While the Youth Centre bar will be invaded by Celts, St Clement’s Church hall will be keeping it local with beers exclusively from the North West of England.
One of the Manchesters longest standing breweries have now become one of the closest to the festival. After 10 years in a mill in Bury, Outstanding Beers’ move to Ordsall in Salford earlier this year means their beers will travel just two miles to the festival – including Dawn Chorus, an oatmeal pale with a sorachi bite brewed specially for the festival.
Amongst the newer brewers featured will be Altrincham’s Stubborn Mule who will have their full core range at the festival across the cask and key-keg bar including their Cream Ale, Single Hop IPA and the highly acclaimed Absolute Banker pale ale. Established in a garden shed in Timperley under three years ago, owner & brewer Ed Bright upgraded to a full size, full time brewery in late 2016 and has quickly shown that his cask and keg beers are every bit as good as the bottles produced from the shed.
The only brewery closer is Joseph Holt’s Bootleg Brewing, based a short walk from the festival at the Horse & Jockey pub. When the festival teamed up with Bootleg and Manchester Beer Week to launch a competition to find the best Anglo-American ingredient homebrew, it was a pale ale by amateur brewer Craig Raey who came out top . Craig travelled to The Horse & Jockey to scale up his recipe for “Brewcamp” to a commercial scale with the help of Bootleg’s head brewer Stefano Occhi.
There will be three beers from Brightside Brewery and three from their Wildside experimental range – including Summer Fruits wheat beer, a new Azacca single hop IPA and their Helles cask conditioned lage.
Fans of the experimental won’t be disappointed with a host of flavoured specials on offer including Coconut Mist – a pale ale with real coconut flakes from Rammy Craft Brew; a new Salted Caramel Coffee Stout from TicketyBrew and The Queen of Custard Tarts – a vanilla & nutmeg saison brewed up by Blackjack Beers in collaboration with Nottingham’s Totally Brewed.
Established favourites from further afield returning to the festival include Hawkshead, who will give a Manchester debut to the July entry in their Cask Session Series of session IPAs, alongside the award winning Cumbrian Five Hop. There’ll be gluten free The North from Stringers in Ulverston and Macclesfield’s RedWillow will have their new Effortless session ale on offer.
