Category: Pubs, Tavs, Diners and Restaurants

Some Thursday Beery News Notes For A Normal Mid-October Week

It’s normal now, right? All normal. Despite what we think and do, it’s definitely normal to get locked inside when the cold creeps in around the nooks and crannies in mid-October.  Yet people are still running around outside, the massive idiots. Wear your masks! And don’t complain about sensible pandemic safety processes!! And write short sentences with many exclamation marks!!! Hmm… the only thing that has really ticked me off this week is I haven’t found any good images to plunk to the right of the first paragraph. Bet Max has something… let me check…  nope. Jeff? Yup. Wear your masks.

Now that that is clear, first up we have a post by Stan is always cause for some serious noting, especially as it relates to the sense of smell and does not advise that loss of the sense is tied to Covid-19:

Researchers at Kyushu University found that the olfactory sensory neurons can exhibit suppression or enhancement of response when odors are mixed, meaning that perception is not the simple sum of the odors. In their experiments, mice that were genetically modified to have their neurons emit green light depending on the amount of calcium ions in them — an indicator of activity — upon absorption of excitation light, the researchers were able to record the response of the neurons in the mice’s noses.

Mice. Noses. Little mousie noses. As with most things, I do not actually understand what is going on here but I trust and have a firm belief in science that gives me an abiding sense of comfort. I am also a good smeller. That sort of thing regularly appeared on my middle school report cards.

Aaaaannnd…. I also don’t understand this from an email received from Pellicle… exactly… which states they will be converting from $ to £:

With recent exchange rate fluctuations the amount getting paid to us has become an uncertain factor, and we’re aware that most of our supporters are UK-based, so this will also avoid any extra fees from your bank when you are paying in dollars. It means we’ll get stronger idea of what we’re receiving each month, and can build more concrete editorial plans in advance. 

Govern yourselves accordingly. I do hope they still take my money. And I hope they take yours once you sign up, if only for pieces like this drinky travel piece taking us to rural England by Kate published this week under the title “With Provenance to Guide Us — Visiting The Moorcock Inn, West Yorkshire“:

It’s late February and sleeting sideways; the sky is an impressive shade of gritstone. Smoke plumes diagonally from the restaurant’s brick ovens outside, which have been slowly roasting mutton all night. Hot roast potatoes will be pulled from them throughout the afternoon, served with aioli as the bar snack of your dreams.

Kate also made the news. News? Oh. News! Oh, well. Let’s see what’s going on. Parts of Britain are now shutting again. In Glasgow, bar and restaurant workers dumped piles of ice in the street as a hospitality shutdown came in and the work went away. The commentary by, I assume, Jimmay is fabulous. Pub man Stonch unpacked an interesting aspect of the laws that applied in his area: the meaning of a “substantial meal”:

… this means the Coronavirus regs on this can be interpreted using case law relating to the ‘64 Act. In Timmis v Millman (a 1965 case) “a substantial sandwich accompanied by beetroot and pickles was a table meal”. So there you go. Get your beetroots ready, publicans!

And Mr. Mudge wrote on the same worthwhile issue:

If you are not going to have an objective yardstick such as price, then you will need to resort to a more subjective definition. Government minister Robert Jenrick* tied himself up in knots by saying that a Cornish pasty on its own wasn’t a substantial meal, but put it on a plate and add chips or salad and it magically becomes one. Few would dispute that a burger and chips would qualify, and the health-conscious should surely be allowed to substitute a salad for the chips. If a burger, then surely also a steak ciabatta, which is in principle the same kind of thing. And a cheese or hummus one for the vegetarians. Before too long, you have a cheese toastie with a couple of lettuce leaves qualifying.

You know… I don’t actually know what a toastie is exactly, either. I assume a toasted sandwich. Or a sandwich made of toast. That was on my middle school report cards too: “..the child thinks a toastie is a toasted sandwich… no hope…”

That’s pivoting. Everyone pivoting. Even though we are staying still. Here in Ontario, Ben has been writing upon his blog (taking a break from narrowcast poor radio impersonation) and decided that Covid-19 has been somewhat good for the Ontario booze trade or at least increased consumer access:

But there is an upside to this — if you’re the kind of person who can find the upside to a viral pandemic increasing our substance use – and it’s that the vigour with which we’ve all embraced the drink has actually had an affect on the availability, politics, and culture related to beer. Yes, this pandemic is a lot of things, most of them terrible, but it also might just be the best time to drink beer in Ontario.

Not necessarily a great deal for consumers medium or long term unless wholesale rates come down – but a good survival technique and good for us all to take part in now. New shops like Byward Market Wine Market (fine booze plus small takeaway meals) will be a next model… until the next next one comes.

In other good news here in eastern Ontario – as reported on Canadian Beer News and also discussed on OCBGTP – Slake Brewing in nearby Prince Edward County (just south of the very questionably named county seat of Picton) has opened. I post to remind myself to go.

Pivoting #2. Or is it #3? Or #4? Something called the Drinking Studies Network (that also looks a lot like a blog) posted “Threat or Opportunity? COVID-19 and Working Men’s Clubs” by Ruth Cherrington:

The post-COVID future of clubs could lie to some extent in drawing upon their enduring ethos and ideals which include their not-for-profit status. The 21st century setting has brought new challenges but also some tools that can help such as social media. With the usual club experience and contact with members impossible, club committee members had to make more use of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Nearly 9% of those surveyed used social media to build up the club’s community and membership over lockdown. Facebook groups became more important for clubs’ committees, especially to let members know what was happening, when they would be reopening and how.

I’d go to an old farts club if they had them around here. Maybe. Would I? Dad peeling potatoes in Yorkshire during the Berlin Airlift might even qualify me for the Legion. But would I go during these the early dark ages? Do I go anywhere? Well, other than the used record shop…

Unrelatedly, this thread on the habits of those in sports and entertainment who passed through this person’s former job at a hotel bar is fun: “Bob Seeger: Honestly he looked like anybodys grandpa with his flannel and orthopedic shoes“; “Stevie Nicks …difficult.” Remember hotel bars?

Now, in this week’s History Comes Alive corner, Gary is finding the time and steam power to get some of the beer history researched and writ… the opposite of my efforts, a personal failing that gnaws within me. One of many. This week he posted about the first draught beer sold in bottles and began with a handy definition:

Pasteurization is used in brewing, including for most imports and mass-marketed beers, not to make it safe for consumption as in the case of milk, say, but to render it stable from a microbiological aspect –bar  to retard souring in particular. Thus, for modern, bright, bottled or canned beer that is not pasteurized, which is the first?* Coors beer is a notable early case, at least the domestic U.S. Coors.** Coors did not abandon pasteurization in bottles until 1959 though…

Elsewhere in space and time, Martin asked “where does Bristol end?” and found a pub that went all snug for Covid-19. BB2 replied: “One of our guidelines is unless there’s an open field separating it, it’s in Bristol.”

Beer… should reference something beery… The proper brewing of lager was discussed in Craft Beer & Brewing through a piece by Steve Holle of the KC Bier Company in Kansas City, Missouri:

Traditional lager brewing requires “more” than a typical ale fermentation. Because the “more” requires additional costs and resources to achieve very subtle, small, and incremental enhancements to flavor, there is always the temptation to take shortcuts by buying cheaper ingredients, skipping decoction, pitching less yeast, raising the fermentation temperature, shortening the conditioning time, or using artificial carbonation.

This neatly illustrates nicely the need for a separation of traditional lager from macro gak conceptually. I was thinking of that when I was writing back and forth with Jeff yesterday about his excellent SNPA post. Others were also thinking of proper lager brewing. Alistair was asking about if decoction mashing was practiced in Victorian Britain.

And finally, Kate Bernot has written about Canada’s ice beers… though sorta missed the twin towers of the phenomenon, Maximum Ice and all the future goth TV ads especially the one with The Smiths*, in favour of something about… a penguin. Still, it is a handy primer and notes importantly that the ice beer boom never busted as it traveled south:

Ice beers are a Canadian invention dating back to the early 1990s; they’re essentially stronger versions of the domestic lagers North Americans had been drinking for decades. American beer companies swiftly copied this “innovative” idea and mass-produced their own versions including Milwaukee’s Best Ice, Keystone Ice, Bud Ice, Busch Ice, and Natural Ice. 

Why does it live on? It’s richer as well as stronger. So curlers dig the stuff. Goes with rye and K-Tel LPs.

There. Enough! I’m rating this a mid-grade week. Or maybe just a mid-grade post. Either way, another week has passed. Like the grains of sand passing through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Remember there’s  Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan shits on tweens!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plenty of good writing. Only a little journalism. Journalism. Yup. Apparently all writing is ultimately… journalism. Sorry Shakespeare. You aren’t in any give-away trade papers.

*Someone at the Labatt PR firm back then knew the value of good music in a beer ad.

The Blursday Beery News Notes, Your Only Certainty in October 2020

Records. I have been known to hate records. But up there? That’s my undergrad bar in the fall of 1985 by best guess-timate. The image popped up on the ’80s alumni FB page by a classmate. I’m not in the picture but I can name half of those who are in there. Packed. Happy. I’ve been trying to sift clues to gleaned within the photo and the others that accompanied it. LL Bean boots were a thing. And I think a beer was $1.10 during Happy Hour according to the posted price list. We only had 200 in residence at the place and most of the marriages amongst we wee Blue Devils started off during Friday Happy Hour. We even had a song. OK, I did. You just sang It’s Happy Hour Time! over and over to “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” which was easy to remember. Duh. Two thirds of my life ago. Note: McEwans Strong. Apparently an 8% treacle based syrup. Had too much of that too often. Ephemera. But very important for some reason.

From within a similar ballpark, ATJ shared an image from just eight years later, the agenda for a conference on the state of IPA in 1994:

Rooting about in the attic where there are hundreds of books, magazines and beer pix and press releases going back to the 1990s I came upon this @Britbeerwriters agenda for their IPA conference – a little bit of history perhaps? Only drunk beer then, beer writing was 2 years away.

Much comment ensued. And more images of the detritus of that day have been located. I was quite interested in who spoke, including four PhDs… or podiatrists… plus Jackson and Protz and Oliver. Heavens. Beats the hell out of a Zoom-cast with influencers.

And last Friday, I listened to Andy Crouch’s interview on BeerEdge with Dr. Theresa McCulla, curator of brewing history at the National Museum of American History. I really liked it. Good production quality for one thing. No umms. No scoffs or chortles.  In terms of substance, I mentioned this:

Having written and researched 1600-1830 brewing history, I’m not sure I fully agree with that given the wide range and the depth of the US records that are available. But they are ephemera, from shocking slave sale notices to banal self praising poetry about brewerys owners… My main takeaway from your excellent discussion was the hope that the same primary transitory records are preserved along with objects. Email data bases and boxes of invoices are as interesting as oral histories from decades after the fact – and perhaps a wee bit more factual.

Which is exactly the point of scrap of paper ATJ found. Just a scrap of paper. And the photos. Not a spoon. I don’t get the spoon thing at all, frankly. There is a difference between symbols and records. Records matter more. So brewers, get those early emails and photocopies onto a disk or a stick or some other thingie and get it to some archive somewhere.

In other news, the shut down hours inspectors are out in England. The comments section in last week‘s noted post at The Pub Curmudgeon offered up this observation on one aspect of the new… rather, latest rules:

It’s table service only. This will be a real pain with only one member of staff, and we can’t afford to have two on at once. If there is anyone with Coronavirus, table service will help spread it through cross contamination. Instead of people coming to the bar – where we have a screen – one at a time then going back to their table, I will be going from table to table constantly taking orders, ferrying drinks and taking payments. Those pubs who have put in ingenious one way systems with collection points and screens because that’s what their risk assessment concluded was safest will have to re-think and implement a new system. In two days.

Conversely, The Sun newspaper-like object has found the one workaround at a highway stop:

…it is classed as providing an essential service because it provides food and drink to motorway drivers. The exemption means the pub — the only one at a services in the country — is not bound by the curfew and can serve between 10pm and 5am. But it is open only until 11pm — although that is still an hour longer than other boozers. Nobody from the Extra Motorway Services group was available for comment last night.

Also about wandering the roads, Boak and Bailey reached back into the letters of a Romantic poet and found out he was “Samuel Taylor Coleridge, beer geek and pub crawler“:

In Llangynog, Wales, in July 1794, he had lunch at the village inn, enjoying ‘hashed mutton, cucumber, bread and cheese and beer, and had two pots of ale – the sum total of the expense being sixteen pence for both of us!’ Note the distinction between beer and ale, there. In 1801, he briefly became obsessed with the idea of making productive use of acorns…

Time passed, and nineteen years later I found myself once again changing trains in Cambridge. I still had my notes from last time, too. Finally I was standing in front of the Free Press. Expecting to be disappointed, I took a deep breath and opened the door. I was not disappointed.

In beer writing critique, Ed posted like it was 2008 when he posted a post about someone else’s post:

…at the end, to sound a little crass, I couldn’t help but think so what? Beer might be described as hyperreal or a simulacra but if I’ve got a pint in my hand why should I care? Postmodernism might by sceptical towards reason but my reason tells me to be sceptical towards postmodernism. 

I thought the post was entertaining, a bit of a romp. My only other comment was similar but hopefully positive: “What isn’t simulacra in craft culture?” Perhaps somewhat related, another beer blog – Look At Brew out of Sussex, England – has declared that it’s time to stop:

I’ve been blogging as Look at Brew on and off for the past eight years or so, mostly focusing on the UK beer scene, a scene which has become an incredible beast. Sometimes that beast is something I want to be around, research and interact with, other times it’s something which I don’t recognise. It has changed beyond what I thought it would in such an incredibly short time.

Many have come and gone. Beer writing has always been a tough gig. Start with limited resources, search hard for a point and/or status – then wash it all down with a lacing or lashings of a generally socially mood altering drug which comes with its own gaps in understanding of the long term consequences. Then add the criticism. Hard on the head if we are looking at our writing as the end of a discussion rather than the beginning. And like many weeks, logging this stuff week after week seems even pointless sometimes…

But that, I think, misses the point. The logging creates an aggregation that displays a pattern. Last Saturday I woke up in the middle of the night and I was thinking about Blursday. Here we are. On the one hand we’ve made it six months in – with about another six until we know what is up with the vaccine roll out.  On the other, it is a Blursday. Day after day of the same. If you are as lucky as me. The boring same is pretty good. Other have not been… what… as immune. The million plus dead worldwide. The millions more now ill without any understanding of the long term consequences. And even millions more hammered economically. Makes beer blogging seem insignificant.

And you know all that already. Because we are all in this Blursday together. Sure – it’s like everyone has the same haircut… or all jam came in one flavour. So, like you I am having a difficult time determining if beer has gotten extra boring or if it is just that a receding tide lowers all boats or if my get up and go got up and went. But then I realize that it’s just Blursday and that better things are coming. Imagine the fun of vaccine day. It’s going to be a happy happy hour. I am almost… perhaps… excited by the idea of looking back at all this, all these weekly news notes posts, once Roaring Twenties V.2.0 starts up in 2021. Which is why I guess I write this. To create a record.

With that glimpse of possible cheer in the late short term, early mid-range… that is it! Enjoy yourself while you are in the pink… and remember there’s  Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on the decline of Fullers rep in Ontario but then celebrates the likely return by other means) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword (where this week a bigger bum to behold on a brand is discussed. And remember BeerEdge, too.

 

Your First Thursday Beery News Notes For Autumn 2020

A quieter week. As I napped, I saw this image passing by on the internets screen this week and grabbed it for posterity. One reason it struck me was that it passed by soon after  I read somewhere how craft beer was a response to 60 or 70 years of light pilsner. Hmm… that’s an image of Ballantine ale being delivered in downtown New York in the 1950s. When the ale maker was the third biggest brewer in the U.S. of A.*

It slightly boggles the brain bucket sometimes how limited the recollection of the recent past is. A cursory reading of 1970s and 80s interviews with micro brewers makes clear that they were positively and opportunistically cloning existing beers, especially locally available imports but also beers like Ballantine ale which still existed or were recalled in very recent memory. And catching up with the good food revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Fine followers all. Sure, industrial pilsner was part of it all but, even then, aggregation and lightening the light macro lager continued parallel to the first micro wave that took off in the ’80s and into the ’90s. Anyway, it’s a lovely photo reminding us of the twenty years of maybe a perhaps arguable US ale gap. Here’s some info on the Hudson Theatre.

In the U.K. o’ G.B. etc., the upset centers this week on the new Covid-19 measures and especially the new early 10 pm pub closing order. The B and the B summed up the feeling that someone somewhere is flailing about this way:

What would help is if the Government would get into the habit of providing evidence and rationale for policy decisions. As it is, this latest feels like what you get when half the cabinet wants to close pubs, the other half doesn’t, so you agree to meet halfway.

Stonch has finally been given his proper place as a spokesperson, being interviewed on Times Radio,  opining that pubs got off lightly with these pre-announced changes, that it could have been full closure. His statement that the table service requirement and 10pm closing should not inhibit sensible trading in safe venues was at least a hopeful one. These things have been all over the place in all jurisdictions so it appears to be as much as what approach to the rules is taken as it is what role you play in the system: publican, staff, drinker. Does it work best if the place is small? Cookie has posted a post and suggested a suggestion:

Let’s adopt British Timbo Time. It’s simple. We all set our watches an hour earlier. We get Timbo to turn the smooth bitter taps on an hour earlier. Time is what we say it is. Boris may say it is 10pm. We know it is 11pm BTT. Why should we let the government dictate when it is 10pm? It is 10pm when we want it to be 10pm. If enough of us decide that right now this minute, it a 6am then by hell it is 6am.  British Timbo Time. By the people, for the people!

Elsewhere, we are told that the next months coming could be disastrous for all sorts of breweries – perhaps depending where you live and what sort of economic policies are being followed as, for example, in the US:

A report commissioned by John Dunham Associates claims that 651,000 jobs in brewing, distributing and retail “will be lost by the end of the year”, while overall beer sales could fall by as much as US$22 billion by the end of 2020. Brewing roles are expected to be the hardest hit, with the report warning 3,600 brewers could lose their jobs by year end. “The beer industry has seen a dramatic decline both in sales and jobs that rely on our nation’s most popular alcohol beverage,” said Jim McGreevy, president and CEO of the Beer Institute.

Perhaps as illustration of candidates, this is classic – but, still, pretty sure the owner was not laughing. How much financial loss does a stacked pallet of cans represent? In much more dangerous occupational health and safety news…

A barman who had his arm blown off in a horror beer keg explosion will receive a compensation payout after reaching an out of court settlement with a former employer. Jye Parker, 29, was seeking more than $2million in damages from Bar Beach Bowling Club in Newcastle, two hours north of Sydney, claiming the venue breached its duty of care. He was helping a friend set up and test a portable beer keg system in October 2014 when it suddenly exploded and changed his life forever.

Yikes. Well, yikes is a bit of an understatement, isn’t it.

Note: only about half his weight.

Quitting blogging. Haven’t we all dreamed of being released from the pinching shackle. Me myself, I passed my 17 and a halfth anniversary this month of beating the pick axe against the face of the blogs.** Anyway, “Life After Football” is packing it in but has gifted us all with a list*** of his favourite blogs of a similar sort of interest:

…there is still plenty to cheer as I can recommend all of the following blogs at the bottom of this post, as they are a terrific read.  If you can’t find something beer or booze related in this smorgasbord then you really don’t like reading about beer or pubs!

The Beer Nut is not quitting and his personal travel ban has him seeking out the what remains of the real and the well thought out:

Pleasingly, it does taste of blueberries, fresh and juicy and real. The hibiscus brings the red fruit too, of course, and it’s quite fun to explore the flavours. This is helped by the beer being neither too sweet nor too tart, the sourness level just enough to make it invigorating without trying to be a full-on enamel-stripper.

Conversely, while I agree with Jordan about what might be considered the amateur hour of micro branding, I also have little interest in the excessive time and money spent on artsy craft packaging and other surfaces where this era’s branding is place – but if you disagree with me soon there will be a book for those with an interest… though perhaps one with a wee bit of confirmation bias behind it. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that beer Advent calendars have been around for a while. But what is old is apparently new again to the Daily Record.

Speaking of which, it is good to see that international brewing corp. BrewDog hasn’t got full rights to appropriate “Elvis” as it has “Punk”:

…the brewer initially lost its battle to trademark the beer in the UK, but later it was overturned and Brewdog was given permission to trademark ‘Brewdog Elvis Juice’, but not ‘Elvis Juice’.  However it has come unstuck in its latest attempt to trademark the beer in Europe. EPE first opposed Brewdog’s European application back in 2018. Brewdog launched an appeal in the following year which has now been dismissed. In the case documents, the EU Intellectual Property Office ruled: “It is clear that the applicant’s submission based on the peaceful coexistence of the marks cannot succeed. No evidence actually demonstrating such peaceful existence on the pertinent market has been shown. In short…there exists a likelihood of confusion… A likelihood of confusion for only part of the relevant public of the European Union is sufficient to reject the contested application.”

Ontario Beer Store good news. Ontario Beer Store not so good news.

In far worse news, we knew this in general terms but I missed this Amnesty International press release which dives into greater detail related to the connections between the military of Myanmar and many industries including craft brewers:

Pan-Pacific announced that it is terminating its business partnership with MEHL in the wake of Amnesty’s findings and the publication of the UN Fact-Finding Mission report of 2019. KBZ and Kirin have stated they are reviewing their relationship with MEHL, while others did not provide such commitments or did not respond at all. Full copies of responses can be found in Annex I of the report. These companies all partner with MEHL in operations inside Myanmar. However, a few have global reach. Kirin is one of the world’s largest beer brewers, and its drinks, such as Kirin, San Miguel, Lion and Fat Tire are sold in bars and shops all over the world.

Govern yourselves accordingly.

And that is it! Enjoy these last few warm days – and days that you may still be allowed out of the house – and remember there’s  Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on the second wave) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword (and this week rants about why beer awards are stupid.) . And BeerEdge, too.

*Get out your Tremblay and Tremblay. Economists always make the best contemporary brewing historians.
**Never enough mining analogies. As good as any forced if entertaining argument. Zima. Sweet Lambics. Coolers. Alcopops of one sort or another have been around for decades under one label or another. Heck, there was Lemon Beer in Schenectady in the 1830s. Marketing works.
***What the heck… here’s the list… Pub Curmudgeon, Martin Taylor, Colston Crawford, Pubmeister, Pete Allen, West Midlands Explorer, Shove It, Chuck It, Toss It, The Wickingman, Garden Hermit, Citra, Paul Bailey, BRAPA, Jane Stuart, Real Ale Real Music, The Beertonian, Mappiman’s Real Ale Walks, Tandleman, Food, Travel, Football, Beer is the best, The Travelling Barman, The Cask Connoisseur.

Thursday’s Beery News Notes For The Clampdown

What are we going to do now? It appears the summer has ended with a thump. The clampdown. The BBC reports that social gatherings above six are banned in England from 14 September.  The nightclubs of British Columbia are now shut. Greece has shut down.  Kinda makes reading about beer a side show… kinda. Jeff, however, connected the dots and spoke for all of us when he wrote:

I’d like to raise a mug to all those workers out there who make possible the pint of beer it contains. This has been a rough year. Depending on how you count, the pandemic put somewhere between thirty and forty million people out of work. Many breweries were forced to lay off staff as volumes fell.

The BBC (again) published about the why for those being displaced in shops, restaurants and bars serving the now empty high-rise office block with particular attention paid to the underground network beneath much of downtown Toronto:

For businesses in areas like the PATH, the Covid emergency phase is not over,” says Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “Yes, the government is no longer imposing closures, but effectively you may be closed because you have no customers.” While no agency has calculated the estimated cost of these closures yet, the businesses in the PATH typically generate $1.7bn in revenue annually and generate about $271m in tax revenue, according to the city of Toronto, and many have been shuttered since mid-March.

What is a bar to do when its whole model is predicated on the presence of humans? Maureen asked a similar question. I answered: “goats!”

What news of beer otherwise? First, some law and an application for municipal planning approval for the replacement of everything on one (again) Toronto City block has caused great upset. Because it is the location of a dive bar called Sneaky Dee’s:

Local Toronto bar Sneaky Dee’s could be torn down after the city announced it has received a proposal for a 13-storey building in its place. The proposal, which was submitted Sept. 4, calls for a mixed-use building that would cover the current residents of 419, 421, 423, 429, and 431 on College Street. It would also consist of a total of 169 units and more than 13,000 square metres of “combined residential and non-residential gross floor area.” Some Torontonians took to Twitter to express their unhappiness about the proposal, and a petition has been started calling for it to be rejected.

In other legal unhappiness, much has been made of the implications of the firing of many staff by Surly, a craft brewery in Minneapolis, coincidental to a union drive. “Arise, Surly Workers” wrote Dave Infante who noted an obvious trend:

In the few instances where workers in the craft brewing industry have seen through the charade and decided “lol this sucks, let’s organize,” owners have dropped the #oneteamonedream pretense with the quickness. It happened at Rogue Ales in Newport, OR in 2011; and again at Pyramid’s Berkeley, CA brewpub in 2013; and in 2019 in San Francisco, where workers at Anchor Brewing, the country’s oldest craft brewery faced a decidedly corporate union-busting campaign that featured high-powered anti-labor law firms and managers shouting “fake news” at workers exercising their federally protected right to unionize. Very cool shit, nice work all around. 

T-Rex understood what was what as illustrated to the right. Beth, too. And GBH published something a wee bit adrift on the topic but, surprise, could not come to clear conclusions. In sum:

The tension between the two narratives shows that despite businesses reopening, the pandemic’s dramatic effects on the hospitality industry are far from over… It’s currently unclear whether the Unite Here union has any legal avenue to fight the layoffs or planned Beer Hall closure.

Displaying greater clarity, this explanation about pouring central Euro lager is excellent. Effective use of social media. Twenty-seven 600 word articles on the subject could not have put it so well.

Note: not a brewery. A beer company, sure.

Note: not small. Not really even a beer company anymore, either.

More law. Ron wrote an interesting post on a question of Scots law, circa 1948 in the case of more than one case of “Dodgy crown corks”:

The defect in their condition was due to being kept in the damp cellar since February 1948. Dunn knew that corks should be stored in a dry place, and that dampness encouraged the growth of various moulds. Moreover, he failed to use the corks in the order in which they were sent to him. Further, he or his servants ought to have inspected the corks within a reasonable time after delivery, and in any event prior to using them.

Nice touch in the report on the use of “various moulds” indicating, perhaps, a particularly unpleasant multi-coloured effect.

Completely separate from either the situation today and the law, Merryn published a piece on the conclusions drawn in her thesis on pre-historic brewing – very high on the neato scale:

Brewing uses few ingredients, only requiring malted grain, herbal preservatives, water and yeast. These ingredients may survive in the archaeological record in a number of ways. Accidents in drying the malted grain, as happened at Eberdingen-Hochdorf can occur. Residues or sediments of the brewing process may occasionally survive in unusual contexts, such as in the sealed Bronze Age cist graves at North Mains and Ashgrove. Residues of barley without any other plant remains indicate the residues that result from washing the sugars from the mashed barley or ‘sparging the wort’. Those barley residues that contain pollen or macro plant remains indicate the addition of herbs during the boil prior to fermentation.

Again, and without a thought for the law, Retired Martin has again taken us to a place without the cares of the day… except in this episode of his series entitled “287,392 UK Pubs” he explains how those at the Blake Hotel in Sheffield are managing the Covid-19 social distancing rules:

3 pm on a Saturday, filling up but quieter than you’d think, a landlord giving the now customary speech. “Take a seat, fill in the track and trace, follow the one way system, one at a time in the loos, leave glasses on the table“ I felt sorry for him. “I’m sounding like a stuck record !“. “We’re trad drinkers, we miss the interaction at the bar” said the next group. I know how they felt.

Speaking of ye olden times, Eoghan Walsh published a good story of a gruit revival, something I may now have lived through two or three times. While a nod to Unger‘s clarifications on the important role control of gruit played in medieval society would have been nice, I love this level of detail:

Invaluable input came from a most unexpected source: a rich seam of human excrement mined by archeologists from the bottom of a medieval latrine. “They found the remains of hops, juniper, caraway, and bog myrtle, and they asked me how this could be possible that in one stratum of this toilet are these four ingredients appearing together at the same time,” Overberg says. “They thought this clearly had something to do with brewing.” And Overberg naturally agreed. “They have excavations for a period of 300 years, and it is all the same. It’s always hops and bog myrtle, caraway, juniper.

Lastly, The BeerNut wrote a review (no, really he did!) that contained a passage that triggered another thought:

Pyynikin has really missed the mark on “Pacific” here. There’s not an iota of tropicality about this, and nothing American either. Maybe it’s a Finnish take on New Zealand’s ubiquitous Canterbury Draught, because that’s about the only way it makes sense. As beer in its own right it’s inoffensive, and might even be enjoyable as a dark-evening sipper. I couldn’t deal with the surprise, however, and resented it for the rest of the glassful. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

My first thought was it was clearly a tribute to the possible first brewer in Quebec,  Brother Pacifique Duplessis. But then I thought… how little I care about branding of beers. Then I realized how much I have to wade through every week is basically (i) folk writing about the branding of beer especially as displayed on the container. As opposed to the beer itself … and clearly unlike the TBN above who makes note of the  missing connection. Then I wondered what else are similar categories for me: (ii) fun and pozzie but samey brewery owner interviews, (iii) conversely, greater important questions of rights contextualized in brewing,  (iv) then, conversely again, dreary cut and paste posts of others’ research labelled as “reporting” and… (v) all the superlatives. Always the superlatives. Each theme has its audience I suppose and certainly varies in ultimate value… but what percentage of the weekly collective output isn’t one of the five categories above? Sure, these things come in waves – like yesterday’s topics of food pairing and sell outs – but more would be good to add. Please advise by next Wednesday. A fella has deadlines, you know. Next big thing could be canals. Could be.

There. Done. For more please check in with Boak and Bailey Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan points a particularly pointy finger at the letter “B”!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

The Days May Grow Short When You Reach September, Frank, But There’s Still Time For Beery New Notes

The summer has raced by. We only have a bit of lingering warmish things left. Then false summer comes, followed by the now doubly  questionable Indian summer, then lastly a few surprisingly cool rather than cold days. Harvest is coming in. Season of mellow fruitfullness and all that entails. For the ladies to the right it included rather nice dresses. I saw this image on the Twitter feed of The Georgian Lords but have no idea where it is from. I suppose it indicates all hands on a day where there were deck as it’s hardly The Gleaners of months later on in the cycle. But, perhaps surprisingly, not unlike The Harvesters of 1565.

First up and as an excellent introduction for an effort which seeks to separate from chaff from the grain, Stan wrote about an article about wine writers and junkets and other seductions. Like the author, the excellent Jamie Goode, he uses the word “satire” but, as is usually the case with satire, it is framed as such to make a point about a truth:

Good reading from an author who writes, “Personally, I’d rather drink beer than suffer these dull, dishonest, trick-about wines.” Not sure what alternative he’d suggest for dull, dishonest, tricked-about beer.

Is it the beer that is dishonest? In some cases, yes but not always.  Anyway, excellent thoughts as we seek out the good as well as… the Goode in what’s out there to read this week. A reasonable contrasty comparison is this article that Matt noticed by Alicia Kennedy which in part covered similar ground with less of a satirical veneer and more of a personal reflection:

When I was 31 and used my passport again, it was to go to Spain on a trip paid for by a winemaker. The next month, it was a two-week trip to Italy with family that completely drained my meager savings (until I moved to Puerto Rico, this was the longest I’d ever been out of New York), and the next, it was to Scotland for whisky tasting. From 2017 through my move in 2019, I traveled somewhere pretty much every month. These professional opportunities (some personal), about which the ethics were and are always dubious, suddenly began appearing in my inbox at just the right time: after my brother passed away at the end of 2016 and I needed not to wallow, not to continue having panic attacks. 

Staying at home, Martyn triggered a lot of arge and the barge when he himself wrote triggered about changes to the small brewery taxation laws of England and Wales.* It’s all the same to me in that I think reasonably healthy taxation of beer and other strong drinks is a perfectly normal thing to do but decide for yourself:

Much of the outrage seems to come from exaggerated claims of how many and how much brewers will be adversely affected by the proposed reforms, and allegations that the changes will mean large brewers gaining at the expense of small brewers, though the group that led the call for a change in SBR, the Small Brewers Duty Reform Coalition, includes a fair number of brewers making less than 5,000 hectolitres a year among its 60-plus members.

Plus, and I presume some brewers read this so I appreciate it’s not what everyone wants to hear, the idea that the outrage is “manufactured” is not necessarily an accusation. It’s a reality that the discourse is bent and pushed and pulled for any number of reasons and interests. This is one of them.

According to the NME, 99 metal bands have signed up for a ’99 Bottles Of Beer’ charity cover:

The idea for the cover was put together by The Boozehoundz, the moniker of Scour members Derek Engemann and John Jarvis alongside Robin Mazen of Gruesome. It sees 99 musicians all singing a single line of the song, amounting to a mammoth 23-minute song.

All of which is entirely excellent.

Speaking of music, the earlier Matt in my life on these information superhighways linked to an excellent remembrance of being a teen at raves in Preston 30 years ago:

There was an abundance of places to go out to in Preston in the early 90s. The country was in recession but everyone was partying hard. Friday was rave night at Lord Byrons and Saturday was indie/dance. After a grim experience at a club in town when I was 16, Saturday nights at Byrons became part of my life. Most Saturday nights from the beginning to the end of 1991 we were there, drinking cider and black, dancing to our favourite music and forging friendships that would continue for three decades and more.

Reads as true as a witness statement in a criminal proceeding.

Andreas K. wrote about Carinthian Steinbier this week, an Austrian beer that disappeared over 100 years ago, and in doing so gave us a great intro into the world of hot rocks in cauldrons:

Carinthian Steinbier is interesting because it survived for a fairly long time, until 1917 to be exact, despite repeated attempts to completely supplant it with what was called “kettle brewing”, i.e. brewing involving metal kettles. During other research, I recently stumbled upon a 1962 article that is probably the most detailed description of Carinthian Steinbier tradition that I’ve found so far.

“Things You Gotta Try” on NPR’s Splendid Table included dipping Oreos in red wine. Oatmeal Walnut cookies in Imperial Stout anyone?

I have to admit, I have no interest in hard seltzer or hard soda or hard kombuchca and even little interest in most beer writing about cider but I do appreciate Beth’s argument that at least for the business of brewing, non-beer may be one of the ways forward:

They’re not the only San Diego brewery to fully embrace the seltzer craze. Mikkeller’s own line of hard seltzers—dubbed “Sally’s Seltzer” as a nod to one half of their iconic character duo Henry and Sally—launched in January 2020 in response to craft consumers’ changing demographic. “It’s a perfect change of pace for any type of drinker—and a cool opportunity for us to connect with a wide demographic,” explains founder/CEO Mikkel Borg Bjergsø. “It also fits with our desire to be inclusive and reach as many people as possible.”

Let’s be honest. They are end-times beverages, just the same coolers which have been with us for almost thirty years and just gak by another name. As relevant to an interest in good beer as the brand of bubble gum stuck under a pub’s table top. Mr. B. noted the latest abomination: “India pale hard seltzer.” FFS.

Finally, it was with great sadness that I heard the news about the death of Jack Curtin, dean of Philadelphia’s beer writing scene. He was a great supporter of this beer blog from day one and someone with whom I shared an interesting email relationship even if we never met. One of his greatest skills was ripping into his pal Lew Bryson, who I know will mark the loss deeply.

Enjoy the rest of your summer days. As you do, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (where Jordan shits on church ladies and is dead wrong about coconut macaroons) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

 

 

 

*Never sure when these things apply to the whole or the part.

The Nights Have Gone Cool But Thursday Beery News Notes Go On

Achy. A bit from leaving the window open all night despite the forecast of quite cooler air. And me swimming in the big lake when its no longer quite so warm. Winter is coming. I’ve been in the lake maybe seven or ten times over the last few weeks. How long will it last? I grew up swimming in forest rivers as well as the North Atlantic Ocean back home in Nova Scotia. Lakes were always a bit stagnant by comparison. Folk call that “wild swimming” these days. I just call it swimming. Who knew the big water in the nearby big lake would be so big? Beach sand in the car. Beach toys in the trunk. Battered and beaten and happy am I.

First off, before the snow blows, Retired Martin has taken us on a trek to a pub in a lovely traditional thatched roof village in Devon, the Globe Inn in Beaford:

…turns out to be the most crafty of any place I visited in Devon. Plain but welcoming, a good all-rounder whose GBG credentials are a bit mystifying till you taste the beer. That little fridge on the right (below) was packed full of 10% DIPAs and mango sours…

Last weekend, I listened to a repeat of a short piece on the NPR radio show TTBOOK on the changes for the worse that have been imposed upon Bourbon County Stout through the sale of Goose Island to evil big industrial beer. It was particularly gratifying to see guest Josh Noel demonstrating the “nostril in the glass” technique I have been advocating for for about a decade and a half. Not unrelated but to the contrary, Mike reminded us on Twitter of the upside of the buy-out of craft:

You know when a brewery sells to the big guys and they say that it offers them more resources than they would have normally? This example shows that perfectly. Safe place for customers and their employees continue to have jobs. Just sayin.

Everyone’s favourite Midwest bar, the Olympic Tavern, that they have never visited had a rough bit of bad customer experience this week, something that highlights that during times of crisis some folk place having a beer and a Margarita high up on their priorities. Handled well. Along a similar vein, Pellicle has posted the tale of a Scottish drinking habit that, being Scots, I’ve never quite heard of:

The hauf an a hauf is traditional and modern at the same time. It’s a Scottish cultural institution we can be proud of: a combination in which to luxuriate, rather than down in pursuit of a buzz. The hauf an a hauf is about savouring both, two halves coming together to create something new, whole, and wholly wonderful. 

There must be an alt-tartan reality that excluded the generations before me as the idea that there is some long  pervasive history of buzz avoidance going on north of Gretna Green is news to me. Rather than suggesting it is a tradition, in 2014 TheBeerCast described the novelty in this way:

I guess the bottom line here is what do you want from a hauf and hauf? To get loaded, quicker? A US-style ‘Shot and a beer, Dolores’? Or to give a depth of flavour to each drink? It seems, judging from the conversation, that the way half and halves are being seen is changing, as a newer generation of beer/whisky fans indulge in the practice as a tasting exercise, rather than an end-of-shift exercise…

That makes more sense. That’s more in line with Great-Grannie Campbell between the wars being banned for life – a number of times – from the James Watt pub in Greenock even though she lived right above it. Or more likely because. Then the grandchildren being kicked out when they were sent to get a gill on her behalf.

More currently, Matt noted with some hesitancy the creation of something called the Small Brewers Forum in the UK. It is open to breweries:

The Small Brewers Forum has been formed to protect and preserve small British breweries and those who operate them. We have a successful and strong collective voice and campaign on behalf of our members to ‘fight for fairness’ in the industry. We take our campaigning to the highest level at national government as well as local government and within the brewing industry.

The published material indicates that the “only let small brewers join (sub-10000hL) so I can be sure that they represent what’s good for me without any of the big guys pulling the strings.” This makes a lot of sense to me. The numerical majority of brewers are small and have local markets. Their issues are very different from regionals and big craft. Here in Ontario, while there isn’t a second organization after OCB, the membership of that organization represents only the minority of the province’s brewers. Trade organizations structured on “craft” or geography make less sense than those with common issues based on scale.

In the ha ha dumb dumb news item of the week, Budweiser was caught echoing Eco*:

On Friday, the company wrote, in a now-deleted tweet, about two of their brands, Budweiser and Bud Light. “Reject modernity, embrace tradition,” the tweet read, telling consumers to enjoy the original beverage over it’s lower-calorie counterpart. Pictured were the sleek, modern-looking Bud Light can, along with the classic designed Budweiser beer. However, the seemingly simple message raised some eyebrows. One Twitter user, Joshua A.C. Newman, pointed out the origins of the text for the ad. “Are you deliberately quoting the first two elements of Umberto Eco’s 14 elements of Fascism?” he responded to the since-deleted tweet.

There’s that concept of “tradition” again. Calling card of the casually ahistorical.

And, as recommended by Andy, I signed up for the beer newsletter by David Infante – and was pleased to find out it was also a blog. There are a lot of beer blogs holding themselves out as online beer magazines and newsletters these days. It’s a bit sad that self-publishing is that little bit needy that it needs to hide itself behind odd labels and a thin veneer of exclusivity. Anyway, his latest blog post “Hire me, White Claw” caught my attention primarily as it confirmed what I should have known – this year’s trendy cooler White Claw is Canadian!!!** While Jordan mentioned it in passing in his recent post he did not hit me over the head with the fact. Never had one sip myself. Nope. So virtuous I am.  Plus I have Pickled Green Bean Clamato for that.

Stan has been telling tales again – this time about new hops being named and brought to market:

By announcing a name for the experimental hop previously known as HBC 692 the company signaled she is her own brand. “We were getting very significant pull (demand),” said Jason Perrault, CEO and hop breeder for Yakima Chief Ranches. HBC is a partnership between YCR and John I. Haas. “We’ve seen the impact it can have in a beer. Unique, but appealing. It was just time to give it its own identity.” The name, Talus, is a nod to the talus slopes found in the Yakima Valley. She is a daughter of Sabro, the hop formerly known as HBC 438 and commercialized in 2018.

I’m not a hop spotter myself, preferring to drink and think about beer once made but it is interesting to see how in the hop trade these sorts of things matter. Mr Stange even admitted to having been aware of the name (before the name was released) by way of  an embargoed press release – which made me wonder if new shoe lace tech also comes with embargoed press releases. You should also sign up for Stan’s newsletter Hop Queries to really keep up. It’s a blog he sends to you monthly by email.

Finally, Jeff posted a post on Wednesday about the brewing volume stats coming out of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission so far in this very odd year:

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission tracks the taxable barrels sold by Oregon breweries in Oregon. I’ve been watching to see when the June report would drop, because that will give us six months of data to see what kind of violence COVID-19 has done to breweries. The upshot: it’s been bad, but maybe not as bad as we might have guessed back in March. Thirteen of the top twenty breweries were down from this time last year, some substantially. But overall, the top 20 breweries were only down 2% from the same period in 2019.

While that is an average that is great news. If I could go back to myself five months ago, in the middle of the beginning of the stress of what was to come, and say “don’t worry it’ll only be 2% off” I’d be ecstatic. Now, it’s clear that it is an average and some are suffering more than that but for an economic snapshot that’s a pretty sweet picture.

In news of the ancient, Merryn gave me the heads up about a weekly web event put on by EXARC, “the ICOM Affiliated Organisation on Archaeological Open-Air Museums, Experimental Archaeology, Ancient Technology and Interpretation”:

Historical-archaeological Beer Brewers unite! We meet for a chat, this Saturday, 20:00h CET. It’s free, it’s open access and for anybody with a serious interest and / or experience with historic, archaeological craft brewing, anywhere in the world.

You sign up, too! Now!! I may be mowing as that’s mid-afternoon on the best day of the week. The heart of Saturday afternoon which is prep time for the heart of Saturday night.***

Here’s an interesting bit of news. An Albertan laboratory ran a study of beers entered into an awards judge-y thing to see if there were patterns in award giving outery:

The Raft Beer Labs analysis, published on its website, showed a few trends among medal-winning beers. Fresher beer was more likely to win an award. Medal winners were more likely to have a dry-finish than non-winners. Award-winning beers also tended to be clearer, with less turbidity than non-winners. Medal winners were also found to have lower free amino nitrogen levels and tended to be slightly higher in alcohol content than their target. The analysis also showed that both winners and non-winners were less bitter — measured in IBUs, or International Bittering Units — than the listed level, and both winners and non-winners had some microbial contamination, from wild yeasts or bacteria.

Interesting. Clearer, stronger and less bitter beers were preferred. The opposite of trendy low-alc murky hop bombs the blogs and micro blogs and photo blogs and podcast blogs and multi-author blogs are all talking about.

Finally, I am not sure I understand the point of this story. Why care about a brewery that many have written off? Why write and publish “Founders continues to defend its corporate culture”?

Done! For more of the good stuff but from a different view and in a range of blog formats, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (listen as they shit on Belleville this week!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword.**** And BeerEdge, too.

*I know – excellent, right?
**Which is sorta like saying “Soylent Green is people!” in some circles.
***Yup.
****The greatest Great Lake is obviously Lake Ontario as it contains all the other Great Lakes.

As I Lay On The Sofa During A Week Off I Daydream Of Thursday’s Beery News Notes

There. I said it. I’m off this week. I think everyone else is too as there has not been much reading to do. Or is it that I have not been reading? Look, I’ve been in a hotel for two nights in another city, an experience which was 87% comfortable, 13% covid angst.  I’ve slept in, napped, dozed and generally watched the lawn grow from various angles and elevations. And I’ve drifted pointlessly on the internets.

Maybe I just needed to get off my butt and have a look around.  So I did and to the right is my favorite and rather science-laced photo of the week posted by Sir Geoff Palmer along with this explanation:

Barley to Malt: 1972 Electron Micrograph of transverse section of a starch granule from barley (left). After the barley is grown (malted) channels of enzyme digestion (starch to sugar) in a starch granule can be seen (right). Starch to sugar digestion also occurs in our mouths…

Excellent. And made of actual science. The best read of the week has to be this story which is also a bit science focused about how animals use alcohol including a phenomenon I’ve actually witnessed, the drunken starlings at the Rowan tree:

North American songbirds sometimes get grounded when they eat too much fermented fruit. This can easily happen in the spring when migrant birds gorge on crabapples which have overwintered, or arrowwood, juniper, winterberry, and other native berries still clinging to branches. Cedar waxwings, which feed largely on fruit, are especially vulnerable to intoxication or even fatal alcohol poisoning. Certainly some of this is accidental, but birds have been observed breaking the skin on fruit, thus exposing the juices to airborne yeast spores, and returning 24-48 hours later to selectively eat the fizzy fruit.

Forty years ago in high school, we sat watching out the front window as the row of starlings did 360 flips on the telephone wire, holding on all the time but each losing grip over and over. Magic.

In more sober news, Jeff has been running a reader’s survey. Have a look.

In less sober news, Don Redmond posted a posted about a brewery crawl in my home town six months ago during the pre-times.  And he included some business-side stories, the sort of information that never comes out when folk are reporting as opposed to writing:

…he added that outside money people had approached him on occasion, asking if he’d like investors. While outside interest is obviously a good sign for any business, simply because it means others see your potential and would like a piece of that pie, there’s also a downside. Silent partners never stay silent. In fact, they tend to forget what the word ‘silent’ actually means. And since they would like to see the best return on their investment, it isn’t long before they start suggesting cost-cutting measures…

Quite conversely, extravagance reigned as the BBC reported in 1983 on the new quiches of Glasgow’s pub life. And speaking of odd food and beer but more of a not pairing, here is a tale of engineering and brewing and seafood out of the Philippines which I am not sure I can quite follow:

The conglomerate, also the nation’s largest beermaker, will plant 190,000 mangroves in coastal areas near the capital to prevent flooding at the site of the proposed largest gateway in the Southeast Asian nation. To protect these forests, San Miguel will also grow 100,000 mud crabs monthly at the 10-hectare mangrove plantation in Bulacan province, President Ramon Ang said in a statement. Mud crabs can be a source of livelihood for people in the area, he said.

On the other side of the planet, Evan wrote an excellent piece on decoction brewing which included a bit of technical detail of a science-y sort which you might expect from Beer and Brewing* magazine:

Polyphenol levels? Highest in triple-decocted beers, followed by double-decocted beers, and then single-decocted beers, with infusion-mashed beers down at the very bottom, according to a 2004 monograph written by scientists at the Czech Republic’s Research Institute of Brewing and Malting. Dimethyl sulfate (DMS) and acetaldehyde? Lower with decoction, higher with infusion, in both green and finished beers, both of which also improve in direct relation to the number of decoctions, according to a 2005 paper by researchers at Pilsner Urquell. That paper also credits decoction with improving bitterness, cold-break content, sedimentation, and soluble nitrogen.

While I can’t imagine anything more tangential to a political scene that beer in Hong Kong at the moment – this moment when their democratic rights are being stripped – apparently GBH did find a way:

By and large, Hong Kong’s craft beer community was supportive of the protests, although few bars could advertise their support openly, because the police control the issuing of liquor licenses. Now the protest chants have been silenced and banners removed because of the national security law, whose broadly defined crimes include obstructing the government and promoting hatred of China. At least one employee of a local brewery has quit his job and fled the city because he feared he would be targeted under the new law. Although legal analysts say it’s unlikely the law will have a direct impact on employers such as breweries, it does give police new powers to search and seize property without a warrant if they suspect it has been used by someone violating national security.

I have no idea which “legal analysts” speak to the potential that a regime with a massive cultural genocide on the go in one end of the country would not want to bother with craft breweries – but the author appears to still live half time in Hong Kong so there is that reality.

Beer for dullards?

Back to the science based reality, Stan posted an excellent piece that apparently could not wait for his newsletter (which you must and should sign up for) on the new hop varieties which are coming down the pipeline:

The most anticipated new name this year is whatever HBC is calling HBC 692. Releasing the name is an event is on the calendar (Sept. 9, 9 a.m. PST) for Yakima Chief’s virtual hop harvest. HBC 692 is a daughter of Sabro and depending on who is describing the aroma and flavor is packed with “grapefruit, floral, stone fruit, potpourri, woody, coconut, and pine.” She is a high impact hop, bound for plenty of hazy IPAs.

Again in less science based news, we are told that a Sam Smith’s pub posted a Covid-19 notice on Facebook (as shown to the right) then removed it then indicated that it is not participating in track and trace due to privacy concerns… whatever that means… speaking as a privacy lawyer… Not where I’d be spending (i) my hard earned and/or (ii) remaining time on this mortal coil.

Brewing science is also dangerous. But it is also tasty and even edgy as this tale from western Canada shows:

A Calgary brewery is hoping to convince beer lovers that an ale made from municipal wastewater is tasty and safe. Village Brewery has teamed up with University of Calgary researchers and U.S. water technology company Xylem to create a limited-edition batch. The water comes from the Pine Creek wastewater treatment plant by the Bow River in southeast Calgary. Partially treated water was run through an advanced purification system that involved ultrafiltration, ozone, ultraviolet light and reverse osmosis.

Perhaps even less appealing is this piece starting at the outset of this odd story about an anti-police brand of beer, there was this intro which gave me such great faith about what it takes to be a beer reviewer these days:

A fellow recently asked me if I would participate in online beer reviews.  There would be a paycheck attached.  I don’t drink whiskey (my only memory is something that would taste like a used sweat sock) and wine is like cough syrup.  I hated Formula 44 as a kid.  My mom would nearly fight me to take a teaspoonful. I got in touch with the editor of a national beer magazine.  He’s a former broadcaster and the grandson of a Stroh’s distributor.  The editor gave me a long list of smaller breweries here in the Northwest.  It’s a good jumping off point. 

Note: having worked as both a criminal defence lawyer and also with the police, I’m convinced there are certainly bastards and scumbags but there are also a lot of hard working good folk who do the things that need to be done that no one thanks them for. So I’d likely pass on the beer, too. And backing anyone fighting for BLM and other forms of holding officers and officials to account while doing better.  But without a doubt I’d never read this guy’s reviews.

How is the macroeconomic scene looking here well into month six of the pandemic lockdown? Good or horrible depending who you are:

During the COVID-19 period (from the week ending March 8 through August 8), beer category volume growth has averaged 15.3%. Nielsen estimated that the beer category would need to average 22% volume growth in off-premise retailers to offset the loss of on-premise sales — which hasn’t happened. That estimation assumes the on-premise accounts for 20% of the industry’s total volume and sales declines of 90%, the firm said.

Not helping is the reintroduction of US tariffs on Canadian aluminum which goes into those cans that are keeping good beer sales moving. One brewery notes:

Ninkasi’s CEO Nigel Francisco says it is pushing out their planning and their ability to quickly react to a changing market place. “We’re experiencing a can shortage,” Francisco said. “So, what’s happening is, there’s so much package product being sold and consumed in the market right now. It’s pushing some of the small breweries like us to supply shortages. We haven’t experienced any true supply shortages yet, but we have experienced longer lead times.”

Hangover science? Not that I am going to write about hard seltzers… but this is interesting information:

On the other hand, because it doesn’t containcongeners, a byproduct of the fermentation process that produces chemicals like acetone, acetaldehyde, and methanol, the hangover from White Claw could be less intense for some people, especially if they don’t generally experience stomachaches. “Hard seltzers have a very low concentration of congeners, which are thought to contribute to hangover symptoms,” Dr. Braunstein says. “Certain alcohols, such as red wine, brandy, and whiskey, are known to contain much higher levels.”

Finally, and as Martyn advised, BrewDog valuation has passed that of both Carlsberg and Stella each according to something called Brand Finance… according to the Morning Advertiser:

Brand Finance also used factors such as marketing investment, customer familiarity, staff satisfaction and corporate reputation to name Budweiser the world’s strongest beer brand… Interestingly, among this year’s climbers was independent Scottish craft brewer and pub operator BrewDog which bounded ahead of bar top mainstays such as Stella Artois to take 18th place…

“Craft” meaning exactly what in this context…? anymore…? ever…? BTW: also craft… while also “?”

There. Done. That’s a bit better this week. A reasonable mix, a bit of volume. And a lot less angst. I did see a dreary article which will go unnamed that combined “neo-prohibitionist” with a passing science-less denial of alcohol’s health risks** so there is bad stuff out there. Be warned. For more of the good stuff but from a different view, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

*The addition of “Craft” in the title seems to be a bit nouveau, a tad post-URL so I’m a bit confused as to branding versus identify.
**There is still no J-curve. People don’t get sick because they don’t drink. They don’t drink because they are sick… or against it as a Scottish Presbyterian or Muslim and sick… or because they just don’t like the taste and sick… or they are a child and sick. Science.

Your Mid-August Beery News Notes For A Thursday

Wow. I thought last week was dull. Not much happening but it’s mid-August, right? Starting out this week’s drafting I wondered how I’ll fill the page. That’s sorta like any August, right? It’s not the pandemic, right? Not at all. Right? To the right is an image that popped up on Twitter which I liked so much I bought the same hat. Maybe. Remember: winter is coming.

What is up? USA Today published an article on the state of racial diversity in brewing in America this week. It got a fair amount of attention, including weirdly stated attention, for what it stated but I find it as important that it was published where it was published. USA Today sits in hotel lobbies and piled next to the door in gas station convenience stores when you travel the interstates. It is lightweight and cheery and has a lot of things called info-graphics. Yet it is pretty specific in the specifics:

Just 1% of craft brewery owners were Black, the survey found. There about 60 Black-owned craft breweries out of more than 8,000 craft breweries in the U.S. By comparison, that survey found that the population around breweries was about 12.2% Black. The U.S. Census lists Blacks as accounting for 13.4% of the population.

Along those lines, GBH has published three pieces on racial discrimination on craft this week. Beth, the named editor, mentioned this passage in Part II by Toni Boyce:

A community excluded from craft’s evangelical crusade can’t seriously be expected to carry on the industry’s message or inconvenience themselves to support the industry that excluded it, let alone convince others to do so.

I mention this in particular as it connects in my mind with another reality pointed out by Josh Noel (published along with the rest of his book) that a goal in forming the Brewers Association in around 2005 was to cope with the separate – and not all savory – identities being expressed in micro brewing at that time and to form one message of one semi-plastic community.

Matt published a helpful commissioned guide to current understanding of what IPA is. Of course it’s riddled with the normal quibbly inaccuracies but, unlike most matters related to beer expertise, it actually acknowledges that it’s riddled with inaccuracies. Because beer expertise is about intentions, right? And desires. And not admitting. Anyway, because it’s self-aware its a very good guide to current perceptions:

For now I want to provide you with my own personal list of IPA styles, developed by analysing existing style guidelines published by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) and Brewers Association (BA) and then adding my own whimsical spin on them. I have used US definitions rather than those developed by UK bodies such as CAMRA and SIBA as I feel these are the most up to date and accurate with regards to what is actually being brewed in terms of IPA specifically. 

This is good. There are a few styles missing, of course, but that’s quibbles. Pre-craft* macro IPAs still exist. Beers like Harpoon IPA which were sometimes called NEIPA before NEIPA. And beers like Keiths IPA which are macro lagers but which are also somewhat popular. And Deuchars. What the hell is that, anyway? And North America has almost 180 years of continuous autonomous IPA brewing history.**  But these are quibbles. As is a snapshot of what the marketeers are making you believe these days, it’s great. Play Ron’s game, too!

I might be more sympathetic to this effort to raise awareness about greenwashing published in Forbes if the brewery were not owned by a firm that supplies a murderous military dictatorship.

Josh Noel*** published the story of that darling of that past brief era called “craft” – Goose Island Bourbon County – in this the year of pandemic:

The Bourbon County show must go on. Exactly how it will go on during the coronavirus pandemic is unclear. But as it has for the past 10 years, Goose Island Beer Co. will release its flock of barrel-aged Bourbon County beers the day after Thanksgiving across Chicago and beyond… But if the COVID-19 pandemic persists into November — which seems likelier than not — those crowds may become a public health hazard.

Of all the things that aren’t worth it these days, somehow a beer release event is very low on the list yet also very high on the list. Like: (i) who would go… (ii) and who would go? NowhuhImsayn?

Jeff complained and complained in a piece he published on the craft era Franken-glass curiosity that is the IPA glass by Spiegelau:

According to designers, the elongated snout-like bowl creates an aroma “cannon”; the Michelin-man bubble-ridges at the base agitate the beer into further aromatic heights. Curves can be nice, but these are jejune—they don’t flow naturally, but rather bulge foolishly like the barrel on a 1960s toy ray-gun.

I again remind the most careful readers that the whole thing was a bit carney as the glass is just a relabeled existing design with a few ml more in volume. Racket. Better to use a jam jar.

For some reason, the Brewers Association is keeping data it has published related to Brewery opening and closing hours private, available to the membership. Unnecessarily Masonic. And I should know! I expect it is similarly a bit pointless as Le Bart may have been foreshadowing. Kinda comforting to be excluded, too.

Well, that is it. OK but no award winner. Hah! Who needs awards? For more of the same but different, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

*If anyone calls anything before around 2005 “craft” you have to remember and sympathize as they might be a beer expert so, you know, that has to be taken into account. See if you can find a US brewing historian specializing in the 21st century instead.
**The reality is there were at least three coexisting sources acting routes to US micro IPA brewing. So far I have: (i) UK home brewing and brewing encountered on 1970s and 80s personal and professional travels both ways across the Atlantic, (ii) Bert Grant and his Canadian roots and routes in strong hoppy ales, (iii) SNPA as a clone of Ballentine as Foster explained. But don’t be looking to others to tell you that.
***Pour Le Double!!!

The Dog Days Of August Offer Similar Beery News Notes

It’s August. If the barley ain’t in, it will be soon. That’s out the outside world. In inside world news, DSL reposted the image above, the interior of C’est What in downtown Toronto. Does it really pose a problem? C’est What is one of my favourite “waiting for the train home” pubs, as noted 15 years ago and again 5 years ago. I haven’t been on a train for five months. No idea when I will again. But I will.

What’s been going on? I don’t know how to footnote a podcast* or quite a passage from one so all I can do is recommend Andy’s thoughts on the needs for independent reportage of the brewing trade. More meta arose in response to Jeff’s further thoughts on the state of making a freelance living from beer writing:

Many hours in a freelance writer’s life are not occupied by the activities that directly contribute to finished pieces, and a level of chaos emerges from all the other odd work that rattles around, inevitably demanding attention at inconvenient, unexpected moments. Let’s spend a moment unpacking them.

Responses ensued** from many including Eoghan, Maureen, Boak and Bailey and Katie. Me, it’s a mug’s game honestly entered into that often leads to this which leads to this and then oddly this.

Elsewhere, Jon Abernathy reports on the Black Is Beautiful project in Oregon:

I just checked, and the number in Oregon is now 37 on the website, though it doesn’t count Deschutes Brewery, which partnered with The Ale Apothecary (as I mention in the article), so really it’s 38 in Oregon. This is a vitally important project that shouldn’t be ignored. If you see a Black is Beautiful beer on tap, or available in cans, buy it—your dollars will help to fund the necessary change we need to see right now.

Some questions arose over the weekend as to how many of your dollars were actually helping fund change as the differences between proceeds and profits were discussed. But elsewhere real money was gathered: $20,000 and $12,000 for example.

Speaking of gathering resources against the forces of badness, I like this bit of brewing industry legal news. Source Brewing in New Jersey has released a beer called West Coast Troll to help raise funds to help Sawstone Brewing in its defense of the odd threat of an intellectual property legal action brought by one of big craft’s top millstones, Stone:

Here at Source, we do not condone bullying and we are all about supporting small businesses. It’s important to stop and remember how we got here, and how beautiful and life-changing the craft beer community is for so many people. Rising tides raise all ships and our collective focus should remain on sticking together and resisting the corporate bullying often exercised by “Big Beer,” and not on picking on one another. We stand with Stone Brewing in their dispute with MillerCoors, but we firmly support Sawstone Brewing in defending their right to exist.

Class. And solidarity. And Stone as a result has earned itself a FB page rallying for a boycott. Brilliant. Surely completely unconnected was the sudden departure of Stone’s CEO.

Historically, Martyn has told a tale again, this time about Flowers Keg ale in the 1950s and an anti-slaver posse in the 1820s in US Midwest:

Let us begin at the beginning. I knew about Richard Flower because he is an important figure in the history of brewing in Hertfordshire, and I knew he had moved to Illinois to join his son George, who was one of the pioneers in developing what was called the “English Settlement” in the territory, which developed into the city of Albany. But I didn’t know that Richard, who was born in London, had trained at Whitbread…

Health-wise, Evan wrote about alcohol and health claims for Wine Enthusiast:

“Many people are aware of the negative effects of drinking, but drink anyway,” she says. For many, she says, such internal conflict can produce a feeling of mental discomfort. “Reading a newspaper article that states that drinking isn’t that bad after all might reduce this feeling of discomfort.” 

Note: there is still no J-curve.

And filed under very pleasant surprises, while it has not often been the case, I really enjoyed something in Good Beer Hunting. I’ve too often been let down by past cut and paste jobs leaning on too heavily on the published work of others followed by the typical “one the one hand on the other” tepid conclusions. But not this week when Kate Bernot really put the old boot in the Brewers Association. Consider this bit of well deserved finger-pointery:

The BA’s assertion that it will not kick out breweries unless doing so has strong support from other member breweries indicates the organization will not take a top-down approach to eradicating racism among members. Yet experts in the business world have said corporate leadership is especially necessary on these issues.

Among other responses, it got me looking through my own archives and found (then, imagine – tweeted) this gem of days now seemingly long gone:

From the archives: “The Eight Years Reign of Craft Beer Ends” (Jan., 2015) [See this timely thought… => “One of the key PR goals of the Brewer’s Association has been control of the discourse.”] 

Not no more. Good news that story. A bit of spine. Now, if we can just get the guild of pro-am beer editors with empty pantry issues stop praising crappy PR cut and paste sweatshops I might be able to sleep at night. Similarly, the Polk says F the guilds… sorta.

Getting back to the actual life of the actual consumer, the Tand himself wrote about the joys and pitfalls of app service as opposed to table service in the pandemic pub scene:

Our next stop Mackie Mayor had similar issues. If you wanted to only have a drink, you had to sit outside – fine – and use the app – not so fine. This time it wouldn’t download on Android, but it liked Mike’s iPhone. Details required were of the intrusive nature. This took 20 minutes or so again and this time, after a ten-minute wait, decent pints of cask, in proper glasses, were brought. Overall though much more bearable. But not that great.

Not great at all.

Worse? Yes, it could be far worse. Well, there is Cowbell here in Ontario. Check out the second half of the latest OCPG podcast for the details but it’s a bit of an ugly initial mess followed by a PR mess followed by not sure what next… ugh.

Well, that is it. For more of the same but different, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And BeerEdge, too.

*But is a podcast even a podcast without thirty-five “umms” and a dozen snorts? Can’t wait for the new profession of beer podcast audio producers and sound engineers to arise to follow in the brave footsteps of the post-2018 phenom of beer writing editors.
**Oddly, no suggestion that beer writing editors were the solution…

Your Thursday Newsy Notes For The End Of July In Beerland

After last week’s mess of unified theory of a something or other, it would be nice to find some chat that is (i) about beer and (ii) not about other things. You know, those bits of the trivial dribble that attracted me to scribbling about beer in the first place. It’s not just that good beer got into sectarian schisms, then politics, then laced with the pandemic – it’s that it all got so real. Don’t get me wrong, the real is good and important. But sometimes I like to wallow in, the vital but unimportant things in life. Like that really sad BBQ pack, above, that my pal Brian saw at a Maritime Canadian grocery store this week. Pointless… yet strangely compelling.

As a means to hopefully show what I mean, consider this wonderful bit by Katie in Pellicle on the place of burger vans in her life:

This is where I draw the line between burger vans and food trucks. For me, food trucks bring me images of gourmet falafel wraps, jackfruit tacos, outrageous fried chicken and homemade sauces. They’re run by chefs and dreamers on enthusiasm and aspiration, passion and excitement. I enjoy them, but they are a different beast. A burger van might also be a grill on wheels, but that’s where the comparisons stop. A burger van is a means to an end. The owners are chipper, but brisk and efficient. The sauces are bulk-bought and sharp with vinegar and citric acid.

Lovely writing about what is basically… well, is “…what my mum would call “a waste of money.” I have especially enjoyed following her family’s obsession with Superbike, something which really does not exist in my imaginary North America, something British which I only know through staring at 1930s racing championship programs on offer at eBay.

Beer reviews. That is pretty old school straight forward beer blogging, right? Well, Alistair over at Fuggled has renewed his blogging activity and shared his thoughts on one old friend, London Pride:

There are times when I drink this that I really understand why American brewers and drinkers have such a hard time grasping the fact bitter should be, well, bitter. It’s not that it is terribly sweet, though the mouthfeel feels a little like undissolved jelly cubes, it’s that the hops are nudged out by the famous Fuller’s yeast character, as well as not being the same kind of citrus as folks are used to here. So many breweries here use very clean top fermenting yeasts that the character of the beer is so different, and I wonder if American breweries under hop the tyle as a result?

And when the conscientious beer blogger is not writing reviews, she or he should be discussing pubs like the Tand himself did this week when he wrote about one of his “…favourite pubs in the UK, the Coalbrookdale Inn in, well Coalbrookdale…” and included this fabulous paragraph:

After a few minutes – the pub has a more or less square bar – the landlord shouted “Phone call for Peter”.  We all ignored this. Now to explain to my younger reader, back in those days – pre mobile phone – it wasn’t at all unusual to call a pub and ask to speak to “whoever” if he is in.  Now nobody knew we were there we thought and therefore the call out in a busy pub could not possibly be for any of us and could be safely ignored. We carried on supping. Having got no response, the barman returned to the phone, presumably to relate the lack of success to the caller.  A few seconds later he appeared in front of us. “Any of you lads Peter Alexander?” quoth our hero. I stammered “Me” while we all looked on in astonishment. “Phone call for you” he said.

Do you like brewing history? Good news for all! The UK’s National Brewery Centre’s archives have gone online:

Two years ago a project began to produce a digital catalogue and this is what launches today. At a cost of £50,000, it was funded by generous grants from the likes of the Consolidated Charity of Burton on Trent, Staffordshire Community Foundation, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the Brewers’ Research Education Fund, additional funds were raised from corporate and individual donors as well as via a crowdfunding campaign. The archive system was designed and built by Shrewsbury-based digital heritage consultants Orangeleaf Systems, whose other projects include The Parliamentary Archives and the Royal Mail Archives.

More fabulousness!

Lars opened up a small can of worms in a very small pantry when he asked “What counts as a farmhouse ale?” in an actual blog post:

The most common question I get in interviews is “what do you consider to be a farmhouse ale?” and since the answer is a little involved I decided to write it up more fully. There is a fairly clear-cut definition, but it takes a little explaining.

I think the only issue is that Lars has to have one footnote to the first paragraph that reads “*supra, Lars” given he is both the reporter and the compiler of the information in the topic. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that there is a thing called “farmhouse ales” which is an umbrella noun under which all styles fall. But I do like it as a process description that is identifying similar practices playing out in sheds and kitchens in disconnected locations. As a function of what the life of a farmhouse includes.  As Lars notes in his piece:

In the 18th and the 19th Centuries, you had plenty of farming treatises being published. In most if not all of them you have a chapter on brewing.

Brewing as a farming function as much as managing the manure pile or tilling the fields. Note: the wonderful Girardin grows its own grain and has done so for generations… but it may not be brewing farmhouse ale.

Perhaps less monumental that van burgers or les bieres des shed, is the story told by B+B of pubs collecting pennies for charity in post-war Britain:

Looking through old brewery in-house magazines from the 1950s and 60s, one recurring image is inescapable: a monstrous pile of pennies on a bar, in the process of being toppled by a celebrity.

Jeff wrote about losing his blog’s sponsorship to Covid (sorta like I did in the aftermath of the market crash of 2008) which is a very brave admission and not really fabulous at all:

The first question was whether I should even continue with the site. Most writers don’t maintain blogs. They would rather put their effort into procuring and writing paid gigs. It was kind of crazy that I hadn’t monetized the site at all for its first decade, and I realized I couldn’t put the hours of work into it for free anymore. Either ditch it or—sorry for the crass jargon—monetize it. I decided to try the latter before resorting to the former, and considered how to do so in the way that would minimize my conflict of interest while maximizing revenue.

Keep the blog. Writing gigs may make money but the writing is Dullsville.

And lastly, Stan went into the woods this week and he sure got a big surprise.

Enough unreality for you? Fine. OK…. here are the top real news items for the week:

1. JJB took a side on the small brewers’ tax credit reforms in England and Wales. Matt is angry over the same thing.

2. Jeff has split off his political writing from his beer blog to share what he is seeing on the front lines of the fight in the US’s pro-democracy movement in his hometown.

3. Alcohol use, especially heavy use, weakens the immune system and thus reduces the ability to cope with infectious diseases.

4. And today would be a great day to arrest those who killed Breonna Taylor.

Don’t forget it is real out there.  The cool sip of a mild legal intoxicant that is wearing down your internal organs prematurely should not distract you too much from the real. Beer isn’t real.*

There. Done. Some great pro-am and am beer writing for the week. A bit of a side show but, still, worthy in itself. For more, check in with Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword.

*The latest blurt from Stone should be enough proof of that.