Festival will showcase best local brews

26 April 2007

Real ale enthusiasts will be savouring the very best of local brews at the Great Yarmouth Beer Festival next month.

The four day festival, throughout the May 25 to 28 bank holiday weekend, will be a showcase for small Norfolk and North Suffolk Breweries.

At least 40 different ales and bitters will be on sale at the festival at the Priory Centre organised by award winning Yarmouth based Blackfriars Brewery and the Town Centre Partnership.

Reedham-based Humpty Dumpty is presenting three of its beers: Norfolk Nectar, Golden Gorse and Humpty Dumpty Porter at the festival.

Partner Lesley George said: “Norfolk Nectar is one of our local specialities, as it is finished with a taster of honey produced locally here in Reedham.

“The Golden Gorse and Porter are recipes that the brewers have re-worked and the fact that we have been invited to offer these at the festival is, we believe, a testament to their quality.”

Founded by Mick Cottrell in 1998, Humpty Dumpty took its name from a locomotive engine that used to run the Norwich coastal line.

Originally located at the Railway Tavern in Reedham, the brewery moved to a bigger site next to Pettits Animal Adventure Park in Church Road in 2002.

Last year the business was bought by Norfolk Broads Brewing, a partnership of two couples Lesley and Stephen George and Craig and Mary Anne Fermoy.

The owners have expanded the range of cask and bottled ales made from high quality Norfolk barley and malt and hops from Kent and Hereford.

As well as supplying a number of pubs in the Yarmouth area, the beers are also sold at the brewery shop, open weekdays and weekends from 12-5pm.

Other brewers represented at the festival include Lowestoft based Green Jack, Oulton brewery from Oulton Broad, and Champion Beer of Britain winner Crouch Vale from Essex.

Tickets costing £2.50 each for the festival are available exclusively through the Mercury.

Seven sessions from Friday to Bank Holiday Monday are taking place for up to 200 drinkers each in the medieval Noble Hall at the Priory Centre in Priory Plain at the following times: