Travels With Nate

"I don't like lager. I only really drink ale but this is awesome" says Jim as he slams his empty glass that used to contain Redwell Hells Lager on the table. This is why I do the beer thing, for reactions like this. I introduce people to beers they wouldn't usually drink. Last night I had the pleasure of meeting up with British Heavy Metal band Raging Speedhorn before the first night of their first UK tour in 6 years, at Norwich Waterfront. You'll know from my history that I don't do regular band interviews. They're boring. The guys from Raging Speedhorn agree "Why have you reformed? Who are your influences?" Jay tells me they get asked all of the time. So I took the guys to Norwich Taphouse and figured I'd introduce them to our beers from Redwell Brewery, just to put an awesome spin on things. We started off with Hells, which was loved all around the table. Guys, like Jim, who don't drink lager, loved it. They say they could...

We all know that many people in the music industry enjoy a good drink. Rock stars are famed for their overindulgence causing them to throw TVs out of hotel windows, and are sometimes sadly victims of addiction. Over the last couple of years a trend in the UK beer industry has started - musical artists collaborating with breweries to create a beer that relates to their band, more often than not it shares the name with one of their albums or songs. The first I heard of this was that a company called Signature Brew popped up and their whole deal is that they're essentially gypsy brewers (for the uninitiated, this means that they don't have a brewery but instead go to other people's brewery and wreak havoc) -  who solely work with musical artists to specifically create a beer with them. I mean, they've worked with some pretty diverse and high profile artists like rapper Professor Green with whom they created a hoppy pale ale (very delicious), to folk/punk singer Frank ...