Last Thursday saw the opening of the 2009 Robin Hood Beer Festival at Nottingham Castle and Sunday saw it closing slightly earlier than planned – drunk completely dry of beer by the thousands of very happy real ale, beer and cider fans who flocked through the gates in record-breaking numbers.

Bigger and better than last year, CAMRA and the Castle staff had organised a really well run festival with food, music, a great atmosphere and, of course, a truly vast array of beers!

 As well as helping open it myself and the good Lady Marian (the ever lovely Sal Chappell) were also judges in the CIBA Beer Competition, and helpfully we were given the Strong Beer category to judge, starting at 11.30am! Fifteen very fine (well, mostly fine) strong beers to examine, smell, taste and then rate was a tough job, but we made a sterling effort! After a short break we then moved on to judging the Pale Ale and Bitters category, luckily not as alcoholic but just as much fun! All of the winning beers were most excellent but I was very pleased to see that Nottingham’s excellent Castle Rock Brewery did very well again, buit congratulations to all of the entrants and winners!

We stayed all day so also got to meet loads of great festival-goers including some fabulous folks from Australia and a great bunch of guys from Ethiopia – it just goes to show what a great draw the festival is for Nottingham and CAMRA – here’s to a great one this year and a bigger one next as well! Cheers!

There’s a great review of the festival by Nottingham Evening Post author (and all round decent chap) Erik Petersen here. 

(The photo shows SIBA chief executive Julian Grocock, Adrian Redgrove (head brewer, Castle Rock Brewery), the Sheriff of Nottingham Cllr Leon Unczur, Maid Marian (Sally Chappell) and Robin Hood (me) as the award is presented to Castle Rock Brewery – from whom I have shamelessly snaffled the photo - for their excellent first place winning Black Gold dark mild beer).