Weltenburger Anno 1050 at the Seattle International Beer Festival

With today's forecast set for showers, it looks like I caught the best of the weather yesterday at the Seattle Center, enjoying the company of my good friends Mara and Alexis at the Seattle International Beer festival.

This charitable event is held to raise funds for Pet Cross, an organization improving "the lives of many furry critters in the Puget Sound area". Beer for a noble cause! (I hate dogs.)

We pitched up in time to enjoy a dog (hot, not furry) listening to the last jazzy bars of Hot Club Sandwich, after which it was time to see how much and what we could imbibe with our 10 free beer tickets.

With over 130 beers on offer, it's tough to know what to go for, but we did our best filling up our 4oz cups, progressing from some Pale Ales, through the Pilsners and Red Beers on to some Sweet Stouts and a couple of Weizen. We were a little merry after a few hours, but really enjoying the friendly atmosphere and the afternoon sun, accompanied by first the mellow blues of Clarence Gallagher, then later some good ole Rockabilly from the Roy Kay Trio. Getting us in the mood for the 4th!

After all's said and done though, for me, the pick of the beers was the Weltenburger Anno 1050.

This beer is not only brewed by the oldest Abbey Brewery in the world, the Weltenburger Kloster, near Regensburg in Germany, but the Anno 1050 itself, as you can no doubt infer from its name is one of the oldest beers you can buy.

It's a sophisticated golden-yellow lager, with a full-bodied balance of fine hops and bitter-sweet flavour.

I guess those monks knew a thing or two back then...