All fired up about beer

Tim Webb compiled, wrote and edited the Good Beer Guide to Belgium. Rob Allanson spoke to him

Taking the plunge into another country’s beers, especially one with an array of strange styles, is often an exciting and daunting prospect.

Thankfully for those beer lovers looking to expand their tastes with the diverse styles on offer from Belgium help is at hand, in the form of his Good Beer Guide to Belgium, published by Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

Renowned beer writer Tim Webb has long championed the cause of Belgium beer, producing five beer guides since 1992.

During his life long love affair with the European country, Tim has seen the appeal of these mouthwatering styles grow in popularity.

Tim got into the beer game professionally through CAMRA, and was one of the very early members.

The campaign had a surge in memberships taking it from 100 members to nearly 5,000 after the launch of its first beer guide in 1974.

After a couple of years Tim started taking on various jobs for CAMRA including dealing with breweries, and in 1981 he took over organising the Great British Beer Festival.

Tim says: “This was when the venues for the beer festival had a tendency to burn down.

“We lost Alexandra Palace in 1980 to a fire and then the venue we used in Birmingham a couple of years later burnt down six months after we were there.”

In the 1980s Tim took over as the head of publicity and publications for what became CAMRA books, and since then has worked on the beer guides to Belgium and Holland.

He explains that the idea to write the guide came after CAMRA received a .....

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By Rob Allanson

Section : Spotlight

Page number : 28