They Came, They Drank, And We Conquered…

by Dawn Hopkins.

The weekend of 27 – 29^th January saw the arrival of six professional Beer Writers to our Fine City – Susanna Forbes, James Forbes, Adrian Tierney-Jones, Jeff Evans, Tim Hampson and Darren Norbury. They were invited to spend the weekend sampling our pubs, drinking our beer, eating our food and soaking it all up with a look around our lovely city. It was a tough gig – 22 pubs in under 48 hours, some on foot, and some via the lovely vintage City of Ale bus. This is what two of them had to say about it:

http://maltworms.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-do-norwich-in-weekend.html

http://www.insidebeer.com/articles/20120203_2

(Pretty sure the others liked it too.)

Foreground - Jeff Evans, James Forbes, Susanna Forbes and Darren Norbury

And so, after we’d all sobered up, it was time for another meeting, held at The Nelson on Nelson St – many thanks to Don for his warm welcome and hot tea!

We now have 32 pubs signed up for this year’s festival, one more than last year already, and including seven new pubs. Discussions were mainly focused on who we could get to do what – who would officially open the festival (Roger Protz was fantastic last year), who would be on our panel for the pub and brewery based Political Debate on Friday June 1^st, who would sponsor the vintage bus, the events to be held at St Gregory’s Hall and maybe even the T-Shirts and glasses. It was agreed that local breweries would be given first refusal for these opportunities.

We were also introduced to EnjoyNorwich, a website promoting all things awesome in Norwich, and it was agreed that this years’ festival would be featured, not only on the site, but through their Twitter and Facebook profiles and their phone apps.

Finally it was decided that the Awards Ceremony, which was held on the final day of the festival last year, would this time around be held several weeks later – this will allow more time for ale trails and the proposed treasure hunt to be completed, as well as for the feedback forms to be collated (and for us to catch our breath!).

The next meeting will be held on March 1^st at The Whalebone on Magdalen Rd.