Two Hucknall pubs celebrating the ale with their own mini beer festivals

The Byron’s Rest and The Station Hotel are both holding mini festivals which start today (Thursday) and end on Sunday, July 31.

The Station’s festival will be run by its main brewery Lincoln Green of Hucknall and will have 20 ales to try.

Anthony Hughes, founder of Lincoln Green, said: “I’m not sure this event and the main beer festival being cancelled are necessarily connected as we would normally do something around the Bank Holiday weekend anyway.

"The advantage we have with the Station Hotel is there are 20 handpulls available so we are able to put all the beers in the cellar.

“It’s quite unusual to have that many handpulls available, most pubs don’t have as many as that, but it means we can bring 20 beers all up in perfect condition and temperature.

"There will be new beers coming out and we’ve recently been brewing a lot of new beers to compliment the range at the Station Hotel.

"We now brew a lot of beers under the Project Blackshale name – Blackshale being the name of a coal seam under which the brewery is located that was mined at Hucknall number two pit.

"The beers in the range all take their names from old mining terms, Backripper for example. They were all mining terms but also sound like cool beer names.

“They all feature unusual quirky styles and some will be available at the Station Hotel during this festival.”

The Byron’s Rest event will feature 20 ales, ten real ciders, ten fruit ciders and much more and entry will be free each day with the pub opening from 1pm.

Richard Darrington, pub landlord, said: “This is the fourth one of these we’ve done.

"I thought people might still have the beer festival dates in their diaries and while it might seem a strange time for a beer festival, I thought we’d still go ahead with it and ours have always proved very popular.

"This year we’ve got Moot Ales coming in from Matlock, we’ve got Roebuck coming in from Draycott on the Clay, Bang The Elephant from Langley Mill and Beermats from Newark amongst others, so there’s plenty to go at.”

Hucknall’s main beer festival, scheduled for the John Godber Centre on Ogle Street in the town, was cancelled amid fears around the current heatwave.

Without full cellar facilities at the venue, the Nottingham branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) felt the quality of ale on offer couldn’t be guaranteed.

It was a blow for fans after the festival, usually held in February, had been axed for the previous two years because of the pandemic.