EXPERIMENTATION is at the heart of St Peter Port’s Real Ale and Food Festival. It opened on Saturday with 10 pubs taking part and there will be a host of different ales and food available.

The Cornerstone has stretched its imagination with dishes incorporating a variety of drinks.

‘We’re taking part because it sounded like fun to try and tie in a food and beer combination. We spun it a little bit wider by putting in cider as well,’ said landlord Richard Cann.

‘It’s been fun making the meals and trawling through cookbooks like Larousse, just looking for things but not necessarily abiding by them.’

Because the pub normally does just bar meals, Mr Cann said it was enjoyable being creative and still serving affordable food.

Among the dishes on offer are double bass, Cynful beer stew and mushroom and ale pie.

‘I think Rocquettes rabbit is fantastic. It contains wild French rabbit and we’ve warned people to be careful because we don’t want them to break their fillings on the lead shot.’

The menu could change further if certain dishes do not sell well.

‘The first two customers we had in went straight for the specials board; one was a vegetarian and loved the mushroom and ale pie and her partner had the Rocquettes rabbit.’

The meals in the Cornerstone are centred on local produce where possible.

‘We’re not a wine bar and don’t do a lot of wine, but we do a lot of beer, real ale especially, so the festival will always fit in.

‘A lot of our customers are real ale buffs and were already looking forward to this.’

The Ship & Crown has seen a tremendous upsurge in real ale sales in the last six months and the festival is building on this.

‘People know it’s on and we’ve had them specifically coming in for the real ale and dishes, visitors and locals,’ said landlord Mark Pontin. ‘The last few years in the UK, real ale has been on the decrease, but in Guernsey we’ve had a massive increase in sales and there are more places available with it than there ever has been.’

He said the festival was enticing more people to try real ale.

‘The good thing about it is that every single beer has got a different and distinctive taste.’

The pub is offering beef and oyster and a chicken and ale dish for the festival’s two weeks.

‘We tried three or four dishes last year; the two we’ve got this year went really well and sold out each day.

‘We take part because we sell about two barrels a day as it is, so to get more people into it, the better it is for licensees and customers and it goes hand in hand with our clientele’s age group.’

He added that the type of visitor had changed since the schools went back and the festival fitted in well with that and Battle of Britain Week.

‘Younger people are definitely trying real ale more. The university students are trying it in England at their campus and coming back and trying it here.’

Things were also going well after the opening of the event at the Cock and Bull.

‘It’s been very successful; we’ve had more people in today drinking different beers and we’ve gone and had seven different beers on already. Hopefully it will give people a taste before our beer festival,’ said landlord Steve Taylor.

Both the Cock and Bull and Ship & Crown will have an increased selection of real ales on during October to coincide with the Tennerfest.

The festival runs until Sunday 19 September and includes £2-a-pint deals in selected pubs.