November 2024 – A Good Beer Blog

November’s End Brings Me A Fascinating Bout With A Delightful Chest Cold Leading To Some Particularly Phlegmatic Beery News Notes

My top tipple of the last ten days, in case you were wondering, has been Buckley’s Original Mixture. AKA Buck Bucks. It features no actual medicine but does contain pine needle extract, Balsam sap, camphor and smelling salts. A double Makers Mark just about cuts the stuff. So I’ll be the gent in the corner reeking of coniferous forest as you read these notes this week which might not take all that long, given my residency on the sofa.

Good timing as it turns out as down south it’s Thanksgiving, the day that we up here in Canada call “Wrong Thanksgiving” but apparently it serves the social purpose of annually bringing steaming hot deep dishings of political misgivings and animosity directly to the family table just a few weeks after their fixed election date. Today, in honour of all that, we celebrate the 64th anniversary of the best TV ad for one of my favourite old school beers, Utica Club and it’s confirmation that they will need a lot to get through this. Viva Utica Club! Viva!!

What else is happening? Big news out of Britain is the continued demise of tradition. Is it the new old Labour effect? Who knows? But the fact is that Fuller’s is axing Lancer at the same time as Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Co. is discontinuing every cask ale your great uncles ever loved. We get Bombardier here. Haven’t had one in over a decade. Mr. Beeson offers stark but reasonable advice:

Lets not mourn for brands that had already sunk into total irrelevance and put our time and energy into protecting cask brewers of the future…

Harsh? Hmm. My problem is that the loss of brands seems distinct from the loss of fluids. Does anyone bother that much anymore with recipes reformulations under and old label? Is it the beer or the branding we miss? And… and… has the combination of health concerns, price and disappearing brands left you in a quandry? Has it driven you to what The Times describes as “Zebra-striping“?

…drinking trends are moving away from the raucous, post-pandemic. Younger customers are demanding more low or non-alcoholic drinks. In 2016, 0.5 per cent of beer sales were alcohol-free varieties; this has risen to two per cent. But there is still room for significant growth, with the popularity of low or zero-alcohol beer in Britain well behind countries on the Continent… For those not willing to forgo alcohol altogether, “zebra striping” or “zebra-ing”, is gaining popularity — a trend for alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to mitigate the effects of a hangover the following day.

Make sense… except for, you know, water. Who hasn’t double fisted the pinto of water with the pint of ale? Is this really a new thing needing a new name? Or away to sell thick expensive soda pop called NA beers? Man, I am grumpy this week. I need to nicen up.

To that end, a special report from our special assignments correspondence Maureen Ogle who drew my attention to the breaking news that drinking a lot of alcohol over and over again over many day of one’s life is not at all good. Here’s a clip from the NYTs [Ed.: “roll the clip“]:

The National Alcohol Survey series, which collects data from the general population, defines high-intensity drinking as the consumption of at least 8 drinks in a row by anyone, male or female, over the previous 12 months. The survey’s latest analysis, which does not include data beyond the year 2020, also showed a decline in high-intensity drinking among young adults overall. But its frequency among men ages 30 and older and women ages 18 to 64 has increased, said Camillia Lui, a scientist at the Alcohol Research Group who crunched the data.

While the story also says that heavy drinking is not limited to the holiday season; nor is it mainly the pastime of college students we turned to Maureen for her thoughts on the matter:

Fucking morons. Is drinking a shit load of booze in two hours a dumb idea? Yes. Even dumber? Treating it as a shiny new danger.

[Ed.: “After the break, sports.“]

Next, Gary has been writing up a storm with an interesting focus recently on mid-1900s US Bock Beer. Here is part 1 and here is part 2 with a passing mention in this post about the regional brewery owner, the Atlantic Company. I like how this last post again confirms the fibbery in the old saw that the birth of US microbrewing was a response to a decades long wasteland of thin macro lagers. There was plenty of variety in US brewing into the 1970s and with personal or inherited memory of the micro pioneers even if, as Tremblay and Tremblay have shown, corporate mergers and leading brand advertising were starting to have great effect by that point.

David J. has news for you. He was the host of the 2024 British Guild of Beer Writers awards gala and general all around shindig held on Wednesday evening. He dressed up and everything. And I hear he had been studying the style of noted beer person Ricky Gervais. Expect social media to be replete with sorry headed tales of hungover beer writers throughout this Thursday after celebrating Blackout Wednesday in their own way. The big winner for the year was Ruvani de Silva who won “The Michael Jackson Award for Beer Writer of the Year” for 2024. Congratulations.

And Stan has his Hop Queries (edition 8.07 for you numerologists) out and he shared this tidbit about arguments in favour of beer as health fluid based on the presences of hops:

…one thing that does not change is that even hop-forward beers contain only four to five milligrams of xanthohumol. The amount of alcohol a drinker would need to consume to get the benefits would more than offset those benefits. But what about non-alcoholic beer? There is a catch. “The paradox regarding alcohol is a lot of the healthy ingredients in beer are more easily absorbed in the presence of alcohol,” said Zugravu Corina-Aurelia, a physician and researcher at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest.

Zing!!!* To ensure equal time, I was checking out the malting barley news and found this interesting nugget of news out of Manitoba:

Advances in malt barley genetics tend to move slower than they do with other commodities. Breeding companies have traditionally been cautious with new offerings and maltsters prefer older, proven genetics. One of the 2025-26 list’s recommended varieties, CDC Copeland, was registered before the turn of the millennium. Watts described the dilemma in 2022. “It’s been difficult to get uptake of new varieties over the years by the malting and brewing industry, partly because we’ve had very successful varieties like AC Metcalfe and CDC Copeland,” he said during a field day near Wawanesa. That same field day highlighted a new variety, AAC Prairie, which was also noted by the centre as a developing variety for the brewing market. Industry has noted less maltster reticence around newcomer varieties in recent years.

Please flood the comments with your first hand experinces of maltster reticence – which is my new favourite brewing related term.

In another sign of US craft’s contraction, according to Insights Weekly Digest, the Brewers Association has announced another round of cuts and a reorg with Pres. Bob Pease retiring, longtime senior employee Paul Gatza leaving and Dr.J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham moving away from her position as Director of Social Impact despite these being the times we live in.

John Clark posted some excellent photos of a pub, Manchester’s Locomotive from 1990. I was immediately struck by the minimal advertising tat. Looks like an NHL game from before the sideboards got plastered with offers from banks and doughnut makers.

Pellicle‘s piece this week was on cider and another solution to the question of why people are drinking less of the stuff people need to sell:

“Bottles are great at getting fine cider into the hands of cider and wine drinkers,” Little Pomona’s cidermaker James Forbes tells me. “But in the world of beer, draught dispense is king, and we wanted to have something to offer tap rooms and craft beer bars that would suit them better.” Keg-conditioned cider is the most compelling attempt to date to bring the two faces of cider into one cohesive expression. It offers the same level of care, quality and respect for its ingredient as a bottle that might grace a home dinner table, but served in a format that nestles comfortably into cider’s more familiar British surroundings of the pub.

I am not sure I would ever say “thank you, thank you, Baby Jesus… there’s keg cider here” to myself but at the same time I probably wouldn’t ask if the cider was keg or cask if it was tasty. If the technology allows for a more stable yet little compromised drink, why not? That being said, it was warming to see even Matty C himself, especially pre-hungover, chaffe at the word “aspirational” used as it was.

Mr. Trump has threated all and sundry with tariffs to solve the problem of inflation in the US economy. Helpfully, some clever people have indicated how this will cause inflation in the US economy with a focus on Mexico’s Constellation brands:

The stock STZ dropped 3.3% to close Tuesday at $233.60. It inched upward in premarket trades Wednesday. “We estimate Constellation would need a 12% beer price increase to fully offset a 25% increase in beer [costs of goods sold], i.e. keep gross profit dollars flat,” Kirk wrote in a note to clients. He pointed out, however, that three factor merited consideration. First, the last time Trump proposed tariffs on Mexico in 2019, they never actually happened…

We may not need to review the other factors. Still, it’s worth noting that (i) not all imports in beer are finished products and (ii) a lot of US craft beer is made up on a lot of Canadian malt barley. Count your pennies.

Proof that both craft brewing and Christianity are large raft concepts, Forbes has an article this week on a brewery out of Illinois that brands its beers based on events and individuals in the Catholic faith:

The Cristeros, they learned, were a group of Mexicans who stood up against government tyranny against the Catholic Church in the 1920s. “The government was really suppressing the Catholic Church, shutting down churches, executing priests and exiling bishops,” Trevor says. “The people organically rose up, and they brought the government to a standstill”… and their third release is Dies Irae, which means “day of wrath” in Latin, and it is an imperial stout, which references the final judgment. “Not to be morbid, but that beer gets to what is the purpose of life”…

Sounds cheery. Finally and finishing perhaps where we began, as we contemplate the some thoughts from Frederick Douglass from 1894 contemplating another reactionary shift in political times, as quoted by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT last weekend:

Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the luster of the American name and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop.

The pendelum is swinging. I could say just don’t let it hit you but perhaps it would be good if you could give it a good hard nudge as it passes by. Because it would be another 70 years until the US Civil Rights Act and there’s no need to wait that long this time.**

Well, that’s it for now. Looming issues about. Is that the theme? If you are looking for alternatives, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (never ever) 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 out there with the all 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 they are revving up for a new year. 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 the DaftAboutCraft 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. Such is life.

*Wasn’t xanthohumol an Olivia Newton John song?
**Tariffs set at 25%? Lordy. Here comes the 61 cent Canadian dollar. But… we’ve been there before. Did you know much of US craft beer uses Canadian malt? I mentioned that already? Fine. Whatever.

The Exciting Entrancing And Almost Festive Beery News Notes For A Merry Month From Yuletide 2024

Fine. Almost festive. Almost. But this is when the slide starts to feel greased. Five weeks to Boxing Day. Whoooo! The Boxing Day carols shall ring out loud around the Boxing Day leftover casserole once again!! The most wonderful time of the year? You bet. Who knows where we’ll all be this time next year so best to Yule it up right this time like these ladies on a tasting tour of Spain, back in 1959.* Which reminds me… I often wonder what beer writers do, you know, to get the happies when they are not up to that sort of no good on junkets, out and about pub crawling or at the front door in their slippers signing off on couriered packages of samples. David J shared a bit of his reality when he posted about a trip to Fowey, Cornwall and a pub called The Lugger:

I feel this same urge to relocate to Fowey whenever I visit and it’s because of the sea. And the Lugger. But first, the sea, the sea. Well, it’s not quite the sea but the mouth of the River Fowey and it’s sheltered, calm and very swimmable. I braved the tide and swam on Saturday. 15C water; 14C air, according to my swimming diary – I swim at least once a week in an unheated lido… It was choppy enough for me to get the fear, though, which is half the ‘fun’, especially if one of your vices is adrenaline. The river eventually was predictable and a back and forth from beach to buoy was followed by a pint at the Lugger, served by Christian Hanks, custodian of this Cornish pub. Often people think winter swimming is odd, but Christian is different and he takes his eight-year-old son.

Be odd. That’s what I say. With a h/t to Katie, if you think the political news is grim where you are, think of the life of an academic in China turning to pubs as last venues for free expression and folk trying to work on their own odd:

“I was completely stunned when he mentioned violence so bluntly,” said the 32-year-old, who was born and raised in China. “In China, you just can’t talk about the nature of a country so openly.” In recent months, “academic pubs” hosting free lectures by Chinese scholars from universities worldwide have sprung up in China’s major cities – such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou – offering a rare open space for free-flowing intellectual conversation in a country where the public sphere is shrinking as censorship tightens. These alcohol-with-academics sessions delve into a range of topics in the humanities and social sciences. They include issues deemed politically sensitive and often censored online, such as feminism, but also more innocuous subjects like social anxiety and cats in ancient Chinese paintings.

Excellent. Except for the cats bit. I have issues with cats. Well, one cat. Yah, you! I am having other issues, too. Remember when craft beer culture was fun and was worth making fun of? Having a bit of an issue with that. How to mock something that people are ditching faster than their Twex accounts? Jeff noted this in the context of big beer business cutting their craft losses:

I noticed a startling stat in a recent Beer Business Daily story describing how in one market the craft segment accounts for 41% of SKUs, but just 5% of gross profits. That’s unsustainable for retailers and large breweries. It’s different for small breweries, who make and sell beer in a specialty marketplace of local vendors. But it’s just too complex and expensive for big breweries to compete in such a market unless it represents substantial volume. Craft hasn’t grown as a share of the market in a decade, though, and big breweries now conclude it’s just not with the effort. And reasonably so.

See what’s said in there? While it hit peak almost a decade ago, at least in this unnamed US market craft has not grown as a share in a decade and accounts for 5% of the gross.** So much for 20% by 2020. That was never going to be any reality but is Plan B really stagnation at 5%? Really? Hmm… I suppose getting ditched is better than being a zombie brand like Stone:

The brewery’s stated focus is now on its successful launch of Delicious IPA multipacks and its Mexican salt and lime lager Buenaveza, a long way from the days of Arrogant Bastard IPA, which helped Stone make its mark in the burgeoning craft market in 1997.

Brrr… that’s cold. But, still, there’s a certain justice in that one. And note the interesting note at the end of this story about management at Constellation taking a slice while there’s still a slice to be taken:

The company has also trimmed its annual enterprise net sales growth forecast to between 4% and 6%, compared with 6% to 7% previously estimated, as retailers reduce stocking wine and spirits and consumers pare back spending on pricier alcoholic beverages. A large cloud looming over the company is the threat of import tariffs when Donald Trump becomes US President after 20 January.

Are you finding yourself jockeying for position in the coming tariff-based international reality, too? Not The Beer Nut who posted thoughts international at the end of last week and came up with a description of Allagash White that nails it:

What I liked most was the smoothness: it really slips back silkily in a way that encourages serial quaffing. There are no sharp edges; none of the spikes of coriander spice or citric zest that add character to its Belgian counterparts. There’s a pleasant element of candied lemon in the flavour but I got little complexity beyond that. It’s not a beer for complexity, though, being more about the feels than the taste. I understand the attraction of something which places few demands on your attention and offers no challenges to your palate. Creating that without turning out something bland is an impressive feat.

Boom. The best writing indicates the general through the examination of the particular. Boak and Bailey did just that exactly one moment after last week’s deadline*** with an examination of the life and death of one estate pub in Bristol, The Mayors Arms:

In its most recent guise as Sousta, a “Mediterranean restaurant and bar”, it intrigued us because it never seemed to have any customers. Ever. Its location, at the bottom end of a large council estate, on the river embankment, offers little passing trade. There are no other shops or hospitality outlets nearby. In fact, the only business that could really work here is a neighbourhood pub in a working class area where people drink plenty of beer.

Related news from India on the many many reasons for the failure of BrewDog to take hold there:

The BrewDog bar in Bandra West, a suburb that is home to many Bollywood stars and is known for its liberal nightlife, as well as its bar in the office district of Lower Parel, have been closed since the summer. The company’s logos have also been taken down from the locked-up properties, according to checks by the Financial Times. BrewDog now has only two bars open in India, having first set up there in 2021… The closures are also a setback to BrewDog’s plans for overseas expansion. Only last year, it announced plans to open 100 bars in India over the next decade. Chturvedi said the Mumbai closures were only a blip in BrewDog’s India plans.

Yet, they are opening their first Northern Irish pub. In a train station. To serve the travelling pubilc. Somewhat related are the thoughts in this VinePair emailed quote-fest on what makes a craft brewery’s taproom a crappy experience. This one, however, made me wonder if they’d ever been to Gritty’s:

“If a brewpub is in a touristy spot, chances are that the management knows there are different customers every day. There’s less motivation to make delicious beer if you’re not caring about enticing regular customers.”

I thought the point was attracting a regular clientel, like folk who visit often even if not everyday. Being hospitable and all. Speaking of which, how do you feel about price surges in pubs?

A pub chain has sparked fury over its decision to charge punters 1.80 extra for beers on match days. Greene King has been attacked for the “unacceptable” move with punters shelving out a staggering £8 rather than the usual £6.20 per pint at some of its outlets. The Torch pub in Wembley, London, was hit with the 29% increase after supporters paid big prices for their favourite pint to watch England’s match against Ireland.

How do I feel? How’d they like the idea of me packing a wee flask in me pocket? Why not just charge a modest entry fee for events, like when a “good” band is playing?

Note: I will miss the little red biplane.

And in Pellicle, Pete Brown provides us with a primer on malt barley along with his thoughts on the weather… that is, when he isn’t off wandering:

I love old factories like this. As I left the train just a few yards away, the complex reminded me, as maltings always do, of some fantastical half-imagined vision from a Ridley Scott film. There’s a red-brick monolith several storeys high with no windows in its main wall. White towers dwarf what, in their own right, are tall and sometimes fat corrugated iron cylinders, with gantries running up and down and round their perimeters. Something that looks like a watchtower from a World War II Prisoner of War camp. I imagine that if the day ever comes when it’s no longer needed as a maltings, the complex could be used as the location for a climactic gun battle before exploding in a fireball as the hero makes it out just in time.

What was that about? Anyway, in health news, some sucks to suck news from the eggheads recently:

According to new research presented at The Liver Meeting, held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, beer drinkers tend to have lower-quality diets, engage in less physical activity, and are more likely to smoke cigarettes compared to those who consume wine, liquor, or a combination of alcoholic beverages… Beer-only drinkers, who were more likely to be male, younger, smokers, and low income, also reported the highest total daily caloric intake, adjusting for body weight, and the lowest level of physical activity. Previous studies have found that dietary quality declines with increasing alcohol consumption of any type, but little has been reported on the influence of specific alcoholic beverage type.

Feel like taking up baseless objections? Fill your boots. Just don’t blame me. I’m just the guy doing the cutting and pasting. Here’s the study. Read it yourself.

Performing one last 180 degree switcheroo while still speaking of the healthy stuff… do you ever wonder why your olive oil has exploded in price? The Times had a good explanation this week:

The main reason for the price hike, simply, is the weather… Europe produces 67 per cent of the world’s olive oil; the majority comes from Spain, followed by Italy, then Greece. Olive trees thrive under a hot Mediterranean sun, but if the heatwaves come too early, in spring, when the trees are still flowering, crops can be damaged. This, coupled with severe droughts for two years running in Spain, has had a dire effect. Global production of olive oil tanked in 2023, dropping from 3.39 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 2.28 million tonnes in 2023-24… An opposite problem, flooding, also affects harvests, as olive trees don’t like wet feet, and too much water promotes disease…

I don’t like wet feet either. Just sharing. Thought you’d like to know. And one final note as we are rooting for a speedy recovery for Jessica after she posted some tough news about a recent routine procedure.

There. That’s enough for this week. But if you need more, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (he’s queuing one up right now) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) 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 out there with the all 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 they are revving up for a new year. 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.

*From the excellent Bluesky postings of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE): “British tourists tasting Cava on the Costa Brava, Spain, 1959. Photo by Oriol Maspons (Spain 1928—2013).“
**Jeff says “gross profits” but as profit is a net concept I understand this to mean gross revenue.
***In their monthly newsletter, for the double, they also shared this wonderful pub scene from a Friday night in Bristol: “The Green Man, a corner pub on a quiet residential street, was a particular highlight this time. There was a raffle underway and just about enough space to get a drink and find a seat. Someone won a jar of pickled onions. The booby prize was a ‘mystery shot’. There was a baby at the bar eating raffle tickets and Nacho Libre was playing silently on the TV.”

Your Weekly Beery News Updates For This Mid-November Of 2024

What a boring heading. “Couldn’t you come up with anything clever?” I hear you. Nope. All my wit, such as it is, has drained away with the recent tide of events* and I am still waiting for a top up. Retired Martin, as he often does, gave us some relief this week with a lovely photo essay of countryside walk to a village pub:

In truth, I’d no idea where Great Cransley was, only 45 minutes walk from Kettering station and Wickstead Park, a walk that rewards you with the golden stone of east Northants. A smart looking village of 305 souls whose nearest What Pub entry while the Three Cranes was closed was the (keg) Broughton WMC… and you get 4pm opening here, though as is always the way the door was actually open while I stood patiently waiting for the clock to tick.

Good news, too, for the beer book buyer as Dr Christina Wade has announced the publication of her latest:

I’m delighted to announce after seven years of research and writing FILTHY QUEENS: A HISTORY OF BEER IN IRELAND is here! Published with Nine Bean Rows, it is available for preorder now… we look at the history of beer alongside some of the biggest events in the story of Ireland. You’ll find an 18th-century courtesan who had a wicked streak of beer snobbery and early medieval monks who wrote beer reviews so terrible, any Untappd fan would feel right at home.

Yikes! A bit of harshing on the craft nerdiratti. Get your copy here. And Jeff posted an interesting essay on the effect of history’s tide on the distinction between Bavarian and Czech lager:

In a remarkable article in the New York Times immediately following the fall of Communism, reporter Steven Greenhouse identified 2,000 workers at Pilsner Urquell, a brewery roughly the size that Sierra Nevada is today. Among this giant workforce, “the advent of capitalism” will, he wrote, “probably mean tougher management, less slacking off and perhaps some layoffs, especially among the 400 administrative workers who spend much of their time doing paperwork for Prague’s central planners.” It’s hard to fathom what four hundred administrative workers would spend their days doing, though “slacking off” would seem to have been a central activity if for no other reason than there was no work to do.

I worked in Poland as an ESL teacher not long after the fall of Communism there and the drunk principal in the nearby elementary school was certainly proof enough to convince me of Jeff’s main argument – that there was little initiative or innovation under the Soviet system. Yet… I wonder if that is the whole story. Are there cultural differences beyond that between the German and Czech experience? Does the Austrio-Hungarian empire have any lingering effects?** And if there had been no Soviet era locking time in amber… would there still be any Pilsner Urquell as we know it?

Stan shared the news of the closure of the Chippewa Falls brewing facilities of Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co., one of America’s oldest breweries founded in 1867, and the consolidation of operations at another nearby plant owned by parent company Molson Coors with some hard news for those employed there:

The closings will result in the loss of a total of 90 jobs – 34 in Milwaukee atnd 56 in Chippewa Falls – according to notices filed by Molson Coors on Thursday with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. The layoffs at both facilities are expected to begin on Jan. 17. The Milwaukee brewery layoffs include 33 hourly employees and one salaried employee. The Chippewa Falls plant layoffs include 54 hourly employees and two salaried employees. Hourly workers at both plants are represented by local Teamsters chapters.

So… which brewery at this point is more authentic to its own roots? Pilsner Urquell or Leinenkugel? And, to ask Marx’s question, which system alienated the workers from its product, capitalism or collectivity?

Speaking of capitalism, in his most recent edition of London Beer City, Will Hawkes shared a conversation with Sam McMeekin of craft brewers Gipsy Hill on their decision to be acquired:

With the London brewing scene getting progressively smaller, it makes sense to be as big as possible, even for a company that, as Sam puts it, is “essentially debt-free.” “In theory, we could have refinanced all of our equipment, taken on a load of debt and struggled on,” he adds. “But I don’t have [enough] faith in the market [that that would be] a success.” Hence the deal with Sunrise Alliance Beverages, a group which grew out of St Peter’s Brewery in Suffolk and which now takes in Wild Beer, Curious Brewing and Portobello, the latter of which was added last month. It’s more complex than a simple takeover, Sam says: he describes it as a “partial MBO” (Management Buyout), in which Sunrise has bought all the shares but Sam still retains his chunk, “rolled into” the new company.

There is a lot of heavy lifting (parenthetically or not) in that sentence “I don’t have [enough] faith in the market [that that would be] a success.” Picking up that story and hot on the heels of recent reports of SIBA moving to adopt “independent” and ditch “craft” in the ongoing saga of the key adjective tussle (KAT), Glynn Davis applies the new approved verbage to report… things are not going well:

My own involvement with Bohem Brewery has shown that independent breweries without a decent pub estate to sell their beer through will face ongoing pressures, and sadly, there will be more failures. It’s why I sold out at a painful 80% loss. Along with many other craft breweries, Bohem has produced some excellent beer, but as an investment, these businesses can leave a sour taste in the mouth.

And building a pub estate may well require that “faith in the market” that might not necessarily be reasonable. Hmm. Not unrelatedly, Liam guided me to a news item on another approach being taken in Ireland where a number of pub owners showed some faith combined with another now familiar zing:

It is thought to be the first time that a group of Irish publicans have come together to launch their own brewing operation… The new brewery launches into a challenging market, dominated by a small number of large established brewers and brands. It also does so at a time when the cost of living remains a difficulty for many potential customers and when more drinkers are moving away from alcohol to zero-alcohol products. “I think it is a very good idea. It is probably very timely because the craft beer phase has kind of come and gone and the bottle beer and so on,” said Damian O’Reilly, lecturer in retail and services management in TU Dublin.

Phase. You were just going through a phase. You know that, right? Speaking of phase, you don’t have to get past the first paragraph to see something that takes little analysis:

An ongoing point of frustration within the contemporary American brewing industry is the vast chasm between what drinkers say they want, and what they actually buy. For example: sessionable alcohol-by-volume beers. Even though stroller dads get their Vuoris in a bunch lamenting the lack of broad availability of full-flavored, mid-ABV craft beers, the sales data suggest that they simply don’t buy those beers in meaningful volumes.

What frustration? It seems pretty obvious that if you want low alc beer you are also going to be buying less beer*** but, hey… similarly, Katie Mather may have identified the reason for all this change, may have sussed out what is really going on:

In my banking app, it tells me what I could afford to spend less on in future, and this is always a list of pubs I’ve bought pints in. It’s never told me to cut down my spending on bills, by far my largest outgoings. Quite frankly this is bullshit… pubs are still shutting down because people can’t afford to leave their homes to enjoy a little bit of leisure and all-important social time, and the official reaction is, “oh well.”

“Oh well” was also my response to the fair bit of anti- neo- prohibio–science– mumbo- jumbolian back and forth this week, both sides not making any new convincing arguments… until I read this in that august medical journal SurreyLive:

…alcohol indiscriminately impairs brain function as it is a “very weak neurotoxin” that disrupts neuron communication. Restak emphasises the importance of abstaining from alcohol past the age of 65, a time when the body naturally loses neurons more rapidly, potentially exacerbating mental decline: “It is essential to abstain from alcohol at a stage in life where preserving neurons is crucial.”

Drag. But as a bit of relief to all that… we have a wonderful and particularly deftly written**** portrait of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord by Rachel Hendry in Pellicle. Structured in parts that focus on different elements of the brewing and experience, it is both a bit impressionistic as well as, well, expository:

Once I am sat, I slowly rotate the glass clockwise, and then anticlockwise. The colours change with the movement—chestnut glints into amber, glints into cinnamon. I take a sip and I am greeted with thick slices of toast generously spread with a whisky marmalade, the sweet squidge of malt loaf, the reassurance of blood oranges in the depths of winter. The tension in my shoulders begins to dissolve. I can see why so many view this pint as a friend. I have taken it in my hand and it has placed an arm around me in return.

Lovely. I particularly like the concise treatments of various sorts of men. And another warming photo essay, too. This should fall in the beer flavoured beer filing cabinet folder neatly so you can bring it out and point at it when someone says beer flavoured beer is a meaningless concept.

And finally, before the links, we note the passing of Beth Demmons’ Prohibitchin’ which regularly was referenced around these parts. She explained why:

I feel like it worked, for a while. But over time, things have changed. DEI initiatives are getting slashed across the country, from academia to private business. Promises of change are quietly fading into distant memory. People—mostly women and non-binary folks, some even featured on these pages—have faced burnout, changed careers, or just moved on to different things. People kept reading Prohibitchin’, but over the past four years, fewer people have engaged, or even really seemed to care. I’ve felt like I was shouting into the void, or perhaps just preaching to the choir.

Sad stuff, especially coming so soon after the suspension of The Share as noted last week.

For more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) 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 out there 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 they are revving up for a new year. 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.

*As per usual, B+B have something welcome and wise to say about where we are at, from last Saturday’s footnotes on Patreon: “The elephant in the room is the US election which is definitely big news. Our general approach to unsettling events (the pandemic, war in Ukraine, and so on) has been to keep on posting through them more or less as usual. As a wise person once observed: “You don’t need to publicly condemn or condone every event, every announcement, every story. You’re not an embassy.” Don’t think we’re not following the news, though, or that we not concerned about what’s going on. It’s just that a beer blog, and our various silly social media accounts, don’t seem like particularly useful tools for addressing any of it. The best thing we can do is provide an opportunity to think about something else for a few minutes every now and then.“
**A question I ask myself at least once a day in relation to something or other.
***‘Cause who doesn’t love to drain a 12 pack of thick soda pop? See also the shocking concept that high alc low price sells. “Breaking!“
****And a particularly good example of how this publication has succeeded while GBH and others have packed it in.

The “It’s Not Funny At All Out There” Edition Of The Beery News Notes…

Wow. I am going to leave it at that. Because there ain’t much of the big issue sorta news I want to be reading, I suppose. Not now, not this week. Nope. I am definitely having 9/12 waves myself. Not good. But 150 years ago? Well, Jennifer Jordan on BlueSky has been discussing the 1874 business ledgers of Milwalkee Valentin Blatz and there is plenty of news. Price fluxtuations, losses at sea… but for me… just look at that penmanship! That upper case K is out of this world! You can practically hear the pen tip scratching across the page. Whatever the coming years have in store for us – and it may not be pretty – we can at least look back at the hand of Blatz for a lesson in confidence and verve.

Where are we? Starting with some beery beer news, Andreas Krennmair shared a re-creation of a much forgotten German beer style, Adam:

Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes. When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it.

Sounds a bit like a beer Boak and Bailey wrote about this week after spending some time in Gdansk, Gdinya and Sopot Poland recently – Danziger Jopenbier:

It’s a historic style associated with the city, brewed to some kind of original recipe, and selling at 16 Polish złoty (£3) for a 50ml shot. In presentation, it was treated much like a liqueur or a sherry and reminded us of both Riga Balsam and Pedro Ximinez fortified wine. It was extremely sweet and sticky, completely flat, with a funky, leathery, pipe tobacco stink. A curiosity, then, rather than something to session on.

This is just a bit of their an excellent and extended piece about their merry trip, there just a few kilometres across the waters from Putin’s own nuclear navy yards at Kaliningrad. I taught English along those same Baltic shores of Poland in 1991-92 so it’s interesting to read what’s new and what’s the same:

The city itself is a war memorial. At the end of World War II it was 90% destroyed, an apocalyptic rubblescape. The new Soviet-controlled authorities debated what to do and, at one point, someone suggested leaving the city centre as a vast ruin, to remind the Germans of what they’d done… Gdańsk was rebuilt not as it was in 1939, but instead to recall the days before 1793 when it was part of the Kingdom of Poland.

Yup. I remember being in a large church in Gdansk where a tank battle had happened in 1945… within the church.* I mentioned in the comments that that I recalled there being no pubby pubs back then either – except a rougher sort of stand up tavern for men just off work that the guide I bought suggested “are best avoided.” I mainly drank my Gdanskie at home.

David Jesudason published another pub profile last Friday and discussed a feature installed in the 1950s, a snob screen:

“They could have privacy not just from the other side of the pub,” says Ralph, “but from the bar staff as well. You open it to order your drink.” The pub had a revamp in 1956 when Young’s took it over, previously it was a cider house, and Ralph reckons the snob screens are from them and still have the original 70-plus-year glass. Ralph finds it amusing that as a gay person he’s living and working among all this archaic segregationana.

I like that word. Perhaps we might also suggest “segregitus” Or is it “segregitis“? Or did the “segregitus” leave us with a case of “segregitis“? Such questions I have.

You know what is weird? Finding out that Canada exports the fifth most bulk wine of all the nations of the world. More than much larger producing countries like France or South Africa. And what’s weirder? Canada also exports by far the cheapest bulk wine of any nation in the world, at just 29 cents US a litre. What’s that about? What is bulk?** Where is all the dirt cheap wine being consumed?

You know what is also weird? Chaos packaging. Like putting gravy in beer cans or, perhaps, as the ultimate end game for a certain sort of craft, the next step after NA hop water perhaps:

…the decision to market the cans of air came from marketing specialist Davide Abagnale, who initially saw an opportunity when he started with selling Lake Como posters online. Explaining more about the initiative to can the air from the area, a spokesperson for the business told CNN, that Abagnale wanted to offer “something original, fun and even provocative” as well as “create a souvenir that could be easily transported in a suitcase for tourists”. Abagnale explained how the cans, which rather than contain any liquid, subvert the norm and give people something closer to a “memory” rather than a “product”.

So, not so much about the experience but the illusion of experience. I’d gladly pay with a photograph of some money.

Have you ever wondered what something extreeeemely tannic tastes like but don’t want to taste it? Wonder no more as, for free, Barry himself guides you through the physical convulsions that are part of the experience.

And Stan thanked me for a link to a story that I think is actually far more interesting that its initial interestingness might suggest. The initially interesting point is how pervasive alcohol is in nature and how common it is for animals, bird and bugs to consume it. I’m not surprised. In high school, we watched out the front window each autumn as tipsy starlings drunk on over ripe rowen berries flipped 360° loop-de-loops on the telephone wire – or just flopped to the ground unable to fly until they sobered up. Interesting. But check your mailboxes for your own copy of the latest edition of Trends in Ecology & Evolution wherein we can read the original study which also states:

…the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas possessed a single amino acid change (from alanine to valine at site 294, denoted ‘A294V’) that dramatically increased its catalytic efficiency for ethanol. This arose approximately 10 Mya, following the Mid-Miocene Climatic Transition when African forests were gradually replaced by savannah. Around this time, our ancestors adopted a more terrestrial lifestyle and were possibly more likely to encounter fermented fruits on the ground…

That means the question may not be when humans first had alcohol. It may be about when they first learned to make it or store it or otherwise control it enough to have it year round and not just when the fruit was juiced laying about their feet. When did it start? One Million Years BC?

Perhaps relatedly, one of the things that makes The Beer Nut the world’s top reviewer of beer (other than his incessant reviewings of beer) is his egalitarian approach to all venues and all beers, high and low. This is especially evident in his periodic coverage of Wetherspoon beer festivals – which I take to be a sort of in-pub promotion across the chain rather than a fest in the GBBF sense. He treats this event with both respect and reality as he dropped in at a number of outlets recently. I share the alpha and the omega of his most recent thoughts on the topic:

The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad… Unsurprisingly, stout and porter were the standouts. The cask format shines brightest in the dark. Plodding through all the cheap, samey bitters to find them is worthwhile to find the good stuff.

And speaking of which, Pellicle‘s article this week is by Gabe Toth, a profile of the cask specialists at Hogshead Brewery in Denver, Colorado including this bold admission:

“Cask beer, at least in America, has that reputation of being an older person’s beer, like your grandfather’s beer, versus the hip young thing, seltzer or whatever. Beer in general is suffering a little bit of that—I feel like younger people in general are turning more toward other beverages and losing interest in craft beer.”

Jordan did some thinking about loss of interest, too, this week as he assessed the Ontario good beer scene and declared the beginning of a new era – based on the new retail modalities and associated realities:

Does the world really need Carling Light when Keystone Light exists? Does Old Vienna mean anything to people outside Chatham-Kent and Windsor? Does Labatt regret sending one REALLY EFFECTIVE sales rep to Thunder Bay in the 1990’s to sell Crystal? Whoever that was, they’re legend. You’re going to get consolidation of products. You’re going to get less choice, at least initially. The convenience and grocery and big box retail situation has less patience for variety and more desire for expedience than The Beer Store did. The new paradigm is about choice, but it’s largely about choosing how much you’re going to pay for a single product.

Finally, before the regular list of more alt-news about alts and other beers, I would note the suspension of operations at The Share from Stephanie Grant. Looking forward to an energized return. Also, congratulations to those shortlisted with the BGBW Awards.

Otherwise, a shorter post this week. Such the way of this point in time. Other things on the mind. Still, with all that has happened and will happen… for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) 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 out there 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 they are revving up for a new year. 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.

**From this 2017 report on the British Columbian wine industry: “Nationally, it is important to note that Canadian exports totalled 72.9 million litres in 2015. Of this, only 1.8 million litres was premium wine (non-bulk), representing $32.8 million of the total $73.9 million of all Canadian wine exports. It is impressive that premium wine accounted for only 2.5 percent of wine exports, but represented 44 percent of the total value of all wine exports…” More here.
*Our beach side resort city, Kołobrzeg, on the other side of Kaszubia, was also destroyed and rebuilt as it was where the Nazis attempted a Dunkirk as the Soviets encircled them. They stuck around and the sounds of maching gun firing range welcomed one of my first late summer balcony beers when I got there.