Here’s a summary of our blog posts from last month, and a few bonus links to some highlights of 2013.
[ezcol_1third]
[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]We began the month by rounding up all the long posts written by our peers to keep us company on 30 November. (Our next long post, on the subject of pub preservation, is due on Saturday 1 March.)[/ezcol_2third_end]
[ezcol_1third]
[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]We reviewed Leigh Linley’s Great Yorkshire Beer, suggesting it might make a good Christmas present.[/ezcol_2third_end]
- Magic Rock’s Salty Kiss gose with grapefruit was our top beer of 2013, as we revealed in our Golden Pints nominations.
- The Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood had their 50th anniversary at the beginning of December, prompting us to ponder the new fashionableness of wood in brewing.
- We listed our top beer-related Tweets of 2013.
- For the Session #82, we recounted a second-hand tale of Jags and shooters we were once told in a pub.
- We were delighted to unearth an extract from a nineteenth century military memoir which talked about India pale ale and its role in the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857.
- Reflecting on our struggles to talk about ‘off flavours’ with sufficient precision for some readers, we vowed to do some homework.
- We put together a suggested beer’n’pub history crawl of Southwark, a part of London with lots of important sites, and some good beer to boot. (Worth checking out the comments for suggested additions.)
- A seasonal mild from St Austell surprised and delighted us.
- We imagined what our Golden Pints nominations might have looked like in 1993.
- Our first sortie into the newly released British Library public domain image archive yielded a gallery of inns of old York.
- For a brief time in 1984, cask ale was more expensive, on average, than keg. Some interesting comments on this post, mostly questioning the study we quoted and/or the conclusions we drew from it.
- Weird Beard Brew Co earned themselves a place on our ‘continue to buy’ list with a couple of interesting bottled beers.
- A proposed media agenda for beer writing in 2014 seemed to tickle people. We wrote it very quickly with no serious intent, but perhaps, with hindsight, we were feeling frustrated at the same old issues coming up time and again.
- Does beer need editing? If our experience in Bristol in the last week is anything to go by (blog posts to follow), the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’
- A small gallery of tiled pub frontages prompted commenters to point us to some other beauties on Google Street View. That, in turn, inspired us to put together a Street View pub crawl based on a 1975 pub guide.
- Our collection of tatty old beer guides and pamphlets continues to grow.
- Reflecting on the Golden Pints and the tendency for the same brewery and beer names to show up in multiple lists, we concluded that good beer is nothing without distribution.
And as for 2013…
These are the most read posts and pages of the year.
- Our supermarket beer guide has picked up lots of passing trade from Google searchers, suggesting that there is a market for independent advice on navigating the booze aisle.
- A ‘listicle’ of Top Ten Cornish Pubs for 2013 has been viewed thousands of times, but then that might be because we keep Tweeting the link at anyone who asks for advice.
- Our piece on the Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt was very popular, presumably as people tried to work out which beers were especially worth seeking out. (We hear it is not running next year. Boo!)
- We asked ‘What Does IPA Mean?‘ back in April, and pondered how the term has had multiple meanings overs the years. But it turns out lots of people are just puzzled by the abbreviation.
- Researching our book, we asked people for their recollections of the days when Brewdog were widely adored. Lots of people chipped in, including Brewdog’s own James Watt.
- When we go anywhere new, we look for pub crawls and guides by local bloggers. Our ‘directory’ needs filling out, but people seem to be finding it useful.
- Our suggestion in August that perhaps it was time for bloggers and writers to stop acting as if they’re chums with brewers and get more critical apparently struck a chord. (We’re taking our own advice in 2014.)