Beer Compurgation

Dear Beer Con Whilst attending your festival there was some confusion in the queue that led to my hair getting wet. On arrival I wasn’t presented with numerous free tokens. Do you know who I am?. It’s a disgrace. It is no secret that the beer industry can be a pugnacious space. Fuelled by the natural negativity of social media, there are more arguments and squabbles in this vacuous void than ever before. The unrelenting antagonism became a little too much for me last year until a visit to Salford beer festival tore me from the doldrums of despair. The positivity of this particular festival space acted as a personal patronus against the beer Dementors that were slowly sucking the joy from anything to do with this hobby In the ensuing 10 months though the joy began to fade once more. Expense, repetitiveness, FOMO, guilds, Facebook forums and the constant fight for power by the networkers all brought me back within the group of silent, aimless, beer Hattifatte...

Soft Serve Trolltunga After stepping through the doors of Indy Man for the first time in October 2012 , I knew I was experiencing something different; a beer festival like no other I’d been to. I was sure that we were seeing a shift in the way things were done and the future.  In the years that followed came the event's  steady rise and progression – from the opening of more rooms in the building, changes in the layout, desperate scrambling for tickets, visitors from all over the world and then the moment I didn’t seem to know any beer person that wasn’t going. We came full circle in 2017. This year the build-up seemed to involve a touch less “fuss.” The tickets had still sold-out as quickly, but some of my favourite beer people weren’t doing the traditional journey to Manchester. Indy Man Beer Con had lost its place as the number one beer event on the calendar. In fact, it became almost cool to boast that you weren’t going. It wasn’t about mournin...