Queuing for huge Plymouth beer and cider menu

l Left to right, festival organiser Martin Brown, bar manager Sue Hook and Plymouth CAMRA chairman Bill Barnes toast the success of the city's beer festival

July 4, 2005: A queue of more than 200 formed at the Plymouth Pavilions on Saturday afternoon as crowds descended upon a hugely successful beer festival, organised by the city branch of the Campaign for Real Ale.

The venue was packed for the whole evening as 1,500 people enjoyed the music of the Wurzels - and got stuck into 30 casks of real cider.

"Ironically, we ran out of cider as they were signing 'I am a Cider Drinker'," said festival chairman Martin Brown, who was delighted with the success of the event. "Everything that needed to work, worked," he reflected yesterday, as the rows of 160 casks of ale and cider were dismantled.

Appropriately, Westcountry brewers were well represented at the event, with offerings from breweries including St Austell, Barum of Barnstaple, Princetown, RCH of Weston-super-Mare, Ring o'Bells of Launceston and festival sponsors, Skinners of Truro.

But honours in the competition to find the champion beer of the festival went to 'foreigners'. Kelham Island Brewery, of Sheffield, took first and third places with, respectively, Pale Rider, a 5.2 per cent pale ale, and Kelham Gold, a 3.8 per cent, hoppy session bitter. In second place was major London brewer Fuller's with its 'winter warmer', the 8.5 per cent Vintage Ale - to be supped responsibly in halves at the end of a session!

Among the visitors was Jean-Yves Jacob, from Brittany, of the group known as Boisson et Organisation de Keravel (BOK), which promotes the appreciation of real ale, ciders and a apple liquers. He was in England picking up malt from Tucker's Maltings at Newton Abbot and a good friend of the Coreff brewery, in Morlaix, which had two beers at the festival - Ambree, a light 5 per cent beer, and Stout, again 5 per cent and hugely popular with the Plymouth crowd.

A contingent from Plymouth CAMRA went to Brittany last year to meet BOK members on their home ground, visit local brewers and try some of their beers at a festival.