MORE than 10,000 thirsty punters supped their way through more than 35,000 pints in scorching temperatures at this year's Derby summer beer festival.
Organisers of the event, which finished on Sunday, also said the decision to hold part of the show in a marquee outside was so successful they would do it again.
Russ Gilbert, chairman of the festival, said the four-day event had gone as well as he could have hoped.
He said: "The only complaints I have had have been from two people who said it was too hot.
"I don't take that one too strongly because it has been glorious for the past few days, though I can't take credit for that one.
"But definitely the most consistent compliment I have had about the whole thing has been about the marquee."
There is an element of irony in this; Mr Gilbert admits that the decision to use the marquee was prompted by the lack of space available in the Assembly Rooms.
The Great Hall inside the venue – usually a big part of the festival – is currently closed for renovation, so organisers opted to transplant that part of the event outside into the marquee in Market Place.
But with the bright weather, Mr Gilbert said that many people had enjoyed this section the most.
He said: "The thing is, it worked as an advert for the festival. When it is normally fully inside the Assembly Rooms people can walk by and not know it is on. But this year we had so many people dropping in, seeing it there laid out in the Market Place and wanting to get involved.
"We had queues every morning before we opened at 11."
There was a choice of more than 250 beers, across seven bars, with the marquee bar featuring beers from 32 Derbyshire brewers, a number of special brews for the festival and others from around the country.
Inside the Assembly Rooms, the new City Bar featured beers from all 12 Derby brewers; four brewery bars from Titanic, Fullers, Blue Monkey and Muirhouse Breweries; and the Darwin bar provided a selection of beers from around the country, many of them new ones, served on hand pumps. It amounted, Mr Gilbert said, to a pre-order of more than 29,000 pints – but even that was not enough.He said: "After the Thursday we made some calculations and we realised we would run dry by Saturday night at that rate so we ordered another 7,500 pints.
"Now, not all that was drunk dry but that's not the idea.
"What you don't want is a situation where some poor chap coming along on Sunday gets no beer at all.
"But even taking that into account, we got through a lot of beer.
"It was a fantastic effort and it couldn't have been done without the 200 volunteers who have worked so brilliantly."
