Category: Sour Beer Studies

Fine… It’s March And Here Are The Thursday Beery News Notes

I thought the new month would have made a big difference. But a couple of twelve hour days in hard black shoes and a snow squall meeting me as I got off the bus that finally made it through rerouted traffic and, well… well… well, at least it ain’t February any more. Let’s see what is going on!

First, there was much fretting in Engerlant over the shadowy Portman Group issuing an edict against a beer label. Now, I’ve beer posting about the shadowy Portman Group’s edicts since at least 2008 so I don’t really care that much now. But the fretting of others was remarkable. SIBA objected to the lack of much due process. The BBC covered it like it was an actual news story. Martyn wrote: “Running with Sceptres is not the ditch to die in over the Portman Group and its bans…” and then wrote more. Folk were cloyingly superior, spitting angry and even spent all the rent money. Pete went all Pete and shouted from the barricades that we need to “…check out the beautiful, sometimes strangely moving, artwork.” See, that is my issue. To me, that label on the can looks like panels stolen from a 1950s Rupert the Bear book.  And me, I don’t buy beer for the artwork and especially not Rupert the Bear rip-offs. In fact, if the art is too good, I assume they are cutting corners on the actual brewing resources. The money can only be spent once after all. Watch yourselves out there.

In another chapter of the tale how craft goes bad, we learned that Goose Island tri-packs with bottles of 2017, 2018 and 2019 Bourbon County stout have been marked down in the US Midwest to about 20% of their original inflated price. Imagine how many casks of the 2020 and even 2021 are sitting there in brewery warehouses… err… cellars with operating managers knowing how little it is really worth now. With such bad value, maybe they will be candidates for that #FlagshipFlotsam* thing one day.

In yet another sign of craft’s collapse, I had originally thought that this was a parody post from Ben, the tale of a overly-branded vegan brewery in Toronto shutting:

It’s like gentrification on human growth hormones, delivered by “The 5700,” a company that “manages a growing portfolio of lifestyle and entertainment brands that live online.” Now excuse me while I clean up the rage-induced blood-vomit typing that phrase has induced. Vegandale Brewery, which seemed to actually just be a coat of paint and a new name for the main floor of the existing Duggan’s Brewery, who officially moved to the basement of the location six months ago, wasn’t helping the image of veganism. Vegandale Brewery launched with the slogan “Morality on tap” and poured beers like Morally Superior IPA and Shining Example Stout. Yikes.

One last bit of endtimesy-wimsey news from CNY:

The Gordon Biersch Restaurant Brewery in Destiny USA closed today, joining a growing list of locations the national chain has been shutting down across the country. The brewpub — a restaurant with an attached brewhouse — opened in the Syracuse mall in 2012 and occupied a space on the first level, near the Hiawatha Street entrance.

I went there once as the family shopped out in the unending megamall for transitory branded objects. I came away with no actual recollections of the experience. Apparently, I was not alone… or at least not as alone as the bartenders were.

More in line with the “get in line” section of the news, I was glad to see this bit of law enforcement in Ontario’s news this week:

Jason Fach, 38, pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death in December. An agreed statement of facts says that he had had four 20 oz. beers in a little more than an hour at St. Louis Bar and Grill the night of the crash. Fach has been sentenced to six years in prison. On Feb. 28, police announced that they had charged the restaurant, its owners and two staff members. The charges include selling liquor to an intoxicated person, permit drunkenness on licensed premises and failing to facilitate inspection. Under Ontario law, an establishment and its ownership can be held responsible for overserving someone.

The liability of a licensed establishment is distinct from social host liability in which responsibility is much reduced here in the land of the maple and the moose.

On another sort of establishment in another land, Retired Martin posted a lovely photo essay, a snippet of one of which sits above, on a very specific topic this week:

“Should it be open ?” I asked the chattiest of the group, all of whom had OS maps in plastic wallets round their necks. “Oh yes, I phoned them up before we set off. They SAID they’d be open”. Hmmm.

Even more elsewhere, it was Icelandic Beer Day last Sunday.

A nice posi-post of a piece on a lager was sent out via the internets by Pellicle this week:

Thankfully, there was Keller Pils, a lemon-bitter pale lager from Bristol brewery Lost and Grounded. The first barely touched the sides: one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone. The second, golden and glistening with condensation in a Willi Becher—a classic straight German glass that tapers elegantly towards the top—took longer. It was crisp but rich, toasty and bitter, direct and deeply rewarding.

One problem with these sorts of nice posi-posts is how they remind you of other positive experience unrelated to the subject matter. I can think of fifty other beers that have happily let to “one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone” which is not, I suspect, the point of writing about a particular thing. I did notice the pretty can, however. And this rather honest comment from a co-owner of the brewery:

“It’s like a Rubik’s cube, you know?” Alex says. “It’s about the branding. It’s the communications. It’s the quality of the product. It’s about people out on the road talking about it. It’s about how you work with the wholesalers … it’s all sorts of everything.”

And speaking of nothing in particular, here’s an interesting bit of spam by email:

I am the marketing director for Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. As you may know, Jolly Pumpkin is an all wild, oak-aged brewery. We are announcing the launch of a new canning line for our wild ales and thought that your readers might be interested in the news. The first beers off the line will be year-round favorites, Bam Bière and Calabaza Blanca. We will also be canning Hyrrokkin, the first release of a new fruited seasonal saison series. 

Jolly Pumpkin in a can! Long term readers will recall when I spent a happy late afternoon in the company of owner/brewer Ron J back in 2007 when beer bloggers were still unique enough to not have the parking lot lights turned off and all the doors locked when one showed up to check out a brewery.  Now they sell the stuff in a can. Pretty cans. Life comes at you quickly.

Speaking of the most fabulous thing I heard related to the drinks trade this week…

The bartender at the Radisson Kingswood Hotel in Hanwell, near Fredericton, helped deliver a baby in a snowstorm on Thursday night. Storey said she got the call when she was closing down the bar for the night. “The person who works the front desk, Nick, comes over and says, ‘There’s someone having a baby in our lobby,'” said Storey. “At first I thought he was kidding.”

That’s enough. Once a child is born we have hit peak beer news for the week. And remember, if you want more beer news, check out 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. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Check them out. They are like blogs but with people speaking and saying “umm” a lot instead.

*…which is still really better than #JetsamJanuary if you think about it.

Your Quieter Mid-September Thursday Beer News Update

Quieter? Why yes,says I. Quieter. We have begun the long slide and climb towards the Vernal equinox, the true beginning of the year. By which time my carrots for 2020 should be up. I have yet to pick a carrot. Not one. Before you pick a carrot you have dreams that they are all sweet as candy and the size of baseball bats. Like the feeling you have the day before the lottery is drawn, the anticipation felt walking to a first date.  You can eat those little green young stems, you know. You can’t eat a lotto ticket.

So what is going on? First off, Martyn posted another great essay – this time on a small Greek craft brewery which opened in the town where he has been holidaying for years… oops… and now it seems it is gone. Did I see only a draft? It was titled “How Heineken Tried To Bully A New Small Greek Brewer And Failed” and it was wonderful. I know it was named that because I saved the URL in an email to myself. Some of his best stuff. I hope he didn’t get bullied and it did not fail. Please check in, Martyn.

Speaking of locals explaining the local experience rather than the fly-by experts from away who seem to get most everything wrong, Ben Keene* has written a lovely detailed piece about the breweries to be found along the Hudson River Valley train line:

Between the cities of Yonkers and Poughkeepsie (the terminus), no less than a dozen breweries can be found in the small towns dotting this historic river valley, almost all of them a fairly short walk from the corresponding Metro North railroad station. So whether it’s one more hurrah to cap off summer travel, or a trip meant to dovetail with the Hudson Valley’s colorful peak fall foliage, here’s your guide to breweries near the Metro North train line from Westchester to Dutchess County.

As an Upper Hudson Valley Beer and brewery man myself, I find the idea of doddling along the rails for days by the more southerly river shorelines very compelling.

The inclusivity anti-bigotry hashtag #IAmCraftBeer has reached every continent now. Sweet.

I liked this brief photo essay entitled Why Oh Why Do We Cellar / Horde Beer. Time To End This. Sorry, I Have Been Stupid. No More. I only have a few bottles left that I stuck away years ago and they give more pain than pleasure. Weren’t we all silly? Jeff Scott aka @beergeek might agree, I think, as he finds finds cleaning out his hoard, too.

Is 2013 the year the original hyped breweries of the American craft beer scene were opening? No.

As mentioned in the 29 March 2018 edition of these Thursday notes, some questions as to the actual history of lambics have been raised by Roel Mulder of the blog Lost Beers. Remember that next time someone suggests blogging is not a higher form than, say, periodical publishing for pay… as Punch magazine has apparently now** taken notice of the question at whiplash speed and run an article on the situation:

…according to Mulder, that’s a flawed family tree. “Lambic certainly wasn’t the first of the family to surface,” he says, citing evidence that sweet faro, in fact, came before, with the earliest mention dating to 1721—more than 70 years before the arrival of lambic. Gueuze, meanwhile, a merger of young and old lambic, didn’t appear until the early part of the 19th century, while kriek came about at the century’s end. But perhaps the most firmly held belief in the legend of lambic is its adherence to the idea that the beer can only be produced within tight Belgian parameters, the regional microflora supposedly crucial to its creation. Yet Mulder has found lambic brewing records from the Netherlands dating as far back as 1820.

Someone help me out with this – just as soon as we locate Martyn. Do that first.

This is interesting. A new Molson Coors macro brewery is opening in British Columbia. I did like this quote from the firm:

“We’re constantly looking at innovation and introducing new products to the market, knowing that there’s interest in changing things up,” said Andrew Molson with Molson Coors. 

Fascinating. But that much capacity, the capacity to produce more beer than the total amount of craft beer sold in the province in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, is an odd investment. A question. Consolidation is the logical answer with brewing but whose production is going to get rolled into this facility to justify the scale? Not folk in the province’s craft scene, that’s one thing that’s for sure. Odd.

In this week’s beer label lawsuit news, some knuckleheads out near the Pacific used the image and name of UK TV baker Mary Berry and then blurted the classic excuse:

“It was totally intended as an homage, but I get it, people gotta protect their image to the public,” Armistice cofounder Alex Zobel told SFGate. That sounds fairly conciliatory, but the brewery’s Instagram post is more pointed, stating in part: “Somebody’s agency has a very soggy bottom, indeed.” The brewery told SFGate it plans to rebrand the beer as Cease And Desist Berry (reminiscent of Lagunitas’ Undercover Shutdown Ale, if you ask me).

Boring. Boring idea in the first place. Boring style. Boring. Homage? Free advertising stunt more like it. Boring.

Finally, a note*** from the eldest brother:

Therefore one should not discuss geometry among people who are not geometricians, because they will not recognize an unsound argument. The same applies to all other sciences.” 

Seems applicable. Right?

There. A bit quiet. That’s OK now and then. Now, off to think about that carrot patch for another week. In the meantime, Boak and Bailey will have more news on Saturday and Stan will be with us on Monday. The OCBG Podcast is ready most Tuesdays by the recess bell, too. Their review of TIFF and TBW are good listens this week.  That’s a lot. Is there too much updating. What if someone comes out with a mid-week update by way of a Wednesday evening edition? I’ll be ruined… ruined!!!****

*Also author of Best Hikes Near New York City and Camping New York: A Comprehensive Guide to Public Tent and RV Campgrounds.
**In an article dated 10 September 2019 with the very odd statement “The Dutch historian had just published his 2017 book…” I am sure someone can explain.
***Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.12… as if you didn’t know…
****As if I get up at 4 am Thursdays and write all this!

The Thursday Beer News For All Of Us Actually Putting In A Day’s Work

I don’t know if this is a warning or tidings of good cheer. Boak and Bailey issued a short news post on Saturday because “not much has really grabbed our attention” and Stan followed suit. That’s reasonable given the time of year, folks out wandering and such, but I now feel somehow obligated to prove to you – to each of you – that beer blog news roundups matter.*

Speaking of Boak and Bailey, they were on the tartan trail and made it to Fort William in Scotland… or as we call it in the family For Twilliam. Dad’s Dad’s People were from there. Real kilty folk with McLeod at the end of each of their names.  They hit all the pubs and probably hung out with a zillion of my third cousins. But we don’t talk with them. Something happened in the mid-1930s and, well, you know how that goes. The Campbell branch sorta blew up around 1908 and, well, we only started chatting again around 2009. Anyway, enough of me. What did they find?

The one everybody recommended was The Grog & Gruel. We didn’t have a good time on our visit between grumpy service, farting dogs and pass-agg encounters with Canadian tourists determined to nab our space. But it’s certainly a nice looking, pubby pub, and we can imagine having fun there under different circumstances.

Friggin’ Canadians. They ruin everything.

Speaking of travel, [T]he Beer Nut has finally** started to unpack his notes from the gang freebie flip to a beer fest in Wrocław, Poland. Now, don’t get me wrong, as I trust no one more that TBN when it comes to the little things like experience, wisdom and integrity but seeing as I lived in Poland I was interested to see what he thought about the place:

From three days of flitting randomly around the bars I did, however, get a certain sense of generic Craftonia about the offer. It seemed like everyone had the traditional styles — their pils, their weizen and their Baltic porter — and then a plethora of trend-chasers: New England IPA, fruited sour ales, barrel-aged imperial stouts, much of it indistinguishable or unremarkable from one brewer to the next. Next to none of them seemed to specialise in particular styles or processes. I did make an effort to pick unusual-looking beers when I saw them, so hopefully the reviews which follow won’t be too generic in turn.

Interesting. I liked the image of the large concrete hockey puck stadium as the setting for the event. Comforting that my Slavic former neighbours have not lost their dab hand with a spot of grey liquid stone. Martyn also reported on the event and associated opportunities and found “the selections of beers are almost entirely Polish” which I take to mean breweries rather than styles.

In another bit of flitting about, Eoghan Walsh has written about going “Into the Valley of the Lambic Lovers” for the latest issue of Ferment:

By the late 1990s, the lambic industry was emerging from a prolonged depression. Competition from industrial, sweetened lambic had nearly wiped out the traditional breweries of the region, leaving only revivalists like Frank Boon and Cantillon to keep it alive. By the 1980s, even they were questioning the sense in persevering with a beer that no one seemed to want to drink. But lambic people are stubborn people, they toughed it out and their perseverance began to pay off. Export interest slowly took off. Their gueuzes started winning awards. Then in 1991 the first edition of Michael Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium was published.

What else? It can’t all be about hitting the road. Paste Magazine has an article on Hazy IPA which, after a couple of years of the stuff, is about as interesting as hard seltzer.*** Oddly, the article’s author seems to agree:

…the quest for “juicy” profiles in IPAs has led the beer industry in a direction that is actively undermining its own aims, and the result has become a whole lot of bad beer. Worse still, these poorly made NE-IPAs have proliferated to such an extent that they’re confusing the consumer as to what a “juicy” IPA is meant to taste like in the first place. We’re weaning a new generation of beer drinkers on a style that is often fundamentally difficult to drink, and that is a problem.

“Style” itself, of course, is to blame. The need to establish the new experiment in the same hierarchical construct as the loved and established.  Find someone to proclaim that for you and, whammo, you are in the money. Fortunately, it’s all so transitory it is easily avoided. I am also one with Jeff on this and, as a bonus, give tribute his graph folk art skills.

Speaking of the oddnesses of style, Stan caused a ripple in the continuum when he tweeted a photo of a (yik… spittoui!) pumpkin ale by a (whaaaaaat?!?!?!) Trappist brewery. Mucho replyo ensued. He used the moment to argue that “Trappist beer is an appellation, not a style” which is quite interesting because I am not sure what it means.  It’s a bit like 1+0=0 mathematically but maybe it’s 1-0=1. You get my point. The other point is that the pumpkin as determined by God’s very own plan is last year’s old crop so I have no idea what the monks think they are up to.

Katie has stayed at home, found a home for her tomatoes then celebrated in her very own living room. Speaking of which, it is reported that overall beer consumption in the UK is down by a third over the last twelve years:

“Premiumisation is impacting the Beer industry through drinkers drinking less but better,” the report says. Figures show that British people spent £177.8 million more on 66.5 million fewer pints of beer in 2017 than the year before, while the latest statistics from 2018 say that gap is widening, with a further £279 million being spent on another 40.6 million fewer pints. “On trade beer volumes have levelled out in recent years after a change in drinking habits, favouring drinking at home rather than in the pub,” said the report.

“Premiumisation”! What a silly word. ATJ added his thoughts on the story but they are behind a firewall so I don’t know what he wrote.

That is it for another week. I have the highest confidence that we can expect more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..?  Stan is taking another hiatus as he will be “bouncing between cities in Brazil” which is something I would like to see. Bouncing?!? I may need to approach the travel authorities about this.  We’ll see how much bouncing is going on then! Until then, bye!

*Maybe.
**Finally!
***Or “American creamy milk” for that matter.

A Very Busy Beery News Notes Thursday For The End Of November

To be honest, its been quite for a while there. Too quiet. I would have been questioning the value of my time put into this weekly round up but, fortunately, I am far less self-aware than that. My plunking together of this thing every seven days takes about as much effort and thought as scraping a razor across my face each morning. That being said, what a week it has been in the world of thinking about beer and brewing. Cats and dogs! We’ll unpack that a bit but before we do, just as a reminder that no one should have hard feelings, I offer this photo of Monty, the Hook Norton Brewery horse who retired this week. Nice horsey. See? That’s so nice. Not like a huge cow at all. OK, enough of that. Settle in. On to the mud slinging!

First, I am so proud of Norm for writing about his issues with beer and his big decision. He and I have never met but when we do I hope to see much less of him for a good many years.

Next, this piece on opening a restaurant in Toronto and then failing at it was extremely instructive for anyone still considering the foolish route of following one’s passion:

Out of desperation, Dorothy invited her mother to the restaurant for dinner, where we sheepishly explained our problem. A sensible woman, my mother-in-law was always convinced that my restaurant was a stupid idea. We were handily making her case. Nevertheless, she agreed to lend us a few thousand dollars to cover payroll. But her loan was eaten up so quickly that by the next payday, I was short again.

Drag. Conversely, Katie of @Shinybiscuit fame has written a wonderfully positive thing about how beer writing has contributed to her 2018:

There are so many people who’ve lifted me up this year, and believe me, I’m a neurotic mess, I need a lot of lifting. If you have ever told me you liked reading a blog post I wrote, or sent me some constructive feedback, or left a comment that caused me to think differently about something I’d written, or met up with me for a pint and a chat, or sent a Ko-Fi tip my way, or DMed me to see how I was, or allowed me to awkwardly hug you at a beer festival, or asked me to read something of yours, it means the world to me. Not because of what happened last week, but because this year I finally started doing something I’ve always wanted to do.

Fabulous. Again and much more conversely, the massive self-inflicted botch Boston’s Trillium is undergoing has been instructive in a number of ways including (i) how not to seek to correct a story, (ii) what can be found in the public record – and, not the least of which, (iii) how it filtered and organized beer writers into camps of sorts.  Crystal Luxmore appeared to put the whole thing down to a “disgruntled employee” in her tweet upon the matter. But then wrote of outrage. Bryan Roth subtly hinted at something of  seeming pro-ownership view in GBH: (i) allowing that working for crap wages in a “prestige” business (a term he included, left laying there but never really explained in the context of a 5000 brewery universe) while also (ii) including this fabulously and maybe telling wee nugget:

As these back-and-forth public spats tend to do, there’s no winner in a series of “he said,” rebuttals.

It’s a way of discrediting the complaint, isn’t it. And to what end? There is a risk of turning business ethics and employment standards into a matter of personality, framing the “disgruntled” as having “spats” is a conscious choice that a writer makes, leaving doubt as to purposes. Jeff Alworth (like Jason and Craig) saw things far differently in a piece (as well as follow ups) that he introduced by tweet in this way:

A Trillium worker revealed that his pay had been cut from $8 to $5 an hour. That was only the start of the brewery’s trouble. How owner JC Tetreault responded was a case study in bad crisis management. 

Jeff backed that up in the comments by way of a response to his own piece:

I’m assuming that Trillium was making enough money to continue to pay their employees $8/hr. Trillium is wildly successful, and has been under constant expansion for years. Pay cuts look bad and result in disasters like this for the darlings of beer. Unfair? I don’t think so.

To be clear, all these writers are excellent but they may come to the discussion with a view and sometimes interests. I certainly do. This is normal. It’s the marketplace of ideas – in both the senses of ideas fighting for their place and also the voices fighting for… let’s just say their own place. Very normal. Except… it is not much discussed in the great big fiction that is the unified, harmonized, sanitized beer community. Fabulous organic clannishness hot takes all.

Speak of which and perhaps conversely, right after that Pete Brown announced that the British Guild of Beer Writers has issued a Code of Conduct! Heavens to Betsy! This is the sort of thing that filled a beer bloggers mind in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. And 2011.  You can read the Code here for yourself. A few questions immediately jumped out for me:

1. the document speaks of members of the Guild as professional [s.1.1] and that a disagreement between members should be
dealt with in an appropriate business-like manner [s.1.3]. This is the deathknell* of the Guild to the degree it might want to present an organization which might be considered to speak as or for consumers not because of the standards that are being set but due to the reasons stated for setting the standards. This is especially odd give many if not most Guild members are not professionals in either the sense of (i) being solely a beer writer or (ii) supporting oneself with writing. Many tinker. Many others write and earn in a wider context of revenue streams as we saw last week.

2. the prohibition of endorsing “any commercial product or
service save for the promotion of her/his own work or the medium in which it appears” [s.2.2.1] is going to be very problematic for those members, perhaps most of them, who spend most of the time promoting the commercial product known as beer.

3. Good luck having anyone involved abide by the requirement to “give full disclosure if reporting on a press trip or other visit or significant hospitality that has been paid for by the brand or company being written about, or their agencies” [s.2.2.3] if by full disclosure we mean full disclosure. Too often all we can expect is the “trust me” or assertion (and one quite correctly asserted) that writing does not pay well enough not to take all… err… the support one can.

I do not point these things out to be unkind but to state that the undertaking of such a thing as a Code of Conduct is a minefield. Unlike others, I congratulate the BGBW for trying to take on the role of diffusion technician.

Now, to conclude, some shorter news items…

Note: Eoghan warns not to read to much into a loose organization acting as a loose organization as members leave the shadowy HORAL.

Remember: There are other sorts of bad employer practices in craft brewing.

Warning: the cheese has been always been high at GBH but this piece is extraordinary. It’s like a 1970s Coke ad or a dreamy John Denver song.

Affirmed: IPA is meaningless.

Also affirmed: stories too good to be true often aren’t.

Fabulous: Stan reports upon lambic exports in the 1830s.

Even more fabulous: excellent and extended research reported out on the demise of All About Beer Magazine.

Isn’t that enough for all you all? The good. The bad. And the ugly. Can’t I lay down my head now and have a well deserved nap? I think I shall. I think I will do just that. Happy early December without an edition of #TheSession. Pause and reflect as we move towards that quieter Friday. In the meantime, remember to check out Boak and Bailey for their news nuggets most Saturdays.

*Fine. Yes, “partial deathknells” are a silly idea… but I got your attention.

If Mid-November Were More Exciting Would You Be So Happy With Your Thursday Beer News?

So. Here we are again. This is a bad week. Traveling around central Canada. Long meetings. Hotel rooms. Fortunately, I am working on my Korean food skills as part of this road show. My newly increased obsession, kimchi is… well… it’s like a hipster Scot would have invented if Korea hadn’t done it first. Peace food. Other than that, its all hotel breakfast buffets and minivans fully of cheery engineers. Bounding down the highway balanced on a buffer of spicy exotic cabbage.

First off, I was alerted by someone no doubt more attentive that I am, given my kimchi induced food coma, that there has been a shock wave hammering those writing about the history of saison. You see,  has shared his thoughts of a fact-checking mission he undertook on the “2004 book Farmhouse ales, and especially the contribution it includes by Belgian brewer Yvan De Baets” and YdB is not too thrilled but sadly fell back on what looks like a status based defense in his extensive comments offered in response:

This is your website. By definition you will have the last word on it. Cool. I will not start a debate here anyway. I have more to say about some of your claims but I don’t have nor the time nor the desire to do it: not only I strongly dislike the ego battles, but more importantly the first tanks of our new brewery are arriving in a few weeks and I have to prepare them a nice nest.

Remember: watch out for expertise transposition. Few brewers are actually all that acquainted with the means and methods of the historian. Its not in the nature of the gig. Likewise, vice versa. Dig it? For me, however, I think the real problem is assuming anything written in 2004 is going to represent an exhaustive examination of a topic involving beer. A decade and a half is a long time for research to advance – especially when that decade and a half saw the explosion of the digitized historical records. That being the case, taking a strong stance either in favour or against such stale dated research is likely a mug’s game.

More convivially, Eric Asimov of The New York Times (who I like a lot) wrote a piece about the ciders of the Hudson Valley (which I like a lot):

All share a deep-seated desire to understand the traditions, nuances and complexities of apples and ciders. They are the latest wave of a great cider revival in the Northeast, reaching through New England, out to the Finger Lakes in western New York, and down through the Appalachians. For anyone used to most commercial ciders, which are often made from concentrate, sweetened and sometimes flavored, these serious ciders are a revelation. They are mostly bone dry, with the flavors of apples and of the region. Apples, too, it turns out, express a sense of place, what wine lovers call terroir.

Less authentically, apparently what was a contract brewery is now an app that the deal did not include. Figure out that one if you will… and this one for that matter:

Drinking at taprooms isn’t just en vogue, it’s a permanent part of today’s industry that now drives about 10% of Brewers Association-defined volume.

Permanent? You misspelled “today’s top fad” darling. Not unconnectedly, Matthew Curtis announced his retirement from the collective blog Good Beer Hunting. One never know what is behind “effective immediately” but one hopes its nothing too drastic. I line it up in my mind with the tweets about breweries hiring passionate beer comms for their passionate beer comms needs. All in all, a very tough row to hoe but hiring Rebecca would be a smart move, for example:

Hi guys! I’ll be looking for some freelance/ad hoc work after this month. I’m an accredited Beer Sommelier and was even nominated as Best Young Beer Writer this year by the (!).’

You know, Pete Brown used to be a beer comms guy but he is no longer working for this sort of work. He is working on being a better Pete* – which is great – but once in a while loses his marbles most wonderfully:

Oh fuck off. I’m sorry (I’m trying to rein in the bad language and anger and be more professional) but fuck the fuck off. Even the most cursory reading of the history of pale ale/IPA shows this simply isn’t true.

Like others, I don’t really even care what he was writing about when he got so deliciously rude… but in case you are curious it was about a disappointing relaunch of Bass Ale.

Czech beer drinking in a slump.

Tandleman has an opinion on the four Cloudwater cask offerings pending according to a tweet – as well as a very nice new profile photo of himself as you can see. He must have a good social media consultant.  I wonder what social media consultants like that cost…

These days, calling anything “one of the most important beers in modern American brewing” is a bit silly but the Chicago Tribune found cause to so publish in relation to Allagash Brewing’s Coolship Resurgam. I remember about a decade ago getting in a handbags match over someone claiming one US brewery or another was the first to do something to which I replied something something about the Allagash coolship – which Ron will correct correctly as being a “cooler” in English. These things get heated. Fortunately, even the shock of the new is past us now given we live in hyperspace and no one really cares, knowing that next week’s new thing will in turn be stale by the following weekend. Just hope the Allagash beer is tasty.

As noted last week, readbeer.com is up and running. We now can see the output of 63 different sources of online beer writing. That will grow and with it the decentralized, leveled goodness of blogs will return. One of the great things about the former RSBS was how access to ideas was not being filtered through the gauze of self-proclaimed expertise or assertions of journalism. Access was immediate and it was up to the reader to sift clues.  Soon there will be 630 feeds. Best to keep up.

Well, that is enough for now. I am closer to home for most of next week so maybe this will be more considered. Maybe something big will happen that will fill the thousand words with one long observation. Maybe I will sit and count the days to first Christmas and then Spring Training.  That’s more like it. In the meantime, check in with Boak and Bailey for the regular Saturday update.

* Fab.

Your Thursday Beer Newsy Notes For Six Weeks From Autumn

I miss corduroys. Don’t you? Eight months a year they are your best pal. One day a year they feel like your lower half is actually a roast chicken in a plastic bag baking in a 450F oven. I haven’t seen a leaf turn yet but the grapes out front are starting to ripen into show purple. The barley was ripened in the fields when I visited MacKinnon Brothers Brewing on Monday. I haven’t fully captured above how literally golden the fresh cut stalks were – pretty much beer-coloured.* There were a few big beer stories this week but none more important than a good barley crop coming in. Some are not so lucky.

Jeff created a lovely portrait of a small shaded corner. Boak and Bailey found a similar scene from 60 years ago. If there is one thing I like as much as the surprise hue of cut barley it’s scenes like these of actual people and how they enjoy their beer.

Here in Ontario, the big news is how the new Provincial government has launched a “buck-a-beer” initiative – including by lowering the minimum price to, you got it, one dollar. The response has not been a warm one from craft brewers and commentators. Great Lakes Beer spoke to CBC Radio while others were interviewed on TV news broadcasts. Jordan took some time before his UK-Euro vacation to set the tone, explaining how the policy change makes little business sense. Crystal pointed out how one brewery, Dominion City, is responding by donating a dollar from every sale to immigration agencies. Other efforts from the charitable to sarcastic response are underway. I’m sure this one is going to build towards the promised release of the new cheap beer for Labour Day. Question: wouldn’t that beer have to have been in production before the policy announcement?

I don’t recall ever craving no-lo alcohol beer other than to cut beer down to 2.5% or so by pouring half and half. Dad liked it as it was a way to get around his diabetes medications. Not sure the new wave of tasty water would fit any particular one of my needs but that is me.

Beer fests. I found the idea of not taking photos of drunk people a bit weird. Why not other than it’s tawdry. Fest organizers and the drinkers put themselves in positions of risk voluntarily. A few images might load social media with something opposing that other weirder idea promoted by the industry – people not drinking craft beer to get drunk. In other fest news, Ben asked if folk were willing to spend $120 for a three hour drinking session. Not a chance, I said. And James B. reported on the continued sexist crap at the GBBF. So… drunken, expensive and being stuck in the same room as sexist pigs. Not exactly my kind of fun. And it’s all a shame when I think of someone like the Tandyman behind the scenes, working to ensure these sorts of things don’t go on.

I really enjoyed this perspective from BeerAdvocate on wholesale beer buying in the US craft market. Thirty years ago I was a wholesale produce trader for a bit and the story rings true, especially the need to respond to demand rather than try to set trends at the supply side of the equation. Consider this:

“The guy at the shop asks, ‘Where are you opening?’ I tell him and he says, ‘Oh, you’re going to be selling gospel music.’ I was an alternative, metal, New Wave kind of guy. I thought, ‘I’ll never sell gospel music!’ I opened my fledgling store with no money and three or four of the first 10 people in the door asked for gospel music. Guess how long it took before I started selling gospel music?” That experience stuck with Singmaster. “You set something up, but then you follow what the customers do if you’re smart,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what I like or what you like… it only matters what the customers [do].”

When I express my unhappiness with the concept of beer “curation” go back and read that passage.

Ed gave us this bit of fabulousness: “Not everyone like lambic…”

That’s it for this week. No need to link to the usual bland beer travel puff, beer pairing puff or puff-packed beer style announcements. A shorter summary of the news as you would expect from early mid-August but still enough real news to keep it interesting. Don’t forget to tune in to the internets for Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan on Mondays.

*Really? No, I had no idea. Thanks so much for the feedback!

Ontario: Patricia, Stone City Ales, Kingston

A beer with subtitles: autumn saison, brewed with sweet potato and squash. I bought two bottles of this a few Fridays ago from the retail counter at Stone City, a short march up the hill from work. The first bottle gave me a bit of pause. This was an example of something. An excellent beer thoughtfully made that I liked but, still, one that I was not sure about.

And my uncertainty was fuelled by my own uncertainty as to why I am uncertain. So I am glad I bought two. This is a fabulous beer. The base saison is white peppered and dry. The gourd and rhizome quite restrained. On this warm Sunday afternoon in the middle of this strangely warm autumn, it tastes like the rich earthy air flowing in through the wide open windows. It is a clever timely release with adjuncts which are right up my alley. I grow squash and we even have use the nickname Swee Apado around the house, given we eat so much of it. So what is wrong?

Clouded vintage gold ale under a lacing fine white head. On the nose, it is classic saison in the Dupont style. Not the DuPont one, if you know what I mean. Backing it up is the dirt-tang of sweet potato. In the mouth, immediately dry and twiggy herbal with an very pronounced opening of flavours in the swallow followed by a long long hot herbal finish that resolves into the squash. The vegetable elements hide, show, hide then show.

I worry that my problem is this beer is cleverer than I am. Rustic and elegant. I can personally only claim the first. In my mind, I am searching for a place to put the beer. Pigeon hole it. I want to have it with spurting hot venison sausages. In a coconut curry. Or pork shoulder roasted on a bed of parsnips. I want a balancing fattiness. But is that fair to the beer in itself? Yeats spoke about loving something, someone for herself alone.  I have never claimed to be all that nuanced in my tastes but this may well be suggesting, strongly, that I revisit my limitations. I don’t like to not get the point of something this good.

So… I consulted Keats and his poem Ode to Autumn. The subtitle asked me to, no? And this explains everything. This is not the autumn of mists and mellow fruitfulness in the glass. That’s the autumn of back to school. A month ago. This beer speaks to a later point – the brittle leaf pile, warm welcome corduroys. Early sunsets and chilly walks back up Cobourg Road to get to college, to happy hour. Soccer practice with freezing knees. Remembrance Day and singing “Abide with Me” down at the Grand Parade.

We are not there yet. Here the leaves are still on the tree and I am picking cherry tomatoes off the vine a month after the equinox. I mowed today. Soon it will be six months to May. Four to March. This will be a short winter if autumn still is a ways off yet.

 

Half Hours On Earth, Seaforth, Ontario

I’d like to say that I visited Half Hours on Earth a few weeks ago but it was more like a drive-by shooting. Except I was only shooting with the iPad camera. See, it was summer and the kids at camps and cottages on the Lake Huron shore. My only job that week off was to get them there one weekend and get them back on the next one. Thirty-two hours of driving all in all. I needed some joy and a stop like this on a long haul is just the thing I needed. But I only had 12 minutes so I was in and out after asking 57 questions and coming across as a weirdo. I am used to me so it was fine.

 

 

 

 

Seaforth is a small crossroads ag supply town in south western Ontario that looks like a lot of the other small crossroads ag supply towns in south western Ontario that I married into. Lovely orange and tan brick houses and main street buildings. Gingerbread gothic revival churches sitting prominently on a grid of squares drawn on a map in the 1830s, long before the people arrived. All cooled by the shade of large hardwoods planted over 100 years ago – or maybe a dip in the river when it’s a hot one. The whine of cicadas interrupted by blizzards on an annual cycle. Alice Munro country filled with quiet towns laced with the quietly unhappy but satisfied enough. It’s not where you would think you would find great beer but a few weeks back Robin and Jordan declared it the best new brewery in the province and I went all in. I found the brewery and its two owner operators in the lower level of a grain depot by a rail siding. Here is what I thought.

Green Mind: The name is like a Third Doctor serial. Except it needs to have “of Doom” added at the end. I bought a quart jug, aka a small growlers. It provided me with a great follow up to a GLB Canuck and a Friday evening mow of the lawn. At heftier 7.1% its the biggest of the beers I bought, surprising similar but also the senior to the province’s favourite craft beer. Not a sour bomb so much as a weedy raggedy-arsed maybe even pissed-off IPA.  Pale malt sweet base under bitter greens. The lavender brett fitting beneath the lush ditch weed bitter herb hop. Remember. I just mowed the lawn. A bit of Chinese mustard green burn. Not really arugula black pepper bitter but green and sharp like a salad full of salad greens you never heard of. Quaffable. I quaffed. Rounded by the wood not a hint of any cheesy Chardonnay oak. Robust but not heavy. Extremely satisfying dry stinging nettle note in the finish. Cloudy but not milky, mustard – tan coloured ale under a rich clingy fine whipped egg white head. Sweet cream and herbs on the nose portending the unexpected. A thinking person’s ale. Or at least a person having a good think after mowing the lawn on a Friday. Lovely.

Jez: 5.6% rosehip rosemary farmhouse. Herbal lemonade on the nose. Smell like the sorbet/sherbet I want in my life. Cloudy dark lemon ale under rich white whipped head. Dry yet moderately full. Plenty of bright acid, lemon juice, rose hip giving both a bit of body and a seam of earthy slightly sweet must. Very attractive, vinous. Citrus rise at the start, lime and white grapefruit pith. Deftly confident if not bold. Could have been overbearing if a few element had gone astray. Could poach cod in this. With baby leeks and smashed new spuds. I came back to this one. As I thought about this beer, I agreed with myself about how brilliant the use of rose hip was.  Earthy but not mushroomed.

Corrigan: I believe I learned that this was the same 5.6% base beer as the Jez but with coriander and lemongrass. The lack of the earthy non-mushroom tone makes a great difference. This is all bright and light. The piccolo of citrus notes with a relatively slight herbal presence compared to Jez. The lemongrass adds green hues to the middlest middle where another brewer this summer or last might have placed cucumber. Very attractive…. again. The bretty lavender effect frames deftly. Did I use deft again, too? Sure did. A very much quieter sour beer but well worth leaning in a bit and paying proper attention.

Mingus Dew: I bought a full growler, a pottle to those who know. Quarts and pottles. Can’t we just call them that? This pottles-worth was drained in the backyard of the in-laws who were away out east on holiday. We were feeding grapes to the unwelcome rabbit who had set up shop, eating all their garden plants. Rather cheeky. It was the perfect antidote to a stinking hot day in a quiet town, another southwestern Ontario ag supply town. At just 3.8%, a dry hop table sour that offers no dangers, just promises. And opportunities. Dry citrus tang on the nose. Slightly clouded light golden ale under a rich rocky lace leaving head. I should pull the two emergency bottles of that Girardin with the black label out of the residual stash to see how they might compare. This is lovely. Yes, simple lemon but, as with GBL, there is that measured cream backbone from the light malt.

Pod Six: Last but not least. Again, I believe this is the same 3.8% base beer as Mingus Dew with sea salt rather than dry hopping. Side by side, very interesting. The most obvious difference is how the salt adds a slight coating to the lips. Next, it slightly takes the edge off the acid. It might contribute to a more restrained aroma. What, after all, is the smell of salt? A miner might know. The choice of sea salt is interesting as just down the road is Ontario’s salt supply at Goderich. I want to fill a jug with this beer and mild garden herbs. Parsley. Chervil.

We actually chatted a bit. Not what you would call an interview or anything. The kids were in the car. With the AC on. You can read the newspapers for that sort of information. Owners Kristen Harburn and Kyle Teichert grew up in the area. People I know probably know people they know or at least were at the same buck and doe. I asked how it was they got into sours and told me of trips to Buffalo to find Belgian sours, the empties of which were on display. I pointed at a few with strong memories for me, especially Brise-BonBons from Fantome which introduced me to hoppy and sour ten years ago. These beers are the the love child of that.

They ship their beers. You can order them and they stick them in the mail. I will do that. Likely today. After all, I am just about out. If I think of the thrill I had in the fall of 2007 finding myself in Dexter, Michigan getting an hour of Ron Jefferies’ time at the end of a busy week and then getting a case of quarts (and a woolly winter hat) to take away at $5.99 a bottle, the idea of getting beer this fine delivered to my door has a Jetsons’ tone to it here in Ontario the monopolistic. I like this future.

Sour Studies: Timmermans Oude Gueuze 2013, Belgium

image232Session beer. 5.5% and sufficiently sour that a personal sized 750 ml gives at least two hours – or four laundry loads – worth of sips. It pours a slightly clouded golden straw. Plenty of must and funky tang when the nose is rammed into the nonic. Still, a bit of fruit in there. Maybe lingonberry. Just a hint. Much more going on in the swally. Sour, yes, certainly sour with a light summer apple, lemon, creamy wheat, nutmeg heart. “Rotten lemon, more like it!” says the lad after he sticks a finger in the glass. Which pretty much sums it up.

What is my relationship to this sort of brutal beer after all these years of study? I certainly have an appetite for any I get a chance to lay my hands on but they come along so few and far between for Ontarians given out mediocre retail options that I wonder if the scarcity makes them more interesting. I bought this in Albany a few months ago and do like to have a few bottles of panic gueuze… but wonder if I would be quite so excited if I could buy one of these any old day down the street? Or should I just be happy that one of these every three or four months is just what keeps me happy. You really can’t measure the relative value of the exotic.

BAers give it solid respect.

Ontario: Uber, Nickel Brook Brewing, Burlington

uberWhat a minefield this beer presents me. Not only do I know and like the brewer but his mother lives nearby and his auntie works where I do. How could I possible give an opinion unbouyed by positive thoughts? Then again, it’s not like I am all Jim–junkety or anything. No need to stop using the bathroom mirror. Then, besides that, there is the question of what others might think of me – which can be odd and disconcerting – not to mention likely wrong. How dare I try something not conservative? But more importantly, what does it mean about this style? What does this beer in this place and time mean?

You will recall the the best expression of what style is was Jackson’s first go at it, before he went bad Aristotelian creating the mess we live with today. Originally, a style of beer was stylized after an example, a great beer. I think it is fair to say that practically speaking that example is the Weihenstephen Berliner Weiss I wrote about for Session 19 – if for no other reason that for a long while this was the only example you were going to lay your hands on in North America. That is until micro went craft. So, is this homage or dommage to the style? Should I care?

The beer pours an effervescent clear light gold. No head at all. On the snort, you get apple cider and cow poo of the nicest kind. In the mouth, a light and lightly astringent texture holds flavours of apple, meadow grass, minerals like a good Mosel, fresh lemon juice, a little cream of wheat like a good gueuze and a little little something vegetative like fresh cabbage or cauliflower. A really lovely sipper and at 3.8% a beer you can sip for a good long time.

What a relief! No ethical qualms!! Priced at $7.95 for 750ml, this is about twice as much as the brewers hefty IPA Headstock, one of the best values in beer in Canada. The BAers give it lots of positivitay… which is good.