The 30th Shrewsbury CAMRA Beer Festival will take place from 7th to 10th September 2022 at St. Mary’s church. We are pleased to say that the main festival sponsor is RAD Beer (www.radbeer.com). We have had a relationship with RAD for many years, and it is great to have them on board. We are also grateful to The Bailey Head and The Admiral Benbow which sponsored our advance publicity leaflets. This year, the Festival will use a token system to speed up service. You can buy tokens with card or cash, and up to five unused tokens, along with your glass, can be refunded. Almost every beer or cider will cost two tokens for a third of a pint or three for a half.
Location
The festival will be at St. Mary’s Church (full name is the Church of St. Mary the Virgin). This is located on St. Mary’s Street, just beyond the top of Pride Hill in Shrewsbury town centre.
It’s about 5 minutes or so walk up Castle Street from the train and bus stations, and there are various car parks around the town centre, between 5 and 15 minutes walk away.
For those that need the postcode location of the festival, it’s SY1 1DX.
Opening Times
The festival is open on the following days:
Wednesday 7th September from 11:00 to 22:30
Thursday 8th September from 11:00 to 22:30
Friday 9th September from 11:00 to 22:30
Saturday 10th September from 11:00 to 21:00 (or until the beer runs out)
Entrance Fee
Entry will be £12 for non members, but this includes your glass and 9 tokens (enough for three half pints). CAMRA members will still get free entry (in fact a slight discount on their tokens) at £9 including their glass and 3 half pints. As we return we have discovered, as you will have, that prices have risen considerably. So, unfortunately, we have had to raise our prices as well. Our glasses will now cost £2.80 (refundable). They’ve actually gone up to us by 33%!
Extra tokens are 70p each and can be bought with card or cash
If you join CAMRA on the day, you will be eligible for the discounted entry, and you will get a further 4 free half pints! Membership starts at £20 if you are under 26, £28.50 for older people. Joint memberships are available. As benefits include £30 of money-off vouchers in selected pubs and discounts in others, it’s a proper good deal! More information at https://camra.org.uk/join/membership-benefits/
Beers and Ciders
The full list of beers, ciders and perries available at the festival will be published nearer the time. However, we are aiming on having 111 beers, hopefully including beers from every brewery in Shropshire.
Beer list is available to download here:
Shrewsbury CAMRA Beer Festival Beer List
Shrewsbury CAMRA Beer Festival Ciders and Perries List
For non-beer drinkers, we will also have a selection of craft gins and country wines. If you are, or are with a gin drinker, prices there have been adjusted too. A single gin with mixer will now be 7 tokens (£4.90) and a double 11 tokens (£7.70). This is marginally less than 2019, because the point of the gin bar is not to make a huge profit but to keep drinkers in the hall to drink more beer and cider! You will be able to pay directly by card at the gin bar – subject to the machine working – because of the high number of tokens which would otherwise be involved.
Volunteering
If anyone would like to help out at this year’s beer festival, either with the setting up beforehand, assisting at the festival itself, or packing up afterwards, please download and complete the following Staffing Form:
Completed forms should be sent to Becky as soon as possible. Her contact details are on the form. Becky will stand down as Festival Staffing Officer shortly (our grateful thanks to her), so the new staffing officer will get back to you. Thank you.
Campaign for Real Ale - Shrewsbury and West Shropshire Branch 