Comments on: The Permanent Technicolor Beer Festival

By: steve lamond

steve lamond — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 12:45:04 +0000

They’re complementary, though I’d like more pubs to offer third pints!

By: steve lamond

steve lamond — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 12:44:21 +0000

A minority of a minority…

By: steve lamond

steve lamond — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 12:43:48 +0000

Totally agree with everything in your comment here. I would like to see some branches make more of an effort to nominate their local brewers, especially if they haven’t been represented before.

By: steve lamond

steve lamond — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 12:41:06 +0000

py0 the Great is from “Great Britain” not suggesting that the beer is necessarily “great” and in any case great doesn’t mean best. I suppose you could also think of it as Great=big as its a pretty massive affair, though by no means the biggest range of beers any more

By: John West

John West — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:38:07 +0000

(Cambridge, too…)

I agree somewhat with Tandie’s comment that the quality is available in London over some distance, but I must add a few decent crawls exist now which didn’t even five years ago. Especially up through Leyton, Clapton and Hackney, as alluded to by B&B.

I was astonished by the quality in depth and variety (both of beer and pubs) in Manchester when I nipped up last year. Loved it.

By: Boak

Boak — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:41:00 +0000

I agree with Yvan that the GBBF experience continues to improve. It’s just that the competition (ordinary pubs) has got better, certainly in London. Also, being honest, neither of us have the stamina for massive multi-ticking binges these days…

By: Yvan Seth

Yvan Seth — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:08:53 +0000

Not putting the CBoB beers up until later wouldn’t be a problem if the data wasn’t presented in a shit way in the first place. (As then people like me and Erlangernick wouldn’t feel the need to create our own spreadsheets before the event.)

Personally I like what Cambridge Beer Festival have been doing with their iPhone and Android apps. It would be good if HQ/GBBF looked into doing the same – and maybe provided a way for branches to do so for their festivals.

(I always mean to do an app for our festivals… but that’s easier said than done and I have thus far never had the time. My OH might have the time this year. But failing that we always make a spreadsheet available at least.)

By: fishter

fishter — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:53:43 +0000

The reason for not having the Champion’s Bar in the programme is that in publishing it you give away which beers are being tasted in the blind judging. That said, there were a few brewers tweeting that they were definitely supplying GBBF and they weren’t listed on the website – i.e. they’re on the Champion’s Bar and being judged for CBOB.

It’s a “can’t please everyone” situation.

By: py0

py0 — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:30:48 +0000

Playing devils advocate here, I think cask ale drinkers might still be a minority despite the fact that most people have, at some point, tried it, whereas craft beer drinkers are a minority because so few people have tried it.

I know hardly anyone who had heard of Brewdog or Magic Rock or Thornbridge etc before I introduced them to it. They had given real ale a go, hadn’t got into it, and were all confirmed lager drinkers. But they were all instantly amazed.. and then horrified when it was explained that even in 2012 the nearest outlet for this style of beer on draught was still a hours train to London ride away.

Nevermind, at least we can try it at the beer festival they said. Oh the beer festival refuses to serve it, I replied.

By: Yvan Seth

Yvan Seth — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:18:09 +0000

The website was – as usual – a pile of crap. It looked pretty and all, but was functionally useless. May as well have used flash! The printed booklet was as unwieldy and unfathomable as usual.

Let people do what they want to do: download a damn spreadsheet. Or in HTML present the list in a useful tabular form, with a proper search facility, and column sort (glorified HTML spreadsheet).

I actually wrote some perl code to spider the site and convert it to a spreadhsheet in the end. Annoyingly it turned out that the online list was missing the entire Champion Beer of Britain bar.

In this day and age the level of tech incompetence shown by CAMRA isn’t acceptable. I’ve had communications with marketing folk at CAMRA about previous IT faff (the Community Pubs Month site for example… what a bloody waste of time!). Only to be told that I’m wrong, have it implied that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and that they have experienced professionals on the case. I almost hung up my CAMRA involvement at the time… turf the incompetent old-school marketing folk, and pick up some people who understand modern marketing & social media, etc. [It is getting better... but still has a way to go.]