Despite showers on the opening Friday and, at times, torrential rain on the Saturday afternoon and evening, Beer on the Wye IV - held from the 4th to the 6th of July in a riverside marquee adjacent Hereford Rowing Club - has been declared a runaway success by organisers, Herefordshire CAMRA.
There were serious concerns that people would be put off coming down to the riverside festival by the inclement weather, but we needn't have worried. In the end over 3,200 people visited over the two-and a half days. That is nearly 600 up on last year's attendance, and more then double the number that attended our first Beer on the Wye festival back in June, 2005.
This year the traditional-style marquee was bigger than ever, and provided over 6,000 square feet of covered accommodation for festival-goers. No one needed to get wet.
There were 111 different cask beers from over 80 UK breweries - that's a total of over 1,000 gallons of draught cask beer. When the festival finally bid farewell to its last visitor on the Sunday afternoon, 96% of the cask beer had been drunk, and the 53 Herefordshire draught ciders and perries were similarly depleted too. The foreign and bottled beers and ciders completely sold out.
A number of new and unusual beers featured at the festival, including the first ever beer from a new Herefordshire Brewery. Tried & Trusted, a bitter at 3.8% strength, was the first brew by Willoughby Brewery of Brockhampton. Wye Valley also launched their Trekkers Ale, and Hereford-based Spinning Dog produced a festival special aptly named Spin-on-the-Wye. The strongest beer was the locally-brewed Farrier's Ale at a whopping 14.7%.
Station Bitter from Stonehouse Brewery, based nearby to Oswestry in Shropshire, won the Champion Beer of the festival. Black Pig Cider, from Breinton, near Hereford and available from the Victory pub was voted best cider by visitors to the Cider and Perry Bar.
The 627th Mayor of the City of Hereford, Councillor Kevin Wargen, opened the festival at 2.00pm on the Friday - but before this he unveiled a major new photographic exhibition at the festival. Entitled Herefordshire's Heritage Pubs, this project represents a four-figure financial investment by Herefordshire CAMRA. It features internal and exterior photographs of the best 17 pubs in the county in terms of their architecture and unaltered interiors.
This exhibition went down a storm at the festival, and Herefordshire CAMRA have already received a number of requests to take it on the road - including one to go down to the Great British Beer Festival, due to be held at London's Earls Court in August. There it will be displayed for the benefit of an anticipated 80,000 visitors to see. It is expected to return to tour Herefordshire in September, and a number of the photos from the exhibition will also appear on this website at a later date.
Again the Sunday was our Family Fun Day, and for the large part the many family visitors were blessed with sunshine on the riverside terrace.
We are already planning Beer on the Wye V. Put the weekend of the 3rd & 4th of July, 2009 in your diary now!