minutes from the railway station that's opposite that very same bus stop. And thanks to Cross-Country trains, you can get to Burton from all over the country. Mind you, thanks to Cross Country Trains there's no guarantee which station you'll end up travelling via on your way home.
#6: Beers. They have a habit at Burton. They like to put on really good beers that people want to drink. As opposed to beers that thirty people want to tick. So, there will be beers from the likes of Dark Star (Espresso, APA), Brewdog (Edge, Trashy Blonde, 77 Lager, Hardcore IPA), Thornbridge (Seaforth, Jaipur, Epic Halcyon) plus a whole heap of other great stuff.
#7: I'll buy you a beer. All you have to do is approach me with a rolled-up copy of What's Brewing and say "You are the Reluctant Scooper and I claim my free half!".
All the gory details can be found here
Aww. I love the Burton fest. The Wurlitzer guy is amazing, as are the beers. I'm still reeling from them abandoning the winter festival. Have a good time you jammy git.
ReplyDeleteWe should all wear salmon-coloured jackets one year, in homage to the great one.
ReplyDelete2 reasons I'm not going:
ReplyDelete1 - it's in the south
2 - it clashes with York, which has Brewdog Hardcore and Edge, Marble Dobber, 2 Mallinsons, 3 new breweries...