Pubs, Tavs, Diners and Restaurants – Page 2

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…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mod-ren. That’s what the future will be. Mod-ren. Speaking of which… that is it for this first update of 2025. Frig. I forgot to use the new format. Oh well. Have a great New Years Eve and Hogmanay, too! Excitement builds as it’s not yest been announced if Boak and Bailey are posting this Saturday but make it your New Year’s resolution to sign up for their fabulously entertaining footnotes at Patreon. And look out for more of Stan’s new “One Link, One Paragraph” format. Then hunt out something in someone’s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone’s post from 2007!! Listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

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

Yes, It’s Here – The Tryptophan Thursday Edition Of The Beery News Notes

Four Weeks to Christmas Day!!! O.M.G. I have bought nothing. For nobody. Nada. Not Nuttin’. Crap. For some it is too late! Speaking of Christmas, Laura H. has some very interesting art for sale that might be perfect for your favourite beer nerd… err… expert. I invite any one of you to buy me* this her lovely representation of barley to the right. Far more less fleeting than a newsletter subsciption yet fewer calories than a beer. I should be in marketing.

And Eoghan shared another seasonal idea, a beer advent calendar on his newsletter:

Starting tomorrow – Tuesday 25 November – and running every weekday from now until 19 December, this newsletter will become its own kind of advent calendar of a kind, with me sending a short missive each morning from one of Brussels’ 19 municipal communes. As this newsletter’s tagline goes, these will be short observations on life in Brussels, trying to capture the feel of each of these areas, and/or my relationship with them.

A great discussion erupted on BlueSky when the news broke that heled explained many of the details related to the move of America’s oldest brewing school, the Siebel Institute, from Chicago to Montreal:

The Siebel Institute of Technology, the oldest brewing school in the Americas (established in 1872), is officially relocating its operations from Chicago, Illinois (USA) to Montreal, Québec (Canada) effective January 1, 2026. The new location address will be 3035 rue Sainte-Catherine E, Montréal (Québec), near Molson’s original brewery site (1786), the oldest brewery in North America. Siebel will be co-located with the new Lallemand Baking Academy and Application Technology Training Facility.

Siebel has been owned by Lallemand Inc. of Montreal for about 25 years so it makes sense. The press release also explained that “[r]ecent regulatory changes in the U.S. have made it much more challenging for many of our international students, who have become the majority of our student body, to attend classes in person.” Recent grad Drew indicated that about a third of his teachers there were not U.S. citizens. Two administrative staff – the program’s “heart and soul” – may lose their positions.

Speaking of good discussion, Jeff had a talk with himself on the question of Jeff Past and Jeff Future and the question of taste:

If only we could give those pour souls in 1975 a cup of Coava coffee, or in this example a Fresh west to 1995 drinkers, it would change their lives. But that’s not how things work. Beer has evolved partly because we have evolved along with it. All you have to do is look at different beer regions to see that the process of evolution can lead to very different places. It’s quite possible that for 1995 Jeff, the clouds wouldn’t have parted upon drinking a can of Fresh West. I might have found it off-putting in any number of ways. I liked bitterness then, and body, and just a bit of cheese grater that came from the bitterness/hop-matter synergy. It was like being slapped across the face, but with the flavor of caramel malt, and I liked it. I might have thought Fresh West was a cop-out beer, all candy aromas and no punch, not like a proper beer. I’m not sure there will be a 2055 Jeff or that he’ll be drinking beer (I’ll be 87), but I wonder what he’ll be drinking? It might be something I’d find distasteful today. Hmmm…

As we ponder those thoughts here is some straight up filler:

Note #1: David caught some late autumn light at the pub.
Note #2: Another David posted some sweet photos from a recent visit to a lambic bar, the Grote Dorst, including a Girardin eye view.**
Note #3: The Boot Inn is still there.
Note #4: Is an influencer with only 24,000 followers actually an influencer? Or just a deadbeat?

But not cheap filler*** as there was plenty to quote from under each of those links. Think of it more as “make your own Thursday beery news notes!” Invite your friends to play along!

Back to the deets as Hop Queries version 9.07 came out this week and Stan shared an interesting observation about Nelson Sauvin that sorta parallels the changes you can notice through each spring’s maple syrup production:

The Nelson Sauvin character (in a normal season) goes through a progression from i) somewhat vegetal and dominated by green fruit character (gooseberry, etc.) to ii) brighter citrus-y with grapefruit-like notes to iii) bright, wine-y and complex with passion fruit notes to iv) building tropical complexity with brighter citrus fading to v) super tropical with sweeter citrus notes to vi) tropical with light dank and solvent-y notes to vii) fading tropical with lots of weird, random characters ranging from O/G to berry fruit. Extremely late Nelson Sauvin tends to vary quite a bit from season to season and can express a wide array of characters, including appealing and un-appealing ones.

A wide array of character? Something like myself. Speaking of deets, this week’s feature in Pellicle by Fred Garratt-Stanley goes where too few stories dig into – back of house at The Fat Cat:

Only when you walk through The Fat Cat’s cellars can you truly appreciate the size of the operation. Underneath the bar there’s a well-stocked keg cellar with four cask lines, but it’s out back where the magic happens. There are two gleaming, air-conditioned cellar rooms lined with stillages, each of which holds somewhere between 30 and 40 firkins and pins that are either tapped up or settling down. Beyond the glass washers are multiple store rooms and an additional cellar, where a handful of the pub’s biggest-selling beers are racked up in huge, 18-gallon vessels. The site is vast, responding to a level of turnover established over decades spent serving reliable, perfectly conditioned cask beer.

I have worked back of house in a playhouse, bars and restaurants, on election nights and, of course, have seen the backs of many things through law. It is all very good interviewing an owner in the front and hearing the stories but digging into the back and underneath of things where the unpretty can be found tells you what is really what. Are the corners clean? Is the staff sullen? That’s great work up there.

And The New York Times ran a story this week on Germany’s waning interest in beer:

Germans are drinking a lot less beer. “In recent years it was always 46 percent, 47 percent, 48 percent who said, ‘Yes, I drink beer,’” said Marc Kerger, president of Einbecker, referring to consumer surveys. “And this year just 41 percent. Forty-one percent is dramatic.” Alcohol consumption in Germany has been sliding for decades. But the sudden, accelerating drop has caught brewers and bar owners by surprise.

Twist in the tale from Jörg Biebernick, the chief executive of Paulaner: “Half of our sales in Germany are actually non-beer…” What are people doing if they aren’t out on the big binge? According to The Guardian, at certain exclusive clubs they may be on the little one:

For all the talk of generation Z eschewing alcohol, drinking shows no sign of dying out. There are indicators of restraint – the Manchester dessert menu features a two-sip, 60ml mini-version of an espresso martini, for £7, if you prefer an alternative to stodge – and there is “a pocket, from 26- to 30-year-olds” who drink less, says Carnie. But the bigger trend is toward “clean” cocktails, with fewer ingredients and less sugar. The multicoloured, juice-laden, bafflingly named cocktail is old hat. “I get it, because if I go to a bar, and I don’t understand the menu, it annoys me,” the barman tells me. “A cocktail isn’t cheap. If I’m spending money on a cocktail, I want to know I’m going to like it.”

And Katie illustrated another aspect of what’s been going on it terms of culture change at a personal level:

…sometimes I don’t drink because of my MH, sometimes I don’t drink because I don’t feel like it, sometimes I don’t drink because I’m training the next day and want to sleep properly. Don’t raise eyebrows, don’t make it seem like I’m pregnant. Don’t be a dick. Just say okay.

Sleep. Sleeeeeeeep. Katie is spot on in many ways. But still, also in the NYT, there are still people experiencing this sort of night:

Through the window of a dark restaurant we saw a man illuminated by a disco ball who was singing from his chest. He waved at us. We waved back. He unlocked the door and invited us in. Over a bucket of cold Singha, we sang “Happy Birthday.” The owner brought out a brownie topped with a blazing flare on the house. I apologized for the intrusion. “Please kick us out any time,” I said. He smiled and handed me Post-its and a pen. “Just make a list of songs,” he said. Another bucket of beer appeared, along with some peanuts. It was a beautiful night, and we had found something dumb to do.

I have made a point of excelling at finding something dumb to do. To the contrary, Jordan visited a tiny brewery in TO that’s won Best New Brewery in Canada in the 2025 Canadian Brewing Awards.:

At Bickford, what you see is what they have. The space, whose colour palette includes a lot of orange, can’t sit more than 30 people at a time and one assumes that on nights when Dungeons and Dragons groups come in, the only place for drinkers must be at the bar. The main space is not quite as large as a midtown one bedroom, but has been retrofitted as one of Toronto’s smallest breweries. Usually I have to guess at the size of brewing equipment, but everything is labeled. Andrew is brewing 250 litres at a time.

And David J. has shared the background story of another desi pub, the The Century Club in the Forest Gate section of East London which was born from 1970s bigotry as owner Peter Patel recalled:

“We went to the Wheatsheaf,” he recalls. “We didn’t know that in the evening it used to get bikers coming in and they chased us out.” Peter faced similar prejudice in those days when he visited a pub with friends in Lewisham, South London, where I now live. A racist purposely spilt his drink on him, claiming Peter had tripped him up and demanded more than another drink. The atmosphere turned rancorous, the publican sided with the attacker and the Asians were kicked out despite already spending about £40 (the equivalent of £300 today). “It was a lot of money as a pint used to be under a pound then,” he says. “We did nothing at all. That’s when I decided we needed something for Asian people.”

What else? Well, the ISBFX declared an ending**** and Ed noted another sort of end of things, the end of CAMRBG:

…when a heresiarch founded a protestant beer sect called the Campaign for Really Good Beer (CAMRGB) in opposition to our mother church I was not filled with pleasure that I get from say, reading about nestorianism. I must confess that in my arrogance I had come dangerously close to advocating for something similar to the CAMRGB in the early days of beer blogging. Back then whinging about CAMRA was something we all enjoyed…until I realised some of the people were not whinging about the home team but were in fact the opposition. I repented my sins then, and despite my occasional confusion over theological matters and distaste for modernism, my faith has not been shaken.

Fine, one or three more notes:

Note #6: “This is the cheeriest Norfolk pub I’ve ever been in…”
Note #7: Rogue left $16.7 million owing to others after earning only $19.7 gross revenue in 2024.
Note #8: Pink Gin in Interwar China.

Lastly, we talk a lot about beer and monks but Kathleen Willcox reminds us in DB that they established much of what we understand about wine classification, too:

After Rome fell and the Early Middle Ages ushered in intellectual decline and infrastructural decay, monastic orders did not just preserve wine culture; they elevated it. Monks across Europe, particularly Benedictines, Cistercians and Cluniacs, planted vineyards, documented practices and sustained international wine trade. Burgundy became ground zero for evolution and innovation. The observant Cistercians, who owned vast vineyard holdings, first noted how separate vineyard blocks produced different results. They were the first to record these observations, linking differences in wine to soil, climate and elevation. Their careful mapping of micro parcels on the Côte d’Or laid the foundation for the cru system and the modern concept of terroir.

There. That’s it for this week. The United States is in a gravy soaked reverie that may well last into early December. As they/you recover, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

*…or, yes, anyone you care for than me… if that’s even possible!
**I got a couple of these well over a decade old, the remnants of the stash. probably should open one to check see.
***Or… actually… I don’t know what to think. Hope it was worth it.
****As in read to the ending…

The Mid-November Shock Of The First Real Freeze Runs Through These Beery News Notes

Remember all those sunny garden shots? Just a week ago? The wonderful colours? The ripening fruit? Well, it’s now sky shit season and looks to stay that way for another four if not five months. Snow, winds off the lake, freezing rains. Commisserations welcome in the comments. It was also Remembrance Day on Tuesday so plenty to be solemn about for a stretch before the holiday season really begins. I took and posted that photo twenty years ago now,* of a Second World War RCN officer waiting for the service at Navy Memorial Park here by our waterfront.

We start with a look to the past. Boak and Bailey showed their stuff again this week with an excellent post seeking out the source of the beer with the branding “Rustic Ale“:

A slight surprise there might be that ‘rustic’ clearly did not indicate that the beer would be strong or rough, like Spingo. But at about 3.5% ABV, Rustic Ale would be considered at the lower end of session strength even today, never mind before the First World War. Elsewhere there are instances of the phrase ‘rustic ale’ being used not as a brand name but to describe the type of beer drunk in country inns, by country folk. The earliest of these references we could find is from 1855. Another, from 1909, suggests that healthy country girls (think Honoria Glossop) “will face her glass of rustic ale like a young farmer”.

Excellent. And Breandán Kearney wrote about lost Belgian styles for The Brussels Times Sunday magazine and the steps which have been taken to revive them:

Seef or Seefbier, for example, once the pride of Antwerp, vanished with the collapse of small urban breweries during the First World War. A decade ago, Johan Van Dyck claimed to have uncovered an old recipe for a seef beer which he reincarnated with a barley, wheat, and oat grainbill and a creamy, unfiltered profile. In recreating it, Van Dyck reignited city pride with a new generation of drinkers. In Lier, the brown-amber ale caves was revived by a local heritage guild, which commissioned it to be recreated from archival recipes (but only for serving in cafés within the town walls). And then there’s uitzet, a mixed fermentation brown ale from East Flanders that local brewers such as DOK Brewing Co, have tried to recreate in Ghent.

You know, I’ve been told I have a creamy unfiltered profile. Speaking of diligent research, Ron has pulled back the curtain and shared an update on his methodology:

I finally bit the bullet yesterday. Adding an extra column to my main beer gravity spreadsheet. I’d been planning on doing it for a couple of years. And had started using a new format table for any gravities I harvest. But it was getting out of hand. It was over 2,000 lines. And when I wanted to look up beers from a specific brewery, I had to search in both tables. Time to merge the two. It itself, that wasn’t particularly difficult. Just add the column to the main table and tack the entries from the temporary table on the end. Except, most of the entries now had a blank column. Which I’ll have to add. Quite a palaver, in a table of 25,000 entries. I started the work yesterday. And have completed maybe 25%. It’s dull, tedious work. But it will be worth it, when I’m done. In case you’re wondering, the column is the town where the brewery is located…

A-HAH!! I knew it. I knew all these beers were from places. And, I understand, they are made… in ways. On that point, here we have first The Beer Nut and then Stan noticing The Beer Nut on the effect of Thornbridge’s conservation of one part of Marston’s Burton Union brewing set.

TBN: “With luck, one of England’s many fine beer writers will be able to explain what difference the equipment actually makes to the product, beyond the press releases and collaborations.”

SH: “I’m inclined to believe the claims that using the system changes the beer. You might even be able to run a study which compares otherwise identical beers fermented in stainless steel and in the union. Or wood versus the union.”

Two of the best sets of tastebuds in the scribbling set right there. Perhaps the point is simply to continue the use of the way. Interesting notes from one commentator: “notoriously laborious to clean and have higher racking losses than other systems” but “they help in the maintenance of a healthy and regular pitching yeast.” So there may well be value in the way even if it isn’t necessarily translated to the glass.

Pellicle‘s feature this week sent shivers. Not because the piece by Joel Hart about the Mort Subite in Altrincham, a Manchester suburb, was anything but a great portrait of a well loved tavern. But because I had one of the worst drunks ever – followed by a two day hangover – drinking in a place by that name in Paris when I was young and stupid in 1986. Fortunately for me, the five guys from Gascony (spoilers) offering to throttle me did not realize I was with the pack of very large gents in the corner. Events ensued. To the contrary, on Manchester’s version we read:

…it’s quieter, broodier, and more intimate. “I’ve lost hours of time in there,” says Chris Bardsley, who runs Altrincham beer spots The Beacon on Shaw’s Road and Batch Bottlestore in King’s Court. “You’re in there, you don’t see the outside world, you’re just caught in it.”

Glad I wasn’t caught in it, if I am being honest. Back to the question of the tasty, photographer Sean McEmerson provided us with an fabulously detailed essay on the making of green hop beer from Hukins Hops in Tenterden, Kent:

At Hukins Hops, the team carefully assesses each variety across their sprawling, 50-acre farm, checking the hops’ ripeness before deciding when to harvest. Over the last few years, that process has only become more difficult as the UK’s climate has grown more unpredictable. This summer, Kent—one of the country’s key hop-growing regions—experienced record-breaking temperatures during a rolling series of heatwaves. The result was an earlier-than-expected harvest. “Lots of factors contribute to how long harvest takes—machine breakdowns, picking weather, staff, and drying capacity”, Glenn Whatman from Hukins tells me. “This year we had an average crop due to the drought in June, but the machine ran as smoothly as ever and the picking team persevered through torrid weather”.

I had no idea hop pickers’ hands became tarred with resin. Speaking of photo essays, Martin has returned to his winter quarters in Rye, England and took a stroll to see Jeff at the Ypres Castle Inn:

Jeff greets me at the bar, where I sit and watch the magic of a great pub unfold over the next hour. Louie (sp. ?) is the star today, another of Jeff’s great staff team, but all the customers seem lovely too. Not serving food helps. Children bring their empty glasses back to the bar and say “Thank you“. Their proud parents say “Well done“. I say “Well done“, too, perhaps a little enthusiastically. I’m not normally comfortable sitting at the bar, but watching a great pub like the Ypres in full flow on a Saturday evening is a thing of wonder.

Somewhat to the contrary – or perhaps in ignorance of the above – the stomp on craft continues. Auto scene reporter Ben Shimkus was in the The Daily Mail with his autopsy of US craft beer under a “hipster” inclusive headline, dipping heavily into the finger-pointy zingers bucket as he did:

America’s craft beer phase seems to be fizzling out. Expensive beers flavored with ‘notes of citrus and pine’ or brewed with an extra batch of hops are losing favor in US grocery stores and bars. Instead, giant beer brands featuring utilitarian flavors and low prices are all the rage. There might be a charming reason why: Millennial-aged craft beer fans have grown up… the lower-cost seeking has had a damaging impact on America’s microbrewery industry, which dominated younger parts of the US and attracted cornhole players. Dozens of sites have permanently shut down.

Is that tone really necessary? Well, besides “cornhole players” which has always been a self-inflicted wound as far as I can tell. No, the pile on is getting to feel like, you know, making fun of people who just really like their cats.** Perhaps the trade friendly euphemisms like “consolidation” and “mature market” are usefully kinder descriptors for the slump.

A saner explanation of the current situation has been provided by Ron Emler in The Drinks Business – with an particular focus on China:

For the past couple of years, it has been the group mantra from big booze bosses that the current downturn in sales is cyclical rather than structural. But the cracks in that corporate front are widening. No longer can the combined effects of squeezed wallets, the rise of cannabis-infused offerings, the increasing uptake of weight loss drugs which reduce the desire for alcohol and the lifestyle choices being taken by Gen Z be dismissed out of hand as inconsequential in the longer term… According to Morningstar senior analyst Jennifer Song, China’s younger generation rejects the “intense sensation of high-alcohol baijiu”. She said: “We believe expanding low-alcohol baijiu offerings is a long-term trend, driven by demographic change and rising health awareness.”

Jason Wilson takes the broader issue from another angle, the problem posed to premium categories when there is common access to things which have been formerly accepted as luxuries:

The problem right now is that “fancy goods are everywhere,” according to The Economist… I wonder if wine needs to try so hard to present itself as more of an experience than a thing. After all, simply opening a bottle of wine—on a sunny day in the park, during a late night conversation on a roof deck, on a lazy, decadent afternoon in bed—is the prelude to experience. The drinking of the wine in a place with people is the experience. We would do well to remember that. Perhaps it’s more a matter of shifting perspective, framing, and being open to more possibilities.

So do we need to – or should we – buy as much booze to still be interested in the stuff? If you’ve read the stuff posted around here very much over the years you will know that has been always been a question in my head. Do we consumers ally ourselves with producers at all costs? Or are we wanting a decent pint at a decent price? Or both? Should alcohol to play a smaller but healthier role in life or does one root for a business rebound back to the irrational exuberence of craft beer a decade ago? Or even further back even to the 1980s when understanding hard to find beer conveyed a certain status, as Boak and Bailey recently considered. Sometimes the enthusiasts’ approach to beer writing strikes me as similar to the unrequited yearning for the experience of being young again. Were there longings for Rustic Ale in the years after it faded, too?

Speaking of longings, Jeff is looking for an explanation of the price of NA beer building on last week’s note from hereabouts on the update from BMI on the price of the stuff:

In the past decade, non-alcoholic beer has gone through an important upgrade over the old Clausthaler era. Breweries started taking it seriously, and the quality, while still not as good as regular beer, is vastly better than it used to be. Athletic demonstrated that there was a market out there for N/A beer made in modern craft styles. The big question is how big that market will become in the U.S. Here I am a lot more bearish than the industry, for these reasons. It’s a premium-priced product that is inferior in taste to regular beer or other non-alc alternatives. The proliferation of N/A brands is hurting rather than helping, too. With the flood into the market, people are exposed to more of the poor examples. A novelty factor in being able to buy a N/A hazy buoyed the industry, but I have a real question if that’s sustainable.

Is any of it sustainable? And… what is it that would be sustained? Not a small question so we can leave it there for now. Until next week, I will be focusing all my energy at the Grey Cup game and shouting at the sky… and once again thanking my luck for the pack of gents in that corner of that bar. As I do, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

*Lordy…
**By the way, ours finally killed a goddamn mouse after over ten years so there was a smidge of respect – but it wasn’t like I ran to the grocery to buy kitty treats or anything. I have standarrds. I still keep a portrait of the late great slayer of mice Mrs. Beaton (1999-2012) on my office desk. Frobie got all the attention but Beaon was the killer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is it. Next time, the post-lull madness begins. In the meantime, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

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

Your Super (Not All That Scary) Boo-tastic (But Without Any Fake Blood Splatters) Halloween Week Beery New Notes

Frosts? Yup. Green tomatoes brought in? Check. Furnace? On. It’s that time of year. Darker beers. Browner liquors. Higher natural gas bills. I feel a bit like the unnamed gent in the painting, “A Man with a Pint” from 1932 by Fred Elwell. Layered clothes. Sitting in a lower light. Pointing at things in newspapers and telling the person across the table about it. I feel badly for the lad. He just missed out on the first wave of beer blogging by about seventy years so, given that, all he could do was sit in pubs, pointing at things in newspapers and telling the folk who were with him about it.

Before we get into the newsy news, perhaps speaking of him… and even maybe me, The Guardian shared a story this week on hangovers and aging and what’s going on:

The liver breaks down alcohol with the help of enzymes, but as we get older it produces fewer of them, meaning toxic byproducts such as acetaldehyde – the compound responsible for many hangover symptoms – linger in the body. It’s not just the liver. The body’s water content drops by about 5% after the age of 55, partly because levels of muscle, where a lot of it is stored, decrease. Less water means alcohol is more concentrated in the bloodstream, and dehydration caused by its diuretic qualities – a key culprit behind hangover headaches and grogginess – hits harder. Kidney function also declines with age, slowing the removal of waste products. “You get this buildup of waste products in the body that have a longer circulating time to exert their effects…”

Tell me about it! Scary. Getting back to with the ghosts and ghouls theme, The Beer Nut has put on his STASH KILLER! costume this week and has put together an exploding can special post:

I don’t know why I even had these. It certainly wasn’t with the intention of seeing if they improved with age: the styles involved aren’t really built for that. This summer’s warm weather resulted in some warped cans, and I lost a few which ruptured, so I took that as a signal to try these out before they explode completely… For the most part, these were better than I expected. While of course I don’t recommend that anyone age pale ales or hoppy lagers in the hope of improving them, not least because of the risk of explosion, it seems it takes a lot to properly ruin a beer once it’s in its aluminium jacket.

BREAKING PERRY NEWS!!! A solid rebuttal from Barry Masterson this week in Cider Review on a statement by cidermakers Westons declaring that perry is dead!! and using the term “pear cider” instead:

One would think it is incumbent upon established (and let’s admit, pretty large) producers like Westons to protect and promote the uniqueness of perry, not wash it away for the sake of a quick sales boost. The move is especially troubling coming from a company that touts its family history and traditional production methods. You cannot claim authenticity while simultaneously erasing the very tradition that underpins your reputation. Rather than declare perry “dead,” Westons should lead the way in educating new drinkers about its heritage and distinctiveness. Younger consumers are curious, discerning, and increasingly interested in authenticity and provenance.

Quite right. We can’t even get perry in Ontario – but I wouldn’t be buying anything called “pear cider” if it was for sale here. Strikes me, like “Canadian Sherry” or “California Burgundy”, as a sign… and a sign that says “beware!“* By the way, James Beeson wrote the story in The Grocer about Weston’s decision to change the name and dumbdown the drink – and is now getting grief from a key trade association which seems to be a bit confused about the difference between publishing a story and being the topic of a story:

In response to the article “Perry is ‘dead’ declares cidermaker Westons” published by The Grocer on the 21st October 2025, the Three Counties Cider and Perry Association (TCCPA) launch their Perry is Alive campaign. Westons’ justification for their removal of perry from their labelling is to increase their sales figures. The TCCPA believe this dismissal and removal of language to be damaging and a danger to the relationship drinkers have with the rich history and heritage of perry, pears and the land they come from.

And it’s all about the orchards this week as Pellicle‘s feature is a portrait of Virginia’s Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Orchards penned by my fellow Tartan Army follower, Alistair Reece:**

Sitting on the patio overlooking the lush verdant slopes of the orchards, the creek—from which mist rises in the morning, the inspiration for the cidery’s name—in the distance, Diane and I talk about apples, farming, and the making of cider. “It’s not just apple cider varieties—that’s one thing—it’s apples grown for cider,” she tells me. “When I bought Goldrush, I paid in advance for my apples and said ‘I will buy every apple on that tree, but I do not want you to pick them until they are falling off the tree.’ That’s growing apples for cider—they have to be dead ripe on the tree.”

That right there is a nice nugget of knowledge. And, speaking of the sensible, there was a measurably more reasonable response*** to that NYT item was this by Tom Dietrich in Craft Brewing Business on the four steps to “save” craft including one approach to improving the branding:

A big reason “wacky” beer names exist is because the beer trademark landscape is more crazy and crowded than a New Found Glory mosh pit (millennial reference alert!). If you’re applying to register a beer mark, your mark can’t be the same as or similar to any other mark for (a) beers and breweries, (b) wine and wineries, (c) any other spirits or alcoholic beverages or mixers, and (d) bar and restaurant services… In a crowded industry where creative names are increasingly hard to come by, understanding how to lawfully identify, clear, and acquire abandoned trademarks can be a competitive edge.

Another sensible nugget of knowledge. And, continuing the theme, while the periodic column from Pete Brown in The Times can be a bit structured given its tight bit of space some weeks, this time his theme of twelve great London pubs with £5 pints provided for a bit more leeway for neatly balanced comment:

This reinvention of the happy hour is surprisingly widespread. Every pub in the Brewhouse & Kitchen chain has its own on-site brewery. The two currently open in London, at Hoxton and Highbury Corner, fill up in the evenings, when pints cost £6-8. But to get people in during the day, the pubs sell their own cask ales — usually a best bitter and a session IPA — for £3.50 before 6pm… “We have to recognise what session drinkers can afford.” Most pubs aren’t trying to rip you off. They know that cheaper pints mean more customers. It’s far easier to find the £5-ish pint in north, east, and southeast London than in the west… But if you explore, especially via Overground rather than Tube, you’ll find pints in London at prices that make even a Yorkshireman happy.

Good advice. See also Ruvani at Beer Professor and her sensible recommendations for everyday beers. Exercise your right to choose when to drink. And what! Or where!! Like Martin who enjoyed himself at the posh confines of Ye Olde Bell in Nottinghamshire: “You need to walk past several interception points where you feel you might be asked “Can I HELP you Sir…” Or like Katie who was in Koblenz, studying the scenery:

I stare into the shiny window of a cigar cellar for quite a while before turning down a side street to find Spritz Atelier, a brand new bar specialising in fancy cocktails. I order one made with a local quince liquor called Kowelenzer Schängelche and watch from the window as a man finishes his workday with a take-out spritz of his own. He sips from the straw as he pushes his bike down the cobbled street, before disappearing out of sight.

You don’t even have to be there to choose whether you would want to be there. Consider Boak and Bailey‘s thoughts on the Prospect of Whitby as genius loci:

A few weeks ago, Ray visited The Prospect of Whitby with friends and had the usual experience of too many tourists crammed sharing a generally uninspiring chain pub atmosphere. Even in that context, though, there’s something magical about drinking a pint of Old Peculier while looking out over the water while the novelty noose set up for the amusement of visitors swings in your peripheral vision. It gets better again when you detour up the side of the pub, pass through a gate, down some hazardous steps, and onto the beach at low tide. There, the full power of The Prospect really hits you. Not least because you’ve seen this view a thousand times.

Changing themes with wanton abandon, I am enjoying this year’s continuing strained arguments about youth today. Like this in The Morning Adverstiser, taking the “drinking differently” approach:

While younger consumers remain less likely to drink than older age groups Lumina’s data shows more 18- to 24- year olds now describe themselves as drinking ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ and fewer arre opting out completely. The long term fall in alcohol participation has plateaued.

The article goes on to then describe how younger people are, you know, still less drinking of alcohol. Don’t get me wrong. It’s obvious that turning social settings like pubs and tavs into something other than boozers is healthier and economically beneficial. I am all for skittles. But drinking low to no alcohol beers is not maintaining “alcohol participation.“**** It’s reducing it while maintaining social participation which, as I say, is really good. Anyone who actually believe the clinky-clinky is a fundamental social bond or, you know, builds community as the wise said in 2014 is fantasizing.

Which reminds me of something else. Over on FB, a memory from twelve whole years popped up in my feed this week and it gave me some perspective on that whole “the young folk ain’t drinking craft no more” story. Look at the brown graph in the lower left. It was created with data from the British food and marketing trade associations. In 2013 I was irritated by the incompetent bar lengths in the graph. In 2025, I am more interested in the percentages. Keeping in mind these are UK figures, they indicated that two-thirds of craft beer drinkers at the time were over 35. Those people are all over 47 now. Only just over 5% of people who were 21 to 25 at the time admitted to drinking craft beer. So when was this time when “the young folk drinking craft“?***** (This diagram from 2014 might suggest the same was not the case in the New York of the very next year. Maybe.)****** But whatever it was then, Stan is wondering if a key aspect of what made craft interesting back then has disappeared:

Will Curtin said the brewing landscape has changed significantly over the years, and believes that the traditional “garage brewery” model may be waning. “I think sort of the age of a garage brewery is sort of, if not gone, going,” he said.

I wonder if the cause of the going is not so much the loss as the lack of a compelling replacement. Whatever happened to the shock of the new? Well, unless you are in Spain next year, when drivers may get a shock:

Tourists, be warned: Spain is proposing stricter drink-driving laws, and they could be enforced by the end of the year. The country’s Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) wants to introduce new alcohol rules for all drivers — including those on bicycles and e-scooters — by the end of the year. The aim is for a universal alcohol limit of 0.2g per litre in the blood or 0.1mg per litre in breath. That would mean almost zero alcohol consumption before getting behind the wheel. Even a small glass of wine or beer could put you over the threshold.

That’d be one-quarter of the limit we face here in Canada. Be prepared. You can practice the pronunciation of these handy phrases for your next trip to Spain: “Propietario! ¿Duermo en tu cobertizo? Hmm ¿Tal vez debajo de tu árbol?”

One last thing before we go. There was a call for papers from the people of Beeronomics:

The 2026 Beeronomics Conference will take place at ESSCA School of Management, Bordeaux, France, 24-27 June. Main panels and sessions will be held at the ESSCA Bordeaux Campus. The Conference Organising Committee, led by Gabriel Weber and Maik Huettinger, welcomes all high-quality research on the economics of beer and brewing. With a strong interest in interdisciplinary research, we are looking for submissions covering topics including…*******

Check it out, people. And with that, we are done. Adios and farewell to October! Next week the World Series will be over, Halloween will be in the past and I probably will have ripped up and rammed all the tomato plants in the compost bin. In the meantime, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

*See: Perth Pink.
**Note: not aka Alice DuRiz!
***Just for example, see same publication in 2023 making the pretty much the same point but in 2025: “HOW DARE THEY!!!“
****Customer: “I’d like to participate in some alcohol please” Bartender: “I shall be delighted to perloin you said chemical…” (Mutual winkies) CURTAIN!!!
*****By the way, New Buffalo seems to have stopped brewing a year after they published the diagram before getting caught into a legal dispute.
******You know, sometimes a parenthetical sentence is a good as a footnote. No, it really is.
*******… topics including (i) trends and driving forces in local and global beer production, consumption, and distribution; (ii) management, marketing, market structure and industrial dynamics, individual beer choice, health and well-being; (iii) policy and regulations related to the beer brewing industry; (iv) impact of beer on society and culture (v) environmental issues affecting beer and brewing and (vi) other stuff like food industry and alternatives to beer. You could write something about one of those. Birdeaux is nice in June. Why not? Give it a go.

The Beery News Notes For That Post Canadian Thanksgiving Emotional Letdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it for now. Not as long as last week but that was nuts. While you beg for more more more, please also check out the below mentioned Boak and Bailey every Saturday and sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of that now newly refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has been on hiatus since April but the archives are out there with the all the sweary Mary! There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month!

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

The Beery News Notes For The Threat Of Frost And The Yanks And Jays In What Might Just Be A Post-Passion World

Well, since we last met… yes, fine… the Red Sox lost last Thursday. But then the Yankees (who beat the Sox… my Sox) got their own butts kicked in the first two games of the next series by the Jays who took it all in game four last night which… sorta made me feel… schadenfreudig? Is that the word? I dunno. Or is it dünno? Anyway, the other word on my mind is frost. I will only know at sunrise this Thursday morning if the sheets and covers that I threw over the tomatoes and basil and beans did the job. (Update: -0.3C at 6 am!) But it is autumn. And it doesn’t matter if there is no frost for the two weeks after today if the frost came today. Most years, with luck, I can coax something or another to keep on growing right up to November. With luck.

Speaking of words, on Tuesday Jeff wrote about the doom and gloom in the beer trade, reviving some thoughts from 2013 as he did – a discussion in one way about perceptions that the choice of words convey as much as the context. The context being if one is on the way up or the way down. This week’s news notes seem to carry a bit of the weight of those sorts of perceptions so I feel like this sort of preamble is needed to remind ourselves that it’s just the point in time we find ourselves in. We need to reflect. To consider our lot. Sorta how I feel when I look at the black leaves of a tomato patch after a killing frost. When I reflect. And swear a little. So I will perhaps a bit intentionally mix the bad news with some things that are lighter and see what happens. Good thing there’s plenty to read.

First, about that cyberattack* in Japan on Asahi that I mentioned last week. It seems that it has been resolved but I hadn’t appreciated how it create quite serious issues for the broader Japanese bevvy and snacking market:

Most of the Asahi Group’s factories in Japan were brought to a standstill after the attack hit its ordering and delivering systems on Monday. Major Japanese retailers, including 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, have now warned customers to expect shortages of Asahi products… Asahi is the biggest brewer in Japan, but it also makes soft drinks and food products, as well as supplying own-brand goods to other retailers… In its latest statement, Asahi said that as a result of containment measures following the attack, ordering and shipment systems in Japan had been affected and it was also unable to receive emails from external sources.

Speaking of containment, consider Mr. Gladman on two types of entryways to basement bars and how their architecture guides the experience:

The street-steps-door type of basement bar usually has windows somewhere on its street-facing wall and so maintains a connection to the city outside (Type A Basement Bar in the Gladman Taxonomy of Bars…) Bars like this can be hard to find even if you know about them… It’s a tiny adventure that ends with a delicious reward. These bars are often unpretentious and cosy — everyone is hunkered down together, hidden away in a prime spot, unnoticed by the schmoes passing by just a few feet above. The other, street-door-steps type of basement bar (Type B) is even more concealed at street level, often offering just a small sign above a door. Within this lurks a clipboard-wielding, radio-headset-wearing guardian, like Cerberus at the gates to a boozy underworld. Once you’re in, it’s often entirely devoid of natural light. It is its own world, womb-like and all encompassing.

Not so many people walking down these sorts of steps in Brazil – both Type A and B – which is reasonable given the news:

…the market has a new worry: the crisis caused by contamination of distilled beverages with methanol. For now, it’s not possible to determine the impact of this on the beer industry going forward. On the one hand, bars are emptier and parties have been canceled due to the negative repercussions of the contamination. On the other hand, greater consumer concern about cocktails has led to a strong shift toward beer, seen as safer.

My dive bar tourist trip to Rio is now officially cancelled. But more weclome might be a stop at The Dog and Bell in Deptford, London which is the subject of this week’s feature in Pellicle penned… or perhaps rather keyboard clicked by Will Hawkes:

This backstreet boozer in a historically unglamorous part of town has not only survived the pub cull of the past few decades, it has thrived. Indeed, few London pubs are currently more fashionable. How? Well, for all the Dog and Bell’s singularity, its story tracks the evolution of pubs in modern London from the 1970s, when they were ubiquitous, to now, our frantic, distracting era of Instagram Guinness and event culture, when a simple pint in the pub is no longer good enough reason to get off the sofa. It’s been a long journey, but at every key junction over the past 50 years this charismatic pub has taken the right turn.

A loving portrait of a welcome local and perhaps unexpected gem. Conversely, I don’t expect to be following in the footsteps of Jason Wilson who brought an extreme level of exactitude to the consideration of an extremely expensive beverage – coffee that costs $30,000 a kilo:

Each sip I tried—and we were served small sips because of the limited amount of this coffee—had its own personality. Each producer and variety had a different flavor profile, mouthfeel, aroma, even color. While some may regard coffee tastings like this one as snobby or ridiculous, I appreciate the intense mindfulness and attention to detail coffee fanatics have. In one sip of coffee, there are flowers, fruits, foods, and even songs. I tried each of them for myself, then read the judge descriptions from the Best of Panama auction to compare thoughts. Some may disagree, but I try to treat it as if there is no right and wrong, just opinions.

And, speaking of opinions, Boak and Bailey posted a bit of a questionaire on the status of Belgian beer culture, asking folk for their thoughts about whether the beers and pubs they encountered on a recent trip were (my words) out of date duds or treasures at risk:

There’s also something about how the beers we tried on this recent trip didn’t seem to have evolved from Belgian brewing tradition so much as they were inspired directly by American-led homebrewing culture. It’s really weird to drink a Belgian-brewed saison and think, huh, this tastes like one of those ‘farmhouse IPAs’ people were making back home in about 2012. When we think of newer Belgian breweries we do like, it’s because they’ve found a way to push the parameters while still producing beer that tastes and feels Belgian.

This generous sort of the asking of the questions is a very useful tool of one is wanting to advance one’s education. Seek the views of others to check your own assumptions. Among the responses, the particularly well-placed Eoghan provided a lot of insight from the local point of view:

I don’t disagree that Belgium has one of the richest and most diverse beer cultures in Europe, and it is a small miracle that so many idiosyncratic beer traditions managed to survive the tumultuous 20th century – more tumultuous here in Belgium than they maybe allow for. But it was their proposition that Belgian beer culture is defined by evolution not revolution that prompted my little piece of anachronistic time travel above. It is true that Belgian brewers – to borrow an idea I first stole from fellow Belgophile Joe Stange – are past masters at co-opting and finetuning wider brewing trends to make them palatable in Belgium. My contention is, however, that the history of Belgian beer is more of a Hegelian dialectic, a process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis evidenced less by evolution that by periods of stability punctuated by significant, discombobulating ruptures.

See, that is great. Fascinating – and I don’t even know what half of that up there means! Another thing I don’t know is whether a Spanish beer brewed in Britian in a British brewery owned by a Spanish brewing firm is Spanish or not:

This week Damm will make its first meaningful manufacturing foray outside Iberia when it opens a brewery in Bedford. The move represents an investment of almost €100 million (£87 million) and will create scores of jobs. The company is going to great lengths to ensure its UK-brewed beers taste the same as those made in Barcelona by sticking to the original recipe and investing in the equipment to ensure the product is identical.

Hmm… I still don’t know. But if we are sticking with the examination of not only how things became what that are but also what are these things in themselves, there is no better assessor than The Beer Nut who wrote about the recent final edition of the annual Borefts beerfest:

Two brewery stands at the 2025 Borefts Beer Festival seemed to have almost continuous queues. One of them I could understand: the New England legend Hill Farmstead. Early on day one I tried the barrel-aged coffee porter they brought, The Birth of Tragedy… This isn’t the sort of beer I associate with Hill Farmstead but it has been created with the same level of expertise. Canadian brewery Badlands was next to them and was, if anything, even more popular with the crowds. I had never heard of them so had no idea what the fuss was about. After they sold out and closed up early on the first day, I made sure to be there early on the second… [After trying two of their beers…] I was none the wiser regarding the Badlands fuss. They didn’t seem to be doing things particularly different to a thousand other microbreweries..

So, there you have both broader analysis of the cultures of beer as well as specific examination of each beer, drip by drip in the common context of the fest. All cheery and interesting exercises in digging around and thinking about beer. David Jesudason dug into another chestnut for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, unpacking what’s called IPA but what he calls “IPA”:

The first ‘IPAs’ – note quotation marks – were sent out on East India Company boats in the 1760s and were strong, highly hopped ales due to India’s warm climate: the hops’ antimicrobial properties combined with the high alcohol level aimed to prevent spoilage. These were a cross between a bitter and a barleywine and by the time they arrived in India the hop character had vanished into the Bay of Bengal. They were said to taste more like champagne than beer. In reality, they were a world away from a modern IPA. Samuel Allsopp was the first to market them as Indian Pale Ales – and tie them to colonial decadence – after he copied Londoner George Hodgson’s recipe but crucially brewed them in Burton, where the minerals in the water further emphasized the beer’s hop character. These were bitter British ales or similar to heavily hopped autumn stock beers.

And Laura Hadland took on a task that I wish more writers who focus on beer attempt – discussing wine:

The lights were low for a chic soiree organised by Wines of Hungary at Vagabond Wines in Birmingham yesterday. Twenty five producers were showcasing their wines to an enthused audience of trade, media and more. I had an hour to work my way round the hit list that I had prepared in advance – nowhere near enough time. Especially since the winemakers and their sales teams were so enthusiastic about their wares that they all insisted on having us try every single one.

My experience of Hungarian wine started with some pretty hefty even harsh Bulls Blood out by the town’s water resevoir in high school but I now hoard sweet Tokaji which I never seem to get around to opening as fast as I find them. Of course, that means my wake might be worth the trip as my fam gives them away along with my record collection.

ATJ shared more serious thoughts on mortality in his piece “Funeral Pints” where the swirling thoughts at a time of loss were steadied with gratitude by a bracing pint among others in a pub:

The clunk of loose change as it goes into a pitcher, ‘thank you very much William’, ‘not a problem’, a stooped man with a face that reminds me of a thinner version of WC Fields.’ ‘Here he is.’ ‘He ain’t got a jacket.’ ‘What’s it to you,’ comes the reply. ‘He was dressed up as a boy scout yesterday,’ says another voice. The man with the long face who photographed his breakfast is having a talk with himself, while elsewhere pints are piling up on tables. Tattoos, chewing, chomping, swallowing, gulping, laughing, ‘listen mate’, finger pointed without malice. We’d better get to the funeral.

The drink finds a place in so many moments. And does the job. Even now at a time which we are subject to so much that feels like wave upon wave of a grim big picture, like this data* from Beer Marketers’ Insights:

Craft beer trends (ex non-alc) steepened over the summer to volume -8.4% and $$ -6.4%; several pts below total beer volume -5.6% and $$ down 5.1% for 18 wks thru Sep 20 vs yr ago. And when comparing craft’s yr-to-date sales thru Sep 20 vs the same period in 2023, the # of craft vendors (-10%), sub-brands (-13%) and SKUs (-12.5%) are all down double digits.**

From that view of the general, for the double, Jeff also wrote on a specific application in his obit* of Upright, a favourite brewery facing its end:

Craft brewing has spent a huge amount of time navel-gazing over what it means to have a clear vision. This often bled into marketing bromides, as breweries repackaged derivative products as original and creative. That development led to some of the cynicism that marks the mood today. Upright did have a clear vision, however—and Alex seemed almost immune to commercial considerations. Upright always felt more like a sixth-generation Belgian or Franconian brewery than an American craft brewery to me.

A wonderful remembrance of the soon to be no more. Summing up based on all the above, can we draw conclusions? Well we could ask ourselves (yet again*) whether the function of good beer writing to support the industry or to more broadly understand the trade and culture. By way of illustration, consider this:

“…The Guild’s board members are all driven by our shared passion for the beer industry and those who work within it. We’re proud to represent the very best of beer and cider communicators, who are such an important asset to the wider industry…”

A familiar line that’s become cliché and so nothing against the particular speaker. A prominant popular theme voiced for the best part of two decades, perhaps until somewhat recently. I mention that in the context of this article in The New York Times which is, yes, yet another obit* for US craft beer but, perhaps unusually, one that contains some interesting admissions:

This summer, 21st Amendment believed it had found a way to keep at least some of its operations going. It planned to bring in a new partner and start buying smaller craft beer brands that it would brew in San Leandro. But in late August, the lender pulled the plug on that idea. In late September, 21st Amendment closed its flagship brewpub in San Francisco. The San Leandro location is expected to shutter by the end of this month. “We were driven by our passion for craft brewing, and we got so caught up in it that we had blinders around what the reality is for craft brewing right now,” said Shaun O’Sullivan, a co-founder of 21st Amendment. “We’re a cautionary tale right now to anybody who wants to grind down and open up their own place. It’s just not a good time.”

So is / was “passion” an “important asset” or a form of those “blinders“? Whether in business or in writing. Maybe both. What ever happened to well-earned hard-bitten steely-eyed objectivity? Why did we not foresee, just as the rise casinos and later lotto tickets stripped gambling of its vice, how craft beer was infantalizing booze with kiddie friendly fruit flavours in brightly coloured cans – and even converting every tavern into potential seminar spaces.*** I blame the “don’t judge the tastes of others” line. Who writes without hoping to offer incisive opinion? You know, if the beer writers, by error or omission, participated in priming the passion pump with boosterisms during the era of irrational exhuberence… is it not reasonable to consider that the oeuvre itself aided in the downturn to some degree?**** That’s sorta summed up by that old nugget, the one about the rising tide raising all boats that we heard so much about. We also know that the tide falls. Twice a day. Every day. But most folk forgot* to mention that.*****

Doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t learn lessons from the downturn. We might even consider ourselves now “post-passion” in our relation to beer and beer writing. That would be good. Without, you know, sponsored articles or A.I. articles****** or even A.I. sponsored A.I. articles.* That would be better. Based on the above we can see people can and will doubledown and keep digging around, questioning conventions and asking the right questions about what is and what isn’t the good stuff in all this beery culture.******* I’m sure we can. Well, you all can. I just read this stuff.

That’s a lot. And there’s still the footnotes below. While you are chewing on all this, please also check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday and sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of that now newly refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has been on hiatus since April but the archives are out there with the all the sweary Mary! There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newslettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*YIKES!!!
**At least it’s not as bad as in Russia: “In the first half of 2025, retail beer sales in Russia fell by 16.3 percent year-on-year… Due to the increase in excise taxes (they increased by 15.4 percent at the beginning of the year), the cost increased accordingly. In 2023, the average price per liter of beer was 120 rubles, in 2024 — 129 rubles, and at the end of July 2025 it reached 151 rubles per liter — prices have increased by more than a quarter (26 percent) since 2023, Nielsen added.“
***The signs outside the craft beer bars said “Off-flavour Seminars Every Tuesday!” I thought of that when reading this passage from “The Engines and Empires of New York City Gambling”by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, August 4, 2025: “Gambling, too, now divides the world between those who know enough to make it boring and those who—bored—prefer not to know. They play and lose anyway. Thrilling games, like thrilling cities, thrive on enigmatic imperfections: the small market anomalies that quants scour for an edge, the tells and giveaways that reward the observant and elude the rest. Once all is understood, all is dull. Gambling may once have belonged to the Devil, but I assure you it does no longer. The arrival of organized gambling in its casino form has stripped away even the faded glamour of old miscreants like Rothstein and St. Clair. When, at last, detailed renderings of the proposed Caesars Palace emerged, they were hilariously decorous, showing not crowds of modern Harry the Horses and Nathan Detroits but elegantly dressed men and women in dignified black, playing in poker rooms that looked ready to host a seminar.“
****And to be sure we can also lay much at the door of the evangelizing homogenizing craft industry conference seminars which took a page from time share symposiums. Imperial Pilsner anyone? Everyone?
*****Did I ever mention I spent school years right into undergrad next to the Bay of Fundy? Nevermind. Perhaps now’s the time for the trade’s comms people to adopt of the “Big Yellow Taxi” message – “drink craft: you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” It could work. Something might.
******Can’t wait for that market sector‘s crash! It’s all relative.
*******BTW there was some great beer writing advice set out in last Saturday’s footnotes from B+B: “Prop Up The Bar is a new blog to us. It’s a proper old-fashioned blog, full of massive photos that haven’t been edited and typos. It’s made us think again that the professionalisation of blogging arguably didn’t do it any favours and has perhaps discouraged people from just having a go, like Nick C, using their blog as a diary. In that context, props are due to Martin Taylor whose blog is well written and well researched, but never feels as if it’s taking itself massively seriously. (Yes, we know, we should watch and learn.) It signals that, actually, you can just have adventures and quickly write them up.“

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The End Of Summer 2025

There are good views out there. Lots of golden hour sunlight finishing up the days as we face the reality that, yes, winter is coming. Out and about that evening, I saw a frog and a hedge of jewelweed – but you’d expect that, wouldn’t you. I like how the angle of the shadow makes something of a right angle with the tree. I didn’t notice that when I took the photo. But even saying that makes it too artsie, less just see-ie. Similarly, writing about hops, Jeff wrote about a limitation but its really about two limitations. And it’s all a bit like dancing about architecture… but what isn’t:

The thing about adding more is at a certain point you don’t get more. We learned this when breweries were putting eight pounds per barrel of hops in their beers and making them taste like lawn clippings. To get more, you have to add different. And here I give you fresh hop beers. They offer a dimension of flavor that is different from regular kilned hops. Trying to describe them is hard because rather than just reaching for another adjective, we grope toward different realms of experience. Drinking a very good fresh hop beer is to experience synesthesia and encounter the taste of iridescent green.

Conversely yet still on the question of different, not as charming an experience was an airport sandwich sold to Matt Gross under the presumably personally seductive name “the Matthew”, it of the 10 slices of prosciutto:

…laid flat, one on the other, with no space between them, to form a dense, unchewable mound of salty protein. Look, sandwiches are all about architecture, and the meat, especially a powerfully flavored one like prosciutto, needs air. Each slice, thick or thin, should be separated from its brethren, folded gently and laid haphazardly (within reason) upon the bread. You want to feel the texture of the slices, the regular irregularity of the bite as your teeth pass through the layers. That sandwich needs to breathe. If it can’t breathe, it’s dead on the plate, limp and heavy, boring. R.I.P. Matthew. The great thing about this approach is that you can actually use less prosciutto per sandwich and at the same time make the sandwich taste better.

It’s funny. As I go through the week’s saved links I can get interested about someone writing about a crappy sandwich but, for example, can’t be bothered with anything anyone is writing about THC drinks. What could it be? Bad writing? Maybe.* Compare how, for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing, yet another Matthew wrote about beer pubs and heritage in the nearby local layered landscape under development in Manchester’s core, writting in a way which contextualizes more than lobbies:

“We believe regeneration should enhance, not diminish, the city’s heritage. The Marble Arch deserves to be protected as part of Manchester’s future, not pushed aside by it.” On the subject of heritage, one brand looking to capitalise on the city being the national centre of attention this summer is the iconic Boddingtons. Brand owner AB-InBev has decided to return the brand to cask production after it was discontinued in 2012. The news follows hot on the heels of reported investment in another of its heritage beers, Bass…

I like the tone. While one can get numbed by the beating of a drum, an invitation to think about survival and revival in face of modernity is instructive. Speaking of which, maintaining an interest in more than listicles, Laura Hadland‘s** (slightly paywalled) column in The Telegraph takes on a useful discussion for those with a modest to moderate interest in beer – serving temperature:

… some people adore the sharp thrill of bitter flavours. If that’s you, West Coast IPAs should scratch the itch. This US style of beer is hop-led. Citrus and pine flavours are underpinned by intense bitterness, balanced with a light touch of malt… An American brewer may be horrified to see this beer style served any other way but well chilled. However, there is an argument that they could be served fractionally warmer: research shows that as temperature rises, our perceptions of bitterness usually increase. The real connoisseur of bitter flavours should consider ordering a West Coast IPA (such as Elusive Brewing’s Oregon Trail) on cask, served at a cellar temperature of 11-13C, as opposed to the keg-dispensed version that will be around 5-8C.

While there is a reference to the dubious tale of the hyper-efficient expectorating wine judge, this is exactly the sort of writing that there should be more of. An explanation of an idea. An invitation to try something out. Which may be why the comments are not (entirely) focused on slagging the author. Speaking of context and understanding, I like this piece by Jason Wilson about old vines and the disasterous 2025 harvest in Rioja and what keeps the winemakers… making:

I asked Oxer why he thinks people can be so skeptical about the concept of old vines. “In some way,” he said, “we’ve lost our connection with the old world, the spiritual world. We think too much about the scientific world rather than the spiritual world, but we should join both worlds.” He added, cryptically as always: “Soil is darkness, but always in the darkness, there’s light. Soil is a world we don’t really understand. It’s mix of magic and microbiology.” As we finished our meal with a Basque style cheesecake, Oxer told me that 2025 will be a different story than 2024. He’d lost at least 60 percent of this year’s grapes to the summer hailstorms.

Note: if you think you are dedicated to the drink, consider Big Jim. Talk about pacing your drinks. Conversely, The New York Times ran an (somewhat paywalled) article this week that had me shaking my head over the level of alcoholism being decribed and the introduction of a new concept:

Withdrawal from alcohol, though, felt like a direct hit. I looked to my bedside table and saw the glass of “bed wine” from the night before. “Bed wine” is something I promised myself I would quit this year. It’s the last glass of wine I bring with me as I climb into bed to watch TV or do the crossword puzzle. I tell people that my relationship with alcohol is “complicated,” but it’s not. I love drinking wine and a good cocktail, but booze is horrible to me. In my world, there’s always an excuse to drink: celebration, disappointment, stress.

A habit of “bed booze” seems to me to be a pretty alarming cry for help. Which the piece sorta admits it is. But still… Lordy. What’s so wrong with warm milk? But things could be worse… maybe. Last Friday, Will Hawkes circulated his latest edition of London Beer City and included this gem of remembrance of a shit pub past:

In 1998/99 I lived about two minutes’ walk from the Finn and Firkin, an imposing 19th-century boozer on the Pershore Road in Birmingham. I remember Dogbolter, a beer I avoided because it was too strong. I remember the L-shaped bar, and the smelly loos next to one entrance. I remember the huge dance hall/concert venue attached to the back. And I remember, for reasons I still can’t truly understand, being unnecessarily rude to a Stoke-supporting friend when he entered the pub one Saturday evening having just watched his team lose 3-0 (although, checking Stoke’s results, they didn’t actually lose 3-0 in 1997-98. Maybe it was 4-0? Or 4-1). (The pub stopped being a Firkin soon after and is fully shut now).

Nice. Exactly what one looks for in every establishment. Or is it? Some Americans go to Italy in search of an English dispense system… well, at least one did:

Today, from my count, there are at least fifteen locations in Rome serving beer via handpump. And while a number of British breweries send their casks here, there are a several Italian breweries like Hilltop Brewery, Shire Brewing, and Linfa Brewery that are regularly cranking out casks for the pubs. Beyond Rome, you can find handpumps in most Italian city at establishments with an interest in selling anything beyond the standard Peroni or Moretti. Even in Sicily. However, I suspect most of these are serving kegged beer hooked up to a handpump (i.e., they’re not serving cask conditioned beer). To my knowledge, I didn’t have any of that on this trip.

Massimo Internazionalismo!! And perhaps being a bit massimo medievalismo, the feature in Pellicle this week by Thomas Soden is on the topic of gale, the herb that hops destroyed. AKA myrica gale scientifically or sweet gale, sweet bayberry, dutch myrtle or sweet willow. Or even bog myrtle like when I had a beer brewed with it back in 2008 brewed by Beau’s right here in eastern Ontario. Soden shared:

A wild plant, it often featured in the herbal gruit which flavoured beers from low countries before hops became commonplace in brewing. The shrubs require the specific soil acidity of bogland areas, which although once abundant, are increasingly scarce today. Nothing, however, is stopping modern British brewers from utilising gale as a flavouring agent. In an age in which ‘natural’ beers and wines, and fermented drinks like kombucha are gaining popularity, this seems like it has potential. In 2017, the now sadly defunct Treboom brewery in Shipton-by-Beningbrough near York made a wheat beer flavoured with Gale named “Myricale,” and acknowledged it was a homage to the style. So why has it died out?

Hmm… might I suggest the whole “tastes like a bog” thing?

And for Stan because we share the love of such things, a story of how much alcohol chimps consume:

Someone have a word with the chimps? Observations of the apes in the wild show them imbibing the alcoholic equivalent of a half pint of beer a day through the vast amount of fermented fruit in their diet. Researchers arrived at the first estimates of wild chimp daily alcohol intake after measuring ethanol levels in fallen fruit that the apes gather from the forest floor in Kibale national park in Uganda and in Taï national park in Ivory Coast. While individual fruits contained less than 0.5% alcohol, the chimps’ daily intake swelled as they devoured the ripe fruit pulp. The apes were particularly fond of figs, which contained some of the highest levels of alcohol the team recorded.

Speaking of the pre-hop universe of gale and chimps and… stuff… to conclude this week I am going to try a new weekly feature, featuring old stuff every week. I realized the other day that not only had I been writing this… whatever this is… for over two decades but a lot of my history writings are well down the lastest posts lists. So I am going to try to give a nod to a few things that you might find interesting and perhaps new to you if you weren’t reading this sort of beer stuff back then. Let’s start off with a few links to posts under the 1400s tag:

a. from 2016, check out The Steelyard, Stillyard, Stylyard and Spelling about the Hanseatic League’s foothold in central London
b. from 2015, read all about the brewing dynasty of The Hillars Of Golden Lane, Cripplesgate Without and
c. from 2019, a survey of England’s Increasing Concern Over Beer Brewing, 1430s to 1580s.

That is it for now. Enjoy these last days and golden hours of this summer and as you do please also check out the below mentioned Boak and Bailey every Saturday and sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of that now newly refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has been on hiatus since April but the archives are out there with the all the sweary Mary! There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newslettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.

*Yet we do recall the wise words of Boak and Bailey in last weekend’s footnotes: ” “Beer fandom is infested with know-all-ism.” To expand on that briefly, it’s the tendency to respond to any post or article with something like “Old news, already knew this” or “And of course, [supplementary fact]…” Worrying about whether what they’re saying adds anything new to the conversation is one thing that inhibits people from writing and sharing. Yes, there are certain topics that have been hashed out a million times. But when you write about it, it’ll be different because you have a different perspective, and because new evidence has emerged, or things have changed, since it was last written about. Don’t write for the know-alls, because you can’t please them. Write for yourself, and for people who like what you do.” “
**For the double, Laura on pockets at the Beeb.

The Delightful Yet Pensively Penultimate Beery News Notes On A Summer’s Thursday For 2025

It’s been a busy week but not really in the beery sense. Guests and heirs have come and gone – and even bought a $14.99 beer on the way out via an airport bar at Montreal, as illustrated sub-wonderfully perhaps. A last bit of summer visting and the shedding of the last loonies and twoonies. Which means the home is quieter here at this end of the week compated to the other. Which is good. But quieter. At least I have my tomatoes. Did I mention my tomatoes? Definitely illustrated sub-wonderfully, that yellow one in the upper left weighed in a 1.7 pounds. And I did nothing to make it happen. Which is my favourite and most common form of success. Six varieties left to right ish clockwise: Chiltern’s Blue Bayou, Baker Creek’s True Black Brandywine, Chiltern’s Golden Sunshine, Baker Creek’s Kentucky Beefsteak, Chiltern’s Beefsteak and Baker Creek’s Orange Icicle. Picked from the catelog based on the “pin tail on donkey” method. All started from seed last winter and soon getting turned into sauce. That True Black Barleywine is the best tasting tomato ever – like it has built in balsamic vinegar. Thanks for tuning in to Tomato News Today!

First up in the world of beer, the Tand himself has also been out and about on travels and has reported back on the scene in Munich – and found out that certain things were not to be found:

Sadly, you can’t find Pils on draught anywhere, and for reasons best known only to themselves, Spaten insist on offering the dreadful Beck’s as their bottled pils in their most prestigious outlets. It appears Spaten Pils, which I recall was a lovely beer, is no longer brewed. A real shame. In fact, Spaten it seems, only brew Helles in both normal and alcohol-free forms and, of course, an Oktoberfest. It gets worse. The whole shooting match of Spaten-Franziskaner-Löwenbräu-Gruppe is owned by AB InBev, who presumably have streamlined the brands available, though under the Franziskaner brand you’ll also find weissbier and a kellerbier. Like Spaten, the rather delightful Löwenbräu Pils has been dropped. It is a pretty grim picture as the odd hoppy pils provided an alternative to Helles, which in its Munich iteration, can be a little sweet, and dare I say, bland? (The locals call it “süffig”, meaning “easy to drink”. And, in fairness, it is.

And over at Pellicle, Matthew assumed the role of player / manager and reported on his travels to the French & Jupps Maltings in Hertfordshire where he found a hidden truth:

Its long history stretches back to 1689, and for more than a century the maltster has been based in the twin Hertfordshire towns of Stanstead St. Margarets and Stanstead Abbots, bisected by the aforementioned Lea, some 30 miles north of London as the crow flies. There are a few reasons for its relative anonymity—I myself hadn’t heard of them until I was invited for a visit in February 2024. One is due to the fact its malt was (and often still is) bought in bulk and rebagged by various distributors before being shipped out to breweries. And so, it might bear the name of a competitor—although in this context it’s perhaps more accurate to refer to them as partners—in the US, for example, the malt is typically sold under the William Crisp banner.

Sneaky sneaksters! Did you know? (Did I? Never mind that… let’s make this about you.) Did you??? Speaking of hidden truths, Pete Brown had a has retrospective on BrewDog, now well in to the post-Watt era and even into the post-Dickie, published in The Morning Advertiser that he unpacked into something of an obit:

To me, they always felt more like a band than a brand – not least because they wanted to be seen as punks. Bands are different. When none of the original members remain, many former fans insist that it’s simply not the same band any more, and that the newcomers who have taken over, singing songs they never wrote or had hits with, are no better than a covers band. The departure of Martin Dickie feels like the last member of the original line-up has left the building. The entity that remains may own the rights and assets of BrewDog, but it has lost the spirit and soul that once defined it… Dickie remained silent throughout. The initial allegations referred to a “cult of personality” built around both men, but specific personal allegations were focused on Watt’s behaviour. After Dickie’s departure, some former employees took to social media to say that he was “part of the problem.”

Wonderful. I have never understood how Dickie, co-exec past and board member still, has had the teflon wrapper that he has enjoyed through downturn after downturn on what must be one of the most note worthy financial flops in recent brewing history. But perhaps it’s been a case of not noticing that scratch on your hand due to the nail in your foot.

Speaking of endings, Ed the Beer Father has shared his thoughts on the closing of Banks of Wolverhampton, mapping a fairly complex set of international bobs and weave that led to the end:

Eleven years ago the two companies with rights to San Miguel beer, San Miguel Brewery (Philippines) and Mahou San Miguel (Spain) signed a cooperation agreement to promote their international businesses and position San Miguel as a global brand. To further its growth they had already partnered with Carlsberg to contract brew it in Britain, and it was a large part of the output of the Northampton brewery. But for a brand with global ambitions partnering with the world’s biggest brewery seems like an obvious match… So, as what I believe is part of a global realignment, last year San Miguel moved its contract brewing in the UK from Carlsberg to ABInBev. Losing the San Miguel contract left Carlsberg in the UK, which owned one giant factory and two large regional breweries, with a lot of surplus capacity. The giant factory wasn’t going to go and Marston’s has the small pack facilities, which left Banks’s. So a contract change for a Spain and Philippines based international lager brand closed a 150 year old brewery in Wolverhampton that didn’t even brew it.

Lordy. Speaking of things making one’s head spin, I totally missed Stan‘s post before the Labour Day weekend on the nature of beer bubbles so I will correct that error now:

There is more to monitoring beer foam than counting bubbles, although they are the foundation. They result from nucleation, and as those bubbles climb to first form or then replenish the foam head, proteins and bitter substances are carried into the bubble wall, forming a matrix that holds the skeleton together. In his doctoral thesis, “Beer Foam Physics,” A. D. Ronteltap calculated that a foam 3 centimeters high (a bit less than 2 fingers) in a glass 6 centimeters wide (a bit less than a Willi Becher) made up of bubbles with an initial radius of .2 mm (twice the width of a human hair) would contain 1.5 million bubbles distributed over about 100 layers.

Over a million bubbles! Not quite millions and millions but more than one million. And, while the numbers aren’t quite confimed yet, Jessica Mason pulled out the stats as she reported on the question “Can Gen Z save cask ale from extinction?” for Drinks Business:

Statistics from YouGov for the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) have shown 25% of 18 – 24-year-old beer drinkers regularly order cask ale. The figures mark an increase of more than 50% on the previous year… Digging deeper into the SIBA figures, there are also statistics that support the opportunity that women present in the future of cask ale’s revival. For instance, the data revealed how 22% of female beer drinkers regularly order cask ale, compared to 43% of men. But, as Corbett-Collins noted: “It would be great to see even higher numbers, but the glass half full fact is that men and women of all ages are enjoying cask beer.

Out and About Update: Max mapped a 29 km(!) pub crawl he took through the Czech countryside to plant himself in front of a beer at Únětický pivovar, Zdibský pivovar and Polepšovna ducha as well as a few other spots. I marched about a tenth of that the other weekend and my left knee let me know about it for more than one day. Good thing Max kept up a good pace because apparently, according to the white coated eggheads in the Netherlands, beer drinkers are a prime target for mosquitos:

To find out why the blood-sucking critters prefer some people over others, a research team led by Felix Hol of Radboud University Nijmegen took thousands of female Anopheles mosquitoes to Lowlands, an annual music festival held in the Netherlands… Participants who drank beer were 1.35 times more attractive to mosquitoes than those who didn’t. The tiny vampires were also more likely to target people who had slept with someone the previous night. The study also revealed that recent showering and sunscreen make people less attractive to the buzzing menace. “We found that mosquitoes are drawn to those who avoid sunscreen, drink beer, and share their bed…”

Speaking of getting bled, I received the alert from Will Hawkes: “Sorry to be right about this. No GBBF next year as it made ‘a substantial loss’, according to CAMRA.” As per usual and FOR THE DOUBLE!!!… Jessica Mason has more detail:

CAMRA chairman Ash Corbett-Collins explained how “at Members’ Weekend earlier this year, the national executive presented finances that painted a stark picture. As your chairman I was open with you; we were facing significant challenges… Corbett-Collins lamented: “Sadly, this means I must tell you that: The Great British Beer Festival and its Winter counterpart did not attract enough visitors to cover the cost of holding them, resulting in a substantial loss.” Added to this, he revealed that CAMRA’s membership figures “are simply not growing” and confessed that “the hard truth is we are unlikely to return to pre-2020 levels”… and noted how “the cost of running a membership organisation and business is also increasing”.

This is a pretty serious situation as it really looks like a broader issue than just the fests. The organization itself seems to be at risk. I expect more information to be flowing in the coming days.

In the “WAR ON SCIENCE” folder, we read the news out of The New York Times that everyone’s favourite slowly exploding head in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services has pulled the US government’s pending report on alcohol as part of a healthy diet:

Mike Marshall, chief executive of the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to reduce the harms of alcohol, said H.H.S. was “doing the work of the alcohol industry.” “They’re burying the report so the information about the health consequences is not widely known,” Mr. Marshall said. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried a “chronic disease epidemic” sweeping the country. But he has said little about alcohol’s impact on American health since taking office. Consumption of both alcohol and tobacco was absent from the first Make America Healthy Again report released in May. Mr. Kennedy (like his boss, President Trump) has said he does not drink.

It’s important to note that Mr. Kennedy, unlike his boss, does not wear makeup preferring to gain his particular rusty orange hue through a natural process.

Finally, just before this organ went to press, the dynamic duo B+B posted a piece under the fabulous title “Customers Have Always Been a Problem for Pubs” which illustrates the truth based on a sppech given in 1933 by one Lieutenant Colonel E.N. Buxton, director of the East London brewery Truman, Hanbury & Buxton:

The talk finishes with a few more rebukes for the drinkers. First, the reason pubs often look so ugly, and are so sturdily built, is because “you do not treat them so kindly”. “Walls and furniture are roughly treated”, he says. “As for the outside of public-houses, I agree that some of the houses in London look perfectly ghastly. Hard wear, however, had to be the first consideration.” This was addressed, remember, to a room full of people from Bethnal Green. We’re picturing the crowd when Bertie Wooster sings ‘Sonny Boy’.

Fabulous. There. That’s a lot for a busy week but probably less than all the stuff our there to read so please also check out the afore mentioned Boak and Bailey every Saturday and sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe … maybe not. Then listen to a few of that now newly refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer offers a range of podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast. That’s quite good and after a break they may well be are back every month! Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newslettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs! And he’s right.