Birraire - Beer Blog

Article by Mikel Rius - Director of the Barcelona Beer Festival Translation from Spanish by Joan Villar-i-Martí Three out of three. We have had the privilege of living the three editions of the Leuven Innovation Beer Festival , the last of which just a few days ago. Again, it has been a success in terms of attendees, participants and, above all, dissemination of beer culture. The festival is organised by local brewery Hof ten Dormaal, the Janssens family , which brings the concept of hospitality to an extraordinary level, making all the participating brewers feel literally at home. Every year, the Janssens select fifteen breweries under an Innovation criterion, gathering an impressive constellation of brewers in the old factory of Stella Artois - De Hoorn -.

There has been lots of writing and talking around the Mostra de Cervesa Artesana de Mediona , one of our oldest beer festivals. Not only for its twelve editions, but also because many of the attendees from all over this time regard it as a very special event. The Annual Celebration for local beer lovers. I have previously published several texts on it. The magic of Mediona is, in fact, difficult to explain if you don't experience it yourself, and it is something that gets you hooked: something that makes many people want to experience it edition after edition. This year, the wedding of a good friend collided frontally with the appointment that is reserved earlier in my calendar each year. After the initial moan, I thought I would take the opportunity to live Mediona in an alternative way : looking for its magic in the previous day. Trying to understand what makes it so special. "We all carry a bit of Mediona inside of us"

At this point I cannot speak of 'pleasant surprise', but it was nice to find once again a remarkable selection of local beer in my trips around the territory. From bars to restaurants, even also in hostels and hotels, the frequency with which one can find good beer, produced a few kilometers away by small brewers, is certainly good news for consumers. A sign that we are doing things right . Something that concerns the brewing establishment, as our industry news shows us lately. “CTretze is a great example of how important is local produce, and to know the territory”

Oxford University Press awarded it as the Word of the Year 2016. Indeed, since last year ' post-truth ' has entered our lives, being a popular word to be found in press, gatherings and all kinds of conversations. Many people use it, but anywa y let's see what they say about it in the Oxford dictionary: ‘ Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief ’

The looks of the blog, until today. A facelift was required. With this post today, I launch the new design of Birraire . Taking advantage of Blogger's new templates, launched in March 2017, I finally found a satisfactory balance between modernity, functionality and speed. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but it will allow me to focus on content, which in the end shall be the relevant stuff for a blogger. "Few changes had been made since its inception, and the beer scene and my involvement in it have really changed" The redesign has also served as a means to clean up unnecessary archaic elements, as well as to sort the content in a new set of static pages . On the menu above, you can find some key aspects that I had neglected until now, such as a contact page -which some of you actually made me notice in numerous occasions-. Indeed, the blog had not changed substantially since it was registered at the end of 2010 as a simple pastime. And both the be...

At this same time last year I had just finished a job that supposed a new and interesting challenge for me. I have been writing for years, not only about beer here on the blog and other media, but also stories and essays. And even poetry on occasion. Besides, my profession has required me to translate a remarkable number of documents, mostly on financial regulation and banking operative procedures. Never before, however, had I exercised professional translation : an opportunity which, linked to my passion for beer, I did not hesitate to take advantage of as it arose. "For its content and quality, a good gift for Sant Jordi both for homebrewers and beer enthusiasts"

Right now it is that time of the year when one leaves the Barcelona Beer Festival behind and realises that the world has not stopped in the last few weeks. After the usual three weeks long mental disconnection with reality, I sadly come upon the bad news of the death of Pièrre Zuber , owner of Délices et Caprices in Brussels. "People like Pièrre perform an essential work for the dissemination of beer culture"