Sunny Cider Life at Delapre Abbey

This year's Northampton CAMRA Beer Festival at Delapre Abbey was another huge success. Perfect weather conditions for outdoor drinking, and a thirsty local crowd combined to drink the festival dry of nearly 240 beers, and the best part of 100 barrels of cider and perry. In the case of the cider bar, a hasty re-order was required following strong trade on Friday evening, and even this was barely enough to last until closing time on Saturday.

The Delapre Abbey event is rapidly becoming known as one of the best CAMRA beer festivals in the East Midlands, and is set to grow even further in the coming years, staff and venue permitting. Congratulations to festival organiser Phil Greenway, and all the hard working volunteers who helped make this year's festival such an enjoyable, and successful event.

I propped up the cider bar during the Friday afternoon session, where a small but steady flow of customers kept the staff busy (the lull before the storm as it turned out!). There were a wide range of ciders and perrys from Gwynt-Y-Ddraig, Millwhite's, and Thatchers, including some single varietals and spirit cask matured ciders; plus LocApple ciders from Eve's of Kettering, and our own Rockingham Forest and Sulgrave Orchard ciders. As usual I didn't manage to try any of the beers, though I'm led to believe there were quite a few good ones! Mention must also be made of the excellent Malt Shovel Tavern, which provided a useful staging post for many people on the way to the festival.

The FAQ picture is c/o Ben Coulson, who has kindly made this image available under a Creative Commons Licence.