Hardknott Keg at BeerX

It's that time of year again. Lots of brewers will descend on Sheffield Ice, talk about beer, and brewing,  drink lots of beer and then start talking bollocks. It's becoming a bit of a thing in the brewer's calendar.

Yes, that's right, it's SIBA BeerX

In previous years the only beers allowed on the bar were those that gained a medal in the regional competitions. That's quite nice for us this year as Azimuth gained medals for both cask and bottle at Bolton in October. We'll be on the cask bar for part of the festival with Azimuth. We won't have keg in the national finals mainly because we didn't enter at the regional level this year. Silly us.

This year there is a craft keg bar for a select few breweries. I'm told the selection was done by way of a random draw from those breweries that showed an interest. We missed out first time around, and were on the reserve list. However, someone dropped out, so we are now going to be there with our beer.

My intention is to have Azimuth on keg permanently. Irrespective of the assertions to the contrary by the cask lovers brigade Azimuth is just stunning on keg and way better than cask. The extra carbonation lifts the aromatics of the hop volatiles with stupendous results. Even if we don't medal at the finals, likely as there are some great beers being presented, at least we can show the general public just how great it is.

We will have two taps, so we will rotate the 2nd tap through various beers, just to give some variety. We're not sure exactly how we will do it yet, as we want to leave our options open until we see exactly how the thing pans out. However I hope to have some specials that we can rotate through, whilst balancing that against some more general crowd pleasers.

So, come along and say "hi" - most of the team will be there most of the time. Watch out on our twitter feeds to see if we change a beer out for something a bit more special.