Fine. It may be spring but it was also -4C on Tuesday morning. Better warm up before eclipse day. They say half a million people might head our way. There’s not enough food to feed that many people… let alone a good seat at a bar. I’ll be in the backyard, myself. But not to worry – I won’t be hogging all the eclipse beers like this:
After the 2017 eclipse, “I marked my calendar,” said Sam McNulty, co-founder of Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland, which is in the eclipse path this time and will see nearly four minutes of dimmed skies. Last year, McNulty’s team brewed a hazy IPA called “The Totality” to help drum up interest in the eclipse… In the coming weeks, “thousands and thousands” of cans are set to hit store shelves, McNulty said — adding they decided to go big because of how rare the event is. Cleveland won’t be in the path of totality again for a long time — not until 2444. “I don’t want to have to wait 420 years to brew the next batch of cans,” he joked. “So we made a very large one this time.
Eclipse eclipse eclipse. It’s all we talk about these days. Except there were lots more stories this week about “young people these days” like this in Canada’s Old and Stale on the effect the reduced interest in partying is having on urban planning:
Many of the businesses at the heart of urban nightlife are taking note. And as Canadians reimagine their relationship with booze, restaurants, bars and clubs are starting to question the future of cities where drinking is no longer the trend, nor the linchpin for socialization… “People rely on booze to make events fun,” Ms. Monaco says. “If you’re not drinking, you need something else to occupy yourself. I like to have a theme and activities.” “Throughout the Americas, cities are hosting museum nights, bookstore nights, bicycle nights”… Toronto and Montreal are considering 24-hour nightlife zones and, despite an overall decline in drinking, some business owners are advocating for 24-hour alcohol licences, saying it would put Canadian cities on par with hubs such as London, Paris and New York.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen. New York, Paris, Saskatoon? Me? When I was a university lad in my twenties in a east coast navy city it went the other way. For a year or so there was a bar that changed its draught beer prices by the day of the week. Friday nights, a 8 ounce glass of generic draught cost 69 cents, ten cents more than on a Thursday. Monday was 29 cents. You can guess why the place closed. And while it’s not quite same – isn’t dynamic pricing – “At Stock Market Bar Night, Buy Low and Drink Up” in the NYT tells the take of price fluctuations within the one night as some London establishments:
The young and the thirsty had come for “Wall Street Wednesdays,” where drink prices fluctuate with demand like a stock market. Attendees queue three-deep at the bar for a “market crash,” when an air horn pierces through conversations and prices plummet. “You need to keep your eyes on it,” said Emily Bjurqvist, a 23-year-old graduate student, as she nodded to TV screens showing price changes. “It’s more active than just a pub. And the prices might be better than a pub nowadays”… They had gotten a Moscow Mule for £8.20, or just over $10. But that wasn’t rock bottom: It dropped to £7 during a crash. Ms. Bjurqvist eventually saw the price climb to £11 ($14). “People like to think that they’ll save more money than they actually do,” she said.
“Nowadays”? Do people really say that? Much more sedately, Liam and Gary had an interesting discussion on Twex about the difference between the actual history of a brewery and the history as presented in advertising. Gary pointed to a newspaper notice from 1941 on Guinness which perhaps contained a wee fib and Liam countered:
Even back then it was being said in adverts that it had been brewed since 1759 – and the same way. It’s hard to write about Irish brewing history when you have to rewrite so much of it first, and when beer writers are *still* stating that erroneous ‘fact’ …
I stuck my note in – as is my wont – and pointed out that the question pointed out the excellent, venerable and ancient tradition of what we in law call “puffery” in relation to brewing and how it has been recognized by courts and tribunals including in your favourite bedtime reading Anheuser-Busch, Incorporated v Molson Canada 2005, 2012 TMOB 112 (CanLII) where the exercise was illustrated:
In my opinion, the Applicant’s argument that the word “certified” does not bear any reference to temperature is not of assistance to its case. Again, the Mark must not be dissected into its component elements. It must be looked at in its entirety. In my view, the word “certified” in the Mark cannot be read separate and apart from the word “cold”. In other words, it can only be seen as qualifying the word “cold”. It is also of no assistance to the Applicant to argue that despite showing a number of compound words beginning with “cold”, the dictionary evidence does not show a compound word for “cold certified”.
The case revolved on the question of whether one brewer’s branding and ads “clearly describe the conductions of production of beer.“ I will leave it to you to absorb the considerations. Speaking on analytical thinking, Jeff published a rather interesting thesis on the effect on inflation on the real value of your good beer purchasing power this week:
We imagine a dollar represents something solid, like the actual price of a good, when in fact it has a lot to do with currency strength and stability. During hyperinflation, people bring wheelbarrows of cash into stores to buy a loaf of bread. The bread’s intrinsic value hasn’t changed, the amount of the currency needed to purchase it has. That illusion has been enhanced by the incredible stability of inflation. Stuff has seemed to be worth about what we expect for so long it has made us believe prices and value were identical. When we see a $12 sixer or a $7 pint, our minds tell us it’s expensive because, thanks to inflation, it deviates from our expectations of what a beer should cost. The price of a six-pack went up about a buck every decade in actual pricing. What was the price of beer in 1994? The nominal price was a fixed and real $3.65. But if you look backwards from 2019, it was $6.32; from 2024 it was $7.65.
Note: National Geographic magazine says “Declaring any city Britain’s best for beer would be ridiculous.” Don’t tell the good people of Copford:
Carys Miles, 40, of Copford, is the owner of a very special jewellery and accessory brand called Craft BEERings. The idea for the business came to her five years ago when she and her husband Pete discovered their shared passion for craft beer. The stunning artwork on the cans of their beverages had started to catch their eyes, so Carys decided to begin upcycling them. She said: “It was a period of time where I needed a creative outlet, so, of course, I cut them up and mounted them on earring fittings like anyone would.
What about Edinburgh? Nope… not if the law has anything to say about it:
Police in Edinburgh have seized a “beer bike” over road safety concerns. Officers stopped the pedal-powered bar on Leith Walk at about 11:20 on Saturday. The vehicles, which allow revellers to sightsee while enjoying an alcoholic beverage, are popular in several European cities. A spokesperson for Police Scotland said the vehicle had been stopped due to road traffic offences but inquiries are ongoing.
Either they are still sifting clues (because that’s what the police do… they sift clues) or somewhere someone like a character from a Rebus novel is beating the crap out of someone else in connections with these arrests. Likely in the woods. If you ever find yourself in a Rebus novel and you are told by the novelist to go into the woods… just don’t. OK? Don’t.
There was another interesting juxaposition this week that is also worth noting. On Monday, Boak and Bailey wrote about what they framed as “the evolutionary advantage” of booze based on their considering William Golding’s 1955 novel The Inheritors, a book about early human history that I am pretty sure I read about four decades ago:
They’re drinking some form of mead from beakers – which the Neandarthals, who don’t even have the simple technology of cups, conceive of as round stones. This orgy of drunkenness continues for several pages until the humans drift off to their caves, or sneak off to shag in the woods. It’s easy to imagine Golding making observations, and taking notes, in the pubs of Salisbury on Saturday night. He was also an alcoholic and had plenty of personal experience of how it felt to binge yourself silly…
After reviewing some review and academic considerations of the novel, they conclude:
We think this can be interpreted to mean that societies which drink together become stronger overall, as a unit, and so gain a competitive advantage over other ‘tribes’. From our own perspective, as generally well-behaved, rather uptight 20th century specimens, there’s something in this. When we’re tipsy with friends and relatives, we express our feelings more freely. It helps us resolve conflicts and strengthen connections.
I thought about this and the bias involved by framing this as advantage when I read ATJ‘s latest Substack offering* :
I hear an American male voice in another part of the bar. ‘Nuremberg is my kind of place, I went to university here.’ He is sitting at a table with another man. ‘I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Franconia.’ Meanwhile, I also spy at the opposite end of the bar at which I am sitting on a stool a man with a rock lion’s mane of thick hair. He is perched on an identical stool to mine. His glass is empty and I hear him order another beer. ‘Helles, bitte,’ he growls… I have a sense of belonging with regular visits to my local pub, but when you begin travelling and become a kind of nomad it can be possible to carry this sense of belonging along and when walking into a new pub, as I did on this benign evening, maybe the welcome and the mood handed out a temporary passport of belonging. We may drink in the company of strangers and, while looking for the lavatory, half think of the tale of the Minotaur in its maze and wish for a ball of thread, but if you know pubs you will belong.
For me, there is a sort of deep sense of “same as it ever was” in the two considerations. But not sure whether this speaks to advantage or just survival.** Also reminds me all a bit of the movie Shirley Valentine, too. Something sometimes to escape.
Speaking of Neanderthals as Ray’s book did- and perhaps even doing Neanderthals a disservice in doing so – David Jesudason published an exposé of an unnamed pub’s terrible business practices on his newsletter, Episodes of my Pub Life. It’s based on a “20+ interviews, numerous edits and investigative work” as well as a refusal from a publication based on legal concerns that naming names could lead to ramifications:***
One source claimed that they worked with a manager who boasted about employing a homeless man to clear glasses in exchange for inedible food and say they reported this manager to the management at the time. “The manager bragged to me about it,” they said. “I had to walk away. It made me feel physically sick.” The toxicity allegedly also extends to accusations of misogyny, racism and ableism. One source alleges that she was told she was turned down for a promotion because it was “a man’s job” and she also says that workplace adjustments for her disability were removed leading her to go on sick leave.
Arseholes. I’d like to hope the rumour mill will take care of this anonymity thing but… no need to worry about that as it appears the word is out. Most telling comments from David: “4,000 people have read this article in five days… And all the publications that told me this story wouldn’t have wide appeal can fuck off“! Apparently beer publications don’t know what to do when they encounter a journalist.
Fight! Fight the power. And finally, Katie Mather wrote a lovely story for Pellicle this week about a trip she and her man Tom took after the the loss of their dream pub, Corto. They went apple picking and found some healing:
For three years Tom and I had worked late hours, until suddenly, we didn’t. On the Nightingale farm, we had free reign of our surrounding patch of woodland, and yet every night we were in bed by 8pm. There is nothing on earth like the exhaustion of stress. We were drunk on it, stumbling around, squinting in the daylight. Waking up in the middle of an orchard is bliss. There’s no other word for it. In the very early hours, tawny owls make their final calls before their nocturnal bedtime, and as the night is diluted into dawn the countryside begins to wake. I scan through my messages even though it’s 5am, and check in with how I feel. I am sad, it feels heavy in my limbs, but I’m looking forward to the day ahead. Something I’ve not felt in a long time.
Something we all need, looking forward to the day. Except maybe eclipse day around here. That’s going to be weird. Annnndddd… again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and 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 own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (pus one to 126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up one too at 913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (down one to 4,464) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (165), with sorta 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. Fear not! While some apps perform better than other we can always check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts 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 promises to be back next Monday. 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. 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 few podcasts… but some may 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again according to Matty C.
*Word of which I received via Twex with the startling teaser “It’s always Nuremberg in my head” which is starting to me given the whole, you know, legal aspect of the toddlin’ town’s history.
**Sorta something like this: “It’s not just a beverage; it’s a part of our social fabric that brings people together.” Really?
***As a lawyer, I often think this concern is often a bit overstated but likely not in this case. And we remember the poor planning when GBH got the legal advice after the fact and the subsequent litany of features on back of nowhere brewers under the heading “Why? It matters???”