Category: Beer Writing

The Tired Old Thursday Beery News Notes For The End of October

Tired and old? Not the notes! Just me. The municipal election was Tuesday and it was a long day at the coal face, pick and shovel in hand. My sixth election for work. I love it as I get to practice a very specific sort of thing that only applies one evening every four years. Like being good at Leap Year law. Well, at least good enough. I also crossed over to the nearby US of A this week for the first time in years. Didn’t buy any beer given how crummy the exchange rate is and how high the duties – but I did get a couple of boxes of Cracklin’ Oat Bran, one of the cereals our Canadian federal government denies us. The US port of entry at the bridge 35 miles or so from here has been rebuilt and looks like something out of Star Wars… or Red Dwarf maybe. It’s actually really an interesting bit of architectural design. Imposing. As it should be.

What else is going on?  Well, Jordan was in town last week – but I was tied to the desk and couldn’t make the twenty-three minute walk to Spearhead (led by Josh, himself a municipal candidate!) to watch the brewery’s rather ultra set up produce an ESB for an excellent charitable cause. The brewery is very good about offering support like that also producing a light lager for CJAI, the community radio station whose monthly minutes I take as secretary of the board.* Jordan shared a bit about the experience:

…we’ve got Maris Otter, a little Dark Crystal, and some Black Patent Malt for colour correction. We’ve got Challenger, Fuggles, and East Kent Goldings which should give it some verisimilitude… The brewing system at Spearhead is so advanced that there are not a huge number of pictures you can effectively take of the brew day. I have raked out enough mash tubs on camera over the years and I always feel I look a little silly doing it. I also felt silly posing next to the console with my finger over the transfer button so I made Jacob do it. I feel like I look a little silly most of the time.

For Punch, Courtney Iseman wrote an interesting piece on simmering backlash against the vague concept of IPA. I was particularly pleased to see it reached back and made the case for continuity even if it suffers from the amnesia that beer writer interviewing beer writer summations like this also offer:

IPA’s true history remains buried in England, and is all but unknown in the United States. From a 19th-century influx of German immigrants to post-Prohibition consolidation of American beer under just a few behemoth brands pumping out yellow, fizzy water, the United States was a longtime lager land. Peter Ballantine & Sons Brewing Co. made one of the country’s few IPAs from the late 1800s until 1971, which inspired Fritz Maytag to make, four years later, Anchor Brewing Co.’s Liberty Ale, a dry-hopped pale ale that motivated more U.S. brewers to follow suit.

Craig described the history of American IPA dating back to the early 1800s in 2013 – and at least 1852 in Canada – but at least that part of the chain from Ballantine to today has been acknowledged.
Speaking of improving the track of actual brewing history, the comments last week illustrated the need to be diligent. That responsibility led me to one particularly unique factor to include in considerations, suggested in 1933 by the British scientific journal Nature, a stick to medically measure how pervasive ale was in the medieval era:

The medieval publican had a bad reputation for fraud and dishonesty, while the tavern was often regarded as a place of ill-repute. Alcoholism during the Middle Ages in England, as elsewhere, resembled in many ways the alcoholism of classical antiquity…  Legislation dealing with drunkenness or control of the liquor trade was practically unknown in the ancient world, whereas taxation of drink, reduction in the hours of sale and the number of taverns and other restrictions were introduced in the Middle Ages. The absence of syphilis in both ages was noteworthy in view of the fact that alcohol was such a frequent incentive to exposure to infection and was liable to aggravate the disease when once it was acquired.

One more historical question – did this cleric actually first bottle a beer?

Pellicle sent out an update to subscribing supporters like me and the message is clear – the plan to have a self-sufficient quality beer writing without compromising dependence is possible:

…at the time of writing this we are at 296, which is the highest number of Patreon supporters we’ve ever had. We hope you feel your support is worthwhile, and if its not, please consider my inbox always open. We understand that circumstances change, and things aren’t simple for many of us at the moment, including ourselves. I want to ensure that the way we run Pellicle is transparent, and you can see where your donation goes… While we maintain our ethos is to celebrate the joy inherent within our favourite drinks cultures, we also believe that these spaces can only be truly joyful if they can be enjoyed by everyone. We’ll continue publishing articles in this vein in the future for this reason. 

The recent piece by Emmie Harrison-West on the failure of UK craft to support a call to end sexism is proof enough of that intention. Compare assurances elsewhere that a “critique on the beer industry itself” is best avoided. I also liked this week’s article on the folly of wine tourism and suggest they apply equally to beer tourism which, as one wag recently put it, is a euphemism for getting drunk in a city where no one knows you. If you think of it, that second Pellicle article as well as the one in Punch above also align a bit with the image to the right, a brewery advert aimed at a French colonial soldier in Algeria spotted on Twitter this week. Click for deets.

Stan in his newsletter Hopping Mad… The Hoptician… err… Hop Queries included an extended bit on that thing I know nothing about called first wort hopping:

In 1995, the German brewing magazine Brauwelt reported on the “rediscovery of first wort hopping,” documenting that many German breweries implemented first wort hopping 100 years before. It is a technique where hops are added to the first runnings of wort from the lauter tun. This exposes hop material to wort at lower temperatures and an elevated pH for an extended period of time. Advocates for FWH claim it produces a beer with improved bitterness qualities that can be described as “smooth” and “harmonious.”

Sounds a bit like myself, smooth and harmonious.

Glynn Davis wrote about how interviewing one restauranteur who went alcohol free led to considerations of the overall value proposition:

Rather like Hussain has found at the Blue Naan, the adoption of non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic drinks is not going to help attract customers (quite the opposite could be the case, in fact), nor are they going to be some big money spinner for hospitality businesses. But that’s not to say they don’t have a place in helping companies achieve other aims that might be more focused on health, wellness and faith, rather than just being about hard cash.

One last thing? Was craft beer culture ever cool other than to the people with the buzz at the expensive beer bar? Or was the relatively dead air on social media after the results were released more the case?

Hmm… something to think about. As you do, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast. The  OCBG Podcast is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) Check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*I like to play both sides in radio land.

These Are The Brief But Tersely To The Point Beery News Notes For This Week

Mid-October. It is still pretty nice out there. Maples bursting with bright orange leaves around the neighbourhood. Still no frost in the forecast right up to the last days before November. It’s nutty. I have been more ant than grasshopper nonetheless and busily squirreling away preserved crops one way or another. Last night I was seen preserving ginger root in Sauternes. I have more to prepare and may do a batch soaked and submerged with bourbon. Not sure I would try this with beer… unless an imperial stout over 10% was nearby. That might be quite the tasty treat.

Back to the island, Boak and Bailey published a very impressionistic bit of writing about the experience of returning to hunting out beer in Germany after more than a decade. I say impressionistic primarily on the basis of the first word in the title of the bit is “impressions” so you can consider me a believer. And an exercise in an alternative approach it is very refreshing:*

A proper dodgy station, like all proper cities have, its plaza reeking of urine and scattered with beer bottles. Old hands rummaging in its bins, searching for treasure. Have fun in our city, the gateway says – have a drink or two, by all means – but don’t let it take you. Under the ring road, through the old city wall, and into a party on the move. Is it the last night of the year for a T-shirt, or the first for scarves and gloves? Wegbiers there and here. Döners here and there. Cream-coloured taxis nosing through crowds forced out into the street from hot bars with hot red lights.

Elsewhere, Jenny P posted some interesting images this week of South African Chibuku, a sorghum beer made by SABMiller and its competitors which are sold in cartons – some of which have rather direct if not graphic health warnings. We used to get A+W root beer in those containers. When I were a lad…

Lars posted a response to the thoughts of Martyn on the use of beer as the alternative to toxic water in the medieval period. As it is impossible to prove a negative, I lean away from arguments which include statements such as “I suggest that is impossible” and so I find Lars has the slightly more compelling argument:

Sweden and Denmark are further to the south, and a completely different story. In both countries the norm was to brew new beer every time the barrel was empty. Beer literally was the everyday drink against thirst to the point that in Denmark the most common name for the weaker beer was “dagligøl” (daily beer), while in Sweden beer was just known as “dricka” (drink) or “svagdricka” (weak drink). It’s difficult for people today to accept this as fact, but nevertheless people really did drink beer all day every day (where they could). Here’s a quote from a Danish farmer describing his own upbringing: “People drank a lot of beer, and only beer. Nobody would think of drinking water or milk.”

I would point out a couple of things that also guide me. Martyn bases his argument on reliable stats related to English grain production from 1275 to 1324 and holds that:

…to supply every adult in the country with three and a half  pints of ale a day, the minimum to keep hydrated if you are not drinking water, would have required 83 per cent of the country’s entire grain production to be used for brewing.

This is a rational observation. But it fails to take into account that the less noticed lives of poor and country folk would have found their alcohol through fermentables which were (i) not those recorded for national stats and (ii) likely included or even relied on plants other than wheat, rye, barley and oats. We see, for example, plenty of past references to pea and bean malt. Consider this from the very Martyn himself in 2012. Consider also a brewer in my fair city just 207 years ago seeking a supply of peas.  If these are added to the national supply, that 83 percent may drop, maybe even by double digits… say to 66% hypothetically. Also, he argues that “if the average is only one pint a day, that accounts for only 19% of total grain production.” But what else is it supposed grain production would go to in them there days other than bread and ale? Add to that Lars’ argument that we should not forget the poor simply died young as they were destitute. Perhaps destitute of ale. And perhaps exactly because they were destitute of ale. All in all, the jury should still be out on this one.

Back to the present, Jeff concludes his thoughts on a trip to Norway, so praised by clever people like me last week, with more excellent observations but perhaps a few affirmations which may be a wee but perhaps understandable mistake. See if you can see it… hint:

When I started learning about beer more than four decades ago, I made a common American mistake. I assumed brewing traditions and beer styles were permanent and fixed. Finding a small farmhouse brewery in the verdant fields of Wallonia was akin to discovering a new species of otter. You understood it could evolve and probably did, over the decades and centuries, but like otters this process was so slow you couldn’t observe it happening in real time. (This is why the early style descriptions were so rigidly prescriptive.) But once you actually met the brewers making traditional styles, you were reminded that they were people, creative and smart. The idea that they didn’t have the skill and curiosity to experiment was laughable. The preservation of tradition came from a deeper, spookier place.

News from Smithville:

A downtown property owner is taking issue with the City of Smithville’s Beer Ordinance. Todd Cantrell, who owns a building at 119 West Market Street, said the ordinance, as it stands does not permit him to be granted a city beer permit because the location is within 400 feet of a church. The problem, according to Cantrell, is that the city has granted beer permits to others in the past which are in violation of the existing beer ordinance including as it relates to places of public gatherings. City Attorney Vester Parsley said he is unaware of any illegally issued permits under the existing beer ordinance, which has been on the books since 2004.

And Finns are drinking less beer:

…sales of beer containing alcohol fell by 3.6 million litres, or 4 percent, compared to the same quarter last year… Cider sales also fell during the summer months, by 0.4 million litres or 7.4 percent, while sales of long drinks rose by 0.3 million litres or 1.6 percent. Federation CEO described the drop in beer sales as “dramatic,” noting that sales during July to September fell by 70 million litres compared to 10 years ago.

Finns just want to be healthier. Is that so wrong?

Bad idea. Don’t care. Don’t like it. Like calling seagulls an important part of the french fry industry.

Good idea. Pete asked on Twitter what people want from beer writing… which is sort of the question I answer here for myself (and perhaps some of you) every week. A wider range of answers, some of which are exactly the opposite of what I look for. Which is good as there is no one answer. I like Boak and Bailey’s list but even that one is partial – in that it is all positive. Me, I’m just happy reading something that doesn’t strike me as geared primarily towards pleasing the one who wrote the cheque… or perhaps not deterring the one who will write the next cheque.**

Finally and on a very different scale, the other week I mentioned generally speaking how “discussion of any troubles in beer culture or the trade never turn to considering how alcohol soaked the whole thing is” and received an odd snippy response that people were about people writing about craft beer and individual alcoholism,  including at GBH. I clarified the difference between that and this, in case it needed clarifying. Interesting then that there is now a podcast at GBH confirming both in the text and in the interview audio that these posts are not to be taken as “a critique on the beer industry itself“… which is also really odd. Is connecting reasonably common alcoholism to the craft industry’s troubles – like sexism and other bigotries as well as questionable HR standards – something of an untouchable subject?***

There. Not to much heavy this week.  Smithville? City Attorney Vester Parsley?? Really??? As I get a grip, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast. The  OCBG Podcast is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) Check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*The subtext of an obvious sort being what when it is too regularly done it is tedious. We all can name names.
**See for example the very next paragraph!
***But it may have been “don’t worry, be happy and drink up!” week at GBH, so there is that. One must after all have an understanding of the bread and the butter and which side is which.

Your Frighteningly Well Researched Beery News Notes For Mid-October 2022

Wow. I even scared myself a little just putting this together this week. So much effort. So little point. And all the stuff on the cutting room floor. Whew. What’s that? Yes, summer has lingered, thanks for asking. The frosts have only brushed the yard as it turns out. The garden is still going on with plenty to still harvest. Still time for more cardoon mush. You know, you really aren’t a chef/gardener/drinks biz personality until you’ve made your own cardoon mush. And I’ve yet to even eat one of my first crop of salsify. Yet there is it, right by the front door.

Before we get going, an update on the comments I made last week about my hopes and dreams for a futuresque dreamscape of smooth brightly coloured plastics and chrome at BXLBeerFest in Brussels, The Beer Nut reporting. In his update he shared the scene, a bit of which is to your right, my left. Pallets. Wooden pallets held together with wire or tape or something. Really? Craft really needs to get into the modern world, that’s what I say. The world of plastics and chrome.

First up, Eoghan posted some serious thoughts about the point of all his beer writing efforts:

Do I want to continue writing about Brussels and beer? Is it still interesting for me? More importantly, is it still interesting for you? If I stop what I’ve been doing these past five years, what comes after? Do I stop altogether? Or do I try something different? But if I try something different and I fail, and fail utterly, then what? What happens then? Would I want to continue to write?  These might seem like mundane questions, a fixation on something – a blog – that ultimately has little intrinsic value. But that would be to do down the time and the energy I’ve put into my writing in the last five years, and I’ve done myself down enough in the past.

Lots have people have moved on so that is no shame in itself. Just see how many of the beery podcasts, newsletters and blogs listed below are dead or dying. But the idea that writing about a fixation has little intrinsic value needs serious quashing. It’s only in the writing that the fixation becomes of value. Exploring the weird thing that triggers the imagination is always worthwhile. This is the problem with the British Guild of Beer Writers and NAGBW shift from talking about “writing” to the thinly smug language of “reporting” and “journalism” over the last few years. Not only does it smack of needy niche (and also pretendy-ism… yes, I said it) it misses the fundamental point that most of this is obsession, not reportage. Write!

The UK’s Telegraph had a rather positive report on the best new low-beers and no-alc… which also led me to the concept of “Sober October” which seem to be a cheater pants copy of Dryuary:

I started Sober October four weeks early, for weight loss reasons after seeing my holiday snaps. I was doing quite well, but while watching TV I found that my right hand kept reaching over to the side-table where the beer should be. The ingrained habit of taking a swig of something cold and hoppy was proving impossible to break. So I let the hand have the beer it wanted – just without the alcohol. My hand couldn’t tell the difference and, surprisingly, my tastebuds couldn’t either.

I am still in the “I can’t be bothered paying that much for fancy soda pop” school but your mileage may differ.  Lots of solid recommendations for British readers.

Seems ‘Spoons may have weathered economic crisis just in time for the next economic crisis:

… the battered JD Wetherspoon share price already had so many dismal expectations priced in that the results themselves were a reminder of the business potential. After all, the company made an operating profit and generated free cash flow. After exceptional items, it also recorded a profit. I think the operating profit and free cash flow are a welcome sign that the business is rebuilding. It has faced and continues to experience considerable challenges, from energy inflation to staff availability. The fact it has turned an operating profit provides a foundation for improved results in future…

Speaking of the economic pressure on the pub, Pete Brown wrote a bit romantically for CNN’s American audience on the subject.

The folks behind the GABF might need that sort of explanation about British beer styles as apparently this year they balled a heck of a lot into one awards category, according to Alistair:

When GABF has a category called “English Mild or Bitter” it suddenly makes sense why Mild and Bitter don’t have a following in the US. Even the trade organization doesn’t give enough of a shit to understand that mild and bitter are wildly different beers… Also, with medals handed out for ESB as a separate category the grouping could easily have been “Bitter” and “Mild/Brown Ale”. There is little logic from a style perspective for lumping mild and non-extra special bitter together.

Seems rather muddied to me. Stan wrote about about seeing the awards from a seat at the ceremony and was more optimistic. As per usual and as is good. (Folk need to keep off my turf.*) Relatedly, here’s the winner of “The Most Craft Industry Style Observation Upon The Awarding of Craft Industry Awards” award… of all time… well, at least for this week:

Winning at GABF is a testament to the breweries who medal. It’s a huge honor and should be celebrated. At the same time, not winning at GABF is no way diminishes a brewery that entered. Ultimately it’s a crapshoot and a bunch of world class beers will be overlooked.

Emmie Harrison-West raises an interesting question about another far more serious aspect of fests in her very detailed article, one that’s really worthy of the space: “Have beer festivals become a hotbed for crimes against women?” 

For over 14 years, Harriet, who lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, has been attending beer festivals. She says that this derogatory, sexist behaviour towards women and their bodies ‘has been “normal” culture’ for as long as she’s been attending them… reporting such instances of sexism and sexual harrassment at beer festivals was difficult, or that a process simply didn’t exist. That such behaviour and crimes against women had been ‘normalised’ to the extent that women simply accepted it, ignored it, and ‘didn’t make a big deal.’ 

It is good that this discussion is framed as a discussion of crime. Anything less is also a form of normalization.** The article also talks about concrete responses like London police’ Ask For Angela program and The Coven who advocate for women’s safety at events and attend as wellness officers launching the initiative at the Leeds International Beer Festival in September 2021.

Elsewhere, Ron has written about travel again with a focus my favorite character in beer pop culture… his wife Delores:

After bringing back her wine, I tell Dolores: “There’s one big advantage this place has: self-service drinks. None of that “singles only” for me here. It’s trebles all round.” “Don’t go crazy, Ronald.”*** “When have I ever?” “Hmmpfh” She makes that funny noise which somehow manages to convey contempt, pity, incredulity, scorn and a tiny hint of amusement.

And speaking of travel, Jeff gathered up his nickels and bought a ticket to Norway for KviekFest22!**** Now, I am not one of those who usually will comment upon a drive-by bit of beer writing by a stranger in a strange land but – I have to tell you Jeff did one of the most cleverest things I ever did see… he turned a beer porn photo op into a anthropological guide to making farmhouse ale – with photographs and “fig. 1” style descriptions and everything, like this:

As the water heats, the brewer prepares the mash tun. In the actual event, we used a more sophisticated steel tun with a metal strainer, but typically Stig would use a plastic tun (in the old days they were wooden) he’d prepare with a filter log and juniper boughs. (Even with the steel mash tun, he packed it with juniper.)

1. The log has a trough in the bottom and holes throughout.
2. Stig places the open end next to the faucet and then,
3 and 4., he packs juniper boughs around the log for finer filtration.

I love that the guys name was Stig.***** That photo up there? That’s the log. (More like a junk of wood to me. Logs big. But who am I to take away from the spotlight of this excellent piece of information sharing that means more to anyone and everyone than anything journalissimo submitted for crude pay?)

Speaking of being away, there was a lovely bit of exploration shared by Kieran Haslett-Moore about the times to be had in New Zealand:

I breakfast at a vibrant bakery that also does café service. A dome of scrambled eggs, sausage patty, confit mushrooms and glazed ham all spiked with Szechuan crispy chilli oil. A family dressed like it’s 1983 walk along Lower Stuart Street. They are animatedly discussing the city’s wifi service. They head into one of the city’s ‘Scottish shops’ .

Finally, a lovely piece of long writing at the BBC about Nathalie Quatrehomme and her family line of Parisian cheesemongers:

“We make lovely Maroilles washed in beer,” she said. “And we do lovely Langres in Champagne.” And aging isn’t the only way the siblings add a touch of personality to their cheeses. “In addition to being agers, we transform cheeses,” explained Nathalie, evoking a handful of offerings familiar to regulars of Parisian fromageries: Brie with truffle; Camembert dunked in Calvados and rolled in breadcrumbs. Others in the shop, however, are unique creations. Fourme d’Ambert is stuffed with a sweet fig and walnut paste to counterbalance the funk of the blue. A Camembert mendiant (beggar) is covered in jam, nuts, dried fruit and a touch of dark chocolate.

Yum. I must be hungry. Must go eat cheese. As I do, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the  OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) Check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run.

*Funny joke. Ha ha. Not saying anything else.
**Seems to be a common saying in the household.
***Which is why I found the Mikkeller “reconciliation” thing so weird, dissuading people with claims from the law.
****No, you’re right – but it SHOULD be the name!!
*****“Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O’ Tracy.“

Your Inordinately Cheery Beery News Notes For These Days Of The First Frosts

Beer snake! Never seen one from that point of view before. Thanks to beer and baseball specialist Shana for the perspective from the bleachers at one of the last Cubs games of the year. Like my Red Sox, they sorta similarly sucked this season. Reminds me of, what… the first forty years of my life? Ah, the good old days. Anyway, one must be positive. You know, I wrote that header up there before I wrote anything this week. Why? Because there seems to be a lot of bad news out there. Bad in the world and fairly bad in the beery bit of that world. So, as always, I shall try to be the voice of optimism, of good cheer and positivity. I tell myself this again… as I start out…

First up, let’s check the shipping news. Despite what the keen beer trade statisticians who are good and making numbers bendy say, apparently there is a global slowdown coming so fast and hard that trans-Oceanic shipping lines are cutting back:

Ocean carriers are canceling dozens of sailings on the world’s busiest routes during what is normally their peak season, the latest sign of the economic whiplash hitting companies as inflation weighs on global trade and consumer spending. The October cancellations are a sharp reversal from just a few months ago, when scarce shipping space pushed freight rates higher and carriers’ profits to record levels. 

What’s this got to do with beer? Export and imports. Except for big buyers like Ontario’s LCBO, most good beer likely does not ship by the full container load. But it still could be good news for the small and local even if not so good for the forces of international craft.  So… less beer may be moving on the high seas. We see the same thing happening across the bar. Not so good. The export geared breweries of Britain may have a lead on this lesson, learning the hard way due to Brexit… though to be fair those with a local market focus also seem to be suffering. Jings. Tough days. Soon it will all be about nods, winks and word of mouth if you want to find the good stuff.

Never one to be glum… or even fixed in one spot for very long, The Beer Nut went on a holly joliday and reported back from the BXLBeerFest in Brussels which offered beers sort of in the round, reminding me of the Tardis’s console:

I made arrangements to attend last year. That didn’t work out but tickets rolled over and so there I was, if not quite front at least fairly centre, on the last weekend in August 2022.  Sixty invited breweries occupied eight circular pods, each pouring four or more beers at a time. The selection was carefully chosen from Belgium, Europe and North America, with an emphasis on the wild side of fermentation, like saying “we invented lambic, show me what you can do”.

Circular pods! How futuristic! I hope they wore garish wide-lapelled purple, green and/or yellow corduroy suits, too. And played the best of Seals and Crofts on a loop. But that’s just me. Bright. Cheery. Elsewhere, Alistair wrote about dreich this week and (other than knowing you have no idea how to pronounce it because I can) I liked this bit:

Saturday in central Virginia was dreich, gey dreich, as the remnants of Hurricane Ian drifted up the Shenandoah Valley. It was a day for comfort clothes, pots of tea, and whatever mindless shite the kids wanted to watch on the idiot box – I am starting to worry about their love of screens, but that’s not the point of my post. I pondered lighting the first fire of the season, but the wind was whipping along at 20mph and I have an in built fear of a chimney fire. Into this revelry of gloom came a text message from Jason at Devils Backbone…

Speaking of dreich, I see that Jeff has reported on fifth anniversary that relic of 2017, the “independent” seal offered by the US Brewers Association to its membership. For me, it was an extension of 2012’s “crafty” botch that sought to rally beer buyers around the BA’s central “one ring to rule them all” branding approach to selling craft beer in the US.* While (i) these sorts of things may have given comfort to big national craft and, conversely, (ii) the more recent explosion of small and local breweries  fundamentally altered the discussion, I was most surprised by this tidbit in the article indicating how they may have missed the boat – they don’t ask the only people that matter:

Beer in general has been lagging, but craft beer is no longer the bright segment in a declining category. In recent quarters, only imports seem to be bucking the trend—while craft tracks with other domestic categories. And customers themselves? It’s hard to say. The Brewers Association hasn’t done any recent polling on the question—or made it public, anyway.

Note: if there was good news from consumers, polling results would have been made public. Verdict: dud.

And I don’t know what to make of the news that the very large object identifying as BrewDog won a court case. From the BBC News report I see that the defendant “failed to respond to the court” which seems to indicate that a Statement of Defence (as we would call it in Ontario) was not filed. Which, if that is the case, leads to a default judgement which effectively does not represent a ruling on the merits. That being said, I am somewhat concerned that all the sins of craft have merged into this one matter, as it is (i) being a big mean brewery, and (ii) one that is for the most part elsewhere. The resulting response seems to be dumping all errors on this single example, accepting without any serious question the deftly played PR sidestep and perhaps even wiping the balance of craft’s record clean – perhaps comforting and  perhaps even re-numbing ourselves to the more widely spread problem still all around us. Moving on craft? **

Which is the opposite of what Beth Demmons does in her Prohibitchin’ series*** – which this month features Omolola Olateju of Black Girls Drink who makes this excellent point:

“The complications of getting these alcohol-related licenses, LOLOLOL!” she laughs, cynically but genuinely. “I really do wonder about the gatekeeping. Right now in the drinks industry, there are financial barriers and resource barriers — it’s really painful.” One change she believes would help alleviate said barriers would be more BIPOC people getting involved at the legislative level to identify and correct problem areas. “I’d be really curious — and I make some positive assumptions — around how that would change the industry,” she says. “That to me is the next equity front: people in ‘the system.’”

Speaking of the system… note: not Pete’s best photo… that is Pete, right? And grey? Really. Talk about yer dreich! No… not Pete… no, the logo’s background!!****

The reporting on reporting is real this week as Stan chose two stories about wine could well apply to beer: (i) one about the way that the story behind a drink made the drink more appealing and even more valuable to the buyer and (ii) the second …

…another instance where the word “wine” could be replaced with “beer” in two instances. “The wine industry itself is much to blame with its history of pretentiousness, and its absurd rituals and vocabulary that convey the message that one must be a connoisseur before one can enjoy wine.”

I mention this as the two seem to be two side of the same coin to my mind: the myth making  as obstacle making and the gatekeeping of the faux connoisseur… as obstacle making! Strip those away and what do you have?  You know… other than a world without bevvy’s consulto-judge-journalist class?***** Well, what you would have is reality like… bowling and beer – in Walsall!

We met up with Dan Gilbert and Coxy and explained why we had had left The Lion only for Dan to exclaim that he loves UB40. Which made me laugh. We headed to The Wharf Bar. There was karaoke. I was urged to have a go and despite it being free as opposed to the £20 in the bowling alley I wasn’t feeling it. There wasn’t many people in and I like a good sized baying audience when I perform. 

Before you get all caught up in that moment and go off to just do anything anywhere enraptured by the prospect of beer and bowling – BEWARE! Via CookieNet!, we have learned about the most violent pub in Britain along with its, err, customer conduct standards:

He is said to have required an operation to stop the bleeding, with the wound he survived snagging an artery, with police noting customers were “served alcohol by the bar staff” despite it “being evident someone is seriously injured”. At the time of the incident, police also said that management knew “the risks of its customer base yet chooses to ignore this”.

Yikes!  Finally, a white lab coated eggheads have taken credit for all that you love in beer:

Belgian investigators have improved the flavor of contemporary beer by identifying and engineering a gene that is responsible for much of the flavor of beer and some other alcoholic drinks. The research appears in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. For centuries, beer was brewed in open, horizontal vats. But in the 1970s, the industry switched to using large, closed vessels, which are much easier to fill, empty, and clean, enabling brewing of larger volumes and reducing costs. However, these modern methods produced inferior quality beer, due to insufficient flavor production.

Modern! Bad. Bad modern… but… craft is modern… is craft bad? Is that what science is saying? Hmmm. As you ponder that, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the  OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run.

*You will recall that Flying Dog quit the BA over this sort of thing at the time.
**Well, more you than me. I am still off the gluten (happily) so leaning on a little wine or a drop of cider if I need a hit – though I did a test with a can of Guinness. My histamines slept though the whole pint.
***The award winning series!
****Yes, there is… though to be fair… he may well have been suffering from the IPA yips!
*****Because who the hell wants to be an expert in things that have no perceived value?? No, best to stick to the plan.

Your Last Thursday Beery News Notes For Q3 2022

Well, what a few weeks it has been. After the mourning period for Herself among other things, Hurricane Fiona comes along and hammers into family and friends out east where I grew up. Don’t know yet what’s happened to our old house and garden. Despite the loss of life and damage to property, there was in some areas an attitude that we bear these burdens and move on. Example: Krystle Collier’s home in southwest Newfoundland’s Port Aux Basques was destroyed but she found her White Claw Seltzers still in the fridge. Go Krystle!

Beer news? First up, Martyn wrote an interesting piece for Pellicle this week about the revival of Gales Prized Old Ale:

This October the new edition of Prize Old Ale will be bottled and put on sale, each bottle containing a tiny, homoeopathic quantity of every other batch of POA going back to the reign of King George V. Henry, and his masters, the Japanese brewing giant Asahi (which acquired Fullers, and with it Dark Star, in 2019) hopes that drinkers are now knowledgeable enough about mixed-fermentation beers, and what they have to offer, to appreciate Prize Old Ale, which—in the UK, at least—they were probably not when Fuller’s first relaunched it in 2007.

My own tiny special reserve, illustrated to the right as Stan himself would want, has been offered up as a bio-pool refresher should the team need it. 25 years old now, I don’t dare open it. I bet Krystle Collier would, though. I’d let her.

By the way, a bit to the east, did you know that the Beer Party is polling 13% in the Austrian Presidential campaign.

Back in Britain, there has been much talk about the proposed rebranding of cask ale as fresh ale. This seems to be another go as something that has had a few goes and reminds me a lot of the US craft beer botches such as  “crafty” and “true craft” and, yes, “independent” beer. But the issues at play are distinct – central to which is price. Jessica Mason framed it succinctly as the Forces of Timbo v. the Forces of Premiumization:

Wetherspoons Tim Martin gets slammed for devaluing beer and using one price for all, despite research showing people are seeking out premium drinks…

Cookie‘s on Team Timbo BTW. And why not? Most people are not wanting to pay more for beer, especially in these times:

BCA’s head of pubs Graham Manwaring said that as well as the rising cost of brewing their beers at the BCA brewery in Upper Gornal, they were also facing higher costs from beer suppliers like Coors and Carlsberg Marston’s. “We are going to have a careful look at our prices to see how to balance it for customers and to maintain the business.” He said the level of rise had yet to be determined but was expected from mid-October. “It is not going to be easy for anybody. Everyone know pubs are going to have to raise prices. “It is a very difficult time to be trading,” he added.

Hard to argue that the one economic opportunity right now that cask should be leaning on hard is how cheap it is – not upselling it. (But do consultants really want to be seen consulting in favour of discount offerings?) One other more conceptual problem, of course, is this: there is already fresh ale at every brewery taproom as well as that other sort of beer, Fresh Hop Ale. The new phrase fails to distinguish meaningfully. And everyone already knows was cask is. It’s that. “Fresh” is a bunch of things. And the real problem is that many folk know full well what cask is and still aren’t that interested even at a low price. Speaking of which, Boak and Bailey found another thing in the British pub that’s not all that interesting:

We didn’t particularly mind eating a mediocre burger when it’s less than a tenner. When it’s more than £15, we expect it to have a bit of something about it. We completely understand that when everything is going up, you need to charge more to stay in the same place. As we explored in a post a few months ago there are thresholds at which you will lose customers, particularly when they’re also grappling with the increasing cost of living. Based on our observations, this is already happening. 

Changing topics, eleven and a half years ago, Andy Crouch proclaimed “A New Era of Beer Writing” was upon us:

In the stead of groundbreakers such as Michael Jackson, Fred Eckhardt and others, many beer writers have been content to gently tread within the outlines of their predecessors’ sizable but not all-encompassing footprints, rarely venturing into new territories. That means producing tasting notes, and sometimes regurgitating questionable beer and style histories. For those of us who write about beer for a living, even for BeerAdvocate magazine, we need to do more. We need to write about people and place as much as we do about product. In focusing on special releases, limited-batch series and the novelties that comprise so much of today’s beer writing, writers often fail to capture the true essence of the characters and spirit driving craft beer’s unstoppable ascension. Too often, writers craft never-ending odes to their favorite breweries, while skirting over problem points.

I mention this as there was a bit of a huff after the NAGBW awards were announced. Jeff considered the evidence indicated that “[t]en years ago when I judged, there was a ton of very mediocre stuff from small papers around the US. You’re right that we have lost a lot of those outlets, but the quality of work is WAY higher” while I suggested that there are “fewer other outlets for paid writing, very few blogs,* very few books compared to 6, 8, 10 years ago.” We are both probably right in a meaningful sense – but I think Andy was also right from his perspective a bit more than  6, 8, 10 years ago.

Comfortable and careful writing is not good.  Covers up stuff.** Remember: even if the subject matter has narrowed or even in part just shifted – shifted along with the politics even – the writing can still be comfortable and careful. You know what isn’t daring anymore? Positive repetitive blah however well written and layered with gorgeous photos. And do we need another style guide? Or more blocky kitty cat newbie cartooning, confused stabs at market trends or another feel good article about a distant brewery or pub you’ll never ever see,*** one with the ugly bits deleted? Probably not. But do we reject those forms? Probably not that either.  I’m not advocating rejection. Build it up again, broadening and including. If Jeff is right and the quality is higher, then broaden the scope, add to the voices getting attention and widen the variety of topics and the ways they are explored.

Speaking of things not much written these days, Gary wrote a bit about lightness and humour in beer writing by way of introduction to the beer at breakfast – or rather breakfasts – in India a century ago:

Sir Allan’s padre thought “beer” a better choice for the second, more substantial breakfast. Evidently it was pale ale – doubtfully stout, but who knows. So this tells us pilsener and English beer were regarded as quite different, as indeed today. The former was lighter in colour, taste, and alcohol. The witticism Sir Allan reported was a colouful way to make that point.

See: tales of Bamburg past and future.

In GBH, there is an excellent article on new opportunities in non-traditional crops for brewing by Hollie Stephens:

“In the last 150 years we have lost a third of our topsoil.” This explains why Miller says that he has not found it difficult to convince farmers to give perennials like Kernza a try, a sentiment which Kimbler echoes. “What they really need right now are more diverse crops, more diverse cropping systems, and more ability for them to adapt their practices on their unique piece of land, unique climate, and economic and social situation,” she says. “They just need a lot more options.”

Quibble: not sure why the significant and growing percentage of non-tilled traditional grain farms wasn’t explored. Tiny quibble.

Finally, Lars posted a fabulous photo of a drinking hall in Norway that is over 800 years old:

This is typical Setesdal: this is the second oldest wooden building in Norway (if we omit churches), dated 1217. It’s not in a museum, though. Just by the side of the road.

The NYTs wrote about the area in 2019. Right about where my McLeods were – well, you know, after they were MacLeods… and after they were cousins to Elliots who themselves were once O’Llliots after they were O’Ljots and both and all were the Sons of Ljot. Wha’s like us?

There you are. More than I had imagined. Next week it is October. While you think about all that means, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and perhaps now from Stan usually on a Monday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run.

*And, just to be clear, while this is wonderful writing, it is not a blog. Four posts in a year, paid for and no space for comments? Column. Not a blog.
**And it feels like stuff may be getting gently coved up again a bit, doesn’t it…
***Are they all even there? It would be so easy to create a false story about wonderful bar in Ulan Bator.

A Slightly Less Puffed Up Edition Of Your Thursday Beery News Notes

Here I am. Still on vacation but at least at home making dinners rather than forking out for them. Let’s be clear. I am not a cheap date when out and about but at the same time I do have my limits. Big city fun can hit that after a few days so nice to be back in the backyard for week two. Well, once the rain lets up. Gotta say, though, Montreal is my favorite big city even though I am maritally prohibited from rooting or the Habs. Drove past the front gate of the original and still operating  Molson brewery established in 1786 when I got a bit lost in traffic coming into the downtown. Quite the edifice.

Speaking of working, on Wednesday Gary posted an image of a 1938 Quebec beer delivery truck out in winter. Looks like a display as those boxes look empty and stacked way too high. I cropped this image out of the right hand corner. I love the guy’s look. Button suspenders over a tucked in sweater, high lace leather boots, fedora and tie. And look at the window in the background. Signs – perhaps in neon – for Brasserie Frontenac, Boswell Cream Porter as well as Dow Old Stock Ale. These brands were all related to provincial firms that merged in 1909, the amalgamation which inspired a young E.P. Taylor two decades later to start off on his global merger mania.  The truck and many of the boxes are also labeled with Dow’s Black Horse Ale. Cream Porter was still a thing when I lived in the Ottawa Valley in the mid-1990s under the Champlain brand made by Molson and in fact and early beer review on this here site was for Labatt Porter. Now there is a style that needs revival.

What else is going on? A few more ripples caused by the long piece in Pellicle on the state of IPA today are worth noting. JJB himself wrote positively of the explanation and agreed with how the code of IPA (as opposed to the definition) is effective for Stonch as a publican:

I can tell you that consumers with only a cursory knowledge of beer know what IPA means to them, and moreover that concept tends to be very similar across the board. When someone asks for an IPA, I know which taps to point them to.

Matt himself was unhappy with his thoughts being “torn apart in a @BeerAdvocate thread…” but that is a bit of an unfair statement as it was also praised there. His tension is reasonable.* There is a dismissal of old school thread writing but it is always good to remember that many there (folk who have no interest in blogging or certainly no interest in the dead end world of semi-pro beer writing) who know a hell of a lot about beer even though there are, yes, many oafs. For example, I entirely agree with this from someone on the site for fifteen years:

Once breweries realized that some of us were well and truly over the murkbombs, they started relabeling, or at least redescribing. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been shying away from any packaged beer called IPA unless I’m already familiar with it.

And also this from a seventeen year BA veteran:

It appears to me that the craft beer industry is viewing IPA = money and given this consideration I suspect that we will continue to see more and more beer brands with this labeling. They may be brands that can fit within one (or more?) of the categories that Matthew Curtis listed in his article or maybe they will be some brand-new name (e.g., New England style Wheat IPA) that some person just willy-nilly comes up with to make money.

Exactly. See, along with avoiding humour and any actual grasp of much of history, good beer culture has a very hard time with debate. It’s apparently uncomfortable for those trained on the short course who then have decided that they know what needs to be known, like a teen watching a movie with their parents when a dirty bit come on  No, in craft beer culture it is a fundamental principal that you have to all sing from the same hymnal because it is all… great! That is why it generates no serious academic discourse – or even researched to and fro anymore.  “Expert” is sorta of a participation award. Can you even call doing something “taking a course” if it fails to generate any deliverables that aren’t just repetition by rote? No, to discuss and disagree is rude. And that is one main reason why general good beer culture isn’t taken seriously.

Related perhaps, Ron summed up a trip to the USA and his observations on the beer scene this way:

I’m just back from the US. Wasn’t that impressed with the beer selection. Mostly: IPA, Sludge IPA, Sour Shit, Sour Shit with fruit, Sludge IPA with shit, Sludge IPA with fruit and shit, Pilsner.

Boak and Bailey unsettled me with a related consideration following up on a post from Jeff on the idea of session a few weeks back:

Jeff Alworth is right – most people (quite wisely) haven’t let themselves get bogged down in precisely what these terms mean. They just know that a brewery choosing to use a relatively more obscure word to describe its product is saying “You’re no rube, you know the lingo, welcome to the club.” As Matt points out, though, these terms are suffering the same fate as ‘craft beer’, becoming applied so widely, to products of such varying character, that consumers are beginning to distrust them. When you’ve decided you tend to like beers labelled IPA, and habitually order IPA, there’s only so many times you can be served something that doesn’t fit your mental model without getting irritated.

I am not sure what “quite wisely” is meant to suggest here. Basically, there isn’t much light between what is being said about the meaningless of craft beer’s terminology as code and Ron’s observations about how shit IPA has become due to the breakdown of meaning. Meaning it is no longer even code. You have to take a cartoon character approach to still suggest there is any integrity in all this. Which is what is being done, of course.

My thoughts?  What’s the level below lowest common denominator? IPA might as well be “eBeer” or “iBeer” now. The meaninglessness has hit max and all it serves to do it shout “drink me, fool!” which is why I focus on the adjective and not the noun EEEPAH. And avoid anything like a flogged flavour wheel in favour of the theater of the mouth.** Fortunately, as we know, things have three names. In this case, there will be the name on the can or tap handle, the name the brewer uses and the name the beer knows itself by.

Which is perhaps why the lager boom is so attractive. It retains far more stylistic integrity that the botch US craft has made of the IPA everything concept. Paste magazine has gone so far as to say this is the best thing in the good beer world these days:

That’s the biggest thing that has changed, in the last few years—i.e., the pandemic era—ease of access to good craft lagers has increased exponentially, and breweries have seemingly gotten much better at making them! Even breweries not particularly known for lager are now frequently producing excellent examples, and I’ve seen a notable number of breweries also rebrand themselves to revolve more tightly around lager as a central philosophy.

One more thing.  Stan picked up a thread from the IPA story, an actual fact about a yeast strain and unpacked it to explain how beers branded as Steam Beer do or at least did actually display a unique trait even though Steam Beer has little unique to do with steam:

In 1911, while conducting tests as part of another project at the University of California, T. Brailsford Robinson discovered just how different steam beer yeast acquired from California Brewing in San Francisco was from lager strains. “The yeast of the steam beer has accommodated itself to these conditions (warmer fermentation and the clarifier) to such an extent that it can no longer be employed for the preparation of lager beer, while lager-beer yeast may without difficulty be used for the manufacture of steam beer,” he wrote.

Neato. Also neato? Old lost Halifax Nova Scotia bars. Also neato? A Doctor Who based brewery. Less neato? The fall of certain people in the brewing trade that I know little about. Never been that much into the individual as a cornerstone to all of this, now that I think of it. Not neato? Possible signs of the market crashing.

For 22 years, Neal Stewart worked in sales and marketing for breweries like Pabst, Flying Dog, Mark Anthony Brands, Dogfish Head and Deschutes Brewery. He is leaving beer behind and left with some very powerful parting thoughts:

I had plenty of time to reflect on my time in the beer biz and quite honestly, it was a painful process. I discovered two things. First, my self-identity was wrapped far too tightly with my profession. My primary identity was my job. I wasn’t “Neal, the husband” or “Uncle Neal.” I was “Neal, the beer guy” or “Neal, the (insert one of the 47 breweries I’ve worked for) guy.” I was enamored with that identity and my ego needed it. Second, I really think I was addicted to stress. I’ve done some research and although “stress addiction” is not a clinical term, it is known that stress causes the brain to release cortisol and dopamine… When my life suddenly changed from 70 hours a week of non-stop calls, meetings and thinking about the business, to silence, I didn’t know how to react.  

Wow. If that is you, get out. What ever it is you do. And one more thing. I hadn’t expected that this beer would be as good as it turned out to be. Glutenburg Pale Ale out of Quebec. A bit of a rarer find in the Ontario LCBO but out there if you check the inventory. Made without barley but perfectly tasty as a base beer in one’s life. Which is what it might become. Through an odd sequence of absolutely low level medical matters it turns out that I may have a degree of gluten intolerance. See, I had to have a small four stitch operation on my right eyelid, which led to an observation about how my left eye sat, which led to a couple of CT scans in nearby quieter county town hospitals which led to an ENT guy sticking a camera into my sinuses, which led to connecting the dots to a very high wisdom tooth, which led to a removal operation, which led to me having a very tiny bit of my skull removed as a door for the wisdom tooth operation. All of which left me breathing better… unless I ate bread. Hmm. Bread made me puff up a bit. All over. Unpleasantly so on rare occasions. And feel like I had hay fever. Stuffed. So I dropped bread. Clearer head. Breathing better. Had a beer. All came back. Uh oh. So I bought this beer. Didn’t come back. Hmm. I had put the feeling when having a beer down to water bulking up or general alcohol reaction but it appears to be a third aspect of the beer – the gluten. Going to keep up the experiment for a bit. All of which I mention as ungraphically as I can as a recommendation to try it yourself for a week perhaps. See, being puffed is not good. Tiny important passages restrict. Blood pressure rises. Things not ticking along optimally. Leads to other things… more serious things.

There. The beery zeitgeist for another week has been summarized! Want more? Well, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and perhaps now from Stan once in a while on a Monday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays or Wednesdays – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to podcast heaven… gone to the podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable.) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now wound up after ten years.

*I would not want to fail to mention Beth‘s similar sentiment: “I don’t have enough money to enter work for awards I don’t have enough money to fund my own press trips I don’t have enough money to buy a hundred samples to try I don’t have enough money for all the subscriptions or memberships How do writers do it? Actual question…” I may play a grump on social media but I am utterly sympathetic to the plight of the beer writer coming to the realization that for all the money in beer there is little money in beer.
**Make your own copy of the chart if you like. It’s also free and actually useful.

Your Mid-August Mailing It In From Vacation Beery News Notes

So, I probably should have skipped this week’s post given I have paid less than my usual not paying all that much attention. But walking past Montreal’s statute of Edward VII, the best of him that I can think of,* has inspired me to do my duty. So much nicer that the somewhat ignored statute of his mammy, Vicky, turning a cold shoulder a couple hundred yards further south. These little imperial spots are joined by other odd wee hints like we see at the Bell Telephone building on Beaver Hall built in 1928, where we can see a little hint of the rose of England there above the main door. Very weird. Makes one a wee bit more sympathetic for the nationalist cause, doesn’t it.

Well, enough imperial politics. What has been going on with beer? I have had one or two but I like my vacations without beer as much as with. Not so with others out there. For example, Ron has been on the road again, the descriptions of which travels are always some of my favorite things of his to read. Luckily he has not forgotten his need to describe his first meal of every… frikkin’… day:

We don’t rise very early. Well, the kids don’t. Me and Lexxie head down for breakfast at 10:30. And just miss breakfast. But they are serving brunch. Luckily, I can get something with fried eggs: pork hash. It’s quite nice, but the broccoli is almost raw and very tough. As we eat, the dining room fills up a bit. Still far from full, though it is pretty big. 

And Stan has taken a break in his vacation to do a bit of a round up on Monday but he is in no way not not not promising to do it next Monday. I liked this comment he made:

I pass it along not only because I think the combination of five words at the top should be put to music, but because it helps explain why the speed at which beers that don’t taste like beers that came before are being introduced.

Speaking of beers that don’t taste like beers, I liked this thought by Mr. B as to perhaps the why of it all:

Allow me to add a reminder that, back in the early days of microbrewing, what gave rise to the craft beer industry we know today was specifically NOT listening to what people wanted, but rather making good beer and educating people as to why it was so good.

Speaking of which, please note that fresh beer was very common before the days of micro brewing. It was called draft. Ask your uncles. Everyone drank it. And please also note that in 1997 imported beers were not hard to find and often in quite good condition if you had any interest in finding the store or bar that had them. Unlike revisionist histories so common today, reading reports from the time will quickly confirm that the main impetus for the micro brewing revolution was not to take on big beer but to make beers like those widely available imports. I have no idea why so little effort goes into researching a certain class of article when they reference the recent past  – but it shows. I can only appease my disappointment with another entirely gratuitous shot of another fabulous building in Montreal. Just click on the link for the fine details. It’s some sort of bank… or a hotel… or a hotel for bankers… Have I mentioned I’m in Montreal?**

Trying to make sense of another sort of misinformation – the adulteration of the concept of IPA – Matt wrote a long piece on the classifications of beers falling under that shadow… err… label and I was for the most part a very useful thing. There is still too little critical consideration of hierarchical, chronological and taxonomic legitimacy… but… what a lovely bit of truth telling is this:

A session IPA is not an IPA. It is a marketing term designed to sell you lower strength beer on the premise of it being as intensely hoppy as its stronger cousins. In reality, these beers are pale, or golden ales. In the past I have been told by brewers that a session IPA is brewed with the same amount of hops as an IPA, but some of those brewers also make beers called DDH pale ales, so which is it? Call it pale, call it golden, call it a hoppy bitter for all I care, but please let’s stop giving these low strength pretenders the credibility of a true IPA. 

Actual nerds interested in actual history may want to block out May 11-13, 2023 to hold a spot for a virtual lecture or some such experience on experimental archaeology and medieval brewing. Those so inclined can also watch the archives of past beery discussion panels from Ireland’s BeoirFest here.

Excellent reportage of London’s past from Boak and Bailey this week with a story on the Star of the East pub as well as an oral history from Robin Davies, a worker at  Godson’s Brewery in the 1980s. Fabulous.

Finally, Beth wrote another good article on the continuing systemic pale old boy control of craft – which, come to think of it, does remind one of the keystone above the entry way to that Bell Telephone building:

… according to those interviewed for this article, even if some people do begin to accept their role in beer’s exclusionary hierarchy, marginalized folks in craft beer will still likely face insurmountable barriers to equity unless organizational leadership and decision-makers relinquish their need for control. “There are a lot of spaces in which white people, and especially white men, still hold power,” says Lay, who notes that history has shown that redistribution of power rarely comes by asking nicely.

Indeed. There. Just a short report this week. I am sure I missed the most interesting stuff but I am out of here. Well, and then I will be over there by Friday. More later on my movements. Until then check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and perhaps now from Stan once in a while on a Monday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays or Wednesdays – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to podcast heaven… gone to the podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable.) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now wound up after ten years.

*Only one I’ve ever seen. Such a bragger.
**I am in Montreal!

The Beery News Notes For The Thursday Before My Actual Vacation

Vacation? Haven’t had one of those since… 2019? Actually going places and looking at things? Don’t know how I will manage. Mr. Protz wrote* about one way to go places and look at things in Belgium, a tram that runs 42 miles and stops something like 68 times at or near watering holes. Much excitement in the ensuing comments. People want to be on that for sure. But… does it come along with a separate… err… washroom car? Pour le pissoire en volant? Annnnnddd… I might have thought the paint job on the tram might have been a little more exciting given the grey ground, grey sky, grey building setting. But you know me and my commitment to that colourful palate of life’s joys.

First up, Pellicle published another great story by David Jesudason. It’s the sort of piece I wondered for years about, though I was wondering why I never saw them. It’s a portrait of a possibly perfect pub, the Southampton Arms in Kentish Town, London:

This is the only real quandary you face when you visit the Southampton Arms—where to sit and who to sit among. The welcome is warm, inviting, and inclusive. The beer itself meets the most agreed-upon definition of ‘craft’—entirely independent, hand-picked, and varied in style, but not quality. The surroundings are uniquely comfortable for a busy London pub—a rare mix of classic hardwood floors and wood panelling, with a communal seating arrangement that fosters conversation between old and young, rich and poor.

The photos by Lily Waite are gorgeous, laden with the interior’s deep browns and rich creams as well as the bright pop of flowers and the glowing beer. They describe a casual, even worn in pub with a relaxed garden for a backyard escape. It looks like homey, the sort of place I would love to visit. Except I am not traveling to England. I will have to console myself with other wonders. Somewhat related, Old Mudge shared some thoughts this week about the general idea of updating of pubs and whether they are always warranted:

Was there any evidence that the previous layout of the Armoury imposed significant extra costs or held back its trading performance? Very often, pub refurbishments seem to be embarked on simply out of a sense of wishing to smarten things up and move with the times rather than any kind of rational cost-benefit analysis. And, as I have remarked before, once the initial surge of interest has subsided, refurbishment often becomes like a drug where you have to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect. The current zeitgeist is very much against the old, quirky and well-worn, but hopefully one day we will return to a time where these qualities are once again seen as desirable in pubs.

At an earlier point in the overall bevvy process, Barry M (the estate manager of all my German land investments) had a piece published this week about a variety of cider making methods in his adopted home:

Unlike the apple varieties typically used to make the majority of English and French ciders, German cidermakers have traditionally favoured what are generally termed dessert or culinary apple varieties with little to no tannin content. Think of the types of apples used in the Eastern Counties of England. Looking through German books on apple varieties, anything with elevated acid levels tends to be put under the Mostapfel category, deemed most suitable for making Most. And indeed, they do make very good cider, with well-made ciders showing a freshness and fruitiness that marks out this German variant of our favourite drink.

And interesting news out of Maine where Brienne Allan is opening a new brewery with a well-defined focus:

Allan, head brewer, was preparing the inaugural batch of beer for Sacred Profane’s opening mid-August as the only lager-exclusive brewery in Maine. Sacred Profane will basically offer two beers, both lagers: one pale, one dark. And Allan fully intends to make them better than anyone else does. To this end, Allan and her fiance Michael Fava, Sacred Profane’s operations manager and a former brewer at Oxbow Brewing Co. in Newcastle, take great pains during the brewing process. They triple decoct, concentrating the wort three times at three different temperatures to develop deep, complexly layered flavor in the lagers.

Conversely to the wonderful spaces, in the aftermath of the #GBBF, some spoke up about the unpleasant aspects of the event including Emmie Harrison-West who wrote a well considered bit entitled “Everyday sexism at beer festivals: a thread” including this very yik observation:

Touching: at bars, men touch and hold your waist to get past you. They wouldn’t dare do this to their male friends though, would they? Strangers would touch my arm, my hands, pull me in for bear hugs where their arms wrap around my body.

Good to see at least that the organizers issued an apology for failing to uphold any sort of standards for bad behaviours. Note: Stan also pointed out that the “Brewer of the Future” as selected at the #GBBF is 59 years old.  The only thing weirder was that the competition was for the best home brewer. Maybe “RetroBrew84” might have been a better prize title!

Jordan wrote a rebuttal about a piece on tech and beer that had me scratching my head (see the very foot of the last footnote last week) but Jordon thought about it from another angle – how dependent whatever craft has morphed into is driven by the internet:

For me the frustration is that it seems not to grasp that beer itself is a technological construct. In order for it to exist we need to create all of the ingredients, and all of the ingredients chosen to make an individual beer must be chosen by someone. There is always an intelligence behind the design of a beer because the constituent parts do not make themselves readily available. Beer doesn’t exist in the wild. What this means is that any technology that conveys information is going to fundamentally alter the intelligence of the designer of the beer.

And this week Jeff reviewed the concepts of what could be lumped together under the umbrella of the “Limited Transmission of Craft Culture” when he posted about the fact that no one know what “session” is supposed to mean:

The conversation led to low-ABV beers and how to deal with those, which inevitably led Torch and Crown’s Chris McClellan to comment on the best strength for session IPAs. Ah, session IPAs. This led us away from numbers and into language, and this we can file under “things Jeff knows.” And I know regular beer drinkers have no idea what “session” means.

Lots of good discussion followed which led to confirmations that the lack of understanding is a US matter not shared in other lands and, as Gary pointed out, quite seasoned beer fans “have little interest though in technics and terminology.” There is (in my learn-ed estimation) good reason for this: (i) this information is irrelevant to the actual pleasure, (ii) not standardized and so too often sounds like Mr Boring going on and on making it dubious information; plus (iii) it’s too often made up anyway making it not actual information. These are, after all, these times. It also illustrates the fundamental failure of some beer writing – that it is not so much informative than something like rhetoric. The conversation spun off in all directions leading to this summation on my part:

That’s because beer geeks in the US are disconnected from both the vast majority of US beer drinkers as well as vernacular beer culture in other countries. Hence the third artificial lexicon. Unfortunately most beer writers are beer geeks.

A constant observation that I really haven’t beaten you over the head with is this: the audience for so much of the beer writing I sift through every week  is written for (i) other beer writers and (i) other folk tied to the trade. Not the general beer drinking public like that piece up there in Pellicle. No, for too much of it there is an aspect of deep affirmation to it all, goal oriented writing – not unlike reading the histories of the now departed US pop historian David McCullough who seemed oblivious, for example, to the fact that a huge portion of the residents of the 13 colonies in 1775 wanted nothing to do with the revolution. Details. Details…

Finally, I’m not sure what to make of this. At all. Web 1.0 meets setting up a potential liable case? This approach is hardly conciliatory. Is the goal getting lost? What was the goal again?

That’s enough for now. Next week, we will be reporting from the road. On special assignment. Until then for more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays or Wednesdays – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well. And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable.) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now wound up after ten years.

*OK, a couple of weeks after The Times mentioned it.

The Last Lingering Beery News Notes For July 2022

What is up?!? Happy end of July! No one ever says that. I saw back to school ads this week. That sucked. Except the kid will be going back to school. And we had some wicked storms come through this week – a tornado even hit north of here – and now it’s almost sweater weather. Nice. Portents of autumn. Already. That sorta sucks. Like the Red Sox collapsing back to .500 after being ten games up. Also sucks. Thank God for my surrogate Expos, the Mets. And they showed good taste this week by having everyone’s favourite milliners’ client, ex cool band roadie and friend of this blog, Garrett Oliver, through out a first pitch! What a great thing to have experienced.

First news this week? Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the archeological digs at Sedgeford, England where medieval maltings are being uncovered. This week, beer person extraordinaire Nigel Sadler took his interest to the next level and has been participating in the dig, presumably as a volunteer. His Tweet-fest has been fabulous, including these two with their detailed observations:

The kilns are wattle and daub construction across the site. There is only evidence of one steep shown here. Likely this was used almost permanently despite the various kilns burning and being destroyed. I’m getting steep measurements later. Bags of grain were lowered in to soak…  A post hole has been discovered under the germination floor sited between Kiln 1 and the steep which raises questions as to whether an earlier kiln structure was here.

Locally, one of the best small breweries in Ontario, Stone City right here in my home town, is up for sale very much as a going proposition.*  Oh, to be 25 year younger and a bit wealthier.

Perhaps 25 younger and indubitably a bit wealthier in the ways of the world, The Beer Nut shared a “return to fests” story this week and included a few interesting observations about the format:

Three years after the inaugural event, Fidelity was back in the Round Room of the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago. It’s the only festival of its kind in Ireland, where punters pay up front and have free run of forty producers’ stands, each pouring two beers (with a handful of ciders and meads) per session. In a change to the previous iteration it was split across two days rather than having a daytime and evening session — I guess they get more people going to both that way. One for me was plenty and I rocked up on the Friday.

My experience of these beer buffets is that they are a bit of a disaster, encouraging bulk bevvying akin to the 1870s and 1960s here in Ontario. He also shared a follow up post on the same event and shared the best sort of takeaway anyone could hope for: “I’m sure a lot of effort goes into making sure it looks so effortless.”

Oh, and about that bulk bevvying… I wrote another post this week myself, on Ontario’s mid-1900s attempt to provide a reasonably safe environment for beer drinkers of both genders:

Those of you alive to the information era we live in will know that a year or so ago I reposted a bit of research I did for our book Ontario Beer on licensing in this here province after temperance and the phenomenon of the ladies only license that was introduced in 1934 as part of that.  But I had not really considered the other side of the coin, the men’s only license.

I popped into work on Wednesday, too, and got the image up there of goold old Forms 8, 9 and 10 attached to Ont. Reg. 407 as set out in the R.R.O. 1960 which illustrates the gender based licenses. Click and gawk to your heart’s delight. I would love to find a description of a women’s only public house.

Why is the same beer book being published over and over?

Harvest time. Excellent! And another Goldthorpe sighting and at possible brewing scale. So exciting. I had thought that the grain would have migrated east. I had heard it might be around in central Asia but are there patches still in Ireland as there were in the late 1800s as this report at the time mentioned?

The next broad-eared variety is Goldthorpe, which was found in a field of Chevallier so recently as 1889. How it arose, or whether it has any connection with the Continental broad-eared forms, I cannot say.  Goldthorpe has a high grain-yielding potentiality, but it is characterized by a long ” neck.” and the ears are extremely liable to become detached from the straw, especially when the crop is allowed to become fully ripe, as it should be, to obtain the highest quality. The unfortunate bearing of this characteristic on the fortune of the variety will be appreciate; when I add that Goldthorpe was, and still is, one of the best quality barleys in existence.

Broad-eared certainly sounds like Battledore.

Someone who used to post a news update every Monday sent me the link to this post about the problems – for some – associated with IPA domination… not to mention hegemony illustrated succinctly thusly:

…think back to recent years, and the kinds of beers you may have sampled from Sierra Nevada in that time. Perhaps you loved the Nooner pilsner, or the seasonal Summerfest lager. Maybe you were a devotee of the annual Oktoberfest lager, even after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from being a yearly collaboration with a German brewery. Maybe your jam was the Otra Vez gose, or Ruthless Rye, or fall seasonal brown ale Tumbler, or Sierraveza Mexican lager. Maybe your first exposure to classic Belgian ales was Sierra’s Ovila series of abbey ales? Not a single one of those brands is referenced anywhere on the Sierra Nevada website today. Zero of them, in any capacity, are implied to still exist.

That’s not good. And it’s boring. Keep good beer boring, IPA. Way to go. Alistair is fighting the good fight against IPA tedium with his tenth(!) annual best beers of Virginia. Recommendations include an alt, a stout, a Rauch Märzen plus a few pils/pilsens.

Perhaps conversely, the Pubmeister wrote about Margate, a favourite of mine 350 years or so ago, and covered the face paced romance of a pub game I had not heard of before – carrom:

It’s like a table top type of pool, played with fingers, our new friend demonstrating a drag that would have had him drummed out of the German Subbuteo Championships before his bare feet could touch the ground. At Xylo we met two guys out celebrating a birthday who joined the carrom enthusiasts, and Vieve and Jess, two impressive young women who reappeared a little later in the Little Swift and joined us in the sort of free-ranging conversation that you only get in pubs.

Top headline news of the week: “Beer-drinking pony who lives in pub is made mayor“!  Tweet of the week? Photos and descriptions from Kitsault, a ghost town in British Columbia… but a ghost town not from the 1890s but from the 1980s that has been perfectly maintained:

In Kitsault’s community centre sits the Maple Leaf Pub. Lined with the crests of every province, it could be the pub of any small town in Canada. On the last night of the town’s existence, the remaining residents had a drink and signed a poster.

And finally… a couple of dishonourable mentions to finish up. First, I think this is one of the unkindest stunts I have ever seen – one’ arsehole’s attempt to trigger complaints about a Sam Smith’s pub. Don’t be like this:

As I went over to the bar, I pretended to search my pockets, and said “s***, I haven’t got any cash”. I asked if they took card or if a PayPal payment would be acceptable. The barmaid, who looked like a teenager, wrinkled her brow as she noticed the workspace I had created behind me. She said: “You can’t use those in here. If the owner Humphrey [Smith] were to come in and saw that, he’d tell us to shut and ask everyone to leave.” The barmaid did actually look genuinely worried. It felt as if she was being sincere. I asked her if I had to leave with my items, she said yes, that I had to go. As I was packing up, I decided to take one more selfie, to see what would happen.

Perhaps speaking of which, there is another class of arsehole that is unbearable – the “craft insider”** – the interview of one of whom, in a late sighting, illustrated the condition:

The people who care will be in the liminal space of barely knowing much about craft beer but who are usually very vocal about it.

Nice to know how folk think of others. And the superfluous abuse of “liminal” is also one of those benchmark for this sort of thing. Don’t be like that either.

That’s it for now. Long weekend coming up starting with my fourth Covid-19 shot at 4 pm Friday.  Pray to the gods of your choice on my behalf. See you next week when I will complain complain complain about whatever happens. In the meantime, for more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: some crackle this week at about 20 mins.) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Had to be told of this opportunity by the folks to the west end of the lake. Jeesh.
**Sometimes related to the “little did I know that Icelanders are mad for hotdogs” sort of expert… though, to be fair, this is an excellent confessional of a number of sins of omission. The “orange slice in wit” thing is old enough now that it is pretty hitting its own drinking age.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Summer 2022’s Second Third

The trouble with writing something on a weekly basis is you notice that another week has passed. This is why I don’t shave every day. Looking at the same mug in the same mirror at the same time each and every morning? No thanks. You notice too much. Like that one third of this summer is already done. And the last three weeks don’t even count. Panic! Panic!!! Max is having none of it. He is squeezing every moment out of the good weather – and has found a new cocktail to go along with it. I say cocktail but it seems to be booze free: “The coffee is hot. Then they mix it with tonic and ice, add the lime and you get a glass of refreshing goodness.” I will have to try that.

Heatwave. Euro heatwave. Best place to be? In an old pub painted white on the outside with thick insulating walls and a hearty aircon system? Worst place to be? In the car when the prosecco blows. Or working in a brewery for that matter, as one witness confesses. Fact: 3.6 times more people in the UK think drinking beer is a proper way to beat the heatwave than eating iceberg lettuces. Plural. That’s what the graph says – floating, a little alienated even, just there above this Bloomberg story. Looks like Tesco’s estimate for sales this past week:

…there’s pressure on retailers too, though more to keep the nation in supply of its summer quenchers. Supermarket chain Tesco Plc expects to sell more than 9 million ice creams and lollies in the coming week, a record. The supermarket also expects to sell 9 million bottles and cans of beer and 50,000 bottles of Pimms, the classic British summer gin-based fruit drink… Peas, lettuce and apples are particularly susceptible, he said, and crops can’t be shielded. “It’s not catastrophic — it happens,” said Ward. “Extreme heat is uncomfortable for people and plants.”

Either way, bad week to be a lettuce: get eaten or burn. Perhaps making matters worse for the the green crunchies, it appears that some lab coated type people are telling some other not lab coated people to lay off the sauce when being slowly roasted during a heatwave:

“Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it encourages the kidneys to lose extra fluid. That is why you tend to go to the toilet to urinate (pee) much more when you drink alcohol. Alcohol also makes you sweat more. The combination of sweating more in the heat, and going to the toilet more, means you lose more fluid than you take in and become dehydrated unless you replace that lost fluid by drinking water.” Official guidance also urges people to avoid caffeine during the hot weather for the same reason.

WHAAAAATTT!!!  Hot cuppa tea is the best thing on a hot day. That’s what Grannie always said. Never mentioned lettuce either, come to think of it. And they call themselves scientists.* Thankfully, the New York Post found a couple of people perhaps partially of the lab coated variety to root for beer as the mercury climbs:

…in the midst of an international heat wave, one physician on Twitter claimed beer can help with hydration. Academic Ellie Mackin Roberts sparked a now-viral debate when she recently tweeted 10 steps to help beat the heat. Tip No. 9 read: “If you are dehydrated (and an adult, and able to do so) drink a half a pint of beer (inc. alcohol free!) and then move straight onto water (or a sports drink or cordial if you don’t like water).” Followers of Roberts, an expert in ancient Greek history, quickly responded, questioning how beer could ever be helpful in trying to avoid dehydration. However, Dr. Stuart Galloway, of the University of Stirling told Femail that the beverage contains electrolytes, sugar and salt, which helps the body retain fluid, rather than it going straight through. 

Gary added an interesting but also labcoatless and lettuceless post on the conditions in pubs in Halifax, England in 1932 and how the local establishments managed another heatwave ninety years ago:

“The public do not realise the trouble we have to go to, to keep our beer cool,” one licensed victualler said. “When you have a rock cellar as we possess, the business is bad enough, but publicans that do not possess this advantage have a busy time trying to cool their beer. Some of the best bitter beers require nursing if our customers are to be satisfied in these hot days,” he continued, “and even with advantages regarding cellarage I have to keep a succession of wet sacks over my casks to keep them cool.” In one restaurant sacks, thoroughly dampened, are placed over the casks of beer, and from time to time a system of sprayers pours ice-cold water over them.

That’s the spirit – and at least they were not resorting to putting crap in the lager and calling it innovation! Honourable mention and a big “thanks for coming out” for at least shitting on the 2009 video “I am a craft brewer” even if it took them thirteen years to admit how stupid it was. All very “wad some Power the giftie gie us“… Dave! Some are still unaware.

This week in beer writing mildly troubling angst: dashes.

Health update: booze bad. Relatedly, in Jerard Fagerberg’s disappointingly brief but excellent interview (within an important health confessional of sorts) former beer writer Norm Miller shares some thoughts on his 2018 decision to back away from drinking:

During his tenure, Miller became synonymous with the Massachusetts beer scene. But by 2018, Miller was drinking too much. As an obese man in his 40s, he needed a holistic lifestyle change. He never felt physically addicted, he says, but the pressures of being in the beer media were indeed getting to him. “I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, I just drank because I felt like I should keep up with everything,” he says. “It was a combination of trying to keep up with everything and sincerely liking to try different things. It was a bad combination. I decided to step away, because my health was more important than a weekly column.”

PS: Norm‘s normal now… nearly. I applaud the raising of the ill effects of booze but it is sad to see it hidden in the lower shelf of GBH well behind all the regular dubious claims to fame for booze.

Canadian craft Faxe weekly update.

Note: there are upsides to the heat or at least a moderate amount of it. The barley crop in Ireland is loving it, according to grower and not well dead poet, John Dunne: “…grain fill looks really good. You can’t beat sunshine to put weight in grain.” And, did you know, that actual grains make interesting flavours that can be expressed though a resulting booze-laden beverage? No, really. Apparently adding buckets of jam is not required according to this heads up from Curmudgeon Ale Works citing an article in Modern Farmer:

“There were a few older, open-pollinated varieties that really didn’t taste very good. But then there were a few that were absolutely stunning. And what fascinated us was that all of the hybrids kind of tasted the same.” Time and time again, the flavor of the heritage and heirloom grains outperformed the hybrid rye varieties—but that doesn’t mean hybrids don’t have their place. Swanson still grows hybrid grains, such as the popular AC Hazlet, because they “are incredibly robust in the field,” he says. “They give beautiful standards, they yield astronomical amounts.

Pay attention, brewers. And an addendum to last week’s comment about medieval alcohol making:

Later this week blackcurrants are going to make wine too… farmers will convert anything to alcohol, it’s our superpower…

In addition to all its issues, craft beer also has a labour problem, according to this excellent and detailed article by Julie Rhodes:

Think about it this way, if the 1990s were like the kindergarten stage of the overall craft beer industry journey, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and experiential learning moments, the 2020s are proving to be like middle school – full of angst, infinite possibilities, and pivotal decision-making that will determine the long-term future of the industry. We will have to wait to see if the cool kids can mature enough to make equitable and mutually beneficial decisions that will carry this industry beyond the awkward stage, but many are hopefully optimistic.

AKA the era of the spotty faced gits. I like it.

And finally a question: why bother with B.O.B.s** (or W.O.B.s for that matter) set in places you will never see and drinks you will never have? Among the usual questions about veracity in drinks writing, don’t these reach a further level of abstraction from reality, so far that they might as well be entirely made up? A sort of social science fan fiction?

For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: with a good discretion of the purchase of Amsterdam’s recent buyout by Danes this week at about the midpoint but avoid around the 24th minute if you don’t care for sputum) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Other points of view have been circulating.
**Beer Owner Bios, that sort of subset of puffery that is as close to press release reporting as there is… well, except for when that’s all it actually is…