There’s a phrase for three buses coming along at once. Apparently, it’s “positive feedback.” It can also be applied to the partnership of beer and the theatre.
You wait from Shakespearean times for an ale to take its name from a play, then whoosh, positive feedback enters stage left.
A beer called...
Spotlight
from Issue 23 published on 27/03/2009
Scotland has never been short of entrepreneurs, innovators and freethinkers.
Originality colours the national psyche – consider that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, John Logie Baird developed television, John Boyd Dunlop discovered the pneumatic tyre and Shir Sean Connery perfected th...
UK BREWERY FOCUS
from Issue 23 published on 27/03/2009
Superlatives suffer from overuse; it’s the way we tell them. Something just above the ordinary is often ‘world class’; the decidedly average rises to ‘exceptional’, and commonplace becomes ‘outstanding’. It’s our way of elevating mundane to memorable to highlight our opinions and to influence other ...
Micro Brewer
from Issue 21 published on
It has an economy worth £80bn. Its five million inhabitants call it God’s Own Country. Its colloquialisms are virtually impenetrable to strangers. Ireland?
Norway? Greece? Singapore? ’Appen as not, it’s Yorkshire.
Absolutely everything in Britain’s largest collection of counties is referred by its...
UK Focus | Yorkshire
from Issue 21 published on
Fashionable foodies beef over air miles, grouse at nonseasonality and belly-ache about best-befores. Oh, for the days, they wail, when everything was produced locally and freshness was preserved.
A 1913 copy of The Newcastle Daily Journal tells a different story, however. The city’s markets offered...
Spotlight
from Issue 19 published on 30/07/2008
The house lights dim; a ripple of applause sweeps the auditorium; a familiar tune begins as Tony Bennett raises the microphone. Spotlight, anticipation, the moment.
“I left my scarf... in Cesky Krumlov...” The celebrated crooner may not have mislaid his muffler, but I certainly did earlier this yea...
International Focus
from Issue 19 published on 30/07/2008
How did you get involved in beer?
Like many people, as a student! My two industrial placements were at Harp Lager (I know, but I was a student) in Moss Side, Manchester and Moray Firth Maltings (as was) in Arbroath, Scotland. I then studied brewing at Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh and the rest is just a...
Last Shout
from Issue 18 published on 19/06/2008
The world high jump record has been shattered by a young Swede wearing a smart suit.
The previous 2.45 metre leap by Cuban athlete Javier Sotomayor, which has resisted all-comers since 1993, was well and truly surpassed in late 2007 by Erik Jonsson. Erik, who now lives and works in Norway, also wor...
Spotlight
from Issue 16 published on 25/01/2008
The stripes of one of its perpetually-underperforming football clubs are black and white; the geography is hilly and flat; the weather can be hot and cold in the same day – the North East of England is a region of contrasts and extremes.
Its 3,317 square miles nurture world leaders in stem-cell res...
Regional Focus
from Issue 16 published on 25/01/2008
Every sense gets a look-in on the long, straight path leading to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.
The feel of lavender on leg, the sight of the honey-coloured manor house, the aroma of woodsmoke that merges into roast lamb the closer you get, the dribble of saliva and the warble of birdsong blending wit...
Beer Celebrities
from Issue 11 published on 23/03/2007
The water in the whirlpool bath is hot; there’s a metre of snow outside; you’re completely naked, but you’re perfectly relaxed and utterly content, so what is the Swiss spa masseuse about to do with her huge pitcher of organic beer?
She’s going to pour it all over you and turn on the jet stream flo...
International Brewery
from Issue 7 published on 28/07/2006
When the chief executive of one of the country’s most respected beer institutions talks seriously, it pays to listen.
George Philliskirk, chief executive of The Beer Academy, admits that as a student at Newcastle University, he would often call into the city’s Hotspur pub for a lunchtime pie and a ...
Beer Trends
from Issue 7 published on 28/07/2006
One of the country’s most historic beers not only continues to perform well, but its ‘big brother’ is sharing its takehome spotlight.
For more than a century, Vaux Double Maxim has been one of the North East of England’s best-loved beers, with such a following that when the brewing operation ceased...
Beer Trends
from Issue 6 published on 18/05/2006
Who could turn down the invitation to a pub crawl, a bit of banter and a good time?
It’s a suggestion loaded with possibilities which the Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour delivers in entertaining fashion – a witty and dramatic romp led by professional actors through the life and work of Scotland’s great...
Beer Journeys
from Issue 4 published on 27/01/2006
You’re sitting in the only pub in the village. The next-door micro-brewery is about to throw in the towel. The pub gets its beer from the micro. The nearest city is 12 miles away and the bus runs only on Wednesdays. Basis for a tragi-comic television series, or bitter reality?
Fiction lost out when...
Spotlight
from Issue 3 published on 12/01/2006
You know where you are with the sound of keg on concrete and the echo of mallet on bung.
The mind opens its ‘brewery, beer, pub’ homepage, clicks through the menu, then invites the other senses to join the company.
But when the thermometer is rising through the high 20s, a welcome breeze rustles a...
International Brewery
from Issue 2 published on 16/11/2005
Breakfast: Potato pancake filled with smoked bacon in a cheese sauce, accompanied by three different types of cabbage. Half-litre of beer.
Time: Just after 6am.
Cost: The equivalent of the News of the World and a Kit Kat.
Location: A bar/restaurant in the North Bohemian town of Zatec in the Czech...
Spotlight
from Issue 2 published on 16/11/2005
MOST of us are familiar with those three little words that mean everything to a relationship.
They’re a symbol of affection, an underpinning of trust and a measure of unstinting loyalty. They are often whispered intimately but can be signalled across a crowded room with equal effect – an expression...
Beer Sponsorship
from Issue 1 published on 26/08/2005
