The vanguard of modern beer media

Despite being laden with a heavy bag filled with too many bottles of beer, despite the lack of sleep and excess of everything else, and despite the prospect of a bus for the last leg of the journey home, nothing could stop the smile muscles from getting a good workout as I left the Beer Bloggers Conference on Sunday.

As weekends go it’s hard to find one better: great beer, great food, great company, great entertainment, great fun, all multiplied ten-fold because it all pulled together perfectly. As a prospect the weekend was an odd one: what the hell is a Beer Bloggers Conference?! Ignore the name, look at what we did, look at how everyone reacted to it as that’s all you need to know.

But as I was leaving, as the beer haze was lifting and being replaced by the bastard behind the eyes, it became clearer that what we’re doing – writing and reading blogs; loving good beer – is incredibly important.

There is slim space for beer appreciation in traditional media and it seems to be getting harder and harder to place articles, despite the fact that more and more people are discerning drinkers and that Britain has got a brilliant brewing past, present and future. And people want to read about it. This lack of printed word opens up the online space and opportunities which don’t exist elsewhere, and this is key (although, with newspaper readerships serially in decline, and online use ever on the up, does this lack matter to all but the ones who live off writing?)

When I want to find out something the first place I look is Google. When I wanted to learn more about beer as a thirsty 21-year-old with pint in hand, I learnt about it through Google first and books second (plus I needed to Google what books to buy). With mobile technology and the daily draw of social media making the internet ever-more pertinent in our lives, it’s natural that we spend more time online and use it in different ways; the declining print runs of newspapers is concurrent to the increasing hits on their websites, kindle books now outsell physical books two-to-one on Amazon. Things are changing.

And this change is important for beer. Anyone can now easily create their own online content and we can all choose exactly what we do and don’t read: web 2.0 gives us power as content creators. Why is this good for beer? Because it’s allowed anyone to have a voice and the more voices there are the more people know about good beer and the bigger and better it will become.

There’s also an audience of drinkers online who want to know more about beer. For every one person who writes a blog there are a handful who comment and hundreds more who just read (it’s the 90-9-1 idea). The readers are every bit as important as the writers because you are the ones who go out there and drink the beer and tell your friends.

The internet is beer’s medium and it’ll be through the internet that it is able to grow beyond the borders of the printed page. The word ‘vanguard’ was used a few times over the weekend and it’s a good choice: the internet is still young, blogs are still young, and the people who are writing about beer online, and those who are routinely reading about it, are, as Darren from BeerSweden writes, “the vanguard of modern beer media.”

If drinkers want to search for information about beer then they go online. What they tap into Google will often return links to blogs on the first page. And with bloggers based around the world there’s so much coverage and potential, way more than could be achieved offline. This also means we’re a worldwide community, an army ready to mobilise at any time and loft our pints into the air; together we’re stronger.

Beer lovers should be excited about the future because it’s only going to get better and blogs are a very important part of that – we are not just sitting in our bedrooms sipping free beer and crap tasting notes. A post-Conference blog from Bad Attitude Brewery about the importance of blogs is brilliant and everyone who is interested in beer should read it. Ultimately, we are telling a never-ending story where pints and bottles are the characters in an always twisting-and-turning tale, punctuated by the occasional low but with many great highs and where readers can take part in the story themselves by picking up that pint and drinking it.

Brewers create the words, bloggers tell the stories, drinkers bring them to life.

European Beer Bloggers Conference 2011

On Sunday, at the inaugural Beer Bloggers Conference in Boulder, Colorado, I stood up in front of the room and announced that there would be a European Beer Bloggers Conference in London in 2011.

I’m working with Zephyr Adventures, the organisers who also arrange successful wine and food conferences, on the European one. My role is to help sort out a venue, hotels and sponsors, plus have an input in the agenda and generally tweet and blog the hell out of it – my ‘payment’ was being taken to the US conference to see how they did things over there.

I get to have a good say into what I think will work in Europe. This means that I will be trying to arrange the weekend that I really want to go to. I saw the sessions which worked and the ones which didn’t work so well in Boulder, or at least sessions which wouldn’t work so well in front of a British and European audience. The difference is simple: the European beer blogging community is smaller and people already know one another quite well, therefore the event needs to be more social than academic. Plus, I don’t think there will be many European bloggers who want a two-hour session on maximising SEO, studying analytics or the benefits (or not) to adding adverts to your site (correct me if I’m wrong and we can arrange it!).

I’ve got lots of cool ideas for the conference, there are some great sponsors already and a great location and I’m personally very excited and I think all the other beer bloggers should be too (and I’m not just saying that!). A live beer blogging (kind of like speed dating with breweries) will almost definitely happen, a Bring Your Own Bottle night will be an in-person help-yourself beer swap, there’ll be two beer dinners, I’m hoping for a brewery visit or two, a twitter blind tasting, some food and beer pairing... Not your usual ‘conference’ activity, so I suggest you shed the notion of a boring lecture-style conference; this is an online conference and therefore it’s about all the voices in the room.

I’m sure some people will wonder what the point is but for me it’s about galvanising the beer bloggers and improving the overall quality by looking at issues that surround what we do (such as twitter beer reviews/tasting notes and if they work; the effectiveness of blogging; the industry involvement; the future of beer writing; an open debate about do’s and dont’s of blogging), discussing them in a practical and involving way. It’s also about having a great weekend drinking great beers! It won’t be academic, it’ll be practical and interesting and based around beer and the internet and the best ways of communicating – even if you have no interest in a ‘conference’ it’ll still be a fascinating weekend of events which you won’t be able to enjoy anywhere else, that’s for sure.

It’ll be in May or early June and will last two to three days (Friday and Saturday will be the core, with beer dinners each evening, and then a Sunday plan will be there for those who want to stay on longer - Sunday will hopefully involve a brewery and a London pub crawl, so nothing too demanding!). It’ll be very affordable (it’s currently going to be £65 to attend, but this might change, and that cost will include the evening meals and all the beer you can drink) and we’re also working with hotels to find a good rate for attendees. And it won’t just be UK beer bloggers – I hope there will be European bloggers, US bloggers, industry people, breweries, brewers (pouring their beer), beer writers, food and wine bloggers/writers and more, so quite a mix. It’s also the perfect opportunity for a brewery to talk to the key online writers and present their beers to them.

What do you think? Are you interested in this? What would you like to see at the conference? (This is the US agenda) If anyone has any ideas for sessions then let me know and I'll add them to the list - this is about what we all would like to see there! I’ll be writing about the US conference more and you’ll hopefully get a good feeling about what it was like (and it was excellent!). We’ll be announcing all the important details (dates, venue, hotel, sponsors) in the next few weeks and then in the next few months we’ll announce the definitive agenda as it gets decided.

Two Today and a Redesign!

Over 200 posts fatter and 100,000 words longer, the blog is two years old today (a birthday it shares with Hardknott Dave)!

To celebrate and to update, you might notice the change of design... I almost went really drastic and made it www.pencilandpint.com (I even got the logo made up by Rich at myBrewerytap) but I bottled it at the last minute and went with the safe, constant option. At least I’ve got a pint glass in the logo now so it’s easy to see that it’s actually a beer blog. The blog will soon be available at www.pencilandspoon.com (UPDATE: It's NOW available at the .com address). If you have links to it then it’d be great if you can update them once it flicks over (it should automatically direct anyway, I hope). There’s also now a facebook group for the blog (it was probably about time I added one). And an About page.

The last year has been a good one with a few notable highlights including becoming an uncle twice; winning the New Media award from the Guild of Beer Writers; getting engaged; Sheffield Twissup; San Francisco; Prague and Pilsen; earning money with my first paid commission; making new friends and drinking some fantastic beer. I’ve got a bottle of Racer 5 in the fridge which seems like a good beer to open to toast the two years.

Thanks for reading – if no one read it and commented then I’d have so much more spare time on my hands, I’d get two hours extra sleep every night, I’d have a healthier bank balance and body and I’d have room in my wardrobe for actual clothes and not just bottles... But whatever, beer blogging is cool and I’ve had some unforgettable experiences this year thanks to the blog. And despite waking her up at 5am most days, or me going out a few times a week, often waking her up when I get in (drunk), or telling her that I’m going to another country and leaving her for a few more days, Lauren still says that I'm her favourite beer blogger, which is all that really matters.

Many thanks to Richard from myBrewerytap who did the graphic design for the new logo. If anyone needs any design work doing then you can email him on [email protected]. If you need beer you can also use that email address as he’s got lots of it (including the new Marble bottles – Chocolate Dubbel and Vuur and Vlam). And thanks to Andy from Beer Reviews for sorting out all the complicated internet stuff (if it doesn’t work then he’s to blame, although I need to be nice as he now knows my password...).

Two great years in. Here’s to the next one!

And what do you think of the new design?! I nearly photoshopped it myself (after my skills were shown in this post) but instead sent the following picture to Rich and let him do it properly...

Cupcake image from here.

I was absolutely wasted...

Here’s a question for everyone and it’s inspired by something Andy wrote in a post earlier this week. He said: “to put it bluntly I was bolloxed.” It’s not surprising given the list of beers he was drinking during the day, but the question is this: from a writer’s and a reader’s perspective, should we talk about being drunk in blogs?

Traditional beer journalism has worked hard to make beer a serious beverage up there with wine and whisky, breaking away from the binge-drinking statistics, so by getting completely hammered and then telling everyone about it, are we in fact doing more harm to beer than good? Or, is that just a side of beer drinking which now gets a chance to be written about honestly thanks to the diary format of beer blogs?

What do you think: is it good to read about someone being drunk (so long as they aren’t throwing up on trains and pissing in bins) or does it do a disservice to beer? What about discussing a raging hangover? A part of drinking we should talk about or not?

I also ask because I’ve mentioned it in a piece I’ve written for CAMRA’s Beer magazine and wonder what others think. I got the image from here.

What's Next?

I’m still on a high. Lauren is getting sick of me saying things like: ‘I’m an award winning writer now so I don’t need to do the washing up’ and ‘what shower gel do you think award winning writers use?’. The thing is, I want to write and I cannot not write. Take me away from a laptop or pad of paper for more than a day or so and I go a bit nuts. It’s not just therapeutic or comforting; it’s the one thing that I can do so naturally that sometimes it’s scary to re-read (although sometimes it’s bad scary). I’m still learning about beer and trying to form my thoughts on it and communicate them effectively, but for me, I hope this is a reward for the quality of my writing above everything else. A lot of people ask why I get up at 5am, but I do it because that gives me three hours to write in the morning before work. If I didn’t do it then I couldn’t write. It’s an easy decision for me.

This weekend has had me thinking about what’s next, so I will commit them to the page.

I have goals beyond this blog, my notepad and my twitter account. I’ve written a novel and a half but these are waiting to the side for now. I’ve started writing for RateBeer’s Hoppress but I can do more than that. I now need to start trying to get commissions for pieces in papers, magazines and on other websites. I need to travel more, read more, learn more and drink more. I’ve got ideas for small blog projects which I’ll get out there soon and I’ve got ideas for larger projects which I’m working on and trying to hone and perfect (what’s the heart of it? What’s the story?). There’s a lot that I want to do and this, I hope, will be the springboard into my writing career.

Personally, 2009 has been a great year for me. I graduated from my Masters (in Creative Writing), started a career, moved in with Lauren and became an uncle. I think 2010 could be an even better year, but it will be what I make it – it’s in my hands now (or, more precisely, in my tapping fingertips). Ben McFarland is the youngest ever winner of the Beer Writer of the Year and he was 28 at the time. I turned 25 three weeks ago and I believe I’m the youngest to win an award from the Guild (correct me if I’m wrong though). As a goal, let me say this: in 2011 I want to be the Beer Writer of the Year. Now I’ve got almost two years to get there, starting from now.

As for this blog, it carries on the same, hopefully getting better all the time. I want to keep up the FAB POW!s and the As-Live Tastings, I want to do more videos as I’ve been lazy with that recently, there will be more things like Beer Swap where everyone can take part in something, I want to travel more, I want to keep writing different pieces and hopefully I’ll drink more, better beer.

I’d also like to thank everyone again for all the messages that I’ve received - it’s been very humbling. Without any readers this blog wouldn’t be what it is now. It’s also always great to hear from people who read this thing so it was especially nice to hear from first time commenters. Cheers guys. Now watch this space!

The beers are on me!

I haven’t stopped smiling for about 10 hours now. Literally. Winning the British Guild of Beer Writers New Media Writer of the Year is a big deal to me. I guess, considering the award, I should’ve announced it via a tweet but Pete Brown (Beer Writer of the Year, deservedly) and Dave (runner up in New Media) got there first, so I’ll just blog it instead.

I get up at 5am every day to write about beer because I love doing it. To be rewarded for something you love is just a fantastic feeling. To be rewarded for my skills as a writer (whether it’s 1,000 word blog posts or 140 character tweets) is even better. I felt that I’d made a transition beyond ‘beer blogger’ a while ago and now I can officially say that I am an Award Winning Beer Writer! I like that.

The award ceremony was excellent. Nice food, superb beer pairings, good people. Pretty much a triumph all round, I’d say (apart from the tankards not making it down to the hotel!). Now I need to try and work out the best way to spend the prize money. Lauren has requested £100 of it for putting up with me but I laughed that off straight away. I’ve already checked out flight costs to the US and I think I’ll be heading over there early in the New Year (when’s Pliny the Younger released?!). I’ll pop across to Belgium too. And maybe GABF in September. Maybe Italy. Definitely a little tour of UK breweries… Seems I might need to start saving a little extra of my own for all this!!

I’ll be in London all day drinking. If you are around then let me know (tweet, comment, email, whatever). I might buy you a beer.

Beer Blogging is Cool

A few of my posts have discussed twitter recently, but it’s important. And it’s becoming increasingly important all the time. Beer Swap is a prime example: that started as a blog project but rapidly, through the power of twitter, turned into a social media project (the hashtag of #beerswap seemed to pique interest from all over the world with many people asking what it’s about and how they can be involved). This also highlighted something else: the number of people who write regular tweets about beer and the number of people who actually write blogs about beer.

I’ve only been writing Pencil&Spoon for a year, but in that time the number of other beer blogs has increased massively, especially in the last few months. And there’s a new trend now, which is interesting: beer bloggers are getting younger. Have you noticed that? Hop around the blogosphere and see how many beer bloggers are in their 20s. Brewers are getting younger too and they are having an influence (the New Wave cometh). Combined, these are changing beer in Britain, keeping the traditions of old but invigorating with US boldness.

In blogging terms, I think twitter has a lot to do with it. Everyone knows the sociability of the beer scene and there really is nothing like it – our love for good beer inextricably links us and is the match to start our friendship. Take that sociability, take the curiosity to know what others are drinking, take the fun and drunken tweets, the honest and real-life stuff, the 140-character conversations and soon it’s like sitting in a virtual pub with mates (blogging is the same, just with unlimited letters to do it). What twitter has done is highlight those who are really interested in good beer and opened the community; it’s made it inclusive, it’s shown that there are a lot of people out here who want to drink good beer. And thanks to a few twits and bloggers I think it’s shown that writing about the stuff you drink in the pub, or the bottles you open while watching TV, is pretty good fun.

It boils down to this: Beer blogging is cool. And real ale is cool, too. It’s no longer solely the realm of the old, bearded guy; it’s slowly crept into a young man’s thirsty territory. Beer can’t survive and grow on the old guard alone (although it’s very important, and let’s not forget, age is a state of mind as much as it is a number); it needs new blood, new invigoration and new passion to take it to new places. BrewDog have helped (although this post links in well with the debate sparked from James’ recent interview with FullPint) as have other young brewers, and interest in interesting beer is increasing all the time. British beer is more than murky best bitter and its future ascension rests in the brewing hands of those who make it and those tapping fingers of those who use technology to write about it. With every blog written, every tweet sent and with every new and different brew that hits the pub we are promoting (marketing and physically) British beer.

Is the virtual pub becoming as important as the physical pub?

One Today

A year ago today I made the first entry on this blog (a post which doesn't make too much sense now - lots has changed from that; my other blog has been updated and is not about screenwriting, my other website no longer exists). 90,000-odd words and 161 posts later, here we are. A lot has happened in that year; I’ve drunk lots of new beers, learnt lots of new stuff, been to some cool beer-places, met some great new people and made lots of new friends. It’s been a great year for me. And a great year personally too - graduating from my master’s, starting a career, moving into a new flat and writing the first draft of a novel.

The thing with a blog is that it becomes a diary and it lasts for as long as I want it to be there. This means I can track what I was thinking and drinking and it makes for interesting reading, being able to look back and see changes. It took me a while to find my voice and my place but now I’m really pleased with what I’ve got here and I’ll raise my glass to you all tonight because without people reading my stuff then it wouldn’t be what it is now. Cheers!

And check out the blog tomorrow morning as I’ll be announcing a new idea which I hope you’ll be interested in and want to take part in…

I haven’t decided exactly what beers tonight to drink yet, but there will definitely be a Bracia in there as I’ve had some great times with Thornbridge and there’ll be some BrewDog too as I’ve had a lot of their beer this year and James asking me to write some food and beer pairing for them was a major boost for me; it gave me confidence to write more, better.

Why I write a beer blog

It’s not about beer. It’s about people; beer provides the context.

It’s for me to write and read and think every day. I write so that I can become a better writer, so that I can think about things in a different way, learn different perspectives and put my words to my experiences. That’s the challenge: it’s about describing the sensation of the senses; describing feelings and actions that are so natural and casual that we don’t even know they are there.

I don’t just write tasting notes because I can read them on ratebeer or wherever. I want to write about other stuff because beer is more than just how it tastes. I want to drink more beer, better beer. I’m happy to drink shit beer too, why not.

I love reading other blogs. I read them all. I don’t always comment, but every morning and evening I read them.

I blog to drink. I drink to blog.

I don’t know everything about beer. I don't know that much. I know enough. I’m learning more every day.

It’s a personal thing. A kind-of diary.

I wax lyrical. I write in unbalanced ways, it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty emotive. Nearly always positive. Over-passionate, perhaps. So what? I come up with frivolous ideas, An As-Live FAB POW! anyone? I write first, think second: write with your heart, re-write with your head.

I write things so other people will think. I hope they will comment. Comments are where blogs come alive, that’s where the interesting things are said, the disagreement, differences in opinion, sideways conversations.

I try to be different. I can write in a different style with my beer stuff to everything else that I do; I can be informal, colloquial, hell I can even make up words and generally disregard rigid punctuation. I can swear, if I like. It’s liberating. Or I can sit down and try and be articulate and precise and thorough. I can write what I want and how I want. Freedom of speech, and all that.

I’m not a journalist. I don’t want to be a journalist. I seldom write about news because others do it better. I have no expectations from the blog. I don’t think I’ll make my fortune as a beer writer. But I do take this blog seriously. I won’t put up a post that I think is crap. Sometimes I’ll write a post and then it stays on my computer for months before it’s ready to go. I wrote a draft of this post ages ago. It feels like a good time to get it out.

I just want to write things which people read and enjoy.

Beer means a lot to me, sharing it with people means more; this blog is about sharing.

If you blog, then why?