Back to the Beer Festival

The sun was shining, spirits were high, and we were heading to our first beer festival since March 2020, making our way to Twyford, Berkshire.

Casting my mind back to the heady, carefree times of 2019 we had a calendar marked with tons of beer festivals, from those in the back of a pub to those in marquees and huge halls.  

Beer festivals brought us spectacular choices of real ales, sometimes in wonderful buildings such as our very own Oxford Town Hall...

And sometimes with a smaller choice..

Sidmouth Conservative Club Folk Week beer fest

Occasionally with visits from the local Morris dancers...

Aylesbury Beer Festival

And gourmet beer festival cuisine...

Pie in a Cob, why not? GBBF

On Saturday 26th June, we were back...boozin' in the middle of a field in Berkshire!

Making our way to the 11th Twyford Beer Festival, a smooth-running journey meant we arrived super-early before the gates were open.  We could technically have been the first ones in, but hung back and let other folks form a queue, so we didn't look too eager.
The bonus of coming early was picking a good spot and getting the first few beers in without any waiting time.
We found a fine spot with view of the stage and short trek to the bar, sitting next to three chaps with fantastic beards worthy of a ZZTop tribute act.

My first couple of beers came from Ascot's Disruption Is Brewing - a lovely pale ale, followed by 'Like Father Like Son', a hefty imperial Russian stout which only a complete imbecile would order at 12:15 in the sunshine.
All the ales traveled a short distance from Berkshire and surrounding counties and most were priced at £4 a pint.  We supped some wonderful beers from Rebellion, Dolphin, Bond Brews and Elusive.

Choices, choices...

The elephant in the room. 🐘
We're kinda still 'locked down'.  Sort of.  Aren't we?
When 'freedom day' failed to happen on the 21st, we figured we'd be getting an e-mail informing us that we'd have to wait a couple of months more for the beer festival.  But remarkably enough it went ahead, all done above-board in consultation with the local council.

I guess we were sat no closer to anyone than we would be in a busy beer garden or on the  south coast beaches when the Daily Mirror tells us we're due a heatwave at the weekend. 
Helped by my seismic epsilon variant hay fever, which was enough to deter anyone from settling down too close to me!

The downfall - the bit where it didn't work - was when the site reached peak business mid-afternoon.  The bar is the white tent on the right side of the picture below and the queue to it stretches just off the left side...

Thirty-plus minute queues proved too much for us and we used our remaining tokens in one go.  You couldn't keep popping back for halves.

But a big round of applause to the folks who organised Twyford beer festival in the strangest of times and put on a successful event.  Bands played to audiences for the first time in ages.  Everyone from youthful hipsters to families to miserable old buggers like me looked to be having a good time.  And a stack of cash was raised for charity.   So all good all round, then! 🍻

It's a shame we left a little earlier than intended and I missed the Elusive 11% imperial stout (and their fantastically named 'Crisp Whitty'). 
Never mind though - there was something stupidly strong with my name on it in the Weather Station in Reading.