A Grand Day Out!

Our most recent branch social was a trip to the Kelham Hall Beer Festival on Saturday October 26th, with eleven intrepid souls (including two from Amber Valley CAMRA) joining our minibus from Kirkby, Sutton and Mansfield. There were a few spare seats due to late cancellations, unfortunately, but we didn’t let that spoil our enjoyment of the day.

The event ran from Wednesday to Saturday, with a trade session and judging for Champion Beer of Britain (CBoB) 2024 taking place on the Wednesday afternoon and public sessions thereafter. Great value at a single admission price of £10 for the whole event (discounted to £7 for CAMRA members) so you could have gone along every day at no extra cost – but most of us didn’t get to take advantage of that, although a couple of us were also at the event earlier in the week, as volunteers.

An amazing venue with terrific architectural features inside and out, the festival bars (CBoB, main A-Z bar by brewery, Cider bar, USA beers and individual brewery bars from Beermats and Blue Monkey) were all in a marquee in a central courtyard, with seating and a stage area for the entertainment in the great hall next door. The venue’s own bar served other drinks, and the ‘food court’ outside offered a variety of reasonably-priced options including pizzas, burgers, hot dogs, curries, pulled pork, hog roast, chips, ploughman’s platter and pork pies. The event even had entertainment for children, with face painting and a balloon artist – a first for me at any beer festival I’ve ever attended!

When we arrived on Saturday lunchtime, only one festival beer had run out on the preceding afternoon – and not surprisingly it was the 2024 CBoB Supreme Champion winner, Amarillo from Crouch Vale brewery in Essex – so all of the other CBoB finalists were still available on the CBoB bar with a host of beers on the other bars too, so there was a fantastic selection available.

I’d already sampled some of beers from the CBoB bar earlier in the week, so all of my favourite beers on the day came from the main bar. I really enjoyed the Metalhead Brewery 4.8% ‘Motorhead Porter’ and a collaboration between Northern Alchemy and Flying Gang called ‘Broken Face’ - a 10.5% Gingerbread Imperial Stout that wasn’t even advertised in the programme (as it seemingly replaced a beer called John Barleycorn by Northern Alchemy Brewery described on Untappd as a 4.8% 1920’s mild) – but the Ashover Brewery 7% ‘Victorian Ruby Mild’ was my absolute favourite at the event.

We didn’t leave until 7pm – when the minibus really proved its worth as the limited public transport options back to our area from the venue would have taken an age – even with free shuttle coaches between the venue and the two Newark stations as we would have had to go via Nottingham – and everyone commented they had really enjoyed the day and that the time had absolutely flown by.

We shared a post with pictures to our Social Chat group on Facebook – and it wasn’t until a couple of days later that we spotted they’d been shared on CAMRA’s national Facebook page. Fame at last!

Karl Ransford