IMBC17: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Independent Manchester Beer Convention (IMBC) is the highlight of UK beer festivals for me. In the same way that some people love Christmas - I count down the days until IMBC and the closer it gets the more excitable I become. Part of it is simply escaping London for a few days but part of it is that I have a soft spot for Manchester. In the early 1990s, when I was in my early teens, I used to visit my sister who was at university there and I have fond memories of trudging up and down Oxford Road in my DMs either heading out for the night or scuttling home in the early hours. In my mind Manchester has always been closely associated with good times involving beer and laughter.  

View from above, room two

In much the same way that a city can be so central to a story so as to effectively become one of the characters in a book, the venue for IMBC is one of the most important features of the festival for me. It is a pleasure and an honour to be able to spend time in such a beautiful location as Victoria Baths. To contrast it with a venue like Olympia (used for GBBF) which is effectively a giant box, is like comparing a lump of wood to a diamond. As well as three large rooms, the baths has outdoor space and a warren of smaller rooms, plus the upper levels which are fantastic for people watching. But my favourite feature has to be the rows of little changing cubicles in rooms 1 and 3 where you can take a secluded seat behind a curtain or door and enjoy some time out, away from the tidal flow of festival goers. If you spot someone you want to talk to you can just throw out an arm and catch them as they pass by. It makes me happy just to sit on my own with a beer and take in my surroundings. Call me easily pleased, but I'm not sure what other entertainment is really required from a beer festival. 

Who Needs a Beer List Anyway?

A couple of years back we all loved sitting there with our pastel-coloured beer lists and our IMBC pencils, circling the beers we wanted to drink. The lists were reasonably accurate but sometimes beers would run out, or never arrive in the first place, and beers might not appear at the specific session they were slated for. I can understand that it's impossible to know in advance which beers which will be finished in a single session so the 'fluidity' of the beer list was never a serious problem to me. 

This year there was no hard copy of the beer list available to punters, instead we had an app. We are all so used to checking our phones for information rather than a piece of paper that it seems reasonable to do away with the beer list, doesn't it? I confess I didn't even look at the app before I got there. In fact I only looked at it twice while I was there and one of those times was in an attempt to inspire myself to physically get up and go into another room. But it seemed like a functional app to me and I didn't hear any complaints about it while I was there.  

  

But I have a confession to make. The beer list isn't really my priority at IMBC. To provide some context - if I go out for a beer and a bar has one of my favourite beers on (e.g. Cannonball, Axe Edge, or a Kernel pale ale) I'll happily drink that same beer all night. I'm not fussed about ticking and I'm rubbish at checking beers into Untappd. There's a multitude of reasons for that (enough for a post in its own right) but the key point is: I'm not hunting for novelty or trying to get a high score. 

DIPAs and Sippers

What I did at IMBC for the most part was drink beers that I was already excited about: the aforementioned Kernel pale and IPA, Burning Sky Cuvee, Buxton's crazy ice cream beers. But I'll admit that I'm also keen on a well-made DIPA. I know what I like and I'm quite fussy about it. I'm not even talking about faults here (although I'll admit I did drink one poorly made DIPA while I was at IMBC which I was unable to finish), I'm talking about design and technique. There's more than one way to brew a great DIPA but not all of them will produce beers that I would choose to drink. 

For example, I love Other Half beers (that's why I volunteered to pour their beers at two UK beer festivals this year) and I know what to expect from them. But I think that at IMBC I had maybe three OH beers over the whole festival, even though they probably had four times that number available over the weekend. That's because I wasn't at IMBC to drink as many different beers as humanly possible, even if they are amazing beers which I would I know I'd enjoy. 

Social Work

So if the beer is not that important then what is? Well, I already explained how important the venue is to me. But the other key ingredient is the social element of IBMC. It seems like it is impossible to go more than a few yards without bumping into a friend or acquaintance, or spotting them from across the room or whilst looking down from above. It's also great to see friends of ours who started out as homebrewers now pouring their own beers at IMBC (e.g. Elusive, Torrside, Affinity). We are pleased and proud for them. 

There are always loads of people we want to catch up with at the festival. In too many cases this gets limited to a quick 'hey, how are you?' - because one or both parties are already in the process of going somewhere else to do something else at the time.  

But there's another reason we don't manage to chat to as many people for as long as we'd like to and that's because I have a problem with extended social interaction. If it goes on for too long without a break I find myself completely drained of energy. I feel physically and mentally worn out. 

I experience the same effect after teaching or tutoring, or doing voluntary work/public speaking, or working behind the bar. I enjoy all of these activities and I am good at them - otherwise I wouldn't do them - but I really do need to unwind and decompress afterwards. As an introvert I need to put a bit of effort into performing and the energy I expend in being 'switched on' requires me recharge my batteries when I'm done. Luckily, this is as simple as sitting on the sofa without having to interact with anyone for a couple of hours. 

View from the within the changing room, room one

In the first couple of sessions at IMBC I have a great deal of enthusiasm for interaction with people. But as time passes that energy wanes and I begin to feel too 'tired' to cope with any extended conversations. Hopefully, I haven't offended anyone I like and actually wanted to talk to with my fatigued demeanour. 

I am aware that sometimes a hangover can manifest itself as a kind of existential dread which brings with it an awful anxiety. I won't deny that I've been there a few times. But I have to say that I didn't have a single IMBC-related hangover this year, which is probably the one thing which made it clear to me that I have an issue with extended socialising that isn't directly caused by the effects of alcohol. 

I also want to be clear that I don't think I suffer from social anxiety disorder. I would describe myself as shy, antisocial and introverted. None of these things stops me from being a friendly social person when I have the energy or desire to be so. But the trouble is that I don't always have that energy available. 

This year's experience has been a bit of an eye-opener for me in terms of self-awareness. I need to learn my own limits. As much as I love, you IndyMan, it might be that attending all six sessions isn't the best thing for my mental health. It's not you, it's me. Honestly.  

 

The Best Double IPA in the UK

April has seen us drowning in double IPA. If you enjoy this style of strong, super hopped IPA then you’ve been spoiled for choice in the past few weeks. I’ve seen and heard a lot of beer nerds talking about which of them is 'the best DIPA'. Of course this is what beer lovers are into – discussion and friendly argument about beer. But I am surprised that people are still talking about this in terms of absolutes, as if one beer has to be awarded the title of ‘The Best’ and all the others must therefore be 'less good' beers. As if there isn’t a place for variation of expression within a style; as if context is irrelevant. By all means choose a favourite, choose one beer that you prefer above the others. But does one really have to be the best and the others all inferior to it as a result? I don’t think it’s that simple and I don’t really believe in absolutes.

Beer & Cheese: A Match Made in Heaven

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Cheese makes beer even more delicious

ABSTRACT

In an effort to learn more about styles of cheese and to gain a better understanding of beer and cheese pairing we selected nine different beer styles and matched them with cheese. We gave these pairings our full attention and recorded our findings in detail. We reaffirmed our love of some Belgian beer styles and fell head over heels for aged Gouda and Brillat-Savarin. 

Fig 1.0: The unsullied cheese board(s)

INTRODUCTION

I’ve long been a lover of both beer and cheese. I eaten cheese while drinking beer plenty of times in the past but I’ve never really done it in a serious structured fashion before where I’ve put thought into it in advance. For my birthday last month I was given a book on matching beer and cheese (it was from Chris so I’m pretty sure there was an ulterior motive there) so that I might learn more about different styles of cheese. I read it in a frenzied, non-linear fashion, flicking around between the beer styles, staring longingly at the pictures. Very soon I’d cleared a day (possibly even a whole weekend) in our diaries which we could devote to the serious consideration of cheese and beer. 

I planned this event as a kind of luxury at-home experience and I was willing to pay for quality ingredients, maybe somewhere approaching what I’d be prepared to spend on a meal eaten at a restaurant. So, no, this it is not a cheap alternative to going out; I would consider it more like something you’d do to treat yourself or for a special occasion.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

I was aiming to have five or six courses but just in case I wasn’t able to easily source all the beer and/or cheese styles I was after I planned for extra courses just in case. I’m sure you know what I’m going to say next. Yes, we ended up all doing nine pairings in the end.

A variety of different beer styles was what I was after for the pairings, especially those styles we don’t drink too often. From that list of selected beer styles I read through the suggested pairings for each. At the most basic level you’re looking for a cheese to compare or contrast with your beer. By the time I’d gone through the suggestions for each style I had a core of about six styles of cheese, most of which could be tried with each different beer.

Once I my cheese wish list was complete I contacted our local cheese expert, Manish (from Good Taste Food in Gipsy Hill) to check if he could supply everything I wanted. As for the beers, we already had many of them in our beer cupboard but the rest I picked up on the Friday evening from BottleDog or Chris picked up on Saturday from We Brought Beer in Balham.

On the Saturday morning I was positively giddy about going to get my cheeses, skipping off like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket. [NB I am actually eating cheese right now as I type this] I was pretty greedy with the portion sizes because I didn’t want us to run short during the event, plus I wanted leftover cheese too. The intention was for this to be done around the time of the evening meal but I confess that we just couldn't wait that long and started at about 4pm.

See Table 1.0 for the pairings, by round, and the overall ‘winner’ of each round. The winner was the pairing which brought out the best in both the cheese and the beer. In most, but not all, cases we agreed on the winners.

RESULTS

NUMBER	BEER	CHEESE	WINNER
1	Pilsner (Flensburger Pilsner)	- Sharpham Brie - Brillat-Savarin - Dutch Mistress	Brillat-Savarin
2	Dubbel (Westmalle Dubble)	- Aged Gouda -Maroilles	Aged Gouda
3	Gueuze (Cantillon, “Belgian Flag” Gueuze)	- Aged Gouda - Brillat-Savarin - Sharpham Brie	Brillat-Savarin
4	Tripel (La Trappe Tripel)	- Maroilles - Brillat-Savarin - Aged Gouda	Maroilles
5	Imperial Stout (Buxton Rain Shadow)	- Brillat-Savarin - Aged Gouda - Cashel Blue	Cashel Blue
6	Imperial IPA (Crema Brewery Here’s What You Could’ve Won)	- Brillat-Savarin - Mature cheddar - Aged Gouda - Sharpham Brie	Chris: Brillat-Savarin Emma: Aged Gouda
7	Märzen (Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen)	- Aged Gouda - Blue de Gex	Chris: none of the above Emma: Aged Gouda
8	Saison (Dupont Saison)	- Blue de Gex - Maroilles	Chris: Blue de Gex Emma: Maroilles
9	Barleywine (Magic Rock Strongman 2013)	- Aged Gouda - Brillat-Savarin - Cashel Blue - Maroilles	Brillat-Savarin

Table 1.0: Numbered rounds of beer styles and the cheeses they were paired with
(see Table 1.2 for cheese descriptions)

CHEESE	DESCRIPTION
Sharpham Brie	Cow’s milk brie from Devon
Brillat Savarin	French triple cream cheese containing >75% fat
Dutch Mistress	Goat’s cheese from Shropshire
Cashel Blue	Semi-soft Irish blue cheese
Blue de Gex	French aged blue cheese
Maroilles	Rindwashed cow’s cheese from France

Table 1.2: Cheese descriptions

DISCUSSION

Each of the cheeses was gosh-darned delicious in its own right and so were the beers (which we knew before we started doing the pairings) so we were starting from a very solid platform of tastiness. Everything was going to be good, but the question was: ‘how good?’

Fig 2.0 Round 1

We had a few revelations during the tasting. The first was regarding the beers. Yes, of course we’ve drunk pilsners and Belgian beers plenty of times before. We know what they taste like, right? Well, what we did on this occasion was sit down with the beer at a table completely cleared of other distractions. We weren’t chatting to our mates in the pub or watching something on TV at the same time. We were really paying attention to the beer and giving it our full consideration. Our first thought was: blimey, we really don’t drink enough good pilsners. How often are we guilty of overlooking them for hoppier, more bitter beers? Then the dubbel and the tripel: wow. Doing this matching event really relit our fire for Belgian beers, both in their own right and as beers to pair with food. 

Another interesting discovery concerned the 'strength' of the cheeses. As a child I often found mature cheddars to give me a slight allergic reaction. However, sometimes other aged cheeses will still give me a similar 'itchy' reaction. I always thought this was just me and my weirdly over-reactive immune system. But we both experienced an irritation after eating the Blue de Gex (a kind of prickling and itching in the mouth), to the point where we could only have a very thin sliver otherwise it just wasn't pleasant. While writing up our results I learned that this allergic reaction to mature cheeses is the same condition people get when they eat fish which has been allowed to sit around and degrade: the amino acid histidine present in the fish is broken down to histamine, which causes a temporary allergic reaction known as 'scombroid fish poisoning'. #science

Fig 3.0: Round 2

All the pairings were educational for us and I could easily go into detail on every single one. But to pick just a few of the most striking pairings – the most memorable for us both was probably the first round. Pilsner vs. Brillat-Savarin: this seems counter intuitive, putting a delicate ‘mild-mannered’ beer up against a super creamy, rich cheese that’s scarily high in fat. But it works incredibly well. The high carbonation of the dry, refreshing pilsner cleanses and refreshes the palate between each bite of the creamy cheese, literally washing away the fat of the triple cream. In turn the ever-so-slightly sour tang of the cheese brings out the malt flavour of the beer. This is a pairing which contrasts both textures and flavours. When I was sampling the cheeses before buying them Manish told me that the textbook pairing for Brillat-Savarin is champagne so I suppose it makes perfect sense for it to pair so well with a pilsner.

The other two outstanding pairings were the Belgian beers. The dubbel with the aged Gouda was a match which made me smile a lot. This time it was a 'like pairs with like' match, with the sweet caramel notes of the malts snuggling up to the nutty sweetness of the cheese. It was a caramel match made in heaven. The tripel and the rind-washed cheese was a match where two robust characters meet each other head on and neither one gives any ground. I’ve long been a fan of the funk of a rind-washed cheese, but it can be overwhelming. The slight alcohol heat and the slightly sweet malt flavours of the beer easily hold their own against the intensity of the farmyard funk of the cheese. The dry finish of the beer contrasts with the rich creamy texture of the cheese. So with this round we had a comparison and a contrast within the same pairing.

Fig 4.0: Round 4

Our love of beer and cheese was renewed and reinvigorated by this evening of indulgence. It definitely made me want to try new pairings but also just pay more attention to beer and food pairings in general. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys beer (and likes cheese, obviously). Our event was pretty extravagant but you don’t need to have nine different courses! Even just choosing one or two beers to try with two cheeses would be a really good experience, especially if you choose beer styles you don’t often drink.

Finally, I just cannot express how much I love Brillat-Savarin. What a cheese. It seems to pair with absolutely everything you put it next to. It’s magical.

I will admit that the day after we did this we were completely cheesed off. We couldn't look a cheese in the eye, touch a cheese or even think about a cheese without feeling uncomfortable (this was a difficult day as the remaining bits of our fridge that weren't stuffed with beer and hops were occupied by cheese). I think this comes down to us having started our cheese-a-thon at 4pm... yet by 10pm, we were STILL eating cheese. We were simply overwhelmed and so far past cheese that we were Beyond Cheese. But after a 24 hour cheese break we were able to think favourably about it again and get on with finishing off the leftovers.

REFERENCES

1. Fletcher, Jane.  Cheese & Beer. Kansas City, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2013.  

[Post by Emma]