Burma – A Good Beer Blog

The Hardly Able To Sleep I’m So Excited Dontcha Know Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

It is getting close, isn’t it. Hopefully when this is posted, all the mail and all the parcels will have been sent. I have a list and on that list it says that will be done… so it will… right? Last week I shared a photo from the Xmas contests of a decade or so ago and, Lordy, the image above submitted by Jeff of Beervana back in 2012 passed by my Facebook memories on the weekend. Another great entry worth resharing – if only to ponder the question of whether the man on the little green vehicle spent his days saying “wheeee…. oh yeah… vrooooommmm!” quietly to himself.

Starting locally, sometime today we may learn more about the government of Ontario’s new plans for the booze marketplace. The CBC has posted some juicy rumours with perhaps a few twists on expectations:

… two sources said the government will require retailers to devote some portion of their shelf space to Ontario’s craft brewers and small-scale wineries, but had no specifics. The reforms will not alter the role or structure of the LCBO in the retail landscape, sources said. Some industry sources said The Beer Store will be well-placed to corner the potentially lucrative market for distributing beer to thousands of new locations in supermarkets, convenience store and gas stations because of the breadth of its existing distribution network.

Let’s be clear. I look forward to 2025, the year when any grocery stores, all corner stores and any gas stations which are willing will be able to step up and start selling those beers, wines, ciders and even that stuff we call “coolers” but marketeers refer to as “ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages, such as seltzers or premixed cocktails (collectively known as RTDs).” But I also fully expect this to be a mess like the cannabis marketplace of the last five years due largely to a retracting public interest with a lot of good intended investment dollars along with certain consumer hopes to go down the toilet, a lot of places just selling the marco gak and the concept of “craft” being further diluted… if that is even possible.

OK – festive question: does your drinks culture include insanely complex and repetitive Christmas parties? I’ve always thought the British over do these things and am not dissuaded from a guide like this to surviving them without compromise even with all the dangers – social, career or otherwise:

Even if you can hold your nog, there’s snogging — firmly back after the plague years — to consider. And then reconsider: 59 per cent of office romances end with a resignation. Beyond the work do, there’s double booking, guest lists and menu planning, dress codes and inquisitive v intrusive small talk to consider. Personally, I love a 4am finish, dissolve in the face of trying to deliver dinner to the table before 10pm, love flirting with strangers, hate awkward set-ups and loathe being asked to squeeze in for a photo.

Yikes. Too much. And troubles in big fests too? CAMRA has announced that the “Great British Beer Festival is taking a year off in 2024 but will return in 2025.” And Eoghan shared that:

…its Belgian equivalent Zythos also not going ahead in 2024. Zythos moved from Leuven to Kortrijk in 2023 but now cancelled next year, citing “organisational reasons” Will it ever come back?

If you need a drink, just get ye to a proper establishment. The Mudge has again noted the Merseyside Pub Guide from Phil Wieland which, as promised, “goes in the pubs where no other bloggers dare to venture“… like he did this week:

On my previous visits I have noted that this is a football fans’ pub and I recall many years ago during the Euros finding all the regulars with red white and blue face paint and silly hats. Today was no exception, and the place was busy with noisy Liverpool fans, all very happy as their team was now winning. No face paint this time! I watched the last few minutes of a rather scrappy game until the whistle went with 102 on the clock, welcomed with a very loud cheer. More cheers when we learned that that LFC were now top of the league, albeit possibly for only two or three hours. The atmosphere gradually calmed down a little but it remained a lively pub, another proper boozer.

And Jessica herself of B+B has sent a dispatch from Sheffield, a trip that has become an annual affair, where she met up with Retired Martin himself:

First, Ray was unfortunately unwell, so this ended up being a solo trip for me. Secondly, it turns out I can’t come to Sheffield two years in a row and ignore The Rutland Arms, even if that does break the new-pubs-only rule. Martin has handily written up the first part of my weekend. (Yes, I am the mysterious “guest from Bristol”.) He suggested a few meeting spots and I went for The Old Shoe, on the grounds that it was central and promised a good range of beer. It’s always interesting to see how a newly-opened pub can compete in a well-established drinking culture. I’d say based on a short visit that this is a great addition to the city centre.

And… and , for the immediate double, the brawny brains of B+B posed an excellent question that is not unrelated:

Are the pubs dead because there’s a Wetherspoon nearby? Or is the Wetherspoon busy because the pubs nearby are dead?

Check out the comments, too: “My purely anecdotal observation on the two huge Wetherspoons in central Dublin is that they attract a crowd that wouldn’t be in proper pubs otherwise….” There’s sort of a proper theme, then, this week: considering the current sense of the relative rough and tumble of competition and the resulting success of pubs as opposed to fretting about their openings, closings and, you know, intentional burnings down. What makes them work? Does getting yourself known as a fan base hangout really work?

Has a second and perhaps more unexpected theme arise this week? What to make of how very weird it would be if US craft beer took warmly to supplying murderous dictatorships as a way in part to keep their heads above water – but that’s what we learned might be affot this week from Dave Infante in VinePair:

Parr is emphatic that he doesn’t want craft breweries to sell their beer in China, or anywhere else, unless it makes good business sense. “Brewers need to consider whether they have the capacity, the product range, the pricing, and the resources to support all those things like regulatory compliance, marketing, a trade relationship when that could otherwise be supporting your domestic market,” he says. But the potential upside is considerable. “China is certainly a huge market … [and] despite the economic challenges, there’s a segment of the population that has the money to pay for premium products.”

I hear officers’ mess halls in the the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China might have an interest in warm overly hopped IPAs and exploding fruity kettles sours. Would you take that money? But… seriously? Has craft gotten so stunned, so needy that it hugs the despot and rejects the lessons of New Belgium and Kirin dabbling into the fridges of the approved classes of Myanmar? And along a lighter, tempered version of something similar, we may have already have a winner for top junket of 2024 as Jeff explained:

I’ve been invited to give the keynote speech at this year’s Central European Brewers Conference in Budapest. I’ve never visited this city routinely described as one of Europe’s most beautiful, so I’m psyched… I’m going to be speaking on a topic dear to my heart—how culture manifests—but the talk will have a special focus on why that’s relevant to individual breweries… It is a smaller event, which means you’ll have real access to the folks on the ground, including luminaries like Evan Rail, who is the conference MC; see the list of speakers at the links above…

No doubt Hungarians of the current politico-cultural bent with be keen on any illustrations of cultural nationalism made manifest. Try the Tokaji but perhaps best not to mention the related regional imperial tensions. Premium drinks for autocrats.

These things on the edges speak to these times, I am sure. And somewhat relatedly I am left wondering if this is something of a buried lede – but it might be better to arrange the data before the thread begins. Not quite sure of the point other than perhaps the perpetual craft grope 4 hope demographic thing. So… will they or won’t they?

We’ve known for years that underage drinking has been dropping. Monitoring the Future data shows the % of 12th graders drinking has been dropping for years. So it’s no surprise that 16-22 year old Gen Zers would drink less than Millennials.

By comparison, a nice bit of work in Pellicle this week by Courtney Iseman on the cask ale scene in New York City. NYC has been a beer town for over 400 years and it was nice to see a proper bit of research into the recent history of cask there:

Having also tracked bars with cask beer for his blog Gotham Imbiber, Alex confirms there were 67 New York bars serving cask pre-Covid. The pandemic certainly acted as a nail in the coffin for cask beer, moving imbibing into the home. But in New York City, it’s safe to say that while plenty of bars had carried on with perhaps intermittent cask programs, the fervour had cooled. The beer scene had moved into brewery taprooms, suddenly allowed to exist after New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed The Craft NY Act into effect in 2014.

Before the Gotham Imbiber was a blog it was a ‘zine (as this 2007 BeerAdvocate article describes) that identified where cask could be found throughout the city. So I am not sure that the statute was as critical as other factors like higher commercial rents or simply the entertainment competition in the Big Apple. Cask ale and taprooms also predate that date but they were more to be found upstate in Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo like the taproom in 2006 at Middle Ages or at the dearly departed Clarks the year before. Today’s story shares how the arc of history in this century shows how NYC lagged in matters of good beer behind even the rest of the state, leading us to where we are today.

And Gary has been posting another series on a single topic, this time ads from 1924-25 promoting the somewhat vague Barclay’s Lager advertising slogan “Still Discussing It!” which turns out to be a bit of a then new and modern conversation:

…the theme continues of Mrs. Brown showing an equal if not greater interest than her husband in Barclay’s beer. Not all the ads stress the wife’s independence. In one, while sharing (always) the husband’s taste in beer an alterior motive appears, to butter him up for a post-meal shopping spree. In another, impressed by the panoply of financiers in the chic restaurant, she muses she might accompany one to Throgmorton Street (home of the Stock Market) to make an investment sure to pay off, a flutter she calls it.

The characters here are more affluent and carefree but still the structure of the campaign remind me of the ads from two decades later during the war sent out by Labatt under the “Isn’t It The Truth” slogan where the main voices are women working towards their own liberation along with freedom from military dictatorship… hmm… there’s that word again…

Back to Yuletide merriment, Will Hawkes in his December edition of London Beer City newsletter for December set out to find out if the touristy Kensington landmark The Churchill Arms truly is really London’s most Christmassy pub by comparing it to “The Dog and Bell (‘Dog’, locally) in Deptford”:

The best seat in the house – inside the door on the left, dark-green banquettes and a great view of the bar – is untaken. It’s not as busy as at The Churchill, and the voices are all English or Irish, but it shares that key quality: a sense of carefree happiness, of reality postponed. Across the way is a family – grandparents, daughter and two kids (“Tell grandad what colour the loos are … Millwall blue aren’t they?”) – while the regulars are seated at the bar in the new bit of the pub, chiselled out of the next-door building a few years back. There are hops above the bar, alongside copious Christmas decorations – sliced oranges, pine cones, pine leaves – hanging thick and lustrous from the walls and ceilings.

Nice… and finally, maybe not so nice but still one of the funnier yet still sadder tweets was posted by Jessica Mason this week, one that bears preserving should Twex get what it deserves:

EXCLUSIVE: I’m approaching the final week of work for 2023. Glorious men of Twitter, you have JUST ONE WEEK LEFT to tell me how to do my job. Knock yourselves out. #micropenisdetectedonaisle3

As regular readers may have picked up, I have a lot of time for Jessica Mason’s writing about beer business as well as the surrounding culture and so I read this mindful of how it reflects not only (1) the sick abuse she bears personally or even (2) a broader comment on the pervasive misogynistic shit that women in beer have to put up with but, let’s be honest, (3) also a reflection on how good beer culture has a fair share of pricky pathetic fifth-rate obstructive domineers (and, yes, perhaps even -atrixes) who actually bring little to the table but still screw things up for others by blocking the way for others who are more interesting and deserving. Suffice it to say, after all these years now, I am not thrilled with the effectiveness of the curre “state of social advocacy work in craft beer.”

There. Next week, the Yuletide roundup. And remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (97) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (909) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,426) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (164), with unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. All in all I now have a bit of dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat and accept that BlueSky is catching up in “the race to replace.” Even so and although it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Still too, maybe check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts (really? barely! This era’s 8-track tapes!) to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd 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 less occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! 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. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel 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!

Your Mid-May Beery News Notes For The UK Pubs And Other Floodgates Opening

What a week. We hit 50% first vaccine coverage locally and folk over 18 are able to try to book appointments. Our two eldest must head to two town over in three weeks for their. But as for me, the provincial government has gotten very cold feet over the AZ jab just as I await word on my where and what and when my second jab will be. Oooo… sole mio. Oh, to be the happy man that Tim Holt found reference to in an unnamed book: “[h]is hobby was chaffinches… on a Sunday he would lie nearly through the day sucking up the treacle beer through the tube… thinking of nothing at all…” Magic.

Of course I am not that man and, like all you all, must face the realities. This includes the biggest news in US craft beer circles is the news which isn’t really news at all. Sexism is wide ranging within the culture and this week, led last weekend by Notch Brewing’s Brienne Allan, names were named. Beth Demmons provided the best summary of the situation as of Monday afternoon through another well documented article at VinePair, setting out the background:

Allan, production manager at Notch Brewing in Salem, Mass. and a former leader of the Pink Boots Society’s Boston chapter, was on-site at Notch’s forthcoming Boston area brewery to help assemble the new brewhouse. After being in Covid-19 quarantine for a year, she says, she’d gotten used to not having to deal with sexism, but it didn’t take long for it to rear its head once — then twice — more.

In response, Allen went on line. She received over 800 response to her exasperated question “what sexist comments have you experienced?” The responses range from the crude to the horrific as Demmons writes. There have been initial consequences including a staff uprising at Tired Hands Brewing of Ardmore, Pennsylvania by Tuesday afternoon as reported upon by the Philadelphia Inquirer. And firings and resignations at this and other breweries and organizations followed and may continue to follow. Libby Crider of St. Louis’s 2nd Shift also shared experiences of what she has to put up with from pigs but also welcomed the wave of support. David Sun Lee shared the statement above from my local and beloved Matron Fine Beer. Also read Jessica Infante’s piece on the story from Tuesday as well. In addition to these grim allegations, one of the more interesting bits of information was this:

Let’s say hypothetically I run a for profit marketing business, that doubles as a publication, and am on record/screen shotted, warning clients to pull certain SM accounts before a hypothetical article dropped… am I contributing to the toxic male presence in beer while posting articles of the toxic male presence in beer? Asking for a “friend”.

Hardly independent publishing if that is the case. Interestingly, GBH ran a story that consisted on interview notes with Brienne Allan along with commentary from two lawyers on the challenges whistleblowers may face in the form of defamation lawsuits. It was odd as it seemed to give both slightly false hope as well as a warning to whistleblowers. As a lawyer, I also found it a particularly odd approach what with the legal conclusions drawn like:

…users and providers of internet services are generally protected from defamation claims when they post or share content that was created by a third party…

Not to mention the categorization of brewery owners and employees as “public figures” which would require acceptance of the phony rock star narrative which is also part of the problem with depictions of craft beer culture. As always – as with pro/am beer writers offering medical advice – get actual professional advice if you are in any way involved with a situation like this.

My own two cents in all of this was to remind people – again – that the whole shift from “micro” to “craft” brewing was an intentional rebranding specifically in response to a sex scandal that led to criminal charges. You can read about the 2002 “Sex for Sam” promotion fiasco here and, if you doubt the primary sources I cited, you can read about it also in Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business by Josh Noel as reviewed here.

Katie questions the political economics behind the low ethical standards in what was supposed to be craft’s brave new world – what she calls “social justice paint jobs”:

I have worked in marketing for over a decade, and in that time I’ve developed a talent for sniffing out social justice paint jobs. This in turn has allowed cynicism to grow where it’s not welcome — I desperately want to see beer businesses working to bring good into the industry, and to banish what’s rotten, and to believe that this is being done for the benefit of everyone who interacts with the industry. It’s difficult to see how anything that operates within a capitalist society could survive without adopting capitalist goals…

Me, I am not one to think that “it’s the same everywhere” as I think craft has built for itself its own particular variant of the problem:

If you were wanting to create a cover story for anti-social behaviour why not create an alcohol laced drinkers’ loyalty culture controlled top down by the clique of brewery owners, cleverly labelled as a community driven by passion?

It’s that dream of a consequence-free experience under which it provides a particular cover for some pretty bad behaviour, the thing that still allows someone known to be a creep at work to claim it’s his personal matter.* Sorry. Nope.

Somewhat related, while these matters may raise many points of view, I am not sure this is exactly how one should put this, inclusion-wise. Seems itself to be pretty whitely-dudely:

…I want to balance my interview list a bit, so if you make or sell these beers and you’re not a white dude then I’d love to talk to you…

So… if this is all true, then are we facing a reality that unless you are a tiny family operation or a big brewery with all the controls a proper independent and empowered HR department that there is a risk the pigs are in charge? Maybe. Maybe not. As Jeff recommends, we can at least start by remembering that all humans deserve respect, kindness, and equity.

Speaking of tiny family operations, Joe Stange has written a profile of Virginia’s Wheatland Spring Farm and Brewery run by Bonnie and John Branding. It is published in what is either Craft Beer & Brewing or Beer & Brewing depending on which web page upper left logo you are looking at. Warning: there may be pigs but they are the proper sort so it’s OK. The Brandings make land beer:

That experience in Germany also inspired the brewing of what the Brandings call “land beer.” To them, all Wheatland Spring beer is land beer. The Germans use the word landbier—it simply means “country beer,” and breweries use it to evoke images of local, traditional lagers. To the Brandings, it reflects the farm and its surroundings…. Land beer “has to do with culture and a mindset,” John says. “It’s this connection to agriculture and to artisans, and to this more tightly knit community of craft maltsters, small hop growers, and small family breweries.” In Germany, he says, those small village breweries aren’t trying to compete with the bigger ones. “They’re happy and content with their market, just as it is….

History lesson time. The T-feed presence known as “Intoxicating Spaces” posted this message and accompanying image to the right (my left):

A charming C18th view of St Pancras Wells, a spa and pleasure garden on the site of the present-day station. As well as healing waters, it offered ‘the best of tea, coffee, neat wines, curious punch, beers, other fine ales, and cyder’.

I have writing a bit about pleasure gardens, such as Vauxhall Gardens in the last third of the 1660s at Lambeth, England as well as, note bene, Vauxhall Gardens in NYC in around the 1760s. I would absolutely love access to a pleasure garden. Why have you not provided that to me, world?

Courtesy of TBN, I saw that Ron wrote about British military brewing in WWII including in the jungles of Burma:

In Burma they took the concept of mobile brewing one step further than a brewing ship. They stuck breweries on the back of lorries. Quite a clever way of getting beer production as close as possible to the front line. Given the conditions under which it was brewed, I doubt it tasted that great. The soldiers must have been glad to get any beer at all, out in the jungle.

Look! A “curate” sighting care of the Mudge. So 2018. I thought we were done with that once it came to mean “stuff I own” but there you go.

Marverine Cole directed my eyes to this piece in The Guardian about troubles facing the only Belgian brewery that really really matters, Rochefort:

The monks have doggedly claimed that plans by Lhoist, an international company run by one of Belgium’s richest families, to deepen its chalk quarry and redirect the Tridaine spring risked altering the unique taste of their celebrated drink. Now, thanks to a deed dating back to 1833, it appears that makers and drinkers alike need no longer worry. A court of appeal in Liège has confirmed that while the quarry owner also owns the spring, it does not have the right to “remove or divert all or part of the water which supply the abbey”.

Holy subsurface riparian rights ruling, Batman! Excellent outcome.

Boak and Bailey educated us all on the history of pale’n’hoppy ale. As did Ed. They wrote in response to a post from Jeff on Thornbridge Jaipur. The point of pointing this out is not the appearance of corrections and disagreement. No, it was the appearance of a collective exploration that helped everyone and build understanding. Certainly helped me. Excellent. Good stuff indeed!

Finally, the pubs have opened in the UK for indoors pints and, just like that, the arseholes are back:

To the group of lads who ran up a £200+ drinks bill outside a #bristol pub yesterday, were abusive staff & fabricated complaints, only to then do a runner. You are the very worst of the worst sort of people, and we sincerely hope the police can track you down #unbelievable

In happier pub opening news, Jeff only had to move the sofa and TV to get the place fit for human company.

That’s a lot. Take the time to take it in. And please don’t forget to check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plus a newcomer located by B+B: The Moon Under Water.

*Just had to note what a sad exercise this sort of statement is: “While this was all my PERSONAL life, I am so very sorry that these poor choices are now reflecting on the excellent people and products at Grains of Wrath. I emplore those who have any questions or concerns to ask me personally. I’m happy to talk to you and answer any questions you may have because open and honest dialogue is the only way to move forward.” No, bringing bad behaviours out into public with real consequences is how to move forward.

These Are The Mid-April Thursday Beery News Notes

Do we really need more beer? Olive Veronesi from Pennsylvania did. I’ve had five boxes of beer delivered over the last month or more as well as a case of wine. All local. But Olive wanted Coors Light. Olive got her beer. Direct. Everyone and everything is rearranging supply chains. New things are starting up here and there but work is stopping elsewhere and folk are furloughed. Thankfully, no 1949 pub cars on trains yet.

The Brewers Association has cancelled the World Beer Cup and taken the clever step of turning all samples into sanitizer:

With a warehouse full of beer slated for a canceled World Beer Cup competition, the Brewers Association had a dilemma—what to do with the beer. With social distancing measures and distribution laws in place, returning shipments infeasible, and inability to refrigerate the entries long-term, the options were limited… On Monday, a handful of Brewers Association staff and volunteers, led by BA executive chef Adam Dulye, began emptying thousands of cans and bottles of competition beer into 275 gallon totes and delivered the first batch of 1,500 gallons to the distilleries.

Beer judging is a bit like the dis-unified world title boxing organizations these days. Apparently there is also a thing called the World Beer Awards. They are not as of yet turning the beer into san-zi-hizer.* Think I will invent the World Beer Awards Cup.

The question of rat fink etiquette in these troubled times was the basis of a story coming out of Kent in England which was explained a scene in a local beer garden in this way:

“The same four members of staff have been working at the pub during the lockdown and we have been very strict on that – we have too much to lose to make mistakes. They were sitting down to eat their lunch, hence why they were not wearing gloves at the time.”

My take is, unfortunately, this was a clash of reasonable actions. The pub stays open to serve the community in as safe a way as possible and community members need to know it is OK to ask if the actions of others are keeping everyone safe.

Retired Martin provided us with a similar session from the pre-times but with one difference: more drunk members of the affluent end of society who prove that ai nice country pub garden is “where you get the upper-class intoxication the middle-classes just can’t pull off“!

From brewing history, a lovely tale from the early days of the new American republic of the first elephant that sailed to the USA in 1796 – and her love of beer:

…the America was reportedly understaffed and under-stocked. Halfway through their trip, Crowninshield and his crew ran out of clean drinking water and were forced to give the elephant a dark ale, or porter, which is a heavy liquor made with browned malt. Other stories report that Crowninshield charged his New York spectators 25 cents to watch the elephant uncork and drink the dark beer… the elephant uncorked the bottles with her trunk and would consume 30 bottles of porter a day.

Speaking of history, the Tandyman has been rummaging through his safe house and posting things he finds in storage – like this early reference to trendy new hazy beer from twenty years ago:

Today’s breweriana comes under the heading “Things I didn’t know I had”. A spirited defence of hazy beer by @marblebrewers. Not dated, but I’m guessing around Year 2000. Happy to be corrected.

And if you go back another 14 years, you will find the time John Clarke wrote about – a 12 pub crawl through Stockport in 1976:

I edit an award-winning local CAMRA magazine called Opening Times. It was launched in June 1984 and has continued with only a couple of minor breaks (including the current one!) even since. However this isn’t its first incarnation. A previous Opening Times appeared from around Feb-March 1976 to June-July 1977 and that’s where we are going today.

And speaking of more history, Gary has posted an interesting series of posts on British beer and British Burma:

Turning to the Second World War, beer again produces a story so outré one thinks only a novelist could have conceived it. It is the so-called mobile brewery introduced by Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979). He was Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, between 1943 and 1946. This brewery is specifically associated with Burma, although it may have been fielded elsewhere. The beer was intended for forward fighting units, not rest and recreation centres or other rear areas.

We had a nice email chat and discussed lentils.

Still with history, a beer jug from British North America in 1766, noticed care of Craig’s sharp eye on Facebook.

Last week, Ed posted something I like, something of a recent memory, a trigger for a good pointless argument:

In these difficult times it has been encouraging to see many people return to beer blogging. But there has been a noticeable lack of pointless arguments, which as we know is what the internet is for. So you’ll be pleased to hear I spotted in article in the IBD magazine where a German brewer gives his views on extraneous CO2. Always good for a pointless argument that.

Lars posted about a similar technical issue without all the argumentation – mainly because he used three options to figure out how to brew keptinis:

I visited Vikonys in Lithuania and saw how the Lithuanians there brew keptinis. The basic idea is straightforward enough: do a normal mash, then bake the mash in a huge Lithuanian duonkepis oven to get caramel flavours by toasting the sugars in the mash. This is important idea, because it’s a completely “new” type of brewing process that creates flavours you cannot make with normal techniques.

The hot news of the week is that the #BrewsBrothers show on Netflix really sucks. Jonathon started with this:

Just watched an episode of Brews Brothers on Netflix and if you value your life and the minutes you have left, you should probably use that time to watch anything else. Anything. You could go outside and watch bugs have sex or just lay face down on the ground and watch that.

We are told. It is garbage. Mr. B made it through 8 minutes and 38 seconds. I shall not bother.

And finally, Jordan spent time this last seven days of favorite pubs he is missing and included one of mine… and included a picture of me at the Kingston Brew Pub!

I’m fairly certain I had Dragon’s Breath Pale Ale for the first time in 1996. I would have been 16 at the time, and while I’d love to tell you that it was a moment when the heavens opened and Gambrinus reached down and tapped me on the shoulder, but really, I was more impressed with the lamb burger.

I take my lamb burger with blue cheese there.

Another week in the books. Remember there is more out there. Keep writing and keep reading. Check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Laters!

*As known chez nous.