The Top Floor Flat

In the ongoing quest to experience as much of London as possible in the name of event reviews (i.e. for free) I am always excited when I get press tickets from Spoonfed or complimentary tickets for no particular reason at all – as was the case when some random promoter handed me three tickets to Beer Exposed while I was on the tube to work earlier last week. Last night, Sarah and Steve (my now married dancing friends couple – congratulations to the two of them! Although it does make me feel a bit old to have friends who are married couples. I digress.) and I headed off to Beer Exposed at the Business Design Centre in Islington to see what this whole thing was about.

Well, as no one was really surprised to discover, it was about getting drunk. We made a solid effort to treat the event like the beer coineseur’s paradise that it was supposed to be – we took the small sample cups of international beers, read the brochures about what food to pair with which color of ale, got experimental with some fruit (raspberry and strawberry), savoury (coffee and chocolate) and vegetable (carrot and pumpkin) beers which was actually quite enjoyable, but in the end, it was lots of happy inebriated people.

Our two favourites had to be the champagne beer which is made with champagne yeast so as to have the consistency and flavour of champagne (courtesy of Kasteel Cru brewing company) and the raspberry beer (provided by the Brouwerij De Halve Maan group and, apparently, the Flanders and Belgium tourist board). After I had a few drinks in me, I got somewhat patriotically excited by the American brewing companies present which led to this photographic gem (thank you Sierra Nevada Pale Ale):

In addition to Sierra Nevada, some of the other American breweries present included Budwieser, Brookyn Brewers and Blue Moon - which I seem to remember being an on-tap favourite at the Colby pub. Yes, that's Steve in the background.

Also unsurprisingly, it was an incredibly friendly crowd. The patrons were happy, the distributors were happy, everyone was smiling and having a great time. Without a doubt, that event solicited the most interaction between strangers I’ve seen yet in London. It could be their new slogan for next year: “Sick of avoiding eye contact on the tube? Come to Beer Exposed where everyone is your friend whether you know them or not.” I meet a lovely promoter from Ireland who explained to me what the “quintessential British beer” was (she was less than flattering, Brits); an American guy doing a graduate program here who wants to get involved with Spoonfed, another promoter who also got really excited about Spoonfed and will be following up to do some writing with us, and a distributor’s housemate who got dragged along to the event – who gave me probably more free bottles of the beer to take home than he would have had he been working for the company himself and I think asked me out next Thursday.

Overall it was a lot of fun. I don’t know if I would have paid the 14 quid entry, although had I thought about it, since my ticket was free I should have signed up for one of the workshops where they teach you how to pair chocolate or other foods with different beers (with samples) for the extra fiver. It was the first one of these events and I think they’re looking to make it an annual thing. Definitely the most important change for next year would be to get more food at the event next year – the occasional cracker at one or two of the booths was definitely not enough.

Which meant that, after we left, Steve, Sarah and I poured ourselves into the first pizza place we saw. Sorry British kebab shops… we just wanted our drunk pizza.