Malt – Page 4 – A Good Beer Blog

A Thursday’s Worth Of Beer News As The Dog Days Truly Set In

Summer. Proper hot summer. Half the folk you want to see at work to get things done are off on vacation. Half the places you want to waste some time in are filled up with tourists. And half of the ways you’d want to waste your time are not possible because your provincial government owned liquor store bought a new wholesale distribution system that does not seem to work and has left shelves emptying. Jings. There better be Pimms for my weekend’s punch bowl, that’s all I can say.

What else is going on? First, Merryn has continued to explore malting with a tweet thread this week gathering some sources in support of a series of posts by Simpsons Maltings, like this one on the elements of the steeping stage. Reminds me of that Anglo-Norman children’s guide to malting from the mid-1200s:

Now it would be as well to know how to malt and brew
As when ale is made to enliven our wedding feast.
Girl, light a fennel-stalk (after eating some spice-cake);
Soak this barley in a deep, wide tub,
And when it’s well soaked and the water is poured off,
Go up to that high loft, have it well swept,
And lay your grain there till it’s well sprouted…

Traditional brewing practices like these are actually easy enough to identify… but rarely discussed given the trend to adulteration… err… innovation. Ask detractors to show you the soles of their shoes to check if they are boosters.

More than a bit of shock and dismay expressed in the American mid-Atlantic over the closing of Mad Fox brewpub of Falls Church, Virginia:

In the closing announcement, Madden cited the difficulties with the brewpub business model and the rise of breweries in the surrounding area contributing to an “extremely competitive craft beer market.” “When we opened in 2010, there were 40 breweries in Virginia. Now there are close to 250,” Madden said in the post. “The Brewpub business model is a tough one to maintain compared to a Brewery Taproom with little overhead, lower rents and outsourced food trucks. Our draw from the surrounding areas has dwindled in what has become an extremely competitive craft beer market, which has resulted in this final decision.”

Tom Cizauskas shared some background:

Mr. Madden is a successful doyen of the area’s ‘craft’ beer scene, both with Mad Fox and for a quarter-century before that. Beyond his own personal successes, he has mentored area brewers, he has organized beer festivals for brewers (beginning back when that concept was foreign), he was co-instrumental in bringing good beer to Washington baseball.

Don Cazentre wrote about another odd example of that competitive market out there, a Syracuse brewery called…

Anything But Beer, which Berry runs with Logan Bonney, makes alcoholic beverages from a base of fruits and vegetables instead of the barley malt used in most traditional beers. The beverages, which include hard ciders, are carbonated like beer and are about the same strength as many beers — 6 or 7 percent alcohol. They’re served by the pint at bars and restaurants, like beer. They are gluten-free and vegan-friendly. Flavors run the range from strawberry lime and ginger chai to Irish whiskey apple.

Weird. Fancy Zima. Speaking of which, one of the sadder things about good beer these days is there seems to be an expectation that not only do you as the happy beer consumer have to care about the PR characterization of brewery ownership props as presented but now the cult of personality has been extrapolated into sale channels. Just look at this hot heroic mess:

Dealings related to The Bottle Shop’s liquidation mark a renewed interest from ABI’s Beer Hawk in expanding its wholesale trade platform, which has been operating for 18 months. Andrew Morgan, who founded The Bottle Shop, will be joining Beer Hawk to oversee this area of its operations. Roberts said that Beer Hawk plans to accelerate its wholesale activities, and that Morgan possessed unique skills to achieve that.

Nothing against the individuals named – but does anyone without an interest in a piece of the cash flow really care? Does anyone doubt that the skills might just be unique? Just another sort of marketing blurt. Matt had a cooler head when he noted it’s all just about receivership and administration, aka the accountants. He also noted that ratebeer and Beerhawk now are working not at arm’s length:

Interesting to see that @ratebeer shop is now “officially” live in the UK. Currently listing 372 beers, all directly linked to sister company @TheBeerHawk.

Continuing on, I like this article in Pellicle on foraging for tasty brewing adjuncts in Ohio even if the continued misuse of terrior* rivals only the needy puffery of those who toss around curate to mean select:

“It was just supposed to be a clean, monoculture saison,” Brett says as he picks bright green buds from the sagging spruce branches. “The morning of the brew day, I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to do that.’ So I drove out and picked three pounds (1.4kg) of spruce tips.”

Foraging, however, is an excellent word that needs no turd buffing to convey meaning.

Lastly, Lew Bryson wrote of his unnatural admiration for Naturdays, a discount line of fruit beer produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev:

I have to admit, I’m two cans into a six-pack while writing this article. Pink and yellow, flamingo-decorated cans. I bought it out of a sense of duty and fairness, because if you’re going to pick something apart, you should have tried it. But once I opened a can, and tasted that first cold, sweet-tart slug, duty and fairness went out the window, and I was just another guy on a hot summer night, ripping my way through a pounder of Naturdays.

Yum. And that’s it for now. I need to plan the weekend. Where shall I lay upon the grass within reach of a few weeks to pick from the carrot patch so that I can claim I did a chore as I suck Pimms Punch from a wriggly jiggly straw? Such an exciting decision. There should be more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..? I still don’t know. He may well be in Brazil for another week and, so, on another hiatus. See ya!

*If it isn’t about the terre, it’s not about terrior. Vernacular is useful. As might be indigenous. Probably local makes most sense. Or just explain what you did. Adjectives are a waste of time.

Your Beery Newsy Notes For The Coming Summer Solstice

Ah, the middle of the year. The exact middle of the year. I love when the planet is at this angle. Heat but not too much heat. Sorta the end of one of the tops stretches in the year. The next step will be the stinking hot and the death of the lawns and then the long goodbye, the decline. Enjoy this week.

First up, cheery Ed wrote a lovely piece on visiting the Spaten brewery. Lots of photos. And an interesting observation at the end:

For those that care about the distinction between the bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie this brewery was definitely not craft, but at no time did I think the people working there were any less passionate about brewing as any other brewers we met.

Passion. Rhymes with fashion. And mash tun. Speaking of which, super-Lars-man wrote a lovely string of tweets on his weekend experiment in baking a mash of malt like some old school Baltic bad boy brewer with real action photos:

Huh. Three hours in the oven at 250C, last 45 minutes with the hot-air fan on to blow out moisture, and the center temperature remained stubbornly stuck at 100C the entire time. I burned the surface black, so must have been hotter than in Lithuania.

Wow! Reading Lars’ tweets about baking malt, kveik and other things is a bit like reading a James Joyce novel – set in Dublin but are about the human existence. The malt is like all of Joyce’s people of Dublin and the yeast is like Death but Death as played in that black and white movie with the chess board. Am I right? Right.

Eric Asimov must have been thinking of something similar when he wrote about the role of wine critics in The New York Times:

I believe that the most valuable thing wine writers can do is to help consumers develop confidence enough to think for themselves. This can best be achieved by helping consumers gain enough knowledge to make their own buying decisions without the crutch of the bottle review… reviewers often try to eliminate context by paring away these outside elements. All that is left, and all that is judged, the thinking goes, is what’s in the glass. Is that a good thing? I’m not convinced. Usually, wines are scored in mass tastings where very little time can be devoted to each bottle. The critics taste, spit so as to diminish the effects of alcohol, evaluate, maybe taste and spit once more, and move on to the next glass.

I quote than in length for two reasons. First, to bulk up the word count. Second, to ask you to consider if we can consider the role of the beer critic in the same way. For some time, it has struck me that one of the keys to being able to claim the title of “beer critic” or “beer expert” is to know less than me.* Granted, I know a lot but, let’s be honest, I don’t throw it around. That, however, is not the point. Point: why are wine critics, beer critics and Eric Asimov all so different?

Boak and Bailey wrote about recent thoughts on the place of Wetherspoons in English pub culture:

They seem tatty, the quality of the offer declining, presumably as they struggle to retain the all important bargain prices as the cost of products go up. But every now and then we’re reminded why they’re so popular: as truly public spaces, ordinary pubs and working class cafés disappear, Spoons fills the gap.

I loved the story and the eavesdropping but I also asked myself whether there was a reversal of cause and effect. Could Spoons be filling because their presence causes ordinary pubs and working class cafés to disappear? Think Walmart.

I can’t think of anything drearier than going to Venice to drink Belgian beer. Well, maybe drinking DIPAs in Venice. You think Charles and Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited were drinking frikkin’ Belgian beers in Venice? Not a chance. Checking what the critics said first? Nope. By the way, if I say I am Charles, the Beer Nut insists he is Sebastian. Happens every time.

The big news in beer law this week was the courthouse shocker when in Cardiff, Wales our pals at BrewDog lost a discrimination case:

District Judge Phillips said: ‘In my judgment, it is clear that in this case the claimant has been directly discriminated against by the defendant because of his sex. ‘The fact that by identifying as female he was still able to purchase a Pink IPA makes no difference. ‘I accept what Dr Bower says, namely that identifying as female was the only way he could purchase a Pink IPA at a cost of £4.’ Judge Phillips awarded Dr Bower £1,000 in damages after saying he would have felt ‘humiliated’.

Responses have been many but oddly the focus has been on the successful plaintiff. Nail spitting angery responses. My pal and co-author-in-law Robin, in an excellent broader piece on the matter, wrote “Firstly, I’d argue that Bower was operating under extremely bad faith” saying his motive for the court case was that his male privilege had been addressed in an unsuitable way. I can’t agree as, in part, once the ruling is in motive is immaterial. My pal Dr. J. explored the ideas and she wrote:

Perhaps I should sue for the “humiliation” of feeling forced to identify as male every time an organization uses male pronouns to supposedly refer to everyone…

It is interesting that the case was framed as discrimination and one of the fabulous aspects of discrimination law is that is protects the deeply unpopular. I am interested also that it was a male-led** brewery sued by a male plaintiff*** for sexism who was awarded the outcome by a well considered male judge.**** It’s all so weird. Yet it does remind us to seek the nugget of truth in the deeply unpopular point of view. Perhaps using sexism as a means to sell beer under the cloak of someone else’s human rights is so clumsy a strategy that this sort of ancillary wrong isn’t so much offensive as a hallmark.

There. Haven’t I said enough? I’ve likely said too much. Don’t forget to check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday… seems he’s back. It’s good that he’s back. He likes to write about stuff that I don’t like to write about. That’s what makes him so likeable. Them, too – la même.

*Truly unrelated to the comment but still… seriously, you think you need professional input on making your own Radler? Make your own damn Radler. Experiment and figure out what works. Next someone is going to tell you how to make a Red Eye and then charge you for the “advice”! And don’t deny the existence of the bad. Looks silly and, if you think about it, is a bit of a resignation note.
**Both males who met at law school,no?
***Apparently some sort of PhD.
****District Judge Marshall Phillips, president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges. He sits at the Cardiff Civil and Family Justice Centre, where he is also the regional costs judge.

The Thursday Beer News For The Best Week Ever!

What a week. A good week, right? As weeks go, I suppose. If you are into the whole “week” thing. This is the week that we learned Aaron Rodgers can’t chug a beer. That is pretty big news, right? His team of choice, the Bucks lost. Canada said hoo and then said ray. Now… maybe we get our national butts kicked by Golden State.

Just in time for this past week’s European Parliamentary elections, Ed decided to go all nationalist and rate a few sovereign brewing traditions:

…let’s face it, the beer in some countries is better and the four First Class Beer Countries have great beer cultures too. I have carried out extensive research into them and have just come back from a study tour of Germany which confirmed my findings, so for those of you who are still unclear on this matter here’s the ranking…

Aside from the stunning lack of objectivity and the narrow research tools applied to an alarmingly thin data set, I like it! Of course, each of his named top four nations of beer have many horrendous examples of garbage brew and, of course, many other nations have fabulous beers and, of course, his four choices actually have dubious claims to being actual singular nations as opposed to nineteen century splinters or, worse, aggregations of pre-Victorian political convenience but… I like it!!!

A study of Lars studying Kveik. Larsology. Larsologically speaking, quite likeable.

One of the odder bits of news this week was finding out that the Morning Advertiser, the UK brewing trade newspaper, takes money from brewers to take the brewers data, create an advertorial and then hires freelancers to write it up – then publishes it under the sub-header “in association with” the brewer. No word on how much money changed hands for the the advertorial services. Bizarre? Perhaps.

Scone => rhymes with dawn! Exactly.

Martyn chose this week to write a large number of excellently placed words on malting and maltings:

What I wasn’t expecting on the joint Brewery History Society/Guild of Beer Writers trip to Crisp’s maltings in Great Ryburgh in Norfolk was to be allowed inside the kiln, where the malt, once it has germinated enough, is dried off. These pyramidal structures, often topped with cowls that turn with the prevailing wind, are again familiar to anyone who has ever visited Ware in Hertfordshire, once the greatest malting town in the country, or Burton upon Trent, where multitudes of breweries had their own maltings.

I have no idea what he was talking about as if I am not inside a malting kiln within seven minutes of being on site I feel utterly… ripped… off. Otherwise, some extremely violent news about how Maris Otter is kept from becoming Maris Notter.

More self-consciously uncomfortable and leery than straight sexist but I’ll take alternate views on that any time all day long. Note: the past is a foreign land.

For this week’s headline in beer IP law, Josh Noel reported in the Chicago Trib on an odd clash between one big and one small brewer on the use of a name. Unfortunately, you have to swim a bit through the story to get to the only actual point in law:

…without a federal trademark, Palfreyman said, No-Li’s recourse may be limited, at least in Chicago. It could conceivably have common law rights to the name in places where the beer is already sold, he said. That means Goose Island may have established rights to the name in Chicago. But Ahsmann said he wouldn’t oppose No-Li from expanding distribution here.

This news based on the leak of the week is a bit disconcerting… in a way – but I must note I thought it was odd that a local disaster in a time of many local disasters was the one chosen for this initiative:

Over 1,400 brewers around the country signed up to make the beer in their own taprooms—nearly a quarter of all the breweries in the United States. But more than half of those brewers have yet to send any money raised from the beer to Sierra Nevada… The brewer, however, says it has been in contact with many of the brewers and, while the numbers are “concerning,” it expects them to honor their commitment. They just need more time.

And it was a big week in beer news around our house as the I shared on Twitter the other day. Helping with the canning by day two. Kegging lessons started on day three. Good gang, good work and an actual trade if the long hours are put in. Jordan put it best: “Finally after all these years, a conflict of interest“!

Otherwise, it’s been a little quiet on the beer news front this week. Is that why Stan flies somewhere exotic every once in a while? To hide from these uncomfortable pauses where folk have nothing to talk about but beer can wrappers and… well… that’s about it. Please check out Boak and Bailey this Saturday… but that guy Stan? I am betting he calls in sick again this this Monday. Again.

The Q2-May Slightly Shorter Version Of Thursday Beery Newsy Notes

Two evenings of work this weeks seriously imposed on my idle key tapping time. I know you share my pain. Anyway, it’s just as well as it’s been a quiet week from my point of view.

The Ponderosa Tavern is shutting its doors in my old hometown of Bible Hill, Nova Scotia after a five and a half decade run. I never actually went to The Pond as it was a bit rough in my day but it is interesting to learn about how taverns, a beer-only form of establishment, were approved under the local law. There was a local vote in which, I note, the folks of Bible Hill near the proposed tavern said “NO!” while those who lived farther away said “YES!”

Another great photo essay from Martin.

Towards the end of last week, the Brewer’s Association issued their new guidelines for today’s temporary beer styles which might stay relevant until September. Making fun of these guidelines in sorta blog fodder circa 2009 so I will leave it there. It’s also far harder to make fun of something so evidently off the rail so I will just leave it there. Also, if I use the new guideline for anything it might be as a road map of what to avoid so I think it is best if I just leave it there.

The man sometimes known as Stonch is reminding us all to get a life as again he takes a long walk in Italy. There may be beer.

Here’s an interesting video on the expansion of New York, early bits of which I think might not be entirely correct given my research a few years ago into colonial New York breweries. See, folk used boats and weren’t waiting for roads to be built. So there were breweries up the shore.

Geoff Latham has found an excellent bit of information, a miraculous 1690s plan to create 1:10 malt extract syrup for navigators to address the bodily perils faced at sea:

…and they are no other than Corn and Water concentrated, or reduced into a more compact and narrow compass; the one for the extinguishing of Hunger, the other of Thirst…

You know you are going to be a bit disappointed by an article on the state of alcohol retailing in Ontario when the second line starts with the words: “[f]ollowing the repeal of alcohol prohibition in 1927…” We didn’t have prohibition. We had temperance. Different. Still, this ain’t a bad response to the chicken littles who fear the costs of privatization:

There are two important lessons to take from these exorbitant claims. The first is that the figures that opponents of the plan are claiming are entirely unsubstantiated. They are simply the figures they claim. In order for them to have any legal weight whatsoever, they would have to be proven in court, which would require The Beer Store to open its books. Given the grandiose figures being tossed around, it is entirely possible that The Beer Store is bluffing in an attempt to maintain its privileged treatment. The second important lesson here is the price of cronyism overall. The government over-regulating and picking winners and losers in the market hurts consumers twice over. First through inflated prices and poor customer service, and again as taxpayers via legal challenges.

How many journals can I keep? I have a cheese one, a gas station bathroom one, a favorite socks one… thanks be to God I have beer to fall back on as a pleasure, not a task. Speaking of odd habits, don’t find yourself collecting hundreds of collector beers. No one cares.

Jeff’s on a book tour. Speaking of books, Boak and Bailey have published a greatest hits. Which is good. I loved REO Speedwagon’s greatest hits… a lot. So I am looking forward to Balmy Nectar all the more.

It’s fun to pick on an article with so many errors but the underlying unspoken truth might be worth noting – folk are spending a lot on craft beer without any identification that it is good value:

People spend more on craft beer every month than they do on their monthly cell phone and utilities bills. Drinkers are shelling out an average of $59 per month on beer, a new survey from Chicago-based market insights agency C+R research, found. Millennials spend $5 more. More than half (56%) of millennials said they drank an ice cold craft brew at least once a week.

Millennials. Go figure. Likely members of the style set.

Another week in beer in the books. No great shockers but there is still the rest of Thursday and Friday. Want to know what happens then? Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday.

As January 2019 Dies Off Another Set Of Beery News Is Born

A surprisingly long set of links face me in my inbox today. Folk send me suggestions all the time… well, some of the time… OK, once in a while. Honestly, for the most part to make this weekly update of the news in good beer I just email myself links as I notice a story through the week. Usually there are seven or nine by early in the week. This week, I had over twenty by Monday. And, yes, emails. So… let’s dive right in.

First off, if you are in Toronto this evening (and I will be if only passing through via VIA) you can pop over to this fabulous fundraiser for an important cause to witness some top notch curling action (like that to the right from last year) at the Beer Sisters’ Charity Hopspiel:*

On January 31^st, brewers from across Ontario will gather at the Royal Canadian Curling Club in Toronto’s east end. Clad in array of plaid, denim, light-up shorts, toques and matching jerseys, 24 brewing industry teams will face-off to raise money for the Native Women’s Resource Centre in Toronto. The Beer Sisters’ Charity Hopspiel, hosted by beer writers and educators Crystal and Tara Luxmore, is in its 7^th year. The event has raised over $32,000 for the centre, and the sisters hope that this year they’ll cross the $40,000 mark.

Fabulous! And at the Royal Canadian Curling Club! An actual place I am assured, not just a mid-range brand of rye whisky from the 1950s.

Next, Katie wrote a wonderful piece on heritage barley published in Ferment that explores the use of Chevallier, the darling English malting from around 1820 to WWI. I immediately started badgering her about joining my Battledore revival crusade.

Note: Victorians represented in under 1% of the graph and the most striking thing is not their habits so much as the near replication of the feat right before the economic meltdown of 2007-08. Nonetheless, a very handy set of charts and who doesn’t like handy sets of charts?

Not journalism. Or at least not good journalism.** Just badgering. Easy enough to get a quote from someone but it usually requires letting them speak.

An clear and accurate guide to tipping in Canadian tavs, pubs and bars.

Beer Ramen. Kill me now.

Update: We’ve had an actual update on #FlagshipFebruary and I couldn’t be more grateful for the clarification:

…it is in our and the industry’s best interest if we take a moment occasionally to appreciate the flagship beers of the industry’s foundational breweries…

So, the brewery has to have continued through the good beer era and the current flagship is the brewery hallmarks to recognize. Andy Crouch wrote a wonderful dense poem of a tweet on the same topic:

Revisiting long established flagships tastes of antiquity, success, failure, unfulfilled dreams of resurrection, and ultimately nostalgia. A place in time to momentarily revisit if only to remind you how far you’ve come but rarely a place to linger long.

I noticed this statement in a piece on German brewing culture and I thought it was extraordinary for suggesting agricultural capacity of a landscape is not the governing factor in whether beer was made or not:

Alsace is on Europe’s religious faultline. Beer is often thought of a drink of the Protestant north, but the facts don’t really bear that out. Belgium, Bavaria and Bohemia are historically Catholic (even if that religious attachment has faded); only Britain, of Europe’s foundational beer cultures, is Protestant. Does this suggest beer is less Protestant than thought? Perhaps, but I also think Catholic cultures are (as you might assume) better at preservation.

Well, I suppose someone has created a jam/jelly faultline based on religion. Me, I’d suggest many western and central European brewing traditions were pretty much established before the Reformation.

The effect of the US government shutdown on the brewing trade is measurable. Why the difference in processing wines and spirits? I blame the slackers attracted to a career in the beer label branch.

Gary’s piece on Watney’s Red Barrel as experienced in eastern North America at the time contains plenty of those links to contemporary primary documents that leave you persuaded. By way of contrast, this could really be read in two entirely opposite ways:

“I actually am mystified myself,” says Jeff Alworth. He should know…

Fine. I’ve held on long enough. Let’s talk Fuller’s or at least the highlights of the discussion. Promethean Jordan found a very helpful Brexit angle on the timing based on last year’s visit. Martyn argued convincingly that the whole sale spoke of business success and a strong future going forward. Then he added a bonus history of Asahi to deal with, you know, the legitimacy issues. Jeff at distance took it as a hefty body blow and mainly sees that it poses great risk to the English cask ale scene. Boak and Bailey wrote from their semi-characteristic personal perspective, supposing they are facing another long goodbye to a treasured relationship. Matt sided with the corporate success group and then started blatantly and publicly gambling with Boak and Bailey over the matter. Pete wrote first about his lack of levelheadedness when faced with the news and then got level headed and then sorta wobbled again in the semi-revisionist Book of Genesis stuff.***

My take? First, Fuller’s has been masterful in building up its reputation with good beer conversationalists over the last ten years. Remember how fun it was when @FullersJohn started tweeting? How beer writers were brought in and got their names on the label? What is really being noticed now is how the emotional credit Fuller’s they earned through that clever outreach has been truly a rich investment. And notice how none of the commentary comments upon that even though it was all done openly and with integrity. Second, the only constant about the beer business over the centuries has been the goal of continuous growth, merger and acquisition. Brewing has two great outputs: beer and wealth. This is just the latter being successfully served after a long stretch merrily servicing the former.

I love this tweet by Jancis R:

Never ceases to amaze me when we get messages like this: ‘We’d like to find out how to go about having our wines scored by Jancis Robinson, as well as the costs involved.’ Who charges to taste wine?

Who charges to taste beer? I know some but it would be rude to mention, no? Conversely, there is a craft beer fraudster working the US south:

“The phone rang and rang and rang…I checked the house and it was empty. The door was unlocked,” Brandon Oliver says. “His chickens were still in the backyard…about 90% of his clothes were gone…he left as if he only had six hours to leave.” Foster left his tools out at the unfinished beer garden. He and his family left town overnight.

The abandonment of the chickens is a sweet detail.

As someone with hearing that will never get any better, I really like this inordinately nice idea from a campaign under the heading Quiet Scotland:

Ever left a shop or been unable to enjoy a meal or drink because the background music has been so loud? Don’t like complaining? Try leaving one of our polite cards to get your point across.

An email went around from NAGBW HQ about the impending demise of the All About Beer web archive and I first thought it was an oddly presumptuous thing to send… and then I thought it was kind to alert me. I did not save any of my own work as anything I pitched was not dubbed worthy – which made me happy. I really hate editors and others paid to make things duller. But I did save Stan’s story How Craft Became Craft for very obvious reasons.

And, finally, let’s just watch this**** and listen to the screams of those precious darlings witnessing a part of their personal emotional foundations, the rebellious idols of their youths, being washed away out from underneath their feet:

That’s it! A big week in the contemporary detritus of good beer culture. Please check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday for more sensible and refined responses to the week in good beer.

* For those not in the punny know, see Bonspiel.
**Which is quite another point we never explore when a writer claims the journalism label… or at least the helpful bits. Seldom the adoption of the concurrent ethics lead at that moment.
***“Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale began life as an attempt to imitate Fuller’s ESB.” Really? How many beers is SNPA an clone of? Ballentine IPA. Burt Grant’s work. What else?
****And this, for that matter.

Your Thursday Beer News Notes For The Week Winter Showed Up

I should not complain about having to shovel snow on the 20th of January when its the first real snow of the winter. It’s not that tough a life. Five weeks to March today means it won’t be all that bad from here on out. What effect has this on my beer consumption? Not so much in volume but now is the time when a pint of stout and port is added to any sensible diet. I say “a” pint with care given the concoction should be somewhere in the area of 10% alc. Yowza. But when does great reward comes without some risk?

Not long after last week’s deadline for news submissions, Ed tweeted that he had “[j]ust been sent an excellent article on rice malt beer 😉” The study describes the potential of rice for brewing and sets out an optimized malting program allowed water saving. Which is cool. But it is also cool that it is about the use of rice which, except for corn, is the most hated of fermentables. This is despite the fact that rice beer came to Canada about 93 years ago – well after it was brewed in the U. S. of A. – a fact which has been fabulously preserved for us all in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the case The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., [1930] S.C.R. 361 at page 373 about the production of beer during the era of US prohibition:

I do not think we can accept the suggestion that there was no market for lager beer in Ontario. The learned trial judge dwells upon the fact that rice beer is peculiarly an American taste, and infers that it is not sold in Ontario. The evidence in support of this does not proceed from disinterested sources and I wonder whether the boundary line so sharply affects the taste in illicit liquor. In truth, it is stated by Low that it was not until some time in 1926 that the respondents began the manufacture of rice beer, and we are not told at what date, if ever, in their brewery, rice beer wholly superseded malt beer.*

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we stopped calling it “American-style lager” and just called it rice beer… or corn beer as the case may be? Will it take another century to pass for good beer to admit this fundamental reality of North American brewing culture?

Beer at the Post Office? Thanks Vlad!

I am still not sure what to make of #FlagshipFebruary.** Like a lot of you, I have been making up alternative hashtags like #GoldenOldieAles, #FlogshipFebruary and #PartyLikeIts1999. But it’s earnestly offered and, you know, as long as there isn’t a secret spreadsheet being sent around to members of the good beer PR-consulto class prearranging who are going to each write about this or that fabulous flagship as a way to artificially drum up interest and maybe future paying PR gigs, I think we might actually come away with a reasonably good taste in our mouths.

It reminds me a lot of by far the most successful of such hashtags, #IPADay created in 2011 by this blog’s friend Ashley Routson aka The Beer Wench.*** But (and this was not really the case in 2001 so laugh not) I would argue was easier to determine what an IPA was in 2011 than figure out what “flagship” mean today. As I am l not clear what a flagship really is, I asked some questions like if the Toronto brewery Left Field consider their oatmeal brown Eephus (1) their foundation (2) their flagship (3) both or (4) neither. They wrote:

We’d be comfortable calling it a foundational beer. We don’t really refer to any beer in the lineup as a flagship. Along with a few others, it’s one of our year-round offerings.

See, foundational does not (usually) mean flagship. More evidence? Consider this September 1990-ish beer column on the state of affairs in Lake Ontario land. It mentions the venerable and largely forgotten Great Lakes Lager. Foundation? Sure. Not the flagship. That’s now Canuck Pale Ale. You know, flagship might also even be a slightly dirty word in the trade. A tough row to hoe for the industry marketers behind this scheme. But hope lives on eternally in such matters as we learned from the new CEO of Sierra Nevada who, faced with the task of turning things around for the musty ales of yore, stated:

…he’s bullish on Sierra Nevada’s prospects heading in 2019 and he’s projecting 5 percent growth. He believes that advertising will help turn around Pale Ale’s negative trajectory, and that continued growth for Hazy Little Thing, combined with increased focus on Hop Bullet and Sierraveza, will propel the company forward this year.

Advertising! How unlike beer macro industrial crap marketeers!! If that is the case, me, I am launching #FoundationAlesFriday come March to get my bit of the action. Join my thrilling pre-movement now.

Beer so horrible that it can’t really be called beer is rising in popularity in Japan as sales of the real stuff and the semi-real stuff drops.

Elsewhere, I tweeted this in response to the wonderful Dr. J and I quite like it:

Well, the multiplication of “style” to mean just variation leads to a dubious construct that bears little connection to original intent and leaves beer drinkers more and more bewildered when facing the value proposition of fleetingly available brands however well made.

Let’s let that sit there for a second. Fair?

Send a furloughed US Federal employee a beer. Or help with some unplanned bridge financing for an out of luck new brewery.

Even elsewhere-ier, Matt Curtis is to be praised and corrected this week. Corrected only in the respect that he wrote the utterly incorrect “in true journalistic style I was too polite to say” in his otherwise fabulous piece**** on what it was like going booze free for three weeks:

As I walked down Shoreditch High Street on my way to an event from the British Guild of Beer Writers showcasing alcohol free beers I passed some of my favourite bars and restaurants. I found myself pining to sit within them, simply to soak up the atmosphere. In that moment I felt that merely the sound of conversation and conviviality would sate my urge to drink more than any can or bottle of low alcohol vegetable water that has the indecency to call itself beer.

Lovely stuff.

Note: an excellent lesson in what it means to understand beer. “It’s what [XYZ] told me…” is never going to serve as reliable research. Just ask, beer writers! Ask!!! Conversely, this article in The Growler serves as an excellent introduction to the 18 month rise of kveik on the pop culture commercial craft scene. I say pop culture commercial craft as it has been around the actual craft scene for a number of hundreds of years. Much more here from Lars.

How’s that? Enough for now? Winter getting you down? Remember: things could be worse. I think so. Don’t forget to read Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday if you want to stay on top of things. Perhaps he will update the impending contiguous v. non-contiguous acreage rumble we’ll all be talking about in a few weeks.

*Buy Ontario Beer for more fabulous facts like this!
**Though I do like the concept of the pre-movement.
***Note: I make no comment on the wide variety of beer “wenches” or “nuts”… or “foxes” or “man” or any such other monikers. At least they don’t claim to be an expert.
****The current edition of Boak and Bailey emailed newsletter contained this bit on Matt’s experiment: “…it all seemed pretty reasonable to us. But even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be any of our business. We did wince to see people in the business of beer berating him for his decision, and winced even more deeply when we saw people nagging at him to break his resolution.” I agree that this is sad and, I would add, smacks of the nags shouldering the alky’s burden themselves.

“For Drink”: Searching For Something Requires Knowing Something About That Something

Just a bit of a note on how annoying it can be realizing that if you want to find out something you need to know something about the thing you need to find out more about. Not unlike my problems with records or, say, the adjectives of the past.

For example, from time to time I have a habit of hunting through the digital mess of Google Books looking for references to “malt” in lists of ships’ provisions for some sort of expedition or another to see what I can find. I have learned that I have to include a search for “mault” or other variations in the spelling. This is how as I found out about Frobisher’s provisions for his 1577 Arctic expedition by searching for “biere” rather than “beer.” In that same way, I realized recently that I should also be hunting just for not multiple spellings but also phrases – as the phrase “for drink” in these examples show.

1557: in Tusser‘s domestic text set in verse, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry we read in the section on morning work,

Let some to peel hemp, or else rushes to twine
To spin or to card or to seething in brine.
Grind malt for drink,
See meat do not stink.

1585: in Volume 2 of Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts at document #591, we can read in the requirements for setting up English plantations in Munster, Ireland that a farmer requires six quarters of “oats for drink” while a copyholder needs four and a cottager just two.

1597: in the Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, perhaps due to the failure of the previous plan noted above, we see that the military need to receive better supplies instead of just beef, including:

…cheese and salted fish, and with some malt for drink for the soldiers, who I see daily to perish for want thereof, against the rule of Christian compassion…

1623: in the records of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, we can read a note by Sir John Coke, a listing of provisions which includes “malt of barley for drink” and “malt of oats for drink.”

1624: a book on Puritan settlers of America indicate in quotations that their preparations need to include “meal for bread, malt for drink” as they should not expect to “meet neither with taverns nor alehouses.”

1688: in a summary sort of document recording aspects of Communications of the Board of Agriculture, a summary sort of acreage chart entitled Quantity of land necessary to subsist 8,000,000 of people in England, according to the present mode of living:

Bread corn – – – – – – – – – – – 3,000,000
Barley, for drink – – – – – – – – -1,500,000
Potatoes – – – – – – – – – — – – -500,000
Grass land, for butcher’s meat – 12,000,000
Grass land dairy – – – – – – – – -4,000,000
————-
21,000,000

Nothing too profound about it all. Just worth noting that you… that I… have to be open to understanding that the short forms or cliches of others in the past are not the shorts forms of today. All very irritating. Except that you notice that over 7% of all English acreage in the late 1600s was used for beer making and then you think that, hey, that is sorta cool.

The “I HATE YOUR THANKSGIVING!!!!” Edition Of Thursday Beery News Notes

I am the sad Canadian. I hate the week when Thanksgiving comes around late every November. It is the one holiday Canadians don’t get to participate in any way, even through analogy. Face it. Our early October Thanksgiving is the least fun combo that vague residual churchiness and storage squash could muster up. And, yes, we have bonus days off like Boxing Day and Easter Monday – but what do we do with them as a culture? Nothing. Today to the south, Americans seem to plan to get hammered to cope with dodgy distant cousins while setting off exploding turkeys launched from vats of hot oil. And not one of them in any way took seriously the advice on what beer to pair with their family festive feasts. I want a US Thanksgiving, too. Until that day, I am a sad Canadian.

That being said, Josh the Owner of Spearhead has spoken of one of the few things we have… or rather should have… that Americans can’t have… but, in fact, he ain’t getting his hands on it at all:

Hey @ONCannabisStore it’s been over a month since you opened. I made an order @ 6:45 AM on October 17. Still has not arrived. How do you ever expect to shut down an illegal market with such poor customer service?

You know what they say: Hayters gonna hayte.*

Early afternoon update: How did I miss this? Look at this fabulously transparent statement from the Beer Sisters on what working in what they call the beer sommelier gig looks like. No dubious claims to being independent and certainly not journalists. An excellent measure against which others should be measured.

While the US has had a truly horrible run of natural and man-made disasters to cope with, this call from Sierra Nevada to respond to the wildfires in its part of California stresses the need to respond to crisis by supporting the actual neighbourhood as you can:

“Although Chico and the Sierra Nevada brewery were spared, the Camp Fire has devastated neighboring communities where many of our friends, families and employees live,” said Sierra Nevada founder and owner, Ken Grossman. “This community has supported us for 38 years and we’re going to do everything we can to support them back.”

Speaking of fire, the maltsters Muntons tweeted out informative information about a fire at their premises that should be trotted out and thrown at anyone lost for words who blames Twitter as a communications platform:

Local Fire Services arrived quickly at the scene with 8 Fire appliances and a high-level access platform… Muntons have a robust Business Continuity system in place that has been tested annually and proven very effective… For further information please contact: Nigel Davies, Technical and Sustainability Director…

Speaking of the simplicity of malting barley for drink, I’ve been reading a bit in the southern media about the horrible prospect of jacked up prices for craft beer but up here in the true north strong and free that all adds up to good news according to the Western Producer:

Looking ahead to 2020, Watts showed data forecasting relatively steady beer production in the United States compared to 2015, with craft beer rising from 29.1 million hectolitres to 39.0 million, while non-craft beer declines from 194.5 million to 183.9 million hectolitres. However, due to the increased malt usage in craft beer production, the total U.S. malt demand will grow from 2.014 million tonnes in 2015 to 2.211 million tonnes in 2020.

Money, money, money. Speaking of prices getting all jacked up, one should note that GIBCS 2018 is not for keeping… apparently:

…a fellow beer writer who tasted this beer with me, said he wishes there was more of the soft, Tootsie Roll-esque flavors that have characterized past versions. Again, this is total nitpicking. This beer is better than 90 percent of the bourbon barrel-aged stouts other breweries are putting out.

Hmm. Spot the suspicious things with that assertion. Speaking of which, Gary Gilman places the singular success of Belgian beer this week in the lap of the now long late Mr J:

Stella Artois is of course today a growing force in the premium international lager segment, so Unibex was right in a sense, but that growth came in the wake of the romance Jackson created for Belgian beer. Without that groundwork, Belgium would be one of a number of European countries vying for sales internationally and likely well behind Germany, Denmark, and Holland with no cachet, moreover, attached to its beers.

I can’t buy it. Aside from the fact of the continuation duration of his particular death, the general fiction of the few founders in the micro/craft tale – and the necessity of the GWH – is how we would have to believe that no one else would have noticed… whatever. In this case, it requires us to believe that no one would have noticed the indigenous beer culture at any time during the 40 years since Belgium’s brewing.** Not happening. Romance? Nope – it’s been big beer driven, moolah motivated and, frankly, much of the export expansion came just far too late along the timeline for the Jacksonian touch of the hem: “…exports to the USA have risen tremendously from a mere 2 million litres in 2005 to over 130 million litres in 2009.” Stella! Stella!!!

I love this speedy 1983 BBC guide to speedy home brewing. Notice how it ends with a simple “yum”? It gave me nostalgic pause. And there was an interesting juxtaposition with that to be observed, drawing both from this ying to this other yang. I don’t know why in particular it struck me other than the first being the small mutual affirmation pool while the other was a powerful personal kick against construct. Which persuades you more? And do either give more pleasure than the happy man of 1983 enjoyed?

Finally, as the next few weeks drag on, each day shortening before the winter equinox, remember to lay off the sauce – as at least one Scottish medical man recommends:

He said: “We now have new evidence that the weather, and in particular the temperature and amount of sunlight that we are exposed to, has a strong influence on how much alcohol we consume. Furthermore this weather-related alcohol consumption is directly linked to our chances of developing the most dangerous form of liver disease – cirrhosis – which can ultimately end in liver failure and death.”

Death! I understand that is even worse than Stella.

Another week has passed. Soon it will be December – but before then we get to gather as a nation and watch the Grey Cup this Sunday. Bet just knowing there is three-down football to the north ruins many a US Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t let it. Be yourselves. And check out Boak and Bailey this Saturday where no doubt they will have an update on the UK’s plans for Grey Cup celebrations.

*For years I have wandered this earth waiting for the right moment to use that particular Dad joke. Notice I did not write “Hayter’s gonna hayte” as that would be rude.
**Whatever that in fact means.

Your “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” And Other Beery News Update

The beery discussion this past week was woven with tales of travel. Don’t get me wrong. I think the whole idea of beer tourism is weird. If I travel, I save maybe 15 minutes every second day for thoughts about a beer. I like museums, beaches, shopping, seeing friends and family, wandering and napping too much to centre a trip around beer. But… that doesn’t mean you need to be like me. Going elsewhere to find new spaces to roughly replicate drinking at home and roughly familiar bars is great. And, as Nate above shows in the tweet of the week, it can be something that opens the door to lederhosen-based public silliness opportunities and “the best photo of me that’s ever been taken!” Which is good.

Jordan St. John went on one last Euro trip before the UK is, what, given the boot… turns its back? And he went to Brussels… which he found rather odd:

When travelling, you want to try to be positive, so putting this thought out of my head, I ambled along through bustling groups of tourists, instagramming along with them. It is in the nature of the tourist focused district to be reductive and sure enough every fourth store sold waffles and every fifth store sold chocolate. It took only a moment to realize that every sixth store sold beer and the dawning realization came upon me: “Oh, I’ve been rooked.” I’m not referring to the quality of the beers on offer, lest you think I’ve come unmoored. It is the depth, complexity, and overwhelming success that the brand of “Belgian Beer” has on a uniform basis.

Me, I was in Brussels for a week staying at a pal’s place in 1986 but stuck to the Jupiler and Guinness. Seemed all a bit heavy handed to me. Was told by a police officer in a long black leather trench coat to move along after the bars shut. Oh, and he had a machine gun. Still, Jordan also bought me a tie which I got in the mail and it was lovely so I thank him publicly. It says “Ind Coope Sales”! So his trip was not all for nuttin’.

Boak and Bailey have shirked their weekly new nugget obligations (again) while roaming around the land of lederhosen. I like this observation particularly:

Despite looking to British eyes like the garden of the nearby pub-restaurant, people were tucking into picnics they’d brought from home, unloading Tupperware and supermarket paper bags from rucksacks and baskets. (With typical German clarity, most of the beer gardens we visited had large signs explaining the rules pinned to trees: sure, bring your own food, but buy the drink from us, or be cast out of your community.) The garden itself also had a barbecue and a pretzel window. The chef tending the former rang a bell every time a rack of ribs was ready and seemed to be selling out, while even those who had brought their own tea were buying giant pretzels to go with it.

Travel writing needs more of this and less of the “my sponsor’s business is the best” stuff. Knowing where it is OK to have a beer in public and where you can eat a sandwich without offending is vital data.

Still on the travel theme, fellow Haligonian Rebecca Pate headed north to Iceland for an Arcade Fire show – and took a mo to report, as an aside to the main feature, on the state of the Reykjavíkjavíkian* bar scene:

The recent emergence of a craft beer culture in Iceland is tied into the country’s drinking history. Prohibition came into force in 1915 and effectively lasted until 1989. The original blanket ban on drinking became entwined with a sanction on beer specifically, as beer was closely associated with Denmark and the Danish way of life – it was therefore seen as unpatriotic for Icelanders to enjoy a pint. The day that the law was changed, the 1st March, is now celebrated annually as Beer Day (Bjordagur).

Perhaps most heroically of all, Lars went deep into rural Russia and undertook what might better be called “beer exploration” as opposed to beer tourism:

The village looked like any other village in Russia, really: a cluster of traditional wooden houses, neatly arranged in rows, with wide, grassy spaces (the streets) in between. The fields were ranged around the cluster of houses. We went down a couple of streets before finally we stopped in front of one of the houses that looked exactly like the others, except Marina was standing in front of it, waiting for us.

You know, every time someone writes a puff piece and calls their work a “deep dive” on social media I think to myself “that ain’t no frikkin’ deep dive – Lars is the deep dive.” Example. Note how Marina malted her own grain: “the malts are dried in a similar trough on top of the oven. So she makes very pale rye malts.” Which should be enough to put the now well-dismissed “there was no pale malt before coke” fibbery to bed. The process is fabulously described. I want to now try this at home.

One last point on travel. Noticing a lot of people noting they are not traveling to the GABF. Is anyone still going? Why?

Not travel. I had this article about a new brewery in NH shared with me because of the headline but, as I also work in construction for a fair share of my time, this story is refreshing as it has the underlying theme of brewing beer as slowing down as opposed to adolescent manic passion. And the use of “local” rather than “independent” or other such PR claptrap is always good.

Fabulous footage of 1972 hop picking action.

And, finally, this sort of pointless picking apart of alcohol related health advice that is really verging on obsessive compulsive. If you really prefer to die from a liver disease other than cancer, take comfort and keep pounding back the booze.

There. Another week’s update done. That was all very cheery, other than for the wee fibs o’craft stuff. As per. Want more? If Stan doesn’t pick it up again, if Boak and Bailey never get back from holiday you might want to check out what appears to be a German-sourced English language period update from Bier, Bars & Brauer now in its 23rd edition. Until next week , exeunt!

*No, really… it is… look it up… HA HA MADE YOU LOOK!!!

If It’s Lazy And Hazy These Must Be Your Beer News For A Thursday

Late July. The fifty seventh muggy day of the summer. In Africa and California the temperature hovers in the mid-120s F. A beer fest in Oregon has been postponed due to the heat. A couple of years ago, I wondered out loud if it was too hot for beer, if gin or white wine was called for. Not sure I am so worried about that anymore as it’s ice water I want. Soon it will be cold compresses to the wrists and the back of my neck. I am far too danty for this weather.

The photo up there as borrowed from here solely for consideration of the shape of the glass. Have we moved far past the days of stemware or the minutely differentiated special IPA glass? I have actually noticed my betters in social media posts, the writers who I assume care more than me, using these fairly jolly beer can shaped beer glasses. Is this something that might indicate something of a relaxation of attitude?

Next up, Nate drank three old beers that were past it and two that were great. Lesson? Malt is better than real fruit filling. And lesson two? Generic stemware is certainly still out there.

There was an interesting profile published in Drinks Retailing News on the new head of the UK health lobbyist group Alcohol Concern – one Richard Piper – who seems to want to move away from a hard line pushing abstinence (if that is a fair characterization of their past) to something more middling and measured:

“The guidelines are useful up to a point,” he shrugs. “If you’re drinking 70 units a week they’re easy to dismiss, but at 45 units they may be the perfect message. I don’t dispute the science behind them, but I’d like to see an alternative discourse. It’s a more significant risk reduction, for instance, if you cut your drinking from, say, 42 units to 28 units than it is to go from 28 to 14, so we’d like to focus more somewhere up the consumption curve.”

His proposed approach reminds me of the highly successful MADD Canada public service announcement strategy which focuses on not driving if you are going to drink as opposed to lecturing on the drink.

Apparently… (i) there is a beer style more people like than you might have imagined and (ii) some breweries have shut while others have been bought. Oh, sorry…. those things aren’t news.

Merryn reported on an Anglo-Saxon malthouse discovered an archaeological dig:

The settlement was Christian and it is believed the malt house was not something organised by the local inhabitants but was part of a much wider integrated system. “I think here we are seeing the hand of the church. The church is the super state and it had access to all the latest technology and engineering skills anywhere in Europe,” said Dr Jolleys.

A bit of scale, then. Fabulous. I was wondering if the Angles and Saxons ever thought they would just end up hyphenated all the time. Not much related, one thousand years later, Glaswegian students were very very bad in the 1700s.

Last Friday, The New York Times reported that radiation from the 2011 explosions at that nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan had now shown up in California wine. Apparently this is reasonably common as “certain nuclear events would leave unique signatures based on time and proximity to the grapes.” The levels of radiation are below normal background standards so this is more about noticing the footprint than the first ten minutes of the movie THE WINE THAT KILLED CALIFORNIA… but that is no reason not to worry in the back of your mind in the middle of the night about what really might be going on, the things that no one is telling us…

The North American Guild of Beer Writers has announced that entries are now being accepted for the 2018 beer writing awards and will continue to be through Sunday, Aug. 19. There are a semi-boggling thirteen categories in this year’s competition. While I am not sure about the “Best Short Form Beer Writing” (which includes beer writing from any publication, online or print, that contains fewer than 600 words as that would include 90% of the other category submissions) mine is but a quibble. Get yourself and your writing in there and – hey! – see how you fare.

Flux. More discussion on Twitter of a favorite topic, the success / failure of regional US craft brewers branching out and the greater scene. BA Bart indicates that it’s the tiny brewers who are expanding at this time. The context of the North American retail market at the moment is quite dynamic. Macro craft is on the move. Budget priced Wicked Weed at $5.99 a six-pack. Goose Island being moved on a “buy one get one free” basis or a 15-pack for $11.99. Not all beer consumers check price but how does the small scale folk or, rather, the mid-sized firms survive? Jason adds a twist: “keep opening new breweries in the wake of those that close.” We are somewhat immune from price fluctuations here in Ontario… and immune from even twenty years of inflation apparently. Where do you put your money? Where should ambitious craft brewery owners put theirs?

That is it. A bit less than this week than most but I have a range of complaints (which I could share with you if you like) upon which I base this week’s rather thin offering. I know you want more so I will remind you check in with Boak and Bailey on Saturday and again with Stan next Monday. Three separate nations. Three distinct sources of beer news. Two hundred and eleven other nations to go.