Here’s everything we posted in the last month — not a bad run, considering we spent a week on holiday in the middle.
→ Proposed Public House — As ‘new towns’ and Corbusier-inspired estates were built in the rubble and green field of post-War Britain, pubs were a focus of debate.
→ Notable Pubs #2: The Crooked House — In Himley, just over the Staffordshire border near Dudley, is one of the weirdest pubs in Britain.
→ Sarah Warman: Influencer — Is there anyone talking or writing about beer with anything like the ability of Jamie Oliver or Delia Smith to mention a product and immediately cause it to sell out across the country? We reckon Sarah Warman might be the one to watch. (Literally.)
→ Brewery Numbers and Employment — The boom in the number of breweries in the UK has caused a buzz but isn’t the only important number: how many people are actually employed in making beer?
→ Session #100: The Return of Porter — Because the 100th Session is a special occasion, and with the kind permission of our publishers, Aurum Press, we’ve decided to share a slightly edited extract from chapter four of our book Brew Britannia. (And Reuben Gray’s round-up of all the session posts is here.)
→ The Talbot Arms, Settle — Situated off the High Street behind the market place the Talbot is visually striking: a wall of white with the pub’s name in huge black letters and an unusual sign of a white dog which looks both hip and yet also strangely medieval.
→ Moor’s Bristol Takeover — To break the journey back from Yorkshire to Cornwall, we stopped over in Bristol and spent an evening accidentally immersed in Moor Beer.
→ Trousered on Craft — Stumbling home the other night, we reached a conclusion: the biggest problem with ‘craft’ beer (def. 2) is that it gets us more drunk than ‘normal’ beer.
→ Doom Bar and the Question of Origin — It’s official: thanks to Lucy Britner at Just Drinks we now know that Sharp’s Doom Bar — the bottled stuff, at least — has been being brewed outside Cornwall since 2013.
→ What do we Mean by Variety? — When we’re asked what we want from British beer culture we tend to say ‘Variety,’ but what exactly does that mean?
→ Ask for it by Name! — These days, it would seem odd to go into a pub and simply ask for ‘a pint of lager’ or a ‘half of bitter’ but that, we think, is a fairly recent development.
→ The Story Behind That Photograph — You know the one: a hand wrapped around a grubby straight-sided pint glass, its contents (London Pride? John Smith’s?) being tipped into the mouth of an anonymous male drinker.
→ Beer Writing Clichés — We thought it might be a good idea to compile a list of beer writing clichés as part of our very occasional series of posts on writing style. (N.B. The most comments we’ve ever received on a single post.)
→ Saisons Pt. 8: The Last Two — One a gusher, the other a classy contender.
→ Beer Clarity, Ornamental Glass & Mirrors in the 1890s — In her essay ‘Presenting the Perfect Pint: Drink and Visual Pleasure in Late Nineteenth-Century London’ Fiona Fisher argues that judging beer by its appearance was a product of a period when public houses were smartened up and glasses replaced tankards.
→ News, Nuggets and Longreads 6 June | 20 June | 27 June
→ On Facebook we gave a short review of And Union’s Friday ‘Uber IPA’. (No login required.)
→ We Tweeted a load of stuff like this:
https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey/status/615900549649666048
→ And, finally, we also despatched c.1000 words of exclusive ‘stuff’ (notes on Bundobust in Leeds, for example) in our email newsletter — sign up here.