Newark Beer Festival – Beer, Burgers, Sausage Rolls, and Pork Pies

The Newark Beer and Cider Festival was held on the 26-28th May at the Riverside Park in, erm well surprisingly enough, in Newark. This was serious stuff, we even joined CAMRA beforehand so that we could get some extra tokens and stuff. More about that in a later post! 🙂

So anyway we popped along on the Saturday to sample a few beers, they had over 150 different ones to choose from so I figured we might be OK for liquid refreshment. It was a new crowd, some of the guys from work who like a pint (Adam and Sam) and some of their friends who also liked a pint. This was looking to be a pretty good day!

I was also looking for a little bit of food to soak all that lovely ale up with 🙂 perhaps a few small morsels and snacks to help us out as we got a little bit peckish and light headed?

I had my eyes on Fen Farm Venison who were here serving their Venison Burgers

I went for the Venison Burger with Cote Hill cheese for £4, I also took up the offer of some grilled onions on the top as well, which was a good plan. For some reason I added a splodge of yellow mustard for good measure. This was actually a pretty decent burger, often at these sort of events the burgers are kind of meh, but I was very happy with this one from Fen Farm.

Excellent tasty and juicy meat patty, simple and soft bread roll, and a big pile of grilled onion, ooh yes thank very much!

Porter’s Provisions Snacks

I knew that G. H. Porter Provisions were going to be at the Beer Festival so I made a beeline for their stall as soon as I had a chance. These Sausage Rolls looked the business, and they were the business.

I went off-piste a little forgoing the traditional option and taking a punt on the ‘Pork & Black Pudding’ sausage roll. This was an inspired choice! (if I say so myself), such a good tasty hand held treat!

I love Porters and I buy bacon from them everytime I make it over to Newark they are in my top 3 on my list of Nottinghamshire Bacon (message me to get the others 🙂 ) and check out a post from 2013 when I first found them: “G.H. Porter Provisons in Newark for some quality Smoked and Cured Bacon”

I do love a Pork Pie and these ones from Porter’s did look particularly fetching and well goddam tasty! I was not so sure about the thought of the addition of pickle, but I decided that I may as well go alonng for the ride so I bought one anyway to take home.

We ate this over a couple of lunches and I have to say that my thoughts on the pickle situation were to be without foundation. The slight tang of the pickle vinegar enhanced the whole pie and made it actually a lot more enjoyable. I am not sure why I was so surprised after all a bit of pickle on the side of a ploughman’s lunch with a slice of pork pie is quite the norm in my household.