Corfu Beer Festival

Guest Blog by Alex Christou
of www.greencorfu.com

The Corfu Beer Festival

Celebrating Beer in Corfu
All Photos (c) Alex Christou

This October, the 1st Corfu Beer Festival was held in Arillas, in North West Corfu.  It was organised by our local Corfu Microbrewery, in close cooperation with the local community. It took a lot of work, and more than 150 volunteers were involved in the planning, setting up, advertising and actually running the Festival. The Festival lasted five days, from 9-13 October, and it was a bigger success than we could ever have imagined! Thousands of people visited the festival grounds, tasted the beers, local food and local products offered, enjoyed the music and danced along to many different tunes: Corfiot, Greek and German!

Corfu meets Bavaria

The theme was Corfu meets Bavaria. We chose Bavaria because it is the homeland of beer as we know it. The Law on the Purity of Beer (Reinheitsgebot) was made an official law of Bavaria back in 1516! Also in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, the annual Oktoberfest is held, the biggest and oldest beer festival in the world! So, the idea was that this festival could bring together Greeks and Germans to drink, eat and dance, leaving behind the politics that are trying to separate us.

Corfu Beer Festival: The Beers

The Corfu Microbrewery is a small but fast-growing brewery, producing some of the best beers in Greece. All their beers are fresh, unpasteurised and delicious. They produce two types of real ale, plus a lager, a pilsner, and a special beer re-fermented with honey. They were commissioned by JD Wetherspoon to produce a real ale called Koroibos exclusively for the London Olympics. With their connections they managed to get four German brewers to come to Corfu and brew four different wheat beers (Weizenbier) exclusively for the festival.

The Corfu Beer Festival

Food

There was a wide selection of food at the Corfu Beer Festival, from traditional Greek souvlakia to German weisswurst, and from local specialties such as sofrito and pastitsada to recipes created by accomplished Corfiot chefs especially for the occasion. (See Greece Travel Secrets’ Corfu Food and Drink page.)

The Corfu Beer Festival

Music and Dance

There was a diverse music program, changing every night. The stars were the traditional band Zuaweziaga from Bavaria, along with the Rosenheim dancers who performed their impressive dances in lederhosen every night. From the Greek side we had two to three different bands or dance groups each night, performing music ranging from traditional music and rembetika to opera and Queen covers! Dancing went on till deep in the night...

Seminars

In the mornings, when most of us were recovering from the previous night, seminars were organised on different subjects. There was of course a seminar on beer, but also seminars on bartending, cooking and olive oil, all presented by experienced professionals and acclaimed scientists.

The best thing of the whole festival though was the relaxed atmosphere. We may have had more than  10,000 people who drank about as many liters of beer, but there wasn’t a single misunderstanding or fight in the whole five days! It was a great experience and we are all looking forward to next year’s Corfu meets the UK festival (8-12 October 2014), with participants from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland!

More Information
For more videos of the festival you can visit our Green Corfu YouTube channel. And if you want to come to next year’s festival, you can check out our accommodations in Arillas!

Here's a taster of the Corfu Beer Festival from the Green Corfu YouTube video channel:


You might like these other Corfu pages...

  • Visiting Albania from Corfu

    Donna Dailey of Greece Travel Secrets visits Albania by boat from Corfu Town, staying overnight and seeing archaeological sites with Sipa Tours.

  • Southern Corfu

    Southern Corfu has busy beach resorts like Benitses, historical buildings like the Achilleion Palace and Gardiki Castle, and wildlife at the Korision Lagoon.

  • Paleokastritsa, Corfu

    Paleokastritsa is on the west coast of Corfu and is one of the most popular holiday spots. This page gives information on beaches, boat trips, weather and map.

  • Northern Corfu

    Northern Corfu is the most diverse part of the island, with Corfu's highest point, Mt Pantokrator, and beach resorts like Sidari and Palaiokastritsa.

  • Northern Corfu Drive

    There are two sides to every Greek island, the tourist and the traditional, and this drive from Corfu Town through northern Corfu shows the two faces of Corfu.

  • Corfu Town

    Corfu Town is the capital of Corfu and of the Ionian Islands and has museums, two forts, several museums, churches, and many other attractions.

  • Corfu Olives

    Corfu olives are an important part of this Greek island's economy, with an estimated 3-4 million trees producing olive oil of exceptional quality.

  • Corfu Offshore Islands

    There are three islands off the northwest coast of Corfu, Erikouusa, Othoni and Mathraki, popular with day-trippers from resorts like Sidari.

  • Corfu Food and Drink

    Information for travelers on Corfu Food and Drink including restaurants and tavernas, Corfiot specialties, desserts, wine and other Greek drinks like ouzo.

  • Corfu Festivals and Events

    Information for travellers to Greece on Corfu festivals and events including Easter, the Feast of St Spiridhon, Carnival and Name Days.

  • Corfu Climate: Sun, Rain, Winds

    The Corfu Climate page describes the hours of sun, the rain, the winds, to help you plan the best time to visit this Ionian island.

  • Best Things to Do on Corfu

    The best things to do on Corfu include visiting Palaiokastritsa, a day trip to Albania, seeing the Achilleion Palace, and the museums in Corfu Town.

  • Best Beaches on Corfu

    The best beaches on Corfu, chosen by Greece Travel Secrets, include Paleokastritsa, Mirtiotissa, Sidari and Cape Asprokavos.

  • Corfu

    Corfu or Kerkyra is the main island in the Greek Ionian islands with Corfu Town being one of the most attractive of Greek island capitals.

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