Tastebuds tingle for real ale festival

Thousands of Black Country real ale fans are getting their tastebuds sharpened ready for when the barrels are rolled out at the annual Stourbridge Beer Festival.

Members of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), who organise the event each year, have announced that the popular three-day festival will be taking place from May 22 to 24.

The event will be held at Stourbridge town hall, in Market Street, for the 11th year running and organisers are expecting more than 2,000 people to attend this time. Nearly a hundred guest beers, from breweries across the country, will be featured in the festival along with ciders.

Old favourites and new brews created in the region will also be available for visitors to sample, including ales from the popular Kinver Brewery.

The event will kick off at 7pm on the Thursday evening and from noon on the remaining days. Organisers are staging the festival slightly later this year. The event is traditionally held near to a Bank Holiday and originally the festival was planned to take place last week – but the hall was needed for the local elections on the Thursday.

Members of Camra decided to delay the event for a couple of weeks to coincide with the late-May Bank Holiday.

As in previous years there will be no live entertainment just beer and conversation with drinkers stating their preference for this format in previous years. Organiser John Midwood said they were looking forward to the event which was popular with real ale fans across the entire country.

"We have a lot of people travel into Stourbridge for the three-day event and it is always a good atmosphere," he said.

"The full list of guest beers at the event has not yet been released but people who come to the festival will be in for a real treat," he added.

"We are staging the event a bit later this year but the festival is going ahead as planned and we are expecting it to be bigger than ever."