These Are The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of Melting

The week of melting is a great week. It occurs usually two weeks before the week of everything smells like dog poop. The week in between is called the week of maybe it won’t happen this year. One lad was thinking how nice it would be if something didn’t happen, as illustrated to the right. Max shared the image and voted it top entry for the Hogmanay Xmas Yuletide Kwanza Photo Contest 2021. It is a study of humankind’s folly… or true role of beer… or something… whatever it is we are advised by someone presented that balance was in fact recovered.

Much doings to report upon this week. First, Stan wrote about something I have never had the slightest interest in – beer recommend / review / rate apps. If you are spending any time at all on them, you need a goldfish in your life.  Something real. But Stan persists, as they say. And he delved a bit into the phenomenon to point out one app which actually had detail:

Next Glass 1.0, circa 2015, was something different. It was one of several drink recommendation apps that came and went about that time. Some got tagged as the “Pandora for beer.” For First Glass, that made sense because it took a scientific approach similar to Pandora when collecting data… [F]eature-based systems begin by measuring specific attributes of songs (or beers). Pandora created the Music Genome Project and employs musicians to catalog key elements of every song in its database. Next Glass mapped the chemical makeup of individual beers, forgoing any effort to quantify a beer based on its descriptive characteristics. 

All of which means there are graphs. Graphical displays of information. Why did it fail? Beer failed it: “…the company was never going to be able to collect mass spec information on the thousands of new beers released every week…” A.K.A. T.M.I.

Victim of Maths has tweeted an interest set of… graphs! Graphs on the effect of the pandemic on alcohol consumption patters in different nations. The form of graph itself is very helpful. But look how consumption goes up in the US while dropping in terms of the tavern trade. Who benefitted from that? White Claw? Local actual craft brewers delivering to home? Interesting stuff.

Much talk on alewives and witches again which I think is up there with the role of Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi, in medieval Norse brewing. There seems to be a drive to switch one story of exclusivity with another an then make it universal rather than particular.  Dr. Christina Wade made this very good point in relation to this topics and one which is useful in any other historical studies which I present as a merged mega-tweet:

That is a really important avenue of research. And, in which case, we must get hyper-specific. Brewing in the Middle Ages could be a high-status, non-liminal, position for women. If we take the example of late medieval and early modern England, which is what these sorts of articles seem to be meaning, we can see that women who brewed were vilified. And men absolutely did accuse and lie about things to ruin women’s brewing businesses. We have primary sources for that in England. But as to whether this took the form of witch accusations the data is lacking. This may be because the populations who brewed and who were accused of witchcraft overlap. That is to say, single/widowed/poor women. That said, married women also brewed with great regularity. So it’s largely speculative.

This raises an interesting question. Why and should we participate in the continuation of myth telling? Even as myth correction. On the one hand it is organic and bolsters identity often in a healthy way. I myself am quite pleased to be generically connected to the faerie folk and advise all of you to watch your step accordingly. This, however, is quite distinct from the role I play from time to time of amateur historian – even when I get paid for that part of my research and writing. Nothing is as shockingly and clarifyingly accurate as a primary source. You can’t get around that sort of thing. You must face it. So how does one do both in an area of our collective culture as laden with fib and story telling as beer and brewing?

Never a happy event. A founder leaves a brewery.

Wee Beefy, one who has written of the horrors of the experimental craft alcopops that are too prevalent these days, has discovered a new love in an very unexpected form:

Last year or before, Maltgarden Browari came along. I had already tried a few of their excellent stouts, along with stumbling through opening their ridiculous wax capped can, and then bought a can of Tzatziki pastry sour with Pink Guava, Mango and cucumber… I drank the whole can in about ten minutes. It was ludicrously easy drinking – but also featured a distinctive but perhaps created tzatziki flavour along with the excellence of the pastry elements. It tasted very strongly of the cucumber and as I admit, the tzatziki I imagined but impressively the other flavours blended in so well together! I used it as a palate cleanser…

Me, I am physically revolted by that description but celebrate the freedom.

One weighs carefully whether one mentions BrewDog anymore given they are (i) now an international brewery with few links to micro or craft and (ii) they are adherents to a form of serial stupid that is beyond all reckoning – but… but… this one is up there with Sam Adam’s 2002 “Sex for Sam” promotion that led to charges, humiliation and (in a less than round about way than you might imagine) the Brewers Association as we know it. Trade Unionist Kmflett neatly summarized the seemingly sordid scene:

A post noted that Brewdog Indianapolis had sacked female and LBTQ employees on International Women’s Day apparently looking for a change in culture at the bar, possibly to a white male workforce. The CEO of Brewdog USA tweeted that of course Brewdog don’t discriminate while the London based head of Brewdog bars globally tweeted that he was investigating. On the one hand he was aware of an issue on the Indianapolis bar. On the other hand people are not sacked on the basis of gender or sexuality and if anyone had done that they’d be off too.

Lordy. There’s the statement from those let go. To date, no response from Mr. Jim Watt via Twitter except to point out how carbon neutral they are trying to be in addition, apparently, to be anti-discrimination neutral. It’s sad. I just checked my emails and there I was care of Stonch giving James himself advice in exchanges for photo contest prizes. It was all about how to run a blog about his wee brewery… and there it is now…  crushing hopes and dreams.

Finally, you will note every week I list below any number of podcasts related to good beer. This week I tweeted a question which got mucho response:

Honestly, how much time a week do you have for listening to beer podcasts? 27 minutes? Three and a half hours? I think of this when I encounter the 68th new podcast this year that’s over an hour long, not much edited and 7-11% filled with umms, errs and insider giggling.

I mean it quite seriously as a question about the medium. How many could you keep up with. I myself uses the FF technique in which I take a 35 minute podcast and reduce it to 5 by clicking and hunting for the actual bit of most interest to me. For all the “beer editors” out there who seem to be getting chump change for taking away the new writers voice in exchange for the dull tried and true, it would be good if there was a similar thing for podcasts, a central hub of some sort, a single global beer podcast editorial committee who could take these rambles and turn them into an actual magazine of the air of some sort. Some folk who could say “no” and who could also say “yes, this!” Listeners await.

Soon it will be spring. That makes for happy. For more happy, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletterThe Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Mr. Mudge wrote on the same worthwhile issue:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beer for dullards?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Unimpeachable Thursday Beery News Notes

Sad news to start with. We lost one of the greatest comedians I have known in my life – as well as a figure at the early end of this wave of good beer culture. The role of Terry Jones of Monty Python, along with co-conspirator Eric Idle, in bringing real ale to the attention of the British public during the mid-1970s was recorded by Boak and Bailey in their fabulous book Brew Britannia, excerpts of which were posted on their blog for the 100th edition of the dear departed Session:

This should not have come as a surprise to anyone who had seen Palin in the famous 1974 ‘travel agent’ sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, in which Eric Idle delivers a ranting monologue with repeated disparaging references to Watney’s Red Barrel. Of the two, Terry Jones was the more enthusiastic about beer. When his accountant, Michael Henshaw, introduced him to another of his clients, Richard Boston, they entered into partnership on two projects. First, an ‘alternative’ magazine, The Vole, to be edited by Boston; and second, a brewery, which they initially intended to open in Berkshire.

I love that an accountant was involved with getting him going on good beer. Roger Protz remembered him, his brewery and a particular moment before the press with this tweet:

I remember it well. Terry Jones… didn’t want to pose sniffing the beer. He suggested pouring it over his head. He had to do it twice as the incredibly old-fashioned Fleet Street photographers in their trilbys were not ready with their cumbersome cameras.

My favorite remembrance today was from Stephen Fry: “Farewell, Terry Jones. The great foot has come down to stamp on you.” Lovely.

And from a slightly earlier point in beer culture, David Sun Lee shared this Youtube vid for Carling Black Label noteworthy for its significant Mabel content. My mother’s cousin Mabel married a Glasgow pub owner and mailed them Canadian “Hey Mabel, Black Label!” related breweriana when I was a toddly kid in the 1960s.

In corporate news, all is not so real. We learn from Matt that Australia’s Lion Beer, a Kirin subsidiary, is consolidating its “Little World Beverages” arm to include New Belgium, Little Creatures, Panhead, Fourpure and Magic Rock.  And Atwater Brewery of Detroit is selling to  Molson Coors under an agreement that sees all of its brewing assets, taprooms and a biergarten moving to Molson Coors under its craft beer division Tenth and Blake. Adjust your buying preferences accordingly.

Speaking of shadowy corporate goals, I found an email from Beer Connoisseur webzine in my spam folder which had, miracle of miracles, a softball Q+A with well-known promoters Jim Koch and Sam Calagione which included this sad statement of where we are:

Jim: Who would have thought a few years ago that The Boston Beer Company would play in hard seltzer? Truly was an innovation we explored as an alternative for drinkers – and we’re happy we took the chance on it when we did as one of the first to market… We’ll continue to innovate within this lifestyle space with beers like SeaQuench and Slightly Mighty, but in the past two years, the hard seltzer category has grown more than 830 percent and more than 220 percent in 2019 alone. Hard seltzer sales have now surpassed all IPA sales, one of craft beer’s most popular styles, demonstrating the shift in drinker preference, which Truly is capitalizing on.

Lifestyle space! It’s like he writes the advertising himself! Grim stuff. Speaking of pressures on actual good beer, we learn that there is just too much darn pot in Canada!

In just a year after Canada’s historic pot legalization, pot producers built up a massive surplus of pot. In fact, only 4% of pot produced in Canada in July has been sold! The rest is being stored in warehouses… just like crops during the Great Depression. For much of the past century, laws held back pot production like a dam holds back a river. But Canada threw those floodgates wide open, and the market was flooded with millions of kilos of pot.

More grim stuff – and quite a distance from what Terry Jones was advocating for back in the mid-70s. Heck, I’m pretty sure Mabel wouldn’t want any of this, either.

Note #1: don’t blame higher alcohol duty rates in the UK for whatever you need to blame something for. They are actually lower.  Good news!

Note #2: telling others their descriptors are poor is an utter waste of time, reflects a weak understanding of how language works and is also a bit of bullying.*

For more gooder news, look at this fascinating story of how one scientist (for whose work the world should be on its knees thanking its lucky stars) is making a personal medical breakthrough in his own struggles with alcohol:

Electrodes are inserted into a targeted region of the brain to recalibrate activity in that area using electrical impulses – controlled by a pacemaker-like device placed under the skin of the patient’s chest – and ease cravings. Dr Plummer was the trial’s first patient and underwent the experimental surgery just over a year ago. A total of six people are expected to eventually participate – all with a history of chronic alcohol use disorder proven resistant to other types of treatment.

And here’s another ray of sunshine. Pete Brown dusted off his blog and shared two posts this week, including this one on the modest increase in the number of pubs in the UK in 2019:

Now, a friend of mine has pointed out that when you dig right down into the data, rounding numbers in individual regions may mean this very modest increase is even smaller than it looks. It’s also worth noting that the modest increases in 2003 and 2007 – the only other years this century with a net increase – did little to alter the overall downward trend that’s seen more than a quarter of British pubs disappear in the last twenty years. But rather than quibble about the size of the rise, what’s more important is that the number of pubs hasn’t gone down.

Speaking of revival, Will Hawkes has a story in Imbibe on turn in craft’s  rejection of traditional Fuggles-based bitter:

The key to the beer is the use of Fuggles hops, sourced from the Weald of Kent, their ancestral home. Hobbs says the brewery has brewed one batch with Goldings, but that they plan to stick with Fuggles for the foreseeable future. ‘The quality of the Fuggles makes that beer,’ he says. The volume of hops used makes for a fi rm, almost austere bitterness that is very diff erent from some of the more mimsy family brewer ales; ‘That’s how we like it,’ says Hobbs.

And Katie (who assures us she is NOT TO BE FEARED!) wrote about the use of local woods for barrel aging beers in Brazil for Ferment web-mag-thingie:

“Culturally we use a lot of local botanicals in our drinks because fresh hops were hard to come by, and this includes the wood we use to store them,” he explains.  “In fact, brewers and cachaça makers are starting to use small pieces of wood or specially made spirals for an infusion effect. In cachaça there are more than 30 types of wood that can be used to give the flavours of the drink. The trees this wood comes from are local and usually are only found in Brazil. This gives these drinks even more cultural value and adds to their identity.”

Speaking of old beer methodologies, via a h/t to Merryn, we learn for those out there studying China circa 4,000 BC that there is news that “Chinese people experimented with two different methods of making BEER** 6,000 years ago”:

One method, employed by the Yangshao people in Dingcun, was to use malts made of sprouted millet, grass seeds and rice to produce low-alcohol drinks.  Whereas another made use of qu, mouldy grass and grains, to produce stronger drinks. ‘Yangshao people may have been experimenting with various methods to find the best way for alcohol making, or were brewing multiple types of alcohol for different purposes,’ Dr Liu Li, writes in the study.

That’s it for now. The real and the sad. The fake and the glad. Don’t worry. Just five full weeks to March. We can make it. As we wait for sugnshine and warmth, don’t forget to check in with Boak and Bailey’s on Saturdays, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast.

*Or put another way
**Random pointless capitalization is one of the best thing about mid-range UK newspaper headlines.

Your Thursday Beer News Notes For The Week That The Bills Come

It was supposed to be fun. All fun. But now there is the reckoning. Not just in the sense of #Dryuary but #Skint-uary. #I-spent-all-I-had-uary. No wonder folk feel a pinch and stop splurging. Remember, though… pubs can be for cheap sustenance, too.  And if you are really stuck, here is a guide to getting the booze out even if you want to go out. And even if you get the booze out, just thank your lucky stars you aren’t deep into big US milk.  It’ll be #Dairy-uary next year if this keeps up. Fighting all this as a voice raging in the wilderness, the Pub Curmudgeon posted his warnings about state control of such matters – and included this very attractive poster that should really be placed by every child’s bed.

That being said, first off all hail June Hallworth of the Davenport Arms in Stockport, England, Still working at her family’s pub at 81. Her secret is a surprise:

Despite a life spent around alcohol, Hallworth doesn’t actually drink. “My husband used to ask: ‘Is there nothing you like the look of?’” Yet she has witnessed changing drinking habits: before, you’d struggle to get people out of the pub after last orders. “You’d have to shout at them to drink up. Now, people drink earlier. You can lock up more easily.”

Clearly, June is on team #Dryuary. Wonder if she also minds a mobile phone or a little foul language, too? And here’s something interesting and not unrelated – a map of England indicating where alcohol and drugs are laying people flat, kicking or otherwise. Entitled “Deaths from alcohol and drugs by Local Authority in England” – does it make sense? By which I mean, are there cultural, logical, socio-economic aspect to the information? Why is the lower left tippy-toe bit so much worse off than that other bit up there off the North Sea? Hmm… also not unrelated… a poem… on drinking… circa 1700:

His trembling hand scarce heaves his liquor in,
His nerves all crackle under parchment skin;
His guts from nature’s drudgery are freed,
And in his bowels salamanders breed…

So, at least it is not all new. Speaking of getting at the new, I am not entirely sure that I agree with Matt but I do support his right to argue for the place of what he calls beer media:*

Establishing strong lines of communication with both the beer media and the drinker is essential, but as pointed out in the first part of this series, engaging with these two sets of people are actually very different things. Yes, a press release is an essential tool for getting out snippets of information and keeping people informed about what your business is doing. However, there are more effective—and importantly, more meaningful—ways of engaging with the press.

One would hope that sort of thing does not lead to this sort of thing… Because that is really not that far off other sorts of things. Like how baijiu got where it is today. Baijiu you say?

Produced at a state-owned distillery in Moutai Town, in the scenic southwestern province of Guizhou, Kweichow Moutai is rich in symbolism. “Moutai was the favourite drink of Premier Zhou Enlai, Mao’s longtime number two… He made Moutai the baijiu served at all official state dinners.” Legend has it that Red Army soldiers used it to cleanse their feet on the Long March, while in 1972 Zhou Enlai and President Nixon were famously pictured toasting each other with it. “So it became the baijiu of China’s elite…”

To avoid these various pressures of lobbyists and state control, we need information and, honestly, if believes that one really all should buy the new edition of The World Atlas of Wine:

Robinson bears the main responsibility for this new edition, and her limpid, authoritative style is part of what makes the book so engaging. “At least half of the words on 45% of the pages about wine regions are completely new”, Robinson points out. As with earlier editions, there are excellent introductory sections on how grapes are grown and wines are made, plus wholly new sections on the roles of temperature, sunlight, water, money and climate change on winemaking. There are twenty-two new maps, with some countries (including Brazil, Cyprus and Uruguay) receiving their own pages for the first time.

One thing I have not considered adding to my lifestyle** is home delivery of booze. But now craft is in so it must be good. Yet… the rules for these sorts of things at least in in Toronto are a bit involved:

“When we heard foodora was an option for delivering our beer, we immediately got on board,” said Joey Seaman, head of business development at Bellwoods Brewery said in a release. “This is definitely the most convenient way of getting our beer into the fridges of our local Toronto customers that can’t easily make it to our Bellwoods Brewery bottle shops. Only Smart Serve-certified foodora riders will be delivering alcohol. If the order recipient doesn’t produce valid ID, appears intoxicated, or attempts to purchase for a minor or impaired individual, foodora says that the delivery will be cancelled, and a $20 restocking fee will be applied.

I love that a delivery dude is now empowered to assess the appearance of intoxication and charge a penalty. Like that’s going to happen.

Finally, a bit of the old science after a h/t to Stan:

Here’s a sentence that I never imagined writing in a paper “More generally, the two fly species preferred different #beer styles”. Yup, dear tax payers, we are using your money to investigate which fruit fly species prefers which beers! (And Trust me, this actually is useful!)

At least they gave the flies a selection of fine Belgian beers as part of the program. Oude Kriek was one of the offerings!

Oh, and here is @katzenbrau revealed!

Now that it is a new year, there is still no reason to forget to check in with Boak and Bailey’s on Saturdays, at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes a mid-week post of notes from The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast.

*The other term used – “beer writers” – is too wide a label for this purpose, something that the guilds seem to be forgetting.
**Do I really need to say it?

Your Thursday Beer News For The Last Of August… Of Summer… Of…

It’s over. Well, I don’t go back for another five days but the kids are getting geared up for their respective schools and the hot hot heat is gone. Fabulous. Me, I continue to rest and convalesce. I had no idea I had not taken two weeks off for years. Two-thirds of the way in, I am a bit dumbfounded. May eat a peach today. Because I dare. By the way, fresh peach chunks and fresh tomato chunks with olive oil and basil. You have been advised.

The big news this week is White Claw, some seltzer thing that I will never see or try if the gods are pleased. Zima again. The news is not White Claw itself but that that bastion of east coast liberal culture, The Atlantic, published an extensive article by Amanda Mull on this summer’s cultural phenomenon, seeking the why of it all:

A major factor in hard seltzer’s current popularity is what it’s not: difficult or aspirational. Being a cool young drinker has had a lot of arbitrary rules in the past decade. For much of the 2010s, booze trends have centered around limited-edition, high-alcohol craft beers and booze-heavy, professionally assembled cocktails. These trends have demanded that young people learn the ins and outs of booze culture; have a willingness to pursue the stores, bars, and breweries that meet their very particular tastes; and have the ability to spend some money to try new things. To get the full experience, those drinks also have to be aesthetically pleasing—all the better to document on Instagram, to show off your generationally and socioeconomically appropriate good taste.

Screw you, kiddie curating class.  Screw you, the aesthetic tyranny of Instagram-determined good taste, as Mull calls it.  A blip? Hah! As Josh Noel noted, the  White Claw‘s variety 12-pack now outsell every craft beer. After a few months. Screw you, craft. Actually, this reminds me of a line that Stan noted The Beer Nut mentioning earlier this week:

I didn’t expect to get such a cliché of everything wrong with the concept of ‘milkshake IPA’ but here it is. If this is what you wanted beer to be in 2019, fill your boots.

See, it reminded me of that because milkshake IPA and White Claw are exactly the same thing, a facile form of booze that is identifiably different and needs no consideration as it goes down. It’s the other “screw you, craft” beverage. And, yes, after a decade it’s quite possible that people are actually exhausted with the multilayered Art Rock keyboard of being over-informed with non-information by the self-appointed and of, yes, of being intensely beveragely cool being the core of their entertainment time. My kids just like the odd Gordon’s gin so I deffo saw this coming.

Similarly negatively – but hanging on to defend a seemingly crumbling last redoubt – Miles Liebtag in Medium tells us Here’s What’s Killing Craft Beer: Us.** Somewhat curiously to me, he writes:

Allow me to share with you a law of Craft Beeria, deduced from ~8 years of in-field observation: one’s Beer Knowledge is often in direct and inverse proportion to one’s Market Knowledge. The former is what one knows about beer qua beer: how and why and when and where it’s made, and how that set of questions has both historical and political dimensions, what makes a beer look and smell and taste the way it does. The latter is one’s knowledge of trends, brands, who and what’s hot, what’s trading well, what’s rare, who’s on the outs, etc. It’s not that the twain shall never meet, just that they rarely do, and often the entire beer media universe seems bent on keeping them apart.

Jings! Perhaps an over wrought over-intellectualizing of both categories** might just be playing a role in all this, too.  Beer from a consumer perspective or even that of a brewing technician is not complicated compared, you know, to actually complicated things.  We go to movies and buy from Amazon but no one really cares about the logistics of either. Who needs to be associated with the body of beery knowledge that gets foisted on unsuspecting drinkers while all the while studiously avoiding the obvious questions like relative value? That’s beer today. It all befuddles the buying public Hence the unhappiness. Hence… White Claw!

Need a happier link to a simple time? 1970’s TV ads for Courage Best.

In the latest edition of his emailed newsletter on the state of hops, Stan*** discussed the idea of terrior in hops, one that he has long suspected, has been studied by folks in white lab coats:

I’m pleased the idea is catching on. Earlier this month, Coleman Agriculture in Oregon hosted Bine to Beer: Coleman Hop Terroir, announcing that Coleman, Oregon State University and Red Hill Soils have begun a study into hop terroir… The initial study included two hop varieties, Sterling and Centennial, grown across four different locations in the Willamette Valley, and two main types of soil. Scientists analyzed the soil and took into consideration all the other factors involved in growing hops. A sensory panel evaluated beers brewed with these hops.

Interesting. Terrior in beer is a rare thing but here this study found that the differences between Sterling hops from different locations were more muted and nuanced while the differences were clearer and more easily identifiable with Centennial. If they are replicated year after year, I’d say you might well have some terrior right there.

In other joyous beer as farm news, Katie Mather of @Shinybiscuit herself wrote about and with the folk at Rivington Brewing Co. in Chorley, Lancashire who brew on their family farm:

Tenth generation farmer Mick leans against the stone doorway, letting Ben do most of the talking. When he’s done, we head off with muddy boots to their current setup, a mile or so down a puddled and potholed lane, heavily shaded by the midsummer greenery of thick forest scented with marshmallowy clouds of Himalayan balsam. It’s in this woodland vale that Tap Beneath The Trees takes place, Rivington Brewing Co.’s summertime taproom gatherings. Over the years these little weekend-long beer festivals have gained cult status among the beer fans of Lancashire. Ben tells me that people come just as much for the countryside convalescence as they do his beers and that he’s completely happy about that.

Lovely stuff.  And certainly an antidote to all that fretting up there. Who cares about so much of it all? Not when you can go up a country lane and find a wonderful glass of tasty. Or around a city corner. I did that this week myself and found my beer of the year to date but will leave that a separate post.

In a last nod to joy, Ben gave a tip to read a good article in Craft Brewing Business on the good beer scene in Toronto by the design firm involved with the Left Field branding refresh – the last two words there being something that usually makes my temples ache:

We were received with equal warmth at Left Field’s East End taproom, nestled snug in an alley in a charming and lived-in neighborhood. In this area, many years former, a massive factory turned out bricks by the thousands: the neighborhood retains a blue-collar industrial charm. We sampled a number of beers, including a knuckles-down DIPA called Laser Show and a lip-smacking fruited sour called Squeeze Play. We met the staff at hand and talked shop. After a quick tour of the brewery and reviewing our itinerary for the remainder of the trip, we were off to check out a couple more spots relevant to the local beer conversation before calling it an evening.

What I like about the article is how the branding firm sought out an understand of the local scene. I also like how they stuck with the original logo without too many tweeks and then rebranded around it. Wow – look at me fawning over the outside of the can… jeesh…**** Now, if only someone would tell everyone that Canada had only temperance and not prohibition that would be great. Breweries never shut. Booze available but fairly restricted.

PS: being a lawyer is actually fun some days.

My other big news was, of course, the response to my mammoth post on the meaning of Lambeth Ale. Thank you for all the postcards, telegrams and teletyped messages of congratulations. Whatever shall I blog about next month? While I ruminate on that, you will be pleased to know that we can expect Boak and Bailey back behind the newsdesk on Saturday and Stan to be right there on Monday. Catch the OCBG Podcast on  Tuesdays, too. What Septemberish-fun!

*Not me. You. Max and I warned you about all this five years and and did you listen? No.
**My reaction was not as spicy as that of others but perhaps one sees it in the unnecessary use of “beer qua beer”?
***For the double!
****Full disclosure. I have spent more on them than that damn sample was ever worth.

The Look Back At The First Half Of 2019 Edition Of Thursday Beer News

I was thinking about “summer, summer, summer!” as this week’s theme but the coming dawn of Q3 slapped me in the face when I was sitting myself down, knuckles poised over keyboard. Time is flying and we need to get out and about and enjoy ourselves. Like the people above. The photo of the week above is from Jack Dougherty, handy pal of @rpate. Used without permission for purposes of review, I get an early modern renaissance feel from the image, a grim morality tale with arse crack. The only thing I can’t believe about it is that it is not set in Glasgow. Then again, nothing is on fire in the scene.

Update: craft… I kid you not.

Next, we have a fabulous tweet from robsterowski which first led me to this great story, a lesson of the role beer can play in protecting our freedoms:

Local residents in the German town of Ostritz protested against a neo-nazi festival – by buying up all the nearest supermarket’s beer so that the nazis couldn’t get any.

Wonderful! Wunderbar!!! Here’s the story in German. What a lovely tale of making your euros do the talking. Reminds me of when I lived in the Netherlands in 1986 and there was an odd news item on the TV involving a fire department. Apparently when the then tiny Dutch Nazis set up a meeting, the local folk came out to burn down the hotel. The family I boarded with smiled and pointed at the TV as the tale was told.

Boak and Bailey sent out their newsletter and argued again (as others have) for more positivity in beer writing:

If you think old fashioned cask bitter is better than hazy craft beer from the keg make the case for it. Make it sound delicious. Move people to want to drink it. Telling them not to drink stuff they like won’t work, it just leaves a bitter taste.

I am not against such things, but because I’m not particularly interested in other people or being a booster of beer generally I’m not really moved to write about much in that sort of manner. But that is me. I personally find properly written moaning takes more skill as a writer and observer. It’s far more entertaining and often more honest.  Less un-noticing of things. Interestingly, the best example this week of measured consideration came from Boak and Bailey whose notes on their day in Edinburgh refreshingly captured being in a place with few references or footholds.

Speaking of which, some fascinating and initially Brexity bad news for UK beer nerds with wandering ways according to the Eurostar railway (etc.?) Twitter feed:

The personal luggage allowance for alcohol is 4 bottles/cans of beer or 1 bottle of wine so if you have more than 4 bottles they can be taken from you. Please read Alcohol Policy for information…

Joe Stange doesn’t like it but I so enjoy not being surrounded by boozy libertarianism when locked in a train carriage with strangers that I expect the actual travel experience will be improved on average. Then word comes through that it was all a misunderstanding! Hooray! I can safely plan my next Euro-trav happily knowing that no one is supposed to neck full bottles of spirits en route!

Troubles in the world of good beer are not really news these days but this press release is perhaps not the best way to let folk know. This bit is the most interesting:

Together we changed the world of brewing and have been helping hundreds of people and businesses to further explore their passion and businesses in beer. That said we could have done much much better. Our stakeholders, members, course attendees and clients deserved so much more and we failed you in many ways. This has affected people financially, personally and it has been more then frustrating for you. I personally accept full responsibility for this.

The amazing thing is the Monty Python aspect to the messaging.  From the heights to the depths at Mach 4. Voooooooom… splat. I can’t read the words without hearing the voice of John Cleese. I find it so satisfying in that sense, I have made no inquiries as to the actual nature of the troubles involved. (Mr Walsh has recommended own his services to avoid such drafting errors in the future.)

A great piece by Evan Rail in VinePair (even if the early micro-brewers were cloning Euro-beers, a clear decade before the whole “rebel” thing started up) on how US embassy trade staff have been leveraging big US craft industry marketing:

While the U.S. government works to promote sales of American craft beer abroad, American craft beer also helps to promote the U.S. Just as French embassies use French cuisine to promote the image of France, and South Korea is currently enjoying the benefits of global K-pop fandom, American craft breweries can assist with what is known as soft power in the diplomatic world, part of which can come from an appreciation for a country’s culture. In an era when American political influence is on the wane, it doesn’t hurt the U.S. if the entire planet falls in love with New England IPAs. 

Well, that actually might hurt reversing the decline of diplomatic efforts but I am sure other aspects of the program will work out just fine.

This was my favorite bit of beer science for the week: an explanation of how some of the carbonation in your beer might have come out of a horse’s arse. Speaking of which, here is another item on non-alcoholic craft beer aka soda pop:

“I think a lot of people assume that alcohol is why they have fun drinking beer,” Shufelt says. But, he adds, sometimes when people take a break, they begin to see it differently. He says that around the time he turned 30, he began to reflect on his life. He was getting married and taking his career more seriously. He became more focused on his health and good nutrition. “I realized alcohol was so inconsistent with every element of my life,” he says.

Jings. Ever try a nice cup of tea? Pennies a cup.

And with that I bid you adieu for another week. This was all a bit rushed with another busy week with evening meetings and such. Acht, weel. All the extra spelling mistakes just add spice, right? Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and see if Stan makes an appearance on Canada Day Monday. See you!

The Victoria Day Week 2019 Thursday News In Beer

Victoria Day. Is that done only in Canada? Probably. Well, we spent it in Ottawa with the fam and the friends of the fam and it ended up with me paying for it all. Warning to parents of young children: they grow up and they can’t afford their own needs. Anyway, we had fun and in two spots, Brothers as well as the hotel bar  I enjoyed the local Dominion City’s Town & Country  Blonde Ale. And I can confirm that Irene’s is still one of my homes, the honeyed wood even richer 15 years later.

You can now lose hours and hours and hours to the excellent interviews of folk from the recent history of the British brewing trade care of brewingstories.org.uk.

Stan wasn’t really contradicting Jeff and Jeff really wasn’t saying it as any sort of main point but this is an important observation:

I agree, but would another clause. These brewers do have a vision for what they want to create, but they also have enough of an ego to think that they are making beer that will appeal to an audience broad enough to support a thriving business. They may not want to print money, but many like ending up on something of a stage and more look forward to feeling money in their pockets.

Show me a brewery that is not based on the profit making model and I will show you an impending failure.  Everything else has to be built upon that foundation one way or another if it is going to be sustained: capitalist or socialist, private or public. But pretty much anything can be built upon that model.

Beer in corner stores is coming to my province. I like it.

I was really taken by this answer wine writer Oz Clarke gave on why you need to keep an old copper coin in your wallet if you are in the habit of being in places where you are presented with dodgy red wine from time to time.  Now, while I have happily avoided any interest in taking an “off flavours” class (aka misery mongery) I am now interested to see if the copper coin works with any poorly made beers – and apparently I should be focusing on lagers. Any particular candidates for experimentation?

I had no idea there were jazz bagpipers. I approve.

I was quite pleased with the news in this brief article on the beer coming out of Grimbergen Abbey, a brewing monks’ collective that sold their branding in the 1950s. Sounds like it’s reasonably actually actual:

“We had the books with the old recipes, but nobody could read them,” Stautemas said. “It was all in old Latin and old Dutch. So we brought in volunteers. We’ve spent hours leafing through the books and have discovered ingredient lists for beers brewed in previous centuries, the hops used, the types of barrels and bottles, and even a list of the actual beers produced centuries ago… Stautemas, who lives with 11 other monks at the abbey, said: “What we really learned was that the monks then kept on innovating. They changed their recipe every 10 years.”

I like that last bit. Instability is at the heart of brewing. But TBN may well be right: ultimately, it’s really just big-brewery PR.

In this week’s stolen IP news, an Alberta brewery has been allowed by the trademark holder, the municipal government, to use up the last of its stock labeled “Fort Calgary“:

On Wednesday, city officials met with Elite Brewing and Bow River Brewing to discuss the cease-and-desist order over the use of the name, which is trademarked by the city. According to a memo that went to councillors from administration, the city has agreed to allow the brewery to retain the name until the beer is sold out “in the spirit of co-operation.” If any beer is left on July 30, when it’s projected the beer will be sold out, it must be stripped of the name. 

What is it with craft brewers and purloined intellectual property ? Do small bakeries steal the brand names of others? Do weavers and potters? Nope. This story is a bit different as there seems to have been a discussion and a resulting understanding that then was not fully understood.

Here is an interesting stat:

Prince Edward Islanders spend less money on alcoholic beverages than anyone else in Canada, according to a recent report by Statistics Canada. The report found Islanders spend $614.70 per capita on liquor. The national average was $756.90.

Apparently, folk in Newfoundland and Labrador spend $1,029.20 each a year for the national leadership. But note that this is not average sales per unit, just gross sales. And prices in Newfoundland, I suspect, are way higher per unit. But that’s not the interesting thing. The interesting thing was when I lived in PEI from 1998 to 2003 I had pretty much unlimited access through my neighbours to an excellent moonshine vodka called, in its finest form, Augustine. They also still had speakeasies. Everybody and his dog also home brewed. So the stats may mean less than the little they appear to mean.

Neato: six 5,000 year old yeast strains extracted from brewing related pottery in Israel.

Finally, this is weird. Apparently the deadbeat brewery left an unhappy employee in charge of the social media account:

After nearly 30 years Ironworks has come to a shameful end. Yesterday @ 3pm, five armed police officers and a tax enforcement official seized the brewery and changed the locks, and ushered the employees out.

The news is not good: $15,409 in taxes and fees. A pretty modest amount but then add on that no employees have been “paid in the last several months, as well as he stopped paying their payroll taxes over the last year” and you have a sense that there was much going wrong here. H/T Robin.

Well, another week goes by. A bit of a slow one. Such is life. Lessons? Pay your bills. Name your beer a name no one else owns. Simple! Check out Boak and Bailey this Saturday but be warned that Stan on hiatus this Monday. He does that. Hiatuses. Hieronymustic Hiatuses. It’ll be OK.

The Government-Shutdown No-Deal-Brexit Why-Kids-Don’t-Drink Version Of Thursday Beer Notes

Woot!!! Holding up the roof since 1693!!!!

So… two weeks and a bit until #FlagshipFebruary* begins… meaning the inevitable rebound to #TrendyMarchMania will see some of the dry,  those off the sours for almost nine weeks hitting the bottle extra hard. You know, we really need to full year calendar to keep all this stuff straight – given we also have #MildMay and #DecemberIsForAmataurs, too.

As I mentioned a few updates ago, the US government shutdown has caused all approvals required by brewers from the  Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. I clucked at the time that at least this halted the manic pace of biere nouveau but – and with a hefty h/t to @beerinator – it appears that the permitting process is far more intrusive that that:

In a suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in D.C., Atlas notes that the government has approved labels for its cans of The Precious One, an apricot IPA, but not the labels for its kegs, known as “keg collars” before the shutdown began. Those kegs can’t be shipped out for sales outside of D.C. without label approval from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau: Doing so would violate federal law.

Who knew that “permitting” included such minor matters?***1/2

Next but disconnectedly so, here is an excellent primer for buying wine for a crowded restaurant table. Note the following statements:

I simply order what I most fancy eating and what I’d most like to drink, that’s what gives me most pleasure — even if the combination may seem bizarre to the sommelier… Do you worry about which cheeses to pick off a cheeseboard? I’m sure you don’t, so don’t worry about the wine…

Fabulous advice. Applies to beer, too.**

Unrelatedly, wonderful views (see above) of a +335 year old pub structure in Dublin, Ireland. Here is some backstory from 2016 on the efforts to save the structure:

“The astonishing skeletal grid of ceiling beams and joists is still intact on the ground floor, as well as early brick walls with ancient embedded timbers… With all of the modern partitions and ceilings now removed, the ground-floor shop retains all the grand scale one would expect of a public inn of the post-medieval period, complete with typical corner chimney stacks…”

Not connected at all, good to see some wonderful news of Young’s in England taking a stand on saving its affected staff from the fallout caused by Brexit. More here on the business reasons behind this sensible move:

The boss of pubs firm Young’s on Thursday cheered higher sales, but warned that hiring staff is tougher. Patrick Dardis said around 38% of his 5000-strong workforce are EU nationals, and added: “More workers [from Europe] are leaving here than coming. The recruitment and the retention of top talent is increasingly difficult.

Whiplashedly, ScienceDirect published this so it must be right. It’s a research paper entitled “Why are young people drinking less than earlier? Identifying and specifying social mechanisms with a pragmatist approach” which sets out a number of reasons why my children are apparently smarter than I was as a kid:

Recent analyses of surveys of youth drinking in Sweden have found a strong decrease both in rates of abstinence and in levels of drinking among drinkers. For instance, alcohol consumption among 15- to 16-year-olds has fallen more than 50% between 2000 and 2012. At the same time, the abstention rates among boys and girls have increased from about 30% to more than 50% . Moreover, heavy episodic drinking has decreased from 34% to 18% among boys (ibid.)…  Similar declining trends of alcohol consumption among young people have been identified in other European countries, North America and Australia…

Virtigo inducingly, the Tand himself has posted about how craft sees cask and it’s good enough to have a whole month dedicated to the #MarchOnCraftFibs campaign. It starts fabulously thusly:****

Yesterday there was a Twitter post that caught my attention. It referred to an opinion piece in Imbibe Magazine by Jessica Mason in which she claims that “We’re on the precipice of a cask revival”. The article goes on to explain her thinking which can be summed up – more or less – that cask can revived – wait for it – by modern brewers adopting Golden Ales. Well I exaggerate, but I hardly agree either with the way the article says “cask is becoming ever more exciting, flavoursome and stylistically broad” as if we’ve all been drinking flavourless crud for all these years and can only be saved by innovative craft brewers rescuing us from our own stupidity. 

And utterly conversely, I finally figured out what I don’t get about GBH writing style. This piece by Roth is pretty good even if it needs editing down to get some control of the subject. It’s like there is a need to give each source equal space.  And the obvious extra access to New Belgium, an acknowledged sponsor, is there, too. But those are the problems with the subject matter presentation. That’s normal middly stuff. No, it’s the fact that the letters “GBH ” actually appear 22 times within the text of the story. Twenty-two! Breakout the flashing neon font. Enough already. One is enough. Three is cloying. But referencing your own publication 22 times in a story is weird. Needy. And too bad. It’s an important story and would have been much better if it was just cleaned up with a lashing of confidence.

One last thing: stunning stats on pub waste.

That’s enough for now. My neck hurts. Odd. Mid-January is quiet time. I actually typed all this while balled up in family quilts watching VCR recordings of cooking shows from the 1990s. Seriously. Who has time for -26C, Sunday’s promised nighttime high?  I want it over. You want it over. Like Brexit, we know the next few weeks are just going to be ugly and we need to get them out of the way. Need relief along the way? Check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and then Stan on Monday for a well earned break.

*Hmm. Now not thrilled with the hinted need to seek to attach a big old lumbering craft revenue stream to what is basically a hashtag.
***1/2Not sure what this footnote is for… it’s even out of order.
**Have another cold Big Mac, you big carrot-headed lardass! [Note: as a distant cousin of Mr. President, I reserve the right to call him a big carrot-headed lardass.]
***So much of wine pairing advice these days is based on relaxing and not worrying while beer pairing advice is so anxious.
****We really do need to acknowledge what a clear focused writer the Tandy One is.