As I find my way in this world of “beer blogging”, I am regularly learning about new events through the craft beer community. One of these events was a brand new festival, London’s Brewing, marketed to “celebrate London’s thriving and vibrant brewing scene”…and it featured “over 100 beers from over 40 breweries that make up the LBA (London Brewers’ Alliance)”.
Our early arrival for the Sunday session put us 2nd in the queue and gave us an advantage to secure a seat once we entered. Typical of all beer festivals, a line formed around the block before the doors even opened.
Hosted at London Fields Brewery Brewhouse, the venue encompassed two large open rooms underneath the rail arches, an enclosed seating area, and an additional outside space used mainly as a staging area for the food trucks.
One of the large interior spaces where bands performed
One of the interior rooms functioned primarily as the beer room, where there were 50+ taps. The other interior room functioned as a stage for the live bands and operated as the 2nd bar, where 30+ taps were set up.
Jim and I settled in at the coveted seating area and stayed the entire length of the five-hour festival – our day fully occupied as we studied the festival program to learn about the new brewers, sampled beers in 1/3rd pint sized pours, and played a few rounds of cards. A nice way to spend a cloudy afternoon in London.
Seating space
One of my favorites for the day was Weird Beard Brew Co’s Holy Hoppin’ Hell, a double IPA. I also recognized other great beer (from breweries whose beer I’ve tasted and enjoyed in recent months!) featured at the event; from Pressure Drop, a new brewery currently based in Hackney, to names like Beavertown Brewery, beer we have savored while paired with some great American-style BBQ from the brewery’s restaurant, Duke’s Brew & Que.
Crowd outside at London’s Brewing
London’s Brewing festival was a spectacular new event. Most exciting was the fact that twenty-five of the breweries who provided beer for the festival began operations within the last 12 months, a sign that London is fully embracing craft beer! With time, I imagine it will only get bigger and better in future years.
The festival definitely accomplished its objective to “celebrate London’s thriving and vibrant brewing scene”. Considering our serious interest in craft beer, we could not have picked a better period of time to live in London!
May 29, 2013 at 10:06 am
interesting to have a positive perspective on this as by all accounts the saturday was a disaster. I had trade passes but ended up being glad I didn’t make it along.
May 29, 2013 at 4:30 pm
One of the few positive perspectives we’ve seen on this. We were there on the Saturday afternoon session and it was a near total disaster. Late opening and and the fact that they were still building the keg bar, set the scene for the day. Massive queues for the cask bar meant people waiting 45 minutes to get a drink once they managed to get in and then, when the keg bar did open, they couldn’t get the beers they wanted because some taps were labelled incorrectly. Not surprising that people were demanding their money back from early on. We hung around and things improved slightly as the afternoon wore on but not enough to warrant it being ‘good enough’. If they are to run anything again, they should speak to people who’ve organised piss-ups in breweries because it seemed that was a key skill the organisers were lacking.
All that said, we had some great beers (Weird Beard Five O’clock Shadow and Beavertown Bloody ‘Ell) and spent time with a few beery chums. Plus we have some nice, big tuplip glasses for beer drinking at home!
May 29, 2013 at 5:05 pm
I did notice a lot of negative reviews for the Saturday session…I think we picked the right session. They seemed to be doing more crowd control on Sunday as well and were not selling any additional tickets at the door. The glasses are perfect for beer drinking at home!
May 29, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Glad to hear it! Obviously they learned a few lessons from the day before. On the Saturday afternoon session, they had let people in who had just turned up to buy tickets, in front of those who had bought in advance. Lots of enraged hipsters!
Hope the home-brewing is still going strong. We’re brewing a Belgian IPA this weekend. If the yeast arrives on time!