Category: Health

Your Fascinating Yet Exhausting Election Spree Beery New Notes For A Thursday

What a week! Voting seems to be the trend these days. There was Alberta’s referendum, then British Columbians gave the boot, Brazil didn’t, Serbia did, Ontario’s municipals were a bootfest and the tie of some sort in Israel in the books with the world waiting for the results of the US mid-terms before next Thursday.  Change or at least progress seems to be a theme so far. Progress is a handy phrase given its meaninglessness. Sorta like IPA. On the bigger picture, the other theme might be the failure of social media influencer expertise. Which, as a web scribbler, is very disconcerting. We have needs, too! But everyone else might sigh “finally… know your place!” [As my late mother would often say. Especially to me.] But getting back to the point, as shown above Bulgaria also had the first round of its national elections last Sunday, with at least one beer related incident:

The chairman of a section election commission in the village of Izgrev, Tsarevo municipality, was removed after an investigation following a report that he had shown up for work in an intoxicated state. The report was filed by phone. According to him, the man was under the influence of alcohol while transporting the commission members to the section. During the inspection, the Burgas Regional Election Commission found that the chairman was behaving relatively inadequately and showing disinterest in the election process. The inspectors also found that he had brought alcohol into the section’s premises – a two-liter beer in his luggage. During the conversation with him, a characteristically slurred speech was noticed. As a result, the chairman was dismissed, and a new chairman was appointed in his place.

Whew! No need of that. What else is going on? Well, care of Nigel we read that there has been an advance in the understanding of hops out of New Zealand:

Complementary sensory analysis was conducted using a sorting task with descriptors to evaluate similarities and differences in aroma perception. Hop samples from different farms exhibited distinct volatile profiles, demonstrating chemical differences among growing locations and highlighting the potential for origin authentication. Variable identification analysis identified compounds strongly correlated with specific farm origins, with patterns differing between cultivars, highlighting the significant influence of genetics. Sensory results showed that panellists perceived differences and described hops of the same cultivar differently depending on farm origin. 

I wonder if Stan has more on the implications? He does! Right there in his latest edition of Hop Queries:

One of the premises behind this recently published research article…is something I haven’t seen suggested before. The authors write, “Given rising prevalence of food fraud, particularly geographic origin fraud, the NZ hop industry may be a target for fraud” (because New Zealand cultivars are highly prized). 

Holy hop fraud fears!!! Makes sense. If something is definitively from there, it can’t be from here.. or over there. Speaking of Stan, is there a correllation between bad parents in pubs and objections to identifiying NA beer as… NA beer? Perhaps the wailings of the immature? Not sure.

Speaking of taking control of one’s environment*, Anthony Gladman has written about the usefulness of scoring guides in judging contexts. That’s his own version there to the right which he describes thusly:

Ladies and gentlemen, here it is, my gift to you to take away and use in your own life: the International Gladman Scale of Satisfaction — or IGSS for short. Unlike the tier lists of this world, which claim or imply objectivity, the IGSS doesn’t pretend to tell you how good something is. Instead it is based entirely on how the thing made you feel. Yet it’s precise about the difference between, say, merely nodding to yourself and feeling inspired to tell someone else about the experience you’ve just had. To me, that’s the most honest way to go about it.

I like it. I would recommend you adopt this sort of thing in combination with the AGBB certified personal tasting form as well as your own graphical representation of brewing history. For, as we all know and Epictetus taught:

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Some sad news.  The foundational Vermont Brew Pub is closing after 38 years as reported by WCAX:

 Vermont’s oldest craft brewery announced its closure on Monday. “Since 2020, we’ve struggled to get back to the level of business that is necessary to sustain our operation, and unfortunately we just don’t have the resources to hold out any longer for that day to come,” they said in a post on Instagram. It comes as downtown Burlington businesses battle with declining visitors. This summer, The Vermont Pub & Brewery told WCAX that foot traffic was down 20% from last year. The brewery first opened in 1988. They say their last full day of service will be Saturday, November 14.

That up there a picture of me in younger and certainly prettier days back in 1992 where I am sporting the brewery’s t-shirt a day or two after a stop at the place. I remember having a bottle of Brazilian black lager there a couple of years before that. It was always a very handy landmark on the map for trips between Ontario and the old homeland of Nova Scotia back when, you know, one cut the corner across New England. Sad to see it go even if that trip isn’t made so much these days.

Similarly speaking, Gary shared his keen-eyed recollections of his visit to the Coach and Horses, Greek Street, Soho in London in remembrance of pubman Norman Balon who passed on at 99 in June this year:

He was best known for his persona of the rude and braying landlord, although many have said it was not the real man, but a pose. I think years ago here I mentioned my Balon story, but if I did I’ll say it again. I first went in, probably in the late 1980s, when the saloon bar was set up for lunch (main floor, not upstairs where the Private Eye gang met). He would sit in the corner, at the saloon end, and I spoke to him. He was gracious enough, my story was I had read about him in journalism by the great beer writer Michael Jackson. He seemed aware of the publicity, and said something about Americans coming in who also read Jackson. I think I said too I really liked the Burton Ale at the bar, and he smiled at that, knowing its quality of course.

I have avoided all the Halloween hoopla so far but Pellicle, like Gary above, has published a piece by Millie Milliken which starts a remembrance of a landlord who has left us then opens into a consideration of wakes in pubs:

…their role in the act of remembrance goes further than the ghosts that are said to haunt them. The Coroners Act of 1846 decreed that dead bodies were to be taken to the nearest public house and stored until an inquest could be held or a funeral arranged. This seemingly bizarre practice came at a particularly devastating time in Ireland, which was seeing an increase in deaths from the Great Hunger. When mortuaries were overwhelmed, the cooling beer cellars of a pub were the next best thing.  “Irish wakes have gone through lots of changes,” explains Cliona Purcell, head of curation at Waterford Treasures, which counts the Irish Wake Museum as one of its kookier offerings. “One of them was the use of the pub.” While more traditional wake customs revolved around the home—customs which still exist, to some extent, in the countryside today—the pub’s role eventually extended beyond housing the bodies. They started hosting the wakes, too. 

Interesting! On the topic of mortality, here’s a new booze and health study** that’s going to make every beer trade friendly commentator become an instant expert in anatomical pathology and other medical specialities:

Even low beer/cider consumption was associated with elevated cancer mortality. Alcohol intake from spirits at low or combined moderate-to-high levels was linked to greater all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality were noted with low wine intake; meanwhile, high wine intake was associated with increased cancer mortality. Moderate or low red wine intake was associated with lower all-cause, CVD, and other-cause mortality, but high red wine intake was linked to higher all-cause and cancer mortality. 

Beer? No thanks! Pass the Bordeaux, buddy! Now… here’s some notes!

Note #1: Hadn’t known I’ve occasionally “ligged” until now.
Note #2: flashback to brewery and maltster fires of yore.
Note #3: Jeff talks about the weather – and it ain’t right.
Note #4: When Teds Roamed The Earth.

BREAKING! Ray (he a B of B+B) had that Allsopp IPA all the cool kids were talking about last week:

…the real star of the afternoon was Allsopp’s IPA on cask at The Kings Head. It’s very like Bass – clearly a cousin or sibling. But, perhaps because of the excellent condition in which it was served, or that controversial ‘inspired by’ historic recipe, had more marmalade and more zing altogether. We hope to see it around again. (Although someone in the pub was grumbling that “it’s not really, technically, what I’d consider an IPA…”.)

Zing! We approve. Yet… IPAs. Again. Is there a more wasted term in beer? Elsewhere… is David OK? I think he’s OK. But he’s wondering if he’s OK:

I come to consciousness. I can barely breathe. The room is dark but loud. There’s no dog. No family. I begin to panic. I’m in a hotel in Belgium, I think. The space is filled with the clinking of crystalline Church bells which are rung every 15 minutes – I have a flashback to buying a drink whenever I heard them yesterday. I eat breakfast. I drink coffee. I pretend to be normal among the elderly guests at the hotel. No one speaks English around me which is helpful because they could be speaking about me. Or is that the hangxiety? I can walk to the brewery from here. It’s OK. I can style it out when I’m there – after all I’m here for three days and this is my only real obligation.

A bit further to the east, I think Barry is OK. Probably. At least he’s been busy. First he helped identify the trees in an unorganized orchard:

Ok, doing something nice and useful. Last year, an old chap near Waldürn asked me to help identify the pears in a collection that was planted about 20 years ago. They never mapped what they planted 🤦‍♂️ I’ve assembled info on all the varieties I know they had available to plant, so making a folder.

Then he realized that he may have forgotten his own implicit access to another patch of pears:

…I thought it was just for one year, a year they didn’t have time to harvest apples to make their own juice. So for years I’ve been walking by these trees, which includes a magnificent Perry pear tree at the back, wishing I could still take some of that fruit. For years, I have been bringing a case of cider to the owners during harvest time, as we harvest from trees right beside their house. Trees that don’t belong to them, but used to, so it felt right. Now I realise they probably thought I was bringing the cider as a thank you for these other trees…

How many times have I said it: clarify your orcharding rights!! Speaking of clarifications, history fans should take note that tomorrow Friday at lunchtime UK time there is a Zoom by actual expert Dr. Amy Burnett on her PhD thesis that’s bound to be well worth watching:

On Friday 30th October at 12:15pm UK time, I’m giving an overview of my PhD thesis (on women’s work in 17th century English alehouses) for the @drinkingstudies.bsky.social Women and Alcohol cluster! All welcome. 

Here’s the link to the event and here is the contact for the Drinking Studies group. And remember the aysmetrical North Atlantic clock changing reality of this week!  I encourage such things as I have recently done the same sort of thing no doubt at a lesser level. Here’s the PowerPoint presentation for my recent dog and pony show to five paying audience members on the topic “Brewing and Drinking: Kingston 1790-1867“. AKA “spruce Beer Yuk!” Let me know if you can make that link work. I can’t. Hang on… so, if you click here and click again on that page… it appears to download.*** I trust the link provided by Dr. Burnett will be simpler!

More health news! In The Telegraph we read that Heineken has developed a strategy to cope with the effect of the adoption weigh loss medicines like Ozempic and Wegov amongst the drinking public:

Heineken has urged pubs to serve more half-pints as the growing popularity of weight-loss jabs threatens beer sales. The Dutch brewing giant has warned landlords that traditional drinking sessions where people enjoy several pints could become rarer as millions turn to appetite-suppressing medication. It has advised pubs and bars to prioritise smaller drinks, low-alcohol beers and smaller portions to avoid losing customers. According to a presentation seen by Reuters, Heineken warned hospitality businesses that medicines such as Ozempic and Wegovy could reduce demand for beer and cider by making drinkers feel fuller and less inclined to order food and drink.

Other maco brewers are not necessarily following in step. I am not sure that selling less is a means to increase sales but, yes, one must do what one must do. Speaking of which, ATJ has been down the pub and, speaking of sales, seems to have encountered something between a pawn shop and a hoarder’s home:

I was at the Peyton Arms in the North Oxfordshire village of Stoke Lyne, where the barroom was a feng shui nightmare, a clutter of photos, books, signs, beer mats and whatever took the landlord’s fancy. He was called Mick the Hat, grey mutton chop whiskers framing a kindly face, and yes he wore a hat, and all this jumble seemed to fit. ‘All the bric a brac here is my own work,’ he told me, ‘I like it because it is like there is something you will see and something you will miss. It is like coming into your own front room and I like people to feel homely. It works and when we came here there was nothing, but it is now chockablock. I also like cobwebs and Boris the spider, so everything is here as it should be.’

Sounds… hard to dust. And finally, out in the wider world of clinky drinky scribbling, results have been released by the org that defies acronym, NagBwah. It was heartening to see a wider range of entrants including (i) actual academics submitting for the academics category and (ii) even the venerable The New York Times column Wirecutter winning a second in the best review competition – even though only one of the two authors of the column was named. Hmm. Results still indicate the limitations of a self-nomination process, a fact which recommends in itself at least one category of open nominations from readership. And one wonders how a third was offered for a pleasant enough article which consists of 41% direct quote sentences from the single source mentioned, a trade association comms officer who called in from another drinking culture. But all in all a good representation of where the hobby or habit or handicraft stands at the moment.

There you are. That’s good for now. On my end, a very multi-media tech trick sort of exercise this week. My first use of A.I. in fact. Can you spot it? As you think on that and until we meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey’s postings on each and every Saturday along with their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And do look out for more of Stan’s “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then it’s your turn. Read and recommend, please. Scour the world for news tips – then let me know. 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. 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. What else?

*[Ed.: Were you? Really??]
**Li, Z., Tan, B., Desjardins, C. et al. “Total and beverage-specific alcohol use at mid-life and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a prospective cohort study.” Nutr J 25, 114 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-026-01361-3. Here is the cited academic report on the study’s results in which there was a mean term of 13.4 years and 22,381 studied deaths. 
***Any technical advice on sharing a PowerPoint file that you may have is most welcome.

Your Summer’s Lease Sure As Hell Hath All Too Short A Date Beery News Notes For A Thursday

“Bud By The Bay“

Welcome to autumn. The burning of fossil fuels within my home has already begun. And the wearing of more layers. It’s madness all this circling of the sun. A few days ago, it was too hot. Now… I wonder if it will be too hot ever again. I think deep thoughts like that from time to time because, as the poet wrote, I am a sensitive man. So sensitive that I took a photo of the scene above when I came upon a can of Bud sitting quite upright by a familar path, looking out upon the waters. I am also, apparently, a student these days. Forty five years after starting the FYP program at Kings College (aka Bings Bollege), I signed up for the new mini version. So I must be extra clever this week having studied Ajax for minutes on end. Right? Well, we and the gods shall now have to see if anything actually sinks in.

What’s up in beer news? First up: when did the copper age end and the bronze age begin… in Bulgaria? What ever the label, apparently there was wheat ale brewing 6,500 years ago in that corner of Europe:

 Bulgarian archaeologists found evidence that beer was produced at “Provadia-Solnitsata” (5600–4350 BC)-Europe’s oldest salt-production and urban center. This was announced by the leader of the archaeological works, Academician Vasil Nikolov, who presented the team’s summer findings to journalists, BTA reported. According to Nikolov, this likely represents the earliest production of the beverage in the region and possibly in all of Europe. He noted that botanist Elena Marinova contributed to the discovery. A broken vessel was found containing wheat that had sprouted in the manner required to produce malt. The vessel was discovered in a house that had burned down.

I know that Merryn will be pleased with that sort of residual organics analysis. I like that the house burned down. Breweries were always burning down around here 240 years ago. Good sign.

Perhaps another good sign is how, as Jessica Mason reports, it seems that the Canadian and US administations’ mutual tariffs on aluminum products are having an important effect… though likely not the one the White House intended:

Southern Ontario’s Caravan Bev Co’s owner Shane Vear had also admitted that he also imports and distributes Chinese cans and since then his business has risen 30% since last year. Vancouver Island’s Strait & Narrow president Yuri Akeroyd told the publication that his company moved most of its can purchases to China over the past eight months and insisted that the decision was about “survival”. Akeroyd also stated that “cost” was not the only reason for the shift and added that following nearly two years of policy swings that buying from overseas felt “less volatile”.

Import… get it?  Fine. Well, there is someone out there seeking to promote stability. You know the guy working on the creation of cybermen or some other sort of robot army.

Speaking of laying waste, VinePair published a great article by Aaron Goldfarb on the regret and shame and bad feelings and waste of one’s life you can feel when you have a cellar full of beer that was promised to age:

I was saving these beers for some special occasion. But plenty of special occasions came and went and I never drank them. And there they sit: too worthless now to sell, too heavy to haul upstairs on a whim, too fraught to simply throw away because tossing them would mean admitting my wife was right a decade ago, when she kept asking why I needed to buy more beer when I already had so much. I only had one choice, and Leslie’s advice kept ringing in my head: “They’ve all passed their prime, and at this point you might as well just crack them.”

I think it was about ten years ago the I gave away most of the “important” beers I started aging about twent years ago. I probably have more down there in the cellar like my two panic bottles of Girardin Gueuze. I don’t even want to think what they are like given I bought them in the first term of the Obama administration.  Another more serious sort of crime against booze was discussed by Jason Wilson this week with a seriously hefty fine on the line:

On September 10th, the federal government announced that Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits—which controls about one third of all U.S. wine and spirits distribution—agreed to pay $12.5 million in fines over bribery and false invoicing practices. Southern Glazer’s entered into a “non-prosecution agreement” with federal prosecutors for “executives and employees funding and concealing improper payments and benefits to employees of alcohol retailers, including chain grocery stores in California and elsewhere.”

Wilson shares the opinon that the fine is a “rounding error” for the firm that takes in $26 billion USD a year and especially insufficient for an eight year long pattern of infraction. He calls for drinkers to rise up! As you think on that call to action, here’s some notes! Here’s some notes as you plan the revolution.

Note #1: Matty C on some hop parlance.
Note #2: “…3.5% more than in the same period last year…”
Note #3: part beer shop, part radio station.
Note #4: Lars has a new book – The Power of Beer!

What else is going on? Well, David Nilsen in CB&B has provided us with a helpful primer on the French hop industry:

When we think of French hops, we typically think of Strisselspalt, a delicate Noble-adjacent hop with fine herbal-floral aromas and restrained bittering. That classic variety took up most of the Alsace’s 400 hectares under trellis until nearly 20 years ago, and most of that crop was contracted to Anheuser Busch. When InBev purchased the company in 2008, it also abruptly terminated the Strisselspalt contract. That not only meant an immediate loss of sales, but it also left the French hop industry with a visibility problem. Few brewers were familiar with French hops because Anheuser Busch had been using most of them. Yet the rhizomes for a possible future had already been planted. Hop France had begun a hop-breeding program in 2001 with the primary purpose of improving—or replacing—the bittering performance of Strisselspalt…

Frikkin Strisselspalt…. just… don’t ask. And from New Zealand, Kieran Haslett-Moore has shared the idyllic story of a beer fest by a southern sea:

The sun is setting over the alps and is catching the clouds, setting them alight with glorious flaming reds set against the over ripe blue of the heavens. The spectacle is a Salvador Dali painting animated to reality. Beneath the spectacle of the natural world sits one from the realm of human endeavour. Cobbled streets of ornate Victorian white stone have weathered 150 years of southern ocean storms and Kiwi lust for the wrecking ball. Within two of the old buildings Bruxelles Oamaru is in full swing. It is like there is a portal from the sleepy southern town straight into the back streets of Brussels. Goblets of oaky spontaneous ale, various tart, fruited concoctions, lemon-flavoured blonde ales, saison and even a Belgian stout are drunk, discussed and enjoyed. 

What a scene. It’s like good beer was starting fresh all over again. Similar too was the report from Imran Rahman-Jones who has been slumming by the Mediterranean:

I am writing this from the heel of Italy’s boot, otherwise known as Puglia, where it’s still shorts weather and the Nivea factor 50 continues to be sprayed every few hours. The Italian beer here has generally ranged from “not to my taste” to “objectively poor”, with a couple falling into the “very nice served ice-cold but make sure you get it finished before it starts tasting of anything” category. The supermarkets here seem to have as many German and Belgian beers on the shelves as Italian ones. It seems Italy has, like France, decided it should stick to doing what it does better than anyone else (wine), and happily imports the good beer from its European friends.

Blunt but now doubt accurate. And, to be fair, there is a place for the utility of a well placed “very nice served ice-cold but make sure you get it finished before it starts tasting of anything” beer. Similarly, there were some refreshingly simple business truths this week from Chadd Balbi at Breweries in Pennsylvania:

If you’re walking into an industry with a high failure rate, you should probably be ready to face that day when it comes. The data is telling you that you will most likely close… it shouldn’t then come as a surprise. The craft beer boom of 2017/2018 in PA had a lot of different impacts. While most of them were positive (more locally made beer on the market, more jobs added to communities), we are seeing a fair share of negatives as well. One of the biggest downsides of the rise in craft beer are people who probably should have never entered the world of small business ownership. From cutting costs, employee mistreatment (*cough* Bald Birds/ Tired Hands *cough*) and just closing with no notice the industry is still riddled with poorly run businesses.

Naming names and pointing fingures?!?! How refreshing. And professor and historian Dr. Dan Malleck has posted some thoughts on the relatively low risk of  harm caused by moderate alcohol intake over at LinkedIn:

For many people, drinking does have value. I don’t need to re-litigate this, but from socialization, to creativity, to relaxation, alcohol brings value to many people’s lives. Even if you just really like the taste, there is a value. (Is there a risk? Yes, just like a risk in driving excessive speeds, eating way too much beef, chronic sun exposure, or … getting really into cutting wood (I guess) there is a harm of excess.) The difference here is when we talk about alcohol we always need to frame it harm-forward. We can’t just say it’s ok to drink without saying something like “but know your limit” or “if you are worried about your drinking, seek help.” That’s an interesting social convention that we don’t have to use when offering people a ride, cooking them a steak, inviting them to go for a walk, or asking them to help you cut some wood.

It’s a lucid argument but it does invite my mind to wander towards the consideration of the other non-intoxicating pursuits in life that also may enhance socialization, creativity and to relaxation. Are there such medical studies on the risks associated with birdwatching? Doubt it. On napping? Not so much. And if we are being honest, I would worry if socialization, creativity and relaxation were mainly enjoyed by someone after a drink or two. We need to, yes, think of relative risk but really be thinking of relative risk/benefit.

Finally and for the double, David Nilsen has the feature in Pellicle this week, a portrait of Off Color Brewing in Chicago:

Off Color opened in 2013 with two beers: Troublesome—a classic, unfruited gose—and Scurry, a kottbusser. Launching with two obscure German styles was less a statement of defiance than an indication of intent: They were going to brew delicious, approachable beer, but it wasn’t going to be everyone else’s delicious, approachable beer. As unorthodox as Off Color’s beer was, it was matched by the quirky, black-and-white label art. Craft beer branding at the time was rarely subtle, and John and Dave opted for contrast from the prismatic norm rather than competing with a cornucopia of colorful labels. “We ended up on black-and-white just because it really stands out on liquor store shelves,” John says.

Well, that is it for now. It’s been a bit of a quiet week or at least one that had distraction. For me the main one being the arrival of a team of masons who responded to the call and spent a couple of days parging, capping and rebuilding the front step which (in accordance with the Ontario’s Building Code circa 1964) houses the cold room that houses my stash. As with the furnace and the roof, I know enough about concrete to avoid my own advice and certainly my skills. And it always amazes me when capable folk arrive at the house, totally fix problems that visit one’s mind in the hours before dawn night after night –  and only want money. Isn’t money great? Now I can get back to just worrying if I have enough for the next crisis.

As you think on that, please look to Boak and Bailey’s postings on each and every Saturday along with the coincidenal and fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. They do put in the effort. And do look out for more of Stan’s “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then it’s your turn. Read and recommend, please. Scour the world for news tips – then let me know. 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. 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. What else?

*No footnotes this week. Not one.

These Are The Melancholy But At Least Not Mundane Last Beery News Notes Of The Summer

The end of summer. The last stragglers back from holidays. Yellowjackets everywhere. Tired sweetpeas starting to show their age. Tomatoes ripening faster on the vine, some going soft before I get to them in the sauce pot, then into ziplock bags destined for a spot deep into the freezer. I’m even starting to think about getting the garlic ready to plant before the first frost. It all starts to move pretty fast right around now.

Speaking of fast, as Canada is suddenly accused of nuzzling up to the EU, asking if we can spend the weekend – or is it the other way around –  it’s funny to see a politician in France castigated for doing the one thing even a t-total conservative candidate here must always do if they hope to have a hope:

A French presidential hopeful has been accused by leftwingers of encouraging alcoholism after he released a campaign video showing him with a beer. In the video, Gabriel Attal, 37, who was President Macron’s prime minister in 2024, announced plans to hold debates with voters in bistrots across the country. He said he wanted to revive tradition: Enlightenment philosophy had emerged in France’s small dining establishments in the 18th century, he said, as had the call to storm the Bastille in 1789…. The launch of Attal’s “1,000 Bistrots” initiative, as he is calling it, seems unlikely to boost his standing among voters, according to commentators. They noted that it had been widely mocked on social media, with one user saying that the candidate looked more like a spritz than a beer drinker.

Not to worry. He’s way behind in the polls. Speaking of not doing so well, let’s get these interesting numbers from BMI out of the way early this week:

Close to $120 mil in craft $$ tracked by NielsenIQ thru Aug 8 came from 138 craft brands with at least $150K in sales this yr and no sales this time last yr. But it’s top heavy, natch. The top 25 new craft brands generated about 2/3 of that total, each racking up around $1 mil in retail sales. With total craft $$, including craft non-alc, down 4.2% yr to date, existing brands are off over 6% as a group. 

Yikes. So has US craft beer – which told us it came into being to defeat the monoglot of macro – become what it abhored? Fewer and fewer brands, limited in difference hogging more and more of the shelf space? Apparently, not only have fruit flavoured beers chased the tail of coolers but apparently New Belgium’s 11% ABV Voodoo Ranger is the top new beer. Taking on the “electric soup” RTD competition. As Knut notes:

Most Norwegians buy their beer at a supermarket, but the range available has dwindled over the years, with fake cider, hard seltzer and ready mixed drinks taking over much of the shelves.

Tomorrow belong to the gak. Not everyone has noticed. Ontario’s Peterborough Examiner published an opinion piece by apparently self-published author Bruce Gravel that reads like it was defrosted from a glacier that formed around the good beer conversation around 2006 to 2012:

He finally took a sip. He didn’t swallow. Instead, he held the beer in his mouth, churning it around his gums like mouthwash. He made a loud, wet aerating sound — slurrrrp — that caused people at the next table to look over in disgust. He swallowed, closed his eyes, and performed a full 60 seconds of silent contemplation to measure the “finish.” The ultimate annoyance of the beer snob is their complete inability to let anyone else enjoy their drink. When our friend Sarah arrived and ordered a cider, Sebastian spent 10 minutes explaining why her choice was a sugary insult to fermented beverages.

You know, that New Yorker cover is now twelve years old. I thought news editors by definition were up to date on the booze scene, you know, from personal experience.  Speaking of which, here’s some notes with the first one on the better approach in such matters.

Note #1: Advice to journalists.
Note #2: Don’t most people at cricket matches drink beer?
Note #3: Belgium… “if it isn’t poison, it goes into the beer.”
Note #4: All you need to know… twenty something words…

Speaking of simplification, here’s a central European leaning timeline of brewing history. It’s a pretty good effort but, again, pale malt was not first made upon the adoption of coke. Straw fired pale malt drying was common well before coke. Conversely, Katie Mather won a writing prize. And she wrote about winning a prize. And thanked her editor:

Last year, Claire Bullen edited a story I wrote for Pellicle about wine in Tenerife and the Orotava region. It started as an off-the-cuff idea borne from sheer enthusiasm—I had just visited the island and fallen in love with Mount Teide. I have a thing for tall, brooding guys. Most of my best stories come from a small, sharp inkling that I’ve seen or tasted something life changing, and that little feeling gets worked into every thought. Working out the story is part of the fun. Why do I want to tell this tale? How would I even begin? Editors get the hardest job and the least credit. I worked away on my story, did the research, painstakingly rewrote the drafts, but were it not for the editorial process, it wouldn’t be half as good as I think it is now. And I happen to think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, still, over a year later.

You know what’s not the best thing? The price of beer at Oktoberfest according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle:

A Mass, the traditional 1-liter (2.1-pint) serving at Oktoberfest, will cost an average of €15.61 ($18.50) this year. In 1985, it cost about 6.25 Deutschmarks, equivalent to €3.20 after conversion at the fixed euro exchange rate. The figures were analyzed by UniCredit economist Andreas Rees ahead of the opening of the world’s largest beer festival on Saturday. Beer prices at Oktoberfest have increased by around 400% since 1985, according to Rees, using data from Munich’s statistical office. Consumer prices across Germany, by comparison, have risen by around 120% over the same period.

Next, we were off to New Zealand this week with Pellicle‘s feature by Martin Bridges on the Garage Project:

…the plain white box—adorned with nothing but the word “BEER” in a bold, black font—stands out. This classic pale lager, which has been a mainstay of Garage Project’s core range since 2014, is an ode to the power of subtlety and simplicity. Pilsner malt, Saaz hops, Czech yeast. No more, no less. Does exactly what it says on the tin… “It was a bit of a ‘screw you!’ to the big breweries to show that yes, we can do a lot of progressive beers with a lot of adjuncts and flavours and spice and unusual techniques—like hot rocks and making our own cryo hops from liquid nitrogen—but we can also do a fantastic, straight, Czech-inspired lager,” he says.

And, once we’ve had all that, there are the consequnces to be endured. Joan Fitzpatrick at The Conversation wrote aabout the ancient, medieval and early modern ethics and cures for over drinking:

Classical authorities were regularly cited as recommending the consumption of certain foods before a drinking session, with almonds, cabbage, baked quinces, wormwood (absinthe) and even the lungs of a goat being thought beneficial.  They had tips on how to feel better after a surfeit of food and drink. Dietary authors recommended the benefits of moderate exercise, specifically walking, and sleep, with purging by vomit as a last resort. The medieval dietary authors had praised cloves as restorative and good for stomach trouble. But perhaps any notion of a “cure” for a hangover is based upon the questionable premise that one can undo the self-induced damage to body and mind caused by a bout of heavy drinking.

Perhaps some Korean hangover soup would suit you better. David Jesudason shared another sort of tough story in The Greenwich Wire this week, one about Stacey Ayeh of the Bouldr Bar taproom in southeast London and the struggle to get the doors open… and keep them open:

Bouldr Bar’s launch faced delays with wrangling over planning issues, such as increasing the number of toilets. The biggest headache was finding a way for a bar, planned brewery and food offering to meet Bexley Council’s requirements, because it is housed at ground level under new-build flats… The unit next door to Bouldr Bar remains empty. Stacey believes this was going to be occupied by Starbucks. Stacey believes that to create more food options, Peabody needs to build a tower vent system to keep the council happy. Bouldr Bar is in a state of flux until it can be installed – a new wall has been built but not painted. 

At the other end of the economic scale, Heineken is making a claim to an “A.I.” powered beer tap… which might be the fibberfibberony of the year so far:

According to a statement from the brewer, the technology uses “a combination of tastes, moods, and occasions to create more than 100 tailored beers”. Most intriguingly, the new technology means that, from a single tap, drinkers can now choose from 135 different Heineken expressions, each shaped by a combination of traditional brewing characteristics, such as strength, intensity, with options ranging from 0.0% to 5% ABV.  Consumers simply need to scan a QR code, customise your taste preferences on their phones, and then the kit blends their perfect brew using its “integrated barrels”.

Who buys into this sorta guff? Drunk computer sci frosh? The falsification of beer continues with the rise of “protein beer” as reviewed by Adam Campbell-Schmitt at The Food Network:

The protein drink is actually a nonalcoholic beer boasting 10 grams of plant protein (sourced from pea and rice) per 16-ounce can. That’s about five to ten times as much protein as a regular, alcoholic brew. (If you’re counting carbs and calories, each can of ChampionSips contains 90 calories and 11 grams of carbohydrates.) However, like many NA beers, it should be noted that ChampionSips “contains less than 0.5% ABV.”… As someone who has tried a lot of protein products, I could detect a bit of the pea protein. But largely what I tasted was a very malty pilsner, heavy on the caramel and toasted notes. While it may not pass as your favorite beer, it does its job of swapping some pretty palatable protein into a pleasant beer drinking experience.

Grim. What would the Senators of New York State circa 1835 who gathered in committee to respond to public alarm about the adulteration of beer think about such things. Me, I find that a rib steak or a smash burger injects some pretty palatable protein into my beer drinking experience.

Finally and speaking of falsification, Boak and Bailey took a comment on A.I. writing that I made last week and then, at their Patreon newsletter, made more of it:

… we think we can see the tell-tale signs. For example, a sudden change in writing style, with entire paragraphs adopting a strangely flowery, elaborate tone of voice while, at the same time, being devoid of any real substance. While both of us broadly subscribe to the idea that “if you can’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it” we’re not going to take a totally hard line. It’s also difficult for us to know for sure whether someone has used AI to write some or all of a blog post, even if we suspect it. We don’t want to write people off because we get a vibe. (This unfortunate ambiguity is, of course, how AI ends up worming its way into our lives.) It’s especially tricky with writers who are new to us and whom we haven’t been following for years. We don’t know how they usually write and so can’t spot when their style changes.

I commented* but… but… what I didn’t mention is related to what they wrote: “if you can’t be bothered to write…” I know someone who has found a niche that may make him a bit of side cash that relies almost entirely on innoquous A.I. use. It’s a form of design creativity that results in absolutely throw away content. So who cares? It’s just about the extra cash for him. But look at what Laura wrote over on FB. Because it’s good to care. So if you really do care, if you want to put your name on something? Well, you are drinking out of the dog’s water dish if what you put out relies on crap A.I. tech. “Relies” carries a lot of work in that sentence for sure… but if that’s what you’ve done your name bears the shame.

That’s it for now. I gotta get back out to the garden. While I do, please look to Boak and Bailey’s postings on each and every Saturday along with the coincidenal and fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. They do put in the effort. And do look out for more of Stan’s “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then it’s your turn. Read and recommend, please. Scour the world for news tips – then let me know. 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. 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. What else?

*Fine, this was my comment: “I am afraid that A.I. is a bit like men’s cologne. You think you will just use a little, no one will really notice but it makes someone feel better about oneself. To the contrary, it’s like wearing some bit of orange clothing. It does stand out, it never really works and it usually ruins whatever effect you were going for. It’s also lazy because it’s unnecessary. If you are going to pretend you are a writer then do the frigging writing. Put in the time. Like any effort, you improve by error and succeed through the individual quirk of personal expression. A.I. editing is like claiming you cooked the meal when you got take away.” 

Already? The Last Beery News Notes Of August 2026?!?! Really???? Lordy…

A question: where do you pee after drinking beer? The sociological question came up in a conversation touching on the ethics in Ontario, Ireland, Germany and Portugal last weekend. And the associated question of “what and where are the woods?” was canvassed, too. That image to the right? It’s a Portuguese treed setting. Where peeing occurs. Seems a bit… open. Beer based peeing also occurs here in Germany. I think I can see a road in the background there… and maybe a shop. I have always wondered about where one may pee after drinking in the Netherlands in 1986 where guys just walked out of the door of the pub and peed on the front of the building. Seemed a bit too much overlap in the old Venn diagram. But I am Canadian. We do pee in the woods but what qualifies as the woods here is a bit more woodsy. Further field observations of the more tasteful sort will be received in the comments.

The other big topic in Canada is, of course, trade war v.3.1 which popped up again this week in fine style… which has led to more than a few becoming obsessed* with certain American products on the shelf. One branch of a grocery store chain in pretty small town eastern Ontario was spotted selling US wine:

A ban on the sale on all U.S. wine, beer, spirits and seltzers in Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) stores went into effect in March 2025 in response to American tariffs. LCBO is the sole wholesaler of alcohol for licensed restaurants, bars and grocery stores in Ontario. In a statement, Loblaw, the owner of Your Independent Grocer, says the bottles have been removed. “We recognize the importance of supporting Canadian businesses in this climate and understand why this incident raised concerns. The wine was put on the shelves without the approval of the store owner and once identified, it was removed immediately,” a spokesperson for Loblaw said in an email. It’s unclear how long the wine had been sold at the store. A viewer emailed CTV News saying they saw the wine in stock on Sunday.

The rules about these things are a bit unclear as the government run retailers and wholesalers have removed it from the shelves but it’s a bit unclear about what private licensees can do with earlier stock. It was older stock, right? I unkindly remembered the eastern Ontario phenomena of unilingual English labeled products from American sometimes seen on a quiet aisle of regional independent corner stores. Bootleg BBQ sauce is a favourite. Smuggled chocolate bars too. Yum.**

What else is going on? Well, Jordan finally lifted his head up for air and explained his silence for the last few months:

I was a Field Operations Supervisor for Statistics Canada for five and a half months and didn’t really have time for blogging. The nature of the gig economy means that you have to hang on to all the other jobs that will outlast a contract position, so there I was working what was ostensibly a nine to five position while teaching in the evenings and leading walking tours when they were booked conveniently. For the first couple months I continued to edit and co-write Ron’s new book, Brewed In The Family.

Busy busy busy. He also shared recollections of Texas Brown ales past, including Bellwood’s Grizzly Brown. I had a few of those with Jordan at the taproom with Ron P. back in 2014, detailed evidence of which evening can be found here. He did not mention at all where he may or may not have peed.

Elsewhere, it was Sausage Saturday when Martin and herself were in Newport the other day where the service was tiptop – as was his advice on etiquette:

Mrs RM called it before I did. “That’s off“. It was. If starting a conversation with strangers is difficult, taking your pint back undemonstratively without drawing attention to yourself as a CAMRA can be even more daunting. Quietly does it, use “end of barrel” instead of “off“, and offer the extra quid or so for the Thatchers. Which would have been the sensible choice to start with. Sausage and chips and peas for six quid fifty the only sensible choice, and frankly the onion gravy would cost you that in some pubs. Marvellous stuff. The landlord was briefed by the landlady and came over to apologise for the Butcombe, and the clip turned round. They’re advertising Thornbridge on the pump today; I’d give it a go.

Speaking of top pub food, Katie went once again to the Highland Laddie in Leeds and found her corner of heaven:

Ordering food at your leisure from a bar menu that reads like top restaurant business is exactly what I want. My tartare came with its egg yolk jam and tendon crisps and just as I hoped, I was transported to Flanders. The fire baked ham and house brioche dinner rolls was a beautiful pub dinner. I dipped my chippies in the egg yolk jam on my plate and found myself in the depths of comfort I get on my birthday when I take myself off on my own to a cafe for eggy chips and a pot of tea. The vindaloo devilled eggs reminded me of our family preference for using curry powder in our egg mayo butties. Again — deep comfort, delicious luxury.

And travelling a couple of steps further north, I like this review by Chitra Ramaswamy of a Scottish pub, The Keelson, and the wonderful chicken to be found there:

It’s official. Rotisserie chicken, a hipster craze that swept across London, has voyaged north of the border and landed in Leith… Through the buzzy boozer we go, with its many manly textures of wood, framed drawings of nautical knots, television screens (don’t approve) and SFA memorabilia (didn’t expect) to the back, where the small kitchen and restaurant section are housed. Nice, but we prefer the sunny, more pubby front. Can we move? Of course, says our friendly server. She doesn’t bat an eyelid when we ask to move again to a bigger table, to fit all the food we’ve ordered… my god, the succulence of the meat. Leg, wing, thigh, and breast have been expertly carved, the meat juicy and the skin crisp from incessant basting, smoky, perfumed with garlic, woody herbs, and vast amounts of butter. 

A fabulous retort in relation to the “non-place” observation from last week. So, too, were ATJ’s comments on how pubs can be an antidote to rootlessness:

That got me thinking about belonging. I lived in Cambridge for six years but that was not long enough for me to feel as if I belonged to the place. Then I recalled meeting an old girlfriend in 2024 from my time in the city who had since emigrated to Australia. As we visited some of our of old Cambridge pub haunts, she mentioned a couple of times that she was a Fen girl, and I thought of how that despite her long sojourn in Australia she still felt an identity.

Probably due to the WCs. And there was news in The Guardian about the tough position CAMRA finds itself this year and fingers are pointed:

For centuries, the wooden real ale pump has been the hallmark of a good British boozer. But now problems are brewing for the proper pint, as the Campaign for Real Ale has seen its membership sink to an eight-year low and its accounts show it is firmly in the red, making an £800,000 loss last year… Outside the Devonshire pub in Soho, central London, there is an ever-present horde of drinkers downing pints of Guinness, a stout made by the multinational company Diageo. But the landlord and co-owner Oisín Rogers says: “Real ale is all I drink”… Camra is calling for the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the big beer companies’ stranglehold on the market.

More now about me. I received an alert from Sayre Piotrkowski who wrotes about a post at his newsletter Beer & Soul responding to my own thoughts on the general shrinking interest in craft:

Broadly, he argues that craft beer has lost ground since our 2019 peak, fewer people care, and the industry shouldn’t comfort itself with optimistic narratives about a turnaround that may never come. While Alan is replying to a piece that calls for beer to be treated as a cultural beat rather than a business one, with exclusively market-driven reporting, he is not lying: craft beer production today is well below its 2019 peak. But the leap from that fact to “fewer people care” is much harder to defend. An industry’s production volume and a culture’s significance are not the same thing. In fact, I think the obsession with the former is one reason we have become so bad at talking about the latter.

I don’t agree with his disagreement with my comment but (i) that’s just me and (ii) taking on the question of meaning over measurement is an interesting approach. One problem I would note with his argument is he appears to seek to then measure meaning by first suggesting then counting up other categories beyond sales volume – other ways people experience and enjoy good beer, leading to this observation:

People love their local breweries for all sorts of reasons, but no one’s esteem changes with the number of barrels contributed to the national production total each year.

This would be nice if it were true – and perhaps it can become true – but the entire arc of US craft beer’s story has been embued by the trade with an obsession with first marking and then obfuscating the actual meaning of actual stats.  Good for Sayre for seeking to move away from this failed construct.

Speaking of messaging, Eoghan shared this response to new health warnings proposed for booze labeling in Belgium:

Belgian brewers have launched a campaign against more forceful health label warnings – from “Alcohol misuse damages your health” to “alcohol damages your health”… Alcohol misuse does damage your health, but alcohol also does. There is no “safe” amount, similarly to cigarettes (a better comparison than the one they use – soft drinks). I’d question the fixation of brewers on this point – will the new label really make a difference?

And Boak and Bailey have been out on the road – the railroad – according to their Patreon update:

The following day we had a few hours in Brussels before catching a sleeper. We revisited L’Ultime Atome, which really doesn’t have much for beer geeks these days. The beer list is short and the food is pretty mediocre… We then got on a train for a long time. About 300 small naps later, via Amsterdam and Berlin, we arrived in Prague just in time for lunch. Our first beers were in an international brunch place, and we don’t even know which beers we had because they didn’t tell us which was which when they brought them to the table, but after 15 hours on a train they tasted damn good.

Good. No word on the facilities on the train. Here’s some notes:

Note #1: I thought Jake was being a bit rough until I realized he was talking about somthing else.
Note #2: “Brewers don’t have to have much skill anymore…”
Note #3: It’s the weirdly over the top statement that always kills my interests in what someone in the booze trade might be trying to say.
Note #4: “Not one knows” yet… available resources.
Note #5: is Stone now really really dead or just really dead?

A surprising bit of news in The Times this week about the date rape drug being used against men and in some unexpected contexts:

While spiking can lead to a further crime, such as rape, no additional offence is reported in 55 per cent of spiking cases, making it difficult to know what motivates perpetrators. Of incidents in which another crime did occur, men were more likely to experience theft or blackmail, while women were more likely to be sexually assaulted. Dr Amy Burrell, who researches crime and policing at the University of Birmingham, said: “I’ve seen all the combinations: females who have spiked males, males to females, females to females and males to males. Spiking is often a facilitator for other offences but it also happens in and of itself.” The majority of spiking takes place in environments associated with alcohol, like bars and nightclubs, however “mutual spiking” among friendship groups is also very common.

I found this report very disturbing and not something that would have occured to me as possible in the 1980s of my youth… then I remembered the chemistry major in my undergrad who spiked the orange juice dispenser at the residence cafeterian one weekend morning, apparently just to watch people get all sleepy over their French toast.

Finally, back to a more sensible topic, Andreas has shared some thoughts on the formation of esters and phenols in the brewing of hefeweizens, including this tidy summary on how esters are managed:

The main phenol is 4-vinyl guaiacol (4VG). It is formed mostly enzymatically from its precursor, ferulic acid, and to a small extent (10-15%), also thermally at temperatures greater than 80°C. This precursor is located in the malt (in barley malt more so than in wheat malt), and is brought into solution at an ideal temperature range between 40 and 45°C (104-114°F) and a pH range between 5.8 and 6.1. So to promote the formation of phenols, mash in low, do an extended rest between 40 and 45°C, and use at least 40% barley malt in your mash. If you want to minimise the formation of phenols, mash in high, and ideally use as little barley malt as possible. 100% wheat malt mashes are possible if you use rice hulls or straw as a lautering aid.

We are big fans of straw as a lautering aid in the eastern end of the Great Lakes… for over 200 years. And that is it for another week. We will have to see if there is a Boak and Bailey posting on Saturday along with the coincidenal and fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And do look out for more of Stan’s “One Link, One Paragraph” format – this week there was talk of crumpled beer tanks!  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. 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.

*See these comments on Facebook: “So today YOUR independent put American booze back on their shelves. Unbelievable! They claim it was done without the Johnsons knowing. What a load of shit. Just another reason to not shop there” and “If I want American booze then I will buy it“! Lordy!!
**Apparently no one in the US administration checked to see how much of their buttwipe supply comes from Canada. A lot apparently.

The Perhaps Abbreviated “Who’s That In The Kitchen?” Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

You know how it goes. August means guests. So I have not been as idle as it relates to the beer reading and the beer writing. These are pastimes which demand a special type of slacking. One cannot succeed as a dedicated beer scribbler without setting aside the time to be inordinately idle, what in any other pursuit appears to be the disfunctions of a wastetrel.* Plus, when not hosting I have spent much of the week working with the twine and the secaturs. That right there? That was my view Wednesday morning. A deeply woven mess of tomato plants stuck on hands and knees in the patch where I had poured four year old kitchen compost. Lordy, how it grew. Now the tangle has been untanged and all they need to do is produce fruit. Let’s go bees!

There was possibly tougher news in Bigger Ag than my aching back from Stan this week as the forest fires in the Pacific Northwest are threatening the hop crop:

Monday, the Oregon Hop Growers Association issued a press release that began… “’After a few tough years with hop acreages declining as beer sales dipped, Oregon hop growers are especially excited about this year’s hop harvest. The mild spring resulted in ideal growing conditions for the hops, meaning we’re expecting great flavor and aroma,’ said Michelle Palacios, executive director of the Oregon Hop Growers Association.” What could go wrong? Smoke, as growers and brewers learned with the 2020 harvest. Wildfires in Central and Eastern Washington triggered an air quality alert in the Yakima Valley this week. It is also higher today in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, although forecasts are for more favorable conditions soon.

With that difference of focus, I’d say Stan’s concerns might not lead to the hoped for great flavour. Drew, exercising his wag skills, suggested “Celebration might have to be a rauchbier this year.” Speaking of is / not is,  Pellicle‘s feature this week is by Martin Dixon, the story of one of the more venerable NA beers, Maisel’s Weisse Alkoholfrei which has been produced for over twenty-five years:

Instead of choosing between the two commonly used methods to create alcohol-free beer—removing alcohol by an industrial process, which is straightforward but can be harsh; or stopping fermentation early, which gives the beer a fuller flavour but leaves a sweet, worty taste—the brewery used both approaches. Today, two beers are brewed (one a dealcoholised version, and one a lower-strength version) and blended to create Maisel’s Weisse Alkoholfrei. The beer is now roughly a third of Maisel’s business, and its surprise success has given the brewery new financial freedom.

Relatedly perhaps, here’s a new angle on beer and health – beer mats for better mental health:

Man Time’s Flip the Mat campaign is now under way, with the first mats being delivered to pubs, clubs and community venues across Stone and the surrounding area. Volunteer Allan has been visiting local venues with the mats, including The Poste of Stone in Granville Square, where Man Time holds its weekly meetings. One side of each mat displays the Flip the Mat campaign message. Turning it over reveals information encouraging people to talk about the difficulties they may be facing. The reverse also carries a QR code linking directly to the Man Time website, where people can find details about the group and a range of local and national support services.

And on a similar theme, in the weaving back and forth on the question of booze and health, the question of merriment as health pops up as a foundational principle on the pro side. They never seem to interview the hungover** when making these arguments but it has gotten to the point that The New York Times itself has undertaken some investigative journalism on the point sending Ginia Bellafante into the heart of Bourbon country:

“You’d be surprised by how many people around here don’t drink,” our waitress shared with us later. My dinner companion worked for the Louisville mayor’s office. She had given up drinking several years ago in the name of better sleep and general well-being, leaving her vulnerable to the joke that she was part of the problem in a city where the national retreat from alcohol was driving a list of anxieties. I had come to Louisville to gauge the collateral effects of this growing aversion, a reality propelled by science, supported by surveys and punctuated by my own experience as a host who had noticed that a longstanding dictum of entertaining — the allotment of a half bottle of wine per guest — no longer applied. For all the benefits of cutting back, certain rituals were vanishing…

The Beer Nut, of course a ritualist if ever there was one, is having none of it and took the time to examine the offerings from Marks and Sparks this week, with some observations on the claims made on the packaging:

First it’s an extremely straight-up Helles Lager, stating what it is in large capital letters on the 33cl can. It’s brewed by Cornish brewery Harbour, which does a few contractual things of this nature, as I recall. 4.5% ABV seems a little inauthentically low, and it poured without a proper head, which it definitely should not. There isn’t much aroma, but it seems broadly on-style: a snap of cracker with a hint of lemon zest. I was thirsty, so half the glass went in one gulp… In all honesty, how it tastes was not a major concern for me, but out of respect for you, specifically, I will say that it’s very plain stuff. There’s a slightly hot fruitiness, suggesting the same sort of careless brewing flaw that made it headless, but you’d barely notice that. I can’t remember how much it cost, but I’m assuming not much. Drink it cold; lie back and think of anywhere but Germany.

Cold is good. Are we prisoners of the archetype? Is a pub ever modern? To me a pub needs pubbiness or its a taproom, bar or gastro to one degree or another. B+B, however, have been more seriously on the case and reported back on refurbishment and what is considered by the redevelopers as key these days:

… when they do try to lean into the history of their buildings, they do so without much taste or sensitivity. These days, that means whacking “Ye Olde Pube” and “Gin Emporium” on the walls in bad fonts that come preloaded with Microsoft Word. The other key component of a modern old-fashioned pub is, of course, decent beer. The Kings Head, The Crown Inn and The Pembury all have interesting ranges, served in great condition, often in particularly nice glassware. The 10-sided 1930s-style pint glasses with which The Kings Head relaunched seem to have disappeared (stolen, we assume) but there are a couple of authentic 1930s half-pint glasses in the same style.

As you think on that, here’s some notes:

Notes #1:  “…and commissioned by AB InBev…”
Notes #2: Half price beer with a Mitch obit.
Note #3: A beer drinking elk?!?!

Ron himself as well as his sons have traveled to my fair neck of the woods – or at least he’s been neck adjacent – recently and has begun to report on holidaying in a forest fire smoke zone, wanders Toronto, finds a diner that also sells gin and goes to a cellar dweller’s ball game where Chicago beats the hometown Blue Jays badly:

It’s another high-scoring game. The White Sox get five runs in one innings. Then three in another. Then four. The Blue Jays hit several home runs. But with no-one on the bases, they only get a single run… A bloke a few seats along does try to get a chant going a few times. “Let’s go Blue Jays.” He shouts. It’s not the most inspiring of calls. A couple of times he does get others to join in. Until the stadium starts blasting music out again. With the Blue Jays way behind, the crowd starts thinning out after the seventh innings. We leave during the last innings. Mostly because I wanted to be sure of getting to the Steam Whistle Brewery over the road before it closes.

Ron and Sons will report on stops further east in the coming days.

The Guardian published a very handy primer on how the UK is going through a shrinkflation related to beer – now dubbed a but clumsily as “drinkflation” even though it does not relate to all drinks – and especially handy as it relates to the economics involved:

I don’t know what that amounts to. For a 4.0% beer it’s about 41p a pint. Whereas a 3.4% beer is subject to a duty of just £9.96 per litre of pure alcohol, or about 19p a pint.
That’s quite a difference, but what if people don’t like Carling’s new weak beer? The company claims the 3.4% version actually ranked “higher for overall taste” in consumer tests. It also laid the groundwork for the reduction by introducing a stronger and more expensive Black Label version in February, at 4.7%, creating a “value-premium price ladder” within the brand.
Do say: “Alcohol duty must strike a difficult balance between raising revenue and improving health.”
Don’t say: “3.4%? My urine is stronger than that.”

But, see, you said it, Ms. G. You can’t really say “don’t say it” and then go ahead and say the exactly that  one thing you say you shouldn’t say. Really. You might say there ought to be a law about these things in Britain but we also learned in that self same publication this week that:

Parliament is “Britain’s last alcohol-soaked workplace” where MPs are offered free drinks as early as midday despite alcohol-related scandals, a report has revealed. Drinking is commonplace and some MPs have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital, one disclosed.

Yikes! So… maybe less booze is not such a bad thing in one’s glass. Is there less booze in Maryland? Michael Stein in DC Beer went on an interesting investigation and reported out this week on the unused 100,000 barrels of capavity left behind when Flying Dog was bought by FX Matt who shut down the Maryland brewery and moved production to Beautica… err… Utica, New York***:

So, did those 100,000 barrels of 2017 go to the macros? Some did, some didn’t. The Brewers Association of Maryland’s latest data has just under 7,500 barrels brewed in Frederick County in 2025. That’s less than 10% of what Flying Dog was brewing by themselves when they left the state.  Maryland not only lost 100,000 barrels of Flying Dog, they lost DuClaw, and much of Guinness’ Baltimore Blonde production. In The New Brewer, DuClaw was listed in 2020 as brewing 18,250 barrels. That is a sizable amount for the majority of 9,578 craft brewers today, who annually make significantly less than that.

That’s it for now. Not a big week, I gotta get back out to the yard. As I struggle, 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 “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. 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.

*So you know what that means? Yup, extended quotes. Cut and past. That’s my game. Anything to nudge the weekly work past 2300 words. There, 1322 words to Tuesday at 7:45 am. It’s all on track. 
**As I tell the kids, one borrows joy from the future to have boozy joy in the present. With diminishing effect over time.
***I keep telling them that I have the perfect slogan for the city!

Your Actual… No Really… It’s Already Mid-Summer Beery New Notes For A Thursday

Here was are. Even though full seven months will soon be behind us, the mid-year slide now begins. So you take the little day trips in the sun instead of those little afternoon naps that you might have had in June, back when there was plenty of time. Have you had enough ice cream yet? No, have more. Go get some! You could run those hiking shorts you’ve worn all summer through the wash first, though.  And read your Scriptures as you wait for the spin cycle to conclude – or at least Ecclesiastes 8:15:

Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.

Good advice as we face the coming of August and the shortening of days. What else is going on? First up in booze news, that one time staple of waiting rooms thoughout North America, Time magazine, had an article at the end of last week about another “only zero is safe” health statement – this time by the Dutch Health Council – and the author Tim Brinkhof makes observation which I might have thought would have beeen aired before:

As populations age, healthcare systems become overburdened, and governments fail to sufficiently expand or change those systems, preventing preventable diseases is more vital than ever. But herein also lie some of the issues that de-normalizing alcohol consumption brings to light, including its overlap with other, equally pernicious public health crises. In many countries, alcohol consumption has already been decreasing for years, especially among young people. Yet, despite the dwindling popularity of both alcohol and cigarettes, various cancers, not to mention other serious conditions like diabetes and depression, have all been on the rise—again, especially in young people. 

So if we do live in an increasingly poisoned global eco-system where skills and social interaction become less and less valued, there may be plenty of other causes of harm which at least place the clinky and drinky in context. Not a comfort but at least perhaps an excuse. And the world might just need all the excuses it can get these days.

And, in another form of concession, Knut has noted a small relaxation of Norway’s liquor laws with a few odd requirements to move some transactions out of the

“The Government wants to make it possible for tourists and visitors to enjoy more complete and integrated travel experiences. We are therefore proposing that alcohol producers be allowed to sell their products directly to visitors,” according to John Christian Vestre, Minister of Health… A license to sell self-produced alcoholic beverages may only be granted if visitors are offered a paid visitor experience with an educational component, designed to increase knowledge about the production process, products, or local traditions. The scheme would also include limits on the amount that may be sold to each visitor during a single visit.

So, it would appear that you would have to pay to take the same educational experience each time that you go to the producer’s location to buy something to drink. Perhaps similarly odd is the tale of regulation out of Wisconsin as a politically active brewery, Minocqua Brewing Company, has received notice from the state’s Department of Revenue that its license is being revoked. Owner Kirk Bangstad is insensed:

Bangstad said the DOR is “trying to shut down the state’s most progressive brewery for violations that can only be described as laughable.” He said in the post that he received the letter two weeks ago, and the brewery has tried to rectify issues identified by a DOR agent over six months. Bangstad provided a chart explaining what violations were allegedly in the document from the DOR. Those include unauthorized running of a retail outlet, violation of shipping laws and untaxed beer possession in an unpermitted warehouse… Bangstad, who admits to owing taxes to the state, says the “punishment doesn’t fit the ‘crime.’” He says the revocation is tied to organizations against his political leanings, and claims his beer has been boycotted by distributors and stores because of his political statements.

Careful readers keeping notes will recall the news last March that the brewery announced that beers would be free on the day that President Trump dies. Could have been that. Or calling the guy Shitler.

Back on track, Pellicle’s feature this week is by ATJ who finds himself in Italy, face to face with thirty years of Tipopils:

When he opened the brewpub, it was only the third in Italy. In the same year, Teo Musso opened Baladin in the nearby region of Piedmont, to the west of Milan. Things weren’t easy, as there were no suppliers of raw materials for smaller breweries. Agostino’s father’s connections in the brewing industry got him certain supplies, including brewer’s yeast; up until then, he had been using baker’s yeast, which he admits “wasn’t that good.” He also initially faced resistance from locals, with some saying that Tipopils was served too warm. He recalls an elderly local threatening him with a stick, bellowing that Italy was a wine country, before adding “I don’t drink your beer!”

Bellowing!!! More subdued news out of Ireland as reported by Jessica Mason in Drinks Business which leads to some interesting consideration of the local standards used to measure the what is a global retraction of interest in beer:

According to the latest figures from the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI), Ireland’s average alcohol consumption per adult fell by 2.1% last year to 9.30 litres of pure alcohol (LPA). This marks a drop of more than one third (35.6%) since consumption peaked in 2001.  The data has revealed that consumption habits are changing in Ireland and although beer was the most popular alcoholic drink of choice for Irish consumers last year, with a 42.1% market share, it actually experienced a 2.7% drop in total volume sales. Wine’s popularity has more than doubled since 2000 and … spirits saw a small lift in volume of 0.2%, giving it a 22.4% share of the market…

Notice the LPA measurement standard. Annual litres of pure alcohol consumed per capita. A handy and hard to fudge measurement.* In a market where brewers are reducing strength quite aggressively to fit into taxation schemes while reducing input expenses, it would appear to me to mean that where the average strength of a pint drops, the number of pints sold may stay steady even while annual LPA may drop. If NA beers are included that could have quite an effect of the figure.

And David J. used another term this week that I was not familiar with – white label beer – which I take to be the equivalent of what we would call a grocer or restaurant chain’s house brand:

After a taster I could tell it was a very familiar tipple, and the locals shared my raised eyebrow. I took the plunge though mainly out of embarrassment in a busy bar. I slowly realised this was a pint of Greene King IPA and at £5.50 was probably the most expensive one I’ve bought. It was the drink my father loved, and I had the same nostalgic East Anglian hit with every sip. It’s just as Directors Bitter-fan Alan Partridge would say “They’ve rebadged it; you fool!” Now you would think this pint (which was superbly conditioned) would lead me to write an article hoping to spark universal outrage especially as it is nearly £4 cheaper nearby. But I asked an experienced publican for his thoughts and he said, “it’s naff, so I don’t do it, but honestly drinkers love seeing it”.

There was a time over a decade ago when a certain consulting brewer in Ontario worked with a number of craft startups who, not surprisingly, collectively offered a range of pale ales with surprisingly similar and unsurprisingly uninspiring taste. Still, my only thought is that these sorts of things are only offensive if the price point is offensive.

Speaking of offensive and price point, apparently wars and tariffs as rolled out by the US adminisration has not done wonders for Boston Beer‘s bottom line:

Freight rates rose more than 35% year over year, adding pressure even as lower volumes helped offset some shipment costs. Aluminum, energy and tariff exposure also remain concerns. Boston Beer expects tariff costs of $20 million to $30 million for 2026, which could limit the upside from pricing and productivity.

I love finance talk. Always seeking the positive: “lower volumes helped offset some shipment costs.” Interesting, too, is that the article didn’t mention beer at all. Unless that is what is meant by “older growth engines are losing momentum“… maybe.

Tariffs are of course also an issue here in Canada which this story just up the eastern seaboard out of New Brunswick on the situation faced by Moosehead illustrates:

About 10 per cent of Moose­head beer is shipped to the U.S., but with a 50 per cent tar­iff it will be a “chal­lenge” to con­vince Amer­ic­ans to buy New Brun­swick beer, accord­ing to Andrew Oland, pres­id­ent and CEO of Saint John-based Moose­head Brew­er­ies. “We ship a fair amount of beer to the U.S., and if these (tar­iffs) actu­ally go through, it’s going to reduce if not elim­in­ate the amount that we’re ship­ping to the U.S.,” Oland said in an inter­view. “At the same time, I’d say we all know that we’re in a very com­plex situ­ation with a very volat­ile trad­ing part­ner. It can change tomor­row.”

I haven’t sought out any Moosehead brews since they cancelled Ten-Penny but I do see that their lager is now on sale so… who knows. As we consider that, here’s some notes:

Note #1: “The viaduct is a dominating presence.”
Note #2: Gin with your afternoon tea isn’t at all about boozing. No way.
Note #3: Imran Rahman-Jones has a survey for you to fill out.
Note #4: “The French commitment to le pic-nic must be addressed.“

Via Jeff via Stan, we read a tale of contrition from the beer columnist with the Duluth News Tribune, Dave Hoops, including but not at all limited to these admissions:

I wrote about brewers as geniuses and drinkers as audiences. I wrote about taprooms as destinations, not workplaces. I wrote about “the market” as if it were weather, not rent, debt, distribution contracts, burnout, stainless steel leases, tap handles fought over inch by inch… The older I get, the more I think the local scene was never a scene. It was a set of favors, habits, arguments, second chances, borrowed jockey boxes, anniversary parties, charity kegs, bad batches forgiven and good batches remembered, people showing up because showing up was the point. I used to fly past that in search of the new thing, the national thing, the beer people elsewhere were already talking about. I should have stayed longer with the room I was in.

Relatedly, a very stretched stretch. Still, I do now have a sudden hankering for a Landlord. Similarly, I have a hankering for a Hoegaarden what with this from The Tand and this as well from Boak and Bailey:

We got out of the food and beer pairing game years ago, having failed to be convinced by the supposed miraculous effects of matching food and beer – especially if the food has any oomph. What we do tend to find, however, is that Witbier goes with almost anything. And by ‘goes with’ we mean that it remains tasty and enjoyable in its own right; rarely gets in the way of the food; and often enhances it. We’re always pleased to find Hitachino Nest White Ale on the menu at Japanese restaurants, for example. And, of course, there’s always Hoegaarden, our old pal, which contrary to what you might have heard is still an excellent beer.

Max went on another march from pub to pub in Czechia. I think of these things as being urban pub crawls but, as illustrated, he finds himself in some pretty remote spots:

I could have easily had a second or third serving, but right ahead of me was the hardest part of this hike, the fairly steep slope, the uphill one. It wasn’t very long, just 3 km, but I’m still not in the shape I wish I was. The climb surprisingly went well, I managed without even slowing down my pace. It must have helped that it was all in the woods, and beautiful, with no sign of civilisation to be heard or seen. The rest of the way to my destination, however, would be somewhat less fun. Not because it was ugly, far from it, but because it was almost all in the blazing sun…

Speaking of pub crawls, Martin reminds us that sometimes the march comes up short in other ways:

Dodington is really just a gorgeous long street that takes you out of town… and there’s nothing to actually DO…

And finally, Will Hawkes has adjusted his monthly newsletter London Beer City to provide a free monthly sampler story and an annual subscription to the entire publication for a mere £10. The first free offering is the story of a pub in the city’s Docklands between the wars:

It’s October 1933 and you’re on the corner of the West India Dock Road and King Street, in the heart of London’s Docklands. On your right is a pub with a sign reading, simply, “Charlie Brown’s”. And across the road, almost in the shadow of the London & Blackwall Railway’s low-slung brick viaduct, is another pub with another sign, which also reads “Charlie Brown’s.” How could this be? The answer lies in the story of Limehouse, a slice of dockside East London that, for more than 30 years at the start of the 20th century, was the capital’s most feverishly fetishized neighbourhood. Why? Because, since the 1880s, Limehouse had been London’s first Chinatown – and that brought with it extraordinary public interest, fuelled by prurience and racism.

That’s it. Next up, August. Back to School TV ads and a scramble to make something of the weeks of summer that remain. As you fret, 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 “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. 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.

*Well, it should be hard to fudge but in the methodology section of the report by by Anthony Foley, Associate Professor Emeritus at Dublin City University,  it appears that there are deemed strengths applied for each category of clinky-drinky: “The aggregate alcohol contents of the different beverages are based on 5% alcohol by volume for cider and 12.5% alcohol content for wine.” Happy to be corrected.

Your Clear and Crisp Mid-July 2026 Beery News Notes For A Smoky Smoggy Thursday

Wednesday morning news said that Toronto had the worst air quality on the planet. Around here at the other end of the big lake, Tuesday at 11:30 pm was a bit nuts, too. Getting out of the car after picking up the kid from work, it was like I was leaning right over the BBQ as I was smoking ribs. Good enough reason to stay in and watch whatever was on TV yesterday afternoon.  Oh, the Falklands Friendly was on. My linguistic imperialists against my hemisphere mates. Unlike others, I stuck to water and the other NA stuff myself.

You know, Eoghan has done an excellent bit of work with his series on the nations of the World Cup as can be spotted in his city of Brussels. He is coming soon to the conclusion and, on Tuesday, he turned to… Belgium itself! But where to look for the heart of Belgium in Brussels?

It was obvious. Here is a street, a narrow alley that rolls down a steep incline from Gare Centrale before skirting the Grand Place and emptying out behind Boulevard Anspach, charting centuries of Brussels history, architecture and patrimony. A street that might once have been the core of a Brussels nightlife district centred around the Îlot Sacré (the Holy Islet) – frequented by Jacques Brel, Jan Mulder, and the rest of the city’s post-war demi monde – but which has long since been converted into a holding pen, a quarantine zone, for the tourists that visit the city so that the rest of us can get on with our lives unencumbered by their nuisances.

And, keeping with the games, Boak and Bailey looked back to the World Cup of 1966 and found the promise of a financial boom from those games faded fast:

In 2026, it’s quite normal for pubs to have television screens and for people to gather there to watch big football matches together. Last night, even our local craft beer taproom was rearranged to accommodate an enormous screen. Back in 1966, though, the idea of TVs in pubs was fairly new, and pubs with TVs were relatively unusual. As a result, one story at the time was about how the tournament was causing pubs to lose business.

This is something that seems to have repeated now sixty years later in Toronto: “… demand for accommodations in the city is down as more rooms stood empty during the first two weeks of the World Cup than in the same time last year….” The Guardian reports things have gone a bit better for British pubs if card use stats are to be trusted:

Pubs have experienced the biggest boost, thanks in part to football fans taking advantage of extended opening hours, Barclays’ consumer spending report found. England’s group stage victory over Panama emerged as the busiest day of 2026 so far, with takings five times higher than the daily average for the year. On a year-on-year basis, England’s draw with Ghana resulted in the biggest uplift, as card users in pubs spent 244% more than they did on the same day in 2025, possibly because of a relative lack of action that gave fans time to go to the bar. The round of 16 victory over Mexico registered a 201.5% increase, measured over Sunday and Monday to reflect the game kicking off in the small hours.

US sales also have increased but by a much more modest 5.5%. But at least there seems to be actual interest… as opposed to the new beer out of Belarus:

“Minsk Capital,” whose design incorporates Belarusian state symbols, received contradictory reviews from buyers. Some consumers praise the drink, while others, on the contrary, criticize it for “excessive lightness and dilution.” “Light beer water from Trokhsosensky, but without the taste of socks and other drawbacks,” user Dmitry shared his opinion on the website of the “Krasnoye & Beloye” online store.

Speaking of authoritarian regimes, this week’s story in The Times on the health and safety record at BrewDog* surprises me in a couple of ways:

The company complied with the enforcement orders in 2023, but former employees allege that previous instances, where rules were broken, were not reported to the authorities. These allegations are denied. Watt’s lawyer stressed that under the former chief executive’s tenure, BrewDog’s safety records were better than the industry average. With respect to the enforcement notices, the lawyer said that BrewDog worked constructively with the HSE, invested several millions of pounds, implemented required improvements and that both notices were complied with and subsequently closed.

First, if as the story says, Watt was terminated in 2024 it strikes me as odd that his personal lawyer in 2026 is commenting on corporate activities prior to the termination. Does he have access to the records? Second… again… where is Mr. Dickie in all this? Why is his view never sought – let alone his role referenced. He was CEO at the time in question.

UPDATE: Watching CBC late night news at the end of Wednesday, this story out of Nova Scotia caught my eye:

Alcohol producers in Nova Scotia will soon have more options to get their bottles and cans into the hands of consumers after the provincial government said Wednesday it would be loosening restrictions on the industry. Under the changes, wineries, breweries, cideries and distilleries will be allowed to cross-sell as of early August, meaning they can stock their stores with products from another producer. The second change, expected this fall, will allow producers to open retail stores without having a production facility on site.

This is a great set of regulatory amendments that should put a lot of good drinks into the hands of a lot of curious people.  I really like the idea of local wines being sold in brewery taprooms for takeaway as well as vice versa.

Elsewhere, recent reputable talk of the pub in a Lidl grocery store in Northern Ireland inspired Cian Duffy of Every Pub in Dublin to explore the history of drinking in such shops due to the local licensing laws:

You can try cut the definition of a “supermarket pub” lots of ways, but I can assure you that Ireland has had basically all of them; with Dublin covering most bases. Even after deliberately excluding the extremely common (but not in Dublin) pubs-with-shops where the shop is now quite big, and weird cases like a co-op supermarket with an actual but rarely open bar (Inishkeel co-op Glenties); we have lots of examples. These include the direct equivalent of Lidl Dundonald – a supermarket chain opening a pub to run as an off-licence; but also a supermarket chain operating multiple pubs while awaiting redevelopment, a supermarket chain running supermarkets *in* pubs; and some edge cases including Lidl themselves holding planning and a licence in Dublin.

Interesting stuff! Here’s some notes:

Note #1: Laura has been keeping her eye on the Crooked House story.
Note #2: “Dangerously sessionable, as they say in all the best beer bars.”
Note #3: The best no-alcohol beers really should have a bit of alcohol.
Note #4: Clearly a definitive guide…

There were some interesting reactions to one brewery’s initiative on cask ale as discussed in the Morning Advertiser by Nick Payne of Brains:

…people want change. Now, if you sign a deal for four or five years, you’re not changing that keg range. What does cask give you? It enables you to change your beer and, potentially, you can have a different beer on every three days.

Nigel Stadler shared that when I left brewery sales in 2015 “a lot of cask customers were actually fed up with constant rotation of beers” and John Keeling added “Agree. I like staying on the same beer.” I would have thought that one of the great lessons of US craft beer’s years’ long contraction is that chasing the tail of change is not a winning route to building loyalty.

Aslo learning lessons, Alistair has done his “oft, when on my couch I lie” looking back at his recent trip home to the UK and has shared a few conclusions:

The main thought that has pottered and re-pottered around my noggin is just what a fantastic place the British pub is, whether that incarnation is in Inverness or Westminster. Of course every serious beer drinking country has it’s pubs, from Ireland to Czechia, and all stops in between, people love to drink in communal locations rather than just getting battered at home. Perhaps it’s that there isn’t an undercurrent of puritanical shame about going for a pint or two and just hanging out, there doesn’t need to be a purpose or an excuse to go for a drink. Anyway, back to British pubs – and of course this is all just subjective – but being, still, even at nearly 51, a rather introverted person, I find it interesting that going into a British pub is the easiest thing in the world for me. 

Over at his newsletter, Knut has been praising the updated ninth edition of the Good Beer Guide Belgium by Tim Skelton – and shared this bit of a tid, more nug than nugget:

Yvan de Baets, brewmaster at Brasserie de la Senne, outlines the changes in the Belgian beer scene over the years since the last edition of the book. “There are way too many beers,” he says. “Around 40% of the brewers in Belgium are fake, contract-brewers or bierfirma’s….. By taking no entrepreneurial risks themselves, the imposters are further flooding an over-saturated market, hurting the real honest brewer…”

Never the fake, Jeff has been reviewing the latest policy statements from the succinctly named Oregon Health Authority (OHA) on risks associated with alcohol intake and sought to leverage what I might suggest is a difference without a distinction, finding space between these two statements:

“…the more alcohol one consumes, the greater their risk of cancer…“

“…risk may start to increase around one or fewer drinks per day…”

For him, the first from the OHA indicates “gone is any talk of moderation” while the second from the US Surgeon General indicates is “quite a bit different.” Me, with respect, I seem them as being pretty similar statements. The constituency that may inhabit any gap between the two would be those who drink less than a drink a day. Fortunately, that includes me according to my stats. Most people involved with beer at the key personal identifier level, however, aren’t like me. Jeff was clearly saying that the harms of booze are real, don’t get me wrong. But it is not the job of organizations like the OHA to balance health interests against the goals of other community sectors. Does one consider the possible slur by association against the poor pumpkin growers of the early 80s? No.

One last thing. Ron is treking through central Canada looking for the Laurentian Elite of beery experiences.

I’ve only been to Toronto before so I’m totally clueless about the other three cities. If you fancy meeting up and buying me some beer, get in touch. I’,m a sociable fellow and always enjoy meeting new people. Hopefully, it’s not going to be too warm in Canada. Andrew really doesn’t cope with heat well. When we were in Japan a few years back, several times I thought he was going to drop dead. 

I gave him some suggestions (did I?… Irene‘s in Ottawa after that CFL game, Ron!) but do add a comments or two under his post if you can think of anything else he could do. Err… I hope the smoke clears…

That’s it for now. When next we meet, the World Cup will be a memory just like the breathable air of yore. As you think on that, 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.

*PS: who cares…

Welcome To Summer 2026! Here’s The Thursday Beery News Notes That I Dug Up

Taking a break from the TV and all the fitba, I was out and about this week doing a bit of visiting and looking for ice cream. Fields of grain. Sunny skies. I heard Indigo Buntings on separate country roads. Had me a mango sugar cone, thanks for asking.  And no brain melting heat like the reports from elsewhere. Mr Protz took an keen interest in my dirt digging skills the other day, too. Know your strengths. Still, the World Cup is on and we can’t avoid it. As I type Canada is down 2-1 to the Swiss, previously only know for other things. [Will they be commiserating all night at The Duke?] This in The Athletic is my favourite World Cup headline so far, though my own effort deserves honourable mention. I have to thank Pellicle for the Fantasy Premier League pool that I’ve been playing for three seasons now. It’s certainly helped me recognize so many players in these games.

“But what about the beer news, Al?” I hear you say. Fine. First up, Lars has been at it again, making the scientific studies available to mere English majors like me:

Most people have probably heard that Indians in the Andes are divided between those who malt the maize for chicha, and those who chew it, letting enzymes in their saliva make the sugar. An interesting new paper has some surprising results that are relevant. They’ve looked at the human gene AMY1, which makes the amylase enzyme that breaks down starch. The more copies you have, it’s thought, the more enzymes in your saliva… Andean Indians have more amylase enzymes in their saliva than most human populations. Is that why they chose chewing as their saccharification method, and stuck to it until today? Because it works better for them? It seems to have been rare elsewhere, so that would make sense.

One thing that I note is that chewing and saliva are two separare functions. Could it be that chewing generates more saliva? Or is the crushing function itself beneficial to the enzyme’s effectiveness. I have visions of a spittoon collection system at some point becoming a social circle. [Ed.: …”aaannnnnd… that’s it for saliva based journalism for this week.”]

There was drier but still much well deserved excitement over the news on the next book by Andreas Krennmair on Bavarian White Beer. Me, I am as or more impressed with this announcement they made on Bluesky:

When Alan posted this snippet of a colorised drawing of the old Schneider taproom/beer hall in Munich, I loved the idea so much I turned it into a sticker design and got 500 of them printed.

“Cork Head!” forever! Speaking of new books, Eoghan highlighted recent books on Belgian beer:

I tell you what, Belgian beer (writing) is not doing much to beat the charge that it’s a closed-shop old boys club for retired journalists and people say they drank with Michael Jackson like they’re the guys who “shook Sinatra’s hand”. Anyway, if you’re in the market for a recently-published book about Belgian beer, get Tim Skelton’s Good Beer Guide or Sofie Vanrafelghem’s monumental book about the Belgian cafe (or Breandan’s about hidden beers). Because at least they are good, well-written and do something new…

Skelton’s for sale here, Vanrafelghem’s is here and Breandan’s is here. Notes? Notes!

Note #1: celebrity gets news coverage for situation affecting millions.
Note #2: Katie’s dream beach vacation.
Note #3: “Punctuation counts!” say Alan, Alistair, Alice, Alfred and…
Note #4: Twenty-six pints.

Unlike you, I have been replaced on a municipal alcohol policy working group for having an opinion on alcohol. But even saying that, I find the reaction to this news out of Bristol a bit odd:

The Bristol and district branch of Camra has hosted its annual festival in City Hall for many years. It cancelled the event last year after the council contracted out the management of some of its venues to a corporate events company, which brought in a large rise in the hiring costs. When an update on the catering contract was given to councillors this week, Mack told the strategy and resources policy committee that hosting a beer and cider festival at a discounted price for Camra could fall foul of the council’s rules on promoting alcohol.

It’s not that they are banning the event. It’s not that they are charging a high fee for the event. It’s just the recognition that having a discount for the clinky drinky event might actually conflict with another existing policy on alcohol promotion. Fortunately for us, we have the “no bonusing” rule which means it’s the promotion of commercial business below market cost that would be the basis for objection. Question: why give what is effectively a trade show a discount?

Pellicle‘s feature this week is a portrait by Paddy Gardiner of McMullen AK Mild, an ale with the ability to attract fulsome descrption:

“It is unique. I’ve never come across another beer that tastes like that,” he says. Les emphasises its nutty aromas, which arise from the blend of Halcyon pale, crystal, and chocolate malts.  What really entices me are the slightly less earthy, more ephemeral flavours that develop in the glass as the pint diminishes. Red berry yeast esters mingle with oily citrus and dry grass notes from the Whitbread Golding hops, culminating in a comforting impression of summer pudding, blood orange marmalade, and dry autumn leaves. The initial mousse of carbonation, which first refreshed the parched palate, dwindles over time so that the last few sips leave an oily slick of gently astringent bitterness. 

And Knut has been Düsseldorffing which may or may not lead you to want to dorf the Düssel yourselves based on his handy feet on the ground advice:

The standard beers are quite similar, and don’t expect much in the way of special brews. They are happy to sell Uerige Sticke and Doppelsticke to any bottle wholesaler, but they are only to be found in the brewpub at certain times of the year. I even had to drink the Sticke out of a bottle on the sidewalk some years ago, as it was only sold as take-out. The waiters are impeccably dressed, but service can be bordering on the unfriendly in case you ask for something not on today’s menu. But that’s part of the mythology.

Not ever one to be left behind, Martin is on the road too and finds himself on the far side of the Black Sea in Armenia where, it would appear, the toes sweat and no one sleeps:

… if I had to describe a country in one word it would be COFFEE. On every corner, a machine taking your 100 dram coin, often with Hi-Vis maintenance staff on hand, and once you work out how to tell the machine YOU DON’T WANT SUGAR you can have a quality (hot and chewy) espresso for twenty pence (20p). OK, a cappucino is 50p, but what fool orders a cappucino from a machine? I’ve never seen so much strong coffee drunk, long into the evening. That 100 dram espresso is as much a human right as the 1 euro equivalent in Naples. Except it’s just gone up to 150 drams in the newer machines in the city centre. The main difference between Yereven and the rest of Armenia is 10p on an espresso.

Also off and away from home, Alister reported being disturbed when he was recently at the Westminster Arms in London by an influx of… Americans:

It was during my second pint that a group of Americans made their way down to the basement, and proceeded to make me almost despair that real ale will ever be anything other than a niche in the US, so embedded is the collective ignorance of cask ale in the popular consciousness. Yeah, sorry folks, we writers can blather on as much as we want about places doing real ale, but it’s not getting outside of our bubble. One of the group approached the bar and ordered a Spitfire, but a lady sat in the booth they had plonked in yelled across the bar to “make sure you get the Spitfire lager, not the cask, the cask is warm”.

To be fair to the group he also heard them say “don’t tell the pastor we are in a pub drinking beer” which means they are hell-bound hypocrites and falsifiers clearly within Satan’s grip.

Here’s an idea: ban booze in the hottest stretches of summer:

Sweltering temperatures have prompted “red alert” warnings for heat in France. Throughout Europe, heat-related fatalities are growing, train services are being disrupted, and events are being canceled. During France’s annual Music Day, the French government actually banned alcohol consumption in “red alert” zones, according to media reports. The rationale was that limiting booze would free up emergency services for the most vulnerable members of the community. 

Is that realistic? As you think on that, here’s a couple of recollections about the hayday of beer blogging. In their weekend footnotes on Patreon, Boak and Bailey noted that a certain bit of reading was:

…a blog post responding to an article. This feels like a wonderful reminder of 2008 when this kind of thing used to happen all the time. Beer blogging was fuelled by responses to other people’s posts, which often felt like conversation starters rather than broadcast media. Ray also observed something similar this week in his area of interest, horror films and fiction.

Some blame Bluesky: “…seems that BlueSky isn’t,  you know, as exciting for beer discourse as Twitter was.” Me, I blame the broader decades-worth of the “irrational exuberence” culture that paralleled the rise and fall of craft myself. But now when all the trade’s wants and needs are reduced to “happy stories!” and statistics as creative writing which get shamelessly leveraged to distract from the near 20% contraction in US craft beer production (and therefore consumption) since 2019, well, it’s become all a bit… what… truthy. Harder to have a chat in that sort of context. Yet we still read this sort of thing:

Whether it’s the elevated interest in flavor, rotation based on different moments and needs, the ability to express oneself through their beverage choice, or limiting drinking occasions to experiences that include friends or family, craft beer’s value proposition actually holds up quite well. Craft just needs to shed some baggage to bridge the gap between the original craft beer fans who remain engaged, and those newer consumers whose priorities may look a lot different.

Now that‘s a bit of a word salad. Experts, eh? Perhaps relatedly, not sure there’s a lot to comment upon in the breaking news in VinePair that TV ads by US beer companies ain’t what they used to be. Jeff‘s thoughts are more to the point. And it’s not all that unexpected seeing as, you know, TV ain’t what it used to be… and advertising ain’t what it used to be. With this World Cup, the key point is well illustrated:

The decision makers for the beleaguered brewing industry may feel like the moment calls for fiscally conservative marketing — and politically conservative, too, in ABI’s case. But just like in soccer itself, there’s risk in playing it too safe on the marketing front. For example, one of the most viral stories of the tournament so far is the sheer decimation of Boston’s beer reserves at the hands of Scotland’s fearsomely thirsty “Tartan Army.” It’s a funny story, at ABI’s expense: “The Scottish fans just drank the place dry, and all they had [left] was Bud Light,” one eyewitness told the local news.  

Let’s be honest. Other than avoiding that crap, the indifferent fitba fan is just going for the alcohol. Like all those Coca-Cola ads at Christmas, the particular brand of beer doesn’t have anything to leverage from the bigger transient story.*  But FIFA needs it’s money so exclusivity alone becomes the commodity, the illusion acting as distraction from the real, the bowels of the beloved being mined for gold.**

There. I need to get out in to the garden and start digging again. As I do please take time to 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 and 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.

*Compare to the “No Lays No Game” ads which are reasonably entertaining while executing a clear and topical appropriation.
**Finally, my favorite Milton passage gets included.

Well… Welcome To Your “It Is March And The Good Times Are Here Again!!!” Beery News Notes

For well over 20 years, I have lost my marbles over March arriving as it did again last Sunday.   I may have created that image to the right in 2004. Such a clever boy! So well centered. Why do I love March, you ask? Not the green beer. Maybe not the green grass which might pop out soon. It’s the first seeds in the soil. The green green peas in loam. Soon, my precious. Soon. Otherwise, this is a bit of a scattered mix this week as I rush. See, I played taxi driver for folk going to a concert, spending about 21 hours in Montreal Tuesday to Wednesday. On the way out, hit Atwater Market as usual. Got my chicken cretons. Got my duck rillettes. The toast won’t know what hit it. And when toast wins, the beery news update suffers. Such is the way of the world.

Enough about me! First up, Jeff* has shared a retrospective on his writing career and how important blogging was to getting to the next step. Twenty years ago he started on a path (like Matty C a decade ago) towards  a number of leaps of faith. Leaps I avoided. I have my name on four modest books but didn’t see a future in that direction. Me, I can show you instead the bridge I had a large part in building. But they can show you publishing sales figures that put food on the table. It’s good to see that we were all right in our different choices.

Speaking of Matty C, for “Get ‘Er Brewed” he looked around his particular environment through the last holiday season and asked where the future may lie for a trade facing tough times:

I can face the hard facts and admit pubs are dealing with some of the worst trading conditions they’ve ever known. But I also believe that they will continue to persist, whether that’s through innovation and listening to what their customers want from them, or by sheer bloody-mindedness. Despite all the doomsaying I consider that there are still positives for pub owners. However, in order to extract these an equally optimistic outlook is required from publicans. Yes, prices are going to have to go up. Customers are going to have to get used to them and measure their spending accordingly. But I don’t think this will mean that people will stop using pubs, and that they’ll simply vanish off the face of the earth.

I tihnk that is a good baseline position to take. Beer does not go out of style even during an inflationary period… or even in a very localized deflationary one. The BBC had a story about another sort of good value care of one pub in Leeds:

A pub which was told selling a pint of beer for 25p during a promotion was “irresponsible” and a breach of its licence has instead begun giving them away. Leeds city centre pub Whitelocks offered customers their first pint of revived 1970s pale ale brand Double Diamond at the retro price as part of the four-day scheme, which began on Thursday. However publican Edward Mason said the council pulled the plug on the offer later the same day, saying it was in breach of mandatory licence conditions on minimum alcohol pricing. After seeking legal advice and discussing it with the local authority on Friday, the pub then commenced offering the initial pint for nothing. Unlike Scotland or Wales, England does not have a defined minimum price for alcohol.

A bit more scientifically we see that Kendall Jones at the Washington Beer Blog ran a very detailed survey on the place of IPA in his readership’s current mindset and had a significant response:

A few weeks ago, I posted a survey about IPA to gauge how people feel about craft beer’s most popular style. I was wondering if breweries are hitting the mark. Do the beers align with what people want? Have people’s preferences changed? Stuff like that. If you haven’t taken the survey, it’s still up there gathering data. I encourage you to participate! When the survey received 1,000 responses, I gathered the data. I will continue to do so as time moves on, but this report covers that first round of responses. Likely, this round of data comes from a pretty enthusiastic craft beer crowd, not the general beer-drinking public. Take that for what it is. In addition to the results, we also collected a large number of comments, which we rounded up at the end.

One of the particular results that surprised others is the result that Kendall noted: “Really? Nearly 80% of respondents say they understand the differences among IPA styles. I am not sure 80% of professional brewers understand the differences between IPA styles.”  This can certainly reflect the Washington marketplace as well as his readership but I do wonder if there is a difference between detecting the difference between styles and understanding them. I mean I can tell a Black IPA from a White IPA but I still left with questions like “why?” as well as “WHY????”  Go have a look and even add your responses as the survey is still open.  This is an excellent example of how a blog excels at some many sorts of beery writing that other formats can’t touch.

Speaking of excellence, Boak and Bailey placed another sort of question out into the ether – “Do you really want to visit the best pub in town?“:

Before Christmas we found ourselves in a pub surrounded by a group of people grumbling about the seating, the atmosphere, the beer, and everything else. It became apparent that a couple of members of the group had put together an itinerary for a crawl based on their preference for craft beer. We felt quite sorry for them as they tried to enjoy their pints while surrounded by moaning pals – but then what did they expect? What’s funny, we suppose, is that much of the discomfort and discontentment described in the various anecdotes above could be avoided if people just went to normal pubs, of which most towns and cities have plenty.

There is a lot to unpack in the phrase “the excellent is the enemy of the good” and this might be a very instructive context. I mean, I have sat myself in the Cafe Royal and it is utterly wonderful. But could it ever be as “mine” as many other pubs and tavs and dives have been over the years?

Also excellent and perhaps for Katie in particular, I saved this image of the Nahe Valley that pass by my eye this week. Shared by the AAWE, the no doubt authentic colours are surreal:

Erich Heckel (German 1883-1970), Landscape in the Nahe Valley, 1930. Many vineyards. Heckel was a painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the group “Die Brücke.”

According to the wikiborg, in 1937 the Nazi Party declared his work “degenerate” and confiscated his work, destroying much of it. Good to see one that was saved. Time for notes!

Note #1: Ottawa’s Kippisippi to close.
Note #2: BrewDog sale confused yet swift.
Note #3: 1690 brewing text restored.
Note #4: 1978 Joe Piscopo sighting.
Note #5: “Beer with Pals” is the best one.
Note #6: the A.I. bot that wrote this clearly has no idea what “craft beer” is or is it the guy interviewed who doesn’t.

What’s next? Well, I suppose the big news is the surprise takeover of a deadend business location:

A brewery has been allowed to open a new beer café in a former funeral directors site. West Suffolk councillors have given Charles O’Reilly planning permission to turn the former funeral directors at The Shutters, in St John’s Street, Bury St Edmunds, into a beer café and tap room, during a development control committee meeting earlier today… Jane Marjoram, a resident, recognised the importance of such establishments but told councillors the area was a ‘quiet, friendly community’.

 “Very quiet…” said Jane as they leaned forward winking at the committee members. What else? Oh. Yet another, yawn, tale of a forgotten wine cellar under a golf course (h/tKM):

“So we’re thinking it’s just a drain that needs digging out and clearing and repairing but as we dug deeper the chasm underneath just opened up.” Steve said he and his colleagues then noticed a brick structure. He was able to climb inside and look around with a torch and found dozens of empty glass wine bottles. “They’re all odd shapes and stuff so they’re obviously extremely old bottles,” he said.

Speaking of being under, similarly attractive are the summaries of the US beer market in 2025, as this from BMI:

US beer shipments were down more than 5% to ~183 mil bbls for full year 2025 vs 2024, Beer Inst, TTB and US Dept of Commerce data suggests. That amounts to a 10-mil-bbl drop in one year, the 2d tuffest decline in US beer history (post-prohibition) only behind brutal yr in 2023 when shipments sank 5.2%, 10.8 mil bbls. But unlike 2023, beer price increases didn’t come close to offsetting volume loss with CPI for beer at home up just 1.1% for the year, suggesting brewers’ collective revenue likely posted the largest drop ever in a single year post-prohibition.

And Stan raised shared an interesting observation that I suspect might well be connected to those stats:

“If it is beer flavored beer it comes from the brewing side. If it is not, it comes from the marketing side. (FW’s) Michelada did not come from the brewing side,” answered Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson.

More grim news. Yet… here was have another trip to France care of Anaïs Lecoq in this week’s Pellicle which unpacks another cultural touchstone, the bar Pari Mutuel Urbain or PMU:

A rade was originally slang for a bar counter, though it’s come to define a popular neighbourhood bar with a somewhat dated look, but a warm and lively atmosphere. Do not imagine the brown-wood aesthetics of a British pub: Think mosaic tiles on the floor, flashy paint on the walls, a Formica bar dented by years of glasses sliding across it, and worn-out faux-leather booths. … The bar PMU is the epitome of the rade. These spaces will never be advertised as places worth visiting if you’re a tourist. You won’t find them listed as hotspots on the internet, because they don’t look good enough for an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed. Their history, deeply rooted in the working class, labour struggles, and immigrant communities, is not designed for glossy consumption. 

And also yet yet… in this comparison of health effects in The Harvard Gazette at least beer does not find itself at the bottom of the beverage ladder:

The mixed picture for alcohol consumption was in contrast to what panelists agreed is a much clearer one for soda, energy drinks, and other sugar-sweetened beverages, including sugary fruit juices. A 12-ounce can of a popular soda brand has 10 teaspoons of sugar, an amount almost nobody would add to a cup of coffee or tea, Rimm said. Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is linked to rising obesity, which itself raises cancer risk, and diabetes, which increases risk of heart attack and stroke. “When you compare a soda to water, or soda to coffee, or soda to tea, whatever you’re comparing it to always wins,” Rimm said.

Finally and… finally especially for me, one more inter-provincial trade barrier has fallen and, for me at least, an important one. Soon I will be able to directly buy Nova Scotian beer from the homeland of my youth and have it shipped to me here in Ontario the homeland of my… umm… post-youth:

Ontario and Nova Scotia have agreed to let their residents buy alcohol directly from the other’s province, part of the premiers’ ongoing work to bolster interprovincial trade. Producers of beer, wine and spirits can start applying Tuesday to the province’s liquor corporation for authorizations to do the direct-to-consumer sales, a process the premiers say will only take a matter of days. Ontario Premier Doug Ford says strengthening interprovincial trade is a way to counter the effects of U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic attacks on Canada. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says… knocking down interprovincial trade barriers is “a bit like whack-a-mole,” but that direct alcohol sales is a great one to tackle because it is so visible for consumers and producers.

Please sign up every single Nova Scotian producer, please. Then I will be able to hover the fickle finger of fate over your webstores.

There. I achieved my second goal this week. After buying sausages at Atwater Market, that is. I largely avoided mentioning the new assets added to the Tilray portfolio, the second strangest story involved those assets after… you know.  From this point on, it is all now officially just a boring story at least in my office. So with that until next week, please check out Boak and Bailey who are posting every Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And 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, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November 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. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*He also shared his thoguhts on the weird we have witnessed over the last two decades.

And… Finally… Here’s “The Baseball Is Back!!” Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

I mean, let’s face it. The Winter Olympics are all well and good. And the World Cup will fill that gap in June, sure. But… baseball. Baseball: the sport that demands the best in athletes and then asks them to sit around for half the game. When they aren’t standing around in the field. It’s great, isn’t it!  Though, we should also take this moment to remember one of the great Olympic moments from, what, sixteen years ago now when Canada’s gold medal winners took the opportunity to turn the hockey rink into a tavern. And on that topic, here’s a Winter Olympics fact I hadn’t heard before and one that isn’t apparently winning any medals:

The only beer available for purchase at the 2026 Olympic Games is Corona Extra, a Mexican pale lager. This is due to the Olympics only allowing one company to sell its products at the Games, and this time it was Corona who was able to secure a deal. It’s a controversy that may hit closer to home for a lot of Olympic spectators, more so than a few foul-mouthed curlers ever could. It’s fair to say that Corona may not be the most popular beer for fans in Europe, as a photo of a Czech hockey fan went viral last week for his disappointed look while holding his Corona beer.

What a great choice. For the five athletes at the games representing Mexico, I suppose. What else is going on? Plenty to read out there on the chop-shop job coming for BrewDog but The Guardian had a good angle on the pending effect on those who each gave a bit when a lot was needed (or at least wanted with little or now strings attached) early on:

BrewDog’s army of “punk” shareholders have voiced anger and frustration after the Scottish brewer confirmed plans for a possible sale that could render their investments worthless. So-called “equity punks” who spoke to the Guardian or posted on BrewDog’s shareholder forum expressed disappointment and accused the company, which has traded on its upstart ethos, of treatment “bordering on contempt”. One said the plan showed that the small investors, who helped to kickstart BrewDog’s growth after it was founded in 2007, meant nothing to the company.

While the effect on individual EP investors can be quite significant, I mention this mainly as a pretext for posting that 2013 parody up there of the plan from one M. Lawrence at Seeing the Lizards.  Speaking of just saying no, The New York Times has run a four-part series by Pete Wells on getting your consumption back to a healthier level and finished off with a back at life with alcohol as well as a look forward:

Sometimes it seemed to me that I had a richer, more rewarding relationship with alcohol than I did with all but a handful of humans. It was an inexhaustible field of study, an incandescent companion during great meals, a reliable consolation on dull ones. And it brought me close to my real friends, at least some of them, some of the time. Over time, though, the rewards had become more equivocal and harder to justify. It wasn’t just the weight I gained, a predictable result of having a cocktail each night followed by about three glasses of wine or beer. They were, by this point, undeniable signs that my liver was overworked. I slept badly with all that alcohol in my system, too, and it got worse as time went on. …

You may be happy to know that he still enjoys his martinis – even if there are fewer of them: “…feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up as the first sip takes hold, I feel like I’ve been reunited with an old friend…” Another old friend, Liam, reached back just a few decades for his post on the earlier trendy years for NA beer in Ireland, Smithwick’s Alcohol Free Bitter:

The launch was accompanied by newspaper competitions plus promotions, and a strange and repeated focus on how the beer, at 0.5% abv, contained less alcohol than orange juice! Reviews of the product at the time varied a little but it seems to have been generally well received for what it was, with reviewers commenting on how it (ironically) ‘packed a real bite and had good flavour’ and how they could drink it in a pub all night,  although it was also said to be ‘quite gassy and sweet.’ Others said it was ‘pretty good. Smells right and tastes of hops. Quite rich and smooth to drink.’

AKA gak. More positively, Matty C shared his thoughts on some upsides he’s seen in the brewing trade so far in 2026:

A couple of years ago, conversations in beer often centred around the idea that there’s “light at the end of the tunnel”. In reality, I don’t think that chance of daylight is coming anytime soon. Instead, we’ve got to admire the glimmers that are somehow managing to shine through the cracks in the walls around us when we can. Good beer is still being made, and good pubs are still open to sell it in – I’ve seen the proof! 

One of his examples was the tenacity of Jaipur: “… beer, packed with flavour and served at a high strength – seemingly the antithesis of what you would expect to succeed….” Which reminded me of how, in response to recent racist comment from an English oligarch, in The Times Sathnam Sanghera wrote about one of the foundations of the Britain of today:

…the fact that it ran the biggest empire in human history explains lots about Britain beyond its multiculturalism. It explains the popularity of curry. A significant amount of the mahogany furniture, ivory and jewels in our stately homes and royal palaces. Our propensity to travel. A certain amount of our wealth. Our political posturing on the international scene. Our national drink in the form of tea, and our national tipples in the form of pale ale, rum and the gin and tonic. The fact that we don’t feel the need to learn foreign languages because we encouraged/forced large parts of the world to take up English.

Empire of booze! Which, in turn, reminds me of Manitoba’s fabulous Premier Wab Kinew and his cheery fight for my right to Crown Royal after a bit of internal trade tension with Ontario’s Uncle Doug:

Cheers to you Doug Ford for keeping Crown Royal on LCBO shelves . Thanks for doing the right thing. Just like Canadian whiskey, good results take a little bit of time. This is a good day for folks in Gimli, Manitoba and a good day for people in Ontario too. Standing up for workers together is always a big win for Team Canada.

PWK won a lot of support with this bit of good humoured social media savvy. Crown Royal also got about 5,783 times the value of yet another newsletter by email telling breweries about the importance of storytelling.

Note #1: a desperate plea for beer based salad dressings.
Note #2: pairing beer and cussing.
Note #3: democracy in inaction?

Speaking of newsletters by email about storytelling, Will Hawkes was back at the end of last week with his February edition of London Beer City in which he considered the concept of the Irish Pub as illustrated by one new spot, Moylett’s in Clapton:

…I’m confused. What’s Irish about it? According to a report in Broadsheet, the focus is on what owner Moylett calls “the holy trinity of food, music and socialising” – a worthy list, no doubt, although it does seem to be leaving out something quite important (Guinness is £5.50 a pint, btw). As a term, “Irish Pub” is surprisingly hard to define, and particularly in London (and other British cities, arguably, but we’ll put them to one side for now). In much of the rest of the world – indeed, even in London, particularly its once O’Neills-heavy suburbs – the Irish pub is a 1990s phenomenon: flat-packed dark wood decor, pints of Guinness and food options that are often only very vaguely Irish (satay sticks, curry, chicken wings of varying heat levels; Spice Bags are less common, although you can get them at Moylett’s). But Irish pubs in London are, historically at least, quite different, and much less easy to pin down. 

Similarly but further afield, ATJ shared his thoughts on Cologne/Köln, the river there and its crossers:

…leaving Hauptbahnhof I crossed the Rhine, slow-moving, the colour of mud, upon which an elongated, snub-nosed barge was slowly making its way downstream. I stopped and took a photo, a snapshot of slothfulness perhaps and continued along the historic Hohenzollern Bridge. It was crammed with people through which bicycles and the occasional skateboarder cleaved their way, imperious and ‘get out of my way’ seemingly stamped on their features. Some people, were in groups whose colours defined their tribal affiliations — red and white for FC Köln, black and white for Eintracht Frankfurt. Sporting rivals presumably…

And here’s a new insult for craft beer.  If Jeff’s exhaustive listicle is correct, IPA is what it is all about and what it says is “meh, new money..“:

When it comes to beer, the etiquette guru revealed that “new money” consumers “don’t touch the more traditional ales or stouts – it’s all about IPAs that set you back at least £5 a pint. Anything involving the word ‘traditional’ simply doesn’t feature in your vocabulary. “If it doesn’t sound trendy, artisanal, limited-edition, or come with a deliberately obscure name, you simply aren’t interested.”

I actually find it really funny that anyone thinks anything related to beer is about new or old money… other than owning the brewery that great-grandpa built I suppose.  Almost as good as if grandpa owned a country… which is a seque to the next tale of skulduggery – perhaps – in China’s Jilin province:

The marketing materials identify the beer as produced by Rason Ryongson General Processing Factory in the Rason Special Economic Zone, located near North Korea’s borders with China and Russia. …[T]he Chinese distributor is Yanbian Xinyuequan Trading Co., Ltd. The company is based in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, a key gateway for cross-border trade with North Korea. Additional social media posts show boxes bearing the Pado label being unloaded from trucks and delivered to local restaurants in Jilin Province, indicating the beer has entered local distribution channels “…[N]ame changes are largely driven by export considerations, particularly to reduce the risk of sanctions-related flagging when the product circulates in Chinese wholesale or grey market channels…”

Mmmm… grey market North Korean Pado beer…  Quite the opposite in every way are Boak and Bailey who asked about what a drinker wants from a pub’s internet presence.

… we want to know what beer the pub is serving today, right now. Working that out can be surprisingly tricky. Again, Instagram or Facebook can help, but it’s often more reliable to snoop on Untappd and see what’s been logged in the past 24 hours. Pub websites are rarely of any use for this at all, presumably because updating a website feels like a big job, and a job for the Big Computer at that, so it just doesn’t happen.

Great comments followed… but I wonder if the easier solution is a camera aimed at the chalk board at the bar which is already updated daily… all sorta a la last week‘s remote pub experience story. It worked for the Cambridge coffee pot cam. The best way to get a job done is to find a way to make it a not-a-job job.

Finally, the Pellicle feature this week is accompanied by many photos with many many strings of bunting. It’s a story about Steam Machine Brewing of  County Durham – but without saying the word it’s really all about the bunting. Not including reflections in the windows (which would be unethical, of course) I counted thirty-six strings of bunting. That’s a significant contribution.

That’s it! That is all for now. But we are one step closer to spring. Pre-season Grapefruit League baseball on the TV time. Huh. Zah. Until next week, please check out Boak and Bailey who are posting every Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And 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, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November 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. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.