UK’s Best New Independent Craft Brewery

WE DID A THING

Indie Rabble Co Ower Dave on the mob's recent visit to SIBA's independent beer awards at BeerX in Liverpool

So believe it or not from the public persona, patting myself on the back isn’t something that comes at all naturally to me. I tend to do well at something, dismiss it immediately, take little to no satisfaction from it, and immediately start worrying about the next thing I want to do.

It’s a trait in myself that I can’t stand, but much like winning an award, in a moment, my reaction to trying to work on this part of my personality is to lean into imposter syndrome. Believe almost immediately that it’s right that I dismiss the glory because I don’t really deserve it, and spend all of my time instead thinking about how best to leverage the thing, rather than stop – take stock of my surroundings, and remind myself. I did a thing. We did a thing!

Luckily for me, I’m not the only person that works for Indie Rabble. Because as we went up to Liverpool for BeerX, I had a squad of brilliant people around me, telling me, and eachother, how amazing the nomination was, how well we’d done to get here so soon. That for our 6 month old brewery to even be mentioned on stage in the same breath as the likes of Signature, Thornbridge, Northern Monk, Fyne Ales, Siren and the like was an astounding achievement.

But more than that. That I personally truly deserved to be here and in with this opportunity.

By Tuesday night, at The Grapes (where so many of my Liverpool stories seem to punctuate), I had a moment where I started to believe them…

Our pre Beer X crawl, now in its third year, has gotten fairly telegraphed…

After checking in, we go to Bundobust. We eat Bundo chaat. we drink chai porter and rice lager. We then walk on to the Roscoe Head for a pint of sparkled cask, and then onto The Grapes for something Neptune.

And this year, unfortunately for my Wednesday morning – a chance encounter with Iain Clarke….

Three things in life are inevitable. Death, Taxes, and that drinking VK Blue with Iain Clarke at midnight in a Karaoke bar is a really fucking stupid game. And as we all know. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

But I was in the mood to celebrate at that point, and here’s why.

Our evening on the beer was just so wholesome. The Indie Rabble Crowd are a good crowd. I was in (and later, on) the spirits. Why? Well – back at the Grapes, I did what I’ve now done two years running: Catch the eye of someone I knew was on the judging panel and then get massively over excited. Because and I quote “he gave me a look”. Reader, he did NOT give me a look. Nonetheless, this was the kind of over excitement only VK Blue can fix, apparently.

Luckily for me, I had no time to dwell as I sat down to judge some 40 beers as a lead judge for SIBA’s national beer awards, to be given out on the Thursday night. It’s a tough job but someone has to etc etc etc. I can’t finish the quote: Thinking back on that experience even a couple of weeks later is making me feel a bit squiffy. It must be said though, the beer was to a very high overall standard this year – and I was very exicted to get to judge the overall smallpack winner, an astounding Saison that I later found out to be from Burning Sky. Well, Of course it was…

Which led onto the awards themselves…

That’s it then. Indie Rabble is the UK’s Best New Independent Craft Brewery. Woo!

It’s amazing really. In 7 months we’ve created an overall brand that as well as getting this huge win was also in the same category as Budvar and Aunt Bessies for ‘best collaboration’.

We rounded out Beer X the way I always like to: Having an Augustiner in a pub themed like an old wooden boat.

It’s been a mad time. Thanks to everyone who’s bought one of our beers, appeared at the tap, sent a nice message or whatever else.

What will we do now we’re an award winning brewery? Keep on brewing tasty beer, and trying to sell it. And expand our reach we hope. We’ve had a big uptick of new customers post awards and it’s been massively appreciated.

We arranged a few more collabs, a few of them very silly.

And we’re planning our taproom events for the season.

So, see you soon for an (award winning!) beer?

Cheers!