The Watford Beer Festival has been increasing in popularity and success for several years now and the 10th anniversary event was no exception. Last year's festival opened all day Friday for the first time and because of its success, this year the decision was made to open the doors at 5pm on Thursday 4th November. The decision certainly seems to have paid off; 153 customers turned up on the first night to sample 56 different beers, 6 ciders and perry.
Despite the festival opening on Thursday, visitor numbers for Friday and Saturday were almost identical to last year's. Apparently, the longer we're open for the more people come; and, in all, nearly 1000 drinkers turned up over the three days, many of them arriving early and staying late.
The percentage increase in customers was exceeded by the increase in visitors joining CAMRA at the festival. This year 47 new members joined the Campaign, more than double last year's total. This surpassed our expectations by some way and hopefully indicates that the resurgence of interest in Real Ale is continuing apace.
Phil Hernberg of NI Branch serves up a pint at the Fest
In another first for the festival the main function room was designated non-smoking this year, with smokers able to light up in the old members bar. We polled our customers on this and found that 86.5% agreed with this decision and only 6.5% disagreed, so it's very likely that the non-smoking area will be retained in future.
4360 pints of beer, cider or perry were drunk over the three days. Despite this, out of the 56 we started with, we still had 20 beers available at last orders on Saturday night. Over the last couple of years we've found ourselves running very low in beer near the end of the event, but with 38% of our individual brews left at the end, there was plenty of variety right up until the finish this year. Even so, we decided to drop the entrance fee to £1 on Saturday night, so hopefully most people were satisfied.
We asked visitors to nominate their Beer of the Festival. Incredibly, all 56 of the beers, 4 of the ciders and the perry all received at least one nomination. We'd like to think that this reflects the overall quality and condition of the beer. The most popular beer was Heather Ebulum (6.5%), a dark porter-style beer with a 'fruits of the forest' flavour that comes from being brewed with elderberries. In second place was Spectrum Old Stoatwobbler (6.0%) a rich and powerful brew from Norfolk. An old favourite and previous winner, Pictish Brewer's Gold (3.8%), occupied the third place.
We had a number of strong beers on the stillage this year and these went down very well. Ebulum and Old Stoatwobbler are both strong beers and E & S 1872 Porter (6.5%) and Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby (6%) also occupied top ten positions. As well as being strong, these are all dark beers, which were very popular. Perhaps the dominance of the dark stuff at our festival indicates that the public has a greater taste for these beers than the big breweries would have us believe.
The branch would like to thank everyone who came to drink and/or work at the festival. I'd like to think that we got it just right this year. To quote one of the feedback forms we were given, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Andrew Vaughan
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Site maintained by Andrew Vaughan. Last update of this page: 29th July 2006