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This Week’s Beery News Notes Are Fraught With All That A Thursday Might Entail

What a week. I spend the week’s few forecasted dry sunny hours on Tuesday evening hands on knees with this newly acquired handy friend indeed clearing out a patch invaded by raspberries and catnip about seven by ten foot to move some of the tomato plants into. I wanted to lay down and weep by the end me being an old guy and all but it’s got to be done. It’s really getting out of hand out there. I have a pot problem. Bought another six to fill Monday night just in case. “Just in case of what exactly?” I later thought. Seventeen zucchini seeds hit the soil on Saturday and pole beans were added on Sunday too, as illustrated. Who is going to eat all this other than the bugs and birds?

Where to begin this week? There’s a lot so perhaps at the outset just a summary of the endsy timesy news of the week. The spokesperson for the BA actually used the phrase “craft slowdown” this week. Mirrors perhaps the excellently honest new B+B tag for these times: “the age of divestment“! We learned this week, as Stan noted, “stunning is the news” that Anchor‘s beer will be far less common a sight. We also heard (as I dutifully discussed back in late April) that things are not going so well financially at BrewDog as the Morning Advertiser shared:

BrewDog has reported an operating loss of £24m in its latest trading update… which BrewDog founder James Watt attributes to the cost of investing in the brand, its people and its bars, alongside the “devistating” increase in input costs.

All of which unnervingly indicates that the losses were due to making less money than they spending on, you know, their core activities. All of which leads me to wonder if an ebbing tide lowers all boats. Not yet here in Canada where there was a very sensible bit of consolidation as reported by the clever folk behind the Canadian National Beer News Service, a branch of the Department of The North:

Corby Spirit and Wine Limited has announced that it is set to purchase Ace Beverage Group, parent company of Ace Hill Beer and several other beverage alcohol brands, including Cottage Springs and Cabana Coast ready-to-drink cocktails, Liberty Village cider, and Good Vines wine spritzers. The transaction will see Corby acquiring 90% of Ace’s shares for $148.5 million, with call options on the remaining shares that can be exercised in 2025 and 2028.

That’s real money but apparently the beer assets is one of the least attractive part of the deal. Despite its ongoing move to be about less beer hunting, there was an similar tale told about Ninkasi Brewing in GBH. More good beer settling in as just a part of a portfolio.

Settling. Phil of the excellently named Oh Good Ale in a post also excellently named as “Toil and Trouble“* wrote about a survey retaken after ten years, a repeated of a 2013 census of sorts studying pubs, breweries and cask ale in one part of Manchester England, Chorlton, and had surprising results:

What’s changed? Well, many things have changed – I’m comparing April with June, apart from anything else, so it may possibly be that some of those bars were running dry due to warm-weather demand. Other than that, I was expecting to see little change among the (seven) bars of 2013 – six of them still are bars, after all – and carnage among the (22) breweries, but if anything it was the other way round. As far as I can make out, only three of the 22 breweries have closed outright…

What he found had changed was in the pubs, that the range of service had retracted leading him to state that “the cask bubble in Chorlton and environs has pretty well burst” leading in turn the Tand himself to comment:

…leaving cask to those that handle it well is good policy and the points about addressing a mixture of beer expert and cheapskate are well made.

So perhaps not so much a burst bubble as enthusiasms becoming cammed doon. No, craft is not to blame as it is retracting too. It’s all just a bit of balancing out.

Lisa is not settling. She has scouted out another weird pub for her guide to Dublin starting with this appealing intro:

I must admit, the immediate vicinity of this week’s pub is something I typically speed through as quickly as possibly – the visual clutter from its side of Westmoreland Street is not the most inviting vista, featuring, as it does, the National Wax Museum (NATIONAL WAX MUSEUM), lots of plastic major-brand logos, and CCT Dublin’s building in that block must be one of the worst insults to architecture in any European capital (and I have a soft spot for a lot of ‘ugly’ kinda-Brutalist buildings, but this…is not that).

Beet beer is in the news care of Pellicle (and it’s a favourite of mine given we have year round access to my nearby neighbours’ MacKinnon Bros Red Fox Ale which is made with good Ontario root veg):

Given all these strengths, I asked the brewers why they thought beets weren’t a more common beer addition, especially given the great diversity of fruits and other adjunct ingredients brewers are experimenting with these days. Part of it, of course, is that beets are just a contentious food. Todd, for his part, doesn’t find it terribly surprising that so few brewers have touched beetroot. “I recently saw a meme about fast food variety, and it just showed fried chicken sammies from every chain. That is basically craft beer right now, but sub in hazy IPA/kettle sour. Yes, there is a lot being added to beer these days but I would say that it isn’t really experimental, or very courageous,” Todd says. “For real, no shade over here, but the ingredients people are using could be mistaken for a candy shop or ice cream parlour.”

I like that… because if ye’ve no eaten your veg you cannie hae any puddin!

A fitting obituary for a great rugby player and beer man, Paul Rendall:

He would often proclaim Nunc est bibendum. For those old team-mates who had not studied Latin, he would explain, in the bar, of course, that now it is time to drink.

Drinks Business had a great piece this week unpacking more about that waste water beer building that I mentioned a month ago in San Fran:

In an experiment, Epic fed wastewater from a large San Francisco apartment block through “ultrafiltration membranes” 100 times thinner than a human air. They filter out impurities and the cleaned water is then disinfected by using ultra-violet light. Tartakovsky told CNBC this process is comparable with the biology that takes place in the human stomach. And seemingly it works. He claimed that independent testing of Epic’s cleaned water shows it meets US Federal standards for drinking water and often exceeds them. Cleaned water was passed to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co in San Carlos California, which produced the Epic OneWater Brew.

What else is out there in the world? Well, The Beer Nut continued his wandering ways and has reported on a trip in May to Haarlem in The Netherlands and found a lack of wallop:

While I’m used to the Dutch people’s effortless fluency in English, I’m not sure that Black It Up! was a great name for the beer. Echoes of Zwarte Piet linger there. I liked the tarry bitterness in the aroma here, presented with a little black pepper spice. It was unfortunately rather more ordinary to taste: dry and roasty with only a token treacle effect to thicken and sweeten it, and no proper hop wallop. I feel that something of this nature should be delivering wallop aplenty; instead this is calm, restrained and frankly a bit boring. Oh well.

Sounds a bit like me. Anyway, speaking of The Netherlands, Ron has been in Vietnam revealing all on the breakfasts to be found near the lobby among other things. And, elsewhere, Stan is reporting from the hop fields again, with his jam packed June 2023 edition of Hop Queries now out. This month we learn that:

Friday the USDA forecast hop acreage strung for harvest in 2023 in the Northwest will be down 8%, or 5,067 acres, from 2023. That’s only about half of the reduction John I. Haas CEO Alex Barth told those attending the American Hop Convention is necessary to begin to get American hop supply and demand back in balance. More likely will be needed… Because general agreement is that the alpha market is in balance, that means the reduction must come from varieties valued first for their aroma and flavor. In fact, farmers added more than 2,500 alpha acres (primarily +1,960 CTZ and +555 Pahto), and aroma acreage was down more than 7,500.

The fabulousness that Stan brings is rooted in the shameless presentation of hop production as agriculture. Fact fact factity fact. You might as well be reading reports from an early US ag societies studying barley growth over 200 years ago. It is all a continuum of knowledge development that sits as a counterpoint to the sorts of approaches to appreciation that startle one with their admitted limitations:

…there’s nothing wrong with mystery, I try to use it when I can for if you stuck to the plain facts with beer you would have writing on a par with that covering the drainage industry or the world of pallets

Speaking of facts, we had a wonderful bit of pushback published this week by a very unhappy investor in the now restructuring Black Sheep Brewery, one of England’s longest serving micros. See, as noted in my May 4th editon of these my scribbles, when everyone cheered Hooray! at the idea it was not shutting so much as getting its affairs in better order we must remember that one of the realities when a firm goes into administration is that the necessary new money may well have to bump away a lot of the old. As we are told is happening in this case:

Long before Covid, when interest rates were at all-time lows and trading conditions were relatively benign, I clearly identified the coming apocalypse, and tried to spell out to those few of you who would listen that “The End was nigh”. Back then, there was still an opportunity to raise new equity, properly invest in our brand, arrange for regulatory accreditation of the packaging plant, smell the coffee, or rather understand where national beer consumption, and indeed alcohol, trends were heading, and to truly “Build a better Black Sheep”. My prescient web-site spelled it all out for you.

The piece goes on to name names and point pointed fingers. I expect the law will be applied appropriately.

Not dissimilarly in terms of a daring do done, I was surprised in a very familiar way by the wild eyed responses to the excellent opinion piece published by Pellicle this week. An editorial. Now, right up front we have to be clear – good beer is no place for forming and certainly no place for sharing opinions or editorials so it is fair that it created a sort of confusion in the hearts of many. Don’t worry. It’s just like that feeling you felt when you saw a small dog in bright yellow rain boots for the first time. Odd but it actually works.

And what was the problem? What upset the universe? Well, if you really want to know, this is the sort of vile sprew that society faced when it woke on Monday morning:

I respect the importance of linking beer back to its agriculture—in fact this is something I feel personally invested in—but this is not the same thing as terroir. Beer is not merely a representation of the land from where its ingredients came, and to advertise it as such underplays the significance inherent to the production of both beer itself, and its individual raw materials.

Good Lord! The gall of the man!! See… see… err… well, that actually all makes fairly perfect sense doesn’t it. Hardly an opinion at all. Most agreed. It’s practically cheery out there. Yet… we are faced with three sorts of minor rebuke (aside from the usual scoffy self-satisfied crab bucketeers in the corner): (i) “Wrong!” (ii) “Clickbait!!” and (iii) you have to appreciate that to be an expert you need to understand that nothing means anything so trying to explain stuff is pointless… as well as combinations of that trio of top notch beer writing principles right there. We are, as always, formed and framed by our weaknesses more than our strengths.

Stan shared a well considerd counterpiece supporting the use of terrior in relation to beer. Read the whole thing but here is the nub:

I became more comfortable with the word as I researched “For the Love of Hops” and continued with “Brewing Local,” although I continue to prefer “taste of place.” Amy Trubek concludes “The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey Into Terroir,” an absolutely terrific book, by writing “ . . . the taste of place exists, as long as it matters.” To repeat myself, I’m more inclined to use the words taste of place opposed to terroir, but I’m fine with “beer terroir exists, as long as it matters.” Both matter to me.

That works, too. For me? A bit of this has always been the way. There is a simmering desire in beer writing for the shortcutting convenience that making X mean Y brings. The extrapolation slipped in here or there. And there is no X that is more attractive to beer culture as a Y construct than a well grounded principle from the much more established world of wine. So, we have a slightly wonky beer styles construct because wine has naturally developed styles. And we have mildly informative beer atlases mainly because wine legend Hugh Johnson made an excellent one about wine that has been regularly updated.** Just recently Garrett Oliver illustrated this tension (and perhaps even envy) recently when he wrote:

We sometimes forget that the projection of meaning is WORK. Hard work. The wine industry does that work. The beer industry, by and large, does not. This is one reason why wine and spirits are eating our lunch, especially in the US.

And the results and the dear are real. At least here in Canada, where we have moved from a marketplace where (i) in 2002, beer had a market share of 50 per cent by dollar value, while wine had 24 per cent to one (ii) to 2012, to one with a 44 per cent beer to 31 percent wine ratio and (iii) by 2022, we have a 34.9% beer to 31.3% wine. There is cause for concern.

Hmm. What does it mean and where does it all take us? I like this take by T-Rex to my left, your right. And little while ago, Jeff wrote very sensibly how a technique is not a style. Similarly, things can only bend so far and we need to agree that terroir is not defined by a technique. Technique is not terroir. A yeast strain that’s been transported world wide as terroir? Nope. That’s all square-holery-round peggishness to me. Works for you? Fine… but it’s utterly unnecessary and may undermine things. Don’t get me wrong. I have been into good wine for as long or longer than I have liked good beer. I have even tended to my own vineyards in two provinces, mainly to the delight of birds. For my money, the two trades deserve to return to their largely separate and well-defined lexicons if anything is to be understood in itself. Ditch the code and, as Matt wrote, all that it is covering up. Clarity avoids confusion. Get at that, please. Yes, you. The problem is… I am not sure how much of beer writing is meant to do that, if it is meant to make things clearer to the beer buying public.*** There is comfort in mystery apparently. And, in a world where some of the expertise is based on hanging out one’s own shingle or … where one has little else, well… one has to protect one’s reputation. Doesn’t one.

Finally and just perhaps unrelatedly, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea that the Nigerian non-alcoholic beer market is worth 6.2 billion USD when the same article states:

BusinessDay’s findings showed the firm incurred a loss of N10.72 billion in the first quarter of 2023 from N13.61 billion in the same period of 2022. The firm’s net revenue amounted to N123.31 billion in the first quarter of 2023, a 10.5 percent decline from N137.77 billion in the comparable period. “Despite challenges, the opportunities in the coming decades for non-alcoholic beers are quite as substantial. That is a prospect worth drinking to,” John said.

Worth nothing that the collapsing Nigerian Naira is currently worth 0.0021 USD and, as the same article states, roughly 50 percent of Nigeria’s brewing input costs is imported.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. I need to save my strength for the allotment my house now sits in. Back to you for now as always. And as per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the newer ones noted in bold:

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

*Here you go. Here’s the reference.
**When the fam says “What? Why?” when I pull out a bottle of something tasty, I pull out my atlas, point at a patch of a few hundred square metres and say “From that field right there!“
***See, if you see nuance or complex or subtle being used to point at things that are merely specific or one part of a long list, just as with “mystery” as cited above, you might be in the doldrums of such conditions. Hanging out with engineers taught me this. Engineers are the heroes of the lengthy sensible to do list. Put things on it when you think of them and strike them off when they get done. Build a few bridges and you learn this sort of thing.
****And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

Your Thursday Beery Beer Notes For When He Hardly Makes Any Real Effort

It’s been a week. Four out of seven days on the road, driving in a car for about 21 hours. No time for blogging much. The upside? Rhubarb ginger ice cream at the fabulous Slickers of Bloomfield in Prince Edward County, our nearby wine growing region of Ontario. Downside? Highway 401 from Halton to Kitchener upon which I had to drive coming home, telling my son to be quiet as we had 50 km of 130 km/hr traffic packed tight with what felt like a foot or two between cars. Evil. Fortunately, the ice cream came second. On the way there Saturday, as noted on Le Twit, we also ate at the highly recommended Northern Dumpling Kitchen which blew our minds. That image there? That’s the Chinese broccoli with garlic. Very simple. Nutty nutty good. And lamb and leek dumplings. Imagine! The restaurant looks like this. It’s located here along with 25 other small food spots. Go. But don’t go when I go. KDK only has about 30 seats. Wednesday’s dash to Syracuse, NY for a work meeting with some of my favourite business clients was a treat. And I hit the Watertown Hannaford grocery for, you know, Dinosaur BBQ sauces and oyster crackers. Things denied to Canadians.

Enought about me! In the world of beer, Jessica Mason guided us to consideration of a new thing in the UK’s pub trade – the label “fresh ale” as seen in the wild or at least in pubs asking if the new beer category will help lager drinkers migrate to cask or if it actually cannibalises real cask ale for good:

A new beer category, named ‘fresh ale’ has been created by Otter Brewery to bridge the gap between craft beer, cask ale and lager. ‘Fresh ales’ are beers that are initially brewed as cask ales, but instead of being filled into casks they are gently carbonated before being put into kegs. The Devonshire-based brewery’s first beer being launched as a ‘fresh ale’ is named Amber Fresh and paves the way for “a new form of ale for pubs, designed to be fresh in name and fresh by nature”.

We are told that the beer will stay in great condition for longer, remaining fresh to drink for weeks, rather than days. Which is interesting.

Pellicle posted an interesting tale, the story of state of American Porter which paired last evening with a Godspeed Kemuri Porter at this very minute as my fingers do their dance. And what’s that state look like?

In 2023, only a few legacy porter brands remain. Fitz is still ubiquitous here in Ohio and the Midwest in general. Deschutes Black Butte from Oregon is still around, though it’s getting harder to find here on the opposite side of the country. Bell’s Porter can occasionally be spotted, though who knows for how much longer. Anchor’s and Sierra Nevada’s porters have not been seen in the wild in years and are presumed extinct in these parts. Sales figures from Bart Watson, Chief Economist at the Brewers Association (the trade body representing small, independent breweries in the United States) show porter’s share of total craft has dropped by 60% by sales volume since 2007, the earliest year for which numbers are available.

Fitz is good code. And, not really relatedly, Katie Mather is back with another edition of her newsletter, The Glup, this time sharing thoughts on the role of music in one’s thoughts:

Where the void (a term used in BPD circles and treatment to reference the absence of or inability to define emotion—the void can last moments or days depending on the episode) can be a black hole taking in and vaporising thoughts of comfort, in these playlists I can find ways to play with its distortion of reality. Daydreaming has always been my preferred state of being, and learning to find and clarify these powerful places in my mind has been empowering. Liminal spaces have always fascinated and terrified me…

I am a big time daydreamer, me. Katie also advises that she has upcoming articles in Pellicle as well as Hwaet! and Glug and Ferment, too – and that her book(!) will by published by Wine52 later this year.

Gary continues to speed though the archives and provides us a take of mid-century drink, Tenpenny ale:

In comments to my recent post “Walker’s S.B. Sherry Bright Ale”, Ron Pattinson pointed out that the name Tenpenny, shown proximate to the Sherry Bright name in adverts I considered, denoted a separate beer. He indicated it was 5.4% and quite dark in 1951. Edd Mather added that this Tenpenny was a brand originally made by George Shaw & Co. Ltd. of Leigh, Lancashire, a brewery bought up by Peter Walker’s parent company, Walker-Cain.

I shared that this brought back memories of a dear departed but distinct Ten Penny ale. Your uncle’s beer… well, maybe your great-uncle’s.

As noted in B+B’s Saturday round up, Mark Johnson has shared some thoughts about his relationship with alcohol under the grim but honest title of “Chasing Oblivion“:

It would have potentially been helpful for me to find something else as a lifestyle or as a hobby. As it was, my genuine love for tasting beer and visiting different types of pubs pulled me away from oblivion. As much as social media aspects of beer and self-proclaimed bloggers are routinely mocked, that energy made me approach beer differently . It made me focus on the positives without the need for pushing it that extra few drinks. I’ve made no secret that writing about my struggles with depression, my suicidal thoughts and some of my issues from the past have probably kept me alive. Before I had no such outlet. It has never truly occurred to me that my previous release was alcohol. It wasn’t every day. It wasn’t inhibiting my day-to-day life. But I was using it as both therapy and medication. Seeing alcohol purely through the beer lens helped me recalibrate.

An interesting story in the continuing saga of craft buy outs and closings this week sees a CNY veteran brewery buying out one of the top micros of days gone by. As my co-author Don Cazentre* reports from the scene:

Utica’s F.X. Matt (Saranac) Brewing, makers of the Saranac line of craft beers and the traditional lager Utica Club, has agreed to purchase Flying Dog Brewing, a large craft brewer based in Maryland. News of the deal was broken by Brewbound, a site that covers the national brewing industry. The deal announced today will likely make combined Matt / Flying Dog one of the ten largest craft brewers in the country, according to statistics compiled by the national Brewers Association, based in Colorado.

Mike Stein added that this may be a relief to those transitioning to the new leadership given the seemingly poor record of the former.

There is nothing good to report on the Bud Light market these days. Transphobic customers walk, good union jobs perhaps at risk and a welcome inclusive marketing plan gutlessly abandoned as fast as possible:

Bud Light is offering generous rebates for Memorial Day that in some cases amount to free beer as Anheuser-Busch continues its scramble to recover from the Dylan Mulvaney controversy… The rebate offer comes as Bud Light sales have worsened for the sixth consecutive week since April 1, when trans influencer Mulvaney shared an Instagram post of a custom Bud Light can the Anheuser-Busch brand sent her to celebrate “365 Days of Girlhood.” Rebates have already been offered on Bud Light by individual vendors looking to rid themselves of the embattled company.

Question: if your kid was in a local sports organization which, by Jeff’s reckoning, had only 80% committment to being the sort of place that “welcomes all, that straight up supports human dignity with action“… would you stick around? Not me. I am not picking on Jeff at all by saying this as I think he has the numbers shockingly right when it comes to craft beer. He also added another bit of math this week, a verbal description of the graphical representation of data this time which, again, is quite correct:

Nevertheless, the situation arises, at least partly, from a fault line that has always bedeviled the organization. From the very start, the Brewers Association saw itself as not just a trade association, but the central champion of a new culture of beer and brewing. This put them in the position of speaking for an industry far larger than their member breweries, and necessarily created compromises when the interests of their members deviated from the industry’s in general.

So, that entity with 80% top drawer actors is also just one side of a fault line – “fault” being an excellent double entendre – with people who are not produces on the other side of the line. Fans, hangers on, most beer writers, consumers, the public I suppose. People, as Jeff correctly says, who are not makers but are, according to the BA, still seemingly supposed to line up in lock step with them under the banner of the unified champion. Which we already consider to be 20% dodgy to one degree or another. Gotta tell you: if this is that rec league situation me and my kids would out of there in a spray of gravel as fast as I can get the car our of the ball field’s parking lot. In particular, I share the opinions expressed by a reader identifying as “gingersnap” in the comments at Jeff’s post on the underlying situation and how the mechanism actually works:

The problem with the language is that privilege is not a superpower to be used as an instrument of leverage. Privilege, in this case for white brewery owners, is a result of systemic oppression of non-white folks, it is not something that was earned. To talk about leveraging this power of privilege is part of the “white savior trope” and suggests that those without privilege should be grateful for whatever efforts are made on their behalf. That kind of thinking is hurtful, elitist and white-centric.

That cause is pretty all purpose for the effect of bigotries, if history is any sort of teacher. And I have also long thought and even said that this sort of thing (along with all the BA’s upward pricing encouragement and flaky faddish brewing technique promotions) is exactly why North America needs its own verion of CAMRA which sits apart from and even faces the BA. A consumers’ group for and led by beer drinkers, that’s whats needed. Why? Because it would appear that currently, the people in charge of the construct, the culture, the dialogue are not the consumers who actually control the cash with their spending decisions.

Such a plan would be reasonable, given the BA was formed twenty years ago in part to address some late micro era rogue weirdness while protecting the trade and perhaps cushioning the still prominent actor dabbling in some outrageous sexist marketing… as John Noel has confirmed. The yikky pattern continued, for example, two years before #MeToo in the sexist choices of certain prominent trade members at the CBC in 2015 as well as the 2018 Zwanze Day mess again involving a prominent man in beer. Still, all is presented as A-OK in the big craft picture. And still all associated with what gingersnap above called the “white savior trope” or what I have called “Great White Male Hero Theory Problem” in craft beer.

And while the Brewers Association is this keystone in the craft culture it is yet not, as Jeff says, able to respond in any effective manner to these issues. It “wants to be politically neutral in terms of state politics” and, when facing toxisity, found it “impossible to relocate this event.” That all being the case… is your kid still playing in this sports league? Why are you showing up to sit in the stands knowing or even experiencing the bigotries within ear shot form the stands or the benches? Why support the BA? Because it’s all we have?* And why do you think it’s all we have? Probably because we have forgotten what we should have.

Oh… and one last thing. Jeff also wrote that:

…the BA itself bringing smart people who think like these folks (and there are a lot of them!) into BA’s upper management would be a good first step in transforming the way the organization thinks.

Sadly, and as I noted two weeks ago, the BA does have at least one such excellent leader already in their organization and has for a number of years: Dr. J Jackson-Beckham, the Brewers Association’s Equity & Inclusion Partner. Seems there’s been plenty of stumbling at that first step. More on this from Stan, Robin and Stephanie Grant.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. I’m having a glass of wine this evening and relaxing. Let the others now scan the beer news for you! As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

*I just note that he and I are on the team writing the hitory of New York State brewing for SUNY Publishing. He knows everything one needs to know about the CNY brewing business and more.
**Update: well after my press time, Courtney Iseman went so far in her newsletter to carefully suggest and also plainly express a few things about the power dynamic that the BA imposes on craft beer culture when she wrote: “There are good things about CBC, and there are good people at the Brewers Association. I’m not comfortable telling people they should never go to CBC again. I’m not optimistic the BA will really take the note and meaningfully improve CBC, but I’m hopeful, so while I have no plans to attend again for the foreseeable future, I think it’s too soon to make any certain, sweeping statements… I think it’s important for us to remember that there are many people in the industry who don’t have as much of a choice. Their jobs might essentially require them to regularly attend CBC.” Which is absolutely nuts when you think about it for three seconds: get in line or get another job. Thanks BA.
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

Your Beery News Notes For Another Week Filled With Frosty Risks

Here we are. Mid-May and… the tomatoes have had to been covered and stuck in the shed for two nights. It was +0.7C Wednesday at 6 am and -1.0C on Thursday at about the same time. Lordy. BTW, I’ve hit 60 (as I have mentioned a number of times) so I plan to say “Lordy” more. Martin, who I suspect also says “Lordy” a lot, thumbed his nose to the fear of frost and spent some time at the seaside. Withernsea, to be exact. He spotted the same thing in real life that I did in his photos: “… the pub a minor joy with comfortable seating…” Now that I’m 60 I can say what I’ve known in my heart since I was a teen. Nothing like a comfy seat. Now, I know that this may not the sort of hard hitting beer journalism that you have come to expect hereabouts but I say it is beer realism. Happy butt, happy lad.

First up and not as happy, Lew made an interesting observation this week in his column at The Full Pint:

Failure might be on the way, because cost inputs in brewing have gone up and up, and people don’t want to see more price increases in the cooler. How can they not, when I hear from brewers about double-digit increases in packaging prices (glass, cans, kegs), 50% jumps in energy costs, and (finally) increases in labor costs. That’s why prices go up…mostly. But prices also go up sometimes because everyone’s waiting for the big brands – either in sales, or reputation and cachet – to go first, and when they do, everyone rushes to follow. That’s not collusion, they didn’t conspire to do it, it’s more like a stampede. When one buffalo starts running, pretty quickly they’re all running, because no one wants to get left behind.

It’s true that there’s price input pressure but there’s also the reality of sluggish interest in beer. Because, you know, people can run in any number of directions – including to straight to pouring other drinks in their glass. How many breweries are comfortable with the prospect of cutting output and raising prices?

Speaking of which, I had my first natural wine last weekend. My notes: “Yeasty, orange pear juice fruit, dry with light bubble and green pepper end with a little white pepper. Watery Creamsicle with mineral herb?” Perhaps not a repeat buy for me but interesting enough as experience goes. I only mention that (and not anything else like the name of the wine) as I read a piece in a newsletter called Everyday Drinking about how unpleasant natural wine fans are and I don’t want anyone showing up on my door:

Almost immediately, our natural winemaker launched into a rant. First, about the winemaker we’d just visited. “What is biodynamic anyway?” he said. “They can just buy the biodynamic preparations online.” This rant wasn’t surprising. There is possibly no group of people on earth who talk more shit about one another—behind one another’s back—than natural winemakers do. Plus, the biodynamic winemaker had already told us he’d once partnered with this guy and they’d had a “philosophical” falling out.

Yikes. Yet… is it true? Pellicle steps up to the defence of the naturalistas with a day in the life of an Australian harvest:

It is one of the rainiest seasons you’ve ever seen or heard of, and winemakers are anxiously racing against the threat of mildew and rot—the two inevitable results of rain falling on grapevines. Not to mention the birds and the kangaroos, constant predators of your fruits who find their ways past fences and through the netting, so much do they enjoy sucking the juice out of the berries or nibbling entire bunches.

Not at all unpleasantly, Eoghan guided us to an article in The Brussles Times about, what, appropriation of Belgium’s national drink by adulterous hegemonistic US craft:

The competition had a total of 24 “Belgian-style” beer categories, for which US beers took home most of the prizes. Canadian brewers also got more medals than Belgian ones for “Belgian-style” beers, receiving four prizes. “It’s been said that Belgian beer is having some difficulties on the international scene due to a lack of innovation. I think we are proving the opposite with our Seefbier, a beer style that dates back to 16th century Antwerp,” said Johan Van Dyck, founder of the Antwerp Brewing Company.

See also. Interesting use of “innovation” up there which leads us to Ron who suggests it’s a misuse and mislabelling of what is really just change:

True innovation in brewing is far rarer. Things like the adoption of the hydrometer and thermometer. Baudelot coolers. Refrigeration. Pure yeast cultures. Mash filters. Continuous fermentation. (It may have been a total disaster, but it was truly new.) Stuff that really hadn’t been done before. And genuinely transformed brewing. Most of what’s called innovation today? Mere tinkering with ingredients. While change is inevitable, it’s rarely innovation.

Speaking of which, I was there until the flavoured barrel-aging. Why can’t we respect the fundamentals? Speaking of which, the archeological record could support a Journal of Archaaeological Brewing but no one seems to want to do it.

Jeff posted a few thoughts about “innovative” collaborations in the land of good beer, a concept which long ago morphed from brewers getting together to beer writers getting their names on beer bottle labels to anytihng imaginable to… to… perhaps the unimaginable:

I may be an outlier here, but as a rule of thumb, I personally would never green-light a collab with any packaged meats product. No doubt some drinkers will cotton to the idea of a meaty brew, but are their numbers sufficient to offset those who gag at the idea? Put another way, one way to consider the potential harms and benefits of a potential collab is to ask whether people will confuse it with an April Fools joke. If the answer is even a maybe, it’s probably a poor opportunity.

And Cass posted an excellent update on the state of brewing in Syracuse, NY over at A Quick Beer:

Syracuse has an up-and-coming beer scene with many new breweries in a city that’s easy to explore. We enjoyed just a taste of Syracuse’s thriving beer scene, including pioneer Middle Ages, modern breweries such as Talking Cursive, Meier’s Creek, Buried Acorn and Bullfinch, plus checking out Syracuse’s Tipp Hill neighborhood and Seneca Street and SingleCut in nearby Manlius.

What that? NO, that’s just the blurb. He posted a video! Cass also runs the excellent (and perhaps older than this here space) The Bar Towel Forum for all your beer chatting needs. Speaking of which, the Craft Beer Channel has hit a decade of beers by video.

Health question: why does the congratulations around someone saying they are doing so well and feeling much healthier off the booze require also praising the person for also not recommending anyone else try it? Taboo?

Only tangentially related, Stan was having to be pretty blunt this week. His round up was only about the botch of a conference put on by the Brewers Association that I touched on that week – a botch which left him in less than a positive mood:

Last month I wrote, “It’s not my goal to find less pleasant stories to balance the feel good ones, but some weeks that is pretty easy.” There were stories last week that you might label “feel good,” but by the time the week ended nothing felt very good.

The Beer Nut made a few interesting observations about the state of BrewDog’s beer as well as the big surprise in beer for 2023, the battle for stout supremacy:

he first beer to catch my attention was Black Heart. BrewDog has been marketing this heavily as a Guinness substitute, and just like with Ansbach & Hobday’s London Black last year, I wanted to put that to the test. Unlike London Black, however, this one does actually meet the brief. They’ve matched the strength of Draught Guinness in Britain where it’s 4.1% ABV. They’ve got the texture spot on, while the flavour is very dry and rather boring, presenting an equivalent amount of toast and roast but lacking the tangy sourness which is Draught Guinness’s only real nod to having character. Mission accomplished, I guess, though BrewDog normally makes much more interesting beers than this. I would like to try them side by side if I ever get the chance.

David Jesudason (he of the BBC article on his new book, released yesterday) had an interesting article in his Substack newsletter Episodes of My Pub Life and prefaced it with this interesting heads up:

This article should be paid content. In fact, like last week’s article, it was commissioned but I chose to withdraw it from the publication as they wanted to change it too much from the initial brief. There’s no bad feeling about this decision and sometimes you have to value a compelling story above financial concerns.

Have I mentioned that gatekeeping backseat driving editors take away as much as they add? Oh, yes… many times. Anyway, the story is about two British people who ran a pub in rural South Africa from 2003 to 2011 and all the racist bigotries they experienced. Like everything David touches (except for some editors) you will find another read that few others are sharing in the beer world.

Lastly, the structure of this piece by Will Hawkes on Copenhagen illustrates something I notice about beer writing – a familiar structure. First, I like to count paragraphs and this one comes in at a bit under 30 paragraphs with about the first two thirds revisiting known facts. Even if in this case the facts are about negative things. Not a lot of beer writing is about negative things so this is good. And this is for VinePair so that context is important. This is not craft beer bubble writing. The “story” is in the last nine paragraphs and really the final five. The fifth even starts with an introductory sentence: “On a sunny evening, it’s clear that Copenhagen is a beer town.” Then a reference to hygge (that Pete Brown told us all about way back when in his 2006 book Three Sheets to the Wind which I interviewed him about when he was speaking to me.*) And then the final happy hopeful.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

*Funny ha-ha only. Me kidding. Just a joke… with a citation of sorts… you know… for accuracy purposes…
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Absolutely Final No Returns Accepted News Notes Of April 2023

OK, so what’s going on. I am still a bit stunned from the residual effects of da ‘Vid but I also got my taxes done last weekend as opposed to my usual next weekend deadline date with the docts. I have no idea why I didn’t wait for the last minute like usual. To celebrate or maybe just to get me through the filing process, last weekend I finally found a way to get a kick out of a fruity kettle sour. Eat cookies with them. Specifically, the coconut laced Voortman Strawberry Turnover known throughout Ontario when chased by a Left Field Strawberry Rhubarb Sour. YOWSA!!! Any bar that doesn’t stock up the $3.25 grocery store find and then resell to aspiring drunks for $6 is NUTSO!!! Candy. Baby. Boom.

9:20 AM Update: David Jesudason has published another teaser for his much anticipated book on Desi Pubs called Desi Pubs (to be published BTW in a few weeks on May 17th) this time in the newsletter Brown History:

“I must admit I’m a bit nervous. There will be a few difficult customers, no doubt, but I think I shall be able to manage.” Few remember the modest man who spoke these words about the Leicester business he was about to take over in 1962, but unknowingly he was to become a British-Indian trailblazer who paved the way for many others. His name was Soham Singh and he was being interviewed by local newspapers because he was deemed Britain’s first “coloured innkeeper” after he started running the Durham Ox pub with his wife Janet (described as an attractive 28-year-old English woman, “whom he married in a Sikh Temple five years earlier”).

I have to admit I find these writings of his torturous to the point of being tortious – but never, of course, tortuous – as I have no access to a good Desi Pub but expect I would love having access to a good Desi Pub.

First up, Pellicle published an interesting article on a not very hot topic – the effect of a closure of local brewery:

I grew up in weather-beaten pubs like these, as did my father and his father before him. If you were local, you would say we were hefted to the land, such is our family’s connection to this obscure north-western part of this obscure north-western English county. Until recently, when it was closed by parent company Carlsberg Marston’s, there was a brewery hefted to this land too. A brewery called Jennings.

Semi-spoiler: “…the disastrous rebrand…”

And, Stan is back from the Antipodes and reported on the New Zealand hop scene in his latest edition of Hop Queries – including on one matter I might not have noticed myself:

Equally surprising was to see that most often the hops are strung to 4.8 meters (less than 16 feet) on 5.4 meter trellises, so not as high as in other hop growing regions. Farmers in the American Northwest grow hops on 18-foot-high trellises, while in Europe seven meters is standard outside of the Tettnang region of Germany. In Tettnang, older varieties are strung to eight meters and newer ones to seven. I heard several suggestions about why New Zealand farms have lower trellises, and will report back once I sort out if there is a definitive answer.

The Beer Nut undertook a bit of market research by studying the JD Wetherspoon Spring Fest 2023 so you don’t have to and seems to have appreciated the experience as…

then, instantly, all the festival beers disappeared from the Dublin branches a day before the event was due to end. Maybe they bought exactly the right amount of beer, though I would be surprised. Overall there was enough decent stuff in the above to keep me happy, and no outright disasters. I still miss the token 7-8%er that used to lurk at the bottom of every programme. Bring that back.

And, like The Beer Nt, as we look forward to the Coronation next weekend, when 17 million extra pints will be downed, this story in the Scotsman about the role one pub played in the protection of the Stone of DESTINY!!!

According to pub legend, the real Stone of Destiny resides in the historic bar, The Arlington which has been operating since 1860, as this was where the students who stole it hid it. The story goes that the Stone of Destiny that was returned was a replica that had been fashioned by the students. The Arlington bar, which is located on Woodlands Road, displays the ‘real’ Stone of Destiny prominently in a glass case on the bar.

Speaking of Scotland, this tweet was maybe interesting. Apparently, at least on the books, BrewDog is losing money… well, lost it in 2021 when, you know, everyone was losing money. They ended up with almost £14m less in year end cash after taking in almost £20m in share sales… ie non-earned income. All on an net operating cash flow of £12.5m. But they spent £21m on property and equipment which is usually good. But then lent £20m to subsidiaries… which is… perhaps speculative. Maybe.

Speaking of 2021, stats for alcohol use on the isle of Jersey were released and the societal effects are a bit staggering even if drinking is down 25% since 2000:

…in 2021, there were 725 hospital admissions specifically related to alcohol per 100,000 population, similar to the English rate of 626 per 100,000. Two thirds of alcohol-specific hospital admissions were men, the report showed. The report said alcohol played a role in almost one in six of all crimes recorded in Jersey in 2022, with 32% of assaults and serious assaults, 11% of domestic assaults and 23% of offences in the St Helier night-time economy.

I have a pal named Dave who is the CBC afternoon radio guy in Yukon. This week he had an interesting interview with sake importer Patrick Ellis which helpfully unpacks a lot of the basics of the drink.

Did you know that Brazilians over a certain age can now buy decade specific beer brands? I read about it on the internet, myself:

Beck’s 70+ offers a chance to start “a dialogue with the pro-aging culture movement, which understands that age does not limit people’s desires and aspirations,” he says. Well, that’s probably aiming a bit too high. Still, it’s a smart nod to an oft-marginalized audience, a welcome respite from the think/act/feel/dress/drink young ethos that’s getting so darn old already.

Jeff speculated on the implications of the “not at all news” that craft beer has become incredibly boring. We know that because appartently the Brewers Association says sales are flat… which really means they really are BZZZZZzzzzzmmmm….(….’fssst…)…zzzblubt……flpt… KABOOM! Regardless, Jeff suggests a few things including:

With so much excess capacity in the industry, contract brewing is an attractive way to launch a brand cheaply. A slightly different model gaining traction is the alternating proprietorship—basically, a shared brewery. The two or more separate companies schedule time on one brewhouse and then have devoted tanks on the cold side. I’d never heard of this until Ruse launched their brand that way at Culmination. Some time later, Pono did the same with Zoiglhaus. Both Ruse and Pono had their eyes set on using these arrangements to bootstrap up to their own breweries and taprooms, and both have since done so.

I have known contract brewing where there is an expansion. Where there are hopes and dreams. And, in a way maybe, brewing co-operatives where the best stout known to humanity was made. Who knows? Could be.

What else is going on? Lisa‘s off being a weirdo again this time sharing her very own 2023-esque and rather dramatic Guinness story:

Glances were exchanged all around the bar – after all, many of the tourists were here specifically to try other local beers – but she wasn’t done yet. ‘Are you SERIOUSLY SUGGESTING I cannot get a Guinness – IRELAND’S NATIONAL DRINK – at this so-called Irish pub?’ There was a pause, as she looked around for support, and she continued, at a further-increased volume, ‘do any of you here find this AT ALL ACCEPTIBLE?’ To the credit of absolutely everyone in the pub, not a single person responded directly, though there was a light chuckle toward the back of the room. After another dramatic pause, she tried once more to garner some kind of support – once again, upping the decibels: ‘I cannot BELIEVE that a business like this can exist, in this day and age, calling itself an IRISH PUB without Guinness.’ And with that, she turned on her heel and flounced out of the pub.

You know, Lisa really needs to get me interviewed on that podcast. I nkow it’s a group decision but I really could answer questions like “seriously, Al, what the hell?” and “when does the song ‘Time the Avenger’ start meaning different things?” and stuff like that.

What else… Miller cans crushed in Europe? Don’t care. Heineken not caring about poor widdle cwaft beer’s feelings? Who cares? But, hey, what’s that? Could that be true? The white lab-coated nerds at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic are at it again… with ROBOTS FILLED WITH YEAST:

Millimetre-sized robots made of iron oxide and packed with yeast speed up fermentation of beer by swimming around in the fermenting container and can be removed with a magnet, eliminating the need for filtering out yeast

That’s extra nutso. Here’s a 2020 paper published by the Europeans Chemistry Society explaining the process. Egg. Heads.

That’s enough from me. Back to social media scrolling and fretting over the risk of frost. BTW… fine. Mastodon not taking off like you expected? Do what you like. But here’s your Masto-newb cheat sheet. Because… because… things work best when folk get tucked in… Substack notes ain’t anyone’s saviour. I’m getting t-shirt made that says that. You wait… I will…

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and now definitely from Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason every Friday. 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 back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Ben has revived his podcast, Beer and Badword. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade… and by “a bit” I think mean not really just a bit. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!*

*And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

A Warming And Growing Then Dashed Hopes Sort Of Beery News Notes

Ah, false spring. I have happily read Dan Malleck’s 2022 book Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition to stay warm this week. It neatly explains the period between the “your betters” of the Georgian status-based mercentile world and modern life, illustrating the rise of the new “your betters” of the regulating bureaucracy through the brief decades in the later 1800s of Canada’s laisse-faire capitalist “your betters”! Perhaps not surprisingly, there is less actual liquor in Dan’s book than in last week’s 2016 update of the bio of Lemmy, White Line Fever* but, to be clear, waaaay more policy debate set in late Victorian Ontario. Lemmy dropped the ball in that respect.

You know, the two books fill handy gaps and together would make for a very interesting compare and contrast sort of essay question given each in its own way is an exploration of autonomy in the modern state. I highly recommend each of them – especially as it’s reasonable to suggest that the lads on the cover of the Dan’s book would, but for the non-invention of a time machine, no doubt would have picked up a fond affection for Motörhead. Especially that lad to the right. I might have post a full review of the book but (i) it is not 2008-14 and not one does that anymore and (ii) Dan warned me off:

Enjoy. If you don’t, I don’t wanna know 🙂

Get both books. Do it! Note: UBC Press’s online shopping is particularly handy.

Speaking of the song stylings of Motörhead, this week’s piece in the Pellicle about hearing loss is something worth reading. I fried my ears on cheap RadioShack headphones and late 70s punk as a kid, leaving myself now with tinitus, lost accuity leading me to say “what?!?!” a lot as well as pain from a whole range of sounds now. I actually had to flee a pub this year when the Irish band struck up. Hot knives in the head. Anyway, it’s real and if you don’t believe me, think about what Emmie Harrison-West says about it:

…there’s no such thing as a ‘quiet pint’. I struggle if I sit at the bar, or next to barking dogs (which is torture, I tell you—being a lover of all four-legged friends), speakers, toilets, televisions, fruit machines, pool tables, and kitchens, as I have to strain to hear my friends, or ask them to repeat themselves. It’s as frustrating as it is exhausting. There’s only so many times I can say: “Sorry, what?” before I end up closing in on myself, smiling and nodding, becoming reserved, and making an excuse to leave.

There is a good descriptor for NA beer: a soft drink. I don’t care to write about them but others seem to need to include them in with, you know, actual drinks. Big in Germany, says Will Hawkes in VinePair:

It was introduced in 2018 after Reineke spent two years developing the beer. “All my brewer friends told me that it was a stupid idea, that nobody would want it in Germany,” he says. “But it’s getting more and more popular and I think it’ll be our No. 1 product within the next few years.”

Along a similar line of things not being what they suggest they are, are wet led pubs really taking off in the UK? The Mudge doubts it – and considers it in the context of his local where he has seen kitchen food service come and now go:

There was a serving hatch in the extension from which a variety of straightforward food was dispensed at lunchtimes. I remember having some tasty bacon barms there. But the general decline of pubgoing meant that it became nowhere near as busy as it once was… They introduced a much more ambitious and expensive pub food menu, but it never seemed to find many takers, and the general impression that the pub still gave of being a traditional boozer probably put diners off. In hindsight, it might have made more sense to make the extension a dedicated dining area with a brighter colour scheme and return the main bar service to the old side. So the food has now been dropped, and according to WhatPub it now only offers “pies and barmcakes”, which presumably need no kitchen preparation.

Similarly on the theme of what is is not what is said to be, The Tand Himself has taken his study of Sam Smith’s pub chain’s flaunted nanny alt-state rules… and found them utterly flouted in The Big City:

While it has never been officially confirmed, it is known that Humphrey’s son Sam is the supremo of all the Southern operations. Things are done differently there, and while recently in the North, innovations such as paying by phone and card have been accepted, it is true to say that no such restrictions have operated in London for quite some time.The reasons for this are pretty obvious when you look at the clientele. I think it’s fair to say that in the absence of paying by card or phone Mr. Smith would find insufficient customers willing to pay by cash, as payment by such is, in London, the exception rather than the rule. Also missing from most of the London pubs is the plethora of notices forbidding this, that or the other, though it is fair to say that the one prohibiting electronic devices is generally clear and present, but, particularly in the case of phones, is blatantly and wholly disregarded.

Heavens! Speaking of which, The Guardian reports that Trappist breweries are suffering from a definite lack of Trappists. As a Protestant I can only say, theologically-speaking, it’s about time. But will we miss them when they are gone?

…uncertainties hover over the future of Trappist beer production in this traditionally Catholic country, where fewer people are drawn to a life of monastic contemplation. Those questions became more acute in January when Belgium’s Achel beer lost its Trappist status after being taken over by a private entrepreneur. The new owner has vowed to keep the recipe unchanged, but after the severing of ties with monks, Achel can no longer call itself a Trappist beer. “It must be admitted that the state of most monastic communities is precarious,” said Brother Benedikt, the abbot of Westmalle…

Furtherly similarly but from the wholey unholier point of view, will Boston Beer finally complete its BA Denied™ slow full rotation from micro to craft to something else to none of the above by selling itself off:

After riding high on the hard seltzer boom in the run up to the coronavirus, Boston and its shares fell from grace when it almost bet the ranch and lost on its Truly brand only to see demand hit the brakes leaving it to write off huge amounts of stock… Heineken is running its eye over Boston because the existing market positions of brands such as Truly and Twisted Tea could fill a strategic hole in the armoury of the world’s third largest brewer. While she does not believe a deal is imminent, she says such a move holds “strategic rationale for both parties.”

Does all this leave you less than… enthused? Does beer leave you feeling like Wojciech Weiss or even Walter Richard Sickert observed? Is there any doubt it’s been losing fans for very good reasons? Ron wants to know and even shares a confession:

I rarely join the chase foe a specific beer nowadays. Unless it’s something really special. And by special, I mean odd, forgotten and obscure styles. Not the latest trend. I can take or leave the newest type of IPA or adulterated Imperial Stout. My interest has now mostly shifted to history. Understanding how beer styles are formed and mutate as they spread out from their initial homelands. I put in as much time and effort as ever, Just in a different environment. No longer out in the field with my binoculars hoping to spot a rare bird to cross off my list. But at my computer, excavating the barrows of long-lost brews. Without enthusiasm, I wouldn’t be doing this work.

Ontario wine writer Michael Pinkus shared another sort of lack of enthusiasm in his monthly newsletters, the provincial monopoly’s moves to limit local drinks writers:

In 2019 the LCBO started to curate the wines that they were allowing journalists to taste. They were dictating to the local media what they should be covering. When I pressed the LCBO for an explanation nothing was provided. (Did money play a part?). And now, no local, independent journalist tastes any kind of extensive line-up of LCBO wines. So how do you really know what’s good and fits the Ontario palate? Today the LCBO saves even more money by “borrowing” notes from international journalists to sell the wines on their shelves; how does that benefit their ultimate consumer? Ontarians. What I find even more offensive is of late they use their own product consultants as “experts” to review wines.

Finally, some legal news. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this week in a case of the often seen situation of a drunk guy on an ATV bombing along a back road… with a twist:

… a non‑exhaustive definition does not necessarily oust other definitions. Depending on the context, exhaustive and non-exhaustive definitions can be read together. Under a harmonious reading of the two definitions of “driver”, for the purpose of s. 48(1), “driver” refers to a person who is driving, or has care or control of, a motor vehicle on a highway. A person who has care or control of a motor vehicle but who is no longer on a highway would not be a “driver” under the HTA. In the present case, Mr. McColman was not a “driver” for the purpose of s. 48(1) when he was stopped by the police. Even if it can be said that he had care or control of the ATV, he was not on a highway when the police effected the stop. Therefore, the police stop was unauthorized by s. 48(1) of the HTA.

See, the guy was stopped after he left the road and was on private property. Fortunately, the Court let the evidence in even though there was a violation of ATV guy’s rights holding that society’s interest in the truth-seeking function of the criminal trial process would be better served by admission of the evidence even though the police impacted Mr. McColman’s liberty interests when they the police questioned him in the course of an unlawful detention. Sucks, as they say, to suck.

There. Done. Enough. Finis. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

Anyone else? And check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes bits and bobs when he can… like this! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason every Friday. 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 back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!**

*Though neither than compare to Ron’s notes from the road.
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Middlie-March Endie-O’Winter Thursday Beery News Notes

Well, that wasn’t too bad of a winter, was it. Was it? A time for reflection and relaxation. And winning prizes apparently. This was posted on the Facebook page for my near neighbours MacKinnon Brother’s Brewing who explained how their farm and brewery operation took the gold cup… or the blue ribbon… or red the sticker:

First place in the Malt Barley category at the Ottawa Valley farm show! The farming side of the operation, Miller Seed Farm, grows certified seed on 1300 acres. There is a high amount of diversity, with a crop rotation including wheat, oats, barley (feed and malting), soybeans, and corn.

Give you great level of confidence when your brewer is also the farmer. You know, it’s been a good week for photos. Perhaps a bit of an album as a keepsake is in order. Here are a few of the ones that caught my eye:

From left to right, that’s The Beer Nut on the road looking at the wooden vats at Boon, the packing line at Crisp Maltings where its “100% grown, malted and packaged in Scotland. 90% of our farms are within 50 miles” as well as The Old Wellington in Manchester, England established in 1552 on the move in 1971:

…raised on timber pillars and a stone base, our historic building was lifted and moved down the road to where you see it today! Crazy stuff.

You know, I never know what to think about the taxation issue. Folk need to fund the services we uses after all – as examples of its absence show, like in place where the word “austerity” is thrown about as code for taking the burden off all of those who can best afford it. That being said, this pending increase in Canadian federal excise tax does, however, seem to be a levy which has an unequal effect:

The 6.3-per-cent increase is the biggest that Christine Comeau, executive director of the Canadian Craft Brewers Association, has seen, she said. The group wants Ottawa to reconsider the way the tax is levied. The national body said Canada is home to more than 1,100 craft breweries that account for more than 21,000 jobs. The association said the vast majority of those breweries are less than five years old, and most are not yet profitable.

Now, the article states that excise duties are also imposed on spirits, wine, tobacco, cannabis and vaping products suggesting it is just sin related but forms of such national levies are also imposed on insurance premiums, automotive air conditioners and, my favourite, luxuries. By the way, the UK seems to have issued an inter-galectic scale offset.

What else has been going on? Now that you are up on your Canadian federal excise categories… well, The Beer Nut found a way to discuss an Abbey NEIPA this week:

Like any right-thinking drinker of Belgian beer, I consider Troubadour Magma to be one of the greats, taking strong influence from powerhouse American IPA and giving it just a little bit of a classy Belgian twist. I’m not the only one who thinks so highly of it, as evidenced by the brewery’s insistence on releasing brand extensions. So far, only the Brettanomyces-spiked one has been worthy of the name, in my estimation, but here’s another one to try: the inevitable Magma NEIPA.

Spoiler: he likes. [I still think “yikes!” myself but that’s just me.]

Ron is in Brazil… again. Or he’s back from Brazil… again. And sharing his breakfasts. But more importantly, he guided me to this excellent article on koelships by Marta Holley-Paquette of the Beer of SMOD:

A growing list of American and now British craft breweries have since installed these relics. But to properly understand the cooler, we need to go back in time to when they were a logical part of a typical brewhouse. Then we will follow them into traditional breweries who still use them, and perhaps even discover why they went away. In the early days of industrial brewing, the post boil, pre-fermentation period must have been agonizingly long. Cooling down from the boil (100C) to fermentation temperatures in the teens likely required an overnight stand. Not ideal when you’re dealing with a fragile liquid such as unfermented wort. It’s the perfect place for all sorts of microscopic nasties to make their new home, fouling the flavor and longer-term stability of your beer.

Speaking of the supply chain… no, we weren’t… but we are now… it’s not the main topic of conversation but the movement of cash can be as problematic is the reciprocal goods, as Lucy Britner reported in Drinks Retailing:

When the pandemic hit, the pair pivoted to online beer sales and a subscription club. The founders were featured in many news articles in summer 2022, heralding their “£10 million beer company”. But relationships with the trade have soured, as several brewers raised concerns over unpaid bills. Yeastie Boys founder Stu McKinlay said his business is owed around £17,000 from a £27,000 order going back to 2021. “Their last order from us was in late 2021, previous to which they’d purchased a couple of times and cleared all their debts,” he told Drinks Retailing. “They ordered £27,000 worth of stock and took many months of hassling them – plus a letter of demand – to make any payment on that. They only paid £5,000 and then disappeared again.”

Jeff reported on another effect of the pandemic – changed drinking habits:

Those shifts have had profound effects on our cities. Downtowns, once hubs for office work, emptied out and many never really refilled. That meant workers quit pouring into commercial districts, so restaurants and dry cleaners and shops started closing. And pubs… Entire activities we once enjoyed are withering. We don’t go out to movies anymore; we stream content on our devices. We don’t go to concerts as much anymore; we stream music on our phones. And, highly relevant to the beer world, we just don’t go out to drink as much anymore.

Beer flavoured popsicles? Why bother? Speaking of which, it is a sad state of affairs when Craft Beer & Brewing has to explain something that I assumed was learned at the first week of brewers’ school – you can make flavours in beer without chucking in those E-Z gallons of syrup:

Fruit was one of the first things that craft beer used to differentiate itself from mass-market beer. (Remember the ubiquity of fruited wheat beers in the late ’90s and early ’00s?) Yet it remains something of a mysterious ingredient for many brewers. Lost in much of the debate, however—about extracts versus real fruit, puréed versus macerated versus whole, adding fruit in the boil versus the fermentor, and so on—is this question: Do you actually need that fruit in the first place? Now, I’m not passive-aggressively suggesting that you shouldn’t brew with fruit. Nor am I suggesting that you should avoid real fruit and start hitting the chemical extracts.

So… I am. I am suggesting that. Just for the record, don’t we all agree that you should be able to brew a beer well without adjuncts before you use adjuncts if you are going to, you know, take pride in your product? And umm… see that loss of interest in craft beer over the last while? Guess why. Bed? Pooped in.

Err… isn’t “Manifest Destinty“** one of those slogans that should be, you know, ditched because of its racist colonial implucations? Speaking of which, is there any less appealing form of beer story than the semi-annual “ten people I know pull ten breweries you will never hear of again out of their arses” story? Comes in St. Patrick’s Day editions, too. Maybe it’s the haunt spoiler construct. Or maybe the recirculated Proust analogy laced post… maybe…

Alistair at Fuggled found time to wander towards the Rio Grande… I think… and sent a dispatch from Texas where he found his Czech-xas bliss:

I have to admit that I was thrown off by the bartender asking me if I wanted the beer “crispy or sweet”, but she was talking about the style of pour that I wanted, hladinka or šnyt. As you can see I agree with Karel Čapek that a šnyt is “at least something more than nothing”, and so had a classic hladinka. Pilz pours a lovely light golden, is as clear as a bell, and that wet creamy foam just kind of sat there, at least until I slurped a good deal of it off. Up to this point, the only Pilz I had had was canned, but fresh at source on tap is basically as good as beer gets.

I have been gathering in more of the good stuff, including the newest entry to the list of listenables and good reads down below, Will Hawkes’ London Beer City, where this month we read:

I sit by the window and stare towards Peckham Rye itself. This is a great London view: red buses and people of all backgrounds, movement and life and colour. A man on rollerblades, tugged by a staffie, races past on his way up Rye Lane. Inside, the swearing man admonishes his friend: “Fucking ‘ell Jude, that was 40 years ago!”40 years ago, Only Fools and Horses was in its pomp – and this pub was called The Morning Star. It existed under that name for more than a century, featuring in Muriel Spark’s Ballad of Peckham Rye, before it became The Nag’s Head perhaps 20 years ago, according to this account. It was named after the pub in Only Fools and Horses, a whimsical evocation of the perfect working-class South London pub.

And Ben Johnson‘s podcast is back, by the way. Very focused on the Ontario scene. Even the southwestern Ontario scene. But his stress dream about service jobs decades ago are a good topic this week.

There. Done. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

*In case you don’t know, it’s pretty much the North American version of Lebensraum.
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Marchy Marchest March-laden Beery News Notes Of All!

I did mention that I like March, right? Almost met my maker on Saturday shovelling wet snow. Boo-hoo, you say! It’s your own damn fault for being Canadian, you shout!! I get it. I get it. But it is March and while the sun’s heat melts the alpine peaks created on the weekend by the driveway, seedlings are getting ahead of themselves in one corner of the basement under funny looking lights. Those courgettes are pushing it, frankly. Who knew they’d take to subterranian living so well? The endive is looking OK. Taking its time. That stuff at the bottom? Dead by Saturday. Waaaay too leggy.

Hmm… yet to mention beer related things again… must still smarting from getting absolitely owned by TBN over at Twitter on a question of the royals… I had no idea I was dealing with a crypto-monarchist… acht weel… First up, Katie Mather wrote a wonderful goodbye for Pellicle about a well loved spot that has shut:

The Moorcock has been more than a pub to me in the small years it was open—for yes, sadly, it has closed. There is no way in high heaven that The Moorcock could have ever been called my local. I’m not as lucky as that. Stood on top of a hill above Sowerby Bridge, this pub is more than two hours of a trip either way from my home in the Ribble Valley. It is far away enough to merit a whole weekend break to be structured around eating there. Or, it was. I keep forgetting.

And Ed also wrote about something a bit sad and also a bit too common these days, the closing of a small brewery or a pub. The twist in Ed’s case is that the brewery was his former employer:

The news that the Old Dairy Brewery had gone bust didn’t come as a huge surprise to those of us that knew the company. It didn’t mean it wasn’t sad though. I spent a few years working for the company. I learnt a lot there, met some great people and had some good times. I also met some right arseholes and had some bad times, but such is life.

Finding a moment from his own daily postings, Martin shared an interesting comment under Ed’s thoughts on some of the particular problems this place faced: “I was also told that those old Nissen huts weren’t particularly suited to house a brewery – freezing cold in winter, and baking hot in summer.”

Perhaps oddly in this economic climate, Ontario’s oldest micro has been bought by a macro – and for a pretty good price:

The province’s OG craft brewery has reached new heights with exciting news of its acquisition by a gigantic beer giant. Little ole Waterloo Brewing has officially been acquired by Carlsberg Canada (a subsidiary of The Carlsberg Group) as of March, 7. The gigantic business deal is estimated to be in tens of millions of dollars, with CTV News putting it at a whopping $217 million in cash. Known for its creative Radler and IPA flavours (guava lime, tart cherry and original grapefruit), classic lagers, and cute boar icon, Waterloo was first established in 1984 as Brick Brewing.

Note: calling a brewery “craft” in 1984 is like calling Canada’s temperance era prohibition.* Not sure what the attraction is, given the trends noted last week right about here. A facility for brewing more Carlsberg?

Elsewhere, things are still happening and mixing was a bit of a theme this week. Jeff discussed the blending old and young ales while Matt shared some thoughts about wine and beer co-existing. In each case, the point is creating something new out of complimentary qualitities… like this:

…the chalk seam that runs beneath Westwell’s vineyard is the same one that travels all the way to the Champagne region of France, this terroir giving the grapes a similar – if not identical – quality to those cultivated in the storied wine region. This imbued the beer with the rich, spritzy and dry quality of the famous sparkling wine that, when buoyed with the acidic tang of the Beak saison, and the crunchy, bone dry character of the beer from Burning Sky, created a beverage that was somehow even more delicious than the sum of it parts.

Compare force of attraction that the bit of a push that Jeff describes:

Nationwide, there’s an overcapacity of barrel-aged beer of all types. Breweries invested in barrel rooms because, for a time, beer geeks were paying a lot of money for bottles of the stuff (both wild ales and barrel-aged beer). That has changed, and while people still pay a premium for aged beer, it doesn’t move like it used to …

At least the barrel cellars feel the same pain that the thousands of beer stashes have. Just too much of that stuff. Much too much.

And Australia’s website The Crafty Pint published an interesting article on Cherry Murphy, beer and spirits buyer for Blackhearts & Sparrows, drinks retailer:

…the role of beer buyer is something she’s done for close to five years. In that time, the number of breweries has grown significantly. But, while there’s more beer to work through and more options to stock, Cherry says there’s a fundamental they always return to: whether it’s a bottle of lambic, a tall can of hazy IPA, or their own Birra (brewed with Burnley Brewing), their focus is on what tastes good and ensuring their stores can suit many tastes. “We do always say we’re a broad church,” she says, “so we don’t want to alienate anyone or be snobby because good beer is for everyone. Sometimes a good beer is a cheap beer and sometimes it’s expensive, but as long as it’s a good product I’ll range it.

And also Beth Demmon has posted an excellent sketch of cider seller, Olivia Maki of Oakland, CA over at Prohibitchin’:

There aren’t very many cider-centric bars or bottle shops in the United States: I’d guess there are fewer than a dozen. They’re not even an endangered species—more like an ultra-niche novelty that I would really like to see become more popular. Through Redfield, Olivia is doing her damndest to transform cider’s novelty into the mainstream. She laughs when she remembers the initial idea to open a cider bar and bottle shop. “The world didn’t need another beer spot,” she says. But selling the concept to landlords proved difficult. “None of them knew what cider was!”

Keep an eye out for Beth’s soon to be released cider guide. Then Katie Thornton interviewed Adrienne Heslin who, in 2008, opened the first female-owned Irish brewery for the website Love Dublin this week:

I was born in the 60s and you can imagine it’s not plain sailing. Coming to brewing, I actually found the opposite because it’s such a small industry. When I started I was introduced very quickly to the bigger micro-breweries and to my amazement they were just nothing but cooperative. A down-side on the female end of things – it’s amazing, you give a man a job, and suddenly everybody think he’s in charge, so I find that a lot. In particular, I have a gentleman now who’s wonderful and in charge of production, but they refer to him as the brewer, whereas he came in as an intern. I taught him everything.

I remember the same thing happening in my mother’s shop when my father, the reverend, would be there. He quite forcefully would admit his ignorance on all subjects, directing folk back to the one in charge.

When he wasn’t rearranging royal wedding memorobilia, The Beer Nut encountered that strange creature, an “eighty shilling shilling“:

It’s about the same strength as the previous beer and is an unattractive murky muddy brown. The flavour is mercifully clean, but not very interesting. One expects hops from a pale ale and malt from a Scottish-style amber-coloured ale, and this shows little of either. There’s brown sugar and black tea, finishing up so speedily as to resemble a lager. I suppose one could be happy that there’s no “scotch ale” gimmickry or cloying toffee, but I thought it came down too far on the other side, being boring and characterless.

That’s what’s been said about me. Mercifully clean. Not very interesting. And, finally, David Jesudason wrote a very interesting piece – this time for for GBH (regrettably accompanied by distracting retro java script looping weirdness) – about the history of the British curry house and the curry district and the bigotry those who worked there had to put up with:

Curry quarters like these sprang up first as community spaces for South Asians to carve out support networks and enjoy familiar food together. But to make their businesses viable from the 1960s onwards, restaurant owners had to cater to the wider population. This is where many first- and second-generation workers faced racism head on—serving white people “while absorbing their shit at the same time,” says dancer Akram Khan about his curry-house upbringing. It was common for waiters to be mocked for their accents, or to face abuse over the prices they charged.

Keep an eye out for David’s also soon to be released book, Desi Pubs. There. We have concluded our broadcast for the week. Next week? The winter that was. Now the acknowledgements. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

And check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes when when he can. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!**

*Winky Face Emoticon!!!
**I’ve reoganized to note the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Pensive Beery News Notes For That Dull Gap Between US Thanksgiving And Christmas

Are US holidays the most liquor laced of all? Not sure. But they sure are the most extended. I get the sense that nowadays* they just go on and on, one meeting the next at some sort of transition overlap. We seem to have all been in the HallowThanksChristEve zone for a while now and there are still weeks to go. Good thing I’m Canadian as we up here track time by following the sports calendar and the grain growing season cycles. Speaking of holidays, someone is not getting a bonus. Joe Stange shared an image of the aftermath of a disaster in Belgium. Look at that Westmalle, laughing at the Orval.

So what is going on out there? I liked this observation from The Beer Nut which could be applied to any number of things:

The best feature is the booze, delivering as it does a pleasant warming fuzziness, perfect for a miserable evening in mid-November. Overall, it’s fine, but not exactly high end, to my palate anyway.

And I came across a new mag worth checking out, Beer & Weed, out of area code 207 – aka the Great State of Maine aka the Canada of the USA. My favourite American second cousin in law Mike has an article in the December issue as does Carla Jean who offers some ideas for giving which go beyond the usual. Like taking a pal on a beer tour – or making an apple pie after soaking the apples in beer. I like that, a twist on mulled ale… or pastry stout. Think about that. Mmm…

Next – aside from my secret wondering whether it’s all an elaborate façade broadcast from a hidden Nordic mountain lair based on fantastic IT resources, access to private wealth and wicked sense of disruptive if extremely niche humour – Lars has once again produced an excellent thought provoking and well researched essay, this time pushing the history of hops back in northern Europe by more than a century or two, relying in large part on the unreliability of records:**

This, however, is the history you get from written documents, but hop usage began at a time when brewing was mostly something people did at home, for their own household, and almost none of what they did was ever recorded in writing. So we must expect that nearly all of the early history of hops has gone undocumented, and therefore we must turn to other sources of information to cast light on the early history of hops.

Personal note: this is exactly what my first beer experience in the late 70s were like. I’m a bit verklempt.***

I liked this very narrow study of Gary’s this week, a three piece article on something called Tipper Ale, a beer that relied on salt just as 1830s Albany Ale did. Except it wasn’t chucked into the barrel:

The key to the palate was use in brewing, or some use, of “brackish” water. The brewery was at a crossing, originally a drawbridge, over River Ouse near its mouth with the English Channel. Hence the seawater story is plausible, given location and typography. I cited various sources to this effect and there were others I didn’t, as all concur in result. One of the last sources, in 1941, was the most interesting I thought as it stated both regular and sea water was used.

One of my favourite discussions in the comments has to be the time back in 2008 when yeast scientists including a Dr Dunn and a Dr Sherlock took offense at being called “eggheads” and then embraced it. Well, the eggheads of yeast science were at it again this week with release of the news building on their work to explain… something:

It has been known for some time that S. pastorianus is a hybrid of two parents, one of which is S. cerevisiae (de Barros Lopes et al. 2002, Dunn and Sherlock 2008). However, the second parent, Saccharomyces eubayanus, was not isolated until 2011, from the Patagonian Andes in South America (Libkind et al. 2011)…. Regardless of when the hybridization(s) between S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus occurred, they are likely to have occurred in Europe, and possibly in Bavaria. It is, therefore, surprising that no European isolates of S. eubayanus have been described… Here, we describe the discovery of the first European isolates of S. eubayanus. They were isolated from a university campus in Dublin, Ireland.

Excellent. And hardly any Irish inside jokes followed at all.

Andy Crouch marked the passing in early December of a New England brewing original, his pal Ray McNeill of Brattleboro, Vermont whose cantankerous nature was summed up neatly:

Ray was also legendary for his dislike of homebrewers. During one extended rant, he told me, “I don’t care what anybody says, there’s a big difference between making beer a few times a year in your garage and reading thousands of pages of technical literature and then making thousands of beers. Beer is a weird thing. It doesn’t come with a scorecard. If you’re a golfer and you shoot 112, you know that you suck. But if you’re a homebrewer and you make a third-rate beer, you probably think it’s great. A lot of homebrewers think they’re a lot better than they really are.” With Ray, you just never knew what you were going to get. And the same could always be said for his beer. The beer at McNeill’s was legendary: it would either be among the best you’d ever tasted or the worst. Consistency was not something anyone expected from McNeill’s and that was oddly part of the place’s charm.

Beth Demmons issued another great edition of Prohibitchin’ with the focus on Amie Ward and her project to make drinking establishment safer places:

“We [employees behind the bar] are in a very unique position because we are everywhere all at the same time. We hear everything, we see everything, we’re touching tables… we are in a perfect position to become those bystanders that really help change that landscape.” With this eye-opening knowledge and experience, Amie realized many other people weren’t able to manage health, stress, or sharing the responsibility of community safety in the same ways she had been able to hone over the years. “I saw my peers not taking care of themselves [and] really developing poor habits that were not going to suit them for the long haul,” she says. “That’s how I came up with the idea for The Healthtender: melding those two worlds together of wellness and hospitality.”

Turning to the end times, I used to post various noodly noddlings under the heading “This Is How Craft Will Kill Itself” from time to time and, in these fading days, it’s interesting to see how some predictions came to pass and how other factors I couldn’t have imagined contributed to the fall. For example, lack of differentiation posing as critical differentiation is a fatal flaw, as illustrated by this article:

“It’s a pretty neat thing when you go to a place that has a lot of beer selection. You’ll notice a huge variety of beer labels, and it is something that craft beer people look to,” said Scot Yarnell, brewer and owner of the downtown Earnest Brew Works location at 25 S. St. Clair St., Toledo. “They want a unique beer, flavor wise, and they also want a beer that has a unique look to it.”

There’s of course nothing unique about the look of what’s on the beer shelves these days any more than the identi-craft beer in the cans. Fadism gave birth to herd mentality homogeneity. Like gaudy late 1990s web design, there is a certain sort of vomiting bubble gum machine tone to the confusingly cartoony look that signals the trade friendly “blinders on” approach is engaged. But how does this help encourage the consumer – especially when mixed in with the continuing trade narrative’s reliance on tales based on amnesia, flat out untruths and revisionist bullshit mixed with earnest finger wagging over supposed myths that serves the residual wisdom of haut craft culture?**** Even those seeking the solace of knowledge in an honest off-flavour course offers an affirmation in the negative, as Jordan was good enough to admit:

Framed the off flavour training for next week’s class as “Well, you’re never going to be able to turn that switch off, so next week I’m going to ruin fully a quarter of the beer you’ll ever drink….”

Downer. No wonder the value proposition has gone all a’wobbly now in the face of these broader harder times. And no wonder things are as down, as Pete Brown shared in The Times. It’s a good read… but I am not sure I can agree with the proposed treatment as it looks like more of the same:

Refocusing on the aspects of “craft” that big corporations will always struggle to replicate could be key. “Local, independent craft breweries do far more than just make great beer,” said Richard Naisby, acting chairman of the Society of Independent Brewers. “They embed themselves in local communities, create jobs, and add value to the local economies they call home.”

Maybe. Could be. If you get rid of the phony and the baloney – and the kiddie cartoon profiteering prophets – and I also suppose if these fine locals have each paid their suppliers and the folk losing their jobs. Might be nice if enough of them just found a way to make great beer at a good price, frankly. Time to start talking about recession proofing, brewers. That might take a bit of change.

Speaking of which, an interesting and somewhat related call to arms crossed my eye in the course of me legal readings this week:

The Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) has called on the federal government to provide “immediate financial relief” for the legal cannabis industry and end the “stigmatization” of legal cannabis that allegedly limits progress on the key public health aims of legalization… According to C3, while the current framework has been “a financial success” for governments and provincial monopoly distributors who apply mark-ups, it has also been “a bloodbath” for investors of all sizes within Health Canada’s licensed producers and processors framework.

Hmm… dunno. Pretty sure I don’t want my tax dollars saving the less than half decade bubble economy of the Canadian grass trade. Think about it. Could it maybe just be that both craft and dope have to face the fact that there is no market for every investor who believed in a dream of easy cash from selling swanky new forms of intoxicants in each and every neighourhood? Is that what they mean by they “add value to the local economies they call home“?

I leave you there. That enough for now… you’ve had enough… take a break… when you’ve done that, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*Excellent usage, no?
**See from the archives “One Brewery and the Problem with Records” from 2015.
***h/t Cookie.
****Oxymoron.

The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks! Honestly… Why?

OK, I took the week off to burn off vacation days. No plan. Sure, I had a few things I could do on a list but I got through that list by about 11:15 am on Monday. Hmm… what to do… what to do… oh, the World Cup is on! I really didn’t plan as I have not been paying attention. Because it’s all so corrupt… that game I played from the elementary school yard until I was 44 or so a decade and a half ago. That the old man played for Greenock Academy, losing to Falkirk in 1946’s championship at Hampden Park. Less fabulously, there I am with my pal in 1986, just over half my life and just under half my body mass ago at the end of a game heading to the tav… I miss those socks. Anyway, so I watched some fitba this week sitting in the basement. Should I have gone to a pub to watch? Maybe. Might still. I love the idea of having a favourite seat for this sort of thing. I had one until twenty years ago in a tavern in my old stomping ground in PEI. I can think of another in Halifax NS maybe 40 years ago. Comfy corners where the shoulders can nestle in. Martin found one, too, the one up there at the Dog & Partridge:

Perhaps I just wanted to sit in my favourite Sheffield pub room.

What else happened this week? Well, first I am not sure why Budweiser thinks beer is something that can be donated as noted on to Johan Roux’s Mastodon feed (with the h/t):

#Budweiser will donate all of the #beer brewed for the #WorldCup to the winning country. It is also expected that the company will sue #FIFA because of a breach of contract – the sale of beer was banned a few days before the start of the championship. In total, Budweiser will donate tens of tons of beer worth 75 million euros.

And I listened to the Beer Ladies Podcast interview of John, The Beer Nut and I was struck by something. It was one of the best podcasts I had ever heard. Not because of John… or, rather, not due to John or… well, he does sort of giggle, doesn’t he. No, what I mean is that it was so well done technically. A second of dead air between comments was just allowed to be a silence. No one jumping on the other. Nothing forced. Lovely pace to the discussion.

AND… Ray of Boak and Bailey wrote one of the best Patreon essays I’ve read of theirs. A really good piece of writing about realizing his father was no longer at an age when a pub crawl was possible.

I didn’t drink myself until I was 20 which Dad found pretty weird, along with almost everything else about me, I suppose. We always got on but didn’t have much to talk about, or anything to do together other than watch telly. When I finally did start drinking, and got into beer, something clicked. Suddenly, he could take me to The Railwayman’s Club, The Commercial Inn or The Rebel’s Retreat in Bridgwater. There, he taught me to drink ‘properly’: “Blood hell, son – chat chat chat, chug chug chug, chat chat chat!” And when he came to visit me in London, I got to show him the pubs I’d found. (Where he’d often be able to wangle a lock-in.)

Fabulous – and also sad in that way that a rich life is aware of its own passing. My folks passed a decade ago and I can recall the creeping feeling leading up to their deaths of the slow loss of sharing, in my case including soccer games and a kitchen filled with cooking.

Speaking of excellent writing, it is the case that there are good writers who don’t necessarily have much to say. There are also those poorer writers who struggle along working out what are really more interesting ideas.¹ But it is a real treat when the good idea meets the skillful writer like they do in this week’s wonderful feature at Pellicle, David Jesudason’s lengthily titled “Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse“:

Oddly, desi pubs are usually very British in terms of decor; the Red Cow run by Bera Mahli since 2010 (who also worked in Birmid for a short time before he went into the pub trade) has two traditional lounge bars. They can also be reworked to look like an old-fashioned Indian club-style bar like in the Prince of Wales on West Bromwich high street. My 15-minute conversation with Steve at the Red Cow was deeply touching—we hugged—as he’s so passionate about making sure non-white fans are safe during the match, and is one of the many Sikhs who have ensured West Brom is home to one of the most diverse football crowds in the country.

It’s a story that has a lot of commonality with Ray’s thoughts when you thing about it. The only way I can describe the commonality between David’s piece, Ray’s thoughts and the Beer Ladies Podcast interview discussed above is a calmness in the moment. There are none of the burdens.² ³ ⁴ No, in this piece like all the best sort of writing there is also a person and a moment. The scene being seen. I’d be at this pub regularly… if it was in my town… and if Canada has the same sort of pub life… which it doesn’t.⁵ Le sigh.

Ghost of beer scenes past? Eoghan wrote this about an article on Belgian beer:

…I love the classics as much as the next person, and Belgian beer moves more slowly than other places, but there is a world of interesting beers beyond the Trappists and Saison Dupont – brewers/importers, where is your curiosity?

The article in Imbibe mag in part painted a picture of decline, the same one that could have been about brown ale and other darlings of the past shunted aside by craft’s obsession about what was big in, you know, the last six weeks:

Over the last half-decade, Belgian beer’s wattage has dimmed stateside. Saisons have struggled to find traction and comprehension. Local breweries and taprooms have proliferated, negating the need for beer imported from across the Atlantic. To that point, Anheuser-Busch InBev is now producing Stella Artois stateside, and Spencer Brewery, America’s only Trappist brewery, ceased operations in Massachusetts this year. According to a website statement, “The monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey have come to the sad conclusion that brewing is not a viable industry for us.”

What else is going on? Speaking of ghosts, Jenny P. posted a menu from a Q3 20C US steakhouse chain called Lums Restaurant and, well would you look at that, found a very interesting beer list. Click on that. Notice something? Not lager led. A balance of ales and lagers. The idea that post-WW2 beer in the US was all about the macro gak is one of the laziest tropes in American brewing history.⁶

Perhaps by way of contrast, Will Cleveland wrote a great story about a Montana beer co with one product – a light lager – both called Montucky Cold Snacks:

Zeitner said the banks laughed at them initially. “They were like, ‘We’re not going to give you a million dollars to compete against Budweiser or PBR. Are you crazy?” Of course, they are the only ones laughing now. That’s evidenced by some of the ridiculously kitschy and awesome Montucky Cold Snacks merchandise the brewery sells, including pool floats, dog toys, sunglasses, onesies, hats, and a wide variety of other stuff. The rejection caused Zeitner and Gregory to re-examine their plan. They realized that PBR doesn’t brew its own beer, helping them consider a similar, albeit much smaller, path.

Finally, Twitter death march update. Boak and Bailey spoke of their troubles with Le Twit in their November newsletter⁷ which is really also worth a read. This is just a sliver of their thoughts:

We even had a Twitter-fuelled stalking incident – a real low point, and a wake-up call. We started unfollowing, muting and blocking people more freely. Having a word with ourselves, we also learned not to respond to every narky Tweet. Just because people wanted to argue with us didn’t mean we had to play. And we reduced our usage of the site overall. For the past few years, we’ve rolled our eyes at people complaining about the “toxic” nature of “beer Twitter”. Like many things, it’s as good as the effort you put into it. Share the kind of things you want to see, resist the urge to contribute to the cycle of gloom, and it can be A Good Thing. But now, Twitter might be dying.

There’s a lot of good reason to leave right there. But I ain’t goin. No sir-ee. The other day the damn blue bird app was flickering on and off like a bad lightbulb. But I’m still here. If you are concerned and want other sources, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

¹ I used to have a book of letters of Alfred North Whitehead and took great comfort in one written to Bertrand Russell in which he praised the B student over those in the top of the class for being a source of far more interesting ideas, just put a bit poorly.
² The shouty “WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT”foolishness plumping up a dull PR piece. It never is.
³ Or the copycat drive-by bill-paying article, research done from a distance, often based on Twitter polls or email “interviews” of a sort: “I reached out to…” No doubt financially necessary and not always horrible if done well.
⁴ Or, the worst, that “mystery” stuff which is virtually a declaration that a beer writer has given up. Smacks of clairvoyants and spiritualists… “woooa… you need to speak with a beer consultant…” [insert unexpected creaky noise] “…only then will you understand… woooaha000…“
⁵ Because soccer and cooking! Being a perceived majoritarian but a first-gen freckled, identity is a thing. In work, friends and family I gravitate to these inclusive relationships and moments but it can also still get the awkward in return. I don’t care as much anymore. Alongside the homemade mince and tatties, the homemade curries of my Mississauga youth were legit even if they hopscotched (literally) from a great-granddad in 1890s India, through 1940s Britain and on to 1960s Canada when I showed up.
⁶ But it suits the generally accepted false craft origin story neatly.
⁷ OK, I follow B+B by blog, newsletter, Patreon, Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram even emails and once by Zoom. That’s weird. Weird that it has never struck me as too much or, you know, stalking on my part.

Your Beery News Notes Of Mid-November With The Furnace Running Full Blast

And now it’s cold. For good. Plus snow. See that poblano pepper plant setting blossoms? That was Sunday. Sunday?!?! Now it’s frikkin’ cold. Happy we bought a new furnace a few years ago. The old one was a one-stager that came on like a jet plane taking off a runway. Woke you up early in the winter. Every time. Until you got used to it. This new one sneaks up on you. Ramps up. Which means you wake up and ask yourself whether it’s running or not. That’s an improvement. We’ve had the place for 16 years now. Should see us out. First thing I did when we bought the place was ruin a brick. Shouldn’t have done that. But I did save a couple hundred poblano seeds. Always do that.

First up? Pubmeister writes… had an interesting post this week on the taverns of Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland which included this wonderful anecdote right at the end:

Meanwhile in the Black Bull regular customer Daniel was holding court on a wide range of issues, ranging from cricket to his mother’s trade in cheap underwear. His father was once the licensee at the Loudonhill Inn when it was on the convoluted Western buses route from Airdrie to Ayr. Daniel said the drivers used to come into the pub to make sure the customers didn’t miss the last bus home.

That little moment needs slipping into a movie, that does. Speaking of the life in the country, we’ve had a bit more good news about the prospects for the 2022 Canadian malt barley crop with the prayed for combo of high prices and high volumes:

…prices in parts of Canada have surged more than 30% since August. Canadian barley prices are approaching the all-time highs set in 2021 as beermakers and livestock feeders seek to replenish dwindled supplies after last year’s drought, said Peter Watts, managing director of the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre… Dry weather scorched fields last year, shrinking Canada’s barley harvest to the second-smallest since 1968. US farmers reaped the smallest crop since 1934, just after Prohibition ended. Barley production rebounded this year, jumping 34% in Canada and 45% in the US. North America typically harvests enough barley to account for a fifth of global commercial beer production.

Conversely perhaps, The New York Times reported this week on how in Mexico preferential access to water resources for breweries was creating real hardship for residents:

“You’d open the tap and there wouldn’t be a drop of water,” she said. The brewing factories, though, “they produced and produced and produced.” As droughts become more frequent and severe around the world, brewers and other heavy industrial water users have landed at the center of the climate fight in Mexico, with activists leading a movement to reclaim resources from corporations that has gained recognition at the highest levels of government. Even the promise of jobs and economic development is wearing thin as extreme weather events put the disparity in access to water between private industry and households on clear display, forcing some of the biggest global brands onto unsure footing.

And I like this tidbit of information which flew by on social media, gleaned from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut Jr in 1977 in Paris Review. His grandfather’s brewery, Lieber of Indianapolis, added coffee to the grist for extra zip. Click right for the deets. Jay Brooks posted even more information in 2007 about how there was a connection to Denver’s Wynkoop Brewing, which in 1996 brewed a beer a Vonnegut tribute beer – again with coffee. There’s a lot of chronology right there. Take a minute if you need it.

Speaking of fouled things of days gone by, The Telegraph in England by Christopher Howse reliving a slice of taverns past under the title “Pubs used to be revolting – and that is how we liked them” with tidbits like this:

I never got the hang of smoking, but I did not need to. Having taken to drink like a duck to Burton Best Bitter, I did my smoking passively. Early evening sunbeams lit up billows at the deep end of the Archetypal Arms… The Archetypal Arms had bowl-glasses (for bottled Mackeson milk stout or a Babycham) upside-down in wooden docking bays above the bar. These caught smoke curling into them from below, layer upon layer. But when smoking was banned in 2007, the true smell of the pub came out: drains, sweat and drink-spoiled carpets.

Mmm… Some lovely photos of the same era here at Londonist, drawn from The London Pub (a new book with a Pete Brown foreword) one of which is snipped and clipped just above. 1947. Such trousers. But, let’s face it, probably still a smelly scene. Snankin’ perhaps but still smelly. Perhaps less so and here in the present, Martin has done a good deed for us all with a guide to 24 hours in Glasgow:

Where to start? Well, a 9am Breakfast with Lorne sausage at Cairn Lodge on the M6 is the only way to go if you’re driving into Glasgow… 11 am The Bon Accord. Best for beer quality on my visit, and a chance to relive the moment in 1978 when the Scots thought they were going to win the World Cup… 12pm Walk along Sauchiehall Street. Eat that Tunnocks wafer you’ve been saving in your coat pocket…

Had my first pint as a 17 year old on Sauchiehall Street* with my old man. Don’t tell the shadowy Portman Group, which purports to save teens through branding regulation in the drinks trade in the UK. They’ve issued a self congratulatory statement on its many wonders:

For over 25 years, our Code of Practice for the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks has sought to ensure that alcohol is promoted in a socially responsible way, only to those aged 18 and over, and in a way that does not appeal particularly to those who are vulnerable. It is backed by over 160 Code Signatories, which includes all the leading retailers in the UK. Thanks to the Code, over 170 products have been amended or removed from the market. Many hundreds more have been helped to adhere to the Code before appearing on shelves through the support of the Advisory Service.

Hmm… I wonder of 6.8 branding alteration interventions a year is all that an accomplishment. Also sounds like the proverbial waters into which the proverbial oar was stuck were perhaps not such a cesspool.

Elsewhere, I watched an episode of the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. It’s only because I began playing with my Roku TV and came across it a bit by chance, an auto-recommend after watching another train ride video from Japan. Very soothing, those Japanese train ride videos. Anyway, it was very well produced and it was nice to see Martyn talking about IPA’s history. The trouble is only how the format of video forces such a low level of data transfer, especially for the efforts clearly made. This, of course, is compounded by the corner into which the followers of style have painted themselves with regard to IPA, as was illustrated by this passage in the British Beer Breaks newsletter describing a related discussion:

Garrett described IPA to the gathering in Burton as “a family of styles, variations on a theme”, that theme being hop-forward beers. There also seemed to be general agreement that an IPA must be above a certain strength. Yet the country’s best-selling IPA, the Greene King one, is a mere 3.6% abv. And those sweet and juicy New England IPAs are now being dismissed by some as not true to IPA style. As beer historian Martyn Cornell explains in the Craft Beer Channel’s handy history of IPA, the label has been loosely used by breweries for a long time. The important thing is, as Garrett put it, that “we ensure it never becomes just a marketing term”…

Bit late for that. Ship? Sailed. And now… here is your weekly beery Mastodon update. Followers just about doubled in the last week, 108 to just over 200. I am sensing that content at least in the near future is really going to be king… OK… perhaps maybe… an earl. Me, I’m working the #BeerHistory hash with a few others linking to existing content. As a peer based system, it’s more about what is said. Things are more facilitated by Twitter. Facilitated. As Jeff wrote, the shift is a bit daunting. But I found this comment interesting, the old school revisited:

Elon M taking Twitter private and destroying it may be the shock we creators, who left our blogs and DIY internet endeavors in the late 2000s / early 2010s for various social media style micro-blogs owned by other people, needed to wake us up and shock us back into the Indie Web rather than the Corporate Web.

Capitals. Hmm. But I also found this comment from Matty C interesting too:

We still have over 1000 people view the site each month via their RSS feeds! Just checked our entire site referral history and a we haven’t had a single click on a link placed there, ever. Doesn’t give me much evidence that its worth investing in.

Flux. That’s what we are in. Fun. Innit. Or it’s all going to get fluxed. Or not. I’m lonely… it’s so cold…

What? Sorry. On a personal note, it’s just over a year now since I added drink consumption to my daily stats sent to myself by email with a line of code. See, I started tracking stuff because in September 2021 I began a fasting diet that continues today. I only eat in a 6.5 hour or so window each day. Every few weeks I add something more to track, some other topic. Books read, stretches stretched daily. And… did I floss? Nothing too obsessive. Takes a minute a day. But it works. I am lighter and stretchier. And in November 2021, I added drinks. Well, booze. So I can report that in the last 365 days I had 47% alcohol free days and another 13% of just one drink. I average under 2 drinks a day. So a reasonably healthy relationship with the booze all in all. I recommend it.

That’s it for now. You learned enough. If you doubt me, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*I can even pronounce it!