It was a scorcher at Edgeley Park for the 21st Stockportⁱ Beer Festival but Stockport Station was closed for engineering works so a fleet of taxis deposited us there. Abigail's parents decided that baby's 1st beer festival may be more trouble than it was worth and got a last minute baby sitter (Nikki's Mum).

My favourite beers were:

Abbeydale Brimstone - a very hoppy brown beer
Dark Star Hophead - excellently hoppy pale beer with good bitterness too. Probably beer of the festival for me.
Durham White Whopper - grapefruity very pale beer
Facers Flint Dave's Hoppy Bitter - as you'd expect, lovely and hoppy but with little bitterness. The hoppiness was very green and grassy in flavour.
Howard Town Glotts Hop - good pale bitter beer
Marble Chocolate Heavy - the only really dark beer I had all day. Excellent, like liquid cadbury's but not quite as cloyingly sweet. Real good stuff.
Otley CO2 - funny name for a beer style supposed to be produced without added CO2. Good pale beer though.
Stewart Copper Cascade - anything with a hop's name in the title will get me to drink it, especially an American hop. Excellently hoppy bitter.
Thornbridge Jaipur XB - the advertisingⁱ said "Jaipur IPAⁱ with extra hops". Sold! Loads of earthy hops and a fair amount of bitterness. Some sugar sweetness but not overly so.
Wapping Magna 800 - a very pale hoppy beer.
Whim Kascade - excellent pale beer with shedloads of hops. It was between this and the Dark Star Brewery's Hophead for beer of the festival for me.

I've clearly found a new beer law: If someone's bothered to make a beer named after a hop, it'll be well hopped. American hops in pale ale is clearly a winner with me too.

We left the festival with 3 making their way back home for a barbeque and the rest for Manchesterⁱ City Centre to do a few pubs. We started at the Kro Bar for a quick Jever lager and it gets a bit blurry after that...

Someone will tell me where we went next...

Thank you Mark - we went to Odd after that, some of us went to Bar Fringe but I might not of been one of them. Its no good, I'd had a few.