Beer Sommelier Night: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

After a hard day at work, at least for those of us who haven’t yet discovered the joys of retirement, we headed off to the brewery pub for another Durham & North East HOC social.

This time we weren’t ushered into the keg hall. Instead, we disappeared into the maze of corridors, rooms and mysterious brewery warrens for a beer sommelier evening.

Yes, sommelier.

A word that is hard enough to spell sober, never mind after several samples.

For anyone wondering what a beer sommelier evening actually involves, it is basically beer tasting with a slightly posher name and somebody knowledgeable enough to explain why you should be tasting notes of citrus, caramel and roasted malt instead of simply saying, “That’s nice, I’ll have another.”

We worked our way through everything from perfectly respectable 0% beers to considerably less respectable offerings from the “I appear to have misplaced yesterday” end of the scale.

Each drink came with a food pairing designed to complement the flavour. Crisps, chocolate, cheese and various other nibbles appeared throughout the evening.

Rich undertook some independent research of his own and reached an important conclusion for the brewing world.

Philadelphia cheese goes with everything. Beer? Philadelphia. Crisps? Philadelphia. Chocolate? Probably Philadelphia if nobody was looking.

The drinks continued to arrive thanks to an extremely attentive barman. At one point the supply chain was running so efficiently that we had several beers queued up waiting to be dealt with.

Any manufacturing business would have been proud of the throughput.

As the evening progressed, something strange started to happen.

The laughs got louder. The stories got longer. The declarations became increasingly questionable.

Meanwhile, our ability to absorb any of the genuinely interesting information being provided by our host, Tracey, seemed to reduce in direct proportion to the number of glasses on the table. There is probably a scientific explanation for this.

Part two of the evening moved us back into the bar, where naturally we continued our important research.

Despite a determined effort from the group, we did not manage to drink the bar dry. In fairness, this was always going to be ambitious.

When the bar is effectively connected directly to the brewery, you are fighting a battle against industrial scale beer production.

Eventually the evening came to an end and, remarkably, everyone was still standing.

Nobody became permanently lost in the brewery. The beer supply survived. Philadelphia cheese gained several new use cases.

And most importantly, after years of jokes, speculation and careful planning, Durham & North East HOC can finally confirm that we have successfully organised a good night in a brewery.

Mission accomplished.