Category: Health

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.

The Beery News Notes For – What – Another “Red Sox Suck” Season?

It’s hard being a fan. One of the reasons I am not a big booster for this or that drinks category is I have already invested heavily in terms of emotes in other areas of life. The Pellicle-run Fantasy Premier League surprised me with its grip last season. Plus, as you know, there’s all that gardening stuff that I tend to tend to. But those Red Sox. My team. Mine. They have won 4 World Series in the first quarter of this century but now are mid-pack grinders this decade. There’s little chance they get to the playoffs but they are irritatingly near the chance to… maybe to… couple possibly…  Oh well. But even before all of those obsessions, all those fanboy obsessions… there is good food. Making. Eating. So happy was I to read Liam‘s tweet about the sauce above:

An ale and anchovy sauce recipe for steak written by Thomas Gray in a copy of William Verrall’s Complete System of Cookery – via Penguin’s Recipes from the White Hart Inn.

That’s a book from 1759 as I understand it. Imagine living in a time when membership in a fan base of mid-pack grinders was not even possible. Except, you know maybe if you lived in one of the smaller player in the Seven Years War. Perhaps under the rule of Augustus III of Poland. Anyway, anchovies and ale… anchovies and ale.

Back to a semblance of a plot, there was a good story in Blog TO checking out the prices in Ontario’s newly licensed corner stores. It is a little spoken of aspect of the retail booze trade in Ontario that not only are prices stable because of the massive monolithic twins, the LCBO and TBS – but those prices are standard in every store province-wide,  no matter how distant and expensive the shipping costs. Not so in the 7 am to 11 pm new world order. Not that I would buy one – but a 12 pack of White Claw is 30% higher in corner stores compared to TBS retail. Sounds like that one mistake can easily turn into two for the unwary.

Speaking of prices and price inputs, Gary has a great series going on the Canadian brewing trade in WW2 and this week posted this great bit of tabular information detailing all materials used in brewing production in 1944 and 1945. By reverse engineering his Google image search, I found the same record at a Government of Canada site and saved it for perusal. Just look at page 13!

“Grandpa? What was the ratio of steam, diesel and electric power used in Canada’s wartime brewing as part of the war effort against the Nazis?” “Well, little Jimmy, let’s see…”

Excellent stuff. Speaking of which, Katie Mather has been out and about – especially on the Isle of Man – and has sent out a portrait of a favourite pub there, the The Woodbourne Hotel:

This snug in the centre of the building feels like an Edwardian train carriage, everyone packed in together amicably, its little booth seats overlooked by cartoons and paintings that know the secrets of this town, and well-used hand pulls that serve Woodbourne Street’s locals the beer they need to do some much-needed gossiping. We weren’t staying in the Gent’s Room though. It’s too small, and we were too noisy. I was led further down the corridor to the back bar, where somehow we’d multiplied into a rowdy bunch of 12. Basic white walls and a well-stocked bar on first glance became signed photographs of TT racers and etched glass windows. It took my eyes a little time to adjust from the burnished glory of the Gent’s Room, but once I could see it for the perfect little boozer that it was, I was at home.

By the way, Katie is offering self-editing lessons.  Yes, yes. I know. I know. I KNOW!!!

In a year where much of the beer trade news is not necessarily positive, we have also heard that a lot of men spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. Curiosity is good. Not my thing given all those other things – except, you know, all that Christ on the cross stuff – but Ray of B+B has admitted he has joined the legions and asked some questions this week:

After visiting Roman ruins in Colchester and the City of London in early August I found myself frustrated at my lack of solid knowledge about Rome. So, I decided to do my homework. Fortunately, Mary Beard’s 2015 book SPQR offers a relatively concise, extremely clearly-expressed history of Ancient Rome that even I could follow. The Kingdom, the Republic and the Empire made sense, and I understood for the first time which emperor followed which. With my beer blogging hat on, though, the section that really grabbed me was about the decor of a bar in the port of Ostia in the 2nd century CE (formerly AD)…

Back to the now, Eoghan shared some shocking news on the state of Belgian beer this week:

“…outside Europe the export [of Belgian beer] declined by as much as 22.2%” IN ONE YEAR A stat (from the Belgian Brewers Federation) to really set the alarm bells going about the future of Belgian beer. A fairly telling quote, in the same report: “In the past, Belgian brewers were able to compensate this decline largely through export, but last year, for the first time in history, export declined by nearly 7.5%.” Belgian beer’s safety net has some pretty large holes in it…”

Long suffering readers would recall that 15 to 20 years ago, driving distances to find Belgian beers in the northeastern part of the United States was a bit part of one’s stash maintenance. Seems like a third of a lifetime ago… oh… it was. To quote the lads back in Rome sic transit gloria cervisiārum… as Jeff discussed last week:

“Craft beer” is a conceptual cul de sac. We started using it with good intentions, but with a naïveté about how brewing works and how markets function. It now causes more trouble than it’s worth.

In VinePair, David Infante took it a step further and argued that just as craft it no longer relevant as a concept, it isn’t really relevant as a substance:

With the segment struggling to shore up slipping sales figures in the face of increased competition from other categories and shifting preferences from American drinkers, craft breweries have been uncoupling brands from the brewhouses with which they were once synonymous, shedding overhead costs and further muddying what makes a craft beer craft.

Jon Chesto of The Boston Globe wrote a fresh take on the craft shake out that is a bit more visceral in tone, sharing the excellent term “slusheteria” for the craft brewers who chase the tail of other targets. The quitters one might say reading between the lines. Or are they just practical realists racing away from the crushing alternative?  The Chesto story’s punchline, however, is saved for Sam Hendler of Jack’s Abby in Framingham who takes an optimistic approach to the reality of short term shakeouts:

Hendler said many brewers built larger operations than they needed with the anticipation that double-digit sales growth would continue well into the future. Now the industry has far more production capacity than it needs. “We are investing very heavily in craft beer and believe in its long-term future. This isn’t a ‘sky falling’ scenario,” Hendler said. “There might be a challenging period that we’re going to have to navigate through but we see a really bright future for those who figure out how to navigate that successfully.”

Stan also had his own thoughts about the idea that the small and local brewer is going to way of the dodo. But he was heading out the door and just said he’s “…not prepared to abandon the thought embracing efficiency means abandoning inefficiency altogether.” Just strikes me that this sort of trend is an economic reality – but one borne of the pretense that there was something once upon a time called craft that stood there separate and distinct, between microbrewing and today. I dunno. It’s been slipping away for a long long time for this to be news. The glitter. The kettle sours. The identi-haze. But does that necessarily lead inevitably to the horrors of the slusheteria? I am encouraged by Hendler that it does not.

Speaking of slipping further into the sub-standard, MolsonCoors is ditching inclusion in preference for old school capitalist exclusion according to TDB:

…the business would be ending its DEI-based training for its staff members, claiming that it has been “completed”. According to reports, future training initiatives at Molson Coors will now undergo an audit to ensure that they are all focused on the company’s “key business objectives.” In addition to this, Molson Coors is renaming its “employee resource groups” to call them “business resource groups” in a bid to illustrate how the company is focused on “business objectives, consumer dynamics and career development”. Molson Coors also highlighted how its future charitable endeavours will now solely support “hometown communities” aligning to its “core business goals”.

Interesting, too, is how a story can be written about celebrity sports guys building a beer brand by leveraging the excess capacity of Founders Brewing without mentioning the whole bigotty discriminatory scandals thing:

Garage Beer is a fun example of small brand, going big, and making moves quickly. Their connections to two of the NFL’s biggest personalities and even an indirect connection to Taylor Swift make it an extra fascinating story to follow. But beer isn’t sold on podcasts or YouTube, it’s sold in stores and needs to flow through the complex three tier system to reach a national audience. Aligning with Founders Brewing for production and potentially distribution alignment has the ability to execute the hurry-up offense that Garage Beer will need to march across the country.

What’s that? Is it white-white-washing? Dunno but apparently, the inclusion blip has blopped and some want to go back to the old ways. Remember the old ways? Last Friday, David Jesudason published another story of racism in the UK pub trade, this  that 1980s club entertainer Alex Samos faced and pushed back against:

…the club wanted Alex to leave the premises when he arrived and his agent George Fisher was told Alex needed to be replaced because of his colour. This time the club “won” and Alex was barred for not being white. He took legal action against the club and, in a case backed by the Commission for Racial Equality and Equity, won £500 (£1,500 in 2024) compensation for injured feelings and loss of earnings in August 1985.  I hope this would stamp out discrimination by clubs against coloured performers,” Alex told the press at the time. “I thought it was an affront to my dignity. I was outraged.” Club secretary Michael Riordan confirmed none of the 500 members were non-white but feebly retorted that “no coloured people had applied to join”.

Finally and to end on a happier note, Pellicle‘s feature this week was by Martin Flynn on the  Donzoko Brewing Company, a name which I think Augustus III himself might approve if only for having had also to deal with the Austrians but in a slightly different context:

Following calls in pidgin German and some online bids, not long after the search began Reece found himself in Vienna, where gleaming copper brewing vessels and 13 fermentation tanks awaited him. As things transpired, the whole ensemble would spend two days outside on a city centre street, but, somehow, it miraculously remained unharmed and still in one piece. Unfortunately, Reece’s finances were similarly static. A hurried call from the auction house revealed that, for reasons unknown, his funds had been blocked by the UK’s Financial Crimes Authority. “I put the phone down and had a panic attack,” he says. “The head of the auction house was literally walking after me in Vienna, shouting at me.

Heavens! Steer clear of Vienna, that’s what I say. Every. Time. (Did I mention I know a man in Vienna?) Well, we will leave it at that for now. Busy week. Had to retrieve a cat from Springfield… as one does. Until next week for more beery news, check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and 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.

*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 (174) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (933) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,460) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Your Beery News Notes For The Return Of Sweater Weather For 2024

September. The grapes are ripening. And evenings are cooler. And those nightmares about having to go back to grade 11 math class even though that was 45 years ago are back. The rest of the day, you daydream about college days when you were two months away from having to pass in any classwork. And thoughts turn to sweater vests. Over a white t-shirt… if one’s yuff was from that WHAM / Ferris Bueller era forty years ago.* Labour Day Monday was the end of the humidity around these parts. Evenings are cooler. Sweater weather.

First up, in the unending ping-pong game of whether alcohol is good for you or bad for you, Drinks Business summaried the powerful and damning critique of Prof. David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University appeaing of the BBC’s World Service The Food Chain programme:

He said that statistically the overall risk of one beer or wine per day on your life expectancy — which is within current UK government guidelines — has no higher impact than driving a car or eating bacon. Spiegelhalter said that research showed the health benefits of drinking in small amounts, as previously highlighted by the drinks business. He added: “Frankly, I get irritated when the harms of low levels are exaggerated, particularly with claims such as ‘no level of alcohol is safe’. For a start I don’t think the evidence supports that, but also there’s no safe level of driving, there’s no safe level of living, but no one recommends abstention.”

Much, of course, turns on the fuzzy concept of “safe” given that these sorts of statements do not characterize the degree of safety that is, you know… safe. It’s a form of argument that would make the evangelical at the door proud. Fortunately, at least one solid opinion is shared. Spiegelhalter “described the current NHS guidance on levels as ‘ideal’ .” That being…  David Morrison, data-driven wine blogger at The Wine Gourd makes a detailed and well footnoted argument against WHO guidance which unfortunately starts with that sad car driving safety analogy (yes, there is a warning… it is called the licensing process) but then making a good recovery:

…as Robert Joseph has noted: ‘we need to promote the unique, historic qualities of wine that make it such a great convivial product and such a delicious partner to food.’ That is, in the words of Erik Skovenborg, we need to note: Wine as part of a healthy lifestyle; and Drinking with friends: wine’s role as a social lubricant. If the wine label has to list the risks (as is being suggested for the new USA guidelines), should it also list the benefits?

And there was much talk in the UK is about the new government’s plan to enforce a ban on smoking in beer gardens and on pub patios. The Independent discusses the implications:

If implemented, the outdoor smoking ban would make it an offence for people to smoke in certain spaces such as pub gardens or outside sports venues. Should it be enforced in the same way as the 2007 indoor smoking ban, smoking in certain outdoor spaces would carry a Fixed Penalty Notice of up to £150. If you refuse to pay this, you are liable to be prosecuted. According to Action on Smoking Health (ASH), the 2007 ban led to a 2.4 percent reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks, and a 12.3 percent reduction in admissions for childhood asthma.

This is something we have had this sort of ban in Ontario for quite a number of years now – and we’ve expanded it over time – with the result that no one misses breathing in the neighbouring table’s ciggie gak. But these things are local. Apparently elsewhere, not so gak. The Guardian covers some of the frustrations with the proposal:

…Sean Short, 54, was smoking on the pavement outside a Wetherspoon’s pub – there is some suggestion that pavements outside venues could also fall under a new ban. “I think it’s ridiculous. As if there’s not enough pubs being closed anyway at the minute,” he said. “I can understand them banning it outside hospitals, that makes sense, but not outside pubs.” He said an outdoor ban would not stop him from coming to the pub, but he could see that it would for other people, especially when alcohol is cheaper to buy in supermarkets.

Still, will any of this matter if, as The Guardian also asks, the kids ain’t even drinking the stuff:

A seemingly endless stream of recent reports have warned that baby boomers, who have fueled the industry, are retiring and spending less, and millennials aren’t picking up the slack. “You’re looking at a cliff,” the industry analyst Rob McMillan told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2022, following a key report that showed wine consumption in the US hadn’t grown in 2021 – despite bars and restaurants reopening. McMillan foresaw wine consumption by volume declining 20% in the next decade, with millennial habits key to the shift. Last year, Nielsen data showed 45% of gen Zers over 21 said they had never drunk alcohol.

Not all that relatedly, Jordan has been doing his annual stint at the Canadian National Exhibition – aka the CNE – selling beer tokens in a booth, acting as huckster to both carnies and marks alike. Observations include: (i) “Big Boi didn’t draw the crowds”; (ii) a pickle shot is “a pickle, cored out, filled with tequila”; and (iii) someone asked “What is tokens?”

Note: Gary is not linking over at Twex anymore so keep and eye on hiblog for updates. This week he explains why some Canadian troops in WW2 fighting in Italy drank British beer while some of the British fighting there drank Canadian beer.

Boak and Bailey in their footnotes posed a question about the cartoon in Pellicle last Friday:

…cartoonist David Bailey seems to be arguing that confusion, jargon, and being pushed around by expert staff, is part of the fun of artisanal drinks. But maybe he’s also asking: really? Is that how you want it?

Me, I took the cartoon as pure mockery. I felt badly for the poor beer buyer, there in her tiny version of Pilgrim’s Progress facing the craft carny. Could it be that the craft carney stuff is also off putting… or mid… from the perspective of Gen Zers?

Never mid, Ron introduced me to a new word this week… no, not that sort of word, a brewing related word:

… what’s odd, is that there isn’t a full fermentation record for the “Double Stout”. Just one or two entrie. While there is a full record for Single Stout, right up to racking. Why would that be? Eventually I twigged. There’s a reason there isn’t a full fermentation record. Because that wort wasn’t fully fermented. At least not on its own. I’m pretty sure that this is “heading”. One of the elements of Irish Stout. It’s a strong wort in a high degree of fermentation which was blended in at racking or packaging time. It’s effectively a sort of Kräusen.

Now, I had understand that certain Irish stout had a lesser portion of stale for tang as well as fresher for the body in a blend so, if Ron is listening, does this mean that three different agings including a heading as part of finishing were used? Or am I, as per, wrong?

Laura Hanland posts an interesting set of questions which popped to mind after a certain sort of restaurant experience:

In essence then, my food was deeply “not too bad” – usually enough for me to decide not to return for a repeat visit – but I loved the restaurant so much that I really think I am going to go back and give their pasta a go! And this is my conundrum. If you’re reviewing food, then the food must be good. Surely? But the lovely team, the genial surroundings… these were charming elements that I couldn’t ignore. Also I was a little bit taken by the scowling Italian elder who peered out at me from the kitchen. He gave the whole thing a very authentic feel of a family business. This review makes no sense. I don’t know if it will help you decide whether to visit or not. But I’ll be sure to tell you if I do get back for the pasta.

I think it makes perfect sense. One of the problems in the social media age with its instantly curated expertise (just add water… or, as with the craft carney, booze) is the expectation of mind blowing experiences. They rarely actually happen. For example, my chicken burger was actually a bit bland when we were out this week. Could have done with some chopped green onion in there. Or something. But the server was great as was the sharable carrot cake dessert. Look for the good in things. And put a little black pepper on the burger yourself. Don’t be lazy.

Pellicle‘s feature this week is by Jacob Smith – a discussion with and of the definitely not lazy Judith Gillies, co-founder of Cairn o’ Mohr, a Scottish producer of fruit wines and ciders:

There was little money to spare—Judith fondly recalls a cupboard acting as their only shop—yet, the couple enjoyed something far more valuable than excess cash: access to some of the country’s best fruit. Thanks to its loamy soils, moderate temperatures and—for Scotland—dryish weather, Perthshire is home to an array of world class berries, apples and flowers. As head of production at Cairn o’ Mohr, Judith puts this bounty to good work, producing around 18 different wines, three alcohol-free beverages and five ciders. While popular fruits like strawberries, brambles and raspberries are central figures in several of Cairn o’ Mohr’s wines, less appreciated ingredients like elderberries, oak leaf and gorse are just as commonly used.

I like this line, too: “We tend to take knobbly fruit,” Judith says. “The ones that are too big, too small, too ripe for the supermarkets, things like that.” And speaking of seeking out new tipples, Jancis R reported from a tasting of independent wineries from 15 central and eastern European nations:

Of the other countries whose wines I tasted, Croatia was the most stimulating. The wines, especially those from Istria in the far north of the country, seemed to have an extra layer of sophistication. The region’s special white-wine grape Malvazija Istarska (nothing to do with most other Malvasias) produces full-bodied wines with an apple-skin character, real grip and ageing potential. My favourite examples at the tasting were made, respectively, by the well-established Kozlović winery and the much younger enterprise owned by the unfortunately named Fakin family.

Beating us to EuroEast for drinks, The Beer Nut has been reporting live from Bulgaria this week. It sounds so good:

80% of being on holiday is a random bottle of something that’s €8 in a supermarket and has a picture of a fruit on the label. To my veins, please. Directly…  The next song will be performed by a man who looks like he should be on the sex offenders’ register but has sufficient connections to have avoided it… This open-air bar is opposite my hotel. On beautiful sunny days I’ve been looking across and thinking it would be nice for a drink. Here I am and my beer tastes like it was triple-filtered through a skunk’s anal gland… 

And for Labo(u)r Day, Dave Infante in VinePair was fairly free with the finger pointery over craft beer’s record in labo(u)r relations:

Substandard products, dangerous equipment failures, hell, even terrible rebrands — workers can help owners solve these problems with union training programs, higher self-enforced safety standards, and honest feedback from outside the boardroom bubble. But they need a voice on the job, and protection to use it even when it’s going to piss the boss off. This industry is getting left behind by drinkers. It cannot afford to be left behind by its workers at the same time. Like the Teamsters organizer at Stone this past Monday, I have a message to deliver this Labor Day weekend. This one is for brewery bosses and workers alike. The country is changing, and so is this industry. Which side are you on?

I know what side I am on when it comes to beer cocktails (because port and stout is not a beer cocktail… even though I called it just that in 2012) but the National Post shared a very extended article on beer cocktails that lingered over something from the 1990s built around a recollection of youth as part of creating the argument that one should not overthink… or even, really, think about these matters:

…Dad mentioned that I’d left some beer in the basement fridge that I might want to take home to drink. Investigation revealed that the bottles in question were the remainders of a six-pack of Tequiza. Some of you may recall this late-’90s-era beer brand, juiced with “the natural flavour of lime” and sweetened with agave nectar, a brand that lots of people in flannel shirts and Doc Martens used to consume while listening to Pearl Jam and waiting for our dial-up modems to connect to the internet. The portmanteau name was supposed to suggest a marriage of tequila and cerveza…

Never thought Tequiza would get that much media footprint but there you go.  Finally and definitely in the Tequiza zone, today is the day here in Ontario when I can walk to the corner store and get beer… probably a macro brand I don’t want and at a higher price than elsewhere. But I can get it at 7 am. So that is excellent. Does this mean death to the near century old macro brewers’s run retail monopoly aka “The Beer Store”? Can you say supply chain?

“Bring it on — we’re ready,” Roy Benin, president of The Beer Store, said in a statement. “We see this as a new chapter for The Beer Store and we’re excited to compete. All of our channels – from distribution to retail to deposit return will continue to deliver for Ontario.” The beer conglomerate said it has also expanded its distribution fleet, helping to bring close to 4,000 convenience stores online to sell beer. The retail giant is involved behind the scenes in stocking many of those locations, and grocery stores, as well as its own storefronts.

That being the case – is The Polk right? Is it all politics and money?

It’s not about access. It’s about Dougie needing more bread & circuses distractions for the low information voter to drive more votes his way when he calls the election. He wants to get into another majority before the RCMP gets deeper into the Greenbelt. He’s gonna win, too…

Maybe. Maaaaaybe. Hmm. In the meantime, if you want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Ahh… we the drifty, Gen Xers in the era of the X: “What are you interested in?” “Nothing.” “Me neither.“
**Me, I’m all avout the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (166) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (931) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,466) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

The Chores… More Chores… It’s The Weeks Of Chores Along With Some Beery News Notes

When last we met, I was happy as anything, wandering around Montreal on a few days away. That’s so last week. The first week of vacation. Then I came home to folk building the new fence and the related 24 foot tall tree removal on my side of the line. The fencing guys did a couple of the main branches with their power saws but I’m doing the rest by hand, sorting* and hauling most of the stuff away. Which is why this week’s beery news notes are brought to you by my Japanese pruning saw. It is the only thing I have ever bought which has each and every promised attribute. Forget that claim that beer makes you feel exactly like you wanted to feel like just before you had that beer. This beauty sits neatly in the cut, eats into the wood in both directions, stays sharp, creates minimal blisters. Japanese pruning saws. Get yours today.

First off, I am really grateful for Stephanie Grant‘s piece on her changing relationship with alcohol. She puts things so clearly, things that I have thought about myself and others over the years – especially this bit:

I haven’t dived into non-alcohol beers or mocktails, and I’m not sure that I will. I’m not someone who necessarily needs to replace beer with a non-alcoholic version. I know that there are some great options out there today, but when I am abstaining from alcohol, I don’t really feel the need to replace it with something that is similar to alcohol. I also feel the same way about meat substitutes. If I want to eat meat, I will eat meat, but if I want something vegetarian, I don’t necessarily need a meat-like substitute… if I really want a beer during the week, I have no problem drinking a beer and have no trouble sticking to one. That level of flexibility feels good to me and has made this new adventure feel even more doable…. It helps that I know other people who work in beer and the beverage industry as a whole that have also cut back on their drinking. I look to them for inspiration. Because of them, I know it’s possible.

For as long as I have been writing about beer my interest in drinking a lot of beer has slowly slipped away… well, maybe let’s say it has reduced. (Apparently, not unlike Ireland.) For a while now, I’ve been a none or maybe one with meals or maybe after mowing sorta person now.  I know, sounds like Old Man Day Napper. But that’s now due, you know, to hauling the boughs and branches to the yard waste depot.

Yet… when I do have a drink, I like to drink the swell stuff. So what are you drinking when in Lisbon? Not what you expect you might be, if Jason Wilson is right:

My choice for the first stop of the evening would be Quattro Teste, one of the best cocktail bars I’ve visited in any city. Run by Alf del Portillo, from Spain’s Basque Country, and Marta Premoli, from Lombardia, Italy, at Quattro Teste you can start with a shot of cider straight from the barrel, Basque style. Then move on to Alf’s take on the low-brow classic kalimotxo. It’s usually just a mix of red wine and Coke, but his version has a healthy pour of Amaro Lucano and a splash of Branca Menta to make it a kalimotxo revelation.

I am not sure my meagre daily ration would go in the direction of a kalimotxo but, go ahead, make the case for it. Jeff made the case, unpacking his thoughts on our conversation about the economics of local v regional noted last week as Question #7:

The regional breweries can’t compete with the giants on price, and lose the advantage of “local” affection the further they try to send beer. I recently got to see the barrelage of those regional breweries, and it is mostly sinking as this dynamic squeezes them more. And yet if you zoom in a bit, something interesting is going on as well. If you surveyed the beer cooler at the local grocery store in different regions (not just the U.S., but anywhere), you’d see different retail space given to local, regional, and national brands. Some places I visit have mostly national brands and a sad little pocket of local brands. In other places, the reverse is true.

There was also follow up over at their Patreon-based footnotes this week, when Boak and Bailey (Hello Jess and Ray!) looked for just the right word:

The idea of national-regional-local that Jeff Alworth writes about, after a discussion with Alan McLeod (hello, Alan!) feels like an important one. We look here at breweries like Butcombe, which are definitely tied to the West Country, but which don’t feel especially… loyal? Is that the word? They’re not national, exactly, but they’re too big, too remote, and too slick, to feel quite part of the scene. In Bristol, local means from the city. And ideally from the neighbourhood. Somerset and Gloucestershire too, at a push. We need to think about this some more.

I like that reference to “the scene.” A scene is something to which you can have personal affinity. My scene, for example, for a long time pre-pandemic extended much more to the south into central New York than to Toronto to my west.  It is about identity as much as anything but there is a clear tension between the economics and the identification with regionality. Put it this way. I support local breweries as much as I do because I can drive to them all. That is a distinct relationship where the economics and identity of local might look like loyal but perhaps it is only practical. At the regional level one needs to make more of an effort, both the brewer and buyer. I probably put a premium on spotting a Great Lakes zone beer. National craft? Might as well be ketchup. I’ll buy it but mainly on based on the price with hard eye on the best before date.

On the subject of scene, it has many facets. We see that in the piece Laura Hadland had published in What’s Brewing which explored the history of beer serving measurements below the pint. It illustrated the hazards to be encountered in place to plane and time to time – as illustrated by the “schooner”:

The two-third pint measure was not legally recognised as a specified measure until October 2011. Despite this late introduction, the measure was not new. A publican in Greenock, Scotland, is recorded as testing the market for the schooner – a glass of American invention – in the 1870s. His tuppeny drink was described by locals as the Wee Pint and seems to have met with relative success, spreading to other venues in the area. The two-third schooner for beer is not to be confused with the sherry glass of the same name – a tall, waisted 3.5oz glass that was popularised in the UK in the 1960s, alongside its smaller cousin, the clipper. To add another layer of bemusement, a Canadian beer schooner is a 32oz super-sized affair!

I like that, the “wee pint” – basically the size you get in the US now when you ask for a pint. What else is going on? Pete Brown posted his take on George Orwell’s perfect urban pub “Moon Under Water” but with the perfect English country pub in mind:

There’s a big open fire at one end of the room. In winter, you have to be here at opening time to claim the table next to it. There’s also a large, shiny-seated wooden chair opposite. It’s the kind of chair you don’t sit in unless you’ve been drinking here since the pub was built. The walls and ceilings are decorated with random stuff – nothing as obvious as horse brasses or old black-and-white photos of the pub. A lot of the décor relates to the name of the pub (which isn’t really the Old Stone House.) But on top of that (sometimes literally) there’s a collection of old scythes. A bowsaw. A 1930s policeman’s helmet. A case full of arrows.

And… wait for it. There is a twist. By the way, R+J of B+B may have found their own new perfect pub even though the first dealt with some well-founded doubts:

…people who are much more clued into Bristol pub gossip than us told us they’d heard Sam Gregory, landlord of The Bank Tavern, was interested in taking it on. You might have heard of The Bank, even if you don’t know Bristol: it’s the one with the four-year waiting list for reservations for Sunday lunch. We filed this news under “We’ll believe it when we see it”. So much can go wrong with plans to revive pubs, as we’ve seen with successive attempts to take on The Rhubarb.

Also extolling the ideal pub this week was ATJ whose A Pub For All Seasons comes out soon. He summarized the goal of the book:

Deep breath, then: A Pub For All Seasons is a narrative non-fiction travel book about my journey through the UK over the four seasons in search of how pubs change organically, unconsciously, without fanfare, almost with nobody noticing. It is about how pubs echo the seasonal drinks and dishes we fancy throughout the year — as they change a pub also changes.

Speaking of which, I received my copy of Martyn’s new book, Around the World in 80 Beers: A Global History of Brewing, a study of brewing history through 80 beers from around the world. Very oddly, exactly 2.5% of the beers discussed were from my homeland, the Canadian Maritimes. The entry on Keith’s IPA is (shall we say) kind but does highlight, as do a number of others, the imperial reach of British brewing.  My first skim though did raise one question. Has anyone actually seen that receipe for great-grandpaw’s beer that was the foundation for Sam Adams Boston Lager?

Other than witnessing the praising of glitter beer well after it “glit-ted” its last “-ter“**, I was interested in the thoughts Doug Veliky shared on the effect of Hazy with about a decade’s reflection – and expectually its effects on other style as well as style itself:

The term “American IPA” appears to mean little that can be trusted anymore, at least consistently and nationally for someone traveling, and might as well be shelved completely by the US brewing scene. It’s turned into a filler word to show more intention to the style, but that intention is now be muddy and misleading. The reason I used to like the descriptor is because it could serve as a way to communicate clear and bitter, while letting West Coast IPAs be their more specific versions, still leaving a wide range of variables to incorporate and differentiate with.

In Pellicle, Will Hawkes explored other sorts of fundamental changes in his excellent biography of an important figure in mid-1900s British brewing, Dr. Dora Kulka, and her escape from the Nazi we well as how her work in yeast biochemistry supported the early adoption of lager brewing:

Dora produced a stout (“Your vitamin stout is good,” Erna Hollitscher, to whom she sent a bottle, told her; “In spite of the protest of some English people I still don’t think it is so very different from beer!”), a pale ale and, most significantly, a lager. She probably thought little of it, but for the powers-that-be at The Hope Brewery it was like a lightbulb flickering on. Just a few years later, Claywheels Lane became the first British home of Carling Black Label, the beer that started the British lager revolution, and that has been the nation’s favourite since the early 1980s…. Hope & Anchor began making their own lager—Anchor Lager—very soon after the War ended. “Dr Kulka got us brewing a lager. She noticed Sheffield water was similar to that of Pilsen in Czechoslovakia, where her family came from, and suggested we make one. That’s what set us going.”

It will be harder to find a lager in some communities in northern Ontario now that the implications of the new beer sales in private stores are playing out:

The Beer Store has confirmed that the 8 James Bay Rd. location in Cochrane is permanently closing on Sept. 9… In Cochrane, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) has approved two licences for convenience stores that will be able to sell alcohol — the Cochrane Truck Stop at 99 Hwy. 11 S., and COSTCAN Liquor at 143 Fourth St. W. Unit B. The Beer Store locations in Geraldton and Nipigon are also set to close next month.  Gordon Mackenzie, a former Nipigon councillor wrote to The Beer Store president, highlighting the impacts of the closure on the community, noting his concerns that the closure will add to the long-standing issues of vacant buildings populating the downtown core and the loss of job opportunities. The community has also noted that The Beer Store is the only location to return empties to.

Note: “My bet is the price of beer will go up, especially in northern Ontario.” In suburban southern Ontario, the issues are different, as over licensing as 350 new retailers will open up in one municipality on the same day. Plus: “stores will be allowed to sell starting at 7 a.m. and up to 11 p.m., two hours earlier in the morning and later at night than the current operating hours.” Really? Pre-school beers? How long until we read the “drunk guys in grade 12 first class home room” story?

And, relatedly perhaps in terms of change, in his Hop Queries, Stan shared some news about the German hop harvest that ended up with a bit of an odd conclusion:

Each of Germany’s five hop growing regions (Hallertau is by far the largest) provided estimates as harvest began. Production in the Hallertau increased 21 percent over 2023, to 42,350 metric tons, while overall German production grew 18.8 percent to 48,964 metric tons (98.1 million pounds). Why? Yields in Germany were up 20.5 percent. Although yields in 2023 had improved on 2022’s particularly disappointing harvest, they were still below average… The overall harvest yielded about nine percent more hops than an average crop the last 10 years, which a press releases notes will be sold into a market that is “. . . oversupplied.”

“Oversupply” does no lead to cheering as it turns out. A bumper crop causes concerns in a retracting marketplace for beer.

I am sure there is a bit of a punning opportunity related to the exhuberent abundance of my week’s chores there but I am a bit too tired to try. Timber depot, yard waste yard, worn out fabric drop off, vee vee boutique and, most excitingly, the hazardous waste receiving area. Touched all the bases. So… that being the case… here are the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday… with a top drawer effort this week. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Those straight branches to the right are all around ten feet long and will be next year’s tomato poles.
**Not sure if or even how my disinterest in glitter beer translates into sexism but there you have it. Adulterations and adjuncts are simply gak.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (151) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (930) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,469) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

A Most Thoroughly August Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

What can you say about August that we each haven’t thought in our hearts of hearts? We are now well into the downside of the year, four months and three weeks and a bit until Christmas. It’s always struck me as odd that the first half of the year has seven months while the second only has five. August. Hmm. Plus it all gets a bit endtimesy around now. The garden gets weedy and a bit tired in the corners. We even got forest fire smoke from Pennsylvania this week, for God’s sake! Looks!! Good thing there’s all those fit folk at the Olympics in Paris, over there throwing themselves against the track, against the ball, against ocean waves and against each others fists to give us all at home cheering on the sofa an endorphin boost. Speaking of the Olympics, how’s the beer?

Anyone who was planning on heading over to Paris for the 2024 Olympics and expected to be having a boozy jaunt in a stadium is going to be sorely disappointed. Almost everyone who has got tickets to see bits of the 2024 Olympics will not be allowed to buy alcohol at the venues where the sporting competitions are taking place… if you must drink beer inside the venues then you’ll have to stick with the non-alcoholic stuff. For half a litre of non-alcoholic beer you’ll need to be spending €8 (£6.74), while if you want a 400ml drink of zero alcohol beer with some lemon juice in it that’ll cost €6 (£5.05).

Whhhaaaaat?!?!? Really? I’d be tempted to get me a robot but I suppose that makes sense in the keeping the eye on the ball sense for spectators but, more importantly, what is the point of cutting NA beer with juice? Don’t worry, however, as the rich in catered VIP zones will be able to drink… because… France… or the Olympics… or…

Same as it ever was? Things go around and around. Consider this piece from Jessica Mason in TDB on salting your beer:

According to the reports via Parade, the trendsetters claimed that “adding a bit of salt to your inexpensive brew will enhance the flavour” and described how “some people add salt to certain beers, like sours or IPAs, to enhance the fruity notes and reduce the bitterness” and suggested that “for those ‘cheaper’ beers, it’s supposed to make the brew taste a bit more highbrow”. The report emphasised how “Texans take beer salt so seriously” and said that drinkers were “likely to find lots of flavoured beer salt options when you want to crack open a cold one”.

Taverns when I was a lad in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 1980s had shakers of salt on the tables. It was an old guy thing even back then, used by the hard cases in the back corners, but soon a little rattle of the shaker was a habit at the Seahorse or the Lower Deck when the unpasturized generic draft was a little off. Definitely done at the Midtown.

More information has been released on experimentation with the hotest new brewing grain in town, fonio. Interesting news even if this was a rather silly statement from Carlsberg director of brewing science and technology Zoran Gojkovic apparently (but I hope incorrectly) recalling a past discussion with Garrett Oliver:

“The internet says it is millet, but there are lots of millet grains and this one comes from Africa. But, back then, I misunderstood was what it really was all about. If someone tells you something is beef, but really it is like a variety, like wagyu steak, then it can be more easily understood. What I didn’t know was that fonio, compared to other kinds of millet, is like the wagyu steak of grains. Millet, as a cereal could be quite boring, but this in its pure formula is not boring. It is elegant.”

I’m more comfortable with it being the warp drive of millets – but only because that is obviously even more silly. Or is it the warp drives of wagyu? Or the wagyu of warp? That’s the fonio beer name I want to see: Wagyu of Warp!

And, speaking of silly, we have yet another study that resulted from the study of studies that studied booze and, again, it has been determined that there has been a lack of studiouness about that J-Curve fibbery:

…a new analysis challenges the thinking and blames the rosy message on flawed research that compares drinkers with people who are sick and sober. Scientists in Canada delved into 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and how long they lived. In most cases, they found that drinkers were compared with people who abstained or consumed very little alcohol, without taking into account that some had cut down or quit through ill health. The finding means that amid the abstainers and occasional drinkers are a significant number of sick people, bringing the group’s average health down, and making light to moderate drinkers look better off in comparison.

I mentioned how dodgy the concept was at least as far back in 2018 but this newer focus on the problem of including “people who had stopped or cut down their drinking for health reasons in the comparison group” is critical. Note: not drinking because you are sick is different that being sick due to not drinking.

Note too: “golloping beer with zest” was a thing. Gary explains.

In Pellicle, David Jesuason wrote about one of the the tougher aspects, the mental health implications, that can go along with setting out to run a small brewery. This is how he set the scene at McColl’s Brewery of Evenwood, County Durham before help arrived:

“I came here thinking all I have to do is 150 casks a week and it didn’t happen,” Danny says. “Because I did it [before] I thought I was capable of doing it and not even knowing it was the wrong [thing to do] as well.” Danny’s mental health suffered because there was no long-term strategy, just day-to-day drudgery. Graft instead of focus. “I couldn’t make good decisions,” he tells me. He was running the entire operation by himself: brewing, selling and even delivering the beer to customers. It was far too much to take on, his mental health suffered and Gemma, his wife, became worried about him having suffered from depression herself.

That piece reminded me of the life of a farmer, alone with their business subject to the whims of nature and the trade. Should brewing trade associations provide mental health support programs similar to those being set up for agriculture?

Also on the ag beat, Stan has given us something to chew on with his July 2024 edition of Hop Queries, Vol. 8, No. 3 for those who are trying to collect a full set. He mentions that harvest time has begun, triggering images of golden light on hedgerow graced horse plowed scenes, perhaps mixing with Beethoven’s 6th wafting quietly in from somewhere… then – WHAMMO – the invasion of the lab-coated eggheads begins:

Scientists at Sapporo in Japan used headband sensors to measure the brainwaves of participants… The subjects reported feeling relaxed by the aromas of linalool and geraniol because they provided floral and green impressions… An increasing tendency in the rhythm regularities of the frequency fluctuations of the right frontal alpha-waves while drinking a European pilsner-type beer with aromas characterized by hops. 

HEADBAND SENSORS!!! And, for the double, Stan pointed to this number crunching post from Phil Cook on Monday but (even though I may risk breaking an unwritten weekly updating rule) I want to unpack this point in more detail – one key difference between Australian and other beer judging events:

Because there’s a list of every beer entered, not just those that win medals, we can calculate some ‘batting averages’ to better compare how each brewery fared. So, I’ve worked out each entrant’s medal percentage (MPC: how many of their beers won a medal, of any kind) and their points per entry (PPE: adding 3 for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze, then dividing by number of entries submitted). Bigger numbers are better in both cases; overall about 74% of beers entered earned a medal,2 and if your PPE was 1.00 or higher your brewery was in the top half of the competition. 

This would be a huge step towards making the results of these events more meaningful that those of the moveable buffet of the international circle of they who judge. Being able to figure out brewery top rankings as well as those surprising disappointments would be a great benefit to consumers. But who in beer puts the buyer first?

Perhaps connected, Jeff shared his thoughts on the financial perils of being a freelancer writing about the brewing trade without separate income:

Writing is a terrible way to make a living. It’s why people end up going into marketing. You could spend your days scrambling after $600 articles, or you could get a job for $60k with benefits. This is why we bleed great writers, who take their services to companies who will pay what their work is worth. It’s not just that the money’s bad—it’s also hard to get. If you could somehow stack up your articles and get a couple in every week, you could make a decent living, maybe fifty, sixty grand a year before taxes… Trying to pitch stories, and then research, report, and write a hundred of them in a year? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but again, you’d be barely making more than working at McDonald’s if you somehow enjoyed that level of “success,” which perhaps 2-3% of working freelancers enjoy.

The best line was near the end: “If you have any other choice, don’t write.” What he means (of course… or rather I hope!) is don’t write for money but this isn’t news.* Still… write. Writing a free, joyful and easy experience of expression. Scribble, jot, draft, forget and rediscover – and, yes, even submit. Just don’t think you’re going to be buying the kiddies shoes with the income.

Joyful, too, is Dave “Still No Relation” Bailey’s cartooning, also in Pellicle, which this month explored the notion of perfection.  And if you want an example of writing for joy, ATJ has been working on one particular theme quite a bit over at his Substack, that being ATJ sitting in a pub and looking at the details of the scene around him. Second or third time I read one of his I thought “hmm…now, that sounds familiar” BUT as this week’s edition testifies its his process being worked out before our eyes:

My eye was caught by a faded photo of the pub, sometime before World War I. Outside it, there stood a line of long dead regulars, mainly men, standing still, a couple smiling, the rest sombre and holding themselves stiffly as if on parade, which several years later many of them would be, ready to march off to war. A long ago day, the sun shining maybe, though given the quality of the photo it was hard to say. Bowler hats, cloth caps, none of them bareheaded for that was not how they presented themselves to the world then. I’d like to think that once the photographer finished, off the men went into the pub, glasses of ale and cider purchased and amid the hubbub there would have been little time for reflection.

Sharp stuff. And it sure beats the sort of cash-focused writing that has recently given us such gems as “deepest echelons of the industry” and “with demand being high, the category has continued to thrive, despite the sector struggling” and the astoundingly poorly thought out alleged expression of expertise “Liquids within the same ‘competitive set’ are not distinctive from one another as liquids.” Bring on the robots of A.I.! Viva Robots!!

No, I didn’t mean that. There are no robots of joy. It’s actually all around us already now if you look for joy. We see it in a long wandering piece about wandering at length. And we also see it at home as when Rachel Hendry in her emailed newsletter J’Adore Le Plonk shared some thoughts on the role and value of the leftover bottle of wine there in the kitchen that was opened a few days ago… and may have lost whatever finesse it had:

Service work should neither be seen nor paid, tends to be the general consensus and when my wine joins me in a position of domestic work I attach the same framework to it. Why add this beautiful, evocative glass of wine to my dish when I can reach for something leftover, or looked down on, fuck it, why not just add water instead? The recipe provides a role for a wine that is past its best, that may otherwise be retired down the drain and into the bin. It doesn’t, however, mean the wine isn’t important. Wine has many roles in our lives and contributor in the kitchen can be one of them. As I work through my hesitation and add a splash of my wine to the courgettes slowly melting into butter I notice I have not lost anything in the process. The wine is still mine to enjoy, I have placed value on an ingredient as I would like to be valued myself and the meal tastes better for it.

And I should have mentioned that Katie wrote a few weeks ago about trying Italian wines with any sorts of unexpected flavours to see what works for you. My tip? Chianti with roast turkey. It can have a swell cranberry vibe going on. Try a turkey and blue cheese sandwich with slices of pear and a cold glass of Chianti. Could sound weird but it works. Not this weird, mind you, but there that gets a lot going on.

That is it. Enough! Here are the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.**** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday… with a top drawer effort this week. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*My full sympathies (though I might have used the phrase “good writers” to convey a sense of realism.) I wrote this in an email to Max, now eleven years ago: “It is tough. There is no money in beer writing so if that is all you have to go on… I have met with pro writers over beer and always find them bagged out and drained from the nights of PR work in pubs to keep the wolf from the door. I complained once somewhere about how craft brewers should be supporting good beer writers directly without expectation of return and this was met with howls – even from writers. Earn your way as a freelancer, said the freelancers. Suck it up and take the junkets, said those on the junkets.” Is that the macho forehead + wall thinking part of the freelancing problem?
**This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (930) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,483) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Your Sodden And Soaked Mid-July 2024 Mid-Tropical Storm Beryl Beery News Notes

OK, a busy week. Away on the weekend for the rugby, Canada v. Scotland in Ottawa. Photo by me. Scotland won. I wore blue. Then covering for others at the office. Others won. I was blue. So… early in the week I was thinking that this week’s update may be a short one. Or I might just make some stuff up. Then… Beryl came a’callin’. Tropical Storm  Beryl that is. Formerly Hurrican B. I won’t really know if the tomatoes survived until after this here update hits the presses. I may have even scheduled this early for publication, typos and all, just to be on the safe side of the power grid. Wouldn’t want to leave The Beer Nut with nothing to read. That’d be bad.

What else is going on? Big news hereabouts is the strike at the government store, the LCBO. Here is a handy primer on some of the main issues. The Premier is out there on his intern’s social media feeds telling people to buy local, buy elsewhere while the strike goes on. Gary, being the anarchist, wants to burn the whole place down. Robin, being the authoritarian, reads everyone their rights. Jordan broke out some of his excel sheetery, gave it all a good shake and shared a few resulting thoughts:

The LCBO’s dividend to the Ontario government as a crown corporation is up 770 million dollars since 2015 and it is because they have repatriated funds that were going to foreign owned brewers through The Beer Store chain. That 770 million dollars represents 13.3% market share. Back of the napkin math says that if The Beer Store gets run out of town, there’s 2.39 billion dollars up for grabs annually, and increasing rapidly due to inflation… Grocery and Convenience are likely to continue being wholesaled by the LCBO, which means there are going to be a lot of warehousing positions that need staffing. A lot of logistics. A lot of administrative positions. If you let the approximately 2.39 billion that’s about to shift direction go without a fight go, you’d be crazy.

See, in conservative Ontario, statist socialism is incredibly good business. See? Similarly, there was a bit of handbaggery in the UK over “socialist member owned  grocery chain” The Co-operative* when they put out an ad recommending that people shop for their beer at their stores ahead of some sort of sporting event. The Campaign for Pubs, clearly a business oriented front, even issued a press release as illustrated to the right.  Le Protz exemplified the capitalist outrage:

If you can’t make it to the pub to watch the England match, please don’t buy beer from @coopuk in response to their anti-pub #EURO2024.

It strikes me a odd that a business is not able to advertise its own wares without striking terror in the hearts of another set of businesses. It seems odder that Mr. Protz is backing the right wing of the discussion over the left one. Me? When I drink, I drink at home more than in pubs. Old Mudgie seems to share my views:

…this response comes across as distinctly thin-skinned and precious. Pubs are commercial businesses, not sacred institutions, and have no right to be shielded from the rough-and-tumble of competition… The venues that benefit most from the football will tend to be knocked-through drinking barns where most of the customers are on Stella or Madri, not chocolate-box locals or trendy craft bars, many of which won’t even show it in the first place… Being referred to in your competitors’ advertising is generally regarded as a sign of strength rather than weakness, as pointed out by licensee Joe Buckley, who took the ad as a compliment to the pub sector.

Hmm… What would Mr. Protz think of one medical professional’s advice on drinking during these summer heatwaves, as reported in The Daily Star:

But did you know it can also affect you or your partner’s ability to perform in the bedroom? When dehydrated, your body reacts by producing less red blood cells and plasma needed for proper blood flow. It also produces increased levels of a hormone called angiotensin to compensate for low fluid levels, meaning your blood vessels will narrow to conserve fluid, reducing the amount of blood able to reach the penis, causing issues getting or maintaining an erection. Consider limiting your caffeine and alcohol intake as these can have diuretic effects.

Perhaps reading those sorts of reports, big brewer Carlsberg announced plans to move in a decidedly less boozy direction, according to The Independent:

Brewing giant Carlsberg has agreed a huge £3.3 billion deal to buy Robinsons squash maker Britvic. The UK soft drinks firm, which also makes J2O and Tango, told shareholders on Monday morning it will recommend the latest deal – which is valued at £4.1 billion when debts are taken into account – after rejecting a previous £3.1 billion offer. Carlsberg will pay 1,315p per share to Britvic investors under the deal. Britvic also holds an exclusive licence with US partner PepsiCo to make and sell brands such as Pepsi, 7up and Lipton iced tea in the UK.

Speaking of which, here is a stat that I can’t wait for US craft beer spokespeople to spin. Have a look at this graph and then read the following as published in Craft Brewing Business:

…the BPI is a forward-looking indicator measuring expected demand from beer distributors — one month forward. A reading greater than 50 indicates the segment is expanding, while a reading below 50 indicates the segment is contracting. The craft index for June 2024 was 27. Blah. The BPI’s total beer index of 58 marked the highest June reading since 2021, as well as the fourth straight month in expansion (>50) territory.

Craft = Blah. That’s not good. It was also a drop to the 27 Blah Zone from 2023’s Ho Hum of 38. Which is all sorts of yikes.

Neither blah or yikes is the tale told by Isabelle O’Carroll in Pellicle this week of a Balkan pastry, the Burek:

At its core a burek is a yufka (or phyllo pastry) pie, often filled with an egg and cheese mixture, (but sometimes vegetables or meat) and usually (but not always) rolled into a spiral before baking. Take a glancing look at the AskBalkans subReddit and you’ll get an idea of the roiling debates on the proper name and correct filling for bureks. “Go to Bosnia and ask for a burek with cheese, suddenly you’re waking up in the ER with multiple life-threatening wounds, I don’t think we even agree on burek,” one Redditor said. “You said a pita is a burek, which is not true unless you’re okay with calling all pitas bureks, which means you’d call maslenice, mantije, and other meals with jufka bureks, too! Which you said you don’t. It’s okay to just admit you’re wrong, you know?”

Glad we cleared that up! Speaking of science, we read this report that came out this week and see this is the summary in the abstract presented by the journal:

Moderate chronic consumption of IPA beer and hops infusion showed antigenotoxic effects in mice but no antimutagenic action.

Pretty sure that does not equal “[d]rinking IPAs in moderation has shown it does not have an adverse effect on health” very much at all. Seems to me the more likely route to something that does not seem to have an adverse health effect (with all due respect to all neo-boozy-Babbits dreaming of the unthinking life) is not drinking alcohol. Which means NA beer. There’s a lot of money apparently in selling nothing. Yet, if that nada produces nuttin’… why keep it from the kids?

Since these beverages contain virtually no alcohol, they can largely be sold to anyone, anywhere; they’re stocked on grocery and convenience store shelves around the country, and purchasable online. But Collins doesn’t sell to anybody under 18 years old at this store, and he checks ID’s to enforce that rule. “When there’s no minimum age, can a nine-year old come into your store and buy a non-alcoholic Corona? For me, I don’t want that perception,” Collins says. Collins set his own age limit, and he’s free to set it however he wants because in Maryland — as in the majority of states — there are no state age restrictions on who can buy adult non-alcoholic beverages.

Really? That’s odd. I would not buy them for my kids – if I still had little kids – because they are slightly insanely expensive! Odd. And Katie in an abbreviated edition of The Gulp asked another  very odd question:

Why do men order default drinks for the ir female partners without asking them what they’d like?

I’d get shot if I did that!  My mother would have shot my father if he did that – and don’t even start about Grannie! Or Great-Grannie for that matter! I am and come from a long line of men who would be dead if, you know, they weren’t dead already.

Speaking of socialists, did you hear that Keir Starmer and the Labour party gave the Tories the boot in the UK? Always nice when the Tories get the boot somewhere. He is by reports a pub lad. The Spirits Business, not a journal for professional clairvoyants, gave its thoughts on the wish list of policies which may now roll out for the British booze trade, including this from Mark Kent, chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA):

“During the rest of 2024, there will be opportunities to support Scotch in the first budget of the new Parliament, secure a trade deal with India which will reduce tariffs on Scotch whisky in this key market, and work closely with the industry as we continue on our journey towards net zero.” He added that the organisation looks forward to working with the MPs to “ensure that Scotch whisky is at the heart of the central mission of the next five years – growth and economic renewal”.

Not correcting the imbalanced non-dom taxation, not strengthening national defence, not boosting public education or restoring health services… whisky.

Before, as discussed below, the doors close, ATJ got in one last post at GBH which refreshingly is about hunting out good beer and some sort of perversity in Belgium:

Perversely, in the land where Lambic, gueuze, and Trappist ales are heralded and celebrated, lager is dominant. However, these beers might be popular, but they are often seen by connoisseurs as one-dimensional and simply designed to quench thirst as well as being easy on the pocket. Most of these beers have as much in common with the Ur-lagers of central Europe as a kangaroo has with a chicken—they both have two legs, but that’s it. This is why Brasserie de la Mule, led by its young founder and head brewer Joel Galy, is unique, especially as it has only been in existence for three years.

And finally, Good Beer Hunting has suspended operations with a florish offered by way of announcement:

We have some ideas for what the future of Good Beer Hunting might look like—and soon I’ll be working on that vision with the counsel of my colleagues to see where it takes us. But the earliest vision is so drastically different than what GBH currently is, that the only way to get to the other side is to make a clean break. We’ve got to clear out the cache. We’ve got to quiet everything down for a bit and see what it all sounds like on the other side of that silence. We’re shutting down our various content streams—the podcast, the website, social—ending a sort of always-on feed of content that’s been, for many of us writers, editors, and artists, our life’s work. And for most of us, our best work.

Quite so. And that makes sense despite the lamentations of the writing circle. For some time, as careful readers will know, I have noticed** that the focus had shifted as the frequency of posts decreased. Sightlines continues under separate URL but with little seemingly on offer given the sparce front window. And the business model has had a heavy burn rate. Yup, a new title and framing as perhaps a broader audience travel and lifestyle magazine would fit better with the pieces which have been the mainstay of GBH for some time. As noted above, these are not the days to invest in whatever craft has become so any retooling is the wisest approach.***

There! Plenty to read and discuss. And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.**** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! 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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Great-grandpa apparently refused to eat anything bought from anywhere but The Co-op.
**Perhaps after others, I’ve always remembered this tweet from Matty from 2018: “…for a short while now I have felt my own ambitions do not align with that of GBH, and as such I have chosen to go in my own direction…” which was the beginning of Pellicle in a way.
***Conversely, following through on the comment sent to contributors might not be wise: “We still plan to pursue our special print edition featuring original work and new stories from the world of beer, spirits, and food, called “Beer & Brine,” although we’re not committing to a specific timeline for that at the moment.“
****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (930) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,483) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Fabulous Harvest Of The Year

Here we are. Scape pesto to the left of me. Scape pesto to the right. OK, fine. Not really. But the mid-June plucking of the 435 or so scapes and zipping them into a small bucket of goo with a litre of olive oil is a good thing. Martha Stewart circa 1998 good. Free food. And there’s more. I’ll lift the whole plants in three or four weeks to be bundled and dried in the shed before they are sorted and replanted in October. You get the 450 seed cloves for planting in the fall for next year’s harvest, more than 1000 second best cloves for eating, the three litres of scape pesto and – who knew? – the scape tips and dried garlic straw for anti-bug mulching around the tomato patch. All from a 5 x 11’s worth of raised bed. Highly recommended.  Start your own tiny garlic ranch come the autumn.

The biggest bestest reading this week was from Katie at The Gulp and her piece “Beer Has A Sex Problem.” It’s a theme that is admittedly well explored but perhaps not as well – dare I say as radically – argued as this:

…in a conversation with drinks writer Rachel Hendry, we both agreed on something: women who don’t drink beer want something that matches their mood. A drink that accentuates their style and punctuates their sentences. A drink that makes them feel how they want to feel. When I go out and choose not to drink beer—and I’m reminding you here, I’m a woman—it’s because I want something chic like a martini, or sexy and flirty like a spicy margarita. Easy-breezy like a vodka tonic. Beer is seriously unsexy. Is that why women who don’t love beer for all its flavours and styles and aromas don’t drink it? I don’t know. Has anyone asked them? What do women want? As Rachel says: “To feel sexy! And strong! And smart! And sensual! Give me a champagne coupe!”

Question: is that just an approach exclusively for women?  Beer trade writers will tell you that a beer suits all situations… but does really?  Don’t you feel like a bit of a dork with your brown tall neck brewski when everyone is having wine and talking intelligently about it? Wouldn’t you feel dumb having a beer chaser when there is a dram of good whisky in the other paw?

Speaking of social situations, Boak and Bailey linked to this great article in Esquire on ceremony of buying a round:

Maybe six people took me up on the offer. To my left, a pair of guys who were visiting from Atlanta told me one of them was a doctor, and he could tell I’d just had a baby because of the hospital bracelet on my wrist. They drank beers, and as one of them took a sip, I heard him say, “This is why I love New York.” The guy sitting next to me was only there for a burger, but he congratulated me and asked if he could pick up my personal bar tab. I thanked him but told him it wasn’t necessary. Another guy, about sixty-five or seventy, who looked ready for a long day of golf, opted for a shot of whiskey. He walked over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and asked what we’d had. When I told him a daughter, he smiled and said, “A blessing. Daughters are truly a blessing. I’ve got three kids, and the oldest is a girl. She’s my world.”

Memories rushed in. I’ve been in pubs and bars with naval connections, like my dear old college tav, that made it simple. Ring the bell by the end of the bar and you buy for everyone. And don’t touch the damn bell if you don’t intend to! In 1986, in the Rose Street brewpub in Edinburgh I was on the receiving end of the most subtle buying a round ever seen. A gent in a group who came in and placed an elbow at the bar just waggled his index finger ever so slightly. There was less energy in that wagging digit than in a rural Nova Scotian passing pickup driver’s hello. I was asked by the barman “what will you have?” even though I had a pint in front of me. I had to have the whole thing explained to me. Which led to me spenting an hour chatting with the group and having a great old time.

In Pellicle, Ruvani de Silva presented a scathing report on the failure of craft beer to participate in equity, diversity and inclusion in any practical or meaningful way and the resulting burnout banging their heads against walls:

I could go on about how bad things in beer really are, and I will, because we need to address the inconvenient truth that these problems have not been solved and things are not okay… As belts tighten and global attention moves to new disasters, DEI is being left behind across the board. “Breweries and venues [are] desperately trying to survive, so are not putting the time and energy and resources into this kind of work…

Read the whole thing. Best line is the first one: “DEI is so 2021.” I would add one thing. Craft beer awarded itself a gold star for achieving top marks in all matters from day one. It tells itself it has been a success story people enter after the victory was achieved. Everyone is great. A cause fed by passion propped up by trade writing. It’s a big fib. But a profitable even cultural foundation for craft beer. As a result, there is less concern with the performative nod to the bigotries and botches because, you know, it’s craft! Govern yourselves accordingly.

Slightly on that theme, I like this anti-sucker juice statement from Marcel Haas in the Netherlands from his website Tasting Craft Beer:

I should have ignored this advertisement. I should have bought local. Buying locally helps the local bottle shops to survive. They are the ones who make sure that interesting, high quality offering is found around the corner from my house. Another selection around the other corner. When everybody starts buying the same small box from the same (inter-)national importer, then all variety in the beer landscape will cease to exist. I should have reconsidered, and I should have taken my bike to my local bottle shop. And I will.

Speaking of regrets, this story in the NYT by Susan Dominus is a great bit of thinking about drinking which is all about… thinking about your drinking:

No amount of alcohol is good for you — that much is clear. But one might reasonably ask: Just how bad is it? The information we receive on health risks often glide over the specifics of how much actual risk a person faces, as if those were not details worth knowing. These days, when I contemplate a drink with dinner, I find myself wondering about how much to adjust my behavior in light of this new research. Over the years, we’ve been told so many things are either very good or very bad for us — drinking coffee, running, running barefoot, restricting calories, eating all protein, eating all carbs. The conversation in my head goes something like this: “Should I worry? Clearly, to some degree, yes. But how much, exactly?”

ATJ wrote a fine bit of reflection on life as a pub goer:

Another sip of my beer, a long glance at the road outside, and then I think about the Venerable Bede’s parable of the sparrow flying through the mead hall and about how my time in this pub is akin to the flight of the small bird on a cold winter’s night, which takes it briefly through the warmth and the light of the hall. Life. Yet there is nothing sad about my feelings. It could be worse. Remembering some of the most dire pubs I have had to spend time in over the years I imagine the purgatory in which the same dismal pub is visited night after night and the same dismal beer is drunk and the same dismal conversations are had, the purgatory of a failed life, the collapsed star of the only pub in town.

And The Mudge wrote about less finer things said about pubs, election promises never fulfilled:

It’s noticeable how, when an election comes around, politicians suddenly discover an interest in pubs that had been notably lacking in the preceding years. The latest example of this comes from the Labour Party, who have proposed a policy to “give communities a new ‘right to buy’ shuttered pubs.” It must be said that this is a bit rich coming from the party responsible for the smoking ban and the alcohol duty escalator… However, setting that to one side, what would such a plan involve? 

Here is an excellent illustration of an explanation of terroir which should serve you well should you encounter someone insisting that Hazy IPA have, you know, terroir:

The current clos is 99.6% owned by Lambrays. It is triangular in shape and has a difference in elevation of 60 m from the top to the bottom. It is east-facing but far from uniform, with undulations, and some parts with red clay, other parts with brown, and different sized limestone stones in different areas. Unusually, the rows are perpendicular to the slope, to help fight erosion. This row orientation also helps protect the developing bunches from direct sun.

Speaking of wine, as the breweries are plumping up their prices, at least one wine writer is helping with your budget. Here is Eric Asimov from The New York Times with his best summer wines under $20 with this caveat on value:

Despite the seemingly endless climb of wine prices, it’s still not difficult to find intriguing bottles in the $20 and under category. Most will not be familiar producers or grapes, nor will they come from well-known areas in great demand. But that’s why they don’t cost very much. Still, inflation has had an effect. A 20 Under $20 column from 10 or 12 years ago will look quite different. Those bottles remain great, but they cost quite a bit more nowadays. So, we make way for other terrific values.

And in their monthly supplementary newsletter, the media-multiplex of B+B shared thoughts on the concept of psychogeography:

To understand pubs and their place in the landscape you also need to understand how towns develop. Old town, new town, ring road, slum clearances, tower blocks, estates, railways, canals… pubs either stud these spaces, or are noticeably absent from them. Some notable psychogeography practitioners also happen to be keen on pubs. John Rogers, a YouTuber and the author of This Other London, often pauses to look at pubs on his rambles, and often finishes his walk in the pub. And many beer writers and bloggers take a psychogeographic approach, whether consciously or not. Martin Taylor’s posts often include details of the journey to the pub with wry and sometimes snarky commentary on the towns he visits.

I like this idea. One of my roles at work is supporting the built heritage team and as a result of a couple of decades of looking at buildings and street layouts, I see the town in decade by decade layers. One good start is to notice every date carved in the facade of a building. Why do they date buildings anyway?  B+B also mentioned the streetscapery of Will Hawks’ London Beer City which this month included coverage of an event at the massive Downham Tavern in 1931 where a memory and fact entertainer put on a show… and also coverage of those who covered it:

Among the crowd is Daily Herald journalist Hannen Swaffer, who tracks down landlord Fred Johnson. “That Irishman’s a stranger,” he insists. “He doesn’t come from around here. The Downham people all behave themselves.” Swaffer (…according to the British Journalism Review, he was remembered after his death for “little more than the mixture of dandruff and cigarette ash on his velvet collar”) is much taken with the show. He likes the acts. He likes the crowd. He likes the notion that a music-hall revival might be on the cards, even if its real glory days are a few decades in the past.  What Swaffer, boozer-turned-teetotaler, really likes though is the attitude to alcohol. “Alcohol is dying out naturally,” he tells his Daily Herald readers.  

Excellent. And Stan published his Hop Queries this past week with more details on the continuing decline in production:

…the US hop industry has 35-to-40-million-pound aroma hop surplus. Nobody disagrees. In the last six years, farms in the Northwest have produced an average of 1,848 pounds for hops per acres. Across 9,775 acres (this year’s reduction), that would amount to about 18 million pounds of hops. It would, and should, put a serious dent the surplus. Still, it will take much longer for supply and demand to return to balance. You are going to see flash sales like this recent one from Yakima Chief Hops for a while. Although eliminating those pounds is necessary, it also is painful. The average farm gate price last year was $5.40, so we are talking about almost $100 million pounds of hops.

Question: so it, as Stan also says, 2023 is really the twin of 2015 for US craft beer… will 2025 be 2010? That surplus isn’t being used up over one growing season. As you consider that, also consider the post Jeff put up – replete with graphical presentation of data – on the growth in excess brewing capacity:

American breweries are currently at about half their capacity. That’s not good! But it’s actually worse that in looks because growth has been dead flat for three years. Were the industry growing, it would need headspace, so to speak, for future expansion.

Heavens. Tettering. Could deflation be next? One thing is practically for certain. DEI isn’t the next big thing in these conditions.

And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.* Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.**

*This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (133) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (915) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,479) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (162), crap Threads (43) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 
**Not that many footnotes really this week. Look at this one. An out and out joke really. Sad.

The Father’s Day Slackerfest Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

When Monday morning arrives and my inbox has only a couple of links for the Thursday beery news notes, well, I get a yips. Then when Stan as well as Boak and Bailey post great linksfests… I get the shakes. Really. Well, not really but sorta. I look for reasons. I search my soul. And I see something. Something about myself. Deep in myself. I am actually pretty lazy. Just ask my lawn.* But… it’s Fathers Day weekend coming up so who cares!

First up, why aren’t the young folk drinking booze like we expect?!? Like we demand of them. So that they would be more like us. When we were them. A couple of arguments related to this passed my eye this week. First Jeff wrote a post about kids being more sensible these days:

Young people have more free time, fewer life complications, and are more socially motivated to hang out with each other. If they don’t develop the habit of going to bars when they might actually be drinking more, when will they? And, given that I think spending time with friends in pubs is one of the very best ways to spend your time, I agree. But here comes that big “on the other hand”: it’s better if they hold off developing a relationship with alcohol until their brains are less plastic and more able to handle it. High schoolers are going to flirt with danger. It is part of growth and maturity. But it’s good if they do it in ways that are less likely to have massive, life-changing consequences. More of them skipping the booze until they’re well out of high school? Awesome.

And Prof Dan Malleck made these comments in this discussion which I am joining together as I think they are related in terms of framing the zeitgeist:

I see @TheCurrentCBC has yet again doubled down on its neotemperance tendencies with an uncritically fawning segment on non-alcoholic socialization. Stop equating socializing with alcohol to getting blackout drunk… Booze understood as a social lubricant far predates what you call beer trade writers; in fact it predates what we call civilization… We are witnessing the outcome of a strategy by well-resourced temperance organizations that benefit from not appearing to have corporate interests so present as only interested in the public good.

I think there are many good reasons people of all ages for less drinking and these observations above capture some of them. Though the US legal drinking age of 21 is absolutely nuts and “neotemperance” is closing in from behind. No, we need to think about the realities in a realistic way. First, we have to admit that many of them locking themselves up in basements and “socializing” online. What do you call a pub like that? “The Mouse and Soda”? And, the cost of the beer itself is a thing as are the additional expenses that have popped up over the last couple of decades. “When I were a lad” there were little or no digital or communications bills coming at me. No cell phones, no subscriptions, no internet services. Once my food, stamp, rent and tuition was paid the rest in my pocket was “blow” money.  Bah-low! Plus… we were stupid. Err… stupider. Until 1983 there wasn’t even MADD in Canada so there was a fair bit of DD, if we are being honest. The health hazards of booze were known then and now just like they were known for “coffin nails” aka ciggies. So, if youth today are smarter, otherwise occupied, more health conscious and harder up for cash… why would they take up the regular drinking hobby?

Speaking of which, social media whipped up a frenzy over cask ale in the UK – or rather the seeming disinterest in it. It was quite a thing to watch. What started it? John Keeling pronouncing it dead, based on a recent SIBA report stating that “cask beer sales are now less than 9% of all draught beer sales and around 4% of total beer sales.” I think of this as being more the main area of concern, linked as it is to the discussion above:

Only 30% of 18-24-year-olds EVER drink beer, falling behind wines and spirits, and almost a quarter of consumers (24%) say they NEVER visit their local pub.

From afar, Jeff found fault suggesting cask suffers from its characteristic swift loss of freshness due to oxygen ingress and, almost nearly equadistant from Jeff, Laura in return found fault with Jeff’s argument – and by association with Mr. Keeling, too:

I disagree with practically all of this. I’m under 45 and literally wrote the book on CAMRA. If you think cask is in decline, talk to @WyeValleyBrew who have almost doubled their production volume over 10 years including over 20k BBL of HPA & c.19k BBL Butty Bach CASK in 22/23.

The jumpity-onnie-ness seemed to settle on this point Mr. K actually made in his original piece: “cask in the future will be brewed by specialist brewers for specialist pubs to be consume by beer drinking specialists.” Many pointed out, however (i) that this is already the case (given bigger pubcos botched it) and (ii) that holding 9% of the market and growing when in the right hands is not such a bad place to be. (By the way, why is that 9% a total failure while elsewhere 13.3% utter victory?) As usual, the Tand was authoritative.

Somewhat related is another “let’s parse B+B” like last week‘s discussion of the description of peeps in pubs. This week? From their Drinks of the Weekend Patreon posting… how to describe cask ale:

… pleasantly malty and sessionable… unchallenging but not unpleasant…  tasted like they could have been brewed forty years ago… in good condition and suitable unobtrusive… more often struck us as sour and muddy… reasonable… too oniony… balanced and moreish… 

All of which is more a feature than a bug. See, they the cask hounds that they are, are on a serious hunt even if a cheery one. For cask in form. Like any sports fans or concert goers do… or archaeology fans, flag nerds or men’s clothing geeks for that matter. Experience needs to be sought. You know, by adding the factor of understanding if something is or is not in top form – even just adding that bit of risk – experiences like cask poses interesting challenges. And it’s  unlike a super speedy version of the issues with good wine of (i) bottle variation and (ii) whether or not a bottle is en pointe.** Worth hunting out. Worth getting educated about. Because if everything is just great and right there always at hand, well, nothing is excellent.***

Enough!! Enough of your bickering!!! Time for a universal truth. You know what hobby we should all take up? Eating Manx kipper baps, that’s what! Katie has all the news of fish and bun from her Isle of Man sojourn as set out in The Gulp:

The only way to eat breakfast in Peel, in my opinion, is to scoff a Manx kipper bap with cream cheese while walking along the front. The Fish Bar, a little cabin in-between the castle and the prom, is where to get one. The lovely man will fry your salty, smoky kippers in butter in front of you while you look at the beautiful tubs of pickled shellfish you might snack on later. A bite is strangely like the best bacon butty you’ve ever eaten—crisp but meltingly fatty, salt balanced by creamy cheese spread, except with the scent of the sea all around. Eat on the move while the butter drips down your wrist and the fish is still hot from the pan.

Fabulous. Coming up in a close second in the Grand Prix du Fabuloso, Martyn drew my attention to the right sort of event with the right approach that I might be interested if I was in the right country:

If this intrigues you, courtesy of CAMRA’s Games & Collectables, we will be hosting a tasting featuring beers up to 40 years old and everyone will get a chance to try around 10 beers from a selection of over 60. They could be great, or they could be less than great; it will be a one off voyage of discovery! But we will begin the tasting with a modern day 18 month stored beer from Fuller’s – the freshest beer you’ll try on the day. Please note that we cannot guarantee the quality of any of the beers presented so the price includes two halves from the real ales on sale at the Pineapple – just in case!

Not so wonderful news. Are you an archaeologist? Is your working life laced with alcohol?  Are you an archaeologist whose working life laced with alcohol? Apparently it is a thing (h/t). A problem even. When I was starting out in law I would say it was a big problem. Drunk firm parties. older alcoholic lawyers drinking in the office. Plenty didn’t for sure and the reaction of the profession as being a bit Georgian about it all, an issue related to the individual and personal capacity rather than the whole business model. Well, click on the thumbnail and you’ll see that UK archaeologist Dr Chloë Duckworth has thoughts she has decided to share including “I drank every  single night on these projects…“ Yikes.⁦

Sporting news? No beer, only shandy at the Euros for fans watching Engerland v. Serbska, apparently for good reason according to The Mrrrrrr:

The move comes as authorities in Germany, where the major football tournament is being held, fear clashes between England fans and violent Serbian ‘Ultras’. German police fear the Serbian hooligans are planning to clash with drink-fuelled England supporters and so are banning strong lager from the game. It is thought around 40,000 England fans will be at the game and 8,000 Serbs, who will be joined by others from Germany’s Serbian communities.

Not sure hooligans is quite the right word. Elsewhere, The Sun reports Scots are drinking Munich dry. And in Franfurt, according to The Guardian rather comprehensively, the drink is Apfelwein:

England play Denmark here on 20 June, while Germany face Switzerland three days later. This is a nation renowned for its beer quality, of course, but those visiting Frankfurt for the football will find that here, another drink rules: Apfelwein. This traditional Hessisch cider – the beverage of the state of Hessen – is dry, still, unfiltered and is made from sour apples, making it taste tart. Many locals top it up with sparkling water, diluting the flavour, dampening the 5-7% alcohol and making the beverage particularly refreshing on hot days. Hardcore Sachsenhauseners drink Apfelwein pure.

And now… some short notes: (i) line up or pack the bar? Table service for me, thanks – another great gift of the temperence era, (ii) No beer writing received a 2024 James Beard Award, (iii) Pellicle did not win at the Guild of Food Writers awards, (iv) beer sales are up in Cyprus. (v) and still… those damn London prices:

The cheeky pub was charging £19 for just a third of a pint of “Iris 2025”, a 15 per cent speciality beer from Belgian speciality brewer Cantillon. Rob Healy, 52-year-old a retired TFL worker, said he was “outraged” when he saw the menu. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he told The Sun. “I know it’s London prices but that’s ridiculous.”

Outraged! Every English working man deserves a budget priced glass of rare lambic. Right?!? Speaking of which, have you ever not quite get a connotation in a beer reference from another country? Try this one out:

…politicians from the governing parties were shocked by the populist tone of Weimer’s tirade, which some said evoked the rhetoric of the far-right Alternative for Germany. “The bizarre . . . speech is more beer tent than Dax-listed company executive,” Verena Hubertz, deputy leader of the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group, told the Financial Times…  A spokesman for Deutsche Börse described Weimer as a “man of clear words” who is “not known for putting lipstick on the pig”.

Seeing that it is in a British paper, the German idiom might have been unpacked a little for those whose cultures do not include speech-ifi-cations in beer tents. Hicks? Neo-nazism? Drunk louts? Drunk neo-nazi hick louts?

Pellicle has a good piece up this week on the Ontarian abroad in German who unexpectedly became a natural wine maker, Alanna LaGamba, and her purple fizz:

Alanna had a thought. “Being half Italian, I grew up drinking Lambrusco. So I had the idea to do it German-style.” Frauen Power’s colour might be dark and stormy, but it smells like bing cherries, the ones that pair so well with boozy chocolate. It’s not sweet, however. It’s dry like blackcurrants that aren’t quite ready to leave their vine. Frauen Power is also a reminder that sparkling wines can do a lot more than toast to special occasions. They dress down just as well as they dress up, accompanying pizza, buttery crackers, or just a balmy afternoon.

Me, I like purple fizz. And I like this thought: “It’s cool because there are not many industries where you create your raw materials. When you think of a carpenter, he’s not growing the tree he gets the wood from. But everything in the bottle is me.” Inspiring. You know, maybe I will try making a 5% beer-wine with my own two Pinot Noir vines this August just to see if I can. Sure you can make jelly but there is no buzz from jelly. Except that jelly buzz but that is different.

Finally, in an update on the changes coming to Ontario’s retail beer market the government has announced that just as corner stores soon will be able to beer, the former retail monopoly The Beer Store is becoming… more like a corner store:

It’s all in a move to help ease the transition to corner stores and gas stations being permitted to sell alcohol starting this fall. Currently, the privately owned Beer Store is only allowed to sell ancillary items, such as bags of ice, beer mugs, and T-shirts, but the government is now permitting it to sell a multitude of other products including lottery tickets and food. The only exceptions being cigarettes, cannabis, and liquor, which will remain prohibited. It’s not clear if or when The Beer Store plans to expand its offerings.

All I demand are roller hot dogs on every TBS counter! If only for that smell, that body odor salty sweaty thing that makes the moment every time.

And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.**** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the 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 introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  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. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Actually that image is from near here but not here here.
**Also dairy farm milk. A pal who grew up on one disliked milk in February (“ugh… dried hay and silage!”) and August “(“erg… weedy!”) due to the feed inputs.
***You know, if US craft beer was left to determine the fate of either good wine or cask ale, they’d no doubt add fruit flavoured syrup: “Chateau Palmer 2026 with a burst of real peach excitement!“
****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,477) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (162), crap Threads (43) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.