© South Bedfordshire CAMRA 2009
Nationwide Beer Festivals
CAMRA stages over a hundred beer festivals every year in the UK. They are excellent shop windows for real ale and give drinkers the opportunity to sample beers from a wide range of independent brewers. Beer festivals are great fun: many offer good food and live entertainment and, where possible, facilities for families. Some seasonal festivals specialise in spring, autumn and winter ales. Festivals range in size from small local events, to large regional and national ones.
CAMRA holds two national festivals – the National Winter Ales Festival in January, and the Great British Beer Festival in August; the latter features around 500 beers. For up-to-date information on forthcoming CAMRA beer festivals, see the CAMRA website. By joining CAMRA – click here to complete a membership form – you will receive 12 editions of What’s Brewing, which lists every CAMRA beer festival on a month-by-month basis. Most CAMRA beer festivals offer entry discounts to CAMRA members.
Luton Beer Festival
The South Beds branch of CAMRA's main annual event is a beer festival in Luton. This is a good-sized CAMRA beer festival, selling roughly 5000 pints over two and a half days. There are also plenty of ciders, perries and foreign bottled beers. It has recently been successfully re-launched at a new date in February at the new High Town Community, Sports and Arts Centre.
The 2009 Luton Beer Festival will be held between Thursday 19th and Saturday 21st February. Watch this space for more details.
(Ex-) Dunstable Beer Festival
The branch also used to hold an annual beer festival in Dunstable. This festival was started back in darker times when there was a dearth of real ale in Dunstable and it was successful for many years. In recent times however the Dunstable festival has become less well attended largely due to some excellent pubs serving more real ales as well as holding their own beer festivals (such as the Victoria and Globe). In 2007 therefore we decided to stop the Dunstable Beer Festival, we like to think that is a success on the CAMRA front rather than a disappointment.
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