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News, Nuggets & Longreads 12/07/2014

The Connoisseur. (Of whisky, not beer.)
From 1905. Sadly, he’s drinking whisky, not beer, but we like the image too much not to share it.

It’s time for our weekly round-up of interesting stuff from around the internet. Don’t take it too serious — not many do. Read between the lines and you’ll find the truth.

The schedule for London Beer Week (9-16 August) looks pretty impressive. If you’re a beer geek planning to visit the UK, this might help you decide where to stay and when. (Are there politics behind the fact that the site doesn’t mention this is also the week of the Great British Beer Festival…?)

→ Their beer coverage isn’t always particularly deep but this piece from Serious Eats on how beer prices are set has lots to chew on: “Typically, in a restaurant, you want to keep your food costs and so forth at 33 percent… So, a lot people simply multiply [the product cost] by 3.”

‘How To Blow $9 Billion: The Fallen Stroh Family’, from Forbes magazine. (2000 words; via Tim Holt.)

→ Back in 2011, local historian Patrick Carroll attempted to sift facts from the mass of myths and outright fibs surrounding the history of the legendary Blue Anchor pub at Helston, Cornwall. (3,500 words.)

Derek Dellinger argues that beer styles should be taken less seriously while seeming to take them quite seriously: When I pick up a bottle and there’s no style or description at all, nothing but a cute name and a government warning, I become so annoyed that I will almost never buy that beerGive me at least an idea of what the beer is — however you want to do that.” (1600 words.)

→ Emma has written about the apparently sensitive subject of women drinking alone in pubs and the harassment they sometimes experience.

Tangential pub content, but a good read anyway:

For 30 years, the Ripley Road was the go-to destination for the smart set of the day: young, athletic gentlemen at first; radical, bloomer-wearing ladies later. The ten miles between the Angel Inn at Thames Ditton and the Anchor hotel at Ripley were world-famous, and busy with cyclists on all manner of machines.

Hayley Flynn explored a well-preserved 1960’s shopping arcade in Manchester but couldn’t get into the locked-up and dormant El Patio pub. (via Pubs of Manchester Twitter | Web)

→ And, finally, does anyone know if this is actually legal..?

6 replies on “News, Nuggets & Longreads 12/07/2014”

The legality of take-away beer measures was discussed when growler stores started appearing in this country. Whole Foods interpret the law to be the same as for selling draught beer in glasses, i.e. multiples of half a pint etc. This has the entirely unsatisfactory result that, since they are not able to source two-pint bottles, they sell one and a half pints in a litre bottle, which then sloshes about and goes flat.

Every other vendor I have come across, though, argues that they are selling packaged beer, so as long as the measure is declared it’s OK.

The 5x200ml bottles pictured in the Beer Nut’s tweet would be legal by this argument, since they have caps, but since 200ml is actually a bit more than a third of a pint I don’t really see the point of them.

the two events coincided last year, Ive no idea if its deliberate or political (on whose part?), I know GBBF fell back a week in 2013, to fit in with other events already pre-booked at Olympia and has sort of stayed there, as it used to be more towards the first early weeks of August, but it cant drop back further now because then it clashes with Peterborough,who re-use the same cooling/racking equipment.

on the plus side the less people you have to listen to moaning about the lack of craft this or keg that,why arent here etc etc the better 🙂 afaiac london is big enough to support both and they dont really attract the same crowd demographics…Ill be certainly going to one and not partaking in the other 🙂

as for the flight thing, basically sample trays mostly 6 thirds or variations on same theme, aiui the limitation on what approved volumes you could sell beer dont apply if its sold in and poured out of a bottle,and plenty of places now happily sell 12oz bottle imports, so potentially yes it is a workaround as long as the decanting of the beer on the premises into the bottle doesnt alter its legal status…its the kind of thing that seems like it might be potentially full of nasty pitfalls with minimum gain, and is 14mls really that important

Oh! Interesting. Either they added it yesterday or we, as my mum would say, ‘couldn’t see it for looking at it’.

Pointed reference to GBBF as a’ cask ale festival’, though…

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