CAMRA Beer and Cider Festival

So is the CAMRA Beer Festival, I ask its organiser Pete Coppard, just a glorified piss up? Or do people go because they are genuinely interested in the different tastes of the 50-odd beers and ciders on offer? “You’d be surprised”, he replies. “We issue notes on the beers and you see most people reading them. A lot of people are adding notes of their own. You don’t often get the chance to sample beers from so far afield, and people like to try out the ones they haven’t drunk before”.

Tickets for Friday night are already sold out, he warns me, and Saturday tickets are going fast. For Lewesians, the best bet is to go along to the Friday afternoon walk-in session, or the drink-up session (5pm till 'either 8pm or when the beer runs out'). Harveys are producing a special version of ‘Old’ as well as their usual range. Other beers on offer include a couple of original brews from the Rectory Brewery in Streat Hill, Timothy Taylor from Keighley in Yorkshire, and Red Squirrel Sweet Stout, from Hertfordshire, the strongest beer on offer at 6.6% ABV. Not that too many will be getting messed up on it. “Real ale drinkers may like their beer, but they don’t tend to get drunk and cause problems” says Pete. “We haven’t had a serious incident in all the time we’ve been running the festival. You get lager louts, but I’ve never heard of a bitter lout”. AL