Category: Beer Writing

These Are Ye Beere News For Yon Thursdayish This Month From Yuletide

And I suppose the lead up to US Thanksgiving. I am not in the US and, honestly, does it feel a bit late for a harvest fest. The parsley is under snow now around these parts. But the Grey Cup is on this Sunday so that’s good. Hamilton versus Winnipeg.  Oskeeweewee Oskkeewahwah! Say that out loud a lot this weekend – wherever you are. And whether it’s Canada’s autumnal glory* or turkeytime down south, do take care. I didn’t… by which I mean I forgot to note whose tweet I grabbed this lovely common sense public health poster from last Friday. D’uh. [I lie. It was Martyn.]

I was complaining (again)** about the lack of interesting beer writing last week and immediately I was hammered by some fine examples. Consider this realistic vision of Brussels from Eoghan Walsh at Brussels Beer City:

Brussels stinks. It really stinks. Some days it smells glorious, of skewered rotisserie chickens dripping their paprika-stained grease onto the footpath or of the sweet scent of mashed-in grain that marks a new lambic season. On other days it is repellent – the amoniac fug of warming piss rising from pavements heralding summer’s arrival, or the damp choking fumes of the city’s unending winter congestion. 

Lovely stuff. In another hemisphere, Jordan St. John painted another sort of truthful picture of the start of affairs off the Mimico station platform a few stops to the west of downtown Toronto:

…I get the sense that 18 beers would be a lot to maintain. Some of these beers are re-using constituent elements and are not unlike each other. Take the Steampunk Saison, my notes verbatim: “Quite Sweet, Graham Cracker malt character, a little golden raisin or apricot jam character here. Low carbonation for a Saison. Mild notes of spicy orange peel amidst that.” It struck me as closer to Fuller’s ESB with the yeast switched out than a classic Saison. The Belgian style Tripel struck me as a larger version of the same beer. Still stone fruit and graham cracker, but with the intensity dialled up, reaching towards peach nectar. Checking in with the brewmaster, Adam Cherry, he confirmed that the ingredient builds were similar.

It’s a lovely portrait of the sort of locally successful, regionally recognized but also somewhat ordinary brewery that unfortunately rarely gets noted in the rush for the next amaze-balls moment. My immediate response was that Jordan had deftly displayed how to be both fairly critical and warmly encouraged – and encouraging – simultaneously. Exactly the best sort of analysis that, like Eoghan’s olfactory piece, places you by the writer’s side senses engaged.

An excellent and not unrelated discussion took place this week between Beth D and Crystal L as well as others on the role of judging and judges. I took my usual coward’s stance but went back to consider both the challenges of seeking and independent voice while wanting to be recognized as a peer. I’m grateful that they shared their thoughts.

Elsewhere, humility not being their strong suit, I am not surprised by the puffery. But would you really pay for the ever-loving cattle branded “two sides to every story” approach? Real money? Me neither. No doubt in response to the other subscriber offering mentioned a few weeks ago. God love ’em.

2020 is coming. Are your ready? I’m not. But I might feel better if I was heading to the Alcohol and Drugs History Society’s meeting on Friday, January 3rd and 4th, 2020 at the New York Hilton, Concourse Level.  I’d want to be there if only for the presentation by Stephen N. Sanfilippo, of the Maine Maritime Academy, of his paper “It’s My Own Damn Fault; or Is It?” Alcohol and the Assignment of Blame in Mid-19th-Century Maritime Songs and Poems. Being a lad raised by the sea in Nova Scotia, the only place cooler than Maine, I eat this stuff up:

Many nineteenth century seamen’s songs praise consumption of alcohol. Naval victory ballads often end with a toast by the victors, and sometimes include the sharing of liquor with the vanquished. Jack-Back-in-Port ditties also sing the praise of alcohol. This paper will give only passing attention to such songs. Instead, attention will be given to those seamen’s songs, and temperance reformers’ poems, in which alcohol consumption leads to disaster. Such songs and poems always involve the placing of blame. This placement is often not what might be expected, and is frequently complex and illusive.

In their monthly newsletter, Boak and Bailey sought to calm the waters of beer’s social media effect on those caught in its grasp:

Twitter in general can be frustrating, of course, but the conversation around beer is so much better now for us than it was a few years ago when the volume of trolls and bullies felt overwhelming at times. But this is a genuine request: if you think Beer Twitter is particularly terrible, if it really gets you down, can you drop us a line to explain why? Maybe there’s something we’re missing, and maybe there’s something we could do to help.

I think I agree. My behaviour has particularly improved. Far less bastardliness going around these days. At least amongst the scribblers as not all sorts of bad behaviour in beer is gone as Matt let me know of the crime and punishment of a figure in the UK’s craft beer scene.

The founder of a Norwich brewery who duped a businessman into paying £30,000 for equipment he never owned showed a “cavalier” approach to business, a court has heard.  Patrick Fisher, 39, has been jailed after he pleaded guilty to two fraud charges, including one which saw him submit false invoices. Fisher, of School Avenue, Thorpe St Andrew, who was previously a director of Norwich’s Redwell Brewery, admitted one count of fraud by making a false representation to Russell Evans between January 1, 2015, and January 31, 2017, when he claimed to own brewing equipment, when he did not.

That seems to be a bit unfair to Cavaliers, doesn’t it. No, he showed a criminal approach to business. Nice sort of old school larcenous heart to the court case, however.  Very Greene v. Cole, circa 1680-ish.

You might think the same thing is going on with the news about New Belgium being sold into the Kirin universe.  Yawn, I thought. So four years ago. And  the workers got a big payout, right? But then I read this one Facebook from a (former?) employee:

…please don’t lose your “dangerously unbridled in my passion for craft beer” I still have mine. That is the saddest part of this, I feel like everything I was taught, believed and shared at NBB was a fucking lie. I still love this industry and am proud to be working with new, small independent and innovative breweries everyday! It’s not OK to tap out! We need to remain CRAFT to the core. Watch your growth, listen to your employees and don’t chase trends continue to be a trendsetter. The industry needs you stay strong!!

Hmm… has that ship sailed? Maybe. Anyway, that is the week that was. For further beery links, your weekend starts with the Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and then turn the dial on the wireless to the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays. And look to see if there was a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter. It’s usually got even more linky goodness.

*Not unrelated to my own glory days… because they pass you by… glory days…
**Even Jeff noticed with concern.

The Thursday Beery News For When The Winds Of November Come Early

Fine. Here we are. It’s now dark as midnight on the bus ride home from work. The garden is all dead. Dead. Dark. Wind. Cold. And these sensations are also the first hints of the happy holiday season. Depending on your cultural context, it may be just three, four, five or six weeks from the day when everyone packs it in and hits both the bottle and the buffet hard. Not everyone is waiting. My pal Ben, who is semi-Nepalese, is traveling there and found a good beer that was also basically semi-Nepalese. As illustrated. No reports yet on if it was any good.

Also internationalistically, now that craft beer has co-opted kveik, is Lar on the hunt for another indigenous set of yeast strains from Russia?

Kveik signals very clearly when it’s done. It’s almost like the little critters are knocking on the glass, saying “we’re done now.” Starter turns all grainy, and once you stop the stirrer, they settle out in 3-4 minutes. Not so with this Russian yeast. It’s just as milky still.

Speaking of new discoveries, another new beer publication was launched this week, Beer Edge featuring the northeast US’s Andy Crouch and John Holl. The subscription rate is a bit out of my snack bracket but we are promised tidbits au gratis from time to time, focused perhaps more on the trade side of things than whatever community means or doesn’t mean:

From long-form writing that explores the culture, business, and process of brewing, to shorter essays, think pieces, and timely editorials, Beer Edge hosts sharp writing that provides context to an industry that often just receives cursory coverage. For consumers, bartenders, brewers, industry executives, distributors, farmers, bar owners, tourism boards, analysts, and anyone else eager for more news about the craft beer industry… 

Speaking of the trade everywhere, Crystal Luxmore tweeted about an organization and an issue that needs more attention:

When you love tasting, selling and making alcohol it feels like drinking is a joyful part of the job — but it also opens you up to massive health risks and addiction issues…

The organization is Not 9 to 5 and the issue is over-drinking on the job when your just is in the drinks trade. More here.  Not at all unrelated, a British self-described archaeologist, technologist, infovore, mediocre chef under the nom de plume “Archaic Inquiries” published a rather shocking piece on the role of alcohol in archaeology:

I’ve not worked outside of archaeology much, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t think that was a particularly inappropriate thing to say to a supervisor you’d just met (though it didn’t strike me as very smart). But as I thought about it, I started to recall all the antics of archaeologists under the influence, both adorable (getting in trouble for using government jello for wrestling at the McMurdo Antarctic research station) and not so adorable (I once saw a crew chief fall out of the company truck because she couldn’t stand… at the end of the work day).

I also learned that we “shouldn’t giggle when someone pukes into their shovel test pit“! Wow. I have not had a drink since Saturday. Seriously.

Bread.

I have a confession. And not that I have puked in a test shovel pit. No, I am uncomfortably interested in one aspect of the TV show from 40 years ago, Three’s Company. Only one aspect, I said. The Regal Beagle. Why? Well, the past is a foreign land worth studying. And when writing my bits of the history of Ontario, I realized that SCTV’s McKenzie Brothers and their movie Strange Brew was a last vision of the world of Canadian beer before micro hit us all over the head. So, too, in a way was Three’s Company‘s  Regal Beagle – an American vision of a 1970s faux British pub.  I want to put together enough images to figure out the pub set to see what what props were considered necessary 45 years ago. Here’s a blurry analogue vid view of the bar unfortunately filled with bad acting. There seem to be three beer engines back there but were they used? Here is a gif posted this week of Ralph Furley walking into the place, showing the brasses by the door. Here is another tweet with an image of the one bleak plot of the entire show – but with the bonus of an out of place “Ye Olde English” nutcracker sitting at the end of the bar, the couple in the background (above) expressing it for all of us.

Getting back to real life nostalgia, Alistair of Fuggles fame was able to revisit the Prague of his twenties and visit his old favour boozer, U Slovanské lipy:

…no airs and graces, no pointless fripperies, and the majority of patrons were locals rather than tourists, perfect. The big thing that had changed though was the prices. Where I had been used to paying only 20kč for a half litre of Kout’s magisterial 10° pale lager, the nearest equivalent available, Albrecht 10° from Zámecký pivovar Frýdlant, was about double that. Yeah, it was odd having sticker shock in a Czech pub, but a quick conversion in my brain telling me the beer was $2 a pop for superb lager soon put that into context.

In upstate New York, a tiny town voted to go “wet” this week:

In a 3-to-1 vote, the referendum, aimed at making the town “wet” again, passed and a town that has been dry since Prohibition will now be wet. “I’m all for it, absolutely,” said Eleanor deVries on Tuesday afternoon after voting, adding that the town needs it economically.

I trust Eleanor has settled down since Tuesday’s results. Economically, by the way, is the new medicinally.

Sadly but yet again, your weekly reminder that good beer people are not all good people – this time, the distasteful and fairly racist Halloween outfit edition:

Breweries can talk about diversity all they want but when this idiocy still happens it shows how far craft beer has to go to create a safe and welcoming space for POC. You need to not just talk about diversity but “walk the walk”.

I might have added “…as well as a welcoming space for non-fascists…” but that’s just me. Not quite as horrible, but still thoughtless…

You know what’s shitty? A prime time TV show on one of the major channels asking for free beer for their changing rooms & wrap party in exchange for ‘exposure’. If you are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for your ‘talent’ you can afford a few hundred on some fucking beers…

Conversely and to end on a happy note, Jeff gave us a four photo explanation of why in Sicily he has proclaimed:

This place immediately enters my top ten of best drinking establishments I’ve been to in my life…

Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Exhibit C. Exhibit D. Case closed.

There you go. A bit of a global tour. In space and time. The good. The bad. The ugly. For further beery links, check out the Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and then bend an ear towards the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays. And look to see if there was a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well.

The Thursday Beer News Update For A Week When My Mind Was Elsewhere

On Tuesday, I had a great joke all prepared for my proctologist, analogizing with him or her over the election results. But… well, at least in the end, we seem to have had a good result. In both senses. Not much time for me to focus on the beer industry, however, which makes this week’s beer update as much news to me as to you. Let’s see what’s been going on.

First, speaking of biological science, Stan sent out his regular hops newsletter this week and, as exemplified by the photo up at the top, decided to provide some photos from the Hop Research Center in Hüll, Germany that Evan recently wrote about, as mentioned in last week’s news update. Up there, that’s a picture of some of the Center’s germ plasm collection of long-held varieties. Want more? You will have to pay Stan for back issues of his newsletter now if you want to see the images but haven’t subscribed already.*

The biggest story has to be the member of management at Founders giving testimony in a disposition that he did not know if someone who was… well, let’s see see how the story was covered:

A transcript of the exchange between Founders’ Detroit general manager Dominic Ryan and Evans’ attorney, Jack Schulz, shows Schulz shifting from shocked to incredulous and perhaps a bit angry as Ryan claims he had no idea Evans is Black. Instead of just answering the question and moving on, Ryan digs in deeper and deeper, repeatedly asking for clarification when Schulz asks questions like “Are you aware Tracy is Black?” At one point, Ryan even claims that he doesn’t know if former President Barack Obama, Kwame Kilpatrick, or Michael Jordan are African-American, because he has “never met them.”

The Beer Law Center tweeted: “This is stupid. The “if I didn’t say it, you can’t prove it” strategy – quite simply – sucks. The law, justice, trials, and courts, just don’t work that way. Shame on Founders.” As a practicing lawyer a quarter century into his career, I can’t disagree. The person diving the testimony did themselves no favours. Plenty of rightly offended folk now rejecting the brewery like Beery Ed: “if you still drink founders , you suck.” Which is true.

Boak and Bailey proposed a scoring system this week to determine if a British pub is in fact a pub.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones was on the BBC in 1984 and discussed both dental hygiene in medieval Britain and his brewing. Wogan preferred keg to cask. Jones, having a multi-faceted shirt malfunction announced: “real beer can only be made on a small scale.” Heed ye all!

Lisa Grimm has had a timely article published in Serious Eats about the haunted history of the Lemp family of brewers out of St. Louis:

Today’s beer history installment is something of a micro-level view of my previous column on German-American brewers—but this one has a Halloween twist. The story of the rise and fall of the Lemps, once one of America’s most powerful brewing families, reads like something out of gothic fiction; and, as would be entirely appropriate for that genre, some say that they’ve never left. The story begins familiarly enough…

A great technical article on barley came my way entitled “Characterising resilience and resource-use efficiency traits from Scots Bere and additional landraces for development of stress tolerant barley” I believe from @merryndineley. Now I have to go and look again at the standard for “landrace” when it comes to barley as I’ve seen husbandry in the 1600s but when we are talking bere we are talking about something much older than that as the abstract suggests:

Potential sources of viable resilience and resource-use efficiency traits are landraces local to areas of marginal land, such as the Scots Bere from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Bere barley is a deeply historically rooted landrace of barley that has been grown on predominately marginal land for the last half millennia. The landrace yields well in these conditions. The project aim was to assess and genetically characterise traits associated with enhanced resistance/tolerance, and to identify contributing genomic regions.

Speaking of great technical articles, I was blessed with a copy of an article on the history of Fuggles hops by the perennially referenced Martyn which, this time, appeared in Technical Quarterly published by Master Brewers Association:

The Fuggle hop is one of the most important varieties on the planet, not only in its own right as a contributor to the flavor of classic English beers for more than a century but also for the genes it has given to almost three dozen other hops… It is surprising, therefore, that until this year there was considerable mystery over the parentage of the Fuggle—it seemed to be unrelated to any other English hop type, with a hop oil profile much closer to the German landrace variety Tettnanger—and a fair amount of doubt and confusion over exactly who developed the hop and when it was first commercially available. Now, however, research in England and the Czech Republic has convincingly answered all the questions…

Nice article in Pellicle on the realities of the beer scene in Iceland:

We had moved up to the bar at Kaldi, and the low-hanging bulbs made the copper bar top and our bartender’s shaved head shine in the dim light. I had just ordered the Borg Garún Icelandic Stout Nr. 19, an 11.5% behemoth. If you haven’t heard, beer and food are pretty expensive Iceland. Pints of basic craft styles were $12-$15 (£9-£12) everywhere, and the higher in alcohol pours were $20-$30 (£15-£23).

Even at those prices, beats the hell out of an vaguely described essay on (what Canadians properly spell as) bologna.  Sums something up.

Katie tweeting on junkets triggered that a discussion wasn’t the usual monocrop of defensiveness.

There was a discussion on Facebook on the early days of the British Guild of Beer Writers awards dinners with some entertaining recollections. Martyn** recalled a night 22 years ago:

The earliest awards dinner menu I have is from 1997 – ham cured in Newcastle Brown Ale (!), accompanied by figs steeped in Old Peculier, breast of guinea fowl braised in Fraoch heather ale, pears in porter and cheese served with McEwans Champion Beer. Dinner sponsored by Tesco …

Ah, the romance… Related perhaps is this thread about traditional brewing in today’s alcopop world.

That’s it? Yup. For further links, check out the Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and then bend an ear towards the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays. And look for mid-week notes from The Fizz as well.

*I don’t make the rules. Stan does.
**Again with the Martyn!!!

The Thursday Beer News For A Week Of Fests, Awards, Junkets And Other Melancholy Things

So, if I was going to write about all the interesting things I read this week, I need to first acknowledge all the uninteresting things I read this week but then not write about those things so that I can focus on writing about all the interesting things. [Thanks, folk who are keeping good beer stuff so dull!] Now, one of the most interesting things I read this week were the labels by the apples in this image from Instagram and Twitter posted by RV Nurseries of Yorkshire. These are apples from cider varieties all pre-dating the year 1800… which itself is a date that is now 219 years ago. That is very interesting. Very very interesting. Sets a standard this week for interestingness, doesn’t it.

Speaking of apples, Nicci Peet’s extremely interesting interview with one Roger Wilkins, the owner of Wilkins Cider in Somerset was posted by one of the better sort of blogs that calls it self a periodical… no, publication… no, journal. It’s a bit of a trip back into the 1700s in the sense that the production is extremely spare and the cider-making dates back to the 1500s and the farmer appears to be an high-functioning alcoholic:

I’ve drunk cider ever since I were 5 years old, and course I drunk it all me life. Then when I left school, well, before I left school I used to help me Grandfather cos he was crippled with arthritis, he had bad hips. He died when I was 21, I’ll be 72 this year. So then I learned it all off of him right up until he died, then I just carried it on the same. But like I said, there’s not many places you can get proper cider today. You’ll never get a headache or hangover with this because there’s no [additives] in it.

Well, except the saccharine in the sweet cider. And we wonder where Strongbow came from? Very interesting, indeed.

Also very interesting is the week Katie of @shineybiscuit (as illustrated, right) has been having working in a vineyard in the Mosel valley in Germany. Did you work in a vineyard in the Mosel this week? Me neither. I am in fact riddled with jealous to the point I hardly know how to type. She is not only learning about the Mosel but also Riesling grapes and the wine making techniques of Rudi. Holy Mo-lee. Very very interesting. She will write about it all in a story soon, too, which will also be very interesting.

Perhaps not quite as interesting but still rather interesting is the fact that in 1968 Lionel Tutt won the World Beer Drinking Championship by downing 17 pints in an hour as well as the fact that you can watch a video of it now, 51 years later, and notice that he got rather loaded.

Stan wrote an interesting post about language about beer, correcting the recent allegation that these sorts of things (i) start with M. Jackson and (ii) are dependent on M. Jackson but then confirming how they were grabbed, shaped and then released again by M. Jackson. I love how he also corroborated my observations that said M. Jackson developed his thoughts on the unified structure of beer after his initial writings, an observation I shared yoinks ago – just look!

Avery wrote, “There is a move in MJ’s writing from an amateur understanding (in the true sense of the word, the amateur as a lover of something), to an adoption and, crucially, a demonstration of understanding of technical terms, to a move toward describing beers purely in sensory terms.”

It’s wonderfully being so totally vindicated. One quibble – “geek” is venerable and probably misapplied. Speaking not of which, Matt published a story one something called MASH (which is different from the other now semi-former MASH) about the problem with beer events today:

I feel that, presently, venue operators and producers see events as a necessity as opposed to an opportunity. They’re an easy-ish way of putting bums on seats and beer in glasses in an increasingly difficult market, with a consumer that has a limited amount of disposable income. I don’t see how this will reach outside of our insular beer community. This is where work needs to be done to ensure that events have value, so that the community can continue to flourish and grow.

While I have nothing to do with the “let’s grow the trade!!” aspect of beer writing I do like Matt’s candor about such things.

Speaking of degrees of exactitude, Jordan wrote a very interesting blog post about stats, demographics and macro economic trends that really surprised me in the sense that for fifteen years folks holding out to be beer economists have never written anything as useful. Cut to the core question:

The good news is that there is a generation behind them! Somehow we keep making people! Let’s look at the pyramid chart again and think about Generation Z, which is the post-Millennial generation. Mmm. Oh dear. That 1990’s drop in volume from the beer litres per capita chart? That corresponded with the Boomer – Gen X shift. Both of those groups are still much larger proportionally than Generation Z. I don’t think per capita consumption is going back up anytime soon. 

Lars provided us with the photo of the week, an art installation entitled “Kvass tank. Yoshkar-Ola, Mari Republic, Russia. 2017.” I particularly love the way the image confirms that concrete provides no drainage while capturing the moment the girl in the black dress was getting a poorer photo of the same scene from the backside of the really angy looking kvass seller. Check out the high res version of you disagree. Please bring exact change.

Fabulous. A revelation even. I don’t even know where the Mari Republic is! Kray. Not unlike the next story. Except for the lack of resemblance stuff. The Stonch blog lit up in activity this week with a defense of Coconut IPAs. Let me ruin the ending for you:

Danse des Coco certainly doesn’t let the side down. I drank three 500ml cans just to be sure. Like the Italian beer I’d drank a fortnight earlier, it was nice and strong (6.9% abv). Again, this showed me that coconut can really work in brewing. The fruit was more pungent in this example, and the overall package heavier and more bitter, but once more I was drinking a great beer. I used to be sniffy about brewing with adjuncts. I’ve learned not to be. Quite simply, I think craft beer is getting better: the brewers are more experienced, the standard expected by consumers is higher. For those of us who’ve expressed legitimate scepticism in the past, it’s worth overcoming old prejudices and embracing new styles.

Coconut IPA!?! I can’t imagine the pleasures it held. But that’s because I was not there.

Finally, Matt* (again and perhaps unlike others) offered a moderately clear understanding of all those who paid his way to get on a bus in the Czech Republic (unlike those elsewhere paying their own way) on a Pyongyang-style guided and structured tour of repeat offender breweries with a load of other writers – all the while all of whom were missing entirely the fact that one of the land’s most venerable breweries on the tour was days away from financial and legal collapse. Experts! Note: Beth Demmon goes all in on transparency. Wow.

Well, that was better than expected. Just to review. Fest? Boring. Awards?* Well, what a surprise! Junkets? Only thing different is the seats they were assigned on the bus. So… wait for further Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and then check out Stan on Monday. Audiophiles are ranting about the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays, too. See you next week for more logging of the beery web. Laters!

*For the double! And as noted was about to occur last week…
**That’s me in the white shirt…

The Probably Not Quite As Long As Usual Thursday Beer News Given I Am On Holiday

I want to live in Montreal. Might retire there. Just for the subway.  It runs on rubber tires. No screeching metal on metal. And the pale ales.  All over the place, you go in to a pub or restaurant and there they are. Good malt forward classic cold pale ales of one sort or another. Without haze. Without franken-hops pretending to be mango or hot dogs.  Below left to right* are Archibald, Bishop and St.-Ambroise. From Quebec City, Montreal and Montreal respectively. Happy. Happy. Happy. Beer with beer flavour. Favourite newly found bar? Tie. Wolf and Workman, Old Montreal and Le Petite Marche, at the north end of the Plateau on St. Denis. Might go again next week. It’s only two hours drive away.

First up, one obvious sign that you are dealing with a good beer writer is that they are just a good writer.  So happy news, then, as this was announced by one of the B‘s of B+B as it related to the other B:

Anyway, the reason we’ve been on a Monday afternoon bender is to celebrate publication of Ray’s first novel, “The Gravedigger’s Boy“. We’re not going to use this account to promote it, but I wanted to say *something* coz I’m dead proud of him. ^Jess 

Elsewhere in England, Greene King has been acquired by a Hong Kong based firm CK Asset Holdings for mind-boggly £4.6 billion. The Tandy one has shared his thoughts:

As Greene King carries little emotional attachment in the mind of most beer drinkers, it was always unlikely that its takeover would have beer fans rushing to man the barricades. That’s just how it is, but wait.  Greene King is a big part of the British brewing industry. It owns a large number of pubs – over 2,700 – and these are spread all over the country. Heck we even have plenty of them here in Greater Manchester where, one must admit, they aren’t exactly the most popular beerwise.  Their type of beer is not always particularly suitable to local tastes. 

Something else that’s not suitable to location tastes as the brewery that controls the license to brew Skol in Rwanda has had to retract an alarmingly bad branding idea:

A beer company in Rwanda has apologised after critics said jokes that appeared on their bottles were sexist. One of the jokes on a bottle of Skol asked, “when can a woman make you a millionaire” with the answer “when you are a billionaire”. Skol launched the beer labels with the jokes printed on them on Friday but on Monday promised to stop using them.

Being a northern hemisphere western hemisphere sort of person, I was happily informed that “Rwanda is ranked fifth in the world for gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2016 report” – which makes the local brewery’s initial decision all the more mystifying. Except that it’s beer. And… you know.

Reading Canadians on personal consumption politics is a bit like reading English folk writing about voicing opinions on the personal preferences of others. It always seems a bit awkward and unpracticed. The Polk and Ben Johnson as well as others in Ontario wrote this week about the question of craft breweries donating to political parties. First, a bit of Polk:

It is the ultimate first world problem to be worried about the politics of your favourite brewery, but in a world where every dollar counts, it does to those of us who wish to see the world a better place for everyone. Our money is a reflection of our beliefs to a certain extent, although most of us still shop at Walmart, Loblaws and other huge corporations with spotty track records in how they treat their employees, the environment and even their loyal customers.

Now, a bit o’Ben:

 A savvy business owner should recognize the importance of being at the table when decisions are made that affect his or her business and the best way for a brewery to do that in Ontario is with donations (Indeed, the lack of an alternative method in the form of cohesive lobbying efforts is probably one of my biggest beefs with the brewing industry in this province and is a conversation for a dozen more blog posts). Because don’t forget: Breweries are businesses.

If I was to suggest anything, I think both views somewhat overstate the case. No donation gets you access you don’t otherwise get by being otherwise annoying and individual purchasing choices don’t really send the sting of a generally organized boycott. Yet, if a smarmy Canadian-style middle ground is needed, I might suggest that being aware of your beliefs as you make these decisions is good for the soul and arms you for the next time you face the ballot box.

Katie:

If only writing was just sitting down and thinking about what I might want to say and it just happened…

CNY beer intellectual property law guy Brendan Palfreyman was featured in a law publication recently. It’s always good to be recognized outside the bubble. Have a look under the thumbprint right there next door. You can likely read the whole thing. Probably an utter violation of copyright law!

One third of the way in, this two-week holiday thing is working out just fine. Expect Boak and Bailey to have more news on Saturday and Stan to be there on Monday. The OCBG Podcast is a reliable break at work on  Tuesdays, too.

*1,2,3.

The 36 Hours From Vacation Edition Of Your Thursday Beer Notes

Have I mentioned I am going on vacation? Not really doing much but not doing much is exactly what I want to do. Napping. Snoozing. The whole rang of middle aged man stuff. Mowing will be in there, too. Snacking in Montreal defo. Perhaps a trip to a nearby brewery will be in order. Hmm. Haven’t taken two weeks off in a row for a few years given obligations and stuff. This could be interesting. But enough about me. On with the week in beer news!

First off, Boak and Bailey posted a long and interesting piece on the beer scene in Leeds, England from the 1970s to now. I particularly like their choice to rely on chronologically ordered quotes from locals:

What follows is based on emails and interviews, some dating as far back as 2013 (John Gyngell and Christian Townsley), others from the past month or so, with light editing for sense and clarity. We’ve also used a quote from Richard Coldwell’s blog because we get the impression he wouldn’t want the mere fact that he sadly died in July stop him contributing on a subject about which he was so passionate.

Excellent stuff. And, in case you did not know The Hammer has a beer scene, too. Scene mapping is a good thing. Good baseline data to return to down the road.

Garrett Oliver on the present state of popular meaninglessness:

We can complain all we want, but it was craft brewers and our “advocates” who gave away the store. WE declared that “craft beer is dead”, WE gave away the power of nomenclature for quick success (what is “IPA”? Anyone? Anyone?). It’s a bit late now to complain, is it not?

Speaking of which: “Loving this alcohol-free breakfast-blend NEIPA”!?!?!?

Happily, not everything is a sham. I can only repeat what I wrote Wednesday morning immediately after reading Matt‘s piece on Harvey’s Best. “There are supposed deep dives and then, to use a phrase more common ten or more years ago, there is beer pr0n. This love letter is a bit beyond even that. Fabulous.” This is the paragraph that got me over my de rigueur ennui:

Walking past the kettle and into the adjacent room you are met with several stainless steel open fermentation vessels on either side of a thin corridor. It is here that the wildness inherent within Harvey’s beers has nowhere to hide. So potent is the aroma produced by its proprietary strain of yeast—almost strawberry-like—it soaks into every crevice and pore. Waves of off-white foam—known as krausen, produced by the yeast during fermentation—cap several of the tanks. Others lie vacant, with those recently emptied marked by what looks like an immovable dark brown crust around the edge of the vessel. To this day, standing in that room is one of the most intense sensory experiences I can remember. 

Yowza!

In other yowzly news, while we are all in favour of meaningful anti-bigotry efforts in the beer trade and greater society, this action by SIBA is quite remarkable:

We have reason to believe the individual behind this anonymous blog may work in our industry. The blog in question has been reported to the police.

The bigoted comments in question were apparently in response to the latest issues of the SIBA Journal on diversity. Here is more on that issue of the Journal which is likely all you need to know… unless you are with the police. Heather Knibbs adds some excellent connected context in a blog post about how not only SIBA but the GBBF have been taking more serious steps towards inclusion this year – then tells us why it is important to her:

In case it wasn’t clear, I am a woman. So for supporting this decision I will inevitably be labelled a femi-nazi or a liberal snowflake [a.k.a the world’s new favourite slur for anyone who refuses to humour your outdated opinions]. I think it’s a great decision that will hopefully lead to less women feeling intimidated by pubs. I wrote a piece in March about the progress being made within the brewing industry to be more inclusive of women, to which GBBF’s organiser Catherine Tonry contributed. Indeed progress has been made but from the feedback I’ve seen to this decision by the festival, the road to the finish line is as long as ever…

The job is not done, notes Laura of @Morrighani.

Speaking of love letters, Alistair wrote one from home to home about his (and my) people’s favourite beer, Tennents Lager:

Four mouthfuls in and the pint was gone, a fresh one on its way, then another, and another as we settled into the buzz and banter of the bar. At some point a pair of young girls came in, one with ID and one without, dolled up for a night on the town and pre-gaming before heading into Inverness. The gathered older folks, which Mrs V and I have accepted we are now part of, shared looks of recognition of days gone by, while the barman gave the IDless girl short shrift, and soon they were gone, while hands reached out for pints and the drinking continued.

In this week’s OCBG podcast, Robin and Jordan had a good personal discussion about mental health and alcohol, about how pervasive anxiety and depression are in the trade. It’s not an easy topic but it is a real issue.  The health of beer writers has always been something not talked about and, with respect, it does not take a dramatic trauma to trigger it. The tensions that arise for anyone seeking success in the limited world of beer writing careers can itself be a self-damaging cause. Be safe out there. And, yes, drink less. Spit.

Also in the UK, the Samuel Smith chain of pubs has apparently added a “no phones” policy to the “no swearing” policy which was noteworthy enough for noting in July 2017. An alleged copy of a notice in one pub is to the right. Wag-master Mudge observed:

As you know, I’m a big supporter of Sam’s, but the phone ban is a ban too far. They now have a big sign explaining it applies to everything including texting and web browsing. I was tempted to ask whether I could take a photo of it with my phone…

Turning around 180 degrees in terms of the transactional, wine writer Jamie Goode has commented on an interesting question in these recent times of exploding variety:

There has been a lot of chat on twitter about a food blogger who had a bad experience in a restaurant in Manchester. He began by ordering a bottle of Tondonia Blanco (a stunning, but distinctive white Rioja that I and most of my right-thinking friends adore), and then rejecting it because it wasn’t to his tastes. You can imagine the fall out.

He states that the only reason to reject a bottle of wine that is offered is faultiness which should be accepted, when raised by the customer, without opposition. Things gone off should be something you can refuse. But what if the thing that has gone off is the planning and execution rather than the cork? My habit is to not necessarily return a beer, say, but just not finishing but paying while ordering another giving me the right to say “man, did that one suck!” opening up a theoretical discussion not focused on the specific commercial context for the bartender.

Speaking of wine, wine has apparently passed beer as the UK’s most popular drink, according to a very wobbly survey.*

The large veg hobby has struck Mr Driscoll, brewer of Thornbridge.

Evan Rail has shared an interesting Radio Prague story on the discovery of a renaissance Czech brewery:

In medieval times in the Czech lands, only burghers officially had the right to brew beer, right up until the Treaty of Saint Wenceslas in 1517, which repealed the monopoly, and the nobility got into the game. But it was not until 1576 that Krištof Popel of Lobkovic installed a brewery at Kost Castle, in the new palace bearing his name that he had built alongside the original fortifications. Radek Novák says the excavation uncovered some vats in which beer was brewed, along with a kiln and foundations made of the sandstone abundant in the Bohemian Paradise region. 

…and then he made a date with Mr. Fuggled himself to visit it.

Speaking of visiting, Stan has alerted me to the fact that Lars has added more dates to the kveik tour. I am not pleased. I already bought the Toronto ticket. I am half way between Toronto and Montreal and faaaarrr prefer Montreal. For the hotel rates alone. Plus the food. Plus it’s Montreal! But the Red Sox are in Toronto on the same night as the night on my ticket. Oh well. I may never meet Lars.

Enough!!!  Over 1500 words. No dog days these.  Expect more news on your internets soon. Boak and Bailey will be at the presses on Saturday and Stan should apply pressure to the big red “publish” button on Mondays. The OCBG Podcast should be there, too, for you audiophiles again on Tuesday! Me? Next week? I perhaps I will report back from Montreal. Who knows?

*Sorry for linking to The Sun.

The Summer’s Lease Hath Far Too Short A Date Edition Of Thursday Beer News Links

Gather ye rose buds, lads and lassies. Five more weeks until Labour Day weekend looms. Back to school ads on the TV start soon. Remember: every fair from fair sometime declines. Boom. Chucka. Lucka. Photo of the week is from retiredmartin who has been out gathering. Note the first:  check out the third person’s experienced expression. Note the next: there is a missing fourth person. What is not to love?

A great start this week so far, don’t you think? Let’s go! Next, Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham spoke at Slow Food Nations about the progressive influence craft beer has on communities – something I would have thought would have been happening at every slow food conference since time began. She sat for an interview on her thoughts about food and justice:

Largely people are heartbroken because their intentions are good but haven’t actually been realized in their business. The project of equity, inclusion and justice tends to overwhelm people with a sense of fear of doing it wrong. So my approach is to come at this as a huge opportunity for a business both in terms of social good and the bottom line. To do this, a business has to think about it on par with all other organizational goals, build infrastructure and then talk through specific tactical scenarios that people can grab on too.

Here’s some science for you. Drinking is being studied studiously and one study has found out that folk are not altering their habits all the same way. It asked the question “why are alcohol-specific deaths going up in Britain when alcohol consumption is going down?”

Countervailing alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related harm trends in the UK may be explained by lighter and heavier drinkers having different period and cohort trends as well as by the presence of cohort trends that mean consumption may rise in some age groups while falling in others.

I heard a similar science-like story on NPR Monday morning but never found the link. [It’s sad when things turn out like that.] But the point was teens seem to be reversing what the last set of teens did and the newbies are turning to the bottle after their elder teens of the last ten years have been subsisting digitally.

Writing advice. Boak and/or Bailey included more than one excellent observation in their monthly newsletter but I liked this one the bestest:

A couple of weeks ago we posted about migrant workers from Suffolk in the Burton brewing industry. In a follow-up Tweet we said: “TIP: If you really want to learn about beer and brewing, don’t just read beer writers – look beyond.” This is something we think is important. When we wrote Gambrinus Waltz, for example, most of the research was undertaken in newspapers, old magazines, books about London, theatrical biographies, autobiographies… We hardly looked at a single book by a capital-B, capital-W beer writer, except for Ron Pattinson and Martyn Cornell.

Sounds like a couple of dodgy sorts to me… but the point is correct: get ye to the primary records as often as possible. Right after the rosebuds. Or perhaps they are your idea of rosebuds. Good all-round general thinking advice, when you think of it.

Hmm. Not sure I like this. The next nightmare beverage has apparently shown up in Malaysia:

Asians love the bubble milk tea. They love beers as well. One franchise has decided to merge the both together in what it considers the “matchmake of the century”… The Boba Beers consists of Butter Beer made with Kirin Ichiban, Guinness Milkshake with Guinness (duh), Strawberry Lime Cider made out of Apple Fox Cider, and Watermelon Beer mixed with Tiger Beer.

I don’t judge but, well, it sounds pretty yik. I expect some craft brewer will update* it and the kids will go nuts.  Because tea+beer=boba can’t help but be cheaper to make than even beer+juice+radler.

Geoff Latham had a good go at pointing out that one craft fabulous UK brewer selling into the EU was seemingly breaking the law:

It’s not allowed under EU rules. They closed the “personal import by post” loophole when tobacco sales by post rocketed. The person importing can have their goods seized and face prosecution. The company exporting also can if the correct customs documents don’t accompany the beer

I liked Zak Avery’s experienced views on the matter, too. Craft is all fine and good but a couple of weeks of short sharp shock might be called for.

New brewery news: Ontario emigrants brewmaster Andrew Bartle, marketing manager Marissa Bégin have declared their new operation The Church Brewing open for business. This is great and especially so as they are located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia** near where I grew up, where my Dad was a United Church minister which means he likely went to presbytery meetings in a future brewery.

I am enjoying the approach Matt Curtis and his journal Pellicle are taking in treating good beer as part of broader food and rink production.  British wine has been included in that scope this week:

Thanks to this bumper crop, British wine is being spoken about with more fanfare than ever before. British sparkling wine, particularly from vineyards based in Sussex and Kent, is now widely recognised to be on par with Champagne. This perhaps explains why in 2017 the Champagne house Taittinger planted vines in Kent (though, due to its appellation, they cannot call what they make here Champagne) in order to exploit similar growing conditions as the prestigious house enjoys in France.

Boak and Bailey have hit for the double this week when on Wednesday they posted a tweet with a link to a 1971 article from the publisher of the foundational and likely all-time leading home brew and good beer books in terms of sales, Amateur Winemaker. The article is about beer tourism to Belgium, a copy of which is produced to the right. I love it. While a bit cringe making on topics matrimonial, it is far less creepy in its sexist approach than the sometimes leering thoughts of one Mr. Jackson when he spoke of ladies AND it does an excellent job describing the subject matter of his article – traveling to Belgium in that year of 1971 to explore the beer culture. I particularly like the observation that sweetening sour beers like Rodenbach or Gueuze was locally common. This primary record proves their earlier observation – and raises again the question of why no one has seriously studied the influence of Amateur Winemaker publications. Then again, perhaps Columbus did actually discover the New World.

Finally, a point of view from our side good beer on the word authenticity. While I am a bit of a loaf, I do like reading about good menswear as I am a man who needs to wear things. Permanent Style is one of the best current guides to things I can never afford which offers an alternative voice on matters analogous to good beer and here is their take on that word:

In the past couple of years ‘authentic’ has become increasingly important to how I see clothing.  Partly, this is because the other terms – or values – have become less important.  Heritage has been overemphasised. Frankly, some old companies make terrible products and are stuck in the past, unable to adapt either to changing consumer expectations or the media that markets them.  So too has craft. The fact it is done by hand doesn’t necessarily make it better. Some craftsmen set out on their own before they’re ready, and deliver a poor product. And some things are just better made by machine. 

Interesting. Given most “craft” beer is made on computerized set ups that manage much of the process automatically, the comparison may well be a useful one.

Well, that is it for now. Not a boring week at all. Boak and Bailey should have even more to share on Saturday and I am now trusting Stan to being back again Monday. Consider, too, the OCBG Podcast which is broadcasting the thoughts of Robin and Jordan as they observe upon good beer each Tuesday now coming on three months or so.

*aka poach.
**pronounced “Wuhff-fuh” locally.

The Look Back At The First Half Of 2019 Edition Of Thursday Beer News

I was thinking about “summer, summer, summer!” as this week’s theme but the coming dawn of Q3 slapped me in the face when I was sitting myself down, knuckles poised over keyboard. Time is flying and we need to get out and about and enjoy ourselves. Like the people above. The photo of the week above is from Jack Dougherty, handy pal of @rpate. Used without permission for purposes of review, I get an early modern renaissance feel from the image, a grim morality tale with arse crack. The only thing I can’t believe about it is that it is not set in Glasgow. Then again, nothing is on fire in the scene.

Update: craft… I kid you not.

Next, we have a fabulous tweet from robsterowski which first led me to this great story, a lesson of the role beer can play in protecting our freedoms:

Local residents in the German town of Ostritz protested against a neo-nazi festival – by buying up all the nearest supermarket’s beer so that the nazis couldn’t get any.

Wonderful! Wunderbar!!! Here’s the story in German. What a lovely tale of making your euros do the talking. Reminds me of when I lived in the Netherlands in 1986 and there was an odd news item on the TV involving a fire department. Apparently when the then tiny Dutch Nazis set up a meeting, the local folk came out to burn down the hotel. The family I boarded with smiled and pointed at the TV as the tale was told.

Boak and Bailey sent out their newsletter and argued again (as others have) for more positivity in beer writing:

If you think old fashioned cask bitter is better than hazy craft beer from the keg make the case for it. Make it sound delicious. Move people to want to drink it. Telling them not to drink stuff they like won’t work, it just leaves a bitter taste.

I am not against such things, but because I’m not particularly interested in other people or being a booster of beer generally I’m not really moved to write about much in that sort of manner. But that is me. I personally find properly written moaning takes more skill as a writer and observer. It’s far more entertaining and often more honest.  Less un-noticing of things. Interestingly, the best example this week of measured consideration came from Boak and Bailey whose notes on their day in Edinburgh refreshingly captured being in a place with few references or footholds.

Speaking of which, some fascinating and initially Brexity bad news for UK beer nerds with wandering ways according to the Eurostar railway (etc.?) Twitter feed:

The personal luggage allowance for alcohol is 4 bottles/cans of beer or 1 bottle of wine so if you have more than 4 bottles they can be taken from you. Please read Alcohol Policy for information…

Joe Stange doesn’t like it but I so enjoy not being surrounded by boozy libertarianism when locked in a train carriage with strangers that I expect the actual travel experience will be improved on average. Then word comes through that it was all a misunderstanding! Hooray! I can safely plan my next Euro-trav happily knowing that no one is supposed to neck full bottles of spirits en route!

Troubles in the world of good beer are not really news these days but this press release is perhaps not the best way to let folk know. This bit is the most interesting:

Together we changed the world of brewing and have been helping hundreds of people and businesses to further explore their passion and businesses in beer. That said we could have done much much better. Our stakeholders, members, course attendees and clients deserved so much more and we failed you in many ways. This has affected people financially, personally and it has been more then frustrating for you. I personally accept full responsibility for this.

The amazing thing is the Monty Python aspect to the messaging.  From the heights to the depths at Mach 4. Voooooooom… splat. I can’t read the words without hearing the voice of John Cleese. I find it so satisfying in that sense, I have made no inquiries as to the actual nature of the troubles involved. (Mr Walsh has recommended own his services to avoid such drafting errors in the future.)

A great piece by Evan Rail in VinePair (even if the early micro-brewers were cloning Euro-beers, a clear decade before the whole “rebel” thing started up) on how US embassy trade staff have been leveraging big US craft industry marketing:

While the U.S. government works to promote sales of American craft beer abroad, American craft beer also helps to promote the U.S. Just as French embassies use French cuisine to promote the image of France, and South Korea is currently enjoying the benefits of global K-pop fandom, American craft breweries can assist with what is known as soft power in the diplomatic world, part of which can come from an appreciation for a country’s culture. In an era when American political influence is on the wane, it doesn’t hurt the U.S. if the entire planet falls in love with New England IPAs. 

Well, that actually might hurt reversing the decline of diplomatic efforts but I am sure other aspects of the program will work out just fine.

This was my favorite bit of beer science for the week: an explanation of how some of the carbonation in your beer might have come out of a horse’s arse. Speaking of which, here is another item on non-alcoholic craft beer aka soda pop:

“I think a lot of people assume that alcohol is why they have fun drinking beer,” Shufelt says. But, he adds, sometimes when people take a break, they begin to see it differently. He says that around the time he turned 30, he began to reflect on his life. He was getting married and taking his career more seriously. He became more focused on his health and good nutrition. “I realized alcohol was so inconsistent with every element of my life,” he says.

Jings. Ever try a nice cup of tea? Pennies a cup.

And with that I bid you adieu for another week. This was all a bit rushed with another busy week with evening meetings and such. Acht, weel. All the extra spelling mistakes just add spice, right? Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and see if Stan makes an appearance on Canada Day Monday. See you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Thursday Beer News Update: Buy-Outs, Bad Press And Bisulfite Bother

Ah, April. As lilacs breed out of the dead land, we watch baseball beginning. Seven months ahead of baseball baseball baseball. People get spring fever and, as a consequence, sometime buy very big hats. Craig has been brewing Albany Ale again with local brewers C. H. Evans, fabulously holding up the side for the project. I think that collaboration dates now back over five years when his hat was not so tall. I also captured the moment by celebrating the very nice breakfast that I had the next day. All so excellent.

Best boozy April Fool’s Day joke. Best letter to the editor.

I find this bit of craft amnesia really strange. The idea that Allagash White stood alone with haze without reference to Pierre Celis and Hoegaarden is a bit sad. Like people suggesting that sparklers weren’t invented as a way to flog poor beer, I suppose.  Or the idea that micro/craft didn’t start beyond the USA. But, as an entire counterbalance… an antidote even, consider Nate’s incidental beer pictures in the Czech Republic or consider Lars live-baking the mash on so-me or, best of all, consider Martyn finding an ad for US hops being sold in the UK in the 1790s! Wow! I am renewed. Redeemed. You can see that I am a sensitive I might not be alone.

A sensitive man…

I am not alone. Jeff at Beervana is a bit fed up, too, with some of the latest news. He captured the mood of these buy-out PR notices with his Mad-Libs, fill in the gaps form for any craft brewers planning to take advantage of any moolah-laced opportunities:

[ _______________ ] announced today an agreement to acquire a majority interest in [ ________ ]-based [ __________ ] Brewing Company.

I found this refreshing, especially in the context a so much fretting about “rumours” which seem to the UK blogging English for knowing something but living under slightly less freedom of speech than we enjoy in North America, if we trust (as I do) the theme as illustrated by @totalcurtis. I blame an over concern with the interests of lawyers, as perhaps illustrated by Boak and Bailey. I’ve never heard of bloggers facing legal problems over sharing trade information but, well, that’s what it feels like on my side of the gown and wig.

They do raise another point: “…the question of people’s feelings.” I usually don’t put that much stock into this personally* either but then I was reminded of the thought when I read this in a review in The Guardian of Pete Brown’s new book:

Brown moved from advertising into “beer writing”, which is not much of a shift. Beer writing purports to be a branch of consumer journalism. Producer journalism would be more apt. He is forever being invited to judge competitions (beer of course, and cider, veg, pies, cakes, anything). He goes to tastings. He opens food festivals. He attends events…  The proximity of writer/critic to maker or artisan is worrying. Beer or wine or food writing often becomes a sort of dissembled advertising, or advertorial, which doesn’t announce itself save by its gushing enthusiasm and self-congratulation.

Now, even if I am a sensitive man, I point this out for the general concept not the particular. My copy of Pete’s book will come to my house in a few weeks as the release has been delayed in Canada. And I won’t review it because it’s not a beer book. But I do think the review in The Guardian was extremely mean spirited. And not in the A.A.Gill, a hero of mine, sense of mean spirited. Not even in the Pete Brown sense of a teensie mean spirited.  It was actually a bit cruel. Demeaning even.* But the general observation on beer writing set out above? Not too far off the mark for a sadly significant part of beer writing. As you know I have thought and written about for years so don’t… just… OK, fill your boots – what the heck. You gotta be you, too.

Independence.

In other news, Garrett Oliver made The Sunday New York Times. And then an interesting discussion broke out on Twitter between him and Matt C. on the meaning and value of “local” including this comment:

It’s complicated for sure. But there is an extent to which asking a brewery to “double-down on local” is like asking a 12 yr old to “double-down on adolescence.” These days “local” can mean only breweries from your own neighborhood. I can walk to five breweries from my house…

I like the point. But is it what people want today? And isn’t that the only point? The discussion started with this from Matt C and goes along through a large number of threads. Worth thinking about.*** And worth thinking about in the context of all the above and below which is really about how a wide range of writing about beer takes many forms. It’s all fairly robust even if we collectively have not caught up to that realization.

Picking hops in 1800s Wisconsin.

Confession time. I am down to maybe having one or two beers a week. Work pressures? Health concerns? Nope. Allergies. Now I am a sensitive man so I am comfortable sharing with you that more and more I am having histamine reactions from beer like many folk get with red wine. The problem has always been there but I managed it by avoiding naturally high sulfate beers like Burton IPAs or anything Burtonized.  For example, I get a headache during the first Sleemans. Always have. Hard water brewery. Then, as with one really good eastern Ontario Porter,**** I started noticing a reaction from some craft breweries that I put down to smaller newer places using sodium metabisulfite (the pink powder home brewers use) as part of the cleaning regime. That one gives me a set of thrilling achy reactions down the throat. But, recently, I have noticed a new class of randomly sulfate laced beers: some of the ones with fruity flavours added. For decades, I avoid anything that is a flaky pastry treat  that’s foil wrapped  for freshness and boasts of “real fresh fruit filling” because that stuff has actually put me in the hospital a few times. Has anyone else noticed this? I know… I am a sensitive man. And it’s not that I mind. Good for the wallet and the waist. Great sleeps, too.

Not unrelated.

That must be enough for this week. This busy week. The week that BeerAdvocate magazine wrapped it up for good. Where will we end up? Back here?

But the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy

Now, it was brought home to me a long time ago that beer poems and beer history and critical essays about drinking culture will not really buy beer or flowers or a goddamn thing…

and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man

Uncertain how to cope with it all? Read Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday. That might help.

*Honestly, without being the slightest bit pointy fingery, I could not imagine writing “imagine how those team members feel learning the news from Twitter, or on some poxy beer blog” myself but that is why they are they and I am me and, beyond that, there are far more vulnerable voices out there. Too sensitive. But what can you do. Beer is made of flowers.
**Compare to this review in The Observer. Covers the same ground but seems to have no grudge. Odd. And, as I say, cruel.
***And worth hauling out again when someone once again says with a vapid flourish that you can’t explain thing in detail or have a civil discussion on Twitter.
****Which I mention only after I have had the reaction corroborated by someone else I recommended the beer to who had the same odd response.