Beer Compurgation

It’s June 2018 and Taylor Swift is due to play the City of Manchester Stadium. I have two tickets to the occasion and it is fairly safe to assume that a slightly underwhelmed partner is to accompany me with less enthusiasm than myself. Despite the presence of non-fans, Taylor didn’t indulge the mixed audience. There were no covers of Lady Antebellum songs or stage sharing with James Bay. It was almost as if the entire show was tailored towards Swifties, the assumption being that those with tickets had paid for such an experience. Because there isn’t an alternative to such a show. This was the one off opportunity. My partner didn’t say, “I don’t think I’ll get value for money seeing Taylor Swift at City’s stadium – why don’t we see a Bay City Rollers tribute act at the New Inn instead?” There is no equivalence. The New Wave of Tickers   There has been further movement within the beer industry in the last couple of years to keep taking influence in styles...

We are more spoilt right now then we often care to remember. For years I’ve been hearing that there has never been a better time to be a beer drinker and that is only increasing. Still, over-indulgence can lead to complacency and timely feet-grounding reminders can be necessary. If this time of year really is beer festival season then I thought that I’d grown tired of it. Much like the occasional December when one needs a little push in finding their Christmas spirit, there was something about this festival season that just wasn’t clicking for me. I was weary of rush for tickets, overly subscribed trade days and beer list "drops." I left Leeds International Beer Festival (LIBF) in September feeling a little disappointed in something that I couldn’t quite place. In contrast to all of my positive previous visits, when people asked me how it was I was responding with a shrug and a muttered “ alright, yeah .” I couldn’t place my discontent. The festival is still...

Loyalty is often blind. I still remember the moment I was stood in Beermoth beer shop (in the centre of Manchester) and picked up bottles of Pale Ale and Dubbel from a brewery I'd not previously seen. Those spiral tickets around the bottle were eye-catching to me. “They are a new brewery from Stockport,” I was told and I had no reason to believe otherwise. But further inspection after the beers were drunk revealed a Waterloo Court address on the label – an address all too familiar to me. It isn't in Stockport at all. It's an address in the famous Manchester suburban town of Stalybridge . Not only is Stalybridge the town I was born and raised in. Not only is it a town home to my much loved favourite pub that has given me so much . But it is home to the railway arches come industrial units of Waterloo Court where I was once given a stable job after months of unemployed and self-employed torture and uncertainty. That business moved on from the four ra...

Manchester doing as Manchester does. It’s over and the recovery was a slow process. The efforts were monumental and the attendances were decent. That was   Manchester Beer Week   – in its inaugural 2016 year. It was a week of such beerness that even finding the time to write about it needed to be delayed. I needed a recovery period to find normality again; a sentiment shared by the conductor of this fantastic occasion when I saw him a fortnight ago - acclaimed beer writer   Connor Murphy . It seems so much longer than a month ago but I am still determined to exalt the praises of one of the Manchester Beer Scene's finest hours. There was so much packed in to the week that I did want to produce a post talking about My Manchester Beer Week –   along the lines of this great post by half of my beer week soul mate at Yes! Ale  (where you may also see my hand holding a Biere De Garde) -    and after attending nine straight days worth of ...