I’m back after having been locked out of the admin program for the Beer Blog for the first couple of weeks of this month, which was too bad because there was lots to tell about the Great British Beer Festival, which I attended during the first of those weeks. No matter, though, because I’ll get to all of that over the next several days (or you can pop over to World of Beer and check out some of my reports there).
One thing did strike me as I was perusing the many beers available at Bieres Sans Fontieres, the GBBF’s popular foreign beer bar — no Canadians. Not a one. Not even Unibroue, and they’re available almost everywhere, it seems.
Two of the bar sponsors were the Brewers Association of the U.S. and Budweiser Budvar of the Czech Republic, so it was no surprise to find many ales and lagers from those two nations available on cask, draught and in the bottle. But there were also beers from everywhere from Australia to Italy, Nigeria to Belarus, for crying out loud, so it did seem odd that there was not even one Canadian brew on offer.
That said, one of the stars of the fest for me was the crisp and lively Svetly Pivo from the Czech brewery Bernard. I’ve had this in the past from the bottle, but let me tell you, as a draught pilsner, it is very much deserving of all the accolades that have fallen its way of late.
(And no, I didn’t spend much time at Bieres Sans Frontieres. I was in London for cask-conditioned British beers, not American and Irish ones.)
