Billy's Booze Blog

One of the delights of beer festivals for me is the bottled beer stand. Not necessarily for the there and then drinking, but more for the drunken acquisitions that I take home. Often they seem so very appealing at the point of purchase only to turn out to be pretty labels wrapped around a bottle [...]

It’s summer, the Edinburgh festival has begun, everyone seems to be on holiday…that means I’ve not yet got round to writing up my visit to the Great British Beer Festival yet again. In an effort to get it off the todo list here is a special Quick Tastings post (I used to do these more [...]

True to my word I did indeed spend the last three days camped out at Earl’s Court enjoying this year’s GBBF. The plan was simple but elegant – drink on Wednesday, work there on Thursday and do some more drinking (maybe with an insider’s perspective) on the Friday. The plan, as they say, worked perfectly. [...]

Starting today is the annual Great British Beer Festival – 5 days where CAMRA turn Earls Court into the country’s largest pub. I will, naturally, be writing overly wordily and obsessively about the festival later this week, but for now suffice to say that I’m going to be there on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, having [...]

There are certain beers that I have quite serious troubles describing. “It’s like a regular Fuller’s beer but with porridge in” (Fuller’s Red Fox), “It’s like a glass of really hard water, Soda Streamed with the finest bubbles ever created and then magically turned into a lightly flavoured lager” (Kasteel Cru), “It’s like someone has [...]