Sunday, October 30, 2011

Twickenham Beer Festival 2011

On October 28-29 2011 we attended the Friday and Saturday sessions of the Twickenham Beer and Cider Festival. It's a nice venue (York House), although there was less seating available than in previous years (despite there also being less stalls: bottled beer seemed to be missing, and the memorabilia stall was basically CAMRA books and a couple of t-shirts). Not much by way of creature comforts then, but we were there to taste the real ale. Here's what I sampled (I didn't get notes from anyone else).

Monday, October 10, 2011

Top 25: The Euston Tap

Our first of 25 visits to the top London pubs was not too far afield. We went to the Euston Tap, conveniently located right outside Euston station. The tiny building that hosts it is a lodge once part of the Euston Arch demolished in the 60s. The bar area is simple and polished, there is seating outside and on the first floor, which can be reached by climbing some spiral stairs and is a bit claustrophobic. It looks like they did what they could with the space they had, but the Euston Tap is certainly better for a quick beer while waiting for the train rather than for a more relaxed pub evening; unless you're seating outside, that is.
The selection of beers and ales definitely makes up for these few inconveniences. They have 150 bottled beers, 20 kegged ales and 8 rotating live ales. Yum. I've been at this pub a few times this summer and always was lucky enough to have a really good time sat in the garden area. This time we were upstairs, which was less pleasant, but I nonetheless recommend this little gem, especially if you happen to have an hour to spare before catching your train. Hopefully my fellow pub explorers will say whether they agree in the comments.

But now to the beers that we tried. Unlike most of our beer tasting sessions, the marks and comments are personal to the person that had the beer. I gathered here as many comments as I could get, plus I include some tweets that were sent during the evening.