News, Nuggets and Longreads 04/01/2014

This is what we’re using Saturday mornings for now: round-ups, snippets, and things that don’t warrant full blog posts of their own. First, some news.

Weird Beard Brewing revealed that another London brewery, Camden Town, had threatened legal action over a perceived trademark infringement. We’re not trademark lawyers and don’t know the full story, so we keep our nose out of these things, but we can see Camden’s point — what if a small Cornish brewery launched a beer called St Austell? Camden’s heavy-handed approach, however, is undoubtedly very bad for their image.

A long read

The Voice of America website has a long article on craft brewing in South Africa (via @beerhasahistory on Twitter). If you can ignore its offhand attempts to define craft beer, and the assumption that ‘craft beer’ is necessarily ‘good’, it’s an interesting glimpse into yet another burgeoning brewing scene. Highlight? This Afrikaans idiom:

“I think people think I’m a spoilt brat. I think that’s what a big part of it comes down to. You know: ‘Daddy gave her a brewery; sy’t met haar gat in die botter geval…’” [She fell with her bottom in the butter]

Around the Blogoshire

• Leigh Linley asks where all the great UK beer podcasts are.
• Tandleman reflects on draught Bass (‘the ghost of its former self’).
• Craig Heap provides intelligence on the location of Brewdog’s imminent Cardiff bar: like Bristol, the city is soon to have a distinct ‘craft beer run’.
• Neil ‘Leeds Brew’ Gardner provides details of the ‘keeping beer’ he and his other half brewed on New Year’s Day. This time, it was a Flanders Oud Bruin. Inspiring!

If you’ve spotted any other interesting blog posts (other than those you’ve written yourself…) let us know in the comments below.