Beer in the End Times – Page 2

The Week Baseball Starts Taking Over The TV Schedule Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Did you know that there are five Thursdays this February? FIVE!! I thought I was done for the month today – but I am not. It’s leapday Thursday next week. This will be only the third one in my lifetime, now in my 61st year having lived through this experience in 1968 and 1996. The fifth since the 1800s. The responsibilities for next week’s update have suddenly loomed ominously. Am I up to this rich and rare Thursdayness? The very first leap day Thursday since beer blogging began? Better put an effort in. A big effort. So… I can slack off this week and no one will notice. Excellent.

First up, Boak and Bailey are doing some clever things with their multi-media channels. For one thing, they are posting footnotes to their weekly beery news roundups on Patreon. As you can always see below, I like footnotes but rather than merely wallowing in snark like I do BB2 actually add a bit of context and discussion.* And, as you can see to the right, they play with the graphical display of information like with this table explaining their thought on what has been gained and lost over the last ten years of good beer in the UK. They published that in their monthly newsletter after gathering some thoughts from readers over at Bluesky. Which I received by email. Where do they find the time?

And I wrote something last week that caught even me by surprise: “could it be that beer might actually… be going out of style?” For years that was the quip – it’s not like its gonna go out of style. Did I mean it? I mean sure we all know that democracy and simple human decency are well on their way out… but beer?!?! It seems something it up… or, rather, quite a bit down. Stan posted another graph building on the graphs discussed seven days ago. I can’t just put the same graph at the top of my roundup this week (because that would break the weekly updaters Code of Conduct that B+B control with a ruthless efficency) but his point is worth repeating:

The pink on the right represents barrels of beer that would have been sold had sales simply gone flat in 2020, rather than declining, not completely recovering, then declining again. Obviously, that matters a lot to hop growers. When barrels aren’t brewed then hops aren’t used. In this case, about 20 million pounds of them. Two thoughts. First, indeed, little difference between production in 2015 and 2023. Second, if you draw an arrow from the top of the bar at 2015 to 2019 it looks much different than an arrow drawn from the top of 2019 to 2023. Production might be the same, but something different is going on.

One thing I do not believe is causing all this is the lack of detailed description of the offerings at taproom. Jim Vorel would beg to differ and does so at length:

Case in point: Not long ago, my wife was ordering at a large, well-funded and popular local brewery taproom. Looking at the electronic menu above the bar, she landed on a new beer labeled simply as “coffee stout.” She loves stout, and lightly adjuncted classic stouts such as coffee stouts, so she ordered one. The reality? The beer was actually a stout with “vanilla, caramel flavoring and cardamom” in addition to the coffee, which was the only thing mentioned by the sole source of information available to the consumer. Is that a valid concept for a “Turkish coffee stout,” or whatever? Absolutely it is, but the customer needs to know they’re ordering a stout with that kind of theming when they place the order. You can’t just surprise someone with “caramel, vanilla, cardamom” when they think they’re ordering a relatively dry beer. What if that person doesn’t really care for pastry stout concepts? Are they supposed to grill the bartender whenever they see “coffee stout,” to ask if there are any other adjuncts involved? Just how many questions are we expecting these busy taproom employees to answer?

Theming? I had no idea. Me? I just taste the stuff and make my own mind up. Now, let’s be clear. That graph showing US craft beer (including formerly recognized craft brewers kicked out of the BA) have slumped back to 2015 production levels** does not mean all beer is going out of favour, as Jessica Mason explained:

Molson Coors delivered six years of profit growth, six years of growth in just one year. That focus is a new baseline. We are ready for this moment”. To illustrate the size of the achievement, Hattersley explained: “In 2023, our top five brands around the world drove over two million more hectolitres than they did the prior year. This is like adding the entirety of Blue Moon’s global volume to our portfolio.” Looking at America, Molson Coors has seen a boost in both its distribution as well as its presence in supermarkets with more retailers listing its beers. In fact, this momentum and knock-on revenue spike is what has boosted the business to such great heights and reinforced distributor confidence in listing Molson Coors’ beers.

And Kirin is experiencing a bounce as well according to Eloise Feilden:

Kirin Holdings posted revenue of ¥2.1bn (£11.1m) in the year to 31 December 2023, representing a 7.3% rise year-on-year. Profit was up 4.6% on 2022, and operating profit rose 29.5% to ¥150.3bn (£79.4m). Revenue from the Kirin Brewery division was up 3.2% on 2022 to ¥685m. Kirin Brewery’s total beer sales increased 5.9% to 1.4bn litres. CEO Yoshinori Isozaki told analysts that price changes in October helped to boost beer sales “more than expected”, after the company dropped the price of beer brands including Kirin Ichiban. Kirin raised prices for its no-malt Honkirin and Kirin Nodogoshi Nama beers.

Interesting. So are people really just getting fed up with the craft beer nonsense? Remarkably, it’s been a decade since the cult classic The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer by Max and Myself was published – and this remarkably visionary review (given the interveining rise and fall of craft) by Alistair popped up in my Facebook feed this week:

I’ve been slowly reading my way through The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer by Alan and Max, and finding myself agreeing with most things, especially when it comes to tasting vs drinking. I’ve been saying it for a while now, beer is for drinking, not standing around pontificating about the supposed terroir of the hops, the provenance of your peat-smoked 80/- (as in it has none), or worst of all thinking that Pilsners are just American Light Lager without the rice or corn (have heard that more than once). I guess that’s one reason why I love breweries that make classic styles, and make them well, rather than brewing every gimmick going – you know they can make good beer, worth drinking, instead of random shit to taste a thimbleful of and never want to touch again.

Point. And Alistair (as well as someone in the comments) made the analysis that is often made in tighter times – is home brew really cheaper? Why yes, yes it is:

Thankfully, I don’t have to pay myself to make beer, neither do I pay myself to serve the beer, and so the real cost for a half litre of my own beer at home is about $2. One thing though that is really clear to me from this little exercise is that ingredients are not the bulk of the cost of making the beer, it is a the people, equipment, and place to do so. Obviously I am also not able to take advantage of the economies of scale that a commercial brewer (sorry idealogues, if your favourite beer is made by a company that does so for a living it IS a commercial brewery), especially when it comes to non-linear increases such as the ingredients, and don’t forget to factor in that a single decoction brewday in my garage takes about as long as a single decoction brewday at a professional brewery with the appropriate kit.

But… and I am a long lapsed home brewer… you don’t need the equipment and you don’t need the decoction. A nice pale ale or porter from scratch? Do it. Conversely, care of the BBC, here’s another reason I’ll steer clear of NA beer for the foreseeable future – unlisted ingredients:

UK-based brewer, Impossibrew, which specialises in non-alcoholic beers, uses a different means of arrested fermentation. “We brew it in such a way that we can cryogenically stop the fermentation process,” says founder, Mark Wong… Impossibrew also adds its “proprietary social blend”, a mix of nootropic herbs designed to imitate the feeling of relaxation induced by traditional beer. It is a precise blend developed in collaboration with Professor Paul Chazot at Durham University’s Biophysical Sciences Institute. Nootropics are natural compounds – billed as “smart drugs” – which improve cognitive functions.

Sweet. Playing with the psychological therapies. Here is a 2023 paper on nootropic herbs. Including a discussion of the allergies and side effects*** that one might encounter… if you knew what you had consumed.

Pellicle‘s offering this week is a portrait of Bristol, England’s Wiper and True taproom by Anthony Gladman.**** Spoiler – they have a dealcoholiser:

The second tool is a reverse osmosis dealcoholiser, which the brewery uses to remove the alcohol from beers like Tomorrow, and the low alcohol version of Kaleidoscope, which launched in January 2024. “That’s going to be a big push for us for the next… well, for a long time actually,” Michael says. “That’s what the whole business is galvanising around at the moment.” Installing a dealcoholiser is not something a brewery does lightly: the equipment is a huge expense, but so too is the floor space it requires, as well as the staff training, and the effort in recipe research and development to make owning one worthwhile.

Note: The Beer Ladies Podcast interviewed Lars this week. Have a listen.

Merryn has shifted to Bluesky and is still tracking the research on ancient grain residues. We learn that “interest in bread like, porridge like, lumps of charred cereal residues certainly has increased over the past decade.And quite a lot have been found” like in Ancient bread recipes: Archaeometric data on charred findings from the February 2024 issue of the Journal of Cultural Heritage:

This study examines charred bread-like samples found in several archaeological sites across northern Italy and dating from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Middle Ages, some of which are included amongst the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The aim is to investigate differences and homogeneities in bread production processes in different eras and cultures. Bread was a staple food in many ancient societies, but has rarely been found amongst the materials that survive in archaeological sites. When it is found, it is usually because the bread was charred by accidental combustion (falling into the oven during baking) or deliberate combustion (for ritual purposes). The literature on the issue is not abundant, but has been growing over the past decade

It’s beer, isn’t it. Err… wasn’t it. Speaking of was, some bad news for beer drinkers in Nigeria:

The Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Breweries Plc, Hans Essaadi, has said that the economic situation in Nigeria has deteriorated to the extent citizens can no longer afford to buy beer. Essaadi said this on Monday at the company’s investor call following the release of its 2023 results. “It has been unprecedented year for our business in Nigeria. We saw a significant decline in the mainstream lager market as a result of Nigerian consumers no longer able to afford a Goldberg after a hard day’s work,” Bloomberg quoted Essaadi as saying.

Note: no GBH Sightlines for five weeks. Done?

Like clockwork, Stan has posted his February edition of Hop Queries – which is not a quote from Shakespeare, by the way. He built upon that glut of hops mentioned above, twisting the knife just a bit:

My story about why farmers in the Northwest are ready to remove 10,000 acres (about 18 percent of what was harvested last year) from production in 2024 has posted at Brewing Industry Guide (subscription required). Short term, this means there are plenty of hops out there, often at bargain prices.
Long term, think about how many times you have seen the term “soft landing” used when discussing the American economy. How does that usually work out? The market for hops has always been cyclical and landings have not often been soft. It will be a year or more before it is clear if this year is different.

Finally and speaking of honesty, consider this exchange in the comments at Beervana and ponder whether

Reader: Jeff, big fan of your blog and content. That being said, I would hope that we don’t start bashing beers here. The battle for beer should not be within the community but outside of it against wine and spirits. If we bash our own, regardless of how “eye-rolling” the content is we will lose the long game.”

Jeff: “Mason, it’s not my job to promote the brewing industry here. I try to write honestly and entertainingly about beer, and that means I criticize things from time to time. My “clients” are my readers, not breweries. Beyond that, I would argue that anyone who did want to promote the brewing industry would not whitewash negative stories, bad beers, or disappointing news. Concealing faults doesn’t help in the long run.”

Very well said, Jeff. One wonders how much this sort of call to disengagement from reality based reality that craft beer too often promotes has contributred to the slide that we discussed up top. That we see all around us. Maybe that’s what “theming” is. By the way, has anyone brewed a samey Doubly Hazy NEIPA and called it “Self Inflicted Wound”? As things change and interest in craft declines, it’s still good to watch how it falls if only to identify what stands the best chance of coming through the downturn.

OK. Mailed that one in. Didn’t even have to mention BrewDog. Or baseball now that I think of it. Fine… just roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 123) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,450) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (up to 165), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

Fear not! While some apps perform better than other we can always check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan really doing what needs to be done Mondays. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again according to Matty C.

*I mean consider this: “We have taken note of, and pre-ordered, Dr Christina Wade’s upcoming book The Devil’s in the Draught Lines about the history of women in British brewing. We nearly gave it a shout out (free advertisement) in this week’s round-up but decided to save that for next week. But, blimey, eh? CAMRA’s publishing strategy is interesting these days. You might call it public service publishing, doing what’s right for the good of the beer culture rather than what’s commercial (101 beers to drink before you die… again!). Except Desi Pubs seems to have been a substantial success.” That’s a proper bunch thoughts right there.
**IE: not actually “flat” at all.
***Note: “Plant nootropics are generally very well tolerated, but potential users should consider their overall health condition and consult a doctor about possible contraindications and drug interactions before trying a particular plant formulation.“
****This piece serves as an interesting counterpoint to Boak and Bailey’s thoughts from last July whose words from them bear repeating: “It used to be a ‘beer garden’ – a bare yard full of tables. It felt like having a pint in the car park of ASDA. But now it is a Beer Garden, or at least heading well in that direction. Around the perimeter are tall plants providing a green shield. In the garden between tables, there are loaded beds and planters. Grasses, shrubs and young trees soften edges, dampen sound and create depth. This is now a pleasant place to be, like a park or botanical exhibition.“

The Post Superb Owl Mid-February Thursday Beery News Notes That You Demand Are Here

Well that was exciting. Trick plays and roller skates. And there was a football game too. I heard the overtime on the radio. Sports on the radio is an excellent way to fall asleep. Far less exciting. Someone had a word with Ms. Swift’s potential Bro-I-L to keep the hairy nudie fat lad stuff to a minimum as was on display a few (playoff) rounds ago … but did you see this above? Apparently, on Sunday afternoon the Cleveland Guardians baseball team for some reason decided to edit out the original Bud Lite can on the right and replace it with a Miller Lite one when posting on Twex. As one reply noted: “Wait. What? This is the official account admitting photoshopping a photo for political reasons? WOW.” Not so much – it seems to be the baseball team’s beer sponsor… so…

So, here we are. It is the gap between NFL and MLB. The dullest time of the year. So we need to dig around a bit to see what is going on. First, here’s a bit of good news to start off with. Norm Miller, everyone’s favourite recovering beer writer and crime newsdesk guy in the Boston area, posted this on Bluesky:

Officially signed my contract for my new book today. The publisher asked me if I had a problem writing about beer even though I don’t drink anymore. I said “No, I write about murders for work and I don’t murder anymore.”

Nice. But what will it be about? And Boak and Bailey wrote about the 1930s Labour politician Luke Hogan and his efforts to unionize pub workers:

Hogan angered members of the local Brewers’ Society by surveying NUDAW members employed in their pubs. There’s more on this incident in the newspapers, too: they took Hogan to court. The questionnaire asked pub managers for details of wages, living conditions, weekly sales, and the number of staff. As far as the brewers were concerned, this was commercially sensitive information, and confidential.

And Stephanie Grant shared some thoughts about the history her home state’s regulation of alcohol:

Historically, Georgia isn’t an alcohol-friendly state. It wasn’t until 2011 that we could buy alcohol on Sunday, which infuriated my mom who didn’t understand why the state deemed it OK to go to a bar on Sunday to drink, but not buy a six-pack to enjoy at home. And even though you can now purchase your six pack on Sunday, you have to wait until around noon to do so. In 1907, Georgia became the first state in the south to ban alcohol, 13 years before the nation’s prohibition laws went into effect. And while prohibition ended in 1933, Georgia said, “nah, we’re gonna keep this thing going for another two years.” Even in our colony days, Georgia had a strong intolerance for alcohol, with people calling for alcohol restrictions as early as 1735. At least we’re consistent.

Interesting. I once had to look up the constitution of Georgia as it was the one that the colony of Prince Edward Island’s was most poached from around 1760. Hmm… what else is gone on? Trends? Trends! That’s what is going on. In his excellent roundup this week, Stan posted an excellent graphical representation of data which I have plunked just there. Have a look. It was produced by the US Brewers Association. Notice a few helpful things. The lower brown line shows brewery closing. The rate is now back up towards pandemic levels after a period of grace. But more importantly notice that the chart starts at the beginning of 2019. Over a year before the pandemic. Even then closing up, openings down. They two lines have now come together but the trend was there for years. And Jeff also wrote about the fabulousness of graphs this week:

Unlike regular domestic beer, craft took a big hit during Covid. Particularly when combined with the domestic lager numbers, that illustrates the large shift from draft to package that happened during the pandemic. Beyond Covid, however, what the following chart really illustrates is that the Great Flattening didn’t start at or just before 2020—it dates back to 2015. In that year, the US sold 24,523,015 barrels of craft beer—nearly identical to 2022 (the last year for which we have numbers): 24,273,285.

Laura Hadland might as well have taken that big picture, moved it across an ocean, squeezed it down and applied it in the particular to describe what it all means in one pub when she wrote for the CAMRA publication What’s Brewing on (as discussed last week) what the end of the union sets that produced Pedigree for Marston:

A Pedigree drinker himself, down-to-earth Brad, a tied tenant, cares deeply about his pub and the quality of the beer. It looks like the decision to abandon Pedigree has pained him. I asked how he felt about the loss of the Burton union system. He is a man of few words. “You can tell how I feel by the fact we aren’t going to buy Pedigree again.” I wondered if the move was a bit premature, perhaps he might wait and see how the flavour might change in future casks. He sets his jaw and gives me a simple but firm “no”. No Burton union. No Pedigree. End of.

After reading about that glum chap, Cookie raised a question in response about the quality of the beer as brewed in the new equipment. But then we are not sure if there has been a side by side. Not sure, for that matter, there’s any left to be put to that test.

Is it all about the scramble to find a price point that will save us all? The Tand reignited (as per) the continuing tale of are we paying too little for good beer that looks a lot like the story in 2007 when US craft beer complained that people were not paying enough for their product. In this case, the question relates to cask as the Tand reported:

People will pay more for the certainty, especially if quality is poor elsewhere. The other point that should not be forgotten, is that cask beer is a live product. Usually in premium situations, you price an object higher, but sell less at a greater margin. But pesky old cask doesn’t lend itself to this arrangement. It goes off if you keep it hanging around. So, is premiumisation dead in the water? Will cask continue to be the cheapest beer on the bar? It kind of depends doesn’t it. In theory, quality always sells, but implying that premium pricing can apply to the whole market is misleading. Nobody really wants to spend top dollar on a gamble.

These are undeniably difficult times in the UK brewing scene with prominent Elland and Adnams as well as Brick and Brew By Numbers too all at risk of disappearing. And it’s happening everywhere as you know. In Minnisota with Fair State Co-op and also with Melbourne, Australia’s Hawker’s Beer. I understand but can’t fully agree with Jessica Mason‘s assessment of this moment:

A few observations on the news I’ve posted this morning: No brewery is safe right now. (However good or historic). Rising costs & spiralling post-pandemic debts are showing the sector needs help & quickly. The government needs to save British brewing ASAP.

That may certainly be a part of it but any nation that imposes Brexit and Non-Dom taxation exemptions on itself is not exactly helping keep the tax base diversified. Plus, don’t we have to factor in dropping customer interest which is not entirely due to household wallet tightening? Could it be that beer might actually… be going out of style? One critical factor putting UK pubs in peril might be that the young folk today are incredibly dull hermits, according to The Guardian:

To be young and staying in on the weekend would once have spelled social death. But for gen Z increasingly “it’s the norm”, says E1’s senior operations manager Jack Henry resignedly, when we meet one December afternoon in his office… Its stellar lineups of techno, house, electro and drum’n’bass DJs have made it a London success story, but getting younger clubbers through the door, Henry says, is becoming harder. They’ll come out for something special – like the 30-hour marathon party he organised for New Year’s Eve – but maybe only once a month. E1 employs a videographer to film its events, producing promotional clips for TikTok and Instagram to whet clubbers’ appetites. But lately, Henry says, some seem to be watching these as a substitute for actually going out…

Hmm… make sense. Going out itself is going out of style. Pre-gaming became just… the game. Yet the old golf game is apparently not so associated with hermits:

I guess I have a different definition of civic pride, and it isn’t people urinating in their pants, jumping into bunkers during play or falling dead drunk all over the course. And those were just a few of the non-civic moments during last week’s Phoenix Open. Dubbed “The People’s Open,” the annual trip to Scottsdale is a party like no other on Tour—with clearly little to no supervision. Many who entered the gates as adults were magically transformed into adolescents, with a beer or something harder in their hands to enjoy themselves since golf is clearly secondary to getting blotto.

So we have some good, a lot of bad and even a bit of ugly going on. Want more of that but illustrated in a semi-scientific context perhaps? Err… this ain’t great:

She descended more than 6.7 miles in a two-seat submarine to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean where she found something peculiar. “Sitting in sediment at the bottom of the ocean at the Earth’s deepest point: a beer bottle. It had traveled more than 6.7 miles to the darkest depths of the Pacific, label still intact,” Dr Wright explained. “This discarded trash had managed to reach an unsullied part of our world before we actually did – a symbol of how deeply and irrevocably humans are affecting the natural world.”

Erg. Changing the subject, Daniel Croxall aka @GoodBeerLawProf announced that his paper “Legislative Gifts” is no on line and will soom be availble in an issue of the Michigan State Law Review:

This article examines the current state of distribution in the beer market and how distributors have been able to manipulate legislators into providing them with legislative gifts that serve only protectionist purposes. Such laws are premised on the notion that distributors lack market power and are thus subject to unfair treatment from large manufacturers. That justification stems from a time when there were few breweries in the U.S. and an abundance of distributors; thus, the few had power over the many. This article argues that the modern market structure is completely flipped due to extreme distributor consolidation and numerical brewery growth.

Speaking of law… 18 shots!?!? Probably the 60 day suspension is not the end of this situation. Note that s.220 states:

Every person who by criminal negligence causes death to another person is guilty of an indictable offence

And Zak Rotello paid his respects to the passing of a neighbouring bar owner, Mike Leifheit, owner of the Irish Rose, and he shared some anecdotes:

He ran an 100% from-scratch kitchen, drove in to pick his own produce & meats from Chicago’s markets every week himself, and tolerated no BS… You want a well-done filet? Mike will personally walk you out the door before cooking one… Mike would host a free dinner every Thanksgiving for anyone who didn’t have a home or family. The Sad Bastards Dinner. That’s real hospitality… The city installed new art downtown. The one in front of the Rose, although named “The Elephant” looked like a huge silver sperm. So Mike made a FB contest to name the sperm, a lady told him he was unprofessional, and he responded “Please never come into my bar…”

One last question and not about beer. We admit we presumed “Hun” was a slur – but isn’t the slur based on German influence and the Protestant crown (my father was a Scots Protestant man of the cloth, by the way) what with the imposition of Hanoverian rule and faith along with the troops leading up to the whole Bonnie Prince Charlie thing?

OK, not a lot of joy this week. Some weeks there seems to be a balance that one can latch on to. But not so much this week. The time between NFL and MLB. Is that it? Who knows? Pitchers and catchers reported yesterday. Thank God.

Just roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 120) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up at 912) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,438 – down four) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down to 163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind. That being said, check out the race between the rival coders that is going on.

The Thrilling Week When I Got That Head Cold Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

First cold after the pandemic started. Felt very weird. Runny nose. Sneezing. Pretty much gone. Or at least a new thing every day. But, you know, it’s sorta nice to have an ailment that doesn’t mean you are at great risk. And it’s all over the place here, half the folk at work are hit. (No, you’re right… I am struggling with the tie in to good beer, too. Got it!) It makes you appreciate the little things, perhaps. Things without DOOOOOOMMMM in the title. Like how the warm weather this year may see the maple sap running very early… oh, no that is a little doomy. Endtimesy even. Maybe more like this: Jeff, he of Rye, posted that a friend:

…bought an old Victorian frame a while ago. Opening it up, he’s discovered this old brewery advert used as a filler piece behind the print itself! Brewery wound up 1866 so it’s at least 160 years old!

Nice. Click on it. The image is amazingly crisp and colourful for something forgotten at least 158 years ago. A good way to start the week off. Somewhat similarly, A London Inheritance has a great post this week on the history of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden. The structure of the blog is updating older photos taken by the author’s father, contextualizing them with current images all to set up wee histories of the City’s hidden gems:

This is my father’s photo of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden, taken in 1948. The name Lamb and Flag can be seen just above the entrance to the Saloon. On many London pubs of the time, the name of the brewery was given much greater prominence than the name of the pub. Barclay, Perkins & Co. Ltd were a major London brewery operating from the Anchor Brewery in Park Street, Southwark… The source of the name Lamb and Flag has a religious basis. The “lamb” is from the Gospel of St. John: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” and the flag being that of St. George. The pub was also once known as the Bucket of Blood due to links with prize fighting.

Delightful. I wonder if that was supposed to be an attraction back then? Speaking of which, Boak and Bailey discussed the modern equivalent (perhaps) this week when they inquired into what new trends make a pub attractive these days:

As well as the aforementioned board game cafes, we’ve also noticed in Bristol a growing number of (a) video game bars or grown-up amusement arcades and (b) dessert cafes. The video game places are interesting. In both of those we’ve visited there was draught beer but you were absolutely free to ignore it. You were paying your way by paying to play games with drinks as an additional amenity. And the desert cafes will sell you a disgustingly huge plate of ice cream and waffles, or whatever, and then let you and several friends spend hours picking at it.

I like me a good video game bar. The particular preference is an Atari table to play Asteroids on. It’s apparently called a cocktail table. I usually had a beer when these things were more common. And finding one with wood paneling finish is a big bonus. Stepping back from that dailiance with the modern, Martin is back with a bit of a calculation on how much beer did a 1860s farmer brew for his operational needs:

Going back to Samuel, if he, or rather one of his servants, was brewing 96 barrels of beer a year, that works out at eight barrels a month. If he had a two-quarter brewery, that is, one capable of mashing two quarters, 650 pounds or so, of malt at a time (a reasonable assumption, I think, judging by the sizes of small commercial breweries in Hertfordshire in the 19th century), then he was brewing only once a month, at an average of four barrels to the quarter, to give a beer of six to seven per cent abv. Clearly it would not take much of a step up to increase output considerably: brew once a week, and you are now making almost 420 barrels a year, which you could retail for almost £1,000, at 48 shillings for a barrel of XXX. That’s a fairly staggering £110,000 a year in 2024 value, a healthy addition to a farm’s income.

I’ve just remembered something. I was never very good at math. Pellicle has published an excellent article and photo essay by Jemma Beedie on the The Horn Milk Bar, an old school cafe halfway between Perth and Dundee, Scotland which is preserved itself:

…we have time-travelled. This is the place my parents (and maybe yours) are longing for; the spaces they insist still exist. Instead of the cloying nostalgia of brand-new retro-styling, this place is visibly old. We were expecting the polished vintage world of the music videos by Autoheart and Logan’s Close—this is not that. Shades of brown and beige wash over us. Wipe-clean plastic chairs and tables surround us. Outside it is bright, one of the clearest, bluest skies we’ve had since May, but the sunlight struggling through the wall of windows does not penetrate the suffocating room of wood veneer.

Again, wood veneer is good. I once lived in a town with a veneer factory. Unrolled big logs like they were paper towel rolls. Match factory too. Back to beer! There was a bit of a kerfuffle (yes, I said it) after Jessica Mason‘s story on the revival of Black and Tan was published after last week’s deadline. She updated the story with grace and speed to include the connotations of the name in Ireland:

…in Ireland, the ‘black and tans’ referred to constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. They were nicknamed so because of their uniforms being a mixture of dark green (which appeared black) and khaki. During that time, the ‘black and tans’ gained a reputation for brutality and as such exacerbated Irish opinion of the British. With these elements in mind, despite the beer serve being termed so due to its colouring, ordering a black and tan at an Irish bar could be viewed as a contentious move, especially by a British patron. However, taking a piece of history back, many Irish bars – especially in the US – are now beginning to offer the serve, sometimes with a nod to Irish history, but otherwise simply to upsell more Guinness.

There’s another form of the two level cocktail that you can also see in America in bottled form from venerable micros like Saranac as well as Yuegling. BeerAdvocate lists 77 examples of beers by that name, listed under the American Porter category. I wonder if this dates from the earlier post US Civil War usage as it related to the Republican Party, as summarized by Wikipedia:

Social pressure eventually forced most Scalawags to join the conservative/Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted and, starting in the 1870s, formed the “tan” half of the “Black and Tan” Republican Party, a minority in every Southern state after 1877. This divided the party into two factions: the lily-white faction, which was practically all-white; and the biracial black-and-tan faction. In several Southern states, the “Lily Whites”, who sought to recruit white Democrats to the Republican Party, attempted to purge the Black and Tan faction or at least to reduce its influence.

Very interesting – or at least so said Artie Johnson. You know, I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Forecasting is a mug’s game, a fool’s errand, a… a… add your own analogy please… but, still, you gotta love how little credibility this sort of listicle entry conveys:

…there’s an expected 8.51% compound annual growth for the next three years, putting seltzers at the forefront of increasingly important alcoholic beverages.

Interesting, too, is how many in the list of trends in “craft” are as devoid of the word “beer” as the title to the article. Just dislocated “craft” is all there is left. And remember: hop water isn’t a style, it’s a recipe.

Allistair wrote at Fuggled about a brewery he wrote about in a Pellicle feature last summer, as we discussed, on Virginia’s Black Narrows Brewing. An unfortunate update:

Yesterday, Josh Chapman, owner and brewer at Black Narrows Brewing on Chincoteague Island announced that they have decided to close their doors – their final weekend in operation will be February 16-18th… It was also just last year that their magnificent malted corn lager “How Bout It” was awarded a Good Food Award – the corn in the lager being an heirloom variety, grown on the Eastern Shore, malted by Murphy & Rude in Charlottesville, and fermented with a yeast strain derived from a Chincoteague oyster. Beer does not get much more local than that… In announcing the closure, Josh noted that “we watched our ingredients, equipment and labor costs increase. It was all too much”. In the end, the finances of being a hyper local, community supporting brewery just couldn’t sustain the business…

Relatedly and perhaps conversely, it’s certainly daring to suggest that craft malt is “Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex” but it might have been nice if something backing that claim up was actually included in this GBH article.* It’s on new small scale malting barley trends methods by Don Tse. I think the nub of the tale is really this, that these new methods may help small farmers and small maltsters:

Farmers are more likely to grow whatever is most profitable, and since so much research has been invested in improving the yield of corn and other crops, old barley varieties cannot yield sufficient income to compete. Indeed, in a typical crop rotation, barley is likely to be the least profitable unless there is a premium buyer like a maltster… Thanks to new barley varieties bred for a broader range of environments and thanks to craft maltsters creating a market for these varieties, Heisel says he is witnessing regions that had been growing feed barley—Maryland and Delaware, for example—switching to malting barley…

Good. A perfectly acceptable point. Speaking of which, the next edition of Prohibitchin’ from Beth Demmon is out and this month’s focus is Rae Adams who works in a particularly challenging location:

Dry January is behind us, and Rae couldn’t be happier about it. “Dry January is a murderous thing,” she says, only half jokingly. “Let’s change it to Dry July.” A month of widespread sobriety during the slowest part of the year for many food and drink establishments is hard enough on its own. But Graham County, where Rae works as the director of sales for Wehrloom Honey & Meadery, is one of the four remaining dry counties in North Carolina. You can still find and purchase alcohol in dry counties, but not much, and not everywhere. Even on a good day, it’s challenging for producers and retailers.

Speaking of dry, a lack of imported beer to Zanzibar‘s spice islands tourist zone has thrown the industry into a mess:

“We are running short of beer at my bar, and I just have a stock of soft drinks,” he told the BBC. “The government has to take action. It is the high season now, it is very hot and these tourists need joy, they need cold beer on these beaches.” An American tourist, who did not want to be named, said: “I love Zanzibar and its beaches. The people are amazing and only challenge I feel now is I can’t get hard liquor. I want to have spirits or even whisky but nothing is found in the hotel – they instead advised me to order it from Stone Town.” The local manufacture of alcohol is banned in Zanzibar, whose population is largely Muslim.

Why? Permits!! And 90% of the regions income is from tourists and, as the Sex Pistols taught us, tourists are money. The BBC reports that Simai Mohammed Said resigned as tourism minister last week, citing “unfavourable and disruptive working conditions.” Heavens. Why can’t everything work as smoothly as in Poulton? And finally… oh dear:

No one really knows why it’s called a “cream ale” as it is more akin to an American lager and does not contain any cream at all.

That’s expertise for you!** And now… once again… roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 118 rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (stalled at 911) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,442 – up again) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down to 163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

*The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all. And it also would be nice to know why “People were still growing it for feed, but any malting barley was going to Canada.” I mean I think I know why it goes to Canada but it need explaining or tightening. And, yes, there are native North American barleys. Conversely, wouldn’t have some publication wanted this piece for publication, Jeff‘s survey of change at Rogue? Neat and tidy and yes pretty trade positive. It’s a weird week. Check out the next footnote if you don’t believe me! [Update: Stan’s BlueSky comment was “There’s even treasure in the footnotes. “The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all.” My first thought as well.” which is really nice but I just would point out as I know Stan agrees that headlines are not written by authors. I know a guy who inserts “bus plunge” in the headline whenever he can.]
**Want to know? Start here, then go here, then look here, then…

The First And So Far Most Februariest Beery News Notes Of 2024

Here we are. The second month of the year. Even though it sorta sucks around here, February is at least proof that dreary January isn’t forever. Sky watcher Jordan noticed, too. Sky watcher. I saw this weird blinding light up there just yesterday afternoon. It was strange. Everyone I know is looking forward to this month, solely to put January behind them. Was it that bad? It was. It really was. TGIF, baby. You know, January’s taking on a certain societal pong. It’s now the crappiest month of the year, isn’t it. Why? Well, perhaps as a first bit of evidence, Cookie puts his foot down about Dry January:

Boozing is part of culture. December is culturally a month of excessive consumption. January is always quiet. This has been a seasonal norm for centuries. Imagine the guy renting deckchairs on the beach, moaning that it’s quiet in winter. Hospitality is seasonal.

That is a reasonable argument. At least a reasonable baseline. Do people believe it? There have been a number of unfortunate tales of businesses doing badly, blaming the times, blaming others and bad luck, blaming the general cutting back. Can we call these exuberance hangovers?* It is a now problem or a back then one? As this handy graph illustrates, there are even exuberences in some sorts of exuberence avoidance, like in the no/lo marketplace:

The pattern was similar for spirits, with people paying more for no/lo spirits, on average, than standard spirits. Again, the gap has narrowed over time, after an initial ‘noisier’ period when the no/lo spirits market was extremely small. There was relatively little difference between the prices paid for no/lo and standard ciders in pubs, bars, clubs, and nightclubs, with no/lo cider being 5% more expensive on average in 2021. Wine was notably different to the other categories, with prices paid for no/lo wine remaining consistently around 25% lower than standard wine.

You are going to have to read that article for the graph to make any sense. But it looks so good I am just leaving it there. I also thought of this question of inordinate enthusiam when I read Jessica Mason‘s piece on the response of certain minority shareholders of Black Sheep Brewing at the brewery’s reorganization by new investor the private quity firm, Breal:

Regarding Breal’s interests in Black Sheep, Sturdy admitted in his letter that he was “glad that most of the jobs of the employees in the company were saved” despite news of redundancies and closures circulating, but queried “how the directors are fit and proper persons to run the new company”. Describing the issue, he highlighted… “most of us are not rich, but are hard working loyal people, including employees of the old company, farmers, licensees and local tradesmen”. He said: “Coincidentally the CEO owned no shares in the company at this time. The MD and export director owned 6,256 and 11,050 shares respectively” and added: “In my view these deals should be outlawed.”

I mean I get it – and there are the empty pocketed suppliers to think of too. A very January-ish story. The month of general public lament. I noticed that The New York Times published stories on the dangers to mental health by taking lots of things as well as on the various other dangers of cannabis however taken. Having given up on dope around 1981, I am a bit amazed that this is newsworthy because it is simply so. Not news. But then the same paper of record published something I found actually new and noteworthy: businesses responding to the challenges of these times head on, by undertaking all sorts of intentional narrowing in beer selection:

“I don’t need five pilsners,” said Olivier Rassinoux, the vice president of restaurant and bar at Patina Restaurant Group, which is headquartered in Buffalo. At Patina’s Banners Kitchen & Tap, a 72-tap sports bar in Boston, the bar turned two taps over to kegged margaritas last year and plans to add additional draft cocktails and wine. Max’s Taphouse, a Baltimore beer institution since 1986, is buying smaller kegs to fill its 113 taps and reducing its extensive cellar of large-format bottled beers. They’ve fallen out of fashion, and lingering bottles are “turning into nostalgic keepsakes,” said Jason Scheerer, the general manager.

Ahhh… Max’s. Got the kid a sweet tee there in 2012. He was 12. Fits him now. Better to be clever and cautious than closed. Relatedly, in his newsletter Everyday Drinking, after describing another sort of exuberance (his own recent training as a honey sommelier care of the American Honey Tasting Society) Jason Wilson posed the question that has parallel this era of gratification through certification:

…over the past decade, there’s been a creeping wine-ification in every realm of gourmet endeavor. Now, in our era of hyper-credentialism, there’s almost no sphere of connoisseurship without a knowledgeable, certified taste expert, someone who’s completed serious coursework and passed an exam. A two-day tea sommelier certification course (followed by eight weeks of home study) from the International Tea Masters Association costs $1,725. A five-day olive oil sommelier certification program in New York costs $2,800. A nine-day water sommelier certification program at the Doemens Academy in Germany costs more than $3,000 (travel not included). These programs prepare you to be a taste authority, a sensory expert, an arbiter and evangelist in the field, though you’re likely not producing anything.

That’s a lot. Was it also too much? Did we ever need all these niche claims to authority? Enthusiasts with paper. Is that also an exuberance passing out of fashion? Didn’t we have enough of authority when we decided to take a pass on the off-taste lessons and beer pairing dinners? Speaking of excesses, Stan published his latest edititon of Hop Queries and gave a vivid picture of of the excess hop production facing the industry:

A surplus of hops continues to hang like a dark cloud over producers and suppliers in the Northwest. Last week at the American Hop Convention, John I. Haas CEO Tom Davis told growers that as a group they need to remove an additional 9,000 to 10,000 acres of aroma hops from of production. Idling about 6,000 acres (including approximately 9,000 acres of aroma hops) in 2023 had no meaningful impact on inventory reduction. The estimated 35-to-40-million-pound aroma hop surplus has not changed… In the Czech Republic, the third largest hop producing country in the world, growers harvest about 12,000 acres, almost all of them planted with aroma varieties. Eliminating 10,000 acres would be much like eliminating all Czech production. It would reduce acreage to not much more than farmers strung in 2015…

Very much conversely, Lucy Corne had an excellent piece published in GBH about a small, succinct and successful Ontario-Rwanda project which I knew a bit about when it was first started by Beau’s Brewing** in far eastern Ontario – but one which I had lost track before it took a distinct turn just about 17 words after this part of the story below:

Beauchesne thought it sounded like a good fit, though it would present obvious challenges. “It was so much more out of our comfort zone than we had intended,” he says. “We flew down to Rwanda to meet Fina and to check out the business climate. The last thing we wanted was to start a project that had no chance of succeeding. I came back inspired. And also scared shitless.” Burying his fears, Beauchesne dove into the project, launching a crowdfunding campaign which reached its $100,000 target within two months. Over the next year, locations were scouted around Kigali, business plans were drawn up, and the team at Beau’s started working on recipes using traditional Rwandan brewing ingredients, including cassava and bananas.

And the very epitome of a balanced approach, the Tand published a neat a tidy story of a beer crawl in London the highligth of which was his vignette of busy normality:

This is an Irish style pub – without the umpteen intrusive televisions – and was severely rammed with after work drinkers. Nonetheless, the service was swift and cheerfully efficient, but it was so busy I could see little of the bar. I’m pretty sure there was no cask and I wouldn’t have had it anyway here, as everyone seemed to be guzzling Guinness. If you can’t beat them, join them is sometimes not a bad motto. The Guinness was the best I have ever had in London. Perhaps a tad cold, but certainly the best since I was last in Belfast, and at least a match for Mulligans in Manchester. So we had another. Seemed the right thing to do, especially since the same barman who’d served me, when collecting glasses, saw us standing in a corner and shifted some office workers who’d purloined the table that should have been there. Thus seated, we enjoyed the busy scene even more.

Note: one sort of beer, not 113 taps. And what a great heaving description. Balance was also a theme in Lily Waite‘s piece in Pellicle this week, a portrait of Ideal Day Family Brewery, a back to basics brewery situated in a rural English business cooperative:

Set in a central run of low-slung converted stone barns around a well-tended courtyard, and a number of other slightly less hashtag-aesthetic, more utilitarian farm buildings around the site, the various businesses work together in harmony. The hospitality centred ones all invariably use produce from the farm: the restaurant’s whole ethos is farm-to-table; the cafe uses and sells the produce; James uses wheat and barley grown on the farm and various miscellany from the kitchen garden in his beers.

And in his newsletter Episodes of My Pub Life, David Jesudason reflected on being included in a Deutsche Welle broadcast to share his thoughts on speakin of how things really were, looking back with clarity through his studies of the imperial roots of IPA while giving us a bit of an insight into his process:

I’m really proud of this podcast put together by DW (the German equivalent of the BBC) on the thorny subject of the IPA’s colonial legacy. It came about after the producer Sam Baker stumbled upon my first piece for Good Beer Hunting, which changed how we looked at how IPAs were marketed. (I have mixed feelings about that article as none of my subsequent ones for GBH ever reached the same mass audience.) The Don’t Drink the Milk podcast seeks to explain a subject ubiquitous but misunderstood. The IPA episode had a huge scope with numerous recordings in different countries but is easily accessible for listeners new to the subject of empire. It placed mine and beer writer Pete Brown’s stories central to the narrative and even gave international listeners a flavour of what the Gladstone in Borough is like. It’s what I want Radio 4 to be when I switch it on – and then quickly turn off as I feel alienated by a lot of the subject matter...

Reality checked. Finally and as reported in December, Jeff was invited to speak at a beerfest in Budapest. In his reportage from the scene, he posted something like that chapter in the middle of Hobbes’ Leviathan that cuts so quickly to the point that the rest of the book is a bit unnecesary. In sum, it is a summary – but to my mind some bits might need a wee edit like this:

What’s different is the internet—now information moves far more quickly. In the U.S., it took brewers 15-30 years (depending on the region) to develop native beer. Brewers weren’t even making the beer they imitated properly because most had never been to Europe and they had no information about how to make those beers.

There’s a couple of things. First, the US has given birth to many beer styles that would please any nativist. The cream ales, cream beers, steam beers or (the most obvious winner of the race… if it were a race) macro lagers have each had their day just as Pete’s Wicked Ale and then extreme beers have more recently. And Albany, Kentucky and California have all sent their distinct offspring out into the world. Which is why I prefer “regional” to “national” as the adjective in these matter.

Second, even though there weren’t 100 microbreweries and brewpubs in the USA until around 1988 (making them an oddity for most of the decade) in the 1980s there is no question that US craft brewers had access to plenty of information about brewing the good beer they were imitating. There were imported books and magazines as well as beer supply stores and beers of the world bars as meeting places. We see from one document that there were festivals like the Great American Beer Festival in 1982 at Boulder Colorado where Fred Eckhardt, Michael Jackson, Ken Grossman, Michael Lewis, Bill Newman and Charlie Papazian met with British brewers who all spoke and no doubt spoke with each other and anyone else who cared to listen. We learn from another primary record from 1986 that Michael Jackson was delighted with the Winter Ale brewed by Bill Newman at Albany, New York. Newman had learned his stills during the months in 1979 he worked under the tutelage of the father of the British independent brewery movement, the recently departed Peter Austin, at his Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire England. Alan Pugsley of Shipyard also trained under Austin and then trained others. Greg Noonan later of the Vermont Brewery was out there researching his first book “Brewing Lager Beer” before 1986, the same year the Buffalo Brewpub was opened by Kevin Townsell who “imports his malt from England via Canada, and gets hops, a fragrant vine that determines aroma and bitterness levels, from the Yakima Valley.” And, of course, Bert Grant had been in the brewing trade since the 1940s working his way up at E.P. Taylor’s Carling brewery in Toronto before later emigrating and opening Yakima Brewing in 1982. Suffice it to say, they all had the information. And shared it. And understood what they were doing.

That’s a lot. The clear and unclear. The plain and the cluttered. The unexpected and the shoulda seen coming. Ways that are fair while others are rough. Enough!! Once again… roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 116 rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (static at 911) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,437 – down one) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down to 163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

Fear not! While some apps perform better than other we can always check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!)*** to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot for 2024 on Mondays. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*any number of the misheard lyrics of “Video Killed the Radio Star” may apply – we did country wine! Plus I knew a guy called Hubert. That explains everything.
**Disclosure: Steve B has been in my house at least twice and drank my beer…
***Thesis: podcasts and newsletters are a great way to minimize correction, criticism and citation by others so… playgrounds for affirmation. Antithesis: then why do I /you quote from them, numbskull?

The 43 Days To March Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Can we call these the dog days of winter? The evil cousin of August’s dullest days? Storms and snows came this week with a keen intent this week putting the end of a rather warm and grey winter. Six weeks to March. Just about. Just six. I can do that. I hope I can. But how? Where to start? Well, Will Hawkes published the January edition of his newsletter London Beer City and reflected on a slightly surprising positive effect of the pandemic that he thinks he is seeing:

…amid this gloom something interesting has happened: I think London’s best pubs are as good as I’ve ever seen them. Covid-19 has done a lot of funny things to London hospitality – not least Heineken’s increasingly iron free-trade grip, a grip currently manifesting itself in a mini-Murphy’s revival – but one is the impact it’s had on our attitude to pubs. We missed them, and, as a recent Evening Standard list demonstrates, we’re keener than ever to celebrate the best ones – where hospitality, warmth, a sense of historical continuity and an unfussy approach to good drinks are the norm. After Covid, drinkers understand better this is what makes a good pub. Even service, that persistent bane of the London pub-goer, appears to have improved in our best pubs. Martin Taylor, pub-goer extraordinaire, wrote in December that “Pubbing in London is brilliant, and I can honestly say both the beer quality and the friendliness have got better since Covid.”

The Tand, no stranger to pubs, wrote about another sort of surprise he’s learned about:

Hot on the heels of me writing about the difficulties some pubs are facing, causing them to operate on reduced hours, I read with a degree of astonishment that the number of applicants to run pubs is running rather high at the turn of the year. It seems January is the peak time for this optimistic attitude, with, according to the good old Morning Advertiser, numbers up by over 50%. As the MA puts it,“New year, new me.

Martin found another critical factor in the sucess of a pub in these troubled times – brownness – as exemplified by the Royal Oak in Royal Tunbridge Wells:

I’d rather pay a premium for a top pint, and the symphony in brown that is the public bar is worth a quid of your money. That table of six was generating some proper banter. “Jane was standing there with her rolling pin“ “She should get off her ass and get down that catwalk“. Sorry, no context for Jane’s theatrics. In the back bar, billiards ruled.

Oh and one last thing as Jeff described found in a pub – others like you:

Mid-session, two of us found ourselves waiting in that orderly line. As you do, we struck up a collegial conversation with two women in front of us that lasted until they reached the front of the line. In an inversion of typical cultural norms, in drinking establishments it’s almost considered rude to ignore a stranger you’re standing next to. Bars encourage people to forge momentary social bonds, which make them quite special in a country where mistrust is increasingly the default position. In bars, you look for common ground, usually finding it through a joke or two.

So warmth, a convivial crowd with welcoming staff and keener management wanting their jobs and lots and lots of brown? Is that all it takes? What ever form it takes, it sure sounds good to me here stuck inside in the land of slush.

But apparently things are not good for everyone as the bad news for good beer (and allegedly good beer) has continued into the new year. Closings, sell offs and temporary renovations that just never quite end are all around us. We hear those damn kids are too damn sober, no doubt further turned off by drunk uncle’s bad language. Heck, even Uber is eating a $1,000,000,000 investment in an alcohol e-commerce delivery platform. But, if you think about it, those who spun on the way up are now just spinning in the other direction as we face the unravelling. Consider the situation at the makers of that 2007‘s special bottle in the stash, 3 Fonteinen: “It is with deep sadness that we announce that we are saying good bye to part of our team…” Sounds like a retirement party invite. Bummer. More so if it was 15 years ago. But is this the critical point:

Not to kick a brewery when they’re down, but I never warmed to 3 Fonteinen. Sky-high prices for product that I often didn’t think warranted it. They seemed happy to pursue a cult following, which is another way of saying small and of dubious economic viability.*

Me, I’ve been recommending less expensive gueuze for (soon enough) coming on twenty years. With 3 Fonteinen up to $15 bucks for a half bottle around these parts – when you can find it – I am quite content to pick up Timmermans when I am out and about for as little as half that price.

Speaking of the ghosts of hype past, here’s a name from the past – Mikkeller! Remember them? Been years, right? Bear with me as this takes unpacking. Well, just like they asked beer buyers to run through all their spare cash back then, it appears – background care of Kate Bernot in GBH back on New Years Eve 2021 – that they had taken the business model to heart and had found themselves short on dough. So they sold off some of the family silver – maybe:

What this multimillion-dollar infusion from Orkila means for Mikkeller—a global beer company with dozens of locations worldwide—is made less clear by the company’s ownership structure. In a 2018 analysis, Good Beer Hunting found dozens of different companies had been formed over the years, each with varying degrees of ownership in different bars or businesses under the Mikkeller banner. This expansive network is presumably necessary given the company’s different owners, partnership structures, and the many countries in which it does business. At the time, Bjergsø described the number of companies he owns around the world as “more than 25.”

I say “maybe” (having stirred the corporate law pot a bit in private and public practice) because with a nutso corporate model like that who know what was bought for what – and who know who’s left in charge! As far as the “presumably” goes, sounds to me like someone along the way met a clever corporate lawyer who knew a clever corporate accountant. And then they went to work on Mikkeller. It is all a lovely opportunity for holiday second homes for consulting business professionals. And perhaps it is happening again. Anyway, now over two years later Jessica Mason for The Drinks Business seems to now have had more luck finding folk to speak on the record** as well as off the record, too, to explain what’s really been gone on behind the scenes since then:

Speaking to the drinks business, Mikkeller CEO and founder Mikkel Bjergsø, said: “We can confirm that Carlsberg has acquired a 20% stake in Mikkeller. Carlsberg has bought the primary stake from our current co-owners, Orkila.” The sale, which was made for an undisclosed sum, has been rumoured by insiders close to the scene as a significant amount, but nothing compared to the amount that Carlsberg offered for the entire Mikkeller business. According to industry sources: ““Carlsberg offered DKK1 billion (£115 million) for the lot [but] the US company which owns 49% weren’t prepared to sell their shares just yet… the insider hinted that “regardless, Mikkeller becomes a Carlsberg brand” and “Mikkel walks away with a big wedge and still owns shares”.

Carlsberg! So… a frankly tired brand with a confused corporate structure, likely fleets of professional consultants and a lot of baggage is being taken over effectively by a big brewery no doubt care of a carefully crafted shareholders’ agreement. See, shares aren’t equal if the shareholders’ agreement makes some more powerful than others.

Note: before there was Boak and Bailey there was…

And I was a bit surprised by comments related to the UK government not offering beer in diplomatic settings as I am pretty sure that was not the point about this story on the government’s wine cellar:

The report in The Guardian on the UK government’s wine cellar was published on Thursday after repeated delays. It showed that 130 bottles were consumed during the year to March 2021, while a further 1,300 were drunk during the year to March 2022. The consumption was a drastic drop compared with the 3,000 to 5,000 bottles of wine and spirits usually consumed in a year as the government scaled back its activity during lockdown and the lack of international travel. The cellar is meant to “provide guests of the government, from home and overseas, with wines of appropriate quality at reasonable cost”. But a large amount was still spent during the Covid crisis on topping up reserves. From March 2020 to 2021, £14,621 was splashed out on 516 bottles of red bordeaux wines, costing about £28 each.

What the report in The Guardian misses is that for 12 or 13 years, the government wine cellar has largely paid its own way. How they do that? Mine doesn’t! But by selling of some of the old stock that’s been selected and stored since 1908 of course – as the government report itself explains:

The first sales from the cellar stock took place in March 2012, delivering a £44,000 return to off-set the 2011 to 2012 purchases of new stock, which totalled £48,955. The difference was covered by additional funds paid back to Government Hospitality by other government departments for work under-taken on their behalf. Between 2011 to 2012 and 2018 to 2019, the cellar was self-financed through sales and additional funds paid to Government Hospitality for work under-taken on behalf of other government departments. Sales were not possible in 2020 to 2021 due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in February to March 2020. Sales resumed in 2022 to 2023 and we anticipate further sales during 2024

What an excellent government program! Self-supporting, generous as well as prudent. And, as was pointed out, Bordeaux averaging £28 a bottle is pretty savvy buying. Oh – and no one wants ancient cellared beer at the diplomatic reception. Except if it’s a beer trade association lobbying effort. Speaking of Bordeaux, The Beer Nut went a visiting and tried the beer:

Bordeaux was not as I expected. My assumption was that a city so closely associated with one particular product, one which has an arcane and highly-specified quality control procedure, would be a bit of a monoculture as regards food and drink. Far from it. There is a vibrant, varied, multiethnic food scene, although of course high quality French food is very easily come by. And the wave of microbreweries that began to sweep the country a decade ago is very much in evidence here too. Though the city is easy to get around, beer places tend not to open until later afternoon, and several were taking an extended January vacation, so what follows is a very far from comprehensive guide to the Bordeaux beer scene.

Far less tempting but even way more surprising for the fact that it is extremely odd to be asked to read about the drinking habits of Russian and Belarussians without any real mention of, you know, the frikkin’ genocidal war to explain why the story was published … aren’t tomato beers a pretty clear signal we have entered another sadder phase of post-craft?

The tomato mix includes both puree and ketchup, and it goes into the tank post-fermentation. “We found that using tomato puree solely [gives] us too bitter and sour a taste,” Vasin says. “Adding ketchup to the mix [smooths] things out. We source it in bulk, so it’s easier to use with our volumes.”

Mmm… ketchup. Bulk Belarussian ketchup beer. Newsworthy for sure. I remember when I worked in Poland back in 1991 there was Albanian carrot jam still being sold at the state run grocery store. For more appealing was the news that The New Scientist reported on the make up of Guinness yeast strains this week:

The Guinness strains were also found to produce a specific balance of flavour compounds, such as 4-vinyl guaiacol, which produces a subtle clove-like aroma, and diacetyl, which imparts a buttery taste. The team also found that the two strains currently used by Guinness are descendants of a strain used to brew the stout in 1903… “What is particularly unique and exciting in this work is that the company has quite detailed records on the historical handling of the strains,” says Brian Gibson at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. “This information could potentially be used to further develop these yeasts or other yeasts used in industrial applications.”

Great point, Brian. Lars took the time to get into a little (…well, a lot…) more detail than that, unpacking and unpacking like… like Lars. And then Martyn jumped in too:

Between 1810 and 1812 alone, the St James’s Gate brewery pitched with yeast from seven different breweries (David Hughes, ‘A Bottle of Guinness Please’: The Colourful History of Guinness, Phimboy, Wokingham, Berkshire, UK, 2006, p69)… according to a writer in 1884: “Mr Edward Purser [one of Guinness’s senior brewers] informs me that yeast from Bass’s brewery at Burton on Trent is extraordinarily active when transferred to Guinness’s fermenting vats in Dublin, but in time its action becomes tranquil, being… modified by the surrounding circumstances and probably by some difference in nutrition.” (Journal of the Society of Arts, London, England, vol XXXII, no 1,659, Friday September 5 1884, p998)

And as we near the end this week, speaking of Guinness, and perhaps nearing his own end if he keeps this sort of behavious up, the tale of “man drinks 81 pints of Guinness“:

A Guinness-mad bloke who went viral for bragging that he downed 81 PINTS in one weekend has shrugged off those who branded him “moronic” for risking his life – claiming he didn’t even have a hangover… The 33-year-old says he began drinking at 1pm on Friday December 29th at his local boozer and continued over the next two days finishing his 81st pint at 9pm on New Year’s Eve – before heading to bed before midnight. Sean said he spent a whopping €400 on beer across the three days and says Guinness is his favourite alcoholic beverage.

Pfft! Try that on thick Belarussian ketchup beer. Finally, Pellicle utterly refutes the notion of the phrase “not a sausage” this week with a story of the links, a personal portrait by Isabelle O’Carroll:

Although pork is an ideal candidate for a sausage (because of its flavourful fat which cures well,) the earliest kinds of sausages tended to be a blood sausage, a plentiful byproduct from the slaughter of animals. The infinite types of sausage that exist attest to the creativity of humans. There are dried types, like the French saucisson or Chinese lap cheong, fermented, such as Italian mortadella or German Bierwurst, and smoked, such as Corsican figatelli, a sausage made from pork liver which is smoked for four to five days. “Chopped or ground up, mixed with other ingredients, and pressed together, meat scraps can provide one of the heartiest parts of a meal—and even one of the most luxurious…”

And so say all of us!!! And now, once again – roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up a nudge to 113) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (holding at 911) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (still at 4,434) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (hovering at 164), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have to admit my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is the place in “the race to replace.” Even so and all in all, it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins but here are a few of the folk there perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

And remember to check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!) to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot for 2024 on Mondays. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*And… is there really “a big difference between having a private conversation and publishing a statement on a public microblogging website” these days? Gotta think a bit about that.
**See in GBH: “…Madsen declined Good Beer Hunting’s request for a phone interview, and did not address specific questions about the transaction posed to him by email. Orkila Capital also did not respond to a request for an interview…” Gotta love that J. Jonah Jameson tone but the transparency is most welcome.

Surely Your Bestest Christmas Present Ever… These Cheery Beery News Notes

So, here we are. We have slipped into Yule itself, the semi-conscious days of the competing forces of the sugar highs, the alcohol buzz and the tryptophan doze. And napping. I recommend you start with the 3 pm nap. That nap rewards you for putting in 3/4s of a day’s effort and sets you up for pre-dinner cocktails. One of the classic naps. Very relaxing. Sorta like the mood in this week’s front page above the fold photo right there. That picture, by the way, is the Yuletide beery photo contest winner for 2010, perhaps the apex of the madness of submissions every December back then. It was submitted by Brian Stechschulte of San Francisco and was declared Grand Champion. It was called that for no other reason than there were also twelve other separate prize packs awarded that year. Crazy.

First up? What’s that you say: “what’s the news on Japaneses two-row barley breeding?” Well… funny you should ask:

“This study detected key traces of Japanese barley improvement inscribed in the genomes of two high-quality modern cultivars. Japanese beer barley breeding began around 150 years ago by introducing Western high-quality beer barley. The hot and humid Japanese climate and soil-transmitting virus diseases hampered the development of beer barley suited for Japan. Western beer barley cultivars inevitably required crossed with virus-disease-resistant East Asian barley, despite the latter having undesirable brewing quality characteristics. Balancing virus disease resistance and malting quality was extremely difficult.”

Interesting. I also struggle to balance resistance and quality… as you know. Also interesting is how this time last week, I told you about a piece in The Times of London on how to survive and even enjoy the UK version of the Christmas office party. This week in The New York Times (no relation) there was something of a companion piece but one with a very different outlook:

DoorDash, which cut about 1,250 employees at the end of last year, is hosting happy hours in regional offices — many of them starting early, like 4:30 p.m. in San Francisco — as well as “WeDash” meet-ups where employees can compete for prizes like a Vespa scooter. CNBC did a low-key morning celebration in New Jersey, with mimosas, as well as an afternoon party, accommodating employees who work different shifts. TIAA, the investment firm, did on-site holiday celebrations from 4 to 7 p.m. called “Gratitude Gatherings… “When you’re doing an event to inspire people, motivate them and reward them, do it on terms they’d appreciate. Even me personally, I want to get home earlier…”

ZZZzzzz… the article even used the word “wholesome” in a positive sense! Wholesome!!! I hope any Brits reading this are having a good belly laugh. There, the verdict is in: UK pub sales up over 7% compared to Yule2022 – and no doubt up 92,919,845% compared to some sort of wholesome late afternoon gatherings. Conversely, you can check in with Ron who has been sending dispatches from a proper holiday with Dolores in Britain, with three posts with three pictures of three breakfasts and a trip to the Museum on their last day there featuring this fabulous exchange:

Bags packed and dumped, we head to the British Museum. We spend an hour or two there each trip. Concentrating on one section. We’ve still lots left to see. This time, it’s Dark Ages and medieval Europe. There’s quite a queue for the security checks. A jangle of Chinese girlies in front of us are taking selfies. Lots of selfies. “I wonder what they do with them all?” I ask Dolores. “The same as you do with all your boring pub photos. Nothing.” “They’re for my blog.” “Right. Nothing to do with your weird building obsession.” “That’s not true.” “Then why do your photos never have people in them?” “They do sometimes.” “Only by accident.”

And Ruvani has a story out on an interesting new IPA – an actual interesting one! – from brothers Van and Sumit Sharma who developed it with Alan Pugsley, British brewmaster and founder of Shipyard Brewing in Portland, Maine as well as disciple of the late Peter Austin who we lost recently:

In creating their own IPA, the Sharmas and Pugsley decided to brew what they consider to be a “British-Indian IPA,” stylistically modeled on more traditional English IPAs, acknowledging the style’s history, while maintaining Rupee’s ethos of making high quality easy-drinking beer meant for food pairing. “Rupee IPA is brewed in the traditions of classic English IPAs, enhancing malt and hop balance—creating a drinkable beer with a dry crisp hop bitterness balanced with subtle maltiness,” says Sharma. He emphasizes that the beer’s copper color and bright clarity mean it is far removed from American West Coast and New England IPA styles.

Yum. I mean I expect it’s yum. Confession: I like Pugsley beers. I sleep in t-shirts covered in Pugsley brewed beer brand logos. But also a “Blueberries for Sal” one, too. So there. Napwear.

Note: NHS Martin encounters the perfect perhaps prototyical proper pub… possibly. Not at all related, an inproper pint has been punished:

An ice lolly-themed beer has been discontinued after a boy saw his dad drinking it and burst into tears because he wasn’t allowed to try it. The four-year-old’s mother complained about Rocket Lolly IPA to alcohol industry trade body the Portman Group, which agreed that the ale appealed to children. Portman Group upheld the mum’s complaint and brewery Northern Monk agreed to discontinue the beer. The mother, who is unnamed in the report, said: “We raised our four-year-old to understand what alcohol is and why he is not permitted to try it.”

Quite right, too, though I would have thought the prohibition on really stupid branding would have applied, too, and not just the crying toddler rule.

Alistair, my lower mid-table nemisis in the Pellicle EPL pool, has found plenty to not cry about but instead to praise in his annual review of his favourite beers of the year, starting with the pale ones:

Ah…the first day of two weeks of Yuletide holiday. Time to make mince pies, plan menus for the various festive days, and to wonder if I even bother buying beer given the amount of cider in the alcohol fridges. It is also time for the annual review of the year, which thanks to having managed to get out of the country a couple of times will include both a drinking den and a brewery of the year. As ever though, we start with pale beers, those that are yellow or golden, without veering too much into orange.

Not one to be caught napping, Matt is also pushing back against the current gloom with some longer term thinking, gazing towards the end of the decade and seeing some light at the end of the tunnel shining in the form of investments:

But with the industry facing such difficult trading conditions that will likely continue into 2024 and beyond, why invest in such a large chunk of the hospitality industry now? Surely this is a time for caution, not confidence. Investors are a savvy bunch though, and firms like Breal will be intentionally investing in projects it believes will provide them with a profitable return, usually within five to seven years… While Breal’s moves could be framed as blind optimism, I posit that there’s a good deal more logic to it than that. It likely means that, by 2028 and beyond, the investor expects the beer and hospitality markets to be in a far better position to trade profitably.

Buy low. Sell high. Makes sense. And this is the low, right? Right? Hard to tell what is what these days. For example at the end of last week, one report in The Drinks Business received some comment over its overly enthusiastic characterization of the tiny THC laced bevvy trade:

Phil McFarland, Wherehouse Beverage Company’s general manager of THC Beverages and who worked at Half Acre Beer, told Axios that the move reminded him of what happened with craft beer. McFarland said coming “through the craft beer wave, this feels very familiar to me. In five years or so, this is going to be as pervasive and accepted as craft beer has become.”

Mirella was not convinced by such plain puffery but Dan put a finger on one thing: “Only if you consider a growing variety of fruity drinks equivalent to the craft beer wave!” Given that the craft beer trade, embracing the slippery slopes in its despiration, over the last few years has allowed the debasement of its brand along with its products, Dan may well have a point. Except even with that level of meaninglessness… it ain’t happening either. Confess! Do any of you actually drink that stuff? Not just taste it once or twice at trade shows booths but actually repeatedly buy it?

Note: the Badger. Govern yourselves accordingly!

Speaking of which… hmm… ever wonder about the availability of light beer in North Korea? Me neither. So…

Rowan Beard, a tour manager of Young Pioneer Tours, anticipated that the new beverage could be a success. “There is an outspoken demand for a beer that can avoid men putting on weight in North Korea,” he told NK News. Beard explained that many North Koreans drink soju not only because it’s cheaper but because many want to “avoid putting on unnecessary weight caused by beer. I can see this beer selling well if they’re able to price it the same or cheaper than the current beers available in the country,” he said, as many will want beer “without the guilt.”

Bet there’s plenty of “unspoken demand”… if you know what I mean. And there are beer tours! Which means now you can go where people are one, now you can go where they get things done.

Q: is the Bud Lite botch and backlash really over? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps relatedly, Jessica Mason reports that ABInBevBudCo faces a new problem

The union told Fox Business that out of 5,000 members who work at 12 AB InBev breweries in the US, 99% voted to authorise a strike. This means that if the workers cannot secure a new labour contract raising wages, protecting jobs and securing benefits before the union’s contract expires on 29 February 2024, then strikes will take place and beer production will likely become affected. Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien said: “Teamsters stand firm in our fight for the best contract at Anheuser-Busch, and this powerful strike vote proves it. Our members’ labour, talent, and sacrifice are what put Anheuser-Busch products on the shelf, and we are committed to getting a contract that rewards and recognises their hard work.”

Solidarity!! Fight the power!!! It is a time of endings. Many sorts of endings as Boak and Bailey* have carried through with their long promised exit from Twex. I might just keep linking to their roundups for a while as a public service but, then again, there’s this sort of weird comment when helpfully directed where to find them…

Yes, it’s goodbye to B&B from me as well as I don’t follow any other platforms either – and have no plans to do so.

[BREAKING: man starves due to fork being placed on left side of bowl, not on the right.] They explained the move in their newsletter… which is a little like dancing about architecture but never mind:

We got to dislike feeling tethered to a particular platform. Feeling as if we couldn’t leave irritated us. It’s also been unstable and chaotic for a year or more, with sudden changes in functionality and policy. That made us anxious. It also turns out that starting from scratch on other platforms comes with benefits. We’ve got far fewer followers on Mastodon, BlueSky, and Instagram, but they seem more engaged.

In another serious sort of loss, venerable Canadian industry watcher Greg Clow has announced the winding up of his 15 year run as editor-in-chief and bottle washer at Canadian Beer News, a ticker tape of sorts that provided updates on every announcement in the national scene:

After 15 years and more than 17,000 articles, I’ve decided that it’s time to bring Canadian Beer News to an end, meaning this year’s hiatus will be permanent. On one hand, this wasn’t an easy decision. I still enjoy spreading the word about brewery openings, beer releases, festivals and events, and other developments in Canada’s beer and brewing industry. But on the other hand, I’m also pretty damn tired of it.

Thanks, praise and some sadness ensued but this admission from Greg put things pretty clearly into focus: “…honestly, the idea of having to report on so many closures, and the loss of so many people’s livelihoods, just isn’t appealing to me…” Greg promises that he just might revive his blog Beer Boose & Bites after a 12 year snack break.

And Stan has also signed off… but just for the rest of the year.** In addition to his excellent linky selection, this week he explored the state of the industry and shared this message to and from the trade:

A “Year in Beer” summary produced by the Brewers Association and chief economist Bart Watson’s presentation last week for association members and the press both focused on the business of beer. They made it clear that the numbers reflect an ongoing trend, and that 2024 will be just as challenging for breweries. Why should beer drinkers care? For one thing, if your favorite brewery goes out of business you’ve lost something. So consider Watson’s last two slides. He suggested that “most of the challenges craft faces have opportunities in craft strengths.” Flavor and variety matter, a wide range (including next to zero) ABVs serve different occasions well, and where diversity grows niche and local opportunities do as well.

What kills me about these sorts of trade messages Stan shares right there is how they are too often affirmations of what the trade is already doing! Plus everything is a plus. With that lack of critical consideration, I expect 2024 to be worse than 2023. And you see something of a similar analytical gap in those interviewed for a piece by Kate Bernot in GBH on the state of homebrewing that on, one hand wants, to convince the reader that there is hope for the hobby while, at the same time, pretty much identifying that interest has seriously faded – and that there’s good reason for that dwindling within the greater slide of craft beer:

…interest in the club declined six to eight years ago as more craft breweries opened in the Birmingham area. As older members of the club have moved away or aged out, fewer new members are replacing them… Ask an existing homebrewer to invite a friend to brew with them, and statistically, that friend is likely to be a white man, too. The Carboy Junkies’ membership reflects this homogeneity: Joines says the club is made up of 80% white males over the age of 35, with the majority of them being older than 50. He says everyone in the club is married; most are affluent; and most have graduate degrees.

Even I, the lasped bad homebrewer, never personally had the need for a club. It was a kitchen to basement thing for me. (Like farm to table but with stairs… sorta.) Well, other than, you know, that club formed by my friends and sudden wave of strange new acquaintances who drank up whatever I made. Then I had kids. Then I, you know, grew up. Or woke up. Was that it?

That is it! Happy holidays!! The days are already getting longer. And remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (98) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (912) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,427 – I actually gained one!) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have a bit of dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is catching up in “the race to replace.” Even so and although it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Still too, maybe check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!) to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much less occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*Check out their best beer writing of 2023 post, too. I won’t be doing one. I live in the now, baby.
**Man, no wonder they set up the beer roundup writers’ holiday party for next week… oh well, more of the cheese ball for me.

As The Madcap Slide Into Yuletide Speeds Up Here’s This Week’s Beery News

I am already late. I think that is what Yule really means: “you are late!” I need to still get a few things together… very few… but I already feel rushed. Perhaps this is how “We Three Kings” felt galloping across the Middle East and it’s all part of the lessons of the season. Fretting. I dunno. I need a few of these Caribbean Christmas drinks. No wonder people take winter vacations. To make up for the Christmas vacation. Not as rushed as the holiday-time photo contest kept me a decade ago. That’s the winner from 2012 up there by Robert Gale, one of 36 photo entries I posted on just one day in that long contest period. That was a lot of fun – but nuts, too.

First up, Stan is back and posted his linkfest on Monday after a month on the hollyjollydays – and he noticed something:

Has it really been four weeks since I posted links here? Indeed, and it seems as if it would be easy to sort through the headlines since Nov. 6 and assemble a post of only stories about the craft beer apocalypse. I am left searching for a phrase that is the opposite of “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Perhaps “Five Feet And Rising“? Just to, you know, keep up with an aquatic theme? Stan explores some of the reasons for the craft beer predicament so go have a look. Even though the exploration and examination of a downturn is valuable and in craft almost fully ignored… I know the feeling but have promised myself to be cheerier this week. I will. It is the holidays or perhaps just the pre-holidays after all. Let’s see if that’s possible.

But first… Jordan has been worked a few paper rolls through the adding machine and come up with for Ontario what can only be called findings:

Will update the map later, but it looks to me like we’re down from 413 physically operated brewery locations to 389 so far this year. There are some ownership situations I don’t know how to express simply in geographic format. Assume that number is high… If you condense ownership structures, we can reduce 67 locations to 27 companies. So… 349 companies total.

Maybe related: low alcohol partying and no alcohol bars? Apparently Sam Smiths is also running no alcohol bars, given that “as many as 120 Smith’s pubs are currently closed“! That’s what’s said in that article in The Times about the Samuel Smith’s of Yorkshire. Not so much about the brewery as the man running the operation. This was a brutal passage:

Back in the 1990s Samuel Smith’s bought and began pouring millions of pounds into restoring the town’s derelict Old Vicarage, which dates back to the 14th century. Great care was taken to go above and beyond rules stipulated by English Heritage… When the eight-year project was complete, the vicar at the nearby St Mary’s Church was informed that her new house was ready. The offer came like a bolt from the heavens. St Mary’s vicar already had a home — one she liked and better suited the needs of her young family. After the invitation was politely declined, the lavishly restored building was locked up.

Enough. It’s the holidays. Here’s some good news. The BBC reports that Welsh brewery Brains has turned its fortunes around… literally… or is it figuratively…:

The company had debts of £76.4m, most of which had accumulated before the pandemic. Mr Bridge worked with a number of banks to restructure and agree repayment of all of the debt, with the chief executive finally feeling confident about the company’s financial health by the summer of 2023. “We’ve managed to navigate those challenging times. And it wasn’t just us, it was the whole drinks and hospitality industry that went through those challenges,” Mr Bridge said. Brains is more than beer in Wales. Having been brewing in Cardiff since 1882, the company is still owned by the descendants of Samuel Arthur Brain.

More with the cheery. What is cheery? History is cheery! And international. Heck, we received a comment in German this week, a footnote to my bit on the Lispenard clan, 1700s Loyalist beer barons in New York. Lord Goog provided the translation. Speaking of lore of yore, the Beer Ladies Podcast had a great interview this week with Dr Susan Flavin, a historian joined in a project recreating a 1500s brewery:

In this fascinating project – link below – the team used a recipe based on a beer once served in Dublin Castle, in order to not only taste it, but to learn more about the role beer played in the early modern period. This one will tickle the beer history nerds and casual beer fans alike!

In more recent history, Boak and Bailey have a great explainer this week on the pub feature called a “snob screen” as helpfully illustrated in the 1963 comedy The Punch & Judy Man where they are used as part of a physical joke:

Hancock, who co-wrote the film as well as starring in it, uses these as the basis for a bit of ‘business’ which, handily, you can see some of in the trailer for the film. He pops in and out of the various windows, taunting and teasing the snobs behind the snob screen. In other words, he refuses to respect (literal) social barriers, and highlights their purely symbolic nature. After all, he and his pals can hear almost every word that is being said a few inches from them, on the other side of the screen. What is slightly odd is that most surviving examples of tilting or swivelling snob screens are there to separate customers from bar staff, rather than from each other.

Neato. And a couple of decades later, the BBC took us back to a Belfast board game of forty years ago and posed the question whther it was glorifying or just identifying actual pub culture:

1981: Scene Around Six explored a Belfast pub crawl board game, named Binge. Controversial enough that many shops refused to stock it, it did at least have the backing of a certain local mover and shaker, Mr Terri Hooley.

And another bit of history. In the same week that it is reported that Diageo is ditching most of its beer brands*, a landmark in craft brewing history is being lost with the closure of the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England after fifteen years in someone else’s portfolio.

In 2007, Ringwood was purchased by Marston’s for £19.2 million. Marston’s disposed of its brewing operations in 2020, selling assets to a joint venture with the Carlsberg Group to create the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company. Mr Davies mentioned that he is “incredibly proud” of the effort and dedication of staff at Ringwood Brewery, adding: “Our priority now is to support colleagues affected by the proposals through the consultation period, which has now begun.”

You know, the official hagiography of craft beer does not properly account for the importance of the Ringwood Brewery which came into being in 1978 led by Peter Austin. As Boak and Bailey discuss in Brew Britannia as well as in their thoughtful obituary for him of almost a decade ago, Austin was one of the few people who could legitimately be called a founder:

His first triumph was building and getting established the Penrhos Brewery on behalf of Martin Griffiths, Terry ‘Python’ Jones and writer Richard Boston. He then launched his own brewery, Ringwood, in 1978, and thereafter came to be the ‘go to’ guy for advice on setting up similar operations. When David Bruce was setting up his first Firkin brewpub in 1979, it was Austin who vetted his designs for a miniature basement brewkit. The two were both founder members of SIBA, which then stood for The Small Independent Brewers Association, and Austin was its first Chair.

Austin also consulted, with Alan Pugsley, brewing bringing his energy into the new brewing movement in North America. I’ve had beers in breweries in Nova Scotia, Maine, New York and Ontario directly carrying on that tradition. The shutting of the Ringwood is the end of an era.

The big news in the world of Pellicle is that I WON the November fitba pool (even though I am wallowing in the nether ranks.) It which was a great surprise that earned me a mug. Oh… yes, and Will Hawkes wrote something well worth reading for Pellicle about London’s pub group Grace Land and the co-owners Andreas Akerlund and Anselm Chatwin:

They met when Anselm took a job as a bar back at Two Floors, Barworks’ bar in Soho, whilst he was at St Martin’s College (now Central St Martins) in the early 2000s. Temperamentally similar and with a shared passion for music, they cooked up a vague plan to open a dive bar/gig venue—and when a site, formerly The Camden Tup, came on the market in 2009 they opened the first Grace Land venue, The Black Heart. It wasn’t an immediate success. “The Black Heart was a dismal failure for many years,” he says. “But it’s about working with the concept, sticking with it. People get it now.” That philosophy has served them well in the years since, during which they’ve slowly accrued a small family of high-quality pubs…

Note: The English are coming back down to pre-Covid levels of alcohol consumption. Is inflation healthy? Hmm… and while we are at it… next time someone suggests that terrior in wine isn’t real, mention this study as reported in The New York Times:

“It’s one of those terms that the wine industry likes to keep a bit mysterious, part of the magic of wine,” said Alex Pouget, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Geneva. Dr. Pouget is trying to apply chemical precision to this je ne sais quoi. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Communications Chemistry, he and his colleagues described a computer model that could pinpoint which Bordeaux estate produced a wine based only on its chemical makeup. The model also predicted the year in which the wine was made, known as its vintage, with about 50 percent accuracy.

That’s some science right there, that is. Continuing with questions of authenticity, again we go with The Times out of London which had an interesting article on tea and chai this week with some very interesting assertions about appropriation and the nature of foodways:

You can culturally appropriate badly, or you can culturally appropriate well, but almost all culture involves appropriation. While Indians have been adding spices to milky beverages for centuries, the spiced tea that is fashionable in American and British coffee shops, and is sometimes marketed as an exotic drink, is no more purely Indian than, say, chillis (which originally came from Central/South America). Indeed, chai is the result of the British imperial push to get Indians to consume tea.

Note: Lars wrote about complexes of closely located language families. Nicely done. Also nicely done, Geoff wrote about Ethiopian borde over on Mastodon, a very complex form of beer making.

I think I first had Jack’s Abbey lager with Ron and Craig in Albany New York back in March 2016. I recall hitting a store on the way back from Delmar. Ah, Delmar! Anyway, Jeff has done an admirable job remembering what he wrote down during his recent visit… before he lost his notes from that visit… including, to begin, its location:

The city proper is small and compact, but the metro area, or Greater Boston, includes around a hundred small towns clustered in the fan stretching out from Boston Harbor. Two radial freeways, I-95 and I-495, mark important distance metrics. Anything inside I-95 is pretty Boston-y, while anything within the larger I-495 ring is Greater Boston. Framingham, home to Jack’s Abby, is 20 miles due west of downtown Boston and about halfway between 95 and 495.

Note: Zak Rotello of the Olympic Tavern of Rockford, Illinois alerted us to this situation: 1, 2, 3, 4. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Nice piece in Cider Review this week on the state of the tiny German perry trade and its advocate in chief, Barry Masterson:

As anyone who follows Barry will know, there are a good number of pear trees in his home region around Schefflenz. He’s previously reported its former significance in Bavaria and until relatively recently it was a central cultural tenet of rural life in the Western Palatinate, a little way west of Barry, near the Rhine and around much of German wine country. But today there’s vanishingly little to be had commercially, and if I didn’t have a direct line to Barry, Lord alone knows how I’d have found anything out about it for the book.

And finally in one of the weirdest craft fibby claims yet, the fact checkers and desk editors of Forbes seems to have taken coffee break when this one crossed by their inboxes:

Recently the Cicerone Certification Program announced that six people had achieved the rank of Master Cicerone. There are now a total of 28 Master Cicerones worldwide. A Master Cicerone is similar to a Master Sommelier in the wine world but the focus is less on service/hospitality and more on general beer knowledge. The exam is frequently billed as one of the hardest tests not just in beer, but in the world.

FFS. Is there any bloatification that craft can’t claim? Safe to say that gaining the certificate does not require passing one of the hardest tests in the world. There are, after all, brain surgeons not to mention standard shift drivers licenses. Not being a peer reviewed academic course, however, allows for this sort of thing to float around.

Fin. We are done. I know I’m done. Remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (94) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (907) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,426) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon (even if BlueSky is catching up in the race to replace.) And even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Anyone else? Anywhere else? Yes, you also gotta check the blogs, podcasts (really? barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much less occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*Or not… as a web-publication called Just Drinks has asserted that Diageo does not plan to offload beer assets – apparently based on this peak of investigative reporting: a “company spokesperson said: ‘We do not comment on market speculation.’“

The Uncertainty Abounds As Yuletide Looms Edition Of The Beery News Notes

That’s that. Eleven months in the books. Tomorrow? The true Yuletide madness really begins. But before we get all holly jolly, the news in brews this week has not be uplifting. I was surprised last week how much positivity there was. As you will see below, this has not lingered if my reading is to be believed. Except if the British Guild of Beer Writers is to be believed as many of the awards presented last evening were won by familiar friends around these environs: David Jesudason for the treble including best book for sure but also Jessica Mason for business writing as well as Emmie Harrison-West including for communications about diversity and Eoghan Walsh for best self-published plus audio comms as illustrated. I knew them when. Err… read them when. All well deserved. And perhaps better than a silver cup… big congrats to Ruvani de Silva who got her story of the rise of foamy beer published in the lofty pages of the Washington Post:

Foamy beer is a centuries-old European tradition, but in the American market the phenomenon has spread from a nerdy niche to a veritable tidal wave of foam-focused pours across the United States. Increasingly curious drinkers have put bad memories of sticking their fingers into Solo cups at college keg parties behind them and are seeking out the perfect pour, where the presence of beer foam enhances their drinking experience — aided by the arrival of Czech Lukr “side-pour” taps and a new interest in British-style cask engines.

That’s writing for real Bezos bucks, folks. Sweet. Now, remember those successes as we now get back down into the weekly grind. Starting with a question asked by the Morning Advertiser: where have all the pub guides gone… including one published previously by the UK‘s AA Limited, trading as The AA (formerly The Automobile Association)… the people with that nice mod yellow and black logo:

Before you shout “it’s all online now” – it isn’t. People think the AA do everything online but it still produces a book. It’s called The Restaurant Guide and the strapline is written by Janson Atherton, the Michelin-starred chef. So goodbye printed pub guide and hello Michelin man… restaurants ahead of pubs apparently.

The article somewhat confusingly traces the end of the Good Pub Guide which went from being an actual book to an online publication in 2009 and then ceased being updated there in 2021. They also note the loss of the Eating Out in Pubs book which Michelin had put out. Was that one last seen in 2018? Mudgie asks reasonably “is there a decline in the number of people interested in seeking out unfamiliar pubs?” while Matthew noted “I literally had a guide book about pubs published a month a go” as well as:

It also misses the point that the publishing industry has been decimated by both access to free stuff online and inflation making producing high quality print very expensive. This is the toughest I’ve ever known it as a freelancer, I don’t have enough work.

My only quibble is the comment on “free stuff” given paid online came and continues to come from bloggers (even those hiding in those difficult to access newsletters) some of whom decided to get into books and mags starting around 2010-12 and then a few of whom proclaimed themselves “beer experts”, a handful of whom actually are… in specific areas of expertise. We remember that access to audience does not necessarily denote quality in such matters. Consider this sort of made-up cleverness that is less than convincing. We remember too that audience is also no guarantee to reward. Consider now Pete‘s honest sharing this week of the realities of even someone who has voice a voice and topics as well as he has. So the reality is there has only been a living for a few in this area of scribbling. For many it is largely augmented by other income. Most do it for something between love and an itch. What, then, is the “free stuff” in this context I ask… with every sympathy. I do think about that when I read the names of all those shortlisted for last night’s awards.

To make matters even worse, to Matthew’s list I might have also added the sudden wave of crap A.I. generated shit and how (i) it is shit and (ii) how it undermines the expectations of readers, now realizing that some much of the text we encounter is too often A.I. generated shit. Imagine reading this, remembering I used to subscribed to Sports Illustrated. No wonder making a go of it is so hard. [Operative words being, of course, “used to”!] To be fair, I still get The New Yorker and Flagmaster,* international man of mystery that I am, both in physical format. So support those you like if you want to read their writing. And I think about this as well when I read the names of all those shortlisted for last night’s awards.

And yet… and yet… we have to be honest about how layering on that we see the UK bracing for the coming tide of Yule with some sobering… sober… semi-sobered stats out there for the trade, included in this article by James Evison in TDB:

– “the average Brit now drinks… only about 124 pints of beer, which is half the number of 50 years ago“;
– “a third of adults would avoid drinking at Christmas altogether“; and
– “more than half (56%) of 18-34 year olds looking to avoid alcohol over the festive period, compared to a quarter of those aged 55 and over.“

You know, especiallly listening to some blander beer boosting pundits, you would think that something apparently called neo-temperance is to blame and not just a case of folk either finding times tight, wanting to get healthier or finding fun things to do other than getting laced. Like flags, for example. They are fun. Or gardening. Hmm. See, even thought I try to find the uplifting stories for you, I am personally more inclined to sees this all as an overall shift. And a shift towards something else. In Canada as was illustrated neatly by Jason Foster of On Beer who issued some national stats, tracing the plateau and descent that brewing hereabout seems to be experiencing:

…the real story here is the negatives. Nine of 13 jurisdictions report a reduction in the number of breweries per capita (15+). Given that Quebec’s number was previously undereported, there likely isn’t much growth there either. Had I gone with the most recent population data from Q3 of 2023, things would have looked even worse (I didn’t because we can’t get an age breakdown for that dataset). The clear conclusion from this table is that the growth of craft beer has stalled and that with population growth this means the industry is actually starting to fall behind. We are seeing fewer breweries to serve the available market than we did a couple of years ago.

Again with Matthew, he hints at the same thing in the UK, that a reckoning is coming: “speaking to a lot of breweries, so many are up against the wire, even those who may appear on the surface to be thriving, behind the scenes it’s a different picture” so expect to see more exits in early 2024.** While entirely embracing the excellence of folk like Katie at The Glug,*** please ignore some of those “insta expert insider” newsletters while you are at it. There are some amazingly bad takes out there – still! – telling who ever will listen that this is just a blip in the manifest destiny of craft. Seems folk gotta stick to that script. Props gonna prop.

Bad takes and sometimes bad actors. As we see, given the facts as reported, in this simply inspirational if not somewhat defining subtly saucy take****:

Ultimately, Durstewitz says that to expand, Bevana Partners has to stand for quality and reliability in the eyes of wholesalers, retailers, and most importantly, drinkers. Bevana isn’t a household name now, but Durstewitz says the plan for next year is to create marketing materials like shelf talkers that direct shoppers to Bevana brands specifically, which may be grouped together on a shelf.

May. Be. Note to self: don’t jump into something about a decade late with no real plan other than being taker on the take. And of course, there are the tales of the workplace like this piece by Will Ziebell in The Crafty Pint on burnout in the small scale beer industry. It covers a lot of ground that has been explored before but, still, one wonders who has been writing all those not award winning brewery puff pieces and how (or why) they missed what was apparently right there all around them:

During his time in the industry, Tony says expectations around long hours and bad pay were so common that people would talk about it openly during industry events – and not just between sessions over a beer. “I used to go to the conferences and people would be onstage talking about how we’re in the industry because we love it and the pay is going to be shit with long hours,” he says. “That’s within a presentation experienced brewers are giving us, so it felt like we were being set up to put up with this stuff. You can only do that for so long.”

But… but still… even with all that, all the taking and not giving, there is still good stuff. Stuff worthy of awards or at least admiration. Utterly conversely to the above downpour of downers, Alistair wrote about his recent return to Prague where he once had had an extended residency (something like Cher in Vegas?). Upon his review and found a spot he knew:

…I could have stood there all afternoon just gazing at the city that for 10 years I called home, though this time tinged with melancholy. I was missing Mrs V, and the Malé Aličky, and promised myself that next time I come back to Prague, they will be coming with me. Several times as we strolled through the orchards on the side of the hill, I stopped and just listened, marvelling that such peace and quiet is still possible in a major European capital city. Coming off the hill at Ujezd I spied a brewery sign I hadn’t seen in many years, that of Primátor, and then noticed the sign behind it was for one of our old hangouts, Dobrá Trafika.

And then he wrote about the bar snacks, a favourite theme of mine: “…we had nakládaný hermelín, utopenec, and škvarková pomazánka, with classic Šumavský chleb to spread all the unctuous goodness onto.” No, I have no idea either but it sounds great.

Similarly, Martin found lovely scenes in London and published a photo essay worth checking out. And then he found a seat under an arch:

Two great staff (“Enjoy, my friend“), one cask beer, a 6% IPA that will be in my end of year awards. Cool, chewy, gorgeous (4.5). Proof you only need one cask beer on, just as someone once said. Bit quiet, but then it was 4pm and the mile only gets busy from late on Friday, but the rumble of trains above my head and the jazz soundtrack, at perfect volume, sealed the deal for me.

And Pellicle (as Pellicle does) published another interesting story, this week one by Tim Anderson on beer’s adjacent bev sake explaining both the subject and the experience of researching:

At first I’m afraid this might all go over my head, but Shōji and Momiki are both enthusiastic, good-humoured, and most of all, thorough guides. They take me on an in-depth, whirlwind tour of the entire sake-making process. We visit a sacred water source on top of a mountain, we meet the farmer who grows the rice, and the man who grows the kōji used to ferment it. With all of this presented to me, it becomes easier to understand how sake really can be imbued with meaning, and a sense of place that goes deeper than terroir.

See, that’s good stuff. And there’s gotta be more to read that’s not just a grim reminder. Let’s see what’s out there. Jeff left his notes on the plane. Which is a drag sure but it’s not without, you know, being the cause of a shamelessly cheeky and perhaps even insolent rise of an eyebrow:

I arrived at Portland International Airport last night at 11pm, or 2am on the East Coast time to which my body is currently adjusted. I immediately deplaned, leaving my coat with the notes to brewery tours at Jack’s Abby and Sacred Profane tucked in a pocket. By the time I realized the error and returned, efficient Alaska employees had already buttoned up the gate and departed. All of this is a preamble to today’s rare post of newsy bits—and why I’m outsourcing content today. While I wait with fingers crossed to see if the coat comes back to me, let’s chew on these items.

Come back, Jeff’s coat, come back! That’d be good if it did. And places for beer are still opening like Iron Hat in Alberta, like Recluse Brew Works in Washougal, Washington – and like the new beer spa in Sykesville, MD called BierBath and… and… a place in San Francisco called Otherwise Brewing planning to sell only gluten free beer. So it’s still churning along. And beer is cheap at beaches in Turkey. Don’t forget that. And Mr. Protz joined in on the articles on Dark Star’s version of Prize Old Ale adding plenty of detail:

The beer is astonishingly complex. It pours a deep russet brown with a dense collar of foam. The aroma is dominated by a musty note brewers call “horse blanket” with notes of burnt raisin and sultana fruit, wholemeal biscuits, spice and pepper from the hops, with touches of bitter chocolate, espresso coffee, liquorice and butterscotch. The palate has creamy malt, burnt fruit, spicy hops, coffee, butterscotch, liquorice and acidic notes. The finish is bittersweet with sour fruit, peppery hops, chocolate, coffee and butterscotch with a dry and acidic finale.

Holy gambolling gums! Lots going on there in the theatre of that particular maw. All good.

Yet… yet… and yet… the freshly award winning Jessica Mason has opened my mind scientifically speaking to an entirely new branch of concern with this startling health related news:

…there are multiple documented instances in which children diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome were born to mothers who denied that they consumed alcohol during pregnancy… The studies ultimately concluded that chronic male alcohol exposure – defined as consuming more than five drinks per day in a four-hour window – could create the core fetal alcohol syndrome birth defects.

Really? That’s a lot to take in. What’s next? Well, if only go by these stories in chronoligical order (and entirely for Stan) this is what is next: “‘My dog is drunk’ … owner discovers her dog has hit the bottle.”

Fin. We are done. I know I’m done. When you get to the drunk doggie story, you have to be done. Remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (90) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (906) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,427) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (159), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon but BlueSky is catching up. And even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing beer:

*No, you are!… you’re a big dopey loser with weird hobbies… I’m not… I’m not… quit it… stop.
**The medium may be the message but the messages may vary, too. Just look at this week‘s pointed poke at my font of jealousy from Katie: “We were exceptionally lucky—there was one free table. This never happens, I’m sure. We sat down with our almost-finished pints and ordered a roast dinner and a huge plate of venison stew.”
***Yet in Dorset a “brewery in Peaceful Lane will replace a dilapidated chicken coop” defying all the odds after agreeing to no tap room and no on-site sales.
****And those insta-update about the lawsuits are pure gold!

The Clocks Are Changing The Clocks Are Changing Edition Of The Beery News Notes

“…Poop Damn Crap Poop Poopy Crap…”

November. Frig. I never understood why April was the cruellest month when there’s November just a few pages further on in the calendar. What’s so wrong with stirring those “dull roots with spring rain” anyway? Beats the hell out of the prospect of week after week of avoiding frost bite and roadside dead car batteries. This week we went from sunny and +16C on Saturday aft to -4C on Tuesday morning. I filled a bird feeder. I have to fill it again. Those birds are already pissed off with the level of service. And Wednesday we woke to that layer of white shit shown above. Took the photo through the window screen. I would have taken it through the curtain and maybe my bed’s blankets if I could have. I just got that raised bed planted with garlic in time. Poop crap. I even coined a phrase for not drinking this month – Nofunber.

What’s going on with beer? First, Pellicle published an excellent piece on the Double Diamond phenomenon. In the mid-1980s, Double Diamond showed up on keg in my old hometown, the old navy town of Halifax, Nova Scotia around the same time as Guinness did. It was during the beers of the world fad which got going around the same time that the first Maritime micros like the Granite at Gingers and Hanshaus were starting up. Anyway, there are still pals who never really got all that much into beer who still fondly recall the easy sweet taste of Double Diamond at the old Thirsty Duck on Spring Garden Road and how it was tied to the old country:

The name Double Diamond is said to originate from the two interlocking diamond shaped symbols that would have been used to mark cask barrels at the time. And throughout the 1950s all the way through to the 1970s, Double Diamond was one of the best selling beers in the UK. “The rise and fall of [Double Diamond’s] popularity would track the fortunes of the company,” wrote Ian Webster in his book Ind Coope & Samuel Allsopp Breweries: The History of The Hand. “Double Diamond was the leading light, the headline act, the A-list star. It isn’t an overstatement to say that the history of Double Diamond was also the history of the company.” Quite the responsibility to lay on a single beer, is it not?

So… turns we got it pushed out to us after it slumped in the UK. Typical. Read the whole thing to find out why. Excellent writing.

Also excellent is the review by Boak and Bailey of the new and also apparently excellently honest ‘zine edited by the same Rachel Hendry… Service Please!:

There’s also a strand of depressive melancholia: accounts of derailed creative careers, repetitive shifts, and the pressure to perform cosy cheeriness on loop every single day. Even when we’re not being utter dicks, we customers are a wearying lot. In one cartoon, by Ceara Colman, a barista is slowly ground down by one customer after another calling them hun, babe, love…

Trooff, that. And I really liked Alistair‘s post at Fuggles that missed last week’s deadline by a hair. He came upon a brewery in Virginia that has taken the too often ignored concept of an honest beer at an honest price to a new level and explored what the implications of oddly unpopular proposition that value pricing posed:

I am pretty sure this move it going to stir the pot in craft brewing circles in Virginia, especially given the number of breweries where they are changing $7 and upwards for a pint at their taproom… I also love the fact that Tabol don’t shy away from the fact that beer is the everyman drink rather than a niche product for the upper middle classes… [W]here a brewery’s taproom is exactly that, a place to drink a brewery’s beer, in situ, as fresh as fresh could possibly be, without the additional logistical steps that drive up the price, then cheaper than draft or packaged retail should be the norm. If this move drives down the cost of a beer, that is a good thing in my world. After all, isn’t that one of the supposed benefits of increased competition?

Desperate or clever? Hmm… hopefully there will be more on this breaking story from Alistair. Somewhat but not really that connected, Martin visited a university student union that was also a ‘Spoons which is a bit confusing to an auslander like me. I thought the cheapest way to get beer into the hands of students was to have the students sell it themselvesto themselves at their own bars. Is ‘Spoons more efficient than even that?

Speaking of value, there more this week on Russia’s nationalization grab of Carlsberg’s branch operation Baltika:

“There is no way around the fact that they have stolen our business in Russia, and we are not going to help them make that look legitimate,” said Jacob Aarup-Andersen, who took over as CEO in September. Carlsberg had eight breweries and about 8,400 employees in Russia, and took a 9.9 billion Danish crown ($1.41 billion) write-down on Baltika last year. Aarup-Andersen said that from the limited interactions with Baltika’s management and Russian authorities since July, Carlsberg had not been able to find any acceptable solution to the situation.

Err… solution? Maybe leave when the Ukraine was first invaded… in 2014… or when Georgia was invaded… in 2008? Hmm…

Things not being as they seem may also have been the theme at the National Beer Wholesalers Association if their graph shared at Craft Brewing Business is anthing to go by. I’ve edited it for you. Click here. My update makes it much clearer that the “50” level mid-graph is actually indicating zero growth over in the specific US beer market segment. Meaning any sector scoring below the middle is shrinking. Only imports are showing anything like real growth as reported. Craft is taking a beating only saved from the basement by seltzers… which aren’t even beer. Neither are the other big losers ciders, come to think of it. In fact, the story of the graph appears to be that of all beer sectors, craft sales are ditching by far the most drastically. Plenty more than just high level generational demographics making that happen. Especially in a strong US economy.

Speaking of questions, the BBC posed an interesting one this week – “would you drink genetically modified beer?”:

In the UK, GM foods can be authorised by the Food Standards Agency, if they are judged “not to present a risk to health, not to mislead consumers, [and] not to have less nutritional value than their non-GM counterpart”… US brewers using gene-edited yeast in their products is “a secret everyone [in the industry] knows about”… beer makers will rarely promote the fact due to the negative headlines GM technology has received so far. Meanwhile, brewing yeast expert Richard Preiss says that “in the US, you can really do what you want”. He is lab director at Escarpment Labs in Ontario, Canada. It provides more than 300 breweries with yeast, but does not use GM. “You can take [in the States], for example, the genome from basil, and plug it into yeast, and get to market fast with a flavoured beer.”

To be honest, I assume I consume GMOs all the time in my beer. I may grow my own herbs and greens in an all organic yard that a mow with a manual push maching and create special hidey-holes for natitve bees… but my beer? Who knows what crap is in that stuff? Not me! Do you? The question of GMOs in good beer actually strikes me as one of those “journalism / not journalism” beer topics. Much like the silent response to, say, the closing down of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Or, you know, any meaningful discussion of value when it comes to good beer. Just a few of those things that exist in the culture… but no one mentions. Eh. Var.

Converely, Jeff wrote a good piece for VinePair setting out the whole narrative arc in the rise and fall of Hazy IPA – from rare whale to gas station bulk craft – that serves as a good lesson for us all:

The fact that hazy IPAs may have lost some of their cultural power is merely a shadow of the far more significant fact that they have remained so popular for so long. Rather, as they prepare to enter decade two of life, hazies appear to have found equilibrium. Their early success was inflated by oversupply at the small-brewery level, and undersupply nationally, a dynamic that is coming into balance. Their strength remains strong in some regions but less so in others. And they no longer generate the level of excitement that forces people to wait in long lines for the privilege of buying a new release.

It’s been so long since we have had any sort of innovation in craft beer that we forget things like Hazy IPA were once sorta exciting and not just an alt hard seltzer filling the fewer remaining bulk craft shelves at US convenience stores. But these are those times we live in. These be the times. Relatedly, Stan set me a challenge this week in his weekly post on Monday:

Back to “peak of craft.” What does that mean? Is that peak sales? Peak quality? Peak choice? Peak cultural sway? And if the peak has come and gone, how does post-peak beer compare to post-industrial, postmodern, and post-Fordist beer? Can’t wait until Thursday to see if McLeod has answers at A Good Beer Blog.

That call to fess up relates to the cover of the New Yorker from 2014 right there. I mentioned that it had popped up in my FB feed and reminded me of those better days at that time. My response to Stan was that the cover was just the peak point of the cool of craft, the actual brief golden era when there was general public interest and before the wheels had started to come off. Back in 2014, craft was cool. Probably as cool as it would ever be. Now it is in what sociologists call its Sombrero Phase. Still, this all sorta ties into a few other recent posts. Jordan doing a bit of soul searching given the greater picture:

…how am I supposed to write about Craft Beer? Hell, in a situation where everyone is strapped, can you ethically ask for samples for review? Am I going to write about trends? What trends? Someone’s going to put hops or puree in one of the remaining unhopped styles?

Exactly – what trends? The trend of “nothing new” has been the new so long it’s really just the known for the bulk of newbie entrants to the beer buying experience. Jeff was also reflecting and and considers the longer timeline:

Time’s lessons can bring us a certain equanimity about what is important and what merely seems important. On example that has been rising in my mind a lot lately is this one: I don’t need to get worked up about what other people like and, in fact, I can take real pleasure in people who don’t like the things I like. This seems like a banal enough observation—like, really, who cares what beer you drink or car you drive or brand of shoes you wear?

I get it. Both time and the times do wear down upon us. And yet… and yet we still can care even if we aren’t all that cool anymore. Witness Boak and Bailey going on a hobby interest renewal holiday to Berlin and posting some very insightful writing about the observed beer culture there, one about five Pilsners and another about wegbiers – beers bought in small shops for drinking on the way as you walk from one place to another:

… there’s nothing remotely pretentious about these shops. They also sell Monster energy drinks, chocolate bars, ice cream, vapes, and bog roll. That the beers are being sold to drink on the go is underlined by the presence on the counter of a bottle opener. Hand over your cash, knock off the cap, and you’re away. And that’s exactly what people do.

That’s sorta nerdy neato. And Lars had another sort of experience in an alternate reality, too:

My destination: the cheese world championship, where I am to comment on beer/cheese combinations. (I wonder if this might really be national only, though.) So, up there I’m supposed to comment on five cheeses and three beers and how they match. Never tasted any of them before. No idea how this will work out. I guess that worked pretty well. We all of us basically had to just wing it. So you taste the combination and just say whatever comes first to mind.

And The Beer Nut himself did a great job with the keen observational, even self-deprecating wit at the Belgian Beer Challenge, another stop on the Möbius strip of generic international beer awards circuit:

…Belgians, I imagine, are better at this than me…

But… we are told some Belgians were allowed to join in. Which is nice. All of which leads to the question – is there a common aspect to this weirdness? None of it is all that cool, for sure. It’s weird. But is that so wrong? NO – be weird! For now… for us… maybe it’s all just odd enough that good beer still may be a good lens to view this life’s rich pageant or at least good for a laugh – even if it is sometimes at its own expense.

There we are. Hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves once again. Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. But beware! Mr. Protz lost his Twex account and his 27,000 followers this week. Update on my emotional rankings? Now, for me Facebook remains clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (77) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (900) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,434) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (168), with unexpectly crap Threads (41) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon. And even though (even with the Halloween night snows) it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing beer, :

Anyone else? Anywhere else? Yes, you also gotta check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Here’s a new newsletter recommendation: BeerCrunchers. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

The Almost Sweater Weather Edition of Beery News Notes

See that up there? That’s the news of the week. Maybe news of the week last week but are you really the news of the week if you don’t stretch it out to two weeks? That’s a crop from Kat Sewell‘s image from Les Twits and it is one of many out there. Everyone is fascinated in the UK with blue and white cardboard suitcases apparently. On BlueSky, it’s the easy-to-carry box that makes the deal according to B+B… but then we learned of this sad take from one unhappy Pete:

You’re quite possibly right. However by contrast, the box I picked up was damaged and required two hands to carry it. I then had to transport it on my push bike. I ditched the box in the store bin and carried all 10 bottles (loose) in my back pack. It was quite heavy.

Update: there was a yesterday post on Belgian Smaak by Eoghan that Jordan pronounced “It’s some of the best writing I’ve read this year on any subject” so I better include a link here. It’s on the Belgian tram line I believe I mentioned a few months back. But Eoghan has way more detail in his story “Flavour Track — A Culinary Crawl On Belgium’s Coastal Tram“:

…my early morning train from my home in Brussels—skating past wet, flat polder fields with pitched roof village steeples occluded by an early morning mist—terminates in the village of Adinkerke and its well-proportioned brick train station. From here, the sea is a 45 minute walk through corn fields and acorn-strewn dunes, where the entrance to Belgium is marked by a Leonidas chocolate shop housed in a former customs station. By the time the train pulls into the sidings at Adinkerke the mist has congealed into a fine rain. Fortunately, there are already two trams waiting to start their journeys up the coast.

Nice! What else is making folks happ-happ-happy? Kids in pubs? Really? This spot near Manchester apparently hopes so:

It’s wonderful to head out to a countryside pub for a cool drink on a sunny day – but for those without a car, public transport options are often quite limited in getting to some of the region’s prettiest villages. But it’s not something you have to worry about when heading to Mobberley in Cheshire – where there’s a brilliant village pub right next to the train stop. The Railway Inn (in a nod to its convenient location) has been widely acclaimed with both CAMRA beer awards in recent years, as well as with rave reviews from visitors on Tripadvisor. Reviews from this year hail it as a “hidden gem” with its huge beer garden and brilliant play areas for kids. The pub also boasts its own bowling green.

Seems like a huge investment on the pub’s part. To make youg families happy. Kids are great. Right? Not always if the news out of New York City is to be believed:

A crime tale straight out of Charles Dickens is unfolding in the Big Apple — with adults “directing” children who appear no older than 10 to steal from unsuspecting businesses, witnesses told The Post. The chubby-cheeked crooks have terrorized bars on the east and west side of Manhattan and Brooklyn for months, graduating from snatching money in unattended bags to stealing cash from open safes in at least two watering holes in the last few weeks, according to workers and owners. In many cases, the kids at first try to solicit money to raise money for their “basketball team,” and then run amok.

OK, what else… is this a bad idea or a good one? Announcing you are raising pub prices to deal with those times of the week with busier workloads?

Britain’s biggest pub chain has started charging its customers 20p extra for a pint during busy trading periods. Stonegate Group, which owns more than 4,500 pubs across the UK, has begun adding a surcharge at peak times at 800 of its sites across the country. A ‘polite notice’ in one Stonegate pub said ‘dynamic pricing is currently live in this venue during this peak trading session’. The sign says the surcharges will pay for extra staff, extra cleaning, plastic pint glasses, and ‘satisfying and complying with licensing requirements’. The notice explains that ‘any increase in our pricing today is to cover these additional requirements.’

It’s referred to as dynamic pricing and it is not receiving a warm welcome: “Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer group, called the move troubling…” Wow, there’s a strong statement. The proprietor of the Ypres Castle himself is not clear on the point at all and goes even further: “It’s utterly weird, isn’t it. Surely the thing to have done was to raise prices overall but introduce long happy hours, achieving the same thing but spinning it positively.” Wetherspoon pubs are doing the opposite – lowering the price – but just for one day:

It’s that time of year again when all Wetherspoon pubs slash all food and drink by 7.5 per cent. The annual move is to highlight the benefit of a permanent VAT reduction in the hospitality industry. And that means that if you pop into a Wetherspoon’s on Thursday, September 14, then, to mark Tax Equality Day, you will get some money knocked off. That means a customer who spends a tenner will only pay £9.25 for example. Wetherspoon’s founder and chairman, Tim Martin, said: “The biggest threat to the hospitality industry is the vast disparity in tax treatment among pubs, restaurants and supermarkets.

And while you are out there looking for bargains, just be clear about the rules:

This is incredible. A Wisconsin bar offered free drinks if the Jets lost. After Rodgers went down, they started running up their tabs. The news was live when the jets won in overtime and everyone realized they had to pay.

Finally on the question of value (and by the way is it is so great to have gotten to the era that we can talk about value without some semi-pro consulto-journo beer writer jumping in to play the broken record “you can’t put a price on experience!!!“) – finally on the question of value… Boak and Bailey asked about the linger legacy of value pricing at Sam Smith’s:

When people on Trip Advisor are still advising tourists to go to Samuel Smith pubs for good value food and beer, however, there’s clearly a mismatch between reality and reputation. We might also be more relaxed about these prices if we felt they were covering the costs of a good pub experience but… Dirty glassware. Glum service. Grim atmosphere. Evidence of a death spiral, perhaps?

Spicy!!! But enough of your obsessions with filthy lucre. Time to go all ag and to that end Stan has reported in from the hopyards on the effects of climate change before taking a bit of a break over the next few weeks:

The photos at the top and bottom were taken in USDA research fields near Prosser, Washington. The babies in the seedling field (top) are cute, don’t you think? The odds are very much against them ending up with a name and being used to brew beer. But if that happens, farmers will know they are agronomically prepared to survive in a climate wild hop plants in Mongolia did not know five million years ago. A constant topic of discussion last week was the Great Centennial Disaster. In recent years, farmers in the Yakima Valley have harvested about seven to eight bales of Centennial per acre planted. This year, some fields produced only two-plus bales per acre. Not every field was such a disaster, but when the USDA releases harvest data in December the results will not be pretty.

More on this phenomenon in The New York Times where Catie Edmondson providing extended coverage from the hop fields of Spalt, Germany:

The plant is so central to the town’s culture that signs advertising “Spalter Bier” can be found on nearly every street, many of them hanging from the half-timbered, red-roof houses that were built hundreds of years ago to store and dry hops. But the crop and those timeworn traditions are being threatened like never before. The culprit is climate change. The promise of a warming, drier climate has dealt a brutal hand to the hops industry across Europe. But it has been especially ruthless to Spalter, a crop that has sustained this tidy town of 5,000 in southern Germany for centuries.

And Martin continues his quest for pubs but took a break to go to a rainy music fest where he and herself still found their way down country lanes to a pub:

One of the annual traditions at End of the Road, along with watching Mrs RM put the day tent up while we watch and spilling curry down our new T-shirts, is a half hour walk along the narrow lanes to the Museum for a pint of Sixpenny’s 6d Best in a proper glass. Yes, missing last food orders (which seem earlier each year) is also a Retired Martin tradition. So this time we earmarked Saturday lunchtime for a visit, and with the promise of morning WiFi we set off at 10:30 on the “jumping into hedge to duck incoming lorries” routine. It’s worth it for the thatch.

Nice. Similarly but without all the hassles of the actual travel, Gary continued his wanderings around the pubs of the UK in the mid-1900s with this post about a 1940 exhibition of paintings at the National Gallery in Britain on the Blitz including this scene from Wales:

Perhaps, then, the pub next to theh Masonic Hall was St. Ives, also known as St. Ives Inn. Or if not it was presumably one of the other four known to have traded on Caer Street before 1939. Whichever pub it was, one can only hope that it wasn’t occupied when Hitler’s bomb fell. The Masonic Hall, for its part was not occupied; Swansea Masons had shut its doors a few years earlier when they moved to a new location.

It reminds me of how common “getting blitzed” is for slang among my pals. Speaking of which, Cookie wrote a post this week, about the Hillgate Mile pub crawl in and around Stockport:

The hillgate mile was many years ago an iconic pub crawl in and around Stockport. A strip with a high density of pubs that had come about to service high density housing and factories in the area. Much of that housing had become flats and many factories closed and with it the need for so many pubs. The area and its pubs was in decline when I first encountered it and whilst now there has been a revitalisation of the area with new build nicer looking flats there will never be demand for that number of pubs again. It was noted not only for the number of pubs but the variety of brewers that owned pubs under the tied system.

His remembrances about these sorts of endings are worth the read. And reminded me that a few weeks ago, I cast doubts upon the notion that in Britain “Cask is the only beer poured beneath the bar where you can’t see what’s going on and this greatly adds to the uncertainty around it.” Is it really about the show that draws people into pubs, that they are now missing out on? Well, a form of that notion appears to have maybe crossed an ocean if this observation in GBH is to be believed as a major factor in the continuing decline of draft… something that has been on the steady decline for decades:

Draft beer, even when brewed by a multinational beer company, absorbs context from its setting: the bartender who poured it, the adjacent guest on the barstool, the glassware in which it’s served. Adding a humble orange slice to a glass of Blue Moon elevated the way millions of U.S. drinkers thought about beer. In packaged form, beer has fewer tools to pitch itself to drinkers. It works with the same set of variables as any other beverage in a can or bottle, whether wine or pre-made cocktails or hop water.

I am pretty sure that is not the problem, people no longer hankering for an orange slice and a stranger on the next barstool. Again, its only about the relative value proposition and, as with cask lovers in the UK, dive bar beer drinkers are just not as big a part of the population, maybe just because they have found something else to do. Sober up. Collect stamps. Get a happier family life. Netflix. Something. I am also very mindful of the frank words of Katie Mather in her newsletter The Gulp! this week on the closing of her bar Corto:

I want to be clear about the reality of opening a bar like Corto in a small, rural town—even one as permanently lauded in the national press as being the “ideal beer staycation destination”. Last week we opened and drank three bottles of Riesling worth £100 because after three attempts to drum up interest in a tasting event (which we have been repeatedly told by well-meaning folks that we should do more of) only two people came along. The world of premium and craft drinks is not what it was, or what we believe it to be. I sell three times as much basic organic Tempranillo as I do orange wine or sour beers.

In another sort of ending, Andrew Cusack in The Spectator considers the his low alcohol coping mechanism in his remembrances of Sam Smith’s now departed, his beloved Alpine Lager:

Sam Smith’s Brewery has sadly failed to realise the strength of Alpine’s weakness. There has been a downward trend of the main lagers, such as Carlsberg which has reached 3.8 (and which has announced they will move down to 3.4 this year as well) and Fosters at 3.7 per cent. But almost nothing exists in the peak quaffable-but-still-tasty range of 2 to 3 per cent. Many of Sam Smith’s loyal customers will mourn the passing of the Alpine decade and hope that some other brewery might take note of the open territory before them.

Over at Pellicle, Ruvani de Silva has written about a lager in England which is dedicated to the Windrush generation as well as the people and the process behind its development:

If that sounds like a lot to pack into one beer, that’s because it is. Robyn, however, talks passionately about how immigration has shaped her, her family, and her community, consolidating and distilling her thoughts and feelings into brewing a beer that she wants to speak for those experiences, and to resonate with those both inside and outside the Caribbean diaspora.

On this side of the Atlantic, the hippytown of Guelph, Ontario has announced one of the more attractive beer bus deals as Jordan explains:

Running September 16, October 14, November 18, and December 16, the beer bus is a great solution to the logistical problems behind your next afternoon pub crawl… Five breweries, more than five dozen beers on tap, two full food menus to choose from, buses running once an hour, and the best part is that it’s free! Donations are accepted on the bus and proceeds go to a scholarship fund at the Niagara College Brewing program. If you can think of something better to do with your Saturday afternoon than go to Guelph, I’d like to hear about it.

Free! Free is good. Except free runnings. Unexpectely free. Which leads us, finally, to the saddest drinky clinky video of the week: “Streets flooded with wine after tanks burst at Levira, Portugal distillery.” Here is the background:

This is the moment a flood of red wine surged down a street in Portugal after two massive tanks with enough booze to fill a swimming pool burst. Winemakers Levira Distillery were due to bottle the 2.2 million litres when the giant tanks suddenly gave way in Sao Lourenco do Bairro on September 10. Video footage showed a huge, fast-moving river of red wine flowing down a hill and around a bend as baffled locals look on.

Yikes! And that is that. Done. Still no drunk elephant stories this week. I looked again. I really tried, Stan. Still, as per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Got on BlueSky this week and added it to my IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a deservedly dormant Patreaon presence. I am multi! I am legion!! Yet totally sub. All in all, I still am preferring the voices on Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything) including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!