Early Tuesday morning, a delegation of Common and Port Street Beer House set out for London, to the Great British Beer Festival and a few of London’s fine beer establishments, to spread the word about IMBC (including some wonderful posters and flyers). First stop, Euston Tap, and after a lovely half, distribution of IMBC flyers and posters, we traveled on to Olympia.
The GBBF site is of course immense, and after taking in the sights of the various bars, we set to work: IMBC popping up all over Olympia Hall! We also ran into some familiar, wonderful beery faces, Magic Rock, Red Willow, Dark Star, Andreas Fält and Camden Town Brewery. A few beers may have been tasted along the way, too, including the astoundingly sour apricot Cantillon. And, who wouldn’t want to travel in one of these? Barrel-aged riding, it’s the future!
But, no rest for the wicked, there were more posters to be put up, and flyers to be handed out, people to be chatted to about IMBC, so onward we soldiered to Cask. Opened in 2009, Cask is located between Victoria and Pimlico stations, and has been showered with various accolades, including Best Cask Pub of the Year 2011. Cask was still glowing in Red Willow’s tap takeover on Monday night, and we were suitably impressed by wonderfully stocked fridges. After a brief taste of the lovely Mikkeller selection on draught, and the distribution of posters and flyers, we set off yet again to visit Cask’s sister bar, The Craft Beer Co on Leather Lane, in the borough of Camden. (At this point, it should be noted that a correlation exists between your photographer’s intake of beer and her ability to take photos… apologies for the lack of visuals from Craft, please take a look at their gallery page to take it in in all its glory!) Our mission accomplished in Craft, followed by a few refreshments, we set off for Euston to return to Manchester. What a day for beer in London!
