Great British Beer Festival 2011

In his tribute to the life and works of William Shakespeare, Washington Irving quotes the proverb 'they who drink beer will think beer'. This is certainly true. Little less than an hour into GBBF 2011, I wondered if I should purchase a silly hat and beer said yes.

If you do end up buying a silly hat you shall not be alone. There is also a great deal of fancy dress. The bars are named after medical heroes and if you head over to B3 JENNER, I guarantee you will be impressed.

I was told it was all this man's fault.

Going to the beer fest has become something of a birthday tradition for me. I consider it a real treat. Beer doesn't come better than this. All 700 of them are classified as real ales.

CAMRA coined the phrase 'real ale' in 1972 to distinguish a top-fermented beer that is put to cask following fermentation. In the cask is added yeast and residual fermentable sugars, which means the beer is 'live'. It is important that the beer is not pasteurised, nor filtered and that carbonation occurs naturally during secondary fermentation. If the beer ticks all these boxes, and made with TLC, then and only then does it make the grade.

Tutorial over, on to the tasting. There's no sipping here. You cannot taste beer by the sip. It has to be by the mouthful. I insist!

£3 hires you a pint glass which can be filled by the 1/3, 1/2 or pint full. And with measures like that, you can afford to be generous - there was no ending our mirth in shouting rounds for 5 and pocketing plenty of change from a tenner.

Here are the beers that did it for me:
Bar W4 BLACK, Hobsons 'Mild', 3.2% from Shropshire, described as having a roasted, toffee nose, and creamy roasted finish
Bar P7 ROSS, Highland 'Dark Munro', 4.0%, described as 'a dark beer with intense roast aroma followed by summer fruit flavours returning to strong roast malt'
Bar W7 FLEMMING, Goose Eye 'Over and Stout', 5.2%, a full bodied stout, roast, caramel, dark fruit and liquorice palate, bitter finish
Bar W5 HASTINGS, Beowulf 'Dark Raven', 4.5%, a dark brown mild, with a chocolate, coffee nose, and a sweet fruit and nut chocolate taste

'Dark Raven' was by far my favourite.

I would also definitely queue again, no matter how long, for a half of the Gold Medal Winner Mighty Oak 'Oscar Wilde'. They won't serve you any more than that. They want to spread the love. The tasting notes describe it thus: 'Roasty dark mild with suggestions of forest fruits and dark chocolate, the sweet taste yields to a more bitter finish'.

As it was only running off one pump the queue was long. They impressively refused to serve pushers in and there were quite a few. There was one chap whose job it was to watch the queue, and he watched it like a hawk. Well done him. Oscar Wilde was unanimously declared the best beer in Britain by all the judges.

It's a hoot. The pumps are manned by volunteers and brewery-folk and they know the beers best. There are some great beer names such as 'Hedgemonkey', 'Silent Slasher' and 'Joblings Swinging Gibbet'. And you invariably end up meeting lots of very lovely people too, as we did in the Oscar Wilde queue, befriending a Venetian brewer called Filippo who was previously in the caviar industry. Husband also spotted Andrew Ridgeley by P4, looking tanned and in great form.

By the by, Washington Irving shares a lovely anecdote in his essay entitled 'Stratford-on-Aven' [sic]. Apparently Shakespeare was 'as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack'. Irving tells us that in his youthful days the bard oft went to the 'thirsty little market-town' of Bedford, famous for its ale, for contests of drinking. Staggering the seven miles back home, his legs would fail him by a crab-tree which Shakespeare spent many a night under with his drinking companions, the proof of this being that the crab-tree, still standing, is known locally as 'Shakespeare's tree'.

Sadly there isn't a crab-tree to sleep under by Earls Court. By the time the final bell tolled, I could have done with one. But I urge you still to make your way there. You've got until the 6th. And the bard would approve.