Real Ale Festival at MOSI

Hello again! As you may have guessed, the majority of these travel posts are dictated by where I have been volunteering. Well done if you got that at home. Anyway, this post is no different. I was recently volunteering at the MOSI Real Ale Festival, which you can have the pleasure* of reading about.

I believe this was called "Black Magic". Yummy.

Beer

Yes, for those of you that know me, I do like a drink. So this was certainly the place for me. On offer were approximately 90 different types of beer and cider, so there was a wide range of choice. The beers were reasonably priced for a festival, being on average £3 a pint. The bottles, however were more expensive. It did depend on how fancy you wanted to get. I believe I saw several 33cl bottles for about £4. To be fair, these were bottles of beer which incorporated several different types of flavours and ingredients.

Cost

To get into the festival itself, it cost £5 for the general public and £4 for concession (members of CAMRA, OAP's, students). This did strike me as expensive, but the event was a fundraiser for the museum and they do have to make money somehow. The bars were cashless, meaning you had to buy redeemable tokens at the entrance. They were refundable, but an unfortunate by-product of this was that if you had 50p left over, it didn't seem worth trying to refund it. This could be avoided by clever spending, or you could deal with it and donate it to MOSI. The donation solution was used by several people, earning the museum a nice extra bit of cash. 

Glasses were free to use during the event, which was a nice touch. Obviously you had to give them back at the end, but if you liked the design you could buy a clean one for £3 on your way out. If you wanted one for free, you would very likely be having a word with the security guard on your way out.

Somewhere in there is the main bar.

Music

From what I can remember, it was very good music. Think classic rock and general rock. Good stuff.

Location

If you hadn't guessed, it was in the power hall at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester. The power hall acted as an apt setting, providing several engines and steam-driven machinery from times gone by to marvel at.

Summary

This was the third real ale festival at MOSI, which I believe overall was a successful event. My only qualm is the cost of getting in, with the concession only knocking £1 off the price. Yet like I said earlier, the museum has to make money somehow. The festival should be running next September, but there is also the Manchester beer and cider festival in the new year if you can't wait until then. 

*Pleasure not guaranteed.