1800s – A Good Beer Blog

I Declare! These Beery News Notes Are Extra Interesting! Fascinating Even!! Aren’t They… They Are, Right??

Is this fascinating? I think about that at certain quiet moments. I mean I do my best but I can’t answer that question. Only you can. That is the one thing writers don’t talk that much about. The readers. 1.7% of me fully believes that any attention I receive in response to these scratchings is by sociologists asking “why?!?!?” But that is fine. They… like you… are readers. You will weigh the evidence and make your judgement. We just have to remember as our friend Laura H. learned this very week: “it was revelatory to them that beer people exist.” As least I acknowledge you exist. I do. That’s gotta be worth sumthin’.

Where to start? Big news from the seven seas to start with. I love this story about a brewery on a boat, continuing the fine tradition reaching back to the 1660s and again in the 1850s. Except this time it was not Arctic explorers wiliing away the winters when the seas were frozen, as Jessica Mason reports:

…the cruise’s bar manager Giulio Giannini said: “Basically, we desalinate seawater through osmosis. The resulting water is pure H2O, nothing more. From there, the entire brewing process begins.” According to Giannini, all production takes place entirely on the vessel, this encompasses milling and brewing right through to fermentation and maturation. A feat that puts the task into the realms of challenging, but not impossible. Speaking to the drinks business, beer fan Mark Cole admitted that, for him, the move to house a microbrewery onboard “might make me actually consider a cruise,” showing that the positives for the sector are that it will help broaden the audience for cruises in general, attracting beer drinkers.

Would that swing the decision to take a cruise for you? All a bit too busy for me. Me, I am more attracted by these excellent observations of a moment of quiet from ATJ:

I am not the first person in the bar, there is another drinker to the right of me, sitting on a banquette against the wall, next to the fire burning in the grate, white wispy hair hoping to reach his shoulders, perhaps a memory of his youth as a rocker. His glass is half full, beer, amber and what he has drunk so far has left a playful trace of lacing on the glass. He is not reading, neither looking at his phone; he is just looking ahead, and doesn’t seem to have that eagerness on his face, a pushing forward of the upper part of his body, that might indicated that he wants to talk. He seems happy with the stillness of the bar, and like him I am also contented.

I like the stillness of a bar. It’s like taking a nap but you aren’t even at home. Speaking of things that aren’t like other things, I was lobbied to review what I had already noticed, Ben Gibbs‘ piece (at his newsletter with the excellent URL “soberboozersclub”) on alcohol free beer being offered by Bathams:

Alcohol free beer often arrives with messaging attached to it. Moderation and improvement. It’s framed as a better choice, or at least a more considered one. That language doesn’t land here. These pubs aren’t built around self-improvement, they’re built on ritual. The same pint, the same place, the same faces, the same small actions repeated over time until you don’t have to think about it anymore. For anything new to settle into that environment it has to feel ordinary. That is what Bathams alcohol free does. It sits on the bar without drawing attention to itself. It arrives in the same shape and occupies the same space in your hand. Nothing else in the room shifts to accommodate it.

That fits. Just as being “still” means quiet is can also suggest continuity. Next, Knut. Knut? Knut! Knut was once a travel correspondent for this here publication, back when we had a few more voices than just me. Recently, Knut has picked up his pen again… or his keyboard I suppose… and has been writing on his newsletter, this time about the difference between what was Norwegian March Beer, then Easter Beer, then Spring Beer and then Export Beer:

The name was later changed to Påskebrygg (“Easter Brew”), and the sales period ran from March 1 to March 31. The name Påskebrygg met strong opposition from Christian groups, particularly the organization Kristenfolkets Edruelighetsråd (the Christian Temperance Council). The brewing industry decided to change the name, stating that it wished to respect the feelings of those who supposedly took offense at it. The motives in the ads and the bottle labels focused on a new activity – domestic ski tourism. We enter a new period with more leasure and, at least for some people, more disposable income. Following a naming competition, the beer was released in 1939 under the name Vårøl (“Spring Beer”). Påskebrygg and Vårøl were sold from 1934 to 1940. In the postwar years, Eksportøl (“Export Beer”) became their successor.

Make sense? Good. Me, I miss my tenuous access to Easter Beer. What else is going on? I need to pick up tips from Retired Martin who has been on the road again, this time wandering around Cologne, Germany – or, rather, standing around:

I knew I had to visit Gaststätte Lommerzheim (“Lommi’s“) at some point, why not now ? “It’s like the Hare and Hounds” I tell Matt. Frankly, you queue for opening, either for lunch (11) or teatime (4.30), or you miss out. James and Matthew weren’t convinced by the appeal of standing outside a suspect looking building on an unpromising street for a quarter of an hour when nicer looking open options called out across the Rhine. But as we chatted to two lads who’d travelled from Chicago (again !) with Lommies top of their list they began to succumb. And then at 16:30 the back door (the one marked “Keller”) opened, leaving those of us staring at the front door to make a dash for a table.

Staying in Germany but waiting much longer in the line up, Andreas Krennmair has been able to clarify a question that has bothered him for sometime about Munich’s Oktoberfest:

…the current restrictions on beer at Oktoberfest, namely that it can only be from one of the “traditional” breweries from Munich whose beer conforms to the Oktoberfestbier PGI regulations, which requires them to have a well going several hundred metres deep down, are not rooted in the festival’s own history. It is essentially a form of regulatory capture to make it exclusive to Munich’s big 6 beer brands that has been successfully defended in court before.

Andreas located documents showing that in 1895 there were 19 breweries with stalls at the festival. It’s a scam! Fight the power!! Leaving Germany with a few last stops, Franz Hofer wrote this week about the breweries in the towns and villages along the trainline crossing the border between Munich and Salzburg – like Privatbrauerei Schnitzlbaumer in Traunstein:

Renovated recently, Schnitzlbaumer boasts vaulted ceilings and large feature windows with views of the valley. The bar is backlit in that early 2000s atmospheric kind of way, and copper kettles glimmer in the subdued light. It’s a nice, airy space perfect for whiling away the early evening with a few beers. As for those beers… the best of the lot is their Weissbier, a richly textured beer that, with its elegant notes of banana custard and sprinkle of allspice, drinks almost like a Vitus. For what it’s worth, Schnitzlbaumer’s beers aren’t my favourite among Traunstein’s three breweries — a few hits, a few misses.

Reading that, I suddenly realize I only picked that passage so I and now you can say Schnitzlbaumer. Schnitzlbaumer. Schnitzlbaumer. As I approach retirement, I am never that surprised what I knucklehead I am. (Was that why the boss gave me that big pat on the back?) Still, probably more likely to see me on a train holiday like that compared to a cruise. But that’s me.

Note #1: A.I. sourced? Or just drifty and even a bit presumptuous?
Note #2: “It’s like K-Pop…”
Note #3: OK Zedder.

For me, beer is like sports. Some folk drill down into the OBP, SLG and OPS of baseball players. Me? I just liked the Expos and now just like the Red Sox. They have sucked. They have won it all. So I do find it odd when beer writers call those at a different level of fandom abstraction “mansplainers” when they are clearly just shit talkers. If we accept that people like what they like they will also talk shit about what they like. ‘Twas ever so. In fact, there is so much shit talked about beer one can wonder where the facts may be found. But sometimes a study is revealing in terms of both ends of the research as Pete showed this week in his review of 15 mass market mainly lighter beers:

Many drinkers do unite in insisting that all the big multinational brands taste the same. This is not true. Some taste faintly of beer. Others taste of nothing. A sad few taste so bad, you wonder if you might have run over the brewer’s dog years ago and they’ve been plotting their revenge ever since. Nonetheless, I’ve tried all the most popular beers myself and ranked them from best (or least worst) to worst. Here’s hoping this helps you next time you’re faced with nothing but the usual pub suspects.

The findings are solid. Asahi is “clean and crisp, designed to cut through fatty fried food“, #3 Guinness “kept well… it is much better than this faint praise suggests” and #4 Heineken is a “little sweet, but it has integrity.” One thing I have always disagreed with is the idea that light beers are distinct from good beers. As homebrewers know, making something subtle is both more difficult and more rewarding than a bombastic brew. I’m quite happy with anything on the upper end of Pete’s list.

Going for something a bit more haute, Alistair checked one tick off his list when he headed to the hills of Virginia and Alpine Goat Brewing:

To get to Alpine Goat there is a little bouncing along a gravel track, but the views from the brewery and its beer garden over to the Shenandoah National Park are more than worth it. Seriously, if there is a more picturesque brewery in Virginia, I haven’t been there yet. Having packed the kids off with a ball, frisbee, and boomerang to snag a table with space for them to play, we went to the bar and naturally I ordered the pilsner…

Frisbee and boomerang? Lordly. Next, why did I think “PelliProtz!!!” when I checked my emails this morning? Because this week’s feature in Pellicle is by Roger Protz who wrote about Bodger’s, a barley wine from The Chiltern Brewery which has been branded in honour of Roger Protz:

A “bodger” today means someone who does a shoddy job, cuts all available corners, takes the money and runs. But centuries ago, in rural Buckinghamshire, it meant something quite different. It referred to craftsmen who built chain-link fences for farmers to safeguard their crops and animals. Bodger’s, a barley wine from The Chiltern Brewery, celebrates that tradition. As mentioned, the brewery has recently released a special edition of the beer—one with my name and image on the label. It’s Chiltern’s generous way of thanking me for my support towards the brewery, and the wider independent brewing sector, over a writing career that has spanned several decades. The beer is a powerful 8.4% ABV, and has helped to restore a beer style with its roots in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Worthy. And I see that Katie Mather made the news this week, sharing her analysis of the differences with recent brewery closings in the UK with Jo Gilbert:

Speaking to Drinks Retailing, beer expert Katie Mather noted that “each brewery has different issues.” Regarding Molson Coors’ acquisition and subsequent closure of Sharp’s, she said: “This is a common pattern in the beer industry. Small breweries are picked up by bigger ones to extract value and ultimately crash the brand into obscurity.” Conversely, she added: “Brewdog was gutted by its owners’ greed and hubris and, sadly, it’s the workers let go on a 15-minute Teams call and the ordinary people who thought they’d be able to make some money from Equity For Punks who are left with nothing.”

Correct. And there is a great story of another sort death of craft brewing’s irrational and perhaps also manufactured exhuberence in the stock valuation of Boston Beer over the last five years, as reported in Seeking Alpha:

While other stocks declined due to the pandemic-induced shockwave, SAM took off, briefly exceeding $1,300 per share, or $13 billion market cap, on April 23, 2021, after the company reported a whopping YOY growth of 38.9% for revenue and 32.6% for gross profit for Y2020. The height of the drinking party did not last long. By June 2022, as its revenue and gross profits growth decelerated, the stock dropped back to $341. It has been generally declining since then to reach today’s $225 or so. The magnitude of the rise and decline in such a short time window is striking. However, the dramatic rise and equally dramatic fall are not the most interesting part. What is far more instructive is how such a dramatic repricing occurred—and what it reveals about the risks of investing without valuation discipline.

And there’s even another sort of interesting change in the beer market in Korea these days, too, as reported in The Korea Times:

A man in his 20s agreed, noting the appeal. “Japanese beer has a premium feel,” he said. “When I want something different from what I usually drink, Japanese beer is my first choice.” The current boom stands in sharp contrast to recent years. In 2018, Japan exported 12.5 billion yen (about 118.2 billion won) worth of beer to Korea. Exports then plunged to 900 million yen (about 8.5 billion won) in 2020 following the launch of the ‘No Japan’ boycott. The movement began in 2019 after Tokyo restricted exports of vital semiconductor materials, viewed by Korea as an economic retaliation against a Korean Supreme Court ruling that ordered Japanese companies to compensate victims of colonial-era forced labor.

Finally, speaking of politics and division, the Minocqua Brewing Company in Wisconsin has made an offer that one day is guaranteed to pay off:

“Our notorious offer of free beer when ‘he’ dies is still on the table, and for all those who thought that internationally viral post was a little too dark or ‘classless,’ here’s exhibit ‘A’ on what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” the statement there read. “For the Fox News and Daily Mail reporters who shamed us cuz he’s ‘still the President,’ will you be shaming ‘Shitler’ as well about his most recent post?”… The brewery added an update, “we meant the Madison Taproom because that’s open all year, if he dies in the summer, then it’s gonna be the Minocqua Taproom.”

That’s a date! I mean it would seem petty and even crass but, jeese, how many other breweries are going to do the same thing? Do you agree? Is going low a no go? As you consider that, 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. See you next week when I will be retired. Hence that photo up there. If you come back next week we’ll play a game called “did Al just screw up his future finances putting him in the poor house by when he hits 76 in 2039?” Oh. Me. Nerves.

The Beery News Notes For The November Lull Marking The Five-Sixths Mark of 2025

It’s Canada up here and I gotta tell you we have entered the lull. Pals who work in the hospitality trade in these parts know that between Halloween last week and Remembrance Day next week there is a bit of a drop as we perhaps contemplate some bigger things. Like tightening up the house before the snow flies. Like those final chores to put the garden to bed. Like finding about 35 pounds of tomatoes under just one frikkin’ tarp. Holy smokes. Any recipe suggestions for green tomato chutney can be left in the comments and will be seriously considered… given the circumstances.

First up, I liked this recent brief New Yorker review of Barcade, a joint video game and craft beer bar:

If you play it right, a visit to the new, FiDi outpost of Barcade—the hybrid arcade and craft-beer bar that originated in Williamsburg twenty-one years ago—leads to a quasi-inter-dimensional portal. Your first move, after entering, is to advance to the stone countertop on your left. Survey the chalkboard menu, rich in I.P.A.s, and choose according to your mettle. If that means the Evil Twin Pink Pineapple, prepare for a goblet of roseate brew whose tartness zaps the mouth like a laser. Explore your surroundings.

I particularly like how the intergallactic laser theme is the tie between the beer and the games. Ten years ago, the same bar was featured in a Jack Black vignette in the same mag but the only the food was mentioned:

He took a bite of his burger, and his eyebrows soared imperatively: “Dude, this Barcade burger? Awesome!”

Reaching even further back, Liam shared the results of some recent research on efforts by Guinness in 1896 to exert control over the Irish stout market:

This appears to be a damning (if clunkily written*) indictment of a new policy by the Guinness brewery to force those who choose to use the Guinness label to only bottle their stout porter and no other. These days this might be dismissed by many with a shrug and a comment about Guinness just being Guinness but it appears that at the time the other breweries in the city were rather incensed by this behaviour to the point where they issued what could be seen as a full page proclamation under the title ‘Protest of the Dublin brewing Trade Against the New Guinness Label’ where they called out Guinness on what the claimed to be its attempt to establish a monopoly under the guise of wishing to stop adulteration, plus the mislabelling of others’ product as their own.

And The Beer Nut was also sharing this week, this from BlueSky: “What psychopath thought jackfruit Maibock was a good idea?” Indeed. The perils of judging. Possibly relatedly but quite possibly not, David Jesudason pointed me to another peril related to beer scribbling under UK law that I had not been aware of – the taxman cometh:

In news that will have seen some beer writers crying into their gifted Fuller’s Vintage Ales, HMRC has recently clarified that content creators must declare all donations as income on their self-assessment tax return. That’s right. Those crates of beer, jets to foreign breweries and VIP festival passes will now have to be taxed at their market value. (Disclaimer: this is HMRC so some of the guidelines are as muddy as a drain pour smoothie IPA.) It’s caused a few privileged writers to heroically proclaim that they are now refusing unpaid press trips and goodie bags. These virtuous announcements can only mean that a period of austerity will have to be endured; if you see a downtrodden freelance scribe at the bar, maybe buy them a half.

Yup, tax dodging is a serious thing as the makers of Campari have recently found out:

The Italian authorities allege that the holding company, Lagfin, which is controlled by the Garavoglia family, committed tax fraud. The value of the shares seized equates to the tax in question. They will be held until the case is resolved. Lagfin controls 51.3% of the shares in Campari and 38.8% of the voting rights of Davide Campari Milano NV, which is now registered in the Netherlands. The drinks group moved its formal registration to Amsterdam in 2020 to benefit from advantageous tax laws and to exercise tighter control of the company through Dutch company law.

Oopsies!! I have to admit, this next story has me a bit confused. It appears to be an assertion that the British Beer and Pubs Association (BBPA) that the sum total of Britons’ feelings of loneliness relate to the closure of pubs, relying on numbers which appear to exceed perceptions of societal isolation during the pandemic lockdowns:

Research, gathered from new polling by the British Beer and Pubs Association (BBPA) has shown that two out of three (67%) people see pubs as “vital” in the fight against isolation. According to the results, one in three (33%) revealed that they, or someone they know, have experienced increased loneliness as a direct result of losing their local pub… According to the most recent Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures from October 2025, it was discovered that 26% of Brits report feeling lonely at least some of the time, a figure that has remained consistently high since records began in 2020, during the Covid pandemic.

CAMRA presented the same line. I suppose the pandemic is far enough in the past now that co-opting it for commercial purposes isn’t seen as an appropriation of, you know… death. What an odd way to present the poll. Surely, then, it was just coincidence that the NYT had a story on the dangers of placing trust in single issue poll results:

Policy proposals very often overperform in issue polls, according to a recent study that looked at available polling and ballot measure data across 11 topics from 1958 to 2020. The findings apply to both liberal and conservative causes. The more popular a policy is in polls, data showed, the more likely it is to underperform on Election Day. These polls distort our democracy in important ways. Political parties shape their agendas and priorities based on polls that appear to overestimate support for these ideas in the real world. This can make politicians more extreme; if they believe their causes have public support, they will be less likely to moderate.

[You know, I should quote from “a recent study” more often. They’re great.] Still… loneliness for the pub of youth? Makes sense. Was all this the reason that Matty L came out of cryo-hiberation (literarily speaking) and wrote a portrait of a particular Preston pub in peril? Probably not:

The sole survivor of a Victorian terrace, it’s on the side of of a Y-junction, surrounded by sketchy-to-cross roads and large retail units, There’s very little chance a bog-standard pub with a bog standard drink selection would survive long there, and indeed the vast majority of pubs in the area have closed down in the last 30 years. Luckily, at this time the whole “craft beer” thing was taking off. Rich duly installed microbrewed cask ales on the pump, and probably Preston’s first ever “craft keg” selection on the taps. It duly opened in May 2014, to so much local publicity that even I went there for the opening… I assume keeping all these balls in the air must get exhausting after a decade or so, and a couple of days ago Rich announced he was moving on from The Moorbrook in January. As such, the future of the pub is up in the air…

And Boak and Bailey also had a honest evaluation of – and even a yearning for – one former favourite pub near them in Bristol, the Swan with Two Necks:

The bogs at the Swan aren’t its best feature (soap and water on this visit, but no dryer) and the roast potatoes aren’t exhibition quality. But who cares when (a) the atmosphere and (b) the beer list are so bloody good? We think there was certainly a wobble over the summer when punters were thin on the ground and the management was having to disentangle itself from a reliance on beers from Moor. But, yeah, it’s still a great pub, and it’s definitely going to be in our 2026 Bristol pub guide.

No dryer? Me, I take an old fashioned handkerchief for such moments. Because I am old. On a similar theme in terms of noticing the details, ATJ also wrote of a moment at anthother pub past:

The fluffy cockerpoo wagged its tail as it looked at me, while I noticed a couple sitting at the bar; meanwhile a bulky man in Irish rugby shirt rushed past to the gents, disturbing the dog. The music had changed and it was now an almost electro version of (Don’t Fear) The Reaper. Outside the light continued its fall from grace and it was time for me to go to the Albion.

I could quite easily be lonely for those sorts of things, too, I suppose. Maybe. The cockerpoo. A bulky man?!? Speaking of one’s local, Jeff shared a recollection of running into both Evan and diacetyl in Prague:

Typical for any immigrant who lives in an adopted city long enough, Evan long ago absorbed the preferences of Czech drinkers. One of these was an indifference to diacetyl. Or perhaps more accurately, an agnosticism to it. He explained it to me as we sipped buttery pale lagers at his local. Czechs don’t take a position on diacetyl. Like any drinking public, Czechs have certain considerations about what makes a good beer. It should have some meat on its bones, some hop bite in the finish. It should be crystal clear. Above all, it should encourage another sip, another half-liter, and another after that. Diacetyl is just not one of the things it must have or must exclude.

Exactly. What is accepted is real but real is such a cultural construct. For example, we see that Pellicle published a set of top tips for the English pub goer from the good crew that gathers at the magazine – but a few of these have me scratching the old brain bucket. First, the intro in which the scene is set:

….a certain level of pub decorum must also be preserved. All good pubs have unwritten codes of conduct that, over time, become instilled in the people who use them regularly. It is the responsibility of those who live by these codes to pass them on to others. Pubs are for everyone—but not everyone who visits a pub is aware of the particulars that make it hospitable for patrons and staff alike.

I think it is important that we are talking about “codes” rather than a code as a few of the rules the article suggest seem to be particularly placed – and some even may contradict each other. We see that it is important not to shush (“…what possesses people to enter lively social spaces and insist on monastic silence?“) yet don’t take that lively noise too far (“…put your device on silent…“) Also, know what you want to drink based on the menu (“…the majority of your questions may be dispensed by the clearly legible and reasonably sized board directly in your line of sight…“) but don’t order a cocktail even if it’s on the menu (“…but some pubs have a cocktail menu,” I hear you whimper. It doesn’t matter…“) . Further, I’ve worked in pubs and, yes, dropped many glasses and even a full case of beer bottles and still clap a little bit when a glass smashes. Sorry David. The article is very helpful in many ways, including a warning that there is a minefield awaiting just past the pub door for those unlucky enough to be unfamiliar with the particular local variant of the code.

See, we each have all our ways, we tribes. For further example of this, I would suggest that “fake wine” is such a dirty phrase for that regulatory cultural wonder that is “Canadian wine“:

Free Trade? California, Washington and Oregon are out of the wine business in Canada. They were taken off the shelves because of President Trump’s trade war. Yet becuase of a series of past trade agreements, more than fifty million gallons of quote, “Canadian wine” is shipped into the U.S. each year that isn’t made with grapes – it’s made with grain alcohol at a cost of $1.08 a gallon. This so-called ‘Canadian wine’ is shipped into the U.S. and is blended into spirits products. It’s a cheap alcohol base used with vermouth, some port-style wines, wine-based cocktails, wine-based margaritas, and wine-based spirits replacements. It’s blended into distilled spirits products “with natural flavors.”

What is it? Seems to be the base for RTD alcopops and crap like Fireball and Southern Comfort. The stuff my kids snuck and chugged in high school. Also seems to fit right in with “Canadian bacon” and “Canadian tuxedo.” Bulk base booze. Vino del Norte! Viva!!

Speaking of “what is it?” Beer Marketers’ Insights has an interesting observation on the NA* beer market – the price at retail is dropping:

…it’s notable that biggest change is in hottest segment. Avg NA beer prices down 72 cents, almost 2% for 4 weeks, while category $$ sales still up 15% and volume up 17% in this data set. That includes a nearly $1 per case drop for Athletic and almost a $4 per case drop for Heineken 0.0. Athletic is still almost $42 per case and Heineken NA is at almost $39 per case. So they ain’t exactly cheap. Corona NA down a couple bucks per case too. Some of that’s due to mix shifts toward larger pack sizes. Some due to recent promo activity on brands like Heineken 0.0. But could some of these price cuts also be because of pressure created by Michelob Ultra Zero, avg price of $32.36 in last 4 weeks?

Finally, an update on a story I posted in 2010.** A story wherein I included these very quoted words: “Allsopp. That name will live for ages in the recollection of all Polars…” Recollect no more, Polars:

A brewer plans to open up a 150-year-old bottle of beer, made for an Arctic expedition, so a modern version can be created. The original Allsopp’s Arctic Ale was bottled in Burton-upon-Trent for Sir George Nares, when he set out to reach the North Pole in 1875. It was later discovered in a box in a garage in Gobowen, Shropshire, and sold at auction for £3,300 in 2015. The buyer was Dougal Gunn Sharp, founder and master brewer of Edinburgh-based Innis & Gunn, and he now plans to use the ale to seed a new limited-edition beer.

What will it be? Will they also rely on their Sylvester warming apparatus as part of the brewing process? Merryn noted another attempted recreation has already occurred. One may have to wait to find out this time to learn if it is reasonably authentic or “inspired by.” God save us from the beers labled as “inspired by.”

That is it. Next time, the post-lull madness begins. In the meantime, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then 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 has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! 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. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

*Not Actually?
**Notable also was this recent news item about 1890s brewing in Margate that pairs well with my 2016 story of Margage brewing in the 17th and 18th centuries: “This town much consists of brewers of a certain heady ale, and they deal much in malt…“

This Week’s Fantastically Even Dramatically Encouraging Beery News Notes For W3Oct25

Usually I have something to share at the outset. Something cheery. But as the garden is on its last legs, as the month slips toward Halloween and then we deal with the changing of the clocks, it seems that any pretense that the year isn’t beginning the final act is fading fast. But… but… before all that, there is one more bit of baseball. One of the most exciting ALCS runs ever now turns into the World Series between a startlingly strong Blue Jays against the defending Dodgers led by the semi-deity known as Mr. Ohtani. Look at him! He’s the perfect player. Kyusung Gong of the AP took it and it sums up Ohtani neatly. He barely looks like he’s putting in any effort. His batting is the same. Yet… the Jays look good. So, even though neither of the two are my team, I will be feet up this Friday evening for game one. If you have never watched baseball you may want to watch this. One more thing. The Jays celebrate with US beer brewed under license in Canada. Lordy:

The Toronto Blue Jays are sponsored by Labatt Brewing Company, the Canadian-headquartered brewery that represents big-name booze brands like Corona, Stella Artois, Palm Bay and, yes, Budweiser. That’s why, upon the win, you could see an icy barrel stocked to the brim with bottles and cans of Budweiser within an arm’s reach of every Blue Jays player at any given time.

As I say, not my team. Next, some beery news from the world of British fitba. First up, we have Jessica Mason’s report on the new brewery being build at second tier Wrexham, Wales care of those struggling team owners Reynolds and McElhenney:

Since the duo bought Wrexham AFC five years ago, the club has risen up the ranks from the non-league to England’s second tier. Added to this, the brand has also found fame via a Disney+ documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which followed the club’s story and focused global attention on the area, also boosting tourist numbers. Then, last year, Reynolds and McElhenney acquired a majority stake in local brewery Wrexham Lager…. now there are plans afoot for other drinks brands, including Wrexham Lager to have a boosted presence with the proximity of the new brewery being developed nearby. The application reads: ‘The Wrexham Lager proposals, consisting a brewery and associated taproom and museum, will utilise existing buildings on the site.’

But then we read of the news out of England’s seventh tier as reported by Phil Hay of the newsletter, The Athletic FC:

The club were Bracknell Town, based 35 miles to the west of London. Their video drew attention because in it, their coach — the recently-appointed Matt Saunders — hammered a number of his senior players, criticising their conditioning, their attitude and their tendency towards alcohol. “I’m not going to let this football club be dragged down by people that can’t run, can’t look after their body, want to go and drink after games,” he said. “It ain’t happening.” Bracknell are having a time of it. They’re bottom of the Southern League Premier South with six points from 11 matches, and Saunders’ arrival hasn’t picked them up.

Difference? Maybe five tiers? Boak and Bailey have also made a call via an alert on Patreon, asking for a boost to the next level:*

It’s been a while since we tackled a big question like where did lager louts come from, what’s the deal with nitrokeg beers or when did video games in pubs become a thing? We’ve got an idea to write something about The Prospect of Whitby but beyond that, what are some other questions we might tackle? We like to add the sum of collective knowledge – to pull facts together into one place where they can be found. Suggestions welcome.

In a time when some other voices have gone a bit silent or seem a little discouraged, this reminder of the need to add to the sum of collective knowledge is encouraging. Solidarity friends! Send then your ideas or even scribble your own somewhere and let us know. Similarly, The Pellicle feature this week is by Lily Waite-Marsden, a portrait of Macintosh Ales of London which, at the outset, does not offer an initial encouraging prospect:

There’s a small yard a moment away from Stoke Newington Church Street in North East London. At its entrance an entirely perfunctory and heavily battered railing protects the square of overgrown cobbles from the pavement beyond. On the first floor of the old stable buildings on three sides, four green doors lead to nothing but a 10-foot drop; the yard is hemmed with various shades of green paint—faded and flaking patchwork grass, darker, glossier army-surplus vehicle paint. But for a hand-painted sign and a number of planters giving the game away, passing on a quiet morning or late at night it might look a little tired, unloved.

But then… it was encouraging. And, turning to brewing history, Andreas Krennmair wrote about a favourite topic of mine, Schenkbier. Except when I looked at the stuff it was from the perspective of what was brewed by German speaking immigrants to the USA. Schenk was referenced regularly descriptions of the brewing trade in the third quarter of the 1800s and was described as one of three species of German beer which had crossed the ocean: lager, bock and schenk. Andreas found some information from a few decadeds earlier that helped him unpack what was in the glass:

What’s surprising is how different the beers were in terms of original gravity and attenuation. OGs between 11 and 12.6 °P are absolutely solid, and while some of these beers didn’t have nearly as much alcohol as modern lager beers, they’d still be alright to drink, although probably on sweeter side for modern tastes. Especially the beer from Heller stands out, with a respectable 11.5 °P but only 2.9% ABV and a very high residual extract. Doing the calculation, the real attenuation was less than 40%, so this beer must have been a sweet mess. Compare this with modern lager beer, with real attenuation around 65%.

Perhaps syrupy low kick gak is the next big thing. It could be already. There is going to be a next big thing, right? Maybe not. North America’s oldest brewer, Molson, is laying off staff. And not just any staff – the white collar staff of MCBC:

Beer maker Molson Coors Beverage Company said on Monday it would cut about 400 jobs, or nine per cent of its salaried workforce in the Americas by year end as part of a corporate restructuring plan. The company’s Americas workforce consists of employees in the U.S., Canada and certain countries in Latin America. A spokesperson for the company told CBC News in an email that the restructuring “only applies to salaried non-union employees across the Americas.” The company is not providing a breakdown by country or province at this stage, and no offices or breweries will shut down as part of the restructuring, the spokesperson added.

It’s always the suits who suffer. The trends in beer are not comforting. Last week’s noting that craft might need saving** not only got some chatter going but I played Mr Smil and dipped my toe into the math that we are living with seeking to compare those apples to apples:

Interesting to note that 2024, Athletic NA beer alone was 400,000 bbl. Is NA beer a comparable to other booze? Is it booze? We should probably compare alcohol sector to alcohol sector. Take just that one brewery’s production out, the drop is more like 14%… Worse news if we believe Beer Marketers Insights (Oct 1): “Craft beer trends (ex non-alc) steepened over the summer to volume -8.4% and $$ -6.4%; several pts below total beer volume -5.6% and $$ down 5.1% for 18 wks thru Sep 20 vs yr ago.” So 2019-24 at -14% (non-NA) could be down -20% for 2019-25.

Or more *** The Guardian wrote about another aspect of the retraction from alcohol – the loss of a cornerstone element of overall profitability for restaurants:

The industry standard markup on alcohol in a high-end restaurant is anywhere from 150% upwards, making it one of, perhaps the only, high-margin products on the menu. As people drink less, it could leave restaurants in a precarious position. For every restaurateur willing to go on the record to discuss the shifting tide, there were an equal number who refused to be interviewed for this story. Some because they say they’ve witnessed no change in customer behaviour, and others because the subject matter is at odds with promoting a hospitality business. While it doesn’t necessarily do wonders for the bottom line, diners drinking less at the table does create a more harmonious environment for restaurant workers. Fewer drunk bodies means less risk overall.

Me, I usually just have water but still try to tip like I’ve had a bit of booze. Where will this all lead? What can be relied upon to get the attention of the public. Innovation? The Beer Nut himself spent last weekend in Warsaw and spotted one of the more innovative cultural expressions of beer culture – a sausage randall as illustrated in thumbnail format… in consideration of some of your delicate constitutions. Much consternation was found in the comments which followed his Bluesky post – but I really can’t see the difference between a lager washed through sausages and sausages washed down with lager. Much depending of course on the quality of the sausage.

Speaking of quality, Matty C. has written about the return of Boddingtons for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing and has placed it in the moment:

Being honest for a second, this beer is not reinventing the wheel – there are far more interesting and flavourful pints available, even from JW Lees itself. But I consider the resurgence of Boddingtons is about more than flavour. Reports are already coming in from Manchester venues that are not able to keep up with demand, turning away disappointed drinkers who want to be seen with a pint of it in hand. This is significant, because those who are drinking it are young, fashionable, and about as far away from the cask beer stereotype as you can possibly get. This can only be considered a positive. For many drinkers, especially younger ones, a row of handpulls featuring a range of products they’ve never heard of can be incredibly intimidating. In Boddingtons, a brand has been revived that people can easily trust.

Heritage as maybe heritage? Maybe. Speaking of maybe, there is always the potential for maybe not – as one liquor dome in Northern Ireland found out recently:

Planners order the business to remove shipping containers used as a bar and storage, as well as a takeaway food cabin with a serving hatch on a Skipper Street – a side road that runs past the beer garden. Also to go are steel boundaries with wood covering that include an access gate and windows, an enclosed walkway entrance, a “tent structure”, boundary fencing in excess of two metres in height not adjacent to a road, and storage areas for bins and beer kegs. City planners say they’ve reached their verdict as “it appears there has been a breach of planning control” on the site.

Finally and probably relatedly, here is an interesting snippet of an unlocked article from the Financial Times written by Charles Spencer (Princess Di’s brother) on the question of authenticity which includes this:

When, in 1992, I inherited Althorp, my family’s ancestral home, I felt a responsibility to return it to how it had been for much of its 500-year history. For, over the previous decade and a half, the interior had been lavishly redecorated by my stepmother, Raine, whose taste and palette were inherited from her flamboyant mother, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland… I turned to John Cornforth, perhaps the leading British architectural historian of the time, to help me return things to how they should be. We toured Althorp’s principal rooms, assessing them for Raine damage. Cornforth’s kind reassurances dwindled as we went. Finally, on entering the South Drawing Room — a cacophony of clashing pinks (on the walls, on the floor, in the curtains) — Cornforth rocked back in his tightly drawn lace-ups. “Goodness,” he mused. “I really can’t help you here . As he departed Althorp that afternoon, he lobbed me a catch-all mantra that he hoped might help: “Good taste is authenticity — and authenticity is good taste.”

The point is excellently made. But what does this have to do with beer? Only on the idea of how his hunt for authenticity based on that saying became for Spencer a no-doubt very expensive exercise in conformity. Realizing that, he argues for a balance between respect for what has come before with a realization that you need to live in the present, too. Can we compare the return of Boddingtons or the sweet mess that was historic schenk or that sausage randall with the clashing pinks of a devotee Barbara Cartland’s fashion sense? Obviously even the “don’t yuk their yum” level of junior beer expert might balk at the more garish, the most lurid of these pleasures. But where to draw the line?

While we consider that over the week ahead, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of that now newly refreshed 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 has been on hiatus since April but the archives are out there with the all the sweary Mary! There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer 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. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

*Formatted to fit, to protect the innocent perhaps but mainly to fit.
**Jeff updated his thoughts, by the way, but it did make me wonder why what one wants should be limited to what some producers feel they can provide. Perhaps the former suits of Molson now share that feeling.
***A bear of beer!

The Beery News Notes You Need To Get You Through Victoria Day Weekend

If we are honest, we should celebrate the Georges as much as Queen Victoria.* Sure she invented the fifth version of Canada but it was the Georgians who made us, they being the people (and, yes, their red clad dutiful doers) who kept us from being just another slice of Americana. Timely thoughts, you will agree. Some call this coming long weekend not Victoria Day but May Two Four – my greatest gift to Linguista Canadiana being the alt, May Too Far. When the Georgians were running the place, the birthday of the monarch was one of the greatest spectacles in the year as the account of 12 and, I suppose, 13 August 1827 at Guelph, Ontario on the celebration of the King’s birthday bears witness:

…all sat down and enjoyed a hearty meal. “After the cloth was removed,” toasts were drunk to everybody and every conceivable thing, the liquors, of all imaginable descriptions, being passed round in buckets, from which each man helped himself by means of tin cups, about two hundred of which had been supplied for the occasion… those who remained continued to celebrate the day in an exceedingly hilarious manner, most of them, who had not succumbed to an overpowering somnolency, celebrating the night too, many of them being found next morning reposing on the ground in the market place, in loving proximity to the liquor pails, in which conveniently floated the tin cups…

Always solid advice. By the way, the 200th anniversary of that event on the Guelph frontier is just two years and three months away. We need to recognize that boozy bicentennial! Time to apply for those government grant to celebreate our great heritage for celebration. I just hope the application form has a space for indicating the number of tiny tin cups required for the event. By the way, just seven years later, as explained up there in the Kingston Whig newpaper of 12 August 1834, not so much fun. None at all. But the advice still stands today: lay off the opium, buster.

Enough of then! What of the now? First up, Rebecca Crowe shared some of her love for her local, the The Little Taproom on Aigburth Road in Liverpool in Pellicle this week, a place of cheery activity and welcoming hosts, Si and Aggie:

If you’re in the Tap on a Wednesday night, you’ll be greeted by groups of people staring at their phones. However, this isn’t an unsociable act—it’s the Big Quiz in the Little Taproom. When you look around the regular teams, you see couples, groups, solo players, university-aged friends, alongside seasoned quiz addicts, and people just looking for some time out of the house. Si mentions how quickly the quiz has grown as a regular pub fixture. “At first, it was just a regular event to increase revenue on an otherwise relatively quiet Wednesday night,” he says, with his trademark full-hearted honesty.

Next, and perhaps quite conversely, a bit of disappointing news for the efforts being undertaken to have cask ale and pubs recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO as explained in Pellicle by lobbying leader Jonny Garrett:

During brief discussions with the civil servant in charge of the project, I was told there would be a “relatively low bar of entry” to the national list, but that there was no intention to put any submissions to UNESCO for the first few years. The reasoning was that the government was not certain how to select which cultures should be submitted, but it also feels like they are reluctant to do so until they fully comprehend the implications for governance of any that make the grade.

Seems that as the UK is late to ratifying the underlying treaty, the government has to determine how to prioritize the many claims to being awarded the designation. So cask beer is up against things like all of Scotch Whisky (a good bet to beat out cask), Welsh mens’ choirs (obvs ahead of cask) and all those charming English fetes on the village green on lovely summer Saturdays that we see on TV, the ones where half the upper middle class villagers who live there are murdered – and it was the church choir master, jilted by school teacher all those years ago, who was to blame after all!!

If, however, any evidence of the vibrant Life on Cask is required for governmental purposes, the entirity of reportage from Martin is right there for the taking. Just this week he visited wrote about his recent trip to The Castle Hotel of Manchester providing us with a lovely photo essay – including this image of the entry way like something from one of those episodes of Time Team where they uncover a Roman mosaic in a farmer’s field. Heritage.

More bad news for the US booze and craft trade. BeerBoard reported that “total alcohol sales declined -7.3% year-over-year across same-store locations during the May 2–5 weekend” as Beer Marketer’s Insights shared:

Craft beer sales continue to soften in tracked retail channels thru first few wks of April. As total beer sales “improved” a bit to $$ down 2.2%, craft beer softened to $$ down 6.3% for latest 4 wks thru Apr 20 in Circana multi-outlet + convenience channels. Keep in mind, that’s excluding non-alc craft brands tracked in separate NA segment by Circana.

It’s interesting how heavily those still wishing on that star rely on non-alcohol beer stats to prop up the decline while also squeezing that Bourcard report** dismissing the demographics hard. If all the energy to ignore the trend was employed in addressing the trend… would the outcome change? Speaking of tinier trends, has anyone actually noticed the rise of Thai beer in America?

According to reports via The Manual, Group B USA has claimed to be the first and only Thai craft beer distributor in America and now it has also started brewing stateside too. Beer lovers and Thai cuisine connoisseurs have previously only been familiar with Singha and Chang beer brands, but in a deep dive interview with Group B CEO Bamee Prapavee Hematat there is now a growing Thai craft beer movement featuring IPAs and beers flavoured with dried bananas.

Despite all those Thai beers coming it, less is still more for the rest of the US beer trade, as Evan Rail reported in VinePair this week:

“That was the height of craft beer—it was easy to keep 28 handles on tap,” says Zak Rotello, the bar’s third-generation owner. “Now, fast-forward 10 years and I have less beer on tap than ever: 21 beers out of a total of 30 handles. The others are wine and spirits.” It’s not just Rockford. Across the country, a number of bar owners are moving away from the massive tap lists of the craft era. Back in the days of what Rotello calls “rotation nation,” enthusiastic beer drinkers were always hoping to find something new on tap—and bars were happy to oblige. Instead, many bars today are offering fewer draft beers, often using those same lines for pre-mixed cocktails, bulk-packaged wine or other beverages.

And Alistair shared some related thoughts over at Fuggled, too, as he bimbled in his dotage:

Maybe I am just entering my curmudgeonly dotage as I creep ever closer to my 50th birthday later this year, but I have found little joy of late browsing the aisles and shelves of the beer retailing world, whether supermarket or specialist. Of course there are beers, usually seasonally available lagers such as Tröeg’s Little Nator, that I happily stock up on when they are available, but usually my little bimbles are more a ritual performed through a misplaced sense of duty, with a hint maybe of self-flagellating hope of something other than yet another “innovation” in the form of an IPA.

Getting a bit legal for a moment, I came across some excellent discussion of an important topic in the hospitality trade from a team of Australian academics, thoughts about the alleged “perks” in the tavern and grub trade and how they undermine hospitality workers’ rights:

As one chef put it: “Free steak dinners don’t pay my rent or stop my boss docking pay for smoke breaks.” Our data also show that workers with formal agreements were significantly more likely to receive their legal entitlements, including proper rest breaks and overtime pay, compared to those without. Why does this matter? Because protecting rights is not just about fairness. It is about safeguarding the sustainability of an industry we all rely on. Research shows when businesses rely on unpaid labour or ignore basic entitlements, they undercut fair competition, contribute to worker burnout and drive talent out of the sector.

Remember when craft brewing workers were expected to be more interested in passion than pay? What? Still?!?! Boak and Bailey (much to the contrary being unfailingly fair competators in the weekly beer new update scene***) have taken time out from their eastern European sojourns to discuss the source of skull iconography in the craft beer scenic landscape:

David Ensmiger, quoted above, suggests that in the context of punk music and skateboarding, skulls and skeletons represent a certain ‘apartness’ from mainstream culture. To paraphrase his argument, skaters, punks and bikers are monsters created by society, who delight in horrifying and repulsing ‘normies’. There’s also a more obvious sense in which skull imagery is about confronting death, and embracing life. People who fly skull flags see themselves as fearless risk takers, in both physical terms (skateboarding accidents hurt) and in terms of their cultural status. Again, this is exactly the kind of attitude craft beer producers either wanted to tap into (appropriate) or which actually reflected their lifestyles.

Fabulous stuff from they themselves, as is so often the case. I added my two cents that there was an association of the imagery with the Motörhead influenced X-treme beer era which picked up 1980s Mad Max post apocalyptic cool. Rock. On.

Speaking of the 1980s, I had no idea that stubbies were a thing outside of Canada before 40 years ago but here were are… or rather there we are according to Anthony Gladman:

The area around Fressin, known as Les Sept Vallées, is nice enough in a damp kind of way, but it’s not exactly what you picture when you hear ‘holiday house in France’. It soon became clear Dad had chosen it just to be close to the Wine Society’s outpost in nearby Hesdin. Still, when I think back to my visits there — which took me from callow teen to knackered young dad myself — what I remember drinking with Dad was beer. Or stubbies, to be precise: little 250 ml bottles of Kronenbourg, bought dirt cheap by the slab from the local hypermarché.

Are you a curious person? I know I sure am and I also know you probably are because you are here reading this very sentence. This one too. Well, in order to compensate for your undoubtedly regular sense of disappointment founded here week after week, Eoghan Walsh has a plan designed just for you – and for you and especially just for you:

Before the big announcement, a slightly smaller one – Brussels Notes turns 100 next week! That’s 100 newsletters from me to you since I first started sending them out over four years ago, and since I revived the format at the beginning of last year. A huge thank you to every one of you who’ve signed up to get them in your inbox, and to everyone who’s reading this or has read an article in the past. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d do an Ask Me Anything edition for newsletter #100. What’s my favourite bar? My favourite building? Best beer? Worst beer? The worst thing about Brussels? The best thing? Weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me in the city? Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. Best sandwich? How I actually pronounce my name?

My bet it’s pronounced “Ewan”, right? Jason Wilson is actually also possibly pronounced “Ewan” but that is entirely not the point. The point is he made a very interesting observation on US wine buying habits these days as it relates to place:

These days, in the middle of a worldwide wine crisis, it’s never been tougher to sell wine based on place. In fact, over the past couple of years, I’ve observed that a certain type of wine influencer/educator has begun to steer completely clear of talk about terroir. At the low end, the focus is on a certain populism focused on, say, wine in cans or alternative packaging. But much of the higher-end natural wine chatter also avoids a deep discussion of place. While the best natural-wine producers are committed terroirists, a lot of the derivative, middling natty wine talk is way more about winemaking technique and philosophy…

The comments are in the context of the risks inherent in the German legal wine standards adding concepts equivalent premier cru and grand cru to the labels of their bottles. The risks being that the promise better be fulfilled. Does this relate to good beer? “Local” in terms of a beer made of things from this or that “here” (or even a “there” for that matter) has never really taken off even when the best examples ring true. In a trade where popular populisit “IPA” branding has devolved to a euphemism for “maybe better” how could that little old charmer “local” have ever hoped to rise to the top?

Question: is there value in Vittles?

Finally, as you can see to the right, Mr. DJ made all my dreams come true with this post on BlueSky. And that is it! Until we meet again, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday (…as long as all their holiday fun doesn’t get in the way…) and Stan (….not quite…) each and every Monday. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good but, hmm, they’ve also gone quiet this year. The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago. The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering!

*See also 2024, 2019 and 2008 for more Vicky Vicky fun fun fun.
**It’s terrible sweet how, in part, Bourcard relies on a theory that it’s cell phone photos and tracking by parents that has deterred youth drinking – but that they will snap back to act and drink like good boomers as soon as they get their own iPhone accounts.
***According to an unsolicited report authored by something called BB Consulting Associates International that I received by email spam filter in, umm, June 2024.

The “It’s Not Funny At All Out There” Edition Of The Beery News Notes…

Wow. I am going to leave it at that. Because there ain’t much of the big issue sorta news I want to be reading, I suppose. Not now, not this week. Nope. I am definitely having 9/12 waves myself. Not good. But 150 years ago? Well, Jennifer Jordan on BlueSky has been discussing the 1874 business ledgers of Milwalkee Valentin Blatz and there is plenty of news. Price fluxtuations, losses at sea… but for me… just look at that penmanship! That upper case K is out of this world! You can practically hear the pen tip scratching across the page. Whatever the coming years have in store for us – and it may not be pretty – we can at least look back at the hand of Blatz for a lesson in confidence and verve.

Where are we? Starting with some beery beer news, Andreas Krennmair shared a re-creation of a much forgotten German beer style, Adam:

Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes. When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it.

Sounds a bit like a beer Boak and Bailey wrote about this week after spending some time in Gdansk, Gdinya and Sopot Poland recently – Danziger Jopenbier:

It’s a historic style associated with the city, brewed to some kind of original recipe, and selling at 16 Polish złoty (£3) for a 50ml shot. In presentation, it was treated much like a liqueur or a sherry and reminded us of both Riga Balsam and Pedro Ximinez fortified wine. It was extremely sweet and sticky, completely flat, with a funky, leathery, pipe tobacco stink. A curiosity, then, rather than something to session on.

This is just a bit of their an excellent and extended piece about their merry trip, there just a few kilometres across the waters from Putin’s own nuclear navy yards at Kaliningrad. I taught English along those same Baltic shores of Poland in 1991-92 so it’s interesting to read what’s new and what’s the same:

The city itself is a war memorial. At the end of World War II it was 90% destroyed, an apocalyptic rubblescape. The new Soviet-controlled authorities debated what to do and, at one point, someone suggested leaving the city centre as a vast ruin, to remind the Germans of what they’d done… Gdańsk was rebuilt not as it was in 1939, but instead to recall the days before 1793 when it was part of the Kingdom of Poland.

Yup. I remember being in a large church in Gdansk where a tank battle had happened in 1945… within the church.* I mentioned in the comments that that I recalled there being no pubby pubs back then either – except a rougher sort of stand up tavern for men just off work that the guide I bought suggested “are best avoided.” I mainly drank my Gdanskie at home.

David Jesudason published another pub profile last Friday and discussed a feature installed in the 1950s, a snob screen:

“They could have privacy not just from the other side of the pub,” says Ralph, “but from the bar staff as well. You open it to order your drink.” The pub had a revamp in 1956 when Young’s took it over, previously it was a cider house, and Ralph reckons the snob screens are from them and still have the original 70-plus-year glass. Ralph finds it amusing that as a gay person he’s living and working among all this archaic segregationana.

I like that word. Perhaps we might also suggest “segregitus” Or is it “segregitis“? Or did the “segregitus” leave us with a case of “segregitis“? Such questions I have.

You know what is weird? Finding out that Canada exports the fifth most bulk wine of all the nations of the world. More than much larger producing countries like France or South Africa. And what’s weirder? Canada also exports by far the cheapest bulk wine of any nation in the world, at just 29 cents US a litre. What’s that about? What is bulk?** Where is all the dirt cheap wine being consumed?

You know what is also weird? Chaos packaging. Like putting gravy in beer cans or, perhaps, as the ultimate end game for a certain sort of craft, the next step after NA hop water perhaps:

…the decision to market the cans of air came from marketing specialist Davide Abagnale, who initially saw an opportunity when he started with selling Lake Como posters online. Explaining more about the initiative to can the air from the area, a spokesperson for the business told CNN, that Abagnale wanted to offer “something original, fun and even provocative” as well as “create a souvenir that could be easily transported in a suitcase for tourists”. Abagnale explained how the cans, which rather than contain any liquid, subvert the norm and give people something closer to a “memory” rather than a “product”.

So, not so much about the experience but the illusion of experience. I’d gladly pay with a photograph of some money.

Have you ever wondered what something extreeeemely tannic tastes like but don’t want to taste it? Wonder no more as, for free, Barry himself guides you through the physical convulsions that are part of the experience.

And Stan thanked me for a link to a story that I think is actually far more interesting that its initial interestingness might suggest. The initially interesting point is how pervasive alcohol is in nature and how common it is for animals, bird and bugs to consume it. I’m not surprised. In high school, we watched out the front window each autumn as tipsy starlings drunk on over ripe rowen berries flipped 360° loop-de-loops on the telephone wire – or just flopped to the ground unable to fly until they sobered up. Interesting. But check your mailboxes for your own copy of the latest edition of Trends in Ecology & Evolution wherein we can read the original study which also states:

…the ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas possessed a single amino acid change (from alanine to valine at site 294, denoted ‘A294V’) that dramatically increased its catalytic efficiency for ethanol. This arose approximately 10 Mya, following the Mid-Miocene Climatic Transition when African forests were gradually replaced by savannah. Around this time, our ancestors adopted a more terrestrial lifestyle and were possibly more likely to encounter fermented fruits on the ground…

That means the question may not be when humans first had alcohol. It may be about when they first learned to make it or store it or otherwise control it enough to have it year round and not just when the fruit was juiced laying about their feet. When did it start? One Million Years BC?

Perhaps relatedly, one of the things that makes The Beer Nut the world’s top reviewer of beer (other than his incessant reviewings of beer) is his egalitarian approach to all venues and all beers, high and low. This is especially evident in his periodic coverage of Wetherspoon beer festivals – which I take to be a sort of in-pub promotion across the chain rather than a fest in the GBBF sense. He treats this event with both respect and reality as he dropped in at a number of outlets recently. I share the alpha and the omega of his most recent thoughts on the topic:

The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad… Unsurprisingly, stout and porter were the standouts. The cask format shines brightest in the dark. Plodding through all the cheap, samey bitters to find them is worthwhile to find the good stuff.

And speaking of which, Pellicle‘s article this week is by Gabe Toth, a profile of the cask specialists at Hogshead Brewery in Denver, Colorado including this bold admission:

“Cask beer, at least in America, has that reputation of being an older person’s beer, like your grandfather’s beer, versus the hip young thing, seltzer or whatever. Beer in general is suffering a little bit of that—I feel like younger people in general are turning more toward other beverages and losing interest in craft beer.”

Jordan did some thinking about loss of interest, too, this week as he assessed the Ontario good beer scene and declared the beginning of a new era – based on the new retail modalities and associated realities:

Does the world really need Carling Light when Keystone Light exists? Does Old Vienna mean anything to people outside Chatham-Kent and Windsor? Does Labatt regret sending one REALLY EFFECTIVE sales rep to Thunder Bay in the 1990’s to sell Crystal? Whoever that was, they’re legend. You’re going to get consolidation of products. You’re going to get less choice, at least initially. The convenience and grocery and big box retail situation has less patience for variety and more desire for expedience than The Beer Store did. The new paradigm is about choice, but it’s largely about choosing how much you’re going to pay for a single product.

Finally, before the regular list of more alt-news about alts and other beers, I would note the suspension of operations at The Share from Stephanie Grant. Looking forward to an energized return. Also, congratulations to those shortlisted with the BGBW Awards.

Otherwise, a shorter post this week. Such the way of this point in time. Other things on the mind. Still, with all that has happened and will happen… for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan going strong again each and every Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast (maybe he’ll do one again) and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (now hardly at all) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and they are revving up for a new year. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

**From this 2017 report on the British Columbian wine industry: “Nationally, it is important to note that Canadian exports totalled 72.9 million litres in 2015. Of this, only 1.8 million litres was premium wine (non-bulk), representing $32.8 million of the total $73.9 million of all Canadian wine exports. It is impressive that premium wine accounted for only 2.5 percent of wine exports, but represented 44 percent of the total value of all wine exports…” More here.
*Our beach side resort city, Kołobrzeg, on the other side of Kaszubia, was also destroyed and rebuilt as it was where the Nazis attempted a Dunkirk as the Soviets encircled them. They stuck around and the sounds of maching gun firing range welcomed one of my first late summer balcony beers when I got there.

These Be The Reflective Yet Exhuberant And Cardigan Considering First Beery News Notes For Q424

I was thinking about these weekly things I write and whether there are themes are not. Mainly because I thought last week’s was pretty theme-y. Thematic perhaps. All about ones relationship with the ancillaries surrounding beer. Sorta. I tell myself that by writing these summaries I am tracing, following patterns. But I rarely go back and look. Behind the scenes, there are no graphs being added to every seven days. Then Jeff posted about an AI widget that Google has posted and I plunked a document I worked on years ago, trying to combine my research on English strong ales of the 1600s, the ones named after cities like Hull or Margate. Whammo. Summary and key points in about 3 seconds. Weird. Yet not uncompelling.

Back to the present, we have lost one of the great experimental US brewers with the passing of Ron Jeffries of Michigan and Hawaii:

A true embodiment of ohana, Ron was not only a loving family man but also a creative genius and lifelong learner. He dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge, serving as a mentor in the brewing industry. As a legacy brewer and the founder of Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, his contributions to the craft are immeasurable. In his final year, Ron fulfilled the lifelong dream of moving to Hawaii where he eagerly worked on his family brewery. He was excited about what the future was bringing and what he would be bringing to the world with Hilo Brewing Company/ Holoholo Brewing. He cherished moments spent on his lanai, soaking in the Hilo rain with a pint in hand.

In 2007, I found myself at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter and Ron Jefferies gave me a hour of his time at the end of a long day. That’s his barrel room from that visit up there. Frankly I don’t meet a lot of people I write about so I was it was a real treat. My favourite part of the talk was his curiosity in what exactly beer blogging was and might be. He also doubled over with a big laugh at my story about the December 2006 Hair of the Dog shipment with the incompetent capping and how the yeast saved the beer. I visited again a few years later and he was just as swell. Very sorry to hear that he passed.

On a cheerier topic and adding to the discussion about the need for the pint from last week, Liam wrote a very interesting bit about what he calls the “meejum”:

…how much beer was actually in a meejum? The simple answer seems to be a little less than a pint as per the comments from our annoyed Londoner above, but I have come across a couple of others mentions of the volume too. In a court case in Dundalk in 1904 the judge has the same question and was told it was ‘a glass and a half’ (426ml) and another mention in 1901 that says it was ‘two-thirds of a pint’ (379ml). A more recent comment from a letter to the Irish Independent in 2003 looking for the medium to be reinstated, it is said that it was ‘approximately 500ml’. With a pint being 568ml we can see some wildly fluctuating volumes here, but I think we are missing the original point of the medium, which was to give the consumer a drink based on price and not volume, so therefore it is very possible that a medium was a different size in different counties – and even different pubs. It was a portion of beer that equalled a value that was acceptable to the working man.

And we note the announcement of the coming retirement of Humphrey Smith, the controversial Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery and perhaps good beer’s Epimetheus, taking particular guidance from Old Mudgie:

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around.

A new source to me, Literary Hub published a passage or perhaps a chapter on the history of Pilsner drawn from Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity by Jeffrey M. Pilcher published by Oxford Univ Press:

Few visitors in the early nineteenth century might have guessed that the market town of Pilsen, on the road from Prague to Bavaria, would become world renowned for its clear, sparkling beers. Having grown rich from the business of anthracite mining, residents imported Bavarian lagers. In 1840, the town fathers decided to invest some of their mining profits in the construction of a municipal brewery. The first tasting, held on St. Martin’s Day, November 11, 1842, brought their home-grown beverage local acclaim. But apart from the basic recipe of Saaz hops, Moravian malt, soft water, and lager yeast, little is known about how Pilsner acquired its legendary status. It was prized, at first, as an exotic “Bavarian” beer, and the malting process relied on British advances in indirect heating, like Sedlmayr’s Munich malt, but without the final burst of caramelization. The brewery’s capacity of just thirty-six hectoliters, about twenty barrels, meant that the beer was sold primarily in local markets.

My problem with these things is, of course, whether is it, you know, true – keeping in mind, of course, the degree of abstraction at play. It speaks nothing of Prof. Pilcher for me to point out that Pilsner’s history has been stated, restated and revised and refused and refined and (… you get my point…) so often in the last wee while that it gets one in a big of a fog. But there is a certain compelling style to the passage provided in LitHub that I would invite comment from those closer to the topic.

Speaking of style, I missed this post by B+B last week just at the deadline on spinning LP records in pubs and why it works for them:

The magic that people perceive in cask ale is similar to the magic they perceive in pub buildings which is similar to the magic they perceive in the sound of vinyl. A sense of connecting with something authentic. They’re also essentially nostalgic. Most pubs are embassies of the past. Victorian buildings with plastic Watneys clocks, Bass on the bar, and packets of pork scratchings whose packets haven’t been redesigned since 1981. It’s not unusual to find a pub with a stack of records in the corner or behind the bar. Albums that, if they were sold on Discogs, would not warrant a ‘Mint’ or ‘VG+’ rating. Split sleeves, yellowing inner sleeves, with a whiff of stale beer and cigarette smoke about them.

Writing on FB, Alistair brought my attention to a surprisingly startling and poignant video about the loss of working class neighbourhood and working class neighbourhood pubs as part of the modernization of in Salford, England in the 1960s. Here’s the video from the BBC from the time. It appears the modernization did not fully take. Then I thought… Salford… I know that place. Pellicle posted a podcast about Marble Brewing of Salford back in 2023. And Martin (with an “i”) has been there, too. The juxtaposition of each stage of Hanky Park over the sixty years is remarkable.

And, over on BlueSky, I came across an interesting thread on why hip-hop culture connects with Hennessey cognac and why Lebron is tying his brand to the drink:

During the war, African Americans stationed in France began consuming Hennessy. Afterwards, Hennessy, being French & having a different relationship with Black people than American companies, trail blazed by simply marketing to & employing Black people, carving out an extremely loyal consumer base. WWII saw Black soldiers abroad enduring antagonism from USA, like leaflets being dropped over France claiming they had tails in order to discourage sexual intermingling. Many were dismayed to find that their service in the effort of helping stop genocide abroad had not granted them humanity at home. During that time Hennessy was continuing to cater to African Americans & before we were sensationalizing terms like DEI, they had hired Black Olympian Herb Douglass as their VP of Urban Market Development, a role he served in for over 30 years. This history is why you hear about Hennessy in hip hop.

So it is not too far off the “I Am A Man” protests and declarations in the Civil Rights movement. Very interesting. Staying with history but reaching back further, last Sunday Martyn (with the “y”) disassembled the notion that the “Hymn to Ninkasi” is any sort of Sumerian beer brewing guide and did so with both verve and detail… like this:

Paulette has invented the word “šikarologist” to describe students of Mesopotamian beer, from the Akkadian word šikaru, meaning beer, the cuneiform for which looked like one of those pointy brewing jars laid on its side: 𒁉. I will definitely be stealing that. Strangely, a cognate of šikar in another Semitic language, Hebrew, the word shekhár, meaning “intoxicating drink”, is the root of the English word “cider”, via Greek, Latin and French. Shekhár is also the root of the Yiddish word for “drunk”: I remember my Jewish ex-father-in-law, who came from Vienna, staggering around at his 70th birthday party, surrounded by his extensive family in his large garden in rural Surrey, saying: “Ich bin so shicker!”

An interesting chit chat ensued in TwexLand led by Lars which touched on (i) the title is made up, (ii) it’s a hymn and maybe a drinking song but not a brewing guide (iii) why was the grain covered in dirt? (iv) woundn’t the malt get suffocated? and (v) why are the translations so different?

And Martin (still with the “i”) has been out and about in Filey on the North Sea coast seeking out GBG25 entries:

…the thing that hits you about Guide newbie the Station is the friendliness of the welcome, the Guvnor checking we know that food service has stopped before we waste 10 steps to the bar… I ask for mild and a Pride, and get mild and Blonde in Pride glasses. Four simple and unfussy rooms, a good mix of bench seating and squidgy chairs, we take a table with a reservation for “Bingo” in 3 hours time. “Bingo” was a popular boys name in the ’50s, along with Bunty and Bungo.

Top tip time. You want to make the weekly roundup? Include an accurate use of the word “squidgy” – can’t resist! Speaking of good words, Gary wrote an excellent post on the appearance of “suffigkeit” in mid-1900s US beer advertising:

You want Bavarian beer? Here it is, new and improved – tastier, clearer and more sparkle than your original – that’s suffigkeit, or it is now.

Speaking of clearer and more sparkle, Matt made something of a declaration, the return to voluntary non-paying scribbling:

Yes, I still write. For lots of publications in fact. Not as many as I would like, but a writer is never satisfied. What I crave is that unpolished, flow-state writing, the kind that feels like stretching a limb, or the freedom of trying something new that might be absolutely terrible but you’ve done it anyway and calmed that twitchy section of your brain. Writing like this, which I’ve written in 10 minutes, proofed once, and hit the publish button. I just have a need for a space, a scratchpad, to try a few things out once in a while. I want to write basically, so that’s all I’m going to do. No newsletter, no subscription, just a place to take things out of my head and put them on a page.

Very good. Excellent even. Unfettered scribbling is the best. Compare that to the advice own newletter writing beer marketeer offered this week:

Content that takes you wide has to be relevant to millions of people. It can’t be about the impact of thiolized yeasts on lagers. Wide aiming posts tend to be less about you and your brand, and more about the industry, interest, or setting you’re a part of. They can still find parallels to your brand, voice, ethos, or sense of humor. The point of these posts are to appeal to what most people come to social media for these days whether that’s to shut off their brain, have a laugh, or learn something new. Nobody opens Instagram hoping to be sold a new 4-pack of Hazy IPA, so that shouldn’t be the goal when trying to go wide.

Please don’t go wide. Wide is a euphemism for dull, undifferentiating and disposable. It pandering to other goals outside of what’s written. Jeff (for the double) went very narrow and shared something quite personal which lead me to cheer “Yay, Poop Tests!“:

The rest of the trip went fine, but my body was experiencing a kind of systemic failure. I got back to the U.S. and the rash became permanent. I gave up beer and then coffee and eventually even food. In the past, fasting calmed the itchy nerve endings. Nothing helped until a friend recommended a gut naturopath. She gave me a stool sample and we discovered I had an overproduction of some kind of intestinal yeast. She gave me an antifungal and within days the rash left. Today I am back to my old self, happily eating and drinking whatever is placed before me.

Finally and keeping with the personal, Rachel Hendry‘s piece in Pellicle this week is a rich contemplation of loss through the lens of taste:

I want to know what her wine tastes like.

I can’t think about what is going to happen to her. Instead, I find myself obsessed with whether her perception of taste has changed. I think of whether memory can still come to her each evening when she pours herself a glass of wine. I want to ask someone this but it seems so silly in the grand scheme of things—can she still taste if she can’t remember? Can she feel flavour anymore? Is this why she drinks more now?

What if one day I no longer know what my wine tastes like?

I become selfish in these moments. Thoughts of her quickly turn into thoughts of myself. What if one day this happens to me, too?

Some tests, we all learn as we age, do not lead to a good outcome. Rachel has captured that moment with brave clarity.

That ended up unexpectely bookended. Not really themed. Maybe. Still, until next week, as we consider this shared mortal coil, for more beery news check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and there is a promise that Stan may be back from his autumnal break starting this very Monday. Then listen to Lew’s podcast and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is thereback with the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? Check out the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the BOAS podcast for the bro-ly. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down. Plus We Are Beer People. The Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. But not Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. The Moon Under Water is gone which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that but only had the one post.

*Me, I’m all about the social medias. Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (189) rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (931) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,454) hovering somewhere well above my largely ignored Instagram (151), crap Threads (52) with Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear.

The Thrilling Week When I Got That Head Cold Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

First cold after the pandemic started. Felt very weird. Runny nose. Sneezing. Pretty much gone. Or at least a new thing every day. But, you know, it’s sorta nice to have an ailment that doesn’t mean you are at great risk. And it’s all over the place here, half the folk at work are hit. (No, you’re right… I am struggling with the tie in to good beer, too. Got it!) It makes you appreciate the little things, perhaps. Things without DOOOOOOMMMM in the title. Like how the warm weather this year may see the maple sap running very early… oh, no that is a little doomy. Endtimesy even. Maybe more like this: Jeff, he of Rye, posted that a friend:

…bought an old Victorian frame a while ago. Opening it up, he’s discovered this old brewery advert used as a filler piece behind the print itself! Brewery wound up 1866 so it’s at least 160 years old!

Nice. Click on it. The image is amazingly crisp and colourful for something forgotten at least 158 years ago. A good way to start the week off. Somewhat similarly, A London Inheritance has a great post this week on the history of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden. The structure of the blog is updating older photos taken by the author’s father, contextualizing them with current images all to set up wee histories of the City’s hidden gems:

This is my father’s photo of the Lamb and Flag pub in Rose Street, near Covent Garden, taken in 1948. The name Lamb and Flag can be seen just above the entrance to the Saloon. On many London pubs of the time, the name of the brewery was given much greater prominence than the name of the pub. Barclay, Perkins & Co. Ltd were a major London brewery operating from the Anchor Brewery in Park Street, Southwark… The source of the name Lamb and Flag has a religious basis. The “lamb” is from the Gospel of St. John: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” and the flag being that of St. George. The pub was also once known as the Bucket of Blood due to links with prize fighting.

Delightful. I wonder if that was supposed to be an attraction back then? Speaking of which, Boak and Bailey discussed the modern equivalent (perhaps) this week when they inquired into what new trends make a pub attractive these days:

As well as the aforementioned board game cafes, we’ve also noticed in Bristol a growing number of (a) video game bars or grown-up amusement arcades and (b) dessert cafes. The video game places are interesting. In both of those we’ve visited there was draught beer but you were absolutely free to ignore it. You were paying your way by paying to play games with drinks as an additional amenity. And the desert cafes will sell you a disgustingly huge plate of ice cream and waffles, or whatever, and then let you and several friends spend hours picking at it.

I like me a good video game bar. The particular preference is an Atari table to play Asteroids on. It’s apparently called a cocktail table. I usually had a beer when these things were more common. And finding one with wood paneling finish is a big bonus. Stepping back from that dailiance with the modern, Martin is back with a bit of a calculation on how much beer did a 1860s farmer brew for his operational needs:

Going back to Samuel, if he, or rather one of his servants, was brewing 96 barrels of beer a year, that works out at eight barrels a month. If he had a two-quarter brewery, that is, one capable of mashing two quarters, 650 pounds or so, of malt at a time (a reasonable assumption, I think, judging by the sizes of small commercial breweries in Hertfordshire in the 19th century), then he was brewing only once a month, at an average of four barrels to the quarter, to give a beer of six to seven per cent abv. Clearly it would not take much of a step up to increase output considerably: brew once a week, and you are now making almost 420 barrels a year, which you could retail for almost £1,000, at 48 shillings for a barrel of XXX. That’s a fairly staggering £110,000 a year in 2024 value, a healthy addition to a farm’s income.

I’ve just remembered something. I was never very good at math. Pellicle has published an excellent article and photo essay by Jemma Beedie on the The Horn Milk Bar, an old school cafe halfway between Perth and Dundee, Scotland which is preserved itself:

…we have time-travelled. This is the place my parents (and maybe yours) are longing for; the spaces they insist still exist. Instead of the cloying nostalgia of brand-new retro-styling, this place is visibly old. We were expecting the polished vintage world of the music videos by Autoheart and Logan’s Close—this is not that. Shades of brown and beige wash over us. Wipe-clean plastic chairs and tables surround us. Outside it is bright, one of the clearest, bluest skies we’ve had since May, but the sunlight struggling through the wall of windows does not penetrate the suffocating room of wood veneer.

Again, wood veneer is good. I once lived in a town with a veneer factory. Unrolled big logs like they were paper towel rolls. Match factory too. Back to beer! There was a bit of a kerfuffle (yes, I said it) after Jessica Mason‘s story on the revival of Black and Tan was published after last week’s deadline. She updated the story with grace and speed to include the connotations of the name in Ireland:

…in Ireland, the ‘black and tans’ referred to constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence. They were nicknamed so because of their uniforms being a mixture of dark green (which appeared black) and khaki. During that time, the ‘black and tans’ gained a reputation for brutality and as such exacerbated Irish opinion of the British. With these elements in mind, despite the beer serve being termed so due to its colouring, ordering a black and tan at an Irish bar could be viewed as a contentious move, especially by a British patron. However, taking a piece of history back, many Irish bars – especially in the US – are now beginning to offer the serve, sometimes with a nod to Irish history, but otherwise simply to upsell more Guinness.

There’s another form of the two level cocktail that you can also see in America in bottled form from venerable micros like Saranac as well as Yuegling. BeerAdvocate lists 77 examples of beers by that name, listed under the American Porter category. I wonder if this dates from the earlier post US Civil War usage as it related to the Republican Party, as summarized by Wikipedia:

Social pressure eventually forced most Scalawags to join the conservative/Democratic Redeemer coalition. A minority persisted and, starting in the 1870s, formed the “tan” half of the “Black and Tan” Republican Party, a minority in every Southern state after 1877. This divided the party into two factions: the lily-white faction, which was practically all-white; and the biracial black-and-tan faction. In several Southern states, the “Lily Whites”, who sought to recruit white Democrats to the Republican Party, attempted to purge the Black and Tan faction or at least to reduce its influence.

Very interesting – or at least so said Artie Johnson. You know, I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Forecasting is a mug’s game, a fool’s errand, a… a… add your own analogy please… but, still, you gotta love how little credibility this sort of listicle entry conveys:

…there’s an expected 8.51% compound annual growth for the next three years, putting seltzers at the forefront of increasingly important alcoholic beverages.

Interesting, too, is how many in the list of trends in “craft” are as devoid of the word “beer” as the title to the article. Just dislocated “craft” is all there is left. And remember: hop water isn’t a style, it’s a recipe.

Allistair wrote at Fuggled about a brewery he wrote about in a Pellicle feature last summer, as we discussed, on Virginia’s Black Narrows Brewing. An unfortunate update:

Yesterday, Josh Chapman, owner and brewer at Black Narrows Brewing on Chincoteague Island announced that they have decided to close their doors – their final weekend in operation will be February 16-18th… It was also just last year that their magnificent malted corn lager “How Bout It” was awarded a Good Food Award – the corn in the lager being an heirloom variety, grown on the Eastern Shore, malted by Murphy & Rude in Charlottesville, and fermented with a yeast strain derived from a Chincoteague oyster. Beer does not get much more local than that… In announcing the closure, Josh noted that “we watched our ingredients, equipment and labor costs increase. It was all too much”. In the end, the finances of being a hyper local, community supporting brewery just couldn’t sustain the business…

Relatedly and perhaps conversely, it’s certainly daring to suggest that craft malt is “Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex” but it might have been nice if something backing that claim up was actually included in this GBH article.* It’s on new small scale malting barley trends methods by Don Tse. I think the nub of the tale is really this, that these new methods may help small farmers and small maltsters:

Farmers are more likely to grow whatever is most profitable, and since so much research has been invested in improving the yield of corn and other crops, old barley varieties cannot yield sufficient income to compete. Indeed, in a typical crop rotation, barley is likely to be the least profitable unless there is a premium buyer like a maltster… Thanks to new barley varieties bred for a broader range of environments and thanks to craft maltsters creating a market for these varieties, Heisel says he is witnessing regions that had been growing feed barley—Maryland and Delaware, for example—switching to malting barley…

Good. A perfectly acceptable point. Speaking of which, the next edition of Prohibitchin’ from Beth Demmon is out and this month’s focus is Rae Adams who works in a particularly challenging location:

Dry January is behind us, and Rae couldn’t be happier about it. “Dry January is a murderous thing,” she says, only half jokingly. “Let’s change it to Dry July.” A month of widespread sobriety during the slowest part of the year for many food and drink establishments is hard enough on its own. But Graham County, where Rae works as the director of sales for Wehrloom Honey & Meadery, is one of the four remaining dry counties in North Carolina. You can still find and purchase alcohol in dry counties, but not much, and not everywhere. Even on a good day, it’s challenging for producers and retailers.

Speaking of dry, a lack of imported beer to Zanzibar‘s spice islands tourist zone has thrown the industry into a mess:

“We are running short of beer at my bar, and I just have a stock of soft drinks,” he told the BBC. “The government has to take action. It is the high season now, it is very hot and these tourists need joy, they need cold beer on these beaches.” An American tourist, who did not want to be named, said: “I love Zanzibar and its beaches. The people are amazing and only challenge I feel now is I can’t get hard liquor. I want to have spirits or even whisky but nothing is found in the hotel – they instead advised me to order it from Stone Town.” The local manufacture of alcohol is banned in Zanzibar, whose population is largely Muslim.

Why? Permits!! And 90% of the regions income is from tourists and, as the Sex Pistols taught us, tourists are money. The BBC reports that Simai Mohammed Said resigned as tourism minister last week, citing “unfavourable and disruptive working conditions.” Heavens. Why can’t everything work as smoothly as in Poulton? And finally… oh dear:

No one really knows why it’s called a “cream ale” as it is more akin to an American lager and does not contain any cream at all.

That’s expertise for you!** And now… once again… roll the credits… well, the credits, the stats the recommends and the footnotes. There is a lot going on down here and, remember, ye who read this far down, look to see if I have edited these closing credits and endnotes (as I always do), you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. This week’s update on my emotional rankings? Facebook still in first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (up again to 118 rising up to maybe… probably… likely pass Mastodon (stalled at 911) in value… then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,442 – up again) hovering somewhere above or around my largely ignored Instagram (down to 163), with sorta unexpectly crap Threads (43) and not at all unexpectedly bad Substack Notes (1) really dragging up the rear – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. I now have admitted my dispair for Mastodon in terms of beer chat, relocated the links and finally accept that BlueSky is the leader in “the race to replace” Twex even while way behind.

Fear not! While some apps perform better than other we can always check the blogs, newsletters and even podcasts to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations in the New Year from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan really doing what needs to be done Mondays. Look at me – I forgot to link to Lew’s podcast. Fixed. Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by this year’s model citizen David Jesudason on the odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now revitalised and wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog in this weeks best medium as message news. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all. And it also would be nice to know why “People were still growing it for feed, but any malting barley was going to Canada.” I mean I think I know why it goes to Canada but it need explaining or tightening. And, yes, there are native North American barleys. Conversely, wouldn’t have some publication wanted this piece for publication, Jeff‘s survey of change at Rogue? Neat and tidy and yes pretty trade positive. It’s a weird week. Check out the next footnote if you don’t believe me! [Update: Stan’s BlueSky comment was “There’s even treasure in the footnotes. “The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostagic and charming and all.” My first thought as well.” which is really nice but I just would point out as I know Stan agrees that headlines are not written by authors. I know a guy who inserts “bus plunge” in the headline whenever he can.]
**Want to know? Start here, then go here, then look here, then…

The Woooooooooo Scariest Hellbound Beery News Notes Ever Unleashed From The Bowels Of Hell!!!

Ha-ha! I wrote bowels. If you’re not born of Scots, that might not be daily dinner table language so I apologize as I refer you in the alternative to the basso loco of Dante’s Inferno for a clearer sense of the reason for the season. But if you are Canadian of a certain age, however, there is only one true representation of the hellscape of pure evil – SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre from around forty years ago. Wooooohooo. Scary. Lots of beer content on SCTV: Biller Hi-Lite, Moose Beer and twist off beer caps on American beer bottles. Not at all horrible is my new plan for Halloween… which I can’t believe I have not come up with before… a plan to buying candy I like, keep it to myself and eating it as I hand out the crap candy I don’t like so much to the kids. Except I don’t like candy all that much. More extreme measures will not be necessary… unlike apparently in Japan:

In other news, Tokyo’s Shibuya district has banned public drinking, hiring 300 private security guards and urging local stores to stop selling alcohol to ward off revelers this Halloween.

What? That’s some sort of crazy. Are nutty Halloween pub crawls a thing where you live? They seem to be a thing in Buffalo, NY, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Lexington, Kentucky. I like it. Pack the streets. We did a similar thing in the Halifax of my 1980s youth at Halloween – but we called it Mardi Gras for some reason. Tens of thousands of us. Once I went as junk mail (my best costume ever if I am going to be honest with you) with a buddy who went as a breakfast nook – that could actually toast toast. Out there. On the street. Street toast. Class.

Anyway, have you ever seen a lede buried as deep as this one was in GBH? In a neat and tidy piece on a rebranding at the Chicago Brewseum this little bomb is dropped in the middle of paragraph ten:

Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, will leave that post in early November, and the role will no longer exist after her exit.

The Smithsonian program, largely funded and framed in terms of narrative by the Brewers Association’s involvement, started up in 2016. While I was disappointed in the periodic press releases highlighting things like Papazian’s paddle from the great white male hero era of craft, I trust that records and objects from throughout the over 435 years of brewing in the what are now the United States have been protected. Wonder why the Brewers Association gave up on their affiliation? A special thanks to all those beer journalists getting on that story even as I type these very words.

Speaking of endings, Stan discussed the piece in VinePair on the declining influence of US craft beer in Europe, asking if “the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change” which I get but, still, I like the arguments set out in this well thought out piece by Will Hawkes:

California-founded Stone’s failure in Europe is symbolic of a wider issue. Craft beer has made a huge splash across the Atlantic, but American breweries, for the most part, have not prospered as they might have expected — and things don’t appear to be getting better. Extrapolating from Brewers Association (BA) figures published by the organization and in Forbes, the overall craft beer volume exported to Europe declined from 78,994 barrels in 2021 to 63,755 in 2022. The reasons for this are complex, but they get to the heart of Europe’s beer market and the limitations of American craft breweries in a place where their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.

TL;DR? Reasons not so much complex as just numerous… BrewDog being everywhere, other Euro brewers holding branding rights, uncompetative pricing and the botch by Stone diluting the value. Brutal line: “[at] this year’s Berlin Beer Week, Stone beers featured in a tap takeover at a pizzeria.” Perhaps relatedly, things are also not going well for brewers in New Zealand:

“I was talking to a brewer recently and he said: ‘It’s all just beer now.’ The problem with craft is it’s always been ill-defined. Does it mean small scale? Does it mean independent? Does it mean flavoursome?” Without that clear definition, the territory was ripe for major beer companies to step into – and all the big breweries have done exactly that. “You now have Lion with their Mac’s brand, DB with Monteith’s and Asahi with Boundary Road. Those are the three main ones in that area, and what they’re doing is just pumping up the flavour in those brands. They’re making great beer at a more affordable price.”

I know that this is all a bit of a downer – even though this is the “scary” season – but at least things are not as bad as they are in Rioja according to the newsletterist Jason Wilson of Everyday Drinking who includes this summary of recent findings:

I was shocked to read Tim Atkin’s piece about serious problems in Rioja — “Rioja on the Rocks” — a couple of weeks ago. I knew that Rioja had issues, but Atkin (the foremost English-language expert on Rioja) paints a dire picture of a region in crisis. As Atkin reports, the regional governments of La Rioja and the Basque Country plan to detroy 30 million liters of surplus wine to try to balance supply and demand. Another 150 million liters, unwanted by the market, is sitting in cellars. The 2023 harvest has been terrible, and grape prices are at unsustainable lows—in fact, many growers cannot sell their grapes. Reportedly, one major co-operative is on the verge of bankruptcy, two large bodegas are in administration, and Campo Viejo, Rioja’s largest winery, is allegedly up for sale. There are threats by large groups of growers and producers to leave the consortium altogether as they argue over whether to focus on quantity or quality.

Yikes! Just last year things were looking up.

Better news? How about the best big brewery marketing of the moment? Heineken making fun of its own name and using Plastic Bertrand for the soundtrack. That good. And The Brewnut has proven once again how he is the best commentator on what’s actually in the glass, illsustrated by this review of the offerings by Wicklow Wolf:

This year’s twist on the all-local ingredients spec is the inclusion of Kilmacanogue raspberries in a sour ale. Shame they didn’t have a go at spontaneously fermenting it, for extreme local character. Regardless, it’s very nice. The raspberries taste fresher and realer than they do in most raspberry beers, almost bursting on the tongue the way the fruit does. There’s no sugary, syrupy jam here, just a cleanly medium-pitched tartness, again similar to what you’d get from actual raspberries, building to a slightly puckering finish. While it’s only 4.2% ABV, I can’t see this working well as a refreshing summer beer — it’s too intense, with lots going on it. While I definitely liked it, I’m glad I waited until a dull day in October to drink it.

See that: not fawning, explains how it stands out, explains what might be done to improve. I’d buy that beer. Speaking of buying beer, David Nilsen wrote an homage to “Brouwerij Van Steenberge’s Tripel Van De Garre” in Pellicle this week and how it illustrates a few trends:

“In today’s market, imports are struggling against the locavore movement,” says Michael, noting the plethora of local options. “We have 97 breweries in the city limits [of Chicago].” Sara Levin, the package beer buyer for The Barrel House, a beloved beer bar and bottle shop in Dayton, Ohio, has been a professional beer buyer for close to a decade and says the current attitude toward Belgian beer among many American craft devotees had already begun to take shape when she started in the industry in 2014. “Before me it was a little different, but in my time I feel like Belgian beer has always been the old money craft beer,” Sara says. “It’s been the OG beer geeks who really respect the old school styles.”

That right there is one of the sadder things about the craft beer movement’s rush to chase the tale of novelty, the loss of interest in hounouring Belgian styles. Got an opinion on that? You can explain how you feel about such things if you take part in this week’s study on the habits of craft beer and real ale drinkers? Do you have habits? They want to study you. In a similar note, Gary came across a study of real ale drinking in England from 1866… with some very and sadly familiar themes:

Less than one-half of it is drunk in perfection, or at its best condition, the larger percentage becoming more or less flat, hard [tart], and unpalatable, or even sour before it is consumed. From the day of the tapping of the cask, with the gradual entrance of atmospheric air, the liqour undergoes progressive deterioration, first becoming flat and unpalatable, from the loss of its carbonic acid, and then sour from having its spirit converted in acetic acid by the absorption of oxygen. In fact, day by day, as the palate unplesantly detects, it may be said to advance one step further on the road to vinegar.

Yik. Too much OG old school right there. And sorta samesies [h/t] at the blog run by Triskele Heritage, an archaeological consultancy, there was a sweet disassembling of the claim made by an Irish pub as to its status as the world’s oldest tavern:

The problem here is that the fabric of the building is claimed to date to the ninth century, and this is repeated from one website to another, but no archival or archaeological evidence is ever offered as the root source of the information. Instead, the listed entry for Sean’s Bar on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage… notes that the current standing building was constructed c 1725 as a coaching inn which was known as The Three Blackamoors Heads by 1738. The record goes onto confirm that renovations were indeed carried out c 1970 but, instead of finding ““wattle and wicker” dating back to the ninth century”, the walls in question were dated to the seventeenth century. That is a potential exaggeration of at least seven centuries.

Speaking of even more not quite right, perhaps that green bottle of Tsingtao isn’t just skunky:

In the clip which appeared online on Thursday, a worker, dressed in uniform with a helmet on, can be seen climbing over a high wall and into the container before urinating inside it. The location tag of the clip reads “Tsingtao beer No.3 factory”, local news outlet The Paper reported on Friday. Business outlet “National Business Daily” later cited an internal source as saying both the person who took the video and the person appearing in it were not direct employees of the company… Shares in Tsingtao Brewery fell sharply when the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning but were trading broadly flat by the afternoon.

Boo-tastic. Now we have pee in the stuff. In other scary health news, the Time of Londinium shared a story on the problems with a certain sort of stress drinking and had this very interesting fact:

A recent study… found that women with high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness are between 1.5 to 2 times as likely to drink moderately or heavily as those who are sedentary. Charlotte considered herself to be healthy. “I’d go running on Saturday at 8am with my friends after drinking two bottles of wine on Friday. Parker tried all the right things to manage stress. “I went to a meditation teacher, I was looking at my diet, I ran a lot” — everything except quit drinking.”

That is interesting. Fact filled and interesting. And scary.

Enough!!! I leave you there for this week. As per always and forever, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via any number of social media and other forms of comms connections. I have yet another update on the rankings. TweX is now really starting to drop in the standings. I am deleting follows there more and more in favour of mirroring accounts set up by favourite voices elsewhere. Now, for me Facebook is clearly first (given especially as it is focused on my 300 closest friends and family) then we have BlueSky (74) rising up to sit in a tie with Mastodon (899) then the seemingly doomed trashy Twex (4,344) hovering somewhere above or around Instagram (167) with Threads (41) and Substack Notes (1) really dragging – and that deservedly dormant Patreon presence of mine just sitting there. Seven apps plus this my blog! That makes sense. I may be multi and legion and all that but I do have priorities and seem to be keeping them in a proper row. All in all, I still am rooting for the voices on the elephant-like Mastodon, like these ones just below discussing beer, even though it is #Gardening Mastodon that really wins:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts (barely!) and even newsletters to stay on top of things including the proud and public and certainly more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Here’s a new newsletter recommendation: BeerCrunchers. And get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back with all the sweary Mary he can think of! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast… but also seems to be losing steam. And there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube and remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

The Beery News Notes For The Dog Days Of August

Here I am! Thursday morning once again. And the whole world of beer and brewing… and photos of vegetables. It’s what you demand. I know. I hear you. That’s an Orangello plum tomato from Chiltern right there. Just six seeds to the pack and everyone a winner. Super productive and tasty. Seed influencer opportunities most welcome. Katie Mather is eating her veg, too, as we read about in this week’s feature in Pellicle:

Eating salads, for me, has been a radical act: buying fresh food, taking the time to prepare and pre-prepare meals, encouraging myself to eat and to feel good about eating. Learning how to make bowls of healthy, nourishing vegetables and herbs so delicious that I don’t think twice about devouring them. I’ve been steadily unlearning my aversion to salad dressings, and my unhealthy belief that unless they are low-calorie, salads are worthless.

Exactly. All veg is worthy. Is anything else happening out there, things not in my garden? Other than, you know, famous pubs surprisingly burning to the ground days after being sold off… what’s that you say? Here’s the update:

An update post on the pub’s Facebook page on 27 July said: “The Crooked House has been sold. Unlikely to open its doors again. Marston’s have sold the site to private buyer for alternative use, that is all we know. This is just to update the page so nobody makes any wasted journeys to the site.” A petition to save the pub from redevelopment, launched on 29 July, had attracted more than 3,500 signatures. Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands, said there were “a lot of questions” surrounding the fire. “I’m sure the authorities will get to the truth,” he said.

The BBC has visited in happier times. There are rumours that the path of the fire trucks to the site was somehow obstructed leading to suspicions piled upon suspicions: “… blocking off of the lane to the pub seems to indicate a deliberate act.” Police have been on scene. Jings! I say no more.

In almost as disasterous legal news, ye who lives by the sword apparently dies by the sword as whatever is left of California’s former craft darling Stone has lost a tradename court case in Europe to Molson Coors, owners of of the venerable Stones bitter brand – making some extraordinary and entirely unaccepted claims:

Among them was a claim that Molson Coors had not provided “sufficient evidence of genuine use” of the Stones bitter brand – which has been around since 1948 and which was the sponsor of Rugby League and The Superleague in the 1980s and 1990s… that was rejected, along with the claim that “the element ‘Stones’ of the earlier (Molson Coors-owned) trademark will be perceived by a part of the English public as the music band ‘The Rolling Stones’ or the surname ‘Stones’, whereas the trademark applied for Stone Brewing is perceived a reference to the object ‘ stone’.”

Speaking of Molson, to my east… perhaps… Gary has been writing about mid-century brewing marketing from Quebec in a series of posts like this one focusing on 1939-40 advertising including one from Molson with this eye-catching slogan:

The campaign tied into a longstanding advertising theme at Molsons, “The beer your great-grandfather drank.”

Yum… beer flavours from the mid-1800s… Now, on the topic of what your great-grandfather wouldn’t be drinking, The New Yorker has a piece this week on something recently noticed in France:

Recently, in Paris, posters appeared all over town advertising an unfamiliar beverage: vière. “Du jamais bu,” one poster punned—“Never before drunk.” It came in a seven-hundred-and-fifty-millilitre glass bottle, just like a Chablis or a Marsannay. The bottle had a metal cap, the kind you might pry off the top of a Heineken. “It’s not a typo,” Gallia, the drink’s manufacturer explained, on its Web site, of “vière,” adding that “we wanted to switch things up by combining two malts that we love.” Vin (wine) + bière (beer) = vière.

Really? Perhaps you would prefer a citron presse instead? Simple. Perhaps something your great-grandfather would enjoy.

Update: Jessica Mason (who totally wins this week’s best humoured approach to rudeness award) reports that the young folk love cask but they are clueless… dimmer than a 25w lightbulb and just can’t find it in a pub!

Speaking to the drinks business, the ‘Drink Cask Fresh’ campaign coordinator Pete Brown said: “The industry talks it [cask ale] down way more than the drinker does. No one ever says it’s old fashioned or geeky or old men in socks and sandals. We say it to each other. Younger drinkers don’t.” Brown explained: “It’s not just about how tall the font is – the badge at eye level is handy but you can’t have two and a half foot long hand pulls. But even Guinness with its new font is now poured just below eye level. Cask is the only beer poured beneath the bar where you can’t see what’s going on and this greatly adds to the uncertainty around it.”

Not sure I believe that… but beer writers interviewing beer writers is on the rise, however.*** Yet also not sure I believe this either. Paste is having none of the sort of thinking that leads us to kiddie cask campaignning and vière, instead joining the death of craft pile-on and pronounced upon the scene thusly:

Welcome to the spiritual ennui of the beer world, a problem at least partially separate from the myriad economic factors that have made it so daunting to run a successful small brewery in this day and age. On the most basic level, the craft beer landscape has simply felt trapped in stylistic stasis in recent years, a far cry from the previous era of new discovery and growth that was fueled in the 2000s and 2010s by a market in which it was so much easier to turn a profit. This stagnation has no doubt played some role in the migration of craft beer drinkers to other segments of the alcohol world…

Moving on. Have you? Perhaps relatedly, no wonder Ron has joined the masses of people (as discussed just last week) who are questioning why they ever every got at all interested in beer now that it is (i) not cool and (ii) fruit juice with a malt base:

There are so many parallels with the real ale movement. Kicking off with, mostly, very excited young people who want to change the (beer) world. Slow beginnings, followed by intoxicating, seemingly never-ending, growth. Then you look around and you’re all in your forties. And those young people, they just don’t understand what good beer is. They like some new nonsense, that isn’t proper beer. Not like the stuff you love. “Your beer is boring.” Youth says. “We want something new and exciting. Not that old man beer.”

Old man beer? What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what your great-grandfather drank? Speaking of one form of that – and despite all the recent Guinness love – this may be reason enough to boycott the stuff and all Diagio products:

Guinness and Kilkenny back on tap in Moscow despite the war sanctions: Exports of Irish beer and spirits to Russia have been suspended, but are now available in pubs and supermarkets. Vladimir Putin’s local Irish pub in Moscow is boasting of pouring real pints of Guinness and Kilkenny, despite sanctions imposed against the war in Ukraine

But is it? Are these all bootlegged products smuggled infrom third countries? Is Heineken not the worse offender?

Heineken Russia launched an Irish stout last year after Guinness was withdrawn from the country following the invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, the Dutch drinks giant said in that it would join other western brands in withdrawing from Russia following the invasion. However, it maintained a local business that has developed products after it withdrew the Heineken, Miller and Guinness brands. The company makes Miller and Guinness in Russia under third party licences.

Or is it Carlsberg? Questions questions questions. I ask all these questions as, frankly, I am not paying the fee to look behind the paywall.** But they are great questions, you will agree! Speaking of questions being asked, Greene King Abbot Ale came second in the race to be named the Champion Beer of Britain… and people went nutso… as reported in the measured tones of The Sun:

Angry real ale fans are all frothed up amid claims a champion beer contest was rigged. They are questioning how sponsor Greene King’s Abbot Ale won a coveted silver medal at this year’s Great British Beer Festival. The Suffolk brewer’s pub staple was also named the UK’s best premium bitter. Greene King is one of two backers of the festival, along with the JD Wetherspoon pub chain — where Abbot Ale is one of the biggest sellers. Drinkers at London’s Olympia venue were outraged at the vote by the Campaign for Real Ale. Beer blogger Mark Briggs, of Burnley, fumed: “I suspect some unfair influential intervention.

Mr. Briggs appears to write a column for a chain including the Lancashire Telegraph given sa bazillion links pop up for the same story so perhaps it should be beer columnist, beer connoisseur and passionate pub campaigner.* I am of the “get a goldfish!” persuasion in such matters so congrats to this mid-range and accessible brewery for put out a pretty good product. Some beer nerds just need to get a life. And as for doubts as to the definitive authority of a beer judging contest – what the hell do you expect? The ever reliable Ed was even on the scene of the incident:

…the next day was a bit of a struggle it was brightened by the return of twerps whinging on about the GBBF on twitter, this time because Abbot Ale got overall second place in the CBoB. CAMRA and the blind tasting panel are in the pay of Greene King it seems. Which I suppose makes a change from Wetherspoons. To me the twerps are just showing their ignorance. The wonder of cask beer means that at times it can elevate beers to highs you would never have expected. If people spent less time suckling at the devil’s drainpipe and more time drinking beer served as god intended they would realise this.

Martin went out and about looking for some to make up his own mind: ” sadly it’s a bit dull and “milky” (NBSS 2.5)… 2.5 is the level at which you don’t take a beer back, you just decide NEVER to try cask again.”

Things I did not know until this week #1. Sir Walter Raleigh brewed a beer in Virginia in 1585 – and it was made of corn:

…the same in the West Indies is called MAIZE: English men call it Guinea wheat or Turkey wheat, according to the names of the countries from whence the like has been brought. The grain is about the bigness of our ordinary English peas and not much different in form and shape: but of divers colors: some white, some red, some yellow, and some blue. All of them yield a very white and sweet flour: being used according to his kind it makes a very good bread. We made of the same in the country some malt, whereof was brewed as good ale as was to be desired. . .

Not the oldest beer in North America as eight years early that came to what is now Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic care of the 1577 mission of Sir Martin Frobisher, spending a summer for the English navy mining for ores some of which may have ended up in the superior cannon that destroyed the Spanish Armada. Neato. But is this new find the first beer brewed in the hemisphere or even the actual first beer? I know that Cartier brought wine and cider in his hold in the 1530s as was drunk in the 1520s off Newfondland. Still looking for Cabot‘s records from almost 100 years before Raleigh’s trip.

More recently, we learned this week from Boak and Bailey that 1860s London barman Thomas Walker was born Mary Anne Walker – and moved between those identities for a number of years:

Once he had become famous, this became more difficult. Throughout the late 1860s, newspapers delighted in reporting that ‘the female barman’ had been found out again, and taken to court. Eventually, he made some attempts to capitalise on his reluctant fame. In 1870 he went into business with one Solomon Abrahams with the idea of being the celebrity landlord of a pub in Shoreditch. Walker ended up in court again after a dispute over the takings with Solomon. (Lake’s Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser, 15 January 1870.) Eventually, perhaps having run out of options, in the 1870s, Thomas began performing as Mary Walker, “the original Female Barman”, on the music hall stage.

Back to the present, in health matters CNN published a commentary on a study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association indicating an unbalanced increase in mortality from alcohol use:

According to this research, from 2018 to 2020, women saw a 14.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths, compared to a 12.5% increase among men. And the shift was also pronounced among individuals 65 and older, where there was a 6.7% increase in alcohol-related deaths among women, compared to a 5.2% increase among men… There is also the simple fact that Americans have long had a deeply dysfunctional relationship with booze, and as women have moved toward greater equality with men — and lived lives that look more like men’s — women are engaging in more alcohol-related dysfunction.

Really? And what to make of some of the negative news out there when the European Union has declared that beer production has now returned to pre-pandemic levels?

In 2022, EU countries produced almost 34.3 billion (bn) litres of beer containing alcohol and 1.6 bn litres of beer which contained less than 0.5% alcohol or had no alcohol content at all. Compared with 2021, the production of beer with alcohol in the EU increased by 7%, returning to levels closer to the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when production was at 34.7 bn litters. When it comes to beer without alcohol, there was no change compared with 2021. The EU’s total beer (with and without alcohol) production in 2022 was equivalent to almost 80 litres per inhabitant.

Something is selling… but what? Is it just that we want comfort beer in these times of uncertainty? I’ve buy that. If you think about it, isn’t that what identi-craft hazy fruit flavoured IPA are? As much as macro lagers are labeled? Is it what is on the plate next to the comfort beer that really matters, like this rural Australian pub has discovered?

In between pulling beers at the bar and serving fine South Australian wines in the adjoining dining room, Sanne passes me the wildlife-driven menu I’d travelled all this way to see, where I gamely order the specialty of the house – the feral mixed grill – a challenging plate sporting such non-everyday delicacies as emu rissoles, kangaroo fillet, goat chops and camel sausage. Dismissing the momentary reservation I might in fact be devouring a petting zoo – when the dish arrived, it was absolutely delicious – beyond delicious in fact – my favourite, I think, was the goat chop.

Mmm…. feral mixed grill… great-grandpas likely tucked into that once in a while, too. And – that is it! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

*…and draftsman of some pretty ripe prose: “It presented itself foggy golden in colour. The aroma being certainly intense, as I expected. Peach, lemon-citrus, passion fruit and some piney notes were all identified. There was a sublime flavour explosion of more juicy, peach, passion fruit and lemon-citrus on the palate. Some floral, subtle spice, pine and soft, caramel malt sweetness were also tasted; in this beautifully balanced, Simcoe and Loral Cryo hopped beer. More tropical fruit, lemon-citrus and a hint of spicy warmth, in the crisp and long, drying finish.” Lordy!
**It’s not like I’m speading money on just anything for your pleasure reading, you know. Look at this, for example. Clearly a botch on the meaning of the meaninglessness of “craft”… yet there it is. Does one pursue the question? No, because it is going to be public knowledge in 73 hours. It always is. Make that… two: “Upon satisfaction of customary closing conditions, Tilray will acquire Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Blue Point Brewing Company, 10 Barrel Brewing Company, Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Company, and HiBall Energy. The transaction includes current employees, breweries and brewpubs associated with these brands. The purchase price will be paid in all cash and the transaction is expected to close in 2023… the acquired brands will elevate Tilray Brands to the 5^th largest craft beer business position in the U.S., up from the 9^th…” Canadian whacky tobakky firm buys tired old dull brands… why? Jeff has more. Note: I do pay for The New Yorker. All the funny cartoons and those fabulous “Tables for Two” columns are worth every penny.
***Sort of the old self-sustaining adver-news-a-torial thingie I suppose… in The Lion King wasn’t this called “The Circle of Life”? Yet… if how Pete… who will say these things? PS: do you like the chronological appoach to footnotes instead of the traditional sequential? I’m experimenting. Send a telex with your thoughts.

The “It’s Canada Day Down Canada Way” Edition Of The Beery News Notes

It’s that special time of year, the middle of the year, when those two guy up there often reappear. It’s Canada Day week. I can’t be sure when they first appeared on this here blog but nine years ago I said it was nine years before that. Back then I was writing political posts on the now merged blog Gen X at 40* and I had a whole schtick in 2005 about a future where the Maritime Provinces of Canada was working towards breaking away to be an independent nation based on graft and hydrofoil ferry services. The identity of these two gents is lost to time or at least just lost to my mind so if it is you say hello! And remember… for all your Canadian beer news read Canadian Beer News!!

Top beer news of the week from the land of canoes and maple syrup? Toronto municipal bureaucracy!

The proposed pilot, which will be considered by the Economic and Community Development Committee on July 6, comes after city council directed staff to create a pilot program last month to allow residents to drink in select public parks this summer. If approved, recommendations will go to city council July 19. The program would run from Aug. 2 until Oct. 9 and allow people aged 19 and older to drink alcohol in 20 city-owned parks in neighbourhoods where local councillors chose to opt in. Toronto councillors had the option to opt out of the program entirely, making parks in their area off-limits when it comes to drinking in public.

You know, we are not so much prudish in Canada as waiting for our grade four teacher to come back into the class to tell us what to do next. Consider the approach of our Commonwealth sibling Australia in this regard on a similar issue:

No worries about spectators getting a beer at the stadium when Australia hosts the 2032 Olympics. “We’ll serve a beer because we can,” Brisbane organizing committee president Andrew Liveris said Wednesday when asked about an alcohol prohibition for ordinary fans at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In Commonwealth HQ, Boak and Bailey published** a magnificient piece of work entitled “Henekey’s Long Bar and the birth of the pub chain” – effectively an addendum to their excellent 2017 book 20th Century Pub. The story neatly begins are the beginning:

The building was probably built in the 17th century, although a plaque on the site claims there was a pub there from 1430. It was originally called The Queen’s Head Tavern or, in later years, The Queen’s Head Coffeehouse (“Frequented by professional gentlemen”). Under Henekey it came to be known as The Gray’s Inn Wine Establishment. After Henekey died in 1838, at the age of 55, the wine importing business carried on under his name. There were, however, no Henekeys involved in its running and his son, George Henekey Jr, actually set up a rival business right across the road.

PRESSES PAUSED!!!: puzzling Pompeii painting portraying possible pizza published!!

Mark LaFaro wrote quite a good but heavy piece for GBH*** this week on the topic that I had hoped I would see in October 2022, a discussion of the craft beer and drinks trade and the dangers of alcoholism:

Our experiences are not uncommon. Examples like this made it clear from the start of my career there was an ongoing pressure to try to “fit in” culturally in the alcohol industry, which meant honing a coveted skill of being able to drink heavily but still function. So, I drank. Hard. I got extraordinarily good at skirting that line between being a party animal and a professional. As my career and reputation grew, so did my alcohol tolerance.

While we are at it, Afro.Beer.Chick shared her thoughts on the progress of DEI initiatives in craft beer this week at exhibits A, B, C, D, E and…

History corner time. Here to the left (my right) is a lovely bit of brewery record, a rough estimate of profit for 1896 for Rose’s Old Brewery at Malton, England. Click and have a look. Over 100% profit on the sale of XX ales at their tied houses. Approaching 150% profit on XXXX ales. Reminds me of when I bought Sam Adams shares back around 2001 to get their annual financial disclosures. Stunning profitability in beer during good times if it is done sensibly.

Now I know what goes into a new sort of Mexican lager to make them extra special:

Mexican entrepreneurs are using crickets to supplement barley in beer… La Grilla beer is being tested out in small batches in Querétaro by a local craft brewery and a company that makes gluten-free and bread products using insects. The creators wanted to prove that insects can become part of our diet even in drinks while maintaining taste…

I saw Chris Dyson’s blog pass by my newsfeed and liked this piece about Ilkley of Wharfedale in Yorkshire especially for the great level of detail:

Not far down was Bar T’at, a modern bar run by Market Town Taverns. Here there was a good range of beers on cask and keg and the welcoming, effusive lady behind the bar immediately approached to ask me what I would like. From the available cask, I went for a pint of Kirkstall Three Swords, which I have found is always a good bellwether pint when in somewhere new. The bar, which you enter via a mini flight of stairs, is split in two, with the bar itself to the right as you go in from the road, with an adjoining room with seating, which is where I went. There is an additional room below, whilst outside is an area with several tables alongside the car park of a shopping centre. The beer was pretty good, a decent NBSS 3, but I had spotted a beer from Bini Brew Co on the board, so once the Three Swords was no more, I ordered a half of their 4.3% hazy pale Under the Manhole Cover from the keg list. Now I was interested because…

There is more. Speaking of more, Stan unpacked an aspect of the ripples passing through the US craft malting trade after Skagit Valley Malt closed its doors (as mentioned hereabouts last week and discussed in detail here, here and here) and shared one maltster’s sensible caution:

What I have come to terms with is that the financing play for expansion has to jive with malt house aspirations, not the other way around. Letting the needs and requirements of the financing terms influence our goals or take undue risks is simply too reckless for me. In short, unwise ego-driven aspirations need to be replaced with modest, incremental growth strategies utilizing myriad funding options all at the same time (private capital, bank, community rounds, government program funding, and organic). It takes forever because in funding an agriculture-based business you immediately go from an ocean of financing options to a hot tub of very hard to find slow-money-minded investment partners. While customer demand is there, trying to service all of it immediately doesn’t necessarily make financial sense.

Speaking on the processes of brewing, Ed of the excellently named Ed’s Beer Spot is/was in Plzeň at the Plzeňský Prazdroj from whence he reported the following:

Next we went to see the filters. They have a kieselguhr candle filter and two 72 module cross flow filters which filter 600hl/hr of high gravity beer down to 0.45 micrometres. The filter modules are changed after 400 CIPs. Pentair is paid a fee for them by hl filtered. The cross flow filters are better quality than the kieselguhr filter but cost more.

Frankly, I think he just makes this stuff up.

Neat bit of writing this week by ATJ on his Substack site ATJbeerpubs:

Beyond, the view looked out onto lush green fields, cows the colour of dark caramel moving ever so slowly as if in a bovine trance, while behind me voices chorused from tables, and a noisy cock blackbird dashed across my nearer vision and fixed itself on a branch in a luxuriantly leafed tree. I wondered if this is a view that Dave ‘Woody’ Woodward saw when he sat he, for obviously this was a favourite spot of his for on the wooden bench his name and 1943-2006 was engraved alongside the words ‘He loved to sit on this bench’.****

And there was a lovely bit of lighter writing by Martin Flynn at Pellicle this week on the more… err… physically active part of pub life, the crawl, which includes this keen observation:

Personally, I believe crawls are best served in winter. That rush of warmth on entering a pub hits even stronger when it replaces the cheek-tingling air of a December evening. There’s also something lovely about meeting friends in the day, then emerging from your latest stop to see dusk has cloaked the rooftops and the streetlights have started their shift. That visible change bolsters the sense of setting aside time for people you care about: since you met up, nobody’s glanced at the clock.

Ah, the romance of being an international beer judge: stuck on a train station platform unable to get to the event, cold boxed pizza for dinner if you do get yourself there!

Finally, not much to say about the mutiny not mutiny in Russia last weekend except that I saw this totally clickable image from early Saturday morning from Rostov which now captures the whole thing for me. A bleary guy in sandles looking like he’s out for his first coffee, standing mere feet away from a soldier, both probably thinking WTF. Note: sandles guy is not actually at the front which is just a handful of kilometers away. Note as well: the one Russian with the gun is trying to establish a fairer more effective system for running the war against Ukraine but he is next to a guy doing very well by the fact that the soldiers at the front are mainly conscripted from the non-Russian parts of the Russian Federation.

One last thing! Thanks to reader jordan b. who liked this personal favourite of mine from last week:

There was something strangely pleasing about the juxtaposition of “bag of cans” and “all-you-can-puke prosecco”.

There. That’s it! I’m all over the place this week. Smoke’s back but just for a day or so they say. Which means I am not – after I type these last few words- going to attempt to throw my back out this Wednesday evening to make a tomato plant happy. I’ve a long weekend coming up for that. Strains by 10:45 am guaranteed. As for beer news, it’s now back to you all as always. Talk amongst yourselves. Write something. Something for me to read. And then write about. And also as per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the newer ones noted in bold:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things – including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!*****

*all preserved at the Wayback Machine for your reading pleasure.
**And they gave up a nice Saturday for you ungrateful folk!!!
***Slightly undermined for the regular weak kneed editorial function of making sure it’s clear that not everyone in website HQ is entirely comfortable with the actual story or an actual quote: “…John Carruthers, director of communications at Revolution, highlights that the company has policies in place to protect the health and safety of employees. “Beer is a social beverage and naturally a lot of fun can come out of that,” he says, “and that’s why one of our highest priorities is making sure our team has fun in a responsible manner…” ” What is the point of adding that?
****Channelling a bit of the old Thomas Grey if you ask me… which you didn’t…
*****And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?