Category: Ontario

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lew on blind tasting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: but not again this week) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. Things come. Things go.

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

The Beery News Notes For The Last Of May 2022

This is the time of year when it all becomes a blur. Weekend plans for the next three months need to be scheduled because, before you know it, time times out and things gotta get done before the snow flies. Snow will fly. We know that. So I spent the past long weekend recreating my turf-bound ancestors life circa 1450. Fires and dirt and nothing much around to make a meal out of. Completely unlike the very modern lads of Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Oland brewery shown above circa 1950…or ’60… They are modernists. No safety glasses, no screens or other barriers as the clinky clacky glass flew by. “Lean in to check, Jerry!” the boss shouted. That being said I did, no doubt like the lads above, have a beer or two after my efforts were done.

Now, let’s see what’s gone on the world of brewing. I hope not as much as last week, given the news ran to almost 3000 words. First up, even though he is taking a break from his weekly round up, Stan is still producing his Hop Queries newsletter, now up to Vol. 6, No. 1., which included this passage on a product I have no personal interest in trying whatsoever – no alcohol, no calorie hop tea… or perhaps something even less:

I confess the word gimmick came to mind last month when the company announced the launch of Hoplark 0.0, Really Really Hoppy and invited me to see the plant. They are making the point that their drinks contain no alcohol and no calories. Because I’ve been buying their HopTea at my local grocery store, because hop water seems to have become a thing (there are other non-beer companies producing hop-flavored drinks, Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada have both launched national brands, and many smaller breweries have started to produce their own), and because Hoplark is being made only about a 30-minute drive from home I decided to visit.

Moving to matters of actual beery things, I liked this post at The Regency Town House website, an examination of urban planning circa 1825. It’s a discussion of the planning of Brunswick Street West  in Brighton and Hove, England and the street is still there as is at least one of the pubs:

Busby’s scheme for Brunswick Town shows the east side of Brunswick Street West was planned to be individual stables and coach houses for the houses on the west side of Brunswick Square and the south spur of the road for stables at the rear of Brunswick Terrace West. The plan also shows the Star of Brunswick public house with a cottage opposite at the northern end of more stabling at the rear of the garden where Lansdowne Mansions would be built by the 1850s. There were two modest buildings just to the west of the pub which would be used as Green Grocers and Bootmakers.

The core of our fair city was build on Georgian plans and at work I regularly bump into stables and lanes for horses as part of the untangling of property interests.  The air would be full of the scent of poo.

Knowing my family’s industrial Scottish reality, this discussion from the BBC is a very light touch on the devastating reality that organized intoxication was for most. Events from the 1890s still echoed into at least the 1960s as family members sought to escape their past and present.

Sticking with the 1800s, Edd Mather posted about brewings from August to December 1849 according to the Alexander Berwick & Co  Brewhouse Book 1849 – 1852 which I understand was an Edinburgh outfit. Hefty brews from 6.3% to 8.7%. He then converted the first of the beers listed for home brewing set, in case you are interested in a pint of P3 come sometime in June.

Jubilee update. Coronation beers found in Stroud. Relatedly, someone felt “mildly patriotic” elsewhere.

Evan has a project on the go which all beer writers should be excited about, a survey of success and failures in book publishing. I added two sad tales but really need to balance off with the happier tales with Craig of Albany Ale… as well as Al and Max Theatre! Go make your confessions so that others may not suffer!

Eoghan wrote a strikingly sensible statement: “I will avoid subjecting you to my trite observations on my first experience of America…”

States in India have started rationing beer:

West Bengal recently began rationing beer to retail outlets with demand doubling over summer last year. Most states have witnessed volume recovery and are looking to surpass pre-pandemic levels, said Rishi Pardal, managing director of United Breweries, India’s largest beer maker. “Owing to peak summer demand, few states have also introduced local regulations have also introduced local regulations on movement of goods inter-state which may impact fulfilment of demand in certain markets,” Pardal said. “We are well-prepared to serve the market.”

On to the local election where all is quiet beer wise – odd given Canadian politicians tend to kiss more beer taps than babies during elections. One thing did happen. I was sent a copy of a lobbying document issued by the Ontario Craft Brewers but sent apparently by someone unhappy with the message. Here is the memo and here is a bit of the anonymous message in the covering email:

The attached may or may not come as news to you – but it would appear to be against your interests as contract brewing facilities, as well as anti-competitive and short sighted. The OCB appears to be focused on targeting and scapegoating smaller businesses, many of whom are diverse, incubators of new products, and if successful will eventually graduate to brick and mortar operations, while seemingly ignoring the much larger collective threat to Ontario Craft Beer from larger international brewers or the rapid growth of cocktails and ready to drink alcoholic beverages. 

Heavens!  Now, to be fair, the OCB memo does state that contract brewers do not contribute to local economies and take up valuable shelf space from those brewers who do. My immediate reaction was thinking of how these production breweries are often not “either or” businesses, how I knew of someone who worked a brewery’s canning machine who was packaging cases for plenty of other small breweries in Ontario, some bricks and mortar as well as some contractors. These smaller breweries and contracting firms would not otherwise would not have access to retail outlets or other expanded sales routes. And they, along with the production brewery itself, might not survive without this sort of work as part of the provincial supply chain. Many OCB members operate like this. Odd. The focus is needed elsewhere.

The gall is what gets you, as Afro.Beer.Chick flagged. So if someone wants to reference Juneteenth on a the label of some hazy IPA gak with fruit flavours added, does Mr. Driven Snow now get a chunk of change?

Bad behaviour claims against BrewDog continue – and I wonder if perhaps developing in a way that avoids the risk of examining similar acts closer to home. Are they the worst actor? Certainly not the sole bad actor. But the loss of reputation spreads. The situation is now tense. Evidence is undeniable. Individuals rightly utterly violated and repulsed. Me, I don’t drink the stuff myself. Good to see that the actual authorities with adjudicative powers are now becoming involved. Things need sorting.

And finally… Ron posted an excellent set of observations on another thing I avoid – beer fests – and how many are serving such small measures that they deserfve to be called “Thimble Fests“:

I used to go to many more. The main Belgian one, whatever that’s called now. The Borefts Festival. Others in Stockholm and Copenhagen. But that’s all a few years back. Now, I just can’t be bothered with most festivals. Why is that? Well, I’ve already told you, really. Lack of seating, long queues for beer. But the biggest reason of all is small measures. If you’re lucky, you might get a 15 cl serving. But it might well be just 10 cl or even a piddling 5 cl. I’ve got two glasses sometimes to take the edge off my frustration. Or taken along my own Imperial pint glass. A combination of small measures and long queues wring all the pleasure out of a festival for me. Getting in line for your next beer as soon as you’ve been served your last makes for a queueing festival rather than a beer festival.

Me, I don’t go as I don’t like being shedded with hundreds of drunk strangers. But I like that – “a queuing festival” pretty much sums that up.

There. Half the length and no doubt twice the value. For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: but not this week) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. Things come. Things go.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Of April

Here we are. Real spring. No more frozen nights on the forecast. Brussels sprout seeds are in some soil.  The cardoons are up. Cardoons? Yup, cardoons. Four foot tall edible thistles, a Victorian veg. Harry Dobson would be proud. Still rather insulated from the exterior world by my convalescent state but I am assured things are progressing as they should. It was April Fool’s Day last Friday. Best beery April Fools? This is my candidate. Silly but also somewhat restrained. What people might have actually asked about having once in a while, as a joke… as a… what… treat? A good brand making fun of itself. That’s a good thing, making fun. Like this! Fun!

Now, enough of that. Time to get serious. First up, care of Merryn, we learn that the BBC has reported on a Roman brewing site found in England, with speculation that it was actually only a malting with suggestions of a rather complex brewing industry:

Archaeologists have identified evidence of 2,000-year-old beer production at a site of a road improvement scheme. The remains of a Roman malting oven and charred spelt grains were found during digging in Bedfordshire, as part of the proposed work on the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet. Experts have analysed the grains and said they suggested people who lived there were involved in making beer…”As large quantities of grains are only allowed to germinate when the aim is to produce malt – the first step in the brewing process – this strongly suggests the people living at the settlement were involved in beer production,” a Mola spokesperson said.

Some serious neato going on there. Also neato? A map! This is an interesting info graphic. Who asks this question? I suppose health professionals. Utah makes sense but look at the dividing line between West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Florida panhandle and Alabama. Why? I have not idea. I am Canadian.

Pellicle posted one of the best articles it has ever had its hands on this week, a tale of tall ales titled “I Want To See Mountains Again — The Banked Beers of Teesside, North East England” by Reece Hugill:

Half-full glasses are pulled from the bar-back fridge, topped up feverishly from the hand-pull. Placed in front of me are two ridiculous looking pints of ruby-red cask beer. Foam cartoonishly mounded a full four inches higher than the brim of the glass. Wobbling and bubbling, alpine peaks and whips of pure white…

…The pints of Bass at the Sun Inn are magic. It’s a beer I usually don’t even like, but when banked, the beer seems to change a tiny bit. The fluffy head brings out a little more bitterness, the body is mellowed into something less vaguely malty and brown, into something soft and clean, like, perhaps, an unusual dunkel lager…

Excellent. You could do this with an Olands Ex back in college but it was a matter of pouring the bottle yourself.

Lars posted a really good thread about Christmas “sugar beer” for children in Norway including this fabulous if fairly frightening fact:

This newspaper article is quite illustrative. Headline: “The favourite beer of the kids.” They use 3kg sugar for 20l + 1/2 cup of malt extract. If you ferment it out fully that’s 8% ABV. No wonder “the kids prefer this to any soft drink.” Prob not 100% fermented, but still.

Question: is this a new technique? Holding some of the dry malt in a dry aromatic barrel?

In the increasingly vibrant world of beer related litigation, we have (care of Mike Kanach, Esq.) learned on one Mr. Parshall “who does business as Sports Beer Brewing Co. that is operated through a website” – court said this about his business:

Parshall is required to transfer to the university all Internet domain names containing a portion or derivative of Penn State’s marks. He also is to transfer sportsbeerbrewing.com so it ceases operation. The injunction prevents Parshall from engaging in any conduct that would cause consumers to erroneously believe his goods and services are authorized, licensed or affiliated with Penn State.

That is just weird. Took a university’s IP and put it on a beer can. In 2017 he did the same thing with Purdue and another judge did pretty much the same thing. Self-represented. Weird.

Not as weird, Stone now seeks a permanent injunction despite the Keystone brand lords announcing a remake after five years. With any luck they’ll find a new way to jerk Stone around. And mid-weird, the little and large tale of BrewDog and the not quite hired consultant* continues and even made The Times of London. This passage neatly captures the two aspects which have confused me:

Allan Leighton, BrewDog’s chairman and the former boss of Asda, has accused Hand & Heart of “amplifying attacks” on its management team and has declined to take part in a proposed reconciliation programme. In a letter to Kate Bailey, Hand & Heart’s managing director, Leighton said he was concerned about a platform that had been set up for BrewDog workers, claiming it was “encouraging participants to submit malicious content . . . The unavoidable impression is that of H&H charging the company to extinguish a fire it is fuelling itself.”

On the other hand, BrewDog apparently continued to shoot itself in the foot without the assistance of others, rolling out a quote from the consultant that they did actually hire… only for that consultant to point out they never said any such thing. Weird.

This was a fabulous find as posted on Twitter by Mr. S. Smith, a mint 1960s form to fill out and pass over the counter at a Brewers Retail store in Ontario. A buck twenty eight for a dink pack.  Until 1969, you had to give your name and an address to get your beer. Presumably you filled out the last line by hand if you were buying quarts. Crain Business Systems must have made a killing on this contract seeing as this was the only way in Canada’s biggest province to buy beer outside of a sit down establishment.

Finally but fabulously, Beth published her latest edition of Prohibitchin’ (sign up here) and featuring (i) Ashley Johnson and Jasmine Mason bringing cider to Philadelphia along with first (i) this bit of local slang they had adopted in their business’s name – The Cider Jawns:

“Jawn” /jôn/: Philadelphia slang that’s used as an all-purpose substitute for literally anything—a singular or plural person, place, thing, or event that can’t be specifically described…

Jasmine and Ashley are having the time of their jawns. Or is it the jawn of their lives? …“We looked around and a lot of the attendees were women, but there weren’t a lot of women of color as vendors,” explains Jasmine. Ashley agrees, noting that while there wasn’t much diversity in vendors, there were plenty of Black women and other women of color enjoying themselves as attendees. The discrepancy spurred them to action. “We were inspired to take something we enjoyed and bring representation of women of color to the hard cider and brewing industries,” says Ashley. They launched their Cider Jawns Instagram shortly after to “share our cider journey and take our community along for the ride,” she says.

There. Blame all the errors on the meds. For more, checking out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Example: I don’t have a clue what this means. Or this.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For Spring 2022

Let’s see how this goes this week. Still on the meds but all went well, thanks for asking. Don’t be losing track of those wisdom teeth. Just sayin’. From Ukraine, NPR’s Tim Mak reports that due to martial law access to legal alcohol is limited but recently in Vinnytsia there was no ban. The welcoming bartender above is Oleg, who Mak reports had Jäegermeister, a local lager or a kind of berry cider on offer. No doubt they were most welcome from the other photos posted from the bar. Give directly and without delay. If you have a need to filter that through beer, consider supporting Ontario brewer John Graham who has gone to Germany and Poland with others to transport people and supplies involved with Ukraine’s disaster.

First up, there was an excellent tight piece of writing this week by Holly Regan on one of the downsides of the pub, a glimpse of despair. It’s the sort of observation that you don’t see in beer writing much as it is a fairly false positively filtered genre:

…I order a half of Bitter and get sucked into conversation with the bloke behind me: a train driver who wishes he had worked in pictures, all narrative arcs and glassy-eyed ambition. He sees me reading “Ulysses,” so we talk about Joyce, films, and the human condition. It starts off like a Linklater movie until it turns all Aronofsky, as the inevitable end of prolonging the experience begins to reveal itself. He says he’s been parked in that seat for two straight days, and it chills me, triggering memories of times where I couldn’t stand to be in my body, either.

Alistair has been digging through the Austrian National Library’s archives and found a few things that have made their way into a few posts. He found records related to I discovered the Witt & Williams English Brewery of Hamburg, established in 1869 and wound up in 1871 – and he did the maths so we don’t have to:

The ad goes on to inform us that samples are available from the brewery, just write to them with postal instructions and the relevant cash for a case of either 24 full sized bottles or 24 half bottles. 4 thaler 15 silbergroschen, approximately 4 Shillings 1.5 pence in old British money, or if I have done the various sums correctly £24.20 in modern British money ($31.96/€29.05) would purloin for you a case of either “Double Brown Stout” or “The golden Ale”, while 3 thaler 15 silbergroschen (do your own maths, my head hurts) would get your the XX Porter or IPA.*

Ron has added to the question of diastatic brown malt with his post drawing on research he set aside for a decade or so:

The method of making brown malt was changing, for a variety of reasons, one of which was the high risk of a fire.

“it was formerly the custom to dry brown malt also on ordinary kilns, with wire floors, but the labour on these was of a most disagreeable and exhausting character, and brown malt is now generally dried in wire cylinders.” 

The presence of diastase in older forms of brown malt is explained by the way it was produced. Diastase is much more sensitive to heat when moist. By first removing all the moisture from the malt at a low temperature, the diastase was not damaged as much by the finishing high heat.

Careful readers will recall how in 2017 Ed sent me a brown ale with a diastatic brown malt he had created. He explained his malting process in great detail here. And in 2014 I went so far as forming The League of Diastatic Brown Kilnfolk to explore the idea – based in large part on a reference in one of Ron’s books to the quick flame kilning of the malt to achieve a darkening of the outside while retaining the diastatic properties inside. The clubhouse has been a busy spot ever since.

Jordan has provided the third in his series of posts on the 1904 brewery workers’ strike in Toronto, widely relying on extensive citation from contemporary newspapers like this report in May 25th edition of The Globe:

The lockout of union brewery workers, which has been expected ever since the trouble at the Reinhardt and O’Keefe breweries opened, has occurred. Yesterday, the unskilled union men employed by the Dominion, Cosgrave, Copland, and Toronto Brewing and Malting Companies were locked out by the brewers. This action was decided upon at a meeting of the Master Brewers’ Association, and resulted in the calling out to-day of every union brewery man in the city with the exception of those at Davies’ Don Brewery, which is paying the union scale. 

Solidarity, buvver Davies! In other legal news, the testimony in the Keystone / Stone court case is getting weirder and weirder. Plenty of thanks to Bianca Bruno of Courthouse News for sharing some of the juicier bits. Much has been made by the apparent disclosure that Keystone Light is just Coors Light that was not up to specification – as if breweries would not have strategies for dealing with waste, that great concern of E.P. Taylor. But the real story is the nonsense at the heart of Stone’s claims:

Wagner said the company may not survive the business losses it claims to have suffered because of consumer confusion caused by Keystone Light’s “stone”-heavy rebranding. “I know Keystone spent tens of millions of dollars to advertise. I think it would take at least as much to try to rebuild our brand,” Wagner said during questioning by his attorney Douglas Curran. Curran asked Wagner a follow-up question. “If Stone isn’t made whole, what do you think will happen?” Wagner responded: “I think we’re going to lose our company.”

I am not sure Wagner, Stone’s founding brewmaster, actually knows what he himself said.  It would require not just consumer confusion at the first moment of encountering the Keystone advertising in question but the continuing purchasing of Keystone by a large group of people believing it to be a craft beer made by Stone. No one has alleged such a silly suggestion. The two beers are entirely different, not just in terms of price and point of sale but in terms of flavour. Where is the this mass of misguided craft nerds? Nowhere. Because they don’t exist. Which means they pose no risk to Stone. Like some of the witness stand statements by co-founder Koch, this makes little sense and should be looked upon with a wary eye by judge and jury.

Kate Bernot triggered an interesting flood of confession and accusation about the bomber bottle of micros of yore as avaricious scam. I never minded all that much as it gave you enough if you liked whatever was in there but not too much if it sucked.

Spring 1953 looks so pleasant that I can’t believe anyone ever did the sort of thing illustrated in this US Brewers Foundation ad “First Fine Day of Spring” which came with the slogan “In this Friendly, Freedom-loving Land of Ours – Beer Belongs… Enjoy It!” Who are these people and how old were they? I like the idea of getting as snazzed up as anyone but did people really do this?

Collaborations are so common (in a couple of ways) these days – but I kinda liked this marketing plan rolled out by English craft brewery Wild Beer Co. – as reviewed by The Beer Nut:

English brewery Wild Beer Co. came up with this wheeze for the just-finished 2022 Six Nations rugby tournament: six collaborative beers produced with brewers from the competing countries. Of course I bought all six, and at a fiver a can they weren’t cheap. I had every right to expect something special from each.

The price point seems to be his main complaint but, if I might, the whole point of “collabs” is a bit of a soaking for the poor purchaser so the buyer should beware as soon as the word is floated. In this case, however, at least the soak did not just go to a sadder purpose like some starving beer writer on the bleg who came up with the brilliant idea of getting their name on the label in return for suggesting chocolate or beer juice or, you know, dirt be added to an otherwise perfectly fine beer.

Finally, in the “when licensees go a bit nuts” category, this tale of a breakup between the Fullers Brewery people and one of their tenants, a Mr. O’Neil, which took an unusual turn:

The erection of the fence, made up of wooden boarding, came as a shock to local residents who told MyLondon they did not know anything about it. A spokeswoman for Richmond Council confirmed Mr O’Neil does not own the land adjacent to the pub. She said: “Mr O’Neill has been in dispute with Fullers Brewery, which is the freehold owner of The Plough. The freehold does not own the triangle of land immediately adjacent to the public house – there is no registered owner and this area of land is considered part of the public highway.

Nutso. Like to see it. There. Not a bad week’s worth of words. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*No, God as my witness, I have no clue either. Not one clue…

These Be The Beery News Notes For Mid-January 2022

We are already at a mid-point. But there are plenty of them to do around. Pick one point and then another? You’ve created a mid-point. I saw this image from a late 1960s airport or train station waiting area. I remember these at the Halifax airport, coin operated TV chairs. Some sort of mid-point going on. With ashtrays. We are at another now. Mid-January.

This bit of beer business news has every member of the semi-pro beer chattering class without experience in business* scratching their heads:

Molson Coors Beverage Company said today it will stop production of its Saint Archer brand and sell its San Diego-based brewery and taproom to Kings & Convicts Brewing Co., which owns the Ballast Point brand.  

As I reported… relayed… poached from Josh Noel in the Chicago Tribune, back in December 2019 Kings & Convicts, an apparently tiny craft brewery in Illinois bought one time mega-brand Ballast Point. The purchase was made with a bucket of moolah earned from a hospitality asset sale by K&C principal Brendan Watters in 2015  along with input from other friendly and wealthy investors including wine magnate Richard Mahoney. These brewery buys at pennies on the dollar are no doubt a doddle for folk at that level.

In another sector aimed at making the moolah, the sad news has been reported by Jaime Jurado that something called the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association has been created. A concept which seems to put the moron in oxymoron. As it is not about beer, it shall never be referenced again – except when someone mentions “neo-prohibitionists” again. Then I can say:

What? You mean the ANBA?

Best NA-NF quote of the week? This:

Price is an issue. Not sure how I’ll feel about that once work isn’t paying for the beers.

What? Govern the opening of your wallet accordingly, I suppose. Spare a measure of salt when reading review by those who get the freebies. Next fad to return? Temperance bars. As noted by Martin, the mastheadless blog Evo Boozy Scribbler discussed a variation on that theme:

I have nothing but disdain for booze free curry houses. Having a pint of Cobra is part of the experience. I don’t take my own roast potatoes to a carvery.

Well, it’s part of your experience. Why can’t people on the beer imagine that there is a world where being people on the beer is not considered the height of civilization’s progress? I rarely have been with my curry but, then again, I equate it with family meals, not piss ups.

Speaking of food and beer, this is an interesting argument from Zambia related to food security:

Well, if we are talking about food security, perhaps we could start by checking the quantity of maize going into beer before we think of suspending meagre exports of less than a million tonnes because if this info could be true, it could mean us who drink chibuku, ‘eat’ more mealie meal in three months than what the whole country uses in a year! Mwaimvela kanongobilitina skopodicious, ka? But not everything is bad about opaque beer, “…it gives you 13.1% of body energy when you drink,” my friend told me.

Changing course, a high honour and one I agree with entirely was bestowed by Garrett Oliver this week after listening to Matt Curtis interviewed by the two folk at BeerEdge recently:

I don’t really follow the beer press; as a producer it sometimes feels grubby and unseemly to do so. But I will say that this interview put a lump in my throat more than once and made me switch my mental hat to “writer/journo”. We do need actual journalists. Glad of these folks.

Through this troubled world of everything from PR puff to academic research, it is good to note how much quality there actually is – as I get to do each week. While a sort of drinks writing is a narrative with no greater arc, writing attracted to novelty (or even whatever it is that has briefly twitched… right over there, do you see it?) we see another relatively recent aspect of this is how good beer writing is developing and unfolding is the phenomenon of people writing about serious issues faced in life – from humanity’s injustices to the  deeply personal – seen through the lens of something somehow related to beer. On excellent example this week was provided by Jonathon Hamilton in Pellicle:

This time last year I wrote my first essay for Pellicle. It was, like this, a self-reflective piece about the beginnings of the magazine, alongside my own struggles with mental health, imposter syndrome and a sense of belonging. Putting myself out there in such a way was one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do, and I would love to tell you all how it immediately changed me for the better. Unfortunately, it did not.

Similarly, note bene the bene noted:

It’s true that the total number of blogs has declined over the past decade, but the number of good blogs has never been higher. Moreover, they fill a role that would otherwise be left vacant. Beer is little-covered by newspapers and magazines, and often merely superficially. No one is going to print one of Ron Pattinson’s lists of 19th century grists in the Wall Street Journal. Social media is great for opinion and linking, but not much else. Imagine Lars trying to present one of his enthnographies on Twitter. Larger, more ambitious projects like Craft Beer & Brewing and Good Beer Hunting are doing fantastic work and I don’t want to diminish their effort. But blogs are still critical in the media ecosystem—and, given the anemic state of print journalism and the increasingly toxic nature of social media, more important than ever.

Hooray and happy sixteenth beer bloggaversary, Jeff!

There was a sad sighting of another of a bit of a failed PR initiatives this week: Tryannuary. How 2015. How could they have known that a global pandemic would raise general concerns about personal health?

In Scotland a wonderful protest was seen this week in Dundee, where the King of Islington, a Dundee pub was suddenly closed without warning and then suddenly reopened without warning:

Staff at a Dundee bar at the centre of Covid-19 cover-up claims have been told to return to work this week following a sudden closure. The King of Islington pub shut on Saturday with upper management blaming “massively reduced trade levels” due to the “promotion of unsubstantiated claims” in a union-backed grievance letter from staff. Kieron Kelleher, assistant manager at the Union Street venue, accused pub chain operators Macmerry300 of victimising staff who spoke out.

Protests had also been held at pubs owned by the same chain in Glasgow as events unfolded. As a child of a child of the Red Clyde, I got all verklempt.

This week’s Tufte Award for Best Visual Display of Quantitative Information goes to… a chart that explains what we know as “hard liquor” in Canada but described as spirits in the Old Country. It is from Colin Angus using data from Public Health Scotland who first ran a poll, most people guessing gin would be #1 rather than the bronze medal winner. Well down the list but still – who is drinking all that brandy?

The Canadian Beer Cup is off. Now… calm down. Breathe. I am sure it was a big deal in your household, too, but the reason  for the cancellation is… singular and real:

…guidelines announced last week by the Ontario Government in response to the rapid surge in cases of the Omicron variant limit indoor gatherings to a maximum of five people, making it impossible for in-person judging to take place at this time. “One of the goals of The Canada Beer Cup is to showcase the greatness of Canadian breweries to the world,” said Rick Dalmazzi, Executive Director of the Canadian Craft Brewing Association, in a statement. “With all due respect to the many fine Toronto and Southern Ontario judges who will be involved, we want to do everything in our power to also include the many international and cross-Canada judges who have committed to our event.”

In plain language, there was clearly a large aspect of this that was a Toronto tourism event bringing in judges who were also newspaper columnists and consultants to retailer, etc.** (One need not take that statement above in the cancellation notice to suggest that while Canadian beer may be underrated, well, our own Ontarian beer judges are somehow overrated.) Now… how to transition and stay within the overall goals. As happened in the World Beer Cup (whatever that is when it is not the World Beer Awards), beer submissions will be poured. What does a next step look like? Apparently the Greek Cup of Beer or the Greek Beer Cup or the Greek Beer Awards was not so needy of auslander praise as they also just mailed out the samples to the usuals. As did the World Beer Awards. Something will occur. I just hope that there are government grants that buffer all this, that cover the unexpected stranded costs that demobilization and remobilization incurs. Stranded costs are a killer.

Non-beer recommendation of the week:  follow AndyBTravels. He’s train fan who runs a Travel Architect Service. He also wanders around remote parts of places like rural Romania where this week he captured some desolate spots and also some gorgeous moments.

That’s it for now. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*pretty much all of them.
**we should be honest about how these things really work.

The Very First Thursday Beery News Notes For The Second Half Of November 2021

I like this image above. It is a bit of an edit off a photo from Great Lakes Brewery off the north shore of Lake Ontario (as opposed to the one to the south of Lake Erie). Depth of field hit very nicely. Gran’s hand towels being put to good use. And clean lines every day. Best practice. Speaking of which, let’s see what else is worth noting in another week in the life of good beer and related stuff, shall we?

First off, Katie Mather wrote a very interesting piece of these times about a trip to sip natural wines in Paris which was as much about herself:

I ended up at Notre Dame every day I was in Paris. The resilient aura of a burnt-out cathedral was something I hadn’t been prepared for. I stared, making excuses to pass by, marvelling at the Medieval-like wooden supports bolstering the flying buttresses just like when they were new, wrong-footed by the stained glass rose window I had first seen in a Disney film, now blackened with soot. A dark emblem of survival—or perhaps a reminder of how close it has been to ruin, of being rescued, and still being rescued, and maintaining that iconic but now fragile facade. I was unwell, and I found a hand to grasp in the sight of this building. It seemed as tired as I was, of holding itself up, of being under so much of its own weight.

I am a bit interested in natural wine as I’ve known for a long time that I’m fairly sensitive to sulphite-based preservatives. This has been brought a bit into focus in the last few months as I am working on an intermittent diet that sees me weeding certain things out of my diet. Turns out I also have a problem with wheat and barley. Like a glass of red wine, good crusty bread triggers a histamine reaction. As does… beer. Weeping eyes. Inflammation. Drag. But manageable.

UPDATE: ghost tips over beer!

In his blog by email, Dave Infante took a very grim lesson from the Bell’s Brewery sale:

Remember early last decade? Selling out was anathema, and the U.S. craft brewing “movement” looked unstoppable. Now it’s starting to look insolvent. Sales are slowing; reports of workplace discrimination are up; a generation of new drinkers are reaching for hard seltzer and canned cocktails to power the party. In a 10 mere years, craft brewing’s rock-ribbed corporate antagonism has given way to self-imposed purity tests and fading relevance. In the same time, its product has morphed from zeitgeist-y leader to cheugy afterthought. Craft beer remains a product with a value proposition. But make no mistake: a dark night of the soul has fallen on its anti-commodity, independence-over-everything cultural dogma.

He’s probably right. Craft sucks. Right? Or is it “craft – doesn’t suck!” Can’t remember. Never mind – just remember who was calling craft “cheugy” back in May. The cool kids, that’s who.

Gary Gillman has been doing a fabulous job exploring eastern European brewing history with a focus on the role of Jewish culture. This week he wrote about  hops:

Hop-growing in the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia was an established but relatively small-scale business up to World War I. Prior to 1850 one source, Penny Cyclopedia (1838), states “a few hops” were grown, a cottage industry at best. By 1879 hop-growing is on a more solid footing. The Journal of the Society of Arts was particularly approving of quality, stating at their best Galician hops could hardly be distinguished from classic Bohemian Saaz.

Speaking of things easterly, here’s your Belarus update: still finding myself filling the hours at home rather than sprinting out into the local upsurge in the delta, I came across a video blogger who rides the rails of eastern Europe looking for former Soviet things to talk about. In this episode, it’s about five beers from five cities in Belarus.  Half seem to be gak. It is an interesting way to turn to Jeff’s thoughts (which we may have discussed before) about nationalism being the way to understand beer:

In the 44 years since Michael Jackson wrote The World Guide to Beer, people have become much more sophisticated in the way they understand and describe our favorite malty substance. The subject is incredibly complex, and over that span we have collected, classified, taxonomized, and shared information, refining what we know along the way. This effort has produced a shared (if disputed and endlessly debated) vocabulary and conceptual framework for discussing beer. For the most part, people have identified and developed the big concepts and we now focus on refining them. I was therefore surprised to discover a huge dynamic in beer that hasn’t gotten the classification/codification treatment: national tradition…

There is a lot in there to disagree with – that the subject is incredibly complex or that big concepts have been identified. Or that people have become more much more sophisticated. Consider this on that last point. But it is a reasonable additional way to look at a subject mired for a few decades in one fixed conceit – style. It is reasonable to have a number of ways to look at one thing to cross reference and improve understanding. But it is hampered by words like nation and culture that are greasy and malleable. Nations shift and cultures morph. Consider the political and cultural constructs just in Gary’s post above. And the concepts are prone to being coopted. Me, I am more of a globalist technology and trade story arc person myself.  But that is another way of looking at things in addition to style and national tradition, isn’t it. No good comes of the unified theory approach except perhaps in physics. Maybe.

I raise all this by way of background as this week, Stan wasn’t entirely on board with the nationalist construct or at least the rendering of it that made the era of craft special. He wrote thusly by way of counter example:

Last week, during the virtual portion of the Master Brewers Conference, Greg Casey discussed “The Inspiring Histories & Legacies of American Lager Beer.” Casey, who worked for several of America’s largest brewing corporations before retiring in 2013, is writing a trilogy of books that focus on the period between the 1840s and 1940s. He points out that America gave the world “ice cold beer here!” Americans learned about brewing adjunct lagers from the Germans, but made them their own. They perfected chill proofing, allowing beers to be served crystal clear even when cold, changing the look of beer and the culture of drinking beer.

See, this is why we have all those facets of a topic. Like history. See, America did not give the world adjunct beer after receiving them from the Germans. The Germans handed it around themselves as part of their global mercantile and military empire from before the First World War. For example, Germany took over the “port city of Qingdao in north-eastern China in 1898, and ruled over it until 1914” and established Tsingtao beer. See also Argentina. As Boak and Bailey explained in Gambrinus Waltz, they also brought it to Britain. In Japan, a German trained Norwegian (who did admittedly touch down in the USA) founded what is now Kirin. In a bit of a twist, in the 1920s rice-based adjunct beer took off in Canada, to sent it the other way sending it south into the US black market during American prohibition.* Americans then took it with them where they went and often stayed. All of which leads me to think that while nationalism may not be the right unified theory, the paths of nations and the interacting influences upon them may as important as the history of technological advances if we are to understand why beer is what it is.

Speaking of beery culture, the local version got weird this week. I have to admit, I used to drop in at the place a few years back as it was handy to my ride home from work in the family car. Small pitcher of basic adjunct lager and a basket of onion rings was my order.

In a more sensible context, retiredmartin prodded me to read this post from the blog Prop Up The Bar which I liked for a number of reasons but especially the man on the street view:

As I arrived the gaffer was on the phone making a very angry call, his mood not improved by muggings here standing underneath the ‘table service only’ sign at the bar. During his phone call he threatened to “just shut the pub” which would have made this an epic pub ticking fail. Not sure what had upset him so much, but looking at my picture maybe he was on the phone to the company that looks after the shutters.

See also Lord Largis illustrating the “non-tick”:

I hadn’t eaten properly and as the bus approached the Hussey Arms I remembered how good the food is in there, but I’ve been spending too much on takeaways and meals of late and I’m trying to cut this cost down. I had an R Kelly lyric pop into my head. “My mind’s telling me no, but my body, my body’s telling me yes”. But as it was now dark and I wasn’t overly convinced that I knew where my first pub to visit was, my mind won and I remained on the bus.

I like that clarity of the vignette. Much uncertainty, conversely, surrounds a news release that informs us that two of Ontario and Canada’s best established craft brewers have done a form of a deal focusing on efficiencies in distribution. Trouble is… it seems to be more than that. As Jordan stated:

Getting increasingly angry about this entire set of messaging and the general level of competence. Insulting to everyone’s intelligence to dangle the shiny thing at exactly the same time as letting the majority of staff go.

Ottawa’s news source The Review had more on the background:

“I can confirm that layoffs took place today, but they are largely not related to the Steam Whistle announcement,” said Beau’s spokesperson Jen Beauchesne, in a Tuesday afternoon email to The Review in response to an inquiry about the layoffs and the Steamwhistle announcement. Most of temporary layoffs which occurred this week are because Beau’s is slowing down production, while the company does maintenance work on its lines and brewing tanks, said Beau’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Steve Beauchesne. “We have been having some fermentation issues,” Beauchesne said. “We need to empty the tanks and do a deep clean.”

Questions have arisen but, look, the Beauchesnes are family brewers from a small town in far eastern Ontario and (a rarity) I happily call them friends. They are great fun folk who I’ve had over to the backyard and who’ve had me to their fests. The times, however, may not be kind and if the business changes coming are greater than they are in position to discuss today, I can only wish them and their community the best.

B.O.B.** of the Week:  Mr B on a rather good brewery in his neighbourhood. The denial of standard B.O.B. context at the outset is an interesting variation on the brewery owner bio.

Finally: “Man driving 870 miles in world’s smallest car” – not about beer but, still, please send your 500 word essays as usual on how it is still like beer to the regular address to be entered in the context for our weekly prize of a photograph of a ten dollar bill.

That’s a lot. Busy week. For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (where a parsing of press releases was featured this week accompanied by giggle, chortles and the mewing of cats) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*See The King v. Carling Export Brewing & Malting Co. Ltd., [1930] S.C.R. 361 at page 373.
**“Was ist eine B.O.B.? Das is eine B.O.B.!!” Translation: Brauereibesitzerlangweiliglichbiografie.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The First Frosty Nights

First up this week, reality. We still had a fig tree out in the backyard with all its leaves on Wednesday. Doubt it will have them today. Have to check once it is light out.  One way or another it’s almost an eight month growing season here by balmy Lake Ontario. Not something you could say even ten miles to the north. Harvested another load of parsley Monday. Pulled up a frisée endive that was mixed into supper, too. No snow yet. With any luck most of the leaves will be off the trees before it comes. Don’t want to have to deal with sawing fallen limbs. I plan to chop the willow back Saturday, saving the long branches for a bit of wattling next March. Suburban peasant.  Suburban pleasant.

Next, the coolest thing of the week was seeing that small object to the right. It’s a 1,000 year old, 14-sided die from Korea with carved instructions for a drinking game. One side says “let everybody hit you on the nose” while another says “drink a big cup and laugh loudly” all of which indicates a state of civilization far advanced from my youth spent playing caps and sticking playing cards on my forehead. DSL was pleased at the find.

Good news. Movement on the unionization of craft front with the creation of the Brewery Workers Union in the UK under the IWW banner. A bit of a manifesto explains why now:

Why do we need a union? As the interest in and sales of craft beer has risen significantly in the past 10 years it has also meant more workers are being exploited, suffering harassment and abuse, working in unsafe conditions, working long and unsociable hours leading to serious injuries all on insufficient pay, leading to physical & mental strain, burnout and fatigue.  We have seen the ongoing issues with BrewDog and a wealth of other breweries in the UK, as well as active organising from other trade unions, in the US and across Europe.

On the other side of the economic divide, Brewdog has updated* that its plans for global domination are well on track:

Despite facing numerous challenges in 2021 we have managed to continue growing strongly and our UK wholesale sales for October are up 48% on October 2020 (which was also in growth). As well as growing strongly we have also created over 600 brand new jobs this year. We are determined to continue to share our passion for great beer with as many people as possible and to do all we can as a business to fight climate change. And we are determined to use every challenge we face as a catalyst to become better as a business.

Passion. Climate Change. Better. Growth. Perfect setting for a union. Relatedly, this message from Ren is the same as it ever was. Craft is a haven of cheapskates:

“Hi! Can you basically give us a ton of free info that we can use to improve our brewery, our charitable endeavor, and help us make more money?” *Sends them my rates* *Crickets* I would love for this to stop happening once a week. Pay Black people for our knowledge.

See also Ron circa 2014 when it was shocking for brewing history research to be considered a paid consultancy. Speaking of whom, he has some good advice if you happen to live in an empire a few months away from total collapse. Pay attention to the beer supply:

The more observant among you might have noticed that I’ve started writing about Germany and Austria in WW I. There’s a good reason for that. One that I’m not going to tell you quite yet. It is very revealing, though, to look at the war from the other side. The food and booze situation at home for the Central Powers made Britain look like the promised land, overflowing with milk and honey, Or at least bread and beer.

Ever look at a small brewery tax credit regulation? He’s one recently issued in Ontario, good old Ont. Reg. 711/21. All you really need to know is the formula [(A × B) ∕ F + (C × D) ∕ F] × G × H × J × K!  Works on a sliding scale from more than 4.9 million litres but not more than 20 million litres of beer. Which is a lot of beer for businesses called small beer manufacturers. Is there anywhere where small means small?

As mentioned the other week, the Chicago Brewseum’s Beer Culture Summit is happening this weekend. Here is the list of events. I’ve signed up for Sunday if anyone wants to chat in the comments. Looking forward to this presentation:

Archaeologist and historian Dr. Christina Wade, archivist Tiah Edmunson-Morton, and organizer, attorney, author and documentarian Atinuke “Tinu” Akintola Diver discuss the unique experiences (both successes and roadblocks) they have seen throughout their careers researching, collecting and documenting beer and brewing history in a man’s world. This session is moderated and hosted by co-founder of the Albany Ale Project, Craig Gravina.

Speaking of the “ye” and the “olde” did you ever wonder why there is still so much old oak still around in the forests for booze barrels? It’s not because of booze barrels.

Once upon a time, I used to make home brewed ginger beer at about 1.3% based on a recipe from Clone Brews by the Szamatulskis. Great slurping by the bucket out in the garden. I was reminded of that by this rather extended commercial business news item on one Jamaican drinks maker bringing a similar if stronger sort of thing to market. I am not sure how you could ever make money on the 1.3% version – except it was so simple to make yourself who would bother buying it?

Stan and Jeff are having a bit of a parallel chat about the hop varieties which most attract a buyer’s attention. I have to admit something. I don’t have any interest in which hop varieties which most attract a buyer’s attention. I find folk rhyming off hop varieties as they sip a beer to be entirely missing the points. Most beer drinkers don’t care. But govern yourselves according to your own interests. Me, I like 1400s beer shipping records from the Baltic Sea. So go figure. Here are Stan’s questions:

Jeff Alworth posted a question yesterday from Atlanta (hey! we used to live there); more than one, in fact. So here are two I am thinking about: a) Is Citra/Mosaic becoming a marker of style in the way Saaz is in Czech pilsners or EKG in bitters? and b) Do [brewers] feel like the pairing has become so successful it’s constraining the style?

Beer price hikes coming in the US, in France and around the globe. I think things may be worse than this bit of PR gobbiltygook from Sam Adams might suggest, especially given their botch of the seltzer market by over-producing their Truly gak:

Truly is still in a premium position in the fastest-growing area of the alcoholic beverage industry, and it will be a strong platform to use in launching other products. “We are well positioned to succeed in 2022 and beyond,” founder Jim Koch said, “as consumers look to drink more ‘Beyond Beer’ products.” That success will come partly from raising prices across its portfolio by 3% to 6% in 2022. Those hikes reflect rising costs on raw materials like aluminum and glass, but they’re also designed to shore up its profitability now that the industry is maturing. Management had been prioritizing growth and market share, but now that focus is shifting toward achieving a stronger earnings profile.

See that? Raising prices to “shore up profitability” means paying more for less and covering up mistakes with the new cash. Craft. Reminds me of an ancient Korean saying: “let everybody hit you on the nose”!

Once again, a week of the good, the bad and (just above) the uh-guh-lee.  For more, check out the updates from that same Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword which may revive some day.  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Where did I put that link. Nov 1 at 11:20 am if you have it handy. Along these lines, it was. What a crap news service this is. No, here it is. Martin Dickie on LinkedIn. Why the hell do I follow him on LinkedIn. Why the hell am I on linked in?

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For A Oddly Green Mid-October

It’s an odd autumn, isn’t it. Not just the pandemic that is no longer as scary but not resolved either. At least in the privileged bits of the planet. It’s also odd on the longer game scale too. The leaves aren’t turning colour here. Weeks behind schedule. Took the national harvest time short week off with the expectation of cleaning up the yard and there is still mowing to do. The last grapes still on the vine. Potatoes to pull from the ground. Shorts weather at least still today.

What else is going on? First with the positive. Gently manic blogger Retired Martin posted no less than 15 tales over the last week, each with quite attractive photos and a decent measure of wit as he, among other things, defines both cosy and comfy. The aggregation of his writings provide more than a list of taverns ticked off a list. His eye for detail as above (“For Drinkers Only”!) and brief observations on the places he visits are perhaps deceptively rich, adding up to something of an ethos:

Bill the fisherman came in for his late pint, the girls night out were laughing at a boy called Mark who I felt sorry for, and it felt like a happy pub.

Staying in the UK, I was linked to a story by an author this week so I thought it only polite to read rather dedicated fitba and beer blogger Jane Stuart‘s story about the scene around the Blackpool v Blackburn Rovers match on 2 October:

…I now felt hurried because I’d arranged to meet Wilf (of Yorkshire Seasiders fame) in Cask & Tap, which opened at noon. This left me no time for breakfast (not that I can face food first thing anyway) and meant that I was pretty much getting up and going straight to the pub. We did make a pit stop at the ticket office en route to collect around £350 worth of tickets for the next four away games at Forest, Reading, Sheff U and Swansea (there is a Swansea!). Clubs in general have been coy to release away tickets more than 7-10 days in advance this season so it was a bit of a shock (not least financially) to have all these tickets on sale – including one for a match at the end of November.

Supply chain news: beer bottle shortages hit tiny Prince Edward Island.

As Jordan noted, a favorite brewery of mine, Half Hours On Earth of rural Seaforth, Ontario and Canada’s first online retail beer store is shutting down and selling off its brewery gear:

As we wind down the brewery (see full post on Instagram), we’ll be putting our parts and equipment up for sale here on the webshop. This is the first lot, and there will be more listed as equipment becomes out of use. Sign up for our newsletter to be first notified. If anything goes unsold, prices will be reduced until gone. When an item is sold, the listing will be removed. All items are in used condition unless stated otherwise.

As they shared on Instagram, the owners are transitioning to a new focus and a new business, Worldlet, offering sustainable healthy household products:

We opened an eco-shop two years ago, and have plans for something new on the horizon that we hope will be the most impactful of all. It will require more of our attention going forward, and unfortunately, there’s simply not enough hours in the day.

Good. A doubly sensible approach if you ask me. And net positive.

Thing never said in beer: “…and certainly thanks to all those who nominated the winners…” Oh… ***

Speaking of positive news in with a first tiny appearance of neg, it appears that the US hospitality work force has gotten fed up with being low rung on the ladder with millions quitting their dead end jobs:

Quits hit a new series high going back to December 2000, as 4.3 million workers left their jobs. The quits rate rose to 2.9%, an increase of 242,000 from the previous month, which saw a rate of 2.7%, according to the department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The rate, which is measured against total employment, is the highest in a data series that goes back to December 2000.

Good! Want my advice? Don’t make these jobs suck. Support your staff or soon you will understand that not only are they the ones who make the money but they are also customers of the next place down the road. Create careers for those you hire.

[Q: “bin fire“? You do know you can just not follow unpleasant people, right?]

Stan on the state of beer writing or at least one form:

In the 13 or so years I’ve intermittently posted links on Monday I’ve always looked beyond blogs, and beyond beer stories for that matter, for interesting items to pass along. If you are disappointed that I don’t point to more beer blogs, well, so am I. But let’s face it. Beer blogs are dead. That is why you are not reading this.

I know what he means but we have to be honest. As we wallow in newbie guides and second editions and other ways people in financial need find to get by, we have to remember that many narrower focused web periodicals are just blogs repainted and rebranded.** And similar content is created daily in Twitter threads and Instagram posts with great effect. And newsletters arrive regularly, sent from those gentle wee souls who fear the comments blogs receive, sent by people correcting claims in the content. I see plenty of writing is out there even if the deck chairs have been rearranged due to fiscal anxieties and dreams of monetization.

Maybe really probably bad is the news reported by Canada’s ag new source The Western Producer coming out of China that its insane residential construction boom meeting no identifiable demand for residential construction may hit the world’s food commodity markets:

Companies like Evergrande have fuelled themselves with debt while building millions of homes that stand empty, leaving China with an array of ghost cities and neighbourhoods. If Evergrande goes bust the whole industry, which more and more seems like a house of cards, could collapse. That would be bad for demand for steel, coal, copper and other industrial commodities used in construction.

Why mention that in a beer blog? Global prices for hops and barley depend on demand forecasts. As commodities drop, niche markets like hop growing and malt barley get hammered. As WP states: “It’s a potential killer of general demand — around the world.” Massive supplier Russia is also jerking around its own grain farmers with an export tax causing farmers to “abandon wheat, corn and barley in favour of soybeans, rapeseed, flax, lentils, peas and summer fallow.” Put that on your horizon.

Finally and certainly now very negative, the big news this week I suppose… if you can call it news anymore… relates to the continuing implications of sexist behaviors in craft, this time related to the Danish beer brand but not quite a brewery Mikkeller which has seen presumed acolytes ditch a fest being put on in Copenhagen, all rather late in the day as one Toronto brewery staffer noted:

I find it hard to believe these breweries didn’t know about the Mikkeller allegations. Working in the industry it was all anybody talked about for months. It took public shaming for them to pull out, which is a form of pressure.

Another observer tied events to the call for unionizing what really needs to be differentiated as the legacy big craft beer industry.

What’s really interesting is the continuing greater reticence to engage with the boycott by trade voices who may have invested in the brand too deeply as part of craft’s tight circle of reciprocal praise narrative.  Something called The Drinks Business reports on the response to allegations but puts as much effort into polishing Mikkeller’s brand than inquiring into the problem. We read that the fest is “renowned for featuring some of the most highly sought-after breweries in the world” before, in a classic example of beer trade writing reporting on beer trade writing, repeating the GBH praise that Mikkeller is a “tastemaker within the beer world.”

Even with some pretty strong observations on the allegations in past posts including the statement “founder… Mikkel Borg Bjergsø… actively participated in bullying and harassment…” GBH itself still took the time (as if to meet an editorial requirement) to label (if not slur) those rejecting sexist environments in brewing as “activists” and implying a level of ineffectiveness in quite a remarkably dismissive paragraph:

The reversal for these breweries and potentially others is a response to continuing pressure activists have exerted on these companies, urging them not to participate in collaborations or festivals with global beer company Mikkeller, which is based in Copenhagen. Nearly 100 breweries from across the world are still listed on the event’s Facebook page as attending. 

Not necessary. Not every issue has two sides with equal merit. Matt of Pellicle was much more to the point:

I do think that breweries attending this festival in light of ongoing, unresolved issues, paints the entire craft beer industry in a bad light. It feels like a “fuck you” to the victims who’ve shared their stories these past months.

Indeed.* The beer brand owner at the centre of all this has continued to make some astounding statements as Kate Bernot has helpfully shared. But if all that wasn’t enough, what is really unbelievable (but for this being craft beer sucking up and sucking out loud) is how eight UK breweries responded on Wednesday took the time to issue a bit of absolute PR hari-kari of a note explaining their continued participation on certain  “conditions” including:

a. They state (as Matt points out) that they demand a meeting will be held – including other brewers, the abusive and also the victims of abuse (presumably not asked about this kaka meme process at the time of the press release) to move the industry forward;

b. They state that social media (the prime medium for applying ethical pressuring in this case) “is not a productive space” presumably meaning best to keep these things quiet or at least behind closed doors; and

c. They are still attending the event because… why? And each brewery has aligned themselves with the mainly unmoved Mikkeller and each have taken the time to sign on – and openly identify themselves as doing so making it easier for customers to buy somewhere else.

Un. Buh. Lievable. Except… you know… craft.

Positive and negative. Personal experience as opposed to scale and ambition and shameful behaviour. As always, for more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan now on a regular basis again every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*And this weeks gold winning use of an obscenity nudging out this tweet by Evan Rail.
**Filled (he unkindly said) with tales that I pass on mentioning every week even if they win a hubcap in the tight circle of reciprocal praise awards.
***By the way, where did those Flemish farmers in England in the early 1500s come from. You know, when aliens were subject to residency licenses and other severe controls in England. Oh, by “farmers” is it “traders” that was meant… like almost one hundred years before that? Or was it the elite English access to hopped beer in the 1300s or perhaps 1200s? Such a muddle.

The Last Of August’s Thursday Beery News Notes

What was that? Summer 2021? Done? It’s still going on here as I am on an actual holiday and doing fun stuff like getting new spectacles for my face and a new electrical panel for the basement. Wooot! This is the dream and I am livin’ it. I even had 330 ml of a 3.8% beer yesterday and watched a Netflix show about the Korean buckwheat noodle dish naengmyeon, as recommended by DSL.* Both a drinking and then hangover dish apparently. Now I know why my buckwheat noodles suck. I didn’t immediately rinse and rub them in ice water. And, yes, a hundred other reasons. Never again. Probably. Maybe.

First off, it was good to read “The Ancient Magic of Malt: Making Malt Sugars and Ale from Grain Using Traditional Techniques” by sometimes reader Merryn Dineley in the journal EXARC.net,* 2021 (vol 2) who set the record straight:

This paper is presented as a historical narrative as well as being an explanation of basic ‘mashing in’ techniques. I aim to tell the story of the development of my understanding of how to make malt and malt sugars from the grain. I have learned from other experimental archaeologists, from ancient technologists and brewing scientists as well as from ethnographic research and the study of traditional style malting, mashing and fermentation techniques. One of the common myths about the origins of beer thousands of years ago is that grain was perhaps left in a container, it got wet and, somehow, turned into beer. This is impossible. The conditions for making malt and malt sugars do not exist in this situation. 

A bit later in time but still in the past, Rob Sterowski at “I Might Have a Glass of Beer” wrote about Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales, a brewery intent of brewing the old fashioned way:

Possibly the most erudite of Scottish brewers, Young deserted the world of academic philosophy to devote himself to a study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century brewing literature instead, and Epochal Barrel Fermented Ales is the result. A skilled home brewer, he has set up his small brewery in Port Dundas to make beers influenced by the way it was done two hundred years ago. His beer is fermented with a multi-strain yeast, cleansed to rid them of excess yeast and then allowed to mature to completion in oak barrels with a handful of whole-cone hops. The finished product is naturally carbonated in the bottle.

As Boak and Bailey noted, suggestions that the #MeToo and #BLM movements’ efforts to expose craft beer’s ugly side have faded were found wanting with the news of an open letter to England’s West Berkshire Brewery. You can click on the image to the right to read the complaints yourself. It is certainly one of the long failings of the drinking entertainment pleasure trade to address the piggish attitudes that go along with booze. So it is good to read that folk won’t be bullied to keep quiet when it comes to bigotry and harassment even if a lot of the privileged voices have wandered away.

I wasn’t familiar with English comedian Sean Lock. He passed away this past week but I am glad to know he had a hobby.

Update: I failed in not mentioning “Empire State of Mind” by David Jesudason published in GBH (thereby upping their average significantly) who looks at IPA from the point of view of the “I” as in India:

My father’s love of empire, and his belief that Britain was a civilizing force, was mirrored in the drink he called his own: the India Pale Ale. Of all of his beliefs, this one was particularly confused. His friends were Lager drinkers, and his adoption of IPA was a way of pretending to be refined in the days before the craft revolution had taken hold. But where he saw a drink that was emblematic of genteel, colonial India, I see something very different: Owing to the beer style’s association with the East India Company and its brutality, I can’t help but think of bloodshed, oppression, and enslavement.

I noted that it was an parallel to “Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History“, the recent NYer piece on England’s National Trust but also cause for reflection on my own family’s path. One side included servants at big houses like that of the Collins publishing family as well as a great-grandfather who was a Sgt Mjr British army out in the empire while the other side, displaced highlanders in Greenock, built the ships that shifted the sugar that came out of the colonial system. Many died young, many had lives of if not poverty then at best modesty – with much drink caused troubles in industrial towns before many emigrated the hell out of there. If you have any doubt as to the way that IPA is code for empire consider this from that NYer article:

“At the end of the day, we went to a very, very, very rich country and transferred a lot of its wealth to this country, by trade, entrepreneurship, and looting,” Dalrymple said. In 2003, Angus Maddison, a British economist, calculated that India’s share of the global G.D.P. went from 24.4 per cent to 4.2 per cent during two and a half centuries of colonial rule. In 1884, the British state had a total income of two hundred and three million pounds, of which more than half came from its overseas territories, including seventy-four million pounds from India. Taxes were levied across the world and sent to burnish the metropole.

Good for someone to finally point out in depth the obvious issue with IPA as a placeholder for good beer.  Might as well brand US craft lager Berghof.

Note: craft.

One of Canada’s few pre-Confederations tavern/inns/hotels, the Queen’s Inn, is up for sale in my fair town. I wrote about it in 2004 when it was just 165 years old and I was only 41: and is ripe with history and charm:

…he remembers one particular customer who continued coming in until he was in his 80s. The gentleman, Mitchell recalled, was blind and had a booming voice. “Give him two drafts,” the bartender told the younger Mitchell. “We just put the price up to 50 cents. Have fun.” “I didn’t know what he meant. I put the two beers down and said, ‘That’ll be 50 cents.’” “Forty-five is all you’re getting,” the man bellowed back.

Another pandemic affected business. And, on that theme, Josh Noel pointed me in the direction of the tale of overzealous expansion which ended in the collapse  of Ale Asylum of Madison, Wisconsin:

Dilba said the pandemic “didn’t help” the business but added, “there were other extraneous factors, which I won’t get into, but the pressure applied by the pandemic was significant. And we’re not alone in that. Everybody in this world is in this fight together that really made moving forward very difficult.”

Factors cited elsewhere in the article include too many local beers, too many out of state beers in local bars and rent increases. Maybe also it’s because Americans are just drinking less, according to VinePair or, rather, the authors of the polling study they echo:***

Sixty percent is down nearly five percent from 2019. It’s down even more compared to 2010, when 67 percent of U.S. adults replied “yes” to the survey. There seemed to be a shift in drinking habits from 2019 until now. The average number of drinks per week (3.6) dropped to its lowest since 2001. Additionally, men (63 percent) reported drinking at a higher rate than women (57 percent).

Good reason to find another career than drinks writing! One person who does not care is likely Sister Doris Engelhard, the brewing nun in Germany whose story as told by NPR was the retweeted topic of the week:

“I only brew beer that I drink myself, so if the other sisters want to drink a wheat beer, they’ll have to buy it themselves,” she says. She also waves away any question about the intersection of her faith and her beer. “Beer is part of the Bavarian soul. If you’re not happy with yourself, you won’t be happy in a cloister,” she says. “And eating and drinking are part of that life. It’s not about being pious. All I need to do is believe in a higher power that accepts me as I am.”

Speaking of good stories about good outcomes, the BBC reported this week on the life of Cesar Kimbirima, a child soldier in Angola who found himself left for dead, now running a Wetherspoons pub:

…as the sky started spinning, and his consciousness faded to black, he thought it was over. His life would end in the long grass, while his blood poured into the dry Angolan earth. More than 20 years later, that dying soldier pours pints at the pub he manages in south London. As he chats to punters, and waves to babies in prams, there is no hint of Cesar Kimbirima’s former life.

There. That is it for now. Not sure if there will be an edition next week as I am driving to the sea. We will see. During these last lazy days, for more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and (if I dare say) from Stan mostly every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*who once posed as me just to be nearer Lars.
**an archaeological foundation of some sort out of The Netherland with an address on the fabulous street, Frambozenweg!
***Hah! I’m one to talk.