They say…

Des de Moor
Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
Des de Moor

Ads


Murnau: Beer from the Blue Land

Gabriele Münter (1877-1962),Stillleben mit Vase, Flaschen und Zweigen eines Vogelbeerbaumes (Still life with vases, bottles and rowan branch), 1908/09. Did any of these vessels contain beer?

When dedicated beer tourists descend on Bavaria, they tend to head north, for Bamberg and the bucolic Bierkellern of Upper Franconia, where the concentration of breweries per […]

Anchor and the birth of craft beer

Elegant lightbox at Anchor, San Francisco.

The Anchor brewery in the City of San Francisco deserves a guaranteed place on any list of the most important brewing sites in the world. Not only is Anchor the last surviving pre-Prohibition brewer of the historic local style of steam beer, it’s also arguably the starting […]

Pilsner Urquell: An old Czech fairy tale

A Pilsner Urquell dray begins the long trek to Johannesburg… Pic: Pilsner Urquell

I’m one of several writers who’ve complained in the past about the way in which the fanciful notions of marketing departments inform so much of the received wisdom on the history and heritage of brewing, and recently I’ve witnessed the […]

Budweiser Budvar: Britain’s favourite Bohemian?

The Budvar knights — saying No makes them what they are.

In the early 1990s, as Czech brewing faced the new challenges and opportunities of the return of the free market, the trademark dispute between the USA’s biggest brewer Anheuser-Busch (AB) and South Bohemian brewery Budějovický (Budweiser) Budvar entered a new phase. The […]

ThirstyBear Golden Vanilla, Meyer ESB and Ryeison

ABV: 4.5, 6.4 and 7.2% Origin: San Francisco, California, USA Website: http://thirstybear.com

ThirstBear Brewing Company and Spanish Cuisine, San Francisco

Northern California’s Bay Area is indisputably the birthplace of the modern US craft brewing movement, whether you date it from Fritz Maytag buying and reviving San Francisco’s historic Anchor brewery in 1965 or […]

Gueuzerie Tilquin: Lambic across the language boundary

Gueuzerie Tilquin

There are few circles of brewing so exclusive that most serious beer enthusiasts could recite their membership from memory. One is the roll call of Trappist breweries, currently seven strong (though shortly to increase to nine). Another, slightly longer, is the list of artisanal lambic producers in and around Brussels, the […]

Redchurch Brewery (first report)

London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates

Redchurch Brewery, London E2

Microbrewery 273 Poyser Street, London E2 9RF 7.4km/4.6 miles from central London Web http://theredchurchbrewery.com f The-Redchurch-Brewery tw redchurchbrewer

Brewing, it seems, has many functions besides providing the world with one of the most joyously delicious beverages yet invented, and one of them […]

Matuška Raptor IPA

Beer sellers: Zlý Časy / Pivkupectví Top Tastings 2010

ABV: 6.2% Origin: Broumy, Středočeský kraj, Czech Republic Website: www.pivovarmatuska.cz

One of a small but growing number of innovative new microbreweries challenging the dominance of straightforward pale and dark lagers in the Czech Republic, Pivovar Matuška was founded only in 2009 but has already caused ripples […]

Greene King: The Joy of 5X

Greene King Visitor Centre entrance: disused copper

Brewery visits are some beer writers’ bread and butter but I confess I’ve been on very few. Certainly, visiting Greene King, now probably the UK’s biggest brewer that isn’t a multinational, wasn’t high on my to-do list. But then I was in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, […]