Here We Are! February!! A New Month Of Beery News Notes!!!

Last week I was doom scrolling about the Ukraine. Earlier this week, it was about Ottawa.* Now it’s just about the blizzard. Today? Well, if my last name was “Event” I could have named a kid “Snow” and enlisted them in the army to remind me of today: Major Snow Event. Nasty stuff all over eastern North America. Good thing I have my internets to keep me warm. Just look at that up there. Bet that didn’t spend useless days blaring its horn to protest nothing and everything. Sweet. From Brewing Heritage, it’s a…

…handsome steam lorry was built in 1916 by Alley & MacLellen Ltd. of Glasgow, and first registered in February 1917.

Neato. Well, what is going on? Dry January is over. That’s something. The Times of London reported (probs paywalled) that…

A record number of Britons have given up meat, dairy and alcohol for January, with demand for vegan foods and non-alcoholic drinks rocketing over the month, according to data from Britain’s biggest supermarket.

An interesting story, actually. Virtue is in… for a few weeks at least. And the British of Britain** are buying things like “Nozeco Spumante, alcohol-free fizzy wine” (sales up over 200%) and “Gordons 0.0%, a no-alcohol gin”! Yikes. Alcohol-free gin sounds like gin-free gin to me. But I own a juniper tree so I can just suck on a few berries for free if I am desperate. Why pay 20 pounds a litre for flavoured water? Holy moly! NA brewers are missing out on a good payday.

Very conversely, this is great news as we walk away from another lockdown. I can now relive the glory of my beery life fifteen years ago and head to a new beer store in Syracuse, NY just two hours to my south:

The store occupies 9,500 square feet, split primarily into two large rooms. On Monday, Singh’s inventory list showed more than 14,000 “items,” such as 4-packs, 6-packs or cases. And there’s still unused space to fill… “They’re definitely making an effort to provide a wide selection,” Hagner posted recently to the Syracuse Craft Beer Enthusiasts Facebook page. “There’s lots of local stuff, some timely national releases (my first sighting of Hopslam), the biggest SN (Sierra Nevada) assortment I’ve seen. … Personally I was pleased with the import/German section as well as traditional stuff that’s often hard to find.”

Elsewhere, the old is also new again in London where Guinness is creating a new destination brewery with some very good  timing:

Guinness sales in Great Britain have grown by over 30 per cent in the last six months and one in every 10 pints sold in London is now a Guinness. The new site, to be called Guinness at Old Brewer’s Yard, will include: A microbrewery producing limited edition beers and offering tours with Guinness beer specialists; event spaces and central covered courtyard; a Guinness store selling rare items, and a open-fire kitchen, restaurant and 360 degrees glass rooftop space.

I can’t link to every one of the excellent posts in Eoghan’s most excellent series A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects can I? I will, however, for this week’s story connecting Belgian colonial brewing in the Congo with the fight for freedom in the late 1950s:

Brasseries du Congo, or Bracongo, were known for the slender green bottles of their Polar brand. In September 1957 Bracongo hired a former postal worker recently-released from prison following an embezzlement conviction to help sell them. Patrice Lumumba not only grew Polar’s business in the capital, he also used his salesman skills and his client network to advocate for Congolese independence. 

Look at this. We all suffer from the unending spam from the glassmakers of each and every nation. Here, however, we see the reality of fancy glassware according to The Times Of New York:

Most wine drinkers, admittedly, will neither want nor need such rarefied glasses. Many casual drinkers are happy these days to use inexpensive goblets or even stemless glasses, which I would not seek out, though I am happy enough on occasion to drink wine from a tumbler.

Speaking of which, Jancis on Boris… who is clearly a tumbler man:

For months, while millions of ordinary people were deprived of a convivial after-work drink with friends, the staff at 10 Downing Street partied on. It could seem, not least because of the late-night dashes to the supermarket, that the aim was chiefly to drink as much as possible. Connoisseurship appears to have played little part. I feel thoroughly ashamed of how this must look to the rest of the world. Downing Street behaviour looks like binge drinking. 

Bingy Boris. A notch or two more sophisticated is Gary who noticed his modernist Montreal in 1950s promotional material created for the Dow brewery by Albert Edward Cloutier (1902-1965):

The use of pastels in commercial art was a trend internationally at the time, as, say, some European beer posters show, or those dreamy pink, blue and yellow posters advertising holidays on the Riviera. Cloutier rendered a Platonic picture of 1950s Montreal, one rather removed, as I suppose for any city, from the reality in street and district, whether rich, poor or otherwise for that matter. (We were entre les deux chaises). When I think back, it is his Montreal I will remember, family apart.

And Jim Koch thinks cider is a sort of beer. “Fluids I make profit from” appear to be beer to Jim Koch.

Finally, know your medieval English plowing practices. There’s a good explanation of how it worked – and still works in some localities in BBC’s 2010 series The Story of England. Also learn how Piers the Plowman was worth writing about in 1378 as he is the technical wiz of his day even if he shuns the “best brown ale” unlike those young whippersnappers.

That’s it for now. A quieter maybe saner week in beer land. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*“Organizer“!!!
**“Scottish“!!!

The Beery News Notes For The End Of January And Perhaps Of BrewDog

What an odd week. Very bad stuff about craft beer in the UK then more about very bad things in Ontario craft beer. Didn’t help that I was reading Motherwell, a recent memoir about someone about my age whose family didn’t emigrate from the same bit of Scotland mine left behind for Canada in 1956. Grim pain and judgemental negativity pulsing through a hardscrabble family living through hard times in an industrial town near Glasgow. We dodged. Just a few phrases I heard growing up echoed. I hated “know your place” the most, especially as I didn’t have to. Why bother? Why should anyone? Why in craft beer now? Who are these assholes?

MindbogglIng. Let’s start somewhere else. Stan’s latest edition of Hop Queries came out this week with good news from the Czech Republic:

Czech farmers harvested 18.2 million pounds of hops (for perspective, that’s about as much as Americans grow of Citra alone), 40 percent more than 2020 and 34 percent more than the 10-year average. Average yield of 1,467 pounds per acre was an all-time high. (American farmers average 1,900.)

Gary updated a series of posts that he began in 2020 – who hasn’t been up to that sort of thing? – and included the image to the left. It’s not a super huge .jpg but worth a click. I love the name of the beer – PICNIC BEER. It needs an exclamation mark. It needs to be on every brewery’s list of brands. Anyway, Gary was actually not writing so much about PICNIC BEER out of Minnesota as the use of the term “sand porter” in Montreal brewing in days of yore – by which I mean the late 1800s aka The Gilded Era:

Until recently I felt the sand-topped lid idea made the most sense (some English brewers still practiced it into the next centuries, using “marl”, a similar idea). However, in studying recently the history of a Minnesota brewery, Fleckenstein, I now have a further idea what sand porter meant.

Speaking of yore, the free web service known as A London Inheritance included a post on the George Inn in Southwark which was, as we all recall, the subject of Pete Brown’s book Shakespear’s Local. Lots of unconventional photographic views and mapping, like this one to the right giving a very unromantic vision of what you actually see from across the street. It is actually a massive post. A data fest. Well worth reading. The post includes this astute observations about the value of certain second hand books:

Old books help as they provide information closer to the time they are recording. Some care must be taken to double check, but they are a good source of information. These books also have their own history as they pass from owner to owner over the years, accumulating a memory of their time with some of the owners of the book.

The post then goes on to highlight photos and even a letter relevant to the subject that had only been stuck in copies of books that he had found over the years. All fabulously illustrating the unique archival value blogs. Much praise to the author… whose name is not particularly highlighted on the site. Freddie?

On a similar theme but in a colonial context, I saw a reference on Facebook to Ten Mile House in Halifax, NS (my old home town) this week and wondered what shape that was in:

The house was located ten miles from Halifax on the Bedford Highway. It was built in the late 1700s for Colonel Joseph Scott on land granted to him in the 1760s. In 1798 it was called Scott’s Inn, and opened as a House of Entertainment by John Maddock. Joseph Scott died in 1800 and his widow Margaret conveyed property to John Lawlor. Who opened and operated Lawlor’s Inn from 1802- 1809, possibility later.

Nice image at the Nova Scotia Archives website. As you can see from the thumbnail it is now sitting well back of the main road, the Bedford Highway, but looks from photos on Google to be in very good shape right by The Chickenburger. There are plenty of these colonial taverns and inns out there if you know what you are looking for. Like a favourite of mine, the Fryfogle. Interesting note: at the time Ten Mile House was in operation as Scott’s Inn in the late 1790s, it was just down the road from the estate of Queen Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent. The tavern not the Chickenburger. The Chickenburger is old but not that old. I will pay it a visit when I am back there in early March.

And in one last note about built heritage of pubs, taverns and inns this piece in Eater Chicago was interesting in terms of how one preservation project was undertaken:

While Lincoln Square reconfigures during the pandemic — across the street from the Brauhaus space, the Huettenbar has quietly closed (owners hold to hope that it could eventually reopen) — fans can take solace that the Brauhaus has returned in a slightly different format. The bar, at least in spirit, is now located on the second floor of the DANK Haus German American Cultural Center.

In a less physical form of preservation, Edd Mather posted this bit of video on facebook, a fabulous step back into the near past of Ireland and the question of corks v. crown caps which relies on any number of associated technologies:

 

OK – the bad news. I have mentioned this before so let’s be upfront. Once upon a time, BrewDog sponsored this blog. When they were tiny, not the £2 billion international corporation they are now. I still have that label from a sample they sent at the time and it was put on with Scotch Tape. Well before the stupid squirrel and certainly well before BBC Scotland News detailed what apparently everyone in the trade knew but too often was not willing to put into print. The main allegations so far:

a. James Watt owns a massive amount of shares in the global beer brand Heineken hypocritically contrary to his “big beer is bad” stance.
b. James Watt is accused of being a pervy boss;
c. BrewDog falsified paperwork submitted to allow it to import into the United States; and
d. BrewDog carefully structured the Equity for Pinks fundraising to benefit the brewery and not the investors.

This reaction to the first bit of news is gold. Deals between breweries started to come apart. Punks with Purpose said the fight goes on. There were also calls for a resignation. Also questions: “why the obsession?” I will leave it there* as you all know this – and my job is to root out the unknown and beery for your reading delight.** BrewDog has not been delightful for many many years. But we need to remind ourselves, while they are big they are just one of many – as @esbroadfoot helped remind us by inviting  and sharing stories of rotten treatment, largely in the Canadian craft scene.

Still, by Wednesday, it all seems to have put JJB/Stonch in a reflective mood:

Placing orders to fill an empty pub cellar has made me realise what an amazing choice of absolutely superb beer from independents I have. Yes, the craft beer industry has its bad sides, and faces daunting challenges this year, but let’s not forget how brilliant it is.

He’s always hated BrewDog pubs (“…Awful aesthetic, odd places….”) but appreciates how others feel cheated. He also reminds us to be kind to the good folk who distribute our beer. He also posted a link to a 15 year old post about the horrors of a pub crawl in St. Albans, home of CAMRA, for a fair and balanced set of thoughts.

Elsewhere in space and time, Ron has been exploring the colour of milds and has come across a new unit of measurement – tint!

The biggest problem is the lack of hard data. It’s tricky calculating the colour from the ingredients, especially when sugar is involved. As this is mostly only described very vaguely. There are very few records of beer colour before WW I. Occasionally chemical analyses will include a number for the colour, mostly in some weird scale that died out 100 plus years ago. Only a handful of Barclay Perkins records from the Edwardian period include the beer’s colour. At least that’s what I thought. Until I happened to notice that line in a Fullers brewing record. That “Tint” number looked like it was in an understandable scale. The type of Lovibond used before WW II.

Even further afield, does Syracuse have a low estimation of its own worth in the beer world? Like Toronto?  As bad as that? I spent a lot of time in Syracuse up to a certain point… the point at which the Canadian dollar collapsed from parity to 75 cents frankly. For AAA baseball. For the beer shopping day trips. For bars now long gone like The Blue Tusk and Clark’s Ale House. For Wegman’s. I love Syracuse. I used to cross sometimes just for the white hots. Je me souviens… but more to the south…

Finally, note: union made. Nova Scotian beer cases always said that too. Plus health tax included. So by drinking beer you knew were doing your part. I might do a bit of that when I head out east in March, too.

That’s it for now. Too much. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*But if this is correct and such acts are common in craft beer, well, we can all agree that anyone who knew this and is claiming to be reporting on the beer trade… is pretty much a fail, right? If not complicit… right?
**Plus I am aware of my own little realistic chance of not ending up in HELL!!!

Addendum: Cream Beer Was Once Cream Beer

Over five years ago now I wrote the last of a few posts on the question of cream beer.  It co-existed with cream ale and Imperial Cream Ales and all the other creamy drinks. I traced it from Ohio in the 1840s back to NYC and Pennsylvania in the 1820s. It has been referenced as a predecessor to Kentucky Common. It was a thing until it wasn’t:

‘The scent of roses clings round it still.’ Cream beer, which was brewed by our best brewers, is, like the ale-sangaree, is a thing of the past. The rich cool beverage has gone out of use…*

Note: cream ale as not “a thing of the past” when that was written. One of the puzzles was whether it was something from Germany. One of the records I came across referenced “…cream beer, or Lauderschaum…” My problem was I thought there were two waves of German immigration to the USA which did not line up with this timing: the Pennsylvania Dutch from before the American Revolution in the mid-1700s and then the Germans of the 1840s escaping the backlash against other revolutions like George Gillig, bringer of lager.

So much pleased was I to come across that notice up at the top from the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette of 19 Nov 1816. A notice for the sale of indentured servants, or German Redemptioners. To the right is another notice for Redemptioners from New York City in 1785. No brewers were mentioned in this group unlike the notice from thirty one years later. According to Wikipedia, redemptioners were continental European immigrants in the 18th or early 19th century who sailed most often to  Pennsylvania by selling themselves into indentured servitude to pay back the shipping company for the cost of the ticket. Including brewers.

Which means there was a third sort of immigration, one with a supply of brewers with contemporary brewing skills within the right time frame who would be able to make “…cream beer, or Lauderschaum…” just like Gillig was able to bring his lager brewing skills a few decades later.

Update: I should also link to this 2018 post about schenk and Bavarian beer.

*What the hell is ale-sangaree?

The Thursday Beery News Notes For When Winter Actually Showed Up

While we didn’t break the record of most snow in a century like Ottawa to our north did, I has to shovel snow five times on Monday to clear and keep the driveway clear. Not sure I would find, as a result, the idea of a pub with an outside men’s room would be wonderful. I mean I have heard of such things… but here? That doorless door there? It’d be filled with drift. Snow drift. Right up to that bracket to the left of the door frame there. Don’t fancy that. Chilly. Something something rhymes with chilly.

Well, perhaps speaking of which, the big news broke on Wednesday that Brewdog has apparently been falsifying documents submitted to the US government. As BBC Scotland found out:

Scottish beer giant Brewdog sent multiple shipments of beer to the US, in contravention of US federal laws, a BBC investigation has found. Staff at its Ellon brewery told the BBC they were put under pressure in 2016 and 2017 to ship beer with ingredients that had not been legally approved. One US-based importer said they had been deceived by Brewdog. In a social media post on Wednesday, Brewdog CEO James Watt admitted to “taking shortcuts” with the process.

Having practiced low level criminal defense law for about a decade, it is always great to see a suspect get chatty like that. What makes it really quite amazing is how §70.331 of the Fed Reg Title 27, Chapter 1* related to the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the US Treasury Department provides that:

Any person who willfully delivers or discloses to any officer or employee of the Bureau any list, return, account, statement, or other document, known by him to be fraudulent or to be false as to any material matter, shall be fined not more than $10,000 ($50,000 in the case of a corporation) or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both.

But that right up there, as a pal says when I point to a by-law at work… “that’s a law!” Which it is. Which allows for a year in jail. Yikes. Dumbasses. No wonder Dan Shelton, former US importer and man whose name became a new verb, stated that he had been deceived: “They did lead somebody in my company to falsify documents.” Wow.  To think Brewdog once sponsored this blog… I am so embarrassed. I would have thought Prince Andrew’s situation might have been a warning to Brits who are a bit deluded about their proper place. No, apparently not. Perhaps it was a plan to distract folk from their incredibly retrograde insensitive and perhaps even Neanderthal-esque approach to promoting better mental health… you know, when they weren’t, what did the BBC write in that article… running a model workplace… what was it?

One former worker told the investigation: “The pressure was enormous. ‘Just make it happen’, that was the culture. It was clear to us this was coming from the top – from James [Watt].”

Elsewhere and hardly at all as suspect, Stan has been on a bit of a roll, posting five times at his space. He may be making a point of some sort. He wrote this under the heading “#nottwitter 04“:

Can somebody point me to a blog post, an academic paper, something from the New York Times, wherever, that provides insight into what might be called unhealthy nostaglia and the ramifications? And how might it relate tradition as a trap?

I am not sure what is up. Is there a pattern?  Whatever it is, it may be that this post’s point is found in the next post, the Monday beer links: “when we buy into that nostalgia, it might be best to stop and consider what we are longing for.” Isn’t what nostalgia what beer is for? Remembering? Daydreaming? Hmm. Then – get this – then Stan hid a clue in the title of his next post: ethyl octanoate. Ethyl. Octanoate. Think about it. Anyway, it terms of the speed of nostalgia, it moves fast with craft beer. Four Pure and Magic Rock are in a “process“:

We want to update you on some news. As we go through this process, our priority remains our superb team and brewing great beers.

Better a process than a legal process, eh? The Grocer has deets:

“While no decisions have been made, we need to determine how to best set Magic Rock and Fourpure up for success in the coming years. Our team have been informed of the review and we are committed to supporting them through this time.” Fourpure has struggled to make headway in the supermarkets, despite the huge surge in alcohol sales over the course of the pandemic…. In contrast, Magic Rock’s off-trade volumes rose 125.4%…

Well! As with the news last week about the Aussie wine guys buying up US craft, the news about the Aussie beer guys going wobbly on UK craft is par for the course. Dust in the wind. Chose your pop prog song title from the mid to late 1970s. That is what it is.

Thinking about thinking, Ron reflected on the year ahead this week in terms of his own mobility:

Plague permitting, I’ve a few trips planned and a couple of others pencilled in. Corona is a real blessing to travellers. The internet had made travels far too simple. The virus adds a delightful randomness to the proceedings. Like planning a European tour in the summer of 1918. Every time I book a flight I wonder: “What are the chance of me actually taking it?” Nothing is more thrilling than checking the internet until the second before you leave for the airport that the flight hasn’t been cancelled. Or wondering if you’ll be let out of the country once you reach your destination. I love the Phineas Fogg feeling the uncertainty brings.

All this uncertainty. Is that the word of the month? I bought a ticket to a CNY beerfest this week at Craig’s urging. Not sure I see how I could ever go to it but it is at least four months off and I suppose I could rent a camper van and look at people out the window. Now he tells me it’s Mothers Day weekend.  Great.

Conversely to that fest, there is as much to learn from a poorly made or poorly thought out beer. Matt is right. Don’t be a jerk. But also don’t be fooled twice. That’s what got us in this mess.

The Beer Nut found perhaps the dullest beer ever.

Retired Martin found a micropub based the theme of the group The Jam. I was their only fan in high school. Until my pals listened to my records. Not sure even I would stay long.

A few reviews of the ABInBev TV promotional show, Beer Masters, have come in. Boak and Bailey added to Ed‘s observations this week:

Perhaps, however, they could have spent less time on the somewhat laboured descriptions of what makes an Abbey beer, or a pilsner, and told us a bit more about the contestants’ kits. We could see some interesting gadgets and arrangements that were never really discussed. If the aim is to spark a home-brewing revolution, as was suggested at a couple of points, then this probably won’t do it.

Good point. This is the sort of TV that does not interest me but at least it appears that a bit of big brewery money has made for a show that is actually not dreadful. Remember that horrible show produced as an advertising vehicle for Dogfish Head twelve and a half years ago? Of course you don’t as most of you were still in elementary school back then. That show was absolutely dreadful. Note: it was also called Beer Masters.

Somewhat related in the sense of horrible US craft beer messaging. Jeff considered the limits of independence this week with yet another tale of yet another takeover:

This isn’t a problem of the Brewers Associations’ making. It’s a structural feature of the beer industry in the US. It is also a worrying development, an echo of an earlier era when consolidation blighted the industry. What does it say about how we regulate the sale of beer in the US that the most successful start-up breweries eventually have to sell out to giants to survive? Is this the world we want to live in and, critically, what changes would allow those larger regional breweries to compete?

I can’t really agree that this is worrying. I mean if you are worrying about this you must have a pretty worry-free life.  The idea of the “independence” of craft beer was dumb in 2009, in 2012, in 2015, in 2016 and still is today. See what I wrote in six years ago under that 2016 link?

Recently, the Boston Globe profiled private equity firm Fireman Capital Partners, the investment folk behind the expansion of Oskar Blues and the cash injection into Florida’s Cigar City Brewing. You think those guys are shaking in their boots over the prospect of a rival fund based on Stone’s ethos? Hardly. The experienced private equity players will out bid and out run their deals. It’s their business, not a hobby or a faith-based act of grace.

Money knows what money is about. Craft beer is about making money. Ask the Aussie wine guys. Unless it is about Berlin. Then craft beer is not about making money. Elsewhere and far more pure of heart, Lars came to a realization this week:

That feeling when you sit down to summarize the development of Norwegian brewing processes and the process of explaining forces you to realize that for 3/4 of the time people have brewed beer in Norway there is zero knowledge of how they did it. No evidence, no theories, nothing.

I might add that we should always be alive to the other 1/4 being 3/4s correct, too. That is the issue with all histories which is why it comes in a plural. But I expect this to spur on even more of his excellent and single-handed research.

There was a good question put to the chattering classes about the most influential European breweries on the US beer industry but I couldn’t muster the energy to decode influential so only watched the ticker tape pass through my hands. Gary went with Chimay and then wrote a follow up:

My history with Chimay started long before this blog inaugurated in 2015. My first Chimay was in a stone-flagged bar in Montreal, Quebec around 1980, served in the stemmed “chalice” long associated with the brand. I was in Vieux Montréal, the oldest part of the city whose mix of old French and Victorian British architecture contrived to offer a “European” atmosphere (still does)…

The Tand picked up a very similar ball – round and bouncy – and gave it a swift kick himself and wrote this about TT’s Landlord:

Me and Taylor’s Landlord have a bit of history. When I first came to this neck of the woods, a local free house used to sell it. It was on the way to Tesco when we did our weekly shop, and we always stopped on the way back for a couple.  It was a rich, balance of malt and hops, with a distinctive floral touch. The term multi layered really did apply to it.  Alas, the free house was sold to Robinsons and the then landlord presented me with the Landlord pumpclip as a farewell gift. I still have it. And that was that. No more readily available Taylor’s. I have supped it in Keighley too over the years and when I saw it on a bar, I always tried it. E loved it too. Of course, there is a but. Over the years, it just hasn’t retained its appeal somehow. It isn’t the same.

Question: “What makes the Golden Ball special?”

As I am wont to do, when I compare this review of good wines by Eric Asimov in the NYT with what would happen if anyone tried such a thing in a publication about beer I once again am between saddened and confused. Imagine if wine writers wrote “for the trade by the trade” as is often the brand with this sort of beer. No one would take the opinions offered seriously. It’s the neighbour of scandal.

Finally, Jordan took one for the team and drank a bunch of no-alc beer samples he got in the mail. While I would approach that opportunity with the sort of anticipation I might feel just before… what… anyway, Jordan found some good in doing it by suggesting not doing it:

I struggle with Non-Alcoholic products. By my lights, I’d prefer to have beer with alcohol or something that’s not beer. I probably get through three litres of fizzy water a day. While I understand that there’s a question of inclusivity in gatherings and that people want to hold something that looks like a beer so that they feel included, I feel that things are slightly different if you’re… you’re a… [Ed.: hmm he spelled “grown up” wrong…].

And I have been playing with the Patreon thing a bit more. Notes on beers I have tried, thoughts on books and beer culture as well as my war on squirrels at the feeder. I do like how it provide a low barrier to easy access. I can be ruder there. Like cable TV as opposed to broadcast.

That’s it for now. That’s a lot. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Feel free to correct my US citation style. I took and oath to the Crown so you can just consider it payback for the whole “War of Independence” thing.

These Be The Beery News Notes For Mid-January 2022

We are already at a mid-point. But there are plenty of them to do around. Pick one point and then another? You’ve created a mid-point. I saw this image from a late 1960s airport or train station waiting area. I remember these at the Halifax airport, coin operated TV chairs. Some sort of mid-point going on. With ashtrays. We are at another now. Mid-January.

This bit of beer business news has every member of the semi-pro beer chattering class without experience in business* scratching their heads:

Molson Coors Beverage Company said today it will stop production of its Saint Archer brand and sell its San Diego-based brewery and taproom to Kings & Convicts Brewing Co., which owns the Ballast Point brand.  

As I reported… relayed… poached from Josh Noel in the Chicago Tribune, back in December 2019 Kings & Convicts, an apparently tiny craft brewery in Illinois bought one time mega-brand Ballast Point. The purchase was made with a bucket of moolah earned from a hospitality asset sale by K&C principal Brendan Watters in 2015  along with input from other friendly and wealthy investors including wine magnate Richard Mahoney. These brewery buys at pennies on the dollar are no doubt a doddle for folk at that level.

In another sector aimed at making the moolah, the sad news has been reported by Jaime Jurado that something called the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association has been created. A concept which seems to put the moron in oxymoron. As it is not about beer, it shall never be referenced again – except when someone mentions “neo-prohibitionists” again. Then I can say:

What? You mean the ANBA?

Best NA-NF quote of the week? This:

Price is an issue. Not sure how I’ll feel about that once work isn’t paying for the beers.

What? Govern the opening of your wallet accordingly, I suppose. Spare a measure of salt when reading review by those who get the freebies. Next fad to return? Temperance bars. As noted by Martin, the mastheadless blog Evo Boozy Scribbler discussed a variation on that theme:

I have nothing but disdain for booze free curry houses. Having a pint of Cobra is part of the experience. I don’t take my own roast potatoes to a carvery.

Well, it’s part of your experience. Why can’t people on the beer imagine that there is a world where being people on the beer is not considered the height of civilization’s progress? I rarely have been with my curry but, then again, I equate it with family meals, not piss ups.

Speaking of food and beer, this is an interesting argument from Zambia related to food security:

Well, if we are talking about food security, perhaps we could start by checking the quantity of maize going into beer before we think of suspending meagre exports of less than a million tonnes because if this info could be true, it could mean us who drink chibuku, ‘eat’ more mealie meal in three months than what the whole country uses in a year! Mwaimvela kanongobilitina skopodicious, ka? But not everything is bad about opaque beer, “…it gives you 13.1% of body energy when you drink,” my friend told me.

Changing course, a high honour and one I agree with entirely was bestowed by Garrett Oliver this week after listening to Matt Curtis interviewed by the two folk at BeerEdge recently:

I don’t really follow the beer press; as a producer it sometimes feels grubby and unseemly to do so. But I will say that this interview put a lump in my throat more than once and made me switch my mental hat to “writer/journo”. We do need actual journalists. Glad of these folks.

Through this troubled world of everything from PR puff to academic research, it is good to note how much quality there actually is – as I get to do each week. While a sort of drinks writing is a narrative with no greater arc, writing attracted to novelty (or even whatever it is that has briefly twitched… right over there, do you see it?) we see another relatively recent aspect of this is how good beer writing is developing and unfolding is the phenomenon of people writing about serious issues faced in life – from humanity’s injustices to the  deeply personal – seen through the lens of something somehow related to beer. On excellent example this week was provided by Jonathon Hamilton in Pellicle:

This time last year I wrote my first essay for Pellicle. It was, like this, a self-reflective piece about the beginnings of the magazine, alongside my own struggles with mental health, imposter syndrome and a sense of belonging. Putting myself out there in such a way was one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do, and I would love to tell you all how it immediately changed me for the better. Unfortunately, it did not.

Similarly, note bene the bene noted:

It’s true that the total number of blogs has declined over the past decade, but the number of good blogs has never been higher. Moreover, they fill a role that would otherwise be left vacant. Beer is little-covered by newspapers and magazines, and often merely superficially. No one is going to print one of Ron Pattinson’s lists of 19th century grists in the Wall Street Journal. Social media is great for opinion and linking, but not much else. Imagine Lars trying to present one of his enthnographies on Twitter. Larger, more ambitious projects like Craft Beer & Brewing and Good Beer Hunting are doing fantastic work and I don’t want to diminish their effort. But blogs are still critical in the media ecosystem—and, given the anemic state of print journalism and the increasingly toxic nature of social media, more important than ever.

Hooray and happy sixteenth beer bloggaversary, Jeff!

There was a sad sighting of another of a bit of a failed PR initiatives this week: Tryannuary. How 2015. How could they have known that a global pandemic would raise general concerns about personal health?

In Scotland a wonderful protest was seen this week in Dundee, where the King of Islington, a Dundee pub was suddenly closed without warning and then suddenly reopened without warning:

Staff at a Dundee bar at the centre of Covid-19 cover-up claims have been told to return to work this week following a sudden closure. The King of Islington pub shut on Saturday with upper management blaming “massively reduced trade levels” due to the “promotion of unsubstantiated claims” in a union-backed grievance letter from staff. Kieron Kelleher, assistant manager at the Union Street venue, accused pub chain operators Macmerry300 of victimising staff who spoke out.

Protests had also been held at pubs owned by the same chain in Glasgow as events unfolded. As a child of a child of the Red Clyde, I got all verklempt.

This week’s Tufte Award for Best Visual Display of Quantitative Information goes to… a chart that explains what we know as “hard liquor” in Canada but described as spirits in the Old Country. It is from Colin Angus using data from Public Health Scotland who first ran a poll, most people guessing gin would be #1 rather than the bronze medal winner. Well down the list but still – who is drinking all that brandy?

The Canadian Beer Cup is off. Now… calm down. Breathe. I am sure it was a big deal in your household, too, but the reason  for the cancellation is… singular and real:

…guidelines announced last week by the Ontario Government in response to the rapid surge in cases of the Omicron variant limit indoor gatherings to a maximum of five people, making it impossible for in-person judging to take place at this time. “One of the goals of The Canada Beer Cup is to showcase the greatness of Canadian breweries to the world,” said Rick Dalmazzi, Executive Director of the Canadian Craft Brewing Association, in a statement. “With all due respect to the many fine Toronto and Southern Ontario judges who will be involved, we want to do everything in our power to also include the many international and cross-Canada judges who have committed to our event.”

In plain language, there was clearly a large aspect of this that was a Toronto tourism event bringing in judges who were also newspaper columnists and consultants to retailer, etc.** (One need not take that statement above in the cancellation notice to suggest that while Canadian beer may be underrated, well, our own Ontarian beer judges are somehow overrated.) Now… how to transition and stay within the overall goals. As happened in the World Beer Cup (whatever that is when it is not the World Beer Awards), beer submissions will be poured. What does a next step look like? Apparently the Greek Cup of Beer or the Greek Beer Cup or the Greek Beer Awards was not so needy of auslander praise as they also just mailed out the samples to the usuals. As did the World Beer Awards. Something will occur. I just hope that there are government grants that buffer all this, that cover the unexpected stranded costs that demobilization and remobilization incurs. Stranded costs are a killer.

Non-beer recommendation of the week:  follow AndyBTravels. He’s train fan who runs a Travel Architect Service. He also wanders around remote parts of places like rural Romania where this week he captured some desolate spots and also some gorgeous moments.

That’s it for now. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too (… back this week!) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which I hope is  revived soon…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*pretty much all of them.
**we should be honest about how these things really work.

Your First Beery News Notes For A Thursday In 2022

Well, that was a good holiday season, wasn’t it. It wound up with Ontario heading into another semi-demi-lockdown as of Monday so I can’t say that it is all fine and dandy. I still have my stash. And I can settle down into my culturally appropriate assumptions that the stash somehow helps defend against viruses. This is the second in my collection of my “Dewar’s Defeats The Flu!” imagery in addition to this beauty.*  Now you have a collection, too.

What is going on in the beer world? Well, there was a ripple of unhappiness about the term “pub ale” which I have no issue with as it fits a certain spot that I recognize as something once called “Canadian export ale” except it isn’t really exported – a sweeter sort of pale ale.  Like Left Field brews and calls Outstanding which it is. “Bitter” isn’t an old term.  Gary mentioned the question this week dismissing the idea it was novel:

Certainly in export markets, British brewers were alert early on to attune names to market expectations. Boddington’s Pub Ale, a good seller in many markets is a stronger version of Boddington’s Bitter marketed for export since 1993. Back in the 1980s the now defunct regional brewer Greenall Whitley sold a Cheshire English Pub Beer in the U.S. I recall it especially in the Northeastern market.

I am with Mike. Bringing out a craft beer brand called “Leff” without a last letter “E” is just inviting a trade name or copyright law suit. Big faceless industrial gak maker hegemonist ABInBevOfBevAllBev has my sympathies:

“Leffe has an earlier right. Moreover, in both cases it concerns beer. Then there is a risk of confusion. There would be less risk of confusion, for example, if the Leff brand is applied for by a bed manufacturer. Although the protection of well-known brands can sometimes extend to other products.” Moreover, the label of a bottle of the Brasserie Artisanal du Leff also resembles that of the famous Leffe. “The same Gothic letters, for example, and the word ‘Leff’ is very emphatically highlighted. Those logos and fonts are also registered by AB InBev with the trademark register,” says Chalmers. In a French press release, AB InBev says that even in French pronunciation, there is no difference between “Leff” and “Leffe.” Reason enough to send Le Saux a letter.

I love this image to the right of all the various sorts of pints illustrated on a pint glass. Published by Foods of England this week. Pity the Belgian pint.

Joan Birraire in Barcelona, Spain has fired up his coal fed servers and revived the beer blog, no doubt due to everyone saying how beer blogging is dead. He returns with his Golden Pints 2021:

To avoid settling into perpetual criticism and start leading by example, I hope to resume blog activity a bit this year, also as part of a return to good habits that I have definitely lost due to the pandemic and excess work, the combination of which has led me to a terribly monotonous kind-of-monastic life. To begin with, I would like to recover a decade-long initiative that started in the international blogosphere: the Golden Pints awards, which every blogger assigns to beers, establishments or projects that they feel deserve to be praised.

Note: there is no such thing as “too many beer bloggers.” Speaking of which, Lucy Corne of South Africa, not dead, celebrated ten years of beer blogging this week as did Matt Curtis, also not dead. Speaking of whom latterly but not late-rly, Pellicle has published an excellent business plan for 2022 explaining the financials of its operations. Were all the others so transparent:

We run Pellicle on a cash basis. We have no debt, and our plan is, and always will be, to keep commissioning content until the money’s all gone. Thanks to our Patreon supporters, plus our sponsors Hop Burns & Black and Hand and Heart, we’re presently able to publish roughly one or two features per week, plus a podcast every three to four weeks, and both are pretty much self-sustaining as is. 

Full marks. This is why I trust Pellicle and I support them at a very modest level. Speaking of excellent, this piece by Kate Bernot captures exactly what we have not seen much of in craft beer business journalism: digging into the business end. And it was accomplished by reading Danish corporate filings for Mikkeller:

According to a company audit, Mikkeller had a total income loss of about $4 million between 2019 and 2020. The report says that last year’s losses were “primarily a result of COVID-19 related restrictions, lockdown and general uncertainty across the globe heavily impacting our retail sales as well as wholesale to on-premise bars, restaurants.” Borsen reported that Mikkeller founder Mikkel Borg Bjergsø has relinquished some ownership in the company to Orkila as a result of the most recent transaction.

Fabulous levels of detail to dig up and dig through. Now, let’s have the same approach to other breweries. In 2016 there was some unhappiness that I just mentioned Jim Koch selling off shares, pro-am beer writers telling me I “…didn’t understand, so mean…” despite practicing business law for about two decades at that point. More of the digging please.

Maureen retweeted this image of Jack’s Saloon at Camp Claiborne, L.A., 1940s and it is worth poring over for the details. If you click there is far bigger version. What the heck is a “dude drink” and why were these two fine ladies and their wonderful establishment so against them? I mean you could have one but it cost fifteen times the cost of a home brew. Are they brewing out back?  The font of all knowledge explains that “Camp Claiborne was a U.S. Army military camp in the 1930s continuing through World War II located in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana.”

Retired Martyn crossed the northern border thanks in large part to someone else:

A flat tyre from nowhere, but thankfully I have a skilled team to deal with life’s little crises. And no, that’s not the main reason I married her (though her 1991 “Motoring Madams” certification was high on the list).

I was guided to the blog “Paul’s Beer & Travel Blog” which is a fairly plain name if we think about it but no doubt entirely accurate. Paul Bailey is the name (no relation) and what it is really about is Paul’s travels to beer. So there is pleasant train discussion, pleasant pub discussion and pleasant beer discussion as this one paragraph illustrates:

Unfortunately, the trains didn’t connect very well, and as the service from Dorking pulled into Redhill station, I witnessed the one to Tonbridge, pulling away from the opposite platform. The next train to Tonbridge wasn’t due for another hour, which provided the perfect opportunity for a quick, “in-between trains” pint. The question was, with a number of pubs to go for, which one should I choose?’

Remember this next time you read someone saying how negative discussion is on Twitter during the pandemic – it’s much the same in the pub. Current complaints? Dry January…** New York State Governor Hochul? Not so fast:

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that she will permanently legalize the sale of “to-go” alcoholic drinks in the state, adding that the practice was a “critical revenue stream” during the pandemic.

Oh – and Stan mentioned the Patreon thing. Let me play with it a while before I figure out if there is any point to it.

There – a modest offering for this more modest first week of the new year. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*This blog is not sponsored by Dewar’s. This blog is entirely open to being sponsored by Dewar’s.
**For the double!

The Last Beery News Notes And My Golden Pints For 2021

Well, it’s been a bit of a napping sort of time, these last few days. Not much going on. Can find enough to cut and paste enough together to come up with enough beery news notes? Between an increased lockdown and the general Yuletide slowdown, it’s been very quiet. And New Year’s Eve is tomorrow. What to do? What to do? Research canapés and hors d’oeuvres of course! I’ve started my prep and even recommended a resource as shown to your right (Ed.: to my left), a copy of  which you can download for free here. Scotch Woodcock is looking interesting. Scrambled eggs with a little anchovy on tiny toast. Yum.

Is there any beery news or other beer writing to report upon? Jeff Alworth wrote one of the most detailed and slightly obsessed year in review posts which is, one the one hand, clearly a bunch of links to stuff he had thought about and written about throughout the year but, on the other hand, obviously a fabulous summary of all the stuff he had thought about and written about throughout the year! Summary of his summary?

It was a transitional year, but also one that never got out of second gear. Things went back to a kind of new normal, but nobody has been very happy about what that looks like.

Yup. But at least he got to do a US National Grand Tour and updated many fine thoughts and observations as a result. Good stuff.*

Also, Gary Gillman* posted the inordinately and perhaps unnecessarily formally titled “Index to Gary Gillman’s Writing on Porter and Stout” which is a fabulous resource. I would say Gary has had his best year of beer writing. His research on Jewish Breweries of Eastern Europe before the Nazis is one of the most remarkable things I have ever read under the guise of beer writing. Just look at his fabulous post “Hops of Galicia, Beer of Lopatyn” published in mid-November and then look at the twenty or more posts he has written in the weeks between then and now. Blogs dead? Nope, you just fell asleep.

And it is wonderful that Katie‘s piece on the modest dinner roll… bun… bap… was the #1 read piece on Pellicle this year. It’s probably the reason I started supporting them on Patreon. It’s the sort of quality writing that keeps me supporting them. Hope she put the old plates of meat up on the old pouf.

In more newsy news, apparently during these summer months in Australia, drinking beer too quickly is a bad thing:

It used to be a famous sight of the Australian cricket summer – former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke skolling a beer during the New Year’s Test at the SCG. But if the late Hawke skolled a beer at the MCG during the recent third Ashes Test, he would have been among many fans to have been ejected from the venue for drinking their alcoholic beverage too quickly. During the three days of Australia’s thrashing of England at the famous Melbourne stadium, countless cricket fans were booted out for skolling their beers.

There. Your beer word for the week: skolling.

Note: the new 2021 BJCP Style Guidelines are out. The beer I am having right now is excellent and breaks the rules. Table Saison by Meuse is only 3%. No one cares. And that $2.43 is a nutty price. 

And without further ado… well, perhaps a bit of fanfare… I give you…

My Golden Pints For 2021

Favourite new Ontario beer: I thought this was going to be easy after I tweeted this earlier in the month:

Holy crap! Why has no one screamed at me about Sklepník from @Godspeedbrewery? This is one of the best beers I have ever had. Constrained, bread crust malt, herbal, even creamy. Wow. And “sklep” means shop in Polish so that’s totes cool. Shop beer. 

Definitely Skelpnik… but then I had my first Meuse 8 yesterday. So it is a tie. I have not been on side with Jordan’s longstanding claim that this is a golden age for good beer. It is, however, now clearly a golden age for beer in Ontario.

Favourite Old Beery Friend: Peculiar Strong Ale by Granite Brewing. I’ve written about my youthful 1980s in Nova Scotia before, in 2008 for the 15th edition of The Session and again in 2017 when I wrote about a dusty business case study of the Halifax bar scene. for I am not going to be one of those dinkledorfs who will pretend to be able to tell you it does nor does not taste the same but it is very nice to be able to pour a beer that was poured for you around 35 years ago at the time when, in addition to some fine regional breweries and a raft of imports, the Canadian microbrewing scene was taking off.

Best Pub Experience: none.

Best Song About Beer: “Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg. This song is an NPR favourite but what hasn’t been pointed out quite clearly enough is that it is really a song about beer… or at least what goes on that chaise longue:

Hey you, in the front row
Are you coming backstage after the show?
Because I’ve got a chaise longue in my dressing room
And a pack of warm beer that we can consume

Beer song. 100%. Also the best song of 2021 if anyone is asking…

Worst Continuing Trend That Could Just Die: bland samey cartoons with a vaguely positive spin but an underlying tisk of one sort or another – oh and blobby graphics accompanying digital beer ‘zines.

Best Book about Beer: none… bad year for  beer books… though if I had access to more modern British Beer I would likely be happy to recommend Modern British Beer by Matthew Curtis* as a useful guide to my options. This illustrates the ups and downs of more localized beer markets – aka more normal beer markets.

Best New Voice: Probably just new to me. David Jesudason in Pellicle with “Desi Style — The History and Significance of England’s Anglo-Asian Pubs” and “On Bat and Trap, and Finding A Sense of Place in Rural England” both articles gave me a window into place and time. I have also obsessed over Bat and Trap coming on 15 years.

Best Trend in Beer: home delivery continues to be wonderful. Right in front of me as I type these words is a door in my basement to a cold room. There are portions of boxes of beer in there from Matron, Godspeed, Meuse, Leftfield and Stone City for present drinking and gift giving to the neighbours. All brought to my house. Half the time for no shipping if you know when and what to order. Fabulous.

Best Beer Blogger: one stands above all year after year – John Duffy of The Beer Nut. Why? Constantly top  quality writing by an encyclopedic and independent bon vivant, all offered with both sharp wit and a healthy slice of what I can only call humility. He will maybe laugh at me putting it that way but there is sort of decency and humanity that comes through… even when tearing a strip of something. He truly likes the brewing world and those who work in it. Rarely drops a name but highlights what they offer us all. If anyone sets the tone, it’s your lad, John. Drunk Tand agrees.

Best Imported Beer: The LCBO, our government store, brought in bottles of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord this fall and I like it. I have had it on tap when visiting the fam and I like it just fine in the bottle, too.

Biggest Waste Of Effort: either making or writing about pickle beer.

Best Beer Project: I know that Boak and Bailey awarded this their “Blogger of the Year” award but I think that is too narrow, perhaps a mislabeling. A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects by Eoghan Walsh is one of the best projects anyone who thinks at all seriously about beer has tackled in years. It is a book being writing before your eyes on a weekly basis. It is a draft of a TV script for a documentary shown on Belgian TV in 2026.

A final note. Many folk have given up on awarding this year’s beer best awards as part of their general abandonment of good writing about beer. What is up? It does seem like a point of pride with some beer writers that they don’t actually write all that much any more. As Stan got me thinking about this when he wrote his thoughts this week:

I realized as the lists started to roll out in recent weeks that I miss Bryan Roth’s annual effort to add objectivity to subjective choices. I’m too lazy to do something similar, but I did start saving lists a while back with the idea of posting them here in one giant listicle of listicles. Then I came to my senses.

And what is too often written is spun, formulaic or, worse, apologists. “The Five Best Beer Bars in Sarnia.” Lists of beer related presents at holiday time. 40 word beer reviews for throwaway advertising fliers posing as weekly community newspapers. Short, scripted lines for their 37 seconds on TV explaining this beer or that, those 37 seconds before the host laughs unkindly and moves on.  It’s sad that this has happened – and frankly a bit embarrassing in a lot of cases – but I figure it’s better to find something else to do like write trade PR if you have nothing much actually interesting to say. Happily there are other far brighter lights to follow and more new voices showing up regularly. I am happy to help you find it… if that is what I am doing on this site.

Oh – and by the way – one more thing… I have created another thing. A Patreon site. Not necessarily to make any money so much as to create a micro site to experiment with. Honestly, I will probably use any money raised to give to others via Patreon. The micro site is getting populated with content as you read this. Well, right around now. Yesterday for sure. I think you can find the Patreon page here. I tried to make it as cheap as I could but $1 a month is not recommended so I went with $3 USD, $4 CND. One price. All in. Stop by or don’t. I won’t judge you. Maureen** is clearly on board.

There. Welcome 2022 and to Hell with you, 2021! Even though it gave us the vaccine roll out and proved once again that humanity can pull its boots up and get things done if it puts its mind to it. OK, 2021 wasn’t so bad. Remember 2020? Now, that one sucked. While you think on that and plan your Friday evening snacks, please please check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (except when they check out like they have for the last two weeks) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*We have never met and neither of us owes the other money.
**TO my horror, when cleaning up and getting masses of paper files out the door and to a professional shredder, I realized I owe Maureen a modest sum for a project I dreamed up years ago that went absolutely nowhere. I found the envelope she sent her cheque in. Post marked Iowa. I am embarrassed. I need to make amends.

Your Very Merry Christmas Edition Of Beery News Notes

This is the week! Santa and everything. So exciting. Last minute shopping opportunities abound even while heads nestle all snug in their beds bothered by visions of some sort. We are as happy for anything around these parts over the vaccination drive through outdoor wintery clinics, as seen above, which are boosting 5,000 people or about 4% of the city’s population per day. After a very scary spike that led the nation just a week or so ago, this is very good news for the holidays. The goose or turkey or whatever is sorta taking second place this year.

It is Tibb’s Eve today, a Newfoundland early start that may go back to 1700s and into the rural outports. What’s that about, you say?

Tibb’s Eve was a “non-time”; if something was said to happen on Tibb’s Eve, it was unlikely it would ever happen. It appears circa 1785 in “A classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue” thusly: “Saint Tibb’s Evening, the evening of the last day, or day of Judgement; he will pay you on St. Tibb’s Eve, (Irish).”

Fabulous. What is going on in beer itself? Well, I was really exciting by (as excited as one might get by I suppose)… by Ron’s reworking of some data to discover some very basic information about Dutch beer culture in the mid-1900s:

The obvious post-war trends were moves from dark to pale, sweet to bitter and draught to bottled. I’m shocked that pre-war dark beers accounted for almost 50% of the Dutch market. I would never have guessed that. Nor that such a high percentage of beer was sold on draught. Even in the UK, where draught was the norm, a higher percentage of beer was sold in bottled form on the 1940s.

That’s a fourth approach in addition to function, nationalism and style. This illustrates the great thing about amassing and writing in quantity – interesting qualities will jump out that would otherwise be missed.

Trying to be upbeat this week but this story on the death of one UK craft buyout is really interesting – especially as it is written from the marketplace reality point of view as opposed to the usual PR hopes and wishes:

Timing was an issue too. When it bought London Fields, Carlsberg’s eponymous lager and Export brews had been seriously struggling for years. Moving distribution to DHL also didn’t help, according to a second industry source, who says the tie-up was “fraught with difficulties” leaving irate retailers “unwilling to entertain a broader range”. Then after Covid hit, the merger became top priority. Put simply “[brewers] are potentially heading into another difficult period and it is all about cost right now, rather than growing younger brands”.

I really enjoyed watching Lars M.G. discussing why beer and Christmas are deeply connected, and what Christmas was originally all about all on a live (and free) online talk Tuesday afternoon my time hosted by @ChiBrewseum. These presentations they are putting on are a great addition to the good beer scene. He mentioned a record from the 1270s when the Norwegian king required prayers over the beer bowl to Odin to be replaced with those to Jesus. I mentioned that is right about when and why my peeps left town. We are also all the Elliots, too.

I really liked the “best of” reading list from Boak and Bailey if for no other reason that it is the sort of list that is separate from the self nominations we see on awards lists. Which can lead to this sort of unhelpful thing. Every entry is well worth your time. If I would pick out any one as the best 0f their best of 2021, it would be the epic A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects by Eoghan Walsh of Brussels Beer City.  Catch up! There is another half year of this tremendous bit of writing to go.

Great insider thread on the state of the bar scene in the USA in these days of the fourth wave.

The new drink buzz this week was all about the hot poker being thrust into your malty winter ale on a cold tavern patio somewhere.  Kate B. posted a vid. Stan on Insta wrote:

Some like it hot. Next please. My beer (Hogshead ESB) waits for a poke in the mug with a very hot iron. Lots of foam. Toasted marshmallow. 

I liked this – it’s a return to an old practice for winter punchbowls, whether filled with wine or ale… or both. Try it yourself, out in the yard with a Lambswool a la Braciatrix.

Martyn posted about one grump, sort of an anti-communicator, complaining about the quality of his drink:

In October 1736, Jonathan Swift, dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and the foremost satirist of his age, published an attack on English porter, which was made, he said, of “the worst Malt, which is sent from all parts of the Country for that Use, and consequently nothing but Gin exceeds it for Badness.” The smell of London porter, he said, was “sufficient for any Creature above a Swine”…

Yikes. More tastefully, good news for hopheads in Stan’s newest edition to Hop Queries:

Friday the United States Department of Agriculture reported record hop production of 116 million pounds in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. That’s 12 million pounds more than 2020, when weather and smoke damage drug down yield, and 4 million more than the previous record of 112 million pounds harvested in 2019.

Speaking of good taste, Jordan brushed off his fountain pen and wrote about the state of Glutenberg, the Quebecois gluten free brewery and, like the Lord looking down upon creation, was pleased:

Alternative fermentables are used all over the world and the millet and buckwheat, which tend to be from arid climates, are probably things we’re going to need to look into in the near future. One thing this has certainly highlighted for me is how much we’ve become dependent on wheat and oats in the last half decade as the influence of New England IPAs has crept into other styles. I wonder whether that makes the Glutenberg products more accessible than they would have been six or seven years ago since haze and cloudiness are not issues in the general market anymore.

Finally, its time to brush off the Xmas tale from Church-Key Brewing of Campbellford, Ontario has arrived. Gather the kiddies, get your popcorn and Kleenex:

 

Well, the holidays are definitely here now. Be happy and eat a chestnut or whatever it is you eat that’s a bit weird. While you are being happy please also check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

 

 

 

Here We Are At 2021’s End… And What Have We Become?

Charts. I used to draw loads of charts. The one above from December 2016 [Ed.: fig 1.] was really useful as it succinctly describes the world of good beer from a wee titch in time before 1980 to the then present day without all the revisionist history imposed on us all by the BA.  I was very interested five to six years ago in how beer culture described itself – which in part led to me shifting away my focus from researching brewing history to reading the weekly news. And as we can see in the diagram, craft as it then existed died in around 2015* but the term has stuck around, generating suckers and shoots that are worth exploring and, seeking external structures, may be explored using a few agricultural terms as analogies: sports, scions and volunteers.

What’s that? Let’s define some terms. A sport in the plant world is a genetic mutation that results from a faulty chromosomal replication. A scion is the one bit of a grafting that is intended to bear fruit characteristics that is stuck on the bit that goes into the ground which provides other characteristics, often related to hardiness.  A volunteer is something left behind and forgotten in the ground that pops up the next spring, bringing both hazards and opportunities.

Like Wittgenstein pointed out, axioms or self-evident statements are a useful way of understanding something. This is as true in beer as metaphysics. We have established or at least argued (in no particular order) that beer creates aggregation, is a means to an end, is cyclical, is responsive, is pervasive, and beer resists. Does the exploration of where craft has gone through the lens of sports, scions and volunteers add to that list of axioms? Let’s see, shall we? Whatever the outcome its can’t have more holes as nationalism or style as a construct. Let’s hope it is at least as helpful as Ron’s new Dark/Pale and Sweet/Bitter continuum.

One last thing before we start. Another chart. Or, rather, an updated chart. To the right, is an update [Ed.: fig 2] of a chart that I created in 2016 or so trying to get a handle on beer culture at the time upon which I have layered notations. Back when craft was a unified battle against all external forces as opposed to today’s schism riddled word cloud that would make a 1600s Scottish Presbyterian proud. Remember. Craft died in 2015. In 2016-17 were were describing its entrails. Now we are describing something else. Its offspring? Its ghost?

So, to repeat, a sport in the plant world is a genetic mutation that results from a faulty chromosomal replication. I think it is safe to say that we have seen some sporting in the world of good beer.  A sport is something unintended by the original breeder of the plant.  While some will fundamentally misunderstand and call something like the hop Fuggles a landrace, it is actually a sport as its ancestors were hop plants already farmed and developed under the careful eye of husbandry.  As Martyn wrote in 2016, Fuggles were first found in a garden. And hops were big business well before Fuggles came along. No, what is really the sport in IPA isn’t the hop but the muck… the haze… the lactose. The over-allocations of the term IPA over the last few years to encompass these new forms is as faulty a replication if ever there was one. No one intended IPA when first used to later become as diluted in terms of meaning as it has become.  Note: this is a neutral observation at this point – no comment on any sort of fluid in a can marked with these three letters. But it is an example of a sport.

Next, we recall that a scion is the one half of a grafting that is intended to bear certain fruiting characteristics that is stuck on the bit that goes into the ground which provides other characteristics, often related to hardiness. This sort of intentional mixing of characteristics results in something a lot like a sport but it is guided by human intervention. It won’t necessarily make the fruit taste different but, though grafting on tougher root stock, can extend a growing range or defeat a certain pest.

As we can from the chart above, fig. 2, two things we could call craft in 2016 have occurred: (i) it has encroached into micro in terms of a reduced availability of traditional styles of beer even while (ii) it has itself undergone what may be a schism. In addition to craft and poor widdle cwaft we have something else which I may tentatively call new craft. Old craft is serious stuff. Newer craft isn’t the same – it’s a pear branch growing above a root that had every intention of creating apples.

Interesting, this newer craft is made with an intentional rejection of style and tradition while retaining at least a political claim to being somehow craft.  It is not just the hazy IPAs but also the fruit gose and hazelnut imperial bourbon barrel aged stout with kviek.** It may not be your thing or my thing but folk seem to be enjoying themselves. Whatever it is, by rights if it had any self respect it would ditch the label of craft and pick another name to express itself. New craft is mainly characterized by the sense of fun it conveys. Invention, unrestrained exploration and fun. That is itself an intentional scion branching off of craft. And it needs a new word. Again, this is a neutral observation at this point.

Finally, we have the volunteer. The thing left behind and forgotten. Early volunteer potatoes in the spring can be far sweeter and tastier than anything else but the plants also are a playground for blights and viruses that can wipe out the entire following summer’s crop in a whole regions. So, what has been hidden or forgotten in craft? Plenty. One reason for this is natural given in the constant in flow and out flow of writers,*** who move on to other interests like trade PR or comms – or simply more complex journalistic topics.**** Plenty falls through the cracks as a result.

Some things that were hidden or forgotten that have become obvious over the last couple of years. Leading to a well-founded righteous indignation and meaningful accusations. Look, if we take the GBH list of Signifiers 2021 published this week at all seriously, we have to recognize that most are deeply and quite rightly unhappy about bigoted aspects of beer culture. Which draws me back to the chart above, fig. 2. We now know very well that craft can also shelter anti-social and even abusive tendencies. Who were these bigots in beer culture before the newer voices called them out? Were they actually volunteers, all hidden? Or were they sitting there safely in plain view in a zone overlapping poor widdle craft and micro?

Well, they have actually been around as Josh Noel reported for as many decades as the good beer movement has been around. And as he wrote in relation to the time when craft was reinvented out of micro around 2002 to deal with the proudly pervy aspect that had reared its head, it was a time not unlike now:

By the early 2000s, craft beer was splintering into identities. It was cool, it was hip, it was counter culture, it was “you’re not worthy”…

Are we there again? Facing a splintering? I actually think we are. Just one built on new values and new issues. Something that is both fun and ethical. As we see in fig 1, there is always overlap and transition. Will we see new confident approaches, even organizations arise? Why not? Why should the new just defeat the baggage of craft at a moral level when you can beat it on the beer store shelves? After all isn’t that what macro was supposed to do in the first place, address all the wrongs big brewers inflicted upon society?

It may now be that craft is to this new fun, inclusive, ethical sort of beer as micro was to craft. Craft and its dominant culture is now your older sibling’s or uncle’s beer, now tied to themes and traditions that don’t interest people outside of the bubble or fest and events that now turn people off. The new beer and the scene that is building around it doesn’t seem to need craft and, in that respect, is much more like the 1980s inventive weld-your-own-brewery-equipment micro scene that the business oriented ambitions of craft rejected. Today? It’s more about the positive personal experience, not just about being a follower. The new fun beer is easy and tasty. The scene is positive. That’s axiomatic. It just needs its own name. Then I can put it on a graph.

*Change? Remember #IndieBeer or craft v. crafty? No? No one does.
**is at least two adjectives before the substantive style noun is a hallmark of the new?
***…and newbie drinker.
****It reminds me of something I read about a turning point in the early church: what had been society of saints became a school for sinners. Who now relies on the authoritative teaching of craft in light of what we now know? To be honest, while Boak and Bailey may find value in the few remaining digital beer mags that “pay talented people to tackle big subjects at length and for that we thank them” that’s no guarantee pay creates consistently high quality content.  It also causes another form of forgetting: the topic that goes unexplored. So we have constrained formulaic approaches defined by editors who have creditors. We have the standard B.O.B. We have the newbie style guides. And… what? More ra-ra revisionism? What else?

Your Mid-December 2021 Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

Just two weeks and a bit to go. Remember how 2020 dragged on and on? 2021 seems like it was less than a month long. Got my third jab. Thanks for asking, the only side effect has been just a bit of a lingering cold. Are you Christmassy? Me, not like in 2015 when Boak and Bailey won the last Christmas Yuletide Hogmanay Kwanza Beery Photo Contest with the entry above. Why? Just nine days to go but we are having a big big wave* of da-‘Vid around here so joining last minute shopping crowds might not be wise. Good to substitute:

Look, kid – mustard is a perfectly good stocking stuffer. Stop crying… please… have a Brazil nut… no, that’s all there was left at the gas station… check at the bottom of that stocking… yup… handkerchiefs… what, again with the crying?

Ho ho… ho. First up, if you yourself in need a bit of a Christmas gift, The Lars himself is speaking on line next Tuesday at 3 pm Eastern (my time zone is the best!) as he is set to speak at the Chicago Brewseum’s latest event:

Yule, the multi day festival celebrated by pre-Christian Germanic peoples, begins every December 21st. The modern Christmas celebration is very different from the old celebration of Yule as Norwegian farmers knew it, yet at the heart of both sits the feast with the Christmas beer. On this Winter Solstice, Lars Marius Garshol joins us from Norway to take a long look back to the origins of the Christmas feast, and why beer was so central to it. At the center of the mystery we find not Santa Claus, but his forgotten cousin.

Also, just in time for the holiday joy, Dr. Wade at braciatrix reached back 400 years or so to the early 1600s offered some top advice on how to get through this challenging holiday season – butter beer!

Butter beer, or buttered beer, has a long and storied history. There are many recipes all containing at least the butter, sugar, beer and eggs, though the variety of spices seems to vary greatly with some including nutmeg, cloves and ginger, whilst others opt for aniseed and licorice.

That might be worth a try. My go to mulled ale is usually just Chimay Red in a pot warmed with a cinnamon stick. Speaking of fun, there was lots of follow up from last week’s post on the problem of style. I understand it is referred to in Finland as se in certain circles. And this week, we learned that there is another convoluted BJCP style update coming and I also read the words “spicy-guava Lithuanian-influenced Meadow Land IPA” written by Ruvani de Silva.  I am inclined to consider that hard to the one end of the newly christened “style<->fun” continuum. Ron also contributed to the question when he questioned the relevance of the construct when considering Edwardian ales:

Whitbread’s Edwardian beers are bound to get a style Nazi in tizzy. Because they certainly don’t fit with the modern hierarchy of Pale Ales.  With their IPA being significantly weaker than their Pale Ale. Whitbread IPA was a latecomer to the party, first brewed in October 1899. They’d been in the Pale Ale game since the 1860s and already brewed three different ones – PA, 2PA and FA, in descending order of strength. With IPA slotting in just above FA. So, what made this beer an IPA? The fact that the brewery called it that. I can’t work on any other basis. Were British breweries consistent in their use of the term IPA? Like hell they were. And particularly liable to use PA and IPA pretty much randomly. There’s no point searching for a pattern, because there isn’t one.

Noticing things as they were and are can get a bit sticky. The Tand himself captured this idea in a post yesterday about stout:

It isn’t that I’m against such stuff, and I agree and recognize that there are plenty out there that like these additions, but what I do dislike is that a bit too often, there isn’t just a straightforward stout that tastes of, well, stout.  There are exceptions of course, and maybe too many brewers feel that a “normal” stout doesn’t get them sales in a crowded market. Well that’s fine, but let’s at least have an unmucked about version as the default, with the additions as specials.

Where does that sit on the “style<->fun” continuum? Interesting and perhaps somewhat related observations from Boak and Bailey on the role craft beer can play as harbinger of change in gentrification of neighbourhoods, whether those living there like it or not:

Bedminster is made up of multiple neighbourhoods, from the theatre and coffee shop gentrification of Southville to the betting shops and greasy spoon caffs of East Street. The pubs there tend to be either (a) busy and down-to-earth, with stern warnings to shoplifters in the windows; or (b) shut. The borders, though, have fuzzy edges and are porous and, as you might expect, the gentrification is leaking. There are now vegan delicatessens and houseplant emporiums alongside branches of Gregg’s and Poundland. Alpha occupies a retail unit in a 1980s red-brick shopping arcade, across from a kebab house and next door to a charity shop. It feels out of place, for now – but probably won’t in five years’ time.

Change is odd. You can spot it in liminal spaces. Or does it sometimes create the liminal space, the bit that gets abandoned to become a space between before it gets repurposed? Craft beer is probably a follower as often as not in  these things even if it sounds like may receive undo attention compared to the fifth column of big houseplant in these matters. Fern pushers. No good comes of ferns.

Elsewhere… good news in another remote pub story from Britain!

A community on the Isle of Bute has raised more than £92,000 to put towards the purchase and refurbishment of their 200-year-old pub. The Anchor Tavern in Port Bannatyne was put up for sale after it was shut due to a downturn in business caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. It was the last pub in the village following the closures of other licenced premises.

Among the things I wrote these last few days that caused upset for some poorly enunciated reason or another** was the idea that best of lists sorta suck. While Robyn and Jordan make good case for properly run awards in this week’s podcast (while rejecting guava – are they really that fun?)… like the minor league golf tour of weekly sponsored events that beer awards have become (no doubt to give all those vitally important awarding people enough opportunity to prove their really important judging powers by awarding awards) I’ve long wondered whether there any other part of pop culture where the “best of” lists are filled with generally inaccessible items like we see with beer? Eric Asimov in the NYTs shared his best of 2021 wines and I was immediately struck by this first item in his list:

This bottle is a thirst quencher, an uncomplicated $19 liter of red from the Bío Bío region of Chile. So what’s memorable about it? For me, it epitomized how wine is evolving.

Modest price, an over-sized bottle and contextualized to make a greater point. Beer reviews rarely even mention price let alone distribution. We deserve better. Now consider NPR’s Sound Opinion‘s best albums of 2021. In their newsletter they asked “What We Mean By Best Albums”:

…let’s call our Sound Opinions best-of lists what they really are: idiosyncratic, no-two-exactly-alike rankings of personal favorites. We’re not looking for consensus, we’re aiming for let-it-all-hang out personality as reflected by the music each of us love the most. That’s why we devote an entire show to this imperfect exercise every year. It’s fun to reflect on the recordings that sustained or inspired us when we were running errands, washing dishes, hosting a party, recovering from a long work day or just getting lost between the headphones on the couch.

Self-deprecating, accurate and personal. An imperfect exercise. Look for these sorts of qualities in any recommendations before you fall in behind the fog offered otherwise.*** Look for price, actual personal comment and not just the PR notes – plus whether there was actually any sort of possibility anyone (aka you) beyond the sample receiving set was ever going to have a taste.

Very related, sometimes you read things that make you think “hmmm, interesting” and sometimes you read things that make you think “is anything in this actually true?” Oh dear. “Style”? Not in 1977. “Juicy”? More like 2007. Still, expect a NAGBW award for that one. For sure. Meets the club house requirements.

Conversely, speaking of context and reality, I heard a great show on one of CBC Radio’s schedule challenged broadcasts, Now or Never, Saturday aft. It was all about the relationship people have with alcohol. The episode has not popped up on the podcast page yet but keep an eye out for it. There’s a great interview with one Winnipeg craft brewer on the conflict of producing something that harms some while is fun for most. [Update: here it is!]

Want a bit more reality, I hope you are taking a moment to see the green dot in the sky these days. Not a lot of green dots in the sky. Green dot? Yup:

Your once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a green comet named C/2021 A1 — a.k.a. Leonard — is here. Astronomy experts, including the comet’s discoverer, offer tips on when and how to see the comet. Like other comets, Leonard is a ball of frozen gas, rocks and dust. When its orbit brings it close to the sun, the heat causes some of that material to vapourize, which makes it glow and sprout a tail of gas and dust.

Leonard? Hallelujah! Because when the world is a bit too grim and people are just too much face, why no climb way up to the top of the stairs where your cares might just drift right into space. Because you are gawking at a green dot. And you can take a drink up there with you. Something festive.

There. I tried to keep it short. Can you believe it? No? Well, the holidays are here. Be happy – and while you are being happy please also check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and 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. (Or is that dead now?) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s weekly newsletter, The Gulp, too. (That’s a bit now and then now.) And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. 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 (which he may revive some day…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*Sadly, the recent events in Kingston around anti-vaxx also caught up a neighbouring craft brewery, Signal. The owner died of Covid-19 Wednesday. It might have triggered further outbreaks.
**Huh?
***Co-opting a crisis is one of the more distasteful things you can do so it was sad to see one of the worst examples of appropriating aggrandizement in a headline I read this week: “Kentucky Breweries Lead Relief Efforts Following Deadly Storms.” What they meant to say, as the story does, is some brewery owners are pitching in as they would and should but pretty sure the normal authorities and charities are leading relief efforts.