Beer Compurgation

I must warn you I'm going to sentimentalise a beer festival. Some will definitely smirk and see it as aggrandising but I no longer care. There was a moment at the Independent Manchester Beer Convention 2015 that gave me a feeling I’ve never had at a beer festival before. It was the Friday evening session. After an afternoon session of just rolling with whatever happened I somehow ended up volunteering to work the Magic Rock bar in the evening. Don’t ask me how this even occurred, but it was my first time on the other side of proceedings. I’m not a brewer. I’ve never volunteered. So I’ve never had that pleasure. But, in a brief lull of the mass queues after some Ginspired or Bearded Lady PX, I stood from the bar, looked around this old Victorian pool come sports hall in Room 2 at all the happy revellers and felt a little emotional. The feeling was simple: This Is Brilliant and I’m very happy. Perhaps that seems a little over-romanticised for a beer festival, b...

Sometimes a disappointment can lead to something unexpectedly wonderful. The beer Rainbow Project entered it's third year in 2015. Originally conceived by Ryan Witter of Siren Brewery, this year the entire project felt much more like an event than I'd previously remembered.  This year's niche was that the seven UK breweries involved would be making collaboration beers with selected American breweries. Like many recent beer phenomenons, the excitement surrounding this event seemed to reach peak levels this year. Announcements of each beer were dropped like birth declarations. Each stage was given the fanfare treatment. But little of it excited me. Sour after sour after sour. Though some playfully called out my sour cynicism on Twitter , no matter what different styles you refer to them as, we ended up with 6 out of 7 of this year's Rainbow Project beers being sours. I was to be attending the Rainbow Project's Northern launch at the Magic Rock Ta...

This is Day Two of a two day experience in Leeds from May, that has taken a while to write about.  I was determined to finish it one day after several setbacks and distractions.  Day one is written about here. I woke from my slumber with clothes strung about the room and uneaten discarded takeaway scattered at different points on the duvet. Day one in Leeds had been a great time but the dehydration of screaming along to Mobb-phonics and going through the emotions of gun holding had left me feeling tender. Day two in Leeds was supposed to be spent sobering up and meeting somebody for non-alcohol based frivolity, whilst preparing for a stag do the following day. However, when the plans to meet up with somebody fell through, I had potentially a whole extra day of Leeds fun to go at. My first thoughts were of breakfast and after a quick Twitter enquiry I was overwhelmingly pointed in the direction of Northern Monk Refectory for early morning food, which suited me after m...

  Guilty as charged. Despite my love of the city when I visit, I've spent much of the past 12 months, like many others, becoming a little tired of a London-centric blogosphere and beer scene. From beer reviews, certain television tastings only featuring London brews to articles such as Shortlist's Pints and Pistachios 2015 that suggests that SEVEN of the TEN best new beer and food bars opened in the UK this year were from London, the focus on our biggest city has become increasingly exhausting to the rest of us.  Yet maybe it's just true that seven out of ten of the best new beer and food bars did come from London. So on a recent weekend trip I wanted to see for myself what the city has to offer now by experiencing over two days as much of the beer scene as I could squeeze in.  I was due to head to London the weekend before last for the tail end of London Beer City week and the London Craft Beer Festival. As it was, as much as a weekend of craft wan...

Drinking good beer means to support the industry and every aspect of it. Continuous measures and limitations have seriously affected our pubs, especially over the last decade. The famous public houses of British society have gone through a de-normalisation phase fuelled by those in power. Anything that is enjoyable, anything that is deemed unhealthy, is being ousted.  Whether it is the health and safety laws, increasing taxes on beer or the attempted destruction of the tobacco industry, it can no longer be argued that a proportion of the nation's population aren't a bunch of gratuitious, self-righteous killjoys whose aim and pleasure whilst they exist on this world is to control people's levels of fun and happiness. They will call it looking after the nation's health but all it is doing is limiting the people's levels of indulgences. So if a smoking ban inside pubs eight years ago wasn't enough, yesterday the proposed  banning of smoking in outdoor beer ...