Another successful festival supported by residents of the town and tourists from as far as Surrey, West Sussex, London and Yorkshire. This included the champion “ ticker” of Great Britain, Brian Moore of Sheffield, who had travelled to Hinckley to sample 20 beers that he had not tasted before to add to his collection of over 63000 beers! He doesn’t drink them, he takes them home. After visiting our festival he was intending to follow our new, revised, Hinckley Ale Trail when I advised him of more new beers on offer in the town’s pubs.

Our claim to be a small, friendly CAMRA festival certainly seems to have been upheld, thanks to our branch volunteers. In total we had over 1600 visitors who consumed over 4000 pints of beer and 1000 pints of cider along with traditional beer festival food.

Everyone I spoke to was captivated by their visit to the museum to view the “All Hail the Ale” tribute to the Three Brewers exhibition and enjoyed splendid hospitality from the staff.

The Bass Pubs Trail that ran for 6 weeks between Market Bosworth Rail Ale festival and Hinckley Beer festival was well supported and a number of entrants had enjoyed travelling to most of the 15 participating pubs in the area, which, in their words, “ Gave us a an opportunity to visit some of the villages around the area.”

The entertainment in the marquee was well received and the opening ceremony with distinguished guests was especially well attended.

Our judging of East Midlands Champion Beer of Britain – Strong Bitters category was won by Blue Monkey Ape Ale a 5.4% strong bitter.

Personally, I received several favourable comments about the organisation of the festival and the varied selection of beers and ciders.

It now seems a long time to wait until Hinckley and Bosworth CAMRA’s next festival, the Market Bosworth Rail Ale festival in July 2018.

Chris James, Hinckley Beer Festival Organiser

For more information on the 2017 Hinckley Beer Festival, see Hinckley Beer Festival