Bent N Bongs Beer Bash (Atherton Beer Festival)

Festival Details

Festival Description

The Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust, in association with CAMRA, present the 34th Bent and Bongs Beer Bash, February 6 - 8, 2025.

Dates and Times

Opening times for the 2025 festival are:

Thursday 6 February	6pm - 11pm	Ł3
Friday 7 February	4pm - 11pm	Ł6
Saturday 8 February	12pm - 9pm	Ł6

Free admission on Saturday night after 6:30pm

Entry to the beer festival is pay-on-the-door only. There are no advance tickets other than those for sponsors.

Venue

Venue: The beer festival takes place at the Atherton Roller Rink.

What Three Words
If you use What Three Words (and if you don't you should) ///free.spring.teams will drop you right on the doorstep.

For full and comprehensive directions for how to find us by trains and buses head to our How To Find Us page.

Beers

More details about the beers closer to the festival. There will be plenty of favourites, and plenty of new brews.

Music and Entertainment

Live entertainment at all sessions.

The bands lined up for 2025 are:

Thursday night	DJs Steve Pownall and Dave Manny	Our local DJs will be spinning the vinyl for all kinds of music spanning all kinds of genres.
Friday night	Raspberry Glam	I mean what can we say? Bring your big hair, your sequins, your platforms, flares, and anything sparkly.
Saturday (early afternoon - 1pm ish)	Run out the Guns	High energy folk, Irish, and traditional sea shanty band.
Saturday (late afternoon - 4pm ish)	The Rivington Brass Band	If you promise to behave we'll put them on the fllor like last year for all kinds of party music.
Saturday (evening - 6pm+ ish)	TBC	TBC

Food and Festival Fodder

All sessions will have heaps of yummy, scrummy food. The perfect accompanyment to heaps of yummy, scrummy beer.

New To The Festival - Getting Your First Pint

When you enter the festival we will give you your souvenir glass.

We can't stress this enough. Look after your glass. Your glass is your drinking vessel for the whole session and is yours to keep when you head for home. Treat your glass as your friend. Hold it carefully. Keep it out of harm's way. There are no spare glasses kept behind the bars so when you turn up for a drink you need your glass.

Remember! No glass = no beer!

Do not put your glass on the barrier around the rink itself. It's too easy for it to be knocked off and break. A broken glass means no glass. Remember! No glass = no beer!

The festival runs on a token system. To buy beer you must first buy tokens.

The token desk is at the end of the roller rink where you came in.

Once you have your tokens, head for your bar of choice. Please do not try to use cash. The bar staff cannot accept it and will send you to the token desk to buy tokens.

Remember! No tokens = no beer!

Payment for tokens is cash, card, or contactless.

The token desk will cash in any unused tokens at the end of the night. N.B. Tokens are valid only on the day you buy them. They do not roll over from one day to the next.

The rink is organised into 5 bars:

- Ciders and Perrys
- Real Ales
- Craft Corner
- Belgium, Foreign, and Fruit Beers
- Gin and Prosecco

The real ales are organised alphabetically by brewery so when looking for the beer of your choice just follow the letters.

Sponsor the Festival

Head over to our dedicated 2025 Sponsors page for full details of what's available for the 2025 festival. There are options there to suit everyone, and don't forget that you can set-up a sponsorship deal as a group of friends to get access to the sponsors' only hour (5pm-6pm) on Thursday. This isn't exclusive to businesses.

Photography

Enormous thanks to the photographers who volunteered their time for 2024. You are all brilliant.

We'll be doing our best to get them back again for 2025.

Meet The Organisers (The Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust)

The festival is goverened by the Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust, the BBCT for short, a registered charity. If you want to know more about the BBCT and where the money raised by the festival goes head over to the charity's new online home. There isn't a massive amount of information here right now but it will grow over time.

Keep Me Informed

The best way by far to hear about future festivals is to subscribe to our email list. We won't spam you. We won't share your email address. You'll get a handful of emails a year mostly around the time of the festival.

Sign-up here: Opt-in to the Bent and Bongs Email List

On social we are:
Facebook
Twitter/X: @bentnbongs
... but we have absolutely no control over whether these platforms keep you up to date with anything we post.

We also run a blog at blog.bentnbongs.com.

We seem to have adopted the hashtag #bentnbongs for chatter about the festival.

Preserved for all posterity, and for anyone struggling to sleep, the details for the 2024 and earlier festivals are saved here.



Please send all comments or suggestions to