Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time we’ve got Spanish-ish lager, sober kids, and AI art.
First, a check-in on the trend towards lower alcohol consumption with a few interesting ‘signals’:
- We’re quite taken with the buzzphrase ‘zebra striping’ to describe the habit of alternating alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks during a session in the pub, as reported via Beer Today: “A quarter of UK drinkers are alternating between alcoholic and alcohol-free drinks when they visit pubs and bars, according to a new industry report produced by research consultancy KAM and alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint.”
- From the US Jeff Alworth shares numbers on alcohol consumption among “high school seniors” (sixth-formers): “The kids may be up to no good, but they’re not sitting in the parking lot on the hood of their Mustangs with a Bud and a Marlboro like they were in the 70s anymore.”
- And at the BBC Mariko Oi reports on the Asahi’s attempts to court sober young people and shares another lovely idiom, nommunication, which is “a combination of the Japanese word for drink, nomu, and communication”.
The news story that grabbed our attention this week was about Madrí, the faux-Spanish beer brand invented for the UK market. There’s no denying it’s a popular beer but the question is always whether those who buy it (a) think it’s an authentic Spanish brand and/or (b) believe it’s brewed in Spain. Now, as part of its own UK marketing push, Spanish brewery Estrella Galicia has decided to go on the attack:
Aitor de Artaza, international managing director of the Spanish brewer, said a “lack of transparency” among UK beer companies was confusing consumers in pubs and supermarkets alike… Mr de Artaza said: “There is a lack of transparency because they use a big famous city in Spain, but they don’t produce here. This is confusing for the consumer… They did a very nice job in terms of marketing, that’s for sure. But it’s a little bit tricky because people think they are drinking a Spanish beer but it’s not. They are not very clear and not, to my point of view, very honest.”
The Telegraph article is paywalled but is paraphrased at The Week among other places. It has prompted a wider discussion of the problem of authenticity and transparency when it comes to ‘world beer’ brands brewed in the UK, like Moretti and Cobra. Our view is, as it has been for a while, that there’s nothing wrong with brewing foreign brands locally – it’s better for the environment, if nothing else. But if it doesn’t matter where it’s brewed, as breweries tend to claim in their defence, then state it clearly on the packaging.
People have been trying to lever artificial intelligence into beer for a while now, using it to generate gimmicky recipes, for example, or in analytical processes. But one area where it has obvious potential is in quickly and cheaply generating unique artwork for the many one-off beers craft breweries tend to produce. For Pellicle Rob MacKay has spoken to people in the industry who are using AI to create art for cans and bottles, and asks… should they?
Knaresborough’s Turning Point Brew Co are among the most prolific users of AI imagery in the UK beer industry. After their long-term collaborator stopped producing illustrations for the brewery, they took the work in-house. Owner Cameron Brown began designing the labels himself, using an AI engine called Midjourney to generate images… “The problem we have is making thirty to forty new beers a year, and wanting each one to look and feel a certain way; the cost of this on our [production] scale is unrealistic,” Cameron tells me. “AI gives us a platform to still be creative, and express our desired look in a cost effective way. We’ve always had a sci-fi/futuristic look and feel to our branding, and I’m able to get great results using Midjourney in a wide range of styles.”
Chris Dyson has been exploring Castleford in West Yorkshire which has a range of interesting pubs of different types:
[In] years gone by the town boasted a multitude of pubs and three night clubs which led to it being nicknamed Cas Vegas… There are less pubs nowadays, and it didn’t take me long to find one of the most iconic, the Junction… which was less than 5 minutes walk from the station… Despite being a pub since 1882, the building was previously home to two chapels and there are reminders as you walk into the traditional interior… What draws many visitors here though is the fact that the cask beers are normally served from wooden barrels which are owned by the pub. The barrels are filled by a number of breweries who do not have their own stock…
Phil Cook at Beer Diary has been thinking about the occasionally awkward approach to humour in the beer industry, prompted by the existence of a hop variety with a silly name:
A few years ago, U.S. brewing company Fast Fashion sponsored a new hop varietal and named it “anchovy”, in a move that’s probably half in-joke turned outwards and half marketing stunt… Every brewery that uses the hop is caught between needing to riff on the name by referencing actual anchovies somehow (pizza, fishing, whatever), but also being careful to reassure potential buyers that no fish was involved in the brewing. Because of course you have to reassure people of that… Just the other day, I was pouring a customer a (lovely) brown ale called ‘Brown Corduroy’ and they made a joke of double-checking whether it was brewed with actual pants. The public have internalised the absurdity of craft beer.
Last night, back at Wiper & True’s taproom for the third time in a fortnight, we ordered a West Coast Pilsner and wondered, “What’s all this about, then?” Helpfully, Hop Culture has a piece on that very subject by Giovanni Albanese Jr. on that very subject:
In 2015, Highland Park Brewery stumbled into what has become an emerging style in craft beer: the West Coast pilsner. As Tim McDonnell, the sour brewer and wood cellar manager at Monday Night Brewing and previous brewer at Highland Park, recalls, the whole thing kind of just happened by accident… “There was an anniversary party—a cask festival—for this local LA brewery. We were invited and asked to bring a cask,” McDonnell says. “We didn’t have time to brew a new beer specifically for the event, so we had to roll with something we already had.”… McDonnell says that on the spot, they came up with the wild idea of blending a couple of beers already in the tanks.
Finally, on Instagram, we’ve been enjoying Natalie Ainscough’s pictures of historic pubs in London…
For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.
2 replies on “News, nuggets and longreads 8 June 2024: Still Life”
I think you mean Castleford not Castleton.
Oops!