July 2022 – A Good Beer Blog

The Last Lingering Beery News Notes For July 2022

What is up?!? Happy end of July! No one ever says that. I saw back to school ads this week. That sucked. Except the kid will be going back to school. And we had some wicked storms come through this week – a tornado even hit north of here – and now it’s almost sweater weather. Nice. Portents of autumn. Already. That sorta sucks. Like the Red Sox collapsing back to .500 after being ten games up. Also sucks. Thank God for my surrogate Expos, the Mets. And they showed good taste this week by having everyone’s favourite milliners’ client, ex cool band roadie and friend of this blog, Garrett Oliver, through out a first pitch! What a great thing to have experienced.

First news this week? Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the archeological digs at Sedgeford, England where medieval maltings are being uncovered. This week, beer person extraordinaire Nigel Sadler took his interest to the next level and has been participating in the dig, presumably as a volunteer. His Tweet-fest has been fabulous, including these two with their detailed observations:

The kilns are wattle and daub construction across the site. There is only evidence of one steep shown here. Likely this was used almost permanently despite the various kilns burning and being destroyed. I’m getting steep measurements later. Bags of grain were lowered in to soak… A post hole has been discovered under the germination floor sited between Kiln 1 and the steep which raises questions as to whether an earlier kiln structure was here.

Locally, one of the best small breweries in Ontario, Stone City right here in my home town, is up for sale very much as a going proposition.* Oh, to be 25 year younger and a bit wealthier.

Perhaps 25 younger and indubitably a bit wealthier in the ways of the world, The Beer Nut shared a “return to fests” story this week and included a few interesting observations about the format:

Three years after the inaugural event, Fidelity was back in the Round Room of the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago. It’s the only festival of its kind in Ireland, where punters pay up front and have free run of forty producers’ stands, each pouring two beers (with a handful of ciders and meads) per session. In a change to the previous iteration it was split across two days rather than having a daytime and evening session — I guess they get more people going to both that way. One for me was plenty and I rocked up on the Friday.

My experience of these beer buffets is that they are a bit of a disaster, encouraging bulk bevvying akin to the 1870s and 1960s here in Ontario. He also shared a follow up post on the same event and shared the best sort of takeaway anyone could hope for: “I’m sure a lot of effort goes into making sure it looks so effortless.”

Oh, and about that bulk bevvying… I wrote another post this week myself, on Ontario’s mid-1900s attempt to provide a reasonably safe environment for beer drinkers of both genders:

Those of you alive to the information era we live in will know that a year or so ago I reposted a bit of research I did for our book Ontario Beer on licensing in this here province after temperance and the phenomenon of the ladies only license that was introduced in 1934 as part of that. But I had not really considered the other side of the coin, the men’s only license.

I popped into work on Wednesday, too, and got the image up there of goold old Forms 8, 9 and 10 attached to Ont. Reg. 407 as set out in the R.R.O. 1960 which illustrates the gender based licenses. Click and gawk to your heart’s delight. I would love to find a description of a women’s only public house.

Why is the same beer book being published over and over?

Harvest time. Excellent! And another Goldthorpe sighting and at possible brewing scale. So exciting. I had thought that the grain would have migrated east. I had heard it might be around in central Asia but are there patches still in Ireland as there were in the late 1800s as this report at the time mentioned?

The next broad-eared variety is Goldthorpe, which was found in a field of Chevallier so recently as 1889. How it arose, or whether it has any connection with the Continental broad-eared forms, I cannot say. Goldthorpe has a high grain-yielding potentiality, but it is characterized by a long ” neck.” and the ears are extremely liable to become detached from the straw, especially when the crop is allowed to become fully ripe, as it should be, to obtain the highest quality. The unfortunate bearing of this characteristic on the fortune of the variety will be appreciate; when I add that Goldthorpe was, and still is, one of the best quality barleys in existence.

Broad-eared certainly sounds like Battledore.

Someone who used to post a news update every Monday sent me the link to this post about the problems – for some – associated with IPA domination… not to mention hegemony illustrated succinctly thusly:

…think back to recent years, and the kinds of beers you may have sampled from Sierra Nevada in that time. Perhaps you loved the Nooner pilsner, or the seasonal Summerfest lager. Maybe you were a devotee of the annual Oktoberfest lager, even after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from being a yearly collaboration with a German brewery. Maybe your jam was the Otra Vez gose, or Ruthless Rye, or fall seasonal brown ale Tumbler, or Sierraveza Mexican lager. Maybe your first exposure to classic Belgian ales was Sierra’s Ovila series of abbey ales? Not a single one of those brands is referenced anywhere on the Sierra Nevada website today. Zero of them, in any capacity, are implied to still exist.

That’s not good. And it’s boring. Keep good beer boring, IPA. Way to go. Alistair is fighting the good fight against IPA tedium with his tenth(!) annual best beers of Virginia. Recommendations include an alt, a stout, a Rauch Märzen plus a few pils/pilsens.

Perhaps conversely, the Pubmeister wrote about Margate, a favourite of mine 350 years or so ago, and covered the face paced romance of a pub game I had not heard of before – carrom:

It’s like a table top type of pool, played with fingers, our new friend demonstrating a drag that would have had him drummed out of the German Subbuteo Championships before his bare feet could touch the ground. At Xylo we met two guys out celebrating a birthday who joined the carrom enthusiasts, and Vieve and Jess, two impressive young women who reappeared a little later in the Little Swift and joined us in the sort of free-ranging conversation that you only get in pubs.

Top headline news of the week: “Beer-drinking pony who lives in pub is made mayor“! Tweet of the week? Photos and descriptions from Kitsault, a ghost town in British Columbia… but a ghost town not from the 1890s but from the 1980s that has been perfectly maintained:

In Kitsault’s community centre sits the Maple Leaf Pub. Lined with the crests of every province, it could be the pub of any small town in Canada. On the last night of the town’s existence, the remaining residents had a drink and signed a poster.

And finally… a couple of dishonourable mentions to finish up. First, I think this is one of the unkindest stunts I have ever seen – one’ arsehole’s attempt to trigger complaints about a Sam Smith’s pub. Don’t be like this:

As I went over to the bar, I pretended to search my pockets, and said “s***, I haven’t got any cash”. I asked if they took card or if a PayPal payment would be acceptable. The barmaid, who looked like a teenager, wrinkled her brow as she noticed the workspace I had created behind me. She said: “You can’t use those in here. If the owner Humphrey [Smith] were to come in and saw that, he’d tell us to shut and ask everyone to leave.” The barmaid did actually look genuinely worried. It felt as if she was being sincere. I asked her if I had to leave with my items, she said yes, that I had to go. As I was packing up, I decided to take one more selfie, to see what would happen.

Perhaps speaking of which, there is another class of arsehole that is unbearable – the “craft insider”** – the interview of one of whom, in a late sighting, illustrated the condition:

The people who care will be in the liminal space of barely knowing much about craft beer but who are usually very vocal about it.

Nice to know how folk think of others. And the superfluous abuse of “liminal” is also one of those benchmark for this sort of thing. Don’t be like that either.

That’s it for now. Long weekend coming up starting with my fourth Covid-19 shot at 4 pm Friday. Pray to the gods of your choice on my behalf. See you next week when I will complain complain complain about whatever happens. In the meantime, for more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: some crackle this week at about 20 mins.) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Had to be told of this opportunity by the folks to the west end of the lake. Jeesh.
**Sometimes related to the “little did I know that Icelanders are mad for hotdogs” sort of expert… though, to be fair, this is an excellent confessional of a number of sins of omission. The “orange slice in wit” thing is old enough now that it is pretty hitting its own drinking age.

What Did Ontario’s Separate Men’s And Ladies’ Beverage Rooms Looks Like?

Once in a while I get asked things by members of the professional media. It is flattering and instructive. The questions are usually specific but also open ended enough to allow for some back and forth and, as in this case, an opportunity to dig a bit more. This week I received this question from a rather large outlet to my east:

I’m trying to get information about one such former tavern: Montreal House, in Peterborough. I’m looking into Montreal House because yesterday Peterborough city council voted against giving it a heritage designation; this means the building will be demolished. The Montreal House was built for lumbermen from Quebec who came to work in the Peterborough… I was wondering if you knew about the Montreal House? And if you were knew how I could go about confirming if the tavern really was the last—or one of the last—men’s only establishments in the province?*

Those of you alive to the information era we live in will know that a year or so ago I reposted a bit of research I did for our book Ontario Beer on licensing in this here province after temperance and the phenomenon of the ladies only license that was introduced in 1934 as part of that. But I had not really considered the other side of the coin, the men’s only license.

Something seemed odd about the suggestion that this one tavern was the last one, sitting there in Peterborough, a mid-sized Ontario City known for its most excellently named minor hockey team, the Peterborough Petes. That something odd was that there was the idea that there would have been one the last one and not a bunch. Usually when a law like this changes, any number of permits would shift in terms of their application. So why did someone think there was just this one last straggler? I wanted to know what this was about. So I had a look where every clever beer writer starts looking. In databanks of court rulings.

One excellent resource describing these spaces popped up almost immediately, the 1953 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in the case of Assaf v. The City of Toronto. It is excellent because it is a case of an expropriation which occurs when a government takes someone’s land for a government use and has to pay compensation including all legal fees, loss of business income, etc., etc. So there is a description of the thing being valued:

The lands expropriated are situate on Bay Street Street, in the city of Toronto, having a frontage of 35 feet 8 inches on the west side of Bay Street just north of Queen Street, by a depth of 82 feet 3 inches. Upon the land is erected a four- storey brick building, with fire-escape to the rear, and a full basement. It is well located where traffic, at least during the day, is very heavy. The building consists of a basement, the ground floor and second, third and fourth floors. In the basement are the heating apparatus, storerooms, refrigerator units and a beer-cooler. On the ground floor there is a lobby with a ladies’ beverage-room and a men’s beverage-room, with washrooms for both ladies’ and men’s beverage-rooms. On the second floor there are two dining- rooms, with a lunch-counter, and also a fully-equipped kitchen, two washrooms and a counter. On the third floor there are ten bedrooms, nine equipped with sinks with hot and cold running water, one bathroom and a separate toilet. On the fourth floor there are ten bedrooms, eight equipped with sinks with hot and cold running water, one bathroom and a separate toilet.**

Those in the know may have caught this before I did but it looks like those lands were among those expropriated for the building of Toronto’s New City Hall. Based on the 1913 map of the area, a bit of which is displayed above, it looks like the place was called the Cadillac Hotel before the first world war and Canada’s brief and leaky era of temperance. It sat right under what is now the south-east corner of the outdoor skating rink in Nathan Phillips Square which has been used, pursuant to Federal regulations, as a location in every Canadian film since 1964.*** And notice what was in the place after it got its 1940’s renovations discussed in the case: separated ladies’ and men’s beverage-rooms off a ground floor lobby with washrooms for each.

What sort of thing went on in these spaces? If we rely on Court cases, we learn of the bad things. For example, in an appeal from the judgment of the County Court of the County of York, dated June 18, 1939, the Court of Appeal of Ontario found itself involved in the case of a bar room brawl in one ladies beverage room:

Riley was working in the tap room when a “rumpus” occurred in the ladies’ beverage room. Riley encountered Lloyd in the lobby, where he inquired as to the cause of the rumpus. Lloyd said he couldn’t seem to do much about it and, according to Riley, turned the matter over to him. Riley entered the ladies’ beverage room, to find Stephenson in a bellicose mood with his feet on a chair, and when he ordered him to remove his feet, a fight resulted, in which, according to Riley, Stephenson struck the first blow. It was admitted that no express instructions were given to Riley, either by Finnegan or Lloyd, to strike Stephenson, and that the general instructions to the waiters were to handle customers peacefully.

Notice: neither Riley or Stephenson were ladies. In the 1945 trial decision in a case brought by one Mr. Gardner, a customer, against Mr. McConnell, the manager, we get a bit more detail on another fight:

The plaintiff is a cook who had been employed in that capacity at the Leonard Hotel… He was a married man and had been accustomed to patronize the beverage room of the defendant together with his wife and their friends. He joined his wife and her friend at a table near the taproom, having entered the beverage room through the lobby of the hotel. The beverage room also had a direct entrance or exit, as the case might be, from it to St. Paul St. at the opposite end of the room from the tap-room. The tap-room was presided over by the husband of the defendant McConnell, who was the manager of the hotel and of the beverage room. The beverage room in question was the one known as the ladies’ beverage room, and had as waiters in it two men—one Jefferson and one Meighan.

Again, there were plenty of men in this space including one called Bloomer who looking for a fight and found a few including with the staff as the judge discussed:

I accept Gardner’s evidence that he was treading his way with caution to avoid becoming mixed up with any trouble which was occurring between others in the beverage room, and was proceeding to the door when he, as he puts it, was “crashed into” by a man in a white coat, ostensibly a waiter and who, Ι accept on the evidence, was the waiter Meighan who had been struck by Bloomer. The result was that Meighan was knocked to the floor with Bloomer on top of him, still assaulting him.

Fantastic! And still… all these men. Hmm… the same thing happens in 1955 when we read about a…

… young man in question [who] along with two or three companions strolled into the beverage room, ordered a bottle of beer from the waiter, was supplied same, drank it and then wandered into the ladies beverage room, sat there chatting for five minutes or so, when the manager of the tavern, accompanied by an inspector or police officer, came in and challenged the boy as to his age.

These sorts of things go on in rulings from 1960, 1965, 1969 and 1971 – one of which even makes it to the Supreme Court of Canada. In that last ruling from 1971, we have a rather vivid description of a session at one of these places:

Lorenzo Beauchamp and Massicotte joined Florence Dallaire at her table in the ladies’ beverage room. She thought that her brother was “feeling good” and that he talked in a strange way but that he walked all right. An argument developed and Mrs. Dallaire slammed her glass on the table and left. Although Massicotte and the deceased had not quite finished their one draught of beer they proceeded to leave the ladies’ room by the staircase, where the deceased suffered his fatal fall. His condition immediately before leaving the ladies’ beverage room therefore becomes critical; Vincent McAlendin, who was the waiter on duty in that room, thought that the deceased’s condition was good, and that there was no reason to refuse to serve him beer. He was not stumbling or wobbling on his way out. This evidence is confirmed by Charles Fasciano who had heard the loud talk at the Beauchamp table but observed that the deceased’s manner of walking was not impaired on his exit.****

OK – now we have some ladies and they are perhaps of the harder variety… glass slammers. Otherwise, you see this sort of thing like here in the lead up to a 1961 case of murder after a bar closed:

…the only evidence as to the amount of beer consumed by the appellant during the evening of 9th June, apart from that contained in his statement, was given by his companions Zackariah and Baker. Zackariah said that the party of four (the appellant, his wife, Baker and Zackariah) went into the ladies’ beverage room of the Wembley Hotel about 8:30 p.m. Mrs. Fisher “had a coke” and “we had a few beers and then we went down to the Men’s Room,” after Mrs. Fisher left the party about 9:20 p.m. They had “some beer” in the men’s beverage room, and the appellant left Zackariah and Baker “to see some friends.” He returned about three-quarters of an hour later and “had a beer with us… He finished his beer and part of another one.” Later he said in examination-in-chief “That makes three he had down there,” that is, in the men’s beverage room.

So the calculation seems to be this: drinking men include bad men therefore men need to have their own space to be drunker or nastier than the space where the ladies gather or where folk mix. That is why one category of license was called the men’s beverage room in Ontario’s regulations.***** That seems to be the thing to take from these rulings. The ladies beverage room license was actually “ladies and escorts” as the signs read, like the one at the Douglas Tavern that I mentioned in Ontario Beer which is now closed and converted as of June 2021. But any escort in theory was present on the consent of the ladies as I understand it, given that women could also be there alone or with other women. Those escorts were supposed to be a spouse or a date. Yet one report of a 5:1 men to woman ratio was witnessed at the ladies beverage room of the Tusco Hotel in Toronto in 1936. When three government inspector asked the bartender why he was serving unaccompanied men in the ladies beverage room, the bartender said that he didn’t want trouble. There were clearly picking uppings going on. The manager of the swanky Royal York pointed out another benefit: it “tends to increase the tone of business” if men are not left to drink alone. ****** Drinking men include bad men.

And it is important to appreciate that the same establishment could have multiple licenses then. We see that also in the rulings. Have a look at this report in the Georgetown Herald newspaper from February 1, 1962. At that point, municipal governments had to poll residents to see if they wanted any of the licenses in their community. Here the good people of Erin Township to Toronto’s northwest said no, no and no to each of three classes: ladies beverage room licenses, men’s beverage room licenses and dining room licenses. And in fact notice that the ladies beverage room polling got a higher “yes” turnout that the other two. The voting public didn’t want booze but it really didn’t want men only boozers. With good reason. The painter William Ronald discussed the problem in an interview in 1963:

We didn’t even have any night clubs in Toronto until eight or nine years ago. And I don’t drink. This is perhaps why. Everybody asks me why I don’t drink. I don’t really know why. I had an uncle that died of alcoholism at the age of thirty-two. I was very fond of him. My mother’s brother. But really what I think it is now – when I was up in Canada on a recent visit – you see, they have what they call beverage rooms up there, men’s beverage rooms and ladies’ beverage rooms… And they’re horrible. They’re like washrooms with beer, you know. And if you’re not with a lady then you have to go to the men’s beverage room, and it’s not so nice. But if you’re with a lady you can go to the women’s, which is a little poshier. Then they used to have – maybe still have – a twelve o’clock curfew. And so at twelve o’clock everybody loads up and drinks, you see. And so the whole idea of drinking in Canada is to get drunk. I had never seen people drink the way they drink in New York. *******

That puts it in pretty clear perspective. The reason why you needed ladies beverage rooms was to create the other space, the men’s beverage rooms. Because men drank like pigs. Drank to get drunk. To fight. Which was also the problem they were dealing with at the outset of Ontario’s temperance regulations in 1877: men left alone will drink like pigs. Which means every bar now is really a ladies beverage room and, really, it means that the temperance movement won. Thanks ladies.

The references to these sorts of places fade away in the law books in the early 1970s. Reforms came in then that lowered the drinking age, loosened up where you could drink – and also drink in nicer lounges without buying food. Ontario was growing up. Was the Peterborough question answered? No. That may be for another day. Or a pro writer like the one who asked me the question. Let’s see what he finds.

*If the story goes live, you will be the first to know who wrote me.
**There is also an excellent exploration of the “gallonage” of the place – the amount of beer sold, calculated in utterly generic and bulk form. See in the headnote: “There should be some compensation for the difference in gallonage between our hotel and any similar hotel within a radius of 500 feet; the evidence shows that our business in the 12 months immediately before the expropriation was 69,526 gallons, while the gallonage in the 12 months before our purchase was only 25,706…”
***Utter lie.
****See also the 1965 ruling the case of Stephens v. Corcoran et al., 1965 CanLII 210 (ON SC), with this great detail on the spaces within these drinking establishments: “He went to the hotel for the purpose of consuming beer, and in the evening he planned to take his wife and two daughters to the policemen’s games which were to be held at the University of Toronto stadium. Having parked his car at the west side of the hotel, he entered the more southerly of the two entrances to the beverage rooms, the entrance being marked by a “1” in a circle on ex. 1 which is a floor plan of the ground floor. He proceeded to the point numbered “2” where he joined some friends, and consumed in all three pint bottles of beer. He had partly consumed a fourth bottle when he and one or two friends decided to go into another beverage room at the north- west corner of the ground floor, where he took his place at a table at which there were already others sitting and singing, at the point numbered “3”. He brought his partly-consumed bottle of beer with him, and sat down. I find that he was only in the second beverage room a short time before the 6:30 closing hour arrived and the dispensing of beer was closed off in accordance with the law. The table at which he sat may well have been at a point “T” in the same room, which during the day was used as men’s beverage room only and not as a men’s and ladies’ beverage room. About 6:40 p.m. the plaintiff decided to leave. The singing had come to an end, and he said he was going home. He proceeded from the table through a door marked “6” on ex. 1, and then proceeded westerly along the hall, which was illuminated presumably by sunlight shining through a closed door at point No. 9. This was not only closed but apparently locked in some fashion, perhaps by a padlock as shown in the photograph which was taken on October 11, 1965. However, the lighting conditions, it was agreed, are comparable to those which existed on the date of the accident. The plaintiff passed the first door on the left shown on ex. 4. It was locked. When he came to the door “5” on ex. 4 and indicated by figure “8” on ex. 1, he opened it apparently and then fell down the stairs which led to the cellar.”
*****The terminology differed amongst the provinces. In Saskatchewan until 1972 the mens’ only space was a parlour but a mixed area was a beverage room.
******This is not made entirely clear in Craig Heron’s excellent book Booze where it is discussed at page 291. Many pages are given to the topic in Try to Control Yourself by Dan Malleck – including the tale of the Tusco Hotel at page 171 and the Royal York at page 172.
*******The first day of the interview being the date of my birth… the passage goes on: “Some people drink to get drunk here but most people drink just the way they take a cigarette, you know. And some people can drink a lot of liquor but I rarely see people walking along the street the way you do in those towns up there; and cities. And up there not too long ago, for instance, I saw a young man about twenty-two, well-dressed and so on, on a Friday or Saturday night – it’s the big night – and white shirt, I remember, and all this; and there he was on the sort of Fifth Avenue of Toronto completely plastered, stoned, as they say, out cold on the sidewalk, being sick, and his two friends trying to drag him into the car. And this was a very common sight. This is the way always I was brought up – this is the way drinking was.”

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Summer 2022’s Second Third

The trouble with writing something on a weekly basis is you notice that another week has passed. This is why I don’t shave every day. Looking at the same mug in the same mirror at the same time each and every morning? No thanks. You notice too much. Like that one third of this summer is already done. And the last three weeks don’t even count. Panic! Panic!!! Max is having none of it. He is squeezing every moment out of the good weather – and has found a new cocktail to go along with it. I say cocktail but it seems to be booze free: “The coffee is hot. Then they mix it with tonic and ice, add the lime and you get a glass of refreshing goodness.” I will have to try that.

Heatwave. Euro heatwave. Best place to be? In an old pub painted white on the outside with thick insulating walls and a hearty aircon system? Worst place to be? In the car when the prosecco blows. Or working in a brewery for that matter, as one witness confesses. Fact: 3.6 times more people in the UK think drinking beer is a proper way to beat the heatwave than eating iceberg lettuces. Plural. That’s what the graph says – floating, a little alienated even, just there above this Bloomberg story. Looks like Tesco’s estimate for sales this past week:

…there’s pressure on retailers too, though more to keep the nation in supply of its summer quenchers. Supermarket chain Tesco Plc expects to sell more than 9 million ice creams and lollies in the coming week, a record. The supermarket also expects to sell 9 million bottles and cans of beer and 50,000 bottles of Pimms, the classic British summer gin-based fruit drink… Peas, lettuce and apples are particularly susceptible, he said, and crops can’t be shielded. “It’s not catastrophic — it happens,” said Ward. “Extreme heat is uncomfortable for people and plants.”

Either way, bad week to be a lettuce: get eaten or burn. Perhaps making matters worse for the the green crunchies, it appears that some lab coated type people are telling some other not lab coated people to lay off the sauce when being slowly roasted during a heatwave:

“Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it encourages the kidneys to lose extra fluid. That is why you tend to go to the toilet to urinate (pee) much more when you drink alcohol. Alcohol also makes you sweat more. The combination of sweating more in the heat, and going to the toilet more, means you lose more fluid than you take in and become dehydrated unless you replace that lost fluid by drinking water.” Official guidance also urges people to avoid caffeine during the hot weather for the same reason.

WHAAAAATTT!!! Hot cuppa tea is the best thing on a hot day. That’s what Grannie always said. Never mentioned lettuce either, come to think of it. And they call themselves scientists.* Thankfully, the New York Post found a couple of people perhaps partially of the lab coated variety to root for beer as the mercury climbs:

…in the midst of an international heat wave, one physician on Twitter claimed beer can help with hydration. Academic Ellie Mackin Roberts sparked a now-viral debate when she recently tweeted 10 steps to help beat the heat. Tip No. 9 read: “If you are dehydrated (and an adult, and able to do so) drink a half a pint of beer (inc. alcohol free!) and then move straight onto water (or a sports drink or cordial if you don’t like water).” Followers of Roberts, an expert in ancient Greek history, quickly responded, questioning how beer could ever be helpful in trying to avoid dehydration. However, Dr. Stuart Galloway, of the University of Stirling told Femail that the beverage contains electrolytes, sugar and salt, which helps the body retain fluid, rather than it going straight through.

Gary added an interesting but also labcoatless and lettuceless post on the conditions in pubs in Halifax, England in 1932 and how the local establishments managed another heatwave ninety years ago:

“The public do not realise the trouble we have to go to, to keep our beer cool,” one licensed victualler said. “When you have a rock cellar as we possess, the business is bad enough, but publicans that do not possess this advantage have a busy time trying to cool their beer. Some of the best bitter beers require nursing if our customers are to be satisfied in these hot days,” he continued, “and even with advantages regarding cellarage I have to keep a succession of wet sacks over my casks to keep them cool.” In one restaurant sacks, thoroughly dampened, are placed over the casks of beer, and from time to time a system of sprayers pours ice-cold water over them.

That’s the spirit – and at least they were not resorting to putting crap in the lager and calling it innovation! Honourable mention and a big “thanks for coming out” for at least shitting on the 2009 video “I am a craft brewer” even if it took them thirteen years to admit how stupid it was. All very “wad some Power the giftie gie us“… Dave! Some are still unaware.

This week in beer writing mildly troubling angst: dashes.

Health update: booze bad. Relatedly, in Jerard Fagerberg’s disappointingly brief but excellent interview (within an important health confessional of sorts) former beer writer Norm Miller shares some thoughts on his 2018 decision to back away from drinking:

During his tenure, Miller became synonymous with the Massachusetts beer scene. But by 2018, Miller was drinking too much. As an obese man in his 40s, he needed a holistic lifestyle change. He never felt physically addicted, he says, but the pressures of being in the beer media were indeed getting to him. “I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, I just drank because I felt like I should keep up with everything,” he says. “It was a combination of trying to keep up with everything and sincerely liking to try different things. It was a bad combination. I decided to step away, because my health was more important than a weekly column.”

PS: Norm‘s normal now… nearly. I applaud the raising of the ill effects of booze but it is sad to see it hidden in the lower shelf of GBH well behind all the regular dubious claims to fame for booze.

Canadian craft Faxe weekly update.

Note: there are upsides to the heat or at least a moderate amount of it. The barley crop in Ireland is loving it, according to grower and not well dead poet, John Dunne: “…grain fill looks really good. You can’t beat sunshine to put weight in grain.” And, did you know, that actual grains make interesting flavours that can be expressed though a resulting booze-laden beverage? No, really. Apparently adding buckets of jam is not required according to this heads up from Curmudgeon Ale Works citing an article in Modern Farmer:

“There were a few older, open-pollinated varieties that really didn’t taste very good. But then there were a few that were absolutely stunning. And what fascinated us was that all of the hybrids kind of tasted the same.” Time and time again, the flavor of the heritage and heirloom grains outperformed the hybrid rye varieties—but that doesn’t mean hybrids don’t have their place. Swanson still grows hybrid grains, such as the popular AC Hazlet, because they “are incredibly robust in the field,” he says. “They give beautiful standards, they yield astronomical amounts.

Pay attention, brewers. And an addendum to last week’s comment about medieval alcohol making:

Later this week blackcurrants are going to make wine too… farmers will convert anything to alcohol, it’s our superpower…

In addition to all its issues, craft beer also has a labour problem, according to this excellent and detailed article by Julie Rhodes:

Think about it this way, if the 1990s were like the kindergarten stage of the overall craft beer industry journey, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and experiential learning moments, the 2020s are proving to be like middle school – full of angst, infinite possibilities, and pivotal decision-making that will determine the long-term future of the industry. We will have to wait to see if the cool kids can mature enough to make equitable and mutually beneficial decisions that will carry this industry beyond the awkward stage, but many are hopefully optimistic.

AKA the era of the spotty faced gits. I like it.

And finally a question: why bother with B.O.B.s** (or W.O.B.s for that matter) set in places you will never see and drinks you will never have? Among the usual questions about veracity in drinks writing, don’t these reach a further level of abstraction from reality, so far that they might as well be entirely made up? A sort of social science fan fiction?

For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: with a good discretion of the purchase of Amsterdam’s recent buyout by Danes this week at about the midpoint but avoid around the 24th minute if you don’t care for sputum) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Other points of view have been circulating.
**Beer Owner Bios, that sort of subset of puffery that is as close to press release reporting as there is… well, except for when that’s all it actually is…

The Death Defying Mid-July 2022 Thursday Beery News Notes

That’s a bit of a bold claim. Death defying. But, having checked the stats, I am 98% sure that no one has died as a direct* result** of reading the weekly beery news notes. I also can confirm that no one has been harmed by reading Taste, the recent memoir by Stanley Tucci.*** It is mainly about his life with food. I finished reading it just yesterday. If you need any assistance in identifying what I am talking about, that is actually the book’s cover just there to the right. No, really. Taste about his life with food and people, too, and makes for good light reading except when life was not light when it is actually a bit better. Recommended – especially as he includes recipes. So it is a 87% memoir and 13% cookbook… or recipe book. Which is good. I thought when finishing it… I have never read a book about beer that is remotely similar. I wonder why.

Enough about me… and Stanley. First up, some history. Martyn has opened up a very interesting discussion on the question of medieval England and whether they actually didn’t drink the water – something I also doubt – by excellently questioning society’s capacity to replace it with ale:

The population of England in 1300 was approximately 4.25 million. If we leave out those too young to drink ale, that equals about 3.5m “adults”. The recommended liquid intake is 3.5 pints a day. So if they are only drinking ale, those adults are going to require a little under 560 million gallons of ale a year, minimum – and much of their time would be spent doing hard labour under a hot sun, when the requirement for liquid might be as high as ten pints a day…

Now, I am not going to get all linky and suggest that the initial conclusion drawn is incorrect (as I suspect it might be) but I would like to add a few assumptions into the mix which might also make it not entirely correct. While Martyn has quite rightly deducted kids from the calculation, I would suggest a few other points. First, there is no need to suppose that there was equal distribution between men and women, between rich and poor and between town and country. Male labourers in rich country estates may well have consumed more than their share. Second – and I think this is even a bit more important – access to more fermentables than statistically captured malted grains would have been common, especially in the countryside. Plus remember the wine trade. Third, I am not sure what is meant by “ale” in that it could be 1% or 10% alcohol. If it is too thin… what else makes up the necessary caloric load for life? That’s key. Water won’t do that. Fourth, Unger**** states that the requirement per person in the English Navy in 1535 (yes, 200 years later) was 4.6 litres a day. Was there an agricultural explosion during those two centuries that could support a change in diet? Fifth, our pal from 1378 Piers rated water the lowest of all drinks but did indicated that sloth was to be avoided or “ye shul eten barly breed and of the broke drynke…” I know that Martyn would agree that this sort of more granular review would be required to finalize the answer – but I do agree that there is no evidence that medieval people did not drink water to be found in the statistics that they drank a lot of ale.

Note: Cookie advises don’t get Humphed.

And I missed this last week, Lew Bryson on stouts and porters as used and then abused by the micro and craft beer movements in their turn:

Both types were throwbacks to much older Anglo-Irish beers, and as is often the case, the beers that were brewed in the 1980s were, by and large, guesses at what the older beers were like… [I]f porter and stout were the two sources of the river of dark beer that would grow to capture the palate of beer geeks and the Yummy Beer Drinkers (YBDs, that’s my name for the people who want diabeetus dessert in a glass)… Porter’s melody got drowned out. Despite slam-hopping it (“robust” porter), throwback-lagering it (Baltic porter), sweet-tweaking it (coconut and vanilla porter), and bomb-boosting it (the inevitable imperial porter), porter got smacked aside by imperial stout, and never recovered.

Speaking of porter, could this Goldthorpe whisky be associated with the long lost malting barley strain Battledore? Could my dream of a hordeum zeocritum porter come true?

Pellicle published a very interesting bit of reading about the first bottling by a small scale scavenging side project run by English film maker, Thomas Broadhead – Dimpsey Cider. It is written by Hannah Crosbie, who clearly identifies as a wine writer – which gives us passages that are less, you know, about the squishy chumminess of things than many a beer writers might jot on about … like in this:

“It’s a miracle it was actually a drinkable product,” Thomas admits. “We left those barrels until February, we finally tasted and were like, ‘oh, this is actually tasting quite good!’ Only then did I order the bottles and commission the artist for the label.” And so, Dimpsey’s first cuvée, Unprecedented Times, was born. Notes of caramel apples, citrus and smoke from the barrels envelop a vibrant pétillance. Around 470 bottles were made, and those that weren’t smashed by ParcelForce found their way to London’s aesthetic-led drink spots: Bar Crispin, Gipsy Hill Brewery and—the restaurant where I first came across it—Top Cuvée.

There’s a lot of good in there. The writer was attracted to the drink first as a consumer. And, while there is a bit of bio in the piece, it is not beating us over the head. I do also like that the question of balancing time for this side project is a topic that runs through the article. There are some deft touches in there, leaving the question of Broadhead’s life choices just hanging a bit. Will there even be a second batch?

Breaking: there are at least two approaches to handling information. Reminds me of that 1976 homebrewing club.

My spam filters snagged something called BeerBoard this week and I noticed it was enticing me to hand over my personal contact information to gain more on that fast breaking news that “Volume and Rate of Sale are down double digits, while Percentage of Taps Pouring also dipped.” Wow. I am shocked. Not really. These days of jostling bleggy blogs for the shy – aka newsletters – seeking (cap in hand) to let us know the same four things that all the other newsletters and social media links (and sometimes actual new outlets) are saying, well, they lead me to one conclusion. I don’t exactly need another newsletter to tell me there’s a downturn. We all know things are tanking when the BA uses the magic words “mixed bag“! The arse is out of it, as we say. Boak and Bailey picked up on the endsy timesy theme asked an interesting question this week about the UK public’s response to the uptick in pub prices during a time of general inflation:

In the context of supply chain issues, rampaging inflation and staff shortages, let alone the long-term structural problems caused by the pubco model, how much control do most really have over the price of a pint? That’s not to say, of course, that some people don’t do quite well running pubs. We find ourselves thinking of a businessman who owned several pubs in Cornwall and would turn up for inspection in a huge Range Rover with personalised plates, gold cufflinks flashing. It’s perhaps no wonder his customers got the impression that running a pub might be a nice earner and occasionally grumbled about the price of a pint.

My thought was not that it was about getting ripped off so much as customers voting with their reduced buying power to make sure this end met that other end. (This is not a club and I don’t really associate beer with self in the sense that it is an end needing meeting.) Plus I am still not ready to move back to the idea of hanging out in bars – not with, what, the seventh wave upon us? For this? These things are going to take a bit more than naïve possy cartooning and #LetsBeerPositive to get over. Or maybe it just goes the way of that weird but brief big band revival of the late 1990s. Remember that? Me neither. Again, no time to invest in craft beer folks.

In a happier time and place, Gary Gilman has let loose a social media blitz of his trip to France, tweeting up a storm while handing the keys to his blog to his better half – including this fabulous photo of a market fish stall in Calais. What manner of beast is that in the foreground? I am thinking monkfish but who knows. Well, the guy in the sweater with all the stripes does, I suppose.

Speaking of which,***** I am not sure I can fully, heartily, entirely… hesitantly… marginally… agree with Jeff in this particular application of what looks like the great white male theory:

Stone also helped convert Americans to hops (though they had a lot more company than they once admitted). It was, ironically, that strong association to hops that ultimately led to the awkward phase—though Stone also had quite a run as an established, successful brewery. When the haze displaced bitterness, Stone had a hard time adapting its brand.

I think one needs to include the words Berlin and Keystone in any eulogy of the Stone that was. For me, repeated poor business decisions might have been central to the… awkwardness of that business ending poorly. Plenty of good regional and national breweries followed other paths. Sometimes I wonder if that sort of quieter success is considered less interesting. Because…

Congratulations to Eoghan Walsh on the successful completion of his series “A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects” and the accompanying book launch, finishing up sorta where it began:

In December 2021, Brussels Beer Project publicly announced what was both the worst kept secret and the most unexpected recent development in Brussels beer: they had started brewing Lambic. They did so in a quintessentially Brussels Beer Project manner – by wheeling one of their coolships onto the Grand Place and parking within a couple of metres of the Brouwershuis, the centuries-long seat of brewing power in Brussels.

This whole project is a great illustration of the power of properly handled personal websites combined with a clever social media presence.

Finally: beer awards. Q: if this is the ultimate… which is the penultimate? And which is the antepenultimate? Shouldn’t this be clearer? One would want to know when and where one is wasting one’s time.

There. That’s enough. It must be! For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: ??? ) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*made you look.
**made you look again.
***I have now read 32 books in 2022 which is part of my personal productivity project for the year. Along with a number of things like being over ten months in to intermittent fasting which made the Tucci book a risk – but one worth taking. A fair few have been this sort of celebrity bio, some of which lean on happy times and avoids much of the bad times. Not something that I might have taken up before too often – though I highly recommend Alex Trebek’s if only for the news that he swore like a stevedore like any good northern Ontario lad should. Greg Allman, George Clinton, Stanley Tucci, Mel Brooks, Dave Grohl might serve as a handy scale against which one might measure these things. Allman being the most revealing of life’s grimmer side and Grohl the least. Note that Tucci is in the middle. But there is a gap to his left and a fair distance to Clinton. Clinton is only to the right of Allman because he seemed to cope better with many of the same demons – or perhaps just because he is still alive at 80 despite much whereas Allman ended his days at 69 in large part due to his addictions in youth.
****A History of Brewing in Holland 900-1900: Economy, Technology and the State by UBC professor Richard W. Unger, published in 2001 at page 88. He also shows at page 90 that per person consumption in the Netherlands from 1372 to 1500 averaged between 210 and 320 litres a year based on total population.
*****See? Fishy. Ha ha. Funny joke.

July 2022’s Very Own First Beery News Notes

What to do on summer holiday? Now that it is July, I really have to figure out what the second half of August could promise. Not just chores, right? Chores ought to be done by then, done well before the snow shovels and garden hose swap places again. Martyn’s eternal holiday got me thinking about this… again… this week with his post about the pub in Greve de Lecq, Jersey that is apparently separated from all public transportation access other than by foot. It’s like a pub in some unpublished work on Winnie the Pooh – if and when they all grow up, get jobs (and trousers, if we were into finger pointery) and drink a lot of beer. Look at that path to the village pub! While there are many attractions of the pub ticking life that do not do that much for me, this has me thinking about getting some of that woven into my upcoming weeks off. Toddling down earthy paths to bechy pubs. Too much to ask?

What else is going on out there? Are we at the dog days yet?* Certainly not – at least at one archeological dig to which news of which Merryn happily guided me, excavations in a place called Chalkpit Field where maltings from the Dark Ages are being uncovered:

Much of the work undertaken involved cleaning the main malting house features identified from previous years but with special attention paid to the most recently revealed features at the northern and southern ends of the trench. A the northernmost end of the trench, two kiln-like features appear to represent further malting houses, with a considerable quantity of collapsed daub still in situ.

Nosing around the internets as one does I learned that this dig is part of a project investigating “the entire range of human settlement and land use in the north-west Norfolk parish of Sedgeford” and that the maltings date to the triple digit centuries. Fabulous.

Still with the British stuff, there was a good, summarizing (if ultimately despairing) article in The Guardian about the state of pressures on the British pub:

The total number of pubs dropped below 40,000 during the first half of 2022, a fall of more than 7,000 compared with a decade ago… The hospitality sector has faced immense challenges in recent years as it recovered from the pandemic, which resulted in national lockdowns that caused closures and reduced demand. However, the researchers suggest that while pubs managed to battle through Covid-19, they are facing a fresh challenge because of record-high inflation and an energy crisis.

Also in TG, Singapore Slung? Beer made from purified sewage.

Pellicle ran a tribute to an old friend, an old neglected pal… and old pal perhaps we all take for granted… a pal that may not even be there anymore – Newkie Broon:

“It doesn’t make it the same, and it’s a shame,” Mark tells me. “But that’s how things move on.” The beer has now become a joke back home, a travesty. A victim of its own success that has been transformed beyond recognition—proving that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But despite the bitter taste left by losing a legend in the North East, with bottles gathering dust on the shelves of Newcastle offies, the hardy heritage of my hometown lives on through determined, independent breweries sparking a resurgence in brown ale.

I like this near 40 year old clip and the message about what are reasonable sources of influence.

Moving west across the Atlantic, I encountered what was essentially a demand from Stan: “If it were Monday & I was recapping the previous week via beer links this one would be at the top“! Heavens. Good thing it is an interesting read. One Roger Baylor on the question of chatting over beer in America as a person who is outside US alignment, politically speaking, and how it offers hope in these pretty hard times:

I’m free to remain a leftist as it pertains to larger issues, and to vote accordingly, while also judging local grassroots political affairs by criteria unique to the immediate acreage lying just outside my front door. Stated another way, it’s possible for me to have a beer with David Duggins, a Democrat and New Albany’s public housing director, and talk about pressing issues of church-state separation and Supreme Court overreach. I did so last Saturday. It’s also possible for me to have a beer with Indiana’s U.S. Senator Todd Young, a Republican, and talk about federal regulatory issues affecting small businesses, American foreign policy, and other topics that have always been of interest to me.

And so much further west it is east again, I have heard of this sensible use of excess local crops like the neighbours of MacKinnon and their strawberry wheat of a few years back so it is good to see the trend-worthy idea elsewhere, this time in Japan:

Last summer, Ayumi Kato, a 32-year-old member of the town’s community revitalization team, planned the project to support farmers and others amid the pandemic by utilizing nonstandard agricultural produce that would have been discarded. After discussions with other women who are local farmers, Kato decided to create two types of beer: one using Amao strawberries and one using local corn. About ¥850,000 was raised for the project from all over Japan through a crowdfunding campaign. After being offered from the Kirin factory the malt produced in the town, the project members asked a craft beer brewery in Anan, Tokushima Prefecture, to produce the beers for Tachiarai.

Beth Demmon has published yet another in her series on interesting people in the good drinks world, this time Colette Goulding who makes cider in London with Hawkes. This is an excellent observation that came out of their conversations:

The future of cider, both in the U.K. and across the world, lies in the hands of people like Colette. But speaking up in a room full of mostly older men (who often come from more rural areas and espouse old-school ideas) isn’t always easy, especially as a relatively younger nonbinary person who has been in the industry for two years. Discussing diversity as an integral part of cider itself can be a challenge, they say, but one they’re up for.

It has yet to get stinking hot enough here to make the tomato leap in their cages but if it does some day soon, there is only one thing for it – hefeweisen. Nothing breaks the back of a mid-morning scorcher filled with when seven minutes of weeding and thinking about maybe weeding than a few litres of Teutonic clovey wheaty stuff followed by a good nap. And apparently, as Boak and Bailey found out, it is a good year for it – even if not everyone knows it:

BBF’s version, available in 440ml cans, actually pours stubbornly clear, or at least only faintly hazy. It has vanilla in the aroma and, of course, a bunch of banana. At 5%, it’s not as strong as the Schneider original – or, indeed, as most standard German wheat beers. We liked it so much we bought a box of 12 to drink at home. Perhaps others don’t share our enthusiasm, though, because it was discounted to £25.60 – about £2 per tin. At present, they don’t have any in stock.

More about wheat here which, characteristically for US beer writing, misses the entire two centuries of its own wheat beer brewing history.

Tweet of the week:

Finally, a helpful bit of health advice in you are finding too much is causing too much.

There. You have been informed. A bit. For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: Robin got a job!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*Could be as there is plenty of writing not about beer under the umbrella of beer writing. Keep keeping it dull, semi-pros! As a policy point during the times of good beer’s gentle decline, it’s important to remember that beer has reasonably obvious boundaries.