Sunday 27th April, 2008

Venue – Fat Cat, Colchester

Attendances - 4 Young Colchester members, 7 Young Ipswich members, 1 mine of information, 1 late comer interim drinker and his partner in crime.

The story - The morning after the match before (Col Utd played their last ever game at the fortress Layer Road) both sets of Ipswich and Colchester Young CAMRA members merged to form the beer tasting group sitting around the large table in the Fat Cat.

We eagerly awaited Nigel’s (bless him for leading the session) instructions. After introductions and a couple of Roast dinners later, we organised ourselves by dishing out some beer tasting cards and information sheets…and also some water biscuits purchased from a well known chain supermarket! Nigel had already been ultra organised and pre selected a few appropriate beers from the reasonably reduced choice of beers left over from the commiserating/celebrating party the previous night. We then had a small talk lead by Nigel involving several rare facts about malt, hops, adjuncts and anatomy of the tongue. This was good because it reinforced our knowledge, and also taught us a few new things about real ale…then came the beer tasting!

Beers tasted included Hophead, Stoatwobbler, Rusty Bucket, Adnams Best, Honey Ale, Wonkey Dog. It was interesting to taste young beer as we were all very familiar with vinegary old beer, it tastes equally as bad! Did anyone detect a note of 'skunk' in any of them?... I would also like to just add at this point.. that Julian was setting a fine example by bypassing the water biscuits, and cleansing his pallet with an ‘in-betweensy’ pint between samples … Julian … CAMRA promotes sensible drinking!

As usual after beer the conversation resorted back to food … mainly where abouts we could get some! This proved trickier than you might imagine. Between 1400-1800 on a Sunday afternoon, any pub, restaurant, and takeaway banishes anything edible from its vocabulary and kitchen! In the end the general consensus was to make our way to the Oddy. The heavens thought they would open especially for us. They opened just as we opened the door to exit the Fat Cat and closed again as we entered the door of the Odd One Out. After more beer (and what a fine selection of good quality ales), a roll or two and some cheesy moments (the crisps not our actions) we were all content again. Conversation morphed from intellectual discussions about people being drowned by beer … into less intellectual conversations about pubs suffering due to increased sales in cheap supermarket bottled ales. (Or should that be the other way round?) By this time, Naomi was starting to fall asleep (mimicking what I could quite happily have done) … I am pleased about this as it just would not be a CAMRA trip without the traditional photo of someone drifting off into a comfortable afternoon kip (sorry … just resting their eyes) in the corner of a pub. Its good to see that us ‘younger members’ continue tradition and follow in our ‘elders’ footsteps.

Thanks to everyone who came, I enjoyed meeting lots of new people and well done to Nigel and Naomi who did a grand job in helping to make the whole thing happen!

Hope to see you all at our next event!

Georgie