SIBA BeerX 2016

This year's SIBA conference started on a very low note for me. On arrival in Sheffield I found out the Ibis hotel I'd been booked into not only didn't do bacon for breakfast but didn't even have a kettle in the room. Surely this is against the Magna Carta?

At the conference I only had to do one talk this year, based on the enquiries that come to the SIBA technical helpline. It seemed to go well and plenty of people came to talk to me afterwards or found us at our stall. I got to see Peter Darby of Wye Hops talk about the latest in hop breeding and I was able to get a few obscure vital hop questions answered. 

I also went to Steve Price's talk on New Product Development (NPD). Now an academic at an inferior Midlands based institution he spent many years working on NPD for large breweries. It was interesting stuff, but I can't help but think but think he's used to rather a different scale than his audience. He considers working on a brand which only sells 6,000 barrels a year to have been a failure, whereas I'm sure most brewers in the room would give their eye teeth for a brand that sells that much.

I was quite restrained beerwise, which is just as well given the bacon situation, but did managed to get in a few pints of CPD. I revelled in the keggy glory and extraneous CO2-iness of Hardknott Azimuth. Though I did say an act of contrition and three Hail Protzes afterwards, you don't want to take chances with your immortal soul. Sadly One Mile End didn't have any Rudolf Rocker available, but I was delighted to see that a Spanish brewery had one called ¡Ay, Carmela! so I had to buy a bottle.

Pero nada pueden bombas, donde sobra corazón

 Still, they were missing a trick - if they'd had one called ¡A las Barricadas! I'd have bought a crate.