Kieran Falconer fulfills a lifetime’s dream of judging beer and ale on a trip to Cumbria, a heartland for fine English ales

SIBA (Society of Brewers Association, www.siba.co.uk) represents around 450 UK breweries and holds regional competitions to find the finest beers known to humanity - judges include everybody from brewers and celebrities to ordinary drinkers like myself. Cumbria, with its rich tally of 27 breweries is a heartland offering hundreds of different beers to choose from in quaint and ye olde English pubs.

One of Cumbria’s finest is the Hawkshead Brewery (www.hawksheadbrewery.co.uk), founded in 2002 by the ebullient Alex Brodie in the pretty village of Staveley. His beers have already won many awards and having had one in the Mason’s Arms the night before I can see why. The most popular is his Bitter (3.7 per cent) with a nose of elderflower but my favourite was Lakeland Gold (4.4 per cent) a really big, hoppy beer.

But today his beer hall is decked out for the tasting of over a hundred beers which have to be whittled down to three in each category (bitters, strong ales and bottled beers). I joined around 40 other judges and on my table I was lucky enough to have Nicolas Brading (from Murphy & Sons, a brewing supplier), Robert Wicks (founder of Westerham Brewery in Kent) and John Barnes (a professional taster for Booths, the Waitrose of the North).

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