Category: Cider and Perry

The Beery News Notes For The Week We Lost Martyn Cornell

I learned the very sad news on Sunday that Martyn Cornell of Zythophile and many other things had died. Within minutes the tributes started being shared. Martyn was a veteran journalist and news editor, beer writer and historian. And a traveller, whether for newspaper work in Hong Kong or in Chile as a recent hotel breakfast buffet partner for Ron. I first met him in the comments left at this here blog twenty-two years ago when he left a note on my review of Pete Brown’s first book. We soon chatted again when, as invited, I reviewed Martyn’s first book a few month later and the conversation pretty much continued for over two decades after that.

As many have shared, he was fun and clever company. He’d get mad at me – usually quite deservedly – and yet would kindly share tips and ask for leads. Now a decade and a half ago, we had a great time on the wiki project reviewing the OCB. As I wrote to Alistair on Facebook after the news of his passing was shared, Maryn had such a singular presence, both impatiently crotchety and entirely encouraging at the same time. It was all one thing. He just wanted more of us to be writing more, all building the body of knowledge. In the running to do list I keep there was a task I had left for myself: “dig up note for Martyn.” More about the 1600s English strong ales named after their cities. I never around got to it. Craig had some particularly fine words:

I’m not sure beer history writers count as celebrities. But if they do, there must be a pantheon of the mild-mannered—and surely at the top of that list was Martyn Cornell. I don’t get starstruck often, but sharing a pint with him in Colonial Williamsburg came pretty close. Before that, our conversations had been limited to late-night emails—questions, thoughts, rabbit holes. He always replied. And his replies always led me deeper down the trail. Martyn was whip-smart, a bit shy, and deeply committed to facts. He had no patience for myths or baloney—not out of pedantry, but because he believed the truth was always more interesting than the fiction. He was my friend, and I will miss him.

He always replied. That was Martyn. Very sad news.

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I am going to post a few news items this week but perhaps not at much as one a normal one. Starting with one that certainly in line for Martyn’s wish for us all, Phil Cook hosted another excellent edition of The Session in which many beer who like to write about beer wrote this month about beer in art. Plenty of good entries and the annoucement that we need someont to continue the relay as Phil summed up:

Massive thanks to everyone who contributed; it’s a great collection of observations. No one has, as yet, put up their hand to volunteer for the June edition so if you have an idea, let me know. It’s a little work, but a lot of fun.

And, speaking of travels, Matt Gross shared a detailed portrait of Q Bar in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a hidden hotspot he frequented in the 1990s:

Eventually, I realized I had been regularly flying right past it on my 70cc moped, and I understood why I’d overlooked it: Q Bar was tucked into the side of the Saigon opera house. Of all places! This Beaux-Arts edifice, built by the French colonial powers and opened in 1900, this 500-seat hulk that anchored key streets at the core of District 1, had a warren of dark little rooms off to the right, and a tiny patio and a strip of grass. This was Q Bar. I simply had never passed by at the correct hour to note that, as the sun began to descend, this small patch began to fill up with expatriates, with returning Vietnamese from France, Canada, the United States, and beyond, and even with some locals who, perhaps earlier than others, understood that Q Bar was not just the best bar in Saigon but among the best bars in the world.

And Lars has been travelling east – very east in fact – on journey to discover all he can about farmhouse ales. He was in Alsunga, Latvia meeting with a Suiti brewer who had some pretty rustic techniques leading to a good drink:

Visiting a brewer in Alsunga today, belonging to the Suiti minority, which is Catholic. He’s brewing for midsummer. He ties rye straw around the pole for the lauter tun. In the lauter tun is juniper (usually), rye straw, and birch twigs. Lovely raw ale, soft and mild, with notes of juniper and also honey. Could drink this all day. Cooling the wort in the local pond across the road.

Transporting you elsewhere, David Jesudason is transporting us further with his first installment of Just A Bite, to a carpark in England to eat Kenyan influenced fare from a van:

…to land here in Denmark Hill is odd. It’s bizarre that in such a bleak, concrete location – literally everywhere you look is brick, tarmac or truck wheels, despite being so near Ruskin Park – you can have such transcendent food. Now I’m not saying something as hyperbolic as one bite whisks you to the Kenya savannahs of Bharat’s childhood but the spicing is so balanced that it offsets the heat of the chili; and tastes far more regal than you’d expect food to be at a polluted business park just off a forgotten part of Coldharbour Lane. The tikka pieces are almost burnt, crispy on the outside but delicately soft in the middle, while masala chips have a zesty coating of ginger and cumin. I’m a complete fan boy for the mint chutney that doesn’t scrimp on the fire.

Laura Hadland in another of her regular contributions to The Telegraph wrote about what beers can be found at local Lidl, the grocery chain, and she was looking for bargains:

I put Lidl’s beer range through a rigorous taste test to mine for quality bargains. This included a selection of Lidl’s own-label products as well as some of the well-known brands it offers… Examining the range as a whole, I quickly noticed that almost every bottle is labelled “premium”. To paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is super then nothing is – the descriptor loses all meaning. I therefore tasted the range blind, to prevent undue influence from the packaging or my own personal bias.

Relatedly perhaps on the point of budgeting, in The New York Times there was an interesting story on the demise of something not done so much in Canada unless you are in a restopub sort of place: running a tab:

It’s unclear when younger drinkers started souring on bar tabs, but there’s a through line between the Covid-19 pandemic and shifting bar habits. “During and after the pandemic, more people started using cards,” said Doug Kantor, an executive committee member of the Merchants Payments Coalition, a retailers group. Coupled with Gen Z’s distaste for carrying around cash (or a physical wallet, for that matter), the ubiquity of mobile payment options, such as Apple Pay, has contributed to the decline of bar tabs among 20-somethings.

Also speaking perhaps of budgeting in another sense, over there on the US west coast, the much heralded sale of Anchor Brewing to Chobani yogurt billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya of a year ago has led to questions today, as reported by Truong and Kane in The San Francisco Standard:

Through fencing at the old Anchor Brewing taproom in Potrero Hill, passersby can spot a branded, baby-blue, 1940s-era GMC truck at one end of a lot overgrown with weeds. Since July 2023, when Japanese beer giant Sapporo vacated the complex, both the monolithic off-white Art Deco headquarters at 1705 Mariposa St. and the taproom across the street have remained idle. Now, vines and delicate purple flowers snake through the truck’s rusting grille — and San Francisco beer drinkers continue to go without longtime favorites Anchor Steam, Liberty Ale, and the annual Christmas Ale. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Exactly one year ago, billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya posted a video on social media in which he sports an Anchor baseball cap and explains that he’d purchased the defunct company and was eager to take on the responsibility of reviving the country’s oldest craft brewery.

Similarly perhaps, Rob Sterowski of I Might Have A Glass of Beer… wrote about the sale of the last remaining family-owned Kölsch breweries, Malzmühle, to one of the others, Gaffel:

The puzzling thing about all this is that Malzmühle, just a couple of years ago, itself took over another of the remaining independent breweries, Sünner. And that is staying open – so they say at the moment, at least. So they still have a brewery where they could produce Mühlen Kölsch. Can they really buy in beer from a competitor more cheaply than they can brew it themselves? Even if Gaffel is substantially bigger than Sünner? One can only speculate that the contracts being signed commit Gaffel to supplying the Malzmühle with beer at a very favourable price.

I liked Gary‘s piece about a study by a futurist of the past, Dr. Leonard Kent of the advertising agency Needham Lewis & Broby, projecting his 1960s desire for a better beer – something that he may have to wait for a couple of decades to try:

The solitary drinking experience, as he called it, sounds oninous in our neo-prohibitionist 2025. He meant, thought, at least in part, brewers should make a higher quality product. A product reflecting romance and mystery v. the bulk “sameness” of American beer as it was then. Beer that could be enjoyed more in a wine setting, outside that of the popular image of tronged tavern consumption.

And in Pellicle, the fabulous Rachel Hendry and the fabulous Anaïs Lecoq tag teamed to tell the tale of the litre bottle of Cidre Breton from their respective points of view:

The rustic, rural nature of Cidre Breton’s style, the farmyard imagery and the simplistic label design that speaks to a small scale cider operation that no longer exists, the uncomplicated bottle shape that signals to milk and soft drinks as opposed to high end fine wine all work to put a consumer at ease. There is no trace of poshness or pretentiousness here, all are welcome. Cidre Breton is a cider from the people for the people, that extra 250ml a gesture of diplomatic goodwill. To Britain, Cidre Breton becomes an emblem of an accessible France, something attainable to most, regardless of finances and status. A franco-take on a British heritage—orchards and cider are intrinsic to rural, working class stereotypes of Britain after all—allowing us, litre by litre, to drink exactly as the French do.

That’s it for this dimmed week. Looking back, sifting through emails and posts, I had forgotten that I invited Martyn to my fantasy dinner in 2007. I suggested we have a “good thick 1700s West Country white beer as a stand alone first course” to get the conversation going. He accepted. Sad stuff. Until we meet again in a happier moment, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….back again this  Monday and very nice of him to notice what I wrote). Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but, hmm, they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

November’s End Brings Me A Fascinating Bout With A Delightful Chest Cold Leading To Some Particularly Phlegmatic Beery News Notes

My top tipple of the last ten days, in case you were wondering, has been Buckley’s Original Mixture. AKA Buck Bucks. It features no actual medicine but does contain pine needle extract, Balsam sap, camphor and smelling salts. A double Makers Mark just about cuts the stuff. So I’ll be the gent in the corner reeking of coniferous forest as you read these notes this week which might not take all that long, given my residency on the sofa.

Good timing as it turns out as down south it’s Thanksgiving, the day that we up here in Canada call “Wrong Thanksgiving” but apparently it serves the social purpose of annually bringing steaming hot deep dishings of political misgivings and animosity directly to the family table just a few weeks after their fixed election date. Today, in honour of all that, we celebrate the 64th anniversary of the best TV ad for one of my favourite old school beers, Utica Club and it’s confirmation that they will need a lot to get through this. Viva Utica Club! Viva!!

What else is happening? Big news out of Britain is the continued demise of tradition. Is it the new old Labour effect? Who knows? But the fact is that Fuller’s is axing Lancer at the same time as Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Co. is discontinuing every cask ale your great uncles ever loved.  We get Bombardier here. Haven’t had one in over a decade. Mr. Beeson offers stark but reasonable advice:

Lets not mourn for brands that had already sunk into total irrelevance and put our time and energy into protecting cask brewers of the future…

Harsh? Hmm. My problem is that the loss of brands seems distinct from the loss of fluids. Does anyone bother that much anymore with recipes reformulations under and old label? Is it the beer or the branding we miss? And… and… has the combination of health concerns, price and disappearing brands left you in a quandry?  Has it driven you to what The Times describes as  “Zebra-striping“?

…drinking trends are moving away from the raucous, post-pandemic. Younger customers are demanding more low or non-alcoholic drinks. In 2016, 0.5 per cent of beer sales were alcohol-free varieties; this has risen to two per cent. But there is still room for significant growth, with the popularity of low or zero-alcohol beer in Britain well behind countries on the Continent… For those not willing to forgo alcohol altogether, “zebra striping” or “zebra-ing”, is gaining popularity — a trend for alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to mitigate the effects of a hangover the following day.

Make sense… except for, you know, water. Who hasn’t double fisted the pinto of water with the pint of ale? Is this really a new thing needing a new name? Or away to sell thick expensive soda pop called NA beers? Man, I am grumpy this week. I need to nicen up.

To that end, a special report from our special assignments correspondence Maureen Ogle who drew my attention to the breaking news that drinking a lot of alcohol over and over again over many day of one’s life is not at all good. Here’s a clip from the NYTs [Ed.: “roll the clip“]:

The National Alcohol Survey series, which collects data from the general population, defines high-intensity drinking as the consumption of at least 8 drinks in a row by anyone, male or female, over the previous 12 months. The survey’s latest analysis, which does not include data beyond the year 2020, also showed a decline in high-intensity drinking among young adults overall. But its frequency among men ages 30 and older and women ages 18 to 64 has increased, said Camillia Lui, a scientist at the Alcohol Research Group who crunched the data.

While the story also says that heavy drinking is not limited to the holiday season; nor is it mainly the pastime of college students we turned to Maureen for her thoughts on the matter:

Fucking morons. Is drinking a shit load of booze in two hours a dumb idea? Yes. Even dumber? Treating it as a shiny new danger.

[Ed.: “After the break, sports.“]

Next, Gary has been writing up a storm with an interesting focus recently on mid-1900s US Bock Beer. Here is part 1 and here is part 2  with a passing mention in this post about the regional brewery owner, the Atlantic Company.  I like how this last post again confirms the fibbery in the old saw that the birth of US microbrewing was a response to a decades long wasteland of thin macro lagers. There was plenty of variety in US brewing into the 1970s and with personal or inherited memory of the micro pioneers even if, as Tremblay and Tremblay have shown, corporate mergers and leading brand advertising were starting to have great effect by that point.

David J. has news for you. He was the host of the 2024 British Guild of Beer Writers awards gala and general all around shindig held on Wednesday evening. He dressed up and everything. And I hear he had been studying the style of noted beer person Ricky Gervais.  Expect social media to be replete with sorry headed tales of hungover beer writers throughout this Thursday after celebrating Blackout Wednesday in their own way. The big winner for the year was Ruvani de Silva who won “The Michael Jackson Award for Beer Writer of the Year” for 2024. Congratulations.

And Stan has his Hop Queries (edition 8.07 for you numerologists) out and he shared this tidbit about arguments in favour of beer as health fluid based on the presences of hops:

…one thing that does not change is that even hop-forward beers contain only four to five milligrams of xanthohumol. The amount of alcohol a drinker would need to consume to get the benefits would more than offset those benefits. But what about non-alcoholic beer? There is a catch. “The paradox regarding alcohol is a lot of the healthy ingredients in beer are more easily absorbed in the presence of alcohol,” said Zugravu Corina-Aurelia, a physician and researcher at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest.

Zing!!!*  To ensure equal time, I was checking out the malting barley news and found this interesting nugget of news out of Manitoba:

Advances in malt barley genetics tend to move slower than they do with other commodities. Breeding companies have traditionally been cautious with new offerings and maltsters prefer older, proven genetics. One of the 2025-26 list’s recommended varieties, CDC Copeland, was registered before the turn of the millennium. Watts described the dilemma in 2022. “It’s been difficult to get uptake of new varieties over the years by the malting and brewing industry, partly because we’ve had very successful varieties like AC Metcalfe and CDC Copeland,” he said during a field day near Wawanesa. That same field day highlighted a new variety, AAC Prairie, which was also noted by the centre as a developing variety for the brewing market. Industry has noted less maltster reticence around newcomer varieties in recent years.

Please flood the comments with your first hand experinces of maltster reticence – which is my new favourite brewing related term.

In another sign of US craft’s contraction, according to Insights Weekly Digest, the Brewers Association has announced another round of cuts and a reorg with Pres. Bob Pease retiring, longtime senior employee Paul Gatza leaving and Dr.J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham moving away from her position as Director of Social Impact despite these being the times we live in.

John Clark posted some excellent photos of a pub, Manchester’s Locomotive from 1990. I was immediately struck by the minimal advertising tat. Looks like an NHL game from before the sideboards got plastered with offers from banks and doughnut makers.

Pellicle‘s piece this week was on cider and another solution to the question of why people are drinking less of the stuff people need to sell:

“Bottles are great at getting fine cider into the hands of cider and wine drinkers,” Little Pomona’s cidermaker James Forbes tells me. “But in the world of beer, draught dispense is king, and we wanted to have something to offer tap rooms and craft beer bars that would suit them better.” Keg-conditioned cider is the most compelling attempt to date to bring the two faces of cider into one cohesive expression. It offers the same level of care, quality and respect for its ingredient as a bottle that might grace a home dinner table, but served in a format that nestles comfortably into cider’s more familiar British surroundings of the pub.

I am not sure I would ever say “thank you, thank you, Baby Jesus… there’s keg cider here” to myself but at the same time I probably wouldn’t ask if the cider was keg or cask if it was tasty. If the technology allows for a more stable yet little compromised drink, why not? That being said, it was warming to see even Matty C himself, especially pre-hungover, chaffe at the word “aspirational” used as it was.

Mr. Trump has threated all and sundry with tariffs to solve the problem of inflation in the US economy. Helpfully, some clever people have indicated how this will cause inflation in the US economy with a focus on Mexico’s Constellation brands:

The stock STZ dropped 3.3% to close Tuesday at $233.60. It inched upward in premarket trades Wednesday. “We estimate Constellation would need a 12% beer price increase to fully offset a 25% increase in beer [costs of goods sold], i.e. keep gross profit dollars flat,” Kirk wrote in a note to clients. He pointed out, however, that three factor merited consideration. First, the last time Trump proposed tariffs on Mexico in 2019, they never actually happened…

We may not need to review the other factors. Still, it’s worth noting that (i) not all imports in beer are finished products and (ii) a lot of US craft beer is made up on a lot of Canadian malt barley. Count your pennies.

Proof that both craft brewing and Christianity are large raft concepts, Forbes has an article this week on a brewery out of Illinois that brands its beers based on events and individuals in the Catholic faith:

The Cristeros, they learned, were a group of Mexicans who stood up against government tyranny against the Catholic Church in the 1920s. “The government was really suppressing the Catholic Church, shutting down churches, executing priests and exiling bishops,” Trevor says. “The people organically rose up, and they brought the government to a standstill”… and their third release is Dies Irae, which means “day of wrath” in Latin, and it is an imperial stout, which references the final judgment. “Not to be morbid, but that beer gets to what is the purpose of life”… 

Sounds cheery. Finally and finishing perhaps where we began, as we contemplate the some thoughts from Frederick Douglass from 1894 contemplating another reactionary shift in political times, as quoted by Jamelle Bouie in the NYT last weekend:

Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of these tend to dim the luster of the American name and chill the hopes once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of this republic may yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline and the wheel of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the one will fall or where the other may stop.

The pendelum is swinging. I could say just don’t let it hit you but perhaps it would be good if you could give it a good hard nudge as it passes by. Because it would be another 70 years until the US Civil Rights Act and there’s no need to wait that long this time.**

Well, that’s it for now. Looming issues about. Is that the theme? If you are looking for alternatives, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (never ever) 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*Wasn’t xanthohumol an Olivia Newton John song?
**Tariffs set at 25%? Lordy. Here comes the 61 cent Canadian dollar. But… we’ve been there before. Did you know much of US craft beer uses Canadian malt? I mentioned that already? Fine. Whatever.

Beer. News. Notes. Phrases. Words. Selections. Pretentious. Minimalist. Heading. Formats.

What a week! I had no idea that I’d make it to this Wednesday evening when upon I do scribble out these notes. And it’s not even sun up before I’m out the door, although the moon apparently has a decent view up there looking east.  And the reading takes a bit more digging. But as B+B wrote:

…we embraced that: let’s focus on some smaller, more unusual pieces from old skool blogs and old-fashioned Web 1.0 hobby sites. That’s good stuff, too.*****

Agreed. Enough complaining. Let’s get at it. I do like this entry in Every Pub in Dublin if only for its lack of information:

I just walked in and looked for it. And found it relatively easily, as its basically just straight back from the front door, albeit well into the hotel. It’s quite a fancy hotel bar, but nothing incredibly special. I doubt many people ever go here just to drink, what with the Baggot Street and Haddington Road pubs nearby, but you *could*.

Even more of a deterrant to drinking in Dublin is this explanation by Lisa Grimm of the environs of her pub of the week, The Circular:

…the first stone bridge was built here over the Grand Canal in 1795, replacing an earlier wooden structure, and its resemblance to Venice’s Ponte Di Rialto gave the bridge, as well as the surrounding area, its better-known name. There are stories of a Black Shuck-type dog stalking the underside of the bridge, with some tales more specifically citing the devil himself appearing as a black dog in the area. Indeed, devilish attachments (literally) continued with a stone ‘devil’ head formerly being affixed to the bridge – though whether the stories or the sculpture came first is open to investigation. 

Satan himself! Yikes. [You know, I just thought it was a song by The Darkness.] On a more positive or at least not as terrifying note, there was a good bit of writing from Jessica Mason this week on a fairly singular business decision seeing one craft brewer and wine cidery to join up on distribution:

On-trade customers can now buy Red Fin cider products directly from Siren, packed in the brewery’s 30l stainless steel kegs. Two Red Fin ciders are available alongside Siren’s beers to help publicans consolidate their beer and cider deliveries. Further benefits include the option for pubs to take advantage of collaborative brand activations and events as well as custom installations. According to the business owners the new partnership isn’t financial and neither company has a stake in the other. However, the independent businesses describe it as “strategic”.

Sensible. E.P. Taylor would be pleased by the effort to cut what he would have called waste – the failure to find harmoneous deals on the non-profit making expenses. Seeing what is around you with fresh eyes was also the subject of a great interview early one morning this past weekend on CBC Ontario’s Fresh Air on a South African brewery working to support local traditional brewing:

Reitumetse Kholumo is the founder of Kwela Brews in South Africa. She recently won a pitch competition at Queen’s University for her venture.She told us how she is using the prize money to empower women and protect the Indigenous tradition of sorghum beer.

More here on Kwela Brews in this Forbes Africa article from last year. There were two other articles that caught my eye this week which touched on beer and colonialism. First, in New Zealand recently there has been controversy about the naming of a beer after a Māori navigator:

Te Aro Brewing named its Kupe New Zealand IPA after the Polynesian navigator as part of its Age of Discovery series – a limited range of beers showcasing historical explorers including Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan…  Both complaints argued the association of Kupe exploited, degraded, denigrated, and demeaned his mana and, therefore, that of his descendants and the people and places associated with him….”I’m really upset about it because our tupuna is being used as a platform for promoting alcohol, and his name being used on the [packaging] says we agree to this, and we don’t,” she said. “Culture should not be used in that form; whether it be Māori, whether it be other indigenous peoples, or whether it be our community – our babies are having to walk past that every single day… that advertising, that promotion… Peka said she wanted to acknowledge the people that had used their voice to make a difference for the whānau, community and cultures within Aotearoa.”  

I will leave it to you to look up the meaning of manu, tupuna and whānau like I did. The other story is the article this week in Pellicle by David Nilsen on the colonial and Indigenous legacies of brewing in Quito, Ecuador – that capital of a nation facing many serious issues. Elsewhere** we have seen how the perspectives from beer writers on a visit have posed, shall we say, challenges but this artlcle manages this well, if a bit obliquely:

…that rural connection has, sadly, not always helped chicha’s image in Quito as the city tries uncomfortably to balance its Indigenous heritage with its cosmopolitan aspirations. “A lot of people here grew up knowing about chicha, with their aunt or grandmother making it,” he says. “For many years, it had a stigma as a drink that was only for the lower classes living in the country. In Quito, as craft brewers became more knowledgeable about fermentation, they became more interested in reclaiming and revitalising this from their heritage.”

David sets it out for your consideration. We see the colonial hand moving in many ways in the article. The taprooms with the IPA.  The central presence of the monestary and the museum. The application of science upon an Indigenous practice without space for a voice speaking for the pre-contact and continuing original culture as we heard the Māori perspective above. There is much packed into this piece.

Building on the least serious or perhaps most recent form of those intrustions from abroad, in Britian apparently SIBA is sick of “craft beer”…  if only as a term:

Small breweries in the UK are ditching the term “craft beer” in favour of “indie beer”, warning that global corporations have bamboozled many drinkers into believing that formerly independent brands are still artisanal hidden gems. In a survey by YouGov that marks a new phase of the bitter war over what constitutes “craft beer”, consumers were asked to say whether 10 beer brands were made by “independent craft breweries”… More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt consumers were being “misled”…

CAMRA is in on the campaign as well. So is “craft” now a dirty word in Britain? Is it dead… again? Hmm… and there was also an interesting choice of words in an interesting paid advertorial this week in Politico, “sponsor generated content” it says. By Julia Leferman of the Brewers of Europe. Why is this bit of lobbyist comms interesting? Because of this passage:

Brewers are empowering consumers with the tools to take responsible decisions. This is about choice: if people don’t wish to, or simply shouldn’t, consume alcohol, they can still participate in the social experience of sharing a beer with friends and family. At the same time, brewers have pioneered initiatives in education and community engagement to encourage a better drinking culture and help reduce alcohol-related harm.

Could you imagine a North American trade organization place “alcohol” and “harm” that closely? Speaking of choice of words, Stan stood up for flavoured beer this week, building on the use of “beer flavoured beer” and admitting at least one of his sins:

I was wrong to use the term. It can be used to exclude, wielded as a weapon by drinkers who imply they know something others do not. “I can appreciate beer-flavored beer, the complex flavors that result from the interaction of malt and yeast in a simple helles. You are not worthy.” More obviously, it also excludes many, many, many flavors. In fact, some drinkers do not like the flavors in what they’ve come to know as beer-flavored beer. A survey of consumers in non-alcoholic beers in Northern California found they did not care for the “beer like” aroma, taste or mouthfeel they associate with non-alcoholic beers that were intended to mimic alcohol-containing lagers.

Let us be honest. Flavours that come from adjuncts are just not that interesting.  The infinity that four ingredients can provide is enough for me. That’s brewing skill enough to draw me in. To be fair,² Stan did mention that he “would not drink a peanut butter chocolate merlot, but I would like to try the peanut butter chocolate porter from Schell’s.” I wonder what it would taste like? Oh, I know. Peanut butter and chocolate! Brilliant. I am not going to judge – but masking the taste of beer by adding other things to it is in the fine tradition of alco-pops. Fine. I judged. But has any industry succeeded long term by focusing on newbie marketing? One – candy. And I get that it’s a business decision to chase that market but it does seem interesting to me how that trend has tracked in parallel in recent years with the stalling and contraction of interest in good beer. A curse. A pox. Jeff has more, much of what I don’t buy given the tone of sheer presentist congratulationism.**** Still, it’s not that far off my favourite version of the phrase is 1998’s “beer-flavoured water” to describe PBR.

Consider this as something of a contrapunct to all that, entirely thoughtful words from Rachel Hendry (h/t to KM) within her thoughts this week on “Wine and Cider”:

When trees are knocked down, when orchards are treated poorly in the name of higher yields, when cider is infantilised and drinks are manipulated and artificially mimicked in order to make more money for big brands, very few of us win. Where lack of care destroys, care itself transforms. Those who take the more romantic approach, who approach the trees and their fruit and the ecosystems around it with care, who make their drinks to showcase the amazing things that apples have to say once fermented, who pick and press and pour and produce with such ferocity of respect and reverence, well our lands and our lives are better for it. We owe them so much.

I like that. A lot. Romance as integrity. As opposed to infantilism. See above. Maybe. Perhaps quite conversely but still about the language, when they are not bored (at least according to a poll run by the imported and apparently not boring brand Kingfisher) British lager drinkers appear to be really angry with brewers:

One person described a 3.4 percent strength beer as a ‘f**king shandy’, while another lamented Grolsch as a ‘once decent’ tipple, and said he’d been a fan of the old five percent mix. He wondered who the 3.4 percent beer was aimed at, while a third declared: “Grolsch, now alternatively known as p**s.” Someone else said the downgrade made Grolsch into a ‘run of the mill session lager’ that was ‘certainly no longer premium’.

Another sort of infantilisation, I suppose. Potty mouth. Still… journalism FTW. Note: Britons are also livid over noisy upgraded beer gardens and ugly view blocking teepees in upgraded beer gardens.

Finally, Stan** went someway to answer my question when he indicated that the NAGBW attracted 269 submissions from 96 entrants this year. I wonder if that is an increase or decrease? As the scope of the focus narrowed to those who “cover” the beer industry, one can’t help make comparisons*** with the often seemingly more vibrant and ecclectic awards from the British Guild of Beer Writers. Where is the Hawkes? Where is the Jesudason? Yet… I was really pleased to see the first place wine for the fabulous Courtney Iseman for her “Secondary Fermentation — New York City’s Strong Rope Brewery and the East Coast Cask Revival” in Pellicle last December. A writer of fine strong words like “craft beer cringe” and “toxic fandom“, I remember when I saw the title of her winning piece I thought “please reference Gotham Imbiber… please oh please” and yup there is was. Proper job. Proper recognition.

That’s enough. How many links do you need? Until the boo-tastic edition next Thursday, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (if he ever does one) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now very) 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*For example, the stunning white-washing of German atrocities in Brazil or the naive deflection of the genocide by American Revolutionaries against the Haudenosaunee in New York.
**For the double!
***Hmm… maybe “best in the world, if it is focused on the trade side, written in English, relevant to an American perspective and, yes, written by one who submitted“… perhaps?
****That’s a new one… I like it… BUT THESE FOOTNOTES AREN’T EVEN IN ORDER!!!!
*****“Evanescent“!?!? Really???? At least it isn’t “quotidian”… if there were every a inflationary ten dollar word that is never needed and rarely used correctly it’s friggin’ “quotidian”… sheesh… yet also**. See also this sort of devaluation of a concept… no one at all is shocked by a beer trade fact… no one cares…
²Am I ever not?

Your Definitely Final And Last Chance End Of Summer 2024 Beery News Notes

The next time we meet it will be autumn. Who submitted the requistion for that? Thanks. A lot. At least we get one more Saturday in. We’ve had a good run of weather to see us out, picking a couple of pounds of tomatoes a day.  I’ll need a new hobby once the garden slows down. Maybe I could join a men’s pie making groups or something. The American Association of Wine Economists is one of my favourite BlueSky feeds to follow. They seem interesting. That up there? Germany 1920s. Men with a hobby. Comparatively speaking, a better sort of marching in those times.

Speaking of weird, Stan’s monthly newsletter Hop Queries is out for another month and, under the surprising heading “Bitterness and Attitude”, he wrote:

When we moved from the low-altitude flatlands of Illinois 700 feet) to New Mexico (5,320 feet), a professional brewer told me to just throw in a few more pellets when I brewed an IPA. I hope the information in the archives is more useful.

Oh!  Altitude. He wrote altitude.  That makes waaaaay more sense. Note: rumours of Stan O’Eire. Another bit of a puzzle was encountered in this story of the passing of a venerable Mancunian:

…for ten years straddling both decades there was one constant on the streets of Moss Side and Old Trafford – George Powell, the self-syled Ginger Beer Man. He became a legend too selling his home made brew from his bike. George has died, aged 97, and later this month 500 people from all over the country and abroad are expected to pay their respects and attend his funeral. And his son Glen is going to ensure he will get the send-off the big family man deserves after his perfectly timed win at bookies Betfred. Self-employed handyman Glen won £20,000 from a £4 wager… much of his winnings will be spent on George’s funeral at the Church of God of Prophesy in Moss Side, burial at Southern Cemetery followed by the wake at Bowden Rugby Club.

Would that have been an alcoholic ginger beer? I used to brew one based on the CloneBrew recipe. This January 1978 edition local CAMRA newsletter “Whats Doing?” from Manchester suggests (at page 9) that the Salford brewers Walker & Holmfreys brewed a ginger beer along side ale brewing.

Staying there about, you know some things are worth repeating. This same passage in Katie’s edition of The Gulp at the end of last week was quoted in the Boak and Bailey Saturday update but I have to note this fabulous bit of stream of consciousness too:

…I have to check myself before I wreck myself. Tonight is going to be a late one. But it’s just so delicious, so perfect in this moment. Savour it, I tell myself, knowing that I can’t. I’m not a savourer. I eat in big bites, drink in big gulps. I want the best things all in one go, now.

There go I, too. Back here at home, Ontario’s new booze sales in corner stores have attracted all sorts of attention… including the independent accountants:

When the Ford government expanded sales of beer, wine, cider, and ready-to-drink cocktails into Ontario convenience stores and gas stations on Sept. 5, it did so ahead of schedule. A master framework agreement (MFA) signed under the Liberal government in 2015 gave the privately run Beer Store exclusive rights to sell 12—and 24-packs of beer. It was set to expire in 2026, but the government’s expedited plan involves an “early implementation agreement” with the beer retailer that will see the province pay the company up to $225 million. The FAO report will estimate the financial costs and benefits of accelerated expansion “and compare these fiscal impacts to a scenario where the Province expanded alcohol access at the expiration of the MFA on Dec. 31, 2025.”

Listening to CBC Radio 1’s Ontario Morning the other day, they played an audio reworking of this story including interviews with convenience store clerks and customers about the new rules and heard some interest points of view. Shop owners have not been informed about expired product returns so many only place small orders. And a portion of product has to come from small producers – 20 per cent for beer, ciders, and ready-to-drink cocktails, and 10 per cent for wines. Which is not a bad guaranteed return. But there are supply chain issues getting all the stores stocked up. Me, I have not taken advantage of the new world order yet.

Conversely, over on FB, Max has been out and about posted a brief report on his trip to Vorkloster, a brewery in Predklasteri, Czechia… using many words I do not know:

Vorkloster’s pivnice is cute and friendly, it does feel like part of a monastery, and many of the punters are locals dropping by for a pifko. The kulajda was just luvly. The Výčepní tasted jaded, like the feeling of an afternoon after a couple of very rough days at work. Jantarový Ležák is like an otherwise very good sauce that’s just not thick enough. Tmavý ležák has the right balance of coffee and milk chocolate.

Breaking news out of Albany, NY:

Free pizza is almost dead at the City Beer Hall! Long live pizza at CBH! A promotion in place since the City Beer Hall opened in spring 2011 at Howard and Lodge streets downtown provided a small individual cheese pizza for free with every pint of beer sold. The practice is being sharply curtailed, now available only after 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

I will have to check in with Craig to find out of I was ever there. Over at Pellicle, Katie (for the double) wrote about a beer that I used to cross provincial borders* to buy, Theakstons’ Old Peculier:

If it wasn’t for the Steel’s Masher, Old Peculier would not be the beer it is today. The way that the malt is hydrated and mashed by the machine is incredibly efficient, releasing enzymes and raking through the grist before it can form dry-centred clumps. This machine makes short work of stiff mashes. It was invented in Scotland by James Steel, a brewer who, like many of his peers in industry, was making a lot of Scotch Strong and Wee Heavy beers—high malt content, low water content mashes. Getting the paddles around a mash like that is like stirring six tons of day-old porridge, in intense steam heat, in cramped conditions.

Speaking of the good stuff, Matty C wrote about cask ale for What’s Brewing (apparently a play on words of the 1978 Mancester journal of note mentitoned above, What’s Doing) and makes a very good point about the enjoyment of things in the abstract:

I tend to find that foreign visitors who appreciate their beer genuinely revere the cultural significance of cask dispense. But they also find only disappointment when, after months of anticipation, they arrive at last only to be served a tired pint of London Pride that is, well, warm and flat. We’re responsible for that reputation because in so many places where cask beer is served it’s not treated with the care it deserves. I don’t believe in the notion that cask should be some sort of protected appellation though. For me, the problem exists because advocates too often tend to raise cask beer on a pedestal, when really it should be treated like the most normal thing in the world. Yes, it’s a wonderful way to drink beer, but it’s not that special, really, it’s just beer, after all. Care and reverence are not the same thing.

On the topic of keeping the beer cool, one award winning pub has a related issue on its hands with the authorities due to a noisy fan:

Mr Bull took over the listed corner boozer in Gosport, Hants, in 2022. The previous landlady had the cooling unit located in a door cavity close to the beer cellar but after receiving safety advice, he moved it into the courtyard. Following a complaint, he was visited by a planning department enforcement officer last summer and later informed he would need planning permission for the unit. As part of the application, Mr Bull spent £1,500 on a sound survey as part of this in order to prove that the unit was not noisy. However, the survey found that the unit was loud enough that “it would cause sleep disturbance” to someone sleeping on the ground floor of the house next door, and ‘may’ do so for someone sleeping in the upstairs room.

Speaking of a proper pub, I have seen such things in histories of Victorian saloon hellholes… but never in real life:

…see that trough in the pub? That was so blokes didn’t have to leave the bar to relieve themselves. People in London are posh now though; they go to the gents for a piss.

Want a job in beer? Perhaps an open position with the Anderson County Beer Board is for you!

The three members would serve a three-year term expiring in September 2027. The Beer Board was established for the purpose of licensing, regulating and controlling the transportation, storage, sale, distribution, possession, receipt and/or manufacture of beer, according to a county government information. Interested residents can send a resume or pick up a request-to-serve form at the County Commission Office, 100 N. Main Street, Room 118, Clinton, TN, posted outside the office door. 

Will Hawkes is doing an excellent job in London Beer City with his extended series on the history of the biggest pub in London from the 1930s to the 1990s, reminding us that the past is a foreign country and that includes the fairly recent past including the era of the rave:

…Fascination at the Downham Tavern took place on Sunday afternoons, taking in not only DJs but also live bands like Natural Life. These all-dayers quickly became a huge thing, according to Wilson, who always played the last three hours, and who played at Bonnie’s on Saturday nights.  “We had the best laser show, we had the first gyroscope in [a dance] venue,” says Wilson. “When we first started [in 1988] we had 300, 400 people but it just took off. It got to stage where we had ticket touts … the build-up was massive, ‘I can’t wait, I can’t wait!’” Unusually for a pub, all this excitement was not fuelled by beer. Ecstasy arrived in the UK in a big way in the late 1980s, and it’s fairly safe to assume it was a key part of the Fascination experience. “Oh yeah,” says Wilson with a chuckle. “That was flying about.” The Downham Tavern all-dayers ended in 1990. By that stage, media hysteria about rave culture had reached fever pitch, and policing had become much stricter…

There was a good piece in the Manitowoc Herald Times on a 71 year old ship that has helped make that fine community the “Specialty Malt Capital of the World”, the self-unloading freighter SAGINAW:

The name was changed to SAGINAW on Nov. 20, 1999, in honor of Michigan’s Saginaw River. By 2008, the vessel was repowered from steam propulsion to diesel. Today, the 14,000-ton SAGINAW routinely transits between the ports of western Lake Superior and the Port of Manitowoc at least twice a year. Briess confirmed we can expect to see one more shipments of grain this year aboard SAGINAW. With up to 25 million pounds of raw barley in each delivery, that equates to about 40 million 12-ounce bottles of beer.

Finally, word of two more passings. Many remembrances followed up the announcement of the passing of drinks writer and cider maker, Susanna Forbes:

Forbes, whose long fight with cancer had been known by those close to her, had not faltered over the past few years in her dedication to the industry she loved. Speaking to db last year, she outlined how much she “appreciated people and cherished the perspective that treatment and its challenges had uncovered”. Her generosity of spirit showcased by her constant reminder that “in times of hardship you recognise the people who go out of their way to really make a difference”. Friends and colleagues have come from far and wide to pay their tributes to Forbes for her personality and kindness being at the forefront of their descriptions.

And there was another passing this week of particular note for me, of a craft beer pioneer in my old hometown of Halifax NS, Kevin Keefe of the Granite Brewery:

When Keefe opened the Granite Brewery, it was the second microbrewery in Canada — and first east of the Rockies. That’s a far cry from today as there are dozens in Nova Scotia alone. Keefe first became interested in craft brewing after reading an article about it. In 1984, he went to the U.K. and learned how to do it at a brewery. Not only was Keefe a brewer, he was a savvy businessman. “If I retailed it to the liquor commission, I’d get 50 cents a bottle, but if I sold it in a glass to you, I’d get almost two bucks a bottle, so it didn’t take very much for me to figure out, well, what I want to do is sell it to you,” Keefe told the reporter in a 2017 interview for Halifax Magazine. And thus the Granite Brewery operated out of Ginger’s Tavern.

The Granite of Halifax was a big part of my good beer education. I was a bar rat there in my early twenties as soon as he opened the place. I can smell the Ringwood yeast in my mind’s schnozz this very minute.

There. Until next week, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and let’s all see if Stan cheats on his declared early autumnal break from his updates on Mondays. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there.

*When we lived in PEI in eastern Canada, I would stop in Sackville NB when returning from Halifax NS just to grab a few Peculiers.
**Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (183) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (932) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,457) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (152), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Only One Thing Overshadows Eurovision… Could It Be These Thursday Beery News Notes?

Hmm… on the one hand international entertainment with, yes, a limited number of perhaps well worn themes played out, yes, over and over and over. On the other… Eurovision! It’s big. This here beer blog? Not so much. There is an overlap, however, as The Beer Ladies Podcast have a primer. They’re a bit into it: “Our own Katie and Lisa are jetting over to Malmö to revel in the madness…” And The Beer Nut will no doubt be live tweeting the formation of the next day’s piercing hangover, likely as illustrated. There is only one thing bigger – Stan is back. He never lets me take a week off. Stan wants a month away? Stan gets a month away. Me? I write this blog.

What is going on out there?  The big news or, as Ron put it, the great news is the relocation for a remaining Burton Union set from Marston’s Brewery, the traditional brewing system that Laura Hadland discussed last February as being mothballed. Pete Brown shared his thoughts at The Drinks Business:

This week, it’s been announced that Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) has given a set of the famous Burton Unions to Thornbridge…, and is helping the Derbyshire craft brewery get it up and running. This has sent some much-needed cheer through the craft brewing world. Why does this matter? Once upon a time, Burton-on-Trent was the most important brewing town on the planet. And by the middle of the 19th century, most beer in Burton was being fermented on the town’s eponymous Union Sets. The unions were a system of barrels, pipes and troughs, basically an adventure playground for fermenting yeast. The yeast had loads of fun, foaming through the pipes and running down the trough and back into the barrels from which it had spouted. The belief was that happy yeast made better beer.

The Tand shared his initial reaction too: “A cynic might just think that multinational brewing companies care little for either history or cask beer, and this is a cheap way to put a slightly embarrassing problem to bed and come out of it looking rather good.” I entirely agree… but do the yeast care one way or the other? Well, yes, of course… if the alternative is extinction!

And congratulations were also earned by Pellicle this week for this announcement:

We are not sure how this has happened, but we are very honoured, and a little taken aback to have been nominated in the Best Magazine section in this years @GuildFoodWriter awards. Against The Guardian. And the National Geographic. This is nuts. 

Boak and Bailey analyzed the recent news the Buxton Brewery teetering towards administration and focused in on the problem with being “merely quite good”:

This is what we think sometimes happens with breweries like Buxton. They’re not bad enough to have anything specific to fix, but not good enough to generate word-of-mouth enthusiasm. People don’t mind drinking their beer, but they don’t seek it out, or detour to drink it. They might have one pint but won’t stick on it for a session, or stay in a pub to have one more pint than they ought to. And they won’t order it by the box from the brewery shop.

And continuing with the good news / bad news, a statement was made this week by Hadrian Border Brewery about a contract brewing deal gone very wrong:

THEY WON’T PAY. No disputes on product or services! By November 2023, we had no more head space for it, it was making us ill, so we passed the case to a Debt Collection Agency…  

Quite right to call the deadbeats out publicly. But… gee… was “posting this on such a platform is detrimental for the beer industry“? No, not talking about things like this is detrimental. As is not talking about how so much of non-alcoholic beer is a let down… except perhaps for its perhaps natural audience according to the New York Times – children:

…more and more he has noticed children asking for nonalcholic drinks. “It’s not exactly daily, but more than weekly,” he said. The restaurant, which sits inside Saks Fifth Avenue, has two spirit-free concoctions on the menu…  He ultimately decided that while it still feels a little strange to serve the sophisticated beverages to children, it felt satisfying to contribute to family dining experiences “in an interesting way.” As nonalcoholic cocktails, wines and beers have become staples on bar menus across America, some children — people way under the legal drinking age — have begun to partake.

Not that there is any meaning left, but that’s one new twist on the “small” in small, independent and traditional, I suppose. Sorta like this take on the role of the trad:

Novonesis is a leading global biosolutions company formed through a combination of Chr. Hansen and Novozymes. It creates biosolutions for all types of industries. from nutrition and biofuel to chemicals, energy and water. Novonesis’ SmartBev range offers yeast solutions for low/no-alcohol and regular beer. The range includes both unique yeast solutions, like its NEER products, as well as lactic acid bacteria solutions, such as those used in its Harvest range. The company was pushing these products at CBC 2024 — especially its NA alternatives — which Guillory sees as a rapidly growing segment in the last 12 months.  

Mmmm…. biosolutions.* That’s what I am looking for in my glass. Speaking of the world of chem, Ed Himself once again shared some thoughts from the tech side of brewing gleened from his trip to the Murphys Brewery in Cork Ireland, owned by Heineken since 1983:

They can do 12 six tonne brews a day in it in two lauter tuns. Heineken, Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish are brewed there, the stouts being perhaps four brews out of a weekly 35-40. Cider is also made there from sugar and concentrate. They can mash every two hours and ten minutes, lautering takes three house. They have a holding vessel between the lauters and the copper, and unusually the yeast propagation plant is in the Hauppmann brewhouse. Overall extract losses are less than 7%. They have heat recovery on the stack on the copper and a heat recovery tank holds hot water which is used to pre-heat the wort via a Plate Heat Exchanger. They have four 120 tonne malt silos and…

Yeow. Right about there my brain started to hurt. Like it hurts when the kids were in high school and asked me to help with their math homework.

BREAKING: Ron had breakfast.

Beth Demmon is back with another Prohibitchin’ this time featuring the career arc of Maura Hardman, now Seattle Cider Company’s marketing and PR manager – including this tidbit of transitional good luch from her previous stint with Whole Foods:

It was during her time there she first found out about Seattle Cider Company, via their partnership with the local nonprofit City Fruit. “They’d take their ugly apples, crab apples, things that can’t be used for their CSA program or food bank program and put them into cider,” she explains. Whole Foods then sold the City Fruit ciders and sponsored the Seattle Cider Summit, so she began to learn about and appreciate the beverage as a fan. But appreciating cider was one thing. Working in the industry? It hadn’t even occurred to her.

And David Jesudason shared the story of Melba Wilson, an American who moved to London in 1977 – and how she had to “endure a shocking ordeal” in a pub just twenty years ago:

“He was surrounded by his squaddie buddies, so I guess he felt emboldened to carry on. He stopped after a while, I went up to him and looked at him. He didn’t show any signs of remorse. The other customers weren’t treating him negatively – it was like they thought you could get away with saying that in a country pub if there was only one black person around. “It was one of those incidents where you’re shocked that somebody is doing it and then you think ‘how am I going to challenge this?’ I said to my husband: ‘did you hear what he said?’ and I wanted to complain.”

The stunning bluntness of senseless bigotry. Saddest part: “I believe racism – overt or covert – has risen since the noughties.”

On a far less serious topic, Jessica Mason reporting live from the SIBA press conference:

Scary stats: “24% of drinkers NEVER visit their local; 41% WOULD VISIT if prices were lower; 25% of drinkers say NOTHING would make them visit more often & 8% of drinkers choose a pub because of the indie craft beer it stocks.”

And less important still, I am not even sure I have the energy to lift my hands to the keyboard to report on the news that James Watt has shuffled the deck of name plates and has swapped out CEO while retaining his shares, the board seat and adding a new title that makes no sense – captain. Best line was in the Guardian:

He will now be replaced by the company’s chief operating officer, James Arrow, who is expected to focus on returning the loss-making company to profit.

Confused? Imagine my state of mind when Liam gave me hope of a Battledore revival. Because Goldthorpe. Because Goldthorpe may be Sprat. Which may be Battledore. Maybe. But there may actually be Goldthorpes. Maybe.

Speaking of things not appearing as they are, so much for the Euro lifestyle thing as Latvia is moving its legal drinking age from 18 to 20… and the brewing trade lobbyists are lobbying:

…chairman of Saeima’s Social and Employment Matters Committee Andris Bērziņš, [stated] certain coalition and, possibly, opposition deputies may propose excluding beer, cider and wine from the list of alcoholic beverages to be applied with new age restrictions. Bērziņš said he doesn’t support this proposal, as the proposed exception for beverages with a lower content of alcohol does not match the Saeima’s recently passed regulations on the handling of cigarettes, which states how as of 2025 only persons of 20 years of age will be allowed to purchase tobacco products.

And nearby-ish in Germany, access to that friend of the drunk night out – doner kebabs – has become a hot economic policy topic:

Kathi Gebel, the youth policy spokesperson on the board of the Left Party, told Business Insider…  said the government “must intervene to prevent food from becoming a luxury item.” The party plans to propose a government price cap of €4.90 (around $5.30) or €2.90 (around $3.10) for young people, The Guardian reported… [T]he German government said in February that prices of the doner kebab are rising because of rising wages and energy costs… Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the issue in the past, saying that he is asked by young people “everywhere I go” if there should be a price reduction for doner kebabs, according to the outlet.

Finally, once upon a time, people actually paid me actual money to place ads on this here blog. One of those ads was for faux-esque Worthington’s White Shield.** There it is to the right. The little white square to the lower left of a screen shot from early 2007. From the emails I can see that I had to explain PayPal to the PR rep, Danny. Well that fact and Danny’s later emailed disappointment at the results of his hard earned cash placement didn’t make it to the story Pete Brown filed for Pellicle this week but he covered the rest of the issues surrounding of the great beer’s demise admirably:

Molson Coors don’t understand British ale, and of all the big global brewers, they’re the ones who haven’t really got craft beer either. The real reason they “paused” production of White Shield had nothing to do with “production routes.” It was a marketing decision. There are good people working at Molson Coors who adored this beer, but from a corporate perspective, once the company stopped ignoring it, and once Steve Wellington retired for the final time, they didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Turning a completely invented fake Spanish lager into the most successful beer launch in British history? No problem. Continue the production of a legend to satisfy legions of discerning fans across the world? Nah, too difficult, mate.

Such is the way of the world. Still, that 300 USD for the three months of the ad sure was handy at the time. Thanks Molson-Coors!

And with that… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*ever since some guy at work started calling the ten minute ciggie timeouts during day long meetings “bio-breaks” I just can’t see the world in the same way.
**Note the apostrophe – Worthington’s White Shield.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (slumoing to 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up t0 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta 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. Fear not!

The “Is It Tra-La Month Already?” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Tra-la? Really?? How many times have you had to write to remind me not to repeat myself in these weekly notes to myself?  I know. I know.* But in my defence, I am a man of little imagination. As you know. I take photos of pots yet to be filled with soil and seed.  Imagine being so dull.  Which is entirely unlike The Beer Nut whose blog turned nineteen this week so is, therefore, of legal age in all of Canada. Always a gent and always a source of the best information. I wonder what life would be if I ran this place on that basis?

Speaking of sorta which and as a bit of spice to start off the week to contextualize what follows, one of my favourite people from one of my favourite breweries (Max of Godspeed) got into it on Twex yesterday when he posed the following:

This happens at an alarming rate in Toronto, too. It’s not unusual to find myself in earshot of someone in the industry slagging another brewery in town…

See, he was responding to a similar comment from someone whose slow frail hand reached and pressed delete mere moments after posting. It’s an odd aspect of the bigger craft scene that insider smack talk is a bad idea. Me, I spell that sort of “bad” with the letters F-U-N! Me, I want to consider myself to be on Team Godspeed. I fact, I want elbow pads with “It’s Godspeed or it sucks!!” on them. They and maybe ten others stand above in this marketplace and they each should be loud and proud once in a while.  But do they? Do we? What follows this week is a lot about beer and language.

Not unrelated given that it is about one presents oneself… or one’s can I suppose, this bit of social media promo is perhaps the bestest, truest observation on the sad state of craft beer today:

Does your beer name have TOO MANY ADJECTIVES? Are there 3+ ingredients or flavours are namechecked on the can?You may have found yourself in possession of a GIMMICKY BEER – but is that a bad thing? Tune in to find out more…🍻

That’s the Beer Ladies Podcast talking right there… and it you click on this link you can get to the actual talking. When did what written on the beer can get so far down such a wrong path? Do we still have to use language like that?

There has, in fact, been a general concern with the state of writing these days. It’s the talk of the town, the topic of the week. Jeff propounded with a broad brush upon “The Death of Books“… even though new book sales are still ahead of the pre-pandemic rate in the USA. In their monthly e-letter, Boak and Bailey addressed the slightly narrower question of usefulness of the UK pub guide:

The fundamental problem with pub guides – or any kind of print guidebook – is that they go out of date between writing and printing. And that’s especially true in 2024, on the long tail of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, with hospitality feeling rather volatile. It was always a problem, of course. Our copy of Fred Pearce’s 1975 guide to Bristol pubs came with a paper insert with updates from April 1976: “Oliver’s Bar, Victoria Street… The Courage depot’s local is now closed down.” Actually, to an extent, it wasn’t a problem at all. It was part of the business model. If not planned obsolescence than at least a rather helpful incentive for people to buy next year’s edition.

Authors of the soon to be published book Beer Breaks in Britain responded with a bit of a stiff upper lip: “The fact is, people are still buying guidebooks. But that’s because they tell stories that can inspire travel, exploration, not just tell you where to go.” That statement reminded me of something that we need to be thinking about when it comes to discussions about things beery – that ever present need to tell the white lie when we are not, you know, just parroting the press release.  Perhaps it should be considered not all that surprising given we are talking about a subject that literally numbs the senses.

In fact, that comment reminded me greatly of the recent coverage of the slightly less recent Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas where the news of the continuing loss of public interest in craft beer was apparently the theme. Dave Infante described it in VinePair as evidence that we are in what he framed as “Craft Brewing’s ‘Could Be Worse’ Era“:

The industry in aggregate has concerns aplenty, though, and they were discussed at length over three days’ worth of seminars, meetings, and after-hours drinks on and off the Strip. Direct-to-consumer shipping and franchise law reforms are top of mind for the BA’s policymaking double threat, general counsel Marc Sorini and senior director of federal affairs Katie Marisic, and potentially onerous nutritional labeling requirements from the TTB aren’t far behind. Bob Pease, the BA’s president and chief executive, made sure to flag “growing threats from neo-Prohibitionist groups” in his opening remarks on Monday, as did several other speakers throughout the week.

You know when folk start blaming the straw man bleat of “neo-prohibitionism” that something else is really really going sideways. Something something else like (…umm..) customers losing interest in the cyclical fads of craft (… err…) curomers are just sick of the horse apple hype as David Bailey so bluntly put it last Friday in Pellicle? There is no lack of proof of the slide if Jessica Mason’s stories just this week are correct… and they are: laters Ballest Point, see ya Greene King and buhbye BBF. Yet… we also consider the reasonably described booster Don Tse in Forbes uncritically summing up the slew of negative numbers by repeating the trade association’s lead voice of the boosterocracy:

Watson estimated that, “125 million Americans who drink didn’t have a craft beer last month” and suggested that there was still opportunity for brewers to grow. Speaking to the audience of brewers, Watson said, “Many of your customers are fiercely loyal. Breweries that are succeeding are finding ways to have customers drink their products on more occasions… Craft beer as a category has seen fads in beverage alcohol come and go,” said Watson. “But craft is here to stay.”**

Really? Same as it ever was? That’s all there is? Cue the great Ms. Peggy Lee!***

So if we take all that in and that is all there is… which of the two trades are doing more poorly? Books or craft beer?  If Stan is to be understood correctly, craft is down to 2014 levels of interest, five years worse off than the book publishing marketplace apparently.  Whichever it is, books about beer should be expected to face a tough future.

Entirely conversely and far more reality based, Ed wrote a piece this week about another sort of understanding – one based on gaining an actual educated understanding of beer and brewing – which he drew from his conversation with Kathryn Thomson, the Head of Education and Professional Development at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling:

I have for a long while been insisting that as a professional brewer every pint I drink is CPD but that does seem to have bitten me on the arse now that recording CPD is something I’ll actually have to do properly. I don’t suppose untappd submissions will count. The blog however might, my write ups of brewery visits whilst on study tours have been described as “great examples of reflective CPD”. I may be a beer nerd but I’m also a technical beer geek! Well lubricated though those IBD study tours may be there’s a lot of actual studying too.  Kathryn is trying to develop a practical and pragmatic approach to CPD which sounded very positive to me. And I also got a chance to go off on one about brewing education which was great because I have opinions.

It’d be nice if a consumer oriented equivalent was created so that one was not defencelessly subject to the fist punch “craft is here to stay!” sort of yahooism. You know, one where we’d see more of the specificity, respect and honesty that good beer avoids. A discussion like those reports we read this week about how the spirits markets are facing “destocking” and even there candor about value we see in the famously puffy world of wine trade writing these days. Just consider this from James Suckling on the conditions faces by those setting prices for the soon to be sent to market 2023 Bordeaux futures:****

“People are not going to buy if you don’t drop the price,” concurred Hubert de Bouard, whose family owns Chateau Angelus, which last year raised its prices significantly with some backlash from the market. “You can’t go against the wave. If you don’t [drop prices] you can’t sell. It could be 20 percent or more, but it depends on the name of the chateau.” It’s not going to be easy to drop prices to a level that will generate interest in the vintage for en primeur. The market situation is very tough, as any wine merchant knows regardless of where they are based. For a start, the cost of money from banks is the highest in decades in the United States, and wine sales are down in most key markets around the world. There are overstocks with importers, distributors and wine merchants. And prices are falling for many top wines. And then there are two wars and an anxiety-ridden U.S. election in November. It will be difficult for many buyers to tie up money, especially if it’s credit from the bank, for almost two years before the wine is delivered.

Whole lot of context and grounding right there. Could you imagine a leading beer perioidical publishing something like that, being that honest about value?

Lisa Grimm is also all about the real and last Friday her Weirdo Guide to Dublin proved it with a visit to Hynes’ Bar in… of… at Stoneybatter:

On a recent Saturday evening, I found people making the most of the remaining visit from the sun in the beer garden, which comes complete with a DJ booth and Oasis-v-Blur cigarette disposal – a reference that here in Ireland is both a GenX comfort blanket and general Father Ted reference that even the younger set who don’t recall the 1990s will recognize – they know all about Fathers Dougal and Damo (though I note that as I write this, it’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Parklife, so I may crumble into dust before we’re through here – let’s see!).

And ATJ got real over at his newsletter AJTbeerpubs in his reminisings of trips to American dives with some fine character portraits:

It was either his grandfather or great grandfather who had come out west and made something good of himself. ‘Have you heard of so and so?’ I was asked, an unremarkable town in the north-west of England whose name sounds like a low comedian who had a TV series in the 1970s. ‘It’s a fine place and I intend to go there one day.’ I muttered something, but my thoughts were rather, shall we say, less complimentary about his intended place of pilgrimage, but I was a guest. As these kind of evenings do, when we are not expecting anything to happen, stories flew backwards and forwards, and more beer was ordered. Meanwhile, Dean Martin from Rio Bravo staggered in and was served this time. He was a fisherman, who’d come ashore that day, and presumably was drinking away his profits. 

And Pellicle published something that didn’t need to make much of an argument to convince me: “The Case for Perry” by Adam Wells. Perry is the greatest fluid this planet ever created as far as I’m concerned but never gets its due:

These days there is so little perry made, so little known about it, and so few people who care that we pass down lies and generalisations and they stick. We say that it’s always sweet: it isn’t. We say that it’s always light—that’s not true either. We ho-ho about pears containing sorbitol and claim perry is a laxative—if that was true I’d be a ghost. We equate the whole, broad, fascinating flavour spectrum of a labyrinthine, spellbinding drink to Babycham and Lambrini, and wise, sensible people—people who know and care deeply about other drinks—nod and shrug and pass the lies along. At best, perry has been filed as a sidekick; a chapter in a book about cider.

I say I love perry but I never seem to get my hands on much of the stuff. Which places it in the realm of “readily available” when you compare it to the subject of the article in Cider Review “Hymn to the Quince” by Beatrix Swanson:

… it doesn’t take much digging to discover plausible reasons why you don’t see many British quince drinks, either: quinces struggle to ripen fully in some parts of the UK and need to mature in storage for up to two months after harvest; they seem to be unsuited to machine harvesting; and they are not commonly planted and therefore expensive to procure post-harvest. What’s more, until the UK government’s August 2023 alcohol duty reforms, ciders made with quince — or hops, or elderflower, or anything else other than apples or pears — were taxed as ‘made wine’ in the UK and therefore subject to higher duty than cider or perry.

So, again we see, there is good writing out and about right there to be read. Sure, not enough to balance off the other stuff but it is worth the digging. Which means… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.***** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*2023… 2020… 2019… 2009… 2008… 2007… you get the point.
**“Peace for our time!!!“
***For those in need of the footnote…
****Me, I’ll be buying* my mixed two or three cases or so as I have been since the beginning of the pandemic. Investing for my retirement! I’m already menu planning for Christmas 2031. Here’s a cheat sheet for the futures buying process for Ontario.
*****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (back up to 916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (crashing down nince t0 4,463) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta 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. Fear not!

The “Gotta Mow And Gotta Pay My Taxes” Time Of Year Beery News Notes

 

Late April reminds you why it is the cruelest month. Taxes and lawns. Taxes and lawns. You know, the neighbourhood’s lawns may look a bit crap because people can’t figure out and if the “No Mow May” thing applies (i) up to and including May or (ii) just during May.  Me, I am just lazy. See, I have one of those whirly manual mowers that doesn’t cut so good so it takes five times longer than it should and leaves me beat. What’s new this year, however, is news that “No Mow May” might actually be bad for bees! Apparently it’s like feeding your children by leaving hard candies around the yard. Not sure how that fits into my lazy plan… but I’m working on it. That’s my Grandfather up there, by the way, out with the lads about a century ago when he was in his twenties. Second from the right. In case it isn’t obvious to one and all, his name was Jimmy.

Speaking of the crop to come, I wondered to myself when I saw this report in the Western Producer on the forecasts for the next Canadian barley harvest:

Canadian barley supplies are likely to be burdensome in 2024-25, according to a market outlook published by the Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission. Supplies are forecast to be in the range of 10.7 to 11.7 million tonnes. “This is well above the 2023-24 supplies at 9.65 million tonnes and the five-year average of 10.3 million,” stated the report authored by LeftField Commodity Research.

Last time I heard the word “burdensome” used like that was when I was eight years old and asked too many questions about the rules of the hockey as Dad was trying to watch an NHL playoff game on a snowy black and white TV.  Seems the language of barley forecasting is all rather ripe. We read “…lower prices combined with poor movement have cast a shadow…” and “…supplies will be bloated…” as well as “…France has got some problems…”

While we are on the subject of brewing malts, Matty C has been busy scribbling away and shared his story “How British Heritage Malts Are Making a Comeback” at CB&B starting with the tale of one particular ale:

That grist includes small portions of amber, black, brown, and chocolate malts—each about 5 percent of the bill. The most significant twist, however, is that McKenzie replaces 20 percent of the pale base with malt made from a specialty heritage barley variety known as Chevallier, produced by Crisp Malt of Great Ryburgh, Norfolk, in the east of England. A two-row, narrow-eared variety, Chevallier dominated barley farming in England throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, beginning to fall out of favor about 1920. By 1940, production of Chevallier had ceased. In 2017, however—after four years of small-batch trials—Crisp commercially released a five-ton batch produced at its traditional floor maltings at its headquarters in the east of England. At RedWillow, McKenzie was one of the first brewers to get to play with it.

Sounds good – but bring me my Battledore Porter and I’ll be right in there.  Speaking of wishes come true,  NHS Martin moved beyond the boundaries of mere beer when he and she explored a rather empty Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria, this week:

Blimey. 9 million in 1985 before Communism crumbled; 6.5 million and falling now. And further Googling revealed plenty of commentary on the ageing and depopulation of Bulgaria, the result of migration, falling birth rates (1.6, same as UK) and the sporadic availability of London Pride on hand pump. It had certainly felt “spacious” on our night out, and though those craft beer bars we’d visited were busy enough I guess there’s your warning about judging a place by its craft beer bars.

Speaking of wandering worldly ways, the Tand has been considering the pubs of Oz and found one away from the tour group that made his day, The Exeter Hotel in Adelaide:*

…we found ourselves in a proper public bar, with a central bar serving the room we were in and another room opposite. It was basic, unspoilt with wooden floors, a few bar stools, a handful of characterful locals and a couple of rather fearsome women serving. We immediately knew we were in safe hands. It was stunningly good. Even on a warm Adelaide night, indoors here was way preferable. This was smashing. It turned out to be a Cooper’s of Adelaide tied house, with a reasonable number of their beers on offer. I settled on Pale Ale – fermented in the keg as are all their beers – and took in the scene. It was amusing to see some people – tourists I assume – entering, looking round and leaving with a look of dismay and concern on their faces. This was a proper pub. 

However fabulous that proper pub on that wonderful evening might have been, it still can’t rank to probably the most fabulous beer related object ever… as witness by Lars:

Just saw this: the Oldenburg horn. A family relic of the Danish royal family, kept in the vault with the Danish crown jewels, so this really is the Danish royal drinking horn. And it has a legend attached to it… According to the legend, Otto, first of the house of Oldenburg, was out hunting back in 989 when he became thirsty and said “How I wish I had something to drink,” whereupon an elf maid appeared out of a hill with the horn…

You will have to read on for more of the elven lore. We of MacLeod are totally here for these sorts of things.

In Pellicle this week we have a good bit of writing from Rachel Hendry on the phenomenon known as Babycham, its cultural meaning, its logo as well as (a bit to my surprise) its content:

Thankfully an alternative name was already being used. Be it short for champion or champagne, Baby Champ—as the legend goes—was the term used by workers in the factory to distinguish the smaller individual bottles of Champagne de la Poire from their larger siblings. This term of endearment was overheard in an early marketing meeting held at the premises and adopted as a result. Baby Champ, then, became Babycham. Ralph Showering, you may recall, had been appointed head of sales and marketing, a position he did not take lightly. The Showerings family had purchased a small herd of Water Deer from Herbrand Arthur Russell, the 11th Duke of Bedford, for their growing property and it was here that Ralph took inspiration for Babycham’s logo.

I say a bit to my surprise as I spent my high school years over forty years ago in Truro, Nova Scotia. “Of course” you say, “the connections slaps one in the face!” But… in that place there was a factory next to the facory where I made carpets on the night shift for only one week one summer** which made such delights as Moody Blue sparking wine made in part from blueberries as well as Baby Duck made of God knows what. You may still be able to buy a magnum of it for $13.95.

Some classic Ron just after last week’s deadline, starting with a photo of a plate of breakfast and summing up like this:

I fiddle around on the internet for a while. While sipping whisky and stuffing my face. Eventually it says my flight is 45-minutes late. Though, by the time it leaves, it’s delayed by more than an hour. Not much to report about the flight. We take off, fly for a bit, land and then spend forever taxiing to the terminal. When I open my front door, there’s a cup of tea ready. Andrew tracked my flight this time.

Good. Cup of tea and a rest. That’s what Ron needed.

I’ve done a few modest sponsorship deals so it was interesting to read that the English Premier League is moving forward with a four year deal with Guinness as sponsor:

English football’s top flight is toasting a £40m sponsorship deal with Guinness after the Diageo-owned brand saw off competition from Heineken. Sky News has learnt that the Premier League has informed its 20 clubs, which include Everton, Manchester City and Sheffield United, that it is backing a £10m-a-year agreement beginning next season. The deal, which has not yet been formally signed, represents a big financial uplift on the Premier League’s existing partnership with Budweiser’s owner, AB InBev.

The match makes more sense than Bud… except it seems a bit, you know, cheap even though it is up from £7,950,000 a year for Bud.**** When you do a deal like this you should get some exclusive access to the fans in all those twenty fitba stands. That’s a lot of thirsty people. Unlike most naming rights sponsorship deals, the sponsor here actually should get a enhanced revenue stream in addition to loads of advertising and name placement. This boils down to £10 million divided by 360 games or £27,777 per league game not counting Cup or other games. Average game attenence so far is 38,486 meaning its 72p per attendee per game. Won’t this deal generate more value to Guinness than that?

Note: one of the reasons I look away whenever I see the word “neo-prohibitionists” is that the arguments from those who use it are so poorly made. Their cause may have a point… maybe… but, face facts, no government is shutting down the alcohol trade – the taxes are too sweet even if the behaviour causes so much harm. Which is the other reason: the dumb calls to liberty. It’s like that call for the liberty to starve under the highway overpass. The only argument that makes sense is that this is all about taking reasonable risks.

Much conversely, Boak and Bailey wrote a review of Dr. Christina Wade‘s The Devil’s in the Draught Lines which immediately saw me reaching for my iPhone so I could buy my own copy online:

Structurally The Devil’s in the Draught Lines resists the simplicity of chronology. Instead, each chapter covers a different angle and whizzes us back and forth through hundreds of years, from the mediaeval world to the 21st century. There’s also room for stories around race, culture, gender identity, with names and faces unfamiliar to us, like Lizzie and Lucy Stevens of Closet Brewing, and Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela of the Tolozaki Beer Company. In fact, there’s the equivalent of about 25 Pellicle articles hidden throughout the book – and we mean that as a compliment to both parties.

Inspired by the clever as I scanned the wide world for more beer reading, I saw that The Journal of The Institute of Brewing had released a few issues for 2024 on its relatively recent site and, while some can thrill to tales such as the “role of temperature in sporulation was investigated at 25, 27 and 30°C by measurement of the rate of sporulation over ten days,” this article drew my eye perhaps a bit more avidly towards the screen as it deals with that old chestnut, the diastatic variant:

Diastatic variants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are unusual in producing an extracellular glucoamylase which enables the breakdown of starch to fermentable sugars. Diastatic S. cerevisiae has long been viewed negatively as a contaminant of especially beer packaged in cans or bottles. However, this view is being reconsidered due to the opportunities that diastatic strains present for niche fermented products and distillation applications…. This review highlights the utilisation of diastatic S. cerevisiae for its flavour potential, and processing applications in the brewing, distilling, and biofuel industries.

“Whachamacsayin’?” I hear you cry out? More in laypersonspeak over here at Escarpment Labs*** but I think we can all agree on need for increased oppportunities for niche fermentated products. Unless that means White Claw.

Treat of the week? Check out “Eating high” the 1966 video of the London Post Office Tower’s rotating restaurant included with this post at A London Inheritance.

Aaaaannnnnd… again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.***** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday upon which he decides to show up at the office. 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*The actual scene that very evening as personally witnessed by the Tand.
**See, the shift was from midnight until noon for some unknown reason. Plus I was coated outside and in at the end of every shift with polyester from the spinning machines I was to operate. Good wage but goodbye.
***See, for example: “Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus is beer yeast that can break down longer-chained carbohydrates (dextrins and starches) that regular yeast can’t. It doesn’t actually consume them directly, but it secretes an enzyme (glucoamylase) that breaks down dextrins outside the cell into smaller sugars that the yeast can then metabolize.“
****All stats via Lord Goog. Math by me. Govern yourselves accordingly.
*****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (down one again to 915) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up five to 4,472) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (161), with sorta 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. Fear not!

The “What’s Beer Got To Do With The Solar Eclipse” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

I couldn’t stop myself from reusing this image…***

A couple of weeks ago, I flagged the upcoming solar eclipse that is passing over our region, as illustrated again above. All other topics have stopped, it seems. We are calm and composed but at the other end of the lake, the Ontario version fo Niagara Falls has even declared an emergency due to, according to their Mayor, the million people estimated that might show up. So… what is beer to me when the sun is about to be eaten by the moon… or is the moon eaten by the sun? Bear with me if the perspective of these notes this week veers a bit towards the centre of the solar system… but not directly. No way. We and our pets do not look at the sun… except when we can… and only with proper filtering glasses except when they aren’t needed.  Easy.

First up, David Jesudason has continued his investigations of the story of Brewdog Waterloo and has noted a few very strange things. First, he has screen captured the story in the UK edition of Metro magazine which disappeared under mystereous circumstances. And he wrote a follow up piece in his newsletter Episodes of My Pub Life or rather from a duty manager from another BrewDog location did:

There are times when we stay open when I believe we 100% should not be open. We had no water on a Saturday night, it was rammed, we couldn’t wash glasses or dishes, couldn’t wash hands. The operation team was called, the situation was explained and they flippantly asked if people could use the loos in the bar next door. We just ignored them and closed. In my experience the operation managers can’t handle their workload. I feel there’s too many bars for them to manage and this leads to urgent emails regularly unanswered…

There is more but for me it is hilarious that there is a “OPERATIONS CONTROL ROOM HQ” that has to be called for permission to cope with local circumstances. Best fact: “There’s no training materials…” Speaking of power hungry beer chains, The Beer Nut himself has been investigating the phenomenon of the UK pub chain:

They sure love a chain restaurant in England. They have loads of them, and there’s something about a town like Bournemouth — lots of visitors looking for something familiar, perhaps — which seems to concentrate them. I did not go there with the intention of exploring exotic English chain restaurants. It just kind of turned out that way. There is, for example, a Brewhouse & Kitchen, a chain of brewpub-restaurants that felt to me like a modern successor to the Firkins of old, and memorably described by Boak & Bailey as “a bit like business class Wetherspoons.” Now there’s a demographic to aspire to. I wasn’t there to soak up the ambiance, however. I was there to try the beers, brewed on-site on the smart brewkit out front.

More to actual beery side of beer, Lars¹ has unleashed his powers of research and share two fact: (i) there is actually an east-west axis to Norway in addition to north-south and (ii) there is also a place called Atrå where their yeast is not kveik but berm. The story reads like the narration by John Walsh on America’s Most Wanted:

Then I stumbled across a guy on Facebook who had gotten hold of farmhouse yeast from a neighbour. In Atrå, as it turned out. He told me that several people locally had their own yeast. It was usually pitched at 30 degrees C, and everyone thought it was “old”, whatever they meant by that. Then came the surprise: nobody in the village brews in the traditional way any more. Those who brew use malt extract, but they still keep the yeast. This was very unexpected: a village with no brewing tradition, but they did have their own farmhouse yeast? Could this yeast really be genuine?

And looking back in time, Martyn has shared his clearly non-eclipse effected view of a very focused topic – the truth as to the identity of one pub in London, the Tipperary of Fleet Street:

…what of the claim that the Tipperary stands on the site of the Boar’s Head, and therefore has a history going back at least 580-plus years? Here I put myself in the hands of a man called Bren Calver, who aggregated many hours of research on the stretch of Fleet Street between Water Lane/Whitefriars Street and Bouverie Street, in particular studying contemporary illustrations, and who is convinced that the Tipperary occupies what was originally 67 Fleet Street, not the post-Great Fire 66 Fleet Street that was home to the Boar’s Head, which Calver believes was demolished around 180 years ago. This is about to get complicated, so hang on to your hat.

Laura Hadland shared some thoughts on the naming of those spaces where the brewery that brews the beer also sells you a glass of their beer:

Recently I visited the delightful Little Martha Brewing in Bristol, where I got embroiled in a fascinating discussion about the nature of pubs with co-founder and brewer Ed Morgan. Little Martha, for Ed, is assuredly a brewpub, not a taproom: “Rather than being a drinking space that is an add-on to a brewery, we’re a pub with a brewery at the back. When we started the business, the thing driving it was that we always wanted to have our own venue. We wanted to make it a cosy, warmer space certainly than some of the very large taprooms you see now. We wanted it to feel like a local pub, rather than trying to build a beer brand that would attract people here.”

For me, brewpub and taprooms that serve food are much the same thing. I was in Edinburgh’s Rose Street Brewery, drinking with the owner/brewer back in 1986. Pretty much the same set up as Middle Ages in Syracuse, NY back in 2006. When I was there, was I in a pub, a taproom, a microbrewery or a brewpub? All and none of the above… maybe.

BREAKING!!!… “Saskatchewan announces changes to homemade liquor rules”:

On Tuesday Saskatoon Churchill-Wildwood MLA Lisa Lambert announced that the province has amended liquor regulations to allow people who have applied for and received a special occasion liquor permit to serve those two types of homemade alcoholic beverages to their guests. “Previously, these products could only be served among family and friends in their own home,” she said. The new regulations officially came into effect on Tuesday. “This change is yet another example of our government’s ongoing efforts to reduce unnecessary regulation and red tape where possible,” Lambert said.****

Because… that is the one thing that is filling the jails of Saskatchewan… Uncle Fred’s homemade wine at the community Thanksgiving Supper down at the arena without a permit. Speaking of law, Beth Demmon is back with another edition of Prohibitchin’ and features Davon D. E. Hatchett, wine lawyer and The Bubbleista:

“While I was in law school, I took a class in intellectual property. I did not expect this to happen, but I LOVED the content in this class,” she says, adding that she ended up getting the highest grade in the class… But rather than set aside her passions, she decided to merge them, despite some skeptics…  “I actually went and talked to one of my professors at law school when I moved back, and he essentially told me you can’t have a viable practice in trademark law,” she recalls, disappointed. While she figured out what direction she wanted to go, she started working in corporate consulting and taking continuing legal education classes that Texas required. It was there that she first realized the potential for working in beverage and hospitality law.

Jealous. I mean I never knew what sort of law I would want to do but ended up being an owner’s side bridge building lawyer. Concrete. Rebar. Geotech studies. Fun stuff. But wine law sounds really good.

Note: Gary sums up his beers of France.

We flinch about a few things… pairing… IPA… branding… but there were some interesting thoughts from the exporter perspective in The Japan Times about a category of beer that is not necessarily well framed – Japanese beer:

For Japanese beer companies, there is work to do on more clearly defining their image. Mike Kallenberger, a senior adviser at brewing and beverage industry consultancy First Key, said aside from big mainstream imports such as Corona and Heineken, the majority of beers imported into the U.S. are typically associated with a specific occasion — in the case of Japanese beers, as a pairing to Japanese cuisine. “Japanese beers are typically seen as lighter and more refreshing, which makes them very good for pairing with food. Beyond that, the current image may not be very distinct,” Kallenberger said, but noted that given the focus of Japanese brewers on the U.S. market, that perception will likely evolve.

Never lacking in focus, The Tand displayed his full powers this week, as illutrated to the right where he took down Marks & Spencers and their farce of a mezza gigantes. this may have been deleted by some shadowy power or another. The powers behind mezza gigantes should not be underestimated in these matters. But, as we have learned from David Jesudason above, there’s more than one way to skin a cat whe we are dealing with the dark forces of the interwebs… or something like that…

Speaking of full powers, if you sign up for Boak and Bailey‘s Patreon account, you will learn the secret behind this statement:

It was the fastest Ray has drunk a single pint for a very long time and we both stayed on it for the rest of the session.

And still in Britain, The Daily Star has identfied a good marketing tool for these troubled times – one that even the Tand himself has not trotted out – ale is cheap!

With the cost of living crisis ongoing, many of us are dodging the pub in favour of boozing at home or cutting back on alcohol altogether. But for those of us who still enjoy an evening at the local watering hole, we can keep costs lower by opting for a drink other than lager – which, on average, set consumers back £4.24 in 2022… In contrast, ales – including stouts – cost just £3.60 in 2022, about 15% less than lager… Ales tend to be the more budget-friendly option in general…

Stan has declared “MayDay!!” for April and won’t be back for four whole weeks* but left us some good beery links including some considerations on the pretendy world of A.I. as it relates to beer:

I remain skeptical about AI beer recipes, but the information that Kevin Verstrepen’s laboratory at the University of Leuven shares could also be put to good use by humans. Consider this:

“Both approaches identified ethyl acetate as the most predictive parameter for beer appreciation. Ethyl acetate is the most abundant ester in beer with a typical ‘fruity’, ‘solvent’ and ‘alcoholic’ flavor, but is often considered less important than other esters like isoamyl acetate. The second most important parameter identified by SHAP is ethanol, the most abundant beer compound after water.”

Ah, yes. alcohol. So plenty to read in the Nature Communications article, and a lot of sexy charts.

Alcohol?!?!? Speaking of alcohol,** Pellicle published a piece by Alistair of Fuggled fame on Big Fish Cider of Monterey, Virginia:

Each autumn, Kirk’s father would harvest his trees—amongst them a Northern Spy, a Grimes Golden, and a Winesap—pressing the fruit to make sweet cider, which they stored in a barrel. It was here that Kirk’s lifelong obsession with apples and cider began. “I can still remember the scent hitting my nose, and the flavour just exploding in my mouth, and I still think fresh cider off the press is the best thing going,” says Kirk in his soft Virginian drawl. “I love the taste of apples, I love the smell of the bloom. My mom reminded me that I would come in and say if I could make a perfume with the smell of an apple bloom, I could be a millionaire. I never did make it mind.”

Finally, Pete Brown was in The Guardian this week giving advice to the beer drinking fitba fans has part of a bit of a paranoid series of stories about strong lagers in the lead up to Euro 2024 in Germany based on a bit of a confessional:

Years ago, at the start of my career as a drinks writer, I visited Oktoberfest for the first time. The beer at the festival is served in litre tankards… You swing them as much as you drink them, the beer disappears quickly as you sway along to the band and you have quite a few, but it’s OK because the beer is Helles, a light lager style at about 4% ABV. So when we visited a biergarten the following day and saw Oktoberfest Bier being sold by the Maẞ, I naturally assumed it was the same thing we had been drinking at Oktoberfest… It’s typically between 6% and 7% ABV. I didn’t know this. I had seven steins over the course of the afternoon, and then I tried to stand up. We’ll draw a veil over what happened next.

Me? Been there. Syracuse, NY. Blue Tusk circa 2007 or so. Being served a stout whch was actually my first 10% imperial stout. Then four more pints. Samesies.

Enough!! We roll our eyes at misspent yuff as, again, we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and 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 own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,468) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta 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. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday he decides to show up at the office. 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And I listened to the BOAS podcast bro-ly interview of Justin from Matron. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. 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 few podcasts… but some may 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Yes, that is how months generally work.
**Which reminds me to note again how it was not good beer hunting again this week.
***Cry for help or what… hey, what do you mean it’s a crappy headline image… and what do you mean this footnote is out of chronological order? YOU’RE OUT OF ORDER!!!
****Note: the government claims to have reduced red tape by adding a new class of permit… think about that for a moment…
¹Beer history’s Tommy Hunter.

The Super Fantastic Yet Soon To Be Chocolate Stained Easter 2024 Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Let’s get right into it. Jeff posted the graph right above us right there this week which deliciously not only sums up the place of non-alcoholic beer in the US market but also, as any good specific graphical representation of data, also invites us to consider any number of the crises in beer or in all of life itself. Is it neo-proto-Dada? Not sure but it really poses the question “what is big?” BA Bart, who actually started the discussion with this graph, responded with a fact as well as perhaps as something that was less than a fact when he countered with another graph:

All depends on your point of view. From one view 0.8% share isn’t that much. But 1 share of the US beer mkt is >$1 billion in consumer spending & NA is now bigger than any craft style except IPA (category vs style within category is admittedly a bit apples to oranges).

I have to admit that I am personally far more interested in the graphical display of information than I am in NA beers – but the question of what is “big” remains. Very much relatedly, Andreas Krennmair wrote about a sort of “wow – this is big!“: a NA beer from Germany’s venerable brewers Augustiner:

Everything I’ve read about the Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell sounds to me as if Augustiner may have pulled off the same as Guinness, to release a convincing alcohol-free Helles that may be pleasing even to consumers and Augustiner fans that otherwise would not choose an alcohol-free beer. That’s a big deal, and could change the landscape and expected quality of alcohol-free beer in Bavaria and the rest of Germany.

See, as Andreas says, Augustiner was the last of the big Munich brands without an NA beer. And NA beers, in Germany, are big. In other big news, lots of good coverage by James Beeson in The Grocer this week on the purchase of “parts of”* craft beer distributor Eebria by Beer52 and the effect on suppliers to Eebria now holding invoices unlikely to be paid. He’s added a few extra considerations by Twex, too, including this on Wednesday:

Have this AM seen a copy of the SIP16 doc pertaining to the sale of @EeBriaTrade. Was initially marketed as for sale as early as March 2023 (i.e. it had been in financial distress for some time). A buyer pulled out in Dec ’23. Beer52 paid a total of just £30k to acquire. Doc makes reference to the fact the sale process(es) needed to be carried out discretely so as to reduce risk of “supply partners withdrawing their products”, something that “would impact upon the company’s ability to trade and significantly affect the value of the business.”

It is important to note that buying or not buying debt as part of administration is a common choice. If you are not a dealer in debt it is risky to take it on. It’s also important to note that pre-pack administration set ups (if not managed correctly) are not immune from supplier backlash or even allegations of fraud related to the “pre-packing” process. As always, suppliers with concerns related to questions on possession as opposed to ownership of stock in hand should seek qualified independent legal advice. By this I mean, if you did not buy the debt did you really buy the stock associated with that debt? By which I mean… where is the beer and is the possession lawful?** These things are regulated in Canada. There is also a UK police hotline, ActionFraud, which specifically deals with firms “fraudulently trading immediately before being declared insolvent, or phoenix companies.” I make no comment on current situation other than to say suppliers left out of pocket in the UK seem to have sources of professional legal and policing assistance.

Entirely unregulated and certainly well above it all, I so admit that know I have posted about this orchard project a few times. But, as a very minor investor, I have a rather outsized proprietary interest in the experimental forest of rare cider and perry trees of Barry Masterson, the motives behind of which he shared in Cider Review:

What drives a person to do something like that? For me, it began with Flakey Bark. A kind of poster child for rare pears, though believe it or not, there are rarer varieties than that one that was rediscovered by Charles Martell while driving a horse and cart through the Herefordshire countryside. Six known mature trees. Six. Though there are a couple of young trees at the National Perry Pear Centre at Hartpury, Gloucestershire. And now there are two more, planted in a field in Schefflenz, Germany. If it wasn’t for the Ross-on-Wye Cider and Perry Company, we’d likely never have heard of it.

Wow. Really wow. Me? I transplanted my lavender plants this week into ten peat pots as unattractively illustrated to the right. I started each and every one of them from seeds. So… samesies!

Wetherspoons. Love them or hate them, they appear to be either fighting against the tide of bad pub news coming out of the UK or… maybe they are part of the problem. The appropriately named Harry Wallop spent 24 hours in one to investigate for The Times:

It is 12.38am on a Friday night and I have spent nearly 15 hours in the Briar Rose, a Wetherspoons in the centre of Birmingham. Hannah, a law student, is about to head off to Snobs nightclub, but only after she has grabbed my arm to explain to me the appeal of the pub chain. Though she is articulate, she has also had “quite a few” Au Vodkas (£5.29 for a double, including her orange juice mixer). There is something about her enthusiasm that riles her friend Jacob, a politics student. “We don’t want to be here. We’re only here because it’s cheap,” he argues. “That is such bullshit,” says Hannah, rising to her feet.

Also down the ‘Spoons, The Beer Nut has been doing is own investigations of the wares on offer. No word of the volitilitiey of the “doubles Au Vodkas a la Hannah” but plenty of other observations:

It’s funny how branches of pub chain JD Wetherspoon develop personalities for themselves. Of the three in central Dublin, The Silver Penny, in the north inner city, isn’t the biggest, but it always feels like the busiest, the loudest, the endless party on the verge of kicking off. None of that has anything to do with cask beer, and yet it’s the one that does the most to put cask beers on. At festival time, it seems to give everything its turn, where the other two branches don’t seem so committed. That’s a long introduction to say that virtually everything I drank at the Spring 2024 JD Wetherspoon Beer Festival, I drank at the ‘Penny.

Speaking of festivals, the BBC reported on one which went rather wrong:

The first International Brewing and Cider (IBC) Festival was held in Manchester over the weekend. But the not-for-profit event was hit with complaints about rude staff, cold conditions in the Mayfield Depot venue, and a poor atmosphere… Freddy Hardy, co-founder of independent Manchester brewery Courier Brewing Co. said a low turn out in such a large venue meant “the vibe… just wasn’t there”. The 35-year-old added that he had agreed to stay until the end on Friday, but estimated he had only sold beer to around 20 people – 10 of whom he believed to be other people from the industry… Manchester-based beer writer Matthew Curtis told the BBC he estimated crowds to be no bigger than 50 to 100 at any time. He described the atmosphere as “very muted”.

Note that cameo appearance! Sometimes co-conspirator extraordinaire Katie added this:

Can confirm rusty rainwater dripped from the roof into my drink

That’s almost a haiku, right there. Or a bit of a folk song. Staying with the only two real controversies in British pub trade but moving on to the other… everyone’s favourire retired Fullers brewer John Keeling writing in Brewers Journal unpacked the sparkler debate for us who are not really in the know:

I am going to weigh in on this debate with my customary diplomacy. Northern beers use them to produce a massive head which certainly makes the beer look good and appetising but southern beers have a looser fluffy head. If you pour beer from a cask into a glass, you will get a very small head indeed and this was the way beer was dispensed before the invention of the beer engine.  This produced a bigger head, but it needed the invention of the sparkler to produce the tight creamy heads much loved by Northern drinkers. However, it might look good, but does it taste better?

You know what looks good? This scene from Ireland. What a lovely image from 53 years ago. Shared by Dublin By Pub on Twex, no word of the ultimate source but with the caption:

Livestock traders drinking outside a pub on Inis Meáin island, 1971.

Speaking of loverly, Retired Martin has taken us along to see the unexpected splendor of the newly reopened Rochdate Town Hall with a fabuous photo essay that you really need to go check out:

Mrs RM said “Wow”.

Speaking of a bit of another wow but just in time for Easter…

A congregation of Catholic nuns has reopened a bar in an ancient sanctuary in northern Spain, pulling pints of beer in the hopes of spreading the word of God to thirsty guests visiting the 11th-century Romanesque site. “I think plenty of people would think it’s unusual, because they’ve never seen it. But you know, it’s not a sin to drink a beer,” said Miami-born Sister Guadalupe, adding that the bar constituted an “open door for us to evangelise”.

Certainly with the same intention, Ron was back in Brazil for the hotel breakfasts and fit in another one before heading to at Marstons and drinking a lot of Bass [Ed.: passage edited for clarity]:

We start with some Bass that’s been open for a few days. It’s dry and finishes satisfyingly bitter. And no trace of sulphur. Quite like the pint in the Smithfield. Moving on to a freshly-tapped Bass, the contrast is striking…  It’s time to go and drink some beer. In town… Guess what we’re drinking? You’ll never get it. Bass!… We need to be moving on. Not far. To another pub… Why not have a Bass?…  “Fancy a pint in the White Horse?” Mike asks. It’s the pub opposite our hotel. “Why not?”… They’ve got Bass.

Now… there’s a lot of reading out there… so some quick takes like “Is craft beer cringe now?” asked Courtney Iseman. As she writes, “now” is a long time:

Even then, though, “craft beer drinker” was an easy shorthand for mocking hipsters. See: this New Yorker cover from 2014.

“What does ‘fine wine’ really mean?” asked Simon J Wolfe, sounding familiar:

In other words, this has nothing to do with wine – as in the liquid in the bottle.

Wholesale pricing notes from The Beer Nut:

Your regular reminder here that pubs buy beer from independent breweries for less than the big brewers charge, but sell it dearer, just because.

Boak and Bailey on “Real Ale as Folk Horror“:

The main point is that many of the stories concern secretive cults which are unwelcoming to outsiders and cling to arcane practices and rituals. Which brings us to CAMRA.

And… somewhat similarly but not… can we expect someone or something to brew a “Six Finger Stout“?

…researchers say they have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to make brews even better.

Heavy lifting the word “say” right there.  And “West Virginia passes bill allowing home distillation” says NPR with a netly hidden note of doom in the word “celebrate”:

West Virginia’s legislature has approved a bill that would allow individuals to distill up to five gallons of moonshine as a way to celebrate Appalachian history and heritage.

I like how “history” (the actual) and “heritage” (the bits of history that conveniently support whatever the hell you want) are used. Good to see the what was apparently the original level of 50 gallons a year per household was reduced.

Hops news? We got the hop news. Indoor hops farms in Spain? Check. Genetic intervention to preserve Kentish strains? Check. And Stan in his monthly Hop Queries clarifies his thoughts on the term “landrace” comfortably in line with my thoughts. First his thoughts:

Hop geneticists refer to the varieties that farmers chose to propagate over the course of centuries as landrace hops. Val Peacock, long-time manager of hop technology at Anheuser-Busch and now a consultant, explained the decision was pretty basic. “We like the hop that grows on this side of the road. We’re not so happy with the hop that grows on that side of the road”… I prefer the word “landrace” to “noble” because it is more encompassing. The more diverse the population of hops that breeders have to draw from, the more diverse the selection of new varieties brewers will be able to choose from, whether they are seeking old world or new world flavors. 

Me? I do not care for when people use “landrace” to mean wild. Centuries before the 1800s when the concept of nobel hops shows up, farming husbandry was selecting preferred stock.  You see it in hops history and malting barley history. People in the past used the resources around them in clever ways. They were not waiting for our own short stage of their future hoping we would be cleverer.  Speaking of cleverer, Hollie Stephens in Pellicle describes some hybridizing hopsters:

Indie Hops formed a partnership focused on hop research and breeding with Oregon State University (OSU), breathing new life into the university’s well-established hop research, which has been evolving since scientists planted hops on the campus in 1893. The business provides 100 per cent of the program’s funding and sets direction for what they want to achieve. But it’s truly a team effort to bring a new hop into the world. 

Finally, a wonderful photo from brewer Paul Spencer of his team as they start the process of making a new beer with a special ingredient:

And again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and 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 own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up one at 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,465) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta 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. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the next Monday. 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. 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 few podcasts… but some may 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*As succinctly quoted by Boak and Bailey last Saturday.
**See the fabulously named civil cause of action “replevin” (as discussed in the reasonably recent case Gignac v. Move Me Again Transportation Inc, 2021 ONSC 3374) which is a request for the return of someone’s personal property where it is alleged that the property is unlawfully detained by another someone.

Your Super Exciting Beery News Notes For Q3 March 2024

Fine. It may be spring but it was also -4C on Tuesday morning. Better warm up before eclipse day. They say half a million people might head our way. There’s not enough food to feed that many people… let alone a good seat at a bar.  I’ll be in the backyard, myself. But not to worry – I won’t be hogging all the eclipse beers like this:

After the 2017 eclipse, “I marked my calendar,” said Sam McNulty, co-founder of Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland, which is in the eclipse path this time and will see nearly four minutes of dimmed skies. Last year, McNulty’s team brewed a hazy IPA called “The Totality” to help drum up interest in the eclipse… In the coming weeks, “thousands and thousands” of cans are set to hit store shelves, McNulty said — adding they decided to go big because of how rare the event is. Cleveland won’t be in the path of totality again for a long time — not until 2444. “I don’t want to have to wait 420 years to brew the next batch of cans,” he joked. “So we made a very large one this time.

Eclipse eclipse eclipse. It’s all we talk about these days. Except there were lots more stories this week about “young people these days” like this in Canada’s Old and Stale on the effect the reduced interest in partying is having on urban planning:

Many of the businesses at the heart of urban nightlife are taking note. And as Canadians reimagine their relationship with booze, restaurants, bars and clubs are starting to question the future of cities where drinking is no longer the trend, nor the linchpin for socialization… “People rely on booze to make events fun,” Ms. Monaco says. “If you’re not drinking, you need something else to occupy yourself. I like to have a theme and activities.” “Throughout the Americas, cities are hosting museum nights, bookstore nights, bicycle nights”…  Toronto and Montreal are considering 24-hour nightlife zones and, despite an overall decline in drinking, some business owners are advocating for 24-hour alcohol licences, saying it would put Canadian cities on par with hubs such as London, Paris and New York. 

Yeah, like that’s going to happen. New York, Paris, Saskatoon? Me? When I was a university lad in my twenties in a east coast navy city it went the other way. For a year or so there was a bar that changed its draught beer prices by the day of the week. Friday nights, a 8 ounce glass of generic draught cost 69 cents, ten cents more than on a Thursday. Monday was 29 cents. You can guess why the place closed. And while it’s not quite same – isn’t dynamic pricing – “At Stock Market Bar Night, Buy Low and Drink Up” in the NYT tells the take of price fluctuations within the one night as some London establishments:

The young and the thirsty had come for “Wall Street Wednesdays,” where drink prices fluctuate with demand like a stock market. Attendees queue three-deep at the bar for a “market crash,” when an air horn pierces through conversations and prices plummet. “You need to keep your eyes on it,” said Emily Bjurqvist, a 23-year-old graduate student, as she nodded to TV screens showing price changes. “It’s more active than just a pub. And the prices might be better than a pub nowadays”… They had gotten a Moscow Mule for £8.20, or just over $10. But that wasn’t rock bottom: It dropped to £7 during a crash. Ms. Bjurqvist eventually saw the price climb to £11 ($14). “People like to think that they’ll save more money than they actually do,” she said.

“Nowadays”? Do people really say that? Much more sedately, Liam and Gary had an interesting discussion on Twex about the difference between the actual history of a brewery and the history as presented in advertising. Gary pointed to a newspaper notice from 1941 on Guinness which perhaps contained a wee fib and Liam countered:

Even back then it was being said in adverts that it had been brewed since 1759 – and the same way. It’s hard to write about Irish brewing history when you have to rewrite so much of it first, and when beer writers are *still* stating that erroneous ‘fact’ …

I stuck my note in – as is my wont – and pointed out that the question pointed out the excellent, venerable and ancient tradition of what we in law call “puffery” in relation to brewing and how it has been recognized by courts and tribunals including in your favourite bedtime reading Anheuser-Busch, Incorporated v Molson Canada 2005, 2012 TMOB 112 (CanLII) where the exercise was illustrated:

In my opinion, the Applicant’s argument that the word “certified” does not bear any reference to temperature is not of assistance to its case. Again, the Mark must not be dissected into its component elements. It must be looked at in its entirety. In my view, the word “certified” in the Mark cannot be read separate and apart from the word “cold”. In other words, it can only be seen as qualifying the word “cold”. It is also of no assistance to the Applicant to argue that despite showing a number of compound words beginning with “cold”, the dictionary evidence does not show a compound word for “cold certified”. 

The case revolved on the question of whether one brewer’s branding and ads “clearly describe the conductions of production of beer.“  I will leave it to you to absorb the considerations. Speaking on analytical thinking, Jeff published a rather interesting thesis on the effect on inflation on the real value of your good beer purchasing power this week:

We imagine a dollar represents something solid, like the actual price of a good, when in fact it has a lot to do with currency strength and stability. During hyperinflation, people bring wheelbarrows of cash into stores to buy a loaf of bread. The bread’s intrinsic value hasn’t changed, the amount of the currency needed to purchase it has. That illusion has been enhanced by the incredible stability of inflation. Stuff has seemed to be worth about what we expect for so long it has made us believe prices and value were identical. When we see a $12 sixer or a $7 pint, our minds tell us it’s expensive because, thanks to inflation, it deviates from our expectations of what a beer should cost. The price of a six-pack went up about a buck every decade in actual pricing. What was the price of beer in 1994? The nominal price was a fixed and real $3.65. But if you look backwards from 2019, it was $6.32; from 2024 it was $7.65.

Note: National Geographic magazine says “Declaring any city Britain’s best for beer would be ridiculous.” Don’t tell the good people of Copford:

Carys Miles, 40, of Copford, is the owner of a very special jewellery and accessory brand called Craft BEERings. The idea for the business came to her five years ago when she and her husband Pete discovered their shared passion for craft beer. The stunning artwork on the cans of their beverages had started to catch their eyes, so Carys decided to begin upcycling them. She said: “It was a period of time where I needed a creative outlet, so, of course, I cut them up and mounted them on earring fittings like anyone would. 

What about Edinburgh? Nope… not if the law has anything to say about it:

Police in Edinburgh have seized a “beer bike” over road safety concerns. Officers stopped the pedal-powered bar on Leith Walk at about 11:20 on Saturday. The vehicles, which allow revellers to sightsee while enjoying an alcoholic beverage, are popular in several European cities. A spokesperson for Police Scotland said the vehicle had been stopped due to road traffic offences but inquiries are ongoing.

Either they are still sifting clues (because that’s what the police do… they sift clues) or somewhere someone like a character from a Rebus novel is beating the crap out of  someone else in connections with these arrests. Likely in the woods. If you ever find yourself in a Rebus novel and you are told by the novelist to go into the woods… just don’t. OK? Don’t.

There was another interesting juxaposition this week that is also worth noting.  On Monday, Boak and Bailey wrote about what they framed as “the evolutionary advantage” of booze based on their considering William Golding’s 1955 novel The Inheritors, a book about early human history that I am pretty sure I read about four decades ago:

They’re drinking some form of mead from beakers – which the Neandarthals, who don’t even have the simple technology of cups, conceive of as round stones. This orgy of drunkenness continues for several pages until the humans drift off to their caves, or sneak off to shag in the woods. It’s easy to imagine Golding making observations, and taking notes, in the pubs of Salisbury on Saturday night. He was also an alcoholic and had plenty of personal experience of how it felt to binge yourself silly…

After reviewing some review and academic considerations of the novel, they conclude:

We think this can be interpreted to mean that societies which drink together become stronger overall, as a unit, and so gain a competitive advantage over other ‘tribes’. From our own perspective, as generally well-behaved, rather uptight 20th century specimens, there’s something in this. When we’re tipsy with friends and relatives, we express our feelings more freely. It helps us resolve conflicts and strengthen connections.

I thought about this and the bias involved by framing this as advantage when I read ATJ‘s latest Substack offering* :

I hear an American male voice in another part of the bar. ‘Nuremberg is my kind of place, I went to university here.’ He is sitting at a table with another man. ‘I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Franconia.’ Meanwhile, I also spy at the opposite end of the bar at which I am sitting on a stool a man with a rock lion’s mane of thick hair. He is perched on an identical stool to mine. His glass is empty and I hear him order another beer. ‘Helles, bitte,’ he growls… I have a sense of belonging with regular visits to my local pub, but when you begin travelling and become a kind of nomad it can be possible to carry this sense of belonging along and when walking into a new pub, as I did on this benign evening, maybe the welcome and the mood handed out a temporary passport of belonging. We may drink in the company of strangers and, while looking for the lavatory, half think of the tale of the Minotaur in its maze and wish for a ball of thread, but if you know pubs you will belong. 

For me, there is a sort of deep sense of “same as it ever was” in the two considerations. But not sure whether this speaks to advantage or just survival.**  Also reminds me all a bit of the movie Shirley Valentine, too. Something sometimes to escape.

Speaking of Neanderthals as Ray’s book did- and perhaps even doing Neanderthals a disservice in doing so – David Jesudason published an exposé of an unnamed pub’s terrible business practices on his newsletter, Episodes of my Pub Life. It’s based on a “20+ interviews, numerous edits and investigative work” as well as a refusal from a publication based on legal concerns that naming names could lead to ramifications:***

One source claimed that they worked with a manager who boasted about employing a homeless man to clear glasses in exchange for inedible food and say they reported this manager to the management at the time. “The manager bragged to me about it,” they said. “I had to walk away. It made me feel physically sick.” The toxicity allegedly also extends to accusations of misogyny, racism and ableism. One source alleges that she was told she was turned down for a promotion because it was “a man’s job” and she also says that workplace adjustments for her disability were removed leading her to go on sick leave. 

Arseholes. I’d like to hope the rumour mill will take care of this anonymity thing but… no need to worry about that as it appears the word is out. Most telling comments from David: “4,000 people have read this article in five days… And all the publications that told me this story wouldn’t have wide appeal can fuck off“!  Apparently beer publications don’t know what to do when they encounter a journalist.

Fight! Fight the power. And finally, Katie Mather wrote a lovely story for Pellicle this week about a trip she and her man Tom took after the the loss of their dream pub, Corto. They went apple picking and found some healing:

For three years Tom and I had worked late hours, until suddenly, we didn’t. On the Nightingale farm, we had free reign of our surrounding patch of woodland, and yet every night we were in bed by 8pm. There is nothing on earth like the exhaustion of stress. We were drunk on it, stumbling around, squinting in the daylight. Waking up in the middle of an orchard is bliss. There’s no other word for it. In the very early hours, tawny owls make their final calls before their nocturnal bedtime, and as the night is diluted into dawn the countryside begins to wake. I scan through my messages even though it’s 5am, and check in with how I feel. I am sad, it feels heavy in my limbs, but I’m looking forward to the day ahead. Something I’ve not felt in a long time.

Something we all need, looking forward to the day. Except maybe eclipse day around here. That’s going to be weird. Annnndddd… again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and 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 own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (pus one to 126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up one too at 913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (down one to 4,464) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (165), with sorta 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. Fear not! While some apps perform better than other we can always check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan promises to be back next Monday. 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 revitalised and 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 which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. 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 few podcasts… but some may 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again according to Matty C.

*Word of which I received via Twex with the startling teaser “It’s always Nuremberg in my head” which is starting to me given the whole, you know, legal aspect of the toddlin’ town’s history.
**Sorta something like this: “It’s not just a beverage; it’s a part of our social fabric that brings people together.” Really?
***As a lawyer, I often think this concern is often a bit overstated but likely not in this case. And we remember the poor planning when GBH got the legal advice after the fact and the subsequent litany of features on back of nowhere brewers under the heading “Why? It matters???”