East Anglian Beer Festival 2008

This is one of my favourite weekends of the year. Yes, it is the annual East Anglian Beer Festival, now in its 17th year and this year providing 72 local real ales and 10 real ciders. The standard seems to get better every year.

The best time to go, to my mind, is the Friday lunchtime and it's a great use of a half-day's holiday. The Bury St. Edmunds Corn Exchange makes a fine location, especially convivial with sunshine streaming through the skylights.

At the Friday lunchtime session all the beers were still on - at least I found all the ones I looked for from the programme. The stillage is an impressive sight.

Of course, there are only so many of the beers you can try in a session without falling down, and this year they have introduced 1/3 pint measures to let you try more. I stuck to 1/2 pints, though, and returned yesterday afternoon to add a few more to my list from Friday (and meet up with a couple of singing pals).

So what gets my vote this time? I started with Bartrams Rougham Ready (3.6%), which was on great form and very tasty, and also enjoyed Spectrum Brewery's Light Fantastic (3.7%), Tindall Ales Liberator (3.8%) and Waveney Brewery's Lightweight (3.9%). Double ticks in my scoring scheme went to both the Oakham Ales beers - Jeffrey Hudson Bitter (3.8%) and Bishop's Farewell (4.6%). (My equivalent list for 2006 is here - it shows I'm consistent!).

But my beer of the festival (I did taste less than a third of those on offer, though), was the Crouch Vale Amarillo (5.0%). 3 ticks for that one!