Inaugural Ipswich Homebrew festival

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Cobnut
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Inaugural Ipswich Homebrew festival

Post by Cobnut » Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:38 am

I guess I should really have announced this on here a while ago rather than after the event, but hey!

We held the first Ipswich Amateur Brewers' festival on Saturday July 30th.

This was hosted by Rob and his team at briarbank.org close to the Ipswich waterfront (formerly known as the docks, but it's a bit posher now!) and featured 14 beers brewed by local brewers from Ipswich and Essex. It should have been 15, but the RIS popped its' keystone after having been racked, so we sadly lost that one.

The attendance was lower than we had hoped for, but on the whole it was a very successful event which will be repeated next year, with a good selection of beers for everyone to sample. Some of the brewers had never served their beers to the public before, nor had they served in cask or norby keg in some cases. So we were taking them out of their comfort zone!

Rob has hosted a HB competition and this year the judging took place the day before with the results begin announced at the festival.

Results here: https://briarbank.org/brewery/homebrew-competition/

Here's a few photos from the day:

Flyer
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The bar set up and ready
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The beer descriptions
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The Welcome board
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A flight of most of the beers
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It would be great to welcome a few more folk for next year's event and I will be sure to publicise it on here with sufficient notice!

Cheers!
Fermenting: nowt
Conditioning: English IPA/Bretted English IPA
Drinking: Sunshine Marmalade, Festbier, Helles Bock, Smokey lagery beer, Irish Export StoutCascade APA (homegrown hops), Orval clone, Impy stout, Duvel clone, Conestoga (American Barley wine)
Planning: Dark Mild, Kozel dark (ish), Simmonds Bitter, Bitter, Citra PA and more!

f00b4r
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Re: Inaugural Ipswich Homebrew festival

Post by f00b4r » Tue Aug 02, 2022 4:54 pm

That looks a nice selection of beers and great to see a foraged beer too, any outstanding ones?
Good to see the East Anglian clubs put on these festivals for the public, I think it’s a great advert for the homebrew scene.

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Cobnut
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Re: Inaugural Ipswich Homebrew festival

Post by Cobnut » Wed Aug 03, 2022 8:18 am

@f00b4r The majority of the beers were of a very good standard, certainly most would at least rival an average commercial pint in a pub. For me there were a few stand out beers:

The Chevallier pale ale @ 3.5%
Claudia Schiffer's Bathwater (doppelbock) 8.1%
Munich Dunkel 5.5%
Festival Punk 6% (Punk IPA clone)

Immodestly, I'd also say that my 1850 London Porter was very good (see viewtopic.php?f=2&t=83681&p=863904#p863904), but my Cascade Pale Ale (with my homegrown Cascade hops) was a disappointment to me due to some yeast stress issues (although it did receive some favourable comments). I grew a starter from a bottle of Fullers' 1845, but I'm not convinced they use the primary strain any more and it threw quite a lot of spicy phenols :(

The foraged bitter was "interesting", but had it been advertised as a mixed fermentation beer, it would have been received better! The brewer said he'd tried a bottle and it tasted the same...not quite what he'd hoped, nor something he'd re-brew, but an interesting exercise!
Fermenting: nowt
Conditioning: English IPA/Bretted English IPA
Drinking: Sunshine Marmalade, Festbier, Helles Bock, Smokey lagery beer, Irish Export StoutCascade APA (homegrown hops), Orval clone, Impy stout, Duvel clone, Conestoga (American Barley wine)
Planning: Dark Mild, Kozel dark (ish), Simmonds Bitter, Bitter, Citra PA and more!

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