Category: Hops

Christmas Eve 2020’s Merry And Very Own Beery News Notes


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It’s gone a bit quiet, hasn’t it. Yes, yes… there’s lockdown after lockdown all around – but there’s also winter settling in and Yuletide, too. Watching the UK – French blockade news is disheartening but at least France 24 is reporting all the Scottish scallops now in Paris have been sold. So, while we can’t be like those folk above from 1775 – and while we can’t even be down the pub with Santa Sid – we can more quietly mark the season and the day as our beliefs guide us. Go make a snow angel or just watch the stars overheard if the clouds take a break. Or do whatever you want… MNSFW.  It’s too late anyway, December 23rd as I write this. Tibb’s Eve in Newfoundland. Too late to change what’s happening now. The arse is out of it. We have bought the gifts, loaded the larder, filled the buttery and started to drain the bottles. Not quite the new roaring ’20s yet still a welcome break from the lockdowns.

Lockdowns. Always the lockdowns. One report on the lockdown from the auslanders on the way out of the EU  comes from The Retired Man Named Martin who went out a shipping in Sheffield:

Well, there was no panic buying. Perhaps because Northerners are less reliant on brie than London, perhaps because Morrisons are better at stocking shelves than Waitrose, perhaps because there’s a choice of a dozen supermarkets within a mile radius.

No panic. Good. No one needs that. Similarly – but a word that beer nerds like to deny – one of the most important in brewing is also on the go. Consolidation.  As Cookie noted, it is interesting then to read news of CAMRA welcoming one particular deal:

The Campaign for Real Ale said: “While we still need to see the detail of this deal, at first glance it appears a positive move. We hope this means that Marston’s will continue to run the pubs as beloved locals, securing their future for the communities that use them and the people they employ.” Findlay pledged to continue with Brains beers and said its tenanted tied pubs would now be able to stock the ales made by the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company as well.

1,300 jobs saved. Maybe. Prepare ye for the top trend of Q1-Q3 2021. Consolidations are coming just as they always have after bottom is hit. Speaking of saving the day, I had no idea that there was intra-Germanic regulation of beer branding:

The consumer protection agency from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has now banned a beer called Colonia, produced by a Frankfurt brewery, from being sold in NRW, where Cologne is situated. The State Agency for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection (LANUV) said the Frankfurt beer’s name and label could lead consumers to think they were buying Kölsch… The word Colonia harks back to the Latin name of the Roman colony from which the city developed, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium… The term “Kölsch” has a protected geographical indication (PGI) within the European Union, meaning that a beer can be sold under that name only if it is brewed within 50 kilometres (30 miles) of the city of Cologne.

The Beer Nut is not panicking either in this time of second or third wave – and gave a lesson to those unappointed and slightly sad mere beer experts who know not how to cram so much opinion, information and joy into just one paragraph:

Blackest of the black; shiny with a deep tan head, it looks like it promises a good time. The aroma is fairly mild, but gives you all the cocoa you could want from a porter. The flavour is where it really excels. Well, flavour and mouthfeel: the two are inextricably linked. Big and creamy, and a little chewy is how it rolls; cakey, gooey. On that texture rides dark chocolate and liquorice for two kinds of sweetshop bitterness: a rich coffee roast and then a fruity plum pudding thing at the end. It’s sumptuous, and one of those strong dark jobs that makes you wonder why breweries even bother with barrel ageing. More biggity-big no-gimmick porters please!

Speaking of excellence, Martyn noted one “ancient brewing” story that was 67% less full of lies – and utter lies – with only passing reference to Dog Fish Head and the Hymn to Ninkasi, both well trod recourses to the shortcutter, in favour of more interesting info:

The location suggests the Natufians—a hunter-gatherer group that lived along the eastern Mediterranean from 15,000 to 11,000 years ago—used beer in honoring the dead. The beer’s age—between 13,700 and 11,700 years old—is a surprise. The beverage is roughly as old as the oldest Natufian bread, from between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago, discovered at a nearby site in Jordan.

Also thinking historically-wise, Gary posted a double this week, both on the question of English Christmas ales. One about Hallett and Abbey’s version from 160 years ago and, then, the associations between the day and the beer:

The Belgians and northern French took in general to branding beer for Christmas especially after World War II. It was a progenitor to the current widespread practice by craft brewers to label beers for the Season. Anchor Brewery’s annual Christmas Ale was influential here. Its beer is spiced, a different formula each year, reflecting that part of the Christmas beer tradition. Christmas ale was never, in other words, a fixed style or type of beer. At best it might mean something special made available at Christmas. Sussex-based Harvey’s award-winning Christmas Ale, a barley wine (old Burton type), is an outstanding current example in the UK.

Never knew that. And speaking of things I had never heard of until just now, Stan released his latest Hop Queries monthly newsletter this week full of stats and non-stats sharing mucho including this about “dip hopping”:

So what do we know? Kirin began using the process in 2012 for its Grand Kirin beers. Basically, brewers there make a slurry by steeping hops for about an hour at temperatures (150-170° F) lower than found in conventional whirlpooling, then add the slurry into cooled wort before pitching yeast. Kirin found that the resulting beers contained as much linalool as dry hopped beers but less myrcene (which may mask fruity aromas associated with linalool and other oxygenated compounds). This also reduced production of 2M3MB (an onion-like off flavor).

Onion an off flavour? Don’t tell my Yuletide roasts. All in moderation, of course. And one last note. Stay within your means. Even Jude Law, the other lesser Leonardo DiCaprio, has issues with focusing on managing the load. Govern yourselves accordingly. Ho. Ho. And… ho.

There. Soon 2020 will be gone. Like I said about 1987. That one sucked. Let’s see how the last week of 2020 plays out but Trump’s going, we may now be past peak beer writer editor fawning and the vaccine is well on the way. Can’t be all bad. And remember that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday 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 (who advocates for a blog renaissance this week… though it is funny that he says “paid=good”… just means obedient far too often.)  And remember BeerEdge, too. Go! Merry Christmas all you all. See you on New Year’s Eve.

The Last Autumnal Thursday And Its Beery News Notes

I have been burning off unused holidays built up over the months of the early times, back when there were no days or even hours to be had. This week, I motored 20 km west, over to MacKinnon Brothers to pick up gifty swag and chatted briefly about business with brother Dan, the brother who joined the 1780 challenge and pretendy stabbed the rebellious Craig for the camera. They brew on the lands the family has farmed since the 1780s when they first arrived as Anglo-American Loyalist refugees.  The site has got to be one of the most attractive in all of brewing-dom, especially with the new barn space upgrades Dan showed me and that just slightly less new build cathedral-like reception building. Gorgeous. More images below.

 

 

 

 

Other than that, it has been a quiet week in my corner of the universe. Some Tuesdays I open up my folder for the weekly round up and find thirty things to consider. Others, not so much. Let’s see what’s up? First up, our local government run store started and stopped a ill-considered deal with Skip The Dishes, a meal delivery service, providing a way for prepared food and food-like objects to be delivered to Ontarians with some hootch. Not no more – and with good reason:

Through the partnership, customers could have ordered alcohol from the SkipTheDishes app and website. The partnership caused consternation in the restaurant and bar industry, which has been relying in part on the sale of alcohol through takeout and delivery to pay its bills. “Following direction from the Ontario Government, effective end of day today, LCBO’s partnership with SkipTheDishes is paused until further notice,” the LCBO said in a statement on Sunday.

In other offices elsewhere, folk are more successfully branching out to keep the lights on. I have to say, I have no idea who the market is for the Cicerone Explore Beer which, for $25 gets you a digital badge… but not decoder ring.  The next level up, the Certified Beer Server program is simple enough for anyone needing such things. Also – and this one really does me in – one of those blogs that pretends it’s a magazine, Hop Culture, has sold. Fruit juice oriented stuff. Scan my site. Never referenced it.  Often times, these sales are for the IP to the name or the URL  rights so go figure.

Much more substantive is the piece in this week’s Pellicle (of which I have to admit I am a low-mid-level patron, my only such dalliance), a neato exploration of the Neomexicanus hop of New Mexico which Stan has written of some years ago now:

I’m stunned by this revelation. The hop bines I’m looking at—while not at their most majestic—are very much viable and alive. It seems like a miracle. For other varieties, surely such water deprivation would leave nothing but a shrivelled brown mess? “If I had Chinook or Cascade and had the same situation where I lost water, they would probably die” Brain agrees. As we climb back into the Mule, I’m bristling with excitement for what I’ve just seen; hops deprived of water for many weeks that are alive and well.

[Note to self: I need to search the Pellicle sight to see how many things have “stunned” its cadre of authors but “bristling” might be a new one.]

And as for the man who will never sell*, The Beer Nut has launched and investigation into the clone beers of grocer Aldi and finds the relationship is only branding-deep:

What a jape! What an absolute wheeze! When discount supermarket Aldi brought out obvious knock-offs of BrewDog’s flagship beers Punk IPA and Elvis Juice, the Scottish brewer retaliated with ALD IPA, appropriating the German chain’s company livery. Suspiciously soon afterwards, Aldi agreed to begin stocking ALD alongside their specially-commissioned BrewDog doppelgangers, Anti-Establishment IPA and Memphis Blvd. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for some blind-taste fun, to find out if Aldi really can go toe-to-toe with a brewery of BrewDog’s stature. Of course, the recipes of Anti-Establishment and ALD have nothing at all in common with each other, and the beers look very different: one a russet amber, the other purest spun gold.

The question of whether Scotch eggs are a “substantial meal” has popped up again and again given England’s pandemic rules. Law. This story about the situation at the establishment Number 29, in Burnham Market, Norfolk illustrates how frustrating such as vague standard is for all involved:

Mr Roberts, 62, says he refused the two ‘black-booted bouncers’ entry and after a confrontation escorted them off his premises. The former fireman said: ‘They said they wanted to come in but I said they did not have the right of entry….” He added: “I took the commercial decision to offer a free Scotch egg, either with chips or with a salad, to anyone who wanted a drink. I’d call that a meal. Two government ministers have said a Scotch egg is a substantial meal. That’s good enough for me.”

More beer law! I hear it’s what the cool kids want. Wine Enthusiast has published an article on one of craft’s dirty secrets, the commonly sticky hands even when the goods are intangible:

Palfreyman, the attorney who works with breweries on trademark issues, says the key to avoid problems is “common sense.” Think before you print or post, he says. Ask for input from attorneys, or someone from outside of the company first. Breweries that push these boundaries “might find something funny about what they are doing, or think it’s an homage,” he says, but they’ll find that corporations that own and defend their trademarks “are humorless.”

Ha ha. So funny. Me make money off your skill and efforts. Not unrelated, I like the thinking being applied in Thailand as they consider the advertising taxation of no-alcohol beer:

Beer companies could have one non-alcoholic product advertised legally at the same time as an alcoholic product creating a link in the audience’s mind to the product that are restricted from advertising.

Conversion. That’s what lawyers call these sorts of cheater pants allegations! Or appropriation. Or… something… not that different from swiping the intellectual property of another if you think about it. And in Kenya, the rules about trying to control the image on embossed beer bottles are being considered in court:

Minor players have over the years been pointing fingers at East African Breweries Limited (EABL) for engraving this type of bottle with its trademark bottling out rivals. This has led to long-winding legal battle on whether EABL is legally allowed to do so. In January this year, High Court Judge Grace Nzioka ruled that EABL had the right to collect and package their beer brands in their embossed bottles pending determination of a case in which six beer distributors affiliated to Keroche Breweries had challenged the move.

Finally, some bad direct adulteration news out of Brazil for at least three fans of craft beer:

A third person has died in Brazil of suspected poisoning from a batch of craft beer contaminated with a toxic chemical used in antifreeze and other products, police in the state of Minas Gerais said on Thursday… Traces of the sweet-tasting solvent were found in the water tank used by the Backer brewery, whose craft beers have won international prizes and are widely available in Brazil.

Not good. But that’s it for the week so you can cogitate your knogging on that for the next seven days. As always, for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter (except last week because she is busy with opening her new bar business), 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!

*Sell out… I meant to write sell out… really…

Your Final Thursday Beery News Notes For November 2020

Time flies when you are having fun. I’ve likely started more than one of these posts with that quip since this all began, haven’t I. Probably should have my head examined. Except. I have. Twice this week. Drove a pleasant drive to an hour and a half to a sleepy rural district hospital for one sort of probing on Monday and another sort nearer by this week. Nothing serious.* Poking and prodding. The joys of middle age with the next stage coming into view. If I get a third test this week, perhaps I might be given a top hat like the gent above. The image from the West Sussex Archives triggered a lot of interesting chat about the nature of their outfits and that clay pipe but it’s the beer mugs that are the show stopper. Are they pints or quarts? I have one smaller version, a 1940’s green Wedgewood which sits proudly on a shelf.

Speaking of which, the distinctions and differences between a Czech dimpled mug and an English dimpled mug were excellently explored this week by Casket Beer:

Yes. The distinction between these two glasses matters based on history and tradition. Aside from the subtle differences in design, they come from different places and have been vessels for different styles of beer. Further, getting it right adds to our experience when we drink, which is important for breweries in today’s market.

Me, I prefer to get some things wrong and take pleasure in how well they work out – like having IPA in a weissebier glass. Or in a frozen one. Speaking of being one’s own master in small matters, Matthew L wrote about the state of his personal nation as another lockdown struck from a consumer’s point of view:

The final straw for me was the aforementioned Tier 3 announcement.  All pubs not serving a “substantial meal” were to close.  That kiboshed most of my typical weekend.  I contemplated walking to Spoons, or any of the nearby places that do food, sitting on my own with a pizza and 2 pints, then going home (how many “substantial meals” can anyone consume in one day).  Any fun I’d have just wasn’t worth the effort on top of everything else I’d have to do.

Also from one consumer’s point of view comes this post from Kirsty of Lady Sinks the Booze on the moments she has missed, including missing the train:

Since getting a promotion and a pay rise I have done what many working class people do and tried desperately to avoid working class people. Instead of the bus (albeit the wifi enabled fancy express bus with nightclub style lighting) I now get the train, and pay over a ton for a monthly season ticket. Of course since privatisation there are three different trains home and because I’m tight I will never pay extra to get a different company’s train if I miss mine. Hence I will spend £9 on beer, to save the £5.60 train fare. 

Vaccines soon. That’s what I’m thinking. Others too – rather than pretending that owning a brewery means you know more than public health officials, Kenya‘s Tusker is sharing the safety message:

Speaking on the campaign, EABL Head of Beer Marketing, Ann Joy Muhoro, said, “Tusker believes that Kenyans can enjoy their favourite drink with friends in a safe and responsible manner, in line with the set protocols. That is why through the “dundaing” campaign, we are encouraging our consumers to adhere to the set health protocols, as they enjoy their Tuskerat home or at a bar.”

Historically-wise, Bailey and Boak studied the introduction of the jukebox into the UK pub and shared their findings:

This turns out to be surprisingly easy to pin down thanks to the novelty value of these electronic music boxes which guaranteed them press coverage. We can say, with some certainty, that the first pub jukeboxes arrived in Britain in the late 1940s. Even before that date, though, the term ‘jukebox’ or ‘juke-box’ was familiar to British people through reportage from the US.

Best “political tweet with a side of beer” of the week. Second best “political tweet with a side of beer” of the week. Best tweek of the week:

Currently slightly obsessed with TGL-7764, the East German standard for beer. It‘s basically a beer style guideline with some brewing instructions. Only thing I struggle with is colour, though, it‘s provided in NFE and „Einheiten nach Brand“ and I have no idea what these are.

And then he followed up with a link to the TGL-7764. Neato. Similarly mucho neato, Stan wrote about the 107 words to describe hops but neither “twiggy” nor “lawnmower driven into a weedy ditch” appear so I am not sure I can give it all much credit. But that’s just me.

In China, new fangled hydrogen fueled trucks are being used to deliver beer:

The Asian subsidiary of beverage giant Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, meanwhile, added four hydrogen fuel-cell trucks to its fleet, the company announced Sept. 28. It plans to deliver beer using the trucks, making China the first nation where the company has deployed such vehicles for beer shipments.

Martyn found an excellent  cartoon from 32 years ago, framing the thoughts from the time about low and no alcohol beer. I have to say I am of the same mind. It can lead to things, that sort of thing. Just this week I watched as two fully grown adults who have always appeared to have a complete set of marbles going on about the wonders of sparking water. Which they seem to be paying money for. Money they earn. With effort.

My thoughts, as always were, “historic beer style” is an oxymoron. “Style” is a modern international construct, a form to which brewers brew. As Ron has effectively proven, forms of beer in the past were brewed to brew house standards to meet local market expectations. Different names for similar things and similar names for different things were far too common.** Andreas Krennmair*** explored both the oxy and the moron in his post this week about Dampfbier which has that added excitement of relating to a variant of “steam” – a word so many want to own but never seem to understand:

The problem here is… if a beer style’s origin story sounds too good to be true, it probably is not actually rooted in history. Naive me would simply ask why other beers like Weißbier brewed with wheat malt wouldn’t be called the same name because supposedly, the yeast would ferment as vigorous. When we actually look at historic sources though, an entirely different picture is unveiled…

And lastly, Matty C. had an article published this week on a topic near and dear to my heart – the disutility of all the artsy fartsy craft beer cans:

Important stuff like beer style and ABV is too often – in my opinion – printed in a tiny font to make space for more artwork, or isn’t even featured on the front of a can at all. And while this isn’t an issue for most hardened beer fans, for those who exist outside of beer fandom’s bubble (and let’s be honest with ourselves here, that’s most people) it’s actually making it more difficult for people to differentiate between brands. The result of this? Consumers turning back to old, faithful brands – probably owned by big multinational corporations – and turning away from craft beer. 

The phrase I shared was “barfing gumball machine” for these things. Much other similarly thoughtful comment was shared.

Done! Soon – December!!! Meantime, don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, 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, 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!

*Weirder and weirder I am. Seems I have a fully formed molar deep set up into my cheek bone. It is not doing anything. Just sitting there. Thanks for paying your taxes so that could be confirmed.
**I linked it up there! Why are you looking here, too?
***Pour le double!!!!

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Before The Neighbour’s Holiday Season Begins

A quiet week. Not surprising in mid-November, I suppose. Being next to the United States and, even more to the point, being within the FM broadcast range of local US based heavy metal FM radio station, it is difficult not to be aware that something is starting. Their unending holiday season is upon us. In Canada, the holiday season is really, say, December 10th… maybe… until the last of the bought-once-annually Grand Marnier is shaken into a coffee sometime in early January. Weeks, not months. In the US, the future is now. Which means we have turkey and beer pairing blurts clogging up the news. Do these really affect beer sales… or turkey sales for that matter? Get back to me on that.

What’s really going on? Max got out and about. That’s nice. And real. While we are locked down in one way or another, it’s good to find some outdoors. I’ve taken up staring at the sky at night myself. I have really fallen for Epsilon Lyrae myself, which makes sense for a Canadian seeing as it is a double double. I even bought a 20x to 60x scope, the sort of thing also used to bird watch or be a creepy neighbour. The Pleiades alone at 20X are worth the price of admission. And you can drink a beer as you gawk. If you have to. Just sayin’.

Whatever you are experiencing, it could be worse. You could be caught up in the Tomsk Beer Company scandal in Siberia:

The Investigative Committee said earlier that Ivan Klyain is suspected of using his official post to illegally prevent the construction of a building in 2016-2017 on territory close to the Tomsk Beer company, which he controls. The 61-year-old Klyain has served as the mayor of Tomsk since 2013. Before being appointed to the post, he had been the director-general of the Tomsk Beer company, one of the largest breweries in the region, since 1994. After becoming mayor, his wife was elected by Tomsk Beer’s board of directors as the facility’s director-general.

Bad. Bad bad. But the good news is that beer in stadiums is coming back in Tatarstan!

Elsewhere and for the great indoorsmen amongst us, Pete Brown and a few others commented on the  four episode BBC2 TV broadcast Saving Britain’s Pubs hosted by someone named Tom Kerridge. Now, if we are lucky this will show up as a cheap filler on Sunday afternoon on PBS or TVO sometime in 2023 so I have time. Maybe. Rather than a documentary followed by panel format on UK licensing policy, it actually sounds like just a restaurant refit sorta show that pre-dates, you know, the pandemic:

If there’s a common theme running through all four pubs in the series, it’s that the people running them need to add a keener, shrewder business eye to the the long list of talents they already display in running pubs that are popular but not profitable. The things a pub needs to do to survive may not always got down well with the regulars: The first thing Tom tells the Prince Albert to do is put up the beer prices. The domino players nursing one beer all night in the Golden Anchor are shifted to the back room to make way for the craft beer-drinking hipsters who are gentrifying the area.

Yeah, get those happy regulars the hell out of here! But… remember people shifting spots in a bar? Remember people in bars? 2019 was great, wasn’t it? Maybe it’s really just to be taken as a show about the before times. But talking about beer has a notoriously poor track record when it comes to TV… and radio… and newspapers… and so Mudgie also shared his thoughts:

People still like the idea of pubs in theory, but in practice they visit them less and less. Of course it is still possible to do well in a declining market, but that should not be allowed to obscure the wider picture. By and large, the reason so many pubs have closed is not because they haven’t been run as well as they could have been. And it was disappointing, if not entirely surprising, that an entire hour discussing the decline of the pub trade passed by without a single mention of the legendary Elephant in the Room…

Good point. There was a slow death well underway before the more rapid form came along. Speaking of which and on the smaller small screen… is it just me or did Craft Beer Web Event replace Beer e-Publication Editor** as the odd new thing of 2020? Seems like that to me based on the barrage of beery things to watch on line for the last week or two’s worth of Thursdays to Sundays. Not that I watched any. It’s getting like those 47 global beer awards things. Too Organic, if you know what I mean.*** I felt particularly badly seeing as two of my own co-authors were presenting at two of these web events – but they spoke at the same time, I simply could not in good conscience choose one over the other.

Speaking of webby things podcasts, Beer with Ben* finds someone called Ben with interesting things to say about beer and its beginnings:

I’m back for a second series and this time we will be taking a journey through history, as well as beer. 2020 will see us finding out how our earliest counterparts would have made those first brews, look to the local environment to forage and find some of the ingredients and, of course, see if it’s possible to do it ourselves.

Excellent. That sounds really real and not in decline even if likely… organic.***

And speaking of odd jobs sort of in beer, I have no idea what this is if it is not a overly fancified web intern in the ABev macro construct. Consider these strange but assigned tasks:

– Work cross-functionally to plan and manage the Organic Social content calendar which supports key activations across both brand and eCommerce.
– Manage the content creation process for both Paid and Organic Social, from brief to delivery.
– Upload and schedule Organic Social content.

Caught up with excitement by the prospect? Me neither. Nice to know the opposite of “paid” is “organic” which is perhaps a comment on what is left of you and your span of years when you go unpaid too long.

Somewhat to the right on the scale of things that are cryptic was ATJ in Pellicle wandering on and about lagers this week. I wonder if he might benefit from a backyard telescope. The over ripe prose is pungent:

I am both mystified and enthralled whenever I think of the deep sleep of lagering, the process that brings the raw ingredients of the beer into a sharper focus. Enchantment touches me like a spell when I consider the steampunk-like nature of some of the brewing techniques such as lautering and decoction mashing. Then, as if conjured up by some celestial agent, there is the aristocratic elegance of noble hops, which, when writing its entry for the Oxford Companion to Beer, I was surprised to discover that it was a marketing term from the 1970s instead of something from the days of Hansel and Gretel.

Heavens! All very prog. Fortunately, sensible Stan sent around his hops newsletter with it’s dedication to a plain speaking, staid and common sense outlook when it comes to hops – with an update on Hopfen and Stopfen:

The verb stopfen has a slightly different meaning. It is used when repairing clothes or to be more precise darning socks. But more importantly it’s the same word (potentially even etymologically) as to stuff. Whether you want to say one stuffs a pillow with feathers or food into oneself, the word stopfen can always be applied. Hopfenstopfen is therefore the act of stuffing beer with hops, which I guess is an even more fitting term now with all the hazy beers around.

Not at all organic, that. Pretty real, too.

That’s it. As I say, a quiet week. But don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan speaks warmly of Tom Arnold) 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‘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 remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*h/t to Merryn. The podcast comes in multiples of series which is odd as Ben told me they come in multiples of seasons.  Note: Ben’s Beer Blog is not associated with Beer with Ben. 
**I actually saw some folk fawning over their favourtie best beer writing editors the other day. Tres Organique!
***Wait for it!

 

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Second Third of The Tenth Twelfth

It’s hard coming up with new headlines every week, isn’t it. Look at that up there. It hardly makes any sense at all. And it’s getting a bit hard coming up with light entertaining content about beer to share. It’s usually all about something other than beer or like beer or nearly about beer. Like the best thing I saw this week – the tweet accompanied by the image to the left, captioned:

Toddlers in the 1970s looked like pensioners waiting for happy hour in a working men’s club.

This week, let’s look at stories about beer. Beery stories. You bet. Not about something related to beer or something just associated with beer. Hey, Jordan wrote something about beer… or actually drew it. He has created a map and a spreadsheet of all the current breweries and contract beer companies (firms which by beer from actual brewers, including on contract) on Ontario. It’s on his site and over to the right under the dropdown thingie. There. Help him by sending corrections… err, updates. Everyone likes that.

That’s about beer, right? Sure… well, maybe. Is this about beer? Ron wrote about UK cask during WW2 – not cask ale, just the wood in the casks:

In normal times British brewers would never have used American oak as it imparted too much flavour to the beer it contained. Unlike today, brewers wanted to avoid any trace of oak in their beer. Its presence was seen as a fault. But, with the supply of Memel oak dried up, brewers had little choice. When supplies of American oak in turn began to evaporate, brewers had to turn to a more local source.

OK, may be not but it was about something touching beer. Stan! Stan writes about beer like he did last week. He wrote again and got published again – this time about hop creep… which is not actually about the loud loser at the end of the bar in the crafty tavern:

“Hop Creep” isn’t the name of a beer-themed horror movie—just a real, ongoing mystery that brewers and hop scientists are still sorting out. Oregon State University’s Tom Shellhammer, one of the country’s top brewing scientists, says that his earliest moments of being introduced to the phenomenon were about five years ago, although he didn’t realize it at the time. “I was giving a talk at the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference, and somebody in the Q & A asked, ‘Hey, do you see people getting diacetyl when they dry hop?’ I was like, ‘No.’” Diacetyl is one result of hop creep. Beer with more alcohol than a brewery intended—which brewers call “out of spec”—is another, as are bottles or cans with dangerously high levels of carbonation.

Hops! Hops are in beer. And, in his return to London pubs and the blogging of same, the Tand put the beer into the Tand:

…there was a mission to accomplish. A visit to a Sam’s pub to establish London prices following the recent price increase. We chose the John Snow… a nice little boozer and trade was steady on this Wednesday afternoon.  I had the stout, which needed the gas changing, while E had a half of Pure Brewed. The price list was snapped when the barman wasn’t looking and duly posted to a certain Curmudgeon. Prices are on the wickedly high side and now by no means a bargain. It does make you wonder how they’ll compete on this basis.  One other thing. The notices forbidding this and that, which are found all over Northern Sam’s pubs, are conspicuous by their absence. I know. I checked everywhere. Double standards from Mr Smith it seems.

Hardly anything about the excellent Pellicle post this week by Helen Jerome on a cidery in Devon was about beer, but it did start with expected traditional character profile on the person behind the operation in question, deviating only by finding someone who was not first an unhappy accountant:

Spool back to late 2015, and Polly decided she’d had enough of sitting in an office. She needed a fresh challenge. Growing up in Devon, she gained a foundation in science with A-levels in chemistry, physics and biology; taken a module with Master of Wine Susan McCraith while doing a degree in Equine Business; studied Sustainable Agriculture at postgraduate level, then completed an EU-funded ‘slow food’ study tour in Tuscany. She’d never really been into cider though… 

Speaking of science and even a bit about beer, Ed wrote about the scourge of taking the free case of beer and how that ethical flaw of his gnaws at his very soul – except there was a twist:

As every beer blogger knows getting free beer is the easiest thing in the world. Though breweries might grizzle about it, threaten them with a bad review and they’re sending you a case of beer as fast as their little legs can carry it. But despite this due to my insatiable greed I immediately said yes when offered a Hobgoblin beer and bugs snack pack.

Speaking of which, BBC News itself ran an excellent piece on social median influencers – aka what used to be called blegging – and the associated cap in hand:

Like many businesses during Covid-19, Reshmi has seen a change in her customers’ behaviour. Although many people cut back on unnecessary purchases, her bakery was busy as people carried on ordering her celebration cakes. Yet she also noticed influencers were asking for more freebies too. It’s something she has done in the past – looking at the influencer and their posts, who follows them, how they engage with their audience, but says it didn’t work for her. “We have never had a sale off someone [saying] they saw our cake on someone’s post or profile, it’s always been through word of mouth, from paying customers.”

This is interesting. Even if cake is not beer. I have heard many a chortler and scribe announce that “it’s not like anyone could think I have compromised myself by the free samples” but it’s not something you can really say for yourself. And it never plays out that way. Best to pay your way. Folk notice and note. Unless there are edible bugs involved.

Related, the question of free food in pubs. Discuss.

Suzy Aldridge posted something of a goodbye to all that in response to a BrewDog franchise opening up in her English city of Lincoln:

Now I’m out. It’s surreal. I’m looking in from the outside and seeing the struggles in the industry, seeing how friends are marching on. I almost feel left behind, lost, but also that I’ve escaped. I’ve sidestepped into a new career path by pure luck. It’s not something I love like beer but it’s interesting, it pays the bills and, unlike hospitality, the rug won’t be swept from under my feet, then shoved back, then removed again. I’m comfortable, even as I drink some of the very last bottles of Lincolnshire Brewing Co that are in my fridge. 

Eoghan Walsh posted a new podcast at Brussels Beer City featuring an interview with Jean Van Roy of Brussels brewery Brasserie Cantillon. He wisely avoided raising my accusations of 2006 but, still, had a good beery chat:

On a scorching hot early September day on the eve of brewing season for Cantillon, we met at a bar influential not only for the city but also for him, and his family brewery. We talk lambic evangelisation in a country that still doesn’t really get it, his youthful escapades drinking crap beer with friends, how is approach to brewing has changed thanks to his relationships with winemakers and chefs, and how the brewery’s corridors ring hollow and lonely in the absence of American, Italian and other foreign accents.

Elsewhere, you know there is nothing going on in beer in some corners if the discussion turns to flat flavoured water with vodka added.

Speaking of beer and corners, in this week’s edition of That Sorta Happened in Beer History, Mudge the Elder asked this question and got answers:

It’s before my time, but does anyone remember (or have talked to those who do) whether waiter service was commonplace in pubs across the UK in the 50s and 60s, or was it primarily a Northern thing?

A whole new world was revealed to mine eyes.  Someone identifying themselves only as “[Bx2-B=R]” stated:

Primarily northern, my Lancastrian mum says, and common enough there that she didn’t find it weird; down south, mostly seems to have been an inter-war fad in big new pubs and died out with WWII. [Ray]

Talk of bell pushes, tipping and waiters in burgundy jackets with “silver” trays ensued.  Sit down before you start through the thread.

Beer crime of a newer sort happened over in Michigan, as noted by the worst beer blogger ever:

…there was no money on the premise, and luckily no vandalism, but the intruders were there for more than a half an hour. “They ended up pouring nine beers,” he said. “It’s not somebody having a quick beer and leaving.” One of the men called someone and then soon, a bunch of kids entered the premises, running around and looking through the brewery’s merchandise. Luckily, the kids seemed to only have pop, not alcohol…

Another sort of loss is happening in bars like this out of Winnipeg that I don’t think I’ve seen reported in this way before even though it is very 2020:

It’s enough to make a brewski aficionado weep while sudsy hops are poured down the sink. An enormous amount of beer is going to waste in Winnipeg thanks to some bars and pubs being forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other establishments operating at reduced capacity are also having to dump hundreds of gallons down the drain…

I love the first sentence. If you hate sudsy and brewski, then you at least have to admire the proper use of aficionado.

Anyway, finally and speaking of which… perhaps… no, not really… there were comments made after the announcement of the NAGBJ awards… what’s that?… oh, it’s back to a “w”… BAGNW… is that it? Anyway, my comments were limited to “Third?!?!” and “Third?!?!” given I was mystified at certain outcomes. But I used to judge these things as part of panels, too, and I know that there are limits and these limits are realities. As I have noted before, these quibbles mainly hover around process and in particular nominations being from the authors and/or publishers. It would be easy enough to just send all members ballots rather than the filtering function of judging panels. They are also limited in audience as many folk don’t need or care about awards, especially once an “award-winning” adjective is already allocated to the bio.* Yet:

I just want people to know it’s totally normal, okay, and valid to wish for recognition and acknowledgement of a job well done. I don’t write about the things I write about because I NEED those things, but darn if it doesn’t feel good when it happens.

Boom! As with all the medals, I presume it is a stepping stone for the aspiring – which is good and normal and to be encouraged. And a small reward in a field without much recognition.

But, unlike during the years of my own experience, concerns and even unfair slags were raised about it all being too GBH focused or even bad back scratchy.  In homage to 1830s British Parliamentary politics, lobbying continues for the establishment and the reformers. While many entries or entrants have appeared on that bloggy space’s webby pages… well, what is wrong with that?  Especially as other outlets have been disappearing for years? Small pond. That’s where we swim. I do say that while acknowledging (having sifted through it all week after week now for years) I think there is a sort of beer trade writing of a sort not only is a bit samey and a bit goal oriented or even formulaic (the last paragraph often seems written first, as it were) but still a sort which may attract praise within a circle of co-aspirants. Well? So what!?! Why be a grump in all things? It’s just, yes, light entertainment – and we have to remember that much beer writing is actually very good, including, yes, even at GBH.** Perhaps not as much as they would say… but, in the end, Beth did entirely the proper thing and set the record straight in vivid technicolour. Go Team Beth.***

That’s a lot. I’m done. As always, remember there’s more out there. Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan touts discount ham!!!) 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‘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 remember BeerEdge, too.

*No one cares about being “awards-winning” do they?
**Let’s stick with very good, shall we. Superlatives are so… not superlative. Plus, I’m a Pellicle sort of person. 
***See the “*” here.

As Summer Soon Turns To Autumn Take Comfort In These Beer News Notes For Thursday

Hmm. Nothing of, like, a common theme out there this past week, was there? There was some great apple pressing porn to watch, for sure. That stuff is great. And my near neighbours at MacKinnon have been bringing in their hops crop, as illustrated. Fabulous. But there’s also the pending end of summer and, with it, the end of the best chance pubs and brewers had to store a few nuts away for the coming cold.  Something for the stretch until Christmas. Old Mudgie painted a bleak picture of what was to come in the UK for pubs and brewers. And a beer shop shut in Oakland… its obit just above the one for the creepy knife store shutting. And a brewery in Kitchener, Ontario is now up for sale. Polk told me so. 2021 is going to be the year of cheap surplus brewing kit. Not a cheery theme.

But that’s in the future, not in the now. Let’s check in there… err.. here. This week, let’s start over at the ever popular History Corner. Come along. Robsterowski of “I Might Have a Glass of Beer” shared it thoughts about an anti-steam brewing tirade posted in the 23 March 1862 edition of Allgemeine Bayrische Hopfen-Zeitung and even provided a handy translation:

The steam-powered breweries increase constantly in number and it seems they shall quite soon squeeze out the other breweries, or force them into imitating them. As in so many other [trades], the machine seems to make manual labour almost redundant in the brewery. The question must be asked: which beer is preferable, that produced by steam or by hand? Experienced beer conners prefer the latter. 

This goes to the idea that steam beer began simply as a next step industrial brewed beer – but I do love the idea of “factory beer” as the great evil. Because it’s all factory beer, now… right? Interesting that values which were frowned upon in 1862 include steel, lightness and speed. It’s a bit late of a date, I would have thought, for such a broad fear of modernity. Speaking of a similar thing, Jeff tweeted about Belgian Biere de Cabaret from 1851 including this  contemporary comment:

“Has a very sweet and pleasant taste, creamy, and something honeyish that is highly sought after by aficionados.” An amber-golden color, unusual for the time. It has always intrigued me, not least because of the name.

Something? Factory beer is never “something” beer. Boom, it’s there. Always or never. That’s it. Plus I like aficionados… Knut talked about that term back in 2008 but had a better one… though I would not have expected the Spanish word to be in 1851 beer commentary from Belgium… but then again it was once called the Spanish Netherlands before it was the Austrian Netherlands. Is that it?

Now, I do like the idea of #SoberOctober (even though I would have just called it #SoberTober)… except… I have never associated October with wild eye binge drinking. No big holiday, no big bowl sports game. No woo. No hoo. Which I suppose means I don’t like it. Hmm. Except it might be building on a self-fulfilling wish. No crazy reason to overdo it. So no one did! Hey, nothing changes but victory proclaimed!!

This is even weirder than #TotesSobeTobe. It was in fact with a heavy heart that I read the post with this bit of odd triumphalism:

It’s important to remember that there was no useful IRI data in 2017 that told @SierraNevada that they should make Hazy Little Thing. It took instincts, guts, and maintaining a pulse on the industry’s long tail. Doing so gave them a one year head start on their competition.

Kinda mainly wrong, no? I say wrong based on this end of year 2017 blog post (ie a primary source contemporary with subject matter) that recorded reality at that moment:

You know, much is being written on the murk with many names. Kinderbier. London murk. NEIPA. Gak from the primary. Milkshake. It’s gotten so bad in fact that even Boston Beer is releasing one, a sure sign that a trend is past it. Some call it a game changer, never minding that any use of that term practically guarantees something isn’t.

I blame belief systems. Needing to associate yourself with things. Do you associate yourself with such things? I wouldn’t mention it except that it seems to be, you know, a thing.

Hop. Not a belief. Fact. Here’s some slightly disorganized hop news. As if Brophy was really also on the other line… In other hop news – Arkansas. Boom! Who knew?

Next up? Awards. Folk were talking about awards this week. Are they just for the needy? Canadian needy awards are the worst given how needy Canadians are. Are they really too much about the fee and other money aspects? Really? I can’t believe you thought that. For me, it’s never going to get to the point that nominations come from someone other than the candidate… which is my minimum standard for a competition being of any interest. But is it also problematic due to systemic bias?

Imagine what your work would look like if you weren’t gunning for someone to tell you you’re the best, that you’ve beat your peers out this year. If you’re not chasing this particular carrot, shaping your work (even unconsciously) toward what usually gets these accolades, what do you do? Who can you be? The world might be bullshit, but maybe we can be free from the false narratives and stale aesthetics perpetuated by awards, at the very least. 

Yikes! But, certainly, when the same group of individuals own the contest, select the judges, set the rules, act as judges, report on the event, receive a payment or two and then spend the rest of the year being palsy-walsy with the next slate of fee-paying candidates, well, it is all a bit too weird, isn’t it . Too small a circle to be taken seriously. Which might be a good point – why aren’t they just really for fun?! Which is what model railroading is all about! Sorry, not model railroading… craft beer… yes, that’s it.

Speaking of model railroaders, a couple of late breaking “old guy shakes hand at sky” stories came in Wednesday. First was the troglodyte at Stone* yammering about something revolving about himself. You can go read it on your own time. But second was that weird article by ATJ advocating for less information. In particular, hiding the truth about calories in beer. (Perhaps it’s the wine press bullies.) Now, this is especially odd as the information is readily available. That didn’t stop the one Chicken Little’s solo becoming a duet:

Since calorie counts are meaningless to 99.99999% of drinkers, it’s mere virtue-signalling to call for their introduction, and an expensive pain in the butt for small brewers to have to supply for all the one-off beers they are likely to produce.

Whachamahuh? See, eleven years ago Bob Skilnik explained how easy it is to calculate the calories in beer. Here’s the story.  Here’s a calculator. Basically, it’s 250 calories to a 20 oz UK pint of 5% beer. Or 1/8th of your daily dietary requirement. Or 200 calories to a 20 oz UK pint of 4% beer. 1/10th of your daily dietary requirement. Standard. No research needed – but add a few more calories for any increase in heft. So it’s funny folk want to hide that simple truth. But the funniest thing is idea that calorie counts are meaningless to all but a few beer drinkers. Below is a handy comparison of trends for the term “beer calories” compared to “beer history” as search terms.  Now, I am not one to suggest one might want to examine one’s own life choices but if the dead end is where you are looking to find a niche of little interest, the study of beer history is clearly it.

Just another line I rode down from 2004 to now…

Finally, back to today and to reality… and as she has in the past, Beth has been very open again on her income from beer writing for the purpose of telling other freelancers to roll with the flow:

I just broke $12K for the entirety of 2020, which (despite being around 1/3 of my original 2020 income goal) is pretty damn impressive considering I’ve had zero childcare outlets for my ASD-diagnosed 3 year old since March.

I point this out to also note that if someone is going out of their way to be both painfully truthful about themselves while being encouraging to others, well, I expect that I can trust their word on other things.

Well, that’s summer 2020 going out with a load of complainers, complaints and the compliant. And me. I’m so great. Looking forward to Autumn 2020? Me too! As you do that, remember there’s  Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on… no one!) 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 this week rants about why beer awards are stupid.) . And BeerEdge, too.

*Wailing away at his social media presence pointlessly for at least eleven years!

The Nights Have Gone Cool But Thursday Beery News Notes Go On

Achy. A bit from leaving the window open all night despite the forecast of quite cooler air. And me swimming in the big lake when its no longer quite so warm. Winter is coming. I’ve been in the lake maybe seven or ten times over the last few weeks. How long will it last? I grew up swimming in forest rivers as well as the North Atlantic Ocean back home in Nova Scotia. Lakes were always a bit stagnant by comparison. Folk call that “wild swimming” these days. I just call it swimming. Who knew the big water in the nearby big lake would be so big? Beach sand in the car. Beach toys in the trunk. Battered and beaten and happy am I.

First off, before the snow blows, Retired Martin has taken us on a trek to a pub in a lovely traditional thatched roof village in Devon, the Globe Inn in Beaford:

…turns out to be the most crafty of any place I visited in Devon. Plain but welcoming, a good all-rounder whose GBG credentials are a bit mystifying till you taste the beer. That little fridge on the right (below) was packed full of 10% DIPAs and mango sours…

Last weekend, I listened to a repeat of a short piece on the NPR radio show TTBOOK on the changes for the worse that have been imposed upon Bourbon County Stout through the sale of Goose Island to evil big industrial beer. It was particularly gratifying to see guest Josh Noel demonstrating the “nostril in the glass” technique I have been advocating for for about a decade and a half. Not unrelated but to the contrary, Mike reminded us on Twitter of the upside of the buy-out of craft:

You know when a brewery sells to the big guys and they say that it offers them more resources than they would have normally? This example shows that perfectly. Safe place for customers and their employees continue to have jobs. Just sayin.

Everyone’s favourite Midwest bar, the Olympic Tavern, that they have never visited had a rough bit of bad customer experience this week, something that highlights that during times of crisis some folk place having a beer and a Margarita high up on their priorities. Handled well. Along a similar vein, Pellicle has posted the tale of a Scottish drinking habit that, being Scots, I’ve never quite heard of:

The hauf an a hauf is traditional and modern at the same time. It’s a Scottish cultural institution we can be proud of: a combination in which to luxuriate, rather than down in pursuit of a buzz. The hauf an a hauf is about savouring both, two halves coming together to create something new, whole, and wholly wonderful. 

There must be an alt-tartan reality that excluded the generations before me as the idea that there is some long  pervasive history of buzz avoidance going on north of Gretna Green is news to me. Rather than suggesting it is a tradition, in 2014 TheBeerCast described the novelty in this way:

I guess the bottom line here is what do you want from a hauf and hauf? To get loaded, quicker? A US-style ‘Shot and a beer, Dolores’? Or to give a depth of flavour to each drink? It seems, judging from the conversation, that the way half and halves are being seen is changing, as a newer generation of beer/whisky fans indulge in the practice as a tasting exercise, rather than an end-of-shift exercise…

That makes more sense. That’s more in line with Great-Grannie Campbell between the wars being banned for life – a number of times – from the James Watt pub in Greenock even though she lived right above it. Or more likely because. Then the grandchildren being kicked out when they were sent to get a gill on her behalf.

More currently, Matt noted with some hesitancy the creation of something called the Small Brewers Forum in the UK. It is open to breweries:

The Small Brewers Forum has been formed to protect and preserve small British breweries and those who operate them. We have a successful and strong collective voice and campaign on behalf of our members to ‘fight for fairness’ in the industry. We take our campaigning to the highest level at national government as well as local government and within the brewing industry.

The published material indicates that the “only let small brewers join (sub-10000hL) so I can be sure that they represent what’s good for me without any of the big guys pulling the strings.” This makes a lot of sense to me. The numerical majority of brewers are small and have local markets. Their issues are very different from regionals and big craft. Here in Ontario, while there isn’t a second organization after OCB, the membership of that organization represents only the minority of the province’s brewers. Trade organizations structured on “craft” or geography make less sense than those with common issues based on scale.

In the ha ha dumb dumb news item of the week, Budweiser was caught echoing Eco*:

On Friday, the company wrote, in a now-deleted tweet, about two of their brands, Budweiser and Bud Light. “Reject modernity, embrace tradition,” the tweet read, telling consumers to enjoy the original beverage over it’s lower-calorie counterpart. Pictured were the sleek, modern-looking Bud Light can, along with the classic designed Budweiser beer. However, the seemingly simple message raised some eyebrows. One Twitter user, Joshua A.C. Newman, pointed out the origins of the text for the ad. “Are you deliberately quoting the first two elements of Umberto Eco’s 14 elements of Fascism?” he responded to the since-deleted tweet.

There’s that concept of “tradition” again. Calling card of the casually ahistorical.

And, as recommended by Andy, I signed up for the beer newsletter by David Infante – and was pleased to find out it was also a blog. There are a lot of beer blogs holding themselves out as online beer magazines and newsletters these days. It’s a bit sad that self-publishing is that little bit needy that it needs to hide itself behind odd labels and a thin veneer of exclusivity. Anyway, his latest blog post “Hire me, White Claw” caught my attention primarily as it confirmed what I should have known – this year’s trendy cooler White Claw is Canadian!!!** While Jordan mentioned it in passing in his recent post he did not hit me over the head with the fact. Never had one sip myself. Nope. So virtuous I am.  Plus I have Pickled Green Bean Clamato for that.

Stan has been telling tales again – this time about new hops being named and brought to market:

By announcing a name for the experimental hop previously known as HBC 692 the company signaled she is her own brand. “We were getting very significant pull (demand),” said Jason Perrault, CEO and hop breeder for Yakima Chief Ranches. HBC is a partnership between YCR and John I. Haas. “We’ve seen the impact it can have in a beer. Unique, but appealing. It was just time to give it its own identity.” The name, Talus, is a nod to the talus slopes found in the Yakima Valley. She is a daughter of Sabro, the hop formerly known as HBC 438 and commercialized in 2018.

I’m not a hop spotter myself, preferring to drink and think about beer once made but it is interesting to see how in the hop trade these sorts of things matter. Mr Stange even admitted to having been aware of the name (before the name was released) by way of  an embargoed press release – which made me wonder if new shoe lace tech also comes with embargoed press releases. You should also sign up for Stan’s newsletter Hop Queries to really keep up. It’s a blog he sends to you monthly by email.

Finally, Jeff posted a post on Wednesday about the brewing volume stats coming out of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission so far in this very odd year:

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission tracks the taxable barrels sold by Oregon breweries in Oregon. I’ve been watching to see when the June report would drop, because that will give us six months of data to see what kind of violence COVID-19 has done to breweries. The upshot: it’s been bad, but maybe not as bad as we might have guessed back in March. Thirteen of the top twenty breweries were down from this time last year, some substantially. But overall, the top 20 breweries were only down 2% from the same period in 2019.

While that is an average that is great news. If I could go back to myself five months ago, in the middle of the beginning of the stress of what was to come, and say “don’t worry it’ll only be 2% off” I’d be ecstatic. Now, it’s clear that it is an average and some are suffering more than that but for an economic snapshot that’s a pretty sweet picture.

In news of the ancient, Merryn gave me the heads up about a weekly web event put on by EXARC, “the ICOM Affiliated Organisation on Archaeological Open-Air Museums, Experimental Archaeology, Ancient Technology and Interpretation”:

Historical-archaeological Beer Brewers unite! We meet for a chat, this Saturday, 20:00h CET. It’s free, it’s open access and for anybody with a serious interest and / or experience with historic, archaeological craft brewing, anywhere in the world.

You sign up, too! Now!! I may be mowing as that’s mid-afternoon on the best day of the week. The heart of Saturday afternoon which is prep time for the heart of Saturday night.***

Here’s an interesting bit of news. An Albertan laboratory ran a study of beers entered into an awards judge-y thing to see if there were patterns in award giving outery:

The Raft Beer Labs analysis, published on its website, showed a few trends among medal-winning beers. Fresher beer was more likely to win an award. Medal winners were more likely to have a dry-finish than non-winners. Award-winning beers also tended to be clearer, with less turbidity than non-winners. Medal winners were also found to have lower free amino nitrogen levels and tended to be slightly higher in alcohol content than their target. The analysis also showed that both winners and non-winners were less bitter — measured in IBUs, or International Bittering Units — than the listed level, and both winners and non-winners had some microbial contamination, from wild yeasts or bacteria.

Interesting. Clearer, stronger and less bitter beers were preferred. The opposite of trendy low-alc murky hop bombs the blogs and micro blogs and photo blogs and podcast blogs and multi-author blogs are all talking about.

Finally, I am not sure I understand the point of this story. Why care about a brewery that many have written off? Why write and publish “Founders continues to defend its corporate culture”?

Done! For more of the good stuff but from a different view and in a range of blog formats, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (listen as they shit on Belleville this week!) 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.

*I know – excellent, right?
**Which is sorta like saying “Soylent Green is people!” in some circles.
***Yup.
****The greatest Great Lake is obviously Lake Ontario as it contains all the other Great Lakes.

As I Lay On The Sofa During A Week Off I Daydream Of Thursday’s Beery News Notes

There. I said it. I’m off this week. I think everyone else is too as there has not been much reading to do. Or is it that I have not been reading? Look, I’ve been in a hotel for two nights in another city, an experience which was 87% comfortable, 13% covid angst.  I’ve slept in, napped, dozed and generally watched the lawn grow from various angles and elevations. And I’ve drifted pointlessly on the internets.

Maybe I just needed to get off my butt and have a look around.  So I did and to the right is my favorite and rather science-laced photo of the week posted by Sir Geoff Palmer along with this explanation:

Barley to Malt: 1972 Electron Micrograph of transverse section of a starch granule from barley (left). After the barley is grown (malted) channels of enzyme digestion (starch to sugar) in a starch granule can be seen (right). Starch to sugar digestion also occurs in our mouths…

Excellent. And made of actual science. The best read of the week has to be this story which is also a bit science focused about how animals use alcohol including a phenomenon I’ve actually witnessed, the drunken starlings at the Rowan tree:

North American songbirds sometimes get grounded when they eat too much fermented fruit. This can easily happen in the spring when migrant birds gorge on crabapples which have overwintered, or arrowwood, juniper, winterberry, and other native berries still clinging to branches. Cedar waxwings, which feed largely on fruit, are especially vulnerable to intoxication or even fatal alcohol poisoning. Certainly some of this is accidental, but birds have been observed breaking the skin on fruit, thus exposing the juices to airborne yeast spores, and returning 24-48 hours later to selectively eat the fizzy fruit.

Forty years ago in high school, we sat watching out the front window as the row of starlings did 360 flips on the telephone wire, holding on all the time but each losing grip over and over. Magic.

In more sober news, Jeff has been running a reader’s survey. Have a look.

In less sober news, Don Redmond posted a posted about a brewery crawl in my home town six months ago during the pre-times.  And he included some business-side stories, the sort of information that never comes out when folk are reporting as opposed to writing:

…he added that outside money people had approached him on occasion, asking if he’d like investors. While outside interest is obviously a good sign for any business, simply because it means others see your potential and would like a piece of that pie, there’s also a downside. Silent partners never stay silent. In fact, they tend to forget what the word ‘silent’ actually means. And since they would like to see the best return on their investment, it isn’t long before they start suggesting cost-cutting measures…

Quite conversely, extravagance reigned as the BBC reported in 1983 on the new quiches of Glasgow’s pub life. And speaking of odd food and beer but more of a not pairing, here is a tale of engineering and brewing and seafood out of the Philippines which I am not sure I can quite follow:

The conglomerate, also the nation’s largest beermaker, will plant 190,000 mangroves in coastal areas near the capital to prevent flooding at the site of the proposed largest gateway in the Southeast Asian nation. To protect these forests, San Miguel will also grow 100,000 mud crabs monthly at the 10-hectare mangrove plantation in Bulacan province, President Ramon Ang said in a statement. Mud crabs can be a source of livelihood for people in the area, he said.

On the other side of the planet, Evan wrote an excellent piece on decoction brewing which included a bit of technical detail of a science-y sort which you might expect from Beer and Brewing* magazine:

Polyphenol levels? Highest in triple-decocted beers, followed by double-decocted beers, and then single-decocted beers, with infusion-mashed beers down at the very bottom, according to a 2004 monograph written by scientists at the Czech Republic’s Research Institute of Brewing and Malting. Dimethyl sulfate (DMS) and acetaldehyde? Lower with decoction, higher with infusion, in both green and finished beers, both of which also improve in direct relation to the number of decoctions, according to a 2005 paper by researchers at Pilsner Urquell. That paper also credits decoction with improving bitterness, cold-break content, sedimentation, and soluble nitrogen.

While I can’t imagine anything more tangential to a political scene that beer in Hong Kong at the moment – this moment when their democratic rights are being stripped – apparently GBH did find a way:

By and large, Hong Kong’s craft beer community was supportive of the protests, although few bars could advertise their support openly, because the police control the issuing of liquor licenses. Now the protest chants have been silenced and banners removed because of the national security law, whose broadly defined crimes include obstructing the government and promoting hatred of China. At least one employee of a local brewery has quit his job and fled the city because he feared he would be targeted under the new law. Although legal analysts say it’s unlikely the law will have a direct impact on employers such as breweries, it does give police new powers to search and seize property without a warrant if they suspect it has been used by someone violating national security.

I have no idea which “legal analysts” speak to the potential that a regime with a massive cultural genocide on the go in one end of the country would not want to bother with craft breweries – but the author appears to still live half time in Hong Kong so there is that reality.

Beer for dullards?

Back to the science based reality, Stan posted an excellent piece that apparently could not wait for his newsletter (which you must and should sign up for) on the new hop varieties which are coming down the pipeline:

The most anticipated new name this year is whatever HBC is calling HBC 692. Releasing the name is an event is on the calendar (Sept. 9, 9 a.m. PST) for Yakima Chief’s virtual hop harvest. HBC 692 is a daughter of Sabro and depending on who is describing the aroma and flavor is packed with “grapefruit, floral, stone fruit, potpourri, woody, coconut, and pine.” She is a high impact hop, bound for plenty of hazy IPAs.

Again in less science based news, we are told that a Sam Smith’s pub posted a Covid-19 notice on Facebook (as shown to the right) then removed it then indicated that it is not participating in track and trace due to privacy concerns… whatever that means… speaking as a privacy lawyer… Not where I’d be spending (i) my hard earned and/or (ii) remaining time on this mortal coil.

Brewing science is also dangerous. But it is also tasty and even edgy as this tale from western Canada shows:

A Calgary brewery is hoping to convince beer lovers that an ale made from municipal wastewater is tasty and safe. Village Brewery has teamed up with University of Calgary researchers and U.S. water technology company Xylem to create a limited-edition batch. The water comes from the Pine Creek wastewater treatment plant by the Bow River in southeast Calgary. Partially treated water was run through an advanced purification system that involved ultrafiltration, ozone, ultraviolet light and reverse osmosis.

Perhaps even less appealing is this piece starting at the outset of this odd story about an anti-police brand of beer, there was this intro which gave me such great faith about what it takes to be a beer reviewer these days:

A fellow recently asked me if I would participate in online beer reviews.  There would be a paycheck attached.  I don’t drink whiskey (my only memory is something that would taste like a used sweat sock) and wine is like cough syrup.  I hated Formula 44 as a kid.  My mom would nearly fight me to take a teaspoonful. I got in touch with the editor of a national beer magazine.  He’s a former broadcaster and the grandson of a Stroh’s distributor.  The editor gave me a long list of smaller breweries here in the Northwest.  It’s a good jumping off point. 

Note: having worked as both a criminal defence lawyer and also with the police, I’m convinced there are certainly bastards and scumbags but there are also a lot of hard working good folk who do the things that need to be done that no one thanks them for. So I’d likely pass on the beer, too. And backing anyone fighting for BLM and other forms of holding officers and officials to account while doing better.  But without a doubt I’d never read this guy’s reviews.

How is the macroeconomic scene looking here well into month six of the pandemic lockdown? Good or horrible depending who you are:

During the COVID-19 period (from the week ending March 8 through August 8), beer category volume growth has averaged 15.3%. Nielsen estimated that the beer category would need to average 22% volume growth in off-premise retailers to offset the loss of on-premise sales — which hasn’t happened. That estimation assumes the on-premise accounts for 20% of the industry’s total volume and sales declines of 90%, the firm said.

Not helping is the reintroduction of US tariffs on Canadian aluminum which goes into those cans that are keeping good beer sales moving. One brewery notes:

Ninkasi’s CEO Nigel Francisco says it is pushing out their planning and their ability to quickly react to a changing market place. “We’re experiencing a can shortage,” Francisco said. “So, what’s happening is, there’s so much package product being sold and consumed in the market right now. It’s pushing some of the small breweries like us to supply shortages. We haven’t experienced any true supply shortages yet, but we have experienced longer lead times.”

Hangover science? Not that I am going to write about hard seltzers… but this is interesting information:

On the other hand, because it doesn’t containcongeners, a byproduct of the fermentation process that produces chemicals like acetone, acetaldehyde, and methanol, the hangover from White Claw could be less intense for some people, especially if they don’t generally experience stomachaches. “Hard seltzers have a very low concentration of congeners, which are thought to contribute to hangover symptoms,” Dr. Braunstein says. “Certain alcohols, such as red wine, brandy, and whiskey, are known to contain much higher levels.”

Finally, and as Martyn advised, BrewDog valuation has passed that of both Carlsberg and Stella each according to something called Brand Finance… according to the Morning Advertiser:

Brand Finance also used factors such as marketing investment, customer familiarity, staff satisfaction and corporate reputation to name Budweiser the world’s strongest beer brand… Interestingly, among this year’s climbers was independent Scottish craft brewer and pub operator BrewDog which bounded ahead of bar top mainstays such as Stella Artois to take 18th place…

“Craft” meaning exactly what in this context…? anymore…? ever…? BTW: also craft… while also “?”

There. Done. That’s a bit better this week. A reasonable mix, a bit of volume. And a lot less angst. I did see a dreary article which will go unnamed that combined “neo-prohibitionist” with a passing science-less denial of alcohol’s health risks** so there is bad stuff out there. Be warned. For more of the good stuff but from a different view, 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. And BeerEdge, too.

*The addition of “Craft” in the title seems to be a bit nouveau, a tad post-URL so I’m a bit confused as to branding versus identify.
**There is still no J-curve. People don’t get sick because they don’t drink. They don’t drink because they are sick… or against it as a Scottish Presbyterian or Muslim and sick… or because they just don’t like the taste and sick… or they are a child and sick. Science.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Last Of April 2020

Hello again. It’s been another week. We seem to have all hit some sort of peak with our experience of this pandemic, if only for this phase one. I sat in the yard last Saturday mainly by myself. Had a beer or two. Pretty grateful for that yard. Still, knowing it all sits heavy on the shoulders, it’s not a bad idea to seek out light entertainment and isn’t that what good beer is? In moderation? Or  just as prescribed. It’s not easy. Emma Inch has had a personal essay on her particular challenges published in Original Gravity and it mirrors the experience of my few friends who are especially vulnerable. It is certainly not easy.

Now, a public service announcement. Alistair at Fuggled has declared a special edition of The Session is to be held this very Friday.  The Session was one of the best ideas in beer blogging* that ran for over a decade. On the first Friday of the month everyone who was anyone had to write a post about the designated topic. Alistair has continued the concept:

In there is the genesis of the theme for the Quarantine Edition of the The Session, in these unprecedented times, what has become your new drinking normal? Are you drinking more? Less? Have you raided the cellar regularly? Is there a particular brewery whose beer is keeping you company while you are confined to barracks? Has there been a beer revelation in these times?

Write!

Brewery folk are having to redirect their attention, as described in a piece by Josh Noel for the Chicago Tribune. And in Atlanta in Georgia, Monday Night Brewing has released the results of its survey on intended return to the taproom with some fairly specific and graphically displayed results:

While taproom visitors have some trepidation about the immediate future, they are cautiously optimistic about medium-term. 61% of respondents expect their visitation frequency (vs. their reported frequency pre-COVID-19) to go back to normal within 3 months. Still–28% of respondents expect a decline in their brewery visit frequency lasting at least 3 months.

Not unrelatedly, The Tand himself has written a very interesting post on the question of what happens to the pubs when folk get wise that drinks at home are not shabby and no where near as expensive based on his own experience of this new world order:

I’ve enjoyed a different kind of beer o’clock. Around five in the evening E and me have had a beer or two in the sunshine in our garden. Not every evening, but certainly most if the sun is still shining.  We have had to wear fleeces on the odd occasion and once, given the rather spiky wind that generally accompanies sunshine in the Grim North, we reinforced our outer apparel with blankets.  We have remarked, like everyone else, about the perfect blue skies, the absence of vapour trails and aircraft and enjoyed the birds singing. Not so much though the whirring sound of  wood pigeons, but you can’t have everything, can you?

As a bit of counter-measure (and when not wanting help in finding the best British lager), JJB joined the discussion on how pubs in England (he owns one) should deal with the question of pubco tenant rents:

…those getting the grants should indeed apply them toward rent, as the government intended, but pubco should forgive any shortfall if the rent is too high or the closure protracted. 

Others are finding that there are things to do in a pub if you live in it:

Dom, 29, said: ‘I moved in just a couple of months before lockdown which has worked out well, considering.’ He is the assistant manager at the pub after starting there as a barman and has been passing the time with Steve, 39, by playing improvised crazy golf inside. They place chess and cook barbecues on the roof when the weather is nice and have been enjoying the fresh beer on tap with no customers to serve.

When will the pub return? Cookie himself says in England it might happen in steps – but is that fair to the little loved places?

A staggered pub opening strategy could see large chain pubs with app ordering and table service and capacity for social distance open first as a trial an then traditional pubs open around xmas and micropubs by summer 2021.

Future forecasting done. For this week’s look at somewhat recent history, the blogwerk** at Seeing the Lizards continues with this installment on the Dutch lager of the 1980’s Oranjeboom 8.5:

Belying it’s current reputation a black-tinned cornershop-stocked super-strength filth, Oranjeboom pilsner was once quite popular in the UK, and was promoted with ads such as this, rammed full of all the Dutch stereotypes the copywriters could think of.

In other history notes, Martyn has been tweeting about gruesome deaths in breweries of yore, a crushing and a boiling so far.

And in very very recent history, Pellicle has published a piece by Will Hawkes on a trip to a hop farm in Kent in 2019… which all seems like a dream to me now:

It’s the end of July, the start of a key period in the Kentish hop-growing calendar. August is when the volume of the harvest is decided: plenty of sun and rain, and all will be well. But rain, like sunshine, cannot be conjured or cajoled. In 2018, during the UK’s hottest summer on record, just 15 millimetres came in August, and the harvest suffered. The year before there was 95mm and it produced the best yield that Haffenden Farm, Hukins’ family plot, has seen in 100 years.

This twitter thread promises an academic dissection of the imagery on a can of sorta Chicago‘s Old Style beer.  But it is exceedingly silly.

Escaping the Covid-Blase** Beth Demmon has shared a wonderful portrait of one of the world’s most accomplished beer judges – and in doing so has explained a fair bit about what being one of the world’s most accomplished beer judges means:

Cockerham took her first exam in March 2007 and steadily moved up the hierarchy. In 2012, the same year she achieved Master level, she also became an official mead judge. She reached Grand Master in 2014 and has moved one level higher each year since. And last year, she reached her current level of Grand Master VI. She also became a certified cider judge in April 2019 and is currently the Midwest region representative and assistant exam director with Gail Milburn, whom she laughingly calls her “best beer friend, my BBFF.”

See, that is way better an explanation that the “I went to a fest in [pick a country] and saw all my pals… and we got into it… and it was fun… and some of us made the judging session” sort of tale we see more often.

The Beer Nut himself reached his fifteenth anniversary as a beer blogger this week and celebrated with a beer from Ontario:

Like an increasing number of people, this blog is spending its birthday in lockdown. Happy 15th oulfella. To mark the occasion I have retrieved something from the cellar that, honestly, I meant to drink a while ago and now seems the perfect excuse. I bought this bottle of The Exchange Δ Spontaneous Ale when I was at the brewery in Niagara on the Lake in 2018. It came lauded by local expert David Sun Lee, with a recommendation that it be let sit for a year before opening. Well, it got that, and a bit more.

And finally this week, at Boak and Bailey, Jess herself shared a review of Mûre Tilquin, a lambic with 260g blackberries per litre and it turns out she is a bit of a fan of the fruit:

I have Strong Opinions about them, too. For example, I strongly believe that urban blackberries are better than rural ones and that the best of all come from Walthamstow Marshes; should have Protected Designation of Origin status; and ought to be the subject of lengthy essays about terroir.

I like that. very pro-blackberry. Fight! And 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.

**Name twelve!!!
**Not an actual German word.

Here Be Yon Beery News Notes As Easter Weekend Approacheth

Another quiet day. Sitting at home. My butt is in a state of perpetual “sat too much” ache now. I better lay down for a bit to see if it goes away. On the upside, the over-wintered carrots have been crisp and sweet. Gotta eat them now before they start to convert and prepare for flowering. As shown above, I saw bees this week. Wild ones I think. Grabbing all there was to be gotten from the flower of a willow tree, the catkin turning in one last very slow fireworks display.

Beer… hmm… where to start… Jordan posted an interesting proposal to encourage the use of locally grown hop in Ontario.

This is Ontario. It is four times the size of Great Britain. A run from Windsor to Vankleek Hill would take eight hours if you adhered to the speed limit and there weren’t any delays on the 401. The idea that there is such a thing as an Ontario specific cultivar is nonsensical. We’ve already established that Hallertau grown in Germany and New Zealand is different. The Huron Coast isn’t Tillsonburg isn’t The Golden Horseshoe isn’t Prince Edward County isn’t The Ottawa River Valley.  There are microclimates and different substrates and soils and aquifers.

I was helpful in the comments, adding the 1948 soils mapping links as the land and its crops know nothing of county boundaries as well as questioning the insta-profession of sensory professional.  I like it but find a way to fill that not with self-identified volunteers and then add a mechanism for shared calibration and I might buy in completely. Sadly one response suffers from that old suffocating chestnut Jordan is working so hard to break, the closed circle: “… This is far to complex of an issue to describe in a fb box – so lets chat off-line. I’ll send you my contact info…” Open discussion is better discussion.

Next, Lars has two bits of big news. First, the gong bomb:

I got the tip-off from Jørund Geving, a farmhouse brewer in Stjørdal. He’d gotten into a random conversation with a farmer from Ål in Hallindal, who said there were people there who still brewed. That’s in eastern Norway, so that was remarkable news in itself: a new brewing region! But then he dropped the real bombshell: these guys had their own yeast, which they called gong.  This was really exciting, because so far, every brewer in western Norway who has his own yeast has turned out to have yeast that belongs to a single family, which we call kveik. 

This is interesting. In the post pandemic retracted world of post-craft, will gong become at thing? Then Lars wrote something on Wednesday that saddened me: “Writing ~7000 beer reviews on @ratebeer was basically my education. Here my rating notebooks, before they go in the trash.” They might deserve keeping. Nice floor, though. Norwegian wood.

Tom Morton, a well loved radio hand in Scotland, has written a useful piece about drinking in the new era of social media pubs:

Twitter is one of those horrible airport departure lounge bars on a (pre-virus) bank holiday Friday night or Saturday morning. You’ve got everything there from stag parties breakfasting on Special Brew to ginned-up delegates for a conference in Estonia on Signifiers of Loss and Alienation in The Later Works of S Club Seven. There are sherried tourists, single-malted fish farmers, absinthed sales executives. There are the brilliant and the fuckwitted, and they’re all shouting, all grabbing your arm, all breathing fumes into your face. Ninety-nine percent of them are talking shite.

A few more months and I might be with him. Meantime, the social experiment (for those who are not directly fighting as patient or caregiver, of course) is interesting.

Corona tricks during corona time.

Some more blogs are back up and running  – and what I like about them best is the immediate reflection on what is happening around us. Not recollections of the pub or desperate attempts to maintain the consultancy micro-payments as if nothing were happening. First, Matthew Lawrenson at Seeing the Lizards told the tale from the shelf stocking floor:

…that is why I had that Thursday off.  It was likely the last time I’d be able to go out for the forseeable future.  I packed my bottle of isopropanol (usually used for cleaning electronics, but hand sanitiser had long ago run out) and went to town.  And yes, dear reader, I got absolutely hammered.  Buckfast, Bud Light, evil keg filth, cask ale, spirits.  I had it all that night.  I even went to Spoons.  I’m glad I did, as on Friday afternoon, the Government announced that all pubs were to close from midnight. After that, back to work it was.  Prioritising lines, moving labels around to maximise fill, watching pasta and toilet rolls vanish in minutes.  All the usual panic buying fun and games. 

And Old Mudgie wrote a very interesting argument lamenting the loss of cash that is being caused by Covid-19 and the implications for the bankless in pubs and beyond:

It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unbanked workers in the UK, and there must be many other non-workers who have no access to banking facilities. While there may be technological solutions that can address this issue, their interests cannot simply be breezily dismissed. Added to this, there are many people, not by any means entirely elderly, who have a strong preference for using cash and are uneasy about card payments, even though they may theoretically be available to them. Is it reasonable to ride roughshod over their wishes in the name of progress?

In the past, I have been grumpy about the US Brewers Association (as it seems to want to fill the role that CAMRA plays in the UK, just without all those pesky consumers) but the Bart has been doing a great job running the numbers through this crisis:

The first analysis of our second COVID-19 impact survey is done, and the numbers aren’t pretty. 2.5% of breweries say they are going to close. 12.7% say they have a month or less based on current conditions.

Right off, I was wondering how far off the normal annual churn 2.5% closures might represent. And to stay that tide, the BA also announced that what they are calling #CBCOnline starts on this coming Easter Monday:

…a five-week virtual version of CBC including 40 of our educational seminars across all 14 CBC tracks.

I am most interested as all you all all will be to hear Dr. J speak on the topic of “Real Talk: Performing Cultural Climate Audits to Benchmark Organizational Inclusion, Equity, and Justice.” Audits. Excellent. Like having calibration for sensory experience. Doing something real.

Similarly, there are plenty of opportunities to improve one’s wine knowledge during these days of sheltering in the shed. And if you have something to share, there is also a Beeronomics call for papers.

And finally Pellicle published an excellent piece by Jonny Garrett on the Old Fountain pub on Old Street in London (just a bit to the east of my beloved Golden Lane) and the family that has kept it in operation:

They were never tied, but the Durrant’s still leased the pub from Whitbread, who in turn leased it from the local parish church, St Luke’s. It seems the church mistrusted Whitbread and had only been granting it three-year terms. The family had kept a close eye on the situation and, in the early 2000s, an opportunity presented itself. After decades of renewal without gaining a lease extension, Whitbread decided to give up the lease and offered Jim another pub.

Now, I want to know why and for how long the church owned that parcel of land on Old Street. Let the mapping begin!

There you are – but one last thing. A new news round up has sit the presses. Brewsround has started commenting on the beer writing of the week. That/they/her/him/thems/the bot joins the beer news broadcasts we follow each and 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. Stay well.