There’s something special about going to a rock concert. Sure you can listen to your favourite music at home or on your iPod while sitting on the train on the way to work but it’s a totally different feeling being there live, in a stadium surrounded by people who dig what you dig as you literally feel the music pulsating around you.

The same, I would argue, can be said for beer.

(Stick with me here, OK).

A Syrian mercenary drinking beer in the company of his Egyptian wife and child, c. 1350 BC. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

We all know beer is the most sociable drink on the planet, designed to be drunk in the company of others. From the early Egyptians who drank their beers through straws from clay jugs to the modern-day pub we’ve always found pleasure in gathering and chatting with a beer in our hand.

Don’t get me wrong; sitting at home drinking a beer can, if the moment is just perfect, be a wonderful experience. For me though it’s a rare one.

Almost without exception my most memorable beer experiences have been shared in the company of others. Being with someone as you take that first sip of an amazing beer – or perhaps the most disgusting one you’ve ever had – only heightens your emotions. Sharing these moments with someone else is like making a back-up of them to an external hard-drive, enabling you and whoever was with you to replay it again (and again), often years later.

Like a rock concert (Ed Note: finally, he’s back on track!) beer festivals give you a chance to experience beer ‘live’, surrounded by people who share your curiosity and passion. Who dig what you dig, as it were.

Which is why I was so happy to hear the news about Allt Om Öl Festivalen, a brand new outdoor beer festival taking place at Gamla Tullgatan in Eskilstuna between 17-18^th June.

Allt Om Öl Festivalen is the brainchild of fellow blogger and hardened beer veteran Pelle Strid (whose excellent blog shares the same name) and promises to offer festival-goers an exciting line-up of over 100 beers from Sweden and abroad as well as an exciting programme of supporting sessions and events such as a mini Beer Makers Dinner, Beer School and Beer and Cheese matching.

Tickets for this event can be purchased online through Ticnet and cost 170 SEK for a one day pass (including a tasting glass) or 275 SEK (with glass) for a two-day pass. Once inside beer samples can be purchased using ‘beer vouchers’ purchased from festival staff.

Check out Allt Om Öl Festivalen’s website for full details and dip into their Facebook page for more regular updates.

I’ll be there on the Friday to do a spot of judging but mostly just to walk around and chat to people with a great beer in my hand, making beery back-ups as I go.

I hope to see loads of you there!

(ps: If you want some tips on how to survive a beer festival check this out. It’s an old post but my advice is still largely valid )

Yesterday I attended a beer festival here in the UK and ticked off half of all the beers being poured up that day. And not any of those lightweight sample measures either. I drank all the beers I tried in pint glasses.

The miniest mini beer festival I've ever been to.

Sounds impressive until I (somewhat reluctantly) add that the festival in question was the Whitstable Labour Club Mini Beer Festival in which the total number of cask beers tapped and spiled this sunny Easter weekend was four.

That’s right. Four.

I had narrowly missed out on the Planet Thanet Beer Festival (with a list of beers and ciders running into hundreds) due to domestic insistence that I should go sightseeing on holiday rather than spend my vacation drinking beer in tents with fellow beer geeks.

So when I saw the chalkboard outside the town’s labour club yesterday promoting their mini-beer festival I jumped at the chance. I may have been deprived of one festival but there was no way I was going to miss two back-to-back!

I stepped in the labour club with more than a small measure of trepidation. After all, I’m about as politically active as a Buddhist monk and if the people supping pints inside had found out I once voted for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party* I’d have been thrown out on my ear faster than Tony Blair could say ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

I scanned the room. Pictures of past Labour prime minsters on the wall – check. Groups of pensioners staring me up and down and muttering “looks like a Tory boy to me” – check. Stained carpet that clearly hasn’t been washed since Harold Wilson was in power – check.

But where, I wondered to myself, was the festival?

Brings a whole new meaning to the term ice beer.

“Oh, that’s around the back. But you better be quick because the casks could explode any minute” said the friendly barmaid.

I quickly pushed my way through my fellow beery comrades and there, in the back room I laid eyes on a man who, if CAMRA was ever to award a medal of valour for courage in the face of exploding beer casks, would surely have pinned it proudly to his chest.

Bill (or Bob, or maybe it was Bert) was a blur of motion as he ran up and down the wooden rack that held four casks of real ale desperately trying to keep them cool as the Easter heatwave drove the temperature up into the high 70s.

Bill (I think) with his biggest fan.

With an equal measure of desperation and cunning he’d filled plastic bags with ice raided from behind the bar and draped them over each cask in a frantic effort to stop them cooking.

And by some miracle Bill pulled it off, serving up pints of tangy frothy real ale from two Kentish breweries that made my excursion to the centre left of beer drinking thoroughly worth it.

First up was a pint of Gadds No 5, a decent English bitter brewed with East Kent Goldings and Fuggles (does it get any more classic than that?) that was fruity, nutty and had maybe a little too much butterscotch to make it as thirst-quenching as I’d have liked.

Back to Bill and this time it was a pint of Turbulent Priest ( a reference to the line supposedly spoken by King Henry II when complaining about Thomas Becket: ”Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”) from Wantsum Brewery in the nearby city of Canterbury which had the sort of towering frothy head on it you normally only get if you blow through a straw into a glass of milk.

At 4.4% ABV this bitter was bursting with blackcurrants as though someone had spiked it with Ribena. It reminded me of the fruity Bramling Cross hop, although neither Bill nor Ratebeer could actually confirm for me what hops are in it.

I was contemplating going all in and drinking the other two beers at the festival but with the ice rapidly melting and Bill understandably beginning to flag a little I decided to finish my pint and leave the Labour Club.

I passed the time as I wandered home giving serious thought to switching my political allegiances. After all, if a man so dedicated to beer as Bill was to ever stand for election he could count on my vote any day of the week.

* It was 1992 and I was already bored senseless with Tory Prime Minister John Major.

Fancy the idea of travelling to Germany’s oldest beer festival and clunking steins with over 1 million drinking buddies? Then read on.

Eskilstuna Ölkultur is organising a six-day trip to the Erlan­ger Bergkirchweih festival this June and as of writing there are just 10 places left if you want to join them.

The beer flows late into the night at the Bergkirchweih beer festival!

Erlan­ger Bergkirchweih has been celebrated for over 250 years ever since the famous Franconian brewing city (which exports more beer than Munich and Klumbach) started storing beers in the cool cellars of Erlanger Castle.

Today it’s a 12-day long knees-up and along with litres of beer festival-goers can also sample a wide selection of Franconian dishes such as fried sausages or the popular Breze (pretzel).

Eskilstuna Ölkultur’s trip runs from 15^th-20^th June and includes a return bus trip from Eskilstuna to Erlang, five nights hotel accommodation, a day-trip to nearby Bamberg to try some of their famous smoked beers and, most importantly, good company and life-long memories.

The cost? For a single room it’s 4,900SEK and for a double 5,900SEK. For more details or to book one of the last remaining places contact Elisabeth Hoffman on 070 340 2652 or mail her at Elisabeth@marknadsforing.eskilstuna.se

Prost!

Like all good things you have to wait – but at last the beer many of you helped design is a step closer to making its way over here to Sweden.

Word has just reached BSHQ that ‘Hello, My Name is Ingrid’ has finished fermenting and is currently being dry hopped. Twice! This is a process that takes a total of 10 days and is explained by BrewDog’s Head of Stuff James Watt in some detail in this video (fast forward to around 4 minutes in).

We Salute You Ingrid! BrewDog James with a glass of our collab brew which is currently being dry hopped.

We’re now moving onto the packaging stage, deciding what type of bottle Ingrid’s going into and designing the label. I’ve received loads of emails from you asking exactly when Ingrid is coming to Sweden, how you can get hold of ‘her’ and for how much. We’re working hard to iron out all the details but I hope to have some answers for you in the next week or so.

Health Warning: Ingrid tastes so good in isolated cases it can turn your eyes red.

As a veteran of dozens of beer festivals and with the Örebro fest only a few weeks away I thought it might be useful to give you a quick 10-step guide on how to survive your next beer-athon.

1)      The secret to a successful festival is planning. As Benjie Franklin once said, “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. To be fair he was probably talking about national politics and not beer – but he still had a good point. What to do want to get out of your festival? Do you want to scoop some new beers, spend some one-on-one time with your favourite brewers or simply drink as much as you can before they shut the hall? Plan accordingly – visit the festival’s website to get a list of the exhibitors and beers available. Make a list of the ones you really want to try and stick to it!

2)      Before you get to the festival eat something. Drinking beer all day after a spinning session and a light salad isn’t going to cut it people. You’re more likely to go down faster than Zlatan in the penalty box. If you’re going to a beer festival you’re probably not that bothered about carbs – so line your stomach with stodgy foods like pasta, burgers or palt. But not all of them at once, otherwise you won’t have any room for the beer.

3)      Don’t – I repeat don’t – start drinking before you get to the festival. There’s often literally hundreds of beers to try inside so don’t be tempted to kick things off early. Festival organisers place a lot of emphasis (and money) on health and safety and if you turn up drunk there will probably be a guy looking like a condom full of walnuts (often called Johan) who will spin you around and send you on your way.

4)      Never drive to or from a festival. Check out public transport links or get a group of friends together and share a cab. Remember that things get pretty crazy at closing time so it’s always best to get in early and leave an hour before lock-down.

5)      If you have specific questions about a particular beer and want to have quality conversations with the good people working behind the stands get to the show early. After a couple of hours it will get more crowded than a Systembolaget store on a Friday afternoon and you won’t be able to hear a word.

6)      Don’t come to the show wearing a t-shirt that looks like this, or anything else remotely like it. If I’m there and working behind a stand I won’t serve you. I promise.

7)      Protect your official festival glass as though your liver depended on it. It’s the only thing exhibitors are supposed to pour beer into. Without it you’re about as useful as a one-legged ice hockey player.

8)      Drink water – and don’t give me any crap about beer being 96% water. It doesn’t wash with me. Alcohol is dehydrating, so when you’re rinsing your glass out between beers take a quick swig of water.

9)      Don’t get fooled by the small sample measures you’re trying – they all add up! At most fests you can try a 20cl sample or pay a bit more for a large measure (around 40cl). If you try 20 samples that’s 4 litres of (often) high octane beer with ABVs that could stop a grown elk in its tracks. Pace yourself!

10)  Most importantly enjoy yourself! Beer festivals are great place to experience new beers and meet fun people. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to the girls and guys working the stands – that’s the reason they’re there and they really like nothing better in life than to talk beer with you.