Annabel Smith
/Annabel started her beer career in 1990 when she started running a pub near her home town of Horbury in West Yorkshire. Like most bar staff in the country, she took this career choice after gaining a pretty useless degree in English and Journalism and found herself short of money. After 7 years she joined Whitbread and spent the next few years setting up and opening a new breed of ale houses called Hogshead throughout the UK.
In 2002 she joined Diageo (the owners of Guinness) as a trainer, and set off travelling throughout Europe teaching bar owners how to serve a perfect pint of the black stuff.
However, her passion for the burgeoning British cask and craft beer market drew her back to her first love. Cask ale, once the domain of the ‘beards and sandals brigade’ was starting to attract a new breed of drinkers, attracted to the huge variety of flavours and styles. In 2005 she joined Cask Marque, a fledgling organisation founded to promote great quality beer in pubs. After having her taste buds tested Annabel became the first female beer inspector for Cask Marque working alongside the organisation’s 49 male inspectors. Her role included designing training courses to teach licensees about beer keeping, liaising with breweries and pub companies to ensure they serve the best possible beer, and promoting initiatives to encourage more people to consider beer as a drink of choice.
In 2012 she qualified as an accredited Beer Sommelier, only the second woman in the UK to achieve this. In May 2015, she was on the final shortlist of three to become Beer Sommelier of the Year.
In Dec 2014 she set up, and is Director of, BeerBelle, a company running beer related training and events. She is regularly appointed by brewers and pub companies to arrange and host Beer and Food events and also hosts tutored beer tasting sessions for corporate companies such as Honda and Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, and consumer events such as the BBC Good Food Show. Her current clients include SAB Miller, Carlsberg UK, Heineken UK, Timothy Taylors, Daniel Thwaites and Mitchells and Butlers.
She is a founder member of Dea Latis, a group set up to educate women about beer and encourage them to embrace our national drink, and is also a member of the British Guild of Beer Writers.
