Too busy to Blog.

I have just been too busy, and too tired, to put a blog together for a while. I have been working at the CAMRA Beer Festival at Holy Trinity Church in Hull and it has been a 1030 to 2330 day. and thirteen hours straight on my feet which takes it out of you at the best of times. The beer festival makes a lot of money for the church and certainly drags many more in that would enter on a normal day. It is a beautiful church too and is well worth a visit. It has just been granted Minster Status as an up grade from a Parish Church, all be it the largest in the country. We have also just had a lady Bishop appointed who takes up her duties in June I think.

Holy Trinity has big plans to bring what the church offers up to date in terms of the building. They have a £4.5 million plan to open up the body of the church so that event like a beer festival, concerts etc can be more easily staged. I'm not sure what certain groups will make of having the pews moved and  having readily repositioned seating in their place. I think they are to be recycled else where in the building though. There is to be a cafe etc and the square outside the front of the building is to have the wall knocked down and the surfacing to be unified to have a open plan area for events too. The whole is need to be completed for the Year of Culture 2017 so that it can be a fantastic venue for many of the events that will happen then. Something everyday of the year has been planned.

What the western aspect of Holy Trinity may look like in the future.

In past years they have run out of beer at the festival on the Friday. One of the drawbacks of holding it in a Church is that you can't hold it on a Sunday so it runs from Thursday to Saturday. This year they put on 15% more beer and still it was just about all gone by 1700 on Saturday with three house still to run. I had been working on the gravity bar. Hand pulls are used fro beers up to 4.1% alcohol and served by gravity over that.

Only one beer out of twelve still going strong at 1600 on Saturday.

Not many left in the other sections either.

I was quite surprised at how many young ladies came along. They wanted to try the lighter or fruit beers at first but these ran out soon into the second day. However I was able to point them in the direction of several beers that were light and fruity from the hop content rather than added fruit. I could then get them trying a mild with nutty tastes and I enjoyed getting people to try something different. We did gets those that just wanted the strongest one there, but not many. We didn't have any trouble at all so maybe that is another side effect of holding it in a church. I was also slightly surprised at how many people liked the porters and stouts. I think I would put more light and fruity beers on as after all we are trying to encourage younger drinkers, more open to persuasion, to try real ale and they are a good entry, plus we are always looking for the ladies to convert to beer too.

We are off back to the boat later today. I haven't even had time to check out my appearances on the local Look North news. My Mum tells me she saw me three times, serving ale in the background and not being interviewed. I was also filmed by the local TV channel Estuary TV. They did film me in close-up assembling the bar at one stage but whether it was aired I know not. Oh well my five minutes of fame is over and it is back down the the weed hatch for me now.