Festival Fatigue

As someone who is known for enjoying a pint, I often find work colleagues and acquaintances informing me of forthcoming beer festivals. This is especially true at this time of year where, with the Bank Holiday weekend fast approaching, the world and his wife appear to be running a  festival.

I always thank these people politely for their information but when, as is nearly always the case, I give a negative response to the question “I expect you will be going?” the look of disappointed astonishment on their faces never ceases to amaze me. These well-meaning people believe that because I am a beer lover I will automatically attended every local pub, club or village fete beer festival in existence! I try to tell them there are so many going on these days and, that even if I wanted to go to them all, I have neither the time or the finances to do so, but it’s almost as if they think it’s my duty to go along and try every beer on sale, especially where it’s a pub or organisation close to their hearts.

Well, I’m afraid it isn’t, and I think many local CAMRA members are starting to feel the same. I call this “festival fatigue” and whilst I know beer lovers should be welcoming this explosion of interest in decent ale, beer festivals are now becoming so common place there’s a danger they will start to lose their “novelty value” and people will lose interest in them anyway. 

As for me, I’m definitely “festivaled out” if there is such a word. So far this year I have attended beer festivals at Dover (Winter Ales), Angel Fest at Tonbridge Angels Football Ground, Orpington Liberal Club, Tonbridge Juddians twice, (their own festival in February and the massive SIBA South East event in July), Annafest in Forchheim, Germany and most recently the Great British Beer Festival at London Olympia. I’ve also been heavily involved in the preparation for the forthcoming festival our local West Kent CAMRA branch is holding in October, in conjunction with the Spa Valley Railway – a heritage rail line running between Tunbridge Wells and Eridge in Sussex. 

I felt this “festival fatigue” at GBBF last week, and whilst there remains a possibility I might go along to the festival at the Half Way House, Brenchley at some stage over the Bank Holiday, this will be more to be sociable and meet up with friends than a desire to “tick off” a few more beers!  As hinted in my recent post about GBBF, I find the socialising aspect of beer festivals to have a far greater appeal than trying yet another half dozen or so golden ales, all of which tend to taste pretty much the same after one has had a few. This was why Annafest was so good; it wasn’t about sampling as many different beers as possible, but instead just chilling out in the open air, soaking up the atmosphere, wandering around seeing what was going on and just generally having a good time. Sure, there were around a dozen breweries supplying beer, and over the three separate days that we visited Annafest, we managed to sample eight of them, but that wasn’t the main object of the festival.

So what, if anything, is the way forward? Well nothing really at the moment so far as CAMRA is concerned. GBBF now operates to a tried and trusted formula, and apart from a bit of tweaking here and there (more seating would be an improvement!), the campaign’s flagship festival can probably continue along similar lines as present. One worst of caution though, the average age of the volunteers who give up their spare time to run CAMRA festivals is not getting any younger, and  unless more younger members step up to the plate, there will come a time when there just won’t be the manpower available to run events like GBBF.

Pub beer festivals too should be encouraged, and there’s probably not a lot that needs changing here. Not only do these events bring extra trade to the pub, but hopefully they might encourage some of the pub’s regulars to try something different from Fosters or Carling and introduce them to the delights of proper beer!  Again, a note of caution, I would like to see a bit more communication between pubs in order to avoid beer festivals clashing. For example, there are at least four such events that I know of taking place locally over the coming Bank Holiday weekend. I appreciate this is a popular time to pick, but with so many going on there’s a danger attendances will be diluted across the board, and the individual impact each one might have had will be lessened. 

As for me, I’ve already made my views on the subject clear, and I’m sure I’m not alone suffering from “festival fatigue” . Perhaps the way forward is that adopted by the recent London Craft Beer Festival – staged last weekend.  The format was slightly different to a CAMRA festival, and of course not all the beers would have been CAMRA approved so far as storage and dispense is concerned. That doesn’t matter to me, as what these beers actually taste like is far more important than side issues such as dispense. The event took place from 16^th to 18^th August at Oval Space in London’s Bethnal Green. According to the website, there were around 20 breweries taking part, not all of them from London, and even including legendary overseas brewers such as Mikkeller and To Øl, both from Copenhagen and Brouweij De Molen from the Netherlands. Home-grown talent included Dark Star, Kernel, Camden Town, Magic Rock and Redemption, and I’m sure that amongst this line up there would have been some real stunners.

According to the organisers, the £35.00 ticket price included:

• ENTRY TO THE EVENT - all the breweries, the food market and the terraces for the session
• LOTS OF GREAT BEER – a beer from every stand (You’ll get a token for a third of a pint (189ml) from every brewer stand – that’s over 5 pints of great beer!)
• LOVE / KNOWLEDGE / EXPERIENCE - Access to the brewers, brewery teams, beers from around the world, different types of beer
• FREE GLASS - A London Craft Beer Festival branded glass
• AWESOME FESTIVAL PROGRAMME - with tasting notes and information on each brewery
• HOURS OF FUN - 5 hours of enjoying great beer, great music and our lovely terraces
• *Food is not included in ticket price, be sure to bring a bit of cash for our amazing food market (cards also accepted
• *If you power through the five pints more beer will be available to buy
• THE BOTTLE BANK – There will be a selection of the Breweries best bottled beers to purchase from Oval Space to take away. 

I am kicking myself a bit for not having noticed this event. If I’d known further in advance then I would definitely have gone and may even have given GBBF a miss!  I haven’t seen anything on the blogosphere about the London Craft Beer Festival, so if anyone did manage to get along I would like to hear what were their impressions  of the event.

Caveman Brewery

 

Last Saturday, along with a handful of other West Kent CAMRA members, I had cause to visit north Kent. Now this is not a part of the county which I’d normally entertain going to, but we were on a mission to present a certificate for “Beer of the Festival” to the Caveman Brewery of Swanscombe. The festival in question was last year’s Spa Valley Rail and Ale Festival, and the beer concerned was Caveman’s first brew, Citra.

Caveman Brewery is housed in the cellar of the George and Dragon, a Victorian town pub, which is just a stone’s throw from Swanscombe station. Swanscombe itself is a small town on the Thames Estuary, a few miles to the east of Dartford. Until recent times it was a centre of the cement industry, but this has gradually declined and the whole area now seems somewhat down at heel. This is despite the presence nearby of the Bluewater Shopping Centre, one of the largest in Europe.

Still it was beer and not shops that we were after, and where better than the George and Dragon as it has just been voted Pub of the Year for the West Kent area. This is quite an achievement for a pub which, until recently, had seen better times, but 18 months ago it was acquired by licensees Bob and Bron Veal, who set about transforming the place to create a bright and airy drinking environment. They still have plenty of work to do, especially to the pub’s exterior, but according to Bron the main priority was to get the inside of the pub up to a suitable standard, so they could start trading. Apparently the George and Dragon had a bad reputation under its previous owners (Admiral Taverns), and suffered from druggies and other undesirables. Bron told us many of them were dissuaded from renewing their custom by the pub’s policy of concentrating on micro-breweries beers, including the pub’s own, with Chapel Down’s Curious Brew from Tenterden, to cater for lager drinkers instead of multi-national global brands such as Fosters, Stella et al.(Sounds like a good idea to me!)

The policy has obviously worked as today the George and Dragon is a friendly and welcoming community pub, offering a wide selection of quality cask ales alongside Kernel Centennial and Whitstable Oyster Stout on keg, some excellent genuinely home-cooked food – which we partook of ourselves, and hosting all sorts of events, including live music and fund-raising activities. As mentioned earlier, the pub is also home to the Caveman Brewery, and we were fortunate to have been given a guided tour by James Hayward, brewer and one of the two partners behind the operation, (Nick Byram is the other one).

We descended the slightly tricky and steep stairs down into the extensive cellar, or “cave”, beneath the pub. Here the partners have managed to shoe-horn in a full-mash brewing plant, together with four fermenters, plus have fitted out a separate cold room for storage of both their beer, plus casks ready stillaged for serving in the pub upstairs. It is quite an achievement, especially as draining, extraction and a hoist all had to be installed as well. It is even more of an achievement when one learns that both partners have full-time jobs in addition to running the brewery!

So what of our visit? Well the pub had enjoyed a  busy Friday night prior to our visit, and the barman, whose name I forget now, was busy pulling through a couple more beers when we arrived. I started off with Moor Top Pale Ale from Buxton Brewery, a very pale and well-hopped 3.8% beer which was just the thing after a lengthy train journey. I followed it with a couple of Caveman brews – Palaeolithic Pale Ale, another 3.8% beer flavoured with Cascade hops, before moving onto the much stronger 5.9% Megalithic. I preferred this to the Palaeolithic, and found it the perfect accompaniment to my steak and ale pie, served up in a gargantuan portion with new potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Just the thing for a hungry imbiber!

We left the George and Dragon around 3pm, to make the short train journey to Dartford, where we planned to visit the town’s Working Men’s Club. The club itself  is worthy of a separate post, so I won’t say anymore here apart from that a visit to both these establishments makes the journey to this very run down and neglected part of the Garden of England well worthwhile.

Thursday at GBBF 2013

I must admit I didn’t enjoy this year’s Great British Beer Festival as much as I thought I would. I attended the festival on the Thursday, instead of my normal Friday, along with a number of friends from my local CAMRA Branch. I was determined not to go making unfavourable comparisons between GBBF and the brilliant Annafest which I’d visited three weeks previously, as the two festivals are completely different events. However, despite my best intentions, my mind kept harking back to sitting out in the cool, shady woodland setting of the Kellerwald and contrasting it with the packed, noisy hall at Olympia. 

To be fair, I don’t think the location where we chose to base ourselves on Thursday helped. I appreciate my friends’ over-riding concern to grab a table, as it gets very uncomfortable being on one’s feet all day at Olympia, but right at the rear of the hall, facing back towards the stage was not a good idea, as events were to prove as the day wore on. Lacking the natural lighting of the main part of the hall was one thing, but not being able to hold a proper conversation due to the reverberation from the sound system was quite another. The music acts weren’t too bad, but the interminable CAMRA auctions, which took place during every interlude, really did grate, as the acoustics, or lack of them, in that part of the hall meant we were bombarded by a wall of distorted noise, rather than a proper indication of what was actually taking place on stage.

Later in the afternoon I wandered upstairs to look for Fred Waltman, an American beer enthusiast who runs and maintains the Online Beer Guide to Bamberg & Franconia. Fred had emailed to say he was visiting GBBF and would be upstairs, but I must admit I left it a little later than originally planned to go and look for him. Despite carefully perusing table after table of drinkers on the upstairs gallery, I failed to spot anyone with a Franconian Beer Guide hat. Equally I failed to make out any American accents amongst the myriad of drinkers, so gave up on my quest. What I did notice though was that although the rear mezzanine section, where we based ourselves last year, had been blocked off, there was still plenty of space up on the gallery and, had we gone upstairs when we first arrived, we would almost certainly have found ourselves a table! It was light and airy up on the gallery, and a nice temperature too, with the ducting for the air-conditioning blowing out refreshingly cool air just above people’s heads. Contrast this to the artificially lit section we were sitting in downstairs and you can perhaps understand my frustration.

That’s probably more than enough moaning, especially as where we chose to sit was our own decision and nothing to do with the festival organisers. So how was the festival? Good, I would say, but not, in my book, as good as last year’s. Again, this is nothing to do with the festival organisers, or all the hard-working volunteers who give up their spare time to run this well-respected and long established event. Instead this assessment on my part is entirely due what I can only describe as “festival fatigue” on my part. I intend to write about this, at greater length, in a future post but for now let’s just say I was bored!

Anyway, what about the beer, which after all is the raison d’etre of the Great British Beer Festival?  Well there were getting on for 800 of them, so there was something for everyone. The only problem was deciding which ones to go for out of such a lengthy list. I initially picked a provisional short-list of 65 beers which took my fancy, and then highlighted 15 that were definite “must try” beers. The list was flexible though and was designed so that there were many “second choices” I could opt for, should I find a particular bar too crowded or if I happened to find myself at a bar where one of my “must try” beers wasn’t available.

The other part of my plan was to start off with a few light and refreshing Golden Ales, before moving onto some higher strength IPA’s. Eventually I would finish up with a few Porters, Stouts, plus the odd esoteric, or rare beer.

Of course it didn’t quite all go to plan, and I ended up trying a few porters and stouts somewhat earlier in the proceedings than I intended, although I did switch back to IPA’s towards the end. I made a conscious decision not to go for any foreign beers as not only were there just too many to choose from, but also the majority were far too strong, with a number of the American offerings weighing in at 10% plus! Most, if not all, of the foreign beers were sold at a premium price, which is entirely understandable given the time and effort involved in sourcing and importing them.  For me though, part of their appeal is drinking and enjoying them in their home country of origin. I am pleased to day I have achieved this aim for most of the German beers that were on sale, as well as quite a few of the Belgian ones. The next stop has to be the United States, and I am working on a visit to that country, for sometime next year.

So, did any of the beers I tried really stand out? Happily several of them did, with Dissolution IPA, from Kirkstall Brewery, my beer of the festival. This really was an excellent example of a “new wave” IPA. Not too strong at 5.0%, but a beer which really delivered in terms of both taste and appeal. My runner up was Triple Chocoholic from Saltaire; a completely different beer, but one which really managed to deliver the chocolate without being too cloyingly sweet. Also worthy of a mention were Art Brew – Monkey IPA, Ascot – Anastasia’s Exile Stout, Moor - Revival and Purple Moose Glaslyn Ale.

We left the festival shortly after 9pm. It had been a long day; I hadn’t drunk too much, but I was still feeling very dehydrated by the time we departed, (this was despite drinking water wherever possible in between beers). I didn’t manage to meet up with Fred, but I did manage to bump into Peter Alexander, aka Tandleman, and that, more than anything, helped reinforce my belief that the social aspect of GBBF is every bit as important and enjoyable as the appreciation of the beer!

GBBF 2013

CAMRA’s Great British Beer Festival (GBBF), kicked off at midday today with the Trade Session. The festival then opened its doors to the general public at 5pm. I stopped going to the Trade Session a few years ago, not just because tickets had become a lot harder to obtain, but also because the session itself had turned into a glorified “publican’s outing”. Ok, I know it’s all about involving the trade, both on the brewing as well as the pub side, but it really wasn’t my cup of tea (no offence to friends in the brewery and pub trades!). Also, like I said, the tickets became much more difficult to get hold of, primarily because CAMRA tightened up on who could obtain them, effectively restricting their availability to those genuinely involved in the brewing and licensed trades. Even so, I know several people not connected with the trade who will have been there this afternoon! They will have been passed tickets from friendly landlords who for whatever reason are unable to attend so, despite all their efforts, CAMRA have not put an end to this practice completely.

 I used to fall into the trade category,  having run my own off-licence business for the best part of six years, but even then I normally gave my tickets away to friends or customers, and  instead  would pitch up as a normal punter on the Friday lunchtime/afternoon session. Like I said, the trade session in many cases had degenerated into little more than a pub outing-cum-piss-up. CAMRA of course, will disagree with this assessment, but I stand by it and besides, when one goes along as an ordinary member of the public, there are usually far more pretty girls brightening up the place. (A much more attractive sight than a load of red-faced publicans!)

This year I shall be going along on Thursday, rather than my usual Friday; the reason being is our CAMRA  branch has a  presentation this coming Saturday to the Caveman Brewery, as their Citra was voted “Beer of the Festival” at last year’s Spa Valley Railway Rail and Ale event. The brewery is currently housed in the cellar of the George & Dragon pub, at Swanscombe, near Dartford, and as the presentation could turn out to be quite a boozy affair, I want to have a day off from the beer in between this event and GBBF.

So far as GBBF is concerned, I’m a lot more enthusiastic, and even a little excited, about the event than I was a couple of weeks ago, when I’d just returned from Annafest. Back then the prospect of sitting in a hall full of people, surrounded by nearly 800 beers, compared to being out in the open air, under the shade of leafy beech woods, enjoying a Maβ or two of tasty Franconian Kellerbier, just didn’t compare. But now, having browsed through the vast selection of beers on offer and made a few selections, I’m much more receptive to the idea.

There’ll be a handful of  West Kent CAMRA members travelling up to Olympia on Thursday. My plan of action is to start with a few golden ales, to wet my whistle, before moving on to some stronger, and hopefully hoppier, IPA’s. I will then finish with a few stouts and porters, including amongst these one or two of the more esoteric ales. I will leave foreign beers alone, apart from seeing if I can buy a few bottles of Westvleteren beers to take away. The abbey of Sint Sixtus, at Westvleteren, is the smallest and most traditional of the Trappist breweries and its beers, considered by many as world classics, are extremely hard to come by. Hopefully there will still be a few bottles left, and a visit to Bieres sans Frontieres will also give me a chance to catch up with fellow beer blogger, Peter Alexander aka, Tandleman.

Finally, I plan to visit the CAMRA shop, to treat myself to a copy of the recently published “Britain’s Best Heritage Pubs”, by Geoff Brandwood. All in all it promises to be a good day.

A Personal View of Annafest

As most followers of this blog will have gathered by now, my son and I have recently returned from a week’s holiday in Franconia (the northern part of Bavaria). We based ourselves in the picturesque town of Forchheim; a place of some 20,000 souls, situated roughly halfway between Bamberg and Nuremberg in the valley of the River Regnitz. Forchheim’s main claim to fame, apart from its four breweries, is Annafest, a ten day long beer festival which I have already written about here. This post describes our own personal experiences of the event.

We attended Annafest on three separate days (Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday), with breaks in between visits to allow ourselves to recover. By recover, I don’t mean we got so drunk, or were left with king-size hangovers, that we were unable to function the following day,  but with litre (Maß) mugs the only measures the beer was served in, (unless one wanted a wheat beer that is), it was quite easy to over-indulge, albeit unintentionally! What’s more, the beer on sale was the Annafestbier, which weighs in with an abv of around 5.7%, or more! The day’s in-between did afford a break though from the festivities and allowed us to explore other parts of the area. This was as much a part of our holiday as visiting Annafest itself.

On each visit we travelled the short distance from the town centre by shuttle bus, alighting at the fairground at the bottom of the Kellerwald. Depending on the day and the time, the buses were sometimes more crowded than at others, although it was a bit disconcerting to be amongst a bus load of school kids heading up to the Kellerwald; disconcerting until one realises that 16 years is the minimum legal age for the consumption of beer in Germany! Possibly a lot of these youngsters were heading up for the funfair and associated amusements, rather than the more serious business of visiting the Kellers, but it’s nice to report that Annafest is very much a family-oriented event with something to keep all age groups amused.

On each occasion we visited three different Kellers, which meant three litres or nearly six pints each over the course of the day. We paced ourselves though and took our time, savouring the tasty, potent beer, served with one notable exception, in tall, ceramic stoneware mugs.  For the record we visited the following Kellers: Tuesday -Stäffalakeller (Wolfshöher), Schlöslakeller (Hebendanz) and Loẅenbräukeller (Loẅenbräu – Buttenheim); Thursday – Greiffkeller (Greiff), Eichhornkeller (Eichhorn) and Weiß-Tauben-Keller (Rittmayer-Hallendorf); Sunday – Hoffmannskeller (Monschof-Kulmbach), Nederkeller (Neder) and Nürnberger-Tor-Keller (Wolfshöher).

Of the beers drunk, Hebendanz and Neder (both Forchheim brewers), stood out above the rest, although the beers from the town’s other two breweries, Eichhorn and Greiff were also very palatable. The beer from Kulmbach giant, Monschof, was different from the other local beers in that instead of the darker, Kellerbier common in Franconia; it was a golden, Helles-style beer, served in a glass Maß, rather than the stoneware ones used by virtually all the other breweries.

The beer I was least impressed with was Wolfshöher, a regional concern  with expansionist designa, based in the village of the same name, near Neunkirchen. The company has an unduly large presence at the Kellarwald, due to its takeover, and closure of Forchheim’s fifth and largest brewery, Bräuhaus Forchheim. The brewery buildings, now standing empty and forlorn, were only a stone’s throw from our rented holiday apartment, but there was some sign that work was taking place on the site, to convert part of the brewery into residential accommodation.

There was plenty of food available to help soak up all of this beer. Most, if not all Kellers offered various cooked meals, ranging from sausages and potato dumplings to the usual knuckles of pork and roast chickens. There were also various food stalls grouped along the paths between the various Kellers, offering a variety of snacks, both savoury and sweet. This, interspersed with the live music at some of the Kellers, and the fairground attractions at the bottom of the hill, combined to produce a fantastic atmosphere.

On the last day we also went along to the Winterbauerkeller (St Georgen Bräu), but they had stopped serving for a while when we arrived. This was sometime around 7pm, and the wind had really started to blow up and a storm was threatened. Shortly after, sirens began to sound and we were told the festival would be closing for the evening, due to an adverse weather report received from the town authorities. Once back in Forchheim we found out the reason for the authority’s caution. Several years ago, during similar stormy conditions, a branch had blown off one of the trees and fallen on a girl, crushing her to death. They were taking no chances with something similar happening again, and with the Kelarwald on high ground, covered with acres of mature trees; one could quite understand the reasons behind their decision. It was a bit of an anti-climax and not quite how we would have wished our last evening at Annafest to end, but we managed to get a meal, plus more beer back in the town, so at least we didn’t go hungry (or thirsty!).

Actually, managing to get a drink plus an evening meal in Forchheim proved a lot harder than one would think. The trouble is most pubs and restaurants close early whilst Annafest is on, with some not bothering to open at all. Everyone in the town it seems wants a piece of the action up on the Kellerwald. The landlord of our rented holiday apartment had warned us about this on our first evening in the town, but we did manage to find a few places open. Pride of place must go to Gasthaus “Schwanne”, an impressive-looking, stone-built pub overlooking Forchheim’s Paradeplatz, and with a small beer garden at the front (beers from St Georgen Bräu and Pottensteiner), and also Gasthaus Fäßler, a cosy pub-cum-restaurant on the opposite side of the square, (Wolfshöher beer, but good food and very busy). One pub, Brauerei Neder, was also open, and we popped in there a couple of times for a nightcap, plus a chat with the friendly locals.

To sum up, Annafest is very much an event which involves the whole town, plus quite a bit of the surrounding area. On those days when we didn’t attend, we couldn’t help noticing the full trains depositing expectant drinkers at the town’s station, and the crowded buses transporting them up to the Kellerwald.  As I said earlier, the festival appeals to all ages, and it was good to see young people enjoying themselves, quaffing the beer and all without any signs of trouble.The party of English beer enthusiasts that we bumped into in Bamberg, were also very impressed with the event, saying how much better it was than Oktoberfest, and how much cheaper too. A Maß of Festbier cost €7.40; I don’t know how much the same measure of beer will be at Oktoberfest this year, but I wouldn’t mind betting it will be approaching the €10 mark. Obviously Oktoberfest is internationally renowned and attracts people from all over the world. Annafest is by nature much more a local’s festival, but it is none the worse for that. We are certainly glad we made the effort to get along to it, and I thoroughly recommend the event to followers of this blog.

Ps. some of the locals in Brauerei Neder were complaining about the beer price up on the Kellerwald.  Mind you, with the pub charging just €1.90 per half litre, (almost half what one was paying at Annafest),  they did have a point!

Getting The Beers In

I may have let it slip in previous posts that I’m acting as the beer buyer for this year’s Rail and Real Ale Festival, which takes place in October at the Spa Valley Railway in Tunbridge Wells.  As in previous years, the event is a joint venture between the Heritage Railway and West Kent CAMRA. The railway are supplying the venue and are also bank-rolling the festival, whilst us in CAMRA are supplying the knowledge and expertise to ensure there are 60 plus cask-conditioned ales, most of them locally brewed, served in tip-top condition.


This is the first time I’ve undertaken such a task; I’m not acting entirely alone in so much that I’ve had assistance and advice from a CAMRA colleague as to which breweries and which beers to go for, but I’m the person doing all the leg work in contacting the breweries, obtaining prices delivery details etc and then actually placing the orders. Thankfully, most of this work can be done by email – however did we manage in pre-Internet days? Even so I’m finding it a bit frustrating when breweries fail to respond to my requests for information; sometimes after several attempts to contact them.

 Most of the breweries approached are either from Kent or neighbouring East Sussex, with a handful from London and Surrey. With such a wealth of brewing talent and interesting beers on our doorstep, it seems foolish to cast the net further a field. To be fair, most of the companies contacted have now replied, but there remains a small handful that seem to make a point of stubbornly refusing to answer emails. This begs the question, why have email in the first place? And why be in business if you cannot be bothered to respond to sales enquiries? At the end of the day it will be their loss, as with so many breweries operating in the area there are plenty of alternatives to chose from, and in the meantime work continues with planning the rest of the festival.

If you live locally, or even in London or on the south coast, then why not come along?  The festival runs from Friday 18^th to Sunday 20^th October. The bulk of the beers will be on sale at Spa Valley’s Tunbridge Wells West Station headquarters, which is a short walk from the town’s main station. There will also be a smaller range of beers available at the two stops down the line; Groombridge and Eridge - the latter station having connections with mainline train services to London Bridge. There will also be a few beers served on the trains, so what could be better than sitting in a restored passenger coach, hauled by a vintage steam or diesel locomotive, as it chugs its way through the scenic Kent and Sussex countryside, enjoying a tasty, locally-brewed pint of ale? Further details can be found here.

Footnote: The Harvey’s Best was in fine form the other night at the Royal Oak Tunbridge Wells, where we held our monthly meeting to assess progress with the festival. The Session Pale and Cobnut, both from Kent Brewery, were also very palatable in the Bedford, when we called in before catching the last train home.

A Brief Overview of Annafest

 I’m not quite sure how to describe Annafest, apart from to say it was unlike any beer festival I have ever been to before. But then German beer festivals aren’t the same as those we have in the UK anyway. For a start they’ve been running a lot longer than home-grown events; sometimes by as much as a couple of hundred years. Take the grand-daddy of them all, Munich’s Oktoberfest, which began in 1810 and, with the odd break for wars plus a couple of cholera epidemics, has been going strong ever since!

Visitors to this world-famous orgy of beer drinking will be aware that despite the large number of “tents” (temporary halls would be a more accurate description), only the six brewers based in the city are allowed to sell their beers at Oktoberfest. Contrast this with CAMRA’s forthcoming Great British Beer Festival where there will be getting on for 800 different beers to choose from and you get an idea of just how different festivals are in Germany compared to the UK. Whilst British beers festivals are about sampling as many different beers as possible, German beer festivals are about having a good time, with some serious drinking as an essential accompaniment, of course, and this is how I would describe Annafest.

 The event takes place at the Kellerwald, a wooded hillside on the edge of Forchheim, where there are a series of natural rock cellars cut into the hillside. These cellars were originally constructed for the storage and maturation of bottom-fermenting beer, in the days before refrigeration was developed. Today there are two dozen such “Kellers”, the majority of which are just open for Annafest, although a handful remain open all year.  During the summer evenings the Kellerwald is the perfect location for a cool beer in the shady woods  The event is held over a 10 day period around the 26^th July, which is the feast of St Anna (Anne), the mother of the Virgin Mary

Although pilgrims had been journeying to a nearby chapel consecrated to St. Anna since the early 16^th Century, Annafest in its present form began in 1840, when the Forchheim shooting club moved its main shooting ground from the "shooting meadow" on the river Regnitz to the Kellerwald.  As well as plenty of beer drinking there are other attractions such as fairground rides, various stalls, plus six stages which feature a wide range of different musical acts. The local Forchheim breweries Hebendanz, Greif, Eichhorn and Neder all brew a strong Bock beer especially for this festival, the so-called Annafestbier, and a number of other local breweries also supply brews of their own as well.

With seating for about 30.000 people, the Kellerwald provides sufficient accommodation for the 450.000 - 500.000 visitors who come each year over the course of the 10-day festival period. A regular shuttle bus service is provided from the town and surrounding areas to the Kellerwald and back again, so getting to the festival is not a problem. For those of a more energetic disposition, it is not that far to walk up from the town and many people choose to do this, working up a king-sized thirst on the way!

One comment I have seen sums up the whole event quite nicely. "A great atmosphere and very cool location, in the woods above the town. It's everything the Oktoberfest isn't: cool woodland beer gardens instead of hot, smelly tents."