Category: Drinking Culture

Your Mid-March Thursday Beery News Update

What a week. I can’t really get into it but… what a rough week. Not Elizabeth May rough but rough enough. Brendan Palfreyman Esq. has not had such a bad week. He seems to be on holiday along a sunny bit of the US Atlantic shoreline from whence he tweeted the photo of the week. I commented how pleased I was that fancy was apparently not as good as good in that bar’s parlance.

Good news! “Craft beer” has now been defined… by the UK’s SIBA. Note that #3 disqualifies most faceless bulk craft.

“Cellar palate“? That sounds really bad. Could you imagine the doctor telling you that you had that? Great-uncle Louie had shed knee back in the 1950s. That was bad. Oh… oh, it’s not a medical condition:

Suffering from ‘cellar palate’ means that you’ve become so immersed in a local style that you become blind to the faults or shortcomings in the wines. It’s a condition more commonly associated with winemakers, but it can affect anyone tasting lots of wines from a specific region, such as wine critics or even holidaymakers.

No doubt a condition that afflicts most beer nerds as well. Well, maybe it’s called tap tongue. I recommend a month on bracing pots of tea. Rare teas. Intoxicatingly fabulous teas. You’ll go tea crazy! Then you end up with tea tonsils and you need to hit the wine to straighten yourself out.*

Speaking of things to learn from wine fan culture, Matt has been exploring the way of the vinous and…

I learned that wine is just as fallible as beer and that this was reassuring to me. And maybe we need to figure out how to better communicate faults as constructive criticism to help both industries improve.

I agree. And I dump and I spit. Getting loaded on tasting samples is for chumps who depend on convincing folk that beer culture is unique when it is patently not. Try spitting next time you are out and about. See what happens.

Jeff invited Matt Meador of the now defunct Oregon Beer Growler magazine to share his thoughts about the fate of publications like his:

…back at the 2019 Oregon Beer Growler, we were fighting a battle we didn’t win. Our challenge was perhaps best illustrated by one well-established Oregon craft brewery who refused to advertise with us. Each month, the brewery’s marketing people would repeat: “we don’t need to advertise our beer, it sells just fine without advertising.” This highly successful brewery — as was its right — was solely focused on a hard return for any advertising expense. That’s okay, I guess — it’s sound business to spend carefully. But this brewery saw no value in supporting the publications devoted to promoting and celebrating the Oregon craft brewing industry.

Years ago, early on in the life of this fifteen year old blog, I remember writing an established beer writer complaining about how it was that – for all the money in beer – there was no money in writing about beer. Lesson? There is no money in writing about beer. That in itself is a #MoneyMakerMarch message.

Did you watch BBC’s broadcast of Inside the Factory that focused on brewing? Was it any good? I am blocked online so have to wait until 2023 when it will be shown on TVO, Ontario’s educational channel.

Good news! Dann and Martha are back and they are making Jack D’or again!

I can’t get too worked up about the “secret lies that macros tell” approach to this recycling big story, now this week in The Guardian out of the UK:

The British craft beer report, due to be released by small brewers’ trade body the Society of Independent Brewers (Siba) this week, will say that 98% of drinkers do not believe a global firm such as Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch InBev or Molson Coors can make craft beer. The findings cast doubt on the credentials of a growing number of beers bought or launched by major brewers, such as Camden Town, Fourpure, Goose Island, Meantime, Hop House 13, Blue Moon, Lagunitas and London Fields. The report said 43% of 2,000 survey respondents believe craft beer has to be made by a small brewer…

Of course big macro can make craft beer industrially! Most craft beer is brewed industrially. Have you actually visited a craft brewery? Massive things filled with management driving around in golf carts, evil robots and computerized equipment in much the same way as macros are. Truck fleets and logistics staff just like the macros. Bank accounts with funds for advertising and junket payments… just like macros. That’s craft today. You want good beer, find yourselves some micro. Mmm… micro brewed beer, that’s the stuff. Owner still working on the floor, a decent level of variation from batch to batch – and right in your neighbourhood. Don’t let craft fool you.

Josh Noel has written on the tale of Goose Island’s disappearing Honker’s Ale, a sad reality about which I shared a “beer writer’s scoop”** two weeks ago:

Honker’s was among Goose Island’s oldest beers, but never the most popular at the brewpub. That would have been an accessible beer most approximating Bud or Miller, such as Lincoln Park Lager or Blonde Ale. But when deciding what beer to lead with in liquor stores, bars and supermarkets, Goose Island needed to differentiate itself. Sierra Nevada had done so with a pale ale. Samuel Adams did it with dark, hearty Boston Lager. Goose Island opted for Honker’s Ale.

A sad loss for us all… well, in theory. Days of future passed beer. In the sense that we are now back in an era that loves green beer filled with adjuncts and adulteration. That could be the name of my new craft beer bar – Adjuncts and Adulteration.

Speaking of the colour of beer, this post by Rach Smith on the meaning of, the purpose of boring brown bitter from an ornithological point of view is worth a read:

…the winter sun had lingered as it held off the evening from drawing-in any closer, just a little longer than it had the previous day. Shadows were being cast high in the trees against a backdrop of holiday-blue sky. I shot up from my comfy seat and ran upstairs to get a better view of the fancy birds bobbing around outside my window. Curiosity had got the better of me. Only, they weren’t fancy at all, they were just sparrows.

Dirty birds. That’s what I call house sparrows. Invasive. Bullies. Reminds me of something. Now, white throated sparrows? Chipping sparrows. I can listen to those all day. Indigenous sparrows. At home in my yard any time.

Well, that’s it for this week. Rash and rushed. That’s what you’ve come to expect from me. Make sure you make time for the more thoughtful thoughts from Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday. Laters!

*Sing along. Look at those guys singing almost 50 years, just better well groomed hipsters.
**That rare combination of following up on someone else’s work yet still getting it not quite right.

Now That It’s March It Must Be Thursday So Here’s The News

Well, here we are. March. -15C this morning with the wind chill but at least it’s March. Things could be worse, I suppose. I could find myself at what the British call a hen party like we see in the photo of the week captured by temporarily angry Katie apparently practicing her mind control in the attached photo… except I’m not in Britain so she can’t reach me… and… I’d be at a Rooster Do or whatever they call it to make sure we are not getting all inter-species. The rural Ontario stag and doe makes so much more sense. But I am struck how fabulous Katie is… for some reason… give her money… give her power.

We continue with a rather odd tale out of Syracuse NY where we find a craft beer bar shut down due to a rather firm boycott:

Talisman struggled to attract business after its August opening due, at least in part, to a boycott effort from former J.Ryan’s regulars and bartenders. They blamed Carvotta for J.Ryan’s sudden closure and the firing of bartenders and other staff. Former J.Ryan’s fans also posted false negative reviews on the Talsiman Facebook page, attempting to make it difficult for the new bar to get off the ground. They derided the new bar as the “Taliban Tap Room.”

Yikes. Staying in upstate New York, Craig has proved again how flammable he is… and the answer is very… because his FB posts and new findings relate to Albany Ale are on… wait for it… fire. This clickable one to the right from 1832 is my current favourite notice related to Albany ale because it’s from a notice for immigrants to a frontier village in what is now suburb or city to the west end of Lake Ontario, then in Upper Canada, seeking specifically a person who is a tanner, currier and brewer of Albany Ale. Fabulous.

Back in Britain, there was another sort of unhappiness with CAMRA facing apparent or at least alleged revolt from within based on generational shift in appropriate standards:

A war is brewing among members of a real ale campaign group after younger reformers accused the ‘sexist’ old guard of treating the organisation like a ‘pensioners drinking club’.  The feud has been made public after seven reformers – all in their early forties or younger – of Campaign for Real Ale wrote a scathing letter claiming the organisation was ‘riddled with allegations of sexism and cronyism’.  In the letter published in this month’s newsletter, they wrote: ‘We need to see a campaign thinking more seriously about the next generation of pubgoers — a campaign whose public image is not riddled with accusations of sexism…’

Good. Very good. But how many old guard members are there really out there? You’d know better than me. ATJ knows more and he wrote an article for The Telegraph. Here’s a handy Twitter search for “CAMRA sexism” to measure the temper of today.

Crystal takes one of more obligatory sort for the team.

Jordan on why his beer appreciation college course is the best beer appreciation college course:

Luck doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it. I basically started from the proposition that I’ve got to be more useful for less money than both established programs. Cicerone can’t customize their content. Prud’homme can’t customize their content. I can tell the students what happened last week and change out recipes between semesters. 

Martyn has written a cheery attack on the shadowy Portman Group, all over its stance on strong ale:

Among the beers that break the new Portman Group guidelines, and therefore face a potential ban, by being stronger than eight per cent and sold in 75cl bottles, are beautiful brews from the US, such as Brooklyn Brewery Black Ops, or Local 2, Rogue’s XS Old Crustacean barley wine and Lost Abbey’s 10 Commandments; a rake of great beers from Italian craft brewers, who go for 75cl bottles in a big way – pun semi-intended – including the wonderful Xyauyù Barrel from the Italian brewer Baladin; and a fair number of beers from the Netherlands and Belgium… and Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux.

The bastards. The only thing that lets me go on is knowing that there’s Avec Les Bons Voeux out there. Matt took an interesting take on the subject via tweetfest:

…there are thousands of videos of people chugging cans of DIPA on Facebook and Instagram like it’s a game. If we want to encourage responsible drinking of a premium product, perhaps we start by addressing the reality of the situation.

In very happy news… Go Ray… go Ray… go go go Ray!!!

More great news, this out of CBN and the east coast Canadian fabrication scene:

Diversified Metal Engineering (DME) in Charlottetown ceased operations and went into receivership last November along with its sibling business, Newlands Systems (NSI) in Abbotsford, BC. The company and brands have been bought by CIMC Enric Tank & Process B.V. (CETP) of the Netherlands, and the Charlottetown facility has been reopened under the name DME Process Systems. Previous DME staff members have returned to work, and the plant will continue to manufacture DME and NSI equipment, as well as provide parts and technical support to previous DME and NSI customers.

There’s background on the DME story in former weekly news.

I had no idea that there was a German tradition of drinking beer and throwing political insults on Ash Wednesday but state radio folk Deutche Welle says there is:

…every Ash Wednesday the gloves come off, and political leaders are allowed to push the rhetoric to the limits of fairness — and sometimes beyond. That’s been the case this year, too, in the centenary edition of the ritual. Here are some best zingers from the 2019 edition of the political roast day Germans call “political Ash Wednesday.”

The zingers include such winners as “Good PR isn’t going to lift one single child out of poverty” and, of a leader of another political stripe “In her heart of hearts, she’s a Social Democrat.” Wow.  Consider my knee well and truly slapped.

That’s it for this week. A little thin… unlike me in either respect. I got through a kid’s 19th birthday and the intro to drinking legally as well as an radical expansion of the life at work and survived. By next week, the clocks will have changed and the snow will be muchly melted. Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday as well as the slowly simmering #MoneyMakerMarch that everyone… well, Stan… is talking about.

In Like A Lamb And Out With A Better Sense Of The Money Makers

In the article “A Glass of Handmade” published in the November 1987 issue of The Atlantic magazine, William Least Heat Moon along with a character called The Venerable explored the then early micro brewing scene in the USA. It’s one of the original sources of my interest in good beer, dense with keen observation and quotes from players now in their fourth decade past the interviews. One, Buffalo Bill’s Brewpub owner Bill Owens,  was quite clear about his business model:

Owens brews six barrels every Monday, about three hundred barrels a year. “For a hundred and thirty dollars’ worth of ingredients I can make a twenty-five-hundred-dollar profit. A glass of lager – that’s all I brew now – costs seven cents. I sell it for a dollar and a half. Compare my profit on a bottle of commercial beer – forty cents.”

Making money. Along with brewing history, it’s one of the more interesting aspects of good beer but one rarely discussed these days by beer writers. In my conversations with small brewery owners, it’s something I often bring up much to their amusement. I remember the look on Ron‘s face a few years back when I started asking one upstate New York small brewery owner how much this bag of malt cost, how much he made of that keg. I don’t get it. I got answers. Yet no one seems to go there. You can think of as many reasons for that as I can but it’s annoying that such an obvious critical element of the trade is set aside or even hidden behind suggestions that there isn’t any money in making good beer.

For such a successful, now well established industry, well, that sure would be weird. I get it – and there are a couple of folk dabbling with macro-economic observations but getting particular brewers to unpack what they are up to, what the situation they are facing is more immediate. So, inspired by #FlagshipFebruary, I thought it would be good to explore my interest in the green, the black and the red and look to see who is out there doing the same thing. The balance scale and the small scale. Micro brewing micro-economics.

This month, I have a few interviews lined up and might see if anyone else is interested in having a look see wherever they are. #MoneyMakerMarch. Sure, it maybe started as a joke. But then it ended up making me think. And made me remember one of the things I was first interested in when it came to good beer, that seven cent per glass cost. Let’s see if anything comparable to that sort of gross revenue before taxes and other expenses is in anyway still possibly true. These days I take apart the price of multi-million dollar projects for a living.  Let’s see if I can apply any of that experience to come up with anything unexpectedly interesting.

 

That’s It! February Is Over And We Can Now Go On With Our Lives And The Beery News

What a week. I’d tell you about it but that would be telling. On the upside, February is over and that is always good. I never liked it. Icy sidewalks, dirty snowbanks. Elsewhere, daffodils are popping up and buds are bursting. Here, I am convinced every step outside is my last. I haaaaate winter now. The stinkin’ head cold I’ve been dealing with tops it all off. To remind me of happier winter moments past, above is a wonderful photo from Andy Macpherson from the 2015 Xmas photo context of exciting snowy action with him and his pals at Bucktail Brews, a New Jersey brewing project in planning. I hope it works.

News of the week? First up, I don’t disagree with this from @tonitwopint but…

A lot of conversation was generated around Founders, but their situation is indicative of a much larger issue. The conversation needs to continue on a larger scale. If the overall culture of the beer industry were inclusive, it would make it harder for places like that to thrive.

… but you do see two sorts of issue dilution (aka responsibility deflection) being thrown about in such matters: (i) brewery X’s fault needs to be understood in the context of other brewers and (ii) craft brewing needs to be understood in the context of greater society.* Yes and no. Founders may be indicative of a larger issue but it’s also pretty clear that Founders itself alone allowed a culture of bigotry to foster. A particular circumstance which should not be lost. Not cheery but important.

Endtimesy news from Nate.

Timelessness: a study of a back alley tavern from A London Inheritance

In no doubt a move intentionally timed to break the hearts of those interested in #FlagshipFebruary, one of the actual flagships but one not mentioned in the campaign has taken a huge if not fatal hit:

One of Goose Island’s original beers, Honkers Ale, will no longer be on sold on shelves soon. Once a flagship when Goose Island was a locally-owned, craft beer pioneer in Chicago, Honkers Ale is being reduced to being offered only in its brewpubs, according to a post on the Guys Drinking Beer blog, which broke the news. “Honkers Ale was one of the first beers to really put Goose Island on the map. We love this English Bitter style beer! Honkers Ale is not being discontinued and will still be served at our brewpubs…”**

Honkers: a beer so beloved by me it got passing reference once in 2010. RIP.

Entirely crappy news with the filing for bankruptcy by All About Beer magazine and especially the news that plenty of people are left holding the bag. Interesting discussions here and here on what the point and best business model for running a beer magazine in North America is these days. Sad. Actually, just kinda sad.

Speaking of #FlagshipFebruary, even though use of the hashtag went from about 1,000 a day on Twitter to about half that over the  course of the month, I was pleased to see how positive the outcome was. Not just a rear guard action at all. As I had hoped in mid-January, it moved sufficiently off its actual stated mandate to keep interest up rather than beating the dead horse of beers like Honkers no one much cares for anymore. This past week, we have a love letter to a mild, an example and a style which has never been any sort of flagship related to craft. And we had that lovely personal essay by Jay in which the beer is entirely incidental. Wonderful. Now onto that ray of hope, #MoneyMakerMarch when we explore how beer actually works.

In perhaps related beer junket news, a planeload of freebie tourists and cap in hand journalists drinking freebie beer filled the toilets of a plane mid-Atlantic. Such a useful illustration for future reference. Kind of a gross one. Again, grimness prevails.

An interesting bit of intra-provincial comparison went on in Canada’s other national newspaper this week with an article on opening times across our fair land. Ontario, where I live has the latest start – 11 am. Anything earlier, as we learn in school is Satanic. Which is why I do not understand the taverns and dives of New Brunswick opening at six in the morning. Who the hell has to drink in public at that time? Apparently, New Brunswickers.

You know that what follows on social media will be a bit of a grumpy mess, a bit off one’s marbles when it is introduced with the notion that notwithstanding “the steady descent of Twitter generally into a platform for people to get furious over trivia and hurl abuse at people they don’t know…” as if perhaps one did not oneself participate at that level but, never the less, that is what Pete Brown did when he took off on a personal one-legged hopping finger pointy race to explain three reasons why some beer costs more:

But looking at the sheer ignorance of the people we were debating with, two things occurred to me. One, yes, it’s probably not worth bothering engaging with people who for some reason have chosen to spend their precious time on this planet arguing with people they don’t know about subjects on which they are entirely ignorant. But two, the frequency with which this particular attitude surfaces suggests that perhaps we’re at fault too. It’s not just on social media: in pubs and bars, when there’s some strong, rare beer being sold in thirds or halves only, there’s always someone who works out the cost of a pint (even though you can’t buy a pint) and decries how outrageous it is.

The… err… challenging thing is the three reasons (ingredients, time, techniques) are not really (i) explained in terms of the effect of value relative to similar competitors nor are they (ii) explained in the context of fadism-based hyper inflation*** nor are they (iii) explained in terms of the specific effect ingredient, time or technique have on the price. Are they 1%, 5% or 50% variables on overall price? Why can’t we have this explored at a proper level of detail? Apparently understanding price and value are separate issues. [Ed.: we are now having another personal fugue state experience for a mo… and… and… we are back.] Well, if the goals is arguing “on the side of the industry people defending and justifying the expense of some beers…”

That’s it! A bit all endtimesy when you look at it. Frikkin’ February. I blame you. In mere hours it will be March. Joy shall reign! Maybe I’ll even have a beer. Can’t quite be certain if I’ve even had one single beer over the last seven days. Rotten stinking February head cold. Soon, I’ll probably rush to plant radishes so I can stare at the small first patch until it’s clear that nothing is going to grow until a few more weeks have passed. Weeks more waiting. Joy delayed.

What do I have to live for until the soil warms? Well, what other than Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday? Surely that is enough for anyone. Though an early spring might be nice, too.

*Though it is fabulously educational to search for “founders” and “racist” on Twitter.
**Isn’t it always fun when the J. Jonah Jameson breaking the news lines are used? Especially when followed by gooey fanboy exclamation marks.
***One of these days, I’ll pull my gueuze and lambic purchases receipts from say ten years ago when I could afford the stuff. I’d bet fifty cents that the price has doubled compared to the lowest decade of general inflation in centuries. Further, note… yet note.

Your Thrilling Third Week Of February Thursday Beer News Update

A week tomorrow is March. I haven’t even bought my seeds for the garden! How edgy is that? What if I have to pick another sort of broad bean, something new to the market? March also means mud, college basketball and baseball spring training. I suppose it might also mean Bière de Mars if I could find any. I am sure will survive without it. Quite sure, especially compared to ending up with the wrong strain of broad beans. How the neighbours will laugh.

To begin this week’s new review, you know a hobby is well into its mature and not necessarily necessary stage of the life cycle when the news starts to sound like a Monty Python skit:

One of the oldest Lithuanian farmhouse ale yeast strains – sourced from famed brewer Aldona Udriene’s JOVARU Beer – is now available… “We’re ecstatic and fortunate that Aldona Udriene of Jovaru, known as the queen of Lithuanian farmhouse beer, is partnering with us…”

Sadly, no mention of our hero Lars whose work would have been unintentionally instrumental to the craft brewing world’s opportunity to mistreat this tradition. (Not to mention the website Craft Brewing Business which ran the story seems clearly to have poached their story’s photo from Lars.)

In other yeast news, sadly it turns out that the discovery of yeast from a bottle of beer found in a shipwreck was not quite a discovery:

It turns out, there’s more to the story. It turns out, there’s already beer made with that yeast. At Saint James Brewery in Holbrook, Long Island, owner-brewer Jamie Adams has for the past year or so been making use of yeast taken from bottles found in the wreck of the SS Oregon, which sank off Fire Island in 1886. Those beers have mixed the historic yeast with modern yeast.

Hmm… why blend yeasts like that? I’d still be interested in efforts at “a biotech lab at nearby SUNY Cobleskill to culture the yeast for modern use.” But that’s because I was marginally famous in that fabulous program for a glorious afternoon with Craig. Craig was more marginally famous than me. Obvs.

Next up, the chef-owners of Montreal’s celebrated restaurant Joe Beef, David McMillan and Fred Morin, published an exposé on their own past alcohol dependency in Bon Appétit magazine:

The community of people I surrounded myself with ate and drank like Vikings. It worked well in my twenties. It worked well in my thirties. It started to unravel when I was 40. I couldn’t shut it off. All of a sudden, there was no bottle of wine good enough for me. I’m drinking, like, literally the finest wines of the world. Foie gras is not exciting. Truffles are meh. I don’t want lobster; I had it yesterday. What am I looking for, eating and drinking like this every day?

Hmm… what would it take for craft beer to form a registered charity to have professional therapists assess brewery workers and then be able to send them either to therapy or to a rehabilitation center?

Help. I saw this tweet and was unclear of the implication other than to note that by way of some photoshopping a message on a t-shirt was removed from a image used by BrewDog. I am at a loss. Please help.

Conversely, some very blunt and largely (in my view) correct observations on the treatment of various problems in good beer these days and specifically responses to racism:

This level of outrage isn’t applied when the issue is racism or the person offended is black.  The idea that we should all sit around singing “Kumbaya” because someone hired a black face and instituted “sensitivity” training WITHOUT an apology or restitution is a dub.  People are looking for any reason to go back to publicly drinking their Founders products.

Wonderful line, full of importance: “If this was a difficult or emotional read, just imagine what it must have been like to write this piece, let alone live portions of its content.” Also consider this and this as well as this backgrounder from the author.

The entirely welcome death of “curate” as it relates to beer.

The English pub: clubhouses of cliques or open inviting spaces for all? Very good question with perhaps an honest answer which is “both”!

Next, Jay Brooks wrote his piece for #FlagshipFebruary and it was entirely enchanting – and it had nothing to do with the beer he selected to write about –   because it was really a short biography of his life with good beer:

I’m part of that dying breed of beer lovers whose first encounter with better beer predates the craft beer movement. I grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania, when it was a land of regional lagers and the occasional cream ale, but it took joining the military and being posted to New York City to open my eyes to beer’s diversity and endless possibilities. In those dark days — roughly 1978-1980 — it was the imported wonders of Bass Ale, Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, and many others that captivated both my imagination and my taste buds.

And, as a bonus, Jay adds this tidbit: “…[d]espite its success over the previous decade, it had still not remotely saturated the bar scene in the San Jose area…” The beer? Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The modesty of the early success of SNPA contrasts with it’s later national fortunes. Very interesting. Better than the exercise in seemingly denying undeniable* truths.**

Now smaller.

Finally, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal issued an appellate ruling on a case brought by a craft brewery over the fees paid to the government to sell their beer:

Unfiltered applied to the Supreme Court for a declaration that the mark-up was an unlawful tax under s. 53 of the Constitution Act. The application judge found that the mark-up was a proprietary charge and, therefore, not an unlawful tax.

The key word? “Proprietary”! What the ruling really says is that brewers make the beer under license, then it is deemed to be owned by the government for sale by the brewer as agent for the government. It’s called a liquor control board for a reason. And notice this at paragraph 58:

Unfiltered argues that it receives nothing for the mark-up which it pays to
the NSLC. With respect, I disagree. Unfiltered has the ability to sell beer in this province. Without the licenses and permits issued by the NSLC and compliance with them it could not do so.

Boom!! Consider the license to replicate someone else’s created music via CD or Spotify, you are using someone else’s property. In this case, its the same except we are dealing with the proprietary right to convert fermentables to alcohol. Fabulous. As you all know, I wrote a chapter in 2007’s Beer and Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking entitled “Beer and Autonomy” in which I explored in summary how government intersected with alcohol. I wish I had this ruling to work with when I put that chapter together as it gets to the nub of the matter clearly and, obviously, with authority. 

Enough! Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday if you want more sensible insights on the world of beer. Soon… March!***

*physically.
**perhaps mentally.
***#MoneyMakerMarch!

 

Apparently The Beer News Heats Up When We Reach Mid-February

Happy Valentine Day. Or is it Valentine’s Day? Never sure. Me, I grew up in a florist’s household and, as a young lad, was a Netherlands-trained wholesale florist myself. So, I pretty much have burned the entire thing out of my consciousness. Watching people line up to pay $80 bucks for roses when $25 worth of fresh red tulips was the smart move gets depressing. You worried about the big macro industrial beer trade? Worry about the big macro industrial rose trade. Just sayin’.

In other VD related news, thankfully the “what beer to pair with chocolate!” story and the “how to confront your date with beer on your big day!” story seem to have both mercifully gone away. Did you see as many? It feels like something grew up, like watching your teen finally eat a damn green bean. Time to get back to a more honest, wholesome approach. Hmm… stuffed haddock imperial sounds pretty good, actually. Thanks Pam!

Other than that, as I mention above there is plenty of heat in the real news left in the last few weeks of winter. For starters, Jeff shares the news that Portland, Oregon’s seemingly perhaps formerly beloved BridgePort Brewing has shut after 35 years:

This will hurt the soul of many Portlanders. Even if BridgePort wasn’t locally owned, even if it wasn’t making interesting beer, and even if the pub had been turned into a wannabe Chili’s, it was still the oldest and perhaps most important brewery in the state. Exactly 20 years ago, we lost a monument to Oregon beer when Miller shut down the old Henry Weinhard brewery that anchored downtown. We will lose the most important remaining emblem of our brewing history when BridgePort shutters its doors thirteen blocks north of Weinhard’s.

Keep in mind one thing. This and the other closures being reported in 2019 are occurring in an economic upturn.  What will happen if the economy starts to actually wobble?

If that sort of prospect weren’t bad enough, Robin rightly blew a gasket (as did many many others) over an entirely unnecessary but utterly sexist and creepy story run in the Great Lakes Brewing News:

This post isn’t going to talk too much about beer, but it’s something related to the beer world. Primarily one of the many things wrong with it in regards to its treatment of women. No no, this isn’t going to be talking about a sexist label or a really bad PR gaffe in which a rape joke was made. This is a special kind of trainwreck.

In response, the author/editor/publisher indicated that it was all a one off satire. Problem is… there was nothing satirical about it. Also, as I was able to show via a couple of tweets, the GLBN has had a long standing habit of publishing the author/editor/publisher’s pervy creepy personal fiction for over a decade. Breweries (including Fat Head’s which has supported with advertising for years) have now begun abandoning the publication. Nice to see, by the way, someone turning the stupid immortal Calagione statement that the craft brewing industry is “99% a**hole-free” back on itself. 99% asleep at the wheel on such matters might make for more accurate math. More here at a Wednesday round up in Detroit’s MetroTimes.

Entirely to the opposite and building on his Beer 101 webcasts that mentioned last December, Garrett Oliver proved again why he is the leading spokesperson for good beer in North America when he strode upon the small screen on US broadcast morning show LIVE with Kelly and Ryan under the FeBREWary banner:

Look alive, peeps! In the green room about to appear on @LiveKellyRyan. We’re going to improve your Monday! In the meantime, the chocolate chip cookies in the green room are pretty good. The life of the modern brewmaster is a strange thing….

Discussing good beer with the authority the O.G.G.O. brings is a rare thing indeed. Placing it on a normal everyday national forum like that was almost a shock. Here is the four minute segment.

In other good news, Anchor Brewing is thriving and going union!

There are approximately 70 full- and part-time employees in the bargaining unit, spread across the Anchor’s production facility in the Potrero Hill neighborhood and its taproom, Anchor Public Taps, across the street. The brewery employs approximately 160 people total, including white-collar workers…

Video of the week: drunken horse riding in England in 1972.

Floorboard story of the week: early 1900s Danes hid brewing archives under them.

A drinks man,  the roaring boy has left us.

Graham Dineley* has posted something of a personal history of coming to beer which entirely parallels mine – 1980s home brewing along with Dave Line’s books:

My first Baby Burco on the left, on it’s third element, is now relegated to heating sparge water. In the middle is my last remaining beer sphere, Peco mash tun and demi-johns. Inside the blue sleeping bags there is 10 gallons of beer in the final stages of primary fermentation. I bought my ingredients from Hillgate Brewing Supplies in Stockport, the shop mentioned by Boak and Bailey. It must have been just after the shop had changed hands from Pollard. The man running it was John Hoskins, if my memory serves me right. I would phone in an order: “Two of page 88 please” and pick it up the next day. He would make up recipes from David Line’s “Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy”, which was a boon for a novice brewer without any scales.

A Burco! We had a home brew shop owner in Halifax that would lend out Burcos for free like a beery private librarian when you bought your malt and hops. Fabulous. And a completely different route into good beer than the authorized version would let you believe.

Speaking of rambles down the unilateral memory lane, I might be coming around a bit more to #FlagshipFebruary even if the month is long and, frankly, chores are being missed.** It’s a good measure of which memories are considered important to some – naturally I suppose given the model includes allocation of stories through the assignments. Not everyone gets to choose Sam Adams, for example. So what has week two given us? I hand’t paid much attention to  New Zealand’s Epic Ale which seems to be a clone of a mid-2000s C-hop brew. Good for the Kiwis getting a day. I’ve like most New Zealanders I’ve met. Similarly, Evan wrote glowingly on Samichlaus which is a beer I regularly pass when shopping. Racing to be the strongest beer was like being the hoppiest – a bit of a genetic dead end in good beer but still Samichlaus hangs on. Having passed between breweries, it’s a flagship in the sense that war prizes can stock a naval fleet.*** Two more weeks to go. Crickey. No suspense that SNPA will be the last one reviewed, right? Bet it gets ripped. No? You’re probably right.

Well, that’s enough for now. After last week’s update Maureen gave high praise. I am simply grateful that somebody reads this stuff. It’s all just talon sharpening for my real world life. Well… and temper tempering I suppose. Best not to ask my inner voice too many questions. Unlike Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday whose more cogent thoughts should set you off in all sorts of new directions. Two weeks to March! What will March stand for? What will be it’s new hashtag? We’ll have to think about that.

*Yes, indeed.
**Nothing tells you there is a bit of confusion more than GBH insisting there should not be confusion and that he/they/it are confused by it. If people only understood how smart they were they’d get over all the weirdness.
***Whose navy indeed!

 

As January 2019 Dies Off Another Set Of Beery News Is Born

A surprisingly long set of links face me in my inbox today. Folk send me suggestions all the time… well, some of the time… OK, once in a while. Honestly, for the most part to make this weekly update of the news in good beer I just email myself links as I notice a story through the week. Usually there are seven or nine by early in the week. This week, I had over twenty by Monday. And, yes, emails. So… let’s dive right in.

First off, if you are in Toronto this evening (and I will be if only passing through via VIA) you can pop over to this fabulous fundraiser for an important cause to witness some top notch curling action (like that to the right from last year) at the Beer Sisters’ Charity Hopspiel:*

On January 31st, brewers from across Ontario will gather at the Royal Canadian Curling Club in Toronto’s east end. Clad in array of plaid, denim, light-up shorts, toques and matching jerseys, 24 brewing industry teams will face-off to raise money for the Native Women’s Resource Centre in Toronto. The Beer Sisters’ Charity Hopspiel, hosted by beer writers and educators Crystal and Tara Luxmore, is in its 7th year. The event has raised over $32,000 for the centre, and the sisters hope that this year they’ll cross the $40,000 mark.

Fabulous! And at the Royal Canadian Curling Club! An actual place I am assured, not just a mid-range brand of rye whisky from the 1950s.

Next, Katie wrote a wonderful piece on heritage barley published in Ferment that explores the use of Chevallier, the darling English malting from around 1820 to WWI. I immediately started badgering her about joining my Battledore revival crusade.

Note: Victorians represented in under 1% of the graph and the most striking thing is not their habits so much as the near replication of the feat right before the economic meltdown of 2007-08. Nonetheless, a very handy set of charts and who doesn’t like handy sets of charts?

Not journalism.  Or at least not good journalism.** Just badgering. Easy enough to get a quote from someone but it usually requires letting them speak.

An clear and accurate guide to tipping in Canadian tavs, pubs and bars.

Beer Ramen. Kill me now.

Update: We’ve had an actual update on #FlagshipFebruary and I couldn’t be more grateful for the clarification:

…it is in our and the industry’s best interest if we take a moment occasionally to appreciate the flagship beers of the industry’s foundational breweries…

So, the brewery has to have continued through the good beer era and the current flagship is the brewery hallmarks to recognize. Andy Crouch wrote a wonderful dense poem of a tweet on the same topic:

Revisiting long established flagships tastes of antiquity, success, failure, unfulfilled dreams of resurrection, and ultimately nostalgia. A place in time to momentarily revisit if only to remind you how far you’ve come but rarely a place to linger long.

I noticed this statement in a piece on German brewing culture and I thought it was extraordinary for suggesting agricultural capacity of a landscape is not the governing factor in whether beer was made or not:

Alsace is on Europe’s religious faultline. Beer is often thought of a drink of the Protestant north, but the facts don’t really bear that out. Belgium, Bavaria and Bohemia are historically Catholic (even if that religious attachment has faded); only Britain, of Europe’s foundational beer cultures, is Protestant. Does this suggest beer is less Protestant than thought? Perhaps, but I also think Catholic cultures are (as you might assume) better at preservation.

Well, I suppose someone has created a jam/jelly faultline based on religion. Me, I’d suggest many western and central European brewing traditions were pretty much established before the Reformation.

The effect of the US government shutdown on the brewing trade is measurable. Why the difference in processing wines and spirits? I blame the slackers attracted to a career in the beer label branch.

Gary’s piece on Watney’s Red Barrel as experienced in eastern North America at the time contains plenty of those links to contemporary primary documents that leave you persuaded. By way of contrast, this could really be read in two entirely opposite ways:

“I actually am mystified myself,” says Jeff Alworth. He should know…

Fine. I’ve held on long enough. Let’s talk Fuller’s or at least the highlights of the discussion. Promethean Jordan found a very helpful Brexit angle on the timing based on last year’s visit. Martyn argued convincingly that the whole sale spoke of business success and a strong future going forward. Then he added a bonus history of Asahi to deal with, you know, the legitimacy issues. Jeff at distance took it as a hefty body blow and mainly sees that it poses great risk to the English cask ale scene. Boak and Bailey wrote from their semi-characteristic personal perspective, supposing they are facing another long goodbye to a treasured relationship. Matt sided with the corporate success group and then started blatantly and publicly gambling with Boak and Bailey over the matter. Pete wrote first about his lack of levelheadedness when faced with the news and then got level headed and then sorta wobbled again in the semi-revisionist Book of Genesis stuff.***

My take? First, Fuller’s has been masterful in building up its reputation with good beer conversationalists over the last ten years. Remember how fun it was when @FullersJohn started tweeting? How beer writers were brought in and got their names on the label? What is really being noticed now is how the emotional credit Fuller’s they earned through that clever outreach has been truly a rich investment. And notice how none of the commentary comments upon that even though it was all done openly and with integrity.  Second, the only constant about the beer business over the centuries has been the goal of continuous growth, merger and acquisition. Brewing has two great outputs: beer and wealth. This is just the latter being successfully served after a long stretch merrily servicing the former.

I love this tweet by Jancis R:

Never ceases to amaze me when we get messages like this: ‘We’d like to find out how to go about having our wines scored by Jancis Robinson, as well as the costs involved.’ Who charges to taste wine?

Who charges to taste beer? I know some but it would be rude to mention, no? Conversely, there is a craft beer fraudster working the US south:

“The phone rang and rang and rang…I checked the house and it was empty. The door was unlocked,” Brandon Oliver says. “His chickens were still in the backyard…about 90% of his clothes were gone…he left as if he only had six hours to leave.” Foster left his tools out at the unfinished beer garden. He and his family left town overnight.

The abandonment of the chickens is a sweet detail.

As someone with hearing that will never get any better, I really like this inordinately nice idea from a campaign under the heading Quiet Scotland:

Ever left a shop or been unable to enjoy a meal or drink because the background music has been so loud? Don’t like complaining? Try leaving one of our polite cards to get your point across.

An email went around from NAGBW HQ about the impending demise of the All About Beer web archive and I first thought it was an oddly presumptuous thing to send… and then I thought it was kind to alert me. I did not save any of my own work as anything I pitched was not dubbed worthy – which made me happy. I really hate editors and others paid to make things duller. But I did save Stan’s story How Craft Became Craft for very obvious reasons.

And, finally, let’s just watch this**** and listen to the screams of those precious darlings witnessing a part of their personal emotional foundations, the rebellious idols of their youths, being washed away out from underneath their feet:

That’s it! A big week in the contemporary detritus of good beer culture. Please check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday for more sensible and refined responses to the week in good beer.

* For those not in the punny know, see Bonspiel.
**Which is quite another point we never explore when a writer claims the journalism label… or at least the helpful bits. Seldom the adoption of the concurrent ethics lead at that moment.
***“Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale began life as an attempt to imitate Fuller’s ESB.” Really? How many beers is SNPA an clone of? Ballentine IPA. Burt Grant’s work. What else?
****And this, for that matter.

Another Brief Update On That Nagging Beery Bristol Question…

What a time to be a beer blogger. So sad so few of us are left to have all this fun! Do I speak of the switch in ownership of a beloved British brewer? The last try or dry of this the first month? No, it’s that idea of when did hopped beer really was brewed or showed up in and, then, was shipped out from British ports as a recognized commercial product.

I have happily read through and even negotiated electrical interconnection agreements. One lawyer more experience gave me the best advice early on. You have to obey the electrons. Similarly with history. It is not just that you need to get the facts straight. You need to obey the chronology. So, if I am being obedient, I need to know that hopped beer was in the ports and that ships were leaving the port in something like that order.

All of which is to say that it was very good to come across the paragraph to the right in 2002’s England and the German Hanse, 1157-1611: A Study of Their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy at page 81 where  beer is described as “the new drink promoted aggressively by north German merchants in the late fourteenth century.” And it is beer being delivered, granted in small quantities, in London. The 1384 shipping record being mentioned is 17 years earlier than the 1401 shipment to Hull on the Elyn I mentioned last time. Which is good. And which sort of indicates to me what is logical – hopped beer showed up as a finished product before hopped beers were brewed domestically.*

As part of scratching at this itch, a bought a copy of The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 on eBay which proved to be a helpful step in clarifying another record mentioned last time, the one about the two brewers apparently referenced in the alien subsidies. I had no idea what the subsidies were but, care of this helpful guide, starting in the middle of the 1400s near the end of the Hundred Years’ War a sort of census listing all residents immigrants was kept. And a small tax or subsidy was paid by the person in question once identified:

Justices of the Peace (JPs) were to assess who was liable to pay the alien subsidy. Names were returned to the Exchequer, which would then issue lists to the relevant sheriff or civic officials, ordering them to collect the tax.  The JPs used juries made up of local men to identify the alien residents in their area… These local men used their general knowledge to identify aliens in their area. Some aliens were identified by their accent and language, some by their name. Some, whose actual origin may have been uncertain, were simply known not to have been born in England.

The helpful guide led to another website containing the complete England’s Immigrants 1330–1550 database which allows you to search by factors like  name, name era within the period and trade. And so, lo and behold, we can see that one of the two immigrant brewers listed in the census for Bristol in 1441 was named Germanus Pownham of St. James Ward. While not in all records, we can see on this list of all 56 alien brewers that many of these brewers nationalities were listed. Scots, French and Irish are joined by others described as being a “Hollander” or “Brabanter” or having their origin in Lucca in Tuscany. Mr. Pownham’s is not listed but with the first name “Germanus” there is at least a reasonable chance he was German. Was he brewing German style hopped beer? The record actually doesn’t say.

The key for me is that, in addition to there being a Hanseatic depot at Bristol, both the beer and the brewer sufficiently predate long distance trade explorations out of England – including Bristol. Two expeditions for spice and silk to the Middle East are described in The Widening Gate in the mid-1400s. Both end in disaster at the hands of Italian merchant navies. Apparently, Genoa controlled the Mediterranean in much the same way the Hanseatic League managed the Baltic and North Seas. So, the idea that the Cabots – either John in the 1490s or his son Sebastian in the early 1500s – brought beer along with them when they crossed the Atlantic is not far fetched at all. All I need, as I wrote last time, is a record or two. Well, now another record or two.

*And all of which aligns with Martyn’s short history of hops in England from 2009.

Your Thursday Beer News Notes For The Week Winter Showed Up

I should not complain about having to shovel snow on the 20th of January when its the first real snow of the winter. It’s not that tough a life. Five weeks to March today means it won’t be all that bad from here on out. What effect has this on my beer consumption? Not so much in volume but now is the time when a pint of stout and port is added to any sensible diet. I say “a” pint with care given the concoction should be somewhere in the area of 10% alc. Yowza. But when does great reward comes without some risk?

Not long after last week’s deadline for news submissions, Ed tweeted that he had “[j]ust been sent an excellent article on rice malt beer 😉” The study describes the potential of rice for brewing and sets out an optimized malting program allowed water saving.  Which is cool. But it is also cool that it is about the use of rice which, except for corn, is the most hated of fermentables. This is despite the fact that rice beer came to Canada about 93 years ago – well after it was brewed in the U. S. of A. – a fact which has been fabulously preserved for us all in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., [1930] S.C.R. 361 at page 373 about the production of beer during the era of US prohibition:

I do not think we can accept the suggestion that there was no market for lager beer in Ontario. The learned trial judge dwells upon the fact that rice beer is peculiarly an American taste, and infers that it is not sold in Ontario. The evidence in support of this does not proceed from disinterested sources and I wonder whether the boundary line so sharply affects the taste in illicit liquor. In truth, it is stated by Low that it was not until some time in 1926 that the respondents began the manufacture of rice beer, and we are not told at what date, if ever, in their brewery, rice beer wholly superseded malt beer.*

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we stopped calling it “American-style lager” and just called it rice beer… or corn beer as the case may be? Will it take another century to pass for good beer to admit this fundamental reality of North American brewing culture?

Beer at the Post Office? Thanks Vlad!

I am still not sure what to make of #FlagshipFebruary.** Like a lot of you, I have been making up alternative hashtags like #GoldenOldieAles, #FlogshipFebruary and #PartyLikeIts1999. But it’s earnestly offered and, you know, as long as there isn’t a secret spreadsheet being sent around to members of the good beer PR-consulto class prearranging who are going to each write about this or that fabulous flagship as a way to artificially drum up interest and maybe future paying PR gigs, I think we might actually come away with a reasonably good taste in our mouths.

It reminds me a lot of by far the most successful of such hashtags, #IPADay created in 2011 by this blog’s friend Ashley Routson aka The Beer Wench.*** But (and this was not really the case in 2001 so laugh not) I would argue was easier to determine what an IPA was in 2011 than figure out what “flagship” mean today. As I am l not clear what a flagship really is, I asked some questions like if the Toronto brewery Left Field consider their oatmeal brown Eephus (1) their foundation (2) their flagship (3) both or (4) neither. They wrote:

We’d be comfortable calling it a foundational beer. We don’t really refer to any beer in the lineup as a flagship. Along with a few others, it’s one of our year-round offerings.

See, foundational does not (usually) mean flagship. More evidence? Consider this September 1990-ish beer column on the state of affairs in Lake Ontario land. It mentions the venerable and largely forgotten Great Lakes Lager. Foundation? Sure. Not the flagship. That’s now Canuck Pale Ale. You know, flagship might also even be a slightly dirty word in the trade. A tough row to hoe for the industry marketers behind this scheme. But hope lives on eternally in such matters as we learned from the new CEO of Sierra Nevada who, faced with the task of turning things around for the musty ales of yore, stated:

…he’s bullish on Sierra Nevada’s prospects heading in 2019 and he’s projecting 5 percent growth. He believes that advertising will help turn around Pale Ale’s negative trajectory, and that continued growth for Hazy Little Thing, combined with increased focus on Hop Bullet and Sierraveza, will propel the company forward this year.

Advertising! How unlike beer macro industrial crap marketeers!! If that is the case, me, I am launching #FoundationAlesFriday come March to get my bit of the action. Join my thrilling pre-movement now.

Beer so horrible that it can’t really be called beer is rising in popularity in Japan as sales of the real stuff and the semi-real stuff drops.

Elsewhere, I tweeted this in response to the wonderful Dr. J and I quite like it:

Well, the multiplication of “style” to mean just variation leads to a dubious construct that bears little connection to original intent and leaves beer drinkers more and more bewildered when facing the value proposition of fleetingly available brands however well made.

Let’s let that sit there for a second. Fair?

Send a furloughed US Federal employee a beer. Or help with some unplanned bridge financing for an out of luck new brewery.

Even elsewhere-ier, Matt Curtis is to be praised and corrected this week. Corrected only in the respect that he wrote the utterly incorrect “in true journalistic style I was too polite to say” in his otherwise fabulous piece**** on what it was like going booze free for three weeks:

As I walked down Shoreditch High Street on my way to an event from the British Guild of Beer Writers showcasing alcohol free beers I passed some of my favourite bars and restaurants. I found myself pining to sit within them, simply to soak up the atmosphere. In that moment I felt that merely the sound of conversation and conviviality would sate my urge to drink more than any can or bottle of low alcohol vegetable water that has the indecency to call itself beer.

Lovely stuff.

Note: an excellent lesson in what it means to understand beer.  “It’s what [XYZ] told me…” is never going to serve as reliable research. Just ask, beer writers! Ask!!! Conversely, this article in The Growler serves as an excellent introduction to the 18 month rise of kveik on the pop culture commercial craft scene. I say pop culture commercial craft as it has been around the actual craft scene for a number of hundreds of years. Much more here from Lars.

How’s that? Enough for now? Winter getting you down? Remember: things could be worse. I think so. Don’t forget to read Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday if you want to stay on top of things. Perhaps he will update the impending contiguous v. non-contiguous acreage rumble we’ll all be talking about in a few weeks.

*Buy Ontario Beer for more fabulous facts like this!
**Though I do like the concept of the pre-movement.
***Note: I make no comment on the wide variety of beer “wenches” or “nuts”… or “foxes” or “man” or any such other monikers. At least they don’t claim to be an expert.
****The current edition of Boak and Bailey emailed newsletter contained this bit on Matt’s experiment: “…it all seemed pretty reasonable to us. But even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be any of our business. We did wince to see people in the business of beer berating him for his decision, and winced even more deeply when we saw people nagging at him to break his resolution.” I agree that this is sad and, I would add, smacks of the nags shouldering the alky’s burden themselves.

 

The Government-Shutdown No-Deal-Brexit Why-Kids-Don’t-Drink Version Of Thursday Beer Notes

Woot!!! Holding up the roof since 1693!!!!

So… two weeks and a bit until #FlagshipFebruary* begins… meaning the inevitable rebound to #TrendyMarchMania will see some of the dry,  those off the sours for almost nine weeks hitting the bottle extra hard. You know, we really need to full year calendar to keep all this stuff straight – given we also have #MildMay and #DecemberIsForAmataurs, too.

As I mentioned a few updates ago, the US government shutdown has caused all approvals required by brewers from the  Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. I clucked at the time that at least this halted the manic pace of biere nouveau but – and with a hefty h/t to @beerinator – it appears that the permitting process is far more intrusive that that:

In a suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in D.C., Atlas notes that the government has approved labels for its cans of The Precious One, an apricot IPA, but not the labels for its kegs, known as “keg collars” before the shutdown began. Those kegs can’t be shipped out for sales outside of D.C. without label approval from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau: Doing so would violate federal law.

Who knew that “permitting” included such minor matters?***1/2

Next but disconnectedly so, here is an excellent primer for buying wine for a crowded restaurant table. Note the following statements:

I simply order what I most fancy eating and what I’d most like to drink, that’s what gives me most pleasure — even if the combination may seem bizarre to the sommelier… Do you worry about which cheeses to pick off a cheeseboard? I’m sure you don’t, so don’t worry about the wine…

Fabulous advice. Applies to beer, too.**

Unrelatedly, wonderful views (see above) of a +335 year old pub structure in Dublin, Ireland. Here is some backstory from 2016 on the efforts to save the structure:

“The astonishing skeletal grid of ceiling beams and joists is still intact on the ground floor, as well as early brick walls with ancient embedded timbers… With all of the modern partitions and ceilings now removed, the ground-floor shop retains all the grand scale one would expect of a public inn of the post-medieval period, complete with typical corner chimney stacks…”

Not connected at all, good to see some wonderful news of Young’s in England taking a stand on saving its affected staff from the fallout caused by Brexit. More here on the business reasons behind this sensible move:

The boss of pubs firm Young’s on Thursday cheered higher sales, but warned that hiring staff is tougher. Patrick Dardis said around 38% of his 5000-strong workforce are EU nationals, and added: “More workers [from Europe] are leaving here than coming. The recruitment and the retention of top talent is increasingly difficult.

Whiplashedly, ScienceDirect published this so it must be right. It’s a research paper entitled “Why are young people drinking less than earlier? Identifying and specifying social mechanisms with a pragmatist approach” which sets out a number of reasons why my children are apparently smarter than I was as a kid:

Recent analyses of surveys of youth drinking in Sweden have found a strong decrease both in rates of abstinence and in levels of drinking among drinkers. For instance, alcohol consumption among 15- to 16-year-olds has fallen more than 50% between 2000 and 2012. At the same time, the abstention rates among boys and girls have increased from about 30% to more than 50% . Moreover, heavy episodic drinking has decreased from 34% to 18% among boys (ibid.)…  Similar declining trends of alcohol consumption among young people have been identified in other European countries, North America and Australia…

Virtigo inducingly, the Tand himself has posted about how craft sees cask and it’s good enough to have a whole month dedicated to the #MarchOnCraftFibs campaign. It starts fabulously thusly:****

Yesterday there was a Twitter post that caught my attention. It referred to an opinion piece in Imbibe Magazine by Jessica Mason in which she claims that “We’re on the precipice of a cask revival”. The article goes on to explain her thinking which can be summed up – more or less – that cask can revived – wait for it – by modern brewers adopting Golden Ales. Well I exaggerate, but I hardly agree either with the way the article says “cask is becoming ever more exciting, flavoursome and stylistically broad” as if we’ve all been drinking flavourless crud for all these years and can only be saved by innovative craft brewers rescuing us from our own stupidity. 

And utterly conversely, I finally figured out what I don’t get about GBH writing style. This piece by Roth is pretty good even if it needs editing down to get some control of the subject. It’s like there is a need to give each source equal space.  And the obvious extra access to New Belgium, an acknowledged sponsor, is there, too. But those are the problems with the subject matter presentation. That’s normal middly stuff. No, it’s the fact that the letters “GBH ” actually appear 22 times within the text of the story. Twenty-two! Breakout the flashing neon font. Enough already. One is enough. Three is cloying. But referencing your own publication 22 times in a story is weird. Needy. And too bad. It’s an important story and would have been much better if it was just cleaned up with a lashing of confidence.

One last thing: stunning stats on pub waste.

That’s enough for now. My neck hurts. Odd. Mid-January is quiet time. I actually typed all this while balled up in family quilts watching VCR recordings of cooking shows from the 1990s. Seriously. Who has time for -26C, Sunday’s promised nighttime high?  I want it over. You want it over. Like Brexit, we know the next few weeks are just going to be ugly and we need to get them out of the way. Need relief along the way? Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday for a well earned break.

*Hmm. Now not thrilled with the hinted need to seek to attach a big old lumbering craft revenue stream to what is basically a hashtag.
***1/2Not sure what this footnote is for… it’s even out of order.
**Have another cold Big Mac, you big carrot-headed lardass! [Note: as a distant cousin of Mr. President, I reserve the right to call him a big carrot-headed lardass.]
***So much of wine pairing advice these days is based on relaxing and not worrying while beer pairing advice is so anxious.
****We really do need to acknowledge what a clear focused writer the Tandy One is.