Dear readers: if our calculations are correct, you will receive this blog post on Saturday morning.
(We wrote most of it on Thursday before heading off on our grand tour of the North.)
→ We can’t claim to have had anything to do with this one (unlike Dogbolter) but it seems another seminal beer which has a starring role in our book — Brendan Dobbin’s Yakima Grande Pale Ale — is making a return from the dead. Tandleman has all the details here.
→ Saved to Pocket this week is this piece from All About Beer on British family brewers and historic brewing by Adrian Tierney-Jones.
→ This 1905 essay/lecture on ‘The Popular Type of Beer’ (via @YvanSeth) is worth a look in light of ongoing questions about the historic importance (or otherwise) of beer clarity:
I think it is pretty well agreed that an ideal beer for modern taste must have the following characteristics:—
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Brilliancy which is not dimmed by cooling.
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Low alcoholic strength.
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Good condition with a permanent head.
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A clean, fairly full, and mature character, a delicate hop flavour, and pleasant aroma.
→ Phil Mellows’ portrait of a distinctly old-fashioned Welsh pub is highly evocative: “After the smell of wet dog, what struck me first about the place was that, in 21st century terminology, it’s a micropub.”
→ They’re making a film about the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken starring Anthony Hopkins as the wealthy brewing heir. But it turns out it’s not the first — Rutger Hauer had a go at the role a couple of years ago.
→ After a week of sometimes fraught discussion about the intricacies of beer cellaring techniques, here’s another nugget from Ed.
→ We’re hosting the 88th beer blogging session on Friday 6 June, with the topic of ‘traditional beer mixes’: if you blog, get involved.
One reply on “News, Nuggets & Longreads 17/05/2014”
Very interesting article on bottling beer, which I have run into before on a trawl through the Brewer’s Journal. The focus is on bottled beers, and the interesting statement is made that when bottle-conditioned beers are consumed new, they carry a larger yeast sediment that renders the bottle cloudy without careful decanting – it is the same today. With beers which stood for much longer, as those exported to India, the yeast has a way of being absorbed into the beer and/or sticking to the bottom – this is really true as anyone knows with long experience of storing beers for a long time. Such beer would be clearer. While the article states that cask beer is not reliable as to clarity, there is no question that the great majority of writers and observers expressed the desire for clear beer much earlier. Countless citations can be shown from the 1800’s (and earlier).
Gary