Category: Beer Writing

The Thursday Beery News Notes For A Somewhat Ugly Week In Beer

I almost took this week off. It’s been a very busy stretch at work. It’s good busy, mind you. Takes the mind off the pandemic, the near death experience suffered by American democracy and winter and… and… and… Other than that, I did see both the nearest and seventh farthest planets from the Sun last weekend. That was cool. And, see, I noticed the winter brown goldfinches at the feeder just starting to show their yellow feathers at their shoulders. Spring is coming. Oh, and I had a beer or some beer or something at some point. This is still a beer blog, right?

Hmm… what’s in the news? Horrible breweries apparently. First, the end times seem to have struck once again in the semi-beer fruity gak. You a betting reader? Seriously, when is it going to die off? The exploding gak. Jeff started it. And the we end up here. Really. Just look to the right at the warning one horrible brewery had to issue and consider how horrible the warning issued by the horrible brewery actually is. Actually, I know nothing about the horrible brewery except it is happy, first, putting out a horrible fruit gak beer and, then, a horrible warning about the horrible fruit gak beer. Hide the exploding can in your garbage, they say. Hide the exploding can in your garbage? That’s the advice? Did they check with the local solid waste dept? So they must be horrible. Right? Right. I hope they are not but they might well be. Watch your step. You, too.

If that was not enough,* Vinepair started the ball rolling with the story of another horrible idea, the $90 six pack. It’s a dumb idea which has nothing to do with the beer and everything to do with the $90 despite the spin:

After talking to Gislason, however, I don’t think he deserves derision for Hanabi Lager. Though he’s got grand ambitions, and a funny way of revealing them, his ego is in check. You will probably roll your eyes a few more times as you read this story, sure, but who knows? Gislason might very well be taking lager to a place it’s never been before. “The vast majority of beer consumed in the world is lager, albeit an ‘industrial-commodity’ version that’s relatively simple and homogeneous in flavor,” says Gislason. “Recognizing that high-quality lager brewing was underrepresented in the craft brewing world, that became our brewing R&D focus about 10 years ago.”

Sucker juice. A sad tale based on a false premise. Jeff perhaps was unnecessarily detailed in his criticism, giving the discussion a little too much oxygen. It’s not about disrespect as much as not giving a shit. These things arise from time to time and either die off or end up in the business acquisition they were actually initially set up to serve. Best response? This:

Fuck these guys, we do the same thing for $12 a four pack.

Speaking of horrible brewers, the big story of the week would be the situation at Boulevard Brewing, which was first described in a Reddit post:

I left Boulevard Brewing Company in March 2020 because of harassment I received because I was pregnant. My boss stood me and another female employee up in the lab, in front of another coworker, and demanded to know if we were pregnant. When we refused to answer, he told the other woman “the only way you could be pregnant is by your cat”, then continued to ask me. I reported this to HR, but it started a cycle of reporting his behavior to HR and then being punished (by him) for going to HR.

Nutzo. If denigrating and potentially illegal employment standards could be wrapped up in the word “nutzo”… which it might or might not. It’s sorta sweet – in no way that makes any sense on this planet – that the brewery issued a statement that says it was all fine… a joke maybe… but not real… look over here… shadow puppets… AND then, on Wednesday, they repented or at least reflected and started living in reality. THEN, late Wednesday, folk identifying as employees posted an alternate version of reality, of multiple executive firings. Wow. Need to keep an eye on this one.

So much for beer people are good people. Some are. Some aren’t. Speaking of which, beer people writing about other beer people is usually dull as dishwater… or worse, less interesting than exploding fruity gak or a $90 six pack or sexist piggy stuff. But in this case the bio bit on Chalonda White, aka Afro Beer Chick, is good. Very good. I should work one like that, too, but on me. If I was that good. But I am not as interesting. And not committed to important things like Chalonda is. I could learn a thing or two. Grow up a bit.

Enough!. Let’s look elsewhere. Brexit’s effect on the UK wine trade is petty shocking as described by one wine merchant:

I now hope, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, to start seeing stock from early February. My orders with producers were placed as far back as December. So from what was a 7-10 days turn around has become a 5-6 week turn around. Another of those Brexit dividends. 14/22…

Just last week, we discussed* the effects of Brexit on the UK import market. This seems to indicate it is going to be ugly.

Note: it’s never a good idea to use social media to self doom scroll after you get an article published. Blaming headline writers, the readers… anyone with a different view is a bit weird. If it isn’t explained in the story… is it a good story?

One of Canada’s beer blogs that likes to pretend it isn’t a blog has posted a good piece with four people involved in the beer trade talking about the pivot and the way forward:

At Matron we’ve learned to adapt to the rapidly changing market: we’ve leaned into online sales and home delivery. In fact, we predict that to make up for the shortfall in bar and restaurant sales, breweries will need to sell up to half of their beer online this winter to survive. On the flipside, you, the craft beer drinker, have gained incredible access to the majority of Ontario breweries, whether it be shopping directly from the brewery’s website, or supporting one of the many independent bottle shops that have sprung up.

I am rooting for them all. Matron is one of my near neighbours… in the Canadian sense, an hour’s drive away.

And Matt C wrote about Czech v. German in Ferment 52 and has found a number of solid witnesses to give testimony as to their preference. I approve of the following point most heartily:

But one bone I must pick is with those who replied to my poll by stating they don’t like Czech beer because of the diacetyl (an off flavour that makes your beer taste like butter.) And I understand Czech beers often have a rich, butterscotch flavour, but it’s not like the hot buttered popcorn character that makes you want to tip a pint of naff cask down the drain.  “People who say things like that are the type who talk without knowing what they’re talking about,” Evan says, bluntly. “But yeah, there is diacetyl in Czech beer sometimes. There’s diacetyl in German beer sometimes, too.”

The diacetyl police are amongst the most tedious of beer fans. As far as I am concerned it all comes from (i) nutritionalism*** and (ii) need-to-take-a-stand-ism and (iii) the unfortunate proliferation of off-flavour seminars rather than on-flavour seminars.

There. Unfortunately, more seriously nasty stuff going on than good. But some good and we have the eternal glow of the deep and abiding hope for more good. To continue your quest for actually good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

*Which is good for me because, in case you haven’t noticed I like to write a weekly post about all the things I read about so that you can read that in addition to all the things I read about.
**You did have a roundtable discussion by Zoom meeting afterwards, right?
***See Michael Pollen, yes, but see also a sort of fraidy-cat approach to things and the deference to the people who, utterly hypocritically, ended up giving you strawberry milkshake sour fruit candy beer crap. Have a Yorkshire bitter from an actual open square fermenter. Enjoy the slight buttery goodness.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For That Week Some Got To Exhale

What a relief. Never more to worry about the man to the right. It has been said many times that we should never trust someone who does not take a drink. How much more so the man who does not know how to take a drink? I only raise the events of Wednesday in the context of one of the better callings out I have seen in a while – the response to BrewDog suggesting an airport in Scotland be named “Joe Biden International” being an image of BrewDog beers being on the menu at one of Trump’s Scottish golf resorts.  Follow the money.

First up now that that is out of the way, Eoghan Walsh elbowed in and held the top seat at Pellicle this week with his story of a cidery amongst the future freezer lambs:

“Nobody in New Zealand drinks cider,” says Alex Peckham, sitting alongside his wife Caroline on their farmhouse’s veranda, his face turned towards the distant snow-freckled mountains of Kahurangi National Park. “And we’d like it to stay that way.” It’s not the proselytising mission statement you’d expect from the co-founder of one of New Zealand’s most renowned cideries.

Speaking of nobody drinking, Andy Crouch in Beer Edge addressed a matter which was raised here a week or two ago – the animosity towards Dry January – and did so (unlike the man above) with an even hand:

…the public shaming of Dry January participants that now flows at the beginning of every year is often smug, self-assured, and off base. Telling people that taking a break from beer is “stupid” or to “keep it to yourself, feel good about yourself, and let the rest of us be” is entirely unhelpful in a culture that should be encouraged to periodically reexamine its approach to alcohol. Conversely, joking about extended periods of refraining from alcohol consumption as “sober curiosity” or worse yet “detox” belies a potentially questionable relationship with alcohol…

Shaming. Been around a long time. I presume there is a bigoted implication to the use of frogs or toads in this editorial cartoon on the 1870s to the left. One would not use the word “frog” in Canada in this way without fearing a cross-check to the neck for the foreseeable future. But were German lager lovers toads generally to the US nativists of the time or is the warty imagery cartoon specific?

Things not as they are. In stylistic news historical-wise, Martyn posted an excerpt from his upcoming book on stouts and porters arguing that Baltic Porters are not really Baltic at all:

In Poland, however, many (not all) brewers developed their own twist on DBS. The expression Baltic Porter only dates from the 1990s (and there is some doubt as to who invented the term), but it has come to mean a strong black beer brewed with a typical porter/stout grain bill, at the same time using bottom-fermenting yeasts, a style specifically developed in Poland, and personally I don’t believe it should be used for any beer that doesn’t fit that description. 

History of another sort was made this week as a Trappist brewery found it had run out of actual Trappists as Jeff summarized the facts as known:

Eoghan Walsh noted on Twitter that “The last monks left at the end of 2020, meaning Achel fails to fulfill 1 of the criteria for Trappist designation (being brewed under supervision of monks). Westmalle were supervising, but that wasn’t enough for the ITA board.” Yet he added, hopefully: “Was talking to someone else about Achel only recently, and this was not on the radar. I share [Joe Stange’s] sanguinuity that it will eventually be sorted out. This report says they can still call themselves Trappist, given they follow the other edicts, but let’s see.”

Nice to see another reason for things collapsing. Across the channel, the trend continues as the big Post-Brexit crisis news appears to be distinguishing itself from mid-pandemic news as it relates to the effect on the UK pub:

The importer of the German beer I sell has also reported major difficulties and increased costs due to new procedures/requirements caused by Brexit. Lots of beers are going to be more expensive when the pubs re-open.

Note 1: Will this era be the lead in to a time of better quality through the filtering of the marketplace? Stonch v. Protz debate the issues. Only one has had the jab, by the way.

Who to believe? While we are at it, the idea of “qualifications” is always a bit dodgy when the come to the self-certified almost as much as the accredited peer reviewed accreditation invites expertise extrapolation? What can one do? That being said, this is an interesting bit on not accepting being told to shut up:

Like many people I have spent the past few years in a roaring, frothing rage at the incompetence and mendacity of the charmless, greasy-palmed hucksters who have somehow blagged their way into governing us. Occasionally, by which I mean most days, I have expressed this rage via a scalpel-sharp, profound and witty political tweet. Weirdly, not everybody is as impressed by these contributions as I am. Indeed, at least one person usually replies: “Stick to tweeting about food, Rayner.”

Note 2: in Tring there is “…a carving of a monkey holding a bottle of wine and reading a book…

In matters of actual expertise, Stan published another excellent edition of Hop Queries who reported on the response to a bit of readership outreach he had engaged with, the sort of thing that one likes to see:

I was pleasantly surprised by the response. The information helps me decide what to include each month. I feel a little bit guilty about not replying to each of you individually, but then there wouldn’t be time to assemble this newsletter. In case you are curious, the majority of those who responded are brewers, and the majority of brewers are homebrewers. A number grow hops or are otherwise in the hops or brewing trade – and I was a bit surprised by how many brewers or homebrewers who answered are also backyard hop farmers.

Note 3: this week’s best cinematic reference to beer – a smoothie beer in the movie Total Recall from 1990. Any other week, that image would be up there instead of the Orange Blob. Note: that is just three years before the same actor played a heartier role in the beer world.

Also pastly, once upon a time I had posts under the title Pub Games which were mainly English pub games. So I was really pleased that Mark S gave the nod to a post at the well named blog “Shove it, Chuck it, Toss it…” on Leicester Skittles Tables:

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions since I started this blog for the dimensions of the various Skittles Tables featured. Whilst many of these tables are still common enough and regularly come up for sale locally or online, good examples are not cheap to buy, and in some cases the enquiry has come from overseas where building your own table is the only realistic option. I’ve answered these queries personally in the past, but I thought it was high time I created a more permanent and accessible record, starting with my own example of a Leicester Skittles Table. 

Finally, is it only me or are beer writers being a bit more open on their dependence on Twitter and other social media sources for their research. Consider this, this and this.  I don’t mind except it appear concurrent with a theme that Twitter is useless. Best thing since email, that’s what I say…

There. Soon be February. Prepare ye for Valentine’s Day posts from the perhaps doubly desperate.  Meantime, for more actually good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

Your Middle Of January 2021 Beery News Notes For A Thursday

And what a Thursday! The last of Donald Trump’s pre-incarceration period!!!  Days to go… unless he drops the big one and we all fry. That would be typical, wouldn’t it. As soon as you think you are getting rid of a fifth-rate loser like Donnie T, he drops the big one and we all fry. I shall miss things. As in all things, sure, but in particular the sort of unsmarmy positive stuff that slips through all the smarmy positive stuff about good beer, like that image above from The Wicking Man as well as his accompanying message:

I’m sure many have had difficult times in lockdown and like me have been lifted by good people on Twitter. Many thanks to my #pubtwitter friends. Your tweets and blogs have made me smile and I look forward to the days when we can share our pub trips again.

The Tand wrote a bummer of a post about the perils Welsh icon Brains Brewery faces in these uncertain times:

So what has happened? In short, Covid-19 has happened. Wales has been particularly hard hit by restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic causing “significant financial pressure” to Brains. The company had already concentrated business on a core number of  around 160 pubs with the remaining 40 or so being closed or sold off in March 2020.  Clearly this wasn’t enough to stave off problems, as this was followed by an announcement before Christmas that rival pub chain Marston’s was to take over on 25-year lease, 156 Brains pubs in a bid to save 1,300 jobs.  The deal includes a supply agreement to continue the availability of Brains brands in the pubs, which will be leased to Marston’s at an annual rent of £5.5 million. Brain’s managed houses will also be run by Marston’s.

And similarly Jeff wrote about the death of Portland Brewing Company, an early participant in that area’s scene, offering us basically an obituary written by an old friend:

On the Friday afternoon of January 8th, Portland Brewing put out a short note announcing that, after a 35-year run, they were winding down all operations. It was a strangely subdued note given the brewery’s historical significance. One of the founding quartet of Portland breweries that started putting out beer between late 1984 and 1986, it played a substantial role in laying the foundation that would place beer at the center of the city’s identity by the early 1990s.

Going back further, Jeremy Irons as Wooster advertising a sherry of a sort in the 1970s. Fabulous.

Canadian author Anne Theriault spotted an important moment in 18th century English brewing culture the other day:

Because I am twelve years old, I wish to read more about the 18th century Farting Club in Cripplegate, where members “meet once a Week to poyson the Neighbourhood, and with their Noisy Crepitations attempt to outfart one another.” Truly the past is a foreign etc… 

Careful readers will recall that Cripplegate was one of the great brewing areas of London for hundreds of years.  Theriault linked to her source, Geri Walton, who had shared further detail including this:

To determine a winner, stewards acted as judges and new stewards were chosen quarterly. The stewards also resolved any disputes that arose “between the Buttocks of the odoriferous Assembly.”[7] Furthermore, to ensure the competitors did not cheat, in a nearby room a bespectacled Alms-woman sat. This elderly woman’s job was to check the underwear of participants: If “any member was suspected of Brewers Miscarriage, he was presently sent in to be examined by the Matron, who after searching his Breeches, and narrowly inspecting the hind Lappet of his Shirt … made her Report accordingly.”[8]

The fact that there were 21 footnotes below the story is in itself wonderful.

Along the same lines and following up on their 2011 false claim of inventing the beer photo contest, US brewery Founders found time to commit a form of hari kari this past week. Perhaps it was the photoshopped image of their flag as the Battle of Congress last week but their lost their social media marbles by banning everyone on the planet who mentioned them – well, who mentioned their lack of interest in living in the 21st (and perhaps even the 2oth) century. It got so fun that folk like me baited them just to get blocked on Twitter but then all that happened was this:

Funny thing. That blocking strategy rolled out by Founders this weekend? Search for their Twitter handle as any prospective new customer might and you find this long list of folk very unhappy with you. Meaning @foundersbrewing decided to trash their brand

It’s true. This is how that works. Someone woke up and stopped all the blocking by Tuesday. Dumbasses.

Continuing from last week, Mark Solomon has posted again on his new blog, this time about his project Indigenous Brew Day:

I do worry about my alcohol consumption, I would be lying if I told you I don’t think often about addiction regularly.  I do believe I have a healthy relationship with alcohol but I am aware that can change quickly.  Although there are many Indigenous peoples who are struggling with addiction, there are many that have a healthy relationship with alcohol.  I want to tell that story, and turn around the misconceptions about Indigenous people and alcohol.  Indigenous Brew Day is a great start in changing misconceptions. 

ATJ wrote about missing pubs behind a paywall so I never got to read it.

The Beer Nut shared thoughts on one of his nation’s character flaws when it comes to good beer:

This beer deserves to sell in quantity but I fear that the mainstream stout drinkers are too set in their ways to switch, while the craft-curious have too much choice of other beers in more fashionable styles with arty labels to bother with this oulfellas’ stout which isn’t even in a can. The difficulty in getting Irish people to drink stouts is our beer scene’s principal national tragedy. And if you agree with me to any extent about that, make sure you get yourself some of this.

Further odd division was fomented by those who would control who should speak and what should be spoken when it comes to Dry January… oddly called Dry Feb here in Canada. “Keep it to yourself” v “if you’re doing Dry Jan and you’re sharing your experience keep it up” and see also this yet this but also this. I expect you can figure out where I sit on the question.

Kate Bernot has noted that the SCOTUS has declined to hear the case in Lebamoff v. Whitmer, a court case about widening interstate alcohol shipping laws. “Certiorari Denied!” is all they said. So no actual ruling with interesting chat to read unlike the similarly framed case before Canada’s top court in 2018.  SCOTUSblog has framed the issues in the case this way:

Whether a state liquor law that allows in-state retailers to ship wine directly to consumers, but prohibits out-of-state retailers from doing so, is invalid under the nondiscrimination principle of the commerce clause or is a valid exercise of the state’s 21st amendment authority to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages within its borders.

And finally, in other semi-regulatory news, it appears the US Brewers Association may be facing challenging times, too, as they have announced a temporary free membership offer:

Not a member but want to join? To ensure no breweries are missing updates due to financial barriers, we’re offering nonmember breweries a temporary membership free of charge. Reach out to our membership team if you’re interested.

Jings. Well, that is that for now. Enjoy the reassertion of US democracy over the next week. As you do, for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

The First Thursday Beery News Notes For A Brand Spanking New 2021

Well, here we go. One year gone and another year starts full of hope and promise… oh, and an insurrection in the US Capital. Nice. This is the year of the 18th anniversary of my beer blogging, too. That’s 31.56% of my life. What an utter waste. Not at all like the art of Joel Goodman, photographer of the image above as well as the partner photo of the same spot in Manchester one year before taken early on New Year’s Day 2020, a portion of which shows up here as a random header image. Lovely stuff and a great expression of where we are today.

Speaking of reality today… do you know about storm chips and the associated beer weather severity standard? Note I wrote “beer” and not “beers” as in much of Canada the plural of beer is beer. “Beers” means a selection of brands of beer. Twelve Molson Golden are twelve beer. I have my doubts about the particular application as there is no way Kings Co., PEI is in the 24 beer zone but Truro, NS is only at 12 beer. I have a pal from the little islands to the lower left who talked of 1970-80s storm stayed parties held in houses with bordered up windows lasting two or three days until the blizzard had gone past. As posted on the FB page for Storm Level Brewing.

First… err… second, I failed you all before Christmas by not mentioning Martyn’s post on the roots of Jamaica’s love of strong sweet porter:

Draught porter was sold from draught porter shops, in existence in Kingston, Jamaica from at least the Edwardian era; from casks in refreshment parlors that also sold fried fish and bread; and also by travelling salesmen, who would call out “draaf porter!” as they travelled on foot around rural villages in the Jamaican interior, carrying a large tin container with a spout, and cans in quart, pint, half-pint and gill (quarter-pint, pronounced “jill”) sizes, for serving. Jamaica also had itinerant ice-cream salesmen, who would sell a blend of “frisco”—ice-cream and “snow ball”, shaved ice flavored with fruit syrup, mixed together—and “a measure of draught porter for the older folks.”

I wonder if Sam Adams authorized either this guy’s keg delivery technique or his filming rights? The opportunities for injury are a bit boggling. Speaking of which, this non-beer entrepreneurial advice thread had one nugget I quite likes, somewhat related to the Great White Male Hero problem with the good beer narrative:

The biographies of tech unicorn founders won’t help you. Survivorship bias is terrible. For every one that succeeded thousands more failed.

After asking on Twitter if he should, Mark Solomon joined the beer blogging world with his new site Headed Up North on which he is going to share an Indigenous perspective:

There is a tradition in many Indigenous communities, and I have since learned in many other cultures, on winter solstice.  Many communities light a fire at sunset and keep the light going all night.  While winter solstice is known as the shortest day of the year, the one with the least amount of daylight, there is a refrain that it only gets brighter from here. Those fires are not to strike back at the darkness but to honour it and sit within it. In the Anishinaabe creation story there are songs and teachings about the nothingness at the beginning then came darkness.  Darkness is not nothing.  We learn a lot about ourselves and others in the darkness.

In our regular pandemic trade news corner this week, cellar sellers are most note worthy. Makes sense. We’ve seen it from place to place including now at Falling Rock Tap House in Denver:

“We weren’t going to make it if we just kept on doing what we were doing,” Black said.  Luckily, for the past 23 years, Black and his team have been slowly amassing a nest egg. “We have just probably a couple thousand bottles of beer that are vintage,” Black said.  The collection contains very rare, highly sought-after beers from big-name breweries around Denver and the US.  The most prized item is a 750ml bottle of a collaboration blended sour beer made in 2008 by The Lost Abbey Brewing Company called “Isabelle Proximus.” When the Cellar Sale list was posted, the lone bottle sold in one second for $400. 

Retired Martin has started to chronical the take away pubs from his new location in Sheffield:

…we’ve had some wonderful beer, alternating porters and bitters and crafty keg with impunity. The only problem is, cask must by law be enjoyed within 3 hours, which means drinking 4 pints between us in an evening out of Bass glasses (NBSS 3.5/4). That’s not a habit you can keep up forever.

Here’s a big of a helpful hint for the history buffs. If you look at this image from the Twitter feed of a sailing cargo firm you will see in the lower right an explanation of the various grades of tea. These grades appear in many 1700s and 1800s newspaper notices and may assist in determining if accompanying cargo such as beer are considered fancy goods – or nor.

Best historical slag of the week: “your bum is so heavy you can’t get up“! In another history fan news, Dr. Christina Wade at her site Braciatrix wrote about a Viking burial in Ireland in the first part of the release of her Phd thesis. I am hoping for more beer content so this as yet is a placeholder – but a useful one as she canvasses questions on the quality of evidence. I note this especially in the context of the Vikings in Canada and the archaeological evidence they left behind as described in this handy post from Ottawa Rewind, especially this bit:

Wow! Barrel piece…was this for wine? Again, where did they get the oak for this?

Careful readers will recall my 2011 post on the early European settlements in Newfoundland, including Vikings. I have not had any luck finding Viking brewing in my research but it is clear that beer and malt could well have been here before 1577, the earliest date I have so far. Were the Vikings masterless men happily brewing beer hundreds of years before the masterless men? Was there malt in that oak barrel?

Jonny the Ham* wrote in Pellicle about how Pellicle came to be. I like how it is illustrated by images from a particular journey:

The first and most important reason is that Pellicle, the concept, was originally meant to be a short photography zine taken on this trip which I would self publish—something of a passion project I had dreamt of for years, based on my love of travel and film photography. Secondly, I’m incredibly self-conscious about folk reading my innermost thoughts, so at the very least you can enjoy some nice photos.

His partner in crime – or at least publishing – Matt has written a bit in Beer 52 about his upcoming book “hopefully be called Modern British Beer” and the concept of a returning greater regionality in beer. I prefer this muchly to nationalism as a defining characteristic, if only given the reality that beer predates many borders and can reflect the more important factor of trade routes rather than anything like state regulation or even national culture.  I had just one truly tiny quibble about this bit:

Historically in the UK, regionality was a strong differentiator in beer styles and helped develop so much in terms of how we know and enjoy beers today. Take Burtonisation—for example—a process developed by brewers to mimic the mineral content of the Burton-upon-Trent water supply. The hard water of Burton contains higher levels of gypsum, which when used as a brewing process aid in the form of brewers salts will lower your worts pH. This is preferred by some brewers when producing pale, hoppy beer styles, as it aids hop absorption rates, and thus how they are showcased in the resulting beer. It’s no coincidence the story of IPA began here, in the Midlands. 

Quibble? The brewing with and drinking of the sulfurous waters of Burton predated the inclusion of masses of hops. Hops were first added by one clever brewer in the late 1600s at the Brimstone Alehouse to deal with those who had to deal with the, err, vomitous qualities of his local product ripe with regional… umm… vernacular. Which actually makes Matt’s point even a bit better.

Elsewhere, Dave Infante is “joining”** VinePair‬⁩ to cover the beer industry. Send him tips if you think it is a good idea to send other beer writers your tips. And speaking of speaking about beer, I liked this back and forth between Monsieur Noix du Biere and Matt. Are local voices too likely to be embedded or are the embedded ones the best perspective? Note also the second alt use of the word “indigenous” in today’s roundup. I prefer “vernacular “for this particular meaning but I don’t think anyone’s toes are aching.

Finally, two good posts this week from Boak and Bailey on, first, a surprising forerunner of an improved pub from the 1880s and, second, a helpful piece on the rare duck these days that is ESB. Looks like they spent their recent break from beer blogging over the holidays writing beer blog posts. Alistair is taking another sort of break this January but found time to post about a day dream he is having about another venerable beer, Trukker ur-Pils.

There. That’s a good start to the year. And for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

*The Hammer? The Hamster?
**…which could mean anything from being a freelancer to CEO.

The Hogmanay Beery News Notes Special For Last Blursday 2020

Good riddance to 2020.  That’s it. No hum. No haw. It sucked and soon it’ll be over. Next year hopefully will suck less. But, still, at least three good beery things happened to me in this year of the plague which are worth noting:

i. In October, Boak and Bailey invited me to a Zoom chat that lasted a couple of hours.  We had a great old chat, from gossip to interesting thoughts on researching and writing brewing history.

ii. Since mid-March, we’ve been enjoying home delivery of beer mainly from Matron of nearby Bloomfield Ontario. We’ve likely had six or eight different beers from them and have gained a great sense of their liquid aesthetic through exercising a bit of focus. Forthright and Bobo are two standouts for me but Yeasayer has not left the house in ten months.

iii. Lars Marius Garshol published Historical Brewing Techniques, by far the best beer book of 2020. One of the few, sure, but the years of dedication to the pursuit of farmhouse brewing in Scandinavia and eastern Europe is one of the greatest bits of effort in the cause of good beer over the last decade.

There. That’s good. A bit slim. But pretty good. Well, for me. Where shall we start for you, the rest of human existence?  The pandemic? Sure. Fine. OK. In Maine, CJL herself has shone a light on some very poor behavior by one brewery while also illustrating how useful Twitter can be if you know how to use it:

Sunday River Brewing Company has been operating without masks and safety in the name of “freedom” and picking fights with the state to become martyrs for the industry, and raising funds alongside for “legal defense”… The restaurant/brewery has been cited MANY times now for non-compliance with mask orders. Undercover people from the state have documented lack of mask wearing over months, so the state recently said, “hey, your license is set to renew in December… and we’re not renewing it.”

Elsewhere? Summaries. First, across the Atlantic, I Might Have A Glass of Beer posted his Golden Pint 2020 awards from Glasgow, Scotland and shared many thoughts about how the great pivot sometimes made life with beer more interesting in 2020. And found a few more good things about the last year. Example:

A fascinating phenomenon was the redefinition of “beer garden” in 2020. As a partisan of Bavarian beer culture, I am often disappointed by what is offered under this name in the UK, with not a chestnut tree, a stoneware mug or a radish in sight. Yet this year the label became even looser, and over the summer it seemed that merely a row of white plastic chairs on the pavement outside a pub was enough to be a “beer garden”. Nonetheless even this was a definite improvement for some pubs and it’s to be hoped that this trend will continue after all this is over.

And The Beer Nut started on the pandemic fatigue fatigue with his own Golden Pints 2020 from non-northern Ireland which included this welcome remembrance in one category’s name:

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @RuariOToole
It was very much the year for weird and grim humour, and Ruari’s Twitter provided plenty of it. Much appreciated, my man. Dudes rock!

See also Ben Viveur.  See also Quare Swally. See also New School Beer. See also Craft Beer Scribe. Et ceterah… et ceterah… but not Anthony Hopkins. He’s been dry since 1975. Who knew?

Another positive sign was reported by the Protz – with a keen eyed lawyer as key to the action:

….she hoped for a better life in 2016 when it sold the Roscoe to Hawthorn Leisure, the pub-owning division of New River Retail. It wasn’t to be. Hawthorn refused her MRO – Market Rent Only – in order to buy her own beers, on the grounds the company owned fewer than 500 pubs and was outside the terms of the Pubs Code. Carol’s lawyer found that Hawthorn, after buying a package of pubs from Marstons, owned more than 700 pubs and was covered by the code. Hawthorn responded by saying they would take the pub into management in 2021 when Carol’s lease expired. 

Hah! Contrarily, here in Ontario, Drunk Polkaroo* wrote about his five greatest disappointments in 2020… other than, you know, 2020 as a whole:

Drink tap water. Warm tap water. And you might get more out of it than shame and sadness. I drink ’em so you don’t have to…Molson Ultra is a 3.0% Light Lager and well, it is light on everything a beer should be. I’ve had light lagers, a lot of them in fact recently and this is not that. Not even that bubbly, leaves a dry, salt like chemical finish after hinting of hops and barley. Blah, but I had to know, didn’t I.

Writing from Washington, DC, the Beerbrarian summed up his year enjoying both music and beer. He noted:

In 2019 I kind of gave up on IPAs. I don’t really know why, it just shook out that way. Well, they’re back, including two stellar double IPAs, normally the bane of my existence. Go figure. Which style declined at IPAs’ expense? Saison. I saw significantly fewer cans of that style around, which is a bummer. From March 13th to the end of the year I had three draft beers. Three! On the plus side, everyone put everything in cans, because they had to. 

Three.  That’s more that none as one would find now in South Africa – and not supported by the SA Beer Association:

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address that cabinet had decided to move the country to level 3 restrictions from level 1. This would include the total banning of alcohol sales, widespread cancelling of events, and making the wearing of masks in public a legal requirement.

And Boak and Bailey gifted us an end of the year post on Toby Jugs:

What is a Toby jug? It’s a colourful pottery vessel, usually depicting a seated man in embroidered coat and tricorn hat holding a mug of beer and a pipe – decorative rather than useful. More than that, though – Toby jugs are a symbol, a marker, of a Proper Pub. Like other forms of greebling, they add depth, detail and hint at antiquity. They’re also a sort of summoning totem: this jovial, hollow-legged fellow is exactly the kind of customer we want.

Fabulous. We have a Winston Churchill Toby Jug somewhere, circa 1945.

Also ending the year, a couple of navel gazing conversations here and here. First, triggered by the death of that odd thing called October, there was plenty of points of view but this from Matt is the best of the lot:

It’s owners, Condé Naste, will, like all mainstream publishers no doubt avoid further investment in beer coverage in the same vein in the future. This is devastating. As a publisher of an independent beer-focused magazine, things are fucking tough. Readerships are small.

Well, a web-zine. Magazines are found in corner smoke shops and news stands. I know because I buy one at a place like that. It’s about telescopes. Readership definitely is small for beer writing and so being a web-zine is clever. As are patronage subscriptions with little but no return but the continuation of the ‘zine. Second and perhaps in awareness of the endy times for the unsupported beer periodical, this was posed:

Been thinking of @Ben_T_Johnson tweet encouraging peeps to blog more…. anyone interested in a blog about Indigenous home brewer trying to go pro lessons on the way comments about equity diversity and inclusion along the way…. Thoughts?

Many thoughts followed but the key to me was if you want substance, write it yourself. If you don’t want substance, just go all influencer and play with photos on Instagram. If you want money and audience, find another topic. Seriously. Few readers are into thinking about good beer. I could send you dozens of email addresses, addresses of those who had a dream of beer writing that failed. But if you want to enjoy writing about beer, just write about beer  – and yes an Indigenous home brewer could well be interesting new voice. With more new content. Not a lot of actual new content out there. Just write. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But just to saw that same log one more time – remember (as I shared in thread #1):

Beer writing is primarily for (1) fellow beer writers, then (2) industry folk then (3) a section of the beer drinking public with not only an interest in beer but interest in someone else’s thoughts. An oddly shaped marketplace of ideas without much symbiotic adjacency

Finally (and least of all) but not unrelated, an example (even if an ugly one), a bit of a non-story got tiny new legs when Harry Schuhmacher perhaps unwisely responded a week after the fact to that odd story in GBH** that looked much more like a hatchet job, a whack to the knees of a fellow struggling competitor than anything approaching actual news. What percentage pf America shares Harry’s (mainly incorrect) view? 30%? 40%? Yet – an interesting accusation that GBH played selective with the quotes. Never saw that coming. Ultimately, sad for all concerned. Unsavory. Reputation is all you have. Don’t waste it.***

Update!:**** Just as the publication October spirals into the black hole somewhat of its own making, Robin had her excellent defense of Twitter published:

Gripes aside, it’s important to remember that Beer Twitter has its uses. In Waite’s case, and in the case of many online subcultures, it can help elevate the voices of someone from a marginalized community even making them a role model within a typically homogenized culture dominated by straight white cis men. Or it could be a place where you can see the professionals of the beer industry shed their two-dimensional enthusiast veneer, bonding over non-beer things and finding comfort, kinship, and solidarity during a time when we need it most.  

The thoughts shared mirror much of my own even if I am not a professional of the beer industry. The value of throwing a half baked idea on the table to be beaten up or just being silly is not to be ignored. Great read.

There. Tonight 2020 will be gone. Viva 2021. Viva! Viva!!! And remember throughout 2021 that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too. Go! Merry Christmas all you all. See you on New Year’s Eve.

*Sober Polkaroo.
**To go along with their odd story on Hong Kong with the strange effort to find a pro-aspect and the other one with the slightly cringy treatment of a business associate accused of racist behavior.
***The legal meaning of “waste” is meant – not just misspend but destroy.
****A mess punctuationally speaking, I admit.

Your “One Week To Christmas Eve” Beery News Notes

Most years, this sort of roundup post right before Christmas would be full of people – especially British people – going on about the drunken work party they were at. On behalf of all those who have done or said the wrong thing in such settings, here’s a big thanks to the pandemic. Otherwise you totally suck. Scots author Ian Rankin illustrated this year’s alternative model as found in Edinburgh in two tweets this week:

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s Bow Street to the left and the Bow Bar to the right. A favorite place of mine, being near the fam and all. I have a pair of tweed trews from across the street, too. And it’s a spot that features in this year’s Will Ferrell flick Eurovision…* if you know where to look.

Lars to the east took the time to totally suck Christ right out of Christmas this week when he explored pre-Christian aspects to our western materialist winterfest:

So if the ethnographers are right Christmas was first a feast for the dead, then a fertility feast for the new year. Both, of course, requiring the best the house could produce of food and drink. And in Scandinavia the best drink was beer, of course. But how much is this to be trusted? Can ethnographers really have reconstructed the original meaning of Christmas from fragmentary stories and traditions around Norway?

This sort of thing is a doddle for me and mine given the clan MacLeod was founded by Ljot who wanted nothing to do with the conversion to Christianity going on under royal edict in Norway in around 1250.  We were the Beverly Hillbillies of Vikings, moving all to Skye. Probably more of us than them now as a result. Especially if you include the early schism that created the Elliots.**

Update on the value of UK social clubs: grab a grannie.

Martyn shared in length his thoughts on why he does not like cider:

I can see that there will be plenty to appreciate in cider: the variety that comes from dozens – hundreds – of types of cider apple, the changes caused by terroir, not just the soil, but the different strains of yeasts that live on the apples, the variations from year to year, the skills of the cider maker, the alterations brought on by age … it’s no different from beer, or wine, or whisky. And if you’re a cider lover, I’m very pleased for you: it’s tremendous, I’m sure, exploring that world, making discoveries, revisiting old favourites. I’m genuinely sorry I can’t join in.

He admits that he’s also not an enthusiast for wine or whisk(e)y either. I have a variation on this. I am periodically fonder of beer, wine, cider or whisky but I don’t have much luck having a robust interest in more than one of these around the same time. Or anything. They come and go in turn – and sometimes no desire at all for any of them.

And Boak and Bailey have rounded up a bit more this week, proclaiming both their Golden Pints as well as favorite writing for 2020. One of my rare bits of beer history on Dorchester ale and beer made the grade, much to my flattery and gratitude. Other than perhaps their weakness for my histories of English strong ale, they are great assessors of the field and tend to wander away from whatever is held out as the trend of the moment. Always a great resource.

Unlike many, I’ve never bought into the “beer people are great people” stuff and this rather brave bit of sharing by Julia Herz has done nothing to alter my view. If anything, the niche has always appeared to allow plenty of entitled latitude for knuckle draggers with the comfort of “it was all said in fun” thrown in for good measure. Fabulous.

Whether related or not I can’t say but the Evening Standard in the UK has shared the news that no one really should be surprised about*** – the well-off are on the bottle:

The Health Survey for England, which interviewed more than 8,200 adults last year, found that richer men and women showed a greater tendency to drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week. The highest proportion of men drinking at this level were found in the highest income households (44 per cent) compared with 22 per cent in the lowest income bracket. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of women in the highest income homes drank alcohol at higher levels compared to nine per cent in the lowest income homes.

In earthier news, those watching the world’s malting barley markets are predicting a happier 2021:

Malting barley premiums are predicted to nudge higher into the new year, reflecting a recovery from coronavirus lockdowns and a sharp fall in spring barley drillings next year. Premiums for malting barley over feed barley have slipped to £10-£12/t, hit by a drop in demand from the maltsters and a massive spring barley crop area of more than 1m hectares this year, but they are set to recover.

In other barley news, Australia is taking China to the WTO over tariffs:

“As a grains industry, we’ve been accused of acting outside of the rules — (growers) feel uncomfortable about those accusations,” Mr Hosking said. He said the industry did not expect a quick resolution and admitted some exporters were reluctant to support WTO action. “There’s no doubt this makes a lot of growers nervous, we rely on China for a lot of our export opportunities in agriculture, we don’t want to see anything that might impact that detrimentally, but we can’t predict how China will behave.”

Hmm… like a totalitarian military dictatorship with expansionist plans? Maybe? Good news for Oz – India awaits even if China is now dating Europe. Hmm.

Finally, a Christmas tale from my old home town of Halifax on a brewing collaboration between Big Spruce Brewing of Baddeck, N.S., and Boston-based Harpoon Brewery:

Every year, Nova Scotia gifts a tree to Boston, to show the province’s gratitude for the help Bostonians provided after the Halifax Explosion on Dec. 6, 1917.  The taste profile of the beer — called From Nova Scotia With Love — is a history lesson in itself. “Fermented on a Belgian yeast to note the fact that there was a Belgian ship involved in the explosion,” said Jeremy White of Big Spruce. “It was also brewed with a little bit of spruce tips to kind of give it that quintessential Big Spruce touch, Nova Scotia touch, if you will.”

Interesting nod to Belgium. Never seen that before. Perhaps because the ships in the collision were French and Norwegian… oh but it was on charter for Belgian relief work. OK. Not so weird after all.

UPDATE: Will Hawkes has brushed off the blog and posted an essay, arguing on the relationship between Britain and it’s former pal Europe as seen through the bottom of a beer glass as a teaser for an event:

In one sense, it’s banal to point out that Britain and West Flanders have a strong connection. In another, it’s timely; Brexit is happening, and we will be a bit more distant when it has finally run its course. Or we may only seem to be. Whatever the chancers in Downing Street achieve in terms of pissing everyone off, this country’s links to Europe will remain strong. They invariably have been, even before wool exports to Flanders made Medieval England rich and the first barrel of claret reached London in the 12th century. What is the point of this? It’s a convoluted way of promoting a talk I’m doing this Saturday, as part of Context Conversations.

Sadly, no reference to the Hanseatic League and the suggestion that hopped beer wandered over from Holland in the 1300s as opposed to being forced down England’s throat by gunboat in the 1200s… but there you go.

There. A bit shorter this week. Forgive me but I had long public meetings for work run late on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Looking forward to the break, like you no doubt. As we do that, remember that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*Life lesson learned: most people actually only want to hear “Ja Ja Ding Dong”!
**Mac=O, Ljot=Leod=Liots.
***What be the next revelation? Many die in Midsomer?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Your First Thursday Beery News Notes For Autumn 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: only about half his weight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Govern yourselves accordingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just another line I rode down from 2004 to now…

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

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

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

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

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