Chorlton Beer & Cider Festival sets up battle with London’s best brews on one side and Manchester and the North West on the other.

Drinkers attending the 12th Chorlton Beer & Cider Festival will be able to check out whether Manchester has taken the lead in the “craft beer revolution” with the bars at the festival split across the North-South Divide. The festival which takes place at St Clement’s Church from 7th to 9th July has filled one of its two beer halls with a selection of the best beers from London and the South East while the other exclusively features beers from Manchester, Cumbria and Cheshire.

The challenge brings a new angle to the festival which is organised jointly by volunteers from St Clement’s and the Trafford & Hulme branch of the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) to raise funds to support St Clements’ work as a centre open to all of the Chorlton community. Over 4000 visitors are expected to pack the Church grounds on Edge Lane in the South Manchester suburb, drinking their way through 13,000 pints of beer, cider and perry.

Festival beer manager John O’Donnell said “While much of the London based press would have you believe that the so called “craft beer” movement has it’s centre in London and the south of England, from the early 1990s Manchester was leading the way with brewers like Brendan Dobbin pioneering big hoppy beers which led to breweries such as Marble Beers and Pictish setting up long before London caught on”.

He went on to say “With June’s Manchester Beer Week focussing on how great a city Manchester is for beer drinkers, we thought it would be fun to let drinkers try the best from both areas and decide for themselves. We’ve got beers from 20 different breweries from London & the South East ranging from the historic Fullers to big names on the craft beer bars such as Weird Beard and Siren. On the Northern side of the divide we have established breweries such as Outstanding Beers from Bury, Manchester’s Blackjack and Cumbria’s Hawkshead but also some of the newest with Rochdale start up Serious Brewing and the very aptly named Manchester Brewing Co”.

The festival has even commissioned a special beer which brings together the two sides. The festival ale named “North South Collide” is a collaboration between Brightside Brewery from Radcliffe and XT Brewing from Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire.  XT’s co-owner and brewer Russ Taylor travelled to Bury to brew the golden session ale with Brightside’s Neil Friedrich with the brew day appropriately falling during Manchester Beer Week.

Brightside’s sales director Carley Friedrich said “We’ve never done a collaboration brew with anyone but we’ve been swapping beers with XT for years and get on great with them. We are a big supporter of Chorlton Beer & Cider Festival so when the festival approached us with the idea, we thought it was a perfect match and we were only too happy to get on board”.

The festival opens at 6pm on Thursday 7th July, continuing on Friday evening and all day Saturday. More information is available from www.chorltonbeerfestival.org.uk