Category: Poland

The “It’s Not Funny At All Out There” Edition Of The Beery News Notes…

Wow. I am going to leave it at that. Because there ain’t much of the big issue sorta news I want to be reading, I suppose. Not now, not this week. Nope. I am definitely having 9/12 waves myself. Not good. But 150 years ago? Well, Jennifer Jordan on BlueSky has been discussing the 1874 business ledgers of Milwalkee Valentin Blatz and there is plenty of news. Price fluxtuations, losses at sea… but for me… just look at that penmanship!  That upper case K is out of this world! You can practically hear the pen tip scratching across the page. Whatever the coming years have in store for us – and it may not be pretty – we can at least look back at the hand of Blatz for a lesson in confidence and verve.

Where are we? Starting with some beery beer news, Andreas Krennmair shared a re-creation of a much forgotten German beer style, Adam:

Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes. When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it.

Sounds a bit like a beer Boak and Bailey wrote about this week after spending some time in Gdansk, Gdinya and Sopot Poland recently – Danziger Jopenbier:

It’s a historic style associated with the city, brewed to some kind of original recipe, and selling at 16 Polish złoty  (£3) for a 50ml shot. In presentation, it was treated much like a liqueur or a sherry and reminded us of both Riga Balsam and Pedro Ximinez fortified wine. It was extremely sweet and sticky, completely flat, with a funky, leathery, pipe tobacco stink. A curiosity, then, rather than something to session on.

This is just a bit of their an excellent and extended piece about their merry trip, there just a few kilometres across the waters from Putin’s own nuclear navy yards at Kaliningrad. I taught English along those same Baltic shores of Poland in 1991-92 so it’s interesting to read what’s new and what’s the same:

The city itself is a war memorial. At the end of World War II it was 90% destroyed, an apocalyptic rubblescape. The new Soviet-controlled authorities debated what to do and, at one point, someone suggested leaving the city centre as a vast ruin, to remind the Germans of what they’d done… Gdańsk was rebuilt not as it was in 1939, but instead to recall the days before 1793 when it was part of the Kingdom of Poland.

Yup. I remember being in a large church in Gdansk where a tank battle had happened in 1945… within the church.* I mentioned in the comments that that I recalled there being no pubby pubs back then either – except a rougher sort of stand up tavern for men just off work that the guide I bought suggested “are best avoided.” I mainly drank my Gdanskie at home.

David Jesudason published another pub profile last Friday and discussed a feature installed in the 1950s, a snob screen:

“They could have privacy not just from the other side of the pub,” says Ralph, “but from the bar staff as well. You open it to order your drink.” The pub had a revamp in 1956 when Young’s took it over, previously it was a cider house, and Ralph reckons the snob screens are from them and still have the original 70-plus-year glass.  Ralph finds it amusing that as a gay person he’s living and working among all this archaic segregationana.

I like that word. Perhaps we might also suggest “segregitus” Or is it “segregitis“? Or did the “segregitus” leave us with a case of “segregitis“? Such questions I have.

You know what is weird? Finding out that Canada exports the fifth most bulk wine of all the nations of the world. More than much larger producing countries like France or South Africa. And what’s weirder? Canada also exports by far the cheapest bulk wine of any nation in the world, at just 29 cents US a litre. What’s that about? What is bulk?** Where is all the dirt cheap wine being consumed?

You know what is also weird?  Chaos packaging. Like putting gravy in beer cans or, perhaps, as the ultimate end game for a certain sort of craft, the next step after NA hop water perhaps:

…the decision to market the cans of air came from marketing specialist Davide Abagnale, who initially saw an opportunity when he started with selling Lake Como posters online. Explaining more about the initiative to can the air from the area, a spokesperson for the business told CNN, that Abagnale wanted to offer “something original, fun and even provocative” as well as “create a souvenir that could be easily transported in a suitcase for tourists”. Abagnale explained how the cans, which rather than contain any liquid, subvert the norm and give people something closer to a “memory” rather than a “product”.

So, not so much about the experience but the illusion of experience. I’d gladly pay with a photograph of some money.

Have you ever wondered what something extreeeemely tannic tastes like but don’t want to taste it?  Wonder no more as, for free, Barry himself guides you through the physical convulsions that are part of the experience.

And Stan thanked me for a link to a story that I think is actually far more interesting that its initial interestingness might suggest. The initially interesting point is how pervasive alcohol is in nature and how common it is for animals, bird and bugs to consume it. I’m not surprised. In high school, we watched out the front window each autumn as tipsy starlings drunk on over ripe rowen berries flipped 360° loop-de-loops on the telephone wire – or just flopped to the ground unable to fly until they sobered up.  Interesting.  But check your mailboxes for your own copy of the latest edition of Trends in Ecology & Evolution wherein we can read the original study which also states:

…the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas possessed a single amino acid change (from alanine to valine at site 294, denoted ‘A294V’) that dramatically increased its catalytic efficiency for ethanol. This arose approximately 10 Mya, following the Mid-Miocene Climatic Transition when African forests were gradually replaced by savannah. Around this time, our ancestors adopted a more terrestrial lifestyle and were possibly more likely to encounter fermented fruits on the ground…

That means the question may not be when humans first had alcohol. It may be about when they first learned to make it or store it or otherwise control it enough to have it year round and not just when the fruit was juiced laying about their feet. When did it start? One Million Years BC?

Perhaps relatedly, one of the things that makes The Beer Nut the world’s top reviewer of beer (other than his incessant reviewings of beer) is his egalitarian approach to all venues and all beers, high and low. This is especially evident in his periodic coverage of Wetherspoon beer festivals – which I take to be a sort of in-pub promotion across the chain rather than a fest in the GBBF sense. He treats this event with both respect and reality as he dropped in at a number of outlets recently. I share the alpha and the omega of his most recent thoughts on the topic:

The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad… Unsurprisingly, stout and porter were the standouts. The cask format shines brightest in the dark. Plodding through all the cheap, samey bitters to find them is worthwhile to find the good stuff.

And speaking of which, Pellicle‘s article this week is by Gabe Toth, a profile of the cask specialists at Hogshead Brewery in Denver, Colorado including this bold admission:

“Cask beer, at least in America, has that reputation of being an older person’s beer, like your grandfather’s beer, versus the hip young thing, seltzer or whatever. Beer in general is suffering a little bit of that—I feel like younger people in general are turning more toward other beverages and losing interest in craft beer.”

Jordan did some thinking about loss of interest, too, this week as he assessed the Ontario good beer scene and declared the beginning of a new era – based on the new retail modalities and associated realities:

Does the world really need Carling Light when Keystone Light exists? Does Old Vienna mean anything to people outside Chatham-Kent and Windsor? Does Labatt regret sending one REALLY EFFECTIVE sales rep to Thunder Bay in the 1990’s to sell Crystal? Whoever that was, they’re legend.  You’re going to get consolidation of products. You’re going to get less choice, at least initially. The convenience and grocery and big box retail situation has less patience for variety and more desire for expedience than The Beer Store did. The new paradigm is about choice, but it’s largely about choosing how much you’re going to pay for a single product.

Finally, before the regular list of more alt-news about alts and other beers, I would note the suspension of operations at The Share from Stephanie Grant. Looking forward to an energized return. Also, congratulations to those shortlisted with the BGBW Awards.

Otherwise, a shorter post this week. Such the way of this point in time. Other things on the mind. Still, with all that has happened and will happen… for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

**From this 2017 report on the British Columbian wine industry: “Nationally, it is important to note that Canadian exports totalled 72.9 million litres in 2015. Of this, only 1.8 million litres was premium wine (non-bulk), representing $32.8 million of the total $73.9 million of all Canadian wine exports. It is impressive that premium wine accounted for only 2.5 percent of wine exports, but represented 44 percent of the total value of all wine exports…” More here.
*Our beach side resort city, Kołobrzeg, on the other side of Kaszubia, was also destroyed and rebuilt as it was where the Nazis attempted a Dunkirk as the Soviets encircled them. They stuck around and the sounds of maching gun firing range welcomed one of my first late summer balcony beers when I got there.

The Flip Flops Flappin’ Cold Beer Cracking Summ-Summ-Summertimin’ Beery News Notes


Jumping right into it, last Friday’s cartoon strip, a snippet of which site above, in Pellicle by Dave Bailey mocking craft brewery culture was something of a milestone, a bookending of sorts finally… finally confirming those inside the bubble understand what the greater world knew in 2014 when that New Yorker cover of the hipster craft beer bar was published.* The details of all the embarassing characteristics that Bailey notes as he roasts craft culture were not so publicly discussed back in 2014- even if they were obviously known to those present and paying any attention. We are told that the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there but we perhaps forget how, even over one short decade, how quickly those differences may develop.

Fortunately, Boak and Bailey** have saved you all the need to look back to through this blog’s archives just there to the right to trace all the changes which arouse at least in the UK during those intervening times. They’ve provided us with a real gem of an update on their book Brew Britannia also, conveniently,  published in 2014. It’s a beast of a bit but I am not going to ruin it for you so much as, I hope, give you reason to go dive into the full +10,000 word essay:

This long post is an attempt to fill in some of the gaps and hold ourselves to account: what did we get right, what did we get wrong, and what took us totally by surprise? More importantly, it’s about gaining some perspective. It’s easy to mistake the fact that we personally have become older and more jaded to mean that there has been a decline in the quality and vibrancy of the beer scene. Maybe there has, maybe there hasn’t – but there must be some objective facts we can use to test our gut feelings. We know other people have different perspectives, though, so we’ve also asked as many people as possible for their thoughts.

To answer all those questions, B+B applied their list of eleven indicators from 2013 of whether a community has a healthy beer culture and drew some thoughtful conclusions. Go have a look.

Speaking of lists, Jeff wrote one this week that got me thinking, too. It was a list of his top ten beer drinking experiences. I would re-arrange their order, kick a few out and add some others but the exercise is quite interesting. Consider his #10 “In the first half of a sporting event in which you are not deeply invested”:

Sporting events are festive affairs, and drinking a beer early in a game helps elevate the sense of occasion. It builds a mood of camaraderie, binding the watchers in the clink of glass. The beer itself tastes of promise—of the next couple hours, of a win, of greasy food and more beer. By the second half of any sporting event (later innings in baseball, third period in hockey, etc), the drinking event has become a sporting event and attention turns fixedly to the game. Ah, but those first minutes…

See, I see that differently – not as a linear experience but one that turns on the flow of each game. Reminded me of a 1987 Canada Cup pre-tourney hockey game between Canada and the US that I watched with pals. We ended up (like UTTER MORONS) sitting in the bar during the third period drinking beer with our backs turned to the ice because Canada was up something like double digits to diddle over the Americans. Why were we morons? Because Gretsky and Lemieux were on the ice at the same time. And between 27% to 73% of all the other hockey players who I’d ever worshiped were also right there playing. But, you know, there was beer over there on the concourse… soooooo…

Martin marked the fifth anniversary of the passing of his friend Richard Coldwell with a bit of a public service – a report on the gumwashery of Thornbridge‘s brewing of Jaipur on their new old fashioned Burton Unions saved from wreckers… or perhaps the storage locker… earlier this year:

Richard wasn’t a great fan of Burton’s beers, but would have had intelligent things to say about the Thornbridge “saving” of the Burton Unions this year. You’ll know I couldn’t care less about history or the brewing process, and argue the quality of the publican is by far the biggest determinant of the quality of the beer in your glass (see : the improvement of Bass in the hands of a smaller number of committed landlords). On Saturday, back in Sheff from Italy, I thought I’d better taste the new Jaipur at my nearest Thornbridge pub…

He approved. As did John aka TBN himself when he first encountered his first fonio:

Have you heard of fonio? If you haven’t yet, you will, at least according to Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver who has become an advocate for this climate-resistant African grain. Its most important attribute is that you can make beer from it, which will be terribly useful once the Earth decides it can’t do barley any more. Garrett had come to St James’s Gate to make a fonio-based collaboration beer, although that won’t be out until much later this year. He also brought over some beers of his own to share.

He liked it too. You know, I am not sure whether “quite a shock; incredibly soft and chewy” or “if it’s saving the planet, then all the better” is higher praise. Clearly both worth seeking out.

Ron has been looking for a new local and last Saturday found himself with his gang checking out a really good looking stop in Amsterdam called Soundgarden – offering us a pretty good photo essay:

Soundgarden is slightly unusual as it backs directly onto a canal. Which gives it a nice view. And also means that customers can arrive by boat. Which is exactly what happened not long after we got there. How cool is that? Unlike the garden itself. Which was pretty warm. Too warm for my liking. And with almost no shade. That’s a mark against the pub. The inside was totally empty. Which meant I could take lots of nice photos without people getting in the way. I won’t bother trying to describe how it looks. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

Similarly – except a whole country away – Franz Hofer posted a study of a beer garden in Munich with this startling geolocating sentence:

Once the location of the smallest royal blacksmith, the Swiss-style hut at the edge of the estate allegedly served as Ludwig and Lola’s love den.

Now, let’s set all that traipsing wandering about the taverns and such aside. We live in a real world and many in the UK today will be needing one or celebrrating with one as it is election day. One poll by More in Common in particular caught my eye when it hit the sosh-meeds.  It detailed voting intentions according to a fabulous sixteen different favourite clinky-drinkies. So we learn that cider drinkers prefer Labour by an advantage of only half that of IPA fans. Almost twice as many SNP voters prefer shandy to whisky. But Sherry drinkers?  Totes Tory. They’ll be sucking back the sticky raisiny toffee gak tonight!

Speaking of the unhappy, The Times had an extended investigation into the new eco-lairds of Scotland including, as noted hereabouts last April, one Mr. Watts semi-formerly of BrewDog and his failed forestry project:

At Kinrara, Dave Morris, 77, of the Parkswatch Scotland blog, points to the dead sticks which should have grown into great Scots pines. “We should not be planting in the uplands,” he said. “There is inevitable disturbance of the soils which brings peaty ground to the surface, leading to carbon loss for decades.” Morris is furious that BrewDog received nearly £700,000 of money for the project, arguing that the land should have been left to regenerate naturally. A few metres away from the dead and dying saplings, young trees are thriving, pushing their way through the heather. Without the chomping teeth of deer or sheep to tear them down, these trees are growing naturally. All it needed was a fence to keep the animals away.

I’ve mentioned from once in a while that I worked teaching English in Kołobrzeg, Poland back in 1991 but probably didn’t mention the time I watched a construction crew out the window of the classroom. Two things caught my eye. First, they used the trunks of pine trees, bark and all, as a form of embedded rebar as they poured the building’s concrete floors. “How long until that collapses?” I thought foreshadowing a future dabbling in construction law. Second, there was a regular flow of empty beer bottles crashing down upon the work site’s ground level many floors below as the crew kept themselves… hydrated all day long. “Lordy… Lordy…” thought I. I recalled this scene when I read the news about the neghbouring Czechs cutting back on their intake as reported by Jessica Mason:

The average number of beers drunk per capita in 2023 was 256 beers per head, which is equal to approximately 128 litres, reflecting similar figures to the lowest average consumption figures ​​during the pandemic restrictions and the lowest record number in 1963. Radio Prague International (RPI) also highlighted how in 2005, beer consumption reached a record high when Czechs consumed 163.5 litres, or 327 beers per head. Consumption per person was 153 litres in 2009 holding at 140 litres for nearly a decade before falling to 129 litres in 2021… In 2021, the Czech Statistics Office estimated that beer consumption that year was the lowest since 1989 when it had been at around 151 litres per person and even jumped above 160 litres momentarily in the 90s.

So… is that really all that bad a thing for Czechs? I have consulted Max‘s dispatches for clues.

Pellicle‘s feature this week is a piece on a pub called The Swan with Two Necks by Katie, which contains some great detail of the life of a license holder living under pub chain owership thirty years ago:

One day in 1992, they received a letter welcoming them to the PubMaster group, their only notification that Whitbread had sold their pub. After a while of trying to acclimatise to their new owners, it seemed like they might need to move on again. “We just didn’t get on with PubMaster,” Steve says. “There was such a reduced selection of beer, restrictions on what we could and couldn’t buy, it was just an aggravation all the time. It just wasn’t what we set out to do.” PubMaster agreed to talk with them to see how they could help improve the situation. Before the talk was had, Christine and Steve received another letter. It read: ‘Welcome to Jennings’… “They came to me and said they had a tenancy agreement with Whitbread through PubMaster, and that they wanted me to change from partial to full-time leasehold with no compensation. And then PubMaster was bought by Cafe Inns, who were even worse.

Philadelphia magazine had an article this week on an unexpected subject, the city’s obsession with that most basic of drinks that turned out to be well suited for the most basic of bars. The drink? Twisted Tea:

The price point for Twisted Tea was lower than that for any beer they were selling, says Keenan’s owner and Grays Ferry native Scott Keenan, meaning he could sling Teas for two bucks and still turn a decent profit. Combine the price with the drink’s lack of carbonation — if you’re reading this and have somehow never been down the Shore in your early 20s, that translates into “dangerously drinkable” — and Twisted Tea was primed to explode. “It just ran like wildfire,” Keenan recalls. The numbers were eye-watering: Every week that summer, he’d sell between 350 and 500 cases of Twisted Tea. Reread that sentence, then do the math. Every week, one bar in North Wildwood was slinging between 8,400 and 12,000 bottles of Twisted Tea, outselling everything but Miller Lite.

Finally, some wise words from Jamie Goode on the subject of the role of a critic when it comes to wine which are worth thinking about in relation to good beer, too:

…what people come to a professional for is an honest opinion, built on solid tasting experience and good taste. They are looking for the model critic as described by David Hume: someone free of bias, with good sensitivity, and good aesthetic sense. Low involvement consumers are well served by the wines they are being sold. High involvement consumers – the people who are listening to the critics – are well served by critical opinion. That there might be a discrepancy is not a problem: this will always exist in any field, whether it is food, or fashion, or art, or movies. Popular taste often departs from critical opinion, but this doesn’t mean that the critics are out of touch or irrelevant. They are all part of a larger ecosystem and are doing their job. A food critic concentrating on fast food and large chains is entirely useless. So is a wine critic endorsing and second guessing the tastes of people with no real interest in wine who just want something cheap that doesn’t taste bad.

Does beer have those principles? Critical opinion writers? Or just… you know… We can think about the question for a while before we meet again next time. Send in your essays on that point by Tuesday at 5 pm. Marks deducted for late submissions.

And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Along with of course, the crowd pleasing cult classic The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer – A Rant in Nine Acts of earlier that same year.
**Yes, yes – no relation.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (929) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,484) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

The End Of July Heralds These Thursday Beery News Notes

August. It’s coming. Even though it’s the month of my road trip holiday, the first in two years, no one says “Yay! August!!” do they. It’s the last gasp, the slipping away of the sands of summer. The first hint of sweater weather. Darker beers to suit darker days. The crops are coming in, as the scene in Norfolk, England shows.

How is that barley crop doing… for those of you still drinking grain based beverages. Not well. Bryan R. tweeted a very graphic graphic, shown to the right. The US barley crop is collapsing under the heat. Canadian farmers planted 8.3 million acres of barley in 2021, up 9.7% encouraged by last year’s crop but it’s been dry and hot here, too. Northern Ireland looks to be in better shape. France looks fine, too. The rest of the western EU may be dealing with too much rain.

How’s the hops? Stan has issued his latest update on the hops markets, Hop Queries. And it contains an interest discussion on the effect of heat waves on the NW US crop this year:

“One variety that could cause issues is Cascade, as other growers have seen it hit hard.” This comes at a time that farmers have reduced Cascade acres because brewers cut back contracts. Brewers who are counting on buying fresh Cascade at below contract prices on the spot market, which has become standard operating procedure for many smaller breweries, maybe be unpleasantly surprised. (There will still be older Cascade around, but perhaps available for a good reason.) As is to be expected, the heat was hardest on “babies” (first-year plants) because they aren’t yet established. And, of course, the babies tend to be in-demand varieties, because growers are going to plant what brewers want. For instance, a field with Chinook will include only a few babies (replacing plants that grew old or became diseased), and Chinook stood up well to the heat.

Expected result? Less supply of the most desired varieties.

Lingering or revived pandemic blues got you down? Missing the many still delayed fests? Head east!

The 31st Qingdao International Beer Festival, one of the largest beer festivals in China, opened on Friday evening in the coastal city of Qingdao, East China’s Shandong province. The 24-day carnival has gathered more than 1,600 beers from over 40 countries and regions, according to the tourism commission of the Xihai’an (West Coast) New Area, where the festival is taking place. There will be over 400 activities covering international exchanges, economic and trade exhibitions, fashion shows, parades and performances during the festival.

These things are apparently a thing. Room to grow, too. Ten tents in 2022, I say!

Martyn wrote about the development of the water supply for brewing in the City of London in one of those pieces on history that does not make you yearn for the earliest of the good old days:

…despite the mythology that surrounds the river’s historic alleged unwholesomeness, brewers made use of its water to brew their beer for centuries: In 1509 the Bishop of Winchester (who owned considerable land alongside the river in Southwark – much of it occupied by brothels) and the Priory of St Mary Overies granted a license to the brewers of Southwark to have passage with their carts “from ye Borough of Southwark until the Themmys … to fetch water … to brew with,” so long as the brewers did not try to claim the passage as a highway, a license renewed by later bishops. (The Thames at Southwark is surprisingly shallow at low tide, and horse-drawn carts could be driven some way out into the stream to collect water in casks.)

Speaking of water, here as link to an interesting piece by BBC Scotland on the changing attitudes younger folk have towards alcohol. Apparently, 29% of youff are dry, up 10% over the last 15 years. If you can’t access the BBC Scotland site, here’s a brief intro. Bottom line – don’t be planning your business on an expanding beer market over the next few decades.

Elsewhere, the young folk are being less sensible as this report from France of the situation in Mexico explains:

Like all businesses in the capital — home to around nine million people — customers in the bars of Zona Rosa have their temperatures checked and are asked to use hand sanitizer. “People want to drink,” said bar owner Ernesto Castro. “The truth is that young people don’t care if they’re going to be infected or not. They want to party,” the 55-year-old said. “They feel that they’re not going to be infected and it’s a problem because the pandemic is still there and getting worse.” Last Friday the authorities raised the pandemic alert level in the capital, but did not impose new restrictions on economic or social activities.

Jenny Pfäfflin drew my attention to claims made about “natural beer“:

I’m not against alternative beers, but marketing it as more “natural” or “wholesome” than barley beer is a lot to unpack.

Seems similar to the idea of “sustainable” beer in Australia. The natural stuff is based on banana and honey and seems to be yet another weird beverage that flies the banner de jour, including the “heritage” banner. Note: “heritage” is the word for history where you leave out the bits you don’t like and rearrange what’s left to maximize comfort levels. In this case, it seems to be a tribute to craft’s heritage of banging things in to a pot and making up a back story to sell the stuff.

By the way, I never know how to react to a majoritarian/ privileged voices presenting a selection of minority/ under privileged voices. Curated protest? Appropriation of anti-appropriation? Seeing it a lot this year. But conversely, at least it is better than the bizarre branding we see in Poland: “White IPA Matters”!

The company has not responded to the allegations and complaints yet. Mr Mentzen, the owner of the brand, is a member of Poland’s right-wing Confederation party and has contested two elections – local elections in Poland’s Torun city in 2018 and for the European parliament in 2019 – both of which he lost, according to the Daily Mail.

Finally and perhaps related, a fairly sad observation to read:

I miss what my life was before beer.

Probably more common a thought that folk would admit. As you contemplate that, don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, 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. There’s 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.

A Few Beery News Notes For Early May As I Ail Rather That Ale

This may be a brief one as I find myself on Wednesday off work sick from something with nothing to do with a virus. Food allergies. Love. It. I blame the Hungarian salami provisionally. The deli had none of the German stuff I normally buy.  I know you will join me in shaking my fist at the sky from a doubled over position as you marvel at the enhanced level of excitement the ailments of the middle age offer to the modern beer blogging reader.

Still, I expect you have other things to do as those do in the picture of the week, posted on Twitter by Will Hawkes. My first reaction was “OH MY GOD!!!” as we have been in total lockdown for most of 2021 around these parts.  Even though Boak and Bailey are out on the crawls these days, I am no where near heading out into a crowd even though I have had my first AZ jab for half a month now. Still, it does look pleasant. Looks like the scene is near Kings Cross Station at Stoney Street. This would be more likely the scene I’d find myself in. Also in Britain this week:

i. a UK Member of Parliament told a beer joke this week.
ii. a beer rating service on CEFAX, the 1970s and ’80s TV based internet service of sorts, was remembered, too.

Update #1: according to Tom in the comments, apparently May is Mild Month so once again by June 99% of beer drinkers will say to themselves “what’s that mild stuff?”*

Update #2: Good to see our local Stone City Ales managed a local crisis in supply so well. See, they planned for a normalish patio springtime and then faced a renewed lockdown so they had waaaayyy too much beer. Their solution worked according to my email inbox:

Since we started our 25% off sale last week, we have been overwhelmed by your support, and we are so grateful. We just wanted to let you know the sale ends tonight at midnight, so if you would like to take advantage of this opportunity (for the first time, or again) just be sure to order online today, and simply choose a future delivery date. We don’t want to sit on fresh beers, and we had brewed lots thinking our patios may be open. Alas, we are take-out window and delivery only, so every sale really helps.  We are so proud of these beers we have out right now. Don’t miss out. To all of the health care workers and essential workers out there — WE SEE YOU, and deeply appreciate what you do for us all. 

The Beer Nut had a busy week with three posts and eleven beer reviews. Best of the lot appears to be the stemwear worthy beers of Land & Labour but no such joy for a sad faux choco-orange imperial stout from the obscurely named brewery, Wander Beyond:

On the flavour, oranges are conspicuous by their absence. It goes big on the chocolate, which doesn’t sit well with the assertive carbonation. The sweetness, bitterness and savoury side are all what you’d get from dark chocolate or cocoa powder, and there’s only the faintest hint of Jaffa Cake orangeiness on the finish. I’m down on gimmicks in beer generally; poorly rendered gimmicks like this are unforgivable.

When cooking cicadas, beer is optional.

Ron has done a series of posts on AK beer during WWII.

Someone mentioned recently that they thought AK died out between the wars. That’s not really true. AK was given a good old kick in the bollocks by WW I. Many found their demise in the war’s brutal gravity cuts. Others, though fatally weakened, soldiered on. Another war was the last thing they needed. Kicking off the war at a little over 1030º, there wasn’t far they could go once a new round of gravity cuts began to bite.

Posts on the grists, sugars and hops in AK brewing followed. Then he provided a brew it yourself recipe for an AK from 1945. Rather completist of him.

Gary is doing us all a great service with his continuing series of posts on pre-WW II Jewish-owned East European breweries. This week he wrote about the Teitel Brewery of Ostrow Mazowiecka, to the north east of Warsaw and the site of the murder of hundreds of Jews in 1939. Some good research supports the piece:

I located a print ad for the brewery in the National Archives of Israel. It appeared in the June 1, 1928 Trybuna Akademicka, a Jewish-themed, Polish-language newspaper in Warsaw. I wrote earlier that at least two other Polish breweries with Jewish ownership, the Pupko and Papiermeister breweries, placed ads in the paper in the same period.

By comparison with the above, please note elsewhere that it’s not a blog, its a “premier beverage research firm“! Such cringy puff.

Oktoberfest went and got itself cancelled again. Way. To. Go. To the north-west, another sort of doom is on the way as hard seltzers are boing brought to Belgium via AB-InBev-etc-etc. The Brussels Times tries to explain:

To begin with, the name ‘hard seltzer’ is aggressive enough. On the drinks’ British website, meanwhile, the company states, “It’s like alcoholic sparkling water, because that’s exactly what it is,” and “Don’t overthink it”. “We want to be a company that brings all people together, not just beer people,” said Elise Dickinson, marketing manager for hard seltzers at AB InBev. “Hard seltzers are an integral part of that. The demand for the drinks is also starting to increase in Europe. AB InBev is well-placed to help retailers enter this booming market.”

It really is an accusing finger at the craft beer trade that such a vacuous product is kicking it in the marketplace. Could a food product be less skilled? Still, gives a reason to pay freelancers in need. Canadians are less interested as we know how to pour vodka into club soda at 20% of the price.

Conversely, Asahi is investing in no-alcohol beer as opposed to no-beer alcohol:

“Non-alcohol is a good all-around product,” Atsushi Katsuki, Asahi’s chief executive since March, said in an interview. “It helps to resolve social issues, it connects us with new users and it leads to our profitability.” Low and non-alcohol beer sales have benefited as people spent more on drinks to be consumed at home during lockdowns, suiting Asahi’s broader strategy of focusing on higher-margin “premium” beverages.

As with seltzers, the big money is in offering less.

Odd that the previous Game of Thrones beer isn’t referenced. Is this even a story? GoT has become the My Little Pony of beer brandings. Looking forward to Game of Thrones sugary breakfast corn pops.

Retired Martin has been pumping out the blog posts and, in this piece on a trip to a place called Flatt Top in England, posts what has to be the single most honestly unattractive photo of a British pub that I have ever seen. Click on that thumbnail if you dare.

There. Back off to bed for me. While I’m there shivering under the covers, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, 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 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. There’s 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. Plus a newcomer located by B+B: The Moon Under Water.

*Ha Ha. Funny joke, right? No, really. Joking.

The April Fools Day Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Here we are – April. The month of the showers that bring all the flowers. A snow storm is passing through this morning here at the east end of Lake Ontario. Such is life. Work is heavy, the third wave is heavy… and these packs of cookies and chips are making me heavy… heavier. Fine. We’re locking it all back down. I need my jab. Really. Soon please. But remember – it could be worse…

Speaking of the weather… Mexico is considering taking steps about the water that is moving north from arid lands through the porous US border in the form of beer:

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is railing against the production of beer and milk in areas where there isn’t enough water. López Obrador cancelled plans for a huge brewery on Mexico’s northern border last year, and on Sunday he questioned the whole idea of producing beer for export. “How can we have beer breweries in the north? How can we produce beer for export? What are we exporting? Water. We don’t have water in the north,” López Obrador said.

This is not a small matter, as Forbes has reported:

Beer used to come from a variety of countries. In 2020, Mexico accounted for a record 72.27% of all U.S. beer imports during a record year for all beer imports, which totaled $5.75 billion. It marked the ninth consecutive year for record U.S. beer imports and the 12th consecutive year that Mexico increased market share. Most of that beer comes a massive brewing operation outside Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas, which is responsible for 56% of all U.S. beer imports.

The owner of that brewery? Anheuser-Busch InBev. Economic imperialism. Sweet. Somewhat similarly, The Full Pint has somewhat bravely posted, in 2011-esque style, the list of the top 50 US craft breweries but much of the top ten is made up of odd assemblages of investment vehicles of one sort or another. Gambrinus? CANarchy? Artisanal Brewing Ventures? It’s bad enough that Yuengling and Boston Beer are in there. Who are these people… err… these mega corps? So confusing.

Somewhat economic and culturally imperially speaking, a Chinese firm has found a way to brew in Pakistan to serve the Chinese economic actors in their new work zone:

“The company formally started its beer production last week, which product will be supplied to Chinese nationals working at various projects launched in different areas of Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and mines and mineral projects in Balochistan,” Mohammad Zaman Khan, director general, Excise and Taxation South, told Dawn. He confirmed a licence had been issued to the Chinese company in 2018 as it had submitted an application to the authorities concerned in 2017, pleading that the beer and liquor brand which the company produces in China is not available in Pakistan.

Almost as confusingly dramatic… Q: could a hotdog be a sausage IPA? A: apparently anything is possible these days if the logic leading to the “farmhouse IPA” is to be trusted:

The one thing we know for certain, without even a hint of ambiguity, is that the word “saison” does not attract drinkers. A few breweries and a few beers have achieved success, but it’s despite, not because of the word. Justin regularly modifies his “saison” with equally dangerous adjectives like “Brett” or “table.”—other words that scare off drinkers. It’s too bad because I am convinced beers like Ashfall and Bumper Crop and Slow Motion have broad appeal. The word IPA no longer has much connection to style. And if “saison” reads like a warning to drinkers, IPA is a reassurance, a way of saying, “You’ll like this beer.”

Reflecting a more certain time, Ron told the story of a party for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902:

…the hero of the day was enthusiastically drunk. As twilght came on the grounds were beautifully illuminated with fairy lights and lanterns, and at midnight the proceedings terminated by a display of fireworks…

Ron was less enthused, saying Ed7 was “remembered for being a debauched glutton, who ate, drank and smoked himself to an early grave.” I hope he is more charitable in his plans for the next coronation party. What plans do I have? Jings. No idea. Better call Ron and ask. Has anyone laid away a few dozen hogsheads of strong ale?

The price of beer is being lowered in India to cope with Covid.

One of my favourite memories of living in Poland 30 years ago was the hardly operational trains – and especially the food and bar cars:

…the company’s name has in Polish become all but synonymous with its dining cars, serving up a taste of Poland – everything from hearty pierogi to piping hot żurek fermented-rye soup – in sleek and comfortable surroundings. Wars dining cars have fostered countless anecdotes, inspired songs, and generated a large following among contemporary train buffs. And recently, those restaurant cars have been even more of a welcome sight, as they have become the only sit-down restaurants in Poland allowed to remain open amid coronavirus restrictions.

Go Covid! Covid loves trains!! In further news of the pandemic present, Ed has provided a summary of how his British brewing workplace has coped with the situation – and explains its very interesting business model:

… brewing through the plague year. As an essential worker I’ve been slaving away whilst many have been at home all day playing with themselves and saying how it’s affecting their mental health. Maybe the Victorian moralists were right after all? I work at a site which contains four independently owned breweries (brewhouses and fermentation vessels), of which the main brewery does the processing (stabilisation and filtration) and packaging (cask, keg and bottle) for all four, and provides staffing for three.

Reversedly equipment-wise, the UK’s Fullers PubCo is now two years into life without its own brewery but things there are looking up:

Simon Emeny, Fuller’s chief executive, said the company had entered the pandemic in strong shape financially, partly because of the January 2019 sale of its brewery, which makes London Pride ale, to Japan’s Asahi after 174 years in the business. However, the pandemic cash burn meant the company needed money to train staff and take advantage of an expected sales surge once pubs reopen, he said.

Finally, Evan has discussed the use, misuse and uselessness of “craft” in the language of drinks as spoken around the world:

In other languages, saying “craft beer” can be close to impossible, at this point being “too new” a phrase to have a local equivalent. Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, a brewer and consultant at Brewsters Craft in South Africa, says that she wouldn’t even know how to express the idea of a craft beverage in a language like Xhosa or Zulu. “The concept is not new — Africans have been hand-crafting various items for years,” she says. “The traditional beers here have different names, but they all mean beer. Like one is called ‘utywala besintu,’ because ‘utywala’ is beer and ‘besintu’ means for traditional people or natives. But craft beer? Craft beer is still a new term. I don’t think we have a word for it.”

There. Easter weekend. Four days off heres abouts. Nice. Well, except for the whole Christ died on the cross for your sins thing. Best be good. One thing that is good and charming and interesting is Project X. I can’t tell you anything about Project X but it is exciting and charming and… interesting. More when I can tell you. Meantime, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plus a newcomer located by B+B: The Moon Under Water.

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Thursday Beer News Notes Before The UK General Election

It’s not often that I get to headline the weekly update with something so.. so… unbeery – but is beer ever really that much removed from politics? Consider this photo to the right that circulated about a man to the left. I was as sad that it was Coors Light, the faceless multinationals of beer that he was pouring as much as I was saddened by the mleko* pour.  The Late Great Jack Layton held the red banner high here in Canada for years and he also knew how to pour a beer with a bit of style.

Given it is Yule, I will start with Ben Johnson and his list of ways to avoid the Christmas party hell you fear most, other drinking your good stuff:

Hosting at home guarantees my own access to good hooch but it also opens the door to the undesirable possibility that my guests might assume that they will be graced with the same luxury, which of course they are not. Indeed the one downside to hosting is that it means people might drink my beer. Thankfully, over the years, I’ve learned ways to keep my guests from dipping into my stash and I’m here to pass that wisdom on to you.

Speaking of Yule, Merryn in Orkney and Lars in Norway were discussing Christmas brewing obligations in Norway when Lars made this extraordinary statement:

This was not even the law for all of Norway: it only applied in western Norway (the Gulathing area). The other regional laws did not have this provision. (The Frostating law required brewing for midsummer.) Neither did the Swedish regional laws.

The Frostating law? Now I have to get my brain around the legal brewing requirements of other jurisdictions. It would be interesting to have a great big list when folk had to brew and why.

Katie of the shiny and the biscuit gave us a wonderful portrait of and an interview with two Mancunian fans leading the cause of cider from their demand side of the commercial transactional teeter totter, this week at Pellicle:

With Dick and Cath leading the march, Greater Manchester has become the centre of “real” cider in the North in the space of two years. Together, they created the Manchester Cider Club, and in doing so have brought cidermakers like Tom Oliver, Albert Johnson (Ross-on-Wye) and Susanna and James Forbes (Little Pomona) to the city. At regularly sold-out ticketed events and inclusive meet-ups, they are encouraged to answer questions and share their cider with a new, northern audience.

From further east, the tale of Vienna Lager was told at scale in the seven days at A Tempest in a Tankard:

Four hours east of Munich as the RailJet flies, the Viennese were marking a milestone anniversary of their own, albeit with much less fanfare: 175 years of Vienna Lager. Even if no museums commemorated the fact, and even if the media resonance was akin to the sound of one hand clapping, Vienna had good reason to celebrate its contribution to the culture of brewing. Bottom-fermented beer had been produced for centuries in Europe’s Alpine regions, but it wasn’t until Anton Dreher, owner of the Brauhaus zu Klein-Schwechat, brought together technological advances he learned in Britain and Bavaria that he was able to produce the first lager beer that could be brewed year-round. That happened in 1841. **

Big Beer Corporate News? Apparently darling of a decade ago Stone is maybe up for sale, a rumour of a story almost entirely confirmed by the denials of the brewery. In another sort of bad brewery news reporting… or rather reporting on bad news for a brewery… it appears that New Belgium may have new clients amongst the authoritarian military elite!

The New Belgium Brewery insists it is not like other companies. Its owners, who are also its employees, are devoted to fighting social inequity and climate change, proving business can “be a force for good,” its website says. Their CEO Kim Jordan was honoured among 30 “World-Changing Women in Conscious Business” last year. Employees even get free bicycles. But those ethical credentials have not stopped them planning to sell their firm, which has breweries in Colorado and North Carolina, to a beer giant accused of funding genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

Wow. Too bad there was no way for the governing hands on the nNew Belgium transaction to be warned of the situation, like a hearing of the International Court of Justice or anything. Speaking of things end-timesy, beer in the U.S. of A. is dying again:

The trend doesn’t appear to be reversing itself. Sales of domestic beer slipped 4.6% between October 2018 and October 2019, according to Nielsen. Microbrew and craft beers are also in a minor slump, down 0.4%, despite Big Beer companies scooping them up left and right (AnheuserBusch just purchased Craft Brew Alliance, which makes Redhook Ale).

“Microbrew” can only be a word used by someone who knows very little about microbrewing, rights? Aside from that, the story is White Claw and, if we had any sense, no one would care as that is something other people buy like purple velvet trousers or quadrophonic stereo systems. So why do we care? I don’t care. Affects me in no way. Nada.

All of which leads to the news in Ontario that the national brewpub chain Les 3 Brasseurs has announced that four of its locations in Ontario are closing:

Ten years ago, we entered the strategic market of Ontario and, over that time, experienced some great victories, notably our Yonge and Oakville restaurants, but also some challenges,” said Laurens Defour, CEO of 3 Brewers Canada, in a statement. “This is a difficult decision, but we have concluded that we need to close some sites in order to support the evolution of our business.

Careful readers will recall that I happily attended on of the busier outlets in Oakville last year and was quite happy with the carrot pale ale I was served.

Barry in Germany posted an afternoon’s worth of photos of old apple and pear trees taken during a walk with his dog. Elsewhere in Germany, there is a pub branded with the likeness of Roger Prozt but denying it is a pub branded with the likeness of Roger Prozt. Protz commented thusly:

I’m not even allowed to be flattered. They deny any connection to me because they think – wrongly – I’m going to sue them. I recall the image that was produced for a beer event, same style for all participants.

Note: of the two being depicted, I’d suggest the dandy, the fop, jack the lad was more mocked than Peg. Interesting that the powdered wig was not a wig at all. And speaking of the Irish of yore, here is the tweet of the week:

“Ale has killed us”? Short memories of the Vikings apparently. But enough! I have a long day’s work ahead of me then need to settle in for the the election results. Don’t forget that there’s more news at Boak and Bailey’s on Saturday, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too.

*A teacher in Poland I once was…
**I used a slightly different quotation than Boak and Bailey so I feel justified.

The Mid-July Thursday Beer News You Need

Mid-July! It’s lovely. Warm. Tropical even. We are actually getting the edgy remnants of Hurricane Barry into the Great Lakes basis so it’s all a bit thick out there.  Raspberries picked by my own sausage-like digits. And the fire flies are at their peak. I let the garden go a bit and they seem to love it. 100+ flashes a minute in one corner of the garden. Beer has its role, too. I even had one last night, mid-week. At a Denny’s.* A Bud Light. The weirdest thing was being handed a ice cold bottle and an ice cold glass. Entirely hit the spot. Mid-week, mid-month, mid-summer, mid-year, mid-aged.

What is going on? Well, Josh Noel, who admitted to needing something to wash out his mouth after writing about hard seltzer, has written a helpful article for the Chicago Tribune on dark lagers:

And that gets to the genius of dark lager. They’re beers that typically have a modest amount of alcohol — about 5 percent or so — but are long on aroma and taste. Flavors usually include a mild to deep roast character and can veer into chocolate, char or coffeelike terrain thanks to the roasted malt that gives the beer its dark hue. But unlike most of the porters and stouts they resemble, dark lagers tend to finish dry. The best dark lagers make for stealthily ideal summer beers: interesting layers of flavor, but refreshing. The color, which can range from deep amber to impenetrably black, winds up playing a visual trick.

We have an excellent local black lager, Blacklist from The Napanee Beer Company, so I am particularly grateful for this addition to the discussion.

Note: “bee boles were used before the development of modern hives to provide shelter to the skep…”

As we have been noticing over the last few weeks, beer writing and commentary seems to have divided into (i) “it is so dull and boring right now” for one reason or another** and (ii) HOLIDAY!!! So it was good to see some interesting travel being discussed by a couple of Brits abroad. Nate posted a top ten list of things to do in a city I have lived near – Gdansk, Poland – and gave ten top tips for visiting the old Hanseatic port including hitting up a museum about the Solidarity movement and this:

Shoot Some Guns – Maybe a controversial one, but I’d always wanted to shoot some guns since we can’t do it in the UK and I stumbled across a shooting range whilst doing some research. DSTeamStrzelnica was a great experience where we got to shoot four guns (A Glock 17, a revolver, AK-47 and another rifle) and it only cost us £18 each to shoot a full clip of each gun. It was a really fun experience!

Retired Martin has been in NYC and left us a photo essay with commentary:

How joyous to see a “Sorry, no samples” sign, by the way. 16 ounces (80% of a pint) is practically a sampler anyway.  I reckon the Five Boroughs Hazy IPA served in a plastic glass will have cost me £8 by the time taxes and Lloyds Bank conversion charge are added on.  Still cheaper than Port Street. “Tastes like Brew Dog” says Mrs RM.  It tasted like Hazy Jane. On to the High Line, the one place in New York where you can avoid craft beer and tipping…

Saskatchewan’s Pile O’ Bones Brewing Co. is getting a bit of heat for its name – folk saying its disrespectful to the local indigenous community – but according to this Cree language place name resource site, the location of what is now Regina was called “oskana kâ-asastêki” which meant “where the bones are piled.”

Beervana had a interesting guest blog post this week written by Ben Parsons is the co-founder/brewer, along with Rik Hall, of Portland Oregon’s Baerlic Brewing which unpacked the benefits in the US for craft brewers to self distribute their beers:

I would posit that if and when a brewery business does get into some troubled water—albeit from market conditions, saturation, losing chain grocery, etc—not owning their own distribution rights could easily be the last nail in the coffin. And although distributors are a very necessary part of the industry, their foothold on this particular part of the conversation is risky business and needs modernization so that it better fits with the current state of the industry.

Folk chatting about early brewing methods is always interesting. Who knew that bands in the pottery meant the line to fill with boiling water before topping up with cold before adding in the mash was so obvious?

At the Corrigall Farm, Orkney, large tubs that have marked lines inside, usually about one third to a half way up. Custodian told us (years ago, hope I have the details right) that you put in boiling water to the mark, then top up with cold and it’s the correct temperature.

Pilsner as the anti-NEIPA? Maybe.

This is an interesting piece, a remembrance of 16 of B.C.’s now shut early micro- and even some more recent craft era breweries. And it contains this interesting bit of history:

Horseshoe Bay Brewery was the first microbrewery in Canada when it was opened in 1982 by John Mitchell and Frank Appleton to produce beer for the nearby Troller Pub and became Ground Zero for the craft beer revolution. Mitchell and Appleton soon moved on to Spinnakers, and Horseshoe Bay briefly closed in 1985 before reopening and produced beer well into the 1990s, before closing for good in 1999. The original brewhouse, made from converted dairy equipment, is still in use today at Crannog Ales in Sorrento.

Now, that would be a real Canadian beer nerd’s pilgrimage: “honey, I am off to see the original brewhouse, made from dairy equipment!” It’s halfway between Kamloops and Sicamous, if you are planning the trip yourself.

That’s it! Have a great week as Q2 turns into Q3. I will be lounging myself. Well, dapper by day then lounging through evening. Such is the life of the office worker. Check out the beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday and maybe on Monday we will have a sighting of the inter-continental Stan now that he is back from Brazil.

*You can mock me after you’ve tried the burger. I was surprised, too.
**hard seltzer, everyone’s already been bought out, even glitter beer is so last year…

The Thursday Beer News For All Of Us Actually Putting In A Day’s Work

I don’t know if this is a warning or tidings of good cheer. Boak and Bailey issued a short news post on Saturday because “not much has really grabbed our attention” and Stan followed suit. That’s reasonable given the time of year, folks out wandering and such, but I now feel somehow obligated to prove to you – to each of you – that beer blog news roundups matter.*

Speaking of Boak and Bailey, they were on the tartan trail and made it to Fort William in Scotland… or as we call it in the family For Twilliam. Dad’s Dad’s People were from there. Real kilty folk with McLeod at the end of each of their names.  They hit all the pubs and probably hung out with a zillion of my third cousins. But we don’t talk with them. Something happened in the mid-1930s and, well, you know how that goes. The Campbell branch sorta blew up around 1908 and, well, we only started chatting again around 2009. Anyway, enough of me. What did they find?

The one everybody recommended was The Grog & Gruel. We didn’t have a good time on our visit between grumpy service, farting dogs and pass-agg encounters with Canadian tourists determined to nab our space. But it’s certainly a nice looking, pubby pub, and we can imagine having fun there under different circumstances.

Friggin’ Canadians. They ruin everything.

Speaking of travel, [T]he Beer Nut has finally** started to unpack his notes from the gang freebie flip to a beer fest in Wrocław, Poland. Now, don’t get me wrong, as I trust no one more that TBN when it comes to the little things like experience, wisdom and integrity but seeing as I lived in Poland I was interested to see what he thought about the place:

From three days of flitting randomly around the bars I did, however, get a certain sense of generic Craftonia about the offer. It seemed like everyone had the traditional styles — their pils, their weizen and their Baltic porter — and then a plethora of trend-chasers: New England IPA, fruited sour ales, barrel-aged imperial stouts, much of it indistinguishable or unremarkable from one brewer to the next. Next to none of them seemed to specialise in particular styles or processes. I did make an effort to pick unusual-looking beers when I saw them, so hopefully the reviews which follow won’t be too generic in turn.

Interesting. I liked the image of the large concrete hockey puck stadium as the setting for the event. Comforting that my Slavic former neighbours have not lost their dab hand with a spot of grey liquid stone. Martyn also reported on the event and associated opportunities and found “the selections of beers are almost entirely Polish” which I take to mean breweries rather than styles.

In another bit of flitting about, Eoghan Walsh has written about going “Into the Valley of the Lambic Lovers” for the latest issue of Ferment:

By the late 1990s, the lambic industry was emerging from a prolonged depression. Competition from industrial, sweetened lambic had nearly wiped out the traditional breweries of the region, leaving only revivalists like Frank Boon and Cantillon to keep it alive. By the 1980s, even they were questioning the sense in persevering with a beer that no one seemed to want to drink. But lambic people are stubborn people, they toughed it out and their perseverance began to pay off. Export interest slowly took off. Their gueuzes started winning awards. Then in 1991 the first edition of Michael Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium was published.

What else? It can’t all be about hitting the road. Paste Magazine has an article on Hazy IPA which, after a couple of years of the stuff, is about as interesting as hard seltzer.*** Oddly, the article’s author seems to agree:

…the quest for “juicy” profiles in IPAs has led the beer industry in a direction that is actively undermining its own aims, and the result has become a whole lot of bad beer. Worse still, these poorly made NE-IPAs have proliferated to such an extent that they’re confusing the consumer as to what a “juicy” IPA is meant to taste like in the first place. We’re weaning a new generation of beer drinkers on a style that is often fundamentally difficult to drink, and that is a problem.

“Style” itself, of course, is to blame. The need to establish the new experiment in the same hierarchical construct as the loved and established.  Find someone to proclaim that for you and, whammo, you are in the money. Fortunately, it’s all so transitory it is easily avoided. I am also one with Jeff on this and, as a bonus, give tribute his graph folk art skills.

Speaking of the oddnesses of style, Stan caused a ripple in the continuum when he tweeted a photo of a (yik… spittoui!) pumpkin ale by a (whaaaaaat?!?!?!) Trappist brewery. Mucho replyo ensued. He used the moment to argue that “Trappist beer is an appellation, not a style” which is quite interesting because I am not sure what it means.  It’s a bit like 1+0=0 mathematically but maybe it’s 1-0=1. You get my point. The other point is that the pumpkin as determined by God’s very own plan is last year’s old crop so I have no idea what the monks think they are up to.

Katie has stayed at home, found a home for her tomatoes then celebrated in her very own living room. Speaking of which, it is reported that overall beer consumption in the UK is down by a third over the last twelve years:

“Premiumisation is impacting the Beer industry through drinkers drinking less but better,” the report says. Figures show that British people spent £177.8 million more on 66.5 million fewer pints of beer in 2017 than the year before, while the latest statistics from 2018 say that gap is widening, with a further £279 million being spent on another 40.6 million fewer pints. “On trade beer volumes have levelled out in recent years after a change in drinking habits, favouring drinking at home rather than in the pub,” said the report.

“Premiumisation”! What a silly word. ATJ added his thoughts on the story but they are behind a firewall so I don’t know what he wrote.

That is it for another week. I have the highest confidence that we can expect more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..?  Stan is taking another hiatus as he will be “bouncing between cities in Brazil” which is something I would like to see. Bouncing?!? I may need to approach the travel authorities about this.  We’ll see how much bouncing is going on then! Until then, bye!

*Maybe.
**Finally!
***Or “American creamy milk” for that matter.

The Steelyard, Stillyard, Stylyard and Spelling

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Ah, the Hanseatic League. I posted about the Hanseatic League earlier this year, pointing out how it was likely the conduit for the first introduction of hopped beer into England – and, by implication, not the Dutch. I think that might be the case for no other reason that the Dutch were introduced to hopped beer by shipments from the Hanseatic League, the Renaissance corporate port towns of the Baltic which had that handy corporate navy with corporate cannon to enforce its idea of open trade.

Renaissance and Elizabethan brewing and drinking in England is particularly interesting as the period ties a lot of later things together…. or founds them… or whatever. For example, Hull was a 1600s brewing town that also was a Hanseatic depot. Hull ale was a contemporary of Northdown as being a premium drink in London in second half of the 1600s. It’s a coastal ale of the sort that governs until the canals reach deeper into the countryside releasing the odd sulfurous and maybe hoppier beers of Burton in Staffordshire upon the national and international market. Like the railways in the mid-1800s Ontario that gave rural Labatt and Carling the opportunity to explode out into the world, England’s canals of the early 1700s also placed brewing at scale nearer the grain fields, likely cutting out middlemen and displacing premium coastal brewing perhaps by undermining existing price. Theory. Working theory.

What was displaced was the model set by the Hanseatic League. Renaissance Hamburg was the greatest brewing center in the history of beer – 42% of the workforce was involved in brewing. The Hanseatic depot at King’s Lynn still stands, one of the branch locations of Hanseatic activity. London was the Kontor with its headquarters of import / export operation located just west of London Bridge on the north shore of the Thames where Cannon Street station now stands. One of the coolest thing is that there have basically been two owners of that site since perhaps 1250 as the vestigial Hanseatic League interests in Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg sold it to the South-Eastern Railway Company in 1852. The presence of the Hanseatic League cannot be minimized at the critical point in the 1400s. Consider this passage from 1889’s bestseller The Hansa Towns by Helen Zimmern. It has a certain ripe Victorian style but does explain things like this:

Nor was London by any means their only depôt. It was the chief, but they also had factories in York, Hull, Bristol, Norwich, Ipswich, Yarmouth, Boston, and Lynn Regis. Some mention of them is found in Leland’s “Itinerary.” Under an invitation to the Hanseatics to trade with Scotland we find the name honoured in legend and song of William Wallace. In John Lydgate’s poems we also meet with our Hanseatics. In relating the festivities that took place in London city on the occasion of the triumphal entry of Henry VI, who had been crowned king at Paris some months previously, the poet narrates how there rode in procession the Mayor of London clad in red velvet, accompanied by his aldermen 196 and sheriffs dressed in scarlet and fur, followed by the burghers and guilds with their trade ensigns, and finally succeeded by a number of foreigners.

“And for to remember of other alyens,
Fyrst Jenenyes (Genoese) though they were strangers,
Florentynes and Venycyens,
And Easterlings, glad in her maneres,
Conveyed with sergeantes and other officeres,
Estatly horsed, after the maier riding,
Passed the subburbis to mete withe the kyng.”

A love of pomp and outward show was indeed a characteristic of the Hanseatics in England who thus perchance wished to impress upon the natives a sense of their wealth.

Henry IV was crowned the King of England in 1399. Hanseatic League ambassadors are in the procession when he enters London for the first time. They are somebodies. And they are powerful. They had a wee war with England from 1469-74… and won entrenching their right to trade. Hopped beer was not introduced to England by a few straggling sailors showing up at a few coastal towns. It was brought along – even imposed perhaps – by a massive commercial and military complex. Let’s look at some maps at how the Hansa QH has been described:

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The illustration to the left is a detail of the 1633 reprint of the 1561 Agas map. You can see the location of London’s Hanseatic Steelyard in blue to the west of London Bridge. Above way at the top of the text is a much finer detail of the site. Notice it is referred to as the “Stylyarde.” In the middle is a 1720s map of Elizabethan London. Notice the site is now referred to as the “Stillyard.” And to the right is a diagram of the site of the Steelyard itself in this case called the “Stahlhofes” – as it was in 1667 according to a late 1800s German atlas. So, we have four ways of spelling the name of the site. Which means that each needs to be run through the dark Satanic
research mills if we are going to have an idea of what’s going on. In a note to the discussion of John Stow‘s Survey of London (editions from 1598 to 1603), British History Online has an extended discussion in a footnote on the variously described Stillyard / Steelyard / Stilliard / Stelehouse / Steleyard which states that there was a trade presence from Cologne there as early as 1157. It also indicates that the German version Stahlhof that appears rather early on means a stall hall – a marketplace. Stow himself describes the site and operations at length in his narrative map of London including the following:

Next to this lane, on the east, is the Steelyard, as they term it, a place for merchants of Almaine, that used to bring hither as well wheat, rye, and other grain, as cables, ropes, masts, pitch, tar, flax, hemp, linen cloth, wainscots, wax, steel, and other profitable merchandises.

Interestingly, as Stow notes, past the intervening church, near the Steelyard in Haywharf Lane in the late 1500s there was a “great brew-house” operated in the past by Henry Campion and then by his son Abraham. Life in the district was… lively. In the poem by Isabella Whitney (1548–1573) “The Wyll and Testament of Isabella Whitney” we read the following:

At Stiliarde ſtore of Wines there bée,
your dulled mindes to glad:
And handſome men, that muſt not wed
except they leaue their trade.
They oft ſhal ſéeke for proper Gyrles,
and ſome perhaps ſhall fynde:
That neede compels, or lucre lures
to ſatiſfye their mind.

So, as we see on the image to the right, there is a wine house. I assumed it was a wholesale depot but it appears to be an Elizabethan retail party palace where lads and lassies mingle as they consider drink, lust and lucre. February 1582 government orders issued by the Privy Council to the Lord High Treasurer show the Stillyard being excused from certain taxation – right under another order allowing the export of 1,000 tuns of beer from London. Elizabethan brewing and trading at scale. You don’t hear about that often. Leaping ahead into the next century, Samuel Pepys, diarist and high government official, records a number of visits to the site in the 1660s. On Friday, 13 December 1661 he wrote:

…to the office about some special business, where Sir Williams both were, and from thence with them to the Steelyard, where my Lady Batten and others came to us, and there we drank and had musique and Captain Cox’s company, and he paid all, and so late back again home by coach, and so to bed.

On Monday 26 January 1662/63 he stated that he was “up and by water with Sir W. Batten to White Hall, drinking a glass of wormewood wine at the Stillyard… while on Sunday, 2 September 1666 he uses it as a location in his description of the Great Fire of London. Perhaps most gloriously, he gives us this image of a part of his day on Wednesday, 21 October 1663:

Thence, having my belly full, away on foot to my brother’s, all along Thames Streete, and my belly being full of small beer, I did all alone, for health’s sake, drink half a pint of Rhenish wine at the Still-yard, mixed with beer.

Rhenish mixed with beer. There’s a challenge to today’s sense of yum. Thankfully, he also drank Northdown and Hull so it was not all weird for Sammy. I am going to leave it there but to review, then, what we have seen is that the Hanseatic League was a massive trading partner which had a huge export trade in beer in the 1400s. It had a very significant governmental foothold in the middle of London which was recognized from at least 1399 to the 1660s as something to be reckoned with. The business presence stretched for 700 years from the 1150s to the 1850s. They ran a retail and entertainment hall of some sort exactly when beer is coming into England at the same time that they operate the largest brewing center in the world at Hamburg.

Suffice it to say, there is more to be found about the role of the Hanseatic League and the history of hopped beer in England. Does it support the rough overlapping sequence Haneastic hopped beer (say Hamburg and later Flemish 1300s to 1600s) => coastal hopped beer (like Hull and Northdown, say, late 1400s-1712) => canal based hopped beer (Burton after 1712)? Could be. Need to find out.

Is This One Way Big Craft Might Be Dying?

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There is nothing more certain about the brewing trade more than the history is defined an extraordinary limited set of patterns. Those who think that the owners of big craft breweries are special, well, know nothing about the rise of lager in the late 1800s as a premium even healthy drink – and know nothing about the rise of Albany Ale from central New York in early the middle third of the 1800s or the rise of Taunton Ale from southwest England as probably a premium even healthy drink in the last quarter of the 1700s. I suspect Northdown Ale was the premium even healthy drink in the lower Thames valley in the third quarter of the 1600s, too. There are, in fact, only a limited number of things you can say about beer to make people buy it other than that it’s tasty, cheap and gets you a tremendous buzz. They are: (i) it’s premium and (ii) it’s healthy. Check out social media today. The spin doctors are still at it. That quote up there? That is from the fabulously fabulous Dr. Richard W. Unger of UBC. More particularly, it is from his essay “Beer: A New Bulk Good of International Trade” in the book Cogs, Cargoes and Commerce: Maritime Bulk Trade in Northern Europe, 1150-1400. It’s actually the ending. Sorry. Spoilers. It reminds me of craft. Or rather big craft.

Just at the moment, big craft is going through a time of change that is not unlike what happened to the beers of Hamburg in the latter 1400s and early 1500s. Hanseatic Hamburg’s hopped beer as a technology went through an era when it was considered premium, rare and difficult to make. Roughly from 1250 to 1350. Neighbouring markets raised import duties to keep it out or just enough to equalize the cost with local producers. Because Hamburg during that time was the greatest brewing center in the history of beer. 42% of the workforce was involved in brewing. 15% of all Swedish exports were hops sent to the breweries of Hamburg and its allies. Read ye some Unger if you have any doubts. These trading communities had their own warships and a trust based commerce that overcame North Sea and Baltic piracy and storm. A commercial empire. And it all went away. At least the brewing did. They switched to trading in the ultimate beer concentrate – grain.

Here in Canada we are undergoing much more accelerated change at the moment. The collapse of the oil market and the sad performance of the Canadian dollar against the American version means no one in their right mind is even thinking of buying US craft beer either by a quick flip over the border or as an import. Yet there are around 550 craft brewing kettles in the land. As a result, while I can buy 2 litres of Pilsner Urquell for 10 bucks and decent Ontario craft for maybe 12 bucks the equivalent volume of beer in a six pack of fairly pedestrian Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is selling for a silly $15.50 and will likely soon cost more given our new 68 cent dollar. Who needs it? Few if the stock that sits on the shelves is any indication.

This is an accentuated version of what is happening in the US itself. Being well north of 4,000 breweries in the US means fans of good beer in the US are no longer dependent on those Hanseatic Hamburgers of big craft who ship coast to coast. People are making their own better local beer now just as the Netherlands did around 1450 and England did starting in 1520. Big craft is losing sales just as its handmaid bulk cider is. Who needs it? If you are looking for something rare and interesting – premium and maybe even healthy – who needs to go to a grocery store or gas station shelf to buy the beer trucked in from out of state? Fewer and fewer.

The economies of scale in good beer are having their way with the market. Not large scale. Small scale. The era of the great white male multi-millionaire brewery owner is over. The nameless nimble newbie hoards have learned the tricks of Hamburg, leaving the old fests cancelled and the old men the option to sell out, shut down or sit around wondering what happened. Same as it ever was.