As most of you should know by now, in the middle of February, Warwick Real Ale Society hold our annual beer festival on campus. The festival runs from Thursday the 16th of February to Saturday the 18th (Reading Week/Week 6). This is one of the highlights of the student calendar and is a great experience for all involved. We are currently looking for people to serve behind the bar at the festival for this year, hoping for about 20 on each of the 3 nights. Servers will also be expected to help with either the setup on the Monday or takedown on the Sunday.

We offer quite a few perks to servers, not only do you get a free rugby shirt (given to you on the night you serve), but you also get free entry on all nights of the festival and the opportyunity to come on (a heavily subsidised) tour with us the summer. Last year’s tour to Estonia was amazing, just as an indicator. Not only that, but in the more immediate term, on the wednesday before the festival, servers can come along to a free tasting of the beer at the festival. Based on past experience, there will be a LOT of beer going around.

If you would like to be part of this, please can you send the following details to secretary@warwickale.co.uk:
Your name and Uni number,
Whether you would like to help with setup or takedown,
Email,
Phone number,
First and second preference for which night you would like to serve,
What size rugby shirt you would like.

Mark Tetlow, Quality Brewer at Everards, in full flow….

A captive audience….

If you missed this event, don’t worry; there will be a blind tasting and quiz night coming up in January.  Look out for details here or on our Facebook page.

Warwick University Real Ale Society will be holding their week 6 social in conjunction with Everards Brewery and the Somerville Arms on Thursday 10th November 2011.

Come and join us with the experts from Everards for a great evening.  This is an opportunity to find out about their beers, their history and how it is brewed!  The Somerville Arms is also a great local real pub; last year it was Warwickshire’s CAMRA pub of the year.

To sign up click on the link on the right – but hurry; places are limited!

The festival itself was a decent starting point with a variety of tasty ales to drink and allowing everyone else to find us. Well watered we headed off round the corner to the smallest pub in Oxford. From here we continued on round various old pubs in Oxford with highlights being  our social sec getting  thrown out of the Eagle and Child and a pub advertising it’s very own pickpocket.

Of course no trip to Oxford would be complete without crashing an Oxford college bar, and upon seeing the Saturday night atmosphere in one we were glad to be able to return to the comparatively lively Warwick campus.

It was great to introduce a new set of drinkers to the boat race and see that there were a large number of people that buy into our society’s values.

Also check out the photos from the night in case you need help remembering everything.

Next Thursday we head to Coventry to try out old favourite Whitefriars as well as a couple of others.

CAMRA are the biggest, most influential organization in real ale and campaign for good standards in beer.

“The festival
is a great opportunity to make ale
important to the younger audience and
give it a chance to try different beers
with knowledgeable peers pouring them.” Writes Mark Dredge in the article “School of Real Ale”.

This is a great sign that our society and festival is really making an impact nationally.