Hundreds of people helped to put on Britain's biggest beer festival: I was one of them

The Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) made its return to Birmingham for the first time since 1983, having also danced between Leeds and Brighton and then set up home around London at venues such as Olympia and Earls Court.

Having had an hiatus in 2024, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) made the decision to move the festival to the NEC, taking it outside the M25 for the first time in years.

It was a bold move by CAMRA to take it to a venue like the NEC which, while a big centre for activity and events, is also very large to navigate around.

To ensure the smooth running of the festival, it necessitated the recruitment of a large army of volunteers, all drawn from the membership ranks of CAMRA and coming from all over the country and further afield, which is where my involvement came in.

I'd read about the festival coming to Birmingham and, I'll be honest, it did pique my interest as I'd never volunteered at a beer festival before, even a year into my own CAMRA membership, and there were a few things that made me want to get involved.

First of all, it sounded like a fun thing to do, plus it was only a train ride away and I'd also get to see the behind the scenes that you don't usually get from a festival like this.

After putting in my application, which said that I was a journalist (this bit is important later) and also I was happy to do whatever came to me, I was accepted onto the volunteer team, given training to complete and able to select what shifts I was able to do on the days I could do them.

The training consisted of health and safety and drink awareness, both completed quickly, then I waited to see what role I'd be assigned on the days I was working of Thursday, August 7 to Saturday, August 9.

I would have been happy just pulling pints for those three days, but it turned out that my writing and videoing skills were important to the press team as I became a member of that team with a specific role of capturing video and photos for the CAMRA social media teams.

The whole operation about getting volunteers in and getting them all set was a slick one, with the Tout Suite near Hall one of the NEC acting as the base of operations.

In there, you can get your accreditation, which shows how many days you're working, and officially sign in each day, then get your volunteer t-shirt and festival glass (a pint glass for me) and, if you're staying at a hotel on the NEC site, work out subsidised fees and any other issues you might have.

The media office set near Hall two in the base of operations and had a good team of people who made me very welcome, from Ellie, the senior campaigns and communications manager, to the likes of Jane, Ollie, Chris and Matt, all of whom showed me around and helped me understand the scale of what CAMRA does.

It was Ellie who took me on a tour of the site, which turned out to be a lot bigger than I was expecting. I remembered the NEC being large from attending the Good Food Show, Crufts and the 2022 Commonwealth Games, but these were all events with a lot of stuff packed into one space.

The GBBF, on the other hand, had extended itself through Halls one and two, with a staircase separating the two halls and making use of the ample space on offer. 

This included six CAMRA beer bars, a cider bar and a spirits and wine bar, all of which were named after pubs that had closed or been threatened with closure or, in the case of the Carlton Tavern, rebuilt brick by brick following an unauthorised demolition of the pub in Maida Vale.