One of the things that I’ve been rather pleased about in recent years is the explosion of London brewers. It used to be a small circle of folks I’d never heard of along with Fuller’s and Youngs, but since the latter’s departure to the countryside things have started getting interesting and the small names have been getting bigger. Last year a group of London based brewers, the London Brewers Alliance, (for a very inclusive value of London) got together to put on a showcase of their wares and I, in classic fashion, missed it. This year was not going to go down the same path and I grabbed myself a ticket to their Saturday afternoon event, which had moved a couple of doors down into the Mezzanine at Vinopolis.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and was rather pleased to be confronted by a much fuller room than I assumed would be possible. I’ve been out of the beer loop a bit for the last few months and missed a second explosion of brewers – a good third of the stands in the hall were from people I’d either not heard of or merely heard rumour of. Unfortunately this did mean I got a bit drunk and I apologise now to all the various brewers I tried to hug or waxed incomprehensibly at about how great beer was.