Law – Page 3 – A Good Beer Blog

The Final And Totally Mailed In Beery News Notes of August

I have a new hobby. Doin’ nuttin’. After last week’s chores, we took off and wandered a bit around Montreal on the weekend and said hello to Leonard. Crescent‘s bars were bustling last Saturday evening. And we hopped over to Syracuse NY last Wednesday for an afternoon AAA baseball game, a driveby glance into the Loop Grill and some serious American snacks shopping to bring back to Canada but otherwise this summer vacation has been mainly about nuttin’. There should be ads on the TV about staying home and doing nuttin’ like one of those for visiting the Gulf States or Arizona. Except it’s about the backyard. I could monetize that. Become a backyard doin’ nuttin’ influencer. Post TikToks about it. Have a Patreon site about it behind a subscribers only wall. Except that would be doing stuff. And not nuttin’. I am too into nuttin’ to be doin’ something about nuttin’.

What has been going on? First, Pellicle‘s Wednesday piece is about a fairly large diversified English farm operation that includes barley and brewing in its mix of production. It’s a farm with a focus on something more essential – thoughtful care of the soil:

There’s one question which is unanswered: what does this do to the flavour of the beer? Duncan takes a moment to answer, frowning as he thinks of the right word. “Nothing,” he says. He thinks some more, then shakes his head as if confirming the answer to himself. “Nothing. It’s not necessarily about that,” he says. “It’s the ethos that’s gone into building it so you can talk about having environmental benefit and food in the same sentence. That’s the point of it.”

Somewhat similarly in the sense of place, Jeff has written about a relatively secluded micro in eastern Oregon and draws a useful conclusion:

This is perhaps the greatest advantage of remote brewing. In cities, brewers are aware of what people are doing around them. It’s almost impossible not to be influenced, to borrow techniques or discover new ingredients. In Baker City, Tyler and his current head brewer Eli Dickenson can easily drop into their own groove. Their customers know what they do and expect them to do it—and they don’t spend a lot of time at other breweries getting distracted by the trend du jour.

On the opposite end of the reality v. non-reality scale, it was brought to my attention by @DrankyDranks that a fraud is about to be perpetrated on the drinks buying public:

Couple of new non-alc brands on the horizon. White Claw 0% “non-alcoholic premium seltzer,” comin’ in 4 “full-flavor” variants at 15 calories per can with “hydrating electrolytes”: black cherry cranberry, mango passion fruit, peach orange blossom and lime yuzu. Expected in Jan.

The double negative has been achieved! Speaking of the potentially unecessary, care of Beer Today we may have also reached peak data point – an observation I make given the uncertainty I have as to the necessity of this level of detail:

…trading improved in line with the temperatures last week. There was a particular surge in sales in midweek, with Tuesday (up 10%), Wednesday, which was boosted by England’s semi-final victory over Australia (up 17%), and Thursday (up 15%) all in double-digit growth. But trading was more modest on Friday (down 3%) and Saturday (up 4%) as rain moved back in. Warmer weather lifted the beer category, where sales rose 10% year on year. Wine (up 9%) and cider (up 1%) were also positive, but soft drinks (down 2%) and spirits (down 4%) were both negative.

Does the well informed publican check the weather forecast before placing orders for cask deliveries or setting prices? “Hmmm… rain’s coming Friday, need me a happy hours special…” Maybe. Having once created a 15,000 cell Excel table to track (among many things) hot dog sales and visiting team placement in the league’s standings over six or eight years I am sensitive to the possibilities of such things.

Speaking of stats, France is paying winemaker to destroy some of their stock to cope with this drop in some markets – blamed by the BBC on an increase in craft beer sales:

European Commission data for the year to June shows that wine consumption has fallen 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 15% in France, 22% in Germany and 34% in Portugal, while wine production across the bloc – the world’s biggest wine-making area – rose 4%.

Lisa Grimm is posting at Weird Beer Girl HQ and this week comes to the defence of what she calls a trad bar in Dublin, Piper’s Corner:

I’m aware I’m on slightly dangerous ground here, as there’s absolutely a place for the shows aimed at tourists (if they are willing to pay for a specific kind of experience that’s keeping musicians working, why not?), and also because folk music is never static – it’s always evolving, so there’s no one ‘right’ way to play or enjoy trad tunes. Now, this doesn’t mean visitors are not welcome – not at all – just that it seems to be a more organic experience (for lack of a better word – and this is largely based on word of mouth, since you know I’m asleep by then most of the time).

Last Friday, Boak and Bailey posted a review of the new book Cask – the real story of Britains unique beer Culture by Des de Moor which by all accounts is a very good and comprehensive read – if for no other reason (though there seem to be many) than Moore’s willingness to share various points of view:

Though clearly a passionate fan of cask ale, he isn’t an unquestioning cheerleader and points out that it doesn’t work well for every style. American-style IPAs and sour beers, he argues, rarely benefit from cask dispense. He comes right off the fence when it comes to the price of cask ale: “[If] cask beer is to have a sustainably healthy future, its average price will have to rise in comparison to the pub prices of other drinks… One argument for cheap cask is that it helps drive sufficient turnover to keep the product fresh, but that effect has surely reached its limits when price becomes a barrier to maintaining quality.” For balance, he quotes others who disagree, and who worry about cask ale becoming an expensive, niche product, rather than an everyday pleasure.

And Martyn has embarked on a journey about journeying, writing a series of pieces on the value of giving oneself over to the pre-planned pre-paid beer bus tour, all under the umbrella heading “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch!” So far we have parts one, two and three with more promised. It’s a bit mind melting in the pace, one which may tax even Ron, but he shares a number of observations like this on why one might want to subject oneself to this sort of exercise:

…one big advantage of joining a largeish group of people on a European beer trip is that when you get to, say, a place like Cantillon in Brussels, where the brewery tasting room/bar has a large range of aged 75cl bottled beers costing up to 70 euros a (literal) pop, sharing those rare beers you may never get the chance to drink again among half a dozen or more drinkers cuts the cost per head dramatically.

Good point. And another sort of good reminder this week from The Beer Nut: “Slagging off hazy IPA is easy (and fun!) but well-made beers like this do make it a little bit harder to do.”

Heavens, they do things on a certain scale in Kenya when it comes to allegedly skirting the licencing laws:

A Chuka court in Tharaka Nithi County has issued a warrant for the arrest of Simon Gitari for failure to honour court summons over the alleged operation of an unlicensed brewing industry. The millionaire brewer, popularly known as ‘Gitari Boss’, is the director of Hakim Commercial Agencies which owns the factory located in Ndiruni village in Chuka Sub-County. On Monday, a multi-agency team led by Tharaka Nithi County Police Commander Zacchaeus Ngeno raided the distillery and seized 250,000 litres of illegal liquor.

Also somewhat irregular in expectations, Gary wrote an interesting piece on the intersection between pubs and the pulpit in mid-1900s England this week including this example:

The padre Basil Jellicoe (1899-1935) descended from Anglo-Catholic churchment and naval figures, and was Oxford-educated. He had no apparent exposure to pubs as a youth, in fact was a teetotaller. His pub interest was of the old-school missionary-type, inspired by doctrine and the Bible. If church adherents were to be found he wanted to cultivate the ground, and would not let prevailing notions of propriety get in the way. He also wanted to improve social conditions in and related to the pub. He started to operate pubs so he could have full control to promote this goal – the Church was henceforth in the pub business.

Katie wrote about one way of responding to loss through ritual in her most recent edition of The Gulp, one of the few drinks “newsletters” still holding its own:

Despite the tragedies of the past months, spending time with friends is always a celebration, and I intend to treat it as such. My main contribution to the evening’s events will be the wine we drink during feasting and the extremely technical/spiritual practice of “burning shit”. I need to choose carefully. It should be wine that’s good enough to change our fortunes and lift us up. Wine good enough to offer to Hecate, wine good enough to stir our souls and clear our minds. It also needs to pair well with a vegan barbecue.

One of my favourite stunned concepts amongst right-wing US fear mongering is the use of “Canada-style” when used as the ultra “woke” by the “freedom” folk… as in this story’s headline:

President Joe Biden’s chief adviser on alcohol policy said his agency may issue new guidelines that limit Americans to just two drinks per week. Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), told the Daily Mail that he’s interested in tightening U.S. guidelines to match Canada’s alcohol recommendations, which say that both men and women should consider having only two drinks every week. Canada’s health department issued the recommendations this year under left-wing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Note: while publicly funded, the Canadian two-drinks standard is a recommendation of a private entity which is one part of a bigger and heavily leaning academic discourse amongst many of a variety of points of view, much also fueled in whole or part directly and indirectly by public funds. We also do not follow the Canada Food Guide all that closely if grocery store shelves are anything to go by. Note also: we live much longer.

Vinepair published an almost self-defeating piece on the role of celebrity and beer replete with branding consulting jargon which then veers off into a reality-based (perhaps even inadvertenly honest) view near the end:

Celebrity involvement will entice journalists to write about a brand once. But star wattage eventually dims as a selling point. “Someday we will not be new news anymore,” says Eight’s Campbell. Any fermented liquid must stand on its own merits, hitting that sweet spot of price point and pleasure. Convincing customers that they should shoehorn another beer into their crowded drinking calendar takes effort, a long play in a world that celebrates the fast windfall. “Even though you have somebody with a big mouthpiece, you still have to build a brand,” Campbell says. “There’s got to be a meaningful connection.”

And finally for Stan (and apparently on brand pachyderm-wise) we have the story of an elephant which did not get into the beer but still sussed out something else:

Placidly and professionally, the mammal sweeps the ground with its trunk several times before tossing up a nondescript black rucksack, trumpeting as it announces its discovery. Border police were already on the scene. The officers had arrived to escort the elephants out of a nearby village, reported China National Radio (CNR). Mindful of their primary duty, police waited till the elephants had made their safe exit before inspecting the elephant’s “gift”, reported CNR. The elephant did not disappoint.

There. A shorter post perhaps but my world is whole even if the news is a bit quieter this week. And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Got on BlueSky this week and added it to my IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a deservedly dormant Patreaon presence. I am multi! I am legion!! Yet totally sub. All in all, I still am preferring the voices on Mastodon, like these ones discussing beer:

Anyone else? And, yes, we also check the blogs, podcasts and newsletters to stay on top of things (though those things called “newsletters” where 1995 email lists meet the blogs of 2005 may be coming to an end of value if the trend with so many towards the dull dull dull means anything) including more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan at his spot on those Mondays! Get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on many Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s now much more occassional but always wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is back! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? Yes! Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. And the long standing Beervana podcast . There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. All About Beer has introduced a podcast. There’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube soon celebrating a decade of vids. And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water… if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. There was also the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

The Sore Back Grimey Nails Bug Bit Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Not sure if this will end up being a very involved post this week. Vacation time. And this vacation this year comes with a bit of a to do list. Lots of little things getting done. Some small pieces of housework, a bit of slog in the garden and some wandering about locally. A minor league ballgame down in Syracuse NY yesterday, a new favourite restaurant in Pete’s Trattoria in our nearby Watertown and even threw a few Ithaca Flower Power in the grocery cart on the way home. A favourite for coming on 20 years. A couple of nights in Montreal coming up. All sounds good. Still… as the week progressed and I was having a lovely time noodling about, it became obvious that the good beer scene wasn’t keeping up – still so much neg around. What to do about that? Well… stay in the garden. Yup. And to that end I offer as an offset to all the unhappy news this blossom from a Purple Teepee bush bean that I was looking at Tuesday. Neato. I even made it clickable. They are like tiny orchids. Dandy. There you are. Fine. Let’s go. Enough of Mr. Sensitive.

First, Knut wrote a great piece about a beer fest being run as beer fest should be run, setting out ten reasons why Bryggerifestivalen i Trondheim works, things like the setting and the helpful volunteers who keep the event running smoothly. I think this is key:

The locals. A good mix of people. Young and old, town and country, beer tickers and something light, please. Family friendly during the day, which also means that everyone behaves. With 60.000 visitors over the three days, only a handful need to be escorted out.

Being broadly welcoming and well connected is always important. No one really cares about the terpenes. They just want to feel included and have a bit of fun. Speaking of which, The Beer Ladies Podcast will soon be back after summer vacation and they want to know what you want to know:

We’re (nearly) back! We’re planning out our next season this week, and would love to hear from you – any beer-y topics you want? Interview subjects? Haunted locations? And where do you prefer to find us?

Don’t all clammer about them interviewing me… I’m far too shy… and stuck with the doom and gloom label. (Not true. I’m a happy guy. People want happy. As they should.) Interesting observation about “where you prefer to find us” as in “where do folk find anything these days. Even Stan is unsure about where things are to be found.

Note: we actually love orderly lines in Canada. We also do not love patenting higher forms of life – unlike in the USA – but who the hell gets to patent a life form, as Stan explained in this month’s HopQueries, that one does not invent but merely stumbles upon in nature:

A “found hop” has found a name. … Sattler first found the hop in 2015 in Idaho’s St. Joe River Valley, an area he had often visited as a child. He later brought back rhizomes for testing that confirmed the hop is genetically unique, and the new variety is patent pending. Approval is expected in the fall. In the late 19th century, miners and loggers in that area were known to brew beer. Sattler thinks Elanie likely resulted from open cross-pollination of local wild hops with hops the miners and loggers brought with them.

Similarly. A question. What is a “social drinker”? Not sure the author of this piece knows – even after having quit the booze for a month:

I am a social drinker, and for most of my adult life I have always been the first person to order shots and often the last person to stumble home… After the hangover-free month, I won’t lie, I felt amazing. I felt like I had accomplished many things and I could remember every second. I didn’t spend any time in bed nor with my head down a toilet and I didn’t experience hangxiety. My relationship with alcohol has changed for the better and drinking to oblivion is no longer an option.

Un-bean-like. Definitely. As is this – you’ve all heard of the huge and horrible fires in Canada and elsewhere this summer. In British Columbia they threaten a region of Canada’s wine industry as reported at Jancis Robinson’s site by Arnica Rowan:

Two days ago, a forest fire took off on the parched slopes above the Niche vineyards. It tore across the hills, leaping from tree to tree, fuelled by tinder-dry brush and breathtaking winds. Joanna and James were at the winery preparing it for harvest when, at 4.30 pm, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable stopped at the gate and told them, their son and James’s parents, who live on the West Kelowna property, that it was time to leave. They locked the winery doors and drove down the hill and across the Okanagan Lake bridge to the younger couple’s house on the north side of Kelowna. As they fled, Joanna could see the flames snaking rapidly down towards the lake behind them.

Yikes. Very very not purple bean blossomish, that. Not good.

Speaking of doom and gloom, I am waiting for the argument that the main driver in craft brewing’s fall from grace isn’t the lack of value or the simmering bigotries that seem to pop out from every corner. No, it’ll be those large and listened to voices of the main news outlets stirring up troubles by proclaiming craft’s demise. How willl that ever attract the necessary newbies to keep the lights on? Who wants to jump on to that sinking ship? Consider this in The Guardian this week:

Brown, who is American, said craft brewers had been through a “brutal” period. “The craft beer bubble burst in the States in the late 90s, and the same thing is happening here now. “Everybody thought it was cool, everybody started doing it and then everyone was competing to have the next new big thing. And you overwhelm your own market so that even your most loyal customers can’t tell the difference between your key brands and your one-offs. In a bust, people go back to things they recognise. And we’re definitely in a bust.”

Me? I am thinking people are more and more recognizing gin as well as a nice white wine spritzer, frankly. Better for the pocket book. You know, would it hurt good beer to come up with a simple postive spin about beer and stick with it? Ditch the unattractive clubby complexity like they have in Trondheim and make it easy to like beer again. And I don’t think this observation is gonna help:

Just because invention feels slow in real time doesn’t mean it’s happening. This is the kind of thing you may not realize until you look back 10 years from now—“Oh, wow, we didn’t even have X style of beer in 2023!”

Wow? Really? What does the Pruple Teepee bean think of that? Let’s see:

The botanical species, Phaseolus vulgaris, was spread throughout South and Central America in ancient times and experts believed domestication occurred separately in South America and Mesoamerica sometime before 8000 BCE. The species was carried from the Americas to Europe through Christopher Columbus during his second voyage in 1493, and German physician Leonhart Fuchs drew the first official botanical drawing of Phaseolus vulgaris in Europe in 1542. After their introduction in the late 15th century, Phaseolus vulgaris spread throughout the Mediterranean, cultivated as a vegetable by the 17th century.

I had no idea. Tradition. That’s pretty cool. I just looked that up now. (Well, the “now” when I wrote this part of the post.) Fact: beans don’t need no damn innovation to be lovely and purple. Now, turning that line of argument a bit on its head, Jeff broke out the pilsners this week. Well, he may have had some to drink, too, but he tried to establish the state of the styles that use the word including Czech pilsner, German pils, North German pilsner, Italian pilsner, Alsatian/French pilsner and New Zealand pilsner as well as:

The pilsners mentioned above are either real styles or variants with enough substance most brewers recognize them. But out in the wild you might see a bunch of other stuff that they’re throwing against the wall: Polish pils, hoppy pils, Bavarian pils, imperial pils, Belgian pils, rye pils, etc. The existence of these random beers illustrates how much currency the “pilsner” name has achieved. Like IPA, it’s a category now, not a style—at least in the US.

I can easily live with all that. After all, how many beans varieties are there to plant? Many. Many many. Yet – still just beans. See, this is not a call for reducing the varieties of beer. Just improving the conceptual simplification. Perhaps relatedly, I was struck by this observation from one Phil under Boak and Bailey’s recent post about a perfect beer judging contest:

Ten or fifteen years ago one of the American craft beer sites/aggregators ran a “Best Beer In The World” poll; IIRC the top ten included eight imperial stouts from US breweries, including three different barrel-aged versions of one beer. Which I guess is the Jeanne Dielmann problem: your audience of experts/enthusiasts may be experts, but they’re also a social group with its own self-reinforcing preferences and prejudices. I suspect this problem is actually worse with enthusiasts than with experts, ironically – the Sight and Sound 100 isn’t all Jeanne Dielmanns, after all – so if you’re going to open something up to the public, make sure you open it right up.

Is adding “the public” to the pool going to be beneficial or not? Dunno… given the largely amateur clubby enthusiast nature of beer judging. (One is never sure who the others, those self-declared over complicating if not fibby “experts” are.) Let’s be honest. First, the judges are drawn from a pool of traveling keeners with time on their hands. Then the keeners are part of the activily reinforcing homogenous self-affirming culture that sets the norms and expectations. And the norms include the ever expanding the style categories and standards within those categories chasing that “wow!”… the tail of novelty. Then, of course, the problem of self-nomination of candidates for the judges’ consideration.* And what are the rules? Is it individual ranking with these awards or are panels used like at those awards – and is there silent averaging or cross table persuasion? Does the majority rule or is there a weighting formula? Finally, add the booze and the same faces’ boozy bonding. You might as well be handing round the hymnals and tamborines. As a participatory hobby, no prob. No one loses an eye. Fun tasting panels for casual comment? Sure, fill your boots. It’s a lot like achieving personal bean growing bliss. But as a method of establishing the definitive best and awarding glory while explaining the value of good beer to the broader community? Err… not so much…

Speaking of complain, complain, complain… James May, the somewhat annoying car show lad who acted as the foil for Clark on a very good wine show, was in The Times this week saying it is time for a pub purge… and he owns one:

I look at the past and I know it was awful. I know if we could be teleported back to the 1980s it would seem filthy and horrible and backward. Maybe the nostalgia thing is part of the pub’s problem. It needs to have a reality check — what does the pub mean in the modern world? — rather than desperately trying to preserve what we imagine is an institution. It isn’t. Britain is historically a bit oversubscribed with pubs. They used to function as a sort of home from home for a lot of people . . . and that role has largely disappeared. So there are probably too many pubs and, brutal though it is, there’s no harm in having a bit of a purge.”

Not sure where this fits into the bean-not-bean continuum. Hmm. Still, perhaps beer judging, cartoon guide writers and style huggers should be as honest or at least more brazen. Fight for your right! Make your case like James. If there is very little interest in actual traditional brewing and ye olde ways, why not stick it all in a corner, call it a museum and let folk get what they actually want – boozy fruit juice served in an IKEA showroom!

Where does that leave us all? Julie Rhodes argues this is all indicactive of what she describes as a mature market “characterized by market saturation, limited distribution channels, fierce competition for shelf space, a greater need for brand differentiation, and increased direct consumer communication”:

…as the craft beer landscape continues to evolve, brands can expect to see changes in the marketplace that are indicative of a fully mature market – crowded shelves, demand for calculated innovation, and the curation of increased brand loyalty. And these changes will be felt at all levels of the 3-tier system. “Own Premise” consumption is actually rising, so the taproom business is looking pretty good at the moment, which should be great news to owners and operators considering the profit margins are healthier than in the wholesale channel. On the flip side, the squeeze in the wholesale channel will continue as brands can expect to see national chains consolidate their craft beer sections due to declining velocity metrics.

Maybe. This article sees a similar scene in India where taproom sales expand as sales off the shelf drop. Interesting. And perhaps that might be as optimistic as we can hope for at the moment. Not yet in decline. Something like myself. A sort of stability in the face of change.

Finally, we also have this story out of India… as if they heard Stan‘s call for an update earlier this very week week:

On Tuesday, the Villagers living near Shilipada cashew forest in Keonjhar district were in for a surprising sight when they went inside the woodland to prepare ‘mahua’, a traditional country liquor. Instead, they found a total of 24 jumbos, apparently drunk, sleeping near the place where mahua flowers were kept in water in large pots for fermentation. “We went into the jungle at around 6 am to prepare mahua and found that all the pots were broken and the fermented water is missing. We also found that the elephants were sleeping. They consumed the fermented water and got drunk,” Naria Sethi, a villager, told PTI.

Excellent. Sleep on, Jumbos. And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my somewhat quieter than expected Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Waiting for a BlueSky invite but having IG, FB, X, Mastodon, Threads, Substack Notes and a dormant Patreaon I am not sure why I would add another. So many created to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

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

*But how else to earn the entry fees that pay for the judges’ buffet?

The Mere Days Before Vacation Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Mid-August. What to do? What to do? Soon I should have that annual dream about having to go back to school, never finding my courses, finding it all too late to catch up and… why am I even here anyways… seeing as I have more fingers on one hand than I have years to retirement. It’s coming. Thoughts of autumn come in shades of brown, whether new corduroys or old leaves. Like these lovely images from Warminster Maltings, a clickable one of which is nipped and tucked to the right. But I rush ahead. Too far ahead. Plenty of green days still to come, right? Right? Better be. I have plans. Plans a plenty for the next couple of weeks away from the coal mine. Well, the office. The home office, half the time. But my shoes are generally black so you get the idea.

First – and as much as for equal time requirements as anything – one very interesting bit of the old vid I came across this week is a wonderful PR piece for a maker in the old coopering trade:

The special delivery of a 9000L wine foudre by Taransaud at Château de la Chaize near Brouilly. Very proud of our coopers! (sound on).

Sound on indeed for quite a display of how staves and hoops come together to hold over 11,000 sleeping bottles worth of the old Chat de Chaz, one of which sits nearby, sleeping with others in the cold and dark, waiting for my own Christmas dinner in a few years.

Neither sleeping or in the dark is Mudgie who has some shareable thoughts on why of all the pubs that are lost the Crooked Pub, apparently of little interest when opened other than for being off plumb, is now a national cause:

Over the past forty years, the pub trade as a whole has been in a long-term decline that has led to tens of thousands closing down. The reasons for this are down to a variety of changes in social trends and attitudes, although certain government actions such as the Beer Orders and the smoking ban have exacerbated matters. There is undoubtedly a profound sense of loss about this, even from people who never used pubs much… At times this can turn into a kind of vaguely-directed anger, as we are seeing here, and people are keen to look for scapegoats such as pubcos, developers, supermarkets and government. But the reality is that pubs have mainly been undone by social change, not by some malign conspiracy, and there is no remotely credible alternative course of action that would have made it permanently 1978.

And Stan had some good thoughts on the benefits of not chasing the tail that craft’s been diving after for all these years now:

I am left considering what it means for a brewer to be creative, or what it takes for a beer to be considered new, even novel. New Image Brewing, located in an adjoining town, currently has a terrific helles called Do Less on tap and in cans. It is brewed with malts from Troubador Malting here in Colorado, and thus probably tastes more familiar to me than to you. The malt flavor in Do Less is different than the malt flavor in Bierstadt Lagerhaus Helles, brewed less than 10 miles from New Image. Bierstadt Helles, to me, is pretty much a perfect beer. I’m not going to quit drinking it because I’ve found something new (and practically speaking, Do Less is probably a one-off). But new, interesting and good, to me, that is creative. It would be greedy to ask for more.

Indeed. And greed may get one more – or less – than one counted on. Which is why context – the big picture and the long view – is so important. And Andreas Krennmair has added to that total sum by publishing his new book, Bavarian Brewing in the 19th Century: A Reference Guide. He advises that it is available on Amazon worldwide, both as paperback and Kindle e-book and gives the friendly caveat:

Please note that this is properly nerdy beer stuff….

Which is a healthy approach to such things. One can embrace the lighter topic – the hobby interest – too firmly and squeeze much of the joy out if it. Turn it into a belief. Fortunately for a scribbler, the downsides of things can be as interesting as the up and gives opportunity for humanity to expose its gentle foibles. We have as the current example this summer’s continuing flow of opinion about craft’s collapse yea or nay as with this article “Is the craft beer tide turning?“:

“Distributors and retailers have been reducing their focus on distributed craft and searching for growth in other pockets, but there are signs that the worst reductions may be in the past”, the association said. Overall, craft brewers “continue to face economic headwinds on both business and consumer fronts”, it said. From a business perspective, borrowing costs continue to rise, and while input cost increases have stabilised, they remain elevated over previous levels. Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows inflation eroding consumers’ buying capacity.”

Not to mention mega-brewers selling off craft assets.* The news has reached as far as India. Heck, even those boosters for booze at GBH have been having their swings at poor old craft:

“To me, that experience of drinking in your garage with your friends is universal whereas Braxton maybe isn’t,” Sauer says. “When a craft brewery is presenting to a retailer, [the buyer] asks, ‘Can this brand travel?’ I wanted to remove some of those assumptions.” He also hopes Garage Beer can shake off some of the flavor expectations with which drinkers associate the term “craft beer.” Research Sauer conducted in partnership with the marketing department at Miami University in Ohio found that the top characteristics respondents linked to craft beer were “hoppy” and “heavy.”

“Heavy” – oooof! Is that the new curse word? The Beer Nut shared his thoughts on craft meets US macro:

I can safely say it’s true to type for this inexplicably craft-credentialed American industrial style, being dry, crisp and very dull. There’s a tiny hint of fruity lemon fun hovering in the background, but otherwise it’s a straight-up fizzy lager of the nondescript sort. I couldn’t leave things there.

Endtimsey. But, you know, for many of those who have invested deeply in the fading trade on way or another there is still talk of turn around. Could be. As with maybe fringy party politics perhaps, there is that sort of normal human desire for plucky redeption when the hero is cornered, the hope against hope that fuels the observations of alien sci-fi characters like Spock or Doctor Who. Which is what makes reading about the beer trade and beer culture so perhaps unhealthily yet tantilizingly compelling. Especially when it isn’t as firmly footed in fact as I fully expect Krennmair is in his new book.

Note: CB&B has published a handy newbie guide to all mash home brewing – a clear sign of a downturn as ever I saw:

Mashing grain is what makes beer beer. Yes, hops, yeast, and water certainly play important roles, but it is only through the mash, whether performed in your house or in the process of manufacturing malt extract, that the soul of beer is liberated from its starchy origins. Mashing grain is to beer as crushing grapes is to wine, as pressing apples is to cider, and as collecting honey is to mead.

Also note: twenty years ago this very week, I invented the “Molrona” during the 2003 black out. You. Are. Welcome.

Martin noted a sad ending with a photo essay from his recent visit to Corto, Katie and Tom Mather’s establishment, which I never saw myself but supported as I could:

It’s incredibly cosy, and welcoming, and tiny. One spare table upstairs, where the cheery chap brought our Wishbone and Thornbridge… Sorry it was a flying visit, Corto folk, you were lovely. Best wishes for whatever you do next.

Say hello to Tom Grogan, 92, now in his eigthth decade in the pub trade:

Mr Grogan, who is believed to be the UK’s oldest landlord, said he was not that keen on alcohol himself. He said despite pouring thousands of pints, he drank “very little” and had been only drunk “half a dozen times”. His career began 71 years ago, when started helping out in a pub in Rusholme after arriving in England. Seven years later, he got the chance to become a landlord, but said it meant he and his girlfriend had to make a quick decision.

You’ll have to read on to figure out what that decision was… unless you guess… because it’s not much of a guess…

Ron’s Remebrances take us this week back to Scotland in the mid-1970s when a radical change in licensing laws were brought in:

I was dead jealous when my school friend Henry, who studied in Aberdeen, told me of pubs not only staying open all afternoon, but until 1 AM. All totally legal. And totally due to the interpretation of a new Licensing Act for Scotland. Which, I’m pretty sure, wasn’t intended to liberalise opening hours to the extent that it did… I can remember visiting Edinburgh in the late 1970s and wondering at the continental-style opening hours. And wondering why the same liberal treatment couldn’t have been given to the rules in England.

GBH has run an interesting if ripe study of Coopers Sparkling Ale this week:

It can be tempting to dismiss Sparkling Ale as an early offshoot of Pale Ale, without any notable idiosyncrasies to help define the liminal space separating the two. Most contemporary stylistic guidelines highlight a focus on Australian ingredients, but beyond this and some more proscribed production techniques, the difference is minimal. Though delineation between styles has never been an immutable barrier, for those of us who grew up on it, Sparkling Ale has a highly distinctive character.

I had no idea that there were service disruptions in out next province to the left, Manitoba… keeping in mind as my excuse that the border is almost 2000 km and a timezone away. Seems like the government store is on strike with unequal consequences:

When Shrugging Doctor, a local winery and vineyard, said in July it would expand and move operations, its owners had no idea it was about to head into a devastating strike-induced limbo thanks to a labour dispute at the Crown-owned liquor corporation. While Manitoba beer producers have the option of distributing their own products — by hiring delivery companies to drop off merchandise to private vendors, bars and other sellers — by law, wine and spirit manufacturers aren’t allowed to do the same, said Shrugging Doctor co-owner Willows Christopher, who founded the business in 2017.

Matt is doing a good job keeping an eye on Mikkeller’s deek around the ethical implications of claims made against it:

I see Mikkeller are pouring at another U.K. festival this weekend, which is honestly absolutely wild to me. I feel like there was a real opportunity to create real, progressive change in U.K. beer a couple of years ago. But this is being moved on from in favour of the ££££.

No doubt part of their long term plan which seems to have been successfully pulled off if this admission from late July is understood. Easy to enough to foresee back in February 2022.

A poem by Justin Quinn was noted by the ever lyrical M.Noix this week that is worth saving and sharing… and thereby trodding all over intellectual property rights but for this bit of review… lovely… I have dreams also like that… and it even rhymes here and there. Solid second stanza letter “u”use.

Four weeks ago, I forwarded the news that Russia had moved to grab Carlsberg’s assets, you know, those assets that really should have been shut down when the invasion of Ukraine began but, you know, money. Well, now the brewery has spoken out:

The chief executive of brewing giant Carlsberg has said he was “shocked” when Russian President Vladimir Putin seized its business there. Cees ’t Hart said the company had agreed a deal to sell its Russian operations in late June, but just weeks later a presidential decree transferred the business to the Russian Federal Agency for State Property Management. “In June, we were pleased to announce the sale of the Russian business. However, shortly afterwards, we were shocked that a presidential decree had temporarily transferred management of the business to a Russian federal agency,” he said.

Well, lookie lookie. Why buy when you can take? Beware with whom you think you are doing business with, I suppose.

Note: the ever increasing subdivisions of beer expertise never ceases to amaze.

And finally what week would be a proper week without a story like this:

A “plague” of racoons have stormed a number of houses across Germany to steal beer and kill family pets. Households have been billed up to €10,000 after returning home from their holidays to discover their kitchens destroyed. According to Germany’s National Hunting Association (DJV), a total of 200,000 raccoons were killed last year in a bid to control the population.

Furry bastards! And – that is it for another week. Not a record breaker for length this week and, frankly, a few familiar sites may have been mailing it in from the beach. Plus all those awards! Which claim to pick global champions …while also reminding you that judging is nothing more than what a few folk thought on the day. Ah, August! And as per ever and always, you can check out the many ways to find good reading about beer and similar stuff via social media and other forms of comms to connect – even including at my new cool Threads presence @agoodbeerblog. Have you checked out Threads as Twitter ex’s itself? (Ex-it? Exeter? No that makes no sense…) They appear to achieved to make social media offer less and less. Brilliant… but I never got IG either. I still prefer the voices on Mastodon, any newer ones noted in bold:

*Revisiting a thought, we discussed two weeks ago how that portion of Ontario’s smaller brewers who are members of the trade association OCB have launched a new lobbying effort that has a bit of an odd goal: “Keep Craft Beer Local.” I say “odd” as the argument that seems to be being made is taxes are too hight therefore small brewers will have to sell out to… dum dum duuuuuummmm… strange folk from away. As previously noted: “If no changes are made to the tax structure, he and the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, say they fear more and more of Ontario’s craft breweries will be bought up and merged with foreign buyers. The association says it represents over 100 breweries.” This is an odd argument, as I say, seeing as international mega brewers are divesting themselves of their craft assets. I wonder if this is just an example of bad timing, the power points keeping up with the news. Perhaps Ben can help explain.

The Beery News Notes For The Dog Days Of August

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Most August Edition Of Beery News Notes In 2023 For Far

Well, so this is August. And what have I done? I had old pals over, one not seen since about 1989, and shoved some Hard Way Cider at them. Lovely stuff. And I actually finished a briefish if tiny fonted biography of pretty boy Johnny Milton which was interesting even as a reminder of the politics of the 1600s. Forty year old Hons 17th Century Lit flashbacks triggered. Shudders. Have had hard time getting back to the books since my first and only bout of Covid back in April but seem to be back on track, thanks for asking. Next, on to High on the Hog. Also of note, I still have no understanding of cricket whatsoever but apparently the crickets were good this week.

First up, Beth Demmon has another edition of Prohibitchin’ out, this time with a portrait of perry maker Erin Chaparro:

Erin splits her time between her position as a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon’s Educational and Community Supports Research Center and working at the tasting room—which is on the farm’s property—on weekends. But before there was Blossom Barn or even pear trees planted, Erin wondered: what type of farm would set them apart? The pair didn’t want to commit to water-intense crops like hops or lavender, but had been introduced to perry a few years prior and loved it. Plus, the state fruit of Oregon is pear, and the perfect pears found in the iconic Harry & David gift baskets are grown in nearby Medford. It was an ideal crop to pay homage to the land, stand out from the myriad nearby wineries, and maintain their commitment to sustainability.

I love perry but, being in Ontario, have little access to the stuff due to the apparent anti-perryist policies of the provincial monopolists. Frankly, pears are the provincial anti-fruit as far as I can tell. Speaking of policies gone mad, Professor Dan Malack helpfully guided me to this indictment of Canada’s very restrictive new alcohol intake recommendations published in Le Devoir. I am going to presume you can parse this bit of French being the clever readers you are:

“Le modèle utilisé a perdu tout contact avec la réalité. […] Et honnêtement, nous croyons que les études sélectionnées ne représentent pas la quantité et la qualité des études sur la question”

Wow. Just wow. As might be obvious from my writings* hereabouts, I can’t fully buy into a public health policy framework that is as adversarial and even perhaps cynical as in this comment: “accusations that opponents of the CCSAs report have alcohol industry connections are especially spurious, although typical, neo-temperance ad hominem responses“… BUT (and I say BUT!!!) that finding on the quality of the CCSA study is astounding. Moi? I will stick to my max 14 drinks a week plan, thanks very much. Alcohol is still not a health drink.

Note: J. R. R. Tolkien discussing his love for beer & pipe smoking. He lived to 81.

Speaking of modernity and extended life spans Euro-folk-wise, I saw this new to me Substack author (writing under the presumed pseudonm Lefineder) and enjoyed this wee essay called “When did people stop being drunk all the time?” which argues that temperance was not the primary moving principle that cause the shift in societal norms – industrialization was:

England transitioned to a low rate of beer consumption toward the end of the 18th century, looking at the more granular data on Malt beer consumption we see that this transition coincided with the timing of the onset of the British industrial revolution (1780-1800s). Society is transformed in several ways, Whereas beer expenditure used to consume 12.5% of people’s salary in 1734 in the 1800s it consume only 1-3%. In the English poll tax of 1379-81 we can see that a total of 2.5% of the medieval workforce is comprised of brewers, in 1841 this is reduced to only 0.3 of the labor force.

This makes tremendous sense. Just as the Black Plagues caused the end of serfdom in Euro-ville, a couple of centuries later industrialization caused the Great Awakenings which led to the benificence of Temperance which was then modified through the blended capitalist / social welfare state to serve as the foundation of the glory of modern western society that we all enjoy today!

Stan had possibly the greatest weekly round up this week, putting at least myself to shame. My tears are spraying the laptop screen even as I type at this very second. I’m not sure why. Probably the deft paragraphing. And probably due to his highlighting of the B+B round up of comments in response to the question why beer seems boring at this point:

Has the excitement gone out of the beer scene, and if so, why? Those are the questions we asked in our most recent newsletter last week. They prompted some interesting responses across all channels. Overall, we’d say those who had an opinion shared our sense that things feel depressed.

What I find most interesting about their post is how it illustrates the need to move “across all channels” now if you want to find good readings – but how it is actually not all that hard once you sign into all the services. You can rethink your priorities like Boak and Bailey have been doing. Check out Don, for example, for voluminous trade positive but extremely well backed views via emailed newsletter. Read Maureen at Mastodon. She’s there. It’s all there. Just a bit more like driving standard than automatic. Folk who bloat on about not leaving Twitter despite its search for the deepest levels of trash seem to me to be like lost spirits wandering an abandoned shopping mall, long devoid of the old good shops, getting the vapours as they run their fingers along the dusty rose tile trim of the stagnant water fountain by the food court, dreaming it was all still like that one interesting bit of Wonder Woman 1984. Err… sorry… it’s all the Milton I’ve been reading doing talking…

Elsewhere amongst the Canadas, Ontario’s small brewers are lobbying against what they consider unfair levels of taxation, a claim that is largely based on our split sovereignty reality where juristiction is divided in a number of ways including between the federal level and the provinces, leading to different taxation regimes (… as well as some bizzarely fifth-rate governments.) Long time friend of the blog (and once upon a time my mini biographer) Troy gave the CBC some quality quotes:

Craft brewers in Ontario face higher taxes than anywhere else in the country, said Troy Burch, senior manager of sales and business development at Great Lakes Brewery in Etobicoke. If no changes are made to the tax structure, he and the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, say they fear more and more of Ontario’s craft breweries will be bought up and merged with foreign buyers. The association says it represents over 100 breweries. “We’re being taxed too much compared to the rest of Canada,” Burch told CBC Toronto. “What we would like to see at the end of the day is just a fairness when it comes to looking across the country.”

Note: there are over 400 craft breweries in Ontario but only 100 or so in the association. Not sure what the other 300 think. Someone has to pay for health care and sins will be taxed.* Interesting to note that the threat is foreign buy-out and not closure. By the way, by way of disclosure the OCB used to sponsor this here blog years ago. $100 a month. Sometimes the cheques came from a PR agency in St.Louis, Missouri. Dunno why.

The Times ran an article on a Bristol pub with a seemingly winning plan for the Sunday lunch crowd that may have been too successful:

A pub in Bristol has been named the hardest restaurant to reserve in the world, with a waiting list stretching more than four years for its Sunday roast dinners. The Bank Tavern on John Street near Castle Park, which was founded in the 19th century, has closed bookings due to an increased demand for its award-winning lunch… the restaurant confirmed it had begun working its way through the backlog and expected the waiting list to reduce soon. It added that bookings for the remaining days of the week were operating as usual.

Boak and Bailey’s notes on the place are in their guide to the city’s pubs including these particular directions: “On an alleyway next to a churchyard along the line of the old city wall this small pub has the feel of a local boozer despite its central location.” Evan wrote a state of the union address on the English pub for VinePair, too, and found hope:

“I think there’s a kind of romanticization of the idea of the pub, which treats it as this sort of unchanging institution that relates back to Merry England,” he says. “Jolly images of medieval times and so on, which is, of course, all utter nonsense.” Instead of being a purely British invention from the halcyon days of “Merry England,” numerous foreign influences have helped to create British pub culture. In recent years, some of the most visible might have their origins in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. But a generation or two ago, they predominantly came from the Republic of Ireland — geographically part of the British Isles, but decidedly not part of the United Kingdom.

JRR might disagree on the nonsense suggestions but the overall argument is sound. One sound he might not have appreciated, however, is that of children… in the pub… as investigated by The Guardian this week:

It’s a summer afternoon and most of the punters appear to be young adults and parents in their 50s, plus some teenagers with gen X parents. Boyd’s observation strikes me as true at a cultural level even deeper than the pub: the problem with kids isn’t the kids; it’s the parents. Or rather, it’s what some parents become when their kids are under 10, gripped by a sense that the burden of keeping them contented is astronomically heavy and should be shared by all. Martin Bridge, 52, the owner of the Whippet Inn, a boutique, child-free restaurant in York, says: “Being in the industry 30-odd years – and also out shopping, out in public places – how parents view the responsibility of their children, and how that has changed, is quite mind-blowing. It feels as though the kids are now the responsibility of everybody, all the time.”

Frankly, this cultural angst has always struck me as a bit odd (like perhaps that cold draught felt on a warm day as when the backs turned to us at the Golfers’ Rest... though perhaps space was also being made in a way…) but I live in a jurisdiction with a human rights code that protects folk receiving services from discrimination based on family status… so go figure.

Speaking of innovative tavern type places, Gary continued his series on Anchor and its legacy with some thoughts about the brewery in the hippie-dippie era of San Franciso in the 1960s which led me to this piece by Gary’s main source, David Burkhart, about the beat poetry era San Fran of the 1950s:

Frederick Walter Kuh moved to San Francisco in 1954, where he became a waiter/bartender at the Purple Onion. Two years later, on October 19, 1956, Kuh and fellow “founding father” James B. Silverman opened the Old Spaghetti Factory Café & Excelsior Coffee House at 478 Green Street, in the former home of the Italian-American Paste [sic] Company. The OSF became San Francisco’s “first camp-decor restaurant,” Fred later told the San Francisco Examiner, “but it wasn’t called camp then.” Early on and counterintuitively, he advertised his bohemian North Beach watering hole and its “Steam Beer Underneath a Fig Tree” in the New Yorker.

That’s a nice sharp photo of the matchbook cover art that the restaurant handed out.

For the double this week, Evan Rail wrote a heart-felt remebrance of Fred Waltman, travelling beer expert, beer guide author and founder of the Pacific Homebrew Club, and included these observations in his thoughts:

The other meaning I’ve taken from Fred’s death is a bit harder to talk about, so I’ll just come right out and say it: The good beer movement is aging, and funerals for beer lovers are going to be a lot more common than they once were. While it might have been the height of youthful exuberance to launch a brewery or a craft beer bar two or three decades ago, plenty of those first- and second-generation brewery and pub owners—and beer fans, to say nothing of beer writers—are now quickly moving toward and past retirement age.

Very true. And this comment from Andreas Krennmair on Mastodon in response to B+B paints an interesting portrait of the man:

…one time I met Fred Waltman, he actually told me why there was always his cap in his beery photos. Many years ago, he got accused by some internet trolls that he hadn’t actually visited all the places he claimed to have visited, and that he had just stolen the photos off the internet. So to prove that the photos were actually his, he started putting his very own cap in the frame. And that‘s how the cap in the photo became his trademark.

We also lost Warren Ford, one of the great tea persons of England as well as David Geary, founder of the Geary Brewing Company of Portland Maine, whose beer I’ve enjoyed for over 30 years, especially their Hampshire Special Ale. The brewery shared the news of his passing on Facebook:

It is with great sadness that we share the passing of David Geary. In 1983, David and Karen Geary founded the 13th U.S. craft brewery, and David’s pioneering spirit and leadership played an integral part in the explosion of the American craft beer revolution. We send our deepest condolences to the Geary family and take this time to celebrate David’s life and legacy.

And I was surprised to read this week that there are efforts in Ireland to expand barley marketing into being a food crop. I was surprised because, as a Canadian of Scots parents, I have been eating the damn stuff my whole life. But it turns out we only eat 2% of the crop of the StatsCan graph to the right is to be believed. The rest is basically what the US brewing industry is based on. Then I learned that Campbells stopped making their canned Scotch Broth and I am now a little sad. Another hot tid bit of barley news that Matty C shared?

Interesting article. Barley/Ag in general is where most of the efforts to make beer production sustainable need to be. Farming barley uses a lot of water, and produces around half a kg of carbon for ever kg of malt used in the brewhouse. That’s a lot of CO2!

That is a nutty stat right there. Spin that, ye brewery PR type experts (slash) independent writers (slash) consultants (slash) independent beer award judges!

And finally, Pete Brown shared some very personal thoughts in is emailed newsletter, building on the piece by Mark LaFaro discussed here abouts a month or so ago, as he shared his grief at passing of his own younger brother, Stuart Brown, who died at just 51:

It makes me examine my own drinking very carefully – I drink too much. Many of us in the industry do. This excellent piece in Good Beer Hunting last month makes for uncomfortable reading. It makes me think about the false bravado we have, the way we mutually reassure ourselves that we can’t be abusing alcohol because it’s work and we know what we’re doing, or alcoholics only really do any real damage when they’re on spirits (Stuart killed himself with Henry Weston’s Vintage Cider and cheap white wine, by the way.) But it also reminded me why I argue so hard that there is such a thing as positive drinking. Stuart drank mainly alone, in his flat. He didn’t go to pubs much. He didn’t have many friends. If he’d drunk socially in the gorgeous 17th century pub five minutes from his flat, he might still be here. I’m back now. More hesitant and less confident in what I’m doing, less sure of myself in this strange industry. Let’s see how it goes.

Tough reading such open thoughts. My family member like Stuart was my youngest uncle who recently passed away. He was a bit lucky. He caught himself before an early death but he dealt with the serious burdens he placed in his path for the rest of his life.

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

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

*There is still no J-Curve folks even if the harms are statistically marginal with lower levels of intake.

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The Greatest Week Of The Year

Can you believe late May and early June? I was so caught up with the darling buds of May on Tuesday morning, I even posted a third of this two days early. Significantly… no one cared. Anyway, that’s the life of a blogger two decades in. No time to fret. Summer is coming on soon. Last weekend, I got out the big hat and the SPF 50 and partook of a bit of rugger spectating and – I say I say – I shall do so again this week. Wha-hey! Look at that action. The eastern Ontario league games are free and, as you can see, the seats are good… as long as you remember to bring one. You don’t get as close as that gent in grey, mind you, but he was a linesman so there is that.

First up in beer – because there was no beer tent at the field of play – very interesting news from Evan Rail and the publication of an anthology of the best of his his beer writing.

…until now, the old “Why Beer Matters” was never available in print, just on Kindle. (Yes, there was a limited-edition letterpress edition, but that doesn’t count.) This new print + ebook edition was made with the amazing @vellum180g. It looks great, if I do say so myself.

Many of the pieces he has included in the book speak from that era of optimism about good beer that existed before the buy-outs, the murk, the scandals, the fruit sauces and the closings. Very worthwhile and all excellently written. Buy it here.

Speaking of putting it all together, Matty Matt Meister 3000 has published a tale in Pellicle this week, a tale of an apple named Discovery:

You couldn’t possibly make proper cider with eating apples, I thought… I have since learned when it comes to any alcoholic beverage, this breed of snobbery gets you absolutely nowhere—all drinks are valid and have their place, after all.* And some of the best cider in the world is made using sweet, deliciously succulent eating apples. Chief among them: the noble Discovery. First cultivated in 1949, Discovery’s story began when Essex fruit worker George Dummer planted pips taken from the Worcester Pearmain variety in his garden, thought to be pollinated by another variety called Beauty of Bath. The tale goes that the young tree was left unplanted, and was exposed to frost, with only a light sack covering for protection. Fortunately it survived, and eventually came to the attention of Suffolk nursery keeper Jack Matthews, who took grafts of the tree and continued to develop the variety.

Note: unlike all drinks, all apples are valid and do have their place. White Claw and glitter beer are crap and you can’t even turn that shit into compost.

Stats on the UK beer scene are something that Victim of Maths more than dabbles in as this week when he notes that off-trade booze prices have siggnificantly dragged behind inflation:

The latest UK inflation data shows that in spite of continuing high levels of price increases in food and non-alcoholic drinks, prices of shop-bought alcohol, particularly wine and spirits, have not risen at anything like the same rate… you could speculate a few reasons: 1) We produce a lot of it domestically 2) Perhaps ingredients less affected by price increases 3) Ability of retailers/producers to stockpile due to long shelf life 4) Used as a loss leader.

Staying in Britain, The Times published an article on calories and booze and shared this interesting bit of metabolic prioritization info:

“Unlike protein, carbohydrates and fats, alcohol cannot be stored in the liver,” says Eli Brecher, a registered nutritionist. “Drinking large quantities results in your body prioritising the breaking down of alcohol over its other duties such as burning calories and the result is that your metabolism slows and calorie-burning is less efficient.”

Across the Channel, Boak and Bailey have been to Paris and have identified some key tips to navigating its beer bars, tips like this:

You wouldn’t cut towards the bar to greet the staff in a branch of Wetherspoon, though, before finding a table. In France, we’ve found, people will do exactly that, effectively announcing their arrival, and getting (quiet, possibly unspoken) permission to take a seat… Of course we got it wrong at craft beer bar FauveParis at 49 Rue St Sabin on our way out to Italy, while we were still warming up. We then spent 30 minutes trying to win over the staff whose feelings we had hurt. They wouldn’t look at us, talk to us or crack a smile because, fair enough, we’d rudely walked in and failed to greet them before looking at the beer list.

Not dissimilarly except it’s elsewhere, Martin is on the road again, this time in Estonia and Latvia with a series of posts (along with the usual generous accompaniment of excellent photos) that also unpack what you might expect if you found yourself there and thirsty such as these two observations in Riga:

Across the church square was Banshee, a brand new craft bar and another pre-emptive tick, which seemed to specialise in orange murk, a change from the sour obsession in Tallinn… And the local specialties of dumplings and blood sausage were worth the calories, though an impulse late order of dried fish and squid was a step into Estonian authenticity too far.

Closer to home, a great bit of vid was posted this week from here in Ontario where two beer fans report on the limited joys of that regulatory loophole that allows a 7 Eleven convenience store to be deemed a restaurant that serves beer… as long as you don’t leave with it.

Odd story in GBH this week about efforts to undo US alcohol regulation related to category management and how the Brewer’s Association is going to submit something to the Federal regulaory body, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau… but there’s not much input from either the Bureau or the Brewer’s Association:

“…that’s what the BA’s for. Maybe they bring on category management expertise to represent them regionally,” Fisher says. “Now you’d have a category manager who represents these 20 regional beer brands to help them with their business.” The BA declined to answer questions about what would fill the void left by category management, saying it is not speaking further about its comments to the TTB at this time. Brandt says that if the BA is going to put category management under the regulatory microscope, the trade organization should consider an alternative solution that it thinks would benefit its members. (This is a complex question, as some of the BA’s largest member breweries employ their own category managers.) “It would be really cool if they proposed an alternate method,” Brandt says. “Bring me a solution, not a problem, right?”

Not that complex at all. Just that once again, the Brewers Association has no solution what with its hands being tied by the big members… like their hands are tied in implementing EDI… or kicking out bad members, etc., etc., etc…

And I ran a poll this week and, as never before, people on Twitter responded. An exit poll of sorts, 305 nice folk… or maybe 105 folk and 200 bots shared their thoughts on why their interest in craft beer faded. These things aren’t interesting for any sort of overall result so much as the patterns. 11% found other nerdy hobbies, 20% moved away from craft’s culture but almost 70% expressed it’s too pricy or too much of the same experience – both of which speak to value. Then we look at the comments. “NEIPA” says Knut. “Same-ish says Andreas. “$20+ for a 4-pack I might not like makes the price not fine” says Andres. “Too many mediocre/bad quality offerings and a backlog of aged beer in retail” says Dan. “I am simply too old to drink things flavored with children’s cereal” says Kathleen. I likd that one particularly. Then… we also heard “a repetitive online culture that seems more invested in getting clout from strangers on the other side of the world” from Robin. “Gatekeepers” says Japhet and “deliberate antagonism towards those who like their beer from a cask” says Ben. And another Dan wrote: “…there is a lot of crappy performance beers (I call those that seem to have been brewed on a dare or a whim and are more like candy than beer) & it has dulled my interest in exploring.” Add growing up and getting more health conscious. Good comments. Not even all that cranky. Some folk just not as interested if they ever were.

By way of contrast, Stan wrote an interesting post about the residual interest in treating craft brewers like “rock stars” in the context of considering the new revised edition of The Complete Beer Course by Joshua Bernstein. This is an idea which, as Stan kindly noted, I have thought is utterly nutso for over 15 years. I am not alone. But, like those moving on surveyed above, the value decision in the other direction is still a real for some:

In 2023, Bernstein chose to include brewery workers like sensory scientist Rachel McKinney at Fremont Brewing and packaging manager Marcus Crabtree at Kings County Brewing Collective. “I really want to give a voice to these people that are in the industry and show people that beer is more than just one single person, that breweries are miniature factories and everybody has different roles, and getting that beer into your hand requires a lot of hard effort and a lot of [teamwork],” he said to Iseman. What does that mean for the exalted few? Tod and Cilurzo are in the index of the latest edition; Maier and Calagione are not (although Dogfish Head makes multiple appearances). Call it coincidence. Photos posted on Instagram from The Brewers Retreat this week prove, plenty of fans are still willing to pay to hang out with their brewing heroes.

Hero is a word tossed around a lot. And, like rock star, it is too often misplaced. If these be your rock stars, get to a few good concerts. And if these be your heroes, well, maybe time to go volunteer somewhere and find people quietly contributing to those in need with little fanfare. One aspect of this, of course, is that these labels are applied by writers and not the people themselves. Writers with a dictionary that might be a week bit too concise. Or maybe with an interest in plumping up a recycled tale within their chosen narrow area of focus. Still – is this enthusaism any less valid than those who choose to move on after losing the love? Probably not. As we were all so wisely told before… back in 1986.**

Note: “philly dive restrooms are nicer than most cities’ whole bars.”

That’s it! That’s enough from me. As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon, the new ones noted in bold:

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

*Doubt it, Ralphie!!! For those not familiar with the ever excellent phrase “Doubt it, Ralphie” here is some background information.
**Winner of the 2023 Vacuous Conclusion Of The Year Award!
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

A Doubtful Dubious Display Is What You Get With This Week’s Beery News Notes

Tra-laa! How many first posts in May have I “tra-laa-ed” at you? It is because I have no imagination? NO! It’s because it’s from the musical Camelot which earned 110% of it’s reputation to Canada’s greatest gift to world culture, Mr. Robert Goulet!!! Surely the handsomest man of the 20th century. And a clinker of a drink or two, as illustrated. What’s that got to do with beer? WHHHAAAATTTT??? Have you lost your marbles? First, he had a TV show called Blue Light which is obviously the inspiration for Blue Light. AND he did TV ads for Molson Canadian which was owned then (and are again) by the owners of the Montreal Canadiens at the time. Who were right in the middle of proving themselves as the greatest hockey team of all time. Tra. La.

First up this week, happy news as those purveyors of interesting stories, Pellicle, hit its fourth anniversary which by my fingers and toes makes it 20% of this here AGBB‘s longevity. There is a party this very evening or, if you are western hemispheric, this afternoon. You know, at work there is a portrait (like these) of Michael Flannagan, our fair city’s municipal clerk who was in office from the 1840s to the 1890s. If I retire in five years as might be normal I will have made it to what I call the half-Flannagan. In 12 years, Pellicle will half-Flannagan me. Happy news.

And by way of proving the point of their prominence, Pellicle posted a piece (Ed.: STOP IT!!!) on The Five Points Brewing Company, Hackney Downs railway arch, London and its dedication to the craft of cask – with some particularly proper beer pR0n photography (Ed.: STOP!!!!):

“Cask beer is the very definition of craft beer,” Ed says. “Some people can think of cask beer as something different from craft… that it’s boring, brown, British bitter, and craft beer is all about New World hops, and intense flavour experiences, and carbonation. But craft beer is actually about provenance and quality and artisanal approaches to manufacturing,” he adds. “And it’s not just about the manufacturing process, it’s the dispense process. It’s a living, breathing product that continues to condition in the cellar, and that is an art form in itself.”

Me, I can get into that idea of “provenance” way ahead of claims to terrior.

In the police blotter update, I am not sure if this new federal amending statute applies to this here place and whether soon I can expect to be in handcuffs, taken away based in part by your petitions. I am probably sure it will go unnoticed by the law just as the rest of society ignores it… but it is interesting interesting to note that the summary of the amendments to be found at section 2(3) of Chap 8, First Session, Forty-fourth Parliament, 70-71 Elizabeth II – 1 Charles III, 2021-2022-2023 (aka Bill C-11):

…specify that the Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation…

Interesting that they use the phrase “social media service” which may or may not inclue WordPress. And what is a blog if not a soap opera which is indubitably a program. We await the regs.

Boak and Bailey wrote a lovely and well reasearched piece on the lost pubs of Bristol by way of a bit of a tour:

Next, let’s turn left onto Mary-le-Port Street. Except it’s not there any more, so we can’t, really, but we can cut through the park to look at the ruins of St Mary-le-Port Church hidden behind the brutalist Lloyds Bank and modernist Norwich Union building. Then follow the path that tracks the old street pattern towards the site of The Raven. C.F. Deming, author of Old Inns of Bristol, published in 1943, reckoned The Raven dated back to the 17th century and was “mentioned in 1643”.

The article immediately reminded me of the time, gosh, ten years ago when Craig and I went a wandering in Albany NY, looking for evidence of the 1600s town and found the King’s Arms tavern intersection where the American Revolution started locally and where, interestingly, my fair city of Kingston, Ontario was in a very real way born:

But that, oddly, is not my point in posting that picture. Do you see how the street distinctly turns to the left? That turn expresses something a hundred years older than the King’s Arms, the southern design of the palisades of the original settlement. You can see it in this map from 1770 but, more particularly, you can see it in the 1695 map Craig posted to describe the community in the 1600s Dutch era.

Three or four eras in one small corner of Albany: 2013 when the photo was taken, the late 1800s buildings, the revolutionary-era tavern intersectiton and the curve of the 1600 pallisades. Lesson: everybody take B+B’s advice, get outside and look around you! It’s remarkable to see what isn’t quite not there.

Not for any particular reason other than it is a very nice portrait of some very nice beer people having a nice bit bit of beer. The source. The setting.

Jordan by way of IG (the app which I personally hope Bill C-11 SHUTS DOWN) has declared a winner!

There have been lager brewers in Ontario. O’Keefe, Reinhardt, Carling, Labatt. I walk past Toronto’s first lager brewer, John Walz, several times a week in Mount Pleasant Cemetary. I spent so much time looking at fire insurance maps that I researched corrugated iton. I spent so much time reading documents that I needed a nap. I wrote histories. With the help of @wornoldhat, we reviewed all the beer in the province twice. I’ve seen the vast majority of the beer that exists in the modern era of brewing. I checked with people I respect about it, including @beaumontdrinks. I legitimately think that Godspeed’s Pitch Lined Sklepnik is the best lager style beer that had ever existed in Ontario. First to Last. It is SIX DOLLARS A PINT on Sundays.

I love the non-pitched home delivered Sklepnik so have no reason to disagree. And I would not limit that to Ontario. And… I bought a mixed case with some in it because I see that it’s in cans and available for delivery right now. Big sale on Tmavý Ležák 12º. Just saying…

Nineteen years ago, I included Black Sheep Ale in a list of well loved English pale ales that I could find in my eastern Ontario nothern NY ecosystem. Well, this week the brewery went into administration, a step short of bankruptcy:

The Black Sheep Brewery has announced that it intends to appoint administrators to protect the interests of its creditors after the business was hit by a “perfect storm” caused by the pandemic and rising costs. A spokesman for Black Sheep, which is based in Masham, North Yorkshire, stressed that the business is trading as normal and there have been no job losses to date. It employs around 50 staff.

Fingers crossed. Malt still being delivered. And remember you can see Black Sheep as it was in 1997 in this broadcast of the Two Fat Ladies, those foundational thinkers in relation to my life with food and drink.

Beth Demmons has another great edition of Prohibitchin’ out, this time on NA winery Null Wines‘ co-founders Catherine Diao and Dorothy Munholland in which a very good argument is made, one that might move a skeptic like me:

The vast majority of people buying non-alcoholic beverages also drink alcohol, suggesting that NA alternatives are simply an extension of choice rather than trying to act as strict replacements to their boozy counterparts. Dorothy and Catherine say giving consumers more high-quality options was the driving force of launching their business rather than chasing a trend. “One of our internal guideposts for ourselves is ‘Don’t add more crap to the world,’” says Catherine.

Skeptic? Well, when the shadowy Portman Group is jumping on the bandwagon you have to wonder. By the way, look right. What a weird photo to illustrate NA bevvying in the news article. In any other context in any other decade, that image is pure code for being stoned out of one’s cranium. Very mixed message, PG. Very mixed indeed. Can’t be having that. You best be having a word with the Evening Standard.

Question: consider this from Mr.B:

I am repeatedly amazed by the speed with which respected and accomplished chefs will attach their names to suspect beers, ciders, coolers, and seltzers, while at the same time touting the quality of ingredients in their dishes. #MoneyTalks

Aside from the bald accusation of the role of money (something as common enough in beer), if no one has convinced most restaurants high and low from having a serious beer list, well, is this not something that advocates for treating beer more seriously have to take some responsibility for? Let’s be honest – if folks actually wanted it by now folk would have it by now.

Somewhat relatedly… seven years out forecasting. When everything matters does anything matter #3928? As scheduled:

WHY IT MATTERS: The growing strength of Modelo’s cheladas and aguas frescas point to a likely second act for a beer brand that, if current trends continue, is set to unseat Bud Light as the U.S.’s top-selling beer (by dollars) by 2030.

Less cheerily, at the end of last week just after hitting the publish button over here at AGBB HQ, Ruvani de Silva posted a very detailed, well researched and extended piece on the experience of being subject to online trolling as part of the bro culture side of craft beer world (which I have to admit for me isn’t limited to males as I have been on the receiving end from women, too.) But I immediately took to it as it made me think of the causes of craft’s bro culture.

Societal bigotry, yes, but also vestiges of X-Treme? Maybe tribal claims to one community, expertise with a leadership class fed by great white male hagiographies of semi-phony founders?.

I should have added booze obvs. But what do I mean by expertise? Perhaps this sort of smug self-affirmed but highly dubious expertise as opposed to this sort of largely self-driven expertise that makes no claims to extrapolation or even… you know… social status or higher moral ground*! David Jesudason’s thoughts were this:

Thoughtful piece. It mentions some abuse I got. I reported it but the police did nowt. Luckily I’ve done lots of work on resilience and it isn’t a trigger tbh. But some of the other types of trolling I do find difficult including subtweeting criticism cos I hate being ignored…

What else is going on? Not unrelatedly, this past Monday Stan commented on Jeff’s comments on Bud Lite’s maker’s woes following learning they were utterly unprepared and botched the response to their hiring of a trans woman Dylan Mulvaney for an ad campaign. The comment of Jeff’s that Stan considered began with this: “…years ago, I argued that it’s bad business for companies to take political positions. That was correct then, but it’s not anymore.” Note: Jeff made that earlier statement in October 2016 just before the US election when he wrote about Yuengling endorsing Donald Trump. He said it was a bad move. With total respect, I don’t really agree partially as democracy needs robust debate but also because I’m also not sure the two situations are even comparables as that would depend on the badness of the business move being the measure. Still, put it this way if I am wrong: at this point are we sure who is worse, the makers of Yuengling or Bud Lite?

Stan then broadened the question on how it reflects on the whole brewing trade and, again with total respect, drew in something which I have never actually found to be all that true:

Small breweries that some call “craft” have benefited by what is unspoken; that they are the good guys. Recently, they’ve been asked to prove it. Many have. The rest? We’ll see what happens.

The good guys? Really? How good is craft? Certainly doubts are raise by initiatives like the early and short lived co-opting of outrage against the war in Ukraine, the perhaps slightly deeper response with some to the Black is Beautiful initiatives even if not all the money ended up in the pockets pledged – not to mention, as Stan mentioned two weeks ago, the dimming of interest in DEI. (And not to mention… the continuation of bigoted operations like Founders… dots connected.)** Yup, it seems like its all just news cycle compassion so much of the time with craft.* Which builds on the question. Who is worse: the makers of Yuengling, the makers of Bud Lite or the appropriators of craft?

There’s another thing, a more important thing. I don’t believe that the existence of human rights even depends on political power or even the majority of folks’ conviction – and certainly not the stance of commercial operations like a brewery. Human rights are fundamental – a foundational fundamental good, not something politically sourced even if their denial by bastards in power is. Human rights speak to the simple inherent dignity of being a human in all its forms of subjective experience. The dignity shines through any denial and is always worth the fight. I hate to break it to you – but sooner or later we all will have one or more human characteristics which will annoy or even generate hatred by somebody. Don’t believe me? Wait for age. No, we can’t cherry pick which human rights are the winners. It’s all or none. Bandwaggoning the news cycle like craft isn’t any sort of conviction in support of human rights any more than leaving it to any stripe of politicans is. These are really appropriations of goodness. So show me a brewery that welcomes all, that straight up supports human dignity with action and little fanfare and I am there.*** Are there are all that many? Dunno but I do spend my money where there is a chance that they just might be worth my support. I suggest you do the same. It can have an effect. And if these my previous few hundreds of perhaps wandering words don’t convince you, think of what Brian Alberts wrote with just a handful:

Don’t just stick to beer, stick to just beer.****

Why? It matters. This actually matters.

That’s enough from me. You want more? As per, you can check out the many ways to connect including these voices on Mastodon:

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

*Yes, a double footnote… but why always place craft beer on the rosy glowing end of the good-bad spectrum with, you know, Donald Trump at the other Satanic end. Isn’t this obviously self-serving, all this praise from within craft beer for craft beer? (Looka me! I’m part of a community!! ) And another thing… what the heck has craft beer ever actually done to stake its claim to a higher moral position? Do you think of your favorite shoe stores that way, your coffee shops, your cheddar and gin makers or neighbourhood bakers? Actually, I do know bakers who ensure their surplus gets to the homeless day after day so, yes, props to those bakers.
**Can you believe this shit: “When Dillard reported the incidents to management, she alleges that she received drastically reduced hours as retaliation or was ignored. The complaint also states she worked as a part-time manager for nearly a year without moving up, while white managers were promoted within months. The complaint also details alleged instances of sexual harassment from a fellow worker. When Dillard complained about the behavior, she says she was ignored. But once a white employee complained about the same behavior from the same worker, the offending worker was fired. Things were so bad that a white manager also resigned because of the ongoing racial discrimination against Dillard.” H/T to The Polk.
***Could you get a wheelchair in the taproom bathroom? Does the sort of language used on the brewing floor align with the branding?
****Cleverly succinct. Reminds me of a Billy Bragg quip from a concert maybe 35 years ago: “Remember: it’s not ‘how high are you?’ – it’s ‘hi how are you?'”
*****And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

A Warming And Growing Then Dashed Hopes Sort Of Beery News Notes

Ah, false spring. I have happily read Dan Malleck’s 2022 book Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition to stay warm this week. It neatly explains the period between the “your betters” of the Georgian status-based mercentile world and modern life, illustrating the rise of the new “your betters” of the regulating bureaucracy through the brief decades in the later 1800s of Canada’s laisse-faire capitalist “your betters”! Perhaps not surprisingly, there is less actual liquor in Dan’s book than in last week’s 2016 update of the bio of Lemmy, White Line Fever* but, to be clear, waaaay more policy debate set in late Victorian Ontario. Lemmy dropped the ball in that respect.

You know, the two books fill handy gaps and together would make for a very interesting compare and contrast sort of essay question given each in its own way is an exploration of autonomy in the modern state. I highly recommend each of them – especially as it’s reasonable to suggest that the lads on the cover of the Dan’s book would, but for the non-invention of a time machine, no doubt would have picked up a fond affection for Motörhead. Especially that lad to the right. I might have post a full review of the book but (i) it is not 2008-14 and not one does that anymore and (ii) Dan warned me off:

Enjoy. If you don’t, I don’t wanna know 🙂

Get both books. Do it! Note: UBC Press’s online shopping is particularly handy.

Speaking of the song stylings of Motörhead, this week’s piece in the Pellicle about hearing loss is something worth reading. I fried my ears on cheap RadioShack headphones and late 70s punk as a kid, leaving myself now with tinitus, lost accuity leading me to say “what?!?!” a lot as well as pain from a whole range of sounds now. I actually had to flee a pub this year when the Irish band struck up. Hot knives in the head. Anyway, it’s real and if you don’t believe me, think about what Emmie Harrison-West says about it:

…there’s no such thing as a ‘quiet pint’. I struggle if I sit at the bar, or next to barking dogs (which is torture, I tell you—being a lover of all four-legged friends), speakers, toilets, televisions, fruit machines, pool tables, and kitchens, as I have to strain to hear my friends, or ask them to repeat themselves. It’s as frustrating as it is exhausting. There’s only so many times I can say: “Sorry, what?” before I end up closing in on myself, smiling and nodding, becoming reserved, and making an excuse to leave.

There is a good descriptor for NA beer: a soft drink. I don’t care to write about them but others seem to need to include them in with, you know, actual drinks. Big in Germany, says Will Hawkes in VinePair:

It was introduced in 2018 after Reineke spent two years developing the beer. “All my brewer friends told me that it was a stupid idea, that nobody would want it in Germany,” he says. “But it’s getting more and more popular and I think it’ll be our No. 1 product within the next few years.”

Along a similar line of things not being what they suggest they are, are wet led pubs really taking off in the UK? The Mudge doubts it – and considers it in the context of his local where he has seen kitchen food service come and now go:

There was a serving hatch in the extension from which a variety of straightforward food was dispensed at lunchtimes. I remember having some tasty bacon barms there. But the general decline of pubgoing meant that it became nowhere near as busy as it once was… They introduced a much more ambitious and expensive pub food menu, but it never seemed to find many takers, and the general impression that the pub still gave of being a traditional boozer probably put diners off. In hindsight, it might have made more sense to make the extension a dedicated dining area with a brighter colour scheme and return the main bar service to the old side. So the food has now been dropped, and according to WhatPub it now only offers “pies and barmcakes”, which presumably need no kitchen preparation.

Similarly on the theme of what is is not what is said to be, The Tand Himself has taken his study of Sam Smith’s pub chain’s flaunted nanny alt-state rules… and found them utterly flouted in The Big City:

While it has never been officially confirmed, it is known that Humphrey’s son Sam is the supremo of all the Southern operations. Things are done differently there, and while recently in the North, innovations such as paying by phone and card have been accepted, it is true to say that no such restrictions have operated in London for quite some time.The reasons for this are pretty obvious when you look at the clientele. I think it’s fair to say that in the absence of paying by card or phone Mr. Smith would find insufficient customers willing to pay by cash, as payment by such is, in London, the exception rather than the rule. Also missing from most of the London pubs is the plethora of notices forbidding this, that or the other, though it is fair to say that the one prohibiting electronic devices is generally clear and present, but, particularly in the case of phones, is blatantly and wholly disregarded.

Heavens! Speaking of which, The Guardian reports that Trappist breweries are suffering from a definite lack of Trappists. As a Protestant I can only say, theologically-speaking, it’s about time. But will we miss them when they are gone?

…uncertainties hover over the future of Trappist beer production in this traditionally Catholic country, where fewer people are drawn to a life of monastic contemplation. Those questions became more acute in January when Belgium’s Achel beer lost its Trappist status after being taken over by a private entrepreneur. The new owner has vowed to keep the recipe unchanged, but after the severing of ties with monks, Achel can no longer call itself a Trappist beer. “It must be admitted that the state of most monastic communities is precarious,” said Brother Benedikt, the abbot of Westmalle…

Furtherly similarly but from the wholey unholier point of view, will Boston Beer finally complete its BA Denied™ slow full rotation from micro to craft to something else to none of the above by selling itself off:

After riding high on the hard seltzer boom in the run up to the coronavirus, Boston and its shares fell from grace when it almost bet the ranch and lost on its Truly brand only to see demand hit the brakes leaving it to write off huge amounts of stock… Heineken is running its eye over Boston because the existing market positions of brands such as Truly and Twisted Tea could fill a strategic hole in the armoury of the world’s third largest brewer. While she does not believe a deal is imminent, she says such a move holds “strategic rationale for both parties.”

Does all this leave you less than… enthused? Does beer leave you feeling like Wojciech Weiss or even Walter Richard Sickert observed? Is there any doubt it’s been losing fans for very good reasons? Ron wants to know and even shares a confession:

I rarely join the chase foe a specific beer nowadays. Unless it’s something really special. And by special, I mean odd, forgotten and obscure styles. Not the latest trend. I can take or leave the newest type of IPA or adulterated Imperial Stout. My interest has now mostly shifted to history. Understanding how beer styles are formed and mutate as they spread out from their initial homelands. I put in as much time and effort as ever, Just in a different environment. No longer out in the field with my binoculars hoping to spot a rare bird to cross off my list. But at my computer, excavating the barrows of long-lost brews. Without enthusiasm, I wouldn’t be doing this work.

Ontario wine writer Michael Pinkus shared another sort of lack of enthusiasm in his monthly newsletters, the provincial monopoly’s moves to limit local drinks writers:

In 2019 the LCBO started to curate the wines that they were allowing journalists to taste. They were dictating to the local media what they should be covering. When I pressed the LCBO for an explanation nothing was provided. (Did money play a part?). And now, no local, independent journalist tastes any kind of extensive line-up of LCBO wines. So how do you really know what’s good and fits the Ontario palate? Today the LCBO saves even more money by “borrowing” notes from international journalists to sell the wines on their shelves; how does that benefit their ultimate consumer? Ontarians. What I find even more offensive is of late they use their own product consultants as “experts” to review wines.

Finally, some legal news. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled this week in a case of the often seen situation of a drunk guy on an ATV bombing along a back road… with a twist:

… a non‑exhaustive definition does not necessarily oust other definitions. Depending on the context, exhaustive and non-exhaustive definitions can be read together. Under a harmonious reading of the two definitions of “driver”, for the purpose of s. 48(1), “driver” refers to a person who is driving, or has care or control of, a motor vehicle on a highway. A person who has care or control of a motor vehicle but who is no longer on a highway would not be a “driver” under the HTA. In the present case, Mr. McColman was not a “driver” for the purpose of s. 48(1) when he was stopped by the police. Even if it can be said that he had care or control of the ATV, he was not on a highway when the police effected the stop. Therefore, the police stop was unauthorized by s. 48(1) of the HTA.

See, the guy was stopped after he left the road and was on private property. Fortunately, the Court let the evidence in even though there was a violation of ATV guy’s rights holding that society’s interest in the truth-seeking function of the criminal trial process would be better served by admission of the evidence even though the police impacted Mr. McColman’s liberty interests when they the police questioned him in the course of an unlawful detention. Sucks, as they say, to suck.

There. Done. Enough. Finis. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

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

*Though neither than compare to Ron’s notes from the road.
**And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Rather Distracted And Perhaps Brief First Beery News Notes For Spring

So much happening out there. Except maybe in the beer world. All a bit dull this week. Yet, it is spring. And the plants are on the move. I have to dig up me parsnips as soon as I can. You never know if you are going to pull up something the size of a pencil or a baseball bat – but by leaving them in the soil all winter, their starches convert to sugars and the make a fine ginger orange soup. And wouldja look at that there? Growing right now in a corner of the basement in part of my seed starting set up. A zucchini. A tiny wee zucchini. It’s spring for sure now.

Speaking of farming, Stan is slacking off in New Zealand but took time to post a lovely image from the hop harvest:

“These are my moisture meter,” said Brent McGlashen, a fifth generation hop grower, well into a day last week punctuated with frequent grabbing, breaking and smelling of freshly picked hops being kilned on one of the Mac Hops farms.

There. I pretty much just poached his whole post. But there are other posts. Go see.

Picking up on the weak signals from beer culture idea, the monthly B+B email newsletter for March had this idea:

Futures thinking is a way of reflecting on what might or could happen. It’s not about trying to predict the future but, rather, accepting uncertainty and considering multiple possible outcomes… What’s the equivalent today? There are certainly breweries doing things that make most of us think, “Interesting, but it’ll never catch on.” For example, there’s been a slow but steady trickle of beers using waste products, such as Toast Ale, made with surplus bread, and Singapore’s NewBrew which is made with recycled sewer water.

Great. Sewer juice. That sorta puts the “dis” in dystopian, no? What next – powdered beer? Hmm. You know, I really do like how the focus is on coping with the range of futures rather than the prognosticating expert Dr. Tomorrow claptrap. It’s like the risk matrix sort of thinking I’ve participated in big project planning. Craft beer might have avoided a whack of issues if it has tried a bit of futures thinking… but… well, it’s craft, right?

No, let’s stay with reality based reality. Facts. Like this. In a bit of a post-St.Patrick’s Day round up, I found this to the right very interesting from KHM: “My mate Alan (of chip review fame) on the folk music cardio workout.” Seems a pal of a pal wore a FitBit while playing a gig on the big day and learned a lesson. I do recall fitting into my 32 waist jeans back in my slam dancing days so it’s a likely tale of health and publife aligning neatly. Can’t say the same about this item on alcohol and heart health that I came across, a medical study published just a year ago that, again, confirms that the J-Curve is a fantasy, given not only the now well established understanding that it’s not that non-drinkers get sick but, once sick, the ill just don’t drink as much. It now turns out the light drinkers are also otherwise healthier, too:

…individuals in the light and moderate consumption group had healthier lifestyle behaviors than abstainers, self-reporting better overall health and exhibiting lower rates of smoking, lower BMI, higher physical activity, and higher vegetable intake (eFigure 3 in the Supplement). Adjustment for the aforementioned lifestyle factors attenuated the cardioprotective associations with modest alcohol intake...

Veg intake. That’s what did Lemmy in. Low veg intake. I’m reading his biography right now, by the way. Quite the lad. The good news from the cancer study by the way is that the two drink a day thing makes a lot of sense. We are built to take a certain amount of the alcky. Bevvying below that is really low risk but, be clear, heading northward causes a rapid increase in complications. Not funny.

But you know what is funny? People debating if Jeff is or is not a “beer bro“! WTF? I haven’t a clue what they even meant by it. I assume either it’s being too Alström circa 2008… or not Alström enough! But he was slagged just because he triggered a discussion on whether it is actually important to have full measures of beer served. Of course it is, well all know that – and everyone else is wrong but… the point is this: who gives a flying fuck about beer enough to call someone else a “beer bro” like is signifies anything other than the speaker is a utter moron? Hil. Aires. Lou. Zars.

I like this image. A useful reminder that early US microbreweries were not about the dissassembling big macro but to leverage the interest in imports. That’s one of the “20% in 2020 era” revisionist myths that bulk craft created.

Hmm. I am of slightly two minds about this story in the BBC where a 41 year old warrant was enforced related to a bar room fight even if I lean heavily to the result:

The story began in March 1980 when McGrath, an Irish-British national born in Leeds, was out drinking with friends. The 21-year-old, by his own admission, became involved in a drunken fight between two groups of young men. In his telling, he fled to a nearby pub when police arrived. “I’m not getting involved with the police,” he remembers thinking. But British prosecutors alleged he was part of a group that assaulted an officer, who suffered a broken nose, cuts and bruising while attempting to restrain a suspect. Five men were charged, including McGrath. Instead of facing justice, he fled to Ireland. He says he absconded because he believed he was being “set up”.

Note: After the jury met, he “was acquitted, the judge told jurors that he did not know why the case had been brought after so many years.” Still… brawling and absconding are crimes. I’ve been defence on historic claims, though none so minor.

Martyn was on the Beer Ladies Podcast, well worth a listen.

Matthew wrote a good piece on Guinness in the Pellicle,* especially around the idea that there is Guinness guilt. I suffer from no such thing. I have always thought that a good mass produced beer is a very fine thing. Guinness is up there with Miller High Life and Utica Club and… well, there must be a few others. It can be lovely:

In some places, though, to me it just seems to taste spectacular: The Thomas Connoly in Sligo, Lucky Joe’s Saloon in Fort Collins, Stoke Newington’s Auld Shillelagh, and, my favourite spot for a G, The Fidds’ in Levenshulme, South Manchester. When I am in such a place, I wouldn’t want to drink anything else. It’s not just about the beer, it’s about achieving a certain, blissful state of mind. I don’t want to think, I just want some pints.

Why does Guinness make memories?My uncle told the story of following Scotland’s rugby team as a travelling fan and, back in the day in Dublin, having gravity poured Guinness from barrels under the bar… which meant the person pouring had to lay on their side. I myself had 14 pints one night for free in a pub in Hampstead Heath, London near our hostel back around 1986. I’ve told you this one before, haven’t I? One of the loveliest humans I ever saw walked in that pub early that evening. She just stood there, dressed in a little black dress, big waves of blond hair up top, wearing just that one broach a golden a harp. She stood there looking at us, us looking at her. Until the place quietened. Everyone just staring at her. At which time she proclaimed “BOYS, I’M THE GUINNESS REP AND IT’S FREE TONIGHT!!!” Suddenly, we were in a scene from a movie. We’d won the lotto! Cheers filled the place, kegs were carried in on the shoulders of beefy gents in branded garb, everyone loved everyone else and we drank and drank and drank. I can die happy having lived there that evening.**

Jamie Goode wrote in Wine Anorak about the pending crisis of worthless drinks writing now being done by computer rather than by ill served disrespected humans. But wasn’t this the promise of the computer age? Didn’t Dr Tomorrow himself promise us all in around 1974 that they’d take the tat work off the humans? The picture they paint of the life of a bulk writer isn’t that compelling:

…for a long time many ‘journalists’ have been employed creating copy with the sole motivation of search engine optimization (SEO). Reading articles that have been written with SEO in mind is tiresome. I don’t do it: I want my writing to be me, writing in my voice, in my style, as well as I can do it. I’m lucky that I can afford this luxury, and I’m hoping for my readers that they appreciate the integrity of this approach. Many modern journalists might be employed by a newspaper of repute, but they don’t get their bylines in the paper. Their job is to show up for a shift and get paid perhaps £130 to write an article an hour for 8 hours. The subjects are determined by keywords trending on google….

Yikes. Bring on the server farms, I say! Now finally… witness an honest brewery. And not about what is in the beer or how much they sold you but… but breweries being honest about taxes:

Ram McAllister, owner and head brewer at Fairweather Brewing, said the proposed tax hike will hit the small brewer with an additional 20.8 cents to 41.8 cents per 100 hectolitres produced or 0.21 cents to 0.42 cents per litre. “We don’t welcome any tax increase,” said McAllister. “(But) this one has been misrepresented or misunderstood as the equivalent of a six per cent increase in the price of beer.”

Thank you. There. Done. Enough. Finis. Consider Mastodon. Here’s your newbie cheat sheet:

*I’m calling it “the Pellicle” now. Not “The Pellicle” because that is not the name. Like “the rugby” which I say to my kid who plays. As in: “Good day at the rugby, kiddo? Good, now you know what I read in the Pellicle?” That sort of thing.
**And we didn’t even imagine doing something like this…
***And finally the list of the departed newsletters and podcasts or those in purgatory. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

The Thursday Beery News Notes For March March March !!!

I like March. The mud. The late winter blizzards. The building anxiety about income tax return preparation what with that retirement savings deadline yesterday. This particular March is the last full month of my fifties. Yup, I go from being an old young man to a young old man in around seven weeks. Just like that. Which means, yes, I was in a bar when M*A*S*H ended forty years ago this week. It’s enough to drive one to drink. Except we Canadians are driving ourselves away from the bottle according to a government bean counting agency report – as even the BBC reported this week:

Canadians appear to be losing their taste for alcohol, according to findings in a new report that showed beer and wine sales at historic lows. From 2021-22, volume of beer sold per person in Canada slumped drastically. The volume in wine sales slid by its largest margin since 1949… The report, released by Statistics Canada, a government data cruncher, found that sales of alcohol slid for first time in a decade, by 1.2%. Wine sales decreased by 4%, the largest decrease ever recorded by Statistics Canada. Beer’s time as the top alcoholic beverage by sales has shown signs of going flat, according to the report. Over the last 10 years, beer has continued to lose market share, totalling an 8.8% drop.

From breweries to the halls of academia, the news was met with discontent. Trouble is… this isn’t news. As the chart from StatsCan shows this has been a 50 year dteady decline, though with an extra bit of collapse since the recession 15 years ago. We are coming up on consuming half of what folks did two generations ago. I blame colour TV.

Far more pleasantly, Barry pointed us to a great article in Cider Review on the history of perry in the cider country of Normandy:

Pays Domfrontais; this crumb of land in south Normandy, where there are no more than perhaps twenty producers, where production is perhaps a per cent of Normandy’s total, if that, and where the perry might just be the best in the world. The landscape is all but flat; it ripples, rather than rolls, only rising to a swell at the ridge on which perches the medieval town of Domfront. Everywhere is agricultural; every patch of land tilled and tended, covered with corn or cows, narrow, sunken lanes cut into the sea of green. But, as in Austria, it’s the pear trees that make you coo and gasp. Rather than Mostviertel’s ubiquitous lines along the side of fields, here they just as often dominate widely-spaced orchards; always tall, high-branched— haut tiges in local parlance — towering over the handful of apple trees that cluster around them.

Sticking with the local scene elsewhere, Evan Rail has written about the Starkbierzeit beer festival in Munich, Germany for Vinepair this week, how a lesser known German tradtion has found even less traction in America – which may well be part of its charm:

Not every U.S. craft brewery has been able to make a starkbier festival work. Following an initial event in 2014, Wisconsin’s Capital Brewery discontinued its Starkbierfest after just a few years, instead focusing on its better-established Bockfest, which coincidentally takes place at about the same time of year. Other brewers have found that it helps to get back to basics. At the 9-year-old KC Bier Co. in Kansas City, Mo., earlier starkbier celebrations included different types of doppelbock released over several weeks. But the brewery’s 2023 Starkbierzeit sounds a lot more like an event in Munich, featuring a golden doppelbock called “Carolator,” in memory of Carol Crawford, sister of brewery founder Steve Holle. After receiving a blessing from a local priest, Carolator was released to the public on Ash Wednesday.

At the end of last week, Stan reported in his newsletter Hop Queries that there is a glut in the US hop market:

Speaking at the American Hop Convention in January, John I. Haas CEO Alex Barth estimated that the industry is sitting on an excess of 35 to 40 million pounds of hops. Therefore, farmers in the Northwest need to reduce the acres of aroma hops strung for harvest by 10,000 — about 17 percent — to balance supply and demand. Acreage may not be cut that much immediately, and as one industry member told me it could take “three, four, five years” to work off the excess. But when the USDA releases data about 2023 acreage in June, expect the reduction of most proprietary varieties to be pretty stunning. Across the board, stakeholders who own the plant rights to many of the privately owned cultivars are discussing 20 to 30 percent cuts. That includes Citra and Mosaic, of course, because growers planted more of those two in 2022 than any other variety.

Expect the invention of Stale Hop IPA just in time for Christmas 2023. How else are they going to deal with this bit of surprise. Speaking of things not being as expected, apparently the old joke about American beer being like making love in a canoe is no longer acceptable if legal precedent is to be trusted:

The National Advertising Division, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, sided with Anheuser-Busch, which challenged a 2022 ad for Miller Lite that uses the phrase “light beer shouldn’t taste like water, it should taste like beer.” The agency said that Molson Coors should “discontinue” the ad because is “not puffery or a mere opinion.” In the 15-second spot, a cyclist takes a break from riding uphill, cracks open a beer and douses himself with it. No specific beers were mentioned, however the beer uses a similar blue color that adorns Bud Light packaging. NAD said that it “determined that tasting ‘like water’ is a measurable attribute” and that customers might “reasonably expect that the statement is supported by such evidence.”

More observations. JJB aka Stonch aka Jeff Buckly* made a very intersting observation about big beer’s inexplicable recent interest in crappy no-alc beers:

…it’s so blatant the big brewers are pushing their awful alc free versions of their key beers largely so they can have the brand promoted at sports competitions. Idea is you see Heineken 0.0, and then think of actual Heiny.

Still more as Retired Martin is still wandering around the nations as well as around the factilities he and his visit:

That long trestle table is the only downstairs seating, which at least ensures you’ll talk to people like it’s 1995, but sadly we were (again) the only custom at 1pm on a Saturday, which Mrs RM resolved by chatting to the Landlord while I explore upstairs. You may not be aware, but 97% of people would rather stand outside a micropub in a storm, rather than be the first person to go and sit in the upstairs area, and that’s a fact. I could hear Mrs RM saying “He’s done all the Beer Guide pubs” which is always cringeworthy, so I didn’t overstay my visit…

I have no idea why the sink is on the cistern though it likely saves water… but… err… where do you place your feet when you use it? Not at all relatedly, as the newly hired voice of the competition noted, ABInBev have laid off employees at a number of the craft breweries they picked up during the buyout years begun now around seven years ago:

Employees have been let go from Houston, Texas-based Karbach Brewing and Patchogue, NY-based Blue Point Brewing … Citing anonymous sources, Craft Business Daily reported layoffs at Lexington, Virginia-based Devils Backbone and Asheville, North Carolina-based Wicked Weed.

As the craft-esque beer market continues to retract I am not sure why there is the assumption that there would not be layoffs, given the shelf really doesn’t care how production occured, how promises and assumptions were exchanged late in the era of the Obama administration.

Very much another sort of shutdown was the theme as Jeff shared his observations about drinking on a snowy day, a highly recommended way to pass the hours as a blizzard roars:

As we sipped and chatted, Sally’s eldest brother Tom mentioned that #StormDrinking is a thing in New England. Finding a warm nook with a cold beverage and friends is the perfect way to while away a Nor’Easter. We joked about its Portland equivalent, which would be more like #SnowDrinking. Even as we were planning our final move—a restaurant or pub near home—we were still thinking the clouds weren’t going to deliver more than a couple inches. Yet as we called around, we kept hearing the same thing. Places were shutting down and sending staff home while they could go, or planning to close soon. Fortunately for us, Migration Brewing was open, and the bartender said she was happy to hang out if anyone showed up. So off we went.

In a warmer setting, Mark Dredge wrote a good piece about a contest that apparently started here in my home town at Queen’s University – home of my rugby fandom – running a mile while drinking beer:

It’s a simple and relatable race: Short enough that anyone can attempt it, hard enough that most will fail miserably, absurd enough that anyone who learns about it will want to hear more. The event consists of four 400-meter laps around a running track, beginning nine meters behind the official starting line to reach the metric 1,609m of an imperial mile. That extra nine meters becomes the designated “chug zone” in which, before each lap, runners have to down one 12oz beer. It’s four beers, four laps, and try not to puke.

Runners World ran a similar story in 2015 with a bit of focus on the silliness of the concept. You know, around about when we packed the college bar for that last episode of M*A*S*H, we did a similar stunt at undergrad forty years ago: the annual three legged race. Why there I am twice in the yearbook in the spring of 1982, at the start of the race all big and fit and trim and full of youth… and soon to be full of beer. Long since sensibly banned of course. The insurers must have found out. See, you and your partner had to run up the seven four story stairways of the residences joined at the hip and chug a beer at each top landing. Most of us floated and spent more time on fancy costumes than anything like training. We two were dressed as “science students” and kept pace by saying “sign, cosign” over and over as we ran. The records were set in my era by a classmate (who was apparently ninth or tenth, just missing a seat on Canada’s Olympic eights rowing team) and whoever was tied onto to him. Upper left to the right. Artie and Wugg are there, too, to the far right. Fortunately, the architecture allowed for hosing down the stairs afterwards.

There, that’s enough for today. Did I mention that you still need to check out Mastodon. It’s so nice. Here is your cheat sheet if you want to have a look see:

Remember also to read the blogs and the newsletters for more weekly recommendations from Boak and Bailey every Saturday and also from Stan at his spot on those Mondays when he checks in from the road. . And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too. There is new reading at The Glass. Any more? The Moon Under Water if you have $10 a month for this sort of thing… I don’t. Pete Brown’s costs a fifth of that. Book some time for Hugging the Bar as they go long as well as the Guys Drinking Beer in Chicago. And check out The Share with Stephanie Grant.

And, yes, also gather ye all the olde style podcasts while ye may. Check to see the highly recommended Beer Ladies Podcast. Did you know Lew Bryson started a Seen Through A Glass podcast in November 2022? Me neither! And the long standing Beervana podcast but it might be on a month off (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is the Boys Are From Märzen podcast too and check out the travel vids at Ontario’s own A Quick Beer. There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. Still gearing up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too even if it’s a bit trade. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And the Craft Beer Channel this week on Youtube. And remember the Beer O’clock Show but that was gone after a ten year run but returned renewed and here is the link!

Finally, we lift our hats to the departed newsletters and podcasts… and those perhaps in purgatory. BeerEdge may have been effectively absorbed into the revival of All About Beer. Looks like both Brewsround and Cabin Fever died in 2020, . We appreciate that the OCBG Podcast is on a very quiet schedule these days – but it’s been there now and again. The Fizz died in 2019. Ben has had his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…) Plus Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch seems done and the AfroBeerChick podcast is gone as well! The Fingers Podcast packed it in citing, umm, lack of success… as might have been anticipated, honestly. Did they suffer a common fate? Who knows?

*Proof! Since corrected to Mr. Bell himself. Though it still suggests that he only recently made a change to move away from food service at the Ypres Castle Inn. He’s run it for a few years now without a kitchen.