Beer Stuff, Measures, Vessels – Page 3

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.

The Thursday Beery News Update For Fire, College, Style and Being Fifty-Six

I picked that picture up there of a fire in France earlier in the week, the night time warming of the vineyards at Chateau Figeac: “rows and rows of candles on the vineyard to protect the vines from frosty nights…” Here’s perhaps an even more stunning image, the French Côte-d’Or lit up at night form above. I spent three weeks in Paris with pals in 1986, weaving from art galleries to bars to cafe’s to our small family run hotel. We were there so long we got grief from the owners for being so bad at getting to know Paris, for wasting the experience that we were being told where to visit and that led to me, a gawky probably hungover 22 year old, staring at the blue glass at Notre-Dame. Lovely then. Sad now.

Let’s go! Diageo has done a good thing:

The maker of the iconic Irish stout Guinness has announced it is removing plastic from beer packaging. Plastic ring carriers and shrink wrap will be removed from multipacks of Diageo’s beer products – Guinness, Harp, Rockshore and Smithwick’s. They will be replaced with 100% recyclable and biodegradable cardboard.

Excellent. And here’s an excellent suggestion for a gravestone, one that speaks to one of our lingering and perhaps pre-Christian rituals.

I am a bad man. I missed a post by a co-author, mainly because it came out two Thursdays ago, exactly when I am in a post-update publication funk. It’s Jordan’s post on the things he has learned creating and running a college course about beer:

How do you create something unique from scratch? For one thing, it’s continuing education, which means that it’s nights and weekends. It has to be affordable. It’s a self selecting group of students and they have presumably been through a long day at work or a long week at work by the time they get to you. It has to be instructional, educational, and entertaining enough to hold their interest. It probably needs to be a little interactive and there has to be room for discussion. That goes for all 67 hours of class time from the preview workshop to the last week of the last class. So there I was: anxious about public speaking, with no experience teaching, tasked with creating and administering 67 hours of content, and just bloody minded enough to think I could pull it off.

Speaking of structures, Jeff wrote and excellent thing on the development of flash in the pan styles and by excellent I mean he stated something that I have long considered the case:

With trends, there’s a push-pull, and the pull is what establishes the style. First breweries gamble with something new—that’s the push. With a style like gose or a technique like kettle-souring, the push may last for years before a brewery scores a hit. But then that organic interest comes and customers start asking for the new thing. Brewers have been pushing saison for 20 years and Americans are just not taking the bait. But hazies? That’s all pull now. Even brewers who hate them feel compelled to offer their ravenous customers what they want.

Pay attention to that push. Many folk deny it exists, saying its all demand driven. As if there ever was a public outpouring demanding a gap needed to be filled by Black IPA or sugar coated breakfast cereal gose. Officially absolving the beer drinking public from these sorts of abominations of marketing is a welcome thing. And the distinction between trend and style also fits better with the original Jacksonian intention of style to be an emulation of a classic. Good stuff.

Speaking of writing excellent things, Evan Rail has been tweeting about writing longer writing beery-wise as part of his process of writing a new piece of longer writing:

As a writer, you’re constantly doing short-term, short-gain work, which makes it really hard to get ahead. The work that brings real satisfaction — and which often makes for long-term success, financial and otherwise — is hard to fit into the day-to-day grind.

It’s the same for the amateur boy beer writer. Time is the commodity I simply don’t have. I’ve put in 24 hours since 36 hours ago. Frankly, I was glad to get a number of posts on beer and 1400s Bristol this winter but if I had my druthers I would do that sort of research and writing all the days of my life.

Politics? Here in Ontario, we have a particular form of conservative government which is dedicated to changing the way we get our booze and dope. It even affected the annual provincial budget to the point I have to go into work today to look at some beer law, an interesting puzzle. This was a telling tweet:

Number of times Doug Ford’s budget mentioned the words “alcohol” or “beer”: 46. Number of times “poverty” was mentioned: 0. Priorities.

That being said, we regularly regulate these things at the provincial level and alcohol has been at the forefront of cultural policy at many times in our past, not only from the 1870s to the 1930s the period people can’t cope with. Ontario, the true foundation of all hoppy beer trends. Buy our book Ontario Beer for the full story. Seriously. Grow up. Buy it. Pretend it’s my birthday.

A short post this week. But lots of good stuff to share. And it really is my birthday. On a Thursday before a four day springtime weekend. “W” to the “oooot”! And this is the one I have been waiting for. Fifty-six! Remember when you were nineteen and you couldn’t wait to be fifty-six? As you reflect in the arm glow of that, don’t forget Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday. Each a gift to us all. See you next week!

The Blink And May Is Gone Edition Of Your Beery News Links

To start, I have done what every good beer writer does – I have stolen something. The image above is the lower slice of the cover image used by Boak and Bailey for last Saturday’s edition of “News, Nuggets & Longreads” and it snapped my head immediately to attention. Wow! See what is going on there is in the anonymous 1890s pub? Careful readers will recall my 2012 search for better drinking vessels and in particular my love for my pewter quart pot* which is happily put into periodic use. When conducting that search care of Messers E & Bay**, you see these quart pots with spouts that I figured were altered and re-purposed for household reuse after the era of quart in the pub normality left this Earth. But NO! They are for pub use, the buyer purchasing a quart measure but serving himself with it but drinking from the smaller glass instead of the pot. No wonder the spouts are all at 9 o’clock to the handle’s 6 o’clock. So the right hand can pour to the left. A jug built for serving someone else is always spout at 12 o’clock to the handle’s 6 o’clock. Perhaps this was a quart of strong ale compared to to a quart of a lighter weight beer? Now I want one of those, too. And so should you all.

James Beeson on a year writing about beer from the rare perspective of journalism. Also see Jeff on the same. J + J are both correct. Certain brewers and many PR folk have an issue they have to deal with. We might call it “greater society.”

One week until the vote is in for Ontario’s election and NDP leader Andrea Horwath has given us another “candidate with a beer” photo. The scene is Brothers Brewing in Guelph. I prefer the Canadian standard “politician beer pour” pics personally but seeing as this was actually tweeted on the official party feed, I’m more than pleased. Unlike the last national election in 2015, beer is an inordinately active topic in the election so far – and is being picked up by the news organs covering the race. In fact, they are being even so clever as to seek out knowledge such as in this article where Macleans magazine quotes from and even includes a hyperlink to the blog of Jordan St. John! In one of the oddest Ontario election promises ever, conservative leader Doug Ford has promised the return of buck-a-beer cheap lager. That was a thing until 2010. Jordan unpacks the many many ways that this is never going to happen. My tweet:

Ontario’s “buck a beer” went away when a big corporation bought a smaller corporation, shut it down and sold off the equipment. Not a policy matter. And government can’t force brewers to make cheaper beer.

Mr Ford may well be our next premier but no one has accused him of being all that bright. Five years ago, The Globe and Mail*** accused him of selling hashish for several years in the 1980s but no one has accused him of being all that bright. Dumb.

Hail in Bordeaux on May 26th. One-third of Blaye heavily hit. Drag.

Martyn Cornell posted about running ads on his blog. I used to do that a decade ago. Good money. Folk are always seeing us there is a way to recoup the cost of all this. And they should. Hilarious observation in the comments from a reader remarking on folk jabbing about the ad selection:

Other posters — the ads you see *might* be determined by cookies on your machine indicating what you’ve previously been viewing so maybe be a *bit* careful before announcing what’s showing up for you…

Me, I don’t really care about the financing of this here publication any more as digital historic research is less expensive than my other hobby, sewing suspender buttons on trousers for work.**** Seeing as, me, I don’t travel and don’t hang out in pubs I really don’t have a love-hate relationship with my problem writing anymore. I have a backyard. I have a rec room with an old Lay-Z-Boy. It’s all working out.

Note: any brewery drawing water from the Great Lakes south of Sarnia is pretty much making a dilute processed sewage water beer as well. Not to mention it all being DINOSAUR PEE!!!!

Folk are still waiting for the apology that will never likely come. See, Beavertown has been talking to Heineken after all. As noted in your May 17, 2018 edition of the Thursday news, those who saw this coming were “rumour mongering” and spreaders of “falsehood” – which have to be two of the most infantile over-reactions in hard scrabble beer consulto history. Way to go. The fun continues as Beavertown lands a deal with Tottenham football club serviced no doubt with approval of Heineken, the club’s official beer sponsor – but wait! One tiny voice shouts “HOLD THE PRESSES!!!”:

Nothing has been confirmed. Could be completely unrelated – collaboration could be within the stadium only – but there are no sources saying either of these things are true.

And monkeys might be circulating in trousers. What a mess. Having negotiated sports stadium bevvy deals, it is pretty obvious that there is a connection… as it would be to most. Does anyone think that Beavertown or Heineken have two law firms isolating these sorts of deals with the same parties from each other? Yeah, that make sense. Plenty of sense. But no: the last few weeks’ simmering sneer of discredit suddenly has an implicit claim of special access “the sources“! And, suddenly, now rumour mongering is in!! The core self-branding strategy prime directive is pretty obvious… still, I like to read along these sorts of aggrandizement cub reporting mongers with the sound of a teletype or stock ticker clacking along in my mind. It helps.

By contrast, the ever excellent Ben Johnson has written about a wonderful new addition to the Ontario beer scene – the Toronto East End brewers collective. One of the dumber things about the “independent” aspect of the craft beer movement is how it depends on followers aligning into lock step with messaging coming from the tenured staff of centralized national scale trade associations located far far away. The Orwellian scenes at the keynote speeches of the annual Craft Beer Conference look like something out of a mass reeducation session. I hear they chanted “Gose is Good! Gose is Good!” at the end of one of these back in 2016. Newsflash: it often isn’t. Far better it is, then, to read how some are fighting back against mindless homogeneity even in a local scene:

“Most of the breweries in Toronto who have been the beneficiaries of media hype (deserved though it may be) are all clustered in the west end,” he says. “There’s already this ridiculous ‘cultural divide’ that makes people in the west end feel like traveling east of the Don Valley requires a full day of logistics planning and we’re hoping to dispel much of that nonsense.”

Fight the power. Fight the good fight. Fight! We need more of this. Dump those who aspire to “big and controlling” whether in association or in distribution or beer writing or whatever. This nano-political statement is the next logical step for “local” and it is welcome if not long overdue.

And with that, I leave you. Once again the goodness in craft is defined by the local, ungrasping, interesting and kind. Alcohol and money have their powers for sure – but peril lies that way. Both for those who speak in that fashion and those who bother to listen. Much more fun is the real. Next Thursday is election day! I even have an orange sign on the lawn.

*You do all know that a tankard has a lib but a pot does not, right?
**Stolen this time from Norton of Morton.
***Toronto’s national newspaper.
****Good set of buttons costs about $3.50. Tops. Lots of colours and sizes, too. Don’t get me started on vintage buttons made of deer antler…

Your Mid-March Beer News For The Winter That Won’t Go Away

Andy Crouch captured the mood with this tweet on Tuesday:

We are tired. We are tired of slipping. Of sliding. We are tired of corduroy. [Except me. I’m not hating on the cords – just trying to fit in here – gimme a break.] Otherwise, it’s been a really quite week. Not one brewery has done anything stupid since last Thursday. Well, Stone seems to be having shelf space quality control issues in Europe but, well, that’s par for the course for big international craft. And St. Patrick’s Day is coming up on the weekend but that will be ruined but 827 beer writers working for exposure and samples lording over the fun of drinking green bulk lager… but that’s for next week.

Deeply into the now, Mr. B has a new book coming out, Will Travel For Beer. Like any numbers book there is a hyper-inflationary aspect to the idea of going on 101 vacations about beer but I am sure there will be more than a few ideas worth planning one or two trips around.

It’s not the one beer a day I couldn’t manage but who can stop at the third chip?

This is an odd story. Apparently MillerCoors in the US has created a new demographic category for 21 to 24 year olds and is intent in trapping them for life in a haze of weird macro-made beer like things:

The purpose is to sell more beer, which has been losing business to wine and hard liquor for a decade. MillerCoors, the U.S. division of Molson Coors Brewing Co., is gearing its marketing to 21- to 24-year-olds, a slice of the population the company characterizes as “curious,” “pragmatic” and still virginal when it comes to drinking beer… MillerCoors says there are important differences between millennials and the new generation the beer maker created but hasn’t named.

Apparently, the answer for these poor fools is a fluid called Two Hats described as “a light beer imbued with fruit flavours.” Which (i) we have seen in one form or another before such as the cited Bud Light Lime-A-Rita yet (ii) still sounds uniquely horrible. Pity the short term career path of the team that came up with this one.

Did I ever mention I really can’t get too excited about the unhappiness of the good monks who otherwise play quite happily in the commercial marketplace? Think of the extra good work that could be done if one of the recipes were given to big beer to milk for all it’s worth with all licensing residuals going to good causes. No, reselling is fine by me. If I can buy Harris Tweed, an actual craft product, from some one on eBay – why not beer? I mean, who would deny the joy of the best beer thing of the week – also found on eBay?

Boom! Now that we have dealt with matter haberdasherrific, be careful. This post from B+B may find you wanting to stroke your screen. Lovely images of malt being made 50 years or so ago.

If we are honest, GBH is now sort of on a different planet, no?

Finally, as Jeff notes, the US Brewer’s Association has put out its annual biggest 50 craft brewery and biggest 50 brewery list… except it’s not the biggest 50 breweries but the biggest 50 brewing companies. Which is odd for an organization supposedly celebrating small. EcoBart explained that the lay of the corporate landscape no longer allows for simply listing breweries – but then offered a tweek that might see number of brewing facilities listed under each FrankenKraftenCorp. Which gets to be confusing. TBN certainly was confused. I’ve plunked the entire list into this post down there at the bottom for your review. Look at it. Look!! The inclusion of Duvel Moorgat certainly sticks out. Andy hailed it all as the revenge of the East. Me, I applaud Bell’s for sticking with “Inc.” while all the world rushed to “Co.” Two years ago or so, the annual list was a helpful tool in following the breweries which had sold out. We don’t talk of selling out anymore. It is all too confusing. Which is another reason to buy from your local actual small brewery at the taproom where you can talk with the owner and the brewer.

Remember: Boak and Bailey Saturday, Stan on Monday.

À La Recherche Du Bière Perdu

Sitting here with benignly received stitches in my mouth, it’s not only that I look back with fondness on that time before a week ago that I could have a drink. It’s looking back with fondness that I could have anything pretty much not in paste form. I did have a bun the other day. Took me 27 minutes to eat it. Which reminds me of other looking back fondly at the joyful consumption as with this archaeological dig in England:

Once at the cutting edge of Oxford University, the friary building was either torn down or at least fell into disuse during the mid 1500s when the Franciscans fled the country during the dissolution of the monasteries. Built over for many centuries, it is only thanks to redevelopment for a new shopping centre that archaeologists have been able to delve into the treasures it contains. ‘Greyfriars’, as it was known, was home to both the friar lecturers and scholars and their students. So far the archaeologists have found thousands of artefacts, many hundreds of which – in true student fashion – are related to alcohol.

i remember when I could be related to alcohol, too. There is plenty more detail over at this site for Oxford Archaeology which appears to be the firm working with the developers to clear the site. The discovery of a 13th century tile floor was an unexpected surprise. Not unlike my surprise when I learned hummus and yogurt could be an entire meal.

There is much more detail in The Independent. Seems like the monks, unlike me at the moment, had a rich and varied diet:

Mutton, lamb, pork, beef, chicken, geese and song birds were all on the menu, as were sea fish (cod, whiting, haddock, herring, eel, gurnard, conger, grey mullet, thornback ray, salmon and sea trout) and freshwater fish (especially roach and dace). The archaeological investigation has also revealed that they had a liking for oysters and mussels – and for hazelnuts and walnuts. For making pottage – a thick mainly vegetable stew – they used wheat, barley, oats and rye.

They also found “hundreds of medieval beer mugs” – hundreds. The monastery is described as being one of the seats of “super friars” with great academic and political influence which is one of the things, I suppose that lead Henry VIII to getting rid of them. The order reestablished itself in Oxford a bit over a century ago. Their kitchens were apparently preserved in good condition… for archaeology… but I am not sure if they established whether the monk’s ale was brewed within that facility. Medieval Oxford not only had a brewer’s guild starting in the 1400s but they also had a Brewers Street so who knows.

So, there you go. A little light learning for a Tuesday. From a guy with stitches in his mouth. Did I mention the stitches? I did? Oh, good.

It’s March! It’s March It’s March It’s March News!!!

So… I like March. For years I proclaimed March in 89 font letters on one of my old blogs. I am far more restrained now. A place between two seasons. Did you see that it snowed in Ireland and the UK this week? Farmers out east call this the Million Dollar Snow* – the late storms that drench the fields on melting. And all brewing trade social media has been suspended over there for the last few days for pictures of snow laying thinly all about, just like the story told in the carols! Must be that EU Committee on Taking Photos of Snow (EUCTPS) funding grants finally kicking in.

First, right after last Thursday’s deadline, The Tand Himself** wrote about the inversion of reality that craft has become in the UK market and under their cultural version of the term’s application. Years ago Boak and Bailey discussed the vague and wandering UK use of the word “craft” and it seems like it’s wandered six steps further since then. While it is useless to get too caught up into it, craft now appears to mean “an expensive crap shoot enjoyed by folk many times you likely would not want to spend much time with” – or, you know, something other than what’s in the glass. Who needs that? The better approach such clinky studies with a certain humility and thank God others are playing with just, you know, honesty. We are blessed and less affected here where craft can still range from $2.80 a tall boy to whatever the market might bear. Related: discount craft discussion #1 and discount craft discussion #2. Somewhat related: odd personal product placement posing deep and abiding questions about value.

Next, I like this footage from the BBC archive of a show discussing the 1986 about the new UK craze for trend in brown bread. Which is interesting. Context about trends in food and other social patterns should be always related to trends in beer culture. Me, I was in Britain for a good chunk of 1986 and remember both the good malty ales and my uncle complaining about all the whole wheat and vegetables suddenly in his diet. Related: drive-by expertise. Unlike branding, actual history and knowledge are reasonably identifiable things. Dr Caitlin Green, lecturer at the University of Cambridge in history, has posted a series of images of ancient drinking vessels. That drinking cup carved out of amber is one of the more wonderful things I have ever seen. By further contrast, consider this discussion of the poorly traced and argued history of lambic – part of our heritage of mob craftism. Why must this be so?

Back to today, interestingly how Ben noted a change in the demeanor of UK trade reporter James Beeson who wrote about his unhealthy relationship with alcohol on Friday and then how drinking swanky craft before 3pm on Sunday made him somehow “a winner.” I’ve often noted to myself how two classes of people seem to align their identity with drinking, alcoholics and beer writers. If you feel the first, the second is irrelevant – just as he openly explored in the thread that followed. No beer makes you a winner. It’s best to be well. And I wish him well. No one needs a millstone.

Do you see a pattern up there? Proper personal insight compared to something else, perhaps second hand. Yet Jeff manages this tension with care and perhaps a bit daring in his posts on sexism. It’s not his story to tell but it’s the story he can tell or host. Still, even with his own discussion on the fact it is not his story – and the reality that we each are only what we are – I just wish the posts didn’t have a male host as intermediary… so, I will pair this link to one from Nicci Peet who is making a documentary about women in all sectors of the trade and has even launched a Patreon campaign to support it:

If you’re here you probably know I’ve just launched a new documentary project photographing women (cis, trans, genderqueer, woc) in the UK beer industry. There’s a lot of talk and debate lately around sexism and inclusivity. Part of the problem is that there’s a lack of visual representation of the diverse range of women who work in the industry. When I say women working in the industry I don’t just mean brewers. If you have a passion for beer there are so many different routes into the industry.

Both Nicci and Jeff’s very much worth your time. [Related for contrasting context.] And, just so we are clear, the #1 lesson on exactly how not to do it was brought to you Wednesday afternoon by Stone‘s Arrogant Beavis and Butthead social media intern:

The tweets are all now deleted – but for a hour or so defiantly defended. It makes one wonder why do they stick with the junior high locker room branding at Stone? It’s all about judgement of others with a passive aggression from a largely unwarranted stance. Don’t get me wrong. They make mainly pretty good gas station beer that’s reasonably reliable and know how to get the government grants for the branch plants. But apparently because that’s how the head office rolls if the intern’s tacit instructions are anything to go by. Time to move on.

*Unrelated.
**aka TTH.

Your Mid-January Thursday Beery New Round-Up

It’s been a big week. The Arctic air mass has left us so Easlakia once again is a ball of slush. It’s been a dryish January around these parts but only “-ish” – so don’t go all hostile. Much more veg. No fries. Walks as walks can be walked. It’s good for you. Hmm. Ice storm coming Friday. That should be sweetly end-timesy. Like what Lars just went through recently… maybe. You and I? We have done nothing for good beer. Not like Lars. Speaking of getting off the kookoo juice, I like this: “…waking up fresh at 8am on a Saturday morning after 8 hours uninterrupted sleep.” Try it. It’s good.

I was very sad to read a Ed’s blog about the passing of Graham Wheeler. During my home brewing years his book (with a drizzle of R. Protz) Brew Your Own British Real Ale was a constant companion. One thing I will always appreciate having learned from him was how small differences between recipes created remarkably different ales. A great loss.

This is the national anthem of beer.

Caption contest! What the hell was Mr. B saying with that expression? It’s a third of an Elvis, clearly. Click for the full view. Was Jordan using that dab of tuna fish juice behind the ear as cologne – again? Robin caught the moment* at a beer dinner Wednesday night in the centre of the universe which famously included house made gentleman’s relish, the only relish a gentleman ever needs. Perhaps Mr. B was musing on the qualifications JSJ brought to the table, gentlemanly-wise. Surely not.

Speaking of hostile, it was a bit odd reading the follow up this week to Eric Asimov’s bit in The New York Times on brown beer. His column was just a round up of the brown ales you can try in the New York market with, yes, a little jig and jag about beer nerds. Then…. accusations, handbags and recriminations. Reminded me a lot about last week’s crisis over pointing out – “theatrical gasp” – sexism in craft beer.** What a round up of “the superior gathered to get the boot in” that was. And now, while it is clear that it’s probably never going to be a good idea to go all “bored quasi-intellectual snobbery intro is the tiredest of journalistic tropes” if you want to be taken seriously, I was quite happy Jeff told his what his actual issue was with this week’s panic. Not my issue but a reasonable issue as he framed it. Still, Asimov’s a fabulous wine writer who makes complex things make sense – and successful enough to have no interest in making his own status an issue. Me, I liked the piece. And, tellingly, so did a lot of the paper’s readership if the many many comments are anything to go by. So say it loud and say it proud: brown ale is go! As in other hobby interests, this again goes to show that good beer still needs a bit of aging to get past these angst-ridden teenaged years. Yes, these may still be the times of doubtful mild cheddar. As I say to my own kids, it gets better. I hope.

700 employees! Damn good thing they are still small.

Nearby, Robsterowski in Glasgow posted an interesting pit on those little knives or tongue depressors used to smack the head of a fancy beer pour – skimmers. I’ve never thought much about them so his work has added to my understanding by about 1237382%.

Not beer: King Crimson’s Larks Tongues in Aspic. This was 45 years ago now. Talk about gentleman’s relish.

There, another 23 minutes I can’t get back. Don’t forget to lay your bets on next week’s crisis in the shrinking good beer writing marketplace. Who lashes out next? Stay tuned. Meantime I will likely be back on the weekend with something about brewing in the 1500s you won’t care about. See you then.

*Shared without consent.
**Was it only last week? Nate S. uncovered this weeks Pigs Of Craft award winners. Folks just don’t get it.

“Nipperkin” In The 1790s New York Press

I love me a good collection action by beer bloggers and today B+B published initial results on the meaning of nip and nipperkin after a bit of a Twitter discussion yesterday. Ignoring for the moment the question of why I am writing so much about their ideas while entirely ignoring the debacle of the BA’s most recent PR botch, let’s just understand one thing if nothing else in this makes sense – when a man loves a pottle then can a nipperkin be so bad?

To the upper right is a poem published in New York City’s Columbian Gazetteer of 9 January 1794. The content of the poem is wallopingly inappropriate to our eye in how it essentially says “let thinking, more pies and drinkin!'” but there it is… stingo by the nipperkin. Can I apologize and promise in atonement to make a pie or pudding myself and read my wife something in Greek before making a toast? I shall try and might report back.

A bit of a survey about the databases tells me there is was not a lot of use for either word in the press for the time, though a poem on the role of stingo in flips appeared later that same year on the New York Daily Gazette of 25 August 1794. Click on the image to the left. The recipe for flip is quite extraordinary: rum, maple syrup, hopped beer and pumpkin. But it is drunk by the mug into which a hot poker was plunged. Not by the tiny nipperkin.

A brief entry. Go add anything you find and report back to Boak and Bailey.

Half Hours On Earth, Seaforth, Ontario

I’d like to say that I visited Half Hours on Earth a few weeks ago but it was more like a drive-by shooting. Except I was only shooting with the iPad camera. See, it was summer and the kids at camps and cottages on the Lake Huron shore. My only job that week off was to get them there one weekend and get them back on the next one. Thirty-two hours of driving all in all. I needed some joy and a stop like this on a long haul is just the thing I needed. But I only had 12 minutes so I was in and out after asking 57 questions and coming across as a weirdo. I am used to me so it was fine.

Seaforth is a small crossroads ag supply town in south western Ontario that looks like a lot of the other small crossroads ag supply towns in south western Ontario that I married into. Lovely orange and tan brick houses and main street buildings. Gingerbread gothic revival churches sitting prominently on a grid of squares drawn on a map in the 1830s, long before the people arrived. All cooled by the shade of large hardwoods planted over 100 years ago – or maybe a dip in the river when it’s a hot one. The whine of cicadas interrupted by blizzards on an annual cycle. Alice Munro country filled with quiet towns laced with the quietly unhappy but satisfied enough. It’s not where you would think you would find great beer but a few weeks back Robin and Jordan declared it the best new brewery in the province and I went all in. I found the brewery and its two owner operators in the lower level of a grain depot by a rail siding. Here is what I thought.

Green Mind: The name is like a Third Doctor serial. Except it needs to have “of Doom” added at the end. I bought a quart jug, aka a small growlers. It provided me with a great follow up to a GLB Canuck and a Friday evening mow of the lawn. At heftier 7.1% its the biggest of the beers I bought, surprising similar but also the senior to the province’s favourite craft beer. Not a sour bomb so much as a weedy raggedy-arsed maybe even pissed-off IPA. Pale malt sweet base under bitter greens. The lavender brett fitting beneath the lush ditch weed bitter herb hop. Remember. I just mowed the lawn. A bit of Chinese mustard green burn. Not really arugula black pepper bitter but green and sharp like a salad full of salad greens you never heard of. Quaffable. I quaffed. Rounded by the wood not a hint of any cheesy Chardonnay oak. Robust but not heavy. Extremely satisfying dry stinging nettle note in the finish. Cloudy but not milky, mustard – tan coloured ale under a rich clingy fine whipped egg white head. Sweet cream and herbs on the nose portending the unexpected. A thinking person’s ale. Or at least a person having a good think after mowing the lawn on a Friday. Lovely.

Jez: 5.6% rosehip rosemary farmhouse. Herbal lemonade on the nose. Smell like the sorbet/sherbet I want in my life. Cloudy dark lemon ale under rich white whipped head. Dry yet moderately full. Plenty of bright acid, lemon juice, rose hip giving both a bit of body and a seam of earthy slightly sweet must. Very attractive, vinous. Citrus rise at the start, lime and white grapefruit pith. Deftly confident if not bold. Could have been overbearing if a few element had gone astray. Could poach cod in this. With baby leeks and smashed new spuds. I came back to this one. As I thought about this beer, I agreed with myself about how brilliant the use of rose hip was. Earthy but not mushroomed.

Corrigan: I believe I learned that this was the same 5.6% base beer as the Jez but with coriander and lemongrass. The lack of the earthy non-mushroom tone makes a great difference. This is all bright and light. The piccolo of citrus notes with a relatively slight herbal presence compared to Jez. The lemongrass adds green hues to the middlest middle where another brewer this summer or last might have placed cucumber. Very attractive…. again. The bretty lavender effect frames deftly. Did I use deft again, too? Sure did. A very much quieter sour beer but well worth leaning in a bit and paying proper attention.

Mingus Dew: I bought a full growler, a pottle to those who know. Quarts and pottles. Can’t we just call them that? This pottles-worth was drained in the backyard of the in-laws who were away out east on holiday. We were feeding grapes to the unwelcome rabbit who had set up shop, eating all their garden plants. Rather cheeky. It was the perfect antidote to a stinking hot day in a quiet town, another southwestern Ontario ag supply town. At just 3.8%, a dry hop table sour that offers no dangers, just promises. And opportunities. Dry citrus tang on the nose. Slightly clouded light golden ale under a rich rocky lace leaving head. I should pull the two emergency bottles of that Girardin with the black label out of the residual stash to see how they might compare. This is lovely. Yes, simple lemon but, as with GBL, there is that measured cream backbone from the light malt.

Pod Six: Last but not least. Again, I believe this is the same 3.8% base beer as Mingus Dew with sea salt rather than dry hopping. Side by side, very interesting. The most obvious difference is how the salt adds a slight coating to the lips. Next, it slightly takes the edge off the acid. It might contribute to a more restrained aroma. What, after all, is the smell of salt? A miner might know. The choice of sea salt is interesting as just down the road is Ontario’s salt supply at Goderich. I want to fill a jug with this beer and mild garden herbs. Parsley. Chervil.

We actually chatted a bit. Not what you would call an interview or anything. The kids were in the car. With the AC on. You can read the newspapers for that sort of information. Owners Kristen Harburn and Kyle Teichert grew up in the area. People I know probably know people they know or at least were at the same buck and doe. I asked how it was they got into sours and told me of trips to Buffalo to find Belgian sours, the empties of which were on display. I pointed at a few with strong memories for me, especially Brise-BonBons from Fantome which introduced me to hoppy and sour ten years ago. These beers are the the love child of that.

They ship their beers. You can order them and they stick them in the mail. I will do that. Likely today. After all, I am just about out. If I think of the thrill I had in the fall of 2007 finding myself in Dexter, Michigan getting an hour of Ron Jefferies’ time at the end of a busy week and then getting a case of quarts (and a woolly winter hat) to take away at $5.99 a bottle, the idea of getting beer this fine delivered to my door has a Jetsons’ tone to it here in Ontario the monopolistic. I like this future.

You Stop Paying Attention For A Minute And – WHAMMO! – It’s May

What a busy run. I was out of town in a tall building talking about things for days, trying to get four sets of income tax returns in before the deadline, haggling over the extracting a child from a university dorm post-exams and even writing two brewing history columns for a magazine yet to be launched into the public discourse. And planting the vegetable garden. Radishes don’t plant themselves. April may well be the cruelest month and it is, in large part, because it always seems to fly by in a haze of tasks. Can I complain a bit more? Tra la. It’s May.

Things I need to do: blend. Ed sent me a bottle of diastatic brown malt ale. After I begged. My plan is to take a good brown ale or porter and compare and then mix a la Cornval. Maybe I’ll get to that later this week. That sounds exciting.

Things I need to do, the next: reflect upon the urban jungle. I did get out into the town briefly after a long day talking in tall buildings. Twice I had a pint – a lovely dimpled mug’s worth* of Granite IPA – at that place I visit regularly – as in 2009 and then again in 2013. I really am a sucker for Ringwood which, having been raised as a child upon the Granite’s work. It’s funny. I can call it yogurty and think “yum” while at the same time certain lagers can get lumbered as being yogurty yik. I suppose if I paid attention in any of the “off-flavour” seminars I’d have a better vocabulary about such things but I would rather throw myself down stairwells than do that. I liked it more than the average BAer did. Way more than the RateBeerbarians. Good thing I rarely take others seriously.

Things I need to do, furthermore: consider this. I heard while standing in a tap room that the same one brewery in eastern Ontario was seriously moving towards getting out of the 64 ounce growler trade altogether in favour of half size 32s. I found this very odd. Some sort of freshness claims were made. I was unmoved. Quarts over pottles? Perhaps if there was a better lobby group behind the pottle makers, surely a cottage industry clinging on to a traditional way of life. Support the half gallon.

Things I need to do, lastly: watch out. I worry. About the way of the world. About the weight of the world upon us all. But I don’t worry that much about Sam Adams. As Stan wrote, there has been a lot of worry leading up to and after the release of Boston Beer’s quarterly numbers which, as Jeff pointed out, were utterly brutal. If this were a sports team, the ownership would either sack general management or, conversely, back off and put the future entirely in the hands of general management. Unlike many a sorts team, this is just a brewery… and cidery… and alco-pop maker. So I care a lot less. Koch the Less Hairy is not any sort of hero.**(*) Nice enough I am sure, a bit weird what with the yeasty-yogurty thing… but it’s likely a good time for his retirement, actually. Watch out for folk who say too strongly otherwise. Ask if car service arrangements were involved. Gotta watch out for those sorts of things.

May. What shall I do in May?

*LOOK RIGHT! CLICK!!
**Craft beer writing really needs to stop drowning in superlatives of its own invention. Thank God I only practice in beer writing where the income is small but moral judgement enriches.
**(*)So… why does the asterisk have five points on the keyboard but six on the screen?