Reflections on Swindon Beer Festival - there's life in the old dog yet!

St Austell Brewery bar

An odd title for a blog post and no reflection on the 32nd Swindon Beer Festival which again was well up to standard. Congratulations to Swindon CAMRA and also the venue, the Steam Railway Museum. Both combine to deliver a unique and interesting event. There are not many more attractive venues than Steam, its the museum for GWR showcasing a Swindon that was at the very heart of rail travel development to the South West for many years. It's a very fitting venue for an event that promotes traditional cask ale.

I attended for two days bringing some fabulous St Austell Brewery beers from Cornwall for the festival goers to enjoy. There were 120 different cask ales in total and four brewery bars. CAMRA make it very easy for brewers to attend and this year besides St Austell - Ramsbury, Hop Kettle and Flying Monk were in attendance. The latter three are local brewers to Swindon and there are fewer better ways for such brewers to build their brands and encourage sampling with their local market than attending here.

Cooling jackets & cooler shown behind the bar

Thankfully all brewers except Flying Monk were applying cooling to their beers, although the first blast of artic air of the autumn did mean that casks without cooling were served at an acceptable temperature. However, there is certainly a case that if you want to showcase your beers at their best, an investment in cooling is a must for these events. The beers served by CAMRA had no cooling, but they have a bigger challenge to provide cooling for a vast number of casks which is both expensive and logistically challenging, so that's another story.

So back to my headline which is really an observation on the number of people who attended the festival. Attendances for the Thursday session were down, about 100 people was muttered under the breath of some CAMRA members. I feared the worse in that the significant decline in the cask beer market was showing itself at this grass roots level and there would be vast amounts of beer left. However, I need not have worried!

I was delighted that the following two sessions were significantly up with the final session a sell-out. Even better was CAMRA had an excellent selection of beers. Most brewers, let alone their beers I had not heard of before so there was interest to try lots of new flavours. It was great to see so many people enjoying cask ales, all served in good condition hence my blog title, there is life in the old dog yet!

On the St Austell bar our Halloween beer, Bucket of Blood is an old favourite at this event and a past Champion Beer of the festival. We sold double of this beer than any of all our others, but it was also very pleasing to see established brands like Tribute and Proper Job sell very well. As much as people like to try new beers, there is still plenty of scope to build consistently good brands that stand the test of time that customers recognise and want to drink.

To sum up the event, I would comment that beer festivals bring people together and are very social events, where those with a passion for beer can share their enjoyment of trying new brews or remind themselves of some old favourites. If cask ale is to survive the current fashion for keg craft beer it needs well run beer festivals like Swindon to provide entertainment, but most importantly of all, to showcase what's great about cask ale. Bravo Swindon CAMRA and Steam, here's to the 33rd featival in 2019.