Category: Health

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

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

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

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

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

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 In modern France, the bean has been replaced by a porcelain figure, but the finder still gets a paper crown.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Beery News Notes For Finally… Finally… Settling Into 2025

Lordy. Is all the holiday cheese finally gone? Is 2024 gone? Really? Check the back of the bottom shelf. Me, I finished off the holidays with a Covid needle in my left arm and a flu shot in my right. I’d rather have had the cheese. So perhaps a short post today, given me with the low grade fever and insomnia and all you all getting over eating the Yuletide cheeses. We should declare this International Solid Dairy Hangover Week. Whatever it is, it’s all going to be OK as it’s just twenty-five days to Truck Day! Yup. Gonna be OK.

So… The Session. The toe in the water revival edition of The Session. Hmm… there has been a  wave of tremendous excitement over the experimental revival of The Session, as announced last week, after a seven year break. Stan, Maureen and Matthew are among the tremendously excited. What does it mean to you? Well, it is actually all about you – as you do all the work, you scribblers. You write, I list. That’s it! To aid you  in your thoughts, I offer this simple graph from 2021, an example of my excellent in thought organization. It was last featured in late 2021 and is an update of one from 2016 but, still, it is very much in the now. Clarity. That’s what it sets out. Clarity. Hopefully this will give you that extra push to set out your thoughts on 31 January on the question of the month: “What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?“* Most any medium accepted. Subject to arbitrarty post-facto interventions, of course.

What else is going on? Just after the deadline last week, Jordan shared his thoughts on the brewing of beers under license and just how much, at least in Ontario, the beer that is licensed is the beer that is brewed:

It happened gradually. I can’t tell you the date, but I know that it was Jamie Drummond that brought it to my attention. He had been a lifelong Lowenbrau drinker, and a dedicated one at that. He got in touch one day to point out that it didn’t taste right. Of course it didn’t. It was being brewed in London, Ontario at Labatt.  Now, this was nothing new. They’d been brewing Stella Artois in London, Ontario for a while… Over time, I began to get the sense that the walls were pushing in on the import section. One year, maybe 2019, I added Spaten to the beer styles course at George Brown as the ur-example of Munich Helles, but as soon as I opened the can it was wrong. I hadn’t noticed that it was 473 ml, but I surely noticed the difference in aroma within seconds. You guessed it: London, Ontario.

Speaking of things not being what they were… is Facebook going the way of Twitter. I caught this mention of the uselessness of FB ads now for local audiences:

At least in the US, ads used to be excellent for small, local bars/restaurants. Affordable and very effective. I actually liked a lot of the ads I saw. Then they raised the prices and showed them to people from thousands of miles away. So now only shady crap merchants see any value in using them.

No shady crap in The Guardian‘s a great piece this week on getting snowed in, storm stayed, at Britian’s highest pub in most northern Yorkshire:

…the team are well prepared. Their electric power comes from a generator and there is enough food for about a month, “but hopefully it won’t come to that” says Nicole Hayes, one of the bar staff, who has done a number of phone interviews with local and national media in the run-up to the weather warning, such is the reputation of the pub… Word came through that the snow gates on the nearby A66 were being closed at 10.30pm, which meant anyone hoping to leave needed to make their attempt very soon or they were likely to be here for a couple of days, as the snow was forecast to only get worse.

Less placid is the battle being wage for the beer buck of America. Kathleen Willcox wrote these words that really one couldn’t imaging being puslished not that long ago:

…  lagers and traditional styles are often priced a dollar or two cheaper than competing styles,” Varda notes. “In a world of inflation and particularly among younger consumers who may have less financial stability, those dollars make a real difference.” Amid rising inflation, craft beer just doesn’t seem like a priority. Especially as brewers themselves grapple with ever-increasing prices for goods like packaging and transportation, and are forced to pass the increases on to customers….  Some brewers even wonder if craft beer is settling into a new, more permanent rut.

Permanent Rut!! Jings. But at least things are reasonably civil, right? What’s that?  How about the beer trade dispute, discussed in TDB, occurring in one of the new year’s potential hot spots:

Lawmakers have accused Chinese brewers exporting their products to Taiwan of engaging in unfair trade practices by receiving subsidies from the Chinese government, according to the Taipei Times. The Taiwan Brewers Association, made up of the country’s six biggest brewers, called on the government to launch an investigation into cheap beer imports from Mainland China. Finance Minister Chuang announced this week that the government is set to launch a probe into low-priced Chinese beer. The proportion of the Taiwanese beer market made up of Chinese beer brands has increased from just 8% in 2015 to a current market share of 34%.

Ron had an interesting post at the end of last week on the role of used beer in the 1970s. Used beer?

…pretty much everyone was up to blending in various types of rubbish. Even when brewing the beers I loved, like Tetley’s Mild. Which, according to the brewery’s Specifications Manual, could be up to 12.5% “stabilised beer”. Let’s not kid ourselves. There was a lot of recycled beer in the pints we so happily slurped back in the 1970s. Whether it happened at the pub or in the brewery, you were lucky if it was the first time around for all of the beer in your glass. In a Tetley’s pub with handpumps, it might be as little as 80%. And still I loved it.

Note #1: on the US Surgeon General’s advice, actually you can be advised to eat ice cream by medical specialists as one family member was so… not the same… at all. I mean I get that it’s those in the drinks trade posing as medical experts who doth protest but, let’s be honest, if you are going to mention alcohol’s positives of social interaction and relaxation and not weigh that against the negative like the social ills of drunk driving, violence and squandered family budgets you’re not really doing actual analysis. What is that sort of writing called?** Less suspect is this piece called “Why Drink?” by Matt Gross:

It’s not, of course, that alcohol has suddenly become dangerous. The scientific consensus, however, has evolved over the last several years, away from the idea that moderate drinking is harmless or can even have some health benefits, and toward the understanding that no amount of alcohol is helpful. This, too, is not necessarily new. As far back as I can remember, I’ve known alcohol was a poison: After all, that’s how it was described in 1980s X-Men comics by Wolverine, who drank copiously to almost no effect. And poison, as we all know, is bad for you.

Note #2: Matt still drinks regardless. And Kate Bernot forecasts much of the same sort of  non-decision decision making: “I don’t think we’re going to see population-level dramatic shifts in alcohol consumption.” But we read beer is on the decline in the US, even turning unpopular… though not in France. Still, CNN is projecting major alcohol firms will be betting otherwise, taking evasive action:

A December report from IWSR, a leading drinks analysis firm, said that the non-alcoholic drinks global market is “experiencing a transformative period of growth, driven by evolving consumer behaviors and the momentum of no-alcohol.” The trend, to be led by the United States, is expected to grow by $4 billion by 2028 in the firm’s forecast. Non-alcoholic drinks are even “skewing younger than the core buyer demographic across markets, and demonstrate higher frequency and intensity of consumption,” signaling that there’s a sustained thirst for booze-less beverages.

So how do we unpack all that up there. We enter 2025 to a cacophany of contrasting complaint. How does one sort through it all? I came across an interesting concept this week: “the asymmetry of journalism.” It was in an article in The Times about columnist Fraser Nelson in his early days as a business reporter:

Every day, companies release financial results and reporters write a report, perhaps interview them. Smaller firms are lucky to be sent anyone at all, so even a 22-year-old dogsbody is treated like a VIP. The CEO meets you; it’s his job to sell his story, yours to be sceptical.*** Yes, he runs a £100 million company and you’re a chancer with no expertise, but that’s the asymmetry of journalism.

So we need to rely on those voices who provide informed skepticism. Chancer or otherwise. Ms. Mather recommended a new writer to me, something I am also always going to follow up upon and take the chance. In Drinking in Strange Places at the and of last week,  Charlotte Cook wrote about Zoigling including this fundamental fact:

In these Zoigl towns, however, you can still turn up to a strangers house, sit in his living room, and for the very reasonable price of €2,40 per beer, have as many pints as you care to imbibe, often with the whole family chipping in to serve beer and small snacks

Never the chancer, Martin posted an interesting and rather old school set of thoughts on his blog’s stats:

844 posts last year, just a series of diary entries with a pub visit and a rummage around an unsung UK town, with the odd bit of tourism and weird stuff during lockdown. Despite COVID, the conclusion to the quest to complete the Beer Guide that dominated the diary, and a general sense that blogging is past its peak, visitor numbers have been oddly consistent.

Which means this. Blogging? Not in a permanent rut. Unless A.I. takes over. Maybe it has already. How can you be sure I am actual me? Is this “Al” or “A.I.”? The Beer Nut, still calling in from Brazil, can always tell:

I’ll spare you my usual rant about the bad AI-generated artwork on Third Barrel’s cans. Suffice it to say, they’re still at it, and it still looks cheap and terrible. I had built up quite a collection of their beers late last year, through no particular reason, and got to work on them last month.

And in Pellicle, we read that there is more stout going on in Ireland than we are reading about in the medias. In fact, there is cult stout as  Eoghan Walsh explains:

With less than 100 independent breweries now active in Ireland, it’s easy to forget the significance of this achievement, and just how different the beer scene was that leann Folláin debuted into in the late 2000s. John and Liam remember. They remember when spotting the bright green glow of an O’Hara’s tap badge through the window of a pub was like a lighthouse beacon in a storm. It’s too easy to underestimate the impact of that kind of durability in an industry where attention spans are increasingly short, and business plans not much longer. To paraphrase Stalin, sometimes longevity has a quality of its own.

Finally, in 2050 I will be 83… err… 87 years old so I do not give one shit as to what the beer trade will look like then.  I’ll just want to know that there will be Red Sox game on my screen and plenty of oxygen in the tank I wheel around behind me. Jeff, however, took up the challenge and postulated… sorta:

The title of this post is slightly misleading, I confess, because in thinking 25 years ahead, I immediately had to consider 25 years ago. What has changed? Depending on how you look at it, twenty-five years is both a huge amount of time and not much at all. We went from fighting wars with horses to dropping nuclear bombs in 25 years (more or less). On the other hand, Snoop Dogg released an album 25 years ago, and he’s still on 73% of the ads I see during football games. In other words, some things change a lot more than we think, and others far less.

I am not going to say that is a tremendouly robust analysis… but I am sitting in a chair next to a stack of my CDs and LPs so maybe there’s a point to where he’s going.

That big picture or the long game, for me, sums up the opportunity of any writer whether news, history or even poetry. But the key word up there is still “skeptical” as the quality of the good writing will be defined by something like Keats’ negative capability. Be neither booster or bland. That’s it. Maybe. Let’s see you roll some of that out for The Session, wudja?

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

*Find a sunny happy tale even if, as Beer Marketers’s Insights noted, 2024 was unkind to craft: “Volume declined for the 3d year in a row and 4th year outta 5, CBN estimates, on track to finish ~4 mil bbls below its peak in 2019. This also marks the 6th straight year of share loss in off-premise scans. Craft beer held nearly 12 share of $$ in 2018 Circana multi-outlet + convenience channels. This year it’s down to just 10 share of $$ YTD thru Dec 1. The category’s taking hits from every angle. Distribs continue to shift attention toward other categories. Craft bottle sales remain one of the biggest drags on segment sales, down double digits again in 2024. Craft can growth slowed tho continues to gobble up share. Keg volume is declining again this year, disproportionately impacting craft. Taproom volume is on track to decline for the 2d year in a row, TTB data suggests. More breweries closed than opened this yr, Brewers Assn estimates.” Yikes.
**Up there with the scoffing while basically affirming sort of response.
***As opposed to kissing up to your commissioning editor… again!

Your First Beery News Update For 2025, My 2024 Golden Pints And An Homage To The Session

The now, the year now past and the eternal. That’s what it’s all about this week. You, kind reader, may consider this too much as task for one person but let us not forget my capacity to do a very poor job.  Yet. How about my find of the year or rather my daughter’s find when on the old country visiting family last April. That’s my grandfather up there outside the pub with buddies about 100 years ago. Second from the right.

How have others found the year and summed up 2024? First, Matt looked back with some positive personal thoughts:

One of the reasons I feel like I’ve managed to produce more work this year is because I’ve figured out what I like to call my work-work-life balance. I use the term work-work because, essentially, I have two jobs. In fact it would be better to say I run two separate businesses. Pellicle being one, and my freelance writing, photography and whatever else hopefully comes my way being the other. Not only have I managed to split my time equally between the two, but I’ve also got a lot better at switching off and taking time for myself.

And Jeff looked back, too, but found the big picture less cheery:

You always want to write an annual retrospective in such a way that a through-line connects the points—a ribbon, if you will—so that when you come to the end, you can tie it up in a nice bow, presenting a clear picture of the year just deceased. Well, there is no through-line, no way to tie the whole thing up. We are in a transitional phase and mixed signals are the rule of the day. This applies as much to the larger world as to the beer industry, and I suppose those two are connected.

Yup. I’m also not really looking forward to 2025 in the bigger picture. But, still, I planted my first vegetable seeds of the year yesterday so I am not without a certain level of optimism.

So… let’s go. First up some beery news.

A. The Weekly News Notes

Will I keep these brief? Let’s see. First up, we have Alistair at Fuggled declaring his best beer of the year: Selvedge and Coat Czech 12° pale lager.

Ah…the glories of Czech style pale lager, the second best thing to actual Czech pale lager. When a brewery makes an absolute banger of a Czech style pale lager, they are always going to appear in my end of year review…. This especially true when said Czech style pale lager is either a 10° or 12° I could wax lyrical for days when it comes to Selvedge Brewing’s stunning Coat Czech that came out in the middle of spring this year. Absolutely reeking with Saaz hops, with a rock solid bitterness that scrapes the palate clean with every mouthful – again a reminder of our friend Mr Swiveller’s maxim that “it can’t be tasted in a sip”.

Elsewhere, I had an interesting experience which again affirmed my love of auto-archiving whether by blog or email. Over on BlueSky, Kevin of Casket Beer, asked if anyone had ever had a Scotch Ale out of a thistle glass. I knew that I had had one in my hand at sometime and it set me off on scrolling through images I posted from around twenty years ago looking at the pub glassware incidentally included. Which then took me to a side-by-side study of great upstate NY beef sandwiches from the years prior to the Obama administration.  Which then reminded me of the value of taking photos of anything and everything. That image there? A view of Gritty McDuff’s Freeport location’s bar in 2005. Not particularly pretty but loads of information. Look at the range of booze on offer! But not a thistle glass in sight.

This month’s comic in Pellicle from David Bailey (no relation) has moved another step along the path of questioning and abandonment of the stereotypes of craft fandom. This frame particularly strike me, it’s something of an indictment. There’s not a lot charming about this person, this same person in the New Yorker cover of a decade ago. But times have changed. Along with the losses of breweries and the closings of beer bars that mark the end of an era, this character is now just an object of mockery. A clown. Where’s that going to go in 2025?

Mikey Seay alerted me this week to an issue that I had no idea existed:

There is an old beer-head at the taproom I’m at right now. He is in his 60s (probably), all by himself. He’s not hanging out waiting for someone to show up, he is by himself, he’s this for the duration. And this is fine. I am by myself too. There are several dudes by themselves here. Two of them are reading a book. The other is me, sitting on a stool, on a phone, writing into it. So I am not here to shame him for being alone. I am here to shame him for walking around, no agenda. He is just staring off into the abyss, holding his tulip glass, meandering. Non. Stop. Dude, you’re making the rest of us look bad, GO SIT THE FUCK DOWN!

I had no idea. But my eyesight isn’t what it was. And there are all those interesting things on the walls. And those tall barstool chairs set around small wobbly tables are so uncomfortable. But, that being said, as Jeff reminds us, you do not have to drink to get your butt out the door. This month, try #PubJanuary:

Breweries have also been keen on offering nonalcoholic options, and will be happy to support their patrons’ Dry January goals. It’s increasingly common for breweries to make their own NA beer, many make a hop water or NA seltzer, and of course, they all have soda and coffee, too. It may not occur to people, but pubs are pretty good places to go during Dry January.

I would add – meals. If I go for lunch at a pub, half the time I don’t drink much or any alcohol. But I do love me some pub food.

Investing in Russia? Why?

Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 30 signed a decree transferring shares of the foreign brewing company AB InBev Efes Russia to the temporary management of the Russia’s Vmeste group of companies. The move places all the shares of AB InBev Efes Russia, a joint venture between the Belgian brewer and Anadolu Efes of Turkey that launched in 2018, under the temporary control of the Vmeste group, created in August.

Forget Guinness’s manufactured tight supply, there’s an actual beer shortage in Ghana:

…a shortage of Mini Club beer in parts of the Ashanti Region over the past two months. Many of them have gradually become accustomed to seeing empty shelves in their bars. According to local vendors, the shortage was especially hard hit in areas known for their vibrant nightlife, including Krofrom, Ashanti Bantama, Adum, Maxima, Asafo, Kwadaso, and other surrounding communities. Some observers attributed the surge in demand to the mood of residents, particularly supporters of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), who make up a significant portion of the region’s population

And, something from another time popped up this week, as Molson Coors lot its appeal of the trademark ruling brought and won by Stone… whatever that is now:

Molson Coors Beverage Co. can’t nullify Stone Brewing Co.’s $56 million trademark win over its Keystone Light beer packaging predominantly featuring “STONE,” the Ninth Circuit said. Molson Coors failed to establish a jury or the lower court made reversible error leading to the trademark verdict for the craft brewer, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in an opinion issued Monday.

Here’s the full ruling if you want to read it for yourself.

OK, that’s the news for this week. On to the Golden Pints of 2024.

B. The Golden Pints

Wot’s a Golden Pint? Ask The Beer Nut or Ed or Rob or Boak and Bailey or Stan! It’s really whatever you like but you need a template that is your own but also not so far off THE template that you look like you don’t understand the template. Tem. Plate. I think it’s from the Dutch for template. Basically, it is a means to dash off a number of very short passages which add up to the appearance of a large piece of work. Just like most books on beer. See? Anyway, here is my take on it all.

Best Beer on Tap: Wild Stout by MacKinnon Brothers, taproom, Bath Ontario. At a gathering of friends and family in early December, I spied this tap and made my way over to the barn cellar’s bar. Thick without being uncious, mint flavoured without that flavouring feel, a perfect roasty stout with an extra touch of local given the mint grew on fence row on the farm.

Best Beer at Home: going strictly but purchases, it has to be Světlý Ležák 12° from Toronto’s Godspeed.  I probably had at least 24 cans of this beer in 2024. Precise simplicity with thoughtful depth while also being refreshing enough for post-lawnmowing relaxation. I have a hard time thinking of anything else I would want in a lager. In fact, I just ordered more. On sale and the PMTJ tax waiver applies. Has Alistair tried it?

Oddest Beer Experience: Rochefort 8 at home. I really didn’t like it. Much to my surprise as it is a favourite. I hadn’t had a lot of beer in the autumn before opening this one as a great big treat. And I didn’t like it. At all. I know it was a me thing. But it reminded me of the realization from years ago that I can go through wine stretches and through beer stretches but I really  can’t go through beer and wine stretched. 2024 was pretty wine centric.

Best Beer Website: I don’t care for the artificial distinction between blogs and semi-pro beer writing so I would include it all in this category. Newletters. Blogs. Webmags. It’s all just writing on my screen. Winner? Has to be Pellicle. They’ve told the tale. The great success of Pellicle‘s continuing ascent occuring in the year GBH shut up shop after wandering a bit lost for a while is noteworthy, too. But be clear – their success is not relative. Sticking to the topic, employing good humour, steering away from the temptations of pure PR or (worse) lifestyle, aiming for a standard of written excellence as well as a transparent financial self-awareness all work together to earn Pellicle the praise it richly deserves.

Best Individual Bit of Writing: the best written thing? Things abound! How could I possibly choose? Well, let’s start off by saying you beer poets really let us down in 2024. I accept that it is well over a decade since Beer Haiku Daily packed it in but that there is a gap waiting to be filled, all you poetic people. But, seriously… the best bit of beer writing in 2024 is this short sentence: “DEI is so 2021.” Ruvani de Silva’s essay “Apathy Has Rained On Me — On DEI Burnout in the Beer Industry” in Pellicle back in June teaches us a lot of things. Craft beer is loaded with posers. Beer people are not all good people. But most of all she teaches us that is right and proper to write analytical condemnations of the bad things in the beer trade with the hope, foolish or otherwise, that things just might improve.  Took a lot of years and a lot of self-annointed beer experts to convince a lot of people that craft beer culture was just great right across the board. Had they not done that, had they not propped it up* but instead acted more like journalists as claimed and written like Ruvani has… would craft beer been in as much of the mess it is today?

Best Climatic Break for the Beer Industry: the end of California’s drought perhaps?

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: Now, this is a hard one as Simon has been gone and missed for almost 12 years now and the landscape is so different. Just a few months before he passed I asked whether there was anyone more interesting than Simon H Johnson. So we take this selection quite seriously even if Simon wasn’t always that way… or even that other way. Now, we recognize the migration to BlueSky when we calculate these things but there has to be constancy and wit of John Duffy, the Beer Nut. He takes us places that certainly I will likely not see. Like this week a view looking across from a balcony in Brazil or a view looking down from a Balcony in Brazil. And, along with his blog, the most beer focused of all the beery thingies focused.

Best Beery Newsletter: Gotta be The Gulp. The wide range of topics Katie Mather weaves into her writing makes it the one I first go to in my inbox.

Best Local Focus: Fuggled is not as busy a site as it has been in the past (who is?) but if I ever find myself lost and thirsty in Virginia, Alistair is going to find me a way to that good glass of a little something.

Best Book about Beer: Echoing Boak and Bailey, I also have to go with Dr. Christina Wade’s The Devil’s in the Draught Lines: 1,000 years of women in Britain’s beer history. From the first page, you have confidence in the research underlying the writing while also enjoying the pace of the text. As B+B wrote in their review from last April: “It feels effortless, too, and natural.” I particularly liked how Welsh and Scottish history was separated out from the English experience as well as topical comparisons between past practices and current experience of women in British brewing. Her discussion of Elynour Rummyng got my mind going again just like the Lady Eboshi did in Princess Mononoke. Who really was this person… this character… this characature… this political allegory? Got me thinking. Which is exactly what a good book – not just a good beer book – should do.

Final Thoughts: For a bad year in beer, it was a good year for things to read about beer and brewing. Focus and analysis is making headway against the bland boosterism that has hogged too much of the available space for too long. Hoping for more of the same in 2025.

C. The Session

An homage? Of course! Let’s be honest. The Session was the greatest invention in all of beer writing and also a gargantuan effort which ran from 2007 to 2018 led by Jay Brooks which earned him the eternal gratitude of us all. Wuzza sizzon? Here is how Jay described the process:

…It couldn’t be easier. The topic for each month is announced shortly after the previous month’s Session, meaning you have about three weeks to consider what you want to write about within the topic. And as long as it has something to do with the theme, you can pretty much do whatever you feel is appropriate for you. Then on the first Friday of the month, write your post. Usually, you then just let the host know what the URL (the specific web address or permalink to your post, not your home page) is so he can include it in his or her roundup. Each host does it slightly differently, but usually it’s just by sending an e-mail or posting a comment…

I had to move my posts from a former platform to this here one back in 2016 and manually moved about 1000 posts here over the course of a month or so. As a result, I have only shifted a few of my entries over but they will give you a sense of my take on the project – but heed Jay’s words: “you can pretty much do whatever you feel is appropriate for you.” I am also reminded on Alistair’s preferred alt title: “Wee Stampy Feet Time“! But you don’t need to be outraged. You can be quietly satisfied, facinated and/or nerdy. You be you. So, on 31 January 2025 please write a post of anything on the topic of…

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

Look at me – being all positive! And exceedingly general. In my defense, I think this could be a great way to catch up if we get a decent level of response. Please post your thoughts – via blog, newsletter, social media… anything – on the last Friday in January and then email me the link at beerblog@gmail.com! I have also proposed hosts of the February 2025, the form of which I will leave in their good hands along with this wise advice emailed from Stan: “I will support in any way that does not require too much work ;>)“!!!

D. Conclusions

Well, that was a bit of thinking. More than I am comfortable with, frankly. But one last thing, a resolution and perhaps suggestion. I had a bad 2021. I got so out of shape that I really screwed up my knee when I was out gardening. Wrenched a ligament when weeding the zucchini. Put me on a cane for at least a year back then. So… I decided to be healthier for my 60s. Stretching. Squats. Intermittent fasting. And tracking it all. Counting it all. Logging it all daily. Including the number of my drinks. And it all worked. Happy blood tests, looser clothes and I can chuck a 30 lb sack of soil on my shoulder without buckling. And soon I also realized that just by counting I was cutting back on both the clinky and the drinky. Not a lot but enough. In 2021 I figured I averaged 2 drinks a day, maybe a bit more. My StatsMaster ways had yet to fully kick in. Then in 2022 it was 1.95. And down to 1.78 in 2023 and, for 2024, 1.39 a day or 81.4% of my originally budget of 625 for the year. I have now set the budget for 2025 at 550 which is kinda 1.5 a day. Sounds like a lot. My real goal is to get it under under 500. Shifting the fasting from 17.4 to 16.5 hours a day, too, cause I’m getting sick of the 6.6 hour window. Reading this paragraph again I realize you probably don’t care – and rightly so.

So that’s it. Here we are. Welcome to 2025. As you contemplate the sands of time slipping buy, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*I do appreciate that much may have been guided by the words of J. Alfred Prufrock:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is it!  We are well inside that twilight state when time has no meaning called the holidays. I maybe be back with one more round up on New Year’s Eve but come the New Year, you can check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan will be going strong again each and every Monday except when he isn’t. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ed.: “After the break, sports.“]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Exciting Entrancing And Almost Festive Beery News Notes For A Merry Month From Yuletide 2024

Fine. Almost festive. Almost. But this is when the slide starts to feel greased. Five weeks to Boxing Day. Whoooo! The Boxing Day carols shall ring out loud around the Boxing Day leftover casserole once again!! The most wonderful time of the year? You bet. Who knows where we’ll all be this time next year so best to Yule it up right this time like these ladies on a tasting tour of Spain, back in 1959.* Which reminds me… I often wonder what beer writers do, you know, to get the happies when they are not up to that sort of no good on junkets, out and about pub crawling or at the front door in their slippers signing off on couriered packages of samples. David J shared a bit of his reality when he posted about a trip to Fowey, Cornwall and a pub called The Lugger:

I feel this same urge to relocate to Fowey whenever I visit and it’s because of the sea. And the Lugger. But first, the sea, the sea. Well, it’s not quite the sea but the mouth of the River Fowey and it’s sheltered, calm and very swimmable.  I braved the tide and swam on Saturday. 15C water; 14C air, according to my swimming diary – I swim at least once a week in an unheated lido… It was choppy enough for me to get the fear, though, which is half the ‘fun’, especially if one of your vices is adrenaline. The river eventually was predictable and a back and forth from beach to buoy was followed by a pint at the Lugger, served by Christian Hanks, custodian of this Cornish pub. Often people think winter swimming is odd, but Christian is different and he takes his eight-year-old son.

Be odd. That’s what I say. With a h/t to Katie, if you think the political news is grim where you are, think of the life of an academic in China turning to pubs as last venues for free expression and folk trying to work on their own odd:

“I was completely stunned when he mentioned violence so bluntly,” said the 32-year-old, who was born and raised in China. “In China, you just can’t talk about the nature of a country so openly.” In recent months, “academic pubs” hosting free lectures by Chinese scholars from universities worldwide have sprung up in China’s major cities – such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou – offering a rare open space for free-flowing intellectual conversation in a country where the public sphere is shrinking as censorship tightens. These alcohol-with-academics sessions delve into a range of topics in the humanities and social sciences. They include issues deemed politically sensitive and often censored online, such as feminism, but also more innocuous subjects like social anxiety and cats in ancient Chinese paintings.

Excellent. Except for the cats bit. I have issues with cats. Well, one cat. Yah, you! I am having other issues, too. Remember when craft beer culture was fun and was worth making fun of? Having a bit of an issue with that. How to mock something that people are ditching faster than their Twex accounts? Jeff noted this in the context of big beer business cutting their craft losses:

I noticed a startling stat in a recent Beer Business Daily story describing how in one market the craft segment accounts for 41% of SKUs, but just 5% of gross profits. That’s unsustainable for retailers and large breweries. It’s different for small breweries, who make and sell beer in a specialty marketplace of local vendors. But it’s just too complex and expensive for big breweries to compete in such a market unless it represents substantial volume. Craft hasn’t grown as a share of the market in a decade, though, and big breweries now conclude it’s just not with the effort. And reasonably so.

See what’s said in there? While it hit peak almost a decade ago, at least in this unnamed US market craft has not grown as a share in a decade and accounts for 5% of the gross.** So much for 20% by 2020. That was never going to be any reality but is Plan B really stagnation at 5%? Really? Hmm… I suppose getting ditched is better than being a zombie brand like Stone:

The brewery’s stated focus is now on its successful launch of Delicious IPA multipacks and its Mexican salt and lime lager Buenaveza, a long way from the days of Arrogant Bastard IPA, which helped Stone make its mark in the burgeoning craft market in 1997.

Brrr… that’s cold. But, still, there’s a certain justice in that one. And note the interesting note at the end of this story about management at Constellation taking a slice while there’s still a slice to be taken:

The company has also trimmed its annual enterprise net sales growth forecast to between 4% and 6%, compared with 6% to 7% previously estimated, as retailers reduce stocking wine and spirits and consumers pare back spending on pricier alcoholic beverages. A large cloud looming over the company is the threat of import tariffs when Donald Trump becomes US President after 20 January.

Are you finding yourself jockeying for position in the coming tariff-based international reality, too? Not The Beer Nut who posted thoughts international at the end of last week and came up with a description of Allagash White that nails it:

What I liked most was the smoothness: it really slips back silkily in a way that encourages serial quaffing. There are no sharp edges; none of the spikes of coriander spice or citric zest that add character to its Belgian counterparts. There’s a pleasant element of candied lemon in the flavour but I got little complexity beyond that. It’s not a beer for complexity, though, being more about the feels than the taste. I understand the attraction of something which places few demands on your attention and offers no challenges to your palate. Creating that without turning out something bland is an impressive feat.

Boom. The best writing indicates the general through the examination of the particular. Boak and Bailey did just that exactly one moment after last week’s deadline*** with an examination of the life and death of one estate pub in Bristol, The Mayors Arms:

In its most recent guise as Sousta, a “Mediterranean restaurant and bar”, it intrigued us because it never seemed to have any customers. Ever. Its location, at the bottom end of a large council estate, on the river embankment, offers little passing trade. There are no other shops or hospitality outlets nearby. In fact, the only business that could really work here is a neighbourhood pub in a working class area where people drink plenty of beer.

Related news from India on the many many reasons for the failure of BrewDog to take hold there:

The BrewDog bar in Bandra West, a suburb that is home to many Bollywood stars and is known for its liberal nightlife, as well as its bar in the office district of Lower Parel, have been closed since the summer. The company’s logos have also been taken down from the locked-up properties, according to checks by the Financial Times. BrewDog now has only two bars open in India, having first set up there in 2021… The closures are also a setback to BrewDog’s plans for overseas expansion. Only last year, it announced plans to open 100 bars in India over the next decade. Chturvedi said the Mumbai closures were only a blip in BrewDog’s India plans.

Yet, they are opening their first Northern Irish pub. In a train station. To serve the travelling pubilc. Somewhat related are the thoughts in this VinePair emailed quote-fest on what makes a craft brewery’s taproom a crappy experience. This one, however, made me wonder if they’d ever been to Gritty’s:

“If a brewpub is in a touristy spot, chances are that the management knows there are different customers every day. There’s less motivation to make delicious beer if you’re not caring about enticing regular customers.”

I thought the point was attracting a regular clientel, like folk who visit often even if not everyday. Being hospitable and all. Speaking of which, how do you feel about price surges in pubs?

A pub chain has sparked fury over its decision to charge punters 1.80 extra for beers on match days. Greene King has been attacked for the “unacceptable” move with punters shelving out a staggering £8 rather than the usual £6.20 per pint at some of its outlets. The Torch pub in Wembley, London, was hit with the 29% increase after supporters paid big prices for their favourite pint to watch England’s match against Ireland.

How do I feel? How’d they like the idea of me packing a wee flask in me pocket? Why not just charge a modest entry fee for events, like when a “good” band is playing?

Note: I will miss the little red biplane.

And in Pellicle, Pete Brown provides us with a primer on malt barley along with his thoughts on the weather… that is, when he isn’t off wandering:

I love old factories like this. As I left the train just a few yards away, the complex reminded me, as maltings always do, of some fantastical half-imagined vision from a Ridley Scott film. There’s a red-brick monolith several storeys high with no windows in its main wall. White towers dwarf what, in their own right, are tall and sometimes fat corrugated iron cylinders, with gantries running up and down and round their perimeters. Something that looks like a watchtower from a World War II Prisoner of War camp. I imagine that if the day ever comes when it’s no longer needed as a maltings, the complex could be used as the location for a climactic gun battle before exploding in a fireball as the hero makes it out just in time.  

What was that about? Anyway, in health news, some sucks to suck news from the eggheads recently:

According to new research presented at The Liver Meeting, held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, beer drinkers tend to have lower-quality diets, engage in less physical activity, and are more likely to smoke cigarettes compared to those who consume wine, liquor, or a combination of alcoholic beverages… Beer-only drinkers, who were more likely to be male, younger, smokers, and low income, also reported the highest total daily caloric intake, adjusting for body weight, and the lowest level of physical activity. Previous studies have found that dietary quality declines with increasing alcohol consumption of any type, but little has been reported on the influence of specific alcoholic beverage type.

Feel like taking up baseless objections? Fill your boots. Just don’t blame me. I’m just the guy doing the cutting and pasting. Here’s the study. Read it yourself.

Performing one last 180 degree switcheroo while still speaking of the healthy stuff… do you ever wonder why your olive oil has exploded in price? The Times had a good explanation this week:

The main reason for the price hike, simply, is the weather… Europe produces 67 per cent of the world’s olive oil; the majority comes from Spain, followed by Italy, then Greece. Olive trees thrive under a hot Mediterranean sun, but if the heatwaves come too early, in spring, when the trees are still flowering, crops can be damaged. This, coupled with severe droughts for two years running in Spain, has had a dire effect. Global production of olive oil tanked in 2023, dropping from 3.39 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 2.28 million tonnes in 2023-24… An opposite problem, flooding, also affects harvests, as olive trees don’t like wet feet, and too much water promotes disease…

I don’t like wet feet either. Just sharing. Thought you’d like to know. And one final note as we are rooting for a speedy recovery for Jessica after she posted some tough news about a recent routine procedure.

There. That’s enough for this week. But if you need more, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (he’s queuing one up right now) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*From the excellent Bluesky postings of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE): “British tourists tasting Cava on the Costa Brava, Spain, 1959. Photo by Oriol Maspons (Spain 1928—2013).“
**Jeff says “gross profits” but as profit is a net concept I understand this to mean gross revenue.
***In their monthly newsletter, for the double, they also shared this wonderful pub scene from a Friday night in Bristol: “The Green Man, a corner pub on a quiet residential street, was a particular highlight this time. There was a raffle underway and just about enough space to get a drink and find a seat. Someone won a jar of pickled onions. The booby prize was a ‘mystery shot’. There was a baby at the bar eating raffle tickets and Nacho Libre was playing silently on the TV.”

Beer. News. Notes. Phrases. Words. Selections. Pretentious. Minimalist. Heading. Formats.

What a week! I had no idea that I’d make it to this Wednesday evening when upon I do scribble out these notes. And it’s not even sun up before I’m out the door, although the moon apparently has a decent view up there looking east.  And the reading takes a bit more digging. But as B+B wrote:

…we embraced that: let’s focus on some smaller, more unusual pieces from old skool blogs and old-fashioned Web 1.0 hobby sites. That’s good stuff, too.*****

Agreed. Enough complaining. Let’s get at it. I do like this entry in Every Pub in Dublin if only for its lack of information:

I just walked in and looked for it. And found it relatively easily, as its basically just straight back from the front door, albeit well into the hotel. It’s quite a fancy hotel bar, but nothing incredibly special. I doubt many people ever go here just to drink, what with the Baggot Street and Haddington Road pubs nearby, but you *could*.

Even more of a deterrant to drinking in Dublin is this explanation by Lisa Grimm of the environs of her pub of the week, The Circular:

…the first stone bridge was built here over the Grand Canal in 1795, replacing an earlier wooden structure, and its resemblance to Venice’s Ponte Di Rialto gave the bridge, as well as the surrounding area, its better-known name. There are stories of a Black Shuck-type dog stalking the underside of the bridge, with some tales more specifically citing the devil himself appearing as a black dog in the area. Indeed, devilish attachments (literally) continued with a stone ‘devil’ head formerly being affixed to the bridge – though whether the stories or the sculpture came first is open to investigation. 

Satan himself! Yikes. [You know, I just thought it was a song by The Darkness.] On a more positive or at least not as terrifying note, there was a good bit of writing from Jessica Mason this week on a fairly singular business decision seeing one craft brewer and wine cidery to join up on distribution:

On-trade customers can now buy Red Fin cider products directly from Siren, packed in the brewery’s 30l stainless steel kegs. Two Red Fin ciders are available alongside Siren’s beers to help publicans consolidate their beer and cider deliveries. Further benefits include the option for pubs to take advantage of collaborative brand activations and events as well as custom installations. According to the business owners the new partnership isn’t financial and neither company has a stake in the other. However, the independent businesses describe it as “strategic”.

Sensible. E.P. Taylor would be pleased by the effort to cut what he would have called waste – the failure to find harmoneous deals on the non-profit making expenses. Seeing what is around you with fresh eyes was also the subject of a great interview early one morning this past weekend on CBC Ontario’s Fresh Air on a South African brewery working to support local traditional brewing:

Reitumetse Kholumo is the founder of Kwela Brews in South Africa. She recently won a pitch competition at Queen’s University for her venture.She told us how she is using the prize money to empower women and protect the Indigenous tradition of sorghum beer.

More here on Kwela Brews in this Forbes Africa article from last year. There were two other articles that caught my eye this week which touched on beer and colonialism. First, in New Zealand recently there has been controversy about the naming of a beer after a Māori navigator:

Te Aro Brewing named its Kupe New Zealand IPA after the Polynesian navigator as part of its Age of Discovery series – a limited range of beers showcasing historical explorers including Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan…  Both complaints argued the association of Kupe exploited, degraded, denigrated, and demeaned his mana and, therefore, that of his descendants and the people and places associated with him….”I’m really upset about it because our tupuna is being used as a platform for promoting alcohol, and his name being used on the [packaging] says we agree to this, and we don’t,” she said. “Culture should not be used in that form; whether it be Māori, whether it be other indigenous peoples, or whether it be our community – our babies are having to walk past that every single day… that advertising, that promotion… Peka said she wanted to acknowledge the people that had used their voice to make a difference for the whānau, community and cultures within Aotearoa.”  

I will leave it to you to look up the meaning of manu, tupuna and whānau like I did. The other story is the article this week in Pellicle by David Nilsen on the colonial and Indigenous legacies of brewing in Quito, Ecuador – that capital of a nation facing many serious issues. Elsewhere** we have seen how the perspectives from beer writers on a visit have posed, shall we say, challenges but this artlcle manages this well, if a bit obliquely:

…that rural connection has, sadly, not always helped chicha’s image in Quito as the city tries uncomfortably to balance its Indigenous heritage with its cosmopolitan aspirations. “A lot of people here grew up knowing about chicha, with their aunt or grandmother making it,” he says. “For many years, it had a stigma as a drink that was only for the lower classes living in the country. In Quito, as craft brewers became more knowledgeable about fermentation, they became more interested in reclaiming and revitalising this from their heritage.”

David sets it out for your consideration. We see the colonial hand moving in many ways in the article. The taprooms with the IPA.  The central presence of the monestary and the museum. The application of science upon an Indigenous practice without space for a voice speaking for the pre-contact and continuing original culture as we heard the Māori perspective above. There is much packed into this piece.

Building on the least serious or perhaps most recent form of those intrustions from abroad, in Britian apparently SIBA is sick of “craft beer”…  if only as a term:

Small breweries in the UK are ditching the term “craft beer” in favour of “indie beer”, warning that global corporations have bamboozled many drinkers into believing that formerly independent brands are still artisanal hidden gems. In a survey by YouGov that marks a new phase of the bitter war over what constitutes “craft beer”, consumers were asked to say whether 10 beer brands were made by “independent craft breweries”… More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt consumers were being “misled”…

CAMRA is in on the campaign as well. So is “craft” now a dirty word in Britain? Is it dead… again? Hmm… and there was also an interesting choice of words in an interesting paid advertorial this week in Politico, “sponsor generated content” it says. By Julia Leferman of the Brewers of Europe. Why is this bit of lobbyist comms interesting? Because of this passage:

Brewers are empowering consumers with the tools to take responsible decisions. This is about choice: if people don’t wish to, or simply shouldn’t, consume alcohol, they can still participate in the social experience of sharing a beer with friends and family. At the same time, brewers have pioneered initiatives in education and community engagement to encourage a better drinking culture and help reduce alcohol-related harm.

Could you imagine a North American trade organization place “alcohol” and “harm” that closely? Speaking of choice of words, Stan stood up for flavoured beer this week, building on the use of “beer flavoured beer” and admitting at least one of his sins:

I was wrong to use the term. It can be used to exclude, wielded as a weapon by drinkers who imply they know something others do not. “I can appreciate beer-flavored beer, the complex flavors that result from the interaction of malt and yeast in a simple helles. You are not worthy.” More obviously, it also excludes many, many, many flavors. In fact, some drinkers do not like the flavors in what they’ve come to know as beer-flavored beer. A survey of consumers in non-alcoholic beers in Northern California found they did not care for the “beer like” aroma, taste or mouthfeel they associate with non-alcoholic beers that were intended to mimic alcohol-containing lagers.

Let us be honest. Flavours that come from adjuncts are just not that interesting.  The infinity that four ingredients can provide is enough for me. That’s brewing skill enough to draw me in. To be fair,² Stan did mention that he “would not drink a peanut butter chocolate merlot, but I would like to try the peanut butter chocolate porter from Schell’s.” I wonder what it would taste like? Oh, I know. Peanut butter and chocolate! Brilliant. I am not going to judge – but masking the taste of beer by adding other things to it is in the fine tradition of alco-pops. Fine. I judged. But has any industry succeeded long term by focusing on newbie marketing? One – candy. And I get that it’s a business decision to chase that market but it does seem interesting to me how that trend has tracked in parallel in recent years with the stalling and contraction of interest in good beer. A curse. A pox. Jeff has more, much of what I don’t buy given the tone of sheer presentist congratulationism.**** Still, it’s not that far off my favourite version of the phrase is 1998’s “beer-flavoured water” to describe PBR.

Consider this as something of a contrapunct to all that, entirely thoughtful words from Rachel Hendry (h/t to KM) within her thoughts this week on “Wine and Cider”:

When trees are knocked down, when orchards are treated poorly in the name of higher yields, when cider is infantilised and drinks are manipulated and artificially mimicked in order to make more money for big brands, very few of us win. Where lack of care destroys, care itself transforms. Those who take the more romantic approach, who approach the trees and their fruit and the ecosystems around it with care, who make their drinks to showcase the amazing things that apples have to say once fermented, who pick and press and pour and produce with such ferocity of respect and reverence, well our lands and our lives are better for it. We owe them so much.

I like that. A lot. Romance as integrity. As opposed to infantilism. See above. Maybe. Perhaps quite conversely but still about the language, when they are not bored (at least according to a poll run by the imported and apparently not boring brand Kingfisher) British lager drinkers appear to be really angry with brewers:

One person described a 3.4 percent strength beer as a ‘f**king shandy’, while another lamented Grolsch as a ‘once decent’ tipple, and said he’d been a fan of the old five percent mix. He wondered who the 3.4 percent beer was aimed at, while a third declared: “Grolsch, now alternatively known as p**s.” Someone else said the downgrade made Grolsch into a ‘run of the mill session lager’ that was ‘certainly no longer premium’.

Another sort of infantilisation, I suppose. Potty mouth. Still… journalism FTW. Note: Britons are also livid over noisy upgraded beer gardens and ugly view blocking teepees in upgraded beer gardens.

Finally, Stan** went someway to answer my question when he indicated that the NAGBW attracted 269 submissions from 96 entrants this year. I wonder if that is an increase or decrease? As the scope of the focus narrowed to those who “cover” the beer industry, one can’t help make comparisons*** with the often seemingly more vibrant and ecclectic awards from the British Guild of Beer Writers. Where is the Hawkes? Where is the Jesudason? Yet… I was really pleased to see the first place wine for the fabulous Courtney Iseman for her “Secondary Fermentation — New York City’s Strong Rope Brewery and the East Coast Cask Revival” in Pellicle last December. A writer of fine strong words like “craft beer cringe” and “toxic fandom“, I remember when I saw the title of her winning piece I thought “please reference Gotham Imbiber… please oh please” and yup there is was. Proper job. Proper recognition.

That’s enough. How many links do you need? Until the boo-tastic edition next Thursday, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (if he ever does one) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now very) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*For example, the stunning white-washing of German atrocities in Brazil or the naive deflection of the genocide by American Revolutionaries against the Haudenosaunee in New York.
**For the double!
***Hmm… maybe “best in the world, if it is focused on the trade side, written in English, relevant to an American perspective and, yes, written by one who submitted“… perhaps?
****That’s a new one… I like it… BUT THESE FOOTNOTES AREN’T EVEN IN ORDER!!!!
*****“Evanescent“!?!? Really???? At least it isn’t “quotidian”… if there were every a inflationary ten dollar word that is never needed and rarely used correctly it’s friggin’ “quotidian”… sheesh… yet also**. See also this sort of devaluation of a concept… no one at all is shocked by a beer trade fact… no one cares…
²Am I ever not?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More will be needed in Florida no doubt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you may see things differently. Get blog and let your yap trap clap. There. That’s my opinion. If Matthew gets to hoist an opinion so can I! Cancel your subscriptions. See if I care. Why you look to see how in fact to cancel your subscription, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and there is a promise that Stan may be back from his autumnal break starting (not last Monday but surely) this very Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

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

These Be The Reflective Yet Exhuberant And Cardigan Considering First Beery News Notes For Q424

Barrel Room Jolly Pumpkin 2007

I was thinking about these weekly things I write and whether there are themes are not. Mainly because I thought last week’s was pretty theme-y. Thematic perhaps. All about ones relationship with the ancillaries surrounding beer. Sorta. I tell myself that by writing these summaries I am tracing, following patterns. But I rarely go back and look. Behind the scenes, there are no graphs being added to every seven days. Then Jeff posted about an AI widget that Google has posted and I plunked a document I worked on years ago, trying to combine my research on English strong ales of the 1600s, the ones named after cities like Hull or Margate. Whammo. Summary and key points in about 3 seconds. Weird. Yet not uncompelling.

Back to the present, we have lost one of the great experimental US brewers with the passing of Ron Jeffries of Michigan and Hawaii:

A true embodiment of ohana, Ron was not only a loving family man but also a creative genius and lifelong learner. He dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge, serving as a mentor in the brewing industry. As a legacy brewer and the founder of Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, his contributions to the craft are immeasurable. In his final year, Ron fulfilled the lifelong dream of moving to Hawaii where he eagerly worked on his family brewery. He was excited about what the future was bringing and what he would be bringing to the world with Hilo Brewing Company/ Holoholo Brewing. He cherished moments spent on his lanai, soaking in the Hilo rain with a pint in hand.

In 2007, I found myself at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter and Ron Jefferies gave me a hour of his time at the end of a long day. That’s his barrel room from that visit up there. Frankly I don’t meet a lot of people I write about so I was it was a real treat.  My favourite part of the talk was his curiosity in what exactly beer blogging was and might be. He also doubled over with a big laugh at my story about the December 2006 Hair of the Dog shipment with the incompetent capping and how the yeast saved the beer. I visited again a few years later and he was just as swell. Very sorry to hear that he passed.

On a cheerier topic and adding to the discussion about the need for the pint from last week, Liam wrote a very interesting bit about what he calls the “meejum”:

…how much beer was actually in a meejum? The simple answer seems to be a little less than a pint as per the comments from our annoyed Londoner above, but I have come across a couple of others mentions of the volume too. In a court case in Dundalk in 1904 the judge has the same question and was told it was ‘a glass and a half’ (426ml) and another mention in 1901 that says it was ‘two-thirds of a pint’ (379ml). A more recent comment from a letter to the Irish Independent in 2003 looking for the medium to be reinstated, it is said that it was ‘approximately 500ml’.  With a pint being 568ml we can see some wildly fluctuating volumes here, but I think we are missing the original point of the medium, which was to give the consumer a drink based on price and not volume, so therefore it is very possible that a medium was a different size in different counties – and even different pubs. It was a portion of beer that equalled a value that was acceptable to the working man.

And we note the announcement of the coming retirement of Humphrey Smith, the controversial Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery and perhaps good beer’s Epimetheus, taking particular guidance from Old Mudgie:

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around.

A new source to me, Literary Hub published a passage or perhaps a chapter on the history of Pilsner drawn from Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity by Jeffrey M. Pilcher published by Oxford Univ Press:

Few visitors in the early nineteenth century might have guessed that the market town of Pilsen, on the road from Prague to Bavaria, would become world renowned for its clear, sparkling beers. Having grown rich from the business of anthracite mining, residents imported Bavarian lagers. In 1840, the town fathers decided to invest some of their mining profits in the construction of a municipal brewery. The first tasting, held on St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1842, brought their home-grown beverage local acclaim. But apart from the basic recipe of Saaz hops, Moravian malt, soft water, and lager yeast, little is known about how Pilsner acquired its legendary status. It was prized, at first, as an exotic “Bavarian” beer, and the malting process relied on British advances in indirect heating, like Sedlmayr’s Munich malt, but without the final burst of caramelization. The brewery’s capacity of just thirty-six hectoliters, about twenty barrels, meant that the beer was sold primarily in local markets. 

My problem with these things is, of course, whether is it, you know, true – keeping in mind, of course, the degree of abstraction at play. It speaks nothing of Prof. Pilcher for me to point out that Pilsner’s history has been stated, restated and revised and refused and refined and (… you get my point…) so often in the last wee while that it gets one in a big of a fog. But there is a certain compelling style to the passage provided in LitHub that I would invite comment from those closer to the topic.

Speaking of style, I missed this post by B+B last week just at the deadline on spinning LP records in pubs and why it works for them:

The magic that people perceive in cask ale is similar to the magic they perceive in pub buildings which is similar to the magic they perceive in the sound of vinyl. A sense of connecting with something authentic. They’re also essentially nostalgic. Most pubs are embassies of the past. Victorian buildings with plastic Watneys clocks, Bass on the bar, and packets of pork scratchings whose packets haven’t been redesigned since 1981. It’s not unusual to find a pub with a stack of records in the corner or behind the bar. Albums that, if they were sold on Discogs, would not warrant a ‘Mint’ or ‘VG+’ rating. Split sleeves, yellowing inner sleeves, with a whiff of stale beer and cigarette smoke about them.

Writing on FB, Alistair brought my attention to a surprisingly startling and poignant video about the loss of working class neighbourhood and working class neighbourhood pubs as part of the modernization of in Salford, England in the 1960s. Here’s the video from the BBC from the time. It appears the modernization did not fully take. Then I thought… Salford… I know that place.  Pellicle posted a podcast about Marble Brewing of Salford back in 2023.  And Martin (with an “i”) has been there, too. The juxtaposition of each stage of Hanky Park over the sixty years is remarkable.

And, over on BlueSky, I came across an interesting thread on why hip-hop culture connects with Hennessey cognac and why Lebron is tying his brand to the drink:

During the war, African Americans stationed in France began consuming Hennessy. Afterwards, Hennessy, being French & having a different relationship with Black people than American companies, trail blazed by simply marketing to & employing Black people, carving out an extremely loyal consumer base. WWII saw Black soldiers abroad enduring antagonism from USA, like leaflets being dropped over France claiming they had tails in order to discourage sexual intermingling. Many were dismayed to find that their service in the effort of helping stop genocide abroad had not granted them humanity at home. During that time Hennessy was continuing to cater to African Americans & before we were sensationalizing terms like DEI, they had hired Black Olympian Herb Douglass as their VP of Urban Market Development, a role he served in for over 30 years. This history is why you hear about Hennessy in hip hop.

So it is not too far off the “I Am A Man” protests and declarations in the Civil Rights movement. Very interesting. Staying with history but reaching back further, last Sunday Martyn (with the “y”) disassembled the notion that the “Hymn to Ninkasi” is any sort of Sumerian beer brewing guide and did so with both verve and detail… like this:

Paulette has invented the word “šikarologist” to describe students of Mesopotamian beer, from the Akkadian word šikaru, meaning beer, the cuneiform for which looked like one of those pointy brewing jars laid on its side: 𒁉. I will definitely be stealing that. Strangely, a cognate of šikar in another Semitic language, Hebrew, the word shekhár, meaning “intoxicating drink”, is the root of the English word “cider”, via Greek, Latin and French. Shekhár is also the root of the Yiddish word for “drunk”: I remember my Jewish ex-father-in-law, who came from Vienna, staggering around at his 70th birthday party, surrounded by his extensive family in his large garden in rural Surrey, saying: “Ich bin so shicker!”

An interesting chit chat ensued in TwexLand led by Lars which touched on (i) the title is made up, (ii) it’s a hymn and maybe a drinking song but not a brewing guide (iii) why was the grain covered in dirt? (iv) woundn’t the malt get suffocated? and (v) why are the translations so different?

And Martin (still with the “i”) has been out and about in Filey on the North Sea coast seeking out GBG25 entries:

…the thing that hits you about Guide newbie the Station is the friendliness of the welcome, the Guvnor checking we know that food service has stopped before we waste 10 steps to the bar… I ask for mild and a Pride, and get mild and Blonde in Pride glasses. Four simple and unfussy rooms, a good mix of bench seating and squidgy chairs, we take a table with a reservation for “Bingo” in 3 hours time. “Bingo” was a popular boys name in the ’50s, along with Bunty and Bungo.

Top tip time. You want to make the weekly roundup? Include an accurate use of the word “squidgy” – can’t resist!  Speaking of good words, Gary wrote an excellent post on the appearance of “suffigkeit” in mid-1900s US beer advertising:

You want Bavarian beer? Here it is, new and improved – tastier, clearer and more sparkle than your original – that’s suffigkeit, or it is now.

Speaking of clearer and more sparkle, Matt made something of a declaration, the return to voluntary non-paying scribbling:

Yes, I still write. For lots of publications in fact. Not as many as I would like, but a writer is never satisfied. What I crave is that unpolished, flow-state writing, the kind that feels like stretching a limb, or the freedom of trying something new that might be absolutely terrible but you’ve done it anyway and calmed that twitchy section of your brain. Writing like this, which I’ve written in 10 minutes, proofed once, and hit the publish button. I just have a need for a space, a scratchpad, to try a few things out once in a while. I want to write basically, so that’s all I’m going to do. No newsletter, no subscription, just a place to take things out of my head and put them on a page.

Very good. Excellent even. Unfettered scribbling is the best. Compare that to the advice own newletter writing beer marketeer offered this week:

Content that takes you wide has to be relevant to millions of people. It can’t be about the impact of thiolized yeasts on lagers. Wide aiming posts tend to be less about you and your brand, and more about the industry, interest, or setting you’re a part of. They can still find parallels to your brand, voice, ethos, or sense of humor. The point of these posts are to appeal to what most people come to social media for these days whether that’s to shut off their brain, have a laugh, or learn something new. Nobody opens Instagram hoping to be sold a new 4-pack of Hazy IPA, so that shouldn’t be the goal when trying to go wide.

Please don’t go wide. Wide is a euphemism for dull, undifferentiating and disposable. It pandering to other goals outside of what’s written. Jeff (for the double) went very narrow and shared something quite personal which lead me to cheer “Yay, Poop Tests!“:

The rest of the trip went fine, but my body was experiencing a kind of systemic failure. I got back to the U.S. and the rash became permanent. I gave up beer and then coffee and eventually even food. In the past, fasting calmed the itchy nerve endings. Nothing helped until a friend recommended a gut naturopath. She gave me a stool sample and we discovered I had an overproduction of some kind of intestinal yeast. She gave me an antifungal and within days the rash left. Today I am back to my old self, happily eating and drinking whatever is placed before me.

Finally and keeping with the personal, Rachel Hendry‘s piece in Pellicle this week is a rich contemplation of loss through the lens of taste:

I want to know what her wine tastes like.

I can’t think about what is going to happen to her. Instead, I find myself obsessed with whether her perception of taste has changed. I think of whether memory can still come to her each evening when she pours herself a glass of wine. I want to ask someone this but it seems so silly in the grand scheme of things—can she still taste if she can’t remember? Can she feel flavour anymore? Is this why she drinks more now?

What if one day I no longer know what my wine tastes like?

I become selfish in these moments. Thoughts of her quickly turn into thoughts of myself. What if one day this happens to me, too?

Some tests, we all learn as we age, do not lead to a good outcome. Rachel has captured that moment with brave clarity.

That ended up unexpectely bookended. Not really themed. Maybe. Still, until next week, as we consider this shared mortal coil, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and there is a promise that Stan may be back from his autumnal break starting this very Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (189) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (931) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,454) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (151), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Your Beery News Notes For Turning The Calendar Page From Zeptember to Rocktober

Happy autumn!  Did you find any September Ale yet? Nope, me neither. But as I probably say this time every year – it was a thing! Whatever it was.  Defo. A certain thing for a certain time:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core…

Ah, poetry. Autumn wasn’t all about Halloween candies and scaring the kiddies. It was the harvest – as Big Johnny K told us right there. To the core, baby! Just look at my meaty paw loaded with tamayddies. And just look at this bit of harvest Pr0n from Barry. And speaking of the arts poetic, I was listening to NPR’s Mountain Stage on Sunday as I usually do and heard a bit of a band by the name of The Brothers Comatose and these their lyrics:

You look at me like I’m crazy
But that stuff is bitter and gross (So gross)
I just wanna enjoy myself
I don’t wanna be comatose
Well, after a day of working hard
I’ll belly up at the bar
You can keep your hoppy IPA’s
I’ll be sipping on my PBR

The title of the song is “The IPA Song” which has some pretty clear messaging. The concerns are plainly stated: “When I drink a half dozen, I’ll be winking at my cousin…” And the ecomomics is addressed: “…you can keep your bitter brew / That costs you twice as much…” On that last point, Ron found a similar theory on why certain beers are trendy in an article from over fifty years ago:

Mr. Claude Smith, President of the Incorporated Brewers’ Guild, puts it down to cash. “It all down to people having more money,” he says. “At the bottom of the pile you get mild drinkers. When they get paid more, they drink bitter. When they get paid even more, they drink lager, It’s sort of fashionable and up-market. They want to prove they can afford it.”

All reasonable points. So, when people want to be seen they get that IPA.  While still on vacation Stan, however, argued to the contrary and even made the news as reported in Bloomberg praising that “bitter brew” with a focus on what really makes the most popular US hop so… popular:

“The popularity of Citra is directly linked to the popularity of IPA, and the proliferation of IPAs that were brewed with more hops than in the past, notably dry-hopped beers,” says Hieronymus, referencing the process by which even more hops are added late in brewing to boost aroma and flavor without increasing bitterness. “Citra thrived because it works well on its own, but also both compliments and complements the character of other varieties… IPAs are becoming less bitter,” says Hieronymus. “There are three types of hops: aroma hops, high-alpha hops that add bitterness, and now dual-purpose hops that can do both. Citra is the latter. The shift from the qualities of Cascade to those of Citra has led to interest in more expressive hops with higher impact.”

Still… there are so many stories out there about how to avoid beer when having beer. Is an “give me even less than a PBR!” movement? We’ve waded through the zero alcohol stories for a while now but the zero pints stuff is a new twist on how to get less for your beer buying bucks. In The Guardian Eleni Mantzari, a senior research associate from the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, explained the logic behind the study that experimented with smaller portions to capture the reaction:

She explains that there is not a lot of evidence about the impact of serving sizes when it comes to alcohol, but there is lots of research into food portions. “Larger portion sizes are linked to obesity. When portion sizes are smaller, consumption is lower,” she says. Regarding beer, “we just wanted to get the evidence. It’s up to the people in charge what they do with it.” Mantzari spoke to managers and owners from the participating pubs at the end of the study to find out how customers had reacted. “People didn’t tend to order two halves on the spot,” she says. “Some venues got complaints – mostly those outside London and mostly from older men. The complaints subsided over time, whether because people got used to the two-thirds, or because they knew the pints were coming back.”

Yup, there’s a certain sensitivity there. [Was the loss of the Canadian stubby in the 1980s our cultural equivalent? They never really came back. Gary’s been checking for them in Owen Sound. None there. (But there used to be bootleggers.)] And, you know as I get back to the point, it’s not just the ability to have that pint, it’s about where to have one as the number of pubs keeps shrinking, as Jessica Mason summarized:

The analysis showed that number of pubs in England and Wales fell to 39,096 at the end of June with industry experts warning that tax rises in 2025 could result in further closures across the industry. The data additionally highlighted how the total figure also included pubs that currently stood vacant and were being offered to let, which meant that the number of operational pubs was in fact even lower… In the first half of 2023, 383 pubs also closed, the equivalent to 64 pubs closing every month, showing that the situation is dire.

And it is not about how much or where you have one – it’s also about when and how the pint is even pictured. There is a fixation with British beer writers about certain photos being used for certain purposes. David J. picked up the theme for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing but added an insider’s view:

Working as a sub editor at the Guardian around the time web stories started to become very popular – and the newspaper was losing £1m a week as print sales started to fade – was a quick education. The volume of work we had to publish was so punishing that very little attention was given to details that were vital to make a story appeal to a reader. Captions, headlines, and, crucially, photos were slapped on quickly because senior editors would shout and curse for us taking too long… Now 15 years later, I’d like to hope that things have changed, but when I read national health stories about alcohol abuse, I doubt it. This is because nearly every time a sub publishes a story that looks at the harm alcohol causes, or the impact abuse can have on our society… a photo of a pint is used.

He calls it “lazy caricaturing” which is fair enough but is beer really more beautiful to the eye than wine or spirits? Could the average British beer drinking person in an slightly, err, obsessive relationship? I am pretty sure that it is no more healthy or less heathy than other booze. They are just different outfits for the same paper dolls. But, yes, they could get about four more stock images to add to the three that get heavy rotation.*

Not unrelatedly in terms of how and why the beer is presented, The Conversation published an interview with Dr. Jordanna Matlon of American University on what is described as the exploitation of lower income men in Africa by Guinness through leveraged advertising:

Guinness needed to speak to the experiences of real consumers: men who had long abandoned the prospect of a job that would have required a tie and a briefcase… I borrow this idea of the “bottom billion” from the business world, where emerging markets are a final frontier for corporate profits. It is supposed to celebrate the wealth potential of the poorest people on Earth: as the argument goes, the minuscule “wealth” of a billion people is really a fortune. Of course if we pick this apart just a bit it is clear that the wealth belongs not to the poor but to the corporations that sell them things. There is no real “Africa Rising” in this vision, no plan for enlarging an African middle class. Reflecting a longer colonial legacy, wealth here is something to be extracted.

It’s the whole bonding thing. Does beer and other bonding agents get taken advantage of?  For example, I like this analysis, as discussed in TDB, of the cost of being an English football fan which not only compared the price of a pint at a game but added another six factors to come up with a more wholistic sense of how the fan is squeezed:

Ipswich Town came out top, with an average beer costing just £3.50. In second were Wolves and Brentford, where the average cost of a beer was £4 – although the overall second cheapest team including tickets and other goods was Southampton, where the price of a pint was £4.55. At the same time, bitter North London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham were the two most expensive teams to follow. A pint at Arsenal cost £6.30 and pies cost almost a fiver (£4.80). Spurs pint was considerably cheaper, at £5.10, but it performed poorly in other goods and ticket prices, with shirts costing £85.

I always like me a good methodology. Brings out considerations of integrity. In Pellicle, Anna Sulan Masing wrote about another sort of integrity, transparency in spirit making:

Are sustainable changes happening because of consumer demand, or because businesses think it is the right thing to do? I believe it should be a combination of political structure, business desire and consumers wanting to drink better. Wong thinks there is real change happening. “Since lockdown people have had a bit more time to think, consider what they buy, invest (time and money) as well as what they put into their bodies.” She says it is akin to eating organic, sustainable foods. “People are more curious.”  She sees a correlation with the growth in agave spirits—people are coming to the category with an interest and understanding about the growing process, and the farming and the farming community is very much a part of the narrative of understanding the quality of the liquid.

Are these things, as she wrote, “rich, white person’s badge of honour”? Why do we associate so strongly about these things? Speaking of which, Boak’s and Bailey’s emailed monthly newsletter is a goodie this time, with the interesting results of questions they had posed about the effect of change of management in pubs as well as this line which sort of summarizes the arc of their last twenty years of beer writing:

It’s easy to romanticise pubs. This makes clear how crap they can be while still, somehow, being enchanting…

Is that it? You’ve been enchanted?

In the health section this week, we revisit whether there is any aspect of alcohol drinking that legitimately is a boost to your health? Did I ever mention my 2012 kidney stone? What fun. Well, there may have been a reason it was not as bad as it might have been:

In a study that included 29,684 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2018, mean alcohol intake was significantly higher among non-stone formers compared with stone formers (42.7 vs 37.0 g/day). Beer-only and wine-only drinkers had significant 24% and 25% reduced odds of kidney stones compared with never drinkers or current drinkers who did not report alcohol intake by dietary recall, after adjusting for multiple variables, Jie Tang, MD, MPH, of Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues reported in Nutrients. The investigators found no association with liquor-only intake.

Finally, if kidney stones weren’t uncomfortable enough for you to add to your worries of the week, Jeff posted an excellent and extended consideration of the implications of arguments made by a lobbyist group advocating for increased beer taxation in Oregon – with some interesting candor:

Beer tax proponents should be honest about their goals, which mirror anti-tobacco efforts to marginalize smoking by making it so expensive. That’s a fine goal! I would be completely happy to see cigarettes completely vanish from the earth, and I’ve supported taxes that make it so expensive that people have to be really committed to continue. Not everyone agrees with the position, but that’s the way of politics. Oregon Recovers wants to cripple the beer industry much as I wanted to cripple Philip Morris. I’d be happy to put it out of business and I’m willing to own that.

But if that is the case, if you have a certain understanding that alcohol is detrimental to health and to society… should we be listening or opposing?  Do you associate so deeply with the booze you drink that it is a political platform?

As you think about that… until next week for more beery news, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and let’s see if Stan cheats on his declared autumnal break on Mondays. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there.

*Just click on that zero pints link up there for one of them.
*Just consider this on the two-third portion in their footnotes this week: “But what problem are they solving that half-pint glasses don’t? Well, half-a-pint does feel a bit too small sometimes – especially if the glassware is really nasty, like something you might find in a hotel bathroom. We used to love drinking Brooklyn Lager out of branded glass that was about two-thirds-of-a-pint. It felt nice in the hand, swiggable but not over facing. Again, more choice, by all means. Let’s have options.” I now want a t-shirt that says “swiggable but not over facing”! I don’t really know what it means – but I like it.
***Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (185) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (931) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,455) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (153), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.