Last night saw me popping off to the Wakefield Beer Festival, which (as seems to be usual now) took place at Lightwaves Leisure Centre. I arrived before any of my compadres so managed a few more than usual, half a pint of each of:

  1. Magna 800 (Wapping)
  2. Ale To The Tsar (Fernandes, Wakefield)
  3. Best (Ludlow Brewery, Shropshire)
  4. Idle Chef (Idle Brewery, Notts)
  5. Grasshopper (Westerham, Kent)
  6. Chameleon (Kelham Island, Sheffield)
  7. Woodcote (Hammerpot, West Sussex)
  8. Scotts 1816 (Copper Dragon, Skipton)
  9. Best Bitter (Ballards, Hampshire)
  10. Seasider (Ramsgate, Kent)
  11. Bishop’s Farewell (Oakham, Peterborough)
  12. OSB (Oldershaw, Lincolnshire)
  13. Takeout: Pater 6 (Sint Bernardus, Watou)

I was joined after the fourth by Lee and his friend Jerry, some odd nutter of a gentleman we’d never met before appeared around the fifth (he wah’d about his wife, then disappeared), and around the sixth Colin and Howard turned up. Howard flaunted his ginger beard in our general direction, which was nice.

Lightwaves is an odd venue for a beer festival – the main hall has no natural light, and gets very very stuffy during the course of the day owing to a lack of ventilation, plus of course the odour contributes to the general atmosphere (I pity the poor sods who’ll be wanting to use the changing rooms where the nearest toilet was – it stank).

A nice touch this year was the cheese stand provided by Cryer & Stott, my favourite cheesemongers who had some excellent Fountains Gold and the ubiquitous Yorkshire Blue.

Photos here.