Jo and I decided to spend last weekend in Ullapool which coincided nicely with the 8th Ullapool Beer Festival, held at the Morefield Hotel. We stayed at the Royal Hotel and were pleased to find An Teallach on handpump there, which was a nice taster before heading up the hill - about a mile - to the Morefield.
It was Friday night but the lounge wasn't very busy when we first arrived. The beer festival is held there - there's no outside mini-marquee like the Nairn festival, for instance. They had 9 handpumps in operation, compared with what I understand is normally just 3. This was the planned beer list:
17 beers plus one cider don't go in to just 9 handpumps, but we did try all the beers that were available over the Friday and Saturday nights. The Beinn Darg and Suilven from An Teallach, plus Three Bulls, Stag, Trade Winds, Corncrake and Red MacGregor were never on when we were there.
The MòR ish! from MòR Brewing - a Dundee brewery I'd never even heard of until now - is described on their web site as "a bright amber ale with a malty, fruity aroma and a well-balanced and controlled bitter finish", but we weren't terribly impressed. Probably our favourites were the Brewhouse Special and the as yet un-named beer.
They had bands playing in the lounge both nights - North Sea Gas on Saturday night attracted a bigger crowd, but it was never standing room only.
Apart from our hotel, we also tried the Seaforth and the Argyll Hotel, both of which stocked the LocAle An Teallach, but we subsequently discovered that, to my amazement, there are 7 outlets in Ullapool, a town with just 1,300 inhabitants. By comparison, Banchory has 5 times the population of Ullapool, but no more outlets than it.
I discovered all these outlets in Ullapool by picking up a copy of "What's yours then?", the CAMRA Highlands & Western Isles quarterly newsletter - a very nice colour glossy publication, handily produced in A5 size. It runs to 44 pages and I counted a total of 28 adverts taking up about half the space. 5 of these adverts came from the region's breweries, with the rest coming from real ale pubs, hotels etc. North Sea Ale looks positively tame by comparison. Well done Chairman Eric and Committee.
In "What's yours then?", the list of real ale pubs helpfully notes which pubs are serving real ale using Top Pressure. There's also a nice article on Dixie Taylor, who records that he first developed his love for real ale when he started playing football in London in the early 70's - exactly as I did. We must swap notes some time.
My last bit of news comes from the Cask Report, which was distributed to all BLO's recently. The most interesting statistical graphic in it was:
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