Battersea Beer Festival: a Carling free zone

5:20pm Friday 25th January 2008

The way I see it, you can legitimately attend this year's Battersea Beer Festival by claiming medicinal purposes'. Why? Because the festival is an antidote to the groundhog day feeling one gets, simply by entering a pub in the 21st century and scanning the choice' of beers.

"Kronenburg, Carling, Stella," it goes, with the rigidness of a school register, "Strongbow, Guinness, John Smith's, J20 if you're driving". The only correct prescription is: one dose of Winter Warmer, Purple Moose Glaslyn Ale or Nethergate Umbel Magna, several times a day, next week at Battersea Arts Centre. Food optional.

Other than featuring 150 cask-conditioned ales, plus cider, perry and foreign beers, the festival will announce (on Thursday) the winner of CAMRA's South West London Pub of the Year for 2007. The 2006 winner was the Bricklayer's Arms, Putney, which went on to win CAMRA'S Greater London Pub of the Year award for 2007, and was featured in last week's Borough News, after it welcomed into its bosom some punters deemed "too old" for the nearby Queen Adelaide.

In contention for the 2007 award are the Crown & Sceptre, Streatham Hill; the Trinity Arms, Brixton; the Beehive, St Johns Hill; the Nightingale, Balham; the Grapes, Wandsworth and three South Wimbledon pubs - the Princess of Wales, the Sultan and the Trafalgar.

The festival will also mark the launch of Down the River, a new SW18 and SW11 pub guide.

The 18th Battersea Beer Festival; BAC, Lavender Hill, SW11 5TN, Weds, Feb 6 to Friday, Feb 8, noon to 11pm daily, £3/£2/£1.

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