Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival back for 2018
The weekend-long beer festival features DJ sets from some huge musical names, as well as beers from dozens of breweries from across the globe
After the success of its debut edition last year, the Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival (ECBF) will return this May for a weekend stuffed to the brim with beer, music and street food. More than 40 breweries will be in attendance at this year’s festival at the Biscuit Factory, with over 300 beers available over the course of the weekend of 25 to 27 May.
Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival: The Breweries
The set up for ECBF is pleasingly simple. Just buy your ticket, turn up, then maraud around trying beers from brewers from across the UK, Europe and beyond without faffing about with tokens or pockets clinking with change. The initial brewery line-up includes Danish craft beer heavyweights Mikkeller, the always eye-catching and delicious duo of Magic Rock and Beavertown, and US-inspired Swedish microbrewery Dugges. There will also be opportunities to try beers from Belfast-based co-op brewery Boundary, Basqueland Brewing Project – a high-end craft brewery run by a trio of American brewers near San Sebastian – and the Stillwater nomadic brewery run by Baltimore native (and former techno DJ) Brian Strumke.
There’s also a good contingent of local breweries on the line-up including Tempest Brew Co from the Borders, the Cromarty microbrewery near Inverness, the Belgian-influenced Stonehaven brewery 6 Degrees North and Leith’s own Pilot brewery.
The event will also feature beers from the winners of the festival’s Raise the Bar competition for new breweries. Applications are open to all commercial breweries who’ve been in production for less than two years, with the winning breweries featuring at Edinburgh, London and Bristol Craft Beer Festivals. Find out more about Raise the Bar here; entries close on 13 Mar.
Music at Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival
Fittingly for a festival with hundreds of beers to navigate, the musical line-up for this year’s ECBF is an intriguing mix of big names from right across the UK music scene.
Don Letts – the BBC 6 Music DJ and Big Audio Dynamite co-founder – will be in charge of the music on the Friday night, while Saturday’s DJ duties are split between Glasgow post-rock titans Mogwai and Olugbenga Adelekan, bass player in Metronomy. The Sunday session will be soundtracked by a DJ set from Irish indie trio Two Door Cinema Club.
Food at Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival
With all that beer flying around, it’s important to keep everyone well-fed; a line-up of vendors curated by street food aces The Pitt will be on hand to do just that. The reigning Scottish Street Food Award winners of The Buffalo Truck will be serving up their outrageously good fried chicken, and they’ll be joined by pop-up wood-fired greats Pizza Geeks, the seafood-and-shellfish combo of Barnacles and Bones, curry from Tuk Tuk, and Steak and Halloumi who… well, the clue’s in the title on that one.
The 2018 Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival takes place Fri 25 May (6-11pm), Sat 26 May (11.30am-4.30pm; 6-11pm) and Sun 27 May (12-5pm) at Biscuit Factory, Edinburgh. Tickets are on sale now, from £35.