GBBF 2013

CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival (GBBF), kicked off at midday today with the Trade Session. The festival then opened its doors to the general public at 5pm. I stopped going to the Trade Session a few years ago, not just because tickets had become a lot harder to obtain, but also because the session itself had turned into a glorified “publican’s outing”. Ok, I know it’s all about involving the trade, both on the brewing as well as the pub side, but it really wasn’t my cup of tea (no offence to friends in the brewery and pub trades!). Also, like I said, the tickets became much more difficult to get hold of, primarily because CAMRA tightened up on who could obtain them, effectively restricting their availability to those genuinely involved in the brewing and licensed trades. Even so, I know several people not connected with the trade who will have been there this afternoon! They will have been passed tickets from friendly landlords who for whatever reason are unable to attend so, despite all their efforts, CAMRA have not put an end to this practice completely.

 I used to fall into the trade category,  having run my own off-licence business for the best part of six years, but even then I normally gave my tickets away to friends or customers, and  instead  would pitch up as a normal punter on the Friday lunchtime/afternoon session. Like I said, the trade session in many cases had degenerated into little more than a pub outing-cum-piss-up. CAMRA of course, will disagree with this assessment, but I stand by it and besides, when one goes along as an ordinary member of the public, there are usually far more pretty girls brightening up the place. (A much more attractive sight than a load of red-faced publicans!)

This year I shall be going along on Thursday, rather than my usual Friday; the reason being is our CAMRA  branch has a  presentation this coming Saturday to the Caveman Brewery, as their Citra was voted “Beer of the Festival” at last year’s Spa Valley Railway Rail and Ale event. The brewery is currently housed in the cellar of the George & Dragon pub, at Swanscombe, near Dartford, and as the presentation could turn out to be quite a boozy affair, I want to have a day off from the beer in between this event and GBBF.

So far as GBBF is concerned, I’m a lot more enthusiastic, and even a little excited, about the event than I was a couple of weeks ago, when I’d just returned from Annafest. Back then the prospect of sitting in a hall full of people, surrounded by nearly 800 beers, compared to being out in the open air, under the shade of leafy beech woods, enjoying a Maβ or two of tasty Franconian Kellerbier, just didn’t compare. But now, having browsed through the vast selection of beers on offer and made a few selections, I’m much more receptive to the idea.

There’ll be a handful of  West Kent CAMRA members travelling up to Olympia on Thursday. My plan of action is to start with a few golden ales, to wet my whistle, before moving on to some stronger, and hopefully hoppier, IPA’s. I will then finish with a few stouts and porters, including amongst these one or two of the more esoteric ales. I will leave foreign beers alone, apart from seeing if I can buy a few bottles of Westvleteren beers to take away. The abbey of Sint Sixtus, at Westvleteren, is the smallest and most traditional of the Trappist breweries and its beers, considered by many as world classics, are extremely hard to come by. Hopefully there will still be a few bottles left, and a visit to Bieres sans Frontieres will also give me a chance to catch up with fellow beer blogger, Peter Alexander aka, Tandleman.

Finally, I plan to visit the CAMRA shop, to treat myself to a copy of the recently published “Britain’s Best Heritage Pubs”, by Geoff Brandwood. All in all it promises to be a good day.

A Personal View of Annafest

As most followers of this blog will have gathered by now, my son and I have recently returned from a week’s holiday in Franconia (the northern part of Bavaria). We based ourselves in the picturesque town of Forchheim; a place of some 20,000 souls, situated roughly halfway between Bamberg and Nuremberg in the valley of the River Regnitz. Forchheim’s main claim to fame, apart from its four breweries, is Annafest, a ten day long beer festival which I have already written about here. This post describes our own personal experiences of the event.

We attended Annafest on three separate days (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday), with breaks in between visits to allow ourselves to recover. By recover, I don’t mean we got so drunk, or were left with king-size hangovers, that we were unable to function the following day,  but with litre (Maß) mugs the only measures the beer was served in, (unless one wanted a wheat beer that is), it was quite easy to over-indulge, albeit unintentionally! What’s more, the beer on sale was the Annafestbier, which weighs in with an abv of around 5.7%, or more! The day’s in-between did afford a break though from the festivities and allowed us to explore other parts of the area. This was as much a part of our holiday as visiting Annafest itself.

On each visit we travelled the short distance from the town centre by shuttle bus, alighting at the fairground at the bottom of the Kellerwald. Depending on the day and the time, the buses were sometimes more crowded than at others, although it was a bit disconcerting to be amongst a bus load of school kids heading up to the Kellerwald; disconcerting until one realises that 16 years is the minimum legal age for the consumption of beer in Germany! Possibly a lot of these youngsters were heading up for the funfair and associated amusements, rather than the more serious business of visiting the Kellers, but it’s nice to report that Annafest is very much a family-oriented event with something to keep all age groups amused.

On each occasion we visited three different Kellers, which meant three litres or nearly six pints each over the course of the day. We paced ourselves though and took our time, savouring the tasty, potent beer, served with one notable exception, in tall, ceramic stoneware mugs.  For the record we visited the following Kellers: Tuesday -Stäffalakeller (Wolfshöher), Schlöslakeller (Hebendanz) and Loẅenbräukeller (Loẅenbräu – Buttenheim); Thursday – Greiffkeller (Greiff), Eichhornkeller (Eichhorn) and Weiß-Tauben-Keller (Rittmayer-Hallendorf); Sunday – Hoffmannskeller (Monschof-Kulmbach), Nederkeller (Neder) and Nürnberger-Tor-Keller (Wolfshöher).

Of the beers drunk, Hebendanz and Neder (both Forchheim brewers), stood out above the rest, although the beers from the town’s other two breweries, Eichhorn and Greiff were also very palatable. The beer from Kulmbach giant, Monschof, was different from the other local beers in that instead of the darker, Kellerbier common in Franconia; it was a golden, Helles-style beer, served in a glass Maß, rather than the stoneware ones used by virtually all the other breweries.

The beer I was least impressed with was Wolfshöher, a regional concern  with expansionist designa, based in the village of the same name, near Neunkirchen. The company has an unduly large presence at the Kellarwald, due to its takeover, and closure of Forchheim’s fifth and largest brewery, Bräuhaus Forchheim. The brewery buildings, now standing empty and forlorn, were only a stone’s throw from our rented holiday apartment, but there was some sign that work was taking place on the site, to convert part of the brewery into residential accommodation.

There was plenty of food available to help soak up all of this beer. Most, if not all Kellers offered various cooked meals, ranging from sausages and potato dumplings to the usual knuckles of pork and roast chickens. There were also various food stalls grouped along the paths between the various Kellers, offering a variety of snacks, both savoury and sweet. This, interspersed with the live music at some of the Kellers, and the fairground attractions at the bottom of the hill, combined to produce a fantastic atmosphere.

On the last day we also went along to the Winterbauerkeller (St Georgen Bräu), but they had stopped serving for a while when we arrived. This was sometime around 7pm, and the wind had really started to blow up and a storm was threatened. Shortly after, sirens began to sound and we were told the festival would be closing for the evening, due to an adverse weather report received from the town authorities. Once back in Forchheim we found out the reason for the authority’s caution. Several years ago, during similar stormy conditions, a branch had blown off one of the trees and fallen on a girl, crushing her to death. They were taking no chances with something similar happening again, and with the Kelarwald on high ground, covered with acres of mature trees; one could quite understand the reasons behind their decision. It was a bit of an anti-climax and not quite how we would have wished our last evening at Annafest to end, but we managed to get a meal, plus more beer back in the town, so at least we didn’t go hungry (or thirsty!).

Actually, managing to get a drink plus an evening meal in Forchheim proved a lot harder than one would think. The trouble is most pubs and restaurants close early whilst Annafest is on, with some not bothering to open at all. Everyone in the town it seems wants a piece of the action up on the Kellerwald. The landlord of our rented holiday apartment had warned us about this on our first evening in the town, but we did manage to find a few places open. Pride of place must go to Gasthaus “Schwanne”, an impressive-looking, stone-built pub overlooking Forchheim’s Paradeplatz, and with a small beer garden at the front (beers from St Georgen Bräu and Pottensteiner), and also Gasthaus Fäßler, a cosy pub-cum-restaurant on the opposite side of the square, (Wolfshöher beer, but good food and very busy). One pub, Brauerei Neder, was also open, and we popped in there a couple of times for a nightcap, plus a chat with the friendly locals.

To sum up, Annafest is very much an event which involves the whole town, plus quite a bit of the surrounding area. On those days when we didn’t attend, we couldn’t help noticing the full trains depositing expectant drinkers at the town’s station, and the crowded buses transporting them up to the Kellerwald.  As I said earlier, the festival appeals to all ages, and it was good to see young people enjoying themselves, quaffing the beer and all without any signs of trouble.The party of English beer enthusiasts that we bumped into in Bamberg, were also very impressed with the event, saying how much better it was than Oktoberfest, and how much cheaper too. A Maß of Festbier cost €7.40; I don’t know how much the same measure of beer will be at Oktoberfest this year, but I wouldn’t mind betting it will be approaching the €10 mark. Obviously Oktoberfest is internationally renowned and attracts people from all over the world. Annafest is by nature much more a local’s festival, but it is none the worse for that. We are certainly glad we made the effort to get along to it, and I thoroughly recommend the event to followers of this blog.

Ps. some of the locals in Brauerei Neder were complaining about the beer price up on the Kellerwald.  Mind you, with the pub charging just €1.90 per half litre, (almost half what one was paying at Annafest),  they did have a point!

Getting The Beers In

I may have let it slip in previous posts that I’m acting as the beer buyer for this year’s Rail and Real Ale Festival, which takes place in October at the Spa Valley Railway in Tunbridge Wells.  As in previous years, the event is a joint venture between the Heritage Railway and West Kent CAMRA. The railway are supplying the venue and are also bank-rolling the festival, whilst us in CAMRA are supplying the knowledge and expertise to ensure there are 60 plus cask-conditioned ales, most of them locally brewed, served in tip-top condition.


This is the first time I’ve undertaken such a task; I’m not acting entirely alone in so much that I’ve had assistance and advice from a CAMRA colleague as to which breweries and which beers to go for, but I’m the person doing all the leg work in contacting the breweries, obtaining prices delivery details etc and then actually placing the orders. Thankfully, most of this work can be done by email – however did we manage in pre-Internet days? Even so I’m finding it a bit frustrating when breweries fail to respond to my requests for information; sometimes after several attempts to contact them.

 Most of the breweries approached are either from Kent or neighbouring East Sussex, with a handful from London and Surrey. With such a wealth of brewing talent and interesting beers on our doorstep, it seems foolish to cast the net further a field. To be fair, most of the companies contacted have now replied, but there remains a small handful that seem to make a point of stubbornly refusing to answer emails. This begs the question, why have email in the first place? And why be in business if you cannot be bothered to respond to sales enquiries? At the end of the day it will be their loss, as with so many breweries operating in the area there are plenty of alternatives to chose from, and in the meantime work continues with planning the rest of the festival.

If you live locally, or even in London or on the south coast, then why not come along?  The festival runs from Friday 18^th to Sunday 20^th October. The bulk of the beers will be on sale at Spa Valley’s Tunbridge Wells West Station headquarters, which is a short walk from the town’s main station. There will also be a smaller range of beers available at the two stops down the line; Groombridge and Eridge - the latter station having connections with mainline train services to London Bridge. There will also be a few beers served on the trains, so what could be better than sitting in a restored passenger coach, hauled by a vintage steam or diesel locomotive, as it chugs its way through the scenic Kent and Sussex countryside, enjoying a tasty, locally-brewed pint of ale? Further details can be found here.

Footnote: The Harvey’s Best was in fine form the other night at the Royal Oak Tunbridge Wells, where we held our monthly meeting to assess progress with the festival. The Session Pale and Cobnut, both from Kent Brewery, were also very palatable in the Bedford, when we called in before catching the last train home.

A Brief Overview of Annafest

 I’m not quite sure how to describe Annafest, apart from to say it was unlike any beer festival I have ever been to before. But then German beer festivals aren’t the same as those we have in the UK anyway. For a start they’ve been running a lot longer than home-grown events; sometimes by as much as a couple of hundred years. Take the grand-daddy of them all, Munich’s Oktoberfest, which began in 1810 and, with the odd break for wars plus a couple of cholera epidemics, has been going strong ever since!

Visitors to this world-famous orgy of beer drinking will be aware that despite the large number of “tents” (temporary halls would be a more accurate description), only the six brewers based in the city are allowed to sell their beers at Oktoberfest. Contrast this with CAMRA’s forthcoming Great British Beer Festival where there will be getting on for 800 different beers to choose from and you get an idea of just how different festivals are in Germany compared to the UK. Whilst British beers festivals are about sampling as many different beers as possible, German beer festivals are about having a good time, with some serious drinking as an essential accompaniment, of course, and this is how I would describe Annafest.

 The event takes place at the Kellerwald, a wooded hillside on the edge of Forchheim, where there are a series of natural rock cellars cut into the hillside. These cellars were originally constructed for the storage and maturation of bottom-fermenting beer, in the days before refrigeration was developed. Today there are two dozen such “Kellers”, the majority of which are just open for Annafest, although a handful remain open all year.  During the summer evenings the Kellerwald is the perfect location for a cool beer in the shady woods  The event is held over a 10 day period around the 26^th July, which is the feast of St Anna (Anne), the mother of the Virgin Mary

Although pilgrims had been journeying to a nearby chapel consecrated to St. Anna since the early 16^th Century, Annafest in its present form began in 1840, when the Forchheim shooting club moved its main shooting ground from the "shooting meadow" on the river Regnitz to the Kellerwald.  As well as plenty of beer drinking there are other attractions such as fairground rides, various stalls, plus six stages which feature a wide range of different musical acts. The local Forchheim breweries Hebendanz, Greif, Eichhorn and Neder all brew a strong Bock beer especially for this festival, the so-called Annafestbier, and a number of other local breweries also supply brews of their own as well.

With seating for about 30.000 people, the Kellerwald provides sufficient accommodation for the 450.000 - 500.000 visitors who come each year over the course of the 10-day festival period. A regular shuttle bus service is provided from the town and surrounding areas to the Kellerwald and back again, so getting to the festival is not a problem. For those of a more energetic disposition, it is not that far to walk up from the town and many people choose to do this, working up a king-sized thirst on the way!

One comment I have seen sums up the whole event quite nicely. "A great atmosphere and very cool location, in the woods above the town. It's everything the Oktoberfest isn't: cool woodland beer gardens instead of hot, smelly tents."

Mass Overload?

A litre is not a sensible measure for drinking beer. I say this after my recent visit to Annafest where the litre, or Maß (Mass) to give the unit its correct name, was the only measure beer was sold in. This, combined with the fact that most of the Kellers only stocked a strong “Festbier” with an abv of around 5.7%, meant it was necessary to pace one’s self very carefully when it came to knocking back the beer. Fortunately most of the Maß mugs were stoneware, rather than glass, so this at least helped the beer to remain cooler for longer.

Unlike the southern half of Bavaria, especially the area around Munich, Maß measures are relatively uncommon in Franconia, with much more sensible stoneware half litre mugs, known as Steinkrug or Krug, (but never “Stein”), the norm in most pubs. Jon Connen confirms this in his “Guide to Bamberg & Franconia”, stating “Litre measures are the exception rather than the rule in Franconian beer gardens. Franconians tend to consume more beer with less fuss than the macho Bavarians of Munich.” It was therefore doubly strange to see them being used at Annafest.

 Litres, of course, are roughly the equivalent of an imperial quart. I say roughly, because a quart actually works out at 1.136 litres, so the Maß is slightly less than two pints. Leaving this small difference aside for a moment, when was the last time you saw anyone drinking out of a quart pot in an English pub? Your most likely answer is, like my own, never, but quart measures were relatively common in England, back in the times of Charles Dickens, and I’m not certain when they fell out of favour. For some reason though this heavy and cumbersome measure has continued to be used in southern Germany.

I have three main criticisms of the Maß, the first of which concerns the weight of the vessel itself plus that of the contents, ( one litre of beer will weigh approximately one kilogramme). The second is the beer slips down a bit too readily, and the mistake I always make is by the time I’m on my second Maß the first has started to kick in, and it’s then I realise that ordering a second one was not such a good idea.! The third, of course, is that I like to sample as many different beers as possible, especially when I am visiting somewhere for the first time. Volume and alcoholic strength constraints make the Maß a most impractical vessel for the beer connoisseur. I’m not saying the Bavarians  should go the whole hog and offer the equivalent of the third or half pint measures one sees at beer festivals here in the UK, or the “thimbles” used at the Great American Beer Festival, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere along the line.

Perhaps what this all boils down to is that centuries of usage have proven the English pint to be the perfect measure for social beer drinking. What do other people think?

Café Abseits - Bamberg

Café Abseits, in Bamberg, is one of those places I’d always meant to visit, but somehow never quite got round to doing so, despite having made three previous visits to the city. Billed as Bamberg’s “premier beer speciality pub”, Café Abseits is tucked away down a side street on the “wrong side of the tracks”, to the east of the station. However our recent visit to Franconia included a day spent in Bamberg, and whilst on this occasion we didn’t manage to visit the pub, we did notice a newly constructed entrance to the station on the eastern side; a facility we were to make use of on a return visit a couple of days later.

We had spent the first part of the day in Coburg, a town which is almost as far north as one can travel and still be in Bavaria. It was a blisteringly hot day; far too hot unfortunately to climb up to the impressive Veste (fortress) Coburg, which overlooks the town. Instead we found a backstreet pub, (the Bratwurstglöcke) with some nice shaded outside tables where we could sit in the relative cool and enjoy a couple of mugs of locally-brewed Coburger Brauerei beers. The plan was to stop off in Bamberg on our return journey to Forchheim, in order to pick up some bottles from the shop attached to the internationally-renowned Weyermann Maltings, which are on the east side of the station.

 

I had taken the precaution of  contacting the company by email, to confirm the opening times of the shop, but unfortunately their reply contained an error and did not state  that on Friday’s the shop closed at 3pm, an hour earlier than we were anticipating. My son was not best pleased after having walked up, through the swelteringly hot heat, to find the place closed. I wasn’t over impressed either, but put the mistake down to experience, and made a mental note to call back on a future visit. I then began to quickly search for somewhere where we could grab a beer and cool off.

Fortunately I had with me Jon Conen’s excellent “Guide to Bamberg & Franconia”, an essential travelling companion in this part of the world. The nearest pub to us was Café Abseits, less than 10 minutes walk away and, what’s more, it was described as having a beer garden attached as well.

We found the pub without too much trouble, and walked through the side entrance straight to the aforementioned garden, which was at the rear of the pub. Fortunately, given the extreme heat, the garden was nice and shady and we were soon sat at a table studying the beer menu prior to the arrival of the waiter. I opted for the Huppendorfer Vollbier, an amber coloured and well-hopped beer from the village of the same name, situated in the Fränkische Scheiz, (Franconian Switzerland) area to the east of Bamberg. Matthew’s choice was Mönchsambacher Lager, a much paler beer from Mönchsambach, a village to the west of the city, in the area known as the Steigerwald. He followed that up with another of the same, whilst I went for the Gänstaller Kellerbier; origin unknown, but very drinkable all the same.

We weren’t the only visitors from England that day. Sitting a few tables away from us we couldn’t help over-hearing a group of men speaking in our mother tongue. After a while, I went over and had a word with them. It turned out they were a group of beer enthusiasts, (I didn’t ask whether they were CAMRA members or not), from Nottingham, doing much the same as us really – spending a few days at Annafest, interspersed with visits to other towns and villages in order to track down and sample some of the local beers. They were staying in nearby Buttenheim, at the Löwenbräu Brauerei – one of two neighbouring breweries in the village. We swapped notes and shared a few recommendations, one of which we decided to follow the following day.

The beer enthusiasts left, shortly before us, but before we departed I had a closer look at Café Abseits’s beer extensive list (see photo’s). As well as the three draught beers already mentioned, the pub carries a wide range of bottles, including a number from the pilot brew-plant at Weyermann Maltings, home of our abortive visit earlier. There were also some examples of what, for Germany, can only be described as experimental styles of beer, such as pale ale and porter!

We decided to leave such beery delights for another occasion, as Café Abseits’s is definitely somewhere worthy of a much longer visit. Not only that, with the weather as hot as it was, we never got to see the inside of the pub, having spent the whole of our visit in the garden at the rear. However, at least I can now say I’ve visited Bamberg’s “premier beer speciality pub”. As for the pub's unusual name, it apparently translates as "the other place", so now you know!

Franconia 2013

We arrived back home last Monday evening, after a most enjoyable week in the northern area of Bavaria known as Franconia. We based ourselves in the small, picturesque town of Forchheim; a town of just 20,000 inhabitants, but with four breweries, which lies roughly halfway between Nuremberg and Bamberg. The prime, but not sole, reason for our stay here was to visit Annafest, an event which began life as a religious festival, but which is now one of the largest folk festivals in Franconia. I ought to add that by “folk” I don’t mean lots of bearded men in chunky jumpers wailing out sea-shanties or traditional rural ballads with a finger stuck in one ear, but rather folk as in “something for the people”, something which everyone can join in with and have a good time.

Naturally, as in much of Bavaria, beer plays an important role in such events, and Annafest was definitely no exception to this. I will be writing a much more detailed post about Annafest a bit later, but for now I just want to say that we visited the event on three separate days, which were interspersed with days out exploring some of the surrounding Franconian towns and villages; towns such as Bamberg with its eight breweries and villages full of rural charm and, as like as not, a brewery to match. In the countryside we came across Bierkellers tucked away in the unlikeliest of places, serving cool refreshing Kellerbier – beer which smacked of locally grown hops and sold at unbelievably low prices (€1.90 per half litre). Whilst in towns such as Bamberg, Coburg and of course Forchheim, there were unspoilt basic boozers, tucked away down side streets mixed in with internationally renowned establishments such as Schlenkerla and Spezial in Bamberg.

All in all it was like visiting a beer lover’s paradise; somewhere which at times just seems too good to be true. I will be recalling some of our discoveries over the next couple of weeks or so, depending on time and other commitments (I’m acting as beer buyer for this year’s Spa ValleyRailway Beer Festival, and I’ve got quite a bit of ringing around and chasing to catch up on). In the meantime attached are a few photo’s to wet your appetites.