Category: The Session

Your Beery News Notes For Finally… Finally… Settling Into 2025

Lordy. Is all the holiday cheese finally gone? Is 2024 gone? Really? Check the back of the bottom shelf. Me, I finished off the holidays with a Covid needle in my left arm and a flu shot in my right. I’d rather have had the cheese. So perhaps a short post today, given me with the low grade fever and insomnia and all you all getting over eating the Yuletide cheeses. We should declare this International Solid Dairy Hangover Week. Whatever it is, it’s all going to be OK as it’s just twenty-five days to Truck Day! Yup. Gonna be OK.

So… The Session. The toe in the water revival edition of The Session. Hmm… there has been a  wave of tremendous excitement over the experimental revival of The Session, as announced last week, after a seven year break. Stan, Maureen and Matthew are among the tremendously excited. What does it mean to you? Well, it is actually all about you – as you do all the work, you scribblers. You write, I list. That’s it! To aid you  in your thoughts, I offer this simple graph from 2021, an example of my excellent in thought organization. It was last featured in late 2021 and is an update of one from 2016 but, still, it is very much in the now. Clarity. That’s what it sets out. Clarity. Hopefully this will give you that extra push to set out your thoughts on 31 January on the question of the month: “What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?“* Most any medium accepted. Subject to arbitrarty post-facto interventions, of course.

What else is going on? Just after the deadline last week, Jordan shared his thoughts on the brewing of beers under license and just how much, at least in Ontario, the beer that is licensed is the beer that is brewed:

It happened gradually. I can’t tell you the date, but I know that it was Jamie Drummond that brought it to my attention. He had been a lifelong Lowenbrau drinker, and a dedicated one at that. He got in touch one day to point out that it didn’t taste right. Of course it didn’t. It was being brewed in London, Ontario at Labatt.  Now, this was nothing new. They’d been brewing Stella Artois in London, Ontario for a while… Over time, I began to get the sense that the walls were pushing in on the import section. One year, maybe 2019, I added Spaten to the beer styles course at George Brown as the ur-example of Munich Helles, but as soon as I opened the can it was wrong. I hadn’t noticed that it was 473 ml, but I surely noticed the difference in aroma within seconds. You guessed it: London, Ontario.

Speaking of things not being what they were… is Facebook going the way of Twitter. I caught this mention of the uselessness of FB ads now for local audiences:

At least in the US, ads used to be excellent for small, local bars/restaurants. Affordable and very effective. I actually liked a lot of the ads I saw. Then they raised the prices and showed them to people from thousands of miles away. So now only shady crap merchants see any value in using them.

No shady crap in The Guardian‘s a great piece this week on getting snowed in, storm stayed, at Britian’s highest pub in most northern Yorkshire:

…the team are well prepared. Their electric power comes from a generator and there is enough food for about a month, “but hopefully it won’t come to that” says Nicole Hayes, one of the bar staff, who has done a number of phone interviews with local and national media in the run-up to the weather warning, such is the reputation of the pub… Word came through that the snow gates on the nearby A66 were being closed at 10.30pm, which meant anyone hoping to leave needed to make their attempt very soon or they were likely to be here for a couple of days, as the snow was forecast to only get worse.

Less placid is the battle being wage for the beer buck of America. Kathleen Willcox wrote these words that really one couldn’t imaging being puslished not that long ago:

…  lagers and traditional styles are often priced a dollar or two cheaper than competing styles,” Varda notes. “In a world of inflation and particularly among younger consumers who may have less financial stability, those dollars make a real difference.” Amid rising inflation, craft beer just doesn’t seem like a priority. Especially as brewers themselves grapple with ever-increasing prices for goods like packaging and transportation, and are forced to pass the increases on to customers….  Some brewers even wonder if craft beer is settling into a new, more permanent rut.

Permanent Rut!! Jings. But at least things are reasonably civil, right? What’s that?  How about the beer trade dispute, discussed in TDB, occurring in one of the new year’s potential hot spots:

Lawmakers have accused Chinese brewers exporting their products to Taiwan of engaging in unfair trade practices by receiving subsidies from the Chinese government, according to the Taipei Times. The Taiwan Brewers Association, made up of the country’s six biggest brewers, called on the government to launch an investigation into cheap beer imports from Mainland China. Finance Minister Chuang announced this week that the government is set to launch a probe into low-priced Chinese beer. The proportion of the Taiwanese beer market made up of Chinese beer brands has increased from just 8% in 2015 to a current market share of 34%.

Ron had an interesting post at the end of last week on the role of used beer in the 1970s. Used beer?

…pretty much everyone was up to blending in various types of rubbish. Even when brewing the beers I loved, like Tetley’s Mild. Which, according to the brewery’s Specifications Manual, could be up to 12.5% “stabilised beer”. Let’s not kid ourselves. There was a lot of recycled beer in the pints we so happily slurped back in the 1970s. Whether it happened at the pub or in the brewery, you were lucky if it was the first time around for all of the beer in your glass. In a Tetley’s pub with handpumps, it might be as little as 80%. And still I loved it.

Note #1: on the US Surgeon General’s advice, actually you can be advised to eat ice cream by medical specialists as one family member was so… not the same… at all. I mean I get that it’s those in the drinks trade posing as medical experts who doth protest but, let’s be honest, if you are going to mention alcohol’s positives of social interaction and relaxation and not weigh that against the negative like the social ills of drunk driving, violence and squandered family budgets you’re not really doing actual analysis. What is that sort of writing called?** Less suspect is this piece called “Why Drink?” by Matt Gross:

It’s not, of course, that alcohol has suddenly become dangerous. The scientific consensus, however, has evolved over the last several years, away from the idea that moderate drinking is harmless or can even have some health benefits, and toward the understanding that no amount of alcohol is helpful. This, too, is not necessarily new. As far back as I can remember, I’ve known alcohol was a poison: After all, that’s how it was described in 1980s X-Men comics by Wolverine, who drank copiously to almost no effect. And poison, as we all know, is bad for you.

Note #2: Matt still drinks regardless. And Kate Bernot forecasts much of the same sort of  non-decision decision making: “I don’t think we’re going to see population-level dramatic shifts in alcohol consumption.” But we read beer is on the decline in the US, even turning unpopular… though not in France. Still, CNN is projecting major alcohol firms will be betting otherwise, taking evasive action:

A December report from IWSR, a leading drinks analysis firm, said that the non-alcoholic drinks global market is “experiencing a transformative period of growth, driven by evolving consumer behaviors and the momentum of no-alcohol.” The trend, to be led by the United States, is expected to grow by $4 billion by 2028 in the firm’s forecast. Non-alcoholic drinks are even “skewing younger than the core buyer demographic across markets, and demonstrate higher frequency and intensity of consumption,” signaling that there’s a sustained thirst for booze-less beverages.

So how do we unpack all that up there. We enter 2025 to a cacophany of contrasting complaint. How does one sort through it all? I came across an interesting concept this week: “the asymmetry of journalism.” It was in an article in The Times about columnist Fraser Nelson in his early days as a business reporter:

Every day, companies release financial results and reporters write a report, perhaps interview them. Smaller firms are lucky to be sent anyone at all, so even a 22-year-old dogsbody is treated like a VIP. The CEO meets you; it’s his job to sell his story, yours to be sceptical.*** Yes, he runs a £100 million company and you’re a chancer with no expertise, but that’s the asymmetry of journalism.

So we need to rely on those voices who provide informed skepticism. Chancer or otherwise. Ms. Mather recommended a new writer to me, something I am also always going to follow up upon and take the chance. In Drinking in Strange Places at the and of last week,  Charlotte Cook wrote about Zoigling including this fundamental fact:

In these Zoigl towns, however, you can still turn up to a strangers house, sit in his living room, and for the very reasonable price of €2,40 per beer, have as many pints as you care to imbibe, often with the whole family chipping in to serve beer and small snacks

Never the chancer, Martin posted an interesting and rather old school set of thoughts on his blog’s stats:

844 posts last year, just a series of diary entries with a pub visit and a rummage around an unsung UK town, with the odd bit of tourism and weird stuff during lockdown. Despite COVID, the conclusion to the quest to complete the Beer Guide that dominated the diary, and a general sense that blogging is past its peak, visitor numbers have been oddly consistent.

Which means this. Blogging? Not in a permanent rut. Unless A.I. takes over. Maybe it has already. How can you be sure I am actual me? Is this “Al” or “A.I.”? The Beer Nut, still calling in from Brazil, can always tell:

I’ll spare you my usual rant about the bad AI-generated artwork on Third Barrel’s cans. Suffice it to say, they’re still at it, and it still looks cheap and terrible. I had built up quite a collection of their beers late last year, through no particular reason, and got to work on them last month.

And in Pellicle, we read that there is more stout going on in Ireland than we are reading about in the medias. In fact, there is cult stout as  Eoghan Walsh explains:

With less than 100 independent breweries now active in Ireland, it’s easy to forget the significance of this achievement, and just how different the beer scene was that leann Folláin debuted into in the late 2000s. John and Liam remember. They remember when spotting the bright green glow of an O’Hara’s tap badge through the window of a pub was like a lighthouse beacon in a storm. It’s too easy to underestimate the impact of that kind of durability in an industry where attention spans are increasingly short, and business plans not much longer. To paraphrase Stalin, sometimes longevity has a quality of its own.

Finally, in 2050 I will be 83… err… 87 years old so I do not give one shit as to what the beer trade will look like then.  I’ll just want to know that there will be Red Sox game on my screen and plenty of oxygen in the tank I wheel around behind me. Jeff, however, took up the challenge and postulated… sorta:

The title of this post is slightly misleading, I confess, because in thinking 25 years ahead, I immediately had to consider 25 years ago. What has changed? Depending on how you look at it, twenty-five years is both a huge amount of time and not much at all. We went from fighting wars with horses to dropping nuclear bombs in 25 years (more or less). On the other hand, Snoop Dogg released an album 25 years ago, and he’s still on 73% of the ads I see during football games. In other words, some things change a lot more than we think, and others far less.

I am not going to say that is a tremendouly robust analysis… but I am sitting in a chair next to a stack of my CDs and LPs so maybe there’s a point to where he’s going.

That big picture or the long game, for me, sums up the opportunity of any writer whether news, history or even poetry. But the key word up there is still “skeptical” as the quality of the good writing will be defined by something like Keats’ negative capability. Be neither booster or bland. That’s it. Maybe. Let’s see you roll some of that out for The Session, wudja?

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

*Find a sunny happy tale even if, as Beer Marketers’s Insights noted, 2024 was unkind to craft: “Volume declined for the 3d year in a row and 4th year outta 5, CBN estimates, on track to finish ~4 mil bbls below its peak in 2019. This also marks the 6th straight year of share loss in off-premise scans. Craft beer held nearly 12 share of $$ in 2018 Circana multi-outlet + convenience channels. This year it’s down to just 10 share of $$ YTD thru Dec 1. The category’s taking hits from every angle. Distribs continue to shift attention toward other categories. Craft bottle sales remain one of the biggest drags on segment sales, down double digits again in 2024. Craft can growth slowed tho continues to gobble up share. Keg volume is declining again this year, disproportionately impacting craft. Taproom volume is on track to decline for the 2d year in a row, TTB data suggests. More breweries closed than opened this yr, Brewers Assn estimates.” Yikes.
**Up there with the scoffing while basically affirming sort of response.
***As opposed to kissing up to your commissioning editor… again!

Your First Beery News Update For 2025, My 2024 Golden Pints And An Homage To The Session

The now, the year now past and the eternal. That’s what it’s all about this week. You, kind reader, may consider this too much as task for one person but let us not forget my capacity to do a very poor job.  Yet. How about my find of the year or rather my daughter’s find when on the old country visiting family last April. That’s my grandfather up there outside the pub with buddies about 100 years ago. Second from the right.

How have others found the year and summed up 2024? First, Matt looked back with some positive personal thoughts:

One of the reasons I feel like I’ve managed to produce more work this year is because I’ve figured out what I like to call my work-work-life balance. I use the term work-work because, essentially, I have two jobs. In fact it would be better to say I run two separate businesses. Pellicle being one, and my freelance writing, photography and whatever else hopefully comes my way being the other. Not only have I managed to split my time equally between the two, but I’ve also got a lot better at switching off and taking time for myself.

And Jeff looked back, too, but found the big picture less cheery:

You always want to write an annual retrospective in such a way that a through-line connects the points—a ribbon, if you will—so that when you come to the end, you can tie it up in a nice bow, presenting a clear picture of the year just deceased. Well, there is no through-line, no way to tie the whole thing up. We are in a transitional phase and mixed signals are the rule of the day. This applies as much to the larger world as to the beer industry, and I suppose those two are connected.

Yup. I’m also not really looking forward to 2025 in the bigger picture. But, still, I planted my first vegetable seeds of the year yesterday so I am not without a certain level of optimism.

So… let’s go. First up some beery news.

A. The Weekly News Notes

Will I keep these brief? Let’s see. First up, we have Alistair at Fuggled declaring his best beer of the year: Selvedge and Coat Czech 12° pale lager.

Ah…the glories of Czech style pale lager, the second best thing to actual Czech pale lager. When a brewery makes an absolute banger of a Czech style pale lager, they are always going to appear in my end of year review…. This especially true when said Czech style pale lager is either a 10° or 12° I could wax lyrical for days when it comes to Selvedge Brewing’s stunning Coat Czech that came out in the middle of spring this year. Absolutely reeking with Saaz hops, with a rock solid bitterness that scrapes the palate clean with every mouthful – again a reminder of our friend Mr Swiveller’s maxim that “it can’t be tasted in a sip”.

Elsewhere, I had an interesting experience which again affirmed my love of auto-archiving whether by blog or email. Over on BlueSky, Kevin of Casket Beer, asked if anyone had ever had a Scotch Ale out of a thistle glass. I knew that I had had one in my hand at sometime and it set me off on scrolling through images I posted from around twenty years ago looking at the pub glassware incidentally included. Which then took me to a side-by-side study of great upstate NY beef sandwiches from the years prior to the Obama administration.  Which then reminded me of the value of taking photos of anything and everything. That image there? A view of Gritty McDuff’s Freeport location’s bar in 2005. Not particularly pretty but loads of information. Look at the range of booze on offer! But not a thistle glass in sight.

This month’s comic in Pellicle from David Bailey (no relation) has moved another step along the path of questioning and abandonment of the stereotypes of craft fandom. This frame particularly strike me, it’s something of an indictment. There’s not a lot charming about this person, this same person in the New Yorker cover of a decade ago. But times have changed. Along with the losses of breweries and the closings of beer bars that mark the end of an era, this character is now just an object of mockery. A clown. Where’s that going to go in 2025?

Mikey Seay alerted me this week to an issue that I had no idea existed:

There is an old beer-head at the taproom I’m at right now. He is in his 60s (probably), all by himself. He’s not hanging out waiting for someone to show up, he is by himself, he’s this for the duration. And this is fine. I am by myself too. There are several dudes by themselves here. Two of them are reading a book. The other is me, sitting on a stool, on a phone, writing into it. So I am not here to shame him for being alone. I am here to shame him for walking around, no agenda. He is just staring off into the abyss, holding his tulip glass, meandering. Non. Stop. Dude, you’re making the rest of us look bad, GO SIT THE FUCK DOWN!

I had no idea. But my eyesight isn’t what it was. And there are all those interesting things on the walls. And those tall barstool chairs set around small wobbly tables are so uncomfortable. But, that being said, as Jeff reminds us, you do not have to drink to get your butt out the door. This month, try #PubJanuary:

Breweries have also been keen on offering nonalcoholic options, and will be happy to support their patrons’ Dry January goals. It’s increasingly common for breweries to make their own NA beer, many make a hop water or NA seltzer, and of course, they all have soda and coffee, too. It may not occur to people, but pubs are pretty good places to go during Dry January.

I would add – meals. If I go for lunch at a pub, half the time I don’t drink much or any alcohol. But I do love me some pub food.

Investing in Russia? Why?

Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 30 signed a decree transferring shares of the foreign brewing company AB InBev Efes Russia to the temporary management of the Russia’s Vmeste group of companies. The move places all the shares of AB InBev Efes Russia, a joint venture between the Belgian brewer and Anadolu Efes of Turkey that launched in 2018, under the temporary control of the Vmeste group, created in August.

Forget Guinness’s manufactured tight supply, there’s an actual beer shortage in Ghana:

…a shortage of Mini Club beer in parts of the Ashanti Region over the past two months. Many of them have gradually become accustomed to seeing empty shelves in their bars. According to local vendors, the shortage was especially hard hit in areas known for their vibrant nightlife, including Krofrom, Ashanti Bantama, Adum, Maxima, Asafo, Kwadaso, and other surrounding communities. Some observers attributed the surge in demand to the mood of residents, particularly supporters of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), who make up a significant portion of the region’s population

And, something from another time popped up this week, as Molson Coors lot its appeal of the trademark ruling brought and won by Stone… whatever that is now:

Molson Coors Beverage Co. can’t nullify Stone Brewing Co.’s $56 million trademark win over its Keystone Light beer packaging predominantly featuring “STONE,” the Ninth Circuit said. Molson Coors failed to establish a jury or the lower court made reversible error leading to the trademark verdict for the craft brewer, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in an opinion issued Monday.

Here’s the full ruling if you want to read it for yourself.

OK, that’s the news for this week. On to the Golden Pints of 2024.

B. The Golden Pints

Wot’s a Golden Pint? Ask The Beer Nut or Ed or Rob or Boak and Bailey or Stan! It’s really whatever you like but you need a template that is your own but also not so far off THE template that you look like you don’t understand the template. Tem. Plate. I think it’s from the Dutch for template. Basically, it is a means to dash off a number of very short passages which add up to the appearance of a large piece of work. Just like most books on beer. See? Anyway, here is my take on it all.

Best Beer on Tap: Wild Stout by MacKinnon Brothers, taproom, Bath Ontario. At a gathering of friends and family in early December, I spied this tap and made my way over to the barn cellar’s bar. Thick without being uncious, mint flavoured without that flavouring feel, a perfect roasty stout with an extra touch of local given the mint grew on fence row on the farm.

Best Beer at Home: going strictly but purchases, it has to be Světlý Ležák 12° from Toronto’s Godspeed.  I probably had at least 24 cans of this beer in 2024. Precise simplicity with thoughtful depth while also being refreshing enough for post-lawnmowing relaxation. I have a hard time thinking of anything else I would want in a lager. In fact, I just ordered more. On sale and the PMTJ tax waiver applies. Has Alistair tried it?

Oddest Beer Experience: Rochefort 8 at home. I really didn’t like it. Much to my surprise as it is a favourite. I hadn’t had a lot of beer in the autumn before opening this one as a great big treat. And I didn’t like it. At all. I know it was a me thing. But it reminded me of the realization from years ago that I can go through wine stretches and through beer stretches but I really  can’t go through beer and wine stretched. 2024 was pretty wine centric.

Best Beer Website: I don’t care for the artificial distinction between blogs and semi-pro beer writing so I would include it all in this category. Newletters. Blogs. Webmags. It’s all just writing on my screen. Winner? Has to be Pellicle. They’ve told the tale. The great success of Pellicle‘s continuing ascent occuring in the year GBH shut up shop after wandering a bit lost for a while is noteworthy, too. But be clear – their success is not relative. Sticking to the topic, employing good humour, steering away from the temptations of pure PR or (worse) lifestyle, aiming for a standard of written excellence as well as a transparent financial self-awareness all work together to earn Pellicle the praise it richly deserves.

Best Individual Bit of Writing: the best written thing? Things abound! How could I possibly choose? Well, let’s start off by saying you beer poets really let us down in 2024. I accept that it is well over a decade since Beer Haiku Daily packed it in but that there is a gap waiting to be filled, all you poetic people. But, seriously… the best bit of beer writing in 2024 is this short sentence: “DEI is so 2021.” Ruvani de Silva’s essay “Apathy Has Rained On Me — On DEI Burnout in the Beer Industry” in Pellicle back in June teaches us a lot of things. Craft beer is loaded with posers. Beer people are not all good people. But most of all she teaches us that is right and proper to write analytical condemnations of the bad things in the beer trade with the hope, foolish or otherwise, that things just might improve.  Took a lot of years and a lot of self-annointed beer experts to convince a lot of people that craft beer culture was just great right across the board. Had they not done that, had they not propped it up* but instead acted more like journalists as claimed and written like Ruvani has… would craft beer been in as much of the mess it is today?

Best Climatic Break for the Beer Industry: the end of California’s drought perhaps?

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: Now, this is a hard one as Simon has been gone and missed for almost 12 years now and the landscape is so different. Just a few months before he passed I asked whether there was anyone more interesting than Simon H Johnson. So we take this selection quite seriously even if Simon wasn’t always that way… or even that other way. Now, we recognize the migration to BlueSky when we calculate these things but there has to be constancy and wit of John Duffy, the Beer Nut. He takes us places that certainly I will likely not see. Like this week a view looking across from a balcony in Brazil or a view looking down from a Balcony in Brazil. And, along with his blog, the most beer focused of all the beery thingies focused.

Best Beery Newsletter: Gotta be The Gulp. The wide range of topics Katie Mather weaves into her writing makes it the one I first go to in my inbox.

Best Local Focus: Fuggled is not as busy a site as it has been in the past (who is?) but if I ever find myself lost and thirsty in Virginia, Alistair is going to find me a way to that good glass of a little something.

Best Book about Beer: Echoing Boak and Bailey, I also have to go with Dr. Christina Wade’s The Devil’s in the Draught Lines: 1,000 years of women in Britain’s beer history. From the first page, you have confidence in the research underlying the writing while also enjoying the pace of the text. As B+B wrote in their review from last April: “It feels effortless, too, and natural.” I particularly liked how Welsh and Scottish history was separated out from the English experience as well as topical comparisons between past practices and current experience of women in British brewing. Her discussion of Elynour Rummyng got my mind going again just like the Lady Eboshi did in Princess Mononoke. Who really was this person… this character… this characature… this political allegory? Got me thinking. Which is exactly what a good book – not just a good beer book – should do.

Final Thoughts: For a bad year in beer, it was a good year for things to read about beer and brewing. Focus and analysis is making headway against the bland boosterism that has hogged too much of the available space for too long. Hoping for more of the same in 2025.

C. The Session

An homage? Of course! Let’s be honest. The Session was the greatest invention in all of beer writing and also a gargantuan effort which ran from 2007 to 2018 led by Jay Brooks which earned him the eternal gratitude of us all. Wuzza sizzon? Here is how Jay described the process:

…It couldn’t be easier. The topic for each month is announced shortly after the previous month’s Session, meaning you have about three weeks to consider what you want to write about within the topic. And as long as it has something to do with the theme, you can pretty much do whatever you feel is appropriate for you. Then on the first Friday of the month, write your post. Usually, you then just let the host know what the URL (the specific web address or permalink to your post, not your home page) is so he can include it in his or her roundup. Each host does it slightly differently, but usually it’s just by sending an e-mail or posting a comment…

I had to move my posts from a former platform to this here one back in 2016 and manually moved about 1000 posts here over the course of a month or so. As a result, I have only shifted a few of my entries over but they will give you a sense of my take on the project – but heed Jay’s words: “you can pretty much do whatever you feel is appropriate for you.” I am also reminded on Alistair’s preferred alt title: “Wee Stampy Feet Time“! But you don’t need to be outraged. You can be quietly satisfied, facinated and/or nerdy. You be you. So, on 31 January 2025 please write a post of anything on the topic of…

What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?

Look at me – being all positive! And exceedingly general. In my defense, I think this could be a great way to catch up if we get a decent level of response. Please post your thoughts – via blog, newsletter, social media… anything – on the last Friday in January and then email me the link at beerblog@gmail.com! I have also proposed hosts of the February 2025, the form of which I will leave in their good hands along with this wise advice emailed from Stan: “I will support in any way that does not require too much work ;>)“!!!

D. Conclusions

Well, that was a bit of thinking. More than I am comfortable with, frankly. But one last thing, a resolution and perhaps suggestion. I had a bad 2021. I got so out of shape that I really screwed up my knee when I was out gardening. Wrenched a ligament when weeding the zucchini. Put me on a cane for at least a year back then. So… I decided to be healthier for my 60s. Stretching. Squats. Intermittent fasting. And tracking it all. Counting it all. Logging it all daily. Including the number of my drinks. And it all worked. Happy blood tests, looser clothes and I can chuck a 30 lb sack of soil on my shoulder without buckling. And soon I also realized that just by counting I was cutting back on both the clinky and the drinky. Not a lot but enough. In 2021 I figured I averaged 2 drinks a day, maybe a bit more. My StatsMaster ways had yet to fully kick in. Then in 2022 it was 1.95. And down to 1.78 in 2023 and, for 2024, 1.39 a day or 81.4% of my originally budget of 625 for the year. I have now set the budget for 2025 at 550 which is kinda 1.5 a day. Sounds like a lot. My real goal is to get it under under 500. Shifting the fasting from 17.4 to 16.5 hours a day, too, cause I’m getting sick of the 6.6 hour window. Reading this paragraph again I realize you probably don’t care – and rightly so.

So that’s it. Here we are. Welcome to 2025. As you contemplate the sands of time slipping buy, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. The Share looks to be back with a revival. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too.  All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post. Such is life.

*I do appreciate that much may have been guided by the words of J. Alfred Prufrock:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair…

The Session 144: Mea Taverna Quarantina

Hmm… what have I been up to… or… how I spent my involuntary semi-vacation in the house and yard… or … I dunno… let’s see… what did Alistair say I should be writing about…

Having been bombarded for the last 4 or 5 weeks by various media sources and corporate email blasts telling everything that companies are doing to combat COVID-19 and how they are “on your side”, the phrases that have been so heavily used as to border on cliche include “abundance of caution” (title of the next Coldplay album apparently), “unprecedented times”, and “the new normal”. 

4 or 5? My last normal day was March 6th when I took the day off to watch the Canadian national curling championships in our town. By the next week, folk were staying away from the office and the NBA shut down. Late winter has turned to spring as I watched out the kitchen window. I was in the office for 30 minutes in April. Being on the edge of response events, I have had waves of busy interspersed with very very busy but they are waves on on that part of the ocean called the doldrums. Quiet. Waking up and being aware that the light is a bit different and the grass greener. Waiting for the next Zoom meeting. Always the next Zoom meeting.

We have 15 rooms in our 1964 bungalow. And a front yard. And a back yard. And a shed. You remember the shed, right? Five people with places to hide from each other. Four of age. We’ve been buying local beer and Prince Edward County wine for home delivery and, this being Friday, will have some this evening.  We buy take away dinners from our favorite spots once or twice week. I am happy to report that the brewery folk I have talked to have been saying that switching from draught account kegs to curbside home delivery cans has worked. Money is flowing.

Things I have not done: learned a new language, picked up the idle guitar, cleaned off the pile of crap on the old computer desk, taken up jogging. I have, however, gotten the garden going, napped a lot and generally destressed after being excessively stressed for the first few weeks. Even though I shop in a surgical mask there now seems to be a sense of this thing now, even if it is smothering – in all the meanings of that word.We have been lucky even as some nursing homes in other towns  have been on fire wit the virus. A restructuring of much will be coming.

It’s good that I’m a homebody. I have most beers I drink around here, in the living room or out in the yard. Garden centers start to open Monday here in Ontario. I don’t miss the pub. Much. I sorta miss the ability to go out even when I don’t go all that much. Maybe soon. Maybe next month?

Who’s doing the next edition of The Session? Maybe next month.

 

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Last Of April 2020

Hello again. It’s been another week. We seem to have all hit some sort of peak with our experience of this pandemic, if only for this phase one. I sat in the yard last Saturday mainly by myself. Had a beer or two. Pretty grateful for that yard. Still, knowing it all sits heavy on the shoulders, it’s not a bad idea to seek out light entertainment and isn’t that what good beer is? In moderation? Or  just as prescribed. It’s not easy. Emma Inch has had a personal essay on her particular challenges published in Original Gravity and it mirrors the experience of my few friends who are especially vulnerable. It is certainly not easy.

Now, a public service announcement. Alistair at Fuggled has declared a special edition of The Session is to be held this very Friday.  The Session was one of the best ideas in beer blogging* that ran for over a decade. On the first Friday of the month everyone who was anyone had to write a post about the designated topic. Alistair has continued the concept:

In there is the genesis of the theme for the Quarantine Edition of the The Session, in these unprecedented times, what has become your new drinking normal? Are you drinking more? Less? Have you raided the cellar regularly? Is there a particular brewery whose beer is keeping you company while you are confined to barracks? Has there been a beer revelation in these times?

Write!

Brewery folk are having to redirect their attention, as described in a piece by Josh Noel for the Chicago Tribune. And in Atlanta in Georgia, Monday Night Brewing has released the results of its survey on intended return to the taproom with some fairly specific and graphically displayed results:

While taproom visitors have some trepidation about the immediate future, they are cautiously optimistic about medium-term. 61% of respondents expect their visitation frequency (vs. their reported frequency pre-COVID-19) to go back to normal within 3 months. Still–28% of respondents expect a decline in their brewery visit frequency lasting at least 3 months.

Not unrelatedly, The Tand himself has written a very interesting post on the question of what happens to the pubs when folk get wise that drinks at home are not shabby and no where near as expensive based on his own experience of this new world order:

I’ve enjoyed a different kind of beer o’clock. Around five in the evening E and me have had a beer or two in the sunshine in our garden. Not every evening, but certainly most if the sun is still shining.  We have had to wear fleeces on the odd occasion and once, given the rather spiky wind that generally accompanies sunshine in the Grim North, we reinforced our outer apparel with blankets.  We have remarked, like everyone else, about the perfect blue skies, the absence of vapour trails and aircraft and enjoyed the birds singing. Not so much though the whirring sound of  wood pigeons, but you can’t have everything, can you?

As a bit of counter-measure (and when not wanting help in finding the best British lager), JJB joined the discussion on how pubs in England (he owns one) should deal with the question of pubco tenant rents:

…those getting the grants should indeed apply them toward rent, as the government intended, but pubco should forgive any shortfall if the rent is too high or the closure protracted. 

Others are finding that there are things to do in a pub if you live in it:

Dom, 29, said: ‘I moved in just a couple of months before lockdown which has worked out well, considering.’ He is the assistant manager at the pub after starting there as a barman and has been passing the time with Steve, 39, by playing improvised crazy golf inside. They place chess and cook barbecues on the roof when the weather is nice and have been enjoying the fresh beer on tap with no customers to serve.

When will the pub return? Cookie himself says in England it might happen in steps – but is that fair to the little loved places?

A staggered pub opening strategy could see large chain pubs with app ordering and table service and capacity for social distance open first as a trial an then traditional pubs open around xmas and micropubs by summer 2021.

Future forecasting done. For this week’s look at somewhat recent history, the blogwerk** at Seeing the Lizards continues with this installment on the Dutch lager of the 1980’s Oranjeboom 8.5:

Belying it’s current reputation a black-tinned cornershop-stocked super-strength filth, Oranjeboom pilsner was once quite popular in the UK, and was promoted with ads such as this, rammed full of all the Dutch stereotypes the copywriters could think of.

In other history notes, Martyn has been tweeting about gruesome deaths in breweries of yore, a crushing and a boiling so far.

And in very very recent history, Pellicle has published a piece by Will Hawkes on a trip to a hop farm in Kent in 2019… which all seems like a dream to me now:

It’s the end of July, the start of a key period in the Kentish hop-growing calendar. August is when the volume of the harvest is decided: plenty of sun and rain, and all will be well. But rain, like sunshine, cannot be conjured or cajoled. In 2018, during the UK’s hottest summer on record, just 15 millimetres came in August, and the harvest suffered. The year before there was 95mm and it produced the best yield that Haffenden Farm, Hukins’ family plot, has seen in 100 years.

This twitter thread promises an academic dissection of the imagery on a can of sorta Chicago‘s Old Style beer.  But it is exceedingly silly.

Escaping the Covid-Blase** Beth Demmon has shared a wonderful portrait of one of the world’s most accomplished beer judges – and in doing so has explained a fair bit about what being one of the world’s most accomplished beer judges means:

Cockerham took her first exam in March 2007 and steadily moved up the hierarchy. In 2012, the same year she achieved Master level, she also became an official mead judge. She reached Grand Master in 2014 and has moved one level higher each year since. And last year, she reached her current level of Grand Master VI. She also became a certified cider judge in April 2019 and is currently the Midwest region representative and assistant exam director with Gail Milburn, whom she laughingly calls her “best beer friend, my BBFF.”

See, that is way better an explanation that the “I went to a fest in [pick a country] and saw all my pals… and we got into it… and it was fun… and some of us made the judging session” sort of tale we see more often.

The Beer Nut himself reached his fifteenth anniversary as a beer blogger this week and celebrated with a beer from Ontario:

Like an increasing number of people, this blog is spending its birthday in lockdown. Happy 15th oulfella. To mark the occasion I have retrieved something from the cellar that, honestly, I meant to drink a while ago and now seems the perfect excuse. I bought this bottle of The Exchange Δ Spontaneous Ale when I was at the brewery in Niagara on the Lake in 2018. It came lauded by local expert David Sun Lee, with a recommendation that it be let sit for a year before opening. Well, it got that, and a bit more.

And finally this week, at Boak and Bailey, Jess herself shared a review of Mûre Tilquin, a lambic with 260g blackberries per litre and it turns out she is a bit of a fan of the fruit:

I have Strong Opinions about them, too. For example, I strongly believe that urban blackberries are better than rural ones and that the best of all come from Walthamstow Marshes; should have Protected Designation of Origin status; and ought to be the subject of lengthy essays about terroir.

I like that. very pro-blackberry. Fight! And keep writing and keep reading. 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. Thanks for stopping by.

**Name twelve!!!
**Not an actual German word.

The Session 143: How Was Dryanuary Anyway?

Before the death of #TheSession, I posted some thoughts and indicated that I was not willing to entirely let the idea go:

I was so strongly moved by the idea of shutting down the sentence that I tweeted out my congratulations to Stan and Jay on their retirement, as opposed to that of The Session – the monthly collective writing exercise that has been a constant in the last 7/8th of the history of beer blogging. But then Stan and Jay wrote to tell me it really was time to let go. I wonder if they are right. They might be.

Jay also sent an interesting and positive email in response which I don’t need to share or anything but the idea is to see if we  (meaning “I”) play with the fabulous concept of collective theme writing without having the same structures that, over time, became perhaps a bit burdensome. Make it hostless, for one. So, not quite the Avignon Papacy but exploring a slightly different path. Think of a 1990s TV special a year after the show was cancelled.  Or maybe Star Trek’s The Wrath of Khan.

That being the case, here is an idea. We have heard a lot about #Dryanuary and folk like Matt have already posted a summary. I am suggesting a hybrid on the topic might be useful if only to record an overall statement on what the phenomenon of January 2019 meant to good beer culture generally. By hybrid, I mean a collection of new tweets and blog posts, links to big media articles  and any other form of opinion gathering might be interesting.

So, how about it? How was your dry or wet January? Did the campaign actually change your behaviours in any way? Or is it just good to reflect on the idea of alcohol and health and this is a great way to do it? Send your thoughts to the comments below, to beerblog@gmail.com or do your own think with the added hashtag #TheSession. I will gather it together as I can and post something either separately or on the following Thursday as part of the weekly update.

My Own Golden Pints For 2018

Spurred on by the demise of The Session, I have this suspicion that beer blogging needs to be a wee bit more intentional about adhering to its own traditions. Like The Session, the Golden Pints were born in the UK during the golden age of beer blogging before anyone had a book contract and no one could sell an article to the press if their life depended on it.  I am pretty sure that I would find a version of my Golden Pints from years past if I hunted through the Wayback Machine (where much of the incidental archives of this blog sits) but Boak and Bailey have restated the format in their thoughts for 2018 so I am going to just poach and adapt their structure and see what I come up with. 

Best English… err… Local Spot. I have to admit that I have a new darling but it is not so much a pub as what really is a gastro pub: Red House West. Inventive food, a great selection of beers with a heaping measure of eastern Ontario craft, a bustling sometimes loud tone, $13 Eggs Benedict on Sundays and its in our end of town. And Labatt 50 always on tap just in case.

Best Establishment Further Afield. Like 2017, I actually did not leave the country this year. Work and college kids have their implications. I have, however traveled and was extremely pleased with Brothers Beer Bistro in Ottawa earlier this month. While not quite Quebecois in its embrace of less traditional ingredients, their two rabbit dishes I tried were fabulous and the beer selection was shockingly good.  

Best New Beer of 2018: Hmm… with so much fad and sideshow with the glitter and the brut and the haze, it really has not been a year with a lot to recommend it in terms of the new entries.  If I were to report on any change to my buying habits it’s the wave of new simple vernacular Ontario ciders made from just Ontario apple juice. Like Forbidden Dry Cider by Coffin Ridge near Owen Sound. And amongst those Millennials I actually know, a far more common preference than anything beer glittery, hazy or sour.

Best Beer Value of 2018: While at Brothers Beer Bistro, I landed first on a $9 CND Rochfort 8, a fantastic price for when one is out. We get this beer brought in by our state monopoly for wines, spirits and most imported beer for under $4 CND (under $3 USA) and is about as fine a value as you are going to find in beer. I would also give honourable mention to Napanee Brewing‘s Blacklist.

Best Blog or Internet Publication: Boak and Bailey. No real challengers. Earnest places like Beer Advocate or GBH might suggest themselves as a supply of beer journalism but never reaches the level the B+B offer seemingly from their kitchen table. Plus they provide the weekly round up, the wit, the history, observational vignettes and many other forms of writing. I suspect these two are actually about seven people backed by some shadowy investment consortium. 

Best Beer Book: There is only one this year, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out by Josh Noel. Important beer business journalism expressed in very long form without a hint of agenda or interest. Here is my review from July. And it is thoroughly devoid of food pairing suggestions, style guide parroting or three or four figure numbers ending in “1” in the title. 

Best Beer Twitter: It’s a bit boring saying, ho-hum, @thebeernut but he’s really that fun to follow. So, that being said, I am going with Katie of @shinybiscuit – especially for her tweets about Tom. And her ever changing hair colour.

Biggest Brewing News: I think it might be the collapse of North American brewing equipment manufacturer DME if only because (1) they have sold their gear so widely, (2) there is an aspect of the role of Chinese steel in the market that needs greater understanding and (3) I have a suspicion that there is more to the story – something perhaps salacious even – than the early somewhat formulaic explorations at a distance seem to suggest.  As I noted, I know a number of those involved in the circle around the issue but there are some significant gaps still needing to be explained like why was there no provincial business development intervention… and where did all that cash go?

Best Work Done In The Cause Of Good Beer: Lars Garshol. If Boak and Bailey seem to pull of all they do from the kitchen table, Lars never seem to be home. He has discovered and described the entire works of traditional northern European kveik brewing. He is so central to the entire topic that I created #TheLawOfLars and, surprisingly, it almost made sense!

Other comments on 2018: I can’t recommend a magazine or other publication as there seems to have been a definite slump in that area. A bit of a relapse into trade PR for my tastes, no out reasonably due to those involved being constantly on survival mode. Interestingly, there has been a concurrent set changes such as magazines folding, columnists being let go, personal departures from trying to write for pay, personal writing for health reasons. A certain realism struck after years of somewhat irrational exuberance. Yet, still sad for those stuck in the middle of the problem.  

So, there you are my thoughts and, to other beer bloggers, a gauntlet drop. Let’s see what others think about the year gone by.

Your Days Dwindling Down To A Precious Few Beery News Notes

Well, it sure is getting quiet out there. I put off gathering together my thoughts until Wednesday night and, still, it felt like I’d only posted the last weekly update the day before. Christmas is a-comin’. Right off, however, I need to show you the photo of the week. To the right, tweeted out by Joe of @whatjoewrote after he wrote “making a sacred pilgrimage to a golden place today.” I love a lot about the image but probably the best is that Orval font.

Next up, Stan is finally back. Free loader Stan. Stan the travelin’ man. Stan the guy who drifts into work at 10:45 am saying wide-eyed “what? whataaa?!?” to the questioning stares.  His final roundup for The Session begs the question of why we don’t have one mega-blog and pay him to edit. Why?

Quere: if two contract brewers merge in the forest, does anybody hear?

Nothing says Yuletide like bankruptcy law news. Turns out DME, the eastern Canadian brewing equipment manufacturer, is now confirmed to be $27 million in debt of which $18 million is owed to the Royal Bank of Canada:

The entire list names more than 700 creditors between DME’s operations in Charlottetown and Abbotsford, B.C. The creditors list includes companies from around the world, along with individuals and government agencies. More than 50 of the companies owed money are on P.E.I., along with approximately 140 people with Island addresses… Around $1 million of that is listed as being owed to P.E.I. companies. However, nearly half of the companies and individuals named in the creditors document don’t have dollar amounts listed. Those numbers still have to be determined. The final amount DME owes could change.

So far, as I mentioned last week, these are old stomping grounds and I know the receiver’s lawyer and the judge, now have fed the press backstage and even recommended counsel to international interests. And I am not even involved. Here is the list of the additional unsecured creditors. Their own lawyers are owed around $435,000. Wow. Note that the Indie Alehouse deposit is there but without a noted value. The Toronto Star reported it as being worth $800,000. Many other breweries with deposits are all there but also without a noted value. Sift the clues. Go ahead.

Responding to the news from two weeks ago that Norm was  moving away from beer, Jason Notte has posted a thread of tweets that shares his views on the affect of alcohol on the health of writers, including this one:

A few years ago, the great told me something I wasn’t ready to hear: Craft beer isn’t a trend story and beer consumption isn’t just an industry. When you see rising beer consumption and “drunkest states” listicles, there’s some hurt behind those numbers.

It’s true. You might not like it but it is true. Along those lines, perhaps in miniature, Boak and Bailey recorded a brief conversation overheard in a UK pub:

“My plan is to get back to the office after lunch absolutely hammered.”
“Blimey, careful, mate.”
“Nah, it’s fine — it’s December!”

Yikes. Yik even. To make us all feel as we should – distracted – Mark Dredge has posted some fabulous photos from Vietnam. Fabulous.

A bit less fabulously, I don’t particularly have that particular hate on for “listicles” that those never asked to write one have but this one works for me, 25 from Fortune magazine. It expressly contextualizes the selection well and also notes price. Happy to see that the Ontario’s price for #2 is 50% of what is suggested by the list. I will have my fill over the next few weeks. Ha ha! Sucks to sucks if you don’t live here.

If your brain is like mine, you might like this. Issue #163 of Brewery History has been released from behind its paywall for everyone to enjoy. The article on 15th century brewing in England is of particular interest to me but there are a range of articles to explore.

I came upon this article, no doubt funded by shadowy interests*, that argues that US tariffs on aluminum have led to an increase in reliance on US made beer cans:

President Donald Trump’s aluminum tariff won’t make beer taste better, but it’s succeeded in boosting the economy, according to a report published on Dec. 11 by the Economic Policy Institute. The research argues that tariffs imposed on aluminum and steel have led to increases in U.S. employment, production and investment.

Finally, in his big comeback** Stan did note something I myself should also address:

Boak & Bailey recently explained how they choose what to put in their Saturday lineup. In the interest of transparency, my rules are pretty arbitrary. I include links here to stories I think you should enjoy reading, either because the writing is terrific or the ideas within merit thinking about, or both. I also include links to stories I simply want to comment on.

Me?  I don’t really think of you. I think of the news as something that develops and needs tracking. Beer news needs its own aggregation. So I keep graphs. I make tables. I smoke a pack and then smoke another as Wednesday night turns into Thursday morning. I am even thinking about how Putin and Xi have minions and how once one maybe stumbled across my social medial presence. I know I am being watched. Help! No?  Look, I realize this is mid-December filler but if you think about it from my perspective, well, maybe it will make a little sense. Just a little?

That being said, there is only one more roundup before Christmas and two before this year is dead. Dead dead dead. Let’s think about that a bit before we get pounded at lunch, shall we?  A good time to reflect on things. Things like pasting together a weekly charade of a commentary on the brewing industry. Things like concerning myself more with the roasts to come rather than the giving one ought to give.

Enough from me! B+B on Saturday and Stan next Monday.

*Note: “The EPI advocates for policies favorable for low- to moderate-income families in the United States.“
**What? You want every footnote to mean something?

Session 142: The End Is Over And Now There’s Nuttin’

So, here we are. The end. Stan has asked for one last kick at the can and asks us to consider:

Pick a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship. So happy or sad, or something between. Write about the beer. Write about the aroma, the flavor, and write about what you feel when it is gone.

Beer for an ending? What about the end of beer? Or maybe just the end of a beer. I was never fully convinced by Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting or rather Bernie’s lyrics, the wanting to rock, the wanting to get a belly full of beer:

A couple of the sound that I really like
Are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike
I’m a juvenile product of the working class
Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass…

It seemed a bit 1970s comfy rec room faux dystopian. But I remember it every time I look down at the dregs. Now often sated, even with a little relief. When I was young maybe a bit of tension. Tastes like another but wondering if I could afford a next… and a next. Goodbye to all that? To my surprise, over 15 years of this beer blogging seen many endings. The long goodbye. Endings I had not anticipated. People coming into view and then some time later departing, stage left. Switching to PR, quitting writing, quitting beer, moving along, falling apart, passing away.

A beer for all that? Clearly Orval. Simon H. Johnson‘s passing was over five and a half years ago now. He loved his Orval. And he had one Derby Bimble before he left. Amazingly, his blog is still all there. It’s hard to describe how influential he was, how his cheery insistent popping of each and every balloon was what we, what I wanted to read. If I could find a bottle of Orval I would have it now, before morning coffee. But this is Canada so I can’t just get one when I want it. Oh, sorry… this is a beer blog. There. Wonder what’s at the bottom.

The First Week Of December Finds Every Child’s Mind Drifting To Beery News Notes

This week’s big news saw me and mine on the road. I was up in the nation’s capital over Saturday and Sunday and took part in my kind of beer tourism. By that I mean actually doing normal things while noting beer around me and having one when the more important things in life were not imposed upon. We took in an hour at the National Gallery of Canada and spent time in the Canadian exhibits, where I came across this painting, Manitoba Party, from 1964. Cheery and folk artsy, right away I noticed the kegs and beer distribution smack dab in the middle. More detail below.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Canada, Frank Zappa once said that you can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. Canada obsesses about such things, often when there is little in the news other than, you know, affirmations. Mr. B has picked up the theme:

I’ve no idea what Canada’s national beer style might ultimately be, whether it will be hop-focused or yeast-based or feature some ingredient that it true to the Canadian spirit. 

Not sure that is a big worry of mine. Zappa went on to that that it also “helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” We have our own form of football. And, really, the good neighbour has enough of those bombs. Art, however. That works for me.

Looking back on the rest of my week, I find I have to take something back* from last week’s news notes. I wrote that we would have to spend a “happy early December without an edition of #TheSession” but Stan is giving us one last kick at the can with the topic “One More For The Road” in which we are asked to:

Pick a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship. So happy or sad, or something between. Write about the beer. Write about the aroma, the flavor, and write about what you feel when it is gone.

Not particularly Yule-drenched but there will be a few weeks afterwards to get oneself back in the spirit. With any luck, the responses will give J. Wilson some cheer, given his tweet this week which is about as broadly grim as one might get:

Sometimes I worry about the future of beer since so many beer lovers today don’t even like the taste of beer.

Me, I am more hopeful than that – especially given how beer and brewing has survived any number of false gods and dead ends over the centuries.  December is actually an excellent time to get back in touch with the classics and leave the NEIPAs and other alcopops to the amateur drinkers. Alistair of Fuggled fame has offered us one route to set things back in their proper order:

…it seems that Craft Beer™ Advent Calendars have been all the rage in recent years and I thought I’d jump on the old bandwagon. Only one minor issue, I have an aversion to having stuff curated for me, I much prefer to survey what’s available and make my own decisions, yes I can be something of a contrarian, I know. The plan as it currently stands is to buy 24 bottles of seasonal beers, drink one each day of Advent, and then write a blog post about it…

Wonderful. A blog plan. Nate has also offered us a route forward for his beer blogging for 2019 and beyond:

…I gave up on the Beats element about music years ago as I stopped listening to so much music, and frankly, my music reviews weren’t very good at all. So, I needed to replace Beats with something and given my love for professional wrestling, why not change it to Beatdowns and write about wrestling since I watch so much of it? So, from now on, this blog will be known as Booze, Beatdowns and Bites.

There was a university radio show near me that I liked a decade ago named something like “Hardcore Grooves and Wrestlin’ Moves” so this should work for me.

Here’s an interesting twist on the recreation of one historic brand of beer – the rights to brew Syracuse NY’s Congress beer were acquired by the local historical society!

In more real news, BarMas that objectified human point of fascination of mine – for his superhuman chore doing and vernacular booze production skills – has posted about his new orchard:

Originally, the ends of every row had cherry trees, which our current plot is missing, so we will gain, I think, 5 very large cherry trees. Inside the cherry trees, each row then had a few pear trees, and this is repeated a thee ends of the rows we are purchasing. Mostly they seem to be conference, mirroring the ends of the current rows, but there are a few other varieties, like Bürgermeisterbirne/Köstliche aus Charneux, and I hope some perry pear trees and more Williams Christ.

Wow.  Riddled. Jealousy.

The serious news in the business of beer as it affects Canada and beyond has been reported upon by my pal Josh Rubin in the Toronto Star:

DME, a P.E.I.-based equipment manufacturer with facilities in B.C. and South Carolina, was in receivership, with more than $18 million owed to RBC and an unspecified amount to other creditors, including the company’s own 250 employees. The company’s directors have all resigned, and a B.C.-based receiver has been appointed to explore either a liquidation or sale of the company, with offers due by Jan. 7.

Big news. And a bit strange news. First, though, gotta tell you. I know folk involved, the lawyer bringing the receivership and even the judge granting it,** and have no doubt as to the realities but the effect is going to be widespread. Josh*** got Jason Fisher**** on the record to explore what losing a $800,000 deposit means to him and his brewery. What gets me is that the required cash injection was allegedly only $5,000,000 which seems like a paltry sum in the face of 250 jobs – that’s just $20,000 a job  – and especially given the work they were getting including being a supplier to the new Guinness brewery in Baltimore. Where is the ACOA money? Where was Wade… who I also know… former law school prof. Also, before you buy brewing equipment, here is some reasonable advice on securing your deposit.

There. By next week will be another one gone and one closer to Yule. I am more of a Dec 15th to Jan 10th sorta holiday season person. Other versions exist. Many are US Thanksgiving to Dec 25th holiday-ers, immediately stripping the house of tree and tinsel thereafter and, presumably, getting a bit drunk on New Years Eve then staring out the window waiting for spring.  Not me. I want to realize that the sun has made at least three weeks worth of its way back to equinox before I come around to reality.  Then, I want be out in the winter woodland to hear the chickadees calling out for mates and, well, we all know about chickadees, right?

I am sure there still will be beer news throughout. Just like Boak and Bailey know and report out on each Saturday.  Feel nostalgic? Go check out some Xmas contest entries from Yuletides past. Link to the right…

* No, not what caused this weird blurt… which looked like a 1.3 violation with perhaps a 1.2 twist.
** I practiced law in PEI from 1998 to 2003. Respectively (i) co-associate pal and (ii) respected partner of another firm and colleague of my counterpart respectively.
*** Who I know in the fellow beer writer sense.
*** Who I don’t know but think I had a brief flame war with once.

Session 141: The King Is Dead! Long Live The King!!

My reaction was immediate when I heard the news:

At first I was afraid, I was petrified…
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…

In fact, I was so strongly moved by the idea of shutting down the sentence that I tweeted out my congratulations to Stan and Jay on their retirement, as opposed to that of The Session – the monthly collective writing exercise that has been a constant in the last 7/8th of the history of beer blogging. But then Stan and Jay wrote to tell me it really was time to let go. I wonder if they are right. They might be.

My problem is not that beer blogging is one type of writing in a broad range of formats.  It’s the only one that provides for long form creative writing on anything that strikes the author’s fancy, without concern for pay or editorial intrusion. The Session was one way that the fellow minded stayed in touch with each other. Interestingly, Jonathon Surratt is reviving another old tool – the very former RSBS – with the same goal through his new beer aggregator, readbeer.com.

I think there is a place for such things. Folk new to writing need encouragement. Folk with opinions need a venue when their writing is more personal or quirky than editors will pay for. Despite more ways for more people to express their thoughts about beer, there is an unfortunate drive to homogeneity driven by the unreasonable hope of some day making some sort of living from beer writing. Wasn’t likely when The Session was new. Likely less likely now. It’s a side gig for 98% of us. A fun gig, sure. But that is sorta it.

There is nothing wrong with this. Writing is a pleasure. Sharing your writing is a way to make that experience richer. Maybe Jay’s work on The Session will continue in another form. Maybe not. Either way link you writing to readbeer.com so as many people as possible can find it. If you have enough interest in writing you should have interest enough in putting in it front of a few more eyeballs. Sign up.