09.59:

Good morning from Electronic Communications & Media. So far, everything’s looking good this morning at #nclbcf.

14.01:

Electronic Communications & Media are setup in their office downstairs, and have been updating the beer list.

Quite a few people in, considering how early it is, but we’re not complaining!

14.57:

Have you been to see The Pewter Scribe?
Colin, from Derby, is an engraver and leatherman that travels to many CAMRA Festivals across the country, and always supplies customers with high-quality wares, including an impressive selection of tankards.

If you haven’t bought anything yet, why not go over and see what he has to offer?

16.25:

It’s very busy in Domain right now, many people stood near the doors. Don’t forget we’ve got more seating in both Reds & Habita!

18.43:

The following log is between the Technical Team right now:

• Titanic Porter has lost its plums!
• 3 Kings shy bairns dead
• Ouseburn Valley flooded
• Fyne Stout no longer sublime
• Gundog has been shot

Well, we have to find new ways of communicating that beers have sold out – it gets boring otherwise…

19.32:

Looking pretty busy here, some beers starting to run out but nothing to worry about – yet!!

19.41:

Silly hat day going “well”!

19.47:

Media Station 1 right in the thick of things! It’s bloody hot in here – must get a nice cold beer.

If you can’t stand the heat…

19.48:

Allendale End 39 and Brewlab Dame van der Nacht have sold out!

20.01:

Oh No!  The Blackout has sold out – Bummer!

Blackout blacked out

20.25:

Phew! It’s hot mending coolers tonight

Cooler on the mend.

21.06:

Crikey no beers have gone off for nearly 10 minutes now – not sure what to do with the free time!

21.24:

Typed to soon – another flurry of beers running out.

21.29:

Essential supplies for the hard worked admissions staff.

Nice jugs Murray!!

21.38:

Blimey the heat in here must be making everyone thirsty!  Beers running out all the time -but still masses left.

21.57:

Plenty of beery books and other beery reading material available on the book stand next to the start of section 1. Posters and advertising plaques too.

21.59:

There’s a timelapse camera on the end of section 9, come and wave at it and maybe you’ll appear on the web when we get it sorted!

22.08:

Section 11 is sold out – well done drinkers!

22.12:

Section 10 feeling the pressure now!

22.17:

Last orders called – don’t all rush at once.

22.38:

media post 1 signing off for this year. further posts from ground zero.

00.32:

We must apologise that we were unable to keep you updated about beers going off during today via all our communications channels, as we had hoped to. At one point, around 20 beers sold out in the space of an hour, and our priority was to keep the live beer lists and QR codes on the website updated, rather than the social media outlets.

At the moment, we’re busy rebuilding all of the lists on the website to ensure that we haven’t missed anything, and then we’ll put some summary information on social media advising how much is left to drink tomorrow.

11.54:

Off-site Electronic Comms & Media have been signed on for about an hour already, replying to your tweets and updating the live beer lists ready for opening today.

We’ve only sold out of 1 beer so far, and there’s 6 that aren’t quite ready yet.

12.12:

The off-site team has just rang the on-site team to find out that they’re not actually the on-site team this afternoon!

Might be a short delay with live updates until around 2pm until one of the teams gets to site…

14.29:

Full beer check completed – 97% of the range is on-sale. Only Tyne Bank’s Tropical Haze has sold out so far, and 3 beers are still waiting for a line on their section to come free.

Quite a few people in for an afternoon, but all enjoying themselves, and some pleasant conversations happening across the bars.

16.26:

Technical Team have been swapping some beers around, NSU have confirmed that they’ll be showing tonight’s NUFC game on all 3 floors of the building, and the customers have been enjoying the ales. Not a bad afternoon, thus far…

17.23:

Old Freddy Walker has just passed away, sadly. The technical team are busy writing his obituary.

For those who haven’t see the beer list – we are of course referring to Moor Beer’s old ale, and the technical team are marking it as sold out on the website!

19.03:

Looking pretty busy here considering it’s only 7pm

Busy here!!

19.21:

One of our cars isn’t working at the moment. Already found a replacement, thankfully!

20.10:

Bear Claw’s Gone A Murdering has just been murdered by our customers…

20.26:

So if you or anyone you know fancies towing a trailer with tonnes of scaffolding on on Sunday – let us know! Or  if you know how to get a Citroen C8  with an engine immobiliser fault working.

22.18:

last orders called – starting to thin out a bit now.

22.30:

Time has been called on a busy Wednesday!  Hope you all enjoyed it and see you tomorrow. Open from 12

22.46:

Much cleaning of pumps and bars going on while we wait for people to go home.

Media station 1 signing off.

00.50:

Quickly looking over the statistics for today before the Electronic Comms & Media team close down for the night…
…and someone’s searched on our website for the word “larger”…

…it’s not as if they can even spell it correctly!

13.43:

Been a busy morning here – 139 beers pulled through, 10 lines not working and sorted out – 1 broken pump – still nereds fixing. Only about 10 beer not ready – still need a bit more settling time

13.59:

Cider bar complete and ready to go

cider bar

14.04:

VIP session begins with a massive inrush of publicans and brewers plus a few special guests

We’re open PANIC!!!

14.04:

The Mayor is here and beers are starting to flow. Brewers anxiously checking their beers are OK.

14.07:

Battle of the beers result expected about 14:30

Early rounds proving a close race – Here’s hoping for a clear winner though.

14.11:

Mordue crowd sampling their beers  - looking good.

14.55:

Mordue Brewery wins Battle Of the Beers with their X2

Some of the Mordue team after the announcement.

15.32:

Mordue Girls celebrating the win.

16.48:

Pretty busy so far – still plenty of beer and cider left though.

Festival Crowd

17.00:

Heavy demand for Battle Of The Beers Winners Allendale End 39 pump suffering from fatigue and stopped working. Fixed now though.

20.37:

Here’s a picture of the #BattleOfTheBeers judging going on. Spot the Bald Patch

Nice beer shame about the hair

20.42:

The Mayor of Newcastle and Mordue team after the Battle of the beers win.

Thanks to Bill the Bus for the photo.

22.45:

Time has been called on the first day Phew! Sore feet and looking forward to going home.

Ha

Elbow grease

lf an hour cleaning up, a few drinks upstairs and home to bed

22.46:

media post 1 signing off.

12.51:

Building continues apace this morning. Bars being covered in plastic and Beer lines being connected up – all 142 of them!

14.18:

Banners Going up and lines being cleaned

Cider Bar nearly complete – just some plumbing and, for the first time on our cider bar, coolers to fill and plumb in.

Hard work this cider!

14.34:

Lunch over and back to work. “washing line” to  put up. Beer lines to finish tidying up and pumpclips to sort.

15.56:

17.20:

Improved qr codes this year. Sections 6 – 11 completed.

Improved QR codes

17.30:

Short bar complete, staff glass and bin bag holders in place , all beer connected and awaiting testing tomorrow.

Must be beer o clock soon. #thirstywork

17.43:

Beer O clock!!  #thirstywork

leave the rest for tomorrow.

09.19:

We’re on site in Northumbria Students’ Union this morning ready to erect that scaffold, receive the beers, and generally get ready for opening on Wednesday…

10.22:

The bars are starting to go up, piece by piece. Putting the metal in place is the easy bit – they’ve then got to have a lot of wood, some plastic, some rope, and various other bits attached in order to turn them into working bars…

11.26:

Electronic Comms & Media  - the team that runs this website, twitter, Facebook, and so on – have been busy updating the beer lists, sorting out electronic pump clips, and are trying to keep up with all the information they’re receiving about the beers! Also, a big thanks owed to Chris Palmer for sending over a lot of cider information.

12.42:

Just heard from Steve at Out There Brew Co that he’ll soon be on his way with his beer.

13.29:

Domain is starting to fill nicely with casks of beer. The coolers are now chilled, so we’ll be running the lines into the beers before long to ensure they’re just right come Wednesday afternoon…

14.41:

Electronic Comms & Media back again! We’re busy planning #NorthEastHour tonight, even though it doesn’t start until 8pm, as we’ve also got the Branch’s account (@TYNCAMRA) to look after this week. Then we’ve got to get ready to do some massive updates to the website tonight, as we’ll know which beers will be on which bars, and we’re going to have the logos & pumpclips appearing online, too. And if we’ve got time after all that, we’ll be tweeting & Facebook posting to all of the breweries/producers to say “hi!” to them…

15.10:

Setup on Monday

We’re still going hard this afternoon – handpulls starting to take shape on the bars!

15.15:

21,744 pints of beer currently on-Site. Ciders, perries & pyders coming tomorrow!

We’ll be making some updates to the website overnight to reflect  any changes, so do check back in the morning…

16.36:

Still busy in Electronic Comms & Media – we’re busy setting up the automated parts of our LIVE beer/cider lists! Always good to know which beverages are available…

17.03:

Volunteers now on a pizza break, while the cooling begins to take effect.

18.18:

The team are still busy working hard – although all of the beer has been tapped and is now cooling, there’s a few handpulls still to setup, a little bit of tidying to do, and some things need to be sorted out ready for tomorrow morning. The off-site team are almost finished writing their automated bits & bobs, and are getting ready for a night in front of twitter / Facebook and running some mass updates to the website. By the time you arrive on Wednesday, our volunteers will have collectively been working for about 300 hours (and that’s just today & tomorrow)!