The Session – Page 4 – A Good Beer Blog

Session 115: Don’t Judge A Book By Its Topic

This month’s edition of The Session sees Joan of Birraire asking us all to consider this:

The discussion at hand is “The Role of Beer Books”. Participants can talk about that first book that caught their attention, which brought them to get interested in beer; or maybe about books that helped developing their local beer scene. There’s also the bad role of books that regrettably misinform readers because their authors did not do their work properly. There are many different ways to tackle this topic.

These are good things to think about. I have co-written three books about beer and also written, imagine if you can, 3,421 posts on just this one beer blog. That is a nutty amount of writing. Which means I must value writing about beer. I must, right? Over 13 years ago in May 2003 my first beer blog post was actually titled “Books About Beer” and it was about the 27 books on my bedside table. I copied the post over from my earlier blog, the one about everything else I thought about. Because in those days that was what I was thinking about, looking to figure stuff out about my interest in home brewing and how this internet thing might help me out.

I do not read that many books about beer any more even though I have many times as many at hand. Books suffer from a lot of challenges when it comes to a topic like beer. It is difficult to hit on a new universal topic that holds up its interest from first draft to publication. Plus publishers want something plenty will want to buy. So we have a glut of samey style guides as well as yawn inducing food and pairing guides. “Shrimp and avocado wrap? Brilliant!” These sorts of challenges were discussed in a comment placed by Martyn Cornell under a post I wrote later in 2003, my review of his book Beer: The Story of the Pint. It is jam-packed with so many good thoughts I thought I would lift it from the archives for reconsideration here:

Thank you for giving me the luxury to respond at length to some well-meant criticism, a privilege authors almost never get.

First, I would say that the two Peters and I were trying to do rather different jobs in our takes on the history of British beer brewing and drinking: mine was meant to be much more specifically about the brewers and the beers they brewed, rather than a concentration on the social context in which beer was made and drunk. That is why you will find plenty of stuff in my book not only about the beers of the past, their likely strengths and tastes, but stuff on the rise and fall of the pub brewer, the crises that hit the family brewers in the 20th century and so on that you won’t find in Haydon or Brown, and much less in my book about pubs. Theirs (particularly Haydon) are histories of pubs and drinking rather than beers, brewers and brewing. Both Haydon and Brown use their books for polemics about the state of the British beer and pub scene today: I wanted a pure history book. (I do the current analysis thing in another place, as editor of a yearly guide called Key Issues in the UK Pub and Bar Market.)

Second, I set out deliberately to ensure an accurate account, to destroy the dozens of myths that have encrusted the history of beer, with one chapter devoted to some of the worst errors. If I couldn’t verify a story from original sources I wouldn’t print it. You will see my version of the Great Meux Brewery Beer Flood of 1814 and Pete Brown’s are rather different. He took his more spectacular account from Alan Eames’s Secret Life of Beer, an American book that came out in 1995 (which, curiously, gives the wrong date for the flood, October 16 – it was October 17.) My facts came from contemporary issues of The Times newspaper and the Gentleman’s Magazine. Where Eames got his version from I don’t know, but none of the stuff about people being crushed in the rush for free beer, riots in a nearby hospital and the collapse of the floor at a temporary morgue appear in any British sources that I have been able to trace, either contemporary or more recent. There’s an old journalistic joke about never letting the facts get in the way of a good story – unfortunately, a history book can’t take that line.

Third I am proud that there is a mass of genuine, verifiable material in Beer: The Story of the Pint that has simply never appeared before in any book about brewing history (and certainly doesn’t appear in Haydon or Brown): to mention just a few, Atrectus the brewer and the Vindolanda tablets; Henry VIII and his mobile breweries; John Leeson, the first brewer to rise to the aristocracy; street porters; the true nature of the beers exported to India from Britain (which included, contrary to popular belief, masses of porter alongside the pale ale); and the first histories of two important British beer styles, Burton Ale and AK.

Incidentally, I was aware of the Wind in the Willows reference to Burton Ale. In my original draft (cut from the final edition) I pointed out that in Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s tale, his drawing of the Christmas homecoming scene shows the bottles that Ratty found in Mole’s cellar bear labels that carried the red diamond of Bass Burton ale (as opposed to the red triangle of the pale ale labels). Bass No 1 barley wine still carries the same red diamond?

Let’s unpack it, shall we? Setting aside the idea of anyone thanking me for my criticism, that first paragraph identifies a very important point. There are no books about beer. There are books about topics related to beer. Beer is too big a thing to have a book written about it all. Anyone who calls themselves a beer expert is, by any sensible measurement, not a beer expert. There are rhetorical polemics as well as beer histories. There are many other sorts of opportunities for books addressing particular topics within beer and brewing. As mentioned in the second paragraph, there are also good stories which are immune from very much rigor. We learned about that when infamously undertaking the careful reading of the Oxford Companion to Beer and then stopped when the obvious level of error got too depressing. In the third paragraph, Martyn makes his best point. He felt in that book he had recorded some things which were simply not written about before: “…Henry VIII and his mobile breweries; John Leeson, the first brewer to rise to the aristocracy; street porters…”

This is the glory of good beer writing and, sadly, one reason it is so rarely found in books. Or magazines for that matter. The process of writing a book contains too many gates: self censorship, uninterested editors, sales focused publishers. Pete Brown somewhere wrote about the glum day when his publisher let him know that another beer book would simply not be welcome – soon after publishing another winner. So, that being the way it is, we get the style guides as well as the beer and food pairing books. Yet more than a few good ones get through the system. Boak and Bailey’s Brew Britannia: The Strange Rebirth of British Beer was shockingly good. In fact so good that I am all pins and needles waiting for the promised follow up. And Alistair is entirely correct in pointing Evan Rail’s way for a trove of good reading. And I named Pete Brown beer writer of the first half decade last Christmas. It can be done. There are more. Go find them.

Is reading books about beer important? The worthy ones are. You have to judge which those are from your point of view. For a few years now, I have been focusing my writing on pre-1825 history and happy to do so. So I hunt out histories even though I will often find myself disappointed. I myself even have a 10,000 word summary for a book entitled Beer in North America before 1700 – which I appreciate will never be published. Too few care. But what does that matter? Some do. For all I know there are folk out there who day after day find fulfillment in eating their dinner with a beer matched up for them by a stranger. “Shrimp and avocado wrap? Brilliant!” The world is a weird and varied place. Exploring it through books will help guide you even if your decisions will likely be based on your own variety of personal weirdness.

Session 114: I Know Nothing About Pilsner

This month’s edition of The Session sees Allistair Reece asking us about pilsners.

I know zippo about pilsners. I never went on one of those five-day long weekend holidays to Prague that made me a drive-by insta-expert. I never lived there spreading the cultural imperialism of English as a Second Language either. When I was teaching overseas after university standing before a group of sweaty ignorant teens in 1991-92, I went to northern Poland and drank Gdanski. So I can tell you all you might want to know about tripe soup and how to say bad words in another Slavic language. When I worked in Aalsmeer in the Netherlands in 1986 I drank a lot of the local big named stuff – Grolsch, Amstel and Heinekin – and even learned how to pronounce the first one “[hork]-rols-[hork]”… but I am not sure that is what Alistair is thinking about. It’s not like I pretended. When I needed Czech-based pilsner content, Evan wrote a post. Why pretend? It’s not that I haven’t experienced beers branded as pilsner. But I’ve never heard the mermaids sing about it. Is it maybe that pilsner gets lost in the shuffle of the more generic “lager” thing now and in the past? It has suffered indignities at the hands of craft even when others make honest efforts.

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?

Session 109: Porter And Our Shared Georgian Culture

For this month’s edition of The Session, Mark Lindner, the Bend Beer Librarian has asked us to write about porter:

There are English porters, Brown porters, Robust porters, American porters, Baltic porters, Imperial porters, Smoked porters, barrel-aged variants of most of the preceding, and so on. With as many variations as there are it is hard to believe that porter is perhaps a neglected style. Then again, it did disappear for a while [see Foster, Porter, and others]. Of 14 beer people asked about overrated and underrated styles three of them said porter was most underrated and no one suggested it as overrated in our current market climate. [Yes, I know that is from Thrillist; feel free to ignore it.] I would like you to sit down with one or more porters of your choosing. Pay a few minutes attention to your beer and then use that as a springboard to further thoughts on the style.

Click on that image. It’s from the commonplace book of William Maud, evidently of Wetherby, York, England, b. 1787 who served as a customs official in Great Britain; he was employed at the excise office in Leeds in 1830. In his note book he keeps track of things of personal interest like Egyptian history and the excise table. On page 135, he wrote down two recipes: strong porter and common porter. He was likely taking an interest as the district excise man in the business of those who paid him taxes. The 184 year old jottings of a curious unfamous man.

There is so much going on. Both the common and strong porters are built upon a bit more porter malt than pale malt. The strong porter calls for Clay hops, which I now know from this 1855 agricultural journal was a rather rank hop that had particular preserving qualities. Which is interesting as Maud notes that the amount of hops you use depends on “the length of time you intend to keep the porter in the vats.” I am not sure that I had understood the word “cleanse” to mean the primary fermentation dropping clear. Notice he records that cleansing the common porter is accomplished by raising the temperature of the primary from 71 to 77 degrees. His conclusion is wonderful: “this is all wrought in the Punchin”! As with porter so with life.

Porter is Georgian Britain’s gift to us all. It comes in many forms. It was enjoyed in New York City as an import and then a local product in the second half of the 1700s, before and after the Revolution. The best was ripe and brisk. It survived both sides of that civil war. As we wrote in Ontario Beer:

The day book of tavern owner Abner Miles from 1798 illustrates drinking preferences of the governing elite who spent this a English money. Merchants Hamilton and Cartwright along with Commodore Grant and Chief Justice Elmsley along with many others are noted drinking a wide range of strong drinks with their meals and afterwards. They drank an impressive number of bottles and bowls of white wine, syrup-punch, brandy, rum, port, madeira, gin sling and sour punch along with mugs of beer and bottles of porter. The variety of drink indicates that, at least for the elite, tastes were as varied as imports from throughout the British empire and beyond would allow. The imported porter also illustrates a commercial connection to imperial and global brewing that continues to the present.

It does continue. I am having a Fuller’s London Porter as I write this. The grainy dusty texture of the malt so chocolately good. The hops twiggy minty good.

Session 99: A Little Mild And A Little Excitement

This month’s edition of The Session is hosted by Velky Al who asks us to consider American mild. Mild of the Americas? Pan-American mild? I am game. After all, the Western Hemisphere is the happeningist hemisphere if all.

Mild. I actually have had two glasses of the stuff over the last few months. Here in the central section of the hemispheric upper quarter. That is an upgrade from most years here in Ontario where mild is rare as… as… a very rare thing. That glass above? I had it in Toronto in early December. After the day of sitting in a strange city studying the difference between a semi-colon here and a comma there, considering whether “shall” or “must” is better placed in that sentence. Seriously. Contract drafting skills are not particularly thrilling. So, a stop at C’est What, a bar I wrote about a decade ago, was needed. The venerable basement tavern has always struck me as Toronto’s rec room and the pint or two of mild fit right in and washed away the classroom, the grammar and the concrete landscape of 90 degree angles before I jumped on the train back home.

Two months later I was in small town Ontario – Collingwood on Georgian Bay – and we stopped for a great dinner at Northwinds Brewhouse. Again, a reviving hit of malt and lush fluidity framed rather than cut but modest hopping. And under 4%, the drink didn’t hamper my ability to take on the last leg of the trip to the hotel another hour down the road. Brewmaster Bartle had three beers on under that level of strength – the mild, a grodziskie and a farmhouse ale – the details of which you can see on the chalkboard if you squint at that photo… yes, there… way in the back. Yup.

But that is it. Good news? Well, I’d like more but at least this all represents and improvement over Session #3 which was also about mild ale. Back in 2007 I really couldn’t find one. Had to post a picture of a book to find something to talk about. I was a bit naive, too. I wrote “you are never going to see a flavoured mild or an extreme mild.” AHHAAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHA. Had I but known how stooooopid craft beer was going to get over the intervening years. What a fool I was.

Session 97: A $40 Room And Maybe Free Beer

sessionlogosm We are asked to write about up and coming beer destinations for this month’s edition of The Session but I wonder if I’m living the rougher and readier reality. Beer travel? From what I see it often includes some sort of relapse into undergrad lifestyle. I am having bit of a creeping feeling that this two star hotel on the old four-lane route out of Albany, New York might be serving that up for me this weekend. But the room ain’t bad and soon pals will arrive. The solvent againt will prove to be the bond.

See, as I mentioned, I am attending the New York Brewers Association fest and conference at some other fancy pants hotel without $38 CND rooms. And to be fair I got this deal in Hotwire weeks ago. But it illustrates one of two ways beer and travel interact for me. I go to beer events or I find beer wherever I go. I have never traveled to find only beer. But that was covered in Session #93 four months ago. Not to mention sorta during Session 29.

Beer destinations? You may want to have a good look in the mirror if you dwell too much on the idea. You will find good beer on life’s highway if you are good at noticing stuff. You will also find other good stuff if you keep you eyes open for that as well. And if you don’t want your grand children to think you were an alcoholic back in the day get some photos of that stuff, too, when you travel. Travel gives you perspective. Or at least it should. Jeff knows. Go hicking in Franconia and you’ll find some good beer along the way. And, if not beer, wine or rum or even a nice cup of tea. It’s a big world out there. Don’t let the grandkids down.

Session 89: A History Of The Hop And The Malt And The Beer…

sessionlogosm It’s that time again. The monthly edition of The Session. Beer blogging boys and girls gather ’round the coal fired ISPs throughout the world to share their thoughts on a topic. This month our host is the Pittsburgh Beer Snob who writes:

At many points in history you can look back and find alcohol intertwined. A lot of times that form of alcohol is beer. Beer is something that connects us with the past, our forefathers as well as some of our ancestors. I want this topic to be a really open-ended one. So, it should be fairly easy to come up with something and participate. If you were among any readers I had when I posted most of the time you have a very good idea of where I might be going with my post when the time comes. The same doesn’t apply to you. Do you want to write about an important beer event with great historical significance? Famous figures that were brewers? Have you visited an establishment that has some awesome historic value? Maybe a historically-themed brewpub? I wouldn’t be surprised to even see a few posts on Prohibition. It doesn’t really matter when it comes to history!

History is good. I am actually of the opinion the best histories of beer and brewing are yet to be written. But I also believe the best beer writing, thinking, constructs, descriptions and criticism are all a fair ways off, too. We wallow in times of self-satisfaction. Would you just look about you at the works so far, Ozzy?

Anyway, that being or not being the case, what to make of the state of brewing history? I have written a bit of my bit to be sure but I am still not satisfied. I have come across beer in the Arctic in the 1570s, the 1670s and the 1850s. Fabulous facts. Beer for those living on the edge. Why? Because it kept them alive. Happy and alive. Billy Baffin, that giver of what I think the most Canadian surname, on his fifth voyage in 1616 got into a real pinch and had to hightail it to an island off Greenland and make a tea to keep he and his crew alive:

Now seeing that wee had made an end of our discouery, and the yeare being too farre spent to goe for the bottonie of the bay to search for drest finnes ; therefore wee determined to goe for the coast of Groineland to see if we could get some refreshing for our men ; Master Hei’bert and two more having kept their cabins above eight days (besides our cooke, Richard Waynam, which died the day before, being the twenty-six of July), and divers more of our company so weake, that they could doe but little labour. So the winde favouring us, we came to anchor in the latitude of 65° 45′, at six a clocke in the evening, the cockin eight and twentieth day, in a place called Cockin Sound. The next day, going on shoare on a little iland, we found scuruy great abundance of the herbe called scuruie grasse, which we boyled in beere, and so dranke thereof, using it also in sallets, with sorrell and orpen, which here groweth in abundance; by meanes hereof, and the blessing of God, all our men within eight or nine days space were in perfect health, and so continued till our arrivall in England.

God is good, indeed. Beer is a bounty that is provided to us for health and joy and the lessons of history prove it. Yet, history also proves the wages of not only drunkeness but seeking out the best and brownest. Beer is neither benign or neutral but a powerful tool. That is what history teaches us. It can trace empires for us. Fortify a frontier. Collapse a region. Give hope. And bring despair.

Session 85: When I Drink Is There A Why?

The good folk of B-More (as opposed to B-Lo) ask us to think today for this moth’s edition of The Session:

It’s easy to find article after article on the internet telling us that alcohol is bad. As beer bloggers it’s safe to say we all disagree. Let’s take the opportunity as a group to tell people why we do drink and how it improves our life for the better. I know the default answer a lot of us fall back on is “it’s nice to sit back with a good beer after a stressful day of work”, and while that’s true, I’m looking for answers that aren’t so obvious to people who aren’t fans of our hobby. Beer is bigger than a liquid “chill pill” or we wouldn’t have gone about setting up a blog and dedicating so much of our time discussing it. So, what is it that compels you to drink and what would your life be missing if beer was no longer an option for you?

Oh dear. Safe to say we disagree? Beer improves your life for the better? And the Brewers Association used to call macrobrewers “crafty”… until they raised the white flag and joined them recently. The simple fact is most people begin to drink out of some character flaw. Shyness. Sadness. Gripping doubt. Existential angst. Crap dancing skills. You are British. But then, hopefully not too long after the teen years have passed, you wake up on the hardwood floor of a friends house laying on scattered snack foods and beer bottle tops as the LP needle skips again and again. For the rest of your lives you hear Bon Jovi’s words “…oh-oh, living on a pra… …oh-oh, living on a pra… oh-oh, living on a pra… …oh-oh, living on a pra…” and remember how close you came to believing that beer improved your life.

But then you are stuck. All your friends have degrees of alcoholism, mostly functional… except your friend Smedly struggles. You move on a bit. You start to like other things. So do many friends. The decent wine at your wife’s co-worker’s dinner party. The Manhattan someone stuck in your hand. Then you have a better beer. And you try asparagus. You make coffee from beans you grind in the kitchen. And you learn to make a decent flank steak. And that decent beer tastes good with the flank steak and no longer reminds you of the dill pickle chips that you found under the sofa when you woke up on the floor that time. And you’ve got plenty of hobbies and commitments that have nothing to do with beer. You can have a conversation over lunch with people you barely know without the tiny crutch of alcohol. And you lose some weight, your skin gets better and the doctor is pleased.

Beer? It’s a condiment. And you don’t put mustard on your breakfast bowl of cereal. It doesn’t make your life better anymore than sugar snap peas do. Then again… sugar snap peas are mighty fine.

Session 39: Collaboration? Call O’ Bore-a-tion?

That’s not very clever. Or polite. But one must pun as one can. And one has to be always on watch for indulgence – especially when it comes to marketing… or is it marketability. That is what Stan mentioned: “Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer.” Or a bit of what he said… or implied. Sorta. But can they also result in bad business, poor marketing, tedium and dull beer? Of course they might. If not, what point would there be to this month’s edition of The Session?

This brew is a good illustration of the quandary, Brewmaster’s (sic) Collaboration Signature Ale #1 which resulted from a brewing get together 3 years ago and two months ago between Tomme Arthur of Port Brewing and Dirk Naudis of De Proef. It pours a deep rich varnished pine under thick rocky clinging off white head. The aroma includes pine sap and nutmeg, bubblegum and marigold. The mouthfeel is very soft and compelling but turns on you with the twin bite of hops and alcohol. There is pear and honey in the malt. All very attractive yet it’s a bit of a muddle. It’s overly hot from just 8.5% alcohol, the hops also burn and the malt’s a wee bit flabby. There is a bit of brett or some other sour tang a bit down there as well as a little of spice. But the furniture polish hops overwhelm it all. As they usually do. Like using the fuzz or the waa-waa pedal or a car with an intentionally bad muffler. The label claims that “these notes could be out of balance were it not for the generous maltiness that holds the beer in check.” I am not sure I agree.

Could be that time or the shelves of the middleman have taken a toll? I think not. This beer is like a decent Belgian golden strong ale got mixed up with a good California double IPA which stumbled into little dubbel. Plenty of BAer love but hasn’t this been done? A hundred times? Could be by now – but had it “been done” back in March of 2007? Three years and two months is a lifetime in craft beer marketability trends. It took until 2009 before folks got a bit jaded on the idea. Maybe this was one of the first inquiries into the collaboration idea that branched into or at least was working with into that early late mid-decade Belgian double IPA idea. When collaboration was new and interesting.

Collaboration might be a great idea but it also might be an idea with less universal applicability or longevity than one might have hoped a few years ago. Let’s be honest. All craft beer is collaboration. Brewers work with other brewers, were trained by brewers and were inspired by brewers. Does it really matter that one craft brewer held the basket of hops as they were shaken into the other’s brewing kettle? After taking a jet?

The Session #22: What Does Repeal Mean to Me?

It seems like a very sad thing. As Mr. Beaumont has already pointed out, for a global beer blogging day, the very question asked is so provincial, so singularly parochial and limited to one nation of all the nations of the world that one has to take it either as an intentional insult or at least as an approach so laced with ignorance that one inevitably wonders whether to take up the challenge or not. That is no less the case when one considers that the question is being posed by a craft brewery that brands itself so closely in relation to the question of the US national repeal of prohibition, 21st Amendment Brewery of San Fransisco. Frankly, I feel as if I am writing their advertising copy for them which I trust was never ever the intention of The Session and should be a call (again) to get this day a month back on point…and that point being beer.

But having said all that (and keeping in mind I am extra cranky due to being off work sick) as the folk asking the question today are by all accounts a wonderful, witty and wise gang of malt jockies as ever there was – oh, what the hell. So, as any good legal counsel as I presume myself to be would, let us begin from the beginning. The full inquiry posed by 21AB is this:

What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?

Well, the obvious answer to the first is absolutely nothing whatsoever. I wasn’t around then and pretty much anyone that was is dead and never met me. The second is really disconnected. As a right, it is something that is inherent to me as a human being and not something granted or retracted by the state. This is something neocons and, in the US, those called “originalists” get but really don’t get. A right cannot be defined by a constitution – it can only be observed to be present and acknowledged by the state through declaration and then respect. The wisest constitutions and constitutional thinkers realize that the observation and recognition of rights is not unlike the job of the tropicial ecological taxonomist: when a new species of bird is identified, it gets noted down, its characteristics observed and it is given a name. It is respected for what it is and also understood to have been pre-existing. So, too, with any observed right and the control of alcohol is a splendid example: in both the respect and disrespect implicit in regulation of booze-related rights. It is worth noting again that we have to separate right from regulation and thing about each separately and in their relation to one another. Notice also that I stated this in the present tense. We will reflect again on the question “what does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you?” As you will see, I argue that we are not done with it today.

More about law. We are discussing the “repeal” of a certain thing. That happened on a date. That it was not actually this date or that date in the US nor this date in many other dates in all the other places where a prohibition on alcohol was or has been in place is not important. In fact, in many places and in many ways it still exists. What is important is that the certain thing being “repealed” is a “prohibition” – the stopping of doing of an activity by action of law. That last bit that is important, too: “by action of law.” You see, prohibition by law is not actually the stopping. Murder and theft are illegal and happen, sadly, every day. If you think about it, those lucky enough to live in free states are in fact largely free, in a way, to do wrong but then are also subject to the sanction of law and the punishments imposed under those laws. So to understand what we are even talking about today, we need to understand two basic things: what is the right being discussed and what did the law do when it prohibited. Once we know that, we can discuss a third thing – what effect did the law actually have…because we all have to admit all laws are subject to their own inherent stengths and weaknesses as well as different rates of success.

First, then: what is the right. There is a principle in the Canadian constitution that I explored in my chapter on our relgulation of beer found in the book “Beer and Philosophy” which came out just last year (and so still makes an excellent stocking stuffer.) That principle states:

“everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

The first thing you will see as that this is a set of rights and it is not a statement of the grant of the rights but an acknowledgement. It is also a balancing. The right not to be deprived is conditional on “the exercise of the principles of fundamental justice”. The meaning and elaboration of these right have been explored many times by many courts and, in 2003, an aspect of the right to liberty – which we can call the sub-right of “autonomy” or the right to be left alone – was discussed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case R. v. Clay in relation to marijuana use. The court, illogically as I suggested at the time, stated that:

…the liberty right within s. 7 is thought to touch the core of what it means to be an autonomous human being blessed with dignity and independence in “matters that can properly be characterized as fundamentally or inherently personal” With respect, there is nothing “inherently personal” or “inherently private” about smoking marihuana for recreation. The appellant says that users almost always smoke in the privacy of their homes, but that is a function of lifestyle preference and is not “inherent” in the activity of smoking itself. Indeed, as the appellant together with Malmo-Levine and Caine set out in their Joint Statement of Legislative Facts, cannabis “is used predominantly as a social activity engaged in with friends and partners during evenings, weekends, and other leisure time” (para. 18). The trial judge was impressed by the view expressed by the defence expert, Dr. J. P. Morgan, that marihuana is largely used for occasional recreation.

What boggles my mind about this ruling is the idea that one’s private pleasures in life – which are often the things which one actually takes most joy from in life and most makes oneself known and identifiable to oneself – are not protected. I think this is wrong. The court confuses “fundamentally or inherently personal” with matters which are objectively or, worse, collectively accepted as serious. Put it this way, a fan of craft beer who spends a large measure of income on the interest and is fascinated enough by the subject to, you know, blog about it pretty much every day and even write chapters in books about its regulation likely also considers it “fundamentally or inherently personal”. I will not digress further on this point but to note the case was not on booze and if it was on the issue relating to a lawyer’s wine cellar, the court might have had other sympathies – and the difference between wine and marijuana might well justify such a difference. Suffice it to say, however, that this is a reasonable example and description of the underlying human right as against the state that is at play when we are talking about Prohibition in this context. And, if we thing of our tropical ecological taxonomist above, the name of that right is “autonomy.” So, having established the nature of the right, we can now move on to the question of the nature of what is “prohibition”.

I am going to take a break now, go take more meds, have a nap and a think, and pick up from here later today.

Later that day: That’s better. So where were we? Yes, prohibition. So if we have a right and then we have a prohibition and then we have a repeal, where are we? Back with the right, right? But we are not. We do not live in relation to alcohol as we did before the beginning of prohibition are we. And when was that anyway? Well, if by prohibition we mean an total ban on all activity related to the trade, transportation, manufacture, possession and consumption of alcohol that never happened in Canada. The US introduced an amendment in 1919 to its constitution that imposed the following:

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Canada, by comparison, had a national referendum in 1898 under which, although 51.3% approved prohibition only 44% of the population voted according to Craig Heron at page 172 of his highly recommended book Booze which I quoted from back in March. Heron describes the difference between the US and Canada’s approach in this way:

Defeat at the national level set Canada’s prohibition movement on a different course from its US counterpart. South of the border, as state prohibition experiments were failing and the Supreme Court reinforced federal powers to intervene on this issue as an aspect of federally controlled interstate commerce, prohibitionists looked to Congress for action and then, in 1913, decided to seek and anti-booze amendment to the Constitution. In contrast the Canadian movement turned decisively back to the provinces, where members would concentrate their energies for the most part of the next three decades. Canada’s highest court helped shape that strategic direction with its 1896 and 1901 declarations that prohibiting the sale of booze within the boundaries of one province was a solidly provincial responsibility.

So up here, each province charted its own course. People certainly were arrested and beer barrels put to the axe. Little PEI imposed the strictest ban in 1901 that lasted until 1948 – which triggered a continuing fine but entirely illegal moonshine trade as well as the blind pigs of bootlegging bars, a dirty open secret that was tacitly accepted right up until just a few years ago after a man died at the bar in one of these establishments…and no one noticed for a while. Other provinces took other actions over the early decades of the 1900s, none of which entirely banned personal possession and none of which was in line with the others. A patchwork was created under which alcohol was more or less available if you wanted it. There were some reasons for this.

Canada then as now simply does not have a constitution in one document. One hundred years ago it was still subject to British Parliamentary approval for major changes which would be the equivalent of a US constitutional amendment. As a result, the approach was more local and regulatory because that was the available law.
Quebec voted heavily against prohibition in 1898. A whopping 81.2% of the electorate voted against it. Canadian politics being what it is, any prohibition against booze had to take that into account.
After WWI, there was a social change in Canada whereby the rights and dignity of the worker was raised in the consciousness of the land. General strikes ending in deaths of strikers placed veteran against veteran. And having had a longer war than the US, there was no doubt greater Canadian exposure to freer social drinking from 1914-1918 in Europe.
Practices like continued access to 2.5% beer in taverns, medical prescriptions and drug store slips for medicinal alcohol and inter-provincial shipments from “wholesalers” were openly abused throughout the “prohibition” period.

There is another thing. Frankly, we Canucks were and, to be fair, still are a nation of loop hole seekers. Our relationship to the state is less fundamental in most of Canada than in America. We do not pledge allegiance to the flag so much as answer questions posed by police officers and other officials with our fingers crossed behind our backs. This national characteristic is accentuated by legal patchworks and common access to other jurisdictions where the law is different than where each of us lives.

The patchwork of rules and access to other jurisdictions continues. In a real way we never had prohibition, just degrees of regulation. Plenty of that makes sense. No one wants ten year old children standing in the liquor store line-ups and no one wants people to clean of a case of beer and then drive away from the party. There will always be regulation of some aspects of the booze trade. But there are plenty of laws that people not only flout but that officials do not enforce and sometimes do not even know exist. We are like that. Just consider that certain comic books still are prohibited under our national Criminal Code…a provision that is never enforced.

No, still today vast provincial bureaucracies exist, like Ontario’s LCBO, which impose costly regulation, which no one really cares about and which do not real describable good other than perpetuate a vision of a society in need of protection from demon rum. There is plenty of booze for all under these systems of oversight but also plenty of rules continued directly from the “prohibition” period. When I was in university, it was still illegal in PEI to stand in a bar and be holding a beer at the same time. All drinking was to be seated. Here in Ontario and elsewhere, importation is restricted on craft beer and other alcohols even though I can drive into the US and buy the stuff myself and bring it back within hours. Labels on bottles must be in line with regulations that only apply here, causing needless delay and cost. Due to lab testing and other requirements, I have a hard time saying that most beers in the LCBO system could be considered fresh – except those of small local brewers who, as I learned late last winter, control deliveries themselves like Beau’s All Natural here in eastern Ontario, as so romantically illustrated to the right.

As a result, I also have a hard time saying that repeal means anything to me because there has never been a repeal of the program of regulation that was imposed during the period of regulation. I can’t buy a beer in a corner store in Ontario – though I can drive two hours to Quebec or an hour into New York state if I want to. I cannot buy a beer here which is not inflated in price due to taxation, minimum pricing rules, duties and state monopolistic practices. So in answer to the questions above, repeal means nothing as it never really happened and to celebrate my right to drink beer, I will drink the beer that I am allowed to have by my bureaucratic betters. Whoop-dee-doo.

Session 15: How Did It All Start For You?

I want to say one thing. Where the heck did the days of whatchure fayvrit bock go? All these questions like who’s your beer friend, what’s your best beer place? I wish we’d get back to beer and a lot less about me…or you if you are another beer blogger. But at least this one is about me and beer.

There. Done. Off chest.

So, I was trying to thing of auspicious moments on my early years with good beer. I am a lucky guy who, at 45, started in my university years interest in beer in early 80’s Halifax, a seaport town, that was interested in beer and drink and donairs and whether Keith’s or Moosehead was better house draught. A place where one could say “it’s a drinker” on a lovely day and know by midnight you;d be amongst 50 pals in the taverns, pubs and beverage rooms of our fair city’s waterfront. I’ve written about the 1980s Halifax pub scene then in an earlier edition of The Session, but here are some notes:

In frosh week of 1982, my second year of undergrad, I decided unfortunately to drink a large amount of MacEwans Scotch Ale much to my later distress. Twice that night I noticed that it went down with the consistency of HP sauce and was quite different from the local Nova Scotian lagale I had been drinking.

The next year, 1983, the college bar had a “beers of world” weekend and we all drank Dortmunder Union which came in in very thin glassed bottles with light grey labels. Not too long after, Maxwell’s Plum, an imports bar opened in Halifax.

Soon after that on Christmas Eve 1985, I ran into my high school pal, Pete, at his new gig bartending at The Thirsty Duck put on a new keg of the recent novelty arrival Guinness. We went through a fair bit of that at that pub, too.

In 1986, the Halifax scene takes another jump with the Granite Brewery (now also of Toronto) at the old Gingers location on Lower Barrington, started up its experimental brewing with a variety of levels of success. About that time, the New Brunswick micro Hans Haus or Hanshaus started in Moncton and, according to Brewed in Canada, lasted five years. They brewed a lighter lager but also a beer that I recall as being like a marzen, darker and flavourful.

In 1985 I am in Holland working and traveling in France and the UK will college pals and, again at the end of 1986, I am to be found backpacking in the UK, in the pubs trying what’s ever going. The latter time I visit the Pitfield Beer Shop which Knut visited in 2005 and buy two homebrewing books, one by Dave Line and the other by Tayleur as well as some basic equipment I expect I can’t get back in Canada like polypins. I still use some of that stuff as well as those authors’ more basic brewing techniques.

But I think the real break came when I got the November 1987 issue of The Atlantic and read the article “A Glass of Handmade” – an article that gave me a sense there was something happening in North American outside of Halifax, that was maybe like the UK, that was maybe something to look forward to. I wrote about that back here and even sorted a copy of the article for posterity in my bloggy archives. Go read it again – it’s a great snapshot of where craft brewing was in 21 years ago and reminds me of what I was thinking about when I was first learning about what beer could be.