Tag Archive for: Indy Man Beer Con

Foam-filled Baths time for Indy Man Beer Con and the podcasts from Pellicle

Two weeks to Indy Man Beer Con (October 5-8) and a smattering of tickets remain for the UK’s best celebration of craft beer. OK, I’m biased. I’ve attended every one since its inception in 2012. The organisers trumpet it as “a multi-sensory, headlong, hop-forward beer extravaganza.” Which is spot on with 150 plus beers available at each session.

Its venue on Hathersage Road, Manchester, Victoria Baths, has been around much longer. Since 1906. First as a working public pool, latterly as a hugely atmospheric Grade II listed events space. Ticket prices have been frozen for this year’s bash, which as usual features an array of quality street food ballast alongside beers and other drinks (including non-alcoholic). 

The opening Thursday night session costs £14.50, along with the Friday morning 11am to 4pm session, with the weekend daytime and evening sessions at £19. Sunday’s afternoon slot is back to £14.50, and a full weekend pass for all sessions is £75. Check for late availability at this link.

Two waves of breweries attending Independent Manchester Beer Convention 2023 (to give it its full title) have now been announced. The line-up is post-Pandemic less extravagant but still packed with stellar names. My tips: Zapato, Beak, Brasserie de la Senne, Pastore, Tommy Sjef, Neptune, Drop Project and our own Pomona Island, whose (genuinely) eagerly awaited Manchester city centre pub, the North Westward Ho opens for business on Wednesday, October 4. So that will make an ideal base camp for IMBC, if you are staying over in the city.

Keeping loyal to ‘Cottonopolis’, a further exciting arrival this October is Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars by Matthew Curtis (CAMRA Books, £16.99). Based upon his own sensible displacement from London to Manchester, it is a sequel to 2021’s Modern British Beer, lauded by this website. This will be published on Wednesday, October 18, with a launch that night at Cafe Beermoth.

Before then Matthew (above left) is also involved in an exciting new initiative at Indy Man Beer Con, wearing another hat of his, as co-editor in chief of online magazine, Pellicle, to which I am a subscriber (and so should you be, drinks lovers). Over the four days they will be running a series of live podcasts, featuring sessions including panels of craft beer professionals, including Pellicle co-founder Johnathan Hamilton (above right), brewer at Newbarns in Edinburgh. The sessions, all in the basement beneath the Thornbridge room, are… Thursday 4pm – ‘How Does the Beer Industry Navigate a Cost of Living Crisis?’; Friday 1pm –‘ An Open Discussion About Sustainability in Beer’; Saturday 1pm – Interview and Q&A with David Jesudason, Author of Desi Pubs;  Sunday 1pm – ‘The Great Craft Beer Debate 2023’.

The one I hope to attend is the Saturday event, focused on Desi Pubs, a ground-breaking CAMRA Books publication, a guide to the British-Indian pubs that have sprung up throughout the UK since the 1960s. Its author, David Jesudason, spent months travelling the length and breadth of the country, to unpack the idea of the British pub as an institution and how Desi Pubs have built on this, as various communities have sought to create safe, inclusive spaces for themselves.

The book makes a fascinating companion piece to Desi Kitchen by Sarah Woods (Michael Joseph, £30), which explores the culinary evolution inside various second generation sub-continental communities across the UK. Check out my round-up of a whole new genre of ‘ethnic’ cookbooks.

Meanwhile, I’m cleansing my palate ahead of Indy Man after sampling many of the 38 smoked beers on offer at the annual ‘Smokefest’ at Torrside Brewery, New Mills, Derbyshire. It was a showcase for the subtlety and sophistication of this niche pathway. Variety is all in the brave new world of brewing.

My friend Matthew Curtis has a new book out on Wednesday (October 18, Manchester launch at Cafe Beermoth). The incomer from Lincoln, now a proud Stopfordian, has dared to write a book entitled Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars.  My blog view on it. It should be an absolute corker on the evidence of its 2021 predecessor, Modern British Beer (Buy it from CAMRA Books, £16.99).

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Wild about wasp yeast after a honeyed epiphany at Indy Man Beer Con

Ensō is an old Zen word meaning “a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create”. 

That’s how I almost felt tasting beer with that name at the recent Indy Man Beer Con in Manchester. Brewed using wasp yeast and in-season apricots, it tasted naturally honeyed, giving a whole new slant on ‘amber nectar’. I was exquisitely pure. You always get surprises from the Wild Beer Co, but this surpassed expectations. So what was the backstory behind the buzz?

The Shepton Mallett based brewers are celebrating their 10th anniversary, so sought a statement beer to grace their presentation box. Like the Royal Funeral preparations it has been a drawn out process. Eureka moment came when they managed to harvest a wild yeast from an abandoned wasp’s nest and a handful of dead wasps discovered on the farm next to the brewery. 

Five months’ harvesting later and it was ready to kickstart Ensō. The fresh apricots and British hops seemed a perfect fit for this one-off 6% ABV wild ale, currently available only as part of the Wild Beer Co 10th Anniversary Box (pre-order via the web shop at £74.99). But there are plans for it to be released as a separate product before Christmas.

Wild Brew Co consulted with entomologists (as you do) along the way. “This kind of project is what we are all about, so it had to be investigated. Wasps are proven to play a significant part in the preserving of wild yeast throughout the colder months, and then helping to reintroduce it back into the wild when spring arrives.” 

For the full narrative read their blog. Then consider the wider entomological picture. 

Research shows the importance of wasps to the brewing process. They preserve the yeast picked up from summer fruits over the cold winter months and continue to preserve it for reintroduction in the spring. A couple of academics from University of Florence found that the guts of wasps provide a safe winter refuge for yeast – specifically saccharomyces cerevisiae, the fungus we use to make wine, beer and bread.

For years scientists had assumed that yeast’s ability to show up on virtually every grape in a vineyard was most likely due either to birds or bees with wind scattering a factor. The trail then narrowed to wasps, which hibernate, then construct nests in the spring. 

To find out if wasps were indeed the saviour of yeasts, the team collected samples from 17 Italian vineyard regions. Result: he majority of them harboured yeast in their guts across all four seasons and the yeast turned up in the guts of the young shortly after they were first fed ensuring that the yeast could carry on indefinitely.

Thanks, wasps. And by the way the wasp-free remainder of the Wild Beer Co line-up was among the best on show at Indy Man and the most comprehensive I’ve encountered since dropping in on their Bristol waterfront taproom. Top of my bucket list, though, is a visit to their HQ a few miles from Glastonbury.

Matthew Curtis in his excellent Modern British Beer (CAMRA Books, £15.99) describes “a certain peacefulness to the location – touch of magic in the air, perhaps. Inside the barrel store the air is taut with the musty scent of beer maturing in oak. It’s a climate ripe for the practice of the mystical art of spontaneous fermentation and he creation of evocative beers that live up to the ‘Wild’ element of the brewery’s name.

You can almost feel the benign presence of the wasps in the barn.

Main wasp image by barockschloss. 

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Festival fever as Track and Rivington are my hoppy headliners in build-up to Indy Man

Glastonbury 2002’s over. Just the stragglers still dispersing as the litter clearers descend. The wag who flew a ‘Work Event’ flag by the Pyramid stage has furled it up and taken it home with his washing, probably still humming ‘Hey Jude’.

My big festivals preview was about the beer variety. Hence my rallying cry: ‘Go Aleish, not Eilish!’ Though several fests have already been and gone the thirst for such communal participation shows no sign of abating and what is great to see is the emphasis on championing our local brewing operations.

Prominent among these is Track Brewing Co, which has never looked back since upsizing from its Piccadilly railway arch to large and stylish new brewery and taproom in Ardwick, Manchester. . They seem to be leading the way with collabs with other breweries and recently significantly upgraded their food offering by hosting a kitchen takeover by Liverpool-based restaurant group Maray, who are close to opening their new Manchester venue in Lincoln Square.

Food is a big deal in the first of two further Manchester mini-festivals they are helping generate this summer. Beers In The Garden will take place in Platt Fields on Friday and Saturday, July 8-9, curated by Track and Cheltenham’s Deya and featuring stellar names such as North Brewing, Burning Sky, Verdant, Pressure Drop, Newbarns, Donzoko and, a personal fave, St Mars of the Desert.

The food on offer? Pizza from Honest Crust and barbecue from Where The Light Gets In. The MUD kitchen will prepare dishes using ingredients from the garden there and Levenshulme’s ISCA will offer seasonal dishes and natural wines. The will be four sessions; tickets at £10 available here.

On Saturday, August 27, celebratinga successful first nine months in their new home on the Piccadilly Trading Estate (and the arrival of their beer garden), Track bring us Welcome to the Neighbourhood. There are two sessions with tickets £40 a head, to include all DRAUGHT beer at the festival, a glass and a programme. Tickets available here.

For your money you’ll have access to beers from an amazing array of North West stars – including Track, of course, Rivington, Sureshot, Balance, Red Willow, Pomona Island, Chain House, Bundobust, Squawk, Runaway, Cloudwater and Blackjack – plus DJ and street food. 

The first four days in September see the bucolic Farm Trip festival. Venue a hilltop farm-based brewery above Horwich I have lauded previously For its outstanding views and brews – Rivington (founder Ben Stubbs, above). Their first Trip was hastily assembled in 2021; the follow-up is more measured, promising 120 beers poured through 41 lines. Do check it out.

It’s a nice little autumn chaser before the eagerly anticipated return of Indy Man Beer Con  at Victoria Baths (September 29-October 2), the UK’s best craft beer festival. Capitalising on its absence last year, the Manchester Craft Beer Festival, is heading back to Mayfield Depot, across the weekend of July 22-23. Expect fire pit food and sizzling sounds from Goldie and David Holmes. All a bit high octane for me and to get full value beerwise out of the £55 session ticket you have to be a very canny queue hopper. The likes of Marble, Track and Union Lager are representing Manchester, but this is very much a national brand that straddles several UK cities.

Before then another metropolitan cuckoo descends. Camden Town Brewery Tank Party Roadshow is nesting at neighbouring Escape to Freight Island on Friday, June 24 and Saturday 25.A single brewery tour hardly counts as a festival really, even coming with its own raft of DJ and street(ish) food. The selling point is its unfiltered version of Hells Lager with an estimated 23,000 pints being poured ‘fresh from the tank’ during the Party’s parade across the UK. Camden’s owners, ABV Inbev, the world’s largest brewing operation, sure know how to market a very ordinary product.

I’d recommend, in these difficult times for our breweries: Think Local, Drink Local.

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