Beer Compurgation

Recently, and partly due to  the demise of Bury FC , I’ve decided to spend the odd spare Saturday I have throughout the football season going to watch a local (for now) football team and take in some of the pubs and bars around the towns and stadiums in which they reside. Tribalism is fickle. I grew up in Greater Manchester with a father from West Yorkshire and a mother from Merseyside, fighting a lifelong nationality identity crisis where I loved the country north of the border more than my own, for reasons nobody was sure of. On reflection, that identity was healthy; it helped shape me better. Everyone around me has always been so sure that Manchester is the greatest city of all time and it has always been nice to reply, from a very early age, “Personally I think Liverpool is much better.” Football is, of course, more clannish than most sports, cornicing youngsters and adults alike into antagonists baying for the blood of people who dare to live in a neighbo...

Whilst my work for the Irish and German authorities* on the reopening of drinking establishments has kept me busy during lockdown, our own government has announced that pubs are allowed to reopen on the 4th July . Many opinions and stances have emerged from this and will continue to do so for the next week and a half. Due to my lengthy post about how pubs may look back in April , including some ideas that a few establishments may be implementing, I was going to opt out of offering more conjecture to matters. But I then clicked on a set of polls on Twitter formed by the Hopinions podcast and, as usual, reading through the replies left me itchy to respond. As I am too verbose to form these thoughts on that platform, I have decided to answer each question here, considering some of the thoughts of others. (The Hopinions polls are still open at time of writing – add your own answers there if you wish.)   https://twitter.com/BeerOClockShow/status/12753959422383...

Back in 2016 for the inaugural Manchester Beer Week , I helped then curator Connor Murphy conceive a couple of events. Mine focused on trying to extend the ideas outside the centre and into the eastern boroughs, mainly Tameside . This included an attempted “Tameside Tap Takeover” at Stalybridge Buffet Bar. It says much of the advancement of the current beer scene that my requests and invitations to breweries in that period were met with confusion and scepticism. The realisation of the idea was less than I desired due to the tentativeness from both venue and breweries. Still, eventually the event took place, even if not to the enthused grandeur I had hoped. The event had an original list of seven potential breweries within the Tameside boundaries to work with. Since summer 2016, there has been differing luck for the seven. One of the breweries never got officially going, existing as a gypsy brewery at the time. One operated as a brewpub that has ceased operation. And ...