With the New Year’s hangover now a hazy memory, Helen Raine dons her beer goggles to look at five of the best beer festivals around the world this year.
Great British Beer Festival, London
If there is one thing that the Brits excel at, it is brewing beer. They are also pretty good at drinking it to excess, so the GBBF 2012 is sure to be an animated event.
Last year, 80 pints per minute were poured for 62,000 visitors. It’s your chance to try all those speciality beers, the bitters served of course at a distinctly lukewarm temperature (only the lagers get chilled; I put it down to the weather as the Brits are usually huddled near the log fire trying to keep warm rather than kicking back in a beer garden).
This year, the event will be from August 7 to 11 at Olympia in south-west London. There will be tutored beer tasting sessions that will lead you through the look, taste, style and history of the beers. You can then put your new found knowledge to good use on the myriad of stalls offering regional beers or introducing new breweries.
To add to the air of jovial madness, on ‘hat day’ everyone turns up wearing preposterous headwear. If you have always wanted to release your inner milliner, it is too good to miss.
Oktoberfest, Munich
Germany is the spiritual home of the beer festival. So passionate are they about their beers that they eschew the piddly pint pot and instead go all out with a litre ‘stein’.
The glass and the beer weigh about 2.5kg, but the waitresses at German festivals are pros; they can carry 12 at a time (a staggering 30kg) and their bulging biceps are testimony to how much practice this takes.
Munich’s Oktoberfest is the biggest festival in the world, a riotous affair that goes on for 16 days (you are unlikely to last that long). Perversely, it starts on September 22 this year.
Traditionally, you are seated at long trestle tables with waitress service and a rousing brass band. After downing a few litres of Germany’s finest ale, you’ll likely end the evening wearing a pair of borrowed lederhosen and belting out a few Bavarian lieder.
There are a huge variety of different tents in Munich though with different experiences in each, from the cheese tent which serves molten cheese over spicy pickles to a tent which offers ‘oxen specialities’, or an all beer tent with German rock ‘n’ roll on tap.
Munich is massive, but pretty much every German city has a festival, most of them considerably less crowded (although equally frenetic and drunken).
Bitter and Twisted International Boutique Beer Festival, Australia
Ever wanted to drink a beer in a maximum security prison? Er, no, me neither... but Bitter and Twisted offers tastings of more than 50 beers from Australian craft breweries and beyond so you can forgive the bizarre setting. In fact, you can embrace it, by going on a jail tour hosted by an ex-inmate in between pints of the Australia’s best brews (relax... the jail closed in 1998 but it’s still got some great escape stories).
The festival also gives you the chance to meet the brewers and pick up some expert brewing tips.
If you really can’t find a babysitter, then the kids are taken care of with face painting and, rather intriguingly, ‘bitter and twisted’ characters... that should scare them into submission while you quaff your ale in peace.
Maitland is two hours away from Sydney and the festival takes place on November 3 and 4.
Zythos Bierfestival, Belgium
Belgium brews around 450 varieties of beer and has no shortage of beer festivals.
Zythos Bierfestival in Leuwen (April 28 and 29) is a relatively low key event (the tombola is listed as one of the highlights so this is no Oktoberfest) but for the serious beer taster, it’s paradise with 250 flavoursome beverages on offer from 60 breweries.
If you find the beer of your dreams, you can vote for it to win the coveted consumer trophy. Classic brews this year include Forestinne Mysteria, Cookie Beer, Femme Fatale and Enfant Terrible.
Qingdao International Beer Festival, China
You know a festival is going to be unique when, as homage to the amber nectar, they erect a giant cup of beer as the centrepiece for the event, surrounded by a small lake and gushing fountains (sadly, not of beer.... but you get the idea of the level of reverence involved here).
Qingdao is famous for beer in a country which brews twice as much as the next major producer, the US. It is also home to Tsingtao, China’s most famous brew.
This is the biggest beer festival in Asia, held over 16 days in August, and will give you a sneak insight into the beer drinking culture in China.
One essential accompaniment is karaoke, so after a few pints for lubrication, you can join in with the locals in a badly mangled version of I Will Survive.
There’s tons of good Chinese food and you are also likely to be treated to many a free beer by generous locals. Gan bei (bottoms up) with the Tsingtao!