Over 300 Beers!

This was the main reason I was in Manchester recently - the Winter Beer Festival, which is the last one they will be holding in Manchester. The next one is going to be in Derby, I think.
I say "in Manchester". The posters cheerfully said that the Sheridan Suite is only 15 minutes walk, or 5 minutes bus ride from the City up Oldham Road. It seemed like a lot longer! We needed a beer after that walk!
Once inside though, things couldn't have gone more smoothly. We had the booklet detailing the 300 beers, as well as foreign beers, cider and perry; we had the Festival glasses (I liked the way I always got a handled glass when I asked for a half while I was 'up North'), and we had lots of time. We'd also had a good meal at Bella Italia on Piccadilly Gardens before we started out.
I'd decided that I wanted to find as many Manchester beers as possible, or from that region, so I started with Pendle Witches Brew from Moorhouses, which was sweeter than I remembered. Moorhouses also do the excellent Black Cat, which I had later on. In the meantime, though, my resolve to drink only Lancastrian ales was broken when I saw the Adnams beer clip. I started grinning broadly when I saw that, not only was it Adnams, but the beer they had sent to the Festival was Adnams Old Ale!
A word of explanation may be in order here. When I lived in Norwich, I was introduced to the wonderful world of real ale through the beers from Adnams, Batemans, Woodfordes and other East Anglian breweries. It was actually on a trip to Southwold, where the brewery is (and it must be the only brewery to have a lighthouse on top of it!) that I discovered that they were stopping the brewing of their Old Ale. It was a commercial decision, to drop the least commercial of their beers, I imagine - and now it's back!
This made me very happy indeed.
What made both of us very happy was the Robinson's Old Tom (we only had a third of a pint of this potent brew - it's 8.5%), and we also sampled the Robinsons 1892, and the Unicorn. The unicorn is their logo, and featured on the side of the Festival glasses as they were the sponsors of the glasses.
Mark was also very pleased to see the Bushy's Oyster Stout, from the Isle of Man, and the Red Beacons, from Brecon. I didn't have any of that, because I knew I could get it locally later. I did try the Moonraker from JW Lees, though, another Manchester brewer, and another fondly remembered dark beer.
We also tried some beers that were new to us - after all, there's no point to going to a Beer Festival if you don't try anything new - so we enjoyed Sleepless from Red Willow, Old Slewfoot's Friend of the Devil (another full-bodied beer at 7.7%) and Isle of Skye's Cuillin Beast.
Mark is more of a drinker of foreign beers than I am, so he tried the German Wagner Dunkel and the American Flying Dog Wildeman Farmhouse IPA, both of which he enjoyed for their different styles.
By that time, we'd reached capacity, and it was time to take the bus back to the town centre (there was no way we were going to walk back!)
So we didn't get round to sampling any Joseph Holts or Marble or Hydes (more local brewers). Mark spotted the Nethergate Old Growler, but what he really wants to try again is their Umbel Magna, which he first sampled at the Hereford Beer Festival, Beer on the Wye. If I remember correctly, it's made with coriander!
It was nice to see a scatter of Welsh breweries, too, like Purple Moose and Conwy as well as the Brecon Brewing - and I'd had the Grimley's Brown Bombshell from Quantum over lunch the day before at the Joshua Brookes pub, which was very pleasant.
Worthingtons seems to be branching out too - the famous White Shield has been joined by Winter Shield, and I've heard that they have a new brewery to play with.
Everyone seemed cheerful (and the place was heaving with people), and though there were rather more men there than women, it felt a safe and friendly atmosphere for a woman to drink in - and the following morning, we woke up without a hangover!