Your Fascinating But Still A Bit Sticky And Humid Mid-July Beery News Notes – A Good Beer Blog

Summer. Heat waves. Heat warnings. Smoke warnings. Drought. We got it all. Including sugar snap peas. I’ve adoped the Canadian old fart posture this week, when facing a comment on the blistering sun, as I just reply “at least I ain’t shoveling it!” Which is, of course, hilarious. Roar! Tape me ribs! No wonder all of comedy in Hollywood is run by Canucks! The heat in England heat has even driven Boak and Bailey off the beer, according to themselves in their monthly supplement:

…we had some beer at home, so it wouldn’t be too bad, right? Except however much we chilled it, it never quite seemed to refresh us. After a couple of lagers we gave up and switched to iced water. Apparently our bodies were telling us to hydrate and beer, unfortunately, has very much the opposite effect. When we have made it to the pub during heatwaves, we’ve often found cask ale to be a write off. Partly because not all pub cellars are capable of withstanding extreme heat, and partly because people switch to lager leaving ale to lose its sparkle.

Reporting from a land more used to the stinking heat, Pellicle‘s feature this week is a feature by Ruvani de Silva on the Green Bench Brewery in St. Petersburg, Florida. Which is, of course, another part of American utterly infested with we Canadians including, twenty years ago, by my late parents who would occassionally lunch at the welcoming Don CeSar with other welcomed snowbirds from all over. Wasn’t always like that:

Rewind seventy years or so, however, and our experience of St Pete’s would have been very different. The Sunshine City might have been a holidaymakers’ paradise, but only if you were the right kind of visitor. The city’s unwritten law that people of colour were not permitted to sit on its famous green benches evidenced how St Pete’s did not escape Florida’s vicious segregationist policies of the time. This unofficial ordinance was more than simply a physical imposition—it was a restriction that entrenched systemic racism for generations of Black Floridians. It’s for the memory of this injustice that Khris Johnson, founding brewer and co-owner of Green Bench Brewing and Florida’s first Black brewery owner, chose to name his business.

Speaking of establishments, one of the swellest images that passed before my eyeballs this week was this one to the right. At first I thought it was a fire insurance map but there isn’t enough detail.  It’s was posted at a local history group over on FB, Woodlesford and Oulton History, and seems to be a diagram that accompaned a 1933 planning application to update the New Masons in Oulton:

In October 1933 Fred applied to the Hunslet Rural District Council to make major alterations to the layout of the pub and add a new frontage and windows. The work involved knocking down part of the old front wall and fitting a rolled steel joist to support the upper floor. The new layout was then much the same as it remains today.

And here is the pub, still there. The photos help explain the map including the location of the fireplaces, the scale of the room. But the one thing I don’t understand is why the bar is in the passageway. Did you go there from one of the three rooms, get your pint and go back in to find your chair or was the passageway itself a drinking area? These are the things that haunt me.

In more somber news, we have received the sad news the passing of Jack McAuliffe. In remembrance, John Holl has republished a tribute from All About Beer from 2017 to the founder of the New Albion Brewery Company in California which opened in 1977.  And Maureen‘s comment on BlueSky is a wonderful tribute that tells a lot about the man:

Ah. This saddens me. Not unexpected, but I’m sad i won’t see him again. He was hilarious, among other things. I was humbled by the fact that I was one of the very few people Jack likes and respected. That meant a lot to me. Godspeed, Jack. 

Just two weeks ago, Gary shared an anecdote from the earliest days of Jack’s brewery which is worth revisiting to get a sense of how this brewer helped start the change that led on to micro and craft brewing working with very basic resources.

Stan has shared the latest edition of his Hop Queries and explained the dire situation facing hop growers in the Tasman region of New Zealand, including Brent McGlashen of Mac Hops:

“Statistically and visually, we hit above the 1 in 100-year flood level, with also highest ever recorded river flows in a number of parts in the Motueka river… Both our farms have water everywhere, fences with damage and some debris scattered around, but we are fortunate compared to others who have had significant damage and loss due to the flooding. Was this predicted, well yes it was. Forecasters said over 200mm and we sure got that. We have had a wet winter and the ground can’t absorb more so it has to go somewhere.” One hop farmer died as a result of the storm. Peter Lines was clearing flood damage from his property in Wai-iti, southwest of Nelson, when he was hit by a tree.

Rain came again the next week “leaving fields under water and dumping mud, gravel and sand on facilities that had just been cleaned up…” 

Writing about disasters of the unnatural sort, The Beer Nut brought his lucidity to a review of an unknown Dutch brewery, to which he added a key question on BlueSky: “how long can a brewery keep up a sequence of nautical-themed beers flavoured with fruit syrup?” The answer is apparently “too long“:

My report card for Stadshaven says “must try harder”. A sampler pack of fruit syrup does not make for a vibrant range of modern beers, for one thing. I sense an ability to do plain-spoken beers quite well, testified by the red and blonde in particular. Whether the decision not to steer that course is a creative one or a management one, I cannot say. The low price point is very much in these beers’ favour, though I’m still not sure I got my money’s worth from them. 

Speaking of the low, Matty C wrote for What’s Brewing on the most obnoxious retort around: “stick to…” with the line filled in by the obnoxious. In this case, it was about the position being taken him and by many other drinkers in the UK on the Palestinian-Israel war – and in doing so makes this very lucid argument:

In modern political discourse it’s perhaps the first approach to go out the window when things get a little spicy. But it is because of compassion, not malice or spite, that the volunteers of Trafford and Hulme CAMRA opted to have the donation box in the first place, and it is compassion that motivated attendees to make a donation as they leave. It is compassion that triggered the response from customers when they found out beer from breweries they admired were selling beer into a market they didn’t. And it is because of compassion that you’ll struggle to find Moor Beer on tap in Bristol at this very moment. It would be far easier, surely, to stick to beer, and leave the politics to the politicians. But in fact, sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is stick your head above the parapet and say, “I don’t think this is okay.”

Politics is for the people. All the people. No matter what the cause or the position, being active and acting on compassion is a good thing.

You know what also gets people losing their composure, their perspective? Beer glassware. Do you have a go to glass for beer? I do… well, one for inside and one for the yard. Kevin at Casket Beer advocated in favour of simplicity and recommended a basic four:

…while the shaker isn’t as bad as many make it out to be, it really shouldn’t be a major player either at a beer bar or your home bar. But having a respectable selection of glassware doesn’t need to break the bank or become unmanageable. There are four widely available glass styles that are affordable, cover a wide array of styles, and will satisfy the most discerning beer drinker. Here they are.

You can go see which four they were. Jeff then picked up the theme and advocated for one fewer: “Give me a mug, a goblet, and either a snifter or tulip—both is overly fussy…  I like a handle, and I find a beer looks great when it’s in a wide vessel—the clarity and color is easier to see. Facets bedazzle and please me (recall, I am one of the few fans of glitter beer).” Wow. I was with him there until those two last words. Just… wow.

And staying with the wow,* Alistair has been staying (practically) true to his promise to bust his writer’s block by writing every day (almost) over at Fuggled. Wednesday’s story this week was about the Austrio-Hungarian schnitt of 1900:

The writer continues to berate their fellow German Austrians that a single “schnitt” fewer every day wouldn’t be so bad and that the savings would build up to a sizeable fund for civic associations tied to the ethnically German population of the Empire. And here we have again an example of the cross pollination of cultures that was Bohemia and Moravia in the 19th century, evidenced today through the use of a transliteration of “schnitt” into Czech, “šnyt” as the name for effectively a half pour of beer and lots of foam. “Schnitt”, if you know your German means “cut”, because it is a cut down pour of beer, that is “better than nothing”, at least according to Bohumil Hrabal, or was it Karel Čapek, when he wasn’t inventing the word “robot”?

And the colonial history of the beer gardens of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe was the subject of research for Prof Maurice Hutton of the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester who shared some findings for The Conversation:

The more picturesque beer gardens began to emerge in the 1950s, reflecting the developmental idealism of Hugh Ashton. The Lesotho-born anthropologist was educated at the Universities of Oxford, London and Cape Town, and took up the new directorship of African administration in Bulawayo in 1949. He was tuned into new anthropological ideas about social change, as well as developmental ideas spreading through postwar colonial administrations – about “stabilising” and “detribalising” African workers to create a more passive and productive urban working class. He saw a reformed municipal beer system as a key tool for achieving these goals. Ashton wanted to make the beer system more legitimate and the venues more community-building. He proposed constructing beer garden complexes with trees, rocks, games facilities, food stalls and events like “traditional dancing”. So the atmosphere would be convivial and respectable, but also controllable, enticing all classes and boosting profits to fund better social services. As we shall see, this strategy was full of contradictions…

Finally, like you, I am a regular reader of the Greenock Telegraph the newspaper of record of my paternal peeps. This week they publised an editorial from by the local member of the Scottish Parliament Stuart McMillan on alcohol in the workplace:

Too often there is a conception that people living with drink dependency can’t hold down a job – but when one in four people in the UK worry about their drinking, it’s clear this is a myth. I’m not suggesting 25 per cent of the adult population in the UK have an alcohol addiction. However, these figures indicate that increasing numbers of people are concerned about the impact alcohol has in their lives… For most of us, though, we don’t need specialist support. But we do need to be more open about how alcohol impacts us, and try to foster healthier habits. The popularity of alcohol-free products shows that many people are looking for alternatives – whether that’s alcohol-free beer, wine, spirits or mocktails. Locally, one idea that has been suggested to me is a ‘sober bar’ – which would give people a place to go that feels like a pub, but without the presence of alcohol.

I decided to include this piece not because I agree or disagree. Not even because health and booze is always a worthwhile conversation. But… I can’t imaging a Canadian politician writing this. Because I can think of many other alternatives to alcohol which include, say, playing a banjo or reading a book or going for a walk or staring at a bird in a tree or making a pot of tea – none of which need to simulate the drink or the pub. Which is one of my things about pricy NA not-booze. Just go for a soda. We even have a song about it.

So there you are. Staring at the little screen in your hand as the A/C hums. Until the weather breaks, please check out Boak and Bailey every Saturday. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge now that he’s retired from Monday slot… maybe. Then listen to a few of the now rarely refreshed Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on the (sometimes even but never) odd Fridays. And maybe The British Food History Podcast. Maybe? And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful newsletter, The Gulp, too.  Ben’s Beer and Badword is out there with the all the sweary Mary! And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. There is new reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer featuring visits to places like… Michigan! All About Beer has given space to some trade possy podcasts and there’s also The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast with an episode just last month!. 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 are back every month! The rest of these are largely dead. And the long standing Beervana podcast …except they have now stood down.  As has We Are Beer People. The Share looked to be back with a revival but now its gone quiet. And the Boys Are From Märzen podcast appears suspended as does BeerEdge, too. VinePair packed in Taplines as well. All dead and gone.  There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. Nope – that ended a year ago.   The Moon Under Water is gone – which is not surprising as the ask was $10 a month. Pete Brown’s one cost a fifth of that – but only had the one post. Such is life. Such is beer podcasting and newlettering… which, as Ray says, are blogs!

*Forced, I know. I’ll try to do better. My footnote game isn’t the best either. It’s the heat. Well known fact. Asides suffer in the summer. Researchers are on it.