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Nottingham Beer Festival Visit

Friday 19th October 2007

The Top Hall

A small contingent meet at Hinckley Station for the trip to Nottingham. The beer Festival is held at the Victoria Leisure Centre just east of the city centre. This year there were about 300 beers available on the Friday with a further 100 held over for the Saturday. There are two halls, Main & Top. There were Brewery Bars from Batemans, Caythorpe, Castle Rock, Everards, Milestone, Nottingham & Springhead. Much was made of Nottingham Branch's excellent LocAle scheme to promote local breweries. The beers were arranged alphabetically by brewery, making your choice easy to find. 

The old part of the Leisure Centre

The Main Hall

The New part of the Leisure Centre

After an adequate tasting period we decided to try some of the local pubs, spurred on by a useful article in the Nottingham Drinker & some advice from Andy Sales. Our first choice was the King William IV, recently reopened as a Mecca for real ales from micro breweries. It has been completely refurbished in a simple traditional way - an excellent pub.

Next call was the Moot, just round the corner, offering 8 changing micro brewery beers. JHB is the only regular. The Moot was originally a motor cycle shop.
The first two pubs were both excellent pubs with a wide selection of micro brewery beers at prices around £1.90 to £2.25ish. Neither are in the GBG08, but must be contenders for 09 - well worth finding!

We now started to head back towards the Station, calling first at Kean's Head (GBG08 p386). Situated in a quiet street near to the old lace manufacturing area, a glass of Castle Rock Harvest Gold was my choice here. Next was the Newshouse (GBG08 p386), containing memorabilia from Radio Nottingham.

Last call, just by the Station, was the Vat & Fiddle (GBG08 p387), the brewery tap of Castle Rock.

Words by Alan Cooke
Photos by Chris Davies

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