The Father’s Day Slackerfest Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

When Monday morning arrives and my inbox has only a couple of links for the Thursday beery news notes, well, I get a yips. Then when Stan as well as Boak and Bailey post great linksfests… I get the shakes. Really. Well, not really but sorta. I look for reasons. I search my soul. And I see something. Something about myself. Deep in myself. I am actually pretty lazy. Just ask my lawn.* But… it’s Fathers Day weekend coming up so who cares!

First up, why aren’t the young folk drinking booze like we expect?!? Like we demand of them. So that they would be more like us. When we were them. A couple of arguments related to this passed my eye this week. First Jeff wrote a post about kids being more sensible these days:

Young people have more free time, fewer life complications, and are more socially motivated to hang out with each other. If they don’t develop the habit of going to bars when they might actually be drinking more, when will they? And, given that I think spending time with friends in pubs is one of the very best ways to spend your time, I agree. But here comes that big “on the other hand”: it’s better if they hold off developing a relationship with alcohol until their brains are less plastic and more able to handle it. High schoolers are going to flirt with danger. It is part of growth and maturity. But it’s good if they do it in ways that are less likely to have massive, life-changing consequences. More of them skipping the booze until they’re well out of high school? Awesome.

And Prof Dan Malleck made these comments in this discussion which I am joining together as I think they are related in terms of framing the zeitgeist:

I see @TheCurrentCBC has yet again doubled down on its neotemperance tendencies with an uncritically fawning segment on non-alcoholic socialization. Stop equating socializing with alcohol to getting blackout drunk… Booze understood as a social lubricant far predates what you call beer trade writers; in fact it predates what we call civilization… We are witnessing the outcome of a strategy by well-resourced temperance organizations that benefit from not appearing to have corporate interests so present as only interested in the public good.

I think there are many good reasons people of all ages for less drinking and these observations above capture some of them. Though the US legal drinking age of 21 is absolutely nuts and “neotemperance” is closing in from behind. No, we need to think about the realities in a realistic way. First, we have to admit that many of them locking themselves up in basements and “socializing” online. What do you call a pub like that? “The Mouse and Soda”? And, the cost of the beer itself is a thing as are the additional expenses that have popped up over the last couple of decades. “When I were a lad” there were little or no digital or communications bills coming at me. No cell phones, no subscriptions, no internet services. Once my food, stamp, rent and tuition was paid the rest in my pocket was “blow” money.  Bah-low! Plus… we were stupid. Err… stupider. Until 1983 there wasn’t even MADD in Canada so there was a fair bit of DD, if we are being honest. The health hazards of booze were known then and now just like they were known for “coffin nails” aka ciggies. So, if youth today are smarter, otherwise occupied, more health conscious and harder up for cash… why would they take up the regular drinking hobby?

Speaking of which, social media whipped up a frenzy over cask ale in the UK – or rather the seeming disinterest in it. It was quite a thing to watch. What started it? John Keeling pronouncing it dead, based on a recent SIBA report stating that “cask beer sales are now less than 9% of all draught beer sales and around 4% of total beer sales.” I think of this as being more the main area of concern, linked as it is to the discussion above:

Only 30% of 18-24-year-olds EVER drink beer, falling behind wines and spirits, and almost a quarter of consumers (24%) say they NEVER visit their local pub.

From afar, Jeff found fault suggesting cask suffers from its characteristic swift loss of freshness due to oxygen ingress and, almost nearly equadistant from Jeff, Laura in return found fault with Jeff’s argument – and by association with Mr. Keeling, too:

I disagree with practically all of this. I’m under 45 and literally wrote the book on CAMRA. If you think cask is in decline, talk to @WyeValleyBrew who have almost doubled their production volume over 10 years including over 20k BBL of HPA & c.19k BBL Butty Bach CASK in 22/23.

The jumpity-onnie-ness seemed to settle on this point Mr. K actually made in his original piece: “cask in the future will be brewed by specialist brewers for specialist pubs to be consume by beer drinking specialists.” Many pointed out, however (i) that this is already the case (given bigger pubcos botched it) and (ii) that holding 9% of the market and growing when in the right hands is not such a bad place to be. (By the way, why is that 9% a total failure while elsewhere 13.3% utter victory?) As usual, the Tand was authoritative.

Somewhat related is another “let’s parse B+B” like last week‘s discussion of the description of peeps in pubs. This week? From their Drinks of the Weekend Patreon posting… how to describe cask ale:

… pleasantly malty and sessionable… unchallenging but not unpleasant…  tasted like they could have been brewed forty years ago… in good condition and suitable unobtrusive… more often struck us as sour and muddy… reasonable… too oniony… balanced and moreish… 

All of which is more a feature than a bug. See, they the cask hounds that they are, are on a serious hunt even if a cheery one. For cask in form. Like any sports fans or concert goers do… or archaeology fans, flag nerds or men’s clothing geeks for that matter. Experience needs to be sought. You know, by adding the factor of understanding if something is or is not in top form – even just adding that bit of risk – experiences like cask poses interesting challenges. And it’s  unlike a super speedy version of the issues with good wine of (i) bottle variation and (ii) whether or not a bottle is en pointe.** Worth hunting out. Worth getting educated about. Because if everything is just great and right there always at hand, well, nothing is excellent.***

Enough!! Enough of your bickering!!! Time for a universal truth. You know what hobby we should all take up? Eating Manx kipper baps, that’s what! Katie has all the news of fish and bun from her Isle of Man sojourn as set out in The Gulp:

The only way to eat breakfast in Peel, in my opinion, is to scoff a Manx kipper bap with cream cheese while walking along the front. The Fish Bar, a little cabin in-between the castle and the prom, is where to get one. The lovely man will fry your salty, smoky kippers in butter in front of you while you look at the beautiful tubs of pickled shellfish you might snack on later. A bite is strangely like the best bacon butty you’ve ever eaten—crisp but meltingly fatty, salt balanced by creamy cheese spread, except with the scent of the sea all around. Eat on the move while the butter drips down your wrist and the fish is still hot from the pan.

Fabulous. Coming up in a close second in the Grand Prix du Fabuloso, Martyn drew my attention to the right sort of event with the right approach that I might be interested if I was in the right country:

If this intrigues you, courtesy of CAMRA’s Games & Collectables, we will be hosting a tasting featuring beers up to 40 years old and everyone will get a chance to try around 10 beers from a selection of over 60. They could be great, or they could be less than great; it will be a one off voyage of discovery! But we will begin the tasting with a modern day 18 month stored beer from Fuller’s – the freshest beer you’ll try on the day. Please note that we cannot guarantee the quality of any of the beers presented so the price includes two halves from the real ales on sale at the Pineapple – just in case!

Not so wonderful news. Are you an archaeologist? Is your working life laced with alcohol?  Are you an archaeologist whose working life laced with alcohol? Apparently it is a thing (h/t). A problem even. When I was starting out in law I would say it was a big problem. Drunk firm parties. older alcoholic lawyers drinking in the office. Plenty didn’t for sure and the reaction of the profession as being a bit Georgian about it all, an issue related to the individual and personal capacity rather than the whole business model. Well, click on the thumbnail and you’ll see that UK archaeologist Dr Chloë Duckworth has thoughts she has decided to share including “I drank every  single night on these projects…“ Yikes.⁦

Sporting news? No beer, only shandy at the Euros for fans watching Engerland v. Serbska, apparently for good reason according to The Mrrrrrr:

The move comes as authorities in Germany, where the major football tournament is being held, fear clashes between England fans and violent Serbian ‘Ultras’. German police fear the Serbian hooligans are planning to clash with drink-fuelled England supporters and so are banning strong lager from the game. It is thought around 40,000 England fans will be at the game and 8,000 Serbs, who will be joined by others from Germany’s Serbian communities.

Not sure hooligans is quite the right word. Elsewhere, The Sun reports Scots are drinking Munich dry. And in Franfurt, according to The Guardian rather comprehensively, the drink is Apfelwein:

England play Denmark here on 20 June, while Germany face Switzerland three days later. This is a nation renowned for its beer quality, of course, but those visiting Frankfurt for the football will find that here, another drink rules: Apfelwein. This traditional Hessisch cider – the beverage of the state of Hessen – is dry, still, unfiltered and is made from sour apples, making it taste tart. Many locals top it up with sparkling water, diluting the flavour, dampening the 5-7% alcohol and making the beverage particularly refreshing on hot days. Hardcore Sachsenhauseners drink Apfelwein pure.

And now… some short notes: (i) line up or pack the bar? Table service for me, thanks – another great gift of the temperence era, (ii) No beer writing received a 2024 James Beard Award, (iii) Pellicle did not win at the Guild of Food Writers awards, (iv) beer sales are up in Cyprus. (v) and still… those damn London prices:

The cheeky pub was charging £19 for just a third of a pint of “Iris 2025”, a 15 per cent speciality beer from Belgian speciality brewer Cantillon. Rob Healy, 52-year-old a retired TFL worker, said he was “outraged” when he saw the menu. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he told The Sun. “I know it’s London prices but that’s ridiculous.”

Outraged! Every English working man deserves a budget priced glass of rare lambic. Right?!? Speaking of which, have you ever not quite get a connotation in a beer reference from another country? Try this one out:

…politicians from the governing parties were shocked by the populist tone of Weimer’s tirade, which some said evoked the rhetoric of the far-right Alternative for Germany. “The bizarre . . . speech is more beer tent than Dax-listed company executive,” Verena Hubertz, deputy leader of the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group, told the Financial Times…  A spokesman for Deutsche Börse described Weimer as a “man of clear words” who is “not known for putting lipstick on the pig”.

Seeing that it is in a British paper, the German idiom might have been unpacked a little for those whose cultures do not include speech-ifi-cations in beer tents. Hicks? Neo-nazism? Drunk louts? Drunk neo-nazi hick louts?

Pellicle has a good piece up this week on the Ontarian abroad in German who unexpectedly became a natural wine maker, Alanna LaGamba, and her purple fizz:

Alanna had a thought. “Being half Italian, I grew up drinking Lambrusco. So I had the idea to do it German-style.” Frauen Power’s colour might be dark and stormy, but it smells like bing cherries, the ones that pair so well with boozy chocolate. It’s not sweet, however. It’s dry like blackcurrants that aren’t quite ready to leave their vine. Frauen Power is also a reminder that sparkling wines can do a lot more than toast to special occasions. They dress down just as well as they dress up, accompanying pizza, buttery crackers, or just a balmy afternoon.

Me, I like purple fizz. And I like this thought: “It’s cool because there are not many industries where you create your raw materials. When you think of a carpenter, he’s not growing the tree he gets the wood from. But everything in the bottle is me.” Inspiring. You know, maybe I will try making a 5% beer-wine with my own two Pinot Noir vines this August just to see if I can. Sure you can make jelly but there is no buzz from jelly. Except that jelly buzz but that is different.

Finally, in an update on the changes coming to Ontario’s retail beer market the government has announced that just as corner stores soon will be able to beer, the former retail monopoly The Beer Store is becoming… more like a corner store:

It’s all in a move to help ease the transition to corner stores and gas stations being permitted to sell alcohol starting this fall. Currently, the privately owned Beer Store is only allowed to sell ancillary items, such as bags of ice, beer mugs, and T-shirts, but the government is now permitting it to sell a multitude of other products including lottery tickets and food. The only exceptions being cigarettes, cannabis, and liquor, which will remain prohibited. It’s not clear if or when The Beer Store plans to expand its offerings.

All I demand are roller hot dogs on every TBS counter! If only for that smell, that body odor salty sweaty thing that makes the moment every time.

And with that… now we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.**** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Actually that image is from near here but not here here.
**Also dairy farm milk. A pal who grew up on one disliked milk in February (“ugh… dried hay and silage!”) and August “(“erg… weedy!”) due to the feed inputs.
***You know, if US craft beer was left to determine the fate of either good wine or cask ale, they’d no doubt add fruit flavoured syrup: “Chateau Palmer 2026 with a burst of real peach excitement!“
****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (132) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,477) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (162), crap Threads (43) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear. 

BREAKING: These Are The Gentlest Most Supportive Beery News Notes Of All Time!

So… me here, you there. Again. It’s hit the lazy months. Or is it exhausted? As the dawn seems to start at about 4:07 am, so too do the times of laze. Good thing it’s warm enough to stick one’s toes in the big lake, as long as you don’t mind half the pee in America trickling by. I wonder if my attitude has affected the beery news notes this week? Let’s see.

First up, there was plenty written this week on the purchase of San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing. It actually led me to wonder how many days of hangtime the word “Breaking!” possibly can have on social media given how folk were still using it as a prefix to tweets maybe two days after the fact. Anchor is one of those foundational breweries of the fibby revisionist history of craft* so I am not particularly moved by the tales being told – except (a) I loved Liberty Ale when I could find it and (b) I do believe if anyone other than Christ can pull off a resurrection which does form a true twist in the narrative it is going to be Hamdi Ulukaya, upstate New York yogurt magnate.

Speaking of magnates and brewing and fire sales, there was some interesting information from Ron Elmer in The Drinks Business this week, this time about the current value of Boston Beer Co., the business that makes less and less of its revenue from, you know, beer:

Boston’s shares look attractive to a potential suitor, having plummeted more than 25% in the past 12 months. But the stock has jumped almost 31% on the recent rumours which started only two days after the shares closed at their lowest price since February 2019. At today’s price, Boston’s market capitalisation is about US$3.95 billion, far below its record valuation of US$15.98 billion in April 2021. The likely price put on a potential deal is unclear, although it would unusual if it did not include a significant premium, especially as no sale could proceed without the consent of Jim Kock, who founded Boston in 1984 and remains its chairman.

Aside from the Freudian slip, that is quite an eye popping collapse in value – under a quarter of previous corporate worth over just three years.  On May 17th, 2024 the stock was worth $260.75 compared to $1,294.93 on April 16th, 2021. That is closer to a drop down to 20% of peak value. Why? Well, if you click on that thumbnail you will see that the five year value really tracked in parallel with the pandemic. Compare it to the shape of the valuation for Moderna over the same period. Then to Constellation Brands. See? Boston Beer may also be the poster child for the general drop in interest in craft beer, too – even though they make more and more drinks that are less and less like beer. Still, hope springs eternal that an investor might be buying something more than a dead cat bounce.

Somewhat related, the Beer Ladies Podcast asked a question this week that was both exactly on point and a bit sad:

In this week’s episode, Lisa, Thandi and Christina debate an ever-popular topic in beer (and other things!) – ethos. Does the ethos of a brewery influence you to buy, or not buy, their beer? What happens when breweries make good beer, but treat their staff badly, or are divisive in their politics? We chat about a few stories that have been in the news over the last few years, and debate our own feelings on separating art from artist.  

Just run those thoughts that over in your mind as you consider: (a) it’s only beer (b) there are now exactly one bazillion breweries now, and (c) a huge amount of the beers being made these days are copycats of what everyone else is brewing. So… how can you not believe in ditching the assholes? For me, it is entirely on the beer buyer. Know your stuff. I would point out one comment made elsewhere, in relation to the well deserved dislike of Hazy IPAs recently from Sam Tierney of Firestone Walker:

I know some great brewers who playfully hate on the style and don’t make it, but they tend to be obsessive traditionalists. As long as you aren’t an asshole about it you’re allowed to not like any style. 

Which would guide me to recommend a point of consistency. If anyone doesn’t want the beer buying public to act like assholes when they mock the money-making gak, then as a mimimum don’t turn a blind eye to the assholes within the supply side of the equation. Me? My money walks and talks. But, let’s be honest, the big money about the talking about the walking is on Boak and Bailey as they displayed when they ripped out some opinionating this week about a pub crawl they undertook and the beings they encountered thereupon:

…Our fellow customers included a big party of beefy middle-aged blokes in quietly expensive casual clothes…  we found ourselves surrounded by classic 00s hipsters who are now in their forties, with kids. These days, the quiffs and waxed moustaches have gone grey, and the vintage workwear has baby sick on it… We found it fairly quiet inside except for a party of stags who kept bursting into song and breaking out in competitive banter… Instead of craft beer dads it was all black T-shirted youths and the background throb of heavy guitar music.

People! I was thinking about all this peopled populating of places when I read another rightly depressing comments from Jessica Mason on the experience of women in beer and the reasons why women like drinking beer with other women:

Personally, I find this side of the research the most galling. Damned if we do & damned if we don’t. Why gender stigma around beer leads to most women’s drinks order falling back onto a glass of fizz or a G&T. Because nobody would judge us making those drinks choices.

Let’s be honest. We all know that (both chemically and culturally) beer attracts, induces, comforts and/or reveals the asshole. Plus women are underrepresented in important positions in the industry so we quite possibly are losing a natural counterbalance. And, even when not taken to that degree, we also know that as mentioned by Rob Sterowski:

I wonder if the “craft beer” movement has been damaging by suggesting you have to rote learn a load of bullshit about styles before you can enjoy beer.

This led me to reach back to the greatest statement on the genesis of point as stated in the film Gregory’s Girl: “Why are boys obsessed with numbers?”

Generally conversely but still speaking of being obsessed with any number of things while also being clearly blessed with natural ability, The Beer Nut left the house and checked out yet another reno at the Guinness World HQ:

A few hours after the doors opened I wasn’t expecting many customers nor much on the menu, so was surprised to find the place packed with tourists and off-duty staff, and a full set of new beers to try. Better get the flights in, so. One definite retrograde step is the loss of the big screen menu, which provided useful information on the beers. Now there’s a sparse retro split-flap display board and a printed menu, which weren’t in agreement on details like what the beers were called and how strong they were. It’s all very well to dream in beer but occasionally you need to wake up and do your proofreading.

Spinning the globe again, from Japan we read an update of a story first shared here last October about a ban on public drinking within the autonomous Shibuya district within Tokyo:

Mayor Ken Hasebe recently told journalists: “We have been stepping up patrols and other efforts over the last year, but we have had people say, ‘Well, the rules say you can drink, don’t they?’ By establishing the rule, we would like to convey the district’s intentions, including during patrols — we would prefer people to enjoy their drinks inside restaurants.” This news may not come as a surprise to local residents… Mayor Hasebe says that local businesses supported the regulations in October 2023 and were behind the push to make them permanent.

Circumnavigating now via the northern pole, being out and about was also on the mind of Lisa Grimm this week who told the tale of her beery trip on the Eurovision trail to Malmo Sweden:

…the trip was a perfect excuse to explore the beery options on offer in the region, and we began with an initial visit to Malmö Brewing Company, located in an old brewery building, appropriately enough. These days, they brew a wide array of the usual hazy IPAs and fruited sours you find in most craft brewery taprooms, but they also have a few more meads, ciders and cocktails than you tend to find in Ireland or the UK.

And speaking of folk out there enjoying themselves, the Times o’London had a bit of a shocking yet not surprising story from the world of professional darts:

… concerns have been raised about the portrayal of a now predominantly sober sport, while alarming alcohol consumption allegedly occurs behind the scenes. The Sunday Times has learnt of an incident where one player had to be placed in the recovery position outside a PDC Pro Tour venue in Wigan. A player was also seen passed out in his chair in the practice room, where photography is prohibited, at a different event after, it is claimed, drinking about ten pints. A large number of professionals are still believed to fear that they cannot play well without alcohol, owing to performance anxiety; very few are widely known to play sober…

Yikes!! Speaking of anxiety and shock, Paste magazine has posted an ode from Jim Vorel to a long lost love – American Amber Ale… with an interesting intro:

As far as consumer selling points go, the allure of “subtlety” is not exactly an easy one to conceptualize and market. Take a look at the snack foods aisle of a grocery store, and you’ll see what I mean. The “crunchiest” potato chips on the shelf? The selling point there is easily grasped. The “tangiest” or “fruitiest” yogurt or ice cream? Ditto. It’s human nature for the consumer to think in terms of superlatives, because in exchange for our hard-earned money, we by and large believe that we deserve the best version of a product. And it’s an understandable fallacy to naturally believe that “best” is largely going to correlate with “most,” because we humans also want bang for our buck. It’s hard-coded into our behavior in a capitalist economy.

Now, you have read my recent thoughts on the individuality and subtly of Hazy IPA Clonefest (or, to quote a yawning Lisa Grimm up there, “…the usual…“) we are living in so to go to that sort of nutty extreme in the other direction to justify a place in the heart for Amber Ale is a bit much. Perhaps it’s just what Robin said: we still have lots of them in Canada. Or maybe it’s just obvious given how there is a whole load of badly thought out beers being sold today fighting it out for the attention of fruity seltzers and RTD drinkers. Maybe you need to think of them as the American version of a Mild. Whatever. But… but if you have ever held a small pile of amber malt in your hand, sniffed it and chewed a few grains. And then realize they can make a beer that tastes like that and can get you buzzed? It’s obvs to anyone who is paying any attention. Drink them for an evening and remember how good they are. And perhaps what a fool you’ve been.

Finally – and for the double! – I like what Robin wrote after reading the piece in Pellicle by Rob MacKay about A.I. and cartoony can lables:

I’ll say this, if you are a brewery that believes in the power of small, independent, local options, you are a hypocrite if you use AI to create your label art and framing it as a small business trying to keep the brand cohesive is intellectually dishonest and downright shitty.

Yup. That being said I pass on any can that has a cartoony label unless I have some other info on what’s in the can that helps me overcome my suspicions about the contents. Cartoon labelled cheese? Bland gak for pre-schoolers. Cartoon labelled bread? It’s going to have candy imbedded in the loaf. I presume I am looking at a sugar bomb. Plus, you know, how A.I. “still constitutes copyright theft—a civil wrong, and under certain circumstances, a criminal offence” as MacKay notes. So… no thanks.

And we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*[MY 2023 COMMENTS REPEATED IN FULL FOR POSTERIRY] The endtimsey big news in US craft this week I suppose is the press release issued by Sapporo on Wednesday, as described by Dave Infante in his newsletter Fingers: “This morning at about 1:45am local time, Anchor Brewing Company issued a brief press release announcing its imminent liquidation, citing “a combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016.” The brewery has been operating in one form or another since 1896; its current owner, Japan’s Sapporo conglomerate, acquired the firm and its iconic Potrero Hill facility in 2017 for a reported $85 million.” Quite a blow given the narrative of craft’s whole genesis story. I am not convinced (at all) that the hagiography necessarily matches reality (at all) but I sure did like Liberty Ale back when Ontario was part of the sales footprint a few decades back. There has been much by way of erroneous speculation, questioning, cherry tree chopping, wailing and rending of garments along with some common sense and respect… but… the bottom line is this from The Olympian: “I ran a cheap “pizza and pint” feature. It helped for a while, but then hazy IPA became a thing. Beer geeks turned their laser focus on to that style and unfortunately, a lot of other brands/styles just slowed down or stopped selling altogether. Anchor was one. I think there’s only so much life a publican or retailer can do to breathe life into a cherished heritage brand before they finally give up and switch to something new and shiny. But when I see 3 cleaning dates marked on the top of a keg, it’s a slow mover and time to move.” AKA: no one bought the Cro-Magnon of beers anymore. Be honest. You may have loved it, but you didn’t actually like it all that much.
**This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (915) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,474) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. 

 

The Last And Perhaps Best Yet Perhaps Slightly Timid Beery News Notes For May 2024

Well, that went fast. May. See ya. June backons. That image up there? It’s from the Facebook group for the Brewery History Society, a grand display of policing the Epsom Darby on May 31, 1911. Each having Mann London Ale. They would need it as thunderstorms later that day killed 17 people and 4 horses. Hopefully more peaceful, this year’s race will be on again this Saturday. And the French Open, the UEFA Euros, the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and World Cup of Cricket will be all on the go in June, too. Brought to you by Stella Atrois, Bitburger, Michelob ULTRA, Molson and Bira91 respectively.

First up, I have to say I really liked this portrait by Boak and Bailey of Dorset’s Square & Compass, a pub that took them back through a forest, even back through time in terms of the layout and service, a pub where they found themselves looking at a menu with three food items and maybe twice that many drink offerings before they went outside to sit next to a slab of rock:

Looking out from the garden is as magical as looking up at it from the lane. We had a view of the hills sloping down to the sea, fading into haziness beneath a big white sky. At one point an ancient blue Landini tractor passed by, its upright driver puffing on a pipe, like something from a 1950s British Transport documentary. In the hedgerows, on the telephone wires, and on freestanding stones, birds gathered and chattered.… Then, unbelievably, they came to visit.

Fabulous. And check out Martin’s review of The Harlequin in Sheffield for another sort of fabulous in an urban setting.

Back into the now, the big news here in Ontario is the debate over the costs of the Province’s move to finally get beer, wine and all the coolers into corner stores. Let me say from the outset that while I don’t plan to vote Tory, I can’t imagine a download of services (either to the private sector or another level of government) that does not include a transfer of revenues associated with those services. That being said…

“It’s a billion-dollar booze boondoggle,” Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said Monday during a news conference at Queen’s Park. Crombie and the Liberals base their $1 billion figure on these additional costs: (i) $74 million per year to the large grocery chains by giving the 10 per cent wholesale discount, (ii) $375 million to the Beer Store by rebating the LCBO’s cost-of-service fees and (iii) 300 million in foregone revenue by not charging retailers a licensing fee. Those amounts would be on top of the LCBO’s lost revenue from selling less alcohol through its own stores and on top of the $225 million payment to The Beer Store. *

See, if the gross revenues of the LCBO (wholesale and retail) were $7.41 billion generating a whopping $2.58 billion in dividends to the Province, according to the most recent annual report, then shifting significant services, fees and expenses away from the LCBO to the new players probably should be expected to cost more than the 3% of gross revenue. But, if the annual report in 2026 says that the gross has dipped to $6.41 billion with the dividend dropping to $1.58 billion, well, then there should be some questions asked. The main problem is the concept that the greater number of outlets will cause an expansion of sales covering those costs. Ain’t happening. Booze is retracting. Even pre-pandemic, there was no change in sales caused by partial deregulation. And we’ve already seen the retraction of sales in those 450 grocery store which were first permitted to sell beer wine and cider in 2015. This is all a great leap sideways.

I missed Jordan‘s post last week on the pleasures and pitfalls of brewing a collaboration including this unexpected turn towards what can only be called pronounced zippiness:

A funny thing happened on the way to the brewery. Adrianna, who had very kindly put aside some Agnus for our 20 hL batch, got in touch one day to say that it had accidentally shipped with someone else’s order. She offered to throw in some Saaz for the trouble, and I asked if there was anything else Czech in the warehouse. This is how we ended up with Vital hops. Vital isn’t a brewing hop. It’s pharmaceutical grade. They were originally grown for their antioxidant properties (xanthohumol and DMX), although I didn’t know that when I leapt at the opportunity to use them. What I saw, looking at materials online, was that it contained everything including Farnesene and Linalool in pretty high proportion. Farnesene is usually Saaz exclusive (gingery, snappy, peppery). Linalool is the monoterpenoid associated with lavender, lilac, and rose. In fact, the description of it said lavender, spice, plum, licorice.

Oddly, “Linalool” has been my private nickname for Jordan for years! Not apparently encountering any Linalool whatsoever, Stephanie Grant has still been on the move and reported from Belgium where she visited some auspicious breweries and perhaps experienced that other sort of hangover that lambics can offer:

Our last day in Belgium, we continued the Tour de Gueze, this time joining the bigger group of participants on one of the many buses taking drinkers around the region. We visited De Troch, Mort Subite, Eylenbosch, and Timmermans. I’ll be honest, after gorging myself on lambics the day before, I wasn’t as thrilled to do it all again the next day. Instead, I spent most of the day seeking out bottles to bring home and share with friends once I returned home…

Ah yes: that good old “I am sure it hates me” feeling. Also out and about, Katie has reported from the ferry to the Isle of Man… in fact from the ferry’s busy bar:

The bar on board the Manxman is just as bizarre and pleasant as I remember it, and I’m sat with a Guinness at a little round cabaret table surrounded by TT hats, jackets, and fleeces and the people they belong to. Almost everyone on board is travelling for the races, and we’ve already run out of Norseman lager, the local lager brewed by Bushy’s on the island. By the time we get to Douglas I’m sure we’ll be out of crisps too.

What else is going on? You know, I wasn’t going to go on about the Hazy Eeepah thing that took too much time in May BUT (i) Stan shared a great summary of where we have gotten so far** and (ii) ATJ shared a recollection of IPA studies past by sharing the agenda of a British Guild of Beer Writers from 1994. Click on the image. Notice something? Apparently three PhD recipients. Plus Jackson, Oliver and Protz. No mention of fruit sauce. And no cartoon infographics or can wrapper designers. When people backdate the term “craft” beer to anything before around 2007 when it passed microbrewing in popular usage, I think this primary sort of document is a helpful reminder that the terms of reference were quite different. Not, by the way, “dudes grumbling about the good old days” so much as a discussion before the adulteration of both the beer itself and the overall concept of IPA. We need more of that again. Because it is possible to discuss things being worse that other things. Not that it seems many “in craft” would understand.

Similar in the sense of things not appears to be what they are or rather appearing to be exactly what that are even if that is not admitted – and for the double… wheew… ahem, Martin came upon a scene at a beer festival in Cambridge, England that (in amongst the photos of dilapidated properties and sodden grounds) has got to be the aggreation of all the reasons I share his dislike of beer fests including: (i) “the students and groups of mates who make up the core attendance“; (ii) “Nice weather for newts” and (iii) that disappointing beer that “has a touch of sharpness about it that I can’t explain.” Let me spoil his conclusion for you:

I didn’t see anyone I knew, and (unlike in pubs) it’s on your own hard to strike up conversations with random strangers who have largely come with mates. In and out in 24 minutes. Time for a pub.

Also missed: the Historic Brewing Conference planned for August has been cancelled.

Pete Brown shared some refreshing comments on the old trope that craft brewers need to tell their story in his industry insights newsletter this week:

Firstly, every single one of them insisted on telling him their foundation story – where the founders met, what inspired their “dream”, and the modest circumstances in which they began dragging it into reality. Secondly, when they finally got to the shiny parcel of vats, every single one beamed, “And here’s where the magic happens.” Now, on the surface, this is far more interesting – there’s an actual story there for a start. But on the other, I get the sense that when he visited these businesses, Thom was given this spiel whether he wanted it or not. Once again, the pitch wasn’t tailored towards its audience. 

Short take: if it’s everyone’s story it’s no one’s story.

Elsewhere, The New York Times had a great article on the unique story of Eritrean and Ethiopian diaspora home brewing – and home barley malting – in Texas:

The thick brown liquid had been fermenting in the jug for three days, which meant it was time for Fatean Gojela to get it ready to serve for Orthodox Easter. With her granddaughter, Ava, at her side, she poured it little by little through a thin mesh sack. “Patience, Mama,” she said to Ava, showing her how to squeeze out the liquid from a doughy mix of grains and herbs. Ms. Gojela, 65, learned to make suwe, as the beerlike drink is called in the Tigrinya language, from her mother while growing up in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. (Today, she lives in Fort Worth, where she works as a housekeeper for hospitals.) The beverage is primarily brewed for special occasions in Eritrea and Ethiopia, where Amharic-speakers call it tella.

In a far less celebratory frame of mind, Jessica Mason shared a depressing thought that really makes one wonder what all the efforts towards inclusion were really about:

If you’re wondering why fewer women think beer is for them, maybe just look at the comments I get on a daily basis when I share, write or question anything on the topic of beer. See how women are treated when they do take an interest in beer. It is no wonder we are where we are.

She shared that on Twex the day after having her piece on the suprisingly negative findings related to women and the UK beer market in the report “The Gender Pint Gap: Revisited” authored by Annabel Smith:

Speaking exclusively to the drinks business about the data, gathered by YouGov, report author and beer sommelier Annabel Smith said: “When we set out to conduct a further piece of research into women’s attitudes and behaviours towards beer in Great Britain, we were fairly optimistic that the dial would have moved in a positive direction since the first Gender Pint Gap”… Smith lamented that “there has been very little academic research done in this field, but we uncovered a wealth of anecdotal evidence perpetuating the ideology that beer is for men. And when this is in your face every single day, you start to believe it.”

Here is the full report by Smith.  There’s more at Beer Today too. Oddly, the Morning Advertiser chose to highlight the phrase “the dial doesn’t appear to have moved very much since” 2018 despite the report saying that the report indicates that female participation slipped from 17% to 14%. This is a 17.6% drop. Which is sorta huge given the efforts taken during the time to counteract disinterest in this group of consumers. But beer is bad at math, isn’t it. (Like when we read that a large facility closure is a sign of industry maturity. Subtraction. It’s tough to explain. Who knew?) Conversely, Rachel Auty also added her thoughts which were more comprehensive, including these comments related to beer advertising the in UK:

I believe we also need to address the connection between beer and sport, and move away from sport being treated like it’s something that only men like to do. The rise of the Lionesses – as one high-profile example – has given beer an opportunity to unlock a whole new type of customer, and it’s only going to continue in the same direction. Why would any brewery or venue turn that opportunity away? Ultimately, if more women work in breweries, bars and other beer industry roles, the advertising will shift. The problem is at the core – truly – and we have to get women into roles where they have leadership responsibilities and the autonomy to make key decisions and become role models that create and inspire positive change. This is still not happening anywhere near enough to shift the needle.

Preach. Why isn’t that as easy for everyone to see as seeing a mud filled beer fest in Cambridge and, you know, leaving?

And, just before deadline, we note the long form writing of Claire Bullen in BelgianSmack on Frank Boon and his beers:

From the park, the Zenne flows around the village, under bridges, and approaches Brouwerij Boon, where it meets the gaze of Frank Boon. He has paused for a moment on a small concrete bridge to regard it, to watch as ducks and moorhens paddle against the current. In its progression, the river bisects the brewery, one bank home to the brewhouse, coolship room, visitor centre, taproom, woodshop for foeder repairs, and an enormous warehouse of foeders and barrels; the other a rented warehouse space where additional foeders are stored.

The piece is Augustan***, displaying the arguably Tory nature of this part of brewing – a perfected stasis point where craft and nature sit in ordered balance. And, once achieve, will remain so. I was immediately taken back to my university class forty years ago where we studied the Olivers Goldsmith, the Irish one of the middle 1770s as well as his less successful great-nephew of early 1800s Nova Scotia and their two villages. Or that Boak and Bailey pub way up there, come to think of it.

Finally, Mudgie shared the sad news of the passing of one of his long time readers, Janet Hood a Scottish solicitor who was a member of the licensing bar. Her colleague Stephen McGowan shared his thoughts:

…as a new solicitor I was a recipient of her enthusiasm, passion, and I know she gave great encouragement to new solicitors and those on the journey into the profession. That was Janet. I first met her at a licensing conference when she was the deputy clerk to the Aberdeenshire Licensing Board and she made an immediate impression. What a character! Although I confess I can’t remember her precise topic I do recall no one was left unsinged – everyone got it in the neck! Other clerks, agents, the Government. She really rattled some cages and forced the conference to face the difficult questions. But that was Janet.

An inspiring life. I am adding her email sign off to my own: “niti pro regula legis – fight for the rule of law.”

That’s a lot of good reading and good thinking for one week. Next – the credits, the stats, the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.**** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Edited to get rid of the stupid bullet points that the CBC seems to inordinately love.
**Notice in particular his coy statement “I do not agree every word in the paragraph” when referring to something, frankly, extremely insightful that I wrote last week… which made me realize something – there was a typo in the text he  quoted  that I needed to fix. Now he must agreed with every word, right? That’s what you meant, Stan, right?
***Ripely ornamented: “Our steps clang madly as we walk into the empty coolship. Outside, the wind makes the yellow wildflowers dance, a feast for pollinators. The river reveals nothing.”
****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,478) hovering somewhere high above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. 

The Ever Uplifting Beery News Notes For The Beginning Of That First False Canadian Summer

We are hitting the ground running this week. The image of the week up there is from Liam who posted a few shots on #BeerSky of his latest find, a “grubby 1920s silver-plated pint tankard” from Clery’s Restaurant in Dublin. I think it is all very charming. Careful readers will recall my own foray into such matters with a mid-1800s pewter quart pot I picked up in 2012. Just the thing for a very large measure of Porter.

And there was again a lot about beer writing this week. Not sure if that is good or bad. Stan beat me to one particular thought on Monday. A few years back I complained to him in an email that so much beer writing was repetative, timid and sort of dull and he gave me the best advice which he has repeated in his post this week – you’ve been around too long, seen too much… or something like that:

I would add this thought. What is new to me or Evan Rail or Jeff Alworth or Alan McLeod might be different than what is new to somebody finally getting around to visiting a new brewery because one opened in their neighborhood… There are many opportunities to write something new, for both the beer experienced and the beer inexperienced audiences.

Gary writes on a similar note. Yet having heard that and agreeing to a point, I am also mindful of the tweet David Jesudason posted about his current situation. You will remember that he is the current holder of The Michael Jackson Award for Beer Writer of the Year from BGBW. But, if you click on that thumbnail, you will see he says:

I am currently in a position where I am not sure I can continue this type of work.

Because while there may be “many opportunities to write something new, for both the beer experienced and the beer inexperienced audiences,” I would submit, there is little to no support for many types of normal business reporting and investigative reporting that we see in  other areas of lifestyle writing. And why is that? Does it leads to things like this? A story about one British brewer with a claim:

Speaking about the expansion, Vault City’s co-founder Steven Smith-Hay said: “Our ambition is to be the biggest dedicated sour beer producer in the world. This new site will be instrumental in achieving that.*

The headling added certainty by way of the “to be” rather than “may become” sort of grammarical structure. And, yes, the author does not write the headling but it all led to the statement “I’ve got a lot to say about that Vault City interview but tough cheese I’m on holiday” as well as the statement “was from a press release anyho” with questions about the reality of that ambition. To be or not to be. But only on social media. Will there be follow up? Will track records be tracked? Is it that we don’t really care and it’s all puffery for… well, you know.

It also may be related to the opinion piece “Hazy IPA Conspiracy Theories” from Andy Crouch. He who upset my world by this article – by leaving me more in agreement with the very Mr. B who Andy sought to criticize. As reported last week, Mr. B pointed at Hazy IPAs as either the cause or at least a key symptom of US craft’s sputtering retraction.  Why? Well, in addition to simmering tone of “one does not question craft”, Andy also surprisingly uses that hallmark of a weak argument: poorly dolled out snark. Phrases deployed included “grumpy old craft beer cowboys” and “strawman” and “laugh out loud moment” and especially “55 year old dudes grumbling” as, you know, Mr. B is older than that. Setting such faux juveneilia aside, what he really misses is this:

The popularity of consumer products, including beer, wine, and spirits, ebbs and flows over time. In just the past decade, we’ve seen the rise and fall of cocktails, cider, hard seltzers, and many others. Each will continue to play some role in the drinking landscape but no drink has a right to the public’s attention. Craft beer has many issues but chief among them is a generational disconnect. The audience for craft beer continues to age, younger folks make fun of craft beer dads and their beer samplers on TikTok, and the industry stands in a corner publicly wishcasting for the return of “beer-flavored beer.” 

What Andy does not seem to want to admit is that it’s not about the rise and fall of each particular form of drink but a greater overall trend. These sugar bomb beers that are labeled as Hazy IPA are nothing more than the beery sibling to RTDs, coolers and hard seltzers. Interchangible. Forgettable. Cavity causing. They may sell but they are part of that continuum that speaks to a candy fixated palate. Kinderbier. Easy to make and easy to sell with the right cartoony can wrapper.  In fact, their rise was perfectly culturally appropriate for the troubled times, a perfect drink for an era of crisis that started with the shock of Trump getting elected and then continued on through the daze of life in the pandemic. They are booze for unsettled people who have bigger things to deal with, those who don’t want to think about it. Any of it. The “eating a box of ice cream sandwiches stnading by my fridge because I can” of beers for folk who no longer can muster the energy to give a shit.  What sort of industry bases its long term health on that sort of consumer? By all appearances, this shrinking one called craft.

Speaking on asking why things are the way they are, Steve Dunkey wrote a bit of a exposé of the Good Beer Guide that was publishing in What’sBrewing, describing some of the politics behind the scenes including this bit of a revelation:

There isn’t enough room in the printed book for every pub that could meet new nationalised selection criteria. Each branch has an allocation that it can fill, and it’s well known that the allocation will be filled regardless of the quality of the pubs, because it’s believed at a branch level that if it doesn’t fill its allocation, it might not have as many entries the following year. This would restrict it if it then did have the great pubs to fill the quota.

That is quite the thing. I had no idea that there was no centralized editing of submissions from the regions. The story raises other questions, too. Check it out.

Stan (for the double) has all the questions and this week shared another Hop Queries where he pointed out again another few trends trend that point to continued retraction:

Hop Products Australia harvested 26 percent fewer metric tons of hops in 2024 than in 2023. Much of that was intentional, taking into consideration that the worldwide supply of aroma hops is greater than demand. Production of Galaxy, which is 65 percent of what HPA sells, was down 20 percent to 879 metric tons. Vic Secret dipped 22 percent and Eclipse 57 percent…. A report from Germany suggests acreage has not been reduced to the extent it has been in the United States. When the numbers are toted up, Perle and Hallertau Tradition will likely decline the most, while high alpha acreage will likely increase slightly.

And apparently the days of food and beer pairing are well behind us. As Jeff noted from a recent newsletter reporting from a conference speech by a commercial investment banker – it’s now all about “the mood management” business! As a banker might, the points being made included a grind that sounds a lot like someone worried about their ROI:

      • If consumer are walking away from beer, Nik asks that you explain Modelo, Pacifico, Michelob Ultra, Voodoo Ranger, Busch Light, and Coors Banquet to him, which are all performing great.
      • We’re not in the beverage business, we’re in the “mood management business” per Nik. He says we drink 8 beverages a day and that alcoholic ones are competing with non-alcoholic ones.
      • “There’s no such hing as lazy markets, only lazy marketers”
      • Prices have been going up lately. Are we doing enough to reinforce that value we provide to command the new, more premium price? (He implies no)…

Mmm… mood management. That’s a lot of “out-Barting” even BA Bart (as recently seen as a few weeks ago) for pushy positivity in a retracting market but RBC (actually my own bank, with those very unAmerican two out of three letters) and its investment bankers have needs. The problem with beer is you, you and you… especially you… are LAZY!!! I know I am. And, yes, so does my bank.

Next up, Millie Bowles writing for Kent Online shared the tale of neighbours fed up with the smells off the neighbouring property, the contract brewers South East Bottling:

Fed-up neighbours say the stench from a brewery is so bad they cannot sit in their gardens – but bosses are urging residents to be more “pro-business”. People living near South East Bottling (SEB) on Northdown Industrial Estate in Broadstairs have complained of a “yeasty, sickly” smell which can even force them to keep their windows shut. Such is the pong, Thanet District Council has now ordered the company to carry out an odour assessment. SEB, which works with brands such as Old Dairy and Tiny Rebel, says it is “unfortunate that in current times, local residents and the council choose to operate in an anti-business manner”.

Stench! Pong!! We read that Marion Langelier, 82, is stopped from going out in the garden because of the smell as well as “noise issues, notably “banging and crashing’ bins.” Giving equal time, we also read that Chris Prentice, 49, says it is “like hot Weetabix. It’s quite comforting. It’s nice.” Hot Weetabix? How spicy! But the real question is this – why do UK newspapers include people ages? Otherwise, solid business reporting.

Not quite as smelly apparently but still irritating is Albania where NHS Martin unpacked** some of the trials and tribulations one can meet when traveling there:

… we sprinted to Berat’s bus station where the bus driver checked 3 times we really wanted to go to Lushnje. “Can we go to the Station please” we asked as the bus pulled up in an unprepossessing centre, the Mansfield of the Balkans, but the driver just pointed vaguely to the west. If in doubt, follow the tractor. Well, there’s a building called “STATION” anyway; five minutes to spare for the 10:38. No bus stops, no timetable, no-one to ask, just (bizarrely) two cafes side-by-side. Resigned to missing (if it had ever run) the 10:38, we resolved to seek advice from the cafes. It’s what you’d do in England, isn’t it, ask in a pub. The chap in one pointed heavenwards, the lady who brought us two espressos borrowed Mrs RM’s phone to point at a roundabout a half mile south, though a bus driver taking a fag break added “autostrada” mysteriously…

There is more. I think they ending up catching the 1:38 pm bus. Me, when I worked in Poland in 1991 I tried Albanian carrot jam. Cured me of making further travel inquiries.

As a follow up on the receive spate of breweries going under, Ed wrote an interesting post on his pre-brewing life as a microbiologist with a firm that went into receivership:

When I worked as a microbiologist the company I was at went bankrupt and managed to re-open a soon after with a slightly different name doing the same business. It had been obvious the company was not doing well for some time. A big customer had been lost so the work just wasn’t there like it once was. When I saw the owners daughter updating her CV on a work computer I thought the company was definitely going under, but despite this it still came as a shock when it finally happened. I’d worked there for years so though intellectually I’d guessed I’d soon be on the sausage it hadn’t prepared me emotionally for when reality hit. 

Finally and perhaps along the same line… in my undergrad years over 40 years ago, one entertaining pal would discuss hypothetical washroom fixtures he wanted to see. He dubbed one the VomKing 5000? Apparently they exist for real in Germany according to one posting on the Dull Men’s Club on Facebook. Note: this is a free standing barf station in a public washroom there. Handles and all. I think it only lacks the mist of ice cold water spraying your forehead that my pal had designed into his porcelain dream. His grip handles may also have been refrigerated in his version. But here you can head butt the flush button in this model. Reminder: the internet was made for educational purposes. You have been educated.

And with that great moment in blogging history… from Alpha to Omega… input to output…so… once again… that is it and we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*I couldn’t gather the energy to keep up with the Vault City thing further –  but Stonch made a great point.
**Travel pun!!
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,474) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. 

This Week We Celebrate Queen Victoria, The Two-Four And These Beery News Notes

Victoria Day weekend is here. Err… I mean… VICTORIA DAY IS HERE!!!  That’s better. It’s gonna get boozy. Break out the two-fours. No, not those ones. We were thinking of a couple of nights in nearby Montreal  but the hotels weren’t cheap so now it’s going to be all about what’s within an hour’s drive. HMVR is pissed – won’t even look at me now. Back solidly turned. Shunned. Wow. Seriously, wow. Also wow in an entirely different way was a comment left by Maureen Ogle at the foot of last week’s update:

…thanks for the weekly dose of thoughtful snark. So many years of pleasure….

Fabulous. What could be better than when someone you admire provides you with the obvious name of the anthology for my top 1001 of these here blog posts from the last two decades – Thoughtful Snark. I will get right on that.

What’s been going on? Well, for one thing, a trio of the old guard of beer writing each shared their thoughts one way or another on the state of beer writing… and… it’s apparently not entirely good – but also not entirely bad. First, we have Evan Rail‘s thoughts on the state of beer writing:

…we have a new opportunity to focus on truly great writing: not getting there first, so much as covering the subject beautifully; not breaking news (though of course that can be important, too), so much as understanding and explaining its nuances; not reporting on every new beer or brewery that opens (an impossibility, given our current numbers), but writing more selectively about the ones that truly matter.

Then, we have Jeff at Beervana and his piece “Is Beer Less Interesting Or Am I?” which builds on the passage above:

I relate strongly to the idea that it’s harder to find anything new in beer, and that so much seems repetitious. (Let’s not get into the way beer media now seems to be infected with listicles, poor explainers, or pieces with titles like, “The Best ______ According to These Experts.”) Evan takes the point of view of a writer who has been covering beer for a quarter century, and as a fellow old I identify with it. But as an old I often find myself coming up short and asking: is the beer world really less interesting, or am I?

And finally we have Pete Brown who shared a few observations on, first, a beer junket to Spain and, then, a recent piece he wrote on the succession plan at BrewDog*:

Read this! Claiming it as “exclusive” is hilarious given I was on the same press trip, along with journos from the S*n and the Daily Heil, and some “influencers”. But at the brewery, this guy was the only one apart from me who was actually taking notes. Nice bloke, good journo.

and:

…commenting can be tricky. My brief was for an over-arching piece on the industry impact since 2007. If I’d just focused in on actions towards people in the business it would have been rejected. I tried to get the balance right and hope it doesn’t trivialise.

They, each in their turn, hit on various degrees of hope and despair and reality. But together they sort of expose the nature of the writing gig. Not everyone is taking notes, not every idea is interesting and not every page is beautiful. The same stark facts would face a sports, pop music or political writer too. I don’t think it is naval gazing either. If we consumers of the writing, if we readers are to value the effect of a story it is good to know that the writers are thinking about what they are doing, if the brief is a constraint – and certainly if they have just been hanging on at the edge of a junket, not bothering to even take notes.

So let’s see who’s done the best at that this week! I really like Jess’s piece at B+B on the particulars she loves in a pub as she rediscovered on a recent say out:

The crawl took us to three of the four pubs in St Werburghs: The Farm, The Miners’s Arms and The Duke of York. All of them have hippy vibes of varying degrees and make me feel nostalgic for her early drinking days – while leaving Ray a little on edge. He’s such a clean boy! The Farm has an enormous beer garden and several of my drinking companions told me it was more of a family pub than an alternative one these days, especially on Sundays. Last time Ray and I visited someone was trying to persuade the bar staff to give them the beer slops from the drip trays, allegedly to keep slugs off their plants in their allotment.

Hippies and slugs and slops. Excellent. Like what you like. And that photo of the skittles alley! As I’ve mentioned about a billion times, we could also do with a similar bit of honesty about value like we see a bit more these days in wine writing like this about the next opportunity to buy Bordeaux futures:

…right now – today – 2023 Angélus has been released at a price that comes in at more than the 2020, 2019, 2018, 2016 and 2015 vintages, all of which have some very punchy reviews and, moreover, are the finished product.  You can buy a case of wine rather than title to nine litres of wine sitting in a barrel in St Emilion. Quite simply: there is zero point in buying it.  Even if your name is Mr Angélus and your first born is a 2023: in this instance you can just stick £3,120 in the bank for a couple of years, get 5%, and buy the same wine, in bottle and in the UK, for the same or less money.  Again: this is not rocket science or cutting edge economic analysis.  It’s just obvious.

Mr. B. himself in Just Drinks broke out the honesty in his thoughts on the state of US craft beer, pointing a very particularly pointy finger in one particular direction:

This ‘haze craze,’ as it’s become known, led to several market shifts in North America, including the one most cited by craft brewers themselves: an overabundance of beers of very similar, sometimes almost interchangeable, character and flavour. As one veteran brewer who asked to remain anonymous put it: “There are only so many ways you can make a lasagna and it’s the same for hazy IPAs. That’s why so many of them taste the same.”

And, speaking of innovations becoming stagnation, over at The Gulp Katie Mather wrote about A.I. and her doubts:

I doubt I’ll ever be convinced of its merit in the fields of creative writing, painting, drawing, poetry, and music. In my opinion, it should be used as a powertool. It makes boring, labour-intensive jobs easier, in order to enable the creative and skilled work to be carried out by people who have the talent to do so. We are all good at different things. AI Art is not a leveller, it is a thief.

Boom! Plus it’s, you know, pretty shitty.** I mention this in particular given the news that one western Canadian brewery has made an all A.I. beer:

Amber Waves of Grain, released in February by Grain Bin Brewing Company, is an amber ale in which everything — the name, the price, the packaging and the recipe — was decided by OpenAI’s Chat GPT, an artificial intelligence tool trained to mimic human responses. “We decided to just be as hands-off as possible, to see what the limitations were and what the actual final product would be if we relied solely on artificial intelligence,” said Dalen Landis, a co-owner of the brewery in Grande Prairie, Alta., about 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. In an interview with CBC News, Landis said the beer is meant to be a conversation piece. He said it also raises a moral dilemma particularly with the packaging generated from sources across the internet. 

While it was a bit of an exploration, maybe performance art, the whole thing reminds me a lot of the glory days of this here blog when I was interviewed about things, especially the time I was asked by The New York Times about what was called Open Source Beer back in 2005. It was sort of a manual form of artificial intelligence as I recall. Made no sense. Beer isn’t that hard, is it?

But maybe it is. In Pellicle this week Laura Hadland writes about the disruptive force that Anspach and Hobday have released on the unsuspecting population of London:

Jack and Paul are happy to admit the pervasive influence of the global brewing giant on their work, and it’s hard to overstate the influence of the shadow that St James’s Gate throws over the entire brewing world, especially when it comes to nitro porter. When attempting to take on Guinness, it’s also worth pointing out the scale of the challenge. 350,000 litres of London Black are now being brewed each year, with further expansion planned. From a standing start, that’s an impressive achievement in less than three years. But if litres were metres, then Guinness’ UK on-trade volume is the height of The Shard with London Black just a Labrador standing dolefully beside it. At the current rate of expansion, Anspach and Hobday aren’t going to be treading on Guinness’ heels any time soon.

Staying in that fair city, in his latest edition of London Beer City, Will Hawkes shared a lovely bit of observation and, yes, honesty that makes total sense as far as I’m concerned:

A dog is sniffing my leg. I’m standing at the bar at the Parakeet, a gastropub in Kentish Town, in brief beer-related discussion with the bar-lady, and I can feel its cold nose through my trouser leg. I turn and look. It’s an XL Bully. I didn’t intend to turn this edition of London Beer City into an XL Bully Special, but here we are. Honestly, there are loads of them about. I see them in the street. I avoid them in the park. I take an involuntary leap back when one sniffs my leg in the pub.

Third London tidbit: the beer spend in the city for the upcoming Euro 2024 will be £120 according to El Predicto… or something  sorta like that.

Gary posted another interesting slice of 20th century brewing history with a study of the strength of Rainier Old Stock Ale – 5%? 7.5%? 9%? What ever it is… PEP UP!

The King and Queen have announced their Royal Warrants including those for the clink and the drink. These things are not part of the Canadian Royal fam set up but, still, gonna be looking for that little crest on my box of Weetabix. First beer to get the sticker on the label?

In 2014, the Prince of Wales also gave permission for the Royal Warrant to be used on bottles of Shepherd Neame’s Spitfire Amber Ale, first brewed in 1990 to commemorate the Battle of Britain. “We have a long association with the Royal Family, and are incredibly proud to be among the first UK businesses to be awarded a Royal Warrant by His Majesty King Charles III,” said Shepherd Neame chief executive Jonathan Neame.

Probably the only warrant you want being issued with your name on it.

Was that enough snark? I don’t really think so. That’s a pretty positive and mild one this week. Oh dear. I will have to do better next week!

And with that… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan back each Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*To the greater point being made, get the backstory right like the Daily Mail did: “Mr Watt comes from a family of fishermen and used to help his father on his fishing boat in the North Sea. On his LinkedIn profile he claims to be a ‘fully qualified deep sea captain’. He graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in law and economics. After landing a job as a trainee solicitor he quit after two weeks – branding ‘conforming’ as ‘painful at best – and, three years later, started BrewDog with Mr Dickie.“
*And a bonus first footnote observation from B+B’s own gossipy (I said) Footnotes on the connection between putting in the hours and building trust: “We’re Patreons of Pete Brown which means every now and then we get an email with some behind the scenes info. He’s had a busy week covering various bits of brewing news, including the Burton unions story. On that, he reveals that he had inside info on the deal. Which makes us think that when he says in his Pellicle piece about Worthington White Shield “Rumours are now circulating that a deal may be struck…” he knows (a) that this is definitely the case; and (b) exactly who is likely to be brewing White Shield. Again, we wonder if it might be Thornbridge. The brewery wot does heritage would be an interesting niche for them.“
**From the NYT: “It’s a little hard to believe that just over a year ago, a group of leading researchers asked for a six-month pause in the development of larger systems of artificial intelligence, fearing that the systems would become too powerful. “Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” they asked. There was no pause. But now, a year later, the question isn’t really whether A.I. is too smart and will take over the world. It’s whether A.I. is too stupid and unreliable to be useful.“
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (bloop! 127) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (slumoing to 913) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up t0 4,472) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

Only One Thing Overshadows Eurovision… Could It Be These Thursday Beery News Notes?

Hmm… on the one hand international entertainment with, yes, a limited number of perhaps well worn themes played out, yes, over and over and over. On the other… Eurovision! It’s big. This here beer blog? Not so much. There is an overlap, however, as The Beer Ladies Podcast have a primer. They’re a bit into it: “Our own Katie and Lisa are jetting over to Malmö to revel in the madness…” And The Beer Nut will no doubt be live tweeting the formation of the next day’s piercing hangover, likely as illustrated. There is only one thing bigger – Stan is back. He never lets me take a week off. Stan wants a month away? Stan gets a month away. Me? I write this blog.

What is going on out there?  The big news or, as Ron put it, the great news is the relocation for a remaining Burton Union set from Marston’s Brewery, the traditional brewing system that Laura Hadland discussed last February as being mothballed. Pete Brown shared his thoughts at The Drinks Business:

This week, it’s been announced that Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) has given a set of the famous Burton Unions to Thornbridge…, and is helping the Derbyshire craft brewery get it up and running. This has sent some much-needed cheer through the craft brewing world. Why does this matter? Once upon a time, Burton-on-Trent was the most important brewing town on the planet. And by the middle of the 19th century, most beer in Burton was being fermented on the town’s eponymous Union Sets. The unions were a system of barrels, pipes and troughs, basically an adventure playground for fermenting yeast. The yeast had loads of fun, foaming through the pipes and running down the trough and back into the barrels from which it had spouted. The belief was that happy yeast made better beer.

The Tand shared his initial reaction too: “A cynic might just think that multinational brewing companies care little for either history or cask beer, and this is a cheap way to put a slightly embarrassing problem to bed and come out of it looking rather good.” I entirely agree… but do the yeast care one way or the other? Well, yes, of course… if the alternative is extinction!

And congratulations were also earned by Pellicle this week for this announcement:

We are not sure how this has happened, but we are very honoured, and a little taken aback to have been nominated in the Best Magazine section in this years @GuildFoodWriter awards. Against The Guardian. And the National Geographic. This is nuts. 

Boak and Bailey analyzed the recent news the Buxton Brewery teetering towards administration and focused in on the problem with being “merely quite good”:

This is what we think sometimes happens with breweries like Buxton. They’re not bad enough to have anything specific to fix, but not good enough to generate word-of-mouth enthusiasm. People don’t mind drinking their beer, but they don’t seek it out, or detour to drink it. They might have one pint but won’t stick on it for a session, or stay in a pub to have one more pint than they ought to. And they won’t order it by the box from the brewery shop.

And continuing with the good news / bad news, a statement was made this week by Hadrian Border Brewery about a contract brewing deal gone very wrong:

THEY WON’T PAY. No disputes on product or services! By November 2023, we had no more head space for it, it was making us ill, so we passed the case to a Debt Collection Agency…  

Quite right to call the deadbeats out publicly. But… gee… was “posting this on such a platform is detrimental for the beer industry“? No, not talking about things like this is detrimental. As is not talking about how so much of non-alcoholic beer is a let down… except perhaps for its perhaps natural audience according to the New York Times – children:

…more and more he has noticed children asking for nonalcholic drinks. “It’s not exactly daily, but more than weekly,” he said. The restaurant, which sits inside Saks Fifth Avenue, has two spirit-free concoctions on the menu…  He ultimately decided that while it still feels a little strange to serve the sophisticated beverages to children, it felt satisfying to contribute to family dining experiences “in an interesting way.” As nonalcoholic cocktails, wines and beers have become staples on bar menus across America, some children — people way under the legal drinking age — have begun to partake.

Not that there is any meaning left, but that’s one new twist on the “small” in small, independent and traditional, I suppose. Sorta like this take on the role of the trad:

Novonesis is a leading global biosolutions company formed through a combination of Chr. Hansen and Novozymes. It creates biosolutions for all types of industries. from nutrition and biofuel to chemicals, energy and water. Novonesis’ SmartBev range offers yeast solutions for low/no-alcohol and regular beer. The range includes both unique yeast solutions, like its NEER products, as well as lactic acid bacteria solutions, such as those used in its Harvest range. The company was pushing these products at CBC 2024 — especially its NA alternatives — which Guillory sees as a rapidly growing segment in the last 12 months.  

Mmmm…. biosolutions.* That’s what I am looking for in my glass. Speaking of the world of chem, Ed Himself once again shared some thoughts from the tech side of brewing gleened from his trip to the Murphys Brewery in Cork Ireland, owned by Heineken since 1983:

They can do 12 six tonne brews a day in it in two lauter tuns. Heineken, Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish are brewed there, the stouts being perhaps four brews out of a weekly 35-40. Cider is also made there from sugar and concentrate. They can mash every two hours and ten minutes, lautering takes three house. They have a holding vessel between the lauters and the copper, and unusually the yeast propagation plant is in the Hauppmann brewhouse. Overall extract losses are less than 7%. They have heat recovery on the stack on the copper and a heat recovery tank holds hot water which is used to pre-heat the wort via a Plate Heat Exchanger. They have four 120 tonne malt silos and…

Yeow. Right about there my brain started to hurt. Like it hurts when the kids were in high school and asked me to help with their math homework.

BREAKING: Ron had breakfast.

Beth Demmon is back with another Prohibitchin’ this time featuring the career arc of Maura Hardman, now Seattle Cider Company’s marketing and PR manager – including this tidbit of transitional good luch from her previous stint with Whole Foods:

It was during her time there she first found out about Seattle Cider Company, via their partnership with the local nonprofit City Fruit. “They’d take their ugly apples, crab apples, things that can’t be used for their CSA program or food bank program and put them into cider,” she explains. Whole Foods then sold the City Fruit ciders and sponsored the Seattle Cider Summit, so she began to learn about and appreciate the beverage as a fan. But appreciating cider was one thing. Working in the industry? It hadn’t even occurred to her.

And David Jesudason shared the story of Melba Wilson, an American who moved to London in 1977 – and how she had to “endure a shocking ordeal” in a pub just twenty years ago:

“He was surrounded by his squaddie buddies, so I guess he felt emboldened to carry on. He stopped after a while, I went up to him and looked at him. He didn’t show any signs of remorse. The other customers weren’t treating him negatively – it was like they thought you could get away with saying that in a country pub if there was only one black person around. “It was one of those incidents where you’re shocked that somebody is doing it and then you think ‘how am I going to challenge this?’ I said to my husband: ‘did you hear what he said?’ and I wanted to complain.”

The stunning bluntness of senseless bigotry. Saddest part: “I believe racism – overt or covert – has risen since the noughties.”

On a far less serious topic, Jessica Mason reporting live from the SIBA press conference:

Scary stats: “24% of drinkers NEVER visit their local; 41% WOULD VISIT if prices were lower; 25% of drinkers say NOTHING would make them visit more often & 8% of drinkers choose a pub because of the indie craft beer it stocks.”

And less important still, I am not even sure I have the energy to lift my hands to the keyboard to report on the news that James Watt has shuffled the deck of name plates and has swapped out CEO while retaining his shares, the board seat and adding a new title that makes no sense – captain. Best line was in the Guardian:

He will now be replaced by the company’s chief operating officer, James Arrow, who is expected to focus on returning the loss-making company to profit.

Confused? Imagine my state of mind when Liam gave me hope of a Battledore revival. Because Goldthorpe. Because Goldthorpe may be Sprat. Which may be Battledore. Maybe. But there may actually be Goldthorpes. Maybe.

Speaking of things not appearing as they are, so much for the Euro lifestyle thing as Latvia is moving its legal drinking age from 18 to 20… and the brewing trade lobbyists are lobbying:

…chairman of Saeima’s Social and Employment Matters Committee Andris Bērziņš, [stated] certain coalition and, possibly, opposition deputies may propose excluding beer, cider and wine from the list of alcoholic beverages to be applied with new age restrictions. Bērziņš said he doesn’t support this proposal, as the proposed exception for beverages with a lower content of alcohol does not match the Saeima’s recently passed regulations on the handling of cigarettes, which states how as of 2025 only persons of 20 years of age will be allowed to purchase tobacco products.

And nearby-ish in Germany, access to that friend of the drunk night out – doner kebabs – has become a hot economic policy topic:

Kathi Gebel, the youth policy spokesperson on the board of the Left Party, told Business Insider…  said the government “must intervene to prevent food from becoming a luxury item.” The party plans to propose a government price cap of €4.90 (around $5.30) or €2.90 (around $3.10) for young people, The Guardian reported… [T]he German government said in February that prices of the doner kebab are rising because of rising wages and energy costs… Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke about the issue in the past, saying that he is asked by young people “everywhere I go” if there should be a price reduction for doner kebabs, according to the outlet.

Finally, once upon a time, people actually paid me actual money to place ads on this here blog. One of those ads was for faux-esque Worthington’s White Shield.** There it is to the right. The little white square to the lower left of a screen shot from early 2007. From the emails I can see that I had to explain PayPal to the PR rep, Danny. Well that fact and Danny’s later emailed disappointment at the results of his hard earned cash placement didn’t make it to the story Pete Brown filed for Pellicle this week but he covered the rest of the issues surrounding of the great beer’s demise admirably:

Molson Coors don’t understand British ale, and of all the big global brewers, they’re the ones who haven’t really got craft beer either. The real reason they “paused” production of White Shield had nothing to do with “production routes.” It was a marketing decision. There are good people working at Molson Coors who adored this beer, but from a corporate perspective, once the company stopped ignoring it, and once Steve Wellington retired for the final time, they didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Turning a completely invented fake Spanish lager into the most successful beer launch in British history? No problem. Continue the production of a legend to satisfy legions of discerning fans across the world? Nah, too difficult, mate.

Such is the way of the world. Still, that 300 USD for the three months of the ad sure was handy at the time. Thanks Molson-Coors!

And with that… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.*** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*ever since some guy at work started calling the ten minute ciggie timeouts during day long meetings “bio-breaks” I just can’t see the world in the same way.
**Note the apostrophe – Worthington’s White Shield.
***This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (slumoing to 914) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up t0 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The “Is It Tra-La Month Already?” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Tra-la? Really?? How many times have you had to write to remind me not to repeat myself in these weekly notes to myself?  I know. I know.* But in my defence, I am a man of little imagination. As you know. I take photos of pots yet to be filled with soil and seed.  Imagine being so dull.  Which is entirely unlike The Beer Nut whose blog turned nineteen this week so is, therefore, of legal age in all of Canada. Always a gent and always a source of the best information. I wonder what life would be if I ran this place on that basis?

Speaking of sorta which and as a bit of spice to start off the week to contextualize what follows, one of my favourite people from one of my favourite breweries (Max of Godspeed) got into it on Twex yesterday when he posed the following:

This happens at an alarming rate in Toronto, too. It’s not unusual to find myself in earshot of someone in the industry slagging another brewery in town…

See, he was responding to a similar comment from someone whose slow frail hand reached and pressed delete mere moments after posting. It’s an odd aspect of the bigger craft scene that insider smack talk is a bad idea. Me, I spell that sort of “bad” with the letters F-U-N! Me, I want to consider myself to be on Team Godspeed. I fact, I want elbow pads with “It’s Godspeed or it sucks!!” on them. They and maybe ten others stand above in this marketplace and they each should be loud and proud once in a while.  But do they? Do we? What follows this week is a lot about beer and language.

Not unrelated given that it is about one presents oneself… or one’s can I suppose, this bit of social media promo is perhaps the bestest, truest observation on the sad state of craft beer today:

Does your beer name have TOO MANY ADJECTIVES? Are there 3+ ingredients or flavours are namechecked on the can?You may have found yourself in possession of a GIMMICKY BEER – but is that a bad thing? Tune in to find out more…🍻

That’s the Beer Ladies Podcast talking right there… and it you click on this link you can get to the actual talking. When did what written on the beer can get so far down such a wrong path? Do we still have to use language like that?

There has, in fact, been a general concern with the state of writing these days. It’s the talk of the town, the topic of the week. Jeff propounded with a broad brush upon “The Death of Books“… even though new book sales are still ahead of the pre-pandemic rate in the USA. In their monthly e-letter, Boak and Bailey addressed the slightly narrower question of usefulness of the UK pub guide:

The fundamental problem with pub guides – or any kind of print guidebook – is that they go out of date between writing and printing. And that’s especially true in 2024, on the long tail of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, with hospitality feeling rather volatile. It was always a problem, of course. Our copy of Fred Pearce’s 1975 guide to Bristol pubs came with a paper insert with updates from April 1976: “Oliver’s Bar, Victoria Street… The Courage depot’s local is now closed down.” Actually, to an extent, it wasn’t a problem at all. It was part of the business model. If not planned obsolescence than at least a rather helpful incentive for people to buy next year’s edition.

Authors of the soon to be published book Beer Breaks in Britain responded with a bit of a stiff upper lip: “The fact is, people are still buying guidebooks. But that’s because they tell stories that can inspire travel, exploration, not just tell you where to go.” That statement reminded me of something that we need to be thinking about when it comes to discussions about things beery – that ever present need to tell the white lie when we are not, you know, just parroting the press release.  Perhaps it should be considered not all that surprising given we are talking about a subject that literally numbs the senses.

In fact, that comment reminded me greatly of the recent coverage of the slightly less recent Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas where the news of the continuing loss of public interest in craft beer was apparently the theme. Dave Infante described it in VinePair as evidence that we are in what he framed as “Craft Brewing’s ‘Could Be Worse’ Era“:

The industry in aggregate has concerns aplenty, though, and they were discussed at length over three days’ worth of seminars, meetings, and after-hours drinks on and off the Strip. Direct-to-consumer shipping and franchise law reforms are top of mind for the BA’s policymaking double threat, general counsel Marc Sorini and senior director of federal affairs Katie Marisic, and potentially onerous nutritional labeling requirements from the TTB aren’t far behind. Bob Pease, the BA’s president and chief executive, made sure to flag “growing threats from neo-Prohibitionist groups” in his opening remarks on Monday, as did several other speakers throughout the week.

You know when folk start blaming the straw man bleat of “neo-prohibitionism” that something else is really really going sideways. Something something else like (…umm..) customers losing interest in the cyclical fads of craft (… err…) curomers are just sick of the horse apple hype as David Bailey so bluntly put it last Friday in Pellicle? There is no lack of proof of the slide if Jessica Mason’s stories just this week are correct… and they are: laters Ballest Point, see ya Greene King and buhbye BBF. Yet… we also consider the reasonably described booster Don Tse in Forbes uncritically summing up the slew of negative numbers by repeating the trade association’s lead voice of the boosterocracy:

Watson estimated that, “125 million Americans who drink didn’t have a craft beer last month” and suggested that there was still opportunity for brewers to grow. Speaking to the audience of brewers, Watson said, “Many of your customers are fiercely loyal. Breweries that are succeeding are finding ways to have customers drink their products on more occasions… Craft beer as a category has seen fads in beverage alcohol come and go,” said Watson. “But craft is here to stay.”**

Really? Same as it ever was? That’s all there is? Cue the great Ms. Peggy Lee!***

So if we take all that in and that is all there is… which of the two trades are doing more poorly? Books or craft beer?  If Stan is to be understood correctly, craft is down to 2014 levels of interest, five years worse off than the book publishing marketplace apparently.  Whichever it is, books about beer should be expected to face a tough future.

Entirely conversely and far more reality based, Ed wrote a piece this week about another sort of understanding – one based on gaining an actual educated understanding of beer and brewing – which he drew from his conversation with Kathryn Thomson, the Head of Education and Professional Development at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling:

I have for a long while been insisting that as a professional brewer every pint I drink is CPD but that does seem to have bitten me on the arse now that recording CPD is something I’ll actually have to do properly. I don’t suppose untappd submissions will count. The blog however might, my write ups of brewery visits whilst on study tours have been described as “great examples of reflective CPD”. I may be a beer nerd but I’m also a technical beer geek! Well lubricated though those IBD study tours may be there’s a lot of actual studying too.  Kathryn is trying to develop a practical and pragmatic approach to CPD which sounded very positive to me. And I also got a chance to go off on one about brewing education which was great because I have opinions.

It’d be nice if a consumer oriented equivalent was created so that one was not defencelessly subject to the fist punch “craft is here to stay!” sort of yahooism. You know, one where we’d see more of the specificity, respect and honesty that good beer avoids. A discussion like those reports we read this week about how the spirits markets are facing “destocking” and even there candor about value we see in the famously puffy world of wine trade writing these days. Just consider this from James Suckling on the conditions faces by those setting prices for the soon to be sent to market 2023 Bordeaux futures:****

“People are not going to buy if you don’t drop the price,” concurred Hubert de Bouard, whose family owns Chateau Angelus, which last year raised its prices significantly with some backlash from the market. “You can’t go against the wave. If you don’t [drop prices] you can’t sell. It could be 20 percent or more, but it depends on the name of the chateau.” It’s not going to be easy to drop prices to a level that will generate interest in the vintage for en primeur. The market situation is very tough, as any wine merchant knows regardless of where they are based. For a start, the cost of money from banks is the highest in decades in the United States, and wine sales are down in most key markets around the world. There are overstocks with importers, distributors and wine merchants. And prices are falling for many top wines. And then there are two wars and an anxiety-ridden U.S. election in November. It will be difficult for many buyers to tie up money, especially if it’s credit from the bank, for almost two years before the wine is delivered.

Whole lot of context and grounding right there. Could you imagine a leading beer perioidical publishing something like that, being that honest about value?

Lisa Grimm is also all about the real and last Friday her Weirdo Guide to Dublin proved it with a visit to Hynes’ Bar in… of… at Stoneybatter:

On a recent Saturday evening, I found people making the most of the remaining visit from the sun in the beer garden, which comes complete with a DJ booth and Oasis-v-Blur cigarette disposal – a reference that here in Ireland is both a GenX comfort blanket and general Father Ted reference that even the younger set who don’t recall the 1990s will recognize – they know all about Fathers Dougal and Damo (though I note that as I write this, it’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Parklife, so I may crumble into dust before we’re through here – let’s see!).

And ATJ got real over at his newsletter AJTbeerpubs in his reminisings of trips to American dives with some fine character portraits:

It was either his grandfather or great grandfather who had come out west and made something good of himself. ‘Have you heard of so and so?’ I was asked, an unremarkable town in the north-west of England whose name sounds like a low comedian who had a TV series in the 1970s. ‘It’s a fine place and I intend to go there one day.’ I muttered something, but my thoughts were rather, shall we say, less complimentary about his intended place of pilgrimage, but I was a guest. As these kind of evenings do, when we are not expecting anything to happen, stories flew backwards and forwards, and more beer was ordered. Meanwhile, Dean Martin from Rio Bravo staggered in and was served this time. He was a fisherman, who’d come ashore that day, and presumably was drinking away his profits. 

And Pellicle published something that didn’t need to make much of an argument to convince me: “The Case for Perry” by Adam Wells. Perry is the greatest fluid this planet ever created as far as I’m concerned but never gets its due:

These days there is so little perry made, so little known about it, and so few people who care that we pass down lies and generalisations and they stick. We say that it’s always sweet: it isn’t. We say that it’s always light—that’s not true either. We ho-ho about pears containing sorbitol and claim perry is a laxative—if that was true I’d be a ghost. We equate the whole, broad, fascinating flavour spectrum of a labyrinthine, spellbinding drink to Babycham and Lambrini, and wise, sensible people—people who know and care deeply about other drinks—nod and shrug and pass the lies along. At best, perry has been filed as a sidekick; a chapter in a book about cider.

I say I love perry but I never seem to get my hands on much of the stuff. Which places it in the realm of “readily available” when you compare it to the subject of the article in Cider Review “Hymn to the Quince” by Beatrix Swanson:

… it doesn’t take much digging to discover plausible reasons why you don’t see many British quince drinks, either: quinces struggle to ripen fully in some parts of the UK and need to mature in storage for up to two months after harvest; they seem to be unsuited to machine harvesting; and they are not commonly planted and therefore expensive to procure post-harvest. What’s more, until the UK government’s August 2023 alcohol duty reforms, ciders made with quince — or hops, or elderflower, or anything else other than apples or pears — were taxed as ‘made wine’ in the UK and therefore subject to higher duty than cider or perry.

So, again we see, there is good writing out and about right there to be read. Sure, not enough to balance off the other stuff but it is worth the digging. Which means… once again… we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.***** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan who, like the swallows to  Capistrano, show return next Monday. Elsewhere go look at then listen to Lew’s podcast. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*2023… 2020… 2019… 2009… 2008… 2007… you get the point.
**“Peace for our time!!!“
***For those in need of the footnote…
****Me, I’ll be buying* my mixed two or three cases or so as I have been since the beginning of the pandemic. Investing for my retirement! I’m already menu planning for Christmas 2031. Here’s a cheat sheet for the futures buying process for Ontario.
*****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (holding at 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (back up to 916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (crashing down nince t0 4,463) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (162), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The “Gotta Mow And Gotta Pay My Taxes” Time Of Year Beery News Notes

 

Late April reminds you why it is the cruelest month. Taxes and lawns. Taxes and lawns. You know, the neighbourhood’s lawns may look a bit crap because people can’t figure out and if the “No Mow May” thing applies (i) up to and including May or (ii) just during May.  Me, I am just lazy. See, I have one of those whirly manual mowers that doesn’t cut so good so it takes five times longer than it should and leaves me beat. What’s new this year, however, is news that “No Mow May” might actually be bad for bees! Apparently it’s like feeding your children by leaving hard candies around the yard. Not sure how that fits into my lazy plan… but I’m working on it. That’s my Grandfather up there, by the way, out with the lads about a century ago when he was in his twenties. Second from the right. In case it isn’t obvious to one and all, his name was Jimmy.

Speaking of the crop to come, I wondered to myself when I saw this report in the Western Producer on the forecasts for the next Canadian barley harvest:

Canadian barley supplies are likely to be burdensome in 2024-25, according to a market outlook published by the Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission. Supplies are forecast to be in the range of 10.7 to 11.7 million tonnes. “This is well above the 2023-24 supplies at 9.65 million tonnes and the five-year average of 10.3 million,” stated the report authored by LeftField Commodity Research.

Last time I heard the word “burdensome” used like that was when I was eight years old and asked too many questions about the rules of the hockey as Dad was trying to watch an NHL playoff game on a snowy black and white TV.  Seems the language of barley forecasting is all rather ripe. We read “…lower prices combined with poor movement have cast a shadow…” and “…supplies will be bloated…” as well as “…France has got some problems…”

While we are on the subject of brewing malts, Matty C has been busy scribbling away and shared his story “How British Heritage Malts Are Making a Comeback” at CB&B starting with the tale of one particular ale:

That grist includes small portions of amber, black, brown, and chocolate malts—each about 5 percent of the bill. The most significant twist, however, is that McKenzie replaces 20 percent of the pale base with malt made from a specialty heritage barley variety known as Chevallier, produced by Crisp Malt of Great Ryburgh, Norfolk, in the east of England. A two-row, narrow-eared variety, Chevallier dominated barley farming in England throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, beginning to fall out of favor about 1920. By 1940, production of Chevallier had ceased. In 2017, however—after four years of small-batch trials—Crisp commercially released a five-ton batch produced at its traditional floor maltings at its headquarters in the east of England. At RedWillow, McKenzie was one of the first brewers to get to play with it.

Sounds good – but bring me my Battledore Porter and I’ll be right in there.  Speaking of wishes come true,  NHS Martin moved beyond the boundaries of mere beer when he and she explored a rather empty Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria, this week:

Blimey. 9 million in 1985 before Communism crumbled; 6.5 million and falling now. And further Googling revealed plenty of commentary on the ageing and depopulation of Bulgaria, the result of migration, falling birth rates (1.6, same as UK) and the sporadic availability of London Pride on hand pump. It had certainly felt “spacious” on our night out, and though those craft beer bars we’d visited were busy enough I guess there’s your warning about judging a place by its craft beer bars.

Speaking of wandering worldly ways, the Tand has been considering the pubs of Oz and found one away from the tour group that made his day, The Exeter Hotel in Adelaide:*

…we found ourselves in a proper public bar, with a central bar serving the room we were in and another room opposite. It was basic, unspoilt with wooden floors, a few bar stools, a handful of characterful locals and a couple of rather fearsome women serving. We immediately knew we were in safe hands. It was stunningly good. Even on a warm Adelaide night, indoors here was way preferable. This was smashing. It turned out to be a Cooper’s of Adelaide tied house, with a reasonable number of their beers on offer. I settled on Pale Ale – fermented in the keg as are all their beers – and took in the scene. It was amusing to see some people – tourists I assume – entering, looking round and leaving with a look of dismay and concern on their faces. This was a proper pub. 

However fabulous that proper pub on that wonderful evening might have been, it still can’t rank to probably the most fabulous beer related object ever… as witness by Lars:

Just saw this: the Oldenburg horn. A family relic of the Danish royal family, kept in the vault with the Danish crown jewels, so this really is the Danish royal drinking horn. And it has a legend attached to it… According to the legend, Otto, first of the house of Oldenburg, was out hunting back in 989 when he became thirsty and said “How I wish I had something to drink,” whereupon an elf maid appeared out of a hill with the horn…

You will have to read on for more of the elven lore. We of MacLeod are totally here for these sorts of things.

In Pellicle this week we have a good bit of writing from Rachel Hendry on the phenomenon known as Babycham, its cultural meaning, its logo as well as (a bit to my surprise) its content:

Thankfully an alternative name was already being used. Be it short for champion or champagne, Baby Champ—as the legend goes—was the term used by workers in the factory to distinguish the smaller individual bottles of Champagne de la Poire from their larger siblings. This term of endearment was overheard in an early marketing meeting held at the premises and adopted as a result. Baby Champ, then, became Babycham. Ralph Showering, you may recall, had been appointed head of sales and marketing, a position he did not take lightly. The Showerings family had purchased a small herd of Water Deer from Herbrand Arthur Russell, the 11th Duke of Bedford, for their growing property and it was here that Ralph took inspiration for Babycham’s logo.

I say a bit to my surprise as I spent my high school years over forty years ago in Truro, Nova Scotia. “Of course” you say, “the connections slaps one in the face!” But… in that place there was a factory next to the facory where I made carpets on the night shift for only one week one summer** which made such delights as Moody Blue sparking wine made in part from blueberries as well as Baby Duck made of God knows what. You may still be able to buy a magnum of it for $13.95.

Some classic Ron just after last week’s deadline, starting with a photo of a plate of breakfast and summing up like this:

I fiddle around on the internet for a while. While sipping whisky and stuffing my face. Eventually it says my flight is 45-minutes late. Though, by the time it leaves, it’s delayed by more than an hour. Not much to report about the flight. We take off, fly for a bit, land and then spend forever taxiing to the terminal. When I open my front door, there’s a cup of tea ready. Andrew tracked my flight this time.

Good. Cup of tea and a rest. That’s what Ron needed.

I’ve done a few modest sponsorship deals so it was interesting to read that the English Premier League is moving forward with a four year deal with Guinness as sponsor:

English football’s top flight is toasting a £40m sponsorship deal with Guinness after the Diageo-owned brand saw off competition from Heineken. Sky News has learnt that the Premier League has informed its 20 clubs, which include Everton, Manchester City and Sheffield United, that it is backing a £10m-a-year agreement beginning next season. The deal, which has not yet been formally signed, represents a big financial uplift on the Premier League’s existing partnership with Budweiser’s owner, AB InBev.

The match makes more sense than Bud… except it seems a bit, you know, cheap even though it is up from £7,950,000 a year for Bud.**** When you do a deal like this you should get some exclusive access to the fans in all those twenty fitba stands. That’s a lot of thirsty people. Unlike most naming rights sponsorship deals, the sponsor here actually should get a enhanced revenue stream in addition to loads of advertising and name placement. This boils down to £10 million divided by 360 games or £27,777 per league game not counting Cup or other games. Average game attenence so far is 38,486 meaning its 72p per attendee per game. Won’t this deal generate more value to Guinness than that?

Note: one of the reasons I look away whenever I see the word “neo-prohibitionists” is that the arguments from those who use it are so poorly made. Their cause may have a point… maybe… but, face facts, no government is shutting down the alcohol trade – the taxes are too sweet even if the behaviour causes so much harm. Which is the other reason: the dumb calls to liberty. It’s like that call for the liberty to starve under the highway overpass. The only argument that makes sense is that this is all about taking reasonable risks.

Much conversely, Boak and Bailey wrote a review of Dr. Christina Wade‘s The Devil’s in the Draught Lines which immediately saw me reaching for my iPhone so I could buy my own copy online:

Structurally The Devil’s in the Draught Lines resists the simplicity of chronology. Instead, each chapter covers a different angle and whizzes us back and forth through hundreds of years, from the mediaeval world to the 21st century. There’s also room for stories around race, culture, gender identity, with names and faces unfamiliar to us, like Lizzie and Lucy Stevens of Closet Brewing, and Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela of the Tolozaki Beer Company. In fact, there’s the equivalent of about 25 Pellicle articles hidden throughout the book – and we mean that as a compliment to both parties.

Inspired by the clever as I scanned the wide world for more beer reading, I saw that The Journal of The Institute of Brewing had released a few issues for 2024 on its relatively recent site and, while some can thrill to tales such as the “role of temperature in sporulation was investigated at 25, 27 and 30°C by measurement of the rate of sporulation over ten days,” this article drew my eye perhaps a bit more avidly towards the screen as it deals with that old chestnut, the diastatic variant:

Diastatic variants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are unusual in producing an extracellular glucoamylase which enables the breakdown of starch to fermentable sugars. Diastatic S. cerevisiae has long been viewed negatively as a contaminant of especially beer packaged in cans or bottles. However, this view is being reconsidered due to the opportunities that diastatic strains present for niche fermented products and distillation applications…. This review highlights the utilisation of diastatic S. cerevisiae for its flavour potential, and processing applications in the brewing, distilling, and biofuel industries.

“Whachamacsayin’?” I hear you cry out? More in laypersonspeak over here at Escarpment Labs*** but I think we can all agree on need for increased oppportunities for niche fermentated products. Unless that means White Claw.

Treat of the week? Check out “Eating high” the 1966 video of the London Post Office Tower’s rotating restaurant included with this post at A London Inheritance.

Aaaaannnnnd… again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections.***** Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday upon which he decides to show up at the office. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*The actual scene that very evening as personally witnessed by the Tand.
**See, the shift was from midnight until noon for some unknown reason. Plus I was coated outside and in at the end of every shift with polyester from the spinning machines I was to operate. Good wage but goodbye.
***See, for example: “Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus is beer yeast that can break down longer-chained carbohydrates (dextrins and starches) that regular yeast can’t. It doesn’t actually consume them directly, but it secretes an enzyme (glucoamylase) that breaks down dextrins outside the cell into smaller sugars that the yeast can then metabolize.“
****All stats via Lord Goog. Math by me. Govern yourselves accordingly.
*****This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 128) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (down one again to 915) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (up five to 4,472) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (161), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

The “Happy Birthday To Me!” Edition Of These Beery News Notes

Well, well, well. I entered the first day of my 62nd year today. No trauma. No big plans. Not like when you hit 25 or 40. Those were panicky birthdays. Feeling like middle age is coming too fast. Now that it is here… who cares? All one has to do is consider the alternative and sliding that bit closer to two-thirds of a century is mighty fine by me. Change is everything. Even the bird feeders are put away now. Winter is not coming. Not quite yet. So have one for me if you are having any at all. I’ll be the one gorging on cake.

First up, some very good news. In 2015, the world of good beer in California at least faced a stark reality – the water was running out. I noted that UC Davis had started a  California Drought Watch program which includes considerations for the brewing industry. So it was good this week to read this update on the situation:

California’s water storage is at its healthiest levels in over a decade. Virtually every major reservoir in the state has average to above-average storage, with a substantial 115% of average snowpack still to melt. The last two years have been an amazing reprieve from the multiple brutal, record-breaking droughts that have plagued the state in the last decade.

What else? Hmm… Jeff wrote this in his last emailed weekend update : “It was a quiet week and I can’t think of much to say up…” Double hmm… and Boak and Bailey in their Patreon footnotes: “We were quite thrown by the lack of a substantial news story this week.” I can’t believe it! There’s gotta be something to read!!

Sorta breaking all the rules*, I see that Ron wrote a wonderful piece about the serial relationship he’s had with his locals… plural. They come and go but something has to come along with each if it is going to qualify. He’s currently on the hunt:

Last Saturday was or third time there. Not really giving me a local vibe yet. But that takes time to build. Harder to bear is the lack of draught Mild and Stout. Especially Headroom. A beer that took me closer to the 19th century with every sip. Weihenstapher Dunkles Weissbier is OK. But three of four pints is enough. And Checkpoint Charlie does sell korenwijn. Drinablke jenever. Not like the industrial cleaner called jonge jenever. The presence of a pool table and pinball machine mean Alexei is much more likely to come along. And reminded me of a previous local.

Katie also wrote about pubs this week in her newsletter The Gulp sharing her thoughts on children in pubs… like Ron’s kids… who grew up in pubs… I suppose:

…in my experience, the people who claim to hate children, and make a big deal out of this fact about themselves, are younger. They are around 20-35 years old, and they invariably claim to like dogs better. Of course, personal choice is absolutely valid. It shows that they prefer unconditional love. Who doesn’t? What I find distasteful is the absolute disdain for children and their existence anywhere near their personal space. It’s brutally Victorian. It’s outmoded. It’s—I’m going to say it—it’s selfish. Selfish in the true sense of the word, of only thinking of one’s self. The problem is, pubs are not made just for one individual’s comfort. They are places of socialisation and congregation…

(You know, I am not sure that personal choice is always valid… but then again I used to practice divorce law and criminal law. Bad choices exist. Really really bad one.) But back to Katie’s point which is entirely valid – if you teach kids that pubs aren’t for them, well, you will graduate cohorts of young adults who have learned that pubs aren’t for them.

Speaking of choices, the stats released by the BA on US craft beer’s 2023 seem to have been worked pretty hard to find a positive glint to focus upon:

The top-five craft players included, D. G. Yuengling & Son, Boston Beer Co., Sierra Nevada Company, Duvel Moortgat and Gambrinus, while the leading brewing companies included Anheuser-Busch Inc, Molson Coors, Constellation, Heineken and Pabst Brewing Company. Despite craft production decline in the US, the number of operating breweries in the craft space hit “an all time high”, up 1.37% on 2022 to 9,683. These breweries were comprised of 3,900 taproom breweries, 3,467 brewpubs, 2,071 microbreweries, and 245 regional craft breweries. Craft-brewery closure rates however increased again in 2023 from 3% to “approximately 4%”. The US saw 495 openings in 2023, a 9.8% dip on 2022, while closures increased 31% with 418 breweries shutting up shop.

Add to that the conglomerates and businesses focused on drinks other than actual beer, there is a lot of shaping going on. Closures up, openings down but the number of operating breweries in the craft space hit “an all time high”! Lordy.

David Jesudason shared a tale in his newsletter that he foreshadowed this way: “…despite the subject matter it’s quite amusing.” It’s the story of a charmless man:

He barred people for a lot of class-based reasons which seem bizarre today. One of his biggest annoyances were people who wore braces – calling them “hideous apparel worn by grubby people and are offensive to me and other customers”. In fact, a lot of the reasons for barring people were ridiculous, like in 1973 he threw out a group of drinkers for wearing nuclear disarmament badges.  Tickell did, however, have no problem with rightwing political messaging and he proudly displayed two signs behind the bar – “Hands of Rhodesia” and “Keep the Falklands British”. He also gave speeches to local trade bodies – wearing a monocle around his neck and gold cufflinks – criticising customers who wanted chips with every meal and ate “deep freeze food and foreign-sounding fare”.

Braces!! The man knew nothing.** Then again, no one is useless – they can serve as a bad example.

And Jacob Smith wrote a bit of a semi-contrarian opinion piece for Pellicle this week suggesting that Britain’s community ownerd pubs are no answer in many cases:

In a 2022 report, the Plunkett Foundation, a charity which helps rural communities in Britain to create and run community-owned businesses, reported that only one in 12 rural community-owned pub projects reached trading status. That means 91.7% of all rural community ownership pub bids failed without ever pouring a pint. These failed bids are rarely, if ever, highlighted by mainstream media. And while it’s human nature to focus on the winners and allow the also-rans the dignity of anonymity, such blatant survivorship bias risks distorting our perception. If we’re not careful, soon everybody looks set to become the next Beyoncé.

I had questioned that this sort of use of “mainstream media”*** is a bit meaningless – and perhaps a manufactured strawman now that I think of it – given folk from Roger Protz to Boak and Bailey have also waived the “save the pub!” banner. Being involved with community organizations in a number of ways, it’s true many fail but we don’t need to look to big bad outside forces for why that occurs. As Jacob points out in parallel, locla factors like the involvement of difficult personalities can often but simply overwhelm the collective goal.

Sorta building on something I read about last year, I shared that story of how one building in San Francisco was capturing waste water which was passed to Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co in San Carlos California to brew a beer. In something of a closing of the bio-eco loop, this week we learned from Jessica Mason that researchers in Singapore have found a way to extract proteins from spent brewing mash for human consumption:

The researchers also said that the extraction method would also help mitigate a possible protein shortage due to a forecast 73% increase in meat consumption by the year 2050 which has been predicted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN to occur amidst the future rapid growth of the global population. The NTU researchers also revealed that the proteins extracted from the brewers’ spent grains were found to be rich in antioxidants, which could not only protect human skin from pollutants but could also potentially extend the shelf life of cosmetics and skincare products.

That is sorta cool. Stan may be on holiday this month, including a stop at the Craft Brewing Conference in Las Vegas, but I found his latest issue of Hop Queries waiting on the front stoop when I stepped outside with my cup of coffee last Saturday morning. It includes that chart to the right which is cunningly identified as “the second chart”:

The second chart (clicking on it should enlarge it a bit)**** provides another way to look at genetic distancing. In this one (a two-dimensional principal coordinate analysis), the country of cultivar origin is represented by: Germany green triangle, Czech green square, UK green square with x, France green circle, Poland green triangle outlined, Slovenia green circle with x, Australia blue circle, New Zealand blue square, USA red circle, South Africa black circle. The research establishes the value of utilizing molecular genetic methods for “reliable cultivar identification or the evaluation of genetic variability and similarity by hierarchical cluster analysis and principal coordinate analysis.” 

Do I understand every word? No. But one gets the point. There are, as Stan says, relationships that should be understood to be going back through cultivar to landrace to wild. Maybe.

Speaking of the CBC Vegas, Courtney Iseman in her latest Huggering the Bar shared some tips for attendees seeking a decent beer in a land known for other things:

If you can’t get off the Strip but want a craft beer, your best bet is honestly to grab a tall boy from a convenience store. You won’t find much selection at casinos and you’ll pay stadium prices, predictably. Not too far of a walk (more on this in a sec) is Ellis Island. This hotel + casino is one of the most depressing I’ve been to, but! Stay with me and persevere through the casino part to The Front Yard, a bar and restaurant nice enough to feel completely disjointed from the rest of the hotel. Ellis Island brews its own beer, and it’s pretty great, based on the lager and Berliner weisse (for which they have a few different syrups) we had. If you want lunch and good, affordable, local craft beer, you could do a lot worse.

I read a nice little vignette from Jason Wilson in Everyday Drinking, the story of a starting a small sleepy wine cellar to last until retirement from someone in South Jersey who is now 86:

Pierre acquired much of his collection at one liquor store in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, one that also sold cigarettes and lottery tickets. “I got lucky,” Pierre said. “ “When I first built my wine cellar, that’s when the 1982s were just coming out… you could still occasionally find a knowledgeable, passionate wine person in a standard-issue liquor store. “I was lucky that I had a guy,” Pierre said. “I used to subscribe to the Wine Spectator, and I had a wine encyclopedia. But the guy at my local store knew what was good.” The wines at this tasting had been cellared well. Pierre does not have a fancy, custom-made wine cellar. “It’s all natural, three sides dirt and one stone wall. When I built the house, it was going to be a crawl space, but I said, ‘No, no, let’s make it a wine cellar.’” He added: “I’ve never had a bad bottle that’s been stored there.”

Jeff wrote a bit of a tough personal piece on his family’s life with alcohol this week – which starts with a surprise:

“Let me see my little Susan!” Mom recalls saying. Before ultrasounds existed, predicting a baby’s sex was apparently a primitive exercise, and my mother’s doctor got it wrong. The nurse held me aloft, announcing instead the arrival of little “Johnny.” It hadn’t occurred to Mom to have a boy’s name at the ready, so for a week I was Baby Gorostiza. She has never been sure why she chose Jeff, and used to joke that with a bit more warning she’d have probably named me David.

One of my favorite stories in beer is the nice tale of an historic beer recreation that turns out to avoid the actual characteristics of the historic beer… like this:

Brewing beer from bread is not without its challenges. “Early beers probably were a little bit bitty and maybe like an alcoholic porridge,” Ziane says. The method took some adapting – including an industrial shredder to crumb the bread slices, and rice hulls to prevent the bread from becoming an impenetrable sponge in the tank. The recipe Toast settled on replaces 25% of the grain with bread. In doing so, it replaces 25% of the carbon, water and land needed to grow the grain.

Finally, in what is really a challenging footrace despite there being only one competitor there was news from ParksWatchScotland of one of the more pathetic results from a BrewDog self-promotion project… with the added twist of a waste of significant public funding:

In mid-February I described how many of the trees planted by BrewDog, as part of the Phase I creation of its Lost Forest, had died and how they appeared to be investing little, if any, of their own money in the whole disastrous project.  A week after the post I received a response from Scottish Forestry to an information request I had submitted in December about the number of trees that had died, any related correspondence with BrewDog or their agents and the amount of forestry grant they had disbursed to date. The response stated Scottish Forestry had paid BrewDog £690,986.90 to date and confirmed that a very high proportion of the planted trees had died…

The anti-Midas touch, as usual. With that, again we roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 127) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (down one to 916) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (161), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday upon which he decides to show up at the office. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube.  The Moon Under Water… is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that but is writing for 47 readers over there. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*Boak and Bailey had already noted this one which leads to consideration of this from the B+B footnotes last week: “(…on one unlinked story in the main article…) …certainly worth a read, especially if you have an emotional connection to Rhode Island. And Alan had already flagged it anyway, which is sometimes a consideration….” (…on another unlinked story in the main article…) “…the rest of the piece felt a bit like a sales pitch, as brewery profiles with access to the subjects can tend to do. And Alan had already flagged it anyway. Again.” This has been a heretofor an undiscussed phenomenon. I actually do like to not link on Wednesday evening to something that Boak and Bailey will no doubt mention Saturday morning. Reminds me of how when playing soccer or road hockey and I pathetically missed a pass sent my way – and then a teammate made more of the opportunity I ever could have… pals praising sarcastically with a “Well Left!!!” cheer. 
**I unashamedly share my supplier, Albert Thurston. Seriously. Buy yourself a couple of sets along with a few buttons and you have enough for a lifetime. You spend more on a pair of boots. Maybe I’ll spend my birthday money and buy a fourth set… you are sending birthday money, right? Right?!?!??
***The word “media” appears eight times. Is no one else to blame? Is there even any need to blame?
****Sure did. Stan no lie.

Well, That Was The Eclipse That Was… And Now Here Are The Beery News Notes

No throngs showed up apparently. It was even fairly quiet. But that thing in the sky was up there with the most amazeballs things I’ve ever seen. Certainly that I’ve seen from the backyard. As illustrated with a far better camera than the one that tried to capture my view of my new pal and master Sauron, via our actual eyeballs we could see two solar flares clear as day… except it wasn’t day… yet it was. We may have seen the out of focus lighting effect just for a moment and the seagulls had a pretty hard time of it, swirling overhead all through totality.  Here’s a video or two of the shadow of the moon passing across our fair city by the lake which really gives the sense of how there wasn’t anything like dusk, just diminishing light – whammo – dark and back to a return to light. See you all in 2399 AD… or whenever the next one is. Back to your regularly scheduled gardening notes next week.

Beer? Beer! Let’s go!! In all the grim news shared about the effect of Brexit on the UK brewing industry, this bit of a fact in an article in The Guardian is quite telling on the actual effect of the departure on the UK economy despite other indicators:

This, industry figures said, ignores the wider burden on brewers, including Britain’s departure from the EU, which has brought with it administrative hurdles that have added to the cost of importing ingredients and all but wiped out opportunities for export. At Charles Faram, getting British hops into Europe has become more complicated, at the expense of British jobs. Corbett said: “We’ve set up a company in Poland to facilitate that, shipping in bulk and distributing to the EU. We’re employing people in Poland to do the work we used to do here.”

Note: by “the work we used to do here” Corbett may mean “the work they used to do here.” That’s a bit amazeballs, too. The company followed the displaced workforce. Speaking of unsupportable policy decisions, I was unaware (given the constant flow of annoncements about beerfests at every second UK street corner) that some beer fests are actually are refused permission, like this one which faced a litany of objections* according to this BBC report:

Greater Manchester Police and council licensing officers objected to the Craft Beer Festival going ahead… The force believed there was a risk of “traffic chaos”, which organisers said would be prevented by asking people not to use their cars to get there. They also objected to the amount of toilets available – 25 toilet facilities for 460 ticket holders – which they thought could lead to public urination… PC Alan Isherwood said their biggest fear was how overcrowding would be “dealt with”… Licensing officers added their worry over “three days of noise nuisance” for residents with “the nearest property only 230ft (70m) away”…

Far more agreeably and right after last Thursday’s deadline to send these news notes to the press, Boak and Bailey posted a really entertaining collection of pub vignettes from their recent reading, like the voices of Welsh miners singing or the case of a pub that stradled a county line:

Some years ago the Wortham constable was about to arrest a man who had gone to earth in the inn after a poaching or similar minor offence. As it happened the wrong-doer was in the Wortham part of the house when the constable approached; but receiving warning he quickly slipped into the bar on the Burgate side, thus putting himself outside the constable’s jurisdiction.

In the latest science news update from under the microscope, Lars gave us the heads up over the weekend that a new study from Canada’s Escarpment Labs shows that the farmhouse yeast he has been stufying  forms one big and separate family of yeast titled rather generally as “European farmhouse yeast” as Lars summarizes:

The big finding is that group you see in the upper middle: a large group of farmhouse yeasts all next to each other. Yeasts from the kveik, gong, and berm areas as well as the Baltic all group right next to each other, with nothing else in between. The conclusion is that European farmhouse yeast is a separate family of yeast. Farmhouse yeast really is a separate type of yeast. And that family spans Norway, Latvia, and Lithuania, at least. I’ve been using the term “farmhouse yeast” for many years now, and now we learn that it’s not just a functional category (like bread yeast, or wine yeast), but it’s also a genetic family, a type of yeast.

For the double, announced speaker Lars has also shared some information on the prospects of the August 2024 Historic Brew Con being planned in Manchester by sharing this post from BeerNouveau:

Apart from having to postpone because we lost our venue, twice, and then the whole COVID thing, everything has been pretty smooth so far. Except ticket sales. Tickets have been on sale now for a couple of months and we haven’t sold enough to cover costs. A lot of people have said that they’ll be getting tickets, and if everyone who said they would did, then we’d likely be fine. But I can tell you now, if we don’t sell enough tickets in the next five weeks we’re going to have to cancel the event. There would still be eight or nine weeks before it went ahead, but there’s non-refundable deposits to pay, accommodation and travel to arrange, and a whole load of other costs that we have to stump up for before the conference starts.

I am not sure if there is a live feed option being offered but I had reached out a few months about about submitting papers, something I like as an option with an academic gathering. I did not hear back.

Slightly to the left on the map of the British Isles, Katie in her wonderful newsletter The Gulp shared an excellent glimpse of the ecosystem abord a ferry to the Isle of Man with particular stylish attention to its wee bar:

The bar on board the Manxman truly believes you are on a cruise. It gestures to the bar stools around a mood-lit console table, and wonders why you are not wearing a cocktail dress. The seating is a realistic shade of leather. Take in the atmosphere, make yourself comfortable. Prepare to disembark in an hour or two.

Here’s a thing I did not know. The Masters golf tournament has it’s own beer – and there isn’t much else known about it:

Crow’s Nest is a proprietary blend brewed exclusively for the Masters and not even available during the regular club season (which makes it that much cooler). It’s light, refreshing and tastes good, especially for parched golf fans wanting to fuel up after hiking up and down Amen Corner. It’s $5 and comes in a 20-ounce green commemorative cup, complete with italic Crow’s Nest text sandwiched between graphics of the tournament logo and the other Crow’s Nest (the one amateurs bunk in above the clubhouse). The brew is such a star, it even has its own shirt in the Masters Golf Shop. You think the domestic beer can claim that? Please.

Staying in the US of A, it’s been a difficult patch for the former beer focused firm, Boston Beer Co. according to one bot**:

Boston Beer Co’s revenue growth over a period of 3 months has faced challenges. As of 31 December, 2023, the company experienced a revenue decline of approximately -12.02%. This indicates a decrease in the company’s top-line earnings. When compared to others in the Consumer Staples sector, the company faces challenges, achieving a growth rate lower than the average among peers.

Speaking of stats, there were a number interesting graphs in the recent edition of Doug Veliky’s Beer Crunchers newsletter – a discussion about how beer trade stats are gathered. This one table in particular caught my eye. US beer sectors year to date 2023 v 2024. Craft down. Significantly. Now less craft sold off premises than that excellent category “domestic below premium” which includes such Hamms, Keystone Light and – much to my surprise – Miller High Life which is entirely above the below… if you know what I mean.

Great piece in Pellicle by David Nilsen on the revival of Narragansett of Rhode Island but not quite sure on the history of their porter. If their brewer Lee Lord started homebrewing in 2011 and…

When the Providence Historical Society reached out to Lee shortly after she started and wanted to brew a collaboration beer, she decided to revive the brand’s Porter with a new—well, old—recipe. She used a recipe discovered by British beer historian Ron Pattinson based on an 1822 Porter; nearly half the grist is brown malt, and no black malt is used at all. 

… then how did Lew and I gleefully drink their Porter no later than late 2009 and early 2010*** repectively? Ron. It’s got to be Ron who can explain what’s going on.

Speaking of revivals, GBH has an interesting story by Fred Garratt-Stanley of an English regional brewery, Lacons of Great Yarmouth, that thought ahead and stored its yeast:

“Securing the rights was a complex process that took two or three years,” says Carver, speaking to me over the phone. “Once we did, we went to the yeast bank and asked for the deposits of our yeast from 1956, of which there were eight: five top-fermentation yeasts and three bottom-fermentation yeasts.” Reviving these historic strains wasn’t simple, though. “Strains frozen in the 1950s have now been dormant for almost 75 years, so we have to revive them,” says Nueno-Palop. “Also, because many of the original depositors are not alive anymore, [breweries] need to acquire the rights. With Lacons, they had the original documentation pointing them toward the right NCYC strains … it was interesting that they had documented everything because this is very important for replicating recipes.”

Finally, it was interesting to note this comment on Twex from Jessica Mason:

As the end of the week nears, I look forward to a selection of men notifying us all of their ultimate line-up of most worthy beer news. Painstakingly collated into a list of what truly is best for everyone to read. Like they wrote it all. Can’t bloody wait.

As as far as I know, I get roundups from at least, yes, Katie Mather of The Gulp but also Jessica B. of Boak & Bailey and Stephanie Grant of The Share as well as I believe a few other women on recommended beery reading so I am pretty sure this corner of the hobby isn’t a chromozonal exclusive. That being said, good to have a sense of humour about being both the readers and the writers with these sorts of Nobel Prize ineligible topics. We hold each other up. As always, bring back RSBS so we wouldn’t have to rely on others!

Enough!! We roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes and the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my own emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up one to 126) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (up three to 917) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (minus 1 to 4,467) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down two to 161), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Fear not!

Want to keep up with the news before next Thursday? Check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan the very next Monday upon which he decides to show up at the office. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And I listened to the BOAS podcast bro-ly interview of Justin from Matron. And the long standing Beervana podcast . Plus We Are Beer People. There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too.  All About Beer has introduced a few podcasts… but some may be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link! Errr… nope, it is gone again.

*One comment in the BBC report caught my eye: “… not to be confused with Didsbury Beer Festival, which has been held annually for 11 years at St Catherine’s Community Centre.” Is there some sort of tension between the Didsbury Beer Festival and the Didsbury Craft Beer Festival? Must be very civil peeing practices at the old DBF if the DCBF is called out on that particular fear. Just hope that there is none of that thimping thumping beat that neighbours complain about eminating from St Lawrence Church of York. 
**Note: “This article was generated by Benzinga’s automated content engine and reviewed by an editor” so take this situation with a grain of salt.
***Shameless mooch that I was back then, the emails flew back and forth and the press release from November 20, 2009 read: “Originally called Narragansett Dark, ‘Gansett’s Porter craft brew first premiered in 1916. ‘Gansett still retains their original recipe, offering the same great-tasting Porter winter brew today. ‘Gansett Brewmaster, Sean Larkin offers some tasting notes on the brew: “We produce the Porter using summit hops, black malt, pale malt, roasted barley and ale yeast. It is then dry hopped with Amarillo hops, creating a deliciously mild chocolate flavor with just a hint of smokiness.” The specialty brew is 5.4% alcohol by volume with 22 International Bittering Units. Narragansett Porter is brewed in small batches at Trinity Brew House in Providence, Rhode Island and Cottrell Brewery in Pawcatuck, Connecticut.“