Let’s be clear. By “empty feeling” I mean not bloated from either last weekend‘s turkey dinners and pumpkin pie or those mini Crispie Crunch bars yet to come. October is a bit of feed fest around these parts. It’s the cold turn, I suppose. Took me a while after we moved to this border city to gather from upstate NY media that in the United States their holiday season lasts from their Thanksgiving in late November through to New Year’s Day. Not us. We have two separate sessions. October is the time of harvest for us, first the family one… then the freaky one. Holiday season is still a couple of months off. It’s still autumn.
Last Sunday, on a walk I saw a Golden-crowned Kinglet hover. I had no idea that these tiny olive coloured birds hovered, pausing just for a moment before perching as it flit here and there through the autumn afternood. Staring up through the turning leaves, it was a enchanting few minutes until a red tail hawk came silently coasting through the stand of trees, scattering and silencing everything in view. I am not sure that deeply fascination with the sheer wonderfulness of existence was similarly felt by Stan last week when he visited the GABF:
Not many hours later, Daria and I were at the Great American Beer Festival. We walked by the wrestling, but did not stop. We never saw the bull riding. If you were looking for a specific brewery, the layout was at times confusing. But I liked that the “Fright” area was dimly (very dimly) lit, that the National Black Brewers Association area was much more prominently placed than last year, and the proximity of “Meet the Brewer” to Homebrew Headquarters. So I thought, maybe they should rebrand the event as the Great American Beer Experience.
Oh, that Stan and his dry sense of humo(u)r. There has been one thing that benefitted from being called a capital “E” experience and that ended fifty-five years ago. Reviews? Jacob Berg pointed out there were 326 medals awarded and “…four states (California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington) won 176 of them, which is probably bad for the beer industry overall.” Probably. Jon A noticed the “beers were brewed by the brewers who were fired by @tilray this year.” They restrict cameras, halt beer service early and there were plenty of tickets left unsold. Some were not impressed but Andy Crouch wrote:
The 2024 iteration of the @GABF is a disorienting, immersive experience where beer is not the central draw but a companion. The layout is a baffling maze, with each turn offering something new or odd, including pitch darkness. Saw lots of smiling and engaged attendees.
There’s that word again. Is BrewDog still an experience? I think they were going for “experience” for a while there. Maybe not so much now. BrewDog’s big botched batch has made news:
Scottish beer powerhouse Brewdog has had to ditch an eye-watering amount of beer, reportedly worth millions of pounds, due to contamination issues. At their renowned brewing facility in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, batches of their celebrated Punk IPA were deemed unsellable following a “major quality incident” that plagued the production line. Chris Fielden, Brewdogs Chief Supply Chain Officer, expressed his exasperation over the mishap involving “sour beer” in a scathing email blasted across the company, indicating that the significant waste came after employees consistently failed to meet standard cleanliness requirements.
Matthew C himself noted: “Find it funny that everyone is having a good lol about the Br*wdog infected beer. Me? I’m having a good lol that they still haven’t filed their accounts, which are now four months overdue.” All very weird. These are strange times. Update: “…pre-tax losses soared to £59m, up from £25m in 2022…” Yikes.
Yet there are still innovations. Like thinopyrum intermedium. Or as it is somehow trademarked in the US, Kernza. It’s another sustainable grain, like Fonio, that is starting to work its way into the brewing lexiscon. Nebraska Public Media has the story:
The Kernza kernel is much smaller than a barley or wheat kernel, he added, kind of elongated and skinny. Almost flat.” Those differences did pose a few challenges. Thompson explained the Kernza slipped right through his mill when he tried to crush the kernels to expose the starch that’s necessary for brewing. In the end, Thompson adjusted to a different brewing technique that used a mix of milled and unmilled Kernza and the experiment worked. That was good news for Thomson but also for Kernza advocates who want the grain to succeed and see in its small seeds potentially huge changes to modern agriculture.
At the other end in the life a beer, the tap end perhaps, is the story told over at London Beer City where Will Hawkes shared the prior qualifications of Mr. Pat Ahern, publican of the Downham Tavern in the 1970s:
Pat and Sheila, an East London girl, came to the Tavern having run the New Gog, a pub in the Royal Docks north of the River. Pat, a barman at the pub, took over when the previous licensee committed suicide. One incident in 1963, when a young man, George Head, was “called out” onto the street and shot in an apparent gangland hit, illustrates what sort of place it was. Pat put a tourniquet on the wounded man’s legs and drove him to hospital. “That was a really rough house,” says Sue. Pat, who came to Britain at the age of 19, hadn’t wanted to work in a pub – the long hours weren’t conducive to family life – so he took a job at Ford’s huge Dagenham plant. A serious injury in which he fell down a pit and fractured his skull left him incapacitated for nine months, though, and the family was soon in desperate need of cash.
Staying in that era, Ron reminds us that these weren’t the only strange times. In his series of beer in the UK of the 1970s, he has been working through his records of the breweries now long gone and shared this:
One of the largest independent brewers, Greenall Whitley wasn’t that far behind Scottish & Newcastle in terms of tied houses. Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire and North Wales were lucky enough to be home to their tied pubs. I never cared for their beers, even though they were often available in cask form. It was also annoying the good brewers the bastards took over and closed. The Warrington brewery closed when Greenalls decided to get out of brewing and become a pub chain. Not a brewery I miss.
Note: speaking of autumn,* the Beer Ladies Podcast is back for another session with their “what I did on summer vacation” edition. Don’t miss it. definitely better than Greenalls.
The Morning Advertiser succinctly reports on the effectiveness of the UK’s 2023 Alcohol Duty Review which saw taxes lowered for lower strength beers:
Alcohol Duty Review has seen 100m alcohol units removed from the market and a “boom” in new lower-strength products, the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) has said… The BBPA also revealed 1.3 – 3.4% strength drinks have leapt from less than 1% of beer sales in 2022 to now more than 7%, while the no and low alcohol beer category has also seen rapid growth, accelerating to 2% of the overall market in 2024. Moreover, some 90% of pubs now serve at least one no and low alcohol beer…
I like that 100m units stat. You rarely find absolute numbers in these matters, just change percentage. Speaking of change, you can still have fun drinking beer in Prague but not that sort of fun… not that not no more:
Prague council deputy mayor Zdenek Hrib confirmed that from hereon in “it will not be possible to have guided tours between 10pm and 6am”. According to reports via the national press, the city’s councillors have banned night-time pub crawls organised by travel agencies because the city would prefer to target “more cultured” tourists rather than British stag parties. Speaking about the decision to reporters on Monday, another deputy mayor for Prague city hall Jiri Pospisil revealed that the council was “seeking a more cultured, wealthier tourist” and “not one who comes for a short time only to get drunk”.
Cultured. So is it wine time? Is that what it means? Sure. First up, Pellicle published a piece by Anaïs Lecoq that unpacks the relationship between the wines of Champagne and the local working families who get the wine to the shelf:
…a more familiar, popular and approachable way of drinking champagne does exist, and advertisers have yet to realise it. If they truly want to convey something other than luxury, they could start by getting rid of that fancy crystal flute, and replace it with a blida. “Blida is the epitome of working class champagne,” Maxime tells me, and I couldn’t agree more. Originally made in Reims, this small, 70ml glass was sent to the town of Blida, Algeria, for serving mint tea. After Algeria’s war for independence in 1962, the market collapsed and manufacturers found another use for the glass—champagne.
I like that. Ditch the snobbery. Next up, Simon J Woolf of The Morning Claret wrote about Chateau Musar of Lebanon:
Musar remains a great demonstration of how to scale up production without compromising ethics and quality, while managing to stay fairly priced – especially in the UK, where it hovers around the mid-£30s on release. For a wine released on its seventh birthday, that’s value. It has mercifully not been ruined by speculation and cultism. We should be forever thankful that Parker only gave the 1995 82 points.
Musar is a maker I leap to which I have send my money when I have the rare occassion to find a bottle over here. Ever since Tom Cannavan helped me direct my folk to a bottle from the 1990s located in Edinburgh where they were visiting the fam. Quebec’s SAQ had their red Musar Jeune a year ago. Christmas dinners have often had a Musar on the table where I live. Again, less of the snobbery even with the nerditry.
Enough of that. Back to beer for our final thoughts. Joe Stange has writting himself a long piece on American IPA, long enough that you get the sense that it’s properly done. You know, not like the other stuff on a subject like this. Just look:
“I still think that’s a necessary thing in these beers,” says Alexandra Nowell, former head brewer at Three Weavers in Los Angeles, now working toward setting up a new brewery, Mellotone Beer Project, in Cincinnati. “But we’re talking really light—C-15, light-grade crystal that can still provide a little bit more complexity to the beer itself. … I think the concept of American IPA has drifted into a more modern place.” Caramel malt has become uncool among IPA brewers today. Many avoid it altogether, while others have reduced, lightened, and fine-tuned it—essentially, they’ve learned how to use it with finesse.
And only one “passion” in the whole piece. And it’s ahead of “-ate” and in a quote. So that’s good.
That’s it. A short one this week. For more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan now again every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.
*We’re still speaking of autumn, right? I’m only covering the tomatoes just in case. Still weeks of some sorta warm, right?