The Whalebone Beer festival kicks off this Friday with around 80 beers both on gravity and handpump. PintPicker profiles feature colourfully in the tasting notes and will be gracing the barrel ends too, making it very easy for punters to pick their preferred pint! (Try saying that after two or three...)
The tasting notes can be downloaded from http://www.pintpicker.co.uk/assets/docs/whalebone_beerlist.pdf - quite a large file, around 3Mb. Looking through the list, the summery pale and golden ales predominate, but there's something in there for everyone, including some breweries that were new to us, as well as some old favourites.
The Festival runs from 5th - 14th June giving us plenty of time to sample a good range from across the length and breadth of the land.
Update: the programmes arrived late from the printers on Friday (around 4pm in fact) and were printed in b/w instead of colour but they still looked pretty good. Beer of the Festival for me was Rooster's Elderflower (3.9%): "Light and florally hoppy over a crunchy biscuit base. Sweetish at the start fading to an astringent dry finish. Tasty and impressive for a 3.9" I gave it 9/10. Also worthy of mention, scoring 8/10, were Blue Monkey Gold (aka Evolution) (4.3%): "Vegetally hoppy with citrus fruitiness"; Dartmoor IPA (4.5%): Deep golden, refreshing with some citrus and good hoppiness"; Wizard Lundy Gold (4.1%): "Florally, biscuity and refreshingly light" and Ascot Alligator Ale (4.6%): "Sweet upfront with hedgerow and spicy hops and light orchard fruits - oranges, pears and apricots".
