Publican Live: take the taste test
Visitors to Drinks Brands Live will have the opportunity to take part in the trade's largest ever blind tasting and comparing drinks brands in four categories: beer, wine, spirits and soft drinks.
Sessions will be run by industry experts, including the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET), the Beer Academy, Cask Marque and Coca-Cola Enterprises. The aim of this area is to give visitors a better understanding of products' tastes and how the brewing/fermentation process works, and to enable you to speak from a more informed perspective to customers and suppliers.
There will also be the added excitement of the first ever viewing of Jasper Carrott's new national pub quiz Cash Inn, which will play an integral part in Drinks Brands Live. Cash Inn is an internet-based game that will allow customers to pit their wits in real time against punters in other pubs around the country, all hosted via a video link-up by Carrott. The high-profile comedian will be launching the pub quiz live at the event, and visitors will get to play for special prizes.
More importantly, all the sessions are linked to Cash Inn, with everyone at the tasting areas getting one of the quiz's signature keypads with which to answer the questions. The opinions and feedback from the floor will be fed live into the Cash Inn system to provide statistics on the blind tasting.
Beer Tasting
Hosted by the Beer Academy, sessions will introduce cask-conditioned ales, and cover food and beer matching.
Wine Seminar Programme
WSET will be offering frontline staff the confidence to speak to customers about all things grape-related, with an introduction to wine tasting. There will also be a wine and food matching course.
Spirit Seminar Programme
Visitors to the Spirit Seminar Programme will find courses on the core categories of vodka, gin, rum and whisky. WSET will answer questions such as "what's in a botanical?" and "what's the difference between whisky with and without an 'e'?"
Soft Drinks Tasting
Soft drinks are becoming a core driver of licensees' profits, with the on-trade recognising their growing importance in attracting customers.
Coca-Cola Enterprises will put on a show with its brands, suggesting it is "time for an alternative" with 10 new flavours from Schweppes, and offer tips for bartenders on mixed and straight drinks.
Tasting areas
Drinks Brands Live's beer, wine, spirits and soft drinks tasting areas will all run at the following times:
12 noon - 12:30pm Session 1
12:30pm-12:45pm Cash Inn gameshow
1:00pm-1:30pm Session 2
1:30pm-1:45pm Cash Inn gameshow
2:00pm-2:30pm Session 3
2:30pm-2:45pm Cash Inn gameshow
4:00pm-4:30pm Session 5
4:30pm-4:45pm Cash Inn gameshow
The Beer Festival
The Beer Festival will provide ideas on how to run your own beer festival, as well as education on cask beer. Operated in association with Cask Marque, Beer Academy, the British Beer & Pub Association's Beautiful Beer campaign, the Society of Independent Brewers and Filton Products, it will give visitors the chance to sample beers and meet the brewers. More than 32 different cask-conditioned ales will be on display, all stored and poured using Filton products, including cask-cooling probes and cask-insulating jackets. There will also be an Ask the Experts area.
Cellar talks
This traditional pub with a working cellar will offer live training sessions on best practice in cellar management - as well as operating as a real pub!
Visitors will learn everything there is to know about beer conditioning, racking systems and cooling.
With increasingly discerning customers, licensees need to be more and more aware of the quality of served product and how to store it correctly. To this end, live training sessions will run throughout the three days in a special theatre attached to the working cellar.
