Here’s all the writing about pubs and beer that caught our attention in the past week, including two mentions for pickle beer.
First, a few bits and pieces about what’s going on right now in brewing and hospitality.
- Steve Dunkley, chronicler of recent UK brewery closures, has now added commentary to those numbers: “When the price of a pint has risen by 25% while people’s spending cash has dropped, it’s a double whammy.”
- In her newsletter, The Gulp, writer and bar-owner Katie Mather offers a similar view: “It’s the middle of January 2023 and… hospitality businesses are counting up their Christmas and New Year takings, falling short of their targets, and closing up shop.”
- For the BBC Dearbail Jordan reports that the UK economy performed surprisingly well in November: “The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said pubs and restaurants also boosted growth as people went out to watch the football.”
- SIBA has launched a new tracker for monitoring brewery numbers. There are the usual quibbles about how the numbers are derived but as another data sat, consistent within itself, it’s good to have.
All of which leads us nicely into…
‘British Drinking Culture, Meet Cost of Living Crisis’ is a great headline for Lauren O’Neill’s piece for Vice. She spoke to people out and about in London to find out how the economic squeeze is affecting their spending on booze:
I decided to conduct what I believe is scientifically known as a “vibe check”. I hit up high streets in south London’s Clapham (notoriously the home of many chain bars, and many, many rugby lads in fancy dress) and Soho to ask punters how the cost of living crisis is affecting the way they go boozing, and whether in times of hardship – perhaps especially in times of hardship – there is anything at all that can get in between Brits and their love of drinking… The answer to that second question, in short, is basically “absolutely not”. In general, while everyone I speak to says they’re seeing costs rising, it isn’t putting them off going out.
There’s some especially interesting stuff about fixed-cost events such as bottomless brunches, which make budgeting easier. Is there any way for pubs to legally offer something similar?
In the second edition of his newly pub-focused newsletter David Jesudason tells the story of The Windmill in Croydon:
In 2011, Darshan Barot visited the Windmill, was greeted warmly by the punters and decided that being a pub landlord would give his family a better life. He was running a post office seven miles away in Coulsdon but he wanted a business he and his wife, Dipta, could run and, most importantly, stamp their distinct desi identity on… The pub before Barot took over was described to me by former Croydon resident, Libby Bradshaw, as “not exactly rough, but not not rough”.
That’s an interesting category of pub, isn’t it? They might read as rough depending on your sensitivity, or how well your face fits; or they might feel like the absolute ideal, if you know how to navigate them.
Courtney Iseman has noticed a perhaps counterintuitive trend in drinks other than beer: a focus on decadence, luxury and silliness. And she asks ‘Hang on, is drinking supposed to be… fun?’
2023 feels like a good time to lean into the fun on the inside, too. That means, let’s stop fighting all the wacky trends… I totally understand why it was once worthwhile to be a sort of guard for some rigid distinctions in craft beer. It had to differentiate itself from macro beer, it had to earn respect, and styles had to form. I still think some of that should stand—in fact, I’d argue for a split: let’s enjoy and educate consumers on styles in their original forms, with all the traditional methods and ingredients that define them and make them special, and also wild variations on those styles, whatever brewers dare to dream up. Even if that means extracts.
How can we resist an article that opens with the provocative statement: “Listen: Pickle beers are already a thing.” For Craft Beer & BrewingJoe Stange digs into the trend for putting “pickle juice” (the liquid from a jar of gherkins) into beer:
Even if we hadn’t noticed this trend anecdotally, an Untappd search turns up more than 1,400 pickle-themed beers… To ask why people are making pickle beers is to ask the wrong question. Indeed, that is usually the wrong question here, in our Special Ingredient department. This is where we set aside our love of sublime things such as great drinkability and Reinheitsgebot purity to embrace mad science. Insert Ian Malcolm: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” We could roll that quote like a news-channel chyron over these articles, and it would always fit.
If you’re not already following Lisa Grimm however in whichever ways you prefer to follow people, now’s a good time to start. In 2023, she’s going be putting together what she calls her Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs, starting with The Bald Eagle:
For the uninitiated, Phibsborough is one of the World’s Coolest Neighbourhoods™, at least according to Time Out… Although I am not personally cool enough to live in Phibsborough itself, I’m in and out of it several times a day – it’s just a short walk up the canal for me, so I get all the Cool Neighbourhood benefits without the full Cool Neighbourhood price. And Cool Neighbourhoods need cool pubs, but it’s all about being just the right level of cool, and not trying too hard – and that (finally) brings me to what I love about The Bald Eagle.
Finally, from Mastodon…
…and Twitter:
For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.
One reply on “News, nuggets and longreads 14 January 2023: Story of the blues”
Not often I see even a passing reference to the name of the place I lived from 3 to 8 and 13 to 18, where I walked the dog on the Downs and went to church with my parents and bought 7″ singles at the electricians and shocked the neighbours by growing my hair and shocked them again by getting a buzzcut and once (in the long-haired period) played flute improvisations sitting on the war memorial… I don’t think I ever drank beer there, though – I used to meet people from school in the Railway in Purley – so that’s about it for Coulsdon. The Windmill (Croydon) does ring a bell – and I don’t think it’s the kind of place a 17-year-old novice would venture, even back then when 17-year-old novices could get served, which supports the idea it was “rough but not rough rough”. There’s a couple of decades between my period and the one David J’s talking about, though.