By Oliver Coningham
The third annual London Vegan Beer Fest moved from its previous location at The Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green last year to the Camden Centre in Kings Cross. The new location opposite the grandeur of St Pancras station was perhaps a clue towards the scale and vision of this years event. With suited security on the door it felt like entering a nightclub during the day; bags were searched and bottles of water discarded. Once through the entrance it was very welcoming with colourful bunting and dimmed lights.
Branded pint glasses and a beer checklist were handed out from volunteers with a smile and received with an even greater one!
There was a welcome return from previous festival favourites; Pitfield Brewery, Brass Castle, Stroud Brewery, Moncada Brewery, Clarkshaws and Hastings Beer Co. Each brewery brought enough of a beer range, including some new additions, to ensure their offering remained fresh for veteran attendees. The Redchurch Brewery and Partizan Brewing were new arrivals this year and increased the spectrum of beers available. Each brewery had set up as their own entity with appropriate signage, merchandise and styling. This made a refreshing change from the wall-to-wall casks at traditional beer festivals, creating a really engaging space.
It was interesting to note a diverse mixture of dispense types including cask, keg and bottles with cans popping up too. Hastings Beer Co’s Mosaic was particularly fresh tasting from the can and abundant with fruity flavours including peach, apricot and blueberry.
Pitfield Brewery and Brass Castle were an obvious attraction with constant queues and two of the latter brewery’s beers – Life’s a Beach and Bad Kitty – selling out quickly. LVBF has definitely embraced the craft beer movement with many of the breweries producing fantastic beers designed to excite the palate rather than conform to any notion of traditional beer. The inclusion of Partizan’s Raspberry and Lemon Saison or Brass Castle’s aforementioned pineapple and coconut wheat beer, Life’s a Beach, were testament to this. The influence of strong, bold flavours from the US could easily be found in a number of American-style pale ales. From the intensely fruity Mosaic cans from Hastings Beer Co. again to the pithy citrus and resinous pine in Redchurch’s Bethnal Pale.
The embrace of low-alcohol session beers was an inspired decision by several of the breweries. These provided light relief for those who had either started early or were planning on sampling as many of the different beers as possible. Stroud Brewery’s Light Weight was a great gateway beer into the festival. Light and fruity with plenty of bitterness and the wonderful mouthfeel you get from an unfined pint. A fantastic opener that would have only been improved by being slightly cooler. Moncada Brewery’s Notting Hill Summer was a wonderful find and at 3.2% was stacked full of sweet, fruity flavours with a pale malt backbone.
If you were following the #LVBF15 hashtag on Twitter you’ll probably be aware that the food offering needed vast improvement. We queued for over an hour and a half for our Italian burger with crunchy rosemary fries. The problem was not with the food itself, it was delicious, but the length of time taken to get it. There was only one person taking orders for a queue that was relentless throughout the event. Some more staff or volunteers would have easily reduced the issue and to their credit both Fat Gay Vegan and Ms Cupcake stepped in and began to distribute food down the line. Next year it would be great to see a wider selection of refreshments and perhaps open the food hall up to 2 or 3 vendors with plenty of support staff.
Performances throughout the afternoon and early evening were perfect for those moments where you wanted to sit and sip your drink while enjoying the atmosphere in the room. Full praise must be given to all the performers for their fantastic effort in playing to a hall full of beer drinkers whose attention may have been otherwise diverted. The short comedy slot by vegan Jake Yapp was also appreciated to offer some variation to the music. The volume of background music in between performances did get loud at some points. Some lighter acoustic sets would be welcome at future events especially if there was space in any of the other areas in the building.
The ‘Meet the Brewer’ sessions went down a storm, with Pitfield Brewery’s ‘Guess the Beer’ session being incredibly well received by all who attended it. Hopefully these will continue next year with an even fuller schedule of them running throughout the duration of the event. It offers a real opportunity for attendees to get closer to the people making the beer they love.
It is safe to say that the London Vegan Beer Fest has continued to be a huge success this year.
From the quaint, cafe gathering of last year, to a full blown beer festival with over double the capacity. The outside garden space was missed this year, but it needs to be held at the Camden Centre next year in order to overcome the few negative issues. With enough variation in the beers, food and entertainment there is more than enough to keep drawing the vegan (and non-vegan) beer lover back year after year. Personally, I would love to see it being held over two days as Saturday went too fast! It’s a fantastic achievement by Fat Gay Vegan and all those involved; the time and dedication taken to create the event must be applauded. I’m sure that future iterations of the event, like a vintage ale, will get better and better over years to come.
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