Category: Sour Beer Studies

The Beery News Notes For When You Dream Of Sweater Weather

As you all know all too well, I taught English to rude high school kids and bored adult evening classes in Poland in 1991. So sweater always strikes me as a word that should raise and eyebrow or two:

Student: “You wear that just to sweat in it!?!?” Teacher: “No, it’s for when it’s cold.” Student: “So… you don’t have something to wear when you sweat?” Teacher:  “Well, there is a sweatshirt, sure.” Student: “Wait, a sweater and a sweatshirt and different things?” Teacher: “Yes – but a sweatshirt is not a shirt.” Student: “WHAAAAT??” 

(Next class… you have to explain what a “bunny hug” is.)  I was thinking of sweaters, sweatshirts and bunny hugs as I did crofter cos-play all weekend out in the yard. I should feel guilty for wishing away the warmth as I dig, haul, dig, haul, get lightheaded, sit, get up, dig, haul… repeat… daydream of sweater weather… have a cold beer… plan putting the garden to bed for winter… shorter nights… and sooner or later nap. And to dream of sweater weather. Cooler weather. OK, maybe not that cold.

Good to have dreams. Many are living theirs at the Great British Beer Festival. Not Matthew sadly – but many others. Lots of happy faces at the hashtag even if Des de Moor can’t find enough mild. Ruvani held court. And Ed posted this excellent cheat sheet clearly created in some sort of trade feedback meeting setting. SWOT. About cask ale. See? I can read the big letters up top. It’s interesting in a direct sense but also in an indirect one.* It’s an interesting sign of hope that something can be worked out. Best line. “Lost Expertise From Staff Leaving” under threats.  And the worst?  “Learn From Craft.” Don’t be doing that sort of thing.

Speaking of doing, Ontario small rural brewer John Graham of Church-Key Brewing in Campbellford continues to volunteer as a driver of goods and people in and out of Ukraine. I am absolutely struck by his dedication to humanity and the effort he is putting in towards that end. Here’s a video from Monday of what he doing. What’s he doing? Doing good.

What else went on this week? The Morning Advertiser in the UK published** a very messy argument in favour of ramming the square peg of today’s range of beers into the round hole of the reasonably now long departed concept of “craft” referencing such terms as “real craft” “craft-washing” “craft-style beer” “craft-influenced beer” and “in the style of craft” for fear that otherwise “the craft beer scene will be watered down”!  I am not sure if I missed the time loop portal but that argument is about a decade too late. Stop digging up the empty grave! It’s all about fruit sauce, adjuncts and scale these days.  And money. And, by the way, who would have predicted back in 2005 that the much maligned too sweet and reasonably sour and slightly funky dud known as Chapeau Exotic would have ended up as the archetype for craft beer in 2022?

And there may not be enough money going around these days, according to Heineken:

The company recorded 24.6% organic growth in operating profit, while it generated sales of €16.4 billion, a rise of 22.4% on an organic basis. However, Heineken said that while consumer demand has been resilient in the first half, “there is an increasing risk that mounting pressure on consumer purchasing power will affect beer consumption”.

But while Molson Coors is forecasting a similar low coming in from the horizon they have taken that possibility into account:

A year ago, Molson Coors began trimming its portfolio of lower-priced beers to focus on more other options. Some investors wanted the company to ditch the segment altogether and instead focus entirely on more expensive beers, which have performed better in recent years. “What some would regard as an Achilles heel, in the past, has positioned us perfectly at the moment,” Hattersley said. “Some of our competitors only operate in the premium space, which is obviously not a place I’d like to be as we’re heading into what’s clearly going to be tough times.”

Always interesting to see beer businesses seeking to be where the beer buying public is going to be. People can’t buy what they can’t afford.

Note: Canada waaaaay over invested in pot. 425 million unsold tons destroyed in 2021.

The scene. The poem.

Breeze Galindo is the focus of this month’s edition of Beth Demmon’s Probibitchin’. She’s a west coast turned east coast brewer who is also involved with the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling:

“Garrett had never heard of me at all,” Breeze laughs. That changed when an acquaintance on the West Coast reached out to Oliver to recommend her as an MJF Board member. (Note: boost! your! friends!) With Other Half’s blessing — and a glowing reference — the position was hers by October 2020. Now with the Foundation’s resources, Breeze hopes to take it to the next level by chairing a brand-new mentorship program, slated to formally launch this fall.

Jess of Boak and Bailey published an excellent piece on a disappearing aspect of pub architecture – the function room that served as the location of many of life’s milestones in the past:

You’re dealing with customers who are struggling emotionally and can’t or don’t want to have boring conversations about logistics. Undertakers are trained to deal with this; publicans not so much. And they can’t be sure about how many people are going to turn up – “No, we’re surprised too, we didn’t think he had any friends!” – and so fixing a price that works for both parties is a challenge. Because of a general trend towards hosting weddings in posher places (country hotels, stately homes, the Maldives) it’s also harder to justify holding a room that only does any business when someone dies.

Long time pal of this here blog and fellow Scot abroad Alistair Reese of Fuggled fame has had a very interesting article published in Pellicle this week on the rise of Murphy & Rude Malting Co in Charlottesville, Virginia:

Sitting by the open roll door of an industrial unit in the historic Woolen Mills district of Charlottesville, Jeff, owner and maltster at Murphy & Rude Malting Company tells me how he started learning about craft beer’s supply chain as a result of the new law. Jeff had assumed that in a state in which agriculture plays such a significant role in the economy there would be several malting companies already in-state ready to work with the coming tsunami of new brewers. What he discovered shocked him, there was not a single malt house in the entire state.

Note: the image next to the story above is not related to the story above but I liked it so much when I saw it this week at a store in town that I added it anyway. Sorta ag, though, right? Rude ag. What would the children think it meant? Rude. Ag rude.

And finally in sadly negative news,*** a small brewer in Canada’s tiniest province received a whack of play hate cowards this week when it posted images of the Prime Minister’s visit.

“So within a few hours, we had thousands of comments, we were getting hundreds of private messages, we are now getting phone calls to the brewery and all of these comments are extremely negative, vulgar, there is a lot of profanity being used, sexualizing our staff,” Murphy said in an interview outside the pub. 

Nutso.

So there you are. Have fun. But not too much fun. You know what I mean. While you exercise moderation, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the mostly weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays or Wednesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And the long standing Beervana podcast (Ed.: which I have missed from this list for some unknown reason.) There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now… nope, there was a post on July 25th… 2022 even.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Still gearing  up, the recently revived All About Beer has introduced a podcast, too. (Ed.: give it a few weeks to settle in and not be as agreeable.) Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*No, I don’t know what I meant either.
**Word spread through a Mudge-Alert!
***Finally more unnecessary neg – or perhaps just this week’s clangers – conveniently all lumped together down here for easy and brief reading. Or ignoring. First, we have a complaints department update… I am not sure which complaint is worse: the beer, the scoring, the basis for the scoring or caring about the first three. And perhaps relatedly, there was a sighting of the denialists oath this week – craft beer working conditions are apparently A-OK… so stop your complaining… as if that makes a difference. And, sticking with the theme of wasnotwas, the style experts have now determined (in a bit of a bizarre twist) that style is not a construct so much as a result… meaning any trending branding label can go on any old thing. Takes experts to tell you that there sort of thing… or not thing… beware! Beware too those who think appreciating this all stuff requires professional expert guidance! This too!! The fruits of these scholars are a glory to behold. Also really beware of the long thread that makes something pretty simple look reeeealllly hard – you can usually spot one of these by first going right to the end to see what the point is. In this case, trying to sell you consultancy services! It’s a frikkin’ dog and pony show! Because there is no way anyone in the trade could figure out the tap configuration of their bar. PS and finally… it’s like there’s a few sentences missing, with all due respect, as doesn’t this only make sense if books, beers of the world bars, pencils and note books, trade gatherings of any sort, telephones, word of mouth and you know humans talking to humans did not exist prior to 1990?

These Are The Beery News Notes For The First Thursday Of June

The left lateral collateral ligament is something I have which I had not considered for most of my life. Well, not until I strained mine yesterday. Yeowsers. It’s been a bumpy old year so far. Me, I blame gardening. Heaving soils and such. The good news is the cure. Napping. I can do that. But what of the drink, you ask? Let’s see. First up, this article by Valerie Kathawala on the role of migrant labour in wine got me thinking about the price of the bottles I buy:

Selling natural wine involves a narrative about holistic farming, intimate scale, and transparency of methods. So while the wine industry as a whole has much to answer for when it comes to issues of worker welfare, it’s a question that falls harder on natural producers, who stake their claim on making ethical, kinder-to-the-planet wines that align with the conscious consumer’s values. 

Is there an equivalent reliance on cheap foreign labour in beer? I think the head of the UK’s Wetherspoon chain of pubs, as fabulously illustrated to the right, might be finding out there was but there might not be as much now:

Brexit-backing Wetherspoon pubs boss Tim Martin has added his name to the list of those wanting to relax work visa rules for EU migrants. Martin, who toured the country’s Wetherspoons pubs espousing the benefits of a hard Brexit, says that the UK should make it easier for lower-skilled EU workers to relocate here. His comments came as rival pub and restaurant bosses told the Telegraph that recruitment in the industry was so poor that many sites are having to close to lunchtime trade.

Question: what do you do when the brand gets an upgrade but what’s in the can goes in the opposite direction?

The West Berkshire CAMRA mag is online for all those who want a copy. I don’t really know where West Berkshire is. I also don’t know where Pontefract is but Martin took us there this week.

The Beer Nut explored sweet lambic, something I dabbled in 15 or so years ago but then no more. His description of a black current beer from Lindemans is enough to make one take up a habit:

It’s a beautiful beetroot-purple in the glass, with an electric-pink pillow of foam on top. The aroma has a little oaky spice and a dollop of crème de cassis liqueur. The latter comes through strongly in the flavour. I was expecting Ribena but it’s much more a classy French aperitif. This tastes of sunny afternoons, especially on a sunny afternoon.

Max guided me to an excellent article by writer Anandi Mishra on her life with alcohol:

That first year, I mostly drank alone. Friends were capricious then, not wanting to ‘drink much’ lest they ‘become alcoholics’. As a nation, India’s obsession with quickly bracketing people who enjoy a drink as ‘raging alcoholics’ got the better of them. During the solitude of these drinking sessions, I turned to the page to process how I felt. I’d write out my hopes and dreams while drunk, most of them dwelling on my desire to be a writer. I read, and wrote profligately. Most nights I sat down with printouts of Brain Pickings articles, George Orwell’s essays, anything I found ‘readable’. Punctuated by swigs of beer, I’d make notes for hours. When in 2014 I moved to Chennai to pursue a journalism degree, the boldness of that decision was largely motivated by my solitary drinking sessions.

News out of South Africa, with an unexpected outcome in a  umqombothi brewing contest:

He might have been the only male contestant vying for the crown, but in the end the judges were unanimous in selecting Sibusiso Skhosana.

Sibusiso Skhosana is from Thembisa, East Rand, Gauten and here is a description of the beer he was making. H/T to the man with hats.

Is it just me or in this last wee while and the uncoverings of craft beer’s seamy side (more of which was revealed in the UK this week) does the label “independent” smack a bit too much of the consequence-free narrative? It’s a bit like the tone I watched play out when a question was dared to be asked of an “important person” in craft:

Q: But doesn’t this ambiguity/reluctance to name names just perpetuate the wink wink attitude to this kind of behaviour Paul?
A: Taking a moment to clock that you’ve turned up to criticise one thing I could have said over acknowledging the many things I did say. Aye, I think that’s all I’ve got for now Eoghan.

Oh dear. The poor little craft stuff wears upon you, doesn’t it. By the way and quite related, running brewery names through employment sites like Indeed with reviews by former employees and you get some interesting information:

DO NO rotate staff out to prevent repetitive stress injuries… Majority of staff is part time or temporary workers brought in on the daily. There is zero opportunity for promotion of part time workers the company also heavily promotes alcohol abuse…”

Finally, I am always interested in the realm of expertise extrapolation. That’s why I stay up at night listening to Coast to Coast AM from a station out of Cleveland. Someone knows something about X so they have an opinion of Y. Recently, we saw a lot of probably well meaning but somewhat dangerous supposed legal advice being passed around related to abusive craft brewing work situations. People have real problems and should not be distracted by pro-am beer bloggers. The medical equivalent is of course far more prevalent with beer writers, last bastion of belief in the J-Curve. With an absence of intent, Jeff seemed to continue with the tradition this week with a piece that walks an unusual line along a wobbly if not fictional fence: “Alcoholism is a dangerous disease, and no one should try to downplay its horrors. But neither should we attribute this behavior to a larger group.” My immediate fear is he contradicted himself in those two sentences. Me, I am guided more by the advice of the US  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, or 261 deaths per day. These deaths shorten the lives of those who die by an average of almost 29 years, for a total of 2.8 million years of potential life lost. It is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States… More than half of alcohol-attributable deaths are due to health effects from drinking too much over time, such as various types of cancer, liver disease, and heart disease. 

Why qualify that sort of reality? That’s the same as a Covid-19 pandemic every five or six years. Better to take this oath: “booze is pretty much not that good for me but I choose to drink anyway!”

On that cheery note, please don’t forget to check out those weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday  and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too. Plus a newcomer located by B+B: The Moon Under Water.

A False Thaw In February And Your Thursday Beery News Notes

Fine. January is done and more jabs are getting jabbed out and about on this planet. A better situation than at any time in the last year. That’s good. Just weeks to go until spring. Like you, with these few warmer days I am planning the veggie garden and have my row covers ready to go. To help with those considerations, I have a new beer coming this week. Beer is like buying from eBay these days. I get an email saying I might want to consider this new beer from Matron. And I do. And I buy it along with something called Bobo, too. I live the Bo and Bo. It will all be on the front step Friday. So exciting. I shall watch like a child watching the stockings hanging by the fireplace on Christmas Eve.

First up this week, Black History Month has begin with a celebration of Theodore Mack, owner along with “a group of investors under the United Black Enterprises banner” who bought People’s brewery in 1970 and then only hired black employees. Fight the power. More here, here and here. And speaking of the calendar, more backlash against those in brewing trade PR who’ve been attacking folk opting out of the dipsomania-laced crowdsourcing so that the brewers who fund that PR have enough money in the kitty:

I’d also like it noted how unsupportive and honestly sometimes just straight-up gross some people are about others’ sobriety. Placing blame if businesses fail, mocking Dry January. It’s hard as fuck to not drink and you people suck.

Unconnectedly, ATJ posted a image from a 1922 book which again supports my long held understanding that no Belgian in their right mind drank unsweetened lambic before the unknowing but self-flagellating English language beer writer tours began in the 1970s. Likely something of a local lads’ gag, no doubt, watching them suck back the vinegar, then outdoing each other to heap praise.

Speaking of mid-20th century stuff but too late for the presses last week was Martyn’s take on the new labels on the beers from the relatively venerable US brewer, Anchor:

The design of the “classic” Steam Beer label is a crowded mess, the name of the beer only the second most prominent part of the label, at best, with some kind of odd parchment effect in the background making it look as if the colours failed to fix properly on the printing plates. The Porter label is better, being simpler and more direct, but still with distracting clusters of barley and hops that detract from the impact.

Fibby fake heritage, as Martyn points out, is a bit of a bore. I don’t care greatly either way as branding is one of the least interesting areas of the good beer world.

One other late excellent word was that of Kate B. on the scandal at Boulevard which, yes, includes the GBH standard cut and paste from the work of others but a more  daring, hardnosed and personal conclusion than that website is usually known for:

As a reporter, I struggle with my duty to ask questions of survivors. It’s a journalistic necessity, but it runs the risk of retraumatizing a person. My need to verify facts is counter to survivors’ need to be believed, to have their abuse validated. Even asking them to repeat the who, what, when, where of their experiences runs the risk of doing psychic damage. Trying to identify the why of it all—if there even is one—feels ethically impossible, and potentially harmful. That’s because people who have experienced abuse are often made to feel it’s their fault or that they are misreading the facts, often termed “gaslighting.” 

Speaking of which in a way, in another way I am not sure I can agree with this from my personal hero Dr.J.:

“A lot of people ask me, ‘How did it get this way in craft beer?’ Craft beer isn’t special—craft beer is a microcosm in the U.S. If there are inequities and disparities in craft beer, it’s because it’s serving as a mirror for the country at large,” Jackson-Beckham said. But she remains hopeful about the future of the industry.

My question relates to craft beer as microcosm. It isn’t. It is overly represented by a white, male, clubby tribe with access to money and wading in alcohol. Sort of like the Masons in plaid shirts.  While the statement above was made well before the Boulevard scandal broke, it is clear that many knew much for yoinks but turned a blind eye, according to impressively investigative work by the actual professional journalists of The Kansas City Star:

Boulevard employees recalled widely-known stories of harassment, particularly from a few high-ranking employees. Even when the women they victimized reported them, they remained in power. Even McDonald, who came back last week to lead the company in its time of crisis, acknowledged hearing reports in the past but not acting on them… The founder, now 67, acknowledged serious failings. But he didn’t want to believe his brewery had a systemic cultural problem. And he views the accusations against Boulevard employees as “isolated issues.”

Right. One also can only assume that this situation was well known to some of the beer trade writers among us but was not worth the trouble to report upon.

In another area of the craft-not-craft industrial zone, we read:

…james watt taking domestic flights between London & Aberdeen and being irked by his international ones being cancelled in the middle of a pandemic, all while running a supposedly climate conscious business lol. can’t make this shit up…

Also over there, the Beer Nut linked us to a story on the potential for the party being over for Irish folk coming back from the UK:

The EU is considering stopping Irish holidaymakers loading up on cheaper alcohol and cigarettes when they travel to other countries – with new rules that would also affect trips to Northern Ireland. Ireland is one of the most expensive places in the EU to buy alcohol and cigarettes, due to high excise duties. In a public consultation launched yesterday, the EU suggested holidaymakers should pay excise duties at home rates rather than where they buy products.

I asked many questions and tried to compare to the US-Canadian border which sits at a very long 2-wood from my house, just over the horizon. Not sure I was fully successful in informing myself.

Brendan P. has pointed out, as illustrated to the left,  the latest dumb legal move by one of the least appealing of the legacy micros out there. Apparently they now own all the rights to “bastard” too. I’ll let Austin Powers know. It’s sad that whatever goodwill they had as a quality gas station retail shelf supplier has been trashed in the cause of their protection of a common word and the most utterly tired brandings in beer. Keystone. Sawstone. Didn’t even notice they sued something called Hollystone. FFS. Is there any constituency left rooting for Stone in these matters? Is there any way these court cases lead to growth or is it just part of a rear guard strategy after the disaster in Berlin? Like those who would diss Dry January, there is a whole sector of the brewing trade that seems to live in a disconnected delusion about what the customer base actually thinks.

And finally another paper-based beer mag disappears after a irregularly schedule life and less than a year after an industry veteran was brought in. A tough row to hoe. Viva blogs! Viva!!!

That’s it. Now, for good reading check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey, back now mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  We have a new entry from the DaftAboutCraft podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword.  And remember BeerEdge, too.

 

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Second Third of The Tenth Twelfth

It’s hard coming up with new headlines every week, isn’t it. Look at that up there. It hardly makes any sense at all. And it’s getting a bit hard coming up with light entertaining content about beer to share. It’s usually all about something other than beer or like beer or nearly about beer. Like the best thing I saw this week – the tweet accompanied by the image to the left, captioned:

Toddlers in the 1970s looked like pensioners waiting for happy hour in a working men’s club.

This week, let’s look at stories about beer. Beery stories. You bet. Not about something related to beer or something just associated with beer. Hey, Jordan wrote something about beer… or actually drew it. He has created a map and a spreadsheet of all the current breweries and contract beer companies (firms which by beer from actual brewers, including on contract) on Ontario. It’s on his site and over to the right under the dropdown thingie. There. Help him by sending corrections… err, updates. Everyone likes that.

That’s about beer, right? Sure… well, maybe. Is this about beer? Ron wrote about UK cask during WW2 – not cask ale, just the wood in the casks:

In normal times British brewers would never have used American oak as it imparted too much flavour to the beer it contained. Unlike today, brewers wanted to avoid any trace of oak in their beer. Its presence was seen as a fault. But, with the supply of Memel oak dried up, brewers had little choice. When supplies of American oak in turn began to evaporate, brewers had to turn to a more local source.

OK, may be not but it was about something touching beer. Stan! Stan writes about beer like he did last week. He wrote again and got published again – this time about hop creep… which is not actually about the loud loser at the end of the bar in the crafty tavern:

“Hop Creep” isn’t the name of a beer-themed horror movie—just a real, ongoing mystery that brewers and hop scientists are still sorting out. Oregon State University’s Tom Shellhammer, one of the country’s top brewing scientists, says that his earliest moments of being introduced to the phenomenon were about five years ago, although he didn’t realize it at the time. “I was giving a talk at the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference, and somebody in the Q & A asked, ‘Hey, do you see people getting diacetyl when they dry hop?’ I was like, ‘No.’” Diacetyl is one result of hop creep. Beer with more alcohol than a brewery intended—which brewers call “out of spec”—is another, as are bottles or cans with dangerously high levels of carbonation.

Hops! Hops are in beer. And, in his return to London pubs and the blogging of same, the Tand put the beer into the Tand:

…there was a mission to accomplish. A visit to a Sam’s pub to establish London prices following the recent price increase. We chose the John Snow… a nice little boozer and trade was steady on this Wednesday afternoon.  I had the stout, which needed the gas changing, while E had a half of Pure Brewed. The price list was snapped when the barman wasn’t looking and duly posted to a certain Curmudgeon. Prices are on the wickedly high side and now by no means a bargain. It does make you wonder how they’ll compete on this basis.  One other thing. The notices forbidding this and that, which are found all over Northern Sam’s pubs, are conspicuous by their absence. I know. I checked everywhere. Double standards from Mr Smith it seems.

Hardly anything about the excellent Pellicle post this week by Helen Jerome on a cidery in Devon was about beer, but it did start with expected traditional character profile on the person behind the operation in question, deviating only by finding someone who was not first an unhappy accountant:

Spool back to late 2015, and Polly decided she’d had enough of sitting in an office. She needed a fresh challenge. Growing up in Devon, she gained a foundation in science with A-levels in chemistry, physics and biology; taken a module with Master of Wine Susan McCraith while doing a degree in Equine Business; studied Sustainable Agriculture at postgraduate level, then completed an EU-funded ‘slow food’ study tour in Tuscany. She’d never really been into cider though… 

Speaking of science and even a bit about beer, Ed wrote about the scourge of taking the free case of beer and how that ethical flaw of his gnaws at his very soul – except there was a twist:

As every beer blogger knows getting free beer is the easiest thing in the world. Though breweries might grizzle about it, threaten them with a bad review and they’re sending you a case of beer as fast as their little legs can carry it. But despite this due to my insatiable greed I immediately said yes when offered a Hobgoblin beer and bugs snack pack.

Speaking of which, BBC News itself ran an excellent piece on social median influencers – aka what used to be called blegging – and the associated cap in hand:

Like many businesses during Covid-19, Reshmi has seen a change in her customers’ behaviour. Although many people cut back on unnecessary purchases, her bakery was busy as people carried on ordering her celebration cakes. Yet she also noticed influencers were asking for more freebies too. It’s something she has done in the past – looking at the influencer and their posts, who follows them, how they engage with their audience, but says it didn’t work for her. “We have never had a sale off someone [saying] they saw our cake on someone’s post or profile, it’s always been through word of mouth, from paying customers.”

This is interesting. Even if cake is not beer. I have heard many a chortler and scribe announce that “it’s not like anyone could think I have compromised myself by the free samples” but it’s not something you can really say for yourself. And it never plays out that way. Best to pay your way. Folk notice and note. Unless there are edible bugs involved.

Related, the question of free food in pubs. Discuss.

Suzy Aldridge posted something of a goodbye to all that in response to a BrewDog franchise opening up in her English city of Lincoln:

Now I’m out. It’s surreal. I’m looking in from the outside and seeing the struggles in the industry, seeing how friends are marching on. I almost feel left behind, lost, but also that I’ve escaped. I’ve sidestepped into a new career path by pure luck. It’s not something I love like beer but it’s interesting, it pays the bills and, unlike hospitality, the rug won’t be swept from under my feet, then shoved back, then removed again. I’m comfortable, even as I drink some of the very last bottles of Lincolnshire Brewing Co that are in my fridge. 

Eoghan Walsh posted a new podcast at Brussels Beer City featuring an interview with Jean Van Roy of Brussels brewery Brasserie Cantillon. He wisely avoided raising my accusations of 2006 but, still, had a good beery chat:

On a scorching hot early September day on the eve of brewing season for Cantillon, we met at a bar influential not only for the city but also for him, and his family brewery. We talk lambic evangelisation in a country that still doesn’t really get it, his youthful escapades drinking crap beer with friends, how is approach to brewing has changed thanks to his relationships with winemakers and chefs, and how the brewery’s corridors ring hollow and lonely in the absence of American, Italian and other foreign accents.

Elsewhere, you know there is nothing going on in beer in some corners if the discussion turns to flat flavoured water with vodka added.

Speaking of beer and corners, in this week’s edition of That Sorta Happened in Beer History, Mudge the Elder asked this question and got answers:

It’s before my time, but does anyone remember (or have talked to those who do) whether waiter service was commonplace in pubs across the UK in the 50s and 60s, or was it primarily a Northern thing?

A whole new world was revealed to mine eyes.  Someone identifying themselves only as “[Bx2-B=R]” stated:

Primarily northern, my Lancastrian mum says, and common enough there that she didn’t find it weird; down south, mostly seems to have been an inter-war fad in big new pubs and died out with WWII. [Ray]

Talk of bell pushes, tipping and waiters in burgundy jackets with “silver” trays ensued.  Sit down before you start through the thread.

Beer crime of a newer sort happened over in Michigan, as noted by the worst beer blogger ever:

…there was no money on the premise, and luckily no vandalism, but the intruders were there for more than a half an hour. “They ended up pouring nine beers,” he said. “It’s not somebody having a quick beer and leaving.” One of the men called someone and then soon, a bunch of kids entered the premises, running around and looking through the brewery’s merchandise. Luckily, the kids seemed to only have pop, not alcohol…

Another sort of loss is happening in bars like this out of Winnipeg that I don’t think I’ve seen reported in this way before even though it is very 2020:

It’s enough to make a brewski aficionado weep while sudsy hops are poured down the sink. An enormous amount of beer is going to waste in Winnipeg thanks to some bars and pubs being forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Other establishments operating at reduced capacity are also having to dump hundreds of gallons down the drain…

I love the first sentence. If you hate sudsy and brewski, then you at least have to admire the proper use of aficionado.

Anyway, finally and speaking of which… perhaps… no, not really… there were comments made after the announcement of the NAGBJ awards… what’s that?… oh, it’s back to a “w”… BAGNW… is that it? Anyway, my comments were limited to “Third?!?!” and “Third?!?!” given I was mystified at certain outcomes. But I used to judge these things as part of panels, too, and I know that there are limits and these limits are realities. As I have noted before, these quibbles mainly hover around process and in particular nominations being from the authors and/or publishers. It would be easy enough to just send all members ballots rather than the filtering function of judging panels. They are also limited in audience as many folk don’t need or care about awards, especially once an “award-winning” adjective is already allocated to the bio.* Yet:

I just want people to know it’s totally normal, okay, and valid to wish for recognition and acknowledgement of a job well done. I don’t write about the things I write about because I NEED those things, but darn if it doesn’t feel good when it happens.

Boom! As with all the medals, I presume it is a stepping stone for the aspiring – which is good and normal and to be encouraged. And a small reward in a field without much recognition.

But, unlike during the years of my own experience, concerns and even unfair slags were raised about it all being too GBH focused or even bad back scratchy.  In homage to 1830s British Parliamentary politics, lobbying continues for the establishment and the reformers. While many entries or entrants have appeared on that bloggy space’s webby pages… well, what is wrong with that?  Especially as other outlets have been disappearing for years? Small pond. That’s where we swim. I do say that while acknowledging (having sifted through it all week after week now for years) I think there is a sort of beer trade writing of a sort not only is a bit samey and a bit goal oriented or even formulaic (the last paragraph often seems written first, as it were) but still a sort which may attract praise within a circle of co-aspirants. Well? So what!?! Why be a grump in all things? It’s just, yes, light entertainment – and we have to remember that much beer writing is actually very good, including, yes, even at GBH.** Perhaps not as much as they would say… but, in the end, Beth did entirely the proper thing and set the record straight in vivid technicolour. Go Team Beth.***

That’s a lot. I’m done. As always, remember there’s more out there. Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays (this week Jordan touts discount ham!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. There’s the AfroBeerChick  podcast as well! And have a look at Brewsround‘s take on the beer writing of the week. Not to mention Cabin Fever. And Ben has finally gone all 2009 and joined in with his own podcast, Beer and Badword. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*No one cares about being “awards-winning” do they?
**Let’s stick with very good, shall we. Superlatives are so… not superlative. Plus, I’m a Pellicle sort of person. 
***See the “*” here.

Fine… It’s March And Here Are The Thursday Beery News Notes

I thought the new month would have made a big difference. But a couple of twelve hour days in hard black shoes and a snow squall meeting me as I got off the bus that finally made it through rerouted traffic and, well… well… well, at least it ain’t February any more. Let’s see what is going on!

First, there was much fretting in Engerlant over the shadowy Portman Group issuing an edict against a beer label. Now, I’ve beer posting about the shadowy Portman Group’s edicts since at least 2008 so I don’t really care that much now. But the fretting of others was remarkable. SIBA objected to the lack of much due process. The BBC covered it like it was an actual news story. Martyn wrote: “Running with Sceptres is not the ditch to die in over the Portman Group and its bans…” and then wrote more. Folk were cloyingly superior, spitting angry and even spent all the rent money. Pete went all Pete and shouted from the barricades that we need to “…check out the beautiful, sometimes strangely moving, artwork.” See, that is my issue. To me, that label on the can looks like panels stolen from a 1950s Rupert the Bear book.  And me, I don’t buy beer for the artwork and especially not Rupert the Bear rip-offs. In fact, if the art is too good, I assume they are cutting corners on the actual brewing resources. The money can only be spent once after all. Watch yourselves out there.

In another chapter of the tale how craft goes bad, we learned that Goose Island tri-packs with bottles of 2017, 2018 and 2019 Bourbon County stout have been marked down in the US Midwest to about 20% of their original inflated price. Imagine how many casks of the 2020 and even 2021 are sitting there in brewery warehouses… err… cellars with operating managers knowing how little it is really worth now. With such bad value, maybe they will be candidates for that #FlagshipFlotsam* thing one day.

In yet another sign of craft’s collapse, I had originally thought that this was a parody post from Ben, the tale of a overly-branded vegan brewery in Toronto shutting:

It’s like gentrification on human growth hormones, delivered by “The 5700,” a company that “manages a growing portfolio of lifestyle and entertainment brands that live online.” Now excuse me while I clean up the rage-induced blood-vomit typing that phrase has induced. Vegandale Brewery, which seemed to actually just be a coat of paint and a new name for the main floor of the existing Duggan’s Brewery, who officially moved to the basement of the location six months ago, wasn’t helping the image of veganism. Vegandale Brewery launched with the slogan “Morality on tap” and poured beers like Morally Superior IPA and Shining Example Stout. Yikes.

One last bit of endtimesy-wimsey news from CNY:

The Gordon Biersch Restaurant Brewery in Destiny USA closed today, joining a growing list of locations the national chain has been shutting down across the country. The brewpub — a restaurant with an attached brewhouse — opened in the Syracuse mall in 2012 and occupied a space on the first level, near the Hiawatha Street entrance.

I went there once as the family shopped out in the unending megamall for transitory branded objects. I came away with no actual recollections of the experience. Apparently, I was not alone… or at least not as alone as the bartenders were.

More in line with the “get in line” section of the news, I was glad to see this bit of law enforcement in Ontario’s news this week:

Jason Fach, 38, pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death in December. An agreed statement of facts says that he had had four 20 oz. beers in a little more than an hour at St. Louis Bar and Grill the night of the crash. Fach has been sentenced to six years in prison. On Feb. 28, police announced that they had charged the restaurant, its owners and two staff members. The charges include selling liquor to an intoxicated person, permit drunkenness on licensed premises and failing to facilitate inspection. Under Ontario law, an establishment and its ownership can be held responsible for overserving someone.

The liability of a licensed establishment is distinct from social host liability in which responsibility is much reduced here in the land of the maple and the moose.

On another sort of establishment in another land, Retired Martin posted a lovely photo essay, a snippet of one of which sits above, on a very specific topic this week:

“Should it be open ?” I asked the chattiest of the group, all of whom had OS maps in plastic wallets round their necks. “Oh yes, I phoned them up before we set off. They SAID they’d be open”. Hmmm.

Even more elsewhere, it was Icelandic Beer Day last Sunday.

A nice posi-post of a piece on a lager was sent out via the internets by Pellicle this week:

Thankfully, there was Keller Pils, a lemon-bitter pale lager from Bristol brewery Lost and Grounded. The first barely touched the sides: one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone. The second, golden and glistening with condensation in a Willi Becher—a classic straight German glass that tapers elegantly towards the top—took longer. It was crisp but rich, toasty and bitter, direct and deeply rewarding.

One problem with these sorts of nice posi-posts is how they remind you of other positive experience unrelated to the subject matter. I can think of fifty other beers that have happily let to “one gulp, two gulps, three gulps, gone” which is not, I suspect, the point of writing about a particular thing. I did notice the pretty can, however. And this rather honest comment from a co-owner of the brewery:

“It’s like a Rubik’s cube, you know?” Alex says. “It’s about the branding. It’s the communications. It’s the quality of the product. It’s about people out on the road talking about it. It’s about how you work with the wholesalers … it’s all sorts of everything.”

And speaking of nothing in particular, here’s an interesting bit of spam by email:

I am the marketing director for Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. As you may know, Jolly Pumpkin is an all wild, oak-aged brewery. We are announcing the launch of a new canning line for our wild ales and thought that your readers might be interested in the news. The first beers off the line will be year-round favorites, Bam Bière and Calabaza Blanca. We will also be canning Hyrrokkin, the first release of a new fruited seasonal saison series. 

Jolly Pumpkin in a can! Long term readers will recall when I spent a happy late afternoon in the company of owner/brewer Ron J back in 2007 when beer bloggers were still unique enough to not have the parking lot lights turned off and all the doors locked when one showed up to check out a brewery.  Now they sell the stuff in a can. Pretty cans. Life comes at you quickly.

Speaking of the most fabulous thing I heard related to the drinks trade this week…

The bartender at the Radisson Kingswood Hotel in Hanwell, near Fredericton, helped deliver a baby in a snowstorm on Thursday night. Storey said she got the call when she was closing down the bar for the night. “The person who works the front desk, Nick, comes over and says, ‘There’s someone having a baby in our lobby,'” said Storey. “At first I thought he was kidding.”

That’s enough. Once a child is born we have hit peak beer news for the week. And remember, if you want more beer news, check out Boak and Bailey most Saturdays, plus more at the OCBG Podcast on Tuesdays and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, too. There’s the AfroBeerChick podcast now as well! Plus the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. Check them out. They are like blogs but with people speaking and saying “umm” a lot instead.

*…which is still really better than #JetsamJanuary if you think about it.

Your Quieter Mid-September Thursday Beer News Update

Quieter? Why yes,says I. Quieter. We have begun the long slide and climb towards the Vernal equinox, the true beginning of the year. By which time my carrots for 2020 should be up. I have yet to pick a carrot. Not one. Before you pick a carrot you have dreams that they are all sweet as candy and the size of baseball bats. Like the feeling you have the day before the lottery is drawn, the anticipation felt walking to a first date.  You can eat those little green young stems, you know. You can’t eat a lotto ticket.

So what is going on? First off, Martyn posted another great essay – this time on a small Greek craft brewery which opened in the town where he has been holidaying for years… oops… and now it seems it is gone. Did I see only a draft? It was titled “How Heineken Tried To Bully A New Small Greek Brewer And Failed” and it was wonderful. I know it was named that because I saved the URL in an email to myself. Some of his best stuff. I hope he didn’t get bullied and it did not fail. Please check in, Martyn.

Speaking of locals explaining the local experience rather than the fly-by experts from away who seem to get most everything wrong, Ben Keene* has written a lovely detailed piece about the breweries to be found along the Hudson River Valley train line:

Between the cities of Yonkers and Poughkeepsie (the terminus), no less than a dozen breweries can be found in the small towns dotting this historic river valley, almost all of them a fairly short walk from the corresponding Metro North railroad station. So whether it’s one more hurrah to cap off summer travel, or a trip meant to dovetail with the Hudson Valley’s colorful peak fall foliage, here’s your guide to breweries near the Metro North train line from Westchester to Dutchess County.

As an Upper Hudson Valley Beer and brewery man myself, I find the idea of doddling along the rails for days by the more southerly river shorelines very compelling.

The inclusivity anti-bigotry hashtag #IAmCraftBeer has reached every continent now. Sweet.

I liked this brief photo essay entitled Why Oh Why Do We Cellar / Horde Beer. Time To End This. Sorry, I Have Been Stupid. No More. I only have a few bottles left that I stuck away years ago and they give more pain than pleasure. Weren’t we all silly? Jeff Scott aka @beergeek might agree, I think, as he finds finds cleaning out his hoard, too.

Is 2013 the year the original hyped breweries of the American craft beer scene were opening? No.

As mentioned in the 29 March 2018 edition of these Thursday notes, some questions as to the actual history of lambics have been raised by Roel Mulder of the blog Lost Beers. Remember that next time someone suggests blogging is not a higher form than, say, periodical publishing for pay… as Punch magazine has apparently now** taken notice of the question at whiplash speed and run an article on the situation:

…according to Mulder, that’s a flawed family tree. “Lambic certainly wasn’t the first of the family to surface,” he says, citing evidence that sweet faro, in fact, came before, with the earliest mention dating to 1721—more than 70 years before the arrival of lambic. Gueuze, meanwhile, a merger of young and old lambic, didn’t appear until the early part of the 19th century, while kriek came about at the century’s end. But perhaps the most firmly held belief in the legend of lambic is its adherence to the idea that the beer can only be produced within tight Belgian parameters, the regional microflora supposedly crucial to its creation. Yet Mulder has found lambic brewing records from the Netherlands dating as far back as 1820.

Someone help me out with this – just as soon as we locate Martyn. Do that first.

This is interesting. A new Molson Coors macro brewery is opening in British Columbia. I did like this quote from the firm:

“We’re constantly looking at innovation and introducing new products to the market, knowing that there’s interest in changing things up,” said Andrew Molson with Molson Coors. 

Fascinating. But that much capacity, the capacity to produce more beer than the total amount of craft beer sold in the province in the 2018/2019 fiscal year, is an odd investment. A question. Consolidation is the logical answer with brewing but whose production is going to get rolled into this facility to justify the scale? Not folk in the province’s craft scene, that’s one thing that’s for sure. Odd.

In this week’s beer label lawsuit news, some knuckleheads out near the Pacific used the image and name of UK TV baker Mary Berry and then blurted the classic excuse:

“It was totally intended as an homage, but I get it, people gotta protect their image to the public,” Armistice cofounder Alex Zobel told SFGate. That sounds fairly conciliatory, but the brewery’s Instagram post is more pointed, stating in part: “Somebody’s agency has a very soggy bottom, indeed.” The brewery told SFGate it plans to rebrand the beer as Cease And Desist Berry (reminiscent of Lagunitas’ Undercover Shutdown Ale, if you ask me).

Boring. Boring idea in the first place. Boring style. Boring. Homage? Free advertising stunt more like it. Boring.

Finally, a note*** from the eldest brother:

Therefore one should not discuss geometry among people who are not geometricians, because they will not recognize an unsound argument. The same applies to all other sciences.” 

Seems applicable. Right?

There. A bit quiet. That’s OK now and then. Now, off to think about that carrot patch for another week. In the meantime, Boak and Bailey will have more news on Saturday and Stan will be with us on Monday. The OCBG Podcast is ready most Tuesdays by the recess bell, too. Their review of TIFF and TBW are good listens this week.  That’s a lot. Is there too much updating. What if someone comes out with a mid-week update by way of a Wednesday evening edition? I’ll be ruined… ruined!!!****

*Also author of Best Hikes Near New York City and Camping New York: A Comprehensive Guide to Public Tent and RV Campgrounds.
**In an article dated 10 September 2019 with the very odd statement “The Dutch historian had just published his 2017 book…” I am sure someone can explain.
***Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.12… as if you didn’t know…
****As if I get up at 4 am Thursdays and write all this!

The Thursday Beer News For All Of Us Actually Putting In A Day’s Work

I don’t know if this is a warning or tidings of good cheer. Boak and Bailey issued a short news post on Saturday because “not much has really grabbed our attention” and Stan followed suit. That’s reasonable given the time of year, folks out wandering and such, but I now feel somehow obligated to prove to you – to each of you – that beer blog news roundups matter.*

Speaking of Boak and Bailey, they were on the tartan trail and made it to Fort William in Scotland… or as we call it in the family For Twilliam. Dad’s Dad’s People were from there. Real kilty folk with McLeod at the end of each of their names.  They hit all the pubs and probably hung out with a zillion of my third cousins. But we don’t talk with them. Something happened in the mid-1930s and, well, you know how that goes. The Campbell branch sorta blew up around 1908 and, well, we only started chatting again around 2009. Anyway, enough of me. What did they find?

The one everybody recommended was The Grog & Gruel. We didn’t have a good time on our visit between grumpy service, farting dogs and pass-agg encounters with Canadian tourists determined to nab our space. But it’s certainly a nice looking, pubby pub, and we can imagine having fun there under different circumstances.

Friggin’ Canadians. They ruin everything.

Speaking of travel, [T]he Beer Nut has finally** started to unpack his notes from the gang freebie flip to a beer fest in Wrocław, Poland. Now, don’t get me wrong, as I trust no one more that TBN when it comes to the little things like experience, wisdom and integrity but seeing as I lived in Poland I was interested to see what he thought about the place:

From three days of flitting randomly around the bars I did, however, get a certain sense of generic Craftonia about the offer. It seemed like everyone had the traditional styles — their pils, their weizen and their Baltic porter — and then a plethora of trend-chasers: New England IPA, fruited sour ales, barrel-aged imperial stouts, much of it indistinguishable or unremarkable from one brewer to the next. Next to none of them seemed to specialise in particular styles or processes. I did make an effort to pick unusual-looking beers when I saw them, so hopefully the reviews which follow won’t be too generic in turn.

Interesting. I liked the image of the large concrete hockey puck stadium as the setting for the event. Comforting that my Slavic former neighbours have not lost their dab hand with a spot of grey liquid stone. Martyn also reported on the event and associated opportunities and found “the selections of beers are almost entirely Polish” which I take to mean breweries rather than styles.

In another bit of flitting about, Eoghan Walsh has written about going “Into the Valley of the Lambic Lovers” for the latest issue of Ferment:

By the late 1990s, the lambic industry was emerging from a prolonged depression. Competition from industrial, sweetened lambic had nearly wiped out the traditional breweries of the region, leaving only revivalists like Frank Boon and Cantillon to keep it alive. By the 1980s, even they were questioning the sense in persevering with a beer that no one seemed to want to drink. But lambic people are stubborn people, they toughed it out and their perseverance began to pay off. Export interest slowly took off. Their gueuzes started winning awards. Then in 1991 the first edition of Michael Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium was published.

What else? It can’t all be about hitting the road. Paste Magazine has an article on Hazy IPA which, after a couple of years of the stuff, is about as interesting as hard seltzer.*** Oddly, the article’s author seems to agree:

…the quest for “juicy” profiles in IPAs has led the beer industry in a direction that is actively undermining its own aims, and the result has become a whole lot of bad beer. Worse still, these poorly made NE-IPAs have proliferated to such an extent that they’re confusing the consumer as to what a “juicy” IPA is meant to taste like in the first place. We’re weaning a new generation of beer drinkers on a style that is often fundamentally difficult to drink, and that is a problem.

“Style” itself, of course, is to blame. The need to establish the new experiment in the same hierarchical construct as the loved and established.  Find someone to proclaim that for you and, whammo, you are in the money. Fortunately, it’s all so transitory it is easily avoided. I am also one with Jeff on this and, as a bonus, give tribute his graph folk art skills.

Speaking of the oddnesses of style, Stan caused a ripple in the continuum when he tweeted a photo of a (yik… spittoui!) pumpkin ale by a (whaaaaaat?!?!?!) Trappist brewery. Mucho replyo ensued. He used the moment to argue that “Trappist beer is an appellation, not a style” which is quite interesting because I am not sure what it means.  It’s a bit like 1+0=0 mathematically but maybe it’s 1-0=1. You get my point. The other point is that the pumpkin as determined by God’s very own plan is last year’s old crop so I have no idea what the monks think they are up to.

Katie has stayed at home, found a home for her tomatoes then celebrated in her very own living room. Speaking of which, it is reported that overall beer consumption in the UK is down by a third over the last twelve years:

“Premiumisation is impacting the Beer industry through drinkers drinking less but better,” the report says. Figures show that British people spent £177.8 million more on 66.5 million fewer pints of beer in 2017 than the year before, while the latest statistics from 2018 say that gap is widening, with a further £279 million being spent on another 40.6 million fewer pints. “On trade beer volumes have levelled out in recent years after a change in drinking habits, favouring drinking at home rather than in the pub,” said the report.

“Premiumisation”! What a silly word. ATJ added his thoughts on the story but they are behind a firewall so I don’t know what he wrote.

That is it for another week. I have the highest confidence that we can expect more beer news from Boak and Bailey on Saturday but Stan..?  Stan is taking another hiatus as he will be “bouncing between cities in Brazil” which is something I would like to see. Bouncing?!? I may need to approach the travel authorities about this.  We’ll see how much bouncing is going on then! Until then, bye!

*Maybe.
**Finally!
***Or “American creamy milk” for that matter.

A Very Busy Beery News Notes Thursday For The End Of November

To be honest, its been quite for a while there. Too quiet. I would have been questioning the value of my time put into this weekly round up but, fortunately, I am far less self-aware than that. My plunking together of this thing every seven days takes about as much effort and thought as scraping a razor across my face each morning. That being said, what a week it has been in the world of thinking about beer and brewing. Cats and dogs! We’ll unpack that a bit but before we do, just as a reminder that no one should have hard feelings, I offer this photo of Monty, the Hook Norton Brewery horse who retired this week. Nice horsey. See? That’s so nice. Not like a huge cow at all. OK, enough of that. Settle in. On to the mud slinging!

First, I am so proud of Norm for writing about his issues with beer and his big decision. He and I have never met but when we do I hope to see much less of him for a good many years.

Next, this piece on opening a restaurant in Toronto and then failing at it was extremely instructive for anyone still considering the foolish route of following one’s passion:

Out of desperation, Dorothy invited her mother to the restaurant for dinner, where we sheepishly explained our problem. A sensible woman, my mother-in-law was always convinced that my restaurant was a stupid idea. We were handily making her case. Nevertheless, she agreed to lend us a few thousand dollars to cover payroll. But her loan was eaten up so quickly that by the next payday, I was short again.

Drag. Conversely, Katie of @Shinybiscuit fame has written a wonderfully positive thing about how beer writing has contributed to her 2018:

There are so many people who’ve lifted me up this year, and believe me, I’m a neurotic mess, I need a lot of lifting. If you have ever told me you liked reading a blog post I wrote, or sent me some constructive feedback, or left a comment that caused me to think differently about something I’d written, or met up with me for a pint and a chat, or sent a Ko-Fi tip my way, or DMed me to see how I was, or allowed me to awkwardly hug you at a beer festival, or asked me to read something of yours, it means the world to me. Not because of what happened last week, but because this year I finally started doing something I’ve always wanted to do.

Fabulous. Again and much more conversely, the massive self-inflicted botch Boston’s Trillium is undergoing has been instructive in a number of ways including (i) how not to seek to correct a story, (ii) what can be found in the public record – and, not the least of which, (iii) how it filtered and organized beer writers into camps of sorts.  Crystal Luxmore appeared to put the whole thing down to a “disgruntled employee” in her tweet upon the matter. But then wrote of outrage. Bryan Roth subtly hinted at something of  seeming pro-ownership view in GBH: (i) allowing that working for crap wages in a “prestige” business (a term he included, left laying there but never really explained in the context of a 5000 brewery universe) while also (ii) including this fabulously and maybe telling wee nugget:

As these back-and-forth public spats tend to do, there’s no winner in a series of “he said,” rebuttals.

It’s a way of discrediting the complaint, isn’t it. And to what end? There is a risk of turning business ethics and employment standards into a matter of personality, framing the “disgruntled” as having “spats” is a conscious choice that a writer makes, leaving doubt as to purposes. Jeff Alworth (like Jason and Craig) saw things far differently in a piece (as well as follow ups) that he introduced by tweet in this way:

A Trillium worker revealed that his pay had been cut from $8 to $5 an hour. That was only the start of the brewery’s trouble. How owner JC Tetreault responded was a case study in bad crisis management. 

Jeff backed that up in the comments by way of a response to his own piece:

I’m assuming that Trillium was making enough money to continue to pay their employees $8/hr. Trillium is wildly successful, and has been under constant expansion for years. Pay cuts look bad and result in disasters like this for the darlings of beer. Unfair? I don’t think so.

To be clear, all these writers are excellent but they may come to the discussion with a view and sometimes interests. I certainly do. This is normal. It’s the marketplace of ideas – in both the senses of ideas fighting for their place and also the voices fighting for… let’s just say their own place. Very normal. Except… it is not much discussed in the great big fiction that is the unified, harmonized, sanitized beer community. Fabulous organic clannishness hot takes all.

Speak of which and perhaps conversely, right after that Pete Brown announced that the British Guild of Beer Writers has issued a Code of Conduct! Heavens to Betsy! This is the sort of thing that filled a beer bloggers mind in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. And 2011.  You can read the Code here for yourself. A few questions immediately jumped out for me:

1. the document speaks of members of the Guild as professional [s.1.1] and that a disagreement between members should be
dealt with in an appropriate business-like manner [s.1.3]. This is the deathknell* of the Guild to the degree it might want to present an organization which might be considered to speak as or for consumers not because of the standards that are being set but due to the reasons stated for setting the standards. This is especially odd give many if not most Guild members are not professionals in either the sense of (i) being solely a beer writer or (ii) supporting oneself with writing. Many tinker. Many others write and earn in a wider context of revenue streams as we saw last week.

2. the prohibition of endorsing “any commercial product or
service save for the promotion of her/his own work or the medium in which it appears” [s.2.2.1] is going to be very problematic for those members, perhaps most of them, who spend most of the time promoting the commercial product known as beer.

3. Good luck having anyone involved abide by the requirement to “give full disclosure if reporting on a press trip or other visit or significant hospitality that has been paid for by the brand or company being written about, or their agencies” [s.2.2.3] if by full disclosure we mean full disclosure. Too often all we can expect is the “trust me” or assertion (and one quite correctly asserted) that writing does not pay well enough not to take all… err… the support one can.

I do not point these things out to be unkind but to state that the undertaking of such a thing as a Code of Conduct is a minefield. Unlike others, I congratulate the BGBW for trying to take on the role of diffusion technician.

Now, to conclude, some shorter news items…

Note: Eoghan warns not to read to much into a loose organization acting as a loose organization as members leave the shadowy HORAL.

Remember: There are other sorts of bad employer practices in craft brewing.

Warning: the cheese has been always been high at GBH but this piece is extraordinary. It’s like a 1970s Coke ad or a dreamy John Denver song.

Affirmed: IPA is meaningless.

Also affirmed: stories too good to be true often aren’t.

Fabulous: Stan reports upon lambic exports in the 1830s.

Even more fabulous: excellent and extended research reported out on the demise of All About Beer Magazine.

Isn’t that enough for all you all? The good. The bad. And the ugly. Can’t I lay down my head now and have a well deserved nap? I think I shall. I think I will do just that. Happy early December without an edition of #TheSession. Pause and reflect as we move towards that quieter Friday. In the meantime, remember to check out Boak and Bailey for their news nuggets most Saturdays.

*Fine. Yes, “partial deathknells” are a silly idea… but I got your attention.

If Mid-November Were More Exciting Would You Be So Happy With Your Thursday Beer News?

So. Here we are again. This is a bad week. Traveling around central Canada. Long meetings. Hotel rooms. Fortunately, I am working on my Korean food skills as part of this road show. My newly increased obsession, kimchi is… well… it’s like a hipster Scot would have invented if Korea hadn’t done it first. Peace food. Other than that, its all hotel breakfast buffets and minivans fully of cheery engineers. Bounding down the highway balanced on a buffer of spicy exotic cabbage.

First off, I was alerted by someone no doubt more attentive that I am, given my kimchi induced food coma, that there has been a shock wave hammering those writing about the history of saison. You see,  has shared his thoughts of a fact-checking mission he undertook on the “2004 book Farmhouse ales, and especially the contribution it includes by Belgian brewer Yvan De Baets” and YdB is not too thrilled but sadly fell back on what looks like a status based defense in his extensive comments offered in response:

This is your website. By definition you will have the last word on it. Cool. I will not start a debate here anyway. I have more to say about some of your claims but I don’t have nor the time nor the desire to do it: not only I strongly dislike the ego battles, but more importantly the first tanks of our new brewery are arriving in a few weeks and I have to prepare them a nice nest.

Remember: watch out for expertise transposition. Few brewers are actually all that acquainted with the means and methods of the historian. Its not in the nature of the gig. Likewise, vice versa. Dig it? For me, however, I think the real problem is assuming anything written in 2004 is going to represent an exhaustive examination of a topic involving beer. A decade and a half is a long time for research to advance – especially when that decade and a half saw the explosion of the digitized historical records. That being the case, taking a strong stance either in favour or against such stale dated research is likely a mug’s game.

More convivially, Eric Asimov of The New York Times (who I like a lot) wrote a piece about the ciders of the Hudson Valley (which I like a lot):

All share a deep-seated desire to understand the traditions, nuances and complexities of apples and ciders. They are the latest wave of a great cider revival in the Northeast, reaching through New England, out to the Finger Lakes in western New York, and down through the Appalachians. For anyone used to most commercial ciders, which are often made from concentrate, sweetened and sometimes flavored, these serious ciders are a revelation. They are mostly bone dry, with the flavors of apples and of the region. Apples, too, it turns out, express a sense of place, what wine lovers call terroir.

Less authentically, apparently what was a contract brewery is now an app that the deal did not include. Figure out that one if you will… and this one for that matter:

Drinking at taprooms isn’t just en vogue, it’s a permanent part of today’s industry that now drives about 10% of Brewers Association-defined volume.

Permanent? You misspelled “today’s top fad” darling. Not unconnectedly, Matthew Curtis announced his retirement from the collective blog Good Beer Hunting. One never know what is behind “effective immediately” but one hopes its nothing too drastic. I line it up in my mind with the tweets about breweries hiring passionate beer comms for their passionate beer comms needs. All in all, a very tough row to hoe but hiring Rebecca would be a smart move, for example:

Hi guys! I’ll be looking for some freelance/ad hoc work after this month. I’m an accredited Beer Sommelier and was even nominated as Best Young Beer Writer this year by the (!).’

You know, Pete Brown used to be a beer comms guy but he is no longer working for this sort of work. He is working on being a better Pete* – which is great – but once in a while loses his marbles most wonderfully:

Oh fuck off. I’m sorry (I’m trying to rein in the bad language and anger and be more professional) but fuck the fuck off. Even the most cursory reading of the history of pale ale/IPA shows this simply isn’t true.

Like others, I don’t really even care what he was writing about when he got so deliciously rude… but in case you are curious it was about a disappointing relaunch of Bass Ale.

Czech beer drinking in a slump.

Tandleman has an opinion on the four Cloudwater cask offerings pending according to a tweet – as well as a very nice new profile photo of himself as you can see. He must have a good social media consultant.  I wonder what social media consultants like that cost…

These days, calling anything “one of the most important beers in modern American brewing” is a bit silly but the Chicago Tribune found cause to so publish in relation to Allagash Brewing’s Coolship Resurgam. I remember about a decade ago getting in a handbags match over someone claiming one US brewery or another was the first to do something to which I replied something something about the Allagash coolship – which Ron will correct correctly as being a “cooler” in English. These things get heated. Fortunately, even the shock of the new is past us now given we live in hyperspace and no one really cares, knowing that next week’s new thing will in turn be stale by the following weekend. Just hope the Allagash beer is tasty.

As noted last week, readbeer.com is up and running. We now can see the output of 63 different sources of online beer writing. That will grow and with it the decentralized, leveled goodness of blogs will return. One of the great things about the former RSBS was how access to ideas was not being filtered through the gauze of self-proclaimed expertise or assertions of journalism. Access was immediate and it was up to the reader to sift clues.  Soon there will be 630 feeds. Best to keep up.

Well, that is enough for now. I am closer to home for most of next week so maybe this will be more considered. Maybe something big will happen that will fill the thousand words with one long observation. Maybe I will sit and count the days to first Christmas and then Spring Training.  That’s more like it. In the meantime, check in with Boak and Bailey for the regular Saturday update.

* Fab.

Your Thursday Beer Newsy Notes For Six Weeks From Autumn

I miss corduroys. Don’t you? Eight months a year they are your best pal. One day a year they feel like your lower half is actually a roast chicken in a plastic bag baking in a 450F oven. I haven’t seen a leaf turn yet but the grapes out front are starting to ripen into show purple. The barley was ripened in the fields when I visited MacKinnon Brothers Brewing on Monday. I haven’t fully captured above how literally golden the fresh cut stalks were – pretty much beer-coloured.* There were a few big beer stories this week but none more important than a good barley crop coming in. Some are not so lucky.

Jeff created a lovely portrait of a small shaded corner. Boak and Bailey found a similar scene from 60 years ago. If there is one thing I like as much as the surprise hue of cut barley it’s scenes like these of actual people and how they enjoy their beer.

Here in Ontario, the big news is how the new Provincial government has launched a “buck-a-beer” initiative – including by lowering the minimum price to, you got it, one dollar. The response has not been a warm one from craft brewers and commentators. Great Lakes Beer spoke to CBC Radio while others were interviewed on TV news broadcasts. Jordan took some time before his UK-Euro vacation to set the tone, explaining how the policy change makes little business sense. Crystal pointed out how one brewery, Dominion City, is responding by donating a dollar from every sale to immigration agencies. Other efforts from the charitable to sarcastic response are underway. I’m sure this one is going to build towards the promised release of the new cheap beer for Labour Day. Question: wouldn’t that beer have to have been in production before the policy announcement?

I don’t recall ever craving no-lo alcohol beer other than to cut beer down to 2.5% or so by pouring half and half. Dad liked it as it was a way to get around his diabetes medications. Not sure the new wave of tasty water would fit any particular one of my needs but that is me.

Beer fests. I found the idea of not taking photos of drunk people a bit weird. Why not other than it’s tawdry. Fest organizers and the drinkers put themselves in positions of risk voluntarily. A few images might load social media with something opposing that other weirder idea promoted by the industry – people not drinking craft beer to get drunk. In other fest news, Ben asked if folk were willing to spend $120 for a three hour drinking session. Not a chance, I said. And James B. reported on the continued sexist crap at the GBBF. So… drunken, expensive and being stuck in the same room as sexist pigs. Not exactly my kind of fun. And it’s all a shame when I think of someone like the Tandyman behind the scenes, working to ensure these sorts of things don’t go on.

I really enjoyed this perspective from BeerAdvocate on wholesale beer buying in the US craft market. Thirty years ago I was a wholesale produce trader for a bit and the story rings true, especially the need to respond to demand rather than try to set trends at the supply side of the equation. Consider this:

“The guy at the shop asks, ‘Where are you opening?’ I tell him and he says, ‘Oh, you’re going to be selling gospel music.’ I was an alternative, metal, New Wave kind of guy. I thought, ‘I’ll never sell gospel music!’ I opened my fledgling store with no money and three or four of the first 10 people in the door asked for gospel music. Guess how long it took before I started selling gospel music?” That experience stuck with Singmaster. “You set something up, but then you follow what the customers do if you’re smart,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what I like or what you like… it only matters what the customers [do].”

When I express my unhappiness with the concept of beer “curation” go back and read that passage.

Ed gave us this bit of fabulousness: “Not everyone like lambic…”

That’s it for this week. No need to link to the usual bland beer travel puff, beer pairing puff or puff-packed beer style announcements. A shorter summary of the news as you would expect from early mid-August but still enough real news to keep it interesting. Don’t forget to tune in to the internets for Boak and Bailey every Saturday and Stan on Mondays.

*Really? No, I had no idea. Thanks so much for the feedback!