There are a few things going on around the Blogoshire and in the real world that we wanted to highlight.
- In our last post, we wondered whether it was time for commentators to take a more assertive stance in ‘calling out’ the industry. With perfect timing, The BeerCast posted this account of a tiff with Arran Brewery. It’s certainly entertaining, and exactly the kind of challenge we had in mind, but might it not get a bit exhausting to read this kind of thing every week?
- We were very sad to hear of the death of Mike Hall, National Chairman of the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood. Our correspondent was lucky enough to meet him at an SPBW National Executive meeting earlier this year, as part of research for the book, and enjoyed his stories of pub-going, beer-hunting and London boozing immensely.
- It’s always interesting to read comments on British beer culture from someone who isn’t wrapped up in it, and this piece on the Great British Beer Festival by Canadian beer writer Jordan St. John is no exception. Brains, he suggests, are trying too hard at ‘craft beer’; but St Austell (our local brewers) are nailing it. (Note the temporary change to the subtitle of his blog…)
- Beerenalia has posted a Top Ten Norfolk Beers as a kind of counterpart to our Top Ten Cornish ones. If anyone else feels the urge to do the same for their town or county, we and others would certainly find it useful; and the same goes for personal local pub guides.
- We’ve been busy on Facebook lately and this guide to recreating the experience of the Great British Beer Festival at home seems to have gone down well. On Twitter, a highlight (we think) has been this excerpt from a 1986 edition of 2000AD.
- And, finally… you might have noticed the blog has a new design. This new off-the-shelf theme comes with various bells and whistles including distinctive formatting for different types of post, e.g. quotations, video, audio, photo galleries, and so on. We tested the water with a quotation yesterday. What do you reckon — should we stick to ‘proper’ blogging, or mix it up a bit?
3 replies on “In Other News”
I dug out my 2000AD collection from my folks attic last night, and while I don’t have the one with that particular strip in it, I do think I have other editions of that story. It was a 14 week series called The Tomb of Terror that ran from Dec 85 to March 86. The timing is obviously right, and the artwork style and characters look bang on, as it did change prior to and again after that time. I had a look on ebay and although there were some weeklys availble from this time for a quid each, it was impossible to know which edition this strip was in, and I didn’t want to buy them all, just for one page, as I already have some of them, and this search is more beer geek related than comic fan. I then came across a best of series from 1988 which covers all of this story in 2 comics, and there was only 30 minutes left on it with no bids, so got it for £3, which I think is incredibly lucky and meant to be! This might be in colour rather than black and white, as many of the best of’s were, but will be really interesting to see the original context and how much of the text was via Camra verses original. Also possibly something nice to get blown up and framed for my brewhouse/garage. I’d be shocked if this doesn’t contain it, so will let you know once it arrives.
Fantastic — thanks, Taf!
Everything Brains and St Austell brew is craft beer and that goes for the other regionals too. It just happens to be OUR craft beer, not American craft beer.