Category: Low Strength Beer

Quick Note: Atlética, Athletic Brewing, Connecticut

Once upon a time, I wrote quick notes about beers I had tried. Like this one for Shepard Neame Goldings, I beer I haven’t thought about for one minute in the subsequent twenty years. So it was pleased I was to read that Boak and Bailey decided to turn back the clock this week and blog like it was 2008 again. I am nothing if not a follower.

“Made in the USA” says the can but the given corporate address is by Athletic Brewing Canada of Vancouver, BC. Atlética passed the guzzle test. A beer right out of the fridge should go down prickly when chugged and chill your belly.  It did that nicely. Very nicely. It gives off the pleasant aroma of a apricot-lemony sweet iced tea. Taste? Martime Canadian husky brown bready and grassy lemon with a bit of a worty middle with a hint of elementary school glue cut with a black tea and bitter weedy green hopping as well as more of that lingering lemon.

I bought a six-pack of this on sale at a lower budget grocery story for $10 CND. Or $7 USD or $1.17 USD a can. Judged as a craft beer as the label states, this would be a disappointment. A bit of the new microbrewery 2005ish vibe. A bit of the replicant. There is a under cooked pie crust aspect to that mid-point. But it works around that with balancing notes pretty well – as long as you drink it cold.

BAers rank it in the mid-70% range. I’d buy it again… in summer… if I saw the same sale.

Your Frankly A Bit Too Humid Post-Canada Day 2026 Doldrums Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Happy day after Canada Day! I’ve been hiding in the basement near the air conditioner outlet myself. Because Wednesday days off are the worst of the days off in the schedule, aren’t they. But it’s still a day off for so many so we should not begrudge the lack of mail delivery and all that does along with that. We should, in fact, celebrate the fact that our country was built on ale. It’s always worth raising the flag in honour of that. I stole this photo off the internets over twenty one years ago so I have no idea who the heck they are* but the bowties and that Budweiser is too sweet not to repeat.

What else is going on? First up, there was a good response to the latest edition of The Session hosted by Boak and Bailey on the topic of Martyn Cornell’s last book Porter and Stout, all leading to this encouraging summation of the discussion:

Martyn Cornell was not often wrong and enjoyed a scholarly argument. At the same time, our impression is that the truth was more important to him than his ego. With that in mind, we think he might be pleased to see people spotting gaps, arguing points and generally building upon a work that, as Phil Cook points out in his Session post, could never really hope to be a ‘complete history’. Writers like Liam K should take heart: this is not a full stop; there is still research to be done; and Martyn’s book presents many new avenues for investigation. We shouldn’t look at tomes like this and think there’s nothing left to write but, instead, let them inspire us.

I would add to my post that it was nice seeing Martyn identify that once upon a time this very part of the world had its own version of Porter.

And, yes, it is still the time of the World Cup. Canada is through to the round of 16 after a match with the 54th ranked team that was being reported as being very dull and disorganized until a fabulous goal made the team national heroes forever… apparently. Joining the ranks of the performative perhaps. Me, I’d save that label for something past the first came of a five round playoff myself – and I live in hope – but, suffice it to say, the World Cup has fostered some interesting thinking, such as in Boston as Lara Wildenberg for The Times discovered:

Much to the offence of the English, The Dubliner, which had been the epicentre of Scotland’s party in Boston, closed for the day of England v Ghana to recover after nearly a fortnight of the Tartan Army. At least one other bar closed straight after the match “to give staff some rest”. American women, however, have already expressed their grief at having to part with the Tartan Army. Talking to the women in the Boston area, I met one who started a relationship with a Scottish fan, becoming inseparable and sobbing when he left for Miami. They are hoping to continue long distance.

A less attractive sort of experience was described by Jen Blair who published an interesting piece on the approach of males at the table in beer judging this week:

I’ve judged with this specific judge before and enjoyed it. We were both first-year judges at GABF when we met. I was happy to see him at my judging table because I remembered him being warm, funny, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. He still is! Which is why I feel pretty comfortable inferring that, if you asked him, he would loudly and proudly say that he supports women and denounces sexism. You can imagine how shocked he would be to hear that he’s failing at a very basic level. Back at my judging table, while the judge was technically correct in agreeing with me, if I asked him why I thought the beer in question should not advance to the next round, he would not be able to answer truthfully. Why? He never listened to my answer. Actually, I never answered. I was interrupted before I could, and neither of the men with whom I was judging noticed.

Perhaps relatedly, I’ve always liked the formerly regular Sam Smith’s Christmas special box set offered at the LCBO most years years ago so I really can’t personally add anything to the better informed folk who found him a miserable brewery and pub chain owner. But… he has left us as reported in the York Press:

The owner and chairman of the Tadcaster-based Sam Smith’s Brewery was well-known for his ‘traditional’ policies as well as his private nature. Smartphones, children, dogs and swearing were all banned from his pubs across the country, policies which attracted much controversy but also much support. However, this was widely blamed for causing around half of the brewery’s 300-pub estate remaining empty. The role of the 81-year-old at the brewery has also been the subject of much speculation, with reports he has been seriously unwell for some time.

So… something of an anti-capitalist in his own way! The Tand has shared his thoughts on the man’s passing:

New to me yesterday was that he was an old Etonian, which I suppose explains a lot – or doesn’t depending on your point of view. While it has been seen before in smaller measures, there was a fair old outpouring of support from him from some former colleagues and pub managers, mostly along the lines of “If  you obeyed the rules, you got on fine with him”. The consensus, such as I could make out is that those who fell foul of him didn’t think highly of him at all, while those who hadn’t did. 

And Matt L adds an unexpected angle:

….Sam Smith’s owns the Fitzroy Tavern in Soho and for many years from the early 1990s it was the main meeting place of the capital’s Doctor Who fans.  And there in their dozens they would drink cheap lager and plot and plan for the day they would take over the show and make it in their image.  And, yes, the last three showrunners of Doctor Who – Russell T. Davies. Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall – were regulars at the Tav.  And sometimes, there may even have been a woman there, but sources vary as always.

Elsewhere, there are other correlations between brewing and… other sorts of bad stuff as illustrated in Mexico:

The problem, Gomez says, originated about a decade ago when Grupo Modelo, a Belgian-owned brewing company, installed a sprawling $328-million complex of hangar-like buildings on the outskirts of town. The third-largest brewery in Mexico, it uses over four times as much water as the entire population of Hunucmá. Soon after it was completed, residents began struggling to draw water from their pumps, and what water did trickle out contained evidence of salinization and agrochemicals, some of which have been linked to cancer.

So it’s not just A.I. data centres that are sucking the lands dry. Are we on the cusp of a larger eco-movement? And does the continuing slump make Mother Earth happy if, you know, we were to believe the big numbers from BMI this week:

Stack population growth on top of beer’s 5% volume decline in 2025 and average beer consumption per 21+ adult fell by a tuffer 5.6% in just one yr. The avg US legal-age adult consumed just below 22 gals of beer last yr, or about 4.5 cans per wk. Back in 2020, it was more like 5.3 beers per wk (tho a solid chunk of that was hard seltzer that yr). And 5 yrs before that, avg consumer per person per yr was up over 27 gals or 5 oz shy of a six pk per wk. So beer’s dismal 2025 capped a 16% drop in avg consumption over 5 yrs and over 20% decline in the last decade.

It will be interesting to see what BMI’s numbers** will look like deeper into the World Cup period – and see if they bear any resemblance to claims seemingly to the contrary. As an aside, it’s always interesting, too, to see “not beer” being categorized as “beer” to prop up actual beer. Do we expect beer trade consulto-experto-amateur MDs to issue responses claiming again that the numbers are rigged? Of course we do.

Speaking of “less than beer”, the continuing trend to make sure beer is less than beer continues as Jeff reports from the front lines of craft’s battle to emulate 1970s macro beers:

We certainly have abundant evidence that Americans love low(ish)-alcohol beer: most of the beer America drinks is light beer. There’s a fair amount of evidence that calories are a big part of drinkers’ motivation. Getting a beer down below ten calories an ounce really helps move product. Breweries post calories as prominently as they do alcohol content right on the package. So again, on paper, all of this suggests a potential new market in 3% beers. And yet, it just doesn’t quite make sense to me. I’ve been pondering this for some days now, trying to figure out where the disconnect lies. It has to do with price. Are Americans really going to pay $12-14 a six-pack to buy a 3% beer so they can drink three or four beers when they could buy a 5% beer at the same price point, drink two or three and save money.

Sounds like the consequence free marketing futurists (a separate but related class compared to consulto-experto-amateur MDs mentioned above) the have been let out again. But, as Jeff said, why pay more for less? Seems like a downward spiral. Do all these brand extensions and small shift variants bolster or weaken the trade? Is it possible that poor decision making has contributed to a consumer confusion that has turned into disinterest?

Perhaps relatedly, this is your annual reminder that if you ever hear a member of the consulto-class suggest exported beer has a great future in China as they periodically do, it might be wise to see how the wine trade has done. Consumption is at 70% of the 1995 rate of intake.  A weak long term economic forecast could well be the main drivers but nationalism and a shrinking population is at play as well. The good news is that prices have dropped for everyone else. Here’s some notes:

Note #1: Lars explains Satan’s key role in brewing.
Note #2: “…Parisians… restricted from drinking alcohol in public…”
Note #3: Craft beer slump worries craft coffee.
Note #4: Is “drink whatever you like” bad for wine?
Note #5: Gary has expanded upon his cheese spread discussion.

OK, where were we? Cheese spread? Check. Humph dead? Check. Oh, did you know that there are wine danger zones?

Wine’s danger zones include long-haul flights, gallery openings, ethnic restaurants and other miscellaneous cultural events. All situations that could be improved by a glass of the good stuff – and all situations where it will most likely remain a distant dream. The seasoned wine professional knows when they are beat and will swiftly order a beer. But if the pleasures of the grain aren’t for you, is there a way to make things more bearable?

Are there beer danger zones? Around these parts, there’s always rye and ginger when all else fails. And from the law files, we hear of trouble in Thailand for the ownership of Singha:

A multi-billion-dollar beer dynasty is being torn apart by explosive allegations of assault and a century-old law that is designed to protect parents from neglectful children. The Bhirombhakdi family founded the Singha beer company and has an estimated wealth of $US1.75 billion ($2.5 billion).  Forbes lists the family as Thailand’s 15th richest.  But allegations of sexual assault have prompted a mother to sue her own son in a rare case involving Thailand’s “ungrateful child” law.

Glad we don’t have a law under that name! Apparently it came into force in 1908 and reflects long-standing cultural values of Thailand that place strong emphasis on filial duty.

OK, enough. Some happier stories about pubs to round out the week. First, Imran Rahman-Jones has shared his experience getting view of Scotland’s play in a packed pub:

The Finch is buzzing nicely this evening. It’s warm, I can hear Friday after-work chatter from the garden as I enter, and there’s just space for one or two more tables before it’s standing room only. The sun is setting and the candles on each table are already lit, gently flickering and ready to welcome the night. There’s a sense of anticipation – not just for the start of the weekend, but because Scotland are playing in the World Cup. We manage to squeeze into a tiny table inside what must have been a storage cupboard at some point – The Finch is full of reminders of previous pubs in this building – but soon move for a better view of a screen. 

And for Pellicle, we’ve been given a portrait by Fred Garratt-Stanley of a small English village enjoying a good beer revival:

There’s a train station, a post office, a tea room, and a stately home. The latter hosts Glynde’s primary claim to fame: the annual Glyndebourne opera festival, held since 1934, which sees scores of out-of-towners wearing black tie descend on the village every summer.  Apart from that high-cultural aberration, this is twee English country living personified. On paper, Glynde really shouldn’t have one of the most exciting small rural beer scenes in the country. But it does.

And, finally, Katie on holiday in Spain has found her beer:

In all of our 330ml can adventures so far on this journey, the best by far has been Voll-Damm by Estrella Damm. We’ve been trying to buy local fridge-stockers where we can, but when you’re in Catalunya, that’s actually Estrella. So don’t berate me, this is me being accurate. You may be forgiven for thinking I’m on the payroll over at Damm. It’s true that they sent me to Primavera last year, and showed me around their brewery—just as Guinness did some years ago. I’m not too bothered about any perceived association with them because until I hear otherwise (and I do ask) Damm seem like a big beer company that actually looks after their people. And crucially: I like Estrella. It’s one of my favourite “everyday” beers, and it’s why I’ve chosen to promote them a couple of times. I don’t do that with brands I don’t rate. Whether you believe me or not, Voll-Damm is a delicious beer.

I’m convinced. If you are one of those who rummage in my recycling blue box by the curb in the middle of the night, you will find cans with DAB. A well placed tasty beer on a hot summer afternoon. What’s your version of the guilty pleasure big beer brew?

As you think on that over the week to come, please take time to check out Boak and Bailey posting on Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And do look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format.  Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword remains on pause but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube as well as the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*I do know they are Neil and Larry… but which is which. And the image is from a 2005 post on the old alt blog Gen x at 40 where I had a bunch of other k0o-Kee Canada Day photos. Thank God for the Wayback Machine.
**And other data sources.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week We Are All Cape Verdean

We need a new anthem:

Let’s root root root for Cape Verde
If they don’t win it’s a shame…

Actually, that tie will do just fine. Just fine. Still, Uruguay has have the best strip. We remember the Graf Spee after all. Isn’t it fun how many old simmering bigotries and grudges come out during international sporting events! Speaking of fabulous cups, Lars shared that image this week: “… carved by a Norwegian farmer… The king bought this mug in 1798 for 60 riksdaler, an absolutely wild amount, equivalent to roughly 10 cows.” The Scandenavian bovine value (SBV) scale to the rescue… again.

How many cows is the World Cup worth? [Ed.: “…crickets...”] Studies have shown that a beer at the stadium might cost you about one-third of a cow. On the other hand, it is pretty clear what inviting the Tartan Army to your town is worth to breweries:

The Tartan Army chartered dozens of school buses from Boston and Providence to get to the game. On the ride with the Scots were many father-son pairs, kilts and even more beer. Organizers brought 10,000 cans of Narragansett Lager for the Foxborough-bound buses from Providence alone. None were left by the end of the night.

Wow. The call has gone out for an extra 100,000 more! My own wee cousin** is out there representing the fam. Seems like the Army is working hard to beat the English in Spain in terms of fluid input, according to one French news source. And Ruvani has also been on the World Cup beat and shared the thoughts of opinions of commentator Roger Bennett what makes for a great fitba focused bars in the US including this good point:

Bennett is keen to emphasize that there are aspects of great American soccer bars that are both unique and essential to the U.S. In other countries, “you commune with fans of your team and everyone else is the enemy, but in the U.S. most fans are young and have come in since the Premier League started being broadcast by NBC in 2013,” he said. “Their discovery and passion have created a unique culture that’s not divided into us-against-you.” This difference means that bars must be ready for and welcoming to multiple fan groups, fostering an inclusive spirit. 

Speaking of welcoming, Ontario’s fading but venerable former retail monopoly The Beer Store is doing something very unusual the days – opening two stores as it closes many more. But its doing so seemingly primarily to receive back more empties as much as to sell beer:

The Beer Store has closed dozens of retail locations across the province over the past two years, citing changing market conditions and the expansion of beer sales to convenience stores, more grocery stores and gas stations. Many of these retailers do not accept empty container returns… As Ontario’s largest beer retailer, The Beer Store recently unveiled a new “Take back what’s yours” campaign aimed to boost awareness of the province’s deposit return system. A recent analysis by the Toronto Star suggested Ontario consumers lost more than $60 million in unredeemed deposit refunds last year by placing empty alcohol containers in their blue box or the trash instead of returning them to The Beer Store.

And Stan has issued his latest Hop Queries and you are all well advised to govern yourselves accordingly. And he’s used a concept that’s been unfamiliar in the brewing world in recent years – stabilized:

After reducing acreage from 60,872 acres in 2021 to 41,654 in 2025 (that’s 19,218 acres), American farmers indicate that total acreage will remain basically the same in 2026 (at 41,642; 12 fewer acres than in 2025, less than three-tenths of one percent lost). The German Hop Growers Association reports that farmers will harvest 5.8% fewer acres in 2026 after slicing 6.5% in 2025 — leaving 44,117 in 2026, compared to 50,136 in 2024…. It should not be a surprise that a press release from the German hop growers about acreage states, “The mood in the hop market is currently poor” and “the oversupply of aroma hops had made production cuts necessary for several years.” 

In amongst some cheeky chat about NA beer, Andreas Krennmair stood up and sensibly explained with semi-cited research why it is that German NA beers are better than elsewhere in the world:

I’m sure the technology will eventually cross the ocean. From what I’ve been told, all the Bavarian breweries launching new and better NA beers basically comes from one guy’s PhD thesis at the Technical University of Munich at Weihenstephan. I’m not sure the thesis has been published yet, but… here’s one paper from the same guy about the impact of different NA production methods on aroma compounds. 

Here’s Dr. Guy’s paper. I like the acronym they use too, NAB. Suits my feels as a consumer some times. Andreas also shared the best beery gross out of the tournament so far, the drink to accompany an early match:

If you’re looking for the perfect drink for today’s Germany-Curaçao match, here’s a 1970’s beer cocktail for you: Isarwasser. In a 1 litre Maßkrug, combine a bottle of Bavarian wheat beer, half a litre of orange juice or orange soda (e.g. Fanta), and a shot of Blue Curaçao liqueur. Enjoy!

I’m all for fighting the hegemony of homigeneity but… I was sure he was joking. Here, however, is independent evidence of this crime against the clinky and the drinky.

Matty C had a good go at the numbers behind the lack of a GBBF this year, the reasons for which have become clearer with time:

… attendance was way down, with 13,000 people attending over five days – far short of the event’s apparent 23,000 target…  both the main GBBF and its winter equivalent have been cancelled. According to one discussion on its members internal forum, the festival made a staggering £320,000 loss. This feels significant, because you don’t plan the largest beer festival of the year and then move on after losing more than a quarter of a million pounds. A loss of this magnitude isn’t made simply by mismanagement – it’s gross negligence.

Wow. Wowsie-wow-wow even. Knut‘s written about another sort of challenge facing those in the trade – finding yourself brwing quality niche brewing in an isolated location. He noted a few interesting strategies to deal with that reality:

Carl brews beers inspired by Belgian classic styles, usually with malt from the Trøndelag region and with Belgian organic hops. I am lucky to have a designated driver, as we sit down to sample a few of his saisons. It’s a tough market these days, there are some beer bars in Oslo and Trondheim who sell his beers, but not many. He has teamed up with a local company that sells high end salmon fishing in the nearby Gaula river, probably a wise choice with guests paying good money for a quality product. The lower alcohol beers are available directly from the brewery, get in touch with him if you are passing by.

As you consider your route to the Gaula River, here some notes:

Note #1: this vid on UK pub habits also is about Canadianness.**
Note #2: “…BUD stock up 29% yr-to-date…”
Note #3: Ron on Scottish Sweet Stout.
Note #4: “…stuck in 2016 for a moment… Just like DogHouse Edinburgh.“

Question. Horse brasses – history or heritage?*** Boak and Bailey were on the case this week:

Newly built pubs on housing estates and new towns across Britain, desperately in need of instant personality, also often came with horse brasses fitted as standard. For example, when Scottish & Newcastle built The Moorcock at Peterlee, County Durham, in 1973, to provide a “tinge of country atmosphere… in a tasteful blend of ancient and modern” they fitted it out with “beams and timbers and rustic brickwork and horse brasses, sporting prints, and game birds”. (Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 November 1973.)

So a bit of each. And Alistair has been back home in the UK and has started sharing his thoughts on what he’s missed, starting with a day in Windsor waiting for his flight on to Inverness:

I had been to Windsor all of once previously, but I may have been about 12 years shy of being able to drink legally, and as such I don’t remember much about that visit. There is though a family legend/inside joke that at some point whilst wandering near the castle, I asked my parents why it wasn’t finished yet given the scaffolding that surrounded many of the buildings. I was then somewhat keen to walk by the castle to check up on progress in the intervening 40 odd years – there was still scaffolding to be seen, still not finished then I guess. It was getting pretty bloody warm by this point of the day, even though it was only 9.30 by now, so I took myself off along the river to get to my first planned stop of my tour of the town’s hostelries.

Alistair, being the good saintly lad he is, was well advised to leave out the visit to the city if the latest edition of London Beer City where Will Hawkes explains something I, also being a good saintly lad****, was not aware of… the class of establishment known as the strip pub:

Now – a bit like the Ploughman’s Lunch – strip pubs have almost entirely disappeared. This week the owners of The Nag’s Head in Aldgate submitted plans to Tower Hamlets council which would see this long-established strip pub turned into a “traditional pub” and 24-room hotel…. For younger Londoners – who make up the bulk of my readers, naturally – it must seem incredible that so many pubs once featured women taking off their clothes, but the past was a different country. What was most remarkable, actually, wasn’t the stripping – that still exists, albeit largely in glitzier surroundings – but the low-key, unglamorous, seedy-in-a-specifically-British-way nature of it. No stage, no pole, pounds-in-a-pint-pot for payment… Crucially, these strippers moved whilst naked…

Heavens. Naked people just wandering around the pub among the drinkers? Yik. These places probably reeked of Isarwasser. Speaking of another form of the unfortunately unsavoury, Lesley Chesterman wrote about criticism this week:

When reviewing dishes like that, you can’t lie and say everything was great just to keep things positive. I saw this in my time as a critic as well, this idea of being “mean” when criticizing professionals cooking. People obviously focus on the negative side of criticism, but the truth is, it can be beneficial too. How will any chef improve if you don’t give it to them straight? And how will we uphold a high level of gastronomy here in Quebec if we’re all afraid to call out mediocrity? It is constructive criticism after all, and the goal in cooking should always be excellence. Undercooked frog’s legs and rice are not excellence. 

Agreed. In one of the sillier examples of forecasting yet, the International Wine and Spirits Record (now IWSR) has predicted what the world will be like in 2035… without any reference to the coming global resource wars:

According to the findings, the stabilisation in global volume from 2031 will be driven by two main factors: a “substantial rebalancing” of the global market, and continued growth in the worldwide drinking age population. Over the next decade, the global beverage alcohol market is, according to the analysis, anticipated to be “shifting away from China, North America and Europe to India, South America and Africa”. From a global perspective, this is said to be “most clearly illustrated by looking at consumption by servings” with the research highlighting that “the different serving size volumes of different categories” is a factor to consider.

Serving size? I might have thought fire spewing drones sweeping the landscape into a hell zone might have been a more important factor in the future to come… but I’m like that.

On a similar sort of standard, some attention was drawn to a PR infographic calling itself a summary but being held out as a research study about the NAB drinking habits of the British. Example: “New research from non-alcoholic brewery Athletic Brewing Company and KAM Insight shows that 94% of alcohol-free beer drinkers also consume alcohol.” There seems to be no statement of the research’s definitions, the methodology or the manner in which data was collected. Noce. I’d move to know the criteria for establishing whether one is or is not a “highly active, performance led consumer“! The 94% to 6% split on “alcohol-free drinker” habits is a head scratcher. Is anyone who ever had a NAB included in the 94%? One wag commented that it was akin to this sort of statement:

The Benson & Hedges Wellness Institute reports filtered cigarettes offer a smoother more pleasurable smoking experience.

Oh. That was me! Still, this sort of effort seems to discredit itself from the start. By the way, I’ve been “Zebra Striping” regularly for about four decades. It’s called water.

There you go. That’s enough for now. Another jam packed week in beer and brewing… and the World Cup. As we wade through more and more matches, please take time to check out Boak and Bailey posting on Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And do look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format including this week’s wisdom: “People need to get out from behind their phones, go to a bar and talk to each other.” Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter (but always never with this week’s NSFW warning) and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword remains on pause but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube as well as the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*The young lad possibly as illustrated on a FB page name of The Boston Calendar. I tihnk that the the City Hall plaza if I remember correctly.
**H/T Gladman. Note the dropping of the terminal consonant at the ends of syllabels.
***Heritage being that approved part of history promoted for present purposes.
****Apparently, according to a key word search, I’ve never told you how at the dinner table one evening when I was about 15 my mother out of the blue advised me “oh, and if you ever think of going to one of those stropper places think of me up there!” She may have pointed her fork at me as she said that. I never have cross the doorstep.

A Magnificently Monarchist League-less Mid-May Beery News Note Extravaganza For Victoria Day Weekend

Victoria Day weekend.* A most welcome springtime Canadian holiday about something and someone not a lot of Canadians take much time thinking about but, still, many don’t mind it – as long as we don’t pay the bills. And more birds are back as my new pal, one of a pair of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks proved. Aaaannnnd the weather is looking warmer than earlier in the week, which is good. Those are all good reasons for a long weekend in my books. Me, I shall sing the fabulous song about her by the The Kinks to myself as I go about doing nothing all holiday Monday:

Canada to IndiaAustralia to CornwallSingapore to Hong KongFrom the west to the eastFrom the rich to the poorVictoria loved them all

Speaking of the Victorian, first up we have Chris Dyson of Real Ale, Real Music starts us off this week with a pretty detailed description of the interior architecture at the Agricultural Inn of Penrith:

…one of the finest surviving Victorian shuttered and panelled bar serveries in the country with working sash screens which reach right up to the ceiling. It is two-sided, of three bays length, two bays on the return, and has a curved bay at the corner. The five main bays have lower sliding screens with the corner bay and upper ones having fixed glazed panels. The bar-back fitting is mainly old with some wood and modern colourful stained glass.

My main concern would be whacking my forehead on the screen but he didn’t have good luck with the beer on the day… but at least he got full pints. Does the average beer drinker even care if they get a full serving anymore? Stan guided us to this story which lead to this study out of HaaaVaaad which may indicate little consumer pressure to pour correctly:

The investigation began in November 2025 in Harvard Square, Cambridge—about three miles from home, a short bicycle ride or an easy trip on the bus. The first round of measurements surveyed the pubs of the Square: Charlie’s Kitchen, Grendel’s, Felipe’s, Toscano’s, The Sea Hag, Russell House, and McCarthy’s… The original plan was to survey all the squares of Cambridge, but as the investigation progressed the strategy shifted to breweries. McCarthy’s, in Porter Square, was the one measurement taken outside Harvard Square before that pivot. The realization came quickly. Most bars in Harvard Square used the ubiquitous shaker pint glass, and it was clearly a short pour by design. Charlie’s Kitchen gave me one as full as could be—right to the brim—and it still came up short. 

Hmm… that’s one way to make an extra buck. Relatedly, does the beer drinker care if pub chain profits are somewhat moderated? Not eliminated. Just not earning as great a profit. The alternative would be paying more, right?

Pubco JD Wetherspoon has warned profits could come in slightly below expectations after a fresh surge in costs hit the pub giant, despite continued growth in sales. The group, which operates 794 managed pubs and 21 franchise sites across the UK, said it had experienced “substantial increases in costs” in recent months, putting pressure on margins even as trading remained broadly resilient. Chairman and founder Sir Tim Martin (above) said the rise in employment-related and regulatory costs could result in “profits slightly below market expectations”, marking a cautious tone from one of the UK’s best-known pub operators.

The same story could be shared as a good news piece: “Wethering the Storm!” Speaking of moderation in all things (except for the seating) Retired Martin has also been avoiding the inflationary effects of today’s economy in London reasonably successfully:

… the Pelt Trader under the arches at Cannon Street is possibly the ugliest pub in London, though the Spoons in the station runs it close. It wasn’t heaving today, which presumably is because Thursday is the new Friday but Wednesday is the old Thursday, or something profound. You’ve no doubt read about the £10 pint in London, which is nothing as Sheffield has £27 pints; Sheffield leads in all things. Well, the pint of Southwark Porter here was £5.20, which would have been even more of a bargain if it had that last degree of crispness it patently lacked…

As beer in pubs moves up in price point for those paying less attention, an interesting observation by guest writer Caroline Lamb at Everyday Drinking in response to a piece in Wine Spectator on Gen Z and wine:

…the elitism framing is just lazy—a tired recitation of wine culture’s snobby past. The real barrier is economic. Wine is expensive to experiment with on the average young person’s income in the age of inflation, tariffs, crushing housing costs, and student debt that undermines discretionary spending in ways previous generations simply didn’t face. That is a fundamentally different problem than intimidation, and conflating them leads the industry exactly where it keeps ending up: Apologizing for wine’s depth to people whose real problem isn’t that wine is too elitist—it’s that it’s too expensive to gamble on.

Ten years ago or so, craft beer was doing its best to go in the opposite direction, creating complexities that weren’t really there** to manufacture a boosted price point and all they got in the end was sell outs and years of samey fruit gak IPAs.  See also premium name brand boredom. Will US craft beer learn? Or… happy stories! *** Perhaps as illustration is a piece B+B drew my eye to in their footnotes last weekend, California-based Sayre Piotrkowski arguing folk complain too much without understanding the realities:

If beer is consistently framed as a struggling industry, a re-consolidating market, or a category in search of its next gimmick, then it becomes easier to believe that our best days are behind us. But that is simply not true.  The quality of American beer has never been higher, and it has never been easier for consumers to access beer in brewery-fresh condition. The same is true upstream: hops, malt, yeast, and process have all improved in ways that would have been hard to imagine just two decades ago.

graph showing by 2024 airline travel was up 5% compared to pre-pandemic levelThe problem with that reach for the happy story is that fewer problem actually care. That’s not negativity. It’s reality. By the end of this year US craft production may well be down over 20% from 2019 and it’s far too late to blame the pandemic. There is no analogy to the airline industry’s rebound as illustrated by the graph under the thumbnail to the right. Somethings just go away. There may be a welcome upturn one day soon but that will not be based on replicating the factors that led to the downturn.

One way good beer could boost revenues is to go old school – as in Sammy Pepys old – and reintegrate beer back into the workplace. For Esquire, Eric Fransisco explores the opportunity for NA beer as part of a rebalanced work experience:

Despite NA beer’s explosion in popularity, I never thought about drinking it during work hours, let alone at the office. It seemed harmless on the surface. But something changes when you march past your bosses in the mid-afternoon with a Heineken in hand. Suddenly, I felt 13 again, absconding to my room with a nudie mag in my jacket. Little did I realize that what I was doing wasn’t all that out of the ordinary.

To be fair, I have never assocated porn and being a tween with NA beer. But, unlike the author, I also don’t sweat consuming the 69 calories per can which convinced him to give up the habit. Also considering a balance act, Pete Brown’s column this week was about the ups and downs of the manners of those who bring dogs into a UK pub and shared some clear guidance to why its not always a great idea:

Dog owners are also guilty of forgetting that some people in the pub might be allergic to their little darlings (Captain was and Mildrid is non-shedding and hypoallergenic). If you’re sitting there enjoying a pint and suddenly you’re sneezing and your eyes are streaming, your haven from the world has become a hostile environment. Ditto if you’ve discovered too late in the pub garden that an owner forgot to bring poo bags. Perhaps the most persuasive argument I’ve heard against dogs in pubs comes from a publican I spoke to recently. “I don’t like dogs and I don’t like kids,” he said. “We allow both, but neither are coming to the bar to buy drinks. 

She watched as terriers pissed on handbags left of a pub floor and thought it charmingNot being a fan of dogs, my face having an encounter with a husky forty years ago, I could offer an additional category but I would add one more argument against them which was shared by Clarissa Dickson Wright in her book Spilling the Beans**** at page 130 which you can see under that thumbnail. Oddly it seems to be presented as a jolly positive.

Note #1: A discussion of XPA.
Note #2: Brew a Victorian Mild.
Note #3: Knut in Stockholm.
Note #4: Toronto’s Left Field Brewery makes the New York Times.

There are questions being raised which may lead to pointy fingers, too, about the proposal to stop unlimited 24 hour drinking at UK airports:

This week Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, made a bold suggestion. What if, he said, we applied the law that exists outside airports, inside airports? “I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning,” he said. Too often, he said, his flight attendants had to deal with drunk passengers. “Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?” Well, Lindzi Percival, 34, for one. The bride-to-be — who swears that is her real name — has arrived from Oxford, bound for Tenerife. She is wearing a wig with a bald patch, and is using a wheelchair thanks to a drinking-related injury at a recent wedding. The pint, for her, is a signal that the holiday has begun. “You start getting relaxed at the airport,” she says. “Also, it helps you not to feel silly wearing this outfit.”

Or wearing that wheelchair, Lindzi! Note also how the word “needs” is doing a lot of work up there.  The UK opposition shadow transport secretary, called it all “slightly draconian” which is sorta like saying slightly murderous if one knows one’s Draco. Wetherspoons’ profitable cash receipts depositor-in-chief, Timbo, is nearly apoplectic, describing the plan as “an overreaction”!!! Lordy, what language…

Conversely perhaps – and certainly calmer – from Imran Rahman-Jones at Edinburgh Pub Reviews, we have a keen eye on what makes a good pub like the Iona Bar special:

…there’s no real ale here. In fact, I can only really see two drinks wherever I look: It seems we’re all either seeing to a portly, white-haired Guinness, or a rakish tower of Tennents, its loops of bubbles excitedly rising. The lady sitting at the bar gets up to put something on the jukebox and Lola Young starts playing. The music causes everyone to raise their voices a few decibels and the atmosphere livens. It’s nothing too raucous, still being early in the evening before the football’s started on TV. But we’re all in a good mood sharing this living room-style space. The decoration is limited to a dart board, a few tasteful framed beer posters on the white walls and a swirly red and yellow pub carpet.

Ahh, that’s better. Plus, a very deft placement of the word “swirly” if you ask me. And, finally, just a reminder that there will be an edition of The Session next month celebrating Martyn Cornell’s final book Porter and Stout: A Complete History. Boak and Bailey shared the news in an update last month and this is another heads up that you need to get your thoughts organized in preparation.

That is it for another week. What will havoc will the new rules cause for Victoria Day celebrations this year? Will the North American edition of the World Cup wise up and lighten the burden placed on fans in response to low interest? Will I finally stop running the furnace? For these and many other stories ,hceh in next week. In the meantime, please check out Boak and Bailey who are posting every Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword remains on pause but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube as well as the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*Previous observations on the observations from 2025, 2024, 2019, 2018, 2011, 2008
**“Please sir, may I have some more off-flavour seminars? I’ll pay…“
***For all the alt definitions of craft, this is a new one: “…some weirdo somewhere is the only person carefully preserving the memory of a particular technique or flavor profile is the essence of craft…“
****She of Two Fat Ladies Fame. A book that will convince you that you may not have an alcohol problem after you read of what gin meant to her from age 25 to 40 or so. Which may lead you to believe terriers pissing on the clientele is a good thing for a pub.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Sunny Yet Still Cold But Not Standoffish Beery News Notes For Early February

February flies by. That’s just the way it is. Good time to take stock. Good time to eat the little chocolates filled with beer brought by a visitor from Belgium. Early review: the “…chocolate is dry and dark so a lack of sweetness in the kriek left it a bit stark but the Palm was that bit richer.” Not sure I am chowing down on these outside of a winter like this but all quite a bit better than expected. Paid endorsements welcome. Winter was also on the mind and under the feet of Jordan as he wrote about the weather at the end of last month or perhaps just his efforts to get about in it:

Monday, Jan 26th: The deep freeze is well and truly upon us, and looking at the forecast for the next couple of weeks, it looks like we’re in four-layer territory. If your primary mode of transport and exercise is walking, then -25 with the wind chill does you no favours. Besides, the sidewalks are not shovelled in any meaningful way. Dry and cold is a great combination to ensure you’re reminded of the various injuries you’ve had over the years. Sometimes I get the unprompted sense memory of an ankle ligament rolling.

Also looking at the world as it exists below the knee, Stan shared some research he has done on the word Hopfenstopfen and its relation to a certain pair of boots:

The shoes were worn by a worker processing hops. When a bag was filled, a worked would jump into it, stomping down the hops to make sure the bag was full. When I dug this out, I wondered if these could have been called Hopfenstopgen boots. That’s because in Hop Queries Vol. 4, No. 6, I wrote about dry hopping in Germany in the 19th century. That was called Hopfenstopfen, which can be translated at hop plug. Simon Moosleitner, a subscriber in Germany, suggested there is more to think about…

I won’t spoil the fun but speaking of getting the boot in, late last week in VinePair, Dave Infante wrote about the effect of the homicidal ICE intrusion into Minneapolis on the beer trade in the city including this from Drew Hurst of Bauhaus Brew Labs:

You can see it in the firm’s sales figures. Taproom sales are down 40 percent compared to January 2025. “It’s a wildly unsustainable thing,” says Hurst. “None of us signed up to have to live through a federal occupation and figure out how to run a business at the same time.” Not that it was easy before the onslaught: Bauhaus wrapped this month last year down around 30 percent from January 2024. Craft brewers have been struggling to find their way for years in the face of shifting demand, new competition, and rising costs. In Minneapolis and Saint Paul, they’re doing all that with the MAGA jackboot on their necks.

At first I thought it was an odd angle but then realized it illustrates the principle that beer prefers peace as well as how quickly that peace can be lost. Dave also shared in his email updates that he was told to “stick to beer” and that some paying subscribers to his newsletter Fingers canceled their subscriptions. Perhaps if those folk didn’t “stick to” amateur neo-fascism it might be better. Funny how the “stay in your lane” crowd don’t show up for this sort of politicization within the pub:

A beer tap labelled “Rachel Thieves” has appeared on the bar of a Hertfordshire pub protesting Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves introducing crippling tax hikes. Anyone ordering the beer will receive only water. The Green Dragon in Flaunden, which is run by publican Chris Ghazarian, has added the spoof cask ale pump badge as a protest – telling customers that pints of this particular beer are “very bitter” and cost more than anything else on the bar and anyone ordering it will receive only water. Speaking to the British national press, Ghazarian said: “They find it hilarious. I obviously don’t make them pay for it.” 

On the other side of the planet, a very difference approach has been taken in Australia:

The Albanese government is seeking to put a hold on increases to the beer excise for the first time in 40 years. The Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 seeks to pause the indexation of customs duty rates for draught beer for two years from August 1, 2025. Currently, the beer excise is indexed twice yearly to stay in line with the consumer price index, with Australian beer, wine, and spirit importers and producers saddled with some of the highest rates in the world…  Addressing the House of Representatives, Anthony Albanese said he was “proud” to introduce the Bill, “one of the most popular commitments that we took to the election”.

Boak and Bailey also wrote about another sort of pressure to conform but the context was less confrontational – just writing about their thoughts on a craft brewery:

Maybe that post was a bit too snarky, with hindsight, but it certainly didn’t warrant trolling impersonation accounts on Twitter, general abuse that last for months, or a stalking campaign. That was, as you might imagine, quite traumatising, and probably did make us nervous about being critical of breweries in the supposedly cuddly craft brewing sector. It didn’t stop us, but it had a ‘chilling effect’ on how freely and frequently we felt able to express ourselves. It’s easy to say “Don’t mince your words” but minced words are less likely to lead to sleepless nights. We can totally see why some people might decide it’s not worth the trouble, and certainly wouldn’t judge them.

On reflection, I have probably benefitted from folk starting with the assumption that I am a bit of an arsehole. I lose my sleep over other things.

Note #1: Take a news event and ram it like a square peg in a round hole.
Note #2: Martin at another fabulous pub, this time inordinately bright.

Ron TV continues to impress. This week he’s been presenting an extended interview with Mitch Steele and, like the comment maker Oscar, I am drawn to the brief introductory electro-thrash almost as much as the subjects of these interviews. Part 1 of the interview is over thirty-seven minutes long with Part 2 clocking in at thirty-three. Set aside an hour or so of your time. More if, like me, you keep replaying the first six seconds and that mesmerizing theme music over and over and over.  Good multi-media breakout for Ron – even if it likely doesn’t pay the bills. One a similar note, Ray of B+B on the prospects of a career in writing:

This is excellent. Depressing, but excellent. My response has been to give up, basically, and accept that writing is a thing I do on the side, while something else pays the bills. I also like that thing, so it’s fine, but I get sad thinking what I could have achieved if writing was my full-time job.

Perhaps also on the theme of less is more, Guinness 0 also continues to impress me and Pete‘s brief review does not surprise:

There are many great 0.5 per cent stouts from small indie brewers, but Guinness 0.0, which took years to develop, is indistinguishable from the real thing.

I noticed one thing when writing this. It is branded as “Guinness 0” in Canada but “Guinness 0.0” in the UK. Why? Is it a different formulation here and there? Whatever it is, I am finally seeing a point to NA beers. But things will be going in a slightly different direction in UK neighbourhood if one permit applicant has their way:

The shop also sought an amendment to the condition currently imposed on the licence… to “No super-strength beer, lagers or ciders of 6.5% ABV (alcohol by volume) or above shall be sold at the premises with the exception of Dragon Stout and Guinness Export beers.” The applicant’s agent, Frank Fender, told Bedford Borough Council’s licensing sub-committee (Thursday, January 29), that these “super strength” beers are not usually the “street drinkers’ choice of drink”. “They are they are widely consumed by members of the Afro-Caribbean community, and obviously this shop wants to be inclusive,” he said. This claim was backed up by Chris Hawks, the council’s licensing compliance and enforcement officer. He said: “What Frank says about Dragon Stout and Guinness Export is spot on.

For years, the word authentic was bounced around in the face of glitter and haze. That plan in Bedford sounds like authenticity to me. Similarly perhaps, crossing the Atlantic, Matty C has written some notes on the US beer scene for the supplier Get ‘Er Brewed‘s webpage and found something of a revivial going on:

Nostalgia is one play many breweries seem to be using. During my time in both Portland and in Colorado, (the latter of which I visit regularly to see family,) I noticed that many drinkers seem to be choosing the classics made by more established breweries. Allagash White, the Belgian style witbier from the brewery of the same name wasn’t just on tap everywhere in Portland, but it felt like everyone was drinking it too. The beer carries the kind of hushed reverence that money can’t buy, and demonstrated to me why establishing a core beer as part of your brewery’s identity is essential for longevity.

This is quite a reversal as, you will recall, in 2019 flagships were considered a dead concept: the “concept of a flagship in almost all ways maps to an earlier and obsolete way of thinking.” Futurisms rarely stand up to audit but it’s good to know, in an era too concerned with branding and other misinformations, that identity in the form of what is in the glass has made a come back. One never knows what is really going on otherwise. As with the news about the bills left unpaid and the suppliers left in the lurch by Rogue, James Beeson in The Grocer shared that the level of insolvency at failed Keystone Brewing had hit almost £15 million. Heavens! Remember when we all spoke of community?

Sticking with things in the USA, the feature in Pellicle is a portrait of Eckhart Beer Co. in NYC by Ariana DiValentino with its focus on central Euro lagers and foods that share the same theme:

The menu focuses primarily on Central European dishes that match the beers’ origins. There is a brat plate, and spaetzle gratin, and kartoffelpuffer (German-style potato pancakes), which you can order fried in oil or beef tallow. But there’s also a falafel dog, an Italian cold cuts sandwich, and a Moroccan-spiced ratatouille with vegan lemon yogurt. The variety of cultural influences feels very reflective of the brewery’s New York City context. “I wanted to offer food that supports the beer. It didn’t have to be Central European per se, but that felt like a natural foundation,”

Sounds like a great place for all. Not so in Japan where one establishment has embraced ageism:

The concept of age restrictions and minimum requirements is commonplace around the world. But have you ever heard of an establishment imposing a maximum age limit? Now, a Tokyo chain pub has set a ban on older customers – in order to try to maintain the raucous, fun atmosphere for which it is known. Tori Yaro Dogenzaka is an izakaya (an affordable Japanese pub) situated in Japan’s capital city. This year, the establishment propped up a sign outside the entrance, informing customers of the new rules. The sign said: ‘Entrance limited to customers between the ages of 29 and 39. This is an izakaya for younger generations. Pub for under 40s only.’

I wasn’t wanting to go there anyway. Screw them. That’s it. As as I sulk in a mode Japonais, please check out Boak and Bailey who continue to post every Saturday. adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

Your Happy Merry And Even Supportive Beery News Notes For The Week Of Blue Monday

How does it feel? That’s what Blue Monday asks of you. Katie was particularly aggrieved as last Monday was her birthday. So first of all –  happy birthday! Apparently, Blue Monday is perhaps a floater with not 100% agreement on which date it is.* Like Easter but without the medieval calculation to give some assurance as with the death date of Jesus. So you have options and need advice. Fortunately I am full of good advice on this topic. Me, I prefer to celebrate what I call “Bleu Monday” on which I eat a lot of cheese. Also, it seems to also have been originally a term that in Germany was “der blaue Montag.” and then United States when workers told the boss to shove it, as we read in 1838:

Drink till all is blue. Cracking bottles till all is blue.

Blue meant the haze apparently. Or perhaps the slightly wicked as in “blue laws.” I dunno. But I like that it also has it’s own anthem, even if it’s a wee bit Dieter Sprockets.

Beer Marketers’ Insights have a note about a little blip that could be the beginning of a bit of a bump for beer:

Pretty much everything was comin’ up roses in beer and beyond for the first week of the new year in Circana multi-outlet + convenience channels. Beer, wine and spirits all grew for latest week thru Jan 4, 2026 (including Dec 29-31). Can’t glean much from just one week, but interestingly, craft beer’s 4.4% $$ gain outpaced total beer (+2.9%) for period. Multiple top craft fams saw sales pop for the week including New Belgium, Sierra Nevada and Elysian each up low double-digits by $$, Lagunitas up 8.5% and Bell’s (+5%), Shiner (+4%) and Blue Moon (+3%) up low-to-mid singles.

And these US market numbers exclude non-alcoholic beers so it’s more beery than we often seen in the booster stats announcements. But they could also indicate that fine spirit of “fuck it!” that one finds in a time of crisis. Speaking of which, can you write about the crisis in US hard liquor sales without mentioning the tariffs that have effectively cut out a massive share of your customer bases? VinePair seems to think so:

And though distilleries share similarities with other business closures — from layoffs to managing creditors — there’s uniquely challenging inventory to deal with: barrels of aging whiskey. “They’re a little bit of a problematic asset because they can only be sold to someone who has the license to hold them,” says Will Schragis, managing partner at WellSpun Consulting. “Barrels are in-bond, so they’re non-tax paid. There are only certain licensees and other companies that can acquire them.”

No mention of, you know, lobbying for free trade as a recourse makes me wonder if there is a ex-nay on the t-word going on, lest one draw wrathful attention away from Greenland. H/T to Jeff. It’s all about getting the spend in country it seems and Americans are doing their part:

Surveys have shown that consumers feel pessimistic about the economy as they worry about tariffs and the jobs market. More than half of voters believe President Trump is “losing the battle against inflation”, according to a Harvard Caps/Harris poll of 2,204 registered voters released last month. Yet despite the economic gloom, data suggests that spending has risen across all income groups.

Mikey Seay shared a few thoughts that are not unrelated to this moment:

It’s the price. I struggle with the price of NA and low ABV beers. This is my Dry January issue. I can get behind drying out for a month. Or (what I am trying) focusing on drinking lower ABV beers. But there is a hidden suck. Low alcohol/no alcs are priced the same as regular beers, sometimes even double. It’s hard for me to get over that. It’s like, I am getting ripped off, and I have a hard time shaking that. But I must. I know it costs a brewery close to the same to make a NA or low beer, so they gotta charge the same. And that cost trickles down to the stores and bars. So I gotta get over myself there..  Enjoy my low ABV beer, and don’t be a baby about what I am paying for it. I must do this for myself and the business of beer.

One must spend. Do one’s part. Think of England and all that. One of things I appreciate locally is that Guinness 0 is $11.95 at the LCBO and the regular draught is $13.50. Trouble is… no Guinness 0 to be found in the province these days. Guinness is experiencing a height of fame and fortune – and there are good reasons for that, according to Jeff:

The world is unstable, especially for young drinkers who spend half their paychecks on small apartments. Young people are threatened by more dangers than any generation in decades: huge college debt, a machine-learning era that may eliminate entire sectors of jobs, climate change, political instability, the corruption of media and the vitriol that marks society. This is not a time for risk-taking. It’s a moment when people are taking refuge in safe ports and reliable brands. Guinness isn’t alone in this appeal—the popularity of old Mexican brands follows the same script—but it has the advantage of being a 4.2% black ale that comes with a helping of theatricality and a creamy head. It is both safe and also different from other global brands.

I think some of this turns on that 4.2%. And low calories. Theme shift. Did you know you can watch RonTV?  He’s got a YouTube channel going:

You might have noticed that I’ve posted a few videos on YouTube over the last couple of days. There will be more to follow. It’s part of my drive to document and preserve. Initially, it’s mostly material that I acquired for my book on the 1970s, “Keg!”. I conducted several Zoom interviews Which I think are worth making public. Especially as the interviewees are all past retirement age. And won’t be around forever. I’m particularly keen on recording Derek Prentice’s recollections of more than half a century in brewing. Despite my urging, Derek shows no interest in writing his memoirs. But he’s happy to be interviewed and share his memories. I already have around two hours of video. And plan to record several more. Covering his time at Youngs and Fullers.

Next, Stan has published his newest edition of his monthly Hop Queries newsletter and there is much to consider. For one thing, he shared that chart of total US hop acreage which indicates the plantings of 2025 roughly match those of both 1997 and 2008, both years before further drastic drops. He also explained what BLP flash frozen hops are:

The idea began with hop farmer Jim Schlichting, who upon retiring bought 40 acres of land next to his home and began growing hops… Basically, he freezes the hops fresh off the bines and ships them in vacuum sealed packages along with reusable ice packs. The cones should remain frozen until brew day. After thawing them, brewers may use them as they would unkilned hops, replacing each pound of pellets in a recipe with four pounds of cones. Blue Lake markets the hops to both homebrewers and commercial breweries.

Whenever I read that some blog or newsletter on beer won some award or another I always think to myself “looks like Stan didn’t apply again this year.”

Note #1: to bar or to not bar ICE.
Note #2: medical thoughts from amateurs.
Note #3: the Magnus Lounge on the ferry to Orkney.
Note #4: are people outside of the beer echo chamber aware that many many others have quite happily active social lives… without beer?**

And Jordan continues to diarize*** his weeks in detail, appointments in pub and breweries plus the scribbling for magazines and books along with the totalling up of spreadsheets. He’s found that the current bottom line in Ontario is not good news:

Among the various hats I wear, I’m historian for the Ontario Craft Brewers and I get to update their timeline on a yearly basis. Since I’m updating the spreadsheet with news throughout the year, this gives me the opportunity to get paid something for the information I’m collating. …the end of the year has been brutal on breweries. Both Goose Island and Blue Moon have decided Toronto has beaten them. If the corporate guys are out, you know things are bad. It looks like 30 physical breweries closed in Ontario in 2025 and something like four contract breweries, but who cares? Some physical breweries switched to contract status and some ownership structures are more or less impossible to parse. Can you really say Indie isn’t a contract brand because of Birroteca at Eataly? 

Can you really? Shifting from the crunch of numbers to the stream of consciousness, it’s a good thing ATJ prepared us with the subtitle of his piece this week – “an amiable ramble” – as this letter of love to beer culture touches on every corner of the pub and glass experience other than the variations on paper towel dispensers one might encounter, such as:

It is about the rattling bus snaking through the countryside with a pub at the end of the journey, the train skirting the wave battered coast with a pub at the next station, or maybe two or three, the walk through the rain, the nature of the game; under the hill all of us go at the final stage of our life but beer can be used to celebrate that passing, reconnect your memory with a swig and another swig, raise a full glass to the memory of dear old matey they all chorused, may he be never forgotten, but as soon as the rain stopped they walked out of the pub never to think of their dead friend ever again, for they were alive and he wasn’t.

Poor old matey! Gone and soon forgotten. Interesting legal news if you are into doing your own thing, a category of which I appreciate many of you fall into according to your own tumble of choice. The news is that the US District Court in Northern Texas assessed submissions in a case and last Saturday (odd date for a ruling to be issued) held:

…these documents reflect a shared First Amendment vision: Free Speech, Press, Petition, and Assembly rights combine to protect and elevate the public discourse necessary to self-government—not self-expression in all forms, and certainly not the libertine “expressive conduct” absolutism envisioned by
Plaintiff Spectrum WT… Spectrum failed to enforce its intended “PG-13” format during a drag show held off campus, as professional and student performers tasked with “breaking” and “destabilizing” sexual norms engaged in sexualized conduct more akin to a striptease…

Libertines! Libertines at a university?!? Now, keep in mind what “WT stands for: West Texas A&M University. The students of which the court determined included minors. Perhaps in Amarillo the age of majority is 35. Who knows. But it did remind me of the 2003 ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada in in the case R. v. Clay:

…the liberty right within s. 7 is thought to touch the core of what it means to be an autonomous human being blessed with dignity and independence in “matters that can properly be characterized as fundamentally or inherently personal”. With respect, there is nothing “inherently personal” or “inherently private” about smoking marihuana for recreation. The appellant says that users almost always smoke in the privacy of their homes, but that is a function of lifestyle preference and is not “inherent” in the activity of smoking itself. 

Lifestyle! Thankfully, the old wack-tabac is now legal in these parts. But these matters, in case you ever wondered, one has to be on top of one’s right to have fun as one wishes. The law of the libertines’ lifestyles may need more research.

Finally, Pellicle has a short survey out about their next steps:

It’s one thing to run a magazine based on the things we like most, but to grow and bloom into something bigger, we need our readers’ insights and support. That’s why we’ve created this survey: We want to hear what you want from Pellicle in 2026, and use your input to plan our next moves. For the next two weeks, we’re opening up the floor to learn what Pellicle means to you, and where you’d like to see it go next. The 2026 Pellicle Reader Survey is just a seven-to-10-minute task, and you can easily complete it on your phone. Plus, you can opt in to win one of three prizes…

As you know, I would pay to take a survey so the whole idea of prizes is just insane!  While you are busy with that, please check out Boak and Bailey who are posting every Saturday and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*It is, however, reliably closer to the start of 2027 than the end of 2025.
**I find this eager rush to shimmy right up next to the nutster RFK Jr somewhere between bizarre and disgusting: “…In explaining that approach, officials pointed to the social context in which alcohol is often consumed – its role in bringing people together to bond and socialize, while creating shared experiences – summed up by the idea that ‘there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.’ ” That’s two possible bits of bootlickery this week. A better take on the moment.
***Boak and Bailey do something along a similar line with their regular beers of the week posts on Patreon: “Running with Spectres was also on excellent form, much to Jess’s regret the following day.“

Your Thrilling Thursday Beery News Update For The First 1/48th Of 2026

We are in the lull. Not a lot of beer news out there. Well, there are other things going on, aren’t there. Grim things. In case you didn’t realize it, we are already 1/48th into 2026. It’s practically 2027 already. (Ah, 2027… impeachment proceedings… or Greenland ablaze… err…. best not look too far into the future.) That there photo to the right? A contest submission from 2009 sent in by Jeremy Craigs of North York, Ontar-iar-iar-io. It’s a view from within the Heineken Keg Yard in Cork, Ireland. Click for the full experience.

Yes, despite the lack of beer news we all know that the first week of January has a lot to offer. You can do some looking back, like Barry did. Or looking back to a number of futures like Stan did. Or patching together what really happened on New Year’s Eve like Cookie did. Proclaiming resolutions that are bound to fail by next week… or maybe not. And, ahhhh, Dry January. Dry. January. There are those who are praising it. Others offer alternatives like Jeff who asks us to remember the pub. Alistair finds his own path:

 I am 50 years old and as might be reflected in the paucity of posts on Fuggled over the last several years, my drinking is slowing down… it was as a result of my annual physical that it became clear that certain lifestyle choices needed to be changed. I need to get healthier in order to get certain numbers more on target than they were in October. To that end, I have already lost about 22lbs/10kg, which brings me back to my justification for taking a month off away from alcohol, it being the best way to lose the festive season weight gain…  I was sat pondering the shopping trip to World Market to stock up on the German Christmas treats that transport me back to my childhood in Celle – pfeffernuss, lebkuchen, stollen – when a thought popped into my head. How about just not gaining as much weight over the holidays, and not bothering with Dry January?

Our little Alistair is growing up!  I am myself over four years into intermittent fasting and a more and more robust approach to my health, too, so I get it. Beer is not so much like cake as like icing. Mmm… a pint of icing please. No wonder it once required a doctor’s note. And it’s not even that old a thing, Dry January:

Dry January started with the group’s former deputy CEO, Emily Robinson in 2011. At the time, she was reading more about the harms of alcohol consumption – at the same time as her half marathon training. Piper says Robinson “wondered what would happen if she had a whole month not drinking” and how it could benefit her running. “Spoiler alert: It really improved her running performance, but she gained other benefits as well,” Piper adds. In 20313 Alcohol Change UK made its Dry January challenge official and trademarked the name. 

What I like about Dry January is just that. When people take a break from anything they come back to it with fresh perspective. Or they never comeback to it, preferring just that fresh new thing. ATJ takes another tack on the whole idea as he looked back on looking back with Bowie and Bing:

I have a vague memory of it and ponder on the weirdness of the Thin White Duke doing a duo with the Old Groaner. I take a brief pause from the beer but then another mouthful is embarked on, followed by more crisp coldness that refreshes the mouth and wakes up the somnambulant parts of the palate, wake up, sound the reveille! The alarm clock shock to the palate continues as I pass down the glass. Mindful drinking? I’m focusing on the beer and how comfortable I am in my chair and how it has just passed 3pm. As the glass reaches the state of emptiness, a slight suggestion of melancholia flits through my mind, Christmas and its thoughts, memories of those no longer with us, grandparents, parents, friends, dogs, health, but the crispness is still there as I come to the end of the glass and decide to head out into the gleaming lights that bring on the emerging city night. Mindful drinking.

Mindful. My mind full. Me, I am a sober daydreamer myself. And I am not doing Dry January. I just haven’t had a drink since 2025. Might have one or two this weekend. Might not. Speaking of one or two, my fellow public service lawyer Teddy Pasketti of Baltimore shared one of the best “I am an idiot” story the other day:

I’ll tell it again. Once in law school I was 23 and really drunk and obnoxious and the owner cut me off and the bouncer told me I needed to go, and I told him, “I’m going to be a lawyer and you’re always going to be a bouncer,” and that bouncer was Mike Tomlin.

Perhaps for those in other continents, this is Mr. Tomlin. Note time!

Note #1: A defiant stand against the slump in Colorado.
Note #2: While one might blame the neo-temperate for the slump one needs to consider the family, too.
Note #3: Is this the greatest example of a lovely interior within a plain pub exterior?
Note #4: A strengthening of the team at Brewery History as Dr Christina Wade joins the editorial board.

We have had a new euphemism appear!  The years’ long decline in the booze trade has been called many things (other than, you know, a decline) so as to distract folk from the fact of, you know, the decline. That old chestnut from years ago – “cyclical” – is still used a lot by boosters and believers.  Then in 2025 we got the mystifying “maturing” market as well as the sometimes even appropriately applied  “consolidation“. And now we have plain old “burnout” and even that new entrant – a “cleansing“:

A well-publicised surplus in the global wine trade is causing a ‘cleansing’ of the sector – but consumers won’t ever mark major celebrations with soft drinks, believes industry veteran and Joseph Phelps CEO David Pearson… Beginning his answer, he admitted that “the market is oversupplied” before commenting that while this is undesirable, it’s not new. “We’ve had oversupply situations before,” he stated, referring particularly to the Californian wine industry, before drawing attention to reasons for their disappearance.

I think I am waiting for “the cull” to come into fashion.* What will save the industry?  Fitba!

“The volume of beer and the increase in revenues from World Cups have consistently driven a strong increase in beer consumption in host cities, far exceeding pre-tournament trends,” Barclays strategists wrote. The tournament’s summer timing in high-consumption months adds to the opportunity. “This is a clear signal of the scale and opportunity this event represents,” they added. North American hosts rank among the Top 15 global beer consumers per capita. Of the 20 leading per capita consumers, 14 have qualified, potentially rising to 16 with Poland and Italy by March 2026. “The combination of large venues, regulatory boosts and greater fan participation creates a perfect context for beer sales growth,” the strategists stated.

You ever feel… forecast to be used? Me, I am looking forward to the actual soccer and, you know, the hairy tartaned folk.

You know how people used to try to explain good beer to wine people they write really insightful things like “lager is like white wine“? It’s a good thing for us all that that dumber era – let’s call it the reign of terroir – is well and truly over. Still, information is power and, well, Eric Asimov of the NYT has some hints for new wines to try in 2026, including this hint that I would suggest should work better for a beer fan:

Stereotypes are not the problem with port and Madeira so much as how and when to drink them. The era of cigars and after-dinner drinks is long gone. The French enjoy white port as an aperitif, but I prefer vermouth or fino sherry. Occasionally, though, it’s worth having a glass with cheese as a reminder of how glorious sweet fortified wines can be. Of the various types, I will recommend aged tawny port and bual Madeira. If you store an open bottle of tawny port in a cool, dark place, it will last a couple of months, while an open bottle of Madeira will last forever.

If you like grapefruit tang in your IPA, try Madiera. Sweet, oaky and white grapefruit pith. I worked my way though a bottle of Blandy’s Duke of Clarence Rich Madeira over the holidays and if I was a cashew I would consider this stuff Enemy #1. But, perhaps for Boak and Bailey, something else is Enemy #1:

On a recent trip to an otherwise peaceful pub we were treated to squawking phones by two separate groups. First, a pair of men in their forties decided to share some ‘funny videos’ they’d found, at full volume. This sent scratchy, distorted noises and bursts of music echoing through the pub, which they further enhanced with their own loud live commentary. Then, a little later, a party of couples in their sixties took the table next to ours. When a friend phoned one of them, he immediately said: “I’ll put you on speaker, mate.” For a full five minutes, the phone shouted at them, and they all shouted at the phone, and we gave up on trying to have a quiet conversation between ourselves.

It’s a cry for help! Is this ever acceptable? Alistair drew his line slightly to the side: “[p]ubs should never become monastic scriptoria.“** Happily, B+B also discovered a possible new form of pub this week, too.In The New Statesman, we have a description of the perfect pub

Most of all, a pub must be what Hemingway described as a “clean, well-lighted place”. It is not a bar. It is not a club. It is not a hotel. It should comfort, relax, lift the spirits and loosen the tongue. A place to settle in. As at home, TV is allowed, and so too music, so long as they do not intrude. The landlord must guide the atmosphere towards homeliness. Think of Mr Banks in Mary Poppins: “A firm but gentle hand, noblesse oblige.” Publicans are to England what head waiters are to France: respected members of the social order.

Hmm: “…so long as they do no intrude…” As you think on that… more notes!

Note #5: Duffman done.
Note #6: Big Sale at ‘Spoons.
Note #7: Soon be time to Wassail.
Note #8: Craig the Elephant and Tusker’s icon passes.

Maybe my problem finding enough to write about is me including all these notes. I could stretch out the beery news notes if I just cut and past every story linked uner a note.*** As I ponder that opportunity, let me ask you thing: how are your telomeres? “My whatsits!?!” Telomeres:

“Telomeres are the ends of your chromosomes,” explains Topiwala. “Our DNA is organised into chromosomes, and when our cells divide, these chromosomes are copied. But the copying is incomplete at the ends of the telomeres. “So, over time, these telomeres get progressively shorter. When they reach a critical shortening, the cell dies.” That means scientists can measure the length of someone’s telomeres to work out how many times their cells have divided and thereby estimate how old they might be – biologically speaking. Back in 2022, Topiwala and her team at the University of Oxford researched the link between alcohol and telomere length in more than 245,000 UK adults. “We found that the more people drank, the shorter their telomeres,” says Topiwala. “The drinkers had accelerated their biological ageing.”

Yikes. I don’t think I needed that level of detail, frankly.  As I said, it’s a slow week in beer so… we get to add telemere shortness anxiety to all the other grim anxieties of this age. Fabulous.

STOP THE PRESSES UPDATE 7:48 am Eastern: well worth the wait, Pellicle published Courtney Iseman‘s piece on New Orleans a day later than normal. The story is about taking a break from a drinks conference to explore the city:

It’s my third day at the annual Tales of the Cocktail bar and beverage alcohol industry convention; it’s exhilarating but exhausting, day after day of back-to-back seminars, tastings, and parties where the booze flows can make any introvert like myself feel their battery depleting. My head is spinning with the information and socialisation overload of the day, my bones are tired, my skin is melting into the thick air. I need to cool off, to decompress. I know exactly where I’m going: Brieux Carré.

Good stuff. Another bit of good news is that Boak and Bailey are back posting every Saturday but, still, remember to fulfill make it your New Year’s resolution to sign up for their fabulously entertaining footnotes at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2007!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword seems to be on pause since November but there is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*To be fair, it’s not only breweries that are suffering, as Dave Infante pointed out: “A quarter-century ago, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 people in this country, compared to just eight journalists for every 100,000 people today, per a 2025 report by MuckRack and Rebuild Local News. Maybe the reason I’m not overly sentimental about the brewers, winemakers, and distillers struggling against and succumbing to stiffening headwinds in the beverage-alcohol industry is because doom and gloom has been my own professional milieu for virtually my entire career and I’ve grown inured to it. What a cool and normal thought!“
**Let me assist you with that.
***Or just add more gratuitous footnotes, I suppose…

Your Merriest Of Merry Christmas Day Beery News Notes For 2025

Stan has been worried. Very worried. Either worried that there would not be any beery news notes this Chrismas Day or worried that there would be beery news notes today and that I really should be doing something else. I am deeply appreciative of the concern but as I usually farm this all out to the team of sleep deprived unpaid interns there is no question whatsoever of the news getting to each of you, my gentle and today hopefully mildly hungover while turkey and stuffing compromised readers. So… the show goes on! Speaking of which, todays photo above from the Yuletide photo contest was submitted by Zak Rotello of the Olympic Tavern of Rockford Illinois, a long time pal of this here beer blog. Click on it for a bigger version. It’s an image of a member of the brewer staff cleaning open fermenters at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, the brewery that will now never reopen. Like the sleep deprived unpaid interns, we remember those who are working today to keep the holidays jolly.

So what news is actually out there this week? We might have slim pickin’s but there shall be pickin’s. First up, what days are your local party days? As mentioned last year, Tuesday was Tibb’s Eve in Newfoundland last Tuesday. And this is the first year I saw a lot of references to “Black Friday” for the last Friday before Christmas as opposed to the first Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving. Here, for example, is the new coverage from Wales.  Mainly photos of the dressed up and drunk yuff today. It also seems to be referred to as “Mad Friday” in Scotland but maybe it’s a phrase able to be swapped out. I share the thumbnail attached as evidence that such stuff happens in Canada but perhaps with a little more grace as well as perhaps a bit more grit. By the way, one assumes (given the obviously strong ankles) that such natty folk might also be hockey players so… a misplaces comment might receive an brisk elbow right to the Chiclets… if you know what I mean.

What else? The best booze stories of the year according to the Drinks Business included beer news including the high price of a pint in the UK, BrewDog ditching pubs and the suggestion that NA beer should be “a functional drink rather than a compromise…” whatever that means. Pellicle offered up its top tales of their very good year. And Ron has been posting about the best of his personal year including:

I did a bit of judging this year. Mostly in South America, obviously. That’s where I prefer to judge. The Blumenau contest was fun this year. And not in Blumenau. Instead, it was on the coast at Balneario Camboriu. Literally on the coast, as the judging location was on the seafront. Meaning you could have a stroll down the beach at lunchtime. So civilised. And I managed to dodge judging Best of Show. That’s always a win. In Santiago, judging was in the same hotel as we were staying. Which is always good.

Also good was his news that he’s been cutting back.  On a related note, the* Beer Nut on the expansion of NA beers that don’t suck:

Non-alcoholic beer gets the occasional bit of coverage on here, though I tend to find very few which perform the role required of a beer. Pale ales, wheat beers and lagers seem to be the preferred styles, which may be the problem. I’ve often said that dark styles make for better alcohol-free beer, my favourite to date being Švyturys Go Juodas, and the Guinness one is pretty decent too. The latter’s success has provided an opportunity for other breweries to get in on the 0.0 stout racket, and the first I’ve seen locally is Dundalk Bay’s Zero Zero Nitro Stout, available in Aldi.

I’ve recently bought into the “Guinness 0” thing so good news that other smaller operations are able to similarly pass muster. Speaking of news, Stan also had newsy news in his Hop Queries in the state of the US supply of hops:

Farmers in the Northwest reduced acreage 7% in 2025 and harvested 5% percent fewer hops, according to the USDA National Hop Report. Average yield per acre was the highest since 2011, when higher yielding hops appreciated more for their alpha made up a larger percentage of acres planted. The 2025 value of production was $447 million, up slightly from 2024, but significantly less than $662 million in 2021. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given that acreage has shrunk 31% since 2021 and production 28%. Perhaps as important, in September the USDA reported that the inventory of hops held by growers, dealers and brewers was 116 million pounds, down 15 percent from the previous year. That’s the largest contraction in 15 years and suggests the market is getting closer to being in balance. Still, it is a significant amount, and almost 40 percent higher than it was through much of the teens.

Me, I was higher in my teens. That’s the main difference between me and the US hops trade.

Note#1: “Stephen Beaumont once gave me some good advice: don’t.”
Note #2: “Scroll at your leisure…”
Note #3: Women in public bars over fifty years or so ago.
Note #4: Continental had a pub in the sky.
Note #5: Short pours in Milton Keynes!

Speaking of controversy, a debate threatened to break out in the comments at Boak and Bailey but it appeared to just be a slightly paranoid complainer intent on playing one handed ping pong, the prattling lad being handled firmly by the administration. Much more interesting were the comments confirming reality behind the sale of Bristol’s Moors, including:

I now have had a chance to dig into their structure and, in short, they were not employee-owned in the recognised sense of being owned by an employee ownership trust or being a co-op, etc – it was just that all of the owners were also employees (i.e. no external investors). Justin owned 85% of the business. It looks like he has now sold that stake to Albatronic Arcades Ltd, a company registered on 5 August 2025 and owned solely by Bruce Gray. So I feel less unnerved about the boycott! But still hope they can turn Moor around.

Another set of comments were helpful in building upon Jeff‘s thoughts on the shutting down of three of ABInBev’s megabreweries in the U.S. of A.:

At a macro level, overcapacity normally drives prices down, which is always hard on producers. It’s especially bad for breweries right now, which face a host of financial challenges. Craft and big beer function largely in separate realms, though, and it’s seemed like big beer has been able to replace lost beer volumes with flavored-malt beverages and the like. This news suggests otherwise. Further, for anyone who has followed the beer industry over the past fifty years or so, this is a shocking development for a financial and logistical juggernaut.

Not as shocking to one Karl “the Commentron”** Ockert who shared his understanding:

I worked at the Newark brewery, then a 9 million bbl per year plant, in the early 90’s. I (half) jokingly tell people that I earned my Masters at the university of AB, Newark campus. While I learned a lot of the science of brewing at UC Davis with Dr Lewis, at Newark I learned even more about production and process discipline which I was able to use at the BridgePort and Deschutes Breweries. Last year Newark was down to a rate of 500,000 bbls per year and brewing less than a week per month. Along with Fairfield and Merrimack, it fell victim to the changing beer market. I’m sure it was a painful decision to close all 3 breweries at once, and I’m sorry to see it finally happen.

One wonders what it was that kept the facilities hanging on for so long. Wasn’t money. Somewhat similarly was the concern raised by Ron about the loss this year of Martyn Cornell and state of Martyn’s now 404 website:

What did Martyn leave unfinished? I can’t believe that he wasn’t working on another book. (He asked me about self-publishing because he was so pissed off with how long it took to get a book published.) Not to go all fanboy, but (meaning I am doing) how much material is there that hasn’t been published? Including stuff chopped from Porter. I’d buy a book with that in. Niche, made possible by self-publishing.  A compilation of his, often very long, always hugely informative, blogposts would make a great book. And preserve them in print. As Zythophile is no longer there. Fuck. This material really needs to be saved. Maybe I should get in touch with his brother. 

Happy was I then to confirm that the contents of the entirely excellent Zythophile has been preserved at the Wayback Machine, a service which I have been in love with since the great blog server shift of 2016. Think something has been lost on the internet? Check the Wayback Machine first.

There was intrigue in England as we wondered if Mrs RM could walk past  one of the great conversational pubs:

Walking back from the Sun to Faversham Premier Inn on the eve of Mrs RM’s birthday I suddenly realised we’d taken a different route into town that afternoon and missed its most famous pub. Would she be able to resist the lure of the Elephant on first sight. No. “We’re going in there“. I was happy to skip it, honest. A year ago it was packed on Sunday folk afternoon, a bit quieter on Tuesday night but there still weren’t a lot of spare tables.

A pub full of chatters. Not always what one wants but good to see someone get their way.  In other situations, choosing beer can be the wrong move as this personal injury workers compensation claim denial illustrates:

The claimant’s business required them to purchase and transport bulk quantities, and as the pain apparently intensified the claimant was awarded income replacement benefits, the release says. Surveillance by investigators found the claimant was seen regularly transporting beer for seven to 10 hours every day, often loading up to 20 cases of beer into their vehicle without assistance or any evidence of pain. The benefits were terminated…

All this leads to one fact – beer is not always kosher. No, really. Not kosher:

In November, three of America’s largest kosher certifying organizations came together to release new guidance regarding the status of beer, which has long been considered kosher by default. Due to the proliferation of flavorings brought on by craft brewing and other industry changes, however, the rabbis who declare whether food products are in line with Jewish dietary laws now say the label must be checked before drinking. “We’ve discovered that companies use many flavors, different flavors, to enhance even the simple beers that they manufacture. Those flavors need to be kosherly supervised,” said Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the head of kosher operations at the Orthodox Union, who released the guidance along with Star-K and OK Kosher. “We’ve seen more than one situation… that some beers have dairy in them. They add lactose, they add milk, so a beer could be dairy, which has very serious kosher ramifications.”

Knew it. Gak. Yet some of the stuff that can be crammed into beer other than via the “craft” of the fruit sauce hose might actually be useful:

Buck isn’t just a home brewer dabbling in drug-making. He is a virologist at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he studies polyomaviruses, which have been linked to various cancers and to serious health problems for people with weakened immune systems. He discovered four of the 13 polyomaviruses known to infect humans. The vaccine beer experiment grew out of research Buck and colleagues have been doing to develop a traditional vaccine against polyomavirus.

As I mentioned last week, I am pro-line in the pub. Better, table service. Each to their own, I suppose, but is there any bore are boring as the “don’t queue” bore in a ‘Spoons?

Believing it’s an ‘unwritten rule’ that you don’t queue at a bar, the 24-year-old barman was stunned to spot ten people in an orderly line waiting for their drinks. Jack refused to join the queues, instead ‘standing his ground’, claiming he propped up the bar for 10 minutes until he was served. Baffled Jack, shared a snap of the queue on X, slamming it as a ‘disgusting and uncouth disregard for sacred tradition’… Jack, who lives in Birkenhead, Merseyside, said: “It’s going against British tradition and it’s just wrong. It’s not like they’re doing anything inherently bad but it’s an unwritten rule you don’t queue at a bar.

Finally – and looking forward to New Year’s resolution suggestions – a word on usage if I might. Please stop writing “I don’t understand” as it means… you are admitting you don’t understand. And if you are a professional writer and you use the phrase “trust me” it only shows you can’t clearly explain your views which means your views are likely not trustworthy. And ask yourself before hitting “publish” if it is wise to write “… an unimaginable amount of work goes into…” when not only was it imaginable but it was accomplished as imagined. And if you as a beer business person want to want to display your ignorance of the times and market conditions of your trade as it exists today, feel free to post something like this on LinkedIn:

Given the current state of the industry, I think it’s about time we rally together and finally retire “Dry January.” Honestly, hasn’t it taken up more spotlight than anything that fun-free should? Let’s change the narrative and remind people what beer actually is……. a simple, natural combination of water, malted grains, hops, and yeast. Four ingredients. Zero mystery. This is our heritage. It’s real, it’s straightforward, and frankly, it deserves a comeback tour. Let’s make it happen and get things moving in the right direction!!!

Seeing as the “industry” didn’t start Dry January how exactly the hell does this person propose that it retire the concept. Plus… “a simple natural combination“? Yes, let’s go out in nature and find some beer, shall we? Displaying further ignorance on the brewing processing is another not strong move.

And that’s it! Stan will either be satisfied or concerned. The interns are using all resources to seek further clarifications on the question. No Christmas for them! And as we enter deeper into the holiday week lull, please also remember that Boak and Bailey are not posting this Saturday so we also will do without their fabulously entertaining footnotes, too. Sitll, look out for Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2007!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*I am always torn. Sweat forms on the brow. Does one capitalize the “t”?
**The title reserved only for the most experienced of comment makers.