What’s a beer festival doing at a Harvey’s pub, is this a dream? No, not a dream, but perhaps a dream come true for old regulars of the The Wheatsheaf, who remember that it was, for many years prior to Harvey’s ownership, the home to a small annual beer festival. Ted & Maggie, aware of the history, thought that to revive it would be one way of putting the pub firmly back on the drinking map of Crowborough. Happily, after some debate, Harveys agreed to give it a try – this was quite a result since, in all their history, Harvey’s had never permitted any of it’s estate pubs to run a festival with guest ales. |
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With some trepidation and fingers crossed for decent weather, we held our first beer festival over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend at the end of May 2004, which featured 12 guest beers in a marquee, with food and live music. We had very little idea what to expect, and just hoped we wouldn’t be left with a lot of unsold beer on our hands. Some chance of that - certainly nothing had prepared us for what followed, to the extent that all the guest beers had sold out by the Sunday night, (though there was of course plenty of Harveys in the cellar!) and we even had to borrow some lager (yes, lager!) from another pub. |
Our customers loved it, we were gobsmacked, and Harvey’s had a real eye opener (since we sold much more of their beers than we would in the course of a normal weekend!). It didn’t take long to agree to make this an annual event, and it has since grown like topsy. In 2005 we needed a double marquee for some undercover seating along with an increase to 16 guest beers, in 2006 we upped the guest beer order to 20, and in 2007 we featured 25 guest ales with cider and perry too, along with a spit-roasts, barbecues and live music. Now we are taking the festival concept a stage further by holding a second festival, this time in late October 2007, which we hope will also become an annual event. |
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So, in answer to the question, what’s a beer festival doing in a Harveys pub, it is there because we kept on asking for one, and finally they were prepared, despite initial misgivings, to allow guest beers and to set the reputation of their own ales, in house, against the best of the rest. We have benefited from their full support, with fantastic back up from the technical services team who set up the cooling system, and also from Harvey’s willingness and ability to supply some superb one-off beers to give us something a little bit different. Thank you Harveys. |
The Beers
Our choice of beers is quite simply made – for the May festival we pick a number of category winners from CAMRA’s most recent Great British Beer Festival, add one or two local brews, and then take a wide selection of ales from all around the country (with the daftest names possible) with a view to quality and overall balance of beer styles. In terms of strength, we attempt to keep everything within a range of 3.5% to 6% so we avoid the real falling over juice, and finally our customers can vote for their favourite beers of the festival, bringing the top three back for one further year. For our first October festival, we are concentrating on craft and microbrewers, and though there is a tilt towards darker winter style beers, we still seek an overall balance
Of course, we don’t have a choice as far as Harvey’s beers go; we simply take plenty of whatever they can let us have. In 2006 we were able to offer no less than NINE Harvey’s beers, which included a delicious one-off Brown Bull Stout, which we named Cocksteddle (old Sussex dialect meaning to capsize), and Wheatsheaf Festival Ale, which is a dry hopped wheat beer specially prepared for us.
Of course, in 2005 and 2006, Harveys Sussex Best Bitter was voted Champion Best Bitter of Britain at the GBBF, a tangible reward and evidence of what Sussex drinkers have known for many years, that Harveys can hold it’s own in any company. No wonder that when the festival is over, so many of our regulars say to us, ‘that was absolutely fantastic, really, really enjoyed it, but it’s good to get back to Harveys!’
The Fun and the Food
The beer festival is not just about beer, though that is obviously the main interest of many. We hope that visitors to our festival will feel that they have not only been well ‘watered’ but also well sustained and entertained with plenty of good food and a varied live music programme, much of which is performed outside in May (but naturally inside in October).