Hoop Beer Festival

In honour of my getting (even) older, we spent the afternoon at the Hoop Beer Festival. As you will see, if you follow the link, there is a large marquee which serves as an extension to the pub. There are many different beers to try, more than I could possibly get through in a week, and certainly not an afternoon.
Between us we tried a number and shared the glasses round so that we got to taste many more. Being the sort of person that I am, I naturally scored the beers on their taste, here are our combined, agreed scores:

Brewery	Beer	Rating
Brentwood	Lunberjack	********
Brentwood	Summer Virgin	*******
Brentwood	Marvelous Maple Gold	******
Crouch Vale	Essex Boys Bitter	********
Crouch Vale	Brewers Gold	******
Crouch Vale	Best	******
Downton	Maroonmaker Mild	*********
Goffs	White Knight	********
Goffs	Jouster	*******
Hop Back	Summer Lightening	*******
Summerskills	Hopscotch	******
Titanic	Anchor	**
White Horse	Wayland Smithy	****
	Farmhouse Cider	**********

There was a general high approval rating, but one or two were not so good. Usually because the flavour was too strong.

The festival itself runs all week. If it's as crowded for the rest of the week as it was today, the publican can take a long and expensive holiday. Food was also available, so I ditched the diet (just this once) and went for the 'hog roast' - a large burger, with carved pork, stuffing, apple sauce and crackling. Very nice, but not really quite enough - still the beer fills you up!

A very enjoyable afternoon with my family and my sisters family.