85 fantastic brewers. 193 delicious beers. It’s time to announce the Cambridge Beer Festival 2023 British beer list. Find out what we’ve got in store for you, then get back here for some of this year’s festival beer highlights and facts.
Before we get into the facts, we’ll start with a massive shout-out and thanks to our three brewery bars this year.
Brewery bars
The Wylde Sky bar includes Bohemian Lager (4.9%, Munich style with a biscuity body, gentle bitter sweetness and easy finish); Cambridge Hazy Pale, 4.6%, juicy citrus and tropical fruit notes and soft mouthfeel); as well as a steam ale, a stout, IPA, and saison.
Three Blind Mice will be launching their new beer, Citra & Galaxy, with mango and peach flavours (4.5%). Other highlights include a 3.7% NEIPA, a pale, a porter, an IPA, and Confessor, their 10% stout brewed in collaboration with Brew Board.
Pastore Brewing & Blending is a mixed fermentation sour and wild brewery in Waterbeach. Try their zingy, juicy and refreshing 2.5% citrus sour, a 6% banana split sour, the 5% pineapple sour IPA, or a fruity and acidic saison collaboration with @balancebrew made with heritage malts.
Milton and Gearset
Another launch will come from Milton Brewery debuting their Gearset beer, named for one of our festival sponsors.
Big love to Gearset, who have supported us for several years. They’re recruiting for software engineers and more right now.
Facts and highlights
Those 193 beers. Got any lagers?
Oh yes.
6 lagers, but also 49 bitters, 28 IPAs, 26 golden ales, 20 stouts, 16 milds, 11 porters, 11 fruit beers, 5 wheat beers, 2 barley wines, and 13 ‘speciality’ beers that don’t fall into one of the above!
Lowest cask ABV beer will be Alfred’s Curfew Bell from Oxford Brewery at 2.7%. We’ll also have a range of low/no-alcohol beer available from our international bar.
Highest cask ABV beer will be Immortal Memory from Vocation Brewery at 11.5%. Drink with care!
70% of the British beers on the list haven’t appeared at the Cambridge Beer Festival before.
We’ve ordered 11,178 gallons (that’s 89,424 pints) of British Beer.
We’ll have 99 beers that are suitable for vegans, and 16 that are gluten-free. We’ll highlight these in our printed programme, and publish a list of the gluten-free beers on our website soon.
Printed programmes will be available at the festival, which include tasting notes and style, ABV, vegan and gluten-free indicators. There’s no iOS app this year, but the Android app will be returning. We’ll also update the beer list on our website throughout the festival.
The newest breweries on our list were established in 2020: Ivo Brewery, Bowlers Brewery, and Artifact Brewery.
Harvey’s is the oldest established brewery at the festival this year. Their famous Sussex Best Bitter is on the list, as well as an exciting 9% stout.
And there’s more
Still to come: we’ll publish lists that highlight beers that are vegan or gluten-free. And not forgetting our huge international beer, cider, perry, mead, and wine selections.
Finally: a lot of time, passion, skill and knowledge has gone into creating this year’s beer list. We’re so grateful to the volunteers that have worked hard on it for many months.
This is a fantastic selection. Come join us in celebrating it, 22–27 May on Jesus Green.