Some judging

I rise at 7:15. And have a shower. I need a good clean after all that travelling yesterday.

I breakfast with Claudia, Sandy Cockerham and Gabi Demozzi. It's an OK buffet. Scrambled eggs, but no bacon. I have cheese instead. And fruit, obviously. I wouldn’t want to drop dead from lack of vitamins.

The breakfast room fronts onto the rather pretty garden, with many bright flowers and a small swimming pool. The small terrace is rather pleasant in the early morning sun. And sun is what you get every morning.

We take a taxi to the judging location, where we hang around for an hour before judging kicks off. Which is quicker than usual. If judging in South America has taught me one thing it’s patience. And to always have your laptop powered up.

Diego Perrotta hasn't turned up, so I'm just judging with Gabi. Which is fine by me, as we're old mates.

First category is Grape Ales and Fruit beers. A five-beer flight. Two pretty good ones and a couple of quite bad ones. Tasting pretty weird. We do manage to award three medals. These are homebrew, incidentally. 

We're done before 11:30 and have a free hour before lunch. Which I use to write this rubbish. Well, some of it. I’ll add loads of lies when I get home. (That’s what the kids believe I do.)

The judging location Restaurante Sillustani, is right next to the river. Which is, er, rather fierce. Not that wide, but very swift. Maybe we'll go rafting later.

I have lunch with Sandy, Gabi and Dan Calzaretta, an American judge. We have to wait quite a while for our food. Which is pretty decent: a large chicken filet with chips and boiled veg. We sit outside, next to the raging river. Which is quite noisy.

Ignacio Lomeli is judging with us after lunch. We start with American Pale ales, a set of six. These are commercial brews. Mostly OK.

Followed by British styles. I hate them all. It's fun finding ones to award medals to.

Because we've been quite quick, we're given a bonus round of a homebrew medal flight. They’re various types of IPA. Including some pretty good ones. Awarding medals really is fun this time.

Thankfully, it’s been a quite light judging day. Fewer than thirty beers. We're done by 17:15. Which is great. I'm back in my room by 17:45. And I'm free until 20:00. What could I possibly do? I know: fiddle around on the internet, as I always do.

I ask for a cup at reception and they point me to the bar. Where I pick up two thick plastic glasses. Now I can drink like a civilised person, not straight from the bottle. How can you have no glasses in a hotel room?

I set off for Servus just before 20:00. I bump into Gabi outside reception and we walk down together. Via Plaza de Armas, which is beautiful.

It’s a typical colonial square, with an impressively large cathedral filling one side and two-storey colonnades occupying the other three. All built of the pale grey volcanic stone. Massive palm trees dominate the gardens at the centre of the square. 

People bustle around, all dressed in overcoats on account of the evening chill. The lights lend it a magical, fairytale atmosphere. It’s hard to believe that we’re in the southern hemisphere.

I should mention the unusual climate here. The temperature is the same every day: 23º C maximum, 7º C minimum. And when I say every day, I mean all 365 days of the year. That’s what you get for being in the tropics, but in a desert at 2,300 metres. The difference between summer and winter? In the summer it occasionally rains.

Our destination isn’t far from the square: Servus. A brewpub in a rambling old building also built from the local grey volcanic stone. We're barely through the door when Silvia gives us a beer from her brewery. Which is quite nice. Both the gesture and the beer.

When I've finished that, I go to the bar to get another beer. It takes a while as they're very busy. Eventually, I get an IPA. Which is OK. A bit lacking in aroma, though.

There's no sign of the promised pizzas. Gabi gets fed up of waiting and heads off in search of food. I finish my beer and get an Uber back to the hotel. I can’t be arsed to look for a restaurant.

Not having had any pizza, I pick up a sandwich and a bag of cheese and onion crisps in reception. That will be my tea. I’m glad I got the crisps, as they liven up a very bland sandwich.

I go to the hotel bar in search of a pisco sour nightcap. Unfortunately, they're just closing. It's only 22:00. Instead, I go to my room where Jura is waiting for me. We take a stroll together down the sleepy-town path.



Restaurante Sillustani 
JF97+2W2, Puente Chilina Magnopata Yanahuara, 
Cercado De Arequipa 04017.


Servus
C. Palacio Viejo 325, 
Arequipa 04001.
https://www.atom.bio/servusaqp