The Town Hall is the venue for an amazing range of British & Foreign Beer, Cider and Perry.

Keith Hoskins of Hitchin Initiative will formally open the event on Friday afternoon.

See the festival webpage for  more information and a beer list..

• the accounts for last year were presented (but not yet audited)
• new auditors were appointed to complete the above, and for next year
• the committee was re-elected
• the Half Moon, Hitchin, was chosen as the North Hert’s Pub Of The Year

The North Herts CAMRA Committee is voted for at our Branch AGM in March each year.

The committee members for 2010-11 are:

• Colin Yates – Chair and Pints Of View Local Newsletter Coordinator
• Tony Driscoll – Secretary
• Jacqui Piper – Treasurer
• Malcolm Mills – Membership Secretary
• Andy Rawnsley - Pubs Officer and Festival Organiser
• Gill Richardson – Publicity Officer and Branch Contact and Auditor
• Ashleigh Milner – Social Secretary (contact for minibus trips, etc., via e-mail or on 07930-958548)
• Dan Hancu – Young Members Coordinator
• Richard Merritt – Public Affairs Officer
• Paul Breadsley – Herts Liaison Rep.
• Elaine LaRoche – Auditor

In particular, any general enquiries about, or comments on, the branch’s activities can be sent to the Branch Contact by clicking here.  If necessary, the Branch Contact will forward your query to an appropriate committee member.

• branch business
• branch beer festivals
• other branches’ beer festivals
• brewery visits
• pub visits

For dates and venues of all of our activities, see:

• this website’s Diary,
• the Diary section in What’s Brewing
• our Social Secretary’s monthly e-mail (sign-up for e-mails via CAMRA HQ or contact our Social Secretary)
• the Diary section of Pints Of View.

We want to see as many of you as possible at our events.  If we are holding an event near you, please feel free to come and meet us.  You don’t have to be a member, but we hope that if you like good beer you will decide to join.  Husbands, wives or other partners and friends are also welcome, even if they insist on drinking something unmentionable.  We are a friendly crew and you may afterwards decide that you could get more out of your CAMRA membership by joining in regularly.  We certainly hope so.

If you can’t make it to these events, feel free to suggest alternatives.

We conduct branch business once a month at a Branch Meeting or Committee Meeting.  We usually alternate the Branch and Committee Meeeting.  Branch Meeetings are of course open to all members.  Committee Meetings are aimed at committee members, but are also open to all members to attend; but only committee members can vote (if any voting is needed).  Of course, as well as doing the business, we also enjoy a few drinks in pleasant company.

We hold two Beer Festivals each year: Hitchin in March; and Letchworth in September.  At these, a team of hard-working members ensure that beer lovers can sample a wide range of beers, many not normally found in our area. More help is always welcome at these events; please contact the Festival Organiser to offer your services. You need to be a CAMRA member (or a Round Table member for the Hitchin festival) if you want to help, but if you are not already a CAMRA member we can sign you up on the spot!

Groups of us also support the festivals held by other branches.  For this purpose, we usually meet on the train (in the front carriage).  Friends and relations are welcome, but no children please, as they cannot be admitted to most festivals.

From time to time we visit breweries at which we see all stages of the brewing process and get to taste the final product. This is not just a fun activity; we also get to hear about the problems the brewers have to contend with, which can affect our campaigning activities profoundly.  Usually these trips are in conjunction with presenting the brewer with one of our Beer Of Festival awards.

We also try to visit as many pubs in our area as we can during the course of the year.  We do this mainly in two ways: Wednesday walks; and Saturday minibusses.

• Wednesday evening walks around town centres, visiting several pubs.  These walks start at 8pm in the first pub, and the number of pubs (usually four) is chosen to fill a reasonable evening walk for time and length, depending upon how spread out each town centre is.  Some towns require several visits to cover all the pubs.
• Saturday evening minibus trips to the rural pubs.  VISIT RURAL PUBS WITHOUT HAVING TO DRIVE!  These trips start at 7pm in the first pub, but minibus pick-ups start from 6:30 onwards in Stevenage, Hitchin, Letchworth and Baldock.  A minibus trip costs £6 to members and £10 to non-member.  The number of seats on the minibus is limited, and so, places have to be booked in advance with the Social Secretary; I suggest, you book early.

We also meet more frequently on a purely socially basis.

Nationally, CAMRA runs many campaigns on all manner of beer-related issues, in addition to it’s stated aims as the UK beer consumer’s champion.

Locally, our three main tasks each year are:

• selecting the best pubs in North Herts for our part of the Good Beer Guide,
• selecting pubs for local awards and
• collecting local news for our part of the all-Hertfordshire newsletter, Pints of View.

Surveying pubs for possible inclusion in the Good Beer Guide is a grim business.  It tends to involve drinking rather a lot of beer; but the only way to judge beer quality is to drink the stuff.  Hopefully, most of it will be good, but there are always a few which don’t make the grade.  We try to spread the work among as many members as possible, and your help with this arduous task would be much appreciated.  All you need to do is record what you drink, when, where, and how good or bad it is on CAMRA’s 0-5 rating scale (the National Beer Scoring System).  You can enter them interactively on this website or send them to us in emails, on spreadsheets or on the back of fag packets.  If your favourite pub never gets into the GBG, you need to tell us how great it is.

We present the following local awards to the good pubs in our area, the recipients being decided by members at Branch Meetings, and we try to get as many members as possible to the actual presentations:

• Pub-of-the-Year (this one goes into the County competition, and may progress on to the Regional and National levels)
• Community Pub-of-the-Year
• Most Improved Pub-of-the-Year.

Every two months, we submit articles to the Pints Of View newsletter, covering branch activties, pub news, brewery news, events, awards, etc.  If you know of any beer related news, do let us know, so we can pass it on.  We also rely on members to distribute the newsletters to the pubs, and volunteers are always needed to complete our coverage of the branch area.  So if you can spare an evening or two every two months to visit some pubs take and them some newsletters, please let us know.

The main event is, of course, the Hitchin Beer & Cider Festival on the 12th and 13th.  Planning and preparation are well in hand, and there will be lots of traditional British beers, foreign beers, ciders and perries.  Come and help us drink it!  Better still, as the event is staffed by volunteers from CAMRA and the Round Table, if you are in either of these groups and want to volunteeer to help us serve it, contact the Festival Organiser in advance (and as soon as possible).

Perhaps the last at the Town Hall

Opening times

Friday 12th March, Noon to 11pm

Saturday 13th March, 11am to 11pm

If anyone knows of any other upcoming festivals which may be of interest to North Herts people, please drop me a note, at secretary@camranorthherts.org.uk.

Tony.

Format: Dates /  CAMRA Branch  or PUB Name / Festival

4-6 February 2010 / CAMRA Chelmsford & Mid-Essex / Chelmsford Winter Beer Festival

4-6 February 2010 / Fox, Woolmer Green / Mini Beer Festival

18-20 February 2010 / CAMRA South Bedfordshire / Luton Beer and Cider Festival

26-27 February 2010 / CAMRA all Essex branches / Chappel Winter Festival

12-13 March 2010 / CAMRA North Hertfordshire / Hitchin Beer and Cider Festival

18-20 March 2010 / CAMRA Huntingdonshire / ‘Booze on the Ouse’ St Neots Beer Festival

7-10 April 2010 / CAMRA Dengie Hundred / Maldon Beer Festival

16-18 April 2010 / CAMRA NATIONAL / Members Weekend and AGM, Isle of Man

21-24 April 2010 / CAMRA West Suffolk / East Anglian Beer Festival, Bury St Edmunds

29 Apr – 2 May 2010 / CAMRA NATIONAL / Reading Beer and Cider Festival, Reading

24-29 May 2010 / CAMRA Cambridge & District / Cambridge Beer Festival

10-12 June 2010 / CAMRA North West Essex / Braintree Real Ale Festival

19-20 June 2010 / CAMRA Herts & Essex Borders / Beer In The Gibberd Garden, Harlow

29-31 July 2010 / CAMRA Herts & Essex Borders / Bishops Stortford Beer Festival

23-25 September 2010 / CAMRA North Hertfordshire / Letchworth Beer & Cider Festival

Click the link at the top of the page for more detail.

CAMRA’s Hertfordshire branches have arranged a passport scheme covering 35 pubs in the county. Customers collect passport stamps in participating pubs each time they order a pint of real ale. When participants have visited 10 pubs and collected their individual stamps they will receive a free pass to a Hertfordshire beer festival of their choice. Their name will also be entered into a prize draw with 10 prizes – each winning 3 pints at the same beer festival.

Do you want to take part in our Pub Passport? Have a look it is here

James has aleady made his mark by reducing the price of the real ale – a refreshing move in this day and age! He tells us that he wants to increase the turnover of real ale. Good news!

Finally, James tells us that he’s holding a beer festival from the 10th to 13th September.

Buntingford Brewery just won Silver with “Britannia” in the Best Bitters category of the Champion Beer of Britain at the Great British Beer Festival, from 18 other beers in the same class.