British Columbia – A Good Beer Blog

The Sore Back Grimey Nails Bug Bit Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Not sure if this will end up being a very involved post this week. Vacation time. And this vacation this year comes with a bit of a to do list. Lots of little things getting done. Some small pieces of housework, a bit of slog in the garden and some wandering about locally. A minor league ballgame down in Syracuse NY yesterday, a new favourite restaurant in Pete’s Trattoria in our nearby Watertown and even threw a few Ithaca Flower Power in the grocery cart on the way home. A favourite for coming on 20 years. A couple of nights in Montreal coming up. All sounds good. Still… as the week progressed and I was having a lovely time noodling about, it became obvious that the good beer scene wasn’t keeping up – still so much neg around. What to do about that? Well… stay in the garden. Yup. And to that end I offer as an offset to all the unhappy news this blossom from a Purple Teepee bush bean that I was looking at Tuesday. Neato. I even made it clickable. They are like tiny orchids. Dandy. There you are. Fine. Let’s go. Enough of Mr. Sensitive.

First, Knut wrote a great piece about a beer fest being run as beer fest should be run, setting out ten reasons why Bryggerifestivalen i Trondheim works, things like the setting and the helpful volunteers who keep the event running smoothly. I think this is key:

The locals. A good mix of people. Young and old, town and country, beer tickers and something light, please. Family friendly during the day, which also means that everyone behaves. With 60.000 visitors over the three days, only a handful need to be escorted out.

Being broadly welcoming and well connected is always important. No one really cares about the terpenes. They just want to feel included and have a bit of fun. Speaking of which, The Beer Ladies Podcast will soon be back after summer vacation and they want to know what you want to know:

We’re (nearly) back! We’re planning out our next season this week, and would love to hear from you – any beer-y topics you want? Interview subjects? Haunted locations? And where do you prefer to find us?

Don’t all clammer about them interviewing me… I’m far too shy… and stuck with the doom and gloom label. (Not true. I’m a happy guy. People want happy. As they should.) Interesting observation about “where you prefer to find us” as in “where do folk find anything these days. Even Stan is unsure about where things are to be found.

Note: we actually love orderly lines in Canada. We also do not love patenting higher forms of life – unlike in the USA – but who the hell gets to patent a life form, as Stan explained in this month’s HopQueries, that one does not invent but merely stumbles upon in nature:

A “found hop” has found a name. … Sattler first found the hop in 2015 in Idaho’s St. Joe River Valley, an area he had often visited as a child. He later brought back rhizomes for testing that confirmed the hop is genetically unique, and the new variety is patent pending. Approval is expected in the fall. In the late 19th century, miners and loggers in that area were known to brew beer. Sattler thinks Elanie likely resulted from open cross-pollination of local wild hops with hops the miners and loggers brought with them.

Similarly. A question. What is a “social drinker”? Not sure the author of this piece knows – even after having quit the booze for a month:

I am a social drinker, and for most of my adult life I have always been the first person to order shots and often the last person to stumble home… After the hangover-free month, I won’t lie, I felt amazing. I felt like I had accomplished many things and I could remember every second. I didn’t spend any time in bed nor with my head down a toilet and I didn’t experience hangxiety. My relationship with alcohol has changed for the better and drinking to oblivion is no longer an option.

Un-bean-like. Definitely. As is this – you’ve all heard of the huge and horrible fires in Canada and elsewhere this summer. In British Columbia they threaten a region of Canada’s wine industry as reported at Jancis Robinson’s site by Arnica Rowan:

Two days ago, a forest fire took off on the parched slopes above the Niche vineyards. It tore across the hills, leaping from tree to tree, fuelled by tinder-dry brush and breathtaking winds. Joanna and James were at the winery preparing it for harvest when, at 4.30 pm, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable stopped at the gate and told them, their son and James’s parents, who live on the West Kelowna property, that it was time to leave. They locked the winery doors and drove down the hill and across the Okanagan Lake bridge to the younger couple’s house on the north side of Kelowna. As they fled, Joanna could see the flames snaking rapidly down towards the lake behind them.

Yikes. Very very not purple bean blossomish, that. Not good.

Speaking of doom and gloom, I am waiting for the argument that the main driver in craft brewing’s fall from grace isn’t the lack of value or the simmering bigotries that seem to pop out from every corner. No, it’ll be those large and listened to voices of the main news outlets stirring up troubles by proclaiming craft’s demise. How willl that ever attract the necessary newbies to keep the lights on? Who wants to jump on to that sinking ship? Consider this in The Guardian this week:

Brown, who is American, said craft brewers had been through a “brutal” period. “The craft beer bubble burst in the States in the late 90s, and the same thing is happening here now. “Everybody thought it was cool, everybody started doing it and then everyone was competing to have the next new big thing. And you overwhelm your own market so that even your most loyal customers can’t tell the difference between your key brands and your one-offs. In a bust, people go back to things they recognise. And we’re definitely in a bust.”

Me? I am thinking people are more and more recognizing gin as well as a nice white wine spritzer, frankly. Better for the pocket book. You know, would it hurt good beer to come up with a simple postive spin about beer and stick with it? Ditch the unattractive clubby complexity like they have in Trondheim and make it easy to like beer again. And I don’t think this observation is gonna help:

Just because invention feels slow in real time doesn’t mean it’s happening. This is the kind of thing you may not realize until you look back 10 years from now—“Oh, wow, we didn’t even have X style of beer in 2023!”

Wow? Really? What does the Pruple Teepee bean think of that? Let’s see:

The botanical species, Phaseolus vulgaris, was spread throughout South and Central America in ancient times and experts believed domestication occurred separately in South America and Mesoamerica sometime before 8000 BCE. The species was carried from the Americas to Europe through Christopher Columbus during his second voyage in 1493, and German physician Leonhart Fuchs drew the first official botanical drawing of Phaseolus vulgaris in Europe in 1542. After their introduction in the late 15th century, Phaseolus vulgaris spread throughout the Mediterranean, cultivated as a vegetable by the 17th century.

I had no idea. Tradition. That’s pretty cool. I just looked that up now. (Well, the “now” when I wrote this part of the post.) Fact: beans don’t need no damn innovation to be lovely and purple. Now, turning that line of argument a bit on its head, Jeff broke out the pilsners this week. Well, he may have had some to drink, too, but he tried to establish the state of the styles that use the word including Czech pilsner, German pils, North German pilsner, Italian pilsner, Alsatian/French pilsner and New Zealand pilsner as well as:

The pilsners mentioned above are either real styles or variants with enough substance most brewers recognize them. But out in the wild you might see a bunch of other stuff that they’re throwing against the wall: Polish pils, hoppy pils, Bavarian pils, imperial pils, Belgian pils, rye pils, etc. The existence of these random beers illustrates how much currency the “pilsner” name has achieved. Like IPA, it’s a category now, not a style—at least in the US.

I can easily live with all that. After all, how many beans varieties are there to plant? Many. Many many. Yet – still just beans. See, this is not a call for reducing the varieties of beer. Just improving the conceptual simplification. Perhaps relatedly, I was struck by this observation from one Phil under Boak and Bailey’s recent post about a perfect beer judging contest:

Ten or fifteen years ago one of the American craft beer sites/aggregators ran a “Best Beer In The World” poll; IIRC the top ten included eight imperial stouts from US breweries, including three different barrel-aged versions of one beer. Which I guess is the Jeanne Dielmann problem: your audience of experts/enthusiasts may be experts, but they’re also a social group with its own self-reinforcing preferences and prejudices. I suspect this problem is actually worse with enthusiasts than with experts, ironically – the Sight and Sound 100 isn’t all Jeanne Dielmanns, after all – so if you’re going to open something up to the public, make sure you open it right up.

Is adding “the public” to the pool going to be beneficial or not? Dunno… given the largely amateur clubby enthusiast nature of beer judging. (One is never sure who the others, those self-declared over complicating if not fibby “experts” are.) Let’s be honest. First, the judges are drawn from a pool of traveling keeners with time on their hands. Then the keeners are part of the activily reinforcing homogenous self-affirming culture that sets the norms and expectations. And the norms include the ever expanding the style categories and standards within those categories chasing that “wow!”… the tail of novelty. Then, of course, the problem of self-nomination of candidates for the judges’ consideration.* And what are the rules? Is it individual ranking with these awards or are panels used like at those awards – and is there silent averaging or cross table persuasion? Does the majority rule or is there a weighting formula? Finally, add the booze and the same faces’ boozy bonding. You might as well be handing round the hymnals and tamborines. As a participatory hobby, no prob. No one loses an eye. Fun tasting panels for casual comment? Sure, fill your boots. It’s a lot like achieving personal bean growing bliss. But as a method of establishing the definitive best and awarding glory while explaining the value of good beer to the broader community? Err… not so much…

Speaking of complain, complain, complain… James May, the somewhat annoying car show lad who acted as the foil for Clark on a very good wine show, was in The Times this week saying it is time for a pub purge… and he owns one:

I look at the past and I know it was awful. I know if we could be teleported back to the 1980s it would seem filthy and horrible and backward. Maybe the nostalgia thing is part of the pub’s problem. It needs to have a reality check — what does the pub mean in the modern world? — rather than desperately trying to preserve what we imagine is an institution. It isn’t. Britain is historically a bit oversubscribed with pubs. They used to function as a sort of home from home for a lot of people . . . and that role has largely disappeared. So there are probably too many pubs and, brutal though it is, there’s no harm in having a bit of a purge.”

Not sure where this fits into the bean-not-bean continuum. Hmm. Still, perhaps beer judging, cartoon guide writers and style huggers should be as honest or at least more brazen. Fight for your right! Make your case like James. If there is very little interest in actual traditional brewing and ye olde ways, why not stick it all in a corner, call it a museum and let folk get what they actually want – boozy fruit juice served in an IKEA showroom!

Where does that leave us all? Julie Rhodes argues this is all indicactive of what she describes as a mature market “characterized by market saturation, limited distribution channels, fierce competition for shelf space, a greater need for brand differentiation, and increased direct consumer communication”:

…as the craft beer landscape continues to evolve, brands can expect to see changes in the marketplace that are indicative of a fully mature market – crowded shelves, demand for calculated innovation, and the curation of increased brand loyalty. And these changes will be felt at all levels of the 3-tier system. “Own Premise” consumption is actually rising, so the taproom business is looking pretty good at the moment, which should be great news to owners and operators considering the profit margins are healthier than in the wholesale channel. On the flip side, the squeeze in the wholesale channel will continue as brands can expect to see national chains consolidate their craft beer sections due to declining velocity metrics.

Maybe. This article sees a similar scene in India where taproom sales expand as sales off the shelf drop. Interesting. And perhaps that might be as optimistic as we can hope for at the moment. Not yet in decline. Something like myself. A sort of stability in the face of change.

Finally, we also have this story out of India… as if they heard Stan‘s call for an update earlier this very week week:

On Tuesday, the Villagers living near Shilipada cashew forest in Keonjhar district were in for a surprising sight when they went inside the woodland to prepare ‘mahua’, a traditional country liquor. Instead, they found a total of 24 jumbos, apparently drunk, sleeping near the place where mahua flowers were kept in water in large pots for fermentation. “We went into the jungle at around 6 am to prepare mahua and found that all the pots were broken and the fermented water is missing. We also found that the elephants were sleeping. They consumed the fermented water and got drunk,” Naria Sethi, a villager, told PTI.

Excellent. Sleep on, Jumbos. 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. Waiting for a BlueSky invite but having IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a dormant Patreaon I am not sure why I would add another. So many created to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any 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 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!

*But how else to earn the entry fees that pay for the judges’ buffet?

The Last Lingering Beery News Notes For July 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broad-eared certainly sounds like Battledore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End Of November’s Thursday Beery News Notes

I won’t miss getting past November. The worst month in my year. Damp and dreary. I mourn the end of the garden, the shortening of the days. The death of parsley. While Katie may have pointed us to a more healthy approach to November, I know too well that just a month from now, nearing the end of December, we’ll start feeling the days just slightly lengthening even it the cold is deepening. I took Monday off as I am still due about three weeks away from the office this year and drove off looking for signs. Just after noon, I found one on that dirt road up there. On the south side of Bloomfield, Ontario in Prince Edward County. It’s the last few hundred yards to the rolling idled farmer’s field across from Matron Fine Beer. I stocked the pantry with some jolly juice for Yule. Clever me.

Speaking of the hunt, Boak and Bailey may have found a small redoubt in the battle for more mild assisted by those behind the lyrically titled BADRAG:

Tasting notes on mild, like tasting notes on ordinary lager, can be a struggle, like trying to write poetry about council grit bins. Good mild is enjoyable and functional but, by its nature, unassuming, muted and mellow. Still, let’s have a go: dark sugars and prune juice, the body of bedtime cocoa, hints of Welsh-cake spice, and with just enough bite and dryness to make one pint follow naturally into the next.

I actually have to write bits of essays about council grit bins once in a while at work but never poems.

Never thought we would need a beer cooler for keeping beer cool when ice fishing out on a wintery lake in Saskatchewan frozen a foot thick but this is actually a clever idea. It keeps the beer from freezing.

The decade photo challenge as posted on behalf of IPA. I wonder if IPA will sue for defamation or whether the law’s recent dim view of chicken not being entirely chicken will deter such reckless? Speaking of the laws of Canada, drunk driving in Quebec now carries a new serious penalty:

Starting Monday, Quebec motorists convicted of drunk driving twice in 10 years will have to blow into a breathalyzer every time they start a car — for the rest of their lives. Their licence will be branded so any intercepting police officer will know to inspect the driver’s ignition for an interlock device — a piece of equipment that prevents the car from starting if the driver’s estimated blood alcohol concentration is above the legal limit.

To my east across the ocean, Mr Protz alerted us all to the closing of a pub that has been in place for about 750 years, the Cock Inn “situated on an upward slope on the north side of a tributary of the river Sence” as reported in the Leicester Mercury:

One of the oldest inns in England built in about 1250 AD, it witnessed the preparation and aftermath of the Battle of Bosworth Field and the death of Richard III and the start of the Tudor reign. The notorious highwayman Dick Turpin would return here after working the Watling Street, taking refuge in the bar chimney, stabling his horse in the cellar when pursuit was close at hand.

Interesting to note the nature of its feared fate: “…hope it will reopen and not become a house, as many village pubs do.” Still on the pubs, Retired Martyn has ticked all the GBG 2020 pubs in Glasgow but on the way made something of an admission about a distraction:

Yes, by the Tim Horton Christmas Spiced Caramel Brownie and a medium filter. I read that “nearly eight out of 10 cups* of coffee sold across Canada are served at Tim Hortons restaurants and more than 5.3 million Canadians – approximately 15 percent of the population – visit the café daily“, and Canadians are never wrong. Most of them.

Who knew? And he visited Greenock, the paternal ancestral seat, too. Great photo essays as always. The Pub Curmugeon prefers to work similar themes in text.

I was confused by a thread about CAMRA discount cards this week, accused of being out of date, faithless to the true cause and a money grab… but then there seems to be no way to replace them in terms of the good they do. It stated with this:

I’m a CAMRA member & I work in a brewery. CAMRA needs to address the corrosive paradox of claiming that real ale is ‘the pinnacle of the brewers art’ while promoting discount schemes for cask beer. So I’ve drafted an AGM motion & explanation.

Discount? Doesn’t that mean well priced? Speaking of which, is beer about to get cheaper in Sweden?

Sweden’s state-run alcohol monopoly chain Systembolaget is planning to cut the costs of its cheapest beer from next year. The cheapest beer sold at Systembolaget today costs 8.40 kronor ($0.87). But next year it plans to launch two new kinds of canned beer for less than 6.90 kronor… the plans, which are meant to compete with border trade, that is Swedes travelling across the border to Denmark and Germany to stock up on crates of cheap beer.

The wonders of scale. Big entities can do great things, can’t they. Just consider this story on beer and the environment:

Anheuser-Busch, in partnership with Nikola Motor Company and BYD Motors, completed their first ever ‘Zero-Emission Beer Delivery’ in the company’s hometown of St. Louis — utilizing both companies’ innovative fleet technology to deliver beer from the local Anheuser-Busch brewery to the Enterprise Center using only zero-emission trucks.

Imagine! Using the word “innovation” and not referring to copycat alcopop IPAs!

Finally, I am not sure I want legalized beer corkage opportunities. Just another argument I don’t need. Go out where you want and spend the money at the place. Don’t bring your own cutlery either.

There. A quieter week in these parts. But a busy one at work so there you go. Busier still soon enough, too, what with the last month of the decade comes the inevitable “best off” lists. I myself sorta did one at the end of 2009, at least painting a picture of where things stood. I’ll have to think about what I’d say ten years on… other than wondering where the time went. Where did it went…

In the meantime, there’s more news at Boak and Bailey’s on Saturday, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And look for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too.

Your Quieter Mid-September Thursday Beer News Update

Quieter? Why yes,says I. Quieter. We have begun the long slide and climb towards the Vernal equinox, the true beginning of the year. By which time my carrots for 2020 should be up. I have yet to pick a carrot. Not one. Before you pick a carrot you have dreams that they are all sweet as candy and the size of baseball bats. Like the feeling you have the day before the lottery is drawn, the anticipation felt walking to a first date. You can eat those little green young stems, you know. You can’t eat a lotto ticket.

So what is going on? First off, Martyn posted another great essay – this time on a small Greek craft brewery which opened in the town where he has been holidaying for years… oops… and now it seems it is gone. Did I see only a draft? It was titled “How Heineken Tried To Bully A New Small Greek Brewer And Failed” and it was wonderful. I know it was named that because I saved the URL in an email to myself. Some of his best stuff. I hope he didn’t get bullied and it did not fail. Please check in, Martyn.

Speaking of locals explaining the local experience rather than the fly-by experts from away who seem to get most everything wrong, Ben Keene* has written a lovely detailed piece about the breweries to be found along the Hudson River Valley train line:

Between the cities of Yonkers and Poughkeepsie (the terminus), no less than a dozen breweries can be found in the small towns dotting this historic river valley, almost all of them a fairly short walk from the corresponding Metro North railroad station. So whether it’s one more hurrah to cap off summer travel, or a trip meant to dovetail with the Hudson Valley’s colorful peak fall foliage, here’s your guide to breweries near the Metro North train line from Westchester to Dutchess County.

As an Upper Hudson Valley Beer and brewery man myself, I find the idea of doddling along the rails for days by the more southerly river shorelines very compelling.

The inclusivity anti-bigotry hashtag #IAmCraftBeer has reached every continent now. Sweet.

I liked this brief photo essay entitled Why Oh Why Do We Cellar / Horde Beer. Time To End This. Sorry, I Have Been Stupid. No More. I only have a few bottles left that I stuck away years ago and they give more pain than pleasure. Weren’t we all silly? Jeff Scott aka @beergeek might agree, I think, as he finds finds cleaning out his hoard, too.

Is 2013 the year the original hyped breweries of the American craft beer scene were opening? No.

As mentioned in the 29 March 2018 edition of these Thursday notes, some questions as to the actual history of lambics have been raised by Roel Mulder of the blog Lost Beers. Remember that next time someone suggests blogging is not a higher form than, say, periodical publishing for pay… as Punch magazine has apparently now** taken notice of the question at whiplash speed and run an article on the situation:

…according to Mulder, that’s a flawed family tree. “Lambic certainly wasn’t the first of the family to surface,” he says, citing evidence that sweet faro, in fact, came before, with the earliest mention dating to 1721—more than 70 years before the arrival of lambic. Gueuze, meanwhile, a merger of young and old lambic, didn’t appear until the early part of the 19th century, while kriek came about at the century’s end. But perhaps the most firmly held belief in the legend of lambic is its adherence to the idea that the beer can only be produced within tight Belgian parameters, the regional microflora supposedly crucial to its creation. Yet Mulder has found lambic brewing records from the Netherlands dating as far back as 1820.

Someone help me out with this – just as soon as we locate Martyn. Do that first.

This is interesting. A new Molson Coors macro brewery is opening in British Columbia. I did like this quote from the firm:

“We’re constantly looking at innovation and introducing new products to the market, knowing that there’s interest in changing things up,” said Andrew Molson with Molson Coors.

Fascinating. But that much capacity, the capacity to produce more beer than the total amount of craft beer sold in the province in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, is an odd investment. A question. Consolidation is the logical answer with brewing but whose production is going to get rolled into this facility to justify the scale? Not folk in the province’s craft scene, that’s one thing that’s for sure. Odd.

In this week’s beer label lawsuit news, some knuckleheads out near the Pacific used the image and name of UK TV baker Mary Berry and then blurted the classic excuse:

“It was totally intended as an homage, but I get it, people gotta protect their image to the public,” Armistice cofounder Alex Zobel told SFGate. That sounds fairly conciliatory, but the brewery’s Instagram post is more pointed, stating in part: “Somebody’s agency has a very soggy bottom, indeed.” The brewery told SFGate it plans to rebrand the beer as Cease And Desist Berry (reminiscent of Lagunitas’ Undercover Shutdown Ale, if you ask me).

Boring. Boring idea in the first place. Boring style. Boring. Homage? Free advertising stunt more like it. Boring.

Finally, a note*** from the eldest brother:

Therefore one should not discuss geometry among people who are not geometricians, because they will not recognize an unsound argument. The same applies to all other sciences.”

Seems applicable. Right?

There. A bit quiet. That’s OK now and then. Now, off to think about that carrot patch for another week. In the meantime, Boak and Bailey will have more news on Saturday and Stan will be with us on Monday. The OCBG Podcast is ready most Tuesdays by the recess bell, too. Their review of TIFF and TBW are good listens this week. That’s a lot. Is there too much updating. What if someone comes out with a mid-week update by way of a Wednesday evening edition? I’ll be ruined… ruined!!!****

*Also author of Best Hikes Near New York City and Camping New York: A Comprehensive Guide to Public Tent and RV Campgrounds.
**In an article dated 10 September 2019 with the very odd statement “The Dutch historian had just published his 2017 book…” I am sure someone can explain.
***Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.12… as if you didn’t know…
****As if I get up at 4 am Thursdays and write all this!

The Mid-July Thursday Beer News You Need

Mid-July! It’s lovely. Warm. Tropical even. We are actually getting the edgy remnants of Hurricane Barry into the Great Lakes basis so it’s all a bit thick out there. Raspberries picked by my own sausage-like digits. And the fire flies are at their peak. I let the garden go a bit and they seem to love it. 100+ flashes a minute in one corner of the garden. Beer has its role, too. I even had one last night, mid-week. At a Denny’s.* A Bud Light. The weirdest thing was being handed a ice cold bottle and an ice cold glass. Entirely hit the spot. Mid-week, mid-month, mid-summer, mid-year, mid-aged.

What is going on? Well, Josh Noel, who admitted to needing something to wash out his mouth after writing about hard seltzer, has written a helpful article for the Chicago Tribune on dark lagers:

And that gets to the genius of dark lager. They’re beers that typically have a modest amount of alcohol — about 5 percent or so — but are long on aroma and taste. Flavors usually include a mild to deep roast character and can veer into chocolate, char or coffeelike terrain thanks to the roasted malt that gives the beer its dark hue. But unlike most of the porters and stouts they resemble, dark lagers tend to finish dry. The best dark lagers make for stealthily ideal summer beers: interesting layers of flavor, but refreshing. The color, which can range from deep amber to impenetrably black, winds up playing a visual trick.

We have an excellent local black lager, Blacklist from The Napanee Beer Company, so I am particularly grateful for this addition to the discussion.

Note: “bee boles were used before the development of modern hives to provide shelter to the skep…”

As we have been noticing over the last few weeks, beer writing and commentary seems to have divided into (i) “it is so dull and boring right now” for one reason or another** and (ii) HOLIDAY!!! So it was good to see some interesting travel being discussed by a couple of Brits abroad. Nate posted a top ten list of things to do in a city I have lived near – Gdansk, Poland – and gave ten top tips for visiting the old Hanseatic port including hitting up a museum about the Solidarity movement and this:

Shoot Some Guns – Maybe a controversial one, but I’d always wanted to shoot some guns since we can’t do it in the UK and I stumbled across a shooting range whilst doing some research. DSTeamStrzelnica was a great experience where we got to shoot four guns (A Glock 17, a revolver, AK-47 and another rifle) and it only cost us £18 each to shoot a full clip of each gun. It was a really fun experience!

Retired Martin has been in NYC and left us a photo essay with commentary:

How joyous to see a “Sorry, no samples” sign, by the way. 16 ounces (80% of a pint) is practically a sampler anyway. I reckon the Five Boroughs Hazy IPA served in a plastic glass will have cost me £8 by the time taxes and Lloyds Bank conversion charge are added on. Still cheaper than Port Street. “Tastes like Brew Dog” says Mrs RM. It tasted like Hazy Jane. On to the High Line, the one place in New York where you can avoid craft beer and tipping…

Saskatchewan’s Pile O’ Bones Brewing Co. is getting a bit of heat for its name – folk saying its disrespectful to the local indigenous community – but according to this Cree language place name resource site, the location of what is now Regina was called “oskana kâ-asastêki” which meant “where the bones are piled.”

Beervana had a interesting guest blog post this week written by Ben Parsons is the co-founder/brewer, along with Rik Hall, of Portland Oregon’s Baerlic Brewing which unpacked the benefits in the US for craft brewers to self distribute their beers:

I would posit that if and when a brewery business does get into some troubled water—albeit from market conditions, saturation, losing chain grocery, etc—not owning their own distribution rights could easily be the last nail in the coffin. And although distributors are a very necessary part of the industry, their foothold on this particular part of the conversation is risky business and needs modernization so that it better fits with the current state of the industry.

Folk chatting about early brewing methods is always interesting. Who knew that bands in the pottery meant the line to fill with boiling water before topping up with cold before adding in the mash was so obvious?

At the Corrigall Farm, Orkney, large tubs that have marked lines inside, usually about one third to a half way up. Custodian told us (years ago, hope I have the details right) that you put in boiling water to the mark, then top up with cold and it’s the correct temperature.

Pilsner as the anti-NEIPA? Maybe.

This is an interesting piece, a remembrance of 16 of B.C.’s now shut early micro- and even some more recent craft era breweries. And it contains this interesting bit of history:

Horseshoe Bay Brewery was the first microbrewery in Canada when it was opened in 1982 by John Mitchell and Frank Appleton to produce beer for the nearby Troller Pub and became Ground Zero for the craft beer revolution. Mitchell and Appleton soon moved on to Spinnakers, and Horseshoe Bay briefly closed in 1985 before reopening and produced beer well into the 1990s, before closing for good in 1999. The original brewhouse, made from converted dairy equipment, is still in use today at Crannog Ales in Sorrento.

Now, that would be a real Canadian beer nerd’s pilgrimage: “honey, I am off to see the original brewhouse, made from dairy equipment!” It’s halfway between Kamloops and Sicamous, if you are planning the trip yourself.

That’s it! Have a great week as Q2 turns into Q3. I will be lounging myself. Well, dapper by day then lounging through evening. Such is the life of the office worker. Check out the beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday and maybe on Monday we will have a sighting of the inter-continental Stan now that he is back from Brazil.

*You can mock me after you’ve tried the burger. I was surprised, too.
**hard seltzer, everyone’s already been bought out, even glitter beer is so last year…

Your Saturday Morning News Not From Boak And Bailey

Six thirty Ay Hem. That’s what you get when you go to bed early on a Friday. After having a nap around supper time. That’s how I think of myself on this sort of Saturday. Okocimiski.

Three elections in a row this week plus, you know, the life of a desk jockey did me in. The first election last Monday in my former tiny jurisdiction of PEI saw my old law school prof get in as Premier. The next on Tuesday in the western Canadian home of the conservative puritans saw a landslide by the socialist hoard. And in the Old Country Thursday the nationalist lefties beat out the unionist pinkos to send the aysmetrical quasi-federation into a dither. The combined effect of many split votes in the last one caused the astounding “great victory of no more votes” – quite an accomplishment. What’s this got to do with beer? Not that much. But I work in governance so am aware that some things do actually matter. What else has been going on?

=> Jim Koch is cashing in some of his shares. Note that his balance of equity seems to be worth around 63.4 million. Sure, it’s a small brewery. Sure it is.

=> In one post, Ron has explained the point of Asheville NC far more clearly than the output of 1,000 subsidized junkets. That he got there via a milk run back country bus was a deft bit of contextualization even if he had to sit on his luggage… no, his actual luggage.

=> It’s been three weeks since beer retailing in Ontario was reformed and absolutely not one thing has actually changed. Classic boondoggling. And no one is complaining. Classic Ontario. Perhaps by 2028 we’ll be allowed to hold our beer bottles with our left hands in public. After all, what really matters is the posing. Like calling something “a game changer”, Toronto has a wee problem calling itself “world class” like the needy kid back in kindergarten who told you his uncle went to space. The phenomenon is described by the term world classy.

=> Go read BB. And then do it again. Where don’t their tentacles reach? It’s like they are becoming a vast industrial complex. [Thankfully, we can trust they did not write “here’s how to unearth the ‘ultimate’ session beer” in that header.] Note: their post on May Day celebrations at Padstow in North Cornwall is one of their best ever.

=> This is funny. In far western British Columbia:

The final report of the B.C. Liquor Policy Review recommends the government consider establishing a quality assurance program for craft beer and artisan-distilled spirits, similar to the VQA, or Vintners Quality Alliance, program — which currently guarantees wines are made in B.C., with 100 per cent B.C. ingredients.

Trouble is no one checked that “local” and “craft” in beer bear scant relationship to wine so… they are left with the same sort of fibs and platitudes we always see – which led to the refreshingly honest admission: “that’s kind of thrown a wrench into the ability to focus on what the next level would be.“

=> Just realized that if I started my own periodical I could name it “Al About Beer.” I would have to work on my ra-ra superlatives so maybe not.

=> Might I suggest unless one is extreeeeemely certain that a surprise beer and brunch pairing for Mother’s Day is only one thing: a quick route to the dog house. Don’t be stupid. Just because the love of your life puts up with your dependency / “hobby” it does not mean she likes it. Not at all.

Saturday. And maybe a stinking hot one as well. It was +25C¹ after deep into dusk last night. That means gardening. Letting more lettuce seed buried. Or drinks in the yard. Might get a bit Okocimiski. Jest Sobota Okocimiska? Może. Or I could just go get a growler. You have to remember that they sell lettuce at the grocery store in July, too, you know. Enjoy your Saturday. 7:45 am. People are starting to get up. Better make coffee.

¹ Disclosure: in Canada in spring there are a few days when you have to still make clear you are talking about +25C and not -25C.

‘Tis The Time Of The Canadian Goat

Is it just me or does the expression on Beau’s Hogan’s Goat bear a slight resemblance to the brewery’s co-founder Tim Beauchesne? A sample arrived a few days ago and, while I am pretty sure I have had the beer before, “spiced” beer of any sort is not something I hunt out. Same with weizenbocks like the sample of Burly Goat sent by British Columbia’s Granville Island Brewing. Yet, given how often I am wrong, I really should check in on my prejudices. Besides, Tim-Goat is giving me a mean death stare from that label. Better do something.

Hogan’s Goat pours a bright caramel under a slightly orange cream head. The almond malty aroma leans slightly to gingersnap. A very pleasant first foamy gulp: rich nutty malt with a late showing of herbal hops. Sweet with nods in the malt to apple, raisin and even old fashioned brandy butter sauce. What spicing there is gets neatly placed. The overall effect is a bit barley candy, a bit herbal lozenge and more than that in beer. You particularly notice the orange peel when you burp. At 6.9%, strong but not over the top. BAers have the love.

Burly Goat is a beer in the style of Aventinus and a respectable homage. It has that spiced weizen yeast in common with its mentor and displays how wheat, when stronger, starts to move from simply grassiness to something itself rustic and spiced in the way that rye is. It has that beefy gravel hue that would be a turn off in any other sort of beer. Green grass, marigold, pumpernickel, a bit of almond in a drying brew. Herbal leathery aromas. You could soak a pork shoulder in this very nicely. Just one rating by a happy BAer.

What did I learn? I was reminded that I like beers like this and that domestic craft can make them with verve. Or is it panache?