All posts tagged: gbbf

Great British Cider (and Beer) Festival 2011 Review

2 Comments 8th August 2011

As you’d expect this review only includes thoughts and information about cider and perry at this years event.

Introduction

Demand for real cider and perry continues to increase with new cider makers starting up throughout the UK every year – this was evident at GBBF last week with a fantastic selection of traditional west country and eastern counties ciders available at Earls Court, London.

Showcasing Britain’s most exciting cider makers

CAMRA‘s annual early-August event celebrates British drinking. With over 110 ciders and perries at the Great British Beer Festival this week, CAMRA showcased the largest selection of real cider and perry ever seen at the event.

The range included award winning ciders and perries from national gold medallists at the National Cider and Perry Championships, judged at the Reading Beer Festival earlier in May, including Virtual Orchard cider.

Gwynt y Draig, Two Trees perry and Black Dragon cider were among the three fastest selling drinks in the first three days of the Festival. Great news for Welsh cider makers. Catch them at this weekends International Cider Festival.

John Lewis, Cider Bar Manager (great job) has been delighted with the increased interest in ciders and perries:

‘All our ciders are selling very well, appealing across all tastes from dry to sweet with a broad range of people of all ages enjoying the large selection.’

What you said about the cider on Twitter

We also had a good response of ‘cider heads’ live tweeting their responses back to us on Twitter.

Cider bar training

As an added bonus this year, I had the pleasure of doing cider bar training with CAMRA’s Mick Lewis (chief cider head).

Mick guided us through what he defines as real cider and perry, following CAMRA’s guidelines. The group was made up of 10 people who were either starting to make their own cider, sell it at a cider event, or learn more about what makes a good cider.

The interesting aspect for me was the cider tasting, of course! where Mick explained you didn’t have to like them all, just appreciate the difference in the tastes by there location in the UK, and style of fermentation. We tasted around 12 ciders from all corners of cider land.

One aspect where the cider and perry selection should be applauded is supporting first time ciders at events. A great way of enjoying British apples all under one roof!

Photos from the event

Finally, here are some personal images of the event.

Hope you enjoy. If you did make it this year let us know what you thought by leaving your comments below. If you didn’t – hope to see you at the cider bar next year!

See you at GBBF!

2 Comments 4th July 2011

The cider and perry list has now been published on the Camra web site for this years Great British (Beer and) Cider Festival  – showcasing the selected cider and perries that will be available at the 5 day event in West London.

Recommended ones to taste

Great to see the Welsh ciders on show, representing not just West Country cider styles. I’m particularly looking forward to trying New Forest’s cider’s Kingston Black single varietal cider – a new line for them this year.

Also some new ciders from Cambridgeshire and Kent this year, cider makers over in this part of the UK use culinary apples that are more common here than true cider apples from the West country – which results in a clear, crisp and very pale cider. Some not for the faint-hearted at approx. 8% ABV!

View the full list online

Visit gbbf.camra.org.uk/ciders

On the site you can read the comments and reviews from other cider fans, and even create your own shortlist to print off and take to the event.

Hope to see you there!

I will be along for the tutored tasting session and also be helping a couple of afternoons, would love to meet you – so just ask for Jim Callender

Britain’s biggest cider festival

1 2nd August 2010

Britain’s biggest beer festival takes place this week from 3rd to 7th August 2010 at Earls Court, London. The Great British Beer Festival (often shortened to GBBF) is a yearly beer festival organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA

GBBF is styled as the “biggest pub in the world” and offers around 450 beers from British breweries, as well as around 200 foreign beers from countries including Belgium, Germany and the USA. Traditional British cider and perry is also available. The festival is completely staffed by unpaid volunteers, around 1000 of whom work at the festival.

Organisers are hoping for a bumper event as ticket sales this year are up by 32% on last year. Which means that the attendance will be well over the 64,000 thirsty people that turned up in 2009.

Louise Ashworth, head of marketing at the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), said: “Across the UK, CAMRA beer (and cider) festivals have continued to report record attendance figures and increases in sales. And with our own research showing that 50% of pub-goers have now tried real ale and cider, this August at Earls Court will be an exciting time for brewers to come together and champion our national drink.”

At Waitrose, sales of bottled ciders and ales have risen 30% year on year as customers are trying out new producers. We have a fantastically rich heritage of cider makers and people seem to want to reach out and try local and national ciders.

View all the listed ciders and perries available at this years GBBF.

Further links: