Octoberfest Beer Festival

It just keeps getting better!

It's 17th October 2002, with the festival about to start, all preparations made, and the nail-biting starts. Will folk come? Will the bands turn up? Will there be enough helpers?

With nearly £6000 committed to the Beer Festival, the investment is high and the budgets are tight for this good value celebration. The low recovery rate means things could go badly wrong.

The planning for this Octoberfest started 12 months ago, just as the last one ended. It was only a six weeks ago that we knew which beers would be offered. The beers couldn't be selected by CAMRA until the end of August, when the Champion of Great Britain beers competitions had been judged.

Selecting the bands is simpler as they have been 'sampled' at other venues and come with good reports. As usual, Rawlins College provided their new band for the warm up session on Friday. (This year, the band is as yet unnamed - any suggestions?) They were very good, displaying a great deal of talent amongst the pupils, and look like maintaining the high standard of previous years.

It's no good having this wonderful selection of beers, if people have no food to go with them. So a big thank you to Jean for organising this much appreciated catering.

As with previous years, the public turnout was excellent, in fact we couldn't have coped with many more. But I found it nail-biting to the end, because it was very sobering to realise that it wasn't until the last couple of hours of the last day that we broke even. For all those who were disappointed to see the 'sold out' sign going up on successive barrels of the beers, to the organisers these were welcome signs, which showed that the event would be in profit. In fact the skill and objective is to run out of all beers at the 'time' call on Saturday night. Anything left in an opened barrel is profit that goes down the drain.

Relief! A modest profit was made the amount of which won't be known until the unsold bottles and barrels are credited but it is expected to be in the order of £500. This will be used to support any community village hall event or production, either in terms of equipment, or to ensure that organisers are not left with a financial loss after investing their time and effort for the benefit of our community. So if you feel inclined to stage an event but are reluctant to undertake the financial risk do give me a ring.

David Cawdell

Photographs Courtesy of Quorn Village Website.