Law – Page 5 – A Good Beer Blog

The Rather Distracted And Perhaps Brief First Beery News Notes For Spring

So much happening out there. Except maybe in the beer world. All a bit dull this week. Yet, it is spring. And the plants are on the move. I have to dig up me parsnips as soon as I can. You never know if you are going to pull up something the size of a pencil or a baseball bat – but by leaving them in the soil all winter, their starches convert to sugars and the make a fine ginger orange soup. And wouldja look at that there? Growing right now in a corner of the basement in part of my seed starting set up. A zucchini. A tiny wee zucchini. It’s spring for sure now.

Speaking of farming, Stan is slacking off in New Zealand but took time to post a lovely image from the hop harvest:

“These are my moisture meter,” said Brent McGlashen, a fifth generation hop grower, well into a day last week punctuated with frequent grabbing, breaking and smelling of freshly picked hops being kilned on one of the Mac Hops farms.

There. I pretty much just poached his whole post. But there are other posts. Go see.

Picking up on the weak signals from beer culture idea, the monthly B+B email newsletter for March had this idea:

Futures thinking is a way of reflecting on what might or could happen. It’s not about trying to predict the future but, rather, accepting uncertainty and considering multiple possible outcomes… What’s the equivalent today? There are certainly breweries doing things that make most of us think, “Interesting, but it’ll never catch on.” For example, there’s been a slow but steady trickle of beers using waste products, such as Toast Ale, made with surplus bread, and Singapore’s NewBrew which is made with recycled sewer water.

Great. Sewer juice. That sorta puts the “dis” in dystopian, no? What next – powdered beer? Hmm. You know, I really do like how the focus is on coping with the range of futures rather than the prognosticating expert Dr. Tomorrow claptrap. It’s like the risk matrix sort of thinking I’ve participated in big project planning. Craft beer might have avoided a whack of issues if it has tried a bit of futures thinking… but… well, it’s craft, right?

No, let’s stay with reality based reality. Facts. Like this. In a bit of a post-St.Patrick’s Day round up, I found this to the right very interesting from KHM: “My mate Alan (of chip review fame) on the folk music cardio workout.” Seems a pal of a pal wore a FitBit while playing a gig on the big day and learned a lesson. I do recall fitting into my 32 waist jeans back in my slam dancing days so it’s a likely tale of health and publife aligning neatly. Can’t say the same about this item on alcohol and heart health that I came across, a medical study published just a year ago that, again, confirms that the J-Curve is a fantasy, given not only the now well established understanding that it’s not that non-drinkers get sick but, once sick, the ill just don’t drink as much. It now turns out the light drinkers are also otherwise healthier, too:

…individuals in the light and moderate consumption group had healthier lifestyle behaviors than abstainers, self-reporting better overall health and exhibiting lower rates of smoking, lower BMI, higher physical activity, and higher vegetable intake (eFigure 3 in the Supplement). Adjustment for the aforementioned lifestyle factors attenuated the cardioprotective associations with modest alcohol intake...

Veg intake. That’s what did Lemmy in. Low veg intake. I’m reading his biography right now, by the way. Quite the lad. The good news from the cancer study by the way is that the two drink a day thing makes a lot of sense. We are built to take a certain amount of the alcky. Bevvying below that is really low risk but, be clear, heading northward causes a rapid increase in complications. Not funny.

But you know what is funny? People debating if Jeff is or is not a “beer bro“! WTF? I haven’t a clue what they even meant by it. I assume either it’s being too Alström circa 2008… or not Alström enough! But he was slagged just because he triggered a discussion on whether it is actually important to have full measures of beer served. Of course it is, well all know that – and everyone else is wrong but… the point is this: who gives a flying fuck about beer enough to call someone else a “beer bro” like is signifies anything other than the speaker is a utter moron? Hil. Aires. Lou. Zars.

I like this image. A useful reminder that early US microbreweries were not about the dissassembling big macro but to leverage the interest in imports. That’s one of the “20% in 2020 era” revisionist myths that bulk craft created.

Hmm. I am of slightly two minds about this story in the BBC where a 41 year old warrant was enforced related to a bar room fight even if I lean heavily to the result:

The story began in March 1980 when McGrath, an Irish-British national born in Leeds, was out drinking with friends. The 21-year-old, by his own admission, became involved in a drunken fight between two groups of young men. In his telling, he fled to a nearby pub when police arrived. “I’m not getting involved with the police,” he remembers thinking. But British prosecutors alleged he was part of a group that assaulted an officer, who suffered a broken nose, cuts and bruising while attempting to restrain a suspect. Five men were charged, including McGrath. Instead of facing justice, he fled to Ireland. He says he absconded because he believed he was being “set up”.

Note: After the jury met, he “was acquitted, the judge told jurors that he did not know why the case had been brought after so many years.” Still… brawling and absconding are crimes. I’ve been defence on historic claims, though none so minor.

Martyn was on the Beer Ladies Podcast, well worth a listen.

Matthew wrote a good piece on Guinness in the Pellicle,* especially around the idea that there is Guinness guilt. I suffer from no such thing. I have always thought that a good mass produced beer is a very fine thing. Guinness is up there with Miller High Life and Utica Club and… well, there must be a few others. It can be lovely:

In some places, though, to me it just seems to taste spectacular: The Thomas Connoly in Sligo, Lucky Joe’s Saloon in Fort Collins, Stoke Newington’s Auld Shillelagh, and, my favourite spot for a G, The Fidds’ in Levenshulme, South Manchester. When I am in such a place, I wouldn’t want to drink anything else. It’s not just about the beer, it’s about achieving a certain, blissful state of mind. I don’t want to think, I just want some pints.

Why does Guinness make memories?My uncle told the story of following Scotland’s rugby team as a travelling fan and, back in the day in Dublin, having gravity poured Guinness from barrels under the bar… which meant the person pouring had to lay on their side. I myself had 14 pints one night for free in a pub in Hampstead Heath, London near our hostel back around 1986. I’ve told you this one before, haven’t I? One of the loveliest humans I ever saw walked in that pub early that evening. She just stood there, dressed in a little black dress, big waves of blond hair up top, wearing just that one broach a golden a harp. She stood there looking at us, us looking at her. Until the place quietened. Everyone just staring at her. At which time she proclaimed “BOYS, I’M THE GUINNESS REP AND IT’S FREE TONIGHT!!!” Suddenly, we were in a scene from a movie. We’d won the lotto! Cheers filled the place, kegs were carried in on the shoulders of beefy gents in branded garb, everyone loved everyone else and we drank and drank and drank. I can die happy having lived there that evening.**

Jamie Goode wrote in Wine Anorak about the pending crisis of worthless drinks writing now being done by computer rather than by ill served disrespected humans. But wasn’t this the promise of the computer age? Didn’t Dr Tomorrow himself promise us all in around 1974 that they’d take the tat work off the humans? The picture they paint of the life of a bulk writer isn’t that compelling:

…for a long time many ‘journalists’ have been employed creating copy with the sole motivation of search engine optimization (SEO). Reading articles that have been written with SEO in mind is tiresome. I don’t do it: I want my writing to be me, writing in my voice, in my style, as well as I can do it. I’m lucky that I can afford this luxury, and I’m hoping for my readers that they appreciate the integrity of this approach. Many modern journalists might be employed by a newspaper of repute, but they don’t get their bylines in the paper. Their job is to show up for a shift and get paid perhaps £130 to write an article an hour for 8 hours. The subjects are determined by keywords trending on google….

Yikes. Bring on the server farms, I say! Now finally… witness an honest brewery. And not about what is in the beer or how much they sold you but… but breweries being honest about taxes:

Ram McAllister, owner and head brewer at Fairweather Brewing, said the proposed tax hike will hit the small brewer with an additional 20.8 cents to 41.8 cents per 100 hectolitres produced or 0.21 cents to 0.42 cents per litre. “We don’t welcome any tax increase,” said McAllister. “(But) this one has been misrepresented or misunderstood as the equivalent of a six per cent increase in the price of beer.”

Thank you. There. Done. Enough. Finis. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

Anyone else? And check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes bits and bobs when he can… like this! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason every Friday. 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 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. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. 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!***

*I’m calling it “the Pellicle” now. Not “The Pellicle” because that is not the name. Like “the rugby” which I say to my kid who plays. As in: “Good day at the rugby, kiddo? Good, now you know what I read in the Pellicle?” That sort of thing.
**And we didn’t even imagine doing something like this…
***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. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) 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 Thursday Beery News Notes For March March March !!!

I like March. The mud. The late winter blizzards. The building anxiety about income tax return preparation what with that retirement savings deadline yesterday. This particular March is the last full month of my fifties. Yup, I go from being an old young man to a young old man in around seven weeks. Just like that. Which means, yes, I was in a bar when M*A*S*H ended forty years ago this week. It’s enough to drive one to drink. Except we Canadians are driving ourselves away from the bottle according to a government bean counting agency report – as even the BBC reported this week:

Canadians appear to be losing their taste for alcohol, according to findings in a new report that showed beer and wine sales at historic lows. From 2021-22, volume of beer sold per person in Canada slumped drastically. The volume in wine sales slid by its largest margin since 1949… The report, released by Statistics Canada, a government data cruncher, found that sales of alcohol slid for first time in a decade, by 1.2%. Wine sales decreased by 4%, the largest decrease ever recorded by Statistics Canada. Beer’s time as the top alcoholic beverage by sales has shown signs of going flat, according to the report. Over the last 10 years, beer has continued to lose market share, totalling an 8.8% drop.

From breweries to the halls of academia, the news was met with discontent. Trouble is… this isn’t news. As the chart from StatsCan shows this has been a 50 year dteady decline, though with an extra bit of collapse since the recession 15 years ago. We are coming up on consuming half of what folks did two generations ago. I blame colour TV.

Far more pleasantly, Barry pointed us to a great article in Cider Review on the history of perry in the cider country of Normandy:

Pays Domfrontais; this crumb of land in south Normandy, where there are no more than perhaps twenty producers, where production is perhaps a per cent of Normandy’s total, if that, and where the perry might just be the best in the world. The landscape is all but flat; it ripples, rather than rolls, only rising to a swell at the ridge on which perches the medieval town of Domfront. Everywhere is agricultural; every patch of land tilled and tended, covered with corn or cows, narrow, sunken lanes cut into the sea of green. But, as in Austria, it’s the pear trees that make you coo and gasp. Rather than Mostviertel’s ubiquitous lines along the side of fields, here they just as often dominate widely-spaced orchards; always tall, high-branched— haut tiges in local parlance — towering over the handful of apple trees that cluster around them.

Sticking with the local scene elsewhere, Evan Rail has written about the Starkbierzeit beer festival in Munich, Germany for Vinepair this week, how a lesser known German tradtion has found even less traction in America – which may well be part of its charm:

Not every U.S. craft brewery has been able to make a starkbier festival work. Following an initial event in 2014, Wisconsin’s Capital Brewery discontinued its Starkbierfest after just a few years, instead focusing on its better-established Bockfest, which coincidentally takes place at about the same time of year. Other brewers have found that it helps to get back to basics. At the 9-year-old KC Bier Co. in Kansas City, Mo., earlier starkbier celebrations included different types of doppelbock released over several weeks. But the brewery’s 2023 Starkbierzeit sounds a lot more like an event in Munich, featuring a golden doppelbock called “Carolator,” in memory of Carol Crawford, sister of brewery founder Steve Holle. After receiving a blessing from a local priest, Carolator was released to the public on Ash Wednesday.

At the end of last week, Stan reported in his newsletter Hop Queries that there is a glut in the US hop market:

Speaking at the American Hop Convention in January, John I. Haas CEO Alex Barth estimated that the industry is sitting on an excess of 35 to 40 million pounds of hops. Therefore, farmers in the Northwest need to reduce the acres of aroma hops strung for harvest by 10,000 — about 17 percent — to balance supply and demand. Acreage may not be cut that much immediately, and as one industry member told me it could take “three, four, five years” to work off the excess. But when the USDA releases data about 2023 acreage in June, expect the reduction of most proprietary varieties to be pretty stunning. Across the board, stakeholders who own the plant rights to many of the privately owned cultivars are discussing 20 to 30 percent cuts. That includes Citra and Mosaic, of course, because growers planted more of those two in 2022 than any other variety.

Expect the invention of Stale Hop IPA just in time for Christmas 2023. How else are they going to deal with this bit of surprise. Speaking of things not being as expected, apparently the old joke about American beer being like making love in a canoe is no longer acceptable if legal precedent is to be trusted:

The National Advertising Division, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, sided with Anheuser-Busch, which challenged a 2022 ad for Miller Lite that uses the phrase “light beer shouldn’t taste like water, it should taste like beer.” The agency said that Molson Coors should “discontinue” the ad because is “not puffery or a mere opinion.” In the 15-second spot, a cyclist takes a break from riding uphill, cracks open a beer and douses himself with it. No specific beers were mentioned, however the beer uses a similar blue color that adorns Bud Light packaging. NAD said that it “determined that tasting ‘like water’ is a measurable attribute” and that customers might “reasonably expect that the statement is supported by such evidence.”

More observations. JJB aka Stonch aka Jeff Buckly* made a very intersting observation about big beer’s inexplicable recent interest in crappy no-alc beers:

…it’s so blatant the big brewers are pushing their awful alc free versions of their key beers largely so they can have the brand promoted at sports competitions. Idea is you see Heineken 0.0, and then think of actual Heiny.

Still more as Retired Martin is still wandering around the nations as well as around the factilities he and his visit:

That long trestle table is the only downstairs seating, which at least ensures you’ll talk to people like it’s 1995, but sadly we were (again) the only custom at 1pm on a Saturday, which Mrs RM resolved by chatting to the Landlord while I explore upstairs. You may not be aware, but 97% of people would rather stand outside a micropub in a storm, rather than be the first person to go and sit in the upstairs area, and that’s a fact. I could hear Mrs RM saying “He’s done all the Beer Guide pubs” which is always cringeworthy, so I didn’t overstay my visit…

I have no idea why the sink is on the cistern though it likely saves water… but… err… where do you place your feet when you use it? Not at all relatedly, as the newly hired voice of the competition noted, ABInBev have laid off employees at a number of the craft breweries they picked up during the buyout years begun now around seven years ago:

Employees have been let go from Houston, Texas-based Karbach Brewing and Patchogue, NY-based Blue Point Brewing … Citing anonymous sources, Craft Business Daily reported layoffs at Lexington, Virginia-based Devils Backbone and Asheville, North Carolina-based Wicked Weed.

As the craft-esque beer market continues to retract I am not sure why there is the assumption that there would not be layoffs, given the shelf really doesn’t care how production occured, how promises and assumptions were exchanged late in the era of the Obama administration.

Very much another sort of shutdown was the theme as Jeff shared his observations about drinking on a snowy day, a highly recommended way to pass the hours as a blizzard roars:

As we sipped and chatted, Sally’s eldest brother Tom mentioned that #StormDrinking is a thing in New England. Finding a warm nook with a cold beverage and friends is the perfect way to while away a Nor’Easter. We joked about its Portland equivalent, which would be more like #SnowDrinking. Even as we were planning our final move—a restaurant or pub near home—we were still thinking the clouds weren’t going to deliver more than a couple inches. Yet as we called around, we kept hearing the same thing. Places were shutting down and sending staff home while they could go, or planning to close soon. Fortunately for us, Migration Brewing was open, and the bartender said she was happy to hang out if anyone showed up. So off we went.

In a warmer setting, Mark Dredge wrote a good piece about a contest that apparently started here in my home town at Queen’s University – home of my rugby fandom – running a mile while drinking beer:

It’s a simple and relatable race: Short enough that anyone can attempt it, hard enough that most will fail miserably, absurd enough that anyone who learns about it will want to hear more. The event consists of four 400-meter laps around a running track, beginning nine meters behind the official starting line to reach the metric 1,609m of an imperial mile. That extra nine meters becomes the designated “chug zone” in which, before each lap, runners have to down one 12oz beer. It’s four beers, four laps, and try not to puke.

Runners World ran a similar story in 2015 with a bit of focus on the silliness of the concept. You know, around about when we packed the college bar for that last episode of M*A*S*H, we did a similar stunt at undergrad forty years ago: the annual three legged race. Why there I am twice in the yearbook in the spring of 1982, at the start of the race all big and fit and trim and full of youth… and soon to be full of beer. Long since sensibly banned of course. The insurers must have found out. See, you and your partner had to run up the seven four story stairways of the residences joined at the hip and chug a beer at each top landing. Most of us floated and spent more time on fancy costumes than anything like training. We two were dressed as “science students” and kept pace by saying “sign, cosign” over and over as we ran. The records were set in my era by a classmate (who was apparently ninth or tenth, just missing a seat on Canada’s Olympic eights rowing team) and whoever was tied onto to him. Upper left to the right. Artie and Wugg are there, too, to the far right. Fortunately, the architecture allowed for hosing down the stairs afterwards.

There, that’s enough for today. Did I mention that you still need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. Here is your cheat sheet if you want to have a look see:

Remember also to read the blogs and the newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and also from Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he checks in from the road. . And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? 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. Book some time for Hugging the Bar as they go long as well as the Guys Drinking Beer in Chicago. And check out The Share with Stephanie Grant.

And, yes, also gather ye all the olde style podcasts while ye may. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. Did you know Lew Bryson started a Seen Through A Glass podcast in November 2022? Me neither! 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 more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

Finally, we lift our hats to the departed newsletters and podcasts… and those perhaps in purgatory. BeerEdge may have been effectively absorbed into the revival of All About Beer. 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. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) 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?

*Proof! Since corrected to Mr. Bell himself. Though it still suggests that he only recently made a change to move away from food service at the Ypres Castle Inn. He’s run it for a few years now without a kitchen.

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 “Whoooot! Yes!! It’s February!!!” Thursday Beery New Notes

I have traditionally hated February. OK, fine – sure – by “traditionally” I don’t mean that we have special hatin’ on February outfits in my culture and we don’t gather outside in large circles holding hands dancing to hatin’ February folksongs and hatey hymns. Maybe they do that in Manitoba – but not here! No, February for me means sofa, blankets and getting weepy when the days are longer but the thermometer is plunging. Out the dining room window we are watching a neighbour’s eaves trough slowly rip away from the house under the weight of the ice. Not much you can do until spring about that one. Why do I tell you this? Because it sucks. And I am not alone in this. But then you read about how a fairly late early modern looking pub facade in Wakefield, England was removed and a Tudor building was found and you think… neato.

Anyway, what is going on in the world of beer? Beer beer news. Ikea has beer. Who know? Do you have to open the bottle with a little hex wrench?* What else? Feather bowling! I had no idea that such a thing existed but apparently feather bowling is a Belgian pub game… in Detroit:

The game originally was a Belgian pastime akin to horseshoes and Bocci. These games have many similarities amongst them. Though little is known about the exact origin of the game, it is probable that the resemblance of the balls to wheels of cheese is no mistake. The Cadieux Cafe is proud to be the only home of Feather Bowling in the United States. The game is rarely played in Belgium, and visitors from the old country are often astonished to see the game preserved as it is here.

It looks like bowls on a gutter. Dryland wickedly warped curling. Here’s a video. Speaking of videos, Alistair wrote about watching the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube, something I discovered myself just a few months ago. As usual, drawing from that episode on the micropubs of Thanet** and the lastest from B+B, he took a bit of time to gather his resulting thoughts:

One episode has stuck with me in particular since my little marathon, and that is the one about micropubs in Thanet… I love the concept of the micropub, as it allows easier entry into the world of selling booze as well as allowing the business to be more of an expression of the owner as it is unbound by the conventions of “the pub”. Since watching the video, and reading Boak and Bailey’s fantastic post in BeerAdvocate about their local… Just last week, on our drive to do the weekly shop, Mrs V asked me if I would like to open a micropub, and I had to admit that I had been investigating some of the legalities in Virginia around boozer retailing.

Now, that is the power of amateur video productions available for free on the internets. Gets the brain going. Hey! – is stout really making a comeback? That might be the Protzean point of view:

On Friday it was announced Guinness Stout is the UK’s biggest selling beer, overtaking Carling Lager. UK Stout market now worth £1bn a year. In the small brewing sector, Anspach Hobday Porter is now their biggest seller. Tomorrow Brewdog are launching a Stout “to take on Guinness”

Or… is it all a trap?!? Questions have been posted about the influence leveraged to attain this lofty status. (You know, I once rated higher than Guinness… ah, those were the days…) And ATJ wrote an interesting piece about a grimmer sort of moment in a pub in Aberdeen, Scotland:

Maybe I have that sort of face that attracts certain people, but the slapping man then sat next to me and said something which I could only catch was that his daughter had died. I said I was sorry and then he asked if he could have a drink from my beer. ‘No mate,’ I laughed and he slapped his fist against his hand and I could not understand his words. He was aggressive but for some reason I didn’t feel too threatened, feeling that it was all show.

Am I the only one who thinks the whole “mindful drinking” as a euphemism for low or no alcohol drinks thing is a bit dumb? A bit arrogant even? I mean, when I have a really swell Pouilly-Fuissé I’m being pretty mindful. Paying a lot of attention to what’s in the glass and in my head. NPR covered the story when the superior set met recently:

One of the hottest tickets in Washington, D.C., last weekend was to a festival that was all about drinking and having fun — without being fueled by alcohol. The sold-out Mindful Drinking Fest was emphatically zero proof, but it offered plenty of proof that the movement to drink less alcohol is booming. And with an explosion of new choices, it’s also delicious. From a ginger old fashioned to espresso martinis and spritzes, hop water to pink rosé, the rich complexity of today’s alcohol-free drinks was on full display.

@JJB aka Stonch’s recent trip to Czechia has been immortalized*** in a series of photos and short vids on Twitter that tell the story of the local scene, certainly in a plain archival sense, better than I’ve ever seen in any travel article or beer book, right down to the 40 watt lightbulb look of some places. That is his picture of an Obora 12 ‘Ježibaba’ at Pult. Not beer pr0n. A picture of a beer. Speaking of the Czech Republic… they now have a pro-NATO cask toting new President.

GBH has taken a break from its unattainable fantasy tourism puffs and published an interesting article on the challenges posed by the revitalization of a favorite brewery of mine, Great Lakes Brewing (of Lake Erie, not the Great Lakes of Lake Ontario):

“10 years ago if you had asked me to tell you what I thought craft beer would be like in 2022, I would have taken a guess,” says Hunger, who’s tasked with figuring out how to brew new products on a large scale after a quarter decade of brewing classic styles. “Now if you asked me to tell you what I think it will be like two years from now, I wouldn’t even attempt that. It’s actually a lot of fun. You get to really flex your skills and use different techniques.”

A bit of legal history I’ve missed due to lazy lawyering. You know what happens – you tend to read the appeals cases like the ruling in R. v. Carling Export Brewing and Malting Company, 1931 CanLII 373 (UK JCPC) or even The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., 1930 CanLII 46 (SCC) looking for the final result… but never check out the fuller statement of facts like in this case about the taxation of beer brewed in Canada but smuggled into the USA during that nation’s Prohibition era. So I never noticed what was described in The King v. Carling Export Brewing and Malting Co., Ltd., 1928 CanLII 758 (CA EXC) at

…the evidence clearly discloses that these goods were actually placed on board vessels for foreign destination, after due clearance from the Customs. The boats came in, reported inward to the Canadian Customs, reported outward, and they obtained their clearance after the goods on board had been duly verified by the Customs officer. Corroborating this exportation to the United States we have the evidence establishing that Rice Beer or Lager— which constituted the largest proportion of the exportation —is very little used in Canada and that it is the preferred beverage in the United States. Moreover, also by way of corroboration a large quantity of Carling’s special, bottles and kegs were returned empty to Canada through the Customs, and upon which a duty was duly paid. The identification of the kegs is ascertained by the special bungs marked with specific cut figures for that purpose. One witness stated that after seeing some boats clear from the Canadian shore with the goods, he saw them being unloaded on the American shore. Another witness testified he saw the Carling beer in the road-houses in the American towns.

Look at that: 1920s Canadian Federal Customs officials were checking the boats going out to verify their cargo then checked the cargo of the ships coming back loaded with empties. Why? Credits for the beer not consumed in Canada! No need to impose business inhibiting punitive social engineering excise tax on beer bought by Americans! You know, there’s a Canadian children’s TV drama just waiting to be built on that story arc.

And then we have the obituary for Sir Samuel Whitbread in The Times this week that claimed he was a farmer first more than the corporate executive who oversaw the family move away from the booze making trade… but the details given are a bit at odds with that:

He presided over a radical reshaping, prompted by government decree and changing public tastes, that took Whitbread into the international hotel and restaurant business — Beefeater and TGI Fridays — and out of beer production after 250 years. Sam Whitbread sold the group’s spirits business, including Long John and Laphroaig whisky and the coincidentally named Beefeater gin. Under an ambitious chief executive, Peter Jarvis, they diversified into David Lloyd Leisure, Marriott Hotels, Pizza Hut and Thresher off-licences. They soon had more UK outlets than McDonald’s.

Hardly the cow shit on the rubber boots sorta lad I’d call a farmer. I feel particularly well advised on this sort of point of view as I am working my way through 1969’s Akenfield: Portiait of an English Village by the also very recently departed Ronald Blythe, in many respects a grim portrait of almost modern English rural life from the 1860s to the 1960s. The book includes this recollection at page 59 as part of the statement given by a farmer, John Grout, of brewing his farm’s traditional beer at harvest in around the start of the First World War:

You took five or six pails of water in a copper. Then you took one pail of boiling water and one pail of cold water and added them together in a tub big enough to hold 18 gallons. You added a bushel of malt to the water in the tub. Then you added boiling water from the copper until there was 18 gallons in all in the tub. Cover up and keep warm and leave standing for at least 7 hours, though the longer the better. When it has stood, fill the copper 3 parts full from the tub, boil for an hour and add a half pound of hops. Then empty into a second tub. Repeat with the rest. All the beer should now be in one tub and covered with a sack and allowed to cool. But before this, take a little of the warm beer in a basin, add two ounces of yeast and let it stand for the night. Add this to the main tub in the morning and cask the beer. You can drink it after a week. And it won’t be anything like you can taste in the Crown, either…

Each man at harvest was entitled to 17 pints through each day’s work. Resulting results of the brewing unpacked here. Lovely. When harvest was done, all involved stood out in the fields and shouted, then waited to hear those in the neighbouring villages shouting back in reply.

That’s it. Now gather ’round the kiddies as we are on to the indices of Mastodon, podcasts and newsletters. Note: Newsletters. CBC published an archived news post about how newsletters began as letters that brought you news. So is what you are reading really that? Let’s just have a think, shall we? Hmmm… and what song this week as we do? What would I play if this were a movie and these were the scrolling credits? Could it be this? Yup. That’s it…

Go have a look yourself. I am up to 750 followers myself. Time and patience and regular posting attracts the audience as per usual. While you are at it, check for more from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays.

And now the podcasts and… newsletters… First, check to see if there is 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.

*Now that’s what I call funny!
**“Class? Class?!? CLAAAAAAASS!!! Now… do remember why Thanet is important in beer history?”
***Well, as immortalized as a picture on a slowly decaying web app will ever be.

The Fascinating If Not Captivating Beery News Notes For November’s Start

November. Yippee, November! No one ever said that. Maybe if you were born on the first of November. Or in New Zealand. A New Zealander born on the first of November might be feeling they hit the jackpot, come to think of it. DSL might, too. Speaking of which, the Austrian Beer Party is saying yippee or whatever it is you say thereabouts. Still at 10% in the polls, down from 13% a month ago but no joke:

An upstart satirical party whose flagship policies include an unconditional beer allowance for every citizen and municipal lager fountains has come out of nowhere to win fourth place in national opinion polls. Founded in 2015 by a charismatic punk rock singer, the Beer Party was until very recently a fringe phenomenon in Austrian politics, scraping only 0.1 per cent of the vote at the last parliamentary election in 2019.

What else is up? I need to make this snappy. Things to do. Naps to have. Hmm…. Crisp Malting issued its 2022 Harvest Report which contains some startling observations about the climate:

It was the sixth driest summer on record and the driest since 1995, with just 62% of the usual summer rainfall. Additionally, we also saw more sun than usual at 115% of the 1991-2020 average. As a result of all this weather, it was the earliest barley harvest ever – some fields were cut on June 29^th – and by July 19^th, 70% of the UK winter barley harvest was cut. In the 50s and 60s, this would have been a month later, in August. Harvest in Scotland closed out earlier than usual also, another demonstration of the impact climate is having on our agricultural calendar.

Jings. Word is by 2042, the harvest will take place in 2041 a full twelve weeks before the time of planting. Canada is also having a bumper crop – and seeing higher prices for the wrong reason.

And I’ve come across something I am not sure I’ve seen as much as I thought I might – a review of the Good Beer Guide from Phil Mellows of British Beer Breaks who attended the book launch:

The strength of the Good Beer Guide, and what makes it different from, and in many ways better than, competing guides, is that the people picking the entries are so close to the ground. They know exactly what’s going on with the pub, because they drink in there week in, week out. This is also a weakness. A pub can fall out of favour with these individuals for all kinds of reasons that may be obscure to the occasional visitor. And there must be, it seems to me, a growing pressure on the decision-making resulting from the limit imposed on the number of entries allocated to each county or region.

Economics abounds. Muskoka buys Rally. Bench Brewing and Henderson sorta maybe merging. And Jeff has it right – Ommegang has lost its way. Another sign of the times? Lost Abbey is cutting back:

The Lost Abbey’s co-founder and managing partner Tomme Arthur says the scale-down is an acknowledgment of vastly different market conditions than those of the brewery’s sales heyday seven years ago… Arthur says he hopes that reducing costs, particularly on rent and property taxes, will mean the brewery can maintain its staff of roughly 35 employees. “You can’t get small enough quick enough if you’re trying to protect the flank,” he says.

I’m worried. Not about beer. There will always be beer. I am worried about my problem with Twitter. If we lose Twitter there’s bound to be a new problem for me that will replace my problem with Twitter. I’m having a look at Mastodon but who’s over there? 100% of everyone voted to not “Quit the Twit” in my scientific study. And what will I do without it, without for example good folk going all pointy finger over a history of lambic which is an accusation of all other histories of lambic? I quite like “jeremiads full of invective“… although he’s misspelled jeroboam, hasn’t he. Sad.

Sadder? A thieving beer guzzling monkey in India!

Matty C has also asked a question of verbiage. Specifically the use of Helles:

I’m talking about ‘Helles’, and how it’s become the latest in a stream of buzzwords the lager machine has sacrificed to maintain its youth and vim. But why this particular terminology, and how did it take hold? How accurate are modern brewers’ renditions of this classic Bavarian style? And does what a beer is called really matter, if people are enjoying great lager as a result?

I like my words to mean what they mean and not mean what they don’t mean. Otherwise it can lead to things. Ron found himself lead to things and in a bit of a pickle out and about on the Brazilian beer tourism scene again:

Last full day in Brazil. A bit weird. An election and the clocks changed. Plus everything in the centre of Florianopolis is shut…. It’s going crazy outside. People clearly think Lula has won. I hope that’s fireworks and not gunfire.

I trust it all worked out. Speaking of travel and a bit more sedate sort bit of travel, B+B took us to Cologne, Germany this week and laid down a new law:

We decided on a rule: you need a minimum of three beers per pub on a Kölsch crawl. The first one will taste weird because it isn’t the same as the last you were drinking. You gulp that one down. Get the city scum out of your throat. The second, as you acclimatise, allows you to pick up distinct aromas and flavours. How is it different? Why is it different? The third allows you to appreciate what’s in front of you in its own right, and decide whether you want to turn this into a real session. Or walk on. Because you’re never far from another.

In brewing history this week, Gary highlighted the upcoming 2022 Chicago Brewseum Beer Summit and, elsewhere, @AfricanArchives wrote about a moment in history that I had not heard about – The Battle of Bamber Bridge which saw US soldiers fighting each other in England in 1943… and the local English publicans taking a side:

In 1943 Black American soldiers faced off with white American Military police during World War 2 on British soil. Black American soldiers had to fight their own white American soldiers, while in England, where they were fighting the world war. …when the American Military police found out that their own black soldiers were drinking at the same pubs as white people, they went in to arrest them. The people in the town got mad about that treatment and decided to then turn their pubs into “BLACKS ONLY DRINKING PUBS”

Finally, a less inspiring story came to light just when the blog post was going to the presses. Ben Johnson posted an excellent exposé on one Ontario brewery facing little public condemnation after allegations of sexual harassment:

It is unfortunate then that, when the City of Kitchener recently opened up their Requests for Proposals (RFP) process to find a “non-premier brewery partner” to serve beer at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex and Kitchener Golf Courses, they awarded the contract to Four Fathers Brewing Company in Cambridge. Unfortunate, of course, because in 2018 Four Fathers founder and University of Guelph Professor John Kissick actually was charged with two counts of assault and one count of assault with a weapon. Those charges were ultimately dropped in 2020 when Kissick entered into a peace bond with the party who brought forward the charges, but to craft beer drinkers and any feeling humans who watched video of the (alleged) assault (myself among them) the incident likely left a bad taste in their mouth.

There. Nothings like ending on a crummy note. For better news, 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 Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – and 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 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!

Your Frighteningly Well Researched Beery News Notes For Mid-October 2022

Wow. I even scared myself a little just putting this together this week. So much effort. So little point. And all the stuff on the cutting room floor. Whew. What’s that? Yes, summer has lingered, thanks for asking. The frosts have only brushed the yard as it turns out. The garden is still going on with plenty to still harvest. Still time for more cardoon mush. You know, you really aren’t a chef/gardener/drinks biz personality until you’ve made your own cardoon mush. And I’ve yet to even eat one of my first crop of salsify. Yet there is it, right by the front door.

Before we get going, an update on the comments I made last week about my hopes and dreams for a futuresque dreamscape of smooth brightly coloured plastics and chrome at BXLBeerFest in Brussels, The Beer Nut reporting. In his update he shared the scene, a bit of which is to your right, my left. Pallets. Wooden pallets held together with wire or tape or something. Really? Craft really needs to get into the modern world, that’s what I say. The world of plastics and chrome.

First up, Eoghan posted some serious thoughts about the point of all his beer writing efforts:

Do I want to continue writing about Brussels and beer? Is it still interesting for me? More importantly, is it still interesting for you? If I stop what I’ve been doing these past five years, what comes after? Do I stop altogether? Or do I try something different? But if I try something different and I fail, and fail utterly, then what? What happens then? Would I want to continue to write? These might seem like mundane questions, a fixation on something – a blog – that ultimately has little intrinsic value. But that would be to do down the time and the energy I’ve put into my writing in the last five years, and I’ve done myself down enough in the past.

Lots have people have moved on so that is no shame in itself. Just see how many of the beery podcasts, newsletters and blogs listed below are dead or dying. But the idea that writing about a fixation has little intrinsic value needs serious quashing. It’s only in the writing that the fixation becomes of value. Exploring the weird thing that triggers the imagination is always worthwhile. This is the problem with the British Guild of Beer Writers and NAGBW shift from talking about “writing” to the thinly smug language of “reporting” and “journalism” over the last few years. Not only does it smack of needy niche (and also pretendy-ism… yes, I said it) it misses the fundamental point that most of this is obsession, not reportage. Write!

The UK’s Telegraph had a rather positive report on the best new low-beers and no-alc… which also led me to the concept of “Sober October” which seem to be a cheater pants copy of Dryuary:

I started Sober October four weeks early, for weight loss reasons after seeing my holiday snaps. I was doing quite well, but while watching TV I found that my right hand kept reaching over to the side-table where the beer should be. The ingrained habit of taking a swig of something cold and hoppy was proving impossible to break. So I let the hand have the beer it wanted – just without the alcohol. My hand couldn’t tell the difference and, surprisingly, my tastebuds couldn’t either.

I am still in the “I can’t be bothered paying that much for fancy soda pop” school but your mileage may differ. Lots of solid recommendations for British readers.

Seems ‘Spoons may have weathered economic crisis just in time for the next economic crisis:

… the battered JD Wetherspoon share price already had so many dismal expectations priced in that the results themselves were a reminder of the business potential. After all, the company made an operating profit and generated free cash flow. After exceptional items, it also recorded a profit. I think the operating profit and free cash flow are a welcome sign that the business is rebuilding. It has faced and continues to experience considerable challenges, from energy inflation to staff availability. The fact it has turned an operating profit provides a foundation for improved results in future…

Speaking of the economic pressure on the pub, Pete Brown wrote a bit romantically for CNN’s American audience on the subject.

The folks behind the GABF might need that sort of explanation about British beer styles as apparently this year they balled a heck of a lot into one awards category, according to Alistair:

When GABF has a category called “English Mild or Bitter” it suddenly makes sense why Mild and Bitter don’t have a following in the US. Even the trade organization doesn’t give enough of a shit to understand that mild and bitter are wildly different beers… Also, with medals handed out for ESB as a separate category the grouping could easily have been “Bitter” and “Mild/Brown Ale”. There is little logic from a style perspective for lumping mild and non-extra special bitter together.

Seems rather muddied to me. Stan wrote about about seeing the awards from a seat at the ceremony and was more optimistic. As per usual and as is good. (Folk need to keep off my turf.*) Relatedly, here’s the winner of “The Most Craft Industry Style Observation Upon The Awarding of Craft Industry Awards” award… of all time… well, at least for this week:

Winning at GABF is a testament to the breweries who medal. It’s a huge honor and should be celebrated. At the same time, not winning at GABF is no way diminishes a brewery that entered. Ultimately it’s a crapshoot and a bunch of world class beers will be overlooked.

Emmie Harrison-West raises an interesting question about another far more serious aspect of fests in her very detailed article, one that’s really worthy of the space: “Have beer festivals become a hotbed for crimes against women?”

For over 14 years, Harriet, who lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, has been attending beer festivals. She says that this derogatory, sexist behaviour towards women and their bodies ‘has been “normal” culture’ for as long as she’s been attending them… reporting such instances of sexism and sexual harrassment at beer festivals was difficult, or that a process simply didn’t exist. That such behaviour and crimes against women had been ‘normalised’ to the extent that women simply accepted it, ignored it, and ‘didn’t make a big deal.’

It is good that this discussion is framed as a discussion of crime. Anything less is also a form of normalization.** The article also talks about concrete responses like London police’ Ask For Angela program and The Coven who advocate for women’s safety at events and attend as wellness officers launching the initiative at the Leeds International Beer Festival in September 2021.

Elsewhere, Ron has written about travel again with a focus my favorite character in beer pop culture… his wife Delores:

After bringing back her wine, I tell Dolores: “There’s one big advantage this place has: self-service drinks. None of that “singles only” for me here. It’s trebles all round.” “Don’t go crazy, Ronald.”*** “When have I ever?” “Hmmpfh” She makes that funny noise which somehow manages to convey contempt, pity, incredulity, scorn and a tiny hint of amusement.

And speaking of travel, Jeff gathered up his nickels and bought a ticket to Norway for KviekFest22!**** Now, I am not one of those who usually will comment upon a drive-by bit of beer writing by a stranger in a strange land but – I have to tell you Jeff did one of the most cleverest things I ever did see… he turned a beer porn photo op into a anthropological guide to making farmhouse ale – with photographs and “fig. 1” style descriptions and everything, like this:

As the water heats, the brewer prepares the mash tun. In the actual event, we used a more sophisticated steel tun with a metal strainer, but typically Stig would use a plastic tun (in the old days they were wooden) he’d prepare with a filter log and juniper boughs. (Even with the steel mash tun, he packed it with juniper.)

1. The log has a trough in the bottom and holes throughout.
2. Stig places the open end next to the faucet and then,
3 and 4., he packs juniper boughs around the log for finer filtration.

I love that the guys name was Stig.***** That photo up there? That’s the log. (More like a junk of wood to me. Logs big. But who am I to take away from the spotlight of this excellent piece of information sharing that means more to anyone and everyone than anything journalissimo submitted for crude pay?)

Speaking of being away, there was a lovely bit of exploration shared by Kieran Haslett-Moore about the times to be had in New Zealand:

I breakfast at a vibrant bakery that also does café service. A dome of scrambled eggs, sausage patty, confit mushrooms and glazed ham all spiked with Szechuan crispy chilli oil. A family dressed like it’s 1983 walk along Lower Stuart Street. They are animatedly discussing the city’s wifi service. They head into one of the city’s ‘Scottish shops’ .

Finally, a lovely piece of long writing at the BBC about Nathalie Quatrehomme and her family line of Parisian cheesemongers:

“We make lovely Maroilles washed in beer,” she said. “And we do lovely Langres in Champagne.” And aging isn’t the only way the siblings add a touch of personality to their cheeses. “In addition to being agers, we transform cheeses,” explained Nathalie, evoking a handful of offerings familiar to regulars of Parisian fromageries: Brie with truffle; Camembert dunked in Calvados and rolled in breadcrumbs. Others in the shop, however, are unique creations. Fourme d’Ambert is stuffed with a sweet fig and walnut paste to counterbalance the funk of the blue. A Camembert mendiant (beggar) is covered in jam, nuts, dried fruit and a touch of dark chocolate.

Yum. I must be hungry. Must go eat cheese. As I do, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and 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.) 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 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.

*Funny joke. Ha ha. Not saying anything else.
**Seems to be a common saying in the household.
***Which is why I found the Mikkeller “reconciliation” thing so weird, dissuading people with claims from the law.
****No, you’re right – but it SHOULD be the name!!
*****“Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O’ Tracy.“

Your Inordinately Cheery Beery News Notes For These Days Of The First Frosts

Beer snake! Never seen one from that point of view before. Thanks to beer and baseball specialist Shana for the perspective from the bleachers at one of the last Cubs games of the year. Like my Red Sox, they sorta similarly sucked this season. Reminds me of, what… the first forty years of my life? Ah, the good old days. Anyway, one must be positive. You know, I wrote that header up there before I wrote anything this week. Why? Because there seems to be a lot of bad news out there. Bad in the world and fairly bad in the beery bit of that world. So, as always, I shall try to be the voice of optimism, of good cheer and positivity. I tell myself this again… as I start out…

First up, let’s check the shipping news. Despite what the keen beer trade statisticians who are good and making numbers bendy say, apparently there is a global slowdown coming so fast and hard that trans-Oceanic shipping lines are cutting back:

Ocean carriers are canceling dozens of sailings on the world’s busiest routes during what is normally their peak season, the latest sign of the economic whiplash hitting companies as inflation weighs on global trade and consumer spending. The October cancellations are a sharp reversal from just a few months ago, when scarce shipping space pushed freight rates higher and carriers’ profits to record levels.

What’s this got to do with beer? Export and imports. Except for big buyers like Ontario’s LCBO, most good beer likely does not ship by the full container load. But it still could be good news for the small and local even if not so good for the forces of international craft. So… less beer may be moving on the high seas. We see the same thing happening across the bar. Not so good. The export geared breweries of Britain may have a lead on this lesson, learning the hard way due to Brexit… though to be fair those with a local market focus also seem to be suffering. Jings. Tough days. Soon it will all be about nods, winks and word of mouth if you want to find the good stuff.

Never one to be glum… or even fixed in one spot for very long, The Beer Nut went on a holly joliday and reported back from the BXLBeerFest in Brussels which offered beers sort of in the round, reminding me of the Tardis’s console:

I made arrangements to attend last year. That didn’t work out but tickets rolled over and so there I was, if not quite front at least fairly centre, on the last weekend in August 2022. Sixty invited breweries occupied eight circular pods, each pouring four or more beers at a time. The selection was carefully chosen from Belgium, Europe and North America, with an emphasis on the wild side of fermentation, like saying “we invented lambic, show me what you can do”.

Circular pods! How futuristic! I hope they wore garish wide-lapelled purple, green and/or yellow corduroy suits, too. And played the best of Seals and Crofts on a loop. But that’s just me. Bright. Cheery. Elsewhere, Alistair wrote about dreich this week and (other than knowing you have no idea how to pronounce it because I can) I liked this bit:

Saturday in central Virginia was dreich, gey dreich, as the remnants of Hurricane Ian drifted up the Shenandoah Valley. It was a day for comfort clothes, pots of tea, and whatever mindless shite the kids wanted to watch on the idiot box – I am starting to worry about their love of screens, but that’s not the point of my post. I pondered lighting the first fire of the season, but the wind was whipping along at 20mph and I have an in built fear of a chimney fire. Into this revelry of gloom came a text message from Jason at Devils Backbone…

Speaking of dreich, I see that Jeff has reported on fifth anniversary that relic of 2017, the “independent” seal offered by the US Brewers Association to its membership. For me, it was an extension of 2012’s “crafty” botch that sought to rally beer buyers around the BA’s central “one ring to rule them all” branding approach to selling craft beer in the US.* While (i) these sorts of things may have given comfort to big national craft and, conversely, (ii) the more recent explosion of small and local breweries fundamentally altered the discussion, I was most surprised by this tidbit in the article indicating how they may have missed the boat – they don’t ask the only people that matter:

Beer in general has been lagging, but craft beer is no longer the bright segment in a declining category. In recent quarters, only imports seem to be bucking the trend—while craft tracks with other domestic categories. And customers themselves? It’s hard to say. The Brewers Association hasn’t done any recent polling on the question—or made it public, anyway.

Note: if there was good news from consumers, polling results would have been made public. Verdict: dud.

And I don’t know what to make of the news that the very large object identifying as BrewDog won a court case. From the BBC News report I see that the defendant “failed to respond to the court” which seems to indicate that a Statement of Defence (as we would call it in Ontario) was not filed. Which, if that is the case, leads to a default judgement which effectively does not represent a ruling on the merits. That being said, I am somewhat concerned that all the sins of craft have merged into this one matter, as it is (i) being a big mean brewery, and (ii) one that is for the most part elsewhere. The resulting response seems to be dumping all errors on this single example, accepting without any serious question the deftly played PR sidestep and perhaps even wiping the balance of craft’s record clean – perhaps comforting and perhaps even re-numbing ourselves to the more widely spread problem still all around us. Moving on craft? **

Which is the opposite of what Beth Demmons does in her Prohibitchin’ series*** – which this month features Omolola Olateju of Black Girls Drink who makes this excellent point:

“The complications of getting these alcohol-related licenses, LOLOLOL!” she laughs, cynically but genuinely. “I really do wonder about the gatekeeping. Right now in the drinks industry, there are financial barriers and resource barriers — it’s really painful.” One change she believes would help alleviate said barriers would be more BIPOC people getting involved at the legislative level to identify and correct problem areas. “I’d be really curious — and I make some positive assumptions — around how that would change the industry,” she says. “That to me is the next equity front: people in ‘the system.’”

Speaking of the system… note: not Pete’s best photo… that is Pete, right? And grey? Really. Talk about yer dreich! No… not Pete… no, the logo’s background!!****

The reporting on reporting is real this week as Stan chose two stories about wine could well apply to beer: (i) one about the way that the story behind a drink made the drink more appealing and even more valuable to the buyer and (ii) the second …

…another instance where the word “wine” could be replaced with “beer” in two instances. “The wine industry itself is much to blame with its history of pretentiousness, and its absurd rituals and vocabulary that convey the message that one must be a connoisseur before one can enjoy wine.”

I mention this as the two seem to be two side of the same coin to my mind: the myth making as obstacle making and the gatekeeping of the faux connoisseur… as obstacle making! Strip those away and what do you have? You know… other than a world without bevvy’s consulto-judge-journalist class?***** Well, what you would have is reality like… bowling and beer – in Walsall!

We met up with Dan Gilbert and Coxy and explained why we had had left The Lion only for Dan to exclaim that he loves UB40. Which made me laugh. We headed to The Wharf Bar. There was karaoke. I was urged to have a go and despite it being free as opposed to the £20 in the bowling alley I wasn’t feeling it. There wasn’t many people in and I like a good sized baying audience when I perform.

Before you get all caught up in that moment and go off to just do anything anywhere enraptured by the prospect of beer and bowling – BEWARE! Via CookieNet!, we have learned about the most violent pub in Britain along with its, err, customer conduct standards:

He is said to have required an operation to stop the bleeding, with the wound he survived snagging an artery, with police noting customers were “served alcohol by the bar staff” despite it “being evident someone is seriously injured”. At the time of the incident, police also said that management knew “the risks of its customer base yet chooses to ignore this”.

Yikes! Finally, a white lab coated eggheads have taken credit for all that you love in beer:

Belgian investigators have improved the flavor of contemporary beer by identifying and engineering a gene that is responsible for much of the flavor of beer and some other alcoholic drinks. The research appears in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. For centuries, beer was brewed in open, horizontal vats. But in the 1970s, the industry switched to using large, closed vessels, which are much easier to fill, empty, and clean, enabling brewing of larger volumes and reducing costs. However, these modern methods produced inferior quality beer, due to insufficient flavor production.

Modern! Bad. Bad modern… but… craft is modern… is craft bad? Is that what science is saying? Hmmm. As you ponder that, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and 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 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 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.

*You will recall that Flying Dog quit the BA over this sort of thing at the time.
**Well, more you than me. I am still off the gluten (happily) so leaning on a little wine or a drop of cider if I need a hit – though I did a test with a can of Guinness. My histamines slept though the whole pint.
***The award winning series!
****Yes, there is… though to be fair… he may well have been suffering from the IPA yips!
*****Because who the hell wants to be an expert in things that have no perceived value?? No, best to stick to the plan.

These Are The First And Most Exciting Beery News Notes Yet For September 2022

So… me and we are back from holiday. And I’ve been away and back on the road for work already. Before the before I was roadlying it a lot but the big project is in the final strokes and, happily, it seems all turned out fabulously. To the extent I understand. We are well past the gravel, moved on from the concrete and are thinking asphalt. School starts next week, too. Just a few first days of school left in this family. Days are being squeezed by the junior ranks. I am looking forward to the big holiday one day, a life with days like Martin has been enjoying on his wandering retirement. He’s in the Isles this week, westering home, land o’me peeps, the Local Hero zone. I hope Alistair has been able to reach for the Kleenex. Plenty of pub social commentary and observation.

What else is going on? First, expect a fresh breakout of the usually high quality amateur medical science* from the brewery consultancy classes as we have received harsher worser news about booze health wise in Canada:

Any level of alcohol consumption had a net negative impact on health for almost every disease reviewed by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA)… The health risks become “increasingly high” when someone has six or more drinks per week. And for women who have three or more drinks per week, the risk of health issues increases more steeply compared to men, research shows.

Note: four years after the j-curve was dumped, those cardio benefits have now been ditched. You are on your own now. Ben takes the right path and suggests it is time for more consumer focused health info for drinks.

Stan shared more bad news. The Euro hop crop has been hit hard by their drought:

Estimates made as harvest began — late, in many cases — indicate that the German crop will be down about 20 percent from 2021, and 18 percent below and average year. The Czechian crop, which is almost entirely Saaz, will be down 43 percent from last year’s record crop. BarthHaas reports, the “early maturing German varieties (Hallertau Mittelfrüh, Northern Brewer, Hallertau Tradition, Perle) are affected and will yield poorly. Rainfall towards the end of August are giving hope for the later maturing varieties that still have time to recover.”

I am thinking of a GoFundMe for the new book a copy of Egypt’s Beer: Stella, Identity, and the Modern State by Omar D. Foda. $120.75 USD is like what… 24 bottles of wine? Have we had reviews that I missed? I need to know if I need to know.

Note: the new knowledge embraces the new not knowledge.**

Our pal Evan has writing another great piece, this time exploring the sherry cask trade:

Those two legal rulings led to the growth of an important new business in the Sherry Triangle: the sherry cask trade, which produces sherry-seasoned casks for export. Today, Work notes, there are really two types of sherry casks made in the Sherry Triangle. “One goes into the solera process, and that stays in that solera for years and years and years. It grows patina around the outside, from the ambience of the mold and fungus growing in the area, and it gets the sherry flor inside,” he says. “And there’s another kind of barrel that the coopers are making, and basically these coopers are making an export-style barrel.”

Judging of the Scottish Beer Awards are underway and one of the most interesting thing is how the judges are not picked from the all too familiar international floatplane-assisted consulto set but are representatives of the actual local scene. Top marks for that. Bonus for actually naming the judges on line.

Speaking of jingoism, the question of whether something is related to a culture or not is a semi-spicy one. You may, for example, recall my own review last February of whether Japanese lager is all that much Japanese. Things are not as they seem. So the question of China‘s relationship with beer from Tsingtao to craft was immediately a topic I would find interesting:

Before resigning ourselves to understanding Chinese beer as—broadly and imperfectly—a beer brewed in China by a Chinese company with a brand recognized as being Chinese, there is still the question of style. No broadly-recognized Chinese beer style currently exists. Is it possible to create one? Considering how Cascadian Dark Ale became a Black IPA, despite having no historical connection to India, there is a possibility of it being co-opted by others and turned into a generic category.

Hmm… the problem also could be that trying to frame beers as national in nature is a bit of a dead end.

In England, Ed wrote about signs that he has seen that the pubs in his village are threatened:

…the natives of Ripley have long been staunch pub supporters. I mean it’s not like they’ve got anything else to do apart from stay in and watch DVD boxed sets. But it seems no more. The two evenings I’ve been down recently the number of people in the pub apart from me and my friends varied between nought and two. This is not good. If pubs in Ripley are quiet what hope is there for the rest of Britain? As a #PubMan I fear for the future.

Also much discussion of the another threat to another pub, the Compton Arms in Islington district of London. But it isn’t just another pub. It’s the pub George Orwell described in perfect in 1946, all as unpacked by Kat Thomas in The Spectator:

…the Compton Arms could soon be consigned to the history books. Four neighbouring households, having grown used to a more tranquil setting during Covid times, aren’t relishing the return of us locals – the people who give this pub its purpose and personality. They’ve successfully obtained a licence review, having pieced together a few claims around the pub being a public nuisance and a threat to health. Which, as a regular, seems an almighty stretch.

Time Out joined the response to the situation as did Roger Protz and many other voices.

Odd corporate brewing news out of India where seeking compliance with regulatory rules is cause for getting the boot:

Carlsberg said it is removing “certain” board representatives from its India unit that come from its partner Nepal-based Khetan Group, accusing them of acting against their joint venture’s interests. The move represents a deepening of a long-standing dispute that first came to light in 2019, when Carlsberg India board members from Khetan first protested internally before asking the Indian government to investigate what they said was Carlsberg’s non-compliance with laws on trade discounts, advertisement and sales promotion.

Finally, I was a little surprised by this response that I got from Mikkeller when I asked if their reputation restoration efforts would include a public compliance and improvement reports:

It’s not a part of our current action plan, but definitely something we will look into. Are you familiar with some relevant ressources or providers of public compliance and improvement reports, we should reach out to?… If you are familiar with a HR consultancy that is specialized in retail dominated companies like ours with a split between national and international locations, please let us know. We would be very interested in getting in touch with them.

I was particularly surprised as I thought they had a consultant and that this would have naturally been part of their response to acknowledging harassment claims but when I went back to the GBH report on their approach I saw that it really isn’t really about restoring public confidence:

“…we’re also trying to facilitate a process that doesn’t involve courts and extensive legal action that wouldn’t be good for anyone. We’re able to do that because we have the cooperation of the company.”

Not sure how consumer confidence is supposed to be restored if making outcomes public weren’t considered whether through the courts, an HR comms plan or otherwise.

Suddenly wish I had access to these sorts of beers…

There. Probably a dog days week. as there was not a lot of news and not a lot of wonderful this week… but life is life! As you ponder that bit of wisdom, 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 most Tuesdays or Wednesdays or Thursdays – and 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 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.

*…swapping one dependency for another…
**See footnote three for more of the same.

What Did Ontario’s Separate Men’s And Ladies’ Beverage Rooms Looks Like?

Once in a while I get asked things by members of the professional media. It is flattering and instructive. The questions are usually specific but also open ended enough to allow for some back and forth and, as in this case, an opportunity to dig a bit more. This week I received this question from a rather large outlet to my east:

I’m trying to get information about one such former tavern: Montreal House, in Peterborough. I’m looking into Montreal House because yesterday Peterborough city council voted against giving it a heritage designation; this means the building will be demolished. The Montreal House was built for lumbermen from Quebec who came to work in the Peterborough… I was wondering if you knew about the Montreal House? And if you were knew how I could go about confirming if the tavern really was the last—or one of the last—men’s only establishments in the province?*

Those of you alive to the information era we live in will know that a year or so ago I reposted a bit of research I did for our book Ontario Beer on licensing in this here province after temperance and the phenomenon of the ladies only license that was introduced in 1934 as part of that. But I had not really considered the other side of the coin, the men’s only license.

Something seemed odd about the suggestion that this one tavern was the last one, sitting there in Peterborough, a mid-sized Ontario City known for its most excellently named minor hockey team, the Peterborough Petes. That something odd was that there was the idea that there would have been one the last one and not a bunch. Usually when a law like this changes, any number of permits would shift in terms of their application. So why did someone think there was just this one last straggler? I wanted to know what this was about. So I had a look where every clever beer writer starts looking. In databanks of court rulings.

One excellent resource describing these spaces popped up almost immediately, the 1953 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in the case of Assaf v. The City of Toronto. It is excellent because it is a case of an expropriation which occurs when a government takes someone’s land for a government use and has to pay compensation including all legal fees, loss of business income, etc., etc. So there is a description of the thing being valued:

The lands expropriated are situate on Bay Street Street, in the city of Toronto, having a frontage of 35 feet 8 inches on the west side of Bay Street just north of Queen Street, by a depth of 82 feet 3 inches. Upon the land is erected a four- storey brick building, with fire-escape to the rear, and a full basement. It is well located where traffic, at least during the day, is very heavy. The building consists of a basement, the ground floor and second, third and fourth floors. In the basement are the heating apparatus, storerooms, refrigerator units and a beer-cooler. On the ground floor there is a lobby with a ladies’ beverage-room and a men’s beverage-room, with washrooms for both ladies’ and men’s beverage-rooms. On the second floor there are two dining- rooms, with a lunch-counter, and also a fully-equipped kitchen, two washrooms and a counter. On the third floor there are ten bedrooms, nine equipped with sinks with hot and cold running water, one bathroom and a separate toilet. On the fourth floor there are ten bedrooms, eight equipped with sinks with hot and cold running water, one bathroom and a separate toilet.**

Those in the know may have caught this before I did but it looks like those lands were among those expropriated for the building of Toronto’s New City Hall. Based on the 1913 map of the area, a bit of which is displayed above, it looks like the place was called the Cadillac Hotel before the first world war and Canada’s brief and leaky era of temperance. It sat right under what is now the south-east corner of the outdoor skating rink in Nathan Phillips Square which has been used, pursuant to Federal regulations, as a location in every Canadian film since 1964.*** And notice what was in the place after it got its 1940’s renovations discussed in the case: separated ladies’ and men’s beverage-rooms off a ground floor lobby with washrooms for each.

What sort of thing went on in these spaces? If we rely on Court cases, we learn of the bad things. For example, in an appeal from the judgment of the County Court of the County of York, dated June 18, 1939, the Court of Appeal of Ontario found itself involved in the case of a bar room brawl in one ladies beverage room:

Riley was working in the tap room when a “rumpus” occurred in the ladies’ beverage room. Riley encountered Lloyd in the lobby, where he inquired as to the cause of the rumpus. Lloyd said he couldn’t seem to do much about it and, according to Riley, turned the matter over to him. Riley entered the ladies’ beverage room, to find Stephenson in a bellicose mood with his feet on a chair, and when he ordered him to remove his feet, a fight resulted, in which, according to Riley, Stephenson struck the first blow. It was admitted that no express instructions were given to Riley, either by Finnegan or Lloyd, to strike Stephenson, and that the general instructions to the waiters were to handle customers peacefully.

Notice: neither Riley or Stephenson were ladies. In the 1945 trial decision in a case brought by one Mr. Gardner, a customer, against Mr. McConnell, the manager, we get a bit more detail on another fight:

The plaintiff is a cook who had been employed in that capacity at the Leonard Hotel… He was a married man and had been accustomed to patronize the beverage room of the defendant together with his wife and their friends. He joined his wife and her friend at a table near the taproom, having entered the beverage room through the lobby of the hotel. The beverage room also had a direct entrance or exit, as the case might be, from it to St. Paul St. at the opposite end of the room from the tap-room. The tap-room was presided over by the husband of the defendant McConnell, who was the manager of the hotel and of the beverage room. The beverage room in question was the one known as the ladies’ beverage room, and had as waiters in it two men—one Jefferson and one Meighan.

Again, there were plenty of men in this space including one called Bloomer who looking for a fight and found a few including with the staff as the judge discussed:

I accept Gardner’s evidence that he was treading his way with caution to avoid becoming mixed up with any trouble which was occurring between others in the beverage room, and was proceeding to the door when he, as he puts it, was “crashed into” by a man in a white coat, ostensibly a waiter and who, Ι accept on the evidence, was the waiter Meighan who had been struck by Bloomer. The result was that Meighan was knocked to the floor with Bloomer on top of him, still assaulting him.

Fantastic! And still… all these men. Hmm… the same thing happens in 1955 when we read about a…

… young man in question [who] along with two or three companions strolled into the beverage room, ordered a bottle of beer from the waiter, was supplied same, drank it and then wandered into the ladies beverage room, sat there chatting for five minutes or so, when the manager of the tavern, accompanied by an inspector or police officer, came in and challenged the boy as to his age.

These sorts of things go on in rulings from 1960, 1965, 1969 and 1971 – one of which even makes it to the Supreme Court of Canada. In that last ruling from 1971, we have a rather vivid description of a session at one of these places:

Lorenzo Beauchamp and Massicotte joined Florence Dallaire at her table in the ladies’ beverage room. She thought that her brother was “feeling good” and that he talked in a strange way but that he walked all right. An argument developed and Mrs. Dallaire slammed her glass on the table and left. Although Massicotte and the deceased had not quite finished their one draught of beer they proceeded to leave the ladies’ room by the staircase, where the deceased suffered his fatal fall. His condition immediately before leaving the ladies’ beverage room therefore becomes critical; Vincent McAlendin, who was the waiter on duty in that room, thought that the deceased’s condition was good, and that there was no reason to refuse to serve him beer. He was not stumbling or wobbling on his way out. This evidence is confirmed by Charles Fasciano who had heard the loud talk at the Beauchamp table but observed that the deceased’s manner of walking was not impaired on his exit.****

OK – now we have some ladies and they are perhaps of the harder variety… glass slammers. Otherwise, you see this sort of thing like here in the lead up to a 1961 case of murder after a bar closed:

…the only evidence as to the amount of beer consumed by the appellant during the evening of 9th June, apart from that contained in his statement, was given by his companions Zackariah and Baker. Zackariah said that the party of four (the appellant, his wife, Baker and Zackariah) went into the ladies’ beverage room of the Wembley Hotel about 8:30 p.m. Mrs. Fisher “had a coke” and “we had a few beers and then we went down to the Men’s Room,” after Mrs. Fisher left the party about 9:20 p.m. They had “some beer” in the men’s beverage room, and the appellant left Zackariah and Baker “to see some friends.” He returned about three-quarters of an hour later and “had a beer with us… He finished his beer and part of another one.” Later he said in examination-in-chief “That makes three he had down there,” that is, in the men’s beverage room.

So the calculation seems to be this: drinking men include bad men therefore men need to have their own space to be drunker or nastier than the space where the ladies gather or where folk mix. That is why one category of license was called the men’s beverage room in Ontario’s regulations.***** That seems to be the thing to take from these rulings. The ladies beverage room license was actually “ladies and escorts” as the signs read, like the one at the Douglas Tavern that I mentioned in Ontario Beer which is now closed and converted as of June 2021. But any escort in theory was present on the consent of the ladies as I understand it, given that women could also be there alone or with other women. Those escorts were supposed to be a spouse or a date. Yet one report of a 5:1 men to woman ratio was witnessed at the ladies beverage room of the Tusco Hotel in Toronto in 1936. When three government inspector asked the bartender why he was serving unaccompanied men in the ladies beverage room, the bartender said that he didn’t want trouble. There were clearly picking uppings going on. The manager of the swanky Royal York pointed out another benefit: it “tends to increase the tone of business” if men are not left to drink alone. ****** Drinking men include bad men.

And it is important to appreciate that the same establishment could have multiple licenses then. We see that also in the rulings. Have a look at this report in the Georgetown Herald newspaper from February 1, 1962. At that point, municipal governments had to poll residents to see if they wanted any of the licenses in their community. Here the good people of Erin Township to Toronto’s northwest said no, no and no to each of three classes: ladies beverage room licenses, men’s beverage room licenses and dining room licenses. And in fact notice that the ladies beverage room polling got a higher “yes” turnout that the other two. The voting public didn’t want booze but it really didn’t want men only boozers. With good reason. The painter William Ronald discussed the problem in an interview in 1963:

We didn’t even have any night clubs in Toronto until eight or nine years ago. And I don’t drink. This is perhaps why. Everybody asks me why I don’t drink. I don’t really know why. I had an uncle that died of alcoholism at the age of thirty-two. I was very fond of him. My mother’s brother. But really what I think it is now – when I was up in Canada on a recent visit – you see, they have what they call beverage rooms up there, men’s beverage rooms and ladies’ beverage rooms… And they’re horrible. They’re like washrooms with beer, you know. And if you’re not with a lady then you have to go to the men’s beverage room, and it’s not so nice. But if you’re with a lady you can go to the women’s, which is a little poshier. Then they used to have – maybe still have – a twelve o’clock curfew. And so at twelve o’clock everybody loads up and drinks, you see. And so the whole idea of drinking in Canada is to get drunk. I had never seen people drink the way they drink in New York. *******

That puts it in pretty clear perspective. The reason why you needed ladies beverage rooms was to create the other space, the men’s beverage rooms. Because men drank like pigs. Drank to get drunk. To fight. Which was also the problem they were dealing with at the outset of Ontario’s temperance regulations in 1877: men left alone will drink like pigs. Which means every bar now is really a ladies beverage room and, really, it means that the temperance movement won. Thanks ladies.

The references to these sorts of places fade away in the law books in the early 1970s. Reforms came in then that lowered the drinking age, loosened up where you could drink – and also drink in nicer lounges without buying food. Ontario was growing up. Was the Peterborough question answered? No. That may be for another day. Or a pro writer like the one who asked me the question. Let’s see what he finds.

*If the story goes live, you will be the first to know who wrote me.
**There is also an excellent exploration of the “gallonage” of the place – the amount of beer sold, calculated in utterly generic and bulk form. See in the headnote: “There should be some compensation for the difference in gallonage between our hotel and any similar hotel within a radius of 500 feet; the evidence shows that our business in the 12 months immediately before the expropriation was 69,526 gallons, while the gallonage in the 12 months before our purchase was only 25,706…”
***Utter lie.
****See also the 1965 ruling the case of Stephens v. Corcoran et al., 1965 CanLII 210 (ON SC), with this great detail on the spaces within these drinking establishments: “He went to the hotel for the purpose of consuming beer, and in the evening he planned to take his wife and two daughters to the policemen’s games which were to be held at the University of Toronto stadium. Having parked his car at the west side of the hotel, he entered the more southerly of the two entrances to the beverage rooms, the entrance being marked by a “1” in a circle on ex. 1 which is a floor plan of the ground floor. He proceeded to the point numbered “2” where he joined some friends, and consumed in all three pint bottles of beer. He had partly consumed a fourth bottle when he and one or two friends decided to go into another beverage room at the north- west corner of the ground floor, where he took his place at a table at which there were already others sitting and singing, at the point numbered “3”. He brought his partly-consumed bottle of beer with him, and sat down. I find that he was only in the second beverage room a short time before the 6:30 closing hour arrived and the dispensing of beer was closed off in accordance with the law. The table at which he sat may well have been at a point “T” in the same room, which during the day was used as men’s beverage room only and not as a men’s and ladies’ beverage room. About 6:40 p.m. the plaintiff decided to leave. The singing had come to an end, and he said he was going home. He proceeded from the table through a door marked “6” on ex. 1, and then proceeded westerly along the hall, which was illuminated presumably by sunlight shining through a closed door at point No. 9. This was not only closed but apparently locked in some fashion, perhaps by a padlock as shown in the photograph which was taken on October 11, 1965. However, the lighting conditions, it was agreed, are comparable to those which existed on the date of the accident. The plaintiff passed the first door on the left shown on ex. 4. It was locked. When he came to the door “5” on ex. 4 and indicated by figure “8” on ex. 1, he opened it apparently and then fell down the stairs which led to the cellar.”
*****The terminology differed amongst the provinces. In Saskatchewan until 1972 the mens’ only space was a parlour but a mixed area was a beverage room.
******This is not made entirely clear in Craig Heron’s excellent book Booze where it is discussed at page 291. Many pages are given to the topic in Try to Control Yourself by Dan Malleck – including the tale of the Tusco Hotel at page 171 and the Royal York at page 172.
*******The first day of the interview being the date of my birth… the passage goes on: “Some people drink to get drunk here but most people drink just the way they take a cigarette, you know. And some people can drink a lot of liquor but I rarely see people walking along the street the way you do in those towns up there; and cities. And up there not too long ago, for instance, I saw a young man about twenty-two, well-dressed and so on, on a Friday or Saturday night – it’s the big night – and white shirt, I remember, and all this; and there he was on the sort of Fifth Avenue of Toronto completely plastered, stoned, as they say, out cold on the sidewalk, being sick, and his two friends trying to drag him into the car. And this was a very common sight. This is the way always I was brought up – this is the way drinking was.”

These Are The Beery News Notes For The Week Of Jubilee Madness

It is here! Jubilee!!* There shall be bunting. Confession time: I like the Queen herself. I like the structure that the Crown in Canada give the law that I practice. And… that’s pretty much it. Others are less enamored thanbeven that. So… we recognize that Her Maj does like a drink and a pub yet we do recognize that the whole rah-rah Union flag bunting and the children of Oswald Mosley’s nasty jingoism has tainted the whole flaggy wavey aspect… along with the colonial record… and… rampant and growing inequality… and well… Boris… but HRH like a drink and a pub! In commemoration of the Platinum Joobe, I participated in one of the few ways the government in Canada provided and got a few pins. Pins! What Canadian child doesn’t long for their very own lapel pin celebrating HRH? And in mad cap celebration, one will be gifted to the maker of the cleverest comment left below this post or on social media responding to this post on an appropriately related theme. Remember – cleverest.

First, I missed this a few weeks back, a post from Ashley Newall with a number of forms of branding from Bradings brewery of Ottawa, the first step on our blessed patron E.P. Taylor’s rise to fame. Of particular note is the photo of the Bradings Man by Yousuf Karsh and how similar it is to one of EPT’s assets, the branding for Cincinnati Cream Beer discussed in the bigger scheme of cream beer six years back.

Two writers took the helpful step this week of tweeting guidance on stories located in obscure journals. First, a Lily Waite bio in Waitrose Magazine (as illustrated) and, second, ATJ in Brewing & Beverage Industries Business saved here on the perils facing brewing industry in these uncertain times. Brewery closures, investment failures and hegemony from big craft. Times are hard at all corners of the trade, especially given the UK’s situation. It was all foretold of course, if only by the obvious patterns set out in brewing industry history. Consider this letter from Carling to Molson in the 1930s. Beer competes. Beer colludes. The small and weak fail. Spend your pennies wisely.

Not sure the monks were all that wise with the pennies as Jeff explores, here quoting from reporter John W Miller** of the publication America: the Jesuit Review:

“…it is very modern, with automated machines that require only a handful of workers. Everything is top-of-the-line. Bottling lines come from Italy, brewing gear from Germany…” In order to service the debt and fund the monastery, the business plan called for the monks to build to annual production of 10,000 barrels a year… Miller helpfully reports that they had annual revenues of $1.5 million, which is pretty good if you’re not servicing a lot of debt.

In Boak and Bailey’s newsletter for May there was a comment made which, unlike everything they have ever ever written, had me shaking my head. It’s this passage in a good discussion about when to stop blogging:

Another natural full stop on a blogging project might be when you ‘make it’ as a writer and sell your first commercial piece. That’s not why everyone gets into blogging but we’ve certainly seen quite a few people make that transaction, with the blog as a stepping stone.

Perhaps what is meant is that this is the reason folk themselves think to stop blogging about beer – which I agree with – but it is not an actual reason to stop writing for the public without pay on a website you control. Why write to make someone else money? Seems weird. Let’s be honest. You have not made it or (too often) you have not made much of anything. So much of what I have to sift through to put together this weekly review is boring derivative and/or feeble writing for pay. Very generously I would say half of what is most interesting is writing shared freely.*** Very generous half. Hunt out that other good stuff along with me. And write.

Lew on blind tasting:

We taste 5 spirits (blind picked by my daughter from 20 whiskies, rums, barrel-aged gins, calvados) in colored @GlencairnGlass & fearlessly guess all but one wrong.

Lew: “I’m dead sure we’re stupid…” Gold!

Not really related at all, BBC Four apparently ran a replay of Abigail’s Party last evening. You can see the entire miserable drunken thing here. A great trip back into “not nostalgia” for anyone convinced the past was a better place.

Perhaps it’s just an unfortunate camera angle but only in Montreal could someone out-Scandinavia the Scandinavians when it comes to stark and grey:

The space, designed by Ethan’s wife, interior designer Annika Krausz, has soaring ceilings, a firehall door with daytime light streaming through, and heated floors for the winter. Two immense earth-toned paintings by Annika’s father, renowned artist Peter Krausz, and a huge red light fixture above the semi-circular bar further enhance the space.

Another sighting of a brewery sending 100% of proceeds and not just profits as part of supporting the Ukraine cause. Good.

Debates of the week: (i) In the US, can you cool warm beer that was previously cold and (ii) are UK rough pubs a real thing?**** Expertise abounds with, as per, many contradictory positions taken.

Conversely, for years I wondered why beer writing did not focus more on particularly fabulous pubs… then I realized that there would be a chill from the many of those not mentioned,***** one of the great drivers in beer writing topic selection. Robot says “must raise all ships must raise all ships.” Happy then are we to see in Pellicle an honest to goodness warming tribute to a great singular pub, The State Bar of Glasgow:

The State Bar isn’t particularly trendy or arrogant, it’s a humble affair with an unassuming frontage. Possessing an Edwardian horseshoe bar upstairs—an ideal spot for watching football, doubly so as the bar is strictly non-partisan, (a rare blessing in Glasgow). Head downstairs and you’ll find yourself in what feels like the cosy library of a well-to-do Victorian household, complete with dusty books to read, well-worn leather chairs and a crackling fireplace. You can find all the essentials here; house wines and spirits, Tennent’s, Guinness, Cider & McEwans 80-/, or “wee heavy” as it’s known by the locals, and a stage for the bar’s weekly comedy or acoustic nights.

Nice. Now on to cheery international beery news time. Price hikes of 6% to 10 % expected in Japan. In India, beer drinkers may also be facing beer price hikes in addition to the local rationing mentioned last week. South American brewers are seeing “early signs of demand destruction” while a beer contamination scandal in Brazil (in which coolant and wort mixed during the brewing process leading to deaths) has reached the courts. Brewing for a rare medical disorder charity in New Zealand.

Finally, GBH seemingly did the right thing – though in the wrong order – and got some actual advice about writing risky bits about BrewDog and British court processes now republished, though there is the odd suggestion that others can rely on the legal opinion received. Beware! Now… it will be interesting to see if a legal paperwork of some sort now follows. As I have often said, just getting a legal opinion doesn’t stop a plaintiff from taking steps. I trust all involved got independent legal advice, too, just in case assurances had been given.

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.: but not again this week) 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 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…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. Things come. Things go.

*I expect scenes not unlike those in The Return of the Archons to play out. In tribute, an old pal used to shout “Festival!” in bars as he smoked three cigarettes at a time. That sort of thing.
**Quoting heavily yet still slightly slagging the author he relies upon as it relates to a side issue: “… but he’s not an industry writer and doesn’t realize…” No need of that… I clearly like to project a less saucy approach!
***If you have any doubts, read Boak and Bailey‘s archives… then go on to Jeff at Beervana… or Jordan‘s site or… or… or…
****Of course they are. The playgrounds of racist, sexist and every other sort of beery bigotry… oh, and violent, too. But most labeled as such are not.
*****And perhaps also the tourist association funders who ensure junkets are (i) paid for and (ii) non-selective. I mean, sure, a rising tide raises all boats but who doesn’t want to control the tides???