Harwich & Dovercourt Winter Beer Festival
2003  In 2002 we took a risk and launched a new beer festival. Not content with two beer festivals (Colchester and Clacton) our branch of CAMRA (Colchester & N.E. Essex) enthusiastically backed us. Our then Branch Treasurer (Regional Director) Mike Harvey prepared a budget, and the rest of the committee lent their support. Beer Festival veterans Nigel Mullender and Trevor Johnson gave us the benefit of their considerable experience, and the festival when it happened was a huge success. The following year, 2003, presented a problem. We had to do it all again, and without one of the founders, Richard Cooper, who had moved away from the area. We planned carefully using the same formula with a few twists and hoped for the best. We needn´t have worried. The support was fantastic and the experience of the previous year invaluable. A total of 864 people turned out over the three days of the Festival, drinking 2444 pints of real ale between them. On Friday the Celebrated Onion Band followed the Harwich Royal British Legion Brass Band giving a diverse but highly enjoyable soundtrack to a great evening. So which beers did we enjoy? The dark beers certainly delighted, Tendring´s stunning Crab & Winkle Mild and Museum´s seriously delicious P2 Imperial Stout just losing out to Old Cannon´s Black Pig for Beer of the Festival. That said some refreshing golden beers also shone, Iceni´s lovely Honey & Nutmeg and Crouch Vale´s moorish Amarillo both getting plenty of attention. The excellent bottled beer bar also played host for the first time this year to some finely-crafted foreign delights in the form of six beers from small and medium-sized Czech regional breweries. We´ve calculated that we can grow the festival again this year, but not too much. We have no desire to overstretch ourselves, and for us the smaller festivals have an unbeatable atmosphere as well as the opportunity to talk to the visitors about our favourite subject – the beer! See you in December. Ken Brand Pete Goodwin Richard Oxborrow Ta Muchly!Those among you who didn´t make it to December´s Harwich beer festival have our permission to kick yourselves. Having done that you can pencil in the provisional dates for next December. Go on – you´ll enjoy it. Last December´s festival was notable for several things, almost all of which were positive. The pleasant atmosphere was quite an achievement in a church hall in December, and it certainly wasn´t down to the heating. Yes, it was down to you – many thanks. But what about the beer? Well, there was a fair amount of it, and you almost drank us dry. Apart from that there are one or two slightly more specific things that warrant a mention. The first and most obvious is the continued world-conquering advance of Crab & Winkle Mild, brewed, as I´m sure you all know, in a shed somewhere in Brightlingsea. Its success is not a mystery to those lucky enough to have tried it: it tastes splendid, and it isn´t so strong that you can´t keep right on drinking it. As there seems to be a fad at present among brewers for equating ‘good´ with ‘strongest possible taste´, C&W´s success, with its soft, balanced flavours, is particularly heartening. Crab & Winkle Mild is a dark beer, and – this being winter – there was a lot of interest in dark beers. Old Cannon´s Black Pig and Isle of Skye´s Black Cuillin were well received, Museum Brewery´s rather severe Imperial Stout less so. It wasn´t the eight per cent. alcohol content that produced the mixed laughs and looks of horror, more the flavour turned up to eleven. There was an interesting contrast to be found in the bottled beer department. Introduced for the first time this year to complement the Belgian beers was a range of six top-notch Czech beers, among them an eight per cent. porter from Pivovar Pardubice. Although it´s certainly quite chewy, it´s nevertheless delicious and drinkable. That´s one of the problems with it, in fact... No-one was more proud of the six new Czechs than I, as I´m one of the importers, but with them the bottled beer department (a.k.a. Chez Trev) is now a powerhouse of quality portable beers of all kinds. The real ales might be the focus of the evening, but nevertheless it´s a pity that most punters don´t even think about trying a bottle. Especially as we have an off-sales licence. And now the moment has come to mention the legendary Onion Band. If you have never seen the Celebrated Onion Band (their formal title*) it´s difficult to describe them adequately. Perhaps if Kurt Cobain or Neil Young had been born in a tiny village in (say) County Wicklow, this is what Serious Rockers would be listening to. Frontman Pug Rayner may not have Young´s catch-me-before-I-fall voice or Cobain´s air of nihilism, but they can certainly make a lot of noise. Great stuff. What was that about a brass band? Simon Harvey * The band is named after a celebrated onion (oignan célèbre) grown on an allotment in Brittany in 1976. It achieved a size of 7.3kg, but the night before the local vegetable show it disappeared and was never seen again. |