Cambridge Beer Festival is finally back for another boozy extravaganza this year – Miriam Balanescu catches up
with festival organiser Anthony Mobbs
As one of the most eagerly anticipated events in the city’s calendar, many were gutted when Cambridge Beer Festival was forced to cancel last year. In its well-known and much-loved form, it has been on hiatus for three years, after the pandemic slammed the brakes on the events and hospitality industry as a whole.
A dedicated team have been toiling away to keep the festival ticking along nonetheless, with online sessions held by local breweries and cider makers in the fateful year of 2020, and a virtual festival – merging online and in-pub beer tastings – going down a storm in 2021. “We are all volunteers keeping the beer festival alive,” says organiser Anthony Mobbs.
This year’s event has been in the works since August. “It will be the same beer festival with a ‘we’re back!’ theme,” explains Anthony. “We are trying out a few new things, such as advance ticket sales.”
Unfurling on Jesus Green, 22 to 27 May, expect the beloved knees-up to be back to its former glory – it’s a given that drinks will be flowing. “We want the festival to seem familiar, friendly and back to normal,” insists Anthony. “We will have a few extra hand wash stations around, but it is the festival everyone knows and loves.”
Boasting roughly 200 beers from around 100 breweries, it’s your opportunity to sample beverages from far and wide – with many flavours. “Our beer selection team focuses on getting a great range of local beers, while covering the best the British Isles has to offer,” he explains.
“Smaller brewers often do not know which beers they will be making more than a couple of months in advance, so sampling is sometimes not an option,” Anthony says. “The team will contact some of the local breweries early to enquire if they would be interested in producing a special beer in relation to the theme of the festival. They then use their knowledge of interesting brewers throughout the UK to see which beers will be available and what can be supplied for the event.
“The beer selection team have a varied mix of taste preferences, as it results in a much better range of beers available for the public to try.”
If beer is not your cup of tea, there are ciders, wines and meads aplenty, along with a tantalising cheese counter. Above all, the festival champions local breweries. “In common with the rest of the country, a lot of our local producers sadly face problems getting their product into pubs, because so many beer pumps and taps are tied to national and global producers,” Anthony adds. The festival acts as the perfect platform for their pints.
Part of what makes Cambridge Beer Festival such a pivotal event is the community that has surrounded it ever since it was founded in 1974. CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) kick-started it: “Nobody really knew exactly what was involved, since CAMRA had never run a festival before,” recalls Anthony. “But it turned out to be popular.”
He joined as a volunteer in 2012, before taking the helm himself in 2018. “I understood from previously visiting the festival as a customer that they were constantly short on volunteers, so I decided to try at a session, and enjoyed it so much that I ended up working for the whole week.”
Anthony has been hooked ever since. “The volunteers themselves are what make me continue to enjoy helping out at the festival – they are very much like a large family that comes together once a year to do something fun and rewarding.”
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