A national beer festival for the UK

I’d assumed that the concept of a national UK beer festival originally came from CAMRA in the mid-1970s. But I recently discovered that the idea had earlier been kicked around by people involved in the brewing industry.

This comes from an opinion piece in the Brewers’ Guardian in 1970:

"Comment
For an industry that is always seeking new outlets - even to the extent of buying small concerns lock, stock and barrel to obtain them - we appear to be rather slow in putting some of the more obvious and attractive sales-boosting schemes into operation.

Take, for instance, a Beer Festival. Such an event could be of enormous financial benefit not only to brewers but to the tourist industry and the country as a whole.

There are many such festivals held throughout the world. The tremendous success of events such as the Munich Oktoberfest need no elaboration, but even the smaller affairs, like the one in Kilkenny, have proved to be just what the public want.

Considering that beer plays such a large part in the British way of life, it is regrettable that in this respect we are even lagging behind wine-drinking countries like Cyprus, who will be holding their first beer festival next year.

Such an idea has often been mooted by individual brewers here, but nothing concrete ever seems to emerge, so surely the time has come to investigate, possibly through a Brewers’ Society committee, the viability of a British Beer Festival on a co-operating company basis.

Objections will come in thick and fast, no doubt, but if planned correctly in conduction with bodies like the British Travel Association and with a balanced programme of traditional dancing, music and good British food there is no reason why it could not become an important annual event.

Choice of venue would be another problem, with Northern and Midland brewers showing a strong preference for a town like Burton-on-Trent instead of London, but inclement weather need present no difficulties, as such a project could very easily be staged in a large exhibition hall like Earls Court or Olympia.

An obvious choice of time would be during one of the off-peak tourist seasons, like early spring or late autumn, when hotels are not overcrowded with holidaymakers and brewers are not faced with peak production difficulties. Why not stage the first one to coincide with Brewex?

With such a heavy burden of continually mounting overheads, the industry must search out new fields for increasing sales and a National Beer Festival might well go a long way to help. The organisational difficulties would be sizeable, but the rewards, in terms of both finance and prestige, would more than compensate."
Brewers' Guardian, Volume 99, March 1970, page 33. 

Nothing came of this proposal and the task was left to CAMRA. Interestingly, Earl’s Court and Olympia were suggested as possible locations. Something which, a couple of decades later, would come to pass.

Great British Beer Festival

Me and my brother worked as volunteers in several years when it was held at Alexandra Palace. One year, after he’d left for Jamaica, I worked there alone.

It was a nightmare year. There had been a fire in the palace and, at short notice, they set up tents instead. Which have been OK, if it hadn’t been wet. Despite the duckboards, mud oozed everywhere.

On the other hand, the first year at Alexandra Palace was: on the stage, bring your own sleeping bag. Being young and stupid, I didn’t realise how unacceptable that was.

The food provided was obviously on a very tight budget. Instant mash, really cheap sausages. There was plenty of free beer, though.

Each bar had a beer assigned as “staff beer”. As the name implies, all staff got that for free. Quite often it was a poor seller or unexciting beer. Not always. It depended on the bar manager.

At some bars, they couldn’t care less what the staff beer was and would serve you anything. Other than rare stuff they didn’t have much of. And on your own bar, you often got to drink pretty much what you wanted.

After the end of the evening session, one of the bars would become the staff bar and you could help yourself to whatever you wanted. Other than rare stuff. I think we got around an hour. Maybe a little bit more. It wasn’t that long.

Then again, I didn’t usually need that much more beer. Three pints maybe in the afternoon session. A pint with lunch. Or maybe two while we’re closed for the afternoon. Another three or four in the evening session, unless it gets too frantic. Which it often did.

A sea of faces. Who ordered what I just poured? Whose turn is it next? I’ve no fucking idea. It could be any one of the people waving a glass or a fiver in the hope of getting my attention.

The relief of a few minutes break and the chance quickly knock back a pint of Mild. Before returning to face that wall of hopeful faces.

After the end of the final session, all the beer left was fair game. That might be beer from unpopular breweries, that had gone off or simply been overordered. Or just unpopular styles. Like the Mild that I drank. I could usually find something pretty good.

I had my first taste of Belgian beer in the finish it all up after the last public session inside Ally Pally. Lambic, from a plastic barrel. I thought it was off. And was glad that I hadn’t paid for it. How wrong I was. Just ignorance, really. Not knowing what to expect and drinking it with no explanation.

Nowadays, there’s information about styles and individual beers all over the place. And a good beer bar will have examples of all sorts of different styles. It wasn’t like that at all in the 1970s. At least in the UK. Which is what I’m really talking about here.

There was quite a bit of camaraderie amongst the staff. Despite the long hours, it was lot of fun. And gave me the chance to try so many beers. Which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible without spending a fortune on travel.

I’ve been to the festival since as a drinker. But it’s not the same as the vibe of working behind the bar.

Beer Festivals in the 1970s

The age of modern beer festivals began with CAMRA’s Covent Garden Beer Exhibition in 1975. At least that’s how I remember it, I’m sure it was the first to be anything like national scope. It made an impression on me. And I think many others.

I went down to London with my school friend Martin Young. Also, a CAMRA member. We had to queue for a while to get in, which surprised me. As I think it did the organisers.

How many beers did they have? Fifty or sixty? I doubt that it was any more. It still seemed enormous to me. More beers than I could possibly hope to get around. I went for Mild and hard to get. Embodied in the only beer I can remember drinking: Yorkshire Clubs Dark Mild.

Why do I remember that? Because soon after the brewery was bought up and closed. A shame. The Mild was pretty much black and from what I can recall, fairly nice.

It was like a wonderland of beer for someone living in a town where only three cask beers were available. Not having travelled much, pretty well all the beers on offer were new to me. Most of all, it was a demonstration of the richness of the UK’s brewing culture, despite the best efforts of some in the Big Six to destroy it.

Covent Garden was the template for future CAMRA festivals. It morphed into the Great British Beer Festival and inspired scores of local events.

Do you have memories of early beer festivals? Then get in touch.

Thimble fests

Last weekend there was another festival at Butcher's Tears. This time it was a Franconian Anstich Fest. That is, gravity-served Lager from Franconia.

I wasn't going to miss out on that. Incorporating, as it did, two of my favourite things: good Lager and gravity dispense. There were some cracking beers: Heckel Vollbier, Hartleb Landbier, Gradl Dunkel and Zehender Maibock. Too many beers for me to get around to all of them. Especially when I had two of the Zehender Maibock.

The beers would have confused the hell out of a style Nazi. Most seemed to be named fairly randomnly. Heckel Vollbier was stronger than Scharpf Märzen. Several were called Landbier. One of the vaguest terms in German brewing. Even more so than Kellerbier, which popped up several times, too. Trying to categorise Franconian beers is a short path tto madness.

It wasn't as crowded as the Czech festival a couple of months back. Which suited me. Not much queueing for a beer or a slash.

The kids seemed to enjoy themselves. And why not? They were getting free beer. And very nice beer, too.

I don't go to many beer festivals nowadays. In recent years, it's just been the ones at Butcher's Tears and the Berliner Bier Meile. And what do those have in common? Good-quality Lager and full measures. Oh, and plenty of seats.

I used to go to many more. The main Belgian one, whatever that's called now. The Borefts Festival. Others in Stockholm and Copenhagen. But that's all a few years back. Now, I just can't be bothered with most festivals.

Why is that? Well, I've already told you, really. Lack of seating, long queues for beer. But the biggest reason of all is small measures. If you're lucky, you might get a 15 cl serving. But it might well be just 10 cl or even a piddling 5 cl. I've got two glasses sometimes to take the edge off my frustration. Or taken along my own Imperial pint glass.

A combination of small measures and long queues wring all the pleasure out of a festival for me. Getting in line for your next beer as soon as you've been served your last makes for a queueing festival rather than a beer festival.

Then there's the beer. Most festivals don't serve anything any different from the beers I can usually buy. Either Belgian styles or the murky muck, junk-laden sours and over-pastried Stouts that seem to be brewed everywhere nowadays. Nothing that's going to drag me out of my bed. While a proper Lager is something that's undeservedly rare. Outside of the festivals I do still attend.

Thimble fests. I doubt I'll be going to another one soon. 

The first beer festival - the participants

I didn't realise that Boak & Bailey had already written about this event. It was a few years back, so I've a good excuse for forgetting. I can't remember everything I wrote last month, let alone what someone else wrote a few years ago.

They'd found other references to the event. Including one that gave a full list of the participating breweries. It's an odd list. Of the 30 breweries, only two still exist: Donnington and Dreher (now called Schwechat). And there's an oddity straight off. I can't think of many lists that would include the largest brewery in Continental Europe and a tiny rural brewery in the West Country.

You know how much time I spend with my head stuffed up the past's arse. But I only recognised six names in the list. Meaning most couldn't have made it into the 20th century. It also  implies that they weren't very big. Dreher aside, none of the participants was particularly well-known.

There are none of the big names in British brewing: Bass, Allsopp, Whitbread, Truman, Barclay Perkins, William Younger, Charrington, Mann, Watney, Beamish & Crawford, Guinness and Tetley.

Brewery	Town	County/Country
Anton Dreher	Vienna	Austria
Franz Erich		Bavaria
W. J. Green, Phoenix Brewery	Luton	Bedfordshire
Wm. Potts, Anchor Brewery		Cambridgeshire
Magor, Davey, and Co., Redruth Brewery	Redruth	Cornwall
Nicholl and Co.	Colchester	Essex
R. J. Arkell, Donnnington Brewery	Stow-on-the-Wold	Gloucestershire
E. Bowley and Son, Cotswold Brewery	Cirencester	Gloucestershire
J. Richings, London Brewery		Guernsey
Biden and Co.	Gosport	Hampshire
J. Lush, St, George's Brewery	Portsea	Hampshire
John Steal, Pale Ale Brewery	Baldock	Hertfordshire
Henry and Co.	Newry	Ireland
Hills and Son	Deal	Kent
Beer and Co., Original Brewery	Canterbury	Kent
Gillow and Wareham, East Kent Brewery	Sandwich	Kent
Jude and Co., Kent Brewery	Wateringbury	Kent
Stacey, Isherwood, and Foster	Maidstone	Kent
J. W.Crosby, Crown Brewery	West Derby, Liverpool	Lancashire
Hornby And Co.	Liverpool	Lancashire
Monro and Co.	Warrington	Lancashire
Sidgwick and Mottram, Sun Brewery	Salford, Manchester	Lancashire
Boddington and Co., Strangeways Brewery	Manchester	Lancashire, and Burton-on-Trent
Nunnelly and Eady, The Brewery	Market Harboro'	Leicestershire
Horton and Co., Dalston Brewery	Haggerstone	Middlesex
Byles and Co., Grey's Brewery	Henley-on-Thames	Oxfordshire
T. P. Adcock and I. J. Fast	Melton Mowbray	Rutland
E. A. Green, Western Brewery	Bath	Somerset
Phillips Bros.	Burton-on-Trent	Staffordshire, and Northampton
G. S. and H Sainsbury	Devizes	Wiltshire

The geographical spread is very uneven, too. No breweries from Scotland, nor from anywhere in North other than Lancashire. Unsurprisingly given the event's location, a majority are from the South - 17 of 30. Though none are from London.

Region	No. breweries
South	2
Southeast	10
Southwest	5
Midlands	4
North	5
Channel Islands	1
Ireland	1
Foreign	2
Total	30

Kerstbierfestival

It's that time of year again. Just before Santa is due to call, comes my annual pilgrimage to Essen for the Kerstbierfestival.

I love the Kerstbierfestival. One of my absulute favourites. Not too much time wasted trudging around a hall to fetch beer - the one bar design is a great idea for the old and slightly infirm such as I. A reasonable number of seats - a great idea for the old and slightly infirm such as I.And they have all the Belgian winter seasonals in one convenient spot - a great idea for the old and slightly infirm such as I.

Give me a yell if you spot me there tomorrow. There's no prize, other than have me slobber over your jacket. Not really a prize that, is it?

As Dolores is coming along, I may even remember some of the event this year. She tends to make sure we leave at a sensible time.

Pint pot

"Next time I'm taking my own glass." That's what I said after the 2011 Borefts Bierfestival. I didn't go last year, being otherwise detained in Canada. But I hadn't forgottten my promise to myself when I was getting ready to head off to Bodegraven on Saturday. I carefully wrapped a Nonic imperial pint in a teatowel and put it in the bag with my camera and lumps of bread.

I hate drinking beer from small glasses. An imperial half pint is the smallest acceptable measure to me. 10 cl? That's just taking the piss. My glass is likely to be empty before I've got back to my seat. Getting two glasses helps a little, but the best solution is more radical: taking a proper glass with me.

In the train from Utrecht, when I was surrounded by young enthusiasts* chatting excitedly about Whales, I knew I wasn't going to fit the festival's demographic very well. Not at all, more like. I'm pretty sure my attitude to the beers on offer was unique amongst the attendees. For I had a very simple plan: drink cask beer by the pint.

Let me explain why that wasn't as reactionary as it might sound. The two British breweries present - Fynes Ales and Thornbridge - brew some pretty decent stuff. Especially in cask form, and they'd both brought several with them. I like cask beer. Love it. I'm not going to apologise for that. I know it's trendy to sup craft keg nowadays, but there's something about cask no other form of beer can replicate. That soft, enticing drinkability. One pint makes you lust for another. And another. It never gets tired, tiring or dull as long as your legs are still up to their job and your lunch isn't threatening a return. Fun and easy to drink -what could beat that?

I don't get to drink cask beer very often. Amsterdam's only regular cask outlet is Wildeman and, let's be honest, they're a bit clueless as how to handle it. They keep the firkin somewhere too cold, then plonk it on the bar when they want to serve it. Pretty much guaranteed to produce a pint that's hazy and lacking condition. I've just about given up on it. Especially as it costs 7 or 8 euros a pint. Which leaves trips to the UK my only chance to drink cask. Three or four times a year. That's how often I can drink my favourite drink. Not much. I'll struggle to knock back a couple of hundred more pints of it in my lifetime. Now there's a depressing thought.

Note all the beards

With the brewers manning the stalls, I was sure there would be no quality problems. Poor handling is cask's Achilles heel. An idiot can turn the best beer in the world into a foul mess. Then again, and this is one of the big points in cask's favour, the opposite is also true. Handled by an expert, the dullest beer in the world can shine and sing. With cask you really can polish a turd.

Sadly neither brewery had brought a Mild with them. Or a Burton. Fyne Ales did have a dark four-and-a-bit ABV dark beer (Vital Spark) that could possibly have been hammered into the Mild category, if you ignored the New World hops. But it didn't fool me, pleasant as it was.

I did make a few notes. A very few notes. Not really enough to have been worth the bother. Sitting next to Beer Nut, a very dilligent note-taker, highlighted what a rubbish job I was doing. He was also being much wider in his choice of beers than me. In comparison, I was an amateurish bumbler, sticking to just a handful of beers.

This festival report is a bit like my festival experience. Narrow, incomplete and





* Bizarrely, I recognised one American from his BeerAdvocate avatar, a picture of himself and his Dutch girlfriend. I would have introduced myself, but what would have been the point? "Hello, I'm the shouty Englishman who annoys Americans on the interweb."

Kimchi Farm Festival

"There's a small food festival in the buurtboerderij* at the weekend. Do you fancy coming? There'll be beer."

Will got me with that last one. A promise of beer is always likely to set my legs in motion. "Sounds promising, what beer will they have?" He knew he'd got me when I asked that.

"Very small breweries and home brewers. I'll send you the list."

He didn't really need to send the list of brewers and beers to convince me.  Though it certainly nailed the last few nails in the coffin lid down.

The thought of a Saturday afternoon away from town with artisan food to chomp on was enough to tempt Dolores, too. Especially the bread. Dolores likes a decent bit of bread almost as much as I like my beer. Almost.

We decided to get there relatively early after hearing that the food ran out early last year and arrived a couple hours after kick off. It was already busy, but not packed. And we managed to score the best seats in the house, a picnic table and chairs surrounded by greenery. And all to ourselves. At least for as long as Dolores could fight off the yuppie seat-grabbers while me and Will fetched beer.

"It's very white here, isn't it?" I remarked, pointing, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers style at the crowds of beautiful thirty-somethings sunning themselves on the lawn.

"At least there aren't any of those horrible young people here." Will pointed out. Not 100% true, but I knew what he meant.

While Will and I were getting beer, a woman dropped by our secluded table to mix up vodka and coke. "I'll bring a bottle of wine and a corkscrew next time." Was Dolores's comment. "No-one will notice."

Dolores wasn't impressed with the prices**, but was going all gooey-eyed over a rampaging four year old psycho kid. "He's just like Lexie." Yes. Exactly. The kid started picking up stones. Then bigger and bigger rocks. Then he started throwing them. He had quite an arm on him, for his age.

The twenty-something yuppies at our table at the time weren't impressed: "Aren't the parents going to tell him to stop?" A rock about the size of a half brick got two thirds of the way to a group of unaware yuppies. "Should we tell him to stop?" The parents were too busy to notice, sharing a spliff and fiddling with their phones.


It was brilliant. Someone was moaning about unruly kids and inadequate, inattentive parents and it wasn't my family they were talking about. I felt a bit sorry for the spliffing yuppies couple. Who knows what a nightmare the rest of the day might have been for them? Maybe this was their one half hour off in the whole week. Putting pity aside, it was still a super chance for smugness.

I suppose you want me to tell you about the beer. All the really small local breweries plus homebrewed beer. Not sure how they get away with selling the latter.

"This would be a great event for tickers, Dolores."

"Why's that?"

"Because every brewery has brewed a Farmhouse IPA specially for the event. Unavailable anywhere else, ever. Unrepeatable ticks. That's what they dream about."

This is brilliant. Because I did take notes this time, I can bore you with every beer I drank (almost). Magic!

Pampus Blek Hol
"I knew you'd pick that one, Ronald." was what Dolores said when I chose the strongest beer on the list'
Viscous and roasty.

Oersoep Black as a Cadillac

Whisky Stout. Boozy and fun, a Bet Lynch of a beer.

Oersoep Saison
Spicy and bitter - nice.

Smiecht (homebrewer) Tendentieuze
A Tripel with an underlying honey sweetness, but nicely hoppy. Pretty good.

De Pomp (homebrewer) Drietakt
Doppelbock: sweet, toffee. OK

De Vriendschap (homebrewer) NDSM Porter
Chocolatey Porter brewed with English yeast.

De Vriendschap (homebrewer) Houthaven Porter
Brewed with "normal" yeast - tastes a bit infected.

Deep Thoughts Brewery Haver Stout
Oatmeal Stout - a bit sour.

Deep Thoughts Brewery Smoked Scottish
Forgot to write any notes for this one.

Rooie Dop Daily Grind Coffee Porter
Actually looks like coffee, it's so flat. Smells like coffee. Tastes like coffee. Mmm. Definitive coffee theme.

Rooie Dop Double Oatmeal Stout
Nicely roastily bitter.









I started off with a beer from Butcher's Tears but was too busy to take notes. Devil's Nettle, it was called. Not to worry. I'll be writing more about them soon. Next weekend they're opening their brewery tap just a 10-minute walk from my house.

Not a bad festival, overall. Low-key, local. And sitting in a garden under mature trees has something of a Franconian Bierkeller to it. A bit of the pricey side, but probably cheaper than many a geek fest. I'll be going again next year.







* Neighbourhood farm.

** 7.50 euros for an admittedly quite nice hamburger. 1.75 for some indescriminate measure of beer in a plastic glass. 15 cl, if you were lucky. On the times I grasped the shitty end of the stick, it was at most 10 cl.


Buurtboerderij Ons Genoegen
Spaarndammerdijk 319,
1014 AA Amsterdam.
tel: 020-33.76.820
e-mail: info@buurtboerderij.nl
http://www.buurtboerderij.nl/

My kind of festival

This weekend it's the ZBF. Belgium's national beer festival. And a favourite of mine. I go every year (just about).

Why do I like it?

- The venue is a short walk from the station.
- I can get a seat.
- It doesn't take too long to get served
- The measure is a decent size.
- The prices are reasonable
- There's the full spectrum of Belgian beer, regionals as well as micros.
- People quite often bring beer for me.
- Andrew likes the sausages.
- I can have a Stout - Lambic - Stout session.
- There are falling over beers for me to finish off with.
- I can score loads of free beers with all my memberships.
- I always meet old friends.
- The journey home isn't too long.
- A shop in Antwerp Centraal sells Guinness Special Export for that journey.

This year will be special. Both kids are coming along. Should provide loads of material of the glass-eating kind. My blog will eat off it for weeks. A bit like a buffalo carcass. But not as smelly. And definitely without maggots.

If you're there on Saturday afternoon, maybe you'll have the chance to buy me a beer. You wouldn't want Andrew and Lexie to go hungry, would you?

Beer fest vs geek fest

It's probably just me feeling pissed off about having to miss the De Molen Festival. But a trend is starting to worry me: the geek festival.

One of the things I like about festivals such as the GBBF and ZBF is their inclusivity. They don't just try to appeal to the beer nut (or even The Beer Nut). Their aim is to pull in normal punters, too, and expose them to a wider range of beer than they might come across in their dull, meaningless existence. Which means they don't just concentrate on the loony juice end of the beer spectrum, but have plenty of fairly mainstream choices as well.

Those who will never knowingly drink the same beer twice are dismissive of this type of festival. Nott enough new, weird or plain ludicrous beers for them to tick. Which is why a new breed of festival has appeared. I call them geek fests. They offer nothing but the rare and unusual, preferably exclusive, beers. Should any member of the public accidentally be lured in by the bright lights, they aren't likely to feel very included, nor find anything they could drink more than a mouthful of.

What I love about beer is that it's democratic and inclusive. Unlike wine or whisky, which have their heads firmly stuck up their own arses. Let's not throw this away, eh? I don't want to do my drinking in a geek bubble. I want to share my love of beer with everyone, not just a few similarly-minded obsessives. Beer should stay mainstream.

I don't want to see good beer be an exclusive club, only open to those willing to fork out most of their cash and time in its pursuit. Let's keep it for everyone.

Light relief

You're doubtless longing for some light relief amongst this relentless technical detail. Don't despair. It may be in sight.

This weekend one of my favourite beer festivals takes place: Hasselt. Me and Mike usually go, despite it being a bit of a trek to go there and back in a day. Especially if you miss the connection in Antwerp. The service from Antwerp to Hasselt only runs once an hour.

Now they've found a more central location for the festival, Mike's been assuring me that squeezing in a visit to the jenever museum will be no problem. Except, maybe, for my liver. I don't think I'll mention that part of the plan to Dolores. She'll only worry.

Fortunately she doesn't often read this blog. Only at gunpoint. That's why I was so surprised to catch her reading Stonch's blog the other day. "I thought you weren't interested in beer." "I'm not. But his blog is funny." At least she didn't tag "Not like yours." on the end. She didn't need to. I could see that's what she was thinking. Traitor.