Guerrilla Eats is a collective set up by a group of street food traders in Manchester. Tired of trekking around farmers markets and festivals, this collective is run by people who want to trade regularly in their home town and just love the food they make.

“The aim of the Guerrilla Eats events is to create a buzz around street food. By bringing in music, bars and other traders and putting it all under one roof (or no roof), we’re making street food the central focus of the events.”

From barbecue to hot dogs, Indian vegetarian delights to burgers, and much more, Guerrilla Eats has something to satisfy everyone.

Finally, on Friday, 3 May, 2013, beer aficionados from all over the world gathered at Sparta Hallen in Copenhagen to have their taste buds dazzled. Wristbands secured after a short queue, and it was into the breach!

It seemed only fitting to start the day with a Doubleblueberryspontanale from the lovely hosts, Mikkeller. From a fruit stout with made with the indigenous Brasilian fruit atemoia, to a cachaça barrel aged barley wine, Way Beer from Brasil were quite the discovery. The number of sours, saisons, and barrel-aged beers was astounding, and the small measures proved to be the key in keeping up with all the high ABV beers. A variety of food stalls rounded out the hall, with risotto, cheese to compliment the beery flavours, chili, hot dogs, and fish cakes with traditional Danish ‘rugbrød’ to help mop up the beer. Finally, the excellent Coffee Collective were on hand to offer caffeinated support.

Another beery highlight was Firestone Walker’s Sixteenth anniversary beer. Blended with eight different Firestone Walker beers, then barrel aged, this imperial stout was immense, with rich vanilla and chocolate notes, and a definite sipping beer.

With beers from Stillwater Artisanal, Westbrook, Amagher Bryghus, ToØl, Jester King, Boxing Cat, Mountain Goat, Three Floyds… and many more, it was difficult not to become giddier than a child in a sweet shop.

Apart from just working one’s way through the bars, there were seminars to attend. Friday’s ‘Session IPA’ seminar, featuring brewers from Kuhnhenn, Founders, Firestone Walker, and Cigar City, turned out to mostly focus on ‘regular’ IPAs, different hopping rates, and each brewery’s IPA recipe evolution.

Saturday’s afternoon sour yeast seminar with Troels Prahl of White Labs and Chad Yakobson of Crooked Stave proved challenging after hitting the Saturday early session, but tasting what the White Labs testing lab produces, not to mention Crooked Stave, was too great an opportunity to pass up. For home brewers and professional brewers, this was surely a most interesting and inspiring seminar. Undoubtedly, there is lots more room for sour and barrel-aged beers produced both in the UK and elsewhere — at least one hopes there will be more readily available soon!

After a full day of supping, the intrepid continued on to the wonderful Mikkeller Bar and the latest addition to the Mikkeller family, the astounding (40 taps, oodles of bottles, spoiled for choice doesn’t even come close) Mikkeller and Friends.

Highlighting all that is innovative, exciting, and experimental in brewing today, CBC pushed the boundaries of palates in the most relaxing and enjoyable way. Thanks to everyone involved for making it happen! Beer education par excellence.

Words and photos by Claudia Asch

Tickets are now on sale via eventbrite.

We decided to sell a very limited amount of weekend tickets this year, there are only 50 available priced at £33 each, they give you access to ALL the sessions. ‘Lite Session’ tickets start from as little as £6 (including fees).

Session times and prices are as follows :

Thursday 10th October
5.30pm – 11.30pm / £6

Friday 11th October
5.30pm – 11.30pm / £11.50

Saturday 12th October
11am – 4.30pm / £8.50
5.30pm – 11.30pm / £11.30

Sunday 13th October
12pm – 6.30pm / £8.50

Weekender / Thursday 10th – Sunday 13th / £33

* all prices include booking fees

Thanks for all your support this year, it’s been great!

All the best – team IMBC

Session times / IMBC 2013

Thursday 10th October
5.30pm – 11.30pm

Friday 11th October
5.30pm – 11.30pm

Saturday 12th October
11am – 4.30pm
5.30pm – 11.30pm

Sunday 13th October
12pm – 6.30pm

2012 was so much fun! We decided to document it all in a lovely video made by our good friends Asta Films – it features interviews with the brewers, punters and we hope it gives you a great picture of what to expect this year!

Here’s to 2013 – see you back at Victoria Baths for plenty more beer!

In the meantime here are some lovely quotes about IMBC 2012 that we missed a few months ago :

Beer From The Cellar : “quite frankly an extraordinarily special festival of beer”
http://cellarbeer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/indymanbeercon2012.html

Tandleman : “I liked it by and large”
http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/

BeersManchester : “I attended the Convention both as a customer and as a volunteer and enjoyed both, hugely!”
http://beersmanchester.blogspot.co.uk/

Shebeen : “IMBC really broke away from the general stereotypes of your average beer festival and provided the perfect environment to showcase the new wave of British breweries. Roll on 2013″
http://www.shebeenuk.com/2012/10/09/imbc-2012-victoria-baths/

Tickets will be on sale from March 1st 2013.

Session times and more information will be announced real soon.

ALL THE BEST /  Team IMBC

Well that was IMBC 2012, we had plenty of fun hosting an amazing event, we hope you did too? It took a while to ‘come down’ from such a great couple of days! Judging by the ever flowing twitter feed it made us glow with all the lovely comments. Thanks everyone!

The event would not have happened without the huge help of all the brewers, volunteers, Port Street Beer House and Common staff, everyone at Victoria Baths and the amazing production team! Thank you SO much for making IMBC work so well.

We have already mooted ideas for 2013, we will be announcing dates soon once we have convinced the baths to welcome us back. So watch this space as we make 2013 even better. Also keep an eye out for a video we had specially commissioned!

Thank you once again, without you we would be nothing!

All the best / TEAM IMBC

PS. if you would alike to send us ANY feedback place email : info@indymanbeercon.co.uk

PRESS / BLOG REVIEWS

It appears there have been plenty of press reviews heading our way, they have been quite a few over the past week, so sorry if we have missed you out!

The Good Stuff : “The atmosphere was great; friendly, reverent without being preachy, and inclusive. Community, indeed.”

http://goodfoodgoodbeer.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/indyman-beer-con-2012/

Ale Is Good : “Nothing else I’ve been to in the UK is comparable”

“http://ale.gd/blog/2012/10/independent-manchester-beer-convention/

Beer Say : “It was groundbreaking, the first of it’s kind and in my view at least an event that strove from the start to examine everything about the average British beer fest”

http://beersay.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/indyman-the-beer-festival/

Beer Compurgation : “It was just perfect”

http://beercompurgation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/indy-man-beer-con-it-was-that-good.html

Opportunity Hops : ” A huge thanks to those behind the festival for making it one of my most memorable beer festival experiences to date.”

http://www.opportunityhops.co.uk/indy-man-beer-con-2012-2/

Zak Avery : Panel report on ‘What The HELL is Craft Beer?’

http://thebeerboy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/what-hell-is-craft-beer.html

Reluctant Scooper : “An event of this nature and scale doesn’t get designed by a committee yoked with misplaced tradition. It needs vision and ambition, bloody-mindedness and bloody hard work. So caps doffed to the organisers for shaping it…”

http://www.reluctantscooper.co.uk/2012/10/indymanbeercon-been-there-drank-that.html

Tyson’s Beer Blog : “Overall, then, an enjoyable first event that, with a few tweaks, could establish itself on the beer calendar”

http://tysonsbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/tysonindymancon.html

Liverpool Craft Beer Blog : “This weekend heralded the most exciting beer festival to happen in the UK in years”

http://www.liverpoolcraftbeer.com/apps/blog/indy-man-beer-con

The Beer Cast : “Indy Man will come round again, if for no other reason than due to the near-constant stream of praise that emanated from Twitter”

http://thebeercast.com/2012/10/indymanbeercon-2012.html

Fiona Beckett : Aumbry Meal / Food matching review

http://www.matchingfoodandwine.com/news/match_of_the_week/hazelnut_and_rosemary_truffles_with_mikkeller_big_worse_red_wine_barrelaged_barley_wine__

Martin Pearson : Photo Blog - http://indymanbeerblog.tumblr.com/

Gallery pictures by Luke Chase

As the compere for the evening my brief was to keep the discussion going, stimulate discussion and to try and keep my opinions to myself. Each member of the panel was given 3 minutes to state their case, a very brief run down of some of the live tweets from the talk:

“Trying to define it (craft beer) I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere” - John Clarke (CAMRA)

“A really powerful thing is how you define yourself ” – Zak Avery

“we need the definition, to protect it from the multi corporate bastards” James Watt (Brewdog)

“I don’t think we can define craft beer” - Tandleman

“we should not follow the USA in relation to their definition of craft beer” – Tandleman

“You’ve got your own palates! We brew beer you like it, you drink it. You don’t like it, you don’t drink it.” – Toby Mckenzie

“It’s about education. Information for the consumer is key to drink better beer.” - James Watt (BrewDog)

“Not everyone can drink expensive beer” – Zak Avery

“We don’t need a definition. Summer Wine, RedWillow, Thornbridge, Quantum are growing – does it matter?” - James (SWB)

“Be wary of selling things. Don’t push people out. Keep the prices low.” – Tandleman

Well that gives you a flavour of the discussion, the only person who really advocated a tighter definition of craft beer was James Watt, stating size, independence and something else, a broadly similar to the American Brewers Association definition. I was surprised that more people didn’t really support this type of motion, personal I think there is some sense in it.

Do we really need a definition at all? I would argue that maybe we don’t, the US have a constitution set in stone the UK do not, is there a parallel to be drawn here, do us Brits need strict rules to judge these things by and even if we did would we still argue about them anyway? I would say that maybe we need a set of aspirations so that consumers can judge for themselves what is and isn’t craft, some guidance through the world of beer particularly for the uninitiated. I think some of the proposal containing in Tandleman’s blog are very sensible, to develop a broad qualitative definition, maybe using size, independence, ethos and other such wooly terms, at least this gives people a framework by which to make up their own minds.

In terms of ‘craft beer’ being derided as a marketing term, what is the problem with it being a marketing term? Real ale has become a marketing term and plenty of brewers have hung their hat on that, why not have a marketing term which could help small brewers, pubs and customers a like in the same way real ale has done so far.

I think it’s fair to say outwardly we may not have come to a conclusion, however I think it was good to get the discussion out in the open and it has maybe thrown up a few possible discussion points for future events such as:

What future for CAMRA? Beer is an exciting and dynamic industry with a changing demographic, young people, women, previous non-beer drinkers of all ages are getting interested. Can CAMRA keep pace? Is it interested in moving forward? Is it too late? Has the campaign(for real ale) been won already?

Why are PROFIT and MARKETING dirty words in the beer industry? Two words which are vital to the success of any small business or industry as a whole so why do so many get so worked up a bout them?

Words By Jonathan Heyes

One of our flagship discussions over the weekend, documented by Asta Films.