May 2025 – A Good Beer Blog

Session #147: More Poems Please!

It’s the day for The Session again, the last Friday of the month. Our host this month is Phil Cook, a New Zealander in the beer trade who lives in Australia. He posed his question for this month’s consideration over at his blog and it’s all about art:

Feel free to interpret “art” and “fiction” as broadly as you like. Film, TV, music, games, poetry, prose, painting, a particularly pointed piece of graffiti; whatever. Don’t feel obliged to pick a single favourite. A random grab-bag of examples would be wonderful — though a carefully-selected set that illustrates a trend or theme is of course welcome, too. I’d even be curious to hear about a beer or pub that came to you in a dream, if it felt like it captured something about its subliminal force in culture or on your own specific consciousness.

Phil was good enough in his announcement of the topic to remind me that he was struck by Gord Downie’s rendition of the poem “At the Quinte Hotel” by Al Purdy, something I shared years ago. Here’s Al Purdy’s own rendition. Around that time, I also received what was unquestionably the highest award a Canadian beer blog writer can receive for their sensitivity as my original post about Purdy’s poem received this comment from none other than the host of CBC TV’s Man Alive Roy Bonisteel back in 2007, offering a bit of background on the poet and the poet:

I like the beer blog….it’s very good. In interesting fact that a lot of people don’t know is that although Bellevillians are very proud of Al Purdy’s poem about the Quinte Hotel…it is not the Belleville Quinte. It is the Trenton Quinte…now called something else…where Purdy drank. At this same time I had a room at the Quinte when I was driving cab and working at the Courier. At that time we didn’t know each other…but year’s later over many a beer, talked about the fact that we had both been there at the same time. Tell your friend I’ll keep up with his blog.

We now understand that the Quinte of Trenton became known as The Sherwood Forest Inn, a peeler bar, before it burned in 2012. Such is the way of the world. There are somethings even poetry can’t save us from.

And as further proof (if it was needed… or even possible) of my status as a sensitive man, I posted a number of passages from poems about beer back in 2007. It included this passage from a poem I have admired since I was in undergrad, William Shenstone‘s “Written At An Inn” from 1758:

Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
Which lackeys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store,
It buys me Freedom, at an inn.

Freedom. Wonderful thought right there. Click on that image to see the whole thing as it appeared on page of Volume 27 of The London Magazine, Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer at page 255. And you know it wasn’t just poems being read about drinking in inns back then. There were poems written that were meant to be sung in the taverns and inns of the eighteenth century. I’ve posted a few over the years but I think my favourite, set to a very familiar tune, was “Nottingham Ale” because, as explained in the 2017 post under that link, I was familiar with the tune. But that was not the only one. In the very next year, I wrote about “Dorchester Beer” which includes this rueful geo-political verse offering an alt-history of the lead up to the American Revolution:

E’en our brethren across the Atlantick, could they
But drink of this liquor, would soon be content:
And quicker by half, I will venture to say,
Our parliament might have fulfilled their intent.
If, instead of commissioners, tedious and dear.
They had sent out a cargo of Dorchester-beer.

I wonder if they’d be open to that trade these days. Hmm. And I would be failing in my sensitivity on this point if I didn’t finish with an acknowledgement to Beer Daily Haiku which ran from 2005 to 2013 during the Golden Age of Beer Writing. That was a great thing to read over the first coffee each morning. The Wordle of its day.

What happened to it all? Why has beer ceased to inspire the pen? Is it because we have traded haze where once was clarity? I don’t know. Have we lost our capacity for sensitivity? I wonder. One last bit of verse before you go about your weekend, this from Keats’s Ode to Autumn which I wrote about in 2003 again thinking back to undergrad days when I was struck by this poet’s thoughts on the plenty of harvest and, in the end, harvest’s rewards:

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Good work, Johnny K. Now I am off. Gotta go plant something. And then maybe have a drink.

The Goodbye May And Hello Temperatures Over 68F Edition Of The Beery News Notes

It’s always good to find a new extension to a hobby. I have kept a birding life list for decades but, you know, I’m am pretty lazy about adding to it in any organized way. Because you have to go out there and look. Out into the world. Into the woods and fields. Just look that that chaos! What a pain in the ass. So happy was I that I was advised by eldest to add the free Merlin app from Cornell University to my phone. Not only does it identify the birds you can hear around you but it records and archives the sounds with a handy graph that looks like a seismic chart. Did you know I had a Swainson’s Thrush in the tree by my house or Magnolia Warblers down the street? I didn’t. But now I do. All very exciting – especially as all that is required of me is to find a spot and stand still. The Kingbirds come to you. I can even doze off as the device gathers the data. Excellent. I bet it pairs well with the backyard and a beer.

Speaking of the high sciences, I always like to report on the Beeronomics Society news when I get an email update on their doings. Rather than the usual sort of beer experts, they are a group of global academics with (get this) credentials from peer reviewed institutions! They don’t get together all that often but they have announced a meeting in Bordeaux, France tentatively set for June 24 to 27, 2026. Please support my funding drive to send me to that event – with, yes, a two week lead up climatization prep there ahead of time and, yes a two week cool down afterwards… also there. Ahhhh… Bordeaux. Their website may be tremendously out of date in terms of form and content, but their newsletter I got by email this week did mention a new book to find out there on your travels, The Brew Deal: How Beer Helped Battle the Great Depression by Jason Taylor of Cntreal Michgan University who discussed it on YouTube:

During the final stages of Prohibition, the US government allowed the consumption and sale of “non-intoxicating” beer, which was at or below 3.2% alcohol-by-weight. Beer’s return—permitted with an eye toward job creation during the Great Depression—was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s earliest New Deal policies. In this book, economic historian Jason E. Taylor takes readers through the rapid resurgence of American breweries and shows how beer helped spark a sharp recovery in the spring of 1933.

And continuing with their sociological studies, Boak and Bailey wrote this week about finding themselves in a culture over twenty years behind in terms of the interior public smoking scene:

We’d assumed that smoking bans had come into place in most countries in the orbit of the EU, or that are tentatively working their way towards membership. In Serbia, though, it turns out that the smoking ban introduced in 2010 exempted bars, cafes and restaurants. Small establishments can choose to ban smoking if they want to. But based on our observations in the past week, very few opt for anything but ashtrays on every table… If you’re someone who spends a bit too much time hanging around outside taprooms and craft beer bars, puffing away in the cold and the drizzle, you might want to consider Belgrade for your next holiday.

I grew up with smoking in bars until my early 40s but have absolutely no interest in going back. Elsewhere, Katie has been in Spain and I am, you know, really frikkin’ jealous:

I love Spain. Every region is so different but so familiar, the same searing hot sun shining down in golden waves, touching everything with a little magic. I particularly love Spanish ham, and last night at a bar in a tiny alleyway I was served some of the most delicious acorn-fed lomo I’ve ever had in my life. Salty, melting, rich, served on paper.

Ahhh… Spain. Very very jealous. OK, back to the eggheads in lab coats, in this week’s “Hey That Sucks” news in the medical sciences, the New York Post has reported on a study published in “Environmental Science & Technology” found that 95% of 23 tested beers across the US contain cancer causing forever chemicals – and there are more in someplaces than others:

The study found a strong correlation between PFAS concentrations in municipal drinking water and levels in locally brewed beer — a phenomenon that has not previously been researched. While the study did not disclose specific beer brands, it identified that beers brewed near the Cape Fear River Basin in North Carolina exhibited the highest levels and most diverse mix of PFAS. Beers from St. Louis County, Missouri, also showed significant PFAS presence. The findings suggest that standard water filtration systems used in breweries may not effectively remove forever chemicals, highlighting the need for improved water treatment strategies at both brewing facilities and municipal treatment plants.

And it was the week for Stan’s monthly Hop Queries report and of note this time was the agri-science horticultural news of great crops from Australia and New Zealand. He also shared a secret about the frankly anti-terrioristic efforts behind one old pal of mine, Bell’s Two Hearted Ale:

…for Bell’s, the quality of the Centennial is quite important. But a few years ago, I learned that when you drink a Two Hearted you can’t say, “Yes, that’s Centennial from Crosby Hops.” Or from Segal Ranch, or CLS Farms. Or other farms that supply Centennial to Bell’s. The team at Creature Comforts Brewing in Georgia was excited in 2022 when they were brewing a collaboration beer with Bell’s, because that beer was to include “Centennial from Bell’s selected hops” along with five other varieties. Bell’s vice president in charge of operations John Mallett, since retired, explained what that means. After carefully selecting 500,000 pounds of Centennial each year from multiple farms, Bell’s creates a master blend that does not smell or taste of a single farm.

There. Now… let’s take a pause here so we don’t forget to consider the arts, too. And don’t forget that at the end of the month for now and forever, we have The Session. Phil Cook is hosting this week who explains the topic:

I’d like to take us out of the ‘real world’ for a moment to share the beers and pubs in art and fiction that have grabbed our attention, whether they were sublime, surprising, moving, amusing, somehow significant, or symbolic of something — or awkward and out of place, if you like. Gather your thoughts, or keep an eye out over the next few weeks, and let’s enjoy them together at the end of the month.

Fine. Art. Got it? Done with that? Now… back to the grim reality of today. Remember those tariffs? We’ve heard about their effect on aluminum cans and glass bottles, but Utah’s KUER radio reported on the effect of tariffs on brewers who rely on rare ingredients like Kiitos Brewing which relies on fonio*:

“It’s the most expensive grain we’ve ever purchased, because it is coming from West Africa,” Dasenbrock said. “They’ve already kind of signaled that the price that we had been quoted will not likely be the price when it arrives.” That price swing is because of the Trump administration’s tariffs. In April, the president slapped tariffs on about 90 countries. Since then, some products have been exempted while other tariffs have been postponed… For Dasenbrock, the rapidly changing landscape makes it difficult to pinpoint what his expenses will be. “Day by day, it’s 10%, it’s 50%, it’s 1,000%. Oh, no, wait, just kidding, it’s 10%,” he said. “It’s virtually impossible to predict what your costs are going to be in an environment like that.”

Ahhh… Utah. [Nope. That just doesn’t work in the same way.] And where the tariffs aren’t hitting hard, breweries continue to close and, in Germany, brewers are even – sounds a bit exotic in these times – going on strike as Jessica Mason reports:

…the growing concern among beer fans is that, without resolution, beer production at Krombacher could also be cut during the summer months… Isabell Mura, deputy NRW regional chair of the NGG and managing director of the NGG South Westphalia explained that the strike falls just before the beer-hungry holidays of Ascension Day and Pentecost and warned that summer thirst could also suffer since reduced beer production would then also make barbecues and summer festivals drier.

And speaking of both the moo as well as the lah, Jeff wrote about how one economic development agency – a concept rife with chin rubbing questions – in his home state of Oregon helps and perhaps fails to help industries, like brewing, there:

It’s possible Travel Oregon is killing it with other industries; the state is also famous for its wine, coffee, cuisine, and agricultural and natural resource plenty, not to mention its non-industrial and amazing outdoor activities. Neff quoted folks who said it was great, and I have no reason to argue with them. In terms of making the case that Oregon is a unique and special place for beer in the US, with a deeper culture and history than you’ll find anywhere else, not so much. Travel Oregon’s brewery information is out of date and sparse, and the map is even more out of date and inaccurate. Those deficits are a big part of the reason I wanted to create Celebrate Oregon Beer. Since I was really the main critic, I just wanted to heavily caveat my comments to say they only applied to beer.

And David J himself has a new project on the go, the Desi Food Guide that builds upon his work to date inclusing hs book Desi Pubs and his newsletter Episodes of My Pub Life:

Although the question of where serves the best mixed grill is very important, explaining the reasons why desi pubs were set up in the face of racism, segregation and hostility seemed far more pressing. The book resonated with readers because it wasn’t a shallow interaction with desi culture but a deep dive into modern British-Asian history. Desi Food Guide will continue where the book left off and delve into the stories behind dishes made by those often overlooked or superficially covered by online influencers. I will use my many decades as a journalist to tell their stories and interview those who may be shy but have a special tale to tell. I will visit restaurants, cafes, food trucks and, of course, pubs to detail one dish a week that you have to experience.

That sounds very interesting. You can sign up here. Finally, Pellicle took us to Pigalle Beer Bar in Tokyo where the selection is the owners’ personal collection more than the result of curation. The work this week is provided care of author Reece Hugill, where he found an old friend on offer :

I, too, was a bit taken aback by this. Memories of warm bottles drunk in my youth, often a misguided Christmas present, are not positive. Forced-down, tepid pints in suburban chain pubs with dirty lines are even worse. It took me two visits to Pigalle before I overcame this, and plucked up the courage to join the locals in their favourite beverage… the Old Speckled Hen is their “toriaezu biru” which means that it’s the initial beer you order to start yourself off, without thinking, or looking at the menu, before diving into whatever you fancy next. Something to shrug off the world with.

What a great idea. Baselining as opposed to mainlining. Well, that is it for now. A bit of a quiet week. The King visited. I didn’t drive to Ottawa to see him. Next time maybe. And until you and I meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….back again this Monday and very nice of him to notice what I wrote). 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!

*Fonio.

Your Beery News Notes For The Start Of The Last Month Of Spring

Here we are. Growing season. Well, it’s been hovering between 11C and 14C in these parts mid-day so perhaps not very much growing but at least there is no frost. That’s my Pinot Noir there. I hacked out most of the Concord this year to let the swankier sibling get more sunlight. That pink edging fades soon enough but it’s a great guide to assist with what lives and dies. Is that why I garden? To judge? To dispense edict? That and salads, sure why not?

First, and sticking with the theme vinous, Katie Mather has been reporting from the front lines of the wine trade and has a discovery to share – well, two after her thoughts on what was once all in black is now very much back:

Ice in wine is becoming a *thing*. Don’t believe me? Do a couple of shifts in your local pub. Over the past year I’ve noticed more and more women (it has been primarily women) ordering white or rose wine and insisting on having ice in their glass. Perhaps it’s because they don’t really like the flavour, and the ice dulls it down. Perhaps pub fridges aren’t cold enough. Perhaps — and this is what I think — it reminds us of being on holiday. Oh god, I am doing everything I can at the moment to pretend I’m not really here. Aren’t you? The world is a nightmare, a giant morality eclipse, and if a little clinky-clinky in my glass helps lift me out of it even for a second, I am going to do it. Black Tower is an ideal icy wine, because it’s heavy in syrupy flavours. And also because you don’t really want to taste it.

Viva cheap sweet wine on ice! Our government is also all about the viva! This week as there was good news for good beer this week was in Ontario’s provincial budget:

The beer, cider, and premixed cocktails you buy at the LCBO could be a lot cheaper as of August 1, with the government cutting the markup rates the LCBO charges for those products. So long as manufacturers don’t increase their prices, the cost of beer, cider and ready-to-drink beverages could drop between 21 per cent to 50 per cent. For example, the government is slashing the markup on Ontario craft beer by 50 per cent. It’s a move that is going to further impact already falling revenues. LCBO revenues are down sharply since the Ford government started allowing the sale of alcohol in convenience stores.

Really? Booze prices could drop 50%? Really?? Jordan ran the numbers and noticed that is not quite correct:

…for every six pack sold, the LCBO gets $1.836… That’s not really helpful math since most breweries sell 473 ml cans. Translated, that’s $0.0939 cents per can. Going by the earlier example of 2,000 hL of cans sold, you’re actually doing better by about $39,700. If you were a larger regional like a GLB or Nickel Brook doing 10,000 hL in cans, you’re looking at a couple hundred grand. The government gets a nice win, because they can say they cut a tax by 50%. No one really wants to understand what I just explained, so there won’t be any probing questions about tax vs. retail markup.

Interestingly, the budget also weakened the regulations around what arrangements qualify as craft beer, as changes “would permit microbrewers to enter into a contract with another brewer that is not a microbrewer” while retaining its status. Don’t know who in particular will benefit from that change…

There was also not so great beer related news from Ontario. Unlike those high hopes I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, on Monday morning I found my Leafs jersey on the basement floor. Inside out. In a bundle. In the corner. You know, it’s reasonable – mathematically speaking – to say that the only team that loses in the seventh game of the quarter finals is the fifth best team in the playoffs. Didn’t feel that way. They certainly did better than I’ve done in the Pellicle FPL pool where me, I sit by myself at 36th out of 55 in the table – but at least I didn’t do what people at the game did:

On Sunday, the Florida Panthers ran the Maple Leafs out of their own building to the tune of a 6-1 blowout. It’s the second 6-1 loss in a row the Maple Leafs have sustained on home ice in this series and Toronto’s 2025 Stanley Cup hopes have officially ended thanks to this defeat… It’s safe to say that Maple Leafs fans have had enough of the disappointment. In the middle of Sunday night’s Game 7, multiple jerseys were thrown onto the ice and beer was reportedly thrown at Toronto’s bench as well.

I’ve seen baseball fans throw beer onto the field in Toronto but never hockey fans. At the prices they charge, it means they have to have been seriously pissed off.*

Could be worse, of course. You could be a US craft beer exporter who had to listen to this sort of weirdly denialist argument from a rep of the US Brewer’s Association as reported in VinePair:

…the in-person attendance of Chinese and Canadian buyers in last month’s 2025 Craft Brewers Conference as proof of the “lasting reputation of U.S. craft beer for quality and innovation — even amid ongoing trade uncertainty for markets,” while conceding that importers from those two countries in particular have scaled back or stopped down on ordering in the opening months of Trump’s trade war. This, after craft exports saw a 15 percent decline in 2024, outpacing the category. Still, Parr argues, “for breweries with a long-term, quality-driven approach, global markets continue to offer meaningful opportunities.”

That’s a funny thing to say. Seeing as the largest importer in the world is our very own LCBO and (i) that 15% drop was pre-Trump and (ii) for the last ten weeks with no sign of a pending policy reversal, the LCBO has entirely cut off your all your exports (in coordination with other Canadian booze commissions), well, I am not quite sure where the “meaningful opportunity” is to be found in Canada. But, you know, it’s the BA! Beer Market’s Insights continues to tell a different story for US trade:

For 4 weeks, beer biz looks a little better. Down 2.9% for 4 weeks thru 5/4, -4.6% for 12 weeks. Wine down just 2% for 4 weeks (including Easter this yr), spirits up 5.6%.

By “a little better” read “not as bad” perhaps. Note the reverse is happening in the UK with the news this week of a UK-EU trade deal as noted in TDB:

Miles Beale, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association welcomed the reset, noted that anything that improves the relationships and practical arrangements with the EU is “great news”. However he warned that “as ever the devil is in the detail” and he looked forward to seeing the legal texts over the coming weeks. “For the UK wine sector, where imports account for 99% the wine enjoyed by UK consumers, we want to ensure that any new rules and obligations work for the UK market,” he said.

Well, that’s looking like actual opportunity. Viva! Speaking of which in only the most oblique sense which I will let you figure out on your own, this week’s feature in Pellicle is a postcard from local author, Ewen Friers, who introduces us at a pace to the pubs about the town, as illustrated by some lovely photos from MC Himself:

Quite rightly, Kelly’s and The Crown have changed little over the years, but that’s not to say Belfast and its beer is an entirely fixed concept. The place brims with lively modern bars like any small touristic city in Europe, and new takes on age-old traditions have been popping up more and more. This is true for smaller breweries too. The now sadly defunct ABV Festival and the aforementioned more recent Belfast Beer Festival have been crucial in pulling the beer environment forward. Whilst some small breweries have come and gone in recent years, like the much missed Farmageddon, the scene has continued to grow.

Entirely contrary to that sort of familiar stability and reassuring comfort, Evan Rail followed up on that weird SNPA as ESB story for VinePair this week, sensibly seeking some common sense:

For Chris Williams, competition director at World Beer Cup, SNPA’s win as an ESB shows how well Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. understood the character of its beer, as well as the changes in the pale ale category over the years. For about a decade, the competition’s otherwise English-focused ESB category has included an additional set of style guidelines for an “American-style ESB” subcategory, into which Sierra Nevada Pale Ale fits perfectly. “They looked at the specs, they looked at how their beer stacks up, and they were like, ‘That American-style ESB category is a match for our beer…

I’ll ruin Evan’s punch line: “…fans didn’t seem to notice.” Which is definately fair comment… even maybe when taken out of context. For me the whole thing is a bit of a mini-mummer of a muddle that mainly points out that it’s hard to have 1257 styles (or so) and sub-styles (or whatever) then have them shift around over time and space, then expect a clear outcome… or even a useful one! Once again, it’s good to remember this sort of judging is a nice hobby interest for all the participants. Jeff added his thoughts but, I have to say and with respect, the entire discussion has only convinced me again that the main goal of this sort of approach to style is the perpetuation of this approach to style. Does that qualify as what the kids these days are calling propaganda? Me, if I have a SNPA in front of me, I am really only concerned with the taste of the thing in front of me, not whether it has hit the bullseye on the shifting dart board of style. Still, it’s quite a nice hobby for all involved. Nothing wrong with that.

Speaking of what is in the glass itself, still on the run… err… on vacation, Boak and Bailey have been drinking a lot of lager and have come to some conclusions as discussed at and within their monthly newsletter:

When we’re drinking these half-arsed efforts we find ourselves thinking: “Why didn’t they just give that tap over to a lager from another craft brewery that knows what it’s doing? Or to the best of the local mainstream products?” This would, at least, demonstrate good taste. It’s an opportunity to ‘curate’ and to guide. And, yes, some of the national brands in Romania and Bulgaria struck us as pretty decent beers – as if they’ve been overlooked for so long that someone forgot to make them bad. We’d be happy to see them in offer in craft beer bars. If your £6-a-pint in-house lager isn’t better than something we can buy at a normal pub for half the price, or pick up from a cornershop in a scuffed brown bottle for a quid or two, what’s the point?

And The Beer Nut has been considering what to have in his glass (though not yet pouring a cheap sweet wine on ice) as he finds himself right here at the very toe tippy verge of another hot summer, and also drew conclusions:

Probably to be expected given the lactose, it tastes mostly like lemon curd, and can only make the woolliest of claims to being sour. It’s barely even bitter. Half way down I decided to add ice, and honestly I think it improved it. The flavour became less blurry, more spritzy, although less beery as well. I suppose that with “limoncello sour” it’s unsurprising that it would taste quite like an alcopop. As such, it’s a nice and undemanding summer drink, but it doesn’t press the beer buttons. And doesn’t even know where the sour buttons are. I’m unimpressed but I see what they were trying to do.

Is that so very far from Black Tower on ice? Hmm? Well, except for the price I suppose.

Finally, a fond farewell to actor George Wendt who played TV’s favourite guy at the end of the bar, Norm. His obit in The Hollywood Reporter including this explanation of how he managed the role:

The portly, curly-haired Wendt was self-deprecating about his well-honed delivery, contending that the toughest part of his job was drinking the “beer,” a warm, flat, non-alcoholic concoction that was layered with a pinch of salt in every mug to create a TV head. “There I was slamming those down for a whole day. It not only tastes disgusting, I was afraid of keeling over from high blood pressure,” he told The Washington Post in 1985. “Then I got the knack. I didn’t have to put all those brews away. It only mattered when the camera was pointing my way. It took a couple of years, but now I watch the camera. That’s how I make my money. That’s acting.”

Well, there you go. See you, Norm! And until we (not George and me… you and me!) meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….not quite every week but yes, he was there this time…) 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!

*Superior reportage from The New York Post: “The Maple Leafs’ alternate captain, Marner, is set to hit free agency this offseason and is expected to depart. After the Maple Leafs allowed three unanswered goals in Game 7, completely taking the air out of their raucous building, Marner yelled at his team on the bench, screaming “wake the f–k up.””

The Beery News Notes You Need To Get You Through Victoria Day Weekend

If we are honest, we should celebrate the Georges as much as Queen Victoria.* Sure she invented the fifth version of Canada but it was the Georgians who made us, they being the people (and, yes, their red clad dutiful doers) who kept us from being just another slice of Americana. Timely thoughts, you will agree. Some call this coming long weekend not Victoria Day but May Two Four – my greatest gift to Linguista Canadiana being the alt, May Too Far. When the Georgians were running the place, the birthday of the monarch was one of the greatest spectacles in the year as the account of 12 and, I suppose, 13 August 1827 at Guelph, Ontario on the celebration of the King’s birthday bears witness:

…all sat down and enjoyed a hearty meal. “After the cloth was removed,” toasts were drunk to everybody and every conceivable thing, the liquors, of all imaginable descriptions, being passed round in buckets, from which each man helped himself by means of tin cups, about two hundred of which had been supplied for the occasion… those who remained continued to celebrate the day in an exceedingly hilarious manner, most of them, who had not succumbed to an overpowering somnolency, celebrating the night too, many of them being found next morning reposing on the ground in the market place, in loving proximity to the liquor pails, in which conveniently floated the tin cups…

Always solid advice. By the way, the 200th anniversary of that event on the Guelph frontier is just two years and three months away. We need to recognize that boozy bicentennial! Time to apply for those government grant to celebreate our great heritage for celebration. I just hope the application form has a space for indicating the number of tiny tin cups required for the event. By the way, just seven years later, as explained up there in the Kingston Whig newpaper of 12 August 1834, not so much fun. None at all. But the advice still stands today: lay off the opium, buster.

Enough of then! What of the now? First up, Rebecca Crowe shared some of her love for her local, the The Little Taproom on Aigburth Road in Liverpool in Pellicle this week, a place of cheery activity and welcoming hosts, Si and Aggie:

If you’re in the Tap on a Wednesday night, you’ll be greeted by groups of people staring at their phones. However, this isn’t an unsociable act—it’s the Big Quiz in the Little Taproom. When you look around the regular teams, you see couples, groups, solo players, university-aged friends, alongside seasoned quiz addicts, and people just looking for some time out of the house. Si mentions how quickly the quiz has grown as a regular pub fixture. “At first, it was just a regular event to increase revenue on an otherwise relatively quiet Wednesday night,” he says, with his trademark full-hearted honesty.

Next, and perhaps quite conversely, a bit of disappointing news for the efforts being undertaken to have cask ale and pubs recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO as explained in Pellicle by lobbying leader Jonny Garrett:

During brief discussions with the civil servant in charge of the project, I was told there would be a “relatively low bar of entry” to the national list, but that there was no intention to put any submissions to UNESCO for the first few years. The reasoning was that the government was not certain how to select which cultures should be submitted, but it also feels like they are reluctant to do so until they fully comprehend the implications for governance of any that make the grade.

Seems that as the UK is late to ratifying the underlying treaty, the government has to determine how to prioritize the many claims to being awarded the designation. So cask beer is up against things like all of Scotch Whisky (a good bet to beat out cask), Welsh mens’ choirs (obvs ahead of cask) and all those charming English fetes on the village green on lovely summer Saturdays that we see on TV, the ones where half the upper middle class villagers who live there are murdered – and it was the church choir master, jilted by school teacher all those years ago, who was to blame after all!!

If, however, any evidence of the vibrant Life on Cask is required for governmental purposes, the entirity of reportage from Martin is right there for the taking. Just this week he visited wrote about his recent trip to The Castle Hotel of Manchester providing us with a lovely photo essay – including this image of the entry way like something from one of those episodes of Time Team where they uncover a Roman mosaic in a farmer’s field. Heritage.

More bad news for the US booze and craft trade. BeerBoard reported that “total alcohol sales declined -7.3% year-over-year across same-store locations during the May 2–5 weekend” as Beer Marketer’s Insights shared:

Craft beer sales continue to soften in tracked retail channels thru first few wks of April. As total beer sales “improved” a bit to $$ down 2.2%, craft beer softened to $$ down 6.3% for latest 4 wks thru Apr 20 in Circana multi-outlet + convenience channels. Keep in mind, that’s excluding non-alc craft brands tracked in separate NA segment by Circana.

It’s interesting how heavily those still wishing on that star rely on non-alcohol beer stats to prop up the decline while also squeezing that Bourcard report** dismissing the demographics hard. If all the energy to ignore the trend was employed in addressing the trend… would the outcome change? Speaking of tinier trends, has anyone actually noticed the rise of Thai beer in America?

According to reports via The Manual, Group B USA has claimed to be the first and only Thai craft beer distributor in America and now it has also started brewing stateside too. Beer lovers and Thai cuisine connoisseurs have previously only been familiar with Singha and Chang beer brands, but in a deep dive interview with Group B CEO Bamee Prapavee Hematat there is now a growing Thai craft beer movement featuring IPAs and beers flavoured with dried bananas.

Despite all those Thai beers coming it, less is still more for the rest of the US beer trade, as Evan Rail reported in VinePair this week:

“That was the height of craft beer—it was easy to keep 28 handles on tap,” says Zak Rotello, the bar’s third-generation owner. “Now, fast-forward 10 years and I have less beer on tap than ever: 21 beers out of a total of 30 handles. The others are wine and spirits.” It’s not just Rockford. Across the country, a number of bar owners are moving away from the massive tap lists of the craft era. Back in the days of what Rotello calls “rotation nation,” enthusiastic beer drinkers were always hoping to find something new on tap—and bars were happy to oblige. Instead, many bars today are offering fewer draft beers, often using those same lines for pre-mixed cocktails, bulk-packaged wine or other beverages.

And Alistair shared some related thoughts over at Fuggled, too, as he bimbled in his dotage:

Maybe I am just entering my curmudgeonly dotage as I creep ever closer to my 50th birthday later this year, but I have found little joy of late browsing the aisles and shelves of the beer retailing world, whether supermarket or specialist. Of course there are beers, usually seasonally available lagers such as Tröeg’s Little Nator, that I happily stock up on when they are available, but usually my little bimbles are more a ritual performed through a misplaced sense of duty, with a hint maybe of self-flagellating hope of something other than yet another “innovation” in the form of an IPA.

Getting a bit legal for a moment, I came across some excellent discussion of an important topic in the hospitality trade from a team of Australian academics, thoughts about the alleged “perks” in the tavern and grub trade and how they undermine hospitality workers’ rights:

As one chef put it: “Free steak dinners don’t pay my rent or stop my boss docking pay for smoke breaks.” Our data also show that workers with formal agreements were significantly more likely to receive their legal entitlements, including proper rest breaks and overtime pay, compared to those without. Why does this matter? Because protecting rights is not just about fairness. It is about safeguarding the sustainability of an industry we all rely on. Research shows when businesses rely on unpaid labour or ignore basic entitlements, they undercut fair competition, contribute to worker burnout and drive talent out of the sector.

Remember when craft brewing workers were expected to be more interested in passion than pay? What? Still?!?! Boak and Bailey (much to the contrary being unfailingly fair competators in the weekly beer new update scene***) have taken time out from their eastern European sojourns to discuss the source of skull iconography in the craft beer scenic landscape:

David Ensmiger, quoted above, suggests that in the context of punk music and skateboarding, skulls and skeletons represent a certain ‘apartness’ from mainstream culture. To paraphrase his argument, skaters, punks and bikers are monsters created by society, who delight in horrifying and repulsing ‘normies’. There’s also a more obvious sense in which skull imagery is about confronting death, and embracing life. People who fly skull flags see themselves as fearless risk takers, in both physical terms (skateboarding accidents hurt) and in terms of their cultural status. Again, this is exactly the kind of attitude craft beer producers either wanted to tap into (appropriate) or which actually reflected their lifestyles.

Fabulous stuff from they themselves, as is so often the case. I added my two cents that there was an association of the imagery with the Motörhead influenced X-treme beer era which picked up 1980s Mad Max post apocalyptic cool. Rock. On.

Speaking of the 1980s, I had no idea that stubbies were a thing outside of Canada before 40 years ago but here were are… or rather there we are according to Anthony Gladman:

The area around Fressin, known as Les Sept Vallées, is nice enough in a damp kind of way, but it’s not exactly what you picture when you hear ‘holiday house in France’. It soon became clear Dad had chosen it just to be close to the Wine Society’s outpost in nearby Hesdin. Still, when I think back to my visits there — which took me from callow teen to knackered young dad myself — what I remember drinking with Dad was beer. Or stubbies, to be precise: little 250 ml bottles of Kronenbourg, bought dirt cheap by the slab from the local hypermarché.

Are you a curious person? I know I sure am and I also know you probably are because you are here reading this very sentence. This one too. Well, in order to compensate for your undoubtedly regular sense of disappointment founded here week after week, Eoghan Walsh has a plan designed just for you – and for you and especially just for you:

Before the big announcement, a slightly smaller one – Brussels Notes turns 100 next week! That’s 100 newsletters from me to you since I first started sending them out over four years ago, and since I revived the format at the beginning of last year. A huge thank you to every one of you who’ve signed up to get them in your inbox, and to everyone who’s reading this or has read an article in the past. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d do an Ask Me Anything edition for newsletter #100. What’s my favourite bar? My favourite building? Best beer? Worst beer? The worst thing about Brussels? The best thing? Weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me in the city? Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. Best sandwich? How I actually pronounce my name?

My bet it’s pronounced “Ewan”, right? Jason Wilson is actually also possibly pronounced “Ewan” but that is entirely not the point. The point is he made a very interesting observation on US wine buying habits these days as it relates to place:

These days, in the middle of a worldwide wine crisis, it’s never been tougher to sell wine based on place. In fact, over the past couple of years, I’ve observed that a certain type of wine influencer/educator has begun to steer completely clear of talk about terroir. At the low end, the focus is on a certain populism focused on, say, wine in cans or alternative packaging. But much of the higher-end natural wine chatter also avoids a deep discussion of place. While the best natural-wine producers are committed terroirists, a lot of the derivative, middling natty wine talk is way more about winemaking technique and philosophy…

The comments are in the context of the risks inherent in the German legal wine standards adding concepts equivalent premier cru and grand cru to the labels of their bottles. The risks being that the promise better be fulfilled. Does this relate to good beer? “Local” in terms of a beer made of things from this or that “here” (or even a “there” for that matter) has never really taken off even when the best examples ring true. In a trade where popular populisit “IPA” branding has devolved to a euphemism for “maybe better” how could that little old charmer “local” have ever hoped to rise to the top?

Question: is there value in Vittles?

Finally, as you can see to the right, Mr. DJ made all my dreams come true with this post on BlueSky. And that is it! Until we meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….not quite…) 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!

*See also 2024, 2019 and 2008 for more Vicky Vicky fun fun fun.
**It’s terrible sweet how, in part, Bourcard relies on a theory that it’s cell phone photos and tracking by parents that has deterred youth drinking – but that they will snap back to act and drink like good boomers as soon as they get their own iPhone accounts.
***According to an unsolicited report authored by something called BB Consulting Associates International that I received by email spam filter in, umm, June 2024.

Your Beery News Notes For The Week That I Start To Watch The Maple Leafs Again

I have a little rule. I have been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan since the 1960s. I know that because I still have most of my 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards. I also know that they have sucked for most of the 55 years since I bought them. Oh, there was Darryl and there was Wendle but in the last decade they’ve only won one playoff series – until this season. So my rule is obvious. I won’t watch them unless they win a series. Which they now have. And they won the next series’s game one too. Update: and game two.

Speaking of victory, I noticed an interesting sidenote to the Australian election last weekend with the after party for the winner Anthony Albanese being fueled by Albo Pale Ale. Albo? Albo:

…you might have heard of Albo. When this beer was brewed, he was simply the brewery’s local Member of Parliament who was known for his support of the craft beer industry, trains and the ocassional spot of DJing. He went on to be the 31st Prime Minister of Australia and his younger self will forever be immortalised in this beer, which sure beats a toilet.

BTW – that toilet. Speaking of objects holding liquids, Kevin K commented an interesting comment this week: “always seems there’s a strong lack of editing for glassware articles.” Is that a lack of strong editing? And is “strong lack” related to Strong Bad? Whatever it is… I fully agree. What was the object of his disappointment?

Cusack gave a thumbs-down to two common beer glasses. “Pints and mugs are fine for a quick pour, but they do nothing to highlight what makes an IPA good. Too open, too wide, they lose aroma fast,” Cusack told The Takeout. “Steins are worse — thick glass insulates the beer too much and dulls your senses.” Pints and mugs don’t actually do much to enhance any beer’s flavor (not just IPAs), but mugs and glass steins, with their thick walls and side handle, will do the job well when keeping your beer cold is a priority.

Me, I drink pretty much everything from the same hefeweizen glass if I am wanting to pay attention. Lots of schozz space to get right in there for a sniff. And it holds the temperature well. And it allows me to compare one experience with another a neutral yet effective context. Otherwise, anything will do. What’s up with a glass per beer anyway? It’s like audiophiles who have different stereo speakers for different sorts of music.* Who can afford that? Do you really want to be like audiophiles? It all sounds connected to hyperflavor related status anxiety.

On a similar theme, I was really impressed with one aspect of the announcement from the World Beer Cup.** Transparency. For such an overblown title,*** it was interesting to see that the relatively low number of entries competing in most categories. An average of 73 entries per category. No doubt most were perfectly swell but doesn’t that mean it’s pretty likely that any winner is actually not going to be the best out there? And, with only 53 entries, they found a way to discover that SNPA is an ESB! Mucho guffaw resulted.

Mike Seay may have caught the moment both neatly and tidily with this comment this week:

I need to start asking for tasters before ordering an IPA or even a Pale. You see, sometimes they end up being hazy when there was no indication of it on the menu description. And I am over hazzies…for now. Yes I could always ask for a taster before, but I like to just go for it. Give me a pint and I’ll drink it, even if it ends up sucking. But I am getting too many New Englands when I was wanting a West Coast, so I gotta start asking, I guess.

Hazzies? Is that what we call a grouping of badly thought out hazies now? Maybe huzzies or hizzies even? And exactly how many beer educators did it take to get us to the place where you can’t order a beer and have a clue what you’re about to drink? And is that part of what Jeff meant by the wallpaper phase? Or perhaps what led us to this point:

Craft beer isn’t new and exciting anymore, and almost everyone has heard of it, and the vast majority of potential future customers have experimented with it. What breweries have to do now is sell their product to people who are already familiar with it—but also blasé about it. Craft beer is part of the wallpaper of alcoholic beverages now—present, but in the background, familiar and easy to ignore. Selling a product like that is very different than selling beer in 2000.

And Matthew C perhaps spoke to a similar idea with another sector of the beer trade in his note on Bluesky introducting this week’s feature at Pellicle:

Top stuff from Emmie Harrison-West on the site today about a really interesting no and low alcohol brewery near Edinburgh. It might be our last no and low piece, at least for now, as despite lots of (apparent) interest in what is often cited as the fastest growing sector in beer, the pieces we’ve published to date have struggled to gain traction with our audience.

What to make of all that? Perhaps conversely but definitely offering a ray of hope in this, Jamie Goode wrote an interesting article on standardization and balance (for the lyrically named WineMag.Co.Za) which easily applies to a lot of good beer:

This is the problem with the concept of balance. It can lead to a certain stylistic homogeneity; to boring wines that tick all the boxes, but which fail to thrill. Alongside this concept of balance, we have the problematic notion that we always want to drink the same sort of wine. There are even people who peddle protocols for matching consumers with the right wine for them. The truth is that we want to drink different wines on different occasions. I have lots of wines at home, but it’s not easy finding the right wine for the right moment, even though I have only wines that I like to hand. I think the concept of balance in wine is next to useless. It should be about whether or not a wine has personality, and whether or not that wine, with its personality, is the right wine for this particular drinking occasion. I want my wines to be interesting…

Me too. And my beers. But what is it to be interesting… and what makes it so? (And, he thought to himself, if we just left these clinky drinky things to individuals and their own interests, well, what would we do with all the experts and, horrors, the editors?) Hmm… Drew Starr has an idea that perhaps may help frame the concept:

I think we discussed my theory of cognition for quirky regional food I conjured after Nick Tahou’s. Anyone can appreciate it, but you have to try it before your brain matures at 26 to have a love that defies objectivity. You always love it more when older, because the memory of youth is delicious… Ask me or anyone who grew up in Western MA who makes the world’s best burger, we’ll say White Hut, an objectively incorrect answer that we are incapable of being made to believe otherwise.

So… the things that are interesting are things that relate to the person by whom… in which… that interesting thing is / was experienced. Radical. Matty himself, for the double, had a similar sort of tingly sensation this week, not from a recollection of youth but from being in the audience for a performance of Hamlet:

Such was the intensity and physicality of the performance as a whole that I can’t stop thinking about it. Samuel Blenkin, playing the titular role, was gripping. The way music and dance was weaved throughout meant I couldn’t look away for the whole 90 minutes. It was dark and visceral and unrelenting and sad and funny. Of course, I had to go for a pint and sit down afterwards, to help myself come down. But as I did so I realised in witnessing such a brilliant act of creativity my very soul itself felt nourished. I was full to the brim. There are moments in life, sometimes major, sometimes fleeting, but they leave a permanent mark on you. My first sip of IPA at Odell Brewery, devilled kidneys on toast at St. John, Mills Foxbic at Hereford Beer House, the reuben on rye at Choice City Deli. These are experiences that helped shape my worldview.

Is that what Goode meant by interesting? Probs. As one who is perpetually in that condition, when they prepare the syllabus for the Master degree seminar on The Beer Nut this will be one of the key passages the class will have to study:

…I didn’t think it worked very well, but I’m told by Kev the brewer and owner that I’m wrong, which is fair enough…

Returning to that piece in Pellicle, the not wrong and definitely interesting Emmie Harrison-West offered up a portrait of Jump Ship Brewing, low-no alcohol brewers near Edinburgh, and unpacked the background:

Like many of us as we age, Sonja found that her tolerance for booze had dropped. She was becoming irritable after drinking and dreaded the day after. “I was drinking less, but it was that Tuesday night beer that I was really craving. You know, when you’re finally sitting down, the kids are in bed, you’re tired and up early for work,” she says. Sonja discovered that an NA beer really scratched that itch, but she still felt like something was missing: choice. Sure, she was making better choices for herself, but found her options in terms of the variety of NA beers available were woefully limited. “That’s when I thought, ‘why don’t I just do it?’,” she tells me.

Swtiching a bit abruptly to the Health News Desk: the recent flurry of discussion about Savory IPA got me thinking again about the need to label the ingredients on beer. See, like a lot of people I am allergic to MSG – the key additive apparent miracle that transforms a humdrum beer into an amazing new style! It’d be nice to have informed decision making so I can know if my respiratory equiment is going to seize up or not.

And, perhaps taking a breather from all that above, I really liked David Jesudason‘s piece**** on the Alehouse in Reading where he found people ready to just have a chat:

It never was my plan to travel 50-odd miles in a four-hour round trip for this specific chat but that’s where my day took me. I had a vague idea to visit the Alehouse for the second time because, inspired by The Shiralee, I wanted somewhere a bit rough and ready where I knew there would be people drinking in the day despite the broad sunshine outside. The pub is covered head to toe in pump clips, has a queue of pickled egg jars at the bar and various hair rock songs being played through the speakers – the only tune I could place was Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls, and it’s been a long time since these women made the rocking world go round.

All of which, coming full circle, brings me to the thought that Boak and Bailey shared on their Patreon back channel last weekend and gave us all the “oomph” of the year in beer, YTD-wise:

Jeff Alworth’s wallpaper post got us thinking about lots of things, but mostly that time passes quickly before you notice it. It’s easy to feel as if craft beer is a thing that just landed, beloved of fresh-faced hipsters. But even in its most recent form – IPAs and punks and skulls – it’s been around for several decades. Thornbridge Jaipur, an especially significant beer in British craft beer, turns 20 this year. There are people at university now who have never lived in a Jaipurless world – who don’t remember a time before BrewDog, or Beavertown.

Me: “I’m not 62! That old guy over there is!!!” What is it we want from all this anyway? Being part of Club Craft? Nope. A nice chat sound perfectly nice, if I am being honest. And a nice beer in any frikkin’ glass I feel like using. See, the failings of craft now so evident in 2025 – especially the failure to reign victorious as was clearly promised a decade or more ago – reminds me of what I recently read in that grab bag of convenient quips for we the aged alumni with the BAs, The New Yorker, on the translation of Catullus:

Precisely what makes much of Catullus’ work so appealing and “relatable” to modern audiences—the offhand charm, the impish vulgarity, the jazzy colloquialisms—makes him that much more difficult to bring into modern English. Ordinary language, after all, has a far shorter shelf life than does the elevated language of high literature; translations of Catullus that are barely twenty years old already feel dated. Peter Green’s “Wretched Catullus, stop this stupid tomfool stuff” sounds positively Victorian next to Mitchell’s “Wretched Catullus, stop this crazy longing.”

It lives in the past tense, does craft. It is, to my adult chidren, exactly that: stupid tomfool stuff. Not beer, mind you, which is good. Beer remains interesting.

That’s it for this week. I am on a train later today so may be delayed in responding to all your emails and DMs and stuff. Bear with me. Until we meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….not quite…) 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!

*“Disco Woofer” would be a great name for an DIPA. Or a speaker.
**No doubt intended to be confused with the equally grandiosely World Beer Awards. Not to mention the World Awards of Beer.
***Olympics? That all? Surely it’s the Mount Olympus of Beer! Even as the BA continues its logical retraction, the fawning seems to be enhanced.
****His writing in which reminded me of another passage from another article in that same issue of The New Yorker from March 30 2025: “Much of the art of “Encounters with the Archdruid” lies in the way that McPhee manages to be both there and not there. He bathes his aching feet in the water. He recalls other trips he has taken with Brower and, separately, with Park. He searches for copper-bearing rocks, and, when he finds them, gets excited. But he never reveals whose side he is on. When it comes to the great question of the piece—to mine or not to mine—he gets out of the way.“

A Brief Yet Utterly Fascinating First Beery News Notes For May 2025

Brief? I am on the road as you read this. At a Holiday Inn out by the airport if you have to know. Just a brief trip but that is going to mean a brief update. Why? Why??? Stop screaming that word into your pillow. It will be OK. Why do we know it will be OK? Because… as The Beer Nut has proven by hitting another milestone as he enters his third decade of beer blogging. Meaning we can never stop. Never. Ever. Another thing that never stops is the cycle of life that marks the work from planting seed to harvest time and, again, to planting again. Just to make you beer. As my near neighbours, the farmers and brewers at MacKinnon Brothers, showed when they shared this photo and these thoughts below on FB:

First planting of the year—no-till malting barley into soybean stubble. We’re testing new aftermarket firming and closing wheels on 6 of the 32 rows to see if they improve seed placement over the factory setup.

Martin, sitting in a pub enjoying a pint of Bass, has no doubt thought of that sort of thing from time to time but this week he raised another excellent question on the tension between the campaign to get UNESCO recognition for cask and the campaign to get CAMRA members to stick to “indie” beer:

I watched as a succession of unapologetic young folk arrived at the bar, went “ooh” and pointed at the red triangle. Yes, a national is finally putting a bit of money behind Bass, though frankly only pints this good will keep the pumps flowing and make sure it stays on the bar. Not everyone is delighted by this enthusiasm for Bass, whether because of ideology… CAMRA’s Conference instructed the NE to “ensure that all relevant CAMRA publications and communications pledge preferential support to beer producers and suppliers that are independent of the influence of the multinational brewers, and to make the case persistently for this stance.”

So, is the UNESCO campaign “Bass Inclusive” (BI) but the CAMRA one is Bass exclusionary” (BE) ? A report in The Guardian, while setting out what I had thought would be pretty well known information, adds a twist:

In its annual independent beer report, parts of which have been shared with the Guardian, the trade body for British indie brewers said tough conditions were exacerbated by difficulty selling to local pubs… Siba members told a survey that 60% of the pubs within 40 miles were inaccessible to them, choking off potential sources of revenue and reducing choice for consumers thirsty for more interesting options at the bar. They blamed conditions imposed by large breweries and some pub chains, including financial agreements that impose conditions on what beers pubs can sell.

So if Bass is brewed by a large multinational and it is engaging in practices which are detrimental to small brewers who, among other things, brew fine cask ales… is the UNESCO designation application going to be BI or BE? WIll it carve out those fine cask ales which are made by the faceless nasties of international capitalism? Asking for a friend.

Speaking of machines, Boak and Bailey continue on their travels and have considered the role of well choreographed hospitality:

In the past week, we found ourselves in two such machines in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Both drew us in with beautiful, historic buildings and the promise of decent mainstream beer… We really wanted to see inside the building, though, and also really wanted to drink a decent lager in vaguely trad surroundings, so we made our booking and braced ourselves. On arrival, we were intercepted by a member of staff whose only job was to assign people to free tables and escort them to their seats. She wasn’t exactly cheerful, but she was certainly efficient. She handed us off to a waitress controlling a section of about 10 or 15 tables who was just as friendly as she needed to be to avoid making us feel totally unwelcome. When we took a little too long to decide what to drink she got, perhaps, a touch impatient. But, like in the beer halls of Cologne, or The Dog & Bell in Deptford, once you accept that you’re not there to make friends with the staff, this brusqueness becomes part of the offer.

You know, I have played such a role in this life from time to time. As an usher, a waiter and to be honest a lawyer. I’ve said “right this way” as I led then to their seat, a table or… umm… the dock. Yes, standardized impersonal presentation in hospitality are efficient and reliable yet also impersonal and distant. You are being served but, in turn, so is the operation in a reciprocal sense. And sometimes even mentioning your past experience can open up a bit of conversation – but in other situations, you know, it can be taken as an insult. Govern yourselves accordingly. They don’t really care about the time you too failed to put in that order.

Speaking of touchy situations… would you drink out of a skull… have you?

Of course nobody wants to end up as a wine cup, but it must be a consolation to know that some very distinguished historical figures lived on in the drinks cabinet. One outstanding example was the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I, who ruled in Constantinople from 802 to 811. After the emperor was ambushed by the Bulgars in a mountain pass and slaughtered alongside his army, his head was delivered to the splendidly named Bulgar khan, Krum the Fearsome. According to a Byzantine chronicler, Krum “hung it on a pole so as to exhibit it to the tribes that came before him and to dishonour us. After that, he laid bare the skull, riveted it on the outside with silver and, in his pride, made the chieftains of the Slavs drink from it.”

The article in question being from The Times and the facts that led to the question being newsworthy cause Dr. Alice Roberts to comment “I can’t believe this isn’t a spoof article. It seems to be supporting a very questionable approach to human remains.” The facts in questions being some Oxford dons doing it based on an ancient tradition going back to … err… 1946.

Glut news:

The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) shares export figures annually. For several years, Michael Kravitz of the Diving for Pearls blog published an excellent analysis of this data, predicting in 2017: “If volume sales don’t increase [significantly], then we’re going to start seeing A TON of well-aged malt whisky within 5 years. If this continues further, there is going to be an embarrassment of oversupply in 10 years. Even if industry-wide production is cut in half in 2017, it would be too late to stop The Loch.”

Similarly perhaps, good play-by-play from CBC by Dave Infante, highlighting the potentially irrational exuberence in the pep rally:

Matt Gacioch of the Brewers Association notes that U.S. craft brewing’s -4% volume drop in 2024 was the largest since the trade org started tracking that metric. “Consumers feel much worse than they’re acting.” Even as sentiment tanks, people are still spending on-trend for now. Doesn’t explain why they’re spending less on craft beer, but hey, listen, silver linings!

There was a similar theme in the Beer Insider Insights newsletter this week:

… in 2012-2013, households led by folks under 30 spent more like 1.1% of their disposable income on alcohol. That dropped to 0.74% a decade later, about 1/3 less. Households run by younger folks will generally have less income, disposable or otherwise, Bourcard reminds. But the fact that Gen Z is already spending less on alcohol could stick around. Then too, the most cited reasons of “health and vanity” are “greatly overblown,” in his view.

I love how “greatly overblown” gets something of the rimshot treatment after those sorts of stats. Silver linings! More serious in terms of the inquiry, David Jesudason wrote this week about a puzzle:

Dennis Morris took a series of photos of life in Southall in the 1970s after apparently driving past the West London suburb on the way to a Bob Marley gig. This one was sent to me by a friend visiting an exhibition of his in Paris. I’ve asked people if this is the legendary Glassy Junction… but none can confirm. All I know is this is a Sikh pub landlord photographed in Southall in 1976. So if anyone has any idea what pub this is or the name of the man pictured, please get in touch!

I don’t know anything about that. Do you? No? Well, did you know, if you are not sufficiently disappointed in the beer in front of you, that there’s an app for that?

…a new experimental measurement tool, created by scientists assessing the concentration of DMS in beer through “smartphone-based colorimetry” uses a “paper-based analytical device (PAD)” which was made using an “immobilising a chromogenic reagent phase consisting of alkaline nitroprusside in a gelatin hydrogel”. Breweries and beer judges analyse the DMS content of products to ensure consistent flavour quality and consumer satisfaction.

Lordy. I am loving this “off-flavour” studies revival. Remember last week? That was excellent. Feels all 2012. Is that unkind? You know what’ll perk this conversation up? Rice malt, that’s what:

The rice malt can also reduce crop-growing acreage needs by half or more, because the research shows it produces more grain per acre than barley, while having an equivalent or greater sugar extract potential… The study, which is derived from the University of Arkansas, also identified how malting has the potential to decrease time and energy costs and make using rice more feasible for more small-scale craft brewers — especially when creating gluten-free beers. Since rice is cultivated globally, the analysis highlighted how it also has the benefit of serving as a viable malting grain for tropical and subtropical countries that would otherwise need to rely on barley imports for brewing.

You know… I wonder about the arsenic. Any mention of the arsenic? Not sure. Hmm… and that’s it. Not much this week. It’ll get bettter. Next week for sure. Let me check my calendar. No, away briefly again. Until then, 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!