By MIKE HALLS
It’s been a bit of an epic few weeks for me. The week before this years Fools & Fans I had just returned from a beer lovers trip of a lifetime, ticking off some of the best breweries the world has to offer in Vermont and Boston. There was a point upon my return that I though I may have been all beer’d out! However the beautiful drive up through the mountains changed that, and I arrived in Greyton at 9:30am prompt, ready to assist judging the homebrewers competition.
The standard was extremely good and we tasted some fantastic beers (and, an unintentionally sour one!) I was fortunate enough to be at the judging table that scored the winning beer, a Red IPA brewed by Anthony Smith. This was up there with the best commercial beers I drank all weekend and a deserving winner. As part of Anthony’s prize, he will be brewing his beer at Old Potters in the near future, so look out for this when it becomes availble.
After sampling and judging no less than 11 homebrews from 10am – 1pm, it was on to the festival. Fools & Fans is truly one of the best organised beer festivals I have been to. They layout was perfect, it was very family friendly and one of its greatest strengths is that the owners/ brewers actually man the stands. I love this, you can have a good chat with the passionate people that created the beer/ brand.
There were some awesome beers on show and my top three favourites were:
- Little Wolf’s Nectarous, a white nectarine and vanilla sour.
- Mountain Brewing Co.’s 14.5 % ABV. Cherry Beer.
- Woodstock’s NEIPA.
I also loved meeting up Sean from Dog & Fig Brewery, in Parys. All of their beers were excellent and it was great to be able to try some beers from that part of the country. Despite living just down the road from them for more than three years, I hadn’t come across them until Fools & Fans, but will be sure to check out the brewery next time I am up that way.
So now we wait until next year, Saturday 6th April 2019. If you missed this year, put that date in your diary now, you will not want to miss out again.
