On Wednesday evening I went with a few friends to the “London Drinker Beer & Cider Festival 2008“, held at the Camden Centre just behind Camden Town Hall (which isn’t really in Camden proper – its on the opposite site of the street from the rather grand St Pancras Station on Euston Road). I should really have blogged about this earlier, because if you’re reading this now its probably too late to nip along as the festival is only running from Wednesday to Friday of this week.
It’s the baby version of the huge beer festival that takes place in the late summer every year in one of London’s large exhibition halls, but this event is much better for its small scale. The fesitval is actually organised by members of the North London branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) themselves, who seem to be a uniformly friendly bunch, and what it lacked in incredible variety it certainly made up for in terms of the quality. The finest British ales, ciders and perrys were lined up in casks in the main hall, while in the cafe bar imported beers, including several German cask ales, wheat bears, Belgian fruit lambics and all the rest, were on offer. The cafe bar also served up hearty portions of food to soak up the ale.
I love authentic European beers and I started off by sampling one of the German cask ales that were on offer; a half of Schlenkerla from the Bamberg brewery. This is an ‘ur-bock’ style of beer, very dark and smoky but not at all like a stout – it’s more of a lager but dark brown with a heavy consistency. Although the friends I was there with didn’t feel the same way from the looks on their faces after supping it, I loved its complex barbeque saucey smell and taste. Very unique.
I next sampled a much more ordinary american pale ale that magically appeared in my hand as it arrived from the main hall. Although it had quite a refreshing taste there was a hint of sweaty sock in its aroma, so I’m not sure I’d have had another one if it had been offered! We weren’t planning on staying at the festival for very long, so I returned to Germany for my third and final beer of the evening, a nice, simple ‘trunk’ style beer, again one of the ones on draft, which was light and hoppy with a slightly sour taste, which I like. We did see some bottled fruit lambics which had come all the way from the Cantillon brewery in Brussels, but they were really expensive so didn’t go for one of those. Mind you, I should be able to pick up a bottle much more cheaply when I tour the brewery next Friday afternoon It’s funny that the commemorative glass produced for the evening happens to have a Eurostar train on it, which is how we’ve chosen to travel to Belgium next week. I’m going to take it as an omen of good luck.