Legal Customs In Three Sorts Of Brewing Cases

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More law. And why not? Beer is largely a function of law being a rich source of revenue for the crowd and a rich source of discord within the community. And with 178 volumes of court rulings in the English Reports covering the years from 1220 to 1866, there’s likely years’ worth of content to be examined. I am trying to wrap my head around it all. The court dealing with claims of ancient or at least established custom appear as a recurring theme. Two of the hops cases in the post from a couple of weeks ago were about a form of custom, the tithe to be paid to the church by the hop growers in a parish. Local rules. There are other customs to be identified as set out in cases like these:

• In the 1817 case Gard v. Callard [1817] EngR 255; (1817) 6 M & S 69; 105 ER 1169, the following claim was brought to the court in Devon.

… the plaintiff declared upon the custom that all the inhabitants within the borough of Modbury brewing in their houses there any ale or beer for sale, ought to grind at his mills in the parish of Modbury, all the malt used or spent ground by them in their said houses, in the brewing of ale or beer for sale, and to pay him a certain toll for the grinding thereof ; and alleged that the defendant was an inhabitant, &e. and that on the 1st January 1803, and on divers other days between that and the day of exhibiting the bill, he ground at other mills.

See the odd thing? The case is heard fourteen years after the wrong is alleged to have started occurring. The defendant, Callard, had not gotten his malt processed at Gard’s mill in all that time. The fee to be paid for the grinding was ” a toll of six quarts and a pint out of every bag of twenty gallons.” If there are four quarts in a gallon I make the fee 6.5 quarts out of every 80 or 8.125% of the malt. That is a hell of a toll for just milling the malt. No wonder they wanted to go elsewhere. But the toll was upheld. The lord of the manor was to be paid because “doubtless long usage and acquiescence in one uniform payment was cogent evidence that it was reasonable.” Because the internet is wonderful, here is more information on the manorial charter as well as the mills of Modbury. I wonder how much later it was until modernity hit, how long it was before beer was being brought in by train from somewhere else, undermining the manorial toll.

• Another sort of custom was claimed in Bosworth (Chamberlain of London) against Hearne [1791] EngR 130; (1791) Andr 91; 95 ER 312:

…that anno 1663 order was made by the mayor, aldermen and commonalty reciting, that the streets of the said city were much annoyed by brewers carts and drays, and therefore it was ordained thereby, that no brewer, drayman or brewers servants, shall work or be abroad in the streets with any cart or dray from Michaelmas to Lady-Day after one of the clock in the afternoon, or from Lady-Day to Michaelmas after eleven in the morning, upon the pain of forfeiting 20 s. for every time…

I am not sure why the annoyance of the City could be put up with for two hours more from Michaelmas to Lady-Day than in the rest of the year. For those of you who do not know, Lady Day is 25 March while Michaelmas falls on 29 September. The “Lady” is the Virgin Mary and the date on the calendar goes back to before the English Church split away from Roman Catholicism. Like the long standing civic holiday, the City of London’s order of 1663 was upheld as still good law in 1791. The fine for late deliveries was still good local law.

• The next case, Greene versus Cole, is harder to follow but it is laced with references to “custom” and “brew” which in itself qualifies it. The dispute relates to a will. A lot of these cases about breweries relate to a dispute in a will. But this one has a particularly spicy aspect – a charge of waste (perhaps as against the custom of the City of London) as set out in the ruling:

… the said Henry did make waste, sale, and destruction in the said house and messuage, that is to say, by prostrating a brew-house parcel of the said messuage of the price of 1000 [pounds], and taking away and selling the timber and roof thereof; and also by pulling down, pulling oft, and carrying away four ale-tuns fixed to the said brew-house, each of them of the price of 5 [pounds], a copper of brass covered with lead likewise fixed to the said brew-house, of the price of 200 [pounds], a mash-tun likewise fixed to the said brew-house, of the price of 20 [pounds], a pump erected in the said brewhouse, of the price of 5 [pounds], six brewing vessels called coolers made of timber likewise fixed to the said brew-house, each of them of the price of 6 [pounds], a malt-mill with a small millstone belonging to the said mill fixed in the ground in the said brew-house, of the price of 20 [pounds], and a cistern made of a cement called plaster of Paris, and fixed in the ground in the said brew-house, of the price of 10 [pounds], to the disinheriting of the said William, and against the form of the provision in such case provided ; wherefore he says that he is injured, and has damage to the value of 1000 [pounds] and therefore he brings suit…

Short version: the tenant (of a sort) tore down the brewery. The owner (of a sort) got upset. The brewery itself was “commonly called or known by the name or sign of the Flower de Luce” and was on Golding Lane (later Golden Lane) in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate, London. [See more about the brewery here.] There are two versions of the case that I see: Greene versus Cole [1845] EngR 97; (1845) 2 Wms Saund 228; 85 ER 1022 as well as Greene versus Cole [1845] EngR 98; (1845) 2 Wms Saund 252; 85 ER 1037. As you can see, the two cases were published in the same year, the second appearing to be a form of appeal. The passage set out above is from the first of the two. The second one explains what is going on a bit better. The first court hearing is before the “hustings,” a court of the city of London, held before the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs and aldermen. It handled matters related to land, common pleas, appeals from sheriffs and probate – or disputes over wills like in this case. Beadles are called in. Jurors are rounded up from the wards around the location of the brewery to advise what they think was going on. The hearing was held in the still standing Guildhall, illustrated above in the 1750s. The custom in this case is all about local municipal process. But the cases are not from 1845. They are from the 20th year of Charlies II, republished to illustrate the point being made in law. As a result, they also illustrate the value and the elements of a brewery from the 1680s. It had a cement cistern. Who knew? Again… neato.

That is enough for today. This ain’t easy reading.

The British Ale Brewery, A Joint Stock Company In 1807

bab1807In 1807, a correspondent who went by the name “The Plain Dealer” wrote a letter to the editor of The Morning Chronicle on the topic of joint stock companies:

SINCE my last letter a number of new projects have been announced to the public, and some of them of great magnitude…. Let us begin with the Breweries. No fewer than five companies have been established, to rescue the public from bad beer at an increased price. This was a most tempting proposal. There was, after the series of unfavourable harvests, which we suffered at the beginning of the new century, an universal complaint against the beer. It was not merely lowered in quality, but composed of substitutes for hops and malt, which were thought to be pernicious; and to add to the evil, it was said to be the practice of all the great brewers, both in town and country, to buy up the leases of ale-houses, so as to deprive the publican of the freedom of going to the best brewery for his liquor. If this statement be true, it was a crying evil; but it was, and is, capable of an easy remedy. It depends entirely on the Magistrates; for if, instead of the reluctance which they now feel at the licensing of new houses, they would make it a rule, whenever a public tap was known to be the property of a brewer, and that bad beer was the consequence, to license a free house, in the immediate neighbourhood; the competition would be renewed, and the people would be served with a wholesome, palatable, and strengthening beverage. We know that the worthy Chief Magistrate of a city in the county of Kent has announced this to be his determination, and the inhabitants have already reason to be grateful to him for his device.

Competition. That was the promise of the joint stock companies. Too much wealth had gravitated into too few hands through the reactionary period after the loss of thirteen of the fifteen American colonies and then the French Revolution. The quality of beer crashed as prices climbed. But this new cure by joint stock companies was not trusted. In the string of letters to the editor in which this one is found, complaints about “sleeping partners” and “middle men” are set out. The sorts of things that people who distrust big faceless corporations floating mid-air in the stock markets still raise today. Yet there was an argument that these were tools to break the monopolies of the fantastically well connected and landed, the means to introduce competition into a status based economy. Competition was a new idea. Distrust hovered.

There is another reason folk were concerned other than the shock of the new. 1720. Ever since 1720, the joint stock idea was cursed. See, from the mid-1500s to 1720 there was a system of chartered companies approved and given blessing by the Crown. The most famous in Canada is the Hudson Bay Company that continues today. In our book Ontario Beer, Jordan and I describe how in the 1670s beer was being brewed in Ontario’s Arctic north by staff of the HBC over-wintering in trading posts set up to supply the firm with furs and other goods from the exotic north. A number of these were set up to encourage trade with lands as far away as Russia and Turkey… and then in the first quarter of the 1700s the South Seas. Careful readers will recall a few days ago when in the 1760 case Hunter v. Sheppard the Court described the hop buying fraudulent scheme in this way: “…trade was at that time very particularly circumstanced, hops being in 1764, like South Sea stock in 1720, or India stock in 1767…” Frauds. Bubbles. Money going in but never a hope of return coming out. The disastrous South Sea Company was the last of these companies to be chartered. And for a hundred years they remained highly suspect.

By the new century, new problems with the economy demanded a return to the concept.Unincorporated and unlisted subscription joint stock companies were forming when large groups of people subscribed into what essentially was a extremely large partnership. Described as “associations of gentlemen” they formed to break the grip of the established and wealthy in the context of the new commercial liberties and the new industrial era. One of these new enterprises was the British Ale Brewery. In an 1809 edition of The Monthly Magazine in the listings of commodity prices, one aspect of the British Ale Brewery is described: you can purchase a share in the firm for a 4 pound premium. Trading in company shares was an innovation and one that caused distrust.

But what was the British Ale Brewery? Apparently, it operated. The formation of the company was described in the 1815 court case Davies v. Hawkins:

…in 1807 a number of persons, about 600, associated together as a company, and made subscriptions, which subscriptions were divided into shares of 50 pounds each, for the purpose of establishing a brewery for ale, &c. under the name of the British Brewery. The subscribers entered into a deed which contained, among others, these provisions: that the shares should be transferable, &c. the purchaser executing the deed, and binding himself to observe the regulations, etc. contained therein; that a committee to be appointed should have power to make rules, orders, and bye-laws, subject to confirmation by a majority of the proprietors at a general meeting; that the conduct of the business of the brewery should be confided to two persons who should be styled brewers, and the trade should be carried on in their names…

The two assigned to act as brewers 1807 were Begbie and Murray. Their British Ale Brewery along with the Golden Lane Brewery were the only two breweries to complete their share subscriptions and enter trading in Britain’s early 1800s stock markets. How did it fair? In the 1808 ruling in Buck v. Buck, counsel for the firm pleaded that the intentions of the brewing enterprise were the purest:

The object of The British Ale Brewery was to carry on a lawful trade in a lawful manner, and to furnish to the public at a cheap rate, and of a good quality, an article of the first necessity It was a public benefit, therefore, instead of a nuisance, and was no more illegal than any other partnership comprehending a great many members.

The court was not moved. It held the business to be outside the law. The brewery was supposedly located in 1810 on Church Street just south of Lambeth Palace in London between Pratt Street and Norfolk Row as shown in that 1818 map up there. Bits of those streets by those names still seem to exist near the Thames. Its twin, the Golden Lane, died off as a joint stock company in 1826. Hmm. In 1808, the same Begbie and Murray appear to take out an insurance policy for the Caledonian Brewery on Church Street in Lambeth. The equipment and the lease for the Caledonian Brewery of Lambeth are auctioned in 1824 and in 1831, one Thomas Begbie testifies before a committee on the state of the brewing trade. By 1844, the law of Britain required all joint stock companies to be incorporated and listed. Whatever happened, the brewery and the era appear to have been wound up by then.

Three 1700s English Court Cases About Hops

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Have you even noticed I particularly like beer related stuff from before 1800. Have you noticed I like beer related stuff related to the law? Imagine then my joy when I came across a searchable database for the English Reports, the law reports series from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the Judicature Act of the 1870s… or so. The first word I put in the database was “hops” and then “hoppes” just like I did when I cam across this early modern print aggregator tool a few months back. Why hops? Something of value worth arguing over, something with a relatively clear entry point into English culture. Plunk it into the English Reports and, right off the top, three court cases pooped up from the second half of the 1700s. A perfect moment to pull out the image I tucked away for just this situation, the mid-1700s hop picking scene “Hop Pickers Outside a Cottage” by George Smith (1714 – 1776). Notice how in the image, the hop polls are brought into the yard and then are picked by hand there. It’s not without relevance.

The first case has the best narrative. In the ruling in Tyers v. Walton T. 1753. 7 Bro. P.C. 18, there is a dispute between Rev. Walton, rector of Mickleham in Surrey and vicar of Dorking, and Mr Tyers who had a certain acreage of hops within those parishes. The dispute arose because the good vicar had the right to be paid a tithe of the hops in all these two parishes. In 1745, Tyers paid the tithe in the form of 20 guineas. from 1746 to 1750, he provided a tenth of the crop after the hops were picked. 1751, however, was a bumper year and great quantities of hops grew upon the 28 acres that Tyers controlled. Tyers got greedy. He offered a maximum of 20 shillings an acre. This was refused. In response, Tyers seems to have cut the bines on every tenth hill, did not pick the hops and told the vicar to gather them himself. The law was not amused. At trial the court held that “that hops ought to be picked and gathered from the binds before they are titheable” meaning, pick ’em then divide out the 1/10th share. At the appeal hearing, the court held “the appellant had not made the least proof that the tithe of hops were ever set out before they were picked from the bind or stem.” Not the sort of thing an appellant like to hear. 1-0 vicar.

In the second case, Hunter v. Sheppard and others 1769 IV Brown 210, there is no vicar. Just a hop merchant and his purchasing agent. London-based James Hunter is described as being “one of the one of the most considerable dealers in hops in England.” His agent, named Rye, worked in the Cantebury area for years had been well known as Hunter’s man. But in 1764… there was another good year with hops bearing top price. Rye set out to make deals as an independent – without telling Hunter or anyone else. The case gets quite involved. There is much unraveling of what each landowner knew, which agent was working for which buyer and what the prices were. The Court took the matter seriously as Hunter’s purchases for that one autumn in just the Canterbury area were worth a total of 30,000 pounds. In current UK currency, that is worth £394,200,000! Money. At trial, Mr Hunter did not win the day. The judge ordered an elaborate sharing of the proceeds among a number of parties. Hunter appealed and at the appeal the Court made a wonderful observation on the nature of Hunter’s business:

The trade was at that time very particularly circumstanced, hops being in 1764, like South Sea stock in 1720, or India stock in 1767, and it required great precaution to deal in them with safety and advantage; in all which cases, the great art is to conceal the real intention; and the appellant being the most considerable dealer in England, was not obliged to let into the secret every man who pleased to speak to him on the subject, whether upon the road or elsewhere.

The panel hearing the appeal was not impressed with Hunter. One is never encouraged in court when being compared to the South Sea Bubble. The Court held Hunter sought to seriously play the Canterbury hops market and “to support these propositions he had entangled himself in a series of contradictions; and the assertions in both the answers were in many respects falsified by the evidence for the respondents.” The word fraud is then used. Too bad for you, Mr. Hunter.

In the final case, Knight v. Halsey 1797 7 T.R. 88, we find ourselves thirty years in the future but back to the question of tithes. Unlike the previous two cases, the interesting thing is not the narrative tale like something of a distant backstory employed by a Victorian novelist to establish why two families in the 1860s hate each other. The interesting thing is the recitation of the law. Knight is described as “the occupier of a certain close in the parish and rectory of Farnham” while Halsey grew hops. The dispute arose in the manner in which the hops were to be picked and divided. The Court considered the 1753 case of Tyers v. Walton discussed above but reached back farther in time to a case called Chitty v. Reeves in the Court of Exchequer, from Michaermas term 1686 brought by Ann Chitty, the widow and executrix of C. Chitty, against Reeves of the parish of Farnham. It quickly gets even better as in that case, the Court relied on even earlier evidence and held:

It fully appearing to the Court that the custom, usage, or practice of paying tithe hops in the parish of Farnham, in the county of Surrey, for above sixty years past, hath been that the impropriator or his lessee hath had for their tithe the tenth row when equal, or else the tenth hill; that the same have been left standing with the hop binds uncut, and that the impropriators, &c. have always had convenient time to come and cut the said binds the hops upon the grounds…

Fabulous. This means that in the 1797 case, the court is relying on a finding of fact based on evidence from the 1620s that people, like those in the painting above, could take their time to gather the hops owed to the church when it suited them. Boom! That is law as good clean fun. The court reviews a heck of a lot of tithe law but keeps coming back to dear widow Chitty from the time of Charles I. It also points out, conversely, that a custom which is against reason cannot prevail and is, accordingly, legally void. We gotta move on. At a time of transition into the next century’s looming industrial era, it is quite extraordinary – and Lord Kenyon, the Chief Justice admits as such when he states “[w]hether tithes be or be not a proper mode of providing for a numerous class of persons of great respectability, the clergy, I will not presume to say…” In the end, Kenyon throws up his hands at all the information before him and, I understand, orders a new trial to get to the bottom of this claim of a long standing custom versus commercial common sense.

Wow. Such drama. The good widow Chitty and the mercenary Mr. Hunter all jump out off the page, all in the name of their share of the value of the hops crop as England is balancing its rural traditional past and its modern commercial future. Neato!

Unlike Most Gimmicks Fog-Based Beer Is Real

I like the gimmick that are also based on something actual, a rare sight in the craft beer scene these days. Stuff like when thirty years ago I had a beer from the Falklands. And it really was. Fog based beer is apparently real as well:

Since a particularly bad drought in the 1950s, now-retired physics professor Carlos Espinosa Arancibia has been testing nets that could help capture water in Chile’s driest regions, the BBC reports. This current iteration of the net has openings less than one millimeter across around which water droplets condense out of the fog. The drops accumulate and grow until they drip into a pipe at the base of the net, from which it flows into a container, so clean that it’s immediately ready for human use. One of Espinosa’s test centers is near the town of Pena Blanca, home of the Atrapaneblina (fog catcher) brewery. The beer–a golden-amber Scottish ale with brown foam–is made only with the water collected from the fog nets. The brewery produces a meager 6,300 gallons of beer per year, but its owner says the water gives the beer a unique taste and quality.

OK… a golden-amber Scottish ale with brown foam? What the hell is that supposed to be? The brewery’s website only has images of the beer in bottles. Images online show a rather more comforting off-white head. There is just one lonely BAer review.

But what about the science? The Daily Mail published some respectable images of the fog nets of Chile a couple of years ago. The eggheads over at MIT are apparently involved with Chilean fog harvesting and have promised a five-fold increase in production. Their studies of the carapace of the Namib beetle, native to the Namib desert of southern Africa have led them to that conclusion. [Ed.: how many times have I heard that!?!?] Apparently, at certain times of the year a square meter of the better mesh might yield up to 12 liters per day or more. Which means only a ten by ten meter net might be needed to get you that litre of beer a day.

Given the Californian drought, a net of 41,650,000,000 m² is all they need to support current craft beer statewide production. That’s 41,650 km² of netting or about 10% of the state’s total land mass. So… it’s possible.

Thoughts On The Introduction To The Anthology

4913Maybe I am a morning person after all. Again, I am up, wanting to write. The niggling thought in my head about how too much beer writing is sadly like what’s found in the auto section, to quote a newspaper editor I know. I was thinking about this as well as the wee hidden essay I found in the e-book… ebook… “Eeee! Book!!” Boak and Bailey put out. No, I have written them back and forth enough that by now we should be on a first name basis. So it’s Jessica and Ray’s new wee ebook. [Ressica? Maybe.] It’s just a compendium of old blog posts [“Just!” tisked Ressica] but its got this new introduction. Not unlike the “best of” records with that one new hit. Hittish thing. Bonus track? Extra content, perhaps. It’s just 12 paragraphs long but in it they consider the “why” of thinking a lot about beer and then, extraordinarily, writing about it.

The suggestion is that drinking is an experience diminished by involving the brain, or perhaps even that the very point of drinking is to shut the blasted thing down for a couple of hour. Maybe sometimes, that’s true – no-one wants to be the plum on a hen or stag party asking for tasters of ale and taking notes later – but surely the two activities, thinking and drinking, are not always mutually exclusive?

Aside from the questions of punctuation that I as a minimalist would spot, it’s an interesting question. Are they? I wonder. Alcohol briefly might heighten the senses and open the mind but with any extended experience both those effects rapidly crash as the door to the outside closes and the mind takes over with its newsreel of past associations, the recollections of things past. Are you fully thinking when even on a semi-lash? One half-sentence alludes to the experience: “[t]here is also something special about walking down a street and seeing a vision of a long-gone pub, or even the ghost of a vast but vanished brewery.” I might argue that there are somethings special about that experience which may be fairly distinct depending on a number of variables including how many pints you’ve downed to that point. A dentist pal used to have a modest amount of beer when studying and then one before the exam. He knew how to leverage alcohol’s power of ripening the recollection.

But then there is the other problem. Is the experience transferable? In addition to exploring historical context, BB asks us to consider the examples of greater mindfulness and even meditation as answers to the “why write about beer” they pose at the outset. While awareness of one’s beer a part of one’s life is rightly considered a good thing – if only due to the dangers it also carries – does this person’s appreciation of this sort of experience have anything to offer that person over there… keeping in mind that person is concurrently going through a grab bag of subjective experience of their own already. Again, another hint: ‘[t]hey are the posts on which we worked the hardest and cared most about.” An excellent and honest observation. We write to tell. Admittedly, many write mainly to sell but that’s not always the most thoughtful stuff. The human need to fill a fridge has left much on the cutting room floor. Finding those who write to actually tell regardless of return is key. They will be most honest in the endeavor, no?

But, lastly, have they skill enough? Once the author has observed and, then, observed honestly, does the writing convey the observation well? As you might expect, Jessica and Ray demure. They thank and hope at the introduction’s end. They hope the reader will enjoy. They hope other writings will be explored next. This is good. I have noticed an ugly trend recently in the tightening pack of beer writers jostling for attention. The use of the words “trust me” – surely an admission of guilt. The writer who asks you to “trust” them has just told you that they are incapable of expressing something compelling enough for your to actually read. Fortunately, Ray and J. need not worry. Their writing entertains and expresses themselves inherently. Not only are their observations keen but the slightly reserved style they employ hints to their own nature. English reticence balanced with… perhaps even struggling with a touch of hypomania. Likely minds irritated by those seeking to stick them with nicknames yet minds that are, as they say, perhaps prone to causing trouble. Too rare a thing.

“Back of a Beer Mat: Bits from the Blog” can be found here and, tah-dah, it’s free. Worth exploring.

Session 99: A Little Mild And A Little Excitement


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

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

mild2Two months later I was in small town Ontario – Collingwood on Georgian Bay – and we stopped for a great dinner at Northwinds Brewhouse. Again, a reviving hit of malt and lush fluidity framed rather than cut but modest hopping. And under 4%, the drink didn’t hamper my ability to take on the last leg of the trip to the hotel another hour down the road. Brewmaster Bartle had three beers on under that level of strength – the mild, a grodziskie and a farmhouse ale – the details of which you can see on the chalkboard if you squint at that photo… yes, there… way in the back. Yup.

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

Your Saturday Morning News Not From Boak And Bailey

Six thirty Ay Hem. That’s what you get when you go to bed early on a Friday. After having a nap around supper time. That’s how I think of myself on this sort of Saturday. Okocimiski.

Three elections in a row this week plus, you know, the life of a desk jockey did me in. The first election last Monday in my former tiny jurisdiction of PEI saw my old law school prof get in as Premier. The next on Tuesday in the western Canadian home of the conservative puritans saw a landslide by the socialist hoard. And in the Old Country Thursday the nationalist lefties beat out the unionist pinkos to send the aysmetrical quasi-federation into a dither. The combined effect of many split votes in the last one caused the astounding “great victory of no more votes” – quite an accomplishment. What’s this got to do with beer? Not that much. But I work in governance so am aware that some things do actually matter. What else has been going on?

=> Jim Koch is cashing in some of his shares. Note that his balance of equity seems to be worth around 63.4 million. Sure, it’s a small brewery. Sure it is.

=> In one post, Ron has explained the point of Asheville NC far more clearly than the output of 1,000 subsidized junkets. That he got there via a milk run back country bus was a deft bit of contextualization even if he had to sit on his luggage… no, his actual luggage.

=> It’s been three weeks since beer retailing in Ontario was reformed and absolutely not one thing has actually changed. Classic boondoggling. And no one is complaining. Classic Ontario. Perhaps by 2028 we’ll be allowed to hold our beer bottles with our left hands in public. After all, what really matters is the posing. Like calling something “a game changer”, Toronto has a wee problem calling itself “world class” like the needy kid back in kindergarten who told you his uncle went to space. The phenomenon is described by the term world classy.

=> Go read BB. And then do it again. Where don’t their tentacles reach? It’s like they are becoming a vast industrial complex. [Thankfully, we can trust they did not write “here’s how to unearth the ‘ultimate’ session beer” in that header.] Note: their post on May Day celebrations at Padstow in North Cornwall is one of their best ever.

=> This is funny. In far western British Columbia:

The final report of the B.C. Liquor Policy Review recommends the government consider establishing a quality assurance program for craft beer and artisan-distilled spirits, similar to the VQA, or Vintners Quality Alliance, program — which currently guarantees wines are made in B.C., with 100 per cent B.C. ingredients.

Trouble is no one checked that “local” and “craft” in beer bear scant relationship to wine so… they are left with the same sort of fibs and platitudes we always see – which led to the refreshingly honest admission: “that’s kind of thrown a wrench into the ability to focus on what the next level would be.“

=> Just realized that if I started my own periodical I could name it “Al About Beer.” I would have to work on my ra-ra superlatives so maybe not.

=> Might I suggest unless one is extreeeeemely certain that a surprise beer and brunch pairing for Mother’s Day is only one thing: a quick route to the dog house. Don’t be stupid. Just because the love of your life puts up with your dependency / “hobby” it does not mean she likes it. Not at all.

Saturday. And maybe a stinking hot one as well. It was +25C¹ after deep into dusk last night. That means gardening. Letting more lettuce seed buried. Or drinks in the yard. Might get a bit Okocimiski. Jest Sobota Okocimiska? Może. Or I could just go get a growler. You have to remember that they sell lettuce at the grocery store in July, too, you know. Enjoy your Saturday. 7:45 am. People are starting to get up. Better make coffee.

¹ Disclosure: in Canada in spring there are a few days when you have to still make clear you are talking about +25C and not -25C.

“Selling Beer and Keeping Houses of Rendezvous”

barrie2One of the good things about being in my job is the records one comes across or co-workers with an interest in history share with you. I got this tidbit below in my email last week. That’s from the first document I came across in a larger scanned file called “Tavern Inspectors Records 1849-1853“.

To the Honourable the Municipal Council of the Township of Pittsburgh in Session aforementioned, We the Undersigned Tavern Keepers of the Village of Barriefield humbly and respectfully sheweth – whereas that there are persons residing in the said Village or premises adjoining Selling Beer and Keeping Houses of Rendezvous against the Law and to the great Desparagement of Her Majesty her [maybe “Crown”?] and Dignity seeing that we have to pay to the [?] the sum of Eight pounds with additions whereas these are paying [odd symbol for “zippo”] therefore we humbly beg your Honours will be pleased to look into the prayer of this our petition and dispell all such Houses unless they pay the same apportioned as in the City of Kingston vis [?] and we humbly beg that if such is granted that this shall be [?] for seeing that if such is not stopped we Your Petitioners will not be able to pay the Monies apportioned. But trusting that Your Honours will be pleased to looking into the prayer of this Petition and as In duty bound.

Barriefield is a small village in a largely rural township that was amalgamated into the City of Kingston in 1998. It was originally set up in the War of 1812 as an officer’s residence area associated with nearby Fort Henry. The document seems to be dated from 18 April 1850. It’s title on the back page is blurry and ink blot messy but seems to state Petition of [blah, blob, blur] for Beer Shops. It looks like the Tavern Keepers of Barriefield were not happy with the informal competition. I like the suggested threat, too: shut them down or we will maybe not pay our fees. That is the “zippo” emoticon circa 165 years ago in question up there, by the way. Click on it for a bigger bit of the document. I would also attach the whole file but it’s an 80 page pdf. Oh, what the hell. Have a look. By the way, a notation in the petition states that the matter was referred to the next Session and a bylaw was to be prepared… in case you are keeping track.

The beginning of the well regulated marketplace. What follows in those 80 pages is the licensing of all sorts of establishments in the community over the next few years. Afrirmations that the applicant is an honest, steady and sober man. The Township of Pittsburgh hadn’t been long in existence on the date of that first petition of April 1850. In the emails I was sent, there was also another file with the Minutes of the Midland District Municipal Council, a larger regional jurisdiction that was only abolished in 1849. So, one of the first things the new government has to deal with is the standardizing of licensing of the taverns and beer shops. Maybe it was just the fact of a thirsty British military base down the road. Or maybe it was the need to provide regulation as the Georgian ways of the century’s first have gave way to new Victorian expectations.

Is The Data Overload Becoming An Issue?

It was a bit of a revelation. Well, a joke and a revelation. I have a brother who is a bookman who sends rare finds for birthdays and holidays. This year for my 52nd I got this book on cheese. Published in 1960, it is a simple thing. More like a long magazine article than a full book. The author describes one trip taken in a car traveling from farmhouse cheese maker to farmhouse cheese maker. Cheeses are gathered in the back seat and the trunk… sorry, boot… and the taken back to London where they are eaten at dinners and parties with guests like Dame Margot Fonteyn and Stirling Moss. It’s all very light and comforting. It’s not all that unlike Everyday Drinking – The Distilled Kingsley Amis which I reviewed six years ago now. Yes, a voice from another era and one imbued with class and cultural distinctions which don’t matter anymore. Yet it is filled with discovery:

Mrs. Roberts DOES still make Caerphilly but not in her cool dairy, which I had foolishly asked to see. That is only used for storing milk and cream! Her cheeses are made in the kitchen, with vats and presses a hundred years old, and they mature in the bedroom. As these ancient, heavy wooden vats are irreplaceable, she may soon have to give up her cheesemaking.

OK, like Amis perhaps without the ever present danger of arrest for driving whilst intoxicated. Perhaps. There are still bottles consumed as she goes about. But there is nothing snobbish about any of it. In the second paragraph, snobbery is the word used for the one who sniffs contemptuously at the mere mention of the cheeses of ones own country. It’s an essay about the pursuit of the real in a world where imports and processes have become the norm. Sound familiar?

This is a voice like the one in my head when I became interested in beer. Not a voice I hear very much of anymore, sadly. Between the quantity chasing tickers and the off-flavour seminarians and the worshipers of the next ever so slightly different hop strain, there seems to be little being left to individual discovery. Too much expertise in the beer to be assimilated from above. Not enough simple pleasure in the experience of it. The current bleat about poor quality in new craft is just the latest twist. The hand of industrial process now reaches down as one’s betters warn that if you eat that cheese matured in the bedroom you might encounter something unexpected, unplanned.

This is not to suggest all was better. The second half of the book is filled with recipes which range from the traditional – like that very attractive cheddar biscuit – to the weirdly experimental. I will not, for example, take up the recommendation to wrap eight bananas in ham and bake them in a sauce made with a whacking pile of grated Lancashire cheese. But there is a joyfulness about it all which big craft seems to be drumming out of me, drumming out of good beer. I don’t care. The errors and trials and surprises of all these new actual small brewers are too interesting to care about their elders and betters, the self-appointed senex with the standard operating procedures, marketing staff and strategic plans for the annual trade show.

The Process Of Reforming Ontario’s Beer Sales

Well, the members of the editorial board of The Globe and Mail are not impressed. At least that is reassuring:

Politicians will be, more than ever, deciding who gets to sell beer and who does not, and which beer, where, when, how and at what price. Competition will still be largely forbidden. But, good news: If you are unhappy about anything, please write to the new Beer Ombudsman. He’s there to listen.

Ah, the Beer Ombudsman. What a silly idea. I eat a lot of toast and sometimes it doesn’t turn out. I want a toast ombud, too. It’ll never happen. But so might any number of bits of the policy… plan… ideas set out in the announcement. We all remember what happened to the LCBO Express stores idea. What exactly did happen yesterday anyway? As the Toronto Sun reported, the Premier put it this way:

“The days of monopoly are done,” Wynne said Thursday. “This is the biggest shake up to the sale of beer in Ontario since we repealed prohibition in this province and that was in 1927.”

Well, not exactly. Ontario never had much of a prohibition and the final centralization of retail stores happened more like in 1940 or so through the actions of Mr. E.P. Taylor in his gathering up of many of small breweries and their wholesale and retail divisions into what would become Carling-O’Keefe, one of Canada’s largest breweries until Moslon snapped it up in the 1980s. And Ontario was never really dry as humourist Stephen Leacock lampooned in his 1917 essay “In Dry Toronto“:

“…will you please tell me what is the meaning of this other crowd of drays coming in the opposite direction? Surely, those are beer barrels, are they not?” “In a sense they are,” admitted Mr. Narrowpath. “That is, they are import beer. It comes in from some other province. It was, I imagine, made in this city (our breweries, sir, are second to none), but the sin of selling it”—here Mr. Narrowpath raised his hat from his head and stood for a moment in a reverential attitude—”rests on the heads of others.”

See, when I was researching and writing the section for from 1900 to 1980 in our cult classic Ontario Beer, I came to see that Ontario went through a number of very intense shifts in its beer retailing rules and restrictions in little over a decade mainly starting in the middle of WWI, even though smaller changes had been coming for decades. What Leacock was lampooning was the situation in the early part of the regulatory temperance experiment in which Ontario brewed at a large scale for export only but then imported beer came in from intra-provincially brewers direct to the drinker through a process of individual purchases and delayed deliveries that – on paper – occurred outside of the province. The law literally allowed that the sin was only in the local sale of local beer.

And even when the rules were tweeked to stop that nonsense, there was still plenty of drinking going on. A Federal Royal Commission did the rounds on the question of tax evasionduring the years of official temperance and found out masses of beer was going out the back door of the “exporting” breweries for local consumption. As we stated in the book, in the spring of 1927, Labatt was implicated in kickbacks to customs officers in testimony before the Federal Royal Commission on Customs and Excise as it took evidence in hearings across Canada. When a shipping clerk called Aikens admitted he sold strong ale in London and vicinity, he explained that he only sold to people that he knew. He was congratulated for having such a host of friends. Labatt did, however, insist to the Commission that it had stopped shipping by camouflaged rail car in 1924 and, unlike most of its competition, had accounted for all taxes due. Such honesty.

All was forgiven as what replaced the process of tight control through regulatory temperance (and its really light ales along with some Ontario wine unless you had a cousin in the distillery in which case you got rye) was a succession of market control systems, laws and agencies which will be continued under the next new system announced this week. Don’t think so? Consider these aspects to the process leading up to the report issued by the Premier’s Advisory Council on Government Assets (the rather gutturally acronymed “PAC-OGA”) yesterday:

1. In the original announcement starting up this project in April 2014 it was stated that “will recommend how to maximize the potential of these government enterprises to ensure that Ontarians receive the value they deserve.” Note recommendation to the Premier is the goal.

2. An interim report is presented by PAC-OGA in November 2014 which explains how stakeholder (but not public) consultation had taken place:

We structured our review in two phases. Phase I, the results of which are included in this report, incorporated detailed reviews of the subject entities, stakeholder consultation and the development of our initial thinking on proposals for the future direction of each company. Phase II will incorporate further discussion and consultation on the proposals. This will further our goal of reaching agreement among the appropriate parties, leading to definitive recommendations to government for consideration in the 2015 Provincial Budget.

Note that discussion and consultation was to occur in Phase II.

3. But when the final report is announced yesterday, a deal has been struck. It even has at page 47 an “execution copy” of a document titled “Modernizing the Distribution of Beer in Ontario Framework of Key Principles” which has been worked out by Brewers Retail Inc. Molson Canada 2005, Labatt Brewing Company Limited, Sleeman Breweries Ltd., the Premier’s Advisory Council on Government Assets and the Ontario Ministry of Finance. It is also more of a transitional agreement than a simple non-binding memo of understanding. At section 10(c) it states that the parties agree to ” to negotiate the New Beer Agreements on terms acceptable to TBS and the Province, with the view to entering into the New Beer Agreements between the relevant parties as soon as possible and in any event before June 30, 2015.” Done deal. Recommendations and consultations finished. Working out the fine print as we speak. We are well on our way.

But to what? We’ll find out sometime in July, I suppose. Sure, the wish list has been published and will likely fall in place roughly as outlined but it is still a control system. The interests of big beer have been protected for at least a decade as have been enhanced revenue streams to the province’s coffers. There is lip service to concepts of “social responsibility” but no explanation of what that really means in this new world. Good reason. It means the same old thing as the same old structure still sits at the heart of the deal. If you have any doubt that that is not the case, that this is somehow a great leap forward for liberty, have a look at page 31 of the final report where it actually states:

The Ontario taxpayer is better off because they enjoy the same low prices as the Quebec taxpayer, but substantially more revenues go to the government.

Let that sink in for a minutes. No public discussion and locked in for a decade or more PLUS the report explains away how Quebec prices are the same as Ontario’s even with their 8,000 outlets because distribution costs are higher. See, Ontario is better off because instead of spending that money on beer delivery truck fleets – and instead of enjoying lower actual retail prices – all that money is scooped up by Ontario’s Ministry of Finance. Wonderful. Surreal but wonderful. What would Leacock have said about this sort of reform?