Olympia - Great British Beer Festival (GBBF)

Missing our 2020 ????

Third time here this year. Great venue, IMHO. Lots of space, natural light, airy, fun. Get there early to get a table in the foreign beers area and you are set. Three great, fun-filled days in 2019 with a large group of RB friends, though fewer than in previous years.

Great location for the GBBF, more seating this year (at last).

I've been to 4 days of this festival for so many years, I've given up trying to remember. The ticket price for a season ticket is ridiculously low compared with any other similar event. The UK cask selection is safe but there is always plenty to get through including the brewery bars plus cider, perry and meads. The big draw for me though is the non UK beer from Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Czech, in particular the USA casks and bottles /cans. Great selection, and the take away bottles and cans are always such good value. Love this festival.

One of my favourite festivals, with great british cask ales, great american, german and decent belgian stuff. Food is, well, festival food. Works for the occasion. Service is friendly, if not always 100 % knowledgable.

It’s a big hall that once a year has lots of beers in it. The range of UK beers can be a bit uninspiring for the hard core beer geek. There’s more interest in the foreign beers (except the Germans which seem to be the same every year). The US casks take a hammering so if you want to try those go on the first two days. All the servers are volunteers so you need to make alowances for that. There are better CAMRA festivals for UK beer range but I always enjoy my visit here.

Visited in 2014

never knew you could rate a festival venue. But, as I think it’d be useful to rate festivals as well as places (after all, a lot of effort is put into making festivals a great experience for the attendants), I will rate my experience here.

It was a pleasure experiencing this epitome of British beer culture. Ever since the episode of the much praised Michael Jackson I’ve been longing to visit one. Brilliant time. Good company, many hundreds of real ales on draught, classic ciders, perries, a good selection of European and American beers as well. Very nicely executed, pretty venue -albeit feeling somewhat on the large side, even with so many visiters inside- with a good offering of classical pub fare and fan paraphernalia. I had a blast!

Great venue, been a couple of times now, much prefer this to Earls Court where GBBF was hosted on previous visits. Great selection on Cask from across both UK/US and some solid bottles, great they do third pours, always good food options - traditional british and new world, didn’t know this is on "places" will make sure to "check in" in 2016 visit :-)

Strange that beer festivals can be rated as places here, but anyway: this is the mother of all European beer festivals of course, CAMRA goes to great lengths in organizing a fabulous event lasting for six days. Service is quick and very friendly, everything is perfectly organized, food stalls are even more elaborate now than they were back at Earl’s Court and selection is flabbergastering, with all corners of the UK covered. A classic, visited again this week and that will certainly not be the last time. Only small point of criticism I could come up with, is perhaps that more seats should be available, but then it would probably become less pleasurable to stroll through the hall from bar to bar...

Rating from August 2015 and 3 visits. Nice hall with a huge range if beer. The range could be a little more adventurous on the UK front but the European and US cask list are where it’s at. Service can be a little shaky at times but all the staff were friendly. The layout could be improved to get served quicker. It’s a great beer showcase but could be better.