Category: Ireland

Your Weekly Beery News Updates For This Mid-November Of 2024

What a boring heading. “Couldn’t you come up with anything clever?” I hear you. Nope. All my wit, such as it is, has drained away with the recent tide of events* and I am still waiting for a top up. Retired Martin, as he often does, gave us some relief this week with a lovely photo essay of countryside walk to a village pub:

In truth, I’d no idea where Great Cransley was, only 45 minutes walk from Kettering station and Wickstead Park, a walk that rewards you with the golden stone of east Northants. A smart looking village of 305 souls whose nearest What Pub entry while the Three Cranes was closed was the (keg) Broughton WMC… and you get 4pm opening here, though as is always the way the door was actually open while I stood patiently waiting for the clock to tick.

Good news, too, for the beer book buyer as Dr Christina Wade has announced the publication of her latest:

I’m delighted to announce after seven years of research and writing FILTHY QUEENS: A HISTORY OF BEER IN IRELAND is here! Published with Nine Bean Rows, it is available for preorder now… we look at the history of beer alongside some of the biggest events in the story of Ireland. You’ll find an 18th-century courtesan who had a wicked streak of beer snobbery and early medieval monks who wrote beer reviews so terrible, any Untappd fan would feel right at home.

Yikes! A bit of harshing on the craft nerdiratti. Get your copy here. And Jeff posted an interesting essay on the effect of history’s tide on the distinction between Bavarian and Czech lager:

In a remarkable article in the New York Times immediately following the fall of Communism, reporter Steven Greenhouse identified 2,000 workers at Pilsner Urquell, a brewery roughly the size that Sierra Nevada is today. Among this giant workforce, “the advent of capitalism” will, he wrote, “probably mean tougher management, less slacking off and perhaps some layoffs, especially among the 400 administrative workers who spend much of their time doing paperwork for Prague’s central planners.” It’s hard to fathom what four hundred administrative workers would spend their days doing, though “slacking off” would seem to have been a central activity if for no other reason than there was no work to do.

I worked in Poland as an ESL teacher not long after the fall of Communism there and the drunk principal in the nearby elementary school was certainly proof enough to convince me of Jeff’s main argument – that there was little initiative or innovation under the Soviet system. Yet… I wonder if that is the whole story. Are there cultural differences beyond that between the German and Czech experience?  Does the Austrio-Hungarian empire have any lingering effects?** And if there had been no Soviet era locking time in amber… would there still be any Pilsner Urquell as we know it?

Stan shared the news of the closure of the Chippewa Falls brewing facilities of Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co., one of America’s oldest breweries founded in 1867, and the consolidation of operations at another nearby plant owned by parent company Molson Coors with some hard news for those employed there:

The closings will result in the loss of a total of 90 jobs – 34 in Milwaukee atnd 56 in Chippewa Falls – according to notices filed by Molson Coors on Thursday with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. The layoffs at both facilities are expected to begin on Jan. 17. The Milwaukee brewery layoffs include 33 hourly employees and one salaried employee. The Chippewa Falls plant layoffs include 54 hourly employees and two salaried employees. Hourly workers at both plants are represented by local Teamsters chapters.

So… which brewery at this point is more authentic to its own roots? Pilsner Urquell or Leinenkugel? And, to ask Marx’s question, which system alienated the workers from its product, capitalism or collectivity?

Speaking of capitalism, in his most recent edition of London Beer City, Will Hawkes shared a conversation with Sam McMeekin of craft brewers Gipsy Hill on their decision to be acquired:

With the London brewing scene getting progressively smaller, it makes sense to be as big as possible, even for a company that, as Sam puts it, is “essentially debt-free.” “In theory, we could have refinanced all of our equipment, taken on a load of debt and struggled on,” he adds. “But I don’t have [enough] faith in the market [that that would be] a success.” Hence the deal with Sunrise Alliance Beverages, a group which grew out of St Peter’s Brewery in Suffolk and which now takes in Wild Beer, Curious Brewing and Portobello, the latter of which was added last month. It’s more complex than a simple takeover, Sam says: he describes it as a “partial MBO” (Management Buyout), in which Sunrise has bought all the shares but Sam still retains his chunk, “rolled into” the new company.

There is a lot of heavy lifting (parenthetically or not) in that sentence “I don’t have [enough] faith in the market [that that would be] a success.” Picking up that story and hot on the heels of recent reports of SIBA moving to adopt “independent” and ditch “craft” in the ongoing saga of the key adjective tussle (KAT), Glynn Davis applies the new approved verbage to report… things are not going well:

My own involvement with Bohem Brewery has shown that independent breweries without a decent pub estate to sell their beer through will face ongoing pressures, and sadly, there will be more failures. It’s why I sold out at a painful 80% loss. Along with many other craft breweries, Bohem has produced some excellent beer, but as an investment, these businesses can leave a sour taste in the mouth.

And building a pub estate may well require that “faith in the market” that might not necessarily be reasonable. Hmm. Not unrelatedly, Liam guided me to a news item on another approach being taken in Ireland where a number of pub owners showed some faith combined with another now familiar zing:

It is thought to be the first time that a group of Irish publicans have come together to launch their own brewing operation… The new brewery launches into a challenging market, dominated by a small number of large established brewers and brands. It also does so at a time when the cost of living remains a difficulty for many potential customers and when more drinkers are moving away from alcohol to zero-alcohol products. “I think it is a very good idea. It is probably very timely because the craft beer phase has kind of come and gone and the bottle beer and so on,” said Damian O’Reilly, lecturer in retail and services management in TU Dublin.

Phase. You were just going through a phase. You know that, right? Speaking of phase, you don’t have to get past the first paragraph to see something that takes little analysis:

An ongoing point of frustration within the contemporary American brewing industry is the vast chasm between what drinkers say they want, and what they actually buy. For example: sessionable alcohol-by-volume beers. Even though stroller dads get their Vuoris in a bunch lamenting the lack of broad availability of full-flavored, mid-ABV craft beers, the sales data suggest that they simply don’t buy those beers in meaningful volumes.

What frustration? It seems pretty obvious that if you want low alc beer you are also going to be buying less beer*** but, hey… similarly, Katie Mather may have identified the reason for all this change, may have sussed out what is really going on:

In my banking app, it tells me what I could afford to spend less on in future, and this is always a list of pubs I’ve bought pints in. It’s never told me to cut down my spending on bills, by far my largest outgoings. Quite frankly this is bullshit… pubs are still shutting down because people can’t afford to leave their homes to enjoy a little bit of leisure and all-important social time, and the official reaction is, “oh well.” 

“Oh well” was also my response to the fair bit of anti- neo- prohibio–science– mumbo- jumbolian back and forth this week, both sides not making any new convincing arguments… until I read this in that august medical journal SurreyLive:

…alcohol indiscriminately impairs brain function as it is a “very weak neurotoxin” that disrupts neuron communication. Restak emphasises the importance of abstaining from alcohol past the age of 65, a time when the body naturally loses neurons more rapidly, potentially exacerbating mental decline: “It is essential to abstain from alcohol at a stage in life where preserving neurons is crucial.”

Drag. But as a bit of relief to all that… we have a wonderful and particularly deftly written**** portrait of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord by Rachel Hendry in Pellicle. Structured in parts that focus on different elements of the brewing and experience, it is both a bit impressionistic as well as, well, expository:

Once I am sat, I slowly rotate the glass clockwise, and then anticlockwise. The colours change with the movement—chestnut glints into amber, glints into cinnamon. I take a sip and I am greeted with thick slices of toast generously spread with a whisky marmalade, the sweet squidge of malt loaf, the reassurance of blood oranges in the depths of winter. The tension in my shoulders begins to dissolve. I can see why so many view this pint as a friend. I have taken it in my hand and it has placed an arm around me in return.

Lovely. I particularly like the concise treatments of various sorts of men. And another warming photo essay, too. This should fall in the beer flavoured beer filing cabinet folder neatly so you can bring it out and point at it when someone says beer flavoured beer is a meaningless concept.

And finally, before the links, we note the passing of Beth Demmons’ Prohibitchin’ which regularly was referenced around these parts. She explained why:

I feel like it worked, for a while. But over time, things have changed. DEI initiatives are getting slashed across the country, from academia to private business. Promises of change are quietly fading into distant memory. People—mostly women and non-binary folks, some even featured on these pages—have faced burnout, changed careers, or just moved on to different things. People kept reading Prohibitchin’, but over the past four years, fewer people have engaged, or even really seemed to care. I’ve felt like I was shouting into the void, or perhaps just preaching to the choir.

Sad stuff, especially coming so soon after the suspension of The Share as noted last week.

For more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*As per usual, B+B have something welcome and wise to say about where we are at, from last Saturday’s footnotes on Patreon: “The elephant in the room is the US election which is definitely big news. Our general approach to unsettling events (the pandemic, war in Ukraine, and so on) has been to keep on posting through them more or less as usual. As a wise person once observed: “You don’t need to publicly condemn or condone every event, every announcement, every story. You’re not an embassy.” Don’t think we’re not following the news, though, or that we not concerned about what’s going on. It’s just that a beer blog, and our various silly social media accounts, don’t seem like particularly useful tools for addressing any of it. The best thing we can do is provide an opportunity to think about something else for a few minutes every now and then.“
**A question I ask myself at least once a day in relation to something or other.
***‘Cause who doesn’t love to drain a 12 pack of thick soda pop? See also the shocking concept that high alc low price sells. “Breaking!“
****And a particularly good example of how this publication has succeeded while GBH and others have packed it in.

Beer. News. Notes. Phrases. Words. Selections. Pretentious. Minimalist. Heading. Formats.

What a week! I had no idea that I’d make it to this Wednesday evening when upon I do scribble out these notes. And it’s not even sun up before I’m out the door, although the moon apparently has a decent view up there looking east.  And the reading takes a bit more digging. But as B+B wrote:

…we embraced that: let’s focus on some smaller, more unusual pieces from old skool blogs and old-fashioned Web 1.0 hobby sites. That’s good stuff, too.*****

Agreed. Enough complaining. Let’s get at it. I do like this entry in Every Pub in Dublin if only for its lack of information:

I just walked in and looked for it. And found it relatively easily, as its basically just straight back from the front door, albeit well into the hotel. It’s quite a fancy hotel bar, but nothing incredibly special. I doubt many people ever go here just to drink, what with the Baggot Street and Haddington Road pubs nearby, but you *could*.

Even more of a deterrant to drinking in Dublin is this explanation by Lisa Grimm of the environs of her pub of the week, The Circular:

…the first stone bridge was built here over the Grand Canal in 1795, replacing an earlier wooden structure, and its resemblance to Venice’s Ponte Di Rialto gave the bridge, as well as the surrounding area, its better-known name. There are stories of a Black Shuck-type dog stalking the underside of the bridge, with some tales more specifically citing the devil himself appearing as a black dog in the area. Indeed, devilish attachments (literally) continued with a stone ‘devil’ head formerly being affixed to the bridge – though whether the stories or the sculpture came first is open to investigation. 

Satan himself! Yikes. [You know, I just thought it was a song by The Darkness.] On a more positive or at least not as terrifying note, there was a good bit of writing from Jessica Mason this week on a fairly singular business decision seeing one craft brewer and wine cidery to join up on distribution:

On-trade customers can now buy Red Fin cider products directly from Siren, packed in the brewery’s 30l stainless steel kegs. Two Red Fin ciders are available alongside Siren’s beers to help publicans consolidate their beer and cider deliveries. Further benefits include the option for pubs to take advantage of collaborative brand activations and events as well as custom installations. According to the business owners the new partnership isn’t financial and neither company has a stake in the other. However, the independent businesses describe it as “strategic”.

Sensible. E.P. Taylor would be pleased by the effort to cut what he would have called waste – the failure to find harmoneous deals on the non-profit making expenses. Seeing what is around you with fresh eyes was also the subject of a great interview early one morning this past weekend on CBC Ontario’s Fresh Air on a South African brewery working to support local traditional brewing:

Reitumetse Kholumo is the founder of Kwela Brews in South Africa. She recently won a pitch competition at Queen’s University for her venture.She told us how she is using the prize money to empower women and protect the Indigenous tradition of sorghum beer.

More here on Kwela Brews in this Forbes Africa article from last year. There were two other articles that caught my eye this week which touched on beer and colonialism. First, in New Zealand recently there has been controversy about the naming of a beer after a Māori navigator:

Te Aro Brewing named its Kupe New Zealand IPA after the Polynesian navigator as part of its Age of Discovery series – a limited range of beers showcasing historical explorers including Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan…  Both complaints argued the association of Kupe exploited, degraded, denigrated, and demeaned his mana and, therefore, that of his descendants and the people and places associated with him….”I’m really upset about it because our tupuna is being used as a platform for promoting alcohol, and his name being used on the [packaging] says we agree to this, and we don’t,” she said. “Culture should not be used in that form; whether it be Māori, whether it be other indigenous peoples, or whether it be our community – our babies are having to walk past that every single day… that advertising, that promotion… Peka said she wanted to acknowledge the people that had used their voice to make a difference for the whānau, community and cultures within Aotearoa.”  

I will leave it to you to look up the meaning of manu, tupuna and whānau like I did. The other story is the article this week in Pellicle by David Nilsen on the colonial and Indigenous legacies of brewing in Quito, Ecuador – that capital of a nation facing many serious issues. Elsewhere** we have seen how the perspectives from beer writers on a visit have posed, shall we say, challenges but this artlcle manages this well, if a bit obliquely:

…that rural connection has, sadly, not always helped chicha’s image in Quito as the city tries uncomfortably to balance its Indigenous heritage with its cosmopolitan aspirations. “A lot of people here grew up knowing about chicha, with their aunt or grandmother making it,” he says. “For many years, it had a stigma as a drink that was only for the lower classes living in the country. In Quito, as craft brewers became more knowledgeable about fermentation, they became more interested in reclaiming and revitalising this from their heritage.”

David sets it out for your consideration. We see the colonial hand moving in many ways in the article. The taprooms with the IPA.  The central presence of the monestary and the museum. The application of science upon an Indigenous practice without space for a voice speaking for the pre-contact and continuing original culture as we heard the Māori perspective above. There is much packed into this piece.

Building on the least serious or perhaps most recent form of those intrustions from abroad, in Britian apparently SIBA is sick of “craft beer”…  if only as a term:

Small breweries in the UK are ditching the term “craft beer” in favour of “indie beer”, warning that global corporations have bamboozled many drinkers into believing that formerly independent brands are still artisanal hidden gems. In a survey by YouGov that marks a new phase of the bitter war over what constitutes “craft beer”, consumers were asked to say whether 10 beer brands were made by “independent craft breweries”… More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt consumers were being “misled”…

CAMRA is in on the campaign as well. So is “craft” now a dirty word in Britain? Is it dead… again? Hmm… and there was also an interesting choice of words in an interesting paid advertorial this week in Politico, “sponsor generated content” it says. By Julia Leferman of the Brewers of Europe. Why is this bit of lobbyist comms interesting? Because of this passage:

Brewers are empowering consumers with the tools to take responsible decisions. This is about choice: if people don’t wish to, or simply shouldn’t, consume alcohol, they can still participate in the social experience of sharing a beer with friends and family. At the same time, brewers have pioneered initiatives in education and community engagement to encourage a better drinking culture and help reduce alcohol-related harm.

Could you imagine a North American trade organization place “alcohol” and “harm” that closely? Speaking of choice of words, Stan stood up for flavoured beer this week, building on the use of “beer flavoured beer” and admitting at least one of his sins:

I was wrong to use the term. It can be used to exclude, wielded as a weapon by drinkers who imply they know something others do not. “I can appreciate beer-flavored beer, the complex flavors that result from the interaction of malt and yeast in a simple helles. You are not worthy.” More obviously, it also excludes many, many, many flavors. In fact, some drinkers do not like the flavors in what they’ve come to know as beer-flavored beer. A survey of consumers in non-alcoholic beers in Northern California found they did not care for the “beer like” aroma, taste or mouthfeel they associate with non-alcoholic beers that were intended to mimic alcohol-containing lagers.

Let us be honest. Flavours that come from adjuncts are just not that interesting.  The infinity that four ingredients can provide is enough for me. That’s brewing skill enough to draw me in. To be fair,² Stan did mention that he “would not drink a peanut butter chocolate merlot, but I would like to try the peanut butter chocolate porter from Schell’s.” I wonder what it would taste like? Oh, I know. Peanut butter and chocolate! Brilliant. I am not going to judge – but masking the taste of beer by adding other things to it is in the fine tradition of alco-pops. Fine. I judged. But has any industry succeeded long term by focusing on newbie marketing? One – candy. And I get that it’s a business decision to chase that market but it does seem interesting to me how that trend has tracked in parallel in recent years with the stalling and contraction of interest in good beer. A curse. A pox. Jeff has more, much of what I don’t buy given the tone of sheer presentist congratulationism.**** Still, it’s not that far off my favourite version of the phrase is 1998’s “beer-flavoured water” to describe PBR.

Consider this as something of a contrapunct to all that, entirely thoughtful words from Rachel Hendry (h/t to KM) within her thoughts this week on “Wine and Cider”:

When trees are knocked down, when orchards are treated poorly in the name of higher yields, when cider is infantilised and drinks are manipulated and artificially mimicked in order to make more money for big brands, very few of us win. Where lack of care destroys, care itself transforms. Those who take the more romantic approach, who approach the trees and their fruit and the ecosystems around it with care, who make their drinks to showcase the amazing things that apples have to say once fermented, who pick and press and pour and produce with such ferocity of respect and reverence, well our lands and our lives are better for it. We owe them so much.

I like that. A lot. Romance as integrity. As opposed to infantilism. See above. Maybe. Perhaps quite conversely but still about the language, when they are not bored (at least according to a poll run by the imported and apparently not boring brand Kingfisher) British lager drinkers appear to be really angry with brewers:

One person described a 3.4 percent strength beer as a ‘f**king shandy’, while another lamented Grolsch as a ‘once decent’ tipple, and said he’d been a fan of the old five percent mix. He wondered who the 3.4 percent beer was aimed at, while a third declared: “Grolsch, now alternatively known as p**s.” Someone else said the downgrade made Grolsch into a ‘run of the mill session lager’ that was ‘certainly no longer premium’.

Another sort of infantilisation, I suppose. Potty mouth. Still… journalism FTW. Note: Britons are also livid over noisy upgraded beer gardens and ugly view blocking teepees in upgraded beer gardens.

Finally, Stan** went someway to answer my question when he indicated that the NAGBW attracted 269 submissions from 96 entrants this year. I wonder if that is an increase or decrease? As the scope of the focus narrowed to those who “cover” the beer industry, one can’t help make comparisons*** with the often seemingly more vibrant and ecclectic awards from the British Guild of Beer Writers. Where is the Hawkes? Where is the Jesudason? Yet… I was really pleased to see the first place wine for the fabulous Courtney Iseman for her “Secondary Fermentation — New York City’s Strong Rope Brewery and the East Coast Cask Revival” in Pellicle last December. A writer of fine strong words like “craft beer cringe” and “toxic fandom“, I remember when I saw the title of her winning piece I thought “please reference Gotham Imbiber… please oh please” and yup there is was. Proper job. Proper recognition.

That’s enough. How many links do you need? Until the boo-tastic edition next Thursday, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (if he ever does one) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now very) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*For example, the stunning white-washing of German atrocities in Brazil or the naive deflection of the genocide by American Revolutionaries against the Haudenosaunee in New York.
**For the double!
***Hmm… maybe “best in the world, if it is focused on the trade side, written in English, relevant to an American perspective and, yes, written by one who submitted“… perhaps?
****That’s a new one… I like it… BUT THESE FOOTNOTES AREN’T EVEN IN ORDER!!!!
*****“Evanescent“!?!? Really???? At least it isn’t “quotidian”… if there were every a inflationary ten dollar word that is never needed and rarely used correctly it’s friggin’ “quotidian”… sheesh… yet also**. See also this sort of devaluation of a concept… no one at all is shocked by a beer trade fact… no one cares…
²Am I ever not?

These Be The Reflective Yet Exhuberant And Cardigan Considering First Beery News Notes For Q424

Barrel Room Jolly Pumpkin 2007

I was thinking about these weekly things I write and whether there are themes are not. Mainly because I thought last week’s was pretty theme-y. Thematic perhaps. All about ones relationship with the ancillaries surrounding beer. Sorta. I tell myself that by writing these summaries I am tracing, following patterns. But I rarely go back and look. Behind the scenes, there are no graphs being added to every seven days. Then Jeff posted about an AI widget that Google has posted and I plunked a document I worked on years ago, trying to combine my research on English strong ales of the 1600s, the ones named after cities like Hull or Margate. Whammo. Summary and key points in about 3 seconds. Weird. Yet not uncompelling.

Back to the present, we have lost one of the great experimental US brewers with the passing of Ron Jeffries of Michigan and Hawaii:

A true embodiment of ohana, Ron was not only a loving family man but also a creative genius and lifelong learner. He dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge, serving as a mentor in the brewing industry. As a legacy brewer and the founder of Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, his contributions to the craft are immeasurable. In his final year, Ron fulfilled the lifelong dream of moving to Hawaii where he eagerly worked on his family brewery. He was excited about what the future was bringing and what he would be bringing to the world with Hilo Brewing Company/ Holoholo Brewing. He cherished moments spent on his lanai, soaking in the Hilo rain with a pint in hand.

In 2007, I found myself at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter and Ron Jefferies gave me a hour of his time at the end of a long day. That’s his barrel room from that visit up there. Frankly I don’t meet a lot of people I write about so I was it was a real treat.  My favourite part of the talk was his curiosity in what exactly beer blogging was and might be. He also doubled over with a big laugh at my story about the December 2006 Hair of the Dog shipment with the incompetent capping and how the yeast saved the beer. I visited again a few years later and he was just as swell. Very sorry to hear that he passed.

On a cheerier topic and adding to the discussion about the need for the pint from last week, Liam wrote a very interesting bit about what he calls the “meejum”:

…how much beer was actually in a meejum? The simple answer seems to be a little less than a pint as per the comments from our annoyed Londoner above, but I have come across a couple of others mentions of the volume too. In a court case in Dundalk in 1904 the judge has the same question and was told it was ‘a glass and a half’ (426ml) and another mention in 1901 that says it was ‘two-thirds of a pint’ (379ml). A more recent comment from a letter to the Irish Independent in 2003 looking for the medium to be reinstated, it is said that it was ‘approximately 500ml’.  With a pint being 568ml we can see some wildly fluctuating volumes here, but I think we are missing the original point of the medium, which was to give the consumer a drink based on price and not volume, so therefore it is very possible that a medium was a different size in different counties – and even different pubs. It was a portion of beer that equalled a value that was acceptable to the working man.

And we note the announcement of the coming retirement of Humphrey Smith, the controversial Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery and perhaps good beer’s Epimetheus, taking particular guidance from Old Mudgie:

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around.

A new source to me, Literary Hub published a passage or perhaps a chapter on the history of Pilsner drawn from Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity by Jeffrey M. Pilcher published by Oxford Univ Press:

Few visitors in the early nineteenth century might have guessed that the market town of Pilsen, on the road from Prague to Bavaria, would become world renowned for its clear, sparkling beers. Having grown rich from the business of anthracite mining, residents imported Bavarian lagers. In 1840, the town fathers decided to invest some of their mining profits in the construction of a municipal brewery. The first tasting, held on St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1842, brought their home-grown beverage local acclaim. But apart from the basic recipe of Saaz hops, Moravian malt, soft water, and lager yeast, little is known about how Pilsner acquired its legendary status. It was prized, at first, as an exotic “Bavarian” beer, and the malting process relied on British advances in indirect heating, like Sedlmayr’s Munich malt, but without the final burst of caramelization. The brewery’s capacity of just thirty-six hectoliters, about twenty barrels, meant that the beer was sold primarily in local markets. 

My problem with these things is, of course, whether is it, you know, true – keeping in mind, of course, the degree of abstraction at play. It speaks nothing of Prof. Pilcher for me to point out that Pilsner’s history has been stated, restated and revised and refused and refined and (… you get my point…) so often in the last wee while that it gets one in a big of a fog. But there is a certain compelling style to the passage provided in LitHub that I would invite comment from those closer to the topic.

Speaking of style, I missed this post by B+B last week just at the deadline on spinning LP records in pubs and why it works for them:

The magic that people perceive in cask ale is similar to the magic they perceive in pub buildings which is similar to the magic they perceive in the sound of vinyl. A sense of connecting with something authentic. They’re also essentially nostalgic. Most pubs are embassies of the past. Victorian buildings with plastic Watneys clocks, Bass on the bar, and packets of pork scratchings whose packets haven’t been redesigned since 1981. It’s not unusual to find a pub with a stack of records in the corner or behind the bar. Albums that, if they were sold on Discogs, would not warrant a ‘Mint’ or ‘VG+’ rating. Split sleeves, yellowing inner sleeves, with a whiff of stale beer and cigarette smoke about them.

Writing on FB, Alistair brought my attention to a surprisingly startling and poignant video about the loss of working class neighbourhood and working class neighbourhood pubs as part of the modernization of in Salford, England in the 1960s. Here’s the video from the BBC from the time. It appears the modernization did not fully take. Then I thought… Salford… I know that place.  Pellicle posted a podcast about Marble Brewing of Salford back in 2023.  And Martin (with an “i”) has been there, too. The juxtaposition of each stage of Hanky Park over the sixty years is remarkable.

And, over on BlueSky, I came across an interesting thread on why hip-hop culture connects with Hennessey cognac and why Lebron is tying his brand to the drink:

During the war, African Americans stationed in France began consuming Hennessy. Afterwards, Hennessy, being French & having a different relationship with Black people than American companies, trail blazed by simply marketing to & employing Black people, carving out an extremely loyal consumer base. WWII saw Black soldiers abroad enduring antagonism from USA, like leaflets being dropped over France claiming they had tails in order to discourage sexual intermingling. Many were dismayed to find that their service in the effort of helping stop genocide abroad had not granted them humanity at home. During that time Hennessy was continuing to cater to African Americans & before we were sensationalizing terms like DEI, they had hired Black Olympian Herb Douglass as their VP of Urban Market Development, a role he served in for over 30 years. This history is why you hear about Hennessy in hip hop.

So it is not too far off the “I Am A Man” protests and declarations in the Civil Rights movement. Very interesting. Staying with history but reaching back further, last Sunday Martyn (with the “y”) disassembled the notion that the “Hymn to Ninkasi” is any sort of Sumerian beer brewing guide and did so with both verve and detail… like this:

Paulette has invented the word “šikarologist” to describe students of Mesopotamian beer, from the Akkadian word šikaru, meaning beer, the cuneiform for which looked like one of those pointy brewing jars laid on its side: 𒁉. I will definitely be stealing that. Strangely, a cognate of šikar in another Semitic language, Hebrew, the word shekhár, meaning “intoxicating drink”, is the root of the English word “cider”, via Greek, Latin and French. Shekhár is also the root of the Yiddish word for “drunk”: I remember my Jewish ex-father-in-law, who came from Vienna, staggering around at his 70th birthday party, surrounded by his extensive family in his large garden in rural Surrey, saying: “Ich bin so shicker!”

An interesting chit chat ensued in TwexLand led by Lars which touched on (i) the title is made up, (ii) it’s a hymn and maybe a drinking song but not a brewing guide (iii) why was the grain covered in dirt? (iv) woundn’t the malt get suffocated? and (v) why are the translations so different?

And Martin (still with the “i”) has been out and about in Filey on the North Sea coast seeking out GBG25 entries:

…the thing that hits you about Guide newbie the Station is the friendliness of the welcome, the Guvnor checking we know that food service has stopped before we waste 10 steps to the bar… I ask for mild and a Pride, and get mild and Blonde in Pride glasses. Four simple and unfussy rooms, a good mix of bench seating and squidgy chairs, we take a table with a reservation for “Bingo” in 3 hours time. “Bingo” was a popular boys name in the ’50s, along with Bunty and Bungo.

Top tip time. You want to make the weekly roundup? Include an accurate use of the word “squidgy” – can’t resist!  Speaking of good words, Gary wrote an excellent post on the appearance of “suffigkeit” in mid-1900s US beer advertising:

You want Bavarian beer? Here it is, new and improved – tastier, clearer and more sparkle than your original – that’s suffigkeit, or it is now.

Speaking of clearer and more sparkle, Matt made something of a declaration, the return to voluntary non-paying scribbling:

Yes, I still write. For lots of publications in fact. Not as many as I would like, but a writer is never satisfied. What I crave is that unpolished, flow-state writing, the kind that feels like stretching a limb, or the freedom of trying something new that might be absolutely terrible but you’ve done it anyway and calmed that twitchy section of your brain. Writing like this, which I’ve written in 10 minutes, proofed once, and hit the publish button. I just have a need for a space, a scratchpad, to try a few things out once in a while. I want to write basically, so that’s all I’m going to do. No newsletter, no subscription, just a place to take things out of my head and put them on a page.

Very good. Excellent even. Unfettered scribbling is the best. Compare that to the advice own newletter writing beer marketeer offered this week:

Content that takes you wide has to be relevant to millions of people. It can’t be about the impact of thiolized yeasts on lagers. Wide aiming posts tend to be less about you and your brand, and more about the industry, interest, or setting you’re a part of. They can still find parallels to your brand, voice, ethos, or sense of humor. The point of these posts are to appeal to what most people come to social media for these days whether that’s to shut off their brain, have a laugh, or learn something new. Nobody opens Instagram hoping to be sold a new 4-pack of Hazy IPA, so that shouldn’t be the goal when trying to go wide.

Please don’t go wide. Wide is a euphemism for dull, undifferentiating and disposable. It pandering to other goals outside of what’s written. Jeff (for the double) went very narrow and shared something quite personal which lead me to cheer “Yay, Poop Tests!“:

The rest of the trip went fine, but my body was experiencing a kind of systemic failure. I got back to the U.S. and the rash became permanent. I gave up beer and then coffee and eventually even food. In the past, fasting calmed the itchy nerve endings. Nothing helped until a friend recommended a gut naturopath. She gave me a stool sample and we discovered I had an overproduction of some kind of intestinal yeast. She gave me an antifungal and within days the rash left. Today I am back to my old self, happily eating and drinking whatever is placed before me.

Finally and keeping with the personal, Rachel Hendry‘s piece in Pellicle this week is a rich contemplation of loss through the lens of taste:

I want to know what her wine tastes like.

I can’t think about what is going to happen to her. Instead, I find myself obsessed with whether her perception of taste has changed. I think of whether memory can still come to her each evening when she pours herself a glass of wine. I want to ask someone this but it seems so silly in the grand scheme of things—can she still taste if she can’t remember? Can she feel flavour anymore? Is this why she drinks more now?

What if one day I no longer know what my wine tastes like?

I become selfish in these moments. Thoughts of her quickly turn into thoughts of myself. What if one day this happens to me, too?

Some tests, we all learn as we age, do not lead to a good outcome. Rachel has captured that moment with brave clarity.

That ended up unexpectely bookended. Not really themed. Maybe. Still, until next week, as we consider this shared mortal coil, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and there is a promise that Stan may be back from his autumnal break starting this very Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (189) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (931) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,454) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (151), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe. Maaaaaybe. Hmm. In the meantime, if you want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

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

The Mid-August 2024 “No, You’re The One Dreaming Of Sweater Weather” Beery News Notes

Great. Stan took this week off. And probably next week too. He may hover in my mind like the absentee desk editor like I mentioned a few weeks ago. But he also has a nickname, too: cheat sheet. Stan “The Cheat Sheet” Hieronymus. Yup. See, come Monday when I can’t think of anything to go look for in the world of beer to think about, I can go see what Stan has been thinking about first. He’s a bit like that nice smart left handed kid in grade 11 math class with really good posture that I sat one row back of and one seat over to the right. Gave me a good view. Made tests just a bit easier.

By the way, there is little beer related in that photo up there. Took the image Monday evening looking due south, down over central New York State. A pinhole sunset catching the anvil cloud from below. Right about in the middle of that horizon is Oswego, NY.  On still days in winter, you can see the plume rising from Nine Mile Point Nuclear. Also, home of Rudy’s. Where you can skip stones and drink Genny Cream Ale.

Did someone mention beer?  Starting hereabout, as we face almost 4,000 new beer retailers in these parts in a few weeks, Ontario’s public broadcaster TVO published a great piece by Matt Gurney about the shock of the new he has experienced in the last few years of deregulation of the provincial booze market, with a particular focus on that one odd rule that allows 7-Eleven to qualify as a restaurant:

Seeing someone drinking in a 7-Eleven or walking out of my local variety store with a bottle of wine will probably feel exactly the way seeing people openly smoking cannabis felt like for the first few years after legalization. I have a specific memory of standing at an intersection, waiting for a light so I could cross, and noticing two young men standing on the corner passing a joint back and forth. I thought to myself, huh, that’s unusually brazen. And then, seconds later, my brain caught up with reality: it would have been brazen a few years earlier, but that day, it was simply two law-abiding citizens engaging in a legal activity in public. 

On undoubtedly similar sorts of offerings, Doug Velky of Revolution Brewing in his newsletter Beer Crunchers, unpacks how craft has turned full circle with craft’s adoption of “cold” in the race to make light generic lagers:

…we also recognized that Cold Time, whose model focuses more on volume than margins, would require broader adoption than just our loyal Revolution customers to ever be considered a success. To achieve this greater scale, early investments would be crucial to get Cold Time into new places to find audiences who don’t currently think of themselves as craft beer fans, but are very open to a great, locally made lager.

Volume. Hmm. Disclosure. I’ve been buying Ice Cold Beer from Toronto’s Left Field Brewing for at least three years so there is no news here. But that branding had at least a level of self-parody in the mix along with the tasty within. Is that self-effacing sort of joke now all so… what… 2021? They may not be dipping as low as the macro-lags but aren’t they fighting for the Centro-Euro buyer‘s attention? Given how well “beer from anywhere you like” can sell, can we blame them?

Interesting bit of history over from Katy Prickett at Auntie Beeb this week on industrialization of England during the Roman Era, including brewing at scale:

“At Berryfields, we found evidence of malting and brewing and the tanks used to steep the grain before processing,” he said. “We tend to think of the Roman world as being very much a wine-loving place. “But actually a lot of the population in Roman Britain were drinking beer and we see that in the pottery they were using, large beakers in the same sort of sizes as modern pint glasses.”

Being someone who never gives a second thought for the Roman Empire, this was all news to me. I am told that Barryfield was located “at an intersection along a major routeway” and was “the location of multiple roadside industries, such as brewing, woodworking, and metalworking, aimed at supplying the travellers passing through.” Here, too, is an archaeological report on a neighbouring site complete with maltings and even malted spelt deposits along with some barley and even some apples and beets.*

In an exploration of more recent history and in light of far more recent racist events in the UK, David Jesudason published the story of a hopeful scene in late 1940s Wales as recoujnted by historian Kieran Connell, the story of an event that showed how working class people rejecting racist hostility are always as he says the vanguard of multiculturalism:

In 1948, the CIAC organised a black-tie event to celebrate Douglas’s success after he made 39 first-team appearances for the team, with the CIAC inviting white members of Cardiff Rugby Club. Announcements were placed in Tiger Bay shop windows and St Clair attended the night which was held ‘not at a dingy clubhouse’ but in the convention room of a city-centre hotel rented for the occasion. “He [St Clair] entered the hotel,” writes Kieran, “without any of the stares or comments that might ordinarily greet someone from an ethnic minority in central Cardiff. In the hotel lobby, he spotted five white girls and two black girls chatting with a group of four white boys. Further on, four or five boys of mixed ethnicity were trying to set up a large keg of beer.”

Table tennis? Bun fight? A bit of both? That’s the theme in an article by Ted Simmons in The Spirits Business about the dispute between the  American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) on the one hand and, on the other, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) over what is causing the great retraction. We join the debate half way in progress:

WSWA released a second statement [:]… “Blaming wholesalers for the industry’s challenges is shortsighted. The focus should instead be on how the entire supply chain, including wholesalers, can adapt to changing market conditions and support each other in navigating economic pressures,” it read…  ACSA cites a study that found that 87% of craft spirits drinkers want to legally purchase via DTC, and 82% of craft spirits drinkers support laws changing in order to expand DTC… The WSWA calls for an end to any finger pointing… 

Speaking of handbaggery, Ed had a posted about the redistribution of CAMRA branches which so far has not yet popped up into the general finger pointery zone but might be heading that way:

CAMRA currently has a plan to change its branch structure so no branch straddles CAMRA region or county boundaries. From what I can gather it’s a top down proposal from the National Executive… I’m a bottom up man so am dubious about the proposal. Though a devout member of our Mother Church I’m not very active in the branch, but it is the branch I’ve been in since I was a teenager so I would be sad to see it end. Our branch chairman has written a long reply detailing how the branch came to be and why its current structure works.

BREAKING: Ron + Uruguay: one, two, three, four plus one alarming admission: “I want a rest from being Mr. Beer“!!! Heavens. Jings even.

And Jessica Mason shared details on the losses left in the wake of the failure of one brewery, the unfortunately** named Anarchy Brew Co of Newcastle:

Following the pandemic, the business also reportedly fell into financial difficulties after being unable to pay back loans and financial obligations on top of rising supplier costs. Reports have outlined that the trouble began when directors of the company took out Covid support loans and used tax deferrals to manage finances. FRP Advisory has since put together estimates with a breakdown, showing the shortfall owed to creditors stands at approximately £492,413 and an additional £158,016 still being owed to HMRC. Many in the sector with debts currently unpaid by Anarchy are set to lose out with 22 businesses in the industry, including malt and hop suppliers, still being owed thousands of pounds. 

In the referenced reports, it is stated that unsecured creditors such as trade creditors, the landlord and loans and finance agreements are owed £261,468. Assets came in at about one-third of that fugure. What to take away from all that? Certainly the interconnectedness what with so many others dependent on the success of the brewery. Plus… would it have been a kindness had the pulg been pulled earlier?

Perhaps speaking of which but definitely for the double, makring the Molson Coors cutting of losses Doug Velky posted a neat and tidy summation of the recent string of ditchings of unwanted craft brands which has seen one firm… consortium (… collector… aggregator…) named Tilray picking up the pieces to perhaps slide up to fourth place in the contracting US craft brewer market:

For Molson Coors’ there’s no growth potential looking forward for these brands as each posted negative trends in 2023. The brands aren’t dead as nearly 200,000 BBLs across four regional breweries is nothing to sneeze at, but in order to reverse these trends it would take focus, vision, energy, and dollars. As a public company focused on growing shareholder value, cutting these brands and focusing on positive trending formulas is where they’ll head instead. We saw the same of Anheuser Busch who dumped more than half of their crafty brands to Tilray in 2023 and Constellation Brands who quickest to take their “L” in craft and move on when they cleaned house and sold off Ballast Point, Funky Buddah, and Four Corners.

Jeff asks some good questions and triggers good thoughts – but there seems to be an assumption that “local” and “regional” are similar constructs. I don’t think they are. By the way… does one now cheer in 2024 as much as one booed in 2016? Such a long time ago, isn’t it? Wasn’t it? My thought it that it all such a case of corporate deck chair shifting that it really no longer matters. Macro abandoning craft at the same time craft is seeking to mimic macro. Whoda thunk it? What an odd scene this is for so late in the play.

Headline for these times: “World Of Beer Has Filed For Bankruptcy, Here Are The Details.”

Interestingly and conversely, the government of Western Australia has created a ten-year economic development plan to boost the state’s craft beer industry:

The plan was put together by the state’s Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, the Independent Brewers Association (IBA), West Australia Brewers Association (WABA) and South West Brewers Association (SWBA). As part of the strategy, the four parties’ two main goals are increasing the volume and value of locally produced beer threefold by 2034 from a 2023 baseline and creating “greater vertical integration of the craft beer value chain” in the region. Over 120 craft breweries exist in Western Australia, representing 20% of total craft beer production in the country.

A ray of hope? A futile effort given the bigger picture? Who knows. Finally – and as a welcome night cap if you get my analogy – ever the optimist or at least open to the possibility, The Beer Nut gave credit where credit was due in his piece this week on a brewery that has turned its luck around:

There’s hope for us all, I like to think. Today’s beers aren’t the first to come from a brewery premises whose earliest wares I didn’t care for and thought poorly made, but under new management seem to have been turned around. Investment in better equipment? Less corner-cutting? Or just a more highly skilled brewer? I don’t know. I do know that the beers from the Hillstown brewery in Co. Antrim were usually a raft of off-flavours, of the homebrew rookie sort. It seems that there’s a new broom about the place now, going by the friendly and approachable name of Modest Beer.

PS: I like shameless. I can work with shameless.

Here are the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday… with a top drawer effort this week. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*How do you say “ooh, look, my pee’s gone all pink” in Latin?
**Although perhaps not as unfortunate as Jolly this week.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (+1=133) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (-1=929) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (plummeting a bunch to 4,466) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

BREAKING: These Are The Gentlest Most Supportive Beery News Notes Of All Time!

So… me here, you there. Again. It’s hit the lazy months. Or is it exhausted? As the dawn seems to start at about 4:07 am, so too do the times of laze. Good thing it’s warm enough to stick one’s toes in the big lake, as long as you don’t mind half the pee in America trickling by. I wonder if my attitude has affected the beery news notes this week? Let’s see.

First up, there was plenty written this week on the purchase of San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing. It actually led me to wonder how many days of hangtime the word “Breaking!” possibly can have on social media given how folk were still using it as a prefix to tweets maybe two days after the fact. Anchor is one of those foundational breweries of the fibby revisionist history of craft* so I am not particularly moved by the tales being told – except (a) I loved Liberty Ale when I could find it and (b) I do believe if anyone other than Christ can pull off a resurrection which does form a true twist in the narrative it is going to be Hamdi Ulukaya, upstate New York yogurt magnate.

Speaking of magnates and brewing and fire sales, there was some interesting information from Ron Elmer in The Drinks Business this week, this time about the current value of Boston Beer Co., the business that makes less and less of its revenue from, you know, beer:

Boston’s shares look attractive to a potential suitor, having plummeted more than 25% in the past 12 months. But the stock has jumped almost 31% on the recent rumours which started only two days after the shares closed at their lowest price since February 2019. At today’s price, Boston’s market capitalisation is about US$3.95 billion, far below its record valuation of US$15.98 billion in April 2021. The likely price put on a potential deal is unclear, although it would unusual if it did not include a significant premium, especially as no sale could proceed without the consent of Jim Kock, who founded Boston in 1984 and remains its chairman.

Aside from the Freudian slip, that is quite an eye popping collapse in value – under a quarter of previous corporate worth over just three years.  On May 17th, 2024 the stock was worth $260.75 compared to $1,294.93 on April 16th, 2021. That is closer to a drop down to 20% of peak value. Why? Well, if you click on that thumbnail you will see that the five year value really tracked in parallel with the pandemic. Compare it to the shape of the valuation for Moderna over the same period. Then to Constellation Brands. See? Boston Beer may also be the poster child for the general drop in interest in craft beer, too – even though they make more and more drinks that are less and less like beer. Still, hope springs eternal that an investor might be buying something more than a dead cat bounce.

Somewhat related, the Beer Ladies Podcast asked a question this week that was both exactly on point and a bit sad:

In this week’s episode, Lisa, Thandi and Christina debate an ever-popular topic in beer (and other things!) – ethos. Does the ethos of a brewery influence you to buy, or not buy, their beer? What happens when breweries make good beer, but treat their staff badly, or are divisive in their politics? We chat about a few stories that have been in the news over the last few years, and debate our own feelings on separating art from artist.  

Just run those thoughts that over in your mind as you consider: (a) it’s only beer (b) there are now exactly one bazillion breweries now, and (c) a huge amount of the beers being made these days are copycats of what everyone else is brewing. So… how can you not believe in ditching the assholes? For me, it is entirely on the beer buyer. Know your stuff. I would point out one comment made elsewhere, in relation to the well deserved dislike of Hazy IPAs recently from Sam Tierney of Firestone Walker:

I know some great brewers who playfully hate on the style and don’t make it, but they tend to be obsessive traditionalists. As long as you aren’t an asshole about it you’re allowed to not like any style. 

Which would guide me to recommend a point of consistency. If anyone doesn’t want the beer buying public to act like assholes when they mock the money-making gak, then as a mimimum don’t turn a blind eye to the assholes within the supply side of the equation. Me? My money walks and talks. But, let’s be honest, the big money about the talking about the walking is on Boak and Bailey as they displayed when they ripped out some opinionating this week about a pub crawl they undertook and the beings they encountered thereupon:

…Our fellow customers included a big party of beefy middle-aged blokes in quietly expensive casual clothes…  we found ourselves surrounded by classic 00s hipsters who are now in their forties, with kids. These days, the quiffs and waxed moustaches have gone grey, and the vintage workwear has baby sick on it… We found it fairly quiet inside except for a party of stags who kept bursting into song and breaking out in competitive banter… Instead of craft beer dads it was all black T-shirted youths and the background throb of heavy guitar music.

People! I was thinking about all this peopled populating of places when I read another rightly depressing comments from Jessica Mason on the experience of women in beer and the reasons why women like drinking beer with other women:

Personally, I find this side of the research the most galling. Damned if we do & damned if we don’t. Why gender stigma around beer leads to most women’s drinks order falling back onto a glass of fizz or a G&T. Because nobody would judge us making those drinks choices.

Let’s be honest. We all know that (both chemically and culturally) beer attracts, induces, comforts and/or reveals the asshole. Plus women are underrepresented in important positions in the industry so we quite possibly are losing a natural counterbalance. And, even when not taken to that degree, we also know that as mentioned by Rob Sterowski:

I wonder if the “craft beer” movement has been damaging by suggesting you have to rote learn a load of bullshit about styles before you can enjoy beer.

This led me to reach back to the greatest statement on the genesis of point as stated in the film Gregory’s Girl: “Why are boys obsessed with numbers?”

Generally conversely but still speaking of being obsessed with any number of things while also being clearly blessed with natural ability, The Beer Nut left the house and checked out yet another reno at the Guinness World HQ:

A few hours after the doors opened I wasn’t expecting many customers nor much on the menu, so was surprised to find the place packed with tourists and off-duty staff, and a full set of new beers to try. Better get the flights in, so. One definite retrograde step is the loss of the big screen menu, which provided useful information on the beers. Now there’s a sparse retro split-flap display board and a printed menu, which weren’t in agreement on details like what the beers were called and how strong they were. It’s all very well to dream in beer but occasionally you need to wake up and do your proofreading.

Spinning the globe again, from Japan we read an update of a story first shared here last October about a ban on public drinking within the autonomous Shibuya district within Tokyo:

Mayor Ken Hasebe recently told journalists: “We have been stepping up patrols and other efforts over the last year, but we have had people say, ‘Well, the rules say you can drink, don’t they?’ By establishing the rule, we would like to convey the district’s intentions, including during patrols — we would prefer people to enjoy their drinks inside restaurants.” This news may not come as a surprise to local residents… Mayor Hasebe says that local businesses supported the regulations in October 2023 and were behind the push to make them permanent.

Circumnavigating now via the northern pole, being out and about was also on the mind of Lisa Grimm this week who told the tale of her beery trip on the Eurovision trail to Malmo Sweden:

…the trip was a perfect excuse to explore the beery options on offer in the region, and we began with an initial visit to Malmö Brewing Company, located in an old brewery building, appropriately enough. These days, they brew a wide array of the usual hazy IPAs and fruited sours you find in most craft brewery taprooms, but they also have a few more meads, ciders and cocktails than you tend to find in Ireland or the UK.

And speaking of folk out there enjoying themselves, the Times o’London had a bit of a shocking yet not surprising story from the world of professional darts:

… concerns have been raised about the portrayal of a now predominantly sober sport, while alarming alcohol consumption allegedly occurs behind the scenes. The Sunday Times has learnt of an incident where one player had to be placed in the recovery position outside a PDC Pro Tour venue in Wigan. A player was also seen passed out in his chair in the practice room, where photography is prohibited, at a different event after, it is claimed, drinking about ten pints. A large number of professionals are still believed to fear that they cannot play well without alcohol, owing to performance anxiety; very few are widely known to play sober…

Yikes!! Speaking of anxiety and shock, Paste magazine has posted an ode from Jim Vorel to a long lost love – American Amber Ale… with an interesting intro:

As far as consumer selling points go, the allure of “subtlety” is not exactly an easy one to conceptualize and market. Take a look at the snack foods aisle of a grocery store, and you’ll see what I mean. The “crunchiest” potato chips on the shelf? The selling point there is easily grasped. The “tangiest” or “fruitiest” yogurt or ice cream? Ditto. It’s human nature for the consumer to think in terms of superlatives, because in exchange for our hard-earned money, we by and large believe that we deserve the best version of a product. And it’s an understandable fallacy to naturally believe that “best” is largely going to correlate with “most,” because we humans also want bang for our buck. It’s hard-coded into our behavior in a capitalist economy.

Now, you have read my recent thoughts on the individuality and subtly of Hazy IPA Clonefest (or, to quote a yawning Lisa Grimm up there, “…the usual…“) we are living in so to go to that sort of nutty extreme in the other direction to justify a place in the heart for Amber Ale is a bit much. Perhaps it’s just what Robin said: we still have lots of them in Canada. Or maybe it’s just obvious given how there is a whole load of badly thought out beers being sold today fighting it out for the attention of fruity seltzers and RTD drinkers. Maybe you need to think of them as the American version of a Mild. Whatever. But… but if you have ever held a small pile of amber malt in your hand, sniffed it and chewed a few grains. And then realize they can make a beer that tastes like that and can get you buzzed? It’s obvs to anyone who is paying any attention. Drink them for an evening and remember how good they are. And perhaps what a fool you’ve been.

Finally – and for the double! – I like what Robin wrote after reading the piece in Pellicle by Rob MacKay about A.I. and cartoony can lables:

I’ll say this, if you are a brewery that believes in the power of small, independent, local options, you are a hypocrite if you use AI to create your label art and framing it as a small business trying to keep the brand cohesive is intellectually dishonest and downright shitty.

Yup. That being said I pass on any can that has a cartoony label unless I have some other info on what’s in the can that helps me overcome my suspicions about the contents. Cartoon labelled cheese? Bland gak for pre-schoolers. Cartoon labelled bread? It’s going to have candy imbedded in the loaf. I presume I am looking at a sugar bomb. Plus, you know, how A.I. “still constitutes copyright theft—a civil wrong, and under certain circumstances, a criminal offence” as MacKay notes. So… no thanks.

And we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*[MY 2023 COMMENTS REPEATED IN FULL FOR POSTERIRY] The endtimsey big news in US craft this week I suppose is the press release issued by Sapporo on Wednesday, as described by Dave Infante in his newsletter Fingers: “This morning at about 1:45am local time, Anchor Brewing Company issued a brief press release announcing its imminent liquidation, citing “a combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016.” The brewery has been operating in one form or another since 1896; its current owner, Japan’s Sapporo conglomerate, acquired the firm and its iconic Potrero Hill facility in 2017 for a reported $85 million.” Quite a blow given the narrative of craft’s whole genesis story. I am not convinced (at all) that the hagiography necessarily matches reality (at all) but I sure did like Liberty Ale back when Ontario was part of the sales footprint a few decades back. There has been much by way of erroneous speculation, questioning, cherry tree chopping, wailing and rending of garments along with some common sense and respect… but… the bottom line is this from The Olympian: “I ran a cheap “pizza and pint” feature. It helped for a while, but then hazy IPA became a thing. Beer geeks turned their laser focus on to that style and unfortunately, a lot of other brands/styles just slowed down or stopped selling altogether. Anchor was one. I think there’s only so much life a publican or retailer can do to breathe life into a cherished heritage brand before they finally give up and switch to something new and shiny. But when I see 3 cleaning dates marked on the top of a keg, it’s a slow mover and time to move.” AKA: no one bought the Cro-Magnon of beers anymore. Be honest. You may have loved it, but you didn’t actually like it all that much.
**This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (915) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,474) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. 

 

Only One Thing Overshadows Eurovision… Could It Be These Thursday Beery News Notes?

Hmm… on the one hand international entertainment with, yes, a limited number of perhaps well worn themes played out, yes, over and over and over. On the other… Eurovision! It’s big. This here beer blog? Not so much. There is an overlap, however, as The Beer Ladies Podcast have a primer. They’re a bit into it: “Our own Katie and Lisa are jetting over to Malmö to revel in the madness…” And The Beer Nut will no doubt be live tweeting the formation of the next day’s piercing hangover, likely as illustrated. There is only one thing bigger – Stan is back. He never lets me take a week off. Stan wants a month away? Stan gets a month away. Me? I write this blog.

What is going on out there?  The big news or, as Ron put it, the great news is the relocation for a remaining Burton Union set from Marston’s Brewery, the traditional brewing system that Laura Hadland discussed last February as being mothballed. Pete Brown shared his thoughts at The Drinks Business:

This week, it’s been announced that Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) has given a set of the famous Burton Unions to Thornbridge…, and is helping the Derbyshire craft brewery get it up and running. This has sent some much-needed cheer through the craft brewing world. Why does this matter? Once upon a time, Burton-on-Trent was the most important brewing town on the planet. And by the middle of the 19th century, most beer in Burton was being fermented on the town’s eponymous Union Sets. The unions were a system of barrels, pipes and troughs, basically an adventure playground for fermenting yeast. The yeast had loads of fun, foaming through the pipes and running down the trough and back into the barrels from which it had spouted. The belief was that happy yeast made better beer.

The Tand shared his initial reaction too: “A cynic might just think that multinational brewing companies care little for either history or cask beer, and this is a cheap way to put a slightly embarrassing problem to bed and come out of it looking rather good.” I entirely agree… but do the yeast care one way or the other? Well, yes, of course… if the alternative is extinction!

And congratulations were also earned by Pellicle this week for this announcement:

We are not sure how this has happened, but we are very honoured, and a little taken aback to have been nominated in the Best Magazine section in this years @GuildFoodWriter awards. Against The Guardian. And the National Geographic. This is nuts. 

Boak and Bailey analyzed the recent news the Buxton Brewery teetering towards administration and focused in on the problem with being “merely quite good”:

This is what we think sometimes happens with breweries like Buxton. They’re not bad enough to have anything specific to fix, but not good enough to generate word-of-mouth enthusiasm. People don’t mind drinking their beer, but they don’t seek it out, or detour to drink it. They might have one pint but won’t stick on it for a session, or stay in a pub to have one more pint than they ought to. And they won’t order it by the box from the brewery shop.

And continuing with the good news / bad news, a statement was made this week by Hadrian Border Brewery about a contract brewing deal gone very wrong:

THEY WON’T PAY. No disputes on product or services! By November 2023, we had no more head space for it, it was making us ill, so we passed the case to a Debt Collection Agency…  

Quite right to call the deadbeats out publicly. But… gee… was “posting this on such a platform is detrimental for the beer industry“? No, not talking about things like this is detrimental. As is not talking about how so much of non-alcoholic beer is a let down… except perhaps for its perhaps natural audience according to the New York Times – children:

…more and more he has noticed children asking for nonalcholic drinks. “It’s not exactly daily, but more than weekly,” he said. The restaurant, which sits inside Saks Fifth Avenue, has two spirit-free concoctions on the menu…  He ultimately decided that while it still feels a little strange to serve the sophisticated beverages to children, it felt satisfying to contribute to family dining experiences “in an interesting way.” As nonalcoholic cocktails, wines and beers have become staples on bar menus across America, some children — people way under the legal drinking age — have begun to partake.

Not that there is any meaning left, but that’s one new twist on the “small” in small, independent and traditional, I suppose. Sorta like this take on the role of the trad:

Novonesis is a leading global biosolutions company formed through a combination of Chr. Hansen and Novozymes. It creates biosolutions for all types of industries. from nutrition and biofuel to chemicals, energy and water. Novonesis’ SmartBev range offers yeast solutions for low/no-alcohol and regular beer. The range includes both unique yeast solutions, like its NEER products, as well as lactic acid bacteria solutions, such as those used in its Harvest range. The company was pushing these products at CBC 2024 — especially its NA alternatives — which Guillory sees as a rapidly growing segment in the last 12 months.  

Mmmm…. biosolutions.* That’s what I am looking for in my glass. Speaking of the world of chem, Ed Himself once again shared some thoughts from the tech side of brewing gleened from his trip to the Murphys Brewery in Cork Ireland, owned by Heineken since 1983:

They can do 12 six tonne brews a day in it in two lauter tuns. Heineken, Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish are brewed there, the stouts being perhaps four brews out of a weekly 35-40. Cider is also made there from sugar and concentrate. They can mash every two hours and ten minutes, lautering takes three house. They have a holding vessel between the lauters and the copper, and unusually the yeast propagation plant is in the Hauppmann brewhouse. Overall extract losses are less than 7%. They have heat recovery on the stack on the copper and a heat recovery tank holds hot water which is used to pre-heat the wort via a Plate Heat Exchanger. They have four 120 tonne malt silos and…

Yeow. Right about there my brain started to hurt. Like it hurts when the kids were in high school and asked me to help with their math homework.

BREAKING: Ron had breakfast.

Beth Demmon is back with another Prohibitchin’ this time featuring the career arc of Maura Hardman, now Seattle Cider Company’s marketing and PR manager – including this tidbit of transitional good luch from her previous stint with Whole Foods:

It was during her time there she first found out about Seattle Cider Company, via their partnership with the local nonprofit City Fruit. “They’d take their ugly apples, crab apples, things that can’t be used for their CSA program or food bank program and put them into cider,” she explains. Whole Foods then sold the City Fruit ciders and sponsored the Seattle Cider Summit, so she began to learn about and appreciate the beverage as a fan. But appreciating cider was one thing. Working in the industry? It hadn’t even occurred to her.

And David Jesudason shared the story of Melba Wilson, an American who moved to London in 1977 – and how she had to “endure a shocking ordeal” in a pub just twenty years ago:

“He was surrounded by his squaddie buddies, so I guess he felt emboldened to carry on. He stopped after a while, I went up to him and looked at him. He didn’t show any signs of remorse. The other customers weren’t treating him negatively – it was like they thought you could get away with saying that in a country pub if there was only one black person around. “It was one of those incidents where you’re shocked that somebody is doing it and then you think ‘how am I going to challenge this?’ I said to my husband: ‘did you hear what he said?’ and I wanted to complain.”

The stunning bluntness of senseless bigotry. Saddest part: “I believe racism – overt or covert – has risen since the noughties.”

On a far less serious topic, Jessica Mason reporting live from the SIBA press conference:

Scary stats: “24% of drinkers NEVER visit their local; 41% WOULD VISIT if prices were lower; 25% of drinkers say NOTHING would make them visit more often & 8% of drinkers choose a pub because of the indie craft beer it stocks.”

And less important still, I am not even sure I have the energy to lift my hands to the keyboard to report on the news that James Watt has shuffled the deck of name plates and has swapped out CEO while retaining his shares, the board seat and adding a new title that makes no sense – captain. Best line was in the Guardian:

He will now be replaced by the company’s chief operating officer, James Arrow, who is expected to focus on returning the loss-making company to profit.

Confused? Imagine my state of mind when Liam gave me hope of a Battledore revival. Because Goldthorpe. Because Goldthorpe may be Sprat. Which may be Battledore. Maybe. But there may actually be Goldthorpes. Maybe.

Speaking of things not appearing as they are, so much for the Euro lifestyle thing as Latvia is moving its legal drinking age from 18 to 20… and the brewing trade lobbyists are lobbying:

…chairman of Saeima’s Social and Employment Matters Committee Andris Bērziņš, [stated] certain coalition and, possibly, opposition deputies may propose excluding beer, cider and wine from the list of alcoholic beverages to be applied with new age restrictions. Bērziņš said he doesn’t support this proposal, as the proposed exception for beverages with a lower content of alcohol does not match the Saeima’s recently passed regulations on the handling of cigarettes, which states how as of 2025 only persons of 20 years of age will be allowed to purchase tobacco products.

And nearby-ish in Germany, access to that friend of the drunk night out – doner kebabs – has become a hot economic policy topic:

Kathi Gebel, the youth policy spokesperson on the board of the Left Party, told Business Insider…  said the government “must intervene to prevent food from becoming a luxury item.” The party plans to propose a government price cap of €4.90 (around $5.30) or €2.90 (around $3.10) for young people, The Guardian reported… [T]he German government said in February that prices of the doner kebab are rising because of rising wages and energy costs… Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the issue in the past, saying that he is asked by young people “everywhere I go” if there should be a price reduction for doner kebabs, according to the outlet.

Finally, once upon a time, people actually paid me actual money to place ads on this here blog. One of those ads was for faux-esque Worthington’s White Shield.** There it is to the right. The little white square to the lower left of a screen shot from early 2007. From the emails I can see that I had to explain PayPal to the PR rep, Danny. Well that fact and Danny’s later emailed disappointment at the results of his hard earned cash placement didn’t make it to the story Pete Brown filed for Pellicle this week but he covered the rest of the issues surrounding of the great beer’s demise admirably:

Molson Coors don’t understand British ale, and of all the big global brewers, they’re the ones who haven’t really got craft beer either. The real reason they “paused” production of White Shield had nothing to do with “production routes.” It was a marketing decision. There are good people working at Molson Coors who adored this beer, but from a corporate perspective, once the company stopped ignoring it, and once Steve Wellington retired for the final time, they didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Turning a completely invented fake Spanish lager into the most successful beer launch in British history? No problem. Continue the production of a legend to satisfy legions of discerning fans across the world? Nah, too difficult, mate.

Such is the way of the world. Still, that 300 USD for the three months of the ad sure was handy at the time. Thanks Molson-Coors!

And with that… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*ever since some guy at work started calling the ten minute ciggie timeouts during day long meetings “bio-breaks” I just can’t see the world in the same way.
**Note the apostrophe – Worthington’s White Shield.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (slumoing to 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up t0 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The “Is It Tra-La Month Already?” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Tra-la? Really?? How many times have you had to write to remind me not to repeat myself in these weekly notes to myself?  I know. I know.* But in my defence, I am a man of little imagination. As you know. I take photos of pots yet to be filled with soil and seed.  Imagine being so dull.  Which is entirely unlike The Beer Nut whose blog turned nineteen this week so is, therefore, of legal age in all of Canada. Always a gent and always a source of the best information. I wonder what life would be if I ran this place on that basis?

Speaking of sorta which and as a bit of spice to start off the week to contextualize what follows, one of my favourite people from one of my favourite breweries (Max of Godspeed) got into it on Twex yesterday when he posed the following:

This happens at an alarming rate in Toronto, too. It’s not unusual to find myself in earshot of someone in the industry slagging another brewery in town…

See, he was responding to a similar comment from someone whose slow frail hand reached and pressed delete mere moments after posting. It’s an odd aspect of the bigger craft scene that insider smack talk is a bad idea. Me, I spell that sort of “bad” with the letters F-U-N! Me, I want to consider myself to be on Team Godspeed. I fact, I want elbow pads with “It’s Godspeed or it sucks!!” on them. They and maybe ten others stand above in this marketplace and they each should be loud and proud once in a while.  But do they? Do we? What follows this week is a lot about beer and language.

Not unrelated given that it is about one presents oneself… or one’s can I suppose, this bit of social media promo is perhaps the bestest, truest observation on the sad state of craft beer today:

Does your beer name have TOO MANY ADJECTIVES? Are there 3+ ingredients or flavours are namechecked on the can?You may have found yourself in possession of a GIMMICKY BEER – but is that a bad thing? Tune in to find out more…🍻

That’s the Beer Ladies Podcast talking right there… and it you click on this link you can get to the actual talking. When did what written on the beer can get so far down such a wrong path? Do we still have to use language like that?

There has, in fact, been a general concern with the state of writing these days. It’s the talk of the town, the topic of the week. Jeff propounded with a broad brush upon “The Death of Books“… even though new book sales are still ahead of the pre-pandemic rate in the USA. In their monthly e-letter, Boak and Bailey addressed the slightly narrower question of usefulness of the UK pub guide:

The fundamental problem with pub guides – or any kind of print guidebook – is that they go out of date between writing and printing. And that’s especially true in 2024, on the long tail of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, with hospitality feeling rather volatile. It was always a problem, of course. Our copy of Fred Pearce’s 1975 guide to Bristol pubs came with a paper insert with updates from April 1976: “Oliver’s Bar, Victoria Street… The Courage depot’s local is now closed down.” Actually, to an extent, it wasn’t a problem at all. It was part of the business model. If not planned obsolescence than at least a rather helpful incentive for people to buy next year’s edition.

Authors of the soon to be published book Beer Breaks in Britain responded with a bit of a stiff upper lip: “The fact is, people are still buying guidebooks. But that’s because they tell stories that can inspire travel, exploration, not just tell you where to go.” That statement reminded me of something that we need to be thinking about when it comes to discussions about things beery – that ever present need to tell the white lie when we are not, you know, just parroting the press release.  Perhaps it should be considered not all that surprising given we are talking about a subject that literally numbs the senses.

In fact, that comment reminded me greatly of the recent coverage of the slightly less recent Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas where the news of the continuing loss of public interest in craft beer was apparently the theme. Dave Infante described it in VinePair as evidence that we are in what he framed as “Craft Brewing’s ‘Could Be Worse’ Era“:

The industry in aggregate has concerns aplenty, though, and they were discussed at length over three days’ worth of seminars, meetings, and after-hours drinks on and off the Strip. Direct-to-consumer shipping and franchise law reforms are top of mind for the BA’s policymaking double threat, general counsel Marc Sorini and senior director of federal affairs Katie Marisic, and potentially onerous nutritional labeling requirements from the TTB aren’t far behind. Bob Pease, the BA’s president and chief executive, made sure to flag “growing threats from neo-Prohibitionist groups” in his opening remarks on Monday, as did several other speakers throughout the week.

You know when folk start blaming the straw man bleat of “neo-prohibitionism” that something else is really really going sideways. Something something else like (…umm..) customers losing interest in the cyclical fads of craft (… err…) curomers are just sick of the horse apple hype as David Bailey so bluntly put it last Friday in Pellicle? There is no lack of proof of the slide if Jessica Mason’s stories just this week are correct… and they are: laters Ballest Point, see ya Greene King and buhbye BBF. Yet… we also consider the reasonably described booster Don Tse in Forbes uncritically summing up the slew of negative numbers by repeating the trade association’s lead voice of the boosterocracy:

Watson estimated that, “125 million Americans who drink didn’t have a craft beer last month” and suggested that there was still opportunity for brewers to grow. Speaking to the audience of brewers, Watson said, “Many of your customers are fiercely loyal. Breweries that are succeeding are finding ways to have customers drink their products on more occasions… Craft beer as a category has seen fads in beverage alcohol come and go,” said Watson. “But craft is here to stay.”**

Really? Same as it ever was? That’s all there is? Cue the great Ms. Peggy Lee!***

So if we take all that in and that is all there is… which of the two trades are doing more poorly? Books or craft beer?  If Stan is to be understood correctly, craft is down to 2014 levels of interest, five years worse off than the book publishing marketplace apparently.  Whichever it is, books about beer should be expected to face a tough future.

Entirely conversely and far more reality based, Ed wrote a piece this week about another sort of understanding – one based on gaining an actual educated understanding of beer and brewing – which he drew from his conversation with Kathryn Thomson, the Head of Education and Professional Development at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling:

I have for a long while been insisting that as a professional brewer every pint I drink is CPD but that does seem to have bitten me on the arse now that recording CPD is something I’ll actually have to do properly. I don’t suppose untappd submissions will count. The blog however might, my write ups of brewery visits whilst on study tours have been described as “great examples of reflective CPD”. I may be a beer nerd but I’m also a technical beer geek! Well lubricated though those IBD study tours may be there’s a lot of actual studying too.  Kathryn is trying to develop a practical and pragmatic approach to CPD which sounded very positive to me. And I also got a chance to go off on one about brewing education which was great because I have opinions.

It’d be nice if a consumer oriented equivalent was created so that one was not defencelessly subject to the fist punch “craft is here to stay!” sort of yahooism. You know, one where we’d see more of the specificity, respect and honesty that good beer avoids. A discussion like those reports we read this week about how the spirits markets are facing “destocking” and even there candor about value we see in the famously puffy world of wine trade writing these days. Just consider this from James Suckling on the conditions faces by those setting prices for the soon to be sent to market 2023 Bordeaux futures:****

“People are not going to buy if you don’t drop the price,” concurred Hubert de Bouard, whose family owns Chateau Angelus, which last year raised its prices significantly with some backlash from the market. “You can’t go against the wave. If you don’t [drop prices] you can’t sell. It could be 20 percent or more, but it depends on the name of the chateau.” It’s not going to be easy to drop prices to a level that will generate interest in the vintage for en primeur. The market situation is very tough, as any wine merchant knows regardless of where they are based. For a start, the cost of money from banks is the highest in decades in the United States, and wine sales are down in most key markets around the world. There are overstocks with importers, distributors and wine merchants. And prices are falling for many top wines. And then there are two wars and an anxiety-ridden U.S. election in November. It will be difficult for many buyers to tie up money, especially if it’s credit from the bank, for almost two years before the wine is delivered.

Whole lot of context and grounding right there. Could you imagine a leading beer perioidical publishing something like that, being that honest about value?

Lisa Grimm is also all about the real and last Friday her Weirdo Guide to Dublin proved it with a visit to Hynes’ Bar in… of… at Stoneybatter:

On a recent Saturday evening, I found people making the most of the remaining visit from the sun in the beer garden, which comes complete with a DJ booth and Oasis-v-Blur cigarette disposal – a reference that here in Ireland is both a GenX comfort blanket and general Father Ted reference that even the younger set who don’t recall the 1990s will recognize – they know all about Fathers Dougal and Damo (though I note that as I write this, it’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Parklife, so I may crumble into dust before we’re through here – let’s see!).

And ATJ got real over at his newsletter AJTbeerpubs in his reminisings of trips to American dives with some fine character portraits:

It was either his grandfather or great grandfather who had come out west and made something good of himself. ‘Have you heard of so and so?’ I was asked, an unremarkable town in the north-west of England whose name sounds like a low comedian who had a TV series in the 1970s. ‘It’s a fine place and I intend to go there one day.’ I muttered something, but my thoughts were rather, shall we say, less complimentary about his intended place of pilgrimage, but I was a guest. As these kind of evenings do, when we are not expecting anything to happen, stories flew backwards and forwards, and more beer was ordered. Meanwhile, Dean Martin from Rio Bravo staggered in and was served this time. He was a fisherman, who’d come ashore that day, and presumably was drinking away his profits. 

And Pellicle published something that didn’t need to make much of an argument to convince me: “The Case for Perry” by Adam Wells. Perry is the greatest fluid this planet ever created as far as I’m concerned but never gets its due:

These days there is so little perry made, so little known about it, and so few people who care that we pass down lies and generalisations and they stick. We say that it’s always sweet: it isn’t. We say that it’s always light—that’s not true either. We ho-ho about pears containing sorbitol and claim perry is a laxative—if that was true I’d be a ghost. We equate the whole, broad, fascinating flavour spectrum of a labyrinthine, spellbinding drink to Babycham and Lambrini, and wise, sensible people—people who know and care deeply about other drinks—nod and shrug and pass the lies along. At best, perry has been filed as a sidekick; a chapter in a book about cider.

I say I love perry but I never seem to get my hands on much of the stuff. Which places it in the realm of “readily available” when you compare it to the subject of the article in Cider Review “Hymn to the Quince” by Beatrix Swanson:

… it doesn’t take much digging to discover plausible reasons why you don’t see many British quince drinks, either: quinces struggle to ripen fully in some parts of the UK and need to mature in storage for up to two months after harvest; they seem to be unsuited to machine harvesting; and they are not commonly planted and therefore expensive to procure post-harvest. What’s more, until the UK government’s August 2023 alcohol duty reforms, ciders made with quince — or hops, or elderflower, or anything else other than apples or pears — were taxed as ‘made wine’ in the UK and therefore subject to higher duty than cider or perry.

So, again we see, there is good writing out and about right there to be read. Sure, not enough to balance off the other stuff but it is worth the digging. Which means… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.***** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*2023… 2020… 2019… 2009… 2008… 2007… you get the point.
**“Peace for our time!!!“
***For those in need of the footnote…
****Me, I’ll be buying* my mixed two or three cases or so as I have been since the beginning of the pandemic. Investing for my retirement! I’m already menu planning for Christmas 2031. Here’s a cheat sheet for the futures buying process for Ontario.
*****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (back up to 916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (crashing down nince t0 4,463) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The Super Fantastic Yet Soon To Be Chocolate Stained Easter 2024 Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Let’s get right into it. Jeff posted the graph right above us right there this week which deliciously not only sums up the place of non-alcoholic beer in the US market but also, as any good specific graphical representation of data, also invites us to consider any number of the crises in beer or in all of life itself. Is it neo-proto-Dada? Not sure but it really poses the question “what is big?” BA Bart, who actually started the discussion with this graph, responded with a fact as well as perhaps as something that was less than a fact when he countered with another graph:

All depends on your point of view. From one view 0.8% share isn’t that much. But 1 share of the US beer mkt is >$1 billion in consumer spending & NA is now bigger than any craft style except IPA (category vs style within category is admittedly a bit apples to oranges).

I have to admit that I am personally far more interested in the graphical display of information than I am in NA beers – but the question of what is “big” remains. Very much relatedly, Andreas Krennmair wrote about a sort of “wow – this is big!“: a NA beer from Germany’s venerable brewers Augustiner:

Everything I’ve read about the Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell sounds to me as if Augustiner may have pulled off the same as Guinness, to release a convincing alcohol-free Helles that may be pleasing even to consumers and Augustiner fans that otherwise would not choose an alcohol-free beer. That’s a big deal, and could change the landscape and expected quality of alcohol-free beer in Bavaria and the rest of Germany.

See, as Andreas says, Augustiner was the last of the big Munich brands without an NA beer. And NA beers, in Germany, are big. In other big news, lots of good coverage by James Beeson in The Grocer this week on the purchase of “parts of”* craft beer distributor Eebria by Beer52 and the effect on suppliers to Eebria now holding invoices unlikely to be paid. He’s added a few extra considerations by Twex, too, including this on Wednesday:

Have this AM seen a copy of the SIP16 doc pertaining to the sale of @EeBriaTrade. Was initially marketed as for sale as early as March 2023 (i.e. it had been in financial distress for some time). A buyer pulled out in Dec ’23. Beer52 paid a total of just £30k to acquire. Doc makes reference to the fact the sale process(es) needed to be carried out discretely so as to reduce risk of “supply partners withdrawing their products”, something that “would impact upon the company’s ability to trade and significantly affect the value of the business.”

It is important to note that buying or not buying debt as part of administration is a common choice. If you are not a dealer in debt it is risky to take it on. It’s also important to note that pre-pack administration set ups (if not managed correctly) are not immune from supplier backlash or even allegations of fraud related to the “pre-packing” process. As always, suppliers with concerns related to questions on possession as opposed to ownership of stock in hand should seek qualified independent legal advice. By this I mean, if you did not buy the debt did you really buy the stock associated with that debt? By which I mean… where is the beer and is the possession lawful?** These things are regulated in Canada. There is also a UK police hotline, ActionFraud, which specifically deals with firms “fraudulently trading immediately before being declared insolvent, or phoenix companies.” I make no comment on current situation other than to say suppliers left out of pocket in the UK seem to have sources of professional legal and policing assistance.

Entirely unregulated and certainly well above it all, I so admit that know I have posted about this orchard project a few times. But, as a very minor investor, I have a rather outsized proprietary interest in the experimental forest of rare cider and perry trees of Barry Masterson, the motives behind of which he shared in Cider Review:

What drives a person to do something like that? For me, it began with Flakey Bark. A kind of poster child for rare pears, though believe it or not, there are rarer varieties than that one that was rediscovered by Charles Martell while driving a horse and cart through the Herefordshire countryside. Six known mature trees. Six. Though there are a couple of young trees at the National Perry Pear Centre at Hartpury, Gloucestershire. And now there are two more, planted in a field in Schefflenz, Germany. If it wasn’t for the Ross-on-Wye Cider and Perry Company, we’d likely never have heard of it.

Wow. Really wow. Me? I transplanted my lavender plants this week into ten peat pots as unattractively illustrated to the right. I started each and every one of them from seeds. So… samesies!

Wetherspoons. Love them or hate them, they appear to be either fighting against the tide of bad pub news coming out of the UK or… maybe they are part of the problem. The appropriately named Harry Wallop spent 24 hours in one to investigate for The Times:

It is 12.38am on a Friday night and I have spent nearly 15 hours in the Briar Rose, a Wetherspoons in the centre of Birmingham. Hannah, a law student, is about to head off to Snobs nightclub, but only after she has grabbed my arm to explain to me the appeal of the pub chain. Though she is articulate, she has also had “quite a few” Au Vodkas (£5.29 for a double, including her orange juice mixer). There is something about her enthusiasm that riles her friend Jacob, a politics student. “We don’t want to be here. We’re only here because it’s cheap,” he argues. “That is such bullshit,” says Hannah, rising to her feet.

Also down the ‘Spoons, The Beer Nut has been doing is own investigations of the wares on offer. No word of the volitilitiey of the “doubles Au Vodkas a la Hannah” but plenty of other observations:

It’s funny how branches of pub chain JD Wetherspoon develop personalities for themselves. Of the three in central Dublin, The Silver Penny, in the north inner city, isn’t the biggest, but it always feels like the busiest, the loudest, the endless party on the verge of kicking off. None of that has anything to do with cask beer, and yet it’s the one that does the most to put cask beers on. At festival time, it seems to give everything its turn, where the other two branches don’t seem so committed. That’s a long introduction to say that virtually everything I drank at the Spring 2024 JD Wetherspoon Beer Festival, I drank at the ‘Penny.

Speaking of festivals, the BBC reported on one which went rather wrong:

The first International Brewing and Cider (IBC) Festival was held in Manchester over the weekend. But the not-for-profit event was hit with complaints about rude staff, cold conditions in the Mayfield Depot venue, and a poor atmosphere… Freddy Hardy, co-founder of independent Manchester brewery Courier Brewing Co. said a low turn out in such a large venue meant “the vibe… just wasn’t there”. The 35-year-old added that he had agreed to stay until the end on Friday, but estimated he had only sold beer to around 20 people – 10 of whom he believed to be other people from the industry… Manchester-based beer writer Matthew Curtis told the BBC he estimated crowds to be no bigger than 50 to 100 at any time. He described the atmosphere as “very muted”.

Note that cameo appearance! Sometimes co-conspirator extraordinaire Katie added this:

Can confirm rusty rainwater dripped from the roof into my drink

That’s almost a haiku, right there. Or a bit of a folk song. Staying with the only two real controversies in British pub trade but moving on to the other… everyone’s favourire retired Fullers brewer John Keeling writing in Brewers Journal unpacked the sparkler debate for us who are not really in the know:

I am going to weigh in on this debate with my customary diplomacy. Northern beers use them to produce a massive head which certainly makes the beer look good and appetising but southern beers have a looser fluffy head. If you pour beer from a cask into a glass, you will get a very small head indeed and this was the way beer was dispensed before the invention of the beer engine.  This produced a bigger head, but it needed the invention of the sparkler to produce the tight creamy heads much loved by Northern drinkers. However, it might look good, but does it taste better?

You know what looks good? This scene from Ireland. What a lovely image from 53 years ago. Shared by Dublin By Pub on Twex, no word of the ultimate source but with the caption:

Livestock traders drinking outside a pub on Inis Meáin island, 1971.

Speaking of loverly, Retired Martin has taken us along to see the unexpected splendor of the newly reopened Rochdate Town Hall with a fabuous photo essay that you really need to go check out:

Mrs RM said “Wow”.

Speaking of a bit of another wow but just in time for Easter…

A congregation of Catholic nuns has reopened a bar in an ancient sanctuary in northern Spain, pulling pints of beer in the hopes of spreading the word of God to thirsty guests visiting the 11th-century Romanesque site. “I think plenty of people would think it’s unusual, because they’ve never seen it. But you know, it’s not a sin to drink a beer,” said Miami-born Sister Guadalupe, adding that the bar constituted an “open door for us to evangelise”.

Certainly with the same intention, Ron was back in Brazil for the hotel breakfasts and fit in another one before heading to at Marstons and drinking a lot of Bass [Ed.: passage edited for clarity]:

We start with some Bass that’s been open for a few days. It’s dry and finishes satisfyingly bitter. And no trace of sulphur. Quite like the pint in the Smithfield. Moving on to a freshly-tapped Bass, the contrast is striking…  It’s time to go and drink some beer. In town… Guess what we’re drinking? You’ll never get it. Bass!… We need to be moving on. Not far. To another pub… Why not have a Bass?…  “Fancy a pint in the White Horse?” Mike asks. It’s the pub opposite our hotel. “Why not?”… They’ve got Bass.

Now… there’s a lot of reading out there… so some quick takes like “Is craft beer cringe now?” asked Courtney Iseman. As she writes, “now” is a long time:

Even then, though, “craft beer drinker” was an easy shorthand for mocking hipsters. See: this New Yorker cover from 2014.

“What does ‘fine wine’ really mean?” asked Simon J Wolfe, sounding familiar:

In other words, this has nothing to do with wine – as in the liquid in the bottle.

Wholesale pricing notes from The Beer Nut:

Your regular reminder here that pubs buy beer from independent breweries for less than the big brewers charge, but sell it dearer, just because.

Boak and Bailey on “Real Ale as Folk Horror“:

The main point is that many of the stories concern secretive cults which are unwelcoming to outsiders and cling to arcane practices and rituals. Which brings us to CAMRA.

And… somewhat similarly but not… can we expect someone or something to brew a “Six Finger Stout“?

…researchers say they have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to make brews even better.

Heavy lifting the word “say” right there.  And “West Virginia passes bill allowing home distillation” says NPR with a netly hidden note of doom in the word “celebrate”:

West Virginia’s legislature has approved a bill that would allow individuals to distill up to five gallons of moonshine as a way to celebrate Appalachian history and heritage.

I like how “history” (the actual) and “heritage” (the bits of history that conveniently support whatever the hell you want) are used. Good to see the what was apparently the original level of 50 gallons a year per household was reduced.

Hops news? We got the hop news. Indoor hops farms in Spain? Check. Genetic intervention to preserve Kentish strains? Check. And Stan in his monthly Hop Queries clarifies his thoughts on the term “landrace” comfortably in line with my thoughts. First his thoughts:

Hop geneticists refer to the varieties that farmers chose to propagate over the course of centuries as landrace hops. Val Peacock, long-time manager of hop technology at Anheuser-Busch and now a consultant, explained the decision was pretty basic. “We like the hop that grows on this side of the road. We’re not so happy with the hop that grows on that side of the road”… I prefer the word “landrace” to “noble” because it is more encompassing. The more diverse the population of hops that breeders have to draw from, the more diverse the selection of new varieties brewers will be able to choose from, whether they are seeking old world or new world flavors. 

Me? I do not care for when people use “landrace” to mean wild. Centuries before the 1800s when the concept of nobel hops shows up, farming husbandry was selecting preferred stock.  You see it in hops history and malting barley history. People in the past used the resources around them in clever ways. They were not waiting for our own short stage of their future hoping we would be cleverer.  Speaking of cleverer, Hollie Stephens in Pellicle describes some hybridizing hopsters:

Indie Hops formed a partnership focused on hop research and breeding with Oregon State University (OSU), breathing new life into the university’s well-established hop research, which has been evolving since scientists planted hops on the campus in 1893. The business provides 100 per cent of the program’s funding and sets direction for what they want to achieve. But it’s truly a team effort to bring a new hop into the world. 

Finally, a wonderful photo from brewer Paul Spencer of his team as they start the process of making a new beer with a special ingredient:

And again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up one at 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,465) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

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

*As succinctly quoted by Boak and Bailey last Saturday.
**See the fabulously named civil cause of action “replevin” (as discussed in the reasonably recent case Gignac v. Move Me Again Transportation Inc, 2021 ONSC 3374) which is a request for the return of someone’s personal property where it is alleged that the property is unlawfully detained by another someone.

Your See Ya Later Frikkin’ Winter 2024 Edition Of The Beery News Notes

This is it! I know… I know. It’s like a weather bore blog around here with some news items Scotched taped on – but really is there any better day to see coming than the first of spring? Or is that too hemispheric of me! It’s the last day of summer in our nether regions… southern… southern. That’s where Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin found himself this week, photographing these bush beer barrels from the Cook Islands in the national museum. As the tiny print says, the beer they made was based on oranges and honey. Yah-ummm.

First up, beer writer and big city crime beat journalist Norm Miller celebrated the third anniversary of his not dying this week with some great advice :

Three years ago today I nearly died. Still alive. Don’t be like me, go to the doctors, don’t ignore what your body is telling you and move.

Good advice. Thanks for being there, Norm. And in the latest edition of Prohibitchin’ Beth Demmon wrote this week about Ellen Cavalli who is both an established cider maker and now a non-drinker thanks to her own health scare:

“I want to be alive,” says Ellen simply. “I don’t want it to be like I chose alcohol over a longer life with my family.” Not drinking was the easy part. Feeling disconnected from the community and industry she helped build was the hard part. She had to make a choice. “Do I want to continue living with constant anxiety, sorrow, grief, depression, no joy and faking it?” she asked herself. “What do I want my life to be?” She told Scott something had to change for her to find meaning in her life’s work once again. For her to feel joy. For her to feel hope. If she couldn’t drink alcohol, then the choice was clear—make a non-alcoholic cider. After a few months of expedited trials, Ellie’s Non-Alcoholic Gravenstein became the first commercially available dealcoholized cider in the United States…

I like the sound of that drink, coming from Nova Scotia which is one of the other places like part of California where Gravensteins are grown. Speaking of sounding good, Pellicle this week ran a feature on the Lacada Cooperative Brewery in Portrush, Northern Ireland by Ewan Friar featuring a great set of photos, including one of a Mr. Whippy van and oceanside scene Pr0n:

Portrush lies on a mile long basalt peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic off Ireland’s North Coast. Two gorgeous, golden sand beaches flank the base of the peninsula to the east and west, while the northern tip rises to the dramatic cragginess of Ramore Head. It evolved from what was originally a small fishing port into one of Ireland’s major tourist towns in the 19th Century. With its colourful town houses, pleasant promenades and the world famous Royal Portrush Golf Club, the town became an all out Victorian pleasure resort, and much of that character still exists today.

Perhaps less on jolly holiday – but totes Irelandish, too – Eoghan has told a tale that he has called proof that has has “reached my boring era” but I think it has a certain charm:

Every Friday evening during the school year, I cajole the children into the bike by 18.40. I cycle them up the hill to the local municipal swimming pool and wave them through the door by 18.50. By 18.55 I’m sitting in the pub around the corner with a beer in front of me and a book in my hand. By 19.45, I’ll have finished the second of two beers, made no headway in the book, paid up at the bar, and be out the door so I’m back at the pool for the end of class at 20.00. Then it’s pile them back in the bike, and cycle them home where my Friday night routine ends and their bedtime routine begins. Lather, rinse, and repeat the following Friday.

Jessica Mason apparently needed to explain what for me was understood as the clear meaning of the word “however” in her story on Black Sheep’s rather sudden rebranding soon after being takeover and the seemingly complete corporate amnesia over a rather similar effort in 2014:

According to the Yorkshire brewery, this is its “biggest rebrand since it was founded over 31 years ago” and the “sleek new design will feature across all Black Sheep Brewery beers, included keg, cask, and bottles, as well as online merchandise” however the makeover both echoes its previous attempts to modernise the brand, uses similar terminology used by its new owners and also comes amidst the brewery’s restructuring causing a stir across the industry in what has been questioned as a means of diverting attention away from other media.

Ah, the end times. Another country, another end to a good beer landmark. This time, it is New York’s Spuyten Duyvil as Luke Fortney reports in the NY Eater:

“No bar in the city pays more loving and thorough homage to beer.” That’s how New York Magazine once described Spuyten Duyvil, but after two decades, the craft beer bar is shutting down. “Craft beer’s current ubiquity combined with rising rents have made operating Spuyten Duyvil unsustainable,” said owners, Joe and Kim Carroll, who also run nearby restaurants Fette Sau and St. Anselm. When Spuyten Duyvil opened in Williamsburg in 2003, it stood out for its selection of imported European beers — “the beer you couldn’t find anywhere else,” says Joe Carroll. “Now you’d be hard pressed to find any place without it.” The last day at 359 Metropolitan Avenue, near Havemeyer Street, is April 21.

I get but don’t get the “fresh ale” thing as also reported upon by Jessica Mason. It just appear to be a new mid-lower end of market dispense. Is it simply the use of the handle? Liam add this:

Not *quite* the same, but I’m sure many people would-if-they-could have mocked and derided Michael Ash’s invention too, but look at them all slobbering over Guinness Draught now ..!

Elsewhere and to the upper left of the map, Jeff is fighting the neg by creating a non-profit to promote beer in Oregon which is an excellent idea:

It’s a story that deserves to be told, and visitors and locals alike should be aware of its special place in American brewing. So, on Monday, I signed articles of incorporation to create Celebrate Oregon Beer, a nonprofit 501(c)(6) that will do just that. It has the backing of both the Oregon Brewers Guild and Oregon Hop Commission, as well as 26 breweries, growers, and allied groups (and counting) that have pledged donations to launch the project. I’ve convened a Board of Directors, and soon we’ll get started. In the meantime, let me tell you a bit more—and borrow your wisdom as I do.

I like that. Put your time and effort in where your interests lie. Me, I am on and have been on community radio station boards, one in the US for a decade and now another closer to home. Good to get involved. As corporate secretary, my minute taking skills are right up there. And, speaking of radio, one of my weekly listens is CBC Radio’s show Now or Never who this week interviewed Don Tse – who also happens to have a wide selection of beers – as part of an episode dedicated to dream job:

There aren’t many jobs that have “drinking beer” as the first requirement. Calgary’s Don Tse, also known as the Don of Beer, left behind a successful law career to pursue his ultimate dream job — tasting, judging and writing about the bubbly brew.   

You can hear the episode by clicking on that link. Utterly conversely, as Boak and Bailey shared on their Patreon footnotes,  I’m also “a bit sick of hearing and reading and talking about BrewDog” but Will Hawkes had a great piece in VinePair on the dull faux punks:

…many Britons have had enough of Brewdog’s schtick. Even as the company continues to expand — and as rumors of a forthcoming IPO circulate — it remains a lightning rod for criticism, most recently when complaints it made about a BBC documentary were rejected by Ofcom, Britain’s television regulator. The response from online commentators was not sympathetic. So how did Britain’s most important modern brewery accumulate so many, to use Watt’s own term, haters?

Err… no, not Watt’s term. People actually do hate them. Speaking of  growing or not growning up, Boak and Bailey wrote about a really interesting topic for one like me who had, many years ago, served as a bouncer and faced the overly rouged and wobbly high-heel  vision of fifteen year olds with fake IDs:

When did you last see underage drinkers even try to get served in a pub? It’s what you might call a dying tradition. Ray’s dad says he started drinking in a pub on the Somerset Levels when he was 12, surrounded by adults who made sure he and his brothers (mostly) behaved themselves. And in the mid-1990s, Jess went to East London pubs from 16 hiding behind her tall friend, though nobody ever got asked for ID.

Some great comments followed up on that post. They also pondered the nature of the American cheese slice on Bluesky this week:

Discussing American cheese AKA ‘cheesy singles’ with my other half. “It works so well in some sandwiches but you’d never eat one on its own, would you?” I say. “No, because it’s actually a semi-solid sauce,” she replies. My god. This is exactly right.

Pete Brown also seems to have gotten things right when he and his left London for Norwich, which sounds very nice according to his emailed newsletter:

If we leave the house and drive left, the heart of the Norfolk Broads is ten minutes drive away, and a choice of excellent beaches, some home to seal colonies, is twenty minutes beyond that. If we leave the house and turn right, it’s twenty minutes walk to the heart of a culturally vibrant city, with eleven of the best pubs I’ve ever been in punctuating the route. (The pic above is from the nearest one, the Rosebery.) Cask ale is £4.50 a pint and always in excellent condition. People speak to each other. It’s all rather lovely, and I’m losing weight, the bags under my eyes are no longer grey and lined, and the persistent cough I’ve had for years has disappeared. 

ATJ share a less idylic scene as he made his way to a pub in Devon recently:

…outside an east wind blew, a persistent hangnail of gloom. The year had shifted and it was spring, but the weather hadn’t budged one bit and winter had left a dastardly booby-trap of an easterly that gusted through these western lands with a dismal stretch of the soul — however, bundled up like a parcel of joy I had cycled five miles to this pub so that I could have my first pint of the year outside. 

And Stephane Grant shared a few thoughts about another sort of unpleasant beer drinking experience at last years CBC as she plans her plans to avoid the downside this year is Vegas:

It’s no surprise that craft beer has a problematic relationship with drinking. Last year, I found myself drinking too much and even when I tried to slow down, someone was pushing another beer in my hands. The situation sucked, and my plan to avoid it this year is to keep hop water on deck. A little hydration, a little smoke and mirrors—it’s pretty much a win/win. 

Sensible. And just after I published the update last week my “YOU GOT MAIL” notice sounded off, echoing through the house – and there was Katie Mather in her newsletter The Gulp sharing her love of running, a thing which I have never enjoyed as it appears to including running but not include 21 other people chasing a ball… and it is not limited to a modestly sized rectangle:

The day matters. The haze clears. I never get bored of my usual run through the lanes. I am in love with a certain dip in the road where an old woodland congregates either side of a humpback bridge. I feel Pendle behind me and watch as its western flanks follow my course. I spot siskins and chiff chaffs, and robins eye me suspiciously from inside hawthorn hedges. The first blossom is out now, white and frothy high up on tall Serviceberry trees. I pretend, after the first mile, that I’m nowhere near home, that I’m in the middle of the countryside and I’m just running, and running, for no reason, just for the joy of it. This is my lane, and I feel like I can tell it’s happy I’m back.

Finally, from Mastodon and Emergence magazine, some ancient thoughts on aging well which seems to require a rather large capacity for drinking, even larger than perhaps at the CBC:

Now that I’m old with shaved hair and thin clothing, I feel
a vastness inside of me.
Let me pour empty the River West as wine, use the Big Dipper as ladle and invite all worldly things as my guests.
The world is but a passing guest of my mind.
Alone I strum my zither and sing, forgetting what year it is,
while time keeps passing through my body, so time lives.

Zhang Xiaoxiang 1132–1170, Southern Song Dynasty

Mr. Deep. That is what they call me. Cause I post poetry. And with that… that’s it! Again … we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. I saw this comment on Mastodon this week that is worth applying to all social media… and perhaps craft beer too:

Business Insider has written about how much TikTok’s growth rate has collapsed. I think it’s a combination of a few things: (i) Law of large numbers. Almost every eligible user is already on it. (ii) Every major competitor has added similar features and (iii) Attention is a zero sum game. There are no more available entertainment minutes in the day. So it has to compete with streaming shows, gaming, other apps, etc.

Interesting. And check out the collapse of Twex in the graph! Me? This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (125) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (still climbing up to 4,465) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (165), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

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