Category: Beer in the End Times

These Thursday Beer News Notes Have Me In Stitches

Thanks for all the cards and flowers. As hinted last week, the eyelid is now 19% smaller which makes it all 100%  better. I’ve spent the week on meds and on the sofa so, no doubt, these will be less dynamic in terms of being actual new notes than those to which you have become accustomed. Maybe. Best thing noticed of the week? As if a personal gift in my half dazed troubled state, Lily Waite posted a picture of a stoneware mug/stein she made from a lighter Draycott clay. Fabulous and cheery.

Did anything else happen this week? Oh, yes! A US election. America is still divided but as the graph just below shows, along lines that indicate that there might be more to it that mere political allegiance as the accompanying tweet explained. Resentment and widely held prosperity don’t always mix well. Best Biden-based fact:

Washington D.C. liquor store owners say supporters of President-elect Joe Biden have purchased more champagne bottles Saturday than during the previous two New Year’s Eve celebrations combined.

Boak and Bailey shared interesting thoughts about what in the wine world might be considered bottle variation, a hallmark of the real:

For us, a little inconsistency introduced on the front line, in pubs, is part of the way we get to really appreciate a beer we love – not beer being served in poor condition here, just the difference say in drinking ESB that’s been on for one day as opposed to two, three or four.

I’m all in. Here in Ontario, there is a micro era style known as dark ale. If you are lucky the cask is old but not too old which means there is a slight tang that cuts the cloy. Note: your contemporary tin ‘o juice-muck won’t offer that experience. It’ll just explode in your hand. Stan re-upped the related beer rule #4 in reply.

Also here in Ontario, Ron Redmond reported on the response one brewery has made facing allegations of discriminatory services:

Before long, Cowbell also noticed and quickly issued an apology that was sadly lacking in one regard. The apology itself. That further infuriated people. However, I was somewhat heartened to read that they were planning to reach out to Ren, Ontario’s reigning Beer Diversity Monarch, (a hail and hearty “Long live the Queen!”) to come to the brewery and do that thing she does so well. And that is, “plain-splain” why the Ontario Craft Beer industry needs to be to be more inclusive towards the BIPOC and LGBTQ2 communities. As a member of both, Ren is uniquely equipped to calmly, rationally and even happily explain its importance to people, even those as dense as myself.

The path forward is not smooth as Don notes. Not everyone is ready to move on… but that is a reasonable response and one to be expected when serving a thoughtful consumer base. Relatedly, BA Bart posted a review of an academic text, Beer and Racism: How Beer Became White, Why it Matters, and the Movements to Change It by N. Chapman and D. Brunsma.

And very sad news this week with the passing of Bill White of Better With Beer and many other things, a man whose expertise touched all aspects of Ontario’s beer industry. Many tributes here, here and here.

Despite the Raging Orange being on the way out, the big news remains the global pandemic and how folk are coping. In the UK, there seems to be resistance to the idea that:

Britons flouted lockdown in their hundreds of thousands in London today as a market was packed with visitors helping themselves to takeaway beer on the first weekend of new coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

Looking forward, JJB has some interesting thoughts on what the world after looks like in 2021:

When the vaccines are deployed and life returns to normal, rent arrears will be demanded, business rates will return, VAT will go back up, furlough will end and there’ll be a huge destruction in the hospitality industry as a result (and lots of opportunities for survivors)…

Interesting. Certainly after the collapse of the late 1990s there was a surplus of brewing equipment that led to the easier entry early era of craft in the early 2000s. Will those with cash again ride the new wave of the vaccinated boom. Of course they will. As noted a number of times before, debt drowns as it depends on continuing upside.

Looking backwards in this week’s edition of Historian’s Corner, here’s an interesting video with Sir Geoff Palmer describing the role of James Watt at the outset of industrial brewing. Watt was from my father’s home city in Scotland so if you want to hear hearsay versions of any erroneous folk tales of early pump tech let me know.

By way of warning of the temptations of free samples, The Beer Nut himself shared a live update on the new Guinness 0.0:

This is very much an idea whose time has come and I can see it doing well. Edit on 11/11/2020: Diageo have just announced a total product recall due to microbiological contamination. I haven’t suffered any ill effects but you can’t be too careful.

Elsewhere, I spotted an early response to the challenge posted by Boak and Bailey (one we should all take up) to write on the theme of something about beer or pubs that’s always puzzled you? Over in The Mad Brewer’s Notebook we read:

Can you imagine going into the supermarket and then finding out how much your shopping is after it’s bagged and you’re committed to purchasing whatever you have? Can you imagine doing online shopping and finding out the cost when you look at your bank statement? Walking out a bank and complaining to your mates you only found out your mortgage interest rate was 20% after you’d signed the paperwork? Of course not, prices are clearly labelled, you can figure out how much you’re spending as you’re going along. But this is very much the not situation in most British pubs.

Finally, yesterday was Remembrance Day here in Canada and I have been thinking of the time I stayed with a pal in 1986 in Islington area of London. We went into his small local pub, the long shut Old Parrs Head I think, and I was introduced around as a second Canadian. Not long into the session, someone cracked that we should talk to the old guy in the corner to much guffaw. He’s Canadian, too, we were told. We looked at each other, didn’t see the joke and went over to the older man. The place went oddly quiet. We introduced ourselves and could quickly see he was in a rough way, damaged by alcohol. Turns out he was from Saskatchewan. A farmer’s kid who fought in WW2, fighting the Nazis though Holland in the 1940s. When he was released from his service he got a telegram from his family that said “don’t come back, there’s nothing here for you.” So he sat in London for the next four decades, making do but drinking himself to death. The pub owner came over after a while and joined us as we chatted away. He was a bit in shock. “Christ,” he said, “I didn’t know he could speak.” The vet had been sitting silently in that corner of the pub when he had bought the place.

Don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan shares his love of Windsor!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

Your Election Results Swamp All Interest In Thursday Beery News Notes News Notes

I started writing this before the closing of polls in the US, late afternoon Tuesday. It’s a bit of an odd week for me, filled with important work related discussions, a long evening of election night coverage as well as undergoing a voluntary, long planned but slightly disconcerting introduction of tiny number of tiny stiches into my right eyelid.  For all I know, here as I write, none of that will matter when you read this as new chaos or just strange confusion may be raging by Thursday to the nation of the south. Well… to be frank getting eyelid stitches will matter to me. And even to you, perhaps just momentarily, if you have said “yik” in your mind once or twice while reading this paragraph. It’s OK. I’ve said it myself, too.

Frankly, I’m sort of glad for that personal distraction. Jeff wrote about managing this election week… and his hopes for what’s to come. It’s now 11 pm Eastern on Tuesday night and those dreams of a healing many not quite be coming true:

I want so desperately to return to a time when hazy IPAs are the most contentious issue before us. Given the stakes and the emotional energy, we’ll desperately need beer and all it provides to manage and heal the damage this election will almost certainly inflict. I’ll be back to decoction mashing and double dry hop beers soon enough. In the meantime, I want to express my best wishes to all of you, whatever your political stripe. Being a citizen in a democracy can be hard work. We’ll need to find a well of grace and goodwill to get through the next week. And beer. Lots and lots of beer.  

Or maybe less beer. Think about it. Stan wrote a best of list, made a bit of fun about writing a list but still stuck to the true core goal of any good list by listing only beers that are utterly inaccessible to 94.7% of anyone reading the list. But it does include this fabulously swinging observation:

… reading vintage notes is a guilty pleasure. You can find online what rock critic Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell wrote in 1975 for Oui magazine. Their notes include this lovely entry about Straub in Pennsylvania: “At moments, we thought this was just wonderful and wrote down comments like ‘springy’ and ‘soft-edged.’ Then at other times, like now, too drunk to know if we were more or less drunk than we had been the times before, we wondered what we could have meant.”

Glory days. When was that exactly? Forty-five years ago. In a skin mag? Now, is it the case that all we have left is the question of whether it is actually nice to know people are getting paid to write about beer even if the writing isn’t of any use? Isn’t that up there with drinking 46 witbiers before lunch without thinking anyone might consider that a bit of a negative in the context of the drinking’s own purpose? While we are at it, should those others, the influencers be saved or chucked out? What else is running out of ideas? Does all that fit into Jeff’s forward thinking purer hopes… or will we look elsewhere, perhaps even slumping back a la Oui‘s particularly piquant context for those tasting notes?

Elsewhere, in the UK they are in another sort of temporal loop with the reintroduction of lockdown. Stonch wrote last Sunday about the rush before the coming end times V.2.0:

…aaaand we’re fully booked for lunch again. However at about 4:30pm tables will start becoming free for a last hurrah for drinkers. We won’t be opening on Wednesday so this will be our last day of trading pre-lockdown… 

Things are getting incendiary in Britain, with the Morning Advertiser suggesting the pandemic response is actually a stealth war on pubs. That’s a bit thick. As with here in Ontario, it’s really about folk dealing with partial data, guesstimates and trying to do the right thing. It’s be nice if we could just get back to arguing about packaging options with a wee soupçon of ad hominem like in the good old days?

Yes! The past. Surely that must be a safe space. Umm. No, it isn’t. Marty the Zed told us the tale of The Most Dangerous Brewing In The World:

The Quetta brewery must rank as one of the most difficult postings of any brewer’s career. According to Henry Whymper the sun was “so intensely hot, even in the winter months, that a brewer has to wear a sun helmet whilst at the same time he has to clothe himself in a fur-lined coat to protect himself from the biting cold which there is in the shade … 

Excellent. And for the double, M’ d’Z’ also wrote about the blegging for a Guinness 0.0… but is it an ethical question if it’s doubtful as to whether it’s even really beer? I hope the style guides get updated to take into account all the not-beer beers. The not-beer experts will demand it, right?

What is real? Who are the trusted? Where is the foothold that can give us even a glimpse of reality? Surely, the Tand’s the one for that and his review of the latest Protzean prose, The Family Brewers of Britain, provides promise:

It is these companies that are the subject of this book, which describes in detail how the families had mixed fortunes and how they arrived at where they are today. All had the shared problems of war, deaths, economic depressions and more, but while some overcame these by good management and internal agreement, others saw bad management, fraternal fallouts, splits, disagreements over money, policy and more. All are faithfully chronicled in Roger’s usual meticulous style.

Speaking of publications, interesting to get an email for “Style Trends”, a monthly communication from MC Basset, LLC with the URL www.thebeerbible.com which has nothing to do with the book, The Beer Bible. Confusion reigns. Except I am Scottish Presbyterian genetically which means that they are both definitely going to Scottish Presbyterian genetic hell. But not the Protz. He’s safe.

Now it is Wednesday morning. Bleary headed but heading out soon to travel to the city where the guy who will cut my face lives and works. Which, for some reason, reminds me to mention Ben’s podcast. While the medium is entirely inferior without any indexing and too many podcasters putting us all through their dreary revenue streams of ads and the mumblymumbly… mumbly, Ben is actually not sucking at it. This week he did the remarkable and provided an hour plus long interview with Toronto’s Jason Fisher on the state of his brewery, Indie Alehouse, and the state of Ontario’s craft beer industry. It is a little bit rich that the history was rewritten, that it’s now bad to add fruit flavouring compared to, you know, 2014 – but that’s craft for you.

Catching up with the US results mid-day mid-week, it’s interesting to see that Oregon approved the legalization of psilocybin mushrooms. Now, watch the beer writers suddenly become psilocybin mushroom geniuses: pronouncing on the market, the issues and the loopholes in the law.

Finally, Dr. J posted a few good thoughts about a presentation she was giving today… by which I mean yesterday:

“BREAKING NEWS: A Randomly Scheduled Brewery Hip-Hop Night Failed to Make the Brewery’s Customer Base More Diverse.” We can all get a good chuckle from efforts like these, but the truth of the matter is that too many efforts to diversify taprooms result in… inauthentic pandering. In this talk, Dr. J will introduce a way to rethink relationship-building with your future fans that leads to lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.

Good. Hopeful. If it’s archived, go watch. BTW, I once considered calling this blog “Inauthentic Pandering” – but the name was already taken too many times.

I know. It’s all a bit higgled with the piggled up above. Will next week be better? Next month? Next year? Will I post a stitch pic? Dunno. Meantime, read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan sent a coded secret message in the guise of news about a new brewery in my town letting me know there was a new brewery in my town) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

 

The Last Thursday Beery News Notes For October 2020, The US Election And My Tomato Plants

It’s been difficult to cope with the changing of the seasons as I have for every other year I’ve ever been on the planet. Familiar things – like heat or evenings – just seem to have gone away. But the week of Hallowe’en every four years helps set a milestone that’s hard not to stub your toe upon. So here we are. Orange leaves turning to wet bran flakes in the ditch.  Speaking of orange, I saw the image above passing by upon the glowing screen this week, one of a series of four pub scenes by Ruskin Spear (1911-90) whose art included “the citizens of Hammersmith relaxing in local pubs.” Happy people in pubs… or not… also was the topic of my Zoom chat with Boak and Bailey. We had never met before but we chatted away for two hours last Sunday. Blogging. Brewing history. Pandemic. Gossip. Very grateful to have been invited by them.  I took a very fuzzy photo to commemorate the moment.

Out there in a more focused reality, Jessica Mason wrote wonderfully about visiting a neighbour:

I wondered, momentarily, if I should tell her what I did for a living when I wasn’t visiting people in the mornings. Tell her about the industry I worked in. About the drinks and hospitality sector or any of the magazines for which I’d written. I wanted so much for her to know that it wasn’t just her feeling lost and alone. That entire sectors of society had been overlooked and that the paucity of support for those in need had begun to force people into poverty. Do I tell her that I’m really a drinks and pubs writer? That later on that day I’d be at a desk looking for the right words to describe something that made people feel good and interested. Things that reflected our thoughts, tastes and individuality.

In Scotland, a ruling has come down on the meaning of cafe during pandemic, the sort of ruling we may be seeing more and more of in the coming weeks and months as the cold and dark comes upon us. In this case, an injunction was granted against a municipal order to shut based upon the legal principle “surely to heavens this could not be a cafe!”:

“The council’s main, final reason for forcing us to close was that some of our dishes were ‘too smart and too fancy’ for us to be considered a cafe. “Nothing in the law dictates how smart you can or can’t have your food in a cafe.” One20 was granted an interim suspension order by the Court of Session after an online hearing on Friday, 23 October and remains open this weekend.

Further to the south, in Manchester a different legal consideration on the nature of food service was before the Covid considering authorities:

The head of Greater Manchester Police Licensing got on the blower to let us know that Slice Gate has been revisited and our Nell’s Pizza slices (cut from 22 inch pizzas) are now officially deemed substantial.

And to the left, further west, we learn of this heartwarming tale from Northern Ireland:

A man threw a tin of beer over a PSNI officer and shouted “Up the ‘Ra” after being told to return home during the lockdown, a court heard yesterday. Neil Murphy (37) was given 12 months probation for the assault on police and disorderly behaviour outside his flat in north Belfast.

Nice one, Neil. Well handled pandemic response. What’s the “‘Ra”? Short form for the “‘Rona”?

Ryan Avent of The Economist wrote a worthwhile series of tweets that add up to a good remembrance of the phenomenon of blogging which, of course, continues hereabouts and many other places under other names including journalism:

Blog posts could of course blow up. But the potential for instant mass virality was smaller, because drawing attention to blog posts meant creating a post of one’s own, and even link roundups took a bit of effort… As snarky as blogging could be, the medium generally demanded a minimal level of argument and contextualization greater than what’s asked of twitter users: if, at least, one wanted to attract others’ time and attention.

Going further back, Eoghan posted a photo of his beer book bookshelf and started a trend in posting photos of one’s beer book bookshelves.  Me, I have more piles and piles of piles of books by the easy chair myself. There’s a copy of The Chronicles of the Maltmen Craft in Glasgow 1605-1879 in there somewhere. Which I know makes you all riddled with jealousy.

Be prepared. Whenever anyone posts a graph for any reason at all, I am going to quote this guy who wins for this week’s most fabulous gnumbskullery*:

I think that’s hard to conclude from this chart. It might still be true, but i think it’s a lot more complex with alot more unanswered questions.

One of my personal heroes is Katie Mathers, as you may have guessed, and I am saddened to hear that she has met up with the virus… but cheered that she’s found a positive angle:

…it’s actually quite cool that I have something that’s spread all over the world. A big viral connection to the globe…

Here is an update to the story from the Ithaca NY area, the one about the brewery that had to close because it brewed old school micros that no one wanted. Well, the facility has been bought but some downstate operation”

Big aLICe, headquartered in Long Island City, Queens, has reached a deal to buy the former GAEL Brewing Co. on State Route 14 just south of Geneva on Seneca Lake. GAEL owner George Adams announced his brewery’s closing earlier this month. Big aLICe co-owners Kyle Hurst and Scott Berger hope to have the new brewery and taproom open early in 2021. Big aLICe, which also has a tasting room in Brooklyn, is known for a wide range of beers, from hazy New England IPAs and pilsners to sours and barrel-aged brews.

Well, there is some sort of lesson there. You can shape it as you like.

In other business news, we hear a lot about the challenges faced by the hospitality sector and how it affects brewing but here is an interesting story about the challenges faced by Canadian drinks exporters:

…beer exports are down too. Year-to-date sales to the end of July are down 13 per cent compared to the same period last year, trade association Beer Canada data show. Pacific Rim Distributors, the leading distributor of B.C. craft beer, has certainly felt pandemic pain. “We saw a deeper drop in sales in the first quarter because COVID-19 hit Asia before North America,” says Garett Senez, vice-president of marketing for the North Vancouver-based firm representing 13 craft brewers in 19 foreign markets.

Interesting that Ontario’s own “Collective Arts plans to open a satellite brewery in Brooklyn next year.”

Otherwise, beer continues to get more and more boring according to the latest Euro-gak news:

Drinks giants have reported higher alcohol-free beer sales in the latest sign the low- and no-alcohol drinks sector continues to grow. Heineken and Carlsberg have both created alcohol-free versions of their flagship beer labels, Belgian brewer AB InBev recently launched a low-alcohol alternative to Stella Artois, and this week drinks giant Diageo launched a booze-free version of Guinness in Britain and Ireland. Danish brewer Carlsberg – behind the Tuborg and Kronenbourg brands – on Wednesday reported a 29% growth across its alcohol-free brews in the three months to September, compared to the same period last year.

Similarly, the Boston Seltzer and Hard Iced Tea Co. has seen its shares soar.

Speaking of the tactics of macro-gak, Heineken in the UK has been caught forcing its own pubs to sell its own beer… which sounds a bit weird to someone not in the UK:

Heineken has been fined £2m for forcing publicans to sell “unreasonable” amounts of its own beers and ciders. The pubs code adjudicator (PCA), an official who oversees the relationship between pub-owning companies and their tenants, said Heineken had “seriously and repeatedly” breached laws that protect publicans from company behaviour aimed at prohibiting pubs selling competitor brands.

Finally, to top off a less than cheery week, Jeff noted the extinguishment of the All About Beer online archives. I was more written of than wrote in that organ but it did speak to an era or two, thriving in micro times, collapsing under a shoddy hand through perhaps the peak of craft. We have left that behind.

There you are. Less actual beer news that most weeks. But remember that, as the days shorten in the coming darkest third of the year northern hemispherically speaking, there’s more out there. Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan skips his obligations to the sponsors!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*The “g” is sometimes even silent.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Second Third of The Tenth Twelfth

It’s hard coming up with new headlines every week, isn’t it. Look at that up there. It hardly makes any sense at all. And it’s getting a bit hard coming up with light entertaining content about beer to share. It’s usually all about something other than beer or like beer or nearly about beer. Like the best thing I saw this week – the tweet accompanied by the image to the left, captioned:

Toddlers in the 1970s looked like pensioners waiting for happy hour in a working men’s club.

This week, let’s look at stories about beer. Beery stories. You bet. Not about something related to beer or something just associated with beer. Hey, Jordan wrote something about beer… or actually drew it. He has created a map and a spreadsheet of all the current breweries and contract beer companies (firms which by beer from actual brewers, including on contract) on Ontario. It’s on his site and over to the right under the dropdown thingie. There. Help him by sending corrections… err, updates. Everyone likes that.

That’s about beer, right? Sure… well, maybe. Is this about beer? Ron wrote about UK cask during WW2 – not cask ale, just the wood in the casks:

In normal times British brewers would never have used American oak as it imparted too much flavour to the beer it contained. Unlike today, brewers wanted to avoid any trace of oak in their beer. Its presence was seen as a fault. But, with the supply of Memel oak dried up, brewers had little choice. When supplies of American oak in turn began to evaporate, brewers had to turn to a more local source.

OK, may be not but it was about something touching beer. Stan! Stan writes about beer like he did last week. He wrote again and got published again – this time about hop creep… which is not actually about the loud loser at the end of the bar in the crafty tavern:

“Hop Creep” isn’t the name of a beer-themed horror movie—just a real, ongoing mystery that brewers and hop scientists are still sorting out. Oregon State University’s Tom Shellhammer, one of the country’s top brewing scientists, says that his earliest moments of being introduced to the phenomenon were about five years ago, although he didn’t realize it at the time. “I was giving a talk at the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference, and somebody in the Q & A asked, ‘Hey, do you see people getting diacetyl when they dry hop?’ I was like, ‘No.’” Diacetyl is one result of hop creep. Beer with more alcohol than a brewery intended—which brewers call “out of spec”—is another, as are bottles or cans with dangerously high levels of carbonation.

Hops! Hops are in beer. And, in his return to London pubs and the blogging of same, the Tand put the beer into the Tand:

…there was a mission to accomplish. A visit to a Sam’s pub to establish London prices following the recent price increase. We chose the John Snow… a nice little boozer and trade was steady on this Wednesday afternoon.  I had the stout, which needed the gas changing, while E had a half of Pure Brewed. The price list was snapped when the barman wasn’t looking and duly posted to a certain Curmudgeon. Prices are on the wickedly high side and now by no means a bargain. It does make you wonder how they’ll compete on this basis.  One other thing. The notices forbidding this and that, which are found all over Northern Sam’s pubs, are conspicuous by their absence. I know. I checked everywhere. Double standards from Mr Smith it seems.

Hardly anything about the excellent Pellicle post this week by Helen Jerome on a cidery in Devon was about beer, but it did start with expected traditional character profile on the person behind the operation in question, deviating only by finding someone who was not first an unhappy accountant:

Spool back to late 2015, and Polly decided she’d had enough of sitting in an office. She needed a fresh challenge. Growing up in Devon, she gained a foundation in science with A-levels in chemistry, physics and biology; taken a module with Master of Wine Susan McCraith while doing a degree in Equine Business; studied Sustainable Agriculture at postgraduate level, then completed an EU-funded ‘slow food’ study tour in Tuscany. She’d never really been into cider though… 

Speaking of science and even a bit about beer, Ed wrote about the scourge of taking the free case of beer and how that ethical flaw of his gnaws at his very soul – except there was a twist:

As every beer blogger knows getting free beer is the easiest thing in the world. Though breweries might grizzle about it, threaten them with a bad review and they’re sending you a case of beer as fast as their little legs can carry it. But despite this due to my insatiable greed I immediately said yes when offered a Hobgoblin beer and bugs snack pack.

Speaking of which, BBC News itself ran an excellent piece on social median influencers – aka what used to be called blegging – and the associated cap in hand:

Like many businesses during Covid-19, Reshmi has seen a change in her customers’ behaviour. Although many people cut back on unnecessary purchases, her bakery was busy as people carried on ordering her celebration cakes. Yet she also noticed influencers were asking for more freebies too. It’s something she has done in the past – looking at the influencer and their posts, who follows them, how they engage with their audience, but says it didn’t work for her. “We have never had a sale off someone [saying] they saw our cake on someone’s post or profile, it’s always been through word of mouth, from paying customers.”

This is interesting. Even if cake is not beer. I have heard many a chortler and scribe announce that “it’s not like anyone could think I have compromised myself by the free samples” but it’s not something you can really say for yourself. And it never plays out that way. Best to pay your way. Folk notice and note. Unless there are edible bugs involved.

Related, the question of free food in pubs. Discuss.

Suzy Aldridge posted something of a goodbye to all that in response to a BrewDog franchise opening up in her English city of Lincoln:

Now I’m out. It’s surreal. I’m looking in from the outside and seeing the struggles in the industry, seeing how friends are marching on. I almost feel left behind, lost, but also that I’ve escaped. I’ve sidestepped into a new career path by pure luck. It’s not something I love like beer but it’s interesting, it pays the bills and, unlike hospitality, the rug won’t be swept from under my feet, then shoved back, then removed again. I’m comfortable, even as I drink some of the very last bottles of Lincolnshire Brewing Co that are in my fridge. 

Eoghan Walsh posted a new podcast at Brussels Beer City featuring an interview with Jean Van Roy of Brussels brewery Brasserie Cantillon. He wisely avoided raising my accusations of 2006 but, still, had a good beery chat:

On a scorching hot early September day on the eve of brewing season for Cantillon, we met at a bar influential not only for the city but also for him, and his family brewery. We talk lambic evangelisation in a country that still doesn’t really get it, his youthful escapades drinking crap beer with friends, how is approach to brewing has changed thanks to his relationships with winemakers and chefs, and how the brewery’s corridors ring hollow and lonely in the absence of American, Italian and other foreign accents.

Elsewhere, you know there is nothing going on in beer in some corners if the discussion turns to flat flavoured water with vodka added.

Speaking of beer and corners, in this week’s edition of That Sorta Happened in Beer History, Mudge the Elder asked this question and got answers:

It’s before my time, but does anyone remember (or have talked to those who do) whether waiter service was commonplace in pubs across the UK in the 50s and 60s, or was it primarily a Northern thing?

A whole new world was revealed to mine eyes.  Someone identifying themselves only as “[Bx2-B=R]” stated:

Primarily northern, my Lancastrian mum says, and common enough there that she didn’t find it weird; down south, mostly seems to have been an inter-war fad in big new pubs and died out with WWII. [Ray]

Talk of bell pushes, tipping and waiters in burgundy jackets with “silver” trays ensued.  Sit down before you start through the thread.

Beer crime of a newer sort happened over in Michigan, as noted by the worst beer blogger ever:

…there was no money on the premise, and luckily no vandalism, but the intruders were there for more than a half an hour. “They ended up pouring nine beers,” he said. “It’s not somebody having a quick beer and leaving.” One of the men called someone and then soon, a bunch of kids entered the premises, running around and looking through the brewery’s merchandise. Luckily, the kids seemed to only have pop, not alcohol…

Another sort of loss is happening in bars like this out of Winnipeg that I don’t think I’ve seen reported in this way before even though it is very 2020:

It’s enough to make a brewski aficionado weep while sudsy hops are poured down the sink. An enormous amount of beer is going to waste in Winnipeg thanks to some bars and pubs being forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other establishments operating at reduced capacity are also having to dump hundreds of gallons down the drain…

I love the first sentence. If you hate sudsy and brewski, then you at least have to admire the proper use of aficionado.

Anyway, finally and speaking of which… perhaps… no, not really… there were comments made after the announcement of the NAGBJ awards… what’s that?… oh, it’s back to a “w”… BAGNW… is that it? Anyway, my comments were limited to “Third?!?!” and “Third?!?!” given I was mystified at certain outcomes. But I used to judge these things as part of panels, too, and I know that there are limits and these limits are realities. As I have noted before, these quibbles mainly hover around process and in particular nominations being from the authors and/or publishers. It would be easy enough to just send all members ballots rather than the filtering function of judging panels. They are also limited in audience as many folk don’t need or care about awards, especially once an “award-winning” adjective is already allocated to the bio.* Yet:

I just want people to know it’s totally normal, okay, and valid to wish for recognition and acknowledgement of a job well done. I don’t write about the things I write about because I NEED those things, but darn if it doesn’t feel good when it happens.

Boom! As with all the medals, I presume it is a stepping stone for the aspiring – which is good and normal and to be encouraged. And a small reward in a field without much recognition.

But, unlike during the years of my own experience, concerns and even unfair slags were raised about it all being too GBH focused or even bad back scratchy.  In homage to 1830s British Parliamentary politics, lobbying continues for the establishment and the reformers. While many entries or entrants have appeared on that bloggy space’s webby pages… well, what is wrong with that?  Especially as other outlets have been disappearing for years? Small pond. That’s where we swim. I do say that while acknowledging (having sifted through it all week after week now for years) I think there is a sort of beer trade writing of a sort not only is a bit samey and a bit goal oriented or even formulaic (the last paragraph often seems written first, as it were) but still a sort which may attract praise within a circle of co-aspirants. Well? So what!?! Why be a grump in all things? It’s just, yes, light entertainment – and we have to remember that much beer writing is actually very good, including, yes, even at GBH.** Perhaps not as much as they would say… but, in the end, Beth did entirely the proper thing and set the record straight in vivid technicolour. Go Team Beth.***

That’s a lot. I’m done. As always, remember there’s more out there. Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan touts discount ham!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*No one cares about being “awards-winning” do they?
**Let’s stick with very good, shall we. Superlatives are so… not superlative. Plus, I’m a Pellicle sort of person. 
***See the “*” here.

Some Thursday Beery News Notes For A Normal Mid-October Week

It’s normal now, right? All normal. Despite what we think and do, it’s definitely normal to get locked inside when the cold creeps in around the nooks and crannies in mid-October.  Yet people are still running around outside, the massive idiots. Wear your masks! And don’t complain about sensible pandemic safety processes!! And write short sentences with many exclamation marks!!! Hmm… the only thing that has really ticked me off this week is I haven’t found any good images to plunk to the right of the first paragraph. Bet Max has something… let me check…  nope. Jeff? Yup. Wear your masks.

Now that that is clear, first up we have a post by Stan is always cause for some serious noting, especially as it relates to the sense of smell and does not advise that loss of the sense is tied to Covid-19:

Researchers at Kyushu University found that the olfactory sensory neurons can exhibit suppression or enhancement of response when odors are mixed, meaning that perception is not the simple sum of the odors. In their experiments, mice that were genetically modified to have their neurons emit green light depending on the amount of calcium ions in them — an indicator of activity — upon absorption of excitation light, the researchers were able to record the response of the neurons in the mice’s noses.

Mice. Noses. Little mousie noses. As with most things, I do not actually understand what is going on here but I trust and have a firm belief in science that gives me an abiding sense of comfort. I am also a good smeller. That sort of thing regularly appeared on my middle school report cards.

Aaaaannnd…. I also don’t understand this from an email received from Pellicle… exactly… which states they will be converting from $ to £:

With recent exchange rate fluctuations the amount getting paid to us has become an uncertain factor, and we’re aware that most of our supporters are UK-based, so this will also avoid any extra fees from your bank when you are paying in dollars. It means we’ll get stronger idea of what we’re receiving each month, and can build more concrete editorial plans in advance. 

Govern yourselves accordingly. I do hope they still take my money. And I hope they take yours once you sign up, if only for pieces like this drinky travel piece taking us to rural England by Kate published this week under the title “With Provenance to Guide Us — Visiting The Moorcock Inn, West Yorkshire“:

It’s late February and sleeting sideways; the sky is an impressive shade of gritstone. Smoke plumes diagonally from the restaurant’s brick ovens outside, which have been slowly roasting mutton all night. Hot roast potatoes will be pulled from them throughout the afternoon, served with aioli as the bar snack of your dreams.

Kate also made the news. News? Oh. News! Oh, well. Let’s see what’s going on. Parts of Britain are now shutting again. In Glasgow, bar and restaurant workers dumped piles of ice in the street as a hospitality shutdown came in and the work went away. The commentary by, I assume, Jimmay is fabulous. Pub man Stonch unpacked an interesting aspect of the laws that applied in his area: the meaning of a “substantial meal”:

… this means the Coronavirus regs on this can be interpreted using case law relating to the ‘64 Act. In Timmis v Millman (a 1965 case) “a substantial sandwich accompanied by beetroot and pickles was a table meal”. So there you go. Get your beetroots ready, publicans!

And Mr. Mudge wrote on the same worthwhile issue:

If you are not going to have an objective yardstick such as price, then you will need to resort to a more subjective definition. Government minister Robert Jenrick* tied himself up in knots by saying that a Cornish pasty on its own wasn’t a substantial meal, but put it on a plate and add chips or salad and it magically becomes one. Few would dispute that a burger and chips would qualify, and the health-conscious should surely be allowed to substitute a salad for the chips. If a burger, then surely also a steak ciabatta, which is in principle the same kind of thing. And a cheese or hummus one for the vegetarians. Before too long, you have a cheese toastie with a couple of lettuce leaves qualifying.

You know… I don’t actually know what a toastie is exactly, either. I assume a toasted sandwich. Or a sandwich made of toast. That was on my middle school report cards too: “..the child thinks a toastie is a toasted sandwich… no hope…”

That’s pivoting. Everyone pivoting. Even though we are staying still. Here in Ontario, Ben has been writing upon his blog (taking a break from narrowcast poor radio impersonation) and decided that Covid-19 has been somewhat good for the Ontario booze trade or at least increased consumer access:

But there is an upside to this — if you’re the kind of person who can find the upside to a viral pandemic increasing our substance use – and it’s that the vigour with which we’ve all embraced the drink has actually had an affect on the availability, politics, and culture related to beer. Yes, this pandemic is a lot of things, most of them terrible, but it also might just be the best time to drink beer in Ontario.

Not necessarily a great deal for consumers medium or long term unless wholesale rates come down – but a good survival technique and good for us all to take part in now. New shops like Byward Market Wine Market (fine booze plus small takeaway meals) will be a next model… until the next next one comes.

In other good news here in eastern Ontario – as reported on Canadian Beer News and also discussed on OCBGTP – Slake Brewing in nearby Prince Edward County (just south of the very questionably named county seat of Picton) has opened. I post to remind myself to go.

Pivoting #2. Or is it #3? Or #4? Something called the Drinking Studies Network (that also looks a lot like a blog) posted “Threat or Opportunity? COVID-19 and Working Men’s Clubs” by Ruth Cherrington:

The post-COVID future of clubs could lie to some extent in drawing upon their enduring ethos and ideals which include their not-for-profit status. The 21st century setting has brought new challenges but also some tools that can help such as social media. With the usual club experience and contact with members impossible, club committee members had to make more use of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Nearly 9% of those surveyed used social media to build up the club’s community and membership over lockdown. Facebook groups became more important for clubs’ committees, especially to let members know what was happening, when they would be reopening and how.

I’d go to an old farts club if they had them around here. Maybe. Would I? Dad peeling potatoes in Yorkshire during the Berlin Airlift might even qualify me for the Legion. But would I go during these the early dark ages? Do I go anywhere? Well, other than the used record shop…

Unrelatedly, this thread on the habits of those in sports and entertainment who passed through this person’s former job at a hotel bar is fun: “Bob Seeger: Honestly he looked like anybodys grandpa with his flannel and orthopedic shoes“; “Stevie Nicks …difficult.” Remember hotel bars?

Now, in this week’s History Comes Alive corner, Gary is finding the time and steam power to get some of the beer history researched and writ… the opposite of my efforts, a personal failing that gnaws within me. One of many. This week he posted about the first draught beer sold in bottles and began with a handy definition:

Pasteurization is used in brewing, including for most imports and mass-marketed beers, not to make it safe for consumption as in the case of milk, say, but to render it stable from a microbiological aspect –bar  to retard souring in particular. Thus, for modern, bright, bottled or canned beer that is not pasteurized, which is the first?* Coors beer is a notable early case, at least the domestic U.S. Coors.** Coors did not abandon pasteurization in bottles until 1959 though…

Elsewhere in space and time, Martin asked “where does Bristol end?” and found a pub that went all snug for Covid-19. BB2 replied: “One of our guidelines is unless there’s an open field separating it, it’s in Bristol.”

Beer… should reference something beery… The proper brewing of lager was discussed in Craft Beer & Brewing through a piece by Steve Holle of the KC Bier Company in Kansas City, Missouri:

Traditional lager brewing requires “more” than a typical ale fermentation. Because the “more” requires additional costs and resources to achieve very subtle, small, and incremental enhancements to flavor, there is always the temptation to take shortcuts by buying cheaper ingredients, skipping decoction, pitching less yeast, raising the fermentation temperature, shortening the conditioning time, or using artificial carbonation.

This neatly illustrates nicely the need for a separation of traditional lager from macro gak conceptually. I was thinking of that when I was writing back and forth with Jeff yesterday about his excellent SNPA post. Others were also thinking of proper lager brewing. Alistair was asking about if decoction mashing was practiced in Victorian Britain.

And finally, Kate Bernot has written about Canada’s ice beers… though sorta missed the twin towers of the phenomenon, Maximum Ice and all the future goth TV ads especially the one with The Smiths*, in favour of something about… a penguin. Still, it is a handy primer and notes importantly that the ice beer boom never busted as it traveled south:

Ice beers are a Canadian invention dating back to the early 1990s; they’re essentially stronger versions of the domestic lagers North Americans had been drinking for decades. American beer companies swiftly copied this “innovative” idea and mass-produced their own versions including Milwaukee’s Best Ice, Keystone Ice, Bud Ice, Busch Ice, and Natural Ice. 

Why does it live on? It’s richer as well as stronger. So curlers dig the stuff. Goes with rye and K-Tel LPs.

There. Enough! I’m rating this a mid-grade week. Or maybe just a mid-grade post. Either way, another week has passed. Like the grains of sand passing through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Remember there’s  Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan shits on tweens!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plenty of good writing. Only a little journalism. Journalism. Yup. Apparently all writing is ultimately… journalism. Sorry Shakespeare. You aren’t in any give-away trade papers.

*Someone at the Labatt PR firm back then knew the value of good music in a beer ad.

The Thursday Beery News Notes Now That We Are Entering Month Eight

How was this last week for you? I am happy to report I got my hands on a couple bottles of the wonderful Sinha Stout when I was up in Ottawa on my eyelid consult. Did I mention I have one stitch surgery coming up? It’s such a minor adjustment that I find it a bit funny.  With any luck I’ll get some more of the stuff after the actual nip is tucked in a month. Speaking of Eastern Ontario, we are told that this no actual beers were actually harmed in the incident captured in this image tweeted out by the local OPP… aka the Ontario Provincial Police… aka the Official Party Poopers according to the kids.

Speaking of official notices, I received an update… err PR email… from the Beeronomics Society team, a serious academic body looking at the monetary effects of brewing. This was the main bit of news:

…the Beeronomics Biannual Conference in Dublin, Ireland. As you know, the event was planned for Summer 2021 (we were just in the process of announcing dates). However, in consultation with the local organizing committee, we have decided it best to delay the meetings until the first half of 2022. I think we can all agree that a Beeronomics Conference with social restrictions would not be a Beeronomics Conference! 

So, put away thoughts of travel for another 20 months if that was your plan. Also attached to my personal communication was a series of links to papers issued by their membership like this, this and this – Papers in Applied Geography, Volume 6, Issue 3 (2020) Special Issue: Space, Place, and Culture: An Applied Geography of Craft Beer which included this handy disclaimer:

We recognize that craft brewery and microbrewery are defined differently in different countries. In this guest editorial, we use the term craft brewery as a universal term to denote a brewery that produces small volumes of beer and is independently, and in most cases, locally owned.

Conversely, there were a number of academic books on beer listed. The Geography of Beer costs $150. I wish I had the moolah to buy them all.

So… we’ll that’s all handy for present purposes but just don’t tell the US Brewers Association. Speaking of which, BA Bart issued a econo-tweet on the state of certain things based on the graph to the right:

…to me, this suggests Seltzer is showing its seasonality (which got hidden a bit last year with all the growth) and starting to slow from the torrential pace it has been on. AB thinks similar things, guessing it will “only” grow 50% next year…

I dunno. The drop seems to coincide with the bad news about the US economy and the failure to agree upon a stimulus package that would supper average working Joes… meaning they have less of an expectation of survival therefore less moolah to spend on White Claw. But that’s just me. But then BA Bart mentioned another factor that I don’t know if he sufficiently considered linking – not enough cans:

Ball Corp estimates that US market is short 10 billion aluminum cans in 2020. That’s not all beer (soda, other beverage also seeing shortages), but it is equivalent 30M barrels of demand going unfulfilled. Unclear how much of that volume will find a home in other packages.

Unfulfilled. I’ve been there.

Disaster is also on the horizon in Belgium as Eoghan Walsh noted:

Brussels slides towards lockdown – bars closed for a month from tomorrow. “The lamps are going out all over Brussels, we shall not see many of them lit again in our life-time…”

He noted this in response to reading an article in RTBF which I will leave as an acronym on the pretense that I know what it stands for. The article explained new measures announced by Ministre-Président Of Brussels Rudi Vervoort who “confirme la fermeture à partir de ce jeudi 8 octobre et pour un mois.” Included in the closures are:

(i) des cafés, bars, salons de thé et buvettes. Resteront ouverts seuls les lieux où l’on sert exclusivement la nourriture à table; (ii) les salles de fête devront fermer leurs portes; (iii) les clubs sportifs amateurs devront fermer leurs buvettes: les matchs se dérouleront à huis clos pour le “indoor” and (iv) les communes examineront un certain nombre de protocole et mesures à prendre pour ce qui concerne les salles de douche et vestiaires des salles de sport; and (v) l’obligation de fermeture des night shops et salles de jeu à 22 heures déjà décidée précédemment est prolongée pour un mois.

So, it’s not just the liquor establishments but a lot of other things. Frankly, me, I like the idea of rotating lockdowns to disrupt the propagation of the virus but I might be aiming for ten days straight a month. Then there would be both economic certainty as well as a good chance at medical efficacy. Conversely, Scotland. Surprise! But that’s just me.

Glenn Hendry is sharpening his skills. I liked this piece of his about the state of beer here in Ontario and latched onto the importance of recognizing loyalty during these hard times:

Erin Broadfoot, the co-owner and co-brewer at Little Beasts Brewery in Whitby, says loyal customers have been the secret to her business making it this far into 2020. “Lots of people came out at the onset to support us. There were large orders; they were sharing posts and they were telling friends to come out,” she said. “It was an amazing few weeks where we were blown away by our community’s level of support and compassion. But we know that can only last for so long.”

Speaking of Ontario and as reported by Canadian Beer News, take away beer and wine and hard liquor is now part of my forever. If the price point narrows, this could be interesting…

Just to the south, Don Cazentre told the odd story this week of a non-Covid related brewery failure… at least according to its owner:

GAEL Brewing Co. opened (in 2015) as an “Irish-American” brewery, with a focus an Celtic ales like stout, porter and Irish red, plus many of the standards of American craft brewing at the time.  Last weekend, GAEL Brewing closed, permanently… “The failure of the business rests entirely on me,” he wrote. “It was not NY State, Governor Cuomo, COVID-19 or any other excuse. The failure is because of me solely. The market has spoken loudly and they rejected our brand. I have failed.”

That’s harsh but perhaps realistic. The sort of beers I like… the sorts of things I recognize as beer have fallen out of favour. Sign of the times in these sweet tangy alcopop days. Me, I like the sorts of beers The Beer Nut likes even though most of them I will never see. He wrote about fifteen just on Monday. I don’t try fifteen different beers in a month. Not only do we fail to reflect on what The Beer Nut does, The Beer Nut may fail to reflect on what he does not do.

Where is Max? Who is the guy with the accordion?

My pal Beth, who I have never met and may never meet*, has written a fabulous knife twist of an article about the Brewers Association for VinePair, entitled “Not Heard, Not Supported, and Let Down: How The Brewers Association Lost Its Way”:

But to date, Oliver says she has received no funds, no explanation of when to expect them, and no suggested alternatives from the BA. Oliver reached out to the BA via email in March to inquire about the status in light of Covid-19, noting she understood there may be delays. The BA’s office manager, Alana Koenig-Busey*, replied to Oliver, saying she was unable to provide an ETA for grant checks.

That asterisk leads the reader to this statement: “*Ed. note Oct. 6, 2020: Alana Koenig-Busey is no longer employed by the Brewers Association.” Jings! The only quibble I have is the notion that the organization has lost its way. I’ve been mocking it for over a decade.

Stan wrote about the ownership of yeast strains and included this very “Stan found the notes from his writer’s note book because he does that” moment:

Acknowledging the source of every kveik culture is valuable for several reasons, but the suggestion that one might have an “original owner” caused me to remember a story Troels Prahl of White Labs told me a few years ago about fellow Dane Per Kølster. Kølster grows his own raw materials to brew beer in the countryside outside of Copenhagen. He is a founding member of the “New Nordic Beer Mafia” that in 2012 set out to establish a category for beer parallel to New Nordic Cuisine. Kølster headed east several years ago to learn more about traditional farmhouse brewing. In Lithuania, he made beer with a local farmer, and when it came time to pitch yeast they walked to a neighboring farm to collect what they needed. On the way the first farmer told Kølster not to say “thank you” for the yeast. He explained that because no one owns yeast it must be available to anyone and saying “thank you” would disrupt this system.

That is frikkin’ excellent. And in line with Canadian law.** Much interesting comment followed led by Lars. I am on Team Lars, too. Stan, Beth and Lars. With me in nets. We’ll take ya.

Finally, National Geographic ran a piece on Osaka that is surprisingly gritty yet references craft beer:

…I meet up with a local man, university professor Momotaro Takamori, and longtime Kiwi expat Rodney Smith in the Nishinari District, notorious for its homeless population and flophouses, not to mention periodic riots by the area’s day labourers — often targeted at the local police. “This is Japan’s biggest slum,” says Rodney, a food and drink guide, “but it’s still safer than where you or I come from.” We sip glasses of Nishinari Riot Ale at Ravitaillement, a little bar pouring pints from neighbouring Derailleur Brew Works, a micro brewery that employs former addicts and the disabled…

Not your average craft beer PR puff.

There… that is it! Remember there’s  Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week they shit on Nickelback with the worst attempt of an impression of anyone ever) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*Go Beth! She takes shit, deals with it and I like that about her.
**Yes, I have dabbled… and would dabble again if I had to, God damn it!

The Blursday Beery News Notes, Your Only Certainty in October 2020

Records. I have been known to hate records. But up there? That’s my undergrad bar in the fall of 1985 by best guess-timate. The image popped up on the ’80s alumni FB page by a classmate. I’m not in the picture but I can name half of those who are in there. Packed. Happy. I’ve been trying to sift clues to gleaned within the photo and the others that accompanied it. LL Bean boots were a thing. And I think a beer was $1.10 during Happy Hour according to the posted price list. We only had 200 in residence at the place and most of the marriages amongst we wee Blue Devils started off during Friday Happy Hour. We even had a song. OK, I did. You just sang It’s Happy Hour Time! over and over to “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” which was easy to remember. Duh. Two thirds of my life ago. Note: McEwans Strong. Apparently an 8% treacle based syrup. Had too much of that too often. Ephemera. But very important for some reason.

From within a similar ballpark, ATJ shared an image from just eight years later, the agenda for a conference on the state of IPA in 1994:

Rooting about in the attic where there are hundreds of books, magazines and beer pix and press releases going back to the 1990s I came upon this @Britbeerwriters agenda for their IPA conference – a little bit of history perhaps? Only drunk beer then, beer writing was 2 years away.

Much comment ensued. And more images of the detritus of that day have been located. I was quite interested in who spoke, including four PhDs… or podiatrists… plus Jackson and Protz and Oliver. Heavens. Beats the hell out of a Zoom-cast with influencers.

And last Friday, I listened to Andy Crouch’s interview on BeerEdge with Dr. Theresa McCulla, curator of brewing history at the National Museum of American History. I really liked it. Good production quality for one thing. No umms. No scoffs or chortles.  In terms of substance, I mentioned this:

Having written and researched 1600-1830 brewing history, I’m not sure I fully agree with that given the wide range and the depth of the US records that are available. But they are ephemera, from shocking slave sale notices to banal self praising poetry about brewerys owners… My main takeaway from your excellent discussion was the hope that the same primary transitory records are preserved along with objects. Email data bases and boxes of invoices are as interesting as oral histories from decades after the fact – and perhaps a wee bit more factual.

Which is exactly the point of scrap of paper ATJ found. Just a scrap of paper. And the photos. Not a spoon. I don’t get the spoon thing at all, frankly. There is a difference between symbols and records. Records matter more. So brewers, get those early emails and photocopies onto a disk or a stick or some other thingie and get it to some archive somewhere.

In other news, the shut down hours inspectors are out in England. The comments section in last week‘s noted post at The Pub Curmudgeon offered up this observation on one aspect of the new… rather, latest rules:

It’s table service only. This will be a real pain with only one member of staff, and we can’t afford to have two on at once. If there is anyone with Coronavirus, table service will help spread it through cross contamination. Instead of people coming to the bar – where we have a screen – one at a time then going back to their table, I will be going from table to table constantly taking orders, ferrying drinks and taking payments. Those pubs who have put in ingenious one way systems with collection points and screens because that’s what their risk assessment concluded was safest will have to re-think and implement a new system. In two days.

Conversely, The Sun newspaper-like object has found the one workaround at a highway stop:

…it is classed as providing an essential service because it provides food and drink to motorway drivers. The exemption means the pub — the only one at a services in the country — is not bound by the curfew and can serve between 10pm and 5am. But it is open only until 11pm — although that is still an hour longer than other boozers. Nobody from the Extra Motorway Services group was available for comment last night.

Also about wandering the roads, Boak and Bailey reached back into the letters of a Romantic poet and found out he was “Samuel Taylor Coleridge, beer geek and pub crawler“:

In Llangynog, Wales, in July 1794, he had lunch at the village inn, enjoying ‘hashed mutton, cucumber, bread and cheese and beer, and had two pots of ale – the sum total of the expense being sixteen pence for both of us!’ Note the distinction between beer and ale, there. In 1801, he briefly became obsessed with the idea of making productive use of acorns…

Time passed, and nineteen years later I found myself once again changing trains in Cambridge. I still had my notes from last time, too. Finally I was standing in front of the Free Press. Expecting to be disappointed, I took a deep breath and opened the door. I was not disappointed.

In beer writing critique, Ed posted like it was 2008 when he posted a post about someone else’s post:

…at the end, to sound a little crass, I couldn’t help but think so what? Beer might be described as hyperreal or a simulacra but if I’ve got a pint in my hand why should I care? Postmodernism might by sceptical towards reason but my reason tells me to be sceptical towards postmodernism. 

I thought the post was entertaining, a bit of a romp. My only other comment was similar but hopefully positive: “What isn’t simulacra in craft culture?” Perhaps somewhat related, another beer blog – Look At Brew out of Sussex, England – has declared that it’s time to stop:

I’ve been blogging as Look at Brew on and off for the past eight years or so, mostly focusing on the UK beer scene, a scene which has become an incredible beast. Sometimes that beast is something I want to be around, research and interact with, other times it’s something which I don’t recognise. It has changed beyond what I thought it would in such an incredibly short time.

Many have come and gone. Beer writing has always been a tough gig. Start with limited resources, search hard for a point and/or status – then wash it all down with a lacing or lashings of a generally socially mood altering drug which comes with its own gaps in understanding of the long term consequences. Then add the criticism. Hard on the head if we are looking at our writing as the end of a discussion rather than the beginning. And like many weeks, logging this stuff week after week seems even pointless sometimes…

But that, I think, misses the point. The logging creates an aggregation that displays a pattern. Last Saturday I woke up in the middle of the night and I was thinking about Blursday. Here we are. On the one hand we’ve made it six months in – with about another six until we know what is up with the vaccine roll out.  On the other, it is a Blursday. Day after day of the same. If you are as lucky as me. The boring same is pretty good. Other have not been… what… as immune. The million plus dead worldwide. The millions more now ill without any understanding of the long term consequences. And even millions more hammered economically. Makes beer blogging seem insignificant.

And you know all that already. Because we are all in this Blursday together. Sure – it’s like everyone has the same haircut… or all jam came in one flavour. So, like you I am having a difficult time determining if beer has gotten extra boring or if it is just that a receding tide lowers all boats or if my get up and go got up and went. But then I realize that it’s just Blursday and that better things are coming. Imagine the fun of vaccine day. It’s going to be a happy happy hour. I am almost… perhaps… excited by the idea of looking back at all this, all these weekly news notes posts, once Roaring Twenties V.2.0 starts up in 2021. Which is why I guess I write this. To create a record.

With that glimpse of possible cheer in the late short term, early mid-range… that is it! Enjoy yourself while you are in the pink… and remember there’s  Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on the decline of Fullers rep in Ontario but then celebrates the likely return by other means) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword (where this week a bigger bum to behold on a brand is discussed. And remember BeerEdge, too.

 

Your First Thursday Beery News Notes For Autumn 2020

A quieter week. As I napped, I saw this image passing by on the internets screen this week and grabbed it for posterity. One reason it struck me was that it passed by soon after  I read somewhere how craft beer was a response to 60 or 70 years of light pilsner. Hmm… that’s an image of Ballantine ale being delivered in downtown New York in the 1950s. When the ale maker was the third biggest brewer in the U.S. of A.*

It slightly boggles the brain bucket sometimes how limited the recollection of the recent past is. A cursory reading of 1970s and 80s interviews with micro brewers makes clear that they were positively and opportunistically cloning existing beers, especially locally available imports but also beers like Ballantine ale which still existed or were recalled in very recent memory. And catching up with the good food revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Fine followers all. Sure, industrial pilsner was part of it all but, even then, aggregation and lightening the light macro lager continued parallel to the first micro wave that took off in the ’80s and into the ’90s. Anyway, it’s a lovely photo reminding us of the twenty years of maybe a perhaps arguable US ale gap. Here’s some info on the Hudson Theatre.

In the U.K. o’ G.B. etc., the upset centers this week on the new Covid-19 measures and especially the new early 10 pm pub closing order. The B and the B summed up the feeling that someone somewhere is flailing about this way:

What would help is if the Government would get into the habit of providing evidence and rationale for policy decisions. As it is, this latest feels like what you get when half the cabinet wants to close pubs, the other half doesn’t, so you agree to meet halfway.

Stonch has finally been given his proper place as a spokesperson, being interviewed on Times Radio,  opining that pubs got off lightly with these pre-announced changes, that it could have been full closure. His statement that the table service requirement and 10pm closing should not inhibit sensible trading in safe venues was at least a hopeful one. These things have been all over the place in all jurisdictions so it appears to be as much as what approach to the rules is taken as it is what role you play in the system: publican, staff, drinker. Does it work best if the place is small? Cookie has posted a post and suggested a suggestion:

Let’s adopt British Timbo Time. It’s simple. We all set our watches an hour earlier. We get Timbo to turn the smooth bitter taps on an hour earlier. Time is what we say it is. Boris may say it is 10pm. We know it is 11pm BTT. Why should we let the government dictate when it is 10pm? It is 10pm when we want it to be 10pm. If enough of us decide that right now this minute, it a 6am then by hell it is 6am.  British Timbo Time. By the people, for the people!

Elsewhere, we are told that the next months coming could be disastrous for all sorts of breweries – perhaps depending where you live and what sort of economic policies are being followed as, for example, in the US:

A report commissioned by John Dunham Associates claims that 651,000 jobs in brewing, distributing and retail “will be lost by the end of the year”, while overall beer sales could fall by as much as US$22 billion by the end of 2020. Brewing roles are expected to be the hardest hit, with the report warning 3,600 brewers could lose their jobs by year end. “The beer industry has seen a dramatic decline both in sales and jobs that rely on our nation’s most popular alcohol beverage,” said Jim McGreevy, president and CEO of the Beer Institute.

Perhaps as illustration of candidates, this is classic – but, still, pretty sure the owner was not laughing. How much financial loss does a stacked pallet of cans represent? In much more dangerous occupational health and safety news…

A barman who had his arm blown off in a horror beer keg explosion will receive a compensation payout after reaching an out of court settlement with a former employer. Jye Parker, 29, was seeking more than $2million in damages from Bar Beach Bowling Club in Newcastle, two hours north of Sydney, claiming the venue breached its duty of care. He was helping a friend set up and test a portable beer keg system in October 2014 when it suddenly exploded and changed his life forever.

Yikes. Well, yikes is a bit of an understatement, isn’t it.

Note: only about half his weight.

Quitting blogging. Haven’t we all dreamed of being released from the pinching shackle. Me myself, I passed my 17 and a halfth anniversary this month of beating the pick axe against the face of the blogs.** Anyway, “Life After Football” is packing it in but has gifted us all with a list*** of his favourite blogs of a similar sort of interest:

…there is still plenty to cheer as I can recommend all of the following blogs at the bottom of this post, as they are a terrific read.  If you can’t find something beer or booze related in this smorgasbord then you really don’t like reading about beer or pubs!

The Beer Nut is not quitting and his personal travel ban has him seeking out the what remains of the real and the well thought out:

Pleasingly, it does taste of blueberries, fresh and juicy and real. The hibiscus brings the red fruit too, of course, and it’s quite fun to explore the flavours. This is helped by the beer being neither too sweet nor too tart, the sourness level just enough to make it invigorating without trying to be a full-on enamel-stripper.

Conversely, while I agree with Jordan about what might be considered the amateur hour of micro branding, I also have little interest in the excessive time and money spent on artsy craft packaging and other surfaces where this era’s branding is place – but if you disagree with me soon there will be a book for those with an interest… though perhaps one with a wee bit of confirmation bias behind it. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that beer Advent calendars have been around for a while. But what is old is apparently new again to the Daily Record.

Speaking of which, it is good to see that international brewing corp. BrewDog hasn’t got full rights to appropriate “Elvis” as it has “Punk”:

…the brewer initially lost its battle to trademark the beer in the UK, but later it was overturned and Brewdog was given permission to trademark ‘Brewdog Elvis Juice’, but not ‘Elvis Juice’.  However it has come unstuck in its latest attempt to trademark the beer in Europe. EPE first opposed Brewdog’s European application back in 2018. Brewdog launched an appeal in the following year which has now been dismissed. In the case documents, the EU Intellectual Property Office ruled: “It is clear that the applicant’s submission based on the peaceful coexistence of the marks cannot succeed. No evidence actually demonstrating such peaceful existence on the pertinent market has been shown. In short…there exists a likelihood of confusion… A likelihood of confusion for only part of the relevant public of the European Union is sufficient to reject the contested application.”

Ontario Beer Store good news. Ontario Beer Store not so good news.

In far worse news, we knew this in general terms but I missed this Amnesty International press release which dives into greater detail related to the connections between the military of Myanmar and many industries including craft brewers:

Pan-Pacific announced that it is terminating its business partnership with MEHL in the wake of Amnesty’s findings and the publication of the UN Fact-Finding Mission report of 2019. KBZ and Kirin have stated they are reviewing their relationship with MEHL, while others did not provide such commitments or did not respond at all. Full copies of responses can be found in Annex I of the report. These companies all partner with MEHL in operations inside Myanmar. However, a few have global reach. Kirin is one of the world’s largest beer brewers, and its drinks, such as Kirin, San Miguel, Lion and Fat Tire are sold in bars and shops all over the world.

Govern yourselves accordingly.

And that is it! Enjoy these last few warm days – and days that you may still be allowed out of the house – and remember there’s  Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on the second wave) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword (and this week rants about why beer awards are stupid.) . And BeerEdge, too.

*Get out your Tremblay and Tremblay. Economists always make the best contemporary brewing historians.
**Never enough mining analogies. As good as any forced if entertaining argument. Zima. Sweet Lambics. Coolers. Alcopops of one sort or another have been around for decades under one label or another. Heck, there was Lemon Beer in Schenectady in the 1830s. Marketing works.
***What the heck… here’s the list… Pub Curmudgeon, Martin Taylor, Colston Crawford, Pubmeister, Pete Allen, West Midlands Explorer, Shove It, Chuck It, Toss It, The Wickingman, Garden Hermit, Citra, Paul Bailey, BRAPA, Jane Stuart, Real Ale Real Music, The Beertonian, Mappiman’s Real Ale Walks, Tandleman, Food, Travel, Football, Beer is the best, The Travelling Barman, The Cask Connoisseur.

As Summer Soon Turns To Autumn Take Comfort In These Beer News Notes For Thursday

Hmm. Nothing of, like, a common theme out there this past week, was there? There was some great apple pressing porn to watch, for sure. That stuff is great. And my near neighbours at MacKinnon have been bringing in their hops crop, as illustrated. Fabulous. But there’s also the pending end of summer and, with it, the end of the best chance pubs and brewers had to store a few nuts away for the coming cold.  Something for the stretch until Christmas. Old Mudgie painted a bleak picture of what was to come in the UK for pubs and brewers. And a beer shop shut in Oakland… its obit just above the one for the creepy knife store shutting. And a brewery in Kitchener, Ontario is now up for sale. Polk told me so. 2021 is going to be the year of cheap surplus brewing kit. Not a cheery theme.

But that’s in the future, not in the now. Let’s check in there… err.. here. This week, let’s start over at the ever popular History Corner. Come along. Robsterowski of “I Might Have a Glass of Beer” shared it thoughts about an anti-steam brewing tirade posted in the 23 March 1862 edition of Allgemeine Bayrische Hopfen-Zeitung and even provided a handy translation:

The steam-powered breweries increase constantly in number and it seems they shall quite soon squeeze out the other breweries, or force them into imitating them. As in so many other [trades], the machine seems to make manual labour almost redundant in the brewery. The question must be asked: which beer is preferable, that produced by steam or by hand? Experienced beer conners prefer the latter. 

This goes to the idea that steam beer began simply as a next step industrial brewed beer – but I do love the idea of “factory beer” as the great evil. Because it’s all factory beer, now… right? Interesting that values which were frowned upon in 1862 include steel, lightness and speed. It’s a bit late of a date, I would have thought, for such a broad fear of modernity. Speaking of a similar thing, Jeff tweeted about Belgian Biere de Cabaret from 1851 including this  contemporary comment:

“Has a very sweet and pleasant taste, creamy, and something honeyish that is highly sought after by aficionados.” An amber-golden color, unusual for the time. It has always intrigued me, not least because of the name.

Something? Factory beer is never “something” beer. Boom, it’s there. Always or never. That’s it. Plus I like aficionados… Knut talked about that term back in 2008 but had a better one… though I would not have expected the Spanish word to be in 1851 beer commentary from Belgium… but then again it was once called the Spanish Netherlands before it was the Austrian Netherlands. Is that it?

Now, I do like the idea of #SoberOctober (even though I would have just called it #SoberTober)… except… I have never associated October with wild eye binge drinking. No big holiday, no big bowl sports game. No woo. No hoo. Which I suppose means I don’t like it. Hmm. Except it might be building on a self-fulfilling wish. No crazy reason to overdo it. So no one did! Hey, nothing changes but victory proclaimed!!

This is even weirder than #TotesSobeTobe. It was in fact with a heavy heart that I read the post with this bit of odd triumphalism:

It’s important to remember that there was no useful IRI data in 2017 that told @SierraNevada that they should make Hazy Little Thing. It took instincts, guts, and maintaining a pulse on the industry’s long tail. Doing so gave them a one year head start on their competition.

Kinda mainly wrong, no? I say wrong based on this end of year 2017 blog post (ie a primary source contemporary with subject matter) that recorded reality at that moment:

You know, much is being written on the murk with many names. Kinderbier. London murk. NEIPA. Gak from the primary. Milkshake. It’s gotten so bad in fact that even Boston Beer is releasing one, a sure sign that a trend is past it. Some call it a game changer, never minding that any use of that term practically guarantees something isn’t.

I blame belief systems. Needing to associate yourself with things. Do you associate yourself with such things? I wouldn’t mention it except that it seems to be, you know, a thing.

Hop. Not a belief. Fact. Here’s some slightly disorganized hop news. As if Brophy was really also on the other line… In other hop news – Arkansas. Boom! Who knew?

Next up? Awards. Folk were talking about awards this week. Are they just for the needy? Canadian needy awards are the worst given how needy Canadians are. Are they really too much about the fee and other money aspects? Really? I can’t believe you thought that. For me, it’s never going to get to the point that nominations come from someone other than the candidate… which is my minimum standard for a competition being of any interest. But is it also problematic due to systemic bias?

Imagine what your work would look like if you weren’t gunning for someone to tell you you’re the best, that you’ve beat your peers out this year. If you’re not chasing this particular carrot, shaping your work (even unconsciously) toward what usually gets these accolades, what do you do? Who can you be? The world might be bullshit, but maybe we can be free from the false narratives and stale aesthetics perpetuated by awards, at the very least. 

Yikes! But, certainly, when the same group of individuals own the contest, select the judges, set the rules, act as judges, report on the event, receive a payment or two and then spend the rest of the year being palsy-walsy with the next slate of fee-paying candidates, well, it is all a bit too weird, isn’t it . Too small a circle to be taken seriously. Which might be a good point – why aren’t they just really for fun?! Which is what model railroading is all about! Sorry, not model railroading… craft beer… yes, that’s it.

Speaking of model railroaders, a couple of late breaking “old guy shakes hand at sky” stories came in Wednesday. First was the troglodyte at Stone* yammering about something revolving about himself. You can go read it on your own time. But second was that weird article by ATJ advocating for less information. In particular, hiding the truth about calories in beer. (Perhaps it’s the wine press bullies.) Now, this is especially odd as the information is readily available. That didn’t stop the one Chicken Little’s solo becoming a duet:

Since calorie counts are meaningless to 99.99999% of drinkers, it’s mere virtue-signalling to call for their introduction, and an expensive pain in the butt for small brewers to have to supply for all the one-off beers they are likely to produce.

Whachamahuh? See, eleven years ago Bob Skilnik explained how easy it is to calculate the calories in beer. Here’s the story.  Here’s a calculator. Basically, it’s 250 calories to a 20 oz UK pint of 5% beer. Or 1/8th of your daily dietary requirement. Or 200 calories to a 20 oz UK pint of 4% beer. 1/10th of your daily dietary requirement. Standard. No research needed – but add a few more calories for any increase in heft. So it’s funny folk want to hide that simple truth. But the funniest thing is idea that calorie counts are meaningless to all but a few beer drinkers. Below is a handy comparison of trends for the term “beer calories” compared to “beer history” as search terms.  Now, I am not one to suggest one might want to examine one’s own life choices but if the dead end is where you are looking to find a niche of little interest, the study of beer history is clearly it.

Just another line I rode down from 2004 to now…

Finally, back to today and to reality… and as she has in the past, Beth has been very open again on her income from beer writing for the purpose of telling other freelancers to roll with the flow:

I just broke $12K for the entirety of 2020, which (despite being around 1/3 of my original 2020 income goal) is pretty damn impressive considering I’ve had zero childcare outlets for my ASD-diagnosed 3 year old since March.

I point this out to also note that if someone is going out of their way to be both painfully truthful about themselves while being encouraging to others, well, I expect that I can trust their word on other things.

Well, that’s summer 2020 going out with a load of complainers, complaints and the compliant. And me. I’m so great. Looking forward to Autumn 2020? Me too! As you do that, remember there’s  Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on… no one!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword (and this week rants about why beer awards are stupid.) . And BeerEdge, too.

*Wailing away at his social media presence pointlessly for at least eleven years!

Thursday’s Beery News Notes For The Clampdown

What are we going to do now? It appears the summer has ended with a thump. The clampdown. The BBC reports that social gatherings above six are banned in England from 14 September.  The nightclubs of British Columbia are now shut. Greece has shut down.  Kinda makes reading about beer a side show… kinda. Jeff, however, connected the dots and spoke for all of us when he wrote:

I’d like to raise a mug to all those workers out there who make possible the pint of beer it contains. This has been a rough year. Depending on how you count, the pandemic put somewhere between thirty and forty million people out of work. Many breweries were forced to lay off staff as volumes fell.

The BBC (again) published about the why for those being displaced in shops, restaurants and bars serving the now empty high-rise office block with particular attention paid to the underground network beneath much of downtown Toronto:

For businesses in areas like the PATH, the Covid emergency phase is not over,” says Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “Yes, the government is no longer imposing closures, but effectively you may be closed because you have no customers.” While no agency has calculated the estimated cost of these closures yet, the businesses in the PATH typically generate $1.7bn in revenue annually and generate about $271m in tax revenue, according to the city of Toronto, and many have been shuttered since mid-March.

What is a bar to do when its whole model is predicated on the presence of humans? Maureen asked a similar question. I answered: “goats!”

What news of beer otherwise? First, some law and an application for municipal planning approval for the replacement of everything on one (again) Toronto City block has caused great upset. Because it is the location of a dive bar called Sneaky Dee’s:

Local Toronto bar Sneaky Dee’s could be torn down after the city announced it has received a proposal for a 13-storey building in its place. The proposal, which was submitted Sept. 4, calls for a mixed-use building that would cover the current residents of 419, 421, 423, 429, and 431 on College Street. It would also consist of a total of 169 units and more than 13,000 square metres of “combined residential and non-residential gross floor area.” Some Torontonians took to Twitter to express their unhappiness about the proposal, and a petition has been started calling for it to be rejected.

In other legal unhappiness, much has been made of the implications of the firing of many staff by Surly, a craft brewery in Minneapolis, coincidental to a union drive. “Arise, Surly Workers” wrote Dave Infante who noted an obvious trend:

In the few instances where workers in the craft brewing industry have seen through the charade and decided “lol this sucks, let’s organize,” owners have dropped the #oneteamonedream pretense with the quickness. It happened at Rogue Ales in Newport, OR in 2011; and again at Pyramid’s Berkeley, CA brewpub in 2013; and in 2019 in San Francisco, where workers at Anchor Brewing, the country’s oldest craft brewery faced a decidedly corporate union-busting campaign that featured high-powered anti-labor law firms and managers shouting “fake news” at workers exercising their federally protected right to unionize. Very cool shit, nice work all around. 

T-Rex understood what was what as illustrated to the right. Beth, too. And GBH published something a wee bit adrift on the topic but, surprise, could not come to clear conclusions. In sum:

The tension between the two narratives shows that despite businesses reopening, the pandemic’s dramatic effects on the hospitality industry are far from over… It’s currently unclear whether the Unite Here union has any legal avenue to fight the layoffs or planned Beer Hall closure.

Displaying greater clarity, this explanation about pouring central Euro lager is excellent. Effective use of social media. Twenty-seven 600 word articles on the subject could not have put it so well.

Note: not a brewery. A beer company, sure.

Note: not small. Not really even a beer company anymore, either.

More law. Ron wrote an interesting post on a question of Scots law, circa 1948 in the case of more than one case of “Dodgy crown corks”:

The defect in their condition was due to being kept in the damp cellar since February 1948. Dunn knew that corks should be stored in a dry place, and that dampness encouraged the growth of various moulds. Moreover, he failed to use the corks in the order in which they were sent to him. Further, he or his servants ought to have inspected the corks within a reasonable time after delivery, and in any event prior to using them.

Nice touch in the report on the use of “various moulds” indicating, perhaps, a particularly unpleasant multi-coloured effect.

Completely separate from either the situation today and the law, Merryn published a piece on the conclusions drawn in her thesis on pre-historic brewing – very high on the neato scale:

Brewing uses few ingredients, only requiring malted grain, herbal preservatives, water and yeast. These ingredients may survive in the archaeological record in a number of ways. Accidents in drying the malted grain, as happened at Eberdingen-Hochdorf can occur. Residues or sediments of the brewing process may occasionally survive in unusual contexts, such as in the sealed Bronze Age cist graves at North Mains and Ashgrove. Residues of barley without any other plant remains indicate the residues that result from washing the sugars from the mashed barley or ‘sparging the wort’. Those barley residues that contain pollen or macro plant remains indicate the addition of herbs during the boil prior to fermentation.

Again, and without a thought for the law, Retired Martin has again taken us to a place without the cares of the day… except in this episode of his series entitled “287,392 UK Pubs” he explains how those at the Blake Hotel in Sheffield are managing the Covid-19 social distancing rules:

3 pm on a Saturday, filling up but quieter than you’d think, a landlord giving the now customary speech. “Take a seat, fill in the track and trace, follow the one way system, one at a time in the loos, leave glasses on the table“ I felt sorry for him. “I’m sounding like a stuck record !“. “We’re trad drinkers, we miss the interaction at the bar” said the next group. I know how they felt.

Speaking of ye olden times, Eoghan Walsh published a good story of a gruit revival, something I may now have lived through two or three times. While a nod to Unger‘s clarifications on the important role control of gruit played in medieval society would have been nice, I love this level of detail:

Invaluable input came from a most unexpected source: a rich seam of human excrement mined by archeologists from the bottom of a medieval latrine. “They found the remains of hops, juniper, caraway, and bog myrtle, and they asked me how this could be possible that in one stratum of this toilet are these four ingredients appearing together at the same time,” Overberg says. “They thought this clearly had something to do with brewing.” And Overberg naturally agreed. “They have excavations for a period of 300 years, and it is all the same. It’s always hops and bog myrtle, caraway, juniper.

Lastly, The BeerNut wrote a review (no, really he did!) that contained a passage that triggered another thought:

Pyynikin has really missed the mark on “Pacific” here. There’s not an iota of tropicality about this, and nothing American either. Maybe it’s a Finnish take on New Zealand’s ubiquitous Canterbury Draught, because that’s about the only way it makes sense. As beer in its own right it’s inoffensive, and might even be enjoyable as a dark-evening sipper. I couldn’t deal with the surprise, however, and resented it for the rest of the glassful. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

My first thought was it was clearly a tribute to the possible first brewer in Quebec,  Brother Pacifique Duplessis. But then I thought… how little I care about branding of beers. Then I realized how much I have to wade through every week is basically (i) folk writing about the branding of beer especially as displayed on the container. As opposed to the beer itself … and clearly unlike the TBN above who makes note of the  missing connection. Then I wondered what else are similar categories for me: (ii) fun and pozzie but samey brewery owner interviews, (iii) conversely, greater important questions of rights contextualized in brewing,  (iv) then, conversely again, dreary cut and paste posts of others’ research labelled as “reporting” and… (v) all the superlatives. Always the superlatives. Each theme has its audience I suppose and certainly varies in ultimate value… but what percentage of the weekly collective output isn’t one of the five categories above? Sure, these things come in waves – like yesterday’s topics of food pairing and sell outs – but more would be good to add. Please advise by next Wednesday. A fella has deadlines, you know. Next big thing could be canals. Could be.

There. Done. For more please check in with Boak and Bailey Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan points a particularly pointy finger at the letter “B”!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.