Category: Beer Shopping

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Week Three… I Think… Maybe

It’s now April so I think we may be well into the third week of the kids at home and limited public travel. The working life of a municipality has been fairly breakneck but we are all in this together.  Not much time for either the beer or the blog… which puts a bit of a damper on beer blogging. But, as with last week, beer has again be delivered – this time from our own and excellent Stone City Ales where the staff have been heroes* – so let’s see what we can find, shall we?

There are a lot of brave positive statements being made in the beer trade out there, this sort of thing found in the spam filter included:

With the number of breweries, tasting rooms, restaurants and bars closed across the country, we want to remind you that retailers such as grocery stores and bottles shops currently remain a viable way to shop for beverages while practicing social distancing. We also encourage the use of online delivery services as a responsible option in those states where available.

This is good but, at some point, also unnecessary for every point in the supply chain to issue.  We are probably at that point.  The messaging now needs to be stay in place and see you at the other end when the shift in the industry can be reassessed. Me, I hope this new home delivery in Ontario becomes a norm.

On Wednesday, Jordan posted a piece on how the virus and staying in place was affecting one of the less unloved sectors in the beer trade, contract brewers:

Contract Brewing is a fraught subject, but preserving the companies that are doing it has an upside in the face of this 12 week lockdown that the city of Toronto has imposed. There are a number of existing companies that depend on the contracts to fill their volume. Junction Brewing produces both Paniza and True History. Storyteller is produced at Brunswick in Toronto. If those contracting companies fail, there is a knock on effect which causes a decrease in volume at those larger facilities. 

A wee bit of brewing history was discussed last weekend when reports came out of a stash of Victorian era beer found in a UK archaeological dig at a former site of Tetley’s Brewery:

Buried treasure isn’t always the stereotypical chest of gold coins: In the case of a recent British archaeological dig, it turned out to be an enormous stash of beer. Last month, while digging on the site of the former Tetley’s Brewery, in the Northern English city of Leeds, archaeologists from the West Yorkshire Archaeological Services (WYAS) discovered a neatly-stacked stash of over 600 bottles — many of which were still full…

Not sure I want to drink any of the stuff. Moving to the eye on the near future, Stan released the latest issued of his regular newsletter on the state of a key corner of the trade, Hop Queries.  It included this passage on the state of hop farming as Covid-19 moves through the marketplace:

Brewers hope to be in a better position to make predictions for the rest of 2020 before long, but hops are agriculture and farmers can’t wait. As Gayle Goschie at Goschie Farms in Oregon wrote, “Mother Nature has her calendar and we coordinate our needed seasonal work around what the year’s weather brings us.” Although she and the office team are working from home, field work is continuing at normal pace. “Having 40-50 employees spread over 500 acres of hops has us practicing social distancing to the max.”

Back to today, the man called Protz wrote about an age-old question – why is UK cask ale so modestly priced:

I disagree with James Calder on the need to “premiumise” – ugly word — real ale. I cannot accept that cask beer should be seen as the drink of choice of the better-off. It was clear to me that one reason the Wat Tyler in Dartford was busy on a damp, cold Tuesday lunchtime in March was that its captive audience was made up of people who couldn’t afford more than £3.50 for a pint.

Also with a thumb on the pulse of the moment, on Monday Bart of the BA sent out some stats showing a shift in US beer sales was clearly occurring, with the theme being “all beer up“!

IRI scan data from the week ending 3-22 is in & it was another big week for off-premise as consumers stocked up and replaced on-premise purchases. BA Craft up 31.1% by volume versus the same week YA. All beer up 30.7%.

And a wonderful story out of central New York state this week with those whose employment affected by the reduction of work doing the unexpected:

Four of the laid-off workers — tasting room managers Cassie Clack, Barb Lewis, Alanna Maher and Janelle Reale — had a surprise. They’d reached out to dozens and dozens of current and former tasting room staff at the winery and urged them to come together — or as together as they can under social distancing. Then they led a 70-car caravan to the winery at 623 Lerch Road to pick up the wines and beers they’d been ordering all week.

Good stuff. And there was more – as of Tuesday, like so many other craft beverage firms with a distiller’s kit, BrewDog had made a significant contribution to the fight against the virus:

Jill & Leanne, NHS Ambulance Service, picking up 1,000 bottles of free @BrewDog sanitiser today for their frontline team. We have donated over 100,000 bottles to key workers and charities so far.

And finally Ron the Honest has posted a number of posts about his recent junket to Brazil describing events as they were and perhaps not how they are always presented:

I’m up much earlier than I would have liked. 7 AM. As the car taking me and Martyn to where we’re talking is scheduled for 7:50. And I want to have time for brekkie. Martyn trolls up a few minutes after me.

“I don’t expect to see many judges at my talk. They’ll all still be in bed. Pissheads.”  “That’s a bit harsh, Ron.” “Count how many turn up. You’ve more chance as you’re on an hour later.”

Folk think I have a bug in my ear over this junket stuff but having been on a few way back when I primarily find it entertaining, especially as Ron describes it. More fun than productive. Like all these meetings we now know could have been emails. Except a good serving of fun with a side dish of the same small circle. But fun is good.

Remember – even in these troubled times – there is more beer news every week with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Keep hunkering! We got this.

Welcome To The 2020s Edition Of Beery News Notes

I think I lost about three days over the last week. I mean I didn’t notice them slip by at all. It wasn’t any happy haze of a drunken hour or anything. Just the slow drip drip drip of the chocolate assortment boxes being passed around the rooms filled with cousins-in-law, nephews and the pets of others. I was practically temperate all weeks as a matter of fact. Thanks to Katie, I watched the first season of the Detectorists  on DVD – which earned me the stink-eye from our eldest for, again, not having Netflicks.  [See, I didn’t even know it is spelled “Netflix”!]  So, needless to say, I have no real news updates to share.

First up, the blogger known as Wee Beefy had a bit of a sharing post on Boxing Day:

…regular and more astute readers may be aware that since my stroke and more so since my recent brain injury, memories, whatever they are, have not been very high up on my agenda. Longer term readers may also note that throughout the nearly ten year history of my blog, accurate memories of liquids consumed and other aspects of crapulence have thus far regularly escaped me, or at the very least, presented themselves in my memory through a dizzying, contorted haze. So last night, when it took me an hour to find and recall the name of Yorkshiremen the grumbleweeds (not a pub), I was prompted to write.

I’ve actually wondered to myself what, after 17 years of this sort of writing hobby,  might happen were I to have a similar change of life. I assume I would not keep writing. Good to see someone not making that mistake.  I will be reading to see what I can learn.

Jeff at Beervana posted a great scrapbook… album… post… of the favourites among his beery photos.

And to the visual accompaniment of The Beer Nut* on New Year’s Eve, Stephen Beaumont himself concurrently tweeted an excellent and pointed set of wishes for 2020 including:

6) That more breweries operating tap rooms realize that in so doing they are in the hospitality game, and start creating spaces in keeping with that understanding. Also, treating their customers with respect and appreciation. 6/11…

8) That fining and filtration stop being viewed as sins. Yes, hazy works, cloudy works, but there is also nothing wrong with a brilliantly clear beer. 8/11

Switching vices, this is an interesting take from the Beeb on the lack of change that cannibals (aka dope)  becoming legal had on Canadian society:

There were early signs of trouble. When cannabis became legal on 17 October 2018, there wasn’t enough supply to meet the demand. Long lines and backlogs of online orders plagued consumers. Producers weren’t sure what strains would be most popular where, and kinks in the distribution chain were still being ironed out… Where there was once a shortage, now producers have too much product, in part because of the lack of retail. 

The story goes on to say that while we Canucks bought 11,707 kilograms in Sept 2019, about 165,000 kilograms of finished and unfinished products was ready for sale. Frankly, I know of no one who picked up the habit and hear of plenty who still buy off the illegal unregulated market at a much lower price.

On the one hand, I suppose this is entirely good news for Evan and the other authors… but on the other I am not sure why it is news. A gratuitous gift just seems odd. So I trust per word rates will also go up for 2020.

And speaking of curated community, Beth has noted an important limitation on “curation” of “community” – two concepts I have never had much time for: everyone and everything should not be welcome just because sales increase, numbers increase or popularity increases. Things can be bad, especially around alcohol.

You will be happy to know that craft beer is booming in Saskatchewan:

…the major trends right now are hazy New England IPA-style beers, and fruit and sour beers. The hazy beers “are generally very juicy in flavour and they offer a big citrus flavour,” Gasson said. The fruit and sour beers range from very tart to having almost no tartness depending on the style. Gasson thinks those trends will continue, but he also sees more traditional IPAs — that may appeal to a broader audience — making a comeback.

This illustrates the paper-doll moment that good beer is in now. Swap out Saskatchewan for Alabama or Aberdeen and the same sameness applies. Some call it a golden era. It’s conformity. Perhaps even self-censorship.

Contrast that with Gary Gilman who has again added again to our collective substantive experience of beer history with a post on the unrelated brewing Reinhardts of Ontario and Quebec 170 years ago in a series of three posts, including this from the last:

On August 31, 1889, a box ad for the brewery, about 2″x 2″, appeared in Toronto’s The Globe & Mail (institutional access or paywall). The brewery was called Berlin Brewery, with a statement that “E.V. Reinhardt, Prop.”, was “manufacturer of the celebrated Berlin lager” on Queen Street. The ad was in a group of ads from town merchants that accompanied a multi-page feature on Berlin life and industry. Seemingly the business was on a good footing at this time. One imagines that the Toronto Reinhardts were not thrilled to read this over breakfast in their home city. True, it was small beer in relation to them, but as an outpost of an older, well-established Montreal brewery, they probably experienced disquiet over it, apart from seeing “their” name used by someone else.

Elsewhere this week, The Beer Nut* has published his Golden Pint Awards for 2019. This is a thing started by those who have since drifted away into more successful modes of human existence but, along with some really clever wit in the comments section, it’s nice to see a bit of Windows XP era nostalgia being clung onto:

This month makes it ten years since Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg suggested categories that beer bloggers might like to use for an annual run-down of the best in beer. I’ve stuck with it steadfastly since, even if I do change my criteria for the winners each year, and sometimes during the process of writing that year’s entry. It’s not meant to be taken seriously or considered meaningful, is what I’m saying.

[Edit: an earlier entry by Boak and Bailey should be noted, too, as should be the fact they have not posted for two weeks. PANIC!!!!]

Stan‘s latest Hop News by Email! (aka “the HNBE”) newsletter came out this week  and it was a great addition to the beer news chit chattery, including:

Attendees filled out provided evaluation sheets, giving beers a score of 0-5 in seven categories (floral, spicy/herbal, woody/resin/pine, citrus, vegetal/onion/garlic, red fruits, tropical fruit). This certainly was not scientific. The sheets were intended to enhance the experience for attendees more than provide peer reviewable feedback. This was not a trained panel, there was no calibration and it would be silly to present you with a cumulative radar chart for each of the beers. So I won’t. Instead, a couple of overall observations:

Now, based on the above I am not going to make any large observations about my thinking this was all a bit…err… detectorist** but I will leave you to the more fundamental questions of why it is that (i) men like hobbies and (ii) all hobbies eventually bear a strong resemblance to other hobbies.

Note: I drove from the 1780s to the 1840s bit of Ontario on our holiday drive in a Ford Transit mini-bus, passing the Fryfogle Tavern each way. Alarmingly lovely, I always look behind it as we drive by to get a glimpse of where Tiger Dunlop drank in a leanto in the 1820s. Up there at the top is an image actually tweeted alongside the note “John Severn, Brewery, Yonge St., northeast corner Church St.” indicating perhaps that it may well have been painted by Tom Thompson. Which would be lovely.  It was actually apparently painted by Frederic Victor Poole, however. Which is still lovely. Two bits on Ontario’s pre-temperance existence in one paragraph. Beat that, 2020 guess-timate articles.

I must admit to not having much interest in the people who will make the news in beer in 2020 given, as science of yore has explained clearly, they are always about people identified as such in 2019 or earlier. My prediction? 2020 will clearly be best known for the Pellicle-GBH mid-year Asian land wars. We already have a sense of who the loser may… err, will be. And we’ll have plenty more of the really great pro beer writing. That’s always guaranteed.

Somewhat similarly, I can’t think of a better example of underwhelming fact finding than this article in Forbes which seemingly relies exclusively on old big craft brewery owners or executives posing as a “cross-section” assessing how we got to the current market as “beer experts” – a term without meaning in itself – here used to suggest that somehow they are not just players with a possibly fading interest.  Consider this:

…according to Schuhmacher, all of that capex spending could become a problem in the years to come. “The next decade will reveal a tremendous amount of excess brewing capacity, which will drive closures, consolidation, and lower pricing,” he said.

As we know,*** this actually was the tale of 2018 which accelerated in to 2019. We are well down this path. In my own town we are three breweries down compared to a year ago. A healthy retraction. But, again, remembering presented as forecasting. Who saw tree hug leftie New Belgium selling to the pals of the right wing military dictatorship? Now that would have been forecasting!

Should grocery stores selling beer have designated beer aisles as opposed to loss leader end placements? Recovering alcoholics might prefer it:

…it’s “inappropriate” to be displaying alcoholic beverages in grocery aisles alongside basic food items, including products that are marketed to children. “Alcohol is not a normal commodity. It makes you intoxicated. It’s a psychoactive substance. It’s a Group 1 carcinogen. So, from the point of view of a child seeing alcohol in a grocery store, it normalizes a substance which is not the same as the other products that are in that grocery store.”

Hmm… that actually seems reasonable.

So, there… another year and another decade.  It is now The Twenties.  The decade near at the end of which I get a pension.  There’s a cheery thought. As you contemplate that, don’t forget to check in with Boak and Bailey’s on Saturdays, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too.

*JOHN!!! HIS NAME IS JOHN AND HE IS A HUMAN BEING!!!!
**For the next three weeks I shall so compare all things in life’s rich pageant.
***Come for the news, stay for the gratuitous slag!

The End Of November’s Thursday Beery News Notes

I won’t miss getting past November. The worst month in my year. Damp and dreary. I mourn the end of the garden, the shortening of the days. The death of parsley. While Katie may have pointed us to a more healthy approach to November, I know too well that just a month from now, nearing the end of December, we’ll start feeling the days just slightly lengthening even it the cold is deepening. I took Monday off as I am still due about three weeks away from the office this year and drove off looking for signs. Just after noon, I found one on that dirt road up there. On the south side of Bloomfield, Ontario in Prince Edward County. It’s the last few hundred yards to the rolling idled farmer’s field across from Matron Fine Beer. I stocked the pantry with some jolly juice for Yule. Clever me.

Speaking of the hunt, Boak and Bailey may have found a small redoubt in the battle for more mild assisted by those behind the lyrically titled BADRAG:

Tasting notes on mild, like tasting notes on ordinary lager, can be a struggle, like trying to write poetry about council grit bins. Good mild is enjoyable and functional but, by its nature, unassuming, muted and mellow. Still, let’s have a go: dark sugars and prune juice, the body of bedtime cocoa, hints of Welsh-cake spice, and with just enough bite and dryness to make one pint follow naturally into the next.

I actually have to write bits of essays about council grit bins once in a while at work but never poems.

Never thought we would need a beer cooler for keeping beer cool when ice fishing out on a wintery lake in Saskatchewan frozen a foot thick but this is actually a clever idea. It keeps the beer from freezing.

The decade photo challenge as posted on behalf of IPA. I wonder if IPA will sue for defamation or whether the law’s recent dim view of chicken not being entirely chicken will deter such reckless? Speaking of the laws of Canada, drunk driving in Quebec now carries a new serious penalty:

Starting Monday, Quebec motorists convicted of drunk driving twice in 10 years will have to blow into a breathalyzer every time they start a car — for the rest of their lives. Their licence will be branded so any intercepting police officer will know to inspect the driver’s ignition for an interlock device — a piece of equipment that prevents the car from starting if the driver’s estimated blood alcohol concentration is above the legal limit.

To my east across the ocean, Mr Protz alerted us all to the closing of a pub that has been in place for about 750 years, the Cock Inn “situated on an upward slope on the north side of a tributary of the river Sence” as reported in the Leicester Mercury:

One of the oldest inns in England built in about 1250 AD, it witnessed the preparation and aftermath of the Battle of Bosworth Field and the death of Richard III and the start of the Tudor reign. The notorious highwayman Dick Turpin would return here after working the Watling Street, taking refuge in the bar chimney, stabling his horse in the cellar when pursuit was close at hand.

Interesting to note the nature of its feared fate: “…hope it will reopen and not become a house, as many village pubs do.” Still on the pubs, Retired Martyn has ticked all the GBG 2020 pubs in Glasgow but on the way made something of an admission about a distraction:

Yes, by the Tim Horton Christmas Spiced Caramel Brownie and a medium filter. I read that “nearly eight out of 10 cups* of coffee sold across Canada are served at Tim Hortons restaurants and more than 5.3 million Canadians – approximately 15 percent of the population – visit the café daily“, and Canadians are never wrong. Most of them.

Who knew? And he visited Greenock, the paternal ancestral seat, too. Great photo essays as always. The Pub Curmugeon prefers to work similar themes in text.

I was confused by a thread about CAMRA discount cards this week, accused of being  out of date, faithless to the true cause and a money grab… but then there seems to be no way to replace them in terms of the good they do. It stated with this:

I’m a CAMRA member & I work in a brewery. CAMRA needs to address the corrosive paradox of claiming that real ale is ‘the pinnacle of the brewers art’ while promoting discount schemes for cask beer. So I’ve drafted an AGM motion & explanation.

Discount? Doesn’t that mean well priced? Speaking of which, is beer about to get cheaper in Sweden?

Sweden’s state-run alcohol monopoly chain Systembolaget is planning to cut the costs of its cheapest beer from next year. The cheapest beer sold at Systembolaget today costs 8.40 kronor ($0.87). But next year it plans to launch two new kinds of canned beer for less than 6.90 kronor… the plans, which are meant to compete with border trade, that is Swedes travelling across the border to Denmark and Germany to stock up on crates of cheap beer.

The wonders of scale. Big entities can do great things, can’t they. Just consider this story on beer and the environment:

Anheuser-Busch, in partnership with Nikola Motor Company and BYD Motors, completed their first ever ‘Zero-Emission Beer Delivery’ in the company’s hometown of St. Louis — utilizing both companies’ innovative fleet technology to deliver beer from the local Anheuser-Busch brewery to the Enterprise Center using only zero-emission trucks.

Imagine! Using the word “innovation” and not referring to copycat alcopop IPAs!

Finally, I am not sure I want legalized beer corkage opportunities. Just another argument I don’t need. Go out where you want and spend the money at the place.  Don’t bring your own cutlery either.

There. A quieter week in these parts. But a busy one at work so there you go. Busier still soon enough, too, what with the last month of the decade comes the inevitable “best off” lists. I myself sorta did one at the end of 2009, at least painting a picture of where things stood.  I’ll have to think about what I’d say ten years on… other than wondering where the time went. Where did it went…

In the meantime,  there’s more news at Boak and Bailey’s on Saturday, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And look for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too.

 

The Thursday Beer Notes For A Week Or So From My Summer Vacation

There is a certain something in the air. The sound of back to school ads? The fear of seeing a pumpkin ale on a store shelf? Summer is winding up. Harvest has begun, as MacKinnon has pointedly pointed out.  I was out there in the trenches… err… ditches in 2018. Looking forward to their Harvest Ale this fall.

Not entirely unconnectedly, we were up in Ottawa last weekend visiting with eldest before it does and one of the best moments was a pint of London Pride. The middle one has been working at a craft brewery this summer and it was very instructive to watch him take a sip. He has been canning contracted and the brewery’s own stock of beer since May, coming back coated with the stuff. He has tried many brands. But he didn’t know what to make of London Pride, asking what that taste was. It wasn’t fruity. It’s an actual ale, I said.

I thought of that when I read this from The Beer Nut on Wednesday in one of his inordinately regular, lengthy review posts:*

My only other Irish beer for today’s post was from YellowBelly, a brown porter named Chewbaccale, in defiance of the Walt Disney Corporation. It is, fittingly, a big lad, at 6% ABV. It’s all about the balance: a touch of roast, but not too much, and a splash of caramel, but not too much of that either. It’s incredibly satisfying to drink, in that way you only get from brown malt. A little weaker would perhaps make it even better, but might also make it Touching the Scald. Either way, I’d love to see lots more beer like this around.

I was also thinking about this when I chatted with Jordan last Friday morning as I sat in the yard on a day off:

Does Beer develop or just change? Not priggery. “Develop” might suggest (i) progression, (ii) intention. As The Beak of the Finch shows, evolution causes both loss + gain. Each are just results of pre-existing qualities that succeed or fail in new contexts…

My point was illustrated by the idea that it is impossible to have a general global English pale ale fad before 2022 as there just aren’t the hops to support it. Fruit-ee-oh favoured hops control the world. Stan had confirmed that peak Fuggles in the US was achieved in 1930. No wonder TBN longs for more traditional British ale flavours. No wonder my son the brewery worker did not recognize the taste. Hmm. Have traditional British styles become so rare abroad that we have to think of them like Belgian beers in the 1970s?

Elsewhere, something called The Suffolk Gazette posted results of a study that suggest that drinking beer makes men more intelligent:

Boffins at Suffolk’s prestigious College of Medicine found men who drink at least five pints of ale a day were far better equipped to hold high-level discussions about important issues of the day. And blokes on the beer were also more adept at completing brain tasks like finishing cryptic crosswords and solving complicated mathematical equations. The surprising findings will be music to the ears of boozers across Britain, who have been insisting beer is good for them since the drink was first invented in 1937.

Oh, it’s a joke. Speaking of which, Stan posted the picture to the right on Twitter and heard from the crowd: “That store is NO JOKE. He must have $60k+ in bottled beer stock in there.” Which sounded pretty general to me.  This sort of thing interested me in 2006. Do people still drop $300 after driving for hours? Do they have kids?

Did you know that Ontario has a deli meat cold cuts competition every two years? I wan’t that press pass. But the judging took place a couple of weeks ago so I will have to wait until 2021.

The Master Brewers podcast posted an episode entitled “Breathe, Breathe, Breathe, Scream” about brewer Kerry Caldwell who overcame the 34% chance of survival calculated by the hospital after she was injured in 2015 when a brew kettle boiled over at a brewery where she formerly worked. They also discuss improving brew house safety by adding a cut-off mechanism that would avoid her sort of incident.

The Beer Nut** has yet again alerted me to a matter of good ecclesiastic practice. In Cork, Ireland one priest is a bit fed up with folk bringing beer and other personal relics of the deceased to funerals:

Fr Tomas Walsh, who has previously spoken out about Godless Godparents and disrespecting the Holy Eucharist, has criticised behaviour he has seen at funerals. Writing in the weekly Gurranabraher newsletter, Fr Walsh said inappropriate memorabilia is being brought up to the altar at funeral Masses. “Bringing things such as a can of beer, a packet of cigarettes, a remote control, a mobile phone, or a football jersey does not tell us anything uplifting about the person who has died,” Fr Walsh wrote.

My late father, a Protestant minister, confiscated cameras brought out during weddings – walking up the aisle hand outstretched for delivery of the offending article as he continued to speak, leading the service – so I do get Fr Walsh’s point.  Seems a bit pagan. Except the remote control. That’s gold.

It’s interesting that the acquisition of a craft brewery by big bad macro is so uninteresting:

AB InBev SA (NYSE: BUD) has agreed to acquire Platform Beer Co., which will join Anheuser-Busch’s Brewers Collective as its newest craft partner. Platform Beer Co is the fastest growing regional brewery in the United States in 2017, known for their diverse portfolio of unique beers and innovative approach. Platform, founded in Cleveland by local entrepreneurs Paul Benner and Justin Carson, began in 2014 as a homebrew-inspired brewery devoted to community outreach and education. Still carrying community values at the core of their business today, Platform is known throughout Ohio for their taproom customer experiences and vast beverage portfolio of award-winning innovative products – creating more than 200 unique beers per year. The brewery’s unparalleled creativity and experimentation has resulted in more than 600 recipes that include a variety of unique seasonals, sours, ciders and fruit ales, barrel-aged beers, and a line of hard seltzer.

“Homebrew-inspired“? Now there is a new nothingness. “…a line of hard seltzer…”??? Hooray for everything! I look forward to maybe three of those 600 brands being discount regional pale ales by 2022.

There. Next week will be the day before the holidays expect the quality to decline… if that is possible.  Check in with Boak and Bailey for more news on Saturday and Stan on Monday. The OCBG Podcast should be there, too, on  Tuesday so check it out. Have a good weekend!

*Pray for his liver.
**The Double!!!

If This Be Thursday Be It Not The First August Edition Of Ye Beery News?

Finally. August. I am not one to complain but July has seen me up at 5:45 am most days to drop three householders off at their various destinations about town before I get to my office. There. I complained. And the heat. My genetic code has spent most of its existence in the land of the midnight sun. I burn in the shade. I miss cardigans. There. I complained again.

This week’s photo of the week is from a tweet by @davidtinney1. Ghost signs are always good but this one of Whitbread is lovely.

First news: Stan sent out Vol. 3, No. 3 of his Hop Queries newsletter this week and some of the news from Europe makes other bad news from Europe look like not so bad news from Europe:

The 57th Congress of the International Hop Growers’ Convention is meeting this week in Slovenia. You can bet the weather is being discussed. The heat wave tracked here in Vol. 3, No. 2 was not necessarily a setback for much of this year’s German crop, but another heat wave and lack of precipitation combine to raise new concerns. The situation appears worse in the Czech Republic. A report from July 6: “After climatically promising May the weather in June 2019 unfortunately got back into the groove of previous several years, i.e. to the dry and hot weather. A particularly adverse situation developed at the temperatures, when monthly average reached the value of 21.4°C, exceeding the long-term average of 17°C by 4.4°C. Together with unevenly distributed rains, which were mostly of stormy nature, they had a very negative impact to the growth and development of hops, which seemed to be quite promising in this year.” Harvest begins in a few weeks.

Were I Snagglepuss and this was a 1960s Saturday morning TV cartoon, I might say “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” but I am not so I won’t.

Next up, the Tand Himself shared his thoughts on the state and source of murk as we know it today and I think he has it right:

I think it was Robbie Pickering who first coined the term “London Murky” and then it was rather unusual to see deliberately hazy beers, championed by a few and regarded with a mixture of indifference and horror by most of us “traditionalists”, but the beer itself was well enough brewed, with my main objection being that it – pun intended – muddied the cask conditioned waters and undermined the convention built up over many years, that a problem pint was identified by sight first of all, if it was presented as less than clear.  There was more or less a nationwide acceptance on both sides of the bar that this was a starting point about a case to answer on a beer’s saleability. In short the increase in hazy beers eroded the customer’s position and allowed barstaff to say something that had largely been eliminated; “It’s meant to be like that”…  

On the topic of bad ideas, Jason Notte triggered a lively and thoughtful debate on the cultural appropriation of Chinese imagery and language and perhaps even cultural slurs by Stillwater. Argument made in favour: “…inspired by some of your favorite Chinese takeout classics.” David Sun Lee concisely shared: “That Fu Manchu font can GTFO.” All seems pretty crass to me.  “Inspired by” usually is.

Speaking of inspired, one of the biggest problems with podcasts – along with the discovery that humanity gets by through mumbling most of the time – is that you cannot link to the un-indexed content in any meaningful way. So, as I was listening to the R.J. Beer Half Hour Of The Airwaves this week, I live tweeted my thoughts on one observation being made about how Robin felt being called a beer blogger despite all her good writing:

Interesting hierarchical suggestion: beer authors / book writers > published columnists > website columnist > bloggers > YouTubers > instagrammers > mimes! Journalists? Not really around anymore. I place playboy amateur brewing historians at the top. But that’s me.

Now, it has been such a long time that anyone cared about beer blogging that metablogging about blogging is unknown to the youff of today. That being said, after you listen to the podcast yourself. I find the idea that there is a pecking order of beer writer-ship still really odd. To be fair, I am pretty cynical about these things and to be really fair I think the only thing I have not done in that list is beer YouTubing… because there is only one thing sadder than podcasting.* That being said, it is entirely unfair to (i) label anyone these days as a “blogger” and then (ii) put them down because of it. Being a beer blogger these days is like being a Victorian botanist funding trips to Papua New Guinea though frittering away the family estate. Good things may come of the effort but no one is in it personally to come out better off. No, I would far prefer people were put down for claiming to be beer journalists as that is only comparable to being a Venusian.**

Good to see the Ontario Provincial Police sending out this image of someone suspected LCBO shoplifter. There were odd rumours going around that government liquor store shoplifters were being allowed to go free. Nasty thing to say. Nasty thing to do.

Vinepair posted an article this week that has a tile that explains everything: “We Asked 20 Brewers: What Are the Worst Trends in Beer Right Now?” Its interesting because folk seemed to share a wide range of what they each actually thought were the worst trends. Right now. This comment by someone I don’t know named Harris Stewart, Founder and CEO, TrimTab Brewing is particularly interesting:

The beer community is a vocal one, and we love how people freely review, discuss, and share their opinions about beers they try. However, a trend I see that isn’t constructive is a tendency of people to default their reviews to a comparison of any given beer to an archetype of that beer style. As opposed to evaluating a beer as an independent expression of a style — and most importantly whether they liked it! — it becomes more a question of does it taste like X beer or is it better than Y beer. We as a brewery place primary importance on innovation and are never trying to duplicate an expression of any given style. So, we believe it would be a positive move for craft beer if the community would keep an open mind and evaluate beers as unique steps along an evolution of a style, not a catalog of archetype imitations. 

I say this one is interesting as it is a renunciation of so much: Style as archetype, beer store shelf as a place of decision making, consumer as independent opinion makers with their own personal experience and existence.  Problem: if one is to “keep an open mind and evaluate beers as unique steps along an evolution of a style” how does one know and communicate to others when something sucks?

On that note, the long weekend is upon me. I took Friday off, too. Boak and Bailey will more news on Saturday and Stan seems back on track on Mondays. The OCBG Podcast should be there, too  Tuesday so check it out. See you!

*Joke. Funny ha ha!
**Not so much.

A Thursday’s Worth Of Beer News As The Dog Days Truly Set In

Summer. Proper hot summer. Half the folk you want to see at work to get things done are off on vacation. Half the places you want to waste some time in are filled up with tourists. And half of the ways you’d want to waste your time are not possible because your provincial government owned liquor store bought a new wholesale distribution system that does not seem to work and has left shelves emptying.  Jings. There better be Pimms for my weekend’s punch bowl, that’s all I can say.

What else is going on? First, Merryn has continued to explore malting with a tweet thread this week gathering some sources in support of a series of posts by Simpsons Maltings, like this one on the elements of the steeping stage.  Reminds me of that Anglo-Norman children’s guide to malting from the mid-1200s:

Now it would be as well to know how to malt and brew
As when ale is made to enliven our wedding feast.
Girl, light a fennel-stalk (after eating some spice-cake);
Soak this barley in a deep, wide tub,
And when it’s well soaked and the water is poured off,
Go up to that high loft, have it well swept,
And lay your grain there till it’s well sprouted…

Traditional brewing practices like these are actually easy enough to identify… but rarely discussed given the trend to adulteration… err… innovation. Ask detractors to show you the soles of their shoes to check if they are boosters.

More than a bit of shock and dismay expressed in the American mid-Atlantic over the closing of Mad Fox brewpub of Falls Church, Virginia:

In the closing announcement, Madden cited the difficulties with the brewpub business model and the rise of breweries in the surrounding area contributing to an “extremely competitive craft beer market.” “When we opened in 2010, there were 40 breweries in Virginia. Now there are close to 250,” Madden said in the post. “The Brewpub business model is a tough one to maintain compared to a Brewery Taproom with little overhead, lower rents and outsourced food trucks. Our draw from the surrounding areas has dwindled in what has become an extremely competitive craft beer market, which has resulted in this final decision.” 

Tom Cizauskas shared some background:

Mr. Madden is a successful doyen of the area’s ‘craft’ beer scene, both with Mad Fox and for a quarter-century before that. Beyond his own personal successes, he has mentored area brewers, he has organized beer festivals for brewers (beginning back when that concept was foreign), he was co-instrumental in bringing good beer to Washington baseball. 

Don Cazentre wrote about another odd example of that competitive market out there, a Syracuse brewery called…

Anything But Beer, which Berry runs with Logan Bonney, makes alcoholic beverages from a base of fruits and vegetables instead of the barley malt used in most traditional beers. The beverages, which include hard ciders, are carbonated like beer and are about the same strength as many beers — 6 or 7 percent alcohol. They’re served by the pint at bars and restaurants, like beer. They are gluten-free and vegan-friendly. Flavors run the range from strawberry lime and ginger chai to Irish whiskey apple.

Weird. Fancy Zima. Speaking of which, one of the sadder things about good beer these days is there seems to be an expectation that not only do you as the happy beer consumer have to care about the PR characterization of brewery ownership props as presented but now the cult of personality has been extrapolated into sale channels. Just look at this hot heroic mess:

Dealings related to The Bottle Shop’s liquidation mark a renewed interest from ABI’s Beer Hawk in expanding its wholesale trade platform, which has been operating for 18 months. Andrew Morgan, who founded The Bottle Shop, will be joining Beer Hawk to oversee this area of its operations. Roberts said that Beer Hawk plans to accelerate its wholesale activities, and that Morgan possessed unique skills to achieve that.

Nothing against the individuals named – but does anyone without an interest in a piece of the cash flow really care? Does anyone doubt that the skills might just be unique? Just another sort of marketing blurt. Matt had a cooler head when he noted it’s all just about receivership and administration, aka the accountants. He also noted that ratebeer and Beerhawk now are working not at arm’s length:

Interesting to see that shop is now “officially” live in the UK. Currently listing 372 beers, all directly linked to sister company .

Continuing on, I like this article in Pellicle on foraging for tasty brewing adjuncts in Ohio even if the continued misuse of terrior* rivals only the needy puffery of those who toss around curate to mean select:

“It was just supposed to be a clean, monoculture saison,” Brett says as he picks bright green buds from the sagging spruce branches. “The morning of the brew day, I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to do that.’ So I drove out and picked three pounds (1.4kg) of spruce tips.”

Foraging, however, is an excellent word that needs no turd buffing to convey meaning.

Lastly, Lew Bryson wrote of his unnatural admiration for  Naturdays, a discount line of fruit beer produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev:

I have to admit, I’m two cans into a six-pack while writing this article. Pink and yellow, flamingo-decorated cans. I bought it out of a sense of duty and fairness, because if you’re going to pick something apart, you should have tried it. But once I opened a can, and tasted that first cold, sweet-tart slug, duty and fairness went out the window, and I was just another guy on a hot summer night, ripping my way through a pounder of Naturdays. 

Yum. And that’s it for now. I need to plan the weekend. Where shall I lay upon the grass within reach of a few weeks to pick from the carrot patch so that I can claim I did a chore as I suck Pimms Punch from a wriggly jiggly straw? Such an exciting decision. There should be more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..?  I still don’t know. He may well be in Brazil for another week and, so, on another hiatus. See ya!

*If it isn’t about the terre, it’s not about terrior. Vernacular is useful. As might be indigenous. Probably local makes most sense. Or just explain what you did. Adjectives are a waste of time. 

 

A Thursday Beery News Update For A Quiet Mid-June

I am not sure why it has gone so quiet. Am I reading the wrong websites? Was the fact that I know far more about knitting a clue? The coolest thing I saw this week was this image of a 20 pint cask with an handle posted on Twitter by Geoff Latham, English brewer and history fan. One theory of the handle is that the entire cask could be settled into a cooling creek as farm workers toiled away nearby. That’s a lovely thought.

There was a fabulously interesting business news item from here in my local eastern Ontario, describing a plan in which one noted craft brewery has sold to a firm which runs restaurant chains:

Peter Mammas, President and Chief Executive Officer of Foodtastic, said, “Big Rig is a treasured local brand and we are excited to welcome Big Rig into the Foodtastic family. We look forward to preserving Big Rig’s strong brand, while growing the restaurant system across the region. We are already looking at locations in Toronto. This acquisition of a homegrown Ontario business is consistent with our strategy of acquiring quality brands with growth potential that complement our existing brand portfolio. We believe the Big Rig acquisition will leverage our marketing, purchasing and operational systems to better serve our Big Rig customers and welcome many new ones.”

Canada has not had the sort of brewpub chain history that you see in the US and UK so I will be very interested to see if the this makes a go of it.

Sad news out of Syracuse, NY with the closing of a beer store that was critical to my own good beer education starting about 15 years ago:

The Party Source Beverage Center — which has been selling specialty domestic and imported beers since long before the term “craft beer” came into use — has closed. The shop at 2646 Erie Blvd. E. was stripped bare of inventory and most of its shelves this morning. An employee of the adjacent Oasis Mediterraneran food market said the beer store appeared to have closed over the weekend. The owners of Oasis also own the building. The future of the space remains under review, said Raham Soliman, another Oasis employee. “The Party Source Beverage Center will be up for rent until we come to a final decision,” Soliman wrote in an email.

We watch these days as older micros fade in the face of tiny post-craft fruit juice manufacturers but it is interesting to note that the stores which held venerable imported beers are also challenged by today’s hyper-local transient brewing. I likely bought my first Stone here or at the long lost but much beloved Galeville Grocery.

Mr Protz via Twitter alerted me and all you all to a sensible British TV news documentary about the health effects of alcohol and then he suffered one of the oddest dipsomania laced Twitter flame-fest I have seen. You people do understand alcohol is not great for you, right?  I mean I can only assume that anyone who writes…

Please define what you consider “ruinous forms of alcohol”

…has (i) got issues and (ii) likely needs a liver function test asap. The willful blindness of otherwise clever folk to the ruinous aspect of the history of alcohol is one of the most bizarre side effect of the good beer bubble. Note that it relies on the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument.

Un-news.

In addition to my thoughts, Ron Pattinson wrote one of the sweetest posts he has every posted in response to fellow beer writer Rebecca Pate’s thoughts about the Grim Reaper’s approach as she faces turning 35:

I regularly have a birthday party. Once every decade: 40, 50, 60. The interval may reduce to five years as get further down death’s highway. No point denying the inevitable goosestep of time. May as well embrace and attempt to smother it. The exact moment, I’m not sure of, but there was a point, when, rather than seeing each year added as another milestone on the road to extinction, I began viewing my age as a cricket score. Each number added, a little victory. 

The under-exciting #FlagshipFriday thing seems to have run its course. Gary G posted a good piece about a venerable Toronto ale, younger sibling to my own yoof – and in response the founders of the thing were seemingly silent. It’s an unfortunate hashtag, to be fair, used widely for other purposes.

Conversely, the Ontario Craft Beer Guide Radio Show* is going great guns and is serving as a regular source of news items to poach. This week comes the news that the LCBO is adding new grocery stores as part of the changes that are coming (albeit at a slower pace) to the Ontario beer marketplace:

Following the provincial government’s announcement today on plans to deliver more choice and convenience for consumers, the LCBO is rolling out an extensive expansion plan to better serve Ontarians. As part of the marketplace expansion, the LCBO will be authorizing 200 new LCBO Convenience Outlets (formerly called LCBO Agency Stores) over the next year. In addition, the Grocery program, started in 2016, will be expanding with 87 new authorizations, bringing the total number of grocers eligible to sell beer, cider, and in some stores, wine, to 450.

This is smart and no retreat. The law is just waiting for proclamation now.  Whenever you as a government want to expand authority and powers, you also check out any authority which has been sitting around unused.  Q: where is the agency outlet for Bath?

Also, the powers behind the OCBRS are selling ads. Ads make a lot of sense. I used to sell ads. Made a crap load back in the day off those ads. I miss that. Blow money. Pellicle is hitting up folk for moo-lah, too. Good for them. Makes sense. Far better than mystery trips to shadowy Wrocław. Not that there’s anything wrong with visiting Wrocław but it would be nice to know how and why and who. Probably not an issue at all. In fact, I suspect the entire enterprise was a set up, a way to make me say stuff like this… bastards…

Odd drinking advice bested only by odd smoking up advice… from the government! But not nearly as odd as this story, falsely alleging some sort of connection to beer.

That’s a wrap. Another week’s news in the can. Expect more news from Boak and Bailey again this Saturday. No word on Stan. He might post the news Monday. Maybe. You never know. Was he in Wrocław? Who was? Shadowy. All very shadowy.

*They say “podcast” but we all know they mean radio show. They are also still working out the kinks on the call-in feature. 

Tra-La! It’s May!! Here’s Your Thursday Beer News For The Lusty Month

Ah, summer… or at least that part of spring that is after filing taxes. Tax Filing Day, Labour Day and Christmas Day are the only three actual dates that turn the calendar for me. The real seasons are (i) winter plus mud month plus fretting about the furnace and tax forms, (ii) the months of joy, the time of year when all the good movies are set in, and (iii) the long goodbye to all signs of life on the planet. Last week’s cruddy news was clearly the last burst of the bad time before the coming of… the good time. It all makes sense.

What has that got to do with beer? Other than that the months of semi-public semi-irresponsibility are here? Do you think I could sit around my yard listening to a ball game on a tiny AM radio in view of the neighbours and passers by wearing plaid shorts and a funny hat drinking a beer in November or March? No, that would be weird. Now? It’s expected. You know what else is expected? The week in beer news. Let’s go!

First, all bow to Bristol as Boak and Bailey have posted a remarkable post on the 1960s opening of a Guinness brewery in Nigeria based on a collection of records shared with them by the daughter of the plant’s technical director:

David Hughes’s 2006 book A Bottle of Guinness please gives an excellent summary of the rise and fall of the Ikeja brewery. After 1985, the import of barley was banned, and so Nigerian Guinness began to be brewed entirely with local sorghum. Stout ceased to be produced at Ikeja after 1998, with production moving to Ogba, further away from Lagos again. Fiona’s father, Alan Coxon, went on to become head brewer at Park Royal from 1972 until 1983–84. He left Guinness after a dispute with management over, as Fiona understands it, plans to gradually and slyly reduce the ABV of Guinness’s core products.

Value. Interesting. Hmm… somewhat distantly relatedly, I remember first seeing this phenomenon in a New York beer store years ago when there were cans of Heady Topper or some other supposed special beers that wasn’t supposed to be sold outside of Vermont. They sat on the counter by the cash register for ten bucks a pop. I thought “what idiot pays ten bucks for one can of beer” but now it appears that sort of idiot might be the backbone of UK small craft beer retailer strategies:

Some buyers are driven to underhand measures to secure hyped beers for their shops. “I know there’s a lot of jiggery-pokery that goes on,” says Sandy. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world in the craft beer scene.” Stories of retailers buying beers from other shops to resell in their own establishments are common. This can even stray across borders. “I’ve certainly heard of bottle shops ordering from European websites,” says Ferguson. “I know someone up the road was doing grey market beer imports. Obviously HMRC wouldn’t take a kind view of that.”

[Note: I only take journalists seriously when they choose to use the word “jiggery-pokery” if and only if “dog-eat-dog” also is used.]

As another example of writing worth your time, Matt Curtis has led the announcement of his new project Pellicle, a digital magazine with a scope broader than the normal and seemingly failing format of the beer mag, with an article on Irish oysters… and beer:

Inside, we arrive at a table laid out with freshly cut wedges of lemon and lime, along with a few bottles of Tabasco. The gathered crowd marvelled at the effortlessness with which Hunter shucks an oyster. Taking it in one hand—that hand encrusted with salt and dirt, evident that he had been hard at work pulling in nets that day—he inserts a short blade into the shell. Finding exactly the right spot in less than a second, he pops the shell in two with a single motion. Careful not to touch the salty fruit within with his fingers, he then uses the blade to clean the shell of any grit or rough edges, before ensuring the oyster is no longer attached to its shell, and serving.

Having lived in an oyster area or two in eastern Canada, my only concern is Matt failed to find a place for my favorite oyster word – spat. That’s what we of the western Atlantic call a first year seed oyster. Never mind. What I like is how the article is unburdened by any of the wowsy, life changing experience claims much beer writing for money is larded with. Which means it’s an example of just better writing. And a nice clear subject matter travel funding statement, too. Nice. Still, slathering an oyster with Tabasco is an utter waste. But, well… never mind.

Next, Robin wrote an interesting post under the title “Tampopo, Ramen, Beer, & the Amateur” which I immediately was taken by given her assertion of the priority – nay, the primacy of the amateur:

With the word amateur celebrated instead of filled with negative stigma (the latter, I feel, unfairly gets more focus), suddenly all the events people go to, the sense of wonder and excitement I feel when I go to a bar I’ve never been to before, when I don’t recognize a THING on the beer menu, and that wild, devil-may-care attitude when I order something to just try it…all of that suddenly made more sense to me. There was no single word that could accurately define it. “Passionate” felt too one-sided. “Curious” didn’t quite cover the drive. And a label of “connoisseur” or even “expert” seemed to remove a lot of the assumption that there is always more to learn and discover about beer. 

Excellent. The only folk who could fine a negative in amateur is the phony pro, the self-labeled expert. Ay mo. A mass. Am ant. It’s all about love, baby.

The opposite of which, I suppose, is the grasping crowdfunder. Give me the amateur over that every time. Boo, grasping crowdfunders!!

Martyn wrote a wonderful fact packed tweet that I need to share in full:

In England in 1831 there were 5,419 common breweries, 23,582 full-licence pubs that brewed their own beer and 11,432 beer shops that brewed their own beer, over 40,000 breweries in all. The country’s population was 12,011,830. That would require over 187,000 breweries today.

I think of facts like that when I read folk think there were something like 150 or 275 breweries in the US prior to 1800. Makes no sense. Ah, but for a record to bring us back to reality we wallow in the shallows of easily available evidence.

Speaking of summer, tra-la and all that, we often hear a lot about the quality of beer at baseball games. Suckers who like the Toronto Blue Jays are particular complainers. Me, if I am honest and count my ticket stubs, I am more of a minor league guy. So I’m delighted to read that my nearby Syracuse Mets have upped their triple-A game beerwise:

It’s seems to be going about as well as the ballclub hoped. Even on a day when lots of beer was available for a buck, a steady stream of customers popped in for a full-price IPA, Imperial Stout, Saison or other style made by a noted local or national craft brewer. “We’re getting a whole new demographic of people coming to the games — the craft beer enthusiasts,” said Clint “Tonka” Cure, the Mets’ assistant general manager. “And then we’re also getting the craft curious — the people who aren’t sure they’re going to like it but think this is a good time and place to give it a shot.”

That picture way up at the top is from my July 5, 2016 visit to the ball park at Syracuse.  I love Syracuse. We haven’t been south for a couple of seasons since the Canadian dollar tanked but maybe I’ll get my butt back down there this year for a few games. I can take my Mr Mets book to get signed.

That’s it! Another week has passed and tonight I sleep in Oshawa!! What could be better? I bet Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday will let us know.

Perhaps A Very Short Version Of Thursday Beer News.

I say “very short” up there as I never know where these things are going. I am like a one man Brexit in that sense. Suffice it to say, mustering the time and content for this post differs from week to week but, unlike Brexit perhaps, is always the source of joyous surprise.  I couldn’t imagine anything could be more screwed up than 1970s Canadian constitutional conferences – shown live on TV all day in my youth. But Brexit is it! I know some of you are actually living under this nutty-nutso situation so I will not go on. Excecpt to wonder what a backstop really means to @thebeernut.

So what is up in reality land? First, Geoff Latham has an interesting question: what does this record from a brewing session that occurred in September 1848 mean? It appears to show someone dabbling in early hipsterism, employing unholy techniques when it comes to hops. Click on that thumbnail. Can you read the text and help with the mystery?*

Interesting. Second, now Stan has a question:

I think I’ve only asked a variation on that question one other time — in this case the more open ended, “What is the most important hop ever?” — and Jason Perrault of Select Botanicals and Perrault Farms said to give him a little time to think about it. I haven’t pressed him on it since, but now might be time.

My answer – and I am sticking to it – is the one in the beer on the ships that had the cannons of the Hanseatic League 1300 to 1500. Likely proto-Saaz.

Home brew for three pence a pint! What year would that have been? That was my own Burco dream back in the middle of the 1980s. Speaking of the 1980s, great news of  Mendocino Brewing Company, care of a Tom tip. An early micro brewing icon is being revived:

Though the beer is not being produced inside the cavernous, 65,000 square-foot facility, Krauss and his team have high hopes about the future, to the delight of local beer drinkers and fans of the legendary brews. “Red Tail Ale and Eye of the Hawk are back,” smiles Krauss. The beers have recently been revived by the brand’s original brew master, Don Barkley, and can currently be purchased on tap at a few inland Mendo locations: in Ukiah at Crush, Cultivo and the Sports Attic; in Hopland at Campovida; and once again, where it all began, at the Hopland Tap, where the ales were originally served more than three decades ago.

Right on. Moving on, we find some odd responses to the idea of more craft beer going into the UK supermarket chain Tesco. Apparently, the Tand is still the clearest thinking person in beer culture:

This should surprise nobody. Breweries are businesses and while keeping it cosily in the bubble is nice for fans, it don’t pay the milkman. Big beer and big business want a share and they know how to go about it. Expect much more of similar.

The odd thing for me is the twin ideas that (i) for some reason we beer writers are supposed to be boosters for a bigger market slice for the  brewers that self-identify as preferable and yet (ii) we want to keep those precious brewers human scale as if this all is some sort of personal relationship. Note: never has this occurred in all of human history.

Similarly, Paste magazine has listed some of the contract beers they sell under house names – and then unpacks who is actually making them like this entry for Mission Street Pale Ale:

Attributed to Steinhause Brewing in CA, this pale ale actually comes from California’s own Firestone Walker, who also makes a handful of other Mission St. styles like blonde and black ales as well as a hefeweizen. They’re also behind Trader Joe’s Fat Weasel Ale, Jumping Cow Amber, Frugal Joe’s Ordinary Beer, and the Gila Monster Amber Lager.

I had heard years ago that Unibroue up here in Canada made all their Belgian ales. Makes sense. Why sell bad beer in your store when you can rebrand good stuff? And why be a brewer competing with chain branded beer when you can brew it yourself? Everyone wins.

Speaking of beer on the move, Josh Rubin has a great story in The Toronto Star on the ambitious expansion of one Ontario brewery into the Big Apple including one non-traditional and interesting comment from a craft brewer:

Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, was puzzled but welcomes the new arrival. “It seems like an awfully strange move, but then again, we’d probably happily open in Paris or Tokyo, so maybe it’s the same for everyone these days,” said Oliver. “If they make great beer, people will come. And I can walk there from my house. Brooklyn once brewed 15 per cent of all the beer in the United States, so I’m sure that one more brewery/taproom will be just fine,” Oliver said.

Clever people. I hope they make a go of it. Sadly, elsewhere apparently stupid is still a part of craft beer culture:

“We understand it is a bit risqué, but it’s in good humor, comical, and consensual.  We have received good feedback from when we have showed this to many” said Brady.

Jeff obviously was not part of that early feedback loop. Really, I hope you don’t bother looking at the underlying story. Morons. Particularly swell that they are ‘splainin’ sorts who unilaterally assert something is consensual.

Finally in far happier branding news, big craft brewer Stone has lost its motion for a preliminary injunction in that trademark infringement case against cheery micro macro Miller. I say happy because the court has confirmed that the case between Stone and Miller over beer brands is all about money and not some sort of special status. I say happy, too, because it places Dr. Johnson squarely back in the midst of it all, as we observe again with him the unassailable truth that brewing offers and perhaps even inflicts the curse of “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice” upon those who are not careful, who over reach.  Brendan has more in his Wednesday afternoon tweet-fest of the court’s ruling.

Well, that’s it. Not as short as I had thought – and not even all that pointless! More good news than sad. Not a bad week. The dirty snow has already faded to the lump here an there on the north side of things. Desperate for more? You know the drill: Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday. See ya next week, unless that real job of mine gets in the way. Think I am out at meetings on Tuesday and on the road Wednesday night. Uh oh.

*Ooops… forgot I hate any use of “mystery” as it relates to beer and drinking culture.

Merry Christmas Beer News Updates Everyone!

This is going to be great. A weekly news update laced with the holiday spirit. Everything is going to be wonderful and swell. The one and only problem seems to be that I seem to have some sort of new sys admin tool on the bloggy app of mine so bear with me if this all ends up looking like a dog’s dinner* or… thinking of this season of Yule… the day after Christmas dinner with distant cousins!  Footnotes and embedded images seems to be a hassle. Fabulous.**

Anyway, the first gift I offer is the photo of the week above, found on Twitter under the heading “Matchbox Covers Depicting Drunk Cats by Artists Arna Miller and Ravi Zupa.” Cats have always struck me as a struggling species. You can find more images of beer loving hardly coping cats with serious drinking issues by Miller and Zupe here.

Next up, the new government of Ontario has its own gift for us all – a plan to distract us all from the important business of the day to ask us how liquor retailing should be changed! Wow!! The survey even comes with a dumb name, “Alcohol choice and convenience for the people”… which has everyone wondering when the same survey is going to be rolled out for, you know, squirrels and chipmunks.  Or drunken barely coping cats. Fill it out if you like. Even you! Apparently  they are interested in views from beyond Ontario, given that is one of the possible responses. Thanks for skewing the responses to my detriment.

I like this video of Garrett Oliver plunked on YouTube by Epicurious magazine. He demonstrates a wonderful ease with explaining beer. It is unfortunately presented in a way that suggests it’s macro v. micro. I’d prefer some crap craft bashing. He also talks about relative value – but presents some some odd arguments. No, a craft IPA does not cost $4 rather than $1 because of the hops. And a good German malty beer is not double the price of a poor one due to the cost of the malt. There is much more to price and, yes,  not all as easy to explain – but his general argument that good costs more is there and welcomingly well presented. 

Jeff has unpacked how Beervana pays its way:

A little less than two years ago, I began running an experiment here when I took on Guinness as a sponsor. In July, we signed a contract for a third year of sponsorship, which will run through June 2019. This is a slightly different model than the subscriptions Josh describes, but the upshot is the same: the idea was to find a partner who saw value in the site and wanted to reach my very specific, engaged readers.

This is good. Open and honest. And we few remaining actual bloggers need to support each other, knowing how hard it is to make a buck writing one of these things… or just finding the time or accessing the resources you want for the research you want to do. Not unrelated: self-inflicted expertise extrapolation? Heavens to Betsy! Let the man think out loud.

Speaking of supporting our fellow bloggers, Robin ran into Canada’s newest jam blogger in the market the other day. He’s very keen on new content creation. 

The British Guild of Beer Writers has published a list of the best beer books of 2018. The trouble is it seems to be a list of all the beer books published by guild members from 2018. There’s twenty-six books listed, some of which were published years ago – even under other titles. Decisive selection. The best book of the year is not included. 

Conversely, Max in a single not necessarily beautiful image posted on Facebook has told a thousand words… and then added a few words: “…’twas good. ’twas very good, and the second one too. Pivovar Clock Hector at Pivni Zastavka…” The only thing that defies scientific knowledge is how the glass shows multiple lacy rings, each matching a gulp while we all expect that he downed it in one go.

It is an important observation on how useless the US Brewers Association’s definition of “craft brewer” has gotten that it acts as filler for the weekly update only after I have hit 750 words. Jeff notes how it is now entirely related to accommodating one non-craft brewer. Wag that I am, I retorted *** that it no longer requires a brewer to actually brew very much beer.  There. That’s all it means. 

Related: an honest man in Trumps new America or the root of the problem?

This week, Merryn (i) learned not to want to be a medieval farmer and (ii) linked to a 2013 web-based data presentation about Viking brew houses which I am linking to here for future Newfoundland reference but it’s totally today…  so there you go.

Finally, how about some law? This speaks nothing to the people or the business involved but I have no idea how I might determining whether to consider sending string-free cash to a cause like this one:

We know that the decision to invest your hard-earned money is not to be taken lightly, no matter how big or small your contribution may be. We would gratefully use the funds to assist with legal fees, as we continue to protect ourselves, our name, our businesses, and our team. We are looking for and in need of building a legal fund that will provide for our past, present and future legal demands, as a rapidly growing grassroots craft beer franchise system. 

The legal issue appears to be mainly legal dispute with their franchiees. I have no idea who is right and who is wrong. Craft makes it extra blurry. Having advised upon franchise agreements in my past private practice, I would not want to suggest where the right sits. Often in the middle.

Relatedly perhaps, Lew asked about unionization and proper wages for craft brewery workers and got an ear full on Facebook.

Well, on that cheery legal note, I will leave you for now with Jay Brooks description of how “T’was The Night Before Christmas” is really about beer. And, please dip into the archives to remind yourselves of Christmas Photo Contests past. Ah, beer blogging. Remember how fun that was? Until then, Boak and Bailey have more news on Saturday and, the Great Old Elf himself, Stan has more news on Christmas Eve. Ho. Ho. Ho. 

*where is the basic HMTL editor I knew and loved? I can’t even indent this footnote or make the asterisk a larger font than the text. What sort of animals are running WordPress??? Hmm…
**There. Killed if all by installing a “classic editor” widget.
***Yes, retorted.