The Thursday Beery News Notes For May Two-Four 2022!

May two-four. Back again. I explained it back in 2014 when I included the photo to your right (my left) of Bob and Doug McKenzie who were Canada’s #1 export forty years ago and whose 1983 movie, Strange Brew, is the last cultural statement about beer before microbrewing struck in earnest. Even though the movie isn’t set on the Victoria Day holiday in the second half of May, you can see many aspects of our drunken mildly retro-pro-monarchist celebrations replayed in Canadian homes as well as at campsites and cottages throughout the land this weekend as people feign gardening and practice inebriation. And it’s a big year for our top dog, our numero uno, our favourite anti-Nazi. Speaking of which… you know what broke? That cap thing on my whippersnipper that keeps the weedwhacker’s string coil in place. How the hell does that break? Spool went flying and the lawn’s all half haggy still. Didn’t so much break as ‘sploded. Now I have to hunt down a replacement lawn trimmer line cap or I have to buy a whole new thing-a-ma-jig. Pray for me.

Now… to the beer news. First up, a set of photos posted by the Glasladies Beer Society of a recent Glasgow beer fest set up in what looks like a somewhat permanent outdoor space. Being who I am, a child of children of the Clyde, the event looks like a mass gathering of aunties and uncles and masses of cousins. The use of steel container boxes is interesting as a relatively cheap but cheery but secure set up. Looks like it was held at the Glasgow Beer Works in the Queenslie Industrial Estate. This may be a common site for some of you but sometimes that’s still remarkable.

Next, Ron wrote a piece he titled “The Future of Mild” which serves as an interesting counterpoint to the fan friendly writings on the style mentioned two weeks ago. Ron provides an interesting set of thoughts about Mild itself and how styles may or may not make a comeback:

I’d love to go to Cross Green and drink 10 pints of Tetley’s Mild again. But it isn’t going to happen. The world has moved on. Beer styles come and go. And almost never return. I’ll just cherish the memories of a time that’s gone forever. Like a Porter drinker in the 1940s. The same fate, incidentally, awaits Pilsner and IPA. All styles have their day.

The fate of Mild has been formed he suggest as “it’s harder to throw all sorts of random shit into a Dark Mild.” That would seem to be where we are at. The post also lead to an interesting considered discussion on the nature of revivals. Jeff wrote:

…I wonder if a style that was once quite popular ever came back as a major style, perhaps not as popular as it was during its heyday, but with significant production. It’s probably happened, but I suspect it’s very, very rare. Once fashions change, styles sunset.

TBN reminded us of the classic example of style revival – Hoegaarden. I expect this is as much framed by the word “style” and its imposition limiting structure but the entire micro (1980-2003)) and craft eras (2003-2016) were based on revival of lost beers. Hoppy malt rich ales were descendants of earlier strong ales like Ballantine IPA and Dominion White Label as much as they were clones of imports.  So… revivals common enough in the days when brewing was not so wound up with novelty and amnesia. We always have to remember how quickly we forget. As recent at 2011, SNPA’s place in the pantheon was still somewhat speculative. Now, of course, it was always the source of all things including those that came before it – thanks to the nation’s PR professionals!

Speaking of perhaps one revival or perhaps homage that has not lasted, one bit of news that I was a bit surprised to learn about this week was how St. Joseph’s Abbey of Spencer, Massachusetts is no longer brewing its beer. This was all the news in 2015 and I reviewed their first beer as you can read here. The monks announced:

After more than a year of consultation and reflection, the monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey have come to the sad conclusion that brewing is not a viable industry for us and that it is time to close the Spencer Brewery. We want to thank all our customers for their support and encouragement over the years. Our beer will be available in our regular retail outlets, while supplies last. Please keep us in your prayers.

Jordan thought it a particularly worrying development based on their low labour expenses. Greg reported that the equipment was already listed for sale before the announcement. I gratuitously added the 2015ish image up there from the celler’s stash for Stan. Pretty sure the bottle has move about six inches in seven years.

Des generated a wonderful cascade of comments related to cellered casks with this big barrelled beery buttery – including these cautionary ones:

Not being funny, but going on that photo, “immaculate” is a strong word. Serviceable, cleaner than many, maybe. And as I’m sure has been pointed out, a 36 (massing the best part of 200kg) is a H&S nightmare. You romantic.

Note: please don’t send out bleggy emails saying “ I don’t have limitless cash on hand to subsidize this project, but it’s reality nonetheless. I need at least [XXX number of] paid subscribers…” Listen to the wind… the marketplace of ideas is speaking… write for joy or get a job to support your hobby interest in booze.

Boak and Bailey elaborated something at their Patreon widget-a-thing  that was evident in their (lovely and highly recommended) account of Ray’s out for hike and stopping at rural pubs with pals:

…at least part of the joy we took in drinking it on this occasion must be down to having “earned it”. The same goes for that first beer of the weekend, after a tough week at work. Or, as many people have observed, almost any mediocre lager you drink on holiday. How do you compensate for this effect? Well, you don’t, unless you’re a Top International Beer Judge. Instead, you report the context when you give notes on a specific instance of drinking a specific beer. And you make judgements about the overall quality of a beer based on mutliple encounters in multiple contexts. A beer that tastes good every time you bump into it is probably a good beer, full stop.

I wonder if we have become so enthralled with these beer judging events for hobbyists that we miss the obvious – that those beers actually do taste good in those contexts. And that judging contexts make beer taste bad. Because they are geared to ensure failure. Because that is what institutionalizing human experience does, makes you distrust and then outsource your own experience of life. Stop feeling bad because someone who has a certificate for passing the equivalent of a grade 11 history class says so.* Not to suggest TBN is not correct when he explains “Beer is weird. You’re lucky to have me here, putting things straight.” It is. We are.

Handy example: print off and cut into separate burger and beer images. Throw all in air and match the beer with the nearest burger. Equally valid. Every. Time.

Rolling Stone put out a story about beer prices this week under their “Culture Council” tab, not something I have notice from them in all my years at the coal face. The author, Kevin Weeks of Anderson Valley Brewing (who actually follows me on Twitter so I feel extra bad for not noticing before), argues interestingly that any increased costs faced by brewers are likely not going to justify the level of price increases that consumers are going to see on the shelf from the big brewers so…

For the smaller craft breweries facing this dynamic, this is an excellent opportunity to differentiate their brands by both managing pricing and clearly conveying priorities to the consumer. The most obvious tactic is to hold price (or implement only slight increases) to create an opportunity to increase market share through a comparable pricing advantage over the larger brewers that are grasping for margin.

And this passed by my eye this week, “It always rains on Monday” by Ian Garstka. More of his work can be found on IG. Prints available from the artist.

Perhaps relatedly at least atmospherically, Gary posted about “Birmingham Beer Detectives, 1937” who in plain clothes were sent out to protect the interests of the beer-drinking public and augment lab testing quality controls:

It seems therefore, at least for a time, a two-track beer-tasting inspection system existed, city and industry, to control beer quality in pubs. Perhaps the whole thing, at city level, collapsed with the Second World War – bigger fish to fry, if you will, but this remains to be known. Certainly at industry level, tasting onsite continued into the postwar era. A number of press reports, one pertaining to Ansells in 1949, attest only too graphically, a conviction of an inspector for drunk driving.

There’s a BBC historical drama script right there for the taking. I can smell the damp tweed and ashtrays now.

Note: “Finnish brewery release new beer celebrating Finland joining NATO“!

Note also: “TikTok star says Wetherspoons ‘scammed’ him out of £2,000 of food and drink.” Star!

Finally and falling under Stan’s reminder “no one cares what you think, Alan” I upset Maureen a bit a tiny bit (which I never like to do) when I commented about this article on Hogarth’s Gin Lane and Beer Street as I mentioned it amounted to was a bit of a sneeky apology for mass drunken frenzy. My observation was quite specific so I should explain so that all you all can correct me. The first half of the article is fairly straight forward GBH-style with loads of quotes from other sources framing the well understood topic. But then it goes in an odd direction mid-essay with the statement that those “in positions of power in England sought to create an all-around negative image of gin.” According to the article’s own previous paragraphs rightly describing the generally understood hellscape unleashed by gin at the time, I was left wondering if it could also be said that people in power now are perhaps creating an all-around negative image of the Covid-19 virus. My wonderment didn’t last. I found this key angle within the article odd. Odder still the suggestion that the works of Hogarth were for an elite:

Because of the timing, “Gin Lane” and “Beer Street” are often viewed as a work of moral propaganda, and some have speculated they were commissioned by the government to help reach gin’s working-class imbibers. Tonkovich points out this is not the case, however, because that working-class target couldn’t have easily accessed these prints. “These prints would not have been affordable for the working class,” she says. “They might have seen them in a tavern or through a window, but they couldn’t buy prints, so who is the audience for these? People of the press and the merchant class.”

The thing is… I just don’t think that is correct. Because I don’t think that is how mass communications and specifically those on virtue and vice worked at the time. If you look about at English political pamphleteering in the 1600s and 1700s, you see a wide-spread, robust and even salacious debate within a highly literate population. Vibrant grassrootism. You also see in the first bits of the 1700s, the development of the First Great Awakening and proto-Methodists sermonizing to many millions.** Consider, too, 1751’s Essay  on the Characteristicks and the “frenzy” of gin. Ideas related to a proper and healthy society were flying about. These and other Hogarth pieces fit into that scene. And, as the Royal Academy explains, fit into it in a very specific and intentional way given Hogarth’s process:

Hogarth aimed the prints at the popular, rather than fine art market, stating in his prospectus for the prints that: ‘As the Subjects of those Prints are calculated to reform some reigning Vices peculiar to the lower Class of People in hopes to render them of more extensive Use, the Author has published them in the cheapest Manner possible’. As a result the line in these prints is thicker and less sophisticated than in other prints engraved by Hogarth, both to enable the printing of more impressions without significant loss of quality, and to approach the characteristic style of popular prints.***

We are assured, via the hive, that the two prints were in wide circulation and that Hogarth’s works were even used for moral instruction by schoolmasters. So if they are not luxury items but rather something of a targeted public service announcement to those at risk, the paragraphs that follow seem strained, racing through the Victorians and US Prohibition then on to us today with a suggestion of the elites guiding government overstep. And, on the rebound, inappropriately sewing  doubts as to Hogarth’s good faith intentions under the guise of some sort of shadowy social engineering as opposed to improving public health. Had gin been slandered? Seems all a bit goal oriented.****

There. More fodder for a good general public debate. Away you go! And for more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but no longer from Stan every Monday as he’s on another extended leave of absence. 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 newsletterThe 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.

*If you are unaware of this phenomenon, I recommend the works of Ivan Illych to you, starting with 1973’s Tools for Conviviality.
**and they themselves mocked in return.
***See also “The marketing techniques of William Hogarth (1697-1764), artist and engraver” by Mark McNally at page 170 “The conscious decision to set the price of prints according to the theme and the intended audience was further demonstrated with the distinctively didactic Gin Lane, Beer Street and the Four Stages of Cruelty which were advertised twice in the widely read London Evening Post on 19 and 26 February 1751 priced at one shilling each being ‘done in the cheapest manner possible in hopes to render them of more extensive use’ with an alternative set priced at 1/6d being done ‘in a better manner for the curious’. Despite the relative lack of sustained advertising for these key prints, which formed the basis of Hogarth’s campaign with his friend and magistrate Henry Fielding to draw attention to the moral decline of the lower classes, they became as popular as many of his more heavily publicised prints. This was perhaps due to the fact that they were primarily meant as social commentary and evidence of the need for reform rather than for commercial interest…” and also especially at footnote 123: “Hogarth noted with satisfaction in how ‘some masters gave their apprentices sets of the prints as Christmas gifts’ and that ‘he had even heard of a sermon preached on the prints’.”
****PS: a word about disagreement. If we are going to take beer writing seriously at all, we need to get used to the idea that a reader may either (i) disagree with aspects of what they read (as I have above with backing supporting research) or (ii) call out poor writing (which I have not done above.) One of the saddest things in good beer culture is the “hooray for everything!” mantra and, its cousin, the abusive response for those who who don’t buy in to the hooray. Let’s be honest – rooting for booze is weird. I blame too much booze and good folk struggling for not enough money as the commissioning organs do just fine. In this case, my comment to Maureen attracted the less than attractive, the dropped turd. Let’s be honest. I get negative comments and labels all the time and have for a couple of decades from publications high and low,***** sometimes from people I can’t imaging deserving one’s full respect. One scribbler who has my respect once even told me “hear that – that’s all the beer writers in Toronto mocking you” to which I responded “who gives a fuck about beer writers in Toronto?” We don’t worry about such things, especially now that the beer writers in Toronto either either have moved on now and are mowing the lawn somewhere in the suburbs, arguing with themselves. None of which relates to the article above that, in small part, I disagreed with. It is a well enough written if skimmy summary with a mild expression of the standard beer writer political slant on public health (“…nanny state! …neo-prohibitionists!! …folk putting my income at risk but mentioning health!!!“) but, no Maureen, it is not an example of something that did not exist before. The wheel that was invented long ago still turns round and round. Which is good. Because it gets thoughts going and leaves conversations enriched. Which is why I do this every week – to think about what is being written. If you aren’t doing that, why do you bother?
*****Funny ha-ha joke…no really… just kidding… footnote to a footnote, too! Very light and amusing, right?

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 newsletterThe 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 Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Of May

OK, the lawn has been mowed. Even though we had frosts three times in the last week. That is a milestone. As is the Craft Brewers Conference for 2022. I like the logo. No reference to #CBC2022. Actually looks like it was used by the Minnesota Beer Distributors’ Convention back in 1974. Right down to the bottle rather than, you know, a can. So… some people are getting back together. To get a bag or two of fruit sauce. Even we were out last night at a favourite place and hardly anyone had a mask on. Yikes. Our local numbers have moved from worst ever to less than worst ever so people must have forgotten or given up. Fingers crossed!  That’s where we are. Fingers being crossed.

The big news is in beer periodicals… as it is periodically. Is there a comeback being made with the news that All About Beer has been revived to some extent by Beer Edge collaborators Andy Crouch and John Hall:

When we founded Beer Edge in 2019, we drew on our experiences with All About Beer and the role it had in developing our own education and careers to help define the vision for our new company. Meanwhile, All About Beer’s bankruptcy concluded and the company and magazine closed for good. Bradford and Johnson later regained control of the brand itself and the content archive. And in early 2022, they agreed to sell these individual assets to us.

I will be interested in hearing about the business model. Andy, a public service lawyer in the real world, is acting as publisher with John reviving his role as editor, a position last held in 2017. After learning that GBH is essentially subsidized by non-publication public and private revenues (and subject to the inexplicable* withdrawal of cash, too) I thought a bit about the other ways of making an entirely niche topic at least break even. Pellicle, for example, on its third anniversary has announced a sustainability goal based on subscribing patrons with a noble goal: “your subscription lets you ensure that people who can’t afford it can still access our features, free of charge“. I am among the subscribers as Pellicle often offers writing you don’t see anywhere else. The main remaining old school periodical is Craft Beer & Brewing run these days by Joe Stange appears to be run as a for profit business with generous old school subscription rates with various tiers no doubt providing quite a range of valuable benefits.  I don’t subscribe as I find the articles, however excellent, to be often aimed towards the supply side, rather than me and my consumer demands. What is the proposition now from All About Beer?

The other big news in the brewing world in 2022 is really the resurgence of big beer. Or rather BIG BEER. As illustrated this week by the fabulous news from Molson Coors:

Molson Coors Beverage Co. says its profits soared in the first quarter for its largest quarterly sales growth in more than a decade. The Colorado and Montreal-based company, which reports in U.S. dollars, says it earned US$151.5 million or 70 cents per diluted share, up from US$84.1 million or 39 cents per share a year earlier. Underlying net income excluding one-time items was US$63.8 million or 29 cents per share, compared with US$1.6 million or one cent per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2021. Revenues for the three months ended March 31 were US$2.2 billion, up nearly 17 per cent from US$1.9 billion, primarily as a result of strong growth outside of North America amid fewer on-premise restrictions in Europe.

So much for the end times that all the experts spoke of. Like seltzers taking over. We do, however, still seem to have a slight bitterness in the mouth. Speaking of macro-lag, The Tand shared an image of what I think is a very attractive beer label, Cerveza Victoria lager from Malaga Spain. Utterly unhip with its middle aged guy in a suit wiping the sweat off his bald head, the use of white in his shirt, the hankie, the table and the background sends the image of pounding heat. I like the straw hat, too. Lovely design.

Less wonderful are the stories David Jesudason shared of his disheartening discriminatory experiences in the bigoted wine world for Glug:

One of the worst racist nicknames I endured was repeatedly said when I worked at a bar during my university days from 1999 to 2003. It was my job to carry the bottles of wine from the cellar and the manager of this West London establishment – Keith – would reward my efforts by calling me Gunga Din. For those not familiar with the Rudyard Kipling poem (and I’ve got a feeling that my racial abuser only knew the title) it’s about an Indian water carrier so expendable that after being killed helping the British Army his life is summed up by the jokey line: ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’ Although it’s a highly offensive term, it’s actually fitting as I was as dispensable as Kipling’s Hindu hero and if I’d complained I would’ve been ushered out of the door.

Just to be clear, the need for the efforts of Crafted for All and Beer Diversity at #CBC2022 give me no greater hope for the experience in the beer world.

Also at #CBC2022, rolling out craft’s long stale mantras of “we” and “winning” and “wars” is so utterly bizarre. And to my mind, the group think enforced at these gatherings has led to things like hazy IPAs being effectively gateway drinks for seltzers. Dumbing down leading to loyalty leachate. And shit like this:

… beers brewed with marshmallows. This once niche ingredient has actually become a trendy adjunct, but will it stick? …the marshmallow beer trend is like a Peep in the microwave: it is on the rise! Just last year, the number of beers containing marshmallows available through Tavour increased 31% over the year prior… these brewers started using mallows in small doses in select Stouts… fans of the brewery loved it and continue to love it. Tavour recently featured one such Drekker, a dessert-inspired smoothie Sour –– Chonk Mango & Marshmallow. It sold out in less than 48 hours.

I feel dirty just mentioning that. Sharing another sort of thing I don’t want to experience, Ed told a tale of mixing beer and rock climbing this week as he retro-ticked:

On the last night of our trip as the pints went down we were planning what to do in the morning before we went home. We were tempted by the fizzy keg climb Double Diamond (HVS 5b) on the impressive Flying Buttress. I was also tempted to pour more beer down my neck, it was the last night after all. When it started raining heavily I agreed to lead the climb before heading back to the bar, confident it would be far too wet to climb in the the next day. So when I was greeting with blazing sunshine when in my hungover state I peered out of me tent in the morning I was not filled with joy. 

By contrast, Jordan has done the far more sensible thing and taken up writing about beer more often. I say this with the greatest of pleasure as for a certain set it can seem that one of the qualifications for being a beer writer, when not hiding in podcast oblivion,** is not actually writing all that much about beer. Not Jordan! His immediate focus? Actually reviewing beers that show up in the mail and being a bit honest about the process:

I didn’t read the label. Although I try to do right by everyone, sometimes, there’s so many samples that I’m profligate. Sometimes I’ll try things and they aren’t worth mentioning; I’d just hurt the sales. Sometimes, I’ll really enjoy something but I won’t find a place for it. With Hoppy Pollinator, I just didn’t want you to know about it on the off chance you’d prevent me getting more of it next year.

I liked this article by Will Hawkes about the current trend of Dark Mild in England’s Black Country, a theme I’ve seen nosed around periodically over the years. Twenty years ago and more, Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild was a but of a lantern in the dark to the home brewing set. I say I liked it but more so after I did a bit of text analysis on the 3,800 piece to establish what I was reading given, you know, it was filed under the word “critical“… something of an unlikelihood.  I thought to do this primarily as the article makes no mention of the sorts of background to Mild that one would find in, say, a piece by Ron Pattinson… like his 2011 bit in the BeerAdvocate “A Short History of Mild.” So… 42% of the article is made up of quotes from folk in the trade. Three historical records are cited and the rest is mainly pleasant physical observations or input from or about four breweries making these Dark Milds: Yates, Bathams, Fixed Wheel and Box Car. What do we call this sort of writing? If it was in the newspaper, a lifestyle piece on a regional scene?

Matt mentions another aspect of reality:

News of another brewery closure. They are dropping like flies at the moment. My thoughts with all the affected staff.

That was raised in relation to Exe Valley Brewery shutting down. In operation since 1984, the current owners only held the reins since 2020. They join another brewery well into its fourth decade, Wood’s Brewery in Shropshire, along with many others. Normal churn or end times? Hard to know but hard times for the owners and staff.

On the up beat, Beth Demmon continues her series of profiles at Prohibitchin’, her blog receivable by email, with this week’s article on Lauren Hughes, head brewer at Pittsburgh’s Necromancer Brewing and how they are seeking to make change:

Strategic hires at Necromancer Brewing, ensuring long-term support of said hires through consistent mentorship, and plenty of community-facing events that signal safety and support for marginalized people. “Having people enjoy beer in a place where they feel welcome and being able to give back to the community so much, that means a lot to me,” says Lauren.

Finally, I am not sure I would call a beer experience “Schubert-like in its symphonic harmony” given he completed only six of his thirteen symphonies and one of those is named Tragic.

There. 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 newsletterThe 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.

*Actually, quite explicable.
**Let’s be honest. They take up too much footprint in your audience’s available time, you can’t cite an idea within them for a quote, the attract no comments of consequence and they contain no means to link to something they reference. You may as well as be sending postcards to the handful of folk who listen. And writing “umm” for every seventh word.

Your Beery News Notes For The Easter Long Weekend

Four days off at Easter in mid-April is quite sensible. March is too dodgy with the threat of snow. This weekend promises, on average, at least one day of decent half-assed yard work with tasty drinks. Spring is here and soon the lands will be dry. Events too are coming soon. The annual revival is on at nearby Church-Key on May the 7th. Things are happening. I like this event three weeks later at nearer nearby MacKinnon Brothers – and I really like this poster which is a play on their Crosscut brand of ale. Doing things outside. Sprong has spreenged!

First, after the weekly news went to press last week I read an obit from The Times which was worth noting. It was for a young policeman man, Flight Lieutenant Douglas Coxell, who, by just 24, became one of Britain’s most accomplished bomber pilots serving both on D-Day and at Arnhem. This is a great line:

A jovial man, Coxell brewed his own beer and was known by his RAF colleagues as “the Soak of Peterborough”

This second beer related recollection in the obit is also worth noting:

Coxell had been mentioned in dispatches for his daring sorties in Norway, but his greatest feeling of achievement in the war came in early 1945 when he and his brother Peter joined their father and his fellow First World War veterans at the snug bar of the White Hart pub in the Cambridgeshire village of Old Fletton. “It was the proudest moment of his life to present two commissioned air force officers, one flying Spitfires with the 2nd Tactical Air Force in northern Europe and one flying Halifax modified bombers on supply drops to the Norwegian Resistance,” Coxell recalled with tears in his eyes. Much drink was taken.

I am a regular reader of Retired Martin‘s posts from the road as you all know but this week he pulled back the curtain on the exciting exotic life of a pub ticker:

… it’s actually quicker to get from Waterbeach to Guyana than Gunton, home of my next tick, a first newbie in more than two (2) weeks. Gunton has a station, right next to the Suffield Arms, which is convenient as the road is closed due to it being inconvenient to close it that week. The GBG reckons it’s in Thorpe Market (this year, watch it move to Southrepps in 2023). Work that one out. I’ve marked two other GBG entries either side of the Suffield. They’re all called “odd name Arms“; I was TORMENTED by the the fear I’d go in the wrong Arms, particularly as they’re all the sort of rustic gastropub that exist entirely for holidaymakers from Overstrand.

Legal notes this week include Brendan P sharing how Stone is being sued for pinching the trademark of another brewery. I’d be suing for around 50 mill. In other asset lightening news – this time related to your wallet – John Hall encountered a new form of gouge. Being asked to pay more for the sort of tap the beer is poured from. The rip is on at Dogfish Head. Shocking. Not shocking.  Also, Guinness settled a 2015 claim related to the Irishness of beer not brewed in Ireland resulting in a rather modest settlement:

The outer packaging of six- and 12-packs of Guinness Extra Stout sold in stores between 2011 and 2015, McCullough’s suit alleged, led consumers to believe that the beer was brewed at the historic St. James Gate brewery in Dublin, Ireland. It was, in fact, being brewed in New Brunswick, Canada — something that was noted in small print on the side of each bottle…  Those who filed a claim before a deadline last year will receive 50 cents for each six or 12-pack of Guinness Extra Stout purchased between 2011 and 2015, up to a total of $10 without proof of purchase, or up to $20, if a claimant can provide proof of purchase.

The Mudge has reported that England has joined the rest of us in the 21st century and now requires calorie to be listed by all but the smallest restaurants and pubs:

It probably won’t make much difference to obesity, but then the entire government anti-obesity strategy is misconceived anyway. And of course calories are only one figure in the overall mix of nutrition. But what it will do is to give consumers the facts to make informed decisions – it is treating them as adults. It is hard to believe now that, going back forty years, the strength of alcoholic drinks was never declared. When CAMRA first published figures of original gravity – which is a rough approximation to alcoholic strength – in the 1970s, there was an outcry from the brewers, but it is now accepted is routine. I would expect that, in twenty years’ time, we will look back with surprise that calorie figures were ever not stated.

On a related note, I came across one Canadian brewer doing what every pro beer scripto-consult-p/t dishwasher-expert said was impossible: a beer can with a nutritional info label. From a can of Rally Golden Ale made in Thornbury, Ontario. Nice. Treating people as adults.

This is an interesting graph posted ten weeks ago by Dr. McCulla. I am not so much interested in the graph as the footnotes. Utterly unreliable guesstimates. It is so odd that the US still has no grasp on its own brewing history before the mid-1800s.

Ron has, as mentioned, be involved with some extended travel and (finally!) has rid himself of the burden of beer writing to get down to a more essential topic in a twoparter, the eggy breakfasts on Cartagena, Columbia:

As with many restaurants we visited early doors, it was deserted. Almost. One table was occupied by a group of men. One of whom was so load, that he literally made me jump. And hurt my ears. While being right over the other side of the room. And me having my back towards him. I was so glad when they fucked off and I could eat my breakfast in peace. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was delighted to see fried eggs on the menu. But worried they’d come hard fried again. That would be such a downer. I tried to make clear I wanted the yolks runny when I ordered. “Huevos fritos. Liquido, por favor.” See how fluent I am in Spanish. Almost like a native. At least the waitress understood, as two beautifully fried eggs arrive a little later. I’m so happy. Even though they’re served with nothing other than toast.

This was a helpful lesson. An article on a return to the what has been called the toughest pub in Britain, Walthamstow’s Tavern on the Hill (described as  featuring scary customers, random acts of violence and grim facilities) has discovered a very different scene:

I find an impressive 5-star food hygiene rating sticker on the door (something even some popular upmarket chains can’t claim to have); a friendly Scottish barman in a bright pink shirt; and a large collection of impeccably-tended houseplants. A quick scan of the pub’s Twitter reveals it has changed hands, seemingly not long after the YouTube video was shared… and it’s new look couldn’t be more different from its old one. It’s a Tuesday lunchtime and the atmosphere inside is calm and communal. A few locals sit chatting near the bar. The bartender is giving one of the older customers advice about his National Insurance, while other customers are having an amicable debate about the latest Downing Street scandal.

I even read a beer book this week. I am on a bit of a book reading spree, having organized myself a bit, now on my 19th book of the year. The 18th book was 2010’s The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield. A good and reasonably quick read, it’s more a book on the family than the brewery and focuses on their Christian and otherwise ethical good works over the centuries. There is also a helpful bibliography. Here is an interview with the author from the time of publication from a faith-based point of view. It reminds us of how subject to mannerism beer writing is, how formulaic. While a bit of a hagiography it is at least an attempt to discuss the haigo and not the more common happy clappy booze trade PR.

Finally, a new form of beer: illegality and political crisis beer.

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 newsletterThe 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.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Of April

Here we are. Real spring. No more frozen nights on the forecast. Brussels sprout seeds are in some soil.  The cardoons are up. Cardoons? Yup, cardoons. Four foot tall edible thistles, a Victorian veg. Harry Dobson would be proud. Still rather insulated from the exterior world by my convalescent state but I am assured things are progressing as they should. It was April Fool’s Day last Friday. Best beery April Fools? This is my candidate. Silly but also somewhat restrained. What people might have actually asked about having once in a while, as a joke… as a… what… treat? A good brand making fun of itself. That’s a good thing, making fun. Like this! Fun!

Now, enough of that. Time to get serious. First up, care of Merryn, we learn that the BBC has reported on a Roman brewing site found in England, with speculation that it was actually only a malting with suggestions of a rather complex brewing industry:

Archaeologists have identified evidence of 2,000-year-old beer production at a site of a road improvement scheme. The remains of a Roman malting oven and charred spelt grains were found during digging in Bedfordshire, as part of the proposed work on the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet. Experts have analysed the grains and said they suggested people who lived there were involved in making beer…”As large quantities of grains are only allowed to germinate when the aim is to produce malt – the first step in the brewing process – this strongly suggests the people living at the settlement were involved in beer production,” a Mola spokesperson said.

Some serious neato going on there. Also neato? A map! This is an interesting info graphic. Who asks this question? I suppose health professionals. Utah makes sense but look at the dividing line between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Florida panhandle and Alabama. Why? I have not idea. I am Canadian.

Pellicle posted one of the best articles it has ever had its hands on this week, a tale of tall ales titled “I Want To See Mountains Again — The Banked Beers of Teesside, North East England” by Reece Hugill:

Half-full glasses are pulled from the bar-back fridge, topped up feverishly from the hand-pull. Placed in front of me are two ridiculous looking pints of ruby-red cask beer. Foam cartoonishly mounded a full four inches higher than the brim of the glass. Wobbling and bubbling, alpine peaks and whips of pure white…

…The pints of Bass at the Sun Inn are magic. It’s a beer I usually don’t even like, but when banked, the beer seems to change a tiny bit. The fluffy head brings out a little more bitterness, the body is mellowed into something less vaguely malty and brown, into something soft and clean, like, perhaps, an unusual dunkel lager…

Excellent. You could do this with an Olands Ex back in college but it was a matter of pouring the bottle yourself.

Lars posted a really good thread about Christmas “sugar beer” for children in Norway including this fabulous if fairly frightening fact:

This newspaper article is quite illustrative. Headline: “The favourite beer of the kids.” They use 3kg sugar for 20l + 1/2 cup of malt extract. If you ferment it out fully that’s 8% ABV. No wonder “the kids prefer this to any soft drink.” Prob not 100% fermented, but still.

Question: is this a new technique? Holding some of the dry malt in a dry aromatic barrel?

In the increasingly vibrant world of beer related litigation, we have (care of Mike Kanach, Esq.) learned on one Mr. Parshall “who does business as Sports Beer Brewing Co. that is operated through a website” – court said this about his business:

Parshall is required to transfer to the university all Internet domain names containing a portion or derivative of Penn State’s marks. He also is to transfer sportsbeerbrewing.com so it ceases operation. The injunction prevents Parshall from engaging in any conduct that would cause consumers to erroneously believe his goods and services are authorized, licensed or affiliated with Penn State.

That is just weird. Took a university’s IP and put it on a beer can. In 2017 he did the same thing with Purdue and another judge did pretty much the same thing. Self-represented. Weird.

Not as weird, Stone now seeks a permanent injunction despite the Keystone brand lords announcing a remake after five years. With any luck they’ll find a new way to jerk Stone around. And mid-weird, the little and large tale of BrewDog and the not quite hired consultant* continues and even made The Times of London. This passage neatly captures the two aspects which have confused me:

Allan Leighton, BrewDog’s chairman and the former boss of Asda, has accused Hand & Heart of “amplifying attacks” on its management team and has declined to take part in a proposed reconciliation programme. In a letter to Kate Bailey, Hand & Heart’s managing director, Leighton said he was concerned about a platform that had been set up for BrewDog workers, claiming it was “encouraging participants to submit malicious content . . . The unavoidable impression is that of H&H charging the company to extinguish a fire it is fuelling itself.”

On the other hand, BrewDog apparently continued to shoot itself in the foot without the assistance of others, rolling out a quote from the consultant that they did actually hire… only for that consultant to point out they never said any such thing. Weird.

This was a fabulous find as posted on Twitter by Mr. S. Smith, a mint 1960s form to fill out and pass over the counter at a Brewers Retail store in Ontario. A buck twenty eight for a dink pack.  Until 1969, you had to give your name and an address to get your beer. Presumably you filled out the last line by hand if you were buying quarts. Crain Business Systems must have made a killing on this contract seeing as this was the only way in Canada’s biggest province to buy beer outside of a sit down establishment.

Finally but fabulously, Beth published her latest edition of Prohibitchin’ (sign up here) and featuring (i) Ashley Johnson and Jasmine Mason bringing cider to Philadelphia along with first (i) this bit of local slang they had adopted in their business’s name – The Cider Jawns:

“Jawn” /jôn/: Philadelphia slang that’s used as an all-purpose substitute for literally anything—a singular or plural person, place, thing, or event that can’t be specifically described…

Jasmine and Ashley are having the time of their jawns. Or is it the jawn of their lives? …“We looked around and a lot of the attendees were women, but there weren’t a lot of women of color as vendors,” explains Jasmine. Ashley agrees, noting that while there wasn’t much diversity in vendors, there were plenty of Black women and other women of color enjoying themselves as attendees. The discrepancy spurred them to action. “We were inspired to take something we enjoyed and bring representation of women of color to the hard cider and brewing industries,” says Ashley. They launched their Cider Jawns Instagram shortly after to “share our cider journey and take our community along for the ride,” she says.

There. Blame all the errors on the meds. 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 newsletterThe 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.

*Example: I don’t have a clue what this means. Or this.

Thursday Beery News Notes With Under Two Weeks To Spring

Well, again, it seems a bit off to even be bothering with beery news notes given Putin’s botched invasion of the Ukraine. Jancis Robinson, top international wine writer, shared a story from Kiev on how the expert marksmen in the Russian rocket brigades took out a wine warehouse in Kyiv a few days ago. That’s up there with their destroying out of all the 4G communications towers only to find out their own encrypted radio system relies on 4G capacity. It’s hardly an upgrade to speak of evil murderers as also being morons but they appear to be evil murderous morons. Heineken is hitting the road. Evan is helping with refugees in Prague. Jeff is participating in a rare beer auction towards Ukraine’s fight against evil murderous morons. Others are making anti-Imperial Stouts.

Starting out this week in legal land, there are two stories of note. First up, some idiot thought it would be a great idea to rip off OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below album and put out a beer called “The Love Bow” using a two tone label like the album and other references in the imagery. Objection lodged. When a fat pasty aging caucasoid like dear old me know and owns the album, you have to bet that the marketplace confusion and reliance on someone else’s reputation is real. Rooting for a 100% victory for OutKast. We shall follow Brendan for the details as this proceeds.

Elsewhere, it is apparently trial time for that case about Keystone that launched about four years ago. Seeing as Keystone referred to itself as “stone” before the complaining party existed, I am rooting for Big Macro over Big Craft on this one but am hedging at a 60% rooting factor. Pity the poor judge who has to waste her court time and resources on such a loser case whatever the outcome.  I’m buying some Keystone if I ever get back to the States.*

Liar-est headline of the week: “Mushroom Beer Market Giants Spending Is Going To Boom“!

Over at Pellicle, there is an interview of Steve Dunkley, of Manchester’s Beer Nouveau brewers of heritage British ales. I like how this bit sets the tone:

After a nonchalant shrug, he gives me the “official tour”. Wooden barrels, fermenting vessels and shiny stainless steel kegs jostle for position. Every available surface is taken up with precarious towers of crates and boxes, all apparently occupying a designated spot in the carefully shepherded chaos. “Everything here is salvaged,” Steve says with his best faux-innocent grin. “I don’t like paying for things when I can get them for free. The table football is on a slant though.”

This approach by Erin Broadfoot and Ren Navarro to improving safety and reducing sexism in craft beer culture is interesting – because the project accepts that the culture is not going to be actually made safe just because brewery owners and their PR consultos say so. It effectively presumes craft breweries are simply not safe:

Proceeds will now be donated to the Craft Beer Safety Network, a not-for-profit charity “launched with the branched intent of creating safe spaces for all marginalized populations,” as well as tool kits, educational materials and resources for businesses and employers, and the ability to raise funds to help those who have been “harassed, assaulted or otherwise abused while working in the beer & beverage industry.”

Classic Ron on the road, this time in Florida:

Once I’ve showered and shaved, I head over to the beach. It’s hot. Fucking hot. Too hot for me. I don’t linger all that long. I’m really not built for the heat. In several ways. I’m English, old and a fat bastard. Triple whammy.

In health news, the journal Nature published an article this week that confirmed even a little bit of booze makes your brain shrink but, as no doubt the beer journalist PR consultant magic medical experts** will tell us again (yawn), who wants a big brain anyway? Here’s the punchline:

Most of these negative associations are apparent in individuals consuming an average of only one to two daily alcohol units. Thus, this multimodal imaging study highlights the potential for even moderate drinking to be associated with changes in brain volume in middle-aged and older adults.

I am late to Martyn’s review of a Burmese brewing book which he gives in a fine level of detail – including this grim reality about dealing with a topic like this:

I cannot recommend this book highly enough for anyone interested in beer, or in alcohol, outside the comparatively narrow traditions of modern Europe and urbanised North America. Corbin and his colleagues must be congratulated for giving us an essential insight into a set of traditions and drinking cultures… The original Myanmar government sponsors of the book are all now in jail, as a result of the coup of February 2021, which put the Myanmar military back in control of the country, and forced Luke to pull the book from its original publisher in Myanmar, find a new publisher in Thailand, and completely alter several sections.

Final note: if you are going to hit people up for funding after receiving two years of pandemic funding and after withdrawing more than the requested funding from the corporation, maybe don’t use an image that looks like a small town police station guilty as fuck mug shot as part of your promo material.

A short post this week. Makes sense. But 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 newsletterThe 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.

*Five and a half years now since I hiked across the river… currency collapse, Trump, pandemic… I live 35 minutes from a US customs point of entry and used to cross monthly when the Canadian dollar was worth 98 and not 78 US cents.
**No doubt this article was pre-dismissed by these wizards.

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 newsletterThe 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.

Your Mid-February 2022 Edition Of The Beery News Notes And That Odd Problem With Rice

What a week! A trip to the dentist and the Federal imposition of the Emergency Measures Act!! It could drive one to drink. Except I haven’t. Had a couple of really good beers on Saturday, though. Stone City’s Ships In The Night. Oatmeal stout is rarely not a good call. But I have acquired my protest gear as illustrated, should any protests come my way. One must be prepared.

What else? Super Bowl. Stupor Bowl. Superb Owl. It also happened this week. Unlike much of the continent, me I had not one beer. I paid little attention to the game itself on TV which ended up as a bit of a yawner even with the close final score. But would it be better live? Well. it’s not exactly for the snack bracket me and my peeps, is it?

…a double measure of Don Julio, Ciroc or Tanqueray 10 would set punters back US$25. Meanwhile, the craft beer selections clocked in at $19, which would get drinkers a serve of Kona, Golden Road Mango Cart or Elysian Space Dust. The premium beer serve was Michelob Ultra, which was priced at $17. And it’s fair to say that fans were taken aback by the prices.

More breweries closed this week. As Jeff reported, Hair of the Dog and Modern Times -both of the US West Coast wound down in whole or in part. The latter announced it this way:

Today is the most difficult day we’ve ever had at Modern Times. Over the last two unimaginably challenging pandemic years, we’ve done everything we could to keep all of our newly-opened locations afloat in a landscape we never could have imagined when we began building them. As new leadership has stepped up and taken the helm over the last few weeks, it became clear that the financial state of the company that we are now tasked with directing is not just unsustainable, but in immediate and unavoidable peril

Hair of the Dog is/was one of the greats that never had dreams of delivery fleets and HR departments. Retirement is well earned. I put the last cardboard box from the fabulous HOTD misadventure of 2006 out with the recycling just last Sunday.

Elsewhere, building on the momentum to challenge the ethics within Ontario’s brewing industry led by Erin Broadfoot,  Mallory Jones the brewer and co-owner of my beloved Matron Fine Beer in nearby Prince Edward County on behalf of herself and fellow brewer and co-owner Jessica Nettleton, shared experiences of their lives in beer, starting with this remarkably concise statement:

Behind the ‘good times and camaraderie’ there is a dark underbelly, a booze-fuelled side, a sexist and skewed patriarchal side, a side that desperately needs to change.

Note in particular this statement: “…beer events often (read: all of them) result in over consumption which always equals disgusting behaviour from a wide variety of individuals on both sides of the bar…” It boggles the mind how it took so long for such obvious and open behaviours to be simply and plainly stated after years of the trade and trade writers telling us how it’s all one community and craft beer people are good people. I am very careful who I buy from now as well as whose word I take.

There was a great short video of a Polish railway standup tavern car on Twitter this week. One of my favourite memories of working in Northern Poland thirty years ago was the the Polish railway standup tavern car from Kołobrzeg to Gdansk. The good old PKP (“puh-ka-puh”). There is even “fruit syrup for beer” now.

Over in India, the government has taken a very sensible approach to the healthier regulation of the beer market that would be a great first step towards the listing of ingredients:

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) will soon come out with fresh regulations for two important everyday consumption items – bread and beer. Beer brands will have to disclose the calorie count per bottle or can while bread makers will be allowed to label products as ‘multigrain’, ‘whole wheat’, and ‘brown’ bread only if the items have specified amount of multigrain or whole wheat in them, FSSAI CEO Arun Singhal said.

There will be boo-hooing from the please-do-nothing crowd but calculation of beer calories is a reasonably straight forward matter. The only problem is how surprised the beer buying public might be.

Everyone one loves a story about a truck load of beer crashing across the roadway. I think only a load of fish thrown upon the hot asphalt is considered more remarkable but that’s because of the gross immediate squishy slippy driving conditions.

Martin wrote this week about the experience at a little investigate site of beer imbibations – a fitba corporate hospitality suite  – and found it… a bit sad:

£6.50 your pie and mash and peas from memory, and beer not much above Northern Quarter prices (double Kelham prices, of course). This is the cheaper end of the hospitality market, giving you a nice seat with your pre-match pie and pint, and seems to be a treat for the old fellas and the well-off bloke dragging his girlfriend to the match. And then you walk from the social club style bar to your padded seat and get distracted by Caitlin Jenner and goal flashes from Blackburn.

He then had a bit cheerier but also reflective experience with his Pa, down at the Plough & Fleece:

Across the road, we could see the nondescript cafe at Scotsdale Garden Centre busy as usual. The coffee and cake at the garden centre has long replace fish and chips and a pint at the pub, even though the pub is often cheaper and always the more homely option.

Lars as usual used social media to the fullest this week to discuss the role of alder wood as a filtering tool in Norwegian farmhouse brewing undertaking both hallmark mapping excellence and scientific journal review enroute:

I found a modern scientific paper which extracted substances from alder bark that they found to be antibacterial. Unfortunately, they were also antifungal and very effective against yeast, so clearly the concentration in beer isn’t enough to have an effect.

Q: has beer historian Amy Mittelman returned to beer blogging?

And just before the long last topic,  this week we received the sad news of the death of one of the leaders in the early years of the UK’s craft beer movement of 12-15 years ago. Dave Bailey was the owner of the Hardknott Brewery which was founded in 2006 and closed in 2018. He was sought out and sought out others who were thinking about beer, like we see in 2009. Alistair at Fuggled interviewed him in 2010. Dave’s brewery was as well known and certain as central to the scene as BrewDog in those years. He was only in his mid-50s when he passed. Dave was a great friend to those interested in discussing good beer and was a regular chatting in social media. My earliest Twitter chats go back to 2009. He kept an excellent beer blog that gave the straight story about life as a small scale brewer like when in 2017 he shared painful business realities connected to the question of how far to capitalize his venture. He had announced in 2020 that he was living with cancer. Very sad news of the loss of a pioneer. Thoughts are with his partner in life and business, Ann.

Finally, there was a bit of faff over the weekend about something claimed to be “Japanese Pilsner” which was neatly summed up by Jenny Pfäfflin this way:

Anyway, brewers using rice in their beer =\= a “Japanese Lager”—it’s a made-up style in that sense—but I don’t think you can write off the possibility there are distinct ingredients and processes that make Japanese-made rice lagers a style of its own…

I called it a fiction and some poor widdle cwafters went a bit boo-hoo. But were they right? It is always important to understand you may be 100% wrong 100% of the time. So let’s see.

First, the thing is even with that narrowing of focus that Ms. Pfäfflin recommends, we have to consider how late brewing beer came to Japan as well as how rice came to be in beer. Until around the time of the US Civil War in the mid-1860s, Japan was governed under a feudal system which had a strict cultural and economic isolationist policy that the western powers were actively seeking to break down. Breweries founded in the ensuing Meiji period were European and even American affairs. As I mentioned last November, the Spring Valley Brewery, founded in Yokohama in 1869 by Norwegian-American brewer, William Copeland. That brewery later becomes the Japan Beer Brewery Company and then Kirin. In line with the new general national policy of opening up to industrialization, what is now Sapporo was founded by what looks like a government agency, the Hokkaido Development Commission which hired Seibei Nakagawa, a Germany-trained brewer, as its first brewmaster in June 1876. Sapporo still brews Yebisu a Dortmunder/export lager, and Yebisu Black, a dark lager which were  first brewed in Tokyo in 1890 by the Japan Beer Brewery Company. These breweries were brewing German beers. As the CEO of Kirin Brewery, Kato Kazuyasu, in 2011 stated:

The Japan Brewery Company shared its primary objective of brewing authentic German beer. Veteran German brewmasters were recruited and the most advanced equipment and steaming systems of the time were acquired, all under the mantra of providing Japanese consumers with the most authentic quality and satisfying taste possible…

Now… consider Japan’s next few decades. Expansionist military imperial government leading through the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 through to the end of WWII. European influence continued in partnership with government industrialization policy as described in the 2014 article “Structural Advantage and the Origins of the Japanese Beer Industry, 1869-1918” by Jeffery W. Alexander*:

Like Kirin Beer, the firm that we know today as Sapporo Breweries Ltd. underwent a rather complex evolution – one that would take twice as long to unfold and would involve four unique phases through 1949. The first three of those phases are of interest to us here, for between its founding as a government-directed and development project in 1876, its reestablishment by private investors as a limited company in 1888, and its merger with two major rival brewers in 1906, the brewery received extensive technical assistance from a variety of foreign experts.

Through this merger, the Dai Nippon (Greater Japan) Beer Company, Inc. was created on 26 March 1906. It was only broken up in 1949 as the Allied Occupation forces sought to reverse the imperial policy of concentrated economic power. And, as Alexander states, beer in Japan “was brewed, advertised, and sold in Japan as a proudly German-styled commodity into the late 1930s.

After WW2, the United States occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952. There was an economic boom starting in 1950 due to the UN using Japan as it base for the Korean War. Starting at this time, breweries like the smaller Orion shifted from German style brewing to beers which more reflected American tastes. Not much of a vernacular brewing tradition to this point. For the next few decades that consolidated industrial approach continued as a handful of macro industrial brewing supplied the market (as Alexander states elsewhere**) “until Japan’s government decided in 1994 to again permit small-scale brewing.” Kirin held over 60% of the market during those years and competition was primarily related to draft innovations, packaging design and the dry beer market. Japan’s generic international-style macro adjunct lagers which required a minimum of 67% barley malt*** were joined by sub-standard happoshu starting in 1994 and in 2004 sub-sub-standard zero-malt dai-san biiru, a third-category beer all to feeding, one supposes, the salaryman market.

As Lisa Grimm explained in her 2018 Serious Eats article, early Japanese small breweries replicated the adjunct lagers:

The first craft brewery to open in Japan was Echigo Beer, and they struck something of a balance between the entrenched ‘dry’ beer trend and German- and American-influenced craft brewing techniques. In addition to pale ales and stouts, they also made (and continue to make) a rice-based lager that competes with the bigger players in the market—something of a gateway beer.

By twenty years ago, the Japanese branch of the globalist craft beer movement was moving at pace. Created in 1996 as the brewing division of an establish sake maker, Kiuchi, Hitachino Nest is one of Japan’s best known craft brewers. Its Red Rice Ale is first logged by a reviewer at the BeerAdvocate in 2002. So it’s done… even if only as a recent thing. But whatever is done, like German lager brewing in the later 1800s as well as US macro brewing in the mid-1900s, it is being done on the crest of another wave of globalist economic and technological innovation – craft.

So when you read about an American-made Japanese pilsnerbrewed with rice in the Japanese tradition” you have to understand this is really a sort of untruth. And a bit of cultural appropriation, I suppose. Rice in beer is an American innovation. American restructuring of the economy of Japan in the mid-1900s introduced rice into beer brewing because that is how Americans brewed. But that may make it actually a sort of truth as long as we set aside the fibs of craft and look at the situation with a more open mind. Let’s continue to look around a bit more.

When does rice get into beer? In Ambitious Brew, Maureen Ogle tells us in detail how Adophus Busch in the 1870s experimented with a form of what looks like a decoction brewing method which had eight pounds of rice to every five bushels of high quality barley.**** Light and bubbly beer. Tremblay and Tremblay explain how rice is used in the best US adjunct beers still to produce the effect they call “crisp” with again a fairly limited amount being all that is required. Budweiser, Coors and Miller Genuine Draft all having just under 5% rice in the mash which include +/-20% other adjuncts.***** They also explain how around 1950 US national advertising of beer hits its stride with Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz being the premium brands.****** What America wanted. Home or away. It is so popular that the brewers of Canada in the mid-1920s******* during US Prohibition started brewing rice beer to serve the huge and very lucrative bootleg market. Including in Japan where they were the occupying government restructuring the economy including a oligarchical macro brewing industry that stayed in that form of few players, big players for the next 45 years. Which makes Japanese premium rice lager US premium rice lager.

Not only does rice make beer crisp, it makes production cheap. Barley malt is the best barley, the rest going to cattle feed and Scottish soups. Rice for brewing, however, is broken rice:

As brewing adjunct, rice has a very neutral flavor and aroma, and when properly converted in the brewhouse it yields to a light clean-tasting beer. Rice for brewing is a by-product of the edible rice milling industry, any kernels that may get fractured during the milling process (~30%) are considered undesirable are therefore sold to the brewing industry at a cheaper price. ********

The adoption of rice in brewing was part of a general move over decades to move away from heavier foods and drink, what Tremblay and Tremblay call “the growing mass appeal of lighter beer which drove most of the domestic brewers of dark beer out of business.“********* Short-grained or japonica rice is preferred in brewing.+ Japan’s brewer ride that wave, too, as part of the globalization of US macro industrial adjunct lagers that made Carling out of a Canadian beer, gave Kenya Tusker, gave Australia Fosters, etc. etc.

One more thing. How does rice get to the US to get later into the beer? In The Cooking Gene Michael W. Twitty explains how the Asian strain of rice came to colonial America in 1685  care of a very lost ship from Madagascar. Captured and enslaved people from Africa who knew how to grow rice were used forced agricultural labour and by 1770 150,000 acres of the US eastern shoreline were slave labour concentration camp rice plantations with 66 million pounds produced annually.+* After the US Civil War, about when Japanese isolationism policy weakens, rice production drops with emancipation but then shifts inland and become mechanized in Louisiana and Texas which, by the 1890s, are producing 75% of the US rice crop.+** Which creates a lot of broken rice for brewers, notably quite distinct from the top quality rice used in sake.+***

So if, starting in 1685, short grain japonica rice comes to the US, becomes a massively valuable cash crop with a very useful by-product of broken rice that is found to have a role in US macro brewing and then is taken to Japan as part of the post-war era of US Occupation… hasn’t that strain of rice circled the globe over about 260 years? And hasn’t the history of Japan been so affected by these global influences… even if they are arguably economic colonial or even technological hegemonistic influences… that their culture legitimately has a tradition of international rice adjunct premium lager that could be called “Japanese rice pilsner”? Hasn’t Japan’s brewing history been almost entirely based on international influence from the 1860s to now? But can you have a national tradition which is not… vernacular? I will leave that question with you as you next look at a bottle of craft beer labelled Japanese traditional rice pilsner which says “made in the USA” on the back. +****

Nice. There. Done. 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 newsletterThe 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.

*Brewery History (2014) 158, 19-37.
**Brewed in Japan – The Evolution of Japanese Beer Industry” (UBC, 2013) sample introduction at page 5.
***Not the main ingredient as some claim.
****Ambitious Brew (Harcourt, 2006) at pages 76-77.
*****The US Brewing Industry (MIT, 2005) at page 7.
******Ibid., page 52-53.
*******The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., 1930 CanLII 46 (SCC), [1930] SCR 361 at page 373.
********The Use of Rice in Brewing” in Advances in International Rice Research (InTech, 2017) by O. Marconi et al. at page 57 as well as this at page 51: “Usually, brewer’s rice is a byproduct of the edible rice milling industry. Hulls are removed from paddy rice, and this hulled rice is then dry milled to remove the bran, aleurone layers and germ. The objective of rice milling is to completely remove these fractions with a minimal amount of damage to the starchy endosperm, resulting in whole kernels for domestic consumption. The broken pieces are considered esthetically undesirable for domestic use and sold to brewers at a low price. Rice is preferred by some brewers as adjuncts because of its lower oil content compared to corn grits. It has a very neutral aroma and flavor, and when properly converted in the brewhouse it results in a light, dry, clean-tasting and drinkable beer.”
*********Tremblay and Tremblay, supra, at page 107.
+O. Marconi et al., supra, at page 50.
+*The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty (Amistad HarperCollins, 2017) at page 243.
+**See Wikipedia article “Rice production in the United States” at section on 19th century.
+***See MTC Sake and Home Brew Sake websites.
+****Heck, name a brand “1685+1876+1945+1994=???” if you like.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Thaw

Not the big thaw, the ice jam busting thaw. Just the small thaw that tells you a big thaw is not that far off. The thaw that tells you you probably don’t need to buy more bird feed for, basically, the squirrels. The bastardly squirrels. You can sit out now. In the sun. With your Bobo and you Eephus. Yup, it’s a time when your mind starts to look forward to spring. And outdoor unpaid labour followed by a nice cold beer. That’s where it all started, right? As the old Temperance Society hymn told us, yardwork is the root of all evil. Soon coming. Get ready.

But for now, first up is The Beer Nut who found a bit of an expensive dud this week and it does make one wonder how much silent regret there is out there for this sort of thing:

Clearly this has been designed, and priced, for the special-occasion market. Anyone new to big barrel-aged stout and apprehensive about what it brings may find themselves enjoying how accessible it is. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it’s rather bland given the specs. I don’t want a sickly bourbon bomb but I do want more substance and more character than this displays. Perhaps releasing it fresh would have been the better move.

So not a drain pour but, still, not necessarily a beer you want to share with pals who know what’s what – or the price with thems who might not. Is there a word for that? There has to be a word. And what would our man in the EU think of this: blue beer in France: “Question?” “Yes, is it a shitty beer? “Quoi?” “Votre bier… c’est un biere du merde bleu, monsieur?” Peut etre.

Elsewhere, on a day out in Kent (are there ever days not out for Martin?) we gained another bit of knowledge on the rules of pub snacks as they relate to the odd hairy bits:

The Larkins was a lovely cool pint; that ramekin of scratchings a tad let down by the inclusion of pork crackling, which really ought to be outlawed. Unless scratchings have hairs on them, they have no right to that name.

There was a bit of a bittersweet tale posted by Boak and Bailey this week, a story of something found in a pub which starts:

On Saturday 8 March 1975, a 16-year-old boy wrote an autobiographical note on a piece of thin chipboard and concealed it in the skittle alley at The Lord Nelson pub in Barton Hill, Bristol.

Hey look! It’s Ren Navarro appearing on CTV discussing dessert beers nationally. A great public education public service.

Jeff wrote about what he called “malt consciousness” this week and I think he is partially, almost entirely quite right:

I had to spent eight days in Bavaria before something magical happened in my appreciation of beer. Because the main difference among the beers I drank (and drank and drank) came from the malt, I was able to tune into that wavelength. For the first time, I developed “malt consciousness.” I understood the role malt played—something many American brewers and most American drinkers still lack. Brewers are a lot more sophisticated now, and they understand that you’re not going to make a very interesting helles from generic two-row pale. Yet I’m not sure we’ve quite arrived at full malt consciousness.

If you go back to the brewing recipe books of twenty years ago, you will see much more interest in a range of malts that you do today. One of my first posted beer reviews eighteen years ago included the faded but one time most important US micro, Pete’s Wicked Ale. Before the new millennium, ales were malt and lagers hop focused. They really weren’t so binary but that was the story, as we see in this 1991 article about the Buffalo brewing scene or this one from 1987. Full bodied dark ales. Malt was the main event before craft appropriated and reframed micro in the early 2000s preparing us for the everything is IPA world we now want to leave behind. The present malt revival is great and adds another dimension to local brewing for sure. But it’s not new. We are remembering.

The big theme went off in another direction this week, a few more indications of the continuing death… or perhaps these are the zombie years… of craft like this:

Observation: There’s a LOT of confusion right now among wholesalers, trying to get a bead on the current direction of the craft beer industry. A general feeling of “something has fundamentally changed, but we aren’t quite sure what” going around. It’s creating some paralysis.

And Chris Loring of Massachusetts’ Notch Brewing shared this thought:

US brewers can take anything of value and tradition and make it a gimmick before beer drinkers experience the real thing. When was it decided we’d be clowns instead of professionals? I’m done, this is embarrassing.

Then… we learn again that a portion of CAMRA is populated by pigs. Then there was the end-timsey news about contract brewing no alcohol beer being a thing with the unskilled… and, of course, the Flagship February dead cat bounce. It is all flounder or founder? Whatever, I presume it all is the sort of cleansing we would expect after a pandemic… or a recession… or a competing innovation that draws attention elsewhere. Sorta facing all three makes for a guaranteed shift. M. Lawrenson had some interesting thoughts about the perhaps associated irritability of drinking establishments with social media observations:

Unfortunately, some places don’t see it this way.  Apparently, they live and die by their Google rating.  I gave 4/5 to somewhere last week.  On Sunday afternoon, they sent me a message saying “Hi, is there we can do to get you to change your rating to a 5?”  I struggled to think of a reply, as I’ve been to this place twice a week for the last 6 months and it’s been pretty much the same every time.  They could make it perfect for ME, I suppose.  But what’s perfect for me ain’t gonna be perfect for everyone.   Perhaps they recognised my name and imagined I’m some kind of “influencer” in the pub world.

Also, relatedly, I think this is one opinion that is about 180 degrees wrong about the nature of change we are seeing:

As someone who’s covered the seething angst and vexing contradictions of America’s craft beer industry and culture for over a decade, I find this a remarkable development. Where have all the hate tourists gone? Or, to put it another way: How did a craft beer industry and community so opposed to selling out become so inert in the face of their beloved breweries getting sold off?

Umm… maybe the development of small local breweries with no chance of ever being in a buyout maybe? The hate stop hating big craft and just moved on to a more interesting experience. That’s only the main story in history of good beer circa 2015-2022. Sweet status-based self-citation, however.

Note: “not Britain’s oldest boozer.”

I really dislike most beer culture cartoons as they are… umm… not all that likeable* but I do like the more deftly drawn ones by Emily Thee Cannibal, possibly a proctologist, like this one about a pairing of Allagash White with a soft cheese… except I can’t stop feeling that the cheese looks like a dying PacMan. It’s a slower more dignified death for sure… but still.

Finally and weirdly, odd news from (i) the folks fighting against the bad actors and powers of BrewDog and (ii) the folk rooting for Mikkeller despite the bad actors and powers. Both groups seem to have engaged the same consultants to deal with their respective complaints. I hadn’t appreciated that in January there was an announcement that@PunksWPurpose had acquired a “platform to affected Brewdog workers to assist [them]… in their core mission of tackling Brewdog’s cultural issues” but saw today that the same consultancy was hired by Mikkeller to provide provide  a “Workplace Reconciliation Program.” This is a little confusing for me, being a lawyer who dabbles in areas of owner v. contractor, employer v employee issues, as you are either on one side or the other in my profession. Do you really want to share your experience to be used against an allegedly overbearing employer with someone hired by another allegedly overbearing employer to smooth the waters?**

Perhaps it is just as one correspondent wrote privately, “folks might be more interested in catharsis than anything else” regardless of the outcome in terms of justice. The display may be enough. Me, I’d say don’t rely on a consultant, get your own legal advice (especially when the consultant does not seem to understand independent legal advice means) or go to a tribunal (usually free). Whatever you do, be especially careful to not create a record of any complaint that ends up owned by the party against which you are making a complaint. You will see it next in your cross-examination when you do end up making that legal complaint: “… but didn’t you say in Feb 2022 the following…“***.

There. Done. 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 newsletterThe 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.

*rahrah, craft is great, comes in brown and other colours…kittens!
**Then the odd news turned into an odd thread when the consultancy lead jumped at the tail end of a chat I was having with DSL, wanting a discussion with me about Mikkeller, then suggested I was aggressive (no), directed me to the FAQs (no thanks) and sought to get me off Twitter and speak on the phone (really, no thanks). Crisis management deflection stuff. Frankly, I think I find most offensive thing is the use of “reconciliation” which is appropriate when talking about bringing a fundamentally divided nation together, not helping a frigging contract brewer cope with its self-inflicted crisis.
***But, then again, I pretty much did the same thing spilling my beans such as they are, a bearing of witness to a hired investigator about my tangential involvement in a similar issue… which was where the discussion with DSL started – and should have ended. Go figure.

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 newsletterThe 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!!!