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Right at the end of the interminable Denby Dale Road gridlock is a silver lining.
There has never been a better time to sit out rush hour in Wakefield than at the Merrie City's beer festival from Thursday.
The only pipework I'll be interested isn't the necessary utility work currently causing traffic mayhem in Wakey city centre, but the beer lines from the casks on nearby Waldorf Way.
There will be 120 cellar cooled beers on offer at The Space, including some from the district's 11 micro-breweries.
I like to support local breweries at festivals, so I'll pick a few I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with.
The last time I drunk Tiger Tops was at The Fat Cat's Birthday Festival a few years ago. It was a brilliant beer called Tweaky, which soon ran off .
This time the Flanshaw-based brewery has two ales on offer, Golden Hop at 4.6% and Black Hop at 5.2%.

The other brewery, which launched in August, is James and Kirkman, of Pontefract. I say reacquaint because David James had Fernandes Brewery Tap a fair few years ago and I enjoyed his beers down at Kirkgate.
James and Kirkman have three beers on at Wakefield this week, including Inter Planetary Ale, a 7.4% deep copper IPA.

But it isn't the strongest beer of the festival. That honour goes to, surprise, surprise, Five Towns collaboration with North Riding. Mad Monk weighs in at 8% - sounds like one to finish with!
Away from the locals are beers from culled from Worcestershire, the West Midlands, Staffordshire, North West Wales, Devon and Wiltshire.
The beer list was drawn up by Wakefield CAMRA chairman and festival stalwart Albert Bradbury.

But the festival is under new stewardship this year. Mark Gibson has taken over the organising duties from June Bradbury, who is undertaking a "consultancy role".

As part of his preparations Mark undertook CAMRA's bar management course while working at the Great British Beer Festival in London last summer.
You can read about his exploits in a two-page feature in the current edition of O to K, the branch magazine.
Wakefield Beer Festival runs from Thursday, November 7 at Noon until close on Saturday.
Please note the Friday night session is sold out but you can pay on the door at all other times, unless you are in CAMRA then it's free.
Here are a couple of links to festival information.
The first is to the session times and ticket information. The second one directs you to the beer list.
http://www.wakefieldcamra.org.uk/festival/index.php
http://www.wakefieldcamra.org.uk/festival/cask.php
All images in this blog post were kindly supplied by Mark Gibson.



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