Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that leapt out at us in the past seven days, from coolships to TikTok.

On Wednesday the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered the latest Budget (we seem to have one every couple of months these days) including something branded the ‘Brexit pubs guarantee’:

My penultimate cost of living measure concerns one of our other most treasured community institutions, the great British pub… In December, I extended the alcohol duty freeze until 1 August, after which duties will go up in line with inflation in the usual way… But today, I will do something that was not possible when we were in the EU and significantly increase the generosity of Draught Relief, so that from 1 August the duty on draught products in pubs will be up to 11p lower than the duty in supermarkets, a differential we will maintain as part of a new Brexit pubs guarantee… Madam Deputy Speaker, British ale may be warm, but the duty on a pint is frozen.

Emma McClarkin, CEO of The British Beer & Pub Association, says:

The cut to draught duty as part of the alcohol duty reform is positive and we hope that it will result in a boost for our pubs this summer… However, the fact is, our industry will be facing an overall tax hike not a reduction come August. Duty on non-draught beer will rise and the measures introduced today won’t rebalance the catastrophic impact soaring inflation and unfair energy contracts are having on both pubs and the breweries that supply them… As the 1st of April rapidly approaches, businesses are also nervously awaiting what’s next for their energy costs, and a lack of support in today’s announcement will have a direct impact on their ability to keep their lights on and doors open.

If you can slip through the paywall (sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t) there’s a good summary by Oliver Barnes at the Financial Times.

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Martha Holley-Paquette, co-founder of the Brewery of Saint Mars of the Desert in Sheffield, has written about the history and function of flat coolers AKA coolships AKA koelschips:

In the early days of industrial brewing, the post boil, pre-fermentation period must have been agonizingly long. Cooling down from the boil (100C) to fermentation temperatures in the teens likely required an overnight stand.  Not ideal when you’re dealing with a fragile liquid such as unfermented wort.  It’s the perfect place for all sorts of microscopic nasties to make their new home, fouling the flavor and longer-term stability of your beer… The needed innovation for quick cooling was to increase the surface area of the wort, creating a greater cooling surface. If the cooling vessel was also made of a material known for its heat transfer properties, all the better.  Therefore, eventually almost all coolers were built from copper, whose thermal conductivity is right at the top of the list.

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At Daft Eejit Brewing historian of European brewing Andreas Krennmair has written about the ‘court brew houses’ of Bavaria:

Even if you’ve only ever dabbled a little bit in Bavarian beer, you will have stumbled upon the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, owned by the State of Bavaria, and with a beer hall in the heart of the city. But then you look further, and realise that there’s also a Hofbräuhaus Traunstein 75 minutes outside of Munich, and then there’s of course Weißes Bräuhaus… It all actually started with a bit of a brewing crisis. Starting from 3 September 1571, brewing in Munich was totally banned.

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Three years on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic Jeff Alworth has taken a moment to reflect on the experience, and the changes it prompted:

[Here’s] a strange little development I didn’t see coming. The shutdowns didn’t entirely eliminate our desire to get out of the house. Vacation travel is exploding. We see some of the consequences in that trend spilling over into beer. Even when they’re not on a beach, people want to feel like they are. The only unalloyed positive trend in beer is imports, almost exclusively Mexican imports. AB InBev’s craft strategy has mostly been a wash except for one product, their Kona Big Wave, which is about to become a million-barrel beer… This phenomenon is happening in the UK, too. One of the hottest new beers is Madrí—which looks and tastes like a crisp Spanish lager filled with the sunshine of Valencia. But it was actually an invention of Molson Coors, brewed in Burton. People hunger for that sunshine, though, so having a glassful in a pub on a dreary day is like going on a tiny vacation. 

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At Punch Danny Chau announces the return of the term ‘dank’ to describe a certain type of IPA, with quotes from the aforementioned Mr Alworth:

“Dank,” even at its peak as a complimentary term, never lost its connection to revulsion, that sense of unease and intrigue that simultaneously pushes you away and pulls you closer. The dankest IPAs conjure the aroma of cannabis, but also find a secondary connection to weed in their lingering bitterness, a jolt to the system that might as well be psychoactive. The hazy IPA—which leans heavily on dry-hopping to draw out the fruitiness of the new-generation hops, but balances those flavors through a soft texture—could be seen as a balm for the burnout of a palate-wrecked hops enthusiast. For your years of service walking through the pine forests covered in sap, here is your reward: a brew that looks and tastes like a mimosa.

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For VinePair Aaron Goldfarb highlights a cultural trend we’d never otherwise have noticed: TikTok videos about craft beer dads using Untappd. It’s a reminder, if nothing else, that the idea of the youthful craft beer hipster is not a stereotype that necessarily rings true in 2023:

To these teenage and young adult TikTokers, their Dads Untappd beer geekery is from another generation. Even for craft beer fans, we have to admit the days of it being the hip, new thing, enjoyed strictly by a young cognoscenti, are well over. Craft beer is as mainstream as can be, now sold at supermarkets and strip mall Applebee’s, at gas stations and professional sporting events. What was, just a decade ago, the signifier of a drinker who enjoyed the flavorful, the obscure, the anti-corporate, the artisan, the craft of quality beverages, is now seen as something else: a dorky pursuit of older guys with mortgages, respectable jobs, and comfortable New Balance sneakers.

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Finally, from Twitter, some valuable advice…

Finishing up my @SIBA_BeerX presentation, which you can catch on The Hop Yard Stage at 2:15-3pm on Thursday. "Taking the leap from Homebrewer to professional" will contain much truth about how hard running a brewery (or any business) is in the current climate. pic.twitter.com/9wwW3vfxA1

— Andy Parker (@tabamatu) March 14, 2023

…and from Mastodon:

For more good reading check out Alan McLeod’s round-up from Thursday.

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that leapt out at us in the past seven days, from Belgian brewers to Budweiser.

First, some news, from the ‘you love to see it’ file. Developers who knocked down the historic Punch Bowl Inn in Lancashire have been fined and given a year to rebuild it, brick-by-brick, at an estimated cost of £1.5 million. As the Guardian reports…

District Judge Alex Boyd said the ruling would act as a deterrent to others considering illegal demolitions. “The purpose of these requirements is to protect the building for current and future generations to enjoy.”

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In the latest edition of his excellent newsletter David Jesudason writes about the perfect East End desi pub and his outrage about its omission from previous pub guides:

The Sam & Nam… has brown wooden floorboards, panelling and a long bar (with coat hooks) with a terrace that offers unforgettable views of the Thames from the north bank. It’s so close to the river that when a boat rushes past you can hear the waves lap against the sea wall. Near to the Overground (Wapping) it has a diverse clientele and when I visit there’s a mixture of Punjabi, Hindi and English being spoken… Unlike most desi pubs, it doesn’t serve food – it’s like an old East End pub – I even think there’s a criminal element here but for the normal punter there’s no chance of trouble. If anything it means there’s always drama and the regulars have stories to tell – sometimes the gossip is from Indian villages.

(There’s a twist and lots to think about.)

Here’s a round-up of all the writing about beer and pubs we’ve found interesting in the past week, from ‘plubs’ to Guinness purism.

Those with an eye on sustainability have long argued that the UK would benefit from bringing back bottle deposits, encouraging consumers to put containers into the recycle-reuse system. It seems to work well in Germany, among other places, where it’s not uncommon to see freelance litter pickers collecting bottles from the street. Scotland has attempted to lead the way but, so far, the scheme has attracted controversy, as reported by the BBC:

One of Scotland’s most recognisable drinks brands is among hundreds which have not signed up to a controversial new bottle recycling scheme… Dougal Sharp, the founder of Innis and Gunn, questioned the legality of the scheme and raised concerns about its costs to businesses and consumers… A total of 664 producers had signed up to the deposit return scheme by the Tuesday deadline… It was initially estimated that about 4,500 producers would need to register… However First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs that number had now been revised to “below 2,000”.

A key point, though, is that the largest multinationals have signed up. As with tax administration that’s important because it covers off the largest part of the market with relatively few touchpoints.

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Liam K at Beer (History), Food, Travel has started a cool new project: ‘100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects’. He admits this was directly inspired by Eoghan Walsh’s similar series on Brussels from last year, which in turn was a riff on something the British Museum did years ago. It’s a good format, well worth borrowing, and Liam’s already given us several great entries. This is from the third in the series:

Unlike bottle labels, which are a relatively common find for the small number of Irish breweries that survived into the first few decades of the 20th century, cask labels seem to be much rarer. This is of course because they were produced – and needed – in smaller quantities, and because they ultimately ended up back in the brewery who issued them or they became detached from the casks during handling or cleaning, but they do become available at times and facsimiles litter the internet on various sites, perhaps from stock acquired from closed breweries. It is at this point even difficult to know which breweries used them and which used coloured rims to differentiate their various beers – like Guinness did – or used other methods. This relatively rare survivor measures 164mm (6 7⁄16″) in diameter and possibly dates from the late 1920s or the 1930s.

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