Your Beery News Notes For The Middle Of May 2021

Here we are. Fed up with the pandemic. Fed up with hobbies, as illustrated above. I even had to cover the damn tomatoes again this week as we approach mid-May just to be sure. But sunshine, warmth and all things good are promised from here on out… you bet… so I am looking forward these days. Speaking of hobbies, I even have a second beer related project, one in addition to Project X. Let’s call it Project Y, shall we? Project X has a longer arc for sure but Project Y is cheery, quite positive. You know how these things are.

And, well, for Project Y as part of my due diligence I had to go hunting for a particular beer book, a particular history of a particular patch of the Earth.  And I was struck by something as I dug through my shelves – how many creative and interesting beer books came out from about 2008 to about 2017 or so. That was the Golden Era, wasn’t it. I was buying a book once a month back then. When things were not about craft selling to big beer or then about craft adulterating the beer with fruity adjuncts… or non-beers like seltzers and sodas. Could you imagine writing a style guide to seltzers? A few people are dripping tears upon the keyboard even as they read those words… because that is what they are doing.

Anyway, not me. I have Projects X and Y to keep me smug and warm as this lockdown continues. Speaking of which, is this true?

Seltzers were the inevitable end. Throughout history people have always desired beer that tastes less like beer. The death of gruit. The death of smoke beer. The death of highly roasted beers. And now, the death of beer.

There seems to be a lot of seltzer based anxiety in the beer writing world as much as the beer brewing world. What to write about when there is nothing to discuss? Add alcohol, flavouring and carbonation to water. Bingo! Same story over and over.

Interestingly and instead of books, some beer writers appear to be engaging in a relatively recent sort of paid web event. Pete Brown is running book club events on his back catalogue where you can join in the discussion for a fee. One of the most successful books of the Golden Era, his 2009 book Hops and Glory,  was the topic last night.  And Gary Gilmore is appearing at a conference this very afternoon, speaking on the topic of Margaret Simpson: Pioneer Publican-Brewer in Upper Canada. A paper will follow. And Pellicle is holding a second anniversary beer bash where, at least in the UK, you can buy a selected six pack and drink along. I might pop in, if only at the end of that one given it is still at the end of the work day my time.  I highly recommend jumping on these sorts of things as with any luck, like apparently interesting beer books themselves, they will also be a thing of the past once the vaccines are all in arms and the world moves on to its next norm.

What else is going on? Well, an apology to Martin who left a comment on last weeks post that I didn’t get around to noticing needed approval for three days. Such are the consequences and resulting administrative burden from the flotsam, jetsam and other forms of abuse that usually appear in the comments. But chit chat is always welcome so, again, sorry for the delay.

Liam at BeerFoodTravel has posted a second discussion about the history of hops in Ireland, this week covering the 1800s in a detailed calendar entry style like this:

1835 – Under the headline ‘Irish Hops’ a Belfast newspaper states that The Commission of Revenue Inquiry recommended that Irish grown hops should pay a similar rate of duty as those grown in England. (There are also mentions of duties on ‘Irish hops’ in 1843, 1845 and 1846 in various parliamentary records.) Once again this would indicate that hops were possibly still being grown somewhere on the island and in enough quantities to warrant discussion in parliament.

In other hop news, an email that gave me pause came into the spam filters this week from the otherwise reputable firm Yakima Chief Hops:

In 2017, YCH launched a line of innovative hop products known as Cryo Hops® using a cryogenic hop-processing technology that separates whole cones into two components—concentrated lupulin and bract. These concentrated lupulin pellets provide brewers with maximum aroma impact while reducing the negative effects experienced with brewing hoppy beers. The Cryo Hops® brand has since been recognized on beer labels worldwide.  YCH has combined this novel process with cutting-edge hop lab analysis techniques to create Cryo Pop™ Original Blend, formerly known as trial blend TRI 2304CR.

Really? See, I just want Fuggles. I want a bucket worth of Fuggles pitched into a hot bubbling malty wort out of which comes something called ale. I don’t want the “TM” or the “R” all that much either.  How pleasing it was, then to read the announcement of nearish-byish Aston Brewery’s new mascot, Fermie.  The logo was too small for my preferred slogan “Consume me very soon or time will ravage me!!!”

In the UK, trade interests have no doubt rallied effectively to block the right to know what goes into your body should this initiative to list calories in beer get come to pass:

Public Health Minister Jo Churchill has told colleagues she wishes to launch a 12-week consultation on the plans. They would force any business with 250 or more people to publish the calorie information about drinks – meaning the change in the law would hit most major pub chains. Churchill points to the fact that 7-8% of drinkers’ calorie intake come from booze, with lower socio-economic households and those already overweight benefiting the most from the policy. But last night critics slammed the plans as “madness” saying they would be a hammer blow to an already struggling part of the economy.

Not quite clear on the scope of her jurisdiction. And apparently neither was Minister Churchill as the whole thing was scrapped within minutes… days… well, a few weeks for sure.  A fair bit further along the continuum of health and booze, a grim bit of good story telling popped up on BBC Scotland this week, the story of a violent addict who got past it.

Related? Are we really to believe that we are all supposed to not notice the information quality provided by influencers but we are all supposed to sneer a bit a bloggers? I might have to revisit the hierarchies of content control but it is becoming clear that one of the hallmarks of expertise more and more is not actually publishing anything. All a bit topsy turvy.

Related? Nice bit of beer porn out of France this week from GBH. The text is characteristically precious GBH-style likely state funded tourism PR mixed with an NBC Olympics level coverage sweet heartwarming personal story but, well, there’s a lot of nice imagery in there.*

Note: “Historic England believe that only 10 to 15% of identifiable maltings survive.”

Is that it? Barrel bottom scraped? A bit of a quiet week. Keep hunting. And I’ll learn again about all the good stuff that I missed on Saturday. And, speaking of which, please don’t forget to check out the 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.

*I had to preserve this response from Tom C. on FB: “Made me laugh so hard, I almost scalded myself with the single-farm free-trade coffee that I was sipping in the waning darkness of the early dawn, after having been so heartily accosted by my dog, ravenous for his morning gruel, that I relented and fed him, putting off for the moment my Thursday-morning ritual of dallying over Alan’s beery news roundup. And, then my day began.“

A Few Beery News Notes For Early May As I Ail Rather That Ale

This may be a brief one as I find myself on Wednesday off work sick from something with nothing to do with a virus. Food allergies. Love. It. I blame the Hungarian salami provisionally. The deli had none of the German stuff I normally buy.  I know you will join me in shaking my fist at the sky from a doubled over position as you marvel at the enhanced level of excitement the ailments of the middle age offer to the modern beer blogging reader.

Still, I expect you have other things to do as those do in the picture of the week, posted on Twitter by Will Hawkes. My first reaction was “OH MY GOD!!!” as we have been in total lockdown for most of 2021 around these parts.  Even though Boak and Bailey are out on the crawls these days, I am no where near heading out into a crowd even though I have had my first AZ jab for half a month now. Still, it does look pleasant. Looks like the scene is near Kings Cross Station at Stoney Street. This would be more likely the scene I’d find myself in. Also in Britain this week:

i. a UK Member of Parliament told a beer joke this week.
ii. a beer rating service on CEFAX, the 1970s and ’80s TV based internet service of sorts, was remembered, too.

Update #1: according to Tom in the comments, apparently May is Mild Month so once again by June 99% of beer drinkers will say to themselves “what’s that mild stuff?”*

Update #2: Good to see our local Stone City Ales managed a local crisis in supply so well. See, they planned for a normalish patio springtime and then faced a renewed lockdown so they had waaaayyy too much beer. Their solution worked according to my email inbox:

Since we started our 25% off sale last week, we have been overwhelmed by your support, and we are so grateful. We just wanted to let you know the sale ends tonight at midnight, so if you would like to take advantage of this opportunity (for the first time, or again) just be sure to order online today, and simply choose a future delivery date. We don’t want to sit on fresh beers, and we had brewed lots thinking our patios may be open. Alas, we are take-out window and delivery only, so every sale really helps.  We are so proud of these beers we have out right now. Don’t miss out. To all of the health care workers and essential workers out there — WE SEE YOU, and deeply appreciate what you do for us all. 

The Beer Nut had a busy week with three posts and eleven beer reviews. Best of the lot appears to be the stemwear worthy beers of Land & Labour but no such joy for a sad faux choco-orange imperial stout from the obscurely named brewery, Wander Beyond:

On the flavour, oranges are conspicuous by their absence. It goes big on the chocolate, which doesn’t sit well with the assertive carbonation. The sweetness, bitterness and savoury side are all what you’d get from dark chocolate or cocoa powder, and there’s only the faintest hint of Jaffa Cake orangeiness on the finish. I’m down on gimmicks in beer generally; poorly rendered gimmicks like this are unforgivable.

When cooking cicadas, beer is optional.

Ron has done a series of posts on AK beer during WWII.

Someone mentioned recently that they thought AK died out between the wars. That’s not really true. AK was given a good old kick in the bollocks by WW I. Many found their demise in the war’s brutal gravity cuts. Others, though fatally weakened, soldiered on. Another war was the last thing they needed. Kicking off the war at a little over 1030º, there wasn’t far they could go once a new round of gravity cuts began to bite.

Posts on the grists, sugars and hops in AK brewing followed. Then he provided a brew it yourself recipe for an AK from 1945. Rather completist of him.

Gary is doing us all a great service with his continuing series of posts on pre-WW II Jewish-owned East European breweries. This week he wrote about the Teitel Brewery of Ostrow Mazowiecka, to the north east of Warsaw and the site of the murder of hundreds of Jews in 1939. Some good research supports the piece:

I located a print ad for the brewery in the National Archives of Israel. It appeared in the June 1, 1928 Trybuna Akademicka, a Jewish-themed, Polish-language newspaper in Warsaw. I wrote earlier that at least two other Polish breweries with Jewish ownership, the Pupko and Papiermeister breweries, placed ads in the paper in the same period.

By comparison with the above, please note elsewhere that it’s not a blog, its a “premier beverage research firm“! Such cringy puff.

Oktoberfest went and got itself cancelled again. Way. To. Go. To the north-west, another sort of doom is on the way as hard seltzers are boing brought to Belgium via AB-InBev-etc-etc. The Brussels Times tries to explain:

To begin with, the name ‘hard seltzer’ is aggressive enough. On the drinks’ British website, meanwhile, the company states, “It’s like alcoholic sparkling water, because that’s exactly what it is,” and “Don’t overthink it”. “We want to be a company that brings all people together, not just beer people,” said Elise Dickinson, marketing manager for hard seltzers at AB InBev. “Hard seltzers are an integral part of that. The demand for the drinks is also starting to increase in Europe. AB InBev is well-placed to help retailers enter this booming market.”

It really is an accusing finger at the craft beer trade that such a vacuous product is kicking it in the marketplace. Could a food product be less skilled? Still, gives a reason to pay freelancers in need. Canadians are less interested as we know how to pour vodka into club soda at 20% of the price.

Conversely, Asahi is investing in no-alcohol beer as opposed to no-beer alcohol:

“Non-alcohol is a good all-around product,” Atsushi Katsuki, Asahi’s chief executive since March, said in an interview. “It helps to resolve social issues, it connects us with new users and it leads to our profitability.” Low and non-alcohol beer sales have benefited as people spent more on drinks to be consumed at home during lockdowns, suiting Asahi’s broader strategy of focusing on higher-margin “premium” beverages.

As with seltzers, the big money is in offering less.

Odd that the previous Game of Thrones beer isn’t referenced. Is this even a story? GoT has become the My Little Pony of beer brandings. Looking forward to Game of Thrones sugary breakfast corn pops.

Retired Martin has been pumping out the blog posts and, in this piece on a trip to a place called Flatt Top in England, posts what has to be the single most honestly unattractive photo of a British pub that I have ever seen. Click on that thumbnail if you dare.

There. Back off to bed for me. While I’m there shivering under the covers, check out the 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 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.

*Ha Ha. Funny joke, right? No, really. Joking.

If That Was April Is This Thursday’s Beery News Notes?

Boy, did that fly by. April 2021. Lots of real world activity in my life even in the time of the enhanced Ontario lockdown. Vaccine jabbed, moved a kid from one city to another, annual income taxes submitted, another birthday… So things are looking up. Certainly could be worse. I could have concerns about the Truman Brewery Shopping Mall development as illustrated above. I know nothing about it. But the Evening Standard of London, England reports:

…heritage groups, residents and existing business owners have said the new plans are not in keeping with the area, the work could obscure views of the landmark’s Grade II listed chimney and there will be less need for office space post pandemic. Developers Old Truman Brewery said there has been “extensive consultation” with the council, residents, local workers and businesses and is a “high quality design with appropriate uses.”

Speak of the old and the brewing related, there was a fair bit of interesting char related to this article on an archaeological dig in Pembrokeshire, Wales:

Some 2000 years after Neolithic occupation began on the site, a stream became a focus of activity, where hot stones were used to generate steam or hot water, which resulted in the formation of a burnt mound. Water contained in the wooden trough was heated by stones placed in an adjoining hearth. While this process is well understood, the purpose of such features remains a matter of ongoing debate, with use for cooking, craft activities, brewing and saunas all suggested. Over 40 such mounds were found along the pipeline, with radiocarbon dating at one site indicating reuse over a remarkably long timespan of over 1500 years.

“Bronze-age Welsh brewery, I’d say” according to Martyn and “…the size of the troughs matches the batch sizes for farmers brewing for their own household…” says Lars. Barry: “I used to survey them… to calculate potential number of uses based on fracture rate of the stone used and the size of the mound…” Plenty of neato.

He’s the thing… as you may appreciate I have little interest in the alcopops labeled as “vodka soda” or even “craft beer” or even even “IPA” so you likely can guess how little I care about small-dose cannabis beverages. But there was this money quote in this article in Forbes this week which was fairly blunt:

“This is not a medical product. This is an alternative for White Claw,” Kovler says plainly. “No one under 35 likes beer anymore and calories and hangovers are unattractive. For us, it’s an obvious, forward-thinking idea… there is so much opportunity.”

Has anyone mentioned that cannabis comes with a hangover called crippling anxiety for many? No. Thought not. Anyway, it this were to kill off White Claw I suppose it would be something. But it won’t. Just another product in a pretty can on the shelf that really doesn’t have much to do with beer which is fine as I am well over 35 and don’t plan changing that in the near or medium future.

The Beer Nut celebrated his 16th bloggaversary this week, channeling Beckett. Less focused with a piece in Pellicle by ATJ on smoked beer or perhaps just the one sort of smoked beer called rauchbier or… well, when you reference both Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings along with Prometheus, well, it all gets a bit… well… but it is important to note that Game of Thrones did actually make a beer:

This strong golden ale is co-fermented with pinot grigio and viognier grape juices, then bottle conditioned with Champagne yeast.

So this wasn’t that… as it were.

Stan issued another edition of Hop Queries this week and, as usual, shared some excellent insights into corners of the brewing trade few others write about – including this time stuff related to a “fuss that resulted from a few things Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead Brewery said in New Zealand last month”:

“I’ve unfortunately had to brew with some of that Galaxy and destroyed batches of beer that tasted like pencil shavings because of it. At the point that something of highest quality is not being produced with transparency and things are being done for the sake of homogeneity, monoculture and, basically, just earning capital, things can get pretty far out of whack pretty quickly.”

Stan also shares the position of Hop Products Australia on the matter, contrasting the needs of the niche specialist brewers like Hill Farmstead and the general craft brewing trade stating a bit obliquely “consistency encourages a level of brand loyalty that forms the foundation for future growth.” I am not sure with whom I sympathize but Hill comes off as suggesting he should get first access to goods produced by others to literally cherry pick. Sounds like the folk who get to the grapes at the grocery store first, picking through the bunches leaving bruised fruit behind.

Lily Waite joined a trend I have noticed and referred to the craft beer trade as “we” describing an article on the craft beer trade… but she runs a brewery so it is all inside baseball. Good. And a great tl;dr ensued.

I found this an odd statement from the wine world:

No more Kiwi wine for me while New Zealand kowtows to China.

I presume Mr. Johnson is similarly concerned about the authoritarian tendencies of Viktor Mihály Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, home of Johnson’s beloved Tokaji. New Zealand has taken a path that is distinct from the battling one that Australia is taking in its trade war with China, a diplomatic row that includes malting barley:

Beijing hit Australian barley with a 73.6 per cent anti-dumping duty and a 6.9 per cent countervailing duty last May, in a move Canberra regards as politically motivated. Previously about half of Australia’s feed barley and 86 per cent of its malting barley, by value, was exported to China – but that trade has withered since Beijing’s taxes took effect.

Speaking of the politics of beverage alcohol, Chuck nailed it:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer trolled Donald Trump’s former adviser, Larry Kudlow, Sunday with a tweet mocking him for apparently failing to realize that all beer is “plant-based.” “Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer. Thanks Joe Biden,” Schumer posted, along with a photo of himself sipping one in front of a TV.

Nice. That’s it for now. Enjoy your May Day. Wave a red flag and, while you are doing so, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (who marked their 100th episode with gratitude for all) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. 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.

The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of The Big Jab

It’s a good thing that as a teenager I drank really really bad red wine a few times so I had something to measure the reaction I had to the AZ vaccine against. Worst hangover ever. But a welcome one. I was actually more nervous about the immediate reaction than any fear of a slight statistical bump for this or that anomaly. I feel like I expect many did after a night on the old Champale, as illustrated. Mock not. It is apparently still made, has review on BeerAdvocate and been around since 1939.

Trends. That’s why folk read the internets, right? This is my favorite trend story of the week, the state of Heineken sales in 2021:

Volumes jumped 5.4% in the Asia Pacific region, led by double-digit growth in Vietnam, Singapore, and South Korea. Beer sales volumes grew 9.9% in the Africa, Middle East, and Eastern Europe region, driven by Nigeria and South Africa.  Sales volumes fell 10% in Europe, where many countries remain under strict lockdown measures to combat a third wave of Covid-19 infections… Net profit for the period was €168 million ($201.7 million), up from €94 million in the virus-hit first quarter of 2020 but down from €299 million in the same period in 2019.

Lesson #1: things are looking up even if things are not looking up where you are. Lesson #2: folk elsewhere may be deflecting the realities.

You want more interesting information about the place of alcohol in the response to Covid-19… at least in Europe? Most nations are down (like me) but some are up… well, one:

So has COVID-19 got us drinking more, or less, than before? Public health researchers are trying to find out — to see if the events of 2020 have helped the world to sober up, or if we’re all heading for the mother of all hangovers. They’re finding that age and outlook on life drive our response to lockdown. Younger drinkers seem happier to find other things to do, while their stressed-out parents are more likely to be seeking solace in the bottom of a glass. And, surprise, surprise, it looks like we British have reacted to COVID-19 by drinking the most.

Beer as deflection?  Cultural standby? Beer as identify. Contract brewing as an attack on national pride has struck in Finland:

“The brand is owned by Finns, and the product development, warehousing, administration, marketing and sales all take place in Finland, and our office is located in Kontula. Production alone occurs at the factory in Tartu, where beer has been skillfully made since the 19th century,” Matti Pesonen from Kontula Brewery said. The Finnish Food Workers’ Union called on consumers to opt for beer produced in Finnish breweries instead for the purpose of preserving local jobs.

I like that. It’s good and mercantile. I saw this observation from Jeff this week and I have to agree… but how different is it from the the Finns above?

Craft beer used to lean heavily into corporate ethics. This was partly a rebuke to big breweries, laser-focused on the bottom line, and also slightly self-serving (look at how green we are!), but in the main it represented an authentic commitment to community. Lately, not so much. Many breweries still try to lead ethical lives, but they aren’t showy about it, and with some notable exceptions the trend overall has tailed off.

What’s left? Identity? Is that what they brew the beer for?  This question leads directly to a bit of a continuing discussion about England’s Cloudwater selling Scotland’s BrewDog brewed beers structured on worthy collaborations in the Tesco supermarket chain which led to an number of comments. When I find something interesting in GBH, I am careful to start at the end as they do tend to flail and one needs to see the pre-determined point the author was making. It was unfortunate to see their classic but utterly damp conclusion being applied again in this case:

What the long-term impact of one of the U.K.’s most influential breweries going into a national retailer will be remains up for debate.

Yawn-a-rama. Jordan and Robin took a harder line in their weekly podcast which, it being a podcast, I can’t draw a quotation from except to point out that Jordan used the word “crab bucketing” and both spoke of the point of brewing to be primarily to sell beer so that any sales of this sort are certainly good sales to be welcomed.  They also use the word “we” to describe the brewing trade… which I find odd. But GBH doesn’t which I find way weirder given its use of observations like “[t]hat experience is shocking to hear” and the constant self-citation. A shame given they also get money quotes like this one which is effectively the buried lede:

“I must say I do find it distasteful that it’s Tesco,” says Hayward. “Many pub goers will find a trip to their local now a trip to a Tesco Express store.”

But more to the point, I would also point out that k-os provided us with “Crabbuckit” in 2009 which perhaps really is the point that needs to be understood. He also has provided us with the song of summer 2021.*

Somewhat relatedly, Mudgie has posted an interesting set of thoughts about the problem with the UK’s beer drinking cultures and those making fun of the beer drinking cultures:

Much criticism of craft brewers revolves around them supposedly being just in it for the money and not practising what they preach. The same charge is often levelled at climate campaigners. But, in both cases, surely the sense of unshakeable moral certainty is equally worthy of satire. Within craft beer there are strong elements of wanting to change the world and stick it to the man, and self-congratulatory mantras such as “beer people are good people” which are frankly inviting ridicule. If it was just a case of a bunch of geeks who liked weird beers but kept themselves to themselves nobody would be bothered. You can’t really satirise bellringers or metal detectorists.

Hmm… and Prince Phillip was laid to rest this week. A beer man apparently. Who liked his beer from the bottle. But also from the glass in a pinch. His preference was documented in 1976:

I served Prince Phillip a beer years ago when I worked at the Westin (Hotel Nova Scotia). He pushed the glass away and draink from the bottle. Had a Keith’s.

He looked at me once on that same tour. Then he looked away.

We also lost someone central to my understanding of brewing history tis week, Ian Hornsey. Ian wrote A History of Beer and Brewing which I reviewed in 2006 as well as Alcohol and its Role in the Evolution of Human Society which I discussed in 2013. His passing has not been marked, with even his old brewery Nethergate not noting it in social media or on their website. If you see an obit, please forward it along.

That is it for this week. The jab hangover has passed and it’s been snowing on my veggies. Meantime, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (who marked their 100th episode with gratitude for all) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – 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.

*I have to declare a conflict as realizing k-os liked this tweet of mine was one of the happiest five seconds of my 2021.

Your Very Own Mid-April 2021 Beery News Notes For A Thursday

What a difference a week makes. My birthday is coming up. My 18th bloggaversary is coming up. My jab appointment is coming up. The radishes are well up.  Speaking of the 18th bloggaversary, I was thrilled to realize that quite early on I had witnessed and captured forever perhaps the first bit of beer blogging snark or at least shade back in 2003.  Nothing like being a part of history. Oddly, someone just offered me $300 for that original URL  “genx40.com” under which the beer blogging started. I can’t imagine what for.

Pubs are open in England for outdoor service and apparently everyone I follow is a vitamin D deficient dipsomaniac. Except Matt. He was anxious. And Boak and Bailey hovered.  Me, even after I get the jab it’s going to be a while before I am settled enough to race towards a crowd. Retired Martin, as always, provided a great photo essay of his experience, a portion of one of which is captured above. I love capturing of the moment, the hipster hat in shades next to the guy at the left taking a seat. Two years from now the set up will look like something from a sci-fi movie.

Speaking of things not affected by the pandemic, what is not to love about this chart provided by BA Bart indicating what is needed to be remembered if you hang your emotional well being on the peg of craft beer. It shows the percentage of actual craft (not baloney craft) sales as a percentage for the years 2019, 2020 and into 2021. The percentage is stable. You see it dips in the summer when normal people buy more normal beer. And rises when they slow down. Nice. Pundits can cease their concerns otherwise.

In the greatest city in the world, Montreal, people are falling in love with the local lager scene:

Richer says lagers “appeal to a lot of different people” — everyone from “Monsieur et madame Tout-le-monde,” who might normally be fans of Molson or Labatt, to beer geeks who are looking for something simple, but well-crafted, and with lots of variety. To be clear, this isn’t a trend created by the pandemic — just accelerated by it. Across Quebec, hopheads still rush out to the latest can releases at breweries like Messorem Bracitorium, Brasserie du Bas-Canada, and Sir John, which specialize in full-on, double-dry-hopped hazy IPAs. But even those breweries are making lagers.

Perry. One of my heroes in the drinks writing world is Jancis Robinson and this week she offered her website a space to let us know about a rare perry:

Flakey Bark is a marvel of a drink. Broad, bold, structural, it carries on its breath a muscular depth of pear skin, peach pit, earthy bacon rind and wet slate. Its tannins in youth are formidable – so much so that eating the fruit raw is said to skin the roof of your mouth. It is built for food-pairing, offers extraordinary versatility in that respect, and with age it unfurls into layers of riper, fleshier fruit. A treasure – a delicious one. And one bad storm could wipe it entirely from existence, because there are only six mature Flakey Bark trees left in the world.

Nutso. Absolutely nuts. Speaking of which: brewery gets grocery store deal,  brewery told off apparently by morons.

I set out a slightly different understanding of the agreement which binds Ontario’s In and Out Store, aka The Beer Store, compared to some skuttlebutt observations being made. Our own expert beer business reporter Josh Rubin knows more about the situation than anyone else and has set out the deets in The Toronto Star. Very unlikely (aka impossible) that the team leading the big brewers who own TBS into the 2015 Master Framework Agreement that gave us grocery store beer did not see the writing on the wall for the system’s long term prospects. The ten year deal gave them the time to transition.

Or maybe an agreement to terminate. The talks leading to 2015 weren’t exactly public but getting ten years to transition otherwise stranded capital assets into operational loss offsets is a pretty civilized way to wind up EP Taylor’s brilliant idea as it became obsolete… it ends up being free to the 3 owner/breweries’ own pockets and fairly organized as it gives them time to sell the properties applying the funds meaningfully. Not unlike how the Federal gov’t has done it since Chretien. Securing the pension plan will be the big question.

That last point is key. The question of the land and buildings in the inventory of assets is not an issue. Otherwise useless assets offset operational losses. That’s part of the solution. That’s having a spot to put down the hot pan from the oven. The pension, however, is potentially problematic unless it is vested and capitalized. If so, all in all it was a brilliant plan.

Looks like Flying Dog,* the sort of brewery folk thought much about before the second Obama administration, has lifted the IP from BeerKulture, the diversity collabs they were working with:

Hi, @FlyingDog! Did you folks really have a meeting with @beerkulture to work on a collab, walk away from it, and then release Kulture King? That’s disgraceful, dilutes @beerkulture’s brand, and undermines the work they do to make beer better.

Two odd last things. Folks for over a decade have suggested that there is an issue with the reality of the Great White Male narrative in craft beer. Good reason. It’s a false construct. This is not news. Why did you think it was? Also, the idea that WBB invented criticism of craft beer?  Maybe if you were nine years old in 2014. Please. A very fine voice but pretty much common until folk stopped caring much about craft beer in 2015. Grow up. Buy my book. Please.

I really still can’t tell you anything about Project X but it is exciting and charming and… interesting. More laters. Meantime, check out the weekly updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (who marked their 100th episode with gratitude for all) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – 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 proud sponsor of many of A Good Beer Blog’s Christmas Photo Contests of 2005 to 2016… or so…

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For Spring… Actual Spring With Radishes Sprouted And Robins Singing And…

I have been waiting to try out this new introductory sentence that I came up with. Tell me what you think: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Yes, that’ll do nicely. Here we are! The Red Sox are playing real games. And it is warm enough to sit outside for more than five minutes… to get chores done in the yard… to get a sense that soon enough I will be jumping in Lake Ontario to cool off. And… Ontario have gone into an absolute lockdown today. No shops open other than groceries and pharmacies. Out city is relatively safe – even with a small spike yesterday – but we have ICU patients from elsewhere coming to our hospitals because elsewhere is not as relatively safe. I placed another home delivery of excellent beer to mark the moment.

To top it off, it has been a quiet week in this corner of the internet, in the world of beer. What have I noticed? The Suez! I am fond of the Suez canal… but not as fond of it as my slightly mad great-grannie Campbell was between the wars. Her favorite pub circa 1936 was named The Suez Canal… as illustrated to the right from a post circa 2012. Anyway, nice to see the ship has shifted and Suez has been cleared and that goods are moving again:

The shipments included common goods such as the consumer products made in China along with the equivalents of more than 11,000 20-foot containers, hauling wastepaper from the U.S. to India, more than 1,600 boxes holding automotive parts heading from Germany to China and 641 containers packed with beer from the Netherlands—the brands unnamed—on their way to China.

Gee – do you think the name of those beers might rhyme with Bline-hicken? Frankly, I was a bit surprised that so little bulk beer was involved.

From southern England, Stonch has shared some timely and sensible advice as a pub landlord for customers returning to their favorite establishments as they are able to open a bit just as we shut again – and which does open up the question of how to be an ethical pub goer in these times:

Remember, you can’t go for a pint if you’re unwilling to check in for NHS track and trace: pubs are legally obliged to ensure you either use the NHS app, or give your details manually. If you won’t, they must refuse you admission and service. Businesses will be fined – in an amount starting at £1000 and rising to £10,000 for multiple breaches – if they let you in. If you’re going to make a fuss about it this – due to some libertarian, freeman-on-the-land bullshit that’s wrecking your head – you’ve barred yourself from every pub in the UK.

Plain and true. Also from England, the heritage blog A London Inheritance has posted about a pub called Jack Straw’s Castle in Hampstead. As per usual, the post has a great selection of photos past and present as well as a good amount of background detail on the locality being discussed in and about London:

Jack Straw, after who the pub was named, is a rather enigmatic figure. General consensus appears to be that he was one of the leaders of the Peasants Revolt in 1381, however dependent on which book or Internet source is used, he could either have led the rebels from Essex, or been part of the Kent rebellion. Jack Straw may have been another name for Wat Tyler and some sources even question his existence. Any connection with Hampstead Heath and the site of Jack Straw’s Castle seem equally tenuous – he may have assembled his rebels here, made a speech to the rebels before they marched on London, or escaped here afterwards.

Interesting news in the US with some final high level figures about what the pandemic did to the craft sector in 2020 as per J. Noel:

NEWS: @BrewersAssoc says the craft beer industry saw a 9% decline (driven greatly by the pandemic), which dropped craft’s share of the overall beer market to 12.3%. However the number of craft breweries grew yet again in 2020, reaching an all-time high of 8,764.

EcoBart kindly confirmed these figures relate to volume and not value, suggesting it relates to on premises v. off drinking.  I would have thought that direct sales from the brewery were more profitable but that would maybe only apply to the continuing wave of the new and good and tiny and local.

Hereabout and somewhat similarly, apparently it is possible to run a massive and reasonably monopolistic beer retail chain and still lose masses of money. Josh explains:

The retailer, majority owned by Molson Coors and Labatt, had an operating loss of $50.7 million in 2020, as competition from grocery stores and restaurant bottle shops grew, and keg sales were crushed by COVID-19 restrictions… The Beer Store also saw its operating revenue fall to $399.4 million, down from $402.2 million in 2019, and $418.9 million the previous year.

I will miss the stupid name for the chain after it’s gone. Like I miss The TV Store and The Shoes Store. It’s nickname is “The IN and OUT Store” because every branch has a sign that says “IN” and one that says “OUT.” Ah, Ontario. More here on whatever TBS is here from 2015 when its end times were foretold. Relive the thrills of the Beer Ombudsman announcement.

In Japan, one effect of the pandemic has been a rise in no/low beer sales – and not to craft newbies but to established macro beer fans as Reuters reports:

The pandemic is propelling an unexpected boom in alcohol-free beer that has Asahi Group Holdings forecasting a 20% jump in revenue for non and low alcoholic beer this year after flat sales in 2020. Asahi is also debuting a new “Beery” label and has plans to expand its line-up. Main rival Kirin Holdings, which had a head start in the category, expects its sales volumes in the segment to jump 23% this year after a 10% rise in 2020 and recently revamped one of its main non-alcoholic beers.

Finally, like all of you I received the email blurb about November’s Ales Through The Ages event at Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg and, unlike most of what I write about, I had to actually cross check what I saw with others to ensure my eyes did not deceive me. Except for an optional event on Monday morning after the main conference is over, there are only male presenters. And the topics are not particularly diverse.  It’s all a bit weird to see such a thing. I can’t imagine I could travel even over half a year off given other obligations but… it’s all a bit weird.

One last thing. I came across a master list of current beer blogs. It was so 2006 when I found it. Called Top 110 Beer Blogs, it lists 157 blogs. Sweet.

I still can’t tell you anything about Project X but it is exciting and charming and… interesting. More laters. Meantime, check out the 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – 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.

The April Fools Day Edition Of Your Beery News Notes

Here we are – April. The month of the showers that bring all the flowers. A snow storm is passing through this morning here at the east end of Lake Ontario. Such is life. Work is heavy, the third wave is heavy… and these packs of cookies and chips are making me heavy… heavier. Fine. We’re locking it all back down. I need my jab. Really. Soon please. But remember – it could be worse…

Speaking of the weather… Mexico is considering taking steps about the water that is moving north from arid lands through the porous US border in the form of beer:

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is railing against the production of beer and milk in areas where there isn’t enough water. López Obrador cancelled plans for a huge brewery on Mexico’s northern border last year, and on Sunday he questioned the whole idea of producing beer for export. “How can we have beer breweries in the north? How can we produce beer for export? What are we exporting? Water. We don’t have water in the north,” López Obrador said.

This is not a small matter, as Forbes has reported:

Beer used to come from a variety of countries. In 2020, Mexico accounted for a record 72.27% of all U.S. beer imports during a record year for all beer imports, which totaled $5.75 billion. It marked the ninth consecutive year for record U.S. beer imports and the 12th consecutive year that Mexico increased market share. Most of that beer comes a massive brewing operation outside Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas, which is responsible for 56% of all U.S. beer imports.

The owner of that brewery? Anheuser-Busch InBev. Economic imperialism. Sweet. Somewhat similarly, The Full Pint has somewhat bravely posted, in 2011-esque style, the list of the top 50 US craft breweries but much of the top ten is made up of odd assemblages of investment vehicles of one sort or another. Gambrinus? CANarchy? Artisanal Brewing Ventures? It’s bad enough that Yuengling and Boston Beer are in there. Who are these people… err… these mega corps? So confusing.

Somewhat economic and culturally imperially speaking, a Chinese firm has found a way to brew in Pakistan to serve the Chinese economic actors in their new work zone:

“The company formally started its beer production last week, which product will be supplied to Chinese nationals working at various projects launched in different areas of Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and mines and mineral projects in Balochistan,” Mohammad Zaman Khan, director general, Excise and Taxation South, told Dawn. He confirmed a licence had been issued to the Chinese company in 2018 as it had submitted an application to the authorities concerned in 2017, pleading that the beer and liquor brand which the company produces in China is not available in Pakistan.

Almost as confusingly dramatic… Q: could a hotdog be a sausage IPA? A: apparently anything is possible these days if the logic leading to the “farmhouse IPA” is to be trusted:

The one thing we know for certain, without even a hint of ambiguity, is that the word “saison” does not attract drinkers. A few breweries and a few beers have achieved success, but it’s despite, not because of the word. Justin regularly modifies his “saison” with equally dangerous adjectives like “Brett” or “table.”—other words that scare off drinkers. It’s too bad because I am convinced beers like Ashfall and Bumper Crop and Slow Motion have broad appeal. The word IPA no longer has much connection to style. And if “saison” reads like a warning to drinkers, IPA is a reassurance, a way of saying, “You’ll like this beer.”

Reflecting a more certain time, Ron told the story of a party for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902:

…the hero of the day was enthusiastically drunk. As twilght came on the grounds were beautifully illuminated with fairy lights and lanterns, and at midnight the proceedings terminated by a display of fireworks…

Ron was less enthused, saying Ed7 was “remembered for being a debauched glutton, who ate, drank and smoked himself to an early grave.” I hope he is more charitable in his plans for the next coronation party. What plans do I have? Jings. No idea. Better call Ron and ask. Has anyone laid away a few dozen hogsheads of strong ale?

The price of beer is being lowered in India to cope with Covid.

One of my favourite memories of living in Poland 30 years ago was the hardly operational trains – and especially the food and bar cars:

…the company’s name has in Polish become all but synonymous with its dining cars, serving up a taste of Poland – everything from hearty pierogi to piping hot żurek fermented-rye soup – in sleek and comfortable surroundings. Wars dining cars have fostered countless anecdotes, inspired songs, and generated a large following among contemporary train buffs. And recently, those restaurant cars have been even more of a welcome sight, as they have become the only sit-down restaurants in Poland allowed to remain open amid coronavirus restrictions.

Go Covid! Covid loves trains!! In further news of the pandemic present, Ed has provided a summary of how his British brewing workplace has coped with the situation – and explains its very interesting business model:

… brewing through the plague year. As an essential worker I’ve been slaving away whilst many have been at home all day playing with themselves and saying how it’s affecting their mental health. Maybe the Victorian moralists were right after all? I work at a site which contains four independently owned breweries (brewhouses and fermentation vessels), of which the main brewery does the processing (stabilisation and filtration) and packaging (cask, keg and bottle) for all four, and provides staffing for three.

Reversedly equipment-wise, the UK’s Fullers PubCo is now two years into life without its own brewery but things there are looking up:

Simon Emeny, Fuller’s chief executive, said the company had entered the pandemic in strong shape financially, partly because of the January 2019 sale of its brewery, which makes London Pride ale, to Japan’s Asahi after 174 years in the business. However, the pandemic cash burn meant the company needed money to train staff and take advantage of an expected sales surge once pubs reopen, he said.

Finally, Evan has discussed the use, misuse and uselessness of “craft” in the language of drinks as spoken around the world:

In other languages, saying “craft beer” can be close to impossible, at this point being “too new” a phrase to have a local equivalent. Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, a brewer and consultant at Brewsters Craft in South Africa, says that she wouldn’t even know how to express the idea of a craft beverage in a language like Xhosa or Zulu. “The concept is not new — Africans have been hand-crafting various items for years,” she says. “The traditional beers here have different names, but they all mean beer. Like one is called ‘utywala besintu,’ because ‘utywala’ is beer and ‘besintu’ means for traditional people or natives. But craft beer? Craft beer is still a new term. I don’t think we have a word for it.”

There. Easter weekend. Four days off heres abouts. Nice. Well, except for the whole Christ died on the cross for your sins thing. Best be good. One thing that is good and charming and interesting is Project X. I can’t tell you anything about Project X but it is exciting and charming and… interesting. More when I can tell you. Meantime, check out the 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For The End and Beginning

Here we are. The end of March and the beginning of spring. Baseball is on the TV. Shorts and sweater weather. Excellent. I even planted lettuce seed and radish seed last weekend under row cover. Just a bit. I’m no idiot. Well, not that sort of idiot. Like many this year, it’s been a quiet week for good beer writing. Hopefully everyone else has been planting their first radishes, too. It’s also the end and beginning of the year of the plague and the second… year of the plague. Things are weird. Free beer for the vaccinated? Jab-based pub passports… why not? Me, I’m not doing too much soul searching or looking back but this by Martin serves as a milestone of sorts:

A year ago I walked into tourist Cambridge on the hottest day of the year so far. The tourists (typically two-thirds Japanese and Chinese) were completely absent. The Universities looked forlorn. Pubs were advertising their loo rolls, and the staff at Fopp treated me like their first visitor of the week. Perhaps I was.

Enough of that. In good news of 2021, The Guardian reported on an outcome which gives joy to any staff lawyer working for a municipality:

…after a dogged six-year campaign by locals, the Carlton Tavern will reopen next month – lockdown permitting – after the developers were ordered to rebuild the pub “brick by brick”, a ruling that pub campaigners say has set an extraordinary precedent. “People said it was impossible,” said Polly Robertson, a leading member of the Rebuild the Carlton Tavern campaign… “I just thought, no – I’m not going to let it lie.” 

Speaking of the pubs of England, Mudgy wrote about Cask v. Covid and picks a winner:

Nowadays, the pubs that don’t offer cask tend to fall into the categories of places that are effectively restaurants, down-at-heel boozers that only appeal to a local clientele, high-end trendy bars and some beer-focused places that think not selling cask puts across a modern image. Any pub seeking a wide appeal rather than just a captive market of locals will offer cask in some form. There is a huge amount of loyalty to the category that isn’t going to disappear any day soon. The day Wetherspoon’s start dropping cask from some of their pubs in England and Wales is the day you really need to start worrying about its future. It’s not just changing a brand on the bar, it’s making a statement about what kind of pub you aim to be.

To the northwest, a tale of high tech beer packaging tech in Iceland:

The equipment in the line comes from numerous parts of the world, including the U.S.-made end-of-line Econocorp E-2000 cartoning machine.  “We were led to Econocorp during conversations we had with other machine suppliers who are familiar with the kind of machinery that’s suitable for craft brewers,” says Ólafsson. “It’s just the right size machine for our production, and it’s very simple in design and, subsequently, in operation.”*

Me? I love everything from Econocorp. Elsewhere, Stan was good enough to send out his Hop Queries newsletter on Wednesday. Topics this month include “Up the downstream,” “Query of the month,” “UK hop exchange,” “Look & listen,” “At the Hop,” and “Hop profile: Nelson Sauvin” which confirm that, yes, this is a newsletter and, yes, even Stan can’t resist the hop pun. It’s also edition 4.11 which tells me he’s throwing a fifth anniversary party for the next one!  I won’t spoil the Danny and the Juniors reference but Stan does provide this:

In a Wall Street Journal review of “The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats” a writer gushes: “Beer lovers, too, might want to raise a mug to (David) Fairchild. A boozy night in a village inn buying rounds for Bohemian farmers resulted in Fairchild procuring the finest German hops, which he smuggled out of the country, allowing American brewers to vastly improve their sour, inferior beers.” That’s simply not true. Full stop. No farmers in the United States at the beginning of the 20th  century successfully managed to grow continental landrace hops, although English Fuggles did find a home in Oregon.

That is interesting. Formerly, I had a client in PEI who owned a former tavern which was formerly owned by a local brewer who, in his formative years, travelled to England and back, returning with hop rhizomes in pockets that he nurtured and kept damp that whole sailing voyage. The yard of the house was still rotten with them. Google maps shows it still there. Wonder what they are.

Jeff on government. As they saying goes, no one likes to see sausages made.

Also semi-officially, I like the idea of this notification from a bar as referenced on Reddit and Twitter and a bunch of other places. It would be useful for future reference in discussions with one’s children. I, for example, know some one which is or could be a grandmother who was also barred for life from a certain establishment two Saturdays in a row. Having better documentation and records retention principles may have helped.

Gary wrote a very interesting piece on an issue of Brewing Trade Review from 1962 including info on the iconic Toronto brewery set up by my hero E.P.Taylor in the early 1960s and still pumping out macro gak today!

The plant still exists, as Molson-Coors Beverage Co.’s main Canadian brewery. The tower-like, oblong-shape central building of dark brick with contrasting light frame atop, shown in the article, is still a leitmotif at the plant, on Carlingview Rd. in Etobicoke, Toronto, despite much expansion…

Ryuuhyou Draft. Japanese sea ice beer. Low in malt. Blue in colour. Speaking of weird Japanese beers…

“We will pitch the product as the standard beer for the new era.”

Ban-zoink! Elsewhere and much to the opposite, my personal hat supplier Katie M has written about her new business, Corto, with a deft dramatic touch:

“Did you know you can get down under the flooring?” our always-happy landlady beamed, on a final visit to sort the fire alarms. No. We did not know that. We’d agreed not to mention the storage issues for our sanity’s sake, clueless about how we were going to overcome the challenge of managing inventory in such a small space. Tom had only just stopped having nightmares about having to fill the entire ground floor with bathrooms. “The hatch is under the stairs, in the cupboard.”

DON’T GO IN THE BASEMENT!!! You’ll never believe what happens next.

By contrast, I found this portrait of startup Belgian brewers Antidoot a bit bizarre and even a bit disturbing, especially this bit:

A few months after the unpleasant Spring Release, Tom Jacobs read an article in Belgian newspaper De Standaard about a French winery in Bordeaux called Château Pétrus. Pétrus wines were highly coveted, partly for their quality (they are produced on an exceptional slope with blue clay soil) and partly for their scarcity (the vineyard covers only 11 hectares). A limited amount of Pétrus wine is released each year (the whole of Australia, for example, receives only 36 bottles). As a result, bottles of Pétrus were being purchased by speculators who resold them on the black market at huge markups, used as investments which which would grow in value with each passing year the wines aged. 

Weird. I think they invented pre-speculation. Just to be clear, Château Pétrus is one of the great wines of the world, producing vintages since the 1700s. It does not attract high prices on the secondary market. It attracts high prices on the primary market as this LCBO screen shot shows. Antidoot, on the other hand, is one startup brewery among thousands. One of the least reflective articles on a brewery I’ve ever read. The passage where the rocket scientists also invent compost is amazing. Spinal Tap meets beer. Sucker juice.

One final note: beer bottles prove that recycling is bullshit. Never knew that.

There. Spring. Hmm… why doesn’t my heart go dancing? And that waltz isn’t particularly… you know… entrancing? No desire… no ambition leads me… WTF!?! Oh yes – the second spring of a pandemic but, screw it, still spring. Get a beer, turn that soil and plant some seed! While performing your ag-art, check out the 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too.

*ZZZZzzzz….

The Day After St. Paddy’s Day Beery News Notes

There, at least that’s over. That’s him there to the right, apparently ordering two. You know, this may have been the St. Patrick’s Day that I’ve always wanted. Quiet. By force of law. Even last year, during the first week of something being quite wrong, there were college idiots half smashed on a Tuesday loitering around the downtown square, wearing green things made of plastic. Amateurs. Appropriating plastic coated amateurs. In 2017, I asked why craft beer hated the day. I don’t think that is the same now but it’s mainly because craft beer has ceased to exist in the same sense four years on. Not much taking a unified stand against anything these days. Not much of a soap box to stand on anymore so much as being an object of the inquiries.

Breaking: craft beer loves generic globalist multi-internationalism.

In days of yore brewing news, Martyn has undertaken the work I’ve been begging him to undertake for at least a decade: exploring the 1898-1899 Canadian Inspectorate of Foods and Drugs study on stouts and porters:

…the average strength of the Canadian porters was 5.73 per cent abv, nearly 20 per cent less than the average stout strength. The two beers had almost identical average apparent attenuation, at 81.4 per cent for the porters, and 81.5 per cent for the stouts. Other analyses show big differences, however. The average percentage of maltose in the finished beer was 0.594 per cent for the porters, and 0.747 per cent for the stouts. The average percentage of solids in the finished beers was 4.99 per cent for porters and 5.6 per cent for the stouts…

Whammo! Kablammo!! Now you can all shut your pie holes about it and face facts.  “What about McDonagh & Shea porter out of  Winnipeg, Manitoba brewed to 8.8 per cent abv?” you say? Shut up. Get out.

Speaking of relatively recent history, sad news of a pub closing trade in Burton England was tweet-paired with this fabulous image of a 1962 price list for brewers and pub chain operators, Mitchells and Butlers. A great opportunity to identify grannie’s top drinks as well as the relative price of things. Fact: Dubonnet is not vermouth.

And in even more recent recent history, this picture of Eugene Levy and John Candy as the Shmenge Brothers of SCTV fame in the 1984 Kitchener Octoberfest parade posted this week by the University of Waterloo Library is as cheery as it gets. Careful fans will recall how pivotal the same parade is in the plot of the 1983 film Strange Brew, staring fellow SCTV alumni Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis. That’s an actual production vehicle, by the way – a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller.

Thing you couldn’t do in 2019. Going back into past restaurant reviews and finding evidence of unidentified covid-19 symptoms being the unwitting basis for complaint.

Not quiet sure what to make of this supply chain news out of Australia, whether it means Asahi are switching their malt purchases to be more local or just that it is now going to be tracked as local:

The new supply chain means that local barley will be used to brew Australian beers like Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught for the first time in decades. Asahi, which developed the new direct sourcing program after it purchased Carlton & United last year, will now buy more than 70,000 tonnes of malted barley direct from farmers in Victoria and southern NSW to be used at its Yatala and Abbotsford breweries. Growers in northern NSW are expected to join the scheme before this year’s harvest while the first beers brewed under the program will be rolled out in April.

This one program appears to include 7.6% of Australian malt production so what ever it is it is significant.

Not unrelatedly, though he will fully disagree and it pains me when he does, Stan captured one of the best examples of craft beer nonsense that I’ve ever seen:

Breweries have terroir as well. But instead of revolving around a patch of land, ours are centered on a group of people. We operate our business on a human scale and with a human face. 

Remember when people used to say stuff like that? Many copyright law suits later and the firings of all the women in the craft beer bar and… and… and… Speaking of which in a sort of contrapuntal way, diversity in brewing and the craft beer trade continues to be a big discussion circling about the topics of both inclusion and actual identify as this article in Foodism Toronto discusses:

Sandhu has a beer on his menu dedicated to his grandfather, Chanan, which includes Indian coriander as one of its ingredients. “I actually do see a high percentage of Indian customers ordering the beer that’s named after my grandfather,” Sandhu says. “I think these populations feel safe and they feel comfortable at our brewery. We don’t just see them coming in just once, but they become regulars.”

Unlike the samey “I miss the pub” teary tales or the quite uncomfortable “beer has been the only thing that gives my life meaning” confessionals, Mr. G. Oliver has looked to the future and sees hope as well as these three interesting trends:

What use is a “share bottle” you can’t share? It’ll be interesting to see if the stemming of the pandemic brings the 750 back at all. I think people are doubling down on case sales; we haven’t wanted to make any more trips to retail than necessary. People are also buying fewer expensive specialty beers.  I also think that the pandemic is helping fuel the rise of the non-alcoholic category. A lot of people are now home for lunch every day. What are you going to drink with your sandwich for lunch? NA beers can provide a perfect answer, and there’s nobody watching you “drink a beer” at lunch in your kitchen. NA is getting normalized faster than it would have otherwise.

By the way… does anyone know how you are supposed to find a story on GBH? What a hot mess of a front page.

Stonch, well known pub lad and operator of Britain’s longest-running beer blog, praised CAMRA on its 50th anniversary this week for, yes, achieving its goals:

Yes, there’s been a growth in excellent keg, and that has perhaps pushed cask ale out of the limelight in many beer-focused bars. Yes, the immediate after-effects of the pandemic will produce challenging conditions for cask-centric brewers. CAMRA has plenty to be keeping busy with, and without doubt can remain relevant and vital if it so chooses. Speaking as a publican, I can say with confidence that there is no way that a significant part of today’s pub-going public would be happy to visit a pub that didn’t offer reasonably well-kept cask conditioned ale. That commercial reality will preserve this particular part of Britain’s heritage for years to come.

And from the other side of the bar as well as knees under the organizational table, the Tand praised CAMRA on its 50th anniversary this week for, yes, achieving its goals:

I’m a relative newcomer, my tenure in the Campaign being a mere 40 years, but happily my anniversary as a member coincides, more or less, with the fiftieth year of our venerable organisation.  Like many, I’m looking forward to Laura Hadland’s book outlining CAMRA’s rich history and to reading the tales of those who have made this epic campaigning journey, both with and before me. Of course, while the organisation is to be congratulated, it is also an excuse for members to raise a glass to themselves, whether they are grey in beard and sandal or – like some of us – still youthful and inspired. Young or old, we are all the Campaign for Real Ale, and we can justifiably bask in our own reflected glory, even if just for a day.

For an alternative view, consider the Viz magazine perspective.

Best actual brewing thing I have seen this week? This:

OH MY GOSH – sooo excited!! Today’s the day we’re brewing our 1st 2021 Vintage Ale @FullersBrewery and I got the honour of mashing it in! Thanks @FullersGuy!

Me, I’d make my own now… but they employed a cunning strategy and reversed the image so we will never know how the beer was made. One thing is for sure. There aren’t any ambering hops in there.

There. Saturday is spring. Yes, the second spring of a pandemic but still spring. So while you turn the soil and plant the seed, check out the 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too.

These Are The Thursday Beery News Notes For The Week Of Melting

The week of melting is a great week. It occurs usually two weeks before the week of everything smells like dog poop. The week in between is called the week of maybe it won’t happen this year. One lad was thinking how nice it would be if something didn’t happen, as illustrated to the right. Max shared the image and voted it top entry for the Hogmanay Xmas Yuletide Kwanza Photo Contest 2021. It is a study of humankind’s folly… or true role of beer… or something… whatever it is we are advised by someone presented that balance was in fact recovered.

Much doings to report upon this week. First, Stan wrote about something I have never had the slightest interest in – beer recommend / review / rate apps. If you are spending any time at all on them, you need a goldfish in your life.  Something real. But Stan persists, as they say. And he delved a bit into the phenomenon to point out one app which actually had detail:

Next Glass 1.0, circa 2015, was something different. It was one of several drink recommendation apps that came and went about that time. Some got tagged as the “Pandora for beer.” For First Glass, that made sense because it took a scientific approach similar to Pandora when collecting data… [F]eature-based systems begin by measuring specific attributes of songs (or beers). Pandora created the Music Genome Project and employs musicians to catalog key elements of every song in its database. Next Glass mapped the chemical makeup of individual beers, forgoing any effort to quantify a beer based on its descriptive characteristics. 

All of which means there are graphs. Graphical displays of information. Why did it fail? Beer failed it: “…the company was never going to be able to collect mass spec information on the thousands of new beers released every week…” A.K.A. T.M.I.

Victim of Maths has tweeted an interest set of… graphs! Graphs on the effect of the pandemic on alcohol consumption patters in different nations. The form of graph itself is very helpful. But look how consumption goes up in the US while dropping in terms of the tavern trade. Who benefitted from that? White Claw? Local actual craft brewers delivering to home? Interesting stuff.

Much talk on alewives and witches again which I think is up there with the role of Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi, in medieval Norse brewing. There seems to be a drive to switch one story of exclusivity with another an then make it universal rather than particular.  Dr. Christina Wade made this very good point in relation to this topics and one which is useful in any other historical studies which I present as a merged mega-tweet:

That is a really important avenue of research. And, in which case, we must get hyper-specific. Brewing in the Middle Ages could be a high-status, non-liminal, position for women. If we take the example of late medieval and early modern England, which is what these sorts of articles seem to be meaning, we can see that women who brewed were vilified. And men absolutely did accuse and lie about things to ruin women’s brewing businesses. We have primary sources for that in England. But as to whether this took the form of witch accusations the data is lacking. This may be because the populations who brewed and who were accused of witchcraft overlap. That is to say, single/widowed/poor women. That said, married women also brewed with great regularity. So it’s largely speculative.

This raises an interesting question. Why and should we participate in the continuation of myth telling? Even as myth correction. On the one hand it is organic and bolsters identity often in a healthy way. I myself am quite pleased to be generically connected to the faerie folk and advise all of you to watch your step accordingly. This, however, is quite distinct from the role I play from time to time of amateur historian – even when I get paid for that part of my research and writing. Nothing is as shockingly and clarifyingly accurate as a primary source. You can’t get around that sort of thing. You must face it. So how does one do both in an area of our collective culture as laden with fib and story telling as beer and brewing?

Never a happy event. A founder leaves a brewery.

Wee Beefy, one who has written of the horrors of the experimental craft alcopops that are too prevalent these days, has discovered a new love in an very unexpected form:

Last year or before, Maltgarden Browari came along. I had already tried a few of their excellent stouts, along with stumbling through opening their ridiculous wax capped can, and then bought a can of Tzatziki pastry sour with Pink Guava, Mango and cucumber… I drank the whole can in about ten minutes. It was ludicrously easy drinking – but also featured a distinctive but perhaps created tzatziki flavour along with the excellence of the pastry elements. It tasted very strongly of the cucumber and as I admit, the tzatziki I imagined but impressively the other flavours blended in so well together! I used it as a palate cleanser…

Me, I am physically revolted by that description but celebrate the freedom.

One weighs carefully whether one mentions BrewDog anymore given they are (i) now an international brewery with few links to micro or craft and (ii) they are adherents to a form of serial stupid that is beyond all reckoning – but… but… this one is up there with Sam Adam’s 2002 “Sex for Sam” promotion that led to charges, humiliation and (in a less than round about way than you might imagine) the Brewers Association as we know it. Trade Unionist Kmflett neatly summarized the seemingly sordid scene:

A post noted that Brewdog Indianapolis had sacked female and LBTQ employees on International Women’s Day apparently looking for a change in culture at the bar, possibly to a white male workforce. The CEO of Brewdog USA tweeted that of course Brewdog don’t discriminate while the London based head of Brewdog bars globally tweeted that he was investigating. On the one hand he was aware of an issue on the Indianapolis bar. On the other hand people are not sacked on the basis of gender or sexuality and if anyone had done that they’d be off too.

Lordy. There’s the statement from those let go. To date, no response from Mr. Jim Watt via Twitter except to point out how carbon neutral they are trying to be in addition, apparently, to be anti-discrimination neutral. It’s sad. I just checked my emails and there I was care of Stonch giving James himself advice in exchanges for photo contest prizes. It was all about how to run a blog about his wee brewery… and there it is now…  crushing hopes and dreams.

Finally, you will note every week I list below any number of podcasts related to good beer. This week I tweeted a question which got mucho response:

Honestly, how much time a week do you have for listening to beer podcasts? 27 minutes? Three and a half hours? I think of this when I encounter the 68th new podcast this year that’s over an hour long, not much edited and 7-11% filled with umms, errs and insider giggling.

I mean it quite seriously as a question about the medium. How many could you keep up with. I myself uses the FF technique in which I take a 35 minute podcast and reduce it to 5 by clicking and hunting for the actual bit of most interest to me. For all the “beer editors” out there who seem to be getting chump change for taking away the new writers voice in exchange for the dull tried and true, it would be good if there was a similar thing for podcasts, a central hub of some sort, a single global beer podcast editorial committee who could take these rambles and turn them into an actual magazine of the air of some sort. Some folk who could say “no” and who could also say “yes, this!” Listeners await.

Soon it will be spring. That makes for happy. For more happy, check out the 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 more from the DaftAboutCraft  podcast, too. And the Beervana 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 – when he isn’t in hiatus as at the mo, more like timeout for rudeness. And remember BeerEdge, too.