Month: February 2025

Session #144: What’s That Down There Back There In The Stash?


What’s that down there, back there in the stash? Why it’s a beer. Beer. Mmmm… But what beer? Depends. Is it 2005 or 2006? It is tidy and well stocked? Or is it a bit of a mess? In last month’s contribution for The Session, I wrote about how the best thing in beer since 2018 was the advent of home delivery, brought on by the pandemic but carried on due to an inordinate amount of bureucratic common sense. Once it’s delivered, it gets stored down in the stash.

Currently, the shelves of the stash are loaded down with wine. Having a good rest, waiting perhaps for a Christmas dinner in my retirement. Another change of habits brought on during the pandemic. Was it all those chips in those vaccines that made me do that? Can’t tell you. But it’s not all wine down there. One thing that always seems to have a home in the stash is the Světlý Ležák from Godspeed of Toronto. $3.55 a can plus shipping plus tax. Except this one came during the holiday sales tax holiday. Sweet. A credible beer. My beer of 2024. When I reorder my box from Godspeed it’s usually half full of this one beer.

Over the two decades that I have been scribbing here about beer, I have taught myself plenty. I lined up and knocked back IPAs before they were what they became. And I studied sour before there were sours. You watched me learn. In August 2016, my contribution to The Session was about how I knew nothings about good pilsners, concluding:

You know, in 2006 I made something of an admission when I wrote “I just can’t imagine when I am supposed to crave steely stoney dry grassiness.” Is that it? It’s just not my thing?

And by pilsners, let’s face it, I really meant all sorts of lagers. Max responded by saying that Světlý Ležák was one of his favourite types of beer. “What the heck was that?” thought I at the time. Now, thanks to Godspeed of Toronto and a handy global pandemic, it’s one of my favourite types, too. Now I’m going to go have one.

The Last Thursday Beery News Notes For The Suckiest Part Of The Year

We have entered a short and ugly season. False spring. Dwindly wintery. The time of dirty snow. After last week’s -20C temps, high winds and back to back blizzards we got the first sense of spring. Not the reek of dog shit thawing out of snowbanks spring. But at least +5C and even a bit of drizzle. Under five weeks to the first of April. My own pea and carrot seeds will be planted in the cold dark soil by then. Not that bit of basil. No way. I am eating that plant. Soon.

First up? First up and speaking of eating, I have been looking for an angle on long time servant of good beer Jonathan Surratt‘s blog by email about sandwiches, Bound by Buns, and this week he provided in this week’s post:

I recently had the idea to see if I could incorporate beer into each of the main components of a sandwich… I met with Jenny Pfafflin from Dovetail Brewery (we call her JP) and she and I put our heads together to discuss the beer options for this sandwich. I had a rough concept for a beer braised short rib sandwich using a beer cheese spread and we talked through the other options. JP, a brewer who is also an Advanced Cicerone, was very helpful in being a second opinion and a knowledge expert on Dovetail’s line of beers and beer flavors in general.

Now, that is just the introduction to the intro. Take some time. His weekly posts often drill down deep into the details and then wallow with you in the goodness of sammy Pr0n.

Next… what a headline: “Heineken to make beer weaker“!!! Jessica Mason reports:

From 25 February, Heineken will reduce the alcohol of its Sol beer brand to just 3.4% ABV down from from 4.2% ABV. The beer, which was originally brewed in Mexico before it was acquired by Heineken from Fomento Economico Mexicana SAB (FEMSA) in 2010 in a deal worth £4.8 billion, is now produced in Zoeerwoude in the Netherlands. According to reports via The Sun, increased cost pressures facing the sector have also pushed the decision for beer companies to make the move to bring the strength down on some beers.

That’s 23.5% weaker according to my math. Yikes. At what point is that a near beer? Speaking of weak, we have this in from Beer Insights on the serious loss of interest in the darling of a decade ago, Stone, now owned by Sapporo:

…results were driven by strong growth of Sapporo brands offsetting softer Stone trends. Indeed, early in the yr, the co recorded a $90+-mil impairment charge on its Stone biz, it acknowledged while responding to critiques about its overseas investments from a Singapore-based investor with more than 19% stake in the co. Recall, Sapporo acquired Stone for a little less than $170 mil in 2022, then invested tens of mils of $$ in US production facilities.

A $90,000,000 loss on a two year old $170,000,000 investment is quite impressive. Somebody sure ain’t worthy. Conversely, Matty C got out his pen and his writing table and wrote about the end of things for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing:

Everything is finite, and all good things must come to an end. Most people understand this, even if only subconsciously, and it’s why I think we cling to nostalgia so tightly – it helps stop us worrying about that which we ultimately cannot control: change. Nostalgia plays a huge part in what we drink and enjoy. It’s largely why Guinness is so frustratingly popular at the moment (and I say frustratingly from the perspective of someone who feels like this is a missed opportunity to get more people drinking cask beer). But this phenomenon also extends to brands like Theakston’s Old Peculier and Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, even Bass remains popular among some enthusiasts.

Speaking  of institutions… what is a hall of fame for? The already famed? Consider Jeff‘s conclusion:

Elevating the less-heralded figures who shaped American brewing is certainly a worthy effort. Using the Hall to reshape the way we think about brewing (as well as craft brewing) would be a worthy effort. But at least after an initial round of inductees, it seems like the Hall has chosen to celebrate they already celebrated. Maybe this project isn’t for me, or the public generally, and that’s fine. Industries get to define whom they celebrate. But again, looking from the outside, it seems like a missed opportunity.

There isn’t a hall. Just a website. But… if there is no actual hall, does there even have to be actual fame? Or is it for sometinhg else? Consider Stan‘s thoughts:

For the record, I provided nominations and I voted in the election. I nominated Joe Owades (cited within the post), not because of the role he played in developing light beer, but because he was a key advisor to the early giants of microbrewing (even if the beer was not made a small breweries; goodness those were confusing times) such as Boston Beer and Pete’s Wicked Ale. As you will see when you read the entire post, people like to talk about this. 

Soooo… there is the talk. But does the talk get beyond the bubble? Still, it’s a bubbly bubble for sure. Frothy even. As you consider that, we move on a bit deeper into the recent past. Boak and Bailey linked to this one on Saturday but it is too good not to record for archival posterity – a 1977 BBC documentary on the state of the UK beer industry. As Nigel Sadler wrote “a nice old film“! But it was a broadcast to a nation wide public. Not a bubble Could beer still sustain that sort of viewership now?

Well someone* is trying as Pete Brown has been granted space in the Sunday Times in England to write about beer on a regular basis. It will be interesting to see if there will be any of the analysis you would see in wine or restaurant reviews. It would be even more interesting if a writer like A.A. Gill, Brown’s predecessor in those pages, could arise in good beer. Drink was something Gill left behind with good reason.  Similarly, could good beer generate this sort of academic standard we  see with the four newly announced Masters of Wine?  Consider these qualifications:

Jit Hang Jackie Ang MW holds a DPhil in Medical Sciences from the University of Oxford and a MA in Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, said the IMW. He is director of Cherwell Wine and Spirits in Singapore, where he also heads the High Throughput Screening group at the Experimental Drug Development Centre. His research paper was: ‘Are Universal Glasses Truly Universal? — An investigation on whether glassware shape affects perceptions of red and white table wines made from international varieties.’

A brainiac! But there are many sorts of pursuits and pleasures, aren’t there. For example, B+B shared a tiny cheery… dare I say charming… travelogue on a recent weekend trip to Germany with Ray’s mother over at their Patreon page:

In Cologne, almost 24 hours later, we fell upon glasses of Päffgen Kölsch while surrounded by people in carnival costumes – minions, pirates, sequined suits, and so on. Our hypothesis was that Ray’s mum would love Kölsch and Kölsch culture. She’s a lager drinker by default, when she drinks beer rather than whisky, and is no longer keen on pints. Sure enough, she did like this crisp, bitter, incredibly fresh beer. Well, who wouldn’t? Truthfully, it was probably being surrounded by family, and having a fuss made of her, that made the beer taste particularly good.

Sounds ideal. No? Does for me. But maybe this is your ideal pub? Not mine but I am not an elderly emo. Really. I’m not. Others have other ideals… idles… iddles…

After the King pulled a pint called Gone For A Burton, a traditional mid-strength beer brewed by Tower, brewery owner John Mills cheekily asked him: “Going to have a slurp of that, sir?” The King replied that if he was not, he was in the “wrong place”.

Less regally, Doug Veliky has been asking some questions of brewers in these troubled times and Ottawa’s own Dominion City Brewing shared a high level of detail that they had actually shared with their customers along with a few notes:

…we’ve been refining our unique value proposition and have landed on the fact that we offer a high rate of sale and greater profit per pour than our peers. We’ve made up the attachment below [Ed.: err… above…] in a bid to educate our customers about the pricing elasticity they get with our brand (and about the true cost of their macro options once all the freebies and kickbacks are counted.) It’s made the difference in keeping our business with several accounts to date and we hope to use it as part of our pitch to accounts that might not look craft-accessible. So both a shield and sword strategy.

I like it. And I like their Town & Country, too. They are also fighting the tariff threat along with other Canadian brewers. More on the Glorious and Free initiative here. Speaking of Ontario, just days before today’s election, the liquor control agency controlled by current government of “Buck A Beer” Doug Ford slapped a new tax** on beer sales in the province:

The LCBO posted information about the fee increase on its website Monday within hours of Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford unveiling a new campaign promise to scrap the province’s mandatory minimum prices for alcohol.  The increase is set to take effect on April 1. It amounts to a 4.4 per cent jump in what the LCBO calls “cost of service,” a levy that applies to all beer products — whether imported or domestic — sold at retail outlets such as The Beer Store, supermarkets, convenience stores and brewery retail outlets, as well as on beer distributed to bars and restaurants. 

And finally Pellicle picked a spot for this week’s focus where I’ve actually been – but may not no longer – as author Gene Buonaccorsi got to crawl over and under the Cambridge Brewing Company, down the road from MIT and across the river from Fenway***:

With Phil off attending to customers, I asked Will to show me the notorious barrel cellar. For years, I’d heard of this nature-defying space—a small corner of a basement where some of the industry’s most mind-bending beers fermented and matured. We exit the dining room through a door towards the back and enter an industrial white-walled staircase with faded metal handrails. He leads me down to the lowest level, where we emerge into a low ceilinged room with fluorescent lights that (at first glance) illuminate a set of dry goods storage racks and the unmistakable shining silver door of a refrigerated keg room. “It’s a bit tricky from here,” he tells me. “You have to step up but also duck so you don’t hit your head.”

Duck or grouse. That’s the choice. Well, it’s a B.O.B., isn’t it.  That’s it for another week. Until we meet again in March, 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*Others too. For example, I had no idea there was a beer focused radio station broadcasting out of Sheffield: “Ale & Radio will celebrate its milestone on April 13, following a highly successful first year broadcasting beer-focused content alongside a diverse mix of music spanning multiple genres and generations. With a global audience, the station’s mission has always been to support independent breweries, bars, pubs, and beer retailers, while uniting beer enthusiasts through a variety of engaging content. Listeners can tune in for regular beer news, travel features, festival coverage, brewery interviews, and user-submitted audio beer reviews.” Here’s their webpage with a link to the audion stream. But is Pete’s as he posted “the ONLY regular beer column to run in a UK broadsheet newspaper or magazine, first one for over 20 years” or as he blogged “I’ve joined Adrian Tierney-Jones (Daily Star) in the exclusive ranks of people who have a regular beer column in a mainstream British media outlet.“? 
**fine… yes, it’s a fee increase and not a tax…  
***…and, once upon a time, deep down within an entertaining early pandemic freakout…

These Are The Beery News Notes For The Dump Of Snow Finally Showed Up

Well, what can you say. Moscow and Washington making kissy face as planes literally roll off the runway. We had a nasty dump of snow locally, the first it feel like in years, but elsewhere in the province we hear that the school kids are basically back on remote learning this winter. The green onions readying for the garden in a few weeks look out the window in horror. I know the feeling.

For all the change going on, at least we can take comfort that The Session continues! The hosts for this February are Boak and Bailey who announced the topic:

What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now? Not necessarily right now. You can go to the shops if you like. But you shouldn’t have to get on a train or a flight. Or travel back in time. If you like, you can choose a top 3, or top 5, or top 10. What makes it a good beer to drink at home? Is it brewed to be packaged? Does it pair well with your home cooking? Does it pair well with drinking in your pyjamas?

Get writing!  Your submissions are due on Friday, February 28th.  Andreas Krennmair has been writing. And wrote this week about the brewing tradition in the German state of Württemberg and the distinction between the “gewerbsmäßig” and the “Privatbrauereien” in that region in the 1800s:

Normally, “private breweries” at the time referred simply to privately owned breweries, as opposed to publicly owned breweries (of which people own shares) or communal breweries (owned e.g. by the citizens of one particular town or city by virtue of their citizenship). But in this case, the private breweries were strangely juxtaposed with commercial ones… so, were private breweries non-commercial? Turns out, yes: in parliamentary records of the local parliament of Württemberg from 1853, I found a description of what constituted private brewing: it was the non-commercial brewing by Upper Swabian farmers, where it was customary for all farmers who owned larger farms to also own a brewing kettle in order to brew beer for their own use, which included the house drink for the farm workers…

Speaking of unpacking things found in central European digital records, I missed last week when Alistair of Fuggled fame wrote about Josef Groll, the first brewmaster at the brewing company that today is generally known by the brand Pilsner Urquell. What caught my eye was this:

Another fact about the actual beer being produced in Plzeň also caught my eye – that there were 2 types of beer being brewed at Pilsner Urquell, the famed 12° lager and an 11° schankbier, which may have at some point become a 10° version that was known within living memory. The schankbier, the German equivalent of “výčepní”, would be sent out to beer halls to be stored for 2 or 3 weeks before being ready to be drunk, while the lagerbier left the brewery ready to be tapped on arrival, and was mainly consumed during the summer months.

Question: is this schankbier in late 1800s Germany the same as this schenk beer in late 1800s German immigrant community in America? Have a look at footnote #1: “A kind of mild German beer; German draught or pot beer, designed for Immediate use.” Hmmm…

Speaking of ready to be drunk, Laura Hadland wrote an excellent piece for CAMRA on the nature of small beer in English history… and, more importantly, the experience of hunting down that bit of history:

It  occurred to me that we are applying our modern sensibilities to the past. We can just about bend our heads around the idea of a weak beer being consumed in quantity throughout the day. It’s harder to accept that drinking anything approaching a strong beer from dawn til dusk could be the norm. It just sounds mad. But we know that beer drinking was unproblematic and socially acceptable in the early 18th century – consider the gentle serenity of Hogarth’s portrayal of Beer Street next to the debauched depravity of Gin Lane in his famous prints. At the time of the Beer Act in 1830, beer is referred to in the House of Commons as “the second necessary of life.”

Remember: small beer has always sorta made itself due to the nature of mashing. You can chuck away the spent malt after first runnings or make small beer.

Ashleigh Arnott got the nod in Pellicle this week with her portrait of a rather unpolished place, The Rutland Arms in Sheffield, Engerland. I quite liked this aspect of the pub’s weirdness:

The jukebox policy at the Rutty is notorious. Insert your pound but choose wisely, abiding by the rules on the chalkboard above. The ‘permabanned’ list features local acts—Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Richard Hawley—and the sort of bands that Guardian readers know they should never admit to liking: U2, Frank Turner, Foo Fighters, et al. And Taylor Swift, she’s also permabanned, though I suspect it didn’t need saying. Staff decide what’s in the ‘Recommended’ and ‘Forbidden’ columns according to whims, mainly, with a hint of current affairs-based silliness. Even co-owner Chris Bamford can’t overrule it.

The photos that accompany the pice are also excellent, though I fear that the one of the solo pubgoer on a phone brought the phrase “lost in someone else’s thoughts” to mind. Do pubs not still stock newspapers? Are there newpapsers to be stocked? Who has money for that? Speaking of which… where’s all the money in the brewing industry going these days what with threats of tariffs floating all around ? Well…

…the most important new investment made by Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) is Constellation Brands (NYSE:STZ). Buffett acquired 5,624,324 shares, making this position account for 0.5% of the portfolio, with a total value of $1.24 billion.

And, at a lower level of investment, in the latest monthly edition of London Beer City Will Hawkes shared interesting feature on the return of what are described as “traditional” pubs with a measure, as is often the case in such matters, of what looks like gentrification in this discussion with pub developer, Adrian Kinsella:

His aim was to turn the pub around, to attract a more varied clientele, to combine traditional levels of comfort with the quality now typical among Britain’s best small breweries… “[It’s about] taking the best of the old-school hospitality and putting it with the best of the new service standards around beer, and the best of the food, the amazing small street-food operators,” he says. “If you marry that together, that’s the sweet spot.” There won’t be tables laid up for food at the Coach and Horses, though. Kinsella says he’s not chasing numbers; if someone wants to sit over a pint for a few hours, that’s fine. His or her glass won’t be cleared. Beer will cost what it costs. “We’re not gouging, but when [beer is] too cheap, someone is getting the rail and it’s normally the staff,” Kinsella says. “All our staff are on London living wage.”

Speaking of noises made in pubs, “The Baby of the Pub” was the title of Katie M’s piece in the December 2024 edition of Ferment, a UK beer vendor’s inhouse magaine, and it was shared this week via her newsletter The Glug to share with us all the story of one wee pub goer… who is one:

The baby of the pub is growing up in a world where the pub is a normal part of his life. It’s teaching him to treat the pub as a natural meeting place, rather than a posh restaurant or an illicit drinking den. He’s being taught to enjoy hanging out here. And why shouldn’t he? This was our favourite place long before he was born, and now it is his. It’s a pleasure and an honour to teach him the ways of our local pub, and as he grows we’ll have new milestones to celebrate — his first packet of Scampi Fries, his first lime and soda, the first time he flips a beermat. One day he’ll be getting the rounds in and teaching his friends how to properly order at the bar—what a thought! 

Back in Germany, news is breaking that would shock any law abiding Canadian… voters are being bribed with beer:

The city of Duisburg in western Germany has come up with an unorthodox way to lure reluctant voters to the polling station. Voters who cast absentee ballots in the city center by 2 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) on Saturday were given a voucher for a drink to spend at a beer cart next to the polling station… In the 2021 federal election, for example, only 63.3% of voters in the Duisburg II constituency turned up to vote, compared to a national average of 76.6%. “With this unusual campaign, our carnivalists are ensuring that the federal election is once again in the spotlight. It also appeals to citizens who are not persuaded to vote by the usual election posters or information campaigns,” Murrack said, describing it as “a clear benefit for voter turnout and therefore for our democracy!”

Huzzah! Isn’t that what was said in the 1890s? Liam of IrishBeerHistory has announced that he is going to pause doing his series 100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects half way along “but not writing – to assess my options.“ Still he did share one more story, a story about a button:

This small button measuring 3cm (1 3⁄16 inches) in diameter is made of a copper alloy – possibly brass – and shows some green patination where the gilding has worn away to expose the base metal. It is probably from the livery uniform of one of the draymen who worked for the Anchor Brewery of John D’Arcy & Son on Usher Street, not far from where those aforementioned other-uniformed squads lined up. It features the words ‘J. D’Arcy & Son Ltd. Brewery’ and a nicely embossed anchor whose pronged ends appear to resemble demons’ tails. 

And I liked this story about one way drinkers got around the restrictions imposed during US Prohibition:

The unnamed ship turned out to be a glamorous offshore bar. To get aboard the reporter paid a $5 cover charge (about $90 today), with another $5 for a stateroom. Once settled, he was ushered into a festive room with “a jazz orchestra, staff of busy bartenders and a party of sixty revelers who danced the night away.” They were young and old, men and women, but all quite wealthy with “polished manners and a democratic demeanor.” The crew was well dressed and spoke with cockney accents; from them one could order a scotch for $1 or a mint julep for $2.50. 

In Ontario, we had a number approaches to the drinking tourism brining Americans north but, of course, we should be proud of the fact that brewing itself never ceased up here – even during Canadian Temperance – to the point that Labatt sent so much beer south that it expanded its work force by over fifty percent.*

Finally, I found this piece in VinePair on the current Guinness situation odd, mainly I suppose as it tried to apply and drawn lessons for brewers in the US. Consider this:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Guinness is that story. Its current success is the result of the sort of patient, holistic investment across the on- and off-premises that used to be the beer industry’s block and tackle. “The way that I’ve described this to people is, [Guinness] is a political movement,” says Roth. “It includes not just changing minds, but changing actual behaviors.” Its dominance in bars and restaurants has helped to influence consumers beyond their confines, too. That’s only grown more obvious as the beer aisle has grown more overwhelming. 

Nowhere in the story do the words “Baltimore” or “closed” pop up. Nor is there a suggestion of manufactured scarcity. Or a lucid consideration of the success of Guinness goes well beyond the beer rep, well beyond beer itself to a cultural fascination that has been in place for decades if not centuries based on the broader love of all things Irish** actual and faux from St. Patricks Day to The Clancey Brothers, from River Dance and to the identikit pubs. And that the beer itself has had these sorts of peaks upon peaks thoughout that time. The widget over 35 years ago. The Quiet Man over 75 years ago. Imported barrels over 165 years ago. Yes, it is good for the brewery to have existed for all that time but the presumption to make an association with Anchor Brewing or Leinenkugel’s or that it serves as an example and not a sui generis phenomenon is a bit telling.

Well, that is it. Another exercise in distraction from the news, I suppose. For more of the same, 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*What?? $43.99??? At that price, no doubt the authority on the matter.
**My late father born of Greenock called the equivalent “professional Scots” and you can read Billy Connolly’s autobiography Windswept & Interesting for more detail on that point.

Your First Beery News Notes For That Dull Gap Between The NFL And MLB

The gap. It’s not going to be too bad this year with a boooorrrinnnnng Superbowl* coming a bit later in the shortened month. At least there was a nice ad for Bud. But, even with that, this gap between the end of the last football game and the start of baseball’s spring training games is a thing. A dull thing. As is the realization that I am looking past sports fandom at a trade war. Aluminum and steel this week. Am I looking like the guy to the left in the image above pushing from French-Algerian wine from the 1930s. Why does the water drinker look so worried? Why is his hair less stylish?

Yet… what does colonization teach us? Is the dodgy promise of that wine a century ago so unlike what we are like today? I was out buying a magazine last Friday evening in an actual bookstore (because, you know, I had a hankering for buy a magazine like it was 1999) and I looked at all their titles… mainly American… then looked at all the biographies of Americans intersperced with a few semi-royals at the other end of the bookstore… boy oh boy… have we up here taken on a lot of the culture developed down there. Look, I’m not part of the not a real country set but I need something to fill the hours other than lingering angst. Something will level out somewhere. Spring training may do the trick. Maybe that’s it. Down in, you know, Florida.

Speaking of gaps, have you any interest in NA wine or spirits?  Me, I can’t imagine paying non-proxy payment for these sorts of proxies for booze. But if you are interested in NA beer, keep keeping an eye on Polk. He is back with some very interesting observations on one Canadian discount dark ale. And he wrote about where is at** this week, too:

I am incredibly lucky that I still can maintain an online community, despite my switch to mostly non alcoholic options, people in craft beer can be very kind when the road gets bumpy for one of our own and this helps a whole lot. But if I was one who went out and was deeply involved, I wonder how I’d be feeling every weekend when my new normal didn’t include those aforementioned activities. It would be a little overwhelming and would only add to an already stressful time I would imagine. It’s part of why it’s so difficult to go sober, to separate yourself from the good times that feel warm and boozy because you can’t be that person anymore. Change isn’t easy, but letting go of alcohol seems particularly difficult, addiction or not.

I will allow myself more bit of one tariff news item this week from one of my regular reading outlets, mining.com, on the uselessness of tariffs but the benefits of something else:

While US steel imports account for 23% of the country’s consumption, the ratio is much higher at 47% for aluminum, according to the US Geological Survey. The US is particularly reliant on imports of primary aluminum from Canada, which supplies more than two million tonnes each year… Just under half of all cans are thrown away to be land-filled or trashed. More metal is lost through improper sorting at recycling facilities, with losses assessed at roughly one third… Roll out more deposit return schemes and some of that one million tonnes of landfill could be returned to the supply chain.

On our side of the wiggly then very straight line, somewhat similarly, the inter-provincial restrictions are being rethought. New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt is revisting the province’s trade barriers on booze from other parts of Canada and Ontario‘s smaller breweries are looking forward to market opportunities across the country if we ditch the current rules:

Ontario breweries, distilleries and wineries can’t sell their product directly to customers in other provinces, something David Reed, owner of Forked River Brewing Company, says limits their sales opportunities… Because laws around alcohol are up to each province, rules about transporting vary nationwide. In Ontario, the province lifted interprovincial personal exemption limits in 2019 when it comes to alcohol for personal use, the LCBO says. In comparison, SAQ, Quebec’s alcohol board, says any alcohol coming into Quebec, including donations, gifts, and souvenirs, must be reported.

Note: Following up on last week’s news, one Beer Store outlet in my fair city is closing. But… but… me being able to buy my longed for Oland Ex in a corner store? Where do the loyalties lie?

How to pass the time? Cards. Katie plays cards and wrote a bit about it:

We play Rummy. I have no memory for any of the other rules, despite my father in law trying to teach me Stop The Cab every few months. At high school, I used to play a game called shithead in the common room, we doubled the pack so the games would last forever, dragging on into lessons we should have gone to. These are some of my favourite school memories.

Japan has an issue hiring people and then coaxing people back to work in the office but one firm has a solution that perhaps might suit you:

…for new graduates in Japan, one small IT company is offering Gen-Z staff the option to take special ‘hangover leave’ in a fierce recruitment drive being dubbed ‘golden eggs for graduates’. Trust Ring Co Ltd is a tech company in Osaka with roughly 60 employees and is one of many companies combatting Japan’s declining birthrate with quirky incentives as a way to attract new employees…. employees at Trust Ring Co are even encouraged to help themselves to the draught beer machine or a selection of spirits to drink on the job in their Midoribashi offices.

Lordy. And next? What next?!? Beer sludge? Beer sludge!!! Seems “beer sludge” is now a proper term according to the headline to this BBC story:

…nutrition isn’t the only area where spent grain could make an impact. Brett Cotten concedes that early efforts by his young London-based company, Arda Biomaterials, to create leather-alternatives from brewers’ spent grain resulted in something more akin to a flapjack.  But the start-up has since successfully used supramolecular chemistry to make several proteins from brewers’ spent grain that mimic the animal proteins in leather, resulting in a strong and supple alternative. The colour reflects the spent grain used, he says. “Guinness and stouts make for a naturally black material, IPAs and lagers more mid-browns.” 

I shall recommend that to my tailor. If I had one. And I like this understanding in Jeff’s piece on NEIPAs which is one way of explaining the phenomenon:

I would argue an IPA wave was never going to wash over New England before it came along. The region’s preference toward fuller beers with sweet malts and fruity English yeasts, and they have never really embraced the bitterness and spikiness of Centennial or Chinook IPAs. The development of New England IPAs was not unusual: breweries adjusted their process to draw out those incredible flavors and aromas Citra (and successor hops) had.

Careful readers will recall my habit of going to Maine back when the Canadian dollar was worth 95 cents US or more. In 2013, the good beers on offer at Fenway were Long Trail pale ale, Harpoon IPA and Wachusett Green Monster.  New England had plenty of IPA love before NEIPAs… they just weren’t those IPAs.

Speaking of good explanations, in the emailed announcement on Pellicle‘s piece on independent brewing in Thailand, the editorial board of that there publication made an excellent statement on these sorts of things:

About a year ago I received and subsequently rejected a pitch from a writer called Joey Leskin, who writes a great newsletter about beer in London called Beer in the City. I turned it down because I am overtly aware that stories written by British writers about beer culture in other countries can come across as voyeuristic, and often don’t let the voices of the people involved in that scene shine through as they should. Fast forward six months and I was invited to become a mentor by the British Guild of Beer Writers. I agreed, and by coincidence was subsequently assigned Joey as my mentee.

This is a much nicer way of explaining and dealing with what I call “drive-by expertise.” It’s nice that you got to visit. Very nice. But I’ll usually  turn to the local for understanding, thanks.

People who are very much on the scene if not in the scene are Boak and Bailey and this week the scene is very much where they are or at least were – at the Central Library in their own fair city of Bristol, England. There, they came upon what is definitely a scene:

A few weeks ago a special exhibition was laid on at the library on the subject of beer and pubs. Items from the reference collection were put on display in an ornate wood-panelled room and visitors were invited to shuffle round and have a nose about. We visited and were drawn at once to a hefty hardback volume collecting together editions of The Golden Cockerel, the house magazine of Courage, Barclay & Simonds, formed in 1960 when Courage acquired Simonds of Reading. These particular issues of the magazine were from 1962 to 1964 and seemed to include a remarkable number of pub openings.

What follows can only be decribed as remarkable, too. An unpacking of the story of many of those pubs while guiding one to an explanation of the name for “a youth paid to collect dry sand from coastal caves to spread on saloon bar floors.” Fabulous. And a welcome break from the news about those running pubs dealing with the rising costs of running a pub.

And Laura Hadland has updated the story of the Crooked House and the legal battle which has ensued since its demolition:

11th February – And the appeal hearing has been delayed. ATE Farms lodged a High Court challenge against “the Planning Inspectorate’s refusal to postpone the Planning Enforcement Public Inquiry” according to a statement from South Staffordshire Council This means that the public enquiry will now not go ahead as scheduled on 11th March and is unlikely to occur before the criminal investigation is concluded. You can read updates from the Council on their website. According to the Times & Star, the police work continues – “Staffordshire Police said in July last year that six people arrested in connection with the fire have been released from their bail, but remain under investigation.”

N’oubliez pas!!!

There. It’s been a bit of a busy week outside of these readings again. I worry that I am not entertaining enough. I actually don’t but I wonder. That’s a better way of putting it. Enough to worry about out there in the real world, isn’t there. Until when we meet next, 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*What wasn’t boring was the after game celebrations in Philadelphia according to the police scanner: “we lost all the barricades!!!” and especially ““i now have seven or eight people on horses, the fireworks are spooking them and they’re rearing up….they’re civilian horses”!!! And there were some other ads. BeerBoard added some very particularly fine detail on who was drinking what before, you know, the barricades were lost: “Coming off two years of decline for the Big Game, Light Lager saw an increase of +5.6% on the day. Lagers, the #2 style, saw a noted decline of -6.5% in share. IPAs, the third-ranked style, decreased for the second straight year, down -7.9% over 2024. Michelob Ultra was again the top-poured brand nationally on the day, and was up a noted +11.9%. Bud Light, the #2 brand on the day, was -3.0% versus 2024. Miller Lite (+5.4%), Modelo Especiál (+9.6%) and Coors Light (+3.4%) rounded out the Top 5 for draft.” That is very spedific stuff for two days later…
**Or as translated for Maritimers: “where he’s to, too.“

The Beery News Notes For The Week Tariffs Were Punted Down The Road

Because I am a lawyer, my job includes dealing with a bit of mayhem. I even get a bit immune to it, frankly. Not so much in those early bottom feeding days. Remember that? Yeesh.* Anyway, is it back? I dunno. We’ve reviewed all the graphs and charts like this one up there** and now that everyone and their dog calculated the percentage of the US beer market*** made up of the combo of Canadian malt and aluminum as well as Mexican imports, well, it got delayed. Fine. The big bourbon ban was shelved and then restocked. It all got a bit whiplashed and likely will again. As Jeff wrote, this is all getting somewhere between real and unreal:

Enormous changes are underway, and the stability of the U.S. government is no longer a given. Barley prices may seem like an incredibly mundane detail (picayune, even) to pluck out of this hurricane of news. But they are representative of the effects these disruptions will have. The price of barley is directly tied to the health of US businesses, jobs, and lives.

Well, it’s all for the best right? It’s must be. And, between you and me, a closer economic union wouldn’t be all that bad. I sure liked when the Canadian dollar was close to par, gotta tell ya. Stash wantes to stash. Anyway, now that we have a whole 28 days left in the reprieve, I can get on to the important business of worrying about snacks and beers for Superb Owl Sunday. And, for the 47th year in a row, a bunch of people have written about what you should eat and drink. You can find your own damn links for that stuff.

Somewhat relatedly, speaking of large bodies of water that suddenly need to be renamed:

People don’t buy “domestic” cars or salute the “domestic” flag, so they shouldn’t drink “domestic” beer. At least, that’s what Anheuser-Busch’s CEO thinks. Brendan Whitworth, the beermaker’s chief executive, says he  wants to change the term that describes his US-made beers, which includes Budweiser, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light, to “American”… “The pride we take in this great country should also be properly and accurately applied to our great American beers,” Whitworth wrote. “They are brewed by American workers who receive American wages. They rely on American farmers and on American raw material suppliers. They support American causes like the military and first responders. They pay American taxes.”

Speaking of legal mayhem, here’s a story out of Washington state on one brewery’s fight against the local municipality care of WBB:

Although Dominique Torgerson just wants to operate a brewery, she is now well-versed in this kind of legal battle and knows way more about these issues than any brewery owner should ever need to know.  “With the recent overturning of the Chevron Deference doctrine at the U.S. Supreme Court, agencies should no longer have unchecked power to interpret ambiguous laws in their favor,” she explains. “Our petition to the Superior Court cites extensive case law, and we are prepared to take this battle to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.” “Additionally, these zoning restrictions violate Washington State RCW 66.08.120, which explicitly prevents municipalities from regulating alcohol businesses in ANY manner,” she adds.

Boom!  Fight!! Speaking of a good fight, I am really struggling on Pellicle‘s English Premier League fantasy league this season – but unlike one pub’s owners, I did well when I picked the striker for Nottingham Forest the other week:

It had seemed like the perfect promotion to get a few more punters through the door on a Saturday afternoon – give away a free pint for every goal scored by Nottingham Forest that day. But seven goals and £1,500 worth of pints later, Nottinghamshire pub landlady Beccy Webster realised she might have scored a spectacular own goal. “It got to half-time and I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can carry this on.’ But I decided I was sticking to my word,” she said. “This is what I’ve said I’m going to do. Whether it’s four, five, six, seven, 10 goals, I’m seeing it through now. We ended up giving away 300 pints.”

Keeping with the only beer mag that matters, we received another bit of biting commentary about the craft-bro rut from David Bailey (no relation) over there last Friday. He neatly acknowledges the line between what may and may not be said about good beer culture and then crashed through it. In this episode, he mocks the desperate lengths some brewers got to in order to extend their seasonals line up.  I like how these pieces are effectively political cartooning.

With his even more unreserved and thorough approach, David Jesudason has reported on the misogyny that ruled at one imaginatively named London wine bar in the 1970s and how it served as one launching point of an anti-discrimination campaign:

“El Vino stood as a symbol of an ordinary drinking place,” Anna Coote tells me, “that wasn’t a private club and they were not letting women buy drinks at the bar which was very petty of them. But at the time the men were hanging on to their control over how their favourite pub was being run… [Anna and and Tess Gill] used the El Vino as a way to change the law and they didn’t see themselves as patrons of the bar. Anna says they went to El Vino with a couple of male lawyers and were refused service and this was all the proof they needed. “It was to get the law enforced not to get drinks at the bar,” Anna tells me. “It was purely a matter of principle. Neither Tess nor I wanted to spend a minute inside El Vino’s drinking wine or buying drinks!

And we read… well, I read some interesting reporting from Phoebe Knight in BlogTO on the effects being already felt by the big brewer’s retailer, The Beer Store, following Ontario’s expansion of retail beer sales to corner stores last year:

While 23 stores out of over 350 across the province seems like small potatoes now, John tells blogTO that there could be a far larger crash coming in the near future if no further agreements to maintain the stability of The Beer Store against competition are made. “According to the early implementation agreement The Beer Store must keep 300 stores open until the end of 2025,” John tells blogTO. “After that there is no limit on closures.”

Further news on the calls for change in beer retailing out of Korea too:

Liquors registered as traditional products in Korea, such as “makgeolli” (rice wine) and Andong soju, are exempt from the online sales ban, allowing them to be delivered directly to consumers’ doorsteps. In contrast, domestic soju and beer products are only accessible via offline stores and restaurants. Major local producers argue that lifting the ban would expand their distribution channels and improve market competitiveness. Korea and Poland are the only member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, where an online liquor sales ban remains in effect.

In our weekly (it seems) report on contradictions in medical advice, we focus today on the mind. First up, this study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on “the real-time subjective effects of alcohol in individuals with alcohol use disorder”:

This study aimed to investigate the real-time subjective effects of alcohol in individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and those prone to negative affect by virtue of having comorbid depressive disorder (DEP)… The AUD group, regardless of comorbid DEP, reported increases in stimulation and rewarding effects that persisted throughout most of the alcohol episode relative to the non-alcohol episode. To a lesser extent, alcohol relieved negative affect but this was not specific to AUD or DEP groups.

The news is what you’ve wanted to have confirmed: “…researchers found that alcohol consumption reduced negative feelings…” Conversely, in The New York Times, we read:

… if you become physically dependent on alcohol — after years of drinking heavily, for example — the constant ramping up of GABA can cause the brain to produce less of it, and glutamate becomes more dominant. The brain then becomes “hyperexcitable,” which can lead to symptoms like panic attacks, said Dr. Kathleen Brady, an addiction expert and professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina.

As always, good luck making those two stories fit in with each other! Speaking of best wishes, The Beer Nut has seen of Dutch brewery De Molen with a review of a last collaboration before its expiration:

This is a beer to shut me up about nitro for a minute or two: there is plenty of flavour, and while it may have turned out quite cloying if carbonated, I can’t complain when nitrogen’s deadening effect successfully balances the beer. Observation two is that a bit of barley wine energy really suits the Irish red style. Boost that gravity and hold back on the aroma hops: there’s a niche available somewhere adjacent to the strong Scottish ale genre. Thanks to both breweries for showing the way, and with an extra poignancy now that the permanent closure of De Molen has been announced for later this year.

And Boak and Bailey have found an even loftier pint – a perfect ESB:

Our perfect pints on Friday were served this way, as towers of autumnal mahogany topped with loose but steady foam.The aroma was of marzipan and fresh woodland sap. And it tasted like the inevitability of one pint too many, like the Holy Grail, like the White Whale, like a miracle in progress, like being 25 again learning for the first time what beer could really be. It was so good that it made Jess switch from Titanic Plum Porter. It was so good that she didn’t even resent the inevitable day after headache. It was so good that, even with the headache, she co-wrote a blog post about it.

Lovely bit of writing right there.

In 2006, I released the results on an experiment involving Burton Bridge Porter and the passage of time. I am not sure reading back on my notes now that I understand what happened.  Far more lyrical is Pete Brown in his up to date study of that same brewery published in that place that really should be named which is already named above:

Burton Bridge Beers are still Burton Bridge, and Heritage are still Heritage, but both brands are owned by the same company and brewed in the same place, by two stellar alumni from the craft beer world.  Two dying embers rekindled, with new fuel feeding the flame. It’s a misty, drizzly day when I visit Burton Bridge. The flagstones in the yard are slick and shiny, like they always seem to be. The brewing team are wrapped up against the chill as they wash casks, their breath misting the air. After a quick tour of the kit—including the parts that are over a century old and look like they’re  held together by willpower alone—Emma and I retreat to the cosiness of the pub.

Again, some lovely writing right there.

Finally, what was old is new again, as we read in this week’s dispatches from the eggheads:

Do you long for that tart fruity flavor of a sour beer but wish the complicated brewing process were faster? Norwegian scientists might have the answer: field peas, as well as beans and lentils. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, experimental beers made with the sugars found in these foods had similar flavor profiles to your average Belgian-style sour beer, yet the brewing process was shorter with simpler steps. “Sour beer is the beer enthusiast’s alternative to champagne,” said co-author Bjørge Westereng of the Norwegian University of Life Science.

Oh, Bjørge. You ever notice those times when it is clear someone has never had champagne? But… pea beer was a thing. At least beer made with pea shoot kilned malt was. And Japanese third-category beer.

Thanks again for everyone who participated in first edition of The Session Revived. Here’s the round up.  As Stan was kind enough to say, “Much of the best reading last week was on Friday, when The Session revival was pretty dang successful.” Join in next time we gather! In the interim, 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*Though the mass firings are very old school Atlantic Canadian. Maybe we do fit in culturally speaking! Note: these things also happen in beer. 
**No, it really is an actual chart!!
***We also learned that 88% of all beer consumed last year made by Canadian workers in Canadian breweries.

The Session #143 – The Best Of Beer Since 2018

Well, that went well. A revival can be a dangerous thing. From Brady Bunch TV reunion specials to the second Trump administration, these things should be faced with a measure of doubt – but it’s clear that The Session version #143(!) performed well above my expectations with a great level of participation… well, at least greater than I anticipated. Pat yourselves on your backs. So, as one does when one hosts, here is the summary.

Sunday Morning Update: I failed. Not all of you. But I did fail Eoghan Walsh who wrote “I’m Glad“… or rather “I’m Glad” about the settling out of hostilities in the Brussels brewing scene:

I was a partisan in this war, and I picked my side early on. But that was in the first flush of my engagement with the beer world, and we all are a little rash when we’re young. I’ve since mellowed in my views, for many of the reasons outlined above. I still hate with a fiery passion the parasitical marketing companies who’ve gotten involved in beer in recent years, when beer was hot, churning out bland marketing gimmicks in search of a quick return before moving onto the next hype – something we’re already seeing as the number of Belgian beer firms declines.

Fight!

February 8th Update: Jon Abernathy – the first beer blogger in the world and only one longer serving that me… probably – finally posted a week and a day late and shared a few thoughts – including:

Even if non-alcoholic beers and things like hop water aren’t your cup of tea, so to speak, this is still an important category that should be encouraged to grow. And it doesn’t matter why someone is drinking an NA beer (lifestyle choice, health reasons, etc.); just having the option available makes that brewery more accessible and inclusive to more people. And that’s a good thing.

It is. Not my thing but it’s a good thing.

[Now, back to the original post…]

First, as is most deserved, the achivist-in-chief aka the glue throughout the entire history of The Session, Jay Brooks himself is to be noted from the top as he confirmed that this is not Season 2, episode 1 (nope, now way) but actually the 143rd edition (legitimacy affirmed!) and that he is taking his administrative duties one with his hallmark  attentiveness as I learned via email:

I updated the Sessions page to include this and will be happy to keep updating it as we go. If you know who’ll be hosting going forward, let me know and I’ll plug them in. I’ll also happily host if you come to a month with no takers.

Fabulous – so you can go see the records here. And here below are the contributions, according to the means that I received notice. If I have missed a notification please let me know in the comments.

There were three BlueSky posts. First, former Fullers frontman John Keeling wrote “The best thing to happen in beer since 2018 , easy I retired” which makes sense for him, less so for others. And Maureen Ogle shared this:

Best thing in beer since 2018? Thousands of families are paying the mortgage by making beer for their communities. And not trying to become The Biggest Beermaker in the World. Ie, they’re making good beer without making a big fucking deal about its craftiness.

Barry M suggested that he was “wondering if the best thing to happen to beer since 2018 is that I stopped blogging about beer.” But then noted that his wonderful cider and fruit tree orcharding has taken over. Which is fabulous.

Next, those who gave a heads up in the comments. We had four notifications via comments left in the blog. The first was from a regularly featured and extremely active writer who often helps plump up the weekly roundup, Retired Martin:

Happy post-cheese/COVID booster 2025, Alan. And thanks as always for reading my blog. My only observation about good beer post about 2018 is that what I’d still call “craft beer bars” (the Record Cafe in Bradford or the Crow in Sheffield, for example), and I guess there’s a few hundred in the UK, will almost always feature a fruited sour from either Vault City or Pastore (from my hometown, oddly). And it won’t always be a high ABV sour; the last one I had was 2.5%, but it might be. Who (apart from me) is drinking these fruited sours at £5 a half ?

The other three comment leavers were Ding, Jay and Tom Bedell who snuck in just before the deadline no doubt celebrating his After Dark tendencies.  Ding celebrated the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic “kickstarted my Belgian love affair once more” which is great. Jay shared how while he didn’t hate Hazy IPA, he is seeks out the returning diversity of styles and loves “walking into a bar and seeing they have a brown ale, or a mild, or even a dunkelweizen…” Tom, reporting from Vermont, shared more on one theme that appears to be developing:

…it may just be an impression, but it seems to me that that’s the other best thing to have happened to good beer in recent years: a return of interest in classic styles. A week or so ago I was happy to find a few bottles of Côte de Champlain from Zero Gravity Brewing in Burlington, Vermont. Zero Gravity has a solid, wide-ranging portfolio across styles, but it’s not adverse to specialties like this, a wonderful tribute to Orval.

And Boak and Bailey moved us in a similar direction, tradition as diversity:

Bristol is a city dominated by hazy pale ales. That’s what we’d call the defining local style. Even so, when we go out on our weekend crawls, we often find mild or porter at The Kings Head, The Barley Mow, or The Llandoger Trow. These beers aren’t everywhere – but they’re not nowhere, either. Slowly, steadily, they’ve come back into being.

OK, so now we move to heads up which came via email. Matty C rejected the hype and the sellouts and instead celebrated the boring:

I consider the weekend of that festival in September 2018 to be the end point of the modern British beer boom. Both Camden and Beavertown had now been sucked into the inevitable, bland tediousness demanded by their paymasters, their beer eventually becoming as inspiring as a two by four to the face. But I actually consider this to be a good thing. It marked the beginning of beer becoming boring again, and I was here for it.

Next, Laura Hadland wrote to tell me that she had written – and what she had written was this:

It’s a helluva question to answer off the cuff. I’m sat on the train on my way to Crewe to brew with the Ladies of Darkness for International Women’s Day. So I’m tempted to talk about the improvements we’ve made to DEI across the industry over the last few years. But you just have to pay attention to what people like Ruvani da Silva are writing to know that it might still be a little premature for a celebration.

Good points. So, then, Laura instead turned to NA beers and how “now it’s not that hard to find really good examples in almost any beer style that you prefer.”

Stan explored some of the inclusivity initiatives in the US craft scene with perhaps a bit more hope with a survey of initiatives along with this admission: “This is the part of the story I am not particularly comfortable with, because as an observer I don’t belong in it. I took the picture at the top because I crossed paths with Oliver at the Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas and asked him to wag his finger…” I would just note that it is the better finger to have wagged at oneself. And Jordan Buck also wrote an email to share his posting on Instagram:

It feels like there was a tacit admission at some point that maaaybe low-po, easy drinking beers don’t need to be penalty pints. Even in the face of shrinking taplist diversity, it’s getting hard to find a brewery that hasn’t carved out space for at least one thing that’s clean and cold-conditioned and of sensible strength.

I am not very IGGY so you can all tell me if that link worked, please. I also received and email that started “I am Steve “Pudgy” De Rose, of Chicago, IL., U.S.A.” – who maintains a fabulously Web 0.9 page – wrote to tell us that he posted his thoughts on Mastodon that “the best thing happening to good beer since 2018 is the wider availability of transportation applications which can enable the “good beer drinker” to visit more venues without having to operate a vehicle.” Nice.

Next we have the hash taggers. By the way, use #TheSession freely in these matters even though there may be some other applications. Take back the hadstag I say! On Twex, The Beer Nut alerted us that he had posted perhaps unexpectedly about something…

This is where I’d love to be waxing lyrical about the oft-predicted lager revival, but that was never delivered. Nor the West Coast resurgence, nor the black IPA comeback: these styles are still noteworthy when they appear at all. They’re not being revived; they just didn’t quite die. My ruminations in this direction did finally settle on a revival that has largely happened since 2018 and is very much positive, for my drinking tastes at least: lambic. 

Talk about trad. Oh, he did. Other hashtaggers at the BlueSky include Phil Edwards who wrote about something called sour stout: “…that’s what’s new in beer since 2018! Or at least it was, for a couple of months five years ago…” Good points all. And Alistair Reece of Fuggled was hashing the tag which led me to his post which concluded:

This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow…it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.

Jeff Alworth also gave a heads up to check out Beervana for his thoughts which canvassed a range of events and trends and settled on – the vitality of change itself:

In the decades since I started writing about it, it has never gotten boring or stale. Something new is always around the corner, and the subject is so vast it may involve the liquid in the container, the container itself (remember 22s??), the people who make it, or our understanding of the history or culture or politics that shaped and continues to shape it. If I live to a hundred, I will never have to worry about what to write next. Something will come along. I love that, too.

I agree with this entirely. When I started doing this scribbing in 2003, I thought the theme of beer would wear out in a few months. Fat chance. Ed Wray also got all hashtaggeriffic and shared the link to his post on the fact that he… he himself… himself… got to brew one vintage of Thomas Hardy Ale! And Gary Gillman wrote me via a/ an X Message to give me the heads up that he took time off from his taking time off in the south of France to write over at Beer et Seq. to praise the continuing improvement of technical standards which is a very good point – and leads me to my own thoughts.

Me, I think the best thing is home delivery. Since the blessings of the pandemic, I can get beer delivered to my door here in Ontario. Which means I get beer from breweries I can’t regularly visit and – perhaps more importantly – excellent beers that brewers brew in smaller batches. Which means I could get have deliveries from excellent folk like (the sadly now gone) Stone City* and Matron. At the moment, the stash is armed with a mix box from Godspeed. Fabulous. All so fabulous.

I think that is it. All most welcome everyone. By my count that’s twenty-one participants, a respectable start. Thanks all. I think this is a great thing. As is the tradition at least as I recall it, there will be a separate announcement of the theme for the next edition of The Session from the hosts in the very near future – who(m) I am delighted to say will be Boak and Bailey on Friday the 28th of February. Whoohooo! Stay tuned. As my personal heroes The Carpenters once sang, it’s yesterday once more.

*I completely forgot I wrote an alt edition of The Session in January 2019 and again in April 2020 with an alt numeration sequence. What a cheezy bastard. In the great tradition of the Avignon papacy, I posted an edition #143 and #144. They are not part of the same Marvel universe as far as I am concerned.