Category: Beer Writing

My Own Golden Pints For 2018

Spurred on by the demise of The Session, I have this suspicion that beer blogging needs to be a wee bit more intentional about adhering to its own traditions. Like The Session, the Golden Pints were born in the UK during the golden age of beer blogging before anyone had a book contract and no one could sell an article to the press if their life depended on it.  I am pretty sure that I would find a version of my Golden Pints from years past if I hunted through the Wayback Machine (where much of the incidental archives of this blog sits) but Boak and Bailey have restated the format in their thoughts for 2018 so I am going to just poach and adapt their structure and see what I come up with. 

Best English… err… Local Spot. I have to admit that I have a new darling but it is not so much a pub as what really is a gastro pub: Red House West. Inventive food, a great selection of beers with a heaping measure of eastern Ontario craft, a bustling sometimes loud tone, $13 Eggs Benedict on Sundays and its in our end of town. And Labatt 50 always on tap just in case.

Best Establishment Further Afield. Like 2017, I actually did not leave the country this year. Work and college kids have their implications. I have, however traveled and was extremely pleased with Brothers Beer Bistro in Ottawa earlier this month. While not quite Quebecois in its embrace of less traditional ingredients, their two rabbit dishes I tried were fabulous and the beer selection was shockingly good.  

Best New Beer of 2018: Hmm… with so much fad and sideshow with the glitter and the brut and the haze, it really has not been a year with a lot to recommend it in terms of the new entries.  If I were to report on any change to my buying habits it’s the wave of new simple vernacular Ontario ciders made from just Ontario apple juice. Like Forbidden Dry Cider by Coffin Ridge near Owen Sound. And amongst those Millennials I actually know, a far more common preference than anything beer glittery, hazy or sour.

Best Beer Value of 2018: While at Brothers Beer Bistro, I landed first on a $9 CND Rochfort 8, a fantastic price for when one is out. We get this beer brought in by our state monopoly for wines, spirits and most imported beer for under $4 CND (under $3 USA) and is about as fine a value as you are going to find in beer. I would also give honourable mention to Napanee Brewing‘s Blacklist.

Best Blog or Internet Publication: Boak and Bailey. No real challengers. Earnest places like Beer Advocate or GBH might suggest themselves as a supply of beer journalism but never reaches the level the B+B offer seemingly from their kitchen table. Plus they provide the weekly round up, the wit, the history, observational vignettes and many other forms of writing. I suspect these two are actually about seven people backed by some shadowy investment consortium. 

Best Beer Book: There is only one this year, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out by Josh Noel. Important beer business journalism expressed in very long form without a hint of agenda or interest. Here is my review from July. And it is thoroughly devoid of food pairing suggestions, style guide parroting or three or four figure numbers ending in “1” in the title. 

Best Beer Twitter: It’s a bit boring saying, ho-hum, @thebeernut but he’s really that fun to follow. So, that being said, I am going with Katie of @shinybiscuit – especially for her tweets about Tom. And her ever changing hair colour.

Biggest Brewing News: I think it might be the collapse of North American brewing equipment manufacturer DME if only because (1) they have sold their gear so widely, (2) there is an aspect of the role of Chinese steel in the market that needs greater understanding and (3) I have a suspicion that there is more to the story – something perhaps salacious even – than the early somewhat formulaic explorations at a distance seem to suggest.  As I noted, I know a number of those involved in the circle around the issue but there are some significant gaps still needing to be explained like why was there no provincial business development intervention… and where did all that cash go?

Best Work Done In The Cause Of Good Beer: Lars Garshol. If Boak and Bailey seem to pull of all they do from the kitchen table, Lars never seem to be home. He has discovered and described the entire works of traditional northern European kveik brewing. He is so central to the entire topic that I created #TheLawOfLars and, surprisingly, it almost made sense!

Other comments on 2018: I can’t recommend a magazine or other publication as there seems to have been a definite slump in that area. A bit of a relapse into trade PR for my tastes, no out reasonably due to those involved being constantly on survival mode. Interestingly, there has been a concurrent set changes such as magazines folding, columnists being let go, personal departures from trying to write for pay, personal writing for health reasons. A certain realism struck after years of somewhat irrational exuberance. Yet, still sad for those stuck in the middle of the problem.  

So, there you are my thoughts and, to other beer bloggers, a gauntlet drop. Let’s see what others think about the year gone by.

“For Drink”: Searching For Something Requires Knowing Something About That Something

Just a bit of a note on how annoying it can be realizing that if you want to find out something you need to know something about the thing you need to find out more about. Not unlike my problems with records or, say, the adjectives of the past.

For example, from time to time I have a habit of hunting through the digital mess of Google Books looking for references to “malt” in lists of ships’ provisions for some sort of expedition or another to see what I can find. I have learned that I have to include a search for “mault” or other variations in the spelling. This is how as I found out about Frobisher’s provisions for his 1577 Arctic expedition by searching for “biere” rather than “beer.”  In that same way, I realized recently that I should also be hunting just for not multiple spellings but also phrases – as the phrase “for drink” in these examples show.

1557: in Tusser‘s domestic text set in verse, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry we read in the section on morning work,

Let some to peel hemp, or else rushes to twine
To spin or to card or to seething in brine.
Grind malt for drink,
See meat do not stink.

1585: in Volume 2 of Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts at document #591, we can read in the requirements for setting up English plantations in Munster, Ireland that a farmer requires six quarters of “oats for drink” while a copyholder needs four and a cottager just two.

1597: in the Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, perhaps due to the failure of the previous plan noted above, we see that the military need to receive better supplies instead of just beef, including:

…cheese and salted fish, and with some malt for drink for the soldiers, who I see daily to perish for want thereof, against the rule of Christian compassion…

1623: in the records of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, we can read a note by Sir John Coke, a listing of provisions which includes “malt of barley for drink” and “malt of oats for drink.”

1624: a book on Puritan settlers of America indicate in quotations that their preparations need to include “meal for bread, malt for drink” as they should not expect to “meet neither with taverns nor alehouses.”

1688: in a summary sort of document recording aspects of Communications of the Board of Agriculture, a summary sort of acreage chart entitled Quantity of land necessary to subsist 8,000,000 of people in England, according to the present mode of living:

Bread corn – –  – – – – – – –  – – 3,000,000
Barley, for drink – – – – – – – – -1,500,000
Potatoes –  – – – – – – – – — – – -500,000
Grass land, for butcher’s meat – 12,000,000
Grass land dairy – – – – – – – – -4,000,000
                                                    ————-
                                                              21,000,000

Nothing too profound about it all. Just worth noting that you… that I… have to be open to understanding that the short forms or cliches of others in the past are not the shorts forms of today. All very irritating. Except that you notice that over 7% of all English acreage in the late 1600s was used for beer making and then you think that, hey, that is sorta cool.

A Very Busy Beery News Notes Thursday For The End Of November

To be honest, its been quite for a while there. Too quiet. I would have been questioning the value of my time put into this weekly round up but, fortunately, I am far less self-aware than that. My plunking together of this thing every seven days takes about as much effort and thought as scraping a razor across my face each morning. That being said, what a week it has been in the world of thinking about beer and brewing. Cats and dogs! We’ll unpack that a bit but before we do, just as a reminder that no one should have hard feelings, I offer this photo of Monty, the Hook Norton Brewery horse who retired this week. Nice horsey. See? That’s so nice. Not like a huge cow at all. OK, enough of that. Settle in. On to the mud slinging!

First, I am so proud of Norm for writing about his issues with beer and his big decision. He and I have never met but when we do I hope to see much less of him for a good many years.

Next, this piece on opening a restaurant in Toronto and then failing at it was extremely instructive for anyone still considering the foolish route of following one’s passion:

Out of desperation, Dorothy invited her mother to the restaurant for dinner, where we sheepishly explained our problem. A sensible woman, my mother-in-law was always convinced that my restaurant was a stupid idea. We were handily making her case. Nevertheless, she agreed to lend us a few thousand dollars to cover payroll. But her loan was eaten up so quickly that by the next payday, I was short again.

Drag. Conversely, Katie of @Shinybiscuit fame has written a wonderfully positive thing about how beer writing has contributed to her 2018:

There are so many people who’ve lifted me up this year, and believe me, I’m a neurotic mess, I need a lot of lifting. If you have ever told me you liked reading a blog post I wrote, or sent me some constructive feedback, or left a comment that caused me to think differently about something I’d written, or met up with me for a pint and a chat, or sent a Ko-Fi tip my way, or DMed me to see how I was, or allowed me to awkwardly hug you at a beer festival, or asked me to read something of yours, it means the world to me. Not because of what happened last week, but because this year I finally started doing something I’ve always wanted to do.

Fabulous. Again and much more conversely, the massive self-inflicted botch Boston’s Trillium is undergoing has been instructive in a number of ways including (i) how not to seek to correct a story, (ii) what can be found in the public record – and, not the least of which, (iii) how it filtered and organized beer writers into camps of sorts.  Crystal Luxmore appeared to put the whole thing down to a “disgruntled employee” in her tweet upon the matter. But then wrote of outrage. Bryan Roth subtly hinted at something of  seeming pro-ownership view in GBH: (i) allowing that working for crap wages in a “prestige” business (a term he included, left laying there but never really explained in the context of a 5000 brewery universe) while also (ii) including this fabulously and maybe telling wee nugget:

As these back-and-forth public spats tend to do, there’s no winner in a series of “he said,” rebuttals.

It’s a way of discrediting the complaint, isn’t it. And to what end? There is a risk of turning business ethics and employment standards into a matter of personality, framing the “disgruntled” as having “spats” is a conscious choice that a writer makes, leaving doubt as to purposes. Jeff Alworth (like Jason and Craig) saw things far differently in a piece (as well as follow ups) that he introduced by tweet in this way:

A Trillium worker revealed that his pay had been cut from $8 to $5 an hour. That was only the start of the brewery’s trouble. How owner JC Tetreault responded was a case study in bad crisis management. 

Jeff backed that up in the comments by way of a response to his own piece:

I’m assuming that Trillium was making enough money to continue to pay their employees $8/hr. Trillium is wildly successful, and has been under constant expansion for years. Pay cuts look bad and result in disasters like this for the darlings of beer. Unfair? I don’t think so.

To be clear, all these writers are excellent but they may come to the discussion with a view and sometimes interests. I certainly do. This is normal. It’s the marketplace of ideas – in both the senses of ideas fighting for their place and also the voices fighting for… let’s just say their own place. Very normal. Except… it is not much discussed in the great big fiction that is the unified, harmonized, sanitized beer community. Fabulous organic clannishness hot takes all.

Speak of which and perhaps conversely, right after that Pete Brown announced that the British Guild of Beer Writers has issued a Code of Conduct! Heavens to Betsy! This is the sort of thing that filled a beer bloggers mind in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. And 2011.  You can read the Code here for yourself. A few questions immediately jumped out for me:

1. the document speaks of members of the Guild as professional [s.1.1] and that a disagreement between members should be
dealt with in an appropriate business-like manner [s.1.3]. This is the deathknell* of the Guild to the degree it might want to present an organization which might be considered to speak as or for consumers not because of the standards that are being set but due to the reasons stated for setting the standards. This is especially odd give many if not most Guild members are not professionals in either the sense of (i) being solely a beer writer or (ii) supporting oneself with writing. Many tinker. Many others write and earn in a wider context of revenue streams as we saw last week.

2. the prohibition of endorsing “any commercial product or
service save for the promotion of her/his own work or the medium in which it appears” [s.2.2.1] is going to be very problematic for those members, perhaps most of them, who spend most of the time promoting the commercial product known as beer.

3. Good luck having anyone involved abide by the requirement to “give full disclosure if reporting on a press trip or other visit or significant hospitality that has been paid for by the brand or company being written about, or their agencies” [s.2.2.3] if by full disclosure we mean full disclosure. Too often all we can expect is the “trust me” or assertion (and one quite correctly asserted) that writing does not pay well enough not to take all… err… the support one can.

I do not point these things out to be unkind but to state that the undertaking of such a thing as a Code of Conduct is a minefield. Unlike others, I congratulate the BGBW for trying to take on the role of diffusion technician.

Now, to conclude, some shorter news items…

Note: Eoghan warns not to read to much into a loose organization acting as a loose organization as members leave the shadowy HORAL.

Remember: There are other sorts of bad employer practices in craft brewing.

Warning: the cheese has been always been high at GBH but this piece is extraordinary. It’s like a 1970s Coke ad or a dreamy John Denver song.

Affirmed: IPA is meaningless.

Also affirmed: stories too good to be true often aren’t.

Fabulous: Stan reports upon lambic exports in the 1830s.

Even more fabulous: excellent and extended research reported out on the demise of All About Beer Magazine.

Isn’t that enough for all you all? The good. The bad. And the ugly. Can’t I lay down my head now and have a well deserved nap? I think I shall. I think I will do just that. Happy early December without an edition of #TheSession. Pause and reflect as we move towards that quieter Friday. In the meantime, remember to check out Boak and Bailey for their news nuggets most Saturdays.

*Fine. Yes, “partial deathknells” are a silly idea… but I got your attention.

If Mid-November Were More Exciting Would You Be So Happy With Your Thursday Beer News?

So. Here we are again. This is a bad week. Traveling around central Canada. Long meetings. Hotel rooms. Fortunately, I am working on my Korean food skills as part of this road show. My newly increased obsession, kimchi is… well… it’s like a hipster Scot would have invented if Korea hadn’t done it first. Peace food. Other than that, its all hotel breakfast buffets and minivans fully of cheery engineers. Bounding down the highway balanced on a buffer of spicy exotic cabbage.

First off, I was alerted by someone no doubt more attentive that I am, given my kimchi induced food coma, that there has been a shock wave hammering those writing about the history of saison. You see,  has shared his thoughts of a fact-checking mission he undertook on the “2004 book Farmhouse ales, and especially the contribution it includes by Belgian brewer Yvan De Baets” and YdB is not too thrilled but sadly fell back on what looks like a status based defense in his extensive comments offered in response:

This is your website. By definition you will have the last word on it. Cool. I will not start a debate here anyway. I have more to say about some of your claims but I don’t have nor the time nor the desire to do it: not only I strongly dislike the ego battles, but more importantly the first tanks of our new brewery are arriving in a few weeks and I have to prepare them a nice nest.

Remember: watch out for expertise transposition. Few brewers are actually all that acquainted with the means and methods of the historian. Its not in the nature of the gig. Likewise, vice versa. Dig it? For me, however, I think the real problem is assuming anything written in 2004 is going to represent an exhaustive examination of a topic involving beer. A decade and a half is a long time for research to advance – especially when that decade and a half saw the explosion of the digitized historical records. That being the case, taking a strong stance either in favour or against such stale dated research is likely a mug’s game.

More convivially, Eric Asimov of The New York Times (who I like a lot) wrote a piece about the ciders of the Hudson Valley (which I like a lot):

All share a deep-seated desire to understand the traditions, nuances and complexities of apples and ciders. They are the latest wave of a great cider revival in the Northeast, reaching through New England, out to the Finger Lakes in western New York, and down through the Appalachians. For anyone used to most commercial ciders, which are often made from concentrate, sweetened and sometimes flavored, these serious ciders are a revelation. They are mostly bone dry, with the flavors of apples and of the region. Apples, too, it turns out, express a sense of place, what wine lovers call terroir.

Less authentically, apparently what was a contract brewery is now an app that the deal did not include. Figure out that one if you will… and this one for that matter:

Drinking at taprooms isn’t just en vogue, it’s a permanent part of today’s industry that now drives about 10% of Brewers Association-defined volume.

Permanent? You misspelled “today’s top fad” darling. Not unconnectedly, Matthew Curtis announced his retirement from the collective blog Good Beer Hunting. One never know what is behind “effective immediately” but one hopes its nothing too drastic. I line it up in my mind with the tweets about breweries hiring passionate beer comms for their passionate beer comms needs. All in all, a very tough row to hoe but hiring Rebecca would be a smart move, for example:

Hi guys! I’ll be looking for some freelance/ad hoc work after this month. I’m an accredited Beer Sommelier and was even nominated as Best Young Beer Writer this year by the (!).’

You know, Pete Brown used to be a beer comms guy but he is no longer working for this sort of work. He is working on being a better Pete* – which is great – but once in a while loses his marbles most wonderfully:

Oh fuck off. I’m sorry (I’m trying to rein in the bad language and anger and be more professional) but fuck the fuck off. Even the most cursory reading of the history of pale ale/IPA shows this simply isn’t true.

Like others, I don’t really even care what he was writing about when he got so deliciously rude… but in case you are curious it was about a disappointing relaunch of Bass Ale.

Czech beer drinking in a slump.

Tandleman has an opinion on the four Cloudwater cask offerings pending according to a tweet – as well as a very nice new profile photo of himself as you can see. He must have a good social media consultant.  I wonder what social media consultants like that cost…

These days, calling anything “one of the most important beers in modern American brewing” is a bit silly but the Chicago Tribune found cause to so publish in relation to Allagash Brewing’s Coolship Resurgam. I remember about a decade ago getting in a handbags match over someone claiming one US brewery or another was the first to do something to which I replied something something about the Allagash coolship – which Ron will correct correctly as being a “cooler” in English. These things get heated. Fortunately, even the shock of the new is past us now given we live in hyperspace and no one really cares, knowing that next week’s new thing will in turn be stale by the following weekend. Just hope the Allagash beer is tasty.

As noted last week, readbeer.com is up and running. We now can see the output of 63 different sources of online beer writing. That will grow and with it the decentralized, leveled goodness of blogs will return. One of the great things about the former RSBS was how access to ideas was not being filtered through the gauze of self-proclaimed expertise or assertions of journalism. Access was immediate and it was up to the reader to sift clues.  Soon there will be 630 feeds. Best to keep up.

Well, that is enough for now. I am closer to home for most of next week so maybe this will be more considered. Maybe something big will happen that will fill the thousand words with one long observation. Maybe I will sit and count the days to first Christmas and then Spring Training.  That’s more like it. In the meantime, check in with Boak and Bailey for the regular Saturday update.

* Fab.

Session 141: The King Is Dead! Long Live The King!!

My reaction was immediate when I heard the news:

At first I was afraid, I was petrified…
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…

In fact, I was so strongly moved by the idea of shutting down the sentence that I tweeted out my congratulations to Stan and Jay on their retirement, as opposed to that of The Session – the monthly collective writing exercise that has been a constant in the last 7/8th of the history of beer blogging. But then Stan and Jay wrote to tell me it really was time to let go. I wonder if they are right. They might be.

My problem is not that beer blogging is one type of writing in a broad range of formats.  It’s the only one that provides for long form creative writing on anything that strikes the author’s fancy, without concern for pay or editorial intrusion. The Session was one way that the fellow minded stayed in touch with each other. Interestingly, Jonathon Surratt is reviving another old tool – the very former RSBS – with the same goal through his new beer aggregator, readbeer.com.

I think there is a place for such things. Folk new to writing need encouragement. Folk with opinions need a venue when their writing is more personal or quirky than editors will pay for. Despite more ways for more people to express their thoughts about beer, there is an unfortunate drive to homogeneity driven by the unreasonable hope of some day making some sort of living from beer writing. Wasn’t likely when The Session was new. Likely less likely now. It’s a side gig for 98% of us. A fun gig, sure. But that is sorta it.

There is nothing wrong with this. Writing is a pleasure. Sharing your writing is a way to make that experience richer. Maybe Jay’s work on The Session will continue in another form. Maybe not. Either way link you writing to readbeer.com so as many people as possible can find it. If you have enough interest in writing you should have interest enough in putting in it front of a few more eyeballs. Sign up.

Your Beery News For A Thursday Now That The Cardigan Is Finally On

It’s World Series time. When I started putting these notes together, the first game hadn’t been played. By the time it is posted, two games will be in the books. [Ed.: Oh, the Sox won game one!] I hope the idle Stan has time to catch a game or two… not a certainty given his global gallivanting seems to be continuing. This week, he sent us all this wonderful holiday post card of a photo (above) from Crosby Hops of Oregon. Respect beer. Keep the chain oiled, but respect beer.

“Wine drinkers unfairly punished by UK taxes” says wine writer Jancis Robinson responding to a discussion on the implications of Brexit. Has anyone been writing about the implications to the UK beer trade? My hope is that a currency crash and tariff increases might bring on a golden age for Fuggles. There is this point, however:

The Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland (ABFI) has warned that exiting the EU without finalising an Irish border solution is expected to cost €364m worth of drinks trade between Ireland and the UK. The outcome would restrict an estimated 23,000 cross-border truck movements and attract additional new tariffs on supply chains.

To be fair, it’s not like the €364m worth of drinks will not be bought and drunk. It will just be domestic bevvies from each side of the border. Does Guinness rebuild its UK operations? Probably. [Ed.: Wait – that’s not what a good blogger does.] DEFINITELY! Diageo to return to the United Kingdom by Q3 2019.  You heard it here first.

Speaking of wine, look at the size of those servings! Wee lassie sniff-a-wine is pre-gaming for the twentieth century, I’d say.

Are we actually concerned that there are too many references to cannabis in craft beer branding? I hadn’t really noticed it but now that weed is legalized in Canada, I have not been too sharp on the ball. It’s all like a hot box here, the entire country. Have you ever seen a moose in the woods smile dreamily? You can now.

It’s been an interesting week for comments about writing about beer for magazine money. Boak and Bailey in their monthly newsletter (which you really should sign up for) shared that they are done with it for the foreseeable for  very reasonable reasons including frustrations of pitching pointlessly, frustrations with not getting paid, and frustrations when articles are not published. I’ve avoided the crutch of pop beer mag writing for the most part but was quite disheartened when MASH mag went under without publishing my third article on early Canadian brewing… as in early 1600s brewing. BB’s comment – “Can you make it more appealing to Americans?” has worn us down rather – is telling, too. A variant on the too often seen editorial theme of dumbing down. The wonderful @Shineybiscuit shared another curse of the gig:*

Months of pitching a national about the great pubs in my area has resulted in a TV food critic getting to write the piece instead. Love my job.

Yikes! I hope Boak and Bailey still spare a thought for Original Gravity which, while it tends to work “the romance of beer that everyone feels on their fourth pint” as editorial stance, still offers great value for money. And it’s made it to the 20th issue which is worth celebrating in itself.** Very few do, usually with good reason. You can read it here for free.

A fabulous bio of Carol Stoudt got a Lew link and I link on. I love this paragraph:

As the craft beer industry blossomed around her, Carol smelled the roses — and detected the need “to deepen the trenches” in her home state, she says. “As more local breweries pop up, there’s no need for me to be in those markets.” She pulled back distribution around 2015 to bring her beer closer to home. “I never wanted a factory,” she says. “I like small. It’s kind of my philosophy.”

That’s captures what I have been trying to say for about a decade. If you can’t say “I never wanted a factory”, well, I’m not all that interested in what you are brewing. “Factory-made beer” is a wonderful slag against all pretenders of all label levels.

Jordan posted an interesting essay on his experiences returning to England after five year, following up on his piece [… which I have linked to somewhere around here…] what was it called… “Belgium Sucks More Than They Tell You“?… no, couldn’t have been that. Anyway, I liked this point in particular:

Here are some changes that happened when I was away: St. Austell Proper Job in cans. Apparently this is a 2018 development and six packs are available through TESCO. You know how the LCBO changed the market in Ontario by demanding 473ml cans? Well, this is a similar development and something of a standardizing influence between young startups and larger regional legacy brewers. The retailer isn’t quite king, but the 500ml bottles do look a little dated and the deep bottle discounts for multiple purchases do influence the consumer. Cans at least move volume without sacrificing the perception of value.

What is not often noted in the hack writing about “crushable” and the art on cans is their actual benefit as a flexible friend: lower investment, more control, and still that sense of value. Jordan’s other comment about Beavertown Gamma Ray – “there are a couple of dozen better American Pale Ales brewed in Ontario” – was also welcome. It is not, after all, about the quality of the beer, just the quality of the blessed “experience“… which a pop beer mag can tell you all about in a sentence and a half at the rate of about 17 cents a word.

Don C of CNY has penned an interesting article on the return of the (tiny) NY Prohibition Party:

The state’s “pro-alcohol policies are making New York sicker, poorer, and more highly taxed,” the Prohibition Party leaders  said. “Those in state government should come to their senses and end state support for the alcohol industry, or the people should vote to replace them with public servants who will.”

“Should” is the dumbest word in the language. Makes people think what isn’t is what ought to be. No “should” with Pete as he continues his considerations on cask in the UK again and in particular he discusses price. Let me ruin his ending for you:

Price is a thorny topic to get to the bottom of. As a cash-strapped drinker, of course I don’t want the price of beer to go up. But as an adviser to brewers and pubs, I’d say there’s a lot more potential margin in cask if you want it – and if the quality is good. 

The important thing to note is that a lower price is what is being offered and what is being paid. The market is what the market says it is. Which means if folk are happy with lower-price lower-quality cask, well, that might well be the product they want. Hard to capture that as a PR consultancy message*** but it might well be why what is… is what is.

Well, that is it for me for this week. The lettuce patch has not yet suffered a killing frost even if the last green tomatoes have been brought in to ripen on the window sill. The furnace doesn’t run all night but it sure gets turned on before I make the coffee. Winter is coming – but it ain’t here yet. Weekend readings? Day dreaming again, wishing that Saturday was as fun as a Thursday? Fret not. Find your next beer news fix at Boak and Bailey.

*Then removed with well-worthy self-asserted defiance! Fight!!!
**Not the Canadian… err… Toronto edition of OG which seems to have gotten stuck at issue #1.
***Though I am quite fond of my new open source media campaign on the topic “Cask: Reliably Highly Unreliable at a Reliable Low Price!”

It’s Your Mid-October Beer News For A Thursday

Another Thursday, another week of watching the ticker tape of tweets go by. I turn 55 and 1/2 today. Because it’s my brother’s birthday and he was born a year and a half to the day before me. That’s some sort of news. Or at least cause to buy myself a treat. I bought one yesterday, a carrot pale ale from the Oakville, Ontario branch of the 3 Brasseurs brewpub chain. It was quite yum.  Lovely and thick like a medieval beer fan would want.

The really big news this week was, I suppose, the death of All About Beer magazine, as wonderfully eulogized… almost pre-eulogized, in fact… by Jeff:

…as recently as a couple years ago, the magazine was in the midst of its most impressive period of content. The magazine looked great and Holl had the best writers in the business working on excellent, deeply-reported stories. The design of the magazine—never its strength—was also rich and interesting. And, Holl told me, “Even as online news became the standard, when I was editor we saw print subscriptions rise.” The problem wasn’t editorial—it came from the business side.

This blog was in AAB a few times for which I am entirely grateful. The old Christmas photo contest was supported by the magazine during the Julie Johnson Daniel Bradford era with prize packages and the winning entry even published on a couple of occasions. I also think a book review written by Holl of Ontario Beer graced its pages. If I had any complaint it was how, at a critical moment, a lot of the attention granted to the writings of beer bloggers was transitioned four or five years ago into those AAB blog columns – for which the writers were certainly paid but it also set up the expectation that there was money in writing about beer. I have not only thought this belief to be suspect but also undermines excellent amateur writing where I find the depths are actually explored. But, even if that was true…even if my semi-snark had a point, there was certainly no lack of nobility in the efforts behind publishing AAB all those years and many previously isolated writers were encouraged as a result. It is a loss to us all. Where will its digital archives go?

Ben has written about another sort of ending, his speculations starting on the wrong track upon hearing the news of what ended up being the retirement of the last of the three founders of Ontario’s Steam Whistle:

My tweet that started a conversation today predicted today’s Steam Whistle announcement might be about either a buy-out or a cannabis venture. And while that’s not what this announcement was, in light of Heaps’ departure, I actually feel a little more strongly that one of those outcomes might now be possible. Big beer companies tend to have better luck putting a dollar amount to a brewery when the people who built that brewery aren’t around any more…

If you don’t follow the tweets of @BarMas you are missing his adventures in German village life including his recent morning out in the orchard with his odd semi-tractor thingie, illustrated under the thumbnail to the right, gathering apples so that he can make insane amounts of cider. We all need odd things that keep us sane. Being odd is good. Me, I like tweed and I buy flags off some guy in India who gets them off cutting yard ships. Barry’s include this green semi-tractor. What are yours? You better find one or two or you will just mainline beer obsession, which is never good. Beer needs companion oddnesses to keep it in its place.

Conversely, what is the value of excitement over an experience only one in a billion can enjoy? If its enjoyable at all, that is. So, beyond self-affirmation through defeating the fear of losing out appears to be self-affirmation through abandoning the fear of losing out through accepting… losing out:

The Macallan 60-Year-Old 1926 takes this rarity to a higher level and is the zenith for collectors of The Macallan whisky. Sir Peter Blake (the renowned artist responsible for the album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) and Valerio Adami were asked to design a label each for this special bottling, and 12 individually numbered bottles from each artist were released. 

Perhaps relatedly, I was never so pleased to read about a pediococcus infection as when I was reading tweets between Garrett O. and Lars G. on the subject:

This is a pediococcus infection. The bacteria forms a mucilaginous substance in the beer, often forming long strands. The old term for such beer is “ropy”. In lambics, this substance is eventually broken down by Brett. In the meantime (or otherwise) horrible.

See, Lars finally met a beer made with kveik (actually a muri) that he did not like. Thick in the way an ale should not be thick. And I, as a result, finally learned exactly what “ropy” means… after reading about it for years in all those pre-modern texts.

The talk of cask goes on. Matt C took some exception in fact to some of the talk of cask:

Cask ale is no more difficult to make than any beer. Good cellar-ship with cask, like with keg, is a skill, and requires due care and attention, but it’s not that difficult. As wonderful as it is, I wish people would stop romanticising a dispense method in this manner.

Well, it is more than dispense but it is romanticized. Care of the cellar is fundamental to the success of the dispense. And being careful and taking time is not something we value as we should. As we should value tweed, orchards and flags salvaged from scows beached on an India ocean scene. But not too much. Jack Duckworth kept a cellar, after all. Besides, what’s so bad about layering on a little romance?

You know, saying a sad goodbye to All About Beer isn’t over romanticizing things either. Nor admiring the semi-tractor in a field Teutonic. Baking a mash and knowing it’s keptinis and not kveik isn’t romanticizing either, even if its a bit nerdy. We are all nerds. We are folk who might admire a vintage bus rally now and then. Accept it. Me, I have just cut and pasted a whole bunch of links related to early North American colonies and especially the failed 1587 colonizing expedition by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, all to see if I can coax enough for a nerdy post out of it all. The romance of it all is real even if there is an ultimate lack of substance. Or is there? Perhaps this is all what is real.

I’ll have to think about that when I am not day dreaming about 1587 over the week ahead. I hope you have something to fill the idle hour until then, too. As you do, check out Boak and Bailey for more beer news on the weekend. That’ll help.

The Beer News You Need To Know Before The Corduroys Take Over

Listen up!

This was either a quiet week or a busy one. Busy in the sense that it was too busy to spend time on writing about beer. Did anything strike you in particular? Not that much attracted my attention from the #GABF. Usually something of note comes up out of that event. The only blip was the inclusion of the previously outcast, given the BA has learned it’s OK to take their money. And the odd regional unhappinesses. Other than that and as illustrated, apparently plenty of people went, did similar things and a thousands bunch sat similarly uniformed in neat rows to staring at a stage hearing about this year’s new core message from the same people as always. Now, that’s what independence means to me! But, even that, is something we’ve heard before, isn’t it. So, it’s off to the edges of the week to see if we can dig up some actually interesting things.

First, go read Jessica Mason‘s excellent personal essay on how the pubs was instrumental in allowing herself the opportunity to turn a crisis in her life around:

The realisation that my boyfriend had begun seeing a married woman had knocked the life out of me. I looked up her husband and we agreed to meet at the pub — to cry into our beer and to compare stories. The next time we met, he helped us find somewhere to live. He was fast becoming my friend and his consideration was real.

Speaking of pubs, this photo essay exploration of the Commercial Tavern in the Spitalfield district of London, England by Retired Martin is wonderful in its consideration of a forgotten nugget of pure retro tat:

With no conversations to overhear, I made do with admiring the wallpaper, which reminded me a bit of a nightmare I had in my own bedroom in 1975. 

His thoughts on the newest version of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide are worth reading, too.

More happy tidings. Stan won the inaugural NAGBW Fred Eckhardt Award for Critical Beer Writing which is very good news as Stan is very good at winning things and really should win more things.

tl;dr take -> suck’kin ale. Perhaps a similar thing could have been said about Canadian light beer in the late 1970s.

Hadn’t thought of this before – the potential for economic discrimination which inherently along with the cashless bar or pub:

It needs to be made clear we are not discussing cashless payments per se. They are a growing feature of the financial landscape, and obviously it makes business sense for many pubs to accept them. But to refuse to accept cash entirely is something entirely different, and comes across very much as an attempt to practice social selection of your clientele.

CNN published something of a neg nag on Oktoberfest in Munich for, apparently, reflecting German today:

It is remarkable that all these politicians have long felt comfortable promoting a “festival that emphasizes its German origin with strength and power in every aspect,” as the official website claims. But even this idea of Germanness lacks a certain authenticity. The kinds of dirndls and lederhosen worn at the festival have little to do with German history. Dirndels and lederhosen were not even worn in Bavaria when the festival first took place.

Deutche Welle has a far more positive if a bit stilted take on the fest from three of its foreign correspondents. It’s interesting to me mainly for the mundane aspects of the incidental video – the shots from the fair grounds.

Similarly, I was really taken by Boak and Bailey’s post “Incidental Lager, Pubs and Breweries in Photos of Edwardian London” in which they noted incidental lager, pubs and breweries in photos of Edwardian London… which is exactly the sort of thing I have wasted innumerable lunch breaks at work doing because my brain works in exactly the same way.

Not similarly, Jordan’s mother (the far more sensible between the two of them) wrote about her foray into hops as well as herself:

Jordan has been either blessed or cursed with very eccentric parental units. To see the development of this, and if you are a reader of the blog of long standing you may remember the blog post of long ago wherein the teenaged Jordan learned about Weird Old Broads. We have not become more centrist as time has gone along. In fact the oddness may now be worse.

I find the same for myself is true. The oddness is getting worse. So I best wind it up for another week. Try to be more volatile, eccentric or combustible over the next seven days wouldja beer world? Boak and Bailey seem to have got themselves back into the habit so check out their newsy nuggets this weekend. Other than that, see you in October.

Even On A Thursday In Mid-August You Need Your Beer News

That’s the photo of the week. The storage room at Fuller’s as tweeted by Brewers Journal magazine… or journal, I suppose. There is plenty of beauty to go around in good beer if you remember to have a look. Jordan found a slice of it when jet lagged in an London pub:

“How the hell are you, Frank,” says the first of the day’s regulars. “Old and weary,” says Frank, limping slightly towards the cask engine as that ritual badinage continues.

No, you can look up “badinage” for yourself.

Less wonderfully, J.Surratt discovered something about a brewery owner being like Jesus and the offending Twitter presence soon was deleted, the website now password protected.  Perhap’s it’s being reworked as “The Hobo Of Craft” with heavy appropriation of Red Skelton’s lovable clown character,  Dodo Delwyn. 

Brewers! Answer Jeff’s survey. While you are at it, send in your entries to the annual NAGBW awards.

Lars made the front page. I made the front page in Albany once. Craig needed a quote that wasn’t from him so he just sent an email to the paper saying it was from me. Works for me. I have the greatest coauthors. A pal in NY State government phoned to ask me how the hell I got a quote on the front page of the paper of record. I giggled.

Stan beat me to the “craft beer ham slice” photo taken at a UK Tesco grocery store but it bears some discussion. This may either be a sign of successful infiltration of the brand or, you know, a sign of the end times. I am in the latter camp but to be fair if you need every product in your fridge, pantry and bathroom cabinet to have the words “craft beer” on the label, this one is for you. If, on the other hand, you understand the need to protect your brand, moderately priced sandwich meat might not be your best friend. Does anyone buy that margarine with cold pressed olive oil?

Your fabulous brewing history post of the week came from Martyn… again. The joppen/joppen debate has reared its ugly head and I have an inking that the answer is to be found in the vaults and archives of the Hanseatic League, the swellest league of them all. Consider this:

Turns out Pryssing is actually the old Danish/Swedish/Norwegian name for Prussia, which in the modern languages is Preussen, the same as it is in German. Ping! On comes a lightbulb. The old English name for Prussia was Spruce – Chaucer called the country “Sprewse”, and it was still being called “Spruce-land or Prussia” as late as 1697. The “Spruce beer”, beer from Prussia, that appears in an English poem in 1500 and was on sale in London in 1664 is clearly the same drink as Pryssing. (The “spruce tree”, first mentioned in 1670 by John Evelyn, was so called because it was the fir from Spruce.)

My ticking thought is not that the spruce came from Prussia but Prussia was the inheritor of Hansa and that shipping empire brought in spruce and other lumber from deeper into the east, from the Baltic States and Russia, shipping them as early as the 1200s into England and other seaside Euro-nations. The mariners of Hansa were heavily involved, according to Unger, for bringing hoppy beer west.

Constellation brands: lays off craft division sales force and then invests $5,000,000,000 in Canadian dope sales. Somehow this all places rec drugs in a bit of contexts.

Ben pointed out that self-promoter and formerly craft brewery focused now gas station alcopop manufacturer, Mr. Koch, has sidled up to Donald Trump. I can’t think of a less Boston thing to do in 2018. Maybe wearing a Yankees hat – but even that is not this bad. My thought? What do you expect from the man who believes dry yeast mixed with yogurt keeps you from getting drunk and who gave us “Sex for Sam“?

This is the worst one yet from the GBH blog. The formula of (i) pre-determined conclusion and (ii) quotes from lots of people benefiting from the pre-determined conclusion is familiar. No, in this time of tiny brewers and local malt and hops the norm of questioning authenticity and sourcing is not “quaint” and this might as well come from planet Mars:

“These gypsy brewers have no roots, the argument goes. They are hardly brewers. They are marketing companies. They don’t make anything, whereas ‘true’ craft brewers do. These arguments place gypsy brewers outside of the craft beer industry and into the nebulous service sector.” Ironically enough, as with so many things in 2018, none of this seems to matter anymore.

Where do they get this stuff? Sweet rhetorically passive aggressive improper application of “irony” too.

This was posted later today than the usual 5:53 am Thursday pre-set. I am happily working on a project that is worth about 1347 years of my annual income and someone has to write the deal! Me. So, I wrote most of this at a highway side hotel near an engineering firm that I am working with. Very fun stuff. Rebar. Really top quality rebar. Might as well be Lego and Tonka toys. Is that a bad attitude for a lawyer?

With that, I leave you for another week. Remember to check out B+B on Saturday and Stan on Monday. The beer news never sleeps.

It Is August So Make The Best Of What Is Left Guided By These Tidbits Of Thursday Beer News

Remember?

These Thursday news headlines are getting longer. I wonder what Stan would say about my lack of control. I write that because last Monday’s musings from Stan were so well managed. Made me think about how plunking down this weekly post speaks as much or more to my interesting in writing as my interest in beer. Writing demands writing. So, after reading Stan, I immediately looked to see how many links I had stored away so far in the week for this report and – to my horror – it appears I had been having a good weekend. Nothing had been tucked away to be noted so far. Jings! Bet it won’t show.

How did my week go otherwise? Thanks for asking. I did go to a new pub in another town by the waterfront the other day. It was very pleasant with the cooling wind coming in the window with the view. The beer was a house branded short pour that was also in a cheater pint but my waiter forgot to bill m for my partner’s drink so it all worked out. Sweet.

Dad joke.

Beer sales are up in Germany. Revenues are up in the UK, too, but perhaps not volume. Trumps tariffs are forcing US beer makers to raise prices and “America’s long love affair with beer is on the rocks“!

According to the Beer Institute, a trade group, drinkers chose beer just 49.7 per cent of the time last year, down from 60.8 per cent in the mid-90s. Among 21- to 27-year-olds, the decline has been sharper. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, Budweiser’s owner, found that in 2016, just 43 per cent of alcohol consumed by young drinkers was beer. In 2006, it was 65 per cent. Per-capita beer consumption in the U.S. fell to 73.4 litres last year, from 80.2 in 2010 and 83.2 litres in 2000, according to IWSR, a drinks market research firm. Germany, by comparison, consumed 103 litres a person last year.

My kid says it is all about calories in her crowd, so gin or vodka with soda is what they buy. Gin’s big. Makes sense. When folk find out I know something about beer, the look I get is either (i) weirdo or (ii) of course, you fat lump. Both of which are sorta correct so I don’t really mind. Can’t hurt my feelings. No sirree.

Could it be that grain was first malted for purposes other than brewing beer? Merryn has linked to that story.  Interestingly, I heard somewhere – likely NPR – over the weekend that there is a theory (working the theory cocktail circuit) that farming was started to encourage bees because early humans liked honey and bees like plants. Tough luck for that whole “beer created civilization” stuff. It never made sense anyway.

2011 was the peak year for wine blogs. I’d put beer blogs a bit earlier. Lew is one human-sized ball of regret over how things turned out. I remember the glory days. Glory… days…. OK, fine. No one cares. Actually, there are plenty of bloggers but they call themselves on-line journalists. Link every second paragraph to the writings of others while coming to conclusions others had pretty much already figured out? Blog.

Michael Tonsmeire has again updated his fabulous chart of larger brewery ownership connections. Just to be clear, ownership is just one of the ways other outside interests can exert control over a business. Loan agreements are just as restricting but, as private transactions, harder to spot. All those firms in the pure “independent” center of the chart? Just as likely to have a taint that some puritanical nerd sect will have an issue with. But no one cares about that either.

Speaking of law. Beer law story #1.  Beer law story #2. Taking sides in these matters is a bit weird. It’s like folk think they are smarter than the common law. Note: beer not special… standard rules expected to be applied. And these things have happened before. Don’t hear about anyone going all torches and pitch forks against Sam Adams, which is again on the decline. Folk should figure out where to apply their “I’m upset” resources.

New York craft breweries, as Don C. reports, have put together a TV show for public broadcasters. Note:

The series cost about $500,000 to produce, said executive producer and director Justin Maine of MagicWig. The state’s Empire State Development office contributed 80 percent — about $400,000. The project started when the ESD office began looking for ways to promote the state’s growing craft beer industry.

So… more like a state funded advertorial. But its about beer so that’s OK. Don also tells the story of NNY coming to CNY. I enjoyed the original Sackets location in my VBB days.

August. Here’s an August “man bites dog” news story if ever I saw one – someone’s pee is reminding him of beer.

Finally, Europe’s blistering summer might well have seriously damaged the barley crop:

The price of European malting barley, which is used to ferment the brew as well as provide flavour and colour to beer, has surged by two-thirds since the middle of May to a five-year high of €230 per tonne. Scandinavia, the Baltics, Germany and France are among the regions that produce the ingredient, whose production in some regions has dropped by as much as 50 per cent and is “dire”, according to Scott Casey of consultancy RMI Analytics. “In some places the crops are just dying,” he added.

Drag. That actually matters. My yellow zucchini seems to be dying, too. Not that a global industry depends on my yellow zucchini crop. Happens every year. Some sort of virus. Droopy and starting to rot on the blossom end. They look so hopeful in June when they pop out of the ground but by August its a scene out of a C-grade horror movie out in the garden. I should get out my Airfix men and make a flick about how Rommel was really defeated with the assistance of huge yicky plants from Mars.

That’s it for now. Another quality update for your Thursday. Yes! You are welcome. Remember: Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan next Monday.  Bet their zucchini plants are just fine.