GBBF 2010

As the new season finally approaches, there was a week of drinking to be done at the Great British Beer Festival at Earls Court.

Normally I just take a few afternoons off work and pop down to drink with whoever has come down to London to visit the festival but this year I decided to try my hand at being a GBBF volunteer.

I opted for working the set-up weekend before the festival opened and then a couple of sessions working on the bars themselves.

I turned up bright and early on the first Saturday at 8am and after signing in, I was given a hi-vis jacket and told to go and find some work on the floor. I wandered off and found the nearest group who turned out to be Sarah Durham and her Wet Stock Control team.

This team are responsible for the arrival of the beer at the festival - first the large consolidated orders from the major beer wholesalers on articulated lorries and then later from individual brewers themselves.

(left) Setting up the Belgian & Dutch bar

The barrels are unloaded, checked off against what we're expecting and once we're happy we've got what we want, the beers are borne away by forklift to their bars.

It may not sound very exiciting but it was great fun meeting the brewers who brought their own wares. All of the wet stock team were hardened GBBF volunteers and were very welcoming to a newbie like me and it was a fun weekend.

The festival opened on Tuesday afternoon - this is trade session when all different parts of the brewing and pub industry get in for free - and I was working on the BSF (Bier Sans Frontiere) bar, specifically the Belgian and Dutch beers.

This is the bar where I've spent a lot of my time at previous GBBFs so there were quite a few familiar faces around when I turned up at 8:30am. Plenty of work to be done filling the cool cabinets with beers - mainly rearranging them to allow for the Italian beers that had turned up late.

I didn't make a great impression when I knocked a bottle of Orval out of one cabinet and it smashed all over the floor but they're a forgiving lot. I'm sure I'm not the first to have made this faux pas.

There were a few familiar beers from Holland - Ij and De Prael in bottles and draught plus three huge barrels from De Molen - plus the usual suspects from Belgium.

There were some good beers from the Italians too - the West Coast IPA was very good (Steve liked this so much he went back for more) whilst the Revelation Cat Single Hop Lambic divided opinion although the geuze-hounds I know really enjoyed it.

And when the festival opened I met quite a few familiar faces - Steve, landlord of the Pembury Tavern; Evin from the Kerney brewery; James Brodie from Brodies beers and Steve Freer, occasional Darlo fan and publisher of the Tynemill Times.

(right) The three huge barrels from De Molen

I also got to meet Tandleman, one of my favourite beer bloggers, who was working on the German bar of BSF. A nice chap, it was good to finally put a name to a face.

In the evening the public were allowed in so Liz joined me from the other side of the bar whilst she waited for various London Millers.

I was at the festival next day too but that as a punter - Steve had come up from Cardiff and had bagged a couple of seats as I joined him for a steady afternoon of drinking.

Steve and I were back the following day - I was working again whilst he continued from where he left off the previous night.

By this time, we all knew that Castle Rock Harvest Pale had been crowned Champion Beer of Britain - a beer well known to quite a few of DAFTS from our visits to the VAT & Fiddle in recent seasons.

Not the most complex or ground-breaking beer in the worked but it is a very good, consistent session beer and from that perspective as good a winner as any in recent years.

Later in the day I met Trevor, my chum from the Macclesfield festival, and I helped him to try out a few beers with a view to next year's beer list. Unfortunately he went to the loo and lost his notes which rather spoilt his day and so he trudged off disconsolately for his train home.

(above) Punters and Pints

I was left chatting to Dave, one of the brewers from Kinver Brewery, who was down for a few drinks. Coincidentally we had been drinking his beers when we met him - and very good they were.

And then it was all over for me too. The volunteering really enhanced my enjoyment of the festival and gave me a greater insight into the scale of the organisation behind it and the number of volunteers who make it all possible.

I'll be back to do my bit again next year...