Hanging around

I'm up early. At 7:20. Feeling fairly crap. After a shower, I feel a bit better. 

Judging is due to start at 9 AM. Right. No way that will happen. 10:30 AM is guess. At the earliest.

I go upstairs for breakfast. No bacon, sadly. There are both scrambled and fried eggs, mind. I go for the former and cheese. Followed by fruit. It’s not a bad spread. With boiled eggs, too. Pastries, cheese, salami. Not bad at all. It almost makes up for the lack of bacon. Almost.

I send the family a picture of my breakfast. I know they’re fascinated by what I eat when I’m away. And I don’t want to disappoint them. 

Surprise, surprise. The start of judging is delayed. First to 10. Then to 12:30. We are in South America, after all. At least we aren’t just hanging around at the judging venue.

I spend the time laying around in my room. Only punctuated by a quick trip to the supermarket around the corner. Where I buy bananas and milk.

At the judging location – the restaurant La Parrilla del Guatón Jerez – there’s some more hanging around. At first outside, then inside.

At 13;30, they still aren’t ready. And we have lunch. Which is a steak and potato salad. A pretty nice steak. I order a beer to go with it. A half litre. Normally, I’d never drink beer during a judging day. Just feel like a beer.

I don’t forget to send the family a picture of my steak. I’m sure that they’ll love to see what I’m eating. 

While eating, I have a chance to talk to some of the other judges. Who are a sociable bunch.

Judging is in the same place. Finally kicking off at around 15:00. Only six hours late. A record, I think. Luckily, 3.5 hours of the wait were in my hotel room. Though I could have got up 90 minutes later. Which would have been nice.

I’m table captain. With Valeria, a local I’ve judged with before, and Columbian Jose. Not sure if being the captain is a good thing. Will it mean more work? I hope not. I hate work. That’s why I retired at 63.

We start with five non-alcoholic beers. That's always fun. They’re surprisingly good. Well, surprisingly non-horrible. Mostly.

After that, it’s pretty much all UK styles. Which is par for the course, when I’m the table captain. Not sure it it’s a good or a bad thing, 

At least Irish Red isn’t on the list. A style I’ve judged six or seven times. And never had an even vaguely decent beer. It’s not just a matter of personal taste. They were technically bad beers, with serious faults. My heart always drops when I see the style on my schedule.

Most of the flights are pretty small, just a couple of beers. Which I like. Other than Scottish Export, of which there are nine examples. Probably about as many as are brewed in Scotland nowadays.

The captaincy doesn’t involve much extra work. Thankfully. Other than clicking a couple of buttons. And, after my career in IT, I’m rather good at clicking buttons.

There’s only one beer with butyric acid – baby sick – across all the flights. Which is a plus. 

Some of our scores are quite far apart. But we manage to come to a consensus without too much arguing. And keep up a pretty decent pace.

We don’t award a huge number of medals. Just a silver and a couple of bronzes.

It's getting late and we still aren't done. We finish at 20:00, with four beers unjudged. We'll do them tomorrow. Despite only judging for five hours, I feel knacked. It’s been an odd and slightly frustrating day.

The plan is to go to brewpub Mango. I decide to give it a miss and go back to the hotel. It’s just getting too late. Even if I just have a couple of beers, with travelling time, I’ll be lucky to be back in the hotel by 23:00.

I buy a sandwich in the hotel, feeling to knackered to walk around the corner to the supermarket. I watch Champions League quarter final highlights on Ziggo. While sipping a little hotel whisky. Just for medicinal purposes, obviously.

When I’ve finished my sandwich, I realise that I haven’t sent the family a photo of it. Hopefully they don’t notice. I’d hate to let them down.

I turn in at 23:00. It's an early start tomorrow. We're being picked up at 7:45. Well, that's the plan. Let's see if that actually happens.

Just a couple of sips of whisky. I’m too desperate for sleep to drink more. Andrew would be so disappointed in me.



La Parrilla del Guatón Jerez
Av. Padre Hurtado 1460, 
Vitacura,
Santiago.
http://www.laparrilladelguatonjerez.cl/


Disclaimer: Copa ACI paid for my accommadation, some meals and some beer. 

 

You can fins a video report of my trip here: