2020 will forever go down as the year where everything was cancelled. We’ve had hen dos, weddings, holidays and concerts cancelled this year but instead of moaning about it (ok, I’ve done my fair share of that too) in some instances we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands. And by that I mean we decided to create a beer festival at home. Well, in our kitchen. It was that or have Aerosmith over to play in garden, but that was a little on the pricy side.
For me, a lot of these little things we can do at home are as much about having something to look forward to whilst we’re back in local lockdown as the event itself. Germany is somewhere quite close to my heart having grown up in Holland and Belgium (both of which have heavy German influences). My brother went to school in Germany for a time and we would often hop across the boarder for trips away (Phantasialand theme park in Bruhl being one of my favourite places to visit) So when Dave suggested out own beer festival, I was 100% on board
Naturally you’re limited to what you can do in your own home, but I think we get A for effort for sure. I was due a new manicure the week before anyway so had Becca paint my nails the colours of the German flag (when I commit to an idea, I really commit!) Dave borrowed a Borussia Dortmund football shirt from my brother and I got a Beck’s Beer t-shirt for £2 from eBay.
We set up some chairs and a little bar area in the kitchen. Dave, who has actually been to the Munich Beer Festival before, says that to add to the authenticity of it, you can’t be too comfortable (so sitting on the sofa. We fired up some oompah music on Spotify and set up our own beer tasting. Which, again is tricky when there’s just two of you. But we persevered Dave poured the beer out into numbered glasses without me seeing then I went in and jumbled them all up without him seeing so we didn’t know which was which anymore. We even added in a non German beer in there too, just, you know to keep things spicy.
I have to say, I wasn’t great at it, I could tell the non-German beer but between the others, which we just bought from Asda and Aldi, were very much the same to my unseasoned beer pallet. It was fun tasting all the different beers, although I was a bit put out you’re unlikely to find a German fruity beer (which I’m often partial to) due to German brewing laws which means that German beer must only contain 4 ingredients and 4 ingredients alone. There’s only so much beer this wine monster can stomach at any given time though so it was swiftly on to the German wine for me, again, just from Aldi and Asda. I get the impression Riesling has somewhat of a bad reputation amongst wine connoisseurs however I found it pleasantly palatable. Certainly nicer than beer that’s for sure!
It terms of decorations, we were limited to what we can get being in lockdown, however I do recommend Design Bundles for any decoration needs for a season soirre. They offer loads of options you can print off at home for any occasion. My particular favourites are the stars svg and the mountain svg.
As for the food, well it’s incredible what’s available in your local supermarket if you look hard enough. We had German inspired starters in the shape of smoked cheese, German sausage and pretzels. The perfect beer/wine snack. Mains, well, we were all about the wurst (curry and plain). Served with skinny fries, as is the style in Bavaria.
Once the oompah music got on the tedious side (it’s very much an acquired taste) I found a very good ‘german pop classics’ playlist on Spotify which switched things up again and a good night was had by both. Is it the same as being in Munich, no, there’s only so much atmosphere you can create in your own kitchen with the same face you’ve seen every day for the last 26 weeks. But in terms of just having something different to do, something different to look forward to, and something I can cobble 690 words together on for the sake of a blog post, it was a roaring success brüllender erfolg.