Category: The Session

The Session #144: Critique not Criticism

Matthew is hosting this months edititon of The Session and has posed a puzzle that has gotten me thinking, the question of criticism v. critique:

Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

My first thought was that I would write about beer writing but I sort of do that every week. But… that question. Eight days ago I wrote that I was trying to work out how this isn’t a distinction without a difference.*  Building any good argument always requires considered analysis. Isn’t this just a question of good and poor criticism? I mean isn’t it obvious that all “very good writers… work hard at building a fair critique“? Just because you work done’t mean you succeed every time… or ever for that matter. I am not in a snit, by the way. I understand it’s a good question but I am just trying to get my head around how to answer it.

Hmm… don’t we also have to admit that there is an extra layer to this with beer. Aren’t we, sadly, lumbered with the legacy of Jackson** who wrote, I am told, in 1987:

If I can find something good to say about a beer, I do. Any merit or unusual aspect is, I believe, of interest to my readers. That is why I choose to write about it in the first place … Nor since I have the whole world from which to choose, can I be comprehensive. If I despise a beer, why find room for it? This poses a problem only when a beer is too big to ignore.

The trouble for those who followed his lead is that craft itself got too big to ignore, which led to the leading of lots of people to spend their money buying lots of beer from lots of breweries. Without a filtering friend for guidance, however, because the governing principle was fixed. As a result, too often we’ve had to deal with the hooray for everything approach. Which means not only are bad beers not to be assessed honestly but neither are ill thought out styles or even dodgy breweries. Don’t mention the bad stuff! Schtom!! Because… what… criticism (“booo!“) in good beer is subjective while fawning praise (yay!!!) is objective… apparently?*** But is that all there is? Is there any point going over that all again? It is what it is. So I am not going to write about that. Nope.

Despite that… is there any good critical thinking in beer writing beyond the consulto PR? Why doesn’t good generate much of a body of independent peer reviewed thought, either academic or pop culture? Are there even any great beer writers? Well, there are some I can name just as examples. The Beer Nut has established the stylish standard for considering each beer in itself and calling out poor performers. Katie Mather has raised the bar for writing on the experience of both sides of a pub’s taps. And the works of Martyn as well as the Law of Lars pretty much means you can no longer rehash fable as fact. Yes, there are more than a few glimmers. Which is why I still have an interest in the weekly updates. But… I am not going to write about that. Not. At. All.

Yet… we have an excellent example most excellently provided by the excellent Laura Hadland who (like the kid ahead of me in math class who finished the test early and left the answers in view) posted her submission for The Session earlier this week and, in doing so tied excellence in writing to – err… what to call it – reticence in writing when she recalled her first paid reviewing experience:

…the restaurant got in touch with the paper. It turned out that they were in the midst of a battle with the residents who lived on the same street over the noise and odour produced by their flue over and about those properties. The restaurant accused me of being a plant by this co-op of neighbours and giving them a bad review ‘for the cause’. Which was, of course, utter nonsense, but I later discovered that one of the enthusiastic readers emailing me about my fine review was indeed one of the residents. The whole thing was downright bizarre and quite the furore. It all left a very bad taste in the mouth (and not because of the dodgy food or alleged dodgy flue) but I’m not really sure I learned very much except that you never know when you are going to accidentally stir up a hornet’s nest of local politics.

Exactly. So how, then, can one pick a theme in which to develop a critique when the topic potentially denies and even inhibits the construct of fulsome review itself? (And, while we are at it, why is the meta stuff sucking at the very heart of me this month?) Well, by way of relief, I was sorta struck by this passage on the meaning of fandom in The New York Times this week that offered me perspective:

Thankfully I also believe, in the grander sports-as-metaphor-for-life sort of way, that my Metsian prism on the world is fundamentally the correct one. Which is to say, we’re all losers most of the time. We’re all a little Metsy some of the time. We may have success, yes, but we can’t completely avoid failure and the sooner we embrace it, the happier we’ll be. There’s a reason so many Mets fans, myself included, remain delusionally optimistic after all these years, despite all the horrors we’ve seen and the LOLs we’ve endured. The highs are high, and the lows are low, and no matter how high things get we believe with religious fervor that a new low is just around the corner. But also, right behind that, possibly another high. It’s not a terrible way to go through life.

I give you Mr. Met. What does Mr. Met do? They win? He smiles! They suck? He smiles! Why? Well, perhaps it’s the paper mache head, sure, but sports fandom sits at the far end of the continuum from ugly local politics. We understand in this sort of fandom that there is the relationship and there is the knowledge – plus I suppose the honesty about the relationship and the knowledge. Can one both offer critique and have the relationship? How far can it go? I think that is actually the problem with beer writing. Writing by fans or for fans or most often both.  How else can you explain the obvious but continuing botch of IPA: as tradition, as an appropriated style, as a fragmented set of styles and then a meaningless yet all purpose brand of some sort. Yet it works somehow. Is it really a problem? Is IPA is the equivalent of Mr. Met? Fun and certainly associated but not vital. Frankly, do you really want to dig in deep?  When you think of it a bit too much, he’s actually a freakish zoolological and metaphysical horror!! It’s a human with a massive baseball for a head, for God’s sake. Who were his parents? How does he even go to the dentist?? Don’t ask. Just don’t ask.

We just sorta like Mr. Met like we sorta like IPA. One could even ask “who would crap on Mr. Met??” Maybe Phillies fans, I suppose. But who needs that? Who craps on IPA? Who needs to if it has become a meaninglessness? We let it go. We set aside the knowledge in favour of the relationship.

So if good beer hasn’t given rise to a body of critique, as Matthew correctly posits, is it perhaps because it isn’t necessary to do so? Believe it or not, from time to time I have some critical thoughts about the beer trade. No, it’s true. And I have also written histories which have sought to untangle fact from myth. But is a point missed when one does that? Or perhaps too much of that? Or only that? Or something like that?****

*A legal phrase found in Canadian rulings, by the way.
**Whose writing, as Churchill said of Russia, was never as strong or as weak as it looked.
***Matther acknowledges this when he wrote: “If beer culture hasn’t matured enough for writers to levy fair, objective critique of culture, products and processes, then I would argue it hasn’t matured at all.” Which may be correct. But I am not writing about that. Even though the “brewer’s intention” stuff drives me bonkers. As if that’s known.
****Finis. Amplifer fluens. (Applause!) Te relinquo.

The Super Secret Thursday Beery News Notes That Even Hegseth Couldn’t Leak

What a week. A Canadian Federal election was called. The US government proved once again it is led by numpties. And the opening day for Major League Baseball is here. And… The Session. Who was the numbskull who decided that the return of The Session would also have a regular dedicated Friday deadline right after his beery news notes deadline? Me. Yup. That’s who. I know how Maureen feels. “What a moron you are Al,” she says. Maureen, by the way, was not only recreating the first moment she ever read my writing. She was out there fighting against the forces of darkness and her feelings were excellently captured by USA Today in her “holy fucking moley” mode at a townhall event with Senator Chuck Grassley.*  Anyway, Matthew is hosting this month’s edition and your are encouraged to get your fingertips a’tappin’** on the question of…

For the March 2025 edition of The Session I’m asking participants to produce a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs… The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

Get at it!! What else is going on? No, not this… that’s got nothing to do with beer. Ah, yes… this! Ed has reported on a long awaited innovation in hoppetry:

…even more exciting than that is the news that a hop breeding mission going back at least 70 years has finally reached a successful conclusion: a wilt-tolerant Fuggle has been developed. Verticillium wilt is a fungal disease that can devastate hop crops and is difficult to treat… The need for a wilt-tolerant Fuggle is mentioned in a paper back in 1955 and in 2013 I heard the long quest might be only three years away from a successful conclusion. It’s taken considerably longer  that that but craft beer geeks everywhere will be delighted to learn that variety 15/10/23 has now completed its trials and it beer made with it no noticeable change of taste was detected compared to true Fuggle. The hop was released in late 2024 as Wye Fuggle.

Nice. Staying with hops, Stan released the new edition of Hop Queries at the end of last week and shared this tidbit:

Alex Barth, then president of John I. Haas, showed this chart at the 2015 American Hop Convention. It tracks hop usage since 1971. One hundred years ago brewers used the equivalent of 12.6 grams of alpha acids per hectoliter (26.4 gallons, or 85% of a 31-gallon barrel). That had fallen to 9.1 grams in 1971 and continued to drop regularly until it was just over 4 grams in 2011. It ticked up to 4.5 grams in 2011, climbed in the years that followed, and will be about 4.7 grams this year.

Which, once again, makes me want a recreated version of something like Dominion White Label to show what big ales from the early 1900s were really like. Similarly perhaps, The Beer Nut offered an explanation of “spice bag” to my eternal gratitude in case I want to undertake a recreation.

Stan also gave me plenty to poach… err… to consider in his weekly update on Monday, including this from Phil Cook on the appearance of beer related clues in The New York Times crossword puzzles:

Since noticing a reference to modern hazy IPA in the New York Times crossword and wondering what that “meant” in terms of beer’s currency in the popular culture, I’ve been keeping a tally of what else comes up. I recently realised I had a full calendar year worth of such records, and the urge to make a spreadsheet and go looking for patterns came on predictably strongly (for me) after that. The result: ninety-nine appearances, clumped around a few themes, with “ale” and “ipa” done to death, a few favoured brand names, some real clangers, and the occasional delight. I think I got all the beer-related clues and answers.

Speaking of games, did you hear Laura Hadland on BBC 4’s You and Yours talking about pub games this week?

Question: am I horrible for hating branded glassware? I mean I like a nice glass and even have a significant degree of sympathy for an anatomically correct drinking vessel for any certain sort of drink. But, as I consider these sensible thoughts from Boak and Bailey…

This brings us to another problem: a glass of Budvar is much less enjoyable when it’s served in a bog standard British pint glass, with no foam, rather than in a branded mug with a good head. We don’t demand perfect Czech-style ‘pours’ and utter reverence – only an acknowledgement that it’s a bit more than a pint of lager. When that rep visited The Old Stillage, and The Swan, they apparently left behind boxes and boxes of pretty convincing Czech-style mugs. Round, ribbed, slightly squat. The beer looked and tasted great.

…I am all “yup… yup… sure… definitely…” as it all makes sense and then a whisper of a “nope” when there’s mention of a glass with a logo on it. No go the logo. See, I don’t like clothes with the manufacutures’ ads on them. I remember picking the embroidered polo player off the chest of a very nice shirt I once found in a vintage place. Too Heathers. Also – and probably more importantly – it buggers up the look of the beer. Does an apple need a wrapper? Nope. It’s an awkward imposition. Plus it’s a bit “oooh, look at me buying the good stuff” frankly. Branded glasses are the Tesla trucks of beer. There. I said it. Speaking of logos, here’s a question: can it ever be OK to have a representation of a young woman in a UK beerfest advertising:

Emily Ryans, sponsorship manager at St Albans Beer & Cider Festival, explained the reasoning behind the design in a statement: “Rather than adopting soulless corporate branding, we instead choose to highlight a different piece of local history each year, and on this occasion are marking the centenary of Ballito Hosiery Mill. In doing so, we’ve been inspired by Ballito’s 1950s advertising, exhibited by St Albans Museum”… “The character in our logo is a confident, empowering woman, designed to both celebrate the important history of a factory that employed hundreds of local women, as well as make the point that beer festivals – which have suffered from a traditionally male image – are open to all,” Ryans continued. 

Of course it is and this seems reasonable. Also being reasonable, here’s an interesting twist on the US tariffs and Canadian provinces’ booze ban response is how it has led to questions like when is a beer is a Canadian beer… even if the brand is American:

In wake of U.S. tariffs, the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) said it notified beverage alcohol retailers, distributors and producers that American-branded products wouldn’t be sold or distributed in the province. The SLGA originally released a list of 54 American alcohol brands, including Bud Light, Blue Moon, Busch, Kirkland Wine and others… Labatt Breweries of Canada says it employs about 3,500 people in the country and brews brands like Bud Light, Busch and Budweiser in Canada… On Monday, the government walked back its decision. It said in a statement that the move aligned with other provinces and that it would focus on alcohol produced in the U.S.

Speaking of remote wastelands, if you ever need to get from Luton to Moldova, Martin has led the way – and done so in daring fashion seeing as the place is in the Kremlin‘s crosshairs.

Digging further into that map you’ll see not only how close Iaşi is to the Moldovan border, but how close you are to place names like Kherson and Zernov’s Phyllophora Field. 20 minutes after walking through the Arrivals door at Iaşi, we’re at central Piata Independentei and it’s all looking very Communist era. And a bit eerily quiet. “LOOK ! There’s a place saying BEER !” says Mrs RM, urgently.

Thrilling tales of discount holidays replicating The Third Man or what! Martin: “any chance of a slice of lime for the lager?” Bartender: “lime, sir? Harry Lime?”

ADMISSION: here’s that surprise I mentioned above… I forgot to finished this week’s update. Wednesday got away from me. Work stuff. Home stuff. Dinner out. I woke up at 3:25 am and it was like being in a movie – snapping upright, close up on my horrified face, shouting “NNNNNOOOOoooooo!!!” Not really. So maybe I’ll fill in a few more items over the day in this penultimate space I leave for a few last stories.

Update at my 10:40 am ciggie break:*** I had actually bookmarked this piece from Mudgie-man on one retro pub move he liked:

… hang on a minute, isn’t this “unique concept” simply reverting back to how pubs used to be a couple of generations ago? Back in the 1960s, most pubs had, at the very least , two separate bars, a public bar with plainer furnishings and a more down-to-earth atmosphere, where drinkers in working clothes would be served, and a more comfortable, sedate and genteel lounge. Back in those days, the beer was usually a bit cheaper in the public bar as well. However, over the years, brewers steadily knocked their pubs through into a single room. This was in tune with the spirit of the age, being seen as more modern, inclusive and egalitarian. It also made supervision of the pub easier and, at a time when public bar prices were regulated by law, allowed the pub to charge the higher lounge prices throughout. It’s now relatively uncommon to find a pub with completely separate “sides” and, even where they do, the old price differential has disappeared.

And I had noticed one odd thing about this article in the NYT about rich brats and their spring break trips to the Bahamas – the price:

One student at each school is informally appointed a representative for GradCity, rounding up peers to book the trip and serving as a liaison with the company. At some schools, the position is handed down as an honor. The trips cost about $2,700 a person for five nights with four students sharing a room. An additional $250 “platinum pass” provides access to sunset cruises and other amenities. Longer stays and rooms with fewer students cost more. In exchange for their work, student representatives can qualify for a discounted or free trip. Sometimes, students raise funds or pool money to pay for peers who cannot afford the trips on their own.

That is pretty much the same price as a normal (if not taken by my kids) school grad trips. I understand teen participants from my part of the world go to Japan or Ireland, say, for around $5,000 a pop. Maybe more. Is the NTY concern the access to alcohol in nations where there isn’t a nutso ban on drinking under 21 years of age?

[Update over…]

One last thing. With the Federal election on up here, I need to get photos of the leaders of each party pouring a draft beer. They always have to pour a draft beer in at least one photo op during the campaign. Trudeau Jr. in 2021. Jack Layton in 2011. And, from the same year, even an unlikely backhander from Stephen Harper. It’s the law. I picked that fact up when I used to be a pundit. Send them in if you see ‘em.

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

*Fight!!!
**Write!!!
***One need not smoke to have a ciggie break.

Now That We’ve Cleared Up The “St. Paddy’s / St. Patty’s” Day Confusion, Here’s The Beery News Notes

I like a good breakfast sandwich as much as the next guy but I have to say I have never elevated a disk shaped sausage to sainthood. For me, Peanuts sort of established who Patty is before she grew up to be the bassist of The Bangles under an alias. So the whole “Patty v. Paddy” thing flies by me and, anyway, I tend to use the long form.  Which is fine because, you know, we ourselves are Scottish. Which is what we told pals who invited us out to drink on a Monday night when we took a pass. Our new PM probably better knew what to do when celebrating that I did. But I think Liam, however, he of Ireland, has established an alternative answer to the puzzle of how to deal with the day. That’s a hop shoot omlette right there:

I’ve experimented with cooking hop shoots before, but this is my first time to force them in the dark. Blanched and lightly fried, and served on an omelette with pecorino and black pepper. Great texture, like asparagus but more of a delicate mangetout or green bean flavour. I’m impressed …

For a more traditional tribute to Patrick, check out The Loop for a true Americana dive bar version. I wonder what the equivalent elsewhere could be? I know who we could ask. Perhaps Retired Martin who advised on the question of what one can do when there’s a spare 25 minutes to be spent at the train station in Doncaster, all by way of very tightly focused photo essay:

I would buy a book called “What Would Paul Mudge Do ?”. He certainly wouldn’t get his beer in a takeaway milk bottle to drink on the 18:22, oh no. He’d have a pint from one of Sheffield’s cask champions. But a man doesn’t travel from South Yorkshire to South Yorkshire to drink South Yorkshire beers, so I had a pint from Tallinn. And admired the seating in what is a lovely, but slightly too small, station pub.

Admittedly, you need to go back to link each sentence to an image but it’s a nice tidy narrative if you ask me. Speaking of tidy narratives, Pete Brown‘s latest column for The Times has taken a step up, using the space so far dedicated to a newbie guide to share, instead, a vignette on a player in the trade – the beer buyer:

The Waitrose beer buyer Jourdan Gabbini, 31, from Wokingham in Berkshire, genuinely loves beer and obviously enjoys his job. His ambition is to create “a bottle shop within a shop” that doesn’t just stack up the beer but helps people engage with and explore it, in part by highlighting brewers that are local to each store. This can be frustrating when a beer you like isn’t available in your manor. But that means another local brewer is getting the benefit. Gabbini has the freedom to develop real relationships with brewers. Last year he even co-created a new beer with the Lost and Grounded brewery in Bristol and Caravan Coffee Roasters — a coffee pale ale that was exclusive to Waitrose.

Speaking of booze sales, Lew dipped his toe into the tariff dispute and examined the Canadian response when it comes to the policies implimented up here by our government run liquor trade:

The most common reaction has been pure Canada: a non-smiling “Elbows up!”, echoing Mr. Hockey, Saskatchewan-born Gordie Howe, a player who took no shit off anyone. Anyone who tried to slash Howe was getting a fast elbow to the head. Canada’s ready for this, and they’re not kidding. The angry Americans are right about one thing. The Canadian response of taking everything off the shelves, leaving only blank space behind, is disproportionate and goes further than the American tariffs. This doesn’t just affect day-to-day, month-on-month sales. This kind of action also attacks something much more valuable: the brand. Raise the price while leaving the bottles on the shelf, and you paradoxically make people think about the brand more, maybe even realize how much they ARE willing to spend to get it. But take the bottles away, leaving an empty shelf with a “BUY CANADIAN INSTEAD” sign, and the American product becomes invisible.

Lew says, quite reasonably, that this degree of response is because Canada is facing an existential crisis. I don’t actually think that’s the full story. I have loads of pals and more blood family in the USA than here in Canada but, you know, gotta tell you… we’re not going anywhere. And we’re not some sort of jilted pal. Trump just fucking pissed us off. When I played soccer in university, my Scottish father (a much better player in his own youth) would say “don’t wake the sleeping dog.” Well, we’re up now.  And we are drinking our own damn rye. Even the cheap stuff that tastes like gasoline.

Speaking of these the finer things, Nigel Sadler pointed me to an interesting 1991 Belgian beer rating guide posted by the beer importers James Clay and Sons on Bluesky:

This clever guide evaluated beers based on ABV, Sourness, Sweetness, Bitterness, and predominant flavour, which then generated a five digit code that could easily give a picture of the key characteristics.

Here are the five images (1,2,3,4,5) in case your are not part of the Bluesky way of life. I add them not just to scrape the data but to illustrate a couple of points. First, I have long thought the overbearing BJCP system was clumsy and created poorly transferrable information in a simple but meaningful way. This does that. Second, being a real nerd, I immediately recognized that this five digit system mirrors the SINPO code used by long distance radio listener nerds. The SINPO code not only succinctly frames the transient quality of a radio transmission heard well beyond the intended broadcast range but it is also understood across cultural and language gaps. Simple, neutral and still data rich. So it’s gold when you are sending your QSL reception report looking for a postcard, right? What? No! No, it’s really cool. It really is. No, you’re the big fat loser.

Getting back to where we started, Ron has been to Brazil again and, much to my delight, has posted a photo essay – a montage if you will – of many of his breakfasts as well as what it is like to be an Englishman in Rio for Carnaval:

Many not so much lightly-dressed as slightly-dressed partygoers walk by. I’ve never seen so many men in fishnet tights and tutus. It has a bit of a Gay Pride air about it. Some of the party people pause to pick up Pils. Always the Pils. There’s a merry buzz. Everyone is going to a party. I can feel their crackling anticipation as they laugh and drink their way down the road. Anticipation of a good time. A really good time. I’m starting to quite like this Carnaval thing. Everyone is in a really good mood. Even a miserable old git like me.

Over at VinePair, Joshua M. Bernstein told the tale of the rise and fall of Magic Hat #9, a once hudely popular beer out of Vermont:

Johnson built a moderate-strength pale ale infused with apricot essence, and the mysteriously named #9 hit Burlington taps in summer 1995. The beer was designed to disappear come fall, but calls from angry bar owners threatening to stop carrying Magic Hat beers led Newman to turn #9 into a year-round release. “It was never intended to do anything,” Newman says. “We were just trying to find a way to sell beer.” The beer thrived on neglect and even disdain. “Beer geeks at the time f(u)cking hated it, but the more they hated it, the better the sales were,” Newman says, adding that #9 was nobody’s favorite beer at the brewery. Magic Hat initially spent scant dollars to support #9. “I could argue that we spent the first two years doing absolutely nothing to help it grow, almost working to kill it,” Newman says. “And then one day we went, ‘What the f(u)ck are we thinking here?’ And so we got on the bandwagon and it just kept growing.”

There was a time when Magic Hat was way ahead of its time and attracted the dollars of border crossing beer nerds like me over a decade and a half ago, looking for their latest Odd Notion seasonals. I seem to have had some on New Years Eve 2004. In October 2005, I review another mixed case of their and… I mentioned that I didn’t exactly love the #9. I thought it was supposed to be peach but Oskar in the comments said “No. 9 used to be much higher quality, with a REAL apricot taste” so I wasn’t wrong wrong. Just wrong.

Speaking of travel, Katie spent a week on the Isle of Man. She didn’t mention seeing Kelly… but she did write a lovely piece at her space The Glug about solo dining at The Boat Yard in the town of Peel:

The menu is as fishy as I dreamed it would be, and while I’d normally order something picky or snacky or fried for a starter, I couldn’t think of anything nicer on such a cold night than a bowl of chowder. It came hot and creamy, filled with Manx kipper and mussels, and a healthy incorporation of curly parsley. Slurping it felt like warmth and health and happiness. To drink, I had a glass of champagne. And then another. How incredibly off-putting of me, to ignore wine tasting regulations and all common decency, but I wanted some Champagne, so I had some. End of story. If you want to fight me about it, I‘ll meet you outside. Doing champagne by the glass is not ideal for any hospitality venue, and I apologised for being so awkward. Then I apologised for apologising. My lovely host was gregarious: “You deserve to have what you like,” she said. I wondered if had I been with other people she might not have added life coaching to my menu free of charge, but I appreciated it nonetheless. And anyway, I did like it very much, because it was rich and biscuity, with a squeeze of lemon sherbet.

Smoky kipper chowder and glasses of champagne. That’s it right there. Yup.

Note: Martyn captured on the audio talking about the porter. And the book. The book that launches very soon.

And David Jesudason has managed to make me homesick for a place I have never been.  Much of my family lives along the 128 bus route east of Edinburgh and I worked in Poland for a while when I was in my twenties. So this portrait of the The Persevere in Edinburgh’s historic port of Leith has me longing… and (again) hungry:

…it retains those born and bred in Edinburgh’s historically working class Leith district, especially sports lovers who might glance at the horse racing before a match. While it also serves as a home away from home for many of the Polish diaspora who have been linked to the port since 1939. This is seen in the pub’s owners, Lublin-born Dorota Czerniec-Radowska and her husband Konrad Rochowski, and the kitchen they have run since 2015 which pumps out delicacies, such as plate-sized schnitzels and comforting white sausage (Żurek) soup. You can eat these in the pub or the restaurant-style section, known as the Percy (also the affectionate nickname given to the pub by its regulars,) where paintings of Dorota and Konrad’s hometown are displayed.

One of the pleasures of Poland was learning how useful my childhood training in the rolling of an “r” and the roughening of a “ch” were.* And, as with the Korean food, the reassembling of similar ingredients was also a welcome surprise. Next time I am there, I should make of point of being here… there… at this pub.

Note: a reminder for next week. It’s another end of the month edition of The Session… and Gary jumped the gun but gives us a good example as we prepare. Matty C is hosting:

For the March 2025 edition of The Session I’m asking participants to produce a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs. This could be a review of a beer you’ve enjoyed, or perhaps one you haven’t. A pub you’re fond of, or maybe one that has room for improvement. You could write about a beer experience (or lack of) in a setting such as a restaurant, or even produce a critique that focuses on a particular aspect of beer or pub culture. The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.

I am still working out how this isn’t a distinction without a difference as building a good argument always requires considered analysis. But I look forward to the submissions.

Did you now that some common foods do not qualify as no-alc? Well you will now thanks to the exceedingly tenuous argument placed into the discourse by the lobbyists of the The British Beer and Pub Association:

Advocates argue that the current limit not only confuses consumers but also restricts the development of innovative alcohol-free products. According to the BBPA, raising the threshold would help the UK’s brewing sector thrive in the rapidly growing no and low alcohol market, while providing consumers with more clarity and choice. The BBPA’s findings highlight that burger rolls can contain up to 1.2% ABV, while malt loaf can reach 0.7%, and ripe bananas can hit 0.5%. These levels are considered negligible and occur naturally due to fermentation, yet remain higher than the current 0.05% threshold for alcohol-free beer. The government’s consultation is set to conclude later this year, with the industry eagerly awaiting the outcome.

Eagerly. Not “patiently” or even simply “awaiting” but eagerly.

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

*My late toddler trauma includes being told “Whales and Wales are not homonyms!!!” as a parent’s hand was placed before my mouth to catch the whisp of an “h” that was so critical to the continuation of the culture. 

Session #144: What’s That Down There Back There In The Stash?


What’s that down there, back there in the stash? Why it’s a beer. Beer. Mmmm… But what beer? Depends. Is it 2005 or 2006? It is tidy and well stocked? Or is it a bit of a mess? In last month’s contribution for The Session, I wrote about how the best thing in beer since 2018 was the advent of home delivery, brought on by the pandemic but carried on due to an inordinate amount of bureucratic common sense. Once it’s delivered, it gets stored down in the stash.

Currently, the shelves of the stash are loaded down with wine. Having a good rest, waiting perhaps for a Christmas dinner in my retirement. Another change of habits brought on during the pandemic. Was it all those chips in those vaccines that made me do that? Can’t tell you. But it’s not all wine down there. One thing that always seems to have a home in the stash is the Světlý Ležák from Godspeed of Toronto. $3.55 a can plus shipping plus tax. Except this one came during the holiday sales tax holiday. Sweet. A credible beer. My beer of 2024. When I reorder my box from Godspeed it’s usually half full of this one beer.

Over the two decades that I have been scribbing here about beer, I have taught myself plenty. I lined up and knocked back IPAs before they were what they became. And I studied sour before there were sours. You watched me learn. In August 2016, my contribution to The Session was about how I knew nothings about good pilsners, concluding:

You know, in 2006 I made something of an admission when I wrote “I just can’t imagine when I am supposed to crave steely stoney dry grassiness.” Is that it? It’s just not my thing?

And by pilsners, let’s face it, I really meant all sorts of lagers. Max responded by saying that Světlý Ležák was one of his favourite types of beer. “What the heck was that?” thought I at the time. Now, thanks to Godspeed of Toronto and a handy global pandemic, it’s one of my favourite types, too. Now I’m going to go have one.

These Are The Beery News Notes For The Dump Of Snow Finally Showed Up

Well, what can you say. Moscow and Washington making kissy face as planes literally roll off the runway. We had a nasty dump of snow locally, the first it feel like in years, but elsewhere in the province we hear that the school kids are basically back on remote learning this winter. The green onions readying for the garden in a few weeks look out the window in horror. I know the feeling.

For all the change going on, at least we can take comfort that The Session continues! The hosts for this February are Boak and Bailey who announced the topic:

What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now? Not necessarily right now. You can go to the shops if you like. But you shouldn’t have to get on a train or a flight. Or travel back in time. If you like, you can choose a top 3, or top 5, or top 10. What makes it a good beer to drink at home? Is it brewed to be packaged? Does it pair well with your home cooking? Does it pair well with drinking in your pyjamas?

Get writing!  Your submissions are due on Friday, February 28th.  Andreas Krennmair has been writing. And wrote this week about the brewing tradition in the German state of Württemberg and the distinction between the “gewerbsmäßig” and the “Privatbrauereien” in that region in the 1800s:

Normally, “private breweries” at the time referred simply to privately owned breweries, as opposed to publicly owned breweries (of which people own shares) or communal breweries (owned e.g. by the citizens of one particular town or city by virtue of their citizenship). But in this case, the private breweries were strangely juxtaposed with commercial ones… so, were private breweries non-commercial? Turns out, yes: in parliamentary records of the local parliament of Württemberg from 1853, I found a description of what constituted private brewing: it was the non-commercial brewing by Upper Swabian farmers, where it was customary for all farmers who owned larger farms to also own a brewing kettle in order to brew beer for their own use, which included the house drink for the farm workers…

Speaking of unpacking things found in central European digital records, I missed last week when Alistair of Fuggled fame wrote about Josef Groll, the first brewmaster at the brewing company that today is generally known by the brand Pilsner Urquell. What caught my eye was this:

Another fact about the actual beer being produced in Plzeň also caught my eye – that there were 2 types of beer being brewed at Pilsner Urquell, the famed 12° lager and an 11° schankbier, which may have at some point become a 10° version that was known within living memory. The schankbier, the German equivalent of “výčepní”, would be sent out to beer halls to be stored for 2 or 3 weeks before being ready to be drunk, while the lagerbier left the brewery ready to be tapped on arrival, and was mainly consumed during the summer months.

Question: is this schankbier in late 1800s Germany the same as this schenk beer in late 1800s German immigrant community in America? Have a look at footnote #1: “A kind of mild German beer; German draught or pot beer, designed for Immediate use.” Hmmm…

Speaking of ready to be drunk, Laura Hadland wrote an excellent piece for CAMRA on the nature of small beer in English history… and, more importantly, the experience of hunting down that bit of history:

It  occurred to me that we are applying our modern sensibilities to the past. We can just about bend our heads around the idea of a weak beer being consumed in quantity throughout the day. It’s harder to accept that drinking anything approaching a strong beer from dawn til dusk could be the norm. It just sounds mad. But we know that beer drinking was unproblematic and socially acceptable in the early 18th century – consider the gentle serenity of Hogarth’s portrayal of Beer Street next to the debauched depravity of Gin Lane in his famous prints. At the time of the Beer Act in 1830, beer is referred to in the House of Commons as “the second necessary of life.”

Remember: small beer has always sorta made itself due to the nature of mashing. You can chuck away the spent malt after first runnings or make small beer.

Ashleigh Arnott got the nod in Pellicle this week with her portrait of a rather unpolished place, The Rutland Arms in Sheffield, Engerland. I quite liked this aspect of the pub’s weirdness:

The jukebox policy at the Rutty is notorious. Insert your pound but choose wisely, abiding by the rules on the chalkboard above. The ‘permabanned’ list features local acts—Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Richard Hawley—and the sort of bands that Guardian readers know they should never admit to liking: U2, Frank Turner, Foo Fighters, et al. And Taylor Swift, she’s also permabanned, though I suspect it didn’t need saying. Staff decide what’s in the ‘Recommended’ and ‘Forbidden’ columns according to whims, mainly, with a hint of current affairs-based silliness. Even co-owner Chris Bamford can’t overrule it.

The photos that accompany the pice are also excellent, though I fear that the one of the solo pubgoer on a phone brought the phrase “lost in someone else’s thoughts” to mind. Do pubs not still stock newspapers? Are there newpapsers to be stocked? Who has money for that? Speaking of which… where’s all the money in the brewing industry going these days what with threats of tariffs floating all around ? Well…

…the most important new investment made by Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) is Constellation Brands (NYSE:STZ). Buffett acquired 5,624,324 shares, making this position account for 0.5% of the portfolio, with a total value of $1.24 billion.

And, at a lower level of investment, in the latest monthly edition of London Beer City Will Hawkes shared interesting feature on the return of what are described as “traditional” pubs with a measure, as is often the case in such matters, of what looks like gentrification in this discussion with pub developer, Adrian Kinsella:

His aim was to turn the pub around, to attract a more varied clientele, to combine traditional levels of comfort with the quality now typical among Britain’s best small breweries… “[It’s about] taking the best of the old-school hospitality and putting it with the best of the new service standards around beer, and the best of the food, the amazing small street-food operators,” he says. “If you marry that together, that’s the sweet spot.” There won’t be tables laid up for food at the Coach and Horses, though. Kinsella says he’s not chasing numbers; if someone wants to sit over a pint for a few hours, that’s fine. His or her glass won’t be cleared. Beer will cost what it costs. “We’re not gouging, but when [beer is] too cheap, someone is getting the rail and it’s normally the staff,” Kinsella says. “All our staff are on London living wage.”

Speaking of noises made in pubs, “The Baby of the Pub” was the title of Katie M’s piece in the December 2024 edition of Ferment, a UK beer vendor’s inhouse magaine, and it was shared this week via her newsletter The Glug to share with us all the story of one wee pub goer… who is one:

The baby of the pub is growing up in a world where the pub is a normal part of his life. It’s teaching him to treat the pub as a natural meeting place, rather than a posh restaurant or an illicit drinking den. He’s being taught to enjoy hanging out here. And why shouldn’t he? This was our favourite place long before he was born, and now it is his. It’s a pleasure and an honour to teach him the ways of our local pub, and as he grows we’ll have new milestones to celebrate — his first packet of Scampi Fries, his first lime and soda, the first time he flips a beermat. One day he’ll be getting the rounds in and teaching his friends how to properly order at the bar—what a thought! 

Back in Germany, news is breaking that would shock any law abiding Canadian… voters are being bribed with beer:

The city of Duisburg in western Germany has come up with an unorthodox way to lure reluctant voters to the polling station. Voters who cast absentee ballots in the city center by 2 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) on Saturday were given a voucher for a drink to spend at a beer cart next to the polling station… In the 2021 federal election, for example, only 63.3% of voters in the Duisburg II constituency turned up to vote, compared to a national average of 76.6%. “With this unusual campaign, our carnivalists are ensuring that the federal election is once again in the spotlight. It also appeals to citizens who are not persuaded to vote by the usual election posters or information campaigns,” Murrack said, describing it as “a clear benefit for voter turnout and therefore for our democracy!”

Huzzah! Isn’t that what was said in the 1890s? Liam of IrishBeerHistory has announced that he is going to pause doing his series 100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects half way along “but not writing – to assess my options.“ Still he did share one more story, a story about a button:

This small button measuring 3cm (1 3⁄16 inches) in diameter is made of a copper alloy – possibly brass – and shows some green patination where the gilding has worn away to expose the base metal. It is probably from the livery uniform of one of the draymen who worked for the Anchor Brewery of John D’Arcy & Son on Usher Street, not far from where those aforementioned other-uniformed squads lined up. It features the words ‘J. D’Arcy & Son Ltd. Brewery’ and a nicely embossed anchor whose pronged ends appear to resemble demons’ tails. 

And I liked this story about one way drinkers got around the restrictions imposed during US Prohibition:

The unnamed ship turned out to be a glamorous offshore bar. To get aboard the reporter paid a $5 cover charge (about $90 today), with another $5 for a stateroom. Once settled, he was ushered into a festive room with “a jazz orchestra, staff of busy bartenders and a party of sixty revelers who danced the night away.” They were young and old, men and women, but all quite wealthy with “polished manners and a democratic demeanor.” The crew was well dressed and spoke with cockney accents; from them one could order a scotch for $1 or a mint julep for $2.50. 

In Ontario, we had a number approaches to the drinking tourism brining Americans north but, of course, we should be proud of the fact that brewing itself never ceased up here – even during Canadian Temperance – to the point that Labatt sent so much beer south that it expanded its work force by over fifty percent.*

Finally, I found this piece in VinePair on the current Guinness situation odd, mainly I suppose as it tried to apply and drawn lessons for brewers in the US. Consider this:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Guinness is that story. Its current success is the result of the sort of patient, holistic investment across the on- and off-premises that used to be the beer industry’s block and tackle. “The way that I’ve described this to people is, [Guinness] is a political movement,” says Roth. “It includes not just changing minds, but changing actual behaviors.” Its dominance in bars and restaurants has helped to influence consumers beyond their confines, too. That’s only grown more obvious as the beer aisle has grown more overwhelming. 

Nowhere in the story do the words “Baltimore” or “closed” pop up. Nor is there a suggestion of manufactured scarcity. Or a lucid consideration of the success of Guinness goes well beyond the beer rep, well beyond beer itself to a cultural fascination that has been in place for decades if not centuries based on the broader love of all things Irish** actual and faux from St. Patricks Day to The Clancey Brothers, from River Dance and to the identikit pubs. And that the beer itself has had these sorts of peaks upon peaks thoughout that time. The widget over 35 years ago. The Quiet Man over 75 years ago. Imported barrels over 165 years ago. Yes, it is good for the brewery to have existed for all that time but the presumption to make an association with Anchor Brewing or Leinenkugel’s or that it serves as an example and not a sui generis phenomenon is a bit telling.

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

*What?? $43.99??? At that price, no doubt the authority on the matter.
**My late father born of Greenock called the equivalent “professional Scots” and you can read Billy Connolly’s autobiography Windswept & Interesting for more detail on that point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lovely bit of writing right there.

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

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

Again, some lovely writing right there.

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

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

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

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

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

The Session #143 – The Best Of Beer Since 2018

Well, that went well. A revival can be a dangerous thing. From Brady Bunch TV reunion specials to the second Trump administration, these things should be faced with a measure of doubt – but it’s clear that The Session version #143(!) performed well above my expectations with a great level of participation… well, at least greater than I anticipated. Pat yourselves on your backs. So, as one does when one hosts, here is the summary.

Sunday Morning Update: I failed. Not all of you. But I did fail Eoghan Walsh who wrote “I’m Glad“… or rather “I’m Glad” about the settling out of hostilities in the Brussels brewing scene:

I was a partisan in this war, and I picked my side early on. But that was in the first flush of my engagement with the beer world, and we all are a little rash when we’re young. I’ve since mellowed in my views, for many of the reasons outlined above. I still hate with a fiery passion the parasitical marketing companies who’ve gotten involved in beer in recent years, when beer was hot, churning out bland marketing gimmicks in search of a quick return before moving onto the next hype – something we’re already seeing as the number of Belgian beer firms declines.

Fight!

February 8th Update: Jon Abernathy – the first beer blogger in the world and only one longer serving that me… probably – finally posted a week and a day late and shared a few thoughts – including:

Even if non-alcoholic beers and things like hop water aren’t your cup of tea, so to speak, this is still an important category that should be encouraged to grow. And it doesn’t matter why someone is drinking an NA beer (lifestyle choice, health reasons, etc.); just having the option available makes that brewery more accessible and inclusive to more people. And that’s a good thing.

It is. Not my thing but it’s a good thing.

[Now, back to the original post…]

First, as is most deserved, the achivist-in-chief aka the glue throughout the entire history of The Session, Jay Brooks himself is to be noted from the top as he confirmed that this is not Season 2, episode 1 (nope, now way) but actually the 143rd edition (legitimacy affirmed!) and that he is taking his administrative duties one with his hallmark  attentiveness as I learned via email:

I updated the Sessions page to include this and will be happy to keep updating it as we go. If you know who’ll be hosting going forward, let me know and I’ll plug them in. I’ll also happily host if you come to a month with no takers.

Fabulous – so you can go see the records here. And here below are the contributions, according to the means that I received notice. If I have missed a notification please let me know in the comments.

There were three BlueSky posts. First, former Fullers frontman John Keeling wrote “The best thing to happen in beer since 2018 , easy I retired” which makes sense for him, less so for others. And Maureen Ogle shared this:

Best thing in beer since 2018? Thousands of families are paying the mortgage by making beer for their communities. And not trying to become The Biggest Beermaker in the World. Ie, they’re making good beer without making a big fucking deal about its craftiness.

Barry M suggested that he was “wondering if the best thing to happen to beer since 2018 is that I stopped blogging about beer.” But then noted that his wonderful cider and fruit tree orcharding has taken over. Which is fabulous.

Next, those who gave a heads up in the comments. We had four notifications via comments left in the blog. The first was from a regularly featured and extremely active writer who often helps plump up the weekly roundup, Retired Martin:

Happy post-cheese/COVID booster 2025, Alan. And thanks as always for reading my blog. My only observation about good beer post about 2018 is that what I’d still call “craft beer bars” (the Record Cafe in Bradford or the Crow in Sheffield, for example), and I guess there’s a few hundred in the UK, will almost always feature a fruited sour from either Vault City or Pastore (from my hometown, oddly). And it won’t always be a high ABV sour; the last one I had was 2.5%, but it might be. Who (apart from me) is drinking these fruited sours at £5 a half ?

The other three comment leavers were Ding, Jay and Tom Bedell who snuck in just before the deadline no doubt celebrating his After Dark tendencies.  Ding celebrated the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic “kickstarted my Belgian love affair once more” which is great. Jay shared how while he didn’t hate Hazy IPA, he is seeks out the returning diversity of styles and loves “walking into a bar and seeing they have a brown ale, or a mild, or even a dunkelweizen…” Tom, reporting from Vermont, shared more on one theme that appears to be developing:

…it may just be an impression, but it seems to me that that’s the other best thing to have happened to good beer in recent years: a return of interest in classic styles. A week or so ago I was happy to find a few bottles of Côte de Champlain from Zero Gravity Brewing in Burlington, Vermont. Zero Gravity has a solid, wide-ranging portfolio across styles, but it’s not adverse to specialties like this, a wonderful tribute to Orval.

And Boak and Bailey moved us in a similar direction, tradition as diversity:

Bristol is a city dominated by hazy pale ales. That’s what we’d call the defining local style. Even so, when we go out on our weekend crawls, we often find mild or porter at The Kings Head, The Barley Mow, or The Llandoger Trow. These beers aren’t everywhere – but they’re not nowhere, either. Slowly, steadily, they’ve come back into being.

OK, so now we move to heads up which came via email. Matty C rejected the hype and the sellouts and instead celebrated the boring:

I consider the weekend of that festival in September 2018 to be the end point of the modern British beer boom. Both Camden and Beavertown had now been sucked into the inevitable, bland tediousness demanded by their paymasters, their beer eventually becoming as inspiring as a two by four to the face. But I actually consider this to be a good thing. It marked the beginning of beer becoming boring again, and I was here for it.

Next, Laura Hadland wrote to tell me that she had written – and what she had written was this:

It’s a helluva question to answer off the cuff. I’m sat on the train on my way to Crewe to brew with the Ladies of Darkness for International Women’s Day. So I’m tempted to talk about the improvements we’ve made to DEI across the industry over the last few years. But you just have to pay attention to what people like Ruvani da Silva are writing to know that it might still be a little premature for a celebration.

Good points. So, then, Laura instead turned to NA beers and how “now it’s not that hard to find really good examples in almost any beer style that you prefer.”

Stan explored some of the inclusivity initiatives in the US craft scene with perhaps a bit more hope with a survey of initiatives along with this admission: “This is the part of the story I am not particularly comfortable with, because as an observer I don’t belong in it. I took the picture at the top because I crossed paths with Oliver at the Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas and asked him to wag his finger…” I would just note that it is the better finger to have wagged at oneself. And Jordan Buck also wrote an email to share his posting on Instagram:

It feels like there was a tacit admission at some point that maaaybe low-po, easy drinking beers don’t need to be penalty pints. Even in the face of shrinking taplist diversity, it’s getting hard to find a brewery that hasn’t carved out space for at least one thing that’s clean and cold-conditioned and of sensible strength.

I am not very IGGY so you can all tell me if that link worked, please. I also received and email that started “I am Steve “Pudgy” De Rose, of Chicago, IL., U.S.A.” – who maintains a fabulously Web 0.9 page – wrote to tell us that he posted his thoughts on Mastodon that “the best thing happening to good beer since 2018 is the wider availability of transportation applications which can enable the “good beer drinker” to visit more venues without having to operate a vehicle.” Nice.

Next we have the hash taggers. By the way, use #TheSession freely in these matters even though there may be some other applications. Take back the hadstag I say! On Twex, The Beer Nut alerted us that he had posted perhaps unexpectedly about something…

This is where I’d love to be waxing lyrical about the oft-predicted lager revival, but that was never delivered. Nor the West Coast resurgence, nor the black IPA comeback: these styles are still noteworthy when they appear at all. They’re not being revived; they just didn’t quite die. My ruminations in this direction did finally settle on a revival that has largely happened since 2018 and is very much positive, for my drinking tastes at least: lambic. 

Talk about trad. Oh, he did. Other hashtaggers at the BlueSky include Phil Edwards who wrote about something called sour stout: “…that’s what’s new in beer since 2018! Or at least it was, for a couple of months five years ago…” Good points all. And Alistair Reece of Fuggled was hashing the tag which led me to his post which concluded:

This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow…it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.

Jeff Alworth also gave a heads up to check out Beervana for his thoughts which canvassed a range of events and trends and settled on – the vitality of change itself:

In the decades since I started writing about it, it has never gotten boring or stale. Something new is always around the corner, and the subject is so vast it may involve the liquid in the container, the container itself (remember 22s??), the people who make it, or our understanding of the history or culture or politics that shaped and continues to shape it. If I live to a hundred, I will never have to worry about what to write next. Something will come along. I love that, too.

I agree with this entirely. When I started doing this scribbing in 2003, I thought the theme of beer would wear out in a few months. Fat chance. Ed Wray also got all hashtaggeriffic and shared the link to his post on the fact that he… he himself… himself… got to brew one vintage of Thomas Hardy Ale! And Gary Gillman wrote me via a/ an X Message to give me the heads up that he took time off from his taking time off in the south of France to write over at Beer et Seq. to praise the continuing improvement of technical standards which is a very good point – and leads me to my own thoughts.

Me, I think the best thing is home delivery. Since the blessings of the pandemic, I can get beer delivered to my door here in Ontario. Which means I get beer from breweries I can’t regularly visit and – perhaps more importantly – excellent beers that brewers brew in smaller batches. Which means I could get have deliveries from excellent folk like (the sadly now gone) Stone City* and Matron. At the moment, the stash is armed with a mix box from Godspeed. Fabulous. All so fabulous.

I think that is it. All most welcome everyone. By my count that’s twenty-one participants, a respectable start. Thanks all. I think this is a great thing. As is the tradition at least as I recall it, there will be a separate announcement of the theme for the next edition of The Session from the hosts in the very near future – who(m) I am delighted to say will be Boak and Bailey on Friday the 28th of February. Whoohooo! Stay tuned. As my personal heroes The Carpenters once sang, it’s yesterday once more.

*I completely forgot I wrote an alt edition of The Session in January 2019 and again in April 2020 with an alt numeration sequence. What a cheezy bastard. In the great tradition of the Avignon papacy, I posted an edition #143 and #144. They are not part of the same Marvel universe as far as I am concerned.

Q+A: “Is Writing Something For The Session Right For Me?”

We get letters. Letters and postcards plus DMs and faxes as well as, yes, all those cheery cease and desist notices. And this week the letterbox has been filled with questions about the upcoming revival of The Session – like this letter which arrived from J. Wannamaker of Bingree, Indiana:

I was talking with my friends the other day over coffee and one of them mentioned the possible revival of The Session. We thought it was great back in the day and I said I’d like to try it this month… but I am wondering… is writing something for The Session going to take up too much of my time.

How much time? Are you kidding me? People whip this stuff off on a lap top as they gawk past the screen at whatever game is on. Go’wan! Get scribbling!! What to write about? Anything I’m sure that responds to the theme “…the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?” In fact, others have asked what can be submitted. One K. M. of the vicinity of Manchester asks if her proposed topic is within bounds:

Does anyone want tasting notes for WD40 versus GT85?

Probably. Maybe. Yes, I am sure we would receive anything along that line – if only to education me on exactly what that meant!  Which is exactly why K.M. needs to enter.  Even more puzzling was this inquiry from email sender sixfingers993$A@aol.com:

Best wished for your revolutionary website. It is truly a compelling story. Your invitation to The Session conveys both confidence and a treasure trove of information. Will a multifaceted response soar? 

I am sure it will. Soar on, sixfingers993$A! Soar on!! And, finally, we also heard from Jess B. of somewhere in Britain with this question:

Can I just write it by myself… for once???

Of course. Why not! Oh. Perhaps I should have answered that one privately. Oh well. Too late.

So… there you have it. This Friday is the day. You write. I will read. As will everyone else because… the internets.  I’ll be sure to update any further inquires before the deadline. But – on your bike. Have a go. Once again, the rules are here. If you can even call them rules. Prizes? There are no prizes. Who’s running this show anyway? Lordy.

Reminder: A Call For Entries For The Session 2025

As announced a few weeks ago, we are going to try an homage to The Session.  The Session? Not only did it have its own logo, as illustrated,  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 please 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?

Please write a little something – and then post your thoughts via blog, newsletter, social media… anything – on this coming 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 ;>)“!!!

That is the goal. Don’t do too much. Just do a little something.

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!