Reading Beer Festival
Around 450 beers from all over England, Wales and Scotland, plus over 120 ciders and about 35 perrries, plus about fifty German beers, plus an unknown number of other continental beers and English wines. That is the (liquid) fare available at the CAMRA beer and cider festival in Reading this weekend.There are also several food stalls on the site, but, to be honest, the sausage baguettes and bacon baps from Splendid Meat are so good that I've never got around to trying the rest.
There's kind of a memorial feel to our visits to the beer festival these days. A few years back there were four of us used to go, either Thursday or Friday evening. The healthiest of us, we would all have taken bets, was Tyrone. Yet he was the one who died of heart failure. So now there are three, and it still feels strange.
This year, for no particular reason, the three of us were drinking milds and stouts - there were around 50 different milds at the festival, and probably a similar number of stouts - so we weren't able to make much of a dent in the selection available, but it was enjoyable trying.
If the weather isn't too bad tomorrow, the Blackxxx family will probably pop along at lunchtime - Blacksar likes the shandy they sell at the festival; BlackMatt isn't a drinker, but does like good sausages; BlackLin likes cider and perry; and I can always try a different beer - there's around 440 more to choose from!
Now THIS looks like fun! However, what is a bacon bap? It goes
without saying that if it has bacon it's delicious, but I've never heard of
a bap.
Ah well, there's bacon and there's bacon. Splendid Meat bacon (and sausage)
comes from free-range rare-breed pigs and is absolutely delicious. A bap is
a type of large soft round bread roll, which is sliced open and stuffed
with bacon or sausages or whatever.
I've been remiss in my visiting, amongst other things, but I see I've come
at just the right time. Two of my FAVORITE B words, beer and bacon. Honey
likes to stick to his old standby Budweiser, but I thoroughly enjoy the
subtle interplay between the hops, barley, malt, etc., in its almost
infinite combinations. Could be something in my German and Scotch/Irish
ancestry. Or, maybe I appreciate the finer things in life.
We couldn't get in Saturday lunchtime, which was a disappointment.
Apparently they had 14,727 people went this year, with more than 5,000 on
Saturday. Between us we drank 55,440 pints of real ale, 10,400 pints of
cider and perry, 2,870 litres of foreign beer, and 1,594 bottles of wine.
They haven't said how many bacon baps were sold, though.