December 2023 – A Good Beer Blog

The Fabulously Miraculously Perhaps Even Mailed-In Final Beery News Notes Of 2023

What can I say? It’s been quiet. Not sure there’s even going to be enough in the news for a proper update. Me, I didn’t even have one drink on Christmas Day… but only because the celebration falling on a Monday means we have Christmas Eve, Tibb’s Eve and a Friday night after the end of work to get through first. Don’t worry. I was sensible. Not like you lot, I suppose. Or perhaps just like you. I can never tell anymore. I’m a bit tired at this point, bracing for the final two or three events before I can get into the seed catelogues properly. I feel a bit like the inadvertantly hilarious AI generated Santa right there. See, someone did a Santa from every province and the original Nova Scotia Santa was clearly a screw up as instead of being cheery like the rest it looks like the guy hired by Mr. Lahey from Trailer Park Boys for a drunk Xmas party. It was quickly swapped out for something more downtown trade association… aka boring… because… Canada…

Speaking of surprises, Boak and Bailey pulled a surprise – after saying they were taking the rest of the year off but then sending out beer links by newsletter. They even sent me a hello in the fine print.* Cheery them!

Apparently it’s hard to break this habit, especially when this is a quiet time of year for many people, prompting interesting blog posts to emerge. So, just for you – and thank you once again for Patrooning us – here are a few links worth checking out.

They also posted their Golden Pints Awards, which was sort of a bigger thing a few years ago back when – and an excellent thing it was too – when people shared their favourites in any number of categories which fitted their personal experiences for the year. I last did them in 2018 and 2021 which means back when was not so so far back, I suppose. Here’s one for this year by an Australian podcast, too. It’s early as yet so you have until Monday to post your thoughts. Anyway, I did like this observation of theirs which captures the mood one aspires to in such things:

On one occasion we arrived shortly after someone had vomited everywhere leading to an immediate clear out of the premises. The Blitz spirit overtook those who remained. Then a mouse appeared and, high on floor cleaner, began to run in circles around the middle of the pub. On another occasion snooker player and DJ Steve Davis was sitting at the bar. Well, fair enough. And then there was the time someone asked the barman for a saw, hammer and nails and, between pints, made a wheelchair ramp out of a sheet of MDF.

And Alistair announced his beer of the year and it was perhaps less of a surprise given he had worked out three finalists but I do admire his standard for selection:

Choosing a single winner from these three beers is, as it seems to be every year, difficult, as were any one of them a permanent feature of drinking central VA, I would likely drink it an awful lot. However, only one of them could actually claim to have been drunk fairly regularly this year, and so the Fuggled Beer of the Year is…Tabolcloth Vollbier from both Selvedge Brewing and Tabol Brewing. It was simply wonderful, and I hope it makes a comeback when Selvedge open up in their new venue in the new year.

Good. Given all of the beers of the year you read about in most periodicals are frankly just rookie of the year awards, I am rooting for Alistair’s wish that it becomes a regular feature. I wonder how the whole “rookie of the year” as champion thing has led to the novelty obsession which has, you know, let to the superficiality and amnesia.

There’s more! Pellicle posted its top ten stories of 2023 and DC Beer had an extended year end feature on the US Capital scene with many of those involved sharing their thoughts – including this comment from the Brandings of Wheatfield that caught attention:

Moving beyond style guidelines written for another time and place continues its positive momentum. The best is yet to come for truly local beer, wherever your local is. We’re seeing progress experimenting with ingredients from here and methods responsive to them. Local beers will be different than predecessors from afar – even if they share a similar style name – and that’s something to celebrate.

Is that a call for chaos or a call for honesty? Speaking of which, The Beer Nut has wrapped up his series on the 12 top Irish brewers of 2023 with a post on those he ranked 13th to 24th including one making a coffee blonde pale ale that illustrates his excellence in matters reportage:

I’ve never seen the like. It is more or less blonde, with a polished-copper pink tint. The pour seemed a little flat, only reluctantly forming a head and offering no more than a gentle sparkle. There’s an aroma of coffee of a certain kind; a cold pouch of ground beans, with nothing warm or inviting about it. In the flavour it’s predominantly a pale ale: they didn’t go too far away with those hops and there’s quite an old-school American, or even English, tang of earthiness, which tastes like Cascade to me, even though there’s Strata and Amarillo in here as well. I couldn’t taste any of their fruitiness. The coffee is surprisingly complementary to this, again not heavy on the roast, or concentrated or oily; little more than a seasoning, in fact, adding a different sort of dryness to an already quite dry base beer. At only 5.1% ABV there’s not a lot of complexity on offer, and while it’s no revelatory taste experience, the experiment does work, giving you something interesting and worthwhile for your trouble.

And The Mudge himself shared his set of year end thoughts in a two parter including these considerations on one beneficial regulatory change affecting the UK brewing trade:

While one might object to the absolute level of duties, the general principle must be correct. It’s rare to see government carrying out a root-and-branch reform of anything nowadays, rather than merely tinkering around the edges… A significant aspect of these changes was to raise the threshold for a lower rate of beer duty from 2.8% ABV to 3.4%, a level at which it is much easier to brew palatable beers. As I reported earlier this month, there has been significant movement to reduce the strength of beers a little above this level, although it remains distinctly patchy, and the jury is still out on to what extent drinkers will be happy to accept lower-strength beers. The duty savings are so significant, though – over 50% – that the 3.4% category is only going to grow in future.

That’s new analysis right there. Jeff came out with a surprisingly hopeful year ender on the state of beer writing but two cheers for the optimism after this summary at the outset which I share at some length:

Here at the end of the year, a number of folks have been taking stock of their various writing ventures. Three I noted were Boak and Bailey, Courtney Iseman, and the duo behind the recently-launched Taster Tray (Kendall Jones and Adam Robbings), who summed up the mood of the three this way:

“In other ways, the kind of stuff we reported (over and over again) told us that maybe it was a bit irrelevant in today’s craft beer world, where more people than ever drink craft beer but fewer people harbor a deep, hobby-like passion for it. More consumers, less enthusiasts.”

These sentiments get at a reality deeper than just the fortunes of individual writers (or writing teams). It has been hard to make a living as a journalist/writer for—well, forever, but certainly in the cheap-content internet age. But something else is happening as well. As beer goes through the transition I described on Wednesday, everything it touches is transitioning, too. In the case of journalism, two trends in particular made things hard in 2023: people are less curious and engaged about beer (and that means everything from homebrewing to tasting to history and travel to business) at the same time that there is so much already available out there for the interested reader.

I think that last bit is key. For while it is truly amazing how many beer writers (especially those scrambling doing it for meagre pay) do not have a good look at what has already been written about a topic before jumping in (so therefore make some glowing gaffs) the sheer wonder that are these internets is that it is auto-archiving and auto-indexing. Yes, there is still a huge amount of researching and writing to be done but it is being done on the collective shoulders of others whether those standing up there admit it or not! It’s all a collective tree of knowledge. So be a twig! And have aspirations to be a bit of a branch even. I mean, look at Gary. Four posts on the “beer jacket” trend of the first half of the 1900s. Who’s not interested in that sort of digging? Well, paying periodicals for sure… but are you interested in writing or interested in eating? Hmm???

And it’s good to acknowledge that all this re-examination of what we beer scribblers are to do with our brief alloted span on this planet as we stare at our keyboards** is all happening in a contraction rather than a transition, during an overall drop in interest in beer. Business Insider has dubbed this the worst year in beer in a quarter century. With good cause as the always reliable New York Post explains:

Sales declined by more than 5% in the first nine months of the year, dragged down not only by the backlash and boycotts against Anheuser-Busch-owned Bud Light but the changing habits of younger drinkers, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. Overall beer sales have also been hit as millennials and Gen-Zers ditch the brews for other alcohol-infused products like canned cocktails or simply drink less than previous generations. Sales of craft beer, which emerged as a huge growth engine in the late ’90s, have also been down for three of the past four years, according to Steinmann. “This is an industry-wide, five-alarm fire,” Craig Purser, president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, said in a speech to wholesalers at a convention in October, according to the Wall Street Journal report.

AKA: “fewer consumers, less enthusiasts.“Yikes! Is it too late to start collecting stamps? I could be a stamp expert. Maybe… One thing I can admit is that I like about Cider Review is how it is much more focused on the beverage as agriculture than you see in the beer press – with good reason. I grew up in a world of ag commodity prices and the weather on the zones of the Grand Banks being regularly reported on the radio and TV. So happy was I to see their year end review was as much about the crop than anything:

As we conclude our collective summary of Harvest 2023 here on Cider Review, Hogmanay is fast approaching; the weeks of Wassail just around the corner, followed by the pruning cycle for slumbering fruit trees bathing in their Winter chill hours. It’s as beautiful a time of year in the orchard as any – if you can, do go for an explore in one mid-morning, with a strong hoar frost settled over the skeletal branches of Dabinett and Stoke Red, Porter’s Perfection and Ellis Bitter. You won’t be disappointed. Onto then, the final batch of producers who have very generously taken the time out of their harvest schedule (now mostly finished I do hope) to answer our questions here on Cider Review.

Speaking of ag, The Greenock Telegraph, the newspaper of record in the family’s seat in the old country, has certainly been paying attention and shared some odd Scots law including one related to a coo:

Based on the Licencing Act of 1872, it is an offence to be drunk while in charge of a cow, horse, carriage or steam engine or while possessing a loaded firearm. Those found guilty of this weird ‘Victorian DUI’ law could be jailed for up to 51 weeks.

Govern yourselves accordingly! And with even more ag, Jamie Goode, wine writer, shared some thoughts via Twex on the oddities he has noticed in the marketplace for the grape including this observation:

At the bottom end wine is unsustainably cheap and prices need to rise so everyone can make a living and farmers can do what we ask of them when we insist on sustainability for example I don’t like glyphosate but you are naive if you call for a ban because it costs more to farm without it, so we need to make cheap wine more profitable…

That makes sense. And sort of the opposite of craft beer. Additive and adjunct free should come at a premium. But what really shouldn’t come at a great premium is Belgian beer glass collecting as The Brussels Times reports.

The Duvel glass collecting hobby, once pursued for enjoyment, has evolved into a potentially dangerous realm, with Vanhoeck expressing his concerns about the escalating intensity and financial toll it takes on some enthusiasts. While some collectors are driven by passion and nostalgia, others see it as an opportunity to fund major life events, such as buying a home. Even the designers, like Hedof, grapple with ethical dilemmas as the value of their creations skyrockets, balancing principles with financial realities.

Turning to a starker reality and in a follow up of sorts to an article from a few years back in GBH on Taybeh Brewing located in one of the West Bank’s few remaining Christian villages, The Guardian examines the situation the brewery now finds itself in during a time of war:

The brewery has not been able to obtain export permits needed for international shipping through Israeli ports, and several of Khoury’s employees have been injured in attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. “We’re also just filled with grief – and even fear,” says Khoury, who has family in Gaza. She is determined to keep going, however, hoping for a more peaceful future. “To build our state and economy, we have to invest our knowledge and money,” she says. “And that’s exactly what my family and I are doing. Our brewery is not just about great beer, but about the image of Palestine – one of the most liberal Arab countries. That’s one of the messages I’d like to share with the world.”

Now and finally for 2023… looking forward… The New York Times got the jump on Dryanuary… or is it JanDulluary?… with a exeedingly sensible article on how to go about it.

There is no data suggesting that those folks won’t be able to abstain from drinking, said Dr. David Wolinsky, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences with Johns Hopkins Medicine, who specializes in addiction. But starting the month with a few strategies in your back pocket — and with a clear sense of your goals — may help you get the most out of the challenge. “Most of the benefits of Dry January are probably going to be related to the intention with which you go into Dry January,” Dr. Wolinsky said. The challenge isn’t a stand-in for treatment for people with alcohol use disorder, he stressed, but those who are looking to get a fresh start to the year may benefit from the mental and physical reset it can offer, and the opportunity to adopt new habits.

I’m all for that. I track everything every day now and have for a few years – fasting hours, drink downed, exercise done, books read, chores chored. Pandemic habit I suppose but it works. So I don’t necessarily think I am going to do a dry month. For the curious, here’s where I was after 2021 and 2022 and here is a summary of 2023 as we near the end of the final month. I’m quite pleased with it all. I have moved roughly speaking from around 1.95 drinks a day to around 1.8 without any sort of inconvenience. That adds up to maybe 50 less over the whole year. Who misses one a week? No one. I’ll probably aim for a similar drop in 2024 but it is all in the sensible range. Remember: however you do you – make sure you pay a bit of attention.

There. There was enough out there worth getting all linky over. Things are looking up. And you should, too! The darkest two weeks of the year are now past us. Yes, the days are already getting longer. And remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), 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. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up three to 101) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (911 – down one) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,429 – another week with a gain!) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (creeping – literally – up to 164), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have to admit my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is the place in “the race to replace.” Even so and all in all, it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins but here are a few of the folk there perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

And remember to check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!) to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd 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 less 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!

*And a Happy New Year to you!
**OK, that’s a bit too close even for me!

Surely Your Bestest Christmas Present Ever… These Cheery Beery News Notes

So, here we are. We have slipped into Yule itself, the semi-conscious days of the competing forces of the sugar highs, the alcohol buzz and the tryptophan doze. And napping. I recommend you start with the 3 pm nap. That nap rewards you for putting in 3/4s of a day’s effort and sets you up for pre-dinner cocktails. One of the classic naps. Very relaxing. Sorta like the mood in this week’s front page above the fold photo right there. That picture, by the way, is the Yuletide beery photo contest winner for 2010, perhaps the apex of the madness of submissions every December back then. It was submitted by Brian Stechschulte of San Francisco and was declared Grand Champion. It was called that for no other reason than there were also twelve other separate prize packs awarded that year. Crazy.

First up? What’s that you say: “what’s the news on Japaneses two-row barley breeding?” Well… funny you should ask:

“This study detected key traces of Japanese barley improvement inscribed in the genomes of two high-quality modern cultivars. Japanese beer barley breeding began around 150 years ago by introducing Western high-quality beer barley. The hot and humid Japanese climate and soil-transmitting virus diseases hampered the development of beer barley suited for Japan. Western beer barley cultivars inevitably required crossed with virus-disease-resistant East Asian barley, despite the latter having undesirable brewing quality characteristics. Balancing virus disease resistance and malting quality was extremely difficult.”

Interesting. I also struggle to balance resistance and quality… as you know. Also interesting is how this time last week, I told you about a piece in The Times of London on how to survive and even enjoy the UK version of the Christmas office party. This week in The New York Times (no relation) there was something of a companion piece but one with a very different outlook:

DoorDash, which cut about 1,250 employees at the end of last year, is hosting happy hours in regional offices — many of them starting early, like 4:30 p.m. in San Francisco — as well as “WeDash” meet-ups where employees can compete for prizes like a Vespa scooter. CNBC did a low-key morning celebration in New Jersey, with mimosas, as well as an afternoon party, accommodating employees who work different shifts. TIAA, the investment firm, did on-site holiday celebrations from 4 to 7 p.m. called “Gratitude Gatherings… “When you’re doing an event to inspire people, motivate them and reward them, do it on terms they’d appreciate. Even me personally, I want to get home earlier…”

ZZZzzzz… the article even used the word “wholesome” in a positive sense! Wholesome!!! I hope any Brits reading this are having a good belly laugh. There, the verdict is in: UK pub sales up over 7% compared to Yule2022 – and no doubt up 92,919,845% compared to some sort of wholesome late afternoon gatherings. Conversely, you can check in with Ron who has been sending dispatches from a proper holiday with Dolores in Britain, with three posts with three pictures of three breakfasts and a trip to the Museum on their last day there featuring this fabulous exchange:

Bags packed and dumped, we head to the British Museum. We spend an hour or two there each trip. Concentrating on one section. We’ve still lots left to see. This time, it’s Dark Ages and medieval Europe. There’s quite a queue for the security checks. A jangle of Chinese girlies in front of us are taking selfies. Lots of selfies. “I wonder what they do with them all?” I ask Dolores. “The same as you do with all your boring pub photos. Nothing.” “They’re for my blog.” “Right. Nothing to do with your weird building obsession.” “That’s not true.” “Then why do your photos never have people in them?” “They do sometimes.” “Only by accident.”

And Ruvani has a story out on an interesting new IPA – an actual interesting one! – from brothers Van and Sumit Sharma who developed it with Alan Pugsley, British brewmaster and founder of Shipyard Brewing in Portland, Maine as well as disciple of the late Peter Austin who we lost recently:

In creating their own IPA, the Sharmas and Pugsley decided to brew what they consider to be a “British-Indian IPA,” stylistically modeled on more traditional English IPAs, acknowledging the style’s history, while maintaining Rupee’s ethos of making high quality easy-drinking beer meant for food pairing. “Rupee IPA is brewed in the traditions of classic English IPAs, enhancing malt and hop balance—creating a drinkable beer with a dry crisp hop bitterness balanced with subtle maltiness,” says Sharma. He emphasizes that the beer’s copper color and bright clarity mean it is far removed from American West Coast and New England IPA styles.

Yum. I mean I expect it’s yum. Confession: I like Pugsley beers. I sleep in t-shirts covered in Pugsley brewed beer brand logos. But also a “Blueberries for Sal” one, too. So there. Napwear.

Note: NHS Martin encounters the perfect perhaps prototyical proper pub… possibly. Not at all related, an inproper pint has been punished:

An ice lolly-themed beer has been discontinued after a boy saw his dad drinking it and burst into tears because he wasn’t allowed to try it. The four-year-old’s mother complained about Rocket Lolly IPA to alcohol industry trade body the Portman Group, which agreed that the ale appealed to children. Portman Group upheld the mum’s complaint and brewery Northern Monk agreed to discontinue the beer. The mother, who is unnamed in the report, said: “We raised our four-year-old to understand what alcohol is and why he is not permitted to try it.”

Quite right, too, though I would have thought the prohibition on really stupid branding would have applied, too, and not just the crying toddler rule.

Alistair, my lower mid-table nemisis in the Pellicle EPL pool, has found plenty to not cry about but instead to praise in his annual review of his favourite beers of the year, starting with the pale ones:

Ah…the first day of two weeks of Yuletide holiday. Time to make mince pies, plan menus for the various festive days, and to wonder if I even bother buying beer given the amount of cider in the alcohol fridges. It is also time for the annual review of the year, which thanks to having managed to get out of the country a couple of times will include both a drinking den and a brewery of the year. As ever though, we start with pale beers, those that are yellow or golden, without veering too much into orange.

Not one to be caught napping, Matt is also pushing back against the current gloom with some longer term thinking, gazing towards the end of the decade and seeing some light at the end of the tunnel shining in the form of investments:

But with the industry facing such difficult trading conditions that will likely continue into 2024 and beyond, why invest in such a large chunk of the hospitality industry now? Surely this is a time for caution, not confidence. Investors are a savvy bunch though, and firms like Breal will be intentionally investing in projects it believes will provide them with a profitable return, usually within five to seven years… While Breal’s moves could be framed as blind optimism, I posit that there’s a good deal more logic to it than that. It likely means that, by 2028 and beyond, the investor expects the beer and hospitality markets to be in a far better position to trade profitably.

Buy low. Sell high. Makes sense. And this is the low, right? Right? Hard to tell what is what these days. For example at the end of last week, one report in The Drinks Business received some comment over its overly enthusiastic characterization of the tiny THC laced bevvy trade:

Phil McFarland, Wherehouse Beverage Company’s general manager of THC Beverages and who worked at Half Acre Beer, told Axios that the move reminded him of what happened with craft beer. McFarland said coming “through the craft beer wave, this feels very familiar to me. In five years or so, this is going to be as pervasive and accepted as craft beer has become.”

Mirella was not convinced by such plain puffery but Dan put a finger on one thing: “Only if you consider a growing variety of fruity drinks equivalent to the craft beer wave!” Given that the craft beer trade, embracing the slippery slopes in its despiration, over the last few years has allowed the debasement of its brand along with its products, Dan may well have a point. Except even with that level of meaninglessness… it ain’t happening either. Confess! Do any of you actually drink that stuff? Not just taste it once or twice at trade shows booths but actually repeatedly buy it?

Note: the Badger. Govern yourselves accordingly!

Speaking of which… hmm… ever wonder about the availability of light beer in North Korea? Me neither. So…

Rowan Beard, a tour manager of Young Pioneer Tours, anticipated that the new beverage could be a success. “There is an outspoken demand for a beer that can avoid men putting on weight in North Korea,” he told NK News. Beard explained that many North Koreans drink soju not only because it’s cheaper but because many want to “avoid putting on unnecessary weight caused by beer. I can see this beer selling well if they’re able to price it the same or cheaper than the current beers available in the country,” he said, as many will want beer “without the guilt.”

Bet there’s plenty of “unspoken demand”… if you know what I mean. And there are beer tours! Which means now you can go where people are one, now you can go where they get things done.

Q: is the Bud Lite botch and backlash really over? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps relatedly, Jessica Mason reports that ABInBevBudCo faces a new problem

The union told Fox Business that out of 5,000 members who work at 12 AB InBev breweries in the US, 99% voted to authorise a strike. This means that if the workers cannot secure a new labour contract raising wages, protecting jobs and securing benefits before the union’s contract expires on 29 February 2024, then strikes will take place and beer production will likely become affected. Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien said: “Teamsters stand firm in our fight for the best contract at Anheuser-Busch, and this powerful strike vote proves it. Our members’ labour, talent, and sacrifice are what put Anheuser-Busch products on the shelf, and we are committed to getting a contract that rewards and recognises their hard work.”

Solidarity!! Fight the power!!! It is a time of endings. Many sorts of endings as Boak and Bailey* have carried through with their long promised exit from Twex. I might just keep linking to their roundups for a while as a public service but, then again, there’s this sort of weird comment when helpfully directed where to find them…

Yes, it’s goodbye to B&B from me as well as I don’t follow any other platforms either – and have no plans to do so.

[BREAKING: man starves due to fork being placed on left side of bowl, not on the right.] They explained the move in their newsletter… which is a little like dancing about architecture but never mind:

We got to dislike feeling tethered to a particular platform. Feeling as if we couldn’t leave irritated us. It’s also been unstable and chaotic for a year or more, with sudden changes in functionality and policy. That made us anxious. It also turns out that starting from scratch on other platforms comes with benefits. We’ve got far fewer followers on Mastodon, BlueSky, and Instagram, but they seem more engaged.

In another serious sort of loss, venerable Canadian industry watcher Greg Clow has announced the winding up of his 15 year run as editor-in-chief and bottle washer at Canadian Beer News, a ticker tape of sorts that provided updates on every announcement in the national scene:

After 15 years and more than 17,000 articles, I’ve decided that it’s time to bring Canadian Beer News to an end, meaning this year’s hiatus will be permanent. On one hand, this wasn’t an easy decision. I still enjoy spreading the word about brewery openings, beer releases, festivals and events, and other developments in Canada’s beer and brewing industry. But on the other hand, I’m also pretty damn tired of it.

Thanks, praise and some sadness ensued but this admission from Greg put things pretty clearly into focus: “…honestly, the idea of having to report on so many closures, and the loss of so many people’s livelihoods, just isn’t appealing to me…” Greg promises that he just might revive his blog Beer Boose & Bites after a 12 year snack break.

And Stan has also signed off… but just for the rest of the year.** In addition to his excellent linky selection, this week he explored the state of the industry and shared this message to and from the trade:

A “Year in Beer” summary produced by the Brewers Association and chief economist Bart Watson’s presentation last week for association members and the press both focused on the business of beer. They made it clear that the numbers reflect an ongoing trend, and that 2024 will be just as challenging for breweries. Why should beer drinkers care? For one thing, if your favorite brewery goes out of business you’ve lost something. So consider Watson’s last two slides. He suggested that “most of the challenges craft faces have opportunities in craft strengths.” Flavor and variety matter, a wide range (including next to zero) ABVs serve different occasions well, and where diversity grows niche and local opportunities do as well.

What kills me about these sorts of trade messages Stan shares right there is how they are too often affirmations of what the trade is already doing! Plus everything is a plus. With that lack of critical consideration, I expect 2024 to be worse than 2023. And you see something of a similar analytical gap in those interviewed for a piece by Kate Bernot in GBH on the state of homebrewing that on, one hand wants, to convince the reader that there is hope for the hobby while, at the same time, pretty much identifying that interest has seriously faded – and that there’s good reason for that dwindling within the greater slide of craft beer:

…interest in the club declined six to eight years ago as more craft breweries opened in the Birmingham area. As older members of the club have moved away or aged out, fewer new members are replacing them… Ask an existing homebrewer to invite a friend to brew with them, and statistically, that friend is likely to be a white man, too. The Carboy Junkies’ membership reflects this homogeneity: Joines says the club is made up of 80% white males over the age of 35, with the majority of them being older than 50. He says everyone in the club is married; most are affluent; and most have graduate degrees.

Even I, the lasped bad homebrewer, never personally had the need for a club. It was a kitchen to basement thing for me. (Like farm to table but with stairs… sorta.) Well, other than, you know, that club formed by my friends and sudden wave of strange new acquaintances who drank up whatever I made. Then I had kids. Then I, you know, grew up. Or woke up. Was that it?

That is it! Happy holidays!! The days are already getting longer. And remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), 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. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (98) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (912) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,427 – I actually gained one!) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have a bit of dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is catching up in “the race to replace.” Even so and although it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Still too, maybe check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!) 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 when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd 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 less 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!

*Check out their best beer writing of 2023 post, too. I won’t be doing one. I live in the now, baby.
**Man, no wonder they set up the beer roundup writers’ holiday party for next week… oh well, more of the cheese ball for me.

The Hardly Able To Sleep I’m So Excited Dontcha Know Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

It is getting close, isn’t it. Hopefully when this is posted, all the mail and all the parcels will have been sent. I have a list and on that list it says that will be done… so it will… right? Last week I shared a photo from the Xmas contests of a decade or so ago and, Lordy, the image above submitted by Jeff of Beervana back in 2012 passed by my Facebook memories on the weekend. Another great entry worth resharing – if only to ponder the question of whether the man on the little green vehicle spent his days saying “wheeee…. oh yeah… vrooooommmm!” quietly to himself.

Starting locally, sometime today we may learn more about the government of Ontario’s new plans for the booze marketplace. The CBC has posted some juicy rumours with perhaps a few twists on expectations:

… two sources said the government will require retailers to devote some portion of their shelf space to Ontario’s craft brewers and small-scale wineries, but had no specifics. The reforms will not alter the role or structure of the LCBO in the retail landscape, sources said. Some industry sources said The Beer Store will be well-placed to corner the potentially lucrative market for distributing beer to thousands of new locations in supermarkets, convenience store and gas stations because of the breadth of its existing distribution network.

Let’s be clear. I look forward to 2025, the year when any grocery stores, all corner stores and any gas stations which are willing will be able to step up and start selling those beers, wines, ciders and even that stuff we call “coolers” but marketeers refer to as “ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages, such as seltzers or premixed cocktails (collectively known as RTDs).” But I also fully expect this to be a mess like the cannabis marketplace of the last five years due largely to a retracting public interest with a lot of good intended investment dollars along with certain consumer hopes to go down the toilet, a lot of places just selling the marco gak and the concept of “craft” being further diluted… if that is even possible.

OK – festive question: does your drinks culture include insanely complex and repetitive Christmas parties? I’ve always thought the British over do these things and am not dissuaded from a guide like this to surviving them without compromise even with all the dangers – social, career or otherwise:

Even if you can hold your nog, there’s snogging — firmly back after the plague years — to consider. And then reconsider: 59 per cent of office romances end with a resignation. Beyond the work do, there’s double booking, guest lists and menu planning, dress codes and inquisitive v intrusive small talk to consider. Personally, I love a 4am finish, dissolve in the face of trying to deliver dinner to the table before 10pm, love flirting with strangers, hate awkward set-ups and loathe being asked to squeeze in for a photo.

Yikes. Too much. And troubles in big fests too? CAMRA has announced that the “Great British Beer Festival is taking a year off in 2024 but will return in 2025.” And Eoghan shared that:

…its Belgian equivalent Zythos also not going ahead in 2024. Zythos moved from Leuven to Kortrijk in 2023 but now cancelled next year, citing “organisational reasons” Will it ever come back?

If you need a drink, just get ye to a proper establishment. The Mudge has again noted the Merseyside Pub Guide from Phil Wieland which, as promised, “goes in the pubs where no other bloggers dare to venture“… like he did this week:

On my previous visits I have noted that this is a football fans’ pub and I recall many years ago during the Euros finding all the regulars with red white and blue face paint and silly hats. Today was no exception, and the place was busy with noisy Liverpool fans, all very happy as their team was now winning. No face paint this time! I watched the last few minutes of a rather scrappy game until the whistle went with 102 on the clock, welcomed with a very loud cheer. More cheers when we learned that that LFC were now top of the league, albeit possibly for only two or three hours. The atmosphere gradually calmed down a little but it remained a lively pub, another proper boozer.

And Jessica herself of B+B has sent a dispatch from Sheffield, a trip that has become an annual affair, where she met up with Retired Martin himself:

First, Ray was unfortunately unwell, so this ended up being a solo trip for me. Secondly, it turns out I can’t come to Sheffield two years in a row and ignore The Rutland Arms, even if that does break the new-pubs-only rule. Martin has handily written up the first part of my weekend. (Yes, I am the mysterious “guest from Bristol”.) He suggested a few meeting spots and I went for The Old Shoe, on the grounds that it was central and promised a good range of beer. It’s always interesting to see how a newly-opened pub can compete in a well-established drinking culture. I’d say based on a short visit that this is a great addition to the city centre.

And… and , for the immediate double, the brawny brains of B+B posed an excellent question that is not unrelated:

Are the pubs dead because there’s a Wetherspoon nearby? Or is the Wetherspoon busy because the pubs nearby are dead?

Check out the comments, too: “My purely anecdotal observation on the two huge Wetherspoons in central Dublin is that they attract a crowd that wouldn’t be in proper pubs otherwise….” There’s sort of a proper theme, then, this week: considering the current sense of the relative rough and tumble of competition and the resulting success of pubs as opposed to fretting about their openings, closings and, you know, intentional burnings down. What makes them work? Does getting yourself known as a fan base hangout really work?

Has a second and perhaps more unexpected theme arise this week? What to make of how very weird it would be if US craft beer took warmly to supplying murderous dictatorships as a way in part to keep their heads above water – but that’s what we learned might be affot this week from Dave Infante in VinePair:

Parr is emphatic that he doesn’t want craft breweries to sell their beer in China, or anywhere else, unless it makes good business sense. “Brewers need to consider whether they have the capacity, the product range, the pricing, and the resources to support all those things like regulatory compliance, marketing, a trade relationship when that could otherwise be supporting your domestic market,” he says. But the potential upside is considerable. “China is certainly a huge market … [and] despite the economic challenges, there’s a segment of the population that has the money to pay for premium products.”

I hear officers’ mess halls in the the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China might have an interest in warm overly hopped IPAs and exploding fruity kettles sours. Would you take that money? But… seriously? Has craft gotten so stunned, so needy that it hugs the despot and rejects the lessons of New Belgium and Kirin dabbling into the fridges of the approved classes of Myanmar? And along a lighter, tempered version of something similar, we may have already have a winner for top junket of 2024 as Jeff explained:

I’ve been invited to give the keynote speech at this year’s Central European Brewers Conference in Budapest. I’ve never visited this city routinely described as one of Europe’s most beautiful, so I’m psyched… I’m going to be speaking on a topic dear to my heart—how culture manifests—but the talk will have a special focus on why that’s relevant to individual breweries… It is a smaller event, which means you’ll have real access to the folks on the ground, including luminaries like Evan Rail, who is the conference MC; see the list of speakers at the links above…

No doubt Hungarians of the current politico-cultural bent with be keen on any illustrations of cultural nationalism made manifest. Try the Tokaji but perhaps best not to mention the related regional imperial tensions. Premium drinks for autocrats.

These things on the edges speak to these times, I am sure. And somewhat relatedly I am left wondering if this is something of a buried lede – but it might be better to arrange the data before the thread begins. Not quite sure of the point other than perhaps the perpetual craft grope 4 hope demographic thing. So… will they or won’t they?

We’ve known for years that underage drinking has been dropping. Monitoring the Future data shows the % of 12th graders drinking has been dropping for years. So it’s no surprise that 16-22 year old Gen Zers would drink less than Millennials.

By comparison, a nice bit of work in Pellicle this week by Courtney Iseman on the cask ale scene in New York City. NYC has been a beer town for over 400 years and it was nice to see a proper bit of research into the recent history of cask there:

Having also tracked bars with cask beer for his blog Gotham Imbiber, Alex confirms there were 67 New York bars serving cask pre-Covid. The pandemic certainly acted as a nail in the coffin for cask beer, moving imbibing into the home. But in New York City, it’s safe to say that while plenty of bars had carried on with perhaps intermittent cask programs, the fervour had cooled. The beer scene had moved into brewery taprooms, suddenly allowed to exist after New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed The Craft NY Act into effect in 2014.

Before the Gotham Imbiber was a blog it was a ‘zine (as this 2007 BeerAdvocate article describes) that identified where cask could be found throughout the city. So I am not sure that the statute was as critical as other factors like higher commercial rents or simply the entertainment competition in the Big Apple. Cask ale and taprooms also predate that date but they were more to be found upstate in Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo like the taproom in 2006 at Middle Ages or at the dearly departed Clarks the year before. Today’s story shares how the arc of history in this century shows how NYC lagged in matters of good beer behind even the rest of the state, leading us to where we are today.

And Gary has been posting another series on a single topic, this time ads from 1924-25 promoting the somewhat vague Barclay’s Lager advertising slogan “Still Discussing It!” which turns out to be a bit of a then new and modern conversation:

…the theme continues of Mrs. Brown showing an equal if not greater interest than her husband in Barclay’s beer. Not all the ads stress the wife’s independence. In one, while sharing (always) the husband’s taste in beer an alterior motive appears, to butter him up for a post-meal shopping spree. In another, impressed by the panoply of financiers in the chic restaurant, she muses she might accompany one to Throgmorton Street (home of the Stock Market) to make an investment sure to pay off, a flutter she calls it.

The characters here are more affluent and carefree but still the structure of the campaign remind me of the ads from two decades later during the war sent out by Labatt under the “Isn’t It The Truth” slogan where the main voices are women working towards their own liberation along with freedom from military dictatorship… hmm… there’s that word again…

Back to Yuletide merriment, Will Hawkes in his December edition of London Beer City newsletter for December set out to find out if the touristy Kensington landmark The Churchill Arms truly is really London’s most Christmassy pub by comparing it to “The Dog and Bell (‘Dog’, locally) in Deptford”:

The best seat in the house – inside the door on the left, dark-green banquettes and a great view of the bar – is untaken. It’s not as busy as at The Churchill, and the voices are all English or Irish, but it shares that key quality: a sense of carefree happiness, of reality postponed. Across the way is a family – grandparents, daughter and two kids (“Tell grandad what colour the loos are … Millwall blue aren’t they?”) – while the regulars are seated at the bar in the new bit of the pub, chiselled out of the next-door building a few years back. There are hops above the bar, alongside copious Christmas decorations – sliced oranges, pine cones, pine leaves – hanging thick and lustrous from the walls and ceilings.

Nice… and finally, maybe not so nice but still one of the funnier yet still sadder tweets was posted by Jessica Mason this week, one that bears preserving should Twex get what it deserves:

EXCLUSIVE: I’m approaching the final week of work for 2023. Glorious men of Twitter, you have JUST ONE WEEK LEFT to tell me how to do my job. Knock yourselves out. #micropenisdetectedonaisle3

As regular readers may have picked up, I have a lot of time for Jessica Mason’s writing about beer business as well as the surrounding culture and so I read this mindful of how it reflects not only (1) the sick abuse she bears personally or even (2) a broader comment on the pervasive misogynistic shit that women in beer have to put up with but, let’s be honest, (3) also a reflection on how good beer culture has a fair share of pricky pathetic fifth-rate obstructive domineers (and, yes, perhaps even -atrixes) who actually bring little to the table but still screw things up for others by blocking the way for others who are more interesting and deserving. Suffice it to say, after all these years now, I am not thrilled with the effectiveness of the curre “state of social advocacy work in craft beer.”

There. Next week, the Yuletide roundup. And remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), 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. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (97) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (909) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,426) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (164), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have a bit of dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is catching up in “the race to replace.” Even so and although it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

As The Madcap Slide Into Yuletide Speeds Up Here’s This Week’s Beery News

I am already late. I think that is what Yule really means: “you are late!” I need to still get a few things together… very few… but I already feel rushed. Perhaps this is how “We Three Kings” felt galloping across the Middle East and it’s all part of the lessons of the season. Fretting. I dunno. I need a few of these Caribbean Christmas drinks. No wonder people take winter vacations. To make up for the Christmas vacation. Not as rushed as the holiday-time photo contest kept me a decade ago. That’s the winner from 2012 up there by Robert Gale, one of 36 photo entries I posted on just one day in that long contest period. That was a lot of fun – but nuts, too.

First up, Stan is back and posted his linkfest on Monday after a month on the hollyjollydays – and he noticed something:

Has it really been four weeks since I posted links here? Indeed, and it seems as if it would be easy to sort through the headlines since Nov. 6 and assemble a post of only stories about the craft beer apocalypse. I am left searching for a phrase that is the opposite of “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Perhaps “Five Feet And Rising“? Just to, you know, keep up with an aquatic theme? Stan explores some of the reasons for the craft beer predicament so go have a look. Even though the exploration and examination of a downturn is valuable and in craft almost fully ignored… I know the feeling but have promised myself to be cheerier this week. I will. It is the holidays or perhaps just the pre-holidays after all. Let’s see if that’s possible.

But first… Jordan has been worked a few paper rolls through the adding machine and come up with for Ontario what can only be called findings:

Will update the map later, but it looks to me like we’re down from 413 physically operated brewery locations to 389 so far this year. There are some ownership situations I don’t know how to express simply in geographic format. Assume that number is high… If you condense ownership structures, we can reduce 67 locations to 27 companies. So… 349 companies total.

Maybe related: low alcohol partying and no alcohol bars? Apparently Sam Smiths is also running no alcohol bars, given that “as many as 120 Smith’s pubs are currently closed“! That’s what’s said in that article in The Times about the Samuel Smith’s of Yorkshire. Not so much about the brewery as the man running the operation. This was a brutal passage:

Back in the 1990s Samuel Smith’s bought and began pouring millions of pounds into restoring the town’s derelict Old Vicarage, which dates back to the 14th century. Great care was taken to go above and beyond rules stipulated by English Heritage… When the eight-year project was complete, the vicar at the nearby St Mary’s Church was informed that her new house was ready. The offer came like a bolt from the heavens. St Mary’s vicar already had a home — one she liked and better suited the needs of her young family. After the invitation was politely declined, the lavishly restored building was locked up.

Enough. It’s the holidays. Here’s some good news. The BBC reports that Welsh brewery Brains has turned its fortunes around… literally… or is it figuratively…:

The company had debts of £76.4m, most of which had accumulated before the pandemic. Mr Bridge worked with a number of banks to restructure and agree repayment of all of the debt, with the chief executive finally feeling confident about the company’s financial health by the summer of 2023. “We’ve managed to navigate those challenging times. And it wasn’t just us, it was the whole drinks and hospitality industry that went through those challenges,” Mr Bridge said. Brains is more than beer in Wales. Having been brewing in Cardiff since 1882, the company is still owned by the descendants of Samuel Arthur Brain.

More with the cheery. What is cheery? History is cheery! And international. Heck, we received a comment in German this week, a footnote to my bit on the Lispenard clan, 1700s Loyalist beer barons in New York. Lord Goog provided the translation. Speaking of lore of yore, the Beer Ladies Podcast had a great interview this week with Dr Susan Flavin, a historian joined in a project recreating a 1500s brewery:

In this fascinating project – link below – the team used a recipe based on a beer once served in Dublin Castle, in order to not only taste it, but to learn more about the role beer played in the early modern period. This one will tickle the beer history nerds and casual beer fans alike!

In more recent history, Boak and Bailey have a great explainer this week on the pub feature called a “snob screen” as helpfully illustrated in the 1963 comedy The Punch & Judy Man where they are used as part of a physical joke:

Hancock, who co-wrote the film as well as starring in it, uses these as the basis for a bit of ‘business’ which, handily, you can see some of in the trailer for the film. He pops in and out of the various windows, taunting and teasing the snobs behind the snob screen. In other words, he refuses to respect (literal) social barriers, and highlights their purely symbolic nature. After all, he and his pals can hear almost every word that is being said a few inches from them, on the other side of the screen. What is slightly odd is that most surviving examples of tilting or swivelling snob screens are there to separate customers from bar staff, rather than from each other.

Neato. And a couple of decades later, the BBC took us back to a Belfast board game of forty years ago and posed the question whther it was glorifying or just identifying actual pub culture:

1981: Scene Around Six explored a Belfast pub crawl board game, named Binge. Controversial enough that many shops refused to stock it, it did at least have the backing of a certain local mover and shaker, Mr Terri Hooley.

And another bit of history. In the same week that it is reported that Diageo is ditching most of its beer brands*, a landmark in craft brewing history is being lost with the closure of the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England after fifteen years in someone else’s portfolio.

In 2007, Ringwood was purchased by Marston’s for £19.2 million. Marston’s disposed of its brewing operations in 2020, selling assets to a joint venture with the Carlsberg Group to create the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company. Mr Davies mentioned that he is “incredibly proud” of the effort and dedication of staff at Ringwood Brewery, adding: “Our priority now is to support colleagues affected by the proposals through the consultation period, which has now begun.”

You know, the official hagiography of craft beer does not properly account for the importance of the Ringwood Brewery which came into being in 1978 led by Peter Austin. As Boak and Bailey discuss in Brew Britannia as well as in their thoughtful obituary for him of almost a decade ago, Austin was one of the few people who could legitimately be called a founder:

His first triumph was building and getting established the Penrhos Brewery on behalf of Martin Griffiths, Terry ‘Python’ Jones and writer Richard Boston. He then launched his own brewery, Ringwood, in 1978, and thereafter came to be the ‘go to’ guy for advice on setting up similar operations. When David Bruce was setting up his first Firkin brewpub in 1979, it was Austin who vetted his designs for a miniature basement brewkit. The two were both founder members of SIBA, which then stood for The Small Independent Brewers Association, and Austin was its first Chair.

Austin also consulted, with Alan Pugsley, brewing bringing his energy into the new brewing movement in North America. I’ve had beers in breweries in Nova Scotia, Maine, New York and Ontario directly carrying on that tradition. The shutting of the Ringwood is the end of an era.

The big news in the world of Pellicle is that I WON the November fitba pool (even though I am wallowing in the nether ranks.) It which was a great surprise that earned me a mug. Oh… yes, and Will Hawkes wrote something well worth reading for Pellicle about London’s pub group Grace Land and the co-owners Andreas Akerlund and Anselm Chatwin:

They met when Anselm took a job as a bar back at Two Floors, Barworks’ bar in Soho, whilst he was at St Martin’s College (now Central St Martins) in the early 2000s. Temperamentally similar and with a shared passion for music, they cooked up a vague plan to open a dive bar/gig venue—and when a site, formerly The Camden Tup, came on the market in 2009 they opened the first Grace Land venue, The Black Heart. It wasn’t an immediate success. “The Black Heart was a dismal failure for many years,” he says. “But it’s about working with the concept, sticking with it. People get it now.” That philosophy has served them well in the years since, during which they’ve slowly accrued a small family of high-quality pubs…

Note: The English are coming back down to pre-Covid levels of alcohol consumption. Is inflation healthy? Hmm… and while we are at it… next time someone suggests that terrior in wine isn’t real, mention this study as reported in The New York Times:

“It’s one of those terms that the wine industry likes to keep a bit mysterious, part of the magic of wine,” said Alex Pouget, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Geneva. Dr. Pouget is trying to apply chemical precision to this je ne sais quoi. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Communications Chemistry, he and his colleagues described a computer model that could pinpoint which Bordeaux estate produced a wine based only on its chemical makeup. The model also predicted the year in which the wine was made, known as its vintage, with about 50 percent accuracy.

That’s some science right there, that is. Continuing with questions of authenticity, again we go with The Times out of London which had an interesting article on tea and chai this week with some very interesting assertions about appropriation and the nature of foodways:

You can culturally appropriate badly, or you can culturally appropriate well, but almost all culture involves appropriation. While Indians have been adding spices to milky beverages for centuries, the spiced tea that is fashionable in American and British coffee shops, and is sometimes marketed as an exotic drink, is no more purely Indian than, say, chillis (which originally came from Central/South America). Indeed, chai is the result of the British imperial push to get Indians to consume tea.

Note: Lars wrote about complexes of closely located language families. Nicely done. Also nicely done, Geoff wrote about Ethiopian borde over on Mastodon, a very complex form of beer making.

I think I first had Jack’s Abbey lager with Ron and Craig in Albany New York back in March 2016. I recall hitting a store on the way back from Delmar. Ah, Delmar! Anyway, Jeff has done an admirable job remembering what he wrote down during his recent visit… before he lost his notes from that visit… including, to begin, its location:

The city proper is small and compact, but the metro area, or Greater Boston, includes around a hundred small towns clustered in the fan stretching out from Boston Harbor. Two radial freeways, I-95 and I-495, mark important distance metrics. Anything inside I-95 is pretty Boston-y, while anything within the larger I-495 ring is Greater Boston. Framingham, home to Jack’s Abby, is 20 miles due west of downtown Boston and about halfway between 95 and 495.

Note: Zak Rotello of the Olympic Tavern of Rockford, Illinois alerted us to this situation: 1, 2, 3, 4. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Nice piece in Cider Review this week on the state of the tiny German perry trade and its advocate in chief, Barry Masterson:

As anyone who follows Barry will know, there are a good number of pear trees in his home region around Schefflenz. He’s previously reported its former significance in Bavaria and until relatively recently it was a central cultural tenet of rural life in the Western Palatinate, a little way west of Barry, near the Rhine and around much of German wine country. But today there’s vanishingly little to be had commercially, and if I didn’t have a direct line to Barry, Lord alone knows how I’d have found anything out about it for the book.

And finally in one of the weirdest craft fibby claims yet, the fact checkers and desk editors of Forbes seems to have taken coffee break when this one crossed by their inboxes:

Recently the Cicerone Certification Program announced that six people had achieved the rank of Master Cicerone. There are now a total of 28 Master Cicerones worldwide. A Master Cicerone is similar to a Master Sommelier in the wine world but the focus is less on service/hospitality and more on general beer knowledge. The exam is frequently billed as one of the hardest tests not just in beer, but in the world.

FFS. Is there any bloatification that craft can’t claim? Safe to say that gaining the certificate does not require passing one of the hardest tests in the world. There are, after all, brain surgeons not to mention standard shift drivers licenses. Not being a peer reviewed academic course, however, allows for this sort of thing to float around.

Fin. We are done. I know I’m done. Remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), 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. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (94) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (907) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,426) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon (even if BlueSky is catching up in the race to replace.) And even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Anyone else? Anywhere else? Yes, you also gotta check the blogs, podcasts (really? 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 when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd 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 less 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!

*Or not… as a web-publication called Just Drinks has asserted that Diageo does not plan to offload beer assets – apparently based on this peak of investigative reporting: a “company spokesperson said: ‘We do not comment on market speculation.’“