Favourite beers from the Great British Beer Festival?

[booldawg]

Do you fancy suggesting a nicer venue of a similar size not too far from central London? Your options are kind of limited when you have to accommodate 70,000 drinkers.

Why does it have to be London?

Its not always been in London.

Brighton, Birmingham and Leeds have hosted the GBBF and its forerunner on occasions.

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Brighton, Birmingham and Leeds have hosted the GBBF and its forerunner on occasions.

If it ever returns to Birmingham I might go. London's a long way for me to go for a few pints of beer

[Invalid Stout]

Do you fancy suggesting a nicer venue of a similar size not too far from central London? Your options are kind of limited when you have to accommodate 70,000 drinkers.

Why does it have to be London?

Just so you're working within the same constraints as CAMRA. Whether or not it should be in London in the first place isn't the issue.

[Scooby]

Earls Court is a cr@p venue for a beer festival mysterio, it's a dismal place to drink beer

Do you fancy suggesting a nicer venue of a similar size not too far from central London? Your options are kind of limited when you have to accommodate 70,000 drinkers.

Not really, I don't know London that well as I've rarely been there, but imo as a festival venue earls court couldn't be much worse. I went last year and whilst the choice of beers was 2nd to none (although the web site states over 450 real ales and at Reading festival 550 real ales the atmosphere and overall experience was dire. There must be better places.

[Invalid Stout]

I didn't really have an issue with Earls Court. It was about the beer and the people for me, not the venue.

The Munich Oktoberfest is a nicer venue, but there are only six beers, and they're all crap

[Subsonic]

I contacted the Head Brewer at Dark Star brewery about their Gold Medal American APA and the recipe. I reckoned that the hops were cascade and not chinook as posted on other forums. I stuck my neck out a bit there... his reply below

Thanks for your kind words re: APA.

The hops used to include chinook, now it's cascade and centennial.

Malt is low colour maris otter.

Yeast is, as you thought a US strain.

I'm going to have a bash at cloning it. Subsonic.

[Spin]

I was there!! In body anyway.
Some people I spoke to didn't like the Lancaster Porter, but I loved it. It had a nice chocolatey taste to it. I'd like to make something similar at home. I am going to make a London Porter recipe but just add a little bit more chocolate malt to it and see how it turns out as I have some extra chocolate malt anyway.
I must admit though. I went on the last day so a lot of the good beers had been devoured already by the hop monster.