I mentioned in the comments on my recent article about this year's
Great British Beer Festival, that I was in the process of drafting a post about beer festivals. This would primarily be about my feelings towards festivals, and how these feelings have changed over the years.
In the process of writing this post I found that I was constantly being drawn back to
GBBF, and how that event had changed over the past four and a half decades. So without further ado, here is my own personal take on that enduring institution that is the
Great British Beer Festival.
I'm pretty sure I'm correct in crediting
CAMRA for introducing beer festivals to this country. I'm also fairly certain that the idea for such events came from
Germany, where there is a long tradition of festivals involving the consumption of copious amounts of beer. If I'm wrong with these assumptions, then please let me know.
The very first beer festival organised by
CAMRA was the
Cambridge Beer Festival. which took place in
1974. The event is also the longest continuously running event in
Britain; although it has moved site three times. The
Kent Beer Festival, at
Canterbury probably comes second in the longevity stakes, but again that event has had several changes of venue.
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Andreas Praefcke [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) |
I would say that in terms of timing,
CAMRA's first national festival comes in third. Billed as a
“Beer Exhibition,” rather than a beer festival, the event which soon became known as the
Great British Beer Festival, took place at the then recently vacated
old flower market in
London's Covent Garden, in
September 1975. The event was an unqualified success and, as well as encouraging individual
CAMRA branches to run their own beer festivals,
Covent Garden was directly responsible for subsequent national ones.
It was the event which everyone remembers, and I count myself fortunate to have been there; even if it was only for one session. On that sole visit I was like a kid in a sweet shop, with all these beers available for me to try. Thanks to
CAMRA's first
Good Beer Guide I’d read about some of them, and now was my opportunity to try a few.
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexandra_Palace_from_air_2009_.jpg |
There's not a lot I can report about
Covent Garden, apart from the old flower stalls being used as make-shift stillages, and the drains and gulleys in the concrete floor. In addition, quite a lot of the beers were dispensed from wooden casks.
The session I attended was on
Friday afternoon, and quite a few of the customers were office workers, still in their suits, who had popped out for a crafty lunchtime pint. My friends and I returned the following evening, but with the queue stretching right round the block showing no sign of moving, we adjourned to the nearby
Marquess of Anglesea.
The first
Great British Beer Festival took place in
1977, at
Alexandra Palace in north London. I remember going to the festival and climbing up the hill to Ally Pally, after getting off the train at the nearby station, but don't remember that much about the event itself. I'm fairly certain I attended a couple of other subsequent festivals at
Alexandra Palace, but I was definitely there for the
1980 festival, which was held under canvas, in tents, after
Ally Pally burned down.
I also went to the majority of the events held at the
Brighton Metropole. This venue hosted the festival during the mid
1980's, which was handy for those of us living in
West Kent. There would normally be a half dozen or so of us travelling down to
Brighton by train, taking the line from
Tonbridge to
Redhill and then changing onto the mainline. We combined a day at the seaside with some serious beer sampling, and in the days before all day drinking was allowed, the compulsory closed period during the afternoon, provided the opportunity for
fish & chips on the seafront followed by some fooling around on the
dodgems.
It was sometimes quite an effort to get back in the swing again, when returning for the evening session. It was especially hard for the branch member who made a point of starting off with the strongest beers available, and pints of them as well, but we were much younger back then, and drinking a skinful had far less of an effect on me than it would now. They were good days and thinking about them brings back fond memories.
There was no festival in
1984, as
Bingley Hall in
Birmingham, the venue due to hold the event, burned to the ground. Coming just four years after
Alexandra Palace suffered a similar fate the fire prompted comments about the
“curse of CAMRA.”
At the beginning of the
1980's, and also at the end of the decade, the
Great British Beer Festival was held at the
Queen's Hall in Leeds, but given the distances involved and the fact I wasn't that committed to the event, I never attended any of the festivals held in
Leeds or the ones which took place in
Birmingham.
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Arena-_C_Ford.jpg |
The festival returned to
London in
1991, when the event was held at the
Dockland's Arena. This was a short-lived concert, sports and exhibition centre on the
Isle of Dogs. The venue was totally unsuitable for an event like
GBBF, and I remember my friends and I coming away feeling very disappointed. From memory the
Arena was in financial trouble, and there were problems regarding the food and other concessions, so I was not really surprised to learn that the venue was demolished for housing in
2006, after an existence of just
17 years.
The following year, the festival moved to
Olympia which in many ways, seemed the ideal venue, although perhaps not as far as the beer was concerned. In those days,
Olympia lacked air-conditioning so the whole structure, which basically resembles an enormous greenhouse, used to heat up like a hothouse, as soon as the sun put in an appearance. Despite the best efforts of the “cellar staff” the temperature of the beer was often far from ideal.
The installation of a decent air-conditioning system, finally solved the problem, and with the temperature under control
Olympia became the ideal venue for
GBBF. Bright, airy and now super-cool as well, it was a pleasure just walking around, seeing what was on offer and deciding which beers to sample next.
Several year later though, the event moved to nearby
Earls Court, whilst refurbishment work was carried out at
Olympia. Earls Court was the worst venue ever, as far as I was concerned, as it was like drinking in a underground carpark. There were no windows, and therefore no natural light, and the combination of concrete and artificial lighting, meant one left the festival with aching feet and an equally aching head, regardless of how much or how little beer one had supped. After just two visits, I refused to attend subsequent festivals, as I detested
Earls Court that much.
In
2012, after
six years at that
"other place", the
Great British Beer Festival returned to
Olympia, where it remains to this day. It was good to see the festival back at this iconic venue, even though in recent years, I've had mixed feelings about the event.
As stated at the beginning of this article, I'll be writing a
separate post about how my feelings about beer festivals have changed over the years, but I'm pleased to have been able to witness the
Great British Beer Festival change from something just cobbled together in an abandonned old flower market, to the slick, professional and highly polished event it is today.