retiredmartin

August 2025. Birmingham (or is it Solihull ?)

I’m not a beer festival fan. I always say this to folk who equate beer with pubs. Frankly, the venues are dull, the beer not as cool and crisp as in the pub next door and if I’m going solo I find it hard to start the sort of conversation with groups who come with their CAMRA branch and sit with their CAMRA branch and look suspiciously at interlopers.

BUT the return of GBBF to Birmingham sounded good blog material (not that I need it), and Mrs RM said she’d come (but only for a third of mild) and when I had to switch dates to Friday it meant we’d be able to gate-crash Blackpool Jane’s day out with her mates, too. Result.

A mere nine minutes from New Street, the NEC clearly suffered from not being in the city centre and therefore missing out on the suits, but frankly that meant it was pleasantly spacious on the Friday.

Mrs RM started sensibly, with the 8% American cask. Wilbury looked scared, as well he might.

The weaker US cask was the only beer in our 3 hours that fell below “Very Good/Excellent”, as a succession of halves scored NBSS 3.5 and up.

That’s impressive in August, a tribute to the CAMRA volunteers. In fairness, Mrs RM always went for the strong one (Harvey’s Prince of Denmark, Brain Rev James Reserve etc),

but on a day when CAMRA Discourse are speculating on the success of GBBF it’s worth noting that serving cask as the brewer intended is what the Campaign ought to be about.

Tom, Dave and Matthew from Coventry joined us for an hour to chat about Chinese takeaways, Oasis and life in general, and we ate a huge bag of Wild Duck crisps.

I really, really, wanted Mrs RM to return with Green Duck’s 10% impy stout,

but she returned with Apocalyptic Love, a measly 6.5% IPA. Chicken ! (or is it duck ?)

If I come back next year I’ll definitely get Alan McLeod a Burtonwood tie.

And if I go back next year I definitely won’t bother with the beer without beer in it, though.

Unexpectedly, Beer of the Day was my first Arran Blonde for 25 years, when we did all of Arran.

One other complaint from a number of our group.

“Not enough sours !“.

“I’m glad there weren’t sours” says Mrs RM.