Southport CAMRA: Two new real ale festivals are a welcome sign of normality returning

Guest Blog by Neville Grundy, Southport & West Lancs Campaign for Real Ale

For the discerning beer drinker, a welcome sign of a return to normality must be the re-emergence of beer festivals.

I’ve recently received news of a beer festival with a difference: it will be held in Liverpool’s iconic Bombed Out Church from Thursday 25th to Sunday 28th November.

As well as more than 100 real ales and real ciders, they will be offering a craft gin bar with specialty tonics and garnishes, a wine and spirit bar, and even tea and coffee. The admission charge will include a commemorative glass.

There will be various food options and music at all sessions except for Friday during the daytime, which has been designated a quiet session. The beer list will be available from 1st November 2021.

St Luke’s Bombed Out Church is on the corner of Berry Street and Leece Street in Liverpool, L1 2TR, a 5-minute walk from Central Station. To buy your tickets, go to: liverpoolevents.org.uk.

JD Wetherspoon will be holding its in-house beer festival from Wednesday 20th to Sunday 31st October.

Wetherspoon’s has been holding beer festivals for more than thirty years. They normally hold two beer festivals each year in the spring and autumn, but because of the pandemic, this is the first for twelve months.

This event will feature vegan and vegetarian ales among the twenty festival beers from award-winning brewers from across the UK and Ireland. Many of the beers have never featured nationally in Wetherspoons before, and will include a couple of gluten-free options.

Rooster’s Long Shadow (3.6% ABV) is a vegan-friendly seasonal beer and Purity APA (3.9% ABV) is both vegan-friendly and gluten-free, as is Elgood’s Blackberry Porter (4.5% ABV), a speciality beer made with blackberries.

Other speciality beers will include Exmoor Wicked Wolf (4.2% ABV) which is made with juniper berries and Wolf Brewery’s coffee-infused Lazy Dog (4.7% ABV). A full list of the festival beers is available now in the Wetherspoon’s in-house magazine.

If you prefer, you can order your festival beers on the Wetherspoon’s app. You can also order them in one-third pint measures so that you can sample more festival ales.

Wetherspoon’s pubs in the Southport and West Lancs area include the Court Leet in Ormskirk, the Lifeboat in Formby, and in Southport the Sir Henry Segrave and the Willow Grove.

• Visit our CAMRA websites: camra.org.uk (national) and southport.camra.org.uk (local).

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