Sheffield – Irish Beer Snob

Yellowbelly x Irish Beer Snob – the tale of Juice Wayne

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017by irishbeersnobLeave a Comment

The weekend that Storm Doris was lashing the UK & Ireland out of it seemed like as good as any to drive down to Wexford to brew a beer with that awesome bunch of lads at Yellowbelly.

We’d hatched a plan to brew a collaboration beer with Yellowbelly as part of Sheffield Beer Week. We were over there to attend Beer Now, and the stars were aligning. I’d met with Declan and Danny in Bar Rua one evening after work to discuss, the plan, the concept was simple, make a Pale Ale / IPA that paid homage to that most awesome of soft drinks, Rock Shandy. An awesome thirst quencher in a glass, mix of Orange and Lemon. The lads came up with the name!

In fairness, the lads were also in the middle of commissioning their new Wild Goose canning line, having worked through the night to package their Lager in cans, they were still working at the brewery as we were leaving the house at 530 that morning. We met the lads in the brewery and got a sneak peak of the machine, and their new bigger brewery.

So after a quick breakfast in Simon Lambert’s, which was delicious I must say, we began on the brew. The recipe was really simple. Pilsner Malt, Jumbo Oats, and some dextrose. We used Lemon Drop to bitter, and used Azacca with Mandarina Bavaria as late addition / Whirlpool hops, with some fresh Orange & Lemon zest. It finished up at 7.2%.

A few short weeks later we found ourselves in Sheffield, in the UK for Beer Now, and Sheffield Beer Week which was set up by our good friend Jules Grey. Ran every March it’s a veritable treat for all beer lovers with many events. We were going to be part of the YellowBelly TTO in The Sentinel Brewery & Tap House, which i’ve written about here. For the night they developed an Irish food menu to go with the beers. It was great to have the beers with friends who’d come from far and wide to share this moment with us.

The brewday was a long day but Declan and the lads, made it a good laugh, and it was great to have some grub and beers after with them. Next time I have to try a rizzole, after seeing Matt from Boundary enjoyed his so much.

Janice and I are extremely grateful to the team in Yellowbelly for firstly being such a sound bunch of lads, but also for the opportunity to brew with them. It was great sharing beers with them in Sheffield and hopefully we’ll be doing the same next year. It’s great to see where they’ve come from to where they are going and no doubt they’ll continue knocking it out of the park. Sláinte

podcast

Podcast Episode Forty Two – A look back at #SheffBeerWeek & #BeerNow17

April 2, 2017April 2, 2017by irishbeersnobLeave a Comment

In this episode we have a look back at our shenanigans from our trip over to Sheffield Beer Week, which coincided with the first Beer Now Conference.

We had a #Hopical topic of Taprooms, which has means the Craft Drinks Bill has passed from Second Stage to Committee Stage in our parliament.

Seeing as the #CraftDrinksBIll has gone to the next stage, here's the latest #Hopical for #Podcast recording tomorrow pic.twitter.com/Yma19Bseg4

— Wayne:IrishBeerSnob🎅🏻 (@irishbeersnob) April 1, 2017

Share you thoughts with us, using the hashtag #Hopical, or tweet us directly.

We have an interview with Bob Pease of the Brewer’s Association at the end of the episode, so ensure to keep listening for an exclusive announcement in there too!

You can download our latest episode here, or via iTunes & Stitcher Radio.

EBBC

So, European Beer Bloggers Conference, is now called Beer Now

September 7, 2016by irishbeersnobLeave a Comment

“The king is dead, long live the king!”

Now that i’ve had a few weeks to digest the announcement at the conclusion of this years European Beer Bloggers Conference in Amsterdam, that it was to be the last instalment of EBBC as it had become affectionately known. It is to be replaced by a new conference from March 2017, in Sheffield, UK, called Beer Now. I am going to offer some of my own thoughts.

Having come to the EBBC Alumni later than some, attending my first when it was hosted in Dublin, in 2014, we were very excited by the event in Brussels last year, and then this year in Amsterdam. Other host cities have been Leeds, Edinburgh and London. I was beginning to enjoy the camaraderie and experiences of visiting other beer cultures with guided local expertise.

I’ve been lucky enough to speak at EBBC 2015, and EBBC 2016 in the popular blogger reports section

Now, to be fair to Zephyr, the Euro conferences were always on the lower end of the scale attendance wise, this year was no different. However I do think there was a number of factors that triggered lower attendance this year, namely a delay in announcing a venue, and a change of the date from the traditional August UK Bank Holiday weekend.

Zephyr themselves have posted a very rational explanation behind the decision which you can read here . In fact attendance numbers have been static, while our US colleagues event has grown year on year.

There is however a concern for me, in that by allying to SIBA, we will be missing out on some of the diversification that we’ve been lucky to experience while going around Europe. The 2017 event will be tied to SIBA X which is a festival of promoting the best of the Independent brewing scene in the UK, but I wonder will there be any international flavour to this?

Travelling to Sheffield for the 2017 conference, is not a problem for us, but it might be for our continental alumni, and while we know it’s in Sheffield next year, SIBA X could move, to London if the size of the event continues to grow for example, but will it be enough to get people from the mainland over? It was indicated in the announcement that it was going to be an ongoing link to SIBA X, I guess we will just have to see how this plays out.

I see that part of the strategy is to involve more Beer marketing types, tourism boards etc, and not just the writers. This could be quite interesting if it leads to some meaningful collaborations and opportunities for the writers who are there. I do fear unless those beer marketing types are coming from a wide range of countries, and regions, that there will be an unintended bias toward those who are based in the UK.

While there will probably be a few segments in the first two days agenda i’d be really interested in, the main beer writing portion has been allocated the Sunday morning slot, for 3 or so hours. Which seems like a bad time to me, particularly the morning after the night before. Although I’m glad to see that they’ve kept the Live Beer Blogging segment which as always is a lot of fun.

As with many things, I’m going to go, and try it on for size and see if it works for me. I’m not one to dismiss things out of hand. I hope that my concerns turn out to be unfounded, and that the conference is a success, both for the organisers, and the attendees.