Love Beer London Raises the Bar
Love Beer London debuted its first festival in style last week, combining a hop forward keykeg competition with an event not to forget. The three dayer which is in conjunction with SIBA SE and London Brewers Alliance was created to celebrate the fantastic range of craft beer that the south east has to offer, along with complimenting brewers on their hard work. 
The competition that was judged by some of the world’s most experienced international beer sommeliers was topped by Outlooker, a triple fruited sour from Gipsy Hill Brewing Company and crowned Overall Champions of the event.Champions in other categories included; London Brewing Company with Mash-Up, Dorking Brewery with their Red India IPA, Burning Sky Brewery with Petite Saison, West Berkshire Brewery with Good Old Boy, Neckstamper Brewing with Little Mizzle, By The Horns Brewing Co. with West End Pils, Wild Card Brewery with their Table Beer, BOXCAR Brewing with Native Place, Hammerton Brewery with City Of Cake, ORA Brewing with Italian Grape Ale, Hammerton Brewery with Crunch, Wild Card Brewery with their DDH IPA, Solvay Society Brewery with Superposition and CRATE Brewery with their Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout.
Organiser, Brewer and SIBA South East Elected Director, Jaega Wise said, “It’s the first time that anyone's done this scale of competition and it’s been a complete success. We had really professional lead judges so the standard of judging was ridiculously high. If you look at all of the overall winners, the beers that won were just insane! The whole reason why we did it was to try and make a competition structure that is repeatable over cask, small pack and keg and this is absolutely repeatable. Our goal is to force the improvement of competitions, getting qualified professional judges at every single one.”
The event had to make a last minute move from central London to Tottenham Hale due to unforeseen circumstances but organisers didn’t let this dampen the impact that the event was going to have as Jaega told us, “It was quite hard to move from a central location like Kings Cross, moving it to somewhere a bit further out but we had two sell out sessions and I’m so proud of everyone and pleased how people have been so genuinely supportive. It may not have been perfect but you'll never know if it’s going to work unless you try and obviously you need to do your background work too.”
After the judging sessions were over hundreds of festival goers descended to enjoy some of these fantastic brews at The Cause, Down Lane Studios in London. The queue for the first session almost poured out of the estate and the atmosphere was absolutely buzzing. A mixture of regular beer lovers, brewers and individuals involved within the industry came together for an epic baptism of beer! The festival was also working in partnership with Craft Beer Cares, with all proceeds being donated to The Benevolent, a fantastic cause which only adds merit to this event.
Jaega continued, “The feedback has been amazing. We’re tallying up the totals at the moment but we’re looking to have raised a lot of money for charity. I’m super proud of everyone for letting the South East and London do this.”The beer list was unreal, with the festival well and truly raising the bar when it came to quality. Organisers had really pulled one out of the bag… one evening was simply not enough with the range that was available so we already can’t wait for next year's festival! :)
