Hi all, and welcome to the first of the daily reports from the 2008 Ipswich Beer Festival.
This is a double report for the 2 days I visited during the "setting up" sessions.
Much of the hard work was done on Sunday 21st September.
The day started with unloading all of the equipment off the van from Stowmarket. This is always VERY HARD WORK, and this was very apparent with some already tired faces around the Corn Exchange.
Next up was building the stillage, again a tiring heavy lifting job, but made much easier thanks to the new stillage bought last year. I still say it was the best purchase our CAMRA branch ever made!
The brand new cooling equipment from CAMRA headquarters in St Albans had already been brought in on Saturday, and was wheeled into place on Sunday. For the rest of the day, Peter Gager and Chris took the somewhat complicated task of setting that up. If you like Mecano, you would have loved helping out with this! Gratefully, one of the bar managers from the GBBF London (Ron) paid us a visit to help Peter and Chris do the mammoth task. It was quite an honour for us to have him come all the way down from Yorkshire just to halp us out with that.
The aim is to get the beer to the customer at constantly the right temperature, and it should prove interesting this year whether this new equipment will succeed where the previous wet towels have sort of failed.
Lunch for the day was provided by Rae Gardiners wife, Fiona, and was excellent as usual!
Beer was provided for staff by the local Ipswich brewery, St Judes.
Photos for Sunday 21st September can be found by clicking here.
I paid a quick visit on Tuesday 23rd September at lunchtime to see what had developed so far.
Most of the beers had been racked, and were also being cooled by the new cooling equipment. The German beer was still to arrive, but should arrive the next day.
I also had the chance to try a few beers which were already tapped on the downstairs bar. Best of them was a very bitter mild. The beers were also noticably colder too.
Photos for Tuesday 23rd September can be found by clicking here.
So there you go. Tomorrow (Wed 24th) we will be doing final preparation, the trade session, and then opening to the public at 5pm.
If you decide to visit, pop by the German Bar and say hello!!!
Cheers!
Carl.
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