Mordue meet the brewer. Mordue brewery. 30/07/2011.

"One. Two... One. One, two" taps the mike "One. Two... One. One, two"

Meanwhile head brewer Craig would be handing round samples and chat to pub goers. During my time at Daleside I was the official roadie for parts of the Daleside meet the brewer tour. But this time it would be different, I would be the brewer, and support man Dave would be the one holding back the crowd surfers. Another big difference would also be that this meet the brewer would be exclusive to the North East CAMRA branch, held on the home turf of Mordue Brewery itself. Additional to this the CAMRA group would also witness a bit of the magic of the brewing experience themselves as (due to it selling out so fast) I would be in brewing a batch of Northumbrian Blonde.

So, knowing I would have to manage both a tour group and brewing, much preparation was needed. Everything was weighed out in advance, malt samples were prepared and the answers to many obvious questions were revised;:

'yes, I'll sign your sandals'
'yes I'll sign your tickers book'
'yes I'll sign your girlfriends ass'
'no I won't sign your girlfriend's dog's ass'
'no, I'm not sure how many barrels per year we produce, but give me a minute with a calculator and I could have a good guess'

But in the end none of these answers were needed, and our CAMRA friends got a nice tour whilst my batch of blonde sat quietly steeping in late hops. Boss man Matt Fawson and Dave 'the yeast-maister' later took over as various beers were sampled. I even ended up showing off Elizabeth (currently not in use) and some bottles of oak aged 1750s porter (bottled a few months back from Elizabeth herself) were cracked open.

So all in all not bad for my first meet the brewer as the brewer and the CAMRA crew were rather entertaining. Lots of more technical than usual questions and was totally digging the beards. I myself might get the Zakk Wylde look one day. So all in all a grand day out for all.