Scottish Food Events and Festivals: June 2019

June features a host of beer festivals, the return of a nostalgia-powered cocktail bar, and some soon-to-be award-winning street food

Feature by Peter Simpson | 23 May 2019
  • The Upside Down

We begin this month’s round-up with a chance to meet one of our favourite breweries from the north of England. The fantastic Cloudwater brewery (big flavours, lovely branding) host a Meet the Brewer at Six Degrees North’s Glasgow pub. Chat to the team and find out how they tick, or just fire through the delicious beers pouring from the ten taps they’ve taken over. Warning: your ability to say phrases like ‘ten-tap takeover’ may diminish as the evening wears on. 30 May, from 6pm, 566 Dumbarton Rd, Glasgow 

Staying with the beer theme but getting a bit festive with it, Fyne Ales’ Fyne Fest returns with dozens of great breweries from across the UK and beyond. A main bar with forty beers on tap! A delightful lochside location! The kind of festival that suggests getting a cask of beer to drink while pitching your tent! Truly, a fyne job all round. 31 May - 3 Jun, Fyne Ales Brewery, Cairndow, Argyll, tickets from £47.50, fynefest.com

Do you like the pop culture of the 1980s, as well as extremely gnarly synth lines and delicious cocktails? If so, you’re in luck – Edinburgh pop culture drinkmongers The Pop Up Geeks are reviving The Upside Down, their Stranger Things inspired cocktail bar. Expect tasty and intriguing drinks, vaporwave on the stereo, and veiled references to the Demogorgon. From 7 Jun, East Market St Arches, Edinburgh, thepopupgeeks.com/theupsidedown 

June in Edinburgh also means Leith Festival, a celebration of community and creativity that takes place throughout the first half of the month. Of course, celebrations of community and creativity also need that other ‘C’ – cash – and that’s where Steel Coulson Tap’s Beer Festival comes in. 10p from every pint sold over the festival weekend will be donated to Leith Festival’s coffers, and that’s the kind of charitable giving we can get behind. 13-15 Jun, 24 Henderson St, Edinburgh, facebook.com/SteelCoulson

Mid-month, the best of Scotland’s buzzing street food scene comes together for the Scottish Street Food Awards at everyone’s favourite scran-packed shed, The Pitt. Expect a wide array of the country’s best food trucks; expect live music and DJs; expect, if the last few years are anything to go by, to see the fried chicken legends of The Buffalo Truck somewhere near the top of the rankings. As fans of street food and a good bit of competitive ranking, count this Food and Drink section as ‘thoroughly on-board’. 15-16 Jun, 11am - 10pm, The Pitt, 125 Pitt St, Edinburgh, entry £2, facebook.com/pittstmarket

Real Ale. Two words that often pose more questions than they answer – what makes it real? Who determines what is real? Have we been drinking Fake Ale this entire time? One place to find out is at the Glasgow Real Ale Festival, brought to you by the brown beer-loving, ‘we were into beer before it was cool’ folks at CAMRA. They’ll take over the Briggait with 150-or-so ales over the course of a weekend. Yes, that’s right; one hundred and fifty beers. 20-22 Jun, The Briggait, 141 Bridgegate, Glasgow, entry £4-6, glasgowrealalefestival.co.uk 

And finally, it’s the tenth anniversary outing for the Midsummer Beer Happening. Run by the fine folks behind the aforementioned Six Degrees North, the Happening somehow combines a mega-sesh featuring more than 100 beers from across the UK with an enormously popular 100-mile bike ride up some fairly big hills. As much daylight as you can handle while exhausted bike riders flop around you – what better way to mark the midpoint of 2019? 20-22 Jun, Baird Park, Stonehaven, tickets from £21.68 via Eventbrite, midsummerbeerhappening.co.uk

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