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Why a Beer Festival?
The idea came out of the Crayke Plan questionnaire sent round in early 2005, which asked villagers how they would like Crayke to be improved - everything from transport to housing to entertainment. The notion of a beer festival attracted immediate support - and has the benefit of being slightly easier to arrange than affordable housing or a rail link!
The event also ties in with the annual York Festival of Food and Drink, which attracts thousands of visitors each year to the region. In 2005 the festival organisers are keen to support events outside the city, and also to extend the drinks programme. The Crayke plans, which centre around promoting real ales produced by North Yorkshire's 20 or so independent and microbreweries, are receiving a high level of support from the York Festival promoters.
The Organisers
An enthusiastic team has been assembled by carouser-in-chief James Houston to arrange the Beer Festival, including an agreed real ales list, some entertainment, food, advertising, this web site, sponsors, tickets, staffing, etc, etc.
The organisers would appreciate offers of help particularly on the day; this includes manning the door, handling money and dispensing vouchers, serving the beer, and to helping move tables and chairs and clearing up afterwards on the Monday morning.
Please contact:
Grant Henderson 01347 824151 grant@solarwall.co.uk
Why Real Ale, and Micro Breweries/Independent Breweries are
Important
Whilst keg beers and lagers are chilled, filtered to remove all yeast and pasteurised at the brewery, to make a sterile product with a long shelf life, real ale is a living fresh beer that undergoes a natural second fermentation in the cask. It requires careful handling at the point of sale to ensure it is served at its peak condition. It also should ideally not be dispensed through a sparkler.
Our micro breweries and independent breweries not only produce much of our real ale in the UK, they also provide us with a rich variety of real ales - stouts, milds, bitters, old ales and barley wines. Not only do the beer strengths vary enormously, so too do the flavours, sweetness/bitterness, aromas and textures. Our real ale brewing comes from a rich tradition and is worthy of ensuring it lives on for future generations in all its excellence and variety.
The micro breweries and independent breweries need regular outlets for their product where they can be paid a fair price for their beer. At present, the vast majority of pubs are either pub-co or brewery owned, as part of large portfolios of tied or owned pubs, or are tied into a particular brewery which prevents them from ordering any beers from other than the breweries’/pub-co’s own list. These large breweries negotiate big discounts from regional breweries in order to make only certain regional beers available in their pubs; the choice to the consumer is therefore severely limited.
By excluding the smaller independents and micro breweries from being able to sell their beers through these tied pubs, not only is the consumer disadvantaged, but these independents and micro breweries often find it hard to find sufficient regular outlets for their beers. Whilst the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, has in his last two budgets announced tax measures to aid them, this needs to be reinforced by an opening up of freedom for a licensee to order some of his beer from local independent and micro breweries (on a regular or rotating basis), and this is something which CAMRA are actively campaigning for at the moment.
Real ale festivals such as this in Crayke all help to both foster an appreciation of our vast range of real ales in this country, and provide continued customers for the independent and micro breweries: they benefit in terms of both advertising/promotion and of course, sales.
A Future Real Ale Festival?
This all depends on our success this first time, of course – but the team is optimistic and it is hoped that we will repeat the festival every year.
Any further festival will, undoubtedly, be even better!
Please watch this space...
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