The Championship
Monday 1 August 2022
SUFC 2022/23 Game #1
Hello. Remember me? Phil. I write a Blog about BALL games and SUPping beer. Mainly Football. Often Cricket. Recently Baseball (WTF?). Anyway, you haven't heard from me in ages. Mainly because I've been at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. Where the Supping was tremendous. But, where we were Ball-Less.
That meant I have missed ALL of the pre-season United games, including Academy games. So, here we are with Game #1. Watford away. Which, you may also recall was fucking ages ago. The excuse this time is because the Supping has been for the rest of the week at the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), Great British Beer Festival. At which, I met Eric, Beer Festival Organiser for the South East London branch of CAMRA. Eric is a Millwall season ticket holder. He's given me his card & insisted I phone him when The Blades go to The 'wall so we can go for a beer. Now, that's clearly a fucking ambush. I'm recruiting a Firm, details in my Bio.
In case you've never heard of/been to the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF), it's a long running, very well run, annual operation at Olympia in London. Like the rest of fucking everything, the GBBF has lost a few years to Covid. Olympia is undergoing some serious renovation. I couldn't work out what they were doing, apart from digging everything up outside, leaving the original facade intact. Obvs, the main bit of Olympia will be listed & untouchable anyway.
The Carrier Bag Firm were repping Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. Overall, it felt less busy than I remember it pre-Covid. But, certainly not empty. There was one bar dedicated to German & Czech kegs. One dedicated to international bottle & tins. One bar was British KeyKeg. There were smaller individual brewery bars (Bradfield Brewery being one) - mixing Cask & Keg. Although, it looked Keg only at Wild Beer. A Cider bar. And then bar top, after bar top serving handpulled, cask, British Real Ale. Whoop yer whoops.
The "coup" that CAMRA had pulled this time around was to persuade a variety of American Breweries to prepare "one off" cask (as opposed to gassy keg) versions of their beers & ship them over. Those were all dispensed Gravity, straight out of the casks on the Statue Of Liberty Bar.
However, having just returned from Oregon, where very few IPAs come in South of Six n Half, the CBF were craving, craving I say, believable abv, British REAL ALE. So, we restricted ourselves to;
Small Change Brewing Company (Somerville MA), Push The Sky Away, New England Hazy IPA via Gravity at (sighs) 6.5%
We relented on that one because it won the Michael Jackson (no, not that one) award for Best USA Cask Beer. Hopped as Citra, El Dorado & Mosaic. Thick & juicy (as expected).
We were also able to hunt down a (free) taster of;
Anspach & Hobday, The Porter, on Cask at 6.7%.
The story there is that's the ONLY Cask of that (widely available on Keg) beer ever made. Indeed, it may be the only cask of it ever made. The CBF are MUGS for owt like that.
However. We're nervous. Could it really be true. Or were our palates pissing us about. Because, my Outstanding Beer Of The Festival was actually the first one I had. Difficult, maybe we were just Craving Cask. Anyhoo.
Goose Eye Brewery (Keighley), Spring Wells, Pale Ale on Cask at, trumpet fanfare & bunting, 3.6%
Mainly Citra Hops. With the bitterness growing nice & steadily.
During those three day trips to GBBF, we had plenty of time to rake over the Watford game. Many of you will have formed your own rakes. At this point, I'm not prepared to be negative about where we might be going & how it might unfold. But, it's much easier to be negative about the night. One of my companions struggled to get off work. And didn't reach his seat next to me until thirty minutes in. Just before half time, I said to him;
"I'm in no way blaming you. But, since you've come, Norwood hasn't been in the game at all"
And, it could have been Fleck, Berge or Jebbison!!
We just couldn't get anything going. Very rarely any sort of outlet. Clear it, let them recycle, here they come. We were sort of overrun. But, Watford didn't create a whole lot in front of goal either. We could have come away with a somewhat undeserved point. Didn't.
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