During this week, over 6,000 pubs (and quite a few breweries) are celebrating Cask Ale Week.  The week is sponsored by both CAMRA and Cask Marque.

Unfortunately, their website is a little low on information (1) … their is nothing about the breweries involved and none of the pubs that I checked had any details about events included.

Luckily, that is not the only source for information about the week’s events in/around Oxford.  Hook Norton has a range of activities planned and details are available online … these include a meeting with their female brewer at the Coach & Horses in Banbury.  For more national news about the week, CAMRA has a whole page devoted to the week.  Additionally, I found the themes for the week at the IFBB site:

• Monday 6 April: National Beer Day – calling for the Government to recognise this as an official holiday
• Wednesday 8 April: FemALE Day – only 16% of women have tried cask ale, activities will take place to encourage female customers to sample Britain’s national drink
• Thursday 9 April: Introduce A Friend – the majority of cask ale virgins are introduced to it by a friend. Through the power of social networking sites and celebrity ambassadors, we will be asking cask ale fans to introduce a friend
• Friday 10 / Saturday 11 April: Visit A Brewery – breweries from around the UK will be opening their doors to the public for behind the scenes tours and sampling
• Saturday 11 April at 7pm: World’s Biggest Toast! Help set a world record and raise a toast to cask ale

(1) I think that I figured out why the site was so low on information.  It cost £40 + VAT (£46) for each landlord to register their pub for the week.  In these difficult times, I can understand why a lot of pubs did not register on the site.