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News, nuggets and longreads 16 March 2023: Hole in my Shoe

Every Saturday we round up the best beer writing from the past week. This time, we’ve got pandemic memories, solo drinking, and Dublin pubs.

First, some news, from the ever-reliable Beer Today: Rooster’s has acquired Daleside, another brewery of a similar vintage, also based in Harrogate. Why is this interesting? Because small real-ale focused breweries don’t often merge or take each other over, even though it might make sense for them to do so. Daleside used to have quite a reputation back in the days of Michael Jackson. We occasionally found their beers in corner shops in East London. But they’ve disappeared from the scene somewhat in recent years, and now it seems their management team is ready to retire. We expect more of this in years to come.


Shutters with a paper sign attached with tape: "Sorry, closed until further notice".

“Four years ago,” writes Jeff Alworth at Beervana, “the world stopped.” In his post reflecting on the pandemic he considers the longer-term changes it seems to have made to hospitality and our drinking habits:

This is a blog about beer, so let me use this small part of society to illustrate what I mean… The multi-year shift to packaged beer sparked a wholesale conversion to cans from bottles, which are nearly extinct now… Drinking habits changed, and draft remains well below its 2019 baseline. Consumption may be down overall… Younger drinkers who never had the party-hearty experiences of early generations may never fully embrace alcohol… Delayed by government intervention, far fewer breweries closed than expected, but even four years on, Covid closures continue… Thanks to service industry staff getting tagged “essential workers,” many left the industry. That sparked a sharp wage spike that was long overdue, but it did impact breweries already struggling with dropping sales…

We’ve been thinking about some of this, too, especially in relation to young people and their relationship to alcohol, and the fact that people in the UK now routinely drink outdoors even in winter.


A fancy old-fashioned shoe.

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Generic beer pumps in photocopy style.

David Jesudason has written something of an exposé of the management culture at an unnamed pub where multiple staff have spoken to him about shocking behaviour and policy:

Staff say they felt intimidated by management with several reports of workers being shouted at in front of customers, told off for taking breaks and humiliated by a laddish culture… One source claimed that they worked with a manager who boasted about employing a homeless man to clear glasses in exchange for inedible food and say they reported this manager to the management at the time… One source, who is black, claimed they were called a thief by a manager for taking a company T-shirt to use on his shift, while another person of colour alleged that management ignored racist taunts by a customer and instead ordered the staff member to serve him.

Of course it’s frustrating that David can’t name the pub but shouting “Name and shame!” isn’t helpful. He doesn’t have a legal team behind him and can’t afford to be sued. And some of the behaviour he describes is probably more common than we’d like to think, so perhaps keeping it vague is a helpful reminder that this could be happening almost anywhere.


Roadworks in Brussels.

Eoghan Walsh has got into the habit of having one or two beers at the same Brussels bar every Friday night while his kids are swimming. This has set him thinking about what it means to be ‘a regular’, the desire to be alone versus the desire for company, and the importance of routine more generally:

These are not the thoughts of an ordered mind, and it’s not an attitude that has served me very well; I know I’m missing out on some essential aspect of pub drinking. So part of committing to this routine is to confront this way of thinking and overcome it – exposure therapy, if you’d like. But also, alongside my desire to be left alone I also have a contradictory one whereby sometimes I do want people to come up to me. I know there’s a vanity to this, wanting other people to make the effort but being unwilling or unable to reciprocate. Where that comes from, beyond vanity, I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s a desire to be around people but not among them; to put myself into a situation where the latent potential for talk is there if I want it, but it comes with no obligations. And that’s what this place provides.


A pub pool table with bright green baize.

At Oh Good Ale Phil Edwards has been interviewed by a song. Which is to say that ‘Favorite Bar’ by the Magnetic Fields asks a series of questions which Phil has attempted to answer:

Do you have a favourite bar
Where you can play pool with strangers
Maybe wear some lipstick and not be in danger
Of getting beat up in the men’s room

Feeling safe is important in a pub. (Being safe is, too, but in the nature of things you only generally find out if that’s not the case a lot later.) I generally do feel safe in pubs these days, but then (a) I’m White, male and middle-aged and (b) I very rarely go anywhere even slightly rough (Holt’s pubs in the suburbs, on CAMRA crawls, are probably as close as I get). I can remember being in a few places where I felt it would be inadvisable to stay for another, but this is going back a bit – I think at the time my youth was as much a factor as being a posh Southerner. I also think one effect of the general decline in pub-going – and the broader decline in all-male socialising – is that it’s harder to find pubs that are likely to get seriously lairy, or at least easier to avoid them.


The interior of a pub with wooden panelling and dividers, dark red walls, and a couple of drinkers.

Lisa Grimm’s Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs continues with a trip to the famous Fagan’s and some nods to the strange relationship between America and Irishness:

Bill Clinton wuz here. And you’re not likely to forget it, as he seems to be on every wall in Fagan’s, somewhere… Of course, to Dubliners, Fagan’s is better known for its Bertie Ahern connections, but I think it’s the Clintoniana I’ve always found a little bit off-putting; in short, for us Gen X folk of all political and national stripes, that aspect of the décor can seem a bit, well, Boomer. However, it’s not every pub in Dublin that’s had national and world leaders enjoy a Guinness (or other beverage) there, so it’s entirely understandable that there would be more than a few clippings on the wall… And, to be fair, it’s not truly throughout the entire pub, as Fagan’s is enormous.


Finally, from Instagram, a particularly alluring looking pint…

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 9 March 2024: Heroes & Villains

Here’s our selection of the best beer writing from the past week, including Meteor, Elusive and Lokalbiere.

First, though, some news. We wrote recently about what we’ve gained and lost in British beer in the past decade and had Meantime in the ‘lost’ column. Now, it’s got even more lost, as Asahi has announced it will be moving production from South East London to Chiswick, consolidating its UK brewing at Fuller’s.

And there’s more: from this fascinating story about a Ukrainian woman who has taken on the running of a pub in Newport, South Wales, we learned that Tiny Rebel is closing its flagship bar in its home town because of “decreasing footfall and rising operating costs”.


Meteor beer advertising sign, Strasbourg, France.

For Good Beer Hunting Anaïs Lecoq has written about Brasserie Meteor whose distinctly superior lager we enjoyed in Strasbourg a few years ago:

It’s unusual to find a big production site in a town center in France, but Meteor brews its 500,000 hectoliters (about 420,000 barrels) right in the middle of Hochfelden. The gigantic silo, with the brewery’s name in large, bright red letters, is unmissable from afar, giving Meteor a place in the skyline… The aroma of wort that blankets the streets is also part of the town’s atmosphere, with Meteor brewing as often as seven days a week in the busy season.


Lager illustration.

At Daft Eejit Brewing Andreas Krennmair tackles a persistent gripe: “All beer is IPA these days!” As he explains, with reference to German language sources, people have been complaining about the dominance of one beer style or another for centuries:

150 to 200 years ago, German beer and brewing experienced a massive shift. Small breweries were previously mostly brewing relatively small amounts of beer solely for the local market using little to no automation, brewers were organized in guilds, not interested in scaling out their businesses, and sometimes even bound by local law to brew and sell their beer on a rota (Reihebrauen). Then the industrial revolution came and destroyed a lot of these structures… Within just a few decades, a lot of small, local breweries simply shut down because they couldn’t compete, and local beer styles… simply went extinct because nobody wanted to drink them anymore. A lot of these beers we only know by name these days, a few have been preserved in the form of recipes, though a lot of details like how specific malts were prepared are not so well documented, leaving more questions than answers.


A smiling Andy Parker with a glass of beer outside Elusive Brewing.
SOURCE: Pellicle/Matthew Curtis.

At Pellicle David Jesudason has profiled Elusive Brewing and its founder, Andy Parker, who has acquired the perhaps burdensome reputation of “the nicest man in brewing”:

Andy’s journey from experimental homebrewer to Elusive owner and operator was documented in detail in his 2018 book CAMRA’s Essential Home Brewing. He also blogged about beer and homebrewing from 2010 under the name ‘Musings of an Elusive Beer Geek.’ But to properly understand his origin story we have to go back to 1983… At 10 years old, Andy first caught a glimpse of a beige plastic box that would change his life. The BBC Micro is now the kind of retro computer that looks garish from the harsh glare of tech-savvy 2024—a box monitor, sat on a basic 8-bit processor and Cold War nuclear launchpad-style keyboard. But to schoolchildren like Andy, it was a glimpse into the future.


BrewDog bar sign.

At VinePair Will Hawkes has dug into the collapse of BrewDog’s reputation among UK craft beer drinkers and the possible future of the company:

Every so often, Brewdog goes viral on British social media. An ill-judged spat with a much-loved Scottish lager brand; anger over the revelation that it was going to stop paying Britain’s real living wage; a skit that appears to make fun of the middle-aged, baseball-capped owners; an arch review of the brewery’s flagship London bar, which describes it as an “infernal pint crèche for confused children and the wife-dodging salarymen they’ll one day become.”… As one Twitter user put it recently, “When you see Brewdog trending it’s never because they’ve made a lovely new beer, is it?”


The City Arms, a Victorian pub in central Manchester.

On Substack, Jim Cullen recounts a crawl of central Manchester pubs, including old favourites, famous classics, and some that were new to him, despite his decades of drinking in the city:

As we approached [The Circus Tavern] Jaz said “At least the doors are open”…. Which reminded me that when the pub used to reach (its very small) capacity, they’d lock the doors. At the front. (Those in the know could access via the rear of the premises.)… In this pub, the great thing is that you don’t have a choice but to interact with the other customers. We got chatting to a lovely couple from Maghull and shot the breeze for a while. Just one of the things that makes The Circus special.


Finally, from BlueSky

IrishBeerHistory (@beerfoodtravel.bsky.social) on BlueSky: "There are those who say we shouldn't be doing  this kind of thing. Those people are wrong, of course..." The accompanying photo is of Rye River Big Bangin' IPA blended with Saison Dupont.

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 2 March 2024: Because of the Cats

Here’s our pick of the best reading about beer and pubs from the past week including old breweries, writer’s pubs, and at least one machine gun.

First, a couple of bits of news that grabbed our attention:

  1. The Crooked House, the pub that was burned down in suspicious circumstances, is to be rebuilt by order of South Staffordshire Council. Here’s the news story from the BBC and there’s detailed commentary by Laura Hadland on her website at the bottom of a long page we bet she now wishes she’d structured in reverse order.
  2. A slew of new flagship pubs and taprooms have opened or been announced which strikes us as interesting in the wider gloomy context around hospitality: the Craft Beer Co’s new vintage beer pub, a St Austell and Harbour partnership in Cornwall, and a big Siren place in Reading. All via the indispensable Beer Today.

An old sign advertising Stella Artois on the corner of a bar in Leuven.

At Beervana Jeff Alworth digs into a thorny question: how old really are these breweries that claim to be old? And from where do they get these fantastic founding dates?

According to its own history, Weihenstephan started life as a monastery, going back to the 8th century. A nearby farm produced hops, so the brewery believes the monks were making beer there, but they don’t mark their start date until 1040, when the abbot received a license to brew on the grounds. Over the next four centuries, the monastery burned down four times and was depopulated by three plagues, and hit by armies and at least one earthquake. Still, the monks rebuilt. While the history through this period is pretty sketchy, I don’t have any problem calling this legit continuity… However, here the historical record fragments for the next 400ish years and we skip to 1803, when the monastery was secularized. Did the monks continue to brew consistently that whole time?


A drawing of a man with a pint of beer and his hand raised to his head, looking troubled or pained.

There’s a rather soul-bearing piece by Adrian Tierney-Jones on Substack about loneliness and the pub:

There are certainly times when I have been lonely, a state of mind desperately endless it seemed, alone in a flat that once held someone else’s voice and still contained some of her items, the lack of promise petering out and the slowness of the tick-tock of the clock stifling — anxious times as I thought then, when I thought I wanted to sleep for a long time, even though not long afterwards I realised this feeling was an indulgence… Now though, if I feel I am lonely what am I really asking myself and how do I deal with it? Maybe it is a case that the loneliness I feel can be assisted, as well as resisted, by the imagination and the memories of friends, past lovers, family members and that small island of delicious and decadent solitude I experience when in a crowd, sitting in a pub that is slowly being filled with people for instance. They bring with them their lives, their voices and their happiness…


Illustration: a quiet corner in a quiet pub, with table and stools.

Katie Mather has been thinking about what might constitute a “writer’s pub”:

I’ve been trying to plan a short pubs-and-pushbikes break for myself over the summer where I can also get a little reading and scribbling done, and honestly, it’s become a fixation. No matter where I look I can never be sure what I want. Comfy seats? Not old enough. Rural and quaint? Too isolated. What am I looking for? Does the ideal writers’ pub actually exist? I’ve been zooming in and out of Google Maps all week trying to find a place that strikes the balances I require—most of which are incredibly hypocritical.


The Dirty Shame Saloon, a simple wooden building in wild west style, in the snow.
SOURCE: The Beer Chaser/Yaak Real Estate.

You know when you discover a website that’s apparently been around for years and you’re not sure how you missed it? The Beer Chaser is written by Don Williams, a retiree and compulsive ticker of bars and pubs across America. He has a particular interest in dive bars and one of his favourites is The Dirty Shame Saloon in Yaak, Montana, which sounds very… American:

Joan Melcher’s two books on Montana Watering Holes [suggest] there are at least three and possibly four incredible stories strictly on how the Shame was originally named… One involves fighter Joe Lewis and a second relates the saga of seven dead cows – shot by a guy named Jimmy who left them on the road in front of the bar.  Don’t forget the other about a mother-in-law of one of the original owners who would sit in the corner of the bar and admonish him “What a ‘dirty shame’ it was that you bought this bar.” 

There are a few things in the post that made us say “Oh dear” and “Yikes”, including a weird reference to someone as “a female”. But as a portrait of a place, and a people, and a pub that is not our world it’s fascinating.


A view of the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle.

Stephen Liddell has been putting together some historic pub crawls which has led him to investigate the story of Newcastle pub landlord William Campbell, “the heaviest man in the world”:

Born in Glasgow in 1856, Campbell was one of seven children in a family who were all of average proportions, but his parents will have realised they had a whopper on their hands when he’d reached four stone at the age of nine months… Inspired by a freak show that visited Glasgow, Campbell decided to exhibit his vast body for money. He billed himself as ‘The Biggest Man In Britain’, ‘Her Majesty’s Largest Subject’ or ‘The Heaviest Man In The World’, depending on how the fancy took him… The Duke of Wellington public house on High Bridge in Newcastle was owned by the brewers Bartleman & Crighton and had been raided by the police for illegal gambling, coming within a whisker of losing its licence. The brewery decided to change the tone of their business by hiring a celebrity to run the pub, and celebrities didn’t come any bigger than William Campbell.


A selection of crisps and nuts on a pub bar.

As you’ll know if you’ve been following us for a while ‘pub grub’, pub snacks, and the rise of the gastropub are favourite subjects of ours. Ron Pattinson is currently mining 1970s editions of The Brewers’ Guardian for nuggets and has shared a few posts on related subjects this week, including a survey about pub food from 1970:

“Apart from the obvious things, like bad hygiene, I think what I dislike most is that one can never really tell how long the food has been standing in the warming cabinet. It’s easy enough to spot a curled up sandwich or a piece of mouldy cheese but if you fancy shepherd’s pie or sausages I am put off by the thought that they may have been re-heated from the morning session. Perhaps I am too nervous.”

This also reminded us of a joke in the 1940 Ealing comedy Saloon Bar, in which a pub landlord asks a barmaid since when the sandwiches have been on sale. “Last month,” she replies, “but they’ve been under glass you know.” He drops one on the floor, picks it up, blows off the dust and puts it back. “Well, see that they go tonight.”


Finally, from social media…

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 24 February 2024: Pretty Flower

Here’s our pick of the week’s writing about beer and pubs, with breakfast pints, social awkwardness, alder wood, and more.

First, some sad news from our old stamping ground of Penzance: The Star Inn at Crowlas is closing, getting a tidy up, and going on the market along with the attached brewery. If you followed us during our time in PZ you probably got sick of hearing us go on about Potion 9, the brewery’s flagship beer. When Pete Elvin, the genius behind the brewery died at Christmas, we did wonder what might happen next. And perhaps this was in the back of our minds when we wrote about learning to embrace change in our newsletter last weekend.


A pub clock.
Not a Dublin pub.

For Totally Dublin Michael Lanigan has written about the 6 pubs in Dublin that are allowed to open early in the morning, thanks to old licences. Accompanied by evocative photos by by Malcolm McGettigan it’s packed with small incidents, characters, and salty dialogue:

Inside the Wind Jammer, the deep babel of a few dozen male voices chattering boomed through the barroom, and the bright white lights emanating from its chandeliers sent a jolt through each punter stepping in to escape the drowsy city… “I can tell you a lie about the milkman,” said a man in his early fifties, wearing a black pork pie hat and perched on a stool at the rounded marble counter, a large bottle of Bulmers before him… “This place is a nice friendly shop,” the man in the pork pie hat said. “I’ve seen taxi drivers drop off Americans in here, off a flight. They’d be awake all night and are looking to get a beer. So, I’ve been in here, fucking nine in the morning with a singsong, drinking with cunts from New York.”

(We’re grateful to The Beer Nut for sending us the link to this story, which we’d have otherwise missed.)


Stools at the bar in a pub.

At Pints of Cask Make You Strong Ross Cummins has written just the kind of over-analysis of the pub experience that we enjoy. Working out where to sit, or where not to sit, is something that happens mostly subconsciously, so it’s interesting to see the thought process laid out in agonising detail:

Could we sit at the bar? Not really, one person maybe but not two with winter coats, and a camera bag et al. We did want to sit in the lovely cosy bar area, and there was a small table available. We hesitated though. Instead of one of us immediately sitting in the empty space, in the beautifully traditional British way, we took in the pub, stunning as it is, and got cocky. Just as our pints were being placed on the bar a definite regular walked in, taking off his coat in the process. We assumed he would take the available seats.


The garden at Wiper & True with tower blocks at Lawrence Hill in the background.

Anthony Gladman’s piece about Wiper & True for Pellicle grabbed our attention for a couple of reasons. First, it’s one of our local breweries, and the new taproom described in the article is one of our nearest licenced establishments. (Though still not very near.) Secondly, it centres on a beer-cider hybrid – a concept that seemed significant to us back in 2014 when our book Brew Britannia came out. Then, it was Wild Beer Co’s Ninkasi. Now, it’s Orchard Ale:

Technically speaking, Orchard Ale is a graf: a beer-cider hybrid that sees both wort and apple juice blended and fermented together. (The name ‘graf’ actually comes from a fictional beverage invented by author Stephen King in The Dark Tower series of novels.) Wild yeasts do their work with as little intervention as possible from the brewers. The finished drink sits somewhere between a cider and a lambic. It has the crispness of a Somerset cider but with a softening background sweetness from the malt which saves it from being too dry… It’s like drinking the brewery’s deepest roots. The apples come from an orchard Michael planted in 2010 with his wife, Francesca—he made cider long before he ever brewed beer.


Schlenkerla Cap

Here’s a post at Blog-Ums-Bier by Ralf in German (thanks, Google Translate and ChatGPT!) that provides tasting notes and background on the growing range of beers from Schlenkerla in Bamberg:

Recently, I found myself curious about [Schlenkerla’s cherry-wood smoked beer] Weichsel, and pondered the different types of wood that could be used to smoke beers. Then, out of nowhere, Schlenkerla releases their own twist: a dark beer with malt smoked over alder wood. So, what’s the verdict on the Alder? That sounds as if I want to taste the wood itself. And honestly, when it comes to Schlenkerla, that’s not far off. Their standard beer, Märzen, is famous (or infamous) for its distinct ham-like flavour. This brings us to the topic of wood: just as ham is smoked with carefully chosen wood – often juniper for raw ham, and beech for the more delicate sausage varieties – Schlenkerla Märzen also incorporates beech smoke. So, the aroma of beech smoke is something you’re likely familiar with… Alder, on the other hand, is something we don’t really know about.


The spire of Big Ben with the Millennium Wheel in the background.

Having both worked in Westminster when we were younger we were interested to read Kate Whannel’s piece for the BBC about about the history and fate of division bells in pubs around Parliament. We both recall a time when we were in the St Stephen’s Tavern and the division bell rang, prompting David Blunkett to rush past and out of the pub with his guide dog. Anyway, it turns out they’re endangered, and no longer ringing as once they did:

The bell in the Marquis of Granby, once a favourite spot for Conservatives, portentously stopped ringing just before the pandemic shut pubs across the country – and hasn’t started back up since… Pub manager at the Marquis of Granby Jo does want to get it back up and running. “I like having it, it is unique to this area, unique to Westminster, but trying to get it fixed is a nightmare.”


Finally, here’s an interesting looking book by Dr Christina Wade that we’ve ordered and look forward to reading:

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 17 February 2024: Running Wild

Every Saturday we round-up the best writing about beer from the past 7 days. This week we’ve got pessimism, optimism, and pure Belgianness.

First, there’s been a flurry of news about brewery closures and changes:


The pumps at the Royal Oak Borough including one for porter

Will Hawkes has shared the January edition of his London Beer City newsletter online. It’s a great read from beginning to end with the provocative title ‘Is this a golden age for London pubs?’

Given the current economic pressures, it’s worse now than ever. But pubs closing is not a phenomenon just of the last 20 years; they’ve been shutting since the Victorian era, as Mark Girouard pointed out in his superb 1975 book Victorian Pubs. “London is full of dead pubs,” he wrote back then; “In Oxford Street between St Giles Circus and Marble Arch there were 19 pubs in 1890; today there is only one.” (That pub, then the Tottenham and now The Flying Horse, is still there, btw: it’s worth a visit for its classic 1890s interior)… You cannot discuss the decline of pubs without acknowledging the huge changes in society that have taken place, and the new and varied options open to ordinary people that didn’t exist in 1890 or even 1980 (the pre-cheeky Nando’s era, if you like). So much of the hand-wringing over pubs is really disgruntlement at how society has changed – which is all very well, depending on your perspective, but it doesn’t get us very far.

His diary of a weekly visit to a posh pub in Dulwich is fascinating, too, and something all of us habitual pub goers could try. Perhaps we’ll keep a Swan With Two Necks diary for a month or two.


The moody interior of The Britons Protection with tiles, low light and red paintwork.

At Jim’s Substack Jim Cullen has written about a small crawl around some classic Manchester pubs with old friends from work, and the nature of old friendships:

The last few months – on a personal level – have been a bit bleak – so, when I spoke to one of my work heroes (my colleague Phil) about getting my old Boss (Mick) out, I was delighted that he took the reins and organised it… so we found ourselves, on pay day, on Liverpool Road, just off Deansgate in Manchester…. Phil noticed me walking in and I was quickly furnished with a pint of Knack (Mild) by Thornbridge. Lightly roasty, creamy and smooth with ever such a light chocolatey note, it was a beautiful reminder that it doesn’t take a old family brewer to brew heritage styles. I love Mild.


A smiling man with a bald head and big smile holding a flipping massive rabbit.
Senne Eylenbosch with a massive rabbit, of course. SOURCE: Belgian Smaak/Cliff Lucas.

At Belgian Smaak Breandán Kearney profiles Senne Eylenbosch and his lambic blendery, Het Boerenerf, which has a romantic back story:

At the 2011 Kasteelfeest—when Eylenbosch was 15 years-old—his parents were busy scooping ice-cream and making pancakes, so Eylenbosch sneaked off to the tent next door, where Sidy Hannsens of Geuzestekerij Hannsens pulled him aside and gave him a glass of Hannsens Oude Kriek. She even gave him a five euro note to buy a Kriek from another producer so he could understand how “a real one” tasted against other versions. It was a small gesture that made a big impression on a young Eylenbosch… Growing up in the Zenne valley, Lambic was always on Eylenbosch’s periphery. The building right next door to where he lived, now a block of apartments, was once a Lambic brewery dating back to the 1860s and owned for a period by his own bloodline. “It was a big scar in the family,” he says of the family’s decision to stop Lambic production in the 1960s. “It wasn’t commonly talked about. It’s still not.”


An old illustration of hops against a bright green background.

It’s fascinating to see the big problems of European history reflected in the smaller local story of controversy around the Upper Austrian hop market in the 19th century. As Andreas Krennmair writes, the price and provenance of hops was a hot issue, and tangled up with antisemitism:

An 1869 article claimed that hop growers were only paid 60 fl. for their hops, while at the same time, Upper Austrian hops were traded in Saaz for 90 to 100 fl. This is blamed specifically on Jewish hop traders, who the anonymous author accuses of arranging with each other, thus controlling the prices. The same author suggests that hop growers should form an association to centrally control the sales of Upper Austrian hops, thus having more leverage to dictate prices… This article was immediately contradicted by an expert.. The editors added a note to the letter, claiming that the author, although only anonymously signed as “an expert”, was a Jewish hop trader… About a month later, another article was published in a different newspaper, denouncing the initial reports as wrong, not only correcting the wrong price information, but also scalding the use of defamatory, antisemitic language.


A fluted pilsner glass with the word 'Time' on one side and 'Smithwicks' on the other.
SOURCE: Liam K/IrishBeerHistory.

We haven’t seen a flared ‘pilsner glass’ in the wild for years – but we might if we go to Ireland, reports Liam K at IrishBeerHistory, in the latest post in his ‘100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects’ series:

It is an elegant form, if a little top-heavy in appearance when full, although in truth this is balanced by having a thick and heavy base, plus it’s incredibly tactile and extremely practical to drink from, with the width of the mouth of the glass perfectly proportioned for either sipping or gulping its contents. This example from the Smithwick’s brewery in Kilkenny for their forgotten and (ironically) timeline purged Time beer brand has all of those elements, plus a wonderful, thick gold band around its rim that heightens its graceful beauty… Time ales were launched by Smithwick’s in 1960 with the aim of revitalising an ageing brand for more modern times and to celebrate their (so-called) 250th anniversary… The launch meant a complete rebrand for most of the Smithwick’s beers with a new logo, beer labels, coasters and other ephemera, plus of course glassware. Branding on glasses was a relatively new idea here, and Time was probably one of the first beers in Ireland to have its own range of branded glassware.


Finally, from Instagram, it’s Nat Ainscough again, who has been posting pub photos from Glasgow.

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