The U.K. beer media landscape is a curious one. A niche within a niche, at its most simple it’s a genre of food writing, albeit one with a far smaller audience than say, restaurant or wine reviews. Its audience is more interesting still. Beer readers are often hyper engaged and extremely knowledgeable about their subject, which can have the unfortunate knock on effect of making it less accessible to those with a more casual interest.

What, then, do beer publications do to keep readers from both camps engaged? That’s the challenge facing modern beer media. In a world based on algorithms and AI slop farmed out to the masses, how do publications, podcasts, news outlets and journalists keep that audience actively interested in what’s happening in the world of beer and breweries…

It’s certainly an introspective question, but one well worth asking, and that’s exactly what we did at the SIBA Beer X conference held earlier this year in Liverpool. Our editors Katie Mather and Matthew Curtis were joined by Tim Sheahan from Trade publication The Brewers Journal and Robyn Gilmour from the UK’s largest consumer beer magazine, Ferment, to discuss the state of beer media.

Each of our publications is actively engaged in producing long-form written content, something that might seem counter productive in a world of instant videos and shortening attention spans. And yet it still feels like it has great value, especially because there are still so many stories to tell. In this conversation our panel gets in the beer writing weeds to discuss the value of high quality media in beer, and why it matters in 2026 and beyond.

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