Category: Events, General, Uncategorized

On a Sunday afternoon in late October – the last sunny weekend of the year – a group of us are heading out to small-town Virginia to see a little piece of real America live in all it’s beer-loving glory. The Brewfest takes place on a grassy hillside in Virginia next to a firing range (as if we needed any more reminding that we’re out in the boondocks). The area slopes down to a stage where a band are playing covers of hard rock songs to a comically reduced audience of a couple of frolicking kids and a dude in a chair. At the top of the slope, there are four rows of stands, selling beer, grilled food and beer-related merchandise (you know, the cheesy beer t-shirts with “amusing” aphorisms like “I’m not an alcoholic I’m a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings”).

The Living Social deal entitles us to a reduced admission fee and a small, slender beer glass each. The idea behind the festival is that various breweries from around the region have come to showcase their brews. You buy a fistful of one-dollar tokens and wonder around the circuit with your sampling glass. When you see something that interests you, you hand over a token and they fill up you glass. Some of the breweries are well known brands, while others are clearly small-scale operations. Most offering a choice of two brews, usually an IPA and an amber. There’s definitely a trend among breweries for having eccentric names: “Flying Dog”, “Magic Hat”, “Lost Rhino”, “Mad Fox”. It’s pleasant enough wiling away the afternoon strolling from stall to stall, getting venerably sozzled and chatting to the folks manning the pumps. As is often the case, the people take kindly to my foppishly British accent and, late into the afternoon when my speech has started to slur, and my gait to stagger, I meet two anglophile guys from the Cottrell brewery who are promoting their old Yankee ale. They take a liking to me and my companions (one of whom is actually American but is pretending, fairly unconvincingly, to be Australian) and start refilling our glasses for free. So we stay there for a while, knocking back beer after beer while they tell us about the origin of the term I.P.A. – India Pale Ale. Apparently it dates back to the days of the British Raj when drinking water would have to be stored on ships for the long journey between England and the colonies of the Indian sub-continent. Hops would continually be added to the containers of water as a preservative until, some time into the voyage, the mixture would have fermented into a bitter, hoppy brew. On later reflection, this story seems dubious but at the time, on that hillside, as I let myself slide into delicious inebriation, it seems to me a pleasingly apposite yarn.

About the Author: lianecar