Writing about beer can be pretty darn cool for someone like me with a day job and a normal life. Random, friendly people say hello at beer festivals, sometimes brewers give you free beer, you may get to see your work printed in publications you read all the time and you often get invited to groovy parties like the launch party, last month, of the luscious Melissa Cole’s new book, where those in attendance got to schmooze in the good company of other beer geeks and publishing folk, delighting in the mini beer fest that Melissa had provided.
However, the greatest motivation for writing about beer is knowing your thoughts may be being read by lots of people, that they enjoy it and that it may enthuse them to love drinking beer as much as you do. These sentiments are celebrated at the biggest beer writing shindig around- The British Guild of Beer Writers’ annual awards dinner, taking place tomorrow night.
The evening will celebrate all the things that make beer writing great, and praise the people who do it best. Proof that beer lovers can actually scrub up quite well, attendees spend the evening in fabulous company, eating sumptuous food, matched with gorgeous beers, nattering about their favourite topic before the high drama of the awards announcements. The exciting thing about the awards is that there are so many people now doing such great stuff that there are potential winners across all the categories, although I will be thoroughly relaxed and sitting back watching all the nervousness as I didn't enter this year).
Who will win Beer Writer of the Year? I don’t know, but I do know we’ll all leave looking a little less pretty, and much less scrubbed, than when we arrived.
By the way, I was going to link to my latest 'A girl walks into a bar' London Drinker article but have discovered that the editors have bizarrely reprinted the one that went into the April/May edition.
Oh well, if you missed it first time round, here it is http://www.londondrinker.org.uk/.
