July 2025 – A Good Beer Blog

Your Beery News Notes For The End Of July And The Beginning Of The Back To School Ads

The last day of July. It’s one of the first endings of the year. Well, there is the end of winter but no one regrets that. And the switch from late spring to early summer never really leaves a ripple. But… July. Spent the other evening watching dusk arrive at a nearby conservation area, listening for bobolinks and kingbirds as they snabbed a few last bugs out over the field. Saw a raven. Heard it croak. Mr. Nature. That’s me. Five Saturdays to Labour Day. But even that date’s lost its sting as it’s the first September that not one kid is in the public school system for twenty-three years. What milestone is left? Last day of July.

First up, David J. announced the roundup for the July edition of The Session with a pretty interesting set of submissions this month, interruping his reguarly scheduled broadcasting:

Today’s Substack is ‘free to air’ – like Test cricket and Premier League football should be – so that the people who have contributed can gain the widest readership possible. (Also a desi publican I was going to interview suffered a bad injury and had to postpone. He’s fine, though, and I’ll be bringing his story soon.) On July 11, I asked various participants to write a blog, web post, newsletter (like this one) or even a SM thread on the subject of food in pubs. I’ve rounded up their work and at the bottom have written about the dangers of being a go-to voice on pub food.

Go have a look. Plenty of good reading. Also well worth a read, Ruvani de Silva has announced the launch of her course hosted by CAMRA on American Heirloom Cider Apples and it is good to see the historical context at the forefront:

Settlers, noticing the tribes’ bountiful orchards and the quality of the land they were cultivating on, were keen to claim it for themselves, unafraid to use violent displacement to do so. In one particularly horrific example, future President George Washington took a break from fighting the British in 1779 to send Generals Clinton and Sullivan to implement a scorched-earth policy across the Six Nations of the Iroquois’ beautiful, fertile Fingers Lake land in upstate New York, burning their flourishing orchards to the ground.

This lines up from some of what I found when researching upstate New York history over a decade ago including Lord Selkirk’s 1803 description of apple orchards around Geneva NY from before the Sullivan raids as well as this description from 1797:

…a person from Scotland has established, at Geneva, a very respectable brewery, which promises to destroy in the neighbourhood, the baneful use of spirituous liquors. The apple and peach orchards, left by the Indians, yield every year abundance of fruit, for the use of the inhabitants, besides making considerable cyder; so much so, that one farmer near Geneva sold cyder, this year, to the amount of one thousand two hundred dollars.*

Speaking of solid research, after last Saturday’s news update was posted by Boak and Bailey, I rushed to their footnotes at Patreon which included this tidbit:

…we’re entering the era of ‘normalism’. People want to drink normal beer, in normal pubs or bars, while eating normal food, and wearing normal clothes… Perhaps because they don’t have the headspace to cultivate less mainstream tastes, or maybe because standing out as an individual feels like a dangerous business in 2025. Or just pointless. We keep seeing young couples dressed head to toe in formless matching beige.

I thought of that Monday evening when I saw a young man waiting for the lights to change, standing at an intersection in beige Sperry Top Sider clones. They had to be clones, right? I also thought of this when I read Jessica Mason‘s news about the recent rise in Heineken’s fortunes:

Speaking about the results, Heineken CEO and chairman Dolf van den Brink said: “In the first half, we delivered solid results as organic operating profit grew 7.4% as the operating margin expanded by 26 bps and net revenue increased 2.1%…” Highlighting the strides the business has made, van den Brink pointed out how Heineken’s “volume performance improved across all regions in the second quarter and continued to be of high quality… Describing how the company has achieved this, van den Brink explained: “Our advantaged geographical footprint helped us to adapt to ongoing macro-economic challenges which impacted consumer sentiment and expenditures.**

Is that so bad? Perhaps green is as much the new beige as beige is. Normal. Makes more sense than spinning in your sheets over and over thinking of all the coulda woulda shouldas. The trend is evident in the US craft scene as summarized by Keith Gribbins at Craft Brewing Business the other day:

The Brewers Association’s 2025 Midyear Report shows an industry still facing strong headwinds. Yet, pockets of growth remain — especially for the smallest on-site brewers. As of June 2025, 9,269 craft breweries were operating in the U.S. — down 1% from a year ago. Closures continue to outpace openings, led by a 3% decline in microbreweries. Taprooms dipped 1%, while brewpub and regional brewery counts remained flat. Craft beer volume also shrank. The BA estimates a 5% year-over-year decline in production.

Five percent cut in production in the last 12 months is not a “maturing” or any sort of “sideways” something. As one would say in my youth, the arse is out of it. Doug Veliky shared some thoughts about where those buyer might be heading and why the trip isn’t that difficult:

Low-dose THC beverages offer the same qualities that have made light beers, spritzes, and canned cocktails so popular. They are social, easy to enjoy, and deliver a consistent experience every time. Because these drinks are made to be consumed more than once in a sitting, they help establish rituals that lead to frequent, repeat purchases. Instead of being one-and-done, the format allows consumers to stack their way toward their preferred level of buzz.

So, craft may have lost its hook. By which I mean that idea of the ritual habitual. People are still doing things, sure. They’re just not doing those things because they now have the option to do these other things. Or is that the new habit? Being what B+B call normal. It might actually just mean not needlessly complex. Manufactured difficulty. Life’s hard enough without made up difficulties.

Note: not only do the top 40 breweries in the world not include much that can be called craft, onely one and a half seem to be American.

By way of comparison but really only as juxtaposition, Jeff continued his explorations into what makes a saison a saison, following up on his article on the style in Craft Beer & Brewing, illustrating once again that blogging about beer is always superior to the store bought stuff. I particularly liked how he moved the discussion from the romantic (ie lazy / fibby) explanation that saison is “something you feel” to getting to the elements of they stuff including the importance of a coarseness of character to the grains, as decoratively mentioned by Alex Ganum of Upright Brewing of Portland, Oregon:

Not sure if I ever shared this story, but back when we were running Old Salt, our hog rancher kept bugging me about using his triticale, which was the animal feed. He grew it himself and was proud of the quality, but I dismissed it early on thinking, ‘How good can animal feed be? ‘Well, that was dumb, because he eventually just dropped off a bag and it turned out to be incredible (which probably explained part of why his pork was delicious). So we asked him for a pallet and worked it into the Five for about a year or so.

Sixteen years ago, when I had the time to do so, when the kids were little enough that they couldn’t get too far, I grappled with the idea of these sorts of beers and their cousins, back when I could take a Saturday to contemplate such things in the shed. But that right there is as good an explanation as ever I’ve seen: beer made from bits fit for the livestock. Farm yard as much as farm house. Normal may not have time for farm yard.

Speaking of simple pleasures, Katie shared a lovely bit of recollection, a remembrance of Wetherspoons past involving herself and her staff access to discount chips:

When I worked at Wetherspoons many thousands of years ago, the one redeeming feature of the job other than the wage was access to a staff menu, off which we could also take a 50% staff discount. My favourite shift tea from this reduced selection of kitchen scraps was sausage and chips. It was not served with vegetables of any kind. A person can talk shit about Wetherspoons all day, and I will join in, but their chips have always been godly, the best of all the frozen chips. I am certain they are coated in semolina for extra crunch, leaving the centres fluffy and light. With mayonnaise, this dish, which cost me around £1.30 in 2008, was my favourite food. It didn’t make the pub I worked in any better, however. You can’t judge a pub by its chips—sometimes they are simply angels sent to soften the blow.

Normal likes chips and especially good discount chips. Quite right, too. Also alarmingly normal is Martin who has admitted to falling behind in his pub reporting and is trying to catch up which some of the highlights (*ahem*) of his continued touring:

Admit it, you’ve never heard of Cockerton, have you? Neither had I, even though this small Durham village is virtually contiguous (great word) with Darlington and only a few minutes from Piercebridge and my best-read blog post. And it’s got a free space for my campervan from which I can finish Durham’s Guide entries for another year. What Cockerton doesn’t appear to have is much actual character. though it does have excellent podiatry.

Note: at the Vytopna in Prague a little train set delivers your beer…

Finally and for the double, David Jesudason wrote the feature in Pellicle this week, the story of a thriving community pub at the edge of London that makes room for many and much:

Artist Neal Vaughan believes my snap judgment about Carshalton being a bit of a sleepy backwater is wrong. He explains how it’s a hub of creativity, which the Hope is at the centre of. Citing a memory from 2016, Neal recalls when Rodger encouraged him to set up Carshalton Artists’ Open Studios with all meetings and post-event drinks held in the pub. Tuesdays are described as a sacred weekday at the pub by Neal. It’s when folk musicians play an open session, board-game enthusiasts battle against each other at Scrabble, chess and Magic: The Gathering, and on occasion a leather maker taps away while seated on a chair. The pub even has a sailing crew that charters yachts, and when I visit they’re off for 10 days in the Adriatic.

There we are. The end of trends, the end of a week’s news and the end of the month. It’s sorta normal. And as the sands trickle on down in your personal hourglasses, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode three weeks ago!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*See also History of Tioga, Chemung, Tompkins and Schuyler counties, New York. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers at page 13: “The army was to march from their winter quarters on the Hudson to Wyoming; thence up the Susquehanna to Tioga, where another division, under General James Clinton, marching via Otsego Lake, after a diversion into the Onondagas country was to effect a junction, when the combined army, consisting of four brigades of infantry and riflemen, and a park of artillery, was to proceed through the valley of the Chemung; thence northward to Genesee River, destroying crops and houses and everything of value to the Indian as far as could be reached on either side of the trail of the army. The success of the expedition was most complete. Forty towns and more than 200,000 bushels of corn were destroyed, besides vast quantities of pumpkins, beans, melons, and other vegetables, and peach and apple orchards, and a most desolating march executed through the richest portion of the enemy’s country, with small loss to the invaders. Washington was afterwards called by the Indians Hano- dogarear, ” the town destroyer.”
**Oddly, The Independent reports Heineken has suffered losses in the first half of 2025. Who can you trust these days? Other than, you know, me.

The Session #149: Does Pub Food Exist For Me?

Don’t get me wrong. There are pubs in Canada. And there is food. But are the pubs and the food “pub food” in the same sense that David Jesudason has asked about for this month’s edition of The Session?

For the July edition of The Session I’m asking participants to write a blog, web post, newsletter (like this one) or even a SM thread on the subject of food in pubs. At the end of the month I’ll post a list of all the various links…. I encourage people to be critical, whimsical or celebratory. In fact, I hope they will be inspired by today’s format which will take one subject and then recommend a few good pub food options.

In Canada, you can find things called pubs but the function that pubs play in the UK is more often sucked up here by neighbourhood diners or a Tim Hortons, the coffee chain that sells hot brown liquid plus a sugary treat or quick sandwich. Despite their best efforts to redesign their spaces as grab and goes, Timmies and their competition are where people go to sit around and take a break. Without any booze.

What we do have are many sorts of places to write off an hour or an afternoon, place like bars that lean towards drinks other than beer, small town hotels and Legion branches with a few regulars, old school taverns that are focused on macro draft, craft brewery tap rooms and a version of a gastropub – which would never call itself that but which do have the telltale pricey menus and good beer. Sure, there are the rare places that are run by ex-pat Brits along with a few pre-packaged forumula pretendy pubs with a few Union Jacks and that one jar of Branston pickle that’s been in the fridge since 2012 but they aren’t really part of our actual culture.

Any one of these places just might have good food but, let’s be honest, that’s more the exception than the rule. You want good fish and chips? You go to a fish and chips place. You want a curry? You go to a restaurant run by newcomers who share the fabulous family food from their region back home. You may find a bottle Molson Canadian in the fridge or even one tap of a local small brewer’s most popular ale at any one of the sorts of spot but only if you are lucky. The best burger joint in my fair city doesn’t even have a liquor license.

My point? In large swaths of Canada there is still a distance between good beer and good food. Sure there are bright spots. The taverns of my Nova Scotian youth still seem to offer local offerings like steamed mussles or boiled dinner instead of french fries or a burger as a snack. And, pre-pandemic, some craft beer bars did move to adding a better sort of food service like a BBQ smoker, maybe on a trailer out in the parking lot. But these are not necessarily cheaper options. Not what I think of as pub food.

Which is the point for me. Pub food – food that hopefully isn’t microwaved gak that was a frozen brick seven minutes ago – should either be almost loss leader to keep the beers pouring or at least be priced below dining out. If you have one of those in your neighbourhood, lucky you. Otherwise, when you are out and about, your beer stops and you grub stops tend to be separate dots on the map.

Your Highly Organic Beery News Notes From The Backyard Raspberry Patch

Raspberries. I’ve let them run a bit wild but for about one week you get a pint or so every second day or so, coming in waves as long as the squirrels stay away… which they seem to be, thanks to the foxes. Speaking of pints, I bought beer last weekend. No, really. I haven’t really had much laying about time but I added to my tariff transition coping mechanism by buying a few cans of Miller High Life. Unlike Maker’s Mark and all the other bourbons*, you can actually buy Ontario-brewed Miller HIgh Life at the LCBO here without any accompanying pangs of disloyalty. An old pal, it was sorta not good on the first drink last Saturday afternoon but then – magically – it was quite quickly sorta not bad. I felt connected to something bigger.** Small pleasures.

Speaking of small pleasures, it’s also been a bit quiet on the beer writing scene. Very quiet. Is this what’s happening out there?

“Why are you banging your head against the wall?” asked Frog. “I hope that if I bang my head against the wall, it will help me to think of a story,” said Toad.

Never fear. It’s the end of the month this weekend so The Session is here. Hosted this month by David Jesudason who enticed and encouraged us all with his tale of an entirely foreign business model around my town:

I want to examine the growth of Yard Sale Pizza in London and what it says about the state of pubs in 2025. For those who have never experienced this recent phenomenon Yard Sale delivers to taprooms, pubs and bars around the capital in spaces that often don’t have a kitchen or can’t make selling food economical… The list of venues where you can use an app to get a pizza handed to your table is huge; I counted that Yard Sale is the only food option at a staggering 128 places. All of these 128 spaces tend to be indie and/or crafty…

Pubs with no kitchens meet a pizza chain with no retail face. Is that it? Me, I haven’t started writing but if I am honest I would likely fall into the equivalent of what looks like a gastropub as Laura discussed this week for What’s Brewing:

Since the term was coined in the mid-nineties, and popularised from the 2010s, I have sought to find the unicorn – a great pub with excellent beer and an uncommonly high level of food quality. There’s nothing wrong with standard pub grub, I enjoy it regularly, but sometimes I like a little bit of fancy. But finding a genuinely excellent example has been next to impossible, because I care about my beer. While there are many venues out there who offer an elevated menu, I have almost universally found their beer lists are distinctly lacking. You can have all of the locally foraged ingredients and nose-to-tail eating you want, but if you can’t choose a quality pint or bottle to pair with it, disappointment ensues.

That is actually not a problem we face over here as what were once probably called craft beer bars have often had a side of good food to meet the exactly need that Laura has identified.

What else is going on? Sticking with that fair city, Will Hawkes shared the August edition of London Beer City and included the news about another angle on selling good beer that I really hadn’t considered:

Stephen O’Connor, co-owner of the Green Goddess beer cafe and microbrewery in Blackheath, chuckles down the line as he discusses the significant intersection of beer and bus enthusiasm. “There should be a Venn Diagram of people who are into buses, people who are into beer, and people who turn up to events like the one we’re running this Saturday…” But isn’t it stressful driving a bus in London, anyway? “Well technically driving a bus is no harder than driving a car,” Stephen says, which may be true but I remain to be convinced. “The ones I drive are 30, 40, 50 years old, so they do tend to be a bit more challenging. But because you’re that bit higher, you can see what’s going on.”

I had never considered catering to bus enthusiasts. Mainly because I have never considered bus enthusiasm. We also learn from himself that the Dulwich Woodhouse has “unbelievably grumpy staff” and is expensive while The Alleyn’s Head is “a good-value option with a slightly oppressive atmosphere.”

Possible related complaint driven note from 1898: “… he is not likely to waste his time mixing freak drinks with flashy names…” Zing!!

Esquire magazine published a history of events leading to the collapse of Schlitz, the brewer careful readers will recall, which was still the #1 US brewery with 6.92% of the national market in 1956 before much changed.***

The year is 1965. Thirty-four-year-old Bob Martin relaxes in his high-backed leather chair and exhales with satisfaction. His office, perched within the imposing headquarters of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in downtown Milwaukee, hums with the quiet authority of power. As well it should for the guy who’s running the marketing department for “the Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous.” Schlitz is the second-largest beer empire in the world behind only Anheuser-Busch. And it is Martin’s playground, his kingdom to control. A secretary’s voice crackles through the intercom. “Mr. Martin, there’s an unidentified caller on the line. Won’t give a name. Says it’s urgent.” Martin frowns as he picks up the phone. A voice on the other end—flat, emotionless—says, “The baby has arrived and is doing nicely.”

The tale goes on to explain “It wouldn’t be the last time Martin used a fat stack of cash to cut a deal.” Hmm… in brewing? Whoever saw that coming?

Do you waste years of your life on social media reels watching people wander about Japan and finding cool places to eat? Me neither. But… I was moderately amused by this photo essay of the hunt for a beer garden on the roof of a multi-story car park in Tokyo:

He thought he might be imagining things, but once he got to the garage, there was indeed a giant banner advertising the “Tachikawa in the Sky Beer Garden.” He also spotted a few signs on the ground level doubly confirming the fact that beer and yummy things were just an elevator ride away… Next to the rooftop level button was a small visual for the beer garden. What exactly would be waiting for him when the door opened…? There was a particularly good-looking deal called the “Cheers! All-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink course.” For 90 minutes, you can have unlimited alcoholic drinks, soft drinks, and five kinds of food, all for only 2,580 yen (US$17) per person.

WIse choice. Probably. Not utterly dissimilar, as part of the response to tariffs, Canada is taking on the task of reorganizing the economy with new vigour, including removing interprovincial obstacles to the beer trade. Careful readers will recall the Supreme Court upholding their legality in 2018 but, now, even if they pass muster they aren’t passing the smell test according to CTV News:

All but one province, Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as the Yukon are on board. Some brewers, however, say the trouble of moving beer across borders outweighs the benefits. “It’s probably not something that we would look to offer in the near future, based on the logistical challenges and the costs of shipping,” said Jared Murphy, co-owner of Lone Oak Brewing Co. in P.E.I. Beer is heavy, shipping in bulk is pricey and ideally it should be kept cold. For small producers, those are bigger problems, Murphy said. However, the plan could create opportunities for transport companies, said Christine Comeau, executive director of the Canadian Craft Brewers Association. She doubts it will move the needle if costs stay high. “I don’t think that it’s going to be a huge kind of market opportunity for us,” she added.

An in their footnotes to their Saturday news update – a feature to which you really need to subscribe – Boak and Bailey admitted a very clear admission:

Oh, good – Pellicle has an article about beer this week, rather than wine or cider or sausages or something. To be clear, we applaud the range of stuff they cover, but we’re really only interested in beer for the purposes of the weekly round up.****

What!!! Sausages or something?!? How focused. I have never been accused of being particularly focused myself. So happy am I to see that Pellicle is well into the something zone care of Anaïs Lecoq with something of an almost eponymous topic:

Daniel Price thought the same the first time he tried Brets in London, and ultimately decided to stock it when he opened Two Sevens Deli in the Suffolk market town of Sudbury. “We have chicken and beef crisps here [in the UK], of course we do,” he says. “But there is something about Brets poulet braisé that tastes just like the crispy chicken skin, and it’s amazing. Even the côte de bœuf has got a slight char to it, a sweetness and a savoury quality. It tastes like it should.” If the chicken flavour actually tastes like chicken, a simple look at the ingredient list will tell you why: potatoes, sunflower oil, flavoring, salt, chicken meat powder.

Yum. I grew up in Nova Scotia where Roast Chicken chips which are forbidden to all other Canadians for some reason. If you are there and arriving here you will be packing Roast Chicken chips.

And there was some great reporting at the end of last week in the Financial Times on the financial mess that’s BrewDog which illustrates what I have long written about the idea of “independent” needs to dig into the debt obligations of breweries. Just look at the clarity concisely offered by the piece’s author, Dan McCrum, showing how BrewDog doesn’t really own BrewDog like you own that cat over there, given the 2017 deal with private equity outfit TSG Consumer Partners:

TSG ended up with 22.3 per cent of the company at an enterprise value of £895mn or, in dollar terms, a round unicorn billion… The change highlights the effect of the prefs’ entitlement to a compound annual return of 18 per cent at the moment of any sale, initial public offering, or liquidation, ahead of the other shareholders. BrewDog’s equity value had fallen to about £900mn, but TSG could then claim £520mn of that amount. The value of everyone else’s equity had fallen by three quarters. The theoretical value of the £213mn spent by TSG in 2017 has continued to grow at 18 per cent, passing the £800mn ($1.1bn) mark in April.

Eighteen Percent! Who borrows at eighteen percent??? I’ve had credit cards with lower rates of interest. Hmm… but in brewing? Whoever saw that coming? Relatedly perhaps… most likely I mean, Pub & Bar Magazine reports as follows:

Brewery and pub chain BrewDog has announced plans to close 10 of its bars as part of a strategic review of the business. In a note sent to staff today (22 July), CEO James Taylor says the decision was made to outline a more focused strategy, including the rationalisation of its bar footprint to focus on “destination hubs” (large-format, high-impact immersive venues) and “community bars” to drive long-term, profitable growth. “As part of this strategic review, we have made the decision to close 10 bars,” adds Taylor. “This includes some venues that are woven into our history, including Aberdeen, which was our first ever bar, and Camden, the first bar we opened in London….

And so it goes… while we wait on others to write more about the brewing trade, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode three weeks ago!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*From time to time I find myself being a little sad about the whole bourbon thing and then ask myself “who the hell gets sad about booze!?!“
**… and got to once again laugh at the idea circa 2011 of “Toronto beer celebrities“!
***Tremblay and Tremblay, page 69, table 4.2.
****What’s that? You think I am stretching for content this week? Me? And adding unnecessary footnotes, too? How dare you!!! At least I did’nt mention this.

Your Fascinating But Still A Bit Sticky And Humid Mid-July Beery News Notes

Summer. Heat waves. Heat warnings. Smoke warnings. Drought. We got it all. Including sugar snap peas. I’ve adoped the Canadian old fart posture this week, when facing a comment on the blistering sun, as I just reply “at least I ain’t shoveling it!” Which is, of course, hilarious. Roar! Tape me ribs! No wonder all of comedy in Hollywood is run by Canucks! The heat in England heat has even driven Boak and Bailey off the beer, according to themselves in their monthly supplement:

…we had some beer at home, so it wouldn’t be too bad, right? Except however much we chilled it, it never quite seemed to refresh us. After a couple of lagers we gave up and switched to iced water. Apparently our bodies were telling us to hydrate and beer, unfortunately, has very much the opposite effect. When we have made it to the pub during heatwaves, we’ve often found cask ale to be a write off. Partly because not all pub cellars are capable of withstanding extreme heat, and partly because people switch to lager leaving ale to lose its sparkle.

Reporting from a land more used to the stinking heat, Pellicle‘s feature this week is a feature by Ruvani de Silva on the Green Bench Brewery in St. Petersburg, Florida. Which is, of course, another part of American utterly infested with we Canadians including, twenty years ago, by my late parents who would occassionally lunch at the welcoming Don CeSar with other welcomed snowbirds from all over. Wasn’t always like that:

Rewind seventy years or so, however, and our experience of St Pete’s would have been very different. The Sunshine City might have been a holidaymakers’ paradise, but only if you were the right kind of visitor. The city’s unwritten law that people of colour were not permitted to sit on its famous green benches evidenced how St Pete’s did not escape Florida’s vicious segregationist policies of the time. This unofficial ordinance was more than simply a physical imposition—it was a restriction that entrenched systemic racism for generations of Black Floridians. It’s for the memory of this injustice that Khris Johnson, founding brewer and co-owner of Green Bench Brewing and Florida’s first Black brewery owner, chose to name his business.

Speaking of establishments, one of the swellest images that passed before my eyeballs this week was this one to the right. At first I thought it was a fire insurance map but there isn’t enough detail. It’s was posted at a local history group over on FB, Woodlesford and Oulton History, and seems to be a diagram that accompaned a 1933 planning application to update the New Masons in Oulton:

In October 1933 Fred applied to the Hunslet Rural District Council to make major alterations to the layout of the pub and add a new frontage and windows. The work involved knocking down part of the old front wall and fitting a rolled steel joist to support the upper floor. The new layout was then much the same as it remains today.

And here is the pub, still there. The photos help explain the map including the location of the fireplaces, the scale of the room. But the one thing I don’t understand is why the bar is in the passageway. Did you go there from one of the three rooms, get your pint and go back in to find your chair or was the passageway itself a drinking area? These are the things that haunt me.

In more somber news, we have received the sad news the passing of Jack McAuliffe. In remembrance, John Holl has republished a tribute from All About Beer from 2017 to the founder of the New Albion Brewery Company in California which opened in 1977. And Maureen‘s comment on BlueSky is a wonderful tribute that tells a lot about the man:

Ah. This saddens me. Not unexpected, but I’m sad i won’t see him again. He was hilarious, among other things. I was humbled by the fact that I was one of the very few people Jack likes and respected. That meant a lot to me. Godspeed, Jack.

Just two weeks ago, Gary shared an anecdote from the earliest days of Jack’s brewery which is worth revisiting to get a sense of how this brewer helped start the change that led on to micro and craft brewing working with very basic resources.

Stan has shared the latest edition of his Hop Queries and explained the dire situation facing hop growers in the Tasman region of New Zealand, including Brent McGlashen of Mac Hops:

“Statistically and visually, we hit above the 1 in 100-year flood level, with also highest ever recorded river flows in a number of parts in the Motueka river… Both our farms have water everywhere, fences with damage and some debris scattered around, but we are fortunate compared to others who have had significant damage and loss due to the flooding. Was this predicted, well yes it was. Forecasters said over 200mm and we sure got that. We have had a wet winter and the ground can’t absorb more so it has to go somewhere.” One hop farmer died as a result of the storm. Peter Lines was clearing flood damage from his property in Wai-iti, southwest of Nelson, when he was hit by a tree.

Rain came again the next week “leaving fields under water and dumping mud, gravel and sand on facilities that had just been cleaned up…”

Writing about disasters of the unnatural sort, The Beer Nut brought his lucidity to a review of an unknown Dutch brewery, to which he added a key question on BlueSky: “how long can a brewery keep up a sequence of nautical-themed beers flavoured with fruit syrup?” The answer is apparently “too long“:

My report card for Stadshaven says “must try harder”. A sampler pack of fruit syrup does not make for a vibrant range of modern beers, for one thing. I sense an ability to do plain-spoken beers quite well, testified by the red and blonde in particular. Whether the decision not to steer that course is a creative one or a management one, I cannot say. The low price point is very much in these beers’ favour, though I’m still not sure I got my money’s worth from them.

Speaking of the low, Matty C wrote for What’s Brewing on the most obnoxious retort around: “stick to…” with the line filled in by the obnoxious. In this case, it was about the position being taken him and by many other drinkers in the UK on the Palestinian-Israel war – and in doing so makes this very lucid argument:

In modern political discourse it’s perhaps the first approach to go out the window when things get a little spicy. But it is because of compassion, not malice or spite, that the volunteers of Trafford and Hulme CAMRA opted to have the donation box in the first place, and it is compassion that motivated attendees to make a donation as they leave. It is compassion that triggered the response from customers when they found out beer from breweries they admired were selling beer into a market they didn’t. And it is because of compassion that you’ll struggle to find Moor Beer on tap in Bristol at this very moment. It would be far easier, surely, to stick to beer, and leave the politics to the politicians. But in fact, sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is stick your head above the parapet and say, “I don’t think this is okay.”

Politics is for the people. All the people. No matter what the cause or the position, being active and acting on compassion is a good thing.

You know what also gets people losing their composure, their perspective? Beer glassware. Do you have a go to glass for beer? I do… well, one for inside and one for the yard. Kevin at Casket Beer advocated in favour of simplicity and recommended a basic four:

…while the shaker isn’t as bad as many make it out to be, it really shouldn’t be a major player either at a beer bar or your home bar. But having a respectable selection of glassware doesn’t need to break the bank or become unmanageable. There are four widely available glass styles that are affordable, cover a wide array of styles, and will satisfy the most discerning beer drinker. Here they are.

You can go see which four they were. Jeff then picked up the theme and advocated for one fewer: “Give me a mug, a goblet, and either a snifter or tulip—both is overly fussy… I like a handle, and I find a beer looks great when it’s in a wide vessel—the clarity and color is easier to see. Facets bedazzle and please me (recall, I am one of the few fans of glitter beer).” Wow. I was with him there until those two last words. Just… wow.

And staying with the wow,* Alistair has been staying (practically) true to his promise to bust his writer’s block by writing every day (almost) over at Fuggled. Wednesday’s story this week was about the Austrio-Hungarian schnitt of 1900:

The writer continues to berate their fellow German Austrians that a single “schnitt” fewer every day wouldn’t be so bad and that the savings would build up to a sizeable fund for civic associations tied to the ethnically German population of the Empire. And here we have again an example of the cross pollination of cultures that was Bohemia and Moravia in the 19th century, evidenced today through the use of a transliteration of “schnitt” into Czech, “šnyt” as the name for effectively a half pour of beer and lots of foam. “Schnitt”, if you know your German means “cut”, because it is a cut down pour of beer, that is “better than nothing”, at least according to Bohumil Hrabal, or was it Karel Čapek, when he wasn’t inventing the word “robot”?

And the colonial history of the beer gardens of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe was the subject of research for Prof Maurice Hutton of the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester who shared some findings for The Conversation:

The more picturesque beer gardens began to emerge in the 1950s, reflecting the developmental idealism of Hugh Ashton. The Lesotho-born anthropologist was educated at the Universities of Oxford, London and Cape Town, and took up the new directorship of African administration in Bulawayo in 1949. He was tuned into new anthropological ideas about social change, as well as developmental ideas spreading through postwar colonial administrations – about “stabilising” and “detribalising” African workers to create a more passive and productive urban working class. He saw a reformed municipal beer system as a key tool for achieving these goals. Ashton wanted to make the beer system more legitimate and the venues more community-building. He proposed constructing beer garden complexes with trees, rocks, games facilities, food stalls and events like “traditional dancing”. So the atmosphere would be convivial and respectable, but also controllable, enticing all classes and boosting profits to fund better social services. As we shall see, this strategy was full of contradictions…

Finally, like you, I am a regular reader of the Greenock Telegraph the newspaper of record of my paternal peeps. This week they publised an editorial from by the local member of the Scottish Parliament Stuart McMillan on alcohol in the workplace:

Too often there is a conception that people living with drink dependency can’t hold down a job – but when one in four people in the UK worry about their drinking, it’s clear this is a myth. I’m not suggesting 25 per cent of the adult population in the UK have an alcohol addiction. However, these figures indicate that increasing numbers of people are concerned about the impact alcohol has in their lives… For most of us, though, we don’t need specialist support. But we do need to be more open about how alcohol impacts us, and try to foster healthier habits. The popularity of alcohol-free products shows that many people are looking for alternatives – whether that’s alcohol-free beer, wine, spirits or mocktails. Locally, one idea that has been suggested to me is a ‘sober bar’ – which would give people a place to go that feels like a pub, but without the presence of alcohol.

I decided to include this piece not because I agree or disagree. Not even because health and booze is always a worthwhile conversation. But… I can’t imaging a Canadian politician writing this. Because I can think of many other alternatives to alcohol which include, say, playing a banjo or reading a book or going for a walk or staring at a bird in a tree or making a pot of tea – none of which need to simulate the drink or the pub. Which is one of my things about pricy NA not-booze. Just go for a soda. We even have a song about it.

So there you are. Staring at the little screen in your hand as the A/C hums. Until the weather breaks, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they are back every month! The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago. The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs!

*Forced, I know. I’ll try to do better. My footnote game isn’t the best either. It’s the heat. Well known fact. Asides suffer in the summer. Researchers are on it.

Are These Beery News Notes About The Here And Now Or The There And Then?

Summer shouldn’t be when peas take off around here but a regular dousing of cold watering plus seed stock bought from further south than usual seems to have done the trick. That’s a purple velvet Magnolia Blossom pea tip just about to burst. I really don’t concern myself whether it’s going to be tasty or not if it all looks that good. Rabbits? You ask about the rabbits? Well, suffice to say the foxes that moved into the neighbourhood have culled the squirrels… but rabbits? Some radical chicken wire applications have been applied. Treatments which offer fewer treats. Rabbits? Hah!!

Speaking of me and mine, I can’t let the week pass without mentioning a visit by ferry to a really great bar restaurant called Spicer’s Dockside Grill on Wolfe Island just off of my fair city. The place even have a cabana style bar on a dock right where the Great Lakes meet the great St. Lawrence River. A fabulous spot. I’m sharing below a few thumbnails circa 2011 style. I hope they render for you as they render for me… which is essentially the Bloggers’ Prayer, innit. Click for bigger and clearer views.

Back in the basement, on Monday Stan got me thinking. It’s not often that I admit to thinking but Stan did it. He went and got me thinking this very week about times gone by. Because he quoted a piece about the beginning of blogging that diverged from my understanding. It wasn’t gatekeepers and curators. It was hawkers, carnies even shouting “hey look at this… I have no idea what it is but it’s all free!” But these things happen. Time shapes the past. And the beginnings of blogging are events from over thirty years ago, half my life ago. It was 9/11 that really caused the broader introspection on display that fed the hobby I kept up with this here site, now about twenty-two and a half years in operation. That is a bit of a thing. So as we move forward again through the beery news note trust me on this one point: not curated, just gathered and dumped at your feet.

Next up, I came across this excellent explanation of the role and the value of a sommilier by Michele Garguilo that I am not sure quite entirely translates to beer given the scale of markups – except perhaps at the taproom:

The myth persists that a beverage director is a high-ticket hire, a luxury reserved for Michelin stars and major market darlings. But what if I told you that a skilled somm can turn your backstock into liquid gold? That we can reduce spoilage, increase check average, and train your servers to sell smarter in under a month? That our average salary is less than your linen bill, but our impact reaches every guest, every night? We manage theft, negotiate prices, find off-label steals that taste like first growths. We’re part strategist, part magician. But because we don’t always wear chef coats or burn ourselves on the line, we’re treated as “nice to have.” Meanwhile, we’re making you 10–30% in beverage profit on every ticket. You don’t need to afford a sommelier. You need to afford not having one.

I mention that about taprooms given, as I hope you know, the 1987 article in The Atlantic called “A Glass of Handmade” by William Least Heat Moon. It was, personally speaking, a highly influential take on the contemporary micro brewing scene which can be now found at page 31 in the compilation of his essays Here, There, Everywhere. Therein at page 51, Bill Owens of Buffalo Bill’s Brewpub is quoted as saying:

My cost to make a glass of lager – and that’s all I brew now – that lager cost seven cents. I sell it for a dollar and a half.

Speaking of value, Laura has had another fine set of reviews published in The Telegraph and, once again, provided clear guidance on the value proposition:

The light red beer looks attractive but I found the flavour sickly like melted down gummy bears. It suggests watermelon but is too sweet to be refreshing. No thanks.

Fabulous. If someone never tells you what is bad, you really can’t trust their opinion on what is good.

Still… I do get pushed around. All the time. I’m used to it so it’s no big whoop but this week the powers that be behind DC Beer “recommended” that I consider share this tale by Andy MacWilliams on the 60 hours he and herself spent in Italy:

Having been to more than 80 countries and having sought out craft beer in all of them, the Italian scene seems dialed in. Sure, I avoided the obvious potholes, like the one or two smoothie sours I saw on menus. As I reflect on everything I sampled, only one item was bad. Everything else was either true to style or uniquely Italian. Most offerings honored tradition, even the new school traditions. Those that didn’t felt like they embraced the unique agricultural ingredients Italy has to offer. I suppose I’m slightly impressed. Very few things are truly worth the wait, but Fortunata is. Deirdre has the classic ragu while I get one of the dishes they are known for, carbonara. Savoring a bite of mine, Deirdre wonders what makes the carbonara so creamy, which I assume is roughly 17 egg yolks.

That is a lotta yolk. A whole lotta yolk. Conversely, somethings are less. I’ve mentioned before how Canada has cut US wine imports as a “thanks but no thanks” to the orange glow to the south – now looking like a mind boggling 97.2% drop from May 2024 to May 2025 – but what does that looks like in terms of the internal market? Robyn Miller of the CBC reports:

“Ontarians are increasingly committed to buying local and Canadian products,” an LCBO spokesperson said in a statement. “VQA wine (made from 100% Ontario-grown grapes) has seen a sales increase of over 60%, with VQA reds and whites seeing growth of 71% and 67% respectively, and VQA sparkling wine growing by +28%.” From the beginning of March until early June, total wine sales dropped by 13 per cent, the LCBO added.

Which is nice. No jingoism is better than clinky drinky jingoism.

And Matty C cleared himself for takeoff in this week’s feature at Pellicle with a portrait of the White Peak Distillery in Ambergate, Derbyshire – yes, English whiskey makers! Check it out:

As of May 2025, around 2,700 barrels are in-situ at White Peak Distillery. It has since added a second core bottling, a full maturation ex-bourbon barrel English single malt, alongside its Shining Cliff Gin and White Peak Rum. It also regularly releases limited, often more experimental whisky bottlings, from a full port barrel finish, to showcasing heritage barley varieties, and even collaborations with local breweries for which barrels have been swapped and shared. It was on hearing about the latter that I decided to visit White Peak and meet Max and Claire, before leaving with a sense this might be one of the most exciting distilling projects in the country—full stop.

I would note that the “e” should only be dropped for Scotch… and maybe Canadian rye. But I won’t because that wouldn’t be nice. (Maybe even incorrect. But I will not be moved.) I would also note – and actually will note – that Derbyshire should be an excellent spot for this sort of thing as 350 years ago it was the hot spot in England for malt production and strong ale brewing, as careful readers of the archives will recall.

What else? As noted by B+B in their handy dandy footnotes, Mike Seay has shared a bit of slang that is worth remembering:

I ordered a couple of light lagers at Out Of The Barrel the other evening. I didn’t really want to, but they were near 4% and that is what I was after – keeping my wits about me while still enjoying a beer. It’s harder to find low ABV Ales than it is Lagers, which sucks for me. But I will manage. That brings me to this, something I like to call: slow roasting a beer. This is one of the new things I am learning as a single dude sitting at the bar. A guy with nowhere to be and not enough money to keep drinking whatever I want. I have to become better at milking a beer. You get to stay longer without spending more money. It’s camping at the bar.

In my day, that was called rotting. Rotting in a tav. Somewhat connected is the trepedation felt by at the US wholesale beer buying market, even in the lead up to last week’s Fourth of July, as reported by Beer Marketers’ Insights:

…looking ahead to the “last week of pre-holiday” data (thru Jun 29), Circana evp of bev alc Scott Scanlon “would expect to see at a minimum stability across [alc bev] categories with potential build as we head into holiday week data results,” he wrote in latest update. Gotta note, beer’s going up against particularly easy comps in Circana MULC for the last week of Jun due to calendar timing of last yr’s stock-up for July 4 holiday shifting into Jul: beer $$ slipped 11% with volume down 13% for 1 wk thru 06-30-24 vs yr ago. “Given poor Memorial Day performance all eyes will be on the 4th of July to see if we can recapture lost sales,” Scott underscored.

Recapturing lost sales is never going to happen. Doubling up on the second national binge when the first was a dud requires a doubled binge. Perhaps a replication of the “FESTIVAL!!!” on Star Trek’s “Return of the Archons“! A pop culture reference no doubt drilled into each of your minds. Which, given the times, is not outside the realm of the possible now that I think of it.

Speaking of flops, consider this article in VinePair on Enigma a long lost beer produced by Guinness from 1995 to 1998. The TV ads that ran for it for the first few months could well be one of the reasons it was no great success:

To promote the release, Guinness tapped Parisian advertising agency Publicis Groupe, and the resulting campaign featured a dream-like, surrealist TV ad depicting a man walking through a shapeshifting desert before being offered “a glass of the unusual” by a dapper server. The drinker remarks that the beer is “very smooth,” and then the server turns into a Dali-esque piano and vanishes in a burst of flames. Lastly, the words “a lager born of genius” slide onto the screen in the final few frames… Rather than spend more money on advertising or reformulating the product, Guinness simply dropped the price of the beer, making it more affordable, but also damaging its image as a premium offering.

As an interesting juxtaposition – purely for educational purposes – here is a bit of current writing in the trade pep rally style that really got my head shaking this week:

A couple weeks ago, I laid out how Japanese culture is influencing a wide range of U.S. beverage categories, from beer to canned cocktails, and more than a few things in between. Since then, the pace of new launches and collaborations hasn’t slowed, it’s accelerated. What started as a snapshot is now beginning to feel like a full-blown movement. So here’s a fresh batch of recent releases and observations that continue to borrow from Japan, whether through ingredients or origin stories. Some are subtle nods, while others are straight-up love letters.

Wowsers. I’ve often wondered how this sort of thing and its kin damage the understanding of the actual factors facing brewers in this downturn. Irrational exhuberance. Isn’t this sort of reporting out of the Adnams Annual General Meeting (AGM) by Jessica Mason ultimately more helpful even if the message is a bit of a tough one?

As confirmed in the Southwold-based pub, beer and spirit company’s statement ahead of its AGM, Adnams was able to reduce its level of debt over the previous 12 months and has lowered its borrowings by a further £7 million compared to June 2024. Despite these accomplishments its current debt, however, still stands at £11.5 million… db has contacted Adnams urging the business to offer more information on its proposed route out of the situation it finds itself in and how it will navigate the debt pile… Hanlon insisted that “the board of Adnams, and those who work throughout our business, are focused on delivering with openness and transparency as we move ahead in the second half of 2025″. Despite these claims, the company has remained silent on questions over how it is reducing costs and also how it will secure funds to avoid either sale or closure.

No exhuberance there, rational or irrational. Like the discussion of sommeliers as value proposition, the drilling into a brewery’s financial statements is a great way to get past the spin to find out where things actually stand.

And that’s it for now. If I cast my eyes up, I see that there was a lot about veracity and value. I trust my own part in this bears some resemblance to both. Until we meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they are back every month! The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago. The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

The Thursday Beery News Notes For That Lull Between Canada Day And The Fourth Of July

Living on a border makes you aware of the similarities and differences. Even when the border gets more opaque than usual. As illustrated, we saw musketeers but in red and green not the more often seen blue. Most years, especially when the fourth of July falls on a Friday, I’d have gotten my butt down in a seat at the Syracuse Mets AAA stadium, eating a snappy griller white hot, watching the game then sticking around for the fireworks. Not this year. Due to… conditions. So maybe this Canada Day 2025 last Tuesday was a bit more noted and acted upon. We took in a parade even. One with reenactors with muskets. Then we made burgers.

Speaking of… conditions, I really like this bit of thought on meaning of the stubby and its effectiveness as an economic tool:

By 1962, the year after the stubby was introduced, Canada’s Big Three brewers controlled about 95 per cent of the Canadian beer market… When the stubby was made a packaging requirement for all beer sold at its stores in Ontario, Thompson argues, the Big Three effectively locked all foreign brewers out by creating an extra hurdle for entry into the market. “To bottle in the stubby, [American brewers] are going to have to make their own line at their plant to bottle specifically for Ontario,” she said, noting any cost savings for American brewers through the reusable stubby would be eaten up in transportation costs by first shipping the beer to Canada then shipping it back the U.S. for a refill.

PS: a Caeser is better than a Bloody Mary. Fact.

Gary shared a great record of the earliest days of US micro at the end of last week that he found in in the “Golden State Newsletter” column in the Nov-Dec 1979 edition of the Beer Can Collectors New Report found at the Internet Archive. That’s a snippet of the text to the right. I like the live action detail of the first encounter at New Albion:

Greg entered the barn and was surprisingly greeted by three bustling employees involved in 20th Century brewing efficiency: After labels were scraped off what appeared to be recycled Schlitz and Bud bottles, they were washed and singularly hand filled at one tap. The bottles were then hand capped and placed in cases. Boxes of Ale, Stout and Porter stood ready to be loaded onto a used Dodge pick-up truck and delivered world wide. Greg spoke to the Brewmaster (bottle filler). This informative fellow mumbled something about being retired from the Navy, liking to drink ale, and not having time to talk. Greg left.

Lovely vignette. And there’s an interesting note on the state of US drinking trends on the next page: “When color TV became a standard fixture in the home, beer drinking moved out of the bar and into the family room. Two-thirds of all beer is consumed at home—that’s 16 million six-packs a day.” This all speaks to the point made last week about the loss of reliable records – but also shows how there is still good stuff to be found.

What else is going on? Well, Laura published a great roundup from the June edition of The Session last weekend. Plenty of good reading there. David Jesudason is covering the editorial duties for July and Joey at Beer In The City is our host for August.

You think beer has it bad in terms of slumping sales? Look at this chart from the American Association of Wine Economists describing the rise and slump of wine consumption in China over the years 1994 to 2024. Consumption is now below 1995 levels. Mirrors the slump in new home sales there. Makes sense. And that slump in beer has been described in a form worth sharing:

…the industry faces threats from ”sheep, parasites and wolves,” a reference to the way former Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive Doug Ivester once described competition in the soft-drink industry in the early 1990s. “For the beer industry, spirits are wolves, winning share of throat and now pushing more directly into beer occasions with ready to drink,” the analysts said. “Energy drinks are parasites, successfully using beer distribution as a platform to sell to soft drink companies. Beer players are sheep, ceding customers and attention while beer consumption continues to decline.”

Note: lager larks. And another note about a visitor to a pub caught my eye this week, a visit in this case that took place in 1789* that still resonates today in a particular part of the world where my geneologicals place one quarter of my genomics:

When Scotland’s national bard stopped off for a drink in Sanquhar, there was only one place he found acceptable. Robert Burns liked the inn run by Edward Whigham so much that he immortalised it in verse, with At Whigham’s Inn, Sanquhar. The prominent property in the heart of the south of Scotland town has become much less welcoming in recent years and has fallen on hard times. However, the local community has now stepped in with the hope of bringing the building back into use – with a nod to the poet who found it such a pleasant hostelry.

I found this bit of social science interesting but not, to be honest, convincing. If, as we saw above, the new fangled colour TV was another nail on the coffin of the US neighbourhood bar circa 1979, are pub crawls in the UK really going to rescue of the industry today? Here’s a clip from the study’s abstract itself:

Pub crawls are a phenomenon which are part of the hospitality sector and contribute to consumer experiences within the Night Time Economy. We show the current state of knowledge in this immature field via a Systematic Literature Review methodology. Building on this we provide a novel theoretical typology of pub crawl classification based on levels of organisation, supervision/accompaniment and geography. Highlighting the processional nature of pub crawls, where consumers move through multiple individual contexts and as a spatially embedded hospitality experience, we delineate the experience into antecedents, processes and outcomes. Our analyses lay foundations for further fine-grained theorisation.

So… more of an invitation for further investigations. Less compelling was the survey discussed in Decanter, another effort to explain away the younger set not being the boozers their parents were:

Gen Z is known for turning up its nose at alcohol, but more young adults in this group may now be enjoying a drink, according to an international survey by drinks industry research group IWSR. In March 2025, 73% of Gen Z adults said they had consumed alcohol in the previous six months, found the IWSR Bevtrac survey. That’s up from 66% when the same question was posed two years ago. IWSR said its Bevtrac survey included legal-drinking-age adults in 15 markets and defined Gen Z as up to 27 years of age. In the 2025 survey, 70% of Gen Z respondents in the US said they had drunk alcohol in the past six months, up from 46% in 2023.

It would be very helpful if the methodology for these sorts of stats wasn’t (i) a self-declaration about (ii) something you did once maybe in the last half year. A generation that has a drink a few times a year is not going to be the savior for anything more than pub crawls could be. Aside from the “rootin’ for booze” bias, isn’t the real story still that this story isn’t really a story?

Speaking of non-story, Alistair is in a rut but he is going to work himself out of it:

…here is my crazy idea, I am just going to write whatever random boozy thoughts pop into my head each and every day for the rest of July, including when I am in Florida on vacation. Maybe I will find something new in the Austrian newspaper archive that I love to trawl, maybe it will be a few lines of total tosh that just needs someone to comment that I am completely wrong, or right, or that you’ve been feeling the same but unable to say it. Maybe I won’t stress myself out…

The story about Justin Hawke semi-formerly from Moor is odd and, I’m going to admit, made up of threads some of which are outside of my regular reading. But nothing was missed about the “intent” that was meant. Apparently things were known for years but now ties have severed and attendees cancelled and it all reminds me, also oddly, of Rod Stewart… who also was at Glastonbury. UPDATE: see Boak and Bailey’s on the ground reporting.

And over at Pellicle, Katie has published a story on the wines of Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands:

I head across town to Vinoteca Con Pasión, which has the largest selection of Canarian wine in the region. Thankfully, most are available by the glass from the shop, or from the restaurant next door. It’s from here that I buy a bottle of Listán Blanco pét-nat, made by La Orotava winemaker Dolores Cabrera… Her wines named La Araucaria are her most expressive—bottles made exclusively with indigenous Listán Negro or Listán Blanco grapes, from vines between 50 and 100 years old. Her vines are also trained in the cordón trenzado method, trailing long, woven tails across the breadth of her personal sections of paradise.

This is interesting for anyone who has spent a part of their life poring over newpaper notices and other documents from the 1600s and 1700s looking for beer references as “Canary wine” is another product you see regularly referenced. The wines of those times could well have borne a strong resemblance to what Katie experienced today. Though there are clear suggestions of the old stuff being heavy and sweet and boozy.

The New York Times in its Wirecutter column presented a set reasonable arguments from reasonably well informed people for the Teku beer glass… with an interestingly blunt conclusion:

All that said—and as we found in our own tests — most people probably won’t be able to detect significantly more flavors and aromas when they drink a beer out of a Teku compared with other glassware. It takes years of experience and training to develop that much nuance in your senses of smell and taste. But you might notice some subtle improvements while appreciating the other benefits of the glass, such as its versatility and good looks.

So my Mason jar habit remains a solid option. Speaking not of which, was it in a biography of Vita Sackville West that I read the comment from some member of the English aristocracy that he didn’t understand the Great War given all the customers from Germany who were being killed. Are the Trump immigration orders causing an analogous effect?

“A lot of Hispanic consumers are apprehensive to leave their house or … deviate from their routine or go out,” Dave Williams of Bump Williams Consulting told Yahoo Finance. “That results in fewer opportunities and occasions where beer would slot into the mix.” “The abruptness of this slowdown … makes me feel like there’s a lot more of it tied to the cyclical aspect of these consumer behaviors due to the recent ICE raids or deportation scares, whether you’re legal or not … that’s on top of the other structural aspects that beer brands in general,” Williams added.

Well, there you go. We started at the northern end of the current… conditions and ended up at the south. These are the times. As you contemplate that… again… please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? 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 wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! 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. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but, hmm, they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago. The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

*That’s a nice bit of verse: Envy, if thy jaundiced eye / Through this window chance to spy / To thy sorrow thou shalt find / All that’s generous, all that’s kind / Friendship, virtue, every grace / Dwelling in this happy place.