Amateur Drinker

August was obviously dominated by London Beer City, which was even bigger and better than last year. The week kicked off with an unofficial opening party at The Kings Arms, ‘The Scandinavian Embassy’, which hosted a MTB with Dry and Bitter, and had enough brewers and industry people to start a convention. The highlight was…

Apologies for how late July’s round-up is, but as with most of my readers, the 1st half of August was spent in a drunken haze thanks to the fantastic London Beer City, a full round-up of which will appear next month- and I promise that will be more punctual! July’s best event was the Brasserie…

June’s highlight was Beavertown’s Sour Solstice festival. Whether it was because of the style, or the fact that it was a Sunday, the place was relatively empty, chilled and relaxed. The beers were fantastic and included very limited quantities of the exceptionally rare Tommie Sjef Druif, a sour wild ale fermented with Kekfrankos (the Hungarian…

Apologies for a late report this month, but no prizes for guessing that May’s highlight was the Mikkeller Beer Celebration Copenhagen, MBCC. After landing, it was straight to WarPigs for a Tired Hands TTO. Notable beers included Royal Double, a sushi rice DIPA, Individuation Sanguine sour red and Alien Church IPA. However, the real highlight…

Such is the pace of change in the beer industry at present that my first draft of this diary piece felt like I was writing for The Economist so I have written about that elsewhere (Let’s Rake over the Take-overs…) and concentrated on the drinking in this entry! Although Craft Beer 100 was cancelled this…

I could have made this point at almost any time but after collating my notes for this month the growth in the beer scene appears to have moved up to whatever level is above staggering, Brewers are increasing their on-site sales, so March saw Hammerton announce that they had taken over the Wig & Gown…

I have always agreed with Hunter S Thompson, that, due to the NFL season, February is the most gloomy and depressing month: In January, we get the excitement of the playoffs, but, after the climax of the Super Bowl, you then face an agonising 7 month wait for the action to start again. Fortunately, in…

January has been a month of intrigue. There was Sky Sports’ reporter Jim White with ‘Arry Redknapp winding down the window of his 4×4 to lie about players he will, or won’t be signing. This year the beer world caught up: Gregg Irwin left Weird Beard, despite being a co-founder, Georgina Young took over as Head…

As this column covers The Christmas Lunch Month, it seems appropriate to dedicate it to the poet Gavin Ewart, the all-time legend of Lunch With The FT: “The combination led to some memorable encounters, most notably a liquid lunch of biblical proportions at the Cafe Royal between Nigel Spacey, a Cambridge don and freelance FT…

A few thoughts on 2016 as the year comes to a close… Best Pub: King’s Arms, E2 After checking my previous blogs, this category did not prove as hard as I anticipated. Possibly because its location is slightly off the beaten track, but no pub has made more effort this year. The big headlines come…