October 2023 – A Good Beer Blog

The Woooooooooo Scariest Hellbound Beery News Notes Ever Unleashed From The Bowels Of Hell!!!

Ha-ha! I wrote bowels. If you’re not born of Scots, that might not be daily dinner table language so I apologize as I refer you in the alternative to the basso loco of Dante’s Inferno for a clearer sense of the reason for the season. But if you are Canadian of a certain age, however, there is only one true representation of the hellscape of pure evil – SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre from around forty years ago. Wooooohooo. Scary. Lots of beer content on SCTV: Biller Hi-Lite, Moose Beer and twist off beer caps on American beer bottles. Not at all horrible is my new plan for Halloween… which I can’t believe I have not come up with before… a plan to buying candy I like, keep it to myself and eating it as I hand out the crap candy I don’t like so much to the kids. Except I don’t like candy all that much. More extreme measures will not be necessary… unlike apparently in Japan:

In other news, Tokyo’s Shibuya district has banned public drinking, hiring 300 private security guards and urging local stores to stop selling alcohol to ward off revelers this Halloween.

What? That’s some sort of crazy. Are nutty Halloween pub crawls a thing where you live? They seem to be a thing in Buffalo, NY, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Lexington, Kentucky. I like it. Pack the streets. We did a similar thing in the Halifax of my 1980s youth at Halloween – but we called it Mardi Gras for some reason. Tens of thousands of us. Once I went as junk mail (my best costume ever if I am going to be honest with you) with a buddy who went as a breakfast nook – that could actually toast toast. Out there. On the street. Street toast. Class.

Anyway, have you ever seen a lede buried as deep as this one was in GBH? In a neat and tidy piece on a rebranding at the Chicago Brewseum this little bomb is dropped in the middle of paragraph ten:

Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, will leave that post in early November, and the role will no longer exist after her exit.

The Smithsonian program, largely funded and framed in terms of narrative by the Brewers Association’s involvement, started up in 2016. While I was disappointed in the periodic press releases highlighting things like Papazian’s paddle from the great white male hero era of craft, I trust that records and objects from throughout the over 435 years of brewing in the what are now the United States have been protected. Wonder why the Brewers Association gave up on their affiliation? A special thanks to all those beer journalists getting on that story even as I type these very words.

Speaking of endings, Stan discussed the piece in VinePair on the declining influence of US craft beer in Europe, asking if “the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change” which I get but, still, I like the arguments set out in this well thought out piece by Will Hawkes:

California-founded Stone’s failure in Europe is symbolic of a wider issue. Craft beer has made a huge splash across the Atlantic, but American breweries, for the most part, have not prospered as they might have expected — and things don’t appear to be getting better. Extrapolating from Brewers Association (BA) figures published by the organization and in Forbes, the overall craft beer volume exported to Europe declined from 78,994 barrels in 2021 to 63,755 in 2022. The reasons for this are complex, but they get to the heart of Europe’s beer market and the limitations of American craft breweries in a place where their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.

TL;DR? Reasons not so much complex as just numerous… BrewDog being everywhere, other Euro brewers holding branding rights, uncompetative pricing and the botch by Stone diluting the value. Brutal line: “[at] this year’s Berlin Beer Week, Stone beers featured in a tap takeover at a pizzeria.” Perhaps relatedly, things are also not going well for brewers in New Zealand:

“I was talking to a brewer recently and he said: ‘It’s all just beer now.’ The problem with craft is it’s always been ill-defined. Does it mean small scale? Does it mean independent? Does it mean flavoursome?” Without that clear definition, the territory was ripe for major beer companies to step into – and all the big breweries have done exactly that. “You now have Lion with their Mac’s brand, DB with Monteith’s and Asahi with Boundary Road. Those are the three main ones in that area, and what they’re doing is just pumping up the flavour in those brands. They’re making great beer at a more affordable price.”

I know that this is all a bit of a downer – even though this is the “scary” season – but at least things are not as bad as they are in Rioja according to the newsletterist Jason Wilson of Everyday Drinking who includes this summary of recent findings:

I was shocked to read Tim Atkin’s piece about serious problems in Rioja — “Rioja on the Rocks” — a couple of weeks ago. I knew that Rioja had issues, but Atkin (the foremost English-language expert on Rioja) paints a dire picture of a region in crisis. As Atkin reports, the regional governments of La Rioja and the Basque Country plan to detroy 30 million liters of surplus wine to try to balance supply and demand. Another 150 million liters, unwanted by the market, is sitting in cellars. The 2023 harvest has been terrible, and grape prices are at unsustainable lows—in fact, many growers cannot sell their grapes. Reportedly, one major co-operative is on the verge of bankruptcy, two large bodegas are in administration, and Campo Viejo, Rioja’s largest winery, is allegedly up for sale. There are threats by large groups of growers and producers to leave the consortium altogether as they argue over whether to focus on quantity or quality.

Yikes! Just last year things were looking up.

Better news? How about the best big brewery marketing of the moment? Heineken making fun of its own name and using Plastic Bertrand for the soundtrack. That good. And The Brewnut has proven once again how he is the best commentator on what’s actually in the glass, illsustrated by this review of the offerings by Wicklow Wolf:

This year’s twist on the all-local ingredients spec is the inclusion of Kilmacanogue raspberries in a sour ale. Shame they didn’t have a go at spontaneously fermenting it, for extreme local character. Regardless, it’s very nice. The raspberries taste fresher and realer than they do in most raspberry beers, almost bursting on the tongue the way the fruit does. There’s no sugary, syrupy jam here, just a cleanly medium-pitched tartness, again similar to what you’d get from actual raspberries, building to a slightly puckering finish. While it’s only 4.2% ABV, I can’t see this working well as a refreshing summer beer — it’s too intense, with lots going on it. While I definitely liked it, I’m glad I waited until a dull day in October to drink it.

See that: not fawning, explains how it stands out, explains what might be done to improve. I’d buy that beer. Speaking of buying beer, David Nilsen wrote an homage to “Brouwerij Van Steenberge’s Tripel Van De Garre” in Pellicle this week and how it illustrates a few trends:

“In today’s market, imports are struggling against the locavore movement,” says Michael, noting the plethora of local options. “We have 97 breweries in the city limits [of Chicago].” Sara Levin, the package beer buyer for The Barrel House, a beloved beer bar and bottle shop in Dayton, Ohio, has been a professional beer buyer for close to a decade and says the current attitude toward Belgian beer among many American craft devotees had already begun to take shape when she started in the industry in 2014. “Before me it was a little different, but in my time I feel like Belgian beer has always been the old money craft beer,” Sara says. “It’s been the OG beer geeks who really respect the old school styles.”

That right there is one of the sadder things about the craft beer movement’s rush to chase the tale of novelty, the loss of interest in hounouring Belgian styles. Got an opinion on that? You can explain how you feel about such things if you take part in this week’s study on the habits of craft beer and real ale drinkers? Do you have habits? They want to study you. In a similar note, Gary came across a study of real ale drinking in England from 1866… with some very and sadly familiar themes:

Less than one-half of it is drunk in perfection, or at its best condition, the larger percentage becoming more or less flat, hard [tart], and unpalatable, or even sour before it is consumed. From the day of the tapping of the cask, with the gradual entrance of atmospheric air, the liqour undergoes progressive deterioration, first becoming flat and unpalatable, from the loss of its carbonic acid, and then sour from having its spirit converted in acetic acid by the absorption of oxygen. In fact, day by day, as the palate unplesantly detects, it may be said to advance one step further on the road to vinegar.

Yik. Too much OG old school right there. And sorta samesies [h/t] at the blog run by Triskele Heritage, an archaeological consultancy, there was a sweet disassembling of the claim made by an Irish pub as to its status as the world’s oldest tavern:

The problem here is that the fabric of the building is claimed to date to the ninth century, and this is repeated from one website to another, but no archival or archaeological evidence is ever offered as the root source of the information. Instead, the listed entry for Sean’s Bar on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage… notes that the current standing building was constructed c 1725 as a coaching inn which was known as The Three Blackamoors Heads by 1738. The record goes onto confirm that renovations were indeed carried out c 1970 but, instead of finding ““wattle and wicker” dating back to the ninth century”, the walls in question were dated to the seventeenth century. That is a potential exaggeration of at least seven centuries.

Speaking of even more not quite right, perhaps that green bottle of Tsingtao isn’t just skunky:

In the clip which appeared online on Thursday, a worker, dressed in uniform with a helmet on, can be seen climbing over a high wall and into the container before urinating inside it. The location tag of the clip reads “Tsingtao beer No.3 factory”, local news outlet The Paper reported on Friday. Business outlet “National Business Daily” later cited an internal source as saying both the person who took the video and the person appearing in it were not direct employees of the company… Shares in Tsingtao Brewery fell sharply when the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning but were trading broadly flat by the afternoon.

Boo-tastic. Now we have pee in the stuff. In other scary health news, the Time of Londinium shared a story on the problems with a certain sort of stress drinking and had this very interesting fact:

A recent study… found that women with high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are between 1.5 to 2 times as likely to drink moderately or heavily as those who are sedentary. Charlotte considered herself to be healthy. “I’d go running on Saturday at 8am with my friends after drinking two bottles of wine on Friday. Parker tried all the right things to manage stress. “I went to a meditation teacher, I was looking at my diet, I ran a lot” — everything except quit drinking.”

That is interesting. Fact filled and interesting. And scary.

Enough!!! I leave you there for this week. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. I have yet another update on the rankings. TweX is now really starting to drop in the standings. I am deleting follows there more and more in favour of mirroring accounts set up by favourite voices elsewhere. Now, for me Facebook is clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (74) rising up to sit in a tie with Mastodon (899) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,344) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (167) with Threads (41) and Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones just below discussing beer, even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Here’s a new newsletter recommendation: BeerCrunchers. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

An Irritable If Not Confused And Perhaps For Once Even Cranky Set Of Beery News Notes This Week

It’s been another week without frost. It’s going to be a short winter if this keeps up. Garlic still is stilling in a big pot waiting for the necessary chill coming this weekend, sorta the bookend to maple syrup time in the spring. Going to get 500 in the ground this year… but when? It’s the not knowing that gets you on edge. Too early and they sprout. Too late and they suffer. Yet I checked the photos on Facebook… and last year I planted my garlic another three or four weeks from now. What’s that about?

Enough of that! You are here for the beer. First up, Stan had a great linkfest on Monday and especially made pointed comment on the news in circulation on the fate that hops may face from climate change… aka global warming:

I am all for anything that draws attention to what global warming is doing to the planet, although, quite honestly, there are more and larger disasters looming than the demise of certain hop varieties. Even the ones I love. But I do wish the authors had acknowledged there are more agronomically vigorous cultivars available. And that there are new ones on the way. Now is the time for brewers to consider using them. More of my thoughts in the most recent Hop Queries.

You know I enjoy Hop Queries, probably the best beer newsletter out there. Here’s that update he mentioned. News you can trust. Speaking of which, there was a bit of an interesting slag this week in The Guardian‘s piece on fancy schmancy cider (the type we all like), a bit of a primer that takes a sideswipe in passing:

…they cost more than the vast majority of ciders on the supermarket shelves, although they’re still generally cheaper than natural wines, which they often resemble in packaging and marketing style. In fact, cider is more like wine from the point of view of having a single annual harvest and (pét nats aside) the time it takes to produce a bottle, which is certainly much longer than beer. As a result, producers have generally gone down the artisanal, rather than the craft beer route. They’re also attempting to raise cider’s profile by holding “salons”, or live consumer events, which are a mixture of tastings and talks.

My oh my: “gone down the artisanal, rather than the craft beer route“!!! I love how I don’t exactly know what is meant but, yes, we know what is meant. An actual craft. What craft beer lacks. Perhaps not all that dissimilar is the wine taverns of Vienna, as discussed this week at the Beeb:

Heurigen, the rustic winery-run taverns showing off their aromatic white wines around wooden tables set under grape arbors and laden with traditional Austrian fare that might include schnitzel and blood sausage, always potato salad and ham and a variety of savory cheesy spreads to go with dark sourdough bread. Paris might have its bars du vin, Rome its enotecas. But Vienna’s relationship to wine (and wine-friendly food) is unique. The Austrian capital is the only major European metropolis with a designated wine-growing area within its city limits, counting more than 600 producers on some 1,700 acres of vineyards. “Our city’s long viticultural history goes back to the time of the Celts and the Romans,” explained Ilse Heigerth, my guide in Vienna and a city historian.

I just saw a repeat of a Rick Stein’s Long Weekend shot in Vienna and he corroborated the whole thing. Staying in the centro-Euro, Martin reported on a trip to Belgrade, not a locale high on my list for my wanderings ways – and I am apparently not alone:

These foreign posts don’t get a lot of views because a) No-one else has been there and b) No-one else intends to go there. Oddly, it’s the unsung towns that get the most views. But in the last week I’ve referred to three posts from Ron, Duncan and the European Bar Guide folk and I’m sure if I live long enough my posts on Cuban pubs will be useful to someone, though possibly not the nice American lady we met last week who’s visiting every country in the world (except Cuba, obvs). We did eventually find the more ornate bits of Belgrade, but Mrs RM was more interested in photos of the trams.

Speaking of Ron Pattinson, he’s gone back in time again to the 1970s to the world of romance that was his youth:

As we were guests at the hotel, the pints didn’t need to stop at closing time. When I was young, opportunities for pints after 11 PM were as rare as flamingos in Leeds. I never passed them up. Which is a problem when you’ve paced yourself to end at “normal” closing time. I wasn’t feeling great when I rose after far too few hours’ sleep. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me eating the full English that I’d paid for. On the way back to Newark, we stopped at a Kimberley pub for a few pints. I was a bit overenthusiastic, as I rarely got to drink their beer. I was already feeling a bit unwell when we picked up the hitchhiker. About 10 minutes later I really needed to spew. Being considerate, I pushed past the hitcher, opened the rear door and puked on the road. What a hero I was.

Gary – perhaps more properly – neatly added to a space that is too often left alone, temperance drinking prior to US prohibition. Three posts were added to the whole this week on the topic of a church-run dispensery operated in Raleigh, North Carolina from 1904 to 1907 by the members of the local clergy with the blessing of the City government:

The Raleigh experiment formed part of a larger plan in parts of the South to substitute a municipally-run alcohol dispensary for the swing-door saloon of commerce… It competed with other liquor-control plans, such as outright prohibition and so-called high license. High here referred to the cost of the licence to sell liquor. A state might feature examples of all these: normal license, high license, local prohibition, and dispensary.

Someone is getting still the good word one way or another as we read that even the Finns… the FINNS(!) are cutting back:

During the third quarter, beverage companies sold 10.4 million litres less beer than in Q3 2022. The federation based the figures on sales data from its members: Hartwall, MBH Breweries, Momentin Group, Olvi, Red Bull and Sinebrychoff. Year-on-year, Q3 sales of all alcoholic libations sold by its members fell by 2.4 percent, while sales of alcohol-free drinks were also down, by 6.8 percent.

Well at least there is that. David Jesudason has written another great article for Pellicle, this time on the point of those things often written around but never as directly defined, the UK micro-pub as illustrated by the inhabitants of The Shirker’s Rest:

While the others help with the administration and publicity of the pub, James is the one that gets his hands dirty and provides the graft—he built the bar with a friend called Pete Lyons and created the beer boards. He also provides the (slightly deadpan) personality. At the bar is a notebook called James’s Book of Sayings which includes his recurring requests for customers to slide the toilet door closed, look at the boards to see what’s on offer—the keg badges are not easily viewed—and for Ben not to crowd his cellar with too much beer.

And Alistair Reece wrote a good piece on how a visit to one Virginia cider maker got him thinking about the utility of the word “house”:

Given their oenological background, Will lamented that the term “house” has come to mean the most basic wine on offer, something almost cheap and cheerful, but decidedly not excellent. His aim with House Cider is to be the exact opposite, to be the very best that Troddenvale puts out, and it is a magnificent cider, easily up there with the best being made in Virginia today, no I didn’t take notes, I was too busy enjoying it. This got me thinking about the concept of “house” products when it comes to beer. We quite often use the term “house beer” in homebrewing circles to refer to something that we brew regularly, but I don’t recall a brewery, at least not in my neck of the woods, hanging their entire reputation as a brewery on a single “house” beer. Is it perhaps that modern beer drinkers are constantly on the hunt for the new, or is it a case of fear of missing out by not pushing every possible style out the door in case the crowds choose to go somewhere else?

I wonder if they are familiar with the book The Cider House Rules by John Irving which was made into a movie I never watched in 1999. But the idea of a set of governing principles that, according to that Wikipedia summary, sorta fits tthe disfunctions of craft beer nicely:

The name “The Cider House Rules” refers to the list of rules that migrant workers are supposed to follow at the Ocean View Orchards. However, none of them can read, and they are completely unaware of the rules – which have been posted for years.

Sort of related is this message and accompanying clickable image from BlueSky, shared in whole for those without access:

Cask beer write up in heavy metal magazine by Courtney Iseman? Yeah, it’s been kinda a weird year for cask beer. Ups and downs. This one is a big up. Love it.

I like the honesty that US “cask beer’s growth is glacial” but apparently there according to those interviewed by Iseman. Is anyone seeing this on the ground as a consumer? If so where?

Note: Andreas shared information on the beer halls of Munich you might want to visit next time you’re there 150 years ago:

The sheer number of beer halls and restaurants made the area around Unter den Linden/Friedrichstraße/Leipziger Straße the “entertainment quarter” of old Berlin. They even got nicknames: “Unter den Linden” was “Laufstraße” (walking street), Leipziger Straße was “Kaufstraße” (shopping street), while Friedrichstraße was “Saufstraße” (boozing street).

One does not know what to make of certain statements when the fact in question is a couple of minutes on Google away:

FYI: “Brazilian-Germans held slaves (a fact that has been clearly demonstrated) but… Germanophone authors… presented a uniform image of Germans as masters, one that rendered slavery an aspect of the civilizing narrative of German settlement in Brazil.”

What else is true if you can’t get that right? One wonders. And the NAGBW awards were announced this week and – again – we do note the similar themes and similar candidates… but this time with also some real gaps in this subset. Having been a judge in the past, you don’t really want to name names in these things especially now given (i) the fragile state of it all as Jeff noted and (ii) the majority of the uninvolved beer writing that does not get itself self-nominated so, you know, it’s all a bit la crème du milieu… but really. For example, there’s no award or even a mention for David Jesudason’s book Desi Pubs the best book of the year!?!* Seriously? And third and an honourable mention for his other submissions? Please.

Aaaaaannnd… that’s it. I have to tend to other things. Still more to get out of – and into – the garden before the freeze snaps. That zucchini is growing by my front step even as I write this. Look at it! What an odd year. Pray for them and me next Sunday night, just a week before Halloween when the next steep drop of the mercury is due. If we are lucky and hold off the frozen air I am going to go out on the big night as Jack and the Bean Stalk with my own 12 foot tall potted pole beans by my side.

As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. I have yet another update on the rankings. TweX is now really starting to drop in the standings. I am deleting follows there more and more in favour of mirroring accounts set up by favourite voices elsewhere. Now, for me Facebook is clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my friends and family) then we have BlueSky rising up to sit in a tie with Mastodon then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex** hovering somewhere above or around Instagram with Threads and Substack Notes really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones just below discussing beer, even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*I even reached out already and shared my thoughts. Also see above, of course.
**Gary shall turn off the lights at X unless it’s done to him first. I judge not.

The Near Mid-October 2023 Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Took a week off this week just to make sure, you know, all the turkey leftovers were consumed and all the necessary prep chores were done well ahead of winter. To the right is half of the garlic crop as well as the bundle of garlic greens that will be tomato mulch next year. They get replanted soon. Haven’t noticed any particular theme this week but no doubt that quiet is due to the horrors in the Middle East piling upon the horrors in Ukraine. Facing uselessness in the presence of such evil, what do you do? Keep garden and scribbling? Yup.

First up, being October, Pellicle has a timely feature this week by Ariana DiValentino on one of the more venerable and more drinkable pumpkin ales out there, Pumking by Southern Tier of western New York State:

“Pumking should be the brewer’s target for a pumpkin beer,” he adds. Critics and craft beer fans alike echo this, crediting the balance between spicy, sweet, bold, and bitter. Personally, I think it manages to strike a balance in another way: the type of drinker it attracts. Though pumpkin ales are traditionally maligned, there’s something about taking one and turning the volume up to 11 that transforms it into a magnet for craft devotees. And yet, you don’t need to be a beer geek with an encyclopaedic knowledge of hop varieties to appreciate Pumking. You don’t even need to be a beer drinker, really; anyone who likes pie is likely to find the phrase “pumpkin pie in a glass” tempting. Drinkers come for the pie and stay for…also the pie, because in this case, there’s truth in advertising.

Southern Tier was a favourite of mine in the old cross border beer shopping days of ten to twenty years ago. I played a role in bringing their beers into the Ontario market after years of enjoying their range of beers, especially the big ones that led up to Pumking. My first note on Pumking dates to 2009 when a bomber cost you $6.49, well after the after-party. My first pumpkin beer note goes back five years earlier to October 2004 when I bought Post Road by Brooklyn Brewing. But by 2011, unlike what the Pellicle article seems to suggest with the phrase “the nascent hype in the early 2010s“, cracks were already starting to show in the reputation of the long established style. Even the venerable The Atlantic in 2011 questioned their place:

Some beer styles are loved, some are ardently despised, but none is more divisive than pumpkin ales. Those who love them wait all year for their seasonal release; others can’t even broach the subject without foaming at the mouth. “I hate pumpkin beers,” wrote my friend and Washington City Paper beer writer Orr Stuhl. “Even picking a ‘favorite’ — say, Dogfish Head’s — is like picking a favorite airborne illness.”

Hah!! Good one. More timely and far less snippy, Jessica Mason has reported on some new solid data on inflation in the UK’s beer maket ‘Spoons sub-sector:

Using pricing data gathered at every Wetherspoons pub in October 2022 and October 2023 via the pub group’s app, the analysis identified how, currently, the average price of a pint of Carling in a Wetherspoons pub is £3.35. This has increased 11% since Oct 2022, when it was £3.02. According to the findings, 740 Wetherspoons pubs have seen inflation over the last year, 58 have seen deflation, and five saw no price change. Drilling down into the data, the Wetherspoons pubs with the highest inflation rates are The Rann Wartha, Cornwall (42.2%), and The John Francis Basset, Cornwall (42.2%) while the Wetherspoons pubs with the highest deflation rates are The Golden Beam, Leeds (-20.1%), and The Myrtle Grove, West Yorkshire (-19.7%).

I’ve always liked The Myrtle Grove… or at least I would have if I had ever heard of it. And it’s not just in the ‘Spoons. Sucker Juice is always right there begging for your attention:

Brewed independently by the artisans at Freetime Beer Co in Wales, Nothing Beer embraces a minimalist ingredient list; just water, rice, malted barley, hops, and yeast. “As a London-based tech company we are proud to have partnered with another independent British brand in Freetime Beer Co for this launch,” says Ryan Latham, Nothing’s Global Director Brand & Creative. While the limited-edition release (at £20 for a pack of six) is only available in the UK at the moment…

That’s $33 a six. Nuts. Everyone is on the take. Same as it ever was. Except it isn’t. Because inflation is also tied with contraction as Nickolaus Hines explains at the InsideHook:

“…beer as a whole [is] losing out to other alcohol categories, as well as the rise of people who abstain from alcohol altogether… “In plain English, the industry has lost about 30%, or 2.2 million, of its youngest LDA consumers in five years,” Purser said. “This is a pattern, and the current brand crisis has accelerated this broader category concern.”*

Somewhat relatedly in terms of the scramble, here’s a bit of a sad turn from the world of wine which I am quite aware of being replicated in a way in beer, a private financial exchange need to receive a tasting note back from a known beer writer – thus underlining any semblance of the writer’s independence. But in this case, it is the publisher limiting access to the notes issued by a group of critics to those out there who pay 160 Euros. Wine writer Jon Bonné considers the situation thusly:

The fascinating part: This is the first time I can recall anyone has taken a stab at putting a dollar figure (euro figure) on this specific bit of content generation. I won’t say it’s what the market has determined, but it’s what someone thinks the market will bear. It also cuts off at the knees one of the more wobbly arguments of recent years: that these tasting notes and scores are for consumers. Consumers are grabbing bottles from the aisle cap, or checking on the latest orange fad. These are for producers + their agents. If that’s so, then how much more ripping off of the fig leaf is this than the many existing shades of trade-writer clubbiness?

Speaking of wine, the Count Alexandre de Lur Saluces has died… which surely leads each of us to ask “who hasn’t been in this situation?”:

Unknown to the public at large, however, the count owned only 7 per cent of the estate with 48 per cent held by his elder brother and smaller amounts by other members of the extended family. They rebelled against his autocratic behaviour and lack of dividends, which led to an embarrassingly public fight, when in 1996 they agreed to sell majority control to Bernard Arnault, the billionaire owner of the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH. Bitter words were spoken by all sides of the family, with the count declaring “Mr Arnault is financing [other family members] to get rid of me. If he gets hold of this château he will install his fashion models here and start producing a perfume called Yquem!’’

Indeed. And the no doubt well-perfumed Ron’s gone a bit further back, lingering in the early 1970s for a bit this month:

I’m just getting the mixture right between water and dirt to let me have a good old wallow in nostalgia. Or at least, casting a glance back at the past. And hoping no-one is returning my gaze. We were looking at Whitbread’s 1973 set of beers. Time now for the other fermentables: adjuncts and sugar. What should be remembered here is that Whitbread had long been a holdout in the use of adjuncts. Only starting to use them in 1965. Much later than most of their rival brewers. Other than wartime, of course, when they had no choice but to.

For Cider Review, Barry Masterson went a bit further back in time to the Middle Ages of Bavaria to tell the tale of perry’s hayday there:

A chance discovery I made while reading some older articles tracing the ancestry of Austrian perry pear varieties yielded one of the earliest definite mentions of perry in central Europe. The Bavarian-Austrian poet Neidhart von Reuental, probably one of the most famous Minnesänger or minstrels of the period, made a reference to perry in one song. Around 1240, after he had moved from Bavaria to the area near Melk in current day Austria, he added two verses to an existing song, written of course in Middle High German…

A great tale of daring do was set out in Twex this week, a story of inebriated public menace once upon a time in New York City:

In September 1956 after drinking heavily at a bar in New York City, Thomas Fitzpatrick made an intoxicated barroom bet that he could travel from New Jersey to New York City in 15 minutes. At 3 a.m. he stole a single-engine plane from the Teterboro and flew without any lights or radio before landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar where the bet was made. The New York Times called it a “fine landing” and a “feat of aeronautics”. For his illegal flight, he was fined $100 after the plane’s owner refused to press charges.

For the double, we have another story of dissent from about the same time – but this time from Belgium:

Never forget how on Nov 16, 1949 a bunch of Belgian students from Ghent took over a fortress and attacked the police with fruit because the city had raised the price of beer. On November 16, 1949, 138 students (including one girl) entrenched themselves in the Gravensteen in Ghent. The battlements are adorned with playful student slogans, while the police and fire brigade are treated to overripe fruit and smoke bombs. The student-like violence can only be contained with the greatest difficulty by the police. The student joke is front-page news in the international press.

And you think you’re a beer evangelist. Pffft! Sadly, such clear-headed thinking, taking on issues head-on does not seem to exist in all quarters:

Paul Leone is the executive director of the New York Brewers Association, and he says craft beer simply isn’t a growing industry anymore. Before 2016, the growth of the industry was 10% year over year. “No doubt there are breweries that are looking to sell, there are breweries that are not going to make it for the long haul, unfortunately, but I would caution people and say that this is a business like any other business,” Leone said. “There are breweries that are no doubt struggling, and there are some that are expanding… We are not over-saturated and there is no bubble.”

I don’t know what to make of that… don’t worry be happy… whistling in the dark? Also not sure how homogenized craft beer culture is across North America. Can we even make generizations about the politics? I would note if pressed (contrary to Jeff’s suggestion that it identifies as left/liberal rather than right/conservative due to the Bud Lite botch of just a half a year ago) that in 2013 this was the results of a study involving a number of prominent breweries, mainly in Colorado – progressive as anything:

Craft beer drinkers tend to embrace healthier active lifestyles as well as exist on the fringe of conformity. This segment typically enjoys riding bikes, walking from place to place, hiking, camping and in general embraces an outdoor lifestyle. Consequently, they frequent places such as Whole Foods, Sprouts, local fresh markets, REI and national parks. Their choice of music is more generational than driven by their consumption of craft beer; most of the brew pubs we visited played indie-pop music like Dave Matthews, Mumford & Sons or Dawes. Our local observations revealed that many craft beer drinkers value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, creativity, intelligence, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, and witty banter.xxix This definition matches the “hipster” sub-segment of the millennial generation. Craft beer drinkers did not appear to be lazy as they aspire to be accomplished and productive. Craft beer drinkers tend to be more professional than then the blue collar working-class.

And remember: that New Yorker cover is coming up on its ninth anniversary. Still holds up… unlike Mumford & Sons. I am more in alignment with Jeff’s post this week, “The State of Beer Education” or at least the conclusion:

…as the everyman (everyperson) drink, most people feel comfortable ordering and drinking it without deep engagement. What makes it so popular is the very thing that leads to incuriosity. I have reconciled myself to this reality and, on balance, I think it’s a good thing. Beer is wonderful because its accessibility enables it to be the mass social beverage. That requires a simple, unfussy product.

I like that. But I don’t fully buy the route he gets there. Let’s be honest. Beer as a subject for an education just does not attract all that much actual independent study or scholarship other than perhaps in the bio department. Resulting titles are a bit overblown, newbie guides are praised as if they are a thesis while actual thoughtful writers are still refused footnotes by publishers. There isn’t even anything as detailed and complex as the popular annual guide for consumers published under Hugh Johnson‘s name but long overseen by Margaret Rand. [Get yourself a copy.] And too often beer courses are often proprietary, without a published syllabus or independent peer reviewing in any true academic sense. And beer (sorry to break it to you) is simply not “every bit as complex and nuanced as wine“* – especially in these days of adjunct focused, easy-to-please kettle sours and fruit sauce variants. But do you care? No! As Jeff says, the best of the many beer courses you can take online or at say a community college are very helpful entry points especially for ambitious brewery and bar staff but it is self guided study that creates the best education you can gain – whether with wine or with beer. On you way! Hit the books. If that’s your thing. If not, have a beer.

And… there are still no drunk elephants stories for Stan again this week. Just a drunk monkey on the loose in Indianapolis which… makes one wonder whether this is really news:

A monkey named Momo is on the loose in Indianapolis — and one neighbor reported seeing the simian sipping a beer. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said Momo escaped from his owner’s home in the Ironridge Court area of the city’s east side on Wednesday and was subsequently spotted the Gate Drive neighborhood, about a quarter mile away. Police said they were unable to confirm whether Momo has bitten anyone while on the loose.

What the hell kind of good is a “monkey on the loose!” story if there isn’t any biting?!?! Fine. That’s it. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect. I have an update on the rankings. TwitterX is now really starting to drop in the standings. I am actually deleting follows there when I find strongly established mirroring accounts set up by favourite voices elsewhere. Now, for me Facebook is clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my friends and family) then we have BlueSky rising up to sit in a tie with Mastodon then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex hovering somewhere above or around Instagram with Threads and Substack Notes really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! I may be multi and legion but I do have priorities and am getting them in a row. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer, even though it is gardening Mastodon that really wins:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value… if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything… Lordy… it’s not my place to say but there’s at least two that seem think you still get paid by the word…) including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary they can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast…… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*Phillies v. Braves fourth inning update!
**It is an observation often paired with “I don’t know much about wine…” (Update: A point Jeff later sorta took pains to illustrate.) Sure, there are many excellent examples of fine and facinating beers but only a fraction of those found in good wine. Why? Vintages for one. In the twenty years since my first pumpkin ale, each decent winery has put out twenty versions of the same one wine and each winery puts out any number of wines. And then each one changes usually beneficially with understood time frames. There is so much to explore. Beer aging is now often sort of a joke – when it isn’t a source of familial accusation and humiliation!

The Beery News Notes To Help You Understand Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend

“Gather round family! It’s time to unwrap the boiled turkey from its flannel wrap!!” What joy, what child’s glee can match that wonderful moment when the bird is wrapped in Grandpa’s old work shirt from back on the farm. And, for the Canadian craft beer fan, the annual moment to gloat over how no wine can match flannel boiled turkey than a good old musty stock ale in a can. I love how even the branding is classic Canadiana passive aggressive around this time of year:

Extra Old Stock holds a pleasant grain character with a light sweetness. You will enjoy a medium-dry finish with a mild sweet aftertaste.

Damn right you will. You better. Speaking of things Canadian and agricultural, BA Bart has reported on the continental barley crop:

Total N. American barley harvest down 14%. Change mostly driven by lower yields in Canada (better than terrible 2021 but down from last year & 10 year avg).

It’s driven that way in large part because, as the handy graph provided shows, Canadian malt production passed the plummeting annual US crop about forty years ago from a combined high then of just under 1.25 trillion bushels to around 540 billion now. That’s a drop to 43% of peak production. That’s quite the statistic.

Next, an apology to Martyn whose story of the King’s Walden Brewery was published on September 23rd but went unmentioned last week. I note it now for many reasons – but expecially this really interesting bit near the end:

Fellowes went on to be one of a number of British entrepreneurs who invested in American breweries in the 1890s and 1900s: he was on the board of the Bartholomay Brewing Company of Rochester, New York in 1900, and chairman of the company by 1913, and by 1907 he was also a director of the San Francisco Breweries Ltd, an amalgamation of nine Northern Californian concerns. Fellowes was still on both companies’ boards when Prohibition arrived in 1919.

The key facts that I would include on any brewing history exam are: (i) British money poured into the North American brewing industry in the later 1800s seeking large returns, (ii) consolidation along with equipment upgrades was an important means to achieve those returns and (iii) how many of those amalgamated nine breweries were steam breweries… or did the British money pay for steam? Along with trains, this cash influx was a main cause of the retraction in the number of breweries, a phenomenon we see today in US craft but in reverse. Now we have many more breweries making less and less.

Note: If it was in my town, I would spend many hours at the place called Dave’s Pie & Ale House.

Interesting to note that the right-wing bigotry issues continue to dog cask ale in England* all of a sudden. Boak and Bailey unpacked the general nationalist scene:

But in these days of the supposed culture war ‘conservative’ isn’t just about your attitude to economics. It’s also about your stance on feminism, gender, racism, Brexit, vaccination… Nigel Farage, the most prominent champion of Brexit, made pints of cask ale part of his personal image, and the preservation of the crown-stamped pint glass a key talking point of the ‘Leave’ campaign. As beer writers are fond of pointing out, cask ale is uniquely British (terms and conditions may apply) and so lends itself to nationalist posturing. Cask ale is also associated with ‘proper pubs’. For many, a proper pub is the very dream and ideal. For others, it’s an idea loaded with danger signs: doesn’t it just mean white, male and possibly, or probably, racist?

The Drinks Business noted an odd response to the situation: ignore the obvious implications of a botched PR rollout and go straight for some bland messaging by the usual suspects all singing from the well thumbed hymnal, suggesting that the best way to deal with a problem is to deny the problem:

The messages, which came in thick and fast during Cask Ale Week, were in response to the sector feeling that cask assessor Cask Marque’s recent tie up with GB News had done little to amplify the positive aspects of cask. One key message that rang true throughout was that “cask is for everyone” – a turn of phrase which, following the debacle, became a hashtag on Twitter. What then unfolded was a swathe of messages from beer fans and voices from across the industry who set about beginning to preach about cask ale with raptures of how it was such a “perfect” and “comforting” drink, especially when enjoyed in a pub setting.

David calls on the British Guild of Beer Writers to separate themselves from the taint. No perceived groundswell out there. Wouldn’t be comforting. Nope. He addressed the question in his newsletter who uncovered some convoluted weirdness in the accounting department:

As a former director of the Guild, I believe that the members (beer writers) should hold the managers of the institution (the Guild) to account for having problematic sponsors (such as Cask Marque). But what is exactly the role Cask Marque has with the Guild, as their involvement isn’t mentioned on the Guild’s website? I was amazed to discover by the chair of the Guild that “all incoming and outgoing finances go through Cask Marque” despite them not being a corporate sponsor.

WTF??? Do many people know this? So much for an independent press.

Perhaps relatedly in terms of hidden obstacles but certainly interesting, then, to read how one arguably conservative… or is it progressive… institution, London’s 140 years University Women’s Club, which is even now released the legal team to try to achieve parity as reported in The Times:

The club was founded as the University Club for Ladies in 1883 by pioneers of education for women to provide a retreat from the stresses of life with a library and intellectual events. Since 1921 it has been based in a handsome townhouse in Mayfair… In a letter to the City of Westminster council’s licensing committee, they say that councillors must ensure “that the only traditional members club in London dedicated to women and their careers is given comparable privileges to those enjoyed by other traditional clubs dedicated to men”. The lawyers argue that the club “provides direct support to women in their careers, and offers access to a network of unparalleled female talent in a host of industries and fields”. The club is seeking to extend its licence which restricts alcohol sales to between 11am and 11pm and to allow for functions for non-members including music and dancing.

Dancing? Non-members dancing?!? Imagine what that could lead to… And speaking of yes, no maybe so… you can tell it’s no longer summer with the first of the calls for month long no alcohol campaigns. Here’s a story of how US drinker turned a dry month into a year:

The benefits are obvious. I have a higher disposable income, I’m sleeping a lot better, and I’m more focused at work. I’ve gotten through birthdays, weddings, dates and Pride season, all without a drop of alcohol — something I could not have foreseen 12 months ago. There’s also the freedom of not having to think about the next time I’ll potentially embarrass myself by drinking. Sobriety hasn’t solved all my issues. We often hear about the life-changing aspects of putting down alcohol, but doing so also has shed light on the other work I need to do on myself.

Sensible stuff. But the odd thing is… humans embarrassing themselves while not drinking. Or, if we consider the Bangor Daily News out of Maine, non-humans embarrassing themselves while drunk:

Wild berries and other fruit have reached peak ripeness and are falling to the ground. Cold nighttime temperatures concentrate the sugar in the fruit and when it warms up during the day, the sugars break down, forming alcohol. A very potent alcohol. No matter how high the alcohol content, animals and birds rely on the fruit for their fall diet. They consume it, get drunk and behave oddly. But wildlife experts warn that a tipsy animal or bird looks very much like a diseased animal or bird.

That story was just for Stan as once again the elephants have let us down. And surely not related, don’t forget that there is no such thing as a beer expert.

I have to say I am much happier with the new cartoonist at Pellicle, David Bailey.** I think I would have had to spike my tea with catnip to have a clue about the last storyline about cats meant. That right there is but one-twelfth of this month… last months… offering. And now that the monthly funnies are back to being about beer, the features essays continue to be all about all things but in the best of ways. This week we read about a subject that has gotten Alistair a bit weepy over the thought of a fishy snack, the prawn sandwiches as the Green Seafood Shack in Oban, Scotland written by Jemma Beedie:

Tony Ogden always knew he wanted to work in his father’s seafood shack. Known variously as the Green Shack, the Green Seafood Shack, the Original Seafood Shack, the Oban Seafood Hut, Oggy John’s, or any combination of that list, Tony’s shop is the highlight of any trip to the West Coast. Whether taking in Oban’s seaside vibe or jumping on a ferry over to the Inner or Outer Hebrides, it’s an essential stop. A modest shed around the corner from Caledonian MacBrayne’s ferry terminal, so popular it needs no true designation.

While we are out there in the wider world, a question: why does “Czech” get a pass as an adjective for international craft brewers but “Belgian” and certainly “Lambic” do not? We were warned off that sort of appropriation, were we not? Why is “Czech” transportable but “Belgian” is not? Jeff nips around the heels of the question a bit in this article about cloning the dark lagers of Prague:

As Americans have largely turned their backs on darker beers, Czech tmavý is a bit of a cheat code—looks dark, but tastes sweetish and chocolatey, with the smooth drinkability lagers offer. Tmavý—almost always described as “Czech dark lager” in the US—isn’t a giant presence, but it keeps growing incrementally. Yet even where it has found a following, the style remains obscure to most people, and unlike other ur-beers that define their style (Saison Dupont, Schneider Weisse, and Pilsner Urquell), the small brewpub that defines tmavý is unknown to any American who hasn’t visited Prague.

I mean we don’t call it “Belgian saison” when it’s made in another country, do we? And of course it is not called “Czech” went served in its homeland. An update to the etiquette might be timely.

Are blogs boring? Personally, I think podcasts are far more boring, seeing as you sometimes have to wait 45 minutes to find out how frikkin’ boring it is. Dr.J considered her own space and caught us all up a bit:

Blog posts have gotten boring. In fact, I got so bored of my own blog posts that I stopped writing them for the better part of two years. Listicles are mind-numbing. How-tos never feel quite in-depth enough. And the long form editorializing that I was so fond of when I still had one foot in academia has revealed its true nature–navel gazing, self congratulatory, social media obsessed grandstanding–with some much needed time and distance from the ivory tower. But beyond keeping myself entertained, I am a writer who is fond of useful narrative structures. And more importantly, I’m a firm believer that we are most effective when we stick to our strengths. Though I am no longer a college professor, my core strengths are still rooted in being an educator. And when the conviction strikes me to “do something,” my something has always been to leverage the spaces of teaching, learning, and storytelling for the uplift of the communities I belong to.

(I say blogs are merely public diaries… sorta… Dave Winer re-upped this about that on Wednesday.) So… what is the doing that is going to get done by Dr. J? A course called “Topics in Social Advocacy For the Craft Brewing Industry”! Excellent. Why? Because “the progress of social advocacy work in craft beer is in danger of stalling out completely or even rolling backward.” Yup. And good.

That’s it. Time to get the flannel shirt out of the shed and to argue with the neighbours about how to make the stuffing. Or even what to call it! Quel que chose dans le dindon? Stuffing? Dressing? Still, as per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect. How do they rank today? Well, TwitterX is still the first stop followed by (for beer, not cousins) Facebook but BlueSky has rapidly moved past the beery Threads presence. Mastodon also ranks above Threads with IG and Substack Notes really dragging and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence just sitting there. So the rankings are T/X, BS and Masto maybe tied, then Threads with IG close behind then Substack Notes and Patreon at the bottom. Seven plus a blog! I may be multi and legion but I do have priorities. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer, even though it is gardening Mastodon that really wins:

*I say England as Scotland, land of my peeps, has its own tiny batch of whack jobs who go a’courting the same nutters: “A press release from the channel said: “Over a pint [Farage will] debate the tough subjects of the day with guests including representatives from the Alba Party, the Conservative Party and GB News presenter Neil Oliver. “He’ll also host a live Q&A with the audience which will be broadcast live across the UK on TV and radio at 7pm [on Thursday April 20].” It is understood that an Alba “activist” will be on the show.”
**…no relation…