Leicester Beer Festival 2009 This page last updated: February 25, 2009

Leicester  Beer Festival  2009

Welcome to the 2009 Leicester Beer Festival.

The annual four day Leicester Beer Festival kicks off on Wednesday 11^th March 2009 at 5pm at The Charotar Patidar Samaj, the same venue that has been so successful for the previous 8 years. (15 Minutes walk from Leicester train Station, 5 Mins walk from Clock Tower and St Margaret’s Bus station. The festival is located behind Farthings Plumbers Merchants off St Margaret’s Way on the corner of South Churchgate and Bay St next to Leicester Volkswagen.

Please note the whole event is NO SMOKING including outside areas close to the building.

Beers, Perry & Cider

The festival will feature just over 200 beers with approx 70 coming from breweries within a 25 mile radius of Leicester City Centre on our LocAle Bars. There will also be approx 30 Ciders and Perries.

Beers will be sourced from all of the Leicestershire & Rutland breweries along with beers from some of the newest and smallest micro-breweries from other parts of the country.

As usual we will have some one-off "Festival Special" brews along with fruit beers. As March is the CAMRA campaigning month for dark beers - we will have a good selection of Milds, Porters and Stouts to choose from. We have about a dozen beers over 7% and will be able to offer them in one third of a pint measures as well as normal measures - this only applies to the stronger beers.

Our main sponsor Everards will have their brewery bar at the festival selling up to 5 of their award winning beers.

On Wednesday night we will be judging the "Harry Cragg Beer of the Festival" in association with the Foxton Locks Inn.

Note: It is unusual for all beers to be available for all sessions, if a beer is not available it is normally because someone else has got there first. We will have duplicates of some beers however.

Opening Hours / Admission

CAMRA members = Free admission all periods upon showing a valid membership card.

Non CAMRA members  = Free until the times where charge for non members is shown.

Note: If you look under 21 we may ask to see ID, we also retain the right to refuse admission.

Festival Glass

The festival will feature both half pint straight and tankards along with pint straight lined oversized festival special glasses priced at £2.50. This is refundable when you have finished as long as the glass is not damaged although they make great souvenirs to take home! The theme this year is connected with railways and the demise of the Great Central Railway through Leicestershire - 40 years ago (3rd May 1969).  The logo is based on GCR Lord Farringdon Class (9P) No 1165 "Valour" one of only 6 Express locos built. This later became LNER Class B3 No 6165.

You can bring your own glass but it must be government or CE stamped with the legal half and full pint measures shown.

Festival Special brews

We are currently negotiating some one-off brews with our local brewers. We are not interested in beers that have been re-badged or renamed for our festival and all of our "festival specials" are genuine brews to the best of our knowledge. To date we have agreed the following specials:-

LocAle Bar

Leicester Beer Festival supports our local breweries. We have extended our area to 25 miles from the beer festival site as the crow flies. This enables us to represent most, but not all of the 39 breweries involved. We are having our "Lesta Vest" Festival Tee Shirts available at our LocAle launch nights on Feb 24th and 26th - see diary for more details.

"Lesta Vest" Festival T Shirts are available for purchase at £10 each prior to and during the festival. E-mail our Pubs Officers for more details - address on Committee page.

Eating

The festival will feature English food such as our famous Stilton Cobs, Sausage Rolls, Lanes of Leicester Pork Pies, crisps, nuts, pork scratchings etc and our very own Curry House on site. We will again offer authentic curries making the beer go down a treat. These will be available throughout the duration of the festival. Last orders for curries will be 30 mins before closing time.

We also serve tea and coffee.

Soft drinks for nominated drivers are free.

Sponsorship

2009 will see over 4500 people read the Beer Festival programme. We offer reasonable rates to advertisers, particularly breweries and publicans who wish to advertise. Contact Keith Williams on 0116 2531604 or Andy Sales 0115 9462261 if you would like more details and to book advertising space.

We need a hand

We cannot run a beer festival without the help of over 100 volunteers over the duration of the event. We start by collecting the beer racking on the Thursday previous. On the Sunday most of the main activity starts by building the stillage etc. On the Monday all the beer is delivered - over 230 casks! We need volunteers before, during and after the festival to help set up / clean / sell glasses / serve food / serve beer and then take it all back down again. Note: Certain tasks will require you to wear safety footwear.

If you would like to help out on the festival staff please complete a staff form and send to our Staffing Officer. Please include your e-mail and a contact address. Ideally you should be a CAMRA member but we are grateful to non members for assistance as well. Non members - we will need your full details for insurance purposes.

We will give you a Health & Safety brief and training is given if required. We have loads of jobs that need doing, if you don't fancy working behind a bar we will find something for you such as selling glasses, admissions, food etc. We do reward you with beer tokens and discounted food depending on how long you work.

Andy Sales.
Beer and Brewery Co-ordinator.

Previous Beer Festival Reports:

This page last updated: February 25, 2009

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