Now this is the main event for us. Manchester, Chorlton and Liverpool home brew groups along with some independents bringing a variety of their creations to Beer Nouveau. Four bars each with membersserving their club’s beers in small samples. The public are welcome and asked to score out of ten the beers they drink. 750+ scores registered for 59 unique beers over six hours. At the same time some of the beers are entered into a more formal competition judged by beer experts (Abbeydale, Rob from Lallemand and Steve). And beyond that Steve will take the recipes, calculate profit margins and combine them with the other scores to figure out which is the best commercial beer and then brew it.
We’ve entered our latest beer, Special RealAletionship (name courtesy of jason on UA) under the new, and ficticous, name ‘Brick Field Brewery’. It’s a Blonde Ale consisting entirely of Maris Otter. Magnum for bittering and a fair amount of Cluster for aroma and flavour. Simple recipe, cheap beer. It faired well in the public vote, above half way; poorly in the professional (10 out of 13) and we’re waiting to see how it does in terms of profit.
Both of us had great fun serving behind the bar but agreed that being able to just hand out whatever is asked for without needing to take payments is definitely the best way to tend bar.
It was a busy event but most punters joined in with gusto. One chap worked his way through the first 17 of the Manchester brews. Fortunately Keith’s were at the end so he didn’t have to suffer any bottle bombs.
Other than a spillage in the cold store and a slightly sick Rob Percival everything seemed to go well. Poor Steve was visibly shattered by the end though. Two solid days of work for him.