Craft Schismists – Page 4 – A Good Beer Blog

Your Mid-May 2022 Thursday Beery News Notes

Chores. Garden chores. The pruned willow is just about casting enough shade for its six month tour of duty, leaning over me as I sit and sweat and drink a beer. And, about thirty feet away, I built a nice small patch of salad-y things this week radishes, red and green lettuce. Stuff getting done. That’s something, quite a something. For a place that had three frosts under two weeks ago. Then I remembered I have rabbits. Not mine. The wild bunnies of the neighbourhood. So… now I need to box in the patches with walls and a cage top. Perhaps a hinge top will be introduced. Not having chicken wire dig into your neck once the top slips as you gather in the harvest? That’s innovative. Innovation born of not thinking something through fully in the first place. That’s my style.

Beer news? Beer news! It’s a big week this week. First up, the Craft Brewers Conference 2022 ended up having a couple of note worthy twists this week: a fine beer got runner up to the runner up where the runners up don’t actually exist aaaaannnnnnnnd… it was a Covid-19 super spreader event. There’s not much you can say as not one saw it coming… except Robin:

So uh…everyone at cbc just not wearing masks huh…

Not hard at all, doing the right thing. And if that wasn’t enough, plenty of folk wrote have thoughts about the #1 third place for an American classic. Andres wrote the thread o’the week on process. We also got juries of beer fans standing up to snarkily defend the indefensible verdict… the “not credible“*… because “they’re all world class experts of course“… which I take to be a dig but it might not be a dig. AJT added a useful note:

Reminds me of the story that John Keeling tells about when he was at Fullers and judging in the US – their ESB was knocked out of the ESB category for being out of style…

In longer form, we had omni-directional finger wags from Jerard Fagerberg and… my pal Lew who may want to recognize the third possibility:

But as I say to people who complain about the Electoral College, if you don’t like the way the rules are, work to change them. If you’re a brewer who thinks that every medal in every category should always be awarded, because we’ve reached the point as an industry where common levels of excellence are understood and achieved – or, hell, just because – then get organized, find other brewers who feel the same way, and get the rules changed. Or don’t. But if you don’t agree with it, and you don’t do anything about it, you’re just going to be pissed when it happens again. Savvy? Now get out there and brew, or drink, and stop worrying about this. There are a lot more important things, even in beer.

GET OFF HIS LAWN!!! Note: Electoral College references are akin to Godwin’s Law. And that third possibility? For me, be like most people and realize these events are just low level oddly structured fun that are focused on brand promotion. No one loses an eye. Competitions are just a nice side-hobby in the beer world.

On a point much further along the parabolic niceness scale, Lily had her essay on a possibly perfect pub published in Pellicle this week, the story of the Salutation Inn of Ham, Gloucestershire which comes with a few extras:

The pub is welcoming and homely, with low ceilings, pew-like wooden benches, and a fireplace lending welcome warmth to the pub’s two front rooms in winter. The bar is lined with taps and hand pulls pouring beer and cider from across the South West—including the pub’s own brewery adjoining at the rear—as well as the trusty and ubiquitous Guinness… The walled garden which houses the pigs is dotted with apple and pear trees, and the odd damson. The pigs, raucous and rambunctious as we step through the door in the elderly wall, are fed on a mix of apples, cheese curds, and occasionally pellets. Once the private garden of the Berkeley estate manager (the castle’s estate covers 6,000 acres across the local area), it is shown on early 19th Century maps surrounded by orchard after orchard—a cider history now long gone.

Traveling much farther, Jeff made a flash visit to Norway which I worried was was going to be a bit of a drive-by so it was comforting to see the both Lars and Knut gave it the thumbs up. Still… it was a bit of an American abroad with the experience being too much or too little like the USA:

… you might mistake it for a pub in Ohio. Lots of hazies and other IPAs, some barrel-aged stouts, assorted pales. They even have Guinness … Those styles drive the same kind of drinkers in the US, but the difference is that in America they are dwarfed by the number of “regular” craft drinkers… We go through different developmental stages, and the first one is imitation. Norway has yet to find what they like on their own terms. I expected farmhouse brewing and especially kveik to be quite visible, yet it’s not. In fact, when people at the beer fest asked me about my plans for Norway and I mentioned Voss, 80% of them had never heard of the farmhouse tradition there… On the other hand, I’ve been impressed with the beer in general.

Ah, that old assumption that a land matches one’s expectations. Man is indeed the measure of all things. I’ll still probably just stick with Knut’s or Lars’ take on their own homeland. Local knowledge. As Stonch wrote of Prague this very week:

Over the years I have benefitted enormously from the writing of Evan and also Max @Pivnifilosof. Evan also once helped me and my mate Dave get tram tickets when we were too drunk to put the coins in the machine

Elsewhere, the problem of payment came up in a discussion at Boak and Bailey’s over the weekend and I clued into something that had not crystalized within my brain bucket before. I was led to a thought only after I wrote this:

…inventive creative writing sure has taken a hit in the good beer world. Payment has never amounted to quality in my mind, often the opposite. Yet it’s becoming more and more the case that it’s either paid for writing that’s pleasant enough or bits and bob that never seem to get enough time to be properly fleshed out. I can’t say I’m ever comfortable, for example, with histories published and paid for by the word – but who even has the time to put in a proper effort as the amateur’s act of obsession? Retirees, that’s who. They seem to be holding up their end of the bargain.

I then thought “why did I write that?” I did so for two reasons. First, I am always reluctant to be disagreeable especially (honestly… not tugging at a dangling thread) with B+B and, second, I wondered whether it was even true. But it is if you look at it this way. Writing for pay puts a meter on the writing. You will get X amount per word or a flat rate but the reality is that you really are putting yourself on a clock. Based on what you are worth per hour rather than whether the writing is any good. Leading to conserving resources, measuring time as well as money. And deadlines.

Screw that. When I was young and fancy free before a few years back, I had all the time in the world to swan about researching obscure stuff about brewing. Not so much given an uptick in very interesting but very demanding work related matters. Hence Martyn and Martin and Gary and Ron and the Tand and any number of others of the golden handshake who are able to research and scribble with a bit more leisure. Interestingly, the abovementioned Lars has written honestly this week about the other side of the coin, my path not taken a decade and a half ago:

I worked hard to set up talks back in September and October and had one month of good income with from that, before covid stopped it all. So now I need to try to restart that, but without spending so much time on it that I miss my book deadline. I got a deal writing articles for Craft Beer & Brewing magazine, which has also helped. The long and the short of it, however, is that less than a year into this I’ve had to start dipping into my savings, and it’s not a great feeling. So while I will keep doing all of the above to produce some money it looks like it won’t be enough.

Lars then shared an interest in readership support. Go read and contribute if you can. I have written it before but it repeats saying: I have every sympathy for someone who has decided to write about beer. For all the money in beer there is very little money in writing about beer, however interesting the topic.

Which leads to a few things. Like the issues of scope creep and expertise extrapolation. Sure, multiple skilled interests are possible – Dave Sun Lee is but one example – but the good folk who are committed to writing for cash have to go out further upon the waters with nets and lines. They give us stories not about beer but about other alcoholic beverages – about boozy seltzers and things claiming to be non-alcoholic beer even though both are so often laced with fruity gaks that defeat any commonality with brewed malt and hops. Where does it lead other than the inevitable high priced craft NA still unflavoured seltzers?!? Tottering towards international economic collapse, that’s where!!! Consider this behind the The Chicago Trib’s paywall, summarized by author Josh Noel this way:

Goose Island is taking Bourbon County into the world of pricey NFTs ($499 each!).

We really need to know no more. Could you imaging chucking away your pay that way? Pet Rocks taught me enough about that sort of thing in elementary school coming up on 50 years ago… though it did allow me the opportunity to post “Sucker juice layered upon the sucker juice!” There. Dots connected. Thanks for walking this path with me. BTW: Josh Noel is just wrong this time:

After digging in, I can see the future where NFTs play a role connecting brands and customers. Especially in beer, where the bond can be strong.

More sensibly, Gary indexed his recent posts on colonial English pubs in India. Excellent.

Finally, what to think about GBH apparently crossing a line and pulling an article about a legal process?*** While it is entirely healthy to be dubious of craft breweries and their ways, a few grabs on social media about the article prior to its removal may help explain why a reasonable cease and desist letter was sent. Consider this:

“[BrewDog CEO/cofounder James] Watt may have tried to uncover this alleged plot by paying a former romantic partner nearly £100,000 ($125,000 USD) in Bitcoin to gather information on ex-BrewDog staff and others who have been critical of him.”

… and this:

“Documents and interviews suggest Watt paid her to help him uncover information about his critics” and “The woman says she did not defraud or harass Watt, and that she does not believe former BrewDog employees are plotting against him. Her lawyers say she will “robustly” defend herself against these allegations” and “Three women who had contact with Ziem say they did not believe her to be part of a plot to take down Watt, and say they suspected Watt was using Ziem to gather information on them.

Contempt of court. It happens. It basically means you are contemptuous of the judicial process. Usually it is raised when someone won’t respect a warrant demanding their attendance but it can also mean that you are not letting the court do its job of fact finding, that you are interfering with the process. You can see how speculation and allegation become restated as fact. I see it now as I did when I saw the story’s brief appearance:

Speculative review of partially obtained evidence to be framed under the unique system of Scots uncodified civil law! Amazing pluck. Plus “… Watt may have tried to uncover this alleged plot by paying…” and “…people he sees as his enemies…” Impugning skullduggery? Heavens!

I was more thinking that there would be a form of libel suit under Scottish civil law due to the assertions of fact exemplified above but The Beer Nut guided me to the other process, the contempt under English proceedings pursuant to a UK statute. Statutory contempt seems to require consideration of whether there is a lack of good faith, if we have “fair and accurate report of legal proceedings held in public” and whether “the risk of impediment or prejudice to particular legal proceedings is merely incidental”… all of which only a judge would determine. Only an actual judge. Lessons hopefully learned.

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

*To quote my favourite source, me: “And how can you have a mythical standard second place beer? It not only represents something not present but superior while also being inferior to another not present beer. Both of which (not being present) are not contemporaneously experienced, just somehow recalled.”
**Question: While we are at it… why do we rightly (example) qualify one beer publication as “Ferment, the promo magazine of a beer subscription service” when GBH is rarely mentioned as the promo magazine of a beer consultancy service? Both publish very interesting pieces and both aren’t really “reader supported” but actually subsidized by the non-publication side of the business for, logic dictates, non-publication side of the business reasons?
***And not even related to this continuing weirdness.

Your Mid-April 2022 Thursday Beery New Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The Wayward Wisdom Tooth

So, I have to have a very high wisdom tooth coming out Friday. No beer for a while for me. Day surgery. Nothing too drastic. Thanks for asking. And have had my mind on that and other things most of the week. Evan has found himself very much closer that he in his thoughts had assumed. Lars has offered his hopes for peace and I share those hopes. Ontario brewer, John Graham, has put hope in motion by going to Germany to provide transportation support. It’s going to be sunny and +11C on Thursday afternoon. Spring is here. A good time to have hope… and green beer… and paddy wagons.

The tedious days of trial hearings of the “Slurs Against Keystone” have started. The most interesting testimony for me has been this – the CEO of Molson Coors couldn’t have cared less about Stone. He had real problems:

…recapturing economy beer drinkers who had moved on to its competitors in the beer industry was considered a “quick win” by a steering committee of MillerCoors executives and outside consultants and marketing professionals working to increase sales of Keystone Light. Demographic data of Keystone Light consumers was also top of mind for Hattersley when MillerCoors introduced the 15-pack of Keystone Light. Forty percent of Keystone Light consumers earn less than $30,000 a year and either work in a blue collar job or not in the workforce. “It means they are price conscious — don’t mess with the pricing button,” Hattersley said.

Sensible testimony. Conversely, the lead witness has come across as a bit of a fool. He doesn’t appear to understand what the pit of his stomach is and…

Stone founder Greg Koch took the stand in the Stone vs. MolsonCoors lawsuit. Described his reaction to images of stacks of Keystone Light cases oriented to show only the word STONE as “horror” …

Dope. Just remember… as noted last week, Keystone called its brand “‘Stone” before Stone Brewing was known. We shall watch for further updates as the intravenous drips… drips… drips…

Elsewhere in the annals of Big Craft Courtroom*, BrewDog is fanning the flames of its own roasting. As The Guardian newspaper has reported most excellently:

The boss of BrewDog, James Watt, hired private investigators to obtain information about people he believed were taking part in a smear campaign against him and repeatedly accused one woman of being involved until she blocked him on social media. According to multiple sources and evidence seen by the Guardian, private investigators who said they were working for Watt approached people to gather evidence about those who he appeared to believe had maligned him. One subject of their inquiries, Rob MacKay, an ex-BrewDog employee, had appeared in a BBC documentary, The Truth About BrewDog, which made claims about the company’s workplace culture and Watt’s personal behaviour as an employer, including towards women.

To be honest, this is a common enough thing in law. Private investigators are a regulated profession. Here is Ontario’s Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005, S.O. 2005, c. 34. I’ve been on a legal team that included a private investigator and proved a key allegation was not only probably false but actually utterly impossible. That’s what a PI can do. Here, there is a suggestion that the use of PI’s is itself improper. Look here, on a consultancy firm’s website that has an oddly Angolan revolutionary flag colour scheme – yet the firm works with other alleged offenders. Still confused by the use of the word “reconciliation” in this context. Best to get all this before the actual courts and tribunals.

One last legal note: “More than 25,000 litres of illicit beer seized at Dublin Port“!!

The most interesting image on the internets this week was this ad by Timothy Taylor praising the care they take protecting their own wee yeast strain. As published in the October 13th edition of The Observer newspaper. The cartoon’s throwback style is particularly swell.

The youngest off-licence holder in 1974’s Britain. Try to identify some of the bottles behind her on the shelf.

Also in The Guardian, a cleverly constructed discussion triggered by Heineken that “inflation was “off the charts” and its costs would increase by about 15% which could lead to lower beer consumption. Clever? This:

The latest warning on inflation comes as Heineken said the price of beer it sold rose an average 4.3% in Europe in 2021, partly because of a shift to more premium beers and the reopening of bars and pubs, as well as like-for-like price increases. In the UK, beer sales rose by about 5%, driven by the group’s premium Birra Moretti and Desperados brands. Low- and non-alcoholic drink sales increased by more than 30%, led by the continued success of Heineken0.0.

What’s happening elsewhere in the world? South Africa’s top brewing news story off the week? Cow dung:

Beer maker South African Breweries (SAB) says it will soon be using the manure of over 7 000 cows to power its operations. The company on Thursday issued a statement indicating it signed a power-purchase agreement with black-women-owned Bio2Watt. The renewable energy will be produced from Bio2Watt’s Cape Dairy Biogas Plant, located on one of South Africa’s biggest dairy farms – Vyvlei Dairy Farm – in the Western Cape town of Malmesbury.

New ventures are popping up elsewhere. Japan’s Kirin is taking its fermenting skills in a new direction:

The company now hopes to use the technology of the beer-making process in its new biotech ventures. “We want to turn Kirin into a fermentation biotechnology company. We need to grow a new business while the beer segment is still healthy,” Isozaki told the FT. Kirin unveiled a three-year business plan last month, in which ¥100 billion will be invested in research and development and to expand factories in the health science and pharmaceutical sectors. A further ¥80 billion will be spent on in its beer and beverage business. As part of the shift away from beer and into pharmaceuticals, Kirin will increase production of Citicoline, a memory improving supplement.

Memory supplement? Is that a little note of a little something slipped in there?

Southern hemispherically, “Ron of the Road” has done Brazil to the Netherlands to Columbia in under 48 hours. Nuts. His blog posts are two trips behind him. The details, still, compel:

Getting money from the cash machine turns out to be problematic. Until I use my visa card. That’s a relief, having some Brazilian dosh in my pocket. The taxis from Sao Paolo airport are pretty good. They’re run by a cooperative of drivers, which has a monopoly. There are set fares to various locations in the city. My new German friend will be dropped of first, for the set fare. Then the driver will continue on the meter to drop me off. A couple of minutes outside the airport, it starts pissing it down. Really pissing it down. Full-on tropical downpour. Soon the roads are transformed into rivers. It’s all a bit scary. Doesn’t seem to faze the driver. I guess he’s seen it all before.

There. Enough! 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. (Ed.: that seems to be 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. 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.

*Check out my new podcast, Big Craft Courtroom!

Your Beery News Notes For The Beginning Of A Grim March

I used to celebrate March and look forward to what is coming but this horrible week makes me look back at 2021 with envy. Events north of the Black Sea are utterly horrifying and in line with what we see in Yemen and Burma and elsewhere. Not much of a cold war left these days. My ignorance is not complete but what could one add other than it is heartening to see the solidarity that may put a beating on the Russian economy swiftly as spring itself comes forward to help save Ukraine. We here in safer lands are particularly aware that our Canadian population includes the third largest Ukrainian community in the world.

In local response, the provincially own LCBO monopoly is removing Russian made booze from the shelf. The LCBO is one of the biggest booze buyers in the world so that is good. Carlsberg may be taking a more direct approach with their bottles.

Elsewhere, some in the beer nerd world are apparently unable to contextualize the biggest risk of WWIII since glasnost without some kick at current issues in craft. I am not sure this approach illustrated in the tweet to the right is one I would take. I would have though praise was due for the BA (and the LCBO) taking an immediate stance that would propagate quickly back to the staff of breweries and distilleries in Russia, good folk who may not be getting fed the facts from their local tyrant-owned media.

Jeff shared some excellent thoughts on an awful week but, conversely, this sort of thing is a little sad. Feels like coopting a murderous war crime to promote trade. Maybe a bit too soon?

From a happier place and time, Boak and Bailey wrote a fabulous post on a late 1960s Swingin’ Englan’ sort of place called The Chelsea Drugstore and then, in true modern style, elaborated even more elaborately on Twitter. An excellent example of how blogs and social media are far superior to the printed page. Anyway, it was a place:

“The day they opened, we were all so damn high we ran around putting handprints all over it until owners had to set up a roadblock to keep stoners off,” Beverley ‘Firdsi’ Gerrish is quoted as saying in a biography of Syd Barrett. Apart from the visual aspect of the design, the business model was new, too. Bass Charrington needed to recoup its investment and intended to sweat the premises for every penny. So, as well as selling its beer in two bars, they also sold breakfast, lunch and dinner; records; tobacco; soda; delicatessen products; and, of course, drugs, in a late night pharmacy.

Go and see the clip from A Clockwork Orange that B+B include in the post for a sense of what the place was like. Looks like a small smart shopping plaza that you’d see in sci-fi TV of the time. Where the second incarnation of Doctor Who might shop for his jelly babies. Except it was the fourth that really handed out broadly so would have needed a good supply.

Reaching back further, Liam posted an interesting set of thoughts on Mild in Ireland and neatly unpacks an advert from 1915:

Here we see that under their O’Connell’s Dublin Ales brand they were selling a Dark Extra Strong ale and a Pale Mild on draught – and let us not forget a rare mention for an Irish Best Bitter for bottling! Allowing for dubious marketing and the leeway that advertisement writers have with the truth this might be a nice mention for a Strong Dark Mild? Even if I am stretching terminology, styles and descriptions to the limit then if nothing else it is a nice record of what D’Arcy’s were brewing at this time.

On the ethical gaps beat this week, we learn from a “team update” that NYC’s three bar chain Threes Brewing’s CEO stepped down as CEO after pushback from his comparison of the local proof-of-vaccination policy to the Holocaust and segregation in the Jim Crow South. His self-congratulatory resignation was due to, and one quotes, “his duties as a parent and a citizen” which, in the scheme of things, don’t matter all that much. Except if you are taking any comfort or congratulations in the resignations. It is good to remember this: a CEO is the head of staff, the Chair is the head of the board of directors who tell staff what to do and the shareholders tell the board what to do. No word that he is leaving his role as a director or as a shareholder. BTW: never heard of them either.

Ron is back in Brazil. His last junket** there seemed to be a bit miserable but back he went despite the quality of the entries last time: “The Viennas are as expected. Almost all riddled with faults. Except for the only decent one I judged on the first day.“. The hotel breakfast buffet coverage is amongst his finest work, like this from just last December:

No need to rise early. So I don’t. It’s just after 9:30 when I finally wander down. The breakfast room is pretty much empty. Just one other punter. Not someone from the contest. Daringly, I give some of the cheese a try. And the ham stuff. The thrill of the unknown. The orange cheese is pretty tasteless. Doesn’t have much in the way of texture, either. I’ve not been missing much. I feel the fruit working its magic. Or perhaps that’s just a fart coalescing in my gut.

Sounds magical. This time? It’s raining. But at least the currency is gently collapsing and Martyn‘s there to share the joy.

Beth Demon is blogging wonderfully and generously at her substack, Prohibitchin, featuring the underrepresented in the drinks trade. This month, she interviewed Michelle Tham, the head of education at Canada’s venerable Labatt:

As the largest brewer in Canada, Labatt is an inextricable part of Canadian identity, and as a Chinese-Canadian woman, it’s something Michelle finds herself deeply rooted in. “Millennials like to joke that Labatt is ‘Dad beer,’ but it literally was my dad’s beer and still is today… it is a bit of a symbol of the Canadian experience,” she says. “Canadians Google more about beer than any country… It shows they’re interested in wanting to know more about it, and I believe the more you know about it, the more you’re going to enjoy it.”

Through writing Ontario Beer it became clear that Labatt was always one of our most progressive breweries – from focusing almost a hundred years ago on women as valuable customers worth reaching to having honest Dudley Do-rights for shipping clerks.

This week, Stan sent out the latest edition of his Hop Queries newsletter, number 5.10. This is a great set of facts about one of the great US beers:

Bell’s buys 500,000 pounds of Centennial each year – which amounts to about 14 percent of the Centennial harvested in the US Northwest – from multiple farms. Most of those hops go into their iconic IPA, Two Hearted Ale. But you aren’t going to hear drinkers discuss the merits of Two Hearted hopped with Centennial from Segal Hop Ranch versus Centennial from John I. Haas, because the hops all end up in a master blend. The largest blend any facility can process at one time is 200,000 pounds, so it takes three passes during several months after harvest. That’s scale.

Note: not the #1 and #2 craft breweries in Canada. Also… if one entity buys out another, they both can’t continue to claim to be independent.

Finally, one attentive reader emailed me with interesting link related to a proposed oddly modest bond issue by GBH. It was not so much the fact that they were looking for a small amount of money – $100,000 to be repaid over 5 years at 5.5% – that interested me so much as they publicly filed four years of financial statements as part of their effort to get the bonding put in place. The financials tell a few interesting stories. Most obvious is how the vast majority of their income is from consulting services so the writing is subsidized but, before the pandemic, GBH lost 32% of that income flow from 2018-19. We also see that subscriptions to their blog run at well under 10% of their total income and under 3% 2021 at $24,044. They are moving more and more to “underwritten” stories and events, funded by the subject matter. In fact, subscription income for GBH seems to be about half than that of Pellicle as the latter is apparently close to £3,000 per month or around $48,000 USD a year. (I send a paltry two figure amount to Pellicle every month.) Note worthy, too, is how GBH also took in a bit over $153,000 in pandemic loans and paid out $133,000 or so in 2021 as members’ distributions – both larger figures than the goal of the bond.* These matters are not highlighted in the information provided by GBH but they are disclosed.

There we are. Pray for peace. 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. 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.

*Why effectively borrow around $130,000 (bond amount plus interest) right after drawing out more than that?
**Particularly miserable in terms of cheapskate reimbursement for making effort to give free PR, according to the disclosure: “The organisers of the Brasil Beer Cup paid for my accommodation and food during the period of judging (four nights and three days) Beer, too, which was provided by one of the sponsors. I had to pay for my own cocktails. And all other expenses, such as flights and extra hotel nights.” As usual, I agree with whatever Doris says about all this.

The Beery News Notes For The End Of January And Perhaps Of BrewDog

What an odd week. Very bad stuff about craft beer in the UK then more about very bad things in Ontario craft beer. Didn’t help that I was reading Motherwell, a recent memoir about someone about my age whose family didn’t emigrate from the same bit of Scotland mine left behind for Canada in 1956. Grim pain and judgemental negativity pulsing through a hardscrabble family living through hard times in an industrial town near Glasgow. We dodged. Just a few phrases I heard growing up echoed. I hated “know your place” the most, especially as I didn’t have to. Why bother? Why should anyone? Why in craft beer now? Who are these assholes?

MindbogglIng. Let’s start somewhere else. Stan’s latest edition of Hop Queries came out this week with good news from the Czech Republic:

Czech farmers harvested 18.2 million pounds of hops (for perspective, that’s about as much as Americans grow of Citra alone), 40 percent more than 2020 and 34 percent more than the 10-year average. Average yield of 1,467 pounds per acre was an all-time high. (American farmers average 1,900.)

Gary updated a series of posts that he began in 2020 – who hasn’t been up to that sort of thing? – and included the image to the left. It’s not a super huge .jpg but worth a click. I love the name of the beer – PICNIC BEER. It needs an exclamation mark. It needs to be on every brewery’s list of brands. Anyway, Gary was actually not writing so much about PICNIC BEER out of Minnesota as the use of the term “sand porter” in Montreal brewing in days of yore – by which I mean the late 1800s aka The Gilded Era:

Until recently I felt the sand-topped lid idea made the most sense (some English brewers still practiced it into the next centuries, using “marl”, a similar idea). However, in studying recently the history of a Minnesota brewery, Fleckenstein, I now have a further idea what sand porter meant.

Speaking of yore, the free web service known as A London Inheritance included a post on the George Inn in Southwark which was, as we all recall, the subject of Pete Brown’s book Shakespear’s Local. Lots of unconventional photographic views and mapping, like this one to the right giving a very unromantic vision of what you actually see from across the street. It is actually a massive post. A data fest. Well worth reading. The post includes this astute observations about the value of certain second hand books:

Old books help as they provide information closer to the time they are recording. Some care must be taken to double check, but they are a good source of information. These books also have their own history as they pass from owner to owner over the years, accumulating a memory of their time with some of the owners of the book.

The post then goes on to highlight photos and even a letter relevant to the subject that had only been stuck in copies of books that he had found over the years. All fabulously illustrating the unique archival value blogs. Much praise to the author… whose name is not particularly highlighted on the site. Freddie?

On a similar theme but in a colonial context, I saw a reference on Facebook to Ten Mile House in Halifax, NS (my old home town) this week and wondered what shape that was in:

The house was located ten miles from Halifax on the Bedford Highway. It was built in the late 1700s for Colonel Joseph Scott on land granted to him in the 1760s. In 1798 it was called Scott’s Inn, and opened as a House of Entertainment by John Maddock. Joseph Scott died in 1800 and his widow Margaret conveyed property to John Lawlor. Who opened and operated Lawlor’s Inn from 1802- 1809, possibility later.

Nice image at the Nova Scotia Archives website. As you can see from the thumbnail it is now sitting well back of the main road, the Bedford Highway, but looks from photos on Google to be in very good shape right by The Chickenburger. There are plenty of these colonial taverns and inns out there if you know what you are looking for. Like a favourite of mine, the Fryfogle. Interesting note: at the time Ten Mile House was in operation as Scott’s Inn in the late 1790s, it was just down the road from the estate of Queen Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent. The tavern not the Chickenburger. The Chickenburger is old but not that old. I will pay it a visit when I am back there in early March.

And in one last note about built heritage of pubs, taverns and inns this piece in Eater Chicago was interesting in terms of how one preservation project was undertaken:

While Lincoln Square reconfigures during the pandemic — across the street from the Brauhaus space, the Huettenbar has quietly closed (owners hold to hope that it could eventually reopen) — fans can take solace that the Brauhaus has returned in a slightly different format. The bar, at least in spirit, is now located on the second floor of the DANK Haus German American Cultural Center.

In a less physical form of preservation, Edd Mather posted this bit of video on facebook, a fabulous step back into the near past of Ireland and the question of corks v. crown caps which relies on any number of associated technologies:

OK – the bad news. I have mentioned this before so let’s be upfront. Once upon a time, BrewDog sponsored this blog. When they were tiny, not the £2 billion international corporation they are now. I still have that label from a sample they sent at the time and it was put on with Scotch Tape. Well before the stupid squirrel and certainly well before BBC Scotland News detailed what apparently everyone in the trade knew but too often was not willing to put into print. The main allegations so far:

a. James Watt owns a massive amount of shares in the global beer brand Heineken hypocritically contrary to his “big beer is bad” stance.
b. James Watt is accused of being a pervy boss;
c. BrewDog falsified paperwork submitted to allow it to import into the United States; and
d. BrewDog carefully structured the Equity for Pinks fundraising to benefit the brewery and not the investors.

This reaction to the first bit of news is gold. Deals between breweries started to come apart. Punks with Purpose said the fight goes on. There were also calls for a resignation. Also questions: “why the obsession?” I will leave it there* as you all know this – and my job is to root out the unknown and beery for your reading delight.** BrewDog has not been delightful for many many years. But we need to remind ourselves, while they are big they are just one of many – as @esbroadfoot helped remind us by inviting and sharing stories of rotten treatment, largely in the Canadian craft scene.

Still, by Wednesday, it all seems to have put JJB/Stonch in a reflective mood:

Placing orders to fill an empty pub cellar has made me realise what an amazing choice of absolutely superb beer from independents I have. Yes, the craft beer industry has its bad sides, and faces daunting challenges this year, but let’s not forget how brilliant it is.

He’s always hated BrewDog pubs (“…Awful aesthetic, odd places….”) but appreciates how others feel cheated. He also reminds us to be kind to the good folk who distribute our beer. He also posted a link to a 15 year old post about the horrors of a pub crawl in St. Albans, home of CAMRA, for a fair and balanced set of thoughts.

Elsewhere in space and time, Ron has been exploring the colour of milds and has come across a new unit of measurement – tint!

The biggest problem is the lack of hard data. It’s tricky calculating the colour from the ingredients, especially when sugar is involved. As this is mostly only described very vaguely. There are very few records of beer colour before WW I. Occasionally chemical analyses will include a number for the colour, mostly in some weird scale that died out 100 plus years ago. Only a handful of Barclay Perkins records from the Edwardian period include the beer’s colour. At least that’s what I thought. Until I happened to notice that line in a Fullers brewing record. That “Tint” number looked like it was in an understandable scale. The type of Lovibond used before WW II.

Even further afield, does Syracuse have a low estimation of its own worth in the beer world? Like Toronto? As bad as that? I spent a lot of time in Syracuse up to a certain point… the point at which the Canadian dollar collapsed from parity to 75 cents frankly. For AAA baseball. For the beer shopping day trips. For bars now long gone like The Blue Tusk and Clark’s Ale House. For Wegman’s. I love Syracuse. I used to cross sometimes just for the white hots. Je me souviens… but more to the south…

Finally, note: union made. Nova Scotian beer cases always said that too. Plus health tax included. So by drinking beer you knew were doing your part. I might do a bit of that when I head out east in March, too.

That’s it for now. Too much. 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.

*But if this is correct and such acts are common in craft beer, well, we can all agree that anyone who knew this and is claiming to be reporting on the beer trade… is pretty much a fail, right? If not complicit… right?
**Plus I am aware of my own little realistic chance of not ending up in HELL!!!

The Thursday Beery News Notes For When Winter Actually Showed Up

While we didn’t break the record of most snow in a century like Ottawa to our north did, I has to shovel snow five times on Monday to clear and keep the driveway clear. Not sure I would find, as a result, the idea of a pub with an outside men’s room would be wonderful. I mean I have heard of such things… but here? That doorless door there? It’d be filled with drift. Snow drift. Right up to that bracket to the left of the door frame there. Don’t fancy that. Chilly. Something something rhymes with chilly.

Well, perhaps speaking of which, the big news broke on Wednesday that Brewdog has apparently been falsifying documents submitted to the US government. As BBC Scotland found out:

Scottish beer giant Brewdog sent multiple shipments of beer to the US, in contravention of US federal laws, a BBC investigation has found. Staff at its Ellon brewery told the BBC they were put under pressure in 2016 and 2017 to ship beer with ingredients that had not been legally approved. One US-based importer said they had been deceived by Brewdog. In a social media post on Wednesday, Brewdog CEO James Watt admitted to “taking shortcuts” with the process.

Having practiced low level criminal defense law for about a decade, it is always great to see a suspect get chatty like that. What makes it really quite amazing is how §70.331 of the Fed Reg Title 27, Chapter 1* related to the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the US Treasury Department provides that:

Any person who willfully delivers or discloses to any officer or employee of the Bureau any list, return, account, statement, or other document, known by him to be fraudulent or to be false as to any material matter, shall be fined not more than $10,000 ($50,000 in the case of a corporation) or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both.

But that right up there, as a pal says when I point to a by-law at work… “that’s a law!” Which it is. Which allows for a year in jail. Yikes. Dumbasses. No wonder Dan Shelton, former US importer and man whose name became a new verb, stated that he had been deceived: “They did lead somebody in my company to falsify documents.” Wow. To think Brewdog once sponsored this blog… I am so embarrassed. I would have thought Prince Andrew’s situation might have been a warning to Brits who are a bit deluded about their proper place. No, apparently not. Perhaps it was a plan to distract folk from their incredibly retrograde insensitive and perhaps even Neanderthal-esque approach to promoting better mental health… you know, when they weren’t, what did the BBC write in that article… running a model workplace… what was it?

One former worker told the investigation: “The pressure was enormous. ‘Just make it happen’, that was the culture. It was clear to us this was coming from the top – from James [Watt].”

Elsewhere and hardly at all as suspect, Stan has been on a bit of a roll, posting five times at his space. He may be making a point of some sort. He wrote this under the heading “#nottwitter 04“:

Can somebody point me to a blog post, an academic paper, something from the New York Times, wherever, that provides insight into what might be called unhealthy nostaglia and the ramifications? And how might it relate tradition as a trap?

I am not sure what is up. Is there a pattern? Whatever it is, it may be that this post’s point is found in the next post, the Monday beer links: “when we buy into that nostalgia, it might be best to stop and consider what we are longing for.” Isn’t what nostalgia what beer is for? Remembering? Daydreaming? Hmm. Then – get this – then Stan hid a clue in the title of his next post: ethyl octanoate. Ethyl. Octanoate. Think about it. Anyway, it terms of the speed of nostalgia, it moves fast with craft beer. Four Pure and Magic Rock are in a “process“:

We want to update you on some news. As we go through this process, our priority remains our superb team and brewing great beers.

Better a process than a legal process, eh? The Grocer has deets:

“While no decisions have been made, we need to determine how to best set Magic Rock and Fourpure up for success in the coming years. Our team have been informed of the review and we are committed to supporting them through this time.” Fourpure has struggled to make headway in the supermarkets, despite the huge surge in alcohol sales over the course of the pandemic…. In contrast, Magic Rock’s off-trade volumes rose 125.4%…

Well! As with the news last week about the Aussie wine guys buying up US craft, the news about the Aussie beer guys going wobbly on UK craft is par for the course. Dust in the wind. Chose your pop prog song title from the mid to late 1970s. That is what it is.

Thinking about thinking, Ron reflected on the year ahead this week in terms of his own mobility:

Plague permitting, I’ve a few trips planned and a couple of others pencilled in. Corona is a real blessing to travellers. The internet had made travels far too simple. The virus adds a delightful randomness to the proceedings. Like planning a European tour in the summer of 1918. Every time I book a flight I wonder: “What are the chance of me actually taking it?” Nothing is more thrilling than checking the internet until the second before you leave for the airport that the flight hasn’t been cancelled. Or wondering if you’ll be let out of the country once you reach your destination. I love the Phineas Fogg feeling the uncertainty brings.

All this uncertainty. Is that the word of the month? I bought a ticket to a CNY beerfest this week at Craig’s urging. Not sure I see how I could ever go to it but it is at least four months off and I suppose I could rent a camper van and look at people out the window. Now he tells me it’s Mothers Day weekend. Great.

Conversely to that fest, there is as much to learn from a poorly made or poorly thought out beer. Matt is right. Don’t be a jerk. But also don’t be fooled twice. That’s what got us in this mess.

The Beer Nut found perhaps the dullest beer ever.

Retired Martin found a micropub based the theme of the group The Jam. I was their only fan in high school. Until my pals listened to my records. Not sure even I would stay long.

A few reviews of the ABInBev TV promotional show, Beer Masters, have come in. Boak and Bailey added to Ed‘s observations this week:

Perhaps, however, they could have spent less time on the somewhat laboured descriptions of what makes an Abbey beer, or a pilsner, and told us a bit more about the contestants’ kits. We could see some interesting gadgets and arrangements that were never really discussed. If the aim is to spark a home-brewing revolution, as was suggested at a couple of points, then this probably won’t do it.

Good point. This is the sort of TV that does not interest me but at least it appears that a bit of big brewery money has made for a show that is actually not dreadful. Remember that horrible show produced as an advertising vehicle for Dogfish Head twelve and a half years ago? Of course you don’t as most of you were still in elementary school back then. That show was absolutely dreadful. Note: it was also called Beer Masters.

Somewhat related in the sense of horrible US craft beer messaging. Jeff considered the limits of independence this week with yet another tale of yet another takeover:

This isn’t a problem of the Brewers Associations’ making. It’s a structural feature of the beer industry in the US. It is also a worrying development, an echo of an earlier era when consolidation blighted the industry. What does it say about how we regulate the sale of beer in the US that the most successful start-up breweries eventually have to sell out to giants to survive? Is this the world we want to live in and, critically, what changes would allow those larger regional breweries to compete?

I can’t really agree that this is worrying. I mean if you are worrying about this you must have a pretty worry-free life. The idea of the “independence” of craft beer was dumb in 2009, in 2012, in 2015, in 2016 and still is today. See what I wrote in six years ago under that 2016 link?

Recently, the Boston Globe profiled private equity firm Fireman Capital Partners, the investment folk behind the expansion of Oskar Blues and the cash injection into Florida’s Cigar City Brewing. You think those guys are shaking in their boots over the prospect of a rival fund based on Stone’s ethos? Hardly. The experienced private equity players will out bid and out run their deals. It’s their business, not a hobby or a faith-based act of grace.

Money knows what money is about. Craft beer is about making money. Ask the Aussie wine guys. Unless it is about Berlin. Then craft beer is not about making money. Elsewhere and far more pure of heart, Lars came to a realization this week:

That feeling when you sit down to summarize the development of Norwegian brewing processes and the process of explaining forces you to realize that for 3/4 of the time people have brewed beer in Norway there is zero knowledge of how they did it. No evidence, no theories, nothing.

I might add that we should always be alive to the other 1/4 being 3/4s correct, too. That is the issue with all histories which is why it comes in a plural. But I expect this to spur on even more of his excellent and single-handed research.

There was a good question put to the chattering classes about the most influential European breweries on the US beer industry but I couldn’t muster the energy to decode influential so only watched the ticker tape pass through my hands. Gary went with Chimay and then wrote a follow up:

My history with Chimay started long before this blog inaugurated in 2015. My first Chimay was in a stone-flagged bar in Montreal, Quebec around 1980, served in the stemmed “chalice” long associated with the brand. I was in Vieux Montréal, the oldest part of the city whose mix of old French and Victorian British architecture contrived to offer a “European” atmosphere (still does)…

The Tand picked up a very similar ball – round and bouncy – and gave it a swift kick himself and wrote this about TT’s Landlord:

Me and Taylor’s Landlord have a bit of history. When I first came to this neck of the woods, a local free house used to sell it. It was on the way to Tesco when we did our weekly shop, and we always stopped on the way back for a couple. It was a rich, balance of malt and hops, with a distinctive floral touch. The term multi layered really did apply to it. Alas, the free house was sold to Robinsons and the then landlord presented me with the Landlord pumpclip as a farewell gift. I still have it. And that was that. No more readily available Taylor’s. I have supped it in Keighley too over the years and when I saw it on a bar, I always tried it. E loved it too. Of course, there is a but. Over the years, it just hasn’t retained its appeal somehow. It isn’t the same.

Question: “What makes the Golden Ball special?”

As I am wont to do, when I compare this review of good wines by Eric Asimov in the NYT with what would happen if anyone tried such a thing in a publication about beer I once again am between saddened and confused. Imagine if wine writers wrote “for the trade by the trade” as is often the brand with this sort of beer. No one would take the opinions offered seriously. It’s the neighbour of scandal.

Finally, Jordan took one for the team and drank a bunch of no-alc beer samples he got in the mail. While I would approach that opportunity with the sort of anticipation I might feel just before… what… anyway, Jordan found some good in doing it by suggesting not doing it:

I struggle with Non-Alcoholic products. By my lights, I’d prefer to have beer with alcohol or something that’s not beer. I probably get through three litres of fizzy water a day. While I understand that there’s a question of inclusivity in gatherings and that people want to hold something that looks like a beer so that they feel included, I feel that things are slightly different if you’re… you’re a… [Ed.: hmm he spelled “grown up” wrong…].

And I have been playing with the Patreon thing a bit more. Notes on beers I have tried, thoughts on books and beer culture as well as my war on squirrels at the feeder. I do like how it provide a low barrier to easy access. I can be ruder there. Like cable TV as opposed to broadcast.

That’s it for now. That’s a lot. 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.

*Feel free to correct my US citation style. I took and oath to the Crown so you can just consider it payback for the whole “War of Independence” thing.

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.

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.

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 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.