Leeuwarden Beer Festival: Back To Normal

It is one of the things to most look forward to on the beer calendar: festivals. And in the last two years that calendar has been eerily empty. The only festivals that were held were of the sit-down kind where you order at your table and they bring it to you. Not exactly how they were meant to be.

August and September is supposed to be the month of Van Mollfest, Brewda and Borefts but they were all, logically so, cancelled. The only ‘real’ festival that was still on, was the Leeuwarden Beerfestival.  This  festival had gone through the same phases as most with it being postponed a number of times. The last scheduled date was on September 25 and that luckily turned out to be the day that many of the corona rules were relaxed or completely given up. Gone is the 1,5 meter distance between each other for example. But you can only get into a bar or restaurant with a QR code. This code has let to a lot of resistance with bar and restaurant owners, but for this festival it worked fine.

My first beer festival in two years however was not as a visitor, but as part of the Oproer team that was invited to pour that day. It had been a while since I had done something like this but it was a good to do something again where corona was not the first thing on your mind.  

The festival was held at De Eenhoorn, an entertainment venue that is big enough to hold all the brewers and the over 800 people attending, without ever feeling too crowded. There were three seperate rooms for the brewers. The attending breweries were a mix of good local and national brewers like De Moersleutel, Grutte Pier, De Natte Gijt and Duits & Lauret, with some international ones like Lupulus, Dochter van de Korenaar and Lagunitas. At the same time two tap takeover were held at the adjacent café De Markies by De Ranke and Wild Beer. This also meant a nice variety of different beer styles. De Markies was also the organizer and subject of an earlier piece I wrote about Leeuwarden. Besides being a great café they show to be able to organize a great festival as well.

As a ‘brewer’ you usually don’t have a lot of time to walk around the other stands and talk and sample their beers. Especially not at this festival, it was busy all the time. I feel bad for the brewers who were there alone. But a busy festival means a successful one!

I for one was happy to be back into the action without any hassle and rules to strictly adhere too. I would not mind returning next year as a guest and sample all the fine beers on offer.

With all the complaining by some that all our freedoms are being taken away it was good to be at a festival that for the most part was back to normal. It’s good to be back, and thanks De Markies en Leeuwarden for making that possible.