Category: Beer Writing

The Beery News Notes For The Week We Lost Martyn Cornell

I learned the very sad news on Sunday that Martyn Cornell of Zythophile and many other things had died. Within minutes the tributes started being shared. Martyn was a veteran journalist and news editor, beer writer and historian. And a traveller, whether for newspaper work in Hong Kong or in Chile as a recent hotel breakfast buffet partner for Ron. I first met him in the comments left at this here blog twenty-two years ago when he left a note on my review of Pete Brown’s first book. We soon chatted again when, as invited, I reviewed Martyn’s first book a few month later and the conversation pretty much continued for over two decades after that.

As many have shared, he was fun and clever company. He’d get mad at me – usually quite deservedly – and yet would kindly share tips and ask for leads. Now a decade and a half ago, we had a great time on the wiki project reviewing the OCB. As I wrote to Alistair on Facebook after the news of his passing was shared, Maryn had such a singular presence, both impatiently crotchety and entirely encouraging at the same time. It was all one thing. He just wanted more of us to be writing more, all building the body of knowledge. In the running to do list I keep there was a task I had left for myself: “dig up note for Martyn.” More about the 1600s English strong ales named after their cities. I never around got to it. Craig had some particularly fine words:

I’m not sure beer history writers count as celebrities. But if they do, there must be a pantheon of the mild-mannered—and surely at the top of that list was Martyn Cornell. I don’t get starstruck often, but sharing a pint with him in Colonial Williamsburg came pretty close. Before that, our conversations had been limited to late-night emails—questions, thoughts, rabbit holes. He always replied. And his replies always led me deeper down the trail. Martyn was whip-smart, a bit shy, and deeply committed to facts. He had no patience for myths or baloney—not out of pedantry, but because he believed the truth was always more interesting than the fiction. He was my friend, and I will miss him.

He always replied. That was Martyn. Very sad news.

——————————

I am going to post a few news items this week but perhaps not at much as one a normal one. Starting with one that certainly in line for Martyn’s wish for us all, Phil Cook hosted another excellent edition of The Session in which many beer who like to write about beer wrote this month about beer in art. Plenty of good entries and the annoucement that we need someont to continue the relay as Phil summed up:

Massive thanks to everyone who contributed; it’s a great collection of observations. No one has, as yet, put up their hand to volunteer for the June edition so if you have an idea, let me know. It’s a little work, but a lot of fun.

And, speaking of travels, Matt Gross shared a detailed portrait of Q Bar in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a hidden hotspot he frequented in the 1990s:

Eventually, I realized I had been regularly flying right past it on my 70cc moped, and I understood why I’d overlooked it: Q Bar was tucked into the side of the Saigon opera house. Of all places! This Beaux-Arts edifice, built by the French colonial powers and opened in 1900, this 500-seat hulk that anchored key streets at the core of District 1, had a warren of dark little rooms off to the right, and a tiny patio and a strip of grass. This was Q Bar. I simply had never passed by at the correct hour to note that, as the sun began to descend, this small patch began to fill up with expatriates, with returning Vietnamese from France, Canada, the United States, and beyond, and even with some locals who, perhaps earlier than others, understood that Q Bar was not just the best bar in Saigon but among the best bars in the world.

And Lars has been travelling east – very east in fact – on journey to discover all he can about farmhouse ales. He was in Alsunga, Latvia meeting with a Suiti brewer who had some pretty rustic techniques leading to a good drink:

Visiting a brewer in Alsunga today, belonging to the Suiti minority, which is Catholic. He’s brewing for midsummer. He ties rye straw around the pole for the lauter tun. In the lauter tun is juniper (usually), rye straw, and birch twigs. Lovely raw ale, soft and mild, with notes of juniper and also honey. Could drink this all day. Cooling the wort in the local pond across the road.

Transporting you elsewhere, David Jesudason is transporting us further with his first installment of Just A Bite, to a carpark in England to eat Kenyan influenced fare from a van:

…to land here in Denmark Hill is odd. It’s bizarre that in such a bleak, concrete location – literally everywhere you look is brick, tarmac or truck wheels, despite being so near Ruskin Park – you can have such transcendent food. Now I’m not saying something as hyperbolic as one bite whisks you to the Kenya savannahs of Bharat’s childhood but the spicing is so balanced that it offsets the heat of the chili; and tastes far more regal than you’d expect food to be at a polluted business park just off a forgotten part of Coldharbour Lane. The tikka pieces are almost burnt, crispy on the outside but delicately soft in the middle, while masala chips have a zesty coating of ginger and cumin. I’m a complete fan boy for the mint chutney that doesn’t scrimp on the fire.

Laura Hadland in another of her regular contributions to The Telegraph wrote about what beers can be found at local Lidl, the grocery chain, and she was looking for bargains:

I put Lidl’s beer range through a rigorous taste test to mine for quality bargains. This included a selection of Lidl’s own-label products as well as some of the well-known brands it offers… Examining the range as a whole, I quickly noticed that almost every bottle is labelled “premium”. To paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is super then nothing is – the descriptor loses all meaning. I therefore tasted the range blind, to prevent undue influence from the packaging or my own personal bias.

Relatedly perhaps on the point of budgeting, in The New York Times there was an interesting story on the demise of something not done so much in Canada unless you are in a restopub sort of place: running a tab:

It’s unclear when younger drinkers started souring on bar tabs, but there’s a through line between the Covid-19 pandemic and shifting bar habits. “During and after the pandemic, more people started using cards,” said Doug Kantor, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, a retailers group. Coupled with Gen Z’s distaste for carrying around cash (or a physical wallet, for that matter), the ubiquity of mobile payment options, such as Apple Pay, has contributed to the decline of bar tabs among 20-somethings.

Also speaking perhaps of budgeting in another sense, over there on the US west coast, the much heralded sale of Anchor Brewing to Chobani yogurt billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya of a year ago has led to questions today, as reported by Truong and Kane in The San Francisco Standard:

Through fencing at the old Anchor Brewing taproom in Potrero Hill, passersby can spot a branded, baby-blue, 1940s-era GMC truck at one end of a lot overgrown with weeds. Since July 2023, when Japanese beer giant Sapporo vacated the complex, both the monolithic off-white Art Deco headquarters at 1705 Mariposa St. and the taproom across the street have remained idle. Now, vines and delicate purple flowers snake through the truck’s rusting grille — and San Francisco beer drinkers continue to go without longtime favorites Anchor Steam, Liberty Ale, and the annual Christmas Ale. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Exactly one year ago, billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya posted a video on social media in which he sports an Anchor baseball cap and explains that he’d purchased the defunct company and was eager to take on the responsibility of reviving the country’s oldest craft brewery.

Similarly perhaps, Rob Sterowski of I Might Have A Glass of Beer… wrote about the sale of the last remaining family-owned Kölsch breweries, Malzmühle, to one of the others, Gaffel:

The puzzling thing about all this is that Malzmühle, just a couple of years ago, itself took over another of the remaining independent breweries, Sünner. And that is staying open – so they say at the moment, at least. So they still have a brewery where they could produce Mühlen Kölsch. Can they really buy in beer from a competitor more cheaply than they can brew it themselves? Even if Gaffel is substantially bigger than Sünner? One can only speculate that the contracts being signed commit Gaffel to supplying the Malzmühle with beer at a very favourable price.

I liked Gary‘s piece about a study by a futurist of the past, Dr. Leonard Kent of the advertising agency Needham Lewis & Broby, projecting his 1960s desire for a better beer – something that he may have to wait for a couple of decades to try:

The solitary drinking experience, as he called it, sounds oninous in our neo-prohibitionist 2025. He meant, thought, at least in part, brewers should make a higher quality product. A product reflecting romance and mystery v. the bulk “sameness” of American beer as it was then. Beer that could be enjoyed more in a wine setting, outside that of the popular image of tronged tavern consumption.

And in Pellicle, the fabulous Rachel Hendry and the fabulous Anaïs Lecoq tag teamed to tell the tale of the litre bottle of Cidre Breton from their respective points of view:

The rustic, rural nature of Cidre Breton’s style, the farmyard imagery and the simplistic label design that speaks to a small scale cider operation that no longer exists, the uncomplicated bottle shape that signals to milk and soft drinks as opposed to high end fine wine all work to put a consumer at ease. There is no trace of poshness or pretentiousness here, all are welcome. Cidre Breton is a cider from the people for the people, that extra 250ml a gesture of diplomatic goodwill. To Britain, Cidre Breton becomes an emblem of an accessible France, something attainable to most, regardless of finances and status. A franco-take on a British heritage—orchards and cider are intrinsic to rural, working class stereotypes of Britain after all—allowing us, litre by litre, to drink exactly as the French do.

That’s it for this dimmed week. Looking back, sifting through emails and posts, I had forgotten that I invited Martyn to my fantasy dinner in 2007. I suggested we have a “good thick 1700s West Country white beer as a stand alone first course” to get the conversation going. He accepted. Sad stuff. Until we meet again in a happier moment, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….back again this  Monday and very nice of him to notice what I wrote). Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but, hmm, they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

The Session #144: Critique not Criticism

Matthew is hosting this months edititon of The Session and has posed a puzzle that has gotten me thinking, the question of criticism v. critique:

Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

My first thought was that I would write about beer writing but I sort of do that every week. But… that question. Eight days ago I wrote that I was trying to work out how this isn’t a distinction without a difference.*  Building any good argument always requires considered analysis. Isn’t this just a question of good and poor criticism? I mean isn’t it obvious that all “very good writers… work hard at building a fair critique“? Just because you work done’t mean you succeed every time… or ever for that matter. I am not in a snit, by the way. I understand it’s a good question but I am just trying to get my head around how to answer it.

Hmm… don’t we also have to admit that there is an extra layer to this with beer. Aren’t we, sadly, lumbered with the legacy of Jackson** who wrote, I am told, in 1987:

If I can find something good to say about a beer, I do. Any merit or unusual aspect is, I believe, of interest to my readers. That is why I choose to write about it in the first place … Nor since I have the whole world from which to choose, can I be comprehensive. If I despise a beer, why find room for it? This poses a problem only when a beer is too big to ignore.

The trouble for those who followed his lead is that craft itself got too big to ignore, which led to the leading of lots of people to spend their money buying lots of beer from lots of breweries. Without a filtering friend for guidance, however, because the governing principle was fixed. As a result, too often we’ve had to deal with the hooray for everything approach. Which means not only are bad beers not to be assessed honestly but neither are ill thought out styles or even dodgy breweries. Don’t mention the bad stuff! Schtom!! Because… what… criticism (“booo!“) in good beer is subjective while fawning praise (yay!!!) is objective… apparently?*** But is that all there is? Is there any point going over that all again? It is what it is. So I am not going to write about that. Nope.

Despite that… is there any good critical thinking in beer writing beyond the consulto PR? Why doesn’t good generate much of a body of independent peer reviewed thought, either academic or pop culture? Are there even any great beer writers? Well, there are some I can name just as examples. The Beer Nut has established the stylish standard for considering each beer in itself and calling out poor performers. Katie Mather has raised the bar for writing on the experience of both sides of a pub’s taps. And the works of Martyn as well as the Law of Lars pretty much means you can no longer rehash fable as fact. Yes, there are more than a few glimmers. Which is why I still have an interest in the weekly updates. But… I am not going to write about that. Not. At. All.

Yet… we have an excellent example most excellently provided by the excellent Laura Hadland who (like the kid ahead of me in math class who finished the test early and left the answers in view) posted her submission for The Session earlier this week and, in doing so tied excellence in writing to – err… what to call it – reticence in writing when she recalled her first paid reviewing experience:

…the restaurant got in touch with the paper. It turned out that they were in the midst of a battle with the residents who lived on the same street over the noise and odour produced by their flue over and about those properties. The restaurant accused me of being a plant by this co-op of neighbours and giving them a bad review ‘for the cause’. Which was, of course, utter nonsense, but I later discovered that one of the enthusiastic readers emailing me about my fine review was indeed one of the residents. The whole thing was downright bizarre and quite the furore. It all left a very bad taste in the mouth (and not because of the dodgy food or alleged dodgy flue) but I’m not really sure I learned very much except that you never know when you are going to accidentally stir up a hornet’s nest of local politics.

Exactly. So how, then, can one pick a theme in which to develop a critique when the topic potentially denies and even inhibits the construct of fulsome review itself? (And, while we are at it, why is the meta stuff sucking at the very heart of me this month?) Well, by way of relief, I was sorta struck by this passage on the meaning of fandom in The New York Times this week that offered me perspective:

Thankfully I also believe, in the grander sports-as-metaphor-for-life sort of way, that my Metsian prism on the world is fundamentally the correct one. Which is to say, we’re all losers most of the time. We’re all a little Metsy some of the time. We may have success, yes, but we can’t completely avoid failure and the sooner we embrace it, the happier we’ll be. There’s a reason so many Mets fans, myself included, remain delusionally optimistic after all these years, despite all the horrors we’ve seen and the LOLs we’ve endured. The highs are high, and the lows are low, and no matter how high things get we believe with religious fervor that a new low is just around the corner. But also, right behind that, possibly another high. It’s not a terrible way to go through life.

I give you Mr. Met. What does Mr. Met do? They win? He smiles! They suck? He smiles! Why? Well, perhaps it’s the paper mache head, sure, but sports fandom sits at the far end of the continuum from ugly local politics. We understand in this sort of fandom that there is the relationship and there is the knowledge – plus I suppose the honesty about the relationship and the knowledge. Can one both offer critique and have the relationship? How far can it go? I think that is actually the problem with beer writing. Writing by fans or for fans or most often both.  How else can you explain the obvious but continuing botch of IPA: as tradition, as an appropriated style, as a fragmented set of styles and then a meaningless yet all purpose brand of some sort. Yet it works somehow. Is it really a problem? Is IPA is the equivalent of Mr. Met? Fun and certainly associated but not vital. Frankly, do you really want to dig in deep?  When you think of it a bit too much, he’s actually a freakish zoolological and metaphysical horror!! It’s a human with a massive baseball for a head, for God’s sake. Who were his parents? How does he even go to the dentist?? Don’t ask. Just don’t ask.

We just sorta like Mr. Met like we sorta like IPA. One could even ask “who would crap on Mr. Met??” Maybe Phillies fans, I suppose. But who needs that? Who craps on IPA? Who needs to if it has become a meaninglessness? We let it go. We set aside the knowledge in favour of the relationship.

So if good beer hasn’t given rise to a body of critique, as Matthew correctly posits, is it perhaps because it isn’t necessary to do so? Believe it or not, from time to time I have some critical thoughts about the beer trade. No, it’s true. And I have also written histories which have sought to untangle fact from myth. But is a point missed when one does that? Or perhaps too much of that? Or only that? Or something like that?****

*A legal phrase found in Canadian rulings, by the way.
**Whose writing, as Churchill said of Russia, was never as strong or as weak as it looked.
***Matther acknowledges this when he wrote: “If beer culture hasn’t matured enough for writers to levy fair, objective critique of culture, products and processes, then I would argue it hasn’t matured at all.” Which may be correct. But I am not writing about that. Even though the “brewer’s intention” stuff drives me bonkers. As if that’s known.
****Finis. Amplifer fluens. (Applause!) Te relinquo.

Your Jam Packed Bundle Of Beery News Note Excitement For Mid-March 2025

Took a trip east to Gan on Monday. Yup. I was out there day-tripping as I decided a few years ago that the first work day after the clocks change is gonna be a day off from here on out. And what did I see in wonderful Gananoque aka Gan? Well, I observed the law, that’s what I did. Meaning I saw this nice municipally financed and authorized and even installed sign that says you can drink in public in a nice park with a lovely view. I’m bringing a foldy chair and a few tins next time. Because it is the Law of Gan. What else can you do in Gan on a Monday in late winter? Well, the amusements never end if we are going to be honest.*

Speaking about drinking in public, wine writer Jason Wilson wrote this about an evening out in Logroño, a small city in of Spain:

At Bar Soriano, I get grilled wild mushrooms in garlicky sauce and topped with a skewered shrimp. At Bar La Travesía, I eat amazing tortilla española topped with a spicy pepper sauce. At Bar Donosti, I order a bite-sized dish of quail egg, chorizo, and pepper called cojonudos (which means “ballsy,” which is a compliment) followed by grilled foie gras on a slice of bread. At Bar Lorenzo, I get the famed Tío Agus, a skewer of spicy grilled pork on a bun with a secret green herb sauce. At Bar Sebas, I get the pimiento relleno de carne. At Bar El Perchas, I get either pig’s ear in a spicy sauce, or a fried pig’s ear sandwich (the only two items on the menu). At Tastavin, I eat quail escabeche or rabo de toro wrapped in puff pastry. At Bar Garcia, there’s always a plate of cecina or panceta curada. All along Calle Laurel and Calle San Juan, there are endless small plates of paper-thin jamón ibérico or grilled piparra peppers or skewers of olives and tinned fish.

What he wrote about got me all Pavlovian but then – later in the article when he got to writing about writing about wine – I realized the best bit of the article didn’t really mention the wine at all. It was local simple wine that accompanied these lovely plates of tapas. He then discussed how he was asked this by a researcher: “why is most wine communication so bad?”   Go read his answer. Apply it to beer. Then ask yourself whether everyone is an actual expert.

Not unrelatedly, Eoghan provided a useful lexicon of words for being drunk that can be used in Brussels in Brusseleir, a Brabantian-Dutch dialect:

There are organisations that work to keep the language alive, and each year the non-profit Be.Brusseleir presents a “Brusseleirs van ‘t joêr” award to the best representative of the city. But it is a dying language, as native speakers either age out of the population or move outside Brussels in their retirement years. We may not be able to restore the language to its former glory, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still use it. So this weekend, instead of going to the pub drop into your local Stameneie. Not for a bière or a pintje, for a quiet Beeke. And if you stick around and have enough, you might even find yourself getting not drunk but a maybe a little bit Zat.

I quite like “Kousenband”! Never one to accept a kousenband, The Tand himself did spake this week and he spake unto ye and me of London, good and bad – including this lament:

My usual tactic here? Try the cask, pick the least bad one, then immediately wash it away with a pint of London Black. Works every time… Somewhat surprisingly, I feel, as mentioned above, you can trust the cask more in the one that isn’t called Craft, than the one that is, though that certainly wins as a pub.  (I’ll draw a veil over the appalling beer in Fullers Trinity Bell next door to Cask. You could have poached an egg in the beer and it was flat as a pancake. Just the sort of stuff that puts people off cask forever, and not at all what you expect from Fullers managed house.)

Even more disappointedly, Kendell Jones of the Washington Beer Blog shared some tough news from the hop yards of that state with the closing down of Brulotte Farms:

Brulotte Farms is one of over a dozen grower-owners who make up Yakima Chief Hops, one of the world’s premier hop suppliers. The Brulotte family has farmed hops for six generations. Today, Yakima Chief Hops announced that Brulotte Farms is closing its doors after 81 years. The family farm is located in Toppenish, just outside of Yakima. “Yakima Chief Hops expresses our heartfelt gratitude to Reggie Brulotte for her commitment and passion for growing quality hops for brewers worldwide,” said a press release from Yakima Chief Hops. “Reggie has been an industry leader throughout her career and continues to be dedicated to the hop industry. Her contributions have had a tremendous positive impact on both the hop and beer industry… 

Pete Brown posted another image of his weekly beer column in The Sunday Times and then applied some gently encouraging promotion for it on social media:

What’s wrong with mainstream? It’s a mainstream newspaper with a mainstream audience. But you know what? If I was writing a column for Craft Beer Wanker magazine, I’m not sure I’d change a single one. Sometimes, if they’re widely available, there’s a good reason for that.

Makes sense. He’s been sharing fairly newbie friendly primer level stuff so far – as it would have to be for a general audience. Perhaps at the other end of things, Pellicle‘s feature this week received high praise from David Jesudason:

This is brilliant. A fresh, journalistic approach to how a beer was ruined written in an authentic voice. Love it and you will too…

…which sorta laid on a bit of pressure, right?  Fortunately the tale of the end of the Ringwood Brewery by Imran Rahman-Jones was as good as promised, tracing and placing events in the overall arc of brewing better beer:

Alan says Peter Austin would have been “ so proud” that a cask ale brewer like Marston’s had bought the brewery he founded. After all, Marston’s had successfully kept other acquisitions running, including Wychwood, Banks’s and Jennings. My early memories of Ringwood are from after the Marston’s acquisition, and the quality was still exceptional. The decline was not immediate, but over time—Neil says the personal touch was lost in favour of a more corporate environment.  “Marston’s were more interested in selling you insurance, getting the price of your gas down and your rubbish disposal down than they were [selling] you beer,” he says.

The Guardian published a feature on Zahra Tabatabai’s Back Home Beer, an American of an Iranian background who is creating beers which reflect a samily tradition:

“My grandfather died when I was young, but my family always talked about him making beer and making wine,” said Tabatabai, 42, whose parents left Iran in order to attend university in Alabama with the intent to return home, just before the breakout of the Iranian revolution. Tabatabai’s parents ultimately settled in Georgia when she was five years old. Her Persian lager was specifically based on her family’s flavor memories. “I made a few batches of that beer, and they would give me feedback and then I’d go back and change the recipe,” she said.

The New York Times printed an interesting opinion piece this week on how one insider saw DEI initiatives failing at ABInBev:

I should have seen it coming. Many corporations were flexing their credentials in the growing diversity, equity and inclusion movement. But for me, the incident was a particularly telling example of what was going wrong with Anheuser-Busch — and an early sign that too many American corporations had forgotten who their customers were. To be clear, I believe that an employee base that has a diversity of thought — which is naturally associated with a diversity of ethnicities and backgrounds — is good for business. Different employees can better solve existing problems or identify new opportunities. But the massive corporate embrace of D.E.I. was always destined to fail, in large part because the movement was never well defined to begin with.

Some insta-grumbles about woke v. anti-woke but strikes me as this is a description of what was really playing out – and is still playing out – in heartless faceless corporate landscape. Even if it’s all fairly pathetic. Speaking of big beer, when is a beer Canadian? It’s an interesting question in these times of tariffs and retaliations:

Coors Light is an American brand. Molson Canadian is a Canadian one. But a can of either on the shelf in New Brunswick is produced in the same place: the MolsonCoors brewery in Moncton. MolsonCoors is headquartered in Chicago, but, as a publicly traded company, it has shareholders around the world.  When N.B. Liquor began taking Kentucky bourbon and California wines off the shelf in their corporate stores, brands like Coors and Budweiser remained.

Sorta similarly, from the US perspective, there is an eduction process occurring on what local means to the business of beer and other products in these tariffs times – as in this report from Colorado:

Beer prices have recently gone up. Feguson credits the increase to the price of aluminum rising. The beer vendors are spreading the cost out amongst all of their products. So, though Ferguson’s company only buys kegs, he is seeing a $5 to $10 increase on everything he buys. “As a small business, I would say a micro business, our margins are so tight anyways that it does sting. We understand the way the world works though, and I think one benefit for us is because we buy only local Colorado products,” Feguson said. The price of coffee beans has also surged since they are imported to America. However, Colorado Craft Coffee and Beer House has not seen an increase from their suppliers. Ferguson says this is because everything they buy is roasted and brewed in Colorado, so it does “soften the blow.”

Finally and perhaps by way of contrast in both scale and certainty, Jordan wrote about a beer he helped create but really he talked about a cookie or rather the greatest frikkin’ cookie in the history of humankind:

It was, at one point or another, the best selling cookie in Canada. It’s constructed similarly to the oreo, but the oatmeal biscuits have a ridged diamond pattern criss-crossing them, and a touch of honeyed sweetness balanced by a little salt. The peanut butter filling is remarkably temperature stable. It’s not hard to see the appeal. The little devils are moreish, I think mostly due to the combination of sweet and savory. Christie eventually had factories across the city, including one at the far end of the Queen Streetcar in southern Etobicoke and one on O’Connor that is now Peek Freans. The company was purchased by Nabisco and eventually by Mondelez International. The Pirate Cookie has fallen from favour, largely due to the proliferation of nut allergies in the general population. It has not yet disappeared.

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

*There was a large pike out by the hole in the ice, flopping as it dealt with the situation.  And that is the USA in the background, by the way. Wellesley Island is there on the horizon.

The Last Thursday Beery News Notes For The Suckiest Part Of The Year

We have entered a short and ugly season. False spring. Dwindly wintery. The time of dirty snow. After last week’s -20C temps, high winds and back to back blizzards we got the first sense of spring. Not the reek of dog shit thawing out of snowbanks spring. But at least +5C and even a bit of drizzle. Under five weeks to the first of April. My own pea and carrot seeds will be planted in the cold dark soil by then. Not that bit of basil. No way. I am eating that plant. Soon.

First up? First up and speaking of eating, I have been looking for an angle on long time servant of good beer Jonathan Surratt‘s blog by email about sandwiches, Bound by Buns, and this week he provided in this week’s post:

I recently had the idea to see if I could incorporate beer into each of the main components of a sandwich… I met with Jenny Pfafflin from Dovetail Brewery (we call her JP) and she and I put our heads together to discuss the beer options for this sandwich. I had a rough concept for a beer braised short rib sandwich using a beer cheese spread and we talked through the other options. JP, a brewer who is also an Advanced Cicerone, was very helpful in being a second opinion and a knowledge expert on Dovetail’s line of beers and beer flavors in general.

Now, that is just the introduction to the intro. Take some time. His weekly posts often drill down deep into the details and then wallow with you in the goodness of sammy Pr0n.

Next… what a headline: “Heineken to make beer weaker“!!! Jessica Mason reports:

From 25 February, Heineken will reduce the alcohol of its Sol beer brand to just 3.4% ABV down from from 4.2% ABV. The beer, which was originally brewed in Mexico before it was acquired by Heineken from Fomento Economico Mexicana SAB (FEMSA) in 2010 in a deal worth £4.8 billion, is now produced in Zoeerwoude in the Netherlands. According to reports via The Sun, increased cost pressures facing the sector have also pushed the decision for beer companies to make the move to bring the strength down on some beers.

That’s 23.5% weaker according to my math. Yikes. At what point is that a near beer? Speaking of weak, we have this in from Beer Insights on the serious loss of interest in the darling of a decade ago, Stone, now owned by Sapporo:

…results were driven by strong growth of Sapporo brands offsetting softer Stone trends. Indeed, early in the yr, the co recorded a $90+-mil impairment charge on its Stone biz, it acknowledged while responding to critiques about its overseas investments from a Singapore-based investor with more than 19% stake in the co. Recall, Sapporo acquired Stone for a little less than $170 mil in 2022, then invested tens of mils of $$ in US production facilities.

A $90,000,000 loss on a two year old $170,000,000 investment is quite impressive. Somebody sure ain’t worthy. Conversely, Matty C got out his pen and his writing table and wrote about the end of things for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing:

Everything is finite, and all good things must come to an end. Most people understand this, even if only subconsciously, and it’s why I think we cling to nostalgia so tightly – it helps stop us worrying about that which we ultimately cannot control: change. Nostalgia plays a huge part in what we drink and enjoy. It’s largely why Guinness is so frustratingly popular at the moment (and I say frustratingly from the perspective of someone who feels like this is a missed opportunity to get more people drinking cask beer). But this phenomenon also extends to brands like Theakston’s Old Peculier and Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, even Bass remains popular among some enthusiasts.

Speaking  of institutions… what is a hall of fame for? The already famed? Consider Jeff‘s conclusion:

Elevating the less-heralded figures who shaped American brewing is certainly a worthy effort. Using the Hall to reshape the way we think about brewing (as well as craft brewing) would be a worthy effort. But at least after an initial round of inductees, it seems like the Hall has chosen to celebrate they already celebrated. Maybe this project isn’t for me, or the public generally, and that’s fine. Industries get to define whom they celebrate. But again, looking from the outside, it seems like a missed opportunity.

There isn’t a hall. Just a website. But… if there is no actual hall, does there even have to be actual fame? Or is it for sometinhg else? Consider Stan‘s thoughts:

For the record, I provided nominations and I voted in the election. I nominated Joe Owades (cited within the post), not because of the role he played in developing light beer, but because he was a key advisor to the early giants of microbrewing (even if the beer was not made a small breweries; goodness those were confusing times) such as Boston Beer and Pete’s Wicked Ale. As you will see when you read the entire post, people like to talk about this. 

Soooo… there is the talk. But does the talk get beyond the bubble? Still, it’s a bubbly bubble for sure. Frothy even. As you consider that, we move on a bit deeper into the recent past. Boak and Bailey linked to this one on Saturday but it is too good not to record for archival posterity – a 1977 BBC documentary on the state of the UK beer industry. As Nigel Sadler wrote “a nice old film“! But it was a broadcast to a nation wide public. Not a bubble Could beer still sustain that sort of viewership now?

Well someone* is trying as Pete Brown has been granted space in the Sunday Times in England to write about beer on a regular basis. It will be interesting to see if there will be any of the analysis you would see in wine or restaurant reviews. It would be even more interesting if a writer like A.A. Gill, Brown’s predecessor in those pages, could arise in good beer. Drink was something Gill left behind with good reason.  Similarly, could good beer generate this sort of academic standard we  see with the four newly announced Masters of Wine?  Consider these qualifications:

Jit Hang Jackie Ang MW holds a DPhil in Medical Sciences from the University of Oxford and a MA in Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge, said the IMW. He is director of Cherwell Wine and Spirits in Singapore, where he also heads the High Throughput Screening group at the Experimental Drug Development Centre. His research paper was: ‘Are Universal Glasses Truly Universal? — An investigation on whether glassware shape affects perceptions of red and white table wines made from international varieties.’

A brainiac! But there are many sorts of pursuits and pleasures, aren’t there. For example, B+B shared a tiny cheery… dare I say charming… travelogue on a recent weekend trip to Germany with Ray’s mother over at their Patreon page:

In Cologne, almost 24 hours later, we fell upon glasses of Päffgen Kölsch while surrounded by people in carnival costumes – minions, pirates, sequined suits, and so on. Our hypothesis was that Ray’s mum would love Kölsch and Kölsch culture. She’s a lager drinker by default, when she drinks beer rather than whisky, and is no longer keen on pints. Sure enough, she did like this crisp, bitter, incredibly fresh beer. Well, who wouldn’t? Truthfully, it was probably being surrounded by family, and having a fuss made of her, that made the beer taste particularly good.

Sounds ideal. No? Does for me. But maybe this is your ideal pub? Not mine but I am not an elderly emo. Really. I’m not. Others have other ideals… idles… iddles…

After the King pulled a pint called Gone For A Burton, a traditional mid-strength beer brewed by Tower, brewery owner John Mills cheekily asked him: “Going to have a slurp of that, sir?” The King replied that if he was not, he was in the “wrong place”.

Less regally, Doug Veliky has been asking some questions of brewers in these troubled times and Ottawa’s own Dominion City Brewing shared a high level of detail that they had actually shared with their customers along with a few notes:

…we’ve been refining our unique value proposition and have landed on the fact that we offer a high rate of sale and greater profit per pour than our peers. We’ve made up the attachment below [Ed.: err… above…] in a bid to educate our customers about the pricing elasticity they get with our brand (and about the true cost of their macro options once all the freebies and kickbacks are counted.) It’s made the difference in keeping our business with several accounts to date and we hope to use it as part of our pitch to accounts that might not look craft-accessible. So both a shield and sword strategy.

I like it. And I like their Town & Country, too. They are also fighting the tariff threat along with other Canadian brewers. More on the Glorious and Free initiative here. Speaking of Ontario, just days before today’s election, the liquor control agency controlled by current government of “Buck A Beer” Doug Ford slapped a new tax** on beer sales in the province:

The LCBO posted information about the fee increase on its website Monday within hours of Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford unveiling a new campaign promise to scrap the province’s mandatory minimum prices for alcohol.  The increase is set to take effect on April 1. It amounts to a 4.4 per cent jump in what the LCBO calls “cost of service,” a levy that applies to all beer products — whether imported or domestic — sold at retail outlets such as The Beer Store, supermarkets, convenience stores and brewery retail outlets, as well as on beer distributed to bars and restaurants. 

And finally Pellicle picked a spot for this week’s focus where I’ve actually been – but may not no longer – as author Gene Buonaccorsi got to crawl over and under the Cambridge Brewing Company, down the road from MIT and across the river from Fenway***:

With Phil off attending to customers, I asked Will to show me the notorious barrel cellar. For years, I’d heard of this nature-defying space—a small corner of a basement where some of the industry’s most mind-bending beers fermented and matured. We exit the dining room through a door towards the back and enter an industrial white-walled staircase with faded metal handrails. He leads me down to the lowest level, where we emerge into a low ceilinged room with fluorescent lights that (at first glance) illuminate a set of dry goods storage racks and the unmistakable shining silver door of a refrigerated keg room. “It’s a bit tricky from here,” he tells me. “You have to step up but also duck so you don’t hit your head.”

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

*Others too. For example, I had no idea there was a beer focused radio station broadcasting out of Sheffield: “Ale & Radio will celebrate its milestone on April 13, following a highly successful first year broadcasting beer-focused content alongside a diverse mix of music spanning multiple genres and generations. With a global audience, the station’s mission has always been to support independent breweries, bars, pubs, and beer retailers, while uniting beer enthusiasts through a variety of engaging content. Listeners can tune in for regular beer news, travel features, festival coverage, brewery interviews, and user-submitted audio beer reviews.” Here’s their webpage with a link to the audion stream. But is Pete’s as he posted “the ONLY regular beer column to run in a UK broadsheet newspaper or magazine, first one for over 20 years” or as he blogged “I’ve joined Adrian Tierney-Jones (Daily Star) in the exclusive ranks of people who have a regular beer column in a mainstream British media outlet.“? 
**fine… yes, it’s a fee increase and not a tax…  
***…and, once upon a time, deep down within an entertaining early pandemic freakout…

These Are The Beery News Notes For The Dump Of Snow Finally Showed Up

Well, what can you say. Moscow and Washington making kissy face as planes literally roll off the runway. We had a nasty dump of snow locally, the first it feel like in years, but elsewhere in the province we hear that the school kids are basically back on remote learning this winter. The green onions readying for the garden in a few weeks look out the window in horror. I know the feeling.

For all the change going on, at least we can take comfort that The Session continues! The hosts for this February are Boak and Bailey who announced the topic:

What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now? Not necessarily right now. You can go to the shops if you like. But you shouldn’t have to get on a train or a flight. Or travel back in time. If you like, you can choose a top 3, or top 5, or top 10. What makes it a good beer to drink at home? Is it brewed to be packaged? Does it pair well with your home cooking? Does it pair well with drinking in your pyjamas?

Get writing!  Your submissions are due on Friday, February 28th.  Andreas Krennmair has been writing. And wrote this week about the brewing tradition in the German state of Württemberg and the distinction between the “gewerbsmäßig” and the “Privatbrauereien” in that region in the 1800s:

Normally, “private breweries” at the time referred simply to privately owned breweries, as opposed to publicly owned breweries (of which people own shares) or communal breweries (owned e.g. by the citizens of one particular town or city by virtue of their citizenship). But in this case, the private breweries were strangely juxtaposed with commercial ones… so, were private breweries non-commercial? Turns out, yes: in parliamentary records of the local parliament of Württemberg from 1853, I found a description of what constituted private brewing: it was the non-commercial brewing by Upper Swabian farmers, where it was customary for all farmers who owned larger farms to also own a brewing kettle in order to brew beer for their own use, which included the house drink for the farm workers…

Speaking of unpacking things found in central European digital records, I missed last week when Alistair of Fuggled fame wrote about Josef Groll, the first brewmaster at the brewing company that today is generally known by the brand Pilsner Urquell. What caught my eye was this:

Another fact about the actual beer being produced in Plzeň also caught my eye – that there were 2 types of beer being brewed at Pilsner Urquell, the famed 12° lager and an 11° schankbier, which may have at some point become a 10° version that was known within living memory. The schankbier, the German equivalent of “výčepní”, would be sent out to beer halls to be stored for 2 or 3 weeks before being ready to be drunk, while the lagerbier left the brewery ready to be tapped on arrival, and was mainly consumed during the summer months.

Question: is this schankbier in late 1800s Germany the same as this schenk beer in late 1800s German immigrant community in America? Have a look at footnote #1: “A kind of mild German beer; German draught or pot beer, designed for Immediate use.” Hmmm…

Speaking of ready to be drunk, Laura Hadland wrote an excellent piece for CAMRA on the nature of small beer in English history… and, more importantly, the experience of hunting down that bit of history:

It  occurred to me that we are applying our modern sensibilities to the past. We can just about bend our heads around the idea of a weak beer being consumed in quantity throughout the day. It’s harder to accept that drinking anything approaching a strong beer from dawn til dusk could be the norm. It just sounds mad. But we know that beer drinking was unproblematic and socially acceptable in the early 18th century – consider the gentle serenity of Hogarth’s portrayal of Beer Street next to the debauched depravity of Gin Lane in his famous prints. At the time of the Beer Act in 1830, beer is referred to in the House of Commons as “the second necessary of life.”

Remember: small beer has always sorta made itself due to the nature of mashing. You can chuck away the spent malt after first runnings or make small beer.

Ashleigh Arnott got the nod in Pellicle this week with her portrait of a rather unpolished place, The Rutland Arms in Sheffield, Engerland. I quite liked this aspect of the pub’s weirdness:

The jukebox policy at the Rutty is notorious. Insert your pound but choose wisely, abiding by the rules on the chalkboard above. The ‘permabanned’ list features local acts—Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Richard Hawley—and the sort of bands that Guardian readers know they should never admit to liking: U2, Frank Turner, Foo Fighters, et al. And Taylor Swift, she’s also permabanned, though I suspect it didn’t need saying. Staff decide what’s in the ‘Recommended’ and ‘Forbidden’ columns according to whims, mainly, with a hint of current affairs-based silliness. Even co-owner Chris Bamford can’t overrule it.

The photos that accompany the pice are also excellent, though I fear that the one of the solo pubgoer on a phone brought the phrase “lost in someone else’s thoughts” to mind. Do pubs not still stock newspapers? Are there newpapsers to be stocked? Who has money for that? Speaking of which… where’s all the money in the brewing industry going these days what with threats of tariffs floating all around ? Well…

…the most important new investment made by Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) is Constellation Brands (NYSE:STZ). Buffett acquired 5,624,324 shares, making this position account for 0.5% of the portfolio, with a total value of $1.24 billion.

And, at a lower level of investment, in the latest monthly edition of London Beer City Will Hawkes shared interesting feature on the return of what are described as “traditional” pubs with a measure, as is often the case in such matters, of what looks like gentrification in this discussion with pub developer, Adrian Kinsella:

His aim was to turn the pub around, to attract a more varied clientele, to combine traditional levels of comfort with the quality now typical among Britain’s best small breweries… “[It’s about] taking the best of the old-school hospitality and putting it with the best of the new service standards around beer, and the best of the food, the amazing small street-food operators,” he says. “If you marry that together, that’s the sweet spot.” There won’t be tables laid up for food at the Coach and Horses, though. Kinsella says he’s not chasing numbers; if someone wants to sit over a pint for a few hours, that’s fine. His or her glass won’t be cleared. Beer will cost what it costs. “We’re not gouging, but when [beer is] too cheap, someone is getting the rail and it’s normally the staff,” Kinsella says. “All our staff are on London living wage.”

Speaking of noises made in pubs, “The Baby of the Pub” was the title of Katie M’s piece in the December 2024 edition of Ferment, a UK beer vendor’s inhouse magaine, and it was shared this week via her newsletter The Glug to share with us all the story of one wee pub goer… who is one:

The baby of the pub is growing up in a world where the pub is a normal part of his life. It’s teaching him to treat the pub as a natural meeting place, rather than a posh restaurant or an illicit drinking den. He’s being taught to enjoy hanging out here. And why shouldn’t he? This was our favourite place long before he was born, and now it is his. It’s a pleasure and an honour to teach him the ways of our local pub, and as he grows we’ll have new milestones to celebrate — his first packet of Scampi Fries, his first lime and soda, the first time he flips a beermat. One day he’ll be getting the rounds in and teaching his friends how to properly order at the bar—what a thought! 

Back in Germany, news is breaking that would shock any law abiding Canadian… voters are being bribed with beer:

The city of Duisburg in western Germany has come up with an unorthodox way to lure reluctant voters to the polling station. Voters who cast absentee ballots in the city center by 2 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) on Saturday were given a voucher for a drink to spend at a beer cart next to the polling station… In the 2021 federal election, for example, only 63.3% of voters in the Duisburg II constituency turned up to vote, compared to a national average of 76.6%. “With this unusual campaign, our carnivalists are ensuring that the federal election is once again in the spotlight. It also appeals to citizens who are not persuaded to vote by the usual election posters or information campaigns,” Murrack said, describing it as “a clear benefit for voter turnout and therefore for our democracy!”

Huzzah! Isn’t that what was said in the 1890s? Liam of IrishBeerHistory has announced that he is going to pause doing his series 100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects half way along “but not writing – to assess my options.“ Still he did share one more story, a story about a button:

This small button measuring 3cm (1 3⁄16 inches) in diameter is made of a copper alloy – possibly brass – and shows some green patination where the gilding has worn away to expose the base metal. It is probably from the livery uniform of one of the draymen who worked for the Anchor Brewery of John D’Arcy & Son on Usher Street, not far from where those aforementioned other-uniformed squads lined up. It features the words ‘J. D’Arcy & Son Ltd. Brewery’ and a nicely embossed anchor whose pronged ends appear to resemble demons’ tails. 

And I liked this story about one way drinkers got around the restrictions imposed during US Prohibition:

The unnamed ship turned out to be a glamorous offshore bar. To get aboard the reporter paid a $5 cover charge (about $90 today), with another $5 for a stateroom. Once settled, he was ushered into a festive room with “a jazz orchestra, staff of busy bartenders and a party of sixty revelers who danced the night away.” They were young and old, men and women, but all quite wealthy with “polished manners and a democratic demeanor.” The crew was well dressed and spoke with cockney accents; from them one could order a scotch for $1 or a mint julep for $2.50. 

In Ontario, we had a number approaches to the drinking tourism brining Americans north but, of course, we should be proud of the fact that brewing itself never ceased up here – even during Canadian Temperance – to the point that Labatt sent so much beer south that it expanded its work force by over fifty percent.*

Finally, I found this piece in VinePair on the current Guinness situation odd, mainly I suppose as it tried to apply and drawn lessons for brewers in the US. Consider this:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Guinness is that story. Its current success is the result of the sort of patient, holistic investment across the on- and off-premises that used to be the beer industry’s block and tackle. “The way that I’ve described this to people is, [Guinness] is a political movement,” says Roth. “It includes not just changing minds, but changing actual behaviors.” Its dominance in bars and restaurants has helped to influence consumers beyond their confines, too. That’s only grown more obvious as the beer aisle has grown more overwhelming. 

Nowhere in the story do the words “Baltimore” or “closed” pop up. Nor is there a suggestion of manufactured scarcity. Or a lucid consideration of the success of Guinness goes well beyond the beer rep, well beyond beer itself to a cultural fascination that has been in place for decades if not centuries based on the broader love of all things Irish** actual and faux from St. Patricks Day to The Clancey Brothers, from River Dance and to the identikit pubs. And that the beer itself has had these sorts of peaks upon peaks thoughout that time. The widget over 35 years ago. The Quiet Man over 75 years ago. Imported barrels over 165 years ago. Yes, it is good for the brewery to have existed for all that time but the presumption to make an association with Anchor Brewing or Leinenkugel’s or that it serves as an example and not a sui generis phenomenon is a bit telling.

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

*What?? $43.99??? At that price, no doubt the authority on the matter.
**My late father born of Greenock called the equivalent “professional Scots” and you can read Billy Connolly’s autobiography Windswept & Interesting for more detail on that point.

Your First Beery News Notes For That Dull Gap Between The NFL And MLB

The gap. It’s not going to be too bad this year with a boooorrrinnnnng Superbowl* coming a bit later in the shortened month. At least there was a nice ad for Bud. But, even with that, this gap between the end of the last football game and the start of baseball’s spring training games is a thing. A dull thing. As is the realization that I am looking past sports fandom at a trade war. Aluminum and steel this week. Am I looking like the guy to the left in the image above pushing from French-Algerian wine from the 1930s. Why does the water drinker look so worried? Why is his hair less stylish?

Yet… what does colonization teach us? Is the dodgy promise of that wine a century ago so unlike what we are like today? I was out buying a magazine last Friday evening in an actual bookstore (because, you know, I had a hankering for buy a magazine like it was 1999) and I looked at all their titles… mainly American… then looked at all the biographies of Americans intersperced with a few semi-royals at the other end of the bookstore… boy oh boy… have we up here taken on a lot of the culture developed down there. Look, I’m not part of the not a real country set but I need something to fill the hours other than lingering angst. Something will level out somewhere. Spring training may do the trick. Maybe that’s it. Down in, you know, Florida.

Speaking of gaps, have you any interest in NA wine or spirits?  Me, I can’t imagine paying non-proxy payment for these sorts of proxies for booze. But if you are interested in NA beer, keep keeping an eye on Polk. He is back with some very interesting observations on one Canadian discount dark ale. And he wrote about where is at** this week, too:

I am incredibly lucky that I still can maintain an online community, despite my switch to mostly non alcoholic options, people in craft beer can be very kind when the road gets bumpy for one of our own and this helps a whole lot. But if I was one who went out and was deeply involved, I wonder how I’d be feeling every weekend when my new normal didn’t include those aforementioned activities. It would be a little overwhelming and would only add to an already stressful time I would imagine. It’s part of why it’s so difficult to go sober, to separate yourself from the good times that feel warm and boozy because you can’t be that person anymore. Change isn’t easy, but letting go of alcohol seems particularly difficult, addiction or not.

I will allow myself more bit of one tariff news item this week from one of my regular reading outlets, mining.com, on the uselessness of tariffs but the benefits of something else:

While US steel imports account for 23% of the country’s consumption, the ratio is much higher at 47% for aluminum, according to the US Geological Survey. The US is particularly reliant on imports of primary aluminum from Canada, which supplies more than two million tonnes each year… Just under half of all cans are thrown away to be land-filled or trashed. More metal is lost through improper sorting at recycling facilities, with losses assessed at roughly one third… Roll out more deposit return schemes and some of that one million tonnes of landfill could be returned to the supply chain.

On our side of the wiggly then very straight line, somewhat similarly, the inter-provincial restrictions are being rethought. New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt is revisting the province’s trade barriers on booze from other parts of Canada and Ontario‘s smaller breweries are looking forward to market opportunities across the country if we ditch the current rules:

Ontario breweries, distilleries and wineries can’t sell their product directly to customers in other provinces, something David Reed, owner of Forked River Brewing Company, says limits their sales opportunities… Because laws around alcohol are up to each province, rules about transporting vary nationwide. In Ontario, the province lifted interprovincial personal exemption limits in 2019 when it comes to alcohol for personal use, the LCBO says. In comparison, SAQ, Quebec’s alcohol board, says any alcohol coming into Quebec, including donations, gifts, and souvenirs, must be reported.

Note: Following up on last week’s news, one Beer Store outlet in my fair city is closing. But… but… me being able to buy my longed for Oland Ex in a corner store? Where do the loyalties lie?

How to pass the time? Cards. Katie plays cards and wrote a bit about it:

We play Rummy. I have no memory for any of the other rules, despite my father in law trying to teach me Stop The Cab every few months. At high school, I used to play a game called shithead in the common room, we doubled the pack so the games would last forever, dragging on into lessons we should have gone to. These are some of my favourite school memories.

Japan has an issue hiring people and then coaxing people back to work in the office but one firm has a solution that perhaps might suit you:

…for new graduates in Japan, one small IT company is offering Gen-Z staff the option to take special ‘hangover leave’ in a fierce recruitment drive being dubbed ‘golden eggs for graduates’. Trust Ring Co Ltd is a tech company in Osaka with roughly 60 employees and is one of many companies combatting Japan’s declining birthrate with quirky incentives as a way to attract new employees…. employees at Trust Ring Co are even encouraged to help themselves to the draught beer machine or a selection of spirits to drink on the job in their Midoribashi offices.

Lordy. And next? What next?!? Beer sludge? Beer sludge!!! Seems “beer sludge” is now a proper term according to the headline to this BBC story:

…nutrition isn’t the only area where spent grain could make an impact. Brett Cotten concedes that early efforts by his young London-based company, Arda Biomaterials, to create leather-alternatives from brewers’ spent grain resulted in something more akin to a flapjack.  But the start-up has since successfully used supramolecular chemistry to make several proteins from brewers’ spent grain that mimic the animal proteins in leather, resulting in a strong and supple alternative. The colour reflects the spent grain used, he says. “Guinness and stouts make for a naturally black material, IPAs and lagers more mid-browns.” 

I shall recommend that to my tailor. If I had one. And I like this understanding in Jeff’s piece on NEIPAs which is one way of explaining the phenomenon:

I would argue an IPA wave was never going to wash over New England before it came along. The region’s preference toward fuller beers with sweet malts and fruity English yeasts, and they have never really embraced the bitterness and spikiness of Centennial or Chinook IPAs. The development of New England IPAs was not unusual: breweries adjusted their process to draw out those incredible flavors and aromas Citra (and successor hops) had.

Careful readers will recall my habit of going to Maine back when the Canadian dollar was worth 95 cents US or more. In 2013, the good beers on offer at Fenway were Long Trail pale ale, Harpoon IPA and Wachusett Green Monster.  New England had plenty of IPA love before NEIPAs… they just weren’t those IPAs.

Speaking of good explanations, in the emailed announcement on Pellicle‘s piece on independent brewing in Thailand, the editorial board of that there publication made an excellent statement on these sorts of things:

About a year ago I received and subsequently rejected a pitch from a writer called Joey Leskin, who writes a great newsletter about beer in London called Beer in the City. I turned it down because I am overtly aware that stories written by British writers about beer culture in other countries can come across as voyeuristic, and often don’t let the voices of the people involved in that scene shine through as they should. Fast forward six months and I was invited to become a mentor by the British Guild of Beer Writers. I agreed, and by coincidence was subsequently assigned Joey as my mentee.

This is a much nicer way of explaining and dealing with what I call “drive-by expertise.” It’s nice that you got to visit. Very nice. But I’ll usually  turn to the local for understanding, thanks.

People who are very much on the scene if not in the scene are Boak and Bailey and this week the scene is very much where they are or at least were – at the Central Library in their own fair city of Bristol, England. There, they came upon what is definitely a scene:

A few weeks ago a special exhibition was laid on at the library on the subject of beer and pubs. Items from the reference collection were put on display in an ornate wood-panelled room and visitors were invited to shuffle round and have a nose about. We visited and were drawn at once to a hefty hardback volume collecting together editions of The Golden Cockerel, the house magazine of Courage, Barclay & Simonds, formed in 1960 when Courage acquired Simonds of Reading. These particular issues of the magazine were from 1962 to 1964 and seemed to include a remarkable number of pub openings.

What follows can only be decribed as remarkable, too. An unpacking of the story of many of those pubs while guiding one to an explanation of the name for “a youth paid to collect dry sand from coastal caves to spread on saloon bar floors.” Fabulous. And a welcome break from the news about those running pubs dealing with the rising costs of running a pub.

And Laura Hadland has updated the story of the Crooked House and the legal battle which has ensued since its demolition:

11th February – And the appeal hearing has been delayed. ATE Farms lodged a High Court challenge against “the Planning Inspectorate’s refusal to postpone the Planning Enforcement Public Inquiry” according to a statement from South Staffordshire Council This means that the public enquiry will now not go ahead as scheduled on 11th March and is unlikely to occur before the criminal investigation is concluded. You can read updates from the Council on their website. According to the Times & Star, the police work continues – “Staffordshire Police said in July last year that six people arrested in connection with the fire have been released from their bail, but remain under investigation.”

N’oubliez pas!!!

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

*What wasn’t boring was the after game celebrations in Philadelphia according to the police scanner: “we lost all the barricades!!!” and especially ““i now have seven or eight people on horses, the fireworks are spooking them and they’re rearing up….they’re civilian horses”!!! And there were some other ads. BeerBoard added some very particularly fine detail on who was drinking what before, you know, the barricades were lost: “Coming off two years of decline for the Big Game, Light Lager saw an increase of +5.6% on the day. Lagers, the #2 style, saw a noted decline of -6.5% in share. IPAs, the third-ranked style, decreased for the second straight year, down -7.9% over 2024. Michelob Ultra was again the top-poured brand nationally on the day, and was up a noted +11.9%. Bud Light, the #2 brand on the day, was -3.0% versus 2024. Miller Lite (+5.4%), Modelo Especiál (+9.6%) and Coors Light (+3.4%) rounded out the Top 5 for draft.” That is very spedific stuff for two days later…
**Or as translated for Maritimers: “where he’s to, too.“

The Thursday Beery News Notes Perfectly Fit For Any Aspiring Oligarch

I would have thought Mr. Putin’s habit of defenestration would have made the prospect of being an oligarch less than attractive. I would think the real position to aspire to is the one where you don’t need the job, no one thinks you can do the job, you don’t even necessarily fit the job – but sooner or later the job comes to you. Consider Mr. Churchill above in 1932, as above, during his wilderness years. Yet immune to Prohibition when visiting friends overseas.

Is good beer entering a wilderness as we move into in this new political cycle? You know, the one dubbed by the Finns as the start of WWIII? Is that fair? I do fear that people are grasping for the return of something loved but lost as opposed to bracing for the shock of the new, like with this bit of advice:

Most of the category’s biggest threats have greater scale, but aren’t local, and that advantage must be exploited more. By directly engaging with neighbors through the hosting of events, sponsorships, and collaborating with other local businesses, breweries can build a sense of community that money can’t buy. Customers are more likely to support businesses they feel a connection to, so the more organizations that can be included, the more loyalty will compound.

What’s that? 2017 is calling? Fine. This sort of rehash strikes me as unhelpful, a sort of dreamy tariff-free wish for another time. Is that helpful?  I was thinking about that when I read this on Blues Guy from wine writer Jamie Goode:

If you are a wine writer it’s really good to talk about the wines and how good they are (assuming they are) rather than concentrating on the business difficulties, the challenging market etc.! Your audience doesn’t need to know this, and it might end up putting a dampener on sales

It strikes me as a similar sort of thing. Hedging. Hedgy even. Whatever is coming is not going to benefit from tales half told or Obama-era building communities of buyers, you know, just as the money tighten. Compare that from this sort of starker statement from Beer Board about the state of diversity in US draft beer sales in 2024:

Not all brands contribute equally to volume or revenue: the top four draft brands drive about 2.5 times more sales than the next eleven brands, and 15 times more than the long tail.

Compare… hop water?  As if. Yup, better to be blunter, bolder and perhaps even less pleasant. Like these top beer review panel notes of the week: “Ray quite liked but Jess almost spat out in disgust.” And as we consider Rachel Hendry‘s recent thoughts on her own writing:

Not so sexy, is it, to say things like I spent a lot of time on a project that didn’t go anywhere which now feels kinda embarrassing or I had some ideas that I thought were good but actually maybe they kinda sucked.  The sadness and the strops were short lived because a) in the grand scheme of everything writing about wine really isn’t that important and b) I am a firm believer that failure is a good thing. Experiencing rejection means you were brave enough to put yourself out there in the first place, and that’s a win in itself. I like my weird and uncategorisable approaches to wine, I’ve worked hard on developing my style and ways of thinking and I’m not willing to compromise that, to conform my voice into something more mainstream.  

A big fat double “Viva Viva!!” to that, Rachel. Be you. And congratulations on what every good drinks writer really needs – a job!

Consider, too, Katie who considered her relationship with the champers and thought of her favourite pal shown in thumbnail to the rights:

The lovely woman in The Gulp’s header image is taken from a 19th century German oil painting called “Maid Secretly Drinking Champers” (possibly not its original name). She has cleared away the glasses from her Lady’s table, and in the hallway, hidden from view, she downs the last remaining dregs of the bubbles. Her head is tipped right back to catch every drop, her cheeks flush with excitement, knowing she is tasting something out of her reach — and yet is literally in her grasp regularly. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate image for this newsletter.

(Good news, Katie. Champagne sales are down and prices may follow.) Katie’s piece reminded me that I have an acquaintance who was a sommelier 40 years ago and told of us how he sometimes stopped midway on the back service stairway, sipping the last dribs from a 1948 or 1963 that he had served someone then famous now forgotten at some swanky London restaurant also then famous now forgotten. What he knew is what I think Katie’s hero knew. Look at the tray. There’s more in the other two glasses on the tray. There’s more.

Speaking of good news, Jessica Mason is on the mend and too the time to tell the very odd tale of a burglery in India:

The store, based in Tiruttani in India’s Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvallur district, had been locked by supervisors on Saturday night, but when staff returned on Sunday they found evidence of people having drilled through the wall to enter the premises. According to local reports, the money that was being kept in the shop and housed in stacked iron boxes had been completely left untouched with the thieves choosing to consume the alcohol available instead. Much to the shop owner’s surprise, the money in iron boxes inside the shop had been ignored with the miscreants favouring the beer instead and leaving just a collection of empty bottles behind from their night time escapade.

How civil!  Similarly note: “…this is already the best stop on the A1…”

There are other glimmers of good. Boak and Bailey considered the demise of pub food this week when they were asked to recommend a spot for that purpose. I have to say, if I am in a pub these days it is more likely as not that I am eating a meal. And sometimes, yes, I am disappointed. As they have been – until they gave a heads up:

It’s interesting how often we find ourselves in pubs that no longer serve food and hear people ask at the bar: “Is the kitchen open?” They haven’t updated their mental model from before the pandemic. Trying to answer the question we’d been asked, we debated The Barley Mow a bit – it does have food, but when is it served? We couldn’t find this out online and nobody wanted to phone to ask. In the end, we suggested a 10-minute walk into town where The Old Fish Market, a rather corporate Fuller’s pub, is still selling the 1990s gastropub dream. Our correspondent was very happy with apparently excellent crispy pork belly and roasted vegetables.

Is this reflective of a turnaround for at least the corporate chain pubs of Britain? Spoons has been booming a bit:

The pub chain also posted a 4.6% increase in like-for-like sales for the second quarter, bolstered by a 6.1% rise during the critical three-week Christmas period. But as the tills rang merrily, the company’s future increasingly appears “at the mercy of politicians,” with cost pressures mounting. Chairman Tim Martin, addressing the results, said that sales during the Christmas period were particularly strong, showing customer loyalty to Wetherspoons’ value-oriented proposition. Martin said: “Sales during the Christmas period were robust, highlighting the resilience of our approach in challenging times.”

And even further away, The Beer Nut decided to channel his inner Ron and headed to Brazil, living to tell the tale:

It’s hard to beat a bit of sunshine and warmth in the midst of the winter gloom. Last month’s New Year jaunt certainly provided that, with a week or so in sunny, and rainy, but most of all warm, São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. It’s a city that sprawls like few others, so I’m definitely not in a position to provide you with a guide to the best beer places. This week’s posts are just about what I drank, and most of that came from the supermarkets. I did get to a handful of bars, however. Just around the corner from where I was staying, and a stone’s throw from Paulista, the city’s grand main boulevard, was a small and bustling open-fronted restaurant and bar called Asterix, specialising in beers from local outfits.

A similar story seems to be taking place in Korea where small local beers are selling well in small local stores thanks to some regulatory reforms:

The market shares of local craft beers were particularly notable in convenience stores and major retail stores. In convenience stores, craft beer cans accounted for 0.18 percent of the market share in 2019. The figure jumped to 5.3 percent in 2022. The number of domestic craft beer brands also increased. At convenience stores, the number of brands increased from 26 in 2019 to 154 in 2023. Their prices also dropped from as high as over 3,700 won ($2.57) per can to 2,765 won.

So things are moving. The now gainfully employed Rachel Hendry provided us with the Pellicle feature this week, the story of “celebrity” wine branding (with pithy* observations that are equally applicable to beer) helpfully using the case** study of Dolly Parton wine so I know what to avoid:

I’d expected her wines to shimmer and sparkle like she does, for the rosé to taste like sugared rose petals and juicy segments of watermelon, the Prosecco to be effervescent with freshly zested limes and the soft perfume of wildflowers catching in the breeze. I was let down. But how do other celebrity wines compare? There’s nothing celebrities love more than making a rosé, so I try a few out of interest. Gary Barlow has one that is proudly “organic,” whatever the fuck that means these days. The wine is made from Tempranillo grapes grown in Spain’s Castile region and tastes astringent and acidic, the fruit is too intense, like softly rotting strawberries and the stringy white pith of a grapefruit.

Not at all like softly rotting strawberries, we see that Hop Queries is out for this month, Stan’s newsletter on the bitter and smelly aspects of brewing. He linked to an IG post from Crosby Hops that shared some stats on the demise of these hops varieties:

Cashmere: Down 60% in 2 years; Comet: Down 64% since 2022; Mt. Hood: 142 acres remain in Oregon; Mt. Rainier: No longer reported in Washington; Sabro®: Down 69% since 2022; Talus®: Down 78% since 2022; Triumph, Zappa™, Ahtanum® No reported acreage for 2 years…

The first is just an unfortunate name choice for any Canadian… but Mt Hood? That was always my hop to hate 20 years ago. Rough gak. Who owns those last 142 acres anyway?

And who doesn’t love a good schism? I know I do. That’s why I was so very pleased to see that the homebrewers of America are walking out on the craft brewers of America when both are facing something of a slump:

Today, the American Homebrewers Association® (AHA) filed for incorporation in Colorado and seated a founding board of directors in steps to become an independent 501(c). Founded in 1978, the AHA has operated as a division under the umbrella of the Brewers Association—the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American craft brewers—since 1983. With these actions, the AHA will operate as a nonprofit organization autonomous from the Brewers Association, its parent organization, by the end of 2025.

Why? If we think of divorces, the roots of these sorts of things often go back to alcohol or debt. Well, we can rule out the first given, in this case, the solvent actually is – or at least was – the bond. Hmm… “very much needed“? So… what happened? Were doors slammed? Pointy fingers pointed??? Gossip is greatly apperciated. Comments are open.

Speaking of the end times, some but perhaps not that many noticed the release of this year’s Ontario Brewing Awards – but Jordan did and he made a game of it:

Since the Ontario Brewing Awards were this week, I thought I’d go back and figure out who has actually won the most OBAs over time. I awarded 5 points for Best in Show, 3 for Gold, 2 for Silver, 1 for Bronze or People’s Choice, and 0.5 for honorable mention.

Finally, a reminder. Yes, there are health warnings. But more to the point, there are habits. If you are listening to those who talk of “neo-temperance” you may be missing a mood change that has nothing to do with lobbyists or public health officials.  That handy dandy thumbnail is from a YouGov survey of drinking habits in the USA over the last 12 months.  I am not really the audience as I would appear to be a purple or two and the rest all greys.  But if more people are purples than reds as appears to be the case, then habits are continuing on the decline. Rooting for booze is not a strong strategy. Blame whatever you want recreationally but hedge your business bets accordingly regardless.

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

*Pun!
**Another pun!!

These Be The Week Before Christmas Mailed In But Merry Beery News Notes

Well, they would be mailed-in if we hadn’t had a postal strike here in Canada. My Christmas cards are in limbo. Parcels replaced with e-cards. How unjolly. So I have had to find other things to fill my days. Like reading. I was up to a book a week during the pandemic. This year? Not even one a month. I was grateful, then, to read the passage to the right from Prof. Smil’s facinating but dense (not to mention tiny fonted) book Size which is something of an apology to the reader. It’s good to know that sometimes the feelings are mutual when it comes to these sorts of things. Which other writers should issue apologies?

What is up? ATJ starts us off whistfully today, daydreaming of the scene in a favourite pub on Christmas Day:

A pub I regularly visit, The Bridge Inn at Topsham, five miles from where I live, opens for a couple of hours and the landlady Caroline recently told me that hundreds of people turn up and that there was a separate bar to dispense Branoc, which is the pub’s popular session ale. Other beers poured from the wood are of a stronger cast, the kind of strength that would make a cat speak. I am sure that the mood is joyous and celebratory, a cacophony of voices and laughter, inside and outside the pub. The parlour to the left of the pub corridor I guess to be warmed by the well-lit fire and full of eager drinkers, as would I suspect to be the back bar, again with a well-warming fire and conversation ebbing and flowing like the tidal river just below the pub. One day I shall get there on Christmas Day.

Boak and Bailey also consider their actual visits to the pubs of Bristol during these holidays – first at (me being Nova Scotian) the most wonderfully named pub that I will likely never enter, The Nova Scotia, then moving on to The Merchant’s Arms:

The Bass was excellent. The Butcombe was excellent. The Christmas tree twinkled and was reflected in the chocolate brown paintwork. There were more lads in Christmas jumpers, more rugby boys… no, actually, the same ones from The Orchard, on the same trail as us. Again, we found it hard to leave, but The Merchants Arms was beckoning from across the water… We squeezed through the door and through the crowd to a spot within shouting distance of the bar. As we peered at the pumps we heard a voice shouting “Ray! Ray!” but ignored it because, frankly, The Merchants is the kind of pub where almost everyone is called Ray.

If I ever meet B+B, I hope I first see them from a distance so I too can shout “Ray! Ray!” but to be clear I will likely shout “Jess! Jess!” so as to be both cheery and nice while also sneaky and clever.

Also striking a holiday pose, in Foodism we see Will Hawkes wrote about Christmas ales as an echo of Victorian times:

Christmas meant stronger beer, often brewed in October and longer aged to soften the edges. In December 1888, for example, the Phillips Brewery advised readers of the Oxford Times not to miss out on their “Christmas Specialities”: a strong ale, a double [i.e. stronger than usual] stout and an ale aged for two years. These were powerfully flavoured beers designed to accompany the rich, fatty, indulgent dishes then central to, and still part of, a British Christmas: plum pudding, stilton and roast meat of various kinds – this was a time when most Britons did not drink wine. Beers were dark and heady, like liquid Christmas Pudding, and often stronger than 10% ABV.

Now… I would note that English strong ale is not a Victorian invention as careful readers will appreciate. But the point of the reformist middle class Victorian – really Albertan – homey Christmas is quite correct. Still, I do think the Georgians were more fun. Disgusting but fun.

Going further back while remaining ecclesiastical, Dr. Christina Wade shared some snazzy facts this week over on BlueSky about the work of a medieval Cellaress:

The pages of this late 13th-century manuscript, La Sainte Abbeye, detail what would make up a perfect abbey. & what would such an institution be without ale, or, perhaps more precisely, the nun in charge of it, the Cellaress… Pictured in this illustration, between the Abbess, singing nuns, and a small handful of deacons is the cellaress, the woman in charge of food and drink… In medieval monastic communities, ale was an important part of diet. It was critical to the running of many of these nunneries. And not only did they drink it, they often also brewed it on site.

Keeping up with this sort of academic wisdom is what makes this here blog what it is – but I have to admit I also love running across new favourite jargonese like “pseudo-targeted flavoromics” which is just fabulous. Whaaaaaaat does it even mean?

…a comprehensive flavoromics integrating untargeted, pseudo-targeted, and targeted analyses was employed to characterize volatile development across RTs with 14 annotated compounds. Notably, non-linear patterns have been observed in malt coloration, precursors consumption, and volatile development for the first time…

Fabulous. Super dooper fabulous. Speaking of which and yet giving me something of my own flashback, David Jesudason wrote about the experience about returning to the pub as a member of staff, something he had not done for 25 years:

…working in a pub gives you a rare gift of seeing the space for what it truly is even if that is amorphous – at first it went from being a slew of self-contained tables and then a communal mass with multiple conversations tied together with the love of beer. And, at times when I wasn’t part of the fun or the work, I had a vision of it being a high-street shop – the marvel of the micropub unwrapped. The most shameful confession is that for a few seconds when facing random customers I felt like I over-explained to somehow overcompensate that I was more than a bartender – maybe James’s intervention was warranted. That I had somehow failed in my career as a writer and become perma-frosted since 1999, which reveals how I may subconsciously view service industry jobs as somehow inferior to other pursuits.

My trick as a bartender?  Give change in dimes and nickels. You get it all back. Speaking of the jolly, did you see the 1975 BBC new item on the Guinness tanker ship posted at the FB page of the Brewery History Society? It’s not the ship itself that’s jolly but that turtleneck blazer combo… though the “draught” and other puns do strain the patience.

Tariff news update!  Did I mention that Ontario’s government booze store (retail and wholesale) is the biggest in the world? Well, apparently our provincial government is considering restricting the Liquor Control Board of Ontario from buying any American-made alcohol:

“We’ll use every tool in our toolbox, as we put a tariff on bourbon last time. The LCBO is the largest purchasers of alcohol in the entire world. But I’d prefer not to do any of this,” Ford said Friday. Earlier in the week, Ontario’s premier threatened to pull the plug on the electricity supply that powers 1.5-million homes in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Looks like I’ll be sipping rye this winter. As Michigan grinds to a halt. And speaking of sipping, The Tand took himself and herself out for a walk recently to spend the day drinking cask ale in London and shared what he found:

I knew trouble was afoot when the server put my glass under the handpump and splashed beer into it while pouring a half of lager. It was the worst pint of Vocation Bread and Butter I’d ever had, but I supped it quietly and left most of it. I hadn’t the heart to pull this hard-working lass up about it. Someone should have trained her better. At our table we started talking with a couple of lads who’d lived locally for a few years, They too had started on cask and abandoned it so we enjoyed Hofmeister instead…

Somewhat speaking of which and before we get into the “craft rot” stories, they of Pellicle posted some thoughts on the year soon past and their plans for 2025:

While these features remain popular, in that they’re well read, we’ve come to realise that readers are often seeking more than simply a narrative piece about a brewery with a friendly owner who makes really tasty beer. There needs to be an angle, a hook, a proper story to dig your teeth into. We will continue to publish stories about beer and breweries in 2025, but with greater scrutiny and tighter angles focusing on what we feel really matters to our readers. Throughout this year we’ve been pausing to check ourselves and ask “who really cares about this, and why does it matter?” Two hugely important questions when you’re publishing content about any given subject.

This is good. Where ever they are published, brewery owner bios (herein “BOBs”) tend to be samey. Cavity inducing even. Where the reader can find investigative work like fact checking brewery owner assertions or interviewing former employees or business partners for alternative takes on official history these piece might have some hang time. But they are nice and have their place so keep them in there as long as they are matched with as many more analytical critical studies. Good move.

Also looking a bit forward as well, drinks writer Jason Wilson prepared a What’s In and What’s Out chart for the turn of the year. Click to the to the right for a larger version. The bad news that we all know has come to pass is that craft beer* is in the out column but has sake really given it the boot? As is often the case, there is an underlying argument that things that were a bit precious are being left behind so craft beer joins caviar, mini cocktails and Mezcal on the list making room for oysters, dirty martinis and calvados. Now, you can live the life that you think is right for you but I am always going to vote for oysters and calvados.

Note: BA Bart takes the shrinking ship’s helm as the foundering continues. And this is during the week when the frankly “long forgotten to many” RateBeer announced its own demise after five years of big beer ownership – and announced it with some very specific instructions:

Login to the RateBeer website and navigate to the My Profile page… In the right-hand column below “Beer Cellar” is the “My Account” section… In the “My Account” section, click “Compile My Ratings”.. The next page will provide options for downloading your ratings in CSV (comma-separated value) format…

Wow. It’s soon gonna to be gone gone gone goner than Hunter Biden is getting struck from the White House Christmas party list. Just to avoid the link-a-cide, I am connecting to the story at BeerAdvocate, too.

And Jordan noted another passing, of The Growler a beer magazine he edited. Print magazines about beer have never done well in Canada. Ontario had a section in Great Lakes Brewing News from 2009 to 2019 before… the scandal. And we had TAPS that folded its last print edition in 2016, then we had Mash which lasted a few issues the next year, then we had a Canadian edition of Original Gravity for a bit – and now we have The Growler‘s Ontario edition taking its leave in turn, though the BC edition seems to live on. In good times and bad, beer magazines have never seemed to be the thing. Will someone try again?

Speaking of which, interesting zing! from a former blog publisher over Google delisting the “unvetted and often bogus content” of Forbes’ contributor network where a few struggle down the mine axe in hand, hacking against the rock face, convincing others that beer is interesting.

Note: a list of 10 or 25 or 30 people naming their favourite beer or breweries of the year (or anything of the year) isn’t a list of the top 25 or 30. It’s just 25 or 30 lists each with only one listed. End of the year content filling season is here!**

Finally and in far better shape than that second half what was set out above, Drunk Polkaroo is back after 12 weeks off alcohol and counting for health reasons, the details of which he has shared. After a bit of a glum re-entry with a discount brand review, he is one his feet again with a cheery review of a NA beer from one of Canada’s finest brewers. Is this his new thing? It’s certainly a good thing.

That’s it! Happy holidays! Merry Christmas and all that!! Until next time when we will be gathered ’round the Boxing Day Box, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*As per Beer Insights: ‘ Whole Foods beer buyer Mary Guiver reflected on the theme of focus, resisting the urge “to do everything” and “chase everything”… Whole Foods “had to weather the storm of being a craft-centric retailer,” Mary said, and “it sucked.” ‘
**Plus… “beer pros“!

Festive But Still Pensive Are These Beery News Notes Now Two Weeks Out From Boxing Day

Well, there’s nothing like the fall of a murderous dictator to make the season bright. Sadly, no Nicky Ceaușescu moment but, still, it’s all good news. For now. Almost as cheery was this ad for Younger’s shared at the FB page of the Brewery History Society, It isn’t dated but I am thinking it’s 1920s if we are going by the plus fours of the gent leaning at the bar. They might even be plus eights!

Speaking of the happy jollies, Kate has posted some holiday gifting suggestions over at her site The Gulp with a note of sympathy for anyone needing the advice:

It sounds like an impossible job, buying presents for ungrateful bastard beer people, and honestly, it’d be understandable if you didn’t bother. However, if you’re still dead-set on making your favourite beer lover happy, here are some bolt-from-the-blue ideas you’ve still got time to work on before Christmas comes.

I like the reasonably budget conscious Guinness toque idea. Speaking of getting in the holiday mood, Lars has a tale of ales of yore in Craft Beer & Brewing that starts with a timely reminder for you and you and especially you:

One Christmas Eve in the late 19th century, the family on the Hovland farm in Hardanger, Norway, was sitting down for a festive dinner. The food was on the table, the candles were lit, and the big wooden mug was full of beer. Then, suddenly, enormous hands appeared between the logs from which their house was built, tilting one side of the house into the air. In the gap between the logs, they could see giant eyes staring at them, glittering in the candlelight. The farmer didn’t panic. He immediately knew what the problem was. He grabbed the mug of beer from the table and ran out the door to the burial mound, just beyond the farmyard, and he poured the beer on the roots of the tree growing on top.

Feed the frikkin’ tree, wouldja?

Note #1: I could write this every week as opposed to every third week but Martin has another wonderful photo essay of a corner of Britain. This week he adds another twist as he’s in Rye daydreaming in a wonderful pub without really explaining how he is daydreaming in a wonderful pub:

And as you’ll know, has one of the UK’s top pubs on its doorstep. But even more than that, it has working WiFi.

Speaking of pub life, two more good discussions of the effect the cancellation of a number of British cask brands by megabrewers and ultimate licence holders Carlsberg UK and Marston’s PLC will have. First, Phil Mellows in British Beer Breaks shares how one of the beers being cut is a vital part of pub life at The Royal Oak, Chapel Ash:

“It’s tradition. It’s like waking up and seeing the time on a clock. Walking into the pub and not seeing Banks’s Mild in the bar will be very weird. It has been the milk of Wolverhampton for decades and so many people are upset about it going. I am a very proud Wulfrunian and Banks’s Mild has been here all my life. It feels like CMBC has ripped out our hearts.”

And David Jesudason found a similar loss at The Pelton Arms, Greenwich where Bombardier set the tone:

I served the bitter at the first pub I worked in – three cask pumps, always Pride, always Bombardier, the other rotated – and it wasn’t seen as fashionable even then in the late 90s. Which is perhaps to do with its branding – St George’s Cross etc – but the drink is actually quite subtle with a soft finish with hints of toffee, fudge and fruity tones of raisin and sultana. And this is the pint the locals go for here. Or went for, because of a decision made in a far off office they’re having it taken away just at a time when a pub needs to keep its drinkers – its regulars – who may think it’s not worth it after all and not make the trip to the pub.

I’ve seen a bit of a blip in the craft beer code recently, like this from Doug Velky:

Craft beer is currently in a cycle where nostalgia is playing the role that innovation was driving for so long. The pendulum will eventually swing back the other way, but it’s a great time to revisit and remind fans of their favorites that got us here. Despite the added stress we’re all under, here is still an awesome place, so let’s not forget that.

Nostalgia. That’s this week’s word. For what? What was he talking about? Black IPA. Yup, the only beer trend so disappointing it made us forget that the candle wax goodness of White IPA was even worse. Thankfully, it isn’t coming back. We just live in time times when manufactured positivity needs to grasp at straws. See also.

Speaking of what is in the bottle as opposed to what is pasted on the outsides… did I?… was I?… one scribbler I follow but don’t often mention is Mikey Seay of The Perfect Pour. This week he shared his thoughts about the process of bying Kirkland beer, Costco’s house brand:

We have been talking regularly on the Perfect Pour about Costco’s store brand beer Kirkland. Joking about it mostly, but it’s also making me want to try it. Especially since I am told that the fine Oregon brewer, Deschutes, makes it I am not a member of Costco, and it’s a member-only kind of place. But there is an alcohol loophole. Costco can’t put alcohol exclusively behind the membership-only wall. So I/you as a non-member can go in and buy some Kirkland beer and whatever else ones they have.

I don’t think that applies in Canada… yet… but it terms of quality it reminds me of the Bon Appetit episode on the Kirkland range of wines. And by range I do mean range.

Looking over at perhaps the other side of the season too often not acknowledged, Ray posted some thoughts about loss at B+B this week which were both personally heartfelt but also an exploration of what many go through as we demand happiness and joy this time of year:

I’d always got the impression Dad didn’t like the pub much but Mum told me that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, after their first visit, he said he was worried that, in retirement, it might be a bit too easy to end up there every lunchtime spending money they didn’t have on booze that wouldn’t do them any good. So he avoided it altogether. Mum and I had been there a while, one round in, before we noticed that both of us were bopping along to the jukebox. It was non-stop blues music – not exactly the kind of songs Dad would have chosen himself, but not far off. We shivered. It felt spooky.

Far less seriously, in Australia where it is summer a beer snake interrupted an international cricket match:

The beer-snake-wielding cricket fan who ran through a roped-off area of the Adelaide Oval on Friday night has revealed what was going through his head when he interrupted play in the second Test.  Lachie Burtt, now better known as “beer snake man”, hoisted his pile of beer cups above the sight screen just as India’s Mohammed Siraj was about to bowl to Marnus Labuschagne late on day one. “In my head at that time, I just wanted to get away from the guard, so I saw the space and hopped over the tiny white rope,” he told 9News.

The Times of India was less amused. And also not fully amused, Stan had a great round up this week – many new thoughts on the state of things here and there – including this on some of the questionable writing we have to put up with:

If you somehow didn’t see one of the gazillion stories about the role social media stars played in the recent election, one of them was Joe Rogan. Before I grew weary of reading the same story over and over, and wondered to myself who the Joe Rogan of beer might be.

Spill!  The comments are open.

Speaking of something even more dubious, the story of Carlsberg’s somewhat reluctant exit from its Baltika brand and the Russian beer market appears to be coming to its conclusion:

The management buy-out, announced today (3 December), sees a company established by two Baltika employees become controlling shareholder of the subsidiary, which reportedly has eight breweries in Russia, including one in St. Petersburg, and produces more than 50 brands… According to documents seen by Reuters, the deal, which has been approved by both the Russian and Danish states, is worth a reported 30.4 billion rubles (£226.4 million at the time of writing)… A press release from Carlsberg Group also revealed that, as part of the deal, Baltika Breweries will transfer all of its shareholdings in Carlsberg Azerbaijan and Carlsberg Kazakhstan to the Carlsberg Group.

“At the time of writing” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that passage, although the load is lightening by the hour.

Note #2: samples are not gifts.

In Pellicle, Claire Bullen takes us along to Mikulov, Moravia in the Czech Republic where we meet Jitka Ilčíková, the founder of Wild Creatures brewery:

The brewery now occupies an expansive industrial unit just north of Mikulov, in the village of Dolní Dunajovice. The space itself is nondescript and utilitarian, all concrete surfaces that echo with the zap of electric fly killers. Outside, its riches are more apparent. The land here is almost laughably lush, with its orchards and vineyards and fields of nodding sunflowers. At one point, we pass a plum tree whose fruits are still green and hard. But when they are ripe, Jitka says, they taste like honey… Wild Creatures today owns several vineyards, which contain multiple varieties of wine grapes, as well as two apricot orchards and part of a sour cherry orchard. The rest of the fruit comes from friends or partner suppliers.

Last week, we discussed (you and I… we did!) Christmas office parties and how they were dying off. This week we read in The Times of how some are fighting for being included in the inviting:

The Public and Commercial Services Union, the largest civil service union, told its members that if they were not invited to festive dos — and they suspected it may be because of their age, gender, religion or ethnicity — they could have an employment tribunal claim. The union told civil servants that sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour are “just as unacceptable at social events as they are in the workplace”…  They also warned: “Excluding someone from a work social event due to a protected characteristic such as gender, age, religion, or ethnicity, could also constitute discrimination.”

It is an excellent point. Which is another good reason to not have this sort of horrible event and do something else instead. And finally, also following up on the final news item of last week and proving one again that if you have to explain that something was a joke then it wasn’t a joke or at least it wasn’t a good joke, we have this retort care of one K M Flett:

The beer writer Pete Brown had a lengthy Q&A about all matters beer in the Sunday Times magazine on 1st December. It was of course well informed and entertaining. He posed, to give one example, the question ‘does anyone drink mild anymore’ to which he answered simply ‘no’. I’m not sure whether this was a joke (fair enough) or a personal view but either way it is of course not true. Mild has long been characterised as an old man’s drink, and I am an old man (well 68 anyway) so I would say that. Except I’ve been drinking mild for decades even when I was younger, so much younger than today etc.

Zing Not Zing? Oh well. Still, an opportunity to use the rather dusty “Mild” category tag. PS: Matty C also drinks mild.

Note #3: can an introduction really also be a masterclass?

Whew. That is it!  Counting down the days rather than the weeks from here on out. Work will be busy up to the bell for me but hopefully you will start seeing things lighten up soon. Until next Thursday, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (never ever) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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