In case you were wondering, that picture of the pie and peas hasn’t been artificially enhanced. The pork even tasted like pork, too.
I don’t do many beer festivals, but Clifford’s Champion Beer Fest is a must.
This is such a significant event that it gets it’s own marker on Google Maps, and surely deserves an entry in Mr Protz’s otherwise peerless guide to the Great North Road !
In contrast to a night at Spoons where folk get arrested, take beer back and conduct their home business and domestic arguments, even the best beer festivals are going to look a bit tame.
Instead, Clifford gives you;
- Beers you’ve heard of, nearly all from that little county near Lancashire. The Mallinsons and Hawkshead Pale were superb
- Properly cooled cask, and that “live” keg stuff from Brass Castle
- Old blokes singing songs you’ve heard of (just like Glasto, then)
- Some lovely countryside walks up to Boston Spa to walk the pies off
- and cheery Yorkshire folk who don’t all talk about Mr Boycott.
Plus, of course, the best pies outside W***n.
Next year’s fest in on Saturday 30 June 2018.
retiredmartin 
You’re awfully close to turning this into a food blog. Careful.
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Quite right too. Cask is dead, Dave. I only saw 27 pints pulled in the 15 minutes I was in the North Riding.
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Hopefully we still find some this August.
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Hopefully not the same cask of Guzzler they’ve got on now in Battle.
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On the gloom and doom front, one thing I see often is comments that younger people aren’t going to the pubs. I am curious if as they age that will change. Will the pub environment appeal to them when they are older?
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Confess I still see plenty of younger folk in pubs, for example in Craftys on Letchworth last night. Perhaps not in the numbers Mudge recalls from the 80s, but still enough.
It’s daytime drinking that’s dead, I presume pensioners don’t socialise down the pub as much, or perhaps they just don’t retire :😱
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Cheers mate – appreciated. R. >
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Was the bar worker in the pink T shirt closest to the camera a Vicar.
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If you mean the white collar, I think that’s the northern head thats mandatory up there !
Seriously, I don’t think so.
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Are you sure the 60 litres of mushy peas wasn’t the last experimental cask of Cloudwater?
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If so, it was their best beer yet. A bit above ideal temperature, but green is the new black.
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