About

I'm Graham, 39, husband to Ruth and dad to a four year old boy, with another baby on the way. We're based in Holmes Chapel in Cheshire.

I've been enthusiastically drinking beer for a quarter of a century now. Unfortunately, for most of that time I was happy to drink whatever was available, with little thought for what it actually tasted like. I used to go drinking at the Stanley Arms in Blackpool on a Friday night in the early 90's. My mate Chris would pay the extra 4p for Boddingtons while I, being the frugal type, refused to bow to such extravagance and drank Whitbread Trophy. I thought it was great at the time. 

I have a bit of an unusual career history for a landlocked Cheshire lad, being a time-served sailmaker. I've been involved in sailing since I was very young and I built my own boat (a GP14) when I was 19. It was my long-held ambition to win the UK National Championships, which I finally managed to do nearly a decade later. Around that time I also competed on the Olympic circuit in the 470 class for four years. My sailing partner and I weren't sailing full-time but we were the top-ranked amateur UK boat and we were lucky enough to be able to travel round Europe with the GBR Olympic team, which was an amazing experience.

I stopped sailing competitively soon after, then met Ruth and we moved to Manchester. My interest in beer and brewing started to be kindled at this time. I didn't have a great epiphany, rather a slow realisation that I should be concerned about the quality and the provenance of a product I've enjoyed for such a large part of my life.

My interest in brewing was properly ignited in 2012 when I heard that someone I knew from my sailing days had emigrated to Canada and started a microbrewery. I was fascinated by the idea of this and from that point, started to absorb as much information as possible about brewing. I've always been quite good at making things and so it soon became obvious that I should give home brewing a go.

This blog started out as a joint effort - a way of Chris and I sharing beer reviews. However, once we realised that Untappd is frankly much better for this, it quickly got commandeered as my homebrew journal. Chris may still be along occasionally with the odd post but for now it's mainly me and my brewing exploits.

Cheers,
Graham Nelson

@arrowsails