Wandsworth Common Halloween Beer Festival 2011

Our first visit to the annual event in the rain-spattered courtyard of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building - a suitably spooky Victorian Gothic pile formerly used as an orphanage and military hospital. Now the home of Le Gothique restaurant and some nice-looking flats.

The 15-minute walk from Clapham Junction was rewarded with:

Dark Star American Pale Ale 4.7% - a hip and hoppy happy glass from Horsham. (I've enjoyed many superb pints at their excellent Evening Star pub near Brighton railway station with my mate Paul.)

Dark Star Green Hopped IPA 6.5 % - strong as Superman and available just as rarely. Distinguished by a combination of Simcoe and green Target hops.  Wouldn't recognise either of them but they make an outstandingly tangy ale. 

Shepherd Neame Spooks 4.7% - a nothing-special one-off. Never been one of my favourite brewers. All tastes a bit ordinary.

Thornbridge Sequoia American Amber Ale 4.5% - tastes like they've picked a ripe grapefruit from a tree in tarty Bakewell and squeezed it into one of the best beers I've ever had. Fabulous. 

Batemans Victory Ale 5.9 % - a fresh and fruity mouthful of Lincolnshire peardrops. Brewed to celebrate Trafalgar Day on October 21. Nelson would think it was all worth it just for this ale. 

Sambrooks Pale Ale 4.2% - The light and refreshing zing of angry young Battersea. And they sponsored the jolly commemorative glasses.

Thornbridge St Petersburg 7.7%. - Back to Derbyshire for a stunning Imperial Stout. The treacly, smokey, roast chestnut taste of foggy Bonfire Nights.

Priced by strength from £1.70 per half for the standard-strength beers through to £2.50 for the less approachable 7 per centers.

A graveyard smash of an event and one for the diary next year.

How The Americans Hijacked The Great British Beer Festival

Perhaps sad but true - the best beer by far at the Great British Beer Festival this year was made in the USA.

Sierra Nevada's Torpedo Extra IPA smells like a freshly halved grapefruit, explodes with American hoppiness and has a taste so vivid you can still feel it the next day. It's also 7.2% so needs approaching with some caution - but it's what those third-of-a-pint markers on the glass were made for.

I've been making the annual August pilgrimage to the festival for more than a decade. I've stood ankle deep in water when Olympia failed to cope with a thunderstorm; I've made quick dashes to Earls Court after work when I couldn't get the day off; I've been reunited with old friends and chinked glasses with  friends who now flee to Thailand for the summer; I've been with my dad and my brother - last year my brother and I raised a glass in the direction of Manchester Royal Infirmary where my dad was having a heart op. (Probably a lesson, there.)

It's always the drinking highlight of the year.

And the Americans have been getting better every year. Now their IPAs set the global standard. A beer named after the British pale ale exports from Burton to the Indian bit of the old empire has been transformed and modernised by a brewer in California.

Camra legend Roger Protz startled a few British drinkers some years ago when he named Goose Island IPA from Chicago as the best beer in the world. He spotted something early on. Now there's no denying that the US of A is making the globe's best IPA.

The Summit IPA from Minnesota was also a belter and more approachable at 6.2 per cent.

Are you sure you want another, sir?

The festival judges might be making a statement with their current fondness for unique British brews; they seem to hand out the majority of the pump rosettes to those dark stouts, milds and old ales that are an acquired taste for most people.

But even though I love a British bitter as much as the next man, I'm increasingly drawn to the Bieres Sans Frontieres bar at the festival.

Other notable beers sampled this year (from memory due to lost notes and programme):

Tomos Watkin's Cwrw Haf - citrusy from Swansea; Chiltern's Chiltern Gold - bit bitter; Bollington's Best Bitter - bronze medal winner from Cheshire; Houston's Peter's Well - gold medal-winning best bitter from Renfrewshire; Rudgate's Ruby Mild - silver medal-winning mild; Reigate's Pilgrim's Porter - sweet and dark; Holden's Golden Glow - bronze medal winner from Dudley; Triple F's Alton's Pride - familiar  bronze-winning bitter from Hampshire; Skinner's Heligan Honey - Cornish sweetie; Great Oakley's Abbey Stout - the taste of darkest Northants; Widmer Brothers Okto Festival Ale - Bavarian-style American brew from Portland, Oregon; Windsor & Eton's Knight of the Garter - a dashing golden ale.

Mexico was well represented this year