Kmflett's Blog

The Pigs Ear Beer Festival at 41: Only here for the Cask Beer…

I was at the opening night of the 41st Pigs Ear Beer Festival on Tuesday and I’ve been at nearly all of them, from the Bethnal Green days to Stratford and now Hackney. I used to go with my late father, including on the day of the hurricane in October 1987 and this year I raised a glass with friends to my late partner Megan Davies who was a regular attender at the festival for almost as long.

The grade 2 listed Round Chapel does make a great venue, although one might note some accessibility issues. There are lots of steps.

It was again one of the best cask beer ranges I’ve drunk recently in a world where cans from bottle shops and craft keg (more likely to be found in uncertain times because it has a longer life than the few days for a cask) compete for the drinkers interest. As a lifelong cask beer drinker who also enjoys beer in other formats I certainly wasn’t complaining.

The whole beer range (cask, keykeg, cans/bottles) was excellent as ever. In recent times there are of course lots of not just London brewers but east London brewers. In that sense the stand out beer for me was the Redemption/Kernel Victorian mild (6%) first brewed in 2011 in the early days of craft beer and this year brewed at Redemption in Tottenham.

The range of styles from ordinary bitters to stouts, porters, IPAs, sours and much else reflected how much the beer world has changed in the last 15 years or so. As well as the Kernel/Redemption mild I stuck largely to quite strong dark beers. Heritage’s Czar’s P2 (8%) is a recreation of a Bass imperial stout, while the 2025 version of Thomas Hardy Ale (11%) is again brewed at Hepworths. The Thornbridge/Theakstons Masham Ale (6.5%) is another brewed on the Burton Union system while 40 FT’s Eccles Stout brewed in conjunction with St Johns restaurant is designed to compliment the St Johns menu regular of Eccles cake and Lancashire cheese. The 2025 version of Five Points Derailed Porter didn’t seem to me quite as bretted as some years but still very enjoyable. All these beers were on cask. On the keykeg side Cold Shelter’s imperial coffee stout (8%) brewed at Dogs Window- both new wave South Wales breweries was good.

The point being perhaps that when keykeg first appeared at the Pigs Ear it was quite a focus. Now craft keykeg is quite widely available while well-kept and interesting cask is not always quite as easy to find as it should be. In show casing it the Pigs Ear is doing a valuable job. Hard work for the volunteers but enjoyable for the drinker

There was plenty of space and I didn’t feel uncomfortable (plenty of seating down and upstairs) Of  course the attendance could always be more diverse but it being Hackney it was rather more diverse than many beer fests and anyway I have no personal issues with senior men with beards.

The 41st Pigs Ear Beer Festival is at the Round Chapel Hackney until Saturday 6th December