News, nuggets and longreads 18 January 2025: The Fifth Element

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the preceding 7 days. This time we’ve got Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, and double Poland.

First, some interesting numbers from pub company Fuller’s for trade in December and January, via Darren Norbury at Beer Today: 

Like-for-like sales at pub company Fuller’s for the 41 weeks to 11th January were up 5.9%… These figures include excellent trading over the important five-week Christmas and New Year period, said the company. This delivered like-for-like sales growth of 10.2%.

What does this tell us? That corporate chain venues are perhaps outperforming independents, perhaps. And why might that be? Based on the Fuller’s pub here in Bristol, it’s certainly not because they’re cheap. Maybe because of reliability, familiarity, space and scale.

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Pellicle editor Matthew Curtis has given himself space to write about Rooster Brewery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire – a fascinating case study in succession and longevity:

If Roosters was built on the back of Sean Franklin’s legacy, then it was Baby Faced Assassin that ushered in the beginning of the Fozard era. When it comes to that legacy there’s a definite sense of stewardship, which is why you’ll always find Yankee on the hand pulls in the taproom, and on the bar at pubs across Yorkshire… But there’s also a sense that – in terms of identity – it’s something of a burden, perhaps aggravated by [Tom Fozard’s] inherently creative instincts and desire to do things his own way. Roosters was never going to be a blank canvas for the Fozards, but Baby Faced Assassin, at least, gave them a fresh set of paintbrushes with which to depict the brewery’s influence on beer and brewing in the United Kingdom.

(Also, Matt’s written sources for this article are excellent. Ahem.)

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Scott Spencer has been exploring Peterborough, a city that we’ve never visited, for Micropub Adventures:

The Bumble Inn… is recognized as Peterborough’s first micropub, opening up in June 2016 after transforming from an old chemist shop. The place was brought to life by Tom Beran and his wife, Michelle. Before diving into the micropub scene, Tom spent a decade running the Coalheavers Arms Pub in Peterborough. His goal with The Bumble Inn was to create a unique experience, prioritizing quality over quantity and offering a rotating selection of beers from both local and national breweries… Tom gave me an awesome warm welcome, and it was really nice chatting with him and a few regulars…

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Liam K has posted a new entry in his ‘100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects’ series at IrishBeerHistory. This time, it’s a glass that illuminates the export trade from Dublin to Belgium:

This glass is a wonderful piece of workmanship that no photo will do justice to. It is made from quality glass that approaches lead crystal in colour, quality and sound, and appears to be mould-blown or similarly formed before the eight facets were cut and polished by hand to form an octagonal-shaped lower section around an extra thick base, with the bottom of the glass also polished to an incredible smoothness. As to the more boring details, the tumbler is approximately 15cm high by 8.5cm wide at its mouth, it weighs 400grms and holds 400ml of liquid… this volume is a perfect fit for a 330ml bottle of Guinness including room for a head right up to the rim without overflowing, which is helped by the conical shape. The name and product that comes to mind in the 1950s with regard to Guinness on the continent, and Belgium in particular is John Martin in Antwerp, and bottles of Guinness Foreign Export Stout.

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At Beervana Jeff Alworth provides some insight into the history of Baltic porter, the specific variant found in Poland, and its continuing popularity in that country:

In 2019, I traveled to Poland for the first time. I was excited to try grodziskie and get a handle on one of the old, but underrated European brewing countries. What I discovered was that grodziskie was a really obscure style, made by just a few breweries… Baltic porter, on the other hand? It’s not as popular as domestic pale lagers (which are sadly tasteless little wan beers in Poland), but it is definitely a major and successful style. Large industrial breweries still make it, but so do many of the little breweries that have popped up over the last decade and a half. I remember stepping into a beer store in Kraków with scores of beers from local breweries, and a lot of them were Baltic porters.

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Staying in Poland, Andreas Krennmair has continued his exploration of archive material around Europe by digging into material held in the national archives in Kraków:

[A] big reason for me to visit was to find out more about the historic Goldfinger brewery in Kraków. I previously did a little bit of research into Markus Goldfinger through online archives, mostly the Austrian newspaper archives…There wasn’t much I could find about Goldfinger in the first place, and of two bundles of documents that I ordered, only one was made available to me. What I did get to view was a big bunch of correspondence between members of the Goldfinger family and the magistrate (think of it as the municipal office), most of them stamped with Austrian revenue stamps of 50 Kreuzer each (value nowadays would be roughly €8.50)… There was one letter that caught my eye, though…

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Finally, from BlueSky, a post which, for some reason, Steve didn’t think would make this slot…

Fuck yes!

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— CarsmileSteve (@carsmilesteve.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 8:33 PM

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