Top 3 Beer Festivals in Europe.

3. Great British Beer Festival – London

The Great British Beer Festival began in the late 70s and runs in the first full week of August, from Tuesday to Saturday. The festival is run by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and hosts the Champion Beer of Britain awards which nominates and judges top British beers for the title.

Over 400 local British beers are on offer as well as around 200 foreign beers and traditional cider and perry are also sold. The GBBF aims to reproduce a pub-like atmosphere and offers live music, pub games, and food stalls. The festival is significantly smaller than its famous German counterparts but is growing rapidly year on year and has recently moved to a larger venue to accommodate this.

2. Belgian Beer Weekend – Brussels

The Belgian Beer Weekend takes place during the first weekend of September in Brussels and offers another unique experience. The diversity of authentic regional beers available is truly impressive. Belgium is renowned for its vast number of small specialist breweries including the famed Trappist monastery breweries.

You can also taste the Lambic beers, which are the only beers in the world which are produced by “spontaneous fermentation”. This means that instead of using cultivated brewer’s yeasts, the beer is simply exposed to wild yeasts and bacteria of the area. This gives the beers a very unique flavour.

1. Oktoberfest – Munich

Oktoberfest is the most well known beer festival in the world, and officially the world’s largest fair. It is so popular that it has inspired thousands of similar festivals worldwide. In 2010 alone, over 7 million litres of beer were drunk. Only beer that has been brewed within Munich is allowed to be served at Oktoberfest and many of these are special Oktoberfest beers prepared especially for the occasion.

Visitors can expect to enjoy the variety of local beers, würstl and other traditional foods while being entertained by a range of different musical styles. Dressing up in the traditional German lederhosen or dirndl is encouraged and adds to the fun.

If you fall ill or have any other sort of emergency there is a service centre that has been built solely to cater for the festival directly behind the tents. It’s highly recommended that you take out Backpacker’s Travel Insurance for Europe or another suitable policy before you traverse Europe in search of the best beer fests. Make sure that you drink responsibly and that you don’t become one of the “Bierleichen” (German for “beer corpses”)!

Peter Henley writes for EssentialTravel.co.uk, providers of travel extras, travel information and travel news.”

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