Category: Beer Writing

Your First Beery News Notes For A Thursday In 2022

Well, that was a good holiday season, wasn’t it. It wound up with Ontario heading into another semi-demi-lockdown as of Monday so I can’t say that it is all fine and dandy. I still have my stash. And I can settle down into my culturally appropriate assumptions that the stash somehow helps defend against viruses. This is the second in my collection of my “Dewar’s Defeats The Flu!” imagery in addition to this beauty.*  Now you have a collection, too.

What is going on in the beer world? Well, there was a ripple of unhappiness about the term “pub ale” which I have no issue with as it fits a certain spot that I recognize as something once called “Canadian export ale” except it isn’t really exported – a sweeter sort of pale ale.  Like Left Field brews and calls Outstanding which it is. “Bitter” isn’t an old term.  Gary mentioned the question this week dismissing the idea it was novel:

Certainly in export markets, British brewers were alert early on to attune names to market expectations. Boddington’s Pub Ale, a good seller in many markets is a stronger version of Boddington’s Bitter marketed for export since 1993. Back in the 1980s the now defunct regional brewer Greenall Whitley sold a Cheshire English Pub Beer in the U.S. I recall it especially in the Northeastern market.

I am with Mike. Bringing out a craft beer brand called “Leff” without a last letter “E” is just inviting a trade name or copyright law suit. Big faceless industrial gak maker hegemonist ABInBevOfBevAllBev has my sympathies:

“Leffe has an earlier right. Moreover, in both cases it concerns beer. Then there is a risk of confusion. There would be less risk of confusion, for example, if the Leff brand is applied for by a bed manufacturer. Although the protection of well-known brands can sometimes extend to other products.” Moreover, the label of a bottle of the Brasserie Artisanal du Leff also resembles that of the famous Leffe. “The same Gothic letters, for example, and the word ‘Leff’ is very emphatically highlighted. Those logos and fonts are also registered by AB InBev with the trademark register,” says Chalmers. In a French press release, AB InBev says that even in French pronunciation, there is no difference between “Leff” and “Leffe.” Reason enough to send Le Saux a letter.

I love this image to the right of all the various sorts of pints illustrated on a pint glass. Published by Foods of England this week. Pity the Belgian pint.

Joan Birraire in Barcelona, Spain has fired up his coal fed servers and revived the beer blog, no doubt due to everyone saying how beer blogging is dead. He returns with his Golden Pints 2021:

To avoid settling into perpetual criticism and start leading by example, I hope to resume blog activity a bit this year, also as part of a return to good habits that I have definitely lost due to the pandemic and excess work, the combination of which has led me to a terribly monotonous kind-of-monastic life. To begin with, I would like to recover a decade-long initiative that started in the international blogosphere: the Golden Pints awards, which every blogger assigns to beers, establishments or projects that they feel deserve to be praised.

Note: there is no such thing as “too many beer bloggers.” Speaking of which, Lucy Corne of South Africa, not dead, celebrated ten years of beer blogging this week as did Matt Curtis, also not dead. Speaking of whom latterly but not late-rly, Pellicle has published an excellent business plan for 2022 explaining the financials of its operations. Were all the others so transparent:

We run Pellicle on a cash basis. We have no debt, and our plan is, and always will be, to keep commissioning content until the money’s all gone. Thanks to our Patreon supporters, plus our sponsors Hop Burns & Black and Hand and Heart, we’re presently able to publish roughly one or two features per week, plus a podcast every three to four weeks, and both are pretty much self-sustaining as is. 

Full marks. This is why I trust Pellicle and I support them at a very modest level. Speaking of excellent, this piece by Kate Bernot captures exactly what we have not seen much of in craft beer business journalism: digging into the business end. And it was accomplished by reading Danish corporate filings for Mikkeller:

According to a company audit, Mikkeller had a total income loss of about $4 million between 2019 and 2020. The report says that last year’s losses were “primarily a result of COVID-19 related restrictions, lockdown and general uncertainty across the globe heavily impacting our retail sales as well as wholesale to on-premise bars, restaurants.” Borsen reported that Mikkeller founder Mikkel Borg Bjergsø has relinquished some ownership in the company to Orkila as a result of the most recent transaction.

Fabulous levels of detail to dig up and dig through. Now, let’s have the same approach to other breweries. In 2016 there was some unhappiness that I just mentioned Jim Koch selling off shares, pro-am beer writers telling me I “…didn’t understand, so mean…” despite practicing business law for about two decades at that point. More of the digging please.

Maureen retweeted this image of Jack’s Saloon at Camp Claiborne, L.A., 1940s and it is worth poring over for the details. If you click there is far bigger version. What the heck is a “dude drink” and why were these two fine ladies and their wonderful establishment so against them? I mean you could have one but it cost fifteen times the cost of a home brew. Are they brewing out back?  The font of all knowledge explains that “Camp Claiborne was a U.S. Army military camp in the 1930s continuing through World War II located in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana.”

Retired Martyn crossed the northern border thanks in large part to someone else:

A flat tyre from nowhere, but thankfully I have a skilled team to deal with life’s little crises. And no, that’s not the main reason I married her (though her 1991 “Motoring Madams” certification was high on the list).

I was guided to the blog “Paul’s Beer & Travel Blog” which is a fairly plain name if we think about it but no doubt entirely accurate. Paul Bailey is the name (no relation) and what it is really about is Paul’s travels to beer. So there is pleasant train discussion, pleasant pub discussion and pleasant beer discussion as this one paragraph illustrates:

Unfortunately, the trains didn’t connect very well, and as the service from Dorking pulled into Redhill station, I witnessed the one to Tonbridge, pulling away from the opposite platform. The next train to Tonbridge wasn’t due for another hour, which provided the perfect opportunity for a quick, “in-between trains” pint. The question was, with a number of pubs to go for, which one should I choose?’

Remember this next time you read someone saying how negative discussion is on Twitter during the pandemic – it’s much the same in the pub. Current complaints? Dry January…** New York State Governor Hochul? Not so fast:

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that she will permanently legalize the sale of “to-go” alcoholic drinks in the state, adding that the practice was a “critical revenue stream” during the pandemic.

Oh – and Stan mentioned the Patreon thing. Let me play with it a while before I figure out if there is any point to it.

There – a modest offering for this more modest first week of the new year. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*This blog is not sponsored by Dewar’s. This blog is entirely open to being sponsored by Dewar’s.
**For the double!

The Last Beery News Notes And My Golden Pints For 2021

Well, it’s been a bit of a napping sort of time, these last few days. Not much going on. Can find enough to cut and paste enough together to come up with enough beery news notes? Between an increased lockdown and the general Yuletide slowdown, it’s been very quiet. And New Year’s Eve is tomorrow. What to do? What to do? Research canapés and hors d’oeuvres of course! I’ve started my prep and even recommended a resource as shown to your right (Ed.: to my left), a copy of  which you can download for free here. Scotch Woodcock is looking interesting. Scrambled eggs with a little anchovy on tiny toast. Yum.

Is there any beery news or other beer writing to report upon? Jeff Alworth wrote one of the most detailed and slightly obsessed year in review posts which is, one the one hand, clearly a bunch of links to stuff he had thought about and written about throughout the year but, on the other hand, obviously a fabulous summary of all the stuff he had thought about and written about throughout the year! Summary of his summary?

It was a transitional year, but also one that never got out of second gear. Things went back to a kind of new normal, but nobody has been very happy about what that looks like.

Yup. But at least he got to do a US National Grand Tour and updated many fine thoughts and observations as a result. Good stuff.*

Also, Gary Gillman* posted the inordinately and perhaps unnecessarily formally titled “Index to Gary Gillman’s Writing on Porter and Stout” which is a fabulous resource. I would say Gary has had his best year of beer writing. His research on Jewish Breweries of Eastern Europe before the Nazis is one of the most remarkable things I have ever read under the guise of beer writing. Just look at his fabulous post “Hops of Galicia, Beer of Lopatyn” published in mid-November and then look at the twenty or more posts he has written in the weeks between then and now. Blogs dead? Nope, you just fell asleep.

And it is wonderful that Katie‘s piece on the modest dinner roll… bun… bap… was the #1 read piece on Pellicle this year. It’s probably the reason I started supporting them on Patreon. It’s the sort of quality writing that keeps me supporting them. Hope she put the old plates of meat up on the old pouf.

In more newsy news, apparently during these summer months in Australia, drinking beer too quickly is a bad thing:

It used to be a famous sight of the Australian cricket summer – former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke skolling a beer during the New Year’s Test at the SCG. But if the late Hawke skolled a beer at the MCG during the recent third Ashes Test, he would have been among many fans to have been ejected from the venue for drinking their alcoholic beverage too quickly. During the three days of Australia’s thrashing of England at the famous Melbourne stadium, countless cricket fans were booted out for skolling their beers.

There. Your beer word for the week: skolling.

Note: the new 2021 BJCP Style Guidelines are out. The beer I am having right now is excellent and breaks the rules. Table Saison by Meuse is only 3%. No one cares. And that $2.43 is a nutty price. 

And without further ado… well, perhaps a bit of fanfare… I give you…

My Golden Pints For 2021

Favourite new Ontario beer: I thought this was going to be easy after I tweeted this earlier in the month:

Holy crap! Why has no one screamed at me about Sklepník from @Godspeedbrewery? This is one of the best beers I have ever had. Constrained, bread crust malt, herbal, even creamy. Wow. And “sklep” means shop in Polish so that’s totes cool. Shop beer. 

Definitely Skelpnik… but then I had my first Meuse 8 yesterday. So it is a tie. I have not been on side with Jordan’s longstanding claim that this is a golden age for good beer. It is, however, now clearly a golden age for beer in Ontario.

Favourite Old Beery Friend: Peculiar Strong Ale by Granite Brewing. I’ve written about my youthful 1980s in Nova Scotia before, in 2008 for the 15th edition of The Session and again in 2017 when I wrote about a dusty business case study of the Halifax bar scene. for I am not going to be one of those dinkledorfs who will pretend to be able to tell you it does nor does not taste the same but it is very nice to be able to pour a beer that was poured for you around 35 years ago at the time when, in addition to some fine regional breweries and a raft of imports, the Canadian microbrewing scene was taking off.

Best Pub Experience: none.

Best Song About Beer: “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg. This song is an NPR favourite but what hasn’t been pointed out quite clearly enough is that it is really a song about beer… or at least what goes on that chaise longue:

Hey you, in the front row
Are you coming backstage after the show?
Because I’ve got a chaise longue in my dressing room
And a pack of warm beer that we can consume

Beer song. 100%. Also the best song of 2021 if anyone is asking…

Worst Continuing Trend That Could Just Die: bland samey cartoons with a vaguely positive spin but an underlying tisk of one sort or another – oh and blobby graphics accompanying digital beer ‘zines.

Best Book about Beer: none… bad year for  beer books… though if I had access to more modern British Beer I would likely be happy to recommend Modern British Beer by Matthew Curtis* as a useful guide to my options. This illustrates the ups and downs of more localized beer markets – aka more normal beer markets.

Best New Voice: Probably just new to me. David Jesudason in Pellicle with “Desi Style — The History and Significance of England’s Anglo-Asian Pubs” and “On Bat and Trap, and Finding A Sense of Place in Rural England” both articles gave me a window into place and time. I have also obsessed over Bat and Trap coming on 15 years.

Best Trend in Beer: home delivery continues to be wonderful. Right in front of me as I type these words is a door in my basement to a cold room. There are portions of boxes of beer in there from Matron, Godspeed, Meuse, Leftfield and Stone City for present drinking and gift giving to the neighbours. All brought to my house. Half the time for no shipping if you know when and what to order. Fabulous.

Best Beer Blogger: one stands above all year after year – John Duffy of The Beer Nut. Why? Constantly top  quality writing by an encyclopedic and independent bon vivant, all offered with both sharp wit and a healthy slice of what I can only call humility. He will maybe laugh at me putting it that way but there is sort of decency and humanity that comes through… even when tearing a strip of something. He truly likes the brewing world and those who work in it. Rarely drops a name but highlights what they offer us all. If anyone sets the tone, it’s your lad, John. Drunk Tand agrees.

Best Imported Beer: The LCBO, our government store, brought in bottles of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord this fall and I like it. I have had it on tap when visiting the fam and I like it just fine in the bottle, too.

Biggest Waste Of Effort: either making or writing about pickle beer.

Best Beer Project: I know that Boak and Bailey awarded this their “Blogger of the Year” award but I think that is too narrow, perhaps a mislabeling. A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects by Eoghan Walsh is one of the best projects anyone who thinks at all seriously about beer has tackled in years. It is a book being writing before your eyes on a weekly basis. It is a draft of a TV script for a documentary shown on Belgian TV in 2026.

A final note. Many folk have given up on awarding this year’s beer best awards as part of their general abandonment of good writing about beer. What is up? It does seem like a point of pride with some beer writers that they don’t actually write all that much any more. As Stan got me thinking about this when he wrote his thoughts this week:

I realized as the lists started to roll out in recent weeks that I miss Bryan Roth’s annual effort to add objectivity to subjective choices. I’m too lazy to do something similar, but I did start saving lists a while back with the idea of posting them here in one giant listicle of listicles. Then I came to my senses.

And what is too often written is spun, formulaic or, worse, apologists. “The Five Best Beer Bars in Sarnia.” Lists of beer related presents at holiday time. 40 word beer reviews for throwaway advertising fliers posing as weekly community newspapers. Short, scripted lines for their 37 seconds on TV explaining this beer or that, those 37 seconds before the host laughs unkindly and moves on.  It’s sad that this has happened – and frankly a bit embarrassing in a lot of cases – but I figure it’s better to find something else to do like write trade PR if you have nothing much actually interesting to say. Happily there are other far brighter lights to follow and more new voices showing up regularly. I am happy to help you find it… if that is what I am doing on this site.

Oh – and by the way – one more thing… I have created another thing. A Patreon site. Not necessarily to make any money so much as to create a micro site to experiment with. Honestly, I will probably use any money raised to give to others via Patreon. The micro site is getting populated with content as you read this. Well, right around now. Yesterday for sure. I think you can find the Patreon page here. I tried to make it as cheap as I could but $1 a month is not recommended so I went with $3 USD, $4 CND. One price. All in. Stop by or don’t. I won’t judge you. Maureen** is clearly on board.

There. Welcome 2022 and to Hell with you, 2021! Even though it gave us the vaccine roll out and proved once again that humanity can pull its boots up and get things done if it puts its mind to it. OK, 2021 wasn’t so bad. Remember 2020? Now, that one sucked. While you think on that and plan your Friday evening snacks, please please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (except when they check out like they have for the last two weeks) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*We have never met and neither of us owes the other money.
**TO my horror, when cleaning up and getting masses of paper files out the door and to a professional shredder, I realized I owe Maureen a modest sum for a project I dreamed up years ago that went absolutely nowhere. I found the envelope she sent her cheque in. Post marked Iowa. I am embarrassed. I need to make amends.

Your Mid-December 2021 Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

Just two weeks and a bit to go. Remember how 2020 dragged on and on? 2021 seems like it was less than a month long. Got my third jab. Thanks for asking, the only side effect has been just a bit of a lingering cold. Are you Christmassy? Me, not like in 2015 when Boak and Bailey won the last Christmas Yuletide Hogmanay Kwanza Beery Photo Contest with the entry above. Why? Just nine days to go but we are having a big big wave* of da-‘Vid around here so joining last minute shopping crowds might not be wise. Good to substitute:

Look, kid – mustard is a perfectly good stocking stuffer. Stop crying… please… have a Brazil nut… no, that’s all there was left at the gas station… check at the bottom of that stocking… yup… handkerchiefs… what, again with the crying?

Ho ho… ho. First up, if you yourself in need a bit of a Christmas gift, The Lars himself is speaking on line next Tuesday at 3 pm Eastern (my time zone is the best!) as he is set to speak at the Chicago Brewseum’s latest event:

Yule, the multi day festival celebrated by pre-Christian Germanic peoples, begins every December 21st. The modern Christmas celebration is very different from the old celebration of Yule as Norwegian farmers knew it, yet at the heart of both sits the feast with the Christmas beer. On this Winter Solstice, Lars Marius Garshol joins us from Norway to take a long look back to the origins of the Christmas feast, and why beer was so central to it. At the center of the mystery we find not Santa Claus, but his forgotten cousin.

Also, just in time for the holiday joy, Dr. Wade at braciatrix reached back 400 years or so to the early 1600s offered some top advice on how to get through this challenging holiday season – butter beer!

Butter beer, or buttered beer, has a long and storied history. There are many recipes all containing at least the butter, sugar, beer and eggs, though the variety of spices seems to vary greatly with some including nutmeg, cloves and ginger, whilst others opt for aniseed and licorice.

That might be worth a try. My go to mulled ale is usually just Chimay Red in a pot warmed with a cinnamon stick. Speaking of fun, there was lots of follow up from last week’s post on the problem of style. I understand it is referred to in Finland as se in certain circles. And this week, we learned that there is another convoluted BJCP style update coming and I also read the words “spicy-guava Lithuanian-influenced Meadow Land IPA” written by Ruvani de Silva.  I am inclined to consider that hard to the one end of the newly christened “style<->fun” continuum. Ron also contributed to the question when he questioned the relevance of the construct when considering Edwardian ales:

Whitbread’s Edwardian beers are bound to get a style Nazi in tizzy. Because they certainly don’t fit with the modern hierarchy of Pale Ales.  With their IPA being significantly weaker than their Pale Ale. Whitbread IPA was a latecomer to the party, first brewed in October 1899. They’d been in the Pale Ale game since the 1860s and already brewed three different ones – PA, 2PA and FA, in descending order of strength. With IPA slotting in just above FA. So, what made this beer an IPA? The fact that the brewery called it that. I can’t work on any other basis. Were British breweries consistent in their use of the term IPA? Like hell they were. And particularly liable to use PA and IPA pretty much randomly. There’s no point searching for a pattern, because there isn’t one.

Noticing things as they were and are can get a bit sticky. The Tand himself captured this idea in a post yesterday about stout:

It isn’t that I’m against such stuff, and I agree and recognize that there are plenty out there that like these additions, but what I do dislike is that a bit too often, there isn’t just a straightforward stout that tastes of, well, stout.  There are exceptions of course, and maybe too many brewers feel that a “normal” stout doesn’t get them sales in a crowded market. Well that’s fine, but let’s at least have an unmucked about version as the default, with the additions as specials.

Where does that sit on the “style<->fun” continuum? Interesting and perhaps somewhat related observations from Boak and Bailey on the role craft beer can play as harbinger of change in gentrification of neighbourhoods, whether those living there like it or not:

Bedminster is made up of multiple neighbourhoods, from the theatre and coffee shop gentrification of Southville to the betting shops and greasy spoon caffs of East Street. The pubs there tend to be either (a) busy and down-to-earth, with stern warnings to shoplifters in the windows; or (b) shut. The borders, though, have fuzzy edges and are porous and, as you might expect, the gentrification is leaking. There are now vegan delicatessens and houseplant emporiums alongside branches of Gregg’s and Poundland. Alpha occupies a retail unit in a 1980s red-brick shopping arcade, across from a kebab house and next door to a charity shop. It feels out of place, for now – but probably won’t in five years’ time.

Change is odd. You can spot it in liminal spaces. Or does it sometimes create the liminal space, the bit that gets abandoned to become a space between before it gets repurposed? Craft beer is probably a follower as often as not in  these things even if it sounds like may receive undo attention compared to the fifth column of big houseplant in these matters. Fern pushers. No good comes of ferns.

Elsewhere… good news in another remote pub story from Britain!

A community on the Isle of Bute has raised more than £92,000 to put towards the purchase and refurbishment of their 200-year-old pub. The Anchor Tavern in Port Bannatyne was put up for sale after it was shut due to a downturn in business caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It was the last pub in the village following the closures of other licenced premises.

Among the things I wrote these last few days that caused upset for some poorly enunciated reason or another** was the idea that best of lists sorta suck. While Robyn and Jordan make good case for properly run awards in this week’s podcast (while rejecting guava – are they really that fun?)… like the minor league golf tour of weekly sponsored events that beer awards have become (no doubt to give all those vitally important awarding people enough opportunity to prove their really important judging powers by awarding awards) I’ve long wondered whether there any other part of pop culture where the “best of” lists are filled with generally inaccessible items like we see with beer? Eric Asimov in the NYTs shared his best of 2021 wines and I was immediately struck by this first item in his list:

This bottle is a thirst quencher, an uncomplicated $19 liter of red from the Bío Bío region of Chile. So what’s memorable about it? For me, it epitomized how wine is evolving.

Modest price, an over-sized bottle and contextualized to make a greater point. Beer reviews rarely even mention price let alone distribution. We deserve better. Now consider NPR’s Sound Opinion‘s best albums of 2021. In their newsletter they asked “What We Mean By Best Albums”:

…let’s call our Sound Opinions best-of lists what they really are: idiosyncratic, no-two-exactly-alike rankings of personal favorites. We’re not looking for consensus, we’re aiming for let-it-all-hang out personality as reflected by the music each of us love the most. That’s why we devote an entire show to this imperfect exercise every year. It’s fun to reflect on the recordings that sustained or inspired us when we were running errands, washing dishes, hosting a party, recovering from a long work day or just getting lost between the headphones on the couch.

Self-deprecating, accurate and personal. An imperfect exercise. Look for these sorts of qualities in any recommendations before you fall in behind the fog offered otherwise.*** Look for price, actual personal comment and not just the PR notes – plus whether there was actually any sort of possibility anyone (aka you) beyond the sample receiving set was ever going to have a taste.

Very related, sometimes you read things that make you think “hmmm, interesting” and sometimes you read things that make you think “is anything in this actually true?” Oh dear. “Style”? Not in 1977. “Juicy”? More like 2007. Still, expect a NAGBW award for that one. For sure. Meets the club house requirements.

Conversely, speaking of context and reality, I heard a great show on one of CBC Radio’s schedule challenged broadcasts, Now or Never, Saturday aft. It was all about the relationship people have with alcohol. The episode has not popped up on the podcast page yet but keep an eye out for it. There’s a great interview with one Winnipeg craft brewer on the conflict of producing something that harms some while is fun for most. [Update: here it is!]

Want a bit more reality, I hope you are taking a moment to see the green dot in the sky these days. Not a lot of green dots in the sky. Green dot? Yup:

Your once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a green comet named C/2021 A1 — a.k.a. Leonard — is here. Astronomy experts, including the comet’s discoverer, offer tips on when and how to see the comet. Like other comets, Leonard is a ball of frozen gas, rocks and dust. When its orbit brings it close to the sun, the heat causes some of that material to vapourize, which makes it glow and sprout a tail of gas and dust.

Leonard? Hallelujah! Because when the world is a bit too grim and people are just too much face, why no climb way up to the top of the stairs where your cares might just drift right into space. Because you are gawking at a green dot. And you can take a drink up there with you. Something festive.

There. I tried to keep it short. Can you believe it? No? Well, the holidays are here. Be happy – and while you are being happy please also check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Sadly, the recent events in Kingston around anti-vaxx also caught up a neighbouring craft brewery, Signal. The owner died of Covid-19 Wednesday. It might have triggered further outbreaks.
**Huh?
***Co-opting a crisis is one of the more distasteful things you can do so it was sad to see one of the worst examples of appropriating aggrandizement in a headline I read this week: “Kentucky Breweries Lead Relief Efforts Following Deadly Storms.” What they meant to say, as the story does, is some brewery owners are pitching in as they would and should but pretty sure the normal authorities and charities are leading relief efforts.

 

The December Is Almost Here Edition Of The Beery News Notes

And… that was November. or it will be soon. From mowing the lawn to frozen ground in a mere 30 days. World Series to free agency. Stout sales go from “?” to “!” It’s good like that, November. Knows it’s place. The saddest month. Not cold enough to be bracing and clear like January. Look, I’ve already started to move on. Christmas pressies have been bought. Just have to see if they arrive before January. What else might arrive by then? A Christmas photo contest entry pro photographer Peter B. Collins in 2011 might give you some idea.

Now then… first up, a nice bit of work from Retired Martin this week, a photo essay on Whitelock’s in Leeds interspersed with witty tidbits:

All tables taken, but obviously I’d brought the fine weather with me oop north and you don’t get much better outside seating than this, watching life amble by and end up in the loos for the Turks Head, wondering where you are.

Note: I am pro-deposit for reservations.

Not to overload you with pub observations, Life After Football shared some thoughts on one funny gaffer in “Pickled in Branston“:

The Gaffer had a glint in his eye and when I said, “Can I have a pint of Bass?” He replied with “No you can’t – it’s all mine!” Clearly, a man after my own heart and with four other people in there at about 12.05 he has a base of local punters happy to roll in on a Monday. “I’ll get you that pint young man,” he said and when I said I’d not been called that very often, quick as a flash he replied “I’ve been known to lie!”

Har-har… har… And Boak and Bailey asked a couple of good questions this week, one in their newsletter but first, in a variation on the theme, this about memories of past pubs perfect:

We’ve been struck down by nostalgia lately and find ourselves yearning for a particular experience of the pub. Maybe it’s birthdays. Maybe it’s the emotional impact of the two weirdest years we’ve ever lived through. Or perhaps it was just that excellent pint of Young’s Special at The Railway in Fishponds in Bristol.

They were again a bit nostalgic in the monthly newsletter, this time for beer blogging days.

…in the UK at least, the growth in professional (ish) outlets has sucked up a lot of content that would previously have been on blogs. That’s great news for writers – they get paid! They get proper photography and illustrations to accompany their piece! And it gets promoted properly, too. A few years ago, everyone was fretting about the death of beer media, meaning print magazines. But we wanted that and blogs, not one or the other, right?

Well, no. Print writing can be narrow and often by commission. My take? It may not be so much about the death of blogs as the ascent of a duller sort of paid writing. Don’t get me wrong. Some is great but commissioning editors with creditors set parameters.* People with just an interest have gotten to project themselves as people with authority without the decades of Stan‘s experience or the miles Jeff puts in. Others writers – sometimes the better ones – got jobs, moved on or just ran out of imaginative takes on a limited niche topic.  

Yes, that is where we are. It happens. And when things are slow like they have been in 2021, we tend to move backwards hoping we are staying in place.  This year of almost entirely updated next editions is almost over but not until we have, tah-da, the personalized beer flavour wheel. Beer flavour wheels have been around for decades. I am not sure why I need someone else’s different beer flavour wheel. Never bothered with one yet. But beer flavour wheels have been around for decades so someone must have. Schmelzle‘s dates from 2009. Dr. Morten Meilgaard seems to invented them in the 1970s. I asked a related question a decade ago and still have no idea what the answer is.

Speaking of flogging, this year’s version of the GIBC advertorial in the Chicago Tribune has led to some astounding information, not least of which is this:

The “reserve” package is the one the beer nerds want — 9 Bourbon County beers, including the most limited brands aged in the fancy barrels, for $259.99.

Bizarre. Takes some convincing folk that these prices (and I suppose the advice itself) aren’t suspect – if not grand larceny.

And speaking of the more than a bit weird, the US magazine Esquire published a short opinion piece that led to a long list of complaints:

The first half of a beer is why we drink beer. The second half is an afterthought at best, backwash at worst. If you were to watch all the beer commercials from the beginning of time, you’d hear the words cold and refreshing over and over and over. That’s because marketing people aren’t that creative, and also because that’s what sells beer. No one drinks beer for the tepid second half….

Comments included: (i) No one in their right mind would say this about another foodstuff. “Feel free to toss that second half of cold pizza in the garbage…”; (ii) “You know you can order smaller pours if you want beer to stay cold the whole time?”; and (iii) “Like she had to meet a word count quota before she left for Holiday break.” Esquire has apparently claimed that this is a stab at satire which, if it is true, suggests that it is not actual good satire.

PS: never heard of him either. But it appears the status you are desperately wanting to achieve is so incoherent that it requires outside intervention. And tricks.**

That’s a bit of negativity right there. For a bit right up there. What caused that? Nostalgia? Getting away from the pubs? We need to get grounded. Beth Demmon takes us to the hear and now with the first in a series on the state of the water supply in Southern California where the ground is dry and how the San Diego brewing scene may be facing change:

In such a water-thirsty region, it’s imperative for beverage companies like AleSmith to maximize their materials through sustainability initiatives. Cronin says AleSmith is on a two-year track to become Pure Water compliant through the city of San Diego, which aims to provide one-third of the city’s water supply locally by 2035 by purifying recycled water. Considering that Cronin estimates AleSmith rinses 7,000 – 10,000 gallons of wastewater into the municipal system every day, that’s millions of gallons available for reuse.

I brushed against this topic in 2015 in my superficial way but this is seven levels better. Excellent described detailed research. Additionally and also in the present and the positive, Jordan wrote about himself and what he is doing in beer these days – and this time it all makes utter sense:

I would guess that I probably try somewhere between 500-1000 beers every year, not counting repetition. Beyond a certain point, professionally speaking, beer is content. It’s informational. My fridge is more than half full of obligational beverages that people have sent for review and which might end up on instagram or in an article. I probably won’t finish more than about half of any of them, because the point isn’t drinking them; the point is knowing about them. Beer contains calories, as the new pair of jeans remind me.

Good advice. And look! More good advice. Three ingredient cocktails. Sensible simple tasty booze. That’s positive.

What next? History? History is good. Edd the BHB on 1910 Nottinghamshire ales, the Warwicks & Richardsons range. Did they still sing the song 120 years later? More history? Graham Dineley posed the question of beer stone and prehistoric pottery and found fatal flaws in the research to date:

Many scholarly academic beer “experts” have never actually made beer, and so have no experience or expertise. Brewing beer is a particularly experiential process, where the subtleties and nuances are necessary and essential for the full understanding. Many of these “experts” confuse beerstone with calcium oxalate. 

Finally but not happily, this tweet got my attention from Ren:

The irony of being written out of beer history by women hoping to change beer history…

Reality again. I do wish folk would get out of the way. I was also disheartened this week to see another part of Black experience filtered (again) by GBH through the inclusion of the hand of someone from outside. This is a bit of the opposite of my recent experience with the Beer Culture Summit 2021 produced by the Chicago Brewseum. Hand over the keyboard and get out of the way. No amount of time or miles can replace the unfiltered voice of one who has been there and has something to say.

That’s it. A tough one for good pics this week. A bit of a hard row to hoe if we are looking for the captivating in beer writing. Every week can’t be thrilling. I suppose, that’s the way it goes. Still, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Very tempted to go all Ogden Nash and spell it “paramitors.”!
**If your studies include flash cards and tricks… maybe you are not actually studying something at all.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Remembrance Day 2021

Today is Remembrance Day, a fairly significant thing here in Canada which is largely apolitical even now well past a century after the end of WW1. The image to the right is a photo I took in 2005 at the naval memorial downtown. We’ve had a naval presence here in town since 1673.  And here’s a bit of what I wrote in 2014 about the day on Facebook:

…There are no politics with our vets. More than hockey and donuts, we all actually love our square do-gooder Dudley Do-right military and RCMP. I am lucky to be in a congregation at 51 years of age with a man* who commanded CFB Greenwood near Kingston in NS where I lived when I was 9 years old – and who attended the church where Dad was a minister. We remembered today that when I was a kid and he was in his 40s that all the vets were WW1 and there was even likely a Boer War soldier in the pews…

We government workers in Ontario have the day off but it isn’t a general holiday like it was when I grew up in Nova Scotia. Schools and shops are open. Feels weird.  Vets will be at Legions again this year after being shut in 2020. Drinking beer. I’ll donate a few coins into the little cardboard box and, once again, buy maybe the 7th poppy of 2021 – they seem to disappear within four hours after putting one on.

Elsewhere, Mudgie took a trip into the city centre of Manchester and posted a bit of a travel piece on a certain sort of pub. I was taken by this photo to the right, the absolute dream seat, right there in a wee nook in the tiny Circus Tavern. Fabulous:

It has two small cosy rooms with bench seating. The one at the front always seems to have a vault character and is frequented by the regulars, while the one to the rear is more of a snug. I managed to take a snap of the seating opposite in the brief interlude between it being occupied by groups of customers. Understandably, the Circus didn’t reopen until social distancing restrictions were lifted in July, and anyone concerned about getting too close to others would do well to avoid it. 

Note: another photo of the Circus Tavern with people added won the top prize in our 2012 Yuletide Beery Photo contest.

The other week I was correctly corrected about the lack of a certain beer fest holding a meeting in person – so giddy was I to realize that an update on another and rather gentle in person event was posted by The Beer Nut this week. The live action photo at the end is helpful for scale:

From Zwolle, we set off further westwards on Saturday morning for Gramsbergen, a small town about 3km from the border with Germany. G-berg, as nobody calls it, is home to the Mommeriete brewery, set in a rustic canalside inn, all oak beams and porcelain fireplaces. We missed getting to see it as its normal cosy self since they were gearing up for a beer festival: one organised to celebrate 20 years of the Dutch beer consumers’ organisation PINT, onto which was tacked the official 30th birthday bash for EBCU. It was a modest affair, beginning in the the afternoon and finishing at 7pm, and only three guest breweries were in attendance.

Note: cheese cutting diagrams.

Beer experts don’t really exist like wine experts do. Well, a very few of the former might while a few more of the latter do. If you don’t believe me and still think your website generated certification means anything like expert, consider the career path of Kevin Zraly including this:

That any American restaurant would have a cellarmaster or a sommelier was a rare thing in those days. In 1978, Frank J. Prial, the wine columnist for The Times, wrote an article about the virtual disappearance of the sommelier in restaurants, citing Mr. Zraly as one of a very few good young ones in New York, “the knowledgeable type, not the wine hustler…”

I followed this link to his courses at Wine.com. Look! No phony academic rhetoric, no layers of prerequisite that would shame a Scientologist. Just accessible authoritative information at a plain price and presented directly and on the level. Why can’t beer do that?** We need to consider the relationship between access to information along with inclusion and levelling and the commonality of those who opposed them.

Resulting question: why do wine educators start with the premise that wine is not as complex as we consumers have been told while beer educators seem to start with the premise that beer is more complex than we have been told?**

Much to the contrary, I spent bits of last Sunday watching presentations from the Beer Culture Summit 2021 produced by the Chicago Brewseum. I found the structure refreshing as there was none of the Masonic mystery gatekeeping guild approach to information that is a hallmark of what passes for too many claims expertise in good beer culture. The difference? The focus on professional and personal experience as a pathway to leveling and inclusion. Call it cred. The presenters had cred. I particularly liked “Under-Attenuated: Women, Beer History Studies and Representation” session: Dr. Christina Wade, Tiah Edmunson-Morton, and Atinuke “Tinu” Akintola Diver on their careers researching brewing history. And not only because of Dr. Wade’s defense of the value of blogging brewing history – depth, accessibility, primary citations and immediacy both in terms of time and audience** even if Stan is still standing there at the graveside.  In a time when we see bland generalities devoid of citation but plenty of errors*** win awards for best beer history, it was a call for quality within a call for, you got it, levelling.

Best tweet with beer and meat.

Crop-wise, we saw the 150th anniversary of the first sale of Fuggles this week, as Martyn reminded us:

Today, November 8, marks 150 years  since the Fuggle hop first went on sale, in a field in Paddock Wood, Kent, after Richard Fuggle and his brothers Jack and Harry had spent ten years propagating the variety until they had enough, 100,000 sets, to sell commercially.

Wonderful. And we are also seeing a second crop of the heritage barley variety bere in Scotland this year. Isn’t nature wonderful! More on bere here and here.

Taking a break on his book tour, Jeff wrote excellently about what he has seen in America’s downtowns in late 2021:

Most of my adult lifetime downtowns have been shiny, clean, and fun. They’ve always been a bit artificial, but we social beings flowed into these hubs to see shows, get a meal, buy something nice, and mostly, to feel the exciting hum of other people doing the same thing. Now downtowns are listless and depressing, and many of the businesses are boarded up or on long-term hiatus. There’s less and less reason to visit them.. When cities become nothing more than storefronts for the rich, they teeter on a narrow balance point. Did Covid just disrupt that balance?

Possibly the winner for Generic Praise-Laced Brewery Owner Bio Template of 2021.  B.O.B.s are the best. But this one has the header “A World-Class Pairing” which really takes it over the top.

More B.O.B. as a Euro male led publication hires Euro male writer to speak to a Euro male bar owner about diversity in the beer scene in BC’s Okanagan. I’d have more trust in the editorial call if the statement “…only a couple of people in the BIPOC community that even lived here when I was growing up…” was fact checked. While there is a reference to a Indigenous family business, here’s the map of Indigenous communities (aka the “i” in BIPOC) for BC. The communities of the Syilx Okanagan Nation are right there in the south centre. The Central Okanagan Local Immigration Partnership Council formed in 1983 seems pretty active, too. Question: why do writers of B.O.B.s never check in with customers or staff to find out if the claims are correct? The subject in this case could be fabulous… but we don’t know.

Beer prices are going up. Beer prices are going down.

Finally, I was sad to see a dismissive response to my comments about Pellicle’s decision to run and highlight a childish cartoon image about an actual ambush of soldiers where many died. Part of a story that is still recalled hurtfully in my region which touches on both my actual job and my brewing history research. It’s also an entirely unnecessary image and adds nothing to the story. At best, it is just a failed analogy. In an era when we are trying to drive out misrepresentation, appropriation and negativity from the good beer discussion, this sort of hyperbolic grasping for aggrandizing analogies is more than unfortunate. Do better.

Oh… and somebody sold their brewery.  Good beer. Nothing much will change.

There’s plenty to chew on. To complain about. For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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 which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*This is he
**We appreciate that folk have ambitions but actual earned and experienced knowledge is always more helpful than insta-recognition by those editors with creditors. BTW, EWCs are not levellers. BTWx2: what even is a “certified pro“?
***1500s Flemish farmers? 

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For A… For A… I Dunno…

You can get in a rut about things can’t you. These headers for example. It’s just a thing. But a thing almost in a rut. Is craft beer in a rut? I dunno. It didn’t do anything new and stupid this week, did it? It is, however, like a thing that could find itself in a rut, isn’t it.  Makes people say odd things… like: “…not me, not my part of the thing… my thing is really a separate thing…” When things are actually fairly bad, people still take time to say that sort of thing. Because this thing is not like that thing. Not my thing. Can’t be. Never.

First up, the views shared by Alistair at Fuggles on home brewing around little kids ring true for me as I packed in my questionable home brewing hobby completely once we were well and truly surrounded by rut rats :

This weekend was the twins 4th birthday and with time speeding by at a fair old clip, it feels difficult to justify taking 8 hours, give or take, to brew an all grain batch of homebrew. While there is no shortage of decent beer to be had in the central Virginia region, either locally produced or from further afield, there are still times when I just want to drink something I have brewed myself. Enter pre-prepared malt extract.

Speaking perhaps of my home brewing, I found this piece on on imposter syndrome as suffered by women in the drinks trade interesting but I was particularly interested as I have known many men who admit to suffering from the experience as well, especially in law:

Imposter syndrome, according to the American Psychological Association, is a psychological phenomenon wherein you doubt your own skills, abilities, and inherent worth, no matter how much you achieve or accomplish. For many, it’s an inner voice that whispers, “you’re not good enough, you don’t know anything, and one day, everyone is going to find out… storytelling has the power to combat imposter syndrome; however, it will take a proactive effort to tell stories that go beyond the bylines, brewers, and old-boy’s networks that have dominated both breweries and beer journalism.”

Come to think of it, a lot of what sucks about craft beer sucks about law. Stress. Alcohol. Irrational expectations. But not the 50 kg sacks of grain. Even in my early 40s when folks wanted me in on a brewery I knew there was no way I could hack hauling around 50 kg sacks of grain. I wasn’t ever going to go there once I grew used to the seeming reassurance of the hard tight black shoes.

Next up? Just last week I wrote:

Thing never said in beer: “…and certainly thanks to all those who nominated the winners…” Oh… 

And this very week I am pleased to read:

Oh wow, this is huge. A massive thank you to whoever nominated me and a huge congratulations to all the other incredibly talented people on this list!

Which is great. More of this, please. And congratulations Charlotte Cook aka @ilikeotters along this the others who were nominated by even further others who, as nominees in the Best Brewer of Britain category, likely can in fact haul around 50 kg sacks of malt, nae doddle.

How to quit in style. Fabulous.

Careful readers out there will recall that I have a particular thing for the role of alcohol in early victualing of ships‘ holds. This week VinePair shared what dear old Ferdie Magellan was packing:

Documents from Magellan’s expedition cite a hefty 203 butts (barrels) and 417 wineskins — from the Jerez wineries in southwest Spain’s Andalusia region — made it onboard. Today, this amounts to nearly 243,000 liters of booze. Magellan and his crew must have really needed the extra liquid luck on the expedition, seeing as the cost of wine and other provisions amounted to 1,585,551 maravedis. Taking inflation and conversions into account, Magellan brought about $475,665 worth of booze on board. Researcher and crew member Navarrete noted in Document No. XVII that this number accounted for 20 percent of all costs on board.

Speaking of the ancient of days, Garrett Oliver himself guided me to this story in The Harvard Gazette about the scale of brewing in ancient Egypt:

Thanks to his recent excavation of a brewery in the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos, the senior research scholar at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts may get his wish, and soon. But the excavation revealed far more than a way to reconstruct an ancient recipe for suds. The industrial-scale production — on par with today’s best microbreweries — offers direct evidence of the kind of power wielded by Egyptian kings.

I would have thought sustaining an empire for thousands of years might have been evidence enough of the power of Egypt but… you know… I am not a guy who went to Haaaa-vaaaard. Where they call beer suds!*

Evan Rail on hard seltzers: “I thought most of them were gross. A few were harmless but boring. Several were close to nauseating.” Exactly.

Gary Gillman (aka Gee-Gee… OK, not) went off on an interesting wander around what is/was and what is/was not the North American hop known as Neomexicanus care of a part called part one (including below) and part (…wait for it…) two:

…the sources mentioned seem to reserve “neomexicanus” for the Rocky Mountain, American-origin hop while “Manitoba” or “Canadian” describes another hop from North America. While classification as such for regional examples of North American wild hops is beyond my scope here, it might be noted that location – terroir, if you will – plays an important role for all hop attributes, even relatively locally as Stephens explains in her article.

I just don’t believe in #RauchBeerMonth.

Throughout the Commonwealth we hear comments about the news that Vanity Fair has reported: HRH The Sovereign Herself has got to cut back:

According to two sources close to the monarch, doctors have advised the Queen to forgo alcohol except for special occasions to ensure she is as healthy as possible for her busy autumn schedule and ahead of her Platinum Jubilee celebrations next June. “The Queen has been told to give up her evening drink which is usually a martini,” says a family friend. “It’s not really a big deal for her, she is not a big drinker but it seems a trifle unfair that at this stage in her life she’s having to give up one of very few pleasures.”

I dunno. Ninety-five? That’s when I start smoking menthol ciggies regularly. I’ve beaten the odds by then. No filters either. Something else is killing me by then.

Daniel Craig‘s choice of bars makes perfect sense:

“I’ve been going to gay bars for as long as I can remember,” the 53-year-old actor told Bruce Bozzi on the “Lunch with Bruce” podcast. “One of the reasons (is) because I don’t get into fights in gay bars that often. … The aggressive dick swinging in hetero bars, I just got very sick of it as a kid because it’s like I don’t want to end up being in a punch-up. And I did. That would happen quite a lot.”

Nice. Still, can’t go a week without reminding you all of how craft has failed once again, with some pointing out how BrewDog seeking to redefine arsehole ridden work environment with the phrase “high-performance culture” which guides one’s mind to the article on imposter syndrome up there… and perhaps thoughts on who exactly is the imposter in these cases?  The burdened worker or the poser jet set whiner?

I can’t even imagine how horrible having a fruit lambic with eggs benedict might be.**

In the category of “discussions of places I will never go” I came across this fantastic example of a buried lede in this quotey piece on a Cornish rarity, Spingo,  in Pellicle by Lily Waite:

“Spingo is the definition of a cult beer. It stands outside the ‘scene’ and, like [local annual festival] Flora Day, is about Helston doing its own thing,” says Jessica. “They bring out a new beer every twenty years or so and that’s it. The locals seem happy with Middle and, from our observations, seem to regard Flora Daze as a dangerous innovation. You haven’t really experienced Spingo until you’ve had a pint at 8am on Flora Day, dispensed from a hosepipe into a plastic glass. Magic.”

Speaking of Jessica, she and Ray visited Kirkstall Brewery in Leeds and provided a first hand report. The story illustrates how superior the web based beer writing can be if only that it is current.  Like radio reporting on a sports event, it’s fresh and immediate even if a snapshot of a weekend trip I wasn’t on and can’t realistically replicate. By contrast, the piece on Stingo above refers to a visit in June. Why the backlog? Why wait for Waite? Worse, of course, is when you have to read through something that comes out of a physical printing press.  Stale and via mail. Viva hands on laptops! Vivi!!

Viva indeed. For more check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*I love knowing that someone’s ass is burning by someone else calling beer “suds” because it totally disrespects their mild addiction cloaked as a hobby.
**Not to mention which fruit was lambicized before the eggs benedict was held hostage.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The End Of Q3 2021

Do you ever find yourself on a Wednesday evening and realizing you didn’t note a lot beery news in a week? No? Me neither. No way. What’s been going on? I can tell you for sure. Because I have been attentive. Saw stuff like this:  Curtis walked into a 2005/2010 central New York beer store cosplay event this week. That was something. And I cracked a new databased to dig through for new 1700s New York brewery information as part of the work on Empire Beer. Just typing “Lispenard” gave me, like you, a rush as well as a renewed sense of purpose. I found a reference that pushed the brewing career of Mr. Leadbetter back one whole year. And Craig found Albany beer for sale in Boston in the 1730s. Inter-colonial beer shipments almost 300 years ago. Neato. Oh – and I didn’t drink beer in a graveyard. So there.

First up, I had no idea about France… keeping in mind the first thing that comes to mind with much beer industry writing is the question “is that really true?”:

It may be famous for its wine, but France is also the country with the largest number of breweries in Europe. This is how French beer changed its image from a “man’s drink” to a refined beverage worthy of an apéro… The number of microbreweries here has exploded over the past decade. The country went from having 442 active breweries in 2011, to 2,300 today, meaning no country in Europe has more breweries than France, according to the trade union Brasseurs de France. 

Next, an update on the Umqombothi situation. You will recall that in June a man took the prize for making the best Umqombothi, right? Well, now the traditional South African beer faces regulation:

With the newly-amended Liquor Products Act that came into effect last Friday, there are now strict production requirements that traditional beer merchants will have to abide by in order to stay on the right side of the law. Thembisile Ndlovu has made a name for herself as the queen of brewing umqombothi the natural way it was done by grandmothers back in the villages. The 36-year-old from Zondi in Soweto, who is owner of All Rounder Theme events that organises themed parties and provides catering, said the new law regulating the making of umqombothi would not affect her business.

Odd seeing Pellicle win second place in a “best blog” award this week. From Beer 52 which fulls wells knows what Pellicle is. It’s not that it got an award or came second. It’s that it recognized that the drinks website was a blog. There is an interesting comment hidden in the explanation of the award:

…Pellicle has stuck to a founding principle that I recall finding quite radical at the time: kindness. Next to the toxic dumping ground of rivalry and acrimony that is Beer Twitter, Pellicle has been unremittingly positive in choosing what to cover and how to cover it.

I don’t disagree but I also find it weird that the fairly barren wasteland for any beer discussion on Twitter is set up as the comparator. Having made a hobby of reading this stuff every week, beer Twitter died off a long time ago. May still be general jerk Twitter, sure. And both GHB Sightlines and Dave Infante’s  Fingers have recently seen the need to put up a paywall to make ends meet. Is “beer blog” the last phrase standing? Maybe so – if that is what Pellicle is. Speaking of which, they published an excellent piece by Will Hawkes on  hops growing in England:

Crucially, the hop gardens sit on rich, fertile Brickearth soil, windblown loam and silt, deposited during the Ice Age. The Thames Estuary is just three miles away, and the hops, which grow on a gentle east-facing slope, are frequently buffeted by wind. This proximity to the sea is part of what makes East Kent Goldings what they are, although John regards it as a mixed blessing. “They can end up a bit bashed and brown,” he says. “The German hops are always pristine! They must get no wind there.”

Speaking of which, Stan’s Hop Queries blog by email showed up this week including observations on the Colorado hop market:

MillerCoors (now MolsonCoors) subsidized Colorado’s mini-hop boom in the teens, paying much more for Colorado grown hops than the brewery would have for the same varieties from the Northwest. They were, and are, used in the Colorado Native line of beers. That includes seven year-round brands and four seasonals that are brewed with 100% Colorado-grown ingredients. However, a few years ago MolsonCoors cut back its hop contracts to “right-size” inventory. Many farmers weren’t ready to compete.

Stan also noted that the Ales Through the Ages beer history conference has gone Zoomy and yet, even after scrapping the junket side, has also ditched all of the original speakers. Did ticket sales bomb for what many thought, as I observed last April, could have been called “Males on Ales Through the Ages”?

And Andy Crouch guided me to an article in Wine Enthusiast on the tepid performative solidarity craft beer is displaying in response to bigotries in the craft beer trade:

“… I keep getting messages and emails and calls, and people just stopping by the brewery, every day, just being like either this person apologized to me, or this person was fired, or the company just did this for everybody, and just letting me know all these really positive changes that people are actually sticking to and doing what they say. “It is heartwarming to know that it actually is helping people and creating lasting change.” To bring these issues to light in the customer sphere, in July, Allan announced a collaboration beer called Brave Noise. Its aim is to promote a safe and discrimination-free beer industry. At press time, fewer than 100 breweries had committed to the project.

Craft fibs category ticked. Back in England but still about forms of ticking, Mudgie guided me to the post at Real Ale, Real Music about an excellent pub crawl in Preston:

I retraced my route, passing dozens of takeways, a few restaurants, vape shops, beauty salons, and the odd pub as Saturday evening came to life. I had decided I would visit one more place before getting the train home. It was back across town, back to Fishergate, where down the side street by Barclays Bank was the Winckley Street Ale House, another recommendation from earlier in the day. There were tables outside, as there were at other spots on a pleasant side street, and as I walked in I joined a queue to the bar. It moved slowly, but finally it was my turn.

Reality. I believe what I read in that story more than I believe that France has more breweries than any other country in Europe. Or that much of craft cares. Facts! That’s what we need.

That’s it. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now apparently a regular again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast (this week… VIKINGS!!!), at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

These Notes Are Beery And Newsy So It Could Well Be Thursday

If these comments come off as rushed and last minute, there is a reason. Long busy week – even as it looks like it might well end soon enough this being Thursday. And I’m bummed out by the Red Sox choking. And… much bigger a bummer… even though there are upcoming weeks off, there is the good old delta just a’rushing in, trying to block my way to the rooftop patio bar with the apps menu. Or just wanting to go to a game like Stan wanted to …. and just have a beer bat‘s worth. Now, I wake in the night with visions of carefully reserved hotels rooms, where I want to go for the first break in two years… finding myself again blocked by travel restrictions. Boo.

First off, just a few months after it was argued that beer guilds could not should not be considered to have a role in responding to the bad behaviours of some of their members, the New York City Brewers Guild gave one the boot:

“We are aware of the recent allegations against Gage Siegel of Non Sequitur Beer Project. These allegations directly contradict the core values and mission of the New York City Brewers Guild,” the guild wrote on Instagram last week. “In order to ensure a safe space for our guests, members and community at large, the guild has revoked the membership of Non Sequitur Beer Project; and they will not be participating in any upcoming guild sponsored events, meetings or collaborations.”

Good. And speaking of which, I know I post a lot of links to Martin’s posts about beer ticking and UK pubs but they really are fabulous what with a bit of wit and a bit of photos, both from unusual angles. But this is one of his best and it has nothing to do with the drink:

Enough pictures of beer. Let’s do a curry. As always, let Glaswegian legend Curry Heute be your guide. His website is to Chicken Dhansak what BRAPA is to John Smiths Smooth. But he’s little positive to say about Sheffield, and to be honest there do seem to be far more Chinese than Indian/Bangladeshi options in town. Curry Heute’s pick is Apna Style, just south of Bramall Lane, which seemed to justify a return visit.

Conversely, the jerk of the week award may well go to British Columbia’s Minister of Agriculture, Ben Stewart who tweeted:

Business owners across BC are struggling to stay open as Gov’t programs don’t encourage workers to seek employment. This is wrong!

How does this connect to a boozed up blog? He also runs a winery that has taken government subsidization and sells pretty pricey plonk while hunting down low pay labour. Nice.

Relatedly, Kate B. wrote a good piece on a similar situation for CB&B entitled “Help Wanted: Breweries Rethink Employment to Adjust to Staff Shortages” with this intro:

Portland, Oregon’s Von Ebert Brewing estimates it has thrown thousands of dollars behind employee recruitment this summer. The brewery has given away merchandise at job fairs, promoted its job postings on websites such as Indeed and Facebook, and offered $500 signing bonuses after 90 days of employment. The return on that investment hasn’t been good. “It’s moving the needle almost zero,” says Dom Iaderaia, Von Ebert’s director of food and beverage.

What to do when people want to do what they want? The follow up tweeting leaned a bit to the “raise the red banner high!” side with a number pointing out craft breweries avoiding unionization is part of the question.

We had a good long Lars post this week that ends with the unusual statement “I want to make it very clear that this is not my work. I’m just repeating what’s in the paper.” Which is good and all fine as the post is an explanation of a very science-y bit of science related to particular properties of kveik.  Just look at this:

The seven octagons are genes. Let’s start with the upper four: the yellow ones turn glucose into trehalose inside the cell, and the orange ones are regulatory genes that control when trehalose is produced. The kveik strains have changes in all four of these genes, but particularly in the regulatory ones. That’s very likely the reason they make more trehalose.

I know, me too! I have no idea what it is all about but it is neato for sure. And if you like trehalose, check out Stan on the thiols.

Somewhat conversely or perhaps similarly, Jenny P. wrote this:

The quest for “authenticity” in beer has always been something that has bothered me—for one, most of its history has been captured by white men, through a European lens. Who are the critics who get to say a beer (or cuisine) is authentic? It’s a limited scope.

…and then this:

I think it’s more than that—authentic is never objective. Authentic has always been decreed. Who made the decision which tradition or method was authentic?

…then this:

I think there’s a very big difference when talking about Tradition vs Authentic.

It’s very similar to the heritage v. history thing. I think. Does the man known as The Driver have it right? Perhaps. I know who has it wrong – the maker of shit. Speaking of shit, a Halifax NS brewery is offering folk a whole $1 coin (and that’s Canadian) for a social media post:

…you have to pick up one of the five eligible brews at your local liquor store. Then you have to post a photo or video on Instagram of the beer with @goodrobotbrew and #sponsored or #ad in the caption. After that, Good Robot will slide into your DMs to confirm your email and then e-transfer you $1 for each post.

What a stupid idea. Unless they aim to destroy the local market for beer influencers.  Then it’s dumb and stupid.

This week on GBH: a middling post about hops in Italy accompanied but some really weird blobby art. Much better at Pellicle: “…The Inherent Whiteness of British Beer Writing“!

When I wrote this piece on racism craft brewers face in the beer industry I was surprised that such a bold investigative report requiring a lot of time, guidance and investment was given the green light, considering it was the first story that I had approached Pellicle with. But why am I one of the lone minority voices who write about beer compared to other sectors, like food, which sees far more writing from people from diverse backgrounds?

One interesting suggestion in response: overhaul writing award categories “which currently favour print media and target influencers and bloggers.” Where have I heard that before!?!? But the real truth is shared by Pete Brown: “I’m chronically in debt…” There is no moolah in any of this.  Does that make the hardscrabble harder? Less welcoming?

Hmm… let’s leave it there. Lots to think about. For more and maybe even something else, get ye into yon updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Summer’s Sprint

Here we are. The second month of summer. Soon it will be halfway through summer. Spring takes its time. Lingers. Summer is a sprint. To keep pace, I ran a couple of breakneck polls on Twitter asking you good folks about the biggest lies told by craft beer. Hard to narrow it down after writing this weekly column for so long. One immediate finding from the first poll was that the “craft is 99% asshole free” lie is a lie of general application. Whether it’s the bad boss, the sexist and the racist on staff at the bar, the beer writer spreading health myths or assigning blame for beer can hand grenades to the consumer… the general rule has wide application. So I ran it again with that option removed. We’ll see. Tune in for continuing coverage at 11.

Out there in the world beyond my own mind’s wanderings, Andy Crouch posted a really interesting audio interview at Beer Edge with actual reporter Norm Miller this week. Their chat starts seven minutes in but it is well worth the wait. Andy and Norm discuss things like their respective court room experiences – but the real angle on the story is their views of the unhealthy relationship with beer seen too often in the craft beer scene:

Norm wrote that he was giving up beer writing because he needed to stop drinking. He talked about the impact his tasting was having on both his physical and mental health. It was a bold and honest piece of writing and should be required reading for everyone in the beer industry. Spend anytime at a beer event or industry get together and it quickly becomes obvious that some and perhaps many in the beer business have an unhealthy relationship with the product they sell. Whether it’s overconsumption, drinking and driving, or forgiving behavior that would otherwise be unforgivable but for the presence of alcohol, it’s the third rail of the American beer business, one that few dare to touch.

Well, one of the third rails along with observed sexist behaviours, observed bigoted behaviours, the actual financial status of breweries,* the pervasive packaging of canned craft hand grenades….

Less ominously, here’s a lovely and witty visit to the Welsh town of Builth Wells presented by a very busy Martin which includes a portrait of the Greyhound Hotel. Less Welsh by far and over in the cyberverse, on Sunday, Ron and Mitch Steel and a few other guys are talking on your computer screen about IPA. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Looking into recent brewing history, Ray and Jess of the B and the other B wrote extensively about Harp Lager with lots of quotes and imagery  and then get some great comments providing further detail.

The brewhouse was fitted with a Steinecker Hydro-Automatic system which meant that “from a control console… the whole brewing operation is controlled by one man, from the selection and transfer of the grain to the pumping of the finished wort to the wort receiver”. The formal opening ceremony took place on 28 June 1963 with an inaugural brew started by the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten – a sign that this was a big deal.

I will never think of the phrase “Steinecker Hydro-Automatic system” the same way again. By they way, did I ever mention that my grandfather had a heated chat with Lord Mountbatten – right after he had told Lord Louis’s Admiral to go fuck himself? During of a naval engagement in WW2. Probably told you already…

Across the Irish Sea, Marble Beer Ltd., seemingly sensing that BrewDog was getting all the attention in the “how not to respond well to crisis” contest, came out with one of the best semi “sorry not sorry” admissions seen in a long time:

…we believe we owe it to not only our team but also our loyal customers and drinkers to set out how we are going to build and nurture a positive, inclusive and fair Marble community now, and in the future. However, before we continue we feel it’s only fair to our previous management that we first state that some of the allegations made on line were outright falsehoods, but that does not mean we do not wholeheartedly accept that the company fell far short at times…

Wow. There are a lot of moving parts in there. Cookie gave the heads up and a fair commentary, too. Unnecessary and not a wholesome part of any apology.

In industrial packaging news, once again another week sees another complaint about incompetent packaging errors in the drinks trade. Not quite the beer can hand grenade situation (as seen above) but the expensive bottle of cider that empties half of itself before you have a sip as reported upon by CiderReviewAdam:

There are too many ciders, particularly but not exclusively, pét nat ciders that are frankly explosive. This was marketed as high end and sold at, for cider, a premium price. It should not be losing half of itself on opening… The average consumer’s tolerance for this sort of thing is a lot shorter than mine is, and this sort of incident, happening with the regularity it does, comes across as amateurish.

Note: amateur is not the opposite of professional in this context. This is not amateurish. It is incompetent professionalism. As are beer can hand grenades. Unless you are you just pretending you are a journalist, tell this story.

My patronage recipient, Matt, linked to a story of his posted a few weeks ago at the Ferment 52 blog on the question of whether beer can be too fresh:

… I decided to speak to brewers about it. And while some denied it was something they had experienced, others said they found it to be a common phenomenon, and referred to it as can, or bottle shock. The idea being that the very process of packaging and shipping beer can cause its flavours to destabilise—albeit temporarily—and that giving them time to properly rest before serving is what’s required for maximum enjoyment. Some even took this view further, admitting that their beer didn’t taste quite how they wanted until several weeks after it’s packaged.

This reminds me of good wine having to sit for a day after travelling as well as coming in and out of point on a 6 to 12 month cycle. But it’s really also pointing out that very fresh beer is a different thing. Also good but different.

Over there in the wine world, the winner of the inaugural Crap Tasting Note of the Year awards has been announced:

From the very opening, with the rhyme of ‘bright’ and ‘light’ to the pointless alliteration of ‘excited effervescence’ (have you ever seen a lethargic effervescence?)  it’s clear that we are dealing with tasting gibberish of the very highest order. Yet the writer sustains it throughout. There’s more garbage in 97 words here than some writers manage in notes three times that size. There’s unnecessarily archaic language (‘writ’), more alliteration (vigour of the vintage), and garbled imagery. Why would a soloist be monochrome, for Chrissake? What does it even mean? And why have you mixed up sound and colour? 

Less honestly wholesome yet somewhat indistinguishable is one of the more embarrassing examples of the blog-for-pay** GBH self-promotion was published this week but it was not in GBH. Looks like Washington Post journalist Julia Bainbridge was pestered by emails from the cheap seats and gave them some space at her personal blog… oh, it’s a newsletter. Things we learn include: (i) “…we (the media) need to be clearer about the numbers and what they really mean…” (ii) “…Beers brewed with fruit have had a crazy last couple of years, and Bryan is like the only reporter I have seen cover this…” and (iii) “…American psyche for food and beverage is unique in the world…” Grab easily available stats, repackage the obvious as insight and – Voila! – expertise. Amazeballs.

I think that’s enough for now. Have to go gaze at the Twitter polls for another few hours. Hey, don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Remember when seeming adults presenting as seasoned beer writers but dependent on continued access to craft brewery owners insisted over and over that there was no money in brewing craft beer? That was great.
**“It’s a magazine… it’s a real grown up magazine… it is!!! I just have three other jobs to maintain access to my sources…“

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For Mid-July

Beer season. This right here. This week. This is the week in all the beer ads. Mid-July. No “Back to School” sale ads on the TV yet and no freak snow storm hits Manitoba” news items of the Weather Network. Right here. Right now. The moment of beer. Perfect. I spent a similar perfect summer night, the night before last, stuck at the site of that weird weekend seven years ago with Ron Pattinson and hairy Jordan, when I stayed at an airport hotel full of wedding parties to save a buck. Well, I had to see my middle kid off on a plane so it only made sense to stay at the same place, right? No. Odd seeing the formerly jammed hotel essentially devoid of people. And devoid of services like food. I also had a work meeting from 5:30 to 10:45 in the evening by Zoom which was also odd to do in a hotel room. I don’t know how any of that relates to my new favourite web thing, pictures of dogs people have rescued that are really coyotes but there you go.

OK. Enough! Let’s get right to the good beer reading. There was a most thoughtful article on saison published by Joe Stange in Beer and Brewing. It provides great insight as to the methodology he recommends for formulating a beer.  Like this passage about grain options:

Chucking in different grains is fully in the spirit of saison. Keep it intentional: Know what malted or unmalted grains are going to do to your flavor and body, and choose them based on the profile you want. Wheat and spelt can bring softness and nutty, lemony notes, for example. Rye tends to bring peppery notes along with a certain smoothness. Or keep it clean and bright—Saison Dupont, after all, is brewed with 100 percent pilsner malt. 

Know. Great word choice. Best line: “I’ve never had a saison that was more drinkable because of spices, but I’ve had many that would’ve been more drinkable without them.”

Top tier side interest from Katie Mather – Speedway!

I was delighted to find Shove it, Chuck it, Toss it… a blog about English pub games, a topic near to my heart and largely distant from my experience. Consider this detailed description of The Princess Royal in Taunton, Somerset including facts facts facts like this:

With social distancing rules in place for another couple of weeks at least, pubs of all sizes are having to be very careful and creative around the potential for crowding, particularly during large sporting events like the EUROs. Some of the more traditional West Country pubs are better equipped than most to deal with these issues thanks to their (currently mothballed) Skittle Alleys. The Princess Royal is one such pub, with a substantial Twin Skittle Alley/Function Room that’s currently being put to good use as an overspill to the main bar when things get a bit too busy.

Staying in Britain* I spotted this excellent observation on the state of cask ale from El Mudgeo:

You might well think that, if cask beer is struggling, there is already an organisation ideally placed to champion and promote it, and indeed incorporates it in its name. However, over the years, CAMRA’s objectives have multiplied and become more diffuse, and cask beer itself doesn’t seem to feature very high on its list of priorities. No doubt many members will say that Marston’s beers wouldn’t be much loss anyway, while happily sipping on a keg mango sour in the craft bar. It is a touch hypocritical to claim that you are campaigning for real ale while at the same time dismissing most of it as not really worth drinking.

Excellent continuation of the story of a walk from Max:

The place I wanted to go to was about 7 km away, but the walk promised to be mostly under the sun and I just couldn’t be arsed. Fortunately, there’ s a train leaving regularly from the town’s main station that would take me (almost) there in a few minutes – it was a no-brainer. But what to do with the time I would save? Pivoing, of course; I remembered Minipivovar Labuť still had a few beers I wanted to try.

Excellent continuation of the story of Charleston:

Mr. Sammy Backman has been a family friend since I was three years old. A significant part of my upbringing took place on James Island at Backman’s Seafood, a family-owned dock and seafood market that’s been around since the late 1950s. In my life, I’ve never referred to him as anything other than “Mr. Sammy.” “Back then, Black folks didn’t own any boats. It was hard for us to get loans,” Mr. Sammy says. “My mother once paid off a $100,000 loan, only to have the bank ask for collateral when she later asked for a $10,000 loan.”

Excellent story elaboration via Twitter from Dr. Christina Wade:

We also have an Old Babylonian text from Ur, which is basically one giant insult, which among phrases like ‘’You are the one who disappears from work” and ‘you raise an afflicted hand in order to eat food’.

The Tand wrote of “the Beer Police” which is nice if only because it reminds us that folk are getting back to normal and fretting over nothings:

It is funny how tables have turned, but didn’t CAMRA with its erstwhile disapproval of keg beer, used to get the same Beer Police allegations thrown at them? For the record CAMRA is all about choice with an emphasis on cask ale. In line with that, my drinking last Thursday, with its overwhelming predominance of cask, fully complied with this. “Take that Beer Police.” The Beer Police have also been having a pop at us Bass drinkers. Liking Bass is harmless, doesn’t mean approval of Molson Coors and there are bigger beery fish to fry, so lay off.

Speaking of Ron, he discovered that Canada was in fact part of the British Empire in both the spirit and letter of the law this week:

Have you spotted my current theme yet? Obviously, it’s Canada. Only joking. IPA…  Away from the topic of this post: Canadian IPA in the late 19th century. I’d forgotten that I had these. It was only when I started going through my analyses of IPAs that I spotted them. That’s the problem with having so much information. You can’t remember all of it. What strikes me is the similarity to domestic UK IPA. (Only because I was looking at those yesterday could I remember.). The Canadian versions average out a little stronger, by 3º in gravity and 0.34% ABV. While the rate of attenuation was a little lower, but still very high.  Still, a striking similarity between the two sets, despite being brewed 50 years apart.

And finally, more “BrewDog sucks” news at VinePair which is really getting so common is it even really news anymore?

Posts on the shareholders-only, company-run BrewDog EFP forum, reviewed by VinePair, suggest that the brewer has at times struggled to deliver on the perks it has promised its punks. A November 2020 thread has become a 2,000-posts-and-counting clearinghouse for equity punks’ grievances, ranging from long-delayed deliveries and reduced “lifetime” discounts, to poor communication from the company in which they’ve invested. “By the way still no EFP beer after waiting nearly 2 years,” posted a frustrated punk. “For a beer company that makes beer, wastes beer, pours away beer, makes more beer … is it really too much to send said beer to it’s [sic] shareholders as promised?”

Yes, it is too much. Because that was not the point of giving them money.

Contrary-wise to all the foregoing, have you noticed the over use and misuse of “nuance” in beer chit-chattery? It seems to be getting worse.  Tends to ultimately mean “my point is not being well made” as far as I can tell. In this moment, the second and third level writers** (none of which are mentioned above) seem to be jockeying*** a bit like the first level ones did not long after Michael Jackson died. That was more subtle. Folk suddenly added “top beer writer” to their web bios. Within days. “Top not dead beer writer” was more like it. Anyway – and as with “leading” – I think “nuance” is a marker of some sort. But what? Jockeying for the small cheques docile compliance offers? And how does it relate to finding yourself washing a coyote in your bathtub?**** I only mention it as I have to wade through the stuff each week.

That’s all for this week. For more, don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Unlike that trophy…
**The finest of the regularly wrong, much more so than that boogieman “the media“!
***It’s all a bit of a status v. merit struggle, like the 1790s tensions between the Washingtonians and the Jeffersonians. Whiggery depended on the mutual acceptance of status regardless of merit whereas libertarian might is right principle was all about the cacophony of the aggregate ends justifying the means. Whigs give us the small intense circle of praise seal mitten cartoons from Ackbar planet and the textual equivalent. Whigs praise each other as important. That makes them important, too. See? But who can really be trusted? None. Who is an expert? Nobody. In a small pond with too many fish for the available oxygen, things get rough. These aren’t those early days by that small lake at William’s Coopers Town.
****Other than, you know, the seeming requirement to be fundamentally wrong about obvious things.