The Summer’s Lease Hath Far Too Short A Date Edition Of Thursday Beer News Links

Gather ye rose buds, lads and lassies. Five more weeks until Labour Day weekend looms. Back to school ads on the TV start soon. Remember: every fair from fair sometime declines. Boom. Chucka. Lucka. Photo of the week is from retiredmartin who has been out gathering. Note the first:  check out the third person’s experienced expression. Note the next: there is a missing fourth person. What is not to love?

A great start this week so far, don’t you think? Let’s go! Next, Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham spoke at Slow Food Nations about the progressive influence craft beer has on communities – something I would have thought would have been happening at every slow food conference since time began. She sat for an interview on her thoughts about food and justice:

Largely people are heartbroken because their intentions are good but haven’t actually been realized in their business. The project of equity, inclusion and justice tends to overwhelm people with a sense of fear of doing it wrong. So my approach is to come at this as a huge opportunity for a business both in terms of social good and the bottom line. To do this, a business has to think about it on par with all other organizational goals, build infrastructure and then talk through specific tactical scenarios that people can grab on too.

Here’s some science for you. Drinking is being studied studiously and one study has found out that folk are not altering their habits all the same way. It asked the question “why are alcohol-specific deaths going up in Britain when alcohol consumption is going down?”

Countervailing alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related harm trends in the UK may be explained by lighter and heavier drinkers having different period and cohort trends as well as by the presence of cohort trends that mean consumption may rise in some age groups while falling in others.

I heard a similar science-like story on NPR Monday morning but never found the link. [It’s sad when things turn out like that.] But the point was teens seem to be reversing what the last set of teens did and the newbies are turning to the bottle after their elder teens of the last ten years have been subsisting digitally.

Writing advice. Boak and/or Bailey included more than one excellent observation in their monthly newsletter but I liked this one the bestest:

A couple of weeks ago we posted about migrant workers from Suffolk in the Burton brewing industry. In a follow-up Tweet we said: “TIP: If you really want to learn about beer and brewing, don’t just read beer writers – look beyond.” This is something we think is important. When we wrote Gambrinus Waltz, for example, most of the research was undertaken in newspapers, old magazines, books about London, theatrical biographies, autobiographies… We hardly looked at a single book by a capital-B, capital-W beer writer, except for Ron Pattinson and Martyn Cornell.

Sounds like a couple of dodgy sorts to me… but the point is correct: get ye to the primary records as often as possible. Right after the rosebuds. Or perhaps they are your idea of rosebuds. Good all-round general thinking advice, when you think of it.

Hmm. Not sure I like this. The next nightmare beverage has apparently shown up in Malaysia:

Asians love the bubble milk tea. They love beers as well. One franchise has decided to merge the both together in what it considers the “matchmake of the century”… The Boba Beers consists of Butter Beer made with Kirin Ichiban, Guinness Milkshake with Guinness (duh), Strawberry Lime Cider made out of Apple Fox Cider, and Watermelon Beer mixed with Tiger Beer.

I don’t judge but, well, it sounds pretty yik. I expect some craft brewer will update* it and the kids will go nuts.  Because tea+beer=boba can’t help but be cheaper to make than even beer+juice+radler.

Geoff Latham had a good go at pointing out that one craft fabulous UK brewer selling into the EU was seemingly breaking the law:

It’s not allowed under EU rules. They closed the “personal import by post” loophole when tobacco sales by post rocketed. The person importing can have their goods seized and face prosecution. The company exporting also can if the correct customs documents don’t accompany the beer

I liked Zak Avery’s experienced views on the matter, too. Craft is all fine and good but a couple of weeks of short sharp shock might be called for.

New brewery news: Ontario emigrants brewmaster Andrew Bartle, marketing manager Marissa Bégin have declared their new operation The Church Brewing open for business. This is great and especially so as they are located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia** near where I grew up, where my Dad was a United Church minister which means he likely went to presbytery meetings in a future brewery.

I am enjoying the approach Matt Curtis and his journal Pellicle are taking in treating good beer as part of broader food and rink production.  British wine has been included in that scope this week:

Thanks to this bumper crop, British wine is being spoken about with more fanfare than ever before. British sparkling wine, particularly from vineyards based in Sussex and Kent, is now widely recognised to be on par with Champagne. This perhaps explains why in 2017 the Champagne house Taittinger planted vines in Kent (though, due to its appellation, they cannot call what they make here Champagne) in order to exploit similar growing conditions as the prestigious house enjoys in France.

Boak and Bailey have hit for the double this week when on Wednesday they posted a tweet with a link to a 1971 article from the publisher of the foundational and likely all-time leading home brew and good beer books in terms of sales, Amateur Winemaker. The article is about beer tourism to Belgium, a copy of which is produced to the right. I love it. While a bit cringe making on topics matrimonial, it is far less creepy in its sexist approach than the sometimes leering thoughts of one Mr. Jackson when he spoke of ladies AND it does an excellent job describing the subject matter of his article – traveling to Belgium in that year of 1971 to explore the beer culture. I particularly like the observation that sweetening sour beers like Rodenbach or Gueuze was locally common. This primary record proves their earlier observation – and raises again the question of why no one has seriously studied the influence of Amateur Winemaker publications. Then again, perhaps Columbus did actually discover the New World.

Finally, a point of view from our side good beer on the word authenticity. While I am a bit of a loaf, I do like reading about good menswear as I am a man who needs to wear things. Permanent Style is one of the best current guides to things I can never afford which offers an alternative voice on matters analogous to good beer and here is their take on that word:

In the past couple of years ‘authentic’ has become increasingly important to how I see clothing.  Partly, this is because the other terms – or values – have become less important.  Heritage has been overemphasised. Frankly, some old companies make terrible products and are stuck in the past, unable to adapt either to changing consumer expectations or the media that markets them.  So too has craft. The fact it is done by hand doesn’t necessarily make it better. Some craftsmen set out on their own before they’re ready, and deliver a poor product. And some things are just better made by machine. 

Interesting. Given most “craft” beer is made on computerized set ups that manage much of the process automatically, the comparison may well be a useful one.

Well, that is it for now. Not a boring week at all. Boak and Bailey should have even more to share on Saturday and I am now trusting Stan to being back again Monday. Consider, too, the OCBG Podcast which is broadcasting the thoughts of Robin and Jordan as they observe upon good beer each Tuesday now coming on three months or so.

*aka poach.
**pronounced “Wuhff-fuh” locally.

In 1655 Good English Beer Made Its Way To The Caribbean

It’s already 38C according to the humidex outside at 11 am. I’m not gardening. I’m not even hanging around outside until the shade starts making its move in the backyard. With the sting of the Beer Nut’s pointed truth fresh in my mind, how about patching together a beery post about trans-oceanic beer transit.

And what a tale it is! Let’s not forget that the earliest date I have established for trans-Oceanic beer transportation is 1577. In that year, Martyn Frobisher brought a boatload of miners to gather iron ore in Canada’s Arctic. And he brought a boatload of beer to keep the miners lubricated. 80-and-one-half tunnes in all:

Biere for iij monthes contayneng 168 daies after the computation of one gallone aman per day 80 1/2 ton at 2li 5s per ton wth caske iron whoopes and chardges.

All seems to have gone well but it would, wouldn’t it. It’s the Arctic and the beer would have been able to keep relatively cool. What about further south and days of heat like today out there in the yard? We know that good old Taunton ale was shipped south in the 1700s. It’s in New York City in the 1750s and into the Caribbean with its delivery to Jamaica in the 1770s. But the British were in the equatorial zone of the Atlantic well before that. Did they bring beer? Yup:

In September 1655, Major Robert Sedgewick was pleased that the beer shipped along with the troops on the Western Design remained potable: “Amongst the rest of our Provisions our beere proved generally very good wch was a very great refreshment and is so to this day.” 

See footnote 53 at page 124 of Temperateness, Temperance, and the Tropics: Climate and Morality in the English Atlantic World, 1555-1705, a PhD dissertation from 2013. The author-candidate, M.R. Hill contextualized the footnoted information in this way:

In the hot climates of the Atlantic world, however, English travelers and colonists usually had to make do without their cherished beers. European grains did not grow well in the West Indies, leaving the English without ingredients for brewing in the island colonies. Beer often failed to survive long sea voyages, corrupted by bad casks, heat, or simply the passage of time. In the West Indies the English imported drinks or turned to local substitutes such as mobby (a mixture of potato juice and water, sometimes fermented), citrus drinks and rum-based drinks. Because they shipped well, however, distilled spirits often replaced beer among the English in hot climates.

Jamaica was invaded by the English in 1655 as part of Cromwell’s Western Design, ousting the resident Spaniards after flubbing an attack on what is now the Dominican Republic. They landed in Jamaica on the 9th of May. Sedgwick’s letter in which he praises the beer was dated 6 September, four months later. Notice that he wrote that it was a great refreshment and “is so to this day.” Notice that the beer was “shipped along with the troops on the Western Design…” It lasted through a Caribbean summer.

Wikipedia tells us that “Within a year the 7,000 English officers and troops that took part in the invasion were reduced to 2,500.” Robert Sedgwick was one of those who died.  Interesting fellow. Born in England in 1611, he spends his later twenties and thirties in colonial Massachusetts, joins the Military Company of the Massachusetts but goes back home to support Cromwell. He takes to the sea, attacks the French in what is now the Canadian Maritimes and into New England before attacking Spain further south. Sedgwick, Maine is named after him. Boston of the 1630s was a beer drinking town:

Boston was, in the early days of the Company, the principal seaport town in North America, untrammelled as yet by a custom-house, and the flags of the maritime nations waved at her wharves… she exported to the mother country dried codfish, tar, turpentine, lumber, spars, whale oil and bone, deerskins, furs, etc., receiving in return Holland gin, strong beer, and merchandise of every description.

Sedgwich himself seems to have operated a brewery in Boston in 1637. It says this in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America:

… after being licensed by the General Court held in Newton, Massachusetts on 20 November 1637, Captain Robert Sedgwick opened the first of the New England breweries in Charleston, now part of greater Boston.

He also seems to have obtained a licence to brew from the local Boston government in 1635. He was something of an all-rounder:

Charlestown has cause to remember Genl. Sedgwick for the results of his active public spirit when residing in the town. He was an enterprising merchant, built wharves, carried on a brewing establishment, built the old Tide-mills, and had an interest in the Iron Works at Lynn. “He was representative in the style of his ideas and character of the liberal Puritans of those early days of Now England history, religion was in all his thoughts, and yet he openly opposed the prevailing intolerance. He was a very brave, zealous and pious man.”

So, it is entirely reasonable that Sedgwick would not only have written about the beer that arrived in Jamaica along with the English in 1655, he might have been involved with keeping in good condition. Keeping it in good condition from at the latest May to September at the earliest.

He dies in 1656, one year after the invasion of Jamaica and left children who died lived there and in England and in New England. Beer lad.

The Mid-July Thursday Beer News You Need

Mid-July! It’s lovely. Warm. Tropical even. We are actually getting the edgy remnants of Hurricane Barry into the Great Lakes basis so it’s all a bit thick out there.  Raspberries picked by my own sausage-like digits. And the fire flies are at their peak. I let the garden go a bit and they seem to love it. 100+ flashes a minute in one corner of the garden. Beer has its role, too. I even had one last night, mid-week. At a Denny’s.* A Bud Light. The weirdest thing was being handed a ice cold bottle and an ice cold glass. Entirely hit the spot. Mid-week, mid-month, mid-summer, mid-year, mid-aged.

What is going on? Well, Josh Noel, who admitted to needing something to wash out his mouth after writing about hard seltzer, has written a helpful article for the Chicago Tribune on dark lagers:

And that gets to the genius of dark lager. They’re beers that typically have a modest amount of alcohol — about 5 percent or so — but are long on aroma and taste. Flavors usually include a mild to deep roast character and can veer into chocolate, char or coffeelike terrain thanks to the roasted malt that gives the beer its dark hue. But unlike most of the porters and stouts they resemble, dark lagers tend to finish dry. The best dark lagers make for stealthily ideal summer beers: interesting layers of flavor, but refreshing. The color, which can range from deep amber to impenetrably black, winds up playing a visual trick.

We have an excellent local black lager, Blacklist from The Napanee Beer Company, so I am particularly grateful for this addition to the discussion.

Note: “bee boles were used before the development of modern hives to provide shelter to the skep…”

As we have been noticing over the last few weeks, beer writing and commentary seems to have divided into (i) “it is so dull and boring right now” for one reason or another** and (ii) HOLIDAY!!! So it was good to see some interesting travel being discussed by a couple of Brits abroad. Nate posted a top ten list of things to do in a city I have lived near – Gdansk, Poland – and gave ten top tips for visiting the old Hanseatic port including hitting up a museum about the Solidarity movement and this:

Shoot Some Guns – Maybe a controversial one, but I’d always wanted to shoot some guns since we can’t do it in the UK and I stumbled across a shooting range whilst doing some research. DSTeamStrzelnica was a great experience where we got to shoot four guns (A Glock 17, a revolver, AK-47 and another rifle) and it only cost us £18 each to shoot a full clip of each gun. It was a really fun experience!

Retired Martin has been in NYC and left us a photo essay with commentary:

How joyous to see a “Sorry, no samples” sign, by the way. 16 ounces (80% of a pint) is practically a sampler anyway.  I reckon the Five Boroughs Hazy IPA served in a plastic glass will have cost me £8 by the time taxes and Lloyds Bank conversion charge are added on.  Still cheaper than Port Street. “Tastes like Brew Dog” says Mrs RM.  It tasted like Hazy Jane. On to the High Line, the one place in New York where you can avoid craft beer and tipping…

Saskatchewan’s Pile O’ Bones Brewing Co. is getting a bit of heat for its name – folk saying its disrespectful to the local indigenous community – but according to this Cree language place name resource site, the location of what is now Regina was called “oskana kâ-asastêki” which meant “where the bones are piled.”

Beervana had a interesting guest blog post this week written by Ben Parsons is the co-founder/brewer, along with Rik Hall, of Portland Oregon’s Baerlic Brewing which unpacked the benefits in the US for craft brewers to self distribute their beers:

I would posit that if and when a brewery business does get into some troubled water—albeit from market conditions, saturation, losing chain grocery, etc—not owning their own distribution rights could easily be the last nail in the coffin. And although distributors are a very necessary part of the industry, their foothold on this particular part of the conversation is risky business and needs modernization so that it better fits with the current state of the industry.

Folk chatting about early brewing methods is always interesting. Who knew that bands in the pottery meant the line to fill with boiling water before topping up with cold before adding in the mash was so obvious?

At the Corrigall Farm, Orkney, large tubs that have marked lines inside, usually about one third to a half way up. Custodian told us (years ago, hope I have the details right) that you put in boiling water to the mark, then top up with cold and it’s the correct temperature.

Pilsner as the anti-NEIPA? Maybe.

This is an interesting piece, a remembrance of 16 of B.C.’s now shut early micro- and even some more recent craft era breweries. And it contains this interesting bit of history:

Horseshoe Bay Brewery was the first microbrewery in Canada when it was opened in 1982 by John Mitchell and Frank Appleton to produce beer for the nearby Troller Pub and became Ground Zero for the craft beer revolution. Mitchell and Appleton soon moved on to Spinnakers, and Horseshoe Bay briefly closed in 1985 before reopening and produced beer well into the 1990s, before closing for good in 1999. The original brewhouse, made from converted dairy equipment, is still in use today at Crannog Ales in Sorrento.

Now, that would be a real Canadian beer nerd’s pilgrimage: “honey, I am off to see the original brewhouse, made from dairy equipment!” It’s halfway between Kamloops and Sicamous, if you are planning the trip yourself.

That’s it! Have a great week as Q2 turns into Q3. I will be lounging myself. Well, dapper by day then lounging through evening. Such is the life of the office worker. Check out the beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday and maybe on Monday we will have a sighting of the inter-continental Stan now that he is back from Brazil.

*You can mock me after you’ve tried the burger. I was surprised, too.
**hard seltzer, everyone’s already been bought out, even glitter beer is so last year…

A Thursday’s Worth Of Beer News As The Dog Days Truly Set In

Summer. Proper hot summer. Half the folk you want to see at work to get things done are off on vacation. Half the places you want to waste some time in are filled up with tourists. And half of the ways you’d want to waste your time are not possible because your provincial government owned liquor store bought a new wholesale distribution system that does not seem to work and has left shelves emptying.  Jings. There better be Pimms for my weekend’s punch bowl, that’s all I can say.

What else is going on? First, Merryn has continued to explore malting with a tweet thread this week gathering some sources in support of a series of posts by Simpsons Maltings, like this one on the elements of the steeping stage.  Reminds me of that Anglo-Norman children’s guide to malting from the mid-1200s:

Now it would be as well to know how to malt and brew
As when ale is made to enliven our wedding feast.
Girl, light a fennel-stalk (after eating some spice-cake);
Soak this barley in a deep, wide tub,
And when it’s well soaked and the water is poured off,
Go up to that high loft, have it well swept,
And lay your grain there till it’s well sprouted…

Traditional brewing practices like these are actually easy enough to identify… but rarely discussed given the trend to adulteration… err… innovation. Ask detractors to show you the soles of their shoes to check if they are boosters.

More than a bit of shock and dismay expressed in the American mid-Atlantic over the closing of Mad Fox brewpub of Falls Church, Virginia:

In the closing announcement, Madden cited the difficulties with the brewpub business model and the rise of breweries in the surrounding area contributing to an “extremely competitive craft beer market.” “When we opened in 2010, there were 40 breweries in Virginia. Now there are close to 250,” Madden said in the post. “The Brewpub business model is a tough one to maintain compared to a Brewery Taproom with little overhead, lower rents and outsourced food trucks. Our draw from the surrounding areas has dwindled in what has become an extremely competitive craft beer market, which has resulted in this final decision.” 

Tom Cizauskas shared some background:

Mr. Madden is a successful doyen of the area’s ‘craft’ beer scene, both with Mad Fox and for a quarter-century before that. Beyond his own personal successes, he has mentored area brewers, he has organized beer festivals for brewers (beginning back when that concept was foreign), he was co-instrumental in bringing good beer to Washington baseball. 

Don Cazentre wrote about another odd example of that competitive market out there, a Syracuse brewery called…

Anything But Beer, which Berry runs with Logan Bonney, makes alcoholic beverages from a base of fruits and vegetables instead of the barley malt used in most traditional beers. The beverages, which include hard ciders, are carbonated like beer and are about the same strength as many beers — 6 or 7 percent alcohol. They’re served by the pint at bars and restaurants, like beer. They are gluten-free and vegan-friendly. Flavors run the range from strawberry lime and ginger chai to Irish whiskey apple.

Weird. Fancy Zima. Speaking of which, one of the sadder things about good beer these days is there seems to be an expectation that not only do you as the happy beer consumer have to care about the PR characterization of brewery ownership props as presented but now the cult of personality has been extrapolated into sale channels. Just look at this hot heroic mess:

Dealings related to The Bottle Shop’s liquidation mark a renewed interest from ABI’s Beer Hawk in expanding its wholesale trade platform, which has been operating for 18 months. Andrew Morgan, who founded The Bottle Shop, will be joining Beer Hawk to oversee this area of its operations. Roberts said that Beer Hawk plans to accelerate its wholesale activities, and that Morgan possessed unique skills to achieve that.

Nothing against the individuals named – but does anyone without an interest in a piece of the cash flow really care? Does anyone doubt that the skills might just be unique? Just another sort of marketing blurt. Matt had a cooler head when he noted it’s all just about receivership and administration, aka the accountants. He also noted that ratebeer and Beerhawk now are working not at arm’s length:

Interesting to see that shop is now “officially” live in the UK. Currently listing 372 beers, all directly linked to sister company .

Continuing on, I like this article in Pellicle on foraging for tasty brewing adjuncts in Ohio even if the continued misuse of terrior* rivals only the needy puffery of those who toss around curate to mean select:

“It was just supposed to be a clean, monoculture saison,” Brett says as he picks bright green buds from the sagging spruce branches. “The morning of the brew day, I said, ‘You know, I just don’t want to do that.’ So I drove out and picked three pounds (1.4kg) of spruce tips.”

Foraging, however, is an excellent word that needs no turd buffing to convey meaning.

Lastly, Lew Bryson wrote of his unnatural admiration for  Naturdays, a discount line of fruit beer produced by Anheuser-Busch InBev:

I have to admit, I’m two cans into a six-pack while writing this article. Pink and yellow, flamingo-decorated cans. I bought it out of a sense of duty and fairness, because if you’re going to pick something apart, you should have tried it. But once I opened a can, and tasted that first cold, sweet-tart slug, duty and fairness went out the window, and I was just another guy on a hot summer night, ripping my way through a pounder of Naturdays. 

Yum. And that’s it for now. I need to plan the weekend. Where shall I lay upon the grass within reach of a few weeks to pick from the carrot patch so that I can claim I did a chore as I suck Pimms Punch from a wriggly jiggly straw? Such an exciting decision. There should be more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..?  I still don’t know. He may well be in Brazil for another week and, so, on another hiatus. See ya!

*If it isn’t about the terre, it’s not about terrior. Vernacular is useful. As might be indigenous. Probably local makes most sense. Or just explain what you did. Adjectives are a waste of time. 

 

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

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

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

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

Friggin’ Canadians. They ruin everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update: craft… I kid you not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Beery Newsy Notes For The Coming Summer Solstice

Ah, the middle of the year. The exact middle of the year. I love when the planet is at this angle. Heat but not too much heat. Sorta the end of one of the tops stretches in the year. The next step will be the stinking hot and the death of the lawns and then the long goodbye, the decline. Enjoy this week.

First up, cheery Ed wrote a lovely piece on visiting the Spaten brewery. Lots of photos. And an interesting observation at the end:

For those that care about the distinction between the bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie this brewery was definitely not craft, but at no time did I think the people working there were any less passionate about brewing as any other brewers we met. 

Passion. Rhymes with fashion. And mash tun. Speaking of which, super-Lars-man wrote a lovely string of tweets on his weekend experiment in baking a mash of malt like some old school Baltic bad boy brewer with real action photos:

Huh. Three hours in the oven at 250C, last 45 minutes with the hot-air fan on to blow out moisture, and the center temperature remained stubbornly stuck at 100C the entire time. I burned the surface black, so must have been hotter than in Lithuania.

Wow! Reading Lars’ tweets about baking malt, kveik and other things is a bit like reading a James Joyce novel – set in Dublin but are about the human existence. The malt is like all of Joyce’s people of Dublin and the yeast is like Death but Death as played in that black and white movie with the chess board. Am I right? Right.

Eric Asimov must have been thinking of something similar when he wrote about the role of wine critics in The New York Times:

I believe that the most valuable thing wine writers can do is to help consumers develop confidence enough to think for themselves. This can best be achieved by helping consumers gain enough knowledge to make their own buying decisions without the crutch of the bottle review… reviewers often try to eliminate context by paring away these outside elements. All that is left, and all that is judged, the thinking goes, is what’s in the glass. Is that a good thing? I’m not convinced. Usually, wines are scored in mass tastings where very little time can be devoted to each bottle. The critics taste, spit so as to diminish the effects of alcohol, evaluate, maybe taste and spit once more, and move on to the next glass.

I quote than in length for two reasons. First, to bulk up the word count. Second, to ask you to consider if we can consider the role of the beer critic in the same way. For some time, it has struck me that one of the keys to being able to claim the title of “beer critic” or “beer expert” is to know less than me.* Granted, I know a lot but, let’s be honest, I don’t throw it around. That, however, is not the point. Point: why are wine critics, beer critics and Eric Asimov all so different?

Boak and Bailey wrote about recent thoughts on the place of Wetherspoons in English pub culture:

They seem tatty, the quality of the offer declining, presumably as they struggle to retain the all important bargain prices as the cost of products go up. But every now and then we’re reminded why they’re so popular: as truly public spaces, ordinary pubs and working class cafés disappear, Spoons fills the gap.

I loved the story and the eavesdropping but I also asked myself whether there was a reversal of cause and effect. Could Spoons be filling because their presence causes ordinary pubs and working class cafés to disappear? Think Walmart.

I can’t think of anything drearier than going to Venice to drink Belgian beer. Well, maybe drinking DIPAs in Venice. You think Charles and Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited were drinking frikkin’ Belgian beers in Venice? Not a chance. Checking what the critics said first? Nope. By the way, if I say I am Charles, the Beer Nut insists he is Sebastian. Happens every time.

The big news in beer law this week was the courthouse shocker when in Cardiff, Wales our pals at BrewDog lost a discrimination case:

District Judge Phillips said: ‘In my judgment, it is clear that in this case the claimant has been directly discriminated against by the defendant because of his sex. ‘The fact that by identifying as female he was still able to purchase a Pink IPA makes no difference. ‘I accept what Dr Bower says, namely that identifying as female was the only way he could purchase a Pink IPA at a cost of £4.’ Judge Phillips awarded Dr Bower £1,000 in damages after saying he would have felt ‘humiliated’.

Responses have been many but oddly the focus has been on the successful plaintiff.  Nail spitting angery responses. My pal and co-author-in-law Robin, in an excellent broader piece on the matter, wrote “Firstly, I’d argue that Bower was operating under extremely bad faith” saying his motive for the court case was that his male privilege had been addressed in an unsuitable way. I can’t agree as, in part, once the ruling is in motive is immaterial. My pal Dr. J. explored the ideas and she wrote:

Perhaps I should sue for the “humiliation” of feeling forced to identify as male every time an organization uses male pronouns to supposedly refer to everyone…

It is interesting that the case was framed as discrimination and one of the fabulous aspects of discrimination law is that is protects the deeply unpopular. I am interested also that it was a male-led** brewery sued by a male plaintiff*** for sexism who was awarded the outcome by a well considered male judge.**** It’s all so weird. Yet it does remind us to seek the nugget of truth in the deeply unpopular point of view. Perhaps using sexism as a means to sell beer under the cloak of someone else’s human rights  is so clumsy a strategy that this sort of ancillary wrong isn’t so much offensive as a hallmark.

There. Haven’t I said enough? I’ve likely said too much.  Don’t forget to check out Boak and Bailey on Saturday and Stan on Monday… seems he’s back. It’s good that he’s back. He likes to write about stuff that I don’t like to write about. That’s what makes him so likeable. Them, too – la même.

*Truly unrelated to the comment but still… seriously, you think you need professional input on making your own Radler? Make your own damn Radler. Experiment and figure out what works. Next someone is going to tell you how to make a Red Eye and then charge you for the “advice”! And don’t deny  the existence of the bad. Looks silly and, if you think about it, is a bit of a resignation note.
**Both males who met at law school,no?
***Apparently some sort of PhD.
****District Judge Marshall Phillips, president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges. He sits at the Cardiff Civil and Family Justice Centre, where he is also the regional costs judge.

A Thursday Beery News Update For A Quiet Mid-June

I am not sure why it has gone so quiet. Am I reading the wrong websites? Was the fact that I know far more about knitting a clue? The coolest thing I saw this week was this image of a 20 pint cask with an handle posted on Twitter by Geoff Latham, English brewer and history fan. One theory of the handle is that the entire cask could be settled into a cooling creek as farm workers toiled away nearby. That’s a lovely thought.

There was a fabulously interesting business news item from here in my local eastern Ontario, describing a plan in which one noted craft brewery has sold to a firm which runs restaurant chains:

Peter Mammas, President and Chief Executive Officer of Foodtastic, said, “Big Rig is a treasured local brand and we are excited to welcome Big Rig into the Foodtastic family. We look forward to preserving Big Rig’s strong brand, while growing the restaurant system across the region. We are already looking at locations in Toronto. This acquisition of a homegrown Ontario business is consistent with our strategy of acquiring quality brands with growth potential that complement our existing brand portfolio. We believe the Big Rig acquisition will leverage our marketing, purchasing and operational systems to better serve our Big Rig customers and welcome many new ones.”

Canada has not had the sort of brewpub chain history that you see in the US and UK so I will be very interested to see if the this makes a go of it.

Sad news out of Syracuse, NY with the closing of a beer store that was critical to my own good beer education starting about 15 years ago:

The Party Source Beverage Center — which has been selling specialty domestic and imported beers since long before the term “craft beer” came into use — has closed. The shop at 2646 Erie Blvd. E. was stripped bare of inventory and most of its shelves this morning. An employee of the adjacent Oasis Mediterraneran food market said the beer store appeared to have closed over the weekend. The owners of Oasis also own the building. The future of the space remains under review, said Raham Soliman, another Oasis employee. “The Party Source Beverage Center will be up for rent until we come to a final decision,” Soliman wrote in an email.

We watch these days as older micros fade in the face of tiny post-craft fruit juice manufacturers but it is interesting to note that the stores which held venerable imported beers are also challenged by today’s hyper-local transient brewing. I likely bought my first Stone here or at the long lost but much beloved Galeville Grocery.

Mr Protz via Twitter alerted me and all you all to a sensible British TV news documentary about the health effects of alcohol and then he suffered one of the oddest dipsomania laced Twitter flame-fest I have seen. You people do understand alcohol is not great for you, right?  I mean I can only assume that anyone who writes…

Please define what you consider “ruinous forms of alcohol”

…has (i) got issues and (ii) likely needs a liver function test asap. The willful blindness of otherwise clever folk to the ruinous aspect of the history of alcohol is one of the most bizarre side effect of the good beer bubble. Note that it relies on the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument.

Un-news.

In addition to my thoughts, Ron Pattinson wrote one of the sweetest posts he has every posted in response to fellow beer writer Rebecca Pate’s thoughts about the Grim Reaper’s approach as she faces turning 35:

I regularly have a birthday party. Once every decade: 40, 50, 60. The interval may reduce to five years as get further down death’s highway. No point denying the inevitable goosestep of time. May as well embrace and attempt to smother it. The exact moment, I’m not sure of, but there was a point, when, rather than seeing each year added as another milestone on the road to extinction, I began viewing my age as a cricket score. Each number added, a little victory. 

The under-exciting #FlagshipFriday thing seems to have run its course. Gary G posted a good piece about a venerable Toronto ale, younger sibling to my own yoof – and in response the founders of the thing were seemingly silent. It’s an unfortunate hashtag, to be fair, used widely for other purposes.

Conversely, the Ontario Craft Beer Guide Radio Show* is going great guns and is serving as a regular source of news items to poach. This week comes the news that the LCBO is adding new grocery stores as part of the changes that are coming (albeit at a slower pace) to the Ontario beer marketplace:

Following the provincial government’s announcement today on plans to deliver more choice and convenience for consumers, the LCBO is rolling out an extensive expansion plan to better serve Ontarians. As part of the marketplace expansion, the LCBO will be authorizing 200 new LCBO Convenience Outlets (formerly called LCBO Agency Stores) over the next year. In addition, the Grocery program, started in 2016, will be expanding with 87 new authorizations, bringing the total number of grocers eligible to sell beer, cider, and in some stores, wine, to 450.

This is smart and no retreat. The law is just waiting for proclamation now.  Whenever you as a government want to expand authority and powers, you also check out any authority which has been sitting around unused.  Q: where is the agency outlet for Bath?

Also, the powers behind the OCBRS are selling ads. Ads make a lot of sense. I used to sell ads. Made a crap load back in the day off those ads. I miss that. Blow money. Pellicle is hitting up folk for moo-lah, too. Good for them. Makes sense. Far better than mystery trips to shadowy Wrocław. Not that there’s anything wrong with visiting Wrocław but it would be nice to know how and why and who. Probably not an issue at all. In fact, I suspect the entire enterprise was a set up, a way to make me say stuff like this… bastards…

Odd drinking advice bested only by odd smoking up advice… from the government! But not nearly as odd as this story, falsely alleging some sort of connection to beer.

That’s a wrap. Another week’s news in the can. Expect more news from Boak and Bailey again this Saturday. No word on Stan. He might post the news Monday. Maybe. You never know. Was he in Wrocław? Who was? Shadowy. All very shadowy.

*They say “podcast” but we all know they mean radio show. They are also still working out the kinks on the call-in feature. 

June! June?? June!!! The Thursday Beer News For The First Week Of June

So… on Monday night it was just +5C overnight in nearby Ottawa. I have my furnace on June. I sat out the other afternoon and wondered if I might put on long pants and mull a little ale. My radishes love it. Since when do I live for my radishes? Sure, they are incredibly sweet and mild this year. But really… I’m ready for the stinking hot anytime now.

The news that the Province of Ontario is moving towards beer sales in corner stores has released a raft of weirdly half-baked understandings related to the future look of the world of craft beer like this:

Scott Simmons, president of the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, has long been encouraging the province the expand alcohol sales beyond The Beer Store… While craft beer accounts for eight per cent of all beer sales in Ontario, Simmons told CBC News last month that further privatizing the market could raise that number. “When you start expanding retail access to more grocery stores, big box stores or specialty alcohol stores or convenience stores, you’re just creating more distribution.”

My take is more reality based, that creating more distribution into low-choice outlets like corner stores will aid mostly those brewers with deep pockets, existing robust distribution and a ready supply of the stuff most people already buy. Big breweries. I know already that I don’t go to a corner store to buy local artistinal soft brie-clone cheese. Craft beer is not Pepsi. It’s the local brie-clones. Maybe brie with alcohol breaks that rule about shopping at corner stores. Maybe.

Jordan and Robin ask other good questions but I don’t agree that the ban on litigation in Bill 115 is going to be as ineffective as they might argue. It would take a new winning provincial constitutional argument to overturn that provincial law when it comes in. Change is coming. In a vidyah we see that Dan of MacKinnon is expanding but wants craft only stores and a local university prof says it’ll all raise prices. Brain. Aside from that, this low rent political campaign about it all is just plain weird.

The secret to getting into the world of advertising? Hang around in the right bars and buy the right people drinks apparently, according to the BBC.

In sorta history news, there is no caveat like a beer archaeologist’s caveat that the recreation isn’t really a recreation.

Back on Monday, Ze Beer Nut focused his problematically regular reviews of new beers on the unproblematic world of no- and low-alcohol beers. The results are not heartening given the regularity of worty and aspirin appear in the tasking notes. Let me ruin the ending for you:

It seems you can’t just strip the stuff out and expect things to taste as good. 

Now, because I am an intrepid reporter… which is a perfectly good word for journalist that I need to work with more… I had by accident* a very nice can of low alcohol sour beer on Saturday afternoon – and then I had another. Muskoka Ebb & Flow. And I added fruit flavour. A dribbed of apricot jam liquid. And it was good. And I chatted on line with a clever sour beer brewer about it. And the brewery. And that was good, too. It paired very well with the flag of Togo paired with a Gay Pride flag as a statement on human rights flying right there in my backyard.

Is peat-free organic beer coming?

Oh, Stone’s hairy guy made a funny thing happen and then no one cared. I am more impressed by Bud UK’s Pride branding campaign… and that is a modest low level of being impressed I speak of, to be fair.

“Yun craft greth” is now my new favorite slag for bad craft beer. It popped up in the comments posted in response to a post by The Pub Curmudgeon on problems with the cask market in the UK:

Marston’s are going to withdraw cask from 21 of their 22 managed pubs in Scotland. The initial reaction to this is some quarters was one of dismay at the reduction in cask availability. Surely Marston’s could have done more to promote it? However, as Britain’s leading cask ale brewer, they’re hardly going to abandon it lightly: it’s not like they’re some trendy craft brewer trying to make a point. It seems clear that, despite their best efforts, they simply can’t achieve the throughput necessary to keep it in good condition and, given this, it has to be regarded as a sensible and pragmatic, if disappointing decision.

That is it for now. Another week gone. Three evening work meetings in a row means I am writing this foggy headed, early morning. You probably can’t tell the difference. Boak and Bailey will no doubt be with us again this Saturday… but that guy Stan? He surprised us with links from the road last Monday. He is sneaky like that. Sneaky Stan. See if he does it again.

*I just grab all the pretty bright coloured cans.

The Thursday Beer News For The Best Week Ever!

What a week. A good week, right? As weeks go, I suppose. If you are into the whole “week” thing. This is the week that we learned Aaron Rodgers can’t chug a beer. That is pretty big news, right? His team of choice, the Bucks lost. Canada said hoo and then said ray. Now… maybe we get our national butts kicked by Golden State.

Just in time for this past week’s European Parliamentary elections, Ed decided to go all nationalist and rate a few sovereign brewing traditions:

…let’s face it, the beer in some countries is better and the four First Class Beer Countries have great beer cultures too. I have carried out extensive research into them and have just come back from a study tour of Germany which confirmed my findings, so for those of you who are still unclear on this matter here’s the ranking…

Aside from the stunning lack of objectivity and the narrow research tools applied to an alarmingly thin data set, I like it! Of course, each of his named top four nations of beer have many horrendous examples of garbage brew and, of course, many other nations have fabulous beers and, of course, his four choices actually have dubious claims to being actual singular nations as opposed to nineteen century splinters or, worse, aggregations of pre-Victorian political convenience but… I like it!!!

A study of Lars studying Kveik. Larsology. Larsologically speaking, quite likeable.

One of the odder bits of news this week was finding out that the Morning Advertiser, the UK brewing trade newspaper, takes money from brewers to take the brewers data, create an advertorial and then hires freelancers to  write it up – then publishes it under the sub-header “in association with” the brewer. No word on how much money changed hands for the the advertorial services. Bizarre? Perhaps.

Scone => rhymes with dawn! Exactly.

Martyn chose this week to write a large number of excellently placed words on malting and maltings:

What I wasn’t expecting on the joint Brewery History Society/Guild of Beer Writers trip to Crisp’s maltings in Great Ryburgh in Norfolk was to be allowed inside the kiln, where the malt, once it has germinated enough, is dried off. These pyramidal structures, often topped with cowls that turn with the prevailing wind, are again familiar to anyone who has ever visited Ware in Hertfordshire, once the greatest malting town in the country, or Burton upon Trent, where multitudes of breweries had their own maltings.

I have no idea what he was talking about as if I am not inside a malting kiln within seven minutes of being on site I feel utterly… ripped… off. Otherwise, some extremely violent news about how Maris Otter is kept from becoming Maris Notter.

More self-consciously uncomfortable and leery than straight sexist but I’ll take alternate views on that any time all day long. Note: the past is a foreign land.

For this week’s headline in beer IP law, Josh Noel reported in the Chicago Trib on an odd clash between one big and one small brewer on the use of a name. Unfortunately, you have to swim a bit through the story to get to the only actual point in law:

…without a federal trademark, Palfreyman said, No-Li’s recourse may be limited, at least in Chicago. It could conceivably have common law rights to the name in places where the beer is already sold, he said. That means Goose Island may have established rights to the name in Chicago. But Ahsmann said he wouldn’t oppose No-Li from expanding distribution here.

This news based on the leak of the week is a bit disconcerting… in a way – but I must note I thought it was odd that a local disaster in a time of many local disasters was the one chosen for this initiative:

Over 1,400 brewers around the country signed up to make the beer in their own taprooms—nearly a quarter of all the breweries in the United States. But more than half of those brewers have yet to send any money raised from the beer to Sierra Nevada… The brewer, however, says it has been in contact with many of the brewers and, while the numbers are “concerning,” it expects them to honor their commitment. They just need more time.

And it was a big week in beer news around our house as the I shared on Twitter the other day. Helping with the canning by day two. Kegging lessons started on day three. Good gang, good work and an actual trade if the long hours are put in. Jordan put it best: “Finally after all these years, a conflict of interest“!

Otherwise, it’s been a little quiet on the beer news front this week. Is that why Stan flies somewhere exotic every once in a while? To hide from these uncomfortable pauses where folk have nothing to talk about but beer can wrappers and… well… that’s about it. Please check out Boak and Bailey this Saturday… but that guy Stan? I am betting he calls in sick again this this Monday. Again.