The conference might have been ending at this stage but the weekend was far from over.
Saturday was the final day of talks at The Brewery and was by far the most interesting I thought. We started off with a meetup at 9:30 for some breakfast which looked better than what I got at my hotel (Worst in London perhaps?). Then straight upstairs at 9:45 for the start of a very long and fulfilling day.
The proceedings kicked off with three speakers on the topic of Social Media and it's use in the brewing industry with Fergus Fitzgerald (pictured above) of Adnams (UK), Mark McClean of Brasserie de Brunehaut (St Martin - Belgium), and Dave Bailey from Hardknott Brewing (UK).
This was a fascinating topic about the new and exciting world of social media. If you don't know what social media is, well the fact you are reading this blog means that you are engaging in social media. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other's of the like are all forms of social media.
Perhaps the best thing from a company perspective is that social media is far cheaper than traditional radio and TV ads and more importantly is interactive.
From Adnams use of wordpress for their entire website, which means they and any reader can share any content on the site with facebook or twitter means they have a truly interactive website.
Twitter was the big topic of course. All three breweries are avid twitter users and in the case of Hardknott, not only does Dave tweet, Ann also tweets and the back and fourth between them is like a soap opera sometimes. We can't forget Hardknott Sooty though who is the real evil genius behind Hardknott. In fact the entire proceedings of the conference were being tweeted by a lot of attendees (myself included) under the hashtag of #bbc11 (no it's not a British TV station).
Next we heard from three of our international bloggers. From left to right we have Darren from Beer Sweden, Alessio Leone from Hoppy Hour - Italy, & Arnoud Paternot from Bestetotnutoe.nl in The Netherlands.
Each gave a talk on the beer scene in their respective countries. Perhaps the most interesting was Darren (originally from the UK) talking about Sweden because as we all know, Sweden is one of the most expensive places to drink beer and is probably one of the hardest places to get good beer. Italy is far more open with beer as is The Netherlands and it was interesting to hear about these countries direct from a bloggers mouth. Interestingly, Alessio Leone is in the process of setting up a brewery of his own with another person.
Next up was Brewdog. Well what can I say about Brewdog? Love them or hate them, they are the Ryanair of the UK beer scene. Shaking Up the Brewing Scene was the title of this talk which is very apt. Martin Dickie did give an interesting talk but was plagued by technical glitches. He was not supposed to give the talk and it was very last minute. I loved how Martin did not even start talking until he had poured his beer. It was Beer Thirty but I guess Scotland is on a different timezone to the rest of the UK because it was not yet noon. That's ok... but... none of us had any beer to drink yet... Should have shared the love Martin!
Kristy from Molson Coors and Martin got in to a little debate about Brewdog slagging off other breweries. A point denied by Martin which to my mind was absolutely true. They do slag off other breweries. Perhaps sometimes they are justified in what they say but anyway. Let's let sleeping dogs lie shall we? Sorry...
It was now lunch time, which was provided by Molson Coors when originally we had thought it was fend for yourselves at a local pub. So thanks guys!
After lunch we were back for the final talk of the conference. I think they saved the best for last to be honest. The Future of Beer Writing was the title and featured a great chat from Tim Hampson and Pete Brown. I a not familiar with Tim (something I must rectify) but I am a fan of Pete Brown and have read all his books.
Apart from the topic they discussed, the two had brilliant Chemistry. In fact the setting was wrong. They should have been sitting down beside an open fireplace with a tumbler of old ale or whiskey and just having a chat. The back and forth was seamless and it was a joy to behold.
Afterwards we went down for beer and food pairing which was the only somewhat disappointing section of the conference. I think it was only a bad choice of food. The Beer Acadamy do this for a living but I think they were restricted to whatever The Brewery had available. Only one of the pairings worked for me which was some sort of mashed duck thing and Budvar Dark. That was so good I took another duck thingie off a spare plate and did it again. Individually the beer was good as was the food, they just did not match (to me) for the most part.
Next we were invaded by Orcs and the conference started to go downhill as bloggers got slaughtered....
Actually this was the start of the Live Beer Blogging section in which in speed dating style we sat at a table and the breweries (7 of them) came to us to give us beer and talk to us about their product. Many of these I have had before like Hobgoblin above and then there were newcomers to me below.
St Martin from Brasserie de Brunehaut is a beer I have heard of and follow on twitter but never encountered before. The aroma was fruitcake, orange and a little boozy and spicy. A very warming aroma.
Once in the mouth it was, in true Belgian style, very fizzy. In fact perhaps a little too much so for my taste. It does taste good though. Caramel and liquorice was there if muted. I found it a little thin on body and boozy so I imagine a fair bit of fully fermentable sugar is used to get it's 8% ABV. All in I thought it a good solid beer but perhaps not the best Belgian Dubbel I have had. The lightness and high carbonation make this a refreshing beer but the ABV prevents it from being a Summer Quaffer. That said, I only got to taste what you see in the glass so perhaps a little more time will change my opinion so I will keep an eye out for it in Ireland as well as their other products. Unfortunately the bottle I brought home for such a tasting was one of two beers that did not survive the flight.
Far more impressive to me was Two Penny Porter from Bad Attitude Brewery in Switzerland. I will not write about this just now as I got two bottles home and will give them a proper tasting. Lorenzo represented his company perfectly and made us all very excited about his beer before we even tasted it.
Windsor and Eton started following me on twitter a couple of weeks before the conference. I was curious to see what they would bring to the table, so to speak. It turns out they brought a cask instead of bottles (everyone else brought bottles). Inside the cask was the most Un-British of beers. A Black - IPA (US style) called Conqueror. Now I am an avid hophead and love my American style pale ales. Needless to say I loved it. The aroma was smokey with vegetal hops. It tasted pretty much as it smelled with some roastiness from the darker malts. It was the only beer I topped up more than once. I think I had 3 or 4 glasses of it. If course it was on a free flowing cask so no issue of opening beer bottles.
And then all too soon, it was all over. It was time for pictures to be taken and that was the end of the conference. Of course the weekend was far from over as we shall see in the next two blog entries.
If this had been the end and no more events planned, I would have come away fully satisfied but there was so much more to come.
Saturday was the final day of talks at The Brewery and was by far the most interesting I thought. We started off with a meetup at 9:30 for some breakfast which looked better than what I got at my hotel (Worst in London perhaps?). Then straight upstairs at 9:45 for the start of a very long and fulfilling day.
The proceedings kicked off with three speakers on the topic of Social Media and it's use in the brewing industry with Fergus Fitzgerald (pictured above) of Adnams (UK), Mark McClean of Brasserie de Brunehaut (St Martin - Belgium), and Dave Bailey from Hardknott Brewing (UK).
This was a fascinating topic about the new and exciting world of social media. If you don't know what social media is, well the fact you are reading this blog means that you are engaging in social media. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other's of the like are all forms of social media.
Perhaps the best thing from a company perspective is that social media is far cheaper than traditional radio and TV ads and more importantly is interactive.
From Adnams use of wordpress for their entire website, which means they and any reader can share any content on the site with facebook or twitter means they have a truly interactive website.
Twitter was the big topic of course. All three breweries are avid twitter users and in the case of Hardknott, not only does Dave tweet, Ann also tweets and the back and fourth between them is like a soap opera sometimes. We can't forget Hardknott Sooty though who is the real evil genius behind Hardknott. In fact the entire proceedings of the conference were being tweeted by a lot of attendees (myself included) under the hashtag of #bbc11 (no it's not a British TV station).
Next we heard from three of our international bloggers. From left to right we have Darren from Beer Sweden, Alessio Leone from Hoppy Hour - Italy, & Arnoud Paternot from Bestetotnutoe.nl in The Netherlands.
Each gave a talk on the beer scene in their respective countries. Perhaps the most interesting was Darren (originally from the UK) talking about Sweden because as we all know, Sweden is one of the most expensive places to drink beer and is probably one of the hardest places to get good beer. Italy is far more open with beer as is The Netherlands and it was interesting to hear about these countries direct from a bloggers mouth. Interestingly, Alessio Leone is in the process of setting up a brewery of his own with another person.
Next up was Brewdog. Well what can I say about Brewdog? Love them or hate them, they are the Ryanair of the UK beer scene. Shaking Up the Brewing Scene was the title of this talk which is very apt. Martin Dickie did give an interesting talk but was plagued by technical glitches. He was not supposed to give the talk and it was very last minute. I loved how Martin did not even start talking until he had poured his beer. It was Beer Thirty but I guess Scotland is on a different timezone to the rest of the UK because it was not yet noon. That's ok... but... none of us had any beer to drink yet... Should have shared the love Martin!
Kristy from Molson Coors and Martin got in to a little debate about Brewdog slagging off other breweries. A point denied by Martin which to my mind was absolutely true. They do slag off other breweries. Perhaps sometimes they are justified in what they say but anyway. Let's let sleeping dogs lie shall we? Sorry...
It was now lunch time, which was provided by Molson Coors when originally we had thought it was fend for yourselves at a local pub. So thanks guys!
After lunch we were back for the final talk of the conference. I think they saved the best for last to be honest. The Future of Beer Writing was the title and featured a great chat from Tim Hampson and Pete Brown. I a not familiar with Tim (something I must rectify) but I am a fan of Pete Brown and have read all his books.
Apart from the topic they discussed, the two had brilliant Chemistry. In fact the setting was wrong. They should have been sitting down beside an open fireplace with a tumbler of old ale or whiskey and just having a chat. The back and forth was seamless and it was a joy to behold.
Afterwards we went down for beer and food pairing which was the only somewhat disappointing section of the conference. I think it was only a bad choice of food. The Beer Acadamy do this for a living but I think they were restricted to whatever The Brewery had available. Only one of the pairings worked for me which was some sort of mashed duck thing and Budvar Dark. That was so good I took another duck thingie off a spare plate and did it again. Individually the beer was good as was the food, they just did not match (to me) for the most part.
Next we were invaded by Orcs and the conference started to go downhill as bloggers got slaughtered....
Actually this was the start of the Live Beer Blogging section in which in speed dating style we sat at a table and the breweries (7 of them) came to us to give us beer and talk to us about their product. Many of these I have had before like Hobgoblin above and then there were newcomers to me below.
St Martin from Brasserie de Brunehaut is a beer I have heard of and follow on twitter but never encountered before. The aroma was fruitcake, orange and a little boozy and spicy. A very warming aroma.
Once in the mouth it was, in true Belgian style, very fizzy. In fact perhaps a little too much so for my taste. It does taste good though. Caramel and liquorice was there if muted. I found it a little thin on body and boozy so I imagine a fair bit of fully fermentable sugar is used to get it's 8% ABV. All in I thought it a good solid beer but perhaps not the best Belgian Dubbel I have had. The lightness and high carbonation make this a refreshing beer but the ABV prevents it from being a Summer Quaffer. That said, I only got to taste what you see in the glass so perhaps a little more time will change my opinion so I will keep an eye out for it in Ireland as well as their other products. Unfortunately the bottle I brought home for such a tasting was one of two beers that did not survive the flight.
Far more impressive to me was Two Penny Porter from Bad Attitude Brewery in Switzerland. I will not write about this just now as I got two bottles home and will give them a proper tasting. Lorenzo represented his company perfectly and made us all very excited about his beer before we even tasted it.
Windsor and Eton started following me on twitter a couple of weeks before the conference. I was curious to see what they would bring to the table, so to speak. It turns out they brought a cask instead of bottles (everyone else brought bottles). Inside the cask was the most Un-British of beers. A Black - IPA (US style) called Conqueror. Now I am an avid hophead and love my American style pale ales. Needless to say I loved it. The aroma was smokey with vegetal hops. It tasted pretty much as it smelled with some roastiness from the darker malts. It was the only beer I topped up more than once. I think I had 3 or 4 glasses of it. If course it was on a free flowing cask so no issue of opening beer bottles.
And then all too soon, it was all over. It was time for pictures to be taken and that was the end of the conference. Of course the weekend was far from over as we shall see in the next two blog entries.
If this had been the end and no more events planned, I would have come away fully satisfied but there was so much more to come.
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