beards, bellies and ale

this week we tootled along to the Battersea Beer Festival for a celebration of real ale. For those of you unfamiliar with ale it is defined as… ”beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide”.

It is the kind of stuff that most australians would think of when they imagine being served warm beer and I have had the odd visitor turn their nose up at it but really, it is delicious. Apart from the many and varied flavours that you don’t get drinking cold lager, it is produced all over the place in small breweries which means it always has a story. So, the stories from Wednesday night included:

• Old Bushy Tail – a reddish malty beer from Bushy’s brewery on the Isle of Man
• Quadhop – fruity hoppy golden ale from Downton brewery in Wiltshire
• Hophead – an old favourite hoppy bitter from Dark Star in West Sussex
• Dogwatch Stout – chocolate aftertaste from Nelson in Chatham
• Beijing Black – lovely stout from Potbelly in Kettering

and last but not least, Madog’s Ale which according to the notes had a ‘malty nose’ which in reality translates to smelling of farts from Purple Moose in Porthmadog in Wales.