Nottingham Beer Festival - photo by Dom Henry
Jumping straight into an article with advice? You bet I am, because I simply cannot stress this enough, if you intend to visit the Nottingham beer festival on Saturday, or Friday night after 6pm then pre-purchase tickets from either the Nottingham tourism centre in Smithy Row or online at seetickets. Ticket sales have already been significantly higher than previous years due to disappointment from hordes of people who just assumed they could turn up at peak time and get in. So, unless you fancy spending your weekend in a queue, get it done!
Over a 1000 brews! - photo by Dom Henry
So here we go again with Nottingham castle's legendary grounds playing host to another world record beer festival (928 beers and around 170 ciders and perries). Have you ever dreamt of sampling some of the country’s finest beers from the safety of a suit of armour? I certainly have but they keep all the fun stuff locked up in the castle, a shame when jousting seems a perfectly reasonable way to solve any disputes over the last pint of Thornbridges superb Kipling (Nottingham 2010 Champion). It’s health and safety gone mad I tell you.
Get tasting - photo by Dom Henry
If you’re new to all this real ale lark the problem facing you is the range of styles and tastes on offer, it’s unlikely you will just pick one and somehow find your perfect beer from the 928 available, chances are you will be best off sticking to the golden ales as these are generally the most popular though if you like your Guinness then you might want to slip yourself into something darker such as Blue Monkey – Guerrilla (#304 4.9%) so enough rambling, let’s get on with it.
Newbies choice
Thornbridge Brewery – Sequoia (#573 4.5%) & Jaipur (#579 59.%)
Thornbridge are the Manchester United of the beer world with consistent good beers and a number of trophies to match, more importantly they make an excellent choice for the complete newbie as you can’t really go wrong with any of their eight beers at the festival; both above beers I singled out because they’re bold and powerful, especially the Jaipur which has more medals than Rambo.
Best Notts beers
Castle Rock – Harvest Pale (#002 3.8%)
Blue Monkey – Infinity (#303 4.6%) & Big Blue (#306 6.8%)
Prior’s Well – Gardner’s Tap (#718 3.8%)
Nothing wrong with keeping it local but many of the best Nottingham beers are quite easily available around the city centre and further out, but if you happen to be visiting the city then Castle Rock's Harvest Pale (champion beer of Britain 2010) and Blue Monkey's Infinity are fine choices with the lesser spotted Gardner’s Tap by Prior’s Well a favourite of mine.
Of course you could mean Notts as in County, and if you’re a magpie like myself then the beer for us is Burnsides Mad Dogz IPA, I have no idea if this beer is fit to grace the manager of the month but it’s described as golden with a dry finish, which’ll do me (#047 3.8%). Forest fans attending on Saturday will be hoping to avoid Byatt’s Coventry Bitter (#349 3.8%)
Get it while you can
Anything by Thornbridge (#572 – 580)
Anything by Loddon (#456 – 460)
Anything by Potbelly (#497 – 502)
I always recommend people go on the Thursday if they can as some of the popular beers have been known to sell out by the Thursday evening, so here are a few brewers that you should be making a bee-line to before they're adorned with that familiar 'sold out' sign and you're left to pick something close by at random.
Thornbridge as previously mentioned have a sublime range and by the sounds of it the stock levels do not match the popularity. Loddon and Potbelly breweries usually take very little time to completely sell out, especially if word spreads (which it will). They both produce excellent beers and have a full varied range which, if you get the chance, you should definitely explore.
Other beers of note
Teignworthy – RIP (#RES 13%)
Grafters – Yippee I.P.A (#091 5.2%)
If you want to simulate head-butting a concrete post then look no further than Teignworthys appropriately named RIP, thankfully this beer goes on sale when others run out so this may stop a queue of students and kamikaze nutters forming next to the barrel, note I said ‘may’ I fully expect this to get rinsed the moment it goes on sale. Yippee I.P.A is easily the best named beer at the festival and makes me hope people have to crawl through a series of ducts and shafts wearing a dirty white vest to buy it.
As last year Nottingham CAMRA are hoping for no ‘incidents’ so please drink responsibly, don’t be the complete tit who starts a fight with a flowerbed.
Nottsbrew will tweeting live from the festival, so tweet us your favourite beers or ones to avoid to @NottsBrew. And for an even more comprehensive beer rundown take a peek at nottsbrew.co.uk.
Full list of 925 beers at the festival (PDF)
Nottingham Beer Festival website
See also: A Canadian at the Beer Festival
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