‘All hands to the pumps’: 44th Peterborough Beer Festival has opened gates as it gears up for 25,000 customers

Peterborough Beer Festival – one of the city’s premier large-scale events – has open its gates to the public.

With last-minute checks and final preparations diligently ticked off, organisers of the event – which is by attendance the largest in the country – are getting ready to welcome tens of thousands of beer enthusiasts, music lovers and festival fans to the Embankment site.

Matt Mace, chairman of the Peterborough Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) branch, told the Peterborough Telegraph: “All the beer has been up for a couple of days now.”

Matt, who works closely with the event’s director Mike Lane, and the festival’s publicity chief Raeanne Elliott, explained how Peterborough Beer Festival is the culmination of “11 months’ preparation.”

“We started putting the site together on Monday August 14,” he said. “However, preparations actually start in September, shortly after the previous festival ends.”

Impressive statistics

Festival organisers rely on an army of volunteers to help setup and run the event. This year has seen over 300 volunteers sign up for service.

And that isn’t the only impressive statistic.

Peterborough Beer Festival will feature offerings from more than 150 breweries. With each brewery offering an average of six different beers, the Embankment has to accommodate some 1,300 casks of beer. All told, that amounts to a whopping 56,000 pints of cask conditioned ales!

Estimates suggest punters will have more than 500 beers to choose from this year, 350 of which will be draft beers, with the remainder being bottled beers and key kegs. Oh and don’t forget the vast selection of gins, wines, and ciders.

“Our beer orderer, Chris, takes three months to ring around and coordinate all that,” Matt notes, chuckling.

As well as pulling in greater numbers of punters than CAMRA’s flagship Great British Beer Festival in London, Peterborough Beer Festival also boasts the longest bar in the UK.

The 105-metre-long behemoth is 40 metres longer than its nearest rival, the 65-metre-long tiddler at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

With all this in mind, it is no wonder brewers from far and wide are keen to be involved.

Woodston-based brewery Xtreme Ales will be one of the many brewers attending. The family-run outfit will be offering two beers this year: ‘Simply Red X’, a debut beer specially brewed for the festival, and ‘BlaX Forest Stout’, a much-admired, award-winning tipple.

“I love working the festival”

Like many local breweries and CAMRA enthusiasts, the “Xtreme team” has been volunteering on-site, helping get things ready and making sure the festival will be good-to-go by 5.30pm.

“We’ve worked all through the previous week, right up to last night,” said Xtreme’s operations coordinator, Martyn Hunt.

He and his team will be volunteering for the rest of the week, “manning bars, serving people and spreading the news about great beer” - Martyn will be the bar manager of Bar 1.

“I love working the festival,” he said “I find working on the bar side means you get to meet lots and lots of nice people.”

Matt and Raeanne explained that they too will be joining Martyn once the gates open, as their preparatory roles will immediately change to service roles as soon as the first punters arrive:

“We have to switch from having a setting-up face to a customer-service face really, really quickly,” said Matt. “We’ll all be serving and glass washing - it will be all hands to the pumps.”

“I’m normally working behind the gin bar,” Raeanne said. “It’s incredibly hard work but it’s really rewarding - I love it.”

With over 25,000 people expected to turn out for this year’s event, Peterborough Beer Festival is a truly big deal

“It’s one of Peterborough’s biggest events and it puts Peterborough on the map,” Martyn noted.

“We had an outstanding year last year - I think we’re going to have a fantastic year this year as well.”

Peterborough Beer Festival will run from Tuesday August 22 to Saturday August 26.

Alongside the beer, the family-friendly (dog-friendly) festival will offer food, amusements, and a packed schedule of live music, with top-notch acts like Austin Gold and The Very Beautiful South booked in to get punters singing along.

Entry cost £3 for afternoon sessions (12-3pm) and £6 for evening sessions (3-11pm).