Set up for the 40th outing of the Cambridge Beer Festival, the UK's longest running and 2nd largest beer festival was completed on Monday, almost in time, for the festival to open.

We would like to thank the local residents and the users of Jesus Green for their continuing support, consideration and understanding whilst the festival is on Jesus Green.

We would like to thank you, our loyal visitors for making the 39th Cambridge Beer Festival, a record-breaking year, with over 41,000 visitors to the festival.

We hope you will be joining us again this year, to sample the wide range of beers, ciders, perry, wine, mead and of course our famous cheese counter. If you enjoyed the festival last year or this year, then there is still time to volunteer to help run your festival, even if it is only for a few hours, just sign up on line or come and join us on Jesus Green.

For the first time at a Cambridge Beer Festival, we will be offering the opportunity to purchase beer and cider in 1/3rd of a pint measure and thus our festival glasses will be lined at 1/3rd of a pint, as well as half and pint lines.

We have arranged to have a winder range of locally produced wines from around the region, these will be available from the combined Mead and Wine bar.

We are looking forward to welcoming Cranes with their modern and fresh alcoholic cranberry drink, fermented from blended cranberries, this will also be available from the Mead and Wine bar.

The theme

The theme for the 40th Cambridge Beer Festival is our 40th Anniversary and Cask Man is getting in to a party mood ... Whilst it is the 60th anniversary of James D. Watson and Francis Crick announcing in The Eagle pub, here in Cambridge, that with data from Rosalind Franklin and others, that they had discovered of the structure of DNA.

About the festival

The Cambridge Beer Festival was first held in 1974. This festival is the branch's largest and its main beer festival. During its long run, the festival has had several homes but since 2001 has been held on Jesus Green in late May. The festival is the United Kingdom's longest running CAMRA beer festival and currently is the largest regional beer festival in the UK. The festival features a wide range of local and national beers of all styles, as well as cider, perry, mead, wine and bottled & draft beers from around the world. The festival is also famous for its CAMRA Cheese Counter, where a very wide range of fine cheeses, together with locally produced bread, pork pies, ham and other savoury items are available.

Our local brewers

Our local breweries will of course be featured, with a wide range of beers from Cambridge Moonshine Brewery in Fulbourn, Milton Brewery in Waterbeach, Lord Conrad's Brewery in Dry Drayton and Fellows Brewery in Cottenham and returning for a second outing at the Cambridge Beer Festival, is BlackBar Brewery in Harston.

We are pleased to be welcoming Cambridgeshire's two newest breweries, both micro-breweries based in local pubs, to the Cambridge Beer Festival for the first time. From Cambridge we will be welcoming Cambridge Brewing Company, who started brewing in earlier 2013 and are from just around the corner at The Cambridge Brewing House in Kings Street, making them the closest brewery to the Cambridge Beer Festival. Whilst, slightly further a field, from Great Wilbraham, we will be welcoming Crafty Beers, who started brewing in the Autumn of 2012 and are based in the old barns at the The Carpenters Arms. We hope that you will sample their beers and enjoy them.

Opening Times and Admission

Details of the opening times and admission are available here.

The festival supports and operates the Challenge21 scheme; if you are lucky enough to look young enough, then please don't be offended if and when you are asked for ID. The only acceptable ID is a government issued photo ID (photo driving licence or passport) or a card showing the PASS Scheme hologram. We thank you for your co-operation and understanding.

Food at the festival

As well as the famous CAMRA Cheese Counter, offering a very wide range of fine cheeses, together with locally produced bread, pork pies, ham and other savoury items, there are several other food concessions providing a wide range of foods, hopefully, providing something for everyone.

New, for this year we are pleased to welcome Merry Berry Truffles and Chocolates, with their range of uniquely flavoured handmade chocolates, fresh cream truffles, alongside other chocolate gifts. All of their chocolate are gluten and nut free, there will also be some dairy free chocolate and some high in antioxidants and minerals. Finally, they are planning to make some truffles out of a selection of the beers from the festival.

Our CAMRA Cheese Counter, will be offering for the first time this year, pickled onions, pickled in locally produced Cassels Vintage Cider Vinegar, together with the launch of Rosie's pickled egg, again pickled in Cassels Vintage Cider Vinegar, finally, to sweeten things up, we are pleased to be launching Rosie's home made fudge, available in two flavours Vanilla and Chocolate Chip.

We will again, be offering a premium pork scratchings and locally produced Corkers Crisps, (a truly out of this world crisp) from Pymoor, near Ely. Both will be again available from the bars. We are also going to provide a small range of snacks (pies, scotch eggs, ...) in carry out bags from the cheese counter. These will be available after the main cheese counter closes, up until the end of the session.

The Cambridge Beer Festival needs you!

The Cambridge Beer Festival is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, without our volunteers the beer festival would not go on. We are always in need of volunteers, even if you can only do one shift or even just a few hours to cover meal breaks, it would help us tremendously.
In the past the Cambridge Beer Festival has welcomed volunteers from across the United Kingdom (Stockport, Wales, Reading, Croydon to name but a few), as well as volunteers are from across the globe, in 2010, we have had volunteers from Sweden, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, France, Australia, Canada, Japan and San Francisco and possibly a few other locations! Thus making the Cambridge Beer Festival a truly international festival.

However, we were again short of volunteers on several evenings of the 2012 festival, We would just like to thank all those that helped "pitch in" when we had to ask for extra help, we hoped you enjoyed yourself and will be back again this year.

You can get more details on the volunteering page.

The Cambridge Beer Festival Poster

We would like it very much if you could display the festival poster at your place of work, social club or village/community notice board. You can download a PDF of the festival poster. Alternately, if you would like us to send you some posters, please, drop us an email on enquiries@cambridgebeerfestival.com and we'll arrange for some to be sent to you.