Hold on tight to your glasses, the sound of dozens of beer barrels rolling into the city signals final preparations for the York Beer Festival. Bar Talk writer Chris Greenwood investigates what all the noise is about.

OPENING, checking and tasting more than 100 casks of beer might sound like a vision of beer-sodden heaven for many - but for Richard Parker it is the mountainous task that awaits him as part of preparations for the York Beer Festival.

A veteran of five similar celebrations of ale in the city, Richard is responsible for ordering, welcoming and maintaining 105 nine-gallon barrels, containing some 7,000 pints, which will form the liquid core of the Campaign For Real Ale festival.

The eagerly awaited three-day festival returns to York this Thursday after a one-year absence. Drinkers have snapped up all the advance tickets for the Evening Press-sponsored event but thankfully there are still on-the-door tickets available for Friday afternoon visitors.

Six-months preparation by York CAMRA members will culminate when Richard opens and tastes the condition of the beers which have been brought in from up and down the country. It's a messy job which leaves him drenched from head to toe in frothy beer spray and smelling like a brewery.

"At that time it's really yeasty stuff and as you can imagine that's not very pleasant. My girlfriend has to put up with the consequences for days," he says.

"But by the time we open up to the public, the beer's come into condition, everyone relaxes and I just have to keep the staff sober, check the beers stay good and the festival pretty much runs itself. There's never any trouble and it's a very friendly affair."

More than two dozen volunteers will man posts at the Priory Street Centre, off Micklegate, for the festival's five sessions. The event has been given a ghostly theme and features a fiendish selection of beers, ciders and wines, spread across two halls.

A special festival brew, created at the Brown Cow Brewery at Barlow, near Selby, will be joined by beers from a host of North Yorkshire breweries including York Brewery, Rooster, Rudgate, Malton, Hambleton and Jules Dolan's Abbey Bells micro brewery.

The furthest travelling beer, Strong Splitter, named after a Viking King, is also the strongest - a head-throbbing 8.5 per cent ABV from Orkney's brewery. But there is of course plenty of lighter fair on offer, including everything from a lemon fruit brew to newly-created lager beers.

Tockwith's Rudgate Brewery, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, will set up its own bar offering celebration T-shirts featuring their updated branding as well as their award-winning brews, Viking and Ruby Mild, served by brewery staff. Who could be more knowledgeable?

With so much beer on offer, organisers hope to avoid the common problem of a shortage in the variety of beer left by the last session. And the new venue has plenty of space for drinkers and drink alike, with racks of scaffolding to hold the barrels lining the walls of the two halls.

Patrick Hickey, of York CAMRA, says: "We have been very careful this year to order enough, building in some excess to the order which will probably be drunk by grateful members as they clear up on Sunday morning."

If the festival passes as successfully as expected, Patrick is hopeful that the group will be able to return to the city centre venue next year to showcase a new season of the best the thriving real ale industry has to offer.

"It's been six-months since we started organising this back in September. We thought that it seemed a long way in advance but we soon realised that it was going to take some time to organise such a mammoth event properly," he adds.

"It's an opportunity to sample the amazing variety available throughout Britain in a convivial atmosphere. Now we are just looking forward to getting on with it and celebrating some great beers."

The York Beer festival begins on Thursday at 7pm. There are two sessions on Friday and Saturday, from midday until 4pm and 7pm until 11pm. The two drinking halls are no smoking and there is disabled access.

Updated: 16:27 Friday, March 21, 2003