Category: History

Your Thursday Newsy Notes For The End Of July In Beerland

After last week’s mess of unified theory of a something or other, it would be nice to find some chat that is (i) about beer and (ii) not about other things. You know, those bits of the trivial dribble that attracted me to scribbling about beer in the first place. It’s not just that good beer got into sectarian schisms, then politics, then laced with the pandemic – it’s that it all got so real. Don’t get me wrong, the real is good and important. But sometimes I like to wallow in, the vital but unimportant things in life. Like that really sad BBQ pack, above, that my pal Brian saw at a Maritime Canadian grocery store this week. Pointless… yet strangely compelling.

As a means to hopefully show what I mean, consider this wonderful bit by Katie in Pellicle on the place of burger vans in her life:

This is where I draw the line between burger vans and food trucks. For me, food trucks bring me images of gourmet falafel wraps, jackfruit tacos, outrageous fried chicken and homemade sauces. They’re run by chefs and dreamers on enthusiasm and aspiration, passion and excitement. I enjoy them, but they are a different beast. A burger van might also be a grill on wheels, but that’s where the comparisons stop. A burger van is a means to an end. The owners are chipper, but brisk and efficient. The sauces are bulk-bought and sharp with vinegar and citric acid.

Lovely writing about what is basically… well, is “…what my mum would call “a waste of money.” I have especially enjoyed following her family’s obsession with Superbike, something which really does not exist in my imaginary North America, something British which I only know through staring at 1930s racing championship programs on offer at eBay.

Beer reviews. That is pretty old school straight forward beer blogging, right? Well, Alistair over at Fuggled has renewed his blogging activity and shared his thoughts on one old friend, London Pride:

There are times when I drink this that I really understand why American brewers and drinkers have such a hard time grasping the fact bitter should be, well, bitter. It’s not that it is terribly sweet, though the mouthfeel feels a little like undissolved jelly cubes, it’s that the hops are nudged out by the famous Fuller’s yeast character, as well as not being the same kind of citrus as folks are used to here. So many breweries here use very clean top fermenting yeasts that the character of the beer is so different, and I wonder if American breweries under hop the tyle as a result?

And when the conscientious beer blogger is not writing reviews, she or he should be discussing pubs like the Tand himself did this week when he wrote about one of his “…favourite pubs in the UK, the Coalbrookdale Inn in, well Coalbrookdale…” and included this fabulous paragraph:

After a few minutes – the pub has a more or less square bar – the landlord shouted “Phone call for Peter”.  We all ignored this. Now to explain to my younger reader, back in those days – pre mobile phone – it wasn’t at all unusual to call a pub and ask to speak to “whoever” if he is in.  Now nobody knew we were there we thought and therefore the call out in a busy pub could not possibly be for any of us and could be safely ignored. We carried on supping. Having got no response, the barman returned to the phone, presumably to relate the lack of success to the caller.  A few seconds later he appeared in front of us. “Any of you lads Peter Alexander?” quoth our hero. I stammered “Me” while we all looked on in astonishment. “Phone call for you” he said.

Do you like brewing history? Good news for all! The UK’s National Brewery Centre’s archives have gone online:

Two years ago a project began to produce a digital catalogue and this is what launches today. At a cost of £50,000, it was funded by generous grants from the likes of the Consolidated Charity of Burton on Trent, Staffordshire Community Foundation, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the Brewers’ Research Education Fund, additional funds were raised from corporate and individual donors as well as via a crowdfunding campaign. The archive system was designed and built by Shrewsbury-based digital heritage consultants Orangeleaf Systems, whose other projects include The Parliamentary Archives and the Royal Mail Archives.

More fabulousness!

Lars opened up a small can of worms in a very small pantry when he asked “What counts as a farmhouse ale?” in an actual blog post:

The most common question I get in interviews is “what do you consider to be a farmhouse ale?” and since the answer is a little involved I decided to write it up more fully. There is a fairly clear-cut definition, but it takes a little explaining.

I think the only issue is that Lars has to have one footnote to the first paragraph that reads “*supra, Lars” given he is both the reporter and the compiler of the information in the topic. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that there is a thing called “farmhouse ales” which is an umbrella noun under which all styles fall. But I do like it as a process description that is identifying similar practices playing out in sheds and kitchens in disconnected locations. As a function of what the life of a farmhouse includes.  As Lars notes in his piece:

In the 18th and the 19th Centuries, you had plenty of farming treatises being published. In most if not all of them you have a chapter on brewing.

Brewing as a farming function as much as managing the manure pile or tilling the fields. Note: the wonderful Girardin grows its own grain and has done so for generations… but it may not be brewing farmhouse ale.

Perhaps less monumental that van burgers or les bieres des shed, is the story told by B+B of pubs collecting pennies for charity in post-war Britain:

Looking through old brewery in-house magazines from the 1950s and 60s, one recurring image is inescapable: a monstrous pile of pennies on a bar, in the process of being toppled by a celebrity.

Jeff wrote about losing his blog’s sponsorship to Covid (sorta like I did in the aftermath of the market crash of 2008) which is a very brave admission and not really fabulous at all:

The first question was whether I should even continue with the site. Most writers don’t maintain blogs. They would rather put their effort into procuring and writing paid gigs. It was kind of crazy that I hadn’t monetized the site at all for its first decade, and I realized I couldn’t put the hours of work into it for free anymore. Either ditch it or—sorry for the crass jargon—monetize it. I decided to try the latter before resorting to the former, and considered how to do so in the way that would minimize my conflict of interest while maximizing revenue.

Keep the blog. Writing gigs may make money but the writing is Dullsville.

And lastly, Stan went into the woods this week and he sure got a big surprise.

Enough unreality for you? Fine. OK…. here are the top real news items for the week:

1. JJB took a side on the small brewers’ tax credit reforms in England and Wales. Matt is angry over the same thing.

2. Jeff has split off his political writing from his beer blog to share what he is seeing on the front lines of the fight in the US’s pro-democracy movement in his hometown.

3. Alcohol use, especially heavy use, weakens the immune system and thus reduces the ability to cope with infectious diseases.

4. And today would be a great day to arrest those who killed Breonna Taylor.

Don’t forget it is real out there.  The cool sip of a mild legal intoxicant that is wearing down your internal organs prematurely should not distract you too much from the real. Beer isn’t real.*

There. Done. Some great pro-am and am beer writing for the week. A bit of a side show but, still, worthy in itself. For more, 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. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword.

*The latest blurt from Stone should be enough proof of that.

Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week The Patios Reopened

A better week. Not a perfect week in any sense but a better week. Here in Ontario, more coming back to life. As of this Friday, where I live I can get a haircut, go to a church that is 30% full and hang out with ten people at a time. Things are moving forward. One key issue: should pubs still have a proper level of grot as they reopen? Hmm… And when Her Majesty the Queen told us “we will meet again” did she imagine it would be on asphalt in a parking lot?

Furthermore on the hereabouts, on Monday the AGCO announced the expansion for outdoor service on Monday, effective in most of Ontario this Friday. Toronto and the surrounding areas as still considered too much at risk and will open at a later date. The rules for creating a bigger outdoor area are interesting:

1. The physical extension of the premises is adjacent to the premises to which the licence to sell liquor applies;
2. The municipality in which the premises is situated has indicated it does not object to an extension;
3. The licensee is able to demonstrate sufficient control over the physical extension of the premises;
4. There is no condition on the liquor sales licence prohibiting a patio; and,
5. The capacity of any new patio, or extended patio space where the licensee has an existing licensed patio, does not exceed 1.11 square metres per person.

Even more interesting, those who meet the above criteria are not required to apply to the AGCO or pay a fee to temporarily extend their patio or add a temporary new licensed patio and they are not required to submit any documentation to the AGCO to demonstrate compliance with the above criteria.  We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Elsewhere, Boak and Bailey have celebrated another step towards liberation with the takeaway service at their local micropub being now a going concern:

…the reopening of The Drapers is definitely next level, game-changing stuff. Not necessarily because every single beer is utterly brilliant, but because [w]e suddenly have access to a range of cask beers, not just one at a time; [w]e don’t have to decide a week in advance what we want to drink, and we (probably) don’t need to worry about running out between deliveries[; and T]he range that’s been on offer so far includes things we would not have been able to get hold of easily. It also includes new-to-us beers that we wouldn’t have wanted to risk buying in bulk, on spec.*

Stonch tweeted about one of the pains in the neck he has to deal with as he moves to reopening:

The shysters trying to cash in hospitality operators’ anxiety about re-opening at the moment are something else. Steady trickle into the inbox offering weird, unscientific and unnecessary products and services in the name of “COVID-19 secure”. Fuck off, spivs.

The timing and rules for reopening in Britain remain murky at best but Mr. Protz celebrated one  wonderful milestone, the return to brewing cask at Timothy Taylor’s:

We are incredibly chuffed to announce that today is the first day since lockdown that we have produced CASK!! Thank you so much to every single one of you for your support through this incredibly difficult period! Slowly but surely, we are getting there!

Katie wrote an excellent bit on the lockdown’s effect on small brewers… when they weren’t brewing including preserving, returning to home towns and this:

For the synth-aware, Adrian’s current kit (at the time of writing this) was his Eurorack, AKAI Pad controller, Yamaha mixer and Roland Boutiques SH-01, TR-09 and TB-03. If you fancy hearing his creations in action, find him on twitter at @wishbonebrewery.

Catching up elsewhere, Gary has been busy and I particularly liked this piece of his on a 1935 conference which added helpfully to the question of 1800s adjectives in North American beer labeling:

Rindelhardt stated that cream ale and lively ale, which he considered synonymous, were devised in the mid-1800s to compete with lager. He said they were ale barrelled before fermentation had completed to build up carbonation in the trade casks, or krausened in those casks, and sent out. In contrast, sparkling ale and present use ale – again synonymous – might also be krausened, and later force-carbonated, but were a flat stored ale blended with lager krausen. This form, provided the lager krausen was handled correctly, still offered an ale character but in a fizzy, chilled way as lager would offer.

“Cream ale”  and “cream beer” are of special interest as careful readers will recall. Check out his thoughts on the revival of Molson Golden, which I can only pronounce as if I were from Moncton, New Brunswick.

Speaking of history, I was reading through Canadian artist Tom Thompson’s diaries of the summer he disappeared over a century ago and was struck by this:

June 7, 1917: I had a hell of a hangover this morning. The whisky we had yesterday hit me hard but at least I didn’t go blind. That happened numerous times after the Temperance Act went into effect and people started making their own alcohol  Sometimes the alcohol wasn’t right and people would go blind drinking it.

Note that he did not say prohibition and indicated activities not akin to prohibition. Never really right to use the US term and apply it to the Canadian context.

Closer to the present, Jeff wrote about the great Bert Grant (and I added my two pieces in the cheap seats of Twitter replies), Canada’s true gift to craft beer:

The West Coast was divided into segments, and the cities of Portland and Seattle followed a parallel but separate track. The breweries there had their own founders and in one is a historical lacuna that explains a great deal about the influences that guided hoppy ales in the Pacific Northwest. That forgotten figure is Bert Grant, who left the hops business to start his own brewery in 1982 and whose first beers created an instant appetite, decades ahead of the rest of the country, for hoppy ales.

Read all three pieces as you only understand 1982 if you understand 1944.

Jordan celebrated a milestone, hitting a decade in the beer soaked life.  What did he learn? “Soylent Green is people!!!” No… let’s check that… no, beer is people:

If you wanted to play around with ingredients, you’d be a home brewer. A professional brewer, by default, brews for someone else. One assumes that a professional brewer does that because they enjoy it. One assumes that they make a product they believe in to the best of their ability and share it with the world. One assumes they are mindful of all the collective effort that goes into that.

Speaking of home brewers, in 1973 the BBC sent the fabulous Fyfe Robertson in search of the perfect pint made in an English basement. Have I posted this before? If I have it’s worth a second look. Speaking of Auntie Beeb, Merryn linked to a BBC 4 story on bere barley in Orkney.

One last thing. I have seen a few calls from part time editors feeling adrift who are encouraging vulnerable beer writers to turn to them in exchange for the usual pittance and a scraping of your voice in exchange for theirs. Do not be fooled! This is the time for you to be you:

Beer writers! What have you wanted to cover that might not appeal to a mainstream site? An underreported subject that merits a quick dive? An aspect of beer culture that deserves a closer look? Get a blog!

[What is a “quick dive” anyway?]

There. A better week. 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. Except now you can leave your house a bit more. Do it!

*Edited only to make things as I wish they were.

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.

A Thursday Beer News Update For An Even Sadder Week

Another week in lock down. What is there to say? Things are moving along a bit of a path, maybe showing a bit of the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe. I hope the world hasn’t turned too upside down where you are. Things are looking a bit better in Rye, England where as we see above James Jeffrey has created the  “Beer Delivery by Stonch!“* service. I’m not sure of the legalities of it all but how lovely to get a couple of pints of fresh drawn ale delivered from the pub.  We’ve had new laxer laws pub in place here so no doubt there are more novel opportunities out there to be discussed.

The new home delivery here in Ontario has been so successful that some breweries are now being drained:

Thirsty Ottawans in lockdown are drinking beer faster than local breweries can produce it, causing some to run dry of their most popular varieties. The demand for canned beer is keeping some breweries afloat during the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re definitely moving beer faster now,” said Laura Behzadi, co-founder of Bicycle Craft Brewery. “Our beers will sell out in a day or two, sometimes three.” Like many craft beer breweries and brew pubs across the province, Bicycle has shifted solely to taking orders online since public health officials in Ontario commanded restaurants to close in mid-March.

Not every brewery has been able to adapt as Britain’s Left Handed Giant shared in detail:

Aim no 1 has been to try to find new revenue streams after the loss of both our bars, and around 85% of trade custom. All bars are shut and as such all trade we used to sell to wholesalers and bars direct has dried up. Worryingly very little of the beer we sold on credit through the early part of the year has now been paid for. Most bars and shops that have been shut have closed their books and are unable to pay. So not only have we lost current trade, we are staring at the possibility of losing the revenue generated from sales before the crisis even began. We are still paying our bills so we have hugely negative cash flow. All the money we owed going out, but very little of what’s owed coming in.

I do find the folk writing about today’s new situation the most interesting.  By the way, here is great writing advice from Al Purdy, who wrote this. And this was my favorite tweet this week about the change:

Living next to a pub, I’m used to late-night revellers shouting but what really annoyed me was the chap who would imitate an owl hoot around 2.30am every night. Now pubs are shut I realise the hooting still goes on and it’s not a drunk. It is actually an owl.

Looking for something to do? Now you can volunteer to transcribe records on line with the Archives of the Province of Nova Scotia! Might be something about beer in them there archives. I wrote a paper in law school in that there building on the Court of Vice-Admiralty cases 1750 to 1760 on liquor violations. See, the local pre-Cajun Acadians liked their brandy but the conquering British wanted them to buy rum. It all ended up badly.

And while I want to hear about today, the odd post about what is missed is good, this one about a beer garden once visited in Germany:

I find myself thinking back to Bamberg. It was the height of summer and the middle of a Europe-wide heat wave with the sorts of temperatures that I, as a woman from the North of England, rarely come across; high 30s, each step an effort and bringing with it waves of exhaustion. We climb up a hill on the outskirts of town. It feels steeper than it is, the progress takes longer than it should and I grumble that it better be worth it.

Did I mention I wrote an actual post last weekend about actual brewing history? Dorchester Ale!!! Or beer… Dorchester Ale and Beer!!!!

Matthew L has continued his revivalist blogging (when he is not working to stock grocery shelves) with his admission that, along with Paisley patterned shirts, he has a thing for that thing Buckfast:

For me, the past two weeks have been like this – get up, go to work, stay there till Midnight (for maximum social distancing), go home, eat, have a few beers and go back to bed.  The thing about this routine, is you have very little to look forward too at the end of the week.  Basically, it’s the same as a work day, only without the work. And as such, you try to find the smallest thing about your old life to hang onto.  With me, it will be Buckfast Sunday.  Let me explain – every Sunday at 3pm, myself and few other regulars at a local micropub have a glass of the infamous Buckfast Tonic wine.  Like all the best traditions, nobody really knows how it started (or even how a craft beer focused bar ended up stocking notorious Ned juice). 

ATJ created a very interesting participatory project when he tweeted this and received many answers to his hypothesis:

Doing some research on regional beer styles, it’s my belief that the idea of regional differences in beer preferences has all but died out in the UK but am willing to be proved wrong if anyone has any examples. Be good to read all views based on personal experiences.

Robsterowski’s reply was practically haiku… or maybe half a sonnet: “Golden, flinty bitter in West Yorkshire. Sweet yet hoppy golden bitter in the West Midlands. Heavy in Scotland. Lightly flavoured quaffing bitter in Cumbria.” There are more than fifty other responses. Worth the read.

A timely joke…

Finally, as if things could not be worse, they did. As I mentioned last weekend on the bits of social media  I use, I have been particularly struck by the horrible news from Nova Scotia because the crimes occurred where I used to live. The roads around Portapique were where I worked in high school and undergrad summer jobs, doing maintenance jobs in senior citizen housing or working up dirt roads piling pulp wood. Where we had summer beach parties, one of which included a pal’s car floating in the sea after being caught parked too near the world’s highest tides. School friends lived there along the northern shore of the Minas Basin. Some now back retired forty years later. Terrible. I mark this here to remember how it happened in a week like any other week, when we were already dealing with rotten news.

Having said that, we do know that things will be better and another day and week is coming. Keep writing and keep reading. 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. Thanks for stopping by.

Wouldn’t We All Prefer A Nice Quart of Dorchester Ale… Or Beer?

Have my mentioned my last two and a half years have been a bit of a blur at work?  The history blogging has suffered.  But it’s always the things we hold most dear that fall away, aren’t they.  Well, as I expect is the case with you, it’s a bit quieter in the evenings around here so I thought I would pull out some of the delayed research and have a look at Dorchester Ale and Beer starting with a summary of the known information to date.  First, if you look at this notice in The Literary Gazette of 1819, you will see something that is apparent from the research: there is both Dorchester Ale and Dorchester Beer.  For purposes of this bit of writing, I am not going to get into the distinction but it is important to note that they likely were not synonyms.

Dorchester is the county town of Dorset, which sits on the middle of the bottom of England on the Channel. Daniel Defoe praised it in his book A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain (1724–26):

“The town is populous, tho’ not large, the streets broad, but the buildings old, and low; however, there is good company and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time, and as well in Dorchester, as in any town I know in England…”

Dorchester was a key departure port for Puritans emigrating to New England in the 1600s. Dorchester beer was popular before and after the American Revolution from at least the 1760s in New York City to the early 1800s. It is not mentioned by Locke in 1674. There was a song about it published in 1784 praising its power to even sooth political disunion.  Coppinger described its ingredients in this way in the 1815 edition of his fabulously named book The American Practical Brewer and Tanner:

      • 54 Bushels of the best Pale Malt.
      • 50 lb. of the best Hops.
      •   1 lb. of Ginger.
      •   ¼ of a lb. of Cinnamon, pounded.

So, a spiced pale ale says he. You can figure out the 54 bushel to 14 barrel ratio but his version of it does not look like super strong stuff.  That would seem to go against the cross-Atlantic shipping market for it so we can think about that a bit more. Or we can turn to North American’s best beer writer who doesn’t write book nor blog, Gerry Lorentz, who added a great whack of information in a comment left at this here blog posted in October 2018 which I add here in full simply because I can:

I’m sure that Dorchester beer probably didn’t stay constant over the centuries. Coppinger’s recipes contain a long list of additives, so that fact that he says Dorchester beer contained ginger and cinnamon probably doesn’t amount to much. Friederich Accum indicated that “Dorchester Beer is usually nothing else than Bottled Porter,” this coming after a discussion of Old Hock, or white porter. In Observations on the Diseases in Long Voyages to Hot Climates (1775), John Clark also indicated that Dorchester beer was similar to porter. He discussed “country beer,” noting it as one of “the usual diluters” of meals for the fashionable sort in India: “Country beer is made by mixing one part Dorchester beer, or porter, with two or more parts of water.” Others writers viewed Dorchester beer as similar to brown stout. One early twentieth-century researcher looking to get more information on Dorchester Beer put out a question in Notes and Queries in 1905 asking about a footnote in William Gawler’s 1743 poem, Dorchester, that indicated that “an eminent Dealer in Dorchester Beer, now living in London, reckons amongst his Customers the late Czar, the Kings of Prussia and Denmark, as well as his late and present Majesty of Great Britain,” which points to a Baltic trade similar to porter.

Both William Ellis in the London and Country Brewer (1837) and John Farley in The London Art of Cookery, 7th edition (1792) point out the “chalky water” used in making Dorchester beer. Farley writes that “The Dorchester beer, which is so much admired, is, for the most part brewed of chalky water, which is almost every where in that county ; and as the soil is generally chalk.” So, perhaps it had some Burtonesque qualities to it.

Thomas Hardy probably has the best, and least helpful, description of Dorchester Beer in his book The Trumpet Major, in which he states: “It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet with a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste, but finally, rather heady. The masses worshipped it, and the minor gentry loved it better than wine, and by the most illustrious country families it was not despised.”

Excellent. Clearly a strongish ale. And Gerry is always right. I would but quibble the slightest bit about the qualities “Burtonesque” but I have my own theory about the vomit inducing levels of sulfur that spawned that region’s Satanically hopped styles a generation or two earlier that Dorchester rose into popularity.

In the 1922 book Thomas Hardy’s Dorset, by R.T. Hopkins, we read

Dorchester has now lost its fame for brewing beer. But about 1725 the ale of this town acquired a very great name. In Byron’s manuscript journal (since printed by the Chetham Society) the following entry appears:

“May 18, 1725. I found the effect of last night drinking that foolish Dorset, which was pleasant enough, but did not at all agree with me, for it made me stupid all day.”

A mighty local reputation had “Dorchester Ale,” and it still commands a local influence, for this summer I was advised by the waiter of the Phoenix Hotel to try a bottle of “Grove’s Stingo” made in the town. It is a potent beverage–and needs to be treated with respect, to be drunk slowly and in judicious moderation.

Hopkins continues with the same passage from Thomas Hardy that Gerry L. noted in his comment, above, as well as others from Hardy as well as a mid-1700s song “The Brown Jug” that references a Dorchester Butt as a measure of at least one lad’s girth.

Acknowledging the love-hate relationship we have with records, the earliest i have found Dorchester Ale is recorded as being delivered to North America relates to a shipment to Virginia mentioned in a letter dated, oddly, June 28th and July 25th 1727 from one Robert Carter to Edward Tucker, the latter of whom died in 1739, merchant of Weymouth, Dorset who served as mayor in 1705, 1716, 1721, 1725, and 1735, and also as a member of Parliament:

…Your Portland is gon to York to fill up I have Six hhds of my Crop Tobbo: on board her which Sent you a bill of Lading had Russell bin at liberty to have Sent a Sloop for this Tobbo: he might have got redy for this Fleet I must desire you to Send me in the next year in one of your Ships a hogshead of your fine Dorchester Ale well and Carefully bottled of and under very good Package Your Master Britt will tell you how I was abused in the last. The Southam Cyder the Portland brought me I doubt will never be fine it is not yet Bottled If you can Send me a hogshead of it in bottles that is right good Such as I had two Years ago, it would [be] Acceptable but in Cask I will have no more I am with a great deal of Sincerity…

Hmm… it is fine and worth being shipped. In 1752, Frances Monday was before the judge in London’s Old Bailey indicted for that she assaulted John Hall and stole from him one half guinea in gold.  The evidence of Hall begins thusly:

Last Thursday se’nnight I had been in the Borough, staid late, and was in liquor. I could not get into my lodgings in Grey’s-Inn-lane. I was going from thence to Westminster to an acquaintance there, and passing by the new church in the Strand this woman came cross the way to me and asked me to go with her and drink some Dorchester ale. I went to a place which she said was the Black Swan between the new church and Exeter Change. I drank but one glass of beer. She then asked me to give her some shrub. which I did, and a bottle to take home with her.

Ms. Monday was acquitted based on her alternate version of events, backed by witnesses: “The gentleman made me a present of it. After he had what he desired of me, he said he would have it again, or he’d swear a robbery against me.” So… perhaps a sort of beer that was name dropped perhaps to show a bit of unwarranted class?

In his MA thesis for the Université de Sherbrooke submitted April 2014, Mathieu Perron stated that Dorchester ale (or beer) was mentioned among numerous other beers in the notices published in La Gazette de Québec during the early years after the fall of New France:

De 1764 à 1774, sur 28 mentions relatives à la bière dans les petites annonces de La Gazette de Québec, 15 occurrences appartiennent à la catégorie « Porter », le restant étant réparti entre différents Malt Liquor. Ces bières (Dorchester Ale/Beer, Yorchester Ale, Taunton Ale, Welch Ale) aux degrés d’alcool élevés, génèreusement houblonnées,  raditionnellement consommées par les classes moyennes anglaises, attestent du transfert des habitudes de consommation chez les classes marchandes de la province…

Fabulous references to the variety available to the military elite in that garrison town.  And I need to see the ad for “Yorchester” ale now.

Further south, in his diary of 1775-76, the Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper, pastor of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts – a bit of a coffee fiend –  records being treated to “a Glass of Dorchester Ale” on one occasion as he made his way around his fellow revolutionaries in Boston during its bombardment by the British.

After the war, as part of reparations claims which were made with various degrees of success, Henry Howell Williams a 1775 tenant on Noddles Island in Boston Harbour claimed for goods “Destroyed by a Detatchment of the American Army or Carried off by said Detatchment, for the Use of the United States” claimed just in terms of the liquor in his cellar:

3 Barrls. Cyder 36/2 Q. Casks Wine 220
1 Dozn. Ditto Bottled		 1412.–
1 Hamper Dorchester Ale. 6 Dozn. Excellent Cyder 3.16.–
3 Dozn. Carrl. Wine 1 keg Methegalin Sweet Oyle &c. 6:4:–
2 Hogsheads Old Jamaica Spirit 231 Gallns @ 5/- 57.15.–
3 Hogsheads New Rum Just got home from the
W. Indies Quanty. 234 Gallons a 3/4-		 39:0:0

Which seems like a lot – and also places Dorchester Ale in fine company.* And on both sides of the Revolution in Puritan Boston, a century and a half after being founded by Dorset folk.

At about the same time back in England but on the same end of the cannon demographically speaking as Mr. Williams of Noddles Island, we read about a pleasure garden named Jenny’s Whim in the Pimlico area of London, “a very favorite place of amusement for the middle classes”:

This feature of the garden is specially mentioned in a short and slight sketch of the place to be found in the Connoisseur of March 15th, 1775:—”The lower part of the people have their Ranelaghs and Vauxhalls as well as ‘the quality.’ Perrott’s inimitable grotto may be seen for only calling for a pint of beer; and the royal diversion of duck-hunting may be had into the bargain, together with a decanter of Dorchester [ale] for your sixpence at ‘Jenny’s Whim.'”

Then things get all scientific. In the 1797 essay “Experiments and Observations on Fermentation and Distillation of Ardent Spirit” by Joseph Collier the pre- and post-fermentation densities of four type of beer are described: Porter, Ringwood Ale, Dorchester Ale and Table Beer. It is interesting. Of course it is. If it was not interesting why would I have mentioned. it? The author uses a “saccharometer” like this. Without knowing the details of the calibration or the scale, the relative ratio is enough to tell us that Dorchester is sweet and a bit strong, a bit more than double that of Table beer. Dorchester drops 39 degrees of the “whatever scale” where Table beer drops 18. Ringwood drops 44 degrees but has a final gravity that is two-thirds of Dorchester.  Notice too that these are “the most celebrated malt liquors” – which is interesting.

In an 1816 German text entitled Jenaische allgemeine literatur-zeitung, Volume 3, it is listed in another list of English ales. I include the whole passage because it’s pretty interesting as a snapshot of the times. Ron or someone cleverer that I will be able to translate but quite neato to see the references to Queen’s ale and Wittshire ale . 

More science. In 1829, Dorcehster Ale is listed in the book Description and Use of the Brewer’s Sacchatometer as having a “proportion of alcohol” of 5.56 which placed it below Burton and Edinburgh Ale and above London Porter.

Does it start to become faded? After his fall from grace and the financial support of the Regent, Beau Brummell exiled in Calais in the 1820s was said to drink it according to this 1860s account and an 1855 article in Harpers:

 Not even for Lord Westmoreland, his creditor for frequent loans, would the Man of Fashion consent to “feed” at an earlier hour. Being a pauper, Dorchester ale, with a petit verre, and a bottle of the best claret were his usual beverage when alone; but he counted largely on invitations to dinner from passing Englishmen. As he grew older, gluttony grew upon him; ho had not the heart to refuse an invitation, no matter what the hour of ” feeding.”

In Slaters Directory 1852/3 it was written:

The spinning of worsted yarn and the manufacture of woollen goods , formerly ranked as the staple here; but these branches have greatly declined, if they are not entirely lost – blanketing and fiuscy being the only articles now manufactured. Dorchester ale has long been famed, and it still maintains a superior character; the mutton of this district is liekwise held in great and general estimation. 

The same source for that text has a helpful page on one Robert Galpin of Fordington in the County of Dorset, Brewer, which give a helpful sense of scale of brewing operations then or at least his operation at the time.

What to make of it all?  Dorchester Ale / Beer appear to be a Georgian thing that arcs in parallel to Burton and Nottingham, coming after 1600s and early 1700s strong English ales like Lambeth, Derby, Hull and Northdown/Margate.  Like Taunton, it is exported to North America and perhaps elsewhere in the colonies. It is not as strong as others and seems to have chalky water with a pronounced residual sweetness.  Premium while not necessarily being a headbanger.

Interesting also to note how these strong pale ales named after the city or region in which they were brewed generally (but not exclusively) fit between (i) the Medieval and Tudor pattern of naming beers according to their heft: half-penny, two penny, double double and (ii) the brewer branded beer, scientifically made proto-styles we start seeing beginning in the 1800s. Like the climactic observations on the reason French bread in great in the recent excellent article in the New Yorker “Baking Bread in Lyon“, they would have been remarkable for some local characteristic that set them apart.

I will have to organize these posts on English Stuart and Georgian era regional strong pale ales into some better categorizations. They need an umbrella term. They are not styles in the same sense as their predecessors or their descendants. But they were clearly recognizable and sought out for their prestige.

*And I trust that table rendered well at your end of the internets.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Week Three… I Think… Maybe

It’s now April so I think we may be well into the third week of the kids at home and limited public travel. The working life of a municipality has been fairly breakneck but we are all in this together.  Not much time for either the beer or the blog… which puts a bit of a damper on beer blogging. But, as with last week, beer has again be delivered – this time from our own and excellent Stone City Ales where the staff have been heroes* – so let’s see what we can find, shall we?

There are a lot of brave positive statements being made in the beer trade out there, this sort of thing found in the spam filter included:

With the number of breweries, tasting rooms, restaurants and bars closed across the country, we want to remind you that retailers such as grocery stores and bottles shops currently remain a viable way to shop for beverages while practicing social distancing. We also encourage the use of online delivery services as a responsible option in those states where available.

This is good but, at some point, also unnecessary for every point in the supply chain to issue.  We are probably at that point.  The messaging now needs to be stay in place and see you at the other end when the shift in the industry can be reassessed. Me, I hope this new home delivery in Ontario becomes a norm.

On Wednesday, Jordan posted a piece on how the virus and staying in place was affecting one of the less unloved sectors in the beer trade, contract brewers:

Contract Brewing is a fraught subject, but preserving the companies that are doing it has an upside in the face of this 12 week lockdown that the city of Toronto has imposed. There are a number of existing companies that depend on the contracts to fill their volume. Junction Brewing produces both Paniza and True History. Storyteller is produced at Brunswick in Toronto. If those contracting companies fail, there is a knock on effect which causes a decrease in volume at those larger facilities. 

A wee bit of brewing history was discussed last weekend when reports came out of a stash of Victorian era beer found in a UK archaeological dig at a former site of Tetley’s Brewery:

Buried treasure isn’t always the stereotypical chest of gold coins: In the case of a recent British archaeological dig, it turned out to be an enormous stash of beer. Last month, while digging on the site of the former Tetley’s Brewery, in the Northern English city of Leeds, archaeologists from the West Yorkshire Archaeological Services (WYAS) discovered a neatly-stacked stash of over 600 bottles — many of which were still full…

Not sure I want to drink any of the stuff. Moving to the eye on the near future, Stan released the latest issued of his regular newsletter on the state of a key corner of the trade, Hop Queries.  It included this passage on the state of hop farming as Covid-19 moves through the marketplace:

Brewers hope to be in a better position to make predictions for the rest of 2020 before long, but hops are agriculture and farmers can’t wait. As Gayle Goschie at Goschie Farms in Oregon wrote, “Mother Nature has her calendar and we coordinate our needed seasonal work around what the year’s weather brings us.” Although she and the office team are working from home, field work is continuing at normal pace. “Having 40-50 employees spread over 500 acres of hops has us practicing social distancing to the max.”

Back to today, the man called Protz wrote about an age-old question – why is UK cask ale so modestly priced:

I disagree with James Calder on the need to “premiumise” – ugly word — real ale. I cannot accept that cask beer should be seen as the drink of choice of the better-off. It was clear to me that one reason the Wat Tyler in Dartford was busy on a damp, cold Tuesday lunchtime in March was that its captive audience was made up of people who couldn’t afford more than £3.50 for a pint.

Also with a thumb on the pulse of the moment, on Monday Bart of the BA sent out some stats showing a shift in US beer sales was clearly occurring, with the theme being “all beer up“!

IRI scan data from the week ending 3-22 is in & it was another big week for off-premise as consumers stocked up and replaced on-premise purchases. BA Craft up 31.1% by volume versus the same week YA. All beer up 30.7%.

And a wonderful story out of central New York state this week with those whose employment affected by the reduction of work doing the unexpected:

Four of the laid-off workers — tasting room managers Cassie Clack, Barb Lewis, Alanna Maher and Janelle Reale — had a surprise. They’d reached out to dozens and dozens of current and former tasting room staff at the winery and urged them to come together — or as together as they can under social distancing. Then they led a 70-car caravan to the winery at 623 Lerch Road to pick up the wines and beers they’d been ordering all week.

Good stuff. And there was more – as of Tuesday, like so many other craft beverage firms with a distiller’s kit, BrewDog had made a significant contribution to the fight against the virus:

Jill & Leanne, NHS Ambulance Service, picking up 1,000 bottles of free @BrewDog sanitiser today for their frontline team. We have donated over 100,000 bottles to key workers and charities so far.

And finally Ron the Honest has posted a number of posts about his recent junket to Brazil describing events as they were and perhaps not how they are always presented:

I’m up much earlier than I would have liked. 7 AM. As the car taking me and Martyn to where we’re talking is scheduled for 7:50. And I want to have time for brekkie. Martyn trolls up a few minutes after me.

“I don’t expect to see many judges at my talk. They’ll all still be in bed. Pissheads.”  “That’s a bit harsh, Ron.” “Count how many turn up. You’ve more chance as you’re on an hour later.”

Folk think I have a bug in my ear over this junket stuff but having been on a few way back when I primarily find it entertaining, especially as Ron describes it. More fun than productive. Like all these meetings we now know could have been emails. Except a good serving of fun with a side dish of the same small circle. But fun is good.

Remember – even in these troubled times – there is more beer news every week 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Keep hunkering! We got this.

Your Thursday Beer News Notes For The Week Which Was The Best Of Times And The Worst Of Times

What a week! And it’s not done yet. I’m working in isolation as many of you are while many others are not able to work. Here in Canada, a huge collective response is underway at the many levels of government and public compliance with sheltering in place is high. Neighbours are sharing with neighbours. It seems to be working well and I hope the same is true where you are.  Well, working well for the most part:

P.E.I. farmer keeps social distance by hurling pork products to hungry customers.

People are finding out how to make do in the beer world. I get by with a bit of the old bunting when the sun shines. The Polk is out on the porch, too  a sure sign of a Canadian spring.  The BA is looking into supply chains. Some aren’t. Some places it is about bounced paycheques. Andy wrote about the scene as of Monday and it ain’t pretty in the world of NuKraft:

With tap rooms closed, thousands of breweries around the country no longer have a source of income. Most don’t have their own canning or bottling equipment. They don’t have relationships with distributors or bars, restaurants, or off-premise stores. They never saw the need to diversify their operations because nothing could ever shut off their money maker, the customer at their own bar. 

My favourite so far is  (err… perhaps poorly) illustrated to the right, the Albany Pump Station driving around with a growler fill tap truck as Craig described:

Does your brewer show up at your house, with a trailer full of beer and fill growlers for you at 9pm? Mine does. C.H. Evans Brewing Albany Pump Station a buzz tomorrow and ask if Sam will Santa Claus over to your house tomorrow! $10 crowlers (or 3 for $20)!

In Ireland, an extra-legal approach to keeping the taps flowing has lead to a stern warning:

Publicans who have opened despite the Government’s direction that they close for two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic have not only put the wider public at serious risk, they have also put their licences and livelihoods on the line, one of the State’s leading barristers has warned. Senior Counsel Constance Cassidy who specialises in liquor licence applications, told The Irish Times that although the closure guidelines issued last week “are merely directory in nature until specific regulatory legislation is introduced”, publicans have been ignoring them at their peril.

In my own town, newly opened Daft Brewing has, a bit by luck, joined the ranks of those making hand sans-a-hizer:

The company’s new-found ability to make the increasingly scarce hand sanitizer hinged on a decision to buy a 200-litre still from China. “At the time we were thinking we couldn’t get this cheaper and with free shipping, so we just bought it for future use,” Rondeau said. “We had no plans to use it. We’re not a distillery. We just had it sitting in storage.” Skip ahead to three days ago, after hearing about how distillers were switching production to hand sanitizer, and the company’s employees dragged the still out of storage.

The UK’s mass watering hole chain Wetherspoons appears to be rushing to the bottom according to Rog the Protz:

Just in case any of you were thinking the #TimMartin #Wetherspoons fiasco couldn’t get any worse (keep my businesses open no risk in pubs, laying off staff without pay “go & get a job in Tesco”) he’s now written to out of pocket suppliers they must wait at his pleasure to be paid

And just like that, the pure power of Protz proves its potency as the hairy dimwit running the place does a 180. Good news for the staff.

Next, a bit of history was made this week as Martyn wrote the tale of a very early and not much good porter brewery in the US state of Virginia – which might be the first but is certainly the earliest example so far of porter brewing on this side of the Atlantic*:

In 1766 the brewery made 550 bushels of malt, but the quality of much of the beer and ale produced was poor. Mercer wrote to his eldest son George that “Wales complains of my Overseer & says that he is obliged to wait for barley, coals & other things that are wanted which, if timely supplied with he could with six men & a boy manufacture 250 bushels a week which would clear £200 … My Overseer is a very good one & I believe as a planter equal to any in Virginia but you are sensible few planters are good farmers and barley is a farmer’s article.”

And Boak and Bailey have posted about one of my favourite forms of Victorian writing, the recollection of how things were in youth, that leads them on a chase for the meaning of Kennett Ale:

The novelist and historian Walter Besant’s 1888 book Fifty Years Ago is an attempt to record the details of life in England in the 1830s, including pubs and beer. Of course this doesn’t count as a primary source, even if 1888 is closer to 1838 than 2020. Besant was himself born in 1836 and the book seems laced with rosy nostalgia – a counterpoint, at least, to contemporary sources whose detail is distorted by temperance mania…

These sorts of writings were very handy as part of the patching together of the 1800s tales of Albany Ale and Cream Beer. I trust them as recollections in the way one trust evidence in a court proceeding. Something to build upon.

In the category of upside effect of pandemic, ATJ had dusted off Called to the Bar and is getting back in the blogging game as part of his isolation skills development program. His first new post was about his experience of “PSS” – pub separation syndrome:

Where shall I wander when I’m told if I’m old and need to be at home? At what shall I wonder if I cannot stroll alone? The cities and towns in which I clowned but also frowned and then classed glasses of brown, gold and amber beers with varying degrees of hwyl are closed to me for now. 

And Jeffery John himself has fired up the coal-fed servers and has Stonch’s Beer Blog running again:

Day one of being a pub landlord on Coronavirus lockdown: mothball the cellar; thoroughly clean lines; switch off all non-essential equipment.

Day two: turn the remote cooler back on again; connect a keg up to *just one* line for personal consumption.

Day three: get the ice machine going for 5pm G&Ts; decide it’s reasonable to have one IPA line and one lager line in operation for me and my cabin-mate.

JC’s Beer Blog is also revived. Any others?  We need to recall that blogging was one way that we got through the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It’s good to write.

In the world of not-beer, another positive out of the lock down of the planet appears to be the delay in releasing the next vintage of Bordeaux so that it will be first reviewing from the bottle not the cask:

Normally, tastings for the new vintage would take place at the end of this month and early April. Scores and reports would emerge at the end of April and into early May and the first wines, bar the odd wild outlier, would start to trickle out in late May with trading properly happening in June and all wrapped up by July. All in all you have five months of Bordeaux-focused discussion and selling, something entirely unique in the world of fine wine. It’s no wonder it causes such jealousy. In a normal world the Bordelais would not want to release the 2019 wines until the trade has tasted them and formulated an opinion but when can this happen? France is currently in lockdown and the UK is rapidly following suit. When exactly both countries – and indeed other western countries that constitute en primeur’s primary markets – will be fully released from this limbo is unclear at present.

Remember – even in these troubled times, there is more beer news every week 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Check them out. Hunker down. You got this.

*Must check on this. A rogue porter brewery in Newfoundland would not surprise me if it were not for their happy habit from the 1500s on of importing all the good stuff they need.

The Times Are Really Too Serious For The Thursday Beery News

I am not sure what exactly struck me about the two images I have placed side by side above this week as Jeff took a moment to be silent as I fret and bathe my hands in sanitizing stuff. To the left is a photo from the Facebook page for Belgium’s Oud Beersel and to the right we have a moment shared somewhere of Dan of the Brewery of St Mars of the Desert. Lovely. There are certainly common aspects of the colours and massing within the images. But what each of which really spoke to me was about such excellent things not being as we expect them to be. Lambic from a cardboard box. Goodness from a jug.*

First off, what a whalloping take on beer festivals was offered up by Ben this week:

…there might be no character more reprehensible in this industry than the craft beer festival organizer. Even we lowly beer bloggers, with our distended bellies full of free barrel-aged stout and our shoulders slouched from years at an overheating laptop that’s rendered our genital useless, will look upon the shady beer festival organizer and, with hate in our hearts and complimentary cheese in ours mouth, rightfully share our open disdain for this unique breed of leech.

It has always surprised me that while Ben exists on the planet it is I who have been labeled as “good beer’s community curmudgeon” or “the planet’s #1 naysayer.” Don’t believe it. This post of his goes boom when it hits the floor with facts flying in all directions. I, as dear mother always said, am nothing in comparison.

Somewhat more subtly but still in the realm of pulling the band aid off with one sharp tug of the child’s quivering arm, Jordan wrote about Mascot, a Toronto brewery this week:

From my left, Trevor asks at one point, what makes one of the guest taps an Old Ale. Old Ale does not come up much, and never had much cache in my experience. There’s not really a satisfactory answer from behind the bar on that point, and Trevor speculates for a minute about what it might be. It’s at this point that I realize that I’m not having any luck looking up information on any of the beers on offer. The website offers lunch, brunch, and dinner menus, but no tap list. You can download a product list from the website, but it is dated April 2, which puts it at at least 49 weeks old.

Yeowch. And when a principal of the brewery shared on FB that “in the process of changing the beer program and educating the staff more” Jordan replied “I am actually surprised no one got back to me when I gave them 24 hours notice.”

Jordan also had an excellent interview with the national broadcaster on the effects of Ontario government policy.* Which leads to a question or two. Especially when combined with Ben’s post above. Why is no one else noticing this stuff? Are writers in your area also taking the dumb parts of beer culture apart? Or is this just a new blip here in a place to stand, a place to grow? One possible reason raised in a side conversation is that the state of craft beer has gotten to the point that the beer itself is now not that big a part of the calculation. The taproom, the beer label, the music, the pairing… it’s all about not-the-beer. Who speaks for the beer anymore? Not sure. I left a comment at Stan’s that is not unrelated that I am plunking here to remind me to unpack it a bit more:

I think I’ve decided upon a theory that works. Craft is not longer the era many brewers are in now. The glass of handmade was abandoned long ago. We are now post-historical in the sense that Nietzsche wrote about. Sheer capability to do anything is what is being explored. We don’t like that feeling, the abandonment of the system. We all know that milkshake IPA is not an IPA but we desperately hand the three letters as a suffix. We need connection even when the whole point is breaking connection. So too how beer writers comment on White Claw as it it’s something other than another alcopop. Historians and commentators exist to explain context. Context is now irrelevant.

Moving on, as Covid-19 fills the news, there are somethings to note. First, as Carla Jean points out, breweries should not be branding any beer about a killing strain of infection as a baseline principle. Of course, morons immediately slagged her for the suggestion. [Because craft is special, right? And filled with good people.]

Next, in the general area of what I call the Balkans, Prof. Todor Kantardzhiev, director of the Bulgarian National Center for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases explained something that I had not known:

When contacted with the virus by the third day, the person may not be ill but spread it. It is not yet known how to spread how close the contact should be. The coronavirus is highly susceptible to disinfectants. Dies very quickly from alcohol. “Regular hard drinkers are much more protected! ” he added.

Interestingly, a few Balks to the west, Serbian government leaders were saying not so much the opposite as pretty much the same thing backwards… maybe:

President Aleksandar Vucic seized on questions about the efficacy of alcohol applied externally to kill the virus to make a joke. “Once again, I joke on my own account,” he said. “After they told me — and now I see that Americans insist it’s true — that coronavirus doesn’t grow wherever you put alcohol, I’ve now found myself an additional reason to drink one glass a day, so…. But it has nothing to do with that alcohol [liquor], I just made that up for you to know.”

So, who to believe? Dunno. But, yes, #tuttoandràbene.

Somewhat related, this image to the right was attached to a tiny tweet about the politics of quarantines in 1721 London:

In late 1721 the common council of #London complained to #Parliament about the Quarantine Act, which they claimed “affected ‘not only the rights, privileges and immunities’ but also the ‘trade, safety, and prosperity of the city of London’.”

Click on the image and have a look at the drinking scene in the lower left corner. Looks like a tiny beer fest, everyone properly staggering. Except those are getting cancelled, too.

Elsewhere and without thoughts of contamination, NHS Martin directed us to a new writer this week, Blackpool Jane. While the focus is on the fitba, there is beer afterwards such as when:

We managed to secure an outdoor table and sat back and relaxed with some great beer, watching the world go by and simply enjoying Blackpool and each other’s company.  We had planned to take in the Queen tribute band at the Marton Institute Beer & Music Festival, but we simply couldn’t bring ourselves to leave this idyll.  I enjoyed three pints of the delightfully-quaffable Potbelly Beijing Black before tucking into a Chicken Panang Curry, with a couple of amarettos for dessert. 

Short takes:

When your turn for the mandatory isolation order comes along, don’t forget there is more beer news every week 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Check them out.

*Update, Dec 2021: just for posterity, the weird but no doubt Covid panic induced butt hurt in the comments was over earlier wording “Flavour from a jug of juice” which I really never should have edited out.
**For the double!!

Fine… It’s March And Here Are The Thursday Beery News Notes

I thought the new month would have made a big difference. But a couple of twelve hour days in hard black shoes and a snow squall meeting me as I got off the bus that finally made it through rerouted traffic and, well… well… well, at least it ain’t February any more. Let’s see what is going on!

First, there was much fretting in Engerlant over the shadowy Portman Group issuing an edict against a beer label. Now, I’ve beer posting about the shadowy Portman Group’s edicts since at least 2008 so I don’t really care that much now. But the fretting of others was remarkable. SIBA objected to the lack of much due process. The BBC covered it like it was an actual news story. Martyn wrote: “Running with Sceptres is not the ditch to die in over the Portman Group and its bans…” and then wrote more. Folk were cloyingly superior, spitting angry and even spent all the rent money. Pete went all Pete and shouted from the barricades that we need to “…check out the beautiful, sometimes strangely moving, artwork.” See, that is my issue. To me, that label on the can looks like panels stolen from a 1950s Rupert the Bear book.  And me, I don’t buy beer for the artwork and especially not Rupert the Bear rip-offs. In fact, if the art is too good, I assume they are cutting corners on the actual brewing resources. The money can only be spent once after all. Watch yourselves out there.

In another chapter of the tale how craft goes bad, we learned that Goose Island tri-packs with bottles of 2017, 2018 and 2019 Bourbon County stout have been marked down in the US Midwest to about 20% of their original inflated price. Imagine how many casks of the 2020 and even 2021 are sitting there in brewery warehouses… err… cellars with operating managers knowing how little it is really worth now. With such bad value, maybe they will be candidates for that #FlagshipFlotsam* thing one day.

In yet another sign of craft’s collapse, I had originally thought that this was a parody post from Ben, the tale of a overly-branded vegan brewery in Toronto shutting:

It’s like gentrification on human growth hormones, delivered by “The 5700,” a company that “manages a growing portfolio of lifestyle and entertainment brands that live online.” Now excuse me while I clean up the rage-induced blood-vomit typing that phrase has induced. Vegandale Brewery, which seemed to actually just be a coat of paint and a new name for the main floor of the existing Duggan’s Brewery, who officially moved to the basement of the location six months ago, wasn’t helping the image of veganism. Vegandale Brewery launched with the slogan “Morality on tap” and poured beers like Morally Superior IPA and Shining Example Stout. Yikes.

One last bit of endtimesy-wimsey news from CNY:

The Gordon Biersch Restaurant Brewery in Destiny USA closed today, joining a growing list of locations the national chain has been shutting down across the country. The brewpub — a restaurant with an attached brewhouse — opened in the Syracuse mall in 2012 and occupied a space on the first level, near the Hiawatha Street entrance.

I went there once as the family shopped out in the unending megamall for transitory branded objects. I came away with no actual recollections of the experience. Apparently, I was not alone… or at least not as alone as the bartenders were.

More in line with the “get in line” section of the news, I was glad to see this bit of law enforcement in Ontario’s news this week:

Jason Fach, 38, pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death in December. An agreed statement of facts says that he had had four 20 oz. beers in a little more than an hour at St. Louis Bar and Grill the night of the crash. Fach has been sentenced to six years in prison. On Feb. 28, police announced that they had charged the restaurant, its owners and two staff members. The charges include selling liquor to an intoxicated person, permit drunkenness on licensed premises and failing to facilitate inspection. Under Ontario law, an establishment and its ownership can be held responsible for overserving someone.

The liability of a licensed establishment is distinct from social host liability in which responsibility is much reduced here in the land of the maple and the moose.

On another sort of establishment in another land, Retired Martin posted a lovely photo essay, a snippet of one of which sits above, on a very specific topic this week:

“Should it be open ?” I asked the chattiest of the group, all of whom had OS maps in plastic wallets round their necks. “Oh yes, I phoned them up before we set off. They SAID they’d be open”. Hmmm.

Even more elsewhere, it was Icelandic Beer Day last Sunday.

A nice posi-post of a piece on a lager was sent out via the internets by Pellicle this week:

Thankfully, there was Keller Pils, a lemon-bitter pale lager from Bristol brewery Lost and Grounded. The first barely touched the sides: one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone. The second, golden and glistening with condensation in a Willi Becher—a classic straight German glass that tapers elegantly towards the top—took longer. It was crisp but rich, toasty and bitter, direct and deeply rewarding.

One problem with these sorts of nice posi-posts is how they remind you of other positive experience unrelated to the subject matter. I can think of fifty other beers that have happily let to “one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone” which is not, I suspect, the point of writing about a particular thing. I did notice the pretty can, however. And this rather honest comment from a co-owner of the brewery:

“It’s like a Rubik’s cube, you know?” Alex says. “It’s about the branding. It’s the communications. It’s the quality of the product. It’s about people out on the road talking about it. It’s about how you work with the wholesalers … it’s all sorts of everything.”

And speaking of nothing in particular, here’s an interesting bit of spam by email:

I am the marketing director for Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. As you may know, Jolly Pumpkin is an all wild, oak-aged brewery. We are announcing the launch of a new canning line for our wild ales and thought that your readers might be interested in the news. The first beers off the line will be year-round favorites, Bam Bière and Calabaza Blanca. We will also be canning Hyrrokkin, the first release of a new fruited seasonal saison series. 

Jolly Pumpkin in a can! Long term readers will recall when I spent a happy late afternoon in the company of owner/brewer Ron J back in 2007 when beer bloggers were still unique enough to not have the parking lot lights turned off and all the doors locked when one showed up to check out a brewery.  Now they sell the stuff in a can. Pretty cans. Life comes at you quickly.

Speaking of the most fabulous thing I heard related to the drinks trade this week…

The bartender at the Radisson Kingswood Hotel in Hanwell, near Fredericton, helped deliver a baby in a snowstorm on Thursday night. Storey said she got the call when she was closing down the bar for the night. “The person who works the front desk, Nick, comes over and says, ‘There’s someone having a baby in our lobby,'” said Storey. “At first I thought he was kidding.”

That’s enough. Once a child is born we have hit peak beer news for the week. And remember, if you want more beer news, check out 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Check them out. They are like blogs but with people speaking and saying “umm” a lot instead.

*…which is still really better than #JetsamJanuary if you think about it.

These Be The Final Thursday Beery News Notes For February 2020

Go. Go put on your 45 of Don McLean singing “American Pie,” his lament for the milestones marking the ends of innocence during the first two decades of the rock ‘n’ roll era. Go put it on and have have a good cry because that’s sorta what happened this week. BeerAdvocate got bought.  They didn’t “join forces” with anyone.* As they explained on Monday:

A large portion of our business relied on revenue from BeerAdvocate magazine. As the focus of readers and advertisers shifted over recent years, our publication wasn’t immune to the issues that have impacted the entire print media industry. Next Glass stepped up to ensure that our awesome community that we’ve all worked hard to cultivate since 1996 can continue to thrive for years to come.

They ran out of dough and needed someone to take them over. Which is fine.  Next Glass runs that Untappd thing I don’t use but others do. So that is good. BeerAdvocate  will continue in a fashion but just not what they have been doing excellently for over twenty years.  I share the photo to the right as testimonial to their excellence. I took that photo and they like it so much they put it in their magazine in the December 2007 edition. Didn’t ask. Didn’t pay me for it. But I got a good complaining post out of it sixteen years ago so it all worked out in the end.** But it sucks that they had to take a buy out.

From the archives and related: the state of beer mags in 2007.

As mentioned last week, Jancis Robinson is asking questions about the transport weight of wine bottles in a world more and more concerned with sustainability:

The most sustainable way of shipping wine is by sea in a tanker. A wine shipped in bulk to New York from Australia could easily have a lower carbon footprint than one trucked in bottle from California (though behemoth Gallo has long shipped wine across the country by rail). A container of bulk wine holds two and half times as much wine as a container packed with conventional 75-cl bottles. It may sound dreadfully unromantic, but the technology of bulk shipping of wine has improved beyond recognition in the last few years, as has the expertise of professional wine bottlers in major wine-importing countries in northern Europe.

What weight of beer is shipped around the world and how big a carbon footprint does that represent? Should that be calculated into the value of an imported beer – or a big craft beer shipped by truck across the continent?

Best image in beer this week from B and the other B.

Ben, Canada’s leading beer writer best known for not writing that much about beer anymore,*** took the time to do what I can’t be bothered to do – complain about #FlagshipFebruary which is on its last legs… err, week! I meant week!

At the risk of opening my door tomorrow morning to find a frothy-mouthed Beaumont on my porch with a straight razor in his hand, I’d suggest the way to move the needle forward in craft beer isn’t to have a handful of established beer writers talk about a handful of beers that were once relevant. They (the beers that is) are essentially relics of a bygone era and while they broke down doors for today’s craft beers, our interest in them now is and should be a sort of reverential nostalgia and tolerance. Instead of endearing icons, I’d suggest they’re now a bit more like once-great athletes, hanging around their respective sports just a little too long.

Yesterday’s beer for yesterday’s fans brought to you by yesterday’s… Oh. Yes… err… no… that would be unkind.

Note: …and then Ben goes and posts one of his best posts ever**** on Wednesday on the cancellation of the Ontario Beer Summit, a beer diversity conference in Toronto that was being organized by indefatigable Ren Navarro, due to lack of buy in from the target audience, aka the local craft brewers.

Katie is writing something… but what?

In the hot legal new department, Brendan tweeted about the Estate of Johnny Cash (yeah!) suing something called Cash Brewing Company Inc. (boo!) for ripping off the man in black’s trademark.  They even have a beer named “The Can in Black” which I think qualifies as a bastardly thing to do to the memory of old Johnny.

Dr. Christina Wade has written about on the connection and disconnections between alewives and witches in early modern England:

While we may never truly know if alewives were accused of witchcraft simply because they were alewives, it is clear that women who brewed were perhaps particularly vulnerable to the witch-hunts.

Not moving far in space but certainly in time, a brewer in Norfolk, England is pushing a beer barrel on a 140 mile trip. Why? To to raise money for the testicular cancer charity, It’s On The Ball. BBC Radio Norfolk has the story somewhere in this three hour broadcast at about the two hour and fifteen minute mark.

Stan’s Hop Queries digi-hop-zine came out this week and included this observation:

Peter Darby, who has been breeding hops in England for almost 40 years, once said this: “English flavor is like a chamber orchestra, the hops giving simultaneously the high notes and the bass notes. In comparison, a Czech beer is more like a full orchestra with much more breadth to the sound, and an American hop gives more of a dance band with more emphasis on volume and brass. The recent New Zealand hops (e.g. Nelson Sauvin) are like adding a voice to the instrumental music.”

I usually hate that sorta thing but I don’t fully in this case. Almost. Analogies? Really? So 2008. I really only mention it to remind you to sign up. That up there is just a tidbit and a bit of a blip at that on on the great information he periodically produces through the periodical. Did you know that there were 770 attendees at the 2020 American Hop Convention? Neither did I… until Stan told me so.

Stan also sent me an email asking my thoughts on this book, How NOT to start a F@ck!ng Brewery. I checked out the Amazon “Look Inside!” thingme and had flashbacks from writing the Al and Max book. So much dirty language. So much. 

And finally, sad reality in the form of far grimmer bit of news than anyone would want to have to face was shared on Wednesday with the shootings at MillerCoors in Milwaukee. Terrible news. Yes, be excellent to each other.

Next week, on to March. In the meantime for more beer news, check out 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. What else? What indeed.

*They also confirmed on their blog post that they didn’t run a blog, either.
**…and I never saw a case of beer either, Evan.
***A remarkably packed field competed for this award.
****Blogs are back, baby!