Agreed - even the evening sessions were more civilised than most other beerexes manage on a quiet session.
I also really liked Lincoln, which is more of a traditional beerex but had some excellent entertainment and friendly staff.
Yes quite agree but do your surveys mention beer quality as well as selection? A lot of surveys I've read do not. There are many facets to campaigning for real ale but I don't see a well-run campaigning beer festival has any less campaigning value which, as I understand you, is the point you were making.
"Daisy Hill" wrote >
I'll just mention a few events that stick in my mind for
Bit out of touch here duck that was the OLD venue at the Staffs University Students Union, a place we were forced to decamp to due to our greedy city council trying to rip us off.
We returned to our spiritual home at the Kings Hall last year after the council backed down.
Showing your age though if you can remember a 'NAAFI canteen at Dover during the Dunkirk evacuation.' ;-)
Rob Shanks
Don't apologise Brett, the Pickthall's are equally tiresome.
JC
Plenty of soft drinks on the charity stall at Stockport. Record attendance this year, too - obviously we didn't have too many people buggering off to the nearby 'All Bar One' (not that there is a nearby All Bar One).
JC
"Opening Times" takes a bow with its monthly "Stagger" article :-)
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There he goes again, no attempt to join the discussion from snipped-for-privacy@u-net.com, just snide comments.
Nope. I was describing the Kings Hall last year.... What a mess /that/ was! OK, so I turned up at the start of the evening session on Saturday night - but I won't be going back.
I've been around for a while - but not that long! (Been watching too many John Mills pictures on the goggle box lately.)
Oh yes!
Anyone here remember Strathalbyn Brewery? Used to be somewhere down the old docks in Clydebank, I think. Excellent beer!
I think the point made by the article which sparked all this off was that most beer festivals, even those which are "well run" by our standards, are giving the wrong message to a lot of potential beer drinkers. And I can understand that point of view.
To go off at a slight tangent - does it really help our cause to have the tacky T-shirt stalls at every beer festival, selling shirts with "hilarious" slogans about beer making you fat/randy/smelly?
Last I looked Derby had the one large hall and a second smaller hall off in the other direction from the lobby at the top of the stairs.
Some people don't find the second hall.
Sorry, but there's a world of difference between denigrating widely available dross and denigrating widely available cask beers.
The fact that many of the widely available cask ales are dross is just co-incidence.
The other side of the coin is the micro-brewer that routinely puts out a differently named cask of dross each week or so. They do exist and stay in business only on the back of the purchases of the devian^H^H^H^H^H^H tickers.
So, I'm probably now welcome through the doors of Chez Pickthall, and on the hit list of lord knows how many dev..... :-)
Yes, not everyone that goes out for a drink with people and ends up in a festival is a beer purist.
Spoken like a true beer purist. If I go as a customer to a beer festival I drink beer and have a bite to eat. However I wouldn't ridicule people for adding a touch of lemonade to a beer. Rather better would be to point out that if beer X is not quite to their taste then perhaps beer Y might suit their palate better and not require the lemonade.
It's to cater for the varying views of the "dragged along with xxxx" attendees. Sometime in the future those people might try the beer but deny them those wines soft drinks etc and they don't come through the door.
Well I went to something specialising in cheese and dairy products and they had chocolate of various brands on sale. Is that a yes?
of labouring the point, you won't find it at Stockport, for example. And what's all this guff about struggling across a crowded hall - at most sessions there is room to move about reasonable easily. But then again, crowded = popular I think, which puts you firmly in a small (carping) minority.
JC
If they're that bad, why don't you just let their own words damn them?
Content-free sniping hardly covers *you* in glory...
m.
In message , Martin Read writes
We have a steady influx of new readers who don't know discussion with them is wholly one-sided. So few of us bother with them now its hard for newcomers to guess how they behave, regular reminders save wasted effort talking to the deaf & blind (pity that's not deaf, dumb & blind).
The newsgroup is more fun without squawking parrots endlessly repeating the latest fad marketing spiel.
The London Underground is crowded, but that doesn't make it popular!
Anyway, this discussion isn't about preaching to the converted. It's about the image it conveys to the casual visitor.
To some extent, I suspect that Stockport festival is busy because there is little or no alternative. Manchester has lost NWAF (because it's lost the venue). Ditto Bolton. The nearest alternative festivals are Atherton (tiny venue), Wigan (outgrew the venue years ago), Accrington (which I enjoy, but it's a long way away), and then Bury, I suppose, but IIRC that too has lost its regular venue. What's to the south of Stockport? Is there one at Macclesfield? And I think there's one at Northwich too.
Maybe it's time for the Campaign to grit its teeth and find the cash for a big commercial venue to hold a Greater Manchester festival. G-Mex is the obvious venue, and it's always been hideously expensive. But it's hideously expensive because it's enormously large. Maybe that could be the home of a new style of festival, one with enough space for people to walk around in, enough space for people to get sat down, enough space for a long, long bar that minimises queuing. One for the next Regional meeting, I think, eh?
You won't know unless you try it! It depends on the time of year to some extent, shandy sells better in warm weather.
On the other hand, Old Trafford is crowded because it *is* popular - and something that people have a choice to visit is a better comparison than something that for most of its customers is the least bad way of obtaining an essential service.
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Many moons ago, when we investigated GMex after we lost Bingley Hall, it wasn't so much expensive as unionised - we wouldn't be able to build our own bars let alone staff them. As this was nearly 20 years ago, times might have changed and it might be worth looking at again. I would have to say, though, that it would be a good regional/winter ales festival venue, but it's not big enough for anything larger.
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