Beer Compurgation

In 2012, the highlight of the beer year came in October at an old Victorian Baths in Manchester. It came as the Independent Manchester Beer Convention announced their innovation to an old, tiresome format and changed my perception of beer festivals, or at least what they could be. It was a joyous success and only natural that it were to return this year, bigger, bolder and certainly busier. There was a lot to live up to, high expectations, a requirement to improve on near perfection, so how did it fair? Room 2 Lasting four days this year, rather than the previous two, I, along with five companions, opted for the Saturday Lite session allowing me to experience it from 11 'til 4.30. Two days of jubilant tweeting, hashtagging and bragging had already passed before I could return to the Victoria Baths to take my enjoyment from the festival. The rooms had expanded from two to three, the food range had multiplied considerably and so, notably, had the number of festival goers...

Based on a True Story Once Upon a Time… there lived a beast; a handsome beast, but a beast nevertheless. He was a Beast in personality, in attitude, in application and in love. His inability to show feelings led him to the wenches of outer Chester-shire, Lancaster-shire and the repugnant pit known as Wakefield. It was an unhappy time. The Beast also had an insatiable thirst that he could not replete, despite countless attempts. Never contented with the ale served at the local taverns, the Beast began sampling all manner of bottled delights from across the earth to satiate his taste. Many a pilgrimage to a shop in the hamlet of Headingley , outside the kingdom of Leeds , was excursed. The strange, foreign, bottled elements inside held many liquid delights. Some featured bovine, some deranged canines, one held a broadened men holding a barrel above his head shouting “bastard” to another fellow. On one final occasion, when it was time for the Beast to depart Headingley for mor...

Smoked beer has overtime become my definition as a beer enthusiast. (If you didn’t know this, refer to my swooning over meeting a worker from Schlenkerla at Port Street Beer House last year.) It is my niche; my attribute where people will get in touch to say to me, “Do you know such-and-such-a-place has a smoked porter on at the minute?” or “Such-and-such-a-shop has got a new smoked beer in.” It’s also my brother’s (The Booze Nooze ) love too and we tend to get in touch with each other any time we drink a beverage supposedly smoky to review it for each other. Yes, I have a lot of time for this particular genre of beer. Despite this, it is a style rather untouched in British brewing, noticeably absent from many of the more modern microbreweries or “craft” brewer’s range. Though this disappoints me, I hope it’s not the next “ thing to do” on the Brewer’s check list . We’ve had the big influx of Saisons and the recent fad of Sours, I hope Smoke isn’t the next big thing. Especially...

It’s the third annual Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt and the third year I have not raced to my “local” orange store to pick up bottles of the North’s regional finalists . Last week, some writer’s bloggers and tweeters took to a Twitter tasting session – with the witty hashtag of #Sainsbeerys – to taste some of the finalists from their area. I am certainly not criticising this in any shape of form, but it gave me time to attribute some of my own thoughts about this yearly event. I know that as a beer enthusiast I should be grateful and supportive of this mass company making a stride in the right direction of good beer promotion   I’m not so stubborn as to not see the appeal and the positives from it. There is the chance to improve the woeful selection all supermarkets provide. I would say, out of all the corporate, high-street mauling machines, Sainsbury’s do offer the widest range of decent beer in my area, though this doesn’t persuade me to shop there. It is obviously...

Now becoming an annual event, the third Tameside Beer Festival (housed in the Civic Hall in Stalybridge) took place this weekend again. I’d been to both previous events and, whilst the first was a bit of a swift haze before this blog existed, I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s so much I did a short post about it . I always feel a need to promote festivals, especially the smaller, local ones that are as well run as this. As the festival is only held on a Friday and Saturday and is purely for charitable reasons, arranged by the local Rotary Club in Ashton-Under-Lyne, there’s no silly “trade day” or weekday event that empties the hall of the best beers before any regular Joe’s have had chance to set foot in the door. In fact, for a group who are not accustomed to organising such events, the rotary club do an excellent job of running a fair and smooth festival. Entry is a standard £3 that INCLUDES the programme. Beer tokens come in simple £1.25 form, as that is the price for a half...

I've said before, and I'll start this particular post in the same vein that I rarely do individual beer reviews. They won’t happen unless a beer is particularly worth writing about or unless it serves some higher discussion purpose.   So I suppose the reason I am happy to break this for Magic Rock’s Strongman was based on this post I published after the crazy reaction to the release of Un-Human Cannonball from the same brewery. The hype, furore and general geekiness left me in a rather disillusioned state about this beer passion of mine. I no longer knew where the line between actual fan and fanboy existed. I had been alarmed to see tweeters and bloggers I respected caught up in the general hype. Yet, I could not deny, there was an element of jealousy to my dismay. I completely missed out altogether on Un-Human Cannonball and to this day still have no idea what it tastes like.   But, I was much more impressed with the release of Magic Rock’s Barrel Ag...

It’s a well-known fact that people who drink Real Ale are superior to those who don’t. (People who drink “craft” beer are in a different stratosphere altogether.) But all groups and members of society need an arch-nemesis, a rival, an enemy to counter their beliefs and fight for justice. Sonic has Robotnik. Professor Layton has Don Paolo. Krill have whales. And we Real Ale drinkers have lager louts; fiends who take it upon themselves to disturb and disrupt our noble way of life. The lager disease has never been more apparent than on one Trans-pennine Real Ale Trail – yes, I am returning to this topic once more. I covered it last summer after a rather ridiculous amount of attention. I reviewed it again this May, after partaking in the fiendish event. And now I draw to it a final time to bring joyous tidings: the Enemy has been defeated. There has been an on-going war for at least three years on the militant train line between Stalybridge and Batley. Here the honourable and ...