Guess who hosted their very first Beer Talks stage at a festival?

Me! 

I’m super proud of the action-packed and well rounded day of talks that I pulled together. The vibe was great and the Stable venue was so packed to the rafters with people for some of the talks, that we ended up running a little bit behind (as you can see from the time changes on the board in my main pic)!

Adding on additional time to the talks was actually the right thing to do as the audience was so engaged; asking lots of questions and lapping it all up. When I eventually had to unfortunately pull the plug on a few, the audience was so gutted that I actually got booed.

Never been so proud of a boo in my life! 

I wanted to take a minute to say thanks to all the amazing speakers that made the day incredible. 

Massive thanks to the speakers below – so much energy and passion about what they do! 

Major shout outs also to Matt, Emily & Kate from Northern Monk for helping me out on a few sessions – you life savers. And also to Ross and Alex from Bread Birmingham and to my buddy Darren for helping me out too. 

I managed to only sip a few of the beers and a little bit of the lovely grub provided by Clifton Chilli Club but I’m hoping to recreate some of these sessions at home now. If you’d like to have a go yourself, I’ve added a comprehensive list of all the beers and foods used below.  

The lowdown: 

• For talk 1 Justin provided us with Laine’s Mangolicious to sip which was a great way to start the day’s sessions. 

• In talk 2 with Gabs Burtucci, the audience worked their way through the following matches 

1. Seven Lucky Gods – Kimchi Fries paired with Mad Squirrel’s – Zealous Pilsner

2. Beef On The Block’s ‘The Chimichurri’ paired with Squawks – Corvus Stout

3. Churros Amigos – Churro (NO CHOCOLATE) paired with Gipsy Hill x FLOC – Dreamland NE DIPA

• For Talk 3, Joanne Love used the following beers provided by Northern Monk: Faith, Eternal and Ronseal Best Bitter. 

• For Talk 5 we sipped St Austell’s Divine Intervention Abbey Quadrupel which is part of their new Belgian Quad set. We sipped this alone which packed a delightful punch at 13% abv, and then also paired with Lindt’s Chilli Chocolate. 

• In Talk 7 the amazing Clifton Chilli Club presented the following pairings:

1. St. Austell, Korev with a Thai vegetable curry
2. Laine Brew Co. Mangolicious with a Pork, black pudding, Scotch Bonnet, apricot & pistachio roll.
3. Void Space Ratio, Rivington Brewing Co. served with Ghost chilli & chocolate tart  

*For talk 8 with Ben from Rivington, we sipped:

1. Days of Candy Pale
2. Paparahua Table Beer 
3. Very Insulting What You Said About My Coat Passionfruit & Peach Goes
4. Never Known Fog Like It NE Pale
5. KL KL IPA
6. Void Space Ratio Stout

Thanks to everyone that came to the talks – I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to Festival of Beer for inviting me along! cheers.