The Norwich City Beer Festival is reputed to be one of the better ones on the circuit. Dave Wacey, Ed 'Smiley' Lewis and Graham 'G' Buckley decided to establish whether or not this was a valid claim. As is usual with these kinds of excursion, Dave and I drove to Denford near Thrapston to Rendezvous with Smiley at the Cock which, most probably for reasons of not wishing to offend the humourless souls that seem to be all to common in the world today, has rebranded itself as the Inn in Denford. It's still OK and does a couple of good ales. A later stop was made at the Plough in Icklingham, somewhere near Bury St Edmunds. At this one I had a very good half of the Reverend James, although other choices were available too. It's a bit foody in there, so we sat around the corner in a conservatory type area. Of note are (1) the small convenience store type shed at the side of the pub (2) the very sharp speed bump that one has to drive over at very low velocity on entrance and exit from the car park. In due course, we got to G's house and were pleasantly surprised to be welcomed with some garden chilled beers. Hoegaarden was amongst the choices although I elected to have the Bombardier Satanic mills which is actually not Bombardier at all but instead a very dark (Smiley decided stout rather than porter) type beer that slips down very well and is quite strong. A bit of bottle conditioning makes it even smoother and it develops liquorice type overtones as I discovered when I had some a few days before writing this.
The day of the beer festival dawned and we got one of the buses on the recently improved service from Horsford to the City centre. Although the event did not start until about 11am, we decided to get there early so as to nab ourselves a table. We also decided that it would be a good idea to stock up on newspaper vouchers that would entitle us to a free half of stuff less than about 4.5%. Our early start was a good idea as we managed to get a table in the cloisters of St. Andrew's & Blackfriars' Halls. Over 200 beers (223 on the list) were available and Smiley had done his homework by colour coding the list of available cask beers on offer, with annotations to be added later on based on our tasting notes. The official website is here.
Those very annotated notes can be found here and here. There are also some later ones from the Dudley Winter Ales festival held a few weeks later here.
Colour coding was as follows:
green - dark beer - mild/porter
orange - strong beer over 5% - length of line indicates how strong
yellow - golden/light beer
blue - stout
Including beers that had been sampled on previous trips, we managed to get about 40 different types done between us. You can read the full notes of the pdfs, but some of the highlights were:
As others had not had very many solids that day and as I was feeling peckish again, we decided to go to the Coach and Horses which does a number of Chalk Hill Brewery beers. The day was really catching up at this point with the huge loss of any adrenaline that we might have had earlier, and we weren't overly interested in our beers or dinners or the West Ham v Portsmouth match that was on at the time.. So much so that Smiley actually fell asleep at the table. This allowed G the opportunity to misbehave and do Dennis Taylor impersonations with Smiley's glasses, as well as leave abusive messages upon the blackboard in the gents'. This toilet is also renowned for having an extremely powerful hand dryer and this is pictured below along with various other pictures of goings on in this pub.
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I had been told that the Rosary, just around the back of the Coach and Horses was a very good pub indeed, so we decided to check it out. They were gearing up for a Halloween party, and so the entire place was full of various spooky paraphernalia. This included the publican's daughter, an unidentified skeleton and Smiley, as well as shed loads of pumpkins and a ghost candle that I managed to come away with. They had about 4 beers on too and they were pretty decent although the palate was still jaded after the beer festival. Elizabeth stepped up the pace here and quickly went for a couple of cheeky cocktail chasers whilst rounds of beer were being poured. We must have stayed for an hour or two, and when we saw that the pub was filling with people who had made an effort, we decided to leave.
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Final pub of the day was the Adam and Eve. By this stage of the proceedings everything had got a bit silly with the boys sobering up a little after the earlier excesses and Elizabeth now well on her way and trying to beg ciggies from passing drinkers. Old Peculier was on, but I can't remember whether we had it or not. Due to the requirement of smokers, we had to sit outside, which maybe was also foisted upon us because there were not very many seats indoors. It was decided at this stage to call a halt and get the bus back to G's making use of dark alleyways for comfort breaks on the way. There is also a very convenient tree near to where we got on the bus that affords great privacy when needing the toilet. We may also have had a couple of beers once we got back too, whilst watching Match of the Day and generally dissecting the day's Fantasy Football scores.
The following day dawned and Elizabeth had rustled up a cracking fry up which should have set us up pretty well. Alas, I was travelling in the back seat of the car and felt thoroughly wretched although did pick up a little bit after we stopped at the Waggon and Horses in Milton for a selection of Elgoods products, as recommended in the Good Beer Guide. My state of discomfort was noted by an irritatingly chipper landlord. They had about four beers on which slipped down very well and at least one of us had the mild.
Dan Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com
Last updated 21st December 2007.