London Beer Ramble May 2012

We’d love to see our members, and prospective members too, come along and enjoy some London pints with us.

The invitation is extended to all nearby CAMRA branches including London of course! If you’d like to put up a poster advertising the ramble you can download one here [PDF].

From North Hertfordshire our travel arrangements are to catch the train to King’s Cross and then the Northern Line to London Bridge. The train originates in Cambridge at 08:55 (two CAMRA members will be joining from there) and stops at North Herts stations as follows:

08:55: Cambridge
…
09:15: Royston
09:20: Ashwell & Morden
09:25: Baldock
09:29: Letchworth
09:34: Hitchin
09:40: Stevenage
09:44 Knebworth
…
10:20: London King’s Cross

We will be meet in the front carriage of the train – no doubt several of us will be wearing beer/CAMRA-related shirts.

The map below shows the route we shall be taking, and below the map are Richard’s notes about the pubs and surrounds!

View May 18th North Herts CAMRA London Beer Ramble in a larger map

1 – BREW WHARF – Brew Wharf Yard, Stoney Street, SE1
You will have a chance to sample their own beers brewed on site. 11:00 – 11:30

We then proceed on to the…

2 – MARKET PORTER – 9 Stoney Street, SE1
Here you will find up to 9 hand pumps serving a fine selection of beers. 11:30 – 12:15

Weather permitting we take a historic walk beside the Thames passing Southwark Cathedral, The Golden Hind and the Globe. We then cross the Thames again at Blackfriars Bridge and walk via Tudor Street and the Inns at Temple (if open), where some of the top legal people ply their trade, to reach the…

3 – KNIGHTS TEMPLAR – 95, Chancery Lane WC2
This is a Weatherspoon’s pub and may be a lunch stop. 13:30 – 14:30

We take a very short walk to the…

4 – SEVEN STARS – 53 Cary Street, WC2
In this Camra National Inventory pub a selection of beers can be found including Adnams and Dark Star! 14:30 – 15:00

We can walk through Lincolns Inn Fields passing the Old Curiosity Shoppe then cross Holborn Kingsway, noting the old tram tunnel to our left, to reach the Old Covent Garden Market taking in all its splendour via Kemble and Russell Streets. From here it is a short walk to reach the…

5 – HARP – 47 Chandos Place
This was the CAMRA National Pub of Great Britain for 2011, need I say more!! 15:30 – 16:15

We then cross the Strand and walk down Villers Street to the…

6 – SHIP and SHOVEL – 2 – 3 Craven Passage W1
Badger beers are sold here. 16:30 – 17:00

We then take a walk past Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Gerrard Street which is part of London’s China Town to reach…

7 – DE HEMS – 11 Macclesfield Street, W1
This is a genuine Dutch bar that has been trading on this site for over 100 years. Expect the unusual here but all the real beer will probably be found in a bottle! 17:30 – 18:00

We then walk round to Frith Street and on to the…

8 – DOG and DUCK – 10 Bateman Street, W1
This Nicholson’s pub is on the CAMRA National Inventory 18:30 – 19:00

From here we walk down Greek Street to Cambridge Circus and then proceed via Earlham Street and Shelton Street to the…

9 – CROSS KEYS – 31 Endell St, W1
Here you will encounter Brodies Beers from East London and a load of pictures and other bric-a-brac that adorns the pub. 19:30 – 20:00

From here it is a short walk back to Covent Garden (sometimes closed due to crowd control) or Leicester Square tube stations.

We will take the Piccadilly line to Kings Cross where there are lots of fast food outlets before catching the train back to North Herts!

If getting off in Hitchin, who is for a quick one in the HALFMOON?

The Half Moon’s 8th Anniversary “Champions and Local Heroes” beer festival list can be downloaded by clicking here. Thirtyfive ales and ten ciders and perrys!

The Our Mutual Friend’s 10th Anniversary beer festival list can be downloaded here. Ten ales (plus 6 and pumps and loads more different ales in the cellar) plus fifteen ciders and perries!

On Friday April 27th the branch will present both pubs with their runners-up certificates. The Half Moon presentation will be during the day at 12:30, and the Our Mutual Friend presentation will be in the evening at 21:00.

The fun doesn’t stop this weekend – we know of 6 beer festivals planned for May and there are probably even more (please let us know if you know one we have missed!)

It’s time to save your pint and fight back against this year’s budget which saw the Government continue its damaging policy of the beer duty escalator.

Every year beer tax increases by 2% above inflation meaning your pint in the pub costs you 5-10p more. This mounting pressure is contributing to the closure of 16 pubs every single week.

CAMRA is calling all beer drinkers and pub goers to sign an online e-petition today by visiting www.camra.org.uk/saveyourpint.

We need 100,000 signatures to trigger a high profile Parliamentary debate and put pressure on the Government ahead of Budget 2013.

To stand a chance of doing this we need your help in reaching as many people as possible. So please sign the petition and then spread the word.

CAMRA also has free material to take down your local and join the campaign. You can order these online at: http://saveyourpint.co.uk/promotional-materials-order-form/ (One pubs pack contains 5 x A4 posters and 100 beer mats.)

With around £1 on every pint going to the Treasury in beer duty and VAT, it’s time to save your pint and call time on the beer duty escalator!

Community Pubs Month - support *your* local

It has nearly been a whole month since Hitchin Beer Festival, so you should have recovered well enough to be thirsty for another beer festival or two. This month we know of four pubs holding beer festivals: The Orange Tree in Baldock and The Lytton Arms in Knebworth this week, and the Half Moon in Hitchin and Our Mutual Friend in Stevenage both have festivals over the last weekend of the month. See the Calendar listing below for more detail.

Have we missed any April beer festivals? We need our members – or anyone really – to help us out by getting involved. We only have a small handful of active CAMRA members, there aren’t enough of us to keep tabs on every pub and every event going on in our patch of Hertfordshire. You can always email us your event details, or comment on this website, or “tweet” us on Twitter – by whatever means we’d like to see more of you involved!

April is CAMRA’s inaugural “Community Pubs Month” and we’re doing what we can to promote events at local pubs. If your local isn’t registered on the Community Pubs Month website (check here) then sign them up! Please enter any events your local is holding this month as well. You don’t have to be the licensee or even a CAMRA member to do this. To enter an event for a pub search for the pub and click the “add event” link at the bottom of the page (this is easiest as it pre-fills all the pub details). Help promote your local!

The following pubs in our area are already listed on the website, some even have some events listed. Note that the events lists on the pub pages are incomplete, the best way to find pub events in your area it to use the event search page!

• Our Mutual Friend, Stevenage
• Squirrel Tavern, Stevenage
• The Albert, Hitchin
• The Cricketers, Ickleford
• The Nightingale, Hitchin
• The Orange Tree, Baldock
• The Red Lion, Preston
• The Victoria, Hitchin

Also, for a full list of pubs in North Herts that we know are using Twitter click here: North Herts Beer Tweeters Twitter List.

Next 4 upcoming beer festivals:

Longest Hitchin festival queue ever?

It was excellent seeing so many CAMRA and Round Table members donating their time this year to make the festival a success. We had a record 61 volunteers who donated around 900 hours worth of their time. For once, even during Friday’s busiest period, it was possible to have a bit of a break from serving during a shift and drinkers didn’t have to wait too long to be served. It was certainly far more relaxed behind the bar than in the last couple of years – more enjoyable for everyone! We thank our volunteers wholeheartedly and hope to see everyone again at the post-festival party where we will supply plenty of food and beer for all.

What about the beer? We had 75 different ales on over the course of the festival from a wide array of breweries ranging from Isle of Purbeck on the Dorset coast all the way up to Cairngorm in the Scottish Highlands. As a special theme this year we had a several casks from London Brewers Alliance breweries. London was once a great brewing city but in recent times there were a mere handful of breweries left (Fuller’s, Meantime, any more?) – come the current microbrewery revolution and we’ve seen several new breweries popping up within the M25. Redemption we now know well – their “Trinity” (3%) won Beer of the Festival at Hitchin 2011 – now we’ve also met beers from By The Horns, East London Brewing Company, Florence, London Fields and Sambrooks.

The Beer of the Festival (BotF) voting gives an interesting illustration of how varied people’s tastes are. On day 1 we had 71 beers on the go and 64 of these received at least one BotF vote. However, at the end of the festival there was one winner and I’m pleased to write that Windsor & Eton Brewery takes the prize with “Treetops” (4%) a beer created for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and described by the brewery as: “a rich, intense Africa Export Stout brewed from a blend of British and African ingredients, including coffee and vanilla.” The race for this year’s BotF was a close one. Summer Wine Brewery‘s “Diablo IPA” (6%) came in at second place by only a single vote – it won BotF at our Letchworth beer festival last year. Coming in at a respectable third in the BotF race was Milton Brewery‘s “Marcus Aurelius” (7.5%), this “Imperial Roman Stout” is a wintertime favourite of mine.

This year’s Cider of the Festival (CotF) was “Black Dragon” from Gwynt Y Ddraig – that makes it Hitchin CotF two years running now. Runners-up were our local Apple Cottage’s “FTJ” and Millwhites “Rioja Cask”.

We had a broad range of food this year thanks to our Olives and Stuff and Wobbly Bottom Cheese stands plus Radcliffe Arms & Cardona & Son in the kitchen. The kitchen was serving up locally produced rare-breed pork sausages, roasts, and both muntjack & vegetarian wraps throughout both days of the festival.

James from the Radcliffe Arms, and Andre & Ben from Cardona & Son in the Kitchin

As a new feature this year we ran a live webcam. This has allowed us to create time-lapse videos covering the set-up and both days of the festival. These were rather fun and have attracted a lot of positive feedback.

Thanks to everyone who attended the beer festival to make it a successful event! Once again this was our “last one” at the town hall, perhaps we’ll see you there again in 2013? Usually our next beer festival is Letchworth in September, we’re working on arranging a new venue at the moment as Plinston is unavailable – keep an eye on the website for news on this front.

All our time-lapse videos from the festival are below – they can all be viewed in HD mode too if you choose. Day 1, day 2, and then the set-up. Alas we didn’t get a pack-up one because somebody slept in on Sunday morning… maybe next time!

Day 1:

Day 2:

Setup:

And a final pic from the last day:

Want to see a festival set-up in action? Here’s a time-lapse of the activity:

For the first time we’re trialling a ‘fest cam’ to take a time-lapse of the festival this year. Perhaps you might spot yourself? We hope to have the cam live on the site during the festival too. (Time permitting… watch this space!)

Hitchin Beer & Cider Festival 2012

More details on the Fesival Page – including the beer list when it is finalised!

We also need volunteers to help out with the setup and take down of the festival. To volunteer email Paul Beardsley on: socialsecretary@camranorthherts.org.uk

Your local pubs need you!

Good Beer Guide

• http://nbss.camranorthherts.org.uk/

To log in you will need to provide your membership number and postcode.

There is more information on the NBSS here:

• http://www.camranorthherts.org.uk/campaigning/rateyourbeer/

Please take the time to read the “known bugs” section at least!

Want to know why you should bother? Read on…

As you’ll be aware CAMRA publishes the Good Beer Guide every year to promote those pubs in the UK that are serving cask ale in excellent condition. Each CAMRA branch is allocated a small number of Good Beer Guide spaces for the pubs in their area – in our case this is just 16 pubs (out of more than 200 eligible pubs!) As you may be able to imagine it is a difficult task surveying so many pubs (if one individual were to try on weekends they’d have to visit more than 4 pubs every weekend of the year). We often receive stern words from drinkers & publicans who cannot understand why they’re not in the guide. Sadly we sometimes have to tell them: you’d have a better chance if only a handful more of our hundreds of members scored your ales.

To select which pubs go into the guide we rely 100% on CAMRA members submitting beer scores – we use an entirely empirical approach, we simply take the top 16 eligible pubs and they’re IT! The top pubs in this 16 will form the shortlist that members will be asked to survey to determine who will win the branch Pub of the Year award. As you can see, this is an important part of our local campaigning and we would love to have more local members participating. As a branch we try to help out by running monthly minibus trips to countryside pubs & bi-weekly pub rambles around town pubs. This alone is not quite enough to give some pubs the coverage they need. This is where we need local drinkers who are CAMRA members to help out – please submit beer scores, and encourage any other CAMRA members you know to do the same!

As part of this we try and help to make it easier for members to actually get scores to us. To this end the branch provides its own NBSS website, there is also a national NBSS website – and furthermore we are willing to accept and process hand-written scores from our members (please make them readable!)

All the best & happy scoring!
The North Herts CAMRA Committee

There is a whole 5 weeks to wait until the Hitchin Beer & Cider festival — what to do in the meantime? Well all year round you can get great cask ale in excellent North Herts pubs — especially at their own independent beer festivals! The Our Mutual Friend in Stevenage, a Good Beer Guide regular and repeat winner of our Pub of the Year award, will be holding their Winter Beer Festival from the 2nd to the 5th of February — i.e. starting Thursday this week!

The festival will feature around 20 cask ales as well as 15 ciders and perries from a variety of local producers. Although, cider & perry lovers should note that more than 10 ciders and perries is business-as-usual at the Mutual.

The OMF is a 30 minute walk from Stevenage rail station, or a quick and convenient bus or taxi ride. There is a taxi rank just outside the station, and you’ll find most of the busses by crossing the bridge over the main road and heading to the right once you reach ground level. Use the www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk website to find yourself an appropriate transport option. The map below shows the location of the pub.

Remember: support our local pubs!

Hitchin 2012 Beer & Cider Festival

Not long to go now!

Mark March 9th and 10th on your calendars for the Hitchin Beer & Cider festival. Held jointly by North Hertfordshire CAMRA and the Hitchin Round Table at the Town Hall. (Maybe for the last time – yes, we keep saying that. We expect that eventually they’ll get their act together and make the town hall unusable to us as promised.)

We’re still working on the beer list – so if you have any suggestions let us know via a comment here on this post, or to @nh_camra on Twitter, or using an email to: editor@camranorthherts.co.uk.

More details on the Fesival Page – including the beer list when it is finalised!

We also need volunteers to help out at the festival. To volunteer you need to be a CAMRA or Round Table member. Volunteers get a discounted beer price, a t-shirt, and a festival glass! To volunteer email Paul Beardsley on: socialsecretary@camranorthherts.org.uk

"Diablo is our flagship IPA, loaded with US hop varieties, dominated by the 'Citra' variety. Huge tropical flavours & aromas punctuate, mango, lychee, and papaya fruits abound, with notes of resinous pine leading to a lasting bitterness. A devilishly good IPA."

By popular vote, the beer of the festival at Letchworth was Summer Wine Brewery Diablo – a strong & hoppy IPA, a style becoming increasingly popular (other well-known examples include: Thornbridge Jaipur IPA and BrewDog Punk IPA.) Summer Wine Brewery are quite new to the UK brewing scene, though already very well known amongst beer twitterers and bloggers.  They are also no stranger to controversy when it comes to CAMRA, as one of a new wave of breweries that are pushing the boundaries of the beer world they probably often find themselves in the firing line of the occaisional cask ale traditionalist.  There is a famous (in online beer circles) “altercation” with one Kevin, documented on their blog here: CAMRA – The Campaign for Real Alienation.  It makes for amusing reading, so long as you’re not too sensitive – it is worth reflecting on.

If you use Twitter you can follow SWB: @SWBrewery

I was a little worried that the brewery would simply refuse to accept the award, to make a point of some sort.  Luckily it seems that our two members, who headed up north back in November to present the certificate, weren’t put through the malt-mill never to be seen again, nor immediately ejected from the brewery.  The text below is their presentation report.

Regular readers may remember that Summer Wine Brewery’s Diablo IPA 6% was voted the Beer of the Festival at Letchworth in September. North Herts branch policy is to visit en masse, drink free beer at the brewery and then decamp to nearby recommended boozers to get stuck in to plenty more. Sounds good eh? Well this time it didn’t go quite to plan. Summer Wine are going through a never-ending growth in demand for their beers and couldn’t find time to accommodate us. However, a trip to the Yorkshire Motherland gave two of us an opportunity to sneak up while they weren’t looking and thrust the certificate into the Head Brewer’s hands. This was the brewery’s first ever BOF win so it was well received.

Head Brewer James Farran (left) is delighted to receive the certificate from some grinning idiot (right).

While there we had the 50p tour. Current production is on a six barrel plant which will be replaced with something much bigger sometime this year when suitable premises to put it in can be found. Most of the beer is bottled, some is cask and gasp some gets put into kegs… Bottles are now available to buy online if you’re interested. Summer Wine beers are not your typical brown Yorkshire Bitter; most have very complex malt recipes and more hops than you can shake a stick at. The bottles we took away with us were certainly an interesting bunch.

Afterwards we traditionally decamped to the nearby Nook in Holmfirth (round the back of Sid’s Café in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’) which also has a brewery in the back yard, and we got an impromptu tour of that too when we were caught pressing our faces to the windows for a better look. Two breweries in a day, can’t be bad!

Words: Graham Perry, Photo: Helen Perry

Whittlesea Straw Bear

As promised, here are the final details and the itinerary for the annual visit of the ‘North Herts Branch’ to the ‘Straw Bear Festival’ at Whittlesea on Saturday 14 January 2012.

Though you can obviously make your own way there, a group from the branch plans to meet up at certain train stations (and the more the merrier!) We always meet in the front carriage, so that we know who is going. The current plan is as follows: trains from Knebworth; 0838, change at Hitchin or Stevenage, Stevenage; 0847, Hitchin 0852, (arrive Peterborough at 0937), Peterborough 0955 and arrive at Whittlesea at 1003. This way, there is plenty of time to get to the town for the parade itself.

The parade itself consists of many, many Morris Dancing and Sword Dancing teams from all over Britain. They dance and sing at various venues in the streets and pubs. A program is available, (for a small donation), which shows who is where and when and what they are doing. In addition and the main reason for going is the ‘pubs’. There are three in the 2012 GBG, the Boat, George Hotel and the Letter B, along with quite a few other ones worth a visit.

We are planning to leave Whittlesea on the 1553, which arrives in Ely at 1622 and gives us just over three hours to visit the three pubs there; the Prince Albert, (then maybe Fish & Chips), Townhouse Pub and West End House, (then Tesco’s for a last minute snack!). We then get to the station to catch the 2005 back to Hitchin, arriving at 2059 and then train continues and stops at Stevenage and Knebworth.

It’s a great day out and over the years that we have been going, many of us have enjoyed the dancing and drinking. Why not join us this year; you will be made very welcome.

For the impatient, you can get hold of the newsletter as an Adobe PDF document via the South Herts CAMRA website: Pints of View

For the even more impatient, here is a direct link to the PDF file.

December Events

While I’m at it, here’s a reminder about events we have on this December:

Wed 7th Dec 8pm: Pub Ramble in Baldock: White Hart, Cock, Victoria, Orange Tree, Engine.

Sat 10th Dec 6.30pm: Minibus Trip to Graveley & Lt Wymondley: Highwayman, George & Dragon, Wagon & Horses, Plume Of Feathers, Buck’s Head (pickups from 6.00pm onwards in Stevenage, Hitchin, Letchworth + Baldock, £6 members, £10 non-members, contact Paul Beardsley to book using: socialsecretary@camranorthherts.org.uk)

Friday 16th Dec 8pm: Pub Ramble in Hitchin: Half Moon, Sun Runner, Victoria and Nightingale.

Monday 19th Dec 8pm: Branch Meeting: Red Lion, Preston.

• Polhill Arms Beer & Bangers Festival, Renhold, Bedfordshire: Thursday 10th to Sunday 13th November
• Canary Club Winter Beer Festival, Hitchin Town Football Club: Friday 18th to Sunday 20th November
• Orange Tree Winter Beer Festival, Baldock: Thursday 22nd December to Monday 2nd January 2012

If you know any more local festivals, please feel free to tell us: email, comment on this post or tweet us a message on @nh_camra

Whittlesea Straw Bear 2012

When I saw the words “Straw Bear Festival” I must admit that I first thought it was a typo – too much ‘beer’ finding it’s way in my thinking perhaps? Actually, the North Herts Branch has been going to Whittlesea for many years – this year the Branch outing will be on Saturday 14 January 2012 that will coincide with the Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival, followed by visits to Good Beer Guide Pubs in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

Though you can obviously make your own way there, a group from the branch plan to meet up at certain train stations (and the more the merrier!) The current plan is as follows: trains from Knebworth; 0838, change at Hitchin or Stevenage, Stevenage; 0847, Hitchin 0852, Peterborough 0955 and arrive at Whittlesea at 1003. This way, there is plenty of time to get to the town for the parade itself.

The Ely-southward journey from Whittlesea is planned to depart around 1600 and go to Ely to visit the GBG Pubs; leaving Ely around 2000 ensures that the group will arrive at Hitchin around 2100.

There will be more details nearer the time (especially with new train timetables), from Social Secretary – stay tuned for further updates!

A 'Straw Bear' in 1909 - nothing says 'traditional' like a someone dressed for the amusement of others. All in good fun, of course!

Good Beer Guide 2012: it's out now, but we need your votes from this year if you want to include your favourite pubs for _next_ year!

You may be a firm supporter of your favourite pub, as a regular and a CAMRA member, but do you know why we ask you to score your beer? For those unaware, it reveals to the rest of the branch if our pubs have been putting the care and effort in serving beer by keeping them in tip-top shape (note that 0 is a ‘no ale’ and 1 is ‘undrinkable’ while 5 is ‘Whoa! Outstanding!!’), and naturally as a member you should be far happier to be served a tasty pint than one that is.. well (quite franky), isn’t. Unsurprisingly, a pub receiving many good beer scores do a great deal in it getting in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, and ultimately being shortlisted for our branch’s Pub of the Year. Although there are many factors in differentiating an OK pub from a great, serving good beer really is one of the primary factors – there is plenty of competition in our branch area (and we have increased it by including clubs too!)

The greatest tragedy as a member attending the monthly branch meetings leading up to picking a shortlist for the Good Beer Guide (hey you, North Herts members! You can show up too – check the calendar!) is this: seeing that though we have many wonderful drinking establishments eager to serve great beer we cannot include them all. The list is can get pretty long, and length of discussion can mirror that. But if it isn’t scored, it has less backing to get it shortlisted.

So if you cannot make it to the branch meetings, we really can’t emphasize enough: please rate your beer regularly and often as possible. Each year is tallied anew; if you have any scores within this year you need to put them into the NBSS as soon as possible. Every vote helps, and if any of your favourite pubs make it into the Good Beer Guide I’m sure that they won’t be unthankful for the extra exposure for a year. (And why would you want to hide a potential North Herts CAMRA Pub of the Year?)

PS: Hopefully, there will be branch-approved pages to demystify the procedures in how we select the Good Beer Guide list for our branch area as well as how we determine our Pub of the Year. Stay tuned!

Another Letchworth Beer Festival has come and gone, making it 20 that the branch has under its collective belt now. On the stats it was a good one as Letchworth festivals go, a handful more people than last year and a reasonable range of beer available until the end but not too much left over. All up 986 people came through the doors and they drank an average of 3.8 pints of ale each. Of course some of our visitors were of the more fruity persuasion – managing to put away nearly 1000 pints of cider and perry.

I had the honour of putting together the beer list this year – a job much more more difficult than it might sound. Several late evenings were spent poring over the suppliers’ lists trying to pick a range of interesting beers to fit the profile. I managed to arrange some special ales by chatting directly to some breweries online. This is how we got the Grain Blackwood Stout in an oak barrel – an impressive sight! Several ale drinkers, with a look of nostalgia in their eyes, were heard to exclaim something along the lines of “I haven’t seen one of them since I were a lad!” We also had a couple of beers from a new brewery in Norwich, Northcote, thanks to a special request received via twitter from a chap who was going to visit the festival on the eve of his birthday. Thus the Jiggle Juice, one of our two strong IPAs was acquired. Another was the Project Venus Venus Rouge the second in a series of collaboration brews involving brewsters from several British breweries.

Smile & wave for the camera!

During the festival I received more requests to recommend a beer matching a description along the lines of “pale and hoppy” than anything else. This isn’t one of our recognised styles and covers beers we classify as bitters, best bitters, and strong ales. Luckily our kilderkin of Buntingford’s Polar Star provided something we could offer the hop-heads until nearly the very end of the festival. Most of our other hoppy ales ran dry early on Friday. A particular favourite seemed to be the Bristol Beer Factory Acer – a “single hop” ale using a Japanese variety called Sorachi Ace. The flavour imparted to this beer by the hops was unusual yet compelling, very modern – it was described by one of our visitors as “hipster beer”. We may have to give this sort of ale a little more attention for future beer festivals.

Letchworth Morris Men in action

Beer & Cider of the Festival

At the end of the festival we counted the votes and the beer of the festival turned out to be the Summer Wine Brewery Diablo IPA. One of our “pale and hoppy” beers and our other “strong IPA” – 6% ABV and dominated by flavours imparted by Citra hops. We will be arranging an award presentation trip as soon as possible – the brewery is in Honley, just south of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. Keep your eyes on What’s Brewing and our website for further details.

On the cider front we found our winner somewhat closer to home – our own Apple Cottage in Baldock. Their Rumble, a medium-dry cider matured in rum casks, is our cider of the festival and I believe a presentation will take place sometime in October – again, check our website for details.

Our extensive real cider & perry range

Future Uncertain for Plinston Hall

Sadly Plinston Hall is to be renovated and is not expected to be available for the festival next year. As is the case in Hitchin, the hunt is on for a new venue. We’ve held back on being too dramatic about this being the “last festival in Plinston”, look at our situation with Hitchin town hall… we’ll see you there again on the 9th and 10th of March 2012 for yet-another “last festival in the town hall.” Meanwhile we are still interested in hearing your ideas on possible alternative venues in both towns.

Since our first festival in 1991 Dennis Hill and his staff at Plinston Hall have done an excellent job supporting the festival. So it is with some regret that we must bring you the news of Dennis’s well-earned retirement. To recognise his contribution, former branch chairman Brian Mason presented Dennis with an Eric Watson Memorial Award at the beer festival on Friday. Fittingly, Brian was wearing the 1991 Letchworth Beer festival t-shirt at the time! We wish Dennis all the best for the future!

Brian Mason presents Dennis Hill with an Eric Watson award

Festival Charities

At this festival we chose to support two hospices local to our branch area, this was in memory of Cherry Harrington. The collection came to £106.58, the money will be split between the charities. Please support these excellent local organisations that do a great deal of good in our community: The Garden House Hospice & The Isabel Hospice.

Festival Photos

Sadly, this may be the last year the Letchworth festival is to be hosted in Plinston Hall, but I hope that it would become another memorable festival for all the attendees. See you there!