The West Midlands has been brewing up an event like this for a while (excuse the pun). Mercian breweries have shown time and again that they can brew beer to a high standard, but haven’t had their own space to demonstrate what they can achieve together. MABfest -from Mercian Alliance of Brewers – does just that. The breweries under this collective moniker have decided to take matters into their own hands, creating an event to showcase what they can produce. To mark the first festival, MAB put their heads together to produce a beer combining ideas from all breweries involved. ICEL is named after Icel/Icil, considered as the first ruler of the Mercian region in the 6th century (for you history fact fans). It’s a light, honey-coloured beer, only brewed with Bramling Cross hops. On first tasting, ICEL was slightly sweet with a dry, thin body. The Bramling Cross came to the forefront, followed by slight bitterness of blackcurrant, and a spicy aroma. MAB decided to produce ICEL in bottle, keg and cask, which was then split in to fined and unfined versions. It was really interesting to see how a beer could change depending on how it was served. Hopefully this is a feature that will be carried on to the next MABfest.
Due to the sheer amount of beers behind the bar, along with traditional festival cask set up, I didn’t get chance to drink from each of the respective breweries. A delightful surprise at the event was the attendance of Glassjaw: a very new brewery which is looking to be based at premises in the Digbeth area of Birmingham. I started on their Floodgate IPA after the MAB ICEL; it had a lovely, malty body. Pale yellow in appearance, with a massive orange/ grapefruit aroma. The bitter bite wasn’t as strong as you would expect from standard IPAs, but gave a heavy, lasting dryness. It was very well manufactured for a first commercial brew. The second of their beers which I managed to get a quick taster of was Steelhouse: a stout, very light in body with a creamy texture which feels gentle on the throat. If these beers are anything to go by, then this brewery will really be one to watch next year!
Fixed Wheel Brewery are another member of the Mercian Alliance of Brewers that have popped up in the last year and a bit. Making traditional beers with a glimmer of craft seems to be their plan, and it’s definitely working. They had two beers on cask during the event, both tasting excellent. Following on from their ‘meet the brewer’ event at Brewdog Birmingham, Fixed Wheel are gathering speed. I opted for Fixed Wheel’s Summer Smiles, an American wheat beer which was labelled ‘overly hopped’. To be honest, I didn’t think it was overly hopped at all. Perhaps my palate had evolved from from the previous hoppy beers I’d had over the evening. For a wheat beer, sure. It was hoppy, but the balance was ever so pleasing. Hopefully this is a drink that Fixed Wheel’s Scott keeps on producing whenever the sun comes out.
My overall experience of the first MABfest was one of happiness and joy: happiness, due to breweries really wanting to help each other, pushing a scene in an entrenched, somewhat stale West Midlands beer market. Along with this, putting on multiple beer festivals a year to drum up support for newer brewers that people might not have heard of. Joy, because this is an exciting time to be in the Midlands for beer. The caliber and quality of beers available over the weekend was excellent: none of them were ‘average’, all of them great. It would be interesting to see what happens behind the scenes of the Mercian Alliance of Brewers. I imagine we won’t get too much insight, but hope they can secure hops for themselves and produce a better network of distribution outside the Midlands. We might also see some more special beers being worked on between now and the next MABfest, taking place at Twisted Barrel in Coventry next February.
thebeerdidone 