Bristol Beer Week: October 3rd – 9th, 2013

Bristol Beer Week is a celebration of everything beery in the West Country. A week long program of beer festivals, meet the brewer events, food and beer tastings, education sessions, brewing demonstrations and anything anyone can think of to do with beer and the West Country.

Bristol Beer Week is the brain child of Lee Williams and Stephen Powell, two Bristol based beer writers who’ve made it their mission to put the city’s thriving beer scene firmly onto the national and international beer map.

Beer weeks are a major part of the US’s craft beer scene and Lee, having spent the last 12 years travelling across North America living and breathing beer, knew that it would be perfect for Bristol, a city that is already pushing itself to the forefront of the UK’s beer revolution.

Bristol Beer Week is a collective event. The organisers have pledged to promote the week with a central website, an events calendar and a marketing campaign which will include t-shirts, beer mats, posters and all sorts of beery merchandise. In return, Bristol’s beer venues and breweries have agreed to organise their own events across the city to create a week long beer calendar for city dwellers and beer tourists alike. Some of the confirmed events are as follows:

• BrewDog and Source beer dinner

• Bristol Craft Brewers homebrewing open meeting

• Wild Beer and Flinty Red beer and food extravaganza

• Specially brewed beers from local breweries Arbor, Dawkins, Rocket Science, Wiper & True and Bristol Beer Factory, with more to be confirmed

Participation in Bristol Beer Week is completely free but, like many modern enterprises, Lee and Steve have decided to employ crowd-funding techniques to raise capital to finance their marketing campaign. Their funding page at Indiegogo is the place to go for unique t-shirts and a number of special “perks” that have been kindly donated by Bristol’s beer community.

For more information, visit www.bristolbeerweek.co.uk.