In Certain Places Presentation and The Preston Beer Festival.
Quite a succesful day presenting our ideas to a panel which included Charles Quick and Elaine speight from In Certain Places, Clarissa Corfe from the Castfiled Gallery, Ruth McCullough from AND festival, Stella Hall who is director for Preston Guild and Paul Kelly, Arts Development officer for Lancashire County Council.
I was a bit nervous and frazzled from a few late nights preperation but my project seemed to go down well. I’d come armed with beer so that they could all try some and give feedback on a form which will be part of the project archive kept in the timecapsule trophy.
I really enjoyed listening to everyone elses plans which included a bit of performance from Hannah and Jeni who acted as tour guides in front of the Gates of Paradise in the Harris museum.
It was a shame no one was able to stick around for drinks afterwards as it was the first night of the Preston Beer festival, and the Transit of Venus IPA’s first public outing.
Unfortunately it hadn’t settled properly and so didn’t get drunk that evening.
I spent a large part of the night trying to find a beer I liked and ended up in a fine curry house with 2 other artists.. so not too dissapointing.
On the Saturday of the festival they decided to put the beer on anyway and in Neils word “it was flattened” – This is a good thing!
Weirdly about 2 days later one of barrels in the Real Ale Shop cleared and I was able to take my good friend Jim along to try some. We had a small sampling of each of Arkwright’s Ales and then 2 swift halves of Transit Ale before staggering home.. It tasted really good and I was excited that we would be selling some in The Continental (one of the finest pubs in Preston by the River Ribble next to Avenham park)
Well, its not cleared.. apparently this is to do with the proteins and not the yeast.. so its perfectly drinkable. Neil says its a bit like a wheat beer and that in the 1700’s they wouldn’t of worried about being able to see through it.
So I’ve designed a new pump clip on Gary the cellarmans reccomendation that celebrates the cloudiness. This first batch is now called 1769 – the date columbus sailed to Tahiti.
I’ll be checking up on it this weekend to see how its going down.
I’ve also been helping out with a bit of design and marketing for Arkwright’s brewery and redesigned their logo and labels/pump clips for their beer.
We are going to have a tasting event on the 27th April which will be part of the North West Visual Arts Open 2012.
The next batch of Transit Ale is being brewed this week and Neil and John reckon that Jim the brewer has tweaked the recipe so that it should clear properly.
