Sixty-plus brews on offer as Camra stages a ciders festival to savour
CAMRA has published a beer, cider and perry list for our forthcoming festival next week (October 25-27), writes Neville Grundy.
From full-bodied stouts and porters to best bitters and golden ales, the beer choice will be the widest in town, with 60-plus on offer.
The ciders and perries will be similarly varied from straight apple and pear drinks to those that have additional flavours such as rhubarb, lemon and ginger, mango and peach.
A selection of fine wines and Prosecco complete the drinks choices.
You can see the full list by going to the festival page of the Southport & West Lancs Camra website at www. southport.camra.org.uk, where you will also find other information about the event.
The latest issue of the local CAMRA magazine, Ale & Hearty, has just been published.
This month’s edition has information on our local breweries, including an introductory mention of the new Tyton Brewery, in Ainsdale, whose beers are due to be available about now. Dave Wright reports on the seventh annual beer and music festival at the Cross House Inn in Formby, perhaps one to keep an eye out for next year.
There is a detailed article about Camra’s role in campaigning for real cider for the last 30 years through the campaign’s Apple committee.
An article by Mike Kershaw of the Camra East Lancs Branch discusses the controversial topic of keykegs and how they are unlikely to serve real ale, despite their appearance at some Camra festivals.
One point the article does not address is the fact that key-kegs are made of singleuse plastic. With all the current major environmental concerns about plastic, now seems a strange time to be adopting single-use beer containers.
Our Southport festival will not be stocking any key-keg products.
There is also an article by André Fu of Camra Liverpool Branch on the importance of beer scoring, which is used as the basis of entries in the Good Beer Guide and also for local pub and licensee awards.
Ale & Hearty is free and available now in many local real ale pubs, or you can read it online on the relevant page of our website.
Incidentally, our own local awards will be made on the Thursday evening session of our festival.
We look forward to seeing you there next week at the St John Ambulance Hall, Wright Street, Southport.