Red Shed East vs West Beer Festival

Pete / 2018-05-12

I'd been to the Red Shed before when I visited Wakefield for a beer weekend (taking in other pubs like The Hop, Harrys, Fernandes and Black Rock) so I knew I was in for a treat at their beer festival.

They open up the divider to create one large room with the majority of the beers on a temporary bar in the overflow space, with a few extras on the main bar. It was already busy when we arrived but we managed to get a table.

A choice of glasses - we went for dimpled - and a sheet of beer tokens at the door, along with a printed beer list (we also had it on the beer festival app of course).

There were 6 of us in our group and between us we managed to sample all 20 beers between us - including the crazy strong No More Tuesdays at 11.5% - over a few hours. All the beers were kept very well and there wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

My favourite was probably Rat Brewery's Dark Ratanic Mills - a 9% strong rich smoky mild - closely followed by the Coffee and Hazelnut Baby Stout by Abbeydale.

I can strongly recommend going to the beer festival, or at any other time as they're very welcoming of non-members and they know their beer!