These Hills Beer Festival 2022
It’s been a while since we’ve been to a beer festival. A proper beer festival that wasn’t hindered in some way by a global pandemic, anyway. Nearly two and a half years ago since Cloudwater’s Friends & Family & Beer Festival in Febrary 2020 (in the Before Times). We’ve been jonesing for a restriction-free, free-flowing, summer-time beer gathering for quite some time. We’ve discovered a few new drinking spots and visited a few new cities but that itch just hasn’t been scratched. Until now.
We’re back baby and we’re off to… Lewes.
“You can see Lewes lying like a box of toys under a great amphitheatre of chalk hills ... on the whole it is set down better than any town I have seen in England.”
Not the first place that springs to mind when you picture a beer festival, granted. The county town of East Sussex is probably best known for it’s Wicker Man-esque Bonfire celebrations that has entirely too much fire for my liking. Obviously, it has a strong brewing heritage (it is the home of Harvey’s Brewery after all) but until recently, it wouldn’t have been somewhere I’d have expected a ‘craft beer, low intervention wine, mead and cider festival’.
Step forward, Beak Brewery.
Beak appeared like a shiny beery beacon during the dark times of 2020 when lockdowns were all the rage. I ordered a can of their flagship IPA, Parade, when making one of my silly little beer orders mainly on a whim and because I liked what I’d heard about them. The pillowy soft pale was the perfect antidote to being stuck in-doors and I’ve ordered as many Beak beers as I can every time I make an online order now, firmly cementing them as one of my favourite breweries of recent times.
As well as opening their own taproom in Lewes (more on that later) and distributing their wares far and wide, at the arse end of last year they announced These Hills festival - the aforementioned ‘craft beer, low intervention wine, mead, and cider festival’. I bought tickets to the Saturday day session faster than you can say ‘but what is low intervention wine?’ (wine that free of chemicals and additives made naturally if you can’t be bothered to look it up yourself).
Alongside the drinks (see the list below) was the promise of live music, street food, and good vibes so we patiently waited half a year for the festival to arrive.
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BEAK | FOREST AND MAIN (US) | DEYA | CLOUDWATER | BOXCAR | SAINT ERRANT (US) | VERDANT | WYLAM | TRANSIENT ARTISAN ALES (US) | NORTHERN MONK | NORTH BREW CO | WILDFLOWER (AUS) | TRACK | KERNEL | QUEER BREWING | WESTWELL WINE ESTATE | KLØSTER (DE) | BURNT MILL | RANGE (AUS) | UNITY | VILLAGES | DURATION | CROSSOVER BLENDERY | GUEUZERIE TILQUIN (BEL) | LITTLE EARTH PROJECT | BURNING SKY | ZAPATO | NEWBARNS | DONZOKO | SPECIATION ARTISAN ALES (US) | HARVEY'S | BROOD MEADERY | ARPUS (LV) | FLOC | TORN PLANT CIDER | BLENDER
In the week leading up to the festival was a national rail strike that threatened to scupper our plans and despite much of our gang being unable to attend due to this (solidarity with the strikers though), we still made it, thankfully.
The site itself was the appropriately named Party Field and was a bit of a walk from Lewes town centre, down its cobbled streets, under the A27 and along a country lane. The promise of a long-awaited beer festival at the end of the ramble made it pass by in no time and made that first beer taste all the sweeter.
£25 for a session got you entry, a glass and a token for your first beer. The glass itself was a beauty (see for yourself below) and a welcome addition to the beer glass cabinet. The token system was a little confusing to start with; red tokens were worth £3 and blue tokens were worth £2 with drinks ranging from £2-£6. The last few beer festivals I’d attended in the Before Times were all-in type affairs; all of your beer was included in the ticket price. Juggling tokens felt like a bit of a throw back and I thought it’d result in long queues but I needn’t have worried as everyone took to the token system fairly easily.
The festival itself consisted of two big tents - the main tent snaked around the side of the site and housed the majority of the beer slingers with a second central tent for the wild beers/mead/wine called Cedric’s Tent (named after Beak’s saison I think?) that was smaller but looked very cool. Three food trucks lined the hedgerow along with a small tent for the musicians to perform from on the opposite side. The centre of the site was filled with seating in the shape of hay bales and long benches and the entire area was festooned with lights (which looked awesome in the evening session photos I saw on social media).
It was probably one of my favourite beer festival experiences; something about being out in the countryside, in the open air, gave the whole day a very chilled feel and everyone seemed relaxed and in good spirits. I think a free-for-all city-centred festival would’ve been a bit of a shock to the system after so long away so this felt like a beautiful way to ease back into beer festival attending normality.
The weather was also on our side and, although it was a bit windy, the sun did emerge from the clouds repeatedly through the afternoon. So much so, I managed to burn the top of my hand. Can you tell which is my drinking hand?
It was the perfect amount of busy - I don’t think I queued for a beer all day - and there was a great buzz amongst the crowd. That winning combination of sunshine and beer never fails to raise spirits. And how were the beers I hear you ask. Well…
Beers
I managed to sample a wide range of beers during the afternoon and honestly didn’t have a bad beer. Below are my choice cuts, in no particular order:
Damascene - Golden Ale 6.5% //Crossover Blendery
A blend of 1 and 2 year old golden ales, spontaneously fermented, aged in French oak barrels and blended with Damascene damsons. I’d heard murmurings about this tiny Hertfordshire blendery a while back and wanted to try something funky so made straight for them when I saw they were pouring. This beer was beautiful in both taste and looks (it’s that vibrant red beer in the photo above) - it was a wonderful balance of funkiness and fruit and a beer festival in the countryside was probably the perfect environment for it.
Secare - Imperial Stout 14.5% // Saint Errant Brewing
I had to try and least one of the international beers and stumbled across these small-batch brewers from Chicago. I saw the words ‘imperial stout’ and that was enough. The guy pouring explained that any leftover beer not drunk at the festival would have to be taken back on the plane with him so I said I’d do my bit and lighten his load by having some of the stout.
According to the sign it had spent 17 months in a Blanton's and Wild Turkey whiskey barrel and the woodiness shone through. The sweetness really belied the strength and I didn’t realise how strong it was until I checked it in on Untappd midway through. I may have encouraged my father-in-law to also buy one which may have explained why he fell asleep on the bus home later on that evening.
Yuzu - Rice Lager 5% // Donzoko Brewing Company
After the ridiculousness of the impy stout, I was looking for something on the opposite end of the spectrum - something light and refreshing as the sun had crept out from the clouds. I think if you look up the word ‘refreshing’ in the dictionary, it’s just a picture of this beer. Brewed with motueka hops and Japanese Yuzu juice, it barely touched the sides as I chinned it in record time. Well good.
Infrequent Manoeuvre - Melomel Mead 14% // Brood Meadery
Melomel is basically mead made with fruit. And this mead was made with a metric fuckton. All of the blueberries. And of course, lashings of honey. I’m always taken aback by how sweet mead is but it’s always delicious and this was no exception. We also tried a cherry mead that was essentially a liquid bakewell tart but this blueberry fella was my favourite of the two.
QDH Riwaka x Nelson - QIPA 12% // Arpus Brewing Co.
Why not finish off the beer festival with a quadruple dry hopped quadruple IPA from Latvia’s Arpus? I most definitely didn’t need to drink this beer but I had the exact amount of tokens left so it felt like I had to. TIPAs and QIPAs can quite often be sweet, sticky messes but this wasn’t at all. The punchy New Zealand hops shone through and it kept me nicely lubricated as the festival drew to a close.
Food
The three food trucks on offer were Caccia and Tails mac ‘n’ cheese heavy menu, The Two Frida’s vegan Mexican street food and Original Patty Men’s burger-laden bonanza. Between us we had food from all three and all enjoyed our food. My beef shin mac ‘n’ cheese was tasty although felt a little on the small side for £9 a portion. The same sentiment was felt with The Two Frida’s frijole tacos lacking filling. I was envious of my father-in-law who not only lucked out on the food options (OPM’s cheese burger and fries looked much more dense) but also returned with a free beer - one of the breweries had spotted his National Trust cap and gave him a freebie. Result!
Post-festival
I’d saw mention of a shuttle bus from the festival to Beak’s taproom so we made a beeline for the exit and luckily managed to squeeze onto the first bus to the taproom. Skills! The taproom was offering 10% discount to all festival goers all weekend so we thought it’d be rude not to pay it a visit. Beak’s taproom is one of the most picturesque in the country - set below the chalky South Downs, it’s a change from the usual industrial estate or railway arch. We had a swift half here before it got too busy and it was here we noticed my hand had turned a vibrant shade of red.
Our final stop of the day was to another relatively new brewery to Lewes and an even newer taproom - ABYSS! It was (sort of) on the way home so felt obligated to pop in for a final beer. The heavens opened as we arrived and we toasted the fact we’d picked the right session as I imagine those that attended the evening were getting a little damp.
Summary
All in all, These Hills was a resounding success and we had an absolutely brilliant time - Lewes is also a decent option for beer geeks as you can mix traditional boozers with craft brewery taprooms which is basically the perfect mix. I’m assuming These Hills will become an annual thing (plz Beak) and I’ll be first in line for tickets when they go on sale again.
