Pigs Ear Beer Festival: Memories of times past, hopes of times to come
In any other year I would have spent a good deal of this week at the Pigs Ear Beer Festival organised by the City and East London branch of CAMRA and held at the historic Round Chapel in Hackney.
2nd December would have been the opening night but given current restrictions it was not possible to go ahead. With news of a vaccine there will be hope that it will return in 2021 and continue to highlight the best of London and particularly the best of north-east London beer.
Below is a slightly edited post I wrote about the 2018 Pigs Ear
I’ll be at the Pigs Ear beer festival at the historic Round Chapel in Hackney this week. It’s the 35th and I’ve been at nearly all of them (I may have missed the very first but I can’t really remember now). Initially the festival was at Old Ford in Bethnal Green an area then bereft of drinkable beer (not the case now for the unfamiliar). I was certainly there on the day of the hurricane in October 1987 (the festival was originally in October before its move to early December) when I distinctly recall attendance was rather limited.
After Old Ford the Pigs Ear moved to Stratford Town Hall for some years, again then an area without any notable decent beer. Following that there was a brief sojourn at what was then the Ocean Rooms opposite Hackney Town Hall (now the Picturehouse, don’t go there, a vicious anti-trade union employer) and finally 9 years ago now the Round Chapel.
The festival has changed a good deal in 35 years not just in terms of location and time of year but in terms of beer. Keykeg has been a feature for a number of years, as it is again this year, and with the December timing, strong winter beers also appear in numbers.
It has in recent years also reflected the drinking population of north-east London, mixed in terms of age, gender and ethnicity.
I attended on the opening day and while the age was mature in the late afternoon it had come down considerably by mid-evening (my age unfortunately stayed exactly the same). The range of beers was impressive from strong winter beers- barley wines and imperial stouts, sours and goses, to traditional brown beers. The range of drinkers too was diverse with a decent mix of genders in particular.
One might say that if CAMRA has a future (which I hope it has) it should look something like the Pigs Ear.
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