SIBA to hold first ever Great Northern Beer Festival

The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) will hold its first northern beer festival later this week.

The Great Northern Beer Festival runs from tomorrow (October 28) to Saturday at Manchester's Palace Hotel.

It is expected to attract up to 5,000 visitors, making it their biggest beer festival in the North.

SIBA's northern brewers will be providing around 300 cask and 120 bottled beers for the competition, held on the first morning.

Brewers will compete in nine categories, and the winner of each goes through to the SIBA National Beer Competition in February.

Category winners from that will then be sold on the SIBA Champions Bar at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival.

Alex Brodie, festival organiser for SIBA's northern region, said: "This is a celebration of the current revolution in brewing in the UK, which now has over 700 breweries, more than at any time in most of our lifetimes.

"This festival is about SIBA showing the public the exhilarating range of beers now being brewed in the North."