After such japes in Edinburgh in 2013 it was a no-brainer to sign up for 2014. And what an incentive to fulfil my credentials as a proper blogger.

Mentally I had been a blogger since the day I arrived in Edinburgh but actually, virtually, physically the blog didn’t really get off the ground very quickly. Now, the good people at Zephyr Conferences who organise the Beer Bloggers Conferences were very tolerant but they spend a lot of time getting sponsorship for these events and the sponsors do need to know they are reaching real bloggers and not just beer drinking dreamers.

Takehome message: The Beer Bloggers Conference is the best possible reason to start a beer blog.

And 2014 saw the first conference outside the UK, in Dublin, to be sure. At that point I could name Hilden and Clearwater in the North, Porterhouse and O’Hara’s in the Free State and that was it. To be honest four competent but fairly average breweries. Guidance from Steve Lamont again proved invaluable and my solo pre-pub crawl, pub crawl yielded some fine craft beer bars and an excellent offie. L.Mulligan Grocer being the standout bar for me.

You can find all the details of EBBC14 here, I won’t bother repeating it. We learnt that monkeys are alcoholics whilst rats are binge drinkers. A lot of beer was offered, a lot of beer was drunk, in between times we learnt about the burgeoning Irish craft beer scene – and most of us were genuinely surprised at how many new breweries there were. And honestly, there were no duds. Brown Paper Bag Project, N17 and Black Donkey are just three of the 50 or so I could recommend for various reasons.

We are a grateful lot and special thanks have to go to major sponsors including the one man marketing machine that is Vaclav Berka of Pilsner Urquell, the hugely impressive tour, sampling, food and revealing Q&A at Guinness, and Beer Ireland.

To find more about Irish beer try Beoir (a sort of Irish CAMRA without the real ale hang-ups), the excellent blog by Reuben Gray who led the official pub crawl or Beer Ireland.

Why haven’t you signed up for EBBC15 yet?

I don’t advise you try this at home

What japes! Your naïve correspondent discovered this event in Edinburgh at just the time an amateur ‘career in beer’ was being considered.

With so much to learn about beer appreciation, the industry, blogging and the techie necessities this looked like the perfect opportunity to learn from peers.
And I did. In between drinking a lot of beer, very good beer for the most part. Continue reading →