Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Warning: Sandgrounder Beer Festival!
The 10th Sandgrounder Beer Festival takes place in Southport this weekend. Organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), many beers from Lancashire and Yorkshire are there for you to try. These include Lagers, Bitters, Milds, Stouts and Specialty Beers from across the region.
The set-up, although housed in the Southport Arts Centre, is a little un-imaginative to say the least. One wall holds kegs of all the beers, stacked up to the ceiling, to the right they've got the same set-up for perries and ciders and on the left there's a tombola, in which you can win The Good Beer Guide or bottles of beer. There are only a handful of tables and seats, so most visitors will have to stand.
Admission for CAMRA members is free, and you get a half-pint glass and GBP 8 worth of beer tokens to enjoy. Non-members pay GBP 3, get a glass as well (which is refundable if undamaged) and GBP 5 in beer tokens.
However, be careful what beer you try! The first two beers I had were not the nicest I'd ever tasted (one tasted like cough syrup with alcohol), but the third was by far the worst of the lot! I tried Redscar Sands, and it tasted rank. I was actually looking for a toilet to put that beer where it belongs! I don't know whether it was a bad keg or not, but I know for sure that I'll never drink that one voluntarily again!
My boyfriend let me have a sip of a beer he tried, which was an Anglo-Dutch one called Tabatha and was quite sweet but really nice. That must have been the best beer the two of us tried all night. So, if you go along to the festival, get them to give you a taster first, before you order the half pint and pay for it! That way, you can actually sample more, and know which ones to avoid!
A beer lover's heaven
I finally found something in Southport, that I'd been looking for since I came to the UK in 2007: German beer! There's a shop at the end of Lord Street, called The Inn Beer Shop, that sells nearly every kind of beer you can wish for! Whether it's British Ales, German Pils or Australian Lagers, they've got nearly everything (and if they don't, they know where to get it for you) and you can even sit and drink it on the premises!!
What amazed me most was their collection of Kölsch! There's Früh Kölsch, which is my absolute favourite, Sion Kölsch, Reissdorf Kölsch, Küppers Kölsch, Dom Kölsch.... They were out of Schlösser Alt when I last checked but they told me they'd get some in the next few days. They also have varieties of Pils, including Dortmund Union, Kö-Pi (Königs Pilsener, for those not knowing the German abbreviations), Warsteiner, Radeberger and the list goes on. We even found Simmy's favourite German beer Franziskaner Dunkel! And, just because I haven't had one of them since I left Australia in 2007, I bought a bottle of VB, Victoria Bitter.
So I guess I'll make a point of it, that when I come down to Southport to visit my boyfriend, I will grab a few bottles of Kölsch to take back up to Carlisle with me! Maybe I'll even be nice enough to let my friends try a sip of it as well....
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