Category: Beer in the End Times

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!

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 First Beery News Notes For March 2025

It’s been a busy week, hasn’t it. A freaky week. I think I’ll try to avoid much thought of the endtimes in this week’s update but, if you need more existential dread, I recommend what Jeff has shared. Good to be reminded by The Onion that mockery is a valid response. But I would say that in all the new battles of the tariffs, this fact was a bit surprising:

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs will hit the US wine industry harder than beer & spirits. Not only is the value of US wine exports to Canada higher than that of beer & spirits combined, wine industry exports are also more dependent on Canada: 34% of U.S wine exports go to Canada (beer 11%, spirits 10%)

Wow. Other than a few from Ridge stuck away for retirement and maybe a few Oregon Pinot, I never touch the stuff. And I won’t be touching any soon in my local LCBO:

March 4, 2025 – TORONTO – As part of Ontario’s response strategy to U.S. tariffs, the government of Ontario has directed LCBO to take operational steps to implement restrictions on all U.S. beverage alcohol sales and related imports into Ontario, effective immediately. LCBO has ceased the purchase of all U.S. products, retail customers are no longer able to purchase U.S. products on lcbo.com and the LCBO app, and wholesale customers, including grocery and convenience stores, bars, restaurants, and other retailers, are no longer able to place orders of U.S. products online. Furthermore, spirits, wine, cider, beer, ready-to-drink coolers/cocktails, and non-alcoholic products produced in the U.S. will no longer be available in our retail stores or LCBO Convenience Outlets.

Yup. Some places are clearing the shelves while others are selling off stock, like the funny folk at the Inuvik Liquor Store in the NWT.

What else is going on? Well, I love this image shared on the FB page for the Brewery History Society submitted by one Paul Sutherland: highways, railways and seven breweries in:

…aerial pictures of the Craigmillar area of Edinburgh taken I’m guessing in the 1930s. I got the originals when I worked at Tyne Brewery in the late 70s. In 2013 I submitted them to a website, now defunct owing to the death of its founder and administrator but still viewable, called Edinphoto. On September 21st of that year a member of the site called Andy Arthur, of Meadowbank, Edinburgh, annotated the pictures with the names of the breweries…

If you zoom in under this link, you will see how all that brewing and transportation infrastructure is pretty impressive… but is any of that still there almost a century later?  Looks like it’s all part of the Innocent Railway Walking Path now.  Speaking of all gone, here’s a life lesson: don’t leave two stories worth of heavy snow on the top level of the parkade. Bad move. No real beer connection other that I once parked in that very spot and went for a beer.

As we Canucks gird our loins and get all buy inter-provincial, Canada’s national broadcaster has revived the story of Gerald Comeau‘s beer run that ended up in the before the top appeal court panel in the land:

He certainly didn’t expect a police sting, a five-year legal battle and a Supreme Court of Canada decision saying he didn’t have the right to purchase that beer without impediment.  “I can go buy any material anywhere in Canada. You can go buy 20 shirts in Quebec, no problem. Why wouldn’t you be able to buy beer,” said Comeau, over a decade after that fateful beer run. But Comeau’s quest to “free the beer” is once again in the spotlight as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens Canada with tariffs and interprovincial trade gets another look. 

Yes, yes… I said I wouldn’t get into this but dropping inter-provincial trade barriers is one way we expect to be changing to fight the tariffs. Careful readers will recall our discussion (you and me, by the way, not the collective individual that marks some beer writing) of the Comeau case back in 2018 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruling came out defending a province’s autonomous right to stop you from buying beer in the next province. Will the Orange Blob’s tantrum change this?

Stan is fighting back, too. He is down by the Gulf of Mexico (Ed.: Mexico? Really?? Keep up with the lingo, Stan!) and he is actually saying so. Speaking of Stan, his latest edition of Hop Queries came out just after last week’s deadline and he shared the implications of the scything of the US federal government’s staff and their devestating effects on the US hops trade:

They include Francisco Gonzalez, a hop horticulturist who was 42 days from finishing his three-year probation period, and Brandon Sandoval, a biological science technician who worked for Gonzalez. Gonzalez had one measuring tape in any empty lab when he started, and now it is fully stocked. He spent two years building a six-acre experimental hop yard customized for irrigation studies, which was to operate at its full capabilities for the first time 2025. It appears both the lab and yard will be idle this year. Just as important going forward is the loss of support staff offering administrative, IT, and facility support services. 

Yowza.  Speaking of changes to the workplace, some spicy stuff in and about the normally mild mannered UK publication The Grocer on the appointment of a certain someone in what looks like a great leap sideways:

Steve Cox, the CEO behind failed beer business In Good Company (IGC), is to join Keystone Brewing Group a little over a month after its two major brands were swallowed up by the Breal-backed group. Cox moves to Keystone having failed to turn around the fortunes of Fourpure and Magic Rock Brewing, both of which were acquired by IGC from Australasian brewer Lion in 2022, but sold to Keystone in distressed circumstances at the end of January.

Staying over there, I like this story about a collective community hop garden developing in Thanet:

Hop Along Thanet, a non-profit making organisation which launched in 2020, encourages its members to grow the crop in their back gardens and allotment plots. The University of Kent at Canterbury has just joined the project and is set to grow 20 plants on its campus. Chris Morrissey, founding member, said: “Its more than a hobby, it’s an involvement with a historic Kent tradition”. Hop Along Thanet is one of a number of community hop growing groups across Kent. It has more than 50 members who have planted 150 hop bines in their gardens and allotments across Thanet.

Thanet was one of the great English brewing centers of the 1600s. Do they even know?

What else? Well, probably best to not write and opinion column in you’re not interested in opinions. It can’t all be about hiding out, being the shadowy figure. Being negative can always be a positive. Like in this startling review of southwest Scotland as a travel destination:

You feel it’s hard to run a business here. It trickles through the scenery, undoing the beauty of the sky and the sea. The peeling paint and the rundown stores with their mossy window ledges add a tinge of gloom. On a mid-February weekend there weren’t many spots to spend money. You can’t get complacent about people coming for the beaches. You need to build around them to get cash flowing all year round. It isn’t enough to call southern Scotland “overlooked” or “forgotten” — two words beloved by travel writers and the tourist board. I am not certain it is our best kept secret.

Wow. And Wee Beefy is back with his first blog post of 2025 and it does somewhat countervale against the pub as convivial community centre line:

It was late on a midweek night in a popular Sheffield pub and probably about 30 minutes prior to closing. Two men I didn’t know came in and sat down and started chatting but quickly one expressed his extreme irritation at them playing rap music, a phrase he couldnt accurately pronounce. After a couple of minutes he shouted “why dont you play some proper music instead of this rap shit” His friend told him to stop shouting which riled him further so he decided to storm over to the counter and shout the same accusation directly at the barman – who said, politely and calmly, that what they were playing was all music, and may even have suggested that some people liked the music they had chosen. Cue embolism number 2.

Katie got the nod in Pellicle for her piece on something she has been writing about for years in social media and in her newsletter The Gulp – her obsession with wheeled sport! This time the focus is on “Beer and Cyclocross in Belgium and The Netherlands”:

Near the startline of Namur’s citadel cyclocross course in Wallonian Belgium, two women with dark-dyed 80s bouffant mullets wander towards me, a beer apiece. It’s 10.30am. I take this as confirmation I really should be moving on from coffee by now. At a cyclocross race it’s not just Belgian culture and a sense of civic duty that keeps the pints coming. Beer has been essential to the sport since its inception thanks to local brewery sponsorship deals. Even now, podium finishers often receive beer-related prizes, whether that’s an oversized glass of locally-brewed blond, or a keg to take home. As a spectator, beer serves another important purpose.

Speaking of purpose – or perhaps lack thereof – I find this program allegedly aimed at deterring wrongdoing in the pubs of Wales a bit confusing:

The group – supported by North Wales Police and local publicans – work together to help tackle issues like anti-social behaviour to help keep workers and other guests safe. This week saw two people put forward for banning orders. It saw them both given five year banning notices from the pubs in the group. There are no details on the individuals or what they are alleged to have done.

I mean I think it’s a good idea but if you don’t know what earned these guys a five year ban… how are you going to avoid doing it yourself?  Speaking of the unexciting… yawn – but it’s still “craft”, right?

“We are entering 2025 as a stronger company focused on end-to-end execution which is showing progress in a dynamic operating environment…”

Perhaps conversely – and more realistically – Jessica Mason reported this week on a forecasted further downturn for the US beer market:

…the BPI is a net-rising index and a leading indicator of industry performance based on survey responses from participating beer purchasers.” Jones explained that “the index surveys beer distributors’ purchases across different segments and compares them to that of previous years’ purchases”. According to Jones: “A reading greater than 50 indicates the segment is expanding, while a reading below 50 indicates the segment is contracting.” Jones revealed that “overall BPI fell to 35 (a 14-point year-over-year shift) while the at-risk inventory measure rose to 53”… “The index for imports continues to point to expanding volumes with a February 2025 reading of 55; however, that is 13-points lower than the February 2024 reading of 68,” he warned.

Finally – and not buying into that trend at all – Boak and Bailey were out on another rip this past weekend and in the update at Patreon page identified another way of managing low alc beer:

We also took the opportunity to try Proper Job 0.5 for the first time. It’s clean and has an appealing hop profile, as you’d expect, but it’s not quite enough to conceal that it’s a low alcohol beer. For us, Clear Head from Bristol Beer Factory probably still has the edge as it manages somehow to have a fuller mouthfeel. However, as we suspected, interesting things start happening when you mix the 0.5 with, er, proper Proper Job. A 50/50 blend is pretty satisfying; lighter and more gulpable than the full-on PJ, but with enough Proper Job character to convince. Petit Proper Job, if you will.

Interesting – and it’s always good to give that “but… the brewer’s intentions?!?!” stuff a good kick down the stairs and try out your own ideas.

Fine. I did have plenty of stories about the crisis… but as promised I didn’t put much thought into it! Aaaannnnd… that is it for this week. Remember – however bad it was this week it will be worst next week. In the interim, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovely bit of writing right there.

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

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

Again, some lovely writing right there.

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

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

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

Thanks again for everyone who participated in first edition of The Session Revived. Here’s the round up.  As Stan was kind enough to say, “Much of the best reading last week was on Friday, when The Session revival was pretty dang successful.” Join in next time we gather! In the interim, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

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

The Beery News Notes For – What – Another “Red Sox Suck” Season?

It’s hard being a fan. One of the reasons I am not a big booster for this or that drinks category is I have already invested heavily in terms of emotes in other areas of life. The Pellicle-run Fantasy Premier League surprised me with its grip last season. Plus, as you know, there’s all that gardening stuff that I tend to tend to. But those Red Sox. My team. Mine. They have won 4 World Series in the first quarter of this century but now are mid-pack grinders this decade. There’s little chance they get to the playoffs but they are irritatingly near the chance to… maybe to… couple possibly…  Oh well. But even before all of those obsessions, all those fanboy obsessions… there is good food. Making. Eating. So happy was I to read Liam‘s tweet about the sauce above:

An ale and anchovy sauce recipe for steak written by Thomas Gray in a copy of William Verrall’s Complete System of Cookery – via Penguin’s Recipes from the White Hart Inn.

That’s a book from 1759 as I understand it. Imagine living in a time when membership in a fan base of mid-pack grinders was not even possible. Except, you know maybe if you lived in one of the smaller player in the Seven Years War. Perhaps under the rule of Augustus III of Poland. Anyway, anchovies and ale… anchovies and ale.

Back to a semblance of a plot, there was a good story in Blog TO checking out the prices in Ontario’s newly licensed corner stores. It is a little spoken of aspect of the retail booze trade in Ontario that not only are prices stable because of the massive monolithic twins, the LCBO and TBS – but those prices are standard in every store province-wide,  no matter how distant and expensive the shipping costs. Not so in the 7 am to 11 pm new world order. Not that I would buy one – but a 12 pack of White Claw is 30% higher in corner stores compared to TBS retail. Sounds like that one mistake can easily turn into two for the unwary.

Speaking of prices and price inputs, Gary has a great series going on the Canadian brewing trade in WW2 and this week posted this great bit of tabular information detailing all materials used in brewing production in 1944 and 1945. By reverse engineering his Google image search, I found the same record at a Government of Canada site and saved it for perusal. Just look at page 13!

“Grandpa? What was the ratio of steam, diesel and electric power used in Canada’s wartime brewing as part of the war effort against the Nazis?” “Well, little Jimmy, let’s see…”

Excellent stuff. Speaking of which, Katie Mather has been out and about – especially on the Isle of Man – and has sent out a portrait of a favourite pub there, the The Woodbourne Hotel:

This snug in the centre of the building feels like an Edwardian train carriage, everyone packed in together amicably, its little booth seats overlooked by cartoons and paintings that know the secrets of this town, and well-used hand pulls that serve Woodbourne Street’s locals the beer they need to do some much-needed gossiping. We weren’t staying in the Gent’s Room though. It’s too small, and we were too noisy. I was led further down the corridor to the back bar, where somehow we’d multiplied into a rowdy bunch of 12. Basic white walls and a well-stocked bar on first glance became signed photographs of TT racers and etched glass windows. It took my eyes a little time to adjust from the burnished glory of the Gent’s Room, but once I could see it for the perfect little boozer that it was, I was at home.

By the way, Katie is offering self-editing lessons.  Yes, yes. I know. I know. I KNOW!!!

In a year where much of the beer trade news is not necessarily positive, we have also heard that a lot of men spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. Curiosity is good. Not my thing given all those other things – except, you know, all that Christ on the cross stuff – but Ray of B+B has admitted he has joined the legions and asked some questions this week:

After visiting Roman ruins in Colchester and the City of London in early August I found myself frustrated at my lack of solid knowledge about Rome. So, I decided to do my homework. Fortunately, Mary Beard’s 2015 book SPQR offers a relatively concise, extremely clearly-expressed history of Ancient Rome that even I could follow. The Kingdom, the Republic and the Empire made sense, and I understood for the first time which emperor followed which. With my beer blogging hat on, though, the section that really grabbed me was about the decor of a bar in the port of Ostia in the 2nd century CE (formerly AD)…

Back to the now, Eoghan shared some shocking news on the state of Belgian beer this week:

“…outside Europe the export [of Belgian beer] declined by as much as 22.2%” IN ONE YEAR A stat (from the Belgian Brewers Federation) to really set the alarm bells going about the future of Belgian beer. A fairly telling quote, in the same report: “In the past, Belgian brewers were able to compensate this decline largely through export, but last year, for the first time in history, export declined by nearly 7.5%.” Belgian beer’s safety net has some pretty large holes in it…”

Long suffering readers would recall that 15 to 20 years ago, driving distances to find Belgian beers in the northeastern part of the United States was a bit part of one’s stash maintenance. Seems like a third of a lifetime ago… oh… it was. To quote the lads back in Rome sic transit gloria cervisiārum… as Jeff discussed last week:

“Craft beer” is a conceptual cul de sac. We started using it with good intentions, but with a naïveté about how brewing works and how markets function. It now causes more trouble than it’s worth.

In VinePair, David Infante took it a step further and argued that just as craft it no longer relevant as a concept, it isn’t really relevant as a substance:

With the segment struggling to shore up slipping sales figures in the face of increased competition from other categories and shifting preferences from American drinkers, craft breweries have been uncoupling brands from the brewhouses with which they were once synonymous, shedding overhead costs and further muddying what makes a craft beer craft.

Jon Chesto of The Boston Globe wrote a fresh take on the craft shake out that is a bit more visceral in tone, sharing the excellent term “slusheteria” for the craft brewers who chase the tail of other targets. The quitters one might say reading between the lines. Or are they just practical realists racing away from the crushing alternative?  The Chesto story’s punchline, however, is saved for Sam Hendler of Jack’s Abby in Framingham who takes an optimistic approach to the reality of short term shakeouts:

Hendler said many brewers built larger operations than they needed with the anticipation that double-digit sales growth would continue well into the future. Now the industry has far more production capacity than it needs. “We are investing very heavily in craft beer and believe in its long-term future. This isn’t a ‘sky falling’ scenario,” Hendler said. “There might be a challenging period that we’re going to have to navigate through but we see a really bright future for those who figure out how to navigate that successfully.”

Stan also had his own thoughts about the idea that the small and local brewer is going to way of the dodo. But he was heading out the door and just said he’s “…not prepared to abandon the thought embracing efficiency means abandoning inefficiency altogether.” Just strikes me that this sort of trend is an economic reality – but one borne of the pretense that there was something once upon a time called craft that stood there separate and distinct, between microbrewing and today. I dunno. It’s been slipping away for a long long time for this to be news. The glitter. The kettle sours. The identi-haze. But does that necessarily lead inevitably to the horrors of the slusheteria? I am encouraged by Hendler that it does not.

Speaking of slipping further into the sub-standard, MolsonCoors is ditching inclusion in preference for old school capitalist exclusion according to TDB:

…the business would be ending its DEI-based training for its staff members, claiming that it has been “completed”. According to reports, future training initiatives at Molson Coors will now undergo an audit to ensure that they are all focused on the company’s “key business objectives.” In addition to this, Molson Coors is renaming its “employee resource groups” to call them “business resource groups” in a bid to illustrate how the company is focused on “business objectives, consumer dynamics and career development”. Molson Coors also highlighted how its future charitable endeavours will now solely support “hometown communities” aligning to its “core business goals”.

Interesting, too, is how a story can be written about celebrity sports guys building a beer brand by leveraging the excess capacity of Founders Brewing without mentioning the whole bigotty discriminatory scandals thing:

Garage Beer is a fun example of small brand, going big, and making moves quickly. Their connections to two of the NFL’s biggest personalities and even an indirect connection to Taylor Swift make it an extra fascinating story to follow. But beer isn’t sold on podcasts or YouTube, it’s sold in stores and needs to flow through the complex three tier system to reach a national audience. Aligning with Founders Brewing for production and potentially distribution alignment has the ability to execute the hurry-up offense that Garage Beer will need to march across the country.

What’s that? Is it white-white-washing? Dunno but apparently, the inclusion blip has blopped and some want to go back to the old ways. Remember the old ways? Last Friday, David Jesudason published another story of racism in the UK pub trade, this  that 1980s club entertainer Alex Samos faced and pushed back against:

…the club wanted Alex to leave the premises when he arrived and his agent George Fisher was told Alex needed to be replaced because of his colour. This time the club “won” and Alex was barred for not being white. He took legal action against the club and, in a case backed by the Commission for Racial Equality and Equity, won £500 (£1,500 in 2024) compensation for injured feelings and loss of earnings in August 1985.  I hope this would stamp out discrimination by clubs against coloured performers,” Alex told the press at the time. “I thought it was an affront to my dignity. I was outraged.” Club secretary Michael Riordan confirmed none of the 500 members were non-white but feebly retorted that “no coloured people had applied to join”.

Finally and to end on a happier note, Pellicle‘s feature this week was by Martin Flynn on the  Donzoko Brewing Company, a name which I think Augustus III himself might approve if only for having had also to deal with the Austrians but in a slightly different context:

Following calls in pidgin German and some online bids, not long after the search began Reece found himself in Vienna, where gleaming copper brewing vessels and 13 fermentation tanks awaited him. As things transpired, the whole ensemble would spend two days outside on a city centre street, but, somehow, it miraculously remained unharmed and still in one piece. Unfortunately, Reece’s finances were similarly static. A hurried call from the auction house revealed that, for reasons unknown, his funds had been blocked by the UK’s Financial Crimes Authority. “I put the phone down and had a panic attack,” he says. “The head of the auction house was literally walking after me in Vienna, shouting at me.

Heavens! Steer clear of Vienna, that’s what I say. Every. Time. (Did I mention I know a man in Vienna?) Well, we will leave it at that for now. Busy week. Had to retrieve a cat from Springfield… as one does. Until next week for more beery news, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and see if Stan cheats on his declared autumnal break on Mondays. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there.

*Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (174) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (933) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,460) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

The Mid-August 2024 “No, You’re The One Dreaming Of Sweater Weather” Beery News Notes

Great. Stan took this week off. And probably next week too. He may hover in my mind like the absentee desk editor like I mentioned a few weeks ago. But he also has a nickname, too: cheat sheet. Stan “The Cheat Sheet” Hieronymus. Yup. See, come Monday when I can’t think of anything to go look for in the world of beer to think about, I can go see what Stan has been thinking about first. He’s a bit like that nice smart left handed kid in grade 11 math class with really good posture that I sat one row back of and one seat over to the right. Gave me a good view. Made tests just a bit easier.

By the way, there is little beer related in that photo up there. Took the image Monday evening looking due south, down over central New York State. A pinhole sunset catching the anvil cloud from below. Right about in the middle of that horizon is Oswego, NY.  On still days in winter, you can see the plume rising from Nine Mile Point Nuclear. Also, home of Rudy’s. Where you can skip stones and drink Genny Cream Ale.

Did someone mention beer?  Starting hereabout, as we face almost 4,000 new beer retailers in these parts in a few weeks, Ontario’s public broadcaster TVO published a great piece by Matt Gurney about the shock of the new he has experienced in the last few years of deregulation of the provincial booze market, with a particular focus on that one odd rule that allows 7-Eleven to qualify as a restaurant:

Seeing someone drinking in a 7-Eleven or walking out of my local variety store with a bottle of wine will probably feel exactly the way seeing people openly smoking cannabis felt like for the first few years after legalization. I have a specific memory of standing at an intersection, waiting for a light so I could cross, and noticing two young men standing on the corner passing a joint back and forth. I thought to myself, huh, that’s unusually brazen. And then, seconds later, my brain caught up with reality: it would have been brazen a few years earlier, but that day, it was simply two law-abiding citizens engaging in a legal activity in public. 

On undoubtedly similar sorts of offerings, Doug Velky of Revolution Brewing in his newsletter Beer Crunchers, unpacks how craft has turned full circle with craft’s adoption of “cold” in the race to make light generic lagers:

…we also recognized that Cold Time, whose model focuses more on volume than margins, would require broader adoption than just our loyal Revolution customers to ever be considered a success. To achieve this greater scale, early investments would be crucial to get Cold Time into new places to find audiences who don’t currently think of themselves as craft beer fans, but are very open to a great, locally made lager.

Volume. Hmm. Disclosure. I’ve been buying Ice Cold Beer from Toronto’s Left Field Brewing for at least three years so there is no news here. But that branding had at least a level of self-parody in the mix along with the tasty within. Is that self-effacing sort of joke now all so… what… 2021? They may not be dipping as low as the macro-lags but aren’t they fighting for the Centro-Euro buyer‘s attention? Given how well “beer from anywhere you like” can sell, can we blame them?

Interesting bit of history over from Katy Prickett at Auntie Beeb this week on industrialization of England during the Roman Era, including brewing at scale:

“At Berryfields, we found evidence of malting and brewing and the tanks used to steep the grain before processing,” he said. “We tend to think of the Roman world as being very much a wine-loving place. “But actually a lot of the population in Roman Britain were drinking beer and we see that in the pottery they were using, large beakers in the same sort of sizes as modern pint glasses.”

Being someone who never gives a second thought for the Roman Empire, this was all news to me. I am told that Barryfield was located “at an intersection along a major routeway” and was “the location of multiple roadside industries, such as brewing, woodworking, and metalworking, aimed at supplying the travellers passing through.” Here, too, is an archaeological report on a neighbouring site complete with maltings and even malted spelt deposits along with some barley and even some apples and beets.*

In an exploration of more recent history and in light of far more recent racist events in the UK, David Jesudason published the story of a hopeful scene in late 1940s Wales as recoujnted by historian Kieran Connell, the story of an event that showed how working class people rejecting racist hostility are always as he says the vanguard of multiculturalism:

In 1948, the CIAC organised a black-tie event to celebrate Douglas’s success after he made 39 first-team appearances for the team, with the CIAC inviting white members of Cardiff Rugby Club. Announcements were placed in Tiger Bay shop windows and St Clair attended the night which was held ‘not at a dingy clubhouse’ but in the convention room of a city-centre hotel rented for the occasion. “He [St Clair] entered the hotel,” writes Kieran, “without any of the stares or comments that might ordinarily greet someone from an ethnic minority in central Cardiff. In the hotel lobby, he spotted five white girls and two black girls chatting with a group of four white boys. Further on, four or five boys of mixed ethnicity were trying to set up a large keg of beer.”

Table tennis? Bun fight? A bit of both? That’s the theme in an article by Ted Simmons in The Spirits Business about the dispute between the  American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) on the one hand and, on the other, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) over what is causing the great retraction. We join the debate half way in progress:

WSWA released a second statement [:]… “Blaming wholesalers for the industry’s challenges is shortsighted. The focus should instead be on how the entire supply chain, including wholesalers, can adapt to changing market conditions and support each other in navigating economic pressures,” it read…  ACSA cites a study that found that 87% of craft spirits drinkers want to legally purchase via DTC, and 82% of craft spirits drinkers support laws changing in order to expand DTC… The WSWA calls for an end to any finger pointing… 

Speaking of handbaggery, Ed had a posted about the redistribution of CAMRA branches which so far has not yet popped up into the general finger pointery zone but might be heading that way:

CAMRA currently has a plan to change its branch structure so no branch straddles CAMRA region or county boundaries. From what I can gather it’s a top down proposal from the National Executive… I’m a bottom up man so am dubious about the proposal. Though a devout member of our Mother Church I’m not very active in the branch, but it is the branch I’ve been in since I was a teenager so I would be sad to see it end. Our branch chairman has written a long reply detailing how the branch came to be and why its current structure works.

BREAKING: Ron + Uruguay: one, two, three, four plus one alarming admission: “I want a rest from being Mr. Beer“!!! Heavens. Jings even.

And Jessica Mason shared details on the losses left in the wake of the failure of one brewery, the unfortunately** named Anarchy Brew Co of Newcastle:

Following the pandemic, the business also reportedly fell into financial difficulties after being unable to pay back loans and financial obligations on top of rising supplier costs. Reports have outlined that the trouble began when directors of the company took out Covid support loans and used tax deferrals to manage finances. FRP Advisory has since put together estimates with a breakdown, showing the shortfall owed to creditors stands at approximately £492,413 and an additional £158,016 still being owed to HMRC. Many in the sector with debts currently unpaid by Anarchy are set to lose out with 22 businesses in the industry, including malt and hop suppliers, still being owed thousands of pounds. 

In the referenced reports, it is stated that unsecured creditors such as trade creditors, the landlord and loans and finance agreements are owed £261,468. Assets came in at about one-third of that fugure. What to take away from all that? Certainly the interconnectedness what with so many others dependent on the success of the brewery. Plus… would it have been a kindness had the pulg been pulled earlier?

Perhaps speaking of which but definitely for the double, makring the Molson Coors cutting of losses Doug Velky posted a neat and tidy summation of the recent string of ditchings of unwanted craft brands which has seen one firm… consortium (… collector… aggregator…) named Tilray picking up the pieces to perhaps slide up to fourth place in the contracting US craft brewer market:

For Molson Coors’ there’s no growth potential looking forward for these brands as each posted negative trends in 2023. The brands aren’t dead as nearly 200,000 BBLs across four regional breweries is nothing to sneeze at, but in order to reverse these trends it would take focus, vision, energy, and dollars. As a public company focused on growing shareholder value, cutting these brands and focusing on positive trending formulas is where they’ll head instead. We saw the same of Anheuser Busch who dumped more than half of their crafty brands to Tilray in 2023 and Constellation Brands who quickest to take their “L” in craft and move on when they cleaned house and sold off Ballast Point, Funky Buddah, and Four Corners.

Jeff asks some good questions and triggers good thoughts – but there seems to be an assumption that “local” and “regional” are similar constructs. I don’t think they are. By the way… does one now cheer in 2024 as much as one booed in 2016? Such a long time ago, isn’t it? Wasn’t it? My thought it that it all such a case of corporate deck chair shifting that it really no longer matters. Macro abandoning craft at the same time craft is seeking to mimic macro. Whoda thunk it? What an odd scene this is for so late in the play.

Headline for these times: “World Of Beer Has Filed For Bankruptcy, Here Are The Details.”

Interestingly and conversely, the government of Western Australia has created a ten-year economic development plan to boost the state’s craft beer industry:

The plan was put together by the state’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, the Independent Brewers Association (IBA), West Australia Brewers Association (WABA) and South West Brewers Association (SWBA). As part of the strategy, the four parties’ two main goals are increasing the volume and value of locally produced beer threefold by 2034 from a 2023 baseline and creating “greater vertical integration of the craft beer value chain” in the region. Over 120 craft breweries exist in Western Australia, representing 20% of total craft beer production in the country.

A ray of hope? A futile effort given the bigger picture? Who knows. Finally – and as a welcome night cap if you get my analogy – ever the optimist or at least open to the possibility, The Beer Nut gave credit where credit was due in his piece this week on a brewery that has turned its luck around:

There’s hope for us all, I like to think. Today’s beers aren’t the first to come from a brewery premises whose earliest wares I didn’t care for and thought poorly made, but under new management seem to have been turned around. Investment in better equipment? Less corner-cutting? Or just a more highly skilled brewer? I don’t know. I do know that the beers from the Hillstown brewery in Co. Antrim were usually a raft of off-flavours, of the homebrew rookie sort. It seems that there’s a new broom about the place now, going by the friendly and approachable name of Modest Beer.

PS: I like shameless. I can work with shameless.

Here are the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday… with a top drawer effort this week. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the 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 now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! 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 in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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 costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*How do you say “ooh, look, my pee’s gone all pink” in Latin?
**Although perhaps not as unfortunate as Jolly this week.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (+1=133) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (-1=929) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (plummeting a bunch to 4,466) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Fine… The Dog Days Of Summer Beery News Notes Have Begun

Is it me? It’s not you… is it? No, it’s beer. When beer sales peak, the news gets a bit sleepy or at least played out as expected. LCBO strike got settled. Beer in Canada is still expensive. Biden stepped aside. The French fascists were humilated… again. Sure, the back channel comments about the winding up of GBH continue to flow in – but nothing I would share to you lot. Some write for pay. Me, I write for gossip. I think Martin captured the zeitgeist of the week perfectly with this image above from his trip to take in the delights of the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Yarm.

Which leads to the question of the week, as posed by Stan on Monday when he responded to my comment last week that I think of him as my ever absent desk editor:

I am embarrassed, flattered, and a little surprised (perhaps skeptical) by the idea he does the sifting for me. The takeaway, to his credit, is a reminder of something all writers should remember: who the heck they think they are writing for.

Who or what do you write for? The reader? The commissioning editor? The next commissioning editor? The bills? The long dead relative who told you that you’d never amount to anything? I joke about things but I really have only been writing for myself for years. The beer trade is a benign sideshow that lets me explore ideas in an innocuous way. Ideas about life, business, quality, ethics… the whole shebang. It’s all right there. By the way, did you know a shebang was a rough hut of the Civil War era or a frontier settler? Me neither. One has to be careful about certain words.

Speaking of words, Jordan was out there recently wandering lonely as a cloud, not hunting out daffodils so much as dandelions to do some unpacking, dissecting and extractions to ‘splain a thing or two:

Dandelion has GLVs (hexenol), but that is to be expected since it has green leaves. It’s complex in that the different parts of the plant have their own properties. Harold McGee refers to the component smells as “light, fresh, and watery,” but we’re thinking about the entirety of the palate and not just the aroma. In terms of aroma, we have some of the same makeup as clover. Phenylethanol and benzaldehyde. There’s also Nerolidol, which is slightly woody and barky, which makes sense when you think of the rigidity of the stem. When the stem breaks, the dandelion’s defense method is to secrete latex, which is found mostly in the root system of the plant. The latex is not only bitter, but alkaloid, and polyphenolic. If you pick a dandelion to hold under someone’s chin, you’re going to get aroma from both the flower and the stem.

Yes, yes… outside of the Greater Toronto Area kids used buttercups to hold to a chins. But the point is made. There is science right there. Smelly tasty  science. Yes, there. And there as well…. ‘s’tru’. Even if “…phenylethanol and benzaldehyde… There’s also Nerolidol… “ sounds like a particularly challenging point in a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto.

Before the doors close, GBH published an interesting story by  Yolanda Evans on the practice of giving “libation” globally and also particularly in Black American culture:

“I think hip-hop just popularized [libations] in a way where we were given the language to talk about the celebrations of life that maybe we didn’t have before,” says Gates. “It’s not specific to a particular generation—hip-hop only happened 50 years ago, while we’ve been in this country for centuries,” she adds. In some ways, the genre transformed the ritual from a private and personal thing to an act so popular it eventually became removed from its roots—eventually, people everywhere, and especially in the African-American community, would pour one out for their homies without knowing they’re performing an old boozy ritual with roots that go back several thousands of years.

The piece expands much on the 2015 article in VinePair and, for me, it’s an interesting exploration a familiar thing because we Highland Scots do it, too. But it’s part of what my Reverend father would call the greater  “heedrum hodrum” aka the pre-Christian rituals that hang on. But in that context it’s not so much about remembrance as thinning the ether between here and there, now and then. Want to have a moment with Grannie to share a thought? Pour a little of the good stuff on the ground.

Tasting note of the week: “…distressingly grey…”

Speaking of VinePair, David Jesudason wrote an interesting piece for that fine journal in which his powers are on full display. I love how he places himself in stories, rejecting that more formulaic approach that we suffer along with too often. Consider this passage:

He’s all for mixing Guinness when done well but prefers to use bottled Guinness over widget beer cans or draft kegs in pubs for logistic reasons, such as lower carbonation. “Bottled Guinness has a different bite, of course,” he adds. When I press-gang Gaurav Khanna, the publican at the desi pub Gladstone in south London, into mixing numerous Guinness with soft drinks, he at first struggles with wastage caused by the stout’s carbonation. After a few pints mixed with Irn-Bru and some Gonsters, though, he nailed it. (At the end of the session we had to negotiate hard over my tab because we lost count of the amount of Guinness that was “tasted,” drunk or discarded.)

But no mention of stout and port, 2012’s sensation. Why?

News out of the UK related to the affirmation of the new government’s intention to impliment its predecessor’s public venue protection standards in Martyn’s law. Sarah Neish in The Drinks Business shared the likely implications for pubs and other parts of the UK hospitality industry:

… premises are unlikely to be expected to undertake physical alterations or fork out for additional equipment… measures are expected to include: Evacuation – how to get people out of the building; Invacuation – how to bring people into the premises to keep them safe or how to move them to safe parts of the building; Lockdown – how to secure the premises against attackers, e.g. locking doors, closing shutters and using barriers to prevent access; and Communication – how to alert staff and customers, and move people away from danger. “Additionally staff will need to understand these measures sufficiently to carry them out if needed,” Grimsey tells db, which suggests there will need to be an element of staff training for front-of-house employees of Standard Tier venues.

Sensible stuff. These are different times. Speak of these times, Katie wrote an explanation of “underconsumption core” this week in her newsletter The Gulp, a concept which may explain my dedicate use of a dull manual rotary lawnmower:

Underconsumption core exists because even the most exuberant of haulfluencers are starting to feel the constrictions of what is basically a national money shortage. When Broccoli is £1.20 a head in Lidl (one pound twenty pence!! for broccoli!!), there are many other things that have to get cut from our monthly budgets. Nights out become more infrequent. Takeaways become frozen pizzas. Beer turns into slabs of whatever tinnies are on offer at Tesco. We do what we can to keep ourselves afloat when the weekly shop increases by more than 20% over a year.

Reality. It may be a variation on another thing – the return to basic beer. Don’t tell Forbes, by the way, which published a piece by one of the 198,349 beer columnists (no, not AI generated at all, no way) they seem to have on the payroll that offered this astounding statement:

Researchers highlighted the increasing popularity of craft beer and the emergence of more independent breweries, reflecting evolving consumer preferences, especially among younger consumers of legal drinking age in local markets. These breweries are often at the forefront of innovation, offering more flavors and styles that appeal particularly to millennials and Generation Z.

Right. Back on planet Earth, when someone not really at the core of a scene like the former style director of Esquire, Charlie Teasdale, takes the time to give craft beer a mocking kick it is starting to feel like the proper response is, what… pity?*

… like supporting a football team through a massive, slightly grubby commercial takeover, I stayed the course. I never wavered in my dedication to stupidly named pale ales and unorthodox beers. Even a jug of pseudo-craft – a beer brewed by a corporate outfit but marketed as a local endeavour – was better than, say, a Moretti or a Heineken. They were for drinkers, and I was a gourmand.

VinePair may well have gone next level… again, joining this latest pile-on according to Maggie Hennessy. And whereas Mr. Teasdale has moved back to popular lagers, Ms. H is touting something called “lifestyle” beer but mainly to beat the word “hipster” wtith a very big stick… over and over.** Strike me as all a bit of excessively early liminal labeling syndrome. Perhaps best to leave this phenomenon alone until it all settles down a bit and clarifies. By contrast, Courtney Iseman slides a more deftly phased zing in the larger context of her very comprehnensive survey of the use of rice by better brewers:

That industry maturation, and the decreased pressures of toxic fandom—no one’s boycotting your brewery anymore if you sell shares to a corporate overlord, nor if you put rice in your beer—has allowed craft brewers more freedom to find a place for the grain.

Toxic fandom! We are now a long way from the “beer community” fibbery. [Note: as stated in the story, it was the craft brewers were the ones who shit on rice but now it’s us beer buyers who were being toxic for taking up the brewers’s PR (touted by beer writers) as the great cause.] Ron don’t care. Ron is spending much of the month with family in South America. He is sending in posts from the field that look like he’s tied up the radio operator and highjacked a distant railway station deep inland, relying on only direct current and Morse Code to send out terse missives like this one entitled “Loving Santiago“:

The kids, too. We get to ride the metro everywhere. They drink beer, I drink pisco sour. We get to shiver together in the unheated pubs. It’s like being back in the 1970s. But in a good way. Montevideo tomorrow.

That’s the whole post? So unRon, Ron is being. Where the hell are the breakfast buffet photos, Ron?!?!?!

Speaking of a buffet, Rachel Hendry has studied the world of (call them what you will) thin bits of potato fried in oil and shared the extensive results in Pellicle this week. I particularly like the polite “don’t be an arsehole” notice to readers:

I have then chosen ten styles and flavours to explore within each section, with more precise pairings given as examples for each. I have defined crisps as a potato or potato adjacent snack that tends to be found behind the bar or in the crisp aisles of a shop, and I have defined beer styles as you might see indicated on the list displayed in a pub or taproom. There is only so much one woman can cover and I have forgiven myself for the detail and genres missed. I trust you to have the grace to forgive me, too.

And… when did PBR become hipster cool? I was interested for what I consider pre-hipster reasons in 2006. This 2014 HuffPost article traces the story… with graphs!

…something changed, and PBR was suddenly the hipster’s choice at bars and barbecues everywhere. Sales jumped by 20.3 percent in 2009 and continued to rise steadily over the next few years, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. By 2013, Americans drank more than 90 million gallons of PBR, according to data from Euromonitor, which is nearly 200 percent more than they did in 2004.

“Rise Steadily” is one of those hints that the tipping point people can just remain seated.

Fine. That is it. And with that this and those other thats too … now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan on the job each and every Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the 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 now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! 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 in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly soon celebrating a 10th anniversary… or really a 9 1/2th given the timeline . And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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 costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*h/t The Tand.
**Stan gave sound advice (see what I did there?): “I think the relationship, if there is one, between hip and hipster has me confused. Were the bike messengers who drank PBR hip, hipsters, or something else? What PBR itself ever hip?“
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… pass Mastodon (932) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,485) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

Summer’s Here… And Canada Day… And St. Jean Baptiste… And Another Thursday So Here’s The Beery News Notes

We went to Montreal earlier this week just for the one night. Supposedly to catch the tail end of their Saint Jean Baptiste / Fête nationale celebrations marking the founding of Quebec. It was a bit subdued in the area we were in, though the Old Port was hopping. We walked and snacked, walked and snacked. As we do. The lad and I each had a Joufflue which hit the spot on a hot day. Paired well with watching the wait staff panic over the play of Italy against Croatia. We could have easily left without paying. Definitely a pick me up after my personal all absorbing Euro 2024 situation. Little known fact: my fair city once had a seigneurial set up as part of New France, too, so I was representing. It led to thoughts, again, of retiring to La Belle Province. Or maybe just to 5 km west of LBP. Less of an administrative hassle that way. Bonus points for guessing my location in the picture. But – just to be clear – Gary can’t play. Insider knowledge. Gotta keep things on the level.

What is going on? There was a bit of a call for input at the end of their post in which Boak and Bailey traced another bit of English berwing history with their incomplete history of Smiles Brewery of Bristol, 1977-2005. You can read it yourself – but if you can provide any more information you can also help with the preparation of an update, as their epilogue invites:

We’re frustrated by the bittiness of the story we’ve been able to tell above. It feels unfinished – and we’re certain people are going to have additions and corrections. To which we say, bring it on! We’d love version two of this post to have more human voices, more pictures, and more detail from the frontline. If you worked at Smiles, or, indeed, founded it, we’re contact@boakandbailey, or @boakandbailey on Twitter, if you want to get in touch.

Delving further back in time, Ron published something pretty interesting this week, parts of newpaper report on the hearing that followed the 1814 catastrophe at London’s Meux brewery when a large vat burst and the ensuing flood caused multiple deaths. Here’s the scene as recounted by George Crick, the brewery’s store-house clerk:

“I can not account for the accident. The vat which gave way had been built about ten years, and it has been full of beer for two-thirds of the time, during which I have been on the premises. It was built on uprights or pillars of oak. The foundation did not give way. When the wreck is cleared, the bottom of the vat will be found perfectly level; neither did the vat touch the wall. It stood full eight inches from it. We can account for the accident in no other manner, but by the hoops giving way – by the rivets bursting. An hour before the accident a hoop was started; hoops frequently burst – two or three times a year – but such a circumstance does not produce any idea of danger.”

Was the Burton Union developed as a structural alternative to these massive vats? No idea. But another bit of that last union has been saved by Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales.

And ever further back, have we witnessed the birth of another Law of Lars: “Repeat after me: there are no ancient Egyptian recipes.” Yet… OK… but it’s a recreation with what seems to be an aggregation from a few texts with very well intentioned careful ingredient sourcing. Not a recipe but still. Yet… how do you get to 5% and not 11%, 4% or 1.5%?

Back to today. Me, I subscribe to The Times legal briefs newsletter to keep up with my professional distant cousins and this well sourced item caught my eye which, initially, sets out as a description of how drinks centered social culture in law firms can hinder the careers of young observant Muslim lawyers:

According to the report’s authors, many candidates from those two backgrounds feel “underprepared compared to their peers due to limited access to professional networks and social capital”. They went on to target the “prevalent drinking culture in law firms” as a “significant challenge for Muslim candidates”, many of whom abstain from alcohol. “Social events centred around pubs and bars create an uncomfortable environment, forcing these candidates to navigate situations that conflict with their religious beliefs,” the report said.

But then the story goes on to additionally point out (i) “City law firms are significantly better than their peers in the financial markets”; (ii)  it is now more common “to head to the gym for spin classes… after work than it is to head to the pub“; and (iii) “most of the associates just aren’t interested in a late-night drinking bender”! I’ve worked with alcoholic lawyers so this rings entirely true. Still, pity the young unfit accountants of London.

This is a fun bit of Euro 2024 reality for English fans in Germany. In addititon to the shock of learning that the previous visitors from Scotland put a serious dent in Cologne’s beer supply, when they do find it it seems to be served in tiny glasses:

It may not have been a thriller, but with England through to the knock-out stages of the Euro 2024 championships, it was a good opportunity for fans to celebrate with a few glasses of locally brewed cold Kölsch beer. Kölsch, which is the traditional beer style of the city, is served in 200ml tall glasses. But, according to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, this smaller serve have been criticised by fans for the paucity of liquid. The tall and thin glasses were described as like “Champagne flutes” and thirsty fans complained about having to get a large number of rounds in to match their drinking habits. One of the reasons for the bemusement could be that fans have been used to pictures of two pint steins in Germany, often showcased during Munich’s Oktoberfest…

And Pellicle published a piece about beer that tastes like beer. By Matty himself. Those pitch negotiations must have been difficult. Anyway, it’s about a favourite beer… sorta… well, it’s all a bit… artsy*:

We stood there, motionless, in the blinking room’s perpetual silence. Then, suddenly, one of the thin men stretched out an arm, opened its greasy, white palm, and spoke with what appeared to be its mouth. If I could describe to you what I heard, I would, but it was not a sound in a conventional sense, more like a feeling, similar to what I’d experienced when the shape approached me in the field. I remember hearing four distinct waves of a flat baritone that did not waver in pitch, but it felt like there were layers upon layers of complexity to whatever the thin man had uttered.

AJT, recently becalmed, is going to have to watch out for folk making moves on his impressionistic patch. Speaking of impressions, Stan asked me a question this week but I answered another one:

Hmm… do I understand that people prior to the 14th century apparently didn’t understand ice cellars… or storage of foods either, for that matter. Despite Central Europeans using and living in caves and around ice for many millennia.

Many, there is some astoundingly deep… errr… poorly thought out beer writing out there. Greater context? Why bother! [And it is not just the trade puff stuff either: “…highly prestigious World Beer Cup, often referred to as the Olympics of the beer world…“? Said no one ever who was not being rewarded one way or another ever.] Anyway, Stan wanted to like my comment and that is all that matters to me. I actually answered his question over at B+B at the P the day before:

That cream ale story’s history is pretty good fiction. There were two or three eras when “cream” was a flag adjective for premium. 1850s Hudson Valley cream ale was a big burly ale. What is mid-1900s western NY cream ale comes from the earlier forms like 1800s Kentucky Common which in turn came from pre-lager late 1790s German immigrants. It’s all clearly set out publicly if someone takes the time to use Google.

[See here, here, here, here and here for example. Not hard.]

Barley Cluster? I loved their second LP! What’s that? Not that sort of cluster? Hmm:

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) announced a new Canadian National Barley Cluster, a significant initiative aimed at advancing barley production in Canada. With a value of $9.6 million over five years, this Cluster will drive research efforts to enhance the competitiveness and resilience of the Canadian barley industry. More than just a financial commitment, the Barley Cluster represents a united front in securing the future of the barley value chain. Administered by the Canadian Barley Research Coalition (CBRC), the new Barley Cluster will fund research projects that advance feed barley, barley genetics, agronomy, disease resistance and sustainability to make it a more resilient and profitable crop for Canadian farmers and end users.

In fact, we seem to be hubbing it up all over the place, grain-wise. You know what this means: “all your beer is us!!!”

London’s TimeOut had quite a pop at “craft” beer this week framing it as so 2019:

Remember the glory days? When we all had skinny jeans and immaculate beards and wore beanie hats, even in summer? When going for a pint meant nine percent porters, pink rhubarb sours and whatever a ‘saison’ is. It meant tasting each and every beer on tap to make sure they weren’t ‘too hoppy’. It meant, perhaps more than anything, bright, graphic labels and deeply silly names.  Nowadays, trips to the pub look a little different. Rows of pastel-coloured IPAs have been swapped out for classic lagers and big boy beer brands, all seemingly owned by one omniscient beverage uber-corporation. Craft beer options are few and far between (often rotating on just one tap)…

Finally and not unrelated, I’ve noticed that some of the advice to craft brewers these days being written has a couple of odd aspects to it. Reiterating the sort of advice you would might have expected before the downturn is one thing. Buy board games. Hold quiz nights. Hire HR specialists. Not “make sure you diversify your revenue streams to hedge against further consumer disinterest!“** Salty snacks? Used cars! Mens wear!! Anything!!! Another is minimizing the retraction, denying youth’s reduced interest. We see the code word “mature” to describe the industry contraction. Good sign that the writer’s a team player, I suppose, but lacking a certain… certaintly. And Boak and Bailey pointed out last Saturday, the actual news continues to be otherwise in the UK:

There was apparently a sharp acceleration in the number of pubs closing in the first quarter of 2024, according to a report compiled by commercial property intelligence company Altus. Of the 472 pubs that closed between April 2023 and March 2024, a remarkable 236 closed in the first three months of this year – equivalent to around 80 per month.

There sure are loads of factors piling on good beer, not the least inflation. Putting a hurt on wine too. But that complexity just makes things harder to address. One quite singular story underlies the closing of Cascade Brewing of Portland, Oregon – a tale of succession plan gone awry as reported by Jeff:

It was a strange and developing story, but involved the death of Founder Art Larrance last month. That was odd, because he announced he’d sold the brewery four years ago. In the announcement’s fine print he described it was a “phased transition” sale, however, and it turned out that transition never quite happened. The details blur here, but Art’s daughter, who was unaware her father still owned the brewery, didn’t have the money to continue on.

That’s a tough one but a lesson – get to the accountants and lawyers and get things put properly in place. Costs way less than screwing up.

And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the 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 now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! 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 in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. 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 costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
**How long has Twisted Tea been around serving as the obvious example?
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (down 1 to 132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up to 928) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up 3 to 4,482) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (flopping 1 to 162), crap Threads (somehow up to 52 from 43) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.