The 45th Newcastle Beer and Cider came to a close on Saturday after welcoming breweries from all over the north to show off their beers.
There were 110 beers on show at the Northumbria University Students Union throughout the week, more than 50 local ciders, and on Wednesday night 20 local breweries competed in the Battle of the Beers. The winning red ale was Hadrian Border's Rise of the Red, while the winning chocolate stout was Out There's Liquidity.
And punters came from all over the region - though one man's round trip to the festival clocks in at almost 10,000 miles!
Read more: Tiny Microbus in Gateshead wins big at CAMRA Pub of the Year awards
Rob Sutton travelled to Newcastle from Katy, a suburb in the west end of Houston in Texas. And he has loved his time in the North East, having originally intended to come three years ago but his trip was cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Rob told ChronicleLive from the beer festival: "I'm having a great time exploring the city and enjoying the great beers here. I've never been to Newcastle and I've heard a lot about Geordies, I had to come visit and find out in person."
And he says his experience of the city has been "a lot of fun", particularly the beer festival where he has enjoyed a lot of dark beers. His favourite was a crunchy stout, though unfortunately he couldn't remember which brewery it was from.
"Originally I was coming here in 2020, I had everything booked and was ready to come and then it all got cancelled due to Covid and as soon as I saw things open up, I came back this year. It's fantastic, I've really enjoyed myself. It's my first time to this part of the UK and I'm looking forward to coming back next year."
CAMRA also crowned its branch pub of the year, Microbus in Gateshead. Gary Moore, from Microbus, said: "This is astounding news to us, we're a little bar and we've only been running twelve months last weekend.
"We didn't want to win prizes, we just wanted to sell good beer. We wanted to have a good bar in Gateshead because it was a bit lacking at the time.
"Now, we've got good bars around us and we bounce off them and we're working to create a beer area in Gateshead. We didn't expect to win anything, that wasn't the plan, we just want to make good beer and that's it."
What did you think of the Newcastle Beer and Cider Festival? Let us know!
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