Well, they would be mailed-in if we hadn’t had a postal strike here in Canada. My Christmas cards are in limbo. Parcels replaced with e-cards. How unjolly. So I have had to find other things to fill my days. Like reading. I was up to a book a week during the pandemic. This year? Not even one a month. I was grateful, then, to read the passage to the right from Prof. Smil’s facinating but dense (not to mention tiny fonted) book Size which is something of an apology to the reader. It’s good to know that sometimes the feelings are mutual when it comes to these sorts of things. Which other writers should issue apologies?
What is up? ATJ starts us off whistfully today, daydreaming of the scene in a favourite pub on Christmas Day:
A pub I regularly visit, The Bridge Inn at Topsham, five miles from where I live, opens for a couple of hours and the landlady Caroline recently told me that hundreds of people turn up and that there was a separate bar to dispense Branoc, which is the pub’s popular session ale. Other beers poured from the wood are of a stronger cast, the kind of strength that would make a cat speak. I am sure that the mood is joyous and celebratory, a cacophony of voices and laughter, inside and outside the pub. The parlour to the left of the pub corridor I guess to be warmed by the well-lit fire and full of eager drinkers, as would I suspect to be the back bar, again with a well-warming fire and conversation ebbing and flowing like the tidal river just below the pub. One day I shall get there on Christmas Day.
Boak and Bailey also consider their actual visits to the pubs of Bristol during these holidays – first at (me being Nova Scotian) the most wonderfully named pub that I will likely never enter, The Nova Scotia, then moving on to The Merchant’s Arms:
The Bass was excellent. The Butcombe was excellent. The Christmas tree twinkled and was reflected in the chocolate brown paintwork. There were more lads in Christmas jumpers, more rugby boys… no, actually, the same ones from The Orchard, on the same trail as us. Again, we found it hard to leave, but The Merchants Arms was beckoning from across the water… We squeezed through the door and through the crowd to a spot within shouting distance of the bar. As we peered at the pumps we heard a voice shouting “Ray! Ray!” but ignored it because, frankly, The Merchants is the kind of pub where almost everyone is called Ray.
If I ever meet B+B, I hope I first see them from a distance so I too can shout “Ray! Ray!” but to be clear I will likely shout “Jess! Jess!” so as to be both cheery and nice while also sneaky and clever.
Also striking a holiday pose, in Foodism we see Will Hawkes wrote about Christmas ales as an echo of Victorian times:
Christmas meant stronger beer, often brewed in October and longer aged to soften the edges. In December 1888, for example, the Phillips Brewery advised readers of the Oxford Times not to miss out on their “Christmas Specialities”: a strong ale, a double [i.e. stronger than usual] stout and an ale aged for two years. These were powerfully flavoured beers designed to accompany the rich, fatty, indulgent dishes then central to, and still part of, a British Christmas: plum pudding, stilton and roast meat of various kinds – this was a time when most Britons did not drink wine. Beers were dark and heady, like liquid Christmas Pudding, and often stronger than 10% ABV.
Now… I would note that English strong ale is not a Victorian invention as careful readers will appreciate. But the point of the reformist middle class Victorian – really Albertan – homey Christmas is quite correct. Still, I do think the Georgians were more fun. Disgusting but fun.
Going further back while remaining ecclesiastical, Dr. Christina Wade shared some snazzy facts this week over on BlueSky about the work of a medieval Cellaress:
The pages of this late 13th-century manuscript, La Sainte Abbeye, detail what would make up a perfect abbey. & what would such an institution be without ale, or, perhaps more precisely, the nun in charge of it, the Cellaress… Pictured in this illustration, between the Abbess, singing nuns, and a small handful of deacons is the cellaress, the woman in charge of food and drink… In medieval monastic communities, ale was an important part of diet. It was critical to the running of many of these nunneries. And not only did they drink it, they often also brewed it on site.
Keeping up with this sort of academic wisdom is what makes this here blog what it is – but I have to admit I also love running across new favourite jargonese like “pseudo-targeted flavoromics” which is just fabulous. Whaaaaaaat does it even mean?
…a comprehensive flavoromics integrating untargeted, pseudo-targeted, and targeted analyses was employed to characterize volatile development across RTs with 14 annotated compounds. Notably, non-linear patterns have been observed in malt coloration, precursors consumption, and volatile development for the first time…
Fabulous. Super dooper fabulous. Speaking of which and yet giving me something of my own flashback, David Jesudason wrote about the experience about returning to the pub as a member of staff, something he had not done for 25 years:
…working in a pub gives you a rare gift of seeing the space for what it truly is even if that is amorphous – at first it went from being a slew of self-contained tables and then a communal mass with multiple conversations tied together with the love of beer. And, at times when I wasn’t part of the fun or the work, I had a vision of it being a high-street shop – the marvel of the micropub unwrapped. The most shameful confession is that for a few seconds when facing random customers I felt like I over-explained to somehow overcompensate that I was more than a bartender – maybe James’s intervention was warranted. That I had somehow failed in my career as a writer and become perma-frosted since 1999, which reveals how I may subconsciously view service industry jobs as somehow inferior to other pursuits.
My trick as a bartender? Give change in dimes and nickels. You get it all back. Speaking of the jolly, did you see the 1975 BBC new item on the Guinness tanker ship posted at the FB page of the Brewery History Society? It’s not the ship itself that’s jolly but that turtleneck blazer combo… though the “draught” and other puns do strain the patience.
Tariff news update! Did I mention that Ontario’s government booze store (retail and wholesale) is the biggest in the world? Well, apparently our provincial government is considering restricting the Liquor Control Board of Ontario from buying any American-made alcohol:
“We’ll use every tool in our toolbox, as we put a tariff on bourbon last time. The LCBO is the largest purchasers of alcohol in the entire world. But I’d prefer not to do any of this,” Ford said Friday. Earlier in the week, Ontario’s premier threatened to pull the plug on the electricity supply that powers 1.5-million homes in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Looks like I’ll be sipping rye this winter. As Michigan grinds to a halt. And speaking of sipping, The Tand took himself and herself out for a walk recently to spend the day drinking cask ale in London and shared what he found:
I knew trouble was afoot when the server put my glass under the handpump and splashed beer into it while pouring a half of lager. It was the worst pint of Vocation Bread and Butter I’d ever had, but I supped it quietly and left most of it. I hadn’t the heart to pull this hard-working lass up about it. Someone should have trained her better. At our table we started talking with a couple of lads who’d lived locally for a few years, They too had started on cask and abandoned it so we enjoyed Hofmeister instead…
Somewhat speaking of which and before we get into the “craft rot” stories, they of Pellicle posted some thoughts on the year soon past and their plans for 2025:
While these features remain popular, in that they’re well read, we’ve come to realise that readers are often seeking more than simply a narrative piece about a brewery with a friendly owner who makes really tasty beer. There needs to be an angle, a hook, a proper story to dig your teeth into. We will continue to publish stories about beer and breweries in 2025, but with greater scrutiny and tighter angles focusing on what we feel really matters to our readers. Throughout this year we’ve been pausing to check ourselves and ask “who really cares about this, and why does it matter?” Two hugely important questions when you’re publishing content about any given subject.
This is good. Where ever they are published, brewery owner bios (herein “BOBs”) tend to be samey. Cavity inducing even. Where the reader can find investigative work like fact checking brewery owner assertions or interviewing former employees or business partners for alternative takes on official history these piece might have some hang time. But they are nice and have their place so keep them in there as long as they are matched with as many more analytical critical studies. Good move.
Also looking a bit forward as well, drinks writer Jason Wilson prepared a What’s In and What’s Out chart for the turn of the year. Click to the to the right for a larger version. The bad news that we all know has come to pass is that craft beer* is in the out column but has sake really given it the boot? As is often the case, there is an underlying argument that things that were a bit precious are being left behind so craft beer joins caviar, mini cocktails and Mezcal on the list making room for oysters, dirty martinis and calvados. Now, you can live the life that you think is right for you but I am always going to vote for oysters and calvados.
Note: BA Bart takes the shrinking ship’s helm as the foundering continues. And this is during the week when the frankly “long forgotten to many” RateBeer announced its own demise after five years of big beer ownership – and announced it with some very specific instructions:
Login to the RateBeer website and navigate to the My Profile page… In the right-hand column below “Beer Cellar” is the “My Account” section… In the “My Account” section, click “Compile My Ratings”.. The next page will provide options for downloading your ratings in CSV (comma-separated value) format…
Wow. It’s soon gonna to be gone gone gone goner than Hunter Biden is getting struck from the White House Christmas party list. Just to avoid the link-a-cide, I am connecting to the story at BeerAdvocate, too.
And Jordan noted another passing, of The Growler a beer magazine he edited. Print magazines about beer have never done well in Canada. Ontario had a section in Great Lakes Brewing News from 2009 to 2019 before… the scandal. And we had TAPS that folded its last print edition in 2016, then we had Mash which lasted a few issues the next year, then we had a Canadian edition of Original Gravity for a bit – and now we have The Growler‘s Ontario edition taking its leave in turn, though the BC edition seems to live on. In good times and bad, beer magazines have never seemed to be the thing. Will someone try again?
Speaking of which, interesting zing! from a former blog publisher over Google delisting the “unvetted and often bogus content” of Forbes’ contributor network where a few struggle down the mine axe in hand, hacking against the rock face, convincing others that beer is interesting.
Note: a list of 10 or 25 or 30 people naming their favourite beer or breweries of the year (or anything of the year) isn’t a list of the top 25 or 30. It’s just 25 or 30 lists each with only one listed. End of the year content filling season is here!**
Finally and in far better shape than that second half what was set out above, Drunk Polkaroo is back after 12 weeks off alcohol and counting for health reasons, the details of which he has shared. After a bit of a glum re-entry with a discount brand review, he is one his feet again with a cheery review of a NA beer from one of Canada’s finest brewers. Is this his new thing? It’s certainly a good thing.
That’s it! Happy holidays! Merry Christmas and all that!! Until next time when we will be gathered ’round the Boxing Day Box, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And 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. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.
*As per Beer Insights: ‘ Whole Foods beer buyer Mary Guiver reflected on the theme of focus, resisting the urge “to do everything” and “chase everything”… Whole Foods “had to weather the storm of being a craft-centric retailer,” Mary said, and “it sucked.” ‘
**Plus… “beer pros“!