News, nuggets and longreads 21 September 2024: Endless Night

Here’s all the writing about beer that grabbed our attention in the past week, from Old Puke to Moons Under Water.

First, in the news, an academic study has found that people drink less when they’re offered only the choice of ⅔-of-a-pint glasses, and not full pints. Yes, we know this sounds obvious, but the really interesting bit is this: “Researchers found drinkers tend to stick to a specific number of servings when drinking at a pub, regardless of size.” As in, people will have, say, 4 drinks, which might be 4 litres if all you have is Maßkrugs, or 8 thirds-of-a-pint if you only have ⅔-of-a-pint glasses. Or something like that.

We wrote about the rise of ⅔ glasses a decade ago in Brew Britannia. Since then, they’ve remained a novelty, only found in the venues that want to discourage the boshing of pints, or slyly conceal relatively high prices, or both.

Personally, as we find ourselves getting older and less able to process booze, we can imagine being glad of the option to have, as Ed Vaizey puts it, “what looks like a pint, feels like a pint but isn’t a pint”. But we’d like to keep the pint, too, of course. More choice, not less.

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Our favourite format of article at Pellicle is the deep dive into the story and significance of specific beer. This week Katie Mather (who is writing tons of good stuff right now, by the way) shared thoughts on Theakston Old Peculier – a beer we wish we encountered more often:

At the Craven Arms in Appletreewick, Theakstons’ Old Peculier is served from the wood. They sell so many other good things too, but this is what I came for, and to tell the truth, it’s what you came for too. In this perfect ivy-and-stone farmhouse of a pub nothing else makes sense. I order two and am congratulated on my choice by not one, not two, but three separate drinkers at the bar… The peat-dark waters of the North Yorkshire Moors are described by my pint. In its sparkling clear, deep ruby depths, I can see glints of bronze – I’ve moved the glass so it perfectly catches the light from a small window on the other side of the room. It’s funny, even the head has a touch of that earthy colour about it, like the foam under a waterfall, or in the deadly swirling of the Bolton Strid.It’s funny, even the head has a touch of that earthy colour about it, like the foam under a waterfall, or in the deadly swirling of the Bolton Strid.

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David Jesudason continues to unearth stories that reveal the history of racism in Britain through the lens of pubs and beer. This week, it’s the complex story of a racist pub sign, inspired by a probably-not-racist street name, and displayed outside a pub with black customers:

Baroness Martha Osamor came to this country in 1963 from Nigeria when she was aged 24… After a few years Martha… became part of Tottenham’s community and by the late 1970s there was a focus on monthly meetings to fight issues that the black community faced, such as racist sus laws and school exclusions, under the guise of the United Black Women’s Action Group (UBWAG)… Often black residents would bring examples of racism to the group, such as images in school books, and it was in this context that a complaint was presented about the pub sign at the nearby Black Boy pub on West Green Road… A white Tottenham resident told me that the sign was present from at least the 1960s [and] was very offensive by the 1970s.

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Is the availability of Zinnebir by Brasserie de la Senne an indicator that a Brussels neighbourhood has gentrified? Eoghan Walsh thinks it might be:

It’s hard to get a grasp on how much inroads gentrification has really made at Simonis and elsewhere in the commune – like most of Brussels lately, things feel a little run-down. But maybe the appearance of Zinnebir on bar menus is a good cipher. Researchers have, after all, used the prevalence of coffee shops and chicken shops to map gentrification in London to map demographic changes. Why couldn’t we develop some kind of Zinnebir Index to chart the penetration of Brussels’ number one beer across the city and what correlation it has with the spread of gentrification. Maybe this appearance of Zinnebir at the end of my street is a shooting star, a Halley’s Comet.

What would be the equivalent where you live? Beavertown beers and Camden Hells, while no longer beloved by craft beer geeks, might be in our minds.

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Adrian Tierney-Jones has written another entry for that imaginary anthology of ours, The Moons Under Water, setting out his idea of the perfect pub:

I am a great believer in the use of wood in a pub, welcoming wooden walls and floors that make you feel safe, that speak the secret language of the forest, the tranquillity and silence of ancient woodland. So why is wood important? For me it is about comfort, and about how I like a certain sense of antiquity even if the joiners only sorted it out last week. Perhaps it’s the case that wood gets worn and weathered and I like what looks like the patina of age. I think of a pub I visit frequently in Exeter with the worn wooden floors and a wooden bar that looks as if it was put in when Noah came out of the ark.

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Now, some nuggets of brewing history. At Daft Eejit Brewing Andreas Krennmair has shared stats from c.1890 which reveal the extent to which bottom-fermenting beer was overtaking top-fermenting beer in Germany during the 19th century:

What’s very noticeable is that there are only three states with more bottom- than top-fermenting breweries: Hesse, Thuringia and Bremen… But once we look at the average production volumes per brewery of top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries, we’re getting a different picture… Very clearly, bottom-fermenting breweries were producing significantly more beer on average than top-fermenting breweries, across the board.

And at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins Ron Pattinson is mining a seam: what can old beer guides tell us about the beer of the 1970s? Here’s a representative post but you’ll also want to dig back through the past week or two:

I’ve been thinking about why the 1980s saw so many regional brewers disappear. Could it be connected with the rise of Lager? Regionals struggled to establish Lager brands of their own and hence were at a disadvantage compared to national brewers. In 1970, the big brewers held 92% of the Lager market. And in 1975, Lager had grabbed 20% of the beer market. As a regional, that’s one in five pints that you can’t supply… Small brewers – if their beer was any good – would have drinkers seek out their pubs. You’d make the effort to go to a Harveys or Bathams pub. But who would bother to find a Vaux or Matthew Brown tied house?

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Finally, from BlueSky….

Tell me you took the car to Belgium without telling me you took the car to Belgium… #BeerSky

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— Gaby (@drgabywolferink.bsky.social) September 20, 2024 at 7:04 PM

For more good reading check out Alan McLeod’s round-up rom Thursday.