Beer aficionado and writer Steve Crouch has been named as the fifth member of the Imperial Beer Club curators team.
A lambic monster and a hop head, Steve started drinking beer from a young age. A lager drinker at first and a fan of spider beer from Australia, he spent a lot of time in Germany as a child and recalls the aroma of these beers, which seemed to be different to the beers in the UK.
Discovering a CAMRA beer festival, his eyes were opened, but it wasn’t until a friend’s foreign beer tasting event that the familiar smells of his youth were remembered and the flames were rekindled for great beer.
Steve found himself working at the Great British Beer Festival on the foreign beer bar, Bières Sans Frontières, and has never looked back. There he had the good fortune to work alongside beer legends, soaking up knowledge and beer.
Wanting to learn and experience more beers, Steve spent time in Belgium, drinking at 24-hour festivals. On one notable trip he visited a very small brewery in the backstreets in Brussels called Cantillon (at the time when the only toilet in the brewery was outside) and discovered true geuze — this is why on twitter he’s known as @lambicmonster
Teo and Lorenzo from La Baladin Brewery, Italy, invited Steve to be a judge at their festival—- the first ever UK judge at an Italian beer festival. That has led to an involvement in Italian craft beer for the last 20 years, including running taste workshops for Slow Food Italia at Salone del Gusto and working as a liaison with the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo.
A judge at many festivals, both in the UK and in Europe, Steve also writes about beer on his Facebook page, Ales Of The Unexpected.
