Medieval – Page 2 – A Good Beer Blog

The First Thursday Beery News Notes For Rocktober 2022!

Me? I love Rocktober. No, not that beer. That’s just for show. A middling beer from the middle of the Baltic. I am talking about the month. Yes, that’s where we are all now. Rocktober. When recreations start to shift indoors. Fun. And if I call it that I will forget for a moment it’s also when all the leaves die and the ice first forms. Better to rock. Speaking of death… wasn’t it great when Facebook died this week – even if only for a few hours? Some may live in an upside-down world but, really, Facebook is a cesspool of anti-democratic and anti-science lies lies lies… and Twitter is just fun even if chippy… but blogs are sweet and charming. Web 2.0 > Web 3.0. So welcome aboard for another week. What’s going on?

First up, this looks like an interesting hour on “Under-Attenuated: Women, Beer History Studies and Representation” at the Chicago Brewseum’s Beer Culture Summit on the first weekend of November with a few familiar faces:

… while beer history studies is a newer field recognized in the academic landscape, it’s no surprise that it too is a male dominated area of study. Archaeologist and historian Dr. Christina Wade, archivist Tiah Edmunson-Morton, and organizer, attorney, author and documentarian Atinuke “Tinu” Akintola Diver discuss the unique experiences (both successes and roadblocks) they have seen throughout their careers researching, collecting and documenting beer and brewing history in a man’s world. This session is moderated and hosted by co-founder of the Albany Ale Project, Craig Gravina.

Nice to be referenced: “co-“! There are a whack of other topics, too, with loads of interesting speakers with loads of different points of view. No wonder the “Males on Ales Through the Ages” conference scaled way back.

Next, the Mudge himself wrote of the state of pubs and cask ale in the UK this week:

Heavy-handed Covid safety protocols largely seem to have gone by the board, although a few Perspex screens at bars and pointless one-way systems remain. I have walked out of one pub where it was clear that the full works of safety theatre were being applied, and declined to go in another because of a sign outside saying the same, but those were isolated examples. In general, rural and semi-rural pubs seem keener to retain restrictions than urban ones, maybe because they feel they have a captive market who can’t take their trade elsewhere so easily.

Note: The editorial board of A Good Beer Blog lean heavily towards the screen and mask ethos but we are a full service blog of many opinions. And we just don’t want to die of Covid-19 personally. Mask up and take your needles.

“Ancestral beer“? It’s the new thing that turns out isn’t actually a thing at all:

“If you want to sell something on a large scale, you’ve got to have a standard flavor that’s replicable from one bottle to the next,” Juárez said. “Whereas, with a wild beer, no two are ever the same.” Her quest: to bring the old world into modern times. “We’ve brought flavors that were being left behind back to life,” she said. Ancestral beer is determined by the type of yeast used as the main ingredient…

Apparently the proponents of ancestral beer have slept through the micro and home brewing movements entirely. The phrase “it’s not off, it’s Belgian style!” ring any bells?

Josh Noel has been doing a great job in the Chicago Tribune covering the union busting ways at Goose Island:

Several people active in the union drive say they don’t doubt the company was under financial strain at the time. But they also believe Goose Island used the layoffs to target leading union activists and to finish off their efforts. According to current and former employees, the idea of unionizing Goose Island has withered away.

Then Josh linked to the Guys Drinking Beer social media feed where a brewery tour manager seemed to be facilitating a creep making pervy moves on a fellow member of staff. He “told the employee to let said harasser kiss her… apparently gave the harasser her cell phone number.” Now that is an actual grade A asshole.* Remember that next time some beer writing bootlicking hack drools over the keyboard next time there is a Bourbon County Stout junket needing a press release parroting.

Suddenly, I don’t feel well. Why oh why? Oh… it’s this.

Of higher note, I came across a fascinating paper this week, “Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340)” which discusses the new first reference to the Americas in southern European literature. Here’s the only bit of the sort I was really after:

Further northwards there is the Ocean, a sea with many islands where a great quantity of peregrine falcons and gyrfalcons live. These islands are located so far north that the Polar Star remains behind you, toward the south. Sailors who frequent the seas of Denmark and Norway say that northwards, beyond Norway, there is Iceland; further ahead there is an island named Grolandia, where the Polar Star remains behind you, toward the south. The governor of this island is a bishop. In this land, there is neither wheat nor wine nor fruit; people live on milk, meat, and fish.

See that – wine. Or actually no wine. Now, it’s written by an Italian for an Italian crowd but what I am looking for is some contemporary reference to ale drinking in the Viking North American experience. Not in this paper…

What is this poll even about? Best comment was the one to the right…

Liam wrote about Coopers, Ireland’s first beer brand:

The most important point perhaps is that I think that Cooper may have been the first Irish – or at least Irish brewed – beer to be marketed with a brand, jingle (I know I am taking liberties here…) and editorial advert? I am not aware of any others that existed this early anywhere else on these islands in fact, although I have not overly researched it to be fair. I would guess that it was certainly the first trademarked Irish-brewed beer …

First brand? Well, consumer product branding as we know it only came about in around 1800. When adjectives like “cream” started getting added to descriptors. When the breweries rather than retailers posted most of the notices in the papers. (Somewhere I had a paper that explained it all… where is that…)

Finally, Bloomberg is reporting** that ABInBevBigCo is considering getting its Teuronic off:

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV Chief Executive Officer Michel Doukeris is considering a sale of some German beer brands it has owned for decades as the world’s largest brewer aims to prune less profitable businesses and trim debt. The brewer is exploring the sale of labels such as Franziskaner Weissbier, Hasseroeder and Spaten, and the portfolio could fetch about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Interesting (if really badly edited) stat in that article: “Although Germany brews about a quarter of all beers originating from the continent, it exports less of the drink than both the Netherlands and Belgium…” Is that “either” or “combined”? Who knows?!? Thanks Mr. Editor.

Done. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again 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. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Unlike one former beer writer when apparently drunk. Note also, however, that the Beer Culture Summit’s final event is at the Goose Island Brewpub. Watch out!
**Or as GBH would say after reading the same article: “GBH sources have stated that Anheuser-Busch InBev NV Chief Executive Officer Michel Doukeris is considering a sale of some German beer brands…” Again, no one responded to GBH’s inquiries.

The Very Last Beery News Notes For A Thursday In May 2021

One of the worrying things about these weekly news note posts is how rapidly one follows another. I wonder if they speed the pace of life. It’s not unlike shaving every morning. I look in the mirror and say “not you again!” But it is never quite again. Time the revelator.* Or maybe more time the avenger?** Well, no time to wallow in that puddle as there’s news to note. Beer has to display the entire breadth of human experience, from the highs to the ruts. Starting off, Pellicle posted an excellent story this week about the dire situation facing independent bottle shops in the UK.

Otters Tears first opened in 2015, bravely attempting to turn the fortunes of an already struggling high street. But, as with Beer Ritz in Leeds, in 2020 it was forced to close its doors, shifting sales entirely online. The turning point for Hardy was a particularly busy match day at local football club Port Vale. It left Phil pinned behind the counter at the rear of the store, with the seating area in the cellar largely ignored by the “vertical drinkers” standing in the shop’s entrance. “I stopped doing drink-in from that point on,” Phil says. “We didn’t lose any money by doing it, but it was far less stressful.”

Not quite similarly, this image passed by this week, of a calm dog in the corner of an Irish pub. I am less interested in the dog than the corner, honestly, and more into the decades old patina of shoulders and sweat, greasy old wool coat and even possibly Brylcreem that makes up that lovely look. Less lovely, Britain’s roughest pub. Jings.

Interesting update on a stats discussion held in June 2020 about how little effect Covid-19 had on US alcohol consumption – except in relation to who was benefitting from the sales:

About a year ago, I was saying that COVID-19 wouldn’t lead to a large increase in alcohol consumption per capita (see below), and then it didn’t. It *did*, however, cause a large redistribution of income from small to large businesses…

Relatedly, US stores are ditching craft beer from their shelves to stock the more profitable seltzer crap. I bought a box on the insistence on my kid the other day. I took a teaspoon of four flavours. All certified crap. But craft beer is cheuggy so it has to go. Sad. Conversely, minor league baseball has better options that they are exercising – like in Syracuse where they have teamed up with a craft beer bar:

…confidence is built around what he calls the stadium’s beer “guru,” Kara Johnston. He sees her as a future Hall of Famer in beer procurement. She’s the person responsible for stocking up and often serving at The Hops Spot, the dedicated craft beer emporium on the first base side of the stadium concourse. It’s affiliated with the downtown Syracuse beer, burger and poutine bar of the same name and has up to 100 different beers on rotation.

Sadder was the lone beer can mascot spotted at an NHL playoff game this week. The only person allowed to watch the game and they had to dress up in a beer can suit. Did they dance? Who did they dance for? Probably wished he was in Syracuse. Bud Light was light of buds that night…

Hopwise, Stan wrote an interesting article published in CB&B (which really should have been in last week’s edition) about the potential end of some hop varieties:

Craig Mycoskie, Round Trip’s founder-brewer, does not yet have any hop contracts, but he isn’t worried that Hop Head Farms (Hickory Corners, Michigan) will be out of Tettnanger or Select when he needs more. Like lagers themselves, we take them for granted—it’s as if nature herself chose the classic varieties and will always provide them… However, that doesn’t mean they’re immune to climate change and environmental regulations. At times, hops with old-fashioned characteristics are exactly what you need to make old-fashioned lagers and other classic styles. If growing those vintage varieties should somehow cease to be practical—and there are some indications that may be the reality—then breeding new ones with old-fashioned character is going to be necessary.

H/T to @Glidub for the link to an interesting guide as to how to avoid Māori cultural appropriation which was published in 2019 but serves as an example of many sorts of guide craft beer should be adopting.

In addition to the sad spectacle of the ethical genuflect in the craft beer trade, actual stories about horrible situations in craft brewing continue to come out and one particular sort of shocking I had not expected was that of the co-owner shoved out of management.

Questioning inappropriate behavior was seen as a buzzkill. Establishing paid maternity leave was not a priority. When I welcomed my second child in 2014, I returned to work after six (unpaid weeks), strapping my little girl to my chest to carry on. As a mom of two young children, when I expressed the need for a better work/life balance, it was seen as a lack of commitment to the business. Advocating for fair compensation was an annoyance. Expressing the need for help in my ever-expanding job responsibilities was a weakness. “You’re not acting like an owner,” is what I was told over and over and over.

Relatedly, Beth Demmon wrote a piece In GBH on the resistance being expressed by trade associations to the suggestion that they take on the important job of ensuring their members are in good standing, including being in line with the normal sorts of codes of conduct that we see in many sectors. I was thrown off by this following unclear statement that suggested taking on this oversight to protect the public was not part of the toolbox available to non-profit corporations like these:

It’s very, very unlikely many organizations have the ability, or desire, to address most instances of harmful or rule-flouting behavior by their members.

It’s actually quite likely they have the ability, subject to the general local corporate law under which they operate. They just need to amend their by-laws and pass the amendment at a general meeting. Easy peasy. It’s really only the desire they lack.*** Because presumably it would rock the boat… or… craft… Remember, like the myths we see about the actual authority of those NDAs brewing staff are asked to sign, craft loves the fibs. Forget that stuff! It is important to hold craft beer brewers and organizations to account for not taking on the responsibility to ensure their membership acts appropriately.

Elsewhere, big asparagus is giving out medical advice. In other health news, all alcohol kills your brain cells. Contrast this mere science with this but of education news: an Anglo Saxon school primer from the 1000s with the a discussion with a teacher that affirms from the student: “Ale if I have it…” Which reminds me a bit of this early tale of craft in Ontario:

The Deli was a secret room at Upper Canada Brewing Company made from empty glass skids used for surreptitious day drinking. One day we realized every single production team member was in there and we could hear our brewmaster vainly searching for employees… We waited a bit and slipped out one by one so as not to raise any more suspicions. Thank goodness for unions.

Finally, Boak and Bailey sent out their newsletter again this month which includes a lifting of the corporate veil:

Even though the blog has been a bit quiet lately – we’ve both been busy to the point of burnout at work – somehow our Saturday morning news roundups keep happening. They’ve become a habit, really, with both of us bookmarking things throughout the week and then one of us (usually Ray, at the moment) doing the write up at dawn on Saturday morning with a big mug of tea or coffee at hand. The other (usually Jess) reviews, edits and editorialises, if required – particularly important when we’re trying to summarise complex issues such as sexism in beer or the politics of lockdown.

So that’s how it works! Please don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, 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. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plus a newcomer located by B+B: The Moon Under Water.

*Listen.
**Listen. Though to be fair I thought this one was called “Tiny Avenger” for a long time.
***Last evening in about an hour’s reviewing of the internets, it became clear that it was quite likely it was that brewing related organizations did have the ability to kick out pervy members.

These Are The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of Melting

The week of melting is a great week. It occurs usually two weeks before the week of everything smells like dog poop. The week in between is called the week of maybe it won’t happen this year. One lad was thinking how nice it would be if something didn’t happen, as illustrated to the right. Max shared the image and voted it top entry for the Hogmanay Xmas Yuletide Kwanza Photo Contest 2021. It is a study of humankind’s folly… or true role of beer… or something… whatever it is we are advised by someone presented that balance was in fact recovered.

Much doings to report upon this week. First, Stan wrote about something I have never had the slightest interest in – beer recommend / review / rate apps. If you are spending any time at all on them, you need a goldfish in your life. Something real. But Stan persists, as they say. And he delved a bit into the phenomenon to point out one app which actually had detail:

Next Glass 1.0, circa 2015, was something different. It was one of several drink recommendation apps that came and went about that time. Some got tagged as the “Pandora for beer.” For First Glass, that made sense because it took a scientific approach similar to Pandora when collecting data… [F]eature-based systems begin by measuring specific attributes of songs (or beers). Pandora created the Music Genome Project and employs musicians to catalog key elements of every song in its database. Next Glass mapped the chemical makeup of individual beers, forgoing any effort to quantify a beer based on its descriptive characteristics.

All of which means there are graphs. Graphical displays of information. Why did it fail? Beer failed it: “…the company was never going to be able to collect mass spec information on the thousands of new beers released every week…” A.K.A. T.M.I.

Victim of Maths has tweeted an interest set of… graphs! Graphs on the effect of the pandemic on alcohol consumption patters in different nations. The form of graph itself is very helpful. But look how consumption goes up in the US while dropping in terms of the tavern trade. Who benefitted from that? White Claw? Local actual craft brewers delivering to home? Interesting stuff.

Much talk on alewives and witches again which I think is up there with the role of Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi, in medieval Norse brewing. There seems to be a drive to switch one story of exclusivity with another an then make it universal rather than particular. Dr. Christina Wade made this very good point in relation to this topics and one which is useful in any other historical studies which I present as a merged mega-tweet:

That is a really important avenue of research. And, in which case, we must get hyper-specific. Brewing in the Middle Ages could be a high-status, non-liminal, position for women. If we take the example of late medieval and early modern England, which is what these sorts of articles seem to be meaning, we can see that women who brewed were vilified. And men absolutely did accuse and lie about things to ruin women’s brewing businesses. We have primary sources for that in England. But as to whether this took the form of witch accusations the data is lacking. This may be because the populations who brewed and who were accused of witchcraft overlap. That is to say, single/widowed/poor women. That said, married women also brewed with great regularity. So it’s largely speculative.

This raises an interesting question. Why and should we participate in the continuation of myth telling? Even as myth correction. On the one hand it is organic and bolsters identity often in a healthy way. I myself am quite pleased to be generically connected to the faerie folk and advise all of you to watch your step accordingly. This, however, is quite distinct from the role I play from time to time of amateur historian – even when I get paid for that part of my research and writing. Nothing is as shockingly and clarifyingly accurate as a primary source. You can’t get around that sort of thing. You must face it. So how does one do both in an area of our collective culture as laden with fib and story telling as beer and brewing?

Never a happy event. A founder leaves a brewery.

Wee Beefy, one who has written of the horrors of the experimental craft alcopops that are too prevalent these days, has discovered a new love in an very unexpected form:

Last year or before, Maltgarden Browari came along. I had already tried a few of their excellent stouts, along with stumbling through opening their ridiculous wax capped can, and then bought a can of Tzatziki pastry sour with Pink Guava, Mango and cucumber… I drank the whole can in about ten minutes. It was ludicrously easy drinking – but also featured a distinctive but perhaps created tzatziki flavour along with the excellence of the pastry elements. It tasted very strongly of the cucumber and as I admit, the tzatziki I imagined but impressively the other flavours blended in so well together! I used it as a palate cleanser…

Me, I am physically revolted by that description but celebrate the freedom.

One weighs carefully whether one mentions BrewDog anymore given they are (i) now an international brewery with few links to micro or craft and (ii) they are adherents to a form of serial stupid that is beyond all reckoning – but… but… this one is up there with Sam Adam’s 2002 “Sex for Sam” promotion that led to charges, humiliation and (in a less than round about way than you might imagine) the Brewers Association as we know it. Trade Unionist Kmflett neatly summarized the seemingly sordid scene:

A post noted that Brewdog Indianapolis had sacked female and LBTQ employees on International Women’s Day apparently looking for a change in culture at the bar, possibly to a white male workforce. The CEO of Brewdog USA tweeted that of course Brewdog don’t discriminate while the London based head of Brewdog bars globally tweeted that he was investigating. On the one hand he was aware of an issue on the Indianapolis bar. On the other hand people are not sacked on the basis of gender or sexuality and if anyone had done that they’d be off too.

Lordy. There’s the statement from those let go. To date, no response from Mr. Jim Watt via Twitter except to point out how carbon neutral they are trying to be in addition, apparently, to be anti-discrimination neutral. It’s sad. I just checked my emails and there I was care of Stonch giving James himself advice in exchanges for photo contest prizes. It was all about how to run a blog about his wee brewery… and there it is now… crushing hopes and dreams.

Finally, you will note every week I list below any number of podcasts related to good beer. This week I tweeted a question which got mucho response:

Honestly, how much time a week do you have for listening to beer podcasts? 27 minutes? Three and a half hours? I think of this when I encounter the 68th new podcast this year that’s over an hour long, not much edited and 7-11% filled with umms, errs and insider giggling.

I mean it quite seriously as a question about the medium. How many could you keep up with. I myself uses the FF technique in which I take a 35 minute podcast and reduce it to 5 by clicking and hunting for the actual bit of most interest to me. For all the “beer editors” out there who seem to be getting chump change for taking away the new writers voice in exchange for the dull tried and true, it would be good if there was a similar thing for podcasts, a central hub of some sort, a single global beer podcast editorial committee who could take these rambles and turn them into an actual magazine of the air of some sort. Some folk who could say “no” and who could also say “yes, this!” Listeners await.

Soon it will be spring. That makes for happy. For more happy, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too.

The First Thursday Beery News Notes For A Brand Spanking New 2021

Well, here we go. One year gone and another year starts full of hope and promise… oh, and an insurrection in the US Capital. Nice. This is the year of the 18th anniversary of my beer blogging, too. That’s 31.56% of my life. What an utter waste. Not at all like the art of Joel Goodman, photographer of the image above as well as the partner photo of the same spot in Manchester one year before taken early on New Year’s Day 2020, a portion of which shows up here as a random header image. Lovely stuff and a great expression of where we are today.

Speaking of reality today… do you know about storm chips and the associated beer weather severity standard? Note I wrote “beer” and not “beers” as in much of Canada the plural of beer is beer. “Beers” means a selection of brands of beer. Twelve Molson Golden are twelve beer. I have my doubts about the particular application as there is no way Kings Co., PEI is in the 24 beer zone but Truro, NS is only at 12 beer. I have a pal from the little islands to the lower left who talked of 1970-80s storm stayed parties held in houses with bordered up windows lasting two or three days until the blizzard had gone past. As posted on the FB page for Storm Level Brewing.

First… err… second, I failed you all before Christmas by not mentioning Martyn’s post on the roots of Jamaica’s love of strong sweet porter:

Draught porter was sold from draught porter shops, in existence in Kingston, Jamaica from at least the Edwardian era; from casks in refreshment parlors that also sold fried fish and bread; and also by travelling salesmen, who would call out “draaf porter!” as they travelled on foot around rural villages in the Jamaican interior, carrying a large tin container with a spout, and cans in quart, pint, half-pint and gill (quarter-pint, pronounced “jill”) sizes, for serving. Jamaica also had itinerant ice-cream salesmen, who would sell a blend of “frisco”—ice-cream and “snow ball”, shaved ice flavored with fruit syrup, mixed together—and “a measure of draught porter for the older folks.”

I wonder if Sam Adams authorized either this guy’s keg delivery technique or his filming rights? The opportunities for injury are a bit boggling. Speaking of which, this non-beer entrepreneurial advice thread had one nugget I quite likes, somewhat related to the Great White Male Hero problem with the good beer narrative:

The biographies of tech unicorn founders won’t help you. Survivorship bias is terrible. For every one that succeeded thousands more failed.

After asking on Twitter if he should, Mark Solomon joined the beer blogging world with his new site Headed Up North on which he is going to share an Indigenous perspective:

There is a tradition in many Indigenous communities, and I have since learned in many other cultures, on winter solstice. Many communities light a fire at sunset and keep the light going all night. While winter solstice is known as the shortest day of the year, the one with the least amount of daylight, there is a refrain that it only gets brighter from here. Those fires are not to strike back at the darkness but to honour it and sit within it. In the Anishinaabe creation story there are songs and teachings about the nothingness at the beginning then came darkness. Darkness is not nothing. We learn a lot about ourselves and others in the darkness.

In our regular pandemic trade news corner this week, cellar sellers are most note worthy. Makes sense. We’ve seen it from place to place including now at Falling Rock Tap House in Denver:

“We weren’t going to make it if we just kept on doing what we were doing,” Black said. Luckily, for the past 23 years, Black and his team have been slowly amassing a nest egg. “We have just probably a couple thousand bottles of beer that are vintage,” Black said. The collection contains very rare, highly sought-after beers from big-name breweries around Denver and the US. The most prized item is a 750ml bottle of a collaboration blended sour beer made in 2008 by The Lost Abbey Brewing Company called “Isabelle Proximus.” When the Cellar Sale list was posted, the lone bottle sold in one second for $400.

Retired Martin has started to chronical the take away pubs from his new location in Sheffield:

…we’ve had some wonderful beer, alternating porters and bitters and crafty keg with impunity. The only problem is, cask must by law be enjoyed within 3 hours, which means drinking 4 pints between us in an evening out of Bass glasses (NBSS 3.5/4). That’s not a habit you can keep up forever.

Here’s a big of a helpful hint for the history buffs. If you look at this image from the Twitter feed of a sailing cargo firm you will see in the lower right an explanation of the various grades of tea. These grades appear in many 1700s and 1800s newspaper notices and may assist in determining if accompanying cargo such as beer are considered fancy goods – or nor.

Best historical slag of the week: “your bum is so heavy you can’t get up“! In another history fan news, Dr. Christina Wade at her site Braciatrix wrote about a Viking burial in Ireland in the first part of the release of her Phd thesis. I am hoping for more beer content so this as yet is a placeholder – but a useful one as she canvasses questions on the quality of evidence. I note this especially in the context of the Vikings in Canada and the archaeological evidence they left behind as described in this handy post from Ottawa Rewind, especially this bit:

Wow! Barrel piece…was this for wine? Again, where did they get the oak for this?

Careful readers will recall my 2011 post on the early European settlements in Newfoundland, including Vikings. I have not had any luck finding Viking brewing in my research but it is clear that beer and malt could well have been here before 1577, the earliest date I have so far. Were the Vikings masterless men happily brewing beer hundreds of years before the masterless men? Was there malt in that oak barrel?

Jonny the Ham* wrote in Pellicle about how Pellicle came to be. I like how it is illustrated by images from a particular journey:

The first and most important reason is that Pellicle, the concept, was originally meant to be a short photography zine taken on this trip which I would self publish—something of a passion project I had dreamt of for years, based on my love of travel and film photography. Secondly, I’m incredibly self-conscious about folk reading my innermost thoughts, so at the very least you can enjoy some nice photos.

His partner in crime – or at least publishing – Matt has written a bit in Beer 52 about his upcoming book “hopefully be called Modern British Beer” and the concept of a returning greater regionality in beer. I prefer this muchly to nationalism as a defining characteristic, if only given the reality that beer predates many borders and can reflect the more important factor of trade routes rather than anything like state regulation or even national culture. I had just one truly tiny quibble about this bit:

Historically in the UK, regionality was a strong differentiator in beer styles and helped develop so much in terms of how we know and enjoy beers today. Take Burtonisation—for example—a process developed by brewers to mimic the mineral content of the Burton-upon-Trent water supply. The hard water of Burton contains higher levels of gypsum, which when used as a brewing process aid in the form of brewers salts will lower your worts pH. This is preferred by some brewers when producing pale, hoppy beer styles, as it aids hop absorption rates, and thus how they are showcased in the resulting beer. It’s no coincidence the story of IPA began here, in the Midlands.

Quibble? The brewing with and drinking of the sulfurous waters of Burton predated the inclusion of masses of hops. Hops were first added by one clever brewer in the late 1600s at the Brimstone Alehouse to deal with those who had to deal with the, err, vomitous qualities of his local product ripe with regional… umm… vernacular. Which actually makes Matt’s point even a bit better.

Elsewhere, Dave Infante is “joining”** VinePair‬⁩ to cover the beer industry. Send him tips if you think it is a good idea to send other beer writers your tips. And speaking of speaking about beer, I liked this back and forth between Monsieur Noix du Biere and Matt. Are local voices too likely to be embedded or are the embedded ones the best perspective? Note also the second alt use of the word “indigenous” in today’s roundup. I prefer “vernacular “for this particular meaning but I don’t think anyone’s toes are aching.

Finally, two good posts this week from Boak and Bailey on, first, a surprising forerunner of an improved pub from the 1880s and, second, a helpful piece on the rare duck these days that is ESB. Looks like they spent their recent break from beer blogging over the holidays writing beer blog posts. Alistair is taking another sort of break this January but found time to post about a day dream he is having about another venerable beer, Trukker ur-Pils.

There. That’s a good start to the year. And for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*The Hammer? The Hamster?
**…which could mean anything from being a freelancer to CEO.

The “If This Is December Do These Be Holidays?” Edition Of Beery New Notes

I have to say that imagining holidaying in any sense is a bit of a stretch for me and no doubt many others these days. Which tends to mean it is a good reason not to seek out strong drink but rather look elsewhere for meaning – like my choice this last few weeks: engaging in a prolonged and meaningful battle with the neighbourhood squirrels attacking my bird feeders. Think about it. Healthy outside-y lifestyle stuff getting out and setting up unstable and tall poles just out of a squirrel’s leap. Not quite what the doctor may have ordered on the Isle of Man between the wars as illustrated to the right but… is that really a doctor or the accounts manager of Clinch’s in disguise. And smoking! Dodgy looking moustache, that.

Victim of Math‘s starts us out on another week of pandemic laced news with a slight bit of economic upside news in the UK – or at least not a downside:

This is an interesting little nugget from the latest economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility… They expect alcohol duty revenue in 2020/21 to be *higher* than in 2019/20.

You may wish to roam the graphs and summaries of the associated Economic and Fiscal Outlook – November 2020 so here is the link to that. There’s this graph, too, that suggests in this economic downturn folk are turning to wine and spirits instead of beer. Are you?

Craft and shemomechama. Discuss.

Elsewhere and as it is to be expected, American big industrial beer is planning how to come out of the pandemic running. Beer & Beyond, the voice of MolsonCoors, Canada’s other secret infiltration force into the US economy right after Hollywood comedy movies, has asked the following about the marketplace:

With Americans heading into the holiday season, the beer industry is preparing for a winter fraught with uncertainty. A resurgent virus and ongoing recession are colliding with traditional times of elevated beer sales in both on- and off-premise venues. One thing is for certain: People are continuing to drink beer. The big questions are where are they buying it, and how?

The article goes on to state “…data from past recessions show, the beer industry tends to hold up relatively well during economic downturns…” which is true as far as it goes* but it will be interesting to see how this principle holds up where local policy driven pandemic triggering full on economic depressions are occurring in, for example, the non-masker alt-right parts of rural America.

Speaking of pandemic ridden landscapes of elsewhere, I fear I am not fully convinced by this week’s excellent article “I Am Gruit” but it is very gratifying that author Hollie Stephens did consult with one of Unger‘s texts:

“The power to control to sale of gruit was in effect a right to levy a tax on beer production” writes Unger. Public figures who had been granted gruitrecht sought to extend their power throughout their domains. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, towns had taken over the taxation of gruit, handing the task of producing the gruit mixture over to a gruiter and ensuring that it was sold on to brewers at a fixed price.

It’s about the sense of scale. My reading of Unger’s work on gruit is that the scale of production (which went far beyond foraging) and resulting wealth it generated sustained the early modern… or the late medieval… era in the Low Countries and was only displaced more by the cannon of the Hanseatic League‘s hopped beer pushing trading ships more than anything. But otherwise a entirely helpful introduction fitted into such a short space. And a Steve Beauchesne sighting!

Also this week,** Ron wrote three blog posts about a drunken abusive vicar in mid-1940s Dogmersfleld in Hampshire, the Rev. Hugo Dominique de la Mothe. The name itself is a give away but here’s a summary:

The accusations brought under the Clergy Discipline Act of 1892, Section 2, were that between June, 1942, and June, 1944, the rector had been frequently drunk, had “resorted to taverns and tippling.” had been guilty of immorality in that on or about May, 1944. at Dogmersfleld, he was in such a drunken condition that he committed a nuisance in the presence of women, and that he made derogatory references to the husband of Mrs. Maggie Robinson, his servant.

Interesting that the matter held in Winchester Diocesan Consistory Court received such public notice. The cast of characters who show up as witnesses is gold.

In the now, the Tand Himself wrote this week about the new brewery in his home toun of Dumbarton, Scotland – even including a question and answer session with the owner thrown in for good measure:

The current production, as you’d expect, covers all the bases. One delight to this ex season ticket holder, is that the brewery produces the official beer of Dumbarton FC. This pleases me greatly as I remember all too well drinking in the Dumbarton FC Social Club – like the then football ground, but not the club – long gone. Then, we drank without a great deal of enthusiasm, beers from Drybroughs who had rather a monoclastic view of brewing, each beer being parti-gyled from a base beer which wasn’t great to start with. Mind you, we knew nothing of that then.

Less now but still somewhat tartaned, the history of Holsten Diät-Pils in the UK is the focus this week of an excellent post over at I Might Have A Glass of Beer:

In the 1980s so-called “premium lager” was the next big thing, as drinkers realised the watery draught lager nonsense they‘d been drinking wasn’t the real deal, and traded up to more fashionable bottled products. “More of the sugar turns to alcohol,” ran the tagline, alluding to strength in a way that got round the rules. The reference to the specially high attenuation was taken by drinkers to mean not so much “you can drink this if you’re diabetic”, but more “this will get you pisseder, faster”. In comparison to most British beers, Diät Pils was a alcoholic monster: 45% stronger than a 4% bitter and nearly twice as strong as mild or the draught ersatz “lager” people had been drinking before.

Malt. This image to my right caught my eye this week representing trends in the last 20 years of England’s malt barley deliveries. The variety of varieties is quite stunning as are the names. Somewhat more sensible in tone than what we have to put up with the recent namings in hops. Very much settled on the planet Earth.

In further UK pubs and pandemic news, Stonch has found a sensible voice in Jonny Garrett:

…the REAL angle should be “pubs are SAFER than illegal gatherings at home”. They are controlled, clean, ventilated, so opening them could reduce home transmission. We need to campaign for that study.

This has been a line that Ontario’s Premier, Doug Ford, has been playing well. Best to be in well regulated settings. I still don’t go out that much but… you know… Elsewhere and to less effect, Pete B went wandering with some ideas on Scotch Eggs and alcohol absorption and governance models. Conspiracy abounds. But the £1,000 grant does seem a bit of the little and a bit of the too late, doesn’t it. Yet it’s in a combo of benefits we have on good word. So maybe it is…

Speaking of health… there was an excellent article in The Counter on the state of alcohol health disclaimers in the US and the role corporate lobbying plays to dumb it down with an interesting example from Canada’s north:

“I was surprised we were able to run it for [a month], honestly, before we got stopped,” said Stockwell, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and professor of psychology at the University of Victoria. “I was thinking that that was only because it was in the Yukon, out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody quite knew what was going on until the launch—that’s why we got away with it.”

Note: it is “…estimated that the cancer risk posed by drinking one bottle of wine a week was comparable to smoking five cigarettes for men and 10 for women in the same time span…” Excellently simple statement.

Finally, best beer blog interim research potentially becoming – but in no sense now – a fail yet… perhaps.

December, eh? Wasn’t quite expecting that. As you contemplate life’s passage once again, don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where this week they share a fear of teens and also speak of me, me, me!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*See that handy graph link above just a bit.
**Because, you know, this is a weekly update sort of thing…

Thursday’s Beery News Notes For The Clampdown

What are we going to do now? It appears the summer has ended with a thump. The clampdown. The BBC reports that social gatherings above six are banned in England from 14 September. The nightclubs of British Columbia are now shut. Greece has shut down. Kinda makes reading about beer a side show… kinda. Jeff, however, connected the dots and spoke for all of us when he wrote:

I’d like to raise a mug to all those workers out there who make possible the pint of beer it contains. This has been a rough year. Depending on how you count, the pandemic put somewhere between thirty and forty million people out of work. Many breweries were forced to lay off staff as volumes fell.

The BBC (again) published about the why for those being displaced in shops, restaurants and bars serving the now empty high-rise office block with particular attention paid to the underground network beneath much of downtown Toronto:

For businesses in areas like the PATH, the Covid emergency phase is not over,” says Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “Yes, the government is no longer imposing closures, but effectively you may be closed because you have no customers.” While no agency has calculated the estimated cost of these closures yet, the businesses in the PATH typically generate $1.7bn in revenue annually and generate about $271m in tax revenue, according to the city of Toronto, and many have been shuttered since mid-March.

What is a bar to do when its whole model is predicated on the presence of humans? Maureen asked a similar question. I answered: “goats!”

What news of beer otherwise? First, some law and an application for municipal planning approval for the replacement of everything on one (again) Toronto City block has caused great upset. Because it is the location of a dive bar called Sneaky Dee’s:

Local Toronto bar Sneaky Dee’s could be torn down after the city announced it has received a proposal for a 13-storey building in its place. The proposal, which was submitted Sept. 4, calls for a mixed-use building that would cover the current residents of 419, 421, 423, 429, and 431 on College Street. It would also consist of a total of 169 units and more than 13,000 square metres of “combined residential and non-residential gross floor area.” Some Torontonians took to Twitter to express their unhappiness about the proposal, and a petition has been started calling for it to be rejected.

In other legal unhappiness, much has been made of the implications of the firing of many staff by Surly, a craft brewery in Minneapolis, coincidental to a union drive. “Arise, Surly Workers” wrote Dave Infante who noted an obvious trend:

In the few instances where workers in the craft brewing industry have seen through the charade and decided “lol this sucks, let’s organize,” owners have dropped the #oneteamonedream pretense with the quickness. It happened at Rogue Ales in Newport, OR in 2011; and again at Pyramid’s Berkeley, CA brewpub in 2013; and in 2019 in San Francisco, where workers at Anchor Brewing, the country’s oldest craft brewery faced a decidedly corporate union-busting campaign that featured high-powered anti-labor law firms and managers shouting “fake news” at workers exercising their federally protected right to unionize. Very cool shit, nice work all around.

T-Rex understood what was what as illustrated to the right. Beth, too. And GBH published something a wee bit adrift on the topic but, surprise, could not come to clear conclusions. In sum:

The tension between the two narratives shows that despite businesses reopening, the pandemic’s dramatic effects on the hospitality industry are far from over… It’s currently unclear whether the Unite Here union has any legal avenue to fight the layoffs or planned Beer Hall closure.

Displaying greater clarity, this explanation about pouring central Euro lager is excellent. Effective use of social media. Twenty-seven 600 word articles on the subject could not have put it so well.

Note: not a brewery. A beer company, sure.

Note: not small. Not really even a beer company anymore, either.

More law. Ron wrote an interesting post on a question of Scots law, circa 1948 in the case of more than one case of “Dodgy crown corks”:

The defect in their condition was due to being kept in the damp cellar since February 1948. Dunn knew that corks should be stored in a dry place, and that dampness encouraged the growth of various moulds. Moreover, he failed to use the corks in the order in which they were sent to him. Further, he or his servants ought to have inspected the corks within a reasonable time after delivery, and in any event prior to using them.

Nice touch in the report on the use of “various moulds” indicating, perhaps, a particularly unpleasant multi-coloured effect.

Completely separate from either the situation today and the law, Merryn published a piece on the conclusions drawn in her thesis on pre-historic brewing – very high on the neato scale:

Brewing uses few ingredients, only requiring malted grain, herbal preservatives, water and yeast. These ingredients may survive in the archaeological record in a number of ways. Accidents in drying the malted grain, as happened at Eberdingen-Hochdorf can occur. Residues or sediments of the brewing process may occasionally survive in unusual contexts, such as in the sealed Bronze Age cist graves at North Mains and Ashgrove. Residues of barley without any other plant remains indicate the residues that result from washing the sugars from the mashed barley or ‘sparging the wort’. Those barley residues that contain pollen or macro plant remains indicate the addition of herbs during the boil prior to fermentation.

Again, and without a thought for the law, Retired Martin has again taken us to a place without the cares of the day… except in this episode of his series entitled “287,392 UK Pubs” he explains how those at the Blake Hotel in Sheffield are managing the Covid-19 social distancing rules:

3 pm on a Saturday, filling up but quieter than you’d think, a landlord giving the now customary speech. “Take a seat, fill in the track and trace, follow the one way system, one at a time in the loos, leave glasses on the table“ I felt sorry for him. “I’m sounding like a stuck record !“. “We’re trad drinkers, we miss the interaction at the bar” said the next group. I know how they felt.

Speaking of ye olden times, Eoghan Walsh published a good story of a gruit revival, something I may now have lived through two or three times. While a nod to Unger‘s clarifications on the important role control of gruit played in medieval society would have been nice, I love this level of detail:

Invaluable input came from a most unexpected source: a rich seam of human excrement mined by archeologists from the bottom of a medieval latrine. “They found the remains of hops, juniper, caraway, and bog myrtle, and they asked me how this could be possible that in one stratum of this toilet are these four ingredients appearing together at the same time,” Overberg says. “They thought this clearly had something to do with brewing.” And Overberg naturally agreed. “They have excavations for a period of 300 years, and it is all the same. It’s always hops and bog myrtle, caraway, juniper.

Lastly, The BeerNut wrote a review (no, really he did!) that contained a passage that triggered another thought:

Pyynikin has really missed the mark on “Pacific” here. There’s not an iota of tropicality about this, and nothing American either. Maybe it’s a Finnish take on New Zealand’s ubiquitous Canterbury Draught, because that’s about the only way it makes sense. As beer in its own right it’s inoffensive, and might even be enjoyable as a dark-evening sipper. I couldn’t deal with the surprise, however, and resented it for the rest of the glassful. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

My first thought was it was clearly a tribute to the possible first brewer in Quebec, Brother Pacifique Duplessis. But then I thought… how little I care about branding of beers. Then I realized how much I have to wade through every week is basically (i) folk writing about the branding of beer especially as displayed on the container. As opposed to the beer itself … and clearly unlike the TBN above who makes note of the missing connection. Then I wondered what else are similar categories for me: (ii) fun and pozzie but samey brewery owner interviews, (iii) conversely, greater important questions of rights contextualized in brewing, (iv) then, conversely again, dreary cut and paste posts of others’ research labelled as “reporting” and… (v) all the superlatives. Always the superlatives. Each theme has its audience I suppose and certainly varies in ultimate value… but what percentage of the weekly collective output isn’t one of the five categories above? Sure, these things come in waves – like yesterday’s topics of food pairing and sell outs – but more would be good to add. Please advise by next Wednesday. A fella has deadlines, you know. Next big thing could be canals. Could be.

There. Done. For more please check in with Boak and Bailey Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan points a particularly pointy finger at the letter “B”!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

The “All Stories Have Ground To A Halt” Version Of The Thursday Beery News

Things are slow out there. True, I was no paying much attention but the beer news is a bit dribbly. So dribbly in fact that I did not realize I had been blessed with a comment from Tandyman himself five days ago. To tell me I was wrong about something. So slow that I post this picture to the right* in a desperate attempt to drum up the slightest interest in this week’s edition of the news notes. If this whole thing goes on long enough, it might be what the dapper gent will once again where to the pub. Might be wrong about that, too. Who can tell these days? Other than the Tand.

Note: a salad bar now filled with booze minis. [“Nippy sweeties” according to Billy Connolly and his skit “The Jobbie Weecha !!!!“] And Nate is apparently doing very well in all this. Perhaps, Robin not always so much. And Katie is very much on the doorstep. Boak and Bailey are mini-kegging it at home… with maps.

Elsewhere, Stonch was figuring out the rules for English licensees without folk propping up the bar, rules about how to sell their beer, like he does by delivery in milk cartons, but closed with some of his best legal advice ever:

I’ve written a lot of replies there (sorry Matt!) but in general I think I agree with Matt that pubs should be careful doing this. It doesn’t *feel* right, even if it’s legal – and in any case we’ll all be open again properly in a few weeks so why jump the gun?

This tweet purported to show how 2 meter distancing would not work in an English pub but, to my eye, I would assume removing a few chairs could make it possible.

To the east of Stonch, Max wrote a series of tweets about the joys of the reopening of pubs in his Czech hometown, of the first meal on a patio (right) and the first pub visit (below):

I thought a lot about which pub will be the first I would walk into and when. But, sod it! I was in the neighbourhood and simply couldn’t resist…

Nearby, Evan wrote about a few Czech beers, too – but from there, still in his lock down. He was not so thrilled but gave an update on what was allowed:

Flash forward 10 weeks and it feels like we’re over the (first?) hump. Things in the Czech lands are cautiously reopening, at least for now, with pubs and restaurants allowed to serve drinks and food indoors as of May 25, and mask usage no longer required outside, provided you can maintain a 2-meter distance from others. (Masks do not have to be worn by customers while eating and drinking indoors, though they still must be worn by servers and there are new restrictions on customer counts and spacing between seats. Masks still must be worn on public transportation and in shops.)

We can all agree that we need to hate the Astros, right? Now there is a beer for that. Conversely, GBH has decided that beer price rises are not gouging and took the trade association’s word on it:

Uhrich attributes the pricing spike to reductions in discounting. Retailers are simply putting less beer on sale than they normally would at this time.

Really. Never saw one that coming. Somewhat similarly, I was sent links to this story about how the Black Death created the pub. It’s OK but it feels a little like someone took a jigsaw puzzle and gave it a good shake before packing it in a pile and telling folk it was complete:

“The survivors [of the Black Death] prioritized expenditure on foodstuffs, clothing, fuel, and domestic utensils,” writes Professor Mark Bailey of the University of East Anglia, who also credits the plague for the rise of pub culture, over email. “They drank more and better quality ale; ate more and better quality bread; and consumed more meat and dairy produce. Alongside this increased disposable income, they also had more leisure time.” Not every establishment looked like a modern pub: Alehouses were often still literally brewers’ homes, inns offered ale and accommodation, and taverns were a sort of medieval wine bar, a lasting legacy of the Roman Taberna.

I blame the editors, as always. Refresh yourself with Jeff on the fragrant and rich thing that is Italian Pilsner.

Westwardly, Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham wrote a post about, first, what a horrible job she did at social media polling but then how it gave rise to unexpected considerations on how craft breweries might address inclusivity in terms of employment practices:

I was curious if there might be some correlation between perceptions of inclusion and equity and the level of formalization of any given part of the employee journey. As expected, performance reviewing was reported to be the least formalized. Without standard operating procedures that make inclusive and equitable practices transparent, it’s less likely that these practices will be used at all or perceived as such by employees…right? Wrong.

To her east over in Glasgow, Robsterowski wrote about having a 42 year old beer, a 1978 Courage Russian Stout:

First waft of the 1978 bottle on opening: well they certainly didn’t forget to dose this with Brettanomyces. The secondary yeast has completely taken over, leather, prunes, balsamic vinegar. Residual sugars have almost completely dried out since 1978, but the beer is still drinkable: still some carbonation, still quite viscous and oily, though lighter than it once would have been, yet no sweetness. Blackcurrant and some empyreumatic flavours reminiscent of wood smoke, perhaps a little smoked beef, any acrid or chocolatey notes long since mellowed out. There is still quite a bitter aftertaste on this, though it is camouflaged by the massive Brettanomyces aroma. Would probably have been better not quite so old. If you happen to also have a 42 year old bottle of Russian Stout, drink it fifteen years ago.

Fine. That’s enough. Cooler weather by the weekend around here. It’s been like August for a few days so it will be good to see late April again. Keep writing and reading and keeping up with the chin uppitry. Check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. Thanks for stopping by while not leaving the house.

The “Here’s Your Hat – What’s Your Hurry, January?” Edition Of Beery News Notes

There is nothing I like about January. It starts with the worst holiday in the year and ends with ice five inches thick covering every corner of your property. Usually. It’s actually been a warmish winter with only a couple of sharp snaps into the -20C region. But it’s still January so I hate it. This week sucked on a number of levels: coronavirus, Kobe and even a cat named Jinx.* Yet is will be March four weeks next Monday. So that is good. Did you need me to explain how the calendar works? Is that why you come here? Probably not. Not that you need me to explain anything else… and yet I do… week after week. Like this =>

I didn’t see much about beer in the news, frankly, but someone forgot they drove onto a ferry near here so it wasn’t all about zippo – but then I did see that photo up there from Lars’s trip to a museum in Oslo:

Saw this in Oslo Historical Museum today: the Tune stone, 4th century. Raised in memory of Wodurid, “the bread lord”, by his three daughters, who brewed the funeral ale.

There is more in Wikipedia Norske-style. I can’t read a word of it but it’s still really interesting. I did notice that Norwegian for “log in” is “logg inn” which is really, you know, a bit lazy on their part.

And there was that “the sky is falling!” article on the craft beer industry in what is called our national newspaper… except isn’t really. But I really liked one thing in it, this stat about the US craft beer market:

…major brewers have acquired the equivalent of 7 million to 8 million barrels of production as they purchased previously independent companies and added them to their rosters. That’s a significant shift in a roughly 25-million-barrel industry…

So one-third of craft is now macro. And macro-craft and Sam Adams is more than half of craft. Which is weird. But exactly as I suspected…

And Beth just had to remind us that we are coming up to the second anniversary of glitter beer which come right before the second anniversary of the end of glitter beer. And she noted the diversity diversion trend applies to craft beer.**

Plus Jordan got some regional state-run media attention this week with his recreation of an 1830s old ale from what was York, Upper Canada but is now Toronto, Ontario:

The recipe was put together from notes in a diary by William Helliwell — the brewer at Todmorden Mill in the 1820s and 30s. Todmorden Mill was located at the bottom of Pottery Road. “The great thing is that all of the brewing details, all the detail that makes the recipe for this beer is sprinkled throughout that diary,” St. John told CBC News. “He’s not recording it because he’s keeping track, he’s recording it because it’s just part of his day-to-day life. He’s really more interested in the girl next door.”

Wag.

And Mudge semi-fisked the stats about UK pubs losses/gains including this assertion of what really is the obvious:

A few years ago, Pete wrote an angry blogpost in which he called racism over the suggestion that had made that, in some areas, the increasing Muslim population had been a major factor in the decline in pub numbers. However, it was pointed out in the comments that this wasn’t racism, but a simple question of fact. If the proportion of people in the population who don’t drink alcohol, especially in public, increases, then inevitably the demand for pubgoing will decline. He later deleted the post, and now accepts the point in his article.

Note #1: quaff…

1510s (implied in quaffer), perhaps imitative, or perhaps from Low German quassen “to overindulge (in food and drink),” with -ss- misread as -ff-. Related: Quaffed; quaffing. The noun is attested by 1570s, from the verb.

Note #2: -able…

…there are 3 rules that control how the able/ible
suffix is used.
1. In original Latin words, the suffix was -bil- and the vowel was
the thematic vowel of the verb.
2. In new Latin words where the thematic vowel was no longer
apparent, the suffix was reanalyzed as -ible.
3. Words that are formed in English use -able.

Result: Robin wins.

Yup:

The weird thing about the ‘return of bitter’ narrative is that at no point in the last decade has bitter been remotely difficult to find on sale.

Dr J noticed a person doing a good job:

The beertender at the new spot in Terminal E at CLT is personable AF and knows her tap list back and forth. Just watched her upsell 3 separate parties who asked Coronas/Bud Lights. Beer politics aside, she’s out here doing work and pouring lovely beers in clean glass. Props…

Day Bracey wrote about putting together a fest in Allentown but not that Allentown:

We’re talking Allentown, Pittsburgh, a predominantly black “redeveloping” neighborhood between Mount Washington and the South Side. By “redeveloping,” I mean “pre-gentrified.” They have a coffee shop and folks are actively looking to open a brewery there. Once that happens, the flood of white people will be inevitable and Pittsburgh will have a Lawrenceville 2.0, or rather an East LIBERTY 3.0. What better way to combat this than by filling the streets with 5,000 people who may be interested in gentrifying responsibly, with investments in both the people and the buildings?

Neato. And finally, Katie watched a cooper bash a firkin and made a tiny movie.

So not all that much news this week. More anecdote, perhaps. Some tableau, even. Mainly maybe mise en scène. If you want more of that and some other stuff, too, don’t forget to check in with Boak and Bailey’s most Saturdays except for last week and weeks like last week, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast.

*Note: Googling “Polk” and “Jinx” delivers some weird results, not all of which relate to unfortunate U.S. Presidential luck in the 1840s.
**As we see in diverting misery-level funding.

A Thursday’s Worth Of Beer News As The Dog Days Truly Set In

Summer. Proper hot summer. Half the folk you want to see at work to get things done are off on vacation. Half the places you want to waste some time in are filled up with tourists. And half of the ways you’d want to waste your time are not possible because your provincial government owned liquor store bought a new wholesale distribution system that does not seem to work and has left shelves emptying. Jings. There better be Pimms for my weekend’s punch bowl, that’s all I can say.

What else is going on? First, Merryn has continued to explore malting with a tweet thread this week gathering some sources in support of a series of posts by Simpsons Maltings, like this one on the elements of the steeping stage. Reminds me of that Anglo-Norman children’s guide to malting from the mid-1200s:

Now it would be as well to know how to malt and brew
As when ale is made to enliven our wedding feast.
Girl, light a fennel-stalk (after eating some spice-cake);
Soak this barley in a deep, wide tub,
And when it’s well soaked and the water is poured off,
Go up to that high loft, have it well swept,
And lay your grain there till it’s well sprouted…

Traditional brewing practices like these are actually easy enough to identify… but rarely discussed given the trend to adulteration… err… innovation. Ask detractors to show you the soles of their shoes to check if they are boosters.

More than a bit of shock and dismay expressed in the American mid-Atlantic over the closing of Mad Fox brewpub of Falls Church, Virginia:

In the closing announcement, Madden cited the difficulties with the brewpub business model and the rise of breweries in the surrounding area contributing to an “extremely competitive craft beer market.” “When we opened in 2010, there were 40 breweries in Virginia. Now there are close to 250,” Madden said in the post. “The Brewpub business model is a tough one to maintain compared to a Brewery Taproom with little overhead, lower rents and outsourced food trucks. Our draw from the surrounding areas has dwindled in what has become an extremely competitive craft beer market, which has resulted in this final decision.”

Tom Cizauskas shared some background:

Mr. Madden is a successful doyen of the area’s ‘craft’ beer scene, both with Mad Fox and for a quarter-century before that. Beyond his own personal successes, he has mentored area brewers, he has organized beer festivals for brewers (beginning back when that concept was foreign), he was co-instrumental in bringing good beer to Washington baseball.

Don Cazentre wrote about another odd example of that competitive market out there, a Syracuse brewery called…

Anything But Beer, which Berry runs with Logan Bonney, makes alcoholic beverages from a base of fruits and vegetables instead of the barley malt used in most traditional beers. The beverages, which include hard ciders, are carbonated like beer and are about the same strength as many beers — 6 or 7 percent alcohol. They’re served by the pint at bars and restaurants, like beer. They are gluten-free and vegan-friendly. Flavors run the range from strawberry lime and ginger chai to Irish whiskey apple.

Weird. Fancy Zima. Speaking of which, one of the sadder things about good beer these days is there seems to be an expectation that not only do you as the happy beer consumer have to care about the PR characterization of brewery ownership props as presented but now the cult of personality has been extrapolated into sale channels. Just look at this hot heroic mess:

Dealings related to The Bottle Shop’s liquidation mark a renewed interest from ABI’s Beer Hawk in expanding its wholesale trade platform, which has been operating for 18 months. Andrew Morgan, who founded The Bottle Shop, will be joining Beer Hawk to oversee this area of its operations. Roberts said that Beer Hawk plans to accelerate its wholesale activities, and that Morgan possessed unique skills to achieve that.

Nothing against the individuals named – but does anyone without an interest in a piece of the cash flow really care? Does anyone doubt that the skills might just be unique? Just another sort of marketing blurt. Matt had a cooler head when he noted it’s all just about receivership and administration, aka the accountants. He also noted that ratebeer and Beerhawk now are working not at arm’s length:

Interesting to see that @ratebeer shop is now “officially” live in the UK. Currently listing 372 beers, all directly linked to sister company @TheBeerHawk.

Continuing on, I like this article in Pellicle on foraging for tasty brewing adjuncts in Ohio even if the continued misuse of terrior* rivals only the needy puffery of those who toss around curate to mean select:

“It was just supposed to be a clean, monoculture saison,” Brett says as he picks bright green buds from the sagging spruce branches. “The morning of the brew day, I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to do that.’ So I drove out and picked three pounds (1.4kg) of spruce tips.”

Foraging, however, is an excellent word that needs no turd buffing to convey meaning.

Lastly, Lew Bryson wrote of his unnatural admiration for Naturdays, a discount line of fruit beer produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev:

I have to admit, I’m two cans into a six-pack while writing this article. Pink and yellow, flamingo-decorated cans. I bought it out of a sense of duty and fairness, because if you’re going to pick something apart, you should have tried it. But once I opened a can, and tasted that first cold, sweet-tart slug, duty and fairness went out the window, and I was just another guy on a hot summer night, ripping my way through a pounder of Naturdays.

Yum. And that’s it for now. I need to plan the weekend. Where shall I lay upon the grass within reach of a few weeks to pick from the carrot patch so that I can claim I did a chore as I suck Pimms Punch from a wriggly jiggly straw? Such an exciting decision. There should be more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..? I still don’t know. He may well be in Brazil for another week and, so, on another hiatus. See ya!

*If it isn’t about the terre, it’s not about terrior. Vernacular is useful. As might be indigenous. Probably local makes most sense. Or just explain what you did. Adjectives are a waste of time.

Putting The 1390-91 Crusade Beer Buying Notes Through A Latin Translator

Now, as you know, I did take one year of Latin in undergrad but it’s not like I learned anything. So, the other day, when I found the notes from the provisioning of the English forces in the 1390-91 crusade eventually against the Lithuanians, I knew it was provisioning notes in Latin but there were plenty of assumptions. For example, when I read this from the 10 September 1390 provisioning records:

Clerico buterie super beer, pro iij barellis de beer emptis ibidem, xxx scot. Et pro ij barellis beer emptis ibidem, xxij scot. Et pro portagio dicte beer…

I made at least one error in relation to “emptis” and its variant conjugation siblings as well as the various declinations of “ibid…” “Emptis” is not related to empty beer barrels. It’s the verb for purchasing. And the final “j” in numerals is just a “i” like the rest. I thought it might be another indicator for a five. So, the translator give us this:

Clerk buterie the beer, the beer purchased for three barellw place, thirty Scot. He bought beer for two barellw place, twenty Scot. And portagio said beer …

Which I might clean up as:

The Clerk of the Buttery bought three barrels from the same place. He bought two barrels from the same place. And delivery for the beer…

I left out the price. Notice that the three barrels cost “xxx” thirty currency units but the two barrels cost “xxij” or twenty-two units. Different grades of beer? The currencies are also odd. Nearby we read “Clerico buterie super beer pro iij barellis beer emptis ibidem, j marc. vj scot.” which seems to suggest three barrels were bought at the same place for one marc and six Scots – which means one mark is worth 24 of those Scots thingies if the price for three barrels were stable. Consider this note of wine and beer purchases on 26 August 1390 which may give a hierarchy of currency units:

CLERICO buterie super vino per manus eorundem pro vino ibidem empto, ij marc. xxij scot. ij s. pr. Clerico buterie super beer, pro beer empta ibidem ix scot., viij d.

Marc. > scot. > s. > d.? The last are likely shilling and penny but what are “marc.” or “scot.”? All seem to be abbreviations given they are followed by a period. Crack that question and this document is a playground for anyone trying to work out beer prices on the eastern Baltic markets in the 1390 during an inflationary setting such as a crusade.

Oh… that might be just me.

OK – various sources of the currencies must be being described. A Hanseatic League mark? Or a Scottish merk? “Scot.” could well be the Scottish pound which was worth 1/12th of an English pound and 150% of a merk – and made up of 20 shillings with 12 pence each. Which makes it more sensible as the price point of a barrel of beer. But were they are actually using Scots money? No. Here is a helpful table from the introduction to 1894’s hit text Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made by Henry Earl of Derby (afterwards King Henry IV.) in the Years 1390-1 and 1392-3: Being the Accounts Kept by His Treasurer During Two Years, Volume 52

So, they are using local money as they are fighting along side the Teutonic Order against then mighty Lithuania just prior to the formation of the very mighty Polish-Lithuanian alliance.

Going to leave it there for now. Internet getting dodgy. Wind storm and thunder in February. Odd doings.

UPDATE: Interesting chat on Twitter pointed out that “cervisia”* would have referenced ale, not hopped beer. This is more directly illustrated by the contemporary Dunster Castle household accounts kept by John Bacwell, Steward, from 27 June 6 Henry IV, to 27 June 7 Henry IV (or 1405-1406) in which the word is included in this record from 11 June 1406:

In factura 6 barelles pro cervisia imponenda 2s, Et pro 1 eerda et 2 citulis’ prope novum fontem faetum emptis 2s.

So, if that word ceruisia was ale and that word appears in the accounts for the 1390 expedition, then the same account kept by the same clerk of the buttery using the word beer should be expected to mean another substance. And logically that substance would… beer. Local hopped beer.

*Or as Martyn noted a decade ago, a variant of that spelling.