Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time we’ve got thistle glasses, more Kölsch, and an accidental cult beer.
For a generation of British craft beer drinkers, this news carries some emotional resonance: Magic Rock Brewing is appointing administrators.
It’s a brewery you could use to tell the whole story of the UK craft beer boom: family money, a talented brewer; launching at just the right time to attract a new breed of beer drinker; then, a buy-out by big beer, followed by divestment once the brand had lost a decade’s goodwill.
Breweries come and go. They rise and fall. You’re allowed to feel sad but, in this case, the magic really went a long time ago. For us, it will certainly make re-reading our book Brew Britannia bittersweet.
Katie Mather has dropped part 2 of her report on a trip to Cologne and it’s as joyful, and envy-inducing, as the first part:
Brauhaus Päffgen is such a great place that I just got emotional thinking about it. An historic brewery beloved by hardcore Kölsch nerds, of course the beer is good, but the place itself is perfection. We sat on a wooden bench and ate delicious pumpkin soup, bread, cheese and mustard, and Tom ordered a single gherkin jsut because it was on the menu. The wooden-beamed dining hall was welcoming and haunted at the same time, flanked by windowed partitions and a “confessional” — the strange but efficient booth where the maitre d’/Oberkellner took telephone bookings on a rotary phone, controlled the lighting from a central switchboard, and thrust tickets and receipts onto a steel spike at the side of her desk.
An article by Eoghan Walsh, one of our favourite writers, at Pellicle, one of our favourite publications? That went into the bookmarks folder for this round up before we’d even read it. It’s about a cult Irish beer, O’Hara’s Leann Folláin extra Irish stout, and the circumstances that led to its creation:
2008 was an important year for Seamus and the Carlow Brewing Company. It was 12 years since he’d co-founded the brewery with his brother, and 10 since they’d started selling beer from an old goods shed beside Carlow town train station. They’d had a solid decade of export-led growth, and with local interest finally starting to catch up, O’Hara was eyeing up a move to a larger site in nearby Bagenalstown… It was, Seamus says, an “inflection point”—for them and for Irish brewing too. O’Hara’s, together with Porterhouse and Dublin Brewing Company, had all launched in the mid 1990s into what Seamus describes as a “one-dimensional” Irish beer market lacking in adventurous or creative beers. In the mid-2000s they were joined by a new generation of breweries prompted by changes to excise rules that favoured small producers, and Irish drinkers were becoming (a little) more adventurous.
One of Kevin Kain’s special areas of interest is glassware – something that doesn’t often attract forensic attention. This time he’s been asking when and why the ‘thistle glass’ came to associated with Scottish beer, at least from a US perspective:
The popularity led an English importer in Antwerp to create his own brand for the Belgian market. This brand, Gordon’s Highland Scotch Ale, was originally brewed by George Younger & Son in Alloa, Scotland (after changing hands many times, it is now actually brewed in Belgium). Their branded thistle glasses go hand in hand with the beer, now sold as Gordon Scotch Ale. They also often have a special Christmas edition thistle glass for their Xmas beer… So where did we get the notion that the thistle glass was somehow an important part of Scottish beer culture? The Gordon glass may have played a role. However, the 1993 book, Scotch Ale, by Greg Noonan likely had a significant impact, at least in the United States. The cover prominently features a beer in a thistle glass.
In a post reviewing BrewDog’s Wingman Session IPA The Beer Nut says a lot in a 300 words, and much that we agree with:
BrewDog does still be Brewdogging. Whenever the discourse turns in their direction, there’s always someone saying “yer, and thur beer is shit now too,” but in my experience it’s not, and never has been (unless you got one of those Punk cans). This beer is fine, leaning to good, but most importantly is what it’s meant to be. I have no objection to it being on the market and can see it being the best available option in any number of circumstances. Now there’s a slogan for them.
This piece by Robyn Vinter about being snowed in at The Tan Hill Inn is a great read, including the fascinating detail that some people head there hoping for an extended stopover:
On Saturday night at the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub, the snow is falling and the crowd of about 30 people inside know they are probably stuck here for a couple of days. Throughout the place, at the northern edge of North Yorkshire, drinks are flowing and friends are being made… Weather warnings for snow are in place across much of the UK, and the Met Office has advised the public to only make necessary journeys, with road closures, train and flight cancellations, and rural communities becoming cut off… That is something the staff at the Tan Hill Inn, which is 528 metres (1,732ft) above sea level, are used to. The pub has a history of what people call “snow-ins” – in 2021, 61 punters who had come to watch an Oasis tribute band were trapped for three days.
Finally, from BlueSky, a very desirable drinking vessel…
It's not incredibly rare, but I picked up this nice ceramic tankard recently. Made by Coceram (like Orval, a Belgian company) and I'm not sure of the date – 60s-80s maybe? I love the shape and especially the handle, and curiously, it holds exactly one imperial pint! …
— IrishBeerHistory (@beerfoodtravel.bsky.social) January 8, 2025 at 7:57 PM
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For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.