Leading brewing industry journalist and publisher Larry Nelson has died after a short illness, aged 61.
Larry was publisher and editor of the Brewery Manual and the Cider Manual, and previously published and edited the international brewing magazine Brewers Guardian and, until 2019, the British Guild of Beer Writers Handbook.
He arrived in the UK from Canada in 1990 and worked for PJB Publications, later becoming editor of the Brewers Guardian and establishing himself as a familiar and trusted figure across the world of brewing.
In 2001 he won overall silver at the British Guild of Beer Writers awards and went on to win the title of trade writer of the year in 2010 and 2011. He later became a judge.
He stepped up to publisher of the Brewers Guardian in 2012 forming his own company, Advantage Publishing. While publication of the Guardian later ceased, Larry had also taken on the Brewery Manual, previously published by the Brewers Society, keeping a painstaking track of the changes in the industry and running an online news service. The Cider Manual followed in 2019.
Larry was born in August 1961 in Monkton, New Brunswick, to Doreen and Laurence Nelson. A younger brother, Tom, followed.
He completed a degree in economics at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, making his first foray into journalism as a news reporter on the Powell River News.
While in British Columbia he met his future wife, Pippa, and they moved to England where their first child, Phoebe, was born in 1996 and their second, Kit, in 1999. Larry remained a proud Canadian and continued to avidly follow ice hockey and baseball.
He will be missed dearly by family, friends and colleagues, and the British Guild of Beer Writers sends its condolences to Pippa, Phoebe and Kit.
- Larry’s funeral will be at Guildford Crematorium on Monday, February 13, at 10.30am. The family would like people not to dress in black but in something more appropriate to Larry’s colourful life. The wake will take place at Charterhouse School, where a range of Larry’s favourite beers will be served.
- Please RSVP to wknelson99@gmail.com, and address correspondence to Stainers 2, Northway, Godalming GU7 2RE.