Keighley Beer Festival 1999

Keighley Beer Festival 1999, held over the weekend 23rd, 24th and 25th September at the Worth Brewery, Worth Way, Keighley was an overwhelming success.

Keighley Beer Festival 1999Just under 1400 real ale fans packed the brewery over the three days of what will probably be our last year in this unique venue. At the start of the festival, 80 different cask ales were available including special festival brews from both Keighley-based Timothy Taylor and our hosts Worth Brewery. By the end of Saturday night less than thirty gallons were left, proving that, despite what the major national brewers say, local beer drinkers enjoy well-kept quality real ales. The foreign bottled beers and ciders also proved very popular showing that there is local demand for these too.Campaigning at the festival highlighted the pointless closure of the 24 Firkin breweries by national pub group, Punch Taverns. Two casks of some of the last beers produced at their Feast and Firkin Brewery in Leeds were on sale and these were highly popular. In the Beer of the Festival competition, customers rated this in the top 4 beers on sale.As always, we encouraged our customers to support a local charity by donating their unused beer tokens as they left the festival. Just under £200 was raised in this way for the Skipton Dialysis Unit Fund, which helps to improve the life of patients in the Keighley and Craven area on dialysis.

The top ten beers of the festival were:

  1. Oakham JHB
  2. Worth Festival Gold
  3. Mordue Radgie Gadgie
  4. Firkin IPA
  5. Oakham Mompesson Gold
  6. Timothy Taylor Festival
  7. Durham White Gold (winner 1998)
  8. Wolf Golden Jackal
  9. Durham Magus
  10. Caledonian Deuchars IPA

Our thanks go to all who assisted us in organising the event, particularlyWorth Brewery for both providing a venue and being so helpful in all other respects Kitchen Brewery and Flying Firkin for bringing the bulk of the beer

Timothy Taylor for producing and supplying a special Festival beer (as well as their Landlord) and for sponsoring the Festival Programme

Boat Brewery, Bank Top Brewery, Ossett Brewing Company, Goose Eye Brewery, Fernandes Brewery, Roosters Brewery, Daleside Brewery, Max Taylor, Moorhouses Brewery and Briscoes Brewery for bringing/supplying the rest of the beer.John Lindley of the Cricketers Arms, Keighley for being the licenseethe pubs who sold the advance tickets i.e. the Narrowboat, Skipton; The Brewery Arms, Keighley; the Boltmakers Arms, Keighley; the Corn Dolly, Bradford and the Victoria, SaltaireLeon Singleton Services for the loan of the handpumps and other assistancePortable Conveniences of Darwen who provided the toiletsSteve for doing the cateringShin Jig and the Superior Jazz Band for providing the entertainmentChris Jopling for designing the logo(s)Inn-Cider Trading and Pipkin Cider for supplying the cider and perrySchellenburg UK Ltd and James Clay for supplying the foreign bottled beersThe Copy Shop for doing our printingand last, but not least, the volunteer staff and, of course, the customer.