This weekend was the anual Bradford Beer Festival which is held every year at the Victoria Hall in Saltaire. As usual i took the friday off work to go the the free session on friday afternoon (Free as in not requiring tickets otherwise i’d be in hospital) there’s a merry little bunch of about 10 of us that do this every year, mainly so we can send picture messages to our coleagues at work to annoy the hell out of them

With well over 100 Ales, not to mention Ciders, Perry’s and continential beers to choose from i was spoilt for choice but my Fave beers of the festival were

Leeds Pale 3.8%
Leeds New Moon 4.3%
Naylors Crystal Wheat 4.5%
Naylors Old Ale 6.2%
Northumberland Pit Pony 3.8%
Old Spot Ginger Beer 4%
Ossett Big Red 4.2%
Osset Snowdrop 4.2%
Salamander Fire Cracker 4%
Glencoe Wild Oat Stout 4.5%
Wentworth WPA 4%
Wylam Northern Kite 4.5%
Yorkshire Dales Buckden Pike 3.9%

I tried loads of other but these were my fave’s. Needless to say i got completely destroyed on Friday as me and the missis had tickets for the evening session also, so after a brief interlude at the Shipley Pride for a game of Killer Darts and a couple of stunning pints of Tim Taylors Landlord Me and Nicky headed up to meet some friends and then back to the beer festival for round 2. Things got kind of hazy from here. I can not remember getting home at all, and as expected Saturday was a writeoff… Roll on Next years festival

Sunday was spent cleaning, de-labelling and sterilising bottles and racking the IPA. I took a gravity reading of the brew just before bottling and it finished at an amazingly low 1.002 I dont know how this will affect the brew but the ABV came in at 4.93% which will do for me. I had a quick taste of the ale and everything seems ok so into the bottles it went

The next brew will be the Coopers Bavarian beer i put on a few weeks back. Me and Nicky both loved that one so i’m doing it again. Also next week I’m finally going to delve into winemaking. Should be a fun one