Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that grabbed our attention in the past week, from election pledges to ‘earthiness’.
We normally put some news here, up top, but not much has been going on. There was something on Thursday though, wasn’t there? Oh, yes, a General Election. Labour won it rather convincingly (terms and conditions apply) in case you somehow missed the coverage.
We’ve been around long enough to know that elections rarely change anything overnight and that pubs and beer are often way down the agenda after, say, the health service, or the education system. Still, we’ll be watching with interest to see if anything comes of the new administration’s pledge to “give communities a strong new ‘right to buy’ beloved community assets to revamp high streets and end the blight of empty premises”.
There’s commentary from Keith Flett (left) and the Pub Curmudgeon (right) if you want more context.
For Pellicle Katie Mather has written about a pub at Pendleton, Lancashire, called The Swan With Two Necks which, she argues, is perfect:
But pubs don’t just become perfect on their own. The Dilworths know this more than most. They’ve been running The Swan With Two Necks for 37 years, and over that time they’ve seen their fair share of changes sweep over their idyllic little countryside pub… “We opened at 10.30am on Tuesday the 25th of August, 1987,” Steve says, his sharp memory for exactitudes leaving no room for doubt. “I remember it like it was yesterday. It was yesterday, as far as I’m concerned.”… Of course, Christine had been right by his side for the big moment. “Here I was, only 23, skinny as a rake… I had a blue leather suit on, my hair all permed,” she tells me. “They were mortified!” The village had been dubious about a young couple taking on such a traditional pub and in their interview the pub co. had admitted they’d wanted an older couple to take it on. “It was funny though, after we’d only been here a week it just felt so right.”
In a follow-up discussion with Katie on BlueSky we pondered on whether it might be possible to visit all the Swans With Two Neckses in the country. WhatPub suggests there are 9 of them, if you also include Swans With Two Nickses. We’ll start with the Bristol one and see how we go.
Industry journalist Glynn Davis has an excellent interview with Mark Williams, CEO of Keystone Brewing, which is in turn part of the Breal Group. Breal has been buying up struggling UK breweries for a couple of years now – Black Sheep, Purity, Brew by Numbers and Brick so far. The interview is interesting because it’s provides so much detail on numbers, and on Breal’s longer-term plans:
Breal Group, is not going to shy away from this fact as he reveals clearly in numbers and money terms that the company has a plan to build a business with £100 million of sales by the end of 2028, which involves it adding £70 million of additional revenue from further acquisitions. And then it intends to sell the business… “We’ll have a portfolio of desirable aspirational brands that creates value for a later buyer. It will be a regionally national operation,” he says, adding that Keystone is on the lookout for breweries that are ideally solvent to fill in the gaps on the map between its existing breweries… the targets are more likely to be regional brewers – rather than ‘craft’ brewers – with at least £10 million of sales as Williams reveals he is talking to two breweries that would add £20 million in revenues. He foresees three or four acquisitions in total that will include pubs in the deals as he would ideally look to have 25-30% of sales generated through the company’s own outlets.
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We visited Poole a few weeks ago and found quite a few pleasant pubs but didn’t really get round to writing up most of that trip. Fortunately, Scott Spencer at Micropub Adventures has done a much better job at exploring and taking notes on the micropubs, taprooms and bars of Dorset in his latest post:
A short bus ride towards Poole brings me next to the Knight Life Taphouse which opened in December 2021 in a former bank. The brewery itself is located in Bournemouth. A great vibrant decor inside which is quirky and unusual… A range of their own beers were being served, and love the idea of the spray cans instead of pump clips on the bar. Such a unique feature. 11 beers all on keg, 9 of them being their own. Tried 2 of their sour beers here starting with Pie Sub Lime, a tasty and tart key lime pie sour. Secondly was True Lovers Ink, a fruity blackberry pastry sour, delicious.
But is it just us that struggled to parse Pie Sub Lime without seeing the unappetising word ‘slime’?
It’s not likely we’ll make it to a Munich beer garden this year so we enjoyed Franz Hofer’s write-up of a visit to the Gutshof Menterschwaige, an out-of-town Garten with stories swirling around it:
The short walk from the [Waldwirtschaft] to the Menterschwaige takes you down a path toward the foot bridge spanning the Isar, and then up to a wooded trail along the embankment high above the Isar. It’s this kind of walk that gives you a sense of how the topography of the Isar Valley favoured the sinking of beer cellars from Munich all the way up to Bad Tölz at the foot of the Alps. The cellars no longer store beer, but the stands of trees still cast their shade over the cellars for those of us who enjoy the respite of the beer garden… The chime of clinking glasses in the distance fill the evening air, a telltale sign that the Menterschwaige isn’t far off. Villas line the path that lead to the Menterschwaige, a onetime estate of the Wittelsbach dynasty. A small Swiss-style hut stands just off to the side of the beer garden… It’s this rather unassuming chalet that contributes to the Menterschwaige’s latter-day allure, for it’s here that King Ludwig I is said to have met Lola Montez for their nightly trysts. (That’s the same King Ludwig whose marriage celebration in 1810 occasioned the first Oktoberfest.) Hold that thought till we get a beer.
At Substack Jen Blair has some interesting thoughts on the language we use to describe the flavours and aromas in beer:
From time to time, oft-used flavor descriptors will make me stop and think, “But what does that mean exactly? What are we trying to convey? What does it mean to me when I use it?” More recently, that descriptor has been “earthy.”… The thought popped up when I was recording a podcast episode with my cohost and owner of Pilot Brewing, Rachael Hudson.5 We were discussing hop growing regions and flavor descriptions of hops when I briefly derailed the conversation by asking Rachael what she thought “earthy” conveyed. Like me, she had a hard time breaking it down further. It’s not geosmin, exactly. It’s not necessarily mushroomy or moldy. Is it decay? I’m not sure… Before I dive into the research I did, I’d like to point out something that I think a lot of us get stuck on, including me. Aroma is adiaphorous – it is neither good nor bad. Its molecular structure is neither good nor bad. Aromas are – for the most part – neither beneficial nor detrimental.
Finally, from social media, let’s all go to Flaming Moe’s…
For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.
4 replies on “News, nuggets and longreads 6 July 2024: A Very British Coup”
I’m surprised that there are only nine pubs called the Swan with Two Necks/Nicks nationally, given that there are a couple in, pardon the pun, my neck of the woods (the southern edge of Greater Manchester). Looking at WhatPub, most are in the North/North Midlands, which is equally surprising given the origin of the name, which brings to mind swan upping on the Thames.
Why does the swan have two necks?
It is a corruption of the Swan With two Nicks, which has something to do with putting nicks in the beak of a swan to show that they were royal property. Something like that.
Fanx!