Category: Craft Fibs

These Be The Beery News Notes For Mid-January 2022

We are already at a mid-point. But there are plenty of them to do around. Pick one point and then another? You’ve created a mid-point. I saw this image from a late 1960s airport or train station waiting area. I remember these at the Halifax airport, coin operated TV chairs. Some sort of mid-point going on. With ashtrays. We are at another now. Mid-January.

This bit of beer business news has every member of the semi-pro beer chattering class without experience in business* scratching their heads:

Molson Coors Beverage Company said today it will stop production of its Saint Archer brand and sell its San Diego-based brewery and taproom to Kings & Convicts Brewing Co., which owns the Ballast Point brand.  

As I reported… relayed… poached from Josh Noel in the Chicago Tribune, back in December 2019 Kings & Convicts, an apparently tiny craft brewery in Illinois bought one time mega-brand Ballast Point. The purchase was made with a bucket of moolah earned from a hospitality asset sale by K&C principal Brendan Watters in 2015  along with input from other friendly and wealthy investors including wine magnate Richard Mahoney. These brewery buys at pennies on the dollar are no doubt a doddle for folk at that level.

In another sector aimed at making the moolah, the sad news has been reported by Jaime Jurado that something called the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association has been created. A concept which seems to put the moron in oxymoron. As it is not about beer, it shall never be referenced again – except when someone mentions “neo-prohibitionists” again. Then I can say:

What? You mean the ANBA?

Best NA-NF quote of the week? This:

Price is an issue. Not sure how I’ll feel about that once work isn’t paying for the beers.

What? Govern the opening of your wallet accordingly, I suppose. Spare a measure of salt when reading review by those who get the freebies. Next fad to return? Temperance bars. As noted by Martin, the mastheadless blog Evo Boozy Scribbler discussed a variation on that theme:

I have nothing but disdain for booze free curry houses. Having a pint of Cobra is part of the experience. I don’t take my own roast potatoes to a carvery.

Well, it’s part of your experience. Why can’t people on the beer imagine that there is a world where being people on the beer is not considered the height of civilization’s progress? I rarely have been with my curry but, then again, I equate it with family meals, not piss ups.

Speaking of food and beer, this is an interesting argument from Zambia related to food security:

Well, if we are talking about food security, perhaps we could start by checking the quantity of maize going into beer before we think of suspending meagre exports of less than a million tonnes because if this info could be true, it could mean us who drink chibuku, ‘eat’ more mealie meal in three months than what the whole country uses in a year! Mwaimvela kanongobilitina skopodicious, ka? But not everything is bad about opaque beer, “…it gives you 13.1% of body energy when you drink,” my friend told me.

Changing course, a high honour and one I agree with entirely was bestowed by Garrett Oliver this week after listening to Matt Curtis interviewed by the two folk at BeerEdge recently:

I don’t really follow the beer press; as a producer it sometimes feels grubby and unseemly to do so. But I will say that this interview put a lump in my throat more than once and made me switch my mental hat to “writer/journo”. We do need actual journalists. Glad of these folks.

Through this troubled world of everything from PR puff to academic research, it is good to note how much quality there actually is – as I get to do each week. While a sort of drinks writing is a narrative with no greater arc, writing attracted to novelty (or even whatever it is that has briefly twitched… right over there, do you see it?) we see another relatively recent aspect of this is how good beer writing is developing and unfolding is the phenomenon of people writing about serious issues faced in life – from humanity’s injustices to the  deeply personal – seen through the lens of something somehow related to beer. On excellent example this week was provided by Jonathon Hamilton in Pellicle:

This time last year I wrote my first essay for Pellicle. It was, like this, a self-reflective piece about the beginnings of the magazine, alongside my own struggles with mental health, imposter syndrome and a sense of belonging. Putting myself out there in such a way was one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do, and I would love to tell you all how it immediately changed me for the better. Unfortunately, it did not.

Similarly, note bene the bene noted:

It’s true that the total number of blogs has declined over the past decade, but the number of good blogs has never been higher. Moreover, they fill a role that would otherwise be left vacant. Beer is little-covered by newspapers and magazines, and often merely superficially. No one is going to print one of Ron Pattinson’s lists of 19th century grists in the Wall Street Journal. Social media is great for opinion and linking, but not much else. Imagine Lars trying to present one of his enthnographies on Twitter. Larger, more ambitious projects like Craft Beer & Brewing and Good Beer Hunting are doing fantastic work and I don’t want to diminish their effort. But blogs are still critical in the media ecosystem—and, given the anemic state of print journalism and the increasingly toxic nature of social media, more important than ever.

Hooray and happy sixteenth beer bloggaversary, Jeff!

There was a sad sighting of another of a bit of a failed PR initiatives this week: Tryannuary. How 2015. How could they have known that a global pandemic would raise general concerns about personal health?

In Scotland a wonderful protest was seen this week in Dundee, where the King of Islington, a Dundee pub was suddenly closed without warning and then suddenly reopened without warning:

Staff at a Dundee bar at the centre of Covid-19 cover-up claims have been told to return to work this week following a sudden closure. The King of Islington pub shut on Saturday with upper management blaming “massively reduced trade levels” due to the “promotion of unsubstantiated claims” in a union-backed grievance letter from staff. Kieron Kelleher, assistant manager at the Union Street venue, accused pub chain operators Macmerry300 of victimising staff who spoke out.

Protests had also been held at pubs owned by the same chain in Glasgow as events unfolded. As a child of a child of the Red Clyde, I got all verklempt.

This week’s Tufte Award for Best Visual Display of Quantitative Information goes to… a chart that explains what we know as “hard liquor” in Canada but described as spirits in the Old Country. It is from Colin Angus using data from Public Health Scotland who first ran a poll, most people guessing gin would be #1 rather than the bronze medal winner. Well down the list but still – who is drinking all that brandy?

The Canadian Beer Cup is off. Now… calm down. Breathe. I am sure it was a big deal in your household, too, but the reason  for the cancellation is… singular and real:

…guidelines announced last week by the Ontario Government in response to the rapid surge in cases of the Omicron variant limit indoor gatherings to a maximum of five people, making it impossible for in-person judging to take place at this time. “One of the goals of The Canada Beer Cup is to showcase the greatness of Canadian breweries to the world,” said Rick Dalmazzi, Executive Director of the Canadian Craft Brewing Association, in a statement. “With all due respect to the many fine Toronto and Southern Ontario judges who will be involved, we want to do everything in our power to also include the many international and cross-Canada judges who have committed to our event.”

In plain language, there was clearly a large aspect of this that was a Toronto tourism event bringing in judges who were also newspaper columnists and consultants to retailer, etc.** (One need not take that statement above in the cancellation notice to suggest that while Canadian beer may be underrated, well, our own Ontarian beer judges are somehow overrated.) Now… how to transition and stay within the overall goals. As happened in the World Beer Cup (whatever that is when it is not the World Beer Awards), beer submissions will be poured. What does a next step look like? Apparently the Greek Cup of Beer or the Greek Beer Cup or the Greek Beer Awards was not so needy of auslander praise as they also just mailed out the samples to the usuals. As did the World Beer Awards. Something will occur. I just hope that there are government grants that buffer all this, that cover the unexpected stranded costs that demobilization and remobilization incurs. Stranded costs are a killer.

Non-beer recommendation of the week:  follow AndyBTravels. He’s train fan who runs a Travel Architect Service. He also wanders around remote parts of places like rural Romania where this week he captured some desolate spots and also some gorgeous moments.

That’s it for now. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*pretty much all of them.
**we should be honest about how these things really work.

Your First Beery News Notes For A Thursday In 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There – a modest offering for this more modest first week of the new year. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

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

Here We Are At 2021’s End… And What Have We Become?

Charts. I used to draw loads of charts. The one above from December 2016 [Ed.: fig 1.] was really useful as it succinctly describes the world of good beer from a wee titch in time before 1980 to the then present day without all the revisionist history imposed on us all by the BA.  I was very interested five to six years ago in how beer culture described itself – which in part led to me shifting away my focus from researching brewing history to reading the weekly news. And as we can see in the diagram, craft as it then existed died in around 2015* but the term has stuck around, generating suckers and shoots that are worth exploring and, seeking external structures, may be explored using a few agricultural terms as analogies: sports, scions and volunteers.

What’s that? Let’s define some terms. A sport in the plant world is a genetic mutation that results from a faulty chromosomal replication. A scion is the one bit of a grafting that is intended to bear fruit characteristics that is stuck on the bit that goes into the ground which provides other characteristics, often related to hardiness.  A volunteer is something left behind and forgotten in the ground that pops up the next spring, bringing both hazards and opportunities.

Like Wittgenstein pointed out, axioms or self-evident statements are a useful way of understanding something. This is as true in beer as metaphysics. We have established or at least argued (in no particular order) that beer creates aggregation, is a means to an end, is cyclical, is responsive, is pervasive, and beer resists. Does the exploration of where craft has gone through the lens of sports, scions and volunteers add to that list of axioms? Let’s see, shall we? Whatever the outcome its can’t have more holes as nationalism or style as a construct. Let’s hope it is at least as helpful as Ron’s new Dark/Pale and Sweet/Bitter continuum.

One last thing before we start. Another chart. Or, rather, an updated chart. To the right, is an update [Ed.: fig 2] of a chart that I created in 2016 or so trying to get a handle on beer culture at the time upon which I have layered notations. Back when craft was a unified battle against all external forces as opposed to today’s schism riddled word cloud that would make a 1600s Scottish Presbyterian proud. Remember. Craft died in 2015. In 2016-17 were were describing its entrails. Now we are describing something else. Its offspring? Its ghost?

So, to repeat, a sport in the plant world is a genetic mutation that results from a faulty chromosomal replication. I think it is safe to say that we have seen some sporting in the world of good beer.  A sport is something unintended by the original breeder of the plant.  While some will fundamentally misunderstand and call something like the hop Fuggles a landrace, it is actually a sport as its ancestors were hop plants already farmed and developed under the careful eye of husbandry.  As Martyn wrote in 2016, Fuggles were first found in a garden. And hops were big business well before Fuggles came along. No, what is really the sport in IPA isn’t the hop but the muck… the haze… the lactose. The over-allocations of the term IPA over the last few years to encompass these new forms is as faulty a replication if ever there was one. No one intended IPA when first used to later become as diluted in terms of meaning as it has become.  Note: this is a neutral observation at this point – no comment on any sort of fluid in a can marked with these three letters. But it is an example of a sport.

Next, we recall that a scion is the one half of a grafting that is intended to bear certain fruiting characteristics that is stuck on the bit that goes into the ground which provides other characteristics, often related to hardiness. This sort of intentional mixing of characteristics results in something a lot like a sport but it is guided by human intervention. It won’t necessarily make the fruit taste different but, though grafting on tougher root stock, can extend a growing range or defeat a certain pest.

As we can from the chart above, fig. 2, two things we could call craft in 2016 have occurred: (i) it has encroached into micro in terms of a reduced availability of traditional styles of beer even while (ii) it has itself undergone what may be a schism. In addition to craft and poor widdle cwaft we have something else which I may tentatively call new craft. Old craft is serious stuff. Newer craft isn’t the same – it’s a pear branch growing above a root that had every intention of creating apples.

Interesting, this newer craft is made with an intentional rejection of style and tradition while retaining at least a political claim to being somehow craft.  It is not just the hazy IPAs but also the fruit gose and hazelnut imperial bourbon barrel aged stout with kviek.** It may not be your thing or my thing but folk seem to be enjoying themselves. Whatever it is, by rights if it had any self respect it would ditch the label of craft and pick another name to express itself. New craft is mainly characterized by the sense of fun it conveys. Invention, unrestrained exploration and fun. That is itself an intentional scion branching off of craft. And it needs a new word. Again, this is a neutral observation at this point.

Finally, we have the volunteer. The thing left behind and forgotten. Early volunteer potatoes in the spring can be far sweeter and tastier than anything else but the plants also are a playground for blights and viruses that can wipe out the entire following summer’s crop in a whole regions. So, what has been hidden or forgotten in craft? Plenty. One reason for this is natural given in the constant in flow and out flow of writers,*** who move on to other interests like trade PR or comms – or simply more complex journalistic topics.**** Plenty falls through the cracks as a result.

Some things that were hidden or forgotten that have become obvious over the last couple of years. Leading to a well-founded righteous indignation and meaningful accusations. Look, if we take the GBH list of Signifiers 2021 published this week at all seriously, we have to recognize that most are deeply and quite rightly unhappy about bigoted aspects of beer culture. Which draws me back to the chart above, fig. 2. We now know very well that craft can also shelter anti-social and even abusive tendencies. Who were these bigots in beer culture before the newer voices called them out? Were they actually volunteers, all hidden? Or were they sitting there safely in plain view in a zone overlapping poor widdle craft and micro?

Well, they have actually been around as Josh Noel reported for as many decades as the good beer movement has been around. And as he wrote in relation to the time when craft was reinvented out of micro around 2002 to deal with the proudly pervy aspect that had reared its head, it was a time not unlike now:

By the early 2000s, craft beer was splintering into identities. It was cool, it was hip, it was counter culture, it was “you’re not worthy”…

Are we there again? Facing a splintering? I actually think we are. Just one built on new values and new issues. Something that is both fun and ethical. As we see in fig 1, there is always overlap and transition. Will we see new confident approaches, even organizations arise? Why not? Why should the new just defeat the baggage of craft at a moral level when you can beat it on the beer store shelves? After all isn’t that what macro was supposed to do in the first place, address all the wrongs big brewers inflicted upon society?

It may now be that craft is to this new fun, inclusive, ethical sort of beer as micro was to craft. Craft and its dominant culture is now your older sibling’s or uncle’s beer, now tied to themes and traditions that don’t interest people outside of the bubble or fest and events that now turn people off. The new beer and the scene that is building around it doesn’t seem to need craft and, in that respect, is much more like the 1980s inventive weld-your-own-brewery-equipment micro scene that the business oriented ambitions of craft rejected. Today? It’s more about the positive personal experience, not just about being a follower. The new fun beer is easy and tasty. The scene is positive. That’s axiomatic. It just needs its own name. Then I can put it on a graph.

*Change? Remember #IndieBeer or craft v. crafty? No? No one does.
**is at least two adjectives before the substantive style noun is a hallmark of the new?
***…and newbie drinker.
****It reminds me of something I read about a turning point in the early church: what had been society of saints became a school for sinners. Who now relies on the authoritative teaching of craft in light of what we now know? To be honest, while Boak and Bailey may find value in the few remaining digital beer mags that “pay talented people to tackle big subjects at length and for that we thank them” that’s no guarantee pay creates consistently high quality content.  It also causes another form of forgetting: the topic that goes unexplored. So we have constrained formulaic approaches defined by editors who have creditors. We have the standard B.O.B. We have the newbie style guides. And… what? More ra-ra revisionism? What else?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There. I tried to keep it short. Can you believe it? No? Well, the holidays are here. Be happy – and while you are being happy please also check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

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

 

Your Beery News Notes For The Start Of This The Coming Darkest Month

It gets better. We tell our teens that but it is a bit hard to believe sometimes. Like in a pandemic exiting its second year when the sun is well below the horizon. But there’s only a few weeks of this darkness and there is beauty all around even in these troubled times. Up there? That’s Angela Merkel, in November 1990, at 36 campaigning on the Baltic coast in Germany’s first election after reunification. Fabulous. She reportedly drank five schnapps with them. As discussed in early 2019, Merkel has always been handy with a beer glass. I probably disagree with most of her politics but that presence and style will be missed. She strikes me as an excellent example. Do what needs doing. My mother would say that: “it just takes doing.”

There. A bit of positivity. Let’s keep it going until we can’t. First up, I loved this duo of tweets, each of which is oblivious to the other. One, a map of the inns of Southwarke England circa 1550. The other?

What a thrill to discover a 17th C traders token in the Thames mud from the Bell, a tavern mentioned by Chaucer at the beginning of the Canterbury Tales as being close to the Tabard where him & the pilgrims met en route to Thomas Becket’s Shrine in Canterbury.

The Bell and the Tabard are both on the map. Neato. Also neato was an excellent piece that I missed last week by Evan Rail on the problem of appropriation of Indigenous matters in beer branding as well as some very fundamental misunderstandings:

“I can only speak from my point of view, and my point of view is that we—meaning society—mistakenly think of Native Americans as a race,” Keyes says. “And what we’ve got to remember is that each of these tribes individually are sovereign nations. They have their government entities. And every tribe has its different culture. Not all tribes are just a Native American culture that’s the same.”

Getting thing wrong is always central to bigotry. The bigot always wants to control the narrative. This all particularly caught my eye as I am also in a family with Indigenous members and work with Indigenous governments as part of my work. And what mystifies me about the bigots is how they miss how fascinatingly rich Indigenous culture actually is. This article also caught my eye as this very week I had to give the heads up to another major brewing publication that it had very recently published that same very derogatory racist obscenity that Evan discussed in that recent piece. Happily, it was immediately removed – and was removed with thanks.

Also, see this post from the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives about a very specific question on the similarity among brewing competitors advertising a century ago:

I’m left with some lingering questions, the biggest being these: did these two breweries hire an advertising firm, did the newspaper have this book and create the advertisements, or did the brewery have a book of phrases they chose from? My sense is that the book is for a newspaper, given the instructions for setting up a printing machine and information about inks in the latter part of the book.

Conversely perhaps, did you know that Instagram may hate beer? How about these these outfits? Do you like them? No? Me neither, but I do like honest tasting notes:

I think perhaps if I have a lifetime of connections like this I can handle a lifetime of being told my tasting notes are too personal, that who I am is wrong, of failing future wine exams. I think perhaps, if anything, I will make it more so. 

That makes much more sense that a concept limiter, the expertise in narrowing – like a little wheel. Look at that: water’s contribution is actually a binary. A toggle switch. Little good comes of toggle switch understandings. No, no need of that. Stretch your own arms wide, as wide as you can. There was an exceptionally fine example of this in terms of personal tasting in Kate Bernot’s best beers of 2021 as published in (Craft) Beer & Brewing mag. Consider this:

The aroma promises an herbal, not-too-sweet blend of licorice, Tootsie Roll, star anise, gingerbread, and dark cocoa, while the flavor delivers bigger fruit that lends a cherry-cordial and Black Forest–cake impression. It’s like dessert and digestif in one. Gorgeous.

Impression! Less of the style guide references or list of ingredient and more of the personal and taste memories. Good. It’s my personal approach, too. Along with this.* Don’t be sucked in by the actual negs, the forces of poor widdle cwaft. You be you.

In other news, the beer writers of Britain gave each other** awards this week. It lead to some unhappiness and subdued response to that was offered: “The bigger story here tho is how many new writers were recognised for first time in these awards.” In another sort of awarding, Ron finished up his fun in Brazil with a few more interesting and honest notes about the integrity of the process:

“What will we be judging today? We already awarded medals yesterday.” I ask Gordon over breakfast. “Not all the categories have been judged yet.”

You quickly see from Ron’s posts that they center on styles and that styles are more like a skills competition as opposed to playing the actual game. In addition to judging submissions after awards have been given, we also learn that the best may be rejected if they are not fitting into that square peg of style. What’s that about? So much for best of show. Surely, not great.

The process of awarding awards is often a funny thing. Consider Drake’s actions this week to remove himself from the Grammys. People think I am just a bit of a crank about these things but it isn’t so. I do this for a living. Let me tell you something about myself.  As part of my work, I oversee and advise upon many aspects of the process and substance of awarding contracts at a very high level, for up to nine figure procurements. I buy things bigger and more complex than very large craft breweries. Right down to the details. I have worked with engineers to draft specifications for evaluating grades of steel that consider the stages from the fabricator back to the steel mill back to even the mines where the ores were dug. I love it. And those experiences inform these other experiences. Which leads me to the observation that I would not select the award of a pencil supply based on the process Rob described. It’s like folk are just making stuff up!***

We need to pay attention. These sorts of awards that Ron participated in are based on the construct of style. Which is really little different from the characteristics of the various concretes or the range of coverages one needs to consider to ensure the proper sort of workers compensation policy is acquired for a particular job. All of which is timely as the question of style keeps on giving and, weirdly, not one opinion seems to be the same… even when – and perhaps especially when – people think they agree with each other. Only for example, let’s start with Boak and Bailey who approved this comment from Stan’s summary of the situation:

What a frustrating discourse! It is pretty obvious that it is helpful and sometimes demystifying to categorize beers by style. It is also obvious that some people police the style taxonomy in a way that is off-putting and hostile to outsiders.

Oh, simple comment maker. It isn’t that at all. Nothing is binary. And nothing is obviously obvious. No, we can ignore that. “Get a therapist!” says one Aristotelian. Another thoughtful person, who loves the whole thing so much they seem to really want an end to all beer – even for the best of reasons – didn’t like the idea that style is even being discussed.**** But discussed it has been. Lesson: ignore folk who tell you to shut up.

Next, the call that everything is great. Think William Blake, “All Religions Are One” for a mo. Maybe that’s it. So “Drink what you like!” we are told, conversely. We are told style and those who define it are gatekeeping and that this “reinforces the negative stereotypes of the industry.” That may be a very good argument with a very good goal – exploration and inclusion. Other cultures can be actually wonderfully enriching. But, as we see to the up and the right, that can lead to appropriations, circumstances where anything in a can can mean anything now. Nothing demystifying about that. Just a blurrier blur.

So, we have these structures and they help us to avoid the blur. We see, accordingly, Mr. B declared his entire agreement with Garrett Oliver when he rightly and righteously proclaimed:

…[he] says quite simply something I’ve been ranting about — hello, IPA category! — literally for years. Words matter. Styles matter. Expectations based upon words and styles on a label matter…”

…err… right before Mr. Oliver wrote a significantly but not entirely different thing:

Brewers can – and should – call beers whatever they want to. What I want is for brewers to WANT to hold the line on some things. I don’t think calling a deep amber beer “Pilsner” is good for customers or for brewers. That said, in the end…self-respect is always voluntary…

Voluntary. Which raises a point: really? When is a rule voluntary? If style is so central to understanding beer why can it be applied or not applied here and there however folk want. Should it be voluntary? Jings. What ever did the poor folk do before the early 1990s when the concept was invented? Were they happy? Were they maybe happier?

No wonder folk throw up their hands. It wasn’t always so. I came across a voice from the past this week, echoes of the past in something called Brewing & Beverage Industries Business magazine in which you can learn (on page 8) that folk today lack a proper understanding of brown bitter: “…balance in beer, how very uncraft…” You can also learn (on page 10) that folk today lack a proper understanding of Belgian beer:

I remain convinced that, were you to package them differently, or present them already poured rather than in the bottle most younger drinker (sic) would be every bit as enthusiastic about them as they are about Brewery X’s new bourbon barrel-aged Imperial porter or Y Brewing’s guava milkshake IPA…

See, it’s all their fault. Folk who don’t get it. The “younger drinker”! Can we tie that argument all together: awards now suck because the disfunction of style sucks because new craft sucks because young people who want new craft today… suck? Really? Isn’t something else the problem?  Hasn’t uncontrolled style division and propagation as a top down exercise itself caused craft’s cacophony as opposed to clarifying anything? Who pushed that propagation of sub-style after sub-style? Those who benefit from manufactured complexity. And who is that? Surely not the reader of a well thumbed copy of Modern British Beer.

What to make of these ye oldie fartie views? Are they the last bastion of the fight against all these young people***** and all these  strange tastes? There are a lot of strange tastes going around, it’s true. There ought to be a limit. Or at least proper labelling.  Which leads to one last thing, that I think I would be more concerned about supply chain issues if the supply on the chain were not lychee:

His shipment never left Southeast Asia, posing big problems for Urban Artifact’s Petroglyph beer, a top seller. But then, Kollman found a different supplier who already had a container of lychee sitting at the Port of Los Angeles. A lychee lifeline? Not so fast. “Two and a half months later, that [order] never left the port” either, Kollman tells me in a recent phone interview. “So we just dropped that product line.”

If the lychee supply fails, drop the product line. Make something else. Because the next thing is just as good as the last. Transitory. So lacking of structure that the next fruit flavour that comes along is tomorrow’s darling. Somewhere eight or ten years ago, did we see this coming?  Isn’t it like a culture that we have just encountered for the first time – even though it’s been there all along? What do we call this anti-style thing? Is it just… fun?

As you think about that over the week, please also check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*I really need to print off some of these and sell them. I hear that 15 quid is the going rate.
**Surely a top journalism award.
***The “style beer” thing kills me. Just made up. Except it really isn’t. But is that what is happening? Stay tuned!
****Eine selbst beschrieben Auslander.
*****Diese lästig Jugendlichen!

The Very First Thursday Beery News Notes For The Second Half Of November 2021

I like this image above. It is a bit of an edit off a photo from Great Lakes Brewery off the north shore of Lake Ontario (as opposed to the one to the south of Lake Erie). Depth of field hit very nicely. Gran’s hand towels being put to good use. And clean lines every day. Best practice. Speaking of which, let’s see what else is worth noting in another week in the life of good beer and related stuff, shall we?

First off, Katie Mather wrote a very interesting piece of these times about a trip to sip natural wines in Paris which was as much about herself:

I ended up at Notre Dame every day I was in Paris. The resilient aura of a burnt-out cathedral was something I hadn’t been prepared for. I stared, making excuses to pass by, marvelling at the Medieval-like wooden supports bolstering the flying buttresses just like when they were new, wrong-footed by the stained glass rose window I had first seen in a Disney film, now blackened with soot. A dark emblem of survival—or perhaps a reminder of how close it has been to ruin, of being rescued, and still being rescued, and maintaining that iconic but now fragile facade. I was unwell, and I found a hand to grasp in the sight of this building. It seemed as tired as I was, of holding itself up, of being under so much of its own weight.

I am a bit interested in natural wine as I’ve known for a long time that I’m fairly sensitive to sulphite-based preservatives. This has been brought a bit into focus in the last few months as I am working on an intermittent diet that sees me weeding certain things out of my diet. Turns out I also have a problem with wheat and barley. Like a glass of red wine, good crusty bread triggers a histamine reaction. As does… beer. Weeping eyes. Inflammation. Drag. But manageable.

UPDATE: ghost tips over beer!

In his blog by email, Dave Infante took a very grim lesson from the Bell’s Brewery sale:

Remember early last decade? Selling out was anathema, and the U.S. craft brewing “movement” looked unstoppable. Now it’s starting to look insolvent. Sales are slowing; reports of workplace discrimination are up; a generation of new drinkers are reaching for hard seltzer and canned cocktails to power the party. In a 10 mere years, craft brewing’s rock-ribbed corporate antagonism has given way to self-imposed purity tests and fading relevance. In the same time, its product has morphed from zeitgeist-y leader to cheugy afterthought. Craft beer remains a product with a value proposition. But make no mistake: a dark night of the soul has fallen on its anti-commodity, independence-over-everything cultural dogma.

He’s probably right. Craft sucks. Right? Or is it “craft – doesn’t suck!” Can’t remember. Never mind – just remember who was calling craft “cheugy” back in May. The cool kids, that’s who.

Gary Gillman has been doing a fabulous job exploring eastern European brewing history with a focus on the role of Jewish culture. This week he wrote about  hops:

Hop-growing in the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia was an established but relatively small-scale business up to World War I. Prior to 1850 one source, Penny Cyclopedia (1838), states “a few hops” were grown, a cottage industry at best. By 1879 hop-growing is on a more solid footing. The Journal of the Society of Arts was particularly approving of quality, stating at their best Galician hops could hardly be distinguished from classic Bohemian Saaz.

Speaking of things easterly, here’s your Belarus update: still finding myself filling the hours at home rather than sprinting out into the local upsurge in the delta, I came across a video blogger who rides the rails of eastern Europe looking for former Soviet things to talk about. In this episode, it’s about five beers from five cities in Belarus.  Half seem to be gak. It is an interesting way to turn to Jeff’s thoughts (which we may have discussed before) about nationalism being the way to understand beer:

In the 44 years since Michael Jackson wrote The World Guide to Beer, people have become much more sophisticated in the way they understand and describe our favorite malty substance. The subject is incredibly complex, and over that span we have collected, classified, taxonomized, and shared information, refining what we know along the way. This effort has produced a shared (if disputed and endlessly debated) vocabulary and conceptual framework for discussing beer. For the most part, people have identified and developed the big concepts and we now focus on refining them. I was therefore surprised to discover a huge dynamic in beer that hasn’t gotten the classification/codification treatment: national tradition…

There is a lot in there to disagree with – that the subject is incredibly complex or that big concepts have been identified. Or that people have become more much more sophisticated. Consider this on that last point. But it is a reasonable additional way to look at a subject mired for a few decades in one fixed conceit – style. It is reasonable to have a number of ways to look at one thing to cross reference and improve understanding. But it is hampered by words like nation and culture that are greasy and malleable. Nations shift and cultures morph. Consider the political and cultural constructs just in Gary’s post above. And the concepts are prone to being coopted. Me, I am more of a globalist technology and trade story arc person myself.  But that is another way of looking at things in addition to style and national tradition, isn’t it. No good comes of the unified theory approach except perhaps in physics. Maybe.

I raise all this by way of background as this week, Stan wasn’t entirely on board with the nationalist construct or at least the rendering of it that made the era of craft special. He wrote thusly by way of counter example:

Last week, during the virtual portion of the Master Brewers Conference, Greg Casey discussed “The Inspiring Histories & Legacies of American Lager Beer.” Casey, who worked for several of America’s largest brewing corporations before retiring in 2013, is writing a trilogy of books that focus on the period between the 1840s and 1940s. He points out that America gave the world “ice cold beer here!” Americans learned about brewing adjunct lagers from the Germans, but made them their own. They perfected chill proofing, allowing beers to be served crystal clear even when cold, changing the look of beer and the culture of drinking beer.

See, this is why we have all those facets of a topic. Like history. See, America did not give the world adjunct beer after receiving them from the Germans. The Germans handed it around themselves as part of their global mercantile and military empire from before the First World War. For example, Germany took over the “port city of Qingdao in north-eastern China in 1898, and ruled over it until 1914” and established Tsingtao beer. See also Argentina. As Boak and Bailey explained in Gambrinus Waltz, they also brought it to Britain. In Japan, a German trained Norwegian (who did admittedly touch down in the USA) founded what is now Kirin. In a bit of a twist, in the 1920s rice-based adjunct beer took off in Canada, to sent it the other way sending it south into the US black market during American prohibition.* Americans then took it with them where they went and often stayed. All of which leads me to think that while nationalism may not be the right unified theory, the paths of nations and the interacting influences upon them may as important as the history of technological advances if we are to understand why beer is what it is.

Speaking of beery culture, the local version got weird this week. I have to admit, I used to drop in at the place a few years back as it was handy to my ride home from work in the family car. Small pitcher of basic adjunct lager and a basket of onion rings was my order.

In a more sensible context, retiredmartin prodded me to read this post from the blog Prop Up The Bar which I liked for a number of reasons but especially the man on the street view:

As I arrived the gaffer was on the phone making a very angry call, his mood not improved by muggings here standing underneath the ‘table service only’ sign at the bar. During his phone call he threatened to “just shut the pub” which would have made this an epic pub ticking fail. Not sure what had upset him so much, but looking at my picture maybe he was on the phone to the company that looks after the shutters.

See also Lord Largis illustrating the “non-tick”:

I hadn’t eaten properly and as the bus approached the Hussey Arms I remembered how good the food is in there, but I’ve been spending too much on takeaways and meals of late and I’m trying to cut this cost down. I had an R Kelly lyric pop into my head. “My mind’s telling me no, but my body, my body’s telling me yes”. But as it was now dark and I wasn’t overly convinced that I knew where my first pub to visit was, my mind won and I remained on the bus.

I like that clarity of the vignette. Much uncertainty, conversely, surrounds a news release that informs us that two of Ontario and Canada’s best established craft brewers have done a form of a deal focusing on efficiencies in distribution. Trouble is… it seems to be more than that. As Jordan stated:

Getting increasingly angry about this entire set of messaging and the general level of competence. Insulting to everyone’s intelligence to dangle the shiny thing at exactly the same time as letting the majority of staff go.

Ottawa’s news source The Review had more on the background:

“I can confirm that layoffs took place today, but they are largely not related to the Steam Whistle announcement,” said Beau’s spokesperson Jen Beauchesne, in a Tuesday afternoon email to The Review in response to an inquiry about the layoffs and the Steamwhistle announcement. Most of temporary layoffs which occurred this week are because Beau’s is slowing down production, while the company does maintenance work on its lines and brewing tanks, said Beau’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Steve Beauchesne. “We have been having some fermentation issues,” Beauchesne said. “We need to empty the tanks and do a deep clean.”

Questions have arisen but, look, the Beauchesnes are family brewers from a small town in far eastern Ontario and (a rarity) I happily call them friends. They are great fun folk who I’ve had over to the backyard and who’ve had me to their fests. The times, however, may not be kind and if the business changes coming are greater than they are in position to discuss today, I can only wish them and their community the best.

B.O.B.** of the Week:  Mr B on a rather good brewery in his neighbourhood. The denial of standard B.O.B. context at the outset is an interesting variation on the brewery owner bio.

Finally: “Man driving 870 miles in world’s smallest car” – not about beer but, still, please send your 500 word essays as usual on how it is still like beer to the regular address to be entered in the context for our weekly prize of a photograph of a ten dollar bill.

That’s a lot. Busy week. For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (where a parsing of press releases was featured this week accompanied by giggle, chortles and the mewing of cats) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*See The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., [1930] S.C.R. 361 at page 373.
**“Was ist eine B.O.B.? Das is eine B.O.B.!!” Translation: Brauereibesitzerlangweiliglichbiografie.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Remembrance Day 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: cheese cutting diagrams.

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

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

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

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

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

Best tweet with beer and meat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s plenty to chew on. To complain about. For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

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

The Beery News Notes For The End Of 2021’s 10/12ths

Here we are. November looms. I’ve never thought Halloween was all that scary given November is right there behind it.  The dreariest month. If it snows, winter will be too long. If it rains, the rain is bone achingly cold. Dreich. But a big month for beer. Big beers, in fact. I’ve been laying off but maybe it’s time to lay on again. Treat yourselves nice in November. It’s like it needs its own month to celebrate itself. Like gag-tastic #RauchBeerMonth but with, you know, the prospect of someone actually being made happier. And that’s what we want. To be happy. Despite the dreich.

This November marks the seventh anniversary of perhaps the high point in the craft phase of good beer, circa 2003 to about 2016. The cover of The New Yorker from November 3, 2014. Mere months after the publication of the cult classic The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer. Josh Noel‘s comment was spot on – a moment in time before hard seltzer. And perhaps a moment that had some aspects we are well rid of – if this article on Colorado’s New Image brewery is anything to go by:

The idea that brewery employees should expect less money because they are “doing what they love” is a cliché that needs to go away, he adds. “We are trying to take that out of craft-beer culture. It’s about damn time we have good benefits and good pay for people making beer.” Having a second taproom with higher margins on sales will help that effort as well, Capps says. And New Image is now “aggressively” seeking out locations that it can buy to add a third or even a fourth taproom.

The past is a foreign land. Conversely, there are a lot of words that come to mind in this story of today. Gall. Cheek. Privilege. Arseholes probably the correct term as the Manchester Evening News reports:

The Pack Horse, which is in the Peak District village of Hayfield, was visited by a group who didn’t flag any problems with their food when staff checked in with them, but chose to complain when they’d already eaten most of the meal, staff said. They allegedly tried to demand a new dish – which was refused – and eventually left without paying their bill. Owner and chef Luke Payne said that one member of the group then had the nerve to wink at him as they left.

The article goes on to suggest that manners have dropped in these later pandemic months. Arseholes, I say. Matt C. explored other forms of late pandemic angst in an article in Pellicle this week:

Before the pandemic, one place in particular I would find both solace and kinship was at a beer festival. In my search for remembering what it was like to feel more normal, I fondly recalled the deep-seated warmth I felt from head to toe as I travelled home from Cloudwater Brew Co.’s Friends & Family & Beer in February 2020. While there I had a wonderful time enjoying many delicious beverages, and spending quality time with friends old and new—some who had travelled half-way across the world to attend. The festival took place in Manchester, too: a city my partner and I had decided we would soon make our home. I felt ready for the next chapter. Then the wheels came off, the world grinding to a halt at the mercy of the bastard virus. 

I’ve never liked beer fests myself. Don’t miss them.  Too many drunks. Perhaps I differ in this regard from The Beer Nut who celebrated 30 years of the European Beer Consumers Union, the sort of institution North American beer culture lacks. No fest to back up the celebration, however. Just Zoom.

Another venue for drinking that’s much more to my liking is also disappearing as The New York Times reports:

Several decades ago, the beer bar, with its dozens of draft options and deep bottle lists, delivered a liquid education in bitter I.P.A.s and monk-brewed Belgian ales alike. They were places “where customers discovered craft,” and helped the genre grow, said Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association trade group. But with growth of the taprooms, craft-bar release parties for special beers dried up. What was once “a prime way of bringing people into bars was gradually taken away by the breweries themselves,” Mr. Black said.

No, beer bars were not where folk discovered craft. They predate craft. (You’d think people would get it. Obey the chronology.)  In their finest form they are a dive with very good stock. Like Max’s in Baltimore. Conversely, craft is the taproom. But it is true. Craft killed the beer bar. Including by aggressively opening new taprooms, as we read above. (I know… I’ve been quoted as an expert in the subject. Sorta.) But I was quoted by Stan who posted a follow-up post (a post that poses possibilities predicated on the prior post) on the question “wuzza beer bar?“:

Two names I heard more than others were Rino Beer Garden and Finn’s Manor. Finn’s has a shorter tap list — curated, as the kids say — and a cocktail menu. Rino has more than 60-plus taps. Would both be classified as beer bars? Pat Baker provided a definition in his “Beer & Bar Atlas” in 1988. His classifications included classic bar, neighborhood bar, beer bar, Irish bar, German bar, English Pub and fern bar. (Yes, neither wine bar nor sports bar.)

At this point, I pause to consider this week’s candidate for the wonderful graph award. Gaze upon this for a moment:

Look at that graph. I have stripped a few identifiers from it to get to the nub of the matter but it is from Colin Angus as posted under his handle @VictimOfMaths and came with this message:

The UK’s approach to taxing alcohol is stupid. In the budget next week there is a strong possibility the chancellor will overhaul it. Before we find out what he has planned, here’s a thread on what is the current system and what exactly is wrong with it? 

Thread. And it does all look stupid when put that way. Why is beer taxed at a higher rate as it strengthens while wine moves in the opposite direction? The actual changes to taxation were announced Wednesday. CAMRA wrote of games being changed. Matt had a summary as well as  particular view as to the taxed event within the supply chain which is useful:

…the consumer doesn’t pay that duty, nor does the pub. The producer does. So on a 9 gallon cask of 72 pints, that’s £2.16 off costs. Maybe a bigger saving if its below 3.5%…

Speaking of the graphical representations of data, Lars has updated his yeast family tree based on a number of recent studies and included lots of wonderful graphs as well as new info:

They also found a separate subgroup of African beer yeasts, which is very interesting. Africa has an enormous variety of traditional farmhouse brewing going on in many different countries over much of the continent, and many of those brewers still maintain their own yeasts. (Martin Thibault spoke about Ethiopian brewers and their yeast at Norsk Kornølfestival in 2020.) Now it looks like they, too, have their own genetic subgroup of yeasts.

Note: be flexible.

Finally, Boak and Bailey’s post this week on the Stokes Croft Brewery, Bristol, 1890-1911 contains this fabulous image which goes a long way to explain the gradation of late Victorian stouts and ales. I got all excited when I saw it. Lovely. Place a laminated copy in your wallet for handy reference.

There you go. A bumper crop this week. For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up? Just last week I wrote:

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

And this very week I am pleased to read:

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

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

How to quit in style. Fabulous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just don’t believe in #RauchBeerMonth.

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

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

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

Daniel Craig‘s choice of bars makes perfect sense:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Viva indeed. For more check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

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

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For A Oddly Green Mid-October

It’s an odd autumn, isn’t it. Not just the pandemic that is no longer as scary but not resolved either. At least in the privileged bits of the planet. It’s also odd on the longer game scale too. The leaves aren’t turning colour here. Weeks behind schedule. Took the national harvest time short week off with the expectation of cleaning up the yard and there is still mowing to do. The last grapes still on the vine. Potatoes to pull from the ground. Shorts weather at least still today.

What else is going on? First with the positive. Gently manic blogger Retired Martin posted no less than 15 tales over the last week, each with quite attractive photos and a decent measure of wit as he, among other things, defines both cosy and comfy. The aggregation of his writings provide more than a list of taverns ticked off a list. His eye for detail as above (“For Drinkers Only”!) and brief observations on the places he visits are perhaps deceptively rich, adding up to something of an ethos:

Bill the fisherman came in for his late pint, the girls night out were laughing at a boy called Mark who I felt sorry for, and it felt like a happy pub.

Staying in the UK, I was linked to a story by an author this week so I thought it only polite to read rather dedicated fitba and beer blogger Jane Stuart‘s story about the scene around the Blackpool v Blackburn Rovers match on 2 October:

…I now felt hurried because I’d arranged to meet Wilf (of Yorkshire Seasiders fame) in Cask & Tap, which opened at noon. This left me no time for breakfast (not that I can face food first thing anyway) and meant that I was pretty much getting up and going straight to the pub. We did make a pit stop at the ticket office en route to collect around £350 worth of tickets for the next four away games at Forest, Reading, Sheff U and Swansea (there is a Swansea!). Clubs in general have been coy to release away tickets more than 7-10 days in advance this season so it was a bit of a shock (not least financially) to have all these tickets on sale – including one for a match at the end of November.

Supply chain news: beer bottle shortages hit tiny Prince Edward Island.

As Jordan noted, a favorite brewery of mine, Half Hours On Earth of rural Seaforth, Ontario and Canada’s first online retail beer store is shutting down and selling off its brewery gear:

As we wind down the brewery (see full post on Instagram), we’ll be putting our parts and equipment up for sale here on the webshop. This is the first lot, and there will be more listed as equipment becomes out of use. Sign up for our newsletter to be first notified. If anything goes unsold, prices will be reduced until gone. When an item is sold, the listing will be removed. All items are in used condition unless stated otherwise.

As they shared on Instagram, the owners are transitioning to a new focus and a new business, Worldlet, offering sustainable healthy household products:

We opened an eco-shop two years ago, and have plans for something new on the horizon that we hope will be the most impactful of all. It will require more of our attention going forward, and unfortunately, there’s simply not enough hours in the day.

Good. A doubly sensible approach if you ask me. And net positive.

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

Speaking of positive news in with a first tiny appearance of neg, it appears that the US hospitality work force has gotten fed up with being low rung on the ladder with millions quitting their dead end jobs:

Quits hit a new series high going back to December 2000, as 4.3 million workers left their jobs. The quits rate rose to 2.9%, an increase of 242,000 from the previous month, which saw a rate of 2.7%, according to the department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The rate, which is measured against total employment, is the highest in a data series that goes back to December 2000.

Good! Want my advice? Don’t make these jobs suck. Support your staff or soon you will understand that not only are they the ones who make the money but they are also customers of the next place down the road. Create careers for those you hire.

[Q: “bin fire“? You do know you can just not follow unpleasant people, right?]

Stan on the state of beer writing or at least one form:

In the 13 or so years I’ve intermittently posted links on Monday I’ve always looked beyond blogs, and beyond beer stories for that matter, for interesting items to pass along. If you are disappointed that I don’t point to more beer blogs, well, so am I. But let’s face it. Beer blogs are dead. That is why you are not reading this.

I know what he means but we have to be honest. As we wallow in newbie guides and second editions and other ways people in financial need find to get by, we have to remember that many narrower focused web periodicals are just blogs repainted and rebranded.** And similar content is created daily in Twitter threads and Instagram posts with great effect. And newsletters arrive regularly, sent from those gentle wee souls who fear the comments blogs receive, sent by people correcting claims in the content. I see plenty of writing is out there even if the deck chairs have been rearranged due to fiscal anxieties and dreams of monetization.

Maybe really probably bad is the news reported by Canada’s ag new source The Western Producer coming out of China that its insane residential construction boom meeting no identifiable demand for residential construction may hit the world’s food commodity markets:

Companies like Evergrande have fuelled themselves with debt while building millions of homes that stand empty, leaving China with an array of ghost cities and neighbourhoods. If Evergrande goes bust the whole industry, which more and more seems like a house of cards, could collapse. That would be bad for demand for steel, coal, copper and other industrial commodities used in construction.

Why mention that in a beer blog? Global prices for hops and barley depend on demand forecasts. As commodities drop, niche markets like hop growing and malt barley get hammered. As WP states: “It’s a potential killer of general demand — around the world.” Massive supplier Russia is also jerking around its own grain farmers with an export tax causing farmers to “abandon wheat, corn and barley in favour of soybeans, rapeseed, flax, lentils, peas and summer fallow.” Put that on your horizon.

Finally and certainly now very negative, the big news this week I suppose… if you can call it news anymore… relates to the continuing implications of sexist behaviors in craft, this time related to the Danish beer brand but not quite a brewery Mikkeller which has seen presumed acolytes ditch a fest being put on in Copenhagen, all rather late in the day as one Toronto brewery staffer noted:

I find it hard to believe these breweries didn’t know about the Mikkeller allegations. Working in the industry it was all anybody talked about for months. It took public shaming for them to pull out, which is a form of pressure.

Another observer tied events to the call for unionizing what really needs to be differentiated as the legacy big craft beer industry.

What’s really interesting is the continuing greater reticence to engage with the boycott by trade voices who may have invested in the brand too deeply as part of craft’s tight circle of reciprocal praise narrative.  Something called The Drinks Business reports on the response to allegations but puts as much effort into polishing Mikkeller’s brand than inquiring into the problem. We read that the fest is “renowned for featuring some of the most highly sought-after breweries in the world” before, in a classic example of beer trade writing reporting on beer trade writing, repeating the GBH praise that Mikkeller is a “tastemaker within the beer world.”

Even with some pretty strong observations on the allegations in past posts including the statement “founder… Mikkel Borg Bjergsø… actively participated in bullying and harassment…” GBH itself still took the time (as if to meet an editorial requirement) to label (if not slur) those rejecting sexist environments in brewing as “activists” and implying a level of ineffectiveness in quite a remarkably dismissive paragraph:

The reversal for these breweries and potentially others is a response to continuing pressure activists have exerted on these companies, urging them not to participate in collaborations or festivals with global beer company Mikkeller, which is based in Copenhagen. Nearly 100 breweries from across the world are still listed on the event’s Facebook page as attending. 

Not necessary. Not every issue has two sides with equal merit. Matt of Pellicle was much more to the point:

I do think that breweries attending this festival in light of ongoing, unresolved issues, paints the entire craft beer industry in a bad light. It feels like a “fuck you” to the victims who’ve shared their stories these past months.

Indeed.* The beer brand owner at the centre of all this has continued to make some astounding statements as Kate Bernot has helpfully shared. But if all that wasn’t enough, what is really unbelievable (but for this being craft beer sucking up and sucking out loud) is how eight UK breweries responded on Wednesday took the time to issue a bit of absolute PR hari-kari of a note explaining their continued participation on certain  “conditions” including:

a. They state (as Matt points out) that they demand a meeting will be held – including other brewers, the abusive and also the victims of abuse (presumably not asked about this kaka meme process at the time of the press release) to move the industry forward;

b. They state that social media (the prime medium for applying ethical pressuring in this case) “is not a productive space” presumably meaning best to keep these things quiet or at least behind closed doors; and

c. They are still attending the event because… why? And each brewery has aligned themselves with the mainly unmoved Mikkeller and each have taken the time to sign on – and openly identify themselves as doing so making it easier for customers to buy somewhere else.

Un. Buh. Lievable. Except… you know… craft.

Positive and negative. Personal experience as opposed to scale and ambition and shameful behaviour. As always, for more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*And this weeks gold winning use of an obscenity nudging out this tweet by Evan Rail.
**Filled (he unkindly said) with tales that I pass on mentioning every week even if they win a hubcap in the tight circle of reciprocal praise awards.
***By the way, where did those Flemish farmers in England in the early 1500s come from. You know, when aliens were subject to residency licenses and other severe controls in England. Oh, by “farmers” is it “traders” that was meant… like almost one hundred years before that? Or was it the elite English access to hopped beer in the 1300s or perhaps 1200s? Such a muddle.