Beer Compurgation

It’s the third annual Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt and the third year I have not raced to my “local” orange store to pick up bottles of the North’s regional finalists . Last week, some writer’s bloggers and tweeters took to a Twitter tasting session – with the witty hashtag of #Sainsbeerys – to taste some of the finalists from their area. I am certainly not criticising this in any shape of form, but it gave me time to attribute some of my own thoughts about this yearly event. I know that as a beer enthusiast I should be grateful and supportive of this mass company making a stride in the right direction of good beer promotion   I’m not so stubborn as to not see the appeal and the positives from it. There is the chance to improve the woeful selection all supermarkets provide. I would say, out of all the corporate, high-street mauling machines, Sainsbury’s do offer the widest range of decent beer in my area, though this doesn’t persuade me to shop there. It is obviously ple

Now becoming an annual event, the third Tameside Beer Festival (housed in the Civic Hall in Stalybridge) took place this weekend again. I’d been to both previous events and, whilst the first was a bit of a swift haze before this blog existed, I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s so much I did a short post about it . I always feel a need to promote festivals, especially the smaller, local ones that are as well run as this. As the festival is only held on a Friday and Saturday and is purely for charitable reasons, arranged by the local Rotary Club in Ashton-Under-Lyne, there’s no silly “trade day” or weekday event that empties the hall of the best beers before any regular Joe’s have had chance to set foot in the door. In fact, for a group who are not accustomed to organising such events, the rotary club do an excellent job of running a fair and smooth festival. Entry is a standard £3 that INCLUDES the programme. Beer tokens come in simple £1.25 form, as that is the price for a half