Bristol beer events & tour dates
Our upcoming Saturdays are below. Underneath, an honest guide to what else fills a Bristol beer year — and when to come if beer is the point of the trip.
Upcoming Bristol Craft Beer Experience dates
Live availability from DesignMyNight. Public tours run on selected Saturdays, at least monthly, with more through the summer.
Bristol Craft Beer Experience
£69per person — 4 hours, all tastings and platters included
Redeeming a gift voucher? Message us instead of booking above.
Nothing that suits? A private group tour can usually run on your date, including weekdays.
Bristol's beer year, roughly
Bristol runs on beer events more or less continuously, but the shape of the year is fairly consistent. If you're building a weekend around drinking well, this is how it tends to fall.
Spring
Breweries start opening their taprooms more often as the evenings stretch, and the harbourside comes back to life. Good time for tours: our dates are easier to get than summer, the walking is comfortable, and the city hasn't filled up with visitors yet.
Summer
The busiest and best time to be here. Bristol's harbour events and the wider festival season pull big crowds, taprooms run outdoor sessions, and we add extra tour dates to cope with demand. Book well ahead — summer Saturdays go weeks in advance, and if you're planning around one of the city's big weekends, months.
Autumn
Arguably the connoisseur's season. Fresh-hop and harvest beers start appearing, cask comes back into its own, and the festival calendar picks up again after the summer lull. Cooler walking weather and easier availability.
Winter
Fewer public dates, but a bright cold Saturday on the harbour with a dark beer in your hand is an underrated way to spend an afternoon — and it's the easiest time of year to get a group booked in. Christmas is our busiest period for private tours and gift vouchers.
A word on festival dates. Bristol's beer festivals, taproom takeovers and brewery open days move around from year to year, and we'd rather not publish dates that turn out to be wrong. Check directly with organisers before you book travel — and if you tell us the weekend you're coming, we'll happily flag anything we know is on.
Making a weekend of it
Our tour runs from 11:45am to around 4pm, which leaves the evening entirely free — and it finishes on King Street, which is the best possible place to be released into. Plenty of guests build a whole weekend around it: the tour on Saturday afternoon, King Street and the old city in the evening, and taprooms in St Philips or Bedminster on the Sunday.
Our Bristol beer guide covers the areas and breweries worth your own time.
Running a beer event in Bristol?
We're always interested in what's happening across the city, and we point guests towards things we rate. If you're a Bristol brewery, taproom or bar with something on — an open day, a tap takeover, a launch — drop us a line. We can't promise coverage, but we do read everything.
Tour itineraries, venues, beers and pricing can change — breweries occasionally close their doors to visitors at short notice, and we'll always substitute a comparable stop if that happens. Everything on this page was correct at the time of publishing.
Get a date in the diary
Public Saturdays fill up. Private groups can go almost any day.