This year's beer festival will be held from Wednesday 25 April - Saturday 28 April 2012. A Beer Festival website is to be set up by this weekend and access details are available at the end of this message.
This is still the biggest CAMRA Beer Festival in Scotland and as usual will have 4 separate bars in operation.
Scottish Bar will feature over 20 different Scottish Breweries.
English Bar will feature breweries in the Cumbria and Lancashire areas.
Foreign Bar will feature its usual eclectic mix of world beers.
Cider Bar will feature both cider and mead. 
Entertainment on Saturday will be provided as usual by the Caledonian Pipe Band.

Pleased to announce a new outlet in Paisley for real ale. Hamishes Hoose in Old Sneddon Street (beneath Gilmour Street railway station) has been selling ale for the past few months. On sale is the award winning Peter's Well from the local Houston brewery. The pub has a well deserved reputation for entertainment with regular live music, karaoke nights and even the occasional comedy night. Check out info on their website at www.hamisheshoose.co.uk

The Fox and Hounds Pub will be presented on 5 November with the Scotland and Northern Ireland Pub of the Year Award at a ceremony in the pub at 3.00pm. The CAMRA Regional Director, Lindsay Grant will be in attendance and Colin Valentine, CAMRA National Chairman hopes to be there for the presentation of this prestigious award.

The draw for the Houston Passport prizes also takes place that day. This was an initiative by Houston Brewery as part of the CAMRA National Cask Ale Week and has proved to be very successful. Prizes from all participating pubs are on offer and winners will be notified as soon as possible.

Congratulations to the Fox & Hounds Pub and the Houston Brewery on their recent success.

Earlier this year the Fox & Hounds, Houston was awarded the CAMRA Renfrewshire Pub of the Year award for the second year running. Going on to the regional competition they have now won the CAMRA Pub of the Year award for Scotland and Northern Ireland 2011. They will now go forward to represent the region in the Great Britain Pub of the Year competition. The Scotsman newspaper recently published a double page article about the competition giving welcome publicity to CAMRA. Read the Scotsman article.

Just to let people know The Weir on Main Street in Bridge of Weir ( used to be The Millwheel) are now serving Deuchers IPA on draught.

They also sell Old Speckled Hen in bottles. I have spent the last few months cajoling them into selling Real Ale & they have taken notice & put the Deuchers in as a trial.  Much as we would love to drink the whole cask ourselves,we can't so I'm asking CAMRA members to help out & visit for a few pints.  If it's a success they will continue to stock it & will consider extending their range. 

The Weir also do excellent food  in both the bar & restaurant, so worth a visit.

Paisley Beer Festival is back for the 24th year running! The hugely popular event returns to the Town Hall for 4 days (starting on Wednesday the 27th April 2011) when approximately 5000 people are expected to turn up eager to try out the vast range of beers on offer. Last year 20,000 pints of beer and cider were consumed over the 4 days. This year, the festival falls on the same week as the Royal Wedding so it’s a great chance to make use of that extra day off! 

As promised, here's a wee review of the Stonehaven Real Ale Festival.

After the disappointment of not getting in to last year's Stonehaven Real Ale Festival we were determined to get in to this year's one. Thankfully they put on an extra day this year (just for me? maybe not) so we were able to go along on the Saturday and get there at a reasonable time.

Got to Stonehaven just after 2:00pm and things weren't looking good as there was no queue outside and we saw a couple of people leaving as we drove by. We were beginning to wonder if they'd sold out of beer already but undeterred we checked in at the hotel and walked back to the Town Hall. Got inside the door and were met with a sign which stated there were 25 beers left - 10 downstairs and 15 upstairs. Considering there were about 100 different beers to start with that's some going!

I was a bit shocked at first when we paid to get in cos we were charged £14 each for entry. Eek!!!! I was, however, relieved to find out that this included £6 worth of beer tokens and a £1 coin in your glass for you to put in the charity box.

Okay, so we made it in (one up on last year) and there was nowhere near as many beers as there should have been but we still managed to taste some beers that we hadn't tasted before. The upstairs bar was what they called the Celtic Fringe and had local beers (Angus Ales, BrewDog, Burnside and Deeside) and 'celtic' beers (ie Wales, Cornwall and Isle of Man). Downstairs was all the other breweries and their version of the Foreign Legion.

The organisers of the festival actually brew some of their own beers which are on sale under the banner "Festival Ale" and one of these turned out to be our favourite of the day - "Spirit of Glenury - Barrel Aged", described in the programme as "whisky cask-matured, a tribute to Sonehaven's vanished distillery". Susan's tasting notes for this are as follows - "nummyful".

By about 5pm or so there was really was very few beers left on so we left to get some food before retiring to the Marine Hotel to get stuck into their nice array of real ales (including the owner's own Dunnottar Ale).

Next year we need to get there early on the Thursday or Friday so we can get the full benefit of the huge choice of beers on offer.

The results for the survey taken at this years Paisley Beer Festival are in and makes for some interesting reading.

For all those who wish to view a copy please click Here. (Note you must be a member of the website and logged in to view the file or the link will just take you to our public files section)

  Lots of Comments and Feedback on are needed (at this months meeting and also on the website if you might not attend) and hopefully we will be able to make next years Beer Festival Bigger and Better because of it.

Popped into the Fox the other night and spoke to Carl about the beers he has ordered for the beer festival on Sunday 22 August. They will have Green Jack Orange Wheat (Suffolk); RCH PC Steam (Somerset); St Austell Proper Job (Cornwall); Blindmans "Just the beer talking" (Somerset); Oakleaf "Some are drinking" (Hampshire); Skinners Spriggan Ale (Cornwall); Hop Back Summer Lightning and Timothy Taylor Landlord. Also a Westons Scrumpy Cider "Bounds".
The band is Sly Dogs who played at the May beer festival and they are very good.
Sounds like a good day out wih lots of new beers to try. 

Well Derek and Jim were correct about Bamberg being worth a visit. With 8 breweries in the town alone and 50 more in the surrounding countryside not much larger than Renfrewshire it's been a great trip. Cycled right down the Rhine before entering Bavaria so the variety of beers has been great.
Now in Belgium on the journey home and of course having a few of their beers of an evening.
Won't make the August branch meeting but will see you in September.

Brian