Month: April 2025

The Last Thoughtful Yet Wistful Beery News Notes For The Election 2025

Well, it has been fun. Most of the polls remain to lean towards the non-politician globally recognized economist as opposed to the guy who’s been mostly a grievence mongering backbench MP since he was 24. I make no comment otherwise. As you can understand in my position, I must remain strictly neutral in these matters as a member of the media. And how could I not be, given the vital vegemite v. plastic straw level of fundamental policy divide we are faced with as a nation.

No, we need to set that aside. Let’s start off with something pleasant. Travel is always nice. Getting away. We all like to get away. Yet traveling can be difficult. You may want to find something new but the new has to be sufficiently familiar to fit into if not expectations at least your range of capacity to enjoy it. I’ve been following Boak and Bailey’s travels east with interest and have some sympathy for their experience in two pubs in Sibiu, a Romanian city I had never heard of, the first being…

…an odd place called Butoiul de aur, which had a bit of a middle class suburban lounge-bar feel. Then the karaoke started and it began to feel more like a party pub. Local beer Nembeer is either not very good or was not well cared for there. It all tasted rather like our first forays into home brewing. The best of the options was Amarilla (5.2%) which had a promising aroma and some good flavours among the off ones. We were initially excited to discover Kombinat, which appeared to be a Czech inspired Brewpub. But it turned out to be mostly a Staropramen outlet. Their eponymous house beer was fine – vaguely Czech in its maltiness, but not particularly distinguished.

Not particularly distinguished. Something like myself, I am told. You know, I am not sure I could write “some good flavours among the off ones” let alone be patient enough to unravel the threads to discern the difference. Me, I’d be the last one to sign up for anything called an “off-taste seminar” given that it’s basically the beery equivalent of a college course on shitty paintings. No, once I encounter the gak, all thoughts stop.

Also on the road but just a bit to the northwest of B+B, ATJ shared thoughts on things Bambergian… Bambergese… Bamberger:**

Beer to me is an open book about travel, people, friendships, memories, family, history, architecture, bars and pubs, breweries and the harmonic nature of the liquid in your glass. It is about how a landscape can shape the beers that people drink and about how it can be something more than refreshment, and even provide a guide to life and living as thorough as literature, poetry, music or meditation. This was why returning to Bamberg once more unleashed a surge of joy within, a feeling that I also experience when I go to the lagerlands of Bohemia and Bavaria, or drink beer in a brown cafe in Flanders, walk into a rural pub in England or spend time searching for soul-shaking beer in somewhere like Bologna or Barcelona.

Ripe words yet they capture a mood I very much recognize. Twenty years ago, I would have such a surge of joy walking into Finger Lake Beverages in Ithaca, New York that I made myself walk the aisles for five minutes before I could stop and touch any of the offerings.

And furtherer wester still, two feature writers with The Daily Star took themselves on a trip to four east end London’s dubbed roughest pub crawl:

The Manor Arms was empty, with a smell of must and TCP hanging in the air. One bloke sat down at the end of the bar chatting away to a gruff man in a cap pulling the pints. ‘“F*** this, f*** that. It’s the f****** credit union,” said the bartender. “Oh that thing you said would never happen?” “Yeah that f****** thing, hahahahah.” Spurs were on the telly, we both loved that, watching our beloved, beleaguered club fight against Hoffenheim to the soundtrack of Danny Dyre-esque ‘awwwiiiittte’s… The barman, it turns out, was a Spurs fan too. “Typical Germans, if that’s a penalty, my d***s a goldfish,” he said as a Hoffenheim player fell in the box. Men kept walking in with bags of vodka and salmon. “Not for me mate,” our new companion, Graham, behind the bar would say. “Know wot mean?” We didn’t really, but we loved him. Out the blokes would walk with their bags of salmon, deflated, venturing back into the inky blackness to find a more willing buyer. It couldn’t have been more relaxed, more comfortable. Neither of us had had a chat with a barman this good in months.

I know that feeling, too, having once been offered tantalizing beef steaks, discretely offered by a long  coated gent who pulled them from the front of his trousers, all wrapped and labeled and clearly freshly stolen from the grocery store near to the formerly named Ladies Beverage Room in my Halifax of the 1980s.

But forget all that. If one is to believe Reuters, the next big beer tourism destination is going to be Sweden – certainly once news of these changes to the drinking laws get better known:

Under current rules, shops in the Nordic country can only sell drinks with up to 3.5 percent alcohol. For stronger drinks, consumers must head to Systembolaget, the state-run alcohol chain which operates 450 outlets across Sweden. The stores have limited opening hours, don’t advertise alcohol or discount drinks. The government’s so-called “farm sale” law for alcoholic beverages of all strengths takes effect in June and runs for six years before a mandatory evaluation. The law states visitors must have paid, can buy only small “souvenir-style” amounts and have to listen to “a lecture” with an educational element.

Party Party!! Ja! Ja!! Jaaaa!!! What else is going on? Did you hear about these tariff things? No really, they’re a thing now and apparently the wine makers of Bordeaux have had to face some facts this year with the threats and realities:

Trump’s threat of 200 percent tariffs caused dismay in Bordeaux. “Châteaux will close,” said one proprietor. “Négociants will close.” And of course it would cause chaos in the US wine market as well, with many casualties. That was why few believed that he would do it: the damage to US commerce would be too great. And there was a lot of lobbying against tariffs, too: restaurants, sommeliers and retailers had got together to explain the problem. In the end, the tariff on the EU was set at 20 percent – for now. On a practical level, Bordeaux has also been shipping a lot of wine to the US recently. Most leading châteaux have ensured that they have somewhere between six months and a year’s stock already there.

Speaking of managing traditions in times of the new, The Mudge posted a good piece on Thornbridge’s use of one of the Union sets to create some premium and tradititonal ales:

…in a world of heavily-hopped New World IPAs, the question must be asked whether these relatively understated beers in a classic English style will make a mark. Ordering online, these beers came to almost £4 a bottle, so they are probably something better regarded as an occasional treat rather than a regular drink, especially when Jaipur can be obtained from Morrisons at 4 for £7.

Can an occasional treat sustain itself? Even the new has been losing its sheen more and more it seems. Beer Business Insider sends out a cryptically condensed email every week with some pretty frank comment including a ticker tape style summary of fairly recent movements in the US booze trade, in this case to mid-April:

Wine volume down double digits, 9.6% for 4 weeks, several points worse than 26 weeks (-6%) or 52 weeks (-5%). Craft volume down 9% for 4 weeks, $$ down 8%. Craft down 5% for 26 weeks. And volume of spirits-centric seltzers suddenly dropped 6.8% last 4 weeks. Down 3% for 12 weeks. Recall, High Noon is two-thirds of spirits-centric seltzers. It fell 6.6% and 12.8% last 2 weeks. What’s going on?

Yikes… I think. That many numbers makes me all woozy and giggly. Perhaps relatedly, The New York Times had an interesting story about how, for a city that claims to never sleep, it is getting harder to get a license to sell booze late at night:

…some bar owners say closing times have trended earlier in recent years, with lively venues like Carousel, which opened in 2023, shutting down at 2 a.m. Most operators agree that today’s customers are drinking less than previous generations, and that they’re going out earlier… Late-night liquor licenses, once an expectation in nightlife-heavy neighborhoods, have become increasingly difficult to obtain, especially in areas where bars bump up against brownstones. Early birds and night owls have already clashed over outdoor dining programs and summer concerts. “The 4 a.m., seven-days-a-week license is becoming ararer commodity,” said Terrence Flynn, a liquor licensing attorney who has represented hundreds of bar owners in New York City since 1985.

Next up, Jeff posted a post called “Convergence” but I might have called it “Overlap” given, you know, how I see these things: there are no neat and tidy boxes of styles. Yet the drive to be the first to label something as a thing is a real thing but it is not a good thing. But that’s just me. Let’s see what Jeff had to say:

Until I poured out a can of Pure Project’s Neon Bloom, however, it hadn’t occurred to me that pilsners and pales were converging. We’ve had a nice run of warm, sunny weather in Portland, and midway through the first can I enjoyed—thanks to a four-pack sent from San Diego—I realized I was having an experience shift. The beer smelled and tasted like a hoppy ale, but I was slugging it down like a lager. I paused to give it some attention and realize, purely from the sensory experience, that it drank very much like a WC pilsner.

OK, that makes sense. But, and this gets a little ranty and a little tedious, this is not a new issue or even one about pale v. lager so much as continuation of, how should I put it, hmm…  the downward spiral. See, if style means anything, pale ale should lead with grainy texture framed or even cut by the hopping. Lagers should speak one way or another to roundness of malt, again framed to various degrees by hops and even other malts. IPAs are supposed to be where the hops shine but, instead, they suck all the oxygen out of the room.** But, given IPA sells, well here we are. I would also note Stan’s comment:

Bob Kunz and Tim McDonnell of Highland Park Brewery may or may not have invented West Coast Pilsner, but it appears that Kunz was the first to give it a name. Their Timbo Pils pretty much embodies the style. Last October, Timbo won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival . . . in the American-style Pale Ale competition.

Clearly an evil roams upon the land and it’s name is style. Interestingly, this had coincided with the collapse of actual independence in US craft.

Finally, I really liked this article in Pellicle if only for the early inclusion seven lines in of the word Coreff, a word I encountered last January when the same author, Anaïs Lecoq, wrote about that beer of Breton.  Rather than a straight up Part II, this week we have a next chapter on the guide to the beer culture of that part of France:

Strolling effortlessly behind the massive wooden bar, Élise is the first thing you’ll notice when pushing the door of Tavarn Ty Élise—Élise’s house if you translate it into English—in Plouyé, a small village in Central Brittany, France.  Her pub has been a staple for the community since 1978. That’s when Élise’s mum, Anna, bought the place for her daughter after the owner retired. “I was 21 and had no intention of tending a bar,” Élise says. “I was a seasonal worker and I liked my freedom, but I still said yes.” Watching her doing her thing, you would think she’s been there her whole life. She hasn’t.

WIll there be further chapters, a three and even a four? I hope so. One last thing – tomorrow is the next edition of The Session, hosted by Ding and on the question of value. Value?

Value most certainly does not necessarily correlate with cheap either (although it could), rather it means when I part with the cash, no matter how large or small the amount, does what I receive in return meet or exceed the value of said cash? Subjective? Sure, but we all have our own sense of value.

Value! Oh, I am digging into the archives for that one. That’s all for this week. Until we meet in May after all the votes are counted net Monday and after all the taxes are submitted next Wednesday, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….who is also going on his own holiday break so may not be there…) each and every Monday.*** Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts 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. Maybe? 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? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but, hmm, they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   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. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

*Bamberger would be a good name for a smash burger place.
**That is why the label “IPA” is both meaningless and helpful as it gets slapped on anything that wants to hide yet still sell. From candy coated Willy Wonka nightmares to innocence of light lagers and simple pales ales it’s all IPA.
***I heard Stan as well as Boak and Bailey held a vote in secret and decided I could hold the fort, that I really didn’t need a holiday. O. M. G.

These Be Your Mid-April Mid-Life And Perhaps Even Fairly Mid Beery News Notes

Easter week! You’d be right in thinking it was a month ago with all the talk this week of of green beer here and green beer there. But no, it is the time of the bunny who lays eggs which happen to be made of chocolate. Christ! And each Easter is also reason to revisit this 2008 post of mine on the lack of Easter beers – which included, as illustrated, perhaps the oddest thing I have ever published on this here blog of mine. But, of course, the main event of the long weekend is the old man’s birthday, me being the old man in question. Thank you for all the cards! Sixty-two. Whaaaaa Hoooooo! Said no one never. This very evening I am celebrating by going to a ukelele orchestra concert. I have authorized myself to slip out early just in case. Still, I do hope it is silly enough to justify the price of admission.

Enough about me! First off this week, have I mentioned the global economic mood?  The CEO of Mexico’s Constellation Brands Bill Newlands has:

About half of Constellation’s beer sales are from Hispanic consumers… with the demographic accounting for 78% of its total revenue last quarter. The Wall Street Journal report noted that many immigrants in Southern California and Texas have begun avoiding liquor stores, where they are often forced to show identification. Many people have stopped shopping at supermarkets after 6 p.m., hoping to avoid immigration raids… While Modelo, Corona and Pacifico are exempt from the Trump administration’s 25% tariff on Mexican imports, the company is not able to dodge the 25% tariff on aluminum when it comes to their canned beer imports.

Being from somewhere matters apparently. And speaking of tariffs,* James Beeson posed an interesting question in The Grocer: is local a liability in these trade war times? And then he helpfully explored the implications:

These liquids command a hefty price premium thanks to protected geographical indicators (PGIs) which guard the product’s name from misuse or imitation… PGI status offers “clear authenticity and product differentiation in consumers’ eyes”, and plays “a crucial role in premiumisation”… Tariffs certainly look like bad news for Rémy, which generated 38% of its sales in FY24 from the Americas. Thanks to its overexposure to cognac, it also sells 62% of its PGI spirits outside the market in which they enjoy this status.

So being from somewhere can be quite damaging. Plus… never thought over exposure to cognac could be a good thing but there you are.  But then in TDB, David Jesudason was arguing that things should be more clearly from somewhere:

It’s especially concerning because most drinkers cringe at the thought of Madri – the supposed soul of Madrid – being brewed in the UK by Coors – while this unnamed beer is actually being brewed at a renowned British craft brewery. The type of brewery that brews a lot of award-winning tipples that define modern British beer for discerning drinkers prepared to pay premium prices. And this beer is no exception. Which shows there’s no need to lie. But here’s the payoff: by claiming a beer is brewed in Germany not Great Britain what exactly is a British beer company saying? Bavaria has better water than Burton? Hamburg has better brewing techniques than London? Perhaps all British brands will proudly say where their beer is brewed if cask were to become UNESCO recognised and we took our heritage seriously.

THEN… Will Hawkes considered in his latest London Beer City monthly how beer from somewhere might not really be about that somewhere at all and this might not be very good in these times:

American influence – and, more specifically, American hop flavour – has fuelled London’s brewing renaissance over the past few decades. From Neck Oil to Pale Fire, London brewers have paraded their passion for (and understanding of) Obama-era American craft brewing. American Pale Ales on London bars have become legion. Wham bam thank you Uncle Sam. The world, though, has changed. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to elect Donald Trump once might be regarded as misfortune; to do it twice is just fucking stupid. Trump’s introduction of tariffs, the bovine threats to Canada and Denmark, the increasingly aggressive way in which visitors to the USA are being treated: this points in one direction and one direction only. America acknowledges and wants no allies, and that includes Britain. MAGA is unleashed and obnoxious.

Interesting. Will the world reject US craft just as it’s rejecting the Tesla? It is also interesting that making booze under licence was one of the solutions mentioned by Mr. Beeson while is the problem for Mr. Jesudason. Hmm… Speaking of critical thinking, Katie M. took immediate and visceral objection to this article in The Guardian:

Is the editorial team all on holiday leave or something? There are SO many talented writers out there looking for an opportunity like this, and so many editors who do their jobs with skill. How can a national paper be so careless as to publish something so unpolished. The writer isn’t even to blame here, the whole process is, from commission to upload.

There was a lot of unhappiness in the susequent BluesGuy comments all of which confused me a bit until I got to this one that shared a correction to the online edition: “This article was amended on 13 April 2025 to replace some words that were omitted during the editing process.” Yikes!  The post repair job was still a bit much. As ripe with superlatives as the worst of beer writing. Very much overly rouged, as the kids might say. So much unhappiness. Good thing, then, that Gary shared the good news – the Clark’sroast beef sandwich is back in Syracuse NY!

For longtime locals, the main event is the return of a Syracuse bar legend: the Clark’s Ale House roast beef sandwich. Clark’s Ale House, which operated in two locations from 1992 to 2016, was famous for its roast beef sandwich. It was simple — just medium-rare top round, thinly-sliced red onions, cold cheddar cheese between an onion roll from Di Lauro’s Bakery — but it was legendary. And when Clark’s closed for good, its devoted fans were left craving. “We’ve missed this sandwich so much,” Beach said, standing in the Crooked Cattle’s kitchen earlier this week. ”But now it’s back.”

That artisic rendering up there is the sandwich I ate at Clark’s over twenty years ago. Now… if they can just bring back the house ale and the pub’s layout.

Note #1: Katie Mather has returned to owner operated blogging.

Note #2: do you like salt in beer. People have. Since at least 1835.

Stan also spoke of an ingredient this week – specifically the hop – in his Hop Queries edition 8.12 and shared this about the return to work of two US government employees:

Two USDA-ARS employees involved with public hop research were among thousands of probationary employees who went back at work after the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) issued a 45-day stay on their termination (see Hop Queries Vol. 8, No. 10). Francisco Gonzalez, a hop horticulturist, is one of four scientists central to the public hop research program. Brandon Sandoval is a technician assisting Gonzalez… That’s not to say that things are “back to normal” at research facilities in Oregon and Washington. Not all support staff has returned to work and what happens after a hiring freeze lifted is not clear. Also, the USDA has warned employees that a significant reduction in force is likely.

Some chat this week about what was micro then craft now independent. As exhibit A we have Pete of The Times* who gave a quite reasonable explanation how craft was lost to bigger interests… just as, I suppose, micro fell to the avarice of big craft:

To my palate, Beavertown’s Neck Oil and Gamma Ray, and Camden Hells — now owned by corporations that brew as cost-effectively as they can — don’t taste as good as they did. Quality hops are costly. And proper lagering means storing beers in chilled vats for weeks. So what are drinkers to do if they want beer that’s well made by small players? Trade bodies such as Siba, which once promoted craft beer, now champion “indie” beer instead. Siba defines an indie brewer as one that’s UK-based, has less than 1 per cent of the UK beer market and is not connected with any other business bigger than that size. It issued a logo for breweries such as Fyne Ales, Vocation and Five Points to use on packaging and pump clips.

Then, as exhibit B, consider Phil Cook who gave what can only be described as commentary from a view from (Ed.: *…checks map…*) well below my feet:

‘Independent’ remains the adjective of choice in promoting and organising the many Australian breweries that might otherwise be grouped under ‘craft’ or (in earlier times) ‘micro’. But companies who persist in waving it around as they take part in the recent string of mergers, consolidations, and various other entanglements are straining the word to breaking point. It’s too much like someone insisting “being single is really important to me, that’s why I married another bachelor!”

Does it matter? Well, “it” isn’t any one thing. First, locally the word “independent” never really took off in Canada. Even well past “craft” we are… still craft. And if we look at the UK standard of 1% of the market that has little use for the US trade where the small guys got co-opted long ago to falling into line helpfully to support the aspirations of the large ones. These things, too, will not save craft beer. And does any of this matter so much as we continue on the human race’s continued shift away from the bottle? Consider this startling news from The Guardian on the state of the global wine trade:

The OIV said the consumer was now paying about 30% more for a bottle now than in 2019-20 and overall consumption had fallen by 12% since then. In the United States, the world’s top wine market, consumption fell 5.8% to 33.3m hectolitres. Delgrosso said tariffs ordered by the US president, Donald Trump could become “another bomb” for the wine industry. Sales in China remain below pre-Covid levels. In Europe, which accounts for nearly half of worldwide sales, consumption fell 2.8% last year. In France, one of the key global producers, 3.6% less wine was consumed last year. Spain and Portugal were among the rare markets where consumption increased.

Still on the holiday in Romania and pushing back against that trend by all accounts, Boak and Bailey took time to send out their monthly newsletter in which they shared thoughts on one way the pub trade can respond – reduce the congnitive load:

In the context of a holiday, a slight increase in cognitive load can be pleasurable, and part of the fun. It’s about the line between stress and stimulus… How can pubs and breweries reduce cognitive load? The experience of a Wetherspoon will rarely be thrilling but at least (kliche Klaxon) “You know where you are with a ‘Spoons”. All sorts of venues could, and can do, do some of the same things… the single greatest way to reduce the cognitive load of any experience is to keep doing it. However weird and complicated your local pub might be, by the time it is your local, you’ll know how it works and won’t find it weird at all.***

Does a gay bar at a zoo convey significant cognitive load? David Jesudason explains how you might have found that out if you visited the Hotham Park Zoo in Bognor Regis, West Sussex in the 1980s:

…this magical and enchanting period spawned the Safari Bar, a gay bar playing high NRG music, hosting drag queens and causing merriment that could be heard from considerable distances. The night was the idea of DJs Barrie Appleyard and Ian Harding, who had met at a club in Littlehampton. Ian knew the manager of the zoo and Ian phoned Barrie saying “shall we try something with the zoo, you know, gay nights or something?” They found a cafeteria (originally built as a small mammal house) that was tucked away in the back of the zoo and transformed this functional space into a jungle-themed gay bar on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights.

What went on each Thursday? Hmm. Speaking more or less on whether less is maybe more or maybe not, at the beginning of the month Retired Martin shared his thoughts on coming changes to the Good Beer Guide based on this motion that was before the gathering last weekend:

“MOTION 7 : This Conference instructs the National Executive to reduce the number of pubs in the Good Beer Guide from the 2027 edition onwards, to ensure only quality pubs are featured.“

Have the results been published beyond the shadowy membership cabal? I don’t see any reference on the so-me’s.  What the heck could “quality” mean in such a context? By total contrast, I give you the best line written about beer of the week – if not to this point in the month – must be this one:

The best location for a beer, by far, was at the sausage stand near the city incinerator plant.

And, perhaps relatedly, Tom Morton, who I met through his former BBC Scotland radio show, shared a story of a dubious newpaper restaurant reviews which is… detailed:

The worst meal I’ve ever had was at a café I’ll call Les Vomiteurs in the then seriously untrendy, ungentrified, occasionally unsafe area of Glasgow called Finnieston. This was 1979 and the late Jack House was still writing restaurant reviews in the Evening Times. He’d recommended the tripe at Les Vom and as I’d never tried this intestinal delight, and fancied myself an adventurous junior gourmand, I thought I’d have a go… The formica tables of Les Vomiteurs matched the unwelcoming hardness off the proprietor, who served me up a bowl of white gunge. Boiled tatties and slimy tendrils of cow gut in milk. It was unchewable, the bits of stomach slipping about my mouth like frisky tapeworms. I swallowed, inhaled the potatoes and just made it out of the door in time to throw up the entirety of my lunch in the Argyle Street gutter. So much for acting on restaurant reviews.

I don’t know what to say about that… other than my folks grew up on the Clyde and that is the sort of keen tales of humanity that I grew up with.  And speaking of the unexpected, Jeff wrote an intersting exposé of a bootleg beer he injested in Oregon named Corona Mega – and also provided some details on a resulting lawsuit:

The mystery deepened the more I dug into it. Whatever I bought that night was definitely not regular Corona. For one thing, it was a vastly superior beer. It was a tenth of a point weaker in strength at 4.5%…  The label listed Oz Trading Group of Hidalgo, Texas as the importer, which was an oddly bold move for, to quote the economist Stringer Bell, “a criminal [expletive] enterprise.” (As a spicy aside, the apparent owner of Oz Trading is Oziel Treviño, a Hidalgo city councilperson who was found to have committed voter fraud in 2016.) Curiouser and curiouser, in other words.

And, finally, Pellicle published a piece by David Nilsen on depression and loss,  a tough read that carries the disclaimer that “this article makes frequent and detailed references to suicide and severe depression, therefore reader discretion is advised.” The essay is primarily about the life and the passing of a brewer, Brad Etheridge, at age 43 based on conversations with his wife, Julie Etheridge but it also speaks to the broader context. It also contains this passage:

Cindy Parsons is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and an associate professor of nursing at the University of Tampa in Florida. In 2019, she and colleague Jacqueline Warner Garman (who co-owns Hidden Springs Ale Works in Tampa and is a psychotherapist) gave a presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference, held that year in Denver, on addressing mental health issues in the craft beer industry. She thinks the image of craft beer can make its workers and supporters reluctant to acknowledge the complications of mixing mental health issues and alcohol. “We’re supposed to be the happy people,” she tells me. “Do we really want to address this in our industry?”

My profession, lawyering, also has a significant mix of mental health issues and alcohol and much of what’s written by David rings true. Only by way of one example among many I’ve met, the family friend who was my first articling principal now thirty-three years ago quickly upon my arrival revealed themselves to be drinking a quart of rum to get them through each day. Drank to the death. Grim.

There you have it. A huge range of reading this week. Take your time and until next time when I will be, I promise, older and wise… please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts 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. Maybe? 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? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but hmm they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   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. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

*Did I? Was I?
**I forgot this: I knew him and apparently drew him way back when.
***Pardon all the ellipsises… ellipsi… but the point was worth making.

Those Humdrum Work Week Beery News Notes For When Someone Else Is Having More Fun Than You

So, the election is halfway through and the pending arse kicking three weeks from now seems to be still on track.  As fans of beer, we are familiar with the concept of attenuation and yeast efficiency. Right? Well, the Tories in Canada have a history of voter inefficiency – which means they have too many of their voters lodged in too few ridings*. You get my point, right? Anyway, no new pictures of beer being poured on the campaign trail to share this week – but to be fair in 2021’s campaign, Bloc quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet hit a beerfest as illustrated. I am hoping we get more poliiticans at the tap before this all ends on April 28th. Interesting to note that there is at least one Rhinocéros Party** candidates this time around and that at least one candidate is a beer fan:

Anthony Mitchell, a retired elementary school principal running for the Rhinoceros Party in Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong, says he has no campaign budget, just a red nose and a slogan… Mitchell, who grew up in Sarnia, said he’s married, though “my wife doesn’t admit that she’s married to me during the election,” he said. He has two children and six grandchildren. “My hobbies are going to concerts and festivals,” he said. “I brew my own beer in my garage.”

Otherwise… all the news is bad. Still bad. And you all fell bad. And you should. So… it is no surprise that some folk are actually having more fun than you. Much more fun. There they are, off on their holly jollidays saying things like “yipee!!” and “wheeeeeee!!!” And there they are, in Timișoara Romania having more fun than you. Birthplace of the 1989 revolution. Wow. Less happy recently (but probably still happier than you) was The Beer Nut who wrote this upon the consideration of one beer’s branding as compared to the experience of its consumption:

The badge implies that it’s one in a series called “Modern Classics” and that it’s a “celebration stout”. Celebrating what, and how do the whiskey and coffee enter the picture? Not in the flavour, anyway. This tastes very plain indeed, and though it’s not powerhouse-strength, 5.5% ABV is plenty to give a stout character. Here, the extent of the coffee is no more than you’d find in any typical dry stout. There’s nothing resembling whiskey at all, so I doubt it’s barrel-aged. Whisky-soaked oak chips, maybe? Sorry, there are more questions than answers with this one. I was a bit bored by it, not to mention confused.

So many questions, had he. Similarly, question-raising-wise, Lars shared some research on BlueSky, how he came across information from Jutland, Denmark where there were stories related to:

…their “gammeltøl”, strong farmhouse ale brewed in spring and drunk in autumn, that they laid an egg in the barrel. This was common. She adds that “from this egg there might come a basilisk.” That’s not common. Decided to search for “basilisk” and found another mention. She says they believed that if the gammeltøl became too old a basilisk might come into it, and it had eyes everywhere. If it looked at anyone, they died. She’d heard that one place they’d heard the basilisks in the barrel, and then the barrel and the beer were both buried in the ground out of fear of the basilisks.

Creepy.*** Almost as disturbing is this article in The Guardian about how a character in an upcoming film prefers an odd beer cocktail:

“Coke and beer.” Coke and beer. Coke – and beer? Coke and beer! Who is she, this Lucy? And why is she not like other girls? I have rarely been so taken by a trailer. Is this where I’ve been going wrong, I wonder, in dating and in life? I’ve always liked the idea of having a signature drink order. It seems to mark you out as a person of taste and distinction – someone with a history, who knows things. Medium house red says basic, cheap, vaguely health-conscious. Coke and beer, on the other hand, feels provocative, intriguing and a bit peevish, maybe in a sexy way. 

Maybe. Or maybe batshit nutso. Anthony Gladman wrote about perhaps a more sensible drink but perhaps one had at a less sensible time – the nightcap:

As the first drink of the night is different to those that follow, so is the nightcap a drink apart. It is not simply the last drink of the night but the one you sneak in after that — perhaps on your own, but more likely with someone special, someone to whom you’re not quite ready to say goodbye or goodnight. A nightcap is both the drink and the occasion that surrounds it. All we have in life, ultimately, is time. So to opt for a nightcap is to place extra weight on the time spent drinking it and, retrospectively, on the time that led up to it. A nightcap means the evening was so good you can’t allow it to end just yet — or so bad you need to put it right immediately.

That’s one of those things that brings back memories, yes, good and bad. Mainly bad, frankly. Why did I drink that?  Why did I do that? But back to the now and the real and as noted at the end of last week‘s update, the US plunked a tariff on beer and left EU brewers confused as to what exactly was covered by this executive:

The tariff’s scope has left companies uncertain whether to ship — or sit tight and hope for clarification. Belgian brewers, already operating on tight margins, fear a prolonged standoff. “We don’t know how long the measure will be in effect, and that uncertainty is already damaging,” Raf De Jonghe, head of Belgian brewers’ group BEER, told Belgian daily Nieuwsblad. As confusion mounted, the U.S. Commerce Department clarified that the tariff is not intended to apply to the beer itself. “Tariffs on imported beer only apply to the value of the aluminum content of the beer can, and not to the beer itself,” a Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement emailed to POLITICO. “Imports of the empty aluminum cans will be tariffed for their full value.”

Mexico was confused by the news as well. Everyone‘s confused. It wasn’t just me. What else is going on?  Well, there was one more stake in the heart of “That Craft Thing What Was” is in this note from Beer Marketer’s Insights:

Sunset Distributing, a subsidiary of Hand Family Companies of TN (led by JR Hand) will buy 2 distribs, craft-centric Stone Distributing and NA-bev oriented Classic Dist. Both in one fell swoop. They total about 15 mil cases, about one third NA. Deal expected to close in about 60 days

What was “a key piece of Stone Brewing” is now just a branch of a big beer distributor.  Speaking of big money, according to Craft Brewing Business:

…a rare Chief Oshkosh Crowntainer beer can fetched an eye-popping $111,150 at Morean Auctions. The early 1950s can, believed to be the only one of its kind… It was likely held in a safe at Oshkosh Brewing Co. for years. After the brewery shuttered, the can passed through a series of passionate collectors — from a mailman-car-bartering deal in the ‘70s to a wooden replica carved by a regretful ex-owner. Over the decades, it changed hands through legends of the hobby: Paul Esslinger, Dave Peck, Bob McCoy, and more. Each trade layered mystique, and when it hit the Morean stage in 2025, collectors knew: this was *the* can.

Relatively speaking, Youngs Brewing is doing less well than that old beer can… at least and perhaps only on the stock market:

We regret to report that long term Young & Co.’s Brewery, P.L.C. (LON:YNGA) shareholders have had that experience, with the share price dropping 48% in three years, versus a market decline of about 7.0%. And over the last year the share price fell 23%, so we doubt many shareholders are delighted. Shareholders have had an even rougher run lately, with the share price down 15% in the last 90 days… Young’s Brewery became profitable within the last five years. We would usually expect to see the share price rise as a result. So it’s worth looking at other metrics to try to understand the share price move. Revenue is actually up 19% over the three years, so the share price drop doesn’t seem to hinge on revenue, either.

Why? Similarly with the why, Mike Kanach alerted us all to the fight between two US law firms over, what, a slogan? We don’t do this in the law trade over here in dull old Ontario – which probably helps avoid this sorta stuff:

Raleigh-based Matheson & Associates PLLC filed trademark infringement claims April 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, saying that Denver law firm Whitcomb Selinsky PC is causing confusion by using the name “Beer Law HQ.” Matheson attorney John R. Szymankiewicz has used the “Beer Law Center” moniker to promote his legal services at brewers’ conferences since 2013, according to the suit. In 2015, Szymankiewicz federally registered the first of several “Beer Law Center” trademarks in the category of “attorney services.” Szymankiewicz is the founder and managing partner of Beer Law Center, one of Matheson’s subsidiaries along with the firm’s Vice Law Center…

Question: will both Czech beer culture and British cask ale be recognized under the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage?  Given that one has the backing of two web-based beer influencers**** and the other is being promoted by the Czech Beer and Malt Association with, umm, government support, err, I know where my money is going… when I am not saving up for that beer can:

If Czech beer culture gets listed by UNESCO, it would be the second after Belgium, listed in 2016 — which Slunecko said “really boosted the reputation of local beer-making, not only inside Belgium, but also abroad.” The Czech Ministry of Culture already put it on the national list in January — a necessary condition for international recognition — while Slunecko and others are embarking on promoting their bid. 

Note: “Jeremy Clarkson’s beers recalled because of “possible health risk” ” !!!

Finally, in Pellicle, Vince Raison introduced his story of The Green Goddess in Blackheath, London with some refreshingly honest personal reflections on facing the year he turns 64:

The doctor gently suggested some lifestyle changes. More (or some) exercise. Improved diet. The usual stuff. Then she proposed I take three consecutive days off alcohol a week to avoid gout attacks and otherwise unnecessary medication.  “I’ll do you one,” I said, not terribly wisely. She reminded me that it was for my benefit, that I was the only one in this ‘negotiation’ that had any skin in the game, as it were. Not just skin, but actual organs. I have friends who have gone sober and are very happy about it, but that’s not for me, despite their increased vim and vigour. I needed a Third Way. A strategy for survival that still involves my beloved local pub.

That is it for now. While you consider your own actual organs or even holly jollidays, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts 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. Maybe? 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? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but hmm they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   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. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

*Yes, we have ridings… not districts or wards or constituencies. Like Nicky Nicky Nine Door and good aged cheddar cheese, its part of the cultural heritage of being settled in significant part by West Country folk two centuries ago. And in this situation so many rural ridings vote Tory, that they can actually lose elections while still getting the most votes nationally. Arse kicking enhancement factor #1.
**And here is their platform of #1 promises…
***To offset that, here is a second, more charming Bluesky thread from Lars.
****Didn’t they try this in 2021?

The Uplifting And Inspiring Candidate For First Beery News Notes For Q2 of 2025

It’s April. Finally. Did you realize that today we are exactly the same length of time from this time last year as we are to this time next year? No? I was really hoping to start out with something profound this week… but that’s all I could come up with.* It’s got to be the election. I’m all a buzz about the election. And, as predicted last week, there has been an election beer pouring sighting this week as PM Carney took his Liberal party campaign bus to a bar in Georgetown, Ontario. He seems to have a pretty steady hand. Here’s a bit of a vid. More beer pouring please, candidates…

First up, Matthew shared the round up from the March edition of The Session with lots of good stuff. My submission was not as interesting as those of other folk* so go check out all the other entries – but also read Matthews own thoughts on why writing in this “sketching not sketchy” manner is important:

I’ve returned to blogging this year because I think getting the multitude of ideas I’ve been sitting on for months out in a way that is not bound to this process, or to the whims of a particular editor is really valuable. Writing is important, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced journalist or you’re writing your first ever piece, the most important thing is that you get it done, and then move on to the next one. As I enter my 10th year as a full-time professional writer, I consider this blog to be the best place to try out ideas, and figure out what does and doesn’t work.

Next time, the host is Ding and the question is about value. Yes, there are plenty of venues and levels for we scribblers. For example, Rachel Hendry wrote a inner voice piece for the first issue of a new web mag – a wag? – called chlorophyll about a night out with the Gamay:

Tasting Beaujolais is where I learnt the term confected, a harsh word rhyming with infected and inferring the pick-and-mix stalls of the cinema complex and theatre foyer. Parma violets and foam bananas and sweet jellied cherries all manifesting in a glass that people infantilise and dismiss. Yet here, in my glass, a dismissal of an assumption takes place. A Gamay peppery and perfumed and proud. Spicy. Intoxicating. The presence of this spice allows the Gamay to take on a new meaning. A hierarchy rejected.

I like it. You can too. Just remember the scale: Beaujolais Nouveau, Beaujolais, Beaujolais Village and then the best stuff from any of the individual ten villages like Fleurie or St-Amore. From pretty silly fruit juice to age worthy complexity. Yet relatively cheap and cheery at each point up the ladder. Gamay is also pretty commonly grown for wine here in Ontario, too.

Also cheap and cheery seems to be traveling in eastern Europe but, with concerns for their safety, does one really go to Transnistra given it’s largely occupied by the post-Soviet / not-so-post-Soviets. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Retired Martin did:

…our guide Lily wasn’t much interested in facts and figures either. She showed us supermarkets, sturgeon, fridge magnet stores and the Sheriff Tiraspol ground, while changing the tour to squeeze in an unscheduled wine tasting that meant she wouldn’t get back in Chisinau in time to see Haaland and Ødegaard dismantle the Moldovan national team. What a trooper. It’s just as well Transnistrian is so quiet, hardly any traffic in the towns or on the highway, and we were able to stop at Bender’s Tighina Fortress on a promise that we “wouldn’t dawdle or attempt to read the descriptions in the torture museum” or something.

Another town with another fort is Rye in England where Pellicle took us this week where Fred Garratt-Stanley traced the history of some of the oldest pubs if you know where to look – including the chimney at The Mermaid :

Dr. Chris Moore’s research often centres around uncovering these stories by digging into architectural quirks. For example, when he learned that The Mermaid’s central chimney is made from Caen stone (a type of limestone quarried in northern France and usually shipped to England to construct religiously symbolic buildings like Canterbury Cathedral,) he was immediately intrigued. “Caen stone is basically a religious stone used to construct most of our big cathedrals, it would not have been used on a pub,” he explains. “So that’s probably Reformation stone from a dissolved monastery close to Rye that’s been reused. There’s symbolism to that; did the landlord make a conscious decision to go ‘It’s a shame that monastery’s been destroyed, let’s keep a bit of it in the pub’?”

Also keeping up with the past, Liam provided us with another slice of Irish beer history, an inquiry by the magistrates into the problem of the overpour:

…the publicans were summoned to appear in front of the local magistrates and as examples, a pair of half-gallon measures were produced belonging to two publicans, a Mr. McDonnell and a Mrs. Wafer. Both measures had been found to be correct six months previous but now held a naggin more than they previously did according to the inspector. This would equate to over 4% extra liquid per measure, which would amount to a moderate but notable loss to the publican over time. The magistrates were at a loss as to how this could happen, but the puzzle was solved when a tinman called Mr. Waters took to the stand and gave the following explanation…

There… you’re hooked! Go read the rest for yourself under that link. Not dissimilarly, Eoghan Walsh wrote a list of everything he ate outside of the home last month including but not limited to:

Half a packet of Yolloh strawberry marshmallow sweets I found hidden behind my phone at my desk. Four fruit Mentos I found in my dressing gown. A full pack of Yolloh strawberry marshmallow sweets I bought in a moment of weakness. A basket of fries at Brasserie de la Senne, shared. A portion of Boon Mariage Parfait cheese squares, with mustard, shared. Duyvis Crac-A-Nut Paprika nuts, three or four packets, the small ones from the vending machine.

And Laura Hadland wrote an excellent extended post script to a recent What’s Brewing article on sexism at British beerfests to explain the why calling out such bigotries  matter:

Why do something that you know might upset a few people when you can take a different route and try not to actively offend anyone? We all know that you can’t please all the people all of the time and no doubt whatever theme or image the St Albans committee chose, they would end up with detractors saying they didn’t like the decision. But not liking something for reasons of personal taste or preference is different from choosing to use an illustration that has sexist overtones. 

Gary has announced that he is done with X. (Me, I linger there still only for the inflamatory entertainment of the national election here, making any manner of political obsessive lose their marbles.) Speaking of smartening up, The Polk from The Hammer has been near dry for months now and is finding the loss of venue a continuing challenge:

I love a solid beer run and this last weekend was perhaps the worst, most depressing one I’ve ever taken and it illustrates a real problem the sober or non-alcoholic beer world has when it comes to helping folks crossover or drink a little less if that’s what they’re after… I must admit to longing for that jump in the car and head off down the road moment we used to have when it came to grabbing some new beers… There aren’t many options for a sober third space and while some breweries have NA offerings, good ones that aren’t more than a cheap knock-off of something they toss on the menu for the DD are not as easy to find. The culture of raising a glass with your friends is missing, the fluid conversation and excitement of new and returning beers, old favourites and solid stand-bys doesn’t exist…

Also over is April Fools Day. The best beer related prank was this announcement from Bill of It’s Pub Night:

I was surprised to see a local brewery — you can figure out which one — announce on Facebook that they will no longer be brewing their love-it-or-hate-it Donnie the Elder double gose flavored with muskmelon. Muskmelon — another word for cantaloupe — gave the beer its distinctive orange color, but the taste wasn’t for everyone.  The double gose (sometimes abbreviated “doge” on the blackboard) had a small but vocal minority who liked it, but wasn’t popular enough to keep in the rotation.  The brewers had briefly experimented with a lighter-bodied version that wasn’t as sharp, and not as pungent or orange-colored, that was called Donnie the Younger.  But it turned out no one liked that one, not even fans of Donnie the Elder.

Quote to the contrary, Jordan is seeking the real truthy truth and continuing his list of new beer rules and got so excited about #6 that he skipped past #4 and #5 to get at it – it being the lack of succession as he considers the end** of Mill Street:

We’ve had a lot of breweries open and close within a couple of years in Ontario. Sometimes their annual production wouldn’t fill a large Jacuzzi. Discounting those, let’s say you have shelf SKUs and you’re up around 2,000 hl a year. What’s your plan? Are you going to get big enough to sell to a large corporation? In this economy? Is your brand important enough to be consolidated? Will anyone miss it when it’s gone? According to my spreadsheet, which requires some updating, 119 physical brewing locations have closed in Ontario since 2017, just after Mill Street was purchased. Not many of them were purchased by larger companies.

Sticking with the Canadian scene, Mélissa Gélinas in the Aylmer Bulletin out of Quebec considers what the tariffs we face in Canada will mean for her local breweries:

Sébastien Gandy, head of sales, communications, and cultural affairs at La Dérive Brasserie Artisanale in Gatineau [notes, a]ccording to reports, the cost of a can could potentially increase by 10 to 30 cents. “If it were as simple as raising the price of a can and passing it on to customers, it wouldn’t be so complicated,” said Sébastien. “The real issue is that we’re already in a price war since there’s competition between microbreweries and macrobreweries, which always have the upper hand… Ultimately, we’re caught in a political war that makes no sense, where we don’t have the tools to achieve our goals,” he said. “I think we still feel a desire among the population to encourage smaller local players.

And elsewhere in the land, we see that desire play out with perhaps surprisingly patriotic themes:

In response to repeated threats to Canada’s sovereignty and a trade war, Newfoundland and Labrador breweries want you to grab a cold one in solidarity. On Wednesday Landwash Brewery in Mount Pearl unveiled On Guard, a Canadian pale ale made with only Canadian ingredients, like Quebec hops… In downtown St. John’s, Yellowbelly Brewery co-owner and publican Craig Flynn is individually rolling each label on to individual cans for a new brew called Elbows Up. “Sovereignty is a very big belief in Canada,” said Flynn. “If you want to come after us and try to bring us into the corner, we’re going to come back with our elbows up.”

We’re apparently so proud that we just might fight a bit dirty. Blame Gordie. We’re also just a bit weird. Well, it is a global economic crisis and election time so why not be weird? Speaking of the crisis, on Wednesday the US Department issued an addendum to the Trump Administration’s aluminum tariff that will cause some concern in the world of beer:

BIS in this notice revises Annex 1 to add the following two additional aluminum derivative products in Annex 1:

(1) beer; and
(2) empty aluminum cans.

There you have it. As of 12:01 am Eastern Time on Friday 4 April 2025 all canned beer imports will cost 25% more wholesale in the USA. So… that is it for this week. A reasonable set of reads. Nothing too exotic. But some looming panic. Still, remember that there wil be a special prize for pictures of politicians at the taproom. Was Poilievre pouring in Freddie’s Beach on Monday? I need to check that out.

Until next week, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (WHILE YOU CAN!!! They are saying they are holidaying in April and May) 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.

*I like to place the blame on someone other than myself for things like this but, if I am honest, it’s been a bit of a blur recently with two of us covering the work of eight for a few days, three for a bit more than that and four for longer. We hope to be up to five in a few weeks so, with any luck, I can get back to really goofing off now and then.
**Under that link, there’s an interesting comment from an officer of a megabrewer: “…but it’s not an insubstantial amount of liquid…“