Hopfest - a celebration of beer and hops

The following is a diary of the three days my Dad and I spent engaging in Hopfest celebrations organised by the Dark Star brewery. To read up a bit more on their pubs and beers check out their website - darkstarbrewing.co.uk

Friday

My beery weekend began in one of the most unlikely of places, the old nightclub where I misspent much of my late teens and early twenties. The Gloucester as it was known then is located at the entrance to the North Laines and was little more than a purveyor of cheap booze and mostly lousy music. One would never recognise it now that it has undergone this amazing transformation into the North Laine Brewery. The boards off the windows flood the former dance area with light, the soundproofing ripped off the wall to reveal an attractive brick finish and the sticky carpet replaced with a clean wooden floor. Behind the bar is the brewery and a line of gleaming fermenting vessels stand over the staff as they serve pints of quality product to an already quite busy bar for a Friday afternoon. It's bloody sickening I tell you. I moved out of Brighton just over a year ago and in that time 3 new craft beer pubs have sprung up. Three! And one of those has had time to complete a move to bigger premises in that time! My Dad is waiting for me with a pint of Harvest Ale by W.J.King. So new is this place that they haven't got any of their own brew on yet. We finish our pints fairly quickly, uneventful and unremarkable as they were, and move on. This weekend is all about one brewery for me and I'm so particular about their beers that there's only one place to drink them in Brighton.

On the way however whilst walking down Gloucester Street, where my Nan lived as a child, curiosity gets the better of me and we nip into The Brewery Tap. This has always been a trendy something bar in my memory; either coffee, wine and now it would appear beer. A stainless steel wall behind the bar is adorned with a row of about 15 or so taps with an admittedly impressive selection of beers. It's boring in here though, and cold and dead. I could sit here and read the paper and enjoy a great drink, or bring someone out to talk business over an IPA perhaps, but socially this place lacks vibe. I ask for something local. The best they can muster is a wheat beer from Dover or somewhere. It's a lovely drink, I enjoy it, but I'm not hanging round for another. My Dad has an American IPA which he later complains tasted all kinds of wrong. Very particular about his IPAs is my Dad.

We meander our way up through the North Laine area and cross Queens Road to my old stomping ground of Surrey Street and our destination: The Evening Star. The Dark Star Brewery started life in the cellar here and it is indeed this pub, run by Matt and Karen, that is responsible for my love affair with Dark Star beers. I am yet to discover a brewery that brews such a variety of beers so well, yet manages to make each one as individual as they do. We're here because this weekend is Hopfest, a celebration of the hop harvest and the tapping of Dark Star's Green Hop IPA.

My Dad sticks to his guns and has a Hoxted IPA by Brodies which he sips at whilst I devour a pint of Hophead, their incredibly quaffable flagship beer. It's also one of their weakest which is handy. Next I level up to a pint of Original. The Green Hop is waiting in the cellar below, ready to make its debut at 7:00pm. My Dad decides he's going to head off home, not really feeling it today. I know the feeling, sometimes beer gets a bit heavy on the stomach but I'm sticking it out for the night. The Green Hop awaits its debut in the cellar.

Tapping the Green Hop IPA was entirely uneventful. The barman Chris writes it up on the board, the pump clip goes on and the pints begin to flow. It's strong at 6.5 but has a gorgeous aroma and encompasses everything you could love about the flavour of hops in a pint. That said I find it very heavy going and I have to nurse mine somewhat and even take a break afterwards. I hang about awkwardly outside and light a crafty cigarette, my guilty pleasure reserved for drinking nights out in Brighton. The pub has filled up as it always does on a Friday and some familiar faces begin to turn up. I content myself with some people watching for half an hour or so, I'm fairly sure the guy next to me is talking about dungeons and dragons to his mate which provides me with some amusement. Finally my friend Drew arrives and orders a pint of Green Hop and I get back on it with a pint of Camden Ales Hells Lager. My stomach is full of enough ale for one day so I needed something lighter. One more pint of Camden for the road and I head off to grab a taxi to my parents where I shall be staying for the evening.

Saturday

Well, I've had better mornings. However, I've survived the night and it's on with the show, although it would be wise to lessen consumption somewhat today I feel. We have a very slow and phased getting up and walk down to the Steine to catch a bus to Partridge Green. All the busses are delayed and the times are all messed up. This is due to a parade that happened earlier in the day in which recovered addicts celebrated their freedom from drugs by walking along some of the city's major transport routes. Classic Brighton! The stagecoach bus rattles its way up into West Sussex, through Henfield, and eventually to Partridge Green. It stops right outside The Partridge Pub, the most recently acquired Dark Star pub, being so close to the brewery now it has become the official brewery tap. I'm delighted to see an entirely different line up of Dark Star beers to those on at the Star, however I'm not yet ready to jump straight into another rich dark ale yet. My Dad goes for a pint of Winter Meltdown and we wander out the back past the turning hog roast (yep! Hog roast!) to a sunny beer garden. Once he's finished that we head off to the brewery which is no more than a 15 minute walk down the road.

I've visited the brewery a few times before but never made it past the shop to buy a few pints of cheap beer in takeout bottles. Today however the doors at the back of the shop are wide open and we saunter straight into a busy room already in the full swing of Hopfest. To our left huge tuns and fermenting tanks tower over us, to our right bags of malt are stacked on pallets and the whole place is filled with that lovely brewery aroma. A small bar is in operation and a rack of 10 barrels is being manned with a barman dosing out free tasters of about a 3rd of a pint each of some of the various Dark Star beers. I go up for some Festival to carry around as we explore whilst my Dad tries his first taste of Green Hop IPA, despite the advice from the bar man who clearly feels he should be starting at the bottom and working up to the stronger beers. The atmosphere is lively and friendly and everyone is wandering around chatting to each other. Dark Star have this odd relationship with cycling and occasionally organise "Spin up in a brewery" events here, where cyclists are invited to ride out to the brewery to drink beer, watch a couple of bands and attempt to make their way home afterwards. Today the cyclists are again out in force and much of the crowd are sporting the Dark Star cycling merchandise. There’s something about a brewery logo stretched over a toned physique that seems odd to me. Fortunately, we appear to have just missed a display of morris dancing as the morris dancers are still at the brewery and appear to be sober, their job done they can get down to business. It's great to see a brewery opened up like this, usually they are presented as secretive places, entirely out of bounds to anyone without a full outfit of safety gear on or unaccompanied on an exclusive tour of some kind. But this is completely different, completely open, with brewers rubbing shoulders with cyclists, cyclists mingling with CAMRA bellied drinkers and morris dancers strutting loudly and jangly amongst everyone.

At the far end of the room is a table with 5 different hop varieties to sample (as in pick up and smell and rub between your fingers) including some New Zealand and Australian ones that I haven’t come across before. They are definitely some of my favourite hops I've come across, really interesting, liquoricey, sweet smelling and sticky. I must get hold of some when I get round to doing some brewing of my own. Also there’s a handy fact sheet on choosing the right variety of British hops for a beer which I nab a copy of. We don't hang around too long, keen as we are to make it back to the pub and get a taxi booked for later in the evening (travel between country villages is never easy), so we have one last quick nerdy gander at the brewing gear itself before heading out via the shop. I stop to buy 2 bottles of Southern Conspiracy, disappointed that they've run out of Kiwi.

Somehow the morris dancers have beaten us back to the pub and I call out loudly for 2 pints of Partridge so as to be heard over their leg bells. We find ourselves a couple of comfy seats and settle in to our pints that we nurse for a good long time. Partridge is such a great session ale and is delicious down to the last drop in the glass. We're sat in a room called The Hop Barn, a large function room sized area of the pub with hops draped from the ceiling and the names of a few hop varieties painted in gold up on the walls. The blackboard advertises a few of the upcoming pub events (quizzes and such) and boasts of an impressive list of local food suppliers, this is a great pub. We're lucky to have found these seats as Dark Star's very own double decker bus pulls up outside and the pub quickly fills up. Our smugness quickly fades however when the table next to us fills up with morris dancers. It's not long before the inevitable. An accordion appears and so begins a drunken impromptu set of reels and hornpipes. I have no objection to a couple of folk tunes played well, and these are played very well indeed, but I know exactly where this will lead. Sure enough once the accordion player stops for a rest they begin bellowing out the full unabridged version of What Shall we do With the Drunken Sailor at full volume so the whole pub can hear. Finally, the hog roast is ready and everyone goes up for some, we tuck into a bap with some fries and coleslaw washed down with a fresh pint of Partridge. The morris dancers appear to be taking it in shifts so they can eat theirs whilst still pumping out classic drunken hits such as Let Me Go Home which seems to last for about half an hour. Eventually we can take no more and are forced out of the Hop Barn and into the main bar area where a magician is wandering round doing some close up magic. We hang out here until our taxi arrives and we head back to my house for a relatively early night.

Sunday

We make our way back down to Brighton and start the day back off by heading to The Hand in Hand pub in Kemptown. The Hand is the perfect local pub, a true traditional Brightonian’s establishment and the brewery tap for the Kemptown Brewery, the oldest in Brighton which is situated next door. We're here to meet my Nan as my parents do every Sunday, tuck into a pint of Kemptown Brewery's Red Ale and engage in rich foodie discussion with some of the other regulars.

We jump in the car and head to the final destination on our Dark Star tour, The Duke of Wellington in Shoreham. This outpost of Dark Star always seems somehow the most out of reach to me and this is the first time I've visited it. I mean, technically the Partridge is far less accessible but with a great food menu and a car park they rock the country pub angle, and of course with being so close to the brewery it becomes more of an outing than a mere "pop to the pub". The Duke is a charming pub, clearly rescued and transformed into the warm and friendly place it has become. Stained glass windows surround the bar area and the bar itself dominates the centre of the room. The Duke has an excellent selection of ales including a fruit stout and a vanilla and chocolate stout that I am sorely tempted by, also neatly listed are a very good selection of ciders and the best list of lagers I've come across in a long time. I feel immediately at home and recognise a few of the faces from the brewery yesterday. I could do some very serious drinking in this pub. However, I need to be wrapping up my weekend sadly and stay only for the one pint of American Pale Ale. My Dad today has been taking one for the team and drinking bitter shandy so he can drive us, so after we've finished our pints he drives me back home via a favourite farm shop.

My weekend finishes in the comfort of my own living room enjoying a bottle of Southern Conspiracy. It's a 7% collaboration beer between Dark Star and The Bristol Beer Factory, aged in wine barrels and brewed with New Zealand hops, presumably some of the same I sampled at the brewery yesterday. It's utterly delicious.

It was a fantastic weekend and I feel lucky to have been able to take part in so much of it. I feel I’ve done my favourite brewery credit by enjoying their beers in five different surroundings – their brewery, The Evening Star, The Partridge, The Duke of Wellington and finally my own home. Although I'll have to spend a couple of weeks recovering from the amount of beer and stodgy meals I’ve had I'll make certain to use some of what I've learnt about good beer, brewed with good hops and washing down good food when I plan my own brews. Yep, that’s how I'm going justify three days of sheer gluttony - "research".