Russia – A Good Beer Blog

The Beery News Notes For That Week The USA Does All That Weird Thanksgiving Stuff

It is instructional to live next to a bigger neighbour. As long as they don’t attack you… any more. And by bigger I mean the most influential state in the most powerful nation in the history of the western world. Which is to say I can see a slice of New York state from my office window, peeking back at me out there about ten miles to the south. So we get the TV and radio in addition to the general social media onslaught. And – who knew? – turns out it’s Thanksgiving week and today is Thanksgiving Day! Their Thanksgiving. We Canadians naturally give our thanks for the harvest at harvest time. And we keep it to a wholesome day or two. And find things to do like yard chores. Our pals to the south? It’s like they just discovered treats… to eat!! Even though Halloween was just three weeks ago. Any advice you can offer explaining it all will be most welcome. In local news, the basil is up as illustrated. I am aiming for a wrap around 12 month tiny crop of something or other now that there’s a grow op in my life while some tasty stuff is likely still alive out there under the row covers even with the -9C temps the other night. Jings. Gotta start thinning soon.

Which reminds me of beer. Not. So what is up in beer? Well, for starters, the call for papers for Beeronomics 2024 has gone out:

The 2024 Beeronomics Conference will take place at University of Milan Bicocca, Italy, 19-22 June. Main panels and sessions will be held at the University of Bicocca main campus located in the heart of the city. The Conference Organising Committee, led by Christian Garavaglia, welcomes all high-quality research on the economics of beer and brewing. With a strong interest in interdisciplinary research, we are looking for submissions …

It-lay! That’d be nice in June. Maybe something for Al can be whipped up via AI so I can pretend to be clever enough. Speaking of research, Gary has uncovered facts on the heretofore unknown background of the 1950s English beer writer, Andrew Campbell – stumping even Boak and Bailey who had looked at the mystery some years ago:

It is interesting that they mention theatre – why this occurred to them is not explained. The skein was evidently felt inconclusive, as they repeat that Andrew Campbell was possibly a pseudonymous figure. In fact Andrew Campbell who wrote The Book of Beer was quite real. And there was a theatrical connection.

Speaking of Boak and Bailey, they took a bit of an unsual turn in the road this week as they, the keen observers of others, became something of their own subject matter when they took a family trip to an old favourite Somerset cider farm with a restaurant of sorts attached:

When we entered, Jess immediately said, “This feels like a German beer hall.” And she was right. Not a historic one – the kind you find in a post-war block, or out in the sprawl, or in a neat little village. It’s something to do with all the polished wooden surfaces, perhaps. Or the pervasive smell of roast pork. Or the people: there were plenty of sturdy looking country folk digging into heaped plates. If it wasn’t Bavaria of which it reminded me, then it was one of those diners Guy Fieri visits on Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives.

A great bit of writing. And Matty C has taken on the task of rehabilitating the phrase “reverse creep” with his piece in What’s Brewing, an organ of CAMRA, on the new lower ABV trend in UK beer:

Prior to the legislation’s introduction, breweries would have received a discounted rate for drinks rated at 2.8 per cent ABV or lower. Under the new system it has been extended to account for drinks rated at 3.4 per cent or less. The savings that can be made will likely encourage producers to focus on drinks that are lower in alcohol and therefore, in the government’s eyes, carry less long-term health risks. Encouraging news for a market where younger customers are increasingly focused on mindful consumption and wellness.

The cost implications are significant: “…if, over a year, a small brewery produces 5,000 hectolitres (880,000 pints) of a beer it has reduced from 3.5 to 3.4 per cent, it will make a saving of £211,400.” Moo. Lah. Stonch finds the effect of the tax policy depressing. Colin understands the policy is not the main cause of the lower strength beers. Lots of factors at play but hard to not see this as an opportunity.

I don’t usually go for brewery bios given there too often is a bit of an appropriation or maybe just mimickery at play. But in this piece about a Czech focused brewery in small town Texas of all places, Ruvani de Silva explains the local authenticity:

“The concept of a Czech lager brewery made a lot of sense in Bell County with its rich Czech heritage and the Czech Heritage Museum and Genealogy Center nearby,” he says. “The more I discovered and learned about Czech lager, the more I fell in love with it… I’ve learned so much about my family history and our connections within the community since starting the brewery,” he says. “I’m always probing my grandmother for more stories.” Martinec was inspired to play Czech polka in the brewery after discovering a collection of records in his grandmother’s side table. “They belonged to my great-grandmother and grandfather—my grandmother didn’t even know they were there,” he says. “Now regulars will come by and donate polka records, too.”

Before we go further, say to yourself “soon… soon I will know a lot more about bottle caps” because it is true… because Liam wrote all about it from an Irish perspective:

Before his invention there were other methods of closing bottles, one of the most popular and historic being the plain cork bung of course, and other metal closer had existed but none were quite as strong and easy to apply as Painter’s. His crimp-edged, strengthened metal caps clamped on the edge of specially made bottles with a cork liner between the cap and bottle rim ensuring an airtight fit. These caps were easy to apply and remove and would go on to revolutionise the drinks industry around the world. They were also disposable – they were never designed for reuse – a clever way of ensuring a steady income for those involved in their manufacture.

Next, Katie Mather is on to the second installment of her series on packaged foods called “Process” and this week considers the humble oven fry:

The brand of oven chips you had at teatime was a status symbol when I was a kid. McCain’s Home Fries were the holy grail—if you were having those with your Turkey Drummers, you’d really made it. It’s really strange, I didn’t consider oven chips and deep fryer chips and chippy chips as the same thing. It didn’t occur to me until much later on in life that oven chips were meant to be approximations of the soggy, vinegar-coated potato hunks I was used to from Sam’s Bar on Morecambe seafront. Don’t get me wrong, I loved both of them. But they just weren’t the same food at all. They didn’t even speak the same language.

I always find global references to McCain’s brands odd as it’s from my neck of the woods in the Canadian Maritimes and I even went to undergrad with a McCain.* One of the few dynasties which keeps the lights on in New Brunswick.

Courtney Iseman wrote about the SAFE Bar Network, a program that a nonprofit working with alcohol-serving venues on bystander intervention training in anticipation of one ugly downside of the impending festive season:

…it is also a good time for these conversations because we’ve officially arrived at the holiday season, and this time of year can really crank up the already-intense situation at many bars and restaurants in terms of parties and customers’ drinking and behavior. I know this is unfortunately an impossible wish, but I do hope folks working in bars and breweries and such make it through these season as safe and happy as can be, and—perhaps more realistically—I hope more and more venues see the light and bring in training like SBN.

The Shadowy Portman Group has popped up its head and this time it isn’t complaining about cartoony labels or, you know, anything related to BrewDog. This week it’s defending the booze trade against being lumped in with unhealthy smokers and gunky** processed food fans in a wide ranging study of the costs of unhealthy lifestyles to the UK economy:

The Portman Group, an alcohol industry trade body, said a crackdown on alcohol was unnecessary because most adults drank moderately. The health groups’ proposals, including minimum unit pricing, were “disproportionate and inappropriate”, said Matt Lambert, its chief executive. “Significant progress has been made to tackle harmful drinking in recent years, thanks in part to schemes funded by the alcohol industry, and it is counterproductive to try to prevent further cooperation between the government, industry and third sector organisations on these issues.

They make a reasonable point up there as reported in The Guardian – consult your Hornsey if you need to but we are clearly built to digest alcohol but no one ever rationally claimed a ciggie isn’t a coffin nail. Interesting to note The Times raises another source of health care worry: toxic doctors! Interesting that they are alleged to cause 11,000 deaths per year in the UK while the booze causes just over 9,000. Lesson: don’t forget to take your drink!

In high school, 44 years ago or so, we had a Swedish exchange student on the soccer team and he taught some of us about eating spruce tips. The winter beer Jeff featured this week brought that all back to me:

The brewery puts in a lot of work to create that subtle sweetness. Beginning in May or June, depending on the year’s winter, Dan and members of the brewing and restaurant staff head off to a forest that is just west of town. They harvest sustainably so the trees aren’t harmed—they even need a permit—which means more time. The trees must be a certain height to harvest, and they can’t pick too much of the new growth. “We bring a load of grain bags out with us—it’s beautiful,” he said. “I love it.” It takes more than one visit to collect 200 pounds of tips, which they freeze.

Mmm… tree flavour. It’s the new thing. Stan also wrote about another way to get more tree into your diet:

“I think the thing I love most about the beer is that it certainly makes me feel something, often several things. The time and effort spent harvesting the cedar with my friend realigns my heart to a deeper connection and purpose in brewing. I can feel the sun on my face as I’m reaching to trim a branch in the cool autumn air. I can feel the wind on my face as I give thanks to the grove of trees that play such an important part in the entire experience. Something in me awakens each time I sip.”

Remember how I mentioned that the Russian government nationalized the local branch of Carlsburg, Baltika? Things still getting worse for those involved:

Police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents carried out more than a dozen searches at offices affiliated with Baltika in St. Petersburg, the local news website Fontanka reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources. Two unnamed Baltika executives were charged with abuse of trust and large-scale fraud, according to Fontanka. The state-run TASS news agency later identified the detained executives as Baltika president Denis Sherstennikov and vice president Anton Rogachevsky, citing a law enforcement source.

Yikes. And I know I include something from Pellicle every week but they really do stand heads and shoulders above other publications. This week, a portrait by Neil Walker of The Coopers Tavern, a modest old pub and the beer it serves:

In front of me sits my deep-gold pint of Joule’s timeless pale ale, glowing and topped with a bright white head of foam, which creates halos down the glass as I sip. But, really, this is a beer for glugging; a subtle well-balanced bitter, with a delicious caramel undertone from the pale tipple malt, a foil for the floral, drying, hop character. The overall impression is of a bittersweet, incredibly drinkable ale, a balm for dry workers’ throats which slips down pint after pint. Underpinning the beer is the same mineral-rich water which made the brewery’s pale ales so sought after a century or so ago, drawn from an ancient Triassic aquifer.

Excellent. A decendant of the Brimstone Alehouse of the 1680s. At another snack bracket appears to be The Devonshire, a big London pub and restaurant complex… oh, sorry… a butchery, bakery, a pub, restaurant and asado complex. What’s an asado? Nick Lander explains:

Welcome to London’s first asado, where the food is cooked entirely over wood embers. Carroll admitted that it had been harrowing at times, assuring everyone from the landlords to numerous representatives of Westminster Council that the process would work and would be safe. Simply, the logs are burnt and then the ingredients are cooked over the embers. It is this process that has made a name for the likes of Asador Etxebarri in Spain, Burnt Ends in Singapore and Firedoor in Sydney, all of whose chefs have been consulted by Carroll and Rogers.

And finally, in their monthly newsletter and for the double, Boak and Bailey have you all pegged. There’s no wiggling out of this one:

If we say that interest in craft beer in the UK began to increase from around 2007 (when we started this blog – a symptom, not a cause) and peaked in around 2014, when our book Brew Britannia came out, that’s plenty of time for a full cycle of hype to play out. There’s a generation of people who have made ‘being into beer’ part of their identity. That includes people who used to blog; people who started breweries; and people who’ve ended up as middle-aged managers in the industry, having started on the frontline a decade ago. Now, they’re getting old.

ZINGGGGG! They’re shit talking us. Deservedly. So here we are, at the end. The time of the sales, the mergers, the moves. Maybe just the beginning of the end but, yes, I feel bad everytime I read an investment announcement of one sort or another. Ouch. No, not commenting on what they said. Just reached over for the mug of tea. Everying aches now. ‘Cause I’m ooooollllld.

Other than that, we are done. Remember, ye who read this far down to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. But beware! Mr. Protz lost his Twex account five weeks ago and still hasn’t recovered his 27,000 followers. And Boak and Bailey declared they will #QuitTheTwit at the end of the year. Update on my emotional rankings? Now, for me Facebook remains clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (83) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (905) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,427) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (161), with unexpectly crap Threads (42) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Still trying to figure out the Threads and BlueSky distinction but at this point Threads seems more corporate. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon. And even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that still wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing beer:

Anyone else? Anywhere else? Yes, you also gotta check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he is not SLACKING OFF! Look – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Here’s a new newsletter recommendation: BeerCrunchers. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*…not all that rare… also a Labatt as well as Anne Murray’s neice and someone whos godparent was claimed to be the Pope. Et cetera. Et cetera. Lucy MacNeil was in a dorm next to my pal, too. LUCY!! It’s all just one town out there. Go to the tavern for lunch? There’s a member of cabinet. Hit the late night dance club? There is your local MP… dancing with not Mrs. Local MP. Oh dear. Not smart.
**Ouch! Katie Mather just hit me!!!

The Clocks Are Changing The Clocks Are Changing Edition Of The Beery News Notes

“…Poop Damn Crap Poop Poopy Crap…”

November. Frig. I never understood why April was the cruellest month when there’s November just a few pages further on in the calendar. What’s so wrong with stirring those “dull roots with spring rain” anyway? Beats the hell out of the prospect of week after week of avoiding frost bite and roadside dead car batteries. This week we went from sunny and +16C on Saturday aft to -4C on Tuesday morning. I filled a bird feeder. I have to fill it again. Those birds are already pissed off with the level of service. And Wednesday we woke to that layer of white shit shown above. Took the photo through the window screen. I would have taken it through the curtain and maybe my bed’s blankets if I could have. I just got that raised bed planted with garlic in time. Poop crap. I even coined a phrase for not drinking this month – Nofunber.

What’s going on with beer? First, Pellicle published an excellent piece on the Double Diamond phenomenon. In the mid-1980s, Double Diamond showed up on keg in my old hometown, the old navy town of Halifax, Nova Scotia around the same time as Guinness did. It was during the beers of the world fad which got going around the same time that the first Maritime micros like the Granite at Gingers and Hanshaus were starting up. Anyway, there are still pals who never really got all that much into beer who still fondly recall the easy sweet taste of Double Diamond at the old Thirsty Duck on Spring Garden Road and how it was tied to the old country:

The name Double Diamond is said to originate from the two interlocking diamond shaped symbols that would have been used to mark cask barrels at the time. And throughout the 1950s all the way through to the 1970s, Double Diamond was one of the best selling beers in the UK. “The rise and fall of [Double Diamond’s] popularity would track the fortunes of the company,” wrote Ian Webster in his book Ind Coope & Samuel Allsopp Breweries: The History of The Hand. “Double Diamond was the leading light, the headline act, the A-list star. It isn’t an overstatement to say that the history of Double Diamond was also the history of the company.” Quite the responsibility to lay on a single beer, is it not?

So… turns we got it pushed out to us after it slumped in the UK. Typical. Read the whole thing to find out why. Excellent writing.

Also excellent is the review by Boak and Bailey of the new and also apparently excellently honest ‘zine edited by the same Rachel Hendry… Service Please!:

There’s also a strand of depressive melancholia: accounts of derailed creative careers, repetitive shifts, and the pressure to perform cosy cheeriness on loop every single day. Even when we’re not being utter dicks, we customers are a wearying lot. In one cartoon, by Ceara Colman, a barista is slowly ground down by one customer after another calling them hun, babe, love…

Trooff, that. And I really liked Alistair‘s post at Fuggles that missed last week’s deadline by a hair. He came upon a brewery in Virginia that has taken the too often ignored concept of an honest beer at an honest price to a new level and explored what the implications of oddly unpopular proposition that value pricing posed:

I am pretty sure this move it going to stir the pot in craft brewing circles in Virginia, especially given the number of breweries where they are changing $7 and upwards for a pint at their taproom… I also love the fact that Tabol don’t shy away from the fact that beer is the everyman drink rather than a niche product for the upper middle classes… [W]here a brewery’s taproom is exactly that, a place to drink a brewery’s beer, in situ, as fresh as fresh could possibly be, without the additional logistical steps that drive up the price, then cheaper than draft or packaged retail should be the norm. If this move drives down the cost of a beer, that is a good thing in my world. After all, isn’t that one of the supposed benefits of increased competition?

Desperate or clever? Hmm… hopefully there will be more on this breaking story from Alistair. Somewhat but not really that connected, Martin visited a university student union that was also a ‘Spoons which is a bit confusing to an auslander like me. I thought the cheapest way to get beer into the hands of students was to have the students sell it themselvesto themselves at their own bars. Is ‘Spoons more efficient than even that?

Speaking of value, there more this week on Russia’s nationalization grab of Carlsberg’s branch operation Baltika:

“There is no way around the fact that they have stolen our business in Russia, and we are not going to help them make that look legitimate,” said Jacob Aarup-Andersen, who took over as CEO in September. Carlsberg had eight breweries and about 8,400 employees in Russia, and took a 9.9 billion Danish crown ($1.41 billion) write-down on Baltika last year. Aarup-Andersen said that from the limited interactions with Baltika’s management and Russian authorities since July, Carlsberg had not been able to find any acceptable solution to the situation.

Err… solution? Maybe leave when the Ukraine was first invaded… in 2014… or when Georgia was invaded… in 2008? Hmm…

Things not being as they seem may also have been the theme at the National Beer Wholesalers Association if their graph shared at Craft Brewing Business is anthing to go by. I’ve edited it for you. Click here. My update makes it much clearer that the “50” level mid-graph is actually indicating zero growth over in the specific US beer market segment. Meaning any sector scoring below the middle is shrinking. Only imports are showing anything like real growth as reported. Craft is taking a beating only saved from the basement by seltzers… which aren’t even beer. Neither are the other big losers ciders, come to think of it. In fact, the story of the graph appears to be that of all beer sectors, craft sales are ditching by far the most drastically. Plenty more than just high level generational demographics making that happen. Especially in a strong US economy.

Speaking of questions, the BBC posed an interesting one this week – “would you drink genetically modified beer?”:

In the UK, GM foods can be authorised by the Food Standards Agency, if they are judged “not to present a risk to health, not to mislead consumers, [and] not to have less nutritional value than their non-GM counterpart”… US brewers using gene-edited yeast in their products is “a secret everyone [in the industry] knows about”… beer makers will rarely promote the fact due to the negative headlines GM technology has received so far. Meanwhile, brewing yeast expert Richard Preiss says that “in the US, you can really do what you want”. He is lab director at Escarpment Labs in Ontario, Canada. It provides more than 300 breweries with yeast, but does not use GM. “You can take [in the States], for example, the genome from basil, and plug it into yeast, and get to market fast with a flavoured beer.”

To be honest, I assume I consume GMOs all the time in my beer. I may grow my own herbs and greens in an all organic yard that a mow with a manual push maching and create special hidey-holes for natitve bees… but my beer? Who knows what crap is in that stuff? Not me! Do you? The question of GMOs in good beer actually strikes me as one of those “journalism / not journalism” beer topics. Much like the silent response to, say, the closing down of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Or, you know, any meaningful discussion of value when it comes to good beer. Just a few of those things that exist in the culture… but no one mentions. Eh. Var.

Converely, Jeff wrote a good piece for VinePair setting out the whole narrative arc in the rise and fall of Hazy IPA – from rare whale to gas station bulk craft – that serves as a good lesson for us all:

The fact that hazy IPAs may have lost some of their cultural power is merely a shadow of the far more significant fact that they have remained so popular for so long. Rather, as they prepare to enter decade two of life, hazies appear to have found equilibrium. Their early success was inflated by oversupply at the small-brewery level, and undersupply nationally, a dynamic that is coming into balance. Their strength remains strong in some regions but less so in others. And they no longer generate the level of excitement that forces people to wait in long lines for the privilege of buying a new release.

It’s been so long since we have had any sort of innovation in craft beer that we forget things like Hazy IPA were once sorta exciting and not just an alt hard seltzer filling the fewer remaining bulk craft shelves at US convenience stores. But these are those times we live in. These be the times. Relatedly, Stan set me a challenge this week in his weekly post on Monday:

Back to “peak of craft.” What does that mean? Is that peak sales? Peak quality? Peak choice? Peak cultural sway? And if the peak has come and gone, how does post-peak beer compare to post-industrial, postmodern, and post-Fordist beer? Can’t wait until Thursday to see if McLeod has answers at A Good Beer Blog.

That call to fess up relates to the cover of the New Yorker from 2014 right there. I mentioned that it had popped up in my FB feed and reminded me of those better days at that time. My response to Stan was that the cover was just the peak point of the cool of craft, the actual brief golden era when there was general public interest and before the wheels had started to come off. Back in 2014, craft was cool. Probably as cool as it would ever be. Now it is in what sociologists call its Sombrero Phase. Still, this all sorta ties into a few other recent posts. Jordan doing a bit of soul searching given the greater picture:

…how am I supposed to write about Craft Beer? Hell, in a situation where everyone is strapped, can you ethically ask for samples for review? Am I going to write about trends? What trends? Someone’s going to put hops or puree in one of the remaining unhopped styles?

Exactly – what trends? The trend of “nothing new” has been the new so long it’s really just the known for the bulk of newbie entrants to the beer buying experience. Jeff was also reflecting and and considers the longer timeline:

Time’s lessons can bring us a certain equanimity about what is important and what merely seems important. On example that has been rising in my mind a lot lately is this one: I don’t need to get worked up about what other people like and, in fact, I can take real pleasure in people who don’t like the things I like. This seems like a banal enough observation—like, really, who cares what beer you drink or car you drive or brand of shoes you wear?

I get it. Both time and the times do wear down upon us. And yet… and yet we still can care even if we aren’t all that cool anymore. Witness Boak and Bailey going on a hobby interest renewal holiday to Berlin and posting some very insightful writing about the observed beer culture there, one about five Pilsners and another about wegbiers – beers bought in small shops for drinking on the way as you walk from one place to another:

… there’s nothing remotely pretentious about these shops. They also sell Monster energy drinks, chocolate bars, ice cream, vapes, and bog roll. That the beers are being sold to drink on the go is underlined by the presence on the counter of a bottle opener. Hand over your cash, knock off the cap, and you’re away. And that’s exactly what people do.

That’s sorta nerdy neato. And Lars had another sort of experience in an alternate reality, too:

My destination: the cheese world championship, where I am to comment on beer/cheese combinations. (I wonder if this might really be national only, though.) So, up there I’m supposed to comment on five cheeses and three beers and how they match. Never tasted any of them before. No idea how this will work out. I guess that worked pretty well. We all of us basically had to just wing it. So you taste the combination and just say whatever comes first to mind.

And The Beer Nut himself did a great job with the keen observational, even self-deprecating wit at the Belgian Beer Challenge, another stop on the Möbius strip of generic international beer awards circuit:

…Belgians, I imagine, are better at this than me…

But… we are told some Belgians were allowed to join in. Which is nice. All of which leads to the question – is there a common aspect to this weirdness? None of it is all that cool, for sure. It’s weird. But is that so wrong? NO – be weird! For now… for us… maybe it’s all just odd enough that good beer still may be a good lens to view this life’s rich pageant or at least good for a laugh – even if it is sometimes at its own expense.

There we are. Hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves once again. Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. But beware! Mr. Protz lost his Twex account and his 27,000 followers this week. Update on my emotional rankings? Now, for me Facebook remains clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (77) rising up to maybe pass Mastodon (900) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,434) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (168), with unexpectly crap Threads (41) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all I still am rooting for the voices on the elephantine Mastodon. And even though (even with the Halloween night snows) it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins over there, here are a few of the folk there discussing beer, :

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

The Mere Days Before Vacation Edition Of The Beery News Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please note that this is properly nerdy beer stuff….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Beery News Notes For The Dog Days Of August

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Beery News Notes For The Beginning Of A Grim March

I used to celebrate March and look forward to what is coming but this horrible week makes me look back at 2021 with envy. Events north of the Black Sea are utterly horrifying and in line with what we see in Yemen and Burma and elsewhere. Not much of a cold war left these days. My ignorance is not complete but what could one add other than it is heartening to see the solidarity that may put a beating on the Russian economy swiftly as spring itself comes forward to help save Ukraine. We here in safer lands are particularly aware that our Canadian population includes the third largest Ukrainian community in the world.

In local response, the provincially own LCBO monopoly is removing Russian made booze from the shelf. The LCBO is one of the biggest booze buyers in the world so that is good. Carlsberg may be taking a more direct approach with their bottles.

Elsewhere, some in the beer nerd world are apparently unable to contextualize the biggest risk of WWIII since glasnost without some kick at current issues in craft. I am not sure this approach illustrated in the tweet to the right is one I would take. I would have though praise was due for the BA (and the LCBO) taking an immediate stance that would propagate quickly back to the staff of breweries and distilleries in Russia, good folk who may not be getting fed the facts from their local tyrant-owned media.

Jeff shared some excellent thoughts on an awful week but, conversely, this sort of thing is a little sad. Feels like coopting a murderous war crime to promote trade. Maybe a bit too soon?

From a happier place and time, Boak and Bailey wrote a fabulous post on a late 1960s Swingin’ Englan’ sort of place called The Chelsea Drugstore and then, in true modern style, elaborated even more elaborately on Twitter. An excellent example of how blogs and social media are far superior to the printed page. Anyway, it was a place:

“The day they opened, we were all so damn high we ran around putting handprints all over it until owners had to set up a roadblock to keep stoners off,” Beverley ‘Firdsi’ Gerrish is quoted as saying in a biography of Syd Barrett. Apart from the visual aspect of the design, the business model was new, too. Bass Charrington needed to recoup its investment and intended to sweat the premises for every penny. So, as well as selling its beer in two bars, they also sold breakfast, lunch and dinner; records; tobacco; soda; delicatessen products; and, of course, drugs, in a late night pharmacy.

Go and see the clip from A Clockwork Orange that B+B include in the post for a sense of what the place was like. Looks like a small smart shopping plaza that you’d see in sci-fi TV of the time. Where the second incarnation of Doctor Who might shop for his jelly babies. Except it was the fourth that really handed out broadly so would have needed a good supply.

Reaching back further, Liam posted an interesting set of thoughts on Mild in Ireland and neatly unpacks an advert from 1915:

Here we see that under their O’Connell’s Dublin Ales brand they were selling a Dark Extra Strong ale and a Pale Mild on draught – and let us not forget a rare mention for an Irish Best Bitter for bottling! Allowing for dubious marketing and the leeway that advertisement writers have with the truth this might be a nice mention for a Strong Dark Mild? Even if I am stretching terminology, styles and descriptions to the limit then if nothing else it is a nice record of what D’Arcy’s were brewing at this time.

On the ethical gaps beat this week, we learn from a “team update” that NYC’s three bar chain Threes Brewing’s CEO stepped down as CEO after pushback from his comparison of the local proof-of-vaccination policy to the Holocaust and segregation in the Jim Crow South. His self-congratulatory resignation was due to, and one quotes, “his duties as a parent and a citizen” which, in the scheme of things, don’t matter all that much. Except if you are taking any comfort or congratulations in the resignations. It is good to remember this: a CEO is the head of staff, the Chair is the head of the board of directors who tell staff what to do and the shareholders tell the board what to do. No word that he is leaving his role as a director or as a shareholder. BTW: never heard of them either.

Ron is back in Brazil. His last junket** there seemed to be a bit miserable but back he went despite the quality of the entries last time: “The Viennas are as expected. Almost all riddled with faults. Except for the only decent one I judged on the first day.“. The hotel breakfast buffet coverage is amongst his finest work, like this from just last December:

No need to rise early. So I don’t. It’s just after 9:30 when I finally wander down. The breakfast room is pretty much empty. Just one other punter. Not someone from the contest. Daringly, I give some of the cheese a try. And the ham stuff. The thrill of the unknown. The orange cheese is pretty tasteless. Doesn’t have much in the way of texture, either. I’ve not been missing much. I feel the fruit working its magic. Or perhaps that’s just a fart coalescing in my gut.

Sounds magical. This time? It’s raining. But at least the currency is gently collapsing and Martyn‘s there to share the joy.

Beth Demon is blogging wonderfully and generously at her substack, Prohibitchin, featuring the underrepresented in the drinks trade. This month, she interviewed Michelle Tham, the head of education at Canada’s venerable Labatt:

As the largest brewer in Canada, Labatt is an inextricable part of Canadian identity, and as a Chinese-Canadian woman, it’s something Michelle finds herself deeply rooted in. “Millennials like to joke that Labatt is ‘Dad beer,’ but it literally was my dad’s beer and still is today… it is a bit of a symbol of the Canadian experience,” she says. “Canadians Google more about beer than any country… It shows they’re interested in wanting to know more about it, and I believe the more you know about it, the more you’re going to enjoy it.”

Through writing Ontario Beer it became clear that Labatt was always one of our most progressive breweries – from focusing almost a hundred years ago on women as valuable customers worth reaching to having honest Dudley Do-rights for shipping clerks.

This week, Stan sent out the latest edition of his Hop Queries newsletter, number 5.10. This is a great set of facts about one of the great US beers:

Bell’s buys 500,000 pounds of Centennial each year – which amounts to about 14 percent of the Centennial harvested in the US Northwest – from multiple farms. Most of those hops go into their iconic IPA, Two Hearted Ale. But you aren’t going to hear drinkers discuss the merits of Two Hearted hopped with Centennial from Segal Hop Ranch versus Centennial from John I. Haas, because the hops all end up in a master blend. The largest blend any facility can process at one time is 200,000 pounds, so it takes three passes during several months after harvest. That’s scale.

Note: not the #1 and #2 craft breweries in Canada. Also… if one entity buys out another, they both can’t continue to claim to be independent.

Finally, one attentive reader emailed me with interesting link related to a proposed oddly modest bond issue by GBH. It was not so much the fact that they were looking for a small amount of money – $100,000 to be repaid over 5 years at 5.5% – that interested me so much as they publicly filed four years of financial statements as part of their effort to get the bonding put in place. The financials tell a few interesting stories. Most obvious is how the vast majority of their income is from consulting services so the writing is subsidized but, before the pandemic, GBH lost 32% of that income flow from 2018-19. We also see that subscriptions to their blog run at well under 10% of their total income and under 3% 2021 at $24,044. They are moving more and more to “underwritten” stories and events, funded by the subject matter. In fact, subscription income for GBH seems to be about half than that of Pellicle as the latter is apparently close to £3,000 per month or around $48,000 USD a year. (I send a paltry two figure amount to Pellicle every month.) Note worthy, too, is how GBH also took in a bit over $153,000 in pandemic loans and paid out $133,000 or so in 2021 as members’ distributions – both larger figures than the goal of the bond.* These matters are not highlighted in the information provided by GBH but they are disclosed.

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

*Why effectively borrow around $130,000 (bond amount plus interest) right after drawing out more than that?
**Particularly miserable in terms of cheapskate reimbursement for making effort to give free PR, according to the disclosure: “The organisers of the Brasil Beer Cup paid for my accommodation and food during the period of judging (four nights and three days) Beer, too, which was provided by one of the sponsors. I had to pay for my own cocktails. And all other expenses, such as flights and extra hotel nights.” As usual, I agree with whatever Doris says about all this.

With The End Of February Comes These Beery New Notes

That was a bit much last week. All that talk of rice and here’s me trying to be more keto. I’ll try to be more sensible this week. It was, after all, a long weekend last weekend which kept me from reading all that much about beer. Read a book about third-wave ska instead. Now I’m halfway through another, Exploration Fawcett, by British military surveyor Percy Fawcett pre-WWI (aka the quasi-nutso as illustrated) in the jungles of South America. What a horrendous place. Murderous concentration camp slave-based rubber plantations along the Bolivian Brazilian border, a recent war zone, set in the murderous Amazonian jungle populated by murderous Indigenous people defending themselves against murderous imperialist Euro-losers at the end of the world. There are beer references like this one, when an actual ocean-going steamer appears entirely unexpectedly deep up a tributary:

As we glided past we saw the name Antonina in faded letters on her bow. A steward came out on the deck under the bridge, emptied a bucket of slops overboard, to watch us and straightened, his half-naked figure a small man with a mop of tow-coloured hair and narrow pinched shoulders. No one else appeared, and there was no activity ashore, but it was the hour when Europeans would be lunching. Stained canvas wind-catchers were stretched over the high boiler-room ventilators and from open scuttles air scoops protruded. On her counter appeared her name again, Antonina Hamburg, and a blade of her single screw showed beneath. “Hey!” ejaculated Dan. “What about going aboard her and having a beer? I bet they have real German beer fresh from the cask!” It was too late. Already the current had carried us past, and to drive back alongside would be difficult. We should have thought of that before instead of standing like fools and looking at her “Wonder what she’s doing here?” murmured Chalmers. “Rubber,” Dan said. “She’s come to load rubber.*

Cheery.** Like something you might read in Pellicle. Just like it. Fawcett passed thought Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia at one point. It now has a brewpub. Speaking all of which – and nothing really like it except it’s another form of exploration – Stephanie Shuttleworth revisits her old home town:

Ducking down so her dad, who played the piano for the crowd inside, wouldn’t spot her. If he did, someone would be sent to collar her and bring her in, to sing for the room. Now, my grandma could sink a rum and pep (that’s dark rum and peppermint cordial mixed together with a few ice cubes, if they have any) with the best of them. But sing, she could not. I can no longer sit down for a meal with my sadly missed grandma in that pub. Just as much as I couldn’t literally see her running under the giant sandstone window. I am thankful, however, that I can still look at the building (now a shop), step inside, and remember.

Meanwhile, Alistair wrote this week about something that I had no idea was a thing – communal brewing in Bohemia:

The word that leapt from the page as I was reading something completely unrelated in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer was “braucommune”, which translates as “brewing commune”. Naturally, given Czechia’s proximity to Zoigl country over the border in the Oberpfalz, I wondered if what I was seeing here was the remnants of a Zoiglesque communal brewing setup in Bohemia? Digging further, I discovered that in 1895 there were just 4 “braucommune” breweries operating in Bohemia that produced more than 10,000hl…***

Speaking about none of which in no way no how… don’t you love it when real medial people bait craft beer weirdos – chef’s kiss headline! It’s a BA Bart PR puff piece but still…

New research tool opportunity! Hunting through British Library Sounds audio archive reference to pub, beer, ale, “headbutting…” “all those wasted years…”!!

Real news time:

“This month posters will be displayed in all of our members pubs informing people to how seriously we take this matter. It has been agreed between all members that an automatic one-month ban will be issued to anyone caught urinating in public. “North Wales Police are backing Ruthin & District Pub Watch’s campaign and will be given permission to issue the one-month ban to any offender caught at the incident as well as any other penalties NWP have in their power to issue.” Mr Vaughan added: “This subject might generate a snigger from some and possible outrage from others who feel it is too much, but we agree that behaviour like this is just Taking The Pi**(****) when all of our establishments have toilet facilities, there is no excuse.

Unrelated – a new beer blog: Beer Nerdery. Speaking of British beer blogs, RARM went down to Liverpool to relive a moment and caught one, too:

The last time I had visited Liverpool was back in 2017 when a group of us stopped in the city for an hour or two on our way to see Halifax Town get hammered at Tranmere Rovers across the Mersey in Birkenhead. We had called in a few pubs, one of them being the Crown, whose gloriously-decorated exterior beckons you as you emerge from Lime Street Station.

I mention this mainly to share a thought. One of the problems with beer and pub and brewery porn is it is decontextualized. See that image of the Crown? Ugly street scape. I like that. An actual view… except not to scale… it’s just a photo.

Q: if the Royals are just normal folk why have so many Royals?

In their downtime in Norfolk the family are known to have enjoyed family pub lunches (a clandestine photograph showed them eating burgers in a pub beer garden) and trips to build sandcastles on Holkham beach.

And in the second of a two part series, Jordan shared more information on Toronto’s 1904 brewery strike presented with a key dates sticker tape news headline approach:

At issue here is the demand of a union wage across all breweries in the city for approximately 700 brewery workers. We have, for background, figures related from the Brewers Association to the Toronto Star on May 6th. At this point, 105 workers for Reinhardt and O’Keefe (including drivers, helpers, stablement, labourers, bottlers, wash-house, cellar, and kettle men and coolers) have walked out after finally receiving confirmation from the head office in Cincinnati.

Finally, yet another reasons to be disgusted with fearful wee Mr. Putin:

Analysts have warned that since Ukraine, which is among the top five global producers of barley, is in the middle of a major geopolitical crisis, international supplies of raw materials would inevitably be affected. The period between March and July accounts for 40-45% of annual beer sales, and barley is the mainstay ingredient used in beer. According to reports, even for brewers who source barley locally, prices could go up with rise in global prices and supply disruptions.

There. Done. Once again… nice. Really good job on my part. Really. And no rice talk. None. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (which I hope is revived soon…) And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Long quotations… that’s the trick this week. None of that guff about rice… or research. Padding.
**I’m still passing on a trip to Ribeirãozinho during this lifetime. Note: Edwardian Brazilian trade journals have a lot in common with craft beer trade journalists. No talk of the glaringly obvious downsides.
***That’s a lot of Zs.
***Note: two non-footnoting indicating asterisks, can be confusing.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The Quietest Week of Summer

Crickety chirp chirp. Not necessarily in the beer world but certainly in this part of Canada. Holiday long weekend leading into the first week of a summer month? Everyone is gone. I am even holding the fort solo as others jump in a lake at a family cottage. O sole mio. Naps followed by long sleeps abound. Fortunately, the amusements never end in boozeland as the exchange above best illustrated this week.

First, take a moment this week to remember Florencio Gueta Vargas who died on July 29th in a hops field in Yakima County, WA. He worked for decades in the fields but was overcome by temperatures in excess of 100F that day. He leaves behind a wife and 6 children. Workers like Vargas endure conditions most of you would never accept.

Archivally, interesting news out of North Carolina:

We’re in the process of picking up a HUGE donor collection of national importance. A research collection and personal archive going back at least until the late 1970s. Historians of modern US craft beer history and brewers are going to drop their jaws as much as we have.

I know of one other particular private collection which would be likely mind boggling if released but these are the realities of this sort of hoardy hobby world. The recipient of the donation of 20 boxes describes itself this way: “Well Crafted NC documents beer and brewing history in North Carolina from the breweries of the 1700s to the craft breweries today.” They are also colleagues in the same publication series that includes my two histories. Likely need more of those sorts of landing pads created in more jurisdictions as a form of careful succession planning.

Not unrelatedly, Gary has written another fabulous post on aspects of eastern European brewing in the lead up and during WWII. This time it’s an interesting bit of research related to the hops trade up to early 1941:

…American cotton might be paying for hops ending in American hands… Such cooperation between Russia and Nazi Germany was not inconceivable. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty, was still in force between the two countries. It only terminated when Germany invaded Russia in June 1941… It does seem clear America imported no, or very few hops from Germany after the European war started on September 1, 1939. The Royal Navy imposed a blockade of Germany that was generally highly effective, for one thing.

Stan popped in this week for a few Monday musings on three topics. “Why We Drink” caught my attention:

A bit of context for the “hard seltzer is dead, no it’s not” flap. “How Big Beverage poured empty promises down our throats” (from The Goods at by Vox) barely mentions beer, but you can connect the dots.

The two points he highlights from the article (and you will have to go to Stan’s to find the link… bloggy etiquette must be observed) are (i) “we’ve created an entire category of ‘functional’ beverages that claim to have the ability to make us better in every single way, from our brains to our beauty” and (ii) “Instead of collectively admitting that we love drinks… we would rather fool ourselves into believing that drinks can fix us.” It’s interesting as the entire ethos of craft has been build upon personal improvement, a step up. But this is intentional as before craft was created as we know it today, micro-brewing was being led down the pervy and wastrel path. It needed cleaning up… but has it gone too far with, for example, the nutso health claims?

Beer law news? Bloomberg Law reports that Bell’s Brewery has settled a law suit in another copyright infringement situation:

Michigan’s Bell’s Brewery Inc. reached a confidential settlement of a suit alleging its “Deer Camp” beer infringes a “Deer Camp” coffee trademark held by hunting goods company Buck Baits LLC.

Note that the wording used is identical and the offended party may have deeper pockets, h/t MK.

Sir Geoff Palmer has been appointed Chancellor at Heriot-Watt University, home of Scotland’s great brewing college. I came to his writing through the human rights side first and, in particular, have enjoyed his use of social media to argue for a new interpretation of many historical Scots matters including many of the same figures whose names pop up in Canada, like Dundas and Picton. But, yes, he knows more about beer than any of you, too.

What else is going on in the world? I like these cardboard six-pack holder thingies from Norway, especially given the way the plastic ones are killing the planet:

The WaveGrip carrier has been developed in line with Berry Global’s Impact 2025 sustainability strategy, which aims to work with customers to help meet and exceed their sustainability goals. Each carrier weighs just 7.95g for a standard six-pack and is recyclable in most paper and board waste collection streams. Despite its light weight, it is strong and easy to use, while delivering excellent pack retention.

Note: “Excellent Pack Retention” was the name of my folk-punk band in the 1990s.

Not speaking of which, interesting to read that Anheuser-Busch InBev revenues are up even if profits are not matching the full trend. So much for (again) craft the destroyer. That being said, likely they are selling seltzers and auto parts somewhere out in the world, making up for the general disinterest in beer.

From France, two views of the new vaccination passes to get into shops and bars:

“Long live the health pass!” said Chastelloux, who, like the others interviewed for this story, spoke in French. “You have the right not to get vaccinated but not to stop other people [from] getting on with their lives. Shopkeepers need to work, and we need to be able to treat other medical conditions than COVID.”

…and…

“Show a pass in order to drink a beer with your friends? In France? The so-called country of liberty, equality, fraternity? I’m giving up going to restaurants. I’ll boycott cafés. We can eat with friends around each others’ houses. And shop in small stores, not supermarkets,” he said.

Retailers line up on both sides, fearing lost sales in either case. Were this to come to pass here in Canada – with our local double jab rate approaching 75% – there might be less disagreement.

Finally, here is a bit of a bizarre take from Alaska on the problems facing brewing and other hospitality trades in terms of get employee levels up:

Virtually every brewery in the state is looking for help. Like in all industries, it seems like Americans aren’t returning to work post-pandemic like labor and economic forecasters thought they would. There are a lot of reasons for this, and I’m not about to go into the political side of the issue – that doesn’t fit my singular writing objective of “making people thirsty for good beer” – but the bottom line is that, if you want in, now’s the time. Servers, publicans and tap room attendants seem to be in high demand, but there’s room in the brewery, too, if you want to get your boots wet and stir the mash with the big boys and girls in the industry.

By “not getting into the political side” I assume the author means the low wages, health and safety questions and non-unionized environments. Claptrap from a trade shill it seems.

As you nap away the hours, too, don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness! And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Before The Neighbour’s Holiday Season Begins

A quiet week. Not surprising in mid-November, I suppose. Being next to the United States and, even more to the point, being within the FM broadcast range of local US based heavy metal FM radio station, it is difficult not to be aware that something is starting. Their unending holiday season is upon us. In Canada, the holiday season is really, say, December 10th… maybe… until the last of the bought-once-annually Grand Marnier is shaken into a coffee sometime in early January. Weeks, not months. In the US, the future is now. Which means we have turkey and beer pairing blurts clogging up the news. Do these really affect beer sales… or turkey sales for that matter? Get back to me on that.

What’s really going on? Max got out and about. That’s nice. And real. While we are locked down in one way or another, it’s good to find some outdoors. I’ve taken up staring at the sky at night myself. I have really fallen for Epsilon Lyrae myself, which makes sense for a Canadian seeing as it is a double double. I even bought a 20x to 60x scope, the sort of thing also used to bird watch or be a creepy neighbour. The Pleiades alone at 20X are worth the price of admission. And you can drink a beer as you gawk. If you have to. Just sayin’.

Whatever you are experiencing, it could be worse. You could be caught up in the Tomsk Beer Company scandal in Siberia:

The Investigative Committee said earlier that Ivan Klyain is suspected of using his official post to illegally prevent the construction of a building in 2016-2017 on territory close to the Tomsk Beer company, which he controls. The 61-year-old Klyain has served as the mayor of Tomsk since 2013. Before being appointed to the post, he had been the director-general of the Tomsk Beer company, one of the largest breweries in the region, since 1994. After becoming mayor, his wife was elected by Tomsk Beer’s board of directors as the facility’s director-general.

Bad. Bad bad. But the good news is that beer in stadiums is coming back in Tatarstan!

Elsewhere and for the great indoorsmen amongst us, Pete Brown and a few others commented on the four episode BBC2 TV broadcast Saving Britain’s Pubs hosted by someone named Tom Kerridge. Now, if we are lucky this will show up as a cheap filler on Sunday afternoon on PBS or TVO sometime in 2023 so I have time. Maybe. Rather than a documentary followed by panel format on UK licensing policy, it actually sounds like just a restaurant refit sorta show that pre-dates, you know, the pandemic:

If there’s a common theme running through all four pubs in the series, it’s that the people running them need to add a keener, shrewder business eye to the the long list of talents they already display in running pubs that are popular but not profitable. The things a pub needs to do to survive may not always got down well with the regulars: The first thing Tom tells the Prince Albert to do is put up the beer prices. The domino players nursing one beer all night in the Golden Anchor are shifted to the back room to make way for the craft beer-drinking hipsters who are gentrifying the area.

Yeah, get those happy regulars the hell out of here! But… remember people shifting spots in a bar? Remember people in bars? 2019 was great, wasn’t it? Maybe it’s really just to be taken as a show about the before times. But talking about beer has a notoriously poor track record when it comes to TV… and radio… and newspapers… and so Mudgie also shared his thoughts:

People still like the idea of pubs in theory, but in practice they visit them less and less. Of course it is still possible to do well in a declining market, but that should not be allowed to obscure the wider picture. By and large, the reason so many pubs have closed is not because they haven’t been run as well as they could have been. And it was disappointing, if not entirely surprising, that an entire hour discussing the decline of the pub trade passed by without a single mention of the legendary Elephant in the Room…

Good point. There was a slow death well underway before the more rapid form came along. Speaking of which and on the smaller small screen… is it just me or did Craft Beer Web Event replace Beer e-Publication Editor** as the odd new thing of 2020? Seems like that to me based on the barrage of beery things to watch on line for the last week or two’s worth of Thursdays to Sundays. Not that I watched any. It’s getting like those 47 global beer awards things. Too Organic, if you know what I mean.*** I felt particularly badly seeing as two of my own co-authors were presenting at two of these web events – but they spoke at the same time, I simply could not in good conscience choose one over the other.

Speaking of webby things podcasts, Beer with Ben* finds someone called Ben with interesting things to say about beer and its beginnings:

I’m back for a second series and this time we will be taking a journey through history, as well as beer. 2020 will see us finding out how our earliest counterparts would have made those first brews, look to the local environment to forage and find some of the ingredients and, of course, see if it’s possible to do it ourselves.

Excellent. That sounds really real and not in decline even if likely… organic.***

And speaking of odd jobs sort of in beer, I have no idea what this is if it is not a overly fancified web intern in the ABev macro construct. Consider these strange but assigned tasks:

– Work cross-functionally to plan and manage the Organic Social content calendar which supports key activations across both brand and eCommerce.
– Manage the content creation process for both Paid and Organic Social, from brief to delivery.
– Upload and schedule Organic Social content.

Caught up with excitement by the prospect? Me neither. Nice to know the opposite of “paid” is “organic” which is perhaps a comment on what is left of you and your span of years when you go unpaid too long.

Somewhat to the right on the scale of things that are cryptic was ATJ in Pellicle wandering on and about lagers this week. I wonder if he might benefit from a backyard telescope. The over ripe prose is pungent:

I am both mystified and enthralled whenever I think of the deep sleep of lagering, the process that brings the raw ingredients of the beer into a sharper focus. Enchantment touches me like a spell when I consider the steampunk-like nature of some of the brewing techniques such as lautering and decoction mashing. Then, as if conjured up by some celestial agent, there is the aristocratic elegance of noble hops, which, when writing its entry for the Oxford Companion to Beer, I was surprised to discover that it was a marketing term from the 1970s instead of something from the days of Hansel and Gretel.

Heavens! All very prog. Fortunately, sensible Stan sent around his hops newsletter with it’s dedication to a plain speaking, staid and common sense outlook when it comes to hops – with an update on Hopfen and Stopfen:

The verb stopfen has a slightly different meaning. It is used when repairing clothes or to be more precise darning socks. But more importantly it’s the same word (potentially even etymologically) as to stuff. Whether you want to say one stuffs a pillow with feathers or food into oneself, the word stopfen can always be applied. Hopfenstopfen is therefore the act of stuffing beer with hops, which I guess is an even more fitting term now with all the hazy beers around.

Not at all organic, that. Pretty real, too.

That’s it. As I say, a quiet week. But don’t forget to read your weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan speaks warmly of Tom Arnold) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too. Go!

*h/t to Merryn. The podcast comes in multiples of series which is odd as Ben told me they come in multiples of seasons. Note: Ben’s Beer Blog is not associated with Beer with Ben.
**I actually saw some folk fawning over their favourtie best beer writing editors the other day. Tres Organique!
***Wait for it!

The Thursday Beer News For A Week Of Fests, Awards, Junkets And Other Melancholy Things

So, if I was going to write about all the interesting things I read this week, I need to first acknowledge all the uninteresting things I read this week but then not write about those things so that I can focus on writing about all the interesting things. [Thanks, folk who are keeping good beer stuff so dull!] Now, one of the most interesting things I read this week were the labels by the apples in this image from Instagram and Twitter posted by RV Nurseries of Yorkshire. These are apples from cider varieties all pre-dating the year 1800… which itself is a date that is now 219 years ago. That is very interesting. Very very interesting. Sets a standard this week for interestingness, doesn’t it.

Speaking of apples, Nicci Peet’s extremely interesting interview with one Roger Wilkins, the owner of Wilkins Cider in Somerset was posted by one of the better sort of blogs that calls it self a periodical… no, publication… no, journal. It’s a bit of a trip back into the 1700s in the sense that the production is extremely spare and the cider-making dates back to the 1500s and the farmer appears to be an high-functioning alcoholic:

I’ve drunk cider ever since I were 5 years old, and course I drunk it all me life. Then when I left school, well, before I left school I used to help me Grandfather cos he was crippled with arthritis, he had bad hips. He died when I was 21, I’ll be 72 this year. So then I learned it all off of him right up until he died, then I just carried it on the same. But like I said, there’s not many places you can get proper cider today. You’ll never get a headache or hangover with this because there’s no [additives] in it.

Well, except the saccharine in the sweet cider. And we wonder where Strongbow came from? Very interesting, indeed.

Also very interesting is the week Katie of @shineybiscuit (as illustrated, right) has been having working in a vineyard in the Mosel valley in Germany. Did you work in a vineyard in the Mosel this week? Me neither. I am in fact riddled with jealous to the point I hardly know how to type. She is not only learning about the Mosel but also Riesling grapes and the wine making techniques of Rudi. Holy Mo-lee. Very very interesting. She will write about it all in a story soon, too, which will also be very interesting.

Perhaps not quite as interesting but still rather interesting is the fact that in 1968 Lionel Tutt won the World Beer Drinking Championship by downing 17 pints in an hour as well as the fact that you can watch a video of it now, 51 years later, and notice that he got rather loaded.

Stan wrote an interesting post about language about beer, correcting the recent allegation that these sorts of things (i) start with M. Jackson and (ii) are dependent on M. Jackson but then confirming how they were grabbed, shaped and then released again by M. Jackson. I love how he also corroborated my observations that said M. Jackson developed his thoughts on the unified structure of beer after his initial writings, an observation I shared yoinks ago – just look!

Avery wrote, “There is a move in MJ’s writing from an amateur understanding (in the true sense of the word, the amateur as a lover of something), to an adoption and, crucially, a demonstration of understanding of technical terms, to a move toward describing beers purely in sensory terms.”

It’s wonderfully being so totally vindicated. One quibble – “geek” is venerable and probably misapplied. Speaking not of which, Matt published a story one something called MASH (which is different from the other now semi-former MASH) about the problem with beer events today:

I feel that, presently, venue operators and producers see events as a necessity as opposed to an opportunity. They’re an easy-ish way of putting bums on seats and beer in glasses in an increasingly difficult market, with a consumer that has a limited amount of disposable income. I don’t see how this will reach outside of our insular beer community. This is where work needs to be done to ensure that events have value, so that the community can continue to flourish and grow.

While I have nothing to do with the “let’s grow the trade!!” aspect of beer writing I do like Matt’s candor about such things.

Speaking of degrees of exactitude, Jordan wrote a very interesting blog post about stats, demographics and macro economic trends that really surprised me in the sense that for fifteen years folks holding out to be beer economists have never written anything as useful. Cut to the core question:

The good news is that there is a generation behind them! Somehow we keep making people! Let’s look at the pyramid chart again and think about Generation Z, which is the post-Millennial generation. Mmm. Oh dear. That 1990’s drop in volume from the beer litres per capita chart? That corresponded with the Boomer – Gen X shift. Both of those groups are still much larger proportionally than Generation Z. I don’t think per capita consumption is going back up anytime soon.

Lars provided us with the photo of the week, an art installation entitled “Kvass tank. Yoshkar-Ola, Mari Republic, Russia. 2017.” I particularly love the way the image confirms that concrete provides no drainage while capturing the moment the girl in the black dress was getting a poorer photo of the same scene from the backside of the really angy looking kvass seller. Check out the high res version of you disagree. Please bring exact change.

Fabulous. A revelation even. I don’t even know where the Mari Republic is! Kray. Not unlike the next story. Except for the lack of resemblance stuff. The Stonch blog lit up in activity this week with a defense of Coconut IPAs. Let me ruin the ending for you:

Danse des Coco certainly doesn’t let the side down. I drank three 500ml cans just to be sure. Like the Italian beer I’d drank a fortnight earlier, it was nice and strong (6.9% abv). Again, this showed me that coconut can really work in brewing. The fruit was more pungent in this example, and the overall package heavier and more bitter, but once more I was drinking a great beer. I used to be sniffy about brewing with adjuncts. I’ve learned not to be. Quite simply, I think craft beer is getting better: the brewers are more experienced, the standard expected by consumers is higher. For those of us who’ve expressed legitimate scepticism in the past, it’s worth overcoming old prejudices and embracing new styles.

Coconut IPA!?! I can’t imagine the pleasures it held. But that’s because I was not there.

Finally, Matt* (again and perhaps unlike others) offered a moderately clear understanding of all those who paid his way to get on a bus in the Czech Republic (unlike those elsewhere paying their own way) on a Pyongyang-style guided and structured tour of repeat offender breweries with a load of other writers – all the while all of whom were missing entirely the fact that one of the land’s most venerable breweries on the tour was days away from financial and legal collapse. Experts! Note: Beth Demmon goes all in on transparency. Wow.

Well, that was better than expected. Just to review. Fest? Boring. Awards?* Well, what a surprise! Junkets? Only thing different is the seats they were assigned on the bus. So… wait for further Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and then check out Stan on Monday. Audiophiles are ranting about the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays, too. See you next week for more logging of the beery web. Laters!

*For the double! And as noted was about to occur last week…
**That’s me in the white shirt…

The First Thursday Beer News Of October 2019

Beer: less popular year after year!

Ah, beer. You ever ask yourself on why you bother thinking about it? You know, if it’s not your last ditch effort to cobble together a career? BA Bart posted a thread on Twitter this week on the latest stats – which seem to be in line with the previous stats. All worth considering, for sure, but there is that underlying personal question that I suppose everyone who reads this blog has asked themselves since their first glass – why do I bother? Knitting bloggers have a way easier answer. Mittens. Knitting bloggers get all the breaks.

Speaking of big stats over time, relatedly and with a similar set of graphs, apparently Russia’s public policy program to reduce alcohol consumption has been… a fabulous success:

In 2018, Russian life expectancy reached its historic peak, standing at almost 68 years for men and 78 years for women. The experience gathered by the Russian Federation in reducing the burden of disease stemming from alcohol represents a powerful argument that effective alcohol policy is essential to improving the prospects of living long and healthy lives.

By contrast, Gary thumbs his nose at Mr. Putin and gives us a portrait of one of my old favourites,* La Choulette, and the under-respected biere du garde style:

It has a full, complex flavour, quite different from the standard conception at least in North America of a “Belgian ale”. The beer is somewhat earthy, dark fruit estery, with malty/caramel tones, and an interesting tonic or “camphor” edge, almost gin-like to my taste. It has no tart notes, and is quite different from a Flanders brown style, East or West.

Before going on junket with others of the cap in hand crowd,** young Mr. Curtis wrote a response to a typical Stone-based blurt a ripping set of tweets on the failure that has been Stone Brewing’s experience in the UK and Europe including this bit of honesty:

They’ve had to sell there entire U.K. brewing operation. Instead of trying to understand their export markets, they’ve attempted to subvert them. And it’s backfired time and time again.

Yowza! It’s all true, of course, but as we know with the stale older monied end of US craft beer – facts are not all they are cracked up to be.

Perhaps related, GBH shared Jeff Alworth’s sharing of the Instagram posting by Baltimore brewer Megan Stone of @isbeeracarb on sad reality of brew house work conditions. Because I don’t want to know what my kids do on Friday night, I stay away from Instagram so this was helpful.

Beth Demmon has published a wonderfully in-depth piece at CraftBeer.com on brewing while raising a family:

As Oliver, 34, and her generation have children—albeit later and at a lower rate than generations past—more beer professionals are increasingly finding themselves in similar situations as Oliver. Child care costs, lack of parental benefits, and other obstacles mean employees working in the estimated 7,500 breweries across the United States face the potential of their children existing in alcohol-centric spaces.

Now perhaps building upon those last two stories, “scandal” and “Ontario” usually evoke as much shock as the combination of “curling” and “action” but this week the decision of Ontario Craft Brewers*** to attend and post on social media about a government PR announcement which included standing with a certain Member of Provincial Parliament (“MPP”) due to his past and presumably present day quite intolerant positions. Ben Johnson I believe was the first to point out the glaring problem:

For an organization that has made public overtures to women in their industry, the @OntCraftBrewers looks pretty hypocritical here posing for photo ops with a kid who said he wants to make a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body “unthinkable in our lifetime.”

Brewers issued social media statements: Muddy York, Bench, Sawdust City,**** People’s Pints, Manantler. There are others. It made the news. And there was some unhappiness that the associated larger event got tarnished. Some didn’t comment . Jordan posted his thoughts on the naturally resulting trade backlash this way:

The OCB’s leadership is actively undermining its own credibility. They have lost two members this week in Block 3 and Manantler and may well yet lose Muddy York. Their largest members are backpedaling faster than I have ever seen them and while I would like to think that this would be a wake up call to them, I just don’t believe it. I think they believe this will go away because this is an emotional response.

Disastrous decision. In other key conservative political news which might be related, have a gander at British Cabinet member Michael Gove recently pickled out of his skull – not only in public but in the UK’s Parliament.

In more positive news, co-creator of this stuff Max headed out from Prague tracing a line north to try out some actual (and not craft bastardized) kviek in Norway as part of a program to establish partnerships between Czech and Norwegian people who practice traditional trades and crafts:*****

After a hearty lunch prepared by his wife, Julie, Sigurd took us a couple of kilometres uphill to pick juniper and get some alder wood for the next day’s brew. We came back with a full trailer and we sat in the garden to have some home made beer while we waited for our accommodation to be ready. That’s when I had my first contact with a Kveik Ale, brewed with juniper but with a boiled wort. It was amazing! It had notes of green wood and spice that reminded me of Szechuan pepper without the burn, but they weren’t overpowering. It still tasted like beer thanks to its sufficiently muscular malt base.

Wow. And no one adding fruit syrups at all! Finally, some other beer news in brief:

a. The craft beer hangover.
b. Zwanze Day fightin’ words!
c. Beer powered radio.
d. A trip to JJB’s (aka the formerly Stonch’s) pub.
e. The most blatant example of entitled craft ripping off someone’s intellectual property yet. Oof, indeed.
f. Barry in Germany is now selling his own clinky drinky produce!

Finito! I’m actually sick as I put this together. The autumn school bug. While I recover, I can look forward to expect the Boak and Bailey news update on Saturday and Stan should back on Monday. Check out the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays, too. Heck, there is so much to follow – what do you need me for… sorry… it’s just the cold medicine talking… zzzzzzz… zz… zlurp… zzzzzzzzzzzz…

*Ten summers ago…
**If I have done anything, my part in making “the junketeer’s admission” a norm has been my proudest achievement.
***Former sponsors of this blog.
****Oddly, even having to explain a former senior staffer wearing their t-shirt as if he was still representing.
*****Sounds actually legitimate!