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News, nuggets and longreads 26 October 2024: Blaszany Bębenek

Here’s all the writing about beer that grabbed our attention in the past week, from independence to bench seating.

First, some news: Walthamstow’s Wild Card Brewing has ceased trading and the council has repossessed its brewery. This news actually dropped last week but we missed it. Wild Card was never a brewery whose beer we heard anyone rave about – though there was certainly plenty of goodwill towards them, as pioneers in a once brewery-less part of London. We’re beginning to think, too, that 12 years is a good run for a brewery, unless it has what it takes to become a beloved institution.


Beavertown keg fonts.

For The Guardian Katie Mather has written about the corporate takeover of UK breweries and the persistent impression of their independence and ‘craft’ status:

In a recent survey commissioned by the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (Siba), drinkers were asked whether certain beer brands were “independent”, and 40% thought that Neck Oil was, unaware it was now, for all intents and purposes, a Heineken-brewed beer. Three-quarters of drinkers surveyed said they felt they were being misled when formerly independent brands were in fact owned by multinationals. Does it really matter if a business sells out to a larger one? By the looks of it, yes… The reason breweries sell is because of the money. It’s obvious why a multinational such as Heineken would want a brewery such as Beavertown on its books. Drinkers were choosing craft beer over their portfolio of lagers and one cider (Strongbow, if you’re interested) and this was impacting on their sales.


A detail from an old advertisement for Piwo Grodziskie.

Josh Weikert’s piece about how to brew a great Grodziskie for Craft Beer & Brewing caught our eye because, when we saw it, we’d just tried two Grodziskie’s in a row, at a bar in Gdańsk. We don’t know if they were good examples of the style because we lack benchmarks against which to judge. As Weikert explains:

A style that had disappeared before homebrewers and then craft brewers resurrected it, grodziskie (or grätzer, in German) was one of the first beers that really fired my imagination… Grodziskie is a low-ABV beer made from oak-smoked wheat. It has a lot of character for such a light beer, including noticeable wheat and hop flavors, ample smoke, and an elevated carbonation level that adds a nice, crisp bite. Given the wheat and carbonation, it should have a dense, long-lasting, bright white head atop a pale body. It should also be quite clear, despite the wheat. The IBUs are modest in absolute terms, yet the bitterness should be firm given the low gravity.


A neon sign with an arrow pointing to 'Beer'.

The phrase ‘beer-flavoured beer’ has generated some interesting discussion in the past week or so. It started with Dave Infante for VinePair:

Known as “core beer” or “traditional beer” in industry circles, “beer-flavored beer” is what it sounds like — a fermented beverage that hews closely to a familiar, traditional style. Lager, for example, is beer-flavored beer, and a wonderful example at that. But the phrase has also become something approaching a rallying cry for the many craft brewers who yearn for the days when drinkers came to them thirsting for the stuff they wanted to brew.

That prompted Stan Hieronymus to go as far as to say “I was wrong to use the term”:

It can be used to exclude, wielded as a weapon by drinkers who imply they know something others do not. “I can appreciate beer-flavored beer, the complex flavors that result from the interaction of malt and yeast in a simple helles. You are not worthy.”

Which, in turn, prompted Jeff Alworth at Beervana to ponder further:

The first time I heard the term used, it was wielded against beer nerds by tin-can beer drinkers who didn’t like things like IPAs or stouts—or helleses and schwarzbiers. They thought “craft beer” was something only hipsters liked, and they weren’t interested… This is one of those situations where context is everything, and meaning a slippery, mutable substance. We might imagine cases where the phrase becomes a barb to puncture either beer nerds or light beer drinkers, or just a phrase meant to add some color to a conversation without a critique. Language is like that—it is rarely fixed, and we often have to code-switch as we use it.


An old-fashioned pub bar with bench seating.
The public bar at The Fellowship, Bellingham, in 2016.

As we approach the finish, we’re going to pair two posts about, or touching on, pub seating. First, Tandleman has written about traditional bench seating in pubs and how, in his his opinion, the art of sharing tablespace has been lost:

Now thinking on, you often see in busy pubs, (like busy trains), coats and bags covering free seats. And these days, unlike the habit in Germany, it is unusual to see strangers sharing a table. I recall last winter, in the Commercial in London, asking a couple if we could sit at a bench, where six could be accommodated.  They thought I was asking them to move elsewhere, until I explained that I just wanted them to shift their arses along to make room, a notion that seemed alien to them.

And, secondly, the Pub Curmudgeon reports on the refurbishment of a pub in Stockport which has retained its benches, but lost its little round tables:

The lounge retains its wood panelling, bench seating and original stained glass windows, but has acquired some overlarge rectangular tables, although I suppose that is seen as necessary for the food trade… the pub also to my mind suffers from the presence of a large screen for TV sport in every room. I recognise that sport does bring customers in, but surely in a pub with three large rooms there should be scope for one of them not to have a screen, or for it not to be generally used… It also seems incongruous in the context of the historic interior.


Finally, from Instagram, a topical ‘countdown to Halloween’ post from Lisa Grimm:

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

3 replies on “News, nuggets and longreads 26 October 2024: Blaszany Bębenek”

We’re beginning to think, too, that 12 years is a good run for a brewery

Hmm. “Avant-gardes only have one moment – and the best thing that can happen to them is to have had their moment, in the full sense of the term.” (Guy Debord) Possibly not applicable to Wild Card, but it does make me feel a bit better about another brewery I still remember fondly (2013-18). NB link also features Grodziskie.

Hmm, I assumed “beer-flavoured beer” was a reaction to pastry beer, mango beer etc, rather than IPA or stout.

That’s definitely one way it’s used. But it does, as Stan suggests, imply a hierarchy or judgement. We don’t generally like those types of beers either but that doesn’t mean they’re not beer!

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