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Glastonbury beer
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June 21st, 2010Beer Reviews, CommentJust what beer do you take to a summer music festival?
With Glastonbury only a few days away there’s a big supermarket trip around the corner to stock up on all the liquid lunches we’ll be needing over the 5 days we spend wallowing in mud, Carlsberg cans and the reverberation of thumping speakers.
But what is the perfect festival beer?
What's the perfect festival beer?
At Glastonbury you can take what you want. Unlike other festivals, once you’re in, you’re in, and you may freely waltz around with your chosen tipple without fear of eviction. Last year one chap had 3 cans of Stella strapped to each limb with duck tape. He was never without a beer.
The perfect drink has to be light. Multiple car trips are not good so you need to be able to pack it in a rucksack, pop it under your arm or balance it on your head for the long walk from car park to chosen pitching ground.
The perfect drink has to be refreshing. If the sun comes out it needs to revive; if the mud rises up it needs to make you feel fighting fit to grapple through the bodies and lost wellies.
This enigmatic tipple mustn’t be too strong. No-one wants to miss the single unmissable act of the day, not drink too much and earn themselves an early retirement to the tent. You want to be up from 11am until 4am, with perhaps a mid afternoon nap in a quiet folk tent near the tippees.
You need to be able to drink all day and never feel under the weather.
And this magic beer (or other alternative beverage) must be passable, nay even enjoyable when warm. In a perfect world it will chill quickly too and never warm up, if nature or some fancy technology (aka cool box) gives you the opportunity.
We could try lager. Widely available in lightweight cans of various strengths. It’s refreshing when hot which ticks an important box, but crucially though, it’s a bit rubbish when not ice cold.
So in case of warm conditions perhaps we should take some ale. Bottled conditioned is an absolute no-no, and even simply bottles are a bad idea. Stone’s Bitter or Tanglefoot anyone? A choice between garish orange or red, unless you want to risk Smoothflow, of course.
Then there’s the alternative solution, cider. Before you conjure images of vagrants and teenagers on a park bench, just remember the criteria.
Lightweight.
Not too strong.
Easy to carry.
Drinkable warm.
Suddenly Strongbow seems more appealing than ever…
Tags: Ale, beer, Cider, festival, glastonbury, lager, summer
The usually quiet fields of Pilton in Somerset are normally full of cows and green, green grass. But for a few days they'll be home to us and 140,000 other revellers (as the meeja like to call festival folk).
9 responses to “Glastonbury beer” 
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I have the same problem. We’re getting the coach, so it’s even worse … no car to throw beer in the boot of.
Thinking about using the Thursday to do a supermarket trip using the bus service into Glasto town centre. Apparently it runs through out the day and costs £3. Might even use it get some BBQ stuff in for the Thursday evening.
I posted a blog about Glasto today too: http://beerbirrabier.blogspot.com/2010/06/glastonbury-festivale.html
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Nice suggestion from the Baron! I’d be tempted by Firsty Ferret or something from the Cains canned beers. There’s alos GK IPA?!
Make sure you meet up with Chunk from Beer Birra Bier when you are down there!
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FletchtheMonkey June 22nd, 2010 at 06:55
Brakspear sounds like a great idea Barm, I’ve left it too late to get to B&M though (d’oh!).
Chunk, I’ll send you my number so we can grab a beer at Avalon!
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A friend of mine who goes there every year stops off at Roger Wilkins cider farm to stock up on industrial quantities of farmhouse cider to take to Glasto. Does have a Land Rover so plenty of room for it all.
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Good stuff. Where you planning on camping? It’s just the two of us, so we’re thinking of Pennards Hill.
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Brakespear and tanglefoot are good shouts.
either that or go get some beer in a box and take that – its not light but it would probably work ;op
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My local nectar is Ringwood Best, which can be purchased from the Brewery shop in containers holding 4, 8, 18, 36 or 72 pints or any combination there-of. Strikes me that a box holding a plastic bag + tap of 36 pints (in reality it’s more like 40 pints) fits the bill perfectl at 3.8%.
I prefer the taste of the lighter brew Boondoggle, but the Best will measure up better to the ‘warm’ on the list of criteria provided.
If you’re travelling to Glastonbury from the South or South East and travelling along the M3 then A303, then a detour to the end of the M3 and a journey along the M27 and then A31 instead will not be too far out of your way, and will take you within about a mile of the Brewery and its shop…
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FletchtheMonkey Reply:
June 22nd, 2010 at 12:41 pm@Tim Royds, Cheers Tim, we’re coming from Yorkshire via Oxfordshire (stopping with my folks tonight). We have a motorway/shortcut route developed after a local showed us some tricks of the road last year!
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mark u can get tribute ale in cans now, think they might only be available daaan saaf tho ;o(
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Name: Mark
Web Site: http://twitter.com/fletchthemonkey
Bio: Mark is better known as @fletchthemonkey and started writing about beer in 2009. Mark is editor of Real Ale Reviews and blogs at beeralewhatever.co.uk. When not content with spending all day on the internet working for a digital marketing agency, Mark waxes lyrical at digitalmediamonkey.co.uk and types up match reports for Leeds Guide magazine.
Baron Orm June 21st, 2010 at 22:16