The 10th Loch Ness Beer Festival is nearly ready to start. Over 60 ales have arrived (well most of them have!) along with some lovely looking ciders from GWatkin – brand new to the Highlands we believe.

Day 1 will see the official debut of the River Leven Brewery – a new brewplant installed in the premises formerly occupied by the Atlas Brewery in Kinlochleven. We’ll also have some Loch Ness beer on as well as some we’re really looking forward to from Tempest and Blue Monkey.

Music on Friday will be from Tipsy Laird.

Saturday afternoon we’ll be having an official beer tasting course run by the local CAMRA branch, and an evening of local folk music from 9pm.

Sunday evening will be a more informal beer and cider tasting in the Lounge Bar.

Monday – Wednesday will be our annual Pool Tournament before the “highlight” of the week on Thursday night with Steve’s Pub Quiz at 9pm. It is likely, surprisingly, to be very busy on Quiz Night so get here early to grab a table.

Then we finish off on Friday and Saturday with music from the Penny Dogs – they have such a big repertoire these days we need 2 nights to fully appreciate them.

We have a huge amount of raffle prizes to give away in aid of Breast Cancer Care Scotland so come along and buy as many tickets as you can. And don’t forget, 20p of every pint goes straight to BCC so the more you drink, the more charitable you are!!

(N.B. Please drink responsibly, and frequently.)

Sad news this week amidst the excitement of the Brewery test brews and the build up to the 10th Loch Ness Beer Festival.

Archie, our faithful collie who had been with us throughout our time here at the Benleva died on September 11th. He’d been ill for a while and passed away quietly at home in the arms of Allan.

After a pretty awful start to life Archie was saved by the SSPCA and we can safely say he thoroughly enjoyed his 10 years in Drumnadrochit, greeting his many friends in the village when they popped in for a pint or 3.

Murphy and Somer are a little subdued at the moment but the Beer Festival will perk us all up and we’ll make it a worthy tribute to Archie. We’ll never forget you pal.

Confirmed breweries update :-

Isle of Skye, Cairngorm, An Teallach, Inveralmond, Highland Brewing, Fyne Ales, Stewart Brewing, Ayr Brewing, Traditional Scottish Ales, Orkney, Tempest, Deeside, Burnside and Loch Ness Brewery from Scotland. With hopefully a special new brew from Colonsay too.

From England-shire :- Thornbridge (Jaipur back to defend its crown), Blue Monkey, Salamander and Saltaire with more to be confirmed.

Our breweries have been very generous with raffle prizes so we shall be having a draw every day of the festival, and a grand draw on the final night for the star prizes, including the signed Andy Murray shirt.

The nominated charity for the 10th Loch Ness Beer Festival is Breast Cancer Care Scotland. This is very important to us and hopefully it can help to show our wonderful wee sister just how special and important she is to us. In order to maximise funds for this excellent charity we shall be doing a number of things…

1. Raffle – we’re going to be selling raffle tickets and have some excellent prizes already donated. Due to our Dunblane roots we’ve managed to secure a signed Andy Murray shirt, hand delivered by his Granny! By the time of the draw (24th September) he’ll be the new US Open champion which will add to its value considerably. We also have 2 return flights from Inverness to Kirkwall, a weekend for 2 at the Benleva and a Day with the Brewer at a mystery Scottish brewery (to be confirmed…) We’re also asking all our breweries to donate something to the raffle so the prize fund will swell before the day.
2. Beer – our normal price for ale is a staggeringly reasonable £2.80. For the Festival we’re increasing this to £3.00 and the extra 20p will go straight to BCC. Hopefully nobody will complain too much!
3. Glasses – souvenir glasses will be available to buy and £2 for each one sold will go straight to BCC.

Anyone reading this who would like to donate a prize simply email or phone the Hotel. If you’d like to buy tickets drop us an email.

Thank you for reading and we hope to see as many of you as possible at the Festival. Those of you on Twitter please retweet this link to all your followers and we’ll make this a huge success.

Goodness me doesn’t time fly! It’s been a while since the last blog post but much has been happening.

The 10th Loch Ness Beer Festival – can it really be the 10th one already??!! – will run from the 16th – 24th September 2011. Beer ordering is well underway and we should have some marvellous ales to sample including some from….wait for it…..the Loch Ness Brewery! Yes it’s been so long in the incubation that many were starting to think it was as elusive as Nessie herself but the time is nearly upon us for the beers to be launched.

The nominated charity for this year’s Festival is Breast Cancer Care Scotland, more of which in our next blogpost which will be published very soon.

Breweries confirmed are all our stalwarts – Isle of Skye, Fyne Ales, An Teallach, Cairngorm, Orkney/Atlas, Highland Brewing, Stewart Brewing and Inveralmond. We’ll have more to confirm in the very near future….

Music will be from Tipsy Laird (16th) and The Penny Dogs (23rd & 24th) as well as a folk night on the 17th. There will be an official CAMRA beer tasting on the afternoon of the 17th and a fabulous Steve’s Pub Quiz on the 22nd. The traditional Beer Festival Pool Competition will be on the Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday and we hope to have a whisky tasting and a Meet The Brewer session at some point too.

Mild in May is a campaign launched by CAMRA to celebrate Mild, a long established but endangered style of ale. As part of this we aim to have a Mild on the bar every day in May. We’re starting off with Ilkley Black from Yorkshire and hope to follow it up with a mild from Foxfield in the Lake District and others will include Born to be Mild, Ruby Mild, Dark Munro and hopefully many others. Come along and give it a go.

Yes It’s back! Friday 11th March 2011 @ 9 pm.

With a massive Cash Jackpot of at least £250 to be won!!! Someone had better win it soon or it’ll be going to Vegas……

Well, it’s been a while since this was updated – sorry for that, and Happy New Year to everyone. What a year it’s going to be for us! The Loch Ness Brewery has been progressing slowly over the winter. Still no beer yet but the Website has just been launched. Let us know what you think. Test brews are also in the pipeline at the Skye Brewery. March is the planned launch – but no date confirmed just yet!

Exciting news today. We are proud to be the first place anywhere to sell the proper cask version of Colonsay IPA. Up until now it’s only been available in keg or bottle form but, judging by the small tasting this morning, will be very popular in cask form too.

We’ve also taken a large delivery from those nice chaps at Fyne Ales so it will be mostly Fyne Ales for the next week. Lovely!

Long overdue report on the 9th Loch Ness Beer Festival.

59 Ales and 9 Ciders managed to make it on sale during this year’s Festival. The Thornbridge Brewery‘s ales did not disappoint and all, from the 3.5% Wild Swan to the 7.7% Halcyon, were excellent. As usual, all the local brews were superb and special mention also to the Tryst Brewery who supplied us with 3 excellent beers, as well as assisting with the cider supplies.

The Wilkins Farmhouse Cider was particularly well received, and the ladies seemed very taken with the Weston’s Raspberry Twist Cider – unfortunately no longer available.

The Guess Beer was Hebridean Gold from the Isle of Skye Brewery.

Beer of the Festival – Jaipur from Thornbridge

Brewery of the Festival – Cairngorm Brewery, Aviemore

All in all a superb week and thanks to everyone who came along to drink the beers and listen to the bands.

For anyone wanting more regular news updates we do have a Facebook page (which has lots of Beer Festival photos) and a rarely used Twitter thing – @BenlevaHotel.