January 2023 – A Good Beer Blog

The Last But Decisive Beery News Notes For January 2023

Already we see an ending. The long goodbye, that’s what I say. It’s been quite a week. I went to a pub in another city with old pals for one thing. A cheery sort of dive. We talked about stuff like, you know, the anticipated next LP from The Cars and, umm, how the Trudeau administration is going, that sort of stuff. Like we would in the early ’80s. We drank beers like we would have then, too. My pals are generally not the fruity sour sort. Good brown bitter ales. Cheery pubs are good as Jeff has been reminding us from Prague. Not sure going to every pub in downtown Dublin in one day is quite the same thing. But I tell you what is the very thing – THUNDER SNOW!!! Had a blast on Wednesday night. Neato.

Beer! That’s what you are here for. And as B+B highlighted, Cloudwater’s Paul Jones shared a bit of uncertainty about the brewery’s future in a BBC news item and a few people took notice – and quite rightly:

Mr Jones said his Manchester-based company has been in survival mode since March 2020, with high costs, debt, low consumer confidence and post-Brexit trading problems all bearing down on the business. “The cost to me has been pretty bleak,” he said. “I have a heart condition from stress and I feel constantly on the edge of what I can personally cope with.” His thoughts have turned to closing his business “probably once a month since 2020,” he said.

Reporting from the bar room floor, the Tand himself shared that he “had a pint (several) with Paul last Friday and he is really worried about the situation. But he is fighting on, which is good” – others in the thread thought they had as good a chance of getting through these tough times as any brewery. But, yikes… that heart condition.

Spinning the globe that sits by my desk, we see that The Beer Nut wrote about two Bulgarian beers last weekend and, as anyone with an eye on the globe would… I do like me a good tale of Bulgarian beers. Why, just a decade ago I wrote about a matter of brewery crime over there. Anyway, the principled defense of actual gose as against the forces of fruit sauce adjuncts that TBN posted was heartening:

There’s neither nonsense nor novelty in the aroma, just a nice dry saline kick with a suggestion of citric sourness to come. Sure enough, it’s cleanly tart; precise and angular in its flavour. The dry cracker base is a little soggier than I’d like, lacking a crispness it suggests but doesn’t quite deliver on. That does give it a fuller than expected body for only 5% ABV, and onto that they’ve spread grapefruit jelly and a spritz of sea spume. Refreshing? I’ll say. I drank it very cold and it suited it well. And then there’s just enough sourness to keep this sour beer fan happy. Overall it’s a cut above what gets tossed out as gose by most microbreweries these days. Some coriander might have been good too, but there’s plenty of flavour without it.

And TBN also heroically called out the practice of only speaking of beer in positives this week, too. He really needs a government grant to keep on this sort of thing, doesn’t he:

If you paid money for it, and it’s not good, it’s absolutely fair to say “it’s not good”. An out of ten scale is meaningless if you don’t use all the numbers.

On a similar theme but unpacked a bit more was David Jesudason in his excellent newsletter “Episodes of My Pub Life” last Friday:

… this is always going to be their comfort zone if they are from a background that has meant they have never had to work a busy bar or wait on a table. They’re always viewing their glass through the prism of being a privileged consumer – and that’s not to say I’m wholly exempt from this charge. Many even see their sole role as promoters of the beer industry and, more critically, to tell it like it is is somehow negative – they also often feel the same about racism or any other ism. This isn’t journalism or what we were gifted to do and if people, like today’s interviewee, are clamouring to have the truth told then food and drink writing needs to change… That’s not to say that beer writers shouldn’t be writing articles that make people yearn to be in pubs but what’s happening in the moment shouldn’t be played out on social media, while journalists bury their head in their hands.

Well said. And, to be honest, it’s like there’s a whole bunch of me circa 2010s out there now. Nice. [No, not Nice!] Over on Mastodon, Andreas Krennmair shared another less nice sort of beer writing issue – doubt:

…ever since I published my Vienna Lager book, I’ve had this awful feeling that no matter what I’d be writing next about, it will never be nearly as good or popular as the last one, and so I have a (probably 1/2 to 3/4 finished) book WIP lying on my hard drive for 2 years now that I occasionally touch a bit once every few months but never make much progress.

Conversely, never one to suffer doubt or at least be held back by it, Ron has been sharing the secrets of his corner of the writing trade by explaining how he interprets brewery logs and other records:

After the overwhelmingly tepid response to my series looking at a Barclay Perkins record, I’ve decided to plough ahead with another style of brewing record. What I call Scottish format because, well, it\s the type of record used by most Scottish brewers. And a few English ones, too. Such as Boddington, for example… Getting back to the topic, Scottish format records gave their pros and cons. Biggest pro is that you get more beers per photo. This period of Younger’s records have eight beers per double-page spread. Which means you get four beers per photo. Biggest con is that everything is rather cramped and often in tiny handwriting.

OK, enough about writing about writing. How about some bad news about your hobby! The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction issued a statement this week that more than just two drinks a week was courting an increased level of risk from cancers and other harms and there was a bit of an explosion. Folks went crrrrraaaay-crrrraaaay. It particularly set drinks writer Craig Pinhey off more than once, especially the two-hour national radio call in show Cross Country Checkup‘s coverage. Sadly, unhappy folk took to flogging the creaky and well discredited J-Curve and ignored that the latest medical advice* that, contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart. The contestants for leading voices in opposition ranged from the quite sensible Dan Mallack who advocated primarily for an overall calculation that balanced joy v. risk to some complaining Uncle Anti who is also against cutting back on sugary food, smoking, gambling and even seat belts in cars, exercising one might say the Randian** ad absurdum. Such is life… or perhaps the path to an early death. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Returning to lucidity, I just finished reading book at the moment that the very self same Mr. Mallack edited, Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs, which canvasses a range of topics over the included essays and I am quite enjoying it. Buy it. He gets paid for such things. I actually referred to it as the “needles and booze essays” which I am glad to say was warmly appreciated. There are a legitimate range of views in these matters as that book illustrates – and it is good to explore them even if you have no intention of necessarily adopting one or another as your own. Me? I balance all joys and all risks along with the duties of life. I’ve had five or six drinks*** in the last ten days but I did go to a pub last Saturday with pals I met around 40 years ago and had a very nice time until the band started up and my earplugs proved insufficient to protect my punk rock ravaged hearing. The group photo shows me with a nice pint of ice water. It was my bourbon chaser.

When I think of those schoolboy days, I have to admit that I had no idea that some children needed to be coaxed to take their cocktails but there you have it… proof! The 1930s ciggie ad right there to the right says – so it must be true! I am not sure I’ve seen the truth, however, in the case of the boringest tale of beer of at least this short years. It continues with an old style Fat Tire handle spotted unloved in an airport terminal. Stan had the final word on that kerfuffle: so many people with so many opinions for a beer so many people abandoned so many years ago.

Albany ale sighting!!!

An odd blip on perhaps an alternative timeline was noticed. Last heard from in April 2022, an unhappiness with BrewDog was revived but to what end I don’t know. The most telling statement is perhaps the last: “…I consider any further acts towards me or my company a continuance of the retaliation against those former workers…” which reminded me of the time when a lawyer of my acquaintance decided to insist on a house deal not closing – and moved into the house himself to make sure that was the case!

Speaking of odd, I had no idea anyone was bothering to be anti-Cicerone. Given it’s a non-peer reviewed, unaccredited privately run hospitality course, I never thought it would worth anyone’s time… but I do respect Jenny so it’s noteworthy that she wrote:

I always find it funny when brewers are the ones who come out so anti-Cicerone — people who put in time to make the beer you brewed as good as it can be the moment it makes it to the beer drinker. If that’s irrelevant, then you don’t see the whole picture.

Fin! Enough!! Now on to the indices. Again I ask… what song should play if this were a movie and you were there scrolling though the slowly building upon this expanding and randomly organized list of beer writing resources on Mastodon** followed by the less reliable glom of podcasts ‘n’ stuff? Could it be this? Yes? Yes, that’s it – for this week…

Go have a look yourself. I am up to 750 followers myself. Time and patience and regular posting attracts the audience as per usual. While you are at it, check for more from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays. Check to see if there is the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it there again! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very much less) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: still giving it a few more weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus 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 was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has fully packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly.

*World Heart Federation, Policy Brief, The Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Cardiovascular Health”, page 8: “Contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart. This directly contradicts common and popular message that alcohol prolongs life, chiefly by reducing the risk of CVD. The controversy over the role of low to moderate alcohol use and future heart attack relates to inconsistent results among the many studies on the topic. Historically, studies have shown a J-shaped distribution of outcomes. The lowest rates of heart attacks have been in those with low to moderate alcohol consumption and higher rates in those who did not drink or have high rates of alcohol consumption. However, new research has challenged this interpretation by not confirming the J point relationship in Chinese and Indian populations, where alcohol consumption is relatively lower, binge drinking is common and among people less than 55 years of age. Furthermore, there has been heterogeneity in the type and pattern of alcohol consumption in most parts of the world.”
**Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, chapter on “Sir Thomas Brown“: “There have even been outright bad writers blessed by the visitation of a poetic title. Ayn Rand had one with The Fountainhead, and another with Atlas Shrugged: a bit of a mouthful, but nobody has ever spat it out without first being fascinated with what it felt like to chew. Yet if those were not two of the worst books ever written—the worst books ever written don’t even get published—they were certainly among the worst books ever to be taken seriously.“
***Fine, yes, I do keep track of a lot of stats…

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of Blue Monday

How long is Christmas? Until Candlemas? It’s should be long enough to deal with Blue Monday. In fact, for me Blue Monday should be in February. Why? Leftover Christmas liqueurs! There are still leftover Christmas liqueurs in the cabinet. Sure, it’s a dribble of Cointreau and some sort of nut cream thing but it’s still the holidays in some vestigial sense until that goes. Another way to beat the blues is to be not blue except in terms of your toes and your nose. Get out and see that blue sky. Jeff took a great walk to a brewery near Prague this week and shared some of the countryside, one image of which is right there:

Prague tip: a hike from Prague castle to the satellite town of Únětice is only about 13km, really varied and ends at my favourite Czech brewery. Regular buses go back to the city and you could even summon up an Uber, so you’re not stranded at the end...

Speaking of wandering around Prague, remember when people like Evan wrote short stories around beer? Remember Beer Haiku Daily? Well, Beergeek is writing like its 2012 and getting creative, like this:*

If beer replaced water, swimming would be a very different experience. For one thing, the buoyancy of beer might be different from that of water, so it could be more or less difficult to swim depending on the specific gravity of the beer. Additionally, beer is not as clear as water, so visibility while swimming might be reduced.

Speaking of out and about, Paste mag has published an interesting article about the drinking laws of Japan:

… the idea of “public consumption” in Japan goes even further than you’re probably imagining. Drinking in public transportation, for example, is also legal—booze is sold on the famed shinkansen system of high-speed rail, and it’s not illegal to swig from a hip flask on the train, or even a public bus. Perhaps most astoundingly, though, drinking on modes of private transportation such as cars is also legal for everyone but the driver. That’s right: You can be cruising down the highway with an open bottle of whiskey being passed back and forth between all the passengers, and that is legal under Japanese law.

Much to the contrary, Old Mudgie has shared thoughts about the loss of the love of and/or need for alcohol which he has witnessed over recent decades:

As something becomes less fashionable, people are more likely to prefer to do it in private than in public, which is bad news for the pub trade. According to the statistics produced by the British Beer & Pub Association, in the twenty years from 1998 to 2018 (which is as far as they go), total beer consumption fell by 22.8%, but on-trade consumption almost exactly halved. The trail of pubs now demolished or converted to alternative use is all too obvious. Some will argue that the Anteater Tap is still doing great business, while ignoring the fact that the Sir Garnet Wolseley across the road, which was ten times the size, has been replaced by flats. Even within a declining market, it is still possible to be successful, but that doesn’t make the wider narrative any less true.

Note: Oz hops ave.

Katie Mather has made the case for on-trade non-consuption of at least alcohol in here new piece for Pellicle on the pleasures of a lime and lemonade pub crawl:

When we decided to go on a lime and lemonade crawl, the idea started off as a plan to meet for food. Oversaturated by alcohol and the coming winter, we decided to make Mondays a strict no-alcohol day—the most obvious switch for a bar setting is one with food instead of drinks. But neither of us wanted food. We wanted the comfort of a pub, the atmosphere of a communal sitting room. We didn’t want to be wowed by flavours or waited on. We just wanted somewhere to belong. It’s easy to forget that you’re just as welcome in a pub as a non-drinker. Somehow it feels awkward; unusual. But, if you want to sit in a cosy corner and play cards, you go right ahead.

Note: infographics suck… suck. And is the use of isinglass really all that surprising? An odd criticism. I am still thinking of what it means to be critical in a closed or sorta closed circle like good beer and saw this interesting similar discussion of the issues which bear upon criticism of Indigenous arts written by Drew Hayden Taylor:

…while we don’t know every single Indigenous person in the country, we may know someone who knows someone who knows someone. They aren’t an anonymous, blank population. Knowing this can be difficult. As Glen Sumi, theatre critic at large, told me, “there’s also the possibility of being too close to the community you’re writing about — especially if you’ve worked with or are going to be working with some of the artists you’ll be reviewing.” True. I remember reading a quote from some famous novelist who said something to the effect of “I never felt freer as a writer than when my parents died.” Now picture that sense with a whole nation watching you. It can be somewhat problematic.

I would add one key distinction is that there is no community with good beer in the same sense even if there may be communities or at least circles. There is perhaps a sense of this in Eoghan‘s thoughts this week as well as something else:

…beer reviewing is subjective, and there are noses out there better able – thanks to training, genetics, or both – to catch what I missed. And that, beyond the intellectual vanity and the sensory chaos, is why I think I dislike decoding beers: I am uncomfortable with this ambiguity. I trust my eyes, dodgy as they are, and the neural pathways they follow. I don’t trust the messages coming from my olfactory system and the detours they take into memory and recall. Despite all this, there is a reason I became a beer writer and not an art critic (well, there are many). Because good and all as Velázquez’s royal portrait or Picasso’s colourful interpretation might be, on a terrace on a sunny day in Brussels, a 17th century oil on canvas just doesn’t hit the same way as a cold glass of Zinnebir.

At least it’s a beer made in Belgium and not the disassembly of a long dumbed down clone of something Belgian. Telling that the Fat Tire chat has very little to do with the beer, just the sideshow of the brand being scotch taped on a can with something other than Fat Tire in it. Best comment so far?

Alright. Can we all agree that (1) nobody’s had a Fat Tire in years; and (2) nobody’s allowed to talk about New Fat Tire anymore unless it’s about what’s in the fucking can and you include a poorly taken picture of it in a glass. It’s what we do.

There. That’s quite a bit. Well, a middling sort of week. And now on to the index of others. Really, indices. Again I ask… what song should play if this were a movie and you were there scrolling though the slowly building upon a randomized list of beer writing resources on Mastodon** followed by the podcasts ‘n’ stuff? This? Yes, that’s it – an exploration of exploration… over 50 years ago… yikes…***

Go have a look. And also check for more as the year picks up from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays. It’s no longer the holidays. So, look around and check to see if there is the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it there again! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. 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. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus 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 was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has packed it in citing lack of success.

*Stan has admonished me in the mildest manner for not pointing out the use of artificial “intelligence” in this matter. I have commented in reply thusly...
**(again… inspired by Boak and Bailey… not stolen… not!)
***compare to 45 years later with the great Geddy Lee, grinning like a schoolboy at the 3:15 min bass break, sitting in for the dear departed Chris Squire at the RRHF induction.

The Nerve Wrackingly Clever Observations On Beer Culture For January’s Middle-Third

2023!! Here we are knee deep in it already. And my first packets of seeds have already shown up. Dreaming of a feed of that Italian cuke-a-melon, the carosello, is all I’m about now. Let’s be honest – I’m calling this part of the year pre-spring from here on out. Summer, autumn, holidays, pre-spring, spring. Makes way more sense that way. If winter sucks, just eliminate it from the vocabulary. That’s what I say. You. Are. Welcome. Not sure if a new beery theme has coalesced yet this year – other than, you know, the impending total craft beer industry collapse. Things looked a bit wobbly recession-wise in Montreal what with shops closed or quiet, there where we ended up by surprise last week, gifted a short trip by the kids – but I did get to try that there cider without sulfates, at the very busy (good to see) mid-week early dinner sitting at “Au Pied du Cochon” (also really good to scoff.) You never realize how much sulphites trigger histamine flairs until they don’t.

First up this week? Some history for you upon the question of peeing. There is an odd whiff of Ceramics Defense League (CDL) punditry in this article about the use of tiles in pubs in 1930s Australia:

…the emerging awareness of sanitation and hygiene prompted the wider use of tiles as a way to manage germs and dirt. Tiles were easier to clean than plaster and wood. They were also more durable and colourful than traditional materials. These days, the popular imagination might associate pub tiles with piss and vomit, even if the architectural move was more about general hygiene than the dangers of the six o’clock swill. Certainly, a pub with wall tiles was easy to clean, and breweries were keen to play-up the sparkling modernity of tiled bars.

I say “off” as somewhere around here I have a picture of a saloon of the pre-prohibition sort with a urinal trough at the foot of the bar. Or just a mopping out trough… or whatever. Stop kidding yourselves. They were horrible places and you’d all be pro-Temperance, yes you, right there tambourines in hand shouting your favorite Bible verses, if you woke up in the 1890s living next to one, you moderns you. ‘Fess up! One of the oddest thing about the bad old days is that constant desire to polish them up. (Surely great great grandpa wasn’t that sort of pig. He was?!?!)

Continuing of the question of health, I am not sure I need a non-alcohol based route to tickling the old gaba receptors… but someone is working on just that, according to The Times:

Nutt’s idea was simple: target just the gaba, and do so by engineering a molecule that removes itself from the body rapidly and painlessly. By only hitting that one type of receptor, it would avoid some of less desirable effects of alcohol intoxication. By being easily metabolised, it would avoid the less desirable after-effects of that intoxication: a hangover. The result is a substance he calls Alcarelle.

Speaking of technology… consider this and what we have lost. Especially shouting “pick up the phone” to someone else in your house. Best beer marketing campaign ever as far as I’m concerned or at least up there is Beer is Best.

Robin and Jordan are back with a fresh podcast for the New Year with some surprising info on changes in the Ontario brewing scene – including, among other sad recession related news, the end of brewing operations Collective Arts’ Toronto location and the resulting considerations of the ability to run a local semi-autonomous branch with its own life when you are slowly becoming a semi-regional slightly international craft operation during a downturn.

And Martin has shared his New Years Eve in Manchester, picking up the kid with the job. Lovely photos of a ceiling at the Crown & Kettle. “Lordly” ye shall say when ye click on yon thumbprint and look upon the said ceiling yourselves. And, yea, it shall be true.

BREAKING: through his study of stouts, Ron has trampled upon the tender hearts of style obsessives:

These are brew house names. Not what the beer was necessarily sold as. Some brewing records have four beer names across the top, but there’s only really one beer.

Is any of the past true? Is the present? Consider this the* curious tale… of… oh dear… let Stonch explain a bit of the background first:

Curious Brew is grim: a fake, deceptive brand for a decade, then Chapel Down build a white elephant brewery, but soon panic and sell for buttons to a crank. Now they’ll brew Wild Beer ‘brands’ in Ashford. Who cares? I wouldn’t touch any of it. I care about real, honest breweries.

Well, it did sorta get touched but not it seems embraced according to Beeson, J.:

@WildBeerCo brand survives, sold to @CuriousBrewery. Sale includes IP, beer & e-comm biz, but not physical brewery. Some staff inc. Cooper & Ellis staying on. Limited co remains in administration. Investors won’t receive £££ from deal.

So recipes and the website. The shaking out of the pockets of the departed it seems. Not a buy out, just part of the yard sale. And, speaking of buying junk, it’s all like a mini-version of the 1990’s Filipino Pepsi fiasco but still seems a bit of a pile on… even, you know, for himself of themselves:

Mr Watt said that because it was his error, he had contacted all 50 gold can winners to offer them the “full cash amount” as an alternative to the prize if they were unhappy”. “All in all, it ended up costing me around £470,000 – well over 2 and a half years’ salary,” he added. In his post, the Brewdog boss revealed he now owned 40 of the gold cans. After conducting its investigation, the ASA said it received 25 complaints in relation to three social media adverts stating its can prize was made from “solid gold”.

Elsewhere, Boak and Bailey posted a very interesting and very very true article on the 1955 launch party of The Venetian Coffee Bar, a Whitbread project:

The Venetian Coffee Bar got an entire feature in Whitbread’s in-house magazine, The House of Whitbread, in spring 1956. The article gives us a few details that weren’t in the newspaper reports, including the specific date of the launch party – 6 December 1955. The photos of the launch party are slightly more interesting than usual, too. They show the famously hammy British horror actor Tod Slaughter in attendance, dressed in fine Victorian style, shortly before his death in February 1956.

Tod Slaughter! Note: there are two types of people in beer: people who are capable of honest critical reporting on obvious things** and those unable to admit to external reality.*** Andy is also of the first class:

At its best, hazy IPA is reasonably pleasant, sometimes even enjoyable. At anything less than its best, the experience drops quickly. While beer drinking is a subjective experience, feels like many hazy brewers are engaged in an extended gag no one has bothered to call them on.

Let us join hands in a big harmonious circle right now and promise 2023 is the year we stop finger wagging about saying bad things about bad styles and bad beer and just get to speaking some truths about it all. Thanks.

Pellicle has published a travel piece by Rachel Signer (because a big percentage of drinks writing is now really travel pr0n when it isn’t now really well justified social justice writing) which is not the sort of thing I usually like but I do like it very much in this case because it is a well written airy study on being in France and Italy in the spring drinking sulphate-free wine (noted above as something I should explore) and because I am (as noted above) already working on my own “pots and pots of carosello” gardening plans which means I can’t resist… a chicken festival:

We arrive to the chicken festival. It is outdoors, with a string of lights around a café area. Everyone is greeting each other warmly. People who missed coming here for two years have come out in droves, and all the chicken has already been eaten. We have fried potatoes and sausages instead, and we drink a pleasant local red wine, made with the generic Toscana appellation. I feel incredibly at home with the Pācina folks, although we hardly know each other. But there is between us the bond of natural wine, which runs strong around the world. And, perhaps relatedly, a relief that history didn’t go the other way, and that we can talk of fascism as a thing in history.

Well, err, you may want to check on that last bit. Speaking of travel, Alistair shifted himself a whole 7.2 miles as he prepared his thoughts on the subject of one particular local of his that is for the locals:

It was on my Christmas Eve trip to Patch that I was stood at the bar, there was basically no one there other than myself, my neighbour, and the general manager, who was tending the bar that day. I’ve know the GM for quite some time now, initially through the local homebrew club, but also as he has been in the beer industry for the best part of a decade I think at this point. The rest of the bar staff know me as a pilsner drinker, and Erik’s Pylon Pilsner is definitely my most regular tipple at Patch, but the GM knew what I was there for, their “copper ale”, which in my mind treads a fine line between dark mild and the kind of darker best bitter you get in the south of England.

Finally, is it true that Mastodon is not taking off as still Twitter slowly continues to decline, acting more and more like Web 1.0 tickertape? Perhaps the curse of social media has been broken and – oh happy day! – people are now just becoming actually happier in the real world! Wouldn’t that be nice. And so, relatedly in its finality, we come to the credits. Or sorta like the credits. What song should play if this were a movie and you were there scrolling though my continuing tradition (inspired by Boak and Bailey… not stolen from… let’s be clear!) of slowly building upon a shared list of beer writing resources on Mastodon followed by the podcasts? This? Is that the tune? Sure… maybe just for this week…

*What is less than a pun?
**To assist in your thoughts, consider what Robert Christgau wrote on the release of The Marshall Tucker Band: Greatest Hits in 1978: “I can distinguish Tucker from the other boogie bands because they favor cowboy hats, but danged if I can tell their albums apart. Country people know one cow from the next, too, but poor deracinated souls like me refuse to be bothered until A&P runs out of milk and r&r runs out of gimmicks. Toy Caldwell does write pretty good songs for a boogie man, though, about one a year to go with the album, and it’s nice to have them all in one place. Pure boogie mythos, with lots of “Ramblin'” and “Searchin’ for a Rainbow,” though I’m pleased to report that there are more miners and, yes, cowboys here than gamblers, a reassuring token of social responsibility. I recommend this album. It’s as near as you can get these days to hearing that old steam whistle.” He gave the record an -A!
***Something of the latter in last Saturday’s round up from B+B: “Don’t let someone tell you that your perceptions are incorrect because it’s all made up anyway.” It’s like a teeter-totter that sentence, isn’t it… as you go back and forth, back and forth. The passage in which it is embedded could be a valuable introduction to an anthology of beer writing in the section headed “Warning!”

The Brief And Very Short First Beery News Notes Of 2023 In Summary

Surprise! On the road. Really. Away. Unexpectedly. Secret location. Sorta. Bit of a gift extending the old vay-kay. Gondie. Outta here. Over there. Gotta be brief. Good thing Stan got to all the good stories already. Go have a look.

Speaking of which, Twitter is getting gondier and gondier. That’s a screen shot of the textless version I was presented with this week. It was flickering in and out like the lights in a ignored back shed during a blizzard. It hasn’t got long to go. So, starting off these very brief beery news notes, it’s good that Chuggnutt, he of The Brew Site fame, has provided a very helpful guide to using Mastodon for the beer ners. Given the instability of the platform (not to mention the platform’s owner), best to get over there and start getting a feel for the place. I am updating the list of familiar faces regularly… daily… surely hourly as you can see far-ish below. And, on your way out, save your Twitter archive like It’s Pub Night did.

Right… happy news about booze… hmm… The son of the late AA Gill, who I loved greatly as a critic and a social commentator, has published a stark tail of alcohol recovery, a family tradition of sorts:

He was AA Gill to his readers but just a gentle old dad to me. He died of cancer on December 10, 2016, at the age of 62. Three and a half years later, I’m making my fateful train journey. Dad once confided in me that on his own train journey to rehab, back in the 1980s when he was a similar age to me, he shared two bottles of vintage champagne with my grandfather as they made their way to Wiltshire, to the clinic Clouds. I’m sure it was a far less glamorous scene than the one I picture, but a fierce new wave of grief swarms over me as I sit there, fatherless, champagne-less and en route to attempt the impossible.

Also quite happy, Jaega Wise on hangover cures.

And I just finished Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh and I noted this passage quoted by way of thumbnail to the right? The end of negative reviews explained in context. Sound familiar? Buy the book. Explains seven genres of music: rock, R+B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance, pop. Quite a good read.

Dubai makes booze cheaper if still heavily restricted. Oddest fact?

Expatriates outnumber nationals by nine to one in Dubai, known as the Gulf’s “party capital”, and residents commonly drive to Umm al-Quwain and other emirates to buy alcohol in bulk.

Ron got noticed by Oz Clark. He’s sorta like a kinda big name. And Ron has also been reflecting on the meaning of it all:

Why do I blog? I’ve been at it for 15 years. Most of the beer blogs that were around back then have given up. Around a dozen or so are still active. The simple answer is: because I enjoy it. Would I continue if I had no readers? Maybe. I’m perfectly happy to tootle along with a couple of hundred. Just as well, as I’m unlikely to attract many more with the sort of stuff I post.
Posting every day can be a chore. So why do it? Partly, just to make sure I keep posting… It may not look like it, but I do have a plan.

Others have also been reflecting. Retired Martin celebrated a great year. Boak and Bailey think things are not as bad as they may seem. Jeff looked to brewers for comforting voices away from the news, data, facts… and then took off on a break. And Eoghan feels beer writing is massively undervalued. Andy is reflecting romantically, looking back à la recherche des brasseries perdu and he also posted this bit of what I would have thought was alarmingly unnecessary advice:

In the new year, do yourself a favor: resolve to order a second pint of a beer you’ve enjoyed. No need to scour the menu for your next beer. It’s cool to take a break and just enjoy a great beer a second time.

Seriously? You needed to be told that?

I missed this by Martyn in last week’s round up, a neatly parallel piece to mine in 2014 on how beers in the past were not all dark and smoky but as often sweet and light due in my findings from the lightest heat source, straw. Martyn confirms they were pale and fresh because of another method of drying the malt:

It was said of the 1st Duke of Beaufort, Henry Somerset (1629-1700), who lived at Badminton House in Gloucestershire with a household of 200 servants, that “all the drink that came to the duke’s table was of malt sun-dried upon the leads of his house”, “leads” here meaning “window sills”. (Thank you, Marc Meltonville, for explaining to me what leads were!) As you can see from this illustration of the duke’s unassuming little home, he had a very large number of windows, and this, presumably, a very large number of nicely wide sills on which to spread malt to dry, protected by the glass from birds and vermin.

Finally, Beth continues her Prohibitchin’ series with a portrait of Amber Nixon of Atlanta, Georgia and her studies in the world of wine:

…that desire to teach ultimately culminated into wine education. After an accidental (and very fortuitous) discovery of a wine professional giving a talk on Instagram, Amber decided to learn more about the distinguished beverage. By 2019, she was hosting tastings for a wine company as an independent consultant, educating guests about the story behind certain wines and the regions they come from, how climate affects grape harvest, proper serving temperature, and everything else an aspiring cork dork might want to know.

That’s all for this week. Continuing a now weeks-long tradition inspired by Boak and Bailey, I am slowly building upon a shared list of beer writing resources on Mastodon:

Go have a look. And also check for more as the year picks up from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays. It’s still the holidays. So, look around and check to see if there is the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it was there last week! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. 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. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus 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 was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has packed it in citing lack of success.