Good Time in Bedford

I took the long bus ride to Bedford - it was about an hour and 15 minutes. There was a quicker express bus, which I wound up taking home, but my monthly bus pass is only good on the long route. The parts of town I saw were an interesting mix of old historic looking buildings, and new looking shopping and retail sections. It was very crowded too, lots of people walking around the streets. Street vendors were very popular, there was a fairly large farmer's market, as well as food carts and also just generic merchandise for sale too.

Eventually I found the Corn Exchange building where the festival was being held. I walked in around 1pm, and it was already packed. There were at least two levels of seating, so they did a good job of keeping where you ordered beer accessible. They were selling half pint and full pint glasses for 2£. If you didn't want to keep it, you could just return it for a refund after you were done. I kept mine because, well I don't have any pint glasses here.

I was immediately impressed by the organization. As the fest had been going on since Wednesday, not all the advertised beers were still available. They had a printout, in alphabetical or ABV order, of everything that was still available when they opened. The sheet also said what style the beer was, and had a 1-4 number of how much was left. The casks were ordered alphabetically, which made finding what you wanted very easy. In addition, each cask had clearly marked on it what the beer was, what the abv was, and how much a pint and half pint would cost. Most of them were about 1.5£ for a half, and 3 £ for a full.

I think my favorite of the afternoon was probably the Potbelly Beijing Black mild. I found overall that I enjoyed the dark milds, porters and stouts much more than any of the bitters or lighter (color) beers. It is also tricky because some beers are called IPA, but they are 4% abv, and technically they are classified as bitters.

I did wind up stopping by a pub recommended by a guy at the fest for Belgian beers - The Wellington Arms. They had a ton of hand pumps available - 16 I think and a nice cooler of European and Belgian bottles. I wound up with a De Graal Dubble that was very tasty.

I'm glad I took the time to venture to Bedford, it was an enjoyable time.

9-10-10 Bedford Beer Festival

Picasa is being funny this morning, so I'll go through and caption these pictures later.