– Wild Beer Co. Tap Takeover 08/12/16
WILD BEER CO. TAP TAKEOVER
Thursday 8th December 2016 / 4pm-end times / free
Probably our biggest tap takeover of the year falls at the feet of Bristol’s favourite sons, Wild Beer Co. Line-up and more info to follow but this is going to be big so save the date. Talking exclusive tastings with Wild Beer and a full Wild Beer spread across cask and keg. We are commemorating the event with a special poster by HimHallows. Look out for that and maybe even pick up a limited edition print.
– Holy Crab Pop-Up
HOLY CRAB
at Port Street Beer House
Friday 11th November 2016 / 4pm-8pm
Saturday 12th November 2016 / 2pm-8pm
Our friends Holy Crab, purveyors of sustainable seafood snacks (and much more), join us at Port Street for a very special weekend. Very special because there will be hot food at Port Street, this is a total rarity…we haven’t seen hot food in years. Can you even imagine? Menu coming soon.
Holy Crab killed it at Indy Man Beer Con last month (you don’t even wanna know how many oysters they shucked each session) and we’ve since caught up with them on the road at The Pilcrow and Magic Rock Tap. Their hot streak doesn’t look like ending any time soon so come down and enjoy some finger lickin’ crustaceans and more besides fresh from Holy Crab. Crabsolutely.
– IMBC 16 review by Cameron Steward
The night before Independent Manchester Beer (and Stuff) Convention (better known to you and I as Indy Man Beer Con, or IMBC for maximum abbreviation) is always one of skittish anxiety and this year was no different. What would be my first beer? Should we get a table first or tokens? What happens if Cloudwater run out of DIPA V8?
My anxieties aren’t helped by turning up to the Saturday Day session at 11:30 on a hilariously tropical October morning only to join the snaking queue some 500 people deep. I’m convinced everyone will be ordering that DIPA first and my strategic master plan will be thrown into disarray.
Upon arrival the Cloudwater team assure me there’s enough V8 to last the whole weekend, allowing my nerves to cease their shredding. Now I am a man with the world at my feet and it’s high time I drank that world, so I start with IMBC virgins Jester King and their smoked malt, juniper-infused and sweet gale Saison, Gotlandstricka (6.6%). It’s as totally mad as that sounds and perhaps defines my whole approach to Indy Man. Y’see, I haven’t attended this festival every year since its inception (5 years) to taste beers I can sample any-bloody-where. I’ve come here to exercise my weird and wacky taste buds, to let my freak flag fly, and as I walk around the festival plenty of beers that fit that description catch my eye and beckon me in.
As always the bar staff are super-helpful, friendly and always up for a chat. Stockport’s Thirst Class have cleverly put a bee in my bonnet and enticed me to their stand with a funky little pun of a title. I exchange some They Might Be Giants witticisms with Brewer and Proprietor Richard Conway as he pours me a thick ‘n fruity third of Farmhouse In Your Soul (5.3%). Later I also regale an unsuspecting bartender that I’m ordering Jester King’s Le Petit Prince (2.9%), as just last week I read the Antoine de Saint-Exupery novella of the same name. She doesn’t even look like she’s humouring me. I’m definitely in my element here…
The food is always outstanding at Indy Man and the tacos from Al Pastor Paul pair stupidly well with the aforementioned table beer. The mole with avocado, chocolate chilli spiked sauce and cheese variety particularly blew my tiny mind!
Other beers of note include Brodie’s Mocha Milk Stout (9%), To Øl’s Roses Are Brett (6%), Wild Beer and Indy Man‘s BA strawberry sour Strawblender (5.5%) and of course Cloudwater’s best in the series so far DIPA V8 (9%). Even better than all of those however may have been when Buxton Brewery decided to out-raspberry themselves with the limited edition Double Raspberry Rye (5.2%) with a soft serve topping. Picture it if you will; the Mediterranean sun causing your delicious raspberry ice cream to melt before your very eyes, your only chance of cooling down, nay, survival, is to whip off your trunks and go skinny-dipping in sweet raspberry coulis. Yes, it was that good…
This year also marked the first time I got to experience a talk – I’m usually too slow or drunk, or both. My fellow blogging chum Matthew Curtis of Total Ales was doing a live tasting of Fourpure and Cloudwater’s Optare (a 6.6% Black Belgian IPA) and of course whilst wanting to see and support Matt, I also really wanted to participate in something as completely nerdy as live beer blogging! The crowd took a while to warm up to both the concept and the beer but I assisted in contributing a few adjectives including “a palate like Victorian wallpaper”, which a gentleman took to so kindly he found me after the talk and shook my hand, still chucking… Fourpure’s Rob Davies even liked my Mo Farah analogy so much he rewarded me with a delicious slice of Shape Shifter IPA (6.4%). Top lad!
And therein lies the key to Indy Man’s continued success; that friendly, free-spirited, open armed, big fun environment, which keeps me (and many, many others) coming back year after year. So, I’ll see you all in 2017 then.
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Words and photographs by Cameron Steward of All You Need Is Beer.
– Leveller // an exhibition by Robert Parkinson
LEVELLER
An exhibition by Robert Parkinson
Port Street Beer House
Opening Thursday 22nd September 2016 / 6pm
+ Jennifer Reid (live)
+ Squawk Leveller Black IPA launch
Pubs have been a crucial foundation of social space within Britain for hundreds of years. The function of a ‘public house’ has evolved over time and has nurtured many social and political movements throughout our cultural history. From working class people using the space as escapism of the sometimes gruelling manual labour, to feminists and CND movements hosting meetings and events in the then declining pub spaces of the 1980s. It also sparked the musical genre – Pub Rock (pre-cursor to Punk); bands playing stripped back rock and roll music as a reaction to the progressive/hippy scene as actively ‘anti-stadium’ performers.
Mass Observation saw how crucial pub spaces were for a social study and produced ‘The Pub and the People: A Worktown Observation’ in 1947. For every 1000 people in Greater Manchester there is a pub.
The foundation of most pub conversation is light hearted and humorous. Pub games lend themselves well to these playful surroundings and not many have been more popular than darts. Robert aims to explore the level to which darts has come, from the local leagues to filling 10,000 seats at the world championships today.
Art and political movements have often hosted events and meetings within pubs as the environment is perfect to spark discussion and gather collaborative ideas. Leveller will show examples of these within Manchester past and present intending to spark conversations a similar vein.
If you’ve been in a pub, chances are you’ve been in a chip shop. Is that a leap? Chip shops, like pubs, are considered very British and are often referenced in Mass Observations studies. For Leveller Robert has produced a screen-printed poster inspired by a chip shop printed onto chip shop paper. Art you could eat your dinner (chips) off.
Folk singer Jennifer Reid will be performing local traditional pub songs in local dialect at the opening of Leveller. Many of which are featured and have inspired the framed works that will be displayed within Port Street. The opening night will see the launch of a new dark IPA titled Leveller, brewed especially for this exhibition by Squawk Brewery with Robert Parkinson.
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Leveller is an exhibition of all new work by Robert Parkinson, Manchester-based artist and photographer. Robert has previously shown work in London, New York, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Berlin, and Paris. Robert is also one-half of self-publishing/
Facebook event page HERE.
