Lager – A Good Beer Blog

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

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.

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.

As The Madcap Slide Into Yuletide Speeds Up Here’s This Week’s Beery News

I am already late. I think that is what Yule really means: “you are late!” I need to still get a few things together… very few… but I already feel rushed. Perhaps this is how “We Three Kings” felt galloping across the Middle East and it’s all part of the lessons of the season. Fretting. I dunno. I need a few of these Caribbean Christmas drinks. No wonder people take winter vacations. To make up for the Christmas vacation. Not as rushed as the holiday-time photo contest kept me a decade ago. That’s the winner from 2012 up there by Robert Gale, one of 36 photo entries I posted on just one day in that long contest period. That was a lot of fun – but nuts, too.

First up, Stan is back and posted his linkfest on Monday after a month on the hollyjollydays – and he noticed something:

Has it really been four weeks since I posted links here? Indeed, and it seems as if it would be easy to sort through the headlines since Nov. 6 and assemble a post of only stories about the craft beer apocalypse. I am left searching for a phrase that is the opposite of “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Perhaps “Five Feet And Rising“? Just to, you know, keep up with an aquatic theme? Stan explores some of the reasons for the craft beer predicament so go have a look. Even though the exploration and examination of a downturn is valuable and in craft almost fully ignored… I know the feeling but have promised myself to be cheerier this week. I will. It is the holidays or perhaps just the pre-holidays after all. Let’s see if that’s possible.

But first… Jordan has been worked a few paper rolls through the adding machine and come up with for Ontario what can only be called findings:

Will update the map later, but it looks to me like we’re down from 413 physically operated brewery locations to 389 so far this year. There are some ownership situations I don’t know how to express simply in geographic format. Assume that number is high… If you condense ownership structures, we can reduce 67 locations to 27 companies. So… 349 companies total.

Maybe related: low alcohol partying and no alcohol bars? Apparently Sam Smiths is also running no alcohol bars, given that “as many as 120 Smith’s pubs are currently closed“! That’s what’s said in that article in The Times about the Samuel Smith’s of Yorkshire. Not so much about the brewery as the man running the operation. This was a brutal passage:

Back in the 1990s Samuel Smith’s bought and began pouring millions of pounds into restoring the town’s derelict Old Vicarage, which dates back to the 14th century. Great care was taken to go above and beyond rules stipulated by English Heritage… When the eight-year project was complete, the vicar at the nearby St Mary’s Church was informed that her new house was ready. The offer came like a bolt from the heavens. St Mary’s vicar already had a home — one she liked and better suited the needs of her young family. After the invitation was politely declined, the lavishly restored building was locked up.

Enough. It’s the holidays. Here’s some good news. The BBC reports that Welsh brewery Brains has turned its fortunes around… literally… or is it figuratively…:

The company had debts of £76.4m, most of which had accumulated before the pandemic. Mr Bridge worked with a number of banks to restructure and agree repayment of all of the debt, with the chief executive finally feeling confident about the company’s financial health by the summer of 2023. “We’ve managed to navigate those challenging times. And it wasn’t just us, it was the whole drinks and hospitality industry that went through those challenges,” Mr Bridge said. Brains is more than beer in Wales. Having been brewing in Cardiff since 1882, the company is still owned by the descendants of Samuel Arthur Brain.

More with the cheery. What is cheery? History is cheery! And international. Heck, we received a comment in German this week, a footnote to my bit on the Lispenard clan, 1700s Loyalist beer barons in New York. Lord Goog provided the translation. Speaking of lore of yore, the Beer Ladies Podcast had a great interview this week with Dr Susan Flavin, a historian joined in a project recreating a 1500s brewery:

In this fascinating project – link below – the team used a recipe based on a beer once served in Dublin Castle, in order to not only taste it, but to learn more about the role beer played in the early modern period. This one will tickle the beer history nerds and casual beer fans alike!

In more recent history, Boak and Bailey have a great explainer this week on the pub feature called a “snob screen” as helpfully illustrated in the 1963 comedy The Punch & Judy Man where they are used as part of a physical joke:

Hancock, who co-wrote the film as well as starring in it, uses these as the basis for a bit of ‘business’ which, handily, you can see some of in the trailer for the film. He pops in and out of the various windows, taunting and teasing the snobs behind the snob screen. In other words, he refuses to respect (literal) social barriers, and highlights their purely symbolic nature. After all, he and his pals can hear almost every word that is being said a few inches from them, on the other side of the screen. What is slightly odd is that most surviving examples of tilting or swivelling snob screens are there to separate customers from bar staff, rather than from each other.

Neato. And a couple of decades later, the BBC took us back to a Belfast board game of forty years ago and posed the question whther it was glorifying or just identifying actual pub culture:

1981: Scene Around Six explored a Belfast pub crawl board game, named Binge. Controversial enough that many shops refused to stock it, it did at least have the backing of a certain local mover and shaker, Mr Terri Hooley.

And another bit of history. In the same week that it is reported that Diageo is ditching most of its beer brands*, a landmark in craft brewing history is being lost with the closure of the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England after fifteen years in someone else’s portfolio.

In 2007, Ringwood was purchased by Marston’s for £19.2 million. Marston’s disposed of its brewing operations in 2020, selling assets to a joint venture with the Carlsberg Group to create the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company. Mr Davies mentioned that he is “incredibly proud” of the effort and dedication of staff at Ringwood Brewery, adding: “Our priority now is to support colleagues affected by the proposals through the consultation period, which has now begun.”

You know, the official hagiography of craft beer does not properly account for the importance of the Ringwood Brewery which came into being in 1978 led by Peter Austin. As Boak and Bailey discuss in Brew Britannia as well as in their thoughtful obituary for him of almost a decade ago, Austin was one of the few people who could legitimately be called a founder:

His first triumph was building and getting established the Penrhos Brewery on behalf of Martin Griffiths, Terry ‘Python’ Jones and writer Richard Boston. He then launched his own brewery, Ringwood, in 1978, and thereafter came to be the ‘go to’ guy for advice on setting up similar operations. When David Bruce was setting up his first Firkin brewpub in 1979, it was Austin who vetted his designs for a miniature basement brewkit. The two were both founder members of SIBA, which then stood for The Small Independent Brewers Association, and Austin was its first Chair.

Austin also consulted, with Alan Pugsley, brewing bringing his energy into the new brewing movement in North America. I’ve had beers in breweries in Nova Scotia, Maine, New York and Ontario directly carrying on that tradition. The shutting of the Ringwood is the end of an era.

The big news in the world of Pellicle is that I WON the November fitba pool (even though I am wallowing in the nether ranks.) It which was a great surprise that earned me a mug. Oh… yes, and Will Hawkes wrote something well worth reading for Pellicle about London’s pub group Grace Land and the co-owners Andreas Akerlund and Anselm Chatwin:

They met when Anselm took a job as a bar back at Two Floors, Barworks’ bar in Soho, whilst he was at St Martin’s College (now Central St Martins) in the early 2000s. Temperamentally similar and with a shared passion for music, they cooked up a vague plan to open a dive bar/gig venue—and when a site, formerly The Camden Tup, came on the market in 2009 they opened the first Grace Land venue, The Black Heart. It wasn’t an immediate success. “The Black Heart was a dismal failure for many years,” he says. “But it’s about working with the concept, sticking with it. People get it now.” That philosophy has served them well in the years since, during which they’ve slowly accrued a small family of high-quality pubs…

Note: The English are coming back down to pre-Covid levels of alcohol consumption. Is inflation healthy? Hmm… and while we are at it… next time someone suggests that terrior in wine isn’t real, mention this study as reported in The New York Times:

“It’s one of those terms that the wine industry likes to keep a bit mysterious, part of the magic of wine,” said Alex Pouget, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Geneva. Dr. Pouget is trying to apply chemical precision to this je ne sais quoi. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Communications Chemistry, he and his colleagues described a computer model that could pinpoint which Bordeaux estate produced a wine based only on its chemical makeup. The model also predicted the year in which the wine was made, known as its vintage, with about 50 percent accuracy.

That’s some science right there, that is. Continuing with questions of authenticity, again we go with The Times out of London which had an interesting article on tea and chai this week with some very interesting assertions about appropriation and the nature of foodways:

You can culturally appropriate badly, or you can culturally appropriate well, but almost all culture involves appropriation. While Indians have been adding spices to milky beverages for centuries, the spiced tea that is fashionable in American and British coffee shops, and is sometimes marketed as an exotic drink, is no more purely Indian than, say, chillis (which originally came from Central/South America). Indeed, chai is the result of the British imperial push to get Indians to consume tea.

Note: Lars wrote about complexes of closely located language families. Nicely done. Also nicely done, Geoff wrote about Ethiopian borde over on Mastodon, a very complex form of beer making.

I think I first had Jack’s Abbey lager with Ron and Craig in Albany New York back in March 2016. I recall hitting a store on the way back from Delmar. Ah, Delmar! Anyway, Jeff has done an admirable job remembering what he wrote down during his recent visit… before he lost his notes from that visit… including, to begin, its location:

The city proper is small and compact, but the metro area, or Greater Boston, includes around a hundred small towns clustered in the fan stretching out from Boston Harbor. Two radial freeways, I-95 and I-495, mark important distance metrics. Anything inside I-95 is pretty Boston-y, while anything within the larger I-495 ring is Greater Boston. Framingham, home to Jack’s Abby, is 20 miles due west of downtown Boston and about halfway between 95 and 495.

Note: Zak Rotello of the Olympic Tavern of Rockford, Illinois alerted us to this situation: 1, 2, 3, 4. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Nice piece in Cider Review this week on the state of the tiny German perry trade and its advocate in chief, Barry Masterson:

As anyone who follows Barry will know, there are a good number of pear trees in his home region around Schefflenz. He’s previously reported its former significance in Bavaria and until relatively recently it was a central cultural tenet of rural life in the Western Palatinate, a little way west of Barry, near the Rhine and around much of German wine country. But today there’s vanishingly little to be had commercially, and if I didn’t have a direct line to Barry, Lord alone knows how I’d have found anything out about it for the book.

And finally in one of the weirdest craft fibby claims yet, the fact checkers and desk editors of Forbes seems to have taken coffee break when this one crossed by their inboxes:

Recently the Cicerone Certification Program announced that six people had achieved the rank of Master Cicerone. There are now a total of 28 Master Cicerones worldwide. A Master Cicerone is similar to a Master Sommelier in the wine world but the focus is less on service/hospitality and more on general beer knowledge. The exam is frequently billed as one of the hardest tests not just in beer, but in the world.

FFS. Is there any bloatification that craft can’t claim? Safe to say that gaining the certificate does not require passing one of the hardest tests in the world. There are, after all, brain surgeons not to mention standard shift drivers licenses. Not being a peer reviewed academic course, however, allows for this sort of thing to float around.

Fin. We are done. I know I’m done. Remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (94) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (907) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,426) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with 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. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon (even if BlueSky is catching up in the race to replace.) And even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing or perhaps only waiting to discuss beer:

Anyone else? Anywhere else? Yes, you also gotta check the blogs, podcasts (really? barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! 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 much less occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*Or not… as a web-publication called Just Drinks has asserted that Diageo does not plan to offload beer assets – apparently based on this peak of investigative reporting: a “company spokesperson said: ‘We do not comment on market speculation.’“

The Almost Sweater Weather Edition of Beery News Notes

See that up there? That’s the news of the week. Maybe news of the week last week but are you really the news of the week if you don’t stretch it out to two weeks? That’s a crop from Kat Sewell‘s image from Les Twits and it is one of many out there. Everyone is fascinated in the UK with blue and white cardboard suitcases apparently. On BlueSky, it’s the easy-to-carry box that makes the deal according to B+B… but then we learned of this sad take from one unhappy Pete:

You’re quite possibly right. However by contrast, the box I picked up was damaged and required two hands to carry it. I then had to transport it on my push bike. I ditched the box in the store bin and carried all 10 bottles (loose) in my back pack. It was quite heavy.

Update: there was a yesterday post on Belgian Smaak by Eoghan that Jordan pronounced “It’s some of the best writing I’ve read this year on any subject” so I better include a link here. It’s on the Belgian tram line I believe I mentioned a few months back. But Eoghan has way more detail in his story “Flavour Track — A Culinary Crawl On Belgium’s Coastal Tram“:

…my early morning train from my home in Brussels—skating past wet, flat polder fields with pitched roof village steeples occluded by an early morning mist—terminates in the village of Adinkerke and its well-proportioned brick train station. From here, the sea is a 45 minute walk through corn fields and acorn-strewn dunes, where the entrance to Belgium is marked by a Leonidas chocolate shop housed in a former customs station. By the time the train pulls into the sidings at Adinkerke the mist has congealed into a fine rain. Fortunately, there are already two trams waiting to start their journeys up the coast.

Nice! What else is making folks happ-happ-happy? Kids in pubs? Really? This spot near Manchester apparently hopes so:

It’s wonderful to head out to a countryside pub for a cool drink on a sunny day – but for those without a car, public transport options are often quite limited in getting to some of the region’s prettiest villages. But it’s not something you have to worry about when heading to Mobberley in Cheshire – where there’s a brilliant village pub right next to the train stop. The Railway Inn (in a nod to its convenient location) has been widely acclaimed with both CAMRA beer awards in recent years, as well as with rave reviews from visitors on Tripadvisor. Reviews from this year hail it as a “hidden gem” with its huge beer garden and brilliant play areas for kids. The pub also boasts its own bowling green.

Seems like a huge investment on the pub’s part. To make youg families happy. Kids are great. Right? Not always if the news out of New York City is to be believed:

A crime tale straight out of Charles Dickens is unfolding in the Big Apple — with adults “directing” children who appear no older than 10 to steal from unsuspecting businesses, witnesses told The Post. The chubby-cheeked crooks have terrorized bars on the east and west side of Manhattan and Brooklyn for months, graduating from snatching money in unattended bags to stealing cash from open safes in at least two watering holes in the last few weeks, according to workers and owners. In many cases, the kids at first try to solicit money to raise money for their “basketball team,” and then run amok.

OK, what else… is this a bad idea or a good one? Announcing you are raising pub prices to deal with those times of the week with busier workloads?

Britain’s biggest pub chain has started charging its customers 20p extra for a pint during busy trading periods. Stonegate Group, which owns more than 4,500 pubs across the UK, has begun adding a surcharge at peak times at 800 of its sites across the country. A ‘polite notice’ in one Stonegate pub said ‘dynamic pricing is currently live in this venue during this peak trading session’. The sign says the surcharges will pay for extra staff, extra cleaning, plastic pint glasses, and ‘satisfying and complying with licensing requirements’. The notice explains that ‘any increase in our pricing today is to cover these additional requirements.’

It’s referred to as dynamic pricing and it is not receiving a warm welcome: “Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer group, called the move troubling…” Wow, there’s a strong statement. The proprietor of the Ypres Castle himself is not clear on the point at all and goes even further: “It’s utterly weird, isn’t it. Surely the thing to have done was to raise prices overall but introduce long happy hours, achieving the same thing but spinning it positively.” Wetherspoon pubs are doing the opposite – lowering the price – but just for one day:

It’s that time of year again when all Wetherspoon pubs slash all food and drink by 7.5 per cent. The annual move is to highlight the benefit of a permanent VAT reduction in the hospitality industry. And that means that if you pop into a Wetherspoon’s on Thursday, September 14, then, to mark Tax Equality Day, you will get some money knocked off. That means a customer who spends a tenner will only pay £9.25 for example. Wetherspoon’s founder and chairman, Tim Martin, said: “The biggest threat to the hospitality industry is the vast disparity in tax treatment among pubs, restaurants and supermarkets.

And while you are out there looking for bargains, just be clear about the rules:

This is incredible. A Wisconsin bar offered free drinks if the Jets lost. After Rodgers went down, they started running up their tabs. The news was live when the jets won in overtime and everyone realized they had to pay.

Finally on the question of value (and by the way is it is so great to have gotten to the era that we can talk about value without some semi-pro consulto-journo beer writer jumping in to play the broken record “you can’t put a price on experience!!!“) – finally on the question of value… Boak and Bailey asked about the linger legacy of value pricing at Sam Smith’s:

When people on Trip Advisor are still advising tourists to go to Samuel Smith pubs for good value food and beer, however, there’s clearly a mismatch between reality and reputation. We might also be more relaxed about these prices if we felt they were covering the costs of a good pub experience but… Dirty glassware. Glum service. Grim atmosphere. Evidence of a death spiral, perhaps?

Spicy!!! But enough of your obsessions with filthy lucre. Time to go all ag and to that end Stan has reported in from the hopyards on the effects of climate change before taking a bit of a break over the next few weeks:

The photos at the top and bottom were taken in USDA research fields near Prosser, Washington. The babies in the seedling field (top) are cute, don’t you think? The odds are very much against them ending up with a name and being used to brew beer. But if that happens, farmers will know they are agronomically prepared to survive in a climate wild hop plants in Mongolia did not know five million years ago. A constant topic of discussion last week was the Great Centennial Disaster. In recent years, farmers in the Yakima Valley have harvested about seven to eight bales of Centennial per acre planted. This year, some fields produced only two-plus bales per acre. Not every field was such a disaster, but when the USDA releases harvest data in December the results will not be pretty.

More on this phenomenon in The New York Times where Catie Edmondson providing extended coverage from the hop fields of Spalt, Germany:

The plant is so central to the town’s culture that signs advertising “Spalter Bier” can be found on nearly every street, many of them hanging from the half-timbered, red-roof houses that were built hundreds of years ago to store and dry hops. But the crop and those timeworn traditions are being threatened like never before. The culprit is climate change. The promise of a warming, drier climate has dealt a brutal hand to the hops industry across Europe. But it has been especially ruthless to Spalter, a crop that has sustained this tidy town of 5,000 in southern Germany for centuries.

And Martin continues his quest for pubs but took a break to go to a rainy music fest where he and herself still found their way down country lanes to a pub:

One of the annual traditions at End of the Road, along with watching Mrs RM put the day tent up while we watch and spilling curry down our new T-shirts, is a half hour walk along the narrow lanes to the Museum for a pint of Sixpenny’s 6d Best in a proper glass. Yes, missing last food orders (which seem earlier each year) is also a Retired Martin tradition. So this time we earmarked Saturday lunchtime for a visit, and with the promise of morning WiFi we set off at 10:30 on the “jumping into hedge to duck incoming lorries” routine. It’s worth it for the thatch.

Nice. Similarly but without all the hassles of the actual travel, Gary continued his wanderings around the pubs of the UK in the mid-1900s with this post about a 1940 exhibition of paintings at the National Gallery in Britain on the Blitz including this scene from Wales:

Perhaps, then, the pub next to theh Masonic Hall was St. Ives, also known as St. Ives Inn. Or if not it was presumably one of the other four known to have traded on Caer Street before 1939. Whichever pub it was, one can only hope that it wasn’t occupied when Hitler’s bomb fell. The Masonic Hall, for its part was not occupied; Swansea Masons had shut its doors a few years earlier when they moved to a new location.

It reminds me of how common “getting blitzed” is for slang among my pals. Speaking of which, Cookie wrote a post this week, about the Hillgate Mile pub crawl in and around Stockport:

The hillgate mile was many years ago an iconic pub crawl in and around Stockport. A strip with a high density of pubs that had come about to service high density housing and factories in the area. Much of that housing had become flats and many factories closed and with it the need for so many pubs. The area and its pubs was in decline when I first encountered it and whilst now there has been a revitalisation of the area with new build nicer looking flats there will never be demand for that number of pubs again. It was noted not only for the number of pubs but the variety of brewers that owned pubs under the tied system.

His remembrances about these sorts of endings are worth the read. And reminded me that a few weeks ago, I cast doubts upon the notion that in Britain “Cask is the only beer poured beneath the bar where you can’t see what’s going on and this greatly adds to the uncertainty around it.” Is it really about the show that draws people into pubs, that they are now missing out on? Well, a form of that notion appears to have maybe crossed an ocean if this observation in GBH is to be believed as a major factor in the continuing decline of draft… something that has been on the steady decline for decades:

Draft beer, even when brewed by a multinational beer company, absorbs context from its setting: the bartender who poured it, the adjacent guest on the barstool, the glassware in which it’s served. Adding a humble orange slice to a glass of Blue Moon elevated the way millions of U.S. drinkers thought about beer. In packaged form, beer has fewer tools to pitch itself to drinkers. It works with the same set of variables as any other beverage in a can or bottle, whether wine or pre-made cocktails or hop water.

I am pretty sure that is not the problem, people no longer hankering for an orange slice and a stranger on the next barstool. Again, its only about the relative value proposition and, as with cask lovers in the UK, dive bar beer drinkers are just not as big a part of the population, maybe just because they have found something else to do. Sober up. Collect stamps. Get a happier family life. Netflix. Something. I am also very mindful of the frank words of Katie Mather in her newsletter The Gulp! this week on the closing of her bar Corto:

I want to be clear about the reality of opening a bar like Corto in a small, rural town—even one as permanently lauded in the national press as being the “ideal beer staycation destination”. Last week we opened and drank three bottles of Riesling worth £100 because after three attempts to drum up interest in a tasting event (which we have been repeatedly told by well-meaning folks that we should do more of) only two people came along. The world of premium and craft drinks is not what it was, or what we believe it to be. I sell three times as much basic organic Tempranillo as I do orange wine or sour beers.

In another sort of ending, Andrew Cusack in The Spectator considers the his low alcohol coping mechanism in his remembrances of Sam Smith’s now departed, his beloved Alpine Lager:

Sam Smith’s Brewery has sadly failed to realise the strength of Alpine’s weakness. There has been a downward trend of the main lagers, such as Carlsberg which has reached 3.8 (and which has announced they will move down to 3.4 this year as well) and Fosters at 3.7 per cent. But almost nothing exists in the peak quaffable-but-still-tasty range of 2 to 3 per cent. Many of Sam Smith’s loyal customers will mourn the passing of the Alpine decade and hope that some other brewery might take note of the open territory before them.

Over at Pellicle, Ruvani de Silva has written about a lager in England which is dedicated to the Windrush generation as well as the people and the process behind its development:

If that sounds like a lot to pack into one beer, that’s because it is. Robyn, however, talks passionately about how immigration has shaped her, her family, and her community, consolidating and distilling her thoughts and feelings into brewing a beer that she wants to speak for those experiences, and to resonate with those both inside and outside the Caribbean diaspora.

On this side of the Atlantic, the hippytown of Guelph, Ontario has announced one of the more attractive beer bus deals as Jordan explains:

Running September 16, October 14, November 18, and December 16, the beer bus is a great solution to the logistical problems behind your next afternoon pub crawl… Five breweries, more than five dozen beers on tap, two full food menus to choose from, buses running once an hour, and the best part is that it’s free! Donations are accepted on the bus and proceeds go to a scholarship fund at the Niagara College Brewing program. If you can think of something better to do with your Saturday afternoon than go to Guelph, I’d like to hear about it.

Free! Free is good. Except free runnings. Unexpectely free. Which leads us, finally, to the saddest drinky clinky video of the week: “Streets flooded with wine after tanks burst at Levira, Portugal distillery.” Here is the background:

This is the moment a flood of red wine surged down a street in Portugal after two massive tanks with enough booze to fill a swimming pool burst. Winemakers Levira Distillery were due to bottle the 2.2 million litres when the giant tanks suddenly gave way in Sao Lourenco do Bairro on September 10. Video footage showed a huge, fast-moving river of red wine flowing down a hill and around a bend as baffled locals look on.

Yikes! And that is that. Done. Still no drunk elephant stories this week. I looked again. I really tried, Stan. Still, as per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Got on BlueSky this week and added it to my IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a deservedly dormant Patreaon presence. I am multi! I am legion!! Yet totally sub. All in all, I still am preferring the voices on Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything) including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

A Doubtful Dubious Display Is What You Get With This Week’s Beery News Notes

Tra-laa! How many first posts in May have I “tra-laa-ed” at you? It is because I have no imagination? NO! It’s because it’s from the musical Camelot which earned 110% of it’s reputation to Canada’s greatest gift to world culture, Mr. Robert Goulet!!! Surely the handsomest man of the 20th century. And a clinker of a drink or two, as illustrated. What’s that got to do with beer? WHHHAAAATTTT??? Have you lost your marbles? First, he had a TV show called Blue Light which is obviously the inspiration for Blue Light. AND he did TV ads for Molson Canadian which was owned then (and are again) by the owners of the Montreal Canadiens at the time. Who were right in the middle of proving themselves as the greatest hockey team of all time. Tra. La.

First up this week, happy news as those purveyors of interesting stories, Pellicle, hit its fourth anniversary which by my fingers and toes makes it 20% of this here AGBB‘s longevity. There is a party this very evening or, if you are western hemispheric, this afternoon. You know, at work there is a portrait (like these) of Michael Flannagan, our fair city’s municipal clerk who was in office from the 1840s to the 1890s. If I retire in five years as might be normal I will have made it to what I call the half-Flannagan. In 12 years, Pellicle will half-Flannagan me. Happy news.

And by way of proving the point of their prominence, Pellicle posted a piece (Ed.: STOP IT!!!) on The Five Points Brewing Company, Hackney Downs railway arch, London and its dedication to the craft of cask – with some particularly proper beer pR0n photography (Ed.: STOP!!!!):

“Cask beer is the very definition of craft beer,” Ed says. “Some people can think of cask beer as something different from craft… that it’s boring, brown, British bitter, and craft beer is all about New World hops, and intense flavour experiences, and carbonation. But craft beer is actually about provenance and quality and artisanal approaches to manufacturing,” he adds. “And it’s not just about the manufacturing process, it’s the dispense process. It’s a living, breathing product that continues to condition in the cellar, and that is an art form in itself.”

Me, I can get into that idea of “provenance” way ahead of claims to terrior.

In the police blotter update, I am not sure if this new federal amending statute applies to this here place and whether soon I can expect to be in handcuffs, taken away based in part by your petitions. I am probably sure it will go unnoticed by the law just as the rest of society ignores it… but it is interesting interesting to note that the summary of the amendments to be found at section 2(3) of Chap 8, First Session, Forty-fourth Parliament, 70-71 Elizabeth II – 1 Charles III, 2021-2022-2023 (aka Bill C-11):

…specify that the Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation…

Interesting that they use the phrase “social media service” which may or may not inclue WordPress. And what is a blog if not a soap opera which is indubitably a program. We await the regs.

Boak and Bailey wrote a lovely and well reasearched piece on the lost pubs of Bristol by way of a bit of a tour:

Next, let’s turn left onto Mary-le-Port Street. Except it’s not there any more, so we can’t, really, but we can cut through the park to look at the ruins of St Mary-le-Port Church hidden behind the brutalist Lloyds Bank and modernist Norwich Union building. Then follow the path that tracks the old street pattern towards the site of The Raven. C.F. Deming, author of Old Inns of Bristol, published in 1943, reckoned The Raven dated back to the 17th century and was “mentioned in 1643”.

The article immediately reminded me of the time, gosh, ten years ago when Craig and I went a wandering in Albany NY, looking for evidence of the 1600s town and found the King’s Arms tavern intersection where the American Revolution started locally and where, interestingly, my fair city of Kingston, Ontario was in a very real way born:

But that, oddly, is not my point in posting that picture. Do you see how the street distinctly turns to the left? That turn expresses something a hundred years older than the King’s Arms, the southern design of the palisades of the original settlement. You can see it in this map from 1770 but, more particularly, you can see it in the 1695 map Craig posted to describe the community in the 1600s Dutch era.

Three or four eras in one small corner of Albany: 2013 when the photo was taken, the late 1800s buildings, the revolutionary-era tavern intersectiton and the curve of the 1600 pallisades. Lesson: everybody take B+B’s advice, get outside and look around you! It’s remarkable to see what isn’t quite not there.

Not for any particular reason other than it is a very nice portrait of some very nice beer people having a nice bit bit of beer. The source. The setting.

Jordan by way of IG (the app which I personally hope Bill C-11 SHUTS DOWN) has declared a winner!

There have been lager brewers in Ontario. O’Keefe, Reinhardt, Carling, Labatt. I walk past Toronto’s first lager brewer, John Walz, several times a week in Mount Pleasant Cemetary. I spent so much time looking at fire insurance maps that I researched corrugated iton. I spent so much time reading documents that I needed a nap. I wrote histories. With the help of @wornoldhat, we reviewed all the beer in the province twice. I’ve seen the vast majority of the beer that exists in the modern era of brewing. I checked with people I respect about it, including @beaumontdrinks. I legitimately think that Godspeed’s Pitch Lined Sklepnik is the best lager style beer that had ever existed in Ontario. First to Last. It is SIX DOLLARS A PINT on Sundays.

I love the non-pitched home delivered Sklepnik so have no reason to disagree. And I would not limit that to Ontario. And… I bought a mixed case with some in it because I see that it’s in cans and available for delivery right now. Big sale on Tmavý Ležák 12º. Just saying…

Nineteen years ago, I included Black Sheep Ale in a list of well loved English pale ales that I could find in my eastern Ontario nothern NY ecosystem. Well, this week the brewery went into administration, a step short of bankruptcy:

The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs. A spokesman for Black Sheep, which is based in Masham, North Yorkshire, stressed that the business is trading as normal and there have been no job losses to date. It employs around 50 staff.

Fingers crossed. Malt still being delivered. And remember you can see Black Sheep as it was in 1997 in this broadcast of the Two Fat Ladies, those foundational thinkers in relation to my life with food and drink.

Beth Demmons has another great edition of Prohibitchin’ out, this time on NA winery Null Wines‘ co-founders Catherine Diao and Dorothy Munholland in which a very good argument is made, one that might move a skeptic like me:

The vast majority of people buying non-alcoholic beverages also drink alcohol, suggesting that NA alternatives are simply an extension of choice rather than trying to act as strict replacements to their boozy counterparts. Dorothy and Catherine say giving consumers more high-quality options was the driving force of launching their business rather than chasing a trend. “One of our internal guideposts for ourselves is ‘Don’t add more crap to the world,’” says Catherine.

Skeptic? Well, when the shadowy Portman Group is jumping on the bandwagon you have to wonder. By the way, look right. What a weird photo to illustrate NA bevvying in the news article. In any other context in any other decade, that image is pure code for being stoned out of one’s cranium. Very mixed message, PG. Very mixed indeed. Can’t be having that. You best be having a word with the Evening Standard.

Question: consider this from Mr.B:

I am repeatedly amazed by the speed with which respected and accomplished chefs will attach their names to suspect beers, ciders, coolers, and seltzers, while at the same time touting the quality of ingredients in their dishes. #MoneyTalks

Aside from the bald accusation of the role of money (something as common enough in beer), if no one has convinced most restaurants high and low from having a serious beer list, well, is this not something that advocates for treating beer more seriously have to take some responsibility for? Let’s be honest – if folks actually wanted it by now folk would have it by now.

Somewhat relatedly… seven years out forecasting. When everything matters does anything matter #3928? As scheduled:

WHY IT MATTERS: The growing strength of Modelo’s cheladas and aguas frescas point to a likely second act for a beer brand that, if current trends continue, is set to unseat Bud Light as the U.S.’s top-selling beer (by dollars) by 2030.

Less cheerily, at the end of last week just after hitting the publish button over here at AGBB HQ, Ruvani de Silva posted a very detailed, well researched and extended piece on the experience of being subject to online trolling as part of the bro culture side of craft beer world (which I have to admit for me isn’t limited to males as I have been on the receiving end from women, too.) But I immediately took to it as it made me think of the causes of craft’s bro culture.

Societal bigotry, yes, but also vestiges of X-Treme? Maybe tribal claims to one community, expertise with a leadership class fed by great white male hagiographies of semi-phony founders?.

I should have added booze obvs. But what do I mean by expertise? Perhaps this sort of smug self-affirmed but highly dubious expertise as opposed to this sort of largely self-driven expertise that makes no claims to extrapolation or even… you know… social status or higher moral ground*! David Jesudason’s thoughts were this:

Thoughtful piece. It mentions some abuse I got. I reported it but the police did nowt. Luckily I’ve done lots of work on resilience and it isn’t a trigger tbh. But some of the other types of trolling I do find difficult including subtweeting criticism cos I hate being ignored…

What else is going on? Not unrelatedly, this past Monday Stan commented on Jeff’s comments on Bud Lite’s maker’s woes following learning they were utterly unprepared and botched the response to their hiring of a trans woman Dylan Mulvaney for an ad campaign. The comment of Jeff’s that Stan considered began with this: “…years ago, I argued that it’s bad business for companies to take political positions. That was correct then, but it’s not anymore.” Note: Jeff made that earlier statement in October 2016 just before the US election when he wrote about Yuengling endorsing Donald Trump. He said it was a bad move. With total respect, I don’t really agree partially as democracy needs robust debate but also because I’m also not sure the two situations are even comparables as that would depend on the badness of the business move being the measure. Still, put it this way if I am wrong: at this point are we sure who is worse, the makers of Yuengling or Bud Lite?

Stan then broadened the question on how it reflects on the whole brewing trade and, again with total respect, drew in something which I have never actually found to be all that true:

Small breweries that some call “craft” have benefited by what is unspoken; that they are the good guys. Recently, they’ve been asked to prove it. Many have. The rest? We’ll see what happens.

The good guys? Really? How good is craft? Certainly doubts are raise by initiatives like the early and short lived co-opting of outrage against the war in Ukraine, the perhaps slightly deeper response with some to the Black is Beautiful initiatives even if not all the money ended up in the pockets pledged – not to mention, as Stan mentioned two weeks ago, the dimming of interest in DEI. (And not to mention… the continuation of bigoted operations like Founders… dots connected.)** Yup, it seems like its all just news cycle compassion so much of the time with craft.* Which builds on the question. Who is worse: the makers of Yuengling, the makers of Bud Lite or the appropriators of craft?

There’s another thing, a more important thing. I don’t believe that the existence of human rights even depends on political power or even the majority of folks’ conviction – and certainly not the stance of commercial operations like a brewery. Human rights are fundamental – a foundational fundamental good, not something politically sourced even if their denial by bastards in power is. Human rights speak to the simple inherent dignity of being a human in all its forms of subjective experience. The dignity shines through any denial and is always worth the fight. I hate to break it to you – but sooner or later we all will have one or more human characteristics which will annoy or even generate hatred by somebody. Don’t believe me? Wait for age. No, we can’t cherry pick which human rights are the winners. It’s all or none. Bandwaggoning the news cycle like craft isn’t any sort of conviction in support of human rights any more than leaving it to any stripe of politicans is. These are really appropriations of goodness. So show me a brewery that welcomes all, that straight up supports human dignity with action and little fanfare and I am there.*** Are there are all that many? Dunno but I do spend my money where there is a chance that they just might be worth my support. I suggest you do the same. It can have an effect. And if these my previous few hundreds of perhaps wandering words don’t convince you, think of what Brian Alberts wrote with just a handful:

Don’t just stick to beer, stick to just beer.****

Why? It matters. This actually matters.

That’s enough from me. You want more? As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

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

*Yes, a double footnote… but why always place craft beer on the rosy glowing end of the good-bad spectrum with, you know, Donald Trump at the other Satanic end. Isn’t this obviously self-serving, all this praise from within craft beer for craft beer? (Looka me! I’m part of a community!! ) And another thing… what the heck has craft beer ever actually done to stake its claim to a higher moral position? Do you think of your favorite shoe stores that way, your coffee shops, your cheddar and gin makers or neighbourhood bakers? Actually, I do know bakers who ensure their surplus gets to the homeless day after day so, yes, props to those bakers.
**Can you believe this shit: “When Dillard reported the incidents to management, she alleges that she received drastically reduced hours as retaliation or was ignored. The complaint also states she worked as a part-time manager for nearly a year without moving up, while white managers were promoted within months. The complaint also details alleged instances of sexual harassment from a fellow worker. When Dillard complained about the behavior, she says she was ignored. But once a white employee complained about the same behavior from the same worker, the offending worker was fired. Things were so bad that a white manager also resigned because of the ongoing racial discrimination against Dillard.” H/T to The Polk.
***Could you get a wheelchair in the taproom bathroom? Does the sort of language used on the brewing floor align with the branding?
****Cleverly succinct. Reminds me of a Billy Bragg quip from a concert maybe 35 years ago: “Remember: it’s not ‘how high are you?’ – it’s ‘hi how are you?'”
*****And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Gloriously Reduced Redacted And A Bit Recycled Thursday Beery News Notes For Mid-February

A plague upon ye, poor internet services. A plague I say! My Wednesday was rooon’d by bad internet service. Not something I usually suffer from. No, it’s usually a clear path for these my cranks. Not this week. I’ve had to set up antennae, hot spots and coaxial cables just to get this week’s beery news notes to you. It’s tragic. To be so modern yet soooo dependent. Thank God for my AM radio and old New Yorkers, I say, too. Anyway, if this week feels like less value for your hard earned dollars, write Mr. Internets of Internetsville. Ah, the critic’s life is full of troubles. (Update: RIP Mr 2017 Modem.)

But when it does work, this is why the internet was created: a photo that answers questions:

Repurposed malt kiln tiles at St Andrew’s, Foxton. Over time the air holes have ended up being filled in which has created a rather attractive pattern of tiny flowers.

Check out the deets. Tiny wee holes for the warm air to waft up and amongst not quite so tiny malt. And that’d be in a church not a pub, by the way. Tiles were made in the parish near the church as recently as 225 years ago.

Not quite so ancient of days but I also loved the book report submitted by Boak and Bailey this week, extracting lots of pubby goodness from Winter in England by Nicholas Wollaston, published in 1966. This is a sort of thoughtful post on both the book and the genre that makes it worth opening the laptop each week. Genre! Genre:

Wollaston’s idea was not especially original. We’ve got quite a collection of similar books in which a university-educated writer, academic or journalist hits the road to take the temperature of the nation. There’s sometimes an angle, such as a focus on a particular region, or on small towns, or social problems. More often than not, though, they feel quite random and organic – the record of a kind of purposeful drifting. And because they’re supposed to record reality, taking middle and upper class readers to places they perhaps wouldn’t go themselves, pubs feature more frequently than in other types of writing.

I might again recommend Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield for a less perfumed view of 1960s England, one where many farm workers remembered never having enough for the pub – or even shoes – even though they worked upon the land of the wealthy.

Speaking of tight times, Beth gave us the heads up on this story of the SoCal craft scene. Note: cyphers and code abound so please remove your rose coloured craft glasses first to read what is really being said:

Highland Park Brewery near Dodger Stadium emerged from the pandemic in relatively good shape. But Marketing Director James Sullivan says times are tough for a number of local craft brewers. “I think it’s going to be a difficult year,” he says. “I feel like we’re going to see a lot more closures. I feel like we’re going to see a lot more turnover.” Sullivan says the thirsty local market may not yet have hit peak craft. But that day is coming. “I think we’re getting there,” he told me. “I think, you know, starting this year, we’re going to see a lot of our locals unfortunately closing, and it’s tough to see.”

Lisa’s been out and about in Dublin and has set the scene in a very comfortable and not at all closed familiar spot:

The White Hag’s Little Fawn is another excellent go-to, and I had a wander around the entire space, eventually settling in one of the snugs, which now has not only a sofa and comfy chairs, but books of an especially eclectic thrift-shop selection – something I am very much here for. Some may find the upcycled church fittings in this part of the pub a little too ‘hipster’ for them, but I’ve always had a soft spot for that kind of thing, so I am a fan. They are now definitely ticking all the boxes for ‘great spot for solo pint and book’ and as they are mere steps from my door, I am not remotely mad about this.

Not sure – but also not remotely mad – but is a lager is a lager when it isn’t lagered even if the yeast is what it is:

As lager brewing became more popular, ale and porter brewers reacted to the new competition with beers such as cream ales—essentially, pale lagers made with ale yeast. That brings us to an example of where things got mixed up: Once this style became established with consumers, some brewers began making them by blending beers made with ale and lager yeast. Others who were used to brewing lagers also wanted in on this trendy style—so they simply brewed it with lager yeast.

Probably the better argument is that as Germanic immigrants, especially those who came to North America before that tragic rebellion, brought their yeast and continued to use it in all conditions, with or without cold storage. And it did the job, lingered and took on many names.

Jeff (when not thinking about AI aka “Eh? Why?”) has explained a very odd mirrored arrangement by Pacific shores:

The US Department of Justice decided that the deal would create too much consolidation in Hawaii, and demanded that ABI spin off the Kona brewery before they’d approve the CBA acquisition. ABI complied, and the result is a very weird situation in which there are two separate businesses selling the same beer. They use the same branding. Google one and you might find yourself on the webpage of the other. Yet the beer they make is sequestered—with help from the Pacific Ocean—one brewery serving just Hawaii, the other everywhere else.

Speaking of AI, interesting to see that it has now also relieved beer writers from personally participating directly in the standardized but still quite hyperventilated circle of praise.

Breaking and conversely: GBH has added to its random ramblings of reshaping press releases mixed with fan fiction beer travelogues seemingly funded by a shadowy global backwater tourist bureau association** by branching out into an orphaned essay on sports journalism. The word “beer” appears twice so…

Finally, I do hope this is the end of this part of the story. I fear that this sort of salvation might have sidetracked folk from available recourse, maybe made things worse or unnecessarily muddled. The lack of much interest* in the finale was neatly in contrast to the conclusion’s self-assessment:

Our work with the platform has highlighted the shortcomings and systematic failures of labour law in Scotland, the UK and internationally, leaving many affected workers with no legal protection or recourse. These learnings have informed our positive action petition and campaign, called “Retaliation Legislation Reform” which stands as a positive legacy.

That’s it! Now… what to do… with these lists… They are getting to be almost 600 words each week and I am not sure how useful they are. Still… Stan joined Mastodon this week so it must be useful. I mini-ized the list for greater dynamism. Sweet move, right? So what song this week? What would I play if this were a movie and these were the scrolling credits? Could it be this? I’m reading the startlingly excellent autobiography of Nile Rodgers so that works just fine…

You still need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. You need to take the time and have the patience as regular posting attracts the audience as per usual. While you are at it, check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and sometimes from Stan at his spot on those Mondays, you know, when he can. And, yes, also gather ye all the podcasts and newsletters. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very much less) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: still giving it a few more weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has fully packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly.

*A single person really shouldn’t be an “it” should they?
**It’s still a thing – even if the glory days of Catalonian sausages are no longer with us!!!

The Beery News Notes For The False Promise Of An Early Thaw

Thaws. They deceive in February. Being unwise, I have started seeds. Thaws also jack the walkway tiles and bricks outside, too. Spent lunch Wednesday discovering the front step tiles are stuck on with stuff that’s now the consistency of chocolate pudding. So things are getting loose, a bit cracked and sorta smashed. But not quite as badly as these late 1600s and early 1700s manganese mottled tankards from Ireland posted on the internets this week. From Newmarket in Dublin we are told. Others have showed up in the colonies, in Maryland and at Harvard Yard. Lovely things. But most won’t hold beer.

Mid-morning Update: Jordan decided to post an homage to Toronto’s Godspeed and its pitch-lined Sklepnik project – posted at 2 am Thursday morning I would add, well past the time this weekly normally goes to press. But it is not worth waiting around another seven days to bring it to your attention:

Every piece is as important as every other piece. Not everything that Godspeed has done has been a triumph, and the situation has been challenging. It was the potential that excited people, and the pitch-lined Sklepnik represents years of earnest effort, not just in the brewhouse, but interpersonally. A month spent learning from people who have spent their entire careers on a single style, and whose trust creates possibility. Functionally speaking, the odds against its existence are such that it is construable as a miracle, and that’s before the first sip. The only way you can get here is trial and error. There’s no ironic posture as a brewer. It’s not a hobby. The secret ingredient is your life.

Also lovely. Now, back to our normal broadcasting…

Unlike our man in The Netherlands (when he’s not in transit.) And, while we are speaking of lovely, Ron, who, yes, often holds a beer, has posted an image of a 1930s ad for Barclay Perkins lager along with his discussion of their 1941 brewing techniques:

Good news for me, as it gives me a chance to preview (use a recipe I’ve already written) a recipe from “Blitzkrieg!”. Though for any of the four options I could have found a recipe in the book. For a book about UK brewing in WW II, it has quite a lot of Lager recipes. 37 in all. Though there are well over 500 recipes in total. Not that huge a percentage, really. Lucky old Dark Lager has seen its gravity increase by 0.5º compared with the previous year.

Elsewhere and also with increasing gravity, the continuing concerns that Guinness has or has not slipped under the radar and ended up in first place somehow in the UK diet… continue. A call for anecdotal evidence was sent out by B to the B and a summary was posted earlier this week. There was a whole lotta comfort out there as far as I could tell. My thoughts?

Had one two weeks ago in an unfamiliar pub in Toronto. Old reliable friend, tasty with most pub food, creamy savoury with the tang and the roast – and not an alcohol bomb. Might have one or two a year.

It’s all good. Sure it’s made by a faceless international conglomerate. But so is vestigially produced Fat Tire – both the new phony and old – and at least Guinness doesn’t buddy up with Myanmar‘s murderous dictators! And at least it’s actually something not made on the same equipment as automotive window washer fluid. By the way… I don’t understand. Aren’t hard soda and boozy seltzers the same thing? I suppose it doen’t help that I don’t give a crap about this… crap. But I have no idea. Thankfully.

Note: not one craft buzzword bingo square was left undaubed in the making of this story.

Beth Demmon released another issue of Probitchin’, this month featuring the work and career path of Jacque Irizarry:

Her interest in art coalesced during college, after she realized how many years of (expensive) education it would take to become a lawyer. After switching her track from becoming an early childhood education art teacher to visual art, she dabbled in photography and painting before graduating with an art degree. With student loans looming, she worked in customer service before landing her current full-time position handling the graphics and design for a company involved in online education, where she’s been for eight years.

Beth’s newsletter is one of my favorites in the beer world. There is a lot to be said for good writing that avoids the unending wanderings and isn’t hip cool and 45 potty mouth serving as cover for cap in hand recycled PR. Mucho looking forward to Beth’s upcoming book on cider.

Speaking of newsletters… they are all the cool kids talk about these days… Kate Mather fabulously unleashed at The Gulp about unleashing at the pub!

Tom and Phil left for their teas, and we made a move too. On the way home I waved my arms like the two-pint revolutionary I am, telling my Tom how important it is to have common spaces for people to freely share ideas, to congregate—and the more that these places, like pubs, are restricted, taken away, closed down; the more the hospitality industry is left to wheeze on without support, the more suspicious I get.

That is what we like to see: two-pint revolutionaries waving their arms. And, speaking of revolutionary, the future continues to be defined in Japan:

… convenience stores can start selling alcohol and tobacco through self-check-out immediately, as long as they’re set up for compliance with the corresponding required regulations. Under Japanese law, a person must be at least 20 years old in order to purchase alcohol or tobacco. In order to confirm the buyer’s age, convenience stores that want to sell such products through self-check-out will have to equip their registers with a device that can scan either the purchaser’s driver’s license or My Number Card, a government-issued ID card that’s not yet mandatory and which the Japanese government is eager to accelerate the adoption of.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is also cooler in the future. And, doing a chronological 180, Nigel altered me to another good piece at the always excellent site A London Inheritance, this time about a street called XX Place:

To try and find some history on XX Place I carried out an online search on the Tower Hamlets Archives, and armed with a couple of reference numbers visited the archives on a Saturday morning… My first source at the archives was a small booklet published in 2001 by Ron Osborne titled XX Place. The booklet provided a description of XX Place. It was built in 1842 for locally employed workers. It was only a short street of 10 small terrace houses running along one side of the street. It was about 10 feet wide and the majority of those living in the street were employed at the nearby Charringtons Brewery.

Interesting observations on the three grades of Oregon hops in 1910 – fancy choice and prime. Seventy five years earlier there also seemed to be a three tier grading system in New York state’s hop trade but named with a bit less of the marketing spin. In 1835 there was just first sort, second sort and third sort hops. Which suggests sorting. And a certain order. Choice? Fancy? Who knew what they meant! Fancy sounds all a bit “My Little Pony” in a way. By the pricing I can only presume that in 1910 “prime” was not actually… prime. But I suppose thems that knew at the time were in the know back then.

I missed this excellent observation by Ren Navarro on the nature of plans to bolster human rights in brewery work places:

While heady political questions are essentially baked into mutual aid work, a more immediate focus of all such groups remains meeting the needs of people who’ve been left out by existing power structures. For Navarro, industry-sponsored programs designed to address inequities are too often structured from the top down, and create barriers for applicants who really need the help. Applications that require resumes and essays, for example, require time and computer access and reliable internet.

And Pellicle has a good piece this week about cider makers Lydia Crimp and Tom Tibbits of Herefordshire’s Artistraw Cider. You know, I usually don’t go for producer bios with beer but somehow the more immediately agricultural nature of cider makes for a more interesting read:

Observing that some apples lend themselves better to certain seasons, they reckon the bright acidity of dessert fruit works well with the freshness of Spring in Beltane—which boasts the Yarlington Mill, Reinette D’Obray, Chisel Jersey, Browns, and Kingston Black cider apple varieties. Whereas Knotted Kernel (with a dash of Kingston Black, Lambrook Pippin and Foxwhelp) has “cherry brandy” notes conjuring up images of roaring fires for their wintry, Hallowe’en release, Samhain (pronounced SAH-win.) Lammas marks the end of Summer and boasts Dabinett, Browns, Yarlington Mill, and a little Strawberry Norman. Imbolc is all about renewal and promise, with Major, Bisquet, Brown Snout, Chisel Jersey, and Ellis Bitter.

Why, I had a bit of the old Kingston Black myself just the other month.

Aaaaannnd… the coal fired generators at Beervana are back on line now that Jeff is back from holidays and he’s shared a tale of fruit coating yeast of a most natural sort:

The riper [the fruit] is, you’re getting ferments that are starting right away. That’s what the yeast and bacteria like. That’s when the birds start to eat it, and that’s when the insects come out and all these things. Nature is showing us these fruits are in their optimum time right when they’re ripe. The more time the fruit spends on the bush or the tree as its ripening, the more organisms are going to be there.

Hmmm… and finally… nice to see that Carlsberg has got its geopolitical ethics so completely all in order:

Danish brewer Carlsberg… warned on Tuesday that a possible slowdown of beer consumption in Europe because of increased prices could dent profit growth this year. The world’s third-biggest brewer also said it is buying out its partner in India and is seeking an option with the buyer of its Russian business to re-enter that market at some point in future.

Dastards. As the Danish military helps arm the Ukraine, Carlsberg makes plans for appeasement.

That’s it! Now… what to do… with these lists… They are getting to be almost 600 words each week and I am not sure how useful they are. Still… they do slowly mark the shift in the discussion. Podcasts dying, newsletters in flux, Mastodon perhaps peaked… As we think on that… hmmm… and song this week? What would I play if this were a movie and these were the scrolling credits? Could it be this?* Yup. That’ll do…

You need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. You need to take the time and have the patience as regular posting attracts the audience as per usual. While you are at it, check for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan spot on Mondays. And, yes, also gather ye all the podcasts and newsletters. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very much less) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: still giving it a few more weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has fully packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly.

*The setting is real.

The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks! Honestly… Why?

OK, I took the week off to burn off vacation days. No plan. Sure, I had a few things I could do on a list but I got through that list by about 11:15 am on Monday. Hmm… what to do… what to do… oh, the World Cup is on! I really didn’t plan as I have not been paying attention. Because it’s all so corrupt… that game I played from the elementary school yard until I was 44 or so a decade and a half ago. That the old man played for Greenock Academy, losing to Falkirk in 1946’s championship at Hampden Park. Less fabulously, there I am with my pal in 1986, just over half my life and just under half my body mass ago at the end of a game heading to the tav… I miss those socks. Anyway, so I watched some fitba this week sitting in the basement. Should I have gone to a pub to watch? Maybe. Might still. I love the idea of having a favourite seat for this sort of thing. I had one until twenty years ago in a tavern in my old stomping ground in PEI. I can think of another in Halifax NS maybe 40 years ago. Comfy corners where the shoulders can nestle in. Martin found one, too, the one up there at the Dog & Partridge:

Perhaps I just wanted to sit in my favourite Sheffield pub room.

What else happened this week? Well, first I am not sure why Budweiser thinks beer is something that can be donated as noted on to Johan Roux’s Mastodon feed (with the h/t):

#Budweiser will donate all of the #beer brewed for the #WorldCup to the winning country. It is also expected that the company will sue #FIFA because of a breach of contract – the sale of beer was banned a few days before the start of the championship. In total, Budweiser will donate tens of tons of beer worth 75 million euros.

And I listened to the Beer Ladies Podcast interview of John, The Beer Nut and I was struck by something. It was one of the best podcasts I had ever heard. Not because of John… or, rather, not due to John or… well, he does sort of giggle, doesn’t he. No, what I mean is that it was so well done technically. A second of dead air between comments was just allowed to be a silence. No one jumping on the other. Nothing forced. Lovely pace to the discussion.

AND… Ray of Boak and Bailey wrote one of the best Patreon essays I’ve read of theirs. A really good piece of writing about realizing his father was no longer at an age when a pub crawl was possible.

I didn’t drink myself until I was 20 which Dad found pretty weird, along with almost everything else about me, I suppose. We always got on but didn’t have much to talk about, or anything to do together other than watch telly. When I finally did start drinking, and got into beer, something clicked. Suddenly, he could take me to The Railwayman’s Club, The Commercial Inn or The Rebel’s Retreat in Bridgwater. There, he taught me to drink ‘properly’: “Blood hell, son – chat chat chat, chug chug chug, chat chat chat!” And when he came to visit me in London, I got to show him the pubs I’d found. (Where he’d often be able to wangle a lock-in.)

Fabulous – and also sad in that way that a rich life is aware of its own passing. My folks passed a decade ago and I can recall the creeping feeling leading up to their deaths of the slow loss of sharing, in my case including soccer games and a kitchen filled with cooking.

Speaking of excellent writing, it is the case that there are good writers who don’t necessarily have much to say. There are also those poorer writers who struggle along working out what are really more interesting ideas.¹ But it is a real treat when the good idea meets the skillful writer like they do in this week’s wonderful feature at Pellicle, David Jesudason’s lengthily titled “Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse“:

Oddly, desi pubs are usually very British in terms of decor; the Red Cow run by Bera Mahli since 2010 (who also worked in Birmid for a short time before he went into the pub trade) has two traditional lounge bars. They can also be reworked to look like an old-fashioned Indian club-style bar like in the Prince of Wales on West Bromwich high street. My 15-minute conversation with Steve at the Red Cow was deeply touching—we hugged—as he’s so passionate about making sure non-white fans are safe during the match, and is one of the many Sikhs who have ensured West Brom is home to one of the most diverse football crowds in the country.

It’s a story that has a lot of commonality with Ray’s thoughts when you thing about it. The only way I can describe the commonality between David’s piece, Ray’s thoughts and the Beer Ladies Podcast interview discussed above is a calmness in the moment. There are none of the burdens.² ³ ⁴ No, in this piece like all the best sort of writing there is also a person and a moment. The scene being seen. I’d be at this pub regularly… if it was in my town… and if Canada has the same sort of pub life… which it doesn’t.⁵ Le sigh.

Ghost of beer scenes past? Eoghan wrote this about an article on Belgian beer:

…I love the classics as much as the next person, and Belgian beer moves more slowly than other places, but there is a world of interesting beers beyond the Trappists and Saison Dupont – brewers/importers, where is your curiosity?

The article in Imbibe mag in part painted a picture of decline, the same one that could have been about brown ale and other darlings of the past shunted aside by craft’s obsession about what was big in, you know, the last six weeks:

Over the last half-decade, Belgian beer’s wattage has dimmed stateside. Saisons have struggled to find traction and comprehension. Local breweries and taprooms have proliferated, negating the need for beer imported from across the Atlantic. To that point, Anheuser-Busch InBev is now producing Stella Artois stateside, and Spencer Brewery, America’s only Trappist brewery, ceased operations in Massachusetts this year. According to a website statement, “The monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey have come to the sad conclusion that brewing is not a viable industry for us.”

What else is going on? Speaking of ghosts, Jenny P. posted a menu from a Q3 20C US steakhouse chain called Lums Restaurant and, well would you look at that, found a very interesting beer list. Click on that. Notice something? Not lager led. A balance of ales and lagers. The idea that post-WW2 beer in the US was all about the macro gak is one of the laziest tropes in American brewing history.⁶

Perhaps by way of contrast, Will Cleveland wrote a great story about a Montana beer co with one product – a light lager – both called Montucky Cold Snacks:

Zeitner said the banks laughed at them initially. “They were like, ‘We’re not going to give you a million dollars to compete against Budweiser or PBR. Are you crazy?” Of course, they are the only ones laughing now. That’s evidenced by some of the ridiculously kitschy and awesome Montucky Cold Snacks merchandise the brewery sells, including pool floats, dog toys, sunglasses, onesies, hats, and a wide variety of other stuff. The rejection caused Zeitner and Gregory to re-examine their plan. They realized that PBR doesn’t brew its own beer, helping them consider a similar, albeit much smaller, path.

Finally, Twitter death march update. Boak and Bailey spoke of their troubles with Le Twit in their November newsletter⁷ which is really also worth a read. This is just a sliver of their thoughts:

We even had a Twitter-fuelled stalking incident – a real low point, and a wake-up call. We started unfollowing, muting and blocking people more freely. Having a word with ourselves, we also learned not to respond to every narky Tweet. Just because people wanted to argue with us didn’t mean we had to play. And we reduced our usage of the site overall. For the past few years, we’ve rolled our eyes at people complaining about the “toxic” nature of “beer Twitter”. Like many things, it’s as good as the effort you put into it. Share the kind of things you want to see, resist the urge to contribute to the cycle of gloom, and it can be A Good Thing. But now, Twitter might be dying.

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

¹ I used to have a book of letters of Alfred North Whitehead and took great comfort in one written to Bertrand Russell in which he praised the B student over those in the top of the class for being a source of far more interesting ideas, just put a bit poorly.
² The shouty “WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT”foolishness plumping up a dull PR piece. It never is.
³ Or the copycat drive-by bill-paying article, research done from a distance, often based on Twitter polls or email “interviews” of a sort: “I reached out to…” No doubt financially necessary and not always horrible if done well.
⁴ Or, the worst, that “mystery” stuff which is virtually a declaration that a beer writer has given up. Smacks of clairvoyants and spiritualists… “woooa… you need to speak with a beer consultant…” [insert unexpected creaky noise] “…only then will you understand… woooaha000…“
⁵ Because soccer and cooking! Being a perceived majoritarian but a first-gen freckled, identity is a thing. In work, friends and family I gravitate to these inclusive relationships and moments but it can also still get the awkward in return. I don’t care as much anymore. Alongside the homemade mince and tatties, the homemade curries of my Mississauga youth were legit even if they hopscotched (literally) from a great-granddad in 1890s India, through 1940s Britain and on to 1960s Canada when I showed up.
⁶ But it suits the generally accepted false craft origin story neatly.
⁷ OK, I follow B+B by blog, newsletter, Patreon, Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram even emails and once by Zoom. That’s weird. Weird that it has never struck me as too much or, you know, stalking on my part.

A Slightly Less Puffed Up Edition Of Your Thursday Beery News Notes

Here I am. Still on vacation but at least at home making dinners rather than forking out for them. Let’s be clear. I am not a cheap date when out and about but at the same time I do have my limits. Big city fun can hit that after a few days so nice to be back in the backyard for week two. Well, once the rain lets up. Gotta say, though, Montreal is my favorite big city even though I am maritally prohibited from rooting or the Habs. Drove past the front gate of the original and still operating Molson brewery established in 1786 when I got a bit lost in traffic coming into the downtown. Quite the edifice.

Speaking of working, on Wednesday Gary posted an image of a 1938 Quebec beer delivery truck out in winter. Looks like a display as those boxes look empty and stacked way too high. I cropped this image out of the right hand corner. I love the guy’s look. Button suspenders over a tucked in sweater, high lace leather boots, fedora and tie. And look at the window in the background. Signs – perhaps in neon – for Brasserie Frontenac, Boswell Cream Porter as well as Dow Old Stock Ale. These brands were all related to provincial firms that merged in 1909, the amalgamation which inspired a young E.P. Taylor two decades later to start off on his global merger mania. The truck and many of the boxes are also labeled with Dow’s Black Horse Ale. Cream Porter was still a thing when I lived in the Ottawa Valley in the mid-1990s under the Champlain brand made by Molson and in fact and early beer review on this here site was for Labatt Porter. Now there is a style that needs revival.

What else is going on? A few more ripples caused by the long piece in Pellicle on the state of IPA today are worth noting. JJB himself wrote positively of the explanation and agreed with how the code of IPA (as opposed to the definition) is effective for Stonch as a publican:

I can tell you that consumers with only a cursory knowledge of beer know what IPA means to them, and moreover that concept tends to be very similar across the board. When someone asks for an IPA, I know which taps to point them to.

Matt himself was unhappy with his thoughts being “torn apart in a @BeerAdvocate thread…” but that is a bit of an unfair statement as it was also praised there. His tension is reasonable.* There is a dismissal of old school thread writing but it is always good to remember that many there (folk who have no interest in blogging or certainly no interest in the dead end world of semi-pro beer writing) who know a hell of a lot about beer even though there are, yes, many oafs. For example, I entirely agree with this from someone on the site for fifteen years:

Once breweries realized that some of us were well and truly over the murkbombs, they started relabeling, or at least redescribing. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been shying away from any packaged beer called IPA unless I’m already familiar with it.

And also this from a seventeen year BA veteran:

It appears to me that the craft beer industry is viewing IPA = money and given this consideration I suspect that we will continue to see more and more beer brands with this labeling. They may be brands that can fit within one (or more?) of the categories that Matthew Curtis listed in his article or maybe they will be some brand-new name (e.g., New England style Wheat IPA) that some person just willy-nilly comes up with to make money.

Exactly. See, along with avoiding humour and any actual grasp of much of history, good beer culture has a very hard time with debate. It’s apparently uncomfortable for those trained on the short course who then have decided that they know what needs to be known, like a teen watching a movie with their parents when a dirty bit come on No, in craft beer culture it is a fundamental principal that you have to all sing from the same hymnal because it is all… great! That is why it generates no serious academic discourse – or even researched to and fro anymore. “Expert” is sorta of a participation award. Can you even call doing something “taking a course” if it fails to generate any deliverables that aren’t just repetition by rote? No, to discuss and disagree is rude. And that is one main reason why general good beer culture isn’t taken seriously.

Related perhaps, Ron summed up a trip to the USA and his observations on the beer scene this way:

I’m just back from the US. Wasn’t that impressed with the beer selection. Mostly: IPA, Sludge IPA, Sour Shit, Sour Shit with fruit, Sludge IPA with shit, Sludge IPA with fruit and shit, Pilsner.

Boak and Bailey unsettled me with a related consideration following up on a post from Jeff on the idea of session a few weeks back:

Jeff Alworth is right – most people (quite wisely) haven’t let themselves get bogged down in precisely what these terms mean. They just know that a brewery choosing to use a relatively more obscure word to describe its product is saying “You’re no rube, you know the lingo, welcome to the club.” As Matt points out, though, these terms are suffering the same fate as ‘craft beer’, becoming applied so widely, to products of such varying character, that consumers are beginning to distrust them. When you’ve decided you tend to like beers labelled IPA, and habitually order IPA, there’s only so many times you can be served something that doesn’t fit your mental model without getting irritated.

I am not sure what “quite wisely” is meant to suggest here. Basically, there isn’t much light between what is being said about the meaningless of craft beer’s terminology as code and Ron’s observations about how shit IPA has become due to the breakdown of meaning. Meaning it is no longer even code. You have to take a cartoon character approach to still suggest there is any integrity in all this. Which is what is being done, of course.

My thoughts? What’s the level below lowest common denominator? IPA might as well be “eBeer” or “iBeer” now. The meaninglessness has hit max and all it serves to do it shout “drink me, fool!” which is why I focus on the adjective and not the noun EEEPAH. And avoid anything like a flogged flavour wheel in favour of the theater of the mouth.** Fortunately, as we know, things have three names. In this case, there will be the name on the can or tap handle, the name the brewer uses and the name the beer knows itself by.

Which is perhaps why the lager boom is so attractive. It retains far more stylistic integrity that the botch US craft has made of the IPA everything concept. Paste magazine has gone so far as to say this is the best thing in the good beer world these days:

That’s the biggest thing that has changed, in the last few years—i.e., the pandemic era—ease of access to good craft lagers has increased exponentially, and breweries have seemingly gotten much better at making them! Even breweries not particularly known for lager are now frequently producing excellent examples, and I’ve seen a notable number of breweries also rebrand themselves to revolve more tightly around lager as a central philosophy.

One more thing. Stan picked up a thread from the IPA story, an actual fact about a yeast strain and unpacked it to explain how beers branded as Steam Beer do or at least did actually display a unique trait even though Steam Beer has little unique to do with steam:

In 1911, while conducting tests as part of another project at the University of California, T. Brailsford Robinson discovered just how different steam beer yeast acquired from California Brewing in San Francisco was from lager strains. “The yeast of the steam beer has accommodated itself to these conditions (warmer fermentation and the clarifier) to such an extent that it can no longer be employed for the preparation of lager beer, while lager-beer yeast may without difficulty be used for the manufacture of steam beer,” he wrote.

Neato. Also neato? Old lost Halifax Nova Scotia bars. Also neato? A Doctor Who based brewery. Less neato? The fall of certain people in the brewing trade that I know little about. Never been that much into the individual as a cornerstone to all of this, now that I think of it. Not neato? Possible signs of the market crashing.

For 22 years, Neal Stewart worked in sales and marketing for breweries like Pabst, Flying Dog, Mark Anthony Brands, Dogfish Head and Deschutes Brewery. He is leaving beer behind and left with some very powerful parting thoughts:

I had plenty of time to reflect on my time in the beer biz and quite honestly, it was a painful process. I discovered two things. First, my self-identity was wrapped far too tightly with my profession. My primary identity was my job. I wasn’t “Neal, the husband” or “Uncle Neal.” I was “Neal, the beer guy” or “Neal, the (insert one of the 47 breweries I’ve worked for) guy.” I was enamored with that identity and my ego needed it. Second, I really think I was addicted to stress. I’ve done some research and although “stress addiction” is not a clinical term, it is known that stress causes the brain to release cortisol and dopamine… When my life suddenly changed from 70 hours a week of non-stop calls, meetings and thinking about the business, to silence, I didn’t know how to react.

Wow. If that is you, get out. What ever it is you do. And one more thing. I hadn’t expected that this beer would be as good as it turned out to be. Glutenburg Pale Ale out of Quebec. A bit of a rarer find in the Ontario LCBO but out there if you check the inventory. Made without barley but perfectly tasty as a base beer in one’s life. Which is what it might become. Through an odd sequence of absolutely low level medical matters it turns out that I may have a degree of gluten intolerance. See, I had to have a small four stitch operation on my right eyelid, which led to an observation about how my left eye sat, which led to a couple of CT scans in nearby quieter county town hospitals which led to an ENT guy sticking a camera into my sinuses, which led to connecting the dots to a very high wisdom tooth, which led to a removal operation, which led to me having a very tiny bit of my skull removed as a door for the wisdom tooth operation. All of which left me breathing better… unless I ate bread. Hmm. Bread made me puff up a bit. All over. Unpleasantly so on rare occasions. And feel like I had hay fever. Stuffed. So I dropped bread. Clearer head. Breathing better. Had a beer. All came back. Uh oh. So I bought this beer. Didn’t come back. Hmm. I had put the feeling when having a beer down to water bulking up or general alcohol reaction but it appears to be a third aspect of the beer – the gluten. Going to keep up the experiment for a bit. All of which I mention as ungraphically as I can as a recommendation to try it yourself for a week perhaps. See, being puffed is not good. Tiny important passages restrict. Blood pressure rises. Things not ticking along optimally. Leads to other things… more serious things.

There. The beery zeitgeist for another week has been summarized! Want more? Well, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and perhaps now from Stan once in a while on a Monday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays or Wednesdays – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to podcast heaven… gone to the podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable.) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now wound up after ten years.

*I would not want to fail to mention Beth‘s similar sentiment: “I don’t have enough money to enter work for awards I don’t have enough money to fund my own press trips I don’t have enough money to buy a hundred samples to try I don’t have enough money for all the subscriptions or memberships How do writers do it? Actual question…” I may play a grump on social media but I am utterly sympathetic to the plight of the beer writer coming to the realization that for all the money in beer there is little money in beer.
**Make your own copy of the chart if you like. It’s also free and actually useful.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For Summer 2022’s Second Third

The trouble with writing something on a weekly basis is you notice that another week has passed. This is why I don’t shave every day. Looking at the same mug in the same mirror at the same time each and every morning? No thanks. You notice too much. Like that one third of this summer is already done. And the last three weeks don’t even count. Panic! Panic!!! Max is having none of it. He is squeezing every moment out of the good weather – and has found a new cocktail to go along with it. I say cocktail but it seems to be booze free: “The coffee is hot. Then they mix it with tonic and ice, add the lime and you get a glass of refreshing goodness.” I will have to try that.

Heatwave. Euro heatwave. Best place to be? In an old pub painted white on the outside with thick insulating walls and a hearty aircon system? Worst place to be? In the car when the prosecco blows. Or working in a brewery for that matter, as one witness confesses. Fact: 3.6 times more people in the UK think drinking beer is a proper way to beat the heatwave than eating iceberg lettuces. Plural. That’s what the graph says – floating, a little alienated even, just there above this Bloomberg story. Looks like Tesco’s estimate for sales this past week:

…there’s pressure on retailers too, though more to keep the nation in supply of its summer quenchers. Supermarket chain Tesco Plc expects to sell more than 9 million ice creams and lollies in the coming week, a record. The supermarket also expects to sell 9 million bottles and cans of beer and 50,000 bottles of Pimms, the classic British summer gin-based fruit drink… Peas, lettuce and apples are particularly susceptible, he said, and crops can’t be shielded. “It’s not catastrophic — it happens,” said Ward. “Extreme heat is uncomfortable for people and plants.”

Either way, bad week to be a lettuce: get eaten or burn. Perhaps making matters worse for the the green crunchies, it appears that some lab coated type people are telling some other not lab coated people to lay off the sauce when being slowly roasted during a heatwave:

“Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it encourages the kidneys to lose extra fluid. That is why you tend to go to the toilet to urinate (pee) much more when you drink alcohol. Alcohol also makes you sweat more. The combination of sweating more in the heat, and going to the toilet more, means you lose more fluid than you take in and become dehydrated unless you replace that lost fluid by drinking water.” Official guidance also urges people to avoid caffeine during the hot weather for the same reason.

WHAAAAATTT!!! Hot cuppa tea is the best thing on a hot day. That’s what Grannie always said. Never mentioned lettuce either, come to think of it. And they call themselves scientists.* Thankfully, the New York Post found a couple of people perhaps partially of the lab coated variety to root for beer as the mercury climbs:

…in the midst of an international heat wave, one physician on Twitter claimed beer can help with hydration. Academic Ellie Mackin Roberts sparked a now-viral debate when she recently tweeted 10 steps to help beat the heat. Tip No. 9 read: “If you are dehydrated (and an adult, and able to do so) drink a half a pint of beer (inc. alcohol free!) and then move straight onto water (or a sports drink or cordial if you don’t like water).” Followers of Roberts, an expert in ancient Greek history, quickly responded, questioning how beer could ever be helpful in trying to avoid dehydration. However, Dr. Stuart Galloway, of the University of Stirling told Femail that the beverage contains electrolytes, sugar and salt, which helps the body retain fluid, rather than it going straight through.

Gary added an interesting but also labcoatless and lettuceless post on the conditions in pubs in Halifax, England in 1932 and how the local establishments managed another heatwave ninety years ago:

“The public do not realise the trouble we have to go to, to keep our beer cool,” one licensed victualler said. “When you have a rock cellar as we possess, the business is bad enough, but publicans that do not possess this advantage have a busy time trying to cool their beer. Some of the best bitter beers require nursing if our customers are to be satisfied in these hot days,” he continued, “and even with advantages regarding cellarage I have to keep a succession of wet sacks over my casks to keep them cool.” In one restaurant sacks, thoroughly dampened, are placed over the casks of beer, and from time to time a system of sprayers pours ice-cold water over them.

That’s the spirit – and at least they were not resorting to putting crap in the lager and calling it innovation! Honourable mention and a big “thanks for coming out” for at least shitting on the 2009 video “I am a craft brewer” even if it took them thirteen years to admit how stupid it was. All very “wad some Power the giftie gie us“… Dave! Some are still unaware.

This week in beer writing mildly troubling angst: dashes.

Health update: booze bad. Relatedly, in Jerard Fagerberg’s disappointingly brief but excellent interview (within an important health confessional of sorts) former beer writer Norm Miller shares some thoughts on his 2018 decision to back away from drinking:

During his tenure, Miller became synonymous with the Massachusetts beer scene. But by 2018, Miller was drinking too much. As an obese man in his 40s, he needed a holistic lifestyle change. He never felt physically addicted, he says, but the pressures of being in the beer media were indeed getting to him. “I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, I just drank because I felt like I should keep up with everything,” he says. “It was a combination of trying to keep up with everything and sincerely liking to try different things. It was a bad combination. I decided to step away, because my health was more important than a weekly column.”

PS: Norm‘s normal now… nearly. I applaud the raising of the ill effects of booze but it is sad to see it hidden in the lower shelf of GBH well behind all the regular dubious claims to fame for booze.

Canadian craft Faxe weekly update.

Note: there are upsides to the heat or at least a moderate amount of it. The barley crop in Ireland is loving it, according to grower and not well dead poet, John Dunne: “…grain fill looks really good. You can’t beat sunshine to put weight in grain.” And, did you know, that actual grains make interesting flavours that can be expressed though a resulting booze-laden beverage? No, really. Apparently adding buckets of jam is not required according to this heads up from Curmudgeon Ale Works citing an article in Modern Farmer:

“There were a few older, open-pollinated varieties that really didn’t taste very good. But then there were a few that were absolutely stunning. And what fascinated us was that all of the hybrids kind of tasted the same.” Time and time again, the flavor of the heritage and heirloom grains outperformed the hybrid rye varieties—but that doesn’t mean hybrids don’t have their place. Swanson still grows hybrid grains, such as the popular AC Hazlet, because they “are incredibly robust in the field,” he says. “They give beautiful standards, they yield astronomical amounts.

Pay attention, brewers. And an addendum to last week’s comment about medieval alcohol making:

Later this week blackcurrants are going to make wine too… farmers will convert anything to alcohol, it’s our superpower…

In addition to all its issues, craft beer also has a labour problem, according to this excellent and detailed article by Julie Rhodes:

Think about it this way, if the 1990s were like the kindergarten stage of the overall craft beer industry journey, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm and experiential learning moments, the 2020s are proving to be like middle school – full of angst, infinite possibilities, and pivotal decision-making that will determine the long-term future of the industry. We will have to wait to see if the cool kids can mature enough to make equitable and mutually beneficial decisions that will carry this industry beyond the awkward stage, but many are hopefully optimistic.

AKA the era of the spotty faced gits. I like it.

And finally a question: why bother with B.O.B.s** (or W.O.B.s for that matter) set in places you will never see and drinks you will never have? Among the usual questions about veracity in drinks writing, don’t these reach a further level of abstraction from reality, so far that they might as well be entirely made up? A sort of social science fan fiction?

For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: with a good discretion of the purchase of Amsterdam’s recent buyout by Danes this week at about the midpoint but avoid around the 24th minute if you don’t care for sputum) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s wound up now after ten years.

*Other points of view have been circulating.
**Beer Owner Bios, that sort of subset of puffery that is as close to press release reporting as there is… well, except for when that’s all it actually is…