The Robin Hood Beer and Cider Festival is again expected to break its own world-beating records when it opens on Wednesday.
The annual event, put on by the Nottingham branch of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), is held at Nottingham Castle and this year will feature a record number of 1,273 beers, plus more than 200 ciders along with various wines and perries.
The beers total will just beat last year’s collection of 1,270.
More than 20,000 people are expected to attend across the four days and visitors from America, Argentina and Italy have all attended in recent years.
The event showcases the biggest selection of different real ales of any beer festival in the world – made up of local brews and others from 440 breweries around the country.
It opens at 5.30pm on Wednesday until 11pm and runs every day until Saturday when it will close at 11pm.
Sales for this year’s event have gone well as advance tickets for Friday and Saturday sold-out in August; while tickets for Wednesday and Thursday can be bought for £15 on the gate, inclusive of a commemorative beer glass and ten tokens to sample the ales.
Anyone without advance tickets can queue to pay on the gate on any day – although entry is not guaranteed. Organisers say everyone who wanted to get in managed it in 2015 but the festival’s popularity increases each year and the site has limited capacity.
Chairman of Nottingham CAMRA and organiser of the festival, Steve Westby, says: “Most of the breweries within 60 miles of here, I’m not saying we’ve got them all, but certainly the vast majority.
“And the breweries within the Nottingham area, we’ve got them and a lot of their beers. We think it’s likely that 12 per cent of the volume of beer drunk here will be brewed within 20 miles of the castle.”
Most of the beers have been laid down in kegs since Friday to enable them to be in the best possible condition for drinking by Wednesday and volunteers have spent Tuesday mounting plastic taps to the kegs.
Bar manager Anthony Hewitt, who has worked at the last seven festivals, says: “They’ll be left to settle now and tomorrow all the beers will be tried by the cellar team to make sure they’re ready for the festival.
“We have a staff beer because we’re all volunteers and at lunch time we’re allowed to have a smidgen.”
This year features an all-time high of 18 gluten-free beers which have been greeted with praise by people with gluten intolerance.
Steve, who has organised the festival for 35 years, says: “In the past we’ve managed to get the odd one [gluten-free beer] and this year we’ve set the stall out and got 18. They’re going to be interesting to try.
“I know people who’ve got gluten intolerance are very pleased with it – they’re raving about it on the web. There’s a lot of excitement.”
Some beers rate above 10 per cent ABV with weird and wonderful flavours including mint chocolate chip and banana.
There will also be plenty of food such as fish and chips, pulled pork, pasties and pies available to soak up the alcohol.
Ale of the lights: Know the colour of your brew
The 2015 festival introduced colour labels on casks to give people an idea of what to expect from each ale. This handy guide chart was produced – do you know your old-school strong stout from a lighter pale ale?
Generally speaking, the more ‘pale’ or ‘light’ coloured, the lighter and crisper the taste. A darker beer will generally have a deeper ‘richer’ flavour.
Martin Howard, head brewer of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire firm Blue Monkey, says the festival is important to get his products out there and noticed – including two new beers which will be on offer.
He adds: “We’ve got a bit of an experimental one called Chimpagne which is a ten per cent beer and has been fermented using champagne yeast.
“Then we’ve got Silverback, our Russian imperial stout, which is ten and a half per cent. That’s a special one which we don’t do very often.”
