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Anthony Gladman

Freelance Writer
  • Full member
  • London
  • IBD Beer Sommelier
  • gbs
  • beer, beer styles, competition judging, spirits, cider

What is the one thing you'd like to tell visitors to the Guild's website?

Freelance drinks writer and expert

What you can offer as a writer/beer lover?

Anthony is a freelance drinks writer with work in various trade and consumer publications, including Good Beer Hunting, Ferment, October, Brewer and Distiller International, Pellicle, and Drinks Retailing News. He is an IBD accredited Beer Sommelier and holds a WSET L2 award in spirits. Anthony has judged at many beer competitions including the World Beer Awards, plus BJCP and SIBA events. He is available for feature writing, copywriting, and content marketing work. Anthony also has 20 years’ book publishing experience and can offer expert editorial services.

What do you like most about being a Guild of Beer Writers member?

Connecting with fellow members to share knowledge, expertise and a couple of pints.

Pieces of work by Anthony:

  • As more drinkers stay home, AB InBev buys into online, wholesale and home delivery in the UK

    Over two consecutive days late last week, two deals were announced that will result in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s increased penetration into the British beer market. Both concerned retailer Beer Hawk, which was acquired by AB InBev’s investment arm, ZX Ventures, in 2016. Both also hint at a strategy designed to answer a seismic shift in beer-buying and consumption habits in the U.K.—namely, that more beer consumers are staying home with their drinks than ever before.

    On Thursday afternoon, BeerInsider.com published an article that appeared to indicate Beer Hawk had acquired “the remnants” of failed wholesale, retail, and import business The Bottle Shop, which ceased doing business in March.

    Then, on Friday, Beer Hawk revealed it had acquired online beer subscription service BeerBods for an undisclosed sum. In a blog post on the company’s website, Beer Hawk co-founder Mark Roberts wrote that he would be working with the company “to help build the U.K.’s leading retailer of craft beer.”

    BeerBods founder Matt Lane shared the news with his customers via email the same day.

    “I’m incredibly proud of everything we have achieved to date, Lane wrote. “Having said that, we want to do more. Much more. It has become increasingly clear that in order for BeerBods to reach its full potential, we need a partner that can help take us to the next level.”

    Over the weekend, GBH confirmed that Beer Hawk had not acquired all of The Bottle Shop’s former assets, but had only secured rights to the lease of its warehouse in Canning Town, East London. GBH also learned that Beer Hawk was working to buy one of The Bottle Shop’s former retail sites, but had not yet concluded any such deal. Roberts did not confirm whether this was the site at the heart of London’s “Bermondsey Beer Mile”—a highly desirable location for any beer business.

  • Zwanze Day

    It is shortly before 10pm on a warm September evening at the Beer Merchants Tap in Hackney Wick, East London. It’s a special night and the venue is crowded. As if by unspoken agreement, the anointed among us, clutching tickets to the back room, have sacrificed our hard-won places at the tables outside. We have left behind the less fortunate souls passed over for this self-selecting rapture and pushed through the crowds, heading for the beery sanctum and the communion about to take place within. Now we congregate and wait our turn to taste the holiest of holies: Lambic from the fount of funk. Zwanze.

    If beer is your religion then Zwanze Day is one of its many annual observances, albeit one reserved for particularly fervent churchgoers. This ritual pertains to the Apostolic Church of Cantillon, and celebrates a style of brewing that was almost lost to the world. Every year Jean Van Roy, its high priest, releases a specially brewed limited-edition Lambic, and every year fans gather at carefully selected locations across the globe to tap the beer together at 9pm Belgian time.

  • House of Cans reveals unique retailing concept

    As glass bottles gradually fall out of favour with brewers, one specialist drinks retailer in north London has taken this format shift to heart. House of Cans, a tiny beer bar and off-licence, is pushing a can-only concept that it hopes will set it apart from more traditional craft beer bottle shops.

    Simon Brown, House of Cans director and one of its five co-owners, explains the company’s approach by pointing out that cans ensure the product within is fresh; are more recyclable than glass bottles; and are lighter, making them cheaper to transport.

    But all this is secondary to the ambience that House of Cans wishes to cultivate. On its website it notes: “While we are passionate about product and presentation, we’re not prudes. We’re absolutely about aesthetic, but we’re alright. We like beer but we’re not bores. You get the picture… We’re enthused by but relaxed around what we do. It’s a vibe.”

  • Rebirth in England's Orchards — Find & Foster Fine Cider in Devon, UK

    Cider makers Polly and Mat Hilton are visiting one of their orchards for the last time before the season turns. It is late November, and a long, wet harvest is drawing to a close. The apple trees have lost about half of their leaves. Most have also shed their crop, but some trees still cling to their clusters of fruit, not yet ready to drop them onto the grass below.

    As we walk through the orchard, we have to watch where we step. The ground is littered with apples, some spread out and some huddled together in clumps where they have rolled into hollows. They stand out bright yellow and red against the deep green of the grass.

    Polly and Mat look after multiple orchards across the county, and Woodrow Barton farm owns the largest of them all. It is, in fact, a series of three orchards joined together. They overlook a valley along which the River Exe meanders southwards to the sea via Exeter and Exmouth, a railway line snaking alongside.

    Mat points out fruit on the ground that has been lost to marauding pheasants that are bred for hunting on a neighboring farm. He had told me about the problem posed by these game birds the evening before. “We’ve lost so much fruit because of the pheasants,” he says. “They only eat [the apples] when they fall off the tree. And we only pick them when they fall. But the pheasants are here all of the time and we’re only here part of the time. Next year I think we’ll do more tree shaking in this orchard.”