Larling Beer Festival - Hale Ninkasi

This year's Rhythm and Booze Festival saw a new departure for West Norfolk CAMRA. The Larling festival had been selected for the East Anglian roll-out of the latest phase of CAMRA's "Ask if its Cask".

This part of the campaign is aimed at generating interest in real ale particularly with respect to younger females, a category of the population not generally associated with quality beer. The main campaign feature is Ninkasi, apparently the ancient Sumerian goddess of beer. Research has shown that this Middle Eastern civilisation produced substances similar to beer around 4000 year ago, although the quality of the beer has improved since then! Brewing would have been carried out by the lady of the house and she certainly joined in its consumption. It's ironic that today this area is largely populated by teetotal Muslims.

The campaign had been launched a couple of weeks previously at the national beer festival in London. This featured the friendly (according to Shaun of Cambridge) young lady who modelled for the artwork. Ten beers were selected as likely to appeal to females with little previous experience of real ales. Two of them Taylor's Landlord and Charles Wells Banana Bread Beer were also featured at Larling. For the East Anglian Launch, regional director Paul Ainsworth and representatives of adjoining branches came along to give the campaign a push.

As for the festival itself, fine weather (despite torrential downpours afflicting almost all the rest of Norfolk) ensured another record? attendance of how many?. The 42 beers and 5 ciders all sold (?gallons/pints in total?) leaving only the dregs in the bottom of barrels. The selection of beers ranged from Orkney Skullsplitter (the festival's strongest at 8.5%) to Exe Valley's Devon Summer and featured the new local breweries, Fox at Heacham, Spectrum at Barford and Woods of Norwich. Beer of the Festival was voted Admiral's Reserve, Woodforde's tasty new offering at 5%.

The Hale Ninkasi campaign certainly seemed to work given the number of young ladies consuming quantities of the real stuff.