The Stoke-on-Trent Annual Beer & Cider Festival 2014.

Last week I helped at the Annual Real Ale and Cider Festival in the City of Stoke-on-Trent.

Festivals of this kind are held in many cities, towns, villages and pubs all over the United Kingdom throughout the year.

These festivals are usually organised by ordinary people who receive no pay because they volunteer. Usually they are members of an organisation called "CAMRA". (This is an example of an acronym. It means "Campaign for Real Ale")

I wrote about our British real ales in a previous article.

CAMRA members are very proud of the real ale tradition and give their time freely to help small brewers. In Stoke-on-Trent the CAMRA group works very hard to make it's 3 day long event a success.

This is the 35th year for Stoke and it is very important to equal the success of previous year's festivals.

Every year, the group meets each month, starting in January, to make plans, distribute responsibilities and describe progress and solve problems.

There are many jobs to be done. The price for the venue must be agreed and it must be 'booked'. Someone has to be responsible for publicity and someone else must collect the names of volunteers who will  build the structures for the beer barrels, serve the beer and dismantle the structures. There must be a co-ordinator for entertainment. A treasurer is required and a secretary to answer questions and offer advice to our visitors. A "sponsorship officer" is needed who will ask businesses if they would like to spend some money to have their name associated with the event. Drinking glasses have to be ordered and a "logo" must be designed. Usually someone organises a logo competition and the committee chooses the winning design, The design then appears on the Festival programme booklet and is also printed on the drinking glasses. Keeping the volunteers happy is important and so someone has to organise food, tea and coffee, and somewhere to eat and rest for fifty adults. Stoke festival also has a charity corner to collect money for a different charity each year.

And, of course, someone has to choose and order the beers and the ciders!

A local pub which specialises in serving real ale may offer three or four different ales from different breweries. Maybe one or two will remain the same for many weeks, with the others as different ales so the landlord can suprise his customers. Some landlords change every ale so that their customers see a changed list every week. At the other end of the pub size, we have very large pubs owned by big company's. Such pubs may offer four or five ales which are always available and another five or six which change.

So it can be very interesting to visit a large City Festival where, as in Stoke last week, there were 218 different barrels of ale and 51 different ciders.

They are chosen by the Beer Officer and the Cider Officer who contact brewers from all over the United Kingdom to talk about price and to arrange transport. Real Ale is a living product which must be handled with care and allowed time to rest so that the living sediments can settle; to serve cloudy beer is very bad! This means that the venue must be prepared at least two days before opening day and the barrels must be delivered on time.

I am please to write that the 2014 Stoke Festival seems to have been another success. We do not yet know how many visitors we served, or how much beer was left in the barrels. Nor do we know how much money we made. We do know that more than half of the beer barrels were totally empty at the end of the Festival. There was no trouble; nobody was sent outside, and the Charity stall collected a significant sum to give to this year's chosen charity for research and advice on the subject of men's cancers. We hope to have made a profit which will be sent to CAMRA to subsidise smaller festivals.

At the end of the festival, last Saturday, everyone of the volunteers was happy and tired. The volunteers will have their celebration party next Saturday, when we hope to know more about the success of the 2014 Stoke-on-Trent Real ale and Cider Festival.