October Video Blog: Wales

It was a tough choice figuring out where to film this month – from being a virtual beer desert a few months ago, Wales is now bursting with great craft beers. I say Wales, but we only really did south Wales – and only really scratched the surface there. Hopefully we can go back and do central and north Wales, and look at people like Waen and Purple Moose.

Each of these pubs was the kind of place you want to spend an entire day in. We did also want to film in a Brain’s pub. They’re a pretty glaring omission from a South Walean beer blog. Unfortunately we were told we had to ask permission from head office to film in a Brain’s pub. I attempted to get this permission by both phone and e-mail. Two weeks later, I’m still waiting to hear back from them. Shame.

Anyway – here goes…

Pete Brown’s British Beer Blog – October from Ian Hudson Films on Vimeo.

And after doing the ingredients of beer last month, this month Mr Amor shows us around his brewhouse.

Peter Amor’s Brewing Blog Ep2: The Brew House from Ian Hudson Films on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoy watching them. If yiou do, please link to them if you can – we’re trying to maximise traffic so we can gain interest from other places to help get the message about British craft beer out to a broader audience.

Next month we’re in London, filming a London beer week at my local, the Jolly Butchers.

30th September 2010 | Uncategorised

The Two Peters venture into the world of video blogging

Peter Amor is a very nice man. 25 years ago he set up the Wye Valley Brewery, which brews some very nice beers indeed. Earler this year, once the silver jubilee celebrations had died down, he decided he wanted to give something back to the industry he´d built his livelihood on. He wanted to do something to help celebrate British beer.

Ian Hudson, a former brewery employee, had by this time set up a film production conmpany. So Ian and Peter started talking, then contacted me with a view to making some kind of film that sang the praises of British beer.

After kicking a few ideas around, we decided to start off by making a series of video blogs. Once a month, we will be filming in a particular region of the UK, to produce monthly pairs of blogs. I believe (though I may be wrong) that these represent a bit of a depatrture for V-Blogging in that they´re made with a full film crew and hopefully therefore have a veneer of professionalism to them.

They´re not necessarily aimed at a beer geek audience but at a more general public, and we´re exploring ways to give them a wider reach in an age where TV channels won´t commission many serious content about beer. So if you´re a fellow beer blogger and you´re thinking ´this is rally basic stuff´ – fine, but it´s not basic to most people. The featured beers will be limited to cask ales, because that´s what Peter´s passionate about and he´s paying the bills. But in today´s brewing scene, limiting it to cask is hardly a hardship.

My bit is easy. I have to select a few beers from that region, drink them, and talk about them on camera. We decided to do the first one from Nottingham, home of the 2010 Champion Beer of Britain, Harvest Pale. Here are the results. Apart from convincing me of the urgent need for a diet, I´m quite pleased.

Pete Brown’s British Beer Blog from Ian Hudson Films on Vimeo.