For the fourth time, the annual pilgrimage was made to the London Drinker Beer and Cider festival for the Friday afternon session. The CAMRA team were nicely organised this year, and the beer list and notes were up on the website in advance - so most of the week was spent looking forward to the event and salivating :-)

As is the tradition we met up in the Euston Flyer for some quality Fullers ale beforehand, before making our way along to the festival. Beer was of the usual good standard, and the handout was handy and well designed. After a couple of pints we headed downstairs to the imported beer bar. Whether it's changing tastes or just wanting some variation, we seem to end up in the international bars a lot more now. The beers are served cooler and tend to be more refrehing than a lot of the ales, and there's less chance you're going to get a duff pint. Needless to say we had a good few strong ones, nicely supplemented by sausage baguettes from the food servery in the same hall.

Only stayed til about 4pm, but here are those sampled:

Brewer	Region	Name	ABV	Tasting Notes	Rating
Butts	Berks	Barbus Barbus	4.5%	A firm festival favourite, but just didn't deliver the full potential this time	7/10
Elgoods	Cambs	Black Dog	3.6%	Nice tasting but not overly flavoursome	7/10
Budvar	Czech Rep	Budvar Dark	5.0%	Great beer - served nice and cold	8/10
De 3 Horne Bierbrouwerij	Netherlands	Besselaer	7%	Fruit beer (red berries). No notes though....	/10
Brouwerij de Bie	Belgium	Kriekedebie	6.0%	Top flavour Kriek (cherry beer)	8/10

The LDB&CF wouldn't be complete without a trip to the Dolphin opposite, where much drinking of red bull and vodka was had, accompanied by poor pool playing and purchasing of dubious quality DVDs from the local oriental dealer. A brief crawl around a few London pubs rounded of the evening, followed by much snoozing on the lengthy train journey home.