Me and Mine – Page 2 – A Good Beer Blog

The Back To School 2023 Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Corduroys wiff-wiff-wiffing down a linoleum floored hallway. That’s all I can recall from the first week of Septembers if I am being honest. The rest is all a mixed of high school anxious misery and stupid fun – except that sound of new cords on the first day of school. Was I really into beer that much then? Were there September beers before undergrad? I have no recollection other than drinking the one I was handed at some kid’s unfortunate parents’ place, grabbing whatever we could sneak out with while their folks were off shopping. Someone else’s hell to pay when it was all found out later. September beer was a thing in the 1620s. But what was it? Apparently went with Cheshire cheese. That September beer post also has one of my favourite harvest time images, from 1680:

In husbandry affairs they are very neat, binding up all sorts of grain in sheaves; they give the best wages to labourers of any in England, in harvest giving 4 and 5 shillings for an acre of wheat and 2s. a day meat and drink, which doth invite many stout workmen hither from the neighbouring country to get in their harvest. So that you shall find, especially on Sundays, the roads full of troops of workmen with their scythes and sickles, going to the adjacent town to refresh themselves with good liquor and victuals…

Ahh, harvest at the time of mellow fruitfulness… as I blogged about twenty years ago* yesterday. September is also the time when craft beer in the US apparently hits its highest share of the overall market. I know that this is the case because BA Bart posted the helpful chart right there up at the top of this post to confirm that fact. It also confirms that craft beer’s share is down overall something around 2.5% from 2018 to 2022. Which may explain why those breweries and bars are shutting. Yet it also shows that the share in September 2022 was about the same as July 2018. Is that important? Dunno. But it does somewhat create that discussion with many points of view my authoring team leader Carlo Devito triggered over at FB:

Call it a contraction. A correction. A classic cycle of Boom and bust. Whatever. But you are spot on…yes. My % is off but my numbers are correct….I feel. I’ll stand by 1,500 to 3,000. Remember. I’m including wineries and distilleries in this. Not just breweries. This is all craft beverage businesses.

More tiny breweries making their living making less beer? Could be. Seems a reasonable next reality. And Pete Brown asked a good question this week which received plenty of response about the realities of the past:

Question/discussion time: in general, but specifically in brewing, does heritage really matter? Without progress, everything stagnates. But is there value in remembering the past, and encouraging others to do so? If so, what is it?

My thought in these matters? Change is constant – but that still can’t explain bad ideas. It can be a bad idea just to cling on to heritage just as much as it can be a bad idea to run from it. No doubt those workers in 1680 would love the labour standards we enjoy today. Me, I responded that in the late 1800s new brewing techniques in North America were leading to new forms of beer, plus mergers and many closures which often now blamed on temperence.

Then as now, the breweries which didn’t move with the times were the ones left behind. In 1907, one Ontario old school holdout’s beer was tasted by someone hip to the new ways: “not at all nice and had a pronounced old, harsh flavour… devoid of character in every way…“** Sounds a lot like 2023 looking back at 1998. Or 1955 looking back at 1907 for that matter. Stagnation. Perhaps that old, harsh flavour could be recreated as Old Stag Pale Ale! Speaking of changing reality if not “de void” we see that The Beer Nut was frankly surprised after encountering a couple of NA beers:

Honestly, I thought these would be worse than they were. They can’t be accused of going for the lowest common denominator or turning out non-alcoholic clichés. They’ve put the work in and may even be in the upper tier of this sort of product available in Ireland. Not that that’s saying much.

Speaking of new forms of things, Eoghan wrote about a very rare bird, the new gueuze from Belgiums newest lambic brewers, Danseart:

The Dansaert Gueuze is the culmination of BBP’s mixed- and spontaneous-fermentation Dansaert brewery project, a beer that’s been in the works since January 2020. But the Dansaert Gueuze – a blend of one-, two-, and three-year-old Lambics made to the Oude Geuze specifications set down in EU law – is not just a milestone for BBP. It’s a landmark beer for Brussels too, because it’s the first of its kind to have been made in Brussels by a new producer for several generations. Lambic, indigenous to Brussels and once one of the city’s dominant beer styles, was virtually extinct by the early 1990s. There was only two lambic breweries left in Brussels, and only one – Brasserie Cantillon – still making beer the same way as previous generations of brewers. In fact, such was the complete eradication of the Lambic tradition in the 20th century that it’s entirely unclear who preceded BBP as the previous newest Lambic brewery.

Neato. An odder ripple in the beerosphere was noted this week, objections to one brewery taking on an more unexpected focus than a new lambic or NA beers. Joe‘s giving a side eye. Matt was particularly ripe: “How is the grain being farmed? How is the enzyme produced? Who has actually been to the brewery in question and seen the process?” and then apologized. To help resolve matters, the most patient and polite even if too pressed and perhaps put upon Jessica Mason in The Drinks Business published a response to questions raised about one NY state brewery’s raw beer brewing process and a defence of the practice’s benefits:

After all, he hinted, there will always be questions the business will be have time to answer further down the line. Regarding the debates online and the push for data-driven evidence directly and immediately from his brewhouse, he said: “These are very valid questions but are a distraction from what we are doing, which is simply skipping the malting process entirely… In other words, like-for-like if you take one barley farmer and one brewhouse and you brew the exact same beer in the traditional way and you brew it our way, in that controlled environment — where all things are otherwise equal — then this is what you save: 350ml of water and 16g of CO2 per 500ml of beer served.”

Hey maybe it will work! You know, I wonder if being overly concerned about this sort of stuff should lead one to be concerned. It’s all about perspective. Someone tries something. Maybe it works. Things go on. Conversely and probably more in the too much perspective category, there was a passing of note at least adjacent to the world of clinky-drinky with the death of Jimmy Buffet. Never owned a record of his. Still, I probably heard and hummed along to “Margaritaville” in pubs or at parties as much as any other drinking related song out there. Easy enough to do. But this observation from Jason Wilson of Everyday Drinking really is quite remarkable… so I remark… or at least take note:

I’ve always believed we experience drinks very much like we experience the popular songs of our youth. An ounce and a half of booze, a three-minute song—ephemeral for sure, yet in the right context you may remember it your whole life. We know that no new song, regardless of how well made it is, will ever matter as much the ones we heard as a teenager. When I listened to those 1970s Buffett songs again this week, I was struck by how melancholy they are. I’m definitely not the only one commenting on this. There is even a meme making the rounds on social media that suggests if you drop “Margaritaville” into a minor key, it becomes very dark.

Much more in the major key, Beth Demmon continued her Prohibitchin’ series with an interview with Bex Pezzullo of California-based Sincere Cider and her wide ranging interests and back story:

It took nearly 20 minutes for Bex and I to get through chatting about the Hollywood writers’ strike, comparing how quickly our social batteries drain, how to make friends as adults, why we both prefer honesty over tact, and how prison populations artificially inflate town populations for tax benefits to even start talking about Sincere Cider. But honestly, who wants to hear about target markets and five-year sales projections when Bex is talking about working at Bonnaroo? But in talking about Bonnaroo—the annual music and arts festival in Manchester, Tennessee—and her experience having to clear out the outdoor furniture section at Target to construct a makeshift backstage for the musicians after an incident with some destructive raccoons, her personal values still managed to reveal themselves.

Brimming with positivity, David Jesudason’s piece “Ypres Castle, Rye—A Bastion From Hate” in Pellicle yesterday with is a great portrait of the world created by our old pal Jeffery John Bell including his approach to creating a great welcoming tolerant pub:

“It’s my house, and I’m the one curating,” Jeff tells me. “I pick the music. I pick the beers. The lighting, the decor—everything is deliberate. And to some extent you have to curate the conversation at the bar—I don’t police it—but you can steer people. If someone says something beyond the pale or outside the environment you’ve created I say: ‘I don’t agree with that’,” he adds.”

It’s a wonderful portrait about making and shaping space with some particularly lovely photos by Claire Bullen, like this one to the right. Contented lad. I like it so much I am going to put it on the Christmas cards this year.

Do you like wines? I know Jeff does. And would you like a short but handy starter guide to liking them more? Eric Asimov published one this week in The New York Times:

The basics remain, but in between lie incremental alternatives that may offer a richer selection but require a greater degree of understanding. Consider the options that now turn up on contemporary retail shelves or wine lists. You might be asked to choose from transparent whites or golden whites, orange wines ranging from pinkish to amber, rosés in pale or dark hues and reds that are light, dark or somewhere in between. Additional subdivisions further complicate matters. If you want a sparkling wine, would that be pét-nat, traditional method or tank? Do you want that red chillable? Or dense and heavy? Perhaps you would like an oceanic white, or would you prefer it to be mountain?

Speaking of coming to an understanding, Boak and Bailey wrote about being excited by a few beers recently and helped me with this trim description of that thing called an Italian lager:

Bearing in mind Italian Pilsner was basically a mythical entity to us at the start of this year, it struck us as absolutely convincing. It was extremely bitter and desert dry despite its 6.4% ABV. It had the requisite white wine quality with suggestions of elderflower and lemon. On a warm evening, after you’ve schlepped up Christmas steps, it’s exactly the glass of lager you dream of drinking. OK, so beer can still excite us, we’re not dead yet, we said.

That so neatly summed up my last Italo-Pils experience that I had a Pavlovian response, then a Proustian recollection and perhaps even Swedenborgian moment all at once.***

Finally, did you think there would be an agument being made for a revival of malty beers? How about an 1800 word argument like the one by Jim Vorel in Paste this week which carries with it more than a hint of suspicion and perhaps an implicit accussaion:

The expected “malt backbone” once referenced in styles such as pale ale increasingly disappeared, while surviving styles such as amber ale, pale wheat ale or brown ale found their hop rates increased and malt character toned down to appeal more to IPA drinkers. Porter and stout increasingly ditched actual malt-driven flavors for the wide world of desserty adjuncts. By the mid-2010s, we had entered an era where malt-forward flavors were being shunned by many drinkers whether they realized it or not, and we still find ourselves in this position today. This holding pattern has stretched on for almost a decade.

Bet September ales were malty. Good and malty, I bet. Just the thing, a spot of the old September.

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

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

*Yikes! This today is me at 60 looking back at me at 40 looking back at me at 20… and finding a beer related anecdote!
**Which sorta points out how “heritage” is the collection and shaping and editing of only the bits of history we like. See: “Practical Notes on a Visit through American and Canadian Ale Breweries”, Journal of Institute of Brewing, 1907, Vol. 13, Issue 4, page 360 – 362.
***Roughly, the image is of a tree full of slobbering angels stuffing their faces with tiny butter cookies but going on and on about the butter cookies from before.

The Sore Back Grimey Nails Bug Bit Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Not sure if this will end up being a very involved post this week. Vacation time. And this vacation this year comes with a bit of a to do list. Lots of little things getting done. Some small pieces of housework, a bit of slog in the garden and some wandering about locally. A minor league ballgame down in Syracuse NY yesterday, a new favourite restaurant in Pete’s Trattoria in our nearby Watertown and even threw a few Ithaca Flower Power in the grocery cart on the way home. A favourite for coming on 20 years. A couple of nights in Montreal coming up. All sounds good. Still… as the week progressed and I was having a lovely time noodling about, it became obvious that the good beer scene wasn’t keeping up – still so much neg around. What to do about that? Well… stay in the garden. Yup. And to that end I offer as an offset to all the unhappy news this blossom from a Purple Teepee bush bean that I was looking at Tuesday. Neato. I even made it clickable. They are like tiny orchids. Dandy. There you are. Fine. Let’s go. Enough of Mr. Sensitive.

First, Knut wrote a great piece about a beer fest being run as beer fest should be run, setting out ten reasons why Bryggerifestivalen i Trondheim works, things like the setting and the helpful volunteers who keep the event running smoothly. I think this is key:

The locals. A good mix of people. Young and old, town and country, beer tickers and something light, please. Family friendly during the day, which also means that everyone behaves. With 60.000 visitors over the three days, only a handful need to be escorted out.

Being broadly welcoming and well connected is always important. No one really cares about the terpenes. They just want to feel included and have a bit of fun. Speaking of which, The Beer Ladies Podcast will soon be back after summer vacation and they want to know what you want to know:

We’re (nearly) back! We’re planning out our next season this week, and would love to hear from you – any beer-y topics you want? Interview subjects? Haunted locations? And where do you prefer to find us?

Don’t all clammer about them interviewing me… I’m far too shy… and stuck with the doom and gloom label. (Not true. I’m a happy guy. People want happy. As they should.) Interesting observation about “where you prefer to find us” as in “where do folk find anything these days. Even Stan is unsure about where things are to be found.

Note: we actually love orderly lines in Canada. We also do not love patenting higher forms of life – unlike in the USA – but who the hell gets to patent a life form, as Stan explained in this month’s HopQueries, that one does not invent but merely stumbles upon in nature:

A “found hop” has found a name. … Sattler first found the hop in 2015 in Idaho’s St. Joe River Valley, an area he had often visited as a child. He later brought back rhizomes for testing that confirmed the hop is genetically unique, and the new variety is patent pending. Approval is expected in the fall. In the late 19th century, miners and loggers in that area were known to brew beer. Sattler thinks Elanie likely resulted from open cross-pollination of local wild hops with hops the miners and loggers brought with them.

Similarly. A question. What is a “social drinker”? Not sure the author of this piece knows – even after having quit the booze for a month:

I am a social drinker, and for most of my adult life I have always been the first person to order shots and often the last person to stumble home… After the hangover-free month, I won’t lie, I felt amazing. I felt like I had accomplished many things and I could remember every second. I didn’t spend any time in bed nor with my head down a toilet and I didn’t experience hangxiety. My relationship with alcohol has changed for the better and drinking to oblivion is no longer an option.

Un-bean-like. Definitely. As is this – you’ve all heard of the huge and horrible fires in Canada and elsewhere this summer. In British Columbia they threaten a region of Canada’s wine industry as reported at Jancis Robinson’s site by Arnica Rowan:

Two days ago, a forest fire took off on the parched slopes above the Niche vineyards. It tore across the hills, leaping from tree to tree, fuelled by tinder-dry brush and breathtaking winds. Joanna and James were at the winery preparing it for harvest when, at 4.30 pm, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable stopped at the gate and told them, their son and James’s parents, who live on the West Kelowna property, that it was time to leave. They locked the winery doors and drove down the hill and across the Okanagan Lake bridge to the younger couple’s house on the north side of Kelowna. As they fled, Joanna could see the flames snaking rapidly down towards the lake behind them.

Yikes. Very very not purple bean blossomish, that. Not good.

Speaking of doom and gloom, I am waiting for the argument that the main driver in craft brewing’s fall from grace isn’t the lack of value or the simmering bigotries that seem to pop out from every corner. No, it’ll be those large and listened to voices of the main news outlets stirring up troubles by proclaiming craft’s demise. How willl that ever attract the necessary newbies to keep the lights on? Who wants to jump on to that sinking ship? Consider this in The Guardian this week:

Brown, who is American, said craft brewers had been through a “brutal” period. “The craft beer bubble burst in the States in the late 90s, and the same thing is happening here now. “Everybody thought it was cool, everybody started doing it and then everyone was competing to have the next new big thing. And you overwhelm your own market so that even your most loyal customers can’t tell the difference between your key brands and your one-offs. In a bust, people go back to things they recognise. And we’re definitely in a bust.”

Me? I am thinking people are more and more recognizing gin as well as a nice white wine spritzer, frankly. Better for the pocket book. You know, would it hurt good beer to come up with a simple postive spin about beer and stick with it? Ditch the unattractive clubby complexity like they have in Trondheim and make it easy to like beer again. And I don’t think this observation is gonna help:

Just because invention feels slow in real time doesn’t mean it’s happening. This is the kind of thing you may not realize until you look back 10 years from now—“Oh, wow, we didn’t even have X style of beer in 2023!”

Wow? Really? What does the Pruple Teepee bean think of that? Let’s see:

The botanical species, Phaseolus vulgaris, was spread throughout South and Central America in ancient times and experts believed domestication occurred separately in South America and Mesoamerica sometime before 8000 BCE. The species was carried from the Americas to Europe through Christopher Columbus during his second voyage in 1493, and German physician Leonhart Fuchs drew the first official botanical drawing of Phaseolus vulgaris in Europe in 1542. After their introduction in the late 15th century, Phaseolus vulgaris spread throughout the Mediterranean, cultivated as a vegetable by the 17th century.

I had no idea. Tradition. That’s pretty cool. I just looked that up now. (Well, the “now” when I wrote this part of the post.) Fact: beans don’t need no damn innovation to be lovely and purple. Now, turning that line of argument a bit on its head, Jeff broke out the pilsners this week. Well, he may have had some to drink, too, but he tried to establish the state of the styles that use the word including Czech pilsner, German pils, North German pilsner, Italian pilsner, Alsatian/French pilsner and New Zealand pilsner as well as:

The pilsners mentioned above are either real styles or variants with enough substance most brewers recognize them. But out in the wild you might see a bunch of other stuff that they’re throwing against the wall: Polish pils, hoppy pils, Bavarian pils, imperial pils, Belgian pils, rye pils, etc. The existence of these random beers illustrates how much currency the “pilsner” name has achieved. Like IPA, it’s a category now, not a style—at least in the US.

I can easily live with all that. After all, how many beans varieties are there to plant? Many. Many many. Yet – still just beans. See, this is not a call for reducing the varieties of beer. Just improving the conceptual simplification. Perhaps relatedly, I was struck by this observation from one Phil under Boak and Bailey’s recent post about a perfect beer judging contest:

Ten or fifteen years ago one of the American craft beer sites/aggregators ran a “Best Beer In The World” poll; IIRC the top ten included eight imperial stouts from US breweries, including three different barrel-aged versions of one beer. Which I guess is the Jeanne Dielmann problem: your audience of experts/enthusiasts may be experts, but they’re also a social group with its own self-reinforcing preferences and prejudices. I suspect this problem is actually worse with enthusiasts than with experts, ironically – the Sight and Sound 100 isn’t all Jeanne Dielmanns, after all – so if you’re going to open something up to the public, make sure you open it right up.

Is adding “the public” to the pool going to be beneficial or not? Dunno… given the largely amateur clubby enthusiast nature of beer judging. (One is never sure who the others, those self-declared over complicating if not fibby “experts” are.) Let’s be honest. First, the judges are drawn from a pool of traveling keeners with time on their hands. Then the keeners are part of the activily reinforcing homogenous self-affirming culture that sets the norms and expectations. And the norms include the ever expanding the style categories and standards within those categories chasing that “wow!”… the tail of novelty. Then, of course, the problem of self-nomination of candidates for the judges’ consideration.* And what are the rules? Is it individual ranking with these awards or are panels used like at those awards – and is there silent averaging or cross table persuasion? Does the majority rule or is there a weighting formula? Finally, add the booze and the same faces’ boozy bonding. You might as well be handing round the hymnals and tamborines. As a participatory hobby, no prob. No one loses an eye. Fun tasting panels for casual comment? Sure, fill your boots. It’s a lot like achieving personal bean growing bliss. But as a method of establishing the definitive best and awarding glory while explaining the value of good beer to the broader community? Err… not so much…

Speaking of complain, complain, complain… James May, the somewhat annoying car show lad who acted as the foil for Clark on a very good wine show, was in The Times this week saying it is time for a pub purge… and he owns one:

I look at the past and I know it was awful. I know if we could be teleported back to the 1980s it would seem filthy and horrible and backward. Maybe the nostalgia thing is part of the pub’s problem. It needs to have a reality check — what does the pub mean in the modern world? — rather than desperately trying to preserve what we imagine is an institution. It isn’t. Britain is historically a bit oversubscribed with pubs. They used to function as a sort of home from home for a lot of people . . . and that role has largely disappeared. So there are probably too many pubs and, brutal though it is, there’s no harm in having a bit of a purge.”

Not sure where this fits into the bean-not-bean continuum. Hmm. Still, perhaps beer judging, cartoon guide writers and style huggers should be as honest or at least more brazen. Fight for your right! Make your case like James. If there is very little interest in actual traditional brewing and ye olde ways, why not stick it all in a corner, call it a museum and let folk get what they actually want – boozy fruit juice served in an IKEA showroom!

Where does that leave us all? Julie Rhodes argues this is all indicactive of what she describes as a mature market “characterized by market saturation, limited distribution channels, fierce competition for shelf space, a greater need for brand differentiation, and increased direct consumer communication”:

…as the craft beer landscape continues to evolve, brands can expect to see changes in the marketplace that are indicative of a fully mature market – crowded shelves, demand for calculated innovation, and the curation of increased brand loyalty. And these changes will be felt at all levels of the 3-tier system. “Own Premise” consumption is actually rising, so the taproom business is looking pretty good at the moment, which should be great news to owners and operators considering the profit margins are healthier than in the wholesale channel. On the flip side, the squeeze in the wholesale channel will continue as brands can expect to see national chains consolidate their craft beer sections due to declining velocity metrics.

Maybe. This article sees a similar scene in India where taproom sales expand as sales off the shelf drop. Interesting. And perhaps that might be as optimistic as we can hope for at the moment. Not yet in decline. Something like myself. A sort of stability in the face of change.

Finally, we also have this story out of India… as if they heard Stan‘s call for an update earlier this very week week:

On Tuesday, the Villagers living near Shilipada cashew forest in Keonjhar district were in for a surprising sight when they went inside the woodland to prepare ‘mahua’, a traditional country liquor. Instead, they found a total of 24 jumbos, apparently drunk, sleeping near the place where mahua flowers were kept in water in large pots for fermentation. “We went into the jungle at around 6 am to prepare mahua and found that all the pots were broken and the fermented water is missing. We also found that the elephants were sleeping. They consumed the fermented water and got drunk,” Naria Sethi, a villager, told PTI.

Excellent. Sleep on, Jumbos. And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Waiting for a BlueSky invite but having IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a dormant Patreaon I am not sure why I would add another. So many created to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

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

*But how else to earn the entry fees that pay for the judges’ buffet?

The Mere Days Before Vacation Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Mid-August. What to do? What to do? Soon I should have that annual dream about having to go back to school, never finding my courses, finding it all too late to catch up and… why am I even here anyways… seeing as I have more fingers on one hand than I have years to retirement. It’s coming. Thoughts of autumn come in shades of brown, whether new corduroys or old leaves. Like these lovely images from Warminster Maltings, a clickable one of which is nipped and tucked to the right. But I rush ahead. Too far ahead. Plenty of green days still to come, right? Right? Better be. I have plans. Plans a plenty for the next couple of weeks away from the coal mine. Well, the office. The home office, half the time. But my shoes are generally black so you get the idea.

First – and as much as for equal time requirements as anything – one very interesting bit of the old vid I came across this week is a wonderful PR piece for a maker in the old coopering trade:

The special delivery of a 9000L wine foudre by Taransaud at Château de la Chaize near Brouilly. Very proud of our coopers! (sound on).

Sound on indeed for quite a display of how staves and hoops come together to hold over 11,000 sleeping bottles worth of the old Chat de Chaz, one of which sits nearby, sleeping with others in the cold and dark, waiting for my own Christmas dinner in a few years.

Neither sleeping or in the dark is Mudgie who has some shareable thoughts on why of all the pubs that are lost the Crooked Pub, apparently of little interest when opened other than for being off plumb, is now a national cause:

Over the past forty years, the pub trade as a whole has been in a long-term decline that has led to tens of thousands closing down. The reasons for this are down to a variety of changes in social trends and attitudes, although certain government actions such as the Beer Orders and the smoking ban have exacerbated matters. There is undoubtedly a profound sense of loss about this, even from people who never used pubs much… At times this can turn into a kind of vaguely-directed anger, as we are seeing here, and people are keen to look for scapegoats such as pubcos, developers, supermarkets and government. But the reality is that pubs have mainly been undone by social change, not by some malign conspiracy, and there is no remotely credible alternative course of action that would have made it permanently 1978.

And Stan had some good thoughts on the benefits of not chasing the tail that craft’s been diving after for all these years now:

I am left considering what it means for a brewer to be creative, or what it takes for a beer to be considered new, even novel. New Image Brewing, located in an adjoining town, currently has a terrific helles called Do Less on tap and in cans. It is brewed with malts from Troubador Malting here in Colorado, and thus probably tastes more familiar to me than to you. The malt flavor in Do Less is different than the malt flavor in Bierstadt Lagerhaus Helles, brewed less than 10 miles from New Image. Bierstadt Helles, to me, is pretty much a perfect beer. I’m not going to quit drinking it because I’ve found something new (and practically speaking, Do Less is probably a one-off). But new, interesting and good, to me, that is creative. It would be greedy to ask for more.

Indeed. And greed may get one more – or less – than one counted on. Which is why context – the big picture and the long view – is so important. And Andreas Krennmair has added to that total sum by publishing his new book, Bavarian Brewing in the 19th Century: A Reference Guide. He advises that it is available on Amazon worldwide, both as paperback and Kindle e-book and gives the friendly caveat:

Please note that this is properly nerdy beer stuff….

Which is a healthy approach to such things. One can embrace the lighter topic – the hobby interest – too firmly and squeeze much of the joy out if it. Turn it into a belief. Fortunately for a scribbler, the downsides of things can be as interesting as the up and gives opportunity for humanity to expose its gentle foibles. We have as the current example this summer’s continuing flow of opinion about craft’s collapse yea or nay as with this article “Is the craft beer tide turning?“:

“Distributors and retailers have been reducing their focus on distributed craft and searching for growth in other pockets, but there are signs that the worst reductions may be in the past”, the association said. Overall, craft brewers “continue to face economic headwinds on both business and consumer fronts”, it said. From a business perspective, borrowing costs continue to rise, and while input cost increases have stabilised, they remain elevated over previous levels. Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows inflation eroding consumers’ buying capacity.”

Not to mention mega-brewers selling off craft assets.* The news has reached as far as India. Heck, even those boosters for booze at GBH have been having their swings at poor old craft:

“To me, that experience of drinking in your garage with your friends is universal whereas Braxton maybe isn’t,” Sauer says. “When a craft brewery is presenting to a retailer, [the buyer] asks, ‘Can this brand travel?’ I wanted to remove some of those assumptions.” He also hopes Garage Beer can shake off some of the flavor expectations with which drinkers associate the term “craft beer.” Research Sauer conducted in partnership with the marketing department at Miami University in Ohio found that the top characteristics respondents linked to craft beer were “hoppy” and “heavy.”

“Heavy” – oooof! Is that the new curse word? The Beer Nut shared his thoughts on craft meets US macro:

I can safely say it’s true to type for this inexplicably craft-credentialed American industrial style, being dry, crisp and very dull. There’s a tiny hint of fruity lemon fun hovering in the background, but otherwise it’s a straight-up fizzy lager of the nondescript sort. I couldn’t leave things there.

Endtimsey. But, you know, for many of those who have invested deeply in the fading trade on way or another there is still talk of turn around. Could be. As with maybe fringy party politics perhaps, there is that sort of normal human desire for plucky redeption when the hero is cornered, the hope against hope that fuels the observations of alien sci-fi characters like Spock or Doctor Who. Which is what makes reading about the beer trade and beer culture so perhaps unhealthily yet tantilizingly compelling. Especially when it isn’t as firmly footed in fact as I fully expect Krennmair is in his new book.

Note: CB&B has published a handy newbie guide to all mash home brewing – a clear sign of a downturn as ever I saw:

Mashing grain is what makes beer beer. Yes, hops, yeast, and water certainly play important roles, but it is only through the mash, whether performed in your house or in the process of manufacturing malt extract, that the soul of beer is liberated from its starchy origins. Mashing grain is to beer as crushing grapes is to wine, as pressing apples is to cider, and as collecting honey is to mead.

Also note: twenty years ago this very week, I invented the “Molrona” during the 2003 black out. You. Are. Welcome.

Martin noted a sad ending with a photo essay from his recent visit to Corto, Katie and Tom Mather’s establishment, which I never saw myself but supported as I could:

It’s incredibly cosy, and welcoming, and tiny. One spare table upstairs, where the cheery chap brought our Wishbone and Thornbridge… Sorry it was a flying visit, Corto folk, you were lovely. Best wishes for whatever you do next.

Say hello to Tom Grogan, 92, now in his eigthth decade in the pub trade:

Mr Grogan, who is believed to be the UK’s oldest landlord, said he was not that keen on alcohol himself. He said despite pouring thousands of pints, he drank “very little” and had been only drunk “half a dozen times”. His career began 71 years ago, when started helping out in a pub in Rusholme after arriving in England. Seven years later, he got the chance to become a landlord, but said it meant he and his girlfriend had to make a quick decision.

You’ll have to read on to figure out what that decision was… unless you guess… because it’s not much of a guess…

Ron’s Remebrances take us this week back to Scotland in the mid-1970s when a radical change in licensing laws were brought in:

I was dead jealous when my school friend Henry, who studied in Aberdeen, told me of pubs not only staying open all afternoon, but until 1 AM. All totally legal. And totally due to the interpretation of a new Licensing Act for Scotland. Which, I’m pretty sure, wasn’t intended to liberalise opening hours to the extent that it did… I can remember visiting Edinburgh in the late 1970s and wondering at the continental-style opening hours. And wondering why the same liberal treatment couldn’t have been given to the rules in England.

GBH has run an interesting if ripe study of Coopers Sparkling Ale this week:

It can be tempting to dismiss Sparkling Ale as an early offshoot of Pale Ale, without any notable idiosyncrasies to help define the liminal space separating the two. Most contemporary stylistic guidelines highlight a focus on Australian ingredients, but beyond this and some more proscribed production techniques, the difference is minimal. Though delineation between styles has never been an immutable barrier, for those of us who grew up on it, Sparkling Ale has a highly distinctive character.

I had no idea that there were service disruptions in out next province to the left, Manitoba… keeping in mind as my excuse that the border is almost 2000 km and a timezone away. Seems like the government store is on strike with unequal consequences:

When Shrugging Doctor, a local winery and vineyard, said in July it would expand and move operations, its owners had no idea it was about to head into a devastating strike-induced limbo thanks to a labour dispute at the Crown-owned liquor corporation. While Manitoba beer producers have the option of distributing their own products — by hiring delivery companies to drop off merchandise to private vendors, bars and other sellers — by law, wine and spirit manufacturers aren’t allowed to do the same, said Shrugging Doctor co-owner Willows Christopher, who founded the business in 2017.

Matt is doing a good job keeping an eye on Mikkeller’s deek around the ethical implications of claims made against it:

I see Mikkeller are pouring at another U.K. festival this weekend, which is honestly absolutely wild to me. I feel like there was a real opportunity to create real, progressive change in U.K. beer a couple of years ago. But this is being moved on from in favour of the ££££.

No doubt part of their long term plan which seems to have been successfully pulled off if this admission from late July is understood. Easy to enough to foresee back in February 2022.

A poem by Justin Quinn was noted by the ever lyrical M.Noix this week that is worth saving and sharing… and thereby trodding all over intellectual property rights but for this bit of review… lovely… I have dreams also like that… and it even rhymes here and there. Solid second stanza letter “u”use.

Four weeks ago, I forwarded the news that Russia had moved to grab Carlsberg’s assets, you know, those assets that really should have been shut down when the invasion of Ukraine began but, you know, money. Well, now the brewery has spoken out:

The chief executive of brewing giant Carlsberg has said he was “shocked” when Russian President Vladimir Putin seized its business there. Cees ’t Hart said the company had agreed a deal to sell its Russian operations in late June, but just weeks later a presidential decree transferred the business to the Russian Federal Agency for State Property Management. “In June, we were pleased to announce the sale of the Russian business. However, shortly afterwards, we were shocked that a presidential decree had temporarily transferred management of the business to a Russian federal agency,” he said.

Well, lookie lookie. Why buy when you can take? Beware with whom you think you are doing business with, I suppose.

Note: the ever increasing subdivisions of beer expertise never ceases to amaze.

And finally what week would be a proper week without a story like this:

A “plague” of racoons have stormed a number of houses across Germany to steal beer and kill family pets. Households have been billed up to €10,000 after returning home from their holidays to discover their kitchens destroyed. According to Germany’s National Hunting Association (DJV), a total of 200,000 raccoons were killed last year in a bid to control the population.

Furry bastards! And – that is it for another week. Not a record breaker for length this week and, frankly, a few familiar sites may have been mailing it in from the beach. Plus all those awards! Which claim to pick global champions …while also reminding you that judging is nothing more than what a few folk thought on the day. Ah, August! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

*Revisiting a thought, we discussed two weeks ago how that portion of Ontario’s smaller brewers who are members of the trade association OCB have launched a new lobbying effort that has a bit of an odd goal: “Keep Craft Beer Local.” I say “odd” as the argument that seems to be being made is taxes are too hight therefore small brewers will have to sell out to… dum dum duuuuuummmm… strange folk from away. As previously noted: “If no changes are made to the tax structure, he and the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, say they fear more and more of Ontario’s craft breweries will be bought up and merged with foreign buyers. The association says it represents over 100 breweries.” This is an odd argument, as I say, seeing as international mega brewers are divesting themselves of their craft assets. I wonder if this is just an example of bad timing, the power points keeping up with the news. Perhaps Ben can help explain.

The Beery News Notes For The Dog Days Of August

Here I am! Thursday morning once again. And the whole world of beer and brewing… and photos of vegetables. It’s what you demand. I know. I hear you. That’s an Orangello plum tomato from Chiltern right there. Just six seeds to the pack and everyone a winner. Super productive and tasty. Seed influencer opportunities most welcome. Katie Mather is eating her veg, too, as we read about in this week’s feature in Pellicle:

Eating salads, for me, has been a radical act: buying fresh food, taking the time to prepare and pre-prepare meals, encouraging myself to eat and to feel good about eating. Learning how to make bowls of healthy, nourishing vegetables and herbs so delicious that I don’t think twice about devouring them. I’ve been steadily unlearning my aversion to salad dressings, and my unhealthy belief that unless they are low-calorie, salads are worthless.

Exactly. All veg is worthy. Is anything else happening out there, things not in my garden? Other than, you know, famous pubs surprisingly burning to the ground days after being sold off… what’s that you say? Here’s the update:

An update post on the pub’s Facebook page on 27 July said: “The Crooked House has been sold. Unlikely to open its doors again. Marston’s have sold the site to private buyer for alternative use, that is all we know. This is just to update the page so nobody makes any wasted journeys to the site.” A petition to save the pub from redevelopment, launched on 29 July, had attracted more than 3,500 signatures. Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, said there were “a lot of questions” surrounding the fire. “I’m sure the authorities will get to the truth,” he said.

The BBC has visited in happier times. There are rumours that the path of the fire trucks to the site was somehow obstructed leading to suspicions piled upon suspicions: “… blocking off of the lane to the pub seems to indicate a deliberate act.” Police have been on scene. Jings! I say no more.

In almost as disasterous legal news, ye who lives by the sword apparently dies by the sword as whatever is left of California’s former craft darling Stone has lost a tradename court case in Europe to Molson Coors, owners of of the venerable Stones bitter brand – making some extraordinary and entirely unaccepted claims:

Among them was a claim that Molson Coors had not provided “sufficient evidence of genuine use” of the Stones bitter brand – which has been around since 1948 and which was the sponsor of Rugby League and The Superleague in the 1980s and 1990s… that was rejected, along with the claim that “the element ‘Stones’ of the earlier (Molson Coors-owned) trademark will be perceived by a part of the English public as the music band ‘The Rolling Stones’ or the surname ‘Stones’, whereas the trademark applied for Stone Brewing is perceived a reference to the object ‘ stone’.”

Speaking of Molson, to my east… perhaps… Gary has been writing about mid-century brewing marketing from Quebec in a series of posts like this one focusing on 1939-40 advertising including one from Molson with this eye-catching slogan:

The campaign tied into a longstanding advertising theme at Molsons, “The beer your great-grandfather drank.”

Yum… beer flavours from the mid-1800s… Now, on the topic of what your great-grandfather wouldn’t be drinking, The New Yorker has a piece this week on something recently noticed in France:

Recently, in Paris, posters appeared all over town advertising an unfamiliar beverage: vière. “Du jamais bu,” one poster punned—“Never before drunk.” It came in a seven-hundred-and-fifty-millilitre glass bottle, just like a Chablis or a Marsannay. The bottle had a metal cap, the kind you might pry off the top of a Heineken. “It’s not a typo,” Gallia, the drink’s manufacturer explained, on its Web site, of “vière,” adding that “we wanted to switch things up by combining two malts that we love.” Vin (wine) + bière (beer) = vière.

Really? Perhaps you would prefer a citron presse instead? Simple. Perhaps something your great-grandfather would enjoy.

Update: Jessica Mason (who totally wins this week’s best humoured approach to rudeness award) reports that the young folk love cask but they are clueless… dimmer than a 25w lightbulb and just can’t find it in a pub!

Speaking to the drinks business, the ‘Drink Cask Fresh’ campaign coordinator Pete Brown said: “The industry talks it [cask ale] down way more than the drinker does. No one ever says it’s old fashioned or geeky or old men in socks and sandals. We say it to each other. Younger drinkers don’t.” Brown explained: “It’s not just about how tall the font is – the badge at eye level is handy but you can’t have two and a half foot long hand pulls. But even Guinness with its new font is now poured just below eye level. Cask is the only beer poured beneath the bar where you can’t see what’s going on and this greatly adds to the uncertainty around it.”

Not sure I believe that… but beer writers interviewing beer writers is on the rise, however.*** Yet also not sure I believe this either. Paste is having none of the sort of thinking that leads us to kiddie cask campaignning and vière, instead joining the death of craft pile-on and pronounced upon the scene thusly:

Welcome to the spiritual ennui of the beer world, a problem at least partially separate from the myriad economic factors that have made it so daunting to run a successful small brewery in this day and age. On the most basic level, the craft beer landscape has simply felt trapped in stylistic stasis in recent years, a far cry from the previous era of new discovery and growth that was fueled in the 2000s and 2010s by a market in which it was so much easier to turn a profit. This stagnation has no doubt played some role in the migration of craft beer drinkers to other segments of the alcohol world…

Moving on. Have you? Perhaps relatedly, no wonder Ron has joined the masses of people (as discussed just last week) who are questioning why they ever every got at all interested in beer now that it is (i) not cool and (ii) fruit juice with a malt base:

There are so many parallels with the real ale movement. Kicking off with, mostly, very excited young people who want to change the (beer) world. Slow beginnings, followed by intoxicating, seemingly never-ending, growth. Then you look around and you’re all in your forties. And those young people, they just don’t understand what good beer is. They like some new nonsense, that isn’t proper beer. Not like the stuff you love. “Your beer is boring.” Youth says. “We want something new and exciting. Not that old man beer.”

Old man beer? What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what your great-grandfather drank? Speaking of one form of that – and despite all the recent Guinness love – this may be reason enough to boycott the stuff and all Diagio products:

Guinness and Kilkenny back on tap in Moscow despite the war sanctions: Exports of Irish beer and spirits to Russia have been suspended, but are now available in pubs and supermarkets. Vladimir Putin’s local Irish pub in Moscow is boasting of pouring real pints of Guinness and Kilkenny, despite sanctions imposed against the war in Ukraine

But is it? Are these all bootlegged products smuggled infrom third countries? Is Heineken not the worse offender?

Heineken Russia launched an Irish stout last year after Guinness was withdrawn from the country following the invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, the Dutch drinks giant said in that it would join other western brands in withdrawing from Russia following the invasion. However, it maintained a local business that has developed products after it withdrew the Heineken, Miller and Guinness brands. The company makes Miller and Guinness in Russia under third party licences.

Or is it Carlsberg? Questions questions questions. I ask all these questions as, frankly, I am not paying the fee to look behind the paywall.** But they are great questions, you will agree! Speaking of questions being asked, Greene King Abbot Ale came second in the race to be named the Champion Beer of Britain… and people went nutso… as reported in the measured tones of The Sun:

Angry real ale fans are all frothed up amid claims a champion beer contest was rigged. They are questioning how sponsor Greene King’s Abbot Ale won a coveted silver medal at this year’s Great British Beer Festival. The Suffolk brewer’s pub staple was also named the UK’s best premium bitter. Greene King is one of two backers of the festival, along with the JD Wetherspoon pub chain — where Abbot Ale is one of the biggest sellers. Drinkers at London’s Olympia venue were outraged at the vote by the Campaign for Real Ale. Beer blogger Mark Briggs, of Burnley, fumed: “I suspect some unfair influential intervention.

Mr. Briggs appears to write a column for a chain including the Lancashire Telegraph given sa bazillion links pop up for the same story so perhaps it should be beer columnist, beer connoisseur and passionate pub campaigner.* I am of the “get a goldfish!” persuasion in such matters so congrats to this mid-range and accessible brewery for put out a pretty good product. Some beer nerds just need to get a life. And as for doubts as to the definitive authority of a beer judging contest – what the hell do you expect? The ever reliable Ed was even on the scene of the incident:

…the next day was a bit of a struggle it was brightened by the return of twerps whinging on about the GBBF on twitter, this time because Abbot Ale got overall second place in the CBoB. CAMRA and the blind tasting panel are in the pay of Greene King it seems. Which I suppose makes a change from Wetherspoons. To me the twerps are just showing their ignorance. The wonder of cask beer means that at times it can elevate beers to highs you would never have expected. If people spent less time suckling at the devil’s drainpipe and more time drinking beer served as god intended they would realise this.

Martin went out and about looking for some to make up his own mind: ” sadly it’s a bit dull and “milky” (NBSS 2.5)… 2.5 is the level at which you don’t take a beer back, you just decide NEVER to try cask again.”

Things I did not know until this week #1. Sir Walter Raleigh brewed a beer in Virginia in 1585 – and it was made of corn:

…the same in the West Indies is called MAIZE: English men call it Guinea wheat or Turkey wheat, according to the names of the countries from whence the like has been brought. The grain is about the bigness of our ordinary English peas and not much different in form and shape: but of divers colors: some white, some red, some yellow, and some blue. All of them yield a very white and sweet flour: being used according to his kind it makes a very good bread. We made of the same in the country some malt, whereof was brewed as good ale as was to be desired. . .

Not the oldest beer in North America as eight years early that came to what is now Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic care of the 1577 mission of Sir Martin Frobisher, spending a summer for the English navy mining for ores some of which may have ended up in the superior cannon that destroyed the Spanish Armada. Neato. But is this new find the first beer brewed in the hemisphere or even the actual first beer? I know that Cartier brought wine and cider in his hold in the 1530s as was drunk in the 1520s off Newfondland. Still looking for Cabot‘s records from almost 100 years before Raleigh’s trip.

More recently, we learned this week from Boak and Bailey that 1860s London barman Thomas Walker was born Mary Anne Walker – and moved between those identities for a number of years:

Once he had become famous, this became more difficult. Throughout the late 1860s, newspapers delighted in reporting that ‘the female barman’ had been found out again, and taken to court. Eventually, he made some attempts to capitalise on his reluctant fame. In 1870 he went into business with one Solomon Abrahams with the idea of being the celebrity landlord of a pub in Shoreditch. Walker ended up in court again after a dispute over the takings with Solomon. (Lake’s Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser, 15 January 1870.) Eventually, perhaps having run out of options, in the 1870s, Thomas began performing as Mary Walker, “the original Female Barman”, on the music hall stage.

Back to the present, in health matters CNN published a commentary on a study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association indicating an unbalanced increase in mortality from alcohol use:

According to this research, from 2018 to 2020, women saw a 14.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths, compared to a 12.5% increase among men. And the shift was also pronounced among individuals 65 and older, where there was a 6.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths among women, compared to a 5.2% increase among men… There is also the simple fact that Americans have long had a deeply dysfunctional relationship with booze, and as women have moved toward greater equality with men — and lived lives that look more like men’s — women are engaging in more alcohol-related dysfunction.

Really? And what to make of some of the negative news out there when the European Union has declared that beer production has now returned to pre-pandemic levels?

In 2022, EU countries produced almost 34.3 billion (bn) litres of beer containing alcohol and 1.6 bn litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all. Compared with 2021, the production of beer with alcohol in the EU increased by 7%, returning to levels closer to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when production was at 34.7 bn litters. When it comes to beer without alcohol, there was no change compared with 2021. The EU’s total beer (with and without alcohol) production in 2022 was equivalent to almost 80 litres per inhabitant.

Something is selling… but what? Is it just that we want comfort beer in these times of uncertainty? I’ve buy that. If you think about it, isn’t that what identi-craft hazy fruit flavoured IPA are? As much as macro lagers are labeled? Is it what is on the plate next to the comfort beer that really matters, like this rural Australian pub has discovered?

In between pulling beers at the bar and serving fine South Australian wines in the adjoining dining room, Sanne passes me the wildlife-driven menu I’d travelled all this way to see, where I gamely order the specialty of the house – the feral mixed grill – a challenging plate sporting such non-everyday delicacies as emu rissoles, kangaroo fillet, goat chops and camel sausage. Dismissing the momentary reservation I might in fact be devouring a petting zoo – when the dish arrived, it was absolutely delicious – beyond delicious in fact – my favourite, I think, was the goat chop.

Mmm…. feral mixed grill… great-grandpas likely tucked into that once in a while, too. And – that is it! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

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

*…and draftsman of some pretty ripe prose: “It presented itself foggy golden in colour. The aroma being certainly intense, as I expected. Peach, lemon-citrus, passion fruit and some piney notes were all identified. There was a sublime flavour explosion of more juicy, peach, passion fruit and lemon-citrus on the palate. Some floral, subtle spice, pine and soft, caramel malt sweetness were also tasted; in this beautifully balanced, Simcoe and Loral Cryo hopped beer. More tropical fruit, lemon-citrus and a hint of spicy warmth, in the crisp and long, drying finish.” Lordy!
**It’s not like I’m speading money on just anything for your pleasure reading, you know. Look at this, for example. Clearly a botch on the meaning of the meaninglessness of “craft”… yet there it is. Does one pursue the question? No, because it is going to be public knowledge in 73 hours. It always is. Make that… two: “Upon satisfaction of customary closing conditions, Tilray will acquire Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Blue Point Brewing Company, 10 Barrel Brewing Company, Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Company, and HiBall Energy. The transaction includes current employees, breweries and brewpubs associated with these brands. The purchase price will be paid in all cash and the transaction is expected to close in 2023… the acquired brands will elevate Tilray Brands to the 5^th largest craft beer business position in the U.S., up from the 9^th…” Canadian whacky tobakky firm buys tired old dull brands… why? Jeff has more. Note: I do pay for The New Yorker. All the funny cartoons and those fabulous “Tables for Two” columns are worth every penny.
***Sort of the old self-sustaining adver-news-a-torial thingie I suppose… in The Lion King wasn’t this called “The Circle of Life”? Yet… if how Pete… who will say these things? PS: do you like the chronological appoach to footnotes instead of the traditional sequential? I’m experimenting. Send a telex with your thoughts.

The Most August Edition Of Beery News Notes In 2023 For Far

Well, so this is August. And what have I done? I had old pals over, one not seen since about 1989, and shoved some Hard Way Cider at them. Lovely stuff. And I actually finished a briefish if tiny fonted biography of pretty boy Johnny Milton which was interesting even as a reminder of the politics of the 1600s. Forty year old Hons 17th Century Lit flashbacks triggered. Shudders. Have had hard time getting back to the books since my first and only bout of Covid back in April but seem to be back on track, thanks for asking. Next, on to High on the Hog. Also of note, I still have no understanding of cricket whatsoever but apparently the crickets were good this week.

First up, Beth Demmon has another edition of Prohibitchin’ out, this time with a portrait of perry maker Erin Chaparro:

Erin splits her time between her position as a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Educational and Community Supports Research Center and working at the tasting room—which is on the farm’s property—on weekends. But before there was Blossom Barn or even pear trees planted, Erin wondered: what type of farm would set them apart? The pair didn’t want to commit to water-intense crops like hops or lavender, but had been introduced to perry a few years prior and loved it. Plus, the state fruit of Oregon is pear, and the perfect pears found in the iconic Harry & David gift baskets are grown in nearby Medford. It was an ideal crop to pay homage to the land, stand out from the myriad nearby wineries, and maintain their commitment to sustainability.

I love perry but, being in Ontario, have little access to the stuff due to the apparent anti-perryist policies of the provincial monopolists. Frankly, pears are the provincial anti-fruit as far as I can tell. Speaking of policies gone mad, Professor Dan Malack helpfully guided me to this indictment of Canada’s very restrictive new alcohol intake recommendations published in Le Devoir. I am going to presume you can parse this bit of French being the clever readers you are:

“Le modèle utilisé a perdu tout contact avec la réalité. […] Et honnêtement, nous croyons que les études sélectionnées ne représentent pas la quantité et la qualité des études sur la question”

Wow. Just wow. As might be obvious from my writings* hereabouts, I can’t fully buy into a public health policy framework that is as adversarial and even perhaps cynical as in this comment: “accusations that opponents of the CCSAs report have alcohol industry connections are especially spurious, although typical, neo-temperance ad hominem responses“… BUT (and I say BUT!!!) that finding on the quality of the CCSA study is astounding. Moi? I will stick to my max 14 drinks a week plan, thanks very much. Alcohol is still not a health drink.

Note: J. R. R. Tolkien discussing his love for beer & pipe smoking. He lived to 81.

Speaking of modernity and extended life spans Euro-folk-wise, I saw this new to me Substack author (writing under the presumed pseudonm Lefineder) and enjoyed this wee essay called “When did people stop being drunk all the time?” which argues that temperance was not the primary moving principle that cause the shift in societal norms – industrialization was:

England transitioned to a low rate of beer consumption toward the end of the 18th century, looking at the more granular data on Malt beer consumption we see that this transition coincided with the timing of the onset of the British industrial revolution (1780-1800s). Society is transformed in several ways, Whereas beer expenditure used to consume 12.5% of people’s salary in 1734 in the 1800s it consume only 1-3%. In the English poll tax of 1379-81 we can see that a total of 2.5% of the medieval workforce is comprised of brewers, in 1841 this is reduced to only 0.3 of the labor force.

This makes tremendous sense. Just as the Black Plagues caused the end of serfdom in Euro-ville, a couple of centuries later industrialization caused the Great Awakenings which led to the benificence of Temperance which was then modified through the blended capitalist / social welfare state to serve as the foundation of the glory of modern western society that we all enjoy today!

Stan had possibly the greatest weekly round up this week, putting at least myself to shame. My tears are spraying the laptop screen even as I type at this very second. I’m not sure why. Probably the deft paragraphing. And probably due to his highlighting of the B+B round up of comments in response to the question why beer seems boring at this point:

Has the excitement gone out of the beer scene, and if so, why? Those are the questions we asked in our most recent newsletter last week. They prompted some interesting responses across all channels. Overall, we’d say those who had an opinion shared our sense that things feel depressed.

What I find most interesting about their post is how it illustrates the need to move “across all channels” now if you want to find good readings – but how it is actually not all that hard once you sign into all the services. You can rethink your priorities like Boak and Bailey have been doing. Check out Don, for example, for voluminous trade positive but extremely well backed views via emailed newsletter. Read Maureen at Mastodon. She’s there. It’s all there. Just a bit more like driving standard than automatic. Folk who bloat on about not leaving Twitter despite its search for the deepest levels of trash seem to me to be like lost spirits wandering an abandoned shopping mall, long devoid of the old good shops, getting the vapours as they run their fingers along the dusty rose tile trim of the stagnant water fountain by the food court, dreaming it was all still like that one interesting bit of Wonder Woman 1984. Err… sorry… it’s all the Milton I’ve been reading doing talking…

Elsewhere amongst the Canadas, Ontario’s small brewers are lobbying against what they consider unfair levels of taxation, a claim that is largely based on our split sovereignty reality where juristiction is divided in a number of ways including between the federal level and the provinces, leading to different taxation regimes (… as well as some bizzarely fifth-rate governments.) Long time friend of the blog (and once upon a time my mini biographer) Troy gave the CBC some quality quotes:

Craft brewers in Ontario face higher taxes than anywhere else in the country, said Troy Burch, senior manager of sales and business development at Great Lakes Brewery in Etobicoke. If no changes are made to the tax structure, he and the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, say they fear more and more of Ontario’s craft breweries will be bought up and merged with foreign buyers. The association says it represents over 100 breweries. “We’re being taxed too much compared to the rest of Canada,” Burch told CBC Toronto. “What we would like to see at the end of the day is just a fairness when it comes to looking across the country.”

Note: there are over 400 craft breweries in Ontario but only 100 or so in the association. Not sure what the other 300 think. Someone has to pay for health care and sins will be taxed.* Interesting to note that the threat is foreign buy-out and not closure. By the way, by way of disclosure the OCB used to sponsor this here blog years ago. $100 a month. Sometimes the cheques came from a PR agency in St.Louis, Missouri. Dunno why.

The Times ran an article on a Bristol pub with a seemingly winning plan for the Sunday lunch crowd that may have been too successful:

A pub in Bristol has been named the hardest restaurant to reserve in the world, with a waiting list stretching more than four years for its Sunday roast dinners. The Bank Tavern on John Street near Castle Park, which was founded in the 19th century, has closed bookings due to an increased demand for its award-winning lunch… the restaurant confirmed it had begun working its way through the backlog and expected the waiting list to reduce soon. It added that bookings for the remaining days of the week were operating as usual.

Boak and Bailey’s notes on the place are in their guide to the city’s pubs including these particular directions: “On an alleyway next to a churchyard along the line of the old city wall this small pub has the feel of a local boozer despite its central location.” Evan wrote a state of the union address on the English pub for VinePair, too, and found hope:

“I think there’s a kind of romanticization of the idea of the pub, which treats it as this sort of unchanging institution that relates back to Merry England,” he says. “Jolly images of medieval times and so on, which is, of course, all utter nonsense.” Instead of being a purely British invention from the halcyon days of “Merry England,” numerous foreign influences have helped to create British pub culture. In recent years, some of the most visible might have their origins in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. But a generation or two ago, they predominantly came from the Republic of Ireland — geographically part of the British Isles, but decidedly not part of the United Kingdom.

JRR might disagree on the nonsense suggestions but the overall argument is sound. One sound he might not have appreciated, however, is that of children… in the pub… as investigated by The Guardian this week:

It’s a summer afternoon and most of the punters appear to be young adults and parents in their 50s, plus some teenagers with gen X parents. Boyd’s observation strikes me as true at a cultural level even deeper than the pub: the problem with kids isn’t the kids; it’s the parents. Or rather, it’s what some parents become when their kids are under 10, gripped by a sense that the burden of keeping them contented is astronomically heavy and should be shared by all. Martin Bridge, 52, the owner of the Whippet Inn, a boutique, child-free restaurant in York, says: “Being in the industry 30-odd years – and also out shopping, out in public places – how parents view the responsibility of their children, and how that has changed, is quite mind-blowing. It feels as though the kids are now the responsibility of everybody, all the time.”

Frankly, this cultural angst has always struck me as a bit odd (like perhaps that cold draught felt on a warm day as when the backs turned to us at the Golfers’ Rest... though perhaps space was also being made in a way…) but I live in a jurisdiction with a human rights code that protects folk receiving services from discrimination based on family status… so go figure.

Speaking of innovative tavern type places, Gary continued his series on Anchor and its legacy with some thoughts about the brewery in the hippie-dippie era of San Franciso in the 1960s which led me to this piece by Gary’s main source, David Burkhart, about the beat poetry era San Fran of the 1950s:

Frederick Walter Kuh moved to San Francisco in 1954, where he became a waiter/bartender at the Purple Onion. Two years later, on October 19, 1956, Kuh and fellow “founding father” James B. Silverman opened the Old Spaghetti Factory Café & Excelsior Coffee House at 478 Green Street, in the former home of the Italian-American Paste [sic] Company. The OSF became San Francisco’s “first camp-decor restaurant,” Fred later told the San Francisco Examiner, “but it wasn’t called camp then.” Early on and counterintuitively, he advertised his bohemian North Beach watering hole and its “Steam Beer Underneath a Fig Tree” in the New Yorker.

That’s a nice sharp photo of the matchbook cover art that the restaurant handed out.

For the double this week, Evan Rail wrote a heart-felt remebrance of Fred Waltman, travelling beer expert, beer guide author and founder of the Pacific Homebrew Club, and included these observations in his thoughts:

The other meaning I’ve taken from Fred’s death is a bit harder to talk about, so I’ll just come right out and say it: The good beer movement is aging, and funerals for beer lovers are going to be a lot more common than they once were. While it might have been the height of youthful exuberance to launch a brewery or a craft beer bar two or three decades ago, plenty of those first- and second-generation brewery and pub owners—and beer fans, to say nothing of beer writers—are now quickly moving toward and past retirement age.

Very true. And this comment from Andreas Krennmair on Mastodon in response to B+B paints an interesting portrait of the man:

…one time I met Fred Waltman, he actually told me why there was always his cap in his beery photos. Many years ago, he got accused by some internet trolls that he hadn’t actually visited all the places he claimed to have visited, and that he had just stolen the photos off the internet. So to prove that the photos were actually his, he started putting his very own cap in the frame. And that‘s how the cap in the photo became his trademark.

We also lost Warren Ford, one of the great tea persons of England as well as David Geary, founder of the Geary Brewing Company of Portland Maine, whose beer I’ve enjoyed for over 30 years, especially their Hampshire Special Ale. The brewery shared the news of his passing on Facebook:

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of David Geary. In 1983, David and Karen Geary founded the 13th U.S. craft brewery, and David’s pioneering spirit and leadership played an integral part in the explosion of the American craft beer revolution. We send our deepest condolences to the Geary family and take this time to celebrate David’s life and legacy.

And I was surprised to read this week that there are efforts in Ireland to expand barley marketing into being a food crop. I was surprised because, as a Canadian of Scots parents, I have been eating the damn stuff my whole life. But it turns out we only eat 2% of the crop of the StatsCan graph to the right is to be believed. The rest is basically what the US brewing industry is based on. Then I learned that Campbells stopped making their canned Scotch Broth and I am now a little sad. Another hot tid bit of barley news that Matty C shared?

Interesting article. Barley/Ag in general is where most of the efforts to make beer production sustainable need to be. Farming barley uses a lot of water, and produces around half a kg of carbon for ever kg of malt used in the brewhouse. That’s a lot of CO2!

That is a nutty stat right there. Spin that, ye brewery PR type experts (slash) independent writers (slash) consultants (slash) independent beer award judges!

And finally, Pete Brown shared some very personal thoughts in is emailed newsletter, building on the piece by Mark LaFaro discussed here abouts a month or so ago, as he shared his grief at passing of his own younger brother, Stuart Brown, who died at just 51:

It makes me examine my own drinking very carefully – I drink too much. Many of us in the industry do. This excellent piece in Good Beer Hunting last month makes for uncomfortable reading. It makes me think about the false bravado we have, the way we mutually reassure ourselves that we can’t be abusing alcohol because it’s work and we know what we’re doing, or alcoholics only really do any real damage when they’re on spirits (Stuart killed himself with Henry Weston’s Vintage Cider and cheap white wine, by the way.) But it also reminded me why I argue so hard that there is such a thing as positive drinking. Stuart drank mainly alone, in his flat. He didn’t go to pubs much. He didn’t have many friends. If he’d drunk socially in the gorgeous 17th century pub five minutes from his flat, he might still be here. I’m back now. More hesitant and less confident in what I’m doing, less sure of myself in this strange industry. Let’s see how it goes.

Tough reading such open thoughts. My family member like Stuart was my youngest uncle who recently passed away. He was a bit lucky. He caught himself before an early death but he dealt with the serious burdens he placed in his path for the rest of his life.

As per and as is more and more the case, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

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

*There is still no J-Curve folks even if the harms are statistically marginal with lower levels of intake.

These Be The Beery News Notes For A Week Of The Big Smoke

It’s been a weird week. A low pressure system stuck over the Gulf of St. Lawrence has driven smoke from massive forest fires, first, in Atlantic Canada and, then, in Quebec south down upon our fair city, well… really our region and, yup, right down into the American northeast. That’s Monday evening up there. Tuesday the hazard rating hit 11. And no one made a Spinal Tap joke at all. Sports fields shut, tight throats and all outside workers called in. Now everyone is following the smoke forecast. And you can too with this helpful anxiety raising app and its realtime disaster info. So all backyard activity is pretty much suspended which means sitting around with a beer in hand has to wait for the winds to shift. My near neighbour Spearhead Brewing posted this on Facebook Wednesday:

Our thoughts are with those affected by the devastating forest fires. Due to the hazardous air quality in Kingston today, we have made the difficult decision to close our patio. However, we warmly welcome everyone inside our taproom, where we prioritize your safety. Kingston’s air quality is currently classified as ‘extremely dangerous’ by the government…

In equally uncheery news, The Guardian ran an article this week which laid out a few of the factors behind UK craft beer closures:

“The craft beer market became heavily overpopulated over the last decade. The cost of living crisis now means many of these brewers are fighting for a place in a shrinking market. Some of them will not make it.” Small breweries also often suffer from limited routes to market, lacking proper distribution channels to consumers, and are reliant on taprooms and supplying to local bottle shops. Those restrictions have limited the turnover of many craft breweries, meaning that they were not able to break even.

The Yorkshire Evening Post ran a set of old photos from one Leeds suburb and included this snippet of 1930s-esque fact:

Dantzic Brewery on Regent Street in Sheepscar was best known for their black or spruce beer, a drink which is similar to stout in that it is made from roasted malt. The name Dantzic was taken from the town in Germany – now Gdansk in Poland – which was famed for brewing Spruce beer and also the high quality of oak casks which were used. The brewery was owned by Joseph Hobson and also made ‘vintegg’, a ‘delicious’ egg wine.

Yikes! Not necessarily relatedly, Jessica Mason shared the news in Drinks Business that Guinness 0.0 on draught would be hitting Irish pubs – leading to questions as to it’s capacity to support a session.

Diageo has been urging pubs to take the 0.0 brand on draught and its teams of are now working to install separate pipes for the 00 brand into venues that want to stock it. One County Louth publican who is planning to have the 0.0 draught version installed, told reporters: “The drink is very popular with designated drivers who feel they can still have good craic drinking a zero zero and it almost tastes as nice as the real thing. The drink has become a big hit in a very short space of time and now Guinness wants to roll it out everywhere. The reaction to it from the punters is very positive and the 00 obviously has a huge future and is currently the number one non alcoholic drink.”

Whether it’s a beer or a nice cup of tea, you need the zip to go round after round, don’t you? I just can’t see no-alc beer being a sessionable thing. These things are based on the active ingredient. Who chugs decaff? Oh, that person. Yes. I suppose. KHM has other thoughts:

This is the notorious line whose first release was followed by a global recall as it was contaminated with food born pathogens. A poster child for the dangers of taking beer’s chief preservative out of the equation.

What else is going on? I wade through the week’s newsletters by email I’ve filed away… but none really attract a thought. All that self-declared beer expertise and nothing much to speak of. Now, do get yourself on Eoghan’s Like a Little Eel subscribers’ list. Not so much about beer but lots of good writing. Oh, and read Boak and Bailey’s review of Desi Pubs by David Jesudason which really is two reads well worth your while:

It makes you itch to visit Southall, Smethwick or, closer to home, Fishponds, and go somewhere new. Perhaps somewhere you’ve previously ignored because the signals it sent weren’t ones you were primed to read.

Fishponds? Speaking of sessions in pubs, Stan noted one thing in his weekly news notes which was a quote from Jaya Saxena‘s piece in Eater which got me thinking:

The bars that seem to be thriving are ones that managed to embrace the breadth and depth of the LGBTQ+ community. The kind of bar that used to serve only older folks or maybe only young people, or only white people or only men, those bars sometimes seem to struggle. I think bars that have figured out how to embed themselves deeply in the community, maybe being used as a different kind of space during the day than during the night, seem to be thriving.

Thinking back to my bar rat days, I thought how odd the idea of bars which “embed themselves deeply in the community” might have been to me back then. If bar is a third place it is also to a degree antithetical to the general community. Narrow nowheresvilles which offers a perfect alt-reality. Why do you want to be in there? Because you don’t want to be out here. Wouldn’t you like to get away? You want to go where people know people are all the same. You want to go where everybody knows your name. Because in the broader community you are a nobody but in a bar you are with those same people who know you and are like you. Yup. What a miserable idea. No wonder these are the places that are struggling and dying. Viva the big raft bars. Viva!

Speaking of affronts to cultural identify, Eric Asimov wrote an interesting article for The New York Times on how tyrants and dictators regularly destroy vernacular wine cultures:

The Soviet Union routinely sought to transform the local winemaking customs of its constituent republics, discouraging, for example, the winemaking culture of Georgia, and instead creating vast state vineyards that could supply enormous amounts of wine for the Russian market. Likewise, in the Alentejo region of southeastern Portugal, the tradition of making wine in clay talha, amphoralike vessels, largely disappeared in the mid-20th century as the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar pushed the country into centralized wine production. In Spain under Franco, regional methods died off as the government channeled wine into bulk production.

And speaking of cultural appropriations verging on colonial hegemony, Pellicle ran an excellent article by Paul Crowther on whatever Mexican lager is supposed to be. This passage is particularly apt on the meaninglessness of these sorts of things:

…in beer writer Mark Dredge’s book A Brief History of Lager, he suggests that Mexican lagers are more like pilsners, and don’t have anything to do with Vienna lagers. There’s an implication that there are pilsner and Vienna style lagers produced in Mexico, but that there is no such thing specifically as ‘Mexican lager’. “We brew all sorts of lagers in Mexico: pilsners, Viennas, bocks,” Mariana Dominguez of Cervecera Macaria, based in Mexico City, tells me as I try to get to the bottom of this Mexican lager mystery.“What about Mexican lager? Is there such a style?” I ask. “I think it’s something that White Labs [a yeast manufacturer and wholesaler] made popular,” she explains. “They are selling a yeast supposedly propagated from a Mexican beer as ‘Mexican Lager Yeast’. No one in Mexico really uses this as it’s too expensive.” “We’re not brewing ‘Mexican lager’, we’re brewing lager.”

The layers of appropriation are rife. Outsiders upon outsiders layering. American craft style square-hole aficionados and yeast hawkers building upon the unfortunate Hapsburgs and their German industrialist fellow travelers who stood on the shoulders of Spanish colonizing imperialists. Isn’t Mexican beer Tejuino?

Apparently there is oddly at least one unexpected winner in the fall out from the Bud Light brand botch:

Coors sales have accelerated from 6.3% growth over the latest 52 weeks to about 13% growth over the past two months, Spillane said in analyzing Nielsen’s data. The gains have been fueled by demand for Coors Light and Miller Lite. “It’s difficult to determine the duration of the boycott, but it has already lasted longer than industry executives anticipated and appears likely to impact the July 4th holiday,” Spillane added. “Molson Coors appears able to service the demand spike due in part to supply chain improvement (part of the revitalization plan) and learnings from COVID supply chain stress.”

And there are more details on that situation noted last week where branches of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain have been licensed in Ontario as restaurants:

The licences will allow 7-Eleven to serve alcoholic beverages with food at tables in the dining section of each store. Customers are not permitted to take any drinks off the premises. After 7-Eleven applied for the licences in 2021, the AGCO launched a formal review called a Notice of Proposal for all of the company’s applications. That’s a more rigorous process than what the AGCO goes through for the vast bulk of licence applications. The AGCO put out Notices of Proposal for less than one per cent of the nearly 7,000 liquor licences it issued in the 2021-22 fiscal year, according to its annual report.

Prepping for the impending regs allowing corner store beer sales, one presumes. Speaking of Ontario, The Agenda a news magazine produced by TVO ran a 30 minute panel on the state of craft beer in our dear province with some familiar old faces on the show.

And finally – and no doubt inspired by the research shared last week into the dainty powder rooms of Philly dive bars – the image Will Hawkes shared the image of one of the grottier urinal troughs I’ve seen, a vision that takes me back to a bleak Sydney Mines elementary school boy’s washroom circa 1971 when I was dropped into what felt like the grim 1940s after moving from the modern, cool and hip Toronto suburbs. Fabulous.

That’s it! That’s enough from me. It’s back to you for now. And as per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the newer ones noted in bold:

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

*And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The Greatest Week Of The Year

Can you believe late May and early June? I was so caught up with the darling buds of May on Tuesday morning, I even posted a third of this two days early. Significantly… no one cared. Anyway, that’s the life of a blogger two decades in. No time to fret. Summer is coming on soon. Last weekend, I got out the big hat and the SPF 50 and partook of a bit of rugger spectating and – I say I say – I shall do so again this week. Wha-hey! Look at that action. The eastern Ontario league games are free and, as you can see, the seats are good… as long as you remember to bring one. You don’t get as close as that gent in grey, mind you, but he was a linesman so there is that.

First up in beer – because there was no beer tent at the field of play – very interesting news from Evan Rail and the publication of an anthology of the best of his his beer writing.

…until now, the old “Why Beer Matters” was never available in print, just on Kindle. (Yes, there was a limited-edition letterpress edition, but that doesn’t count.) This new print + ebook edition was made with the amazing @vellum180g. It looks great, if I do say so myself.

Many of the pieces he has included in the book speak from that era of optimism about good beer that existed before the buy-outs, the murk, the scandals, the fruit sauces and the closings. Very worthwhile and all excellently written. Buy it here.

Speaking of putting it all together, Matty Matt Meister 3000 has published a tale in Pellicle this week, a tale of an apple named Discovery:

You couldn’t possibly make proper cider with eating apples, I thought… I have since learned when it comes to any alcoholic beverage, this breed of snobbery gets you absolutely nowhere—all drinks are valid and have their place, after all.* And some of the best cider in the world is made using sweet, deliciously succulent eating apples. Chief among them: the noble Discovery. First cultivated in 1949, Discovery’s story began when Essex fruit worker George Dummer planted pips taken from the Worcester Pearmain variety in his garden, thought to be pollinated by another variety called Beauty of Bath. The tale goes that the young tree was left unplanted, and was exposed to frost, with only a light sack covering for protection. Fortunately it survived, and eventually came to the attention of Suffolk nursery keeper Jack Matthews, who took grafts of the tree and continued to develop the variety.

Note: unlike all drinks, all apples are valid and do have their place. White Claw and glitter beer are crap and you can’t even turn that shit into compost.

Stats on the UK beer scene are something that Victim of Maths more than dabbles in as this week when he notes that off-trade booze prices have siggnificantly dragged behind inflation:

The latest UK inflation data shows that in spite of continuing high levels of price increases in food and non-alcoholic drinks, prices of shop-bought alcohol, particularly wine and spirits, have not risen at anything like the same rate… you could speculate a few reasons: 1) We produce a lot of it domestically 2) Perhaps ingredients less affected by price increases 3) Ability of retailers/producers to stockpile due to long shelf life 4) Used as a loss leader.

Staying in Britain, The Times published an article on calories and booze and shared this interesting bit of metabolic prioritization info:

“Unlike protein, carbohydrates and fats, alcohol cannot be stored in the liver,” says Eli Brecher, a registered nutritionist. “Drinking large quantities results in your body prioritising the breaking down of alcohol over its other duties such as burning calories and the result is that your metabolism slows and calorie-burning is less efficient.”

Across the Channel, Boak and Bailey have been to Paris and have identified some key tips to navigating its beer bars, tips like this:

You wouldn’t cut towards the bar to greet the staff in a branch of Wetherspoon, though, before finding a table. In France, we’ve found, people will do exactly that, effectively announcing their arrival, and getting (quiet, possibly unspoken) permission to take a seat… Of course we got it wrong at craft beer bar FauveParis at 49 Rue St Sabin on our way out to Italy, while we were still warming up. We then spent 30 minutes trying to win over the staff whose feelings we had hurt. They wouldn’t look at us, talk to us or crack a smile because, fair enough, we’d rudely walked in and failed to greet them before looking at the beer list.

Not dissimilarly except it’s elsewhere, Martin is on the road again, this time in Estonia and Latvia with a series of posts (along with the usual generous accompaniment of excellent photos) that also unpack what you might expect if you found yourself there and thirsty such as these two observations in Riga:

Across the church square was Banshee, a brand new craft bar and another pre-emptive tick, which seemed to specialise in orange murk, a change from the sour obsession in Tallinn… And the local specialties of dumplings and blood sausage were worth the calories, though an impulse late order of dried fish and squid was a step into Estonian authenticity too far.

Closer to home, a great bit of vid was posted this week from here in Ontario where two beer fans report on the limited joys of that regulatory loophole that allows a 7 Eleven convenience store to be deemed a restaurant that serves beer… as long as you don’t leave with it.

Odd story in GBH this week about efforts to undo US alcohol regulation related to category management and how the Brewer’s Association is going to submit something to the Federal regulaory body, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau… but there’s not much input from either the Bureau or the Brewer’s Association:

“…that’s what the BA’s for. Maybe they bring on category management expertise to represent them regionally,” Fisher says. “Now you’d have a category manager who represents these 20 regional beer brands to help them with their business.” The BA declined to answer questions about what would fill the void left by category management, saying it is not speaking further about its comments to the TTB at this time. Brandt says that if the BA is going to put category management under the regulatory microscope, the trade organization should consider an alternative solution that it thinks would benefit its members. (This is a complex question, as some of the BA’s largest member breweries employ their own category managers.) “It would be really cool if they proposed an alternate method,” Brandt says. “Bring me a solution, not a problem, right?”

Not that complex at all. Just that once again, the Brewers Association has no solution what with its hands being tied by the big members… like their hands are tied in implementing EDI… or kicking out bad members, etc., etc., etc…

And I ran a poll this week and, as never before, people on Twitter responded. An exit poll of sorts, 305 nice folk… or maybe 105 folk and 200 bots shared their thoughts on why their interest in craft beer faded. These things aren’t interesting for any sort of overall result so much as the patterns. 11% found other nerdy hobbies, 20% moved away from craft’s culture but almost 70% expressed it’s too pricy or too much of the same experience – both of which speak to value. Then we look at the comments. “NEIPA” says Knut. “Same-ish says Andreas. “$20+ for a 4-pack I might not like makes the price not fine” says Andres. “Too many mediocre/bad quality offerings and a backlog of aged beer in retail” says Dan. “I am simply too old to drink things flavored with children’s cereal” says Kathleen. I likd that one particularly. Then… we also heard “a repetitive online culture that seems more invested in getting clout from strangers on the other side of the world” from Robin. “Gatekeepers” says Japhet and “deliberate antagonism towards those who like their beer from a cask” says Ben. And another Dan wrote: “…there is a lot of crappy performance beers (I call those that seem to have been brewed on a dare or a whim and are more like candy than beer) & it has dulled my interest in exploring.” Add growing up and getting more health conscious. Good comments. Not even all that cranky. Some folk just not as interested if they ever were.

By way of contrast, Stan wrote an interesting post about the residual interest in treating craft brewers like “rock stars” in the context of considering the new revised edition of The Complete Beer Course by Joshua Bernstein. This is an idea which, as Stan kindly noted, I have thought is utterly nutso for over 15 years. I am not alone. But, like those moving on surveyed above, the value decision in the other direction is still a real for some:

In 2023, Bernstein chose to include brewery workers like sensory scientist Rachel McKinney at Fremont Brewing and packaging manager Marcus Crabtree at Kings County Brewing Collective. “I really want to give a voice to these people that are in the industry and show people that beer is more than just one single person, that breweries are miniature factories and everybody has different roles, and getting that beer into your hand requires a lot of hard effort and a lot of [teamwork],” he said to Iseman. What does that mean for the exalted few? Tod and Cilurzo are in the index of the latest edition; Maier and Calagione are not (although Dogfish Head makes multiple appearances). Call it coincidence. Photos posted on Instagram from The Brewers Retreat this week prove, plenty of fans are still willing to pay to hang out with their brewing heroes.

Hero is a word tossed around a lot. And, like rock star, it is too often misplaced. If these be your rock stars, get to a few good concerts. And if these be your heroes, well, maybe time to go volunteer somewhere and find people quietly contributing to those in need with little fanfare. One aspect of this, of course, is that these labels are applied by writers and not the people themselves. Writers with a dictionary that might be a week bit too concise. Or maybe with an interest in plumping up a recycled tale within their chosen narrow area of focus. Still – is this enthusaism any less valid than those who choose to move on after losing the love? Probably not. As we were all so wisely told before… back in 1986.**

Note: “philly dive restrooms are nicer than most cities’ whole bars.”

That’s it! That’s enough from me. As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the new ones noted in bold:

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

*Doubt it, Ralphie!!! For those not familiar with the ever excellent phrase “Doubt it, Ralphie” here is some background information.
**Winner of the 2023 Vacuous Conclusion Of The Year Award!
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*I’m calling it “the Pellicle” now. Not “The Pellicle” because that is not the name. Like “the rugby” which I say to my kid who plays. As in: “Good day at the rugby, kiddo? Good, now you know what I read in the Pellicle?” That sort of thing.
**And we didn’t even imagine doing something like this…
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Thursday Beery News Notes For March March March !!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember also to read the blogs and the newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and also from Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he checks in from the road. . And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? The Moon Under Water if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. Book some time for Hugging the Bar as they go long as well as the Guys Drinking Beer in Chicago. And check out The Share with Stephanie Grant.

And, yes, also gather ye all the olde style podcasts while ye may. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. Did you know Lew Bryson started a Seen Through A Glass podcast in November 2022? Me neither! And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

Finally, we lift our hats to the departed newsletters and podcasts… and those perhaps in purgatory. BeerEdge may have been effectively absorbed into the revival of All About Beer. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

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

These Be The “February Goes Like A Bat Outta Hell” As Per Usual Beery News Notes

March. The most magical word in the dictionary. OK, pie is up there, too. But March. It’s coming soon. I even started spring cleaning by working on the old cold room built under the front steps of our 1964 bungalow. That’s a tidier view of it in 2007. When I stashed beers. Some pretty sweet bottles in there back then. Now I am 18 months into mainly gluten free intermittent fasting in part to recover from that hobby. And, spoliers, I shelve more wine than beer. So this week, I threw a bunch of +15 year old empty beer bottles that I kept from those days into the recycling blue box including a couple of these – only then to be woken at 3 am by someone rummaging through who (as I found out when I checked in the morning) took them all. He’s going to get a surprise when he’s told at the depot that he has a fine collection of utterly unreturnable US-bought craft and import niceties.

Beer? Beer! First up, here are a few brief headlines for your consideration:

- - Yikes: “…if there is any fetishisation of babies at the event, it will be immediately shut down…”!?! Or… maybe sooner.
  - Hmm… brand buy out or merger?
  - Ron says parti-gyling but I say gyling paritay!!
  - Mudgie sees a pattern of busy pubs.
  - Bill Gates has bought 3.76% of Heineken.
  - The Beer Ladies learn about the origins of the Brewseum.

Speaking of headlines, this one at the BBC is a bit of a neck twister: “Brewdog: UK craft beer giant expands into China”:

The joint venture with Budweiser China will see the Scottish firm’s Punk IPA and other beers brewed in China… In a statement, Brewdog founder James Watt described the Budweiser partnership as “transformational” and said it would bring the craft brewery to “every corner of the world’s biggest beer market”. Under the deal, Brewdog said it expects its beers would begin to be produced at Budweiser China’s Putian craft brewery, in the south-eastern province of Fujian, by the end of next month.

Where is the “craft” in “multinational with ambitious plans under geonicidal dictatorship”? Also… funny that craft nerds are more upset about the arrangements with Bud! There is so little left in that adjective. And the also not-craft of Molson (Coors) is also apparently on the move too, though much less dictatorially:

Molson has seen six straight quarters of net sales revenue growth, with expanding sales in the Americas and elsewhere around the world, resulting in global net revenue above the 2019 baseline. Importantly, Molson’s third-quarter trend for sales to retailers (STR) was the best it has seen in over a decade. The brewer also initiated historic price increases of 10% in the U.S., far above the usual 1% to 2% hikes, to offset the impact of its own rising costs. So while Molson ended up narrowing its full-year outlook to the lower end of its guidance as a result, it is still expecting the long-term trend to keep growing.

Perhaps reflecting the core market that helped start this sort of growth during the pandemic, this week on Boak & Bailey via Patreon, I enjoyed their fond recollection of the deeper days of Covid when adults drank in the park:

During the second and third national UK lockdowns, in the winter and spring of 2020/21, we noticed that one of these wharves became a kind of unofficial outdoor pub. A group of men would hang out there most afternoons and evenings drinking beer they’d bought from the CO-OP next door. Some of them looked as if they might be homeless, others were in hi-vis workwear and branded boiler suits. You’d walk by and hear them chatting, amiably, or laughing together. It sounded exactly like a pub, only outdoors, with birdsong in the background.

And over on his substack page called Episodes of my Pub Life, David Jesudason shared the story of the Red Lion pub in West Bromwich and in particular the complexities* behind four stained glass windows:

In Smethwick and West Brom it was obvious where the diaspora came from and what their mission was. Punjab. Here for a better life. Dalwinder Singh who runs another excellent desi pub, The Island Inn in West Brom, summed it up: “I came here and I couldn’t speak English.” Now look at him. His punters love him. His son runs a thriving pub in Walsall. The glass shows how India was being partitioned and this led to huge amounts of violence between different religions. The bloodshed was not something they left behind in India, though.

Good to see such a range of winners at the Deja Bru 2023 historic recreation homebrewing competition, including an Albany Ale winning a medal.

Pellicle ran a helpful story on an oddly little covered topic – a beerfest. In this case, it’s the Independent Manchester Beer Convention aka Indyman aka IMBC and particularly worthwhile attention is taken to explore the venue, the 117 year old Victoria Baths, with some great supporting photos of the architecture:

Some breweries have the privilege of their own exclusive space and in 2022 Victoria Baths’ Turkish Rest Room became Thornbridge Brewery’s ‘House of Jaipur’, with light evocatively streaming through the striking ‘Angel of Purity’ stained glass window. By contrast, Berkshire-based Siren brought an industrial chic feel to the dark and atmospheric boiler and filtration room, while Cheltenham’s DEYA Brewing brought bean bags and chilled vibes to their bar, all drenched in deep red light. Things seemed to naturally slow down a notch in Room 3.

But in Thailand a beer fest has been cancelled due to the politics of beer fests:

The inaugural Beer People Festival was looking for a new 3,000sqm space after The Street Ratchada shopping mall announced last night that it would no longer host the event because its reputation could be damaged. “The shopping center is concerned that it may cause the public to develop the misconception that the shopping center supports political parties and is not neutral, which may bring about protests or political rallies and may cause disturbance to others in the shopping center or may affect the image of the shopping center in the future,” it… canceled the event to reduce “the risk of political impact” and reserved the right not to be responsible for any of the event’s expenses.

More have entered the AI-verkleption sweepstates this week with Robin and Jordan sharing their fears for future beer writing. And Jeff has continued his anxtity AI week. I wouldn’t worry if I were them… maybe. Let me explain. Last week Jeff posted a discussion with the image to the right that he descibed this way:

It’s appropriately Hopperesque; the algorithm successfully captures the distant look on the man’s face the artist was famous for.

To my eye, it’s actually a bit shit. Has all the charm of the diagram on a pizza box. The sepia tones are all wrong for Hopper who usually used brighter if matted colours. Plus the man’s eyes don’t have a distant look. His eyes are sorta crossed. And the woman’s hands are mangled like they got caught in a hay bailer and were fixed by a doctor who only used spoons. Then there are three glasses of beer for two people, the extra yellowish one dangling in space as it sits half off the table. Robin and Jordan’s AI text tests have a similar disengagement. Too bland to be claptrap. Elsewhere we learn that it’s an excellent source of neat and tidy packets of falsehood. So it’s also a claptrap machine. All in all, I think we are safe… and these three writers are safe. Unless you don’t give a crap about the standards of your imagery and your text or your research. What if you’re a brewery that buys and sells in bulk? Yes, this stuff could put fourth-rate branding summer interns at jeopardy. It could serve as a first draft short cut to let smaller teams get through more bulk work I suppose. But isn’t this fretting about the sort of stuff you want to avoid anyway? By the way, versions of this have been in places like law and community newspapers for years. No one seems MIA from AI. Is it all a fad, this year’s Segway? Shades of Free Beer 1.0 from 2005? Maybe.

Speaking of which. Where are we on the state of actual beer writing? Boak and Bailey in their monthly newsletter stated very positively that:

It feels as if there’s plenty of beer blogging going on at the moment. We’ve been struggling to keep our Saturday morning round-ups to the usual six or seven links. That’s fantastic to see.

Matty C, conversely, also posted some very interesting thoughts this week, interesting in particular given his chosen path. I aggregate thusly:

I’ve woken up thinking about the heyday of beer blogging, and how what I loved most about it was how observational and selfless it was, and how it helped me learn about the nuances of beer culture around the U.K. I’m struggling to find writing to really get engaged with at the moment because—and I’m guilty of this in my own work—so much writing now seems to centre the writer and their experience. And this just isn’t that interesting to me. I miss the observation.

I sit a bit in the middle of those two poles but find, as usual, it is important to move away from the idea that “blogging” is a class of beer writing, especially in terms of quality. There is some horrendously shitty paid and published beer writing and also some excellent stuff shared by amateurs and/or semi-pros either on personal websites, sent via newsletter or recited (with or with 27 “umms”) in a podcast. For me, what is important are the substantive categories – and what I see at the moment are a few main themes in pub and beer writing with, of course, both overlaps and outliers: (i) industry writing, (ii) trade friendly writing, (iii) politico-socio justicio writing and (iv) innovative creative writing.** Is there a fifth category worth mentioning?

Now… it’s the last on the list that Matt may be missing most, the interesting individual observation. There are a number of voices still taking the time to do this but they are certainly fewer than a decade ago… or two for that matter. Where are the wags, the short stories, the haikus, the artistes? As we can see below in the lists, we’ve had another wave of quietening of many voices in 2019-20. It wasn’t really the pandemic so much, I would argue, a bit of boredom after years of craft brewery buyouts. Which may be the real point. There is only so much to write about in beer culture, only so many angles – especially when during a deepening market contraction… errr, sorry, maturation. Plus when you find that your chosen area of life like beer culture is not always or never really was a “community” but in fact a marketplace undermined by an alarming lack of social justice, well, one starts to look for other hobbies. After all, it is only beer. And stamps are, you know… stamps! And there’s sherry too.

That’s enough for today. Did I mention that you still need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. I take pictures of all the mosses that I see when out on walks – and people tell me how lovely they are! Really nice. Sure, you need to take the time and have some patience but regular posting attracts the audience. I particularly love how you can follow a hashtag there. So do go and see. I even small-i-fied my recommended starter list of links for you so as to be less daunting. Have a look:

Remember also to check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and maybe soon from Stan at his spot on those Mondays but, you know, he writes when when he can. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more?

And, yes, also gather ye all the podcasts and newsletters while ye may. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

I’ve reoganized to note the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

*Extremely complex it seems.
**Industrial writing, like say the UK’s Morning Advertiser, is really only meant for business folk and a few fawning fans eager to have new words in their mouths. About the newest gadget. Or hop price fluctuations. Presumably this is reasonably secure for the writers and important for business folk – even if dreadfully boring for everyone else. Trade friendly writing is driven by the writers who have fewer facts than industry writers but want to please a larger group of fawning fans. Clubby writing. Standard issue brewery owner bios, kitty kartoons and authorizative statements on national beer cultures based on chaperoned junkets, discount trips on long weekends backed by a handful of emails. It’s glossy and pretty and all a bit empty. It’s also too often uncritical puff. Even industry writing is somewhat critical. And social justice writing is clearly critical. At its best, it sits miles away from political parroting. It’s a rich area of exploration that now has been well examined and should continue to gather pace. But – whether it’s a history or one of the various calls to action – social justice writing needs and thankfully often receives a committed thoughtful hand on the keyboard keeping it both factual and compelling.