Tickets are now on sale for the 2nd Manchester Beer & Cider Festival. The festival returns to the Manchester Velodrome from 21st – 24th January with an incredible line up of beers, ciders & perries planned.
There will be 19 bars spread across the Velodrome’s concourse and floor including 10 top breweries bringing their own bars to the event. These will be led by Manchester’s own Marble Beers with their enduringly popular beers including Pint, Dobber & Marble Ginger. Also returning to the festival for a second year will be Cumbria’s Hawkshead Brewery who last year walked away with the award for Champion Beer Of The North West for their Cumbrian Five Hop. Yorkshire brewer Ilkley Brewery and Cheshire’s Bollington Brewery will also return and will be joined by six brewers setting up bar for the first time.
Brewster Michelle Kelsall will bring her Offbeat beers to the event including the award-winning Way Out Wheat & Dotty Double IPA. Fellow brewsters Amanda Seddon & Kathryn Harrisson of Wilson Potter brewery will also have their bar at the event. It has been quite a year for Wilson Potter having made habit of picking up awards, winning Beer Of The Festival at Stockport, Chorlton and Didsbury Beer Festivals. The award-winning beers should all be on the bar.
Bury will have two representatives in the brewery bar line up with Outstanding Beers, one of the most established and respected micro-brewers in the region, lining up alongside the up and coming Brightside Beers who have made great strides since setting up in the back of the family bakery just three years ago. From Hebden Bridge, Bridestones Brewery have been making a name for themselves in their local heartland for past couple of years but are only just starting to regular appear in Manchester – this will change after they bring their bar to the festival.
Last but by no means least in the brewery bar line up will be Marble protégée Rob Hamilton & his Blackjack Beers. The regular Brew Tap open weekends at the Manchester based brewer have become a mecca for beer fans over the past year and now they will be bringing their diverse range of beers to Manchester Beer & Cider Festival. The Blackjack Brew Tap will be located on the concourse level.
Of course there won’t just be beers at the event. The new Cider bar on the concourse level will focus on the growing number of cider producers in the North of England. While the traditional cider producing areas of Somerset & Herefordshire continue to dominate the industry, recent years have seen a growing number of producers in the North and Manchester Beer & Cider Festival will be featuring some of the very best of these including Manchester’s own Moss Cider Project, Bolton’s Red Bank Cider Company, Dunham Massey Press and True North Cider Press from Holmfirth.
The festival is also expanding it’s range of beers from across the world. Once again, is expected that the full range of German Oktoberfest beers will be on the bar, in itself a rare occurrence in the UK. However, the festival will also be featuring a range of beers from the growing craft beer movement around the world. These will include beers from Australia’s Stone & Wood, Denmark’s Amager & Spain’s Naparbier. The USA will be represented by Evil Twin, Two Roads & Greenflash amongst others. Other countries represented will include France, Switzerland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Netherlands & Italy.
To keep up to date as brewers & beers are confirmed follow the festival on twitter at @MancBeerFest or on Facebook.com/ManchesterBeerFestival