Category: Science

Your First Beery News Notes For That Dull Gap Between The NFL And MLB

The gap. It’s not going to be too bad this year with a boooorrrinnnnng Superbowl* coming a bit later in the shortened month. At least there was a nice ad for Bud. But, even with that, this gap between the end of the last football game and the start of baseball’s spring training games is a thing. A dull thing. As is the realization that I am looking past sports fandom at a trade war. Aluminum and steel this week. Am I looking like the guy to the left in the image above pushing from French-Algerian wine from the 1930s. Why does the water drinker look so worried? Why is his hair less stylish?

Yet… what does colonization teach us? Is the dodgy promise of that wine a century ago so unlike what we are like today? I was out buying a magazine last Friday evening in an actual bookstore (because, you know, I had a hankering for buy a magazine like it was 1999) and I looked at all their titles… mainly American… then looked at all the biographies of Americans intersperced with a few semi-royals at the other end of the bookstore… boy oh boy… have we up here taken on a lot of the culture developed down there. Look, I’m not part of the not a real country set but I need something to fill the hours other than lingering angst. Something will level out somewhere. Spring training may do the trick. Maybe that’s it. Down in, you know, Florida.

Speaking of gaps, have you any interest in NA wine or spirits?  Me, I can’t imagine paying non-proxy payment for these sorts of proxies for booze. But if you are interested in NA beer, keep keeping an eye on Polk. He is back with some very interesting observations on one Canadian discount dark ale. And he wrote about where is at** this week, too:

I am incredibly lucky that I still can maintain an online community, despite my switch to mostly non alcoholic options, people in craft beer can be very kind when the road gets bumpy for one of our own and this helps a whole lot. But if I was one who went out and was deeply involved, I wonder how I’d be feeling every weekend when my new normal didn’t include those aforementioned activities. It would be a little overwhelming and would only add to an already stressful time I would imagine. It’s part of why it’s so difficult to go sober, to separate yourself from the good times that feel warm and boozy because you can’t be that person anymore. Change isn’t easy, but letting go of alcohol seems particularly difficult, addiction or not.

I will allow myself more bit of one tariff news item this week from one of my regular reading outlets, mining.com, on the uselessness of tariffs but the benefits of something else:

While US steel imports account for 23% of the country’s consumption, the ratio is much higher at 47% for aluminum, according to the US Geological Survey. The US is particularly reliant on imports of primary aluminum from Canada, which supplies more than two million tonnes each year… Just under half of all cans are thrown away to be land-filled or trashed. More metal is lost through improper sorting at recycling facilities, with losses assessed at roughly one third… Roll out more deposit return schemes and some of that one million tonnes of landfill could be returned to the supply chain.

On our side of the wiggly then very straight line, somewhat similarly, the inter-provincial restrictions are being rethought. New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt is revisting the province’s trade barriers on booze from other parts of Canada and Ontario‘s smaller breweries are looking forward to market opportunities across the country if we ditch the current rules:

Ontario breweries, distilleries and wineries can’t sell their product directly to customers in other provinces, something David Reed, owner of Forked River Brewing Company, says limits their sales opportunities… Because laws around alcohol are up to each province, rules about transporting vary nationwide. In Ontario, the province lifted interprovincial personal exemption limits in 2019 when it comes to alcohol for personal use, the LCBO says. In comparison, SAQ, Quebec’s alcohol board, says any alcohol coming into Quebec, including donations, gifts, and souvenirs, must be reported.

Note: Following up on last week’s news, one Beer Store outlet in my fair city is closing. But… but… me being able to buy my longed for Oland Ex in a corner store? Where do the loyalties lie?

How to pass the time? Cards. Katie plays cards and wrote a bit about it:

We play Rummy. I have no memory for any of the other rules, despite my father in law trying to teach me Stop The Cab every few months. At high school, I used to play a game called shithead in the common room, we doubled the pack so the games would last forever, dragging on into lessons we should have gone to. These are some of my favourite school memories.

Japan has an issue hiring people and then coaxing people back to work in the office but one firm has a solution that perhaps might suit you:

…for new graduates in Japan, one small IT company is offering Gen-Z staff the option to take special ‘hangover leave’ in a fierce recruitment drive being dubbed ‘golden eggs for graduates’. Trust Ring Co Ltd is a tech company in Osaka with roughly 60 employees and is one of many companies combatting Japan’s declining birthrate with quirky incentives as a way to attract new employees…. employees at Trust Ring Co are even encouraged to help themselves to the draught beer machine or a selection of spirits to drink on the job in their Midoribashi offices.

Lordy. And next? What next?!? Beer sludge? Beer sludge!!! Seems “beer sludge” is now a proper term according to the headline to this BBC story:

…nutrition isn’t the only area where spent grain could make an impact. Brett Cotten concedes that early efforts by his young London-based company, Arda Biomaterials, to create leather-alternatives from brewers’ spent grain resulted in something more akin to a flapjack.  But the start-up has since successfully used supramolecular chemistry to make several proteins from brewers’ spent grain that mimic the animal proteins in leather, resulting in a strong and supple alternative. The colour reflects the spent grain used, he says. “Guinness and stouts make for a naturally black material, IPAs and lagers more mid-browns.” 

I shall recommend that to my tailor. If I had one. And I like this understanding in Jeff’s piece on NEIPAs which is one way of explaining the phenomenon:

I would argue an IPA wave was never going to wash over New England before it came along. The region’s preference toward fuller beers with sweet malts and fruity English yeasts, and they have never really embraced the bitterness and spikiness of Centennial or Chinook IPAs. The development of New England IPAs was not unusual: breweries adjusted their process to draw out those incredible flavors and aromas Citra (and successor hops) had.

Careful readers will recall my habit of going to Maine back when the Canadian dollar was worth 95 cents US or more. In 2013, the good beers on offer at Fenway were Long Trail pale ale, Harpoon IPA and Wachusett Green Monster.  New England had plenty of IPA love before NEIPAs… they just weren’t those IPAs.

Speaking of good explanations, in the emailed announcement on Pellicle‘s piece on independent brewing in Thailand, the editorial board of that there publication made an excellent statement on these sorts of things:

About a year ago I received and subsequently rejected a pitch from a writer called Joey Leskin, who writes a great newsletter about beer in London called Beer in the City. I turned it down because I am overtly aware that stories written by British writers about beer culture in other countries can come across as voyeuristic, and often don’t let the voices of the people involved in that scene shine through as they should. Fast forward six months and I was invited to become a mentor by the British Guild of Beer Writers. I agreed, and by coincidence was subsequently assigned Joey as my mentee.

This is a much nicer way of explaining and dealing with what I call “drive-by expertise.” It’s nice that you got to visit. Very nice. But I’ll usually  turn to the local for understanding, thanks.

People who are very much on the scene if not in the scene are Boak and Bailey and this week the scene is very much where they are or at least were – at the Central Library in their own fair city of Bristol, England. There, they came upon what is definitely a scene:

A few weeks ago a special exhibition was laid on at the library on the subject of beer and pubs. Items from the reference collection were put on display in an ornate wood-panelled room and visitors were invited to shuffle round and have a nose about. We visited and were drawn at once to a hefty hardback volume collecting together editions of The Golden Cockerel, the house magazine of Courage, Barclay & Simonds, formed in 1960 when Courage acquired Simonds of Reading. These particular issues of the magazine were from 1962 to 1964 and seemed to include a remarkable number of pub openings.

What follows can only be decribed as remarkable, too. An unpacking of the story of many of those pubs while guiding one to an explanation of the name for “a youth paid to collect dry sand from coastal caves to spread on saloon bar floors.” Fabulous. And a welcome break from the news about those running pubs dealing with the rising costs of running a pub.

And Laura Hadland has updated the story of the Crooked House and the legal battle which has ensued since its demolition:

11th February – And the appeal hearing has been delayed. ATE Farms lodged a High Court challenge against “the Planning Inspectorate’s refusal to postpone the Planning Enforcement Public Inquiry” according to a statement from South Staffordshire Council This means that the public enquiry will now not go ahead as scheduled on 11th March and is unlikely to occur before the criminal investigation is concluded. You can read updates from the Council on their website. According to the Times & Star, the police work continues – “Staffordshire Police said in July last year that six people arrested in connection with the fire have been released from their bail, but remain under investigation.”

N’oubliez pas!!!

There. It’s been a bit of a busy week outside of these readings again. I worry that I am not entertaining enough. I actually don’t but I wonder. That’s a better way of putting it. Enough to worry about out there in the real world, isn’t there. Until when we meet next, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*What wasn’t boring was the after game celebrations in Philadelphia according to the police scanner: “we lost all the barricades!!!” and especially ““i now have seven or eight people on horses, the fireworks are spooking them and they’re rearing up….they’re civilian horses”!!! And there were some other ads. BeerBoard added some very particularly fine detail on who was drinking what before, you know, the barricades were lost: “Coming off two years of decline for the Big Game, Light Lager saw an increase of +5.6% on the day. Lagers, the #2 style, saw a noted decline of -6.5% in share. IPAs, the third-ranked style, decreased for the second straight year, down -7.9% over 2024. Michelob Ultra was again the top-poured brand nationally on the day, and was up a noted +11.9%. Bud Light, the #2 brand on the day, was -3.0% versus 2024. Miller Lite (+5.4%), Modelo Especiál (+9.6%) and Coors Light (+3.4%) rounded out the Top 5 for draft.” That is very spedific stuff for two days later…
**Or as translated for Maritimers: “where he’s to, too.“

The Beery News Notes For The Week Tariffs Were Punted Down The Road

Because I am a lawyer, my job includes dealing with a bit of mayhem. I even get a bit immune to it, frankly. Not so much in those early bottom feeding days. Remember that? Yeesh.* Anyway, is it back? I dunno. We’ve reviewed all the graphs and charts like this one up there** and now that everyone and their dog calculated the percentage of the US beer market*** made up of the combo of Canadian malt and aluminum as well as Mexican imports, well, it got delayed. Fine. The big bourbon ban was shelved and then restocked. It all got a bit whiplashed and likely will again. As Jeff wrote, this is all getting somewhere between real and unreal:

Enormous changes are underway, and the stability of the U.S. government is no longer a given. Barley prices may seem like an incredibly mundane detail (picayune, even) to pluck out of this hurricane of news. But they are representative of the effects these disruptions will have. The price of barley is directly tied to the health of US businesses, jobs, and lives.

Well, it’s all for the best right? It’s must be. And, between you and me, a closer economic union wouldn’t be all that bad. I sure liked when the Canadian dollar was close to par, gotta tell ya. Stash wantes to stash. Anyway, now that we have a whole 28 days left in the reprieve, I can get on to the important business of worrying about snacks and beers for Superb Owl Sunday. And, for the 47th year in a row, a bunch of people have written about what you should eat and drink. You can find your own damn links for that stuff.

Somewhat relatedly, speaking of large bodies of water that suddenly need to be renamed:

People don’t buy “domestic” cars or salute the “domestic” flag, so they shouldn’t drink “domestic” beer. At least, that’s what Anheuser-Busch’s CEO thinks. Brendan Whitworth, the beermaker’s chief executive, says he  wants to change the term that describes his US-made beers, which includes Budweiser, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light, to “American”… “The pride we take in this great country should also be properly and accurately applied to our great American beers,” Whitworth wrote. “They are brewed by American workers who receive American wages. They rely on American farmers and on American raw material suppliers. They support American causes like the military and first responders. They pay American taxes.”

Speaking of legal mayhem, here’s a story out of Washington state on one brewery’s fight against the local municipality care of WBB:

Although Dominique Torgerson just wants to operate a brewery, she is now well-versed in this kind of legal battle and knows way more about these issues than any brewery owner should ever need to know.  “With the recent overturning of the Chevron Deference doctrine at the U.S. Supreme Court, agencies should no longer have unchecked power to interpret ambiguous laws in their favor,” she explains. “Our petition to the Superior Court cites extensive case law, and we are prepared to take this battle to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.” “Additionally, these zoning restrictions violate Washington State RCW 66.08.120, which explicitly prevents municipalities from regulating alcohol businesses in ANY manner,” she adds.

Boom!  Fight!! Speaking of a good fight, I am really struggling on Pellicle‘s English Premier League fantasy league this season – but unlike one pub’s owners, I did well when I picked the striker for Nottingham Forest the other week:

It had seemed like the perfect promotion to get a few more punters through the door on a Saturday afternoon – give away a free pint for every goal scored by Nottingham Forest that day. But seven goals and £1,500 worth of pints later, Nottinghamshire pub landlady Beccy Webster realised she might have scored a spectacular own goal. “It got to half-time and I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can carry this on.’ But I decided I was sticking to my word,” she said. “This is what I’ve said I’m going to do. Whether it’s four, five, six, seven, 10 goals, I’m seeing it through now. We ended up giving away 300 pints.”

Keeping with the only beer mag that matters, we received another bit of biting commentary about the craft-bro rut from David Bailey (no relation) over there last Friday. He neatly acknowledges the line between what may and may not be said about good beer culture and then crashed through it. In this episode, he mocks the desperate lengths some brewers got to in order to extend their seasonals line up.  I like how these pieces are effectively political cartooning.

With his even more unreserved and thorough approach, David Jesudason has reported on the misogyny that ruled at one imaginatively named London wine bar in the 1970s and how it served as one launching point of an anti-discrimination campaign:

“El Vino stood as a symbol of an ordinary drinking place,” Anna Coote tells me, “that wasn’t a private club and they were not letting women buy drinks at the bar which was very petty of them. But at the time the men were hanging on to their control over how their favourite pub was being run… [Anna and and Tess Gill] used the El Vino as a way to change the law and they didn’t see themselves as patrons of the bar. Anna says they went to El Vino with a couple of male lawyers and were refused service and this was all the proof they needed. “It was to get the law enforced not to get drinks at the bar,” Anna tells me. “It was purely a matter of principle. Neither Tess nor I wanted to spend a minute inside El Vino’s drinking wine or buying drinks!

And we read… well, I read some interesting reporting from Phoebe Knight in BlogTO on the effects being already felt by the big brewer’s retailer, The Beer Store, following Ontario’s expansion of retail beer sales to corner stores last year:

While 23 stores out of over 350 across the province seems like small potatoes now, John tells blogTO that there could be a far larger crash coming in the near future if no further agreements to maintain the stability of The Beer Store against competition are made. “According to the early implementation agreement The Beer Store must keep 300 stores open until the end of 2025,” John tells blogTO. “After that there is no limit on closures.”

Further news on the calls for change in beer retailing out of Korea too:

Liquors registered as traditional products in Korea, such as “makgeolli” (rice wine) and Andong soju, are exempt from the online sales ban, allowing them to be delivered directly to consumers’ doorsteps. In contrast, domestic soju and beer products are only accessible via offline stores and restaurants. Major local producers argue that lifting the ban would expand their distribution channels and improve market competitiveness. Korea and Poland are the only member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, where an online liquor sales ban remains in effect.

In our weekly (it seems) report on contradictions in medical advice, we focus today on the mind. First up, this study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on “the real-time subjective effects of alcohol in individuals with alcohol use disorder”:

This study aimed to investigate the real-time subjective effects of alcohol in individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and those prone to negative affect by virtue of having comorbid depressive disorder (DEP)… The AUD group, regardless of comorbid DEP, reported increases in stimulation and rewarding effects that persisted throughout most of the alcohol episode relative to the non-alcohol episode. To a lesser extent, alcohol relieved negative affect but this was not specific to AUD or DEP groups.

The news is what you’ve wanted to have confirmed: “…researchers found that alcohol consumption reduced negative feelings…” Conversely, in The New York Times, we read:

… if you become physically dependent on alcohol — after years of drinking heavily, for example — the constant ramping up of GABA can cause the brain to produce less of it, and glutamate becomes more dominant. The brain then becomes “hyperexcitable,” which can lead to symptoms like panic attacks, said Dr. Kathleen Brady, an addiction expert and professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina.

As always, good luck making those two stories fit in with each other! Speaking of best wishes, The Beer Nut has seen of Dutch brewery De Molen with a review of a last collaboration before its expiration:

This is a beer to shut me up about nitro for a minute or two: there is plenty of flavour, and while it may have turned out quite cloying if carbonated, I can’t complain when nitrogen’s deadening effect successfully balances the beer. Observation two is that a bit of barley wine energy really suits the Irish red style. Boost that gravity and hold back on the aroma hops: there’s a niche available somewhere adjacent to the strong Scottish ale genre. Thanks to both breweries for showing the way, and with an extra poignancy now that the permanent closure of De Molen has been announced for later this year.

And Boak and Bailey have found an even loftier pint – a perfect ESB:

Our perfect pints on Friday were served this way, as towers of autumnal mahogany topped with loose but steady foam.The aroma was of marzipan and fresh woodland sap. And it tasted like the inevitability of one pint too many, like the Holy Grail, like the White Whale, like a miracle in progress, like being 25 again learning for the first time what beer could really be. It was so good that it made Jess switch from Titanic Plum Porter. It was so good that she didn’t even resent the inevitable day after headache. It was so good that, even with the headache, she co-wrote a blog post about it.

Lovely bit of writing right there.

In 2006, I released the results on an experiment involving Burton Bridge Porter and the passage of time. I am not sure reading back on my notes now that I understand what happened.  Far more lyrical is Pete Brown in his up to date study of that same brewery published in that place that really should be named which is already named above:

Burton Bridge Beers are still Burton Bridge, and Heritage are still Heritage, but both brands are owned by the same company and brewed in the same place, by two stellar alumni from the craft beer world.  Two dying embers rekindled, with new fuel feeding the flame. It’s a misty, drizzly day when I visit Burton Bridge. The flagstones in the yard are slick and shiny, like they always seem to be. The brewing team are wrapped up against the chill as they wash casks, their breath misting the air. After a quick tour of the kit—including the parts that are over a century old and look like they’re  held together by willpower alone—Emma and I retreat to the cosiness of the pub.

Again, some lovely writing right there.

Finally, what was old is new again, as we read in this week’s dispatches from the eggheads:

Do you long for that tart fruity flavor of a sour beer but wish the complicated brewing process were faster? Norwegian scientists might have the answer: field peas, as well as beans and lentils. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, experimental beers made with the sugars found in these foods had similar flavor profiles to your average Belgian-style sour beer, yet the brewing process was shorter with simpler steps. “Sour beer is the beer enthusiast’s alternative to champagne,” said co-author Bjørge Westereng of the Norwegian University of Life Science.

Oh, Bjørge. You ever notice those times when it is clear someone has never had champagne? But… pea beer was a thing. At least beer made with pea shoot kilned malt was. And Japanese third-category beer.

Thanks again for everyone who participated in first edition of The Session Revived. Here’s the round up.  As Stan was kind enough to say, “Much of the best reading last week was on Friday, when The Session revival was pretty dang successful.” Join in next time we gather! In the interim, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All gone. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring… Michigan! There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has sponsored trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*Though the mass firings are very old school Atlantic Canadian. Maybe we do fit in culturally speaking! Note: these things also happen in beer. 
**No, it really is an actual chart!!
***We also learned that 88% of all beer consumed last year made by Canadian workers in Canadian breweries.

The Exciting Entrancing And Almost Festive Beery News Notes For A Merry Month From Yuletide 2024

Fine. Almost festive. Almost. But this is when the slide starts to feel greased. Five weeks to Boxing Day. Whoooo! The Boxing Day carols shall ring out loud around the Boxing Day leftover casserole once again!! The most wonderful time of the year? You bet. Who knows where we’ll all be this time next year so best to Yule it up right this time like these ladies on a tasting tour of Spain, back in 1959.* Which reminds me… I often wonder what beer writers do, you know, to get the happies when they are not up to that sort of no good on junkets, out and about pub crawling or at the front door in their slippers signing off on couriered packages of samples. David J shared a bit of his reality when he posted about a trip to Fowey, Cornwall and a pub called The Lugger:

I feel this same urge to relocate to Fowey whenever I visit and it’s because of the sea. And the Lugger. But first, the sea, the sea. Well, it’s not quite the sea but the mouth of the River Fowey and it’s sheltered, calm and very swimmable.  I braved the tide and swam on Saturday. 15C water; 14C air, according to my swimming diary – I swim at least once a week in an unheated lido… It was choppy enough for me to get the fear, though, which is half the ‘fun’, especially if one of your vices is adrenaline. The river eventually was predictable and a back and forth from beach to buoy was followed by a pint at the Lugger, served by Christian Hanks, custodian of this Cornish pub. Often people think winter swimming is odd, but Christian is different and he takes his eight-year-old son.

Be odd. That’s what I say. With a h/t to Katie, if you think the political news is grim where you are, think of the life of an academic in China turning to pubs as last venues for free expression and folk trying to work on their own odd:

“I was completely stunned when he mentioned violence so bluntly,” said the 32-year-old, who was born and raised in China. “In China, you just can’t talk about the nature of a country so openly.” In recent months, “academic pubs” hosting free lectures by Chinese scholars from universities worldwide have sprung up in China’s major cities – such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou – offering a rare open space for free-flowing intellectual conversation in a country where the public sphere is shrinking as censorship tightens. These alcohol-with-academics sessions delve into a range of topics in the humanities and social sciences. They include issues deemed politically sensitive and often censored online, such as feminism, but also more innocuous subjects like social anxiety and cats in ancient Chinese paintings.

Excellent. Except for the cats bit. I have issues with cats. Well, one cat. Yah, you! I am having other issues, too. Remember when craft beer culture was fun and was worth making fun of? Having a bit of an issue with that. How to mock something that people are ditching faster than their Twex accounts? Jeff noted this in the context of big beer business cutting their craft losses:

I noticed a startling stat in a recent Beer Business Daily story describing how in one market the craft segment accounts for 41% of SKUs, but just 5% of gross profits. That’s unsustainable for retailers and large breweries. It’s different for small breweries, who make and sell beer in a specialty marketplace of local vendors. But it’s just too complex and expensive for big breweries to compete in such a market unless it represents substantial volume. Craft hasn’t grown as a share of the market in a decade, though, and big breweries now conclude it’s just not with the effort. And reasonably so.

See what’s said in there? While it hit peak almost a decade ago, at least in this unnamed US market craft has not grown as a share in a decade and accounts for 5% of the gross.** So much for 20% by 2020. That was never going to be any reality but is Plan B really stagnation at 5%? Really? Hmm… I suppose getting ditched is better than being a zombie brand like Stone:

The brewery’s stated focus is now on its successful launch of Delicious IPA multipacks and its Mexican salt and lime lager Buenaveza, a long way from the days of Arrogant Bastard IPA, which helped Stone make its mark in the burgeoning craft market in 1997.

Brrr… that’s cold. But, still, there’s a certain justice in that one. And note the interesting note at the end of this story about management at Constellation taking a slice while there’s still a slice to be taken:

The company has also trimmed its annual enterprise net sales growth forecast to between 4% and 6%, compared with 6% to 7% previously estimated, as retailers reduce stocking wine and spirits and consumers pare back spending on pricier alcoholic beverages. A large cloud looming over the company is the threat of import tariffs when Donald Trump becomes US President after 20 January.

Are you finding yourself jockeying for position in the coming tariff-based international reality, too? Not The Beer Nut who posted thoughts international at the end of last week and came up with a description of Allagash White that nails it:

What I liked most was the smoothness: it really slips back silkily in a way that encourages serial quaffing. There are no sharp edges; none of the spikes of coriander spice or citric zest that add character to its Belgian counterparts. There’s a pleasant element of candied lemon in the flavour but I got little complexity beyond that. It’s not a beer for complexity, though, being more about the feels than the taste. I understand the attraction of something which places few demands on your attention and offers no challenges to your palate. Creating that without turning out something bland is an impressive feat.

Boom. The best writing indicates the general through the examination of the particular. Boak and Bailey did just that exactly one moment after last week’s deadline*** with an examination of the life and death of one estate pub in Bristol, The Mayors Arms:

In its most recent guise as Sousta, a “Mediterranean restaurant and bar”, it intrigued us because it never seemed to have any customers. Ever. Its location, at the bottom end of a large council estate, on the river embankment, offers little passing trade. There are no other shops or hospitality outlets nearby. In fact, the only business that could really work here is a neighbourhood pub in a working class area where people drink plenty of beer.

Related news from India on the many many reasons for the failure of BrewDog to take hold there:

The BrewDog bar in Bandra West, a suburb that is home to many Bollywood stars and is known for its liberal nightlife, as well as its bar in the office district of Lower Parel, have been closed since the summer. The company’s logos have also been taken down from the locked-up properties, according to checks by the Financial Times. BrewDog now has only two bars open in India, having first set up there in 2021… The closures are also a setback to BrewDog’s plans for overseas expansion. Only last year, it announced plans to open 100 bars in India over the next decade. Chturvedi said the Mumbai closures were only a blip in BrewDog’s India plans.

Yet, they are opening their first Northern Irish pub. In a train station. To serve the travelling pubilc. Somewhat related are the thoughts in this VinePair emailed quote-fest on what makes a craft brewery’s taproom a crappy experience. This one, however, made me wonder if they’d ever been to Gritty’s:

“If a brewpub is in a touristy spot, chances are that the management knows there are different customers every day. There’s less motivation to make delicious beer if you’re not caring about enticing regular customers.”

I thought the point was attracting a regular clientel, like folk who visit often even if not everyday. Being hospitable and all. Speaking of which, how do you feel about price surges in pubs?

A pub chain has sparked fury over its decision to charge punters 1.80 extra for beers on match days. Greene King has been attacked for the “unacceptable” move with punters shelving out a staggering £8 rather than the usual £6.20 per pint at some of its outlets. The Torch pub in Wembley, London, was hit with the 29% increase after supporters paid big prices for their favourite pint to watch England’s match against Ireland.

How do I feel? How’d they like the idea of me packing a wee flask in me pocket? Why not just charge a modest entry fee for events, like when a “good” band is playing?

Note: I will miss the little red biplane.

And in Pellicle, Pete Brown provides us with a primer on malt barley along with his thoughts on the weather… that is, when he isn’t off wandering:

I love old factories like this. As I left the train just a few yards away, the complex reminded me, as maltings always do, of some fantastical half-imagined vision from a Ridley Scott film. There’s a red-brick monolith several storeys high with no windows in its main wall. White towers dwarf what, in their own right, are tall and sometimes fat corrugated iron cylinders, with gantries running up and down and round their perimeters. Something that looks like a watchtower from a World War II Prisoner of War camp. I imagine that if the day ever comes when it’s no longer needed as a maltings, the complex could be used as the location for a climactic gun battle before exploding in a fireball as the hero makes it out just in time.  

What was that about? Anyway, in health news, some sucks to suck news from the eggheads recently:

According to new research presented at The Liver Meeting, held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, beer drinkers tend to have lower-quality diets, engage in less physical activity, and are more likely to smoke cigarettes compared to those who consume wine, liquor, or a combination of alcoholic beverages… Beer-only drinkers, who were more likely to be male, younger, smokers, and low income, also reported the highest total daily caloric intake, adjusting for body weight, and the lowest level of physical activity. Previous studies have found that dietary quality declines with increasing alcohol consumption of any type, but little has been reported on the influence of specific alcoholic beverage type.

Feel like taking up baseless objections? Fill your boots. Just don’t blame me. I’m just the guy doing the cutting and pasting. Here’s the study. Read it yourself.

Performing one last 180 degree switcheroo while still speaking of the healthy stuff… do you ever wonder why your olive oil has exploded in price? The Times had a good explanation this week:

The main reason for the price hike, simply, is the weather… Europe produces 67 per cent of the world’s olive oil; the majority comes from Spain, followed by Italy, then Greece. Olive trees thrive under a hot Mediterranean sun, but if the heatwaves come too early, in spring, when the trees are still flowering, crops can be damaged. This, coupled with severe droughts for two years running in Spain, has had a dire effect. Global production of olive oil tanked in 2023, dropping from 3.39 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 2.28 million tonnes in 2023-24… An opposite problem, flooding, also affects harvests, as olive trees don’t like wet feet, and too much water promotes disease…

I don’t like wet feet either. Just sharing. Thought you’d like to know. And one final note as we are rooting for a speedy recovery for Jessica after she posted some tough news about a recent routine procedure.

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

*From the excellent Bluesky postings of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE): “British tourists tasting Cava on the Costa Brava, Spain, 1959. Photo by Oriol Maspons (Spain 1928—2013).“
**Jeff says “gross profits” but as profit is a net concept I understand this to mean gross revenue.
***In their monthly newsletter, for the double, they also shared this wonderful pub scene from a Friday night in Bristol: “The Green Man, a corner pub on a quiet residential street, was a particular highlight this time. There was a raffle underway and just about enough space to get a drink and find a seat. Someone won a jar of pickled onions. The booby prize was a ‘mystery shot’. There was a baby at the bar eating raffle tickets and Nacho Libre was playing silently on the TV.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Most Thoroughly August Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

What can you say about August that we each haven’t thought in our hearts of hearts? We are now well into the downside of the year, four months and three weeks and a bit until Christmas. It’s always struck me as odd that the first half of the year has seven months while the second only has five. August. Hmm. Plus it all gets a bit endtimesy around now. The garden gets weedy and a bit tired in the corners. We even got forest fire smoke from Pennsylvania this week, for God’s sake! Looks!! Good thing there’s all those fit folk at the Olympics in Paris, over there throwing themselves against the track, against the ball, against ocean waves and against each others fists to give us all at home cheering on the sofa an endorphin boost. Speaking of the Olympics, how’s the beer?

Anyone who was planning on heading over to Paris for the 2024 Olympics and expected to be having a boozy jaunt in a stadium is going to be sorely disappointed. Almost everyone who has got tickets to see bits of the 2024 Olympics will not be allowed to buy alcohol at the venues where the sporting competitions are taking place… if you must drink beer inside the venues then you’ll have to stick with the non-alcoholic stuff. For half a litre of non-alcoholic beer you’ll need to be spending €8 (£6.74), while if you want a 400ml drink of zero alcohol beer with some lemon juice in it that’ll cost €6 (£5.05).

Whhhaaaaat?!?!? Really? I’d be tempted to get me a robot but I suppose that makes sense in the keeping the eye on the ball sense for spectators but, more importantly, what is the point of cutting NA beer with juice? Don’t worry, however, as the rich in catered VIP zones will be able to drink… because… France… or the Olympics… or…

Same as it ever was? Things go around and around. Consider this piece from Jessica Mason in TDB on salting your beer:

According to the reports via Parade, the trendsetters claimed that “adding a bit of salt to your inexpensive brew will enhance the flavour” and described how “some people add salt to certain beers, like sours or IPAs, to enhance the fruity notes and reduce the bitterness” and suggested that “for those ‘cheaper’ beers, it’s supposed to make the brew taste a bit more highbrow”. The report emphasised how “Texans take beer salt so seriously” and said that drinkers were “likely to find lots of flavoured beer salt options when you want to crack open a cold one”.

Taverns when I was a lad in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 1980s had shakers of salt on the tables. It was an old guy thing even back then, used by the hard cases in the back corners, but soon a little rattle of the shaker was a habit at the Seahorse or the Lower Deck when the unpasturized generic draft was a little off. Definitely done at the Midtown.

More information has been released on experimentation with the hotest new brewing grain in town, fonio. Interesting news even if this was a rather silly statement from Carlsberg director of brewing science and technology Zoran Gojkovic apparently (but I hope incorrectly) recalling a past discussion with Garrett Oliver:

“The internet says it is millet, but there are lots of millet grains and this one comes from Africa. But, back then, I misunderstood was what it really was all about. If someone tells you something is beef, but really it is like a variety, like wagyu steak, then it can be more easily understood. What I didn’t know was that fonio, compared to other kinds of millet, is like the wagyu steak of grains. Millet, as a cereal could be quite boring, but this in its pure formula is not boring. It is elegant.”

I’m more comfortable with it being the warp drive of millets – but only because that is obviously even more silly. Or is it the warp drives of wagyu? Or the wagyu of warp? That’s the fonio beer name I want to see: Wagyu of Warp!

And, speaking of silly, we have yet another study that resulted from the study of studies that studied booze and, again, it has been determined that there has been a lack of studiouness about that J-Curve fibbery:

…a new analysis challenges the thinking and blames the rosy message on flawed research that compares drinkers with people who are sick and sober. Scientists in Canada delved into 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and how long they lived. In most cases, they found that drinkers were compared with people who abstained or consumed very little alcohol, without taking into account that some had cut down or quit through ill health. The finding means that amid the abstainers and occasional drinkers are a significant number of sick people, bringing the group’s average health down, and making light to moderate drinkers look better off in comparison.

I mentioned how dodgy the concept was at least as far back in 2018 but this newer focus on the problem of including “people who had stopped or cut down their drinking for health reasons in the comparison group” is critical. Note: not drinking because you are sick is different that being sick due to not drinking.

Note too: “golloping beer with zest” was a thing. Gary explains.

In Pellicle, David Jesuason wrote about one of the the tougher aspects, the mental health implications, that can go along with setting out to run a small brewery. This is how he set the scene at McColl’s Brewery of Evenwood, County Durham before help arrived:

“I came here thinking all I have to do is 150 casks a week and it didn’t happen,” Danny says. “Because I did it [before] I thought I was capable of doing it and not even knowing it was the wrong [thing to do] as well.” Danny’s mental health suffered because there was no long-term strategy, just day-to-day drudgery. Graft instead of focus. “I couldn’t make good decisions,” he tells me. He was running the entire operation by himself: brewing, selling and even delivering the beer to customers. It was far too much to take on, his mental health suffered and Gemma, his wife, became worried about him having suffered from depression herself.

That piece reminded me of the life of a farmer, alone with their business subject to the whims of nature and the trade. Should brewing trade associations provide mental health support programs similar to those being set up for agriculture?

Also on the ag beat, Stan has given us something to chew on with his July 2024 edition of Hop Queries, Vol. 8, No. 3 for those who are trying to collect a full set. He mentions that harvest time has begun, triggering images of golden light on hedgerow graced horse plowed scenes, perhaps mixing with Beethoven’s 6th wafting quietly in from somewhere… then – WHAMMO – the invasion of the lab-coated eggheads begins:

Scientists at Sapporo in Japan used headband sensors to measure the brainwaves of participants… The subjects reported feeling relaxed by the aromas of linalool and geraniol because they provided floral and green impressions… An increasing tendency in the rhythm regularities of the frequency fluctuations of the right frontal alpha-waves while drinking a European pilsner-type beer with aromas characterized by hops. 

HEADBAND SENSORS!!! And, for the double, Stan pointed to this number crunching post from Phil Cook on Monday but (even though I may risk breaking an unwritten weekly updating rule) I want to unpack this point in more detail – one key difference between Australian and other beer judging events:

Because there’s a list of every beer entered, not just those that win medals, we can calculate some ‘batting averages’ to better compare how each brewery fared. So, I’ve worked out each entrant’s medal percentage (MPC: how many of their beers won a medal, of any kind) and their points per entry (PPE: adding 3 for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze, then dividing by number of entries submitted). Bigger numbers are better in both cases; overall about 74% of beers entered earned a medal,2 and if your PPE was 1.00 or higher your brewery was in the top half of the competition. 

This would be a huge step towards making the results of these events more meaningful that those of the moveable buffet of the international circle of they who judge. Being able to figure out brewery top rankings as well as those surprising disappointments would be a great benefit to consumers. But who in beer puts the buyer first?

Perhaps connected, Jeff shared his thoughts on the financial perils of being a freelancer writing about the brewing trade without separate income:

Writing is a terrible way to make a living. It’s why people end up going into marketing. You could spend your days scrambling after $600 articles, or you could get a job for $60k with benefits. This is why we bleed great writers, who take their services to companies who will pay what their work is worth. It’s not just that the money’s bad—it’s also hard to get. If you could somehow stack up your articles and get a couple in every week, you could make a decent living, maybe fifty, sixty grand a year before taxes… Trying to pitch stories, and then research, report, and write a hundred of them in a year? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but again, you’d be barely making more than working at McDonald’s if you somehow enjoyed that level of “success,” which perhaps 2-3% of working freelancers enjoy.

The best line was near the end: “If you have any other choice, don’t write.” What he means (of course… or rather I hope!) is don’t write for money but this isn’t news.* Still… write. Writing a free, joyful and easy experience of expression. Scribble, jot, draft, forget and rediscover – and, yes, even submit. Just don’t think you’re going to be buying the kiddies shoes with the income.

Joyful, too, is Dave “Still No Relation” Bailey’s cartooning, also in Pellicle, which this month explored the notion of perfection.  And if you want an example of writing for joy, ATJ has been working on one particular theme quite a bit over at his Substack, that being ATJ sitting in a pub and looking at the details of the scene around him. Second or third time I read one of his I thought “hmm…now, that sounds familiar” BUT as this week’s edition testifies its his process being worked out before our eyes:

My eye was caught by a faded photo of the pub, sometime before World War I. Outside it, there stood a line of long dead regulars, mainly men, standing still, a couple smiling, the rest sombre and holding themselves stiffly as if on parade, which several years later many of them would be, ready to march off to war. A long ago day, the sun shining maybe, though given the quality of the photo it was hard to say. Bowler hats, cloth caps, none of them bareheaded for that was not how they presented themselves to the world then. I’d like to think that once the photographer finished, off the men went into the pub, glasses of ale and cider purchased and amid the hubbub there would have been little time for reflection.

Sharp stuff. And it sure beats the sort of cash-focused writing that has recently given us such gems as “deepest echelons of the industry” and “with demand being high, the category has continued to thrive, despite the sector struggling” and the astoundingly poorly thought out alleged expression of expertise “Liquids within the same ‘competitive set’ are not distinctive from one another as liquids.” Bring on the robots of A.I.! Viva Robots!!

No, I didn’t mean that. There are no robots of joy. It’s actually all around us already now if you look for joy. We see it in a long wandering piece about wandering at length. And we also see it at home as when Rachel Hendry in her emailed newsletter J’Adore Le Plonk shared some thoughts on the role and value of the leftover bottle of wine there in the kitchen that was opened a few days ago… and may have lost whatever finesse it had:

Service work should neither be seen nor paid, tends to be the general consensus and when my wine joins me in a position of domestic work I attach the same framework to it. Why add this beautiful, evocative glass of wine to my dish when I can reach for something leftover, or looked down on, fuck it, why not just add water instead? The recipe provides a role for a wine that is past its best, that may otherwise be retired down the drain and into the bin. It doesn’t, however, mean the wine isn’t important. Wine has many roles in our lives and contributor in the kitchen can be one of them. As I work through my hesitation and add a splash of my wine to the courgettes slowly melting into butter I notice I have not lost anything in the process. The wine is still mine to enjoy, I have placed value on an ingredient as I would like to be valued myself and the meal tastes better for it.

And I should have mentioned that Katie wrote a few weeks ago about trying Italian wines with any sorts of unexpected flavours to see what works for you. My tip? Chianti with roast turkey. It can have a swell cranberry vibe going on. Try a turkey and blue cheese sandwich with slices of pear and a cold glass of Chianti. Could sound weird but it works. Not this weird, mind you, but there that gets a lot going on.

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

*My full sympathies (though I might have used the phrase “good writers” to convey a sense of realism.) I wrote this in an email to Max, now eleven years ago: “It is tough. There is no money in beer writing so if that is all you have to go on… I have met with pro writers over beer and always find them bagged out and drained from the nights of PR work in pubs to keep the wolf from the door. I complained once somewhere about how craft brewers should be supporting good beer writers directly without expectation of return and this was met with howls – even from writers. Earn your way as a freelancer, said the freelancers. Suck it up and take the junkets, said those on the junkets.” Is that the macho forehead + wall thinking part of the freelancing problem?
**This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (930) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,483) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

Fine… The Dog Days Of Summer Beery News Notes Have Begun

Is it me? It’s not you… is it? No, it’s beer. When beer sales peak, the news gets a bit sleepy or at least played out as expected. LCBO strike got settled. Beer in Canada is still expensive. Biden stepped aside. The French fascists were humilated… again. Sure, the back channel comments about the winding up of GBH continue to flow in – but nothing I would share to you lot. Some write for pay. Me, I write for gossip. I think Martin captured the zeitgeist of the week perfectly with this image above from his trip to take in the delights of the Church of St Mary Magdalene in Yarm.

Which leads to the question of the week, as posed by Stan on Monday when he responded to my comment last week that I think of him as my ever absent desk editor:

I am embarrassed, flattered, and a little surprised (perhaps skeptical) by the idea he does the sifting for me. The takeaway, to his credit, is a reminder of something all writers should remember: who the heck they think they are writing for.

Who or what do you write for? The reader? The commissioning editor? The next commissioning editor? The bills? The long dead relative who told you that you’d never amount to anything? I joke about things but I really have only been writing for myself for years. The beer trade is a benign sideshow that lets me explore ideas in an innocuous way. Ideas about life, business, quality, ethics… the whole shebang. It’s all right there. By the way, did you know a shebang was a rough hut of the Civil War era or a frontier settler? Me neither. One has to be careful about certain words.

Speaking of words, Jordan was out there recently wandering lonely as a cloud, not hunting out daffodils so much as dandelions to do some unpacking, dissecting and extractions to ‘splain a thing or two:

Dandelion has GLVs (hexenol), but that is to be expected since it has green leaves. It’s complex in that the different parts of the plant have their own properties. Harold McGee refers to the component smells as “light, fresh, and watery,” but we’re thinking about the entirety of the palate and not just the aroma. In terms of aroma, we have some of the same makeup as clover. Phenylethanol and benzaldehyde. There’s also Nerolidol, which is slightly woody and barky, which makes sense when you think of the rigidity of the stem. When the stem breaks, the dandelion’s defense method is to secrete latex, which is found mostly in the root system of the plant. The latex is not only bitter, but alkaloid, and polyphenolic. If you pick a dandelion to hold under someone’s chin, you’re going to get aroma from both the flower and the stem.

Yes, yes… outside of the Greater Toronto Area kids used buttercups to hold to a chins. But the point is made. There is science right there. Smelly tasty  science. Yes, there. And there as well…. ‘s’tru’. Even if “…phenylethanol and benzaldehyde… There’s also Nerolidol… “ sounds like a particularly challenging point in a Gilbert and Sullivan libretto.

Before the doors close, GBH published an interesting story by  Yolanda Evans on the practice of giving “libation” globally and also particularly in Black American culture:

“I think hip-hop just popularized [libations] in a way where we were given the language to talk about the celebrations of life that maybe we didn’t have before,” says Gates. “It’s not specific to a particular generation—hip-hop only happened 50 years ago, while we’ve been in this country for centuries,” she adds. In some ways, the genre transformed the ritual from a private and personal thing to an act so popular it eventually became removed from its roots—eventually, people everywhere, and especially in the African-American community, would pour one out for their homies without knowing they’re performing an old boozy ritual with roots that go back several thousands of years.

The piece expands much on the 2015 article in VinePair and, for me, it’s an interesting exploration a familiar thing because we Highland Scots do it, too. But it’s part of what my Reverend father would call the greater  “heedrum hodrum” aka the pre-Christian rituals that hang on. But in that context it’s not so much about remembrance as thinning the ether between here and there, now and then. Want to have a moment with Grannie to share a thought? Pour a little of the good stuff on the ground.

Tasting note of the week: “…distressingly grey…”

Speaking of VinePair, David Jesudason wrote an interesting piece for that fine journal in which his powers are on full display. I love how he places himself in stories, rejecting that more formulaic approach that we suffer along with too often. Consider this passage:

He’s all for mixing Guinness when done well but prefers to use bottled Guinness over widget beer cans or draft kegs in pubs for logistic reasons, such as lower carbonation. “Bottled Guinness has a different bite, of course,” he adds. When I press-gang Gaurav Khanna, the publican at the desi pub Gladstone in south London, into mixing numerous Guinness with soft drinks, he at first struggles with wastage caused by the stout’s carbonation. After a few pints mixed with Irn-Bru and some Gonsters, though, he nailed it. (At the end of the session we had to negotiate hard over my tab because we lost count of the amount of Guinness that was “tasted,” drunk or discarded.)

But no mention of stout and port, 2012’s sensation. Why?

News out of the UK related to the affirmation of the new government’s intention to impliment its predecessor’s public venue protection standards in Martyn’s law. Sarah Neish in The Drinks Business shared the likely implications for pubs and other parts of the UK hospitality industry:

… premises are unlikely to be expected to undertake physical alterations or fork out for additional equipment… measures are expected to include: Evacuation – how to get people out of the building; Invacuation – how to bring people into the premises to keep them safe or how to move them to safe parts of the building; Lockdown – how to secure the premises against attackers, e.g. locking doors, closing shutters and using barriers to prevent access; and Communication – how to alert staff and customers, and move people away from danger. “Additionally staff will need to understand these measures sufficiently to carry them out if needed,” Grimsey tells db, which suggests there will need to be an element of staff training for front-of-house employees of Standard Tier venues.

Sensible stuff. These are different times. Speak of these times, Katie wrote an explanation of “underconsumption core” this week in her newsletter The Gulp, a concept which may explain my dedicate use of a dull manual rotary lawnmower:

Underconsumption core exists because even the most exuberant of haulfluencers are starting to feel the constrictions of what is basically a national money shortage. When Broccoli is £1.20 a head in Lidl (one pound twenty pence!! for broccoli!!), there are many other things that have to get cut from our monthly budgets. Nights out become more infrequent. Takeaways become frozen pizzas. Beer turns into slabs of whatever tinnies are on offer at Tesco. We do what we can to keep ourselves afloat when the weekly shop increases by more than 20% over a year.

Reality. It may be a variation on another thing – the return to basic beer. Don’t tell Forbes, by the way, which published a piece by one of the 198,349 beer columnists (no, not AI generated at all, no way) they seem to have on the payroll that offered this astounding statement:

Researchers highlighted the increasing popularity of craft beer and the emergence of more independent breweries, reflecting evolving consumer preferences, especially among younger consumers of legal drinking age in local markets. These breweries are often at the forefront of innovation, offering more flavors and styles that appeal particularly to millennials and Generation Z.

Right. Back on planet Earth, when someone not really at the core of a scene like the former style director of Esquire, Charlie Teasdale, takes the time to give craft beer a mocking kick it is starting to feel like the proper response is, what… pity?*

… like supporting a football team through a massive, slightly grubby commercial takeover, I stayed the course. I never wavered in my dedication to stupidly named pale ales and unorthodox beers. Even a jug of pseudo-craft – a beer brewed by a corporate outfit but marketed as a local endeavour – was better than, say, a Moretti or a Heineken. They were for drinkers, and I was a gourmand.

VinePair may well have gone next level… again, joining this latest pile-on according to Maggie Hennessy. And whereas Mr. Teasdale has moved back to popular lagers, Ms. H is touting something called “lifestyle” beer but mainly to beat the word “hipster” wtith a very big stick… over and over.** Strike me as all a bit of excessively early liminal labeling syndrome. Perhaps best to leave this phenomenon alone until it all settles down a bit and clarifies. By contrast, Courtney Iseman slides a more deftly phased zing in the larger context of her very comprehnensive survey of the use of rice by better brewers:

That industry maturation, and the decreased pressures of toxic fandom—no one’s boycotting your brewery anymore if you sell shares to a corporate overlord, nor if you put rice in your beer—has allowed craft brewers more freedom to find a place for the grain.

Toxic fandom! We are now a long way from the “beer community” fibbery. [Note: as stated in the story, it was the craft brewers were the ones who shit on rice but now it’s us beer buyers who were being toxic for taking up the brewers’s PR (touted by beer writers) as the great cause.] Ron don’t care. Ron is spending much of the month with family in South America. He is sending in posts from the field that look like he’s tied up the radio operator and highjacked a distant railway station deep inland, relying on only direct current and Morse Code to send out terse missives like this one entitled “Loving Santiago“:

The kids, too. We get to ride the metro everywhere. They drink beer, I drink pisco sour. We get to shiver together in the unheated pubs. It’s like being back in the 1970s. But in a good way. Montevideo tomorrow.

That’s the whole post? So unRon, Ron is being. Where the hell are the breakfast buffet photos, Ron?!?!?!

Speaking of a buffet, Rachel Hendry has studied the world of (call them what you will) thin bits of potato fried in oil and shared the extensive results in Pellicle this week. I particularly like the polite “don’t be an arsehole” notice to readers:

I have then chosen ten styles and flavours to explore within each section, with more precise pairings given as examples for each. I have defined crisps as a potato or potato adjacent snack that tends to be found behind the bar or in the crisp aisles of a shop, and I have defined beer styles as you might see indicated on the list displayed in a pub or taproom. There is only so much one woman can cover and I have forgiven myself for the detail and genres missed. I trust you to have the grace to forgive me, too.

And… when did PBR become hipster cool? I was interested for what I consider pre-hipster reasons in 2006. This 2014 HuffPost article traces the story… with graphs!

…something changed, and PBR was suddenly the hipster’s choice at bars and barbecues everywhere. Sales jumped by 20.3 percent in 2009 and continued to rise steadily over the next few years, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. By 2013, Americans drank more than 90 million gallons of PBR, according to data from Euromonitor, which is nearly 200 percent more than they did in 2004.

“Rise Steadily” is one of those hints that the tipping point people can just remain seated.

Fine. That is it. And with that this and those other thats too … now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan on the job each and every Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly soon celebrating a 10th anniversary… or really a 9 1/2th given the timeline . And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam… until… Lew’s interview! And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*h/t The Tand.
**Stan gave sound advice (see what I did there?): “I think the relationship, if there is one, between hip and hipster has me confused. Were the bike messengers who drank PBR hip, hipsters, or something else? What PBR itself ever hip?“
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… pass Mastodon (932) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,485) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

The “Remember Before We Went Through The Looking Glass?” Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Remember a month ago? Before “the” debate? Before France went right then went left faster than Gretzky ever could? Before Britain finally ditched the Tories? Before some dumb kid decided to murder Trump and just murdered someone’s Dad? Remember before everything went sideways? Well, except for England losing in fitba… again. Thank God somethings never change. Like bees. Bees don’t care. As I witnessed the other day in the zucchini patch. They just undertake some sort of death battle for pollen from time to time, mindlessly fighting and stinging each other for survival. Isn’t nature wonderful.

First up, Pete Brown was provided a number of bolts of broadcloth to set out his thoughts on the state of CAMRA this week in The Times. It is an excellent piece and even a bit of an artifact in terms of the rare access to the pulpit. I particularly like this paragraph that goes to the heart of the organization:

And Camra saved that culture in a uniquely British way. Whatever else cask ale is, to thousands of campaigners and volunteers it’s a hobby. And as George Orwell once observed, we are a nation of hobbyists — “of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans”. Camra is an organisation of amateurs and enthusiasts. Some are eccentric, some are pub bores, some are cliquey. But they always turn up. Others are charismatic, engaging and keen to welcome anyone who might be persuaded to share their interests. Everyone I speak to inside the organisation describes Camra as a family. If they’re frustrated with it, for most, it’s the type of frustration you feel for an annoying sibling who you will defend to the death.

In North America someone might have chosen the phrase “grassroot” but remember those roots in that conception stay in the dark serving the showy fronds above. Not so in the image Pete paints. For him, it’s an organization for people. Not “The People” – just people. All sorts of people. Great point.

Speaking of a sort of people, The Beer Nut wrote about the gulf between hype and quality. Let me spoil his conclusion without revealing the subjects of his study:

If the road through hype leads to refined and high quality beers like (most of) this lot, then perhaps it’s tolerable. And I’m glad that both of these breweries are still turning out great stuff even when their praises are no longer being sung hourly on social media.

Speaking of praises not being sung, Jordan updated the news on Ontario’s LCBO workers strike on his periodically irregular update on the provincial scene adding an interesting observation to the news shared last week of grocers’ disinterest in the new deal:

This might not go quite as well as the premier seems to think. Under the new plan, grocery stores are staying away in droves because they don’t want to have to deal with returns of bottles and cans. The margin they make on beer and wine sales would be eaten away by it. Probably, the margin they make is eaten away by planogramming. Look at the picture above from a midtown Toronto Loblaws from day four of the strike. They’re using the beer fridge for margarine and the selection is down to about five items. It wouldn’t surprise me if the number of grocery retailers actually drops this year.

Butter and margarine in the beer aisle, folks. Butter and margarine. But little wine in some spots. And a rollout by the government that appears to be being rewritten day by day.

BREAKING NEWS FROM SCOTLAND: “WHIT? No Vitamin T???”

Jeff had a portrait of Czech polotmavý published in Craft Beer & Brewing (a style of beer I have enjoyed after ordering a mixed two-four to be delivered from Godspeed) and pointed out a bit of a puzzle in the chronology:

… to connect the dots from märzen, granát, or Vienna lager—another style that some have cited as a precursor—to polotmavý, you have to skip decades in the historical record. When I ask Czech brewers and experts where (and when) polotmavý came from, I get something like a collective shrug. More than a century ago, Bohemians were making amber lagers—and a few decades ago, they were making polotmavý. In between, no one seems to know what happened.

I wish the crack team at CB+B avoided concepts like “mysteries” which is the neighbour of “magical” even if in this case it does not relate to that most tedious of applications – the brewing science mystery. Those claims put the “moron” back in “oyxmoron.” But here it is different. Here there is a gap in the records. A conundrum perhaps. Yes, a conumdrum mixed with an interlude of Soviet authoritarianism.  Which does have that hint of “The Third Man” so… fine. A mystery. Yet, as Evan noted in 2009, Ron had previously noted* that polotmavý were an amber lager “roughly in the Vienna style” and that:

Vienna lagers aren’t dead: they’ve just moved over the border. No country produces such a range of amber (polotmavé pivo) and dark lagers (tmavé pivo) as the Czech Republic. I can’t quite understand why no-one has twigged this yet.

Well, we’ve twigged now, Ron! I have it delivered. And… I might point out… they didn’t move over the border so much as the borders moved around them. Maps redrawn and all that. Did I ever mention that as a lad, when visting Grannie, I stayed in a small hotel run by friends of the family and had breakfast every morning with an older gent who, in the First World War, had fought the Austrio-Hungarian navy in the Adriatic? I have? Oh. Nevermind.

Pellicle‘s feature this week is by Fred Garratt-Stanley and is about the loss of pool tables in London’s pubs. I love me a pub game and have an entire category of posts dedicated to the concept… which I haven’t updated since 2011… no, 2017! Anyway, I’ve spent a pleasant afternoon playing pool in a London pub so anyone who is rooting for that has my vote. What is to blame for the loss? Money:

Costs vary depending on whether pubs opt for bog-standard tables or high-end ones more suited to league competitions. At Ivor Thomas, it’s £10 a week plus VAT for the former and £20 for the latter, but this is cheaper than most, with some pubs reportedly paying over £20 a week.  A week’s fee can be recouped in one busy evening, while plenty of extra cash is accumulated from drinks sales. But an increased emphasis on food in many pubs has changed the landscape. Writing for the Financial Times Jimmy McIntosh reports that, according to the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), “from March 2022 to March 2023, the number of wet-leds declined by 3.1 per cent, as opposed to food-focused taverns, whose number dwindled by 2.2 per cent.” 

Regular reader and archaeologist Merryn Dineley pointed us towards a very interesting news related to another sort of food stuff storage.  Based on the premise that “beer brewing is difficult to identify in the archaeological record” the authors explain how residues of beerstone as found in clay pot can be used. The study’s abstract as published in the Journal of Archaeological Science concludes:

In comparison to ungerminated and germinated barley grains, we find that beerstone preserves only a subset of the barley proteome, with the residue being more reflective of the final brewing product than of earlier brewing steps such as malting. Overall, we demonstrate that beerstone has potential to entrap and preserve proteins reflective of the beer-making process and identify proteins that we might anticipate in future archaeological analyses.

Got that? Good. Speaking of good, at the end of last week we heard from Will Hawks and his London Beer City project. Not a newsletter. A project. In this edition, he wondered which pub he should hit before an AC/DC concert and in doing so paints a picture of the jumbly sort of pub I’d much prefer over most of those pub-porny protraits all those other folk write about:

You go to De Hems, Soho’s Dutch-ish pub, because it’s recently been renovated and it’s really close to somewhere else you want to go (of which more later).  At 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon it’s busy-ish, mostly with men in pre-Covid business wear: ill-fitting suits, no ties, a smattering of skinny-fit v-neck jumpers. Most of them will not see 45 again. There’s a big TV on in the corner – it’s showing the Tour de France, where Mark Cavendish is about to win a record 35th stage – and there are high tables (boo hiss) around the front section of the bar… the floor is dark wood and the ceiling a sort of dried-blood colour that looks like it’s been there a while. There’s a lot of ageing beer memorabilia on the walls, and some Dutch stuff too, including a Holland football shirt in the corner.

Sweet! Finally, Boak and Bailey wrote in their monthly Substack newsletter about the state of beer writing. I won’t repeat what’s been said but I would point out one thing. “Beer writing” is a thing that only exists in a small fish bowl. ATJ rejects the term for himself. He is a writer (and on form this week, too). So (watch me taking perhaps a mid-sized logical leap) when B+B state “there are too many really good beer writers, and simply not enough outlets for their work” I don’t think I can agree. Or maybe I do. If they mean there are “too many really good writers writing about beer” I have to disagree. Show the me the novels, the essays in a range of periodicals, the CVs with a wide range of seriously and well received writing. not the filler. Some qualify. Others don’t. But if they mean “many really good beer writers” we have to ask ourselves this: what is this narrower thing, the “beer writer“? The phrase has always reminded me of that chestnut “craft beer community” and the circle of affirmation that is so unlike the messy complicated and increasingly inclusive CAMRA Pete describes above. The question then moves to the even narrower phrase “professional beer writers” which they define as those trying to pay a mortgage from income. By that standard, all people who are paid are “professionals.” Which leads one to other words. One commentator responding to social media outreach wrote them about one particular word:

I was a freelance journalist for several years. I guess fundamentally I don’t really think of beer journalism as A Thing, as opposed to “that blogger I used to read, only now he’s got a byline, good luck to him I guess”.

“Top Ten Beers For Summer” journalism anyone? (“It goes with salad!” Amazeballs.) We also see “expert” a bit too generously applied in a similar fashion, too,** even though we know there are some actual experts each in their specific areas related to some corner of the wide world of brewing. What do we take from all this? It is possible that scribblers’ personal dreams of an achievable goal got ahead of actual capability and capacity? Does that cause unfair marketplace where those who are established and have an “in” are heard while others (the often more interesting) are left out? I wonder. There’s plenty of good and plenty of not good. I sift. See, me? I read about beer every week. For this here website. For you. Well, for Stan. You others, too, but between you and me I think of Stan as the managing editor who is oddly never seems to be there at the desk, still not back from lunch who, once in a while, still drops off a sticky note.***

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

*Ron’s source code says the page was written 2004 to 2010.
**Is there a fine line? Consider this observation from  wine writer, Jason Wilson: “I remember arriving at the grand tasting in Montalcino for the release of the 2014 Brunellos. Early grumbling had already labeled 2014 as “challenging,” which is the wine world’s euphemism for “shitty.” We were to taste all day, through dozens of wines, at our own pace. I arrived at the event about an hour after the doors opened and sat down. Before I had even taken a sip, or written a note, an American wine writer I knew waved, came over and, by way of greeting, said, “Ah, I can’t believe you came all the way over here to taste the 2014s. They’re shit.” Apparently, he’d already tasted more than 100 wines in the previous hour, and already rendered his judgment. I don’t know what he did with the rest of his work day.“
***Me – “a high-involvement reader“!?! Certainly gave me airs.
****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (930) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,483) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (160), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

Only One Thing Overshadows Eurovision… Could It Be These Thursday Beery News Notes?

Hmm… on the one hand international entertainment with, yes, a limited number of perhaps well worn themes played out, yes, over and over and over. On the other… Eurovision! It’s big. This here beer blog? Not so much. There is an overlap, however, as The Beer Ladies Podcast have a primer. They’re a bit into it: “Our own Katie and Lisa are jetting over to Malmö to revel in the madness…” And The Beer Nut will no doubt be live tweeting the formation of the next day’s piercing hangover, likely as illustrated. There is only one thing bigger – Stan is back. He never lets me take a week off. Stan wants a month away? Stan gets a month away. Me? I write this blog.

What is going on out there?  The big news or, as Ron put it, the great news is the relocation for a remaining Burton Union set from Marston’s Brewery, the traditional brewing system that Laura Hadland discussed last February as being mothballed. Pete Brown shared his thoughts at The Drinks Business:

This week, it’s been announced that Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) has given a set of the famous Burton Unions to Thornbridge…, and is helping the Derbyshire craft brewery get it up and running. This has sent some much-needed cheer through the craft brewing world. Why does this matter? Once upon a time, Burton-on-Trent was the most important brewing town on the planet. And by the middle of the 19th century, most beer in Burton was being fermented on the town’s eponymous Union Sets. The unions were a system of barrels, pipes and troughs, basically an adventure playground for fermenting yeast. The yeast had loads of fun, foaming through the pipes and running down the trough and back into the barrels from which it had spouted. The belief was that happy yeast made better beer.

The Tand shared his initial reaction too: “A cynic might just think that multinational brewing companies care little for either history or cask beer, and this is a cheap way to put a slightly embarrassing problem to bed and come out of it looking rather good.” I entirely agree… but do the yeast care one way or the other? Well, yes, of course… if the alternative is extinction!

And congratulations were also earned by Pellicle this week for this announcement:

We are not sure how this has happened, but we are very honoured, and a little taken aback to have been nominated in the Best Magazine section in this years @GuildFoodWriter awards. Against The Guardian. And the National Geographic. This is nuts. 

Boak and Bailey analyzed the recent news the Buxton Brewery teetering towards administration and focused in on the problem with being “merely quite good”:

This is what we think sometimes happens with breweries like Buxton. They’re not bad enough to have anything specific to fix, but not good enough to generate word-of-mouth enthusiasm. People don’t mind drinking their beer, but they don’t seek it out, or detour to drink it. They might have one pint but won’t stick on it for a session, or stay in a pub to have one more pint than they ought to. And they won’t order it by the box from the brewery shop.

And continuing with the good news / bad news, a statement was made this week by Hadrian Border Brewery about a contract brewing deal gone very wrong:

THEY WON’T PAY. No disputes on product or services! By November 2023, we had no more head space for it, it was making us ill, so we passed the case to a Debt Collection Agency…  

Quite right to call the deadbeats out publicly. But… gee… was “posting this on such a platform is detrimental for the beer industry“? No, not talking about things like this is detrimental. As is not talking about how so much of non-alcoholic beer is a let down… except perhaps for its perhaps natural audience according to the New York Times – children:

…more and more he has noticed children asking for nonalcholic drinks. “It’s not exactly daily, but more than weekly,” he said. The restaurant, which sits inside Saks Fifth Avenue, has two spirit-free concoctions on the menu…  He ultimately decided that while it still feels a little strange to serve the sophisticated beverages to children, it felt satisfying to contribute to family dining experiences “in an interesting way.” As nonalcoholic cocktails, wines and beers have become staples on bar menus across America, some children — people way under the legal drinking age — have begun to partake.

Not that there is any meaning left, but that’s one new twist on the “small” in small, independent and traditional, I suppose. Sorta like this take on the role of the trad:

Novonesis is a leading global biosolutions company formed through a combination of Chr. Hansen and Novozymes. It creates biosolutions for all types of industries. from nutrition and biofuel to chemicals, energy and water. Novonesis’ SmartBev range offers yeast solutions for low/no-alcohol and regular beer. The range includes both unique yeast solutions, like its NEER products, as well as lactic acid bacteria solutions, such as those used in its Harvest range. The company was pushing these products at CBC 2024 — especially its NA alternatives — which Guillory sees as a rapidly growing segment in the last 12 months.  

Mmmm…. biosolutions.* That’s what I am looking for in my glass. Speaking of the world of chem, Ed Himself once again shared some thoughts from the tech side of brewing gleened from his trip to the Murphys Brewery in Cork Ireland, owned by Heineken since 1983:

They can do 12 six tonne brews a day in it in two lauter tuns. Heineken, Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish are brewed there, the stouts being perhaps four brews out of a weekly 35-40. Cider is also made there from sugar and concentrate. They can mash every two hours and ten minutes, lautering takes three house. They have a holding vessel between the lauters and the copper, and unusually the yeast propagation plant is in the Hauppmann brewhouse. Overall extract losses are less than 7%. They have heat recovery on the stack on the copper and a heat recovery tank holds hot water which is used to pre-heat the wort via a Plate Heat Exchanger. They have four 120 tonne malt silos and…

Yeow. Right about there my brain started to hurt. Like it hurts when the kids were in high school and asked me to help with their math homework.

BREAKING: Ron had breakfast.

Beth Demmon is back with another Prohibitchin’ this time featuring the career arc of Maura Hardman, now Seattle Cider Company’s marketing and PR manager – including this tidbit of transitional good luch from her previous stint with Whole Foods:

It was during her time there she first found out about Seattle Cider Company, via their partnership with the local nonprofit City Fruit. “They’d take their ugly apples, crab apples, things that can’t be used for their CSA program or food bank program and put them into cider,” she explains. Whole Foods then sold the City Fruit ciders and sponsored the Seattle Cider Summit, so she began to learn about and appreciate the beverage as a fan. But appreciating cider was one thing. Working in the industry? It hadn’t even occurred to her.

And David Jesudason shared the story of Melba Wilson, an American who moved to London in 1977 – and how she had to “endure a shocking ordeal” in a pub just twenty years ago:

“He was surrounded by his squaddie buddies, so I guess he felt emboldened to carry on. He stopped after a while, I went up to him and looked at him. He didn’t show any signs of remorse. The other customers weren’t treating him negatively – it was like they thought you could get away with saying that in a country pub if there was only one black person around. “It was one of those incidents where you’re shocked that somebody is doing it and then you think ‘how am I going to challenge this?’ I said to my husband: ‘did you hear what he said?’ and I wanted to complain.”

The stunning bluntness of senseless bigotry. Saddest part: “I believe racism – overt or covert – has risen since the noughties.”

On a far less serious topic, Jessica Mason reporting live from the SIBA press conference:

Scary stats: “24% of drinkers NEVER visit their local; 41% WOULD VISIT if prices were lower; 25% of drinkers say NOTHING would make them visit more often & 8% of drinkers choose a pub because of the indie craft beer it stocks.”

And less important still, I am not even sure I have the energy to lift my hands to the keyboard to report on the news that James Watt has shuffled the deck of name plates and has swapped out CEO while retaining his shares, the board seat and adding a new title that makes no sense – captain. Best line was in the Guardian:

He will now be replaced by the company’s chief operating officer, James Arrow, who is expected to focus on returning the loss-making company to profit.

Confused? Imagine my state of mind when Liam gave me hope of a Battledore revival. Because Goldthorpe. Because Goldthorpe may be Sprat. Which may be Battledore. Maybe. But there may actually be Goldthorpes. Maybe.

Speaking of things not appearing as they are, so much for the Euro lifestyle thing as Latvia is moving its legal drinking age from 18 to 20… and the brewing trade lobbyists are lobbying:

…chairman of Saeima’s Social and Employment Matters Committee Andris Bērziņš, [stated] certain coalition and, possibly, opposition deputies may propose excluding beer, cider and wine from the list of alcoholic beverages to be applied with new age restrictions. Bērziņš said he doesn’t support this proposal, as the proposed exception for beverages with a lower content of alcohol does not match the Saeima’s recently passed regulations on the handling of cigarettes, which states how as of 2025 only persons of 20 years of age will be allowed to purchase tobacco products.

And nearby-ish in Germany, access to that friend of the drunk night out – doner kebabs – has become a hot economic policy topic:

Kathi Gebel, the youth policy spokesperson on the board of the Left Party, told Business Insider…  said the government “must intervene to prevent food from becoming a luxury item.” The party plans to propose a government price cap of €4.90 (around $5.30) or €2.90 (around $3.10) for young people, The Guardian reported… [T]he German government said in February that prices of the doner kebab are rising because of rising wages and energy costs… Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the issue in the past, saying that he is asked by young people “everywhere I go” if there should be a price reduction for doner kebabs, according to the outlet.

Finally, once upon a time, people actually paid me actual money to place ads on this here blog. One of those ads was for faux-esque Worthington’s White Shield.** There it is to the right. The little white square to the lower left of a screen shot from early 2007. From the emails I can see that I had to explain PayPal to the PR rep, Danny. Well that fact and Danny’s later emailed disappointment at the results of his hard earned cash placement didn’t make it to the story Pete Brown filed for Pellicle this week but he covered the rest of the issues surrounding of the great beer’s demise admirably:

Molson Coors don’t understand British ale, and of all the big global brewers, they’re the ones who haven’t really got craft beer either. The real reason they “paused” production of White Shield had nothing to do with “production routes.” It was a marketing decision. There are good people working at Molson Coors who adored this beer, but from a corporate perspective, once the company stopped ignoring it, and once Steve Wellington retired for the final time, they didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Turning a completely invented fake Spanish lager into the most successful beer launch in British history? No problem. Continue the production of a legend to satisfy legions of discerning fans across the world? Nah, too difficult, mate.

Such is the way of the world. Still, that 300 USD for the three months of the ad sure was handy at the time. Thanks Molson-Coors!

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

*ever since some guy at work started calling the ten minute ciggie timeouts during day long meetings “bio-breaks” I just can’t see the world in the same way.
**Note the apostrophe – Worthington’s White Shield.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (slumoing to 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up t0 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The “Happy Birthday To Me!” Edition Of These Beery News Notes

Well, well, well. I entered the first day of my 62nd year today. No trauma. No big plans. Not like when you hit 25 or 40. Those were panicky birthdays. Feeling like middle age is coming too fast. Now that it is here… who cares? All one has to do is consider the alternative and sliding that bit closer to two-thirds of a century is mighty fine by me. Change is everything. Even the bird feeders are put away now. Winter is not coming. Not quite yet. So have one for me if you are having any at all. I’ll be the one gorging on cake.

First up, some very good news. In 2015, the world of good beer in California at least faced a stark reality – the water was running out. I noted that UC Davis had started a  California Drought Watch program which includes considerations for the brewing industry. So it was good this week to read this update on the situation:

California’s water storage is at its healthiest levels in over a decade. Virtually every major reservoir in the state has average to above-average storage, with a substantial 115% of average snowpack still to melt. The last two years have been an amazing reprieve from the multiple brutal, record-breaking droughts that have plagued the state in the last decade.

What else? Hmm… Jeff wrote this in his last emailed weekend update : “It was a quiet week and I can’t think of much to say up…” Double hmm… and Boak and Bailey in their Patreon footnotes: “We were quite thrown by the lack of a substantial news story this week.” I can’t believe it! There’s gotta be something to read!!

Sorta breaking all the rules*, I see that Ron wrote a wonderful piece about the serial relationship he’s had with his locals… plural. They come and go but something has to come along with each if it is going to qualify. He’s currently on the hunt:

Last Saturday was or third time there. Not really giving me a local vibe yet. But that takes time to build. Harder to bear is the lack of draught Mild and Stout. Especially Headroom. A beer that took me closer to the 19th century with every sip. Weihenstapher Dunkles Weissbier is OK. But three of four pints is enough. And Checkpoint Charlie does sell korenwijn. Drinablke jenever. Not like the industrial cleaner called jonge jenever. The presence of a pool table and pinball machine mean Alexei is much more likely to come along. And reminded me of a previous local.

Katie also wrote about pubs this week in her newsletter The Gulp sharing her thoughts on children in pubs… like Ron’s kids… who grew up in pubs… I suppose:

…in my experience, the people who claim to hate children, and make a big deal out of this fact about themselves, are younger. They are around 20-35 years old, and they invariably claim to like dogs better. Of course, personal choice is absolutely valid. It shows that they prefer unconditional love. Who doesn’t? What I find distasteful is the absolute disdain for children and their existence anywhere near their personal space. It’s brutally Victorian. It’s outmoded. It’s—I’m going to say it—it’s selfish. Selfish in the true sense of the word, of only thinking of one’s self. The problem is, pubs are not made just for one individual’s comfort. They are places of socialisation and congregation…

(You know, I am not sure that personal choice is always valid… but then again I used to practice divorce law and criminal law. Bad choices exist. Really really bad one.) But back to Katie’s point which is entirely valid – if you teach kids that pubs aren’t for them, well, you will graduate cohorts of young adults who have learned that pubs aren’t for them.

Speaking of choices, the stats released by the BA on US craft beer’s 2023 seem to have been worked pretty hard to find a positive glint to focus upon:

The top-five craft players included, D. G. Yuengling & Son, Boston Beer Co., Sierra Nevada Company, Duvel Moortgat and Gambrinus, while the leading brewing companies included Anheuser-Busch Inc, Molson Coors, Constellation, Heineken and Pabst Brewing Company. Despite craft production decline in the US, the number of operating breweries in the craft space hit “an all time high”, up 1.37% on 2022 to 9,683. These breweries were comprised of 3,900 taproom breweries, 3,467 brewpubs, 2,071 microbreweries, and 245 regional craft breweries. Craft-brewery closure rates however increased again in 2023 from 3% to “approximately 4%”. The US saw 495 openings in 2023, a 9.8% dip on 2022, while closures increased 31% with 418 breweries shutting up shop.

Add to that the conglomerates and businesses focused on drinks other than actual beer, there is a lot of shaping going on. Closures up, openings down but the number of operating breweries in the craft space hit “an all time high”! Lordy.

David Jesudason shared a tale in his newsletter that he foreshadowed this way: “…despite the subject matter it’s quite amusing.” It’s the story of a charmless man:

He barred people for a lot of class-based reasons which seem bizarre today. One of his biggest annoyances were people who wore braces – calling them “hideous apparel worn by grubby people and are offensive to me and other customers”. In fact, a lot of the reasons for barring people were ridiculous, like in 1973 he threw out a group of drinkers for wearing nuclear disarmament badges.  Tickell did, however, have no problem with rightwing political messaging and he proudly displayed two signs behind the bar – “Hands of Rhodesia” and “Keep the Falklands British”. He also gave speeches to local trade bodies – wearing a monocle around his neck and gold cufflinks – criticising customers who wanted chips with every meal and ate “deep freeze food and foreign-sounding fare”.

Braces!! The man knew nothing.** Then again, no one is useless – they can serve as a bad example.

And Jacob Smith wrote a bit of a semi-contrarian opinion piece for Pellicle this week suggesting that Britain’s community ownerd pubs are no answer in many cases:

In a 2022 report, the Plunkett Foundation, a charity which helps rural communities in Britain to create and run community-owned businesses, reported that only one in 12 rural community-owned pub projects reached trading status. That means 91.7% of all rural community ownership pub bids failed without ever pouring a pint. These failed bids are rarely, if ever, highlighted by mainstream media. And while it’s human nature to focus on the winners and allow the also-rans the dignity of anonymity, such blatant survivorship bias risks distorting our perception. If we’re not careful, soon everybody looks set to become the next Beyoncé.

I had questioned that this sort of use of “mainstream media”*** is a bit meaningless – and perhaps a manufactured strawman now that I think of it – given folk from Roger Protz to Boak and Bailey have also waived the “save the pub!” banner. Being involved with community organizations in a number of ways, it’s true many fail but we don’t need to look to big bad outside forces for why that occurs. As Jacob points out in parallel, locla factors like the involvement of difficult personalities can often but simply overwhelm the collective goal.

Sorta building on something I read about last year, I shared that story of how one building in San Francisco was capturing waste water which was passed to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co in San Carlos California to brew a beer. In something of a closing of the bio-eco loop, this week we learned from Jessica Mason that researchers in Singapore have found a way to extract proteins from spent brewing mash for human consumption:

The researchers also said that the extraction method would also help mitigate a possible protein shortage due to a forecast 73% increase in meat consumption by the year 2050 which has been predicted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN to occur amidst the future rapid growth of the global population. The NTU researchers also revealed that the proteins extracted from the brewers’ spent grains were found to be rich in antioxidants, which could not only protect human skin from pollutants but could also potentially extend the shelf life of cosmetics and skincare products.

That is sorta cool. Stan may be on holiday this month, including a stop at the Craft Brewing Conference in Las Vegas, but I found his latest issue of Hop Queries waiting on the front stoop when I stepped outside with my cup of coffee last Saturday morning. It includes that chart to the right which is cunningly identified as “the second chart”:

The second chart (clicking on it should enlarge it a bit)**** provides another way to look at genetic distancing. In this one (a two-dimensional principal coordinate analysis), the country of cultivar origin is represented by: Germany green triangle, Czech green square, UK green square with x, France green circle, Poland green triangle outlined, Slovenia green circle with x, Australia blue circle, New Zealand blue square, USA red circle, South Africa black circle. The research establishes the value of utilizing molecular genetic methods for “reliable cultivar identification or the evaluation of genetic variability and similarity by hierarchical cluster analysis and principal coordinate analysis.” 

Do I understand every word? No. But one gets the point. There are, as Stan says, relationships that should be understood to be going back through cultivar to landrace to wild. Maybe.

Speaking of the CBC Vegas, Courtney Iseman in her latest Huggering the Bar shared some tips for attendees seeking a decent beer in a land known for other things:

If you can’t get off the Strip but want a craft beer, your best bet is honestly to grab a tall boy from a convenience store. You won’t find much selection at casinos and you’ll pay stadium prices, predictably. Not too far of a walk (more on this in a sec) is Ellis Island. This hotel + casino is one of the most depressing I’ve been to, but! Stay with me and persevere through the casino part to The Front Yard, a bar and restaurant nice enough to feel completely disjointed from the rest of the hotel. Ellis Island brews its own beer, and it’s pretty great, based on the lager and Berliner weisse (for which they have a few different syrups) we had. If you want lunch and good, affordable, local craft beer, you could do a lot worse.

I read a nice little vignette from Jason Wilson in Everyday Drinking, the story of a starting a small sleepy wine cellar to last until retirement from someone in South Jersey who is now 86:

Pierre acquired much of his collection at one liquor store in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, one that also sold cigarettes and lottery tickets. “I got lucky,” Pierre said. “ “When I first built my wine cellar, that’s when the 1982s were just coming out… you could still occasionally find a knowledgeable, passionate wine person in a standard-issue liquor store. “I was lucky that I had a guy,” Pierre said. “I used to subscribe to the Wine Spectator, and I had a wine encyclopedia. But the guy at my local store knew what was good.” The wines at this tasting had been cellared well. Pierre does not have a fancy, custom-made wine cellar. “It’s all natural, three sides dirt and one stone wall. When I built the house, it was going to be a crawl space, but I said, ‘No, no, let’s make it a wine cellar.’” He added: “I’ve never had a bad bottle that’s been stored there.”

Jeff wrote a bit of a tough personal piece on his family’s life with alcohol this week – which starts with a surprise:

“Let me see my little Susan!” Mom recalls saying. Before ultrasounds existed, predicting a baby’s sex was apparently a primitive exercise, and my mother’s doctor got it wrong. The nurse held me aloft, announcing instead the arrival of little “Johnny.” It hadn’t occurred to Mom to have a boy’s name at the ready, so for a week I was Baby Gorostiza. She has never been sure why she chose Jeff, and used to joke that with a bit more warning she’d have probably named me David.

One of my favorite stories in beer is the nice tale of an historic beer recreation that turns out to avoid the actual characteristics of the historic beer… like this:

Brewing beer from bread is not without its challenges. “Early beers probably were a little bit bitty and maybe like an alcoholic porridge,” Ziane says. The method took some adapting – including an industrial shredder to crumb the bread slices, and rice hulls to prevent the bread from becoming an impenetrable sponge in the tank. The recipe Toast settled on replaces 25% of the grain with bread. In doing so, it replaces 25% of the carbon, water and land needed to grow the grain.

Finally, in what is really a challenging footrace despite there being only one competitor there was news from ParksWatchScotland of one of the more pathetic results from a BrewDog self-promotion project… with the added twist of a waste of significant public funding:

In mid-February I described how many of the trees planted by BrewDog, as part of the Phase I creation of its Lost Forest, had died and how they appeared to be investing little, if any, of their own money in the whole disastrous project.  A week after the post I received a response from Scottish Forestry to an information request I had submitted in December about the number of trees that had died, any related correspondence with BrewDog or their agents and the amount of forestry grant they had disbursed to date. The response stated Scottish Forestry had paid BrewDog £690,986.90 to date and confirmed that a very high proportion of the planted trees had died…

The anti-Midas touch, as usual. With that, again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 127) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (down one to 916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (161), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

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

*Boak and Bailey had already noted this one which leads to consideration of this from the B+B footnotes last week: “(…on one unlinked story in the main article…) …certainly worth a read, especially if you have an emotional connection to Rhode Island. And Alan had already flagged it anyway, which is sometimes a consideration….” (…on another unlinked story in the main article…) “…the rest of the piece felt a bit like a sales pitch, as brewery profiles with access to the subjects can tend to do. And Alan had already flagged it anyway. Again.” This has been a heretofor an undiscussed phenomenon. I actually do like to not link on Wednesday evening to something that Boak and Bailey will no doubt mention Saturday morning. Reminds me of how when playing soccer or road hockey and I pathetically missed a pass sent my way – and then a teammate made more of the opportunity I ever could have… pals praising sarcastically with a “Well Left!!!” cheer. 
**I unashamedly share my supplier, Albert Thurston. Seriously. Buy yourself a couple of sets along with a few buttons and you have enough for a lifetime. You spend more on a pair of boots. Maybe I’ll spend my birthday money and buy a fourth set… you are sending birthday money, right? Right?!?!??
***The word “media” appears eight times. Is no one else to blame? Is there even any need to blame?
****Sure did. Stan no lie.

Well, That Was The Eclipse That Was… And Now Here Are The Beery News Notes

No throngs showed up apparently. It was even fairly quiet. But that thing in the sky was up there with the most amazeballs things I’ve ever seen. Certainly that I’ve seen from the backyard. As illustrated with a far better camera than the one that tried to capture my view of my new pal and master Sauron, via our actual eyeballs we could see two solar flares clear as day… except it wasn’t day… yet it was. We may have seen the out of focus lighting effect just for a moment and the seagulls had a pretty hard time of it, swirling overhead all through totality.  Here’s a video or two of the shadow of the moon passing across our fair city by the lake which really gives the sense of how there wasn’t anything like dusk, just diminishing light – whammo – dark and back to a return to light. See you all in 2399 AD… or whenever the next one is. Back to your regularly scheduled gardening notes next week.

Beer? Beer! Let’s go!! In all the grim news shared about the effect of Brexit on the UK brewing industry, this bit of a fact in an article in The Guardian is quite telling on the actual effect of the departure on the UK economy despite other indicators:

This, industry figures said, ignores the wider burden on brewers, including Britain’s departure from the EU, which has brought with it administrative hurdles that have added to the cost of importing ingredients and all but wiped out opportunities for export. At Charles Faram, getting British hops into Europe has become more complicated, at the expense of British jobs. Corbett said: “We’ve set up a company in Poland to facilitate that, shipping in bulk and distributing to the EU. We’re employing people in Poland to do the work we used to do here.”

Note: by “the work we used to do here” Corbett may mean “the work they used to do here.” That’s a bit amazeballs, too. The company followed the displaced workforce. Speaking of unsupportable policy decisions, I was unaware (given the constant flow of annoncements about beerfests at every second UK street corner) that some beer fests are actually are refused permission, like this one which faced a litany of objections* according to this BBC report:

Greater Manchester Police and council licensing officers objected to the Craft Beer Festival going ahead… The force believed there was a risk of “traffic chaos”, which organisers said would be prevented by asking people not to use their cars to get there. They also objected to the amount of toilets available – 25 toilet facilities for 460 ticket holders – which they thought could lead to public urination… PC Alan Isherwood said their biggest fear was how overcrowding would be “dealt with”… Licensing officers added their worry over “three days of noise nuisance” for residents with “the nearest property only 230ft (70m) away”…

Far more agreeably and right after last Thursday’s deadline to send these news notes to the press, Boak and Bailey posted a really entertaining collection of pub vignettes from their recent reading, like the voices of Welsh miners singing or the case of a pub that stradled a county line:

Some years ago the Wortham constable was about to arrest a man who had gone to earth in the inn after a poaching or similar minor offence. As it happened the wrong-doer was in the Wortham part of the house when the constable approached; but receiving warning he quickly slipped into the bar on the Burgate side, thus putting himself outside the constable’s jurisdiction.

In the latest science news update from under the microscope, Lars gave us the heads up over the weekend that a new study from Canada’s Escarpment Labs shows that the farmhouse yeast he has been stufying  forms one big and separate family of yeast titled rather generally as “European farmhouse yeast” as Lars summarizes:

The big finding is that group you see in the upper middle: a large group of farmhouse yeasts all next to each other. Yeasts from the kveik, gong, and berm areas as well as the Baltic all group right next to each other, with nothing else in between. The conclusion is that European farmhouse yeast is a separate family of yeast. Farmhouse yeast really is a separate type of yeast. And that family spans Norway, Latvia, and Lithuania, at least. I’ve been using the term “farmhouse yeast” for many years now, and now we learn that it’s not just a functional category (like bread yeast, or wine yeast), but it’s also a genetic family, a type of yeast.

For the double, announced speaker Lars has also shared some information on the prospects of the August 2024 Historic Brew Con being planned in Manchester by sharing this post from BeerNouveau:

Apart from having to postpone because we lost our venue, twice, and then the whole COVID thing, everything has been pretty smooth so far. Except ticket sales. Tickets have been on sale now for a couple of months and we haven’t sold enough to cover costs. A lot of people have said that they’ll be getting tickets, and if everyone who said they would did, then we’d likely be fine. But I can tell you now, if we don’t sell enough tickets in the next five weeks we’re going to have to cancel the event. There would still be eight or nine weeks before it went ahead, but there’s non-refundable deposits to pay, accommodation and travel to arrange, and a whole load of other costs that we have to stump up for before the conference starts.

I am not sure if there is a live feed option being offered but I had reached out a few months about about submitting papers, something I like as an option with an academic gathering. I did not hear back.

Slightly to the left on the map of the British Isles, Katie in her wonderful newsletter The Gulp shared an excellent glimpse of the ecosystem abord a ferry to the Isle of Man with particular stylish attention to its wee bar:

The bar on board the Manxman truly believes you are on a cruise. It gestures to the bar stools around a mood-lit console table, and wonders why you are not wearing a cocktail dress. The seating is a realistic shade of leather. Take in the atmosphere, make yourself comfortable. Prepare to disembark in an hour or two.

Here’s a thing I did not know. The Masters golf tournament has it’s own beer – and there isn’t much else known about it:

Crow’s Nest is a proprietary blend brewed exclusively for the Masters and not even available during the regular club season (which makes it that much cooler). It’s light, refreshing and tastes good, especially for parched golf fans wanting to fuel up after hiking up and down Amen Corner. It’s $5 and comes in a 20-ounce green commemorative cup, complete with italic Crow’s Nest text sandwiched between graphics of the tournament logo and the other Crow’s Nest (the one amateurs bunk in above the clubhouse). The brew is such a star, it even has its own shirt in the Masters Golf Shop. You think the domestic beer can claim that? Please.

Staying in the US of A, it’s been a difficult patch for the former beer focused firm, Boston Beer Co. according to one bot**:

Boston Beer Co’s revenue growth over a period of 3 months has faced challenges. As of 31 December, 2023, the company experienced a revenue decline of approximately -12.02%. This indicates a decrease in the company’s top-line earnings. When compared to others in the Consumer Staples sector, the company faces challenges, achieving a growth rate lower than the average among peers.

Speaking of stats, there were a number interesting graphs in the recent edition of Doug Veliky’s Beer Crunchers newsletter – a discussion about how beer trade stats are gathered. This one table in particular caught my eye. US beer sectors year to date 2023 v 2024. Craft down. Significantly. Now less craft sold off premises than that excellent category “domestic below premium” which includes such Hamms, Keystone Light and – much to my surprise – Miller High Life which is entirely above the below… if you know what I mean.

Great piece in Pellicle by David Nilsen on the revival of Narragansett of Rhode Island but not quite sure on the history of their porter. If their brewer Lee Lord started homebrewing in 2011 and…

When the Providence Historical Society reached out to Lee shortly after she started and wanted to brew a collaboration beer, she decided to revive the brand’s Porter with a new—well, old—recipe. She used a recipe discovered by British beer historian Ron Pattinson based on an 1822 Porter; nearly half the grist is brown malt, and no black malt is used at all. 

… then how did Lew and I gleefully drink their Porter no later than late 2009 and early 2010*** repectively? Ron. It’s got to be Ron who can explain what’s going on.

Speaking of revivals, GBH has an interesting story by Fred Garratt-Stanley of an English regional brewery, Lacons of Great Yarmouth, that thought ahead and stored its yeast:

“Securing the rights was a complex process that took two or three years,” says Carver, speaking to me over the phone. “Once we did, we went to the yeast bank and asked for the deposits of our yeast from 1956, of which there were eight: five top-fermentation yeasts and three bottom-fermentation yeasts.” Reviving these historic strains wasn’t simple, though. “Strains frozen in the 1950s have now been dormant for almost 75 years, so we have to revive them,” says Nueno-Palop. “Also, because many of the original depositors are not alive anymore, [breweries] need to acquire the rights. With Lacons, they had the original documentation pointing them toward the right NCYC strains … it was interesting that they had documented everything because this is very important for replicating recipes.”

Finally, it was interesting to note this comment on Twex from Jessica Mason:

As the end of the week nears, I look forward to a selection of men notifying us all of their ultimate line-up of most worthy beer news. Painstakingly collated into a list of what truly is best for everyone to read. Like they wrote it all. Can’t bloody wait.

As as far as I know, I get roundups from at least, yes, Katie Mather of The Gulp but also Jessica B. of Boak & Bailey and Stephanie Grant of The Share as well as I believe a few other women on recommended beery reading so I am pretty sure this corner of the hobby isn’t a chromozonal exclusive. That being said, good to have a sense of humour about being both the readers and the writers with these sorts of Nobel Prize ineligible topics. We hold each other up. As always, bring back RSBS so we wouldn’t have to rely on others!

Enough!! We roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up three to 917) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (minus 1 to 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down two to 161), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday upon which he decides to show up at the office. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And I listened to the BOAS podcast bro-ly interview of Justin from Matron. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. 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 few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube 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! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*One comment in the BBC report caught my eye: “… not to be confused with Didsbury Beer Festival, which has been held annually for 11 years at St Catherine’s Community Centre.” Is there some sort of tension between the Didsbury Beer Festival and the Didsbury Craft Beer Festival? Must be very civil peeing practices at the old DBF if the DCBF is called out on that particular fear. Just hope that there is none of that thimping thumping beat that neighbours complain about eminating from St Lawrence Church of York. 
**Note: “This article was generated by Benzinga’s automated content engine and reviewed by an editor” so take this situation with a grain of salt.
***Shameless mooch that I was back then, the emails flew back and forth and the press release from November 20, 2009 read: “Originally called Narragansett Dark, ‘Gansett’s Porter craft brew first premiered in 1916. ‘Gansett still retains their original recipe, offering the same great-tasting Porter winter brew today. ‘Gansett Brewmaster, Sean Larkin offers some tasting notes on the brew: “We produce the Porter using summit hops, black malt, pale malt, roasted barley and ale yeast. It is then dry hopped with Amarillo hops, creating a deliciously mild chocolate flavor with just a hint of smokiness.” The specialty brew is 5.4% alcohol by volume with 22 International Bittering Units. Narragansett Porter is brewed in small batches at Trinity Brew House in Providence, Rhode Island and Cottrell Brewery in Pawcatuck, Connecticut.“