Pubs, Tavs, Diners and Restaurants – Page 7

The Last But Decisive Beery News Notes For January 2023

Already we see an ending. The long goodbye, that’s what I say. It’s been quite a week. I went to a pub in another city with old pals for one thing. A cheery sort of dive. We talked about stuff like, you know, the anticipated next LP from The Cars and, umm, how the Trudeau administration is going, that sort of stuff. Like we would in the early ’80s. We drank beers like we would have then, too. My pals are generally not the fruity sour sort. Good brown bitter ales. Cheery pubs are good as Jeff has been reminding us from Prague. Not sure going to every pub in downtown Dublin in one day is quite the same thing. But I tell you what is the very thing – THUNDER SNOW!!! Had a blast on Wednesday night. Neato.

Beer! That’s what you are here for. And as B+B highlighted, Cloudwater’s Paul Jones shared a bit of uncertainty about the brewery’s future in a BBC news item and a few people took notice – and quite rightly:

Mr Jones said his Manchester-based company has been in survival mode since March 2020, with high costs, debt, low consumer confidence and post-Brexit trading problems all bearing down on the business. “The cost to me has been pretty bleak,” he said. “I have a heart condition from stress and I feel constantly on the edge of what I can personally cope with.” His thoughts have turned to closing his business “probably once a month since 2020,” he said.

Reporting from the bar room floor, the Tand himself shared that he “had a pint (several) with Paul last Friday and he is really worried about the situation. But he is fighting on, which is good” – others in the thread thought they had as good a chance of getting through these tough times as any brewery. But, yikes… that heart condition.

Spinning the globe that sits by my desk, we see that The Beer Nut wrote about two Bulgarian beers last weekend and, as anyone with an eye on the globe would… I do like me a good tale of Bulgarian beers. Why, just a decade ago I wrote about a matter of brewery crime over there. Anyway, the principled defense of actual gose as against the forces of fruit sauce adjuncts that TBN posted was heartening:

There’s neither nonsense nor novelty in the aroma, just a nice dry saline kick with a suggestion of citric sourness to come. Sure enough, it’s cleanly tart; precise and angular in its flavour. The dry cracker base is a little soggier than I’d like, lacking a crispness it suggests but doesn’t quite deliver on. That does give it a fuller than expected body for only 5% ABV, and onto that they’ve spread grapefruit jelly and a spritz of sea spume. Refreshing? I’ll say. I drank it very cold and it suited it well. And then there’s just enough sourness to keep this sour beer fan happy. Overall it’s a cut above what gets tossed out as gose by most microbreweries these days. Some coriander might have been good too, but there’s plenty of flavour without it.

And TBN also heroically called out the practice of only speaking of beer in positives this week, too. He really needs a government grant to keep on this sort of thing, doesn’t he:

If you paid money for it, and it’s not good, it’s absolutely fair to say “it’s not good”. An out of ten scale is meaningless if you don’t use all the numbers.

On a similar theme but unpacked a bit more was David Jesudason in his excellent newsletter “Episodes of My Pub Life” last Friday:

… this is always going to be their comfort zone if they are from a background that has meant they have never had to work a busy bar or wait on a table. They’re always viewing their glass through the prism of being a privileged consumer – and that’s not to say I’m wholly exempt from this charge. Many even see their sole role as promoters of the beer industry and, more critically, to tell it like it is is somehow negative – they also often feel the same about racism or any other ism. This isn’t journalism or what we were gifted to do and if people, like today’s interviewee, are clamouring to have the truth told then food and drink writing needs to change… That’s not to say that beer writers shouldn’t be writing articles that make people yearn to be in pubs but what’s happening in the moment shouldn’t be played out on social media, while journalists bury their head in their hands.

Well said. And, to be honest, it’s like there’s a whole bunch of me circa 2010s out there now. Nice. [No, not Nice!] Over on Mastodon, Andreas Krennmair shared another less nice sort of beer writing issue – doubt:

…ever since I published my Vienna Lager book, I’ve had this awful feeling that no matter what I’d be writing next about, it will never be nearly as good or popular as the last one, and so I have a (probably 1/2 to 3/4 finished) book WIP lying on my hard drive for 2 years now that I occasionally touch a bit once every few months but never make much progress.

Conversely, never one to suffer doubt or at least be held back by it, Ron has been sharing the secrets of his corner of the writing trade by explaining how he interprets brewery logs and other records:

After the overwhelmingly tepid response to my series looking at a Barclay Perkins record, I’ve decided to plough ahead with another style of brewing record. What I call Scottish format because, well, it\s the type of record used by most Scottish brewers. And a few English ones, too. Such as Boddington, for example… Getting back to the topic, Scottish format records gave their pros and cons. Biggest pro is that you get more beers per photo. This period of Younger’s records have eight beers per double-page spread. Which means you get four beers per photo. Biggest con is that everything is rather cramped and often in tiny handwriting.

OK, enough about writing about writing. How about some bad news about your hobby! The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction issued a statement this week that more than just two drinks a week was courting an increased level of risk from cancers and other harms and there was a bit of an explosion. Folks went crrrrraaaay-crrrraaaay. It particularly set drinks writer Craig Pinhey off more than once, especially the two-hour national radio call in show Cross Country Checkup‘s coverage. Sadly, unhappy folk took to flogging the creaky and well discredited J-Curve and ignored that the latest medical advice* that, contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart. The contestants for leading voices in opposition ranged from the quite sensible Dan Mallack who advocated primarily for an overall calculation that balanced joy v. risk to some complaining Uncle Anti who is also against cutting back on sugary food, smoking, gambling and even seat belts in cars, exercising one might say the Randian** ad absurdum. Such is life… or perhaps the path to an early death. Govern yourselves accordingly.

Returning to lucidity, I just finished reading book at the moment that the very self same Mr. Mallack edited, Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs, which canvasses a range of topics over the included essays and I am quite enjoying it. Buy it. He gets paid for such things. I actually referred to it as the “needles and booze essays” which I am glad to say was warmly appreciated. There are a legitimate range of views in these matters as that book illustrates – and it is good to explore them even if you have no intention of necessarily adopting one or another as your own. Me? I balance all joys and all risks along with the duties of life. I’ve had five or six drinks*** in the last ten days but I did go to a pub last Saturday with pals I met around 40 years ago and had a very nice time until the band started up and my earplugs proved insufficient to protect my punk rock ravaged hearing. The group photo shows me with a nice pint of ice water. It was my bourbon chaser.

When I think of those schoolboy days, I have to admit that I had no idea that some children needed to be coaxed to take their cocktails but there you have it… proof! The 1930s ciggie ad right there to the right says – so it must be true! I am not sure I’ve seen the truth, however, in the case of the boringest tale of beer of at least this short years. It continues with an old style Fat Tire handle spotted unloved in an airport terminal. Stan had the final word on that kerfuffle: so many people with so many opinions for a beer so many people abandoned so many years ago.

Albany ale sighting!!!

An odd blip on perhaps an alternative timeline was noticed. Last heard from in April 2022, an unhappiness with BrewDog was revived but to what end I don’t know. The most telling statement is perhaps the last: “…I consider any further acts towards me or my company a continuance of the retaliation against those former workers…” which reminded me of the time when a lawyer of my acquaintance decided to insist on a house deal not closing – and moved into the house himself to make sure that was the case!

Speaking of odd, I had no idea anyone was bothering to be anti-Cicerone. Given it’s a non-peer reviewed, unaccredited privately run hospitality course, I never thought it would worth anyone’s time… but I do respect Jenny so it’s noteworthy that she wrote:

I always find it funny when brewers are the ones who come out so anti-Cicerone — people who put in time to make the beer you brewed as good as it can be the moment it makes it to the beer drinker. If that’s irrelevant, then you don’t see the whole picture.

Fin! Enough!! Now on to the indices. Again I ask… what song should play if this were a movie and you were there scrolling though the slowly building upon this expanding and randomly organized list of beer writing resources on Mastodon** followed by the less reliable glom of podcasts ‘n’ stuff? Could it be this? Yes? Yes, that’s it – for this week…

Go have a look yourself. I am up to 750 followers myself. Time and patience and regular posting attracts the audience as per usual. While you are at it, check for more from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays. Check to see if there is the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it there again! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very much less) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: still giving it a few more weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has fully packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly.

*World Heart Federation, Policy Brief, The Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Cardiovascular Health”, page 8: “Contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart. This directly contradicts common and popular message that alcohol prolongs life, chiefly by reducing the risk of CVD. The controversy over the role of low to moderate alcohol use and future heart attack relates to inconsistent results among the many studies on the topic. Historically, studies have shown a J-shaped distribution of outcomes. The lowest rates of heart attacks have been in those with low to moderate alcohol consumption and higher rates in those who did not drink or have high rates of alcohol consumption. However, new research has challenged this interpretation by not confirming the J point relationship in Chinese and Indian populations, where alcohol consumption is relatively lower, binge drinking is common and among people less than 55 years of age. Furthermore, there has been heterogeneity in the type and pattern of alcohol consumption in most parts of the world.”
**Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, chapter on “Sir Thomas Brown“: “There have even been outright bad writers blessed by the visitation of a poetic title. Ayn Rand had one with The Fountainhead, and another with Atlas Shrugged: a bit of a mouthful, but nobody has ever spat it out without first being fascinated with what it felt like to chew. Yet if those were not two of the worst books ever written—the worst books ever written don’t even get published—they were certainly among the worst books ever to be taken seriously.“
***Fine, yes, I do keep track of a lot of stats…

The Nerve Wrackingly Clever Observations On Beer Culture For January’s Middle-Third

2023!! Here we are knee deep in it already. And my first packets of seeds have already shown up. Dreaming of a feed of that Italian cuke-a-melon, the carosello, is all I’m about now. Let’s be honest – I’m calling this part of the year pre-spring from here on out. Summer, autumn, holidays, pre-spring, spring. Makes way more sense that way. If winter sucks, just eliminate it from the vocabulary. That’s what I say. You. Are. Welcome. Not sure if a new beery theme has coalesced yet this year – other than, you know, the impending total craft beer industry collapse. Things looked a bit wobbly recession-wise in Montreal what with shops closed or quiet, there where we ended up by surprise last week, gifted a short trip by the kids – but I did get to try that there cider without sulfates, at the very busy (good to see) mid-week early dinner sitting at “Au Pied du Cochon” (also really good to scoff.) You never realize how much sulphites trigger histamine flairs until they don’t.

First up this week? Some history for you upon the question of peeing. There is an odd whiff of Ceramics Defense League (CDL) punditry in this article about the use of tiles in pubs in 1930s Australia:

…the emerging awareness of sanitation and hygiene prompted the wider use of tiles as a way to manage germs and dirt. Tiles were easier to clean than plaster and wood. They were also more durable and colourful than traditional materials. These days, the popular imagination might associate pub tiles with piss and vomit, even if the architectural move was more about general hygiene than the dangers of the six o’clock swill. Certainly, a pub with wall tiles was easy to clean, and breweries were keen to play-up the sparkling modernity of tiled bars.

I say “off” as somewhere around here I have a picture of a saloon of the pre-prohibition sort with a urinal trough at the foot of the bar. Or just a mopping out trough… or whatever. Stop kidding yourselves. They were horrible places and you’d all be pro-Temperance, yes you, right there tambourines in hand shouting your favorite Bible verses, if you woke up in the 1890s living next to one, you moderns you. ‘Fess up! One of the oddest thing about the bad old days is that constant desire to polish them up. (Surely great great grandpa wasn’t that sort of pig. He was?!?!)

Continuing of the question of health, I am not sure I need a non-alcohol based route to tickling the old gaba receptors… but someone is working on just that, according to The Times:

Nutt’s idea was simple: target just the gaba, and do so by engineering a molecule that removes itself from the body rapidly and painlessly. By only hitting that one type of receptor, it would avoid some of less desirable effects of alcohol intoxication. By being easily metabolised, it would avoid the less desirable after-effects of that intoxication: a hangover. The result is a substance he calls Alcarelle.

Speaking of technology… consider this and what we have lost. Especially shouting “pick up the phone” to someone else in your house. Best beer marketing campaign ever as far as I’m concerned or at least up there is Beer is Best.

Robin and Jordan are back with a fresh podcast for the New Year with some surprising info on changes in the Ontario brewing scene – including, among other sad recession related news, the end of brewing operations Collective Arts’ Toronto location and the resulting considerations of the ability to run a local semi-autonomous branch with its own life when you are slowly becoming a semi-regional slightly international craft operation during a downturn.

And Martin has shared his New Years Eve in Manchester, picking up the kid with the job. Lovely photos of a ceiling at the Crown & Kettle. “Lordly” ye shall say when ye click on yon thumbprint and look upon the said ceiling yourselves. And, yea, it shall be true.

BREAKING: through his study of stouts, Ron has trampled upon the tender hearts of style obsessives:

These are brew house names. Not what the beer was necessarily sold as. Some brewing records have four beer names across the top, but there’s only really one beer.

Is any of the past true? Is the present? Consider this the* curious tale… of… oh dear… let Stonch explain a bit of the background first:

Curious Brew is grim: a fake, deceptive brand for a decade, then Chapel Down build a white elephant brewery, but soon panic and sell for buttons to a crank. Now they’ll brew Wild Beer ‘brands’ in Ashford. Who cares? I wouldn’t touch any of it. I care about real, honest breweries.

Well, it did sorta get touched but not it seems embraced according to Beeson, J.:

@WildBeerCo brand survives, sold to @CuriousBrewery. Sale includes IP, beer & e-comm biz, but not physical brewery. Some staff inc. Cooper & Ellis staying on. Limited co remains in administration. Investors won’t receive £££ from deal.

So recipes and the website. The shaking out of the pockets of the departed it seems. Not a buy out, just part of the yard sale. And, speaking of buying junk, it’s all like a mini-version of the 1990’s Filipino Pepsi fiasco but still seems a bit of a pile on… even, you know, for himself of themselves:

Mr Watt said that because it was his error, he had contacted all 50 gold can winners to offer them the “full cash amount” as an alternative to the prize if they were unhappy”. “All in all, it ended up costing me around £470,000 – well over 2 and a half years’ salary,” he added. In his post, the Brewdog boss revealed he now owned 40 of the gold cans. After conducting its investigation, the ASA said it received 25 complaints in relation to three social media adverts stating its can prize was made from “solid gold”.

Elsewhere, Boak and Bailey posted a very interesting and very very true article on the 1955 launch party of The Venetian Coffee Bar, a Whitbread project:

The Venetian Coffee Bar got an entire feature in Whitbread’s in-house magazine, The House of Whitbread, in spring 1956. The article gives us a few details that weren’t in the newspaper reports, including the specific date of the launch party – 6 December 1955. The photos of the launch party are slightly more interesting than usual, too. They show the famously hammy British horror actor Tod Slaughter in attendance, dressed in fine Victorian style, shortly before his death in February 1956.

Tod Slaughter! Note: there are two types of people in beer: people who are capable of honest critical reporting on obvious things** and those unable to admit to external reality.*** Andy is also of the first class:

At its best, hazy IPA is reasonably pleasant, sometimes even enjoyable. At anything less than its best, the experience drops quickly. While beer drinking is a subjective experience, feels like many hazy brewers are engaged in an extended gag no one has bothered to call them on.

Let us join hands in a big harmonious circle right now and promise 2023 is the year we stop finger wagging about saying bad things about bad styles and bad beer and just get to speaking some truths about it all. Thanks.

Pellicle has published a travel piece by Rachel Signer (because a big percentage of drinks writing is now really travel pr0n when it isn’t now really well justified social justice writing) which is not the sort of thing I usually like but I do like it very much in this case because it is a well written airy study on being in France and Italy in the spring drinking sulphate-free wine (noted above as something I should explore) and because I am (as noted above) already working on my own “pots and pots of carosello” gardening plans which means I can’t resist… a chicken festival:

We arrive to the chicken festival. It is outdoors, with a string of lights around a café area. Everyone is greeting each other warmly. People who missed coming here for two years have come out in droves, and all the chicken has already been eaten. We have fried potatoes and sausages instead, and we drink a pleasant local red wine, made with the generic Toscana appellation. I feel incredibly at home with the Pācina folks, although we hardly know each other. But there is between us the bond of natural wine, which runs strong around the world. And, perhaps relatedly, a relief that history didn’t go the other way, and that we can talk of fascism as a thing in history.

Well, err, you may want to check on that last bit. Speaking of travel, Alistair shifted himself a whole 7.2 miles as he prepared his thoughts on the subject of one particular local of his that is for the locals:

It was on my Christmas Eve trip to Patch that I was stood at the bar, there was basically no one there other than myself, my neighbour, and the general manager, who was tending the bar that day. I’ve know the GM for quite some time now, initially through the local homebrew club, but also as he has been in the beer industry for the best part of a decade I think at this point. The rest of the bar staff know me as a pilsner drinker, and Erik’s Pylon Pilsner is definitely my most regular tipple at Patch, but the GM knew what I was there for, their “copper ale”, which in my mind treads a fine line between dark mild and the kind of darker best bitter you get in the south of England.

Finally, is it true that Mastodon is not taking off as still Twitter slowly continues to decline, acting more and more like Web 1.0 tickertape? Perhaps the curse of social media has been broken and – oh happy day! – people are now just becoming actually happier in the real world! Wouldn’t that be nice. And so, relatedly in its finality, we come to the credits. Or sorta like the credits. What song should play if this were a movie and you were there scrolling though my continuing tradition (inspired by Boak and Bailey… not stolen from… let’s be clear!) of slowly building upon a shared list of beer writing resources on Mastodon followed by the podcasts? This? Is that the tune? Sure… maybe just for this week…

Go have a look. And also check for more as the year picks up from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back at his spot on Mondays. It’s no longer the holidays. So, look around and check to see if there is the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it there again! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link! The Fingers Podcast has packed it in citing lack of success.

*What is less than a pun?
**To assist in your thoughts, consider what Robert Christgau wrote on the release of The Marshall Tucker Band: Greatest Hits in 1978: “I can distinguish Tucker from the other boogie bands because they favor cowboy hats, but danged if I can tell their albums apart. Country people know one cow from the next, too, but poor deracinated souls like me refuse to be bothered until A&P runs out of milk and r&r runs out of gimmicks. Toy Caldwell does write pretty good songs for a boogie man, though, about one a year to go with the album, and it’s nice to have them all in one place. Pure boogie mythos, with lots of “Ramblin'” and “Searchin’ for a Rainbow,” though I’m pleased to report that there are more miners and, yes, cowboys here than gamblers, a reassuring token of social responsibility. I recommend this album. It’s as near as you can get these days to hearing that old steam whistle.” He gave the record an -A!
***Something of the latter in last Saturday’s round up from B+B: “Don’t let someone tell you that your perceptions are incorrect because it’s all made up anyway.” It’s like a teeter-totter that sentence, isn’t it… as you go back and forth, back and forth. The passage in which it is embedded could be a valuable introduction to an anthology of beer writing in the section headed “Warning!”

The Jing-Jing-Jingliest Thursday Beery News Notes Of All!!

Here we are. Christmas Eve… Eve… Eve… because the 25th is Sunday and that screws everything up. The kid still goes to school tomorrow, which is insane. I am sorta off but not off as there isn’t much happening now a week after even the staff Christmas parties are over. And… there’s a HAMMER OF THOR snowstorm coming tomorrow. All good. I’m Christmassy and that is all that counts. Fam’s all here, pressies bought and the tree is lit! I thought I would pull back the curtain and give you a sense of the life at my house at the holidays. KIDDING!!! That’s not my house, that’s “The Chess Players” by Gustav Wintzel of Norway from 1886. Look at that beer! Gotta be a litre glass right there plus the colour is key to the entire painting, establishing the triangle with the contents of that shelf… probably a mantelpiece with the firebox hidden by those rugs. Lovely.

Right off the top, how is this for a graph from the Victim of Math? Click on it for more detail. It’s the Health Survey for England’s data showing how young people there are abandoning drinking – and have been on a steady trend of going clean at an amazing rate of change. It looks like in 2017 less than 25% of women 16 to 24 well over 40%. The lads are less less inclined but seem to have gone from about 17% dry to 34% so over the last ten years. Don’t know what that bodes other than it bodes something.

Speaking of boding, Jordan wrote the third in his St. Johnian* Effort in the “boding not too welling in Ontario” series this week, the conclusion of which I will ruin knowing it is not the end… not even the beginning of the end… but more like the end of the beginning:

Let’s see if we can recap: Beer is a luxury good by default, and its cost has outpaced wage growth. As established earlier, we’re dealing with the smallest cohort of people turning 19 in living memory, a cohort smaller than any other group younger than 65. Per capita consumption is going down year over year, presumably due to multiple issues including health and lifestyle choices, but also because of decreased relevance due to affordability. Additionally, this is in the face of greater availability in terms of retail purchase locations in the province’s post-prohibition history.

Add callow youth ditching drinking to that list… Perhaps related, an interesting article in The Times on James May and his pub and the lessons he has learned about the marketplace:

Pubs, for obvious reasons, proliferated in the Victorian era, especially in towns and cities, where they were effectively the communal part of working people’s homes. We know that Ebenezer Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol, “took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern”. But pubs don’t need to fulfil this role any more. They are entirely places where we go of our own volition, rather than out of necessity, and they need to acknowledge this. Note how it’s dreary pubs that subscribe to the old thinking, with their mediocre food, crappy karzis and limited drinks lists, that close down. Good pubs, the ones that have readjusted, are doing fine, and we don’t need as many of them as we once did.

What’s that? “Cheer! Give us cheer!!!” you say, gentle readers. Quite so. the ever excellent Evan Rail shared some wonderful Yuletide info about mulled things and spiced things as well as the celebration of wassail:

While the orchard wassail is closely tied to Twelfth Night on Jan. 5 or 6, hardcore traditionalists will celebrate wassail according to Twelfth Night on the Julian calendar, which was used in England until 1752. By that measure, the proper date for an orchard wassail would be Jan. 16 or 17 on today’s calendar. For the sake of convenience, many wassail events are simply scheduled on January weekends. In the village of Hartley Wintney in Hampshire, England, the annual wassail is set to take place on Friday, Jan. 13, with a torchlight procession that starts at the village pub, the Waggon and Horses, where publican Kaesy Steele will be serving a traditional mulled cider.

Do we still care who owns the brewery? I mean, I was sorta making fun of this idea back in 2015… seven years ago tomorrow. Pete Brown updated the dance card and quite rightly treated craft and not craft as all the same thing:

Many leading craft brands have now been acquired by the giants. That’s just how it is. Now – the ownership structure of the beer industry may be of no interest to you. If you’re already drinking mainstream lagers from global giants and you just occasionally fancy something hoppier, that’s up to you. I won’t judge. However, if one of your motivations for drinking craft beer – or just as importantly, cask/real ale – is that you want to support small, independent businesses, it’s not always obvious whether or not the brand in front of you is the real deal.

Nice. Just remember that ownership is only half the story. Obligations in law like debt and shareholder agreements have as much or more influence over a business’s independence. Folk that promote their independence suddenly find, upon a downturn, that they are quite dependent. Consider the Case of Mr. Musk.

Now… in history making history, Ron pushed the early edge of brewing records and published in 1805 pale stout recipe.

Here’s proof that Stout didn’t always imply a dark beer. An example of the pale malt analogue of Brown Stout. It’s a type of beer which must have died out early in the 19th century as this is the only example I have. I’ve no idea why it disappeared but it may be connected with Porter brewers moving to brewing only dark beers. The grist couldn’t be simpler: 100% Hertfordshire pale malt. There’s really nothing more to say.

And Liam found a reference to India Pale Ale dated 1824 (proceeded by “West”) and set off a bit of speculation as to its meaning and implications. I would only add that Vassar in the 1830s referred to one of his ales as “South” as illustrated to the left – but I am quite sure he did not create something called Southern Ale. Just as “style” is useless before it is defined and defined again by Jackson in the 1980s, the further you go back from that, the less meaning categories have. Ideas can’t flow backwards. I suspect that the predecessors to IPA, both eastern and western classes, were the English strong ales named after cities like Taunton and Dorchester and Derby, both evolving and branded according to given marketplace expectations.

It’s that time of the year. No, not just for Ron’s DrinkAlongAThon. The time for lists!! Best wines and Golden Pints. Here are the ten most read stories on Pellicle. Here’s Lisa’s. Alistair of Fuggles has been putting together his “best of” lists including best pales and best oranges to browns. I like the organizational decision he’s made, abandoning illusion for the actual. I suppose he could have gone with viscosity instead of colour. Perhaps in 2023! Jeff of Beervana has gone in another direction and provided us with his favourite photos for 2022. And the Beer Crunchers have jumped ahead with their US craft beer forecast for next year with some refreshing honesty:

Some brewery owners realized that the bigger they got, the more HR became part of the job, when they just wanted to focus on the beer itself. Other brewery owners turned out to be assholes and represented the HR-risk themself. Regardless of the reason, a significant number of breweries are for sale or have been sold in the past year. Some are of great value and truly worth every penny. Others are worth zero, or worse. Expect to see more interesting sales, depressing closures, and everything in between. You won’t be able to keep up and the action already underway.

Note: I had no idea this sort of thing was done:

In February 1961 Guinness paid the London brewer Watney Combe Reid £28,000 to discontinue Reid’s Stout. This was to secure the position of Guinness’s new nitro-keg product – it was clearly worried the Red Barrel keg beer brewer’s stout could be a rival to keg draught Guinness

Finally, Boak and Bailey added a new feature to their weekly which I am going to copy… literally cut and paste… then slowly build upon, too – a shared list of beer writing resources on Mastodon:

Please let me know when you see more to add to the list. I’ll be back next week with my own “best of” post. Not sure if it will be on Thursday or Friday. There’s a long drive between now and then. And bird feeders to fill. Naps, too. May even need to check the lake temperature to see what’s what. You might not have a weekly update from Boak and Bailey as we usually see mostly every Saturday and also also perhaps not from Stan at his spot on Mondays. Still, check and see if there is the weekly and highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it was there last week! See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*Funner if you pronounce it properly – “SinJinnyIn“!

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!! It’s The Ten Days To Christmas Beery News Notes Post!!!

I can’t figure out if being pressed for time will make these notes this week brief or lengthy. The line “I didn’t have time to write a short letter” which is linked to Mark Twain mostly… but in my mind to Jonathon Swift… but in reality to 1600s French mathematician Blaise Pascal… comes to mind. See, not only is it Yuletide with all the running around, I had to finish my bridge. One of the reasons the old beer blog and especially historical research leading to more on the old beer blog quieted a bit has been my part secondment to a big bridge project. Well, it opened to the public Tuesday as Fine Balance Brewing of our fair city’s east end celebrated on Facebook with the image above hoping to see a stream of west enders now heading their way. On time. On budget. Huge fun project. Happy to be the guy who wrote the contract and negotiated the deal.

Enough about me… first up, Christmas has beer RUINED for some in Gloucestershire:

Motorists faced delays on a motorway after boxes containing sweets and beer kegs were spilt over the carriageway. Two lanes of the M5 in Gloucestershire were closed after the spillage which also included books. The problem was reported at 06:30 GMT on Friday and lanes 1 and 2 southbound were closed between junction 13 at Stroud and junction 14 at Thornbury.

And things are tightening in other ways, of course, but I won’t add my list to the lists of disappearing craft breweries as B² did last Sat. And even though I expect it would upset one of those passive aggressive reductionist kitten craft mascots who demand that no one expresses opinions… I have to say this is one of the more interesting observations on how bad the situation is situation from John Porter:

The problem, as we both know from Publican Industry Report days, is that new breweries and pubcos arrive in a flurry of PR and excitement, and tend to disappear quietly to avoid unpaid bills and disgruntled investors. Like you, I suspect there’s always a lot of double counting.

Jordan is crunching the numbers in Ontario and the news is also not that good here for the beer industry. Ontarians are getting older on average and newcomers may not all be all that interested in beer. Beer volumes sold have hit the lowest point in 73 years. He uses words like “eerily” and “painstakingly” and “hanging” and “I’m forced to manually” and “irresponsible” and “robust” which seems all very… err… physical… but the point is not only made but well proven. The arse is out of it all.

The badness reaches out in all directions as these things go sideways. At what point should drinkers rally around with a bit of focus to save the best? And when is it an end or a new beginning?

Real ale fans were saddened to hear of the forthcoming closure of Manchester’s Beer Nouveau… Though Steve Dunkley’s popular tap is no more, the story is not yet over under the railway arch at 75 North Western Street. The space is being taken over by Katie Sutton, the new owner of Temperance Street Brewery. Renamed the Temperance Street Brewery & Tap, the venue will initially open Fridays and Saturdays. Katie works full-time in the NHS, so she is being supported by Matt Gibson of Temperance Street Cider. Both the brewery and the cidery already operate out of the premises and extensive work is not needed.

Speaking of the NHS, Martin once again has shown why private reportage of thing beery are so helpful, this time with a photo essay from his trip to Cologne focusing on Gaststätte Lommerzheim aka Lommi’s. Linger over the images like the one right there. Not all samey pretty beer porn like we see so often. And a brief tale of prowess:

More customers under 30 than over 50, and Mrs RM the only non-bloke, but she outdrank them all. 3 in 20 minutes and we were gone, after admiring the tree outside the Gents (so not quite the Combermere). Honestly, it was perfect, like your favourite Sam Smitha if it wasn’t run with lunatic rules.

It is interesting to see how quickly the discounting of bulk brewery owned Bourbon County is happening this year:

… stumbled upon the below this afternoon. Can confidently say I never expected the reserves and prop to be on the shelf 16 days after Black Friday. Happily took a barelywine and prop and went on my way.

Also interesting to note that one long standing ad placement with Sound Opinions, a US public radio music program out of Chicago, has been dropped. The email read:

We recently learned that we’re losing a significant portion of our funding in 2023. Our long relationship with our major sponsor, Goose Island, has ended due to the shaky economy. We have other revenue sources: a generous grant from the Goldschmidt Foundation, small ad buys, and individual donations from dedicated listeners like you. But it’s not enough to keep the show running at full speed.

If you like music, listen and give. It’s dandy and via Patreon there are a number of bonus features.

The Japanese marketplace appears to have recently hit a particular point of inflection beer-wise-ly:

Beer and quasi-beer sales fell 8 pct from a year before in Japan in November, still reeling from October price hikes, estimates from Kirin Brewery Co. and others showed Monday. Asahi Breweries Ltd. reported a 7 pct drop in the value of its sales, while Kirin logged an 8 pct fall in volume and Sapporo Breweries Ltd. a 7 pct decline. Brewers incurred marked drops in sales of canned products, mainly for household consumption.

Jeff wrote the first “best of list” that wasn’t an unrealistic, purely sample based thing submitted months ago to a mag for the editors to churn upon. He also led up front with excellent context:

Obviously, no one can try all new beers in a year. As all sample groups are, this is highly individual. And, since I do most of my drinking in Oregon, it’s got a lot of Oregon beer. It’s also not exhaustive. I recall a wonderful pFriem Canadian Lager I enjoyed at the brewery, a delicious gueuze from Tilquin I enjoyed at a beer festival in Oslo, a cracking good festbier at Heater Allen, and more. Furthermore, if you think I avoid hoppy ales, behold: this list is lousy with ‘em! I love all beer styles, and it seems like 2022 was a good one for hops.

And Pellicle posted a profile of Glasgow brewers Epochal, sometime past subject within these here weekly notes:

Epochal specialises in barrel-aged pale ales, table beers, Scotch ales, porters and stouts—the latter two having a rich history in Glasgow. The beers undergo an extended dry hop for the duration of their secondary ageing. The mature beer is then bottle-conditioned with a small portion of one-day-old fresh beer, a process employed by one of Scotland’s top 19th-century brewers, the Glasgow-born James Steel. The entire process takes anywhere from three months to a year, resulting in beers you can ponder over, or drink for pure pleasure, depending on your mood.

Is GBH becoming a travel vignette site?

Finally, wrongest quote about the history of beer passed my eyes this week:

For most of the time, intoxication was not the main purpose and could only be achieved to a limited extent, if at all, given that beer had a low alcohol content for most of human history.

See, to make weak beer you either need to first make strong wort or you have to waste resources to boil way too much watery wort. It’s how it works. If you don’t believe me, ask Babylon. Please do better. If only at this Yuletide.

That’s it! Next week, the best reading of 2022 will be mentioned here as well as perhaps also in the updates from Boak and Bailey we see mostly every Saturday and also also perhaps from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

The First And Rather Excitable Beery News Notes Of Yuletide 2022

Finally… nothing like seeing the end of November. My least favourite month. I used to always dread it. Days gloomily shortening. School papers needing to be put properly in hand. Time now to look forward, to the holidays. To life with family and friends, gathering inside. While not directly Christmassy, Max posted two images of insidey painting, each of which illustrate the excellence of non-brewing records to inform us about brewing history. In the first, “Vesnická Hospoda”, a 1863 painting by Czech artist Quido Mánes we have a tavern scene with a discussion being held by all ages. The beer glows. And not unlike today in a way… just the sort of thing that I was looking for in the 2006-15 beer blog Yuletide, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay, Christmas and Hanukkah photo contest. I sifted through hundreds of entries every year looking for a glow just like that to ensure all the pressies were directed to all the wee beer nerds’s stockings. Many of the entries are still saved at the Wayback Machine.

In the world of beer culture politics, British beer home delivery service Beer 52 had to issue a statement concerning some flack it had received over a poor PR decision that received some heat. Click on the image to the right to have a look. This is one of the odder but very consistent themes I’ve seen over the years that perhaps distinguishes UK craft from others – the need to not be too nasty to the competition. At a certain point, craft beer shops and craft beer home delivery service are hunting for the same shillings and guineas lodged in the purses of the nation. But, on the other hand, it is nice to be nice.

The British Beer Writers Guild were also in a manner of speaking required to issue its own statement of sorts, as the Guild’s top judging dog explained the almost Byzantine judging process in response to the howls which usually follow this sort of thing. I’d post a quote from the explanation but it does go on and one. Great transparency. No, I will share two bits:

This year the awards were judged by me, a publican from York, a committee member of the British Institute of Innkeeping, a magazine editor, a brewer, a beer importer, two freelance journalists (an unusually high number) a book publisher, and a cheesemonger. Hardly beer writers slapping each other’s backs… We usually have 13-14 categories, and this year there were a total of 190 different entries. That’s far too much for any one judge to read, so judges are paired up and given a few categories each.

Did you know I used to receive a few abusive responses for the photo contest? No? Did I care? Not much. My only recommendation was that this explanation of the process might have been shared prior to outset but, you know, what can you do? It is an unfortunate situation and in large part based on honest deep disappointment as much as gratuitous slag* – but Martyn has been checking the stats and decided that this year’s British Beer Writer of the Year Jonny Garrett is now the most successful contestant in the award’s last ten years. So that’s something. Oh, and madman Gary crossed the Atlantic to sit in on the awards and enjoyed himself very much.

There, that’s enough of that statement making stuff. Care of Mudgie, we learn of Bernard Bland, 92, of Grimsby:

When Bernard Bland made his first trip to the Nunsthorpe Tavern in 1954, a pint set him back eight shillings and 10 pence – or the equivalent of 45p. Yet despite the rising cost of a pint, Bernard is still going to his beloved Grimsby boozer 68 years later. In fact, the 92-year-old has been going there every day for seven decades – only missing his daily session when the pub closed during lockdown.

Not as regular in his pubbing habits – but who could be – this week Cookie wrote about his relationship to the pub at one of the sadder moments in life, the passing of a parent:

But life adjusts and new normals and patterns emerge. A worry for my father in living alone after 45 years of marriage led to spending much more time with my father to assist in his living, eat a meal or two a week with him, shop and administer things. Run 2 houses and lives in a way. Not a burden in any way, but a rekindling of a friendship that in its way has defined me more than any other. Thus, I ended up on a saunter around the pubs of Reddish. In truth I rarely pop in pubs these days, a couple on a Saturday afternoon in Wetherspoons being more or less it when a quiet couple of hours is needed. People don’t talk to you in Wetherspoons. You can just sink a pint.

Eric Asimov wrote an interesting piece in the NYT on the nature of a “wine bar” – which is also something I have thought about in relation to identifying as a “beer bar” as opposed to a bar:

Are they all wine bars? Or is the term so vague as to be meaningless? It might depend on whom you ask… Good wine bars are informal neighborhood gathering places rather than destinations, with occasional exceptions, like when a wine list is so deep that it draws in the trophy- and rare-bottle hunters. But mostly, they are places to drop in near one’s home. They might take some reservations, but they always have room for walk-ins. Wine bars mostly cater to young people. At almost every place I visited, I was by far the oldest patron there.

Don Cazentre wrote about something I had not thought about before – relative stats on which US community out drinks the others on bars at US Thanksgiving, something his hometown of Syracuse, NY has excelled at before:

The night before Thanksgiving, sometimes called Drinksgiving, is typically one of the busiest evenings for bars across the country. And the Syracuse area is often one of the leaders. That held true again this year, as the Syracuse market once again stood out, according to data from BeerBoard, an Armory Square-based company that manages and collects stats and information from draft beer accounts nationwide.

Do they also use gallon-sized tankards there like in the British Iron Age? The Tand himself has written on the subject of a smaller sort of vessel, Sam Smith’s proprietor, Humphrey Smith and the question of how steady his hand is upon the tiller:

…all is not well. I was told, recently, that no fewer than 120 Sam Smith’s pubs are closed through lack of people to run them. (You can often find them listed in trade adverts for managers) This is an astonishing number given that all of them are managed houses, and while they attract a smallish salary, not much above minimum wage, but they do have heating, lighting and rent thrown in on top. This is not an entirely unattractive package in these dodgy times, so why is there a problem in finding the right people to run them?

Jeff added thoughts from afar including the bluntly stated “no one drinks English ales anymore” which is hard to deny… except for the fact that they do.

Stan’s Hop Queries newsletter for November 2022 has landed on my driveway in a neat plastic wrapper and he has noted the end of the line for one particular strain:

CLS Farms has eliminated Medusa, the neomexicanus-only hop that introduced American brewers to a botanical variety of Humulus lupulus that produces unique aromas in beer, from its portfolio. Plants were “grubbed out” after the 2022 harvest. Before you ask, the future still looks fine for Zappa, a daughter of Medusa, being grown on six farms in five states. “It is time to focus on Zappa and let Medusa go,” CLS co-owner Eric Desmarais wrote via email. Quite simply, Medusa didn’t measure up agronomically. “(Medusa) doesn’t have the yield to be able to be super viable moving forward in a higher inflationary world, and a much more competitive hop variety landscape,” Desmarais wrote.

Bit of World Cup news even with the ban – the soak was on in Qatar and “bars overestimated surge pricing”:

Beer prices in Qatar could fall after some bars “overestimated what they can get away with” charging during the World Cup, according to a fans’ group. Supporters visiting the Gulf state say they have faced prices of up to £15 for a pint during the tournament, although many have found it cheaper and venues have offered deals.

The gouge is one elsewhere too with some UK pubs offering lower alc% beers at higher prices in the New Year.

And, finally, a Mastodon update. Now up to 573 followers after the blog was linked to one of those likely list compilers. Incuration, that’s what I call it. Seems I am incurable. Shocking. Still, I am looking more there than with the Twit. It’s happening. Please join us all at @agoodbeerblog@mstdn.social.

That’s it for this week and that month. As we move into December, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*My only peep this year was that the apparently official award night photos were not wonderful at all. Unlike this one which was great. Which is good – as I used to be a right pain in the arse about these things. Transparency is everything in these matters.

The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks! Honestly… Why?

OK, I took the week off to burn off vacation days. No plan. Sure, I had a few things I could do on a list but I got through that list by about 11:15 am on Monday. Hmm… what to do… what to do… oh, the World Cup is on! I really didn’t plan as I have not been paying attention. Because it’s all so corrupt… that game I played from the elementary school yard until I was 44 or so a decade and a half ago. That the old man played for Greenock Academy, losing to Falkirk in 1946’s championship at Hampden Park. Less fabulously, there I am with my pal in 1986, just over half my life and just under half my body mass ago at the end of a game heading to the tav… I miss those socks. Anyway, so I watched some fitba this week sitting in the basement. Should I have gone to a pub to watch? Maybe. Might still. I love the idea of having a favourite seat for this sort of thing. I had one until twenty years ago in a tavern in my old stomping ground in PEI. I can think of another in Halifax NS maybe 40 years ago. Comfy corners where the shoulders can nestle in. Martin found one, too, the one up there at the Dog & Partridge:

Perhaps I just wanted to sit in my favourite Sheffield pub room.

What else happened this week? Well, first I am not sure why Budweiser thinks beer is something that can be donated as noted on to Johan Roux’s Mastodon feed (with the h/t):

#Budweiser will donate all of the #beer brewed for the #WorldCup to the winning country. It is also expected that the company will sue #FIFA because of a breach of contract – the sale of beer was banned a few days before the start of the championship. In total, Budweiser will donate tens of tons of beer worth 75 million euros.

And I listened to the Beer Ladies Podcast interview of John, The Beer Nut and I was struck by something. It was one of the best podcasts I had ever heard. Not because of John… or, rather, not due to John or… well, he does sort of giggle, doesn’t he. No, what I mean is that it was so well done technically. A second of dead air between comments was just allowed to be a silence. No one jumping on the other. Nothing forced. Lovely pace to the discussion.

AND… Ray of Boak and Bailey wrote one of the best Patreon essays I’ve read of theirs. A really good piece of writing about realizing his father was no longer at an age when a pub crawl was possible.

I didn’t drink myself until I was 20 which Dad found pretty weird, along with almost everything else about me, I suppose. We always got on but didn’t have much to talk about, or anything to do together other than watch telly. When I finally did start drinking, and got into beer, something clicked. Suddenly, he could take me to The Railwayman’s Club, The Commercial Inn or The Rebel’s Retreat in Bridgwater. There, he taught me to drink ‘properly’: “Blood hell, son – chat chat chat, chug chug chug, chat chat chat!” And when he came to visit me in London, I got to show him the pubs I’d found. (Where he’d often be able to wangle a lock-in.)

Fabulous – and also sad in that way that a rich life is aware of its own passing. My folks passed a decade ago and I can recall the creeping feeling leading up to their deaths of the slow loss of sharing, in my case including soccer games and a kitchen filled with cooking.

Speaking of excellent writing, it is the case that there are good writers who don’t necessarily have much to say. There are also those poorer writers who struggle along working out what are really more interesting ideas.¹ But it is a real treat when the good idea meets the skillful writer like they do in this week’s wonderful feature at Pellicle, David Jesudason’s lengthily titled “Please Don’t Take Me Home — How Black Country Desi Pub Culture Made Football More Diverse“:

Oddly, desi pubs are usually very British in terms of decor; the Red Cow run by Bera Mahli since 2010 (who also worked in Birmid for a short time before he went into the pub trade) has two traditional lounge bars. They can also be reworked to look like an old-fashioned Indian club-style bar like in the Prince of Wales on West Bromwich high street. My 15-minute conversation with Steve at the Red Cow was deeply touching—we hugged—as he’s so passionate about making sure non-white fans are safe during the match, and is one of the many Sikhs who have ensured West Brom is home to one of the most diverse football crowds in the country.

It’s a story that has a lot of commonality with Ray’s thoughts when you thing about it. The only way I can describe the commonality between David’s piece, Ray’s thoughts and the Beer Ladies Podcast interview discussed above is a calmness in the moment. There are none of the burdens.² ³ ⁴ No, in this piece like all the best sort of writing there is also a person and a moment. The scene being seen. I’d be at this pub regularly… if it was in my town… and if Canada has the same sort of pub life… which it doesn’t.⁵ Le sigh.

Ghost of beer scenes past? Eoghan wrote this about an article on Belgian beer:

…I love the classics as much as the next person, and Belgian beer moves more slowly than other places, but there is a world of interesting beers beyond the Trappists and Saison Dupont – brewers/importers, where is your curiosity?

The article in Imbibe mag in part painted a picture of decline, the same one that could have been about brown ale and other darlings of the past shunted aside by craft’s obsession about what was big in, you know, the last six weeks:

Over the last half-decade, Belgian beer’s wattage has dimmed stateside. Saisons have struggled to find traction and comprehension. Local breweries and taprooms have proliferated, negating the need for beer imported from across the Atlantic. To that point, Anheuser-Busch InBev is now producing Stella Artois stateside, and Spencer Brewery, America’s only Trappist brewery, ceased operations in Massachusetts this year. According to a website statement, “The monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey have come to the sad conclusion that brewing is not a viable industry for us.”

What else is going on? Speaking of ghosts, Jenny P. posted a menu from a Q3 20C US steakhouse chain called Lums Restaurant and, well would you look at that, found a very interesting beer list. Click on that. Notice something? Not lager led. A balance of ales and lagers. The idea that post-WW2 beer in the US was all about the macro gak is one of the laziest tropes in American brewing history.⁶

Perhaps by way of contrast, Will Cleveland wrote a great story about a Montana beer co with one product – a light lager – both called Montucky Cold Snacks:

Zeitner said the banks laughed at them initially. “They were like, ‘We’re not going to give you a million dollars to compete against Budweiser or PBR. Are you crazy?” Of course, they are the only ones laughing now. That’s evidenced by some of the ridiculously kitschy and awesome Montucky Cold Snacks merchandise the brewery sells, including pool floats, dog toys, sunglasses, onesies, hats, and a wide variety of other stuff. The rejection caused Zeitner and Gregory to re-examine their plan. They realized that PBR doesn’t brew its own beer, helping them consider a similar, albeit much smaller, path.

Finally, Twitter death march update. Boak and Bailey spoke of their troubles with Le Twit in their November newsletter⁷ which is really also worth a read. This is just a sliver of their thoughts:

We even had a Twitter-fuelled stalking incident – a real low point, and a wake-up call. We started unfollowing, muting and blocking people more freely. Having a word with ourselves, we also learned not to respond to every narky Tweet. Just because people wanted to argue with us didn’t mean we had to play. And we reduced our usage of the site overall. For the past few years, we’ve rolled our eyes at people complaining about the “toxic” nature of “beer Twitter”. Like many things, it’s as good as the effort you put into it. Share the kind of things you want to see, resist the urge to contribute to the cycle of gloom, and it can be A Good Thing. But now, Twitter might be dying.

There’s a lot of good reason to leave right there. But I ain’t goin. No sir-ee. The other day the damn blue bird app was flickering on and off like a bad lightbulb. But I’m still here. If you are concerned and want other sources, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly and highly recommented Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s coming back soon. See also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

¹ I used to have a book of letters of Alfred North Whitehead and took great comfort in one written to Bertrand Russell in which he praised the B student over those in the top of the class for being a source of far more interesting ideas, just put a bit poorly.
² The shouty “WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT”foolishness plumping up a dull PR piece. It never is.
³ Or the copycat drive-by bill-paying article, research done from a distance, often based on Twitter polls or email “interviews” of a sort: “I reached out to…” No doubt financially necessary and not always horrible if done well.
⁴ Or, the worst, that “mystery” stuff which is virtually a declaration that a beer writer has given up. Smacks of clairvoyants and spiritualists… “woooa… you need to speak with a beer consultant…” [insert unexpected creaky noise] “…only then will you understand… woooaha000…“
⁵ Because soccer and cooking! Being a perceived majoritarian but a first-gen freckled, identity is a thing. In work, friends and family I gravitate to these inclusive relationships and moments but it can also still get the awkward in return. I don’t care as much anymore. Alongside the homemade mince and tatties, the homemade curries of my Mississauga youth were legit even if they hopscotched (literally) from a great-granddad in 1890s India, through 1940s Britain and on to 1960s Canada when I showed up.
⁶ But it suits the generally accepted false craft origin story neatly.
⁷ OK, I follow B+B by blog, newsletter, Patreon, Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram even emails and once by Zoom. That’s weird. Weird that it has never struck me as too much or, you know, stalking on my part.

Your Beery News Notes Of Mid-November With The Furnace Running Full Blast

And now it’s cold. For good. Plus snow. See that poblano pepper plant setting blossoms? That was Sunday. Sunday?!?! Now it’s frikkin’ cold. Happy we bought a new furnace a few years ago. The old one was a one-stager that came on like a jet plane taking off a runway. Woke you up early in the winter. Every time. Until you got used to it. This new one sneaks up on you. Ramps up. Which means you wake up and ask yourself whether it’s running or not. That’s an improvement. We’ve had the place for 16 years now. Should see us out. First thing I did when we bought the place was ruin a brick. Shouldn’t have done that. But I did save a couple hundred poblano seeds. Always do that.

First up? Pubmeister writes… had an interesting post this week on the taverns of Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland which included this wonderful anecdote right at the end:

Meanwhile in the Black Bull regular customer Daniel was holding court on a wide range of issues, ranging from cricket to his mother’s trade in cheap underwear. His father was once the licensee at the Loudonhill Inn when it was on the convoluted Western buses route from Airdrie to Ayr. Daniel said the drivers used to come into the pub to make sure the customers didn’t miss the last bus home.

That little moment needs slipping into a movie, that does. Speaking of the life in the country, we’ve had a bit more good news about the prospects for the 2022 Canadian malt barley crop with the prayed for combo of high prices and high volumes:

…prices in parts of Canada have surged more than 30% since August. Canadian barley prices are approaching the all-time highs set in 2021 as beermakers and livestock feeders seek to replenish dwindled supplies after last year’s drought, said Peter Watts, managing director of the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre… Dry weather scorched fields last year, shrinking Canada’s barley harvest to the second-smallest since 1968. US farmers reaped the smallest crop since 1934, just after Prohibition ended. Barley production rebounded this year, jumping 34% in Canada and 45% in the US. North America typically harvests enough barley to account for a fifth of global commercial beer production.

Conversely perhaps, The New York Times reported this week on how in Mexico preferential access to water resources for breweries was creating real hardship for residents:

“You’d open the tap and there wouldn’t be a drop of water,” she said. The brewing factories, though, “they produced and produced and produced.” As droughts become more frequent and severe around the world, brewers and other heavy industrial water users have landed at the center of the climate fight in Mexico, with activists leading a movement to reclaim resources from corporations that has gained recognition at the highest levels of government. Even the promise of jobs and economic development is wearing thin as extreme weather events put the disparity in access to water between private industry and households on clear display, forcing some of the biggest global brands onto unsure footing.

And I like this tidbit of information which flew by on social media, gleaned from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut Jr in 1977 in Paris Review. His grandfather’s brewery, Lieber of Indianapolis, added coffee to the grist for extra zip. Click right for the deets. Jay Brooks posted even more information in 2007 about how there was a connection to Denver’s Wynkoop Brewing, which in 1996 brewed a beer a Vonnegut tribute beer – again with coffee. There’s a lot of chronology right there. Take a minute if you need it.

Speaking of fouled things of days gone by, The Telegraph in England by Christopher Howse reliving a slice of taverns past under the title “Pubs used to be revolting – and that is how we liked them” with tidbits like this:

I never got the hang of smoking, but I did not need to. Having taken to drink like a duck to Burton Best Bitter, I did my smoking passively. Early evening sunbeams lit up billows at the deep end of the Archetypal Arms… The Archetypal Arms had bowl-glasses (for bottled Mackeson milk stout or a Babycham) upside-down in wooden docking bays above the bar. These caught smoke curling into them from below, layer upon layer. But when smoking was banned in 2007, the true smell of the pub came out: drains, sweat and drink-spoiled carpets.

Mmm… Some lovely photos of the same era here at Londonist, drawn from The London Pub (a new book with a Pete Brown foreword) one of which is snipped and clipped just above. 1947. Such trousers. But, let’s face it, probably still a smelly scene. Snankin’ perhaps but still smelly. Perhaps less so and here in the present, Martin has done a good deed for us all with a guide to 24 hours in Glasgow:

Where to start? Well, a 9am Breakfast with Lorne sausage at Cairn Lodge on the M6 is the only way to go if you’re driving into Glasgow… 11 am The Bon Accord. Best for beer quality on my visit, and a chance to relive the moment in 1978 when the Scots thought they were going to win the World Cup… 12pm Walk along Sauchiehall Street. Eat that Tunnocks wafer you’ve been saving in your coat pocket…

Had my first pint as a 17 year old on Sauchiehall Street* with my old man. Don’t tell the shadowy Portman Group, which purports to save teens through branding regulation in the drinks trade in the UK. They’ve issued a self congratulatory statement on its many wonders:

For over 25 years, our Code of Practice for the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks has sought to ensure that alcohol is promoted in a socially responsible way, only to those aged 18 and over, and in a way that does not appeal particularly to those who are vulnerable. It is backed by over 160 Code Signatories, which includes all the leading retailers in the UK. Thanks to the Code, over 170 products have been amended or removed from the market. Many hundreds more have been helped to adhere to the Code before appearing on shelves through the support of the Advisory Service.

Hmm… I wonder of 6.8 branding alteration interventions a year is all that an accomplishment. Also sounds like the proverbial waters into which the proverbial oar was stuck were perhaps not such a cesspool.

Elsewhere, I watched an episode of the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. It’s only because I began playing with my Roku TV and came across it a bit by chance, an auto-recommend after watching another train ride video from Japan. Very soothing, those Japanese train ride videos. Anyway, it was very well produced and it was nice to see Martyn talking about IPA’s history. The trouble is only how the format of video forces such a low level of data transfer, especially for the efforts clearly made. This, of course, is compounded by the corner into which the followers of style have painted themselves with regard to IPA, as was illustrated by this passage in the British Beer Breaks newsletter describing a related discussion:

Garrett described IPA to the gathering in Burton as “a family of styles, variations on a theme”, that theme being hop-forward beers. There also seemed to be general agreement that an IPA must be above a certain strength. Yet the country’s best-selling IPA, the Greene King one, is a mere 3.6% abv. And those sweet and juicy New England IPAs are now being dismissed by some as not true to IPA style. As beer historian Martyn Cornell explains in the Craft Beer Channel’s handy history of IPA, the label has been loosely used by breweries for a long time. The important thing is, as Garrett put it, that “we ensure it never becomes just a marketing term”…

Bit late for that. Ship? Sailed. And now… here is your weekly beery Mastodon update. Followers just about doubled in the last week, 108 to just over 200. I am sensing that content at least in the near future is really going to be king… OK… perhaps maybe… an earl. Me, I’m working the #BeerHistory hash with a few others linking to existing content. As a peer based system, it’s more about what is said. Things are more facilitated by Twitter. Facilitated. As Jeff wrote, the shift is a bit daunting. But I found this comment interesting, the old school revisited:

Elon M taking Twitter private and destroying it may be the shock we creators, who left our blogs and DIY internet endeavors in the late 2000s / early 2010s for various social media style micro-blogs owned by other people, needed to wake us up and shock us back into the Indie Web rather than the Corporate Web.

Capitals. Hmm. But I also found this comment from Matty C interesting too:

We still have over 1000 people view the site each month via their RSS feeds! Just checked our entire site referral history and a we haven’t had a single click on a link placed there, ever. Doesn’t give me much evidence that its worth investing in.

Flux. That’s what we are in. Fun. Innit. Or it’s all going to get fluxed. Or not. I’m lonely… it’s so cold…

What? Sorry. On a personal note, it’s just over a year now since I added drink consumption to my daily stats sent to myself by email with a line of code. See, I started tracking stuff because in September 2021 I began a fasting diet that continues today. I only eat in a 6.5 hour or so window each day. Every few weeks I add something more to track, some other topic. Books read, stretches stretched daily. And… did I floss? Nothing too obsessive. Takes a minute a day. But it works. I am lighter and stretchier. And in November 2021, I added drinks. Well, booze. So I can report that in the last 365 days I had 47% alcohol free days and another 13% of just one drink. I average under 2 drinks a day. So a reasonably healthy relationship with the booze all in all. I recommend it.

That’s it for now. You learned enough. If you doubt me, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

*I can even pronounce it!

The Fascinating If Not Captivating Beery News Notes For November’s Start

November. Yippee, November! No one ever said that. Maybe if you were born on the first of November. Or in New Zealand. A New Zealander born on the first of November might be feeling they hit the jackpot, come to think of it. DSL might, too. Speaking of which, the Austrian Beer Party is saying yippee or whatever it is you say thereabouts. Still at 10% in the polls, down from 13% a month ago but no joke:

An upstart satirical party whose flagship policies include an unconditional beer allowance for every citizen and municipal lager fountains has come out of nowhere to win fourth place in national opinion polls. Founded in 2015 by a charismatic punk rock singer, the Beer Party was until very recently a fringe phenomenon in Austrian politics, scraping only 0.1 per cent of the vote at the last parliamentary election in 2019.

What else is up? I need to make this snappy. Things to do. Naps to have. Hmm…. Crisp Malting issued its 2022 Harvest Report which contains some startling observations about the climate:

It was the sixth driest summer on record and the driest since 1995, with just 62% of the usual summer rainfall. Additionally, we also saw more sun than usual at 115% of the 1991-2020 average. As a result of all this weather, it was the earliest barley harvest ever – some fields were cut on June 29^th – and by July 19^th, 70% of the UK winter barley harvest was cut. In the 50s and 60s, this would have been a month later, in August. Harvest in Scotland closed out earlier than usual also, another demonstration of the impact climate is having on our agricultural calendar.

Jings. Word is by 2042, the harvest will take place in 2041 a full twelve weeks before the time of planting. Canada is also having a bumper crop – and seeing higher prices for the wrong reason.

And I’ve come across something I am not sure I’ve seen as much as I thought I might – a review of the Good Beer Guide from Phil Mellows of British Beer Breaks who attended the book launch:

The strength of the Good Beer Guide, and what makes it different from, and in many ways better than, competing guides, is that the people picking the entries are so close to the ground. They know exactly what’s going on with the pub, because they drink in there week in, week out. This is also a weakness. A pub can fall out of favour with these individuals for all kinds of reasons that may be obscure to the occasional visitor. And there must be, it seems to me, a growing pressure on the decision-making resulting from the limit imposed on the number of entries allocated to each county or region.

Economics abounds. Muskoka buys Rally. Bench Brewing and Henderson sorta maybe merging. And Jeff has it right – Ommegang has lost its way. Another sign of the times? Lost Abbey is cutting back:

The Lost Abbey’s co-founder and managing partner Tomme Arthur says the scale-down is an acknowledgment of vastly different market conditions than those of the brewery’s sales heyday seven years ago… Arthur says he hopes that reducing costs, particularly on rent and property taxes, will mean the brewery can maintain its staff of roughly 35 employees. “You can’t get small enough quick enough if you’re trying to protect the flank,” he says.

I’m worried. Not about beer. There will always be beer. I am worried about my problem with Twitter. If we lose Twitter there’s bound to be a new problem for me that will replace my problem with Twitter. I’m having a look at Mastodon but who’s over there? 100% of everyone voted to not “Quit the Twit” in my scientific study. And what will I do without it, without for example good folk going all pointy finger over a history of lambic which is an accusation of all other histories of lambic? I quite like “jeremiads full of invective“… although he’s misspelled jeroboam, hasn’t he. Sad.

Sadder? A thieving beer guzzling monkey in India!

Matty C has also asked a question of verbiage. Specifically the use of Helles:

I’m talking about ‘Helles’, and how it’s become the latest in a stream of buzzwords the lager machine has sacrificed to maintain its youth and vim. But why this particular terminology, and how did it take hold? How accurate are modern brewers’ renditions of this classic Bavarian style? And does what a beer is called really matter, if people are enjoying great lager as a result?

I like my words to mean what they mean and not mean what they don’t mean. Otherwise it can lead to things. Ron found himself lead to things and in a bit of a pickle out and about on the Brazilian beer tourism scene again:

Last full day in Brazil. A bit weird. An election and the clocks changed. Plus everything in the centre of Florianopolis is shut…. It’s going crazy outside. People clearly think Lula has won. I hope that’s fireworks and not gunfire.

I trust it all worked out. Speaking of travel and a bit more sedate sort bit of travel, B+B took us to Cologne, Germany this week and laid down a new law:

We decided on a rule: you need a minimum of three beers per pub on a Kölsch crawl. The first one will taste weird because it isn’t the same as the last you were drinking. You gulp that one down. Get the city scum out of your throat. The second, as you acclimatise, allows you to pick up distinct aromas and flavours. How is it different? Why is it different? The third allows you to appreciate what’s in front of you in its own right, and decide whether you want to turn this into a real session. Or walk on. Because you’re never far from another.

In brewing history this week, Gary highlighted the upcoming 2022 Chicago Brewseum Beer Summit and, elsewhere, @AfricanArchives wrote about a moment in history that I had not heard about – The Battle of Bamber Bridge which saw US soldiers fighting each other in England in 1943… and the local English publicans taking a side:

In 1943 Black American soldiers faced off with white American Military police during World War 2 on British soil. Black American soldiers had to fight their own white American soldiers, while in England, where they were fighting the world war. …when the American Military police found out that their own black soldiers were drinking at the same pubs as white people, they went in to arrest them. The people in the town got mad about that treatment and decided to then turn their pubs into “BLACKS ONLY DRINKING PUBS”

Finally, a less inspiring story came to light just when the blog post was going to the presses. Ben Johnson posted an excellent exposé on one Ontario brewery facing little public condemnation after allegations of sexual harassment:

It is unfortunate then that, when the City of Kitchener recently opened up their Requests for Proposals (RFP) process to find a “non-premier brewery partner” to serve beer at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Complex and Kitchener Golf Courses, they awarded the contract to Four Fathers Brewing Company in Cambridge. Unfortunate, of course, because in 2018 Four Fathers founder and University of Guelph Professor John Kissick actually was charged with two counts of assault and one count of assault with a weapon. Those charges were ultimately dropped in 2020 when Kissick entered into a peace bond with the party who brought forward the charges, but to craft beer drinkers and any feeling humans who watched video of the (alleged) assault (myself among them) the incident likely left a bad taste in their mouth.

There. Nothings like ending on a crummy note. For better news, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey hopefully now again mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast. The OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run… no, it is back and here is the link!

Your Frighteningly Well Researched Beery News Notes For Mid-October 2022

Wow. I even scared myself a little just putting this together this week. So much effort. So little point. And all the stuff on the cutting room floor. Whew. What’s that? Yes, summer has lingered, thanks for asking. The frosts have only brushed the yard as it turns out. The garden is still going on with plenty to still harvest. Still time for more cardoon mush. You know, you really aren’t a chef/gardener/drinks biz personality until you’ve made your own cardoon mush. And I’ve yet to even eat one of my first crop of salsify. Yet there is it, right by the front door.

Before we get going, an update on the comments I made last week about my hopes and dreams for a futuresque dreamscape of smooth brightly coloured plastics and chrome at BXLBeerFest in Brussels, The Beer Nut reporting. In his update he shared the scene, a bit of which is to your right, my left. Pallets. Wooden pallets held together with wire or tape or something. Really? Craft really needs to get into the modern world, that’s what I say. The world of plastics and chrome.

First up, Eoghan posted some serious thoughts about the point of all his beer writing efforts:

Do I want to continue writing about Brussels and beer? Is it still interesting for me? More importantly, is it still interesting for you? If I stop what I’ve been doing these past five years, what comes after? Do I stop altogether? Or do I try something different? But if I try something different and I fail, and fail utterly, then what? What happens then? Would I want to continue to write? These might seem like mundane questions, a fixation on something – a blog – that ultimately has little intrinsic value. But that would be to do down the time and the energy I’ve put into my writing in the last five years, and I’ve done myself down enough in the past.

Lots have people have moved on so that is no shame in itself. Just see how many of the beery podcasts, newsletters and blogs listed below are dead or dying. But the idea that writing about a fixation has little intrinsic value needs serious quashing. It’s only in the writing that the fixation becomes of value. Exploring the weird thing that triggers the imagination is always worthwhile. This is the problem with the British Guild of Beer Writers and NAGBW shift from talking about “writing” to the thinly smug language of “reporting” and “journalism” over the last few years. Not only does it smack of needy niche (and also pretendy-ism… yes, I said it) it misses the fundamental point that most of this is obsession, not reportage. Write!

The UK’s Telegraph had a rather positive report on the best new low-beers and no-alc… which also led me to the concept of “Sober October” which seem to be a cheater pants copy of Dryuary:

I started Sober October four weeks early, for weight loss reasons after seeing my holiday snaps. I was doing quite well, but while watching TV I found that my right hand kept reaching over to the side-table where the beer should be. The ingrained habit of taking a swig of something cold and hoppy was proving impossible to break. So I let the hand have the beer it wanted – just without the alcohol. My hand couldn’t tell the difference and, surprisingly, my tastebuds couldn’t either.

I am still in the “I can’t be bothered paying that much for fancy soda pop” school but your mileage may differ. Lots of solid recommendations for British readers.

Seems ‘Spoons may have weathered economic crisis just in time for the next economic crisis:

… the battered JD Wetherspoon share price already had so many dismal expectations priced in that the results themselves were a reminder of the business potential. After all, the company made an operating profit and generated free cash flow. After exceptional items, it also recorded a profit. I think the operating profit and free cash flow are a welcome sign that the business is rebuilding. It has faced and continues to experience considerable challenges, from energy inflation to staff availability. The fact it has turned an operating profit provides a foundation for improved results in future…

Speaking of the economic pressure on the pub, Pete Brown wrote a bit romantically for CNN’s American audience on the subject.

The folks behind the GABF might need that sort of explanation about British beer styles as apparently this year they balled a heck of a lot into one awards category, according to Alistair:

When GABF has a category called “English Mild or Bitter” it suddenly makes sense why Mild and Bitter don’t have a following in the US. Even the trade organization doesn’t give enough of a shit to understand that mild and bitter are wildly different beers… Also, with medals handed out for ESB as a separate category the grouping could easily have been “Bitter” and “Mild/Brown Ale”. There is little logic from a style perspective for lumping mild and non-extra special bitter together.

Seems rather muddied to me. Stan wrote about about seeing the awards from a seat at the ceremony and was more optimistic. As per usual and as is good. (Folk need to keep off my turf.*) Relatedly, here’s the winner of “The Most Craft Industry Style Observation Upon The Awarding of Craft Industry Awards” award… of all time… well, at least for this week:

Winning at GABF is a testament to the breweries who medal. It’s a huge honor and should be celebrated. At the same time, not winning at GABF is no way diminishes a brewery that entered. Ultimately it’s a crapshoot and a bunch of world class beers will be overlooked.

Emmie Harrison-West raises an interesting question about another far more serious aspect of fests in her very detailed article, one that’s really worthy of the space: “Have beer festivals become a hotbed for crimes against women?”

For over 14 years, Harriet, who lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, has been attending beer festivals. She says that this derogatory, sexist behaviour towards women and their bodies ‘has been “normal” culture’ for as long as she’s been attending them… reporting such instances of sexism and sexual harrassment at beer festivals was difficult, or that a process simply didn’t exist. That such behaviour and crimes against women had been ‘normalised’ to the extent that women simply accepted it, ignored it, and ‘didn’t make a big deal.’

It is good that this discussion is framed as a discussion of crime. Anything less is also a form of normalization.** The article also talks about concrete responses like London police’ Ask For Angela program and The Coven who advocate for women’s safety at events and attend as wellness officers launching the initiative at the Leeds International Beer Festival in September 2021.

Elsewhere, Ron has written about travel again with a focus my favorite character in beer pop culture… his wife Delores:

After bringing back her wine, I tell Dolores: “There’s one big advantage this place has: self-service drinks. None of that “singles only” for me here. It’s trebles all round.” “Don’t go crazy, Ronald.”*** “When have I ever?” “Hmmpfh” She makes that funny noise which somehow manages to convey contempt, pity, incredulity, scorn and a tiny hint of amusement.

And speaking of travel, Jeff gathered up his nickels and bought a ticket to Norway for KviekFest22!**** Now, I am not one of those who usually will comment upon a drive-by bit of beer writing by a stranger in a strange land but – I have to tell you Jeff did one of the most cleverest things I ever did see… he turned a beer porn photo op into a anthropological guide to making farmhouse ale – with photographs and “fig. 1” style descriptions and everything, like this:

As the water heats, the brewer prepares the mash tun. In the actual event, we used a more sophisticated steel tun with a metal strainer, but typically Stig would use a plastic tun (in the old days they were wooden) he’d prepare with a filter log and juniper boughs. (Even with the steel mash tun, he packed it with juniper.)

1. The log has a trough in the bottom and holes throughout.
2. Stig places the open end next to the faucet and then,
3 and 4., he packs juniper boughs around the log for finer filtration.

I love that the guys name was Stig.***** That photo up there? That’s the log. (More like a junk of wood to me. Logs big. But who am I to take away from the spotlight of this excellent piece of information sharing that means more to anyone and everyone than anything journalissimo submitted for crude pay?)

Speaking of being away, there was a lovely bit of exploration shared by Kieran Haslett-Moore about the times to be had in New Zealand:

I breakfast at a vibrant bakery that also does café service. A dome of scrambled eggs, sausage patty, confit mushrooms and glazed ham all spiked with Szechuan crispy chilli oil. A family dressed like it’s 1983 walk along Lower Stuart Street. They are animatedly discussing the city’s wifi service. They head into one of the city’s ‘Scottish shops’ .

Finally, a lovely piece of long writing at the BBC about Nathalie Quatrehomme and her family line of Parisian cheesemongers:

“We make lovely Maroilles washed in beer,” she said. “And we do lovely Langres in Champagne.” And aging isn’t the only way the siblings add a touch of personality to their cheeses. “In addition to being agers, we transform cheeses,” explained Nathalie, evoking a handful of offerings familiar to regulars of Parisian fromageries: Brie with truffle; Camembert dunked in Calvados and rolled in breadcrumbs. Others in the shop, however, are unique creations. Fourme d’Ambert is stuffed with a sweet fig and walnut paste to counterbalance the funk of the blue. A Camembert mendiant (beggar) is covered in jam, nuts, dried fruit and a touch of dark chocolate.

Yum. I must be hungry. Must go eat cheese. As I do, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) Check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run.

*Funny joke. Ha ha. Not saying anything else.
**Seems to be a common saying in the household.
***Which is why I found the Mikkeller “reconciliation” thing so weird, dissuading people with claims from the law.
****No, you’re right – but it SHOULD be the name!!
*****“Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O’ Tracy.“

Your Inordinately Cheery Beery News Notes For These Days Of The First Frosts

Beer snake! Never seen one from that point of view before. Thanks to beer and baseball specialist Shana for the perspective from the bleachers at one of the last Cubs games of the year. Like my Red Sox, they sorta similarly sucked this season. Reminds me of, what… the first forty years of my life? Ah, the good old days. Anyway, one must be positive. You know, I wrote that header up there before I wrote anything this week. Why? Because there seems to be a lot of bad news out there. Bad in the world and fairly bad in the beery bit of that world. So, as always, I shall try to be the voice of optimism, of good cheer and positivity. I tell myself this again… as I start out…

First up, let’s check the shipping news. Despite what the keen beer trade statisticians who are good and making numbers bendy say, apparently there is a global slowdown coming so fast and hard that trans-Oceanic shipping lines are cutting back:

Ocean carriers are canceling dozens of sailings on the world’s busiest routes during what is normally their peak season, the latest sign of the economic whiplash hitting companies as inflation weighs on global trade and consumer spending. The October cancellations are a sharp reversal from just a few months ago, when scarce shipping space pushed freight rates higher and carriers’ profits to record levels.

What’s this got to do with beer? Export and imports. Except for big buyers like Ontario’s LCBO, most good beer likely does not ship by the full container load. But it still could be good news for the small and local even if not so good for the forces of international craft. So… less beer may be moving on the high seas. We see the same thing happening across the bar. Not so good. The export geared breweries of Britain may have a lead on this lesson, learning the hard way due to Brexit… though to be fair those with a local market focus also seem to be suffering. Jings. Tough days. Soon it will all be about nods, winks and word of mouth if you want to find the good stuff.

Never one to be glum… or even fixed in one spot for very long, The Beer Nut went on a holly joliday and reported back from the BXLBeerFest in Brussels which offered beers sort of in the round, reminding me of the Tardis’s console:

I made arrangements to attend last year. That didn’t work out but tickets rolled over and so there I was, if not quite front at least fairly centre, on the last weekend in August 2022. Sixty invited breweries occupied eight circular pods, each pouring four or more beers at a time. The selection was carefully chosen from Belgium, Europe and North America, with an emphasis on the wild side of fermentation, like saying “we invented lambic, show me what you can do”.

Circular pods! How futuristic! I hope they wore garish wide-lapelled purple, green and/or yellow corduroy suits, too. And played the best of Seals and Crofts on a loop. But that’s just me. Bright. Cheery. Elsewhere, Alistair wrote about dreich this week and (other than knowing you have no idea how to pronounce it because I can) I liked this bit:

Saturday in central Virginia was dreich, gey dreich, as the remnants of Hurricane Ian drifted up the Shenandoah Valley. It was a day for comfort clothes, pots of tea, and whatever mindless shite the kids wanted to watch on the idiot box – I am starting to worry about their love of screens, but that’s not the point of my post. I pondered lighting the first fire of the season, but the wind was whipping along at 20mph and I have an in built fear of a chimney fire. Into this revelry of gloom came a text message from Jason at Devils Backbone…

Speaking of dreich, I see that Jeff has reported on fifth anniversary that relic of 2017, the “independent” seal offered by the US Brewers Association to its membership. For me, it was an extension of 2012’s “crafty” botch that sought to rally beer buyers around the BA’s central “one ring to rule them all” branding approach to selling craft beer in the US.* While (i) these sorts of things may have given comfort to big national craft and, conversely, (ii) the more recent explosion of small and local breweries fundamentally altered the discussion, I was most surprised by this tidbit in the article indicating how they may have missed the boat – they don’t ask the only people that matter:

Beer in general has been lagging, but craft beer is no longer the bright segment in a declining category. In recent quarters, only imports seem to be bucking the trend—while craft tracks with other domestic categories. And customers themselves? It’s hard to say. The Brewers Association hasn’t done any recent polling on the question—or made it public, anyway.

Note: if there was good news from consumers, polling results would have been made public. Verdict: dud.

And I don’t know what to make of the news that the very large object identifying as BrewDog won a court case. From the BBC News report I see that the defendant “failed to respond to the court” which seems to indicate that a Statement of Defence (as we would call it in Ontario) was not filed. Which, if that is the case, leads to a default judgement which effectively does not represent a ruling on the merits. That being said, I am somewhat concerned that all the sins of craft have merged into this one matter, as it is (i) being a big mean brewery, and (ii) one that is for the most part elsewhere. The resulting response seems to be dumping all errors on this single example, accepting without any serious question the deftly played PR sidestep and perhaps even wiping the balance of craft’s record clean – perhaps comforting and perhaps even re-numbing ourselves to the more widely spread problem still all around us. Moving on craft? **

Which is the opposite of what Beth Demmons does in her Prohibitchin’ series*** – which this month features Omolola Olateju of Black Girls Drink who makes this excellent point:

“The complications of getting these alcohol-related licenses, LOLOLOL!” she laughs, cynically but genuinely. “I really do wonder about the gatekeeping. Right now in the drinks industry, there are financial barriers and resource barriers — it’s really painful.” One change she believes would help alleviate said barriers would be more BIPOC people getting involved at the legislative level to identify and correct problem areas. “I’d be really curious — and I make some positive assumptions — around how that would change the industry,” she says. “That to me is the next equity front: people in ‘the system.’”

Speaking of the system… note: not Pete’s best photo… that is Pete, right? And grey? Really. Talk about yer dreich! No… not Pete… no, the logo’s background!!****

The reporting on reporting is real this week as Stan chose two stories about wine could well apply to beer: (i) one about the way that the story behind a drink made the drink more appealing and even more valuable to the buyer and (ii) the second …

…another instance where the word “wine” could be replaced with “beer” in two instances. “The wine industry itself is much to blame with its history of pretentiousness, and its absurd rituals and vocabulary that convey the message that one must be a connoisseur before one can enjoy wine.”

I mention this as the two seem to be two side of the same coin to my mind: the myth making as obstacle making and the gatekeeping of the faux connoisseur… as obstacle making! Strip those away and what do you have? You know… other than a world without bevvy’s consulto-judge-journalist class?***** Well, what you would have is reality like… bowling and beer – in Walsall!

We met up with Dan Gilbert and Coxy and explained why we had had left The Lion only for Dan to exclaim that he loves UB40. Which made me laugh. We headed to The Wharf Bar. There was karaoke. I was urged to have a go and despite it being free as opposed to the £20 in the bowling alley I wasn’t feeling it. There wasn’t many people in and I like a good sized baying audience when I perform.

Before you get all caught up in that moment and go off to just do anything anywhere enraptured by the prospect of beer and bowling – BEWARE! Via CookieNet!, we have learned about the most violent pub in Britain along with its, err, customer conduct standards:

He is said to have required an operation to stop the bleeding, with the wound he survived snagging an artery, with police noting customers were “served alcohol by the bar staff” despite it “being evident someone is seriously injured”. At the time of the incident, police also said that management knew “the risks of its customer base yet chooses to ignore this”.

Yikes! Finally, a white lab coated eggheads have taken credit for all that you love in beer:

Belgian investigators have improved the flavor of contemporary beer by identifying and engineering a gene that is responsible for much of the flavor of beer and some other alcoholic drinks. The research appears in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. For centuries, beer was brewed in open, horizontal vats. But in the 1970s, the industry switched to using large, closed vessels, which are much easier to fill, empty, and clean, enabling brewing of larger volumes and reducing costs. However, these modern methods produced inferior quality beer, due to insufficient flavor production.

Modern! Bad. Bad modern… but… craft is modern… is craft bad? Is that what science is saying? Hmmm. As you ponder that, please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and also from Stan more now on a Monday than almost ever! Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the OCBG Podcast which is on a quieter schedule these days – and also sometimes, on a Friday, posts at The Fizz as well (Ed.: we are told ‘tis gone to 404 bloggy podcast heaven… gone to the 404 bloggy podcast farm to play with other puppies.) And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… in 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable… not sure this went very far…) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now gone after a ten year run.

*You will recall that Flying Dog quit the BA over this sort of thing at the time.
**Well, more you than me. I am still off the gluten (happily) so leaning on a little wine or a drop of cider if I need a hit – though I did a test with a can of Guinness. My histamines slept though the whole pint.
***The award winning series!
****Yes, there is… though to be fair… he may well have been suffering from the IPA yips!
*****Because who the hell wants to be an expert in things that have no perceived value?? No, best to stick to the plan.