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TMTW: November 2015

‘The Month That Was’ is a regular round-up of all our recent blog posts.

→ We reported on batches of bottled mild from the Midlands, Cambs/Lincs/Essex and a couple of strays from Wales and Sussex.

AN ALLEGORY OF TASTE: A MAN, BUST-LENGTH, IN A BLACK JACKET AND RED BERET, HOLDING A PASGLAS, by PETRUS STAVERENUS

→ The Pasglas was used for communal drinking games and Dutch artists of the 17th century loved to paint them.

→ Jean Van Roy of Cantillon caused a stir when he suggested climate change might be to blame for the brewery’s supply problems. (Counterpoint: No, he’s just generating PR.)

→ Hermann Muender was a German brewer who set up and ran the Harp plant in Dundalk, Ireland, in the mid-20th century; he had an interesting life.

Edwardian advertisement for Edelweiss beer: top hatted man points at beer with his diamond-topped cane.

→ We tried to map Dr Paul Bloom’s article on why people buy luxury goods to the world of ‘fancy beer’.

→ It was a bit of musical month: Dave Bartholomew asked ‘Who Drank My Beer (While I Was in the Rear)’ (1952) while Ram John Holder had the ‘Pub Crawling Blues’ (1969).

→ Can you make yourself like a particular type of beer by forcing yourself to keep trying it?

Prize bundle feat. Mikkeller book, Brew Britannia, Watney's half-pint glass, BrewDog keyring &c.

→ We’re ‘going long’ on 18 December; it’s always nice to have company and so, to encourage people to join us, we’re giving away prizes for our favourite #BeeryLongreads entry this time round. (The first entry is already in.)

The Handlebar Club, 1947.

→ Andrew Drinkwater correctly identified why the Windsor Castle is an appropriate pub for November: it’s the headquarters of the Handlebar Club.

→ We stumbled upon evidence of the word ‘craft’ loitering around the edges of the conversation from 1946: ‘Maybe it can hardly be called a craft in the strict sense, but cider-making is an interesting old country work…’

→ Bailey recounted a vivid childhood memory of bottle caps, root beer and pub cellars.

→ We reflected on a conversation with a bloke in a pub in Exeter who didn’t seem to know that Heavitree stopped brewing in the 1970s.

→ Boak gave some advice to Christmas pudding cooks passing by via Google searches on how to find barley wine. (I used Harvey’s Christmas Ale in mine in the end — Boak.)

sussex_pubs_cover_detail_672

→ Those Batsford pub guides from the 1960s are full of interesting details: here are the bits we underlined in 1965’s Sussex Pubs.

→ We want your help: did you drink in any of the theme pubs on our list, or theme pubs in general, between 1945 and 1980?

→ Does brewing tea offer a useful analogy for hopping in beer?

→ Harvey’s diddy little 275ml bottles look as if they’ve come from a dusty old pub that closed down in 1983. We offered some notes on their distinctly retro brown ale, light ale and sweet stout.

saloon_bar

→ In 1927 Ernest Selley tried to categorise the main types of pub and came up with ‘Food Taverns’, ‘Social Houses’ and ‘Drink Shops’.

→ And the year before H.V. Morton observed the hawkers and performers wandering from London pub to London pub, including a well-to-do young man with a pair of scissors.

→ Is the much-talked about hop shortage already biting? We’ve been told of one beer that’s endangered. (And, in the comments, there’s news of another.)

→ There were four weekly news round-ups stuffed with links and we also provided a couple of quotes without commentary, the best of which was probably this on light ale and lager from Len Deighton in 1965.

→ And, finally, we quietly updated our standing advice on buying Christmas gifts for beer lovers.