Category: Fests and Gatherings

The Uplifting And Inspiring Candidate For First Beery News Notes For Q2 of 2025

It’s April. Finally. Did you realize that today we are exactly the same length of time from this time last year as we are to this time next year? No? I was really hoping to start out with something profound this week… but that’s all I could come up with.* It’s got to be the election. I’m all a buzz about the election. And, as predicted last week, there has been an election beer pouring sighting this week as PM Carney took his Liberal party campaign bus to a bar in Georgetown, Ontario. He seems to have a pretty steady hand. Here’s a bit of a vid. More beer pouring please, candidates…

First up, Matthew shared the round up from the March edition of The Session with lots of good stuff. My submission was not as interesting as those of other folk* so go check out all the other entries – but also read Matthews own thoughts on why writing in this “sketching not sketchy” manner is important:

I’ve returned to blogging this year because I think getting the multitude of ideas I’ve been sitting on for months out in a way that is not bound to this process, or to the whims of a particular editor is really valuable. Writing is important, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced journalist or you’re writing your first ever piece, the most important thing is that you get it done, and then move on to the next one. As I enter my 10th year as a full-time professional writer, I consider this blog to be the best place to try out ideas, and figure out what does and doesn’t work.

Next time, the host is Ding and the question is about value. Yes, there are plenty of venues and levels for we scribblers. For example, Rachel Hendry wrote a inner voice piece for the first issue of a new web mag – a wag? – called chlorophyll about a night out with the Gamay:

Tasting Beaujolais is where I learnt the term confected, a harsh word rhyming with infected and inferring the pick-and-mix stalls of the cinema complex and theatre foyer. Parma violets and foam bananas and sweet jellied cherries all manifesting in a glass that people infantilise and dismiss. Yet here, in my glass, a dismissal of an assumption takes place. A Gamay peppery and perfumed and proud. Spicy. Intoxicating. The presence of this spice allows the Gamay to take on a new meaning. A hierarchy rejected.

I like it. You can too. Just remember the scale: Beaujolais Nouveau, Beaujolais, Beaujolais Village and then the best stuff from any of the individual ten villages like Fleurie or St-Amore. From pretty silly fruit juice to age worthy complexity. Yet relatively cheap and cheery at each point up the ladder. Gamay is also pretty commonly grown for wine here in Ontario, too.

Also cheap and cheery seems to be traveling in eastern Europe but, with concerns for their safety, does one really go to Transnistra given it’s largely occupied by the post-Soviet / not-so-post-Soviets. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Retired Martin did:

…our guide Lily wasn’t much interested in facts and figures either. She showed us supermarkets, sturgeon, fridge magnet stores and the Sheriff Tiraspol ground, while changing the tour to squeeze in an unscheduled wine tasting that meant she wouldn’t get back in Chisinau in time to see Haaland and Ødegaard dismantle the Moldovan national team. What a trooper. It’s just as well Transnistrian is so quiet, hardly any traffic in the towns or on the highway, and we were able to stop at Bender’s Tighina Fortress on a promise that we “wouldn’t dawdle or attempt to read the descriptions in the torture museum” or something.

Another town with another fort is Rye in England where Pellicle took us this week where Fred Garratt-Stanley traced the history of some of the oldest pubs if you know where to look – including the chimney at The Mermaid :

Dr. Chris Moore’s research often centres around uncovering these stories by digging into architectural quirks. For example, when he learned that The Mermaid’s central chimney is made from Caen stone (a type of limestone quarried in northern France and usually shipped to England to construct religiously symbolic buildings like Canterbury Cathedral,) he was immediately intrigued. “Caen stone is basically a religious stone used to construct most of our big cathedrals, it would not have been used on a pub,” he explains. “So that’s probably Reformation stone from a dissolved monastery close to Rye that’s been reused. There’s symbolism to that; did the landlord make a conscious decision to go ‘It’s a shame that monastery’s been destroyed, let’s keep a bit of it in the pub’?”

Also keeping up with the past, Liam provided us with another slice of Irish beer history, an inquiry by the magistrates into the problem of the overpour:

…the publicans were summoned to appear in front of the local magistrates and as examples, a pair of half-gallon measures were produced belonging to two publicans, a Mr. McDonnell and a Mrs. Wafer. Both measures had been found to be correct six months previous but now held a naggin more than they previously did according to the inspector. This would equate to over 4% extra liquid per measure, which would amount to a moderate but notable loss to the publican over time. The magistrates were at a loss as to how this could happen, but the puzzle was solved when a tinman called Mr. Waters took to the stand and gave the following explanation…

There… you’re hooked! Go read the rest for yourself under that link. Not dissimilarly, Eoghan Walsh wrote a list of everything he ate outside of the home last month including but not limited to:

Half a packet of Yolloh strawberry marshmallow sweets I found hidden behind my phone at my desk. Four fruit Mentos I found in my dressing gown. A full pack of Yolloh strawberry marshmallow sweets I bought in a moment of weakness. A basket of fries at Brasserie de la Senne, shared. A portion of Boon Mariage Parfait cheese squares, with mustard, shared. Duyvis Crac-A-Nut Paprika nuts, three or four packets, the small ones from the vending machine.

And Laura Hadland wrote an excellent extended post script to a recent What’s Brewing article on sexism at British beerfests to explain the why calling out such bigotries  matter:

Why do something that you know might upset a few people when you can take a different route and try not to actively offend anyone? We all know that you can’t please all the people all of the time and no doubt whatever theme or image the St Albans committee chose, they would end up with detractors saying they didn’t like the decision. But not liking something for reasons of personal taste or preference is different from choosing to use an illustration that has sexist overtones. 

Gary has announced that he is done with X. (Me, I linger there still only for the inflamatory entertainment of the national election here, making any manner of political obsessive lose their marbles.) Speaking of smartening up, The Polk from The Hammer has been near dry for months now and is finding the loss of venue a continuing challenge:

I love a solid beer run and this last weekend was perhaps the worst, most depressing one I’ve ever taken and it illustrates a real problem the sober or non-alcoholic beer world has when it comes to helping folks crossover or drink a little less if that’s what they’re after… I must admit to longing for that jump in the car and head off down the road moment we used to have when it came to grabbing some new beers… There aren’t many options for a sober third space and while some breweries have NA offerings, good ones that aren’t more than a cheap knock-off of something they toss on the menu for the DD are not as easy to find. The culture of raising a glass with your friends is missing, the fluid conversation and excitement of new and returning beers, old favourites and solid stand-bys doesn’t exist…

Also over is April Fools Day. The best beer related prank was this announcement from Bill of It’s Pub Night:

I was surprised to see a local brewery — you can figure out which one — announce on Facebook that they will no longer be brewing their love-it-or-hate-it Donnie the Elder double gose flavored with muskmelon. Muskmelon — another word for cantaloupe — gave the beer its distinctive orange color, but the taste wasn’t for everyone.  The double gose (sometimes abbreviated “doge” on the blackboard) had a small but vocal minority who liked it, but wasn’t popular enough to keep in the rotation.  The brewers had briefly experimented with a lighter-bodied version that wasn’t as sharp, and not as pungent or orange-colored, that was called Donnie the Younger.  But it turned out no one liked that one, not even fans of Donnie the Elder.

Quote to the contrary, Jordan is seeking the real truthy truth and continuing his list of new beer rules and got so excited about #6 that he skipped past #4 and #5 to get at it – it being the lack of succession as he considers the end** of Mill Street:

We’ve had a lot of breweries open and close within a couple of years in Ontario. Sometimes their annual production wouldn’t fill a large Jacuzzi. Discounting those, let’s say you have shelf SKUs and you’re up around 2,000 hl a year. What’s your plan? Are you going to get big enough to sell to a large corporation? In this economy? Is your brand important enough to be consolidated? Will anyone miss it when it’s gone? According to my spreadsheet, which requires some updating, 119 physical brewing locations have closed in Ontario since 2017, just after Mill Street was purchased. Not many of them were purchased by larger companies.

Sticking with the Canadian scene, Mélissa Gélinas in the Aylmer Bulletin out of Quebec considers what the tariffs we face in Canada will mean for her local breweries:

Sébastien Gandy, head of sales, communications, and cultural affairs at La Dérive Brasserie Artisanale in Gatineau [notes, a]ccording to reports, the cost of a can could potentially increase by 10 to 30 cents. “If it were as simple as raising the price of a can and passing it on to customers, it wouldn’t be so complicated,” said Sébastien. “The real issue is that we’re already in a price war since there’s competition between microbreweries and macrobreweries, which always have the upper hand… Ultimately, we’re caught in a political war that makes no sense, where we don’t have the tools to achieve our goals,” he said. “I think we still feel a desire among the population to encourage smaller local players.

And elsewhere in the land, we see that desire play out with perhaps surprisingly patriotic themes:

In response to repeated threats to Canada’s sovereignty and a trade war, Newfoundland and Labrador breweries want you to grab a cold one in solidarity. On Wednesday Landwash Brewery in Mount Pearl unveiled On Guard, a Canadian pale ale made with only Canadian ingredients, like Quebec hops… In downtown St. John’s, Yellowbelly Brewery co-owner and publican Craig Flynn is individually rolling each label on to individual cans for a new brew called Elbows Up. “Sovereignty is a very big belief in Canada,” said Flynn. “If you want to come after us and try to bring us into the corner, we’re going to come back with our elbows up.”

We’re apparently so proud that we just might fight a bit dirty. Blame Gordie. We’re also just a bit weird. Well, it is a global economic crisis and election time so why not be weird? Speaking of the crisis, on Wednesday the US Department issued an addendum to the Trump Administration’s aluminum tariff that will cause some concern in the world of beer:

BIS in this notice revises Annex 1 to add the following two additional aluminum derivative products in Annex 1:

(1) beer; and
(2) empty aluminum cans.

There you have it. As of 12:01 am Eastern Time on Friday 4 April 2025 all canned beer imports will cost 25% more wholesale in the USA. So… that is it for this week. A reasonable set of reads. Nothing too exotic. But some looming panic. Still, remember that there wil be a special prize for pictures of politicians at the taproom. Was Poilievre pouring in Freddie’s Beach on Monday? I need to check that out.

Until next week, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (WHILE YOU CAN!!! They are saying they are holidaying in April and May) 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*I like to place the blame on someone other than myself for things like this but, if I am honest, it’s been a bit of a blur recently with two of us covering the work of eight for a few days, three for a bit more than that and four for longer. We hope to be up to five in a few weeks so, with any luck, I can get back to really goofing off now and then.
**Under that link, there’s an interesting comment from an officer of a megabrewer: “…but it’s not an insubstantial amount of liquid…“

The Super Secret Thursday Beery News Notes That Even Hegseth Couldn’t Leak

What a week. A Canadian Federal election was called. The US government proved once again it is led by numpties. And the opening day for Major League Baseball is here. And… The Session. Who was the numbskull who decided that the return of The Session would also have a regular dedicated Friday deadline right after his beery news notes deadline? Me. Yup. That’s who. I know how Maureen feels. “What a moron you are Al,” she says. Maureen, by the way, was not only recreating the first moment she ever read my writing. She was out there fighting against the forces of darkness and her feelings were excellently captured by USA Today in her “holy fucking moley” mode at a townhall event with Senator Chuck Grassley.*  Anyway, Matthew is hosting this month’s edition and your are encouraged to get your fingertips a’tappin’** on the question of…

For the March 2025 edition of The Session I’m asking participants to produce a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs… The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

Get at it!! What else is going on? No, not this… that’s got nothing to do with beer. Ah, yes… this! Ed has reported on a long awaited innovation in hoppetry:

…even more exciting than that is the news that a hop breeding mission going back at least 70 years has finally reached a successful conclusion: a wilt-tolerant Fuggle has been developed. Verticillium wilt is a fungal disease that can devastate hop crops and is difficult to treat… The need for a wilt-tolerant Fuggle is mentioned in a paper back in 1955 and in 2013 I heard the long quest might be only three years away from a successful conclusion. It’s taken considerably longer  that that but craft beer geeks everywhere will be delighted to learn that variety 15/10/23 has now completed its trials and it beer made with it no noticeable change of taste was detected compared to true Fuggle. The hop was released in late 2024 as Wye Fuggle.

Nice. Staying with hops, Stan released the new edition of Hop Queries at the end of last week and shared this tidbit:

Alex Barth, then president of John I. Haas, showed this chart at the 2015 American Hop Convention. It tracks hop usage since 1971. One hundred years ago brewers used the equivalent of 12.6 grams of alpha acids per hectoliter (26.4 gallons, or 85% of a 31-gallon barrel). That had fallen to 9.1 grams in 1971 and continued to drop regularly until it was just over 4 grams in 2011. It ticked up to 4.5 grams in 2011, climbed in the years that followed, and will be about 4.7 grams this year.

Which, once again, makes me want a recreated version of something like Dominion White Label to show what big ales from the early 1900s were really like. Similarly perhaps, The Beer Nut offered an explanation of “spice bag” to my eternal gratitude in case I want to undertake a recreation.

Stan also gave me plenty to poach… err… to consider in his weekly update on Monday, including this from Phil Cook on the appearance of beer related clues in The New York Times crossword puzzles:

Since noticing a reference to modern hazy IPA in the New York Times crossword and wondering what that “meant” in terms of beer’s currency in the popular culture, I’ve been keeping a tally of what else comes up. I recently realised I had a full calendar year worth of such records, and the urge to make a spreadsheet and go looking for patterns came on predictably strongly (for me) after that. The result: ninety-nine appearances, clumped around a few themes, with “ale” and “ipa” done to death, a few favoured brand names, some real clangers, and the occasional delight. I think I got all the beer-related clues and answers.

Speaking of games, did you hear Laura Hadland on BBC 4’s You and Yours talking about pub games this week?

Question: am I horrible for hating branded glassware? I mean I like a nice glass and even have a significant degree of sympathy for an anatomically correct drinking vessel for any certain sort of drink. But, as I consider these sensible thoughts from Boak and Bailey…

This brings us to another problem: a glass of Budvar is much less enjoyable when it’s served in a bog standard British pint glass, with no foam, rather than in a branded mug with a good head. We don’t demand perfect Czech-style ‘pours’ and utter reverence – only an acknowledgement that it’s a bit more than a pint of lager. When that rep visited The Old Stillage, and The Swan, they apparently left behind boxes and boxes of pretty convincing Czech-style mugs. Round, ribbed, slightly squat. The beer looked and tasted great.

…I am all “yup… yup… sure… definitely…” as it all makes sense and then a whisper of a “nope” when there’s mention of a glass with a logo on it. No go the logo. See, I don’t like clothes with the manufacutures’ ads on them. I remember picking the embroidered polo player off the chest of a very nice shirt I once found in a vintage place. Too Heathers. Also – and probably more importantly – it buggers up the look of the beer. Does an apple need a wrapper? Nope. It’s an awkward imposition. Plus it’s a bit “oooh, look at me buying the good stuff” frankly. Branded glasses are the Tesla trucks of beer. There. I said it. Speaking of logos, here’s a question: can it ever be OK to have a representation of a young woman in a UK beerfest advertising:

Emily Ryans, sponsorship manager at St Albans Beer & Cider Festival, explained the reasoning behind the design in a statement: “Rather than adopting soulless corporate branding, we instead choose to highlight a different piece of local history each year, and on this occasion are marking the centenary of Ballito Hosiery Mill. In doing so, we’ve been inspired by Ballito’s 1950s advertising, exhibited by St Albans Museum”… “The character in our logo is a confident, empowering woman, designed to both celebrate the important history of a factory that employed hundreds of local women, as well as make the point that beer festivals – which have suffered from a traditionally male image – are open to all,” Ryans continued. 

Of course it is and this seems reasonable. Also being reasonable, here’s an interesting twist on the US tariffs and Canadian provinces’ booze ban response is how it has led to questions like when is a beer is a Canadian beer… even if the brand is American:

In wake of U.S. tariffs, the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) said it notified beverage alcohol retailers, distributors and producers that American-branded products wouldn’t be sold or distributed in the province. The SLGA originally released a list of 54 American alcohol brands, including Bud Light, Blue Moon, Busch, Kirkland Wine and others… Labatt Breweries of Canada says it employs about 3,500 people in the country and brews brands like Bud Light, Busch and Budweiser in Canada… On Monday, the government walked back its decision. It said in a statement that the move aligned with other provinces and that it would focus on alcohol produced in the U.S.

Speaking of remote wastelands, if you ever need to get from Luton to Moldova, Martin has led the way – and done so in daring fashion seeing as the place is in the Kremlin‘s crosshairs.

Digging further into that map you’ll see not only how close Iaşi is to the Moldovan border, but how close you are to place names like Kherson and Zernov’s Phyllophora Field. 20 minutes after walking through the Arrivals door at Iaşi, we’re at central Piata Independentei and it’s all looking very Communist era. And a bit eerily quiet. “LOOK ! There’s a place saying BEER !” says Mrs RM, urgently.

Thrilling tales of discount holidays replicating The Third Man or what! Martin: “any chance of a slice of lime for the lager?” Bartender: “lime, sir? Harry Lime?”

ADMISSION: here’s that surprise I mentioned above… I forgot to finished this week’s update. Wednesday got away from me. Work stuff. Home stuff. Dinner out. I woke up at 3:25 am and it was like being in a movie – snapping upright, close up on my horrified face, shouting “NNNNNOOOOoooooo!!!” Not really. So maybe I’ll fill in a few more items over the day in this penultimate space I leave for a few last stories.

Update at my 10:40 am ciggie break:*** I had actually bookmarked this piece from Mudgie-man on one retro pub move he liked:

… hang on a minute, isn’t this “unique concept” simply reverting back to how pubs used to be a couple of generations ago? Back in the 1960s, most pubs had, at the very least , two separate bars, a public bar with plainer furnishings and a more down-to-earth atmosphere, where drinkers in working clothes would be served, and a more comfortable, sedate and genteel lounge. Back in those days, the beer was usually a bit cheaper in the public bar as well. However, over the years, brewers steadily knocked their pubs through into a single room. This was in tune with the spirit of the age, being seen as more modern, inclusive and egalitarian. It also made supervision of the pub easier and, at a time when public bar prices were regulated by law, allowed the pub to charge the higher lounge prices throughout. It’s now relatively uncommon to find a pub with completely separate “sides” and, even where they do, the old price differential has disappeared.

And I had noticed one odd thing about this article in the NYT about rich brats and their spring break trips to the Bahamas – the price:

One student at each school is informally appointed a representative for GradCity, rounding up peers to book the trip and serving as a liaison with the company. At some schools, the position is handed down as an honor. The trips cost about $2,700 a person for five nights with four students sharing a room. An additional $250 “platinum pass” provides access to sunset cruises and other amenities. Longer stays and rooms with fewer students cost more. In exchange for their work, student representatives can qualify for a discounted or free trip. Sometimes, students raise funds or pool money to pay for peers who cannot afford the trips on their own.

That is pretty much the same price as a normal (if not taken by my kids) school grad trips. I understand teen participants from my part of the world go to Japan or Ireland, say, for around $5,000 a pop. Maybe more. Is the NTY concern the access to alcohol in nations where there isn’t a nutso ban on drinking under 21 years of age?

[Update over…]

One last thing. With the Federal election on up here, I need to get photos of the leaders of each party pouring a draft beer. They always have to pour a draft beer in at least one photo op during the campaign. Trudeau Jr. in 2021. Jack Layton in 2011. And, from the same year, even an unlikely backhander from Stephen Harper. It’s the law. I picked that fact up when I used to be a pundit. Send them in if you see ‘em.

Meanwhile, check out The Session and also please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (WHILE YOU CAN!!! They are saying they are holidaying in April and May) 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*Fight!!!
**Write!!!
***One need not smoke to have a ciggie break.

Now That We’ve Cleared Up The “St. Paddy’s / St. Patty’s” Day Confusion, Here’s The Beery News Notes

I like a good breakfast sandwich as much as the next guy but I have to say I have never elevated a disk shaped sausage to sainthood. For me, Peanuts sort of established who Patty is before she grew up to be the bassist of The Bangles under an alias. So the whole “Patty v. Paddy” thing flies by me and, anyway, I tend to use the long form.  Which is fine because, you know, we ourselves are Scottish. Which is what we told pals who invited us out to drink on a Monday night when we took a pass. Our new PM probably better knew what to do when celebrating that I did. But I think Liam, however, he of Ireland, has established an alternative answer to the puzzle of how to deal with the day. That’s a hop shoot omlette right there:

I’ve experimented with cooking hop shoots before, but this is my first time to force them in the dark. Blanched and lightly fried, and served on an omelette with pecorino and black pepper. Great texture, like asparagus but more of a delicate mangetout or green bean flavour. I’m impressed …

For a more traditional tribute to Patrick, check out The Loop for a true Americana dive bar version. I wonder what the equivalent elsewhere could be? I know who we could ask. Perhaps Retired Martin who advised on the question of what one can do when there’s a spare 25 minutes to be spent at the train station in Doncaster, all by way of very tightly focused photo essay:

I would buy a book called “What Would Paul Mudge Do ?”. He certainly wouldn’t get his beer in a takeaway milk bottle to drink on the 18:22, oh no. He’d have a pint from one of Sheffield’s cask champions. But a man doesn’t travel from South Yorkshire to South Yorkshire to drink South Yorkshire beers, so I had a pint from Tallinn. And admired the seating in what is a lovely, but slightly too small, station pub.

Admittedly, you need to go back to link each sentence to an image but it’s a nice tidy narrative if you ask me. Speaking of tidy narratives, Pete Brown‘s latest column for The Times has taken a step up, using the space so far dedicated to a newbie guide to share, instead, a vignette on a player in the trade – the beer buyer:

The Waitrose beer buyer Jourdan Gabbini, 31, from Wokingham in Berkshire, genuinely loves beer and obviously enjoys his job. His ambition is to create “a bottle shop within a shop” that doesn’t just stack up the beer but helps people engage with and explore it, in part by highlighting brewers that are local to each store. This can be frustrating when a beer you like isn’t available in your manor. But that means another local brewer is getting the benefit. Gabbini has the freedom to develop real relationships with brewers. Last year he even co-created a new beer with the Lost and Grounded brewery in Bristol and Caravan Coffee Roasters — a coffee pale ale that was exclusive to Waitrose.

Speaking of booze sales, Lew dipped his toe into the tariff dispute and examined the Canadian response when it comes to the policies implimented up here by our government run liquor trade:

The most common reaction has been pure Canada: a non-smiling “Elbows up!”, echoing Mr. Hockey, Saskatchewan-born Gordie Howe, a player who took no shit off anyone. Anyone who tried to slash Howe was getting a fast elbow to the head. Canada’s ready for this, and they’re not kidding. The angry Americans are right about one thing. The Canadian response of taking everything off the shelves, leaving only blank space behind, is disproportionate and goes further than the American tariffs. This doesn’t just affect day-to-day, month-on-month sales. This kind of action also attacks something much more valuable: the brand. Raise the price while leaving the bottles on the shelf, and you paradoxically make people think about the brand more, maybe even realize how much they ARE willing to spend to get it. But take the bottles away, leaving an empty shelf with a “BUY CANADIAN INSTEAD” sign, and the American product becomes invisible.

Lew says, quite reasonably, that this degree of response is because Canada is facing an existential crisis. I don’t actually think that’s the full story. I have loads of pals and more blood family in the USA than here in Canada but, you know, gotta tell you… we’re not going anywhere. And we’re not some sort of jilted pal. Trump just fucking pissed us off. When I played soccer in university, my Scottish father (a much better player in his own youth) would say “don’t wake the sleeping dog.” Well, we’re up now.  And we are drinking our own damn rye. Even the cheap stuff that tastes like gasoline.

Speaking of these the finer things, Nigel Sadler pointed me to an interesting 1991 Belgian beer rating guide posted by the beer importers James Clay and Sons on Bluesky:

This clever guide evaluated beers based on ABV, Sourness, Sweetness, Bitterness, and predominant flavour, which then generated a five digit code that could easily give a picture of the key characteristics.

Here are the five images (1,2,3,4,5) in case your are not part of the Bluesky way of life. I add them not just to scrape the data but to illustrate a couple of points. First, I have long thought the overbearing BJCP system was clumsy and created poorly transferrable information in a simple but meaningful way. This does that. Second, being a real nerd, I immediately recognized that this five digit system mirrors the SINPO code used by long distance radio listener nerds. The SINPO code not only succinctly frames the transient quality of a radio transmission heard well beyond the intended broadcast range but it is also understood across cultural and language gaps. Simple, neutral and still data rich. So it’s gold when you are sending your QSL reception report looking for a postcard, right? What? No! No, it’s really cool. It really is. No, you’re the big fat loser.

Getting back to where we started, Ron has been to Brazil again and, much to my delight, has posted a photo essay – a montage if you will – of many of his breakfasts as well as what it is like to be an Englishman in Rio for Carnaval:

Many not so much lightly-dressed as slightly-dressed partygoers walk by. I’ve never seen so many men in fishnet tights and tutus. It has a bit of a Gay Pride air about it. Some of the party people pause to pick up Pils. Always the Pils. There’s a merry buzz. Everyone is going to a party. I can feel their crackling anticipation as they laugh and drink their way down the road. Anticipation of a good time. A really good time. I’m starting to quite like this Carnaval thing. Everyone is in a really good mood. Even a miserable old git like me.

Over at VinePair, Joshua M. Bernstein told the tale of the rise and fall of Magic Hat #9, a once hudely popular beer out of Vermont:

Johnson built a moderate-strength pale ale infused with apricot essence, and the mysteriously named #9 hit Burlington taps in summer 1995. The beer was designed to disappear come fall, but calls from angry bar owners threatening to stop carrying Magic Hat beers led Newman to turn #9 into a year-round release. “It was never intended to do anything,” Newman says. “We were just trying to find a way to sell beer.” The beer thrived on neglect and even disdain. “Beer geeks at the time f(u)cking hated it, but the more they hated it, the better the sales were,” Newman says, adding that #9 was nobody’s favorite beer at the brewery. Magic Hat initially spent scant dollars to support #9. “I could argue that we spent the first two years doing absolutely nothing to help it grow, almost working to kill it,” Newman says. “And then one day we went, ‘What the f(u)ck are we thinking here?’ And so we got on the bandwagon and it just kept growing.”

There was a time when Magic Hat was way ahead of its time and attracted the dollars of border crossing beer nerds like me over a decade and a half ago, looking for their latest Odd Notion seasonals. I seem to have had some on New Years Eve 2004. In October 2005, I review another mixed case of their and… I mentioned that I didn’t exactly love the #9. I thought it was supposed to be peach but Oskar in the comments said “No. 9 used to be much higher quality, with a REAL apricot taste” so I wasn’t wrong wrong. Just wrong.

Speaking of travel, Katie spent a week on the Isle of Man. She didn’t mention seeing Kelly… but she did write a lovely piece at her space The Glug about solo dining at The Boat Yard in the town of Peel:

The menu is as fishy as I dreamed it would be, and while I’d normally order something picky or snacky or fried for a starter, I couldn’t think of anything nicer on such a cold night than a bowl of chowder. It came hot and creamy, filled with Manx kipper and mussels, and a healthy incorporation of curly parsley. Slurping it felt like warmth and health and happiness. To drink, I had a glass of champagne. And then another. How incredibly off-putting of me, to ignore wine tasting regulations and all common decency, but I wanted some Champagne, so I had some. End of story. If you want to fight me about it, I‘ll meet you outside. Doing champagne by the glass is not ideal for any hospitality venue, and I apologised for being so awkward. Then I apologised for apologising. My lovely host was gregarious: “You deserve to have what you like,” she said. I wondered if had I been with other people she might not have added life coaching to my menu free of charge, but I appreciated it nonetheless. And anyway, I did like it very much, because it was rich and biscuity, with a squeeze of lemon sherbet.

Smoky kipper chowder and glasses of champagne. That’s it right there. Yup.

Note: Martyn captured on the audio talking about the porter. And the book. The book that launches very soon.

And David Jesudason has managed to make me homesick for a place I have never been.  Much of my family lives along the 128 bus route east of Edinburgh and I worked in Poland for a while when I was in my twenties. So this portrait of the The Persevere in Edinburgh’s historic port of Leith has me longing… and (again) hungry:

…it retains those born and bred in Edinburgh’s historically working class Leith district, especially sports lovers who might glance at the horse racing before a match. While it also serves as a home away from home for many of the Polish diaspora who have been linked to the port since 1939. This is seen in the pub’s owners, Lublin-born Dorota Czerniec-Radowska and her husband Konrad Rochowski, and the kitchen they have run since 2015 which pumps out delicacies, such as plate-sized schnitzels and comforting white sausage (Żurek) soup. You can eat these in the pub or the restaurant-style section, known as the Percy (also the affectionate nickname given to the pub by its regulars,) where paintings of Dorota and Konrad’s hometown are displayed.

One of the pleasures of Poland was learning how useful my childhood training in the rolling of an “r” and the roughening of a “ch” were.* And, as with the Korean food, the reassembling of similar ingredients was also a welcome surprise. Next time I am there, I should make of point of being here… there… at this pub.

Note: a reminder for next week. It’s another end of the month edition of The Session… and Gary jumped the gun but gives us a good example as we prepare. Matty C is hosting:

For the March 2025 edition of The Session I’m asking participants to produce a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs. This could be a review of a beer you’ve enjoyed, or perhaps one you haven’t. A pub you’re fond of, or maybe one that has room for improvement. You could write about a beer experience (or lack of) in a setting such as a restaurant, or even produce a critique that focuses on a particular aspect of beer or pub culture. The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

I am still working out how this isn’t a distinction without a difference as building a good argument always requires considered analysis. But I look forward to the submissions.

Did you now that some common foods do not qualify as no-alc? Well you will now thanks to the exceedingly tenuous argument placed into the discourse by the lobbyists of the The British Beer and Pub Association:

Advocates argue that the current limit not only confuses consumers but also restricts the development of innovative alcohol-free products. According to the BBPA, raising the threshold would help the UK’s brewing sector thrive in the rapidly growing no and low alcohol market, while providing consumers with more clarity and choice. The BBPA’s findings highlight that burger rolls can contain up to 1.2% ABV, while malt loaf can reach 0.7%, and ripe bananas can hit 0.5%. These levels are considered negligible and occur naturally due to fermentation, yet remain higher than the current 0.05% threshold for alcohol-free beer. The government’s consultation is set to conclude later this year, with the industry eagerly awaiting the outcome.

Eagerly. Not “patiently” or even simply “awaiting” but eagerly.

That’s it. Lots of interesting stuff to read as it turned out. While you await eagerly for more next week, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (WHILE YOU CAN!!! They are holidaying in April and May) 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 (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*My late toddler trauma includes being told “Whales and Wales are not homonyms!!!” as a parent’s hand was placed before my mouth to catch the whisp of an “h” that was so critical to the continuation of the culture. 

Your Beery News Notes For – YIKES!!! – The 1/24th Mark For The Year 2024… Err… 2025

It’s really good, this whole passage of time thing. It really is. Isn’t it. It is… isn’t it? Fine. Face it. The holidays are over. OVER! But that doesn’t mean the celebrations are over. For example, in the U.S. of A. we hear that it’s Prohibition Remembrance Day celebrating the 106th anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment to their Constitution. Whooo!!! If “neo-temp” was actually a real thing there’d be parades. I do love me a parade. But who needs parades when you have NA beer for $5 a can!

Speaking of fine traditions, at her  very clearly titled Braciatrix: The Newsletter, Dr Christina Wade shares her thoughts on the wassailing tradition which marks the eve of the Epiphany in Christianity. Or rather traditions:

Some versions of the tradition are known as apple howling, which is probably one of the most metal names I have ever heard. Excellent band name tbh. Regardless of exactly how people celebrated wassailing specifically, one thing does seem to often remain at the centre of these traditions- that is the alcoholic beverages. My favourite. So what exactly do we drink? We drink Lambswool or Lamb’s Wool. No, not the actual fuzzy stuff from the adorable creature better known for making sweaters. Nay. It’s a beverage made from ale, spices, sugar, and roasted apples. Some recipes also call for cream, eggs, or both.

That sounds pretty excellent if you ask me. Winterfestive. Speaking of the old Epiph’, we had a visitor who had spent much of 2024 in France over for the holidays and we had a galette des rois but I had no idea it was pagan and also no idea that it was causing another boring woke-trad political scandal in the old country due to its history:

Historians say French Epiphany cakes — called galette des rois (literally, galette of the kings) — can be traced to Roman festivals dedicated to Saturn and to the longer daylight hours after the winter solstice. The custom was to put a bean in cakes given to slaves, and to name the one who found it “king for the day”. In modern France, the bean has been replaced by a porcelain figure, but the finder still gets a paper crown. Over the centuries, the galette des rois merged with Epiphany and it became usual to start eating them after 12th night, at least until the French Revolution, when the cakes were banned in a drive to eradicate Christianity in the 1790s.

Matthew C, taking on the player-manager role this week, published his story on Roosters Brewery in Harrogate, England in which he does a few very unusal things. It is more than a B.O B.* Is that a B.B.O.B.? One thing is that he interviews other people to corroborate the story shared by a brewery owner. And he does background research to tell the tale of the brewery from older records than the recitals of the owner. This sort of thing gives the reader great confidence, especially as the main players seem a bit quiet:

Brew Britannia also speaks of Franklin’s reclusiveness (despite numerous attempts, I was not able to contact him for the purposes of this article) and his modesty. It’s apparent, speaking to those who knew him, that he does not consider himself to be a trailblazer, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary… “Sean was quite straightforward once we’d made contact. Mostly he was a bit embarrassed to be treated like a great authority or legendary figure. He was at great pains to credit others wherever he could,” Boak and Bailey tell me of their interactions with him, which took place in 2013. “He also described himself as an introvert and he was certainly fairly quiet and thoughtful in our conversations—although certainly passionate enough when he got down to actually talking about wine and beer.”

Such a good bit of investigation based writing, especially in a positive portrait.** Speaking of which, even with perhaps a finer focus. The Beer Nut – or rather his alt personality Stash Killer – released the results of his study on a six year old nitro can of Guinness:

It’s in the flavour where I think we’ve had some evolution. It’s definitely more flavoursome than when young, and I wish I had a fresh can to hand to compare. The tartness has both increased and become more rounded, adding a kind of classy balsamic vinegar effect. Conversely, that finishes on a sweeter note, with some chocolate, which is something in most stouts that I find missing in Guinness, and a little maraschino cherry. We’re back to regular programming with the quick finish and minimal aftertaste.

Detail. We meet that again. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, over on BlueSky, Kevin of Casket Beer, asked if anyone had ever had a Scotch Ale out of a thistle glass. Let me ruin the punch line to one of his findings:

So where did we get the notion that the thistle glass was somehow an important part of Scottish beer culture? The Gordon glass may have played a role. However, the 1993 book, Scotch Ale, by Greg Noonan likely had a significant impact, at least in the United States. The cover prominently features a beer in a thistle glass. The book’s contents do not get into glassware or indicate an explanation for why the glass was used. Maybe it was influenced by Gordon. The influential book likely conveyed to a generation of brewers, homebrewers and enthusiasts, that the glass had some meaningful connection to Scottish Ale.

Read the rest for find more findings. It’s not all that precise, sadly. As far as lost goes, these days in all the seesaw back and forth about various recent studies of medical studies and statements resting more and more on labels and less on methodology,*** I found some relief in the transcript from a transcript from TVO’s news magazine The Agenda from almost seven years ago when Mr. B himself**** and three other drinks authors to discuss the question. And it is a civil discussion where views and differences were shared and considered. Firm view like this:

If you can decompress with one glass of wine and keep it at one glass of wine per day, that’s a very uncommon pattern, but if you can more power to you. But those who get into trouble with alcohol tend to find it’s progressive, and denial is a big part of it. So if you can stick to one, go for it.

Speaking of firm and even disagreeable views but, still, focused on the detailed examination… Boak and Bailey wrote about some of the disregarded pubs of the Easton district of Bristol. Then, more importantly, in their Patreon account wrote about a few of their toilets:

Last night, neither of us popped the cork until The Sugar Loaf. Despite having been cleaned up and made a little smarter, it’s still basically down-to-earth. That meant that the toilets had no soap but did have water hot enough to have made tea with. As in, dangerously, scaldingly, steaming hot. Not that the soap or the water mattered much because nobody was washing their hands. [Shudder.]

Not segueing on the notion of popping corks at all, I noticed an interesting idea in this column by Eric Asimov in the NYT on a trend in restaurant wine lists – focus:

The wine list at Smithereens, a new seafood restaurant in the East Village, is shocking to say the least. Of its 62 selections, more than half, 32, are rieslings. Twenty-nine more are various other whites. There’s only one red wine, a pinot noir from Shelter Winery in the Baden region of Germany. Some may criticize a list like that as self-indulgent, but I love it. I rarely see a wine list with such attitude or character… I’ve noticed more and more relatively short wine lists… Not all are as provocative as the Smithereens list, but they are incisive, chosen to convey a point of view and, as good lists ought to do, shape the character of the restaurant.

Sounds like the brewery in Maine that made six stouts twenty years ago. I also like how it is aimed at breaking assumptions. Iconoclasm. Sadly, we too often read of presumed and autonomously authorized ways, like how to achieve a “sensory worst“***** which, if we are honest, depends on learning from the pew and then walking out as an adherent to a form of authority – comforting maybe but that’s too close to the precious basement of speakers, amps and equalizers audiophile approach. If you understood this at all the levels I do, you’d agree.

There are limits to disagreeability, however. In The Times this week we read about one of those situations where two sorts of disagreeabilities clash as each is based on a human right:

Pubs could ban customers from speaking about contentious beliefs such as religious views or transgender rights over fears of falling foul of Labour’s workers rights reforms. The government has been warned by the equalities watchdog that rules could “disproportionately curtail” freedom of expression and be applied to “overheard conversations”. Ministers have proposed that employers must protect workers from being harassed at work by “third parties” such as customers or clients. If they fail to do so they could be sued. However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said this was particularly challenging in cases involving a “philosophical belief”, such as people’s views on religion or women’s rights, because many business owners do not understand such topics are protected by equality law.

Now before any of you scream “WOKE!” like a ninnie (beside the fact J. Christ Himself ask us to be awake), I can share that I have dabbled in this sort of human rights and we need to know just as there are intersecting rights we can have competing rights.******  So these knots need unraveling. And, just to be clear, there is not obligation to allow the loud boorish bigot to remain in the pub. As JJB himself has stated:

…nobody in mine ever uses racist language like Farage’s Reform activists, and if they did they’d be told to leave and never return.

With that good word, a reminder of all you all needing to put down more good words.  The Session is trying a revival, a resuscitation even. On Friday January 31, 2025 please post your thoughts – via blog, newsletter, social media… anything – on the topic:

“What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?

Publish on last Friday in January and then leave a comment here on a comment or even email me the link at beerblog@gmail.com! I have also proposed hosts of the February 2025 (if there is breath in the old corpse) the form of which I will leave in their good hands along with this wise advice emailed from Stan: “I will support in any way that does not require too much work ;>)“!!! Do it!

That’s it. Mid-January is here and boy is it going by. As it flees, 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 (sometimes even but never) 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy 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.

*Better Brewery Owner Bio?
**Also positive, his piece which should be called “Gud Wee Coo!“
***A new and damning report came out just this Tuesday according to the NYT: “Among both men and women, drinking just one alcoholic beverage a day increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, esophageal cancer, oral cancer and injuries of various kinds, according to a federal analysis issued on Tuesday. Women face a higher risk of developing liver cancer even at this modest level of drinking. Drinking two drinks a day — double the U.S. Dietary Guidelines’ recommendation for women but the current amount condoned for men — increases the odds of a death caused by alcohol for both men and women.” Expect outcry for booze boosters! Stan has a better way: “There is no denying the negative impact alcohol has on your body. It is stupid to claim otherwise. The rest I leave to Mary-Chapin Carpenter.“
****A long standing TVO regular it seems from the available records from 1998 or so. Not the absence of references to “craft” in the lexicon. 
*****Has anyone figured out why craft experts were so good with all the flaws but so poor at the strengths?
******A plain example are those chevrons built into public sidewalk corner wheelchair ramps. When they first were installed, instances of people with limited vision walking into traffic increased. The chevons act as a warning to those using a white cane.

Happy Boxing Day! It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year… No Really… It Still Is…

Ah… Boxing Day.* How… How… How was your Christmas? Did you have some string handy yesterday? I like me a Wednesday Christmas Day. Basically writes off two weeks. Beats the crap out of three years ago when we were lining up in our cars for vaccines. Much more merry now. Perhaps. By the way, have you wished someone “Merry Christmas”? Don’t worry about the “war on Christmas” crap spread by materialist heathens who’ve never darkedned the doorway of a church.  It’s the wishing of “merry” that you might want to reconsider – given it meant getting shlozzled and shitfaced before the Victorians got a hold of it and watered it down. While we are at it, you want a Christmas story that’s real and watery eye enducing?  Look no further than Baltimore’s Teddy Pasketti and his taxi ride this week:

“You ready for Christmas? Traveling?” He tells me that he’s not traveling. I ask if he’s from the area. “Hampden born and raised. But my mom and sister now live in Highlandtown.” I ask if he’s seeing them for the holidays. He gets a bit quiet and says, “Yeah, we don’t get along.” I say — again, a wee bit sauced, but not drunk, but certainly too familiar, but completely serious — “Yeah, I have an aunt who got religious and said something we both regretted. We haven’t talked in years. I should call her. Because…”

You want more? How about 34 years ago in Scotland with the fam! How about in the late 1700s? You know, I like that the kids have grown up, not like back in 2008 when I was bagged. Now, it’s relaxing, really a succession of holidays before the e-transfers begin. Did you celebrate Tibb’s Eve? Most sensible holiday of the year:

“…when people drink and eat at kitchen parties and bars with all the people they want to celebrate with before spending time with those they have to…“

NPR had the story of a similar German tradition that is enjoying a bit of a revival:

“Growing up in the ’80s, ’90s, early 2000s, the idea of Stammtisch in Germany’s youth was sort of rejected as ‘This is something that our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ generation, would do,’ ” said Robert Christoffel, 45, who moved to the U.S. more than a decade ago. But he’s noticed that’s starting to change. “A lot of my friends, nowadays, in Germany — maybe because they have gotten a little older as well — they are now meeting up and sort of establishing Stammtisch,” he told me.

And did you watch the Church-Key Brewing holiday video about the true meaning of Christmas? Click here for the whole thing. And that guy there isn’t even playing Santa!

What else is going on? You know, it is good to read a review of something related to beer from outside the beer bubble. In the past overwrought days of craft fandom objections would be raised against those speaking plainly. Thankfully those days of the bubbleverse “experts”** are past. So it is with that greater certainty, then, that we read Declan Ryan in the venerable Times Literary Supplement this week reviewing ATJ’s book A Pub for all Seasons which drew me in with these observations:

Underneath the surface of this apparently casual year-long, post-Covid pub pilgrimage is a darker, more melancholy book peeking out, about grief and loss. With his mother dying, pubs become places that have hosted “generations of drinkers”, where “some of their sensibilities might linger on”. The strongest parts of the book are not just about searching for a new local, but rather about the heating bills saved by crouching in a snug, and the camaraderie and ritual of being somewhere that offers the chance to relive one’s youth, and where “one of the most common words overheard … is ‘remember’”.

That is some very rich recognition right there. And hopefully a boost to sales. Speaking of matters literary, Lisa Grimm shared her thoughts on the year with a few thoughts on her hunt for both beers and books with a few cameos here and there:

Toward the end of the summer, while the offspring went off to visit their grandparents in America, we took an adults-only excursion to Bristol and Bath. In Bristol, we had the pleasure of meeting Ray & Jess of Boak & Bailey in person, and gladly accepted their suggestions for all things beer and books in the area. The Bath portion of the trip had been planned around none of the usual Roman or Jane Austen-y sights in town, but rather, a visit to Persephone Books, which was as excellent as expected. Happily, Bath has an even broader range of independent bookshops, so we took in most of those before taking a side quest to the George Inn in Norton St Philip for some medieval pub tourism.

And keeping with the written, I hadn’t appreciated the work that The Tand and those like him do when putting together a CAMRA branch newsletter. He shared that issue #69 of More Beer Magazine – edited by the hand of Tand and published by the Rochedale, Oldham and Bury branch – was out and then shared the link.  I was immediately struck (again) by the value of this level of CAMRA writing and also by, conversely, the huge and entirely missed opportunity that craft beer had available to follow like this example by generating a discourse that was about the drinker rather than the brewer owner, focused upon an analytical rather than commercial point of view. Have a look.

As noted by B+B in their footnotes and by Stan in his Monday roundup, The Guardian published an extensive and well researched study by Mark Blacklock of Sir Humphry Smith, the elderly and reactionary owner of Samuel Smith Old Brewery. I won’t spoil the final observations that go someway to explain the man’s seemingly wasteful, vain and perhaps paranoid eccentricities – including this sort of conservative decline apparently in the name of puritanical heritage:

Samuel Smith Old Brewery owns more than 200 pubs across Britain, located as far north as Edinburgh and far south as Bristol. According to some estimates, more than half of these pubs are currently closed. The heart of the brewery is in North Yorkshire, where it owns 59 pubs. In September 2023, I phoned all 59 pubs and could only identify 19 that were certainly open. Nine months later, I phoned them all again and managed to speak to staff at 22 pubs. At 30 of them, I heard the same recorded message: “Unfortunately, the pub is currently closed. We hope to appoint a management team and open the pub as soon as possible.” At four pubs, the phone rang but no one answered. At the others, the phone line was dead.

Speaking of Stan, the last installment of his Hop Queries of the year is out. This month he shared these startling stats about the Pacific NW trade in a time of glut:

The news was not exactly news. Farmers in the Northwest states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington reduced acreage 18 percent from 2023 and production was down 16 percent. It fell from 104 million pounds to 87 million pounds. That’s the largest reduction since between 2010 and 2009… Despite reducing acreage in 2023, growers harvested 104 million pounds, compared to 102 million in 2022. Although average yield per acre crept up in 2024, in part because higher yielding alpha hops now account for a larger percentage of acreage, the reduction probably means farmers harvested fewer pounds of hops valued for their aroma than brewers actually used. 

And for what I believe is that rarest of things – the treble reference – Stan also asked me a question on Monday about the story of a Texas Brewery selling a $300 bottle of beer. Well, it was a 6 litre pressure resistant bottle so I am going to guess that the cost is the glass and labour to fille and package the thing is probably $100. A decade ago I had reason to check with a trusted source on this so am happy with that figure. But Stan was asking about the article’s tone which, this being times of good cheer, I can only refer to my discussion of the Tand’s editorialship above. Manufactured enthusiasm did as much to kill craft as anything else. But it is the holidays. So, if such a bottle gives joy, go ahead. But if $100 of very fine beer has the same effect then giving another $200 more to your local food bank will probably more than triple your return.

Question: why is the British Guild of Beer Writers posting advertising as content?

Christmas crime struck one English Premier League fitba ground just before the holidays when one concessionaire’s self-service beer dispensers were stolen:

…10 per cent of EBar’s 50-strong mobile unit fleet was stolen on the eve of a trip down to London to provide its service at Crystal Palace. Mr Beeson described the theft as “so nihilistic” and said the EBars have no resale value and “can’t be operated by anyone else”.  The units were in a trailer attached to a pickup truck in the secure car park outside the firm’s premises.. so the team could get set up ahead of Crystal Palace’s home game against Arsenal. The units were due to head to a racecourse this week but now they will have to be replaced. Mr Beeson said: “They were going to be used several times over the Christmas period, now we are stuffed.

Note: even in the face of criminality we get a Christmas Pun!!

Finally in medical news, the Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health has been released. It is a brand new pre-publication draft by the US Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on the state of knowledge about booze and the bod. It is a study of studies. There are a few things to note.

The selected measure of a unit is very modest. To begin, the millilitre is the only unit that matters and 14 grams of pure alcohol is equal to 17.7 milliliters. This is equivalent to the alcohol in one 12 oz can of 5% beer or a 5 oz glass of 12% wine. One US ounce is just shy of 30 ml so an ounce of 40% liquor has 11.8 ml of pure alcohol. Which means a unit of gin equals a smidge less than 1.2 ounces.*** For women, to be a moderate drinker you have to drink one or fewer of these units a day. One. For men it is up to two.  That’s it. The standard is then extended to be no more than 14 units for men and 7 for women in a week. Anything more than that is not “moderate” drinking. So there is no comfort for the regular drinker, especially for women. You are not a moderate drinker according to this study.

Second, the aggregation of “all risks” to health from alcohol is a bit of a dubious methodology. You don’t die of all risks. You die of one risk. One disease being absent from your risk list does not off set mortality risk from the other diseases. If you die of cancer I would suggest that you at that moment are not in any way relieved that you did not die of heart disease. Individual people die of single diseases. So it is important to not off set the good news, if there is any, for the bad, if there is any.

And there is good news. At page 132 there is a finding that moderate (ie very low) drinking level does assist with heart disease and stroke while at page 162 there was determined to be insufficient evidence to link such modest alcohol use to mental decline. But and it is a bit but, conversely, at page 100 it states “Women who consumed alcohol in moderation (< 1 US drink/day) likely have a higher risk of breast cancer than women who never consumed alcohol.” Note the choice of that word “never” in that it is not “less than” or anything like that. And at page 101 it states:

There is no evidence of a J-shaped association; rather the association appears to be linear with increased consumtion at all levels…

There is also no j-shape for many other cancers including gastric, protate and pancreatic, according to pages 90 and 97. The study identifes that as far as cancer goes many studies also included former drinkers who stopped in the category of non-drinkers which messed up the numbers, too.  This all means for cancer the proper advice is, in fact, that “no amount of alcohol is safe”. “Safe” of course bearing a heavy load in that statement.

Because I have tracked my drinks for a number of years, I can happily report that I now drink under 1.4 units a day and well under 14 a week.  But what about younger me? What did me then do to me now? Other than stockpile happy memories. Happy happy memories. But when does the clock start running? Fine, we can’t undo the done. No sense worrying. Right? But there is much caution to be heeded… if you worry about such things. If. Think about that as you work on your resolutions.

That is it!  We are well inside that twilight state when time has no meaning called the holidays. I maybe be back with one more round up on New Year’s Eve but come the New Year, you can check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan will be going strong again each and every Monday except when he isn’t. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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.

*By law, under section 50.2(1)(a)(i) of the Employment Standards Act an “employee may refuse an assignment of work on…December 26…” exercise your right to do nothing!
**The other coalition of the billing.
***Please check my math. But try making an Manhattan with 1.2 ounces of pure alcohol and let me know how it goes.  

These Be The Week Before Christmas Mailed In But Merry Beery News Notes

Well, they would be mailed-in if we hadn’t had a postal strike here in Canada. My Christmas cards are in limbo. Parcels replaced with e-cards. How unjolly. So I have had to find other things to fill my days. Like reading. I was up to a book a week during the pandemic. This year? Not even one a month. I was grateful, then, to read the passage to the right from Prof. Smil’s facinating but dense (not to mention tiny fonted) book Size which is something of an apology to the reader. It’s good to know that sometimes the feelings are mutual when it comes to these sorts of things. Which other writers should issue apologies?

What is up? ATJ starts us off whistfully today, daydreaming of the scene in a favourite pub on Christmas Day:

A pub I regularly visit, The Bridge Inn at Topsham, five miles from where I live, opens for a couple of hours and the landlady Caroline recently told me that hundreds of people turn up and that there was a separate bar to dispense Branoc, which is the pub’s popular session ale. Other beers poured from the wood are of a stronger cast, the kind of strength that would make a cat speak. I am sure that the mood is joyous and celebratory, a cacophony of voices and laughter, inside and outside the pub. The parlour to the left of the pub corridor I guess to be warmed by the well-lit fire and full of eager drinkers, as would I suspect to be the back bar, again with a well-warming fire and conversation ebbing and flowing like the tidal river just below the pub. One day I shall get there on Christmas Day.

Boak and Bailey also consider their actual visits to the pubs of Bristol during these holidays – first at (me being Nova Scotian) the most wonderfully named pub that I will likely never enter, The Nova Scotia, then moving on to The Merchant’s Arms:

The Bass was excellent. The Butcombe was excellent. The Christmas tree twinkled and was reflected in the chocolate brown paintwork. There were more lads in Christmas jumpers, more rugby boys… no, actually, the same ones from The Orchard, on the same trail as us. Again, we found it hard to leave, but The Merchants Arms was beckoning from across the water… We squeezed through the door and through the crowd to a spot within shouting distance of the bar. As we peered at the pumps we heard a voice shouting “Ray! Ray!” but ignored it because, frankly, The Merchants is the kind of pub where almost everyone is called Ray.

If I ever meet B+B, I hope I first see them from a distance so I too can shout “Ray! Ray!” but to be clear I will likely shout “Jess! Jess!” so as to be both cheery and nice while also sneaky and clever.

Also striking a holiday pose, in Foodism we see Will Hawkes wrote about Christmas ales as an echo of Victorian times:

Christmas meant stronger beer, often brewed in October and longer aged to soften the edges. In December 1888, for example, the Phillips Brewery advised readers of the Oxford Times not to miss out on their “Christmas Specialities”: a strong ale, a double [i.e. stronger than usual] stout and an ale aged for two years. These were powerfully flavoured beers designed to accompany the rich, fatty, indulgent dishes then central to, and still part of, a British Christmas: plum pudding, stilton and roast meat of various kinds – this was a time when most Britons did not drink wine. Beers were dark and heady, like liquid Christmas Pudding, and often stronger than 10% ABV.

Now… I would note that English strong ale is not a Victorian invention as careful readers will appreciate. But the point of the reformist middle class Victorian – really Albertan – homey Christmas is quite correct. Still, I do think the Georgians were more fun. Disgusting but fun.

Going further back while remaining ecclesiastical, Dr. Christina Wade shared some snazzy facts this week over on BlueSky about the work of a medieval Cellaress:

The pages of this late 13th-century manuscript, La Sainte Abbeye, detail what would make up a perfect abbey. & what would such an institution be without ale, or, perhaps more precisely, the nun in charge of it, the Cellaress… Pictured in this illustration, between the Abbess, singing nuns, and a small handful of deacons is the cellaress, the woman in charge of food and drink… In medieval monastic communities, ale was an important part of diet. It was critical to the running of many of these nunneries. And not only did they drink it, they often also brewed it on site.

Keeping up with this sort of academic wisdom is what makes this here blog what it is – but I have to admit I also love running across new favourite jargonese like “pseudo-targeted flavoromics” which is just fabulous. Whaaaaaaat does it even mean?

…a comprehensive flavoromics integrating untargeted, pseudo-targeted, and targeted analyses was employed to characterize volatile development across RTs with 14 annotated compounds. Notably, non-linear patterns have been observed in malt coloration, precursors consumption, and volatile development for the first time…

Fabulous. Super dooper fabulous. Speaking of which and yet giving me something of my own flashback, David Jesudason wrote about the experience about returning to the pub as a member of staff, something he had not done for 25 years:

…working in a pub gives you a rare gift of seeing the space for what it truly is even if that is amorphous – at first it went from being a slew of self-contained tables and then a communal mass with multiple conversations tied together with the love of beer. And, at times when I wasn’t part of the fun or the work, I had a vision of it being a high-street shop – the marvel of the micropub unwrapped. The most shameful confession is that for a few seconds when facing random customers I felt like I over-explained to somehow overcompensate that I was more than a bartender – maybe James’s intervention was warranted. That I had somehow failed in my career as a writer and become perma-frosted since 1999, which reveals how I may subconsciously view service industry jobs as somehow inferior to other pursuits.

My trick as a bartender?  Give change in dimes and nickels. You get it all back. Speaking of the jolly, did you see the 1975 BBC new item on the Guinness tanker ship posted at the FB page of the Brewery History Society? It’s not the ship itself that’s jolly but that turtleneck blazer combo… though the “draught” and other puns do strain the patience.

Tariff news update!  Did I mention that Ontario’s government booze store (retail and wholesale) is the biggest in the world? Well, apparently our provincial government is considering restricting the Liquor Control Board of Ontario from buying any American-made alcohol:

“We’ll use every tool in our toolbox, as we put a tariff on bourbon last time. The LCBO is the largest purchasers of alcohol in the entire world. But I’d prefer not to do any of this,” Ford said Friday. Earlier in the week, Ontario’s premier threatened to pull the plug on the electricity supply that powers 1.5-million homes in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Looks like I’ll be sipping rye this winter. As Michigan grinds to a halt. And speaking of sipping, The Tand took himself and herself out for a walk recently to spend the day drinking cask ale in London and shared what he found:

I knew trouble was afoot when the server put my glass under the handpump and splashed beer into it while pouring a half of lager. It was the worst pint of Vocation Bread and Butter I’d ever had, but I supped it quietly and left most of it. I hadn’t the heart to pull this hard-working lass up about it. Someone should have trained her better. At our table we started talking with a couple of lads who’d lived locally for a few years, They too had started on cask and abandoned it so we enjoyed Hofmeister instead…

Somewhat speaking of which and before we get into the “craft rot” stories, they of Pellicle posted some thoughts on the year soon past and their plans for 2025:

While these features remain popular, in that they’re well read, we’ve come to realise that readers are often seeking more than simply a narrative piece about a brewery with a friendly owner who makes really tasty beer. There needs to be an angle, a hook, a proper story to dig your teeth into. We will continue to publish stories about beer and breweries in 2025, but with greater scrutiny and tighter angles focusing on what we feel really matters to our readers. Throughout this year we’ve been pausing to check ourselves and ask “who really cares about this, and why does it matter?” Two hugely important questions when you’re publishing content about any given subject.

This is good. Where ever they are published, brewery owner bios (herein “BOBs”) tend to be samey. Cavity inducing even. Where the reader can find investigative work like fact checking brewery owner assertions or interviewing former employees or business partners for alternative takes on official history these piece might have some hang time. But they are nice and have their place so keep them in there as long as they are matched with as many more analytical critical studies. Good move.

Also looking a bit forward as well, drinks writer Jason Wilson prepared a What’s In and What’s Out chart for the turn of the year. Click to the to the right for a larger version. The bad news that we all know has come to pass is that craft beer* is in the out column but has sake really given it the boot? As is often the case, there is an underlying argument that things that were a bit precious are being left behind so craft beer joins caviar, mini cocktails and Mezcal on the list making room for oysters, dirty martinis and calvados. Now, you can live the life that you think is right for you but I am always going to vote for oysters and calvados.

Note: BA Bart takes the shrinking ship’s helm as the foundering continues. And this is during the week when the frankly “long forgotten to many” RateBeer announced its own demise after five years of big beer ownership – and announced it with some very specific instructions:

Login to the RateBeer website and navigate to the My Profile page… In the right-hand column below “Beer Cellar” is the “My Account” section… In the “My Account” section, click “Compile My Ratings”.. The next page will provide options for downloading your ratings in CSV (comma-separated value) format…

Wow. It’s soon gonna to be gone gone gone goner than Hunter Biden is getting struck from the White House Christmas party list. Just to avoid the link-a-cide, I am connecting to the story at BeerAdvocate, too.

And Jordan noted another passing, of The Growler a beer magazine he edited. Print magazines about beer have never done well in Canada. Ontario had a section in Great Lakes Brewing News from 2009 to 2019 before… the scandal. And we had TAPS that folded its last print edition in 2016, then we had Mash which lasted a few issues the next year, then we had a Canadian edition of Original Gravity for a bit – and now we have The Growler‘s Ontario edition taking its leave in turn, though the BC edition seems to live on. In good times and bad, beer magazines have never seemed to be the thing. Will someone try again?

Speaking of which, interesting zing! from a former blog publisher over Google delisting the “unvetted and often bogus content” of Forbes’ contributor network where a few struggle down the mine axe in hand, hacking against the rock face, convincing others that beer is interesting.

Note: a list of 10 or 25 or 30 people naming their favourite beer or breweries of the year (or anything of the year) isn’t a list of the top 25 or 30. It’s just 25 or 30 lists each with only one listed. End of the year content filling season is here!**

Finally and in far better shape than that second half what was set out above, Drunk Polkaroo is back after 12 weeks off alcohol and counting for health reasons, the details of which he has shared. After a bit of a glum re-entry with a discount brand review, he is one his feet again with a cheery review of a NA beer from one of Canada’s finest brewers. Is this his new thing? It’s certainly a good thing.

That’s it! Happy holidays! Merry Christmas and all that!! Until next time when we will be gathered ’round the Boxing Day Box, 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 (sometimes even but never) 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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.

*As per Beer Insights: ‘ Whole Foods beer buyer Mary Guiver reflected on the theme of focus, resisting the urge “to do everything” and “chase everything”… Whole Foods “had to weather the storm of being a craft-centric retailer,” Mary said, and “it sucked.” ‘
**Plus… “beer pros“!

Festive But Still Pensive Are These Beery News Notes Now Two Weeks Out From Boxing Day

Well, there’s nothing like the fall of a murderous dictator to make the season bright. Sadly, no Nicky Ceaușescu moment but, still, it’s all good news. For now. Almost as cheery was this ad for Younger’s shared at the FB page of the Brewery History Society, It isn’t dated but I am thinking it’s 1920s if we are going by the plus fours of the gent leaning at the bar. They might even be plus eights!

Speaking of the happy jollies, Kate has posted some holiday gifting suggestions over at her site The Gulp with a note of sympathy for anyone needing the advice:

It sounds like an impossible job, buying presents for ungrateful bastard beer people, and honestly, it’d be understandable if you didn’t bother. However, if you’re still dead-set on making your favourite beer lover happy, here are some bolt-from-the-blue ideas you’ve still got time to work on before Christmas comes.

I like the reasonably budget conscious Guinness toque idea. Speaking of getting in the holiday mood, Lars has a tale of ales of yore in Craft Beer & Brewing that starts with a timely reminder for you and you and especially you:

One Christmas Eve in the late 19th century, the family on the Hovland farm in Hardanger, Norway, was sitting down for a festive dinner. The food was on the table, the candles were lit, and the big wooden mug was full of beer. Then, suddenly, enormous hands appeared between the logs from which their house was built, tilting one side of the house into the air. In the gap between the logs, they could see giant eyes staring at them, glittering in the candlelight. The farmer didn’t panic. He immediately knew what the problem was. He grabbed the mug of beer from the table and ran out the door to the burial mound, just beyond the farmyard, and he poured the beer on the roots of the tree growing on top.

Feed the frikkin’ tree, wouldja?

Note #1: I could write this every week as opposed to every third week but Martin has another wonderful photo essay of a corner of Britain. This week he adds another twist as he’s in Rye daydreaming in a wonderful pub without really explaining how he is daydreaming in a wonderful pub:

And as you’ll know, has one of the UK’s top pubs on its doorstep. But even more than that, it has working WiFi.

Speaking of pub life, two more good discussions of the effect the cancellation of a number of British cask brands by megabrewers and ultimate licence holders Carlsberg UK and Marston’s PLC will have. First, Phil Mellows in British Beer Breaks shares how one of the beers being cut is a vital part of pub life at The Royal Oak, Chapel Ash:

“It’s tradition. It’s like waking up and seeing the time on a clock. Walking into the pub and not seeing Banks’s Mild in the bar will be very weird. It has been the milk of Wolverhampton for decades and so many people are upset about it going. I am a very proud Wulfrunian and Banks’s Mild has been here all my life. It feels like CMBC has ripped out our hearts.”

And David Jesudason found a similar loss at The Pelton Arms, Greenwich where Bombardier set the tone:

I served the bitter at the first pub I worked in – three cask pumps, always Pride, always Bombardier, the other rotated – and it wasn’t seen as fashionable even then in the late 90s. Which is perhaps to do with its branding – St George’s Cross etc – but the drink is actually quite subtle with a soft finish with hints of toffee, fudge and fruity tones of raisin and sultana. And this is the pint the locals go for here. Or went for, because of a decision made in a far off office they’re having it taken away just at a time when a pub needs to keep its drinkers – its regulars – who may think it’s not worth it after all and not make the trip to the pub.

I’ve seen a bit of a blip in the craft beer code recently, like this from Doug Velky:

Craft beer is currently in a cycle where nostalgia is playing the role that innovation was driving for so long. The pendulum will eventually swing back the other way, but it’s a great time to revisit and remind fans of their favorites that got us here. Despite the added stress we’re all under, here is still an awesome place, so let’s not forget that.

Nostalgia. That’s this week’s word. For what? What was he talking about? Black IPA. Yup, the only beer trend so disappointing it made us forget that the candle wax goodness of White IPA was even worse. Thankfully, it isn’t coming back. We just live in time times when manufactured positivity needs to grasp at straws. See also.

Speaking of what is in the bottle as opposed to what is pasted on the outsides… did I?… was I?… one scribbler I follow but don’t often mention is Mikey Seay of The Perfect Pour. This week he shared his thoughts about the process of bying Kirkland beer, Costco’s house brand:

We have been talking regularly on the Perfect Pour about Costco’s store brand beer Kirkland. Joking about it mostly, but it’s also making me want to try it. Especially since I am told that the fine Oregon brewer, Deschutes, makes it I am not a member of Costco, and it’s a member-only kind of place. But there is an alcohol loophole. Costco can’t put alcohol exclusively behind the membership-only wall. So I/you as a non-member can go in and buy some Kirkland beer and whatever else ones they have.

I don’t think that applies in Canada… yet… but it terms of quality it reminds me of the Bon Appetit episode on the Kirkland range of wines. And by range I do mean range.

Looking over at perhaps the other side of the season too often not acknowledged, Ray posted some thoughts about loss at B+B this week which were both personally heartfelt but also an exploration of what many go through as we demand happiness and joy this time of year:

I’d always got the impression Dad didn’t like the pub much but Mum told me that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, after their first visit, he said he was worried that, in retirement, it might be a bit too easy to end up there every lunchtime spending money they didn’t have on booze that wouldn’t do them any good. So he avoided it altogether. Mum and I had been there a while, one round in, before we noticed that both of us were bopping along to the jukebox. It was non-stop blues music – not exactly the kind of songs Dad would have chosen himself, but not far off. We shivered. It felt spooky.

Far less seriously, in Australia where it is summer a beer snake interrupted an international cricket match:

The beer-snake-wielding cricket fan who ran through a roped-off area of the Adelaide Oval on Friday night has revealed what was going through his head when he interrupted play in the second Test.  Lachie Burtt, now better known as “beer snake man”, hoisted his pile of beer cups above the sight screen just as India’s Mohammed Siraj was about to bowl to Marnus Labuschagne late on day one. “In my head at that time, I just wanted to get away from the guard, so I saw the space and hopped over the tiny white rope,” he told 9News.

The Times of India was less amused. And also not fully amused, Stan had a great round up this week – many new thoughts on the state of things here and there – including this on some of the questionable writing we have to put up with:

If you somehow didn’t see one of the gazillion stories about the role social media stars played in the recent election, one of them was Joe Rogan. Before I grew weary of reading the same story over and over, and wondered to myself who the Joe Rogan of beer might be.

Spill!  The comments are open.

Speaking of something even more dubious, the story of Carlsberg’s somewhat reluctant exit from its Baltika brand and the Russian beer market appears to be coming to its conclusion:

The management buy-out, announced today (3 December), sees a company established by two Baltika employees become controlling shareholder of the subsidiary, which reportedly has eight breweries in Russia, including one in St. Petersburg, and produces more than 50 brands… According to documents seen by Reuters, the deal, which has been approved by both the Russian and Danish states, is worth a reported 30.4 billion rubles (£226.4 million at the time of writing)… A press release from Carlsberg Group also revealed that, as part of the deal, Baltika Breweries will transfer all of its shareholdings in Carlsberg Azerbaijan and Carlsberg Kazakhstan to the Carlsberg Group.

“At the time of writing” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that passage, although the load is lightening by the hour.

Note #2: samples are not gifts.

In Pellicle, Claire Bullen takes us along to Mikulov, Moravia in the Czech Republic where we meet Jitka Ilčíková, the founder of Wild Creatures brewery:

The brewery now occupies an expansive industrial unit just north of Mikulov, in the village of Dolní Dunajovice. The space itself is nondescript and utilitarian, all concrete surfaces that echo with the zap of electric fly killers. Outside, its riches are more apparent. The land here is almost laughably lush, with its orchards and vineyards and fields of nodding sunflowers. At one point, we pass a plum tree whose fruits are still green and hard. But when they are ripe, Jitka says, they taste like honey… Wild Creatures today owns several vineyards, which contain multiple varieties of wine grapes, as well as two apricot orchards and part of a sour cherry orchard. The rest of the fruit comes from friends or partner suppliers.

Last week, we discussed (you and I… we did!) Christmas office parties and how they were dying off. This week we read in The Times of how some are fighting for being included in the inviting:

The Public and Commercial Services Union, the largest civil service union, told its members that if they were not invited to festive dos — and they suspected it may be because of their age, gender, religion or ethnicity — they could have an employment tribunal claim. The union told civil servants that sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour are “just as unacceptable at social events as they are in the workplace”…  They also warned: “Excluding someone from a work social event due to a protected characteristic such as gender, age, religion, or ethnicity, could also constitute discrimination.”

It is an excellent point. Which is another good reason to not have this sort of horrible event and do something else instead. And finally, also following up on the final news item of last week and proving one again that if you have to explain that something was a joke then it wasn’t a joke or at least it wasn’t a good joke, we have this retort care of one K M Flett:

The beer writer Pete Brown had a lengthy Q&A about all matters beer in the Sunday Times magazine on 1st December. It was of course well informed and entertaining. He posed, to give one example, the question ‘does anyone drink mild anymore’ to which he answered simply ‘no’. I’m not sure whether this was a joke (fair enough) or a personal view but either way it is of course not true. Mild has long been characterised as an old man’s drink, and I am an old man (well 68 anyway) so I would say that. Except I’ve been drinking mild for decades even when I was younger, so much younger than today etc.

Zing Not Zing? Oh well. Still, an opportunity to use the rather dusty “Mild” category tag. PS: Matty C also drinks mild.

Note #3: can an introduction really also be a masterclass?

Whew. That is it!  Counting down the days rather than the weeks from here on out. Work will be busy up to the bell for me but hopefully you will start seeing things lighten up soon. Until next Thursday, 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. The Share looks to be back with a revival. 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.

The First Beery News Notes For December 2024

The countdown is on! I already feel like Ed Grimley and it’s only the fifth of the month. I am too excited. That rotten cold I had is finally in the past and now I am seeing holiday things everywhere, like in the red and green scene at one pub’s outdoor washroom posted by Beer Nouveau. How cheery. Retired Martin* also included an exposé on the outside gents in one post this week:

No, I don’t know what “To the huts” means, either.

Speaking of cheer, are you having an office party?  The Times says they are in mortal danger from, frankly, sensible updates to the law. I say that as a lawyer given I have never been to such madly lavish and deeply souced Christmas parties as those put on by private law firms. But that was decades ago. Here is what is going on now:

Employers that are found to have failed to do so could face claims for unlimited compensation at tribunals. Lawyers are advising that financial services businesses in the City of London — renowned for alcohol-fuelled Christmas parties — “should be particularly mindful of the new rules”… Updated guidance published in September by the Equality and Human Rights Commission emphasised that workplaces must take an active approach to assessing risk. That translates to an obligation to identify any action to clamp down on possible sexual harassment and the requirement for regular reviews of systems.

This lines up with what is… or rather isn’t… happening in New Jersey whether because of cell phones and social media, workplace harassment, remote working arrangements or lower interest in excessive drinking. Did you know some offices bizarrely arrange for staff to buy holiday party gifts for ownership? And perhaps not oddly, given Russia’s foolishly and murderously self-inflicted economic collapse, but holiday office parties are being cancelled there too. Apparently, there are after effects of this sort of thing well beyond the office:

A new low-alcohol beer has been launched by a train operator in a bid to tackle the number of passengers having drunk accidents during the festive period. The Safety Thirst beer, at 0.5% alcohol, will be stocked onboard Avanti West Coast services, which run on the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Scotland. The company said the pale ale will create a “more enjoyable travel experience” and help passengers “drink responsibly”. 

The Tand doesn’t need no stinkin’ office parties for his jolly holidays. Because he found his perfect beer:

…I probably don’t score beers as much as I ought to, but I regularly do. I am probably quite a strict scorer, given that I judge beer in competitions and also that over the years, I know what its what.  So, that’s a long winded way of saying, until now, I have never given a five. So let’s get to the point. It had to happen and last Friday, in an infrequent visit to our local Wetherspoons, I gave a beer a five. What was it I hear you scream? Well, perhaps not surprisingly given the quality of the brewer and the beer, it was Thornbridge Jaipur. Why a five? Well, this was perfectly brewed, clear and untainted with no off flavours, at a perfect temperature and was bursting with condition. The body and mouthfeel were perfect. The glass was spotless. In my mind I went over everything. Could it be improved in a normal pub environment? Not as far as I could tell. It was, simply, faultless.

Boom! What’s the news from the ag markets? Oh… as we have heard out of Oregon, the hops news coming out of Germany is not good:

Declining beer consumption worldwide is hurting German hops growers, who face lower prices and possible farm closures amid a dip in demand for the bitter crop. A strong hops harvest in 2024 means that Germany has regained the crown as the world’s top producer of hops, but prices have slid. According to the German Hop Industry Association, 2024 is the 11th year in a row in which more hops were produced than required.

And, speaking of not boom,  Canada’s barley supplies appear to be very close to a 25 year low:

With the 700,000-metric-ton (mt) projection being only slightly higher than 542,800 mt remaining after the devastating drought of 2021, there is little room for error…. Given the drought stress experienced and the lowering of yield estimates by provincial counterparts, it is widely anticipated that final production estimates from Statistics Canada will be lower on Dec. 5. The problem is, even a 3% cut in production would take 228,000 mt off the ending stocks (all else equal), leaving them below the 2021-22 level.

In addition to drought, prices and planted acreage of barley were both down in 2024, too. If you want to obsess over this on a regular basis, check out the tables and charts of the Canadian Grain Commission’s weekly stats.  And that’s all the malt news this week… NO IT ISN’T!! The Maltsters Association of Great Britain also issued an update on the 2024 numbers:

The UK malting barley harvest is now complete and the overall picture is one of reasonable quality and good supply. Winter malting barley can be summarised as variable with predominantly low nitrogen crops and grain retention levels similar to 2023. Winter barley yields are recorded at 10-15% less than the 5-year average. Conversely, the spring barley harvest in the UK has seen low nitrogen crops throughout all regions with good retention levels and yields described as better than average.

I’ve been described as better than average, too.  A step up from that but facing similar climate and market pressures, traditional sake makers in Japan are heartened by UNESCO intangible cultural heritage designation for their brewing techniques:

“It’s still quite warm, even though it’s almost December. The price of rice is high and the harvest is poor, which has made sake-brewing (this year) very challenging”… The centuries-old method of making sake is unique for its three-step preparation, or “San-Dan-Jikomi”, of allowing multiple fermentation processes to progress simultaneously in a single container… While sake has lost ground as a regular drink, Maesako said it remains impossible to separate from Japanese culture. “We have sake at celebrations, at New Year’s, and also on sad occasions, like funerals,” he said. “The culture of Japanese sake is the culture of Japan itself.” The brewing technique is expected to be formally endorsed at a UNESCO committee session in Paraguay this week.

More on San-Dan-Jikomi AKA Sandan Jikomi here. Reuters posted a photo essay on the process in addition to the story quoted from above.

Panic!! PANIC!!! They are running out of Guinness:

The BBC understands that Diageo is allocating supplies on a weekly basis to make sure it has enough stock to meet demand over Christmas. A Diageo spokesperson said: “Over the past month we have seen exceptional consumer demand for Guinness in Great Britain. “We have maximised supply and we are working proactively with our customers to manage the distribution to trade as efficiently as possible.”

You know things are going to hell when folk use “proactively” in a press release. Always the actively pro, I think it’s fair to say that The Beer Nut has not always enjoyed the Canadian craft beers that have passed his way. It was good, then, to read how a couple of brewers from my old home in Nova Scotia didn’t disappoint even if one offering didn’t necessarily thrill either:

This is solidly made and workmanlike, but don’t expect fireworks. While I’m not saying that breweries running since 1997 have a particular safe-and-steady way of making their beer, this IPA suggests that there might be something to the theory. It’s not an exciting beer, but I’d say it’s a dependable one.

Boak and Bailey followed up on the recent news of a number of cask brands being discontinued with a consideration of how many brands had existed. Turns out not all that long given a number of constantly moving factors:

When we think of cask ale brands that have been around longer than that a few contenders spring to mind. Hook Norton Old Hooky dates back only to 1977. Adnams Broadside was launched in 1972. Fuller’s London Pride came to the market in 1959. And Marston’s Pedigree was introduced in 1952. You might make an argument for Bass which is not only still available but also having something of a resurgence in popularity. But it’s also, really, just the name of a defunct brewery. And that famous ‘first trademark’ was actually for ‘Bass & Co’s Pale Ale’, which is not what’s on the pump clips today.

Years ago, I noodled around looking up when the first branding attached itself to brewing, when the dissassociation of what is on the label from what is in the glass began. I can’t find the links but if you spend a little time over at Ron’s, you pick up quickly that beers up to a certain point in the middle 1800s were identified as gradations of a brewery’s output like this, not the individually animated distinct personalities in themselves we know as brands. Walk back through time. Trademarks get legislative protection in the UK starting in the 1860s. In the US, we see in the 1820s that beer being shipped out of the local market gets named with adjectives like “cream” added to impress buyers with the superior qualities of the product. A generation before in New York City of the 1790s you see beers sold by style and city of origin much like you would have seen in Britain 120 years before that.  That all being the case, if you think you’ll miss the brand now maybe buy the t-shirt. You’ll probably be able to find a similar drink all the same. As the same B+B wrote in their footnotes:

Perhaps it’s studying beer history that does it – you get used to the idea that beers and brands come and go as tastes change. And if we ran a smaller brewery such as Butcombe or Cheddar Ales, we’d be rubbing our hands in glee, because this would seem to leave a gap in the market for beers which are trad, but not boring. Perhaps we’re being naive, though.

BREAKING!  I had no idea that you had to “stamp” a beer sold in a bar in Quebec. Soon it will be over:

According to the microbreweries, the obligation to affix stamps to their cans and glass bottles is both unnecessary and time-consuming… Since 1971, the law has required a duty stamp to be affixed to all beer sold in restaurants and bars. The original aim was to prevent smuggling and tax evasion. Some microbreweries have recently been visited by police officers who have come to check that the labelling on the stamps complies with the law. Microbreweries that contravene the current law face fines of between $500 and $7,500. The minister was at pains to reassure, saying that a fined business could be forgiven.

BREAKING! I have no idea who these people are:

But how did a ‘celebrity’ couple come to take over this regionally-renowned boutique bar? For that, you’d have to go right back to when it first opened, in 2016. “Katy kept saying she wanted to move somewhere in the countryside but where you can also get a gin and tonic,” Adam says. “So I said: ‘That’s Knutsford.’ I spent so long persuading her to move here. Eventually she agreed and the day we moved in was the day this place opened.”

For VinePair and without any reference to Knutsford, Kate Bernot has unpacked the potential damage Trump’s proposed tariffs will do to the clinky drinky markets in a welcome greater level of detail than we too often see:

The global supply chain means that U.S. companies are heavily reliant on imported materials. For the beverage industry, aluminum is the most significant. Canada exports 75 percent of its aluminum production to the U.S., and domestic production here simply can’t replace that volume. It would take years, Uhrich says, to even begin construction on new aluminum plants, let alone to supply what U.S. alcohol companies need. Beer is obviously the most vulnerable to rising aluminum costs: Two-thirds of U.S. beer is packaged in cans. There’s simply no way, Uhrich says, that further tariffs wouldn’t drive up the cost of domestic beer as a result of costlier materials.

Canadian malt in Canadian cans – US craft! Finally, for the double in The Times, Pete Brown gave a primer on some of the newbie questions that folk who don’t know much about beer are going to ask. It’s an interesting use of the space but the paper must be concerned that there are reader lacking superficial understandings of beer such as this:

Every single menu and every single recipe in the history of humanity is based on one simple truth: some flavours go together better on the palate than others. It would be absurd to think that beer is somehow an exception to this. Beer actually has a broader range of flavour than wine. The caramelisation in a pint of bitter goes perfectly with roast beef. A Belgian-style wheat beer works well with anything you might squeeze some lemon juice over. And stout with a gooey chocolate dessert is so good, so simple, that it’s almost cheating. Just remember to pair light with light and strong with strong, that there’s no right or wrong and that it’s supposed to be fun.

Well, I suppose Christmas is the time for merry chestnuts. At least it’s better than sucking up to your commissioning editor!

That’s it! It’s been a busy week in the real world and that is where I live. Until next Thursday, 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.

*Check out his walk aroung Rye too.

The Beery News Notes For That Empty Feeling Between Thanksgiving and Halloween

Let’s be clear. By “empty feeling” I mean not bloated from either last weekend‘s turkey dinners and pumpkin pie or those mini Crispie Crunch bars yet to come. October is a bit of feed fest around these parts. It’s the cold turn, I suppose. Took me a while after we moved to this border city to gather from upstate NY media that in the United States their holiday season lasts from their Thanksgiving in late November through to New Year’s Day. Not us. We have two separate sessions. October is the time of harvest for us, first the family one… then the freaky one. Holiday season is still a couple of months off. It’s still autumn.

Last Sunday, on a walk I saw a Golden-crowned Kinglet hover. I had no idea that these tiny olive coloured birds hovered, pausing just for a moment before perching as it flit here and there through the autumn afternood. Staring up through the turning leaves, it was a enchanting few minutes until a red tail hawk came silently coasting through the stand of trees, scattering and silencing everything in view.  I am not sure that deeply fascination with the sheer wonderfulness of existence was similarly felt by Stan last week when he visited the GABF:

Not many hours later, Daria and I were at the Great American Beer Festival. We walked by the wrestling, but did not stop. We never saw the bull riding. If you were looking for a specific brewery, the layout was at times confusing. But I liked that the “Fright” area was dimly (very dimly) lit, that the National Black Brewers Association area was much more prominently placed than last year, and the proximity of “Meet the Brewer” to Homebrew Headquarters. So I thought, maybe they should rebrand the event as the Great American Beer Experience. 

Oh, that Stan and his dry sense of humo(u)r.  There has been one thing that benefitted from being called a capital “E” experience and that ended fifty-five years ago. Reviews? Jacob Berg pointed out there were 326 medals awarded and “…four states (California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington) won 176 of them, which is probably bad for the beer industry overall.” Probably. Jon A noticed the “beers were brewed by the brewers who were fired by @tilray this year.” They restrict cameras, halt beer service early and there were plenty of tickets left unsold. Some were not impressed but Andy Crouch wrote:

The 2024 iteration of the @GABF is a disorienting, immersive experience where beer is not the central draw but a companion. The layout is a baffling maze, with each turn offering something new or odd, including pitch darkness. Saw lots of smiling and engaged attendees.

There’s that word again. Is BrewDog still an experience? I think they were going for “experience” for a while there. Maybe not so much now. BrewDog’s big botched batch has made news:

Scottish beer powerhouse Brewdog has had to ditch an eye-watering amount of beer, reportedly worth millions of pounds, due to contamination issues. At their renowned brewing facility in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, batches of their celebrated Punk IPA were deemed unsellable following a “major quality incident” that plagued the production line. Chris Fielden, Brewdogs Chief Supply Chain Officer, expressed his exasperation over the mishap involving “sour beer” in a scathing email blasted across the company, indicating that the significant waste came after employees consistently failed to meet standard cleanliness requirements.

Matthew C himself noted: “Find it funny that everyone is having a good lol about the Br*wdog infected beer. Me? I’m having a good lol that they still haven’t filed their accounts, which are now four months overdue.” All very weird. These are strange times. Update: “…pre-tax losses soared to £59m, up from £25m in 2022…” Yikes.

Yet there are still innovations. Like thinopyrum intermedium. Or as it is somehow trademarked in the US, Kernza. It’s another sustainable grain, like Fonio, that is starting to work its way into the brewing lexiscon. Nebraska Public Media has the story:

The Kernza kernel is much smaller than a barley or wheat kernel, he added, kind of elongated and skinny. Almost flat.” Those differences did pose a few challenges. Thompson explained the Kernza slipped right through his mill when he tried to crush the kernels to expose the starch that’s necessary for brewing. In the end, Thompson adjusted to a different brewing technique that used a mix of milled and unmilled Kernza and the experiment worked. That was good news for Thomson but also for Kernza advocates who want the grain to succeed and see in its small seeds potentially huge changes to modern agriculture.

At the other end in the life a beer, the tap end perhaps, is the story told over at London Beer City where Will Hawkes shared the prior qualifications of Mr. Pat Ahern, publican of the Downham Tavern in the 1970s:

Pat and Sheila, an East London girl, came to the Tavern having run the New Gog, a pub in the Royal Docks north of the River. Pat, a barman at the pub, took over when the previous licensee committed suicide. One incident in 1963, when a young man, George Head, was “called out” onto the street and shot in an apparent gangland hit, illustrates what sort of place it was. Pat put a tourniquet on the wounded man’s legs and drove him to hospital. “That was a really rough house,” says Sue. Pat, who came to Britain at the age of 19, hadn’t wanted to work in a pub – the long hours weren’t conducive to family life – so he took a job at Ford’s huge Dagenham plant. A serious injury in which he fell down a pit and fractured his skull left him incapacitated for nine months, though, and the family was soon in desperate need of cash.

Staying in that era, Ron reminds us that these weren’t the only strange times. In his series of beer in the UK of the 1970s, he has been working through his records of the breweries now long gone and shared this:

One of the largest independent brewers, Greenall Whitley wasn’t that far behind Scottish & Newcastle in terms of tied houses. Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire and North Wales were lucky enough to be home to their tied pubs. I never cared for their beers, even though they were often available in cask form. It was also annoying the good brewers the bastards took over and closed. The Warrington brewery closed when Greenalls decided to get out of brewing and become a pub chain. Not a brewery I miss.

Note: speaking of autumn,* the Beer Ladies Podcast is back for another session with their “what I did on summer vacation” edition. Don’t miss it. definitely better than Greenalls.

The Morning Advertiser succinctly reports on the effectiveness of the UK’s 2023 Alcohol Duty Review which saw taxes lowered for lower strength beers:

Alcohol Duty Review has seen 100m alcohol units removed from the market and a “boom” in new lower-strength products, the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) has said… The BBPA also revealed 1.3 – 3.4% strength drinks have leapt from less than 1% of beer sales in 2022 to now more than 7%, while the no and low alcohol beer category has also seen rapid growth, accelerating to 2% of the overall market in 2024. Moreover, some 90% of pubs now serve at least one no and low alcohol beer…

I like that 100m units stat. You rarely find absolute numbers in these matters, just change percentage. Speaking of change, you can still have fun drinking beer in Prague but not that sort of fun… not that not no more:

Prague council deputy mayor Zdenek Hrib confirmed that from hereon in “it will not be possible to have guided tours between 10pm and 6am”. According to reports via the national press, the city’s councillors have banned night-time pub crawls organised by travel agencies because the city would prefer to target “more cultured” tourists rather than British stag parties. Speaking about the decision to reporters on Monday, another deputy mayor for Prague city hall Jiri Pospisil revealed that the council was “seeking a more cultured, wealthier tourist” and “not one who comes for a short time only to get drunk”.

Cultured. So is it wine time? Is that what it means? Sure. First up, Pellicle published a piece by Anaïs Lecoq that unpacks the relationship between the wines of Champagne and the local working families who get the wine to the shelf:

…a more familiar, popular and approachable way of drinking champagne does exist, and advertisers have yet to realise it. If they truly want to convey something other than luxury, they could start by getting rid of that fancy crystal flute, and replace it with a blida. “Blida is the epitome of working class champagne,” Maxime tells me, and I couldn’t agree more. Originally made in Reims, this small, 70ml glass was sent to the town of Blida, Algeria, for serving mint tea. After Algeria’s war for independence in 1962, the market collapsed and manufacturers found another use for the glass—champagne.

I like that. Ditch the snobbery. Next up, Simon J Woolf of The Morning Claret wrote about Chateau Musar of Lebanon:

Musar remains a great demonstration of how to scale up production without compromising ethics and quality, while managing to stay fairly priced – especially in the UK, where it hovers around the mid-£30s on release. For a wine released on its seventh birthday, that’s value. It has mercifully not been ruined by speculation and cultism. We should be forever thankful that Parker only gave the 1995 82 points.

Musar is a maker I leap to which I have send my money when I have the rare occassion to find a bottle over here. Ever since Tom Cannavan helped me direct my folk to a bottle from the 1990s located in Edinburgh where they were visiting the fam. Quebec’s SAQ had their red Musar Jeune a year ago. Christmas dinners have often had a Musar on the table where I live. Again, less of the snobbery even with the nerditry.

Enough of that. Back to beer for our final thoughts. Joe Stange has writting himself a long piece on American IPA, long enough that you get the sense that it’s properly done. You know, not like the other stuff on a subject like this. Just look:

“I still think that’s a necessary thing in these beers,” says Alexandra Nowell, former head brewer at Three Weavers in Los Angeles, now working toward setting up a new brewery, Mellotone Beer Project, in Cincinnati. “But we’re talking really light—C-15, light-grade crystal that can still provide a little bit more complexity to the beer itself. … I think the concept of American IPA has drifted into a more modern place.” Caramel malt has become uncool among IPA brewers today. Many avoid it altogether, while others have reduced, lightened, and fine-tuned it—essentially, they’ve learned how to use it with finesse.

And only one “passion” in the whole piece. And it’s ahead of “-ate” and in a quote. So that’s good.

That’s it. A short one this week. For more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan now again every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with 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 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 DaftAboutCraft‘s 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.

*We’re still speaking of autumn, right? I’m only covering the tomatoes just in case. Still weeks of some sorta warm, right?

The “Happy Canadian Thanksgiving To You!” “Err… What????” Edition Of These Beery News Notes

Did you know that the entire meal is American. That’s the dirty secret of Canadian Thanksgiving. It’s not even ours. Roast Turkey. Mashed Potatoes. Stuffing and cranberry sauce. Pumpkin pie. Food as seen on cable TV. At least I will have my own damn carrots like those up there. And my own beets. Hmm… if the menu was really Canadian what would it be? I dunno. A big ass butter tart at the end maybe. And a roasted wild goose. Where I lived out east a couple of decades ago there were church hall community suppers serving hunter-shot local wild goose. They even created a special regulation to allow it. But only at church suppers. Fat chance with even that being allowed now. Frigging Ohio. Me, I’d have it with Fin du Monde. Suits the times these days.

What else is going on? I am pretty sure that when I were a lad no one cared about if me and the lads preferred beer or wine. I do find the obsession with Gen Z’s taste in booze a bit odd but let’s let the NYT explain their latest cultural findings as to why wine is doing well with them:

Farah Sheikh-Ogoe, who until August was a bartender at Moonflower, a wine bar in the West Village, said that many of the young customers she encountered were drinking, but drinking less. “It’s a little bit more of like, I’m going to be thoughtful about what I’m consuming,’” Ms. Sheikh said. Drinking wine isn’t like taking a shot of vodka or slamming a margarita, said Carson Bennett, a 24-year-old freelance writer and waiter in Brooklyn. “It’s something to sit and savor.” “I think of watching ‘Ratatouille’ and the way that they drink wine,” she continued. “It is a sort of event.”

Big H/T to the person I forgot to note who mentioned that reliance on a cartoon you saw as a child shaping your adult drinking preferences is all a bit heewhooheehaahaa.

And it is interesting to see some serious format changes coming to both the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) next year and the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) next week. The first is run by CAMRA, a UK lobby group for the beer buying public, while the second is run by the Brewers Association, the USA trade association for brewers other than the really big brewers. The change coming to the GBBF is its move from London to new venue in the reasonably accessible city of Birmingham. The changes coming to the GABF were summarized this week by Andy Crouch who indicated in All About Beer that they were driven by the realities of “emptier aisles and far fewer attendees” in recent years:

Attendees at the 2024 festival will experience six distinct areas. They include “Prost!,” a German inspired biergarten featuring decor paying homage to Oktoberfest, live polka bands playing traditional Bavarian music, and a stein-holding contest. “Score!” is a sports-themed area that will host Lucha Libre Mexican Wrestling and Mechanical Bull Riding. “Fright” is a Halloween-themed area welcoming costumed festival attendees. “Blast Off” offers “liquid innovations and on-trend flavors from international and domestic breweries,” according to the BA. This includes the United Nations taproom, which hosts classic beers from around the globe. 

The event is held in the BA’s hometown of Denver, which makes for interesting logistical challenges. There would be three main classes of attendee: (i) locals, (ii) people in the trade one way or another using their expense accounts or tax write-offs and (iii) beer fans affluent enough to pay to attend. If you are heading any distance to Denver, you would need to have at least $1,000 to spend on the weekend – $220 for the pass, $250 for the plane, $400-600 for three nights at hotels and the balance for food, taxis and the after parties. By contrast, the GBBF pass to the new location in Birmingham costs £9.50 a day and there are four modestly priced trains an hour arriving from the old HQ in London. But even at that budget, the event still has B+B questioning whether to attend according to last week’s footnotes:

The news of the return of the Great British Beer Festival did somewhat gladden our hearts, even though we don’t really like beer festivals, and haven’t always had a great time at GBBF. It just felt as if something was missing from the calendar this year when it didn’t happen. All the old problems will no doubt still apply, however: how do you make a big, drafty conference centre feel anything like as pleasant as a pub?

Somehow I don’t believe they were thinking of “Lucha Libre Mexican Wrestling and Mechanical Bull Riding” as the solution to that conundrum. Yee. Haw. We shall wait on reports from these events before issuing our final condemnations… err… thoughts.

And, just as Hurricane Milton hits, the tough news continues to come out of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene but I was watching for this story:

As communities across the Southeast respond to the catastrophic damage of Hurricane Helene, Anheuser-Busch is actively supporting relief and recovery efforts across the region. Together with our wholesaler partners, we are working alongside the American Red Cross to provide clean, safe drinking water to communities impacted by the Category 4 hurricane… At the request of the American Red Cross, [for example] Anheuser-Busch and its wholesaler partner KW Associates LLC delivered three truckloads (150,000+ cans) of emergency drinking water to Greenville, South Carolina on Wednesday, October 3. 

Good stuff. Similarly, we read about this as well as this at a smaller scale from one craft brewery:

Workers at Holy City Brewing have temporarily shifted their focus from brewing beer to canning water, aiming to provide clean drinking water to those affected by Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. “We haven’t really canned water, so we’ll see how fast we can run it,” said Owner Chris Brown. “Water’s a little bit different from beer. So, we can run the pressures a little lower. We’re not worried about carbonation.” The brewery’s team quickly adapted to the new task, processing between 200 and 250 cases of water… “We kind of had to scrounge some cans together…” 

More will be needed in Florida no doubt.

On a happier topic, in their weekly newletter feature called “WHAHWEDRUNK!!!” (or maybe something else) B+B wrote about one beer that made for a neat and tidy tiny essay:

We spent last weekend in London, and honestly, we keep thinking we should go somewhere other than The Pembury Tavern and drink something other than Five Points Best. But really, when it’s become one of the best beers in the country, why bother? To be fair, both of us tried the Best at a couple of London pubs that weren’t The Pembury, and it was just as good. On the face of it, it’s a really traditional bitter, but there are a few tweaks that make it next level good. There’s a honeyed, biscuityness in the malt; and a slice of orange, Fuller’s style, alongside the hard bitterness. If we were going to make comparisons it would be something like Bathams, or the various Boddington’s clones we’ve had over the years. But like Bathams, it also tastes like its own thing.

(I wish I was known for my honeyed biscuityness.) Moving on briskly, at the end of last week there was this news from the world of art, an incident in the LAM museum in the Netherlands:

An elevator technician, filling in for a regular worker, mistakenly threw away Alexandre Lavet’s All the Good Times We Spent Together (2016), thinking it was trash. The artwork, two hand-painted beer cans meant to evoke memories of friendship, had been intentionally placed inside an elevator shaft to mimic something casually left behind. LAM, known for its food-themed art and unconventional displays, places pieces in unexpected locations to encourage visitors to view ordinary objects differently. “Our goal is to make people see the mundane in a new light,” said museum director Sietske van Zanten in a statement. The technician, unaware of the museum’s approach, discarded the piece in good faith.

Empty Can Performance Art Note: a Nova Scotian tradition continues – though in my day we would leave an empty there any old day of the year.

In the political realm, Kamala Harris had a beer on TV this week:

When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise. Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.

Speaking again of the dry among us, apparently Canada’s game coming to Utah has triggered a Canadian response:

Not only did the Utah Hockey Club begin its tenure in Salt Lake City with a 5–2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night, but also the NHL’s newest fan base arrived at the season opener with a thirst for hockey. And, well, good times. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Delta Center sold a record-breaking number of beverages, with beer sales climbing over $120,000—more than any other previous NBA or NHL event in that venue, which has served as the home to the Utah Jazz since 1991. The beer prices weren’t cheap, either. A Michelob Ultra, which was $13 at the Jazz’s preseason tilt the night before, sold for $15 for the arena’s NHL debut.

I once had professional occassion to review the effect of the Belleville Bulls coming to town for a Friday night OHL game and I can assure you that the right crowd can sell a lot of beer.

Interesting that just as Ontario has opened up beer and wine sales in cornerstores the nanny state social engineering Tories posing as pretendy libertarians of Alberta have come out against the very same idea:

…the Smith government now says it’s not happening, in part, because they think most Albertans do not want beer and wine and ready-to-drink cocktails and coolers sold in convenience stores and grocery stores…  The minister for red tape reduction said those opposed felt there were already lots of liquor stores. “They weren’t being teetotallers in any way, suggesting we need less access to liquor. They seemed to feel we had good access”… There is a report on what the UCP politicians heard. It is not going to be made public.

Noooo… not them… not “in any way”… no way… not a chance…

Speaking conversely of “yes, yes, yes” David Jesudason had a great feature in Pellicle this week. I like that Wednesday publication deadling thing by the way. You can imagine why. Anyway, David wrote about the subtitled “Harcourt, Altrincham’s Hong Kong Inspired Pub”:

“Because we’ve got the traditional Chinese character outside [on the sign] the locals didn’t expect us to be a pub,” Priscilla says. “They thought we were a Chinese restaurant.” “Some people thought maybe we’re just a restaurant serving some beers.” When customers who were sceptical about the food smelt the dishes being brought through, however, it turns out they couldn’t resist temptation. Harcourt reminds me of a great desi pub in that it mixes an important aspect of Asian culture in a British bar setting, offering a unique welcome so that the visitor believes they are visiting a home away from home. The best of Britain. The best of Hong Kong. The best of Manchester.

And finally… well, eventually finally… Matty C wrote an opinion piece on the ongoing debate in the UK about the pint and the proper serving size:

Lets say, for argument’s sake, that legislation was introduced where the pint was scrapped and only third, half and two-third measures remained. If, as the study states, beer consumption was reduced by 10%, then so too would sales volumes, and indeed, revenues shrink by the same amount. The trend in pub closures already indicates how fine a line hospitality businesses are walking in terms of operating sustainably. Any reduction in revenue would surely only hasten the demise of those already teetering on the brink, which, as evidence suggests, is a high proportion of operators.

It is an opinion piece so must naturally invite response. So I shall. First, however, a couple of weeks ago, I shared (or at least I hope I shared) my thoughts that the conspiracy theory about the lazy use of the “guy drinks beer from pint glass” is a bit much. It’s like the North American use of a martini glass (olive and all) in the style of a “banned!” sign. Wine bottles are common here, too. I don’t take these as a slight against wine*… or olives for that matter. Stock images are what they are. They offer continuity and a clue to what’s been written. Even if you don’t agree with what’s been written.

The other arguments often trotted out against the rejecting pinting or quarting for that matter are also well known. Unfortunately. Too many of them are simply not winners. If your best argument is “NEO-PROHIBITION!!” you’ve pretty much wasted the readers time. Same about “things should still be like twenty years ago!“… or even like 1824. And sorry to break the news… again… but medical science advances and public health measures are simply a couple of of those undeniably good things modernity has gifted us.

There are, however, some other good arguments to be made. Try the tax burden. Try other regulatory burdens and the supply chain markups. Try discussing the freedom to choose to drink. Matt does that. And maybe add in a (coherent) relative risk argument. Matt approached that* but then veered towards study sample size and a methodology complaint.  The best of these pieces also address the reality that people have so many more options for their entertainment purchasing power than 40 or even 20 years ago. That isn’t changing. Folk are passing on the pub for many reasons but they are choosing to be elsewhere.

And, for me, the “save the pubs!” argument included in the passage quoted above is – frankly – wishery and honestly even slightly corporate if we unpack it a bit. First, my liver is not an cash cow for anyone’s business. See, it’s an argument that big doughnut makers and the ciggie trade can also make. “Save the sugary snack bakeries!!” No one wants those team mates on the bench. And then lastly there’s that tie of these sin trades to Matt’s bias against the working classes. I am not liking this one – even if in classist England it is a reality. Because isn’t that easily reframed as “working class people ought to compromise their health to ensure pub and brewery owners maintain profitability“? Is that the argument? How can’t it not be? Me no like.

But you may see things differently. Get blog and let your yap trap clap. There. That’s my opinion. If Matthew gets to hoist an opinion so can I! Cancel your subscriptions. See if I care. Why you look to see how in fact to cancel your subscription, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and there is a promise that Stan may be back from his autumnal break starting (not last Monday but surely) this very Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with 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 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 DaftAboutCraft‘s 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.

*But, let’s all be honest, the 250 ml wine glass is a bit nuts. A third of a bottle. 30 ml of pure alcohol. Gulp. Gulp. Nudder plz. Standard wine bottles have five or six sensible servings.