The British Winter Ales Fest

This past weekend we packed our backpacks and headed to Manchester. There's lots to do in that city—museums, good restaurants, the Man U stadium, Legoland, &c &c &c.

I went to the National Winter Ales Festival. I'd volunteered to do anything, from sweeping floors to mopping, to whatever, but they came back with "do you want to pour beer?" Um, yes please.

As usual we took the train to Manchester. It's a bit further away than London, but the 2.5 hour ride isn't that bad. Amidst some decent-sized hail we walked to our hotel, but through an area where children probably shouldn't go at night.

More lively at night, with kids.

Oh well. No harm. It's actually a very pretty town, with Victorian-era block buildings that convey the sense of industry for which the town is famous.

It's a beautiful, post-industrial city whose buildings convey a lot of the majesty that the city used to have.

On Friday morning we had breakfast in the hotel and then Lee and the kids set off for the Man U. stadium, while I headed for the festival. Along the way I passed through some of the downtown parts of Manchester that really make this a city with many different faces. The University of Manchester, a very good university, is in one part of the town. I walked up through an area filled with restaurants and bars, and then up through some pretty run-down neighborhoods.

I arrived at the Fest at around 11am ready to be trained. A very nice woman form the Isle of Man, and who looked like a 50 - 60 year-old version of Maya Rudolph, took me over to one end of the line of 75 taps I'd be operating and began to explain how everything worked.

My end of the row of the 75 taps in this part of the hall.

It was all pretty straightforward until she said that people would ask for recommendations and by the way "I was familiar with most of these beers, right?" This was a section of bar with regional British beers, and so I didn't know a single one.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed, clearly distressed. "OK, quick, grab a glass, you'll need to start trying as many of these as possible before we open." So, basically I had about one-and-a-half hours to work my way through things.

Back side, behind the row I worked, showing more taps on left.

While I started down the line trying beers, she continued to explain "the system." Ale was served in increments of 1/3, 1/2, and full pints. Servers got slips of paper, "toques" as she called them, good for a half pint of most of the beer being sold. Servers were not allow to serve themselves, nor were we allowed to just drink beer while serving. Except that it was permissible to "taste" as much beer as you wanted as long as you were sampling it. That I could pour myself, and repeated sampling was OK, and I'm not sure how the woman who trained me was standing at the end of the night, because every time I saw her she was either draining her beer or pouring herself a "generous sample" that almost always topped the 1/3-pint line. With all that done I was ready to begin serving beer alongside the 15 or so other people standing along the line.

Except . . .

I've been to a couple of other beer festivals in my life, but only in the US. One interesting difference is that people buy a glass separate from their tickets, and then can return the glass for money at the end of the evening, or exchange it for one with a different design if they want. At the GABF I also noticed people dressing up in various costumes. I didn't see that here.

Another big difference is that at many US festivals people pay a cover charge of $15 - $20 or more, get a glass, and then get to drink as much as they want. At others US festivals with which I'm familiar people buy tickets that they can exchange for different beers. At the British Winter Ales Festival, and probably most if not all others in the UK, people pay a small cover charge of a GBP or two, and then pay for each and every individual beer they want. Breweries price each beer as they please, which means that each beer carried a different price. Generally it was around 80p - 1gbp 30p for a 1/3, and then scaled up to the pint.

This meant that I would need to take money and make change in an unfamiliar monetary system with strange coin shapes and sizes. All while trying to pump beer as fast as possible for the horde of thirsty customers walking in the door at a bit past noon. And I'd need to taste, and keep tasting the beers I was serving. The only other challenge was deciphering the accents over the din. I usually had to ask people to repeat themselves.

The afternoon passed pretty quickly. I tried a great number of beers, and had a few chances to wander around the venue. I met a guy who went by the "handle" of Wolf. Dressed in a leather cowboy hat, a leather vest, with chains, long hair and sunglasses, he looked like some kind of 1970s rocker. Except he probably weighed 130 lbs soaking wet. Wolf told me that he liked being a Steward at the beer fest because it gave him a chance "to beat the fuck out of people when they got out of line." He was actually a pretty cool guy, and came over to talk to me a few different times. Well, not "talk," really. He'd come over, grunt, drink his beer, and stand there. Cheers, mate!

In general, I had no problems, but I was definitely a slow money-counter. I'd hold the money given to me in my left hand and then slowly, and vocally count out the change. Then, holding it in my right I'd make sure I had the correct coins in a double-count. All good? Then hand it back. No mistakes. The beer came out great, at perfect cellar temperature maintained by a nice glycol-chilling system that wrapped around the casks. I tried around 20 beers, making sure to drink as much water as beer: 1/3 pint beer? 1/3 pint water. 1/2 pint beer? 1/2 pint water. No two ways about it. In that fashion I ended the night with a mostly clear head.

We ended up having dinner at an Indian place called "Swadesh." It had two things going for it. First, it was amazingly accommodating for two adults and three kids. The staff was incredible. Second, it had great food. We split some dishes among us, including samosas, butter chicken, saag paneer, and the Swadesh Special Lamb. It was incredible. Ryan loved it, Adam ate some stuff, and Brendan wasn't quite as happy. Lee and I were stoked.

Saturday was a different kind of day. I got there around 1pm, ready to work, and was immediately put on "guard duty" watching a door that was open to vent some cold air into the packed, hot room. Wolf immediately came over to say "hi." I asked him if he'd gotten to beat anyone up, and he lamented the generally slow shifts he'd had. It turns out his "handle" comes from his interest in CB radio. 1970s all the way, baby.

When I got moved over to beers, it was to the "foreign" beer section. This was mostly German and Belgian beers, and here I was on firmer ground. I knew many of the breweries, and could speak a bit about styles and such. The only problem that the taps were funky on the two most popular beers—Hacker Pschorr Oktoberfest and Spaten Oktoberfest. The issue was that the kegs were warm and the lines were run through a chiller. The result of the quick chill was foam, and lots of it. The beer was coming out foamy and pouring required patience and finesse. I held the glass at an angle and poured. In this method some beer is going to spill out into the bucket below. But the beer goes into the glass.

At this point and older guy came up to me and started giving me a hard time. "You're wasting beer! Stop that! You're pouring it all out." I apologized and explained the tap situation, but he cut me off and told me to go take the person's money and the head would have gone down by then. It didn't, of course. It sometimes took 5 minutes or so to pour a 1/2 pint.

So I finished a 1/2 pint and the guy yelled at me again, this time for overfilling and then commenting that he wasn't certain if I even knew how to pour beer. "You've given them too much," he said, pointing at the thin strip of beer visible between the top of the beer and the line. "Pour it right." OK, whatever. Older guy, sense of ownership about the taps, maybe doesn't like Americans. Whatever. It wouldn't have been so annoying if I hadn't seen him, all night, pouring beer with the glass tilted and the foam running into the bucket, and serving beers that were way over the fill line. Butthead.

The second night was incredibly crowded. In fact, I started pouring at around 3 and it didn't let up until it closed at 10:00 or 10:30. There was a live band, I seem to recall, but they were hard to hear. I couldn't see the area I had worked the night before, but I could see the other line of taps, across from where I had worked before. There were five sections in total.

Other side, take the first night when it wasn't so crowded.

All in all it was a great deal of fun. I met some great people, and tried a ton of very good beer (and, like all festivals, some not-very-good-beer). It rained constantly in Manchester (which I guess it always does). I think I'd like to go back and see it again. When there's not a beer festival.

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Here's an alphabetical list of the beers I tried. I kept notes as best I could on what I was trying, and then there are a few tasting notes with some of them. All beers were either hand-pulled or on tap, except where bottles are noted.

1. Allgates "Mad Monk"
2. Allgates "Sloe Stout"
3. Amber "Chocolate Orange Stout"
4. Andecher "Andechs Dopplebock Dunkel" (I found this to be overly malty and not very good. But it is interesting that it is produced at a cloistered monastery)
5. Ascot Ales "Anastasia's Imperial Stout" (This multiple-award-winning beer was a soft and chocolate-y beer. I liked it alot. Smoother, very drinkable.)
6. Ascot Ales "On the Rails" (Decent beer, not overly remarkable, but very popular among the crowd)
7. Brecon "Genesis 1:ii"
8. Baraustelle "Caulfield Imperial Stout" (Wow. This is probably one of the best stouts I've ever had. Smooth and malty without being overwhelming. Great nose of chocolate and malts, a touch of hops. Drinks smooth. But is 8-9%.)
9. Braustelle "Ehrenfelder Alt" (Not bad at all. Kind of pleasant.)
10. Beowulf "Dark Raven"
11. Black Hole "Black Hole Bitter"
12. Boggart Hole "Clough Cascade" (Boggart Hole is a Manchester brewery, and the name references the Boggart Hole Clough forest to the north of the city. The legend goes back centuries that there are Boggarts running around in there.)
13. Boggart Hole "Rum Porter" (This was a very nice porter with hints of rum. That kind of thing can get overwhelming, but here the English preference for understatement works perfectly.)
14. Bollington "Night Porter" (I liked this one a great deal. Nice taste to it. An award-winner, I think.)
15. Bollington "Oat Hill" (I thought this was thin, and not very good.)
16. Bootleg "Black Widow" (A Manchester microbrewery)
17. Bridgehouse "Heathcliff Stout" (A pretty decent stout. Not outstanding, just a solid, drinkable beer)
18. Brunswick "Black Sabbath" (An excellent stout, but for the life of me I cannot find a reference to it on their site)
19. Burscough "Black Cannon Stout" (This beer was sour. Yuck.)
20. Bushy's Manx Bitter (A brewery on the Isle of Man, where they have their own purity laws, and flout them just like the Germans.)
21. Coniston "#9 Barleywine" (Tasty, not alcohol-y. Seems aged, but isn't. Maybe a bit late in the night for me to get a good sense of it, after all those stouts)
22. Delirium Tremens (bottle)
23. Elland "1872 Porter" (Quite good. Deep and smoky, chewy, full. A nice sipping beer.)
24. Farmer's Belgian Blue. (A light-colored beer made with blueberries, the result of which was a purple beer. It was pretty good, actually, and very popular.)
25. Fonteinen "Oude Gueze" (Bottle. Very tasty. Crisp, sharp.)
26. Fuller's "1845 Celebration Ale" (bottle)
27. Gouden Carolus "Noel" (Licoricey and deep. Very malty and sweet. Yummy)
28. Heart of Wales "Welsh Black" (Not a very good stout, I thought. Thin, with little of the malty creaminess that a stout ought to have.)
29. Hofbräu "Oktoberfest"
30. Howard Town "Dark Peak"
31. Karg "Weissbier"
32. Liefmans "Cuvée-Brut" (bottle)
33. Milestone "Dark Knight" w/ raspberries.
34. Northern "Deep Dark Secret" (Wow As good a stout as I've ever had. They call it a "licorice porter. I got some hints of licorice, but not too much. It was malty and a bit sweet, and with great character.)
35. Schlenkerla "Eiche" ( I usually don't go in for smoked beers. It's just not my thing. But this one was billed as oak-smoked, as opposed to the usual process. Whatever the case, this was a subtle beer. The smoke hung in the background, supporting rather than defining the beer. It was very very good.)
36. St Feuillien "Cuvée de Noël"
37. Thornbridge "Versa" (bottle)
38. Troubadour "Blonde" (bottle)
39. Vierzehnheiligen Nothelfer "Silberbock Hell"
40. Vierzehnheiligen Nothelfer "Trunk Dunkel"
41. Wickwar "Station Porter"