1800s – A Good Beer Blog

The Thrilling Week When I Got That Head Cold Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

First cold after the pandemic started. Felt very weird. Runny nose. Sneezing. Pretty much gone. Or at least a new thing every day. But, you know, it’s sorta nice to have an ailment that doesn’t mean you are at great risk. And it’s all over the place here, half the folk at work are hit. (No, you’re right… I am struggling with the tie in to good beer, too. Got it!) It makes you appreciate the little things, perhaps. Things without DOOOOOOMMMM in the title. Like how the warm weather this year may see the maple sap running very early… oh, no that is a little doomy. Endtimesy even. Maybe more like this: Jeff, he of Rye, posted that a friend:

…bought an old Victorian frame a while ago. Opening it up, he’s discovered this old brewery advert used as a filler piece behind the print itself! Brewery wound up 1866 so it’s at least 160 years old!

Nice. Click on it. The image is amazingly crisp and colourful for something forgotten at least 158 years ago. A good way to start the week off. Somewhat similarly, A London Inheritance has a great post this week on the history of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden. The structure of the blog is updating older photos taken by the author’s father, contextualizing them with current images all to set up wee histories of the City’s hidden gems:

This is my father’s photo of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden, taken in 1948. The name Lamb and Flag can be seen just above the entrance to the Saloon. On many London pubs of the time, the name of the brewery was given much greater prominence than the name of the pub. Barclay, Perkins & Co. Ltd were a major London brewery operating from the Anchor Brewery in Park Street, Southwark… The source of the name Lamb and Flag has a religious basis. The “lamb” is from the Gospel of St. John: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” and the flag being that of St. George. The pub was also once known as the Bucket of Blood due to links with prize fighting.

Delightful. I wonder if that was supposed to be an attraction back then? Speaking of which, Boak and Bailey discussed the modern equivalent (perhaps) this week when they inquired into what new trends make a pub attractive these days:

As well as the aforementioned board game cafes, we’ve also noticed in Bristol a growing number of (a) video game bars or grown-up amusement arcades and (b) dessert cafes. The video game places are interesting. In both of those we’ve visited there was draught beer but you were absolutely free to ignore it. You were paying your way by paying to play games with drinks as an additional amenity. And the desert cafes will sell you a disgustingly huge plate of ice cream and waffles, or whatever, and then let you and several friends spend hours picking at it.

I like me a good video game bar. The particular preference is an Atari table to play Asteroids on. It’s apparently called a cocktail table. I usually had a beer when these things were more common. And finding one with wood paneling finish is a big bonus. Stepping back from that dailiance with the modern, Martin is back with a bit of a calculation on how much beer did a 1860s farmer brew for his operational needs:

Going back to Samuel, if he, or rather one of his servants, was brewing 96 barrels of beer a year, that works out at eight barrels a month. If he had a two-quarter brewery, that is, one capable of mashing two quarters, 650 pounds or so, of malt at a time (a reasonable assumption, I think, judging by the sizes of small commercial breweries in Hertfordshire in the 19th century), then he was brewing only once a month, at an average of four barrels to the quarter, to give a beer of six to seven per cent abv. Clearly it would not take much of a step up to increase output considerably: brew once a week, and you are now making almost 420 barrels a year, which you could retail for almost £1,000, at 48 shillings for a barrel of XXX. That’s a fairly staggering £110,000 a year in 2024 value, a healthy addition to a farm’s income.

I’ve just remembered something. I was never very good at math. Pellicle has published an excellent article and photo essay by Jemma Beedie on the The Horn Milk Bar, an old school cafe halfway between Perth and Dundee, Scotland which is preserved itself:

…we have time-travelled. This is the place my parents (and maybe yours) are longing for; the spaces they insist still exist. Instead of the cloying nostalgia of brand-new retro-styling, this place is visibly old. We were expecting the polished vintage world of the music videos by Autoheart and Logan’s Close—this is not that. Shades of brown and beige wash over us. Wipe-clean plastic chairs and tables surround us. Outside it is bright, one of the clearest, bluest skies we’ve had since May, but the sunlight struggling through the wall of windows does not penetrate the suffocating room of wood veneer.

Again, wood veneer is good. I once lived in a town with a veneer factory. Unrolled big logs like they were paper towel rolls. Match factory too. Back to beer! There was a bit of a kerfuffle (yes, I said it) after Jessica Mason‘s story on the revival of Black and Tan was published after last week’s deadline. She updated the story with grace and speed to include the connotations of the name in Ireland:

…in Ireland, the ‘black and tans’ referred to constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. They were nicknamed so because of their uniforms being a mixture of dark green (which appeared black) and khaki. During that time, the ‘black and tans’ gained a reputation for brutality and as such exacerbated Irish opinion of the British. With these elements in mind, despite the beer serve being termed so due to its colouring, ordering a black and tan at an Irish bar could be viewed as a contentious move, especially by a British patron. However, taking a piece of history back, many Irish bars – especially in the US – are now beginning to offer the serve, sometimes with a nod to Irish history, but otherwise simply to upsell more Guinness.

There’s another form of the two level cocktail that you can also see in America in bottled form from venerable micros like Saranac as well as Yuegling. BeerAdvocate lists 77 examples of beers by that name, listed under the American Porter category. I wonder if this dates from the earlier post US Civil War usage as it related to the Republican Party, as summarized by Wikipedia:

Social pressure eventually forced most Scalawags to join the conservative/Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted and, starting in the 1870s, formed the “tan” half of the “Black and Tan” Republican Party, a minority in every Southern state after 1877. This divided the party into two factions: the lily-white faction, which was practically all-white; and the biracial black-and-tan faction. In several Southern states, the “Lily Whites”, who sought to recruit white Democrats to the Republican Party, attempted to purge the Black and Tan faction or at least to reduce its influence.

Very interesting – or at least so said Artie Johnson. You know, I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Forecasting is a mug’s game, a fool’s errand, a… a… add your own analogy please… but, still, you gotta love how little credibility this sort of listicle entry conveys:

…there’s an expected 8.51% compound annual growth for the next three years, putting seltzers at the forefront of increasingly important alcoholic beverages.

Interesting, too, is how many in the list of trends in “craft” are as devoid of the word “beer” as the title to the article. Just dislocated “craft” is all there is left. And remember: hop water isn’t a style, it’s a recipe.

Allistair wrote at Fuggled about a brewery he wrote about in a Pellicle feature last summer, as we discussed, on Virginia’s Black Narrows Brewing. An unfortunate update:

Yesterday, Josh Chapman, owner and brewer at Black Narrows Brewing on Chincoteague Island announced that they have decided to close their doors – their final weekend in operation will be February 16-18th… It was also just last year that their magnificent malted corn lager “How Bout It” was awarded a Good Food Award – the corn in the lager being an heirloom variety, grown on the Eastern Shore, malted by Murphy & Rude in Charlottesville, and fermented with a yeast strain derived from a Chincoteague oyster. Beer does not get much more local than that… In announcing the closure, Josh noted that “we watched our ingredients, equipment and labor costs increase. It was all too much”. In the end, the finances of being a hyper local, community supporting brewery just couldn’t sustain the business…

Relatedly and perhaps conversely, it’s certainly daring to suggest that craft malt is “Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex” but it might have been nice if something backing that claim up was actually included in this GBH article.* It’s on new small scale malting barley trends methods by Don Tse. I think the nub of the tale is really this, that these new methods may help small farmers and small maltsters:

Farmers are more likely to grow whatever is most profitable, and since so much research has been invested in improving the yield of corn and other crops, old barley varieties cannot yield sufficient income to compete. Indeed, in a typical crop rotation, barley is likely to be the least profitable unless there is a premium buyer like a maltster… Thanks to new barley varieties bred for a broader range of environments and thanks to craft maltsters creating a market for these varieties, Heisel says he is witnessing regions that had been growing feed barley—Maryland and Delaware, for example—switching to malting barley…

Good. A perfectly acceptable point. Speaking of which, the next edition of Prohibitchin’ from Beth Demmon is out and this month’s focus is Rae Adams who works in a particularly challenging location:

Dry January is behind us, and Rae couldn’t be happier about it. “Dry January is a murderous thing,” she says, only half jokingly. “Let’s change it to Dry July.” A month of widespread sobriety during the slowest part of the year for many food and drink establishments is hard enough on its own. But Graham County, where Rae works as the director of sales for Wehrloom Honey & Meadery, is one of the four remaining dry counties in North Carolina. You can still find and purchase alcohol in dry counties, but not much, and not everywhere. Even on a good day, it’s challenging for producers and retailers.

Speaking of dry, a lack of imported beer to Zanzibar‘s spice islands tourist zone has thrown the industry into a mess:

“We are running short of beer at my bar, and I just have a stock of soft drinks,” he told the BBC. “The government has to take action. It is the high season now, it is very hot and these tourists need joy, they need cold beer on these beaches.” An American tourist, who did not want to be named, said: “I love Zanzibar and its beaches. The people are amazing and only challenge I feel now is I can’t get hard liquor. I want to have spirits or even whisky but nothing is found in the hotel – they instead advised me to order it from Stone Town.” The local manufacture of alcohol is banned in Zanzibar, whose population is largely Muslim.

Why? Permits!! And 90% of the regions income is from tourists and, as the Sex Pistols taught us, tourists are money. The BBC reports that Simai Mohammed Said resigned as tourism minister last week, citing “unfavourable and disruptive working conditions.” Heavens. Why can’t everything work as smoothly as in Poulton? And finally… oh dear:

No one really knows why it’s called a “cream ale” as it is more akin to an American lager and does not contain any cream at all.

That’s expertise for you!** And now… once again… roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 118 rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (stalled at 911) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,442 – up again) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down to 163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

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

*The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all. And it also would be nice to know why “People were still growing it for feed, but any malting barley was going to Canada.” I mean I think I know why it goes to Canada but it need explaining or tightening. And, yes, there are native North American barleys. Conversely, wouldn’t have some publication wanted this piece for publication, Jeff‘s survey of change at Rogue? Neat and tidy and yes pretty trade positive. It’s a weird week. Check out the next footnote if you don’t believe me! [Update: Stan’s BlueSky comment was “There’s even treasure in the footnotes. “The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all.” My first thought as well.” which is really nice but I just would point out as I know Stan agrees that headlines are not written by authors. I know a guy who inserts “bus plunge” in the headline whenever he can.]
**Want to know? Start here, then go here, then look here, then…

The Woooooooooo Scariest Hellbound Beery News Notes Ever Unleashed From The Bowels Of Hell!!!

Ha-ha! I wrote bowels. If you’re not born of Scots, that might not be daily dinner table language so I apologize as I refer you in the alternative to the basso loco of Dante’s Inferno for a clearer sense of the reason for the season. But if you are Canadian of a certain age, however, there is only one true representation of the hellscape of pure evil – SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre from around forty years ago. Wooooohooo. Scary. Lots of beer content on SCTV: Biller Hi-Lite, Moose Beer and twist off beer caps on American beer bottles. Not at all horrible is my new plan for Halloween… which I can’t believe I have not come up with before… a plan to buying candy I like, keep it to myself and eating it as I hand out the crap candy I don’t like so much to the kids. Except I don’t like candy all that much. More extreme measures will not be necessary… unlike apparently in Japan:

In other news, Tokyo’s Shibuya district has banned public drinking, hiring 300 private security guards and urging local stores to stop selling alcohol to ward off revelers this Halloween.

What? That’s some sort of crazy. Are nutty Halloween pub crawls a thing where you live? They seem to be a thing in Buffalo, NY, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Lexington, Kentucky. I like it. Pack the streets. We did a similar thing in the Halifax of my 1980s youth at Halloween – but we called it Mardi Gras for some reason. Tens of thousands of us. Once I went as junk mail (my best costume ever if I am going to be honest with you) with a buddy who went as a breakfast nook – that could actually toast toast. Out there. On the street. Street toast. Class.

Anyway, have you ever seen a lede buried as deep as this one was in GBH? In a neat and tidy piece on a rebranding at the Chicago Brewseum this little bomb is dropped in the middle of paragraph ten:

Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, will leave that post in early November, and the role will no longer exist after her exit.

The Smithsonian program, largely funded and framed in terms of narrative by the Brewers Association’s involvement, started up in 2016. While I was disappointed in the periodic press releases highlighting things like Papazian’s paddle from the great white male hero era of craft, I trust that records and objects from throughout the over 435 years of brewing in the what are now the United States have been protected. Wonder why the Brewers Association gave up on their affiliation? A special thanks to all those beer journalists getting on that story even as I type these very words.

Speaking of endings, Stan discussed the piece in VinePair on the declining influence of US craft beer in Europe, asking if “the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change” which I get but, still, I like the arguments set out in this well thought out piece by Will Hawkes:

California-founded Stone’s failure in Europe is symbolic of a wider issue. Craft beer has made a huge splash across the Atlantic, but American breweries, for the most part, have not prospered as they might have expected — and things don’t appear to be getting better. Extrapolating from Brewers Association (BA) figures published by the organization and in Forbes, the overall craft beer volume exported to Europe declined from 78,994 barrels in 2021 to 63,755 in 2022. The reasons for this are complex, but they get to the heart of Europe’s beer market and the limitations of American craft breweries in a place where their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.

TL;DR? Reasons not so much complex as just numerous… BrewDog being everywhere, other Euro brewers holding branding rights, uncompetative pricing and the botch by Stone diluting the value. Brutal line: “[at] this year’s Berlin Beer Week, Stone beers featured in a tap takeover at a pizzeria.” Perhaps relatedly, things are also not going well for brewers in New Zealand:

“I was talking to a brewer recently and he said: ‘It’s all just beer now.’ The problem with craft is it’s always been ill-defined. Does it mean small scale? Does it mean independent? Does it mean flavoursome?” Without that clear definition, the territory was ripe for major beer companies to step into – and all the big breweries have done exactly that. “You now have Lion with their Mac’s brand, DB with Monteith’s and Asahi with Boundary Road. Those are the three main ones in that area, and what they’re doing is just pumping up the flavour in those brands. They’re making great beer at a more affordable price.”

I know that this is all a bit of a downer – even though this is the “scary” season – but at least things are not as bad as they are in Rioja according to the newsletterist Jason Wilson of Everyday Drinking who includes this summary of recent findings:

I was shocked to read Tim Atkin’s piece about serious problems in Rioja — “Rioja on the Rocks” — a couple of weeks ago. I knew that Rioja had issues, but Atkin (the foremost English-language expert on Rioja) paints a dire picture of a region in crisis. As Atkin reports, the regional governments of La Rioja and the Basque Country plan to detroy 30 million liters of surplus wine to try to balance supply and demand. Another 150 million liters, unwanted by the market, is sitting in cellars. The 2023 harvest has been terrible, and grape prices are at unsustainable lows—in fact, many growers cannot sell their grapes. Reportedly, one major co-operative is on the verge of bankruptcy, two large bodegas are in administration, and Campo Viejo, Rioja’s largest winery, is allegedly up for sale. There are threats by large groups of growers and producers to leave the consortium altogether as they argue over whether to focus on quantity or quality.

Yikes! Just last year things were looking up.

Better news? How about the best big brewery marketing of the moment? Heineken making fun of its own name and using Plastic Bertrand for the soundtrack. That good. And The Brewnut has proven once again how he is the best commentator on what’s actually in the glass, illsustrated by this review of the offerings by Wicklow Wolf:

This year’s twist on the all-local ingredients spec is the inclusion of Kilmacanogue raspberries in a sour ale. Shame they didn’t have a go at spontaneously fermenting it, for extreme local character. Regardless, it’s very nice. The raspberries taste fresher and realer than they do in most raspberry beers, almost bursting on the tongue the way the fruit does. There’s no sugary, syrupy jam here, just a cleanly medium-pitched tartness, again similar to what you’d get from actual raspberries, building to a slightly puckering finish. While it’s only 4.2% ABV, I can’t see this working well as a refreshing summer beer — it’s too intense, with lots going on it. While I definitely liked it, I’m glad I waited until a dull day in October to drink it.

See that: not fawning, explains how it stands out, explains what might be done to improve. I’d buy that beer. Speaking of buying beer, David Nilsen wrote an homage to “Brouwerij Van Steenberge’s Tripel Van De Garre” in Pellicle this week and how it illustrates a few trends:

“In today’s market, imports are struggling against the locavore movement,” says Michael, noting the plethora of local options. “We have 97 breweries in the city limits [of Chicago].” Sara Levin, the package beer buyer for The Barrel House, a beloved beer bar and bottle shop in Dayton, Ohio, has been a professional beer buyer for close to a decade and says the current attitude toward Belgian beer among many American craft devotees had already begun to take shape when she started in the industry in 2014. “Before me it was a little different, but in my time I feel like Belgian beer has always been the old money craft beer,” Sara says. “It’s been the OG beer geeks who really respect the old school styles.”

That right there is one of the sadder things about the craft beer movement’s rush to chase the tale of novelty, the loss of interest in hounouring Belgian styles. Got an opinion on that? You can explain how you feel about such things if you take part in this week’s study on the habits of craft beer and real ale drinkers? Do you have habits? They want to study you. In a similar note, Gary came across a study of real ale drinking in England from 1866… with some very and sadly familiar themes:

Less than one-half of it is drunk in perfection, or at its best condition, the larger percentage becoming more or less flat, hard [tart], and unpalatable, or even sour before it is consumed. From the day of the tapping of the cask, with the gradual entrance of atmospheric air, the liqour undergoes progressive deterioration, first becoming flat and unpalatable, from the loss of its carbonic acid, and then sour from having its spirit converted in acetic acid by the absorption of oxygen. In fact, day by day, as the palate unplesantly detects, it may be said to advance one step further on the road to vinegar.

Yik. Too much OG old school right there. And sorta samesies [h/t] at the blog run by Triskele Heritage, an archaeological consultancy, there was a sweet disassembling of the claim made by an Irish pub as to its status as the world’s oldest tavern:

The problem here is that the fabric of the building is claimed to date to the ninth century, and this is repeated from one website to another, but no archival or archaeological evidence is ever offered as the root source of the information. Instead, the listed entry for Sean’s Bar on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage… notes that the current standing building was constructed c 1725 as a coaching inn which was known as The Three Blackamoors Heads by 1738. The record goes onto confirm that renovations were indeed carried out c 1970 but, instead of finding ““wattle and wicker” dating back to the ninth century”, the walls in question were dated to the seventeenth century. That is a potential exaggeration of at least seven centuries.

Speaking of even more not quite right, perhaps that green bottle of Tsingtao isn’t just skunky:

In the clip which appeared online on Thursday, a worker, dressed in uniform with a helmet on, can be seen climbing over a high wall and into the container before urinating inside it. The location tag of the clip reads “Tsingtao beer No.3 factory”, local news outlet The Paper reported on Friday. Business outlet “National Business Daily” later cited an internal source as saying both the person who took the video and the person appearing in it were not direct employees of the company… Shares in Tsingtao Brewery fell sharply when the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning but were trading broadly flat by the afternoon.

Boo-tastic. Now we have pee in the stuff. In other scary health news, the Time of Londinium shared a story on the problems with a certain sort of stress drinking and had this very interesting fact:

A recent study… found that women with high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are between 1.5 to 2 times as likely to drink moderately or heavily as those who are sedentary. Charlotte considered herself to be healthy. “I’d go running on Saturday at 8am with my friends after drinking two bottles of wine on Friday. Parker tried all the right things to manage stress. “I went to a meditation teacher, I was looking at my diet, I ran a lot” — everything except quit drinking.”

That is interesting. Fact filled and interesting. And scary.

Enough!!! I leave you there for this week. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. I have yet another update on the rankings. TweX is now really starting to drop in the standings. I am deleting follows there more and more in favour of mirroring accounts set up by favourite voices elsewhere. Now, for me Facebook is clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (74) rising up to sit in a tie with Mastodon (899) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,344) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (167) with Threads (41) and Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones just below discussing beer, even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins:

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

The Beery News Notes For The Dog Days Of August

Here I am! Thursday morning once again. And the whole world of beer and brewing… and photos of vegetables. It’s what you demand. I know. I hear you. That’s an Orangello plum tomato from Chiltern right there. Just six seeds to the pack and everyone a winner. Super productive and tasty. Seed influencer opportunities most welcome. Katie Mather is eating her veg, too, as we read about in this week’s feature in Pellicle:

Eating salads, for me, has been a radical act: buying fresh food, taking the time to prepare and pre-prepare meals, encouraging myself to eat and to feel good about eating. Learning how to make bowls of healthy, nourishing vegetables and herbs so delicious that I don’t think twice about devouring them. I’ve been steadily unlearning my aversion to salad dressings, and my unhealthy belief that unless they are low-calorie, salads are worthless.

Exactly. All veg is worthy. Is anything else happening out there, things not in my garden? Other than, you know, famous pubs surprisingly burning to the ground days after being sold off… what’s that you say? Here’s the update:

An update post on the pub’s Facebook page on 27 July said: “The Crooked House has been sold. Unlikely to open its doors again. Marston’s have sold the site to private buyer for alternative use, that is all we know. This is just to update the page so nobody makes any wasted journeys to the site.” A petition to save the pub from redevelopment, launched on 29 July, had attracted more than 3,500 signatures. Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, said there were “a lot of questions” surrounding the fire. “I’m sure the authorities will get to the truth,” he said.

The BBC has visited in happier times. There are rumours that the path of the fire trucks to the site was somehow obstructed leading to suspicions piled upon suspicions: “… blocking off of the lane to the pub seems to indicate a deliberate act.” Police have been on scene. Jings! I say no more.

In almost as disasterous legal news, ye who lives by the sword apparently dies by the sword as whatever is left of California’s former craft darling Stone has lost a tradename court case in Europe to Molson Coors, owners of of the venerable Stones bitter brand – making some extraordinary and entirely unaccepted claims:

Among them was a claim that Molson Coors had not provided “sufficient evidence of genuine use” of the Stones bitter brand – which has been around since 1948 and which was the sponsor of Rugby League and The Superleague in the 1980s and 1990s… that was rejected, along with the claim that “the element ‘Stones’ of the earlier (Molson Coors-owned) trademark will be perceived by a part of the English public as the music band ‘The Rolling Stones’ or the surname ‘Stones’, whereas the trademark applied for Stone Brewing is perceived a reference to the object ‘ stone’.”

Speaking of Molson, to my east… perhaps… Gary has been writing about mid-century brewing marketing from Quebec in a series of posts like this one focusing on 1939-40 advertising including one from Molson with this eye-catching slogan:

The campaign tied into a longstanding advertising theme at Molsons, “The beer your great-grandfather drank.”

Yum… beer flavours from the mid-1800s… Now, on the topic of what your great-grandfather wouldn’t be drinking, The New Yorker has a piece this week on something recently noticed in France:

Recently, in Paris, posters appeared all over town advertising an unfamiliar beverage: vière. “Du jamais bu,” one poster punned—“Never before drunk.” It came in a seven-hundred-and-fifty-millilitre glass bottle, just like a Chablis or a Marsannay. The bottle had a metal cap, the kind you might pry off the top of a Heineken. “It’s not a typo,” Gallia, the drink’s manufacturer explained, on its Web site, of “vière,” adding that “we wanted to switch things up by combining two malts that we love.” Vin (wine) + bière (beer) = vière.

Really? Perhaps you would prefer a citron presse instead? Simple. Perhaps something your great-grandfather would enjoy.

Update: Jessica Mason (who totally wins this week’s best humoured approach to rudeness award) reports that the young folk love cask but they are clueless… dimmer than a 25w lightbulb and just can’t find it in a pub!

Speaking to the drinks business, the ‘Drink Cask Fresh’ campaign coordinator Pete Brown said: “The industry talks it [cask ale] down way more than the drinker does. No one ever says it’s old fashioned or geeky or old men in socks and sandals. We say it to each other. Younger drinkers don’t.” Brown explained: “It’s not just about how tall the font is – the badge at eye level is handy but you can’t have two and a half foot long hand pulls. But even Guinness with its new font is now poured just below eye level. Cask is the only beer poured beneath the bar where you can’t see what’s going on and this greatly adds to the uncertainty around it.”

Not sure I believe that… but beer writers interviewing beer writers is on the rise, however.*** Yet also not sure I believe this either. Paste is having none of the sort of thinking that leads us to kiddie cask campaignning and vière, instead joining the death of craft pile-on and pronounced upon the scene thusly:

Welcome to the spiritual ennui of the beer world, a problem at least partially separate from the myriad economic factors that have made it so daunting to run a successful small brewery in this day and age. On the most basic level, the craft beer landscape has simply felt trapped in stylistic stasis in recent years, a far cry from the previous era of new discovery and growth that was fueled in the 2000s and 2010s by a market in which it was so much easier to turn a profit. This stagnation has no doubt played some role in the migration of craft beer drinkers to other segments of the alcohol world…

Moving on. Have you? Perhaps relatedly, no wonder Ron has joined the masses of people (as discussed just last week) who are questioning why they ever every got at all interested in beer now that it is (i) not cool and (ii) fruit juice with a malt base:

There are so many parallels with the real ale movement. Kicking off with, mostly, very excited young people who want to change the (beer) world. Slow beginnings, followed by intoxicating, seemingly never-ending, growth. Then you look around and you’re all in your forties. And those young people, they just don’t understand what good beer is. They like some new nonsense, that isn’t proper beer. Not like the stuff you love. “Your beer is boring.” Youth says. “We want something new and exciting. Not that old man beer.”

Old man beer? What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what your great-grandfather drank? Speaking of one form of that – and despite all the recent Guinness love – this may be reason enough to boycott the stuff and all Diagio products:

Guinness and Kilkenny back on tap in Moscow despite the war sanctions: Exports of Irish beer and spirits to Russia have been suspended, but are now available in pubs and supermarkets. Vladimir Putin’s local Irish pub in Moscow is boasting of pouring real pints of Guinness and Kilkenny, despite sanctions imposed against the war in Ukraine

But is it? Are these all bootlegged products smuggled infrom third countries? Is Heineken not the worse offender?

Heineken Russia launched an Irish stout last year after Guinness was withdrawn from the country following the invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, the Dutch drinks giant said in that it would join other western brands in withdrawing from Russia following the invasion. However, it maintained a local business that has developed products after it withdrew the Heineken, Miller and Guinness brands. The company makes Miller and Guinness in Russia under third party licences.

Or is it Carlsberg? Questions questions questions. I ask all these questions as, frankly, I am not paying the fee to look behind the paywall.** But they are great questions, you will agree! Speaking of questions being asked, Greene King Abbot Ale came second in the race to be named the Champion Beer of Britain… and people went nutso… as reported in the measured tones of The Sun:

Angry real ale fans are all frothed up amid claims a champion beer contest was rigged. They are questioning how sponsor Greene King’s Abbot Ale won a coveted silver medal at this year’s Great British Beer Festival. The Suffolk brewer’s pub staple was also named the UK’s best premium bitter. Greene King is one of two backers of the festival, along with the JD Wetherspoon pub chain — where Abbot Ale is one of the biggest sellers. Drinkers at London’s Olympia venue were outraged at the vote by the Campaign for Real Ale. Beer blogger Mark Briggs, of Burnley, fumed: “I suspect some unfair influential intervention.

Mr. Briggs appears to write a column for a chain including the Lancashire Telegraph given sa bazillion links pop up for the same story so perhaps it should be beer columnist, beer connoisseur and passionate pub campaigner.* I am of the “get a goldfish!” persuasion in such matters so congrats to this mid-range and accessible brewery for put out a pretty good product. Some beer nerds just need to get a life. And as for doubts as to the definitive authority of a beer judging contest – what the hell do you expect? The ever reliable Ed was even on the scene of the incident:

…the next day was a bit of a struggle it was brightened by the return of twerps whinging on about the GBBF on twitter, this time because Abbot Ale got overall second place in the CBoB. CAMRA and the blind tasting panel are in the pay of Greene King it seems. Which I suppose makes a change from Wetherspoons. To me the twerps are just showing their ignorance. The wonder of cask beer means that at times it can elevate beers to highs you would never have expected. If people spent less time suckling at the devil’s drainpipe and more time drinking beer served as god intended they would realise this.

Martin went out and about looking for some to make up his own mind: ” sadly it’s a bit dull and “milky” (NBSS 2.5)… 2.5 is the level at which you don’t take a beer back, you just decide NEVER to try cask again.”

Things I did not know until this week #1. Sir Walter Raleigh brewed a beer in Virginia in 1585 – and it was made of corn:

…the same in the West Indies is called MAIZE: English men call it Guinea wheat or Turkey wheat, according to the names of the countries from whence the like has been brought. The grain is about the bigness of our ordinary English peas and not much different in form and shape: but of divers colors: some white, some red, some yellow, and some blue. All of them yield a very white and sweet flour: being used according to his kind it makes a very good bread. We made of the same in the country some malt, whereof was brewed as good ale as was to be desired. . .

Not the oldest beer in North America as eight years early that came to what is now Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic care of the 1577 mission of Sir Martin Frobisher, spending a summer for the English navy mining for ores some of which may have ended up in the superior cannon that destroyed the Spanish Armada. Neato. But is this new find the first beer brewed in the hemisphere or even the actual first beer? I know that Cartier brought wine and cider in his hold in the 1530s as was drunk in the 1520s off Newfondland. Still looking for Cabot‘s records from almost 100 years before Raleigh’s trip.

More recently, we learned this week from Boak and Bailey that 1860s London barman Thomas Walker was born Mary Anne Walker – and moved between those identities for a number of years:

Once he had become famous, this became more difficult. Throughout the late 1860s, newspapers delighted in reporting that ‘the female barman’ had been found out again, and taken to court. Eventually, he made some attempts to capitalise on his reluctant fame. In 1870 he went into business with one Solomon Abrahams with the idea of being the celebrity landlord of a pub in Shoreditch. Walker ended up in court again after a dispute over the takings with Solomon. (Lake’s Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser, 15 January 1870.) Eventually, perhaps having run out of options, in the 1870s, Thomas began performing as Mary Walker, “the original Female Barman”, on the music hall stage.

Back to the present, in health matters CNN published a commentary on a study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association indicating an unbalanced increase in mortality from alcohol use:

According to this research, from 2018 to 2020, women saw a 14.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths, compared to a 12.5% increase among men. And the shift was also pronounced among individuals 65 and older, where there was a 6.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths among women, compared to a 5.2% increase among men… There is also the simple fact that Americans have long had a deeply dysfunctional relationship with booze, and as women have moved toward greater equality with men — and lived lives that look more like men’s — women are engaging in more alcohol-related dysfunction.

Really? And what to make of some of the negative news out there when the European Union has declared that beer production has now returned to pre-pandemic levels?

In 2022, EU countries produced almost 34.3 billion (bn) litres of beer containing alcohol and 1.6 bn litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all. Compared with 2021, the production of beer with alcohol in the EU increased by 7%, returning to levels closer to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when production was at 34.7 bn litters. When it comes to beer without alcohol, there was no change compared with 2021. The EU’s total beer (with and without alcohol) production in 2022 was equivalent to almost 80 litres per inhabitant.

Something is selling… but what? Is it just that we want comfort beer in these times of uncertainty? I’ve buy that. If you think about it, isn’t that what identi-craft hazy fruit flavoured IPA are? As much as macro lagers are labeled? Is it what is on the plate next to the comfort beer that really matters, like this rural Australian pub has discovered?

In between pulling beers at the bar and serving fine South Australian wines in the adjoining dining room, Sanne passes me the wildlife-driven menu I’d travelled all this way to see, where I gamely order the specialty of the house – the feral mixed grill – a challenging plate sporting such non-everyday delicacies as emu rissoles, kangaroo fillet, goat chops and camel sausage. Dismissing the momentary reservation I might in fact be devouring a petting zoo – when the dish arrived, it was absolutely delicious – beyond delicious in fact – my favourite, I think, was the goat chop.

Mmm…. feral mixed grill… great-grandpas likely tucked into that once in a while, too. And – that is it! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

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

*…and draftsman of some pretty ripe prose: “It presented itself foggy golden in colour. The aroma being certainly intense, as I expected. Peach, lemon-citrus, passion fruit and some piney notes were all identified. There was a sublime flavour explosion of more juicy, peach, passion fruit and lemon-citrus on the palate. Some floral, subtle spice, pine and soft, caramel malt sweetness were also tasted; in this beautifully balanced, Simcoe and Loral Cryo hopped beer. More tropical fruit, lemon-citrus and a hint of spicy warmth, in the crisp and long, drying finish.” Lordy!
**It’s not like I’m speading money on just anything for your pleasure reading, you know. Look at this, for example. Clearly a botch on the meaning of the meaninglessness of “craft”… yet there it is. Does one pursue the question? No, because it is going to be public knowledge in 73 hours. It always is. Make that… two: “Upon satisfaction of customary closing conditions, Tilray will acquire Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Blue Point Brewing Company, 10 Barrel Brewing Company, Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Company, and HiBall Energy. The transaction includes current employees, breweries and brewpubs associated with these brands. The purchase price will be paid in all cash and the transaction is expected to close in 2023… the acquired brands will elevate Tilray Brands to the 5^th largest craft beer business position in the U.S., up from the 9^th…” Canadian whacky tobakky firm buys tired old dull brands… why? Jeff has more. Note: I do pay for The New Yorker. All the funny cartoons and those fabulous “Tables for Two” columns are worth every penny.
***Sort of the old self-sustaining adver-news-a-torial thingie I suppose… in The Lion King wasn’t this called “The Circle of Life”? Yet… if how Pete… who will say these things? PS: do you like the chronological appoach to footnotes instead of the traditional sequential? I’m experimenting. Send a telex with your thoughts.

The “It’s Canada Day Down Canada Way” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

It’s that special time of year, the middle of the year, when those two guy up there often reappear. It’s Canada Day week. I can’t be sure when they first appeared on this here blog but nine years ago I said it was nine years before that. Back then I was writing political posts on the now merged blog Gen X at 40* and I had a whole schtick in 2005 about a future where the Maritime Provinces of Canada was working towards breaking away to be an independent nation based on graft and hydrofoil ferry services. The identity of these two gents is lost to time or at least just lost to my mind so if it is you say hello! And remember… for all your Canadian beer news read Canadian Beer News!!

Top beer news of the week from the land of canoes and maple syrup? Toronto municipal bureaucracy!

The proposed pilot, which will be considered by the Economic and Community Development Committee on July 6, comes after city council directed staff to create a pilot program last month to allow residents to drink in select public parks this summer. If approved, recommendations will go to city council July 19. The program would run from Aug. 2 until Oct. 9 and allow people aged 19 and older to drink alcohol in 20 city-owned parks in neighbourhoods where local councillors chose to opt in. Toronto councillors had the option to opt out of the program entirely, making parks in their area off-limits when it comes to drinking in public.

You know, we are not so much prudish in Canada as waiting for our grade four teacher to come back into the class to tell us what to do next. Consider the approach of our Commonwealth sibling Australia in this regard on a similar issue:

No worries about spectators getting a beer at the stadium when Australia hosts the 2032 Olympics. “We’ll serve a beer because we can,” Brisbane organizing committee president Andrew Liveris said Wednesday when asked about an alcohol prohibition for ordinary fans at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In Commonwealth HQ, Boak and Bailey published** a magnificient piece of work entitled “Henekey’s Long Bar and the birth of the pub chain” – effectively an addendum to their excellent 2017 book 20th Century Pub. The story neatly begins are the beginning:

The building was probably built in the 17th century, although a plaque on the site claims there was a pub there from 1430. It was originally called The Queen’s Head Tavern or, in later years, The Queen’s Head Coffeehouse (“Frequented by professional gentlemen”). Under Henekey it came to be known as The Gray’s Inn Wine Establishment. After Henekey died in 1838, at the age of 55, the wine importing business carried on under his name. There were, however, no Henekeys involved in its running and his son, George Henekey Jr, actually set up a rival business right across the road.

PRESSES PAUSED!!!: puzzling Pompeii painting portraying possible pizza published!!

Mark LaFaro wrote quite a good but heavy piece for GBH*** this week on the topic that I had hoped I would see in October 2022, a discussion of the craft beer and drinks trade and the dangers of alcoholism:

Our experiences are not uncommon. Examples like this made it clear from the start of my career there was an ongoing pressure to try to “fit in” culturally in the alcohol industry, which meant honing a coveted skill of being able to drink heavily but still function. So, I drank. Hard. I got extraordinarily good at skirting that line between being a party animal and a professional. As my career and reputation grew, so did my alcohol tolerance.

While we are at it, Afro.Beer.Chick shared her thoughts on the progress of DEI initiatives in craft beer this week at exhibits A, B, C, D, E and…

History corner time. Here to the left (my right) is a lovely bit of brewery record, a rough estimate of profit for 1896 for Rose’s Old Brewery at Malton, England. Click and have a look. Over 100% profit on the sale of XX ales at their tied houses. Approaching 150% profit on XXXX ales. Reminds me of when I bought Sam Adams shares back around 2001 to get their annual financial disclosures. Stunning profitability in beer during good times if it is done sensibly.

Now I know what goes into a new sort of Mexican lager to make them extra special:

Mexican entrepreneurs are using crickets to supplement barley in beer… La Grilla beer is being tested out in small batches in Querétaro by a local craft brewery and a company that makes gluten-free and bread products using insects. The creators wanted to prove that insects can become part of our diet even in drinks while maintaining taste…

I saw Chris Dyson’s blog pass by my newsfeed and liked this piece about Ilkley of Wharfedale in Yorkshire especially for the great level of detail:

Not far down was Bar T’at, a modern bar run by Market Town Taverns. Here there was a good range of beers on cask and keg and the welcoming, effusive lady behind the bar immediately approached to ask me what I would like. From the available cask, I went for a pint of Kirkstall Three Swords, which I have found is always a good bellwether pint when in somewhere new. The bar, which you enter via a mini flight of stairs, is split in two, with the bar itself to the right as you go in from the road, with an adjoining room with seating, which is where I went. There is an additional room below, whilst outside is an area with several tables alongside the car park of a shopping centre. The beer was pretty good, a decent NBSS 3, but I had spotted a beer from Bini Brew Co on the board, so once the Three Swords was no more, I ordered a half of their 4.3% hazy pale Under the Manhole Cover from the keg list. Now I was interested because…

There is more. Speaking of more, Stan unpacked an aspect of the ripples passing through the US craft malting trade after Skagit Valley Malt closed its doors (as mentioned hereabouts last week and discussed in detail here, here and here) and shared one maltster’s sensible caution:

What I have come to terms with is that the financing play for expansion has to jive with malt house aspirations, not the other way around. Letting the needs and requirements of the financing terms influence our goals or take undue risks is simply too reckless for me. In short, unwise ego-driven aspirations need to be replaced with modest, incremental growth strategies utilizing myriad funding options all at the same time (private capital, bank, community rounds, government program funding, and organic). It takes forever because in funding an agriculture-based business you immediately go from an ocean of financing options to a hot tub of very hard to find slow-money-minded investment partners. While customer demand is there, trying to service all of it immediately doesn’t necessarily make financial sense.

Speaking on the processes of brewing, Ed of the excellently named Ed’s Beer Spot is/was in Plzeň at the Plzeňský Prazdroj from whence he reported the following:

Next we went to see the filters. They have a kieselguhr candle filter and two 72 module cross flow filters which filter 600hl/hr of high gravity beer down to 0.45 micrometres. The filter modules are changed after 400 CIPs. Pentair is paid a fee for them by hl filtered. The cross flow filters are better quality than the kieselguhr filter but cost more.

Frankly, I think he just makes this stuff up.

Neat bit of writing this week by ATJ on his Substack site ATJbeerpubs:

Beyond, the view looked out onto lush green fields, cows the colour of dark caramel moving ever so slowly as if in a bovine trance, while behind me voices chorused from tables, and a noisy cock blackbird dashed across my nearer vision and fixed itself on a branch in a luxuriantly leafed tree. I wondered if this is a view that Dave ‘Woody’ Woodward saw when he sat he, for obviously this was a favourite spot of his for on the wooden bench his name and 1943-2006 was engraved alongside the words ‘He loved to sit on this bench’.****

And there was a lovely bit of lighter writing by Martin Flynn at Pellicle this week on the more… err… physically active part of pub life, the crawl, which includes this keen observation:

Personally, I believe crawls are best served in winter. That rush of warmth on entering a pub hits even stronger when it replaces the cheek-tingling air of a December evening. There’s also something lovely about meeting friends in the day, then emerging from your latest stop to see dusk has cloaked the rooftops and the streetlights have started their shift. That visible change bolsters the sense of setting aside time for people you care about: since you met up, nobody’s glanced at the clock.

Ah, the romance of being an international beer judge: stuck on a train station platform unable to get to the event, cold boxed pizza for dinner if you do get yourself there!

Finally, not much to say about the mutiny not mutiny in Russia last weekend except that I saw this totally clickable image from early Saturday morning from Rostov which now captures the whole thing for me. A bleary guy in sandles looking like he’s out for his first coffee, standing mere feet away from a soldier, both probably thinking WTF. Note: sandles guy is not actually at the front which is just a handful of kilometers away. Note as well: the one Russian with the gun is trying to establish a fairer more effective system for running the war against Ukraine but he is next to a guy doing very well by the fact that the soldiers at the front are mainly conscripted from the non-Russian parts of the Russian Federation.

One last thing! Thanks to reader jordan b. who liked this personal favourite of mine from last week:

There was something strangely pleasing about the juxtaposition of “bag of cans” and “all-you-can-puke prosecco”.

There. That’s it! I’m all over the place this week. Smoke’s back but just for a day or so they say. Which means I am not – after I type these last few words- going to attempt to throw my back out this Wednesday evening to make a tomato plant happy. I’ve a long weekend coming up for that. Strains by 10:45 am guaranteed. As for beer news, it’s now back to you all as always. Talk amongst yourselves. Write something. Something for me to read. And then write about. And also as per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the newer ones noted in bold:

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

*all preserved at the Wayback Machine for your reading pleasure.
**And they gave up a nice Saturday for you ungrateful folk!!!
***Slightly undermined for the regular weak kneed editorial function of making sure it’s clear that not everyone in website HQ is entirely comfortable with the actual story or an actual quote: “…John Carruthers, director of communications at Revolution, highlights that the company has policies in place to protect the health and safety of employees. “Beer is a social beverage and naturally a lot of fun can come out of that,” he says, “and that’s why one of our highest priorities is making sure our team has fun in a responsible manner…” ” What is the point of adding that?
****Channelling a bit of the old Thomas Grey if you ask me… which you didn’t…
*****And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The “Where Does The First Third Of May Go?” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

OK – gotta be quick about this. The second week of the month sees me busy on Wednesday evenings. I’m on a community radio station board. CJAI… and it’s our funding drive! You there. And you!! Send in money. Moolah. Dollairnoes. And it’s gonna be like that much of the month. (Plus the mow mow mow, plant plant plant…. though the tomatoes started from seed in February now seem to be surviving a few near nippy nights.) Aaaaand work meeting next Wednesday night and then off to another country to discuss a deal. Sounds exotic to those not in a border town. So… gotta be quick. Let’s go.

First, Lew has too much booze. He does. It’s pretty clear that he does. He really does. And that’s just a third of it.

Boak and Bailey discussed one of the interesting trends in brewing – getting away from all that beery taste:

For a start, the cans often look appealing with bright colours, attractive pop art typography, and words like ‘sherbet’ or ‘tropical’ that get your mouth watering. (Don’t tell the Portman Group.) Secondly, they don’t look, smell or taste like beer, just as berry cider doesn’t look, smell or taste like cider, and the original Hooch didn’t look, smell or taste like booze at all. This is a major selling point if you don’t like beer, or the culture that comes with it. Drinking a kiwi, melon and mango session sour this weekend, we marvelled at its similarity to actual mango juice, even down to the viscous texture, achieved with oats.

One commentator pointed out an obvious: “it’s important to remember that these beers *are* manjo juice- it’s absolutely staggering to me quite how much purees juices are added to them post fermentation…” Mango puree juice with beer added. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Mmmm… aseptic…

How was your coronation weekend? Better for Lionel Love than perhaps the UK pub trade.

And Gary added to the discussion of Japanese brewed beer and touched on the role of rice, a topic I discussed a bit over a year ago. I like this tidbit:

Australian lager usually contained sugar by then, an adjunct. Despite the German influence on Kirin’s Hiroshima plant Kirin may have used rice, also an adjunct, by the 1930s. A 1916 issue of The Japan Economic and Financial Monthly, in a summary of Japanese beer brewing, stated rice was used to supplement both imported and domestic malt. The amounts given work out to about one-third for rice, similar to contemporary American practice. In any case, as the soldier’s remarks suggest, a blonde international lager style had emerged, progeny more or less of Central European pilsner.

That 1916 record indicates that a standard brew included a malt bill of 28.5% rice to 71.5% baley malt. Clearly not introduced by the Americans after WW2 but also not yet clear when it was as the article also confirms the desire to replicate German traditions.

There was an excellent piece this week in GBH by Tasha Prados on the forgotten history of the Jewish brewers of Bamburg:

Jews didn’t just work in Bamberg’s beer industry. They were its pioneers, helping to put Bamberg on the brewing map. Jews invented such important aspects of brewery technology as the returnable bottle and pelletized hops, Raupach says, also establishing pasteurization and bringing in international expertise in fields like packaging.”The worldwide reputation of Bavarian beer would never have become reality without the involvement of the Jews,” he says.

I was immediately reminded of Gary’s series on “Prewar, Jewish-Owned Breweries in Central and Eastern Europe” which he published back in the spring of 2021. You will find a handy index under that link. Both these works speak to Prados’ observation, that the Jewish past in the brewing trade often hides in plain sight but is left out of the popular narrative.

The ever wonderful website A London Inheritence told a tale of a pub, a stairway to the river and lots of algae:

It may be that fires were at the start and end of the Anchor and Hope, probably built after the destruction of the 1763 fire, and destroyed in the 1904 fire. After the 1904 fire, the area once occupied by the pub seems to have been included in the space occupied between river and gas works, probably used for the movement of coal from river to gas works. I continue to be fascinated by Thames Stairs. They are some of the oldest features to be found along the river and almost certainly date back many hundreds of years. Most times when I walk down stairs and on to the foreshore, even on a glorious sunny day, they are quiet. It is not often I find someone else on the foreshore.

Speaing of water, Layla Schlack wrote an interesting article on the particular environmental impact of dealcoholized wine, with implicit extrapolations for beer:

To remove that ethanol is less straightforward. In a reverse osmosis process, wine is pressurized against a membrane to separate water and ethanol from concentrated wine. The water is distilled and added back to dilute the wine to a palatable state. While effective at preserving flavor and texture, this method is water-intensive, making it less environmentally friendly… “The number one insight you need to have is that dealcoholization is an energy intensive process,” says Mehmet Gürbüzer, head of sales for Oddbird, a Sweden-based company that makes non-alcoholic still and sparkling wines.

More eco-news with bit more than a little Moon Base Alpha astronauts drinking their own filtered pee about this story out of Japan:

Craft beer made using uneaten rice with mixed grains from a cafeteria for tenants at the Osaka Umeda Twin Towers South has been sold to employees working in the office since mid-March. Hankyu Hanshin Properties Corp., which manages the building in front of JR Osaka Station, launched this initiative as part of its efforts to reduce food waste with entities such as Crust Japan, a startup that strives to do the same… The bottled beer is sold for ¥1,100 at a bar only for people who work in the building.

And even more eco-relatedly-wise:

A water-recycling company is seeking to answer that question, with help from a local brewery. The result is a beer made from wastewater, and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s pretty good. Epic OneWater Brew, from Epic Cleantec and Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company, is made from greywater recycled from showers, laundry and bathroom sinks in a 40-story San Francisco apartment building, where Epic has onsite equipment to capture, treat and reuse water for non-drinking purposes. You won’t find the beer for sale anytime soon.

I suppose this is good to explore the tech… and… as noted above… you know… mango puree. Unrelatedly, there was this good news came to my email this week:

Reaching out to share some exciting news about the newly formed National Black Brewers Association, NB²A. The organization was announced this weekend at the Annual Craft Brewers Conference in Nashville, TN with the goal of promoting the Black brewing community, increasing the number of African American individuals in the brewing industry at all levels of production, and many more. The craft brewing business accounted for nearly $29 billion in beer sales last year, which is nearly one-quarter of the $120 billion beer industry revenue in the U.S. But of the nearly 10,000 craft brewers in the country, only about 1% are Black individuals. NB²A is looking to change that dynamic.

This is great. Here’s some happy photos. I have long argued that the “one ring to rule them all” approach of the centralized unified homogenized Brewers Association was serving certain classes of brewers over others. More productive schisms and separate interests assertions of this sort please.

Speaking of the alt-reality of the Brewers Association, those great folk who brought you such wizardry as “small=big” and “traditional means fruit sauce” has given us another great indoctrination… err… education session winner at the Craft Brewers Conference 2023 as you can see to the right: “Privilege as Your Leadership Superpower”! Now, I would say you would have to live under a rock for the last decade not to realize how offensive just the title of the presentation is… but this is, after all, the BA and the BA says this of itself:

The Brewers Association (BA) is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse craft brewing community for both brewers and beer lovers.

The BA is great! They says so, after all. Just look at all that promotion! The pick all the best locations too! But looking at the l’ship consulto’s website, it appears that the presentation topic is something on the shelf in the can, an easy to replicate dog and pony show* so in this case the BA knew what it was getting. If fact, the topic even appears to be an idea perhaps lifted from elsewhere, as this Australian consulto conference indicates.** Sadly, it was a disaster as Ren Navarro reported: “…it’s the reason I moved my flight up by a day and left the conference early. It was beyond offensive.” Libby Crider provided an image and wrote:

The tone deafness is shattering. You insulted my colleagues, my friends & their life’s work. But pat yourselves on the back for your presenters who “are excited to bring women on board to their brewery” as part of their plan to be more inclusive. Fuck off…

Just hope some “beer writers” (like actual journalists) clear all this up. Let’s wait for that, hmm? Relatedly perhaps, I may have learned this week after last week‘s discussion, debate and revelatory comments on goodness appropriation, that through the craft beer lens cultural appropriation is generally bad but appropriation of crisis may still be something craft can feel good about leveraging to make some sweet sales.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. You got your mango puree. You got your beer made of pee. You got your BA not able to read the room. You want more? As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

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

*Is this phrase broader than in the legal world? Conveys the sense of a regurgitation of slightly moronic simplicites, often with powerpoint, as in: “here is a slide of a dog… and here is a slide of a pony… now… here is a slide of a dog and a pony…” Apparently things got cruder this time. By the way… is Jay daydreaming or bored at this session?
**In fact, the words “leadership” “privilege” and “superpower” are sort of the nose candy for these sorts of consultos these days.
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Last Lingering Beery News Notes For July 2022

What is up?!? Happy end of July! No one ever says that. I saw back to school ads this week. That sucked. Except the kid will be going back to school. And we had some wicked storms come through this week – a tornado even hit north of here – and now it’s almost sweater weather. Nice. Portents of autumn. Already. That sorta sucks. Like the Red Sox collapsing back to .500 after being ten games up. Also sucks. Thank God for my surrogate Expos, the Mets. And they showed good taste this week by having everyone’s favourite milliners’ client, ex cool band roadie and friend of this blog, Garrett Oliver, through out a first pitch! What a great thing to have experienced.

First news this week? Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned the archeological digs at Sedgeford, England where medieval maltings are being uncovered. This week, beer person extraordinaire Nigel Sadler took his interest to the next level and has been participating in the dig, presumably as a volunteer. His Tweet-fest has been fabulous, including these two with their detailed observations:

The kilns are wattle and daub construction across the site. There is only evidence of one steep shown here. Likely this was used almost permanently despite the various kilns burning and being destroyed. I’m getting steep measurements later. Bags of grain were lowered in to soak… A post hole has been discovered under the germination floor sited between Kiln 1 and the steep which raises questions as to whether an earlier kiln structure was here.

Locally, one of the best small breweries in Ontario, Stone City right here in my home town, is up for sale very much as a going proposition.* Oh, to be 25 year younger and a bit wealthier.

Perhaps 25 younger and indubitably a bit wealthier in the ways of the world, The Beer Nut shared a “return to fests” story this week and included a few interesting observations about the format:

Three years after the inaugural event, Fidelity was back in the Round Room of the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago. It’s the only festival of its kind in Ireland, where punters pay up front and have free run of forty producers’ stands, each pouring two beers (with a handful of ciders and meads) per session. In a change to the previous iteration it was split across two days rather than having a daytime and evening session — I guess they get more people going to both that way. One for me was plenty and I rocked up on the Friday.

My experience of these beer buffets is that they are a bit of a disaster, encouraging bulk bevvying akin to the 1870s and 1960s here in Ontario. He also shared a follow up post on the same event and shared the best sort of takeaway anyone could hope for: “I’m sure a lot of effort goes into making sure it looks so effortless.”

Oh, and about that bulk bevvying… I wrote another post this week myself, on Ontario’s mid-1900s attempt to provide a reasonably safe environment for beer drinkers of both genders:

Those of you alive to the information era we live in will know that a year or so ago I reposted a bit of research I did for our book Ontario Beer on licensing in this here province after temperance and the phenomenon of the ladies only license that was introduced in 1934 as part of that. But I had not really considered the other side of the coin, the men’s only license.

I popped into work on Wednesday, too, and got the image up there of goold old Forms 8, 9 and 10 attached to Ont. Reg. 407 as set out in the R.R.O. 1960 which illustrates the gender based licenses. Click and gawk to your heart’s delight. I would love to find a description of a women’s only public house.

Why is the same beer book being published over and over?

Harvest time. Excellent! And another Goldthorpe sighting and at possible brewing scale. So exciting. I had thought that the grain would have migrated east. I had heard it might be around in central Asia but are there patches still in Ireland as there were in the late 1800s as this report at the time mentioned?

The next broad-eared variety is Goldthorpe, which was found in a field of Chevallier so recently as 1889. How it arose, or whether it has any connection with the Continental broad-eared forms, I cannot say. Goldthorpe has a high grain-yielding potentiality, but it is characterized by a long ” neck.” and the ears are extremely liable to become detached from the straw, especially when the crop is allowed to become fully ripe, as it should be, to obtain the highest quality. The unfortunate bearing of this characteristic on the fortune of the variety will be appreciate; when I add that Goldthorpe was, and still is, one of the best quality barleys in existence.

Broad-eared certainly sounds like Battledore.

Someone who used to post a news update every Monday sent me the link to this post about the problems – for some – associated with IPA domination… not to mention hegemony illustrated succinctly thusly:

…think back to recent years, and the kinds of beers you may have sampled from Sierra Nevada in that time. Perhaps you loved the Nooner pilsner, or the seasonal Summerfest lager. Maybe you were a devotee of the annual Oktoberfest lager, even after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from being a yearly collaboration with a German brewery. Maybe your jam was the Otra Vez gose, or Ruthless Rye, or fall seasonal brown ale Tumbler, or Sierraveza Mexican lager. Maybe your first exposure to classic Belgian ales was Sierra’s Ovila series of abbey ales? Not a single one of those brands is referenced anywhere on the Sierra Nevada website today. Zero of them, in any capacity, are implied to still exist.

That’s not good. And it’s boring. Keep good beer boring, IPA. Way to go. Alistair is fighting the good fight against IPA tedium with his tenth(!) annual best beers of Virginia. Recommendations include an alt, a stout, a Rauch Märzen plus a few pils/pilsens.

Perhaps conversely, the Pubmeister wrote about Margate, a favourite of mine 350 years or so ago, and covered the face paced romance of a pub game I had not heard of before – carrom:

It’s like a table top type of pool, played with fingers, our new friend demonstrating a drag that would have had him drummed out of the German Subbuteo Championships before his bare feet could touch the ground. At Xylo we met two guys out celebrating a birthday who joined the carrom enthusiasts, and Vieve and Jess, two impressive young women who reappeared a little later in the Little Swift and joined us in the sort of free-ranging conversation that you only get in pubs.

Top headline news of the week: “Beer-drinking pony who lives in pub is made mayor“! Tweet of the week? Photos and descriptions from Kitsault, a ghost town in British Columbia… but a ghost town not from the 1890s but from the 1980s that has been perfectly maintained:

In Kitsault’s community centre sits the Maple Leaf Pub. Lined with the crests of every province, it could be the pub of any small town in Canada. On the last night of the town’s existence, the remaining residents had a drink and signed a poster.

And finally… a couple of dishonourable mentions to finish up. First, I think this is one of the unkindest stunts I have ever seen – one’ arsehole’s attempt to trigger complaints about a Sam Smith’s pub. Don’t be like this:

As I went over to the bar, I pretended to search my pockets, and said “s***, I haven’t got any cash”. I asked if they took card or if a PayPal payment would be acceptable. The barmaid, who looked like a teenager, wrinkled her brow as she noticed the workspace I had created behind me. She said: “You can’t use those in here. If the owner Humphrey [Smith] were to come in and saw that, he’d tell us to shut and ask everyone to leave.” The barmaid did actually look genuinely worried. It felt as if she was being sincere. I asked her if I had to leave with my items, she said yes, that I had to go. As I was packing up, I decided to take one more selfie, to see what would happen.

Perhaps speaking of which, there is another class of arsehole that is unbearable – the “craft insider”** – the interview of one of whom, in a late sighting, illustrated the condition:

The people who care will be in the liminal space of barely knowing much about craft beer but who are usually very vocal about it.

Nice to know how folk think of others. And the superfluous abuse of “liminal” is also one of those benchmark for this sort of thing. Don’t be like that either.

That’s it for now. Long weekend coming up starting with my fourth Covid-19 shot at 4 pm Friday. Pray to the gods of your choice on my behalf. See you next week when I will complain complain complain about whatever happens. In the meantime, for more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: some crackle this week at about 20 mins.) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Had to be told of this opportunity by the folks to the west end of the lake. Jeesh.
**Sometimes related to the “little did I know that Icelanders are mad for hotdogs” sort of expert… though, to be fair, this is an excellent confessional of a number of sins of omission. The “orange slice in wit” thing is old enough now that it is pretty hitting its own drinking age.

Yet Another Week’s Worth Of Beery News Notes On A Thursday

Here we are. Again. Growing in wisdom. Me, I’ve been reading more books this year and keeping track. Keeping track of a lot of things. Self-improvement? Do more of this cut down on a bit of that. Twenty-seven books so far this year, not one of them about beer. Currently (after reading the highly recommended book The Shipping News,* ultimately a comedy set in a fictional version of small town Newfoundland in which beer – and screech – make appearances) I am on a third by Questlove, this one Creative Quest, an encouraging book about the creative process. I usually avoid self-help books… but then again I avoided books, too… too many law books can do that. You can help decide if it has any positive effect.**

Martin was particularly creative in his photo work, the image right there from his post about a guitar themed pub, Northern Guitars in Leeds. Love the angle.

Just to prove I do occasionally (mostly by accident) take advice, I did take a pub tip from Chris Dyson for my second pre-gig pint in Leeds. Perhaps the pace of change has slowed a little in the east of Leeds, but the Calls District was busy enough, though Northern Guitars was only ticking over. I guess their trade comes from music nights.

For the Jubilee, the ever excellent A London Inheritance posted photos of processions, streets crowded with people and/or bunting from past royal celebrations – including a few pubs covered in banners including The George in the Strand. Some not pleased with last weekend’s events – which is fine. Here is a live action photo of the madcap goings on. We are advised by The Daily Star that the event was pretty boozy as to be expected:

The streets of Soho, in the heart of London, were lined with drinkers and Ripe in East Sussex was just one of hundreds of villages that celebrated with an open-air party. Everywhere you looked, it seemed, someone was enjoying the day. James Heale tweeted: “Horse Guards Parade. Man singing lustily in an England ‘96 shirt, six pack in one hand, fag in another. Union Jack billowing behind him, Tesco crown on his head. The lion roars”. In fact, some people appeared to be enjoying themselves a little too much.

Rooting for an Oaken Joob myself, now. That would be fun. And a bit of a surprise for those most involved. Oh, one last but not least thing – Maureen won the prize so a parcel of goodness shall be sent her way…

Now that the bunting is folded up and put away, reality strikes. First up, why is lager more expensive in London and Northern Ireland compared to other parts of Britain? Less of a puzzle, sanctions against Russia appear to be effectively stopping beer imports:

That has pressured the economy and affected the habits of Russians used to a lavish selection of foreign-made alcohol. “The beer situation is very cheerless,” said Anton, a 36-year-old IT expert who works for a state financial organisation in Moscow. “Not to mention Paulaner, Pilsner Urquell and other tasty stuff, I’m not at all confident if Russian beer is here to stay. There are problems not only with beer imports but even with imports of hops,” he added. Russian breweries depend heavily on imports of raw materials, such as hops.

Another sort of shortage is also at play as the North America is undertaking the rare step of importing malting barley to make up for a poor 2021 crop. Keep an eye on that.

In another sort of dreary news, the iconic Buffalo Bill‘s brewpub of the San Francisco Bay area is shutting – after inflicting the dubious upon us all!

Buffalo Bill’s is best known for putting pumpkin ale on the map in 1986 when Owens was inspired by the beer first enjoyed during colonial America. Owens became obsessed with crafting a modern take on pumpkin ale after learning that even President George Washington once brewed the orange-hued beer during a time when pumpkins often substituted malt. Not long after Buffalo Bill’s resurrected the polarizing beer, other brewpubs around the country began to follow suit and devised their own renditions of pumpkin ale.

Jay wrote about the original owner, Bill Owens, and the place calling it “one of California (and America’s) earliest brewpubs.” Pretty sure I had their Orange Blossom Pale Ale once, found in a NY state beer store over a decade ago. But do you think I can find the review? Who runs this place? What a mess!

Enough! Something fun. The screenshot to the right [Ed.: my left] was grabbed from this short vid of an old pre-decimalization penny auto bot thingie – which still works. Called The Drunkards Dream. More info here, here and here.

And something uplifting. Beth Demmon has published another interesting bio of someone in beer, this time April Dove who balances her interest as a roaming brewer with her professional life as a nurse:

For now, that life means remaining a nurse. It “pays the bills,” April says, although moving into beer full-time remains the dream. The first years of working through COVID-19 left April with nightmares and PTSD. “I did things I hope I never have to do again,” she says. “I saw things I never want to see again.” But she’ll continue to invest in a future in beer, setting goals for herself like pouring one of her beers at a beer festival in the next year. Despite the challenges she’s faced, April hopes that by sharing her experiences with others who have been systemically excluded from craft beer, she’ll be able to introduce her passion to many more.

Ron‘s been on a bit of a roll in terms of writing about his experience of beer, he kissed a squirrel… errr… had a Newkie Broon this week and also featured a trip to Folkestone with Mikey:

It was at least three years since I’d last been. The longest gap, probably, ever. Well, since we started going there. Mikey went twice every year. I’d accompany him on at least one of those trips. I became weirdly fond of the place. Perhaps because of its ordinariness. And the really good chippy. Andrew asked on my return: “What did you do other than hang around in pubs and cafes?” “Nothing, really. Other than a little light shopping.” It genuinely was all breakfasts and beer. And the odd whisky.

The story goes on to end up being a neat and tidy description of two classes of pub, the pricy mini and the cheap maxi. Which makes one wonder if the lounge and the public bar have really just relocated. Boak and Bailey and their wise comment makers wrote about the gradations of such spaces exactly one yoink ago.

And there was an excellent example of Twitter as helpful tool in the form of a description – from the hand behind the Glasgow brewery Epochal – of drinking a 126 year old bottle of McEwan’s Pale Ale which was recovered from The Wallachia which sank in 1895 in the Firth of Clyde:

This one still had a good amount of carbonation. It smelled old but in a peculiarly musky, libraryish way rather than an excess of oxidation. It had a pronounced Brettanomyces character with subtle aromatic acids and miraculously retained a clear hop character, clear enough that I could have a guess that they used Fuggles and Goldings. On the palate it was very dry and still had a powerful, clear bitterness.

Connectedly, Gareth Young of Epocal was also featured in Jeff’s well researched article “Lost, Stock & Barrel: The Forgotten Funk of Old Ales” published by CB&B with this wise observation:

The flavors that marked stock ales of past centuries lacked many of the problems that can trouble mixed-culture brewing: excessive acetic acid, intense funkiness, chemical off-flavors. Instead, using what we would now call “heritage” barleys, techniques like long boils, cleansing tanks, and dry-hopping, brewers are edging back toward the refinement for which old stock ales were renowned.

You know… there is a school of beer history writing, now largely retreating in the rear view mirror fortunately, one based too heavily on supposition and assumption. We heard too often that old brewers made smoky even though there is plenty of evidence against it. Competent brewing starts in the 1800s we are told even though there is plenty of evidence against it. What really needs doing is reading some good history books.

Speaking of being in the good books, The Beer Nut is on the job this week examining if one brand extension has succeeded… and was not impressed:

The aroma is sweet and fruity: lots of very obvious hard caramel, sitting next to softer plum and raisin. The flavour is rather less complex. I was hoping that Landlord + caramel would unlock some new dimension of taste, but I could not perceive anything other than a quite hop forward English bitter — meadow blossoms and earthy minerality — spiked with thick and gloopy treacle. It’s sticky, not wholesome, and the two aspects don’t meld well together. The label promised chocolate and roasted malt, like a proper dark ale, but the flavour doesn’t deliver that.

Question: why a lottery? Why not just promote a program you create, find sponsorship for and provide for free with next level resources identified? We have so much green-washing, #MeToo and #BLM cap waving but never quite cheque sending, Ukrainian net profits only giving corporate PR under the guise of charity. The price of the Sam Adams Pride packaging alone would likely pay for the program’s costs.

Apparently, in a case of un-red-tape, the Province of Saskatchewan’s Auditor has noticed that craft brewing is not getting noticed:

…according to the provincial auditor, the province is struggling to keep pace when it comes to meeting its regulatory oversight targets. The auditor’s latest report notes that of 83 approved craft alcohol product lines, over half (43) did not have valid lab test report certificates. These certificates prove products are untainted and that their alcohol content matches the label. Saskatchewan Provincial Auditor Tara Clemett says the SLGA [Ed.: the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority] is failing to follow up when producers fail to submit a new certificate, which is required every two years. One producer, she noted, had not provided an updated certificate more than nine months after its two-year deadline.

Craft brewers are not concerned. The best way to not be spoken about.

Finally: are we tired of discussing mild yet? No! Are we tied of The Tand winning awards? No!! Are we tired of NA bevvie trade associations? Probably.

There… a middly sort of week I’d say overall. For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: back again this week) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*No, never saw the movie with Mr. Creepy in the main role. The book is excellent even if it can’t really be taken as a documentation of Newfoundland life. [It caused me to buy The Ashley Book of Knots, too, and doubt every half-hitch I make out in the garden.] Yet as in the book Newfoundlanders do, however, shoot off shotguns in their front yards in enthusiastic celebration still in some out ports. My pal, married on Fogo Island, was under attack as they were driven, post vows, about the place, from village to village. BLAM BLAM BLAM!!! Over and over. Were they in a convertible or standing in the back of a pickup? Can’t remember that bit of the story. BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!
**as Martyn helpfully did in last week’s comments.

The Beery News Notes For The Last Of May 2022

This is the time of year when it all becomes a blur. Weekend plans for the next three months need to be scheduled because, before you know it, time times out and things gotta get done before the snow flies. Snow will fly. We know that. So I spent the past long weekend recreating my turf-bound ancestors life circa 1450. Fires and dirt and nothing much around to make a meal out of. Completely unlike the very modern lads of Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Oland brewery shown above circa 1950…or ’60… They are modernists. No safety glasses, no screens or other barriers as the clinky clacky glass flew by. “Lean in to check, Jerry!” the boss shouted. That being said I did, no doubt like the lads above, have a beer or two after my efforts were done.

Now, let’s see what’s gone on the world of brewing. I hope not as much as last week, given the news ran to almost 3000 words. First up, even though he is taking a break from his weekly round up, Stan is still producing his Hop Queries newsletter, now up to Vol. 6, No. 1., which included this passage on a product I have no personal interest in trying whatsoever – no alcohol, no calorie hop tea… or perhaps something even less:

I confess the word gimmick came to mind last month when the company announced the launch of Hoplark 0.0, Really Really Hoppy and invited me to see the plant. They are making the point that their drinks contain no alcohol and no calories. Because I’ve been buying their HopTea at my local grocery store, because hop water seems to have become a thing (there are other non-beer companies producing hop-flavored drinks, Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada have both launched national brands, and many smaller breweries have started to produce their own), and because Hoplark is being made only about a 30-minute drive from home I decided to visit.

Moving to matters of actual beery things, I liked this post at The Regency Town House website, an examination of urban planning circa 1825. It’s a discussion of the planning of Brunswick Street West in Brighton and Hove, England and the street is still there as is at least one of the pubs:

Busby’s scheme for Brunswick Town shows the east side of Brunswick Street West was planned to be individual stables and coach houses for the houses on the west side of Brunswick Square and the south spur of the road for stables at the rear of Brunswick Terrace West. The plan also shows the Star of Brunswick public house with a cottage opposite at the northern end of more stabling at the rear of the garden where Lansdowne Mansions would be built by the 1850s. There were two modest buildings just to the west of the pub which would be used as Green Grocers and Bootmakers.

The core of our fair city was build on Georgian plans and at work I regularly bump into stables and lanes for horses as part of the untangling of property interests. The air would be full of the scent of poo.

Knowing my family’s industrial Scottish reality, this discussion from the BBC is a very light touch on the devastating reality that organized intoxication was for most. Events from the 1890s still echoed into at least the 1960s as family members sought to escape their past and present.

Sticking with the 1800s, Edd Mather posted about brewings from August to December 1849 according to the Alexander Berwick & Co Brewhouse Book 1849 – 1852 which I understand was an Edinburgh outfit. Hefty brews from 6.3% to 8.7%. He then converted the first of the beers listed for home brewing set, in case you are interested in a pint of P3 come sometime in June.

Jubilee update. Coronation beers found in Stroud. Relatedly, someone felt “mildly patriotic” elsewhere.

Evan has a project on the go which all beer writers should be excited about, a survey of success and failures in book publishing. I added two sad tales but really need to balance off with the happier tales with Craig of Albany Ale… as well as Al and Max Theatre! Go make your confessions so that others may not suffer!

Eoghan wrote a strikingly sensible statement: “I will avoid subjecting you to my trite observations on my first experience of America…”

States in India have started rationing beer:

West Bengal recently began rationing beer to retail outlets with demand doubling over summer last year. Most states have witnessed volume recovery and are looking to surpass pre-pandemic levels, said Rishi Pardal, managing director of United Breweries, India’s largest beer maker. “Owing to peak summer demand, few states have also introduced local regulations have also introduced local regulations on movement of goods inter-state which may impact fulfilment of demand in certain markets,” Pardal said. “We are well-prepared to serve the market.”

On to the local election where all is quiet beer wise – odd given Canadian politicians tend to kiss more beer taps than babies during elections. One thing did happen. I was sent a copy of a lobbying document issued by the Ontario Craft Brewers but sent apparently by someone unhappy with the message. Here is the memo and here is a bit of the anonymous message in the covering email:

The attached may or may not come as news to you – but it would appear to be against your interests as contract brewing facilities, as well as anti-competitive and short sighted. The OCB appears to be focused on targeting and scapegoating smaller businesses, many of whom are diverse, incubators of new products, and if successful will eventually graduate to brick and mortar operations, while seemingly ignoring the much larger collective threat to Ontario Craft Beer from larger international brewers or the rapid growth of cocktails and ready to drink alcoholic beverages.

Heavens! Now, to be fair, the OCB memo does state that contract brewers do not contribute to local economies and take up valuable shelf space from those brewers who do. My immediate reaction was thinking of how these production breweries are often not “either or” businesses, how I knew of someone who worked a brewery’s canning machine who was packaging cases for plenty of other small breweries in Ontario, some bricks and mortar as well as some contractors. These smaller breweries and contracting firms would not otherwise would not have access to retail outlets or other expanded sales routes. And they, along with the production brewery itself, might not survive without this sort of work as part of the provincial supply chain. Many OCB members operate like this. Odd. The focus is needed elsewhere.

The gall is what gets you, as Afro.Beer.Chick flagged. So if someone wants to reference Juneteenth on a the label of some hazy IPA gak with fruit flavours added, does Mr. Driven Snow now get a chunk of change?

Bad behaviour claims against BrewDog continue – and I wonder if perhaps developing in a way that avoids the risk of examining similar acts closer to home. Are they the worst actor? Certainly not the sole bad actor. But the loss of reputation spreads. The situation is now tense. Evidence is undeniable. Individuals rightly utterly violated and repulsed. Me, I don’t drink the stuff myself. Good to see that the actual authorities with adjudicative powers are now becoming involved. Things need sorting.

And finally… Ron posted an excellent set of observations on another thing I avoid – beer fests – and how many are serving such small measures that they deserfve to be called “Thimble Fests“:

I used to go to many more. The main Belgian one, whatever that’s called now. The Borefts Festival. Others in Stockholm and Copenhagen. But that’s all a few years back. Now, I just can’t be bothered with most festivals. Why is that? Well, I’ve already told you, really. Lack of seating, long queues for beer. But the biggest reason of all is small measures. If you’re lucky, you might get a 15 cl serving. But it might well be just 10 cl or even a piddling 5 cl. I’ve got two glasses sometimes to take the edge off my frustration. Or taken along my own Imperial pint glass. A combination of small measures and long queues wring all the pleasure out of a festival for me. Getting in line for your next beer as soon as you’ve been served your last makes for a queueing festival rather than a beer festival.

Me, I don’t go as I don’t like being shedded with hundreds of drunk strangers. But I like that – “a queuing festival” pretty much sums that up.

There. Half the length and no doubt twice the value. For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: but not this week) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. Things come. Things go.

With The End Of February Comes These Beery New Notes

That was a bit much last week. All that talk of rice and here’s me trying to be more keto. I’ll try to be more sensible this week. It was, after all, a long weekend last weekend which kept me from reading all that much about beer. Read a book about third-wave ska instead. Now I’m halfway through another, Exploration Fawcett, by British military surveyor Percy Fawcett pre-WWI (aka the quasi-nutso as illustrated) in the jungles of South America. What a horrendous place. Murderous concentration camp slave-based rubber plantations along the Bolivian Brazilian border, a recent war zone, set in the murderous Amazonian jungle populated by murderous Indigenous people defending themselves against murderous imperialist Euro-losers at the end of the world. There are beer references like this one, when an actual ocean-going steamer appears entirely unexpectedly deep up a tributary:

As we glided past we saw the name Antonina in faded letters on her bow. A steward came out on the deck under the bridge, emptied a bucket of slops overboard, to watch us and straightened, his half-naked figure a small man with a mop of tow-coloured hair and narrow pinched shoulders. No one else appeared, and there was no activity ashore, but it was the hour when Europeans would be lunching. Stained canvas wind-catchers were stretched over the high boiler-room ventilators and from open scuttles air scoops protruded. On her counter appeared her name again, Antonina Hamburg, and a blade of her single screw showed beneath. “Hey!” ejaculated Dan. “What about going aboard her and having a beer? I bet they have real German beer fresh from the cask!” It was too late. Already the current had carried us past, and to drive back alongside would be difficult. We should have thought of that before instead of standing like fools and looking at her “Wonder what she’s doing here?” murmured Chalmers. “Rubber,” Dan said. “She’s come to load rubber.*

Cheery.** Like something you might read in Pellicle. Just like it. Fawcett passed thought Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia at one point. It now has a brewpub. Speaking all of which – and nothing really like it except it’s another form of exploration – Stephanie Shuttleworth revisits her old home town:

Ducking down so her dad, who played the piano for the crowd inside, wouldn’t spot her. If he did, someone would be sent to collar her and bring her in, to sing for the room. Now, my grandma could sink a rum and pep (that’s dark rum and peppermint cordial mixed together with a few ice cubes, if they have any) with the best of them. But sing, she could not. I can no longer sit down for a meal with my sadly missed grandma in that pub. Just as much as I couldn’t literally see her running under the giant sandstone window. I am thankful, however, that I can still look at the building (now a shop), step inside, and remember.

Meanwhile, Alistair wrote this week about something that I had no idea was a thing – communal brewing in Bohemia:

The word that leapt from the page as I was reading something completely unrelated in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer was “braucommune”, which translates as “brewing commune”. Naturally, given Czechia’s proximity to Zoigl country over the border in the Oberpfalz, I wondered if what I was seeing here was the remnants of a Zoiglesque communal brewing setup in Bohemia? Digging further, I discovered that in 1895 there were just 4 “braucommune” breweries operating in Bohemia that produced more than 10,000hl…***

Speaking about none of which in no way no how… don’t you love it when real medial people bait craft beer weirdos – chef’s kiss headline! It’s a BA Bart PR puff piece but still…

New research tool opportunity! Hunting through British Library Sounds audio archive reference to pub, beer, ale, “headbutting…” “all those wasted years…”!!

Real news time:

“This month posters will be displayed in all of our members pubs informing people to how seriously we take this matter. It has been agreed between all members that an automatic one-month ban will be issued to anyone caught urinating in public. “North Wales Police are backing Ruthin & District Pub Watch’s campaign and will be given permission to issue the one-month ban to any offender caught at the incident as well as any other penalties NWP have in their power to issue.” Mr Vaughan added: “This subject might generate a snigger from some and possible outrage from others who feel it is too much, but we agree that behaviour like this is just Taking The Pi**(****) when all of our establishments have toilet facilities, there is no excuse.

Unrelated – a new beer blog: Beer Nerdery. Speaking of British beer blogs, RARM went down to Liverpool to relive a moment and caught one, too:

The last time I had visited Liverpool was back in 2017 when a group of us stopped in the city for an hour or two on our way to see Halifax Town get hammered at Tranmere Rovers across the Mersey in Birkenhead. We had called in a few pubs, one of them being the Crown, whose gloriously-decorated exterior beckons you as you emerge from Lime Street Station.

I mention this mainly to share a thought. One of the problems with beer and pub and brewery porn is it is decontextualized. See that image of the Crown? Ugly street scape. I like that. An actual view… except not to scale… it’s just a photo.

Q: if the Royals are just normal folk why have so many Royals?

In their downtime in Norfolk the family are known to have enjoyed family pub lunches (a clandestine photograph showed them eating burgers in a pub beer garden) and trips to build sandcastles on Holkham beach.

And in the second of a two part series, Jordan shared more information on Toronto’s 1904 brewery strike presented with a key dates sticker tape news headline approach:

At issue here is the demand of a union wage across all breweries in the city for approximately 700 brewery workers. We have, for background, figures related from the Brewers Association to the Toronto Star on May 6th. At this point, 105 workers for Reinhardt and O’Keefe (including drivers, helpers, stablement, labourers, bottlers, wash-house, cellar, and kettle men and coolers) have walked out after finally receiving confirmation from the head office in Cincinnati.

Finally, yet another reasons to be disgusted with fearful wee Mr. Putin:

Analysts have warned that since Ukraine, which is among the top five global producers of barley, is in the middle of a major geopolitical crisis, international supplies of raw materials would inevitably be affected. The period between March and July accounts for 40-45% of annual beer sales, and barley is the mainstay ingredient used in beer. According to reports, even for brewers who source barley locally, prices could go up with rise in global prices and supply disruptions.

There. Done. Once again… nice. Really good job on my part. Really. And no rice talk. None. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which I hope is revived soon…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Long quotations… that’s the trick this week. None of that guff about rice… or research. Padding.
**I’m still passing on a trip to Ribeirãozinho during this lifetime. Note: Edwardian Brazilian trade journals have a lot in common with craft beer trade journalists. No talk of the glaringly obvious downsides.
***That’s a lot of Zs.
***Note: two non-footnoting indicating asterisks, can be confusing.