Peterborough Beer Festival aims to 'put on a good show' in 45th year
Around 26,000 people are due to attend over the next few days
Organisers of the Peterborough Beer Festival say they're not afraid to improve to adapt to changing customer needs.
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) event, now in its 45th year, is due to run from today until Saturday night with around 26,000 people from across the country and overseas predicted to attend this week.
Around 170 breweries are expected to come along to the Embankment over the next few days with 350 different cask beers, as well as ciders, perries and a wine bar also on offer.
"It's the peak of Peterborough's activities"
Mike Lane's one of the organisers of the festival, which is mainly manned by volunteers.
"It's a Peterborough thing; we always maintain it's the peak of Peterborough's activities," he said.
"It's the festival that everybody wants to come to; we like to think we put on a good show and people just come out.
"If you go back to the early 1970s, there were probably six main brands (of beer) and they were very insipid beers; you look at the UK now, there are hundreds of small, medium-sized breweries all making products that people want to drink."
At least 60,000 pints to be poured
Mike estimates around 60-65,000 pints of beer could be poured over the course of the festival, with food and entertainment also on offer.
But he's confident there will be enough supply for everyone.
"As the entertainment gets better, the beer amount gets lower but we never run out of beer," he said.
"We have an excellent stock-taking system, we know exactly what we've got, we can estimate how many people are coming in and how much they're going to drink so we don't run out.
"The great thing is to watch people enjoying themselves, and you can't please everybody but if you do get niggles and you can do something about it, learn from them and make it better next year."
CAMRA is an independent, voluntary, consumer organisation which campaigns for real ale, real pubs and consumer rights.
Ahead of this year's General Election, it called for improved consumer rights when purchasing alcohol, better market access for smaller businesses and fairer tax rates.