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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fine, one or three more notes:

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

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

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

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

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

The “Happy False Thanksgiving Week !” Edition Of The Thursday Beery News Notes

We started watching the Ken Burns documentary on The American Revolution – which is a bit of a weird experience for someone living in a city settled by Loyalists. To be fair, regular mention is made of the experience of people enslaved in the third quarter of the 1700s as well as the fact that Indigenous nations were facing further dislocation. But the usual balance of one-third Revolutionary/Patriot, one-third Loyalist/Tory and one third just wanting the whole thing to go away doesn’t yet seem to be the guiding principle.* We’ll wait for further review after the next few episodes but seeing as we are (i) seven weeks after True Thanksgiving and (ii) a week out from “The Day before Black Friday” – aka the true start of the holiday madness – we’ll still raise a glass and wish you readers to the south a happy turkey day next week. The results of my own micro-colonial style dried bean harvest picked this very week is offered in solidarity.

Plenty of good reading this week. Let’s start a bit further back in history. Merryn gave the heads up that there was report published on the making of malt in the Paleolithic including at archaeological sites in Greece and Iraq:

The authors concluded that there was diversity and complexity of plant preparation at both sites, based upon the condition of the plant macrofossils that they found. People were processing wild pulses, nuts, grasses and cereals using several techniques, including crushing, pounding and grinding as well as soaking, steeping and mashing. Although many were made from pulses and nuts, some of the carbonised food fragments resembled charred bread-like foods or finely ground cereal meals, similar to those found at Neolithic and later prehistoric sites.

More recently – though personally it feels about as long ago – once upon a time about twenty years ago, Rogue had good representation on the shelves of Ontario’s LCBO with their reviews** being a regular topic around here. From 2004 to 2012 or so it was personal favourite, then a nation and then it was, for folk like me and Ed, a bit of a disappointment that lost my patonage. And now it is gone, as Jeff records in yet another brewery obit.

The news that Rogue had suddenly slammed shut the doors on all their pubs and breweries is growing more shocking the longer we have to consider it. As recently as last year, Rogue was still one of the largest breweries in the US—50th, according to the Brewers Association’s most recent report. It had been declining a bit in relative numbers on that list, but apparently still selling quite a bit of beer. It wasn’t a new start-up managing risky gambles, either. Rogue has been around 37 years, over three decades of them in their large brewery in Newport… These kinds of breweries don’t just close up in the dark of night. And the way the announcement was handled, with nary a word to the press and crudely-scrawled “closed” signs on the doors of their properties made it all the more surreal.

Interesting. “Crudely Scrawled” was the name of my punk ban in high school back in ’79. Little known fact.*** Chronologically speaking, Ben wrotes about the next stage in Ontario’s beer retailing history tightly following the entry of Rogue into the market – the era of the chosen of Toronto:

We – and by we I mean the brewers, the sales reps, the owners and the collective, foaming-at-the-mouth weirdos on the fringes — we beer writers and nerdy zealots with ink-stained tasting note Moleskins and Untappd obsessions — were a tribe of rabid gatekeepers. We knew what craft beer meant and, brother, if you were trying to fake it, you’d get fucked six ways to the weekend.  Pretenders were roughly shown the door — given a tongue-lashing by a frothy-mouthed and petulant Jordan St John at a beer festival, thoroughly trounced in posts on that esteemed journal of record, blogTO, or – worse – eviscerated in the merciless hellscape that was bartowel. Authenticity was the only currency worth a damn, and it was guarded and fawned over like a dusty six-pack of Westvleteren purchased from Brock Shepherd when he closed Burger Bar. Many a contract brewer was sent packing, red ink on their balance sheet, a case of Hogtown Brewery glassware rattling under their arms and their tail between their legs. But every revolution devours its children. And the fever broke. 

Then came fruit flavouring, then kettle sours and then it all went to fruity IPA Hell. And then… we’re here! The end. And where is here now – and what level of Hell is this now? According to Mudge, it’s Malebolge Level 3.4:

…the latest domino to fall is Fosters Lager, whose makers Heineken have announced that its strength will be reduced from 3.7% ABV to 3.4% with effect from February next year. It’s perhaps surprising to remember that it was 4.0% as recently as early 2023. Heineken claim that this is due to the drinking public demanding lower-strength beers, but in reality that is totally disingenuous, and the underlying reason is obviously the immense saving in beer duty. The British beer market was once dominated by what were regarded as “ordinary strength” session beers in the 3.6-4.0% strength range. But, over the past couple of years, since the duty cut-off at 3.4% was introduced, this entire sector has been pretty much wiped out, at least as far as keg beers are concerned. Carlsberg, Fosters, John Smith’s, Worthington, Boddingtons and Tetley have all been cut, leaving Carling as the last mass-market beer standing at 4.0%.

And in addition to the increasing weakness of the stuff, Pete asked us to consider the increasing price:

By March 2020 the average price of a pint of lager in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics, had hit £3.75. In January 2025 it reached £4.83 and soon breached £5. Maybe those men in Stockport aren’t going to the pub any more. But what about everyone else? How much is too much for a pint? “I think we’re already through the barrier,” says Kate Nicholls, who chairs the trade organisation UKHospitality. “The £5 pint was a watershed for a lot of people. It’s different around the country, of course — it’s already more than £10 a pint at some London venues — but people everywhere are staying at home and pubs are closing. Our main competition is the sofa.”

And he shared a follow up cartoon in The Guardian on the same theme. Being a great indoorsman myself, the sofa has been a big part of my life so, yes, a night it the pub has been a rarer sort of event even for me. Drinks on top of meals while looking across the table at kids who all are card carrying drinking adults does put a chill on the thrill of a night out. Special occasions only. Miself out and about, reporting from the entertainments, Ed says “Quarts are Back!”:

I have been delighted to see the return of beer served in quart measures, albeit in plastic skiffs at concert venues. But sadly the word quart has become archaic in British English, and there was some confusion when I asked for two pints at the bar. Did I want two separate pints or two pints in one container? If we bring back the work quart this wouldn’t be a problem.  The quarts were advertised by a sign behind the bar encouraging people to “Upgrade to a two pint cup”. My humble suggestion is that they could start the re-education by simply adding “(quart)” to the sign after “two pint”. I’m sure people would soon catch on, after all we’ve managed to get by a random mix of metric and imperial measurements for decades.

That’s the whole post! As he is named, so he writes. Briefly. And as with sofas, so too I am with quarts. Though it has been a few years since I pulled my 1850s pewter pot down from the shelf. In the upper Ottawa Valley of the 1990s, one could refer a night out in the pub (before there ever were any kids!) as “going pinting” which led to uproarious laughter one day when I said I was “going quarting” as a lot of plain old beers like 50 or Laurentide could be bought just over the river in Quebec at a dep by the box of six… or was it by twelves?

So quarts are back… but you know who isn’t coming back? “Billy No Mates” sure ain’t – if it’s later than 9 pm and he’s trying to get into the Alibi in the suburbs of Manchester:

In an Instagram post founder and owner Carl Peter said the policy is in place ‘for the safety of guests’ and to prevent groups being ‘mithered’ by solo drinkers and to protect them from a ‘nightmare’ should ‘something happen to them’. After then citing an example where a hopeful customer described the policy as ‘discrimination’ and a disagreement about ‘being woke’, Carl said: “Sorry mate, you’re very easily offended. Are you single? Do you mean it’s because you’re single? Is that what you think this is saying?” The clip also shows an image of the bar’s entrance policy sign, which reads: “No single entry. After 9pm, Alibi does not permit single entry. If you are with guests already inside the venue, please contact them in advance of entry. This is for the safety of all guests.”

Seems like a nice spot, a cocktails bar featuring karaoke. Sounds like a simple “no arseholes” policy to me. Conversely but also in Greater Manchester, look who they did let in… pub quiz cheats!!!

Huddled around their tables, locals poured into The Barking Dog each week to take on a pub quiz – but one thing was amiss. The same team kept winning the prize of a £30 bar tab, leaving regulars scratching their heads and some stopped turning up in protest. Then, a twist. Bosses at the pub in Urmston, Greater Manchester, said they received an anonymous tip-off and caught the team “cheating red-handed” when players were spotted whispering into their smartwatches to get answers.

Along with the barred cheats, the union sets of Marston are now wandering around and may have even gone into hiding, as Laura Hadland illustrates in her report from Glasgow:

The business experienced significant financial distress, despite its recent injection of crowdsourced funds. Gareth Young, the brewery’s founder, has confirmed that Epochal has ceased trading, as efforts over the last six months to find a brewery partner to help revive the brand, have been unsuccessful. The company from which Epochal rented their Payne Street location, Cairn Business Solutions, reclaimed the unit in April 2025, taking back the keys and claiming ownership of the goods and equipment inside – including the historic union – due to a significant accrual of unpaid rent. The union itself remains safe inside the warehouse. 

Safe inside. That’s me. Man of the sofa. Which reminds me – the bumper crop this week now means I have to offer a few quick notes:

Note #1: pro-level whisky tasting.
Note #2: pro-level tariff fighting.
Note #3: “The Generosity of Beer People at the Bar“.
Note #4: “Eating and drinking in South Tyrol“.

Pellicle‘s feature this week is also about one sort of pub, the much mentioned often at the receiving end of comment – but perhaps not so fully unpacked thing, the micropub… specifically The Dodo in London operated by Lucy Do all as portrayed by Joey Leskin:

What makes a micropub? Lucy defines it clearly: “Micropubs are fiercely independent, supporting not only breweries but producers from graphic designers to crisp makers.” They have limited capacity and typically reject TVs and loud music, prizing conversation as the main form of entertainment. The forming of community is inherent and inevitable, with patrons unlikely to sit in isolated silence because—simply put—everyone is physically close. Over time, a community of ambassadors for The Dodo has emerged, calling themselves (with some irony) The Hanwell Massive. They’re easy to spot: Donning Dodo T-shirts at every beer festival, they span age, race and gender, and represent an almost cult-like following. Lucy laughs at the cult comparison, but knows it’s not that inaccurate.

A pretty attractive concept. Totally foreign to these parts. As foreign as those backstreet Tokyo ramen dives on TikTok. As foreign… as a very foreign thing.

While I am a fully signed up member of the Flag Institute,**** Boak and Bailey’s observations at Patreon about the English flag as poltical symbol in pubs was a good reminder that some foreign things are not as charming but it may be something that is undergoing change:

One of our local establishments has been flying several such flags as long as we’ve known it. Then, in around September, the management chose to take them down. Whatever was going on nationally they wanted no part of. The George on the Isle of Dogs wasn’t flying its own flag either, and The Alex in Canning Town was also unadorned. In reality, we’ve seen very little flag flying anywhere, except in the occasional outlying Bristol suburb. Even on the Isle of Dogs it seemed to be emanating from a single house with the concentration of flags reaching a bizarre intensity in and around its back yard. Presumbaly just one slightly odd person who really ought to get out more.

You want to get out? You should – and when you do you should take the advice that was a starling revelation within seven seconds of me reading the following words of Courtney Iseman at Hugging the Bar after two seconds of an intial mindless “yeah right… pfft!” reaction:

Just this past month or so, I’ve been upstate New York; in New Hope, Pennsylvania and nearby areas in New Jersey; and around New England—western to eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Portland, Maine. At 90 percent of those bars, you’re much more likely to find vanilla appearing in more than one cocktail, and an overall menu so loaded with fruit that it’s clear the alcohol is supposed to be all but hidden. As a drinks writer, it’s an important reminder of how small our scopes can get when they should be sprawling—sure, savory cocktails are absolutely a trend, but it’s important to remember it’s not what the average Joe is sipping on. As a savory cocktail lover who involuntarily gags at the mere thought of a sweet drink, I wish this trend were indeed to grow further.

Why my strong reaction? My dream of a global savory porridge industry.**** Cheddar cheese with rosemary tips mixed in a steaming bowl of Quaker Oats. Bacony Red River cereal with brie and basil. Why not? Why is this not a thing? Something to have with a savory cocktail. Something… to pair…

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

*One of my American cousins is making fun of me for this position.
**Remember reviews?  Like “the ten imperial stouts I had this weekend“? Lordy!
***Because the logo was so hard to read! Total lie. Totes fibafibironies.
****Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Week’s Fantastically Even Dramatically Encouraging Beery News Notes For W3Oct25

Usually I have something to share at the outset. Something cheery. But as the garden is on its last legs, as the month slips toward Halloween and then we deal with the changing of the clocks, it seems that any pretense that the year isn’t beginning the final act is fading fast. But… but… before all that, there is one more bit of baseball. One of the most exciting ALCS runs ever now turns into the World Series between a startlingly strong Blue Jays against the defending Dodgers led by the semi-deity known as Mr. Ohtani.  Look at him!  He’s the perfect player. Kyusung Gong of the AP took it and it sums up Ohtani neatly. He barely looks like he’s putting in any effort. His batting is the same. Yet… the Jays look good. So, even though neither of the two are my team, I will be feet up this Friday evening for game one. If you have never watched baseball you may want to watch this. One more thing. The Jays celebrate with US beer brewed under license in Canada. Lordy:

The Toronto Blue Jays are sponsored by Labatt Brewing Company, the Canadian-headquartered brewery that represents big-name booze brands like Corona, Stella Artois, Palm Bay and, yes, Budweiser. That’s why, upon the win, you could see an icy barrel stocked to the brim with bottles and cans of Budweiser within an arm’s reach of every Blue Jays player at any given time.

As I say, not my team. Next, some beery news from the world of British fitba. First up, we have Jessica Mason’s report on the new brewery being build at second tier Wrexham, Wales care of those struggling team owners Reynolds and McElhenney:

Since the duo bought Wrexham AFC five years ago, the club has risen up the ranks from the non-league to England’s second tier. Added to this, the brand has also found fame via a Disney+ documentary Welcome to Wrexham, which followed the club’s story and focused global attention on the area, also boosting tourist numbers. Then, last year, Reynolds and McElhenney acquired a majority stake in local brewery Wrexham Lager…. now there are plans afoot for other drinks brands, including Wrexham Lager to have a boosted presence with the proximity of the new brewery being developed nearby. The application reads: ‘The Wrexham Lager proposals, consisting a brewery and associated taproom and museum, will utilise existing buildings on the site.’

But then we read of the news out of England’s seventh tier as reported by Phil Hay of the newsletter, The Athletic FC:

The club were Bracknell Town, based 35 miles to the west of London. Their video drew attention because in it, their coach — the recently-appointed Matt Saunders — hammered a number of his senior players, criticising their conditioning, their attitude and their tendency towards alcohol. “I’m not going to let this football club be dragged down by people that can’t run, can’t look after their body, want to go and drink after games,” he said. “It ain’t happening.” Bracknell are having a time of it. They’re bottom of the Southern League Premier South with six points from 11 matches, and Saunders’ arrival hasn’t picked them up. 

Difference? Maybe five tiers? Boak and Bailey have also made a call via an alert on Patreon, asking for a boost to the next level:*

It’s been a while since we tackled a big question like where did lager louts come from, what’s the deal with nitrokeg beers or when did video games in pubs become a thing? We’ve got an idea to write something about The Prospect of Whitby but beyond that, what are some other questions we might tackle? We like to add the sum of collective knowledge – to pull facts together into one place where they can be found. Suggestions welcome.

In a time when some other voices have gone a bit silent or seem a little discouraged, this reminder of the need to add to the sum of collective knowledge is encouraging. Solidarity friends! Send then your ideas or even scribble your own somewhere and let us know. Similarly, The Pellicle feature this week is by Lily Waite-Marsden, a portrait of Macintosh Ales of London which, at the outset, does not offer an initial encouraging prospect:

There’s a small yard a moment away from Stoke Newington Church Street in North East London. At its entrance an entirely perfunctory and heavily battered railing protects the square of overgrown cobbles from the pavement beyond. On the first floor of the old stable buildings on three sides, four green doors lead to nothing but a 10-foot drop; the yard is hemmed with various shades of green paint—faded and flaking patchwork grass, darker, glossier army-surplus vehicle paint. But for a hand-painted sign and a number of planters giving the game away, passing on a quiet morning or late at night it might look a little tired, unloved.

But then… it was encouraging. And, turning to brewing history, Andreas Krennmair wrote about a favourite topic of mine, Schenkbier. Except when I looked at the stuff it was from the perspective of what was brewed by German speaking immigrants to the USA. Schenk was referenced regularly descriptions of the brewing trade in the third quarter of the 1800s and was described as one of three species of German beer which had crossed the ocean: lager, bock and schenk.  Andreas found some information from a few decadeds earlier that helped him unpack what was in the glass:

What’s surprising is how different the beers were in terms of original gravity and attenuation. OGs between 11 and 12.6 °P are absolutely solid, and while some of these beers didn’t have nearly as much alcohol as modern lager beers, they’d still be alright to drink, although probably on sweeter side for modern tastes. Especially the beer from Heller stands out, with a respectable 11.5 °P but only 2.9% ABV and a very high residual extract. Doing the calculation, the real attenuation was less than 40%, so this beer must have been a sweet mess. Compare this with modern lager beer, with real attenuation around 65%.

Perhaps syrupy low kick gak is the next big thing. It could be already. There is going to be a next big thing, right? Maybe not. North America’s oldest brewer, Molson, is laying off staff. And not just any staff – the white collar staff of MCBC:

Beer maker Molson Coors Beverage Company said on Monday it would cut about 400 jobs, or nine per cent of its salaried workforce in the Americas by year end as part of a corporate restructuring plan. The company’s Americas workforce consists of employees in the U.S., Canada and certain countries in Latin America. A spokesperson for the company told CBC News in an email that the restructuring “only applies to salaried non-union employees across the Americas.” The company is not providing a breakdown by country or province at this stage, and no offices or breweries will shut down as part of the restructuring, the spokesperson added.

It’s always the suits who suffer. The trends in beer are not comforting. Last week’s noting that craft might need saving** not only got some chatter going but I played Mr Smil and dipped my toe into the math that we are living with seeking to compare those apples to apples:

Interesting to note that 2024, Athletic NA beer alone was 400,000 bbl. Is NA beer a comparable to other booze? Is it booze? We should probably compare alcohol sector to alcohol sector. Take just that one brewery’s production out, the drop is more like 14%…  Worse news if we believe Beer Marketers Insights (Oct 1): “Craft beer trends (ex non-alc) steepened over the summer to volume -8.4% and $$ -6.4%; several pts below total beer volume -5.6% and $$ down 5.1% for 18 wks thru Sep 20 vs yr ago.” So 2019-24 at -14% (non-NA) could be down -20% for 2019-25.

Or more *** The Guardian wrote about another aspect of the retraction from alcohol – the loss of a cornerstone element of overall profitability for restaurants:

The industry standard markup on alcohol in a high-end restaurant is anywhere from 150% upwards, making it one of, perhaps the only, high-margin products on the menu. As people drink less, it could leave restaurants in a precarious position. For every restaurateur willing to go on the record to discuss the shifting tide, there were an equal number who refused to be interviewed for this story. Some because they say they’ve witnessed no change in customer behaviour, and others because the subject matter is at odds with promoting a hospitality business. While it doesn’t necessarily do wonders for the bottom line, diners drinking less at the table does create a more harmonious environment for restaurant workers. Fewer drunk bodies means less risk overall.

Me, I usually just have water but still try to tip like I’ve had a bit of booze. Where will this all lead?  What can be relied upon to get the attention of the public. Innovation? The Beer Nut himself spent last weekend in Warsaw and spotted one of the more innovative cultural expressions of beer culture – a sausage randall as illustrated in thumbnail format… in consideration of some of your delicate constitutions. Much consternation was found in the comments which followed his Bluesky post – but I really can’t see the difference between a lager washed through sausages and sausages washed down with lager. Much depending of course on the quality of the sausage.

Speaking of quality, Matty C. has written about the return of Boddingtons for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing and has placed it in the moment:

Being honest for a second, this beer is not reinventing the wheel – there are far more interesting and flavourful pints available, even from JW Lees itself. But I consider the resurgence of Boddingtons is about more than flavour. Reports are already coming in from Manchester venues that are not able to keep up with demand, turning away disappointed drinkers who want to be seen with a pint of it in hand. This is significant, because those who are drinking it are young, fashionable, and about as far away from the cask beer stereotype as you can possibly get. This can only be considered a positive. For many drinkers, especially younger ones, a row of handpulls featuring a range of products they’ve never heard of can be incredibly intimidating. In Boddingtons, a brand has been revived that people can easily trust.

Heritage as maybe heritage? Maybe. Speaking of maybe, there is always the potential for maybe not – as one liquor dome in Northern Ireland found out recently:

Planners order the business to remove shipping containers used as a bar and storage, as well as a takeaway food cabin with a serving hatch on a Skipper Street – a side road that runs past the beer garden. Also to go are steel boundaries with wood covering that include an access gate and windows, an enclosed walkway entrance, a “tent structure”, boundary fencing in excess of two metres in height not adjacent to a road, and storage areas for bins and beer kegs. City planners say they’ve reached their verdict as “it appears there has been a breach of planning control” on the site.

Finally and probably relatedly, here is an interesting snippet of an unlocked article from the Financial Times written by Charles Spencer (Princess Di’s brother) on the question of authenticity which includes this:

When, in 1992, I inherited Althorp, my family’s ancestral home, I felt a responsibility to return it to how it had been for much of its 500-year history. For, over the previous decade and a half, the interior had been lavishly redecorated by my stepmother, Raine, whose taste and palette were inherited from her flamboyant mother, romantic novelist Barbara Cartland… I turned to John Cornforth, perhaps the leading British architectural historian of the time, to help me return things to how they should be. We toured Althorp’s principal rooms, assessing them for Raine damage. Cornforth’s kind reassurances dwindled as we went. Finally, on entering the South Drawing Room — a cacophony of clashing pinks (on the walls, on the floor, in the curtains) — Cornforth rocked back in his tightly drawn lace-ups. “Goodness,” he mused. “I really can’t help you here .  As he departed Althorp that afternoon, he lobbed me a catch-all mantra that he hoped might help: “Good taste is authenticity — and authenticity is good taste.”

The point is excellently made. But what does this have to do with beer? Only on the idea of how his hunt for authenticity based on that saying became for Spencer a no-doubt very expensive exercise in conformity. Realizing that, he argues for a balance between respect for what has come before with a realization that you need to live in the present, too. Can we compare the return of Boddingtons or the sweet mess that was historic schenk or that sausage randall with the clashing pinks of a devotee Barbara Cartland’s fashion sense?  Obviously even the “don’t yuk their yum” level of junior beer expert might balk at the more garish, the most lurid of these pleasures. But where to draw the line?

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

*Formatted to fit, to protect the innocent perhaps but mainly to fit.
**Jeff updated his thoughts, by the way, but it did make me wonder why what one wants should be limited to what some producers feel they can provide. Perhaps the former suits of Molson now share that feeling.
***A bear of beer! 

The Beery News Notes For That Post Canadian Thanksgiving Emotional Letdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Totally Excited And Entirely Distracted Beery News Notes For Wildcard Week

Just in case, you didn’t know the baseball playoffs are brutal. Four rounds of MLB games take place between last Tuesday and end no later than November 1st. By way of comparison, hockey takes months and months and months to figure out who gets their names on the cup. So… I have been distracted and annoyed. Distracted because my Red Sox are playing October baseball for the first time in a while and annoyed by all the instant Toronto fans who think Canadians all have to root for the Jays. If the gods will it so, the Sox will get past the Yankees* and will then see off Toronto around about October 10th. If not… oh well.

Sticking with sports, over at Real Ale, Real Music the story from Chris was about a trip away to a fitba match at Southend and all the beers along the way:

We finished our beers, and set off walking to the football ground. It was about a 20 minute walk as we moved out of the city centre into the suburbs, passing modern blocks and more traditional housing as we approached the ground. We were directed around to the away end by a couple of friendly bobbies, and we got in pretty quickly, and immediately spotted one or two familiar faces. Roots Hall is very much a traditional football ground, with individual stands on each side of the ground with the one behind the goal opposite the away end having an upper level.   The club though would win no awards for their catering, the cheeseburger we sampled having the consistency of a hard rubber disc, and it was presented in a dried-out, crumbling defrosted bun.

I really like the pace of those pieces. On the other hand, the Netflix series “The House of Guinness” has received some disappointed reviews from those well placed like Liam – “ludicrous and pointless” – but perhaps none so well placed as the one provided by Ms. Molly Guinness as reported in The Times:

We hooted with laughter through the first two episodes. As Sean Rafferty, Norton specialises in lines such as “Oi’ve worked for your family for 20 years and I know that inside every one of yous there’s a woild, woild black cat.” Alas, I suspect this characteristic has been bred out of us over the generations. When a corseted lady (great-great-aunt Olivia, since you ask) says, “I can take your money, but I don’t have to take your cock,” unlike all modern Guinnesses, she is not talking about poultry.

Speaking of disputes, another week and another question of law in the world of beer, this time over the right to the word “wor” – if, you know, it is even a word and not a sound… ok, fine… it’s a word:

A dispute has erupted between two breweries over the trademark of the word Wor on beer associated with a group of football fans. Tyneside-based Wylam Brewery re-branded its Wor Flags beer to NCL Flags last week – the sales of which support the Wor Flags fan group best known for creating Newcastle United banner displays. Anarchy Brew Co, also based in Tyneside, said it registered the trademark for beer products in 2022 during its own similar partnership with Wor Flags, which ended before the start of the new season. Wylam Brewery said it was “disappointed” to be put in that position. Anarchy said it could have been avoided if the other company did its due diligence.

Conversely and more about getting it right, I enjoyed this excellent and detailed potrait of Master Sommelier Agnieszka Swiecka in The Buyer which describes the years of work it took for her to earn the designation this year:

I was fortunate to pass the blind tasting and practical parts of the MS exam at my first attempt in 2023, but the theory was my achilles heel. I have created self-limiting beliefs in my head that hindered my chances to pass. For example, I was telling myself that, to pass the exam I don’t need to have a deep knowledge of spirits and cocktails, as this is a sommelier not a bartender certification. It wouldn’t be fair to ask too many spirits questions. Or things along the lines – if last year there were questions about Chile maybe it’s better to focus on Argentina for this year’s exam? Can I skip studying about Bulgaria? It’s likely that I will get one question if any, and I need 75% to pass. You get the idea.

Skip Bulgarian wine? Come to think of it, as a teen I often thought somewhat after the fact that it might have been wise for me had I done just that.

Speaking of unpleasant drinking habits, I found this graph from the AAWE on BlueSky useful in detailing how big wine coolers were in the 1980s. It also got me thinking of where that segment of drinker preference has gone, say, since the early 1990s. People who want sweet trendy gak.  Jordan helpfull reminded us back in 2020 how Mike’s Hard Lemonade arose starting around 1996:

Michelle Shephard, writing in the Toronto Star on April 19, 1998, clutches pearls magnificently: “It looks like lemonade. It tastes like lemonade…” Shephard interviews two female Ryerson students who are quoted as saying “we went to the bar downtown and just decided it was a night to drink Mike’s. We had one then oh, this is gone. Then, oh this one’s gone so let’s get another…” and “They’re just so easy to drink you don’t even know you’re getting drunk.” One feels as though this might have backfired somewhat.

Jordan was comparing Mike’s to the White Claw boom of the early pandemic months of 2020. But haven’t the fruit flavoured craft alcopops called kettle sours also played that same role? Discussed in VinePair in 2018, I know from the archives that I had my first overly fruity IPA in 2014 and maybe the first sweetie pie kettle sour around 2016 at Folly Brewing, both in Toronto.** So were there gaps in the candy coated timeline or has there always been a form of sweet gak that lets kids say “oh this one’s gone so let’s get another” while having fun? Or put it this way… was there ever not a cheap sweet gak of choice and head cracking aches?***

Slightly related, I had never heard of the UK’s Boring Beer Index until this week which I suppose is good. But as it appears to be some sort of PR counter-insurgency I suppose that indicates something about it isn’t all that good, as perhaps clarified in the Morning Advertiser:

Some premium lager brands have seen sharp increases, such as Madri, which has seen the number of respondents claiming to be bored of it almost double since the previous report. John Smith’s topped the survey’s list of so-called boring ales while Guinness was cited as the most unexciting stout brand…

Very unpopular, that Guinness stuff. Out and about the planet, The Beer Nut was in Germany and hunted out some beers in Dusseldorf other than their famous Alt with much success except at…:

…Schumacher. This was my first time in their downtown pub, Im Goldenen Kessel. It was crowded, the service surlier and less responsive than anywhere else in town, and I got stuck at a table where there probably shouldn’t be a table. To top that off, their Alt alternative was… an Alt. Now, 1838er is 5% ABV and claims to be brewed with Cascade hops, but it’s the clear dark brown of an Alt and has the same medium-roast base. Unfortunately, it also has diacetyl in spades, and tastes more like a Danish butter cookie than anything else. This smacks up against a sharp gastric acidity, rendering it a complete mess and somewhere close to undrinkable. The brewery advises us to look out for the hint of lemon in the aroma. Nah mate; that ship has sailed. It’s just as well Schumacher’s proper Alt is pretty decent.

And Ron was on the road again, this time (again) he headed to Singapore to judge (again). His description of his arrival on the otherside of the planet leaves me a bit boggled myselg given, you know, I’d be more inclined to nap for 36 hours:

The arrival gate isn’t quite in Malaysia this time. It’s not so far to immigration and baggage retrieval. My bag comes out pretty quickly. Soon I’m speeding towards my hotel in a taxi. I’ve a couple of hours before the welcome dinner. Which I kill with some internet fiddling and duty-free whisky. It’s a pretty nice hotel with a decent-sized room. At 18:30, we take a bus to the venue. Which is a rooftop restaurant in a small hotel. With stunning views of the city. There’s just the one downside: no bogs. You have to go down to the ground floor for toileting purposes. Which is a bit inconvenient. Especially for oldies like me.

Back here at home, an interesting discussion is going on hereabouts about the retail rules. It’s on the question of whether big grocery chains in Ontario are going to be forced into participating in the return of recyclable empty beer bottles as part of their right to sell beer, cider and wine, as reported on by TVO Today:

…there are, legitimately, some small grocers who face some real hardship from being forced to choose between stocking beer and wine or accepting empties. That’s why the province’s current policy exempts stores under 4,000 square feet — if your local convenience store or small green grocer has added some beer fridges in the past year, they’re almost certainly fine. Nevertheless, maybe that number needs to be modestly increased; I’m certainly not going to vouch for the Ford government’s perfection in rule-making. Ultimately, however, the question of what to do about small stores is a distraction. The actual fight in Ontario this year is over whether big grocers will, once again, get the province to bend and relieve them of any obligation to collect empties.

And ATJ got the nod for Pellicles feature this week and provided a protrait of Proper Job, an early English clone of a hoppy US IPA. I really like this description from the brewer who makes it now:

“If you want an IPA but have never had one, this is the one to get,” Georgina Young, Roger’s successor as St. Austell head brewer, tells me when we meet at one of St Austell’s Exeter pubs, the Mill on the Exe. “It’s a great example of a punchy, hoppy IPA. To me it represents a real ‘god I really want a Proper Job lightning hop tingling on the tongue’ moment, it’s an exciting beer to drink and I think that is the draw of it.” “If I am going out for a ‘watering’ pint I will go for a Tribute,” she adds. “If something is going to excite me then it will be a Proper Job. Roger was very much into his Def Leppard, AC/DC, metal, he loved it. When you sit and drink Proper Job you can feel that. It is quite heavy metal, a bit scratchy.”

Finally, Japanese brewer Asahi has been hit with a pretty dramatic cyber attack which has led to some serious consequences:

Asahi Group Holdings has not been able to resume production at domestic factories a day after a cyberattack and cannot foresee when it can be resumed, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday… The maker of Asahi Super Dry Beer, Nikka Whisky and Mitsuya Cider last night said its group companies in Japan suspended operations, including order processing, shipping and call centre functions, due to a cyberattack-caused system outage, although no personal information leakage has been confirmed.

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

*Tuesday’s Game 1 result? Sox sorta evicerate the Yanks after seven innings of a pitcher’s duel. UPDATE: Wednesday had a similar plot but the Yanks were the beneficiaries. Great baseball.
**No comment as to the relation to the 2025 Blue Jays… perhaps…
***I am reminded of my late great parents and confirming the nickname for cheap sweet gak in the 1950s just to the west of Glasgow was “electric soup”!

The Very First And Initial And Even Inaugural Beery News Notes For Autumn 2025

Once again, take a moment to consider the words recommended this time every year, the words of Mr. J.Keats first posted to blog twenty-two years ago:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run…

Load and bless! I like that. People fret about autumn coming. As if, you know, it’s February. But you get both loaded and blessed these days. I have been blessed with a load of produce including the tomatoes discussed a few weeks ago. But there’s also the easiest and laziest crop of green onion to be brought in. All winter we save the bottoms of the onion bunches and keep the roots going in jars of water. Come spring, plunk them in a pot or in the ground and you have a perpetual green onion crop to be saved in the freezer. Free free free. Never abandon your roots.

Speaking of free, Dr Christina Wade is doing a free online talk about her book Filthy Queens and the history of Beer in Ireland for the Dublin Festival of History on Sept 30th from 5pm Irish time. Here is the link to sign up. Unrelated, I give you drinking with Brian Eno, circa 2015:

My best wine experiences have been with French wines, so I think the best French wines are the best wines. But there are also so many bad French wines – there’s such a range. A long time ago I wrote an essay called “Wines Classified According To Their Effects” because I was convinced there was a different type of drunkenness from each kind of wine. That was the reason I got into Burgundy, because I noticed Aloxe-Corton in particular made people laugh. Bordeaux is a bad drunk for me. I think Bordeaux wines are largely responsible for the decline in French philosophy in the last fifty years. I think the problem is that Bordeaux makes you think that everything you are saying is really quite important.

Is there an alcohol that doesn’t? Perhaps we should do a survey of our significant others. Speaking of studies, suddenly the stats on the lower levels of drinking by the kids in America* is to be relied upon after yoinks of denials. I dunno what happened – but Kate B reports on the numbers:

The kids are alright. New federal data shows young people ages 12-18 showed statistically significant decreases in alcohol use, cannabis use, major depressive episodes, and suicidality compared to four years ago. Why? Changes to the way kids socialize… It’s partially a COVID ripple effect: With kids more isolated, teens’ reported use of almost all measured substances decreased dramatically between 2020 and 2021. Notable: Teen drinking and drug use have remained low—or continued to decrease—since the pandemic, even as public spaces have reopened.

It’s all about the damn numbers, isn’t it. [See also Mr. Gladman on the grasphical representation of data as it relates to matcha: “The green bar makes it look like we’re gulping down matcha-flavoured fluids by the bucketful…“] And David J is also on the question of “youth ‘n’ booze” for CAMRA’s What’s Brewing with a focus on cask ale and who is interpreting the numbers:

I’m very sceptical when anyone speaks about Gen Z or any demographic cohort with seeming authority. Usually the characteristics of each generation seem very similar to the previous one and a lot of these supposed behaviour patterns could be just attributed to anyone who is lucky enough to be young… So when I read that Gen Z could save cask beer from extinction, I raised an eyebrow. I then raised the other eyebrow – a unique skill – when I read in the same article an industry grandee being quoted as saying Gen Z want variety when they drink, like they’re one homogeneous person tapping their beer order into the app on their phone to avoid the queue.

It would have been better if Mel in Braveheart had shouted “METHDOLOGY! METHODOLOGY!!!” wouldn’t it.

Changing topics with abandon, we see that Boak and Bailey posted their thoughts on holding Oktoberfests in England and added a few more in a footnote that was in addition to their weekly footnotes. Therein, they offered five observations but I was caught on the fourth:

Fourthly, we recall someone suggesting that Oktoberfest events in the UK were a form of cultural appropriation. This is a fair challenge although we tend to think that countries or cultures which had empires and colonies probably don’t get to complain about that.

I shared that I wondered where the limit of cultural appropriation should sit. Here in Canada, it’s mainly illustrated by people pretending to be Indigenous for advantage. So if Germans are selling a welcome product into Britain as they have been (as your excellent book proved) why not celebrate it? If you have seen 1983’s Strange Brew you will know that Ontario’s twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo, the former once named Berlin, has the second biggest Oktoberfest in the world. Because we had many German-speaking immigrants in the 1800s. And as the Bs wrote about in their Gambrinus Waltz there was also heavy marketing of German lager into the UK at around the same time along with the rest of the globe. Cultural expansion can’t then be relabled as an appropriation. That’s a bit too colonial for me.

Merryn linked to another archaeological report that seems to be bending backwards to not find evidence of brewing in pre-historic Britain:

An early Neolithic settlement on the small island of Wyre, Orkney, where a huge amount of carbonised grain on a clay floor was discovered. Interpreted by the excavators as a granary. But I reckon it could’ve been a malting floor and a grain barn.

Here is the report on the study referred to. Note the passage: “But why would a drain begin under a hearth? We can find no logical explanation.” Because maybe it had a log gutter sat in the stone channel drawing off the wort? In my work I am aware that as late as the 1970s pipes made of wood were found in the oldest serviced areas of my fair City. So that could be it. Beats the heck out of “no logical explanation.”

Speaking of science and explanation, Lars took the “monkey fruit booze” story mentioned by me last week as a goof and disassembled the story to create some serious observations on the nature of the human beast itself… ourselves:

…about 10 million years ago, a mutation made that gene much more efficient at breaking down ethanol, the ordinary alcohol that makes us intoxicated. This suggests that we started consuming alcohol already then… the story that our relationship with alcohol began before we were human, at the time we came down from the trees, seems to hold up very well. We have other adaptations against alcohol as well, some of which seem to have appeared when agriculture began, but that’s another story.

As a practicing lawyer, one is never surprised by the news about what hasn’t been pulled off by other lawyers:

Cole Palmer rarely tastes defeat on-the-field, but the Chelsea and England star has lost a bizarre battle off-the-pitch with a French vineyard. The tussle in question has been over his attempts to trademark his ‘Cold Palmer’ nickname and using that to launch his own wine company under that moniker. Last year, Palmer made a move to trademark both his ‘ice cold’ celebration and the name ‘Cold Palmer’, in the hope of using it to sell a number of different products. These include clothes, food, toys, toiletries, razor blades, diet drinks and alcohol. However, the latter was opposed by a revered vineyard in the south west of France. Chateau Palmer, which is in the Margaux region in Bordeaux, believed a trademark of the name would be a threat to its own image.

Having distanced myself from Mr. Palmer in the Pellicle-run FPL league I can take issue with the first proposition set out above but, even having distanced myself from Ch. Palmer economically, I can’t disagree with the outcome. Palmer is to Bordeaux as Mcdonalds is to fast food in terms of notariety. What were they thinking?

Evan has suggested what might be the hot new thing is Czech beer service – řezané pivo:

Roughly translated as “cut beer,” řezané pivo includes both dark lager and pale lager, often (though not always) poured in two separate layers, giving each glass plenty of visual appeal, just like mlíko. (Starting with the famously difficult Ř sound, the full name sounds a lot like “rzhez-on-eh pee-voh,” depending on how many of them you’ve ordered.) As with the all-foam pour, řezané fits perfectly into the burgeoning craft lager movement. But unlike mlíko, řezané is more clearly rooted in Czech tradition, feeling less like a parlor trick, at least for some locals.

I no more have a stash of Chateau Palmer than I have what would be called a “parlor” but, really, wouldn’t that be the best place for a good trick? And a somewhat familiar one as I recall seeing – both in Scotland with a cousin as well as in my old hometown of Halifax, NS – bartenders who could float Guinness on a lighter ale. As Even notes, a half and half is a fun thing.

And on the theme of things formerly sipped gingerly, Alistair wrote about and old fabourite beer, Leffe Blonde. I won’t ruin his findings but his remembrance of the ale past starts out very specifically:

Back in the days when I was a college student in Birmingham, I got the train from New Street early one Saturday morning to go to Esher in Surrey. The main purpose for the trip was to spend the day at the Sandown races with my eldest brother, who lived down that way back then. Having spent the day frittering money away on thoroughbreds of varying uselessness, we headed into central London for dinner at a non-descript curry house, non-descript in the sense that I don’t have the foggiest as to what I ate, but weirdly 2 beers are lodged in my memory, the Żywiec I was drinking and the Leffe Blonde that was my brother’s choice that night.

I got a similar heads up about the state of Cantillon sales from Jeff who directed me to an article in VinePair by Aaron Goldfarb in which he speak of the blip in time when lambic was really cool:

…by 2013, everything had changed and the U.S. beer landscape was now ready for such challenging flavors. By then, Beer Advocate’s top 250 beers list included 11 Cantillon beers. highlighted by Fou’ Foune at #11, the brewery’s Lou Pepe – Kriek at #28, Saint Lamvinus at #36, and the European-only release Blåbær Lambik at #39. Today, it seems hard to imagine a time when Belgian lambic was possibly so hot. If you’re in your 20s or early 30s, it’s possible you’ve never even tasted one. And it wasn’t just Cantillon. Among a list then dominated, as it still is today, by IPAs and big, boozy stouts, a shocking number of sours beers — mostly Belgian lambic but also American wild ales — dot the top 250.

I was definitely into sours in the sense that I created a category for sour beer studies in around 2005 but I wasn’t always a big fan. From the archives, I see that I really liked Lindemans Gueuze in 2005, Kriek De Ranke in 2007 and loved Girardin Gueuze in 2008 but, man, I really really didn’t like Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru by Cantillon in 2006:

Quite plainly watery at the outset then acid and more acid…then one note of poo. Not refreshing to slightly sub-Cromwellian stridency. Annoying. Then at the end a hint of apple cider. Foul. I wonder if this is an example of mass reputation piercing the veil of reality – mob craftism. I cannot hate it. Yet I am sure it hates me.

Check the comments to that post! By 2012, I had coined the phrase “to be Shelted” once my studies had gotten into the economics of what was going on.

Finally, Jeff also announced that he is taking a bit of a  well earned break. He explain a bit about the moment he finds himself as he does so in through this post:

Journalists cover a broad range of topics, and reporting about the actions of their elected leaders and government officials is an important load-bearing wall in any democracy. It’s why, during democratic backsliding, one of the first things the aspiring autocrat does is taking control of the media. I write about beer, and to a small, niche audience, so there’s little worry the government would come after me. (Trump, famously, is not a drinker, so my hot takes about icy beer is unlikely to draw his ire.) Yet as a citizen and as a freelancer, all of this feels very personal. Written speech is not just my livelihood, but it has been a central part of my life. I wasn’t surprised to see these developments, but they did cut me deeply.

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

*Not these Kids in America… that was me and mine. It probably was suppose to be “We’re the Kids In North America” but, you know, the suits…