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News

News, nuggets and longreads 24 May 2025: The Listeners

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got Belfast, brewery stats, and beer in the park. stats, and beers in the park.

First, some news: updated figures from SIBA show that there are now 136 fewer breweries operating in the UK than at this time in 2024, leaving a total of 1,641. You might remember the peak of around 2,000 breweries a few years ago.

Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic turmoil, and a general sense of ennui around craft beer, have seen that number slowly slide downward. Each closure is a tragedy for the founders and employees of the breweries that close. From a consumer perspective, however, it still feels as if we have rather a lot of breweries – and certainly a lot more than in 2007 when we started this blog. What would be interesting to attempt to calculate is how many good or great breweries we have now compared to a couple of decades ago. Has the overall quality improved?

You can read some excellent commentary on the decline in brewery numbers, and the decline in sales of cask ale, in Hazel Southwell’s newsletter Behind the Bar. She runs a pub and does a great job of explaining the challenges around stocking and selling independently brewed cask ale:

“Wait, why can’t they take beer round the corner, stick it in a van and that?” Well I’d imagine they’d love to. Problem is the pubs can’t buy it off them because even most freehouses are actually weirdly tied up with contracts about specific things, only get their cask from Molson Coors or something. And by the time you’ve gone through whatever extra hoops the beer costs so much to get it’s not worth it, even where you can find a way.


The Ulster Sports Club in a shop style premises.
SOURCE: Matthew Curtis/Pellicle.

At Pellicle Ewen Friers has written an article that is both a portrait of, and guide to, the beer scene in Belfast. It includes big brands like Guinness and Harp Lager, and famous pubs like The Crown, as well as up-and-coming craft breweries and newer venues:

Out Of Office Brewery (OOO) [is] situated within the ever-trendy Ulster Sports Club… on High Street. Once a social club where sports fans would congregate in the somewhat neutral space of the city centre, throughout The Troubles it had a reputation as a non-sectarian safe space visited by Belfast’s sporting giants including Mary Peters, Alex Higgins and George Best… At the bottom of the hall that leads to the toilets, adjacent from the retro-panelled walls and old trophy cabinets, is an unassuming lift that will transport you up to the brewery taproom on the second floor. It’s a bright, slick, minimal space oozing with style.


A brewery.

In his newsletter Beer & Soul Sayre Piotrkowski has been pondering on one of the big questions: “Why do people care about breweries?” Or, to put it another way, why do they have feelings about breweries, and why do they get upset when breweries change or close?

Last week, I picked up a shift at Olfactory Brewing’s Berkeley taproom. One of the first guests I served was a woman preparing to attend her 20th college reunion in San Diego. She beamed when she said one of the events would be held at Ballast Point. She and her wife were married in Ballast Point t-shirts: “Red Velvet,” a beet-colored oatmeal stout for her, and “Victory At Sea,” an imperial porter with vanilla, for her bride… This is why so many beer die-hards bristle at M&A news. We’ve seen the Ballast Point arc: sold in 2015, stripped of its value and cultural relevance by 2019. Can you imagine anyone from UCSD’s Class of 2025 getting married in Ballast Point t-shirts?


A jumble of pubs.

Alex at Pub Vignettes has written another set of neat pen portraits of specific pubs and the small comedies and dramas that play out within them:

There’s a strong correlation between the calibre of a pub’s carpet and the quality of the real ale it serves. Now, by “calibre”, we’re talking less Good Housekeeping, more Wetherspoon’s meets your gran’s house. This sweet spot is evidently achieved as soon as the heavy oak door swings open. Pub Carpet Nirvana. Half of Cambridgeshire’s dog population is here to snooze, roll, and loll all over it. Nine handpumps rise from the bar to meet you, dispelling inevitable worries sparked by “Greene King” plastered all over the outside walls on your way in. One line of insipid Abbot Ale on the turn? Or an array of milds, stouts, ESBs, best bitters, and pales kept with care and love? The PubCo tied-house lottery. If you don’t buy a ticket, you’re never going to win.


A drawing of a pop-up bar in a park.
SOURCE: Selkies/Brussels Notes.

Eoghan Walsh has a new edition of his Pintjes zine coming out (a collaboration with illustrator Selkies) and has shared a preview at Brussels Notes. It’s a great snapshot of the city’s drinking culture and political situation:

What’s the best beer I’ve ever had? Easy. Zinnebir. Predictable, sure, but no less true for it, even though my answer is less about the beer than about the circumstances of its drinking. Not a singular drinking experience, but an accretion of them, layered one over the other like a frame of multiple exposed film until they coalesce into one memory. A memory of me, and Zinnebir, on the terrace of Bar Eliza… I think of all the times I sat next to that dilapidated pavilion, perched awkwardly on uncomfortable reclaimed wooden furniture as above me late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the high canopy of oak and linden boughs… It’s Friday, and in front of me is a freshly-poured glass of Zinnebir, foamy and sweating just a little in the afternoon heat.


A cask marque plaque on the outside of a pub.

Did you know that you can report a bad pint in a Cask Marque accredited pub to Cask Marque and (possibly) trigger an inspection? Tandleman reports having done just that after paying quite a wedge of money for a mediocre pint in London:

Did you know that Cask Marque has an area on their website where you can report beer quality problems directly to them? Well, it has… To the point, it is called “Bad Beer Reporting Tool”… I paid £7 for an extremely lacklustre pint of Landlord in the Cask Marque listed Hoop and Grapes in Aldgate, which is a Nicolson’s pub… In a reply to me, Cask Marque advised me that they failed their recent Cask Marque inspection visit… They sign up to all this, so you aren’t grassing them off, rather, you are holding them to their side of the bargain.


Finally, from Bluesky, yet more zine action…

Publishing a print beer zine in 2025 is, as you might guess, not lucrative. We do, however, believe it can be sustainable, but we need your help for Final Gravity to reach that point. So we're having a little informal subscription drive, because that's what the cool kids do. 🧵

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— David Nilsen (@davidnilsenbeer.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 5:18 PM

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

Categories
pubs

The bizarre experience of smoky craft beer bars in Serbia

One unexpected feature of a few days passing through Serbia was a lively craft beer scene… overlaid with a dense fog of cigarette smoke.

We’d assumed that smoking bans had come into place in most countries in the orbit of the EU, or that are tentatively working their way towards membership.

In Serbia, though, it turns out that the smoking ban introduced in 2010 exempted bars, cafes and restaurants. Small establishments can choose to ban smoking if they want to. But based on our observations in the past week, very few opt for anything but ashtrays on every table.

Now, we’ve not written about smoking bans much because, bloody hell, it’s hardly worth the trouble. It’s a highly emotional subject and discussions quickly seem to escalate into arguments.

Personally, though, we welcomed the smoking ban when it came in if only because it made the pub more enjoyable for us.

The complaints against smoky pubs are well known but, in particular, we hated the sore throats, stinging eyes and stinky clothes that resulted from most nights out before 2007.

But even we sometimes indulged in a little nicotine nostalgia, sighing wistfully when a wisp of cigarette smoke drifted by in a pub garden. Proustian wossnames and all that.

In Serbia, however, we realised that we’d forgotten just how intensely smoky pubs used to get, and how pungent the aroma could be.

The first bar where this struck us was the otherwise excellent craft beer bar KOLEKTIV in Niš. As we walked through the door we instantly recognised the mingling of both fresh smoke from live cigarettes and stale smoke baked into the space. There were ashtrays distributed throughout the bar and, between bouts of customer service, the staff also sparked up.

It was bearable for the first hour or so but, as the night grew cooler, people migrated inside from the riverside tables. Before long, there were between 7 and 12 people smoking in a small room, and we started not only to smell it but also to feel it catching at our throats and eyes.

It gave us plenty of food for thought. After some discussion, apart from the inconvenience, we realised why it seemed so odd. We remembered smoky pubs but we’d never known smoky craft beer bars or taprooms. The boom in the number of UK craft beer bars came after around 2010 and taprooms later than that. They’ve always been smoke free.

So, this wasn’t quite like going back in time so much as stepping into an alternate reality.

In Belgrade, we ended up sitting outside at the very impressive Docker brewery taproom in the city’s docklands regeneration area. It wasn’t quite warm enough, and we had to leave earlier than we wanted to as a result. But the inside seating area was simply unbearable, with a wall of chewy smoke hanging like winter mist.

Another nearby brewpub, Gvint, was about the same, as was Krafter, a craft beer bar in the centre of the city.

There’s only so much fun you can have sitting outside shivering, watching other people have fun through the window.

At Krafter, we saw a particularly interesting incident when some customers slammed a couple of windows shut. A testy waiter barrelled over and opened them again, gesticulating angrily. Our guess is that he didn’t want to work his entire shift in a sealed, smoky box.

Once we’d spotted the smoke problem it seemed to follow us around. One museum in Belgrade, with a big NO SMOKING sign on the front door, absolutely stank of cigarettes. The source was a security guard hidden behind a curtain listening to Yugoslavian rock on an ancient tape recorder. Every few minutes we’d hear his lighter click and see smoke curl from his cubbyhole.

Perhaps if we lived in Serbia, we’d get used to it, and our tolerance for smoke would increase. After all, we used to go to smoky pubs, and we didn’t even moan about it that much.

It also occurred to us that there are some craft beer drinkers who are also smokers. They might be reading this and thinking that Serbia sounds like paradise.

If you’re someone who spends a bit too much time hanging around outside taprooms and craft beer bars, puffing away in the cold and the drizzle, you might want to consider Belgrade for your next holiday.

It’s a friendly, fascinating city. The craft beer is of a generally high standard. And nobody will mind if you pair each round with a different brand of cigarette, cigar, or pipe tobacco.

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 17 May 2025: City of Last Chances

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got interviews, reviews, and pub guides.

First, some news about Jennings via Roger Protz on Bluesky:

More good news re #JenningsBrewery: not only escaped the clutches of Carlsberg-Britvic, the new independent owners have recruited Buster Grant as Head Brewer, highly respected from Batemans, planning to restore Cumberland Ale, Jennings Bitter & Snecklifter. #CockermouthBrewingHeritage

— Roger Protz (@rogerprotz.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 6:05 PM

There’s more on the story by Bridget Dempsey at the Times & Star:

Jennings Brewery was closed in 2022, but was acquired by Kurt Canfield, CEO of specialist engineering business Delkia, and Rebecca Canfield, proprietor of wine and spirits company Wine and the Wood in February… Since the announcement, Chris France has been appointed managing director, and Head Brewer, Buster Grant has been appointed – he is currently sourcing new brew kit to a more suited size for the relaunch of the brewery… The company hope to be brewing again by the end of May and beers available by early June.


The front of a Victorian brewery building with big gold letters spelling out St Austell Brewery.

There have been a couple of interesting interviews with UK brewing industry figures in the past week, which we’re going to bunch together. First, for The Grocer, James Beeson has spoken to Russell Bisset of that quiet powerhouse Northern Monk:

Bisset credits Northern Monk’s success partly to its ability to resonate across the north of the UK. Its strapline ‘fresh from the north’ – plus work with Leeds charities including Pyramid Arts and Holbeck Together – evokes a sense of community and pride that connects with beer drinkers, he believes… But Bisset insists the brand also has nationwide appeal… That’s why a chunk of the crowdfunding money will be used to open Northern Monk pubs up and down the country, starting in York and Edinburgh this year, and London in 2026.

Then, for The Morning Advertiser, Rebecca Weller has interviewed Georgina Young, Brewing Director at St Austell:

“You want to give the sales teams what they want, and it is harder for them to sell beer in the current climate with the cost of living, so there’s a lot of cost pressures… We’ve had the energy crisis, there was Covid, the prices of raw material last year and then this year it’s national insurance and the people crisis… But we all live in the state of ‘perma crisis’ and we all feel the pressure.”

In both pieces, it’s worth attempting to read between the lines. Being interviewed when you have a corporate line to toe, and a message to get across is tricky. For example, how do you get across that you’ve made improvements in the process without it sounding as if you’re saying the beers were bad before you arrived?


Two people with glasses standing behind the counter of a pub.
Aggy Perreau and Si Perreau. SOURCE: Matthew Curtis/Pellicle.

There’s a lot of talk about community pubs, and pubs and community… but how, in practice, can a pub help people integrate in a new town, and become part of a community? At Pellicle Rebecca Crowe has profiled The Little Taproom in Aigburth, Liverpool, and its owners Aggy Perreau and Si Perreau:

“We’ve always welcomed small local groups to use our space as best as possible,” Si says. “The book club in particular was born from a conversation with one of my best friends Alyssa, something of a book club impresario, that I’d like to host a book club and she happened to be thinking of starting one.” … Especially in cities, there is a loneliness epidemic. Moving to a new city as an adult with no support system makes it extremely difficult to meet people and make new friends outside of work. With this being the case, people are increasingly drawn to community hubs and extracurricular clubs where they can meet people and bond over shared interests, whether that’s crochet, literature, or bonding over unusual cask [ale].


Neon signs advertising Leffe, Jupiler and Stella Artois in a window.
One of the bars near, but not in, Brussels Midi station.

The Beer Nut has been in Brussels on beer consumer union business and has used the time productively, turning out tasting notes for a wide selection of beers you might encounter in the Belgian capital this summer. Excuse the rather chunky quote from this one, which defied our attempts to edit:

I had lunch in Billie, the bar which has taken the space of beloved Brussels institution Monk. Mercifully, it has been left almost exactly as it was before, down to the menu and beer selection. After my spaghetti, I had the house beer, Billie. This is brewed by Belgoo, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s simply a rebadge of something else. It’s a straight up blonde ale of 5.8% ABV with lots of very typical Belgian flavours: both pithy and earthy; grapefruits and farmyards, with a sprinkling of white pepper spice for a savoury, saison-like, finish. It’s not an especially distinctive beer, but is classically constructed and made well… I had another from Belgoo at the Wolf food market, where they run the brewery. Belgoo Hoppy Pils is beautifully clear and golden. There’s a slightly worrying hint of perfume about the aroma but the flavour goes full-on citrus, with zesty lemon up front, followed by a gentler satsuma or kumquat effect. That’s set on a very simple malt base, properly lager-clean and nicely full-bodied, as one would expect at 5% ABV. To me, it comes across as something in the Italian pilsner style, but regardless of nomenclature it’s very tasty and easy-drinking. Before this trip I didn’t think I liked Belgoo’s beers. These two gave me pause, and indicated why breweries’ beers are often worth revisiting.

There’s also a second post focusing on sour beers, to complete the overview.


A shopping trolley or grocery cart.
SOURCE: Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash.

How’s the beer selection at your local supermarket? ‘Velky’ Al Reece isn’t very impressed by what he finds at his on his ritual, habitual ‘bimbles’ around the beer section:

I noted a single brown ale, the excellent Tavern Brown from Alewerks Brewing in Williamsburg, just the one amber ale, Satan’s Pony from Charlottesville’s South Street Brewery, and precisely zero milds, hefeweizens, Scottish ales, Czech style dark lagers, and even an utter dearth of Extra Special Bitter… At last year’s Great American Beer Festival there were 102 categories, and yet an alien visiting a supermarket in central Virginia would be forgiven for believing beer was called IPA, and that was pretty much all that was available.


A brewpub in a modern glass box building with trees outside.
SOURCE: Lisa Grimm/Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs.

Lisa Grimm’s exploration of Dublin pubs continues with notes on the beer garden at the Urban Brewing brewpub:

Although the branding is different, Urban Brewing is an outpost of Carlow Brewing, of O’Hara’s fame, which means that the core O’Hara’s beers are always available, the gorgeous Leann Folláin included… But there is a rotating lineup of exclusive and one-off beers brewed here on site as well – there’s often a mild that’s a delight in warmer weather, and a variety of interesting things to try… And the site is one of the main reasons to visit Urban Brewing: built into a Grade 1-listed former warehouse at Custom House Quay that has been here since at least 1820, it’s an excellent example of thoughtful and creative reuse of a heritage building – something we could really use more of in Dublin…

As we head into summer, it’s worth adding that Lisa has categorised her posts so you can easily find Dublin pubs with gardens or pubs that are good for ‘pavement pints’. She’s also pulled some of this together into a post about the best Dublin pubs for sunny days.


Finally, from Bluesky, evidence that CAMRA’s ‘month of mild’ is well underway, despite some rather warm weather in the UK…

The pub has 3 dark milds on out of 9 cask. Both impressive and ill advised.

— Mark Johnson  (@marknjohnson.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 8:04 PM

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

Categories
design

Why are skulls a craft beer thing?

What imagery do you associate with craft beer? Hop cones? Beards? Skulls? The first two make sense but the third is, on reflection, a puzzle.

In a craft beer bar in Burgas, Bulgaria, the other week, we realised that there were no fewer than 17 images of skulls surrounding us.

They were on the walls, in the form of chalk art and graffiti murals, and on beer packaging – including the can on our table.

A collage of images of stickers, t-shirts, and beer can labels.
Skulls spotted in craft beer bars over the course of 24 hours in Sofia, Bulgaria.

This reminded us that a few years ago a lot of new entrants into the craft beer market also leaned heavily on skull imagery.

One particularly notable example was Pistonhead, which launched as a faux-craft sub-brand in 2011 by old skool Swedish brewery Spendrups.

A can of Pistonhead lager with a flaming biker gang style skull.

As we drank our skull-adorned Bulgarian craft beer, two questions formed in our minds:

  1. Where did this association between skulls and craft beer start?
  2. What does it mean?

We love digging back through the archives to pin down how certain trends developed and who has the strongest claims to be first.

You might take note of Orkney Skull Splitter, an award-winning beer with ‘skull’ in its name – but no skull on its label, because it’s actually a dual reference to (a) viking axes and (b) hangovers. It was first brewed, we believe, in 1989.

There’s also Laughing Skull, a pilsner first brewed in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in the late 1990s until 2005, and then revived as an amber ale after 2009. This one did and does have a skull on the label.

But it seems fairly clear that the skull obsession in craft beer began in earnest with Beavertown in around 2011, via its in-house designer Nick Dwyer.

In various interviews, like this one from 2012, Dwyer talks about his designs as “psychedelic” and mentions Mars Attacks! as a specific influence.

The article linked above also says “They have their roots in old drawings of robots with rib cages”.

In other words, these particular designs arose from Nick Dwyer’s own interests and obsessions – from the kind of things he liked to draw and doodle.

Before they were dragged into beer, however, skulls were already popular in other areas of hipsterish culture.

In tattoo art, for example, skulls have been among the most popular icons for decades.

A recent book called Skull Session collects examples of skull tattoo designs from the collection of Lyle Tuttle, with some dating back to the 1950s, and many examples which wouldn’t look at all out of place on a beer can.

A selection of designs for tattoos on a page from a book with the caption "Unknown artists 1950s to 1960s".
SOURCE: Skull Session/lyletuttlecollection.com

There’s also a tradition of skull iconography in biker culture, in American punk music, and skateboarding. In his 2011 book Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation David A. Ensminger writes:

Images of skulls and skeletons are omnipresent in [1980s American] punk flyers, which might reveal the influence of skate-core bands like Suicidal Tendencies and their zealous homemade fans who made countless skull shirts… but also the art of Mad Marc Rude (Mis-fits, Battalion of Saints, Christ on Parade), Push-ead (Septic Death, Corrosion of Conformity), or Shawn Kerri (Germs). Most likely, the roots relate to the 1978 skull-and-dagger graphic designed for the (Powell-Peralta) Ray “Bones” Rodriguez [skateboard] deck by V. Courtland Johnson. Similar skull designs were omnipresent on Powell-Peralta [skateboards] throughout the mid-1980s…

He tracks this back further to Los Angeles gang art which, in turn, might have been influenced by Mexican folk art.

There’s a whole strain of alternative street culture here that British breweries were tapping into, consciously or otherwise, in the 2000s and 2010s, as an antidote to the folksy conservativeness represented by CAMRA and real ale.

For BrewDog that meant simply writing PUNK on their products, and shouting it a lot.

For Beavertown and others, the approach was slightly more subtle. They created label designs that wouldn’t look out of place on a skateboard, on stickers, on T-shirts, or in ink on skin.

What skull imagery means in the context of beer

David Ensmiger, quoted above, suggests that in the context of punk music and skateboarding, skulls and skeletons represent a certain ‘apartness’ from mainstream culture.

To paraphrase his argument, skaters, punks and bikers are monsters created by society, who delight in horrifying and repulsing ‘normies’.

There’s also a more obvious sense in which skull imagery is about confronting death, and embracing life. People who fly skull flags see themselves as fearless risk takers, in both physical terms (skateboarding accidents hurt) and in terms of their cultural status.

Again, this is exactly the kind of attitude craft beer producers either wanted to tap into (appropriate) or which actually reflected their lifestyles.

The Weird Beard Brew Co logo with a skull whose eye sockets are filled with hops. The skull also has a long knotted beard.
SOURCE: Weird Beard Brew Co.

In the latter case, Weird Beard Brew Co., launched in 2013, springs to mind.

Its logo incorporated a bearded skull which rather resembled Bryan Spooner, one of the founders and head brewer until 2024. Both he and his co-founder, Gregg Irwin, were fans of metal music – another hotbed of skull imagery.

But skulls didn’t become potent images in the 1970s, of course. Consider the ‘memento mori’, for example, as explained in this article from the Science Museum website:

A memento mori is an object that serves to remind the viewer of the inevitability of their death and the brevity of life. ‘Memento mori’ is a Latin phrase that translates to ‘remember you must die.’ … Ancient Romans would reflect on their own mortality at banquets and feasts. At some feasts, every guest would be presented with a small memento mori.

As regular consumers of beer, a substance that is bad for us, we often find ourselves pondering on the balance between enjoying life and prolonging it. If we gave up beer altogether, we might live longer. But as we’re only here for a short while, why should we deny ourselves pleasure?

Perhaps we might see the skulls we encounter on craft beer packaging as an everyday mass market memento mori. Life is fleeting – treat yourself.

And the memento mori is also a symbol of defiance: we look death in the eye sockets as we knock a few hours off the span of our lives with every session.

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 10 May 2025: Hell House

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week – even when we’re on holiday. This time, we’ve got low-alcohol beer, fancy taps, and cheese.

First, some news we’d missed: Ilkley Brewery went into administration at the end of April. And some more recent news we did catch: a local investor has stepped into prevent the brewery’s closure. “The past 12 months have been extremely challenging,” Ilkley’s Luke Raven says in the official statement, which is a phrase we seem to be hearing a lot lately. We haven’t seen Ilkley beers around lately which is a shame as we generally liked them a lot. Let’s hope this new investment will lead to a revival in their availability.


Illustration of the word 'Zero'.

Sticking with the BBC, Jude Winter from BBC Derby has written a piece explaining in some detail why non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beers might cost as much as ‘proper’ ones – which is a question we see pop up fairly frequently on social media. The piece includes quotes from various brewers, publicans, and drinkers:

[Dominic Driscoll of Thornbridge] said they use less malted barley to get a lower alcohol percentage but use more hops to make the alcohol-free beer taste better… “We use the same equipment but we use it in a different way,” explained Mr Driscoll… “Over the last few years we have developed our own method to create our low alcohol beer, everybody does it in a different way.” … Steve Kirk, owner of the Neptune pub in Derby, said buying alcohol-free products costs the “exact same price” as higher percentage products… “The fact we have to sell it at the same price as regular alcohol is not a great incentive for people to choose an alcohol-free alternative,” he added… Amit Gill, 24, from Derby, said: “The price would put me off if I’m being honest. If it was cheaper I think it would be more attractive to people.”


Sonja Mitchell. SOURCE: Jonny Hamilton/Pellicle.

And while we’re sticking with things, let’s stick with the subject of alcohol-free beer. At Pellicle Emmie Harrison-West has written about a Scottish brewery that’s new to us, Jump Ship, which specialises in booze free beer, under the leadership of Sonja Mitchell. There’s lots of interesting stuff in the article, from legal battles with BrewDog to the process of recipe development, but this was the line that really stood out for us:

“Consumer confidence in this space is still fragile,” Sonja tells me. “And I want their first alcohol-free pint to be perfect.”

In other words, people assume alcohol free beer will be crap, or nasty, and you might only get one chance to change their minds. You could probably extend that philosophy to craft beer more generally.


Beer being poured, from an old advertisement.

Evan Rail has noticed something interesting: global beer culture seems to be going through a phase where how a beer is poured is as important, if not more important, than the beer itself. As he writes in an article at VinePair:

Across North America, the appeal of draft beer is increasingly becoming not just that it is on tap, but how it is being tapped. Want a tube of 100 percent foam? You can get that. Want a Czech-style šnyt, with about half foam and half liquid? No problem. Want a beer poured in the style of a small taproom in Tokyo during the late 1930s? We got you… So what does it mean that the discussion around beer is shifting from aspects of its production — formerly important marketing elements like celebrity brewers, innovative recipes, heritage malts, unusual yeasts, or new kinds of hops — and focusing instead on simply how that beer is being served to the customer?


Kilner jars full of Camembert type cheese marinating in oil.
Nakládaný hermelín. SOURCE: Andreas Krennmair/Daft Eejit Brewing.

At a slight tangent to beer Andreas Krennmair has shared notes on, and recipes for, three cheese-based snacks that go perfectly with beer:

I do love my Obazda, but even though it seems like a very straightforward dish to make, there can be a massive difference in how intense it tastes. I’ve had fairly bland ones, but a beer garden known for its good beer (at least in my experience) usually also serves a very good Obazda… If you want to make it yourself, there are some pretty good recipes available out there. According to legend, Obazda was invented in the 1920s by Katharina Eisenreich at the Weihenstephaner brewpub in Freising. Weihenstephaner brewery has a recipe for Obazda on their website which they claim is the original recipe.

Even non-cooks ought to find these simple recipes quite inspiring – especially as we enter the season of back garden beer gardens.


A sign advertising Duvel.

Adrian Tierney-Jones has stared long and hard at Duvel and reflected on it in four dimensions:

‘Horror, horror, horror.’ … The first words in a diary entry, Tuesday, October 20, 1987… ‘Had a disgusting hangover. Never again that poison Duvel.’ … What did the beer taste like then? I can write on what it tastes like now, but then it was — if my memory serves me right — a taste of difference, not easy perhaps, but difference. This was a totally different beer to what I was used to drinking. This was a new flavour experience, on a par with my first dish in what we used to call a Chinese restaurant at the age of 12 with my father on Saturdays when we used to see him. Or the time in Bologna when an interview with a chef and the subsequent meal I was served made me realise how good a beef ragù could be.


Finally, from Bluesky, a call for submissions for the next round of The Session…

New post up on Beer Diary — a call for submissions to the next round of The Session. During May, have a think about your favourite (for whatever reasons) depictions of beer and pubs in art and fiction (broadly defined). Post them wherever you post things, and I'll round them up.

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— Phil Cook (@beerdiary.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 8:05 PM

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