Reflections on Weymouth Beer Festival

The annual Weymouth Beer Festival took place in Weymouth Pavilions, a much improved venue over recent years and an ideal place for such an event. Organised by West Dorset CAMRA, like many local CAMRA groups they do an excellent job, showcasing over 50 cask ales plus ciders for the locals of Weymouth to enjoy. In 2019 the theme was Cornish beers so I was invited to attend to serve St Austell Brewery beers.

First and foremost, the festival was a great success and very well attended, so much so they ran out of beer mid way through the final session! The range of beers were all Cornish and interesting that CAMRA chose to include the ubiquitous Doombar as part of their Cornish selection. A contensious call, I happen to agree with their choice. Not my favourite beer, none-the-less, it is very popular and above all a consistent, if unremarkable beer. It was in good condition and interesting that many punters remarked how different the beer tasted to what they normally experience in a pub.



CAMRA cask bar

Good as the beers were, I cannot let the festival pass without commenting on an old chestnut of mine - the subject of cooling for the casks. At Weymouth (and its common in other regional CAMRA run festivals as well), no cooling was applied to the casks. On the St Austell bar we used cask jackets with inline cooling and the beer was served at a refreshing cellar temperature throughout. The beer on the CAMRA bar was noticeably warmer and as the festival wore on the temperature increased.




St Austell bar cooling jackets

In my view beer festivals should celebrate a common passion and love for cask ale, showcasing the best, most interesting and relevant and at above all, in perfect condition. This means serving the beer at its optimum temperature i.e. circa 12 degrees c. In a market where younger consumers are searching out chilled and tasty craft keg beers, we need to showcase cask served at the correct temperature to compete with these new beers, making cask drinkable and appealing. It does not need to be over-chilled as I'm certainly not advocating the route Doombar have taken with its chilled cask variant, but at events where consumers might be trying cask for the first time, festival organisers must offer cask at its correct temperature.

So how do we address this - cooling equipment is expensive and CAMRA at a local level is an organisation run by volunteers, perhaps without the necessary funds, experience and knowhow to fit such kit.

My thoughts cover two possible areas for a solution, neither of which lay the blame at the local CAMRA branches for this situation.

Firstly CAMRA head office. Surely encouraging local CAMRA branches to run festivals and furbishing them with the correct equipment, knowhow and funding has to be a priority. Cask ale is under threat from the craft beer sector and so ensuring cask beers at CAMRA run events is served at  the optimum temperature seems really important. I am under no illusion that this is not an easy task, but if cask is to fight back against the tidal wave of craft beer then CAMRA should see their local beer festivals as the shop window to encourage trial of cask beer served at its very best. To me, this should be one of their core objectives.

Secondly, the established local cask ale brewers. The cask sector is in decline and many of the larger regional brewers are wedded to cask beer for their sales. Long term, if that scenario continues its going to be a problem for some. To my mind the established brewers could have a big part to play here as they do have the equipment and knowhow to really improve the local events in terms of the quality of the beer served. It would mean working closer with their local CAMRA groups and we know that's not a prefect marriage as local brewers and their respective CAMRA groups have not always seen eye to eye, but between them they have the funds, skills and passion to showcase cask ale at its very best. Not quite a dynamic duo, but pooling the skills and equipment of a local brewer with CAMRA's passion and army of volunteers could just work.

Finally, I would say again what a great job West Dorset CAMRA do in putting on the event. They received some adverse publicity for running out of beer, but were advised by CAMRA Head office on how much beer to order so lets give them some credit for putting on a great event. Therefore I am pleased to raise a glass to them for their Octoberfest. Well done or should I say Prost!

Weymouth Pavilions