The Wellesbourne Beer Festival 12th and 13th May 2023

Love isn’t found at the bottom of a beer glass, or is it?

That old saying, is so true, but here at the WBF, it couldn’t be far from the truth…

Love is a funny old thing, and we love beer, but we also love our community, a growing community, that has seen, our village grow and change, both in its house coverage and also the population over the past few years..

We also nearly lost our pub, the Stag’s Head, after a thatch fire in October 2022. That is a great pub, at the heart of a great community… and we’re so happy to have the pub open again.

But, as our community has grown, we decided a few years back, that why not have a community beer festival, to support the community, and help people get to know people. And with whatever money we make as a profit to donate that to a community project.

So, we’re only a small and intimate, but open group, enjoying researching beers from the local(ish) area, set up a by some village people. We set out our plan as a beer festival, on a not for profit basis to support community projects. Last year saw a donation to our village hall new kitchen project, and the local air ambulance charity. This year, our beer festival will be taking place on 12th and 13th May and we are pleased to confirm the principle beneficiary will be ‘Wellesbourne in Bloom’ who have plans for some more planters around the village, and we hope to contribute to enable them to achieve that.

We’re also very happy to announce that ‘Shakespeare Morris’ will be dancing on the Friday evening around 8pm, and ‘Wellesbourne Sings’ a great Wellesbourne based mixed choir will be performing on Saturday around 5pm, with a surprise for us, to celebrate the end of Coronation week. Come on, now that’s entertainment, to coin a lyric. Local community, doing local things.

Now the hero of the WBF - the Beer and Cider. Our ‘Beer Boffins’ at WBF Head Office have said they are promising to collect 13 barrels of different ale - that’s not far off 1000 pints! And 2 more barrels than last year.

We will look at the Black Country offerings, some of Sarah Hughes' award winning festival favourites. Perhaps a 5% premium golden called Surprise and also a 4% Pale Amber. Not forgetting some of time served old favourites, we hope to have Church End with their Stout Coffin and maybe Fallen Angel. Also safe to say we'll be revisiting our local Slaughterhouse brewery for some more Saddleback. Purity will be attending, as well as North Cotswold and who can forget Shagweaver XL. Finally we will look to support Leamington based Windmill Hill, let’s see what they have to tempt us with. But until we do the deal, it’s not a done deal.

Local cider producer Sibling will make an appearance and not forgetting the only permitted outsider to all this, practically an alchopop - Lilley's Rhubarb cider. Now that was a crowd pleaser last year.

And finally, we ran out of beer last year, the first festival after Covid was on its slow way out… we didn’t realise the community were all looking to give some love at the bottom of their glass.

So, we look forward to welcoming our community to The Wellesbourne Bowls Clubhouse on the Recreation Ground. We’re going to be open from 4.30pm to 11.00pm on Friday 12 May and 1.00pm to 9.00pm on Saturday 13 May, and of course, not forgetting the BBQ….

So, you’ll be helping to raise money in Wellesbourne for Wellesbourne in Bloom and also trying this years offering of beer and cider.

Best Beer Wishes - The WBF 2023