Manchester Beer Week 2016 Kicks Off This Week

CONNOR Murphy is the most laid back man with a mission I’ve ever met. It may be because the one-man-band who dreamt up Manchester Beer Week is talking to me in his favourite boozer, the Marble Arch, where the festival will kick off on Friday, June 10. 

You never want to wish it on anyone but there’s an inevitability we’ll see some brewers drop off...

It can’t be because of the ale. It’s lunchtime and he has to drive back to Sale and the day job in PR (I stay on a while to celebrate malt and hops in my own way). 

Maybe it’s just because the programme is printed, the official beer MCR Fold – a groundbreaking old meets new collaboration between JW Lees and Cloudwater – is settling nicely in cask and our beer community seems to approve big time of his Herculean efforts.

The ten-day long Manchester Beer Week is like no beer festival we’ve had in the city before. It straddles a variety of venues – bars, pubs, restaurants, breweries, Exchange Square, Old Granada Studios, even the World Rugby Under-20s Championship at Eccles RFC. 

So what on earth possessed Connor, 33, ex-journalist and dad-to-be, to create this sprawling celebration of Manchester’s unparalleled beer culture?

CM: "I’ve just got a real love for beer and Manchester. I grew up in the city, drinking cask ale, bitter and mild. Then latterly being weened onto these new styles of beer the Americans do and which Marble were pioneers of over here. 

"The fact that Manchester has such a beer culture is a source of pride. I started off writing about it in a blog, a blog I’m too busy to work on at the moment.

"That’s because I wanted to take it a step further. Through the blog I had met a lot of the microbrewers in town and realised these guys are honest genuine people who are working really hard to make a living and finding it quite hard. Margins are low, competition is high. I kind of wanted to help the guys as well as promoting Manchester as a destination for good beer."

MBW organiser Connor Murphy

How did you make it happen?

"I developed a concept, bounced ideas off some folk I trusted, brewers, landlords.

"Then took it out and set up meetings. Not every response was favourable but for the most part it was seized upon as a good idea. It’s credit to people in Manchester. Much as we are wedded to the past and revel in our history in some way, we have always been ready to embrace new ideas. Great ideas have been born in pubs.

"It’s incredible the amount of co-operation. There’s such a community here among drinkers and brewers and I wanted to try and bridge that gap between traditional and modern and to their credit sponsors JW Lees have been brilliant. They’ve embraced it wholeheartedly, they’ve been incredibly positive. The Beer Week’s about doing the big and small, old and new, with food producers and brewers.... and championing our great pubs."

But aren’t traditional pubs dying?

"It is sadly the case but there are differences. There are bad pubs that are badly run and will go to the wall because they haven’t adapted. Then there are iconic pubs like the Sir Ralph Abercromby (currently threatened by developers) that need to be kept to remind us where we have come from. Take another classic example – the Peveril of the Peak. It’s part of Manchester’s history and it wows visitors to the city. 

"Most of all, a pub like the Marble Arch is what Manchester today is all about. Full of history and character – look at the glorious mosaic tiles on the floor here – and yet the Marble’s own brewery is turning out brilliant modern beer styles. And then there’s the top class food. They pushed the envelope before anybody else and deserve a lot of credit for inspiring what has come since."

MBW will kick off in the Marble on Friday 10 June

So we’ve established there are great pubs and bars, but are there too many breweries competing to sell beer to them?

"It’s a tough market. You never want to wish it on anyone but there’s an inevitability we’ll see some brewers drop off. It’s already happened with a couple of them. So many are entering at such a rate and bar space is at a premium. The best breweries will survive and prosper."

What about the quality of beer in the city?

"The level of competition is encouraging brewers to up their game. The standard of keeping beer in Manchester is actually very high compared to, dare I say it, in London. In Manchester there is a good baseline, a lot of brewers producing consistent beer.

"It’s all about consumer education, too. Hopefully, the events we are putting on will help that. Working with brewers and pubs about the faults in beers how to address that. Finally, the importance of how it’s served. Cellarmanship appears to be a dying art. It’s not just a case of hooking up lines and spending hours in dark cellars. It’s about really knowing how to deal with a live product."

Beer matching with food looks a big part of Manchester Beer Week?

"Good beer is like good wine. It matches food (cheese and beer). Imperial stout with cheese is perfect or an old ale or a barley wine with a good Stilton (or Stichelton). The human collaborations are equally important. Take Brassica restaurant and Bottle microbar in Heaton Moor. Brassica’s chef Paul Faulkner is putting on a great evening of food with appropriate beers from their neighbours. We have strong tie-ins with GRUB events, who are running a food fair inside Runaway brewery. What they are doing is bringing something new to Manchester, presenting good food in honest surroundings, accompanied by great beer."

Symbiotic. I like they way that the Hawksmoor chain arriving in the city centre chose to have a local beer list (Runaway again). Shouldn’t more restaurants follow suit?

"Absolutely. Hawksmoor are a prime example to restaurants, though there are others doing it. Beer encompasses an amazing range of flavours that can accompany all sorts of dishes. It’s impossible to neglect it and it really does surprise me you go into a restaurant where they are championing producers and locally sourced food yet they have a mass-produced lager on the bar. Why not go out to the multitude of local brewers and source appropriate beers to match their dishes?"

Blackjack Brewery is host a special edition of its much-loved brew tap on the final weekend of MBW

I must ask you finally what are your favourite beers, Connor? Carling? John Smith’s Smooth?

"Maybe not. It depends on the occasion. When I’m sat in the pub I like a session pale ale or a bitter; at home I love chunky IPAs; I love Cloudwater’s. DIPAs. With food sours are brilliant, check out Chorlton Brewery’s."

...and you must be looking forward to one of the geekiest Beer Week events – A Taste of Manchester’s Brewing Past

"This was my idea, working with Ron Pattinson a beer historian, to ask four breweries to each recreate an old Manchester ale recipe. As it turned out three of the most pertinent recipes Ron had managed to get hold of were from JW Lees. The fourth, C Ale, being brewed by Blackjack, was completely peculiar to Manchester. This strong, dark ale existed for a window of time, wasn’t brewed anywhere else and then died out in the Fifties. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. 

I spoke to a couple of the brewers involved and they had been surprised how close the recipes were to modern brews. They thought they’d be distinctly different but there are certain similarities that show the lineage. The American craft movement is influenced by British brewing from way back when.

For full list of events visit mcrbeerweek.co.uk/events

READ MORE: Seven of Manchester's Best Beer Weeks & Festivals or Manchester's Top 10 Brew Taps