Go for Gold at London's Beer Olympics
Added: Sunday, July 22nd 2012
The 2012 CAMRA Great British Beer Festival will celebrate the astonishing renaissance of good beer in Britain and around the world. There will be 800 beers available at London Olympia between 7 and 11 August and, always, the Campaign for Real Ale will open the doors wide. As well as beers from all parts of Great Britain, visitors will also find brews from the United States, Belgium and several other countries.
The festival will also mark the fact that there are now around 900 British breweries, the biggest number since the 1940s. Choice for drinkers has never been greater and Olympia will offer far more than traditional mild and bitter, once the core brands of British brewing. The enormous and ever-growing number of small craft brewers fashion a great diversity of styles.
Many of them have dug deep into brewery history and recipe books to bring back to life beers that disappeared years and even centuries ago.
At the festival you will find porter, a beer with its origins in London early in the 18th century. There will be many IPAs – India Pale Ale – the first pale-coloured beer brewed anywhere in the world, with its roots in Burton-on-Trent in the 19th century. You will also find old ales and barley wine, more ancient styles.
But brewers aren’t living in the past. Golden ales are mightily popular and there will be many interpretations of them: it’s a style developed by small brewers to win younger drinkers away from bland lager to ale bursting with malt and hop flavours.
There will be fruit beers, made with the addition of such fruits as cherries and raspberries. There will be British stouts, quite different in character to the version we get from Dublin. There will be red ales, brewed with special types of malt, and there will be beers that have matured in whisky or wine casks with enormous depths of flavour.
The great beer revival is all the more astonishing when you consider that giant global brewers are the main advertisers in Britain. They devote their time to cajoling us into drinking their fizzy products. But people are abandoning them in droves. The only small growth in the beer market is real ale, beer that matures naturally in its cask, is made from the finest raw materials and which is delivered to the glass without the aid of applied gas.
And it’s not just the ancient stereotype of pot-bellied men with beards and sandals who are drinking cask beer. Research – both analytical and from simple observance – shows that more and more young people are moving from lager to ale.
That includes women, for whom many brewers are fashioning new beer styles – see the report on the launch of Wheat Watchers on this site.
There will be beers to appeal to all tastes and ages at GBBF. The festival returns to Olympia after six years at neighbouring Earl’s Court, which is staging the volleyball competition during the Olympics. If plans go ahead, Earl’s Court will then be turned into apartments and CAMRA will have to find a new home for GBBF, as Olympia, while a fine building, is too small to host the festival on a regular basis.
The festival is great fun. There’s an abundance of good food as well as beer and live music every evening, ranging from classical to rock, with a brass band thrown in for good measure. For tickets go to www.gbbf.org.uk/tickets. Advance day tickets cost £8, season tickets £23. On-the-day tickets cost £10. There are reductions for CAMRA members.
The first day of the festival also sees the final judging in the annual Champion Beer of Britain competition. The winners of such categories as Mild, Bitter, Strong Bitter and Golden Ale will be announced, with one lucky brewer winning the prized award of Champion Beer – a trophy that often leads to greater sales and fortune. The winners will be announced at the Trade Session for brewers and publicans on 7 August. The general public can attend in the evening.
Opening times:
Tuesday 7 August:
Trade session 12 noon to 5pm. Public session 5pm to 10.30pm.
Wednesday 8 August:
12 noon to 10.30pm
Thursday 9 August:
12 noon to 10.30pm
Friday 10 August:
12 noon to 10.30pm
Saturday 11 August:
11am to 7pm.
Entertainment:
7 August evening:
Chaminade String Quartet
8 August evening:
Kitten and the Hip
9 August lunchtime:
Jane Taylor Band
9 August evening:
MadDog Mcrea
10 August evening:
Deborah Bonham band
11 August
Denham Hendon Brass Band
The festival will showcase beers from British brewers big and small, from tiny micros to large regional producers such as Marston’s. CAMRA, backed by such brewers’ organisations as SIBA, the Society of Independent Brewers, and the IFBB, Independent Family Brewers of Britain, will vigorously encourage visitors to sign the petition seeking a review of Britain’s punitive levels of beer duty. CAMRA needs 100,000 signatures to trigger a debate in parliament on the subject.
GBBF also reveals the special nature of CAMRA itself. The festival is run solely by volunteers. They build the gantries that hold casks of ale. They run stalls selling books and clothing. Gate control and security is all handled by CAMRA volunteers. Some volunteers are on site for the best part of 10 days, setting up and taking down the festival. Many give up their summer holidays or take unpaid leave to work at GBBF.
So join the celebrations – don’t miss Olympia. Don’t go East – go West for the Beer Olympics.
Images: home page -- the festival in full swing at London Olympia. Above, drinkers ordering beer. Below: Thursday is Hats Day at GBBF when visitors are encouraged to wear a wide range of head gear.
