First Pour: the City Beer Festival

The original job description of an Ale Conner was straightforward: taste the ale before anyone else could buy it. So there was a certain rightness to my first engagement in the role being the City Beer Festival, held in Guildhall Yard eight days after Common Hall elected me.

The festival is organised by the Brewers’ Company and has grown into a fixture of the City’s summer. This year it brought more than 55 beers from 13 breweries across the UK, Europe and Canada to the Yard, all in aid of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal. Since 2013 the festival has raised over £184,000 for charity, a serious sum built one pint at a time.

Under a blue sky, with the Guildhall itself as the backdrop, my first duty of the day was a pleasure rather than an inspection. It was an honour to welcome the Lady Mayor to the festival and to join her party as we made our way around the stalls, tasting some of the finest beers the country has to offer.

The Brewers’ Company and the Lady Mayor’s party pose together at the entrance to the Guildhall complex on festival day — festival staff in blue polo shirts, a staff-bearer in a bowler hat and brown tasselled gown, liverymen in ceremonial dress and Ale Conners in tricorn hats; Liam Randall stands third from the right, tricorn on and glass in hand. — The Brewers’ Company and the Lady Mayor’s party at the City Beer Festival. Photograph: Chrysoulla Kyprianou Rosling · Chrysoulla Photography

Keith Bottomley, the Non-Aldermanic Sheriff, in his chains and badge of office with a glass of festival ale in hand, in sunny conversation with a guest in a white shirt and with Liam Randall, seen from the side on the right. — In conversation with Keith Bottomley, the Non-Aldermanic Sheriff. Photograph: Chrysoulla Kyprianou Rosling · Chrysoulla Photography

The highlight came at the Timothy Taylor’s stall, where the team invited me behind the bar to pull my first official pint as Ale Conner: a glass of their new Blonde, a refreshing session ale making its debut alongside familiar champions in Landlord, Boltmaker and Golden Best. If the first pour of a term sets its tone, I could not have asked for a better one.

Behind the Timothy Taylor’s stall under a green gazebo in Guildhall Yard, Liam Randall in a dark suit pulls a pint from the hand-pump for the brewery’s new Blonde, flanked by three of the Timothy Taylor’s team; a row of pump-clips reads Landlord, Boltmaker, Blonde and Golden Best. — Behind the bar at the Timothy Taylor’s stall, pulling a pint of their new Blonde.

Good conversations were everywhere. Among many, it was a pleasure to meet Ashutosh Shastri, Master of the Fuellers’ Company, and his cohort, and to catch the Clerk of the Brewers’ Company, Tim McNally CC, Master of the Glaziers’ Company, and Past Sheriff Andrew Marsden, all doing their bit to lighten the stock on the stalls.

Three men raise glasses of City Beer Festival ale in Guildhall Yard, the Gothic front of Guildhall and the Guildhall Art Gallery behind them under a clear blue sky; Liam Randall stands on the left. — With the Clerk of the Brewers’ Company and Tim McNally CC, Master of the Glaziers’ Company, in Guildhall Yard.

Liam Randall, in a dark suit, and Ashutosh Shastri, Master of the Fuellers’ Company, in an embroidered white polo shirt, raise glasses of ale in a toast at the City Beer Festival, with fellow guests and a City official in a tricorn hat behind them. — Raising a glass with Ashutosh Shastri, Master of the Fuellers’ Company, and his cohort.

There is a pleasing symmetry in a day like this. In the medieval City, the Ale Conner was summoned whenever a brewer hung out the ale stake, and not a drop could be sold until the conner had passed judgement. Brewer and conner sat on opposite sides of a regulatory relationship. Seven centuries on, the Brewers’ Company throws the party, the conner arrives as a guest, and the only judgement required is which stall to visit next. Institutions survive by adapting, and this one has adapted rather well.

Three Ale Conners raise glasses of golden festival beer outside the Guildhall complex: two fellow conners in tricorn hats and black gowns faced with blue and gold, and Liam Randall on the right in a navy blazer, his badge of office on a ribbon round his neck. — With two of my fellow Ale Conners. Photograph: Chrysoulla Kyprianou Rosling · Chrysoulla Photography

Days like this also make a wider point. The City’s ambition to be a destination, a place people choose for their free time and not only their working hours, is not delivered by strategy papers. It is delivered by a full Guildhall Yard on a Thursday afternoon, by visitors discovering breweries they had never heard of, and by City institutions putting on a show that raises real money for good causes. Beer is heritage you can drink, and the festival is that heritage at its most welcoming.

Three men clink glasses of beer in a toast beneath a festival gazebo in Guildhall Yard on a sunny afternoon; Liam Randall, wearing a livery badge, is on the right. — Raising a glass with Past Sheriff Andrew Marsden.

Two days later the casks returned to Guildhall Yard, this time rolled at speed by teams from across the livery in the Coopers’ Cask Race. That, though, is a story for the next entry.

In the meantime, if the festival has left you thirsty for more of the City’s brewing heritage, the pub map on this site is a good place to start.

Liam Randall

Ale-Conner, City of London · Citizen and Cooper

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