Des de Moor, San Francisco CA, October 2009. Photo: Ian Harris
For information about my tutored tastings, led walks and other services I can offer, see my In Person page.
Amongst other things, I’m a beer writer. Yes, I know, it’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it. Actually sometimes it can seem like hard work, for example if you’re sitting on a judging panel for a beer competition and have 30 beers to taste and rate before lunchtime, half of which are No or Low Alcohol Beers, but I grant you it’s not as bad as moving furniture, cleaning toilets or completely revising a £5million project budget with a two-hour deadline and only a basic knowledge of calculated fields in Excel to help you. I know, I’ve done them all.
I’m based in London, and though I was born in England, have an English mother and speak English as a first language, my dad was Dutch. I can just about muddle through in Dutch — remarkably, I know quite a few technical brewing terms which aren’t in the usual vocabulary of second language speakers at my level.
July 2011 saw the publication of my first book, The CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, a comprehensive guide to one of the world’s great beer drinking cities and a timely celebration of the current renaissance of London brewing. Since 2002 I’ve been writing regular bottled beer reviews for the member magazines of Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) , first for What’s Brewing, then for BEER, as well as the occasional feature on topics like beer retailing and pub walks. From 2006 I wrote for UK-based newsstand glossy Beers of the World, until that title sadly closed in 2009, including a regular series of profiles of specialist beer shops. I’ve also written for First Draught, the official Fuller’s fan club magazine, and am a contributor to the 2010 book 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die. I contribute pub reviews to View London. There are some of my beer reviews on ratebeer.com, and rather more, though rather older, on the Oxford Bottled Beer Database. I’ve sat on various judging panels, and run various tutored tastings.
My areas of expertise are beers from the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. I’m learning a lot more about craft beer from the USA, and thoroughly enjoying the process; I’m a bit less clued up on beers from Germany and the Czech Republic, though I’m appreciating the learning curve. I’m not a technical whizz or a brewery history buff, though I have a mind full of miscellaneous facts. What really interests me, aside from tastings, is how beer is appreciated and received, the culture that surrounds it and how that relates to wider features of the societies that produce and consume it, and the places where it is made. Beer is an artifact of human society, not a simple intoxicant but capable of being enjoyed and appreciated in the same way as all the other finer things in life, and should be celebrated as such. Thus the title of this site, and the philosophy behind the writing collected here.
The site was started mainly to archive my tasting notes and pieces about specific beers that have appeared in diverse places over the years, but I’m also hoping to add news, and information and views about places and events, as well as features, both reprints of pieces that have appeared elsewhere and original pieces that I feel should see the light of day but can’t find any takers for.
Ethics
There has been much discussion online recently on the issue of ethics in beer blogging and writing, so you may like to know that I’m an independent, freelance writer, not employed by a brewery or any other organisation involved in the brewing industry. The material on this blog represents my honest opinions.
This blog isn’t sponsored or financed by anyone other than me, with the exception of the pitiful handful of pennies that occasionally accumulates on a pay-per-click basis from the Google Ads in the clearly marked panel in the left hand column. Much of the material is original, though some of it was originally written on a paid-for basis for print publications. This is always clearly indicated.
While I buy a lot of the beers I review out of my own pocket, as a beer writer I do sometimes receive free beers from breweries or distributors. I never undertake to write about a beer purely because it was supplied for free, and the fact that it was free certainly wouldn’t sway my view of the beer. Although no-one has ever offered to pay me to write positive things about a beer, I would never present such writing as my unbiased opinions.
In the interests of transparency, I have started to note in reviews whether or not they were based on tasting samples supplied by the brewery or distributor, although I haven’t had time to revise previous reviews on the site with this information where it was not included at the time.
I rarely write about beers that I don’t have something positive to say about — I usually ignore beers I’ve found technically flawed or boring and dull. This is a position shared with many beer writers and bloggers, and I know not everyone in the beer community is happy with it, arguing it’s a writer’s duty to highlight the negative aspects of the beer world alongside the positive ones. But I have limited time to write about beer, and I’d rather spend it celebrating good beers than criticising bad ones.
More about me
I also write about other things — I’ve had quite a bit published in the Ramblers magazine walk and used to be their books editor. I actually work for the Ramblers as a day job, these days mainly on promoting everyday walking for health, developing projects and doing policy work. In a more leisurely frame I have a walking blog focused on walking in London, London underfoot, at http://desdemoor.blogspot.com. I’m interested in all forms of transport and travel, but walking and trains are my favourites.
Music is another passion and I have been a musician, performer, songwriter and translator specialising in European-influenced musical cabaret and chanson. I ran a club in London putting on this sort for stuff for over 12 years from 1994. Since then it’s tailed off a bit, though I’ll get back to it at some point. See www.desdemoor.com for more.
An interest I haven’t yet managed to turn into a job is film and the moving image in general. I’m currently working my way through the 1001 I apparently must see before I die. At the time of writing still got about 375 to go so there’s life in me yet.
I was born in 1961 in Ipswich, and I live in Deptford, southeast London, with my partner Ian Harris.
You can contact me at des@desdemoor.com.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the site. Please leave comments, become a follower, send feedback — and visit again. Thanks.
Des de Moor