I was invited by Fourpure Brewing to last week’s Independent Manchester Beer Convention to talk about beer blogging and photography. Just before that, I took a moment of quiet reflection in this basement room at Manchester’s historic Victoria Baths where the beer festival was taking place.
Up above me were hundreds of folks enjoying beer from plenty of brewers I’ve written about for GBH—Magic Rock, Brew By Numbers, Boundary, Cloudwater. And there were plenty of others whose stories are still waiting to be told. Meanwhile, there was big buzz around the two U.S. breweries pouring—Against the Grain and Jester King. The latter had one of the busiest stands of the weekend, with plenty of folks trying their compelling selection of Texas Hill Country brews.
But it was in these peaceful few moments that I got to really think about just how far craft beer in the UK has come in such a short space of time. Then I told a few dozen people all about documenting it.
—Matthew Curtis