Category: Law

A False Thaw In February And Your Thursday Beery News Notes

Fine. January is done and more jabs are getting jabbed out and about on this planet. A better situation than at any time in the last year. That’s good. Just weeks to go until spring. Like you, with these few warmer days I am planning the veggie garden and have my row covers ready to go. To help with those considerations, I have a new beer coming this week. Beer is like buying from eBay these days. I get an email saying I might want to consider this new beer from Matron. And I do. And I buy it along with something called Bobo, too. I live the Bo and Bo. It will all be on the front step Friday. So exciting. I shall watch like a child watching the stockings hanging by the fireplace on Christmas Eve.

First up this week, Black History Month has begin with a celebration of Theodore Mack, owner along with “a group of investors under the United Black Enterprises banner” who bought People’s brewery in 1970 and then only hired black employees. Fight the power. More here, here and here. And speaking of the calendar, more backlash against those in brewing trade PR who’ve been attacking folk opting out of the dipsomania-laced crowdsourcing so that the brewers who fund that PR have enough money in the kitty:

I’d also like it noted how unsupportive and honestly sometimes just straight-up gross some people are about others’ sobriety. Placing blame if businesses fail, mocking Dry January. It’s hard as fuck to not drink and you people suck.

Unconnectedly, ATJ posted a image from a 1922 book which again supports my long held understanding that no Belgian in their right mind drank unsweetened lambic before the unknowing but self-flagellating English language beer writer tours began in the 1970s. Likely something of a local lads’ gag, no doubt, watching them suck back the vinegar, then outdoing each other to heap praise.

Speaking of mid-20th century stuff but too late for the presses last week was Martyn’s take on the new labels on the beers from the relatively venerable US brewer, Anchor:

The design of the “classic” Steam Beer label is a crowded mess, the name of the beer only the second most prominent part of the label, at best, with some kind of odd parchment effect in the background making it look as if the colours failed to fix properly on the printing plates. The Porter label is better, being simpler and more direct, but still with distracting clusters of barley and hops that detract from the impact.

Fibby fake heritage, as Martyn points out, is a bit of a bore. I don’t care greatly either way as branding is one of the least interesting areas of the good beer world.

One other late excellent word was that of Kate B. on the scandal at Boulevard which, yes, includes the GBH standard cut and paste from the work of others but a more  daring, hardnosed and personal conclusion than that website is usually known for:

As a reporter, I struggle with my duty to ask questions of survivors. It’s a journalistic necessity, but it runs the risk of retraumatizing a person. My need to verify facts is counter to survivors’ need to be believed, to have their abuse validated. Even asking them to repeat the who, what, when, where of their experiences runs the risk of doing psychic damage. Trying to identify the why of it all—if there even is one—feels ethically impossible, and potentially harmful. That’s because people who have experienced abuse are often made to feel it’s their fault or that they are misreading the facts, often termed “gaslighting.” 

Speaking of which in a way, in another way I am not sure I can agree with this from my personal hero Dr.J.:

“A lot of people ask me, ‘How did it get this way in craft beer?’ Craft beer isn’t special—craft beer is a microcosm in the U.S. If there are inequities and disparities in craft beer, it’s because it’s serving as a mirror for the country at large,” Jackson-Beckham said. But she remains hopeful about the future of the industry.

My question relates to craft beer as microcosm. It isn’t. It is overly represented by a white, male, clubby tribe with access to money and wading in alcohol. Sort of like the Masons in plaid shirts.  While the statement above was made well before the Boulevard scandal broke, it is clear that many knew much for yoinks but turned a blind eye, according to impressively investigative work by the actual professional journalists of The Kansas City Star:

Boulevard employees recalled widely-known stories of harassment, particularly from a few high-ranking employees. Even when the women they victimized reported them, they remained in power. Even McDonald, who came back last week to lead the company in its time of crisis, acknowledged hearing reports in the past but not acting on them… The founder, now 67, acknowledged serious failings. But he didn’t want to believe his brewery had a systemic cultural problem. And he views the accusations against Boulevard employees as “isolated issues.”

Right. One also can only assume that this situation was well known to some of the beer trade writers among us but was not worth the trouble to report upon.

In another area of the craft-not-craft industrial zone, we read:

…james watt taking domestic flights between London & Aberdeen and being irked by his international ones being cancelled in the middle of a pandemic, all while running a supposedly climate conscious business lol. can’t make this shit up…

Also over there, the Beer Nut linked us to a story on the potential for the party being over for Irish folk coming back from the UK:

The EU is considering stopping Irish holidaymakers loading up on cheaper alcohol and cigarettes when they travel to other countries – with new rules that would also affect trips to Northern Ireland. Ireland is one of the most expensive places in the EU to buy alcohol and cigarettes, due to high excise duties. In a public consultation launched yesterday, the EU suggested holidaymakers should pay excise duties at home rates rather than where they buy products.

I asked many questions and tried to compare to the US-Canadian border which sits at a very long 2-wood from my house, just over the horizon. Not sure I was fully successful in informing myself.

Brendan P. has pointed out, as illustrated to the left,  the latest dumb legal move by one of the least appealing of the legacy micros out there. Apparently they now own all the rights to “bastard” too. I’ll let Austin Powers know. It’s sad that whatever goodwill they had as a quality gas station retail shelf supplier has been trashed in the cause of their protection of a common word and the most utterly tired brandings in beer. Keystone. Sawstone. Didn’t even notice they sued something called Hollystone. FFS. Is there any constituency left rooting for Stone in these matters? Is there any way these court cases lead to growth or is it just part of a rear guard strategy after the disaster in Berlin? Like those who would diss Dry January, there is a whole sector of the brewing trade that seems to live in a disconnected delusion about what the customer base actually thinks.

And finally another paper-based beer mag disappears after a irregularly schedule life and less than a year after an industry veteran was brought in. A tough row to hoe. Viva blogs! Viva!!!

That’s it. Now, for good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

 

The Thursday Beery News Notes For A Somewhat Ugly Week In Beer

I almost took this week off. It’s been a very busy stretch at work. It’s good busy, mind you. Takes the mind off the pandemic, the near death experience suffered by American democracy and winter and… and… and… Other than that, I did see both the nearest and seventh farthest planets from the Sun last weekend. That was cool. And, see, I noticed the winter brown goldfinches at the feeder just starting to show their yellow feathers at their shoulders. Spring is coming. Oh, and I had a beer or some beer or something at some point. This is still a beer blog, right?

Hmm… what’s in the news? Horrible breweries apparently. First, the end times seem to have struck once again in the semi-beer fruity gak. You a betting reader? Seriously, when is it going to die off? The exploding gak. Jeff started it. And the we end up here. Really. Just look to the right at the warning one horrible brewery had to issue and consider how horrible the warning issued by the horrible brewery actually is. Actually, I know nothing about the horrible brewery except it is happy, first, putting out a horrible fruit gak beer and, then, a horrible warning about the horrible fruit gak beer. Hide the exploding can in your garbage, they say. Hide the exploding can in your garbage? That’s the advice? Did they check with the local solid waste dept? So they must be horrible. Right? Right. I hope they are not but they might well be. Watch your step. You, too.

If that was not enough,* Vinepair started the ball rolling with the story of another horrible idea, the $90 six pack. It’s a dumb idea which has nothing to do with the beer and everything to do with the $90 despite the spin:

After talking to Gislason, however, I don’t think he deserves derision for Hanabi Lager. Though he’s got grand ambitions, and a funny way of revealing them, his ego is in check. You will probably roll your eyes a few more times as you read this story, sure, but who knows? Gislason might very well be taking lager to a place it’s never been before. “The vast majority of beer consumed in the world is lager, albeit an ‘industrial-commodity’ version that’s relatively simple and homogeneous in flavor,” says Gislason. “Recognizing that high-quality lager brewing was underrepresented in the craft brewing world, that became our brewing R&D focus about 10 years ago.”

Sucker juice. A sad tale based on a false premise. Jeff perhaps was unnecessarily detailed in his criticism, giving the discussion a little too much oxygen. It’s not about disrespect as much as not giving a shit. These things arise from time to time and either die off or end up in the business acquisition they were actually initially set up to serve. Best response? This:

Fuck these guys, we do the same thing for $12 a four pack.

Speaking of horrible brewers, the big story of the week would be the situation at Boulevard Brewing, which was first described in a Reddit post:

I left Boulevard Brewing Company in March 2020 because of harassment I received because I was pregnant. My boss stood me and another female employee up in the lab, in front of another coworker, and demanded to know if we were pregnant. When we refused to answer, he told the other woman “the only way you could be pregnant is by your cat”, then continued to ask me. I reported this to HR, but it started a cycle of reporting his behavior to HR and then being punished (by him) for going to HR.

Nutzo. If denigrating and potentially illegal employment standards could be wrapped up in the word “nutzo”… which it might or might not. It’s sorta sweet – in no way that makes any sense on this planet – that the brewery issued a statement that says it was all fine… a joke maybe… but not real… look over here… shadow puppets… AND then, on Wednesday, they repented or at least reflected and started living in reality. THEN, late Wednesday, folk identifying as employees posted an alternate version of reality, of multiple executive firings. Wow. Need to keep an eye on this one.

So much for beer people are good people. Some are. Some aren’t. Speaking of which, beer people writing about other beer people is usually dull as dishwater… or worse, less interesting than exploding fruity gak or a $90 six pack or sexist piggy stuff. But in this case the bio bit on Chalonda White, aka Afro Beer Chick, is good. Very good. I should work one like that, too, but on me. If I was that good. But I am not as interesting. And not committed to important things like Chalonda is. I could learn a thing or two. Grow up a bit.

Enough!. Let’s look elsewhere. Brexit’s effect on the UK wine trade is petty shocking as described by one wine merchant:

I now hope, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, to start seeing stock from early February. My orders with producers were placed as far back as December. So from what was a 7-10 days turn around has become a 5-6 week turn around. Another of those Brexit dividends. 14/22…

Just last week, we discussed* the effects of Brexit on the UK import market. This seems to indicate it is going to be ugly.

Note: it’s never a good idea to use social media to self doom scroll after you get an article published. Blaming headline writers, the readers… anyone with a different view is a bit weird. If it isn’t explained in the story… is it a good story?

One of Canada’s beer blogs that likes to pretend it isn’t a blog has posted a good piece with four people involved in the beer trade talking about the pivot and the way forward:

At Matron we’ve learned to adapt to the rapidly changing market: we’ve leaned into online sales and home delivery. In fact, we predict that to make up for the shortfall in bar and restaurant sales, breweries will need to sell up to half of their beer online this winter to survive. On the flipside, you, the craft beer drinker, have gained incredible access to the majority of Ontario breweries, whether it be shopping directly from the brewery’s website, or supporting one of the many independent bottle shops that have sprung up.

I am rooting for them all. Matron is one of my near neighbours… in the Canadian sense, an hour’s drive away.

And Matt C wrote about Czech v. German in Ferment 52 and has found a number of solid witnesses to give testimony as to their preference. I approve of the following point most heartily:

But one bone I must pick is with those who replied to my poll by stating they don’t like Czech beer because of the diacetyl (an off flavour that makes your beer taste like butter.) And I understand Czech beers often have a rich, butterscotch flavour, but it’s not like the hot buttered popcorn character that makes you want to tip a pint of naff cask down the drain.  “People who say things like that are the type who talk without knowing what they’re talking about,” Evan says, bluntly. “But yeah, there is diacetyl in Czech beer sometimes. There’s diacetyl in German beer sometimes, too.”

The diacetyl police are amongst the most tedious of beer fans. As far as I am concerned it all comes from (i) nutritionalism*** and (ii) need-to-take-a-stand-ism and (iii) the unfortunate proliferation of off-flavour seminars rather than on-flavour seminars.

There. Unfortunately, more seriously nasty stuff going on than good. But some good and we have the eternal glow of the deep and abiding hope for more good. To continue your quest for actually good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

*Which is good for me because, in case you haven’t noticed I like to write a weekly post about all the things I read about so that you can read that in addition to all the things I read about.
**You did have a roundtable discussion by Zoom meeting afterwards, right?
***See Michael Pollen, yes, but see also a sort of fraidy-cat approach to things and the deference to the people who, utterly hypocritically, ended up giving you strawberry milkshake sour fruit candy beer crap. Have a Yorkshire bitter from an actual open square fermenter. Enjoy the slight buttery goodness.

Your Middle Of January 2021 Beery News Notes For A Thursday

And what a Thursday! The last of Donald Trump’s pre-incarceration period!!!  Days to go… unless he drops the big one and we all fry. That would be typical, wouldn’t it. As soon as you think you are getting rid of a fifth-rate loser like Donnie T, he drops the big one and we all fry. I shall miss things. As in all things, sure, but in particular the sort of unsmarmy positive stuff that slips through all the smarmy positive stuff about good beer, like that image above from The Wicking Man as well as his accompanying message:

I’m sure many have had difficult times in lockdown and like me have been lifted by good people on Twitter. Many thanks to my #pubtwitter friends. Your tweets and blogs have made me smile and I look forward to the days when we can share our pub trips again.

The Tand wrote a bummer of a post about the perils Welsh icon Brains Brewery faces in these uncertain times:

So what has happened? In short, Covid-19 has happened. Wales has been particularly hard hit by restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic causing “significant financial pressure” to Brains. The company had already concentrated business on a core number of  around 160 pubs with the remaining 40 or so being closed or sold off in March 2020.  Clearly this wasn’t enough to stave off problems, as this was followed by an announcement before Christmas that rival pub chain Marston’s was to take over on 25-year lease, 156 Brains pubs in a bid to save 1,300 jobs.  The deal includes a supply agreement to continue the availability of Brains brands in the pubs, which will be leased to Marston’s at an annual rent of £5.5 million. Brain’s managed houses will also be run by Marston’s.

And similarly Jeff wrote about the death of Portland Brewing Company, an early participant in that area’s scene, offering us basically an obituary written by an old friend:

On the Friday afternoon of January 8th, Portland Brewing put out a short note announcing that, after a 35-year run, they were winding down all operations. It was a strangely subdued note given the brewery’s historical significance. One of the founding quartet of Portland breweries that started putting out beer between late 1984 and 1986, it played a substantial role in laying the foundation that would place beer at the center of the city’s identity by the early 1990s.

Going back further, Jeremy Irons as Wooster advertising a sherry of a sort in the 1970s. Fabulous.

Canadian author Anne Theriault spotted an important moment in 18th century English brewing culture the other day:

Because I am twelve years old, I wish to read more about the 18th century Farting Club in Cripplegate, where members “meet once a Week to poyson the Neighbourhood, and with their Noisy Crepitations attempt to outfart one another.” Truly the past is a foreign etc… 

Careful readers will recall that Cripplegate was one of the great brewing areas of London for hundreds of years.  Theriault linked to her source, Geri Walton, who had shared further detail including this:

To determine a winner, stewards acted as judges and new stewards were chosen quarterly. The stewards also resolved any disputes that arose “between the Buttocks of the odoriferous Assembly.”[7] Furthermore, to ensure the competitors did not cheat, in a nearby room a bespectacled Alms-woman sat. This elderly woman’s job was to check the underwear of participants: If “any member was suspected of Brewers Miscarriage, he was presently sent in to be examined by the Matron, who after searching his Breeches, and narrowly inspecting the hind Lappet of his Shirt … made her Report accordingly.”[8]

The fact that there were 21 footnotes below the story is in itself wonderful.

Along the same lines and following up on their 2011 false claim of inventing the beer photo contest, US brewery Founders found time to commit a form of hari kari this past week. Perhaps it was the photoshopped image of their flag as the Battle of Congress last week but their lost their social media marbles by banning everyone on the planet who mentioned them – well, who mentioned their lack of interest in living in the 21st (and perhaps even the 2oth) century. It got so fun that folk like me baited them just to get blocked on Twitter but then all that happened was this:

Funny thing. That blocking strategy rolled out by Founders this weekend? Search for their Twitter handle as any prospective new customer might and you find this long list of folk very unhappy with you. Meaning @foundersbrewing decided to trash their brand

It’s true. This is how that works. Someone woke up and stopped all the blocking by Tuesday. Dumbasses.

Continuing from last week, Mark Solomon has posted again on his new blog, this time about his project Indigenous Brew Day:

I do worry about my alcohol consumption, I would be lying if I told you I don’t think often about addiction regularly.  I do believe I have a healthy relationship with alcohol but I am aware that can change quickly.  Although there are many Indigenous peoples who are struggling with addiction, there are many that have a healthy relationship with alcohol.  I want to tell that story, and turn around the misconceptions about Indigenous people and alcohol.  Indigenous Brew Day is a great start in changing misconceptions. 

ATJ wrote about missing pubs behind a paywall so I never got to read it.

The Beer Nut shared thoughts on one of his nation’s character flaws when it comes to good beer:

This beer deserves to sell in quantity but I fear that the mainstream stout drinkers are too set in their ways to switch, while the craft-curious have too much choice of other beers in more fashionable styles with arty labels to bother with this oulfellas’ stout which isn’t even in a can. The difficulty in getting Irish people to drink stouts is our beer scene’s principal national tragedy. And if you agree with me to any extent about that, make sure you get yourself some of this.

Further odd division was fomented by those who would control who should speak and what should be spoken when it comes to Dry January… oddly called Dry Feb here in Canada. “Keep it to yourself” v “if you’re doing Dry Jan and you’re sharing your experience keep it up” and see also this yet this but also this. I expect you can figure out where I sit on the question.

Kate Bernot has noted that the SCOTUS has declined to hear the case in Lebamoff v. Whitmer, a court case about widening interstate alcohol shipping laws. “Certiorari Denied!” is all they said. So no actual ruling with interesting chat to read unlike the similarly framed case before Canada’s top court in 2018.  SCOTUSblog has framed the issues in the case this way:

Whether a state liquor law that allows in-state retailers to ship wine directly to consumers, but prohibits out-of-state retailers from doing so, is invalid under the nondiscrimination principle of the commerce clause or is a valid exercise of the state’s 21st amendment authority to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages within its borders.

And finally, in other semi-regulatory news, it appears the US Brewers Association may be facing challenging times, too, as they have announced a temporary free membership offer:

Not a member but want to join? To ensure no breweries are missing updates due to financial barriers, we’re offering nonmember breweries a temporary membership free of charge. Reach out to our membership team if you’re interested.

Jings. Well, that is that for now. Enjoy the reassertion of US democracy over the next week. As you do, for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

The Hogmanay Beery News Notes Special For Last Blursday 2020

Good riddance to 2020.  That’s it. No hum. No haw. It sucked and soon it’ll be over. Next year hopefully will suck less. But, still, at least three good beery things happened to me in this year of the plague which are worth noting:

i. In October, Boak and Bailey invited me to a Zoom chat that lasted a couple of hours.  We had a great old chat, from gossip to interesting thoughts on researching and writing brewing history.

ii. Since mid-March, we’ve been enjoying home delivery of beer mainly from Matron of nearby Bloomfield Ontario. We’ve likely had six or eight different beers from them and have gained a great sense of their liquid aesthetic through exercising a bit of focus. Forthright and Bobo are two standouts for me but Yeasayer has not left the house in ten months.

iii. Lars Marius Garshol published Historical Brewing Techniques, by far the best beer book of 2020. One of the few, sure, but the years of dedication to the pursuit of farmhouse brewing in Scandinavia and eastern Europe is one of the greatest bits of effort in the cause of good beer over the last decade.

There. That’s good. A bit slim. But pretty good. Well, for me. Where shall we start for you, the rest of human existence?  The pandemic? Sure. Fine. OK. In Maine, CJL herself has shone a light on some very poor behavior by one brewery while also illustrating how useful Twitter can be if you know how to use it:

Sunday River Brewing Company has been operating without masks and safety in the name of “freedom” and picking fights with the state to become martyrs for the industry, and raising funds alongside for “legal defense”… The restaurant/brewery has been cited MANY times now for non-compliance with mask orders. Undercover people from the state have documented lack of mask wearing over months, so the state recently said, “hey, your license is set to renew in December… and we’re not renewing it.”

Elsewhere? Summaries. First, across the Atlantic, I Might Have A Glass of Beer posted his Golden Pint 2020 awards from Glasgow, Scotland and shared many thoughts about how the great pivot sometimes made life with beer more interesting in 2020. And found a few more good things about the last year. Example:

A fascinating phenomenon was the redefinition of “beer garden” in 2020. As a partisan of Bavarian beer culture, I am often disappointed by what is offered under this name in the UK, with not a chestnut tree, a stoneware mug or a radish in sight. Yet this year the label became even looser, and over the summer it seemed that merely a row of white plastic chairs on the pavement outside a pub was enough to be a “beer garden”. Nonetheless even this was a definite improvement for some pubs and it’s to be hoped that this trend will continue after all this is over.

And The Beer Nut started on the pandemic fatigue fatigue with his own Golden Pints 2020 from non-northern Ireland which included this welcome remembrance in one category’s name:

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @RuariOToole
It was very much the year for weird and grim humour, and Ruari’s Twitter provided plenty of it. Much appreciated, my man. Dudes rock!

See also Ben Viveur.  See also Quare Swally. See also New School Beer. See also Craft Beer Scribe. Et ceterah… et ceterah… but not Anthony Hopkins. He’s been dry since 1975. Who knew?

Another positive sign was reported by the Protz – with a keen eyed lawyer as key to the action:

….she hoped for a better life in 2016 when it sold the Roscoe to Hawthorn Leisure, the pub-owning division of New River Retail. It wasn’t to be. Hawthorn refused her MRO – Market Rent Only – in order to buy her own beers, on the grounds the company owned fewer than 500 pubs and was outside the terms of the Pubs Code. Carol’s lawyer found that Hawthorn, after buying a package of pubs from Marstons, owned more than 700 pubs and was covered by the code. Hawthorn responded by saying they would take the pub into management in 2021 when Carol’s lease expired. 

Hah! Contrarily, here in Ontario, Drunk Polkaroo* wrote about his five greatest disappointments in 2020… other than, you know, 2020 as a whole:

Drink tap water. Warm tap water. And you might get more out of it than shame and sadness. I drink ’em so you don’t have to…Molson Ultra is a 3.0% Light Lager and well, it is light on everything a beer should be. I’ve had light lagers, a lot of them in fact recently and this is not that. Not even that bubbly, leaves a dry, salt like chemical finish after hinting of hops and barley. Blah, but I had to know, didn’t I.

Writing from Washington, DC, the Beerbrarian summed up his year enjoying both music and beer. He noted:

In 2019 I kind of gave up on IPAs. I don’t really know why, it just shook out that way. Well, they’re back, including two stellar double IPAs, normally the bane of my existence. Go figure. Which style declined at IPAs’ expense? Saison. I saw significantly fewer cans of that style around, which is a bummer. From March 13th to the end of the year I had three draft beers. Three! On the plus side, everyone put everything in cans, because they had to. 

Three.  That’s more that none as one would find now in South Africa – and not supported by the SA Beer Association:

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address that cabinet had decided to move the country to level 3 restrictions from level 1. This would include the total banning of alcohol sales, widespread cancelling of events, and making the wearing of masks in public a legal requirement.

And Boak and Bailey gifted us an end of the year post on Toby Jugs:

What is a Toby jug? It’s a colourful pottery vessel, usually depicting a seated man in embroidered coat and tricorn hat holding a mug of beer and a pipe – decorative rather than useful. More than that, though – Toby jugs are a symbol, a marker, of a Proper Pub. Like other forms of greebling, they add depth, detail and hint at antiquity. They’re also a sort of summoning totem: this jovial, hollow-legged fellow is exactly the kind of customer we want.

Fabulous. We have a Winston Churchill Toby Jug somewhere, circa 1945.

Also ending the year, a couple of navel gazing conversations here and here. First, triggered by the death of that odd thing called October, there was plenty of points of view but this from Matt is the best of the lot:

It’s owners, Condé Naste, will, like all mainstream publishers no doubt avoid further investment in beer coverage in the same vein in the future. This is devastating. As a publisher of an independent beer-focused magazine, things are fucking tough. Readerships are small.

Well, a web-zine. Magazines are found in corner smoke shops and news stands. I know because I buy one at a place like that. It’s about telescopes. Readership definitely is small for beer writing and so being a web-zine is clever. As are patronage subscriptions with little but no return but the continuation of the ‘zine. Second and perhaps in awareness of the endy times for the unsupported beer periodical, this was posed:

Been thinking of @Ben_T_Johnson tweet encouraging peeps to blog more…. anyone interested in a blog about Indigenous home brewer trying to go pro lessons on the way comments about equity diversity and inclusion along the way…. Thoughts?

Many thoughts followed but the key to me was if you want substance, write it yourself. If you don’t want substance, just go all influencer and play with photos on Instagram. If you want money and audience, find another topic. Seriously. Few readers are into thinking about good beer. I could send you dozens of email addresses, addresses of those who had a dream of beer writing that failed. But if you want to enjoy writing about beer, just write about beer  – and yes an Indigenous home brewer could well be interesting new voice. With more new content. Not a lot of actual new content out there. Just write. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But just to saw that same log one more time – remember (as I shared in thread #1):

Beer writing is primarily for (1) fellow beer writers, then (2) industry folk then (3) a section of the beer drinking public with not only an interest in beer but interest in someone else’s thoughts. An oddly shaped marketplace of ideas without much symbiotic adjacency

Finally (and least of all) but not unrelated, an example (even if an ugly one), a bit of a non-story got tiny new legs when Harry Schuhmacher perhaps unwisely responded a week after the fact to that odd story in GBH** that looked much more like a hatchet job, a whack to the knees of a fellow struggling competitor than anything approaching actual news. What percentage pf America shares Harry’s (mainly incorrect) view? 30%? 40%? Yet – an interesting accusation that GBH played selective with the quotes. Never saw that coming. Ultimately, sad for all concerned. Unsavory. Reputation is all you have. Don’t waste it.***

Update!:**** Just as the publication October spirals into the black hole somewhat of its own making, Robin had her excellent defense of Twitter published:

Gripes aside, it’s important to remember that Beer Twitter has its uses. In Waite’s case, and in the case of many online subcultures, it can help elevate the voices of someone from a marginalized community even making them a role model within a typically homogenized culture dominated by straight white cis men. Or it could be a place where you can see the professionals of the beer industry shed their two-dimensional enthusiast veneer, bonding over non-beer things and finding comfort, kinship, and solidarity during a time when we need it most.  

The thoughts shared mirror much of my own even if I am not a professional of the beer industry. The value of throwing a half baked idea on the table to be beaten up or just being silly is not to be ignored. Great read.

There. Tonight 2020 will be gone. Viva 2021. Viva! Viva!!! And remember throughout 2021 that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too. Go! Merry Christmas all you all. See you on New Year’s Eve.

*Sober Polkaroo.
**To go along with their odd story on Hong Kong with the strange effort to find a pro-aspect and the other one with the slightly cringy treatment of a business associate accused of racist behavior.
***The legal meaning of “waste” is meant – not just misspend but destroy.
****A mess punctuationally speaking, I admit.

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


1775tavern1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There. Soon 2020 will be gone. Like I said about 1987. That one sucked. Let’s see how the last week of 2020 plays out but Trump’s going, we may now be past peak beer writer editor fawning and the vaccine is well on the way. Can’t be all bad. And remember that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (who advocates for a blog renaissance this week… though it is funny that he says “paid=good”… just means obedient far too often.)  And remember BeerEdge, too. Go! Merry Christmas all you all. See you on New Year’s Eve.

Your “One Week To Christmas Eve” Beery News Notes

Most years, this sort of roundup post right before Christmas would be full of people – especially British people – going on about the drunken work party they were at. On behalf of all those who have done or said the wrong thing in such settings, here’s a big thanks to the pandemic. Otherwise you totally suck. Scots author Ian Rankin illustrated this year’s alternative model as found in Edinburgh in two tweets this week:

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s Bow Street to the left and the Bow Bar to the right. A favorite place of mine, being near the fam and all. I have a pair of tweed trews from across the street, too. And it’s a spot that features in this year’s Will Ferrell flick Eurovision…* if you know where to look.

Lars to the east took the time to totally suck Christ right out of Christmas this week when he explored pre-Christian aspects to our western materialist winterfest:

So if the ethnographers are right Christmas was first a feast for the dead, then a fertility feast for the new year. Both, of course, requiring the best the house could produce of food and drink. And in Scandinavia the best drink was beer, of course. But how much is this to be trusted? Can ethnographers really have reconstructed the original meaning of Christmas from fragmentary stories and traditions around Norway?

This sort of thing is a doddle for me and mine given the clan MacLeod was founded by Ljot who wanted nothing to do with the conversion to Christianity going on under royal edict in Norway in around 1250.  We were the Beverly Hillbillies of Vikings, moving all to Skye. Probably more of us than them now as a result. Especially if you include the early schism that created the Elliots.**

Update on the value of UK social clubs: grab a grannie.

Martyn shared in length his thoughts on why he does not like cider:

I can see that there will be plenty to appreciate in cider: the variety that comes from dozens – hundreds – of types of cider apple, the changes caused by terroir, not just the soil, but the different strains of yeasts that live on the apples, the variations from year to year, the skills of the cider maker, the alterations brought on by age … it’s no different from beer, or wine, or whisky. And if you’re a cider lover, I’m very pleased for you: it’s tremendous, I’m sure, exploring that world, making discoveries, revisiting old favourites. I’m genuinely sorry I can’t join in.

He admits that he’s also not an enthusiast for wine or whisk(e)y either. I have a variation on this. I am periodically fonder of beer, wine, cider or whisky but I don’t have much luck having a robust interest in more than one of these around the same time. Or anything. They come and go in turn – and sometimes no desire at all for any of them.

And Boak and Bailey have rounded up a bit more this week, proclaiming both their Golden Pints as well as favorite writing for 2020. One of my rare bits of beer history on Dorchester ale and beer made the grade, much to my flattery and gratitude. Other than perhaps their weakness for my histories of English strong ale, they are great assessors of the field and tend to wander away from whatever is held out as the trend of the moment. Always a great resource.

Unlike many, I’ve never bought into the “beer people are great people” stuff and this rather brave bit of sharing by Julia Herz has done nothing to alter my view. If anything, the niche has always appeared to allow plenty of entitled latitude for knuckle draggers with the comfort of “it was all said in fun” thrown in for good measure. Fabulous.

Whether related or not I can’t say but the Evening Standard in the UK has shared the news that no one really should be surprised about*** – the well-off are on the bottle:

The Health Survey for England, which interviewed more than 8,200 adults last year, found that richer men and women showed a greater tendency to drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week. The highest proportion of men drinking at this level were found in the highest income households (44 per cent) compared with 22 per cent in the lowest income bracket. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of women in the highest income homes drank alcohol at higher levels compared to nine per cent in the lowest income homes.

In earthier news, those watching the world’s malting barley markets are predicting a happier 2021:

Malting barley premiums are predicted to nudge higher into the new year, reflecting a recovery from coronavirus lockdowns and a sharp fall in spring barley drillings next year. Premiums for malting barley over feed barley have slipped to £10-£12/t, hit by a drop in demand from the maltsters and a massive spring barley crop area of more than 1m hectares this year, but they are set to recover.

In other barley news, Australia is taking China to the WTO over tariffs:

“As a grains industry, we’ve been accused of acting outside of the rules — (growers) feel uncomfortable about those accusations,” Mr Hosking said. He said the industry did not expect a quick resolution and admitted some exporters were reluctant to support WTO action. “There’s no doubt this makes a lot of growers nervous, we rely on China for a lot of our export opportunities in agriculture, we don’t want to see anything that might impact that detrimentally, but we can’t predict how China will behave.”

Hmm… like a totalitarian military dictatorship with expansionist plans? Maybe? Good news for Oz – India awaits even if China is now dating Europe. Hmm.

Finally, a Christmas tale from my old home town of Halifax on a brewing collaboration between Big Spruce Brewing of Baddeck, N.S., and Boston-based Harpoon Brewery:

Every year, Nova Scotia gifts a tree to Boston, to show the province’s gratitude for the help Bostonians provided after the Halifax Explosion on Dec. 6, 1917.  The taste profile of the beer — called From Nova Scotia With Love — is a history lesson in itself. “Fermented on a Belgian yeast to note the fact that there was a Belgian ship involved in the explosion,” said Jeremy White of Big Spruce. “It was also brewed with a little bit of spruce tips to kind of give it that quintessential Big Spruce touch, Nova Scotia touch, if you will.”

Interesting nod to Belgium. Never seen that before. Perhaps because the ships in the collision were French and Norwegian… oh but it was on charter for Belgian relief work. OK. Not so weird after all.

UPDATE: Will Hawkes has brushed off the blog and posted an essay, arguing on the relationship between Britain and it’s former pal Europe as seen through the bottom of a beer glass as a teaser for an event:

In one sense, it’s banal to point out that Britain and West Flanders have a strong connection. In another, it’s timely; Brexit is happening, and we will be a bit more distant when it has finally run its course. Or we may only seem to be. Whatever the chancers in Downing Street achieve in terms of pissing everyone off, this country’s links to Europe will remain strong. They invariably have been, even before wool exports to Flanders made Medieval England rich and the first barrel of claret reached London in the 12th century. What is the point of this? It’s a convoluted way of promoting a talk I’m doing this Saturday, as part of Context Conversations.

Sadly, no reference to the Hanseatic League and the suggestion that hopped beer wandered over from Holland in the 1300s as opposed to being forced down England’s throat by gunboat in the 1200s… but there you go.

There. A bit shorter this week. Forgive me but I had long public meetings for work run late on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Looking forward to the break, like you no doubt. As we do that, remember that for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*Life lesson learned: most people actually only want to hear “Ja Ja Ding Dong”!
**Mac=O, Ljot=Leod=Liots.
***What be the next revelation? Many die in Midsomer?

The Last Autumnal Thursday And Its Beery News Notes

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not good. But that’s it for the week so you can cogitate your knogging on that for the next seven days. As always, for more good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter (except last week because she is busy with opening her new bar business), The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

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

The “If This Is December Do These Be Holidays?” Edition Of Beery New Notes

I have to say that imagining holidaying in any sense is a bit of a stretch for me and no doubt many others these days. Which tends to mean it is a good reason not to seek out strong drink but rather look elsewhere for meaning – like my choice this last few weeks: engaging in a prolonged and meaningful battle with the neighbourhood squirrels attacking my bird feeders. Think about it. Healthy outside-y lifestyle stuff getting out and setting up unstable and tall poles just out of a squirrel’s leap. Not quite what the doctor may have ordered on the Isle of Man between the wars as illustrated to the right but… is that really a doctor or the accounts manager of Clinch’s in disguise. And smoking! Dodgy looking moustache, that.

Victim of Math‘s starts us out on another week of pandemic laced news with a slight bit of economic upside news in the UK – or at least not a downside:

This is an interesting little nugget from the latest economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility… They expect alcohol duty revenue in 2020/21 to be *higher* than in 2019/20.

You may wish to roam the graphs and summaries of the associated Economic and Fiscal Outlook – November 2020 so here is the link to that. There’s this graph, too, that suggests in this economic downturn folk are turning to wine and spirits instead of beer. Are you?

Craft and shemomechama. Discuss.

Elsewhere and as it is to be expected, American big industrial beer is planning how to come out of the pandemic running. Beer & Beyond, the voice of MolsonCoors, Canada’s other secret infiltration force into the US economy right after Hollywood comedy movies, has asked the following about the marketplace:

With Americans heading into the holiday season, the beer industry is preparing for a winter fraught with uncertainty. A resurgent virus and ongoing recession are colliding with traditional times of elevated beer sales in both on- and off-premise venues.  One thing is for certain: People are continuing to drink beer. The big questions are where are they buying it, and how?

The article goes on to state “…data from past recessions show, the beer industry tends to hold up relatively well during economic downturns…” which is true as far as it goes* but it will be interesting to see how this principle holds up where local policy driven pandemic triggering full on economic depressions are occurring in, for example, the non-masker alt-right parts of rural America.

Speaking of pandemic ridden landscapes of elsewhere, I fear I am not fully convinced by this week’s excellent article “I Am Gruit” but it is very gratifying that author Hollie Stephens did consult with one of Unger‘s texts:

“The power to control to sale of gruit was in effect a right to levy a tax on beer production” writes Unger. Public figures who had been granted gruitrecht sought to extend their power throughout their domains. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, towns had taken over the taxation of gruit, handing the task of producing the gruit mixture over to a gruiter and ensuring that it was sold on to brewers at a fixed price.

It’s about the sense of scale. My reading of Unger’s work on gruit is that the scale of production  (which went far beyond foraging) and resulting wealth it generated sustained the early modern… or the late medieval… era in the Low Countries and was only displaced more by the cannon of the Hanseatic League‘s hopped beer pushing trading ships more than anything. But otherwise a entirely helpful introduction fitted into such a short space. And a Steve Beauchesne sighting!

Also this week,** Ron wrote three blog posts about a drunken abusive vicar in mid-1940s Dogmersfleld in Hampshire, the Rev. Hugo Dominique de la Mothe. The name itself is a give away but here’s a summary:

The accusations brought under the Clergy Discipline Act of 1892, Section 2, were that between June, 1942, and June, 1944, the rector had been frequently drunk, had “resorted to taverns and tippling.” had been guilty of immorality in that on or about May, 1944. at Dogmersfleld, he was in such a drunken condition that he committed a nuisance in the presence of women, and that he made derogatory references to the husband of Mrs. Maggie Robinson, his servant. 

Interesting that the matter held in Winchester Diocesan Consistory Court received such public notice. The cast of characters who show up as witnesses is gold.

In the now, the Tand Himself wrote this week about the new brewery in his home toun of Dumbarton, Scotland – even including a question and answer session with the owner thrown in for good measure:

The current production, as you’d expect, covers all the bases. One delight to this ex season ticket holder, is that the brewery produces the official beer of Dumbarton FC. This pleases me greatly as I remember all too well drinking in the Dumbarton FC Social Club – like the then football ground, but not the club – long gone. Then, we drank without a great deal of enthusiasm, beers from Drybroughs who had rather a monoclastic view of brewing, each beer being parti-gyled from a base beer which wasn’t great to start with. Mind you, we knew nothing of that then.

Less now but still somewhat tartaned, the history of Holsten Diät-Pils in the UK is the focus this week of an excellent post over at I Might Have A Glass of Beer:

In the 1980s so-called “premium lager” was the next big thing, as drinkers realised the watery draught lager nonsense they‘d been drinking wasn’t the real deal, and traded up to more fashionable bottled products. “More of the sugar turns to alcohol,” ran the tagline, alluding to strength in a way that got round the rules. The reference to the specially high attenuation was taken by drinkers to mean not so much  “you can drink this if you’re diabetic”, but more “this will get you pisseder, faster”. In comparison to most British beers, Diät Pils was a alcoholic monster: 45% stronger than a 4% bitter and nearly twice as strong as mild or the draught ersatz “lager” people had been drinking before.

Malt. This image to my right caught my eye this week representing trends in the last 20 years of England’s malt barley deliveries. The variety of varieties is quite stunning as are the names. Somewhat more sensible in tone than what we have to put up with the recent namings in hops. Very much settled on the planet Earth.

In further UK pubs and pandemic news, Stonch has found a sensible voice in Jonny Garrett:

…the REAL angle should be “pubs are SAFER than illegal gatherings at home”. They are controlled, clean, ventilated, so opening them could reduce home transmission. We need to campaign for that study.

This has been a line that Ontario’s Premier, Doug Ford, has been playing well. Best to be in well regulated settings. I still don’t go out that much but… you know… Elsewhere and to less effect, Pete B went wandering with some ideas on Scotch Eggs and alcohol absorption and governance models. Conspiracy abounds. But the £1,000 grant does seem a bit of the little and a bit of the too late, doesn’t it. Yet it’s in a combo of benefits we have on good word. So maybe it is…

Speaking of health… there was an excellent article in The Counter on the state of alcohol health disclaimers in the US and the role corporate lobbying plays to dumb it down with an interesting example from Canada’s north:

“I was surprised we were able to run it for [a month], honestly, before we got stopped,” said Stockwell, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and professor of psychology at the University of Victoria. “I was thinking that that was only because it was in the Yukon, out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody quite knew what was going on until the launch—that’s why we got away with it.”

Note: it is “…estimated that the cancer risk posed by drinking one bottle of wine a week was comparable to smoking five cigarettes for men and 10 for women in the same time span…” Excellently simple statement.

Finally, best beer blog interim research potentially becoming – but in no sense now – a fail yet… perhaps.

December, eh? Wasn’t quite expecting that. As you contemplate life’s passage once again, don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where this week they share a fear of teens and also speak of me, me, me!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*See that handy graph link above just a bit.
**Because, you know, this is a weekly update sort of thing…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it. As I say, a quiet week. But don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan speaks warmly of Tom Arnold) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

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

 

The Last Thursday Beery News Notes For October 2020, The US Election And My Tomato Plants

It’s been difficult to cope with the changing of the seasons as I have for every other year I’ve ever been on the planet. Familiar things – like heat or evenings – just seem to have gone away. But the week of Hallowe’en every four years helps set a milestone that’s hard not to stub your toe upon. So here we are. Orange leaves turning to wet bran flakes in the ditch.  Speaking of orange, I saw the image above passing by upon the glowing screen this week, one of a series of four pub scenes by Ruskin Spear (1911-90) whose art included “the citizens of Hammersmith relaxing in local pubs.” Happy people in pubs… or not… also was the topic of my Zoom chat with Boak and Bailey. We had never met before but we chatted away for two hours last Sunday. Blogging. Brewing history. Pandemic. Gossip. Very grateful to have been invited by them.  I took a very fuzzy photo to commemorate the moment.

Out there in a more focused reality, Jessica Mason wrote wonderfully about visiting a neighbour:

I wondered, momentarily, if I should tell her what I did for a living when I wasn’t visiting people in the mornings. Tell her about the industry I worked in. About the drinks and hospitality sector or any of the magazines for which I’d written. I wanted so much for her to know that it wasn’t just her feeling lost and alone. That entire sectors of society had been overlooked and that the paucity of support for those in need had begun to force people into poverty. Do I tell her that I’m really a drinks and pubs writer? That later on that day I’d be at a desk looking for the right words to describe something that made people feel good and interested. Things that reflected our thoughts, tastes and individuality.

In Scotland, a ruling has come down on the meaning of cafe during pandemic, the sort of ruling we may be seeing more and more of in the coming weeks and months as the cold and dark comes upon us. In this case, an injunction was granted against a municipal order to shut based upon the legal principle “surely to heavens this could not be a cafe!”:

“The council’s main, final reason for forcing us to close was that some of our dishes were ‘too smart and too fancy’ for us to be considered a cafe. “Nothing in the law dictates how smart you can or can’t have your food in a cafe.” One20 was granted an interim suspension order by the Court of Session after an online hearing on Friday, 23 October and remains open this weekend.

Further to the south, in Manchester a different legal consideration on the nature of food service was before the Covid considering authorities:

The head of Greater Manchester Police Licensing got on the blower to let us know that Slice Gate has been revisited and our Nell’s Pizza slices (cut from 22 inch pizzas) are now officially deemed substantial.

And to the left, further west, we learn of this heartwarming tale from Northern Ireland:

A man threw a tin of beer over a PSNI officer and shouted “Up the ‘Ra” after being told to return home during the lockdown, a court heard yesterday. Neil Murphy (37) was given 12 months probation for the assault on police and disorderly behaviour outside his flat in north Belfast.

Nice one, Neil. Well handled pandemic response. What’s the “‘Ra”? Short form for the “‘Rona”?

Ryan Avent of The Economist wrote a worthwhile series of tweets that add up to a good remembrance of the phenomenon of blogging which, of course, continues hereabouts and many other places under other names including journalism:

Blog posts could of course blow up. But the potential for instant mass virality was smaller, because drawing attention to blog posts meant creating a post of one’s own, and even link roundups took a bit of effort… As snarky as blogging could be, the medium generally demanded a minimal level of argument and contextualization greater than what’s asked of twitter users: if, at least, one wanted to attract others’ time and attention.

Going further back, Eoghan posted a photo of his beer book bookshelf and started a trend in posting photos of one’s beer book bookshelves.  Me, I have more piles and piles of piles of books by the easy chair myself. There’s a copy of The Chronicles of the Maltmen Craft in Glasgow 1605-1879 in there somewhere. Which I know makes you all riddled with jealousy.

Be prepared. Whenever anyone posts a graph for any reason at all, I am going to quote this guy who wins for this week’s most fabulous gnumbskullery*:

I think that’s hard to conclude from this chart. It might still be true, but i think it’s a lot more complex with alot more unanswered questions.

One of my personal heroes is Katie Mathers, as you may have guessed, and I am saddened to hear that she has met up with the virus… but cheered that she’s found a positive angle:

…it’s actually quite cool that I have something that’s spread all over the world. A big viral connection to the globe…

Here is an update to the story from the Ithaca NY area, the one about the brewery that had to close because it brewed old school micros that no one wanted. Well, the facility has been bought but some downstate operation”

Big aLICe, headquartered in Long Island City, Queens, has reached a deal to buy the former GAEL Brewing Co. on State Route 14 just south of Geneva on Seneca Lake. GAEL owner George Adams announced his brewery’s closing earlier this month. Big aLICe co-owners Kyle Hurst and Scott Berger hope to have the new brewery and taproom open early in 2021. Big aLICe, which also has a tasting room in Brooklyn, is known for a wide range of beers, from hazy New England IPAs and pilsners to sours and barrel-aged brews.

Well, there is some sort of lesson there. You can shape it as you like.

In other business news, we hear a lot about the challenges faced by the hospitality sector and how it affects brewing but here is an interesting story about the challenges faced by Canadian drinks exporters:

…beer exports are down too. Year-to-date sales to the end of July are down 13 per cent compared to the same period last year, trade association Beer Canada data show. Pacific Rim Distributors, the leading distributor of B.C. craft beer, has certainly felt pandemic pain. “We saw a deeper drop in sales in the first quarter because COVID-19 hit Asia before North America,” says Garett Senez, vice-president of marketing for the North Vancouver-based firm representing 13 craft brewers in 19 foreign markets.

Interesting that Ontario’s own “Collective Arts plans to open a satellite brewery in Brooklyn next year.”

Otherwise, beer continues to get more and more boring according to the latest Euro-gak news:

Drinks giants have reported higher alcohol-free beer sales in the latest sign the low- and no-alcohol drinks sector continues to grow. Heineken and Carlsberg have both created alcohol-free versions of their flagship beer labels, Belgian brewer AB InBev recently launched a low-alcohol alternative to Stella Artois, and this week drinks giant Diageo launched a booze-free version of Guinness in Britain and Ireland. Danish brewer Carlsberg – behind the Tuborg and Kronenbourg brands – on Wednesday reported a 29% growth across its alcohol-free brews in the three months to September, compared to the same period last year.

Similarly, the Boston Seltzer and Hard Iced Tea Co. has seen its shares soar.

Speaking of the tactics of macro-gak, Heineken in the UK has been caught forcing its own pubs to sell its own beer… which sounds a bit weird to someone not in the UK:

Heineken has been fined £2m for forcing publicans to sell “unreasonable” amounts of its own beers and ciders. The pubs code adjudicator (PCA), an official who oversees the relationship between pub-owning companies and their tenants, said Heineken had “seriously and repeatedly” breached laws that protect publicans from company behaviour aimed at prohibiting pubs selling competitor brands.

Finally, to top off a less than cheery week, Jeff noted the extinguishment of the All About Beer online archives. I was more written of than wrote in that organ but it did speak to an era or two, thriving in micro times, collapsing under a shoddy hand through perhaps the peak of craft. We have left that behind.

There you are. Less actual beer news that most weeks. But remember that, as the days shorten in the coming darkest third of the year northern hemispherically speaking, there’s more out there. Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan skips his obligations to the sponsors!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*The “g” is sometimes even silent.