Festival fatigue

Sally Toms is still recovering from the first Beers of the World Live

So that’s it. Finito. The first Beers of the World Live event is in the bag, and the staff here at BOTW are quite simply shattered.

Like many, I have done more than my share of bar work, but until now I never thought it was possible to get blisters just from opening beer bottles.

More than 5,000 people came our way over the weekend, poached from the epic event that is the BBC Summer Festival.

I’ll be honest, we could have done with a bit more support from the brewers to make it better, but there were plenty of beers available (more than 200 at the last count) and a steady stream of happy beer drinkers.

The first thing I noticed was the amount of women. I am happy to report that there seemed to be a fairly equal mix of boys and girls. And, contrary to popular belief, the girls were being way more adventurous with their tastebuds.

The guys would swagger up, regard the neatly arranged bottles of interesting ales, stouts, porters, pilsners and bocks from around the globe and say, “got any lagers?” The ladies, on the other hand, would look at everything for a long time and ask, “what should I try?” It didn’t follow that they would automatically prefer the lighter, golden ales either. I literally couldn’t stop groups of tough looking blokes from drinking anything other than Fuller’s Honey Dew, whereas their girlfriends were addicted to Dragon Stout, Hawse Buckler from Oakham and Hobgoblin! It just goes to show you should never judge a book by its cover, or the beer drinker by the ‘market research.’ We had all sorts. For every person who would plonk their glass on the table and say, “Gimme one of those eye-pahs,” (gesturing to a bottle of I.P.A) there was a hardcore ale fan, scrupulously studying the backs of bottles and following Roger and Jeff around with a note pad.

But you can’t be too snobby about it, this was a sampling event and hopefully everyone who came found a new beer or style that they enjoyed.

In fact, the ‘sampling’ part was what a lot people struggled with. Our glasses were tremendously popular, but after the third day of pouring sample measures into them, it took a lot of patience to smile sweetly whenever anyone demanded, “fill it up, love.” You can’t really blame people for not understanding, traditionally beer ‘festivals’ have always been a bit of a piss-up. Our system involved free vouchers worth half a glass of beer (approx 75ml), just enough for a taste.

Highlights included the immensely entertaining Hairy Bikers on stage, particularly Dave doing his a capella routine to Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.

(Not sure what that had to do with the beers they were sampling on stage, but the crowd were loving it).

Of course there were mistakes. It was a huge learning curve for us and plans are already in motion to improve next year’s event. I can certainly see BOTW Live going from strength the strength.

With a few more brewers and a few more beer drinkers on board, I reckon we’ve got ourselves one of the best beer events on the calendar.

Who’s with me?

By Sally Toms

Section : From the Editor

Page number : 5