A Good Beer Blog

Well, it’s done. I enjoyed it all. And I am glad it is done. In fact, on reflection, I like how the World Cup becomes a process of a sparcer and sparcer schedule that end in a boring game. You are left without any wish for more. Time to go hang out in the garden and study for my second career as a hand model. You know, the first two rounds of the group stage are the best, when the players aren’t exhausted and the managers are’t scared of losing. Was it worth it all for the US beer trade? BMI reports:

Even with auspicious weekend timing of July 4, big celebrations for America’s 250th and the World Cup tournament taking place on US turf, total beer $$ fell 1.1% and volume dropped 2.4% for 1 week thru July 5 in Circana off-premise channels. 

Soooo…. maybe not so much.* Final numbers yet to come. Next up? It’s wheeeeeeee…. baseball all the way to the first frosts. And hand modeling. [BTW, before we move on, Eoghan has mapped his 48 multi-national stops around Brussels if you want to recreate his World Cup hometown studies.]

And now…. it is official! Beer blogging is back baby – as The Tand has declared:

Ah the good old days. Back then when I used to post a lot – and I’ve been having a look at my old stuff and you should too – it’s great stuff and a lot of it short. A remark about a pub or two, or a beer, or a little industry comment.  Maybe a longer piece about a more complex subject.  Much more enjoyable and frankly a lot easier to do.  It doesn’t take much to see my enthusiasm for blogging has slowly but surely declined and actually I’d like to arrest that. I’ll never get back to the heady days of hundreds of posts, but on the basis of little and often I think I might manage a few more. 

Makes sense. We yearn for the recent past. [In fact, our own youngest has dug out one of the old digital cameras from the dawn of this very blog to take out to the bars when she’s on a crawl with her gang.] And just to prove his point, The Tand posted his thoughts about one scene he encountered him this very week:

Speaking to various landlords and landladies too – even handed me – the picture is again rather mixed with pubs with beer gardens or at least usable outdoor space doing well, though inside has been quieter.  Just as you’d expect I suppose.  My own observation backs this up.  Approaching pubs I’ve noted the busy exteriors and the not so busy interiors.  It is difficult to tell whether those who would normally sit inside have just decanted to the outside, but chatting to the bosses, trade is slightly up with a noted shift to lager, soft drinks and rosé wine.  

Boak and Bailey, leaders of this retro-nuevo, came to a similar conclusion from the different entry point of two particular beers that sat before them –  as they explained in their beers of the weekend post:

They were both very chicken-soupy-looking, and both had that familiar combination of fruitiness and onion. The stronger beer had quite a burn, too, almost as if it had been dosed with raw chilli pepper. But, for all that, we enjoyed them, because they were also (a) cold and (b) bitter – perfect for yet another warm evening.

Time for some money talk. If you have a cellar, there is a very good reason why it makes sense to stock away bottles there to age as opposed to buying them later when you want to drink them, as explained by Sara Danese at Everyday Drinking this week:

A good barrique costs around €1,000 and can be used new or seasoned. Assume it’s used once: after losses you get 200 liters of wine, so the barrel cost is €5 per liter. Labour and electricity add €0.40 per liter. Storage costs €6 per month per barrique — about €0.40 per liter per year. Financing adds another €0.30 per liter if you borrow at 5% on €5.80 (barrel + handling + storage). That’s roughly €6 per liter, or €4.50 per bottle. If you use the barrique three times, the additional cost drops below €2 per bottle. Bottle aging is cheaper but still significant. Storage might cost €6 per month per pallet (600 bottles), or €0.12 per bottle per year. The real cost is the so-called opportunity cost: if a wine could sell now for €10 but doesn’t, the producer must finance that cash flow, adding roughly €0.50 per bottle in interest. The total cost for an extra year in bottle is around €0.62 per bottle.

Speaking of the economics, bottled Old Speckled Hen will be a thing of the past in the not so distanct future and Le Protz explains why with characteristic restraint:

Writing in What’s Brewing, CAMRA’s Roger Protz called the move “a shock decision” resulting from the “rapacious profiteering of giant supermarkets”. He added: “Old Speckled Hen is one of Greene King’s major brands but the income from sales to the off-trade is tiny as a result of the deep discounts demanded by the retailers. “Greene King owns a massive estate of 2,600 pubs, restaurants and hotels. It supplies those outlets with draught and packaged beers.

And in a piece pushing 2,500 words, Laura Hadland has explored in depth the pros and cons of how some smaller British breweries are taking advantage of the tied networks yet still retaining a degree of their independence, all as illustrated by a deal entered into by Jamie Lawson of the SALT Beer Factory :

In 2021, [Molson Coors] approached Jamie, with a view to distributing some independent craft beers through their wholesale network. An agreement was struck to trial the arrangement in bars in the north of England. At first, two beers were used for the pilot – SALT’s flagship session IPA, Jute, and its NEIPA, Huckaback. The experiment went so well that Molson Coors were keen for a national roll out. Jamie jumped at the opportunity and ultimately the partnership was invigorated by the signing of a 3 year deal in 2023. … The macros want the indie brewers to retain that independence. Their authenticity is the thing that makes the relationship profitable for both sides. But it also flags a potential downside. Some drinkers, seeing SALT or Northern Monk beers so widely available, think that the breweries have been taken over and worry that the beer’s quality will change for the worse.

Excellent stuff. Similarly excelling is Lars who wrote about an eastern Latvian farmhouse style from the Latgale district for Craft Beer & Brewing, explaining the locale this way:

Latgale is somewhat different from the rest of Latvia. It had an earlier stint as part of Russia in the 16th century, and the people here speak a variant of Latvian that the rest of Latvia sometimes has a hard time understanding. Latgale also has a larger Russian population than the rest of Latvia—including a group known as the Old Believers, who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church to escape religious persecution in Russia centuries ago. Today, the Russians in Latgale mainly make moonshine, while the farmhouse brewing is very clearly Latvian.

We also have Old Believers in Canada, a community that first moved here in the 1920s. Not sure about their moonshining. Lars also explained that the local malt drying technique in their saunas:

Their saunas included a small hatch in the ceiling, which they would open when drying the malt; that hatch allowed the smoke and heat to waft upward into the drying box (āznīca) on the floor above.

I mention this as it is necessary to remind folk that not all ale was smoky in the past before a certain point. As shared in 2014, smoky ale – at least in medieval England – was considered a fault and other means of drying the malt were available, like in kilns or cooling bread ovens where the heat and smoke were separated. People in the past were resourceful and could control variables through trusted technologies to suit local taste. So both sauna smoked or pale sweet kilned malt were possibilities. Just don’t dry it over ferns. That’s just gross.**

Note #1: “…would you care for some blouge?”
Note #2: Ballast Point’s whimper soon to be whimped.
Note #3: Jeff provides a fine remembrance of the late Alan Sprints.***
Note #4: Gary reported in from Oxford, England.

And Max has reported in from the Czech Republic describing a march of more than 20 kms to put himself in the comforting arms of Pivovar Kladno Kročehlavy,  a walk he undertook on a tender ankle hoping to find a few beers along the way only to find many spots on his path had shut:

I don’t care, most of the way is either along fields or in the shade of trees, far from any roads, and once I set my pace, I soon enter an almost meditative state, with my thoughts running free while I pay close attention to everything that surrounds me, sounds included—birds, trees, the wind, a creek, the rhythm of my footsteps, the flowers, the houses and the few people that cross my path. That idyll lasts until I enter Kladno, under the watchful eyes of the cooling towers of the local heating plant, and the route takes me through the remnants, if not the carcass of what once was one of the hearts of Czechoslovak heavy industry. It is quite disheartening, but it doesn’t affect my spirits, because I’m getting closer to my destination. My legs are beginning to feel heavy, but they quicken the pace regardless, because they reward is near.

And, closer to his home, Retired Martin shared some shocking personal admissions this week:

Back in Sheffield from a cruelly curtailed Cask Camino (CCCC), a man’s thoughts turn to tomato gose. I constantly read how exciting (ugh) the UK beer scene (ugh) is these days, how folk who drink Bass are to be ridiculed etc etc. But can you be a proper country without a brewer of alcoholic gazpacho ? I think not… We don’t drink at home, bar Mrs RM occasional pint of Malbec with Crispy Beef, so I rarely visit the specialist offies. But I was sad to see the closure of longstanding Beer Central mentioned by Chat GPT.

I hadn’t expected that a pub man was practically dry at home but it makes sense. Focus. Makes more sense than any tomato gose did, too. Speaking of odd drinks, The Beer Nut encountered a Triple IPA Quebecois – as if it was 2014 or something – and his conclusions neatly identify a number of issues:

You get a dash of vermouth or madeira in with your hops here, and I’m not convinced that that’s a good thing. The sticky finish coats the palate with marmalade and triple sec: Paddington’s breath on Saturday night. I guess it passes muster as a triple IPA, but it tastes a little elderly and overwrought. Maybe as an end-of-the-night finishing beer, but even then I suspect it’s better in smaller doses than this. I don’t make a habit of buying the double-digit-priced cans, and this is a prime example of why. It’s just not worth the risk. Beer of better quality is available from breweries much closer to home at significantly more reasonable cost.

Conversely to such exactitude – but sadly customary – a certain type of inflationary take plays an unfortunately regular role in drinks reporting. So it was with some suspicion that I met the headline at BrewBound “Gen Z’s Moderate Drinking Reputation ‘Conclusively Debunked,’ per IWSR Survey” this week. The IWSR is/was International Wine and Spirits Record, a London based publisher of trade data and opinion founded in 1972 that is now known as IWSR Drinks Market Analysis Limited. BrewBound led its summary of the report with the statement “The bev-alc industry can no longer blame Gen Z for slowed sales…” but, oddly,  James Bayley (no relatyon) in the Drinks Business quoted IWSR president and managing director Marten Lodewijks who said:

Although Gen Z participation has risen, the generation continues to approach alcohol differently from its predecessors. More Gen Z consumers reported drinking cocktails during the past six months than any other age group, with 84% choosing the category. They were also the most likely to follow government health guidance on alcohol consumption, with 49% saying they paid attention to official advice. The generation was also more inclined to drink in larger social groups, with 18% reporting their most recent drinking occasion involved five or more people…. ****

Which means… they drink less leading… to slower sales. Unless they are still buying but just sticking it in the shed. Is that it? The study seems to  mix participation rate (not much lower) with consumption levels (lower). Leading to the headline… I suppose.*****

That’s all for now… well, not counting the footnotes below. As you chew your way through those over the next few days, please check out Boak and Bailey posting on Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And do look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format.  Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter – but it may not be pay per view. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword remains on pause but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube as well as the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*Yet locally… also according to BMI: “…Burke Distributing sold 600 bbls of Tennent’s Lager in Boston, 10x its annual vol, as the Scottish “Tartan Army” descended on the city. Burke saw a 20% vol lift for Jun, with on-prem up 46% and draft up 53%. “The two weeks the Scots were playing were two of the largest weeks we have had in decades,” said chief growth officer Kristen Burke. At the Sam Adams downtown taproom across town, which almost ran out of beer on the first weekend, “we were pouring them a Sam Adams Boston Lager every 12 seconds,” said ceo Jim Koch. In Philadelphia fans drank 290K beers across six games in the stadium alone, FIFA reported.“
**See me in 2011: “In an edition of A Way to Get Wealth by Gervase Markham from 1668, a book first published in 1615 or about 200 years before the start date picked by Horst, we have an opinion on the preference for straw… and not just any straw: ‘ …our Maltster by all means must have an especial care with what fewel she dryeth the malt; for commonly, according to that it ever receiveth and keepeth the taste, if by some especial art in the Kiln that annoyance be not taken away. To speak then of fewels in general, there are of divers kinds according to the natures of soyls,and the accommodation of places-in which men live; yet the best and most principal fewel for the Kilns, (both tor sweetness, gentle heat and perfect drying) is either good Wheat-straw, Rye-straw, Barley-straw or Oaten-straw; and of these the Wheat-straw is the best, because it is most substantial, longest lasting, makes the sharpest fire, and yields the least flame…’ ” Note again. the Maltster is presumed to be a “she”!
***My interactions with Hair of the Dog twenty years ago were both entertaining and scientific. Ron Jefferies laughed out loud when I told him how the yeast had saved the day.
****Furthermore: “Lodewijks believes this reflects a long-term shift rather than a temporary response to economic pressures. “The number of people drinking remains consistent, but the frequency with which we drink and the amount we drink per occasion is dropping,” he said. “The moderation trend increasingly appears to be driven by lifestyle choices, resulting in a structural, rather than cyclical, change.” Again, they drink less.
*****All of which allows me to reference my quote of the week from an asrticle in June 29, 2026 issue edition of the The New Yorker, “Something Is Very Wrong with Modern Longevity Science” by Dhruv Khullar describing how data can be extremely skewed yet accepted: “Okinawa was the site of a devastating American bombing campaign during the Second World War; much of its infrastructure and essentially all its civil records were destroyed. U.S. authorities reconstructed the civil registry by asking survivors to report their age, a process complicated by language barriers and a traditional Japanese calendar that differed from the Gregorian. The country’s postwar welfare system distributed some benefits based on age, and many Okinawans requested that their records be updated. There is a strong correlation between the number of requests made in a village and the supposed life span of its residents.” The longevity miracle of Okinawans is a fibber-fibber-onie based on fibby-bibsters.