Scores of people flocked to the Burton Bridge Inn to get their fill of food and ale at the pub's seventeenth beer and sausage festival.
The pub, in Bridge Street, in Burton, holds a similar festival every six months. but ahead of this one landlord Carl Stout had expressed his concerns that ongoing traffic issues around Burton because of the closure of St Peter's Bridge might have impacted the turn-out for the event.
The bridge, which connects Burton to Stapenhill, has been closed since Tuesday, August 29, as repairs are made to rusted bearings. Without the work the highways authority would have had to impose a weight limit. St Peter's Bridge is due to reopen at the end of November, three months after work started.
But the pub need not have worried as this was not the case, as just as many people as had attended previous events made their way through the doors, there they had their pick from 31 different types of beer on offer.
Mr Stout said: "Considering everything that is going on in the town at the minute, it actually went really went. Everyone who came enjoyed it.
"They seemed pleased, mainly with the quality of the beer, and the sausage and the bread, which is what we want.
"The amount of people who actually came was right on par with what we normally have, and considering everything going on in the town with the bridge, that’s brilliant. We've had years and festivals with more people, but we've had them with less, so this year was really right down the middle."
The festival, which runs twice a year began on Thursday, October 5, and continued from noon until late on Friday, October 6, and yesterday, Saturday, October 7, with a live music performance on the Saturday evening.
Mr Stout revealed that before each festival members of staff at the pub have quiet bets about which beer will sell out first, and one was overjoyed when their pick, Scottish brewed Jarl, which came all the way from the Scottish hamlet of Cairndow was first to sell out on Saturday.
Another top seller that closely followed by selling out were Goat’s Milk, a beer brewed by Warwickshire brewery Church End. This ale was crowned Champion Beer of Britain at the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia London.
But locally produced were the two buzz words of the festival, with beers brewed in Burton itself, like Albion Bitter, as well as sausages made by Bakers of Rolleston and bread from Swadlincote’s Buckley and Horne all on offer.
"The weekend had a nice flow to it. Thursday night was like the connoisseur evening, obviously because we had the full range out, and the quality was at its very best," Mr Stout continued.
Mr Stout said: "Friday was a really nice atmosphere; busy but not uncomfortably busy, just the right amount of people. Saturday was reasonable. We had the sausages on the go and then the beers started to run out.
"Now we’re really just looking forward to our milestone next festival in April or May time so we would ask everyone to look out for that time, and we hope to make our eighteenth festival special."
