Manchester Beer and Cider Festival partners with local brewers to help visitors learn more about their favourite drink

Cloudwater, Wild Beer Co, Hawkshead and Thirst Class Ale will be supporting CAMRA’s Discovery Zone this year

The Manchester Beer and Cider Festival taking place from 23-25 January at Manchester Central will play host to CAMRA’s second annual Discovery Zone, aimed at empowering visitors to make more informed decisions at the bar.

Volunteers have organised daily beer and cider tastings led by exciting and innovative brewers and cider makers. They will also showcase high-quality brewing ingredients to help drinkers calibrate their senses.

Breweries involved this year include Cloudwater, Wild Beer Co., Hawkshead and Thirst Class Ale. 

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Get beer done!

Incredible inventory from Manchester Beer and Cider Festival 

Drinkers are promised a celebration of our national drinks as the North’s biggest beer and cider festival rolls into Manchester Central next week. And to tease tastebuds, organisers have announced their beer lists packed with the most extensive selection of real ales, modern keg and the best from the international scene.

Now in its seventh year, Manchester Beer and Cider festival has an outstanding menu of the best brewers and producers can muster. This year, 25 bars will serve more than 750 different examples sure to appeal to lovers of traditional British ales, those seeking the cutting edge of modern brewing and fans of foreign beer styles. With ciders, perrys, fruit wines, mead and a gin bar, there’s sure to be a drink for every taste.

As you would expect from an event organised by the nine Greater Manchester branches of the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), the focus is on cask-conditioned beers with almost 400 to choose from.

©James Darcey
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Cider Rethought

A refreshed cider and perry offer from Manchester Beer and Cider Festival

RethinkCider

Fans of traditional fruit drinks are in for a treat this month as the North’s biggest beer and cider festival opens in Manchester.

Organisers of the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival have a reputation for showcasing the best from traditional cider and perry producing regions alongside the developing northern scene. A staggering 73 ciders and perrys picked from 40 different producers will be on offer during the three days of the event (click here to see the list). But that only tells part of the story.

Regular visitors will be able to spot firm festival favourites, but handpumps, a cooling system and bottled ciders and perries will debut on a revised layout. And an innovation – believed to be a national first for Manchester – will see six keg-conditioned ciders dispensed. The equivalent to real ales maturing in cask, live yeasts continue to react with sugars, further conditioning and stabilising the cider.

Cider and perry bar manager Dick Withecombe said: “The festival has a reputation for innovation in beer. But this year, we aim to match that modernisation with the impetus that the ReThink Cider initiative has given us. ReThink Cider is about improving the way cider is perceived. And in line with CAMRA’s priorities, we want to educate drinkers about the diverse styles of cider and perry. Many producers have the skills normally associated with winemakers. ReThink Cider aims to showcase that while harnessing the broad appeal of real ales.

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Rethink Cider at #MBCF20

Is it time to #RethinkCider? We here at Manchester Beer and Cider Festival 2020, certainly think so.

This year’s cider and perry bar will be run by the team behind Manchester Cider Club – creating a new, modern and exciting Cider Bar for this winter’s festival.

We will be introducing several new features:

  • Cider cooling for all the Ciders and Perry
  • Five keg ciders
  • Fifteen draught ciders and perries delivered through hand pulls
  • A diverse range of Bag in Box ciders and perries representing a wide regional range and a diversity of cider styles
  • A cider bottle bar, for takeout and tasters in thirds, featuring some of the best quality bottle fermented and bottle conditioned ciders and perries available
  • An increased number of local ciders from within the Greater Manchester CAMRA Region

We believe MBCF20 will be the very first Festival in the UK to be serving three keg conditioned ciders. These are ciders that are still conditioning within the keg and meet CAMRA’s definition of real cider.

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More Heritage, More Beers From The Wood

In 2019, drinkers couldn’t get enough of our Beers From The Wood bar – drinking every drop from the 50 traditional oak casks by Saturday afternoon.

Taking on the challenge, we have sourced even more wooden casks for 2020 and arranged to have them filled with an even more amazing selection of beers.

Osset Brewery presents the 2020 Beers From The Wood Bar which is set to to feature 75 beers from brewers from across the country, including six from Ossett and their other breweries, Rat, Fernandes and Riverhead.

There will be exclusive wooden casks from local favourites Marble Beers, Runaway, Beatnikz Republic and Pomona Island. Amongst many highlights heading over from Yorkshire will be former Champion Beer Of Britain, Elland Brewery’s 1872 Porter, joined by more exclusives from Rat, Fernandes, Abbeydale, Brew York and many more.

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