The decision was made to move to the beginning of June. This meant there wasn't a lot of time to plan the event but it did give the opportunity to buy some of those summer seasonal beers that have eluded us all these years.

Concerns that the weather might be too hot for the beer were quickly abated when the oh-so reliable haar rolled in each afternoon blocking the sun's feeble attempts to overheat the interior of the Richard Donald Stand. "Perfect temperature control, cool enough for the beer but warm enough to be comfortable in a T-shirt" said festival organiser Richard Jones.

Once again the single 75ft long bar was constructed but this time an extra bay of stillage had been added to enable a more prominent display of the vastly expanded range of ciders and perries.

Despite the better weather and laying on a free shuttle bus from Old Blackfriars to Pittodrie attendances still didn't match those of our peak days in the city centre. This time the festival finished with 46 of the original 89 beers still on. Nearly 3,000 punters came and drank some 10,000 pints.

Beers were sourced from all over the UK, Valhalla (Shetland) in the north to St. Austell (Cornwall) in the south, Hebridean (Stornoway) in the west and Spectrum (Norfolk) in the east.
Map of 2008 festival breweries
Map of 2008 ciders

This year's festival glass sponsor was BrewDog Brewery from Fraserburgh who had five of their beers Paradox, The Edge, Rip Tide, Physics and Punk IPA on offer. Other notable beers were the first outings in this area of beer from Windie Goat and even Blode from the then beleaguered Arran Brewery (thankfully now looking to have a brighter future) as well a whole slew of CAMRA award winners from Champion Beer of Britain, Scotland and Champion Winter beers.

The festival also attracted a large response from the licensed trade, both local publicans and the not-so-local brewers. Local breweries were represented by Hillside (Lumphanan) and BrewDog (Fraserburgh). Overseas visitors from the USA, Denmark, Norway and London (which is further away than some parts of Norway) made themselves known. But who travelled the furthest?

And the winner is...

As usual we had our own competition for the punters favourite beer. This year's winner was a close run thing with Dark Star's American Pale Ale edging out BrewDog's Paradox. As now appears traditional there was a tie for third place with the honours shared between Castle Rock's Harvest Pale Ale, Caledonian's Forbidden Fruit, William's Roisin, Wickwar's Mr. Perrett's Traditional Stout and the fastest selling beer Houston's Helga's Big Jugs.

Charity

As usual the festival played host for a local charity to raise funds. This year it was the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, RNLI, who raised over £1500 in cash and unused beer token donations. On their behalf we would like to than all those who generously donated.

2009 logo nominations

So what did you think of the "Summertime Br-ewe-s" logo? Do you think you can do better? If so then send your entries to Scott Wilson at before 30th November 2008. Entries will need to be in something similar to jpg, tiff, gif file format, a single colour and have sufficient clarity when reproduced no bigger than 3" on a glass. As a rule of thumb a bad pun in the strap line always seems popular.

Thanks

The Aberdeen, Grampian & Northern Isles branch of CAMRA would particularly like to thank the following organisations for their help with the festival: First and foremost this year's festival glasses sponsor BrewDog Brewery. Aberdeen Football Club our hosts at Pittodrie. And bringing beers in from south of the border Flying Firkin. For bringing in beers from slightly nearer Ardo Ales and the breweries at Belhaven, Black Isle, BrewDog, Broughton, Cairngorm, Hebridean, Highland, Hillside, Houston, Inveralmond, Isle Of Skye, Kelburn, Moulin, Sinclair, Sulwath, Williams & Windie Goat. In addition we thank Oddbins and Jon Hallam who supplied the bottled beers, cask cider and perry. A particular thanks to Deborah Services Limited who support us both literally and figuratively with the scaffolding. It was still a tight squeezed but we made it again. We would also like to thank all those individuals; far too many to list (more column inches please Mr. Editor?) who gave their time, help, knowledge, experience and energy to enable this festival to go ahead.

One for the diary

The 23rd Great Grampian Beer Festival is being planned for late May/early June, 2009 in Richard Donald Stand, Pittodrie Stadium in Aberdeen. See you there & don't be late!