GBBF Roundup

The beer arrives

Lots of Mikkeller

New World fridge!

Last week I volunteered at GBBF on the Bieres SansFrontieres international bottled beer bar. I could easily make another mammoth post as I have been wont to do recently, but to spare my readers the agony I'm just going to make a summary of my highlights and lowlights of the week and point you in the direction of some other good reads.

The Good

• All international beer arriving on time, set up and no breakages.
• Awesome tasting beers; especially Revelation Cat South Pacific Ale, Murray's Heart of Darkness and Baird Kurofune Porter
• Getting lager drinkers to try pale ale/IPA and people requesting fruit beer to try revelation cat Mad Walloper
• The variety of expressions of people trying Revelation Cat-3 year old Laphroaig Cask Boon Lambic
• Cask Meet the Brewer events, White Horse Flying Dog Cheese and Beer Pairing
• Making new friends, meeting old ones and the general positive attitude of everyone there

The Bad

• My wink ball video interview (warning large face alert!)
• Far too humid in the room
• Concrete floors and 12 hours on your feet 
• Not enough time to try all the beers I would have liked to
• End of an era at Earl's Court as it is to be demolished next year

Someone had too much Deus...

The Ugly

• People dropping glasses on purpose to get a cheer going
• Lack of sleep
• The amount of money it costs to travel a few stops on the underground!

BSF staff relax on Saturday night

All in all an amazing week and I'm already looking forward to GBBF's return to its spiritual home of Olympia. I hope all of you who went along had a good time (if you didn't go, why ever not?!) and I look forward to meeting more of you next year. No doubt I'll be working on New World beers again.

Here's what some other bloggers thought of the event:

Mark loved the Laphroaig lambic

Reluctant scooper loved the people and dressed in a ginger beard

Pete and Peter made a video blog

Ghost Drinker reviews some beer and the trade day

Tandelman also had achey feet 
Rabid Barfly had a busy week too
Hardknott Ann enjoyed some USA beers
The Beer Monkey tried all manner of beers! 
Whilst Phil only managed two from the UK!
The Beer Beauty missed out on some beers because she spent too much time talking ;) 
James tells us about all the beer he crammed in
Shea likes a pint of the dark stuff

If you were all there than how come most of you bugger's didn't come to say hi?! If anyone else has any blogs about GBBF they'd like to be linked here then post a comment below.