Interesting times for Irish Craft Beer Festivals

Summer 2024 is here and despite the unpredictable weather festival season is in full swing. But there are a few interesting developments. My own Midlands Craft Beer Festival is returning for the tenth and final year. More on that later. I noted back in 2017 that the peak of the Irish Craft Beer Festival was in 2014. You can read that post here, belated apologies for the click bait title. The landscape has changed even more dramatically since due to what I saw described recently as ‘events’! We saw the Irish Craft Beer Festival, once, the biggest, decline in the relatively disappointing events in Dun Laoghaire and Rathmines. Now it returns to the RDS and has been rebranded as the Dublin Craft Beer Festival, we’ll see how it goes in September.

Hagstravagnza is also returning for the tenth year. White Hag’s event seemed to be in doubt this year due to some licensing uncertainty but is going ahead with a line up of Irish breweries. It’s always good craic in Ballymote.

There are some other smaller, more niche festivals happening too such as Mullingar’s Wild Beer Festival. Unfortunately I missed the last one but it’s great to see interesting mixed fermentation breweries landing in the midlands.

So, the Midlands Craft Beer Festival is back on the 31st of August. I have decided to stop at ten. I’m happy to have done it and have created some great memories. Thanks to everyone who has helped out with the festival up to this point, Don and Lisa for hosting and Darren and Brian for helping us through the hybrid event years and everyone who poured pints and sold tokens. But as, anyone who’s ever put on an event knows it’s a bit of work and I think it is a good time to wrap it up. I’m really looking forward to the day and hope you can make it. We have our favourite Ginger’s BBQ back, we will have some live music and I’ve asked some of our past attending breweries to come back to Moate. We will also of course have local legends Dead Centre and Wide Street pouring their fantastic beers. Sláinte!