Whitehaven Beer Festival
Countdown - 357 days approx to the next one!

Congratulations to all planners, helpers and drinkers!!

Beers started to sell out on Saturday afternoon, and by the end of the evening, about two thirds of the casks were empty. This means for the first time in several years, the festival has not been run at a loss!!

Many thanks to the lads at the Candlestick for their generous donation of a cask of the glorious Robinson's Double Hop and to Mark at The Strands for his donated cask of his very quaffable Errmmm!
Also to Marstons for the Cumberland and the Sneck Lifter!

Congratulations to Great Gable: their bottled Yewbarrow won the regional heats in the 'Real Ale in a Bottle' category, and this is now going to the 'Champion Beer of Britain' finals at GBBF (Earls Court) in August.

Congratulations, also, to Marstons, for their Jennings Sneck Lifter, which was voted 'Beer of the Festival' by a tasting panel. This was done completely by taste - no one knew which beer they were scoring - and as we all know, Sneck Lifter is a fabulous beer and it distinguished itself totally anonymously!!

We have yet to find out which was beer of the festival by the customers vote! Watch this space!

It was good to have Copeland MP, Jamie Reed there, to help with the beer judgings, and hopefully to be persuaded that real ale is really rather good and that Bottle English beer is much better than Becks or similar when you can't have real ale!! We also hope he will get beers from some of the nine breweries in our branch on in the Strangers' Bar at the House of Commons.