Categories
Blogging and writing

Everything We Wrote in February 2017

A bar counter with hand pumps: The Month That Was February 2017

We missed a few days in February because of the pressures of real life — family, flu, work — but still managed to knock out a few decent posts from beer reviews to Belgian bars.

We warmed up for the month by reviewing a bottled beer from Vibrant Forest, the stars of last year’s Great British Beer Festival for us: ‘Once we’d accepted that there was to be no grapefruit festival as advertised, we enjoyed it for what it was…


Macro image: 'Hops' with illustration of hop cones, 1970s.

More for the record than anything we rounded up responses to a Guardian article suggesting that Brexit might already be stamping on the toes of UK craft brewers and added a few thoughts of our own:

At the root of the Buy British school of thought it seems to us there are a couple of wrongheaded thoughts. First, we think some people believe the popularity of pale, hoppy American-influenced beers threatens the very existence of traditional English bitter — that they are the thin end of a wedge which will inevitably lead to total domination… but who can seriously say they struggle to get a pint of something brown and old-school in Britain in 2017?


Bullseye Brown -- autumnal vintage beer label. (Detail.)

For the 120th edition of The Session (which takes it to ten years, by the way) we let Joe Tindall’s wide-open choice of topic, brown beer, inspire a bit of whimsy:

Some people will tell you brown isn’t a flavour, but it is. It’s why you sear meat, and about 50 per cent of the meaning of toast.  (N.B. black is also a flavour.)

Joe’s round up of all the contributions is here.

Categories
Blogging and writing

Everything We Wrote in January 2017

From Golden Pints to Victorian faux-lager, here’s a summary of our blog posts from the last month with updates and links out to other people’s follow-ups where we spotted them.

We kicked off 2017 by reviewing every Golden Pints post we could get our hands on and using them to put together a To Do list of breweries whose beers we wanted to look out for in the coming months. We’ve added a few new items and links since originally posting.


'Beer Cooperage' -- vintage illustration of beer casks.

When Cloudwater announced its intention to cease producing cask ale it got us talking between ourselves and we wrote that up as a breakfast debate: is it the end of the world, or nothing to worry about? Peter McKerry rounded up every post and article on this much-discussed topic.


Something moved us to write a couple of hundred words about the pleasure of tending the fire in a pub:

We didn’t mind when it cracked like a whip and spat sparks our way — that was all part of the pleasure. Fires and the sea are two things we can stare at for hours, and if an open fire in a pub on a cold day is a joy, one you’ve had a hand in lighting is ten times better again.

Rather to our surprise, people seemed to like it so we will try to be less shy about indulging such observational whimsy in future.

Categories
Blogging and writing

The Month That Was: December 2016 — Dinner Parties, Wheat Beer, Penzance Pubs

Guise dancers in a Penzance pub at Christmas.

Despite a flipping great big gap where Christmas fell we still managed a decent number of posts in December, covering all sorts of topics from wheat beer to Penzance pubs.

Sir Sydney Nevil's autobiography (page spread).

Our first duty was responding to the Session topic set by Stan Hieronymus: who, living or dead, would we like to invite to a beer dinner party? Stan’s round-up is here and we were rather honoured to be nominated as guests in Mark Lindner’s contribution.


After a trip to a wintry St Austell we wondered what if anything it means when a pub starts selling tinned lager, reaching a somewhat optimistic conclusion. (We have since worried that we got the wrong end of the stick or might have dobbed the pub into the pub company, which wasn’t our intention.)

Categories
Blogging and writing

The Month That Was: November 2016

November 2016 (text over picture of pub ceiling).

November was a moderately productive month with a smattering of posts that we reckon stood out as a bit better than usual, plus all the side orders dished up on Facebook and Twitter. (Do give us a like/follow.)

A quick side note: December being the month of lists, round-ups and predictions, we’re going to be putting together a Golden Pints piece as usual but, this time, it’s going in our email newsletter rather than on the blog. Sign up if you’re interested in knowing which was our favourite crown cap design (UK) and to find out who gets the award for best use of grapefruit juice. But now, back to business.


We started the month, like almost everyone else, by having opinions about Anthony Bourdain’s opinions about beer: ‘STOP TELLING PEOPLE THE BEER THEY ARE DRINKING IS THE WRONG BEER UNLESS THEY SPECIFICALLY ASK YOU FOR ADVICE!’

Categories
Blogging and writing

The Month That Was: October 2016

Here’s everything we wrote in the last month, from pondering on unfined beer to deathtrap breweries.

We started off with an attempt to decipher what the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was trying to achieve by including an essay on unfined beer in the latest edition of the Good Beer Guide:

The real point was intended to be, we think, that (a) CAMRA knows about this stuff on the outer fringes of ‘craft beer’; (b) it acknowledges that good beer can be made this made way; and (c) it is watching with keen interest and an open attitude.


People used to enjoy spitting in pubs, and the pubs were fine with it. The young barmaids charged with cleaning up after them? Not so much.


Interior of 1960s pub with colour palette at bottom.

Tandleman shared some glorious images of 1960s pub makeovers which prompted us to conjur up some colour swatches — what colour should a pub be?


We kicked off a new round of Magical Mystery Pour with beers chosen by David ‘Broadford Brewer’ Bishop. The first post this month was about Magic Rock Inhaler and Rooster’s Fort Smith; the second was Durham Brewery Bombay 106:

A couple of years ago Durham Brewery was all the rage thanks in part, it seemed to us, to a certain generosity with samples for bloggers, Tweeters and raters. We had a few of their beers here and there and found that they ranged from decent (White Stout) to shoddy. So we were pleased at the opportunity to give them another go although our hopes weren’t high.