After 3 long years away, Manchester’s best beer festival, Indy Man Beer Con, returned to the iconic Victoria Baths at the weekend. We went along to the Saturday daytime session to soak up the suds and vibes at the swimming baths and it was the sort of big, beery party we’ve needed after all this time.
There are so many factors that make IMBC so much fun. To start with, the venue is glorious. The Edwardian baths complex has incredible period features everywhere you turn, whether it’s the bright airy pool rooms complete with changing booths around their edges, the archaic machinery of the pump room or the stained glass and shiny tiles of the Turkish baths. It’s great fun to grab your little 1/3 pint glass and spend time exploring every nook and cranny of the building.
Once again this year, each area managed to have its own distinct vibe too. The central pool acted as the festival’s main hub, complete with token desk, merch stand and a big number of brewery bars around the pool’s edges. Another of the three pool rooms featured fewer breweries, but presented some of the festival’s more unusual offerings. The 3rd pool operated as a live music venue and home to Cheltenham’s DEYA, while the party continued outside in the tents housing Sureshot, North, Blackjack and SALT. Meanwhile some of the side rooms had a pub-like feel, housing individual brewery bars. Thornbridge even went the whole hog, branding the Green Room as the Jaipur Arms, complete with meat raffles and retro snacks.
The festival organisers have an uncanny knack for creating a party atmosphere across the weekend. I don’t know how they do it, but they somehow manage to make a beer festival feel like a music festival of sorts, with the brewers and the beers the equivalent of headline acts, up and coming hype bands and timeless classic performers. People are here for the beer, but they’re also here for a good time, rushing to crowd and queue for pop-up tastings and rare pours, as commanded by the notifications of the IMBC app. There’s even a guy dressed as Mr Blobby running around causing havoc, courtesy of Sureshot.
Finally, there’s the beer. This year we are joined by far fewer international producers for reasons of sustainability and affordability for punters. In my opinion, this is of little detriment to the experience. For a start, it’s nice for something to actually go down in price in 2022, with every beer priced at one £2.50 token. And with the quality, invention and range on offer, the festival serves as a fantastic celebration of the UK beer scene after the horrorshow of the pandemic years. One friend of mine described IMBC as an arms race between breweries bringing the most outrageous things they can. And that certainly is true to an extent, with lots of big, big ABVs, crazy flavour combos and one-off serves (Brownies! Ice cream! Hot pokers dipped in stouts!). But at the same time, the tendency towards spectacle is balanced by the consistent quality of the pales, IPAs and lagers we had. To call them ‘normal’ would be to do them a huge injustice.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s the best of what we drank on the day…
Teamwurk – Verdant and Beak
For my first beer of the day, I headed straight to the room shared by two of my current favourite hazy pale-slingers. I opted for the collaboration beer they’d worked on for the festival and it was exactly as I’d hoped – juicy and soft with a slight mandarin zestiness. A great way to kick off the day!
Chain House – Is it wrong? Is it right?
I’d not had anything from Preston’s Chain House before, but this was a really interesting IPA with just the right amount of pineapple fruitiness added to the mix without it becoming too tart or sour.
3 Fonteinen – Zenne y Frontera
I’ve always seen these distinctive bottles with a massive 3 on them in bottleshops and been intrigued by them (and their huge price tags). Taking advantage of the festival’s token system was a great way to finally give one a try. A super funky and complex blend of lambic sours, aged in sherry barrels, it was a departure from the pale ales/IPAs and stouts that I tended towards elsewhere. Would definitely return in future if it weren’t for the cost!
Everything by Sureshot
Every now and then, I took a break from the mad stuff and went in search of a good juicy pale ale. And more often than not, the Sureshot stand is where I gravitated to. I tried 4 of their beers in total and they were all super-smooth and flavoursome. Pick of the bunch was the memorably-named Ducks and How to Make Them Pay, brewed in collaboration with IMBC and The Epicurean to celebrate Sureshot’s debut appearance at the festival.
Kirkstall – Slow Show
The strongest thing I drank all day – a big syrupy, toffee-sweet barley wine from Kirkstall, aged in bourbon barrels. Woof.
Paste – Beak
We got to sample some big, big imperial stouts served in different weird and wonderful ways over the course of the day but the absolute best of the lot was this lovely, thick treacley number from Beak. It didn’t need the additional gimmicks, it gets by on tons of vanilla and maple syrup loveliness. One of the last beers I sampled, this was a real high to go out on – and that’s not just the rest of the booze talking (though it probably helped).
In broad daylight at 4pm, we stumbled into a cab to head home. I had missed this feeling of justified day-drunkenness more than I’d realised – one can only hope nothing gets in the way of feeling it the same time next year and every year from now on!
SOUNDS TASTY 