The 13th Planet Thanet Beer Festival was packed to the rafters last weekend.
The annual event held at the Margate Winter Gardens attracted thousands of visitors who enjoyed a varied selection of drinks and music from Gaddzukes on both days and Left of the Dial on Friday afternoon.
This year’s festival logo was chosen to celebrate the RAF 100 and incorporated with RAF Acrobatic team, better known as the Red Arrows.
With serving and ex armed forces personnel on the festival committee and amongst the volunteers time was taken on the Saturday to raise glasses to “Absent Friends” in honour of Kent-born Corporal Jonathan Baylis, a Red Arrows engineer sadly killed in a crash in Wales in March.
The festival in numbers:
13th festival
2 days
70 volunteers setting up beforehand
4 days spent setting up beginning with the arrival of the scaffolding at the Winter Gardens to form the stillage to put the beer casks on
170 casks of beer and numerous polypins of cider.
1,800 guests squeeze into the festival in the first 2 hours
1st beer to run out (after little over 2 hours of opening) was the specially brewed St Laurence “Gridiron” pale ale brewed in collaboration with St Laurence church by The Four Candles brewery in St Peters.
1st cider to run out was Dudda’s Tun Salted caramel cider, with many of the fruity ciders quickly following.
12,000 pints of real ale and 2,500 pints of cider consumed in 2 days, along with a selection of bottled beers and ciders from at home and abroad.
100 people helped out over the course of the festival