It’s Saturday morning and time for us to round-up the best writing about beer from the past week, including pints, Pilsner and pubs.
The Irish journalist Nell McCafferty has died at the age of 80 resurfacing the story of a protest she led in the 1970s, as described by Dr Christina Wade in this 2018 blog post:
McCafferty led a group of women to a Dublin pub. Here, they ordered the socially acceptable drink of brandy, and after it was served, proceeded to order a pint of Guinness… Which they were flatly refused. Refused on the account of them being women, and most especially because it was a pint. They drank their brandy, refused to pay and walked out… It was acts like this that drew attention to this horrendous practice and helped pave the way for women to happily consume their pints in pubs across the nation. However, it wasn’t until 2000 (!!!) that the Equal Status Act barred this sort of sexist discrimination.
At Daft Eejit Brewing Andreas Krennmair offers a snapshot of the competition for dominance between Vienna Lager and Pilsner at around the turn of the 20th century:
In terms of production, the largest brewery was of course Dreher Kleinschwechat, with about 610,000 hl for the brewing season 1892/1893. Pilsen on the other hand brewed 522,270 hl in the same time period. Dreher’s Hungary-based brewery in Steinbruch brewed another 400,000 hl, while for the other two Dreher breweries, no volumes are listed. It shows to what a large operation the Pilsner brewery had grown, while Dreher’s advantage was having multiple large breweries across Austria-Hungary that were all serving different markets… One thing though where Pilsen absolutely excelled the Dreher breweries was the number of beer wagons: while Kleinschwechat owned and operated 60 of them, and Steinbruch 20, Pilsen had much more capacity for export with a whopping 132 beer wagons.
Every now and then The Beer Nut comes over to England from Ireland and conducts one of his inspections. This time, it’s Sheffield that’s come under his stern gaze:
I wasn’t a fan of the Kelham Island Tavern the first time I visited. The beer selection is excellent, but it has always been uncomfortably loud and crowded, and so it was again. I took my pint of Left Handed Giant’s Dark Mild out to the alley that passes as a beer garden and sulked through it there. It added an extra layer of disappointment to the experience, looking good — a clear dark garnet — but tasting quite plain. Sweet cereal is the bulk of it, like honeyed porridge, and then an off-kilter tang of cork oak. Though only 3.4% ABV, it’s quite heavy and took me a while to get through. There was no sign of the coffee roast I look for in mild, nor any dark fruit. A little chocolate arrived towards the end, but not enough to redeem the beer for me. I wasn’t staying for another.
Scott Spencer has been pub crawling again, this time around Stalybridge, Ashton-under-Lyne and Droylsden:
My day commenced in Stalybridge, a town renowned for its historical significance as one of the pioneering centres of textile production during the Industrial Revolution, notably with the establishment of a water-powered cotton mill in 1776. In 1995, it earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for hosting both the longest pub name, ‘The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn,’ and the shortest, ‘Q Inn’… [Stalybridge Buffet Bar] is among the few remaining original Victorian Station Buffet bars in England, with its structure dating back to the station’s reconstruction in 1885.
At her Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs Lisa Grimm has a sort of combined pub and book review, using Maurice Gorham’s 1949 Back to the Local as a lens through which to view Mooney’s of Abbey Street:
An Irish journalist and, later, broadcaster with the BBC, Gorham had been educated in the UK and lived in London until the late 1940s, when he returned to Dublin and served as the Director of RTÉ Radio… While the historic Mooney’s of Abbey Street was at 1 Abbey Street (indeed, the signage is still visible on the façade), we’re now just a few doors down at 4 Abbey Street, and there’s been a very recent glow-up to the interior. We’re leaning in to ‘traditional pub’ here, but it’s well-executed, with dark wood, deep colours and a bit of slightly-spurious history here and there, but it’s all quite pleasant, with a number of snugs and booths… The stained glass toward the back remains from its previous incarnation as Madigan’s, with the name-change happening in 2020.
Here’s some good pondering from Jeff Alworth at Beervana on the potential different meanings of ‘local’:
What’s curious is how contingent that concept of local is. In Oregon, there’s the very local—the brewery in your neighborhood or town—and then the “local,” which means made in the state. Portlanders don’t distinguish between Breakside (Portland), pFriem (Hood River), or Deschutes (Bend) when they’re reaching for a sixer; they’re all local. You might give your local brewery more of your business than driving to the one a little further away, but really, anything in the state will scratch our parochial itch. And it is parochial, because here’s the thing: you won’t see many (or any) cans on that grocery shelf that come from Vancouver, WA. Vancouver is, even by Belgian standards, very close—just a river’s width away—while Bend, even by Oregonian standards, is a bit of a drive (three hours). Yet in our beer-buying decisions, the latter is the “local.”
Finally, from BlueSky…
More South Bohemia: an undated photograph in the Prácheňské muzeum, Písek. Farm workers drinking what appears to be dark lager (see the man with a mug, center left), possibly 1920s or 1930s, sitting atop sheafs of just-cut wheat. 🍺
— Evan Rail (@evanrail.bsky.social) Aug 19, 2024 at 10:22
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For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.