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The Final And Totally Mailed In Beery News Notes of August

I have a new hobby. Doin’ nuttin’. After last week’s chores, we took off and wandered a bit around Montreal on the weekend and said hello to Leonard. Crescent‘s bars were bustling last Saturday evening. And we hopped over to Syracuse NY last Wednesday for an afternoon AAA baseball game, a driveby glance into the Loop Grill and some serious American snacks shopping to bring back to Canada but otherwise this summer vacation has been mainly about nuttin’. There should be ads on the TV about staying home and doing nuttin’ like one of those for visiting the Gulf States or Arizona. Except it’s about the backyard. I could monetize that. Become a backyard doin’ nuttin’ influencer. Post TikToks about it. Have a Patreon site about it behind a subscribers only wall. Except that would be doing stuff. And not nuttin’. I am too into nuttin’ to be doin’ something about nuttin’.

What has been going on? First, Pellicle‘s Wednesday piece is about a fairly large diversified English farm operation that includes barley and brewing in its mix of production. It’s a farm with a focus on something more essential – thoughtful care of the soil:

There’s one question which is unanswered: what does this do to the flavour of the beer? Duncan takes a moment to answer, frowning as he thinks of the right word. “Nothing,” he says. He thinks some more, then shakes his head as if confirming the answer to himself. “Nothing. It’s not necessarily about that,” he says. “It’s the ethos that’s gone into building it so you can talk about having environmental benefit and food in the same sentence. That’s the point of it.”

Somewhat similarly in the sense of place, Jeff has written about a relatively secluded micro in eastern Oregon and draws a useful conclusion:

This is perhaps the greatest advantage of remote brewing. In cities, brewers are aware of what people are doing around them. It’s almost impossible not to be influenced, to borrow techniques or discover new ingredients. In Baker City, Tyler and his current head brewer Eli Dickenson can easily drop into their own groove. Their customers know what they do and expect them to do it—and they don’t spend a lot of time at other breweries getting distracted by the trend du jour.

On the opposite end of the reality v. non-reality scale, it was brought to my attention by @DrankyDranks that a fraud is about to be perpetrated on the drinks buying public:

Couple of new non-alc brands on the horizon. White Claw 0% “non-alcoholic premium seltzer,” comin’ in 4 “full-flavor” variants at 15 calories per can with “hydrating electrolytes”: black cherry cranberry, mango passion fruit, peach orange blossom and lime yuzu. Expected in Jan.

The double negative has been achieved! Speaking of the potentially unecessary, care of Beer Today we may have also reached peak data point – an observation I make given the uncertainty I have as to the necessity of this level of detail:

…trading improved in line with the temperatures last week. There was a particular surge in sales in midweek, with Tuesday (up 10%), Wednesday, which was boosted by England’s semi-final victory over Australia (up 17%), and Thursday (up 15%) all in double-digit growth. But trading was more modest on Friday (down 3%) and Saturday (up 4%) as rain moved back in. Warmer weather lifted the beer category, where sales rose 10% year on year. Wine (up 9%) and cider (up 1%) were also positive, but soft drinks (down 2%) and spirits (down 4%) were both negative.

Does the well informed publican check the weather forecast before placing orders for cask deliveries or setting prices? “Hmmm… rain’s coming Friday, need me a happy hours special…” Maybe. Having once created a 15,000 cell Excel table to track (among many things) hot dog sales and visiting team placement in the league’s standings over six or eight years I am sensitive to the possibilities of such things.

Speaking of stats, France is paying winemaker to destroy some of their stock to cope with this drop in some markets – blamed by the BBC on an increase in craft beer sales:

European Commission data for the year to June shows that wine consumption has fallen 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 15% in France, 22% in Germany and 34% in Portugal, while wine production across the bloc – the world’s biggest wine-making area – rose 4%.

Lisa Grimm is posting at Weird Beer Girl HQ and this week comes to the defence of what she calls a trad bar in Dublin, Piper’s Corner:

I’m aware I’m on slightly dangerous ground here, as there’s absolutely a place for the shows aimed at tourists (if they are willing to pay for a specific kind of experience that’s keeping musicians working, why not?), and also because folk music is never static – it’s always evolving, so there’s no one ‘right’ way to play or enjoy trad tunes. Now, this doesn’t mean visitors are not welcome – not at all – just that it seems to be a more organic experience (for lack of a better word – and this is largely based on word of mouth, since you know I’m asleep by then most of the time).

Last Friday, Boak and Bailey posted a review of the new book Cask – the real story of Britains unique beer Culture by Des de Moor which by all accounts is a very good and comprehensive read – if for no other reason (though there seem to be many) than Moore’s willingness to share various points of view:

Though clearly a passionate fan of cask ale, he isn’t an unquestioning cheerleader and points out that it doesn’t work well for every style. American-style IPAs and sour beers, he argues, rarely benefit from cask dispense. He comes right off the fence when it comes to the price of cask ale: “[If] cask beer is to have a sustainably healthy future, its average price will have to rise in comparison to the pub prices of other drinks… One argument for cheap cask is that it helps drive sufficient turnover to keep the product fresh, but that effect has surely reached its limits when price becomes a barrier to maintaining quality.” For balance, he quotes others who disagree, and who worry about cask ale becoming an expensive, niche product, rather than an everyday pleasure.

And Martyn has embarked on a journey about journeying, writing a series of pieces on the value of giving oneself over to the pre-planned pre-paid beer bus tour, all under the umbrella heading “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch!” So far we have parts one, two and three with more promised. It’s a bit mind melting in the pace, one which may tax even Ron, but he shares a number of observations like this on why one might want to subject oneself to this sort of exercise:

…one big advantage of joining a largeish group of people on a European beer trip is that when you get to, say, a place like Cantillon in Brussels, where the brewery tasting room/bar has a large range of aged 75cl bottled beers costing up to 70 euros a (literal) pop, sharing those rare beers you may never get the chance to drink again among half a dozen or more drinkers cuts the cost per head dramatically.

Good point. And another sort of good reminder this week from The Beer Nut: “Slagging off hazy IPA is easy (and fun!) but well-made beers like this do make it a little bit harder to do.”

Heavens, they do things on a certain scale in Kenya when it comes to allegedly skirting the licencing laws:

A Chuka court in Tharaka Nithi County has issued a warrant for the arrest of Simon Gitari for failure to honour court summons over the alleged operation of an unlicensed brewing industry. The millionaire brewer, popularly known as ‘Gitari Boss’, is the director of Hakim Commercial Agencies which owns the factory located in Ndiruni village in Chuka Sub-County. On Monday, a multi-agency team led by Tharaka Nithi County Police Commander Zacchaeus Ngeno raided the distillery and seized 250,000 litres of illegal liquor.

Also somewhat irregular in expectations, Gary wrote an interesting piece on the intersection between pubs and the pulpit in mid-1900s England this week including this example:

The padre Basil Jellicoe (1899-1935) descended from Anglo-Catholic churchment and naval figures, and was Oxford-educated. He had no apparent exposure to pubs as a youth, in fact was a teetotaller. His pub interest was of the old-school missionary-type, inspired by doctrine and the Bible. If church adherents were to be found he wanted to cultivate the ground, and would not let prevailing notions of propriety get in the way. He also wanted to improve social conditions in and related to the pub. He started to operate pubs so he could have full control to promote this goal – the Church was henceforth in the pub business.

Katie wrote about one way of responding to loss through ritual in her most recent edition of The Gulp, one of the few drinks “newsletters” still holding its own:

Despite the tragedies of the past months, spending time with friends is always a celebration, and I intend to treat it as such. My main contribution to the evening’s events will be the wine we drink during feasting and the extremely technical/spiritual practice of “burning shit”. I need to choose carefully. It should be wine that’s good enough to change our fortunes and lift us up. Wine good enough to offer to Hecate, wine good enough to stir our souls and clear our minds. It also needs to pair well with a vegan barbecue.

One of my favourite stunned concepts amongst right-wing US fear mongering is the use of “Canada-style” when used as the ultra “woke” by the “freedom” folk… as in this story’s headline:

President Joe Biden’s chief adviser on alcohol policy said his agency may issue new guidelines that limit Americans to just two drinks per week. Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), told the Daily Mail that he’s interested in tightening U.S. guidelines to match Canada’s alcohol recommendations, which say that both men and women should consider having only two drinks every week. Canada’s health department issued the recommendations this year under left-wing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Note: while publicly funded, the Canadian two-drinks standard is a recommendation of a private entity which is one part of a bigger and heavily leaning academic discourse amongst many of a variety of points of view, much also fueled in whole or part directly and indirectly by public funds. We also do not follow the Canada Food Guide all that closely if grocery store shelves are anything to go by. Note also: we live much longer.

Vinepair published an almost self-defeating piece on the role of celebrity and beer replete with branding consulting jargon which then veers off into a reality-based (perhaps even inadvertenly honest) view near the end:

Celebrity involvement will entice journalists to write about a brand once. But star wattage eventually dims as a selling point. “Someday we will not be new news anymore,” says Eight’s Campbell. Any fermented liquid must stand on its own merits, hitting that sweet spot of price point and pleasure. Convincing customers that they should shoehorn another beer into their crowded drinking calendar takes effort, a long play in a world that celebrates the fast windfall. “Even though you have somebody with a big mouthpiece, you still have to build a brand,” Campbell says. “There’s got to be a meaningful connection.”

And finally for Stan (and apparently on brand pachyderm-wise) we have the story of an elephant which did not get into the beer but still sussed out something else:

Placidly and professionally, the mammal sweeps the ground with its trunk several times before tossing up a nondescript black rucksack, trumpeting as it announces its discovery. Border police were already on the scene. The officers had arrived to escort the elephants out of a nearby village, reported China National Radio (CNR). Mindful of their primary duty, police waited till the elephants had made their safe exit before inspecting the elephant’s “gift”, reported CNR. The elephant did not disappoint.

There. A shorter post perhaps but my world is whole even if the news is a bit quieter this week. And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Got on BlueSky this week and added it to my IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a deservedly dormant Patreaon presence. I am multi! I am legion!! Yet totally sub. All in all, I still am preferring the voices on Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything) including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

The Thursday Beery News Notes That Are Closer to 2024 Than 2022

Nights are getting shorter. And baseball is getting into full swing now that the national holidays are behind us. Well, not Bastille Day but it seems every day is Bastille Day in France these days. No, it’s the cooler days now that we long for. Baseball and a beer. A time of romance. To your right, an image from the website formerly known as Twitter, a view of a 1960s or ’70s beer concession at the old Tigers Stadium in Detroit. 60 cents a beer. Anything you like as long as it is Stroh’s. Crush your damn cups. That’s what they are thinking: “he’s not gonna crush, is he…” “Nope, he ain’t.”

Speaking of bulk beer, we are about a year and a half from 2025 when the rules of buying beer in Ontario may change to give us something we have not had in over a century – beer in corner stores:

In the spring of 2023, the Ford government launched consultations on expanding sales to corner stores. Participants were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, so little is known about what is on the table. Dave Bryans, CEO of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, says he received an invitation to consult on the proposal. “We are inching if not moving faster towards an open market,” he told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday, noting that he has participated in multiple consultation processes over 13 years and signed numerous NDAs that prevent him from talking about the meetings themselves.

Excellent. Nothing gives confidence in things moving towards the public good like numerous non-disclosure agreements. Well, maybe the level of confidence one has in the dancing around, the avoiding saying anything like “decline” while not saying much else. (Hmm… those ladies up there? Straight talkers. Crush the damn cups.) Question: is an antipodiean decline really a rise? Nope. Perspective: other craft is suffering too… and yet some sorts are even making a comeback.

Conversely, there was a surprisingly good bit of information in an article by Jessica Mason in The Drinks Business on how craft brewers can actually cope in these troubled times. I say surprising because I first thought there was little chance that some sensible advice could be condensed into such a tight format but I think I might have been wrong:

One thing the beer experts had in common was their admittance that the situation was not easy and there still was not a one-size-fits-all piece of advice. That this was why their advice was so intricate and far-reaching to include all areas of the business. Burgess admitted: “I know it’s not a single piece of advice, but it’s a war on all sides to survive right now” and said “OST and a really good software system to control price are probably tops right now, but all the other points blend in to more than just a single point”. Sadler advised: “I would, personally, avoid trying out new styles without some serious consideration. Stick to the core beers that sell and sell well. Maintaining a positive cash flow, albeit small, is a big plus rather than being another ‘me too’ beer using the latest hop or technique.”

More good advice? Ron is right. Write and record.

Pellicle‘s feature this week is a profile by Phil Mellows of Bass pale ale which, thankfully, does not actually include the word “magic” despite the promo. The news is not necesarily all that good:

There is currently no Bass at all in the whole of East Anglia, and only one pub serving it in Sussex, Surrey and Kent—the Miners Arms in Sevenoaks. We know all this because someone keeps track of the pubs pouring it. In 2018 Ian Thurman, concerned the beer would disappear, gathered a willing group of Bass lovers to report sightings around the country. This crowdsourced research discovered that the number of pubs with Bass permanently on the pumps had fallen to a mere 350. A beer once drunk in thousands of pubs across the land was displaying all the symptoms of an endangered species.

It’s part of a big picture, as the UK’s Office for National Statistics explains:

The data, which was produced by price comparison firm Idealo, reveals there has been a 25% growth in the number of consumers buying beer in the off-trade from supermarkets and independent retailers. It shows that British drinkers bought some £4.1bn per year on beer to drink at home, which is up 25% on 2020 levels. Analysts from Idealo said the rising cost of living is “making people less willing to go out drinking, but more willing to treat themselves to a bottle of wine or beer during their weekly shop.” The news follows concern about the price of beer in the on-trade. A pint of lager in pubs and bars has risen by more than 50p within the space of a single year, according to ONS data.

But not apparently in Scotland. Who to believe? Well, I do find this believable:

“It’s clear that for most consumers, alcohol is still at the heart of a pub experience but today, many just want a bit less booze,” said Clarke. “That only 4% of moderating pub-goers choose a No-Low beer is not down to lack of product awareness – ads are everywhere – it’s because many drinkers don’t like how they taste.

UPDATE: fonio! fonio!! fonio!!!

In his weekly Monday update, Stan noted an interesting thing or two about the state of homebrewing which might… just might… see a glimmer of hope in these tough times:

The survey does not pretend to represent all homebrewers, but it makes you wonder how the hobby might find a wider audience. And about the crossroads Drew Beechum is referring to in the second link. “Homebrewing is at a crossroads right now. Involvement is declining, homebrew shops and clubs see less interest. Every neighborhood has a brewery or two. Why bother spending 4-8 precious weekend hours making beer that I can buy down the street in a minute?

Why bother? Maybe if you are seeing tough times coming. Me, I really homebrewed the most when I was in forced isolation in Prince Edward Island with sporadic efforts after I started up this thing you are reading over 20 years ago now. Back in those before times, when I was getting by in PEI, everyone I knew there was making something like that, beer or wine or something you traded for beer and wine. To save money – and there was a general ban there back in the day on cans or imports or anything a local political hack could not make a margin on. What would it take for a real comeback?

Speaking of margin, sometimes transparency isn’t always as clear as you might expect. The chart to the left was shared by Bordeaux producer Chateau Bauduc in an effort to explain that (in the UK as of August 1st) a £6.50 bottle of French wine in the UK has 40p worth of actual wine while a £20 has £7. VAT, margin, duty, shipping and packaging make up the other costs. But what is margin? Profit? Note that duty, shipping and packaging are all similar in terms of costs. The VAT rate is the same for each. The variable is return to agricultural and margin.

Hmm… Creole or Cajun?

Mudgie has revisited some startlingly bold assertions about relative values as relates to the pub trade:

If you’re someone who never much cared for pubs in the first place, you can’t really be criticised for staying away now. But if you have professed support for pubs in the past, and you are under 60 in reasonable general health, you really need to consider your position. While the death toll from the pandemic has been appalling and tragic, it has overwhelmingly affected the very old and those already in poor health. It has killed just 300 healthy people in the UK under the age of 60. The fatality rate has been 1 in 9,000 for under-65s, but 1 in 250 for over -65s. Now, when the rate of infection is greatly reduced, you are probably more likely to be killed crossing the road on your way to the pub than from contracting Covid-19 when you get there. To still stay away on the grounds that it is not safe represents a warped and exaggerated perception of risk.

Hmm: “…frightened to death by hysterical propaganda…” What is it about beer writers and public health? Hmm… I think there might be something missing in that analysis. Like this little puzzle about likeminded nations coming together:

According to data from 2021, Hungarian beers are mainly destined for EU Member States (80.46 percent), but the growing trade with East Asian countries is noteworthy. In 2014, China accounted for only 0.71 percent of Hungary’s beer exports, but by 2021, 10.6 percent of beer exports were destined for the Asian country.

Hmm… Speaking of hmm… Beth Demmon wrote a good article for Food & Wine about something that isn’t really either – the Trappist beer business in these times of haze and fruit sauces:

Staunton is optimistic about an ongoing future, even as consumer tastes evolve from the “big Belgian beer” mania of the ‘90s to today’s “drink as fresh as possible” movement. “When someone is told over and over by their local brewers to drink beer that day, and then they find something with a five year shelf life, like Orval, they might look at it cross-eyed,” he laughs. “The whole industry has to do a better job of education and bringing this to the new drinker. If you’re 21 years old and somebody throws an Orval at you, you’re not going to know what to do with it!”

And Beth also published another portrait under her Prohibitchin’ series too, a portrait this month of Arizona brewer Ayla Kapahi:

“It’s silly to say, but it took me a year of working in our production facility when suddenly I looked around, and I’m thinking ‘I see women doing everything. There’s a woman working in our lab, brewing our beer, doing the kegging… wait a second… I don’t think this is common!’” She laughs at the memory now, but says it took some time to figure out how to balance a desire to promote their setup as an achievable goal for others against seeming performative.

And The Beer Nut went to Snalbins… to Snalbins he did go… but on the way out the door, not a lasting linging lovely leisurely…

Maybe it’s because I had been drinking it on a warm day, and perhaps the can hadn’t been chilled down to the requisite temperature, but it all felt a bit soupy to me, being neither cleanly refreshing nor full and rounded. I wasn’t impressed. And the reason I picked it is because I’ve heard it scored very highly in a recent, but as-yet unpublicised, blind-tasted assessment. The opposition mustn’t have been up to much. And so to the airport. Thunderstorms across Europe were disrupting flight patterns, and London Luton was full of harried people with nowhere to go. The Big Smoke Brewery has a concession bar here, one which had run out of ice and several of the beers but was bravely muddling through with two very capable teenagers at the helm.

That’s it! Not much going on this week really. And where it’s going on it’s beer writers interviewing beer writing pals poaching and parroting the work of others, playing job title bingo… craft beer expert… industry analyist. No need of that. It’s now back to you all as always. Talk amongst yourselves. Write something. Something for me to read and cut and paste. And also as per, you can check out the many ways to connect including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog and also including these voices on Mastodon, the newer ones noted in bold:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!*

*And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

Your Beery News Notes For Another Week Filled With Frosty Risks

Here we are. Mid-May and… the tomatoes have had to been covered and stuck in the shed for two nights. It was +0.7C Wednesday at 6 am and -1.0C on Thursday at about the same time. Lordy. BTW, I’ve hit 60 (as I have mentioned a number of times) so I plan to say “Lordy” more. Martin, who I suspect also says “Lordy” a lot, thumbed his nose to the fear of frost and spent some time at the seaside. Withernsea, to be exact. He spotted the same thing in real life that I did in his photos: “… the pub a minor joy with comfortable seating…” Now that I’m 60 I can say what I’ve known in my heart since I was a teen. Nothing like a comfy seat. Now, I know that this may not the sort of hard hitting beer journalism that you have come to expect hereabouts but I say it is beer realism. Happy butt, happy lad.

First up and not as happy, Lew made an interesting observation this week in his column at The Full Pint:

Failure might be on the way, because cost inputs in brewing have gone up and up, and people don’t want to see more price increases in the cooler. How can they not, when I hear from brewers about double-digit increases in packaging prices (glass, cans, kegs), 50% jumps in energy costs, and (finally) increases in labor costs. That’s why prices go up…mostly. But prices also go up sometimes because everyone’s waiting for the big brands – either in sales, or reputation and cachet – to go first, and when they do, everyone rushes to follow. That’s not collusion, they didn’t conspire to do it, it’s more like a stampede. When one buffalo starts running, pretty quickly they’re all running, because no one wants to get left behind.

It’s true that there’s price input pressure but there’s also the reality of sluggish interest in beer. Because, you know, people can run in any number of directions – including to straight to pouring other drinks in their glass. How many breweries are comfortable with the prospect of cutting output and raising prices?

Speaking of which, I had my first natural wine last weekend. My notes: “Yeasty, orange pear juice fruit, dry with light bubble and green pepper end with a little white pepper. Watery Creamsicle with mineral herb?” Perhaps not a repeat buy for me but interesting enough as experience goes. I only mention that (and not anything else like the name of the wine) as I read a piece in a newsletter called Everyday Drinking about how unpleasant natural wine fans are and I don’t want anyone showing up on my door:

Almost immediately, our natural winemaker launched into a rant. First, about the winemaker we’d just visited. “What is biodynamic anyway?” he said. “They can just buy the biodynamic preparations online.” This rant wasn’t surprising. There is possibly no group of people on earth who talk more shit about one another—behind one another’s back—than natural winemakers do. Plus, the biodynamic winemaker had already told us he’d once partnered with this guy and they’d had a “philosophical” falling out.

Yikes. Yet… is it true? Pellicle steps up to the defence of the naturalistas with a day in the life of an Australian harvest:

It is one of the rainiest seasons you’ve ever seen or heard of, and winemakers are anxiously racing against the threat of mildew and rot—the two inevitable results of rain falling on grapevines. Not to mention the birds and the kangaroos, constant predators of your fruits who find their ways past fences and through the netting, so much do they enjoy sucking the juice out of the berries or nibbling entire bunches.

Not at all unpleasantly, Eoghan guided us to an article in The Brussles Times about, what, appropriation of Belgium’s national drink by adulterous hegemonistic US craft:

The competition had a total of 24 “Belgian-style” beer categories, for which US beers took home most of the prizes. Canadian brewers also got more medals than Belgian ones for “Belgian-style” beers, receiving four prizes. “It’s been said that Belgian beer is having some difficulties on the international scene due to a lack of innovation. I think we are proving the opposite with our Seefbier, a beer style that dates back to 16th century Antwerp,” said Johan Van Dyck, founder of the Antwerp Brewing Company.

See also. Interesting use of “innovation” up there which leads us to Ron who suggests it’s a misuse and mislabelling of what is really just change:

True innovation in brewing is far rarer. Things like the adoption of the hydrometer and thermometer. Baudelot coolers. Refrigeration. Pure yeast cultures. Mash filters. Continuous fermentation. (It may have been a total disaster, but it was truly new.) Stuff that really hadn’t been done before. And genuinely transformed brewing. Most of what’s called innovation today? Mere tinkering with ingredients. While change is inevitable, it’s rarely innovation.

Speaking of which, I was there until the flavoured barrel-aging. Why can’t we respect the fundamentals? Speaking of which, the archeological record could support a Journal of Archaaeological Brewing but no one seems to want to do it.

Jeff posted a few thoughts about “innovative” collaborations in the land of good beer, a concept which long ago morphed from brewers getting together to beer writers getting their names on beer bottle labels to anytihng imaginable to… to… perhaps the unimaginable:

I may be an outlier here, but as a rule of thumb, I personally would never green-light a collab with any packaged meats product. No doubt some drinkers will cotton to the idea of a meaty brew, but are their numbers sufficient to offset those who gag at the idea? Put another way, one way to consider the potential harms and benefits of a potential collab is to ask whether people will confuse it with an April Fools joke. If the answer is even a maybe, it’s probably a poor opportunity.

And Cass posted an excellent update on the state of brewing in Syracuse, NY over at A Quick Beer:

Syracuse has an up-and-coming beer scene with many new breweries in a city that’s easy to explore. We enjoyed just a taste of Syracuse’s thriving beer scene, including pioneer Middle Ages, modern breweries such as Talking Cursive, Meier’s Creek, Buried Acorn and Bullfinch, plus checking out Syracuse’s Tipp Hill neighborhood and Seneca Street and SingleCut in nearby Manlius.

What that? NO, that’s just the blurb. He posted a video! Cass also runs the excellent (and perhaps older than this here space) The Bar Towel Forum for all your beer chatting needs. Speaking of which, the Craft Beer Channel has hit a decade of beers by video.

Health question: why does the congratulations around someone saying they are doing so well and feeling much healthier off the booze require also praising the person for also not recommending anyone else try it? Taboo?

Only tangentially related, Stan was having to be pretty blunt this week. His round up was only about the botch of a conference put on by the Brewers Association that I touched on that week – a botch which left him in less than a positive mood:

Last month I wrote, “It’s not my goal to find less pleasant stories to balance the feel good ones, but some weeks that is pretty easy.” There were stories last week that you might label “feel good,” but by the time the week ended nothing felt very good.

The Beer Nut made a few interesting observations about the state of BrewDog’s beer as well as the big surprise in beer for 2023, the battle for stout supremacy:

he first beer to catch my attention was Black Heart. BrewDog has been marketing this heavily as a Guinness substitute, and just like with Ansbach & Hobday’s London Black last year, I wanted to put that to the test. Unlike London Black, however, this one does actually meet the brief. They’ve matched the strength of Draught Guinness in Britain where it’s 4.1% ABV. They’ve got the texture spot on, while the flavour is very dry and rather boring, presenting an equivalent amount of toast and roast but lacking the tangy sourness which is Draught Guinness’s only real nod to having character. Mission accomplished, I guess, though BrewDog normally makes much more interesting beers than this. I would like to try them side by side if I ever get the chance.

David Jesudason (he of the BBC article on his new book, released yesterday) had an interesting article in his Substack newsletter Episodes of My Pub Life and prefaced it with this interesting heads up:

This article should be paid content. In fact, like last week’s article, it was commissioned but I chose to withdraw it from the publication as they wanted to change it too much from the initial brief. There’s no bad feeling about this decision and sometimes you have to value a compelling story above financial concerns.

Have I mentioned that gatekeeping backseat driving editors take away as much as they add? Oh, yes… many times. Anyway, the story is about two British people who ran a pub in rural South Africa from 2003 to 2011 and all the racist bigotries they experienced. Like everything David touches (except for some editors) you will find another read that few others are sharing in the beer world.

Lastly, the structure of this piece by Will Hawkes on Copenhagen illustrates something I notice about beer writing – a familiar structure. First, I like to count paragraphs and this one comes in at a bit under 30 paragraphs with about the first two thirds revisiting known facts. Even if in this case the facts are about negative things. Not a lot of beer writing is about negative things so this is good. And this is for VinePair so that context is important. This is not craft beer bubble writing. The “story” is in the last nine paragraphs and really the final five. The fifth even starts with an introductory sentence: “On a sunny evening, it’s clear that Copenhagen is a beer town.” Then a reference to hygge (that Pete Brown told us all about way back when in his 2006 book Three Sheets to the Wind which I interviewed him about when he was speaking to me.*) And then the final happy hopeful.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!**

*Funny ha-ha only. Me kidding. Just a joke… with a citation of sorts… you know… for accuracy purposes…
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

A Warming And Growing Then Dashed Hopes Sort Of Beery News Notes

Ah, false spring. I have happily read Dan Malleck’s 2022 book Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition to stay warm this week. It neatly explains the period between the “your betters” of the Georgian status-based mercentile world and modern life, illustrating the rise of the new “your betters” of the regulating bureaucracy through the brief decades in the later 1800s of Canada’s laisse-faire capitalist “your betters”! Perhaps not surprisingly, there is less actual liquor in Dan’s book than in last week’s 2016 update of the bio of Lemmy, White Line Fever* but, to be clear, waaaay more policy debate set in late Victorian Ontario. Lemmy dropped the ball in that respect.

You know, the two books fill handy gaps and together would make for a very interesting compare and contrast sort of essay question given each in its own way is an exploration of autonomy in the modern state. I highly recommend each of them – especially as it’s reasonable to suggest that the lads on the cover of the Dan’s book would, but for the non-invention of a time machine, no doubt would have picked up a fond affection for Motörhead. Especially that lad to the right. I might have post a full review of the book but (i) it is not 2008-14 and not one does that anymore and (ii) Dan warned me off:

Enjoy. If you don’t, I don’t wanna know 🙂

Get both books. Do it! Note: UBC Press’s online shopping is particularly handy.

Speaking of the song stylings of Motörhead, this week’s piece in the Pellicle about hearing loss is something worth reading. I fried my ears on cheap RadioShack headphones and late 70s punk as a kid, leaving myself now with tinitus, lost accuity leading me to say “what?!?!” a lot as well as pain from a whole range of sounds now. I actually had to flee a pub this year when the Irish band struck up. Hot knives in the head. Anyway, it’s real and if you don’t believe me, think about what Emmie Harrison-West says about it:

…there’s no such thing as a ‘quiet pint’. I struggle if I sit at the bar, or next to barking dogs (which is torture, I tell you—being a lover of all four-legged friends), speakers, toilets, televisions, fruit machines, pool tables, and kitchens, as I have to strain to hear my friends, or ask them to repeat themselves. It’s as frustrating as it is exhausting. There’s only so many times I can say: “Sorry, what?” before I end up closing in on myself, smiling and nodding, becoming reserved, and making an excuse to leave.

There is a good descriptor for NA beer: a soft drink. I don’t care to write about them but others seem to need to include them in with, you know, actual drinks. Big in Germany, says Will Hawkes in VinePair:

It was introduced in 2018 after Reineke spent two years developing the beer. “All my brewer friends told me that it was a stupid idea, that nobody would want it in Germany,” he says. “But it’s getting more and more popular and I think it’ll be our No. 1 product within the next few years.”

Along a similar line of things not being what they suggest they are, are wet led pubs really taking off in the UK? The Mudge doubts it – and considers it in the context of his local where he has seen kitchen food service come and now go:

There was a serving hatch in the extension from which a variety of straightforward food was dispensed at lunchtimes. I remember having some tasty bacon barms there. But the general decline of pubgoing meant that it became nowhere near as busy as it once was… They introduced a much more ambitious and expensive pub food menu, but it never seemed to find many takers, and the general impression that the pub still gave of being a traditional boozer probably put diners off. In hindsight, it might have made more sense to make the extension a dedicated dining area with a brighter colour scheme and return the main bar service to the old side. So the food has now been dropped, and according to WhatPub it now only offers “pies and barmcakes”, which presumably need no kitchen preparation.

Similarly on the theme of what is is not what is said to be, The Tand Himself has taken his study of Sam Smith’s pub chain’s flaunted nanny alt-state rules… and found them utterly flouted in The Big City:

While it has never been officially confirmed, it is known that Humphrey’s son Sam is the supremo of all the Southern operations. Things are done differently there, and while recently in the North, innovations such as paying by phone and card have been accepted, it is true to say that no such restrictions have operated in London for quite some time.The reasons for this are pretty obvious when you look at the clientele. I think it’s fair to say that in the absence of paying by card or phone Mr. Smith would find insufficient customers willing to pay by cash, as payment by such is, in London, the exception rather than the rule. Also missing from most of the London pubs is the plethora of notices forbidding this, that or the other, though it is fair to say that the one prohibiting electronic devices is generally clear and present, but, particularly in the case of phones, is blatantly and wholly disregarded.

Heavens! Speaking of which, The Guardian reports that Trappist breweries are suffering from a definite lack of Trappists. As a Protestant I can only say, theologically-speaking, it’s about time. But will we miss them when they are gone?

…uncertainties hover over the future of Trappist beer production in this traditionally Catholic country, where fewer people are drawn to a life of monastic contemplation. Those questions became more acute in January when Belgium’s Achel beer lost its Trappist status after being taken over by a private entrepreneur. The new owner has vowed to keep the recipe unchanged, but after the severing of ties with monks, Achel can no longer call itself a Trappist beer. “It must be admitted that the state of most monastic communities is precarious,” said Brother Benedikt, the abbot of Westmalle…

Furtherly similarly but from the wholey unholier point of view, will Boston Beer finally complete its BA Denied™ slow full rotation from micro to craft to something else to none of the above by selling itself off:

After riding high on the hard seltzer boom in the run up to the coronavirus, Boston and its shares fell from grace when it almost bet the ranch and lost on its Truly brand only to see demand hit the brakes leaving it to write off huge amounts of stock… Heineken is running its eye over Boston because the existing market positions of brands such as Truly and Twisted Tea could fill a strategic hole in the armoury of the world’s third largest brewer. While she does not believe a deal is imminent, she says such a move holds “strategic rationale for both parties.”

Does all this leave you less than… enthused? Does beer leave you feeling like Wojciech Weiss or even Walter Richard Sickert observed? Is there any doubt it’s been losing fans for very good reasons? Ron wants to know and even shares a confession:

I rarely join the chase foe a specific beer nowadays. Unless it’s something really special. And by special, I mean odd, forgotten and obscure styles. Not the latest trend. I can take or leave the newest type of IPA or adulterated Imperial Stout. My interest has now mostly shifted to history. Understanding how beer styles are formed and mutate as they spread out from their initial homelands. I put in as much time and effort as ever, Just in a different environment. No longer out in the field with my binoculars hoping to spot a rare bird to cross off my list. But at my computer, excavating the barrows of long-lost brews. Without enthusiasm, I wouldn’t be doing this work.

Ontario wine writer Michael Pinkus shared another sort of lack of enthusiasm in his monthly newsletters, the provincial monopoly’s moves to limit local drinks writers:

In 2019 the LCBO started to curate the wines that they were allowing journalists to taste. They were dictating to the local media what they should be covering. When I pressed the LCBO for an explanation nothing was provided. (Did money play a part?). And now, no local, independent journalist tastes any kind of extensive line-up of LCBO wines. So how do you really know what’s good and fits the Ontario palate? Today the LCBO saves even more money by “borrowing” notes from international journalists to sell the wines on their shelves; how does that benefit their ultimate consumer? Ontarians. What I find even more offensive is of late they use their own product consultants as “experts” to review wines.

Finally, some legal news. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this week in a case of the often seen situation of a drunk guy on an ATV bombing along a back road… with a twist:

… a non‑exhaustive definition does not necessarily oust other definitions. Depending on the context, exhaustive and non-exhaustive definitions can be read together. Under a harmonious reading of the two definitions of “driver”, for the purpose of s. 48(1), “driver” refers to a person who is driving, or has care or control of, a motor vehicle on a highway. A person who has care or control of a motor vehicle but who is no longer on a highway would not be a “driver” under the HTA. In the present case, Mr. McColman was not a “driver” for the purpose of s. 48(1) when he was stopped by the police. Even if it can be said that he had care or control of the ATV, he was not on a highway when the police effected the stop. Therefore, the police stop was unauthorized by s. 48(1) of the HTA.

See, the guy was stopped after he left the road and was on private property. Fortunately, the Court let the evidence in even though there was a violation of ATV guy’s rights holding that society’s interest in the truth-seeking function of the criminal trial process would be better served by admission of the evidence even though the police impacted Mr. McColman’s liberty interests when they the police questioned him in the course of an unlawful detention. Sucks, as they say, to suck.

There. Done. Enough. Finis. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

Anyone else? And check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes bits and bobs when he can… like this! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason every Friday. Once a month, WIll Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!**

*Though neither than compare to Ron’s notes from the road.
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

These Be The “February Goes Like A Bat Outta Hell” As Per Usual Beery News Notes

March. The most magical word in the dictionary. OK, pie is up there, too. But March. It’s coming soon. I even started spring cleaning by working on the old cold room built under the front steps of our 1964 bungalow. That’s a tidier view of it in 2007. When I stashed beers. Some pretty sweet bottles in there back then. Now I am 18 months into mainly gluten free intermittent fasting in part to recover from that hobby. And, spoliers, I shelve more wine than beer. So this week, I threw a bunch of +15 year old empty beer bottles that I kept from those days into the recycling blue box including a couple of these – only then to be woken at 3 am by someone rummaging through who (as I found out when I checked in the morning) took them all. He’s going to get a surprise when he’s told at the depot that he has a fine collection of utterly unreturnable US-bought craft and import niceties.

Beer? Beer! First up, here are a few brief headlines for your consideration:

- - Yikes: “…if there is any fetishisation of babies at the event, it will be immediately shut down…”!?! Or… maybe sooner.
  - Hmm… brand buy out or merger?
  - Ron says parti-gyling but I say gyling paritay!!
  - Mudgie sees a pattern of busy pubs.
  - Bill Gates has bought 3.76% of Heineken.
  - The Beer Ladies learn about the origins of the Brewseum.

Speaking of headlines, this one at the BBC is a bit of a neck twister: “Brewdog: UK craft beer giant expands into China”:

The joint venture with Budweiser China will see the Scottish firm’s Punk IPA and other beers brewed in China… In a statement, Brewdog founder James Watt described the Budweiser partnership as “transformational” and said it would bring the craft brewery to “every corner of the world’s biggest beer market”. Under the deal, Brewdog said it expects its beers would begin to be produced at Budweiser China’s Putian craft brewery, in the south-eastern province of Fujian, by the end of next month.

Where is the “craft” in “multinational with ambitious plans under geonicidal dictatorship”? Also… funny that craft nerds are more upset about the arrangements with Bud! There is so little left in that adjective. And the also not-craft of Molson (Coors) is also apparently on the move too, though much less dictatorially:

Molson has seen six straight quarters of net sales revenue growth, with expanding sales in the Americas and elsewhere around the world, resulting in global net revenue above the 2019 baseline. Importantly, Molson’s third-quarter trend for sales to retailers (STR) was the best it has seen in over a decade. The brewer also initiated historic price increases of 10% in the U.S., far above the usual 1% to 2% hikes, to offset the impact of its own rising costs. So while Molson ended up narrowing its full-year outlook to the lower end of its guidance as a result, it is still expecting the long-term trend to keep growing.

Perhaps reflecting the core market that helped start this sort of growth during the pandemic, this week on Boak & Bailey via Patreon, I enjoyed their fond recollection of the deeper days of Covid when adults drank in the park:

During the second and third national UK lockdowns, in the winter and spring of 2020/21, we noticed that one of these wharves became a kind of unofficial outdoor pub. A group of men would hang out there most afternoons and evenings drinking beer they’d bought from the CO-OP next door. Some of them looked as if they might be homeless, others were in hi-vis workwear and branded boiler suits. You’d walk by and hear them chatting, amiably, or laughing together. It sounded exactly like a pub, only outdoors, with birdsong in the background.

And over on his substack page called Episodes of my Pub Life, David Jesudason shared the story of the Red Lion pub in West Bromwich and in particular the complexities* behind four stained glass windows:

In Smethwick and West Brom it was obvious where the diaspora came from and what their mission was. Punjab. Here for a better life. Dalwinder Singh who runs another excellent desi pub, The Island Inn in West Brom, summed it up: “I came here and I couldn’t speak English.” Now look at him. His punters love him. His son runs a thriving pub in Walsall. The glass shows how India was being partitioned and this led to huge amounts of violence between different religions. The bloodshed was not something they left behind in India, though.

Good to see such a range of winners at the Deja Bru 2023 historic recreation homebrewing competition, including an Albany Ale winning a medal.

Pellicle ran a helpful story on an oddly little covered topic – a beerfest. In this case, it’s the Independent Manchester Beer Convention aka Indyman aka IMBC and particularly worthwhile attention is taken to explore the venue, the 117 year old Victoria Baths, with some great supporting photos of the architecture:

Some breweries have the privilege of their own exclusive space and in 2022 Victoria Baths’ Turkish Rest Room became Thornbridge Brewery’s ‘House of Jaipur’, with light evocatively streaming through the striking ‘Angel of Purity’ stained glass window. By contrast, Berkshire-based Siren brought an industrial chic feel to the dark and atmospheric boiler and filtration room, while Cheltenham’s DEYA Brewing brought bean bags and chilled vibes to their bar, all drenched in deep red light. Things seemed to naturally slow down a notch in Room 3.

But in Thailand a beer fest has been cancelled due to the politics of beer fests:

The inaugural Beer People Festival was looking for a new 3,000sqm space after The Street Ratchada shopping mall announced last night that it would no longer host the event because its reputation could be damaged. “The shopping center is concerned that it may cause the public to develop the misconception that the shopping center supports political parties and is not neutral, which may bring about protests or political rallies and may cause disturbance to others in the shopping center or may affect the image of the shopping center in the future,” it… canceled the event to reduce “the risk of political impact” and reserved the right not to be responsible for any of the event’s expenses.

More have entered the AI-verkleption sweepstates this week with Robin and Jordan sharing their fears for future beer writing. And Jeff has continued his anxtity AI week. I wouldn’t worry if I were them… maybe. Let me explain. Last week Jeff posted a discussion with the image to the right that he descibed this way:

It’s appropriately Hopperesque; the algorithm successfully captures the distant look on the man’s face the artist was famous for.

To my eye, it’s actually a bit shit. Has all the charm of the diagram on a pizza box. The sepia tones are all wrong for Hopper who usually used brighter if matted colours. Plus the man’s eyes don’t have a distant look. His eyes are sorta crossed. And the woman’s hands are mangled like they got caught in a hay bailer and were fixed by a doctor who only used spoons. Then there are three glasses of beer for two people, the extra yellowish one dangling in space as it sits half off the table. Robin and Jordan’s AI text tests have a similar disengagement. Too bland to be claptrap. Elsewhere we learn that it’s an excellent source of neat and tidy packets of falsehood. So it’s also a claptrap machine. All in all, I think we are safe… and these three writers are safe. Unless you don’t give a crap about the standards of your imagery and your text or your research. What if you’re a brewery that buys and sells in bulk? Yes, this stuff could put fourth-rate branding summer interns at jeopardy. It could serve as a first draft short cut to let smaller teams get through more bulk work I suppose. But isn’t this fretting about the sort of stuff you want to avoid anyway? By the way, versions of this have been in places like law and community newspapers for years. No one seems MIA from AI. Is it all a fad, this year’s Segway? Shades of Free Beer 1.0 from 2005? Maybe.

Speaking of which. Where are we on the state of actual beer writing? Boak and Bailey in their monthly newsletter stated very positively that:

It feels as if there’s plenty of beer blogging going on at the moment. We’ve been struggling to keep our Saturday morning round-ups to the usual six or seven links. That’s fantastic to see.

Matty C, conversely, also posted some very interesting thoughts this week, interesting in particular given his chosen path. I aggregate thusly:

I’ve woken up thinking about the heyday of beer blogging, and how what I loved most about it was how observational and selfless it was, and how it helped me learn about the nuances of beer culture around the U.K. I’m struggling to find writing to really get engaged with at the moment because—and I’m guilty of this in my own work—so much writing now seems to centre the writer and their experience. And this just isn’t that interesting to me. I miss the observation.

I sit a bit in the middle of those two poles but find, as usual, it is important to move away from the idea that “blogging” is a class of beer writing, especially in terms of quality. There is some horrendously shitty paid and published beer writing and also some excellent stuff shared by amateurs and/or semi-pros either on personal websites, sent via newsletter or recited (with or with 27 “umms”) in a podcast. For me, what is important are the substantive categories – and what I see at the moment are a few main themes in pub and beer writing with, of course, both overlaps and outliers: (i) industry writing, (ii) trade friendly writing, (iii) politico-socio justicio writing and (iv) innovative creative writing.** Is there a fifth category worth mentioning?

Now… it’s the last on the list that Matt may be missing most, the interesting individual observation. There are a number of voices still taking the time to do this but they are certainly fewer than a decade ago… or two for that matter. Where are the wags, the short stories, the haikus, the artistes? As we can see below in the lists, we’ve had another wave of quietening of many voices in 2019-20. It wasn’t really the pandemic so much, I would argue, a bit of boredom after years of craft brewery buyouts. Which may be the real point. There is only so much to write about in beer culture, only so many angles – especially when during a deepening market contraction… errr, sorry, maturation. Plus when you find that your chosen area of life like beer culture is not always or never really was a “community” but in fact a marketplace undermined by an alarming lack of social justice, well, one starts to look for other hobbies. After all, it is only beer. And stamps are, you know… stamps! And there’s sherry too.

That’s enough for today. Did I mention that you still need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. I take pictures of all the mosses that I see when out on walks – and people tell me how lovely they are! Really nice. Sure, you need to take the time and have some patience but regular posting attracts the audience. I particularly love how you can follow a hashtag there. So do go and see. I even small-i-fied my recommended starter list of links for you so as to be less daunting. Have a look:

Remember also to check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe soon from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes when when he can. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more?

And, yes, also gather ye all the podcasts and newsletters while ye may. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

I’ve reoganized to note the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

*Extremely complex it seems.
**Industrial writing, like say the UK’s Morning Advertiser, is really only meant for business folk and a few fawning fans eager to have new words in their mouths. About the newest gadget. Or hop price fluctuations. Presumably this is reasonably secure for the writers and important for business folk – even if dreadfully boring for everyone else. Trade friendly writing is driven by the writers who have fewer facts than industry writers but want to please a larger group of fawning fans. Clubby writing. Standard issue brewery owner bios, kitty kartoons and authorizative statements on national beer cultures based on chaperoned junkets, discount trips on long weekends backed by a handful of emails. It’s glossy and pretty and all a bit empty. It’s also too often uncritical puff. Even industry writing is somewhat critical. And social justice writing is clearly critical. At its best, it sits miles away from political parroting. It’s a rich area of exploration that now has been well examined and should continue to gather pace. But – whether it’s a history or one of the various calls to action – social justice writing needs and thankfully often receives a committed thoughtful hand on the keyboard keeping it both factual and compelling.

The Pensive Beery News Notes For That Dull Gap Between US Thanksgiving And Christmas

Are US holidays the most liquor laced of all? Not sure. But they sure are the most extended. I get the sense that nowadays* they just go on and on, one meeting the next at some sort of transition overlap. We seem to have all been in the HallowThanksChristEve zone for a while now and there are still weeks to go. Good thing I’m Canadian as we up here track time by following the sports calendar and the grain growing season cycles. Speaking of holidays, someone is not getting a bonus. Joe Stange shared an image of the aftermath of a disaster in Belgium. Look at that Westmalle, laughing at the Orval.

So what is going on out there? I liked this observation from The Beer Nut which could be applied to any number of things:

The best feature is the booze, delivering as it does a pleasant warming fuzziness, perfect for a miserable evening in mid-November. Overall, it’s fine, but not exactly high end, to my palate anyway.

And I came across a new mag worth checking out, Beer & Weed, out of area code 207 – aka the Great State of Maine aka the Canada of the USA. My favourite American second cousin in law Mike has an article in the December issue as does Carla Jean who offers some ideas for giving which go beyond the usual. Like taking a pal on a beer tour – or making an apple pie after soaking the apples in beer. I like that, a twist on mulled ale… or pastry stout. Think about that. Mmm…

Next – aside from my secret wondering whether it’s all an elaborate façade broadcast from a hidden Nordic mountain lair based on fantastic IT resources, access to private wealth and wicked sense of disruptive if extremely niche humour – Lars has once again produced an excellent thought provoking and well researched essay, this time pushing the history of hops back in northern Europe by more than a century or two, relying in large part on the unreliability of records:**

This, however, is the history you get from written documents, but hop usage began at a time when brewing was mostly something people did at home, for their own household, and almost none of what they did was ever recorded in writing. So we must expect that nearly all of the early history of hops has gone undocumented, and therefore we must turn to other sources of information to cast light on the early history of hops.

Personal note: this is exactly what my first beer experience in the late 70s were like. I’m a bit verklempt.***

I liked this very narrow study of Gary’s this week, a three piece article on something called Tipper Ale, a beer that relied on salt just as 1830s Albany Ale did. Except it wasn’t chucked into the barrel:

The key to the palate was use in brewing, or some use, of “brackish” water. The brewery was at a crossing, originally a drawbridge, over River Ouse near its mouth with the English Channel. Hence the seawater story is plausible, given location and typography. I cited various sources to this effect and there were others I didn’t, as all concur in result. One of the last sources, in 1941, was the most interesting I thought as it stated both regular and sea water was used.

One of my favourite discussions in the comments has to be the time back in 2008 when yeast scientists including a Dr Dunn and a Dr Sherlock took offense at being called “eggheads” and then embraced it. Well, the eggheads of yeast science were at it again this week with release of the news building on their work to explain… something:

It has been known for some time that S. pastorianus is a hybrid of two parents, one of which is S. cerevisiae (de Barros Lopes et al. 2002, Dunn and Sherlock 2008). However, the second parent, Saccharomyces eubayanus, was not isolated until 2011, from the Patagonian Andes in South America (Libkind et al. 2011)…. Regardless of when the hybridization(s) between S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus occurred, they are likely to have occurred in Europe, and possibly in Bavaria. It is, therefore, surprising that no European isolates of S. eubayanus have been described… Here, we describe the discovery of the first European isolates of S. eubayanus. They were isolated from a university campus in Dublin, Ireland.

Excellent. And hardly any Irish inside jokes followed at all.

Andy Crouch marked the passing in early December of a New England brewing original, his pal Ray McNeill of Brattleboro, Vermont whose cantankerous nature was summed up neatly:

Ray was also legendary for his dislike of homebrewers. During one extended rant, he told me, “I don’t care what anybody says, there’s a big difference between making beer a few times a year in your garage and reading thousands of pages of technical literature and then making thousands of beers. Beer is a weird thing. It doesn’t come with a scorecard. If you’re a golfer and you shoot 112, you know that you suck. But if you’re a homebrewer and you make a third-rate beer, you probably think it’s great. A lot of homebrewers think they’re a lot better than they really are.” With Ray, you just never knew what you were going to get. And the same could always be said for his beer. The beer at McNeill’s was legendary: it would either be among the best you’d ever tasted or the worst. Consistency was not something anyone expected from McNeill’s and that was oddly part of the place’s charm.

Beth Demmons issued another great edition of Prohibitchin’ with the focus on Amie Ward and her project to make drinking establishment safer places:

“We [employees behind the bar] are in a very unique position because we are everywhere all at the same time. We hear everything, we see everything, we’re touching tables… we are in a perfect position to become those bystanders that really help change that landscape.” With this eye-opening knowledge and experience, Amie realized many other people weren’t able to manage health, stress, or sharing the responsibility of community safety in the same ways she had been able to hone over the years. “I saw my peers not taking care of themselves [and] really developing poor habits that were not going to suit them for the long haul,” she says. “That’s how I came up with the idea for The Healthtender: melding those two worlds together of wellness and hospitality.”

Turning to the end times, I used to post various noodly noddlings under the heading “This Is How Craft Will Kill Itself” from time to time and, in these fading days, it’s interesting to see how some predictions came to pass and how other factors I couldn’t have imagined contributed to the fall. For example, lack of differentiation posing as critical differentiation is a fatal flaw, as illustrated by this article:

“It’s a pretty neat thing when you go to a place that has a lot of beer selection. You’ll notice a huge variety of beer labels, and it is something that craft beer people look to,” said Scot Yarnell, brewer and owner of the downtown Earnest Brew Works location at 25 S. St. Clair St., Toledo. “They want a unique beer, flavor wise, and they also want a beer that has a unique look to it.”

There’s of course nothing unique about the look of what’s on the beer shelves these days any more than the identi-craft beer in the cans. Fadism gave birth to herd mentality homogeneity. Like gaudy late 1990s web design, there is a certain sort of vomiting bubble gum machine tone to the confusingly cartoony look that signals the trade friendly “blinders on” approach is engaged. But how does this help encourage the consumer – especially when mixed in with the continuing trade narrative’s reliance on tales based on amnesia, flat out untruths and revisionist bullshit mixed with earnest finger wagging over supposed myths that serves the residual wisdom of haut craft culture?**** Even those seeking the solace of knowledge in an honest off-flavour course offers an affirmation in the negative, as Jordan was good enough to admit:

Framed the off flavour training for next week’s class as “Well, you’re never going to be able to turn that switch off, so next week I’m going to ruin fully a quarter of the beer you’ll ever drink….”

Downer. No wonder the value proposition has gone all a’wobbly now in the face of these broader harder times. And no wonder things are as down, as Pete Brown shared in The Times. It’s a good read… but I am not sure I can agree with the proposed treatment as it looks like more of the same:

Refocusing on the aspects of “craft” that big corporations will always struggle to replicate could be key. “Local, independent craft breweries do far more than just make great beer,” said Richard Naisby, acting chairman of the Society of Independent Brewers. “They embed themselves in local communities, create jobs, and add value to the local economies they call home.”

Maybe. Could be. If you get rid of the phony and the baloney – and the kiddie cartoon profiteering prophets – and I also suppose if these fine locals have each paid their suppliers and the folk losing their jobs. Might be nice if enough of them just found a way to make great beer at a good price, frankly. Time to start talking about recession proofing, brewers. That might take a bit of change.

Speaking of which, an interesting and somewhat related call to arms crossed my eye in the course of me legal readings this week:

The Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) has called on the federal government to provide “immediate financial relief” for the legal cannabis industry and end the “stigmatization” of legal cannabis that allegedly limits progress on the key public health aims of legalization… According to C3, while the current framework has been “a financial success” for governments and provincial monopoly distributors who apply mark-ups, it has also been “a bloodbath” for investors of all sizes within Health Canada’s licensed producers and processors framework.

Hmm… dunno. Pretty sure I don’t want my tax dollars saving the less than half decade bubble economy of the Canadian grass trade. Think about it. Could it maybe just be that both craft and dope have to face the fact that there is no market for every investor who believed in a dream of easy cash from selling swanky new forms of intoxicants in each and every neighourhood? Is that what they mean by they “add value to the local economies they call home“?

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

*Excellent usage, no?
**See from the archives “One Brewery and the Problem with Records” from 2015.
***h/t Cookie.
****Oxymoron.

The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks! Honestly… Why?

OK, I took the week off to burn off vacation days. No plan. Sure, I had a few things I could do on a list but I got through that list by about 11:15 am on Monday. Hmm… what to do… what to do… oh, the World Cup is on! I really didn’t plan as I have not been paying attention. Because it’s all so corrupt… that game I played from the elementary school yard until I was 44 or so a decade and a half ago. That the old man played for Greenock Academy, losing to Falkirk in 1946’s championship at Hampden Park. Less fabulously, there I am with my pal in 1986, just over half my life and just under half my body mass ago at the end of a game heading to the tav… I miss those socks. Anyway, so I watched some fitba this week sitting in the basement. Should I have gone to a pub to watch? Maybe. Might still. I love the idea of having a favourite seat for this sort of thing. I had one until twenty years ago in a tavern in my old stomping ground in PEI. I can think of another in Halifax NS maybe 40 years ago. Comfy corners where the shoulders can nestle in. Martin found one, too, the one up there at the Dog & Partridge:

Perhaps I just wanted to sit in my favourite Sheffield pub room.

What else happened this week? Well, first I am not sure why Budweiser thinks beer is something that can be donated as noted on to Johan Roux’s Mastodon feed (with the h/t):

#Budweiser will donate all of the #beer brewed for the #WorldCup to the winning country. It is also expected that the company will sue #FIFA because of a breach of contract – the sale of beer was banned a few days before the start of the championship. In total, Budweiser will donate tens of tons of beer worth 75 million euros.

And I listened to the Beer Ladies Podcast interview of John, The Beer Nut and I was struck by something. It was one of the best podcasts I had ever heard. Not because of John… or, rather, not due to John or… well, he does sort of giggle, doesn’t he. No, what I mean is that it was so well done technically. A second of dead air between comments was just allowed to be a silence. No one jumping on the other. Nothing forced. Lovely pace to the discussion.

AND… Ray of Boak and Bailey wrote one of the best Patreon essays I’ve read of theirs. A really good piece of writing about realizing his father was no longer at an age when a pub crawl was possible.

I didn’t drink myself until I was 20 which Dad found pretty weird, along with almost everything else about me, I suppose. We always got on but didn’t have much to talk about, or anything to do together other than watch telly. When I finally did start drinking, and got into beer, something clicked. Suddenly, he could take me to The Railwayman’s Club, The Commercial Inn or The Rebel’s Retreat in Bridgwater. There, he taught me to drink ‘properly’: “Blood hell, son – chat chat chat, chug chug chug, chat chat chat!” And when he came to visit me in London, I got to show him the pubs I’d found. (Where he’d often be able to wangle a lock-in.)

Fabulous – and also sad in that way that a rich life is aware of its own passing. My folks passed a decade ago and I can recall the creeping feeling leading up to their deaths of the slow loss of sharing, in my case including soccer games and a kitchen filled with cooking.

Speaking of excellent writing, it is the case that there are good writers who don’t necessarily have much to say. There are also those poorer writers who struggle along working out what are really more interesting ideas.¹ But it is a real treat when the good idea meets the skillful writer like they do in this week’s wonderful feature at Pellicle, David Jesudason’s lengthily titled “Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse“:

Oddly, desi pubs are usually very British in terms of decor; the Red Cow run by Bera Mahli since 2010 (who also worked in Birmid for a short time before he went into the pub trade) has two traditional lounge bars. They can also be reworked to look like an old-fashioned Indian club-style bar like in the Prince of Wales on West Bromwich high street. My 15-minute conversation with Steve at the Red Cow was deeply touching—we hugged—as he’s so passionate about making sure non-white fans are safe during the match, and is one of the many Sikhs who have ensured West Brom is home to one of the most diverse football crowds in the country.

It’s a story that has a lot of commonality with Ray’s thoughts when you thing about it. The only way I can describe the commonality between David’s piece, Ray’s thoughts and the Beer Ladies Podcast interview discussed above is a calmness in the moment. There are none of the burdens.² ³ ⁴ No, in this piece like all the best sort of writing there is also a person and a moment. The scene being seen. I’d be at this pub regularly… if it was in my town… and if Canada has the same sort of pub life… which it doesn’t.⁵ Le sigh.

Ghost of beer scenes past? Eoghan wrote this about an article on Belgian beer:

…I love the classics as much as the next person, and Belgian beer moves more slowly than other places, but there is a world of interesting beers beyond the Trappists and Saison Dupont – brewers/importers, where is your curiosity?

The article in Imbibe mag in part painted a picture of decline, the same one that could have been about brown ale and other darlings of the past shunted aside by craft’s obsession about what was big in, you know, the last six weeks:

Over the last half-decade, Belgian beer’s wattage has dimmed stateside. Saisons have struggled to find traction and comprehension. Local breweries and taprooms have proliferated, negating the need for beer imported from across the Atlantic. To that point, Anheuser-Busch InBev is now producing Stella Artois stateside, and Spencer Brewery, America’s only Trappist brewery, ceased operations in Massachusetts this year. According to a website statement, “The monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey have come to the sad conclusion that brewing is not a viable industry for us.”

What else is going on? Speaking of ghosts, Jenny P. posted a menu from a Q3 20C US steakhouse chain called Lums Restaurant and, well would you look at that, found a very interesting beer list. Click on that. Notice something? Not lager led. A balance of ales and lagers. The idea that post-WW2 beer in the US was all about the macro gak is one of the laziest tropes in American brewing history.⁶

Perhaps by way of contrast, Will Cleveland wrote a great story about a Montana beer co with one product – a light lager – both called Montucky Cold Snacks:

Zeitner said the banks laughed at them initially. “They were like, ‘We’re not going to give you a million dollars to compete against Budweiser or PBR. Are you crazy?” Of course, they are the only ones laughing now. That’s evidenced by some of the ridiculously kitschy and awesome Montucky Cold Snacks merchandise the brewery sells, including pool floats, dog toys, sunglasses, onesies, hats, and a wide variety of other stuff. The rejection caused Zeitner and Gregory to re-examine their plan. They realized that PBR doesn’t brew its own beer, helping them consider a similar, albeit much smaller, path.

Finally, Twitter death march update. Boak and Bailey spoke of their troubles with Le Twit in their November newsletter⁷ which is really also worth a read. This is just a sliver of their thoughts:

We even had a Twitter-fuelled stalking incident – a real low point, and a wake-up call. We started unfollowing, muting and blocking people more freely. Having a word with ourselves, we also learned not to respond to every narky Tweet. Just because people wanted to argue with us didn’t mean we had to play. And we reduced our usage of the site overall. For the past few years, we’ve rolled our eyes at people complaining about the “toxic” nature of “beer Twitter”. Like many things, it’s as good as the effort you put into it. Share the kind of things you want to see, resist the urge to contribute to the cycle of gloom, and it can be A Good Thing. But now, Twitter might be dying.

There’s a lot of good reason to leave right there. But I ain’t goin. No sir-ee. The other day the damn blue bird app was flickering on and off like a bad lightbulb. But I’m still here. If you are concerned and want other sources, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

¹ I used to have a book of letters of Alfred North Whitehead and took great comfort in one written to Bertrand Russell in which he praised the B student over those in the top of the class for being a source of far more interesting ideas, just put a bit poorly.
² The shouty “WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT”foolishness plumping up a dull PR piece. It never is.
³ Or the copycat drive-by bill-paying article, research done from a distance, often based on Twitter polls or email “interviews” of a sort: “I reached out to…” No doubt financially necessary and not always horrible if done well.
⁴ Or, the worst, that “mystery” stuff which is virtually a declaration that a beer writer has given up. Smacks of clairvoyants and spiritualists… “woooa… you need to speak with a beer consultant…” [insert unexpected creaky noise] “…only then will you understand… woooaha000…“
⁵ Because soccer and cooking! Being a perceived majoritarian but a first-gen freckled, identity is a thing. In work, friends and family I gravitate to these inclusive relationships and moments but it can also still get the awkward in return. I don’t care as much anymore. Alongside the homemade mince and tatties, the homemade curries of my Mississauga youth were legit even if they hopscotched (literally) from a great-granddad in 1890s India, through 1940s Britain and on to 1960s Canada when I showed up.
⁶ But it suits the generally accepted false craft origin story neatly.
⁷ OK, I follow B+B by blog, newsletter, Patreon, Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram even emails and once by Zoom. That’s weird. Weird that it has never struck me as too much or, you know, stalking on my part.

The Death Defying Mid-July 2022 Thursday Beery News Notes

That’s a bit of a bold claim. Death defying. But, having checked the stats, I am 98% sure that no one has died as a direct* result** of reading the weekly beery news notes. I also can confirm that no one has been harmed by reading Taste, the recent memoir by Stanley Tucci.*** It is mainly about his life with food. I finished reading it just yesterday. If you need any assistance in identifying what I am talking about, that is actually the book’s cover just there to the right. No, really. Taste about his life with food and people, too, and makes for good light reading except when life was not light when it is actually a bit better. Recommended – especially as he includes recipes. So it is a 87% memoir and 13% cookbook… or recipe book. Which is good. I thought when finishing it… I have never read a book about beer that is remotely similar. I wonder why.

Enough about me… and Stanley. First up, some history. Martyn has opened up a very interesting discussion on the question of medieval England and whether they actually didn’t drink the water – something I also doubt – by excellently questioning society’s capacity to replace it with ale:

The population of England in 1300 was approximately 4.25 million. If we leave out those too young to drink ale, that equals about 3.5m “adults”. The recommended liquid intake is 3.5 pints a day. So if they are only drinking ale, those adults are going to require a little under 560 million gallons of ale a year, minimum – and much of their time would be spent doing hard labour under a hot sun, when the requirement for liquid might be as high as ten pints a day…

Now, I am not going to get all linky and suggest that the initial conclusion drawn is incorrect (as I suspect it might be) but I would like to add a few assumptions into the mix which might also make it not entirely correct. While Martyn has quite rightly deducted kids from the calculation, I would suggest a few other points. First, there is no need to suppose that there was equal distribution between men and women, between rich and poor and between town and country. Male labourers in rich country estates may well have consumed more than their share. Second – and I think this is even a bit more important – access to more fermentables than statistically captured malted grains would have been common, especially in the countryside. Plus remember the wine trade. Third, I am not sure what is meant by “ale” in that it could be 1% or 10% alcohol. If it is too thin… what else makes up the necessary caloric load for life? That’s key. Water won’t do that. Fourth, Unger**** states that the requirement per person in the English Navy in 1535 (yes, 200 years later) was 4.6 litres a day. Was there an agricultural explosion during those two centuries that could support a change in diet? Fifth, our pal from 1378 Piers rated water the lowest of all drinks but did indicated that sloth was to be avoided or “ye shul eten barly breed and of the broke drynke…” I know that Martyn would agree that this sort of more granular review would be required to finalize the answer – but I do agree that there is no evidence that medieval people did not drink water to be found in the statistics that they drank a lot of ale.

Note: Cookie advises don’t get Humphed.

And I missed this last week, Lew Bryson on stouts and porters as used and then abused by the micro and craft beer movements in their turn:

Both types were throwbacks to much older Anglo-Irish beers, and as is often the case, the beers that were brewed in the 1980s were, by and large, guesses at what the older beers were like… [I]f porter and stout were the two sources of the river of dark beer that would grow to capture the palate of beer geeks and the Yummy Beer Drinkers (YBDs, that’s my name for the people who want diabeetus dessert in a glass)… Porter’s melody got drowned out. Despite slam-hopping it (“robust” porter), throwback-lagering it (Baltic porter), sweet-tweaking it (coconut and vanilla porter), and bomb-boosting it (the inevitable imperial porter), porter got smacked aside by imperial stout, and never recovered.

Speaking of porter, could this Goldthorpe whisky be associated with the long lost malting barley strain Battledore? Could my dream of a hordeum zeocritum porter come true?

Pellicle published a very interesting bit of reading about the first bottling by a small scale scavenging side project run by English film maker, Thomas Broadhead – Dimpsey Cider. It is written by Hannah Crosbie, who clearly identifies as a wine writer – which gives us passages that are less, you know, about the squishy chumminess of things than many a beer writers might jot on about … like in this:

“It’s a miracle it was actually a drinkable product,” Thomas admits. “We left those barrels until February, we finally tasted and were like, ‘oh, this is actually tasting quite good!’ Only then did I order the bottles and commission the artist for the label.” And so, Dimpsey’s first cuvée, Unprecedented Times, was born. Notes of caramel apples, citrus and smoke from the barrels envelop a vibrant pétillance. Around 470 bottles were made, and those that weren’t smashed by ParcelForce found their way to London’s aesthetic-led drink spots: Bar Crispin, Gipsy Hill Brewery and—the restaurant where I first came across it—Top Cuvée.

There’s a lot of good in there. The writer was attracted to the drink first as a consumer. And, while there is a bit of bio in the piece, it is not beating us over the head. I do also like that the question of balancing time for this side project is a topic that runs through the article. There are some deft touches in there, leaving the question of Broadhead’s life choices just hanging a bit. Will there even be a second batch?

Breaking: there are at least two approaches to handling information. Reminds me of that 1976 homebrewing club.

My spam filters snagged something called BeerBoard this week and I noticed it was enticing me to hand over my personal contact information to gain more on that fast breaking news that “Volume and Rate of Sale are down double digits, while Percentage of Taps Pouring also dipped.” Wow. I am shocked. Not really. These days of jostling bleggy blogs for the shy – aka newsletters – seeking (cap in hand) to let us know the same four things that all the other newsletters and social media links (and sometimes actual new outlets) are saying, well, they lead me to one conclusion. I don’t exactly need another newsletter to tell me there’s a downturn. We all know things are tanking when the BA uses the magic words “mixed bag“! The arse is out of it, as we say. Boak and Bailey picked up on the endsy timesy theme asked an interesting question this week about the UK public’s response to the uptick in pub prices during a time of general inflation:

In the context of supply chain issues, rampaging inflation and staff shortages, let alone the long-term structural problems caused by the pubco model, how much control do most really have over the price of a pint? That’s not to say, of course, that some people don’t do quite well running pubs. We find ourselves thinking of a businessman who owned several pubs in Cornwall and would turn up for inspection in a huge Range Rover with personalised plates, gold cufflinks flashing. It’s perhaps no wonder his customers got the impression that running a pub might be a nice earner and occasionally grumbled about the price of a pint.

My thought was not that it was about getting ripped off so much as customers voting with their reduced buying power to make sure this end met that other end. (This is not a club and I don’t really associate beer with self in the sense that it is an end needing meeting.) Plus I am still not ready to move back to the idea of hanging out in bars – not with, what, the seventh wave upon us? For this? These things are going to take a bit more than naïve possy cartooning and #LetsBeerPositive to get over. Or maybe it just goes the way of that weird but brief big band revival of the late 1990s. Remember that? Me neither. Again, no time to invest in craft beer folks.

In a happier time and place, Gary Gilman has let loose a social media blitz of his trip to France, tweeting up a storm while handing the keys to his blog to his better half – including this fabulous photo of a market fish stall in Calais. What manner of beast is that in the foreground? I am thinking monkfish but who knows. Well, the guy in the sweater with all the stripes does, I suppose.

Speaking of which,***** I am not sure I can fully, heartily, entirely… hesitantly… marginally… agree with Jeff in this particular application of what looks like the great white male theory:

Stone also helped convert Americans to hops (though they had a lot more company than they once admitted). It was, ironically, that strong association to hops that ultimately led to the awkward phase—though Stone also had quite a run as an established, successful brewery. When the haze displaced bitterness, Stone had a hard time adapting its brand.

I think one needs to include the words Berlin and Keystone in any eulogy of the Stone that was. For me, repeated poor business decisions might have been central to the… awkwardness of that business ending poorly. Plenty of good regional and national breweries followed other paths. Sometimes I wonder if that sort of quieter success is considered less interesting. Because…

Congratulations to Eoghan Walsh on the successful completion of his series “A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects” and the accompanying book launch, finishing up sorta where it began:

In December 2021, Brussels Beer Project publicly announced what was both the worst kept secret and the most unexpected recent development in Brussels beer: they had started brewing Lambic. They did so in a quintessentially Brussels Beer Project manner – by wheeling one of their coolships onto the Grand Place and parking within a couple of metres of the Brouwershuis, the centuries-long seat of brewing power in Brussels.

This whole project is a great illustration of the power of properly handled personal websites combined with a clever social media presence.

Finally: beer awards. Q: if this is the ultimate… which is the penultimate? And which is the antepenultimate? Shouldn’t this be clearer? One would want to know when and where one is wasting one’s time.

There. That’s enough. It must be! For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: ??? ) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*made you look.
**made you look again.
***I have now read 32 books in 2022 which is part of my personal productivity project for the year. Along with a number of things like being over ten months in to intermittent fasting which made the Tucci book a risk – but one worth taking. A fair few have been this sort of celebrity bio, some of which lean on happy times and avoids much of the bad times. Not something that I might have taken up before too often – though I highly recommend Alex Trebek’s if only for the news that he swore like a stevedore like any good northern Ontario lad should. Greg Allman, George Clinton, Stanley Tucci, Mel Brooks, Dave Grohl might serve as a handy scale against which one might measure these things. Allman being the most revealing of life’s grimmer side and Grohl the least. Note that Tucci is in the middle. But there is a gap to his left and a fair distance to Clinton. Clinton is only to the right of Allman because he seemed to cope better with many of the same demons – or perhaps just because he is still alive at 80 despite much whereas Allman ended his days at 69 in large part due to his addictions in youth.
****A History of Brewing in Holland 900-1900: Economy, Technology and the State by UBC professor Richard W. Unger, published in 2001 at page 88. He also shows at page 90 that per person consumption in the Netherlands from 1372 to 1500 averaged between 210 and 320 litres a year based on total population.
*****See? Fishy. Ha ha. Funny joke.

Your Mid-April 2022 Thursday Beery New Notes

And how’s the wax-flavoured chocolate hangover going? No tiny kids left around here so it has been a modest affair compared no doubt to others. Life moves forward. Still playing out the pandemic habits. The local news has not been great as the squiggly line up there shows. The sixth wave. Is it passing? Don’t know. So we are in the basement, now watching Moon Knight and, really, have no idea what is going on. Something about sand. Still, around here the snow this week only lasted hours. And the radish seed is in the ground and the raspberry canes are starting to show their first green as buds open. Things are happening. Yes, the clothes dryer even died but I actually found and immediately bought a replacement that will be delivered today or perhaps tomorrow. Our one small supply chain victory. Not like the dishwasher. We ordered it after the last one died. It’s been months. The some day one day dishwasher, in whole or in parts, is floating somewhere offshore deep in a ship’s hold. Floating out there upon Pacific Ocean waves.

Beer? You stopped by for beer news? Let me see. Where did I put that folder. Here it is… first stop is in legal land. Brendan P shared that the modest personalities behind Stone have filed court documents rejecting the jury award of 25% of the original claim, seeking another $168 million based on the very questionable claim that the Keystone…

…rebrand caused a fundamental change in the trajectory of Stone’s business from which it has not recovered today and will likely never recover.

Really? I just don’t believe it. It would be nice if there was a separate trial of these assertions, given Stone’s self-inflictions and failures to move to the next level what with debacles like the Berlin brewery and never quite earning that grade A level of consumer respect that others second wave brewers have achieved in the marketplace. It would be good to have these facets of their commercial history carefully reviewed by the courts to see what trends and trip ups were really to blame.

One thing is for sure. Out there is the really real world, it’s not been a great year for craft beer generally – even if, given the real news, one may want to put that in perspective. As CNN reported:

For many of the nation’s small and independent brewers, this year will prove to be a true test of their staying power. Early data for 2022 shows that brewery closures are on the rise and some sales have been spotty… The pandemic and its ongoing effects, as well as the war in Ukraine, continue to drag down smaller brewers, who are battling climbing costs, rising rents, and seemingly interminable supply chain challenges… “2022 is going to be a make-or-break year for many breweries…”

Now, while that may be true, it is always important to respect the chronology. Just as prohibition didn’t start the rationalization and reduction of players in the US brewery industry (a phenomenon started with the introduction of English modernization investments in the 1880-90s) so too we have to remember and respect that craft brewing was starting to slow prior to the pandemic. 20% by 2020 never happened and even the numbers that are reported are propped up vastly by the Boston Beer fib and the muddling it up with comparisons to things which just aren’t beer. What do you reckon actual small brewery actually traditionally brewed actual beer represents in the market these days? 2%? 3%?

What does this wobbly market perhaps produce? Well, perhaps complaints about the complaints about a price of a pint. And perhaps even complaints about questions about the authority of beer writing. Relatedly, while we all wallow in myth, I am not sure I am buying the complaint in 2010 that overpricing of Cantillon was due to reselling, especially given I was buying half bottles of their stuff in CNY for $7.50, $8.50 (pervy premium?) and even $9.00 USD around 2007-08 which was well above their cohort. Sure it was a prime example of being “shelted” but the brewery needs to take responsibility for part of their own no doubt quite profitable aggrandizement. Bottom line of all this? The training wheels have come off sometime ago and it’s shifted to a buyer’s market now. I* have choice and I know how to use it. Caveat braciator.

So be clever. Get the basics right. Pete Brown posted a very helpful guide to filling out a form – which may sound like a backhanded compliment but it’s not. Apparently the beer world is rife with folk who can’t manage to figure out how to submit the beer to the right category in the contest as well as folk who can’t figure out how to structure categories in the contest. Here’s his help:

One year, we had an entry that was all about a piece of experiential marketing at a beer event. It was an installation I’d visited personally, and when we came to discuss it, I waxed lyrical about how brilliant it had been, how original and immersive it was, how professionally it had been executed, describing all the little details that made it truly special. The rest of the judges looked at me blankly, and when I finished, one of them said gently, “Yes, Pete, but none of that is on the entry form.”

And do right. David Jesudason has written an excellent piece for Pellicle about the obstacles faced by the beer fan with mobility challenges:

These include being ignored when ordering, or having his personal assistant asked by the bartender what he wants to drink. Not being able to use disabled toilets as they’re being used as a store cupboard. Not being able to attend eating areas or events as they’re located in inaccessible rooms. Or travelling to London from Essex only to be told at a pub that it’s “too busy” for him to enter. And it’s not just the establishments that can ruin his drinking experience. Other drinkers ignore him when there’s no table free that’s at the right height (a high table is useless for someone in a wheelchair) and his personal assistants can be verbally abused if he appears to be drunk—or is drunk, it’s his preference, after all.

Back to the economy. It’s still nipping at our heels. How bad are things getting out there? One English news outlet has suggested the answer is “bad“:

One of the oldest British traditions is meeting your friends at the pub for a nice cold drink. But all this could change soon as news suggests that the cost of a pint of beer could soon set you back £7… BlackCountryLive readers have expressed their fears the price hike could see many beloved pubs disappear from our streets. Phil said: “No pub would survive that.” The sentiment was echoed by Mick who wrote: “Not bothered but it’s the pub owners I feel for.” Brenden added: “It will destroy the local pub.”

I don’t know about these sorts of forecasts. I just don’t believe them either. Hasn’t beer and beer culture survived through adaptation? There have been plenty of dead ends along the way, century after century. Not all brewing industry trends have been wise. Stone is proof enough of that playing out in the US craft scene. Remember Pete’s Wicked Ale? Why wouldn’t today be the same? Yet… notice that Heineken sales are up in Europe over 11% in 2022 “with beer sales in bars and restaurants almost tripling.” Nutty. Beer survives. Things will adapt, especially as long as there are these sorts of places to enjoy… even if not exactly for the reason advertised:

Bass mirrors, Bass glasses, a beer range centred on everything but Bass. A pint of Plain, or was it the Usual ? I don’t care, and with half a dozen blokes seated along the bar discussing Ted Deighton I couldn’t read any of the pump clips even if I did. How do people score beers on What Pub when they can’t read the pumps. I’m not complaining, not more than usual, I just want to see lively pubs full again. The Angel isn’t an obvious “ale pub”, most here were on lager, but at £3.30 a pint the cask sells well enough.

I’m not complaining either. Beer will go on. The dryer will come. I know it in my heart. But will the dishwasher? Will the dishwasher?

There. That’s enough for this week. For more, checking 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. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Speaking as the Global Every- person Beer Buyer as per.

Here We Are! February!! A New Month Of Beery News Notes!!!

Last week I was doom scrolling about the Ukraine. Earlier this week, it was about Ottawa.* Now it’s just about the blizzard. Today? Well, if my last name was “Event” I could have named a kid “Snow” and enlisted them in the army to remind me of today: Major Snow Event. Nasty stuff all over eastern North America. Good thing I have my internets to keep me warm. Just look at that up there. Bet that didn’t spend useless days blaring its horn to protest nothing and everything. Sweet. From Brewing Heritage, it’s a…

…handsome steam lorry was built in 1916 by Alley & MacLellen Ltd. of Glasgow, and first registered in February 1917.

Neato. Well, what is going on? Dry January is over. That’s something. The Times of London reported (probs paywalled) that…

A record number of Britons have given up meat, dairy and alcohol for January, with demand for vegan foods and non-alcoholic drinks rocketing over the month, according to data from Britain’s biggest supermarket.

An interesting story, actually. Virtue is in… for a few weeks at least. And the British of Britain** are buying things like “Nozeco Spumante, alcohol-free fizzy wine” (sales up over 200%) and “Gordons 0.0%, a no-alcohol gin”! Yikes. Alcohol-free gin sounds like gin-free gin to me. But I own a juniper tree so I can just suck on a few berries for free if I am desperate. Why pay 20 pounds a litre for flavoured water? Holy moly! NA brewers are missing out on a good payday.

Very conversely, this is great news as we walk away from another lockdown. I can now relive the glory of my beery life fifteen years ago and head to a new beer store in Syracuse, NY just two hours to my south:

The store occupies 9,500 square feet, split primarily into two large rooms. On Monday, Singh’s inventory list showed more than 14,000 “items,” such as 4-packs, 6-packs or cases. And there’s still unused space to fill… “They’re definitely making an effort to provide a wide selection,” Hagner posted recently to the Syracuse Craft Beer Enthusiasts Facebook page. “There’s lots of local stuff, some timely national releases (my first sighting of Hopslam), the biggest SN (Sierra Nevada) assortment I’ve seen. … Personally I was pleased with the import/German section as well as traditional stuff that’s often hard to find.”

Elsewhere, the old is also new again in London where Guinness is creating a new destination brewery with some very good timing:

Guinness sales in Great Britain have grown by over 30 per cent in the last six months and one in every 10 pints sold in London is now a Guinness. The new site, to be called Guinness at Old Brewer’s Yard, will include: A microbrewery producing limited edition beers and offering tours with Guinness beer specialists; event spaces and central covered courtyard; a Guinness store selling rare items, and a open-fire kitchen, restaurant and 360 degrees glass rooftop space.

I can’t link to every one of the excellent posts in Eoghan’s most excellent series A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects can I? I will, however, for this week’s story connecting Belgian colonial brewing in the Congo with the fight for freedom in the late 1950s:

Brasseries du Congo, or Bracongo, were known for the slender green bottles of their Polar brand. In September 1957 Bracongo hired a former postal worker recently-released from prison following an embezzlement conviction to help sell them. Patrice Lumumba not only grew Polar’s business in the capital, he also used his salesman skills and his client network to advocate for Congolese independence.

Look at this. We all suffer from the unending spam from the glassmakers of each and every nation. Here, however, we see the reality of fancy glassware according to The Times Of New York:

Most wine drinkers, admittedly, will neither want nor need such rarefied glasses. Many casual drinkers are happy these days to use inexpensive goblets or even stemless glasses, which I would not seek out, though I am happy enough on occasion to drink wine from a tumbler.

Speaking of which, Jancis on Boris… who is clearly a tumbler man:

For months, while millions of ordinary people were deprived of a convivial after-work drink with friends, the staff at 10 Downing Street partied on. It could seem, not least because of the late-night dashes to the supermarket, that the aim was chiefly to drink as much as possible. Connoisseurship appears to have played little part. I feel thoroughly ashamed of how this must look to the rest of the world. Downing Street behaviour looks like binge drinking.

Bingy Boris. A notch or two more sophisticated is Gary who noticed his modernist Montreal in 1950s promotional material created for the Dow brewery by Albert Edward Cloutier (1902-1965):

The use of pastels in commercial art was a trend internationally at the time, as, say, some European beer posters show, or those dreamy pink, blue and yellow posters advertising holidays on the Riviera. Cloutier rendered a Platonic picture of 1950s Montreal, one rather removed, as I suppose for any city, from the reality in street and district, whether rich, poor or otherwise for that matter. (We were entre les deux chaises). When I think back, it is his Montreal I will remember, family apart.

And Jim Koch thinks cider is a sort of beer. “Fluids I make profit from” appear to be beer to Jim Koch.

Finally, know your medieval English plowing practices. There’s a good explanation of how it worked – and still works in some localities in BBC’s 2010 series The Story of England. Also learn how Piers the Plowman was worth writing about in 1378 as he is the technical wiz of his day even if he shuns the “best brown ale” unlike those young whippersnappers.

That’s it for now. A quieter maybe saner week in beer land. 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 (… back this week!) 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 I hope is revived soon…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*“Organizer“!!!
**“Scottish“!!!