I wasn’t surprised that Dawn Leeder, founder of Norwich City of Ale, won an Imbibe ‘Innovator of the Year’ award this week. As the co-creator of the UK’s first beer week and of British Beer Cities, which aims to promote similar events all across the UK, she surely deserves it - not least because running a beer week is one of the most dismal experiences there is, this side of discussing Brexit on Twitter.
Read MoreIn 2017, Fuller’s asked me to write a story about their new collaborative project, Fuller’s & Friends. The idea was that I would follow things from start to finish, taking in a dinner, an afternoon of preparatory meetings, a trip to Manchester to see a pilot brew at Marble, eight hours spent at the Griffin Brewery for the brewing of Cloudwater’s New England IPA, a variety of phone interviews … and then I would write it up. An arduous schedule, no doubt, but I took it on …
Read MoreYou can tell Michel Debus is a pretty big deal by his business card. It’s enormous, about two-and-a-half times as large as a standard card, and elegant too. Above his addresses in Alsace and the South of France, it reads “Michel R. A. Debus”, in embossed capital letters, and, below that, “Brasseur”. If the card’s size is striking, then that description heavily undersells Mssr Debus.
Read MoreOne of the defining characteristics of modern beer is its campaigning zeal, its desire to make the world a better place, its earnest idealism. I wrote about this last year for The Guardian, but there was plenty that didn’t make the cut. I would have liked to have included Boozers Without Borders, for example, or the Tap Social Movement in Oxford, which provides help for prisoners and ex-prisoners.
Read MoreI only met David Brassfield once, at The Kernel on a warm day at the end of July 2012. He was standing patiently in front of a fermenting vessel, a notepad clutched to his chest, waiting to speak to Evin O'Riordain. I noted how smartly turned-out he was: he was wearing modish thick-rimmed spectacle, as I recall, and there was a biro tucked into the breast pocket of his white shirt.
Read More