The Talinn Craft Beer Weekend

 

I know the stuff in that glass may look like port but I can assure you that it's beer. Just not like any beer I've ever consumed. 

One of the reasons we are here in Talinn is my mate Pete said there was something called the TCBW, the 'Talinn Craft Beer Weekend' taking place (the 10th edition in fact, so a big one). And also Irish music. And neither of us had ever been to Estonia. How many reasons do you need?

Anyway I've just woken up after yesterday's TCBW and all my parts seem to be connected and no words have gone... what's the word? missing. So we survived and thrived (throve?). And the beer in that glass was 17% proof! That's why it hasn't got a head, and clings to the glass on its way down. And it wasn't even the strongest beer I saw. One was 21%.

So let me show you what the festival looked like. I'll try to insert two videos here to show you the remarkable venue on its two floors. It took place in the Kukturikatel, which seems to be a lightly-repurposed power station (and lightly-repurposing factories and Soviet facilities seems to be an Estonian speciality)

You will see from the videos that there were a lot of people there. In fact, a sell-out, and I met a member of a stag night on the plane out who told me they had tried but failed to get tickets. Dodged a bullet there, thinking of stag nights + barely-legal super-beers.

You will also see that there were a shitload of beers too. Each stand (look for the labels up on the walls) was serving two beers, and then did a shift-change at 18:00 and started serving two different ones. And what beers! I will link to the whole beer list below, just for entertainment purposes but here is a description of one liquid:

Forever Stoned, 3 Sons Brewing Co. 6%

Pastry Fruited Sour w/ Apricots, Peaches, Graham Crackers & Vanilla. Collab w/ Tripping Animals

And this was not unusual for the TCBW. It was like a UK beer festival on acid, translated by Chat GPT. Here is the beer list:

Beer list TCBW 26

And the people! The brewers were from all over the world, but so were the drinkers, with a heavy dose of Baltic and Scandi drinkers. Pete and I were mistaken for Finns more than once! Not sure where the overlap is, but will consider when we go for a day trip to Helsinki on Tuesday. 

So, the people: there were some teams in group T-shirts, several in kilts, two visually-impaired with white sticks (gentlemen, I salute you!). About 30% women, about 5% where sex was completely indeterminable, a defensible number of huge bellies but by no means the majority (maybe ten years of TCBW is not yet enough). And they were very sociable and we talked to several of them while queueing for the next triple-hopped IPA.

So as I sit in the early-morning Macdonald's (and we are 2hours ahead, remember)  where the through-the-night party people are considering taxis, I have to say it has been a blast so far. 

And even before the Irish music starts, thank you very much, Estonia! And Cheers!