Faith – A Good Beer Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ed.: “After the break, sports.“]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can confirm rusty rainwater dripped from the roof into my drink

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs RM said “Wow”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wholesale pricing notes from The Beer Nut:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up one at 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,465) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the next Monday. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

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

The Final And Totally Mailed In Beery News Notes of August

I have a new hobby. Doin’ nuttin’. After last week’s chores, we took off and wandered a bit around Montreal on the weekend and said hello to Leonard. Crescent‘s bars were bustling last Saturday evening. And we hopped over to Syracuse NY last Wednesday for an afternoon AAA baseball game, a driveby glance into the Loop Grill and some serious American snacks shopping to bring back to Canada but otherwise this summer vacation has been mainly about nuttin’. There should be ads on the TV about staying home and doing nuttin’ like one of those for visiting the Gulf States or Arizona. Except it’s about the backyard. I could monetize that. Become a backyard doin’ nuttin’ influencer. Post TikToks about it. Have a Patreon site about it behind a subscribers only wall. Except that would be doing stuff. And not nuttin’. I am too into nuttin’ to be doin’ something about nuttin’.

What has been going on? First, Pellicle‘s Wednesday piece is about a fairly large diversified English farm operation that includes barley and brewing in its mix of production. It’s a farm with a focus on something more essential – thoughtful care of the soil:

There’s one question which is unanswered: what does this do to the flavour of the beer? Duncan takes a moment to answer, frowning as he thinks of the right word. “Nothing,” he says. He thinks some more, then shakes his head as if confirming the answer to himself. “Nothing. It’s not necessarily about that,” he says. “It’s the ethos that’s gone into building it so you can talk about having environmental benefit and food in the same sentence. That’s the point of it.”

Somewhat similarly in the sense of place, Jeff has written about a relatively secluded micro in eastern Oregon and draws a useful conclusion:

This is perhaps the greatest advantage of remote brewing. In cities, brewers are aware of what people are doing around them. It’s almost impossible not to be influenced, to borrow techniques or discover new ingredients. In Baker City, Tyler and his current head brewer Eli Dickenson can easily drop into their own groove. Their customers know what they do and expect them to do it—and they don’t spend a lot of time at other breweries getting distracted by the trend du jour.

On the opposite end of the reality v. non-reality scale, it was brought to my attention by @DrankyDranks that a fraud is about to be perpetrated on the drinks buying public:

Couple of new non-alc brands on the horizon. White Claw 0% “non-alcoholic premium seltzer,” comin’ in 4 “full-flavor” variants at 15 calories per can with “hydrating electrolytes”: black cherry cranberry, mango passion fruit, peach orange blossom and lime yuzu. Expected in Jan.

The double negative has been achieved! Speaking of the potentially unecessary, care of Beer Today we may have also reached peak data point – an observation I make given the uncertainty I have as to the necessity of this level of detail:

…trading improved in line with the temperatures last week. There was a particular surge in sales in midweek, with Tuesday (up 10%), Wednesday, which was boosted by England’s semi-final victory over Australia (up 17%), and Thursday (up 15%) all in double-digit growth. But trading was more modest on Friday (down 3%) and Saturday (up 4%) as rain moved back in. Warmer weather lifted the beer category, where sales rose 10% year on year. Wine (up 9%) and cider (up 1%) were also positive, but soft drinks (down 2%) and spirits (down 4%) were both negative.

Does the well informed publican check the weather forecast before placing orders for cask deliveries or setting prices? “Hmmm… rain’s coming Friday, need me a happy hours special…” Maybe. Having once created a 15,000 cell Excel table to track (among many things) hot dog sales and visiting team placement in the league’s standings over six or eight years I am sensitive to the possibilities of such things.

Speaking of stats, France is paying winemaker to destroy some of their stock to cope with this drop in some markets – blamed by the BBC on an increase in craft beer sales:

European Commission data for the year to June shows that wine consumption has fallen 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 15% in France, 22% in Germany and 34% in Portugal, while wine production across the bloc – the world’s biggest wine-making area – rose 4%.

Lisa Grimm is posting at Weird Beer Girl HQ and this week comes to the defence of what she calls a trad bar in Dublin, Piper’s Corner:

I’m aware I’m on slightly dangerous ground here, as there’s absolutely a place for the shows aimed at tourists (if they are willing to pay for a specific kind of experience that’s keeping musicians working, why not?), and also because folk music is never static – it’s always evolving, so there’s no one ‘right’ way to play or enjoy trad tunes. Now, this doesn’t mean visitors are not welcome – not at all – just that it seems to be a more organic experience (for lack of a better word – and this is largely based on word of mouth, since you know I’m asleep by then most of the time).

Last Friday, Boak and Bailey posted a review of the new book Cask – the real story of Britains unique beer Culture by Des de Moor which by all accounts is a very good and comprehensive read – if for no other reason (though there seem to be many) than Moore’s willingness to share various points of view:

Though clearly a passionate fan of cask ale, he isn’t an unquestioning cheerleader and points out that it doesn’t work well for every style. American-style IPAs and sour beers, he argues, rarely benefit from cask dispense. He comes right off the fence when it comes to the price of cask ale: “[If] cask beer is to have a sustainably healthy future, its average price will have to rise in comparison to the pub prices of other drinks… One argument for cheap cask is that it helps drive sufficient turnover to keep the product fresh, but that effect has surely reached its limits when price becomes a barrier to maintaining quality.” For balance, he quotes others who disagree, and who worry about cask ale becoming an expensive, niche product, rather than an everyday pleasure.

And Martyn has embarked on a journey about journeying, writing a series of pieces on the value of giving oneself over to the pre-planned pre-paid beer bus tour, all under the umbrella heading “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch!” So far we have parts one, two and three with more promised. It’s a bit mind melting in the pace, one which may tax even Ron, but he shares a number of observations like this on why one might want to subject oneself to this sort of exercise:

…one big advantage of joining a largeish group of people on a European beer trip is that when you get to, say, a place like Cantillon in Brussels, where the brewery tasting room/bar has a large range of aged 75cl bottled beers costing up to 70 euros a (literal) pop, sharing those rare beers you may never get the chance to drink again among half a dozen or more drinkers cuts the cost per head dramatically.

Good point. And another sort of good reminder this week from The Beer Nut: “Slagging off hazy IPA is easy (and fun!) but well-made beers like this do make it a little bit harder to do.”

Heavens, they do things on a certain scale in Kenya when it comes to allegedly skirting the licencing laws:

A Chuka court in Tharaka Nithi County has issued a warrant for the arrest of Simon Gitari for failure to honour court summons over the alleged operation of an unlicensed brewing industry. The millionaire brewer, popularly known as ‘Gitari Boss’, is the director of Hakim Commercial Agencies which owns the factory located in Ndiruni village in Chuka Sub-County. On Monday, a multi-agency team led by Tharaka Nithi County Police Commander Zacchaeus Ngeno raided the distillery and seized 250,000 litres of illegal liquor.

Also somewhat irregular in expectations, Gary wrote an interesting piece on the intersection between pubs and the pulpit in mid-1900s England this week including this example:

The padre Basil Jellicoe (1899-1935) descended from Anglo-Catholic churchment and naval figures, and was Oxford-educated. He had no apparent exposure to pubs as a youth, in fact was a teetotaller. His pub interest was of the old-school missionary-type, inspired by doctrine and the Bible. If church adherents were to be found he wanted to cultivate the ground, and would not let prevailing notions of propriety get in the way. He also wanted to improve social conditions in and related to the pub. He started to operate pubs so he could have full control to promote this goal – the Church was henceforth in the pub business.

Katie wrote about one way of responding to loss through ritual in her most recent edition of The Gulp, one of the few drinks “newsletters” still holding its own:

Despite the tragedies of the past months, spending time with friends is always a celebration, and I intend to treat it as such. My main contribution to the evening’s events will be the wine we drink during feasting and the extremely technical/spiritual practice of “burning shit”. I need to choose carefully. It should be wine that’s good enough to change our fortunes and lift us up. Wine good enough to offer to Hecate, wine good enough to stir our souls and clear our minds. It also needs to pair well with a vegan barbecue.

One of my favourite stunned concepts amongst right-wing US fear mongering is the use of “Canada-style” when used as the ultra “woke” by the “freedom” folk… as in this story’s headline:

President Joe Biden’s chief adviser on alcohol policy said his agency may issue new guidelines that limit Americans to just two drinks per week. Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), told the Daily Mail that he’s interested in tightening U.S. guidelines to match Canada’s alcohol recommendations, which say that both men and women should consider having only two drinks every week. Canada’s health department issued the recommendations this year under left-wing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Note: while publicly funded, the Canadian two-drinks standard is a recommendation of a private entity which is one part of a bigger and heavily leaning academic discourse amongst many of a variety of points of view, much also fueled in whole or part directly and indirectly by public funds. We also do not follow the Canada Food Guide all that closely if grocery store shelves are anything to go by. Note also: we live much longer.

Vinepair published an almost self-defeating piece on the role of celebrity and beer replete with branding consulting jargon which then veers off into a reality-based (perhaps even inadvertenly honest) view near the end:

Celebrity involvement will entice journalists to write about a brand once. But star wattage eventually dims as a selling point. “Someday we will not be new news anymore,” says Eight’s Campbell. Any fermented liquid must stand on its own merits, hitting that sweet spot of price point and pleasure. Convincing customers that they should shoehorn another beer into their crowded drinking calendar takes effort, a long play in a world that celebrates the fast windfall. “Even though you have somebody with a big mouthpiece, you still have to build a brand,” Campbell says. “There’s got to be a meaningful connection.”

And finally for Stan (and apparently on brand pachyderm-wise) we have the story of an elephant which did not get into the beer but still sussed out something else:

Placidly and professionally, the mammal sweeps the ground with its trunk several times before tossing up a nondescript black rucksack, trumpeting as it announces its discovery. Border police were already on the scene. The officers had arrived to escort the elephants out of a nearby village, reported China National Radio (CNR). Mindful of their primary duty, police waited till the elephants had made their safe exit before inspecting the elephant’s “gift”, reported CNR. The elephant did not disappoint.

There. A shorter post perhaps but my world is whole even if the news is a bit quieter this week. And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Got on BlueSky this week and added it to my IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a deservedly dormant Patreaon presence. I am multi! I am legion!! Yet totally sub. All in all, I still am preferring the voices on Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything) including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

The Mere Days Before Vacation Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Mid-August. What to do? What to do? Soon I should have that annual dream about having to go back to school, never finding my courses, finding it all too late to catch up and… why am I even here anyways… seeing as I have more fingers on one hand than I have years to retirement. It’s coming. Thoughts of autumn come in shades of brown, whether new corduroys or old leaves. Like these lovely images from Warminster Maltings, a clickable one of which is nipped and tucked to the right. But I rush ahead. Too far ahead. Plenty of green days still to come, right? Right? Better be. I have plans. Plans a plenty for the next couple of weeks away from the coal mine. Well, the office. The home office, half the time. But my shoes are generally black so you get the idea.

First – and as much as for equal time requirements as anything – one very interesting bit of the old vid I came across this week is a wonderful PR piece for a maker in the old coopering trade:

The special delivery of a 9000L wine foudre by Taransaud at Château de la Chaize near Brouilly. Very proud of our coopers! (sound on).

Sound on indeed for quite a display of how staves and hoops come together to hold over 11,000 sleeping bottles worth of the old Chat de Chaz, one of which sits nearby, sleeping with others in the cold and dark, waiting for my own Christmas dinner in a few years.

Neither sleeping or in the dark is Mudgie who has some shareable thoughts on why of all the pubs that are lost the Crooked Pub, apparently of little interest when opened other than for being off plumb, is now a national cause:

Over the past forty years, the pub trade as a whole has been in a long-term decline that has led to tens of thousands closing down. The reasons for this are down to a variety of changes in social trends and attitudes, although certain government actions such as the Beer Orders and the smoking ban have exacerbated matters. There is undoubtedly a profound sense of loss about this, even from people who never used pubs much… At times this can turn into a kind of vaguely-directed anger, as we are seeing here, and people are keen to look for scapegoats such as pubcos, developers, supermarkets and government. But the reality is that pubs have mainly been undone by social change, not by some malign conspiracy, and there is no remotely credible alternative course of action that would have made it permanently 1978.

And Stan had some good thoughts on the benefits of not chasing the tail that craft’s been diving after for all these years now:

I am left considering what it means for a brewer to be creative, or what it takes for a beer to be considered new, even novel. New Image Brewing, located in an adjoining town, currently has a terrific helles called Do Less on tap and in cans. It is brewed with malts from Troubador Malting here in Colorado, and thus probably tastes more familiar to me than to you. The malt flavor in Do Less is different than the malt flavor in Bierstadt Lagerhaus Helles, brewed less than 10 miles from New Image. Bierstadt Helles, to me, is pretty much a perfect beer. I’m not going to quit drinking it because I’ve found something new (and practically speaking, Do Less is probably a one-off). But new, interesting and good, to me, that is creative. It would be greedy to ask for more.

Indeed. And greed may get one more – or less – than one counted on. Which is why context – the big picture and the long view – is so important. And Andreas Krennmair has added to that total sum by publishing his new book, Bavarian Brewing in the 19th Century: A Reference Guide. He advises that it is available on Amazon worldwide, both as paperback and Kindle e-book and gives the friendly caveat:

Please note that this is properly nerdy beer stuff….

Which is a healthy approach to such things. One can embrace the lighter topic – the hobby interest – too firmly and squeeze much of the joy out if it. Turn it into a belief. Fortunately for a scribbler, the downsides of things can be as interesting as the up and gives opportunity for humanity to expose its gentle foibles. We have as the current example this summer’s continuing flow of opinion about craft’s collapse yea or nay as with this article “Is the craft beer tide turning?“:

“Distributors and retailers have been reducing their focus on distributed craft and searching for growth in other pockets, but there are signs that the worst reductions may be in the past”, the association said. Overall, craft brewers “continue to face economic headwinds on both business and consumer fronts”, it said. From a business perspective, borrowing costs continue to rise, and while input cost increases have stabilised, they remain elevated over previous levels. Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows inflation eroding consumers’ buying capacity.”

Not to mention mega-brewers selling off craft assets.* The news has reached as far as India. Heck, even those boosters for booze at GBH have been having their swings at poor old craft:

“To me, that experience of drinking in your garage with your friends is universal whereas Braxton maybe isn’t,” Sauer says. “When a craft brewery is presenting to a retailer, [the buyer] asks, ‘Can this brand travel?’ I wanted to remove some of those assumptions.” He also hopes Garage Beer can shake off some of the flavor expectations with which drinkers associate the term “craft beer.” Research Sauer conducted in partnership with the marketing department at Miami University in Ohio found that the top characteristics respondents linked to craft beer were “hoppy” and “heavy.”

“Heavy” – oooof! Is that the new curse word? The Beer Nut shared his thoughts on craft meets US macro:

I can safely say it’s true to type for this inexplicably craft-credentialed American industrial style, being dry, crisp and very dull. There’s a tiny hint of fruity lemon fun hovering in the background, but otherwise it’s a straight-up fizzy lager of the nondescript sort. I couldn’t leave things there.

Endtimsey. But, you know, for many of those who have invested deeply in the fading trade on way or another there is still talk of turn around. Could be. As with maybe fringy party politics perhaps, there is that sort of normal human desire for plucky redeption when the hero is cornered, the hope against hope that fuels the observations of alien sci-fi characters like Spock or Doctor Who. Which is what makes reading about the beer trade and beer culture so perhaps unhealthily yet tantilizingly compelling. Especially when it isn’t as firmly footed in fact as I fully expect Krennmair is in his new book.

Note: CB&B has published a handy newbie guide to all mash home brewing – a clear sign of a downturn as ever I saw:

Mashing grain is what makes beer beer. Yes, hops, yeast, and water certainly play important roles, but it is only through the mash, whether performed in your house or in the process of manufacturing malt extract, that the soul of beer is liberated from its starchy origins. Mashing grain is to beer as crushing grapes is to wine, as pressing apples is to cider, and as collecting honey is to mead.

Also note: twenty years ago this very week, I invented the “Molrona” during the 2003 black out. You. Are. Welcome.

Martin noted a sad ending with a photo essay from his recent visit to Corto, Katie and Tom Mather’s establishment, which I never saw myself but supported as I could:

It’s incredibly cosy, and welcoming, and tiny. One spare table upstairs, where the cheery chap brought our Wishbone and Thornbridge… Sorry it was a flying visit, Corto folk, you were lovely. Best wishes for whatever you do next.

Say hello to Tom Grogan, 92, now in his eigthth decade in the pub trade:

Mr Grogan, who is believed to be the UK’s oldest landlord, said he was not that keen on alcohol himself. He said despite pouring thousands of pints, he drank “very little” and had been only drunk “half a dozen times”. His career began 71 years ago, when started helping out in a pub in Rusholme after arriving in England. Seven years later, he got the chance to become a landlord, but said it meant he and his girlfriend had to make a quick decision.

You’ll have to read on to figure out what that decision was… unless you guess… because it’s not much of a guess…

Ron’s Remebrances take us this week back to Scotland in the mid-1970s when a radical change in licensing laws were brought in:

I was dead jealous when my school friend Henry, who studied in Aberdeen, told me of pubs not only staying open all afternoon, but until 1 AM. All totally legal. And totally due to the interpretation of a new Licensing Act for Scotland. Which, I’m pretty sure, wasn’t intended to liberalise opening hours to the extent that it did… I can remember visiting Edinburgh in the late 1970s and wondering at the continental-style opening hours. And wondering why the same liberal treatment couldn’t have been given to the rules in England.

GBH has run an interesting if ripe study of Coopers Sparkling Ale this week:

It can be tempting to dismiss Sparkling Ale as an early offshoot of Pale Ale, without any notable idiosyncrasies to help define the liminal space separating the two. Most contemporary stylistic guidelines highlight a focus on Australian ingredients, but beyond this and some more proscribed production techniques, the difference is minimal. Though delineation between styles has never been an immutable barrier, for those of us who grew up on it, Sparkling Ale has a highly distinctive character.

I had no idea that there were service disruptions in out next province to the left, Manitoba… keeping in mind as my excuse that the border is almost 2000 km and a timezone away. Seems like the government store is on strike with unequal consequences:

When Shrugging Doctor, a local winery and vineyard, said in July it would expand and move operations, its owners had no idea it was about to head into a devastating strike-induced limbo thanks to a labour dispute at the Crown-owned liquor corporation. While Manitoba beer producers have the option of distributing their own products — by hiring delivery companies to drop off merchandise to private vendors, bars and other sellers — by law, wine and spirit manufacturers aren’t allowed to do the same, said Shrugging Doctor co-owner Willows Christopher, who founded the business in 2017.

Matt is doing a good job keeping an eye on Mikkeller’s deek around the ethical implications of claims made against it:

I see Mikkeller are pouring at another U.K. festival this weekend, which is honestly absolutely wild to me. I feel like there was a real opportunity to create real, progressive change in U.K. beer a couple of years ago. But this is being moved on from in favour of the ££££.

No doubt part of their long term plan which seems to have been successfully pulled off if this admission from late July is understood. Easy to enough to foresee back in February 2022.

A poem by Justin Quinn was noted by the ever lyrical M.Noix this week that is worth saving and sharing… and thereby trodding all over intellectual property rights but for this bit of review… lovely… I have dreams also like that… and it even rhymes here and there. Solid second stanza letter “u”use.

Four weeks ago, I forwarded the news that Russia had moved to grab Carlsberg’s assets, you know, those assets that really should have been shut down when the invasion of Ukraine began but, you know, money. Well, now the brewery has spoken out:

The chief executive of brewing giant Carlsberg has said he was “shocked” when Russian President Vladimir Putin seized its business there. Cees ’t Hart said the company had agreed a deal to sell its Russian operations in late June, but just weeks later a presidential decree transferred the business to the Russian Federal Agency for State Property Management. “In June, we were pleased to announce the sale of the Russian business. However, shortly afterwards, we were shocked that a presidential decree had temporarily transferred management of the business to a Russian federal agency,” he said.

Well, lookie lookie. Why buy when you can take? Beware with whom you think you are doing business with, I suppose.

Note: the ever increasing subdivisions of beer expertise never ceases to amaze.

And finally what week would be a proper week without a story like this:

A “plague” of racoons have stormed a number of houses across Germany to steal beer and kill family pets. Households have been billed up to €10,000 after returning home from their holidays to discover their kitchens destroyed. According to Germany’s National Hunting Association (DJV), a total of 200,000 raccoons were killed last year in a bid to control the population.

Furry bastards! And – that is it for another week. Not a record breaker for length this week and, frankly, a few familiar sites may have been mailing it in from the beach. Plus all those awards! Which claim to pick global champions …while also reminding you that judging is nothing more than what a few folk thought on the day. Ah, August! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*Revisiting a thought, we discussed two weeks ago how that portion of Ontario’s smaller brewers who are members of the trade association OCB have launched a new lobbying effort that has a bit of an odd goal: “Keep Craft Beer Local.” I say “odd” as the argument that seems to be being made is taxes are too hight therefore small brewers will have to sell out to… dum dum duuuuuummmm… strange folk from away. As previously noted: “If no changes are made to the tax structure, he and the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, say they fear more and more of Ontario’s craft breweries will be bought up and merged with foreign buyers. The association says it represents over 100 breweries.” This is an odd argument, as I say, seeing as international mega brewers are divesting themselves of their craft assets. I wonder if this is just an example of bad timing, the power points keeping up with the news. Perhaps Ben can help explain.

English-Speaking Atheists Lose Their Columnist Saint

I can’t say that I am particularly struck by the loss of Christopher Hitchens but its in the same way that I was not moved by the death of Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, Hitchens was something of a presentation of himself – not a bad thing in itself but it does distract from whether the output was as valuable as claimed. That being said, David Frum has an excellent memorial to the man in the National Post that captures bits of his appeal:

As the event broke up, a crowd of questioners formed around him. I created a diversion thinking it would help him escape for some needed rest. But Christopher declined the offer. He stood with them, as tired as I was, but ready to adjourn to a nearby bar and converse with total strangers till the bars closed. Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

Frum called him “a man of moral clarity.” I would have thought “amoral” or perhaps ethical was more the proper word. The man he most reminded me of was Mencken. Both had that sort of rhetorical skill that aligned well with their failure to actually meaningfully participate in anything that added to the public good. Both were keen observers and skilled reporters. The sort of person who can tell you what a poor job someone, anyone, yourself even has done but would not actually engage with the doing themselves. Both were famous drinkers.

I am sure that we benefit somewhat from these columnists, folk who can sharply report on the human condition. But they never really get to anything of value as to the why of it all. They have their own belief system which is immune to denting and judge all from that place on the orb with skill, charisma and something of an ultimate pointlessness. Humans already know life is hard and confused, that our leaders make many bad calls. Directing us to that obvious state of affairs, however insightfully or entertainingly, is not the stuff of heroes.

Japan: Where Faith And Beer Come Together

Jay has been lamenting the divide between Southern Baptists and their beer. You know, it was darn pesky of the Lord to hang around in taverns and make wine when you think of it. In addition to the work, however, of Rev. Taffy Davis in Macclesfield, England, Jay found one US pastor who has followed in the steps of the Big Guy and brought the word back to the tavern. Good stuff.

Interesting, then, it was for me to find out this sort of thing is happening under other faiths as well as this story from last month about Buddhist monks in Japan shows:

This is what you might call “Buddhism-lite” though. It is performance, not preaching. After their first session on the stage, which lasts about 20 minutes, they sit down with the audience for a drink and a chat. One of the monks gets a bag of balloons out of his pocket and starts sculpting balloon flowers for some of the older ladies sitting around the room. “Many Japanese don’t want to come to temple,” Hogen Natori says. He is standing behind the bar where he has lit up a cigarette as he chats with the drinkers. “They think Buddhism is very difficult, and deep and serious, but Buddhism is much more than that – exciting, funny even. I want to spread this kind of teaching.” He feels people are more receptive in a bar, when they are drinking and with friends.

Hmmm…that last bit makes it sound a bit like a pick up line: “Hey good looking – that’s quite the soul you have there.” The BBC has a short video of the monks in action at the Chippie Sound Music Bar in Tokyo. Be warned – having watched it, I am still not clear which beer goes best with “Ohmm”.