My First Beer Festival

I attended my first Beer festival last weekend - The Winter Ale and Cask Ale Festival at The Franciscan Well Brewpub in Cork.
First up we (I was accompanied by another Ciddytourist)  had a pint of Jule Ol from White Gypsy brewery. A  6.5% winter warmer scandinavian style beer and it tastes like it. At this point we decided that discretion was the better part of valor and if we kept drinking pints of strong ale we would not get to try all the beers available. There followed a quick succession of ales, porters and stouts - I tried to leave the hoppier beers until later so as not to ruin my palate. I shouldn't have bothered my palate was drunk by about 5pm.
There were some stand-out beers for me:
Raven Vintage Stout - Oak-aged Imperial stout blended with a young stout, even the froth had more flavour than most beers
Purgatory Pale Ale - Lovely hoppy zesty flavour
Messrs Maguire Brown Ale - Malty sweetness that made your hand stick to the glass but balanced
3 Kings Smoked Ale - think sod of turf in a glass, surprisingly tasty

There were also some interesting descriptors used , my favourite being from  John: I said that Hilden brewerys Cathedral Quarter tasted a bit cardboardy and he took a sip and said  "No! It tastes like old library books" and you know he was right and it wasn't a bad taste just a dusty taste.

All in all I enjoyed my first visit to a beer festival and it was nice to meet some of  the brewers (Melissa of Messrs Maguires has promised to have the next beer launch at the weekend so those down the country can attend) and to put some faces to names that I have become familiar with over on Beoir.