Adelaide on Australia’s southern coast is home to the Southern Hemisphere’s largest folk festival the Schutzenfest. Schutzenfest’s have been popular throughout Germany for hundred’s of years when towns celebrated with a shooting festival followed by a fun day of beer drinking. Today fortunately the shooting is a fairground style attraction and the beer is icy cold and each year a King and Queen shooter are crowned. The festival dates back to 1865 in Adelaide and became a annual event in 1964. Now held in the city’s Bonython Park there’s Oompah music, Bavarian Foods including plenty of sausages and great beer. Over 40 stalls attend selling food, beer and cultural items. The highlight of the event is the Strong Arm Beer Stein Lifting Competition where the person who can hold a full stein at arms length for the longest wins. The Adelaide Schutzenfest runs from 11th – 12th of January this year.

for more information visit http://www.schutzenfest.com.au/

After the German’ no one loves beer more than the Irish, and this week in Belfast fresh flowing beer will rule supreme at the Balmoral Hall, King’s hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the Belfast Beer and Cider festival.  The festival will feature over 120 beers and nearly 20 different ciders over three days with all the fun and food you would expect from a great beer festival.  The fefstival is ran my CAMRA which is a consumer organisation which campains for Real Ale and the right to good beers. There are some 85000 members througout the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.  Highlight of the festival will be the awarding of the Champion Beer of Belfast 2007 which is sure to be a tasty drop. This year marks the 9th year of the festival.

www.camrani.org.uk

 The riverside village of Morphet in the Hunter Valley just out of Sydney Australia is playing host to the first of what it hopes to be one of the worlds best beer festivals- The Bitter and Twisted International Boutique Beer Festival. The plan all comes to climax this weekend with the first festival. They have an impressive line up of quality beers from around the world including some of Australia’s and Germany’s best. Some tasty food and of course some entertainment from some great homegrown talent including Dan Kelly and former king of pop himself Dave Graney.

One of the highlights of the festival will be the Top Twister Pro-Am where anyone who brews beer can enter, it dosen’t matter if you are a home brewer or a major brewer you can enter this fantastic competition . It is hoped the festival will become a regular part of the regions already busy calendar.

for more information: www.bitterandtwisted.com.au

This weekend in at the Convention Centre in Denver Colorado the Great American Beer Festival hits town. Over 30,000 people attend this amazing event which even has a Guinness Book of Records entry for teh most beers on tap. The festival has tasting competitions and there are over 1,600 beers to try for over 350 breweries around the world.  Now the idea of the festival is not to guzzle its to try new and exciting beers they are served in one ounce samples.

For more information http://www.beertown.org/events/gabf/faq.htm

The Oktoberfest celebrations have come to a close in Munich for another year. An estimated 6.2 million people passed through the gates and drank over 6.7 million litres of Munich beer and ate 104 oxes, half a million sausages and more chickens than you could point a stick at.  But visitors to Munich should not worry too much there are plenty of great beer halls and beer gartens around the city to continue the festivities.  Preperations are underway for next years huge event which starts on September 20th at noon and will mark the 175th Anniversary.

For more information  http://www.oktoberfest.de

Well most people would asume all the beer drinking fun in Germany at the moment is in Munich, well they are wrong- Stuttgart is getting in on the act too. The annual Cannstatter Volksfest is in full swing and will attract over 3 million visitors over the next two weeks.  Starting a week later than the Munich festival the Stuttgart festival has everything Oktoberfest has just  a little smaller scale.

Datting back to 1818 when the festival was merely a agricultural trade fair this festival has grown to be the second biggest in Germany after Oktoberfest.

There are beer tents from some of Stuttgart’s best breweries including Schwaben Brau, Stuttgarter Hofbrau, Dinkelaker and of course Furstenberg. The fairgrounds has some amazing rides too, including the worlds biggest mobile ferris wheel, some amazing roller coasters including an indoor coaster called the Black Hole and plenty of other thrill rides. There food, fun and the centrepiece is a huge 26 metre wooden fruit coloumn  which can be seen from most points of the festival.

For more information http://www.stuttgart-tourist.de/ENG/leisure/volksfest.htm

The Hofbrau-Festzelt is the biggest beer-tent at the Munich’s Oktoberfest. The tent is massive measuring 82 metres long, 62 metres wide and having a capacity of 9992 people within its floor, balconies and beergarden. And then theres the back of house areas where with kitchens and beer storage. To give you some idea of the massage kitchen it can cook 828 roast chickens at one time. Over 280 staff are required to work in the tent.

Over the 16 days of this years festival it is expected the HB tent alone will serve over half a million litres of ice cold HB beer, 70,000 1/2 chickens, 5500 pork roasts 2800 spare ribs and over 8500 sausages.

The construction program this year was massive the first trucks arrived at the Thersienwiese in on July 15 and it has taken over 9 weeks to complete, the beautiful interior fit out has taken nearly 7 weeks.

The Hippodrom was first seen at Oktoberfest in 1902 and since then has become one of the most popular tents. This tent was the first to offer amusement and it was in the form of horse rides. There were 25 horses which carried visitors around a track. Today the real horses have dissapeared but their legacy remains with beautifuly decorated horse models hanging from the ceiling of this huge tent. The tent dosent only offer great beer and fine German food it has a champange bar. This bar is very popular with the ‘Beautiful People’ set of Germany and quiet often famous film and television stars are seen enjoying themselves at the bar.

Armbrustschutzenzelt has been a major tent at Munich’s Oktoberfest since 1895. The name in English translates to ”Crossbow Shooters Tent”, and thats exactly what goes on in this tent yes thousands of beer drinkers and cross bows. It sounds like a dangerous mix but no its perfectly safe, the crossbows fire foam rubber arrows and they are in a special area away from the crowd. The Armbrustschutzen is also famous for its tasty roast pig knuckles and of course its golden fresh Paulaner beer. The tent houses 5800 and another 1800 can fit in the outside beer garden. Work begins in the middle of July to build this massive tent and get it ready for the festival.

 Munich’s Oktoberfest starts today with the tapping of the barrel by the Lord Mayor and the parade to the Oktoberfest Grounds. This year over 6000000 (6 million) people will rock up at the festival for a beer, giant pretzel, sausage or ginger bread. The festival is not only about eating and drinking it is a full on fair with huge carnival rides and a real party atmosphere. Check out our special YouTube video to see what some of the sights of last years Oktoberfest. 

Official Site:  http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/

Good to see the Germans have got good taste. Last year the controversial celebrity gatecrashed the Munich festival in a very tacky gold traditional Bavarian dress to promote some sort of canned wine. Organisers and the public were not impressed and have banned celebrity promotions from this years festival in the wake of her stunt. Some people thought it was a shame they didn’t drown her in weissbier, but why waste perfectly good beer.
 

The countdown is on to the climax of months of planning and preperation for the 2007 Oktoberfest in Munich Germany. It’s less than three hours till the Lord Mayor of Munich taps the first keg and declares “O’zapft is!” (Bavarian: “It’s tapped!”). the world’s biggest folk festival open for another year.  Over the next 16 days over 6 million people will drink a third of Munich’s yearly beer intake in the grounds of the Theresenwiese.

Only local Munich breweries serve beer at the festival and many serve a special Oktoberfest brew for the occasion, this beer is slightly darker and a bit stronger than their normal brews and is in a one-liter glass tankard called a  Maß.

There are 14 large tents including The Hippodrom, Armbrustschützenzelt, Hofbräu Festzelt, Hacker-Festzelt, Schottenhamel, Winzerer Fähndl, Schützen-Festzelt, Käfers Wiesn Schänke, Weinzelt, Löwenbräu-Festhalle, Bräurosl, Augustiner-Festhalle, Ochsenbraterei and Fischer Vroni plus many smaller tents. Some of these larger tents are able to seat 4 – 5000 people in one sitting.

Over the festival Hoppsy will have several reports live from the 2007 Oktoberfest.

Official Site: http://www.oktoberfest.de/en/02/

Next Wednesday the barrel gets tapped and the festivities begin for the 174th Oktoberfest in Munich Theresienwiese festival grounds. This years fest will see over 6 million people visit the 42 hectare park over its 12 days. That’s half a million people a day!. In that time 6 million litres of beer, (30% of Munich’s annual consumption) quarter of a million sausages, 100 oxen, and half a million roast chickens will be served by over 1600 waitresses. The site has 1800 toilets and seating for over 100,000 people.   12000 people are employed during the festival including cleaners, ride operators, food vendors, security and tent staff. Last year over 200,000 mugs were retrieved by security guards from would be thieves, this year there will be a 50 Euro fine to crack down on people pinching the mugs. Plenty are on sale for souvenirs and all at pretty reasonable prices.

Western Australia’s Emu Bitter dates back to 1923 with its sharp hoppyness and bitter aftertaste this beer is very popular in the West. It hasn’t made much inroads into the eastern states of Victoria due to the huge loyalty and strenght of Lion Natha’s other brands and of course Carlton United. The beer has a 4.6% alcohol content and is brewed by the Swan Brewery in Perth. Colloquially Emu Bitter is known as “EB” or “Kenny”, we are not sure why Kenny, we would have prefered Barry..Barry the Beer sounds much better! 

Official Site: http://www.emubitter.com.au

Late July every year Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia is home to one of the worlds greatest events. The annual Beer Can Regatta. This event has been running for over 30 years and has raised thousands of dollars for the Lions Club’s community projects in the region. The event was spawned out of Cyclone Tracey in 1974. Thousands of interstate workers came to Darwin to help with the rebuild and after a hard days work they boys needed a beer or two to finish the day. There was a huge abundance of empty beer cans so some clever bloke called Lutz Frankensfeld thought the beer cans needed to go to a good use as there were no suitable recycling programs at the time. Lutz came up with the plan to turn the beer cans into boats and race them in a family day. Now some of the boats measure 12 metres long and are quiet sea worthy and take thousands of empty beer cans to build.

For more information visit their official website: http://www.beercanregatta.org.au/