A review by Dominic Heneghan from the December 2004 newsletter published by the Newark Branch of CAMRA

Caravan

Rockinbeerfest 2004

Huntingdon Racecourse 20th-22nd August 2004

What's this? Rockinbeerfest?

This is a marriage made in Heaven. A hybrid of a Beer festival and a Rock festival.

A Rock Festival disturbing the ambience of a beer festival?

No, not disturbing, enhancing. Well chosen bands that suit the type of people who probably were drinking beer in the early 70s!

Look at the line up. Plenty of support bands on Friday leading up to Friday's headliner of Dr Feelgood. Saturday, the last four bands were Revolver, Caravan, Stray and the Stranglers. On Sunday we had some good bands that I had not heard of before, but the headliner was - Wishbone Ash. But more of that later. What actually occurred and will it be worth going later.

Friday20th August.

Evening we arrived. There were two caravans in our party and we had just got parked up and the heavens opened, and did they open! It was about 100 yards to the festival gate and we could not see it. The music that had been filling the ground stopped. Ah well, at least the beer tent will be dry, except it was too heavy to get there. We had to ring our friend in the other caravan to get him to dash the 5 yards to get into our van for a glass of red wine! Well, you don't take coals to Newcastle, do you?

About half an hour later the rain slowed enough for us to venture out to the beer tent.

Well set up, plenty of room and lots of bar space and barmen and women. We were working on a token system, a £2 token for beers under 4.0% abv (per pint) and £2.50 for a beer above 4.00%abv. Pretty reasonable we thought.

There was not a list that you could take away. They were taped to the bar and pinned to the tent poles. However I was lucky and found one that had fallen off!

There were 31 beers from 5 breweries. If I had to criticise anything that would be it.

There were 4 beers from Greene King, 2 from Ruddles, 2 from Morlands and 23 from 2 local breweries, 10 from Fenland Brewery and 13 from Wissey Valley brewery.

I can understand why. This was a new venture and obviously relied on local support, as all the breweries are fairly local to Huntingdon. I would like to think that, if the organisers have made enough money to try again, they would source their beers from further afield when they do next year's festival.

So as we had got into the beer tent, we started drinking. We did keep notes of the beers we tried and between the three of us we tasted 30 of the 31 beers on offer. Why did we not try the 31st? It didn't drop bright so went back.

I am not going to bore you with our views on all the different beers, but I will give a bit of a summary.

Greene King. All beers in top notch order.

Not had Suffolk Summer before. Lovely easy drinking summer beer.

Also XX mild. What a real mild should be, full body, full flavour, a meal in a glass.

IPA and Abbot. VG

Ruddles. County and Best. Both in very good order.

Morlands. Old Speckled Hen and Original. Both in very good order.

Fenland Brewery. Various beers, some good some a bit thin.

Abbey Towers, specially brewed for CAMRA was good, a pleasant malty beer.

Generally speaking the Fenland beers got a good to OK rating. They generally had enough body, or if they seemed a bit thin, they had a good hop finish to exercise the taste buds.

Wissey Valley Brewery.

The first pint from WVB may have spoilt me for the rest.

It was an absolutely stonking Porter, the type you would give your life to produce as a home brewer. It is called Old Grumpy but what a misnomer! It was one of the happiest beers I have ever drunk. Full body, sparkling with flavour. In my notes I put "will revisit". I did many times!!

WVB also produced the festival ale, called Rockinbeerfest Ale. It was described as "a malt and nut flavoured midlands style beer". We liked it and described it as - very good beer. Tastes like a session ale but at 4.4.dangerous!!

Unfortunately, the rest of the WVB beers did not impress. Looking at our notes we have comments like " tap water", "stronger out of the tap", " described as a session beer. It would have to be a long session as there does not seem to be a stagger in a barrel full".

I might well be maligning the Wissey brewery as we were drinking very different styles of beer and it is very likely that Wissey are brewing to suit local tastes, I know I would if I were a relatively young, small brewer.

All I can say is that in general they were thinner than I like, apart from Old Grumpy, which I would swap my dogs for if I had no money!

However, I digress. We did not drink all of these on the first night.

On the first night, the rain came back and whilst it was ok in the beer tent, it was not so good for the bands. Water and electricity do not mix well and the two stages got flooded.

What about Dr Feelgood? Everyone was worried.

The message came through that the last three Friday bands would play in a special tent that was to be used for a sort of rock college the next day.

Unfortunately, the delay was too much for Paul, our friend, who has a homing beacon connected to an intoximeter which clicks in when he is about to fall over. It clicked in about half an hour before Feelgood were due on. He disappeared. I spent a few minutes looking for him before I decided that he would probably be all right and we would probably find him in the morning. I went back to Hilary, and Feelgood were superb.

Paul was discovered in his caravan next morning, still alive (just!).

Saturday 21st August.

Weather completely changed. Sunny, dry, except underfoot.

Got up, Paul cooked breakfast about 11.00am as the first band struck up.

After breakfast we strolled across to the beer tent and the day started improving. We listened to various bands, some session bands that did 70s covers and other modern bands that played music of varying quality. The beer kept flowing.

We realised that if we carried on drinking all day, we would not see the Stranglers or even Caravan. We decided that, as we are now Europeans, we would have a siesta. We went back to the vans, had something to eat, chucked Paul out and went to bed with the alarm set for 7pm. It all worked very well. We were back in the festival ground, seated with a pint as Caravan struck up and we were really rocking when the Stranglers came on.

Both these bands were immense. (I had last seen Caravan in Aberdeen in about 1974!)

Off to the vans, glass of wine to warm the blood, chuck Paul out and so to bed.

Sunday 22st August.

Pretty much the same as Saturday, but fewer wasps today.

Had to delay breakfast as we could not get a beer until 12.00.

Same sort of day, beer, food, chuck Paul out, siesta, alarm, beer but today WISHBONE ASH!

I last saw them in Aberdeen about the same time as Caravan. Wishbone Ash were absolutely f***ing marvellous. They were a lot less hairy than when I saw them in Aberdeen, but they were indescribably good.

Just before they came on we had exchanged our last tokens for two jugs of beer. There was still some left when Ash finished, so we took it back to the vans, finished it, finished the wine, chucked Paul out and went to bed.

Next morning we did not have to leave the site until 10.00am, so we didn't.

A damn good weekend, plenty of beer, bloody good music and like-minded people to talk to while you are enjoying yourself.

The only problem was that there were not enough people there. While that made it better for getting beer, getting close to the stage or the loos, it probably has not made the organisers enough money.

I don't know the daily charges as we bought a weekend ticket, but I think that the weekend ticket was good value. £50 plus £15 to camp.

Compare that to Leeds at £105 for the weekend and only Lager, John Smiths, Strongbow or Guinness to drink. Oh, and bands that don't actually play music!

Look out for it next year. It was a bloody good weekend. I'll be going next year. Get down there as well!

Dominic Heneghan

Newark Branch of CAMRA

Thanks Dominic and The Newark Branch of CAMRA for allowing us to reproduce this article.

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