Category: Ireland

Your Alluring Beery News Notes For The Magical Week When The Cowbirds Returned…

We all know that the swallows Capistrano in California and it’s all yada yada yada, right? But here – the Cowbirds are back. Yes!  See… I have an app on the phone that identifies birdcalls and sitting in the parking lot of a municipal park the other day it clearly picked up the squeek of Brown-headed Cowbirds, the parasitical arseholes of the birding world. Isn’t nature wonderful! Well, it is inside. The cukes and tomatoes still face a few light frosts keeping them indoors. That middle plant? Tumeric. Just stick a chunk of rhizome in a peat pot and keep the soil damp. Easy. Peasy.

What else is going on? First up, hot news out of Iowa this week and Ms. M. Ogle may have let a cat out of a bag over at BlueSky:

This is so sweet! @dsquareddigest.bsky.social defends Budweiser in part by relying on my book. (The essay is from 2007.) PS: I’m currently working on a 20th anniversary edition w new material. Release late summer.

Fine, that does seem a bit intentional. So save up your pennies for that wee treat later this year. The Tand himself likes a similar sort of straight forward discussion as he wrote about this week:

Way back in the past I wrote about how the modern mannerism “You all right there” at the bar had become a kind of of substitute for previous greetings such as “what can I get you?” or “what would you like?” For the record, it was a short blogpost, as this one will be, and it was over fifteen years ago and, inevitably, in the way of things, it has got worse. Fifteen years ago, I was by my measure of the day an old git – and I quote myself there. Nowadays I’m an even older old git and while generally good natured, I am slightly wound up, inwardly at least by how bar staff have become even more slapdash.

Perhaps this is what distinguishes a UK pub from the sort of port town tavern I was raised in.  I would not necessarily want to engage with the guy on the other side of the bar as, when I did, his side of the conversation could be more like “you call that a tip?” or “I got kids, you know…”  Speaking of which, it seems pretty obvious to me, if IKEA can sell discount meatballs to those waiting for the shopping for even more napkins and sidetables to be over, that a discount grocery store should be able to make a little something on the side by selling macro lager in a somewhat unattractive setting to those silently waiting for the groceries to be gathered:

German discount grocery chain Lidl has begun building its first ever pub, which is expected to open this summer. The pub and its associated liquor store, located in Northern Ireland, will offer Lidl’s range of wines, beers, ciders, spirits and liqueurs, according to the retailer. The premises will be located in the eastern Belfast suburb of Dundonald, next to one of Lidl’s existing stores, it said in a statement. The pub will be able to seat 60 people and will have a floor space of 60 squar meters (646 square feet).

As John Milton told us centuries ago, they are also served who would otherwise only stand and wait. Not waiting around at all is Katie M. who has justifiably strong feelings about the quality of news coverage of pub life in the UK, as she unpacked this week:

Pubs and beer will never receive the coverage they deserve in the national press because they are seen as lesser, until they elevate themselves to the point of being better than a mere public house. I agree with Sitwell that the Laddie is superlative, “a quite magnificent thrill” but I also note that he mentions one drink throughout the entire review, a pint of Guinness, despite the location being a pub and not a restaurant. Oh, I am so sick of Guinness getting all the headlines (sorry Padraig, it’s nothing personal.) The whisky selection! The wine list! The cask on offer at this place! It’s all carefully chosen by experts in their field with purpose and delight. It deserves at least a casual reference.  I love pubs. Millions of British and Irish people love pubs. So why are we still being offered so little in terms of pub and beer coverage? 

On perhaps a related note, I realized I had noticed something that I should have noticed before. When describing folk writing about beer and pubs, news media tend to describe them as “our beer expert“* while every other columnist on restaurants, theatre, music etc is the newspaper’s “critic.” Why is that and what does it suggest? Do they lack a certain edge that one sees, for example, in Boak and Bailey‘s honest and detailed weekly reviews? Would a news paper ever publish the words “somewhat muddy in appearance and flavour, like one of our own attempts at home brewing“? And when a paper clearly seems to have at least two, they never acknowledge the other one. Always “our beer expert” in the singular. Hmm…

The Irish Times has raised an issue about non-alcohol beers that is not discussed. We have heard and accept that the cost of production is no less than traditional brewing but what is not discussed is now it is often not taxed in the same way:

…walk up to a bar in Ireland and order an excise-free, non-alcoholic beer and you’ll pay close to the same as you would for the full-strength equivalent. This has been a bugbear for consumers for years. Three years ago, in a written Dáil answer, the then minister for finance, Michael McGrath, said pricing of these drinks was a matter for retailers and publicans. “This should reflect the fact that no excise applies to such products as well as other factors,” he said. A pint of standard beer comes with a 54 cent excise rate attached – its zero-alcohol partner does not… “The challenge with non-alcoholic beers is that there’s not much transparency here. A lot of this is very opaque and the private business of manufacturers.”

I have become a regular purchaser of NA Guinness but, thinking about it, I have no idea what role taxation plays in the final price. Speaking of things I never knew nuttin’ about, this very week Mr. R. Protz has opened my eyes to an even more troubling aspect of the beer related media:

While breweries & publicans struggle in a tough climate, trad beer writers work hard for lean pickings, a most lucrative “career in beer” is viral boozing. Jon May boasts “the best job in the world” earns £100k a year livestreaming drinking 10 pints a day. Downside: his health concerns.

Downside #2: taking advice from a drunk moron.  Upside: won’t last that long.  Lars may well have provided a hint as to the perfect soundtrack for these sorts of things.

Jeff gave us a summary of the Brewers Association stats for 2025 and it appears things ended up worse than expected:

Total craft production fell 5.1%, accelerating the decline last year of 3.9%.Overall beer sales declined slightly more, at 5.7%, allowing the craft segment to tick up to 13.3% of the total beer market. That’s way worse than the overall beer market did last year, when it declined only 1.2%. In terms of dollars, craft constitutes a quarter of the dollars earned on beer, unchanged from last year. The overall number of American breweries fell by 218 in the past year to 9,578 according to the Brewers Association (but please note that that figure is almost certainly overstated.)

Even with some pretty sad number twisting attempts, that’s a combined drop in production of over 9% for 2024-25.  And 2024 was not the beginning as (we recall from a footnote) craft production at that point had already “declined for the 3d year in a row and 4th year outta 5…” Didn’t expect an accelleration in the decline. But, again, has BMI seen the bottom?  Still… if there is a change coming, could it include a division between efficient and hand made beers? I saw a glimmer of this when Knut interviewed Nikklas, the brewer of Sweden’s Hops ‘n Leon who shared a thought that might lean towards a future schism in the making:

…we prefer bottles for our beer. I feel it also sends a message that this is craft. I feel that cans symbolize something more industrial.

A revival of small scale traditional brewing might be interesting. Remember the good old days, I say. Well, the big news out of the March 8 1917 edititon of the Cape Vincent Eagle was the bootleggers. We discussed bootlegging last week but this bourbon-less era during tariff time has me on the look out for The Ontario Temperance Act of 1916 remained in force until 1927 whereas US Prohibition was the law across the river from 1920 to 1933. The ban on both sides of the border only lasted for seven years. Not that there wasn’t booze moving even during those days. One must always remember the testimony of Mr. Aikens , the man with “a host of friends” according to the Royal Customs Commission of 1927. But it is not all old news. A form of prohibition still exists as Drew in Boston noticed this week. Yup, bars at the Red Sox’s home of Fenway Park came under scruity for serving minors (aka young adults in an unfree state):

The state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission has ordered Game On Sports Cafe, 72-82 Lansdowne St., to give up its liquor license for five days starting April 20 and Fenway Johnnie’s, 96-98 Brookline Ave., to give up its license for four days starting April 27, after inspectors found both serving underage drinkers with fake IDs. But Fenway Johnnie’s shut for good earlier this month, so, oh, well. The Game On suspension stems from a visit around 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 4, 2024 by state inspectors –  who found 17 people under 21 with drinks, from Coors Lite and Michelob Ultra to various vodka and whiskey-based concoctions.

Imagine being twenty years old and legally barred from drinking a Michelob Ultra!  Time for notes!

Note #1: Ramble On.
Note #2: “Had any bourbon lately?’
Note #3: Katie M. on the pubs and breweries of Cumbria.
Note #4: ATJ on travel and beer.

I miss Bourbon. Have I ever mentioned that? What else might I be missing? Ruvani’s piece about ranch water was published this week in Austin Monthly. Ranch water? She explains the drink’s background:

Founded by late local restaurateur Kevin Williamson in 1998, his original Ranch Water recipe hit the menu in February 1999, based on a concoction Williamson invented on hunting trips with his father, mixing tequila and lime in his water bottle topped off with crisp chilled Topo Chico. Williamson correctly surmised that his own refreshing treat would slake the thirst of other parched Texans and worked up his original recipe with two parts reposado tequila, one part orange liqueur (Ranch 616 uses Sauza Hornitos and Jalisco 1562, respectively), and one part lime, served over ice with a freshly popped frosty Topo Chico on the side to be poured to taste.

Not to be confused with Topo Gigio, Topo Chico is a mineral water from Mexico.

Finally, in their newletter to subscribers, Pellicle has announced some plans and asked for additional support:

Last month the team gathered in London to begin looking at the bigger picture, and discussed everything from the look and feel of the website (you might have noticed a little update to the homepage), the results of the survey you all kindly completed and how best to implement those findings, and—most importantly of all—to start making serious plans to launch issue one of our print publication….  You may also have seen we’ve recently ramped up our subscription drive, which is an important part of this.  Growing our subscriber numbers remains the most sustainable way to grow the resources we have at our disposal. More subscribers doesn’t just mean a print magazine. It means better rates for our contributors, proper support for our team as their workload increases, and potentially even the chance to invest in some of the kinds of content you indicated you might like to see in our survey: guides, short form writing, op-eds, personal essays, and travel stories. Our aim is to hit 1000 subscribers this year, which would mean growing our current number by around a third.

I cut and paste that much of a snipet out as I am myself a supporter. I root for them. Even as I have yet to figure out if Pellicle is a survivor or the conqueror in the beer publication field. The business model is prudent and realistic. The content is varied and often excellent. There’s good reason it gets so many links in these weekly round ups. And it still aspires to be more. Sign up. While I myself am at a heigher tier, their entry level subscription is just $2.50 a month via Paypal.

And that is it for now. As I adjust to the life of the idle and alive of a certain age, I will keep plugging away at these updates as best I can. For more, 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!

*By contrast and fine example, Laura is The Telegraph’s “regular correspondent” which seems much more satisfactory.

 

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of The Green And The Black

It’s that time of year. When being born of Scottish parents means nothing. Nothing!!! I think that is what Governor Kathleen Mary Courtney was actually saying when my FB pal (and fellow garlic grower) Sean took this photo at the Executive Manstion in NYC the other day. The Governor even has a pint of stout. Stout is in. Everybody says so. And see me, I am buying that black can of the 0% stuff quite happily. But what even is a stout? Does the Beer Nut have clarity on the question he might share? Let’s see:

Though a full 7% ABV, it looked a little thin on pouring, and is red-brown in the glass, rather than black, with a fast-fading head. The aroma is sweet, with lots of caramel plus an aniseed-candy herbal side. It’s not thin, I’m happy to say, but it doesn’t quite reach the realm of creaminess, and I wouldn’t have guessed it’s as strong as it is. The flavour is plain. Chocolate forms the centre and then doesn’t go anywhere especially interesting from there. There’s a little buttery toffee and a slightly acrid smoky side. Some coffee roast would have been nice; likewise proper hop bittering to take the edge off all the sugar, but neither materialises. 

That’s helpful. It’s not that. It’s not that. And it’s really not that. But still it sells. One question we saw this week on the question of stout is this: why are the Irish turning to Beamish in their hunt for stout? Well, one reason certainly makes common sense:

Another undeniable draw is that Beamish is often the cheapest stout available in pubs.  A pub in Dublin, a county where pints have become infamously expensive, recently advertised a pint of Beamish for only €5.40. Ciarán said the drink is generally at least 50c cheaper than other stouts, one of the reasons he said students have always been fond of it. Another Beamish fan, Richard, thinks the popularity of the stout solely comes down to its price and availability. “It’s consistently €1 or 50c cheaper than Guinness,” he said, adding that as it is owned by Heineken it is also widely available in bars. “I don’t think they’re doing anything special other than being a small bit cheaper,” he added.

Always looking for value is The Tand who has found renewed blogging energy with five posts so far in March after taking a break since last November. Which post to choose as a classic of the man’s oeovre? Consider these comments on the Hand and Marigold in Bermondsey and how they reflects both his careful observations and his established standards:

The pub itself is handsome, well laid out inside and the staff in my experience are helpful. Glasses are oversized ensuring a full pint and the cask beer is well-chosen, and by and large has been in very good condition when we’ve visited. Perhaps it is the times we’ve chosen, but it hasn’t been very busy when we call in, but us being a bit older (ahem) it tends to be during the day.  They are however extending it by opening a room downstairs, so hopefully it is doing fine. One observation is that twice we’ve called in winter and both times the pub has been pretty cold.  Maybe that’s a money saving exercise, but it doesn’t really do it for me.  I expect to be warm in the pub.

It’s good to know what you want and what you like. Conversely, a check with the archives tells me that as early as 2011 I was somewhat ambivalent when it came to Innis & Gunn beers. After fifteen years, has the rest of the marketplace has caught up? We have learned that the administrators have begun to break up the assets:

The brand and its intellectual property has been included in a £4.5 million sale to Tennent’s lager owner C&C Group. However, the Perth brewery at Inveralmond Place is not included as part of this deal. C&C Group was a minority shareholder of Innis & Gunn and brewed its lager. Administrators said the collapse of the company was due to a combination of factors including a “decline in consumer spending and rising cost pressures”. “It is with deep regret that redundancies will need to be made,” they said in a statement. “The administrators would like to thank all the employees of the companies for their hard work.”

Imran Rahman-Jones had fonder memories from a happier time for I&G:

My introduction to craft beer came from my eldest brother. In the late 2000s, when I was still a teenager, small brown bottles started appearing on the top shelf of the fridge. He’d discovered this Edinburgh brewery called Innis & Gunn and their bourbon barrel-aged beers. I was allowed to try a few sips and was surprised at what hit my tongue. My experience with beer up until then had been the odd warm can of Carlsberg in the park, or a taste of my dad’s bitter, which rarely breached the 4% ABV mark. This stuff was intense and alcoholic, like drinking boozy butterscotch. I could only really get through half a glass.

Maybe it was the moment. Boozy butterscotch was sort of where I was going, too. Was I wrong? Or was it an acquired taste? What even is that?

Is there a more backhanded compliment, a more passive-aggressive judgment, a more of kiss-of-death phrase, than “Well, I guess that’s an acquired taste”? It’s also rather centering of a certain type of American suburban taste mindset. I mean, if you grew up in another culture, black salty licorice, anchovy, sea urchin, espresso, fish sauce, huitlacoche, kimchi, vegemite, lutefisk, curry and scores of other so-called “acquired tastes” would not be acquired tastes at all. They would be innate. I grew up eating Scrapple, for god’s sake—an “acquired taste” for anyone but a person born in the Philadelphia metro area. Anyway, my point is this: Try pastis. Open your mind. Grow up. Make peace with your childhood dislike of black jellybeans.

I had no idea. I thought everyone went through a boring sophmoric late teen phase, reading Hemingway and drinking Pernod in the 1980s. You know, the one that preceded the boring sophmoric late teen phase, reading Waugh and drinking Pimms in the 1980s?  What!!?!! It was only me?!?!? Time for notes as I cope with that realization.

Note #1: “Drinking trash NA beers so you don’t have to…”
Note #2: no, not regulations and, no, nothing set.
Note #3: “…it is just a widget.“

It may be just a widget but the unexpected upswing in widgettery seems to be continuing according to BMI:

…craft beer remains up 0.3% by $$ with volume down just 1.6% yr-to-date thru Feb 22 in Circana multi-outlet + convenience data. That’s still lagging total beer, which grew 1.6% by $$ with volume off just 0.1%. So craft shed 0.1 share. But trends are much healthier for craft and total beer than they were thruout last yr…

Still… “where’s the Allagash White?” asks Michael Stein in DC:

So what’s replaced Allagash White? Hard to say exactly. What wasn’t there in 2021? Unsure. And what’s there in 2026? Now that question I’ve got answers to. There’s Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor and there’s Schlitz Bull Ice. There’s Coors Banquet and Coors Light. There’s Pabst Blue Ribbon, and there’s Steel Reserve. And while I just listed six brands, there’s only two breweries that own these / have these brands as subsidiaries: MolsonCoors and Pabst. There’s Modelo, Modelo Michelada, Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch Light, Michelob Ultra, Devils Backbone, and Stella Artois. These are all owned by Anheuser Busch InBev. Then there’s Lagunitas, Tecate, Heineken, and Heineken Silver. Guess who owns all these?

That’s a bit of reality right there. But not everyone wants the real when it comes to drinking, as B+B found out:

We were astonished recently to see someone sitting in the pub wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset waving two controllers around to manipulate objects in a virtual world.It just looked so weird and incongruous. His eyes were covered for one thing which immediately gets you into uncanny territory. Then there was the vigour and weirdness of his movements… At one point, he got up to go for a cigarette while still wearing the headset. We later learned that he could, in fact, see the entire room through the magic of augmented reality – something subtly different to virtual reality. But in the moment, it really looked as if he’d just decided to stroll through a busy pub while effectively blindfolded.

Young people today!  At least this isn’t the sort of thing that’s being seen in Bermondsey according to The Londoner:

If you speak to any of the owners on the mile, they now draw an almost church-and-state style separation between the “beer people” and the “Saturday crowd”. The former are who the Mile first started for: the craft beer nerds who can tell the difference between different subspecies of Sussex hops. The latter come in and ask for eight pints of lager before throwing up in your urinal. The problem is, the latter far outweigh the former — to the tune of thousands a week. The chaos they bring can be extreme: swastikas carved into toilet doors, glasses filled with vomit left on tables, old ladies in dry robes getting into fights. One bar manager tells me they’ve dealt with at least two different punters defecating on the floor, in one case in protest at being denied service. 

It’s enough to take a pass. Speaking of which, has the era of a dry generation youth moved on, leaving their kid brothers and sisters the opportunity to redefine their lifestyle? The Guardian reports from the UK:

Binge drinking rates among gen Z have risen sharply since their teenage years, according to research that challenges their reputation as “generation sensible”. Almost seven in 10 (68%) 23-year-olds reported binge drinking in the past year, while nearly a third (29%) said they did so at least monthly, up from 10% at age 17. While drug use is relatively limited in the teenage years, by their 20s almost half (49%) have used cannabis and a third (32%) have tried harder drugs such as cocaine, ketamine and ecstasy, analysis by University College London (UCL) found.

Assumptions refuted?  It isn’t always that clear. Whenever that old myth is trotted out that before a certain point beer was foul, smoky and dark – despite all evidence – I wonder what people are missing. Well, not dissimilarly,  science has now determined that contrary to previous assumptions, early humans were good cooks:

… at least some people living in Europe between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago were deft chefs. Stone Age cooks skilfully combined meat, fish, fruit and vegetables in cooked meals that followed local recipes, according to new research. Using chemical analysis and sophisticated microscopes, researchers…  examined residues found on 58 pieces of pottery unearthed at 13 sites across northern and eastern Europe dating from the last millennia of the Stone Age, before the dawn of the Bronze Age. The residues survive as charred “foodcrusts” left on pots and bowls. Mixed in with meat, mainly freshwater fish and shellfish, scientists found “wild grasses and legumes, fleshy fruits or berries, green vegetables and roots/tubers from plant species”. These plants included barley, wild oats, types of brome grass and other wild greens such as goosefoot, pigweed and saltbush leaves, as well as viburnum berries such as guelder rose berries.

An interesting perspective. And, from the “too much fucking perspective” file, human trafficking in the fields of Champagne has hit the courts in France with sentences upheld on appeal:

Convicted in the first instance to four years in prison, two of which were suspended, the main defendant, who headed the former wine service company Anavim, had her sentence confirmed for human trafficking, concealed work, and employment of foreigners without authorization. This woman in her forties from Kyrgyzstan was kept in detention. Her lieutenants, two thirty-somethings mainly in charge of recruitment, saw their sentences slightly reduced to one year in prison with a suspended sentence each. The court of appeal ordered the defendants to pay 4,000 euros to each of the 53 victims for their moral damage. However, the company of the winegrower who had called on Anavim for harvesting, the SARL Cerseuillat de la Gravelle, was acquitted on appeal.

While one can acknowledge the acquittal, one would also want to ask whether there has been an unjust enrichment of all those who received the benefit of the trade in these slave-made wines. Especially as inspectors had “found conditions that seriously endangered workers’ health, safety and dignity. The local prefecture later closed the site after finding makeshift bedding, filthy toilets and common areas, and dangerous electrical installations.” Bastards.

Finishing up on a happier note, the feature in Pellicle this week is by Will Hawkes, a portrait of the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, London:

The door at the Sutton Arms swings open and six Americans come bounding in like cocker spaniels just off the leash. After securing a table in the corner, they send emissaries to the bar. Lunchtime food options (“I’ll do a minted lamb pie”) and beers, from pints of cask ale to a half of Vault City’s triple-fruited mango sour, are discussed, and promptly purchased. Landlord Jack Duignan, who has stepped behind the bar to help out, takes in the scene. “Where are you from?” he asks, his gaze focused on the pint he’s pouring. “America,” one replies, perhaps a touch cagily. A pause. “Well I didn’t think you were fucking French!” Jack retorts. There’s momentary silence, then a burst of exuberant laughter, then clarification: Missouri, “right in the centre.”

Such language! And me a preacher’s son. I don’t know how people cope. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it! That is all for now. But we are one step closer to spring. Pre-season Grapefruit League baseball on the TV time. Huh. Zah. Until next week, please check out Boak and Bailey who are posting every Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

Welcome To 2026 And To The Exciting New Format Of The Thursday Beery News Notes!!

How’s your skull this New Year’s Day? Are you OK? Are you ready for some questions? Questions like: “is this the optimum alignment of the holidays?” Seem to me that a Wednesday New Year’s Eve pretty much guarantees that this week and last are a total write off work-wise. Unless you are in hospitality, of course. I am sure, by the way, that Sunday Christmas Day is the worst. Gotta put some sort of effort in the week before and you just get Monday off the week after. Glad I won’t have to deal with one of those weeks, when it’ll next shows up in 2033 when I will be long retired. That photo up there? A submission for the 2014 Holiday Beery Photo context received from Aaron Stein of Oregon. Aaron won the “Surprise Twist” award that year.*

First up, as we put 2025 on the shelf, it’s good to carefully consider your “best of” lists. It’s a tricky business finding the best of “best of” with plenty of the dubious. There are great ones like the Golden Pint Awards like this quite expansive one from Lisa Grimm that shares some happy news along with the useful insights:

… half of the family now Irish citizens (delighted!), and the rest midway through the naturalisation process, plus a book manuscript finished and in the production pipeline (finally!), as well as some exciting news on the employment…

Fabulous! And not just because of the heads up to my old hometown’s Garrison Brewing. And it doesn’t have to be all good news. Jeff posted his thoughts on 2025 and declared it “the worst year in my lifetime” with solid evidence supporting that view, before he moved on to the upsides, including:

The blog has been relatively healthy as well. Thanks to AI, online media sites are in real trouble. Google’s new AI summary means people don’t click through to websites, and traffic at some sites has fallen up to 50%. Traffic here, thanks to a strong finish to the year, has been basically flat—which is a lot better than I expected. Moreover, comments on the blog are way up, and it feels a lot more interactive these days. Thanks so much for contributing to the site!

But all lists aren’t all great. And there’s one category of useless which demands a PSA: the list of the unattainable. Not the luxurious as once in a while everyone can get their hands on something rather nice. No, I mean the sort of lists exemplified (but by no means limited to) by the beer writers’ short-run sample gift packs. Someone made 100 gallons of inguana poop stout and then couriered them to the gullible / needy / starving? Who cares. But this next sort of list, this here list of the 35 best pubs in Edinburgh? The best. Accessible. Useful. Helpful, even. And should be prepared by every topic hobbiest out there for their fair city or region.** Just look at the common sense info succinctly provided:

4. The Holyrood 9A – Round the corner at the bottom of St Mary’s Street towards the parliament building, a surprisingly bustling beer and burger den, with impressive selections of both. Food is prepared in the tiniest kitchen somewhere downstairs and served in the packed backroom or bar itself. Huge range of draught beers but also wines by the glass. An all-round good pub. Details: 9a Holyrood Road, theholyrood.co.uk

I know this is correct as I’ve been there, the cousins being just a route 128 bus ride away. One of my great regrets is not getting a photo of that kitchen as I walked out. I know, I let you down. But it is so small that you’d have to have the camera in their face. Little more than a cloakroom by the front door.

Another great format for the best of is the “stashkiller” mode, this week deployed by Barry Masterson in Cider Review:

There’s nothing new about this, we’ve all been there. You get a nice bottle of cider, or maybe it’s a beer or wine, and you think to yourself “yeah, I’ll keep that for a special occasion”. And this happens again and again, ad nauseam, until you’ve got a stash of special bottles built up that you’re almost afraid to dip into it as that special occasion just never came. It’s a funny thing, really, that with some things we think we need an excuse, when the fact is they have been made to be consumed, enjoyed, shared. In my case, when prowling the cellar for a drink at the end of a day’s work, I usually end up just reaching for a bottle of pils from the stack of crates because I feel I should be sharing the large bottles of cider, or if I open one I must be making notes, and that sometimes feels like work. It’s a terrible attitude when you have a cellar full of cider; it’s made to be drunk!

JD TBN has shared his extensive Golden Pint Awards, with characteristically  impressive level of detail in the 25 categories including ten related to specific beers as well as others such as:

Best Beer Blog or Website: The Drunken Destrier – I had this flagged for greatness since the spring, but the flurry of entertaining beer reviews petered out in late May. In the hope of some revived activity — I mean, how hard is it to drink a beer and write down what it tastes like? — I’m slinging a Golden Pint in Kill’s direction.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: barmas.bsky.social – Yeah, it’s mostly for the dog pictures, but you knew that.

I think Simon would have accepted the broader application of the otherwise tightly defined term “Twitterer”.  In DC, Jake Berg of DC Beer published his annual top beer and top music of 2025 – in not that order at all:

How this works: I pretty much only use the blog for this yearly post. I’ve got a bunch of music I liked this year with pithy comments that may or may not make sense to outside readers, interspersed with some songs I liked. Then I’ve got beer. You like beer, don’t you? This year there’s a pretty clear top two for me; both of these are excellent. After that I’m less sure, but tried to settle on an order because ranking things is fun. 

On thing we see less of in these annual lists (that itself needs a comeback) is the the in and out list or what is hot and what is not, like the one suggested at Everyday Drinking. But maybe that’s because I know what black currant tastes like. And here’s another sort of handy guide, particularly useful on this New Year’s Day. Lew Bryson on his podcast “Seen Through A Glass” on all your coffee booze options:

So I’m here with a whole bunch of coffee drinks to get going this morning!  I didn’t know what to do for a relaxed post-Christmas episode, and then I remembered this interview with John Mleziva of State Line Distillery. They make a great coffee liqueur, and we talked about that. I knew we’d be just sitting around drinking coffee on that morning after Christmas, so I made that into an episode.  Then I told you more about the press trip to Mexico I took back in 2011 to see how Kahlua is made, with all the feels, and all the delicioso, and the extra-special cocktail we learned how to make. And the donkey herb moonshine we had. Yeah, not a typo. 

For what it’s worth, get a nice winey coffee blend, add 10% cream and a splash of Chambord. Or maybe Cointreau but that’s sorta a regular Saturday thing if you ask me. Black coffee though the week, by the way.

Boak and Bailey helped put things in order in a different sense with their post on what beers for Christmas mean to them now:

There were a couple of factors behind our decision. For a start, there’s the question of what’s easiest for non-beer-geek family members to acquire and look after. We don’t want to be pains in the arse. We also find ourselves thinking about relatives might also actually enjoy drinking with us. Normalish ale and normalish lager are easy sells to almost anyone, and stay out of the way of conversation, board games, or Lethal Weapon II on the telly. Maybe nostalgia and sentiment kicked in a bit, too. Ray’s dad got quite into Cheddar Gorge Best in his final years and it was nice to feel that, in a way, we were still able to share a beer with him. We raised our glasses in the direction of his photo.

I am with them. I saw someone recommend a beer store somewhere where the cheapest offering was two and a half times the price of a very good Belgian ale and, being in the holiday mood, though to myself… WTF!! I think there may be a bit of embarassment about the sucker juice era but rather than knaw at one’s innards about the waste of a decade, do what B+B did and think of what the company you’ll be in. That’s what actual beer as social lubricant means, after all. Now… some quick notes:

Note #1: Ron pointed to a news item on the end of corked Guinness.
Note #2: Liam then explained the news item on the end of corked Guinness.
Note #3: read Bounded by Buns by the noted beerman… as, frankly, you really need to add some solid food to your diet.
Note #4: needing something to do on Jan 11th? Tune into Desi Pubs.

More news out of Britain on the relaxation of concern related to drinking and driving. In The Times this week we read:

A survey of more than 2,000 adults, including 1,300 drivers, found that 37 per cent of Generation Z believed it was more socially acceptable to drive when marginally over the legal limit, compared with 9 per cent of baby boomers. Across the population as a whole, only 21 per cent of people agree… The survey showed that more than a third of young drivers believed driving while slightly over the limit was acceptable, but also that they were twice as likely to think that alcohol did not impair their judgment. [Ed.: thankfully…] The number of young drivers obtaining their licence is at its lowest level for generations, partly because of the cost of lessons and the difficulties in getting a test.

Much is made of the lowering of the blood alcohol limit in England to match the rest of Europe but that last stat up there may indicate a truth – there might also be a general level of ignorance related to the risks of driving itself at play. And now… some more quick notes:

Note #5: a collab on the bit heading to the recycling bin?
Note #6: “RESIGN!!!”
Note #7: “…number of pubs in England and Wales… fell to 38,623 from 38,989 a year earlier…”

Not at all related, the business resource The Street has chosen “the craft beer apocalypse” as its descriptor for 2025, illustrating that claim with a couple of non-bankruptcies:

One of the most recent closings was Miamisburg, Ohio, craft brewery Entropy Brewing Company, which revealed on social media that it would close down its business permanently on Dec. 27, 2025, with no plans yet to file for bankruptcy… And now, New Mexico-based Bosque Brewing Company is closing down all of its taproom locations and ending its business after a federal judge dismissed the brewer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case on Dec. 22 because it had too much debt to reorganize, KOB-TV 4 in Albuquerque reported. The dismissal of the Chapter 11 case will likely prompt the brewery company to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation unless it can settle all of its debts with its creditors out of court.

AKA no hope of resuscitation. It seems to me that there might be a role for a bit of bankruptcy trustee advice for breweries in trouble at an earlier point in the downward cycle than “too much debt” but there seems to be a bit of a theme if we consider how late Rogue played along.  Before perhaps hitting the intersection of economics and ethics. Perhaps related (but only if you glean more from this passage than I do) is this offering from Gunnar Rundgren at countercurrents.org:

…society, human expression and technology develop in tandem. And in order to be strong they need to reinforce each other. And one technology assumes, or dictates, that many other technologies are in place and that society is organised in certain ways. Even something basic as beer assumes agriculture, and agriculture assumes and requires a sedentary culture. Sedentism, in turn, implies a lot of things, even though I don’t subscribe to the idea that agriculture and sedentism is the fall of man, the cradle of tyranny or the broken link between humans and nature. Some claim that beer preceded or even initiated agriculture and sedentism in that case means that it is beer that is the culprit, quite an entertaining thought….

So… if beer created civilization*** then beer is also complicit with the end of civilization. Perhaps. Shifting gears and in sensible rejection of last week’s sharing of bad advice about Dry January, this article in the New York Times may illustrate how dry does not need to mean no customers if there’s an application of a little planning to serve those cutting back:

Given that drinking — on the slopes, at the pool, or at the hotel bar — is for many people a staple while on holiday, forgoing the ritual leaves time for other activities. Here are six hotels that have devised alternatives to drinking, from snowshoeing to aerial stretching; from making mocktails to simply sipping them… The 54 rooms and suites spread across seven lodges are light-filled, with neutral-colored linens, Hästens beds and natural oak wood floors… A sustainable ethos guides the vision for the property, including its three restaurants. The extensive mocktail menu, which features zero-proof counterparts of its signature cocktails, leverages local ingredients and scraps from the kitchen. A mocktail called Too Hot to Handle, for example, is a umami-forward mix of Rebels Botanical Dry, a nonalcoholic gin; lemon; bell peppers; tomato and smoky housemade bitters.

Horsehair beds? Kitchen scraps in the drinks?!? OK… fine… maybe not so much… Speaking of retreats, like you, I read the Luxembourg Times. Where else can I catch up with the regional news of the Trappists fame… republished from Bloomberg… including some interesting technical insights from Westmalle:

The idea is to hold profit and production stable, to provide for the abbey, give to charity, and reinvest where necessary in the business. Westmalle’s bottling plant hums and crashes with life during the day as bottles are washed, labeled, filled and prepared for delivery. At maximum capacity, 45,000 are processed per minute. But the production line lies idle outside its one day shift, and doesn’t operate on weekends, as the monks want the staff to work sociable hours. It’s set to be replaced by 2030 with a new modernized facility through a major, self-funded investment in the brewery.

Mod-ren. That’s what the future will be. Mod-ren. Speaking of which… that is it for this first update of 2025.  Frig. I forgot to use the new format. Oh well. Have a great New Years Eve and Hogmanay, too! Excitement builds as it’s not yest been announced if Boak and Bailey are posting this Saturday but make it your New Year’s resolution to sign up for their fabulously entertaining footnotes 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 2007!! 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.

*From the Wayback archives, here is the explanation of the Surprise Twist: “I feel a 1980s power ballad coming on. I can’t fight this feeling anymore. Maybe I was just so damn tired. I was checking out all the entries and just like that I heard a voice. It said: “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?” I dunno. This time I wanna be sure. Suddenly, it’s touching the very part of me. It’s making my soul sing. It says the words that I can’t say. Maybe little things I should have said and done. I guess I just never took the time. When it was thinking about prize giving this was always on my mind… always on my mind. I’m never gonna dance again if I don’t make this right. Aaron Stein of Portland, Oregon wins. Not sure what he wins. But he wins the book I need to dig out award for the overlooked image of 2014.” That’s… a lot. Wow. Was I drunk?
**Consider B+B’s Bristol or (for the double!) Lisa’s Dublin.
***Didn’t.

Your Festive Beery News Notes For A Blursday In This Jolly Hollifest

What day is it? I think I can still recall. It’s definitely somewhere between the last parcel being mailed and 2026. I know that much. I also know that in 2009 one Stan Hieronymus, possibly barely out of his teens at the time, submitted this photo above as one of his entries in the Christmas photo context. I will say one thing about a beer photo contest – if you don’t like your range of browns you might as well admit that you should never run one. Like the other contest submissions I have been posting out of the archives the last few weeks, I am pretty sure this one didn’t win a prize – but have you ever seen a better placement of a five gallon white food service bucket? No. Come to think of it, do you ever give a second thought for the glorious role of the five gallon food service bucket in all of brewing? Stan did. For one beautiful moment, he sure did.

Let’s get to the beer news. First up, another controversy related to booze and the ticker:

…the American Heart Association has revived the idea in a scientific review that is drawing intense criticism, setting off a new round of debate about alcohol consumption. The paper, which sought to summarize the latest research and was aimed at practicing cardiologists, concluded that light drinking — one to two drinks a day — posed no risk for coronary disease, stroke, sudden death and possibly heart failure, and may even reduce the risk of developing these conditions.

Before you go off to the Christmas office party with the thought that it’s really not all that far off a visit to a health spa, remember the critics’ warnings about the quality of all these sorts of studies: “Some are clearly horrible, some are good, but a lot are in the gray zone, and people may just cherry-pick and select those that agree more with their narrative.” Hah! So there…

Speaking of the office party at this time of year, the very same authoritative organ shared a bit of advice about conduct at office parties for the supervisory set:

It’s a good idea to stop after two drinks. Sure, you could have three drinks — or six! — and enjoy the social leveling and bonhomie that accompanies lowered inhibition and decreased cognitive capacity. But it’s hard to command respect in the office when people have seen you red-faced and trying to light a cigarette from the filter. 

Is it unfair to compare today to forty or so years ago? The (other) Times did this week when they republished a guide called “How to Survive Christmas” from 1986:

Commuting in the run-up to Christmas is absolute murder. On the way home from a hard day’s work you are liable to find everyone either festively drunk or helping someone else to be sick. Then there’s the office party. People will drink far too much, lunge at one another, tell the managing director he’s a twerp and pour the office vegan’s sprout wine down the word processor to cackles of mirth. How do susceptible males stay out of trouble at the office party? One friend suggests that offices should introduce Tube straps hanging from the ceiling. Thus you could remain vertical however much you knocked back, but with one hand in the strap and the other clutching your glass, both would be kept out of mischief.

Good idea. While it appears that thirty-nine years have passed since that was published, it’s clear ther are still bad behaviours that need to be stamped out at this Holly Jolly time of year, as Pete reports from the pub:

Black Friday has a different meaning in the hospitality industry. It’s not the consumer frenzy of late November, it’s the last Friday before Christmas. This is the night when post-work drinks climax in a frenzy of ill-advised shots and poorly judged flirting. For pubs, it’s one of the busiest nights of the year.

And then he gives ten rules, many of which would be enough to deter me from going to the pub. No line? Never have liked that when visting the fam. How un-Canadian! Give me a good line any day. But “no ordering a round of cocktails“? Perfect sense. No playing your crap music off your phone? Automatic ejection, I say.

Speaking of bad behaviour, I missed this tale of sticky fingers a few weeks ago but I will share it now as this could end up being quite the thing… perhaps quite the thing indeed:

Molson Canada has accused former managers of embezzling millions of dollars in an intricate fraud scheme allegedly involving fake vendors, shell companies, the president of a major pub chain and a pair of married couples. In documents filed Wednesday in Ontario Superior Court, the brewing giant claimed that former Molson Canada sales director Frank Ivankovic oversaw “a complex scheme to defraud the company of many millions of dollars” that later involved two subordinates.

Holy crap! Gotta watch that story. You may scoff at the very thought but I will share a fact that is actually true – I had a personal banking representative many years ago who made a very tidy sums on false mortgage accounts until the scam was uncovered. As this situation at Molson is reportedly both complex and intricate, I am spellbound and await further disclosures from any and all court processes.

Speaking of people who can’t tell their left pocket from their right one, in the land of Vinho Verde the police have had to get involved:

Those arrested from the trade body, which is responsible for quality control and official certification of Vinho Verde wines, belong to its Inspection and Control Division, with the individuals arrested for allegedly warning wineries of upcoming inspections and accepting bribes of meals, wine and event tickets. According to Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias, the officials also allegedly turned a blind eye to wine producers failing to meet the requirements to obtain designation of origin (DO) or geographical indication (IG) certification to be able to label their bottles as Vinho Verde…  Meanwhile, a further four “business owners involved in the distribution and production of Vinho Verde” – have also been arrested, charged with “active and passive corruption, falsification of documents and abuse of power”.

Doce mãe de deus!!!  Fiddling with the Vinho Verde!?! That has been a mainstay in my life for around forty-five years, starting with my mother’s micro-obsession with the plonky version. Not unrelatedly as it turns out, Lars found some dirt about law scoff doing a little farmhouse brewing in Japan, news that he shared on BlueSky:

The Japanese are less law-abiding than I thought: farmhouse sake brewing continued despite the legal ban. In 1941 folklorists surveyed 85 localities, finding home brewing in 44 of them…  In 1895 there were 1 million home brewing licenses in total. So Japan definitely had farmhouse brewing of sake. Then in 1886 the gov’t banned home brewing entirely. Probably killed the farmhouse brewing. Home brewing is still illegal in Japan (gov’t wants its alcohol taxes), but in 2003 one exception was made: farms using their own rice are allowed to brew. This kind of sake is called “doburoku”. There are now 100 designated doburoku districts where this style exists.

That could make for something very interesting, a doburoku tour… doburoku tour… doburoku… WAKE UP!!! Sorry. Now… some notes:

Note #1: “only 37 percent of craft breweries in Canada are profitable”? Really? That’s a lot of subsidization.
Note #2: Who the hell pours Bailey’s down the sink?
Note#3: A.I. designed beer? Nope, couldn’t care less…

Aaaaannnnnd… the BA issued a somewhat delicately drafted “year in review” type press release suited to both address and deflect the industry’s annus horribilis and, I gotta tell ya, I sorta choked on what is stated to be the top trend:

This year, there was a continued democratization and expansion of what it means to be a “brewer.” With acquisitions, mergers, and collaborations, the stainless tanks in the background may not be as important as the brand story.

As one who has never given a shit about the story someone is telling about a brewery, I think if I were an actual brewer I might consider this statement slightly, you know, treachery if not treasonous. But it is nice to know that, finally, years after the BA’s abandoning the need to be small or traditional or independent it’s now not even necessary to be an actual brewer.

Much more reliable was the annual release of the Golden Pints 2025 awards from Boak and Bailey which starts with this introduction to the concept.

What can we say? Hardly anybody else bothers doing this anymore but we’re creatures of habit. We first took part in the Golden Pints back in 2011 and find it a pleasingly reassuring ritual. It’s also good to have in mind throughout the year as we roam from town to town, and from pub to pub. It makes us look at the beer we’re drinking and ask: “Could this be a contender?” Before we get down to business, a bit of encouragement: nobody owns the Golden Pints thing; anyone can join in; you don’t even need a blog to take part. Post your own list on social media as a thread, or even in the comments on this post if you like.

I won’t ruin the announcement of their winners – but what I like about the whole Golden Pints idea is that it celebrates their winners. Was it started by the late great Simon Johnson? He posted his thoughts in 2010, 2011 and 2012 but perhaps it goes back further. Yes, Mark Dredge awarded them in 2009 and even cited his own pre-GP “best of” post of 2008. Who was his best beer Twitterer of 2009? Simon Johnson! Who else? Anyway, you can check out the examples new and old and figure out your own summary of the year according to your own standards.

In another annual year end tradition, Alistair has begun to announce his beers of the year, style by style. His first post celebrates the pale based on three footprints – state, national and imports:

It’s that time of the year, the Winter Solstice is upon us, and what better to do than to review a year’s worth of drinking? As has become my own tradition, I will break this down into multiple posts, one for pale beer, one for BOAB (“between orange and brown”, and dark, and then an overall beer of the year, as well as one for Virginia cider of the year. As I have done for several years now, I will highlight beers from Virginia, the rest of the US, and the rest of the world before crowning each category winner, so on with the show…

I liked this comment: “Spoolboy, the most perfect desítka imaginable, and one that I wish I could sit and drink with Evan, Max, and co back in Prague.” That would be a good table to join.

Over at Pellicle, Robyn Gilmour shared the story of an innovation in Dublin’s beer scene:

…the beer that’s consumed in the majority of Irish pubs isn’t even Irish, with the exception, perhaps, of Guinness, Murphy’s, Beamish, and a handful of other outliers that are brewed locally but owned by foreign multinationals. While treasured in Ireland, these brands do not represent the full spectrum of the country’s beer, which is far more nuanced and varied than most pub offerings would suggest. Speak to anyone working in the independent Irish brewing sector and they’ll soon tell you about the savage competition for taps in Ireland—primarily between Diageo, Heineken, and Molson Coors. As someone who’s worked with many of these smaller breweries, I’ll admit I never had prior reason to question where publicans fitted into this dynamic. That was until 2024, when 16 of Dublin’s most cherished pubs banded together to form a brewery of their own—the aptly named Changing Times.

Finally, David shared his thoughts on language and alcohol promotion, thoughts based on serious personal experience:

…this kind of communication is terrible in the run up to Christmas when more people are tempted into drink driving despite the messaging. Recalling the trauma caused by my dad drink driving was bad enough but only days later I was forced into recollecting my flatmate’s attempted suicide when BrewDog ran an advertising campaign with the slogan “tastes like commercial suicide”. 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, much of my experience with drunk driving was from an earlier stage in my professional career as a duty criminal defence counsel processing those passing before the court for judgement. But I also lost a client of our office every year to a drunk driver in those years, too. And I probably have to admit that up to a certain point growing up in Nova Scotia in the 1970s and 80s, drunk driving was so common there was an inevitable even blasé attititude to the tragic harms done. There were so many Mondays that someone was not at their locker. So I don’t buy arguments that there is a risk reward sweet spot in these matters. The vast sums that the booze trade offers do not offset the loss.

And that may sound like a bummer of a way to end the news notes for the lead up to Christmas but this is a high danger zone within the calendar for drunk driving and other forms of harmful behaviours. So be thoughtful and be safe as you do about the holiday partying in these next few weeks. Maybe think of what else can be done that is as helpful as a London Underground strap hanging from the ceiling to make sure the season actually remains jolly.

As you contemplate that, 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 beery news posts) from Budapest or wherever – as he is getting active again. 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.

 

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…“

The Beery News Notes For That Post Canadian Thanksgiving Emotional Letdown

Actually, it’s been a good week this week. Forget that headline. While not at the level of “I’m a traffic cop in Spain under Franco and it’s Christmas so give me gifts of booze” good (as illustrated to the right) it’s been good.  Week off for yard work. And Monday’s Thanksgiving turkey came out of the oven in fine shape. We even had a last minute guest which meant we had to be on best behaviour and, get this, I couldn’t even each over the table for seconds of stuffing bare handed. Sheesh. And my vote for the Cardinal* even tied my preferred runner up the Crow** so that worked out well. Annnnd it was heartening to see the fans of the Blue Jays not repeat past bad behaviour when the Mariners took the first two games on the road care of, in part, a great Canadian.

Where to begin? The past! Last Thursday after that week’s edition went to… well, after I clicked on “post”, Liam shared an interesting piece on the joys of finding an excellent set of observations from the past:

While trawling through newspaper mentions for old pubs for yet another historical project, I came across a smattering of repeats in numerous papers in 1908 of a piece of pubcentric prose under the title, ‘The Delights of an Old Alehouse.’ It really gripped me as I read it and brought out some of the emotions mentioned above, but it wasn’t in any way familiar to me which seemed odd, as it was extremely well written and clearly done by someone with a lot of talent. Luckily, at the end of the piece the author – Charles Hugh Davies – was credited as well as the source of the original publication, which was The Pall Mall Magazine. Some sleuthing and searching finally led me to the piece, which is actually just a small part of an article titled ‘An Essaie in Prayse of Beer’ which is a much broader love letter to beer, and especially old ale, as was hinted at in the excerpt I had read. I can’t find it in any other source (apologies if it has been covered by others and I’ve just missed it.)

Good work. Sadly, the hunt for information on line has become harder as sources are removed from public access. It’ll only become harder as A.I. search narrows what you need to know. Which really was the underlying point about brewing history that Pope Leo was trying to make the other day.

And Gary has been digging into the old records this week, too, focusing most recently on Old Vienna beer – both Ontarian and Ohioan – and some almost eerie machinations on the part of my personal hero E.P Taylor:

Since Ohio was ground zero to market Red Cap Ale and Carling Black Label beer made in Clevelend, it makes sense that Canadian Breweries wanted to add Old Vienna to the American portfolio, at least initially as an export. If Canadian Breweries bought the rights to Koch’s Old Vienna from the receiver, a potential obsacle to such marking would be removed. Presumably O’Keefe Old Vienna did reach Ohio, as it did other states in the north. in the 1950s…

While E.P. clearly had a thing for Ohio, there are still questions questions questions and he’s on the hunt. Fortunately there are also answers at least etymologically speaking! On “steaming“…

The word ‘steaming’ for being drunk stems from when people in Scotland used to circumvent Sunday licensing laws by taking to the water. Public houses were closed, but steamships weren’t. To be ‘steaming drunk’ made its way into public parlance.

Also on another aspect of the question of “what is history,” Chalonda White of Afro.Beer.Chick posted about the meaning of National Black Brewers Day and how it is still not properly appreciated:

National Black Brewers Day isn’t just about history. It’s about continuity. It’s about connecting ancient African fermentation to modern Black ownership. It’s about giving credit where it’s long overdue. When I pour a pint on this day, I’m not just thinking about the beer. I’m thinking about the people. I think about the enslaved brewers whose hands shaped the recipes. I think about Theodore Mack Sr., who bet on himself when no one else would. I think about Celeste Beatty of Harlem Brewing Company, who became the first Black woman to own a craft brewery in the U.S. and did it with unapologetic Harlem pride. She turned her love for the culture into liquid storytelling.

In another context of the search for authenticity, Ron shared his experience of attending the Norsk Kornølfestival in Ålesund, Norway over a series of posts including breakfast photos as well as observations on framhouse brewing:

The house is a log cabin with one of those turfed roofs which are pretty common around here. Next to it is a roofed fire pit, where a cauldron of water and juniper twigs are bubbling away over a wood fire. They never brew with pure water. It’s always juniper infused. The farmer, his brother and a mate are doing the brewing. Occasionally, giving the water a stir with a long wooden stick. Mashing takes place in a stainless-steel tub. Though they have some wooden tubs to show us how they used to do things. Water is transferred in buckets to the mash tub. To which the malt is later added. No measurements, either of the temperature of the water or the weight of malt, are made. It’s all very casual. Done by eye and experience. While the mash is standing, we go off for lunch. Which is more potatoes and cold cuts. It fills a hole.

As a bonus, there was also some sensible maritial fest-going advice from Ron like when he made: “…some cheese and salami sandwiches to eat at the festival. I saw the price of the food they’re selling there. I’d never be able to look Dolores in the eye again if I paid that much for nosh.” As always, I am with Dolores in these matters. Less realistic is the news out of the GABF last week… if BMI is to be believed:

At Boston Beer’s annual GABF brunch Oct 10, it felt like a throwback to the heady days of early craft, an optimism that might’ve seemed defiant if it hadn’t had receipts from the night before. BA prexy Bart Watson opened the event by noting that despite the “gloom and doom” in craft, Thurs night’s crowd had produced a “lively festival” with “not a phone in sight.” Bart said “that’s the spirit we need to find – people connecting over great beer.” Boston Beer prexy Jim Koch echoed Bart, saying GABF’s opening “was an illustration of the creativity and vibrancy of the craft beer movement and our ability to evolve, change, add more layers to what we do.” 

You will remember Boston Beer, the firm that one is advised now makes 30% of its revenue from beer making. Clearly not part of the post-passion universe. More connected to the reality-based reality is Mike Seay who visited an old friend – a brew pub:

In this era of Craft Beer, with more places closing than opening, my area got a nice boost with the return of a local brewpub chain that is tied to the original microbrew wave in the 90s. That place is Sequoia Brewing in Fresno. It closed for a while, lost owners, and felt like it would not return. But it did return, with new owners. Thankfully. Brewpubs fill a gap for most of us beer geeks. The gap of having kids. Or a partner that isn’t into going to taprooms. With a brewpub, both can be happy. Food for the ones not really into beer, and craft-style beer for us beer geeks. Usually, brewpub beer rises up to a respectable level of beer, but not a “I want to buy this in a store” level. That there is the rub for us.

And (also) out and about but farther afield was Retired Martyn as well as Mrs RM who’ve (also) been looking for happiness care of a beer and a bite in Romania and found it at the Grand Café Van Gogh:

We’re in a modern apartment near the University, Romana a mix of youth and decay… Appropriately, the city is full of umbrellas, in Umbrella Street and the Grand Café Van Gogh which is one of Mrs RM’s ticks. Obviously those paintings aren’t all original Van Goghs, that would be silly, but they are high quality prints and this is the classiest place in Old Town by a distance. Big brewery beer, CAMRA would be appalled, but a black lager is matched expertly with…. Papanasi, your Romanian mix of doughnuts, cream and fruit.

I hope the service was up to scratch. I’ve done service – missed putting in the order, dropped the beer, invented “diming” to maximize the tips, took shit from the kitchen staff – but I never had to work it like a waitress. For Pellicle, Rachel Hendry discussed the role in pop culture and her own life:

What is it that you want from your waitress? Efficiency, charm, a smile, care, attention to detail, an attractive physique, a winning personality, a sense of humour, wisdom, empathy, experience—the list goes on! All of that flair! No wonder she’s so popular! But how much of a person are you really entitled to? The Waitress moves among her audience members, weaving her way past tables and into their lives. She works within her community—there’s that animation, there’s that exposure—performing for them as is the requirement of her work. How much should The Waitress give and how much should she restrain? How much are you paying for?

Excellent stuff. And from India, we learned there was much surprise on what people found out their drinks tab was paying for:

A liquor bill of a restaurant in Rajasthan has been going viral on social media. But why? Well, it levies cow cess among other taxes, including CGST and SGST. The tax, which was introduced in 2018 to support cows and cow shelters in Rajasthan, has triggered a debate online.  One user said, “As much as I want the welfare of cows (or all animals for the matter), I don’t understand the concept of cow cess.” Another said, “The irony is the Jaipur-Jodhpur highway, which is littered with cattle loitering on the road, making it extremely dangerous for commuters. Rajasthan govt is barely doing anything for the rehabilitation of cattle/cows.”

Sticking with news from India, there is a shortage of aluminum cans for the domestic brewing market that strict regulations are making worse, according to Jessica Mason:

Domestically, aluminium can suppliers such as Ball Beverage Packaging India and Can-Pack India, have revealed that they have already reached maximum capacity at their sites and will not be able to increase supplies for at least 6-12 months unless production lines are added or expanded in some way… At present, due to the QCO, the beer industry cannot import cans from foreign vendors as BIS certification can take many months to process. To avoid a shortage in beer supply, local reports have outlined that the BAI has lobbied the government for a “short-term regulatory relaxation” of its QCOs to ensure uninterrupted supplies from other countries.

Interesting then that Canada is courting India as a market for the supply of our metals. We make a lot of aluminum that could suppliment local production. If, you know, Mr. Trump lets us…

And then… there was much response to that nice light piece in the NYT by Mark Robichaux originally titled “Opinion – How to Save the Craft Beer Industry“*** on what US craft beer can do to save itself. Some sensible… (…maybe…) Others not so much**** or worse. Me, I wonder if  it can be saved as the taint of “your uncle’s drink” is now so well upon it. Not to mention the whole general slump of interest in booze thing.***** But what I liked most in the piece is how it makes an attempt too rarely seen with the general topic – an attempt to set out a reasonable argument. Four arguments in fact… of varing decrees of validity. The best one is the third of the four:

Craft beers also need smarter labels. The industry built its identity on personality, with quirky mascots, puns and inside jokes as logos. It was fun — until it became clutter and noise. My beer aisle now looks like a vertical Comic Con merch table. Today’s overwhelmed consumer doesn’t have time to decode a beer called Sour Me Unicorn Farts (a glittered sour from DuClaw), Purple Monkey Dishwasher (a chocolate peanut butter porter from Evil Genius), or Hopportunity Knocks (a perfumed, piney I.P.A. from Caldera Brewing Company). They want to know: What does it taste like? Will I like it? Design matters, yes, but clarity matters more. Make labels that tell drinkers what’s inside, not just what’s funny at 2 a.m. in the brew house.

Certainly a point we’ve heard, agreed with or disagreed with****** over the last few years. Consumers (not nerds, not trade staff, not beer writers) are not aided by in joke branding design. AKA the exploding bubble gum machine effect. But he misses the mark for me on issue #1 on the IPA problem, complaining that “…most taste like pine resin…” and not that anything that tastes like anything can be called an IPA now and that it loops into issue #3 above. Issue #2 is an observation on strong beer that is both true and also a bit dated by, you know, fifteen years. While it’s sorta true there’s plenty of beers being made which are not like that so, you know, buy those. Issue #4 is just a sensible observation that good beers should come in smaller cans… but plenty do.  One take away for me is this: if a reasonable writer and a reasonable publication like this is suffering from as serious a misunderstanding of the whole topic as a number of beer writers allege… have the last twenty years of public writing about good beer been an utter and too insular failure?

That’s it for now. Not as long as last week but that was nuts. While you beg for more more more, please also check out the below mentioned Boak and Bailey every Saturday and 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!

*The bird so nice they named it twice, cardinalis cardinalis!
**HARBINGER OF DEATH!!!!
***But then on Tuesday the title was altered to the less serious “Wacky Labels and Silly Names Are Killing Craft Beer” after an intense intimidation campaign by about 13 craft beer nerds that would have left even a Trump bootlicker impressed. Please don’t tell them about SNL’s non-non-alcoholic beer ad. Don’t make fun of poh widdle cwaft.
****Leaving out words like ““… as many have…” which undermine your point is not a strong move.
*****An interesting description of the loss of interest in booze can be found at UnHerd where “Is it last orders for German beer? Disaster is brewing in Bavaria” by Ian Birrell was published this week with this odd scene from Oktoberfest: “Not that everyone is into wellness. In one tent, I come across a lively group snorting what I presume was cocaine from the top of a bald man’s shiny head. One gives me a big grin as he sniffs deeply, then wipes his nose. Two tables down, another ebullient gang of pals pass around a mirror with chunky white lines laid out on it. Minutes later, I pass yet another high-spirited gaggle tapping small piles of powder onto their clenched fists.“
******It’s good to have a good civil disagreement. Stan misses them.   I once recommended a client sign a document in addition to a contract called a “Letter of Disagreement” to clarify what was and wasn’t acceptable. They didn’t.

Your Totally Excited And Entirely Distracted Beery News Notes For Wildcard Week

Just in case, you didn’t know the baseball playoffs are brutal. Four rounds of MLB games take place between last Tuesday and end no later than November 1st. By way of comparison, hockey takes months and months and months to figure out who gets their names on the cup. So… I have been distracted and annoyed. Distracted because my Red Sox are playing October baseball for the first time in a while and annoyed by all the instant Toronto fans who think Canadians all have to root for the Jays. If the gods will it so, the Sox will get past the Yankees* and will then see off Toronto around about October 10th. If not… oh well.

Sticking with sports, over at Real Ale, Real Music the story from Chris was about a trip away to a fitba match at Southend and all the beers along the way:

We finished our beers, and set off walking to the football ground. It was about a 20 minute walk as we moved out of the city centre into the suburbs, passing modern blocks and more traditional housing as we approached the ground. We were directed around to the away end by a couple of friendly bobbies, and we got in pretty quickly, and immediately spotted one or two familiar faces. Roots Hall is very much a traditional football ground, with individual stands on each side of the ground with the one behind the goal opposite the away end having an upper level.   The club though would win no awards for their catering, the cheeseburger we sampled having the consistency of a hard rubber disc, and it was presented in a dried-out, crumbling defrosted bun.

I really like the pace of those pieces. On the other hand, the Netflix series “The House of Guinness” has received some disappointed reviews from those well placed like Liam – “ludicrous and pointless” – but perhaps none so well placed as the one provided by Ms. Molly Guinness as reported in The Times:

We hooted with laughter through the first two episodes. As Sean Rafferty, Norton specialises in lines such as “Oi’ve worked for your family for 20 years and I know that inside every one of yous there’s a woild, woild black cat.” Alas, I suspect this characteristic has been bred out of us over the generations. When a corseted lady (great-great-aunt Olivia, since you ask) says, “I can take your money, but I don’t have to take your cock,” unlike all modern Guinnesses, she is not talking about poultry.

Speaking of disputes, another week and another question of law in the world of beer, this time over the right to the word “wor” – if, you know, it is even a word and not a sound… ok, fine… it’s a word:

A dispute has erupted between two breweries over the trademark of the word Wor on beer associated with a group of football fans. Tyneside-based Wylam Brewery re-branded its Wor Flags beer to NCL Flags last week – the sales of which support the Wor Flags fan group best known for creating Newcastle United banner displays. Anarchy Brew Co, also based in Tyneside, said it registered the trademark for beer products in 2022 during its own similar partnership with Wor Flags, which ended before the start of the new season. Wylam Brewery said it was “disappointed” to be put in that position. Anarchy said it could have been avoided if the other company did its due diligence.

Conversely and more about getting it right, I enjoyed this excellent and detailed potrait of Master Sommelier Agnieszka Swiecka in The Buyer which describes the years of work it took for her to earn the designation this year:

I was fortunate to pass the blind tasting and practical parts of the MS exam at my first attempt in 2023, but the theory was my achilles heel. I have created self-limiting beliefs in my head that hindered my chances to pass. For example, I was telling myself that, to pass the exam I don’t need to have a deep knowledge of spirits and cocktails, as this is a sommelier not a bartender certification. It wouldn’t be fair to ask too many spirits questions. Or things along the lines – if last year there were questions about Chile maybe it’s better to focus on Argentina for this year’s exam? Can I skip studying about Bulgaria? It’s likely that I will get one question if any, and I need 75% to pass. You get the idea.

Skip Bulgarian wine? Come to think of it, as a teen I often thought somewhat after the fact that it might have been wise for me had I done just that.

Speaking of unpleasant drinking habits, I found this graph from the AAWE on BlueSky useful in detailing how big wine coolers were in the 1980s. It also got me thinking of where that segment of drinker preference has gone, say, since the early 1990s. People who want sweet trendy gak.  Jordan helpfull reminded us back in 2020 how Mike’s Hard Lemonade arose starting around 1996:

Michelle Shephard, writing in the Toronto Star on April 19, 1998, clutches pearls magnificently: “It looks like lemonade. It tastes like lemonade…” Shephard interviews two female Ryerson students who are quoted as saying “we went to the bar downtown and just decided it was a night to drink Mike’s. We had one then oh, this is gone. Then, oh this one’s gone so let’s get another…” and “They’re just so easy to drink you don’t even know you’re getting drunk.” One feels as though this might have backfired somewhat.

Jordan was comparing Mike’s to the White Claw boom of the early pandemic months of 2020. But haven’t the fruit flavoured craft alcopops called kettle sours also played that same role? Discussed in VinePair in 2018, I know from the archives that I had my first overly fruity IPA in 2014 and maybe the first sweetie pie kettle sour around 2016 at Folly Brewing, both in Toronto.** So were there gaps in the candy coated timeline or has there always been a form of sweet gak that lets kids say “oh this one’s gone so let’s get another” while having fun? Or put it this way… was there ever not a cheap sweet gak of choice and head cracking aches?***

Slightly related, I had never heard of the UK’s Boring Beer Index until this week which I suppose is good. But as it appears to be some sort of PR counter-insurgency I suppose that indicates something about it isn’t all that good, as perhaps clarified in the Morning Advertiser:

Some premium lager brands have seen sharp increases, such as Madri, which has seen the number of respondents claiming to be bored of it almost double since the previous report. John Smith’s topped the survey’s list of so-called boring ales while Guinness was cited as the most unexciting stout brand…

Very unpopular, that Guinness stuff. Out and about the planet, The Beer Nut was in Germany and hunted out some beers in Dusseldorf other than their famous Alt with much success except at…:

…Schumacher. This was my first time in their downtown pub, Im Goldenen Kessel. It was crowded, the service surlier and less responsive than anywhere else in town, and I got stuck at a table where there probably shouldn’t be a table. To top that off, their Alt alternative was… an Alt. Now, 1838er is 5% ABV and claims to be brewed with Cascade hops, but it’s the clear dark brown of an Alt and has the same medium-roast base. Unfortunately, it also has diacetyl in spades, and tastes more like a Danish butter cookie than anything else. This smacks up against a sharp gastric acidity, rendering it a complete mess and somewhere close to undrinkable. The brewery advises us to look out for the hint of lemon in the aroma. Nah mate; that ship has sailed. It’s just as well Schumacher’s proper Alt is pretty decent.

And Ron was on the road again, this time (again) he headed to Singapore to judge (again). His description of his arrival on the otherside of the planet leaves me a bit boggled myselg given, you know, I’d be more inclined to nap for 36 hours:

The arrival gate isn’t quite in Malaysia this time. It’s not so far to immigration and baggage retrieval. My bag comes out pretty quickly. Soon I’m speeding towards my hotel in a taxi. I’ve a couple of hours before the welcome dinner. Which I kill with some internet fiddling and duty-free whisky. It’s a pretty nice hotel with a decent-sized room. At 18:30, we take a bus to the venue. Which is a rooftop restaurant in a small hotel. With stunning views of the city. There’s just the one downside: no bogs. You have to go down to the ground floor for toileting purposes. Which is a bit inconvenient. Especially for oldies like me.

Back here at home, an interesting discussion is going on hereabouts about the retail rules. It’s on the question of whether big grocery chains in Ontario are going to be forced into participating in the return of recyclable empty beer bottles as part of their right to sell beer, cider and wine, as reported on by TVO Today:

…there are, legitimately, some small grocers who face some real hardship from being forced to choose between stocking beer and wine or accepting empties. That’s why the province’s current policy exempts stores under 4,000 square feet — if your local convenience store or small green grocer has added some beer fridges in the past year, they’re almost certainly fine. Nevertheless, maybe that number needs to be modestly increased; I’m certainly not going to vouch for the Ford government’s perfection in rule-making. Ultimately, however, the question of what to do about small stores is a distraction. The actual fight in Ontario this year is over whether big grocers will, once again, get the province to bend and relieve them of any obligation to collect empties.

And ATJ got the nod for Pellicles feature this week and provided a protrait of Proper Job, an early English clone of a hoppy US IPA. I really like this description from the brewer who makes it now:

“If you want an IPA but have never had one, this is the one to get,” Georgina Young, Roger’s successor as St. Austell head brewer, tells me when we meet at one of St Austell’s Exeter pubs, the Mill on the Exe. “It’s a great example of a punchy, hoppy IPA. To me it represents a real ‘god I really want a Proper Job lightning hop tingling on the tongue’ moment, it’s an exciting beer to drink and I think that is the draw of it.” “If I am going out for a ‘watering’ pint I will go for a Tribute,” she adds. “If something is going to excite me then it will be a Proper Job. Roger was very much into his Def Leppard, AC/DC, metal, he loved it. When you sit and drink Proper Job you can feel that. It is quite heavy metal, a bit scratchy.”

Finally, Japanese brewer Asahi has been hit with a pretty dramatic cyber attack which has led to some serious consequences:

Asahi Group Holdings has not been able to resume production at domestic factories a day after a cyberattack and cannot foresee when it can be resumed, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday… The maker of Asahi Super Dry Beer, Nikka Whisky and Mitsuya Cider last night said its group companies in Japan suspended operations, including order processing, shipping and call centre functions, due to a cyberattack-caused system outage, although no personal information leakage has been confirmed.

How odd. Who gains from that? Economic terrorism or just pesky teens messing around on the internets. Gotta keep an eye on that one. But now I need to get back to the baseball. As you root root root for whichever is your home team of choice, please also check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and 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! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newslettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*Tuesday’s Game 1 result? Sox sorta evicerate the Yanks after seven innings of a pitcher’s duel. UPDATE: Wednesday had a similar plot but the Yanks were the beneficiaries. Great baseball.
**No comment as to the relation to the 2025 Blue Jays… perhaps…
***I am reminded of my late great parents and confirming the nickname for cheap sweet gak in the 1950s just to the west of Glasgow was “electric soup”!

Now That I Have My Back To School Corduroys Here’s The Thursday Beery News Notes

With the onset of September comes the offset of the the garden. I am still planting things that have a hope to give us a bit of return before the frosts – basil, peas, leaf lettuces – but the fact is it’s now about starting the long process of taking down the pole beans, filling up the composters and putting away pots for next year. I saw this image on the Brewery History Society’s FB page and immediately liked the scene. The sweater vest and long trousers in particlar are a good and fashionable reminder that there’s still lots needing done as autumn advances.

Speaking of the change of seasons, The Beer Nut is looking forward to summer being behind him if his reviews of warm weather drinks including something called Fruit Sundae Gelato Sour is anything to go by:

It’s lactose rather than Lactobacillus that drives the flavour, and indeed the smooth and heavy texture. Vanilla forms the base of the profile, to which is added a mish-mash of fruit concentrates (four are named on the ingredients) with strawberry and blackberry being the most apparent. And that’s it. While the mouthfeel reflects the high ABV, the flavour complexity doesn’t. The weight also means it doesn’t work as a summer refresher, and is more of a pudding substitute. This is simple and inoffensive stuff, so long as oodles of lactose and rivers of fruit gunk don’t bother you.

And Boak and Bailey were also feeling the last of the summer and looking forward to the coming change if we can judge by their last “beers of the week” note at Patreon:

This piece would be a lot longer if we listed all the duds we had. Hot weather and a quiet city make for some rough pints: cloudy, warm, chewy, as exhausted as the sweaty August insomniacs drinking them. But we always wanted this little write up to be more positive in tone. We don’t chicken out of giving negative reviews on the main blog – we’d have a lot more friends in the industry if we did! – but we don’t want this other thing to consist of us bitching behind closed doors. Anyway, it’s cooling now. The Swan With Two Necks will be resuming its usual opening hours and cask ale across the city will be dropping down from its rolling boil.

Perhaps they needed to add a little something to their ales? Should you? Would you? Could you? The Guardian has many questions along these lines:

The true number of icy beer fanatics is probably much higher. Why is that? Because another 10% said embarrassment was holding them back from requesting ice in their beer, and another 20% said that they had previously been told off by friends, family and bar staff for requesting it. Seriously, though, why is putting ice cubes in beer a bad thing? Because beer is already delicately flavoured enough as it is, so diluting it with melted ice risks rendering it tasteless. Plus, a lot of work went into crafting that flavour profile. Don’t just mess it all up because you like your glass to clink when you swirl it.*

Why not!?! As Gary pointed out this week, some have jumped through hoops to cool their beer. Back to question of the heat, reaching west we have one last “what I did on summer vacation” report from Glenn Hendry on a trip to grasslands of the Canadian Prairies where he found himself on a brewery tour:

The scenery was outstanding – if you’re into grasslands and rolling hills, which I am – but eventually I made the long drive in the rental car back to Regina for the rest of the Tuesday-to-Saturday trip. With my beer consumption in Toronto reduced to the odd social outing back in Oshawa and maybe a beer a week at home, a pub crawl in Regina, Saskatchewan was an unexpected addition to the itinerary, but when my server at Pile O’ Bones Brewery told me if I visited all six breweries on the city’s ‘Hop Circuit’ and had a pint at each I would score a beer glass, well, despite the ‘self-guided’ disclaimer/warning, the challenge is on, innit? To be entirely truthful, I hadn’t planned on hitting up all six – maybe three or four – on this steaming hot Thursday in the prairie city, but when the old legs get moving and the old mind stops making sound decisions, challenges are simply met.

Speaking of the Prairies, I am a bit more swayed by this comment from Suzanne Sexton on the closure of an Ontario Crown Royal whisky bottling plant than I am by Premier Ford pouring a bottle out over the loss of 200 jobs:

This is the Crown Royal production facility in Gimli, Manitoba. This is where Crown Royal is actually made on the shore of Lake Winnipeg. It runs 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year. It houses millions of barrels of Canadian Crown Royal, made and moved by Canadians. There are more barrels of Crown on-site than there are people in this province. The high quality barley, corn, and rye are grown by Canadian farmers. Please don’t follow people who don’t know these facts when they ask you to boycott Crown Royal because they moved one Ontario bottling plant to US to survive US tariffs. Buying Crown Royal still puts dinner on the table in hardworking Canadian households across the country.

It is the reality we live in that bulk booze is trafficked across the border. I seem to recall that Canadian good beers have been shipped south to the US for bottling and labeling there as grocery house brands in a way that avoids certain tax treatments in both countries. Nothing wrong with that.

Speaking of booze as business, Pellicle‘s feature this week is Phil Mellows’ portrait of David Bruce, owner of the Frikin pub chaing from 1979 to 1988, who explained the 1988 sale when he was bored, tired and facing debt:

The numbers were stacking up against him, too. “We still owned 90% of the business but that meant we had a massive level of debt, £3 million. I could see the Monopolies & Mergers report that led to the Beer Orders would mean more freehouses on the market and more competition. The banks were getting nervous. It was a matter of flog it or float it. We couldn’t carry on.” Finally free of money worries once the Firkins were sold, Bruce launched the charity providing barge holidays for disabled people that earned him his OBE, but it wasn’t long before he was back in beer and making an impact, this time on a global scale.

It’s interesting to see how Bruce also rolled his profits into the churn of further beer business projects including many US micro breweries which themselves were sold off in the great buyout era of a decade ago.

And studies were among things discussed these last seven days. Last Friday, Ed himself expressed himself on the topic of beer foam based on a study written by non-brewers:

The authors of the beer foam paper appear to be competent scientists, even if they are ignorant when it comes to brewing. They certainly seem to know a lot about the science of bubbles (Marangoni stresses is a new one to me!). And they correctly discuss Lipid Transfer Protein 1 as playing a key role in stabilising foam, though this nothing new to brewers. In fact last year I went to a talk by “The pope of foam” Charlie Bamforth where he discussed the role of Lipid Transfer Protein and Protein Z (40 kDa) in foam stability. He said research had shown this was not due to any particular property of the proteins, but rather that the partial denaturing of them during the boil (not during secondary fermentation!) exposed their hydrophobic interior which helps stabilise bubbles.

Didn’t know about Marangoni stresses?!? Reeeeallly? Hmm. Lordy. Err… umm… where were we… oh yes – and Lars commented on another study that sought to link the development of beer brewing with the onset of organzied societies:

Many researchers have suggested that alcohol may have been an important factor in developing early states. Basically, it’s supposed to have helped social cohesion, improved cooperation, and reduced friction among people living cramped together…. What they found was that in all models there was a positive correlation between alcohol and political complexity. It was 0.77 when the only factor was alcohol, and 0.19 in the weakest (model 4). Average 0.27 across all five models. In other words, the result appears pretty robust.

“Au contraire dit…” Jeff who pointed out that some of the assumptions were not well founded:

I’m not an archaeologist (though neither are the authors), but the data here seems abundant and clear. On the first highlighted quote, people made beer *millennia* before agriculture. On the second one, man, what a sweeping judgment. Let’s take the NW Coastal natives, where I live… They had incredibly complex societies. They had social stratification, organization, and hierarchy. Some of the peoples managed harvests, but whether you could call it agriculture is a very sticky question. They had such abundance they didn’t need agriculture. Cultures are very hard to characterize.

My thoughts are these: (i) the general “cradle of civilization” concept seems pretty middle eastern focused as there are many models of society, many without alcohol, (ii) the studies also rarely seem to compare the multiple other factors like seed storage techniques that would run parallel to booze production** and (iii) there often seems to be an inordinate wish to make booze the winner when, as in this case, it is also reasonable to assume that these early societies were slave based coercive hell holes.

Stan issued his latest edition of his Hop Queries newsletter (v.9.04) and shared how poor the crop was looking in England (“…shrunk to a level that this news won’t affect the world hop market…“) as well as in Germany:

Farmers are expected to produce 41,235 metric tons (about 90.7 million pounds and likely more than the U.S. crop), 11 percent fewer than 2024. Growers cut acreage by 6.5 percent and yields were adversely affected by a lack of rain until mid-July and further reduced by disease and pest pressure. A press release indicates that 44 farms ceased operations, meaning the number of growers has slipped below 1,000. It concludes: “Hop growers are reacting to poor prices and limited marketing opportunities by reducing acreage. The short-term outlook is not rosy: Given declining beer consumption, a further decline in hop demand is to be expected. The result will be continued pressure on prices and a further reduction in hop acreage until supply and demand are restored.”

Until demand is restored? Does anyone think that is happening? Not the stock market if this report in Beer Marketers’ Insights is to be trusted:

Bank of America analyst Peter Galbo downgraded Constellation [NYSE: STZ] to “Underperform” last Tue, reducing his price target from $182 to $150. “We see further downside potential as beer industry consumption remains soft creating risk to sales, margin and multiple,” Peter wrote. And there are “added risks” such as “core Hispanic demographic remains pressured” and “longer term alcohol consumption trends” remain soft. He now expects a -1.8% decline for Constellation in fiscal 26 (thru next Feb) compared to his previous estimate of -0.5%. CITI also put out tuff report noting “continued softness in both STZ’s beer trends and the broader beer category.”

The company itself seems to agree in their own disclosures issued Tuesday. To be fair, there are still believers and even at least one corner of Canada running out of beer:

“We saw it right from the beginning of June — it hit hard and fast,” Clark said. “Every day we talked to different tourists. It was a wide demographic this year … American, Canadians, from all over, young and old.”  Some days, he said the brewery was so busy it had to turn people away. “We have not been great at keeping up with demand this summer,” he said. “You always assume you might grow with a good summer, but we would have never expected this.”  Evermoore Brewing Co. was not the only local producer scrambling to meet a higher-than-normal demand. According to Jared Murphy, president of the P.E.I. Craft Brewers’ Alliance, some craft breweries had sales show a double-digit increase this summer.

There. We can end on an upbeat note this week.*** Somewhere there was an increased demand for beer. While you consider that before we meet next time, please also check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and 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, 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 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 offers a range of podcasts and there’s also 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! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newslettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*That comment about “delicately flavoured” sound like it was provided by the wizard who told you that you can’t spit beer at a tasting!
**Consider how the introduction of the Swede Turnip in 1700s England led to year round beef production which in turn arguably led to the second British Empire. Just consider that, wouldja?
***[Ed.: “Really? Are you sure we can’t add just one more collapsing beer market story? No? Fine. Whatever.”]

Your Beery News Notes For A Thursday When The Deep Dark Recesses Get Examined

What does that headline mean? More BrewDog financial disclosures? Another exposé of some distasteful behavious be a well known brewer. Nope. Not this week. No, the real news is it’s my regular quinquennial colonoscopy day! Today!! When I got the call I laughed “YES!” into the phone much to the clinics receptionist’s surprise. This’ll be my fifth. Or maybe sixth. Lost count. It’s good to have your innards examined, folks. And trimmed by the little clippers that show up on screen once in a while. Like a good dental cleaning… just at the other end. I wish you all your own happy colonoscopy days.

Note: up there in other health news, in 1936, tonic wines work for smokers too! I’ll take the c-scope, thanks.

Not at all related, Barry filed an article for Cider Review with himself on the Kemker Kultuur ciders of Münsterland:

Rather than emulating mass-produced, filtered and sweetened ciders that would probably sell more easily in northern Germany, the Kemkers draw inspiration from the rustic ciders of northern and central Europe: dry, unfiltered, with a sense of place in every bottle. Each batch is a reflection of that year’s harvest, the varieties of apples available, and the unpredictable beauty of wild yeast. And it is this that is perhaps the most defining aspect of Brauerei Kemker’s cider, their commitment to spontaneous fermentation. This wild process takes time, and the results are never entirely predictable, which is exactly as intended. Wild fermentation can yield ciders that are complex, dry, sometimes funky, with layers of flavour that reveal themselves gradually, though it is not without risk.

This is no puff piece. Barry’s ensuing notes include “…luscious yet arrestingly bitter…” and “…Like engine oil, so, so dark, like undiluted Ribena…” and “…an astringent, tannic grip hits the throat on the swallow, and does not release easily…” not to mention “…ciders that are reminders of what is possible when nature is allowed to lead…” And ATJ also shared a nice bit of honest observation this week:

On another table I spotted a man in a suit who still had his bicycle clips on. He was humming and then stopped to talk to a woman sitting on a stool at the bar. A man at the fruit machine next to the bar joined in. By the time I left, the man at the fruit machine was standing at the bar next to the woman on the stool and had swapped his half-pint for a pint. Walking back up the hill I wonder how their evening progressed. I never saw them again. A pub is nothing without people

In other international news, Auntie Beeb has reported on the collapse of the bourbon market which warmed my heart – almost as neatly as a glass of Makers Mark:

…most provinces in Canada have stopped importing American alcoholic beverages in retaliation. The country accounts for about 10% of Kentucky’s $9bn (£6.7bn) whiskey and bourbon business. “That’s worse than a tariff, because it’s literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves … that’s a very disproportionate response,” Lawson Whiting, the CEO of Brown-Forman… said back in March when Canadian provinces announced their plan to stop buying US booze… In Canada, where bourbon imports have slowed to a trickle, local distilleries have started experimenting with bourbon-making methods to give Canadian whiskey a similar taste. “The tariff war has really done a positive for the Canadian spirits business…”

And, perhaps relatedly, from the ever reliable Beer Marketer’s Insight weekly newsletter, there was this interesting info during the time of tariffs:

Leading aluminum packaging supplier Ball Corp posted one of its strongest qtrs in yrs with high rev growth and solid volume growth vs yr ago across all regions in Q2 2025. Global net revs jumped nearly 13% to $3.3 bil for the qtr off of 4.1% volume increase in aluminum packaging shipments, benefitting from a sizable price increase. North & Central America region revs rose 9.5% to $1.61 bil in Q2 and volume up “mid-single digit percent” vs yr ago. Tho oper margin in the region slipped 140 bps as oper profit dipped to $208 mil vs $210 mil yr ago, “primarily” due to price/mix and higher costs.

One thing we have learned in 2025 is that Canada supplies most of North America’s aluminum much of which is shipped south to be turned in to cans to be sent back to Canada to be filled with beer. Which makes me wonder if the unexpected bump in revenue described above which was twinned with a drop in operating margin is a sign of the two sides of an increased tariff regime. We are now buiding the tin can factories of liberty.

Speaking of freedom, over at Pellicle, Eoghan Walsh has given us a bit of treat just as the European fitba seasons take off with a story of good local beer at good local matches in Ireland:

Dublin’s breweries and its football clubs would have been successful without their respective collaborations, but that they’ve experienced their twin revivals in parallel but interconnected journeys like a double helix speaks to a more fundamental change in Irish attitudes, a renewed self-confidence and a reaction to the flattening impulses of globalisation, that encompassed not just sport but also the creative arts and the wider culture.  “I wouldn’t call it a cultural reawakening,” says Barry Crossan, friend of Donnchadh, fellow ‘Riversider,’ and editor of club fanzine Red Inc. “But there is a bit of a feeling of, ‘These are our bands, these are our clubs.’ It’s phenomenal.”

Sports can define identity. Which sorta reminds me of Big Pappy.  And along the lines of language usage, Mikey Seay asks us all the question “Are you a Private Brewer?” and in doing so coins a handy phrase:

Home Brewer sounds too much like just a hobby – a goof in a garage. PRIVATE Brewer sounds more legit. It puts you, the home brewer, and the person who drinks beer from home brewers, in a more sophisticated space. Same as Private Chefs. Home Chef doesn’t sound all that cool. But PRIVATE Chef does. I want to commission a Private Brewer. A Home Brewer? Not so much. Do Home Brewers sell their beer under the table? I am sure they must, I have just never heard of it. Home Brewers are always too eager to have you try their beer and end up giving it to you.

And, speaking of laying down the law, Phil Mellows brought a recent ruling by the shadowy Portman Group on, of all things, Radler can branding:

The Panel assessed the front label of the drink which included the word ‘Radler’ in a prominent large font. The Panel discussed that while the term ‘Radler’ may be recognised by some consumers as a citrus-based beer, this was not a universally recognised term to denote alcohol in the UK.  The Panel acknowledged that the term was better known with a younger drinking demographic but noted that it had not been understood by the underage person who had accidentally consumed the drink. Therefore, the Panel considered that ‘Radler’ on its own did not sufficiently communicate the product’s alcoholic nature.

As usual, the ruling is weird. The complainant is identified as “underaged” but no actual age is provided. It is a very diferent thing if the person was nine years old and drank a radler as opposed to someone who is seventeen. The label clearly indicated the alcoholic strenth of 3.4% and also had the words “beer” as well as “brewing” – but the shadowy panel found the label “was predominantly focused on fruit-flavours and bore resemblance to a soft drink.” Most oddly, the panel did not consider the absence of indicia that the drink was a soft drink as they claimed. The ruling lacks obvious evidentiary foundations. The British Soft Drinks Association, for example, has a code related to labeling of their products. Food Standards Scotland also offers guidance. The SPG’s failure to consider these obvious sorts of rules for what they consider the packaging looked like leaves one scratching the old hockey helmet holder. But, you know, I’m just a lawyer so…

And, finally, there was a lot of response to a greasy pervy tone found at the Great British Beer Festival this year, including from Kimberley in her piece “It’s a nice day for a beer festival (if you’re a man)“:

As soon as I got my festival glass I made a beeline for a bar that didn’t look crowded, so I could get my back against a nearby table/bar so I didn’t feel so vulnerable. The vast open space and the weird “welcome” got me off to a ropey start. I didn’t even feel comfortable making the long walk to the bathroom in that wide open space.  I knew I needed a gameplan to get through the trade session and because I was late, I wanted to stay a few more hours after because there were breweries I wanted to connect with and support. I’ll provide more context on why I was late to GBBF later – it’s relevant to give a whole picture of the day.  In the first hour of being there I had several interactions that made me feel uncomfortable. I nearly left after just one hour – a friend reassured me I’d be ok staying.

Fests. David J. also says he avoids them for similar reasons. I do not go to beer fests. I’ve hit a few where the transportation failed the amount of drinking by shitfaced strangers. Rachel H. is really ticked that there was no outreach to people who actually know how to plan for bad behaviours and role out anti-sexist strategies. Hopefully more useful than the admittedly successful “designated boyfriend” role I sometimes happily played in bars in the 1980s. Boak and Bailey asked “what can be done?” given “the easy fixes have been tried.” Lillput at What’ll You Have might be on to something as explained in her piece “Don’t Be A Dick” at :

I work with young people – mostly young men, most of whom are socially somewhat awkward and at risk of missing social cues.  We have an extensive “Code of Conduct” which everyone has to read and understand.  “So what you’re saying is – don’t be a dick – in essence”?  Said one lad.  Yeah, that’s it – and everyone knows really what it means – they don’t really need a list.  I don’t believe any poor behaviour is because they don’t understand the rules.  They understand, but they choose – for whatever reason – to ignore or flout them.

Lordy. Which is one reason why I avoid fests. The arseholes.

Well, I am going to leave it there this week. Alpha-ed and Omega-ed, I did. Being Wednesday as this is writ, I now need a drink. No, not that sort of drink, this sort of drink.  Friday? Friday I may drink. As you ponder these inevitables, please also check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and 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 the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode three weeks ago!. And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.