Popular beer festival set to return for another year of friendship and good drinks

The ninth Cannock Beer Festival will bring lovers of ales, stouts, ciders and many other drinks to the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cannock for three days of drinks and friendship between September 12 and 14.

The annual festival started after members of the Walsall CAMRA branch made the decision to start their own branch in Cannock in 2016 and, as part of becoming a new branch, they had to then organise their own festival.

It was also a relaunch of beer festivals in the town, having been organised at the same venue by Pelsall CAMRA back in the 1970s, and Chris Southall, who is one of the organisers, said the format for the festival had remained similar to the first festival.

He said: "It's very much the same as we've always had the Prince of Wales Theatre, which meant the amount of space we've had has never changed, and we found that the first one was very successful, so we've not really needed to make many changes from the first one.

"What people can expect when they walk through the doors is 45 ales, 15 ciders and five keykeg beers, which is a new idea we tried out last year and which went down well, so we're repeating that this year.

"We've also got an international beer bar, live entertainment, raffle, tombola and all the usual things you can get from a beer festival as we've taken the things we love from festivals and put them into our own one."

Mr Southall said the beer choices were fairly regular as well from previous years, with a lot of people requesting darker beers and stouts, but lighter beers and ales also being very popular.

He said that the festival was an inclusive event, with all welcome, and said that while it was hard work to organise, it was worth the effort every year.

He said: "We get people of all ages coming to the festival and there's a lot of younger people who come along on the Fridays and Saturdays now that when we first started.

"That's nice because a lot of people do think that CAMRA is all old men with twigs in their beards and it really isn't that at all.

"The festival is one which is hard work to organise, but we do look forward to it and begin to enjoy it when it gets started."

To find out more about the event, go to the Cannock Beer Festival website