Categories
News

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.

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 10 February 2024: Station Eleven

Every Saturday morning we round up our favourite reading about beer and pubs from the previous week. This time, we’ve got country houses, faux-snugs, and little bowls of malt, among other delights.

First, some news. SIBA has published updated stats on UK brewery numbers and reports a slight drop from 1828 active brewers in January 2023, to 1815 in 2024. Interestingly, the data they’ve collected also allows them to be more specific about which regions are being hit hardest. This time, it’s the North West of England, and the North more generally. This is always worth remembering when we have conversations about boom and bust in the brewing industry: it’s rarely evenly distributed.


A Victorian painting of farm labourers during harvest with English countryside behind.
‘Harvest‘ by John Frederick Herring, 1857, via Wikimedia Commons.

Martyn Cornell has been looking at English country house brewing – a commercial activity in a different sense, as a byproduct of the real business of farming. His focus is Samuel Unwin Heathcote of Shephalbury Manor in Hertfordshire:

The six quarters of malt at a time that Heathcote bought in 1861 would have been enough to make perhaps 24 barrels of beer, which would have been supplied to the servants and farm workers at Shephalbury Manor, as well as the family (I’m ignoring the malt dust Heathcote was buying because I have no idea what difference that might have made to yields …) Over the year that works out at 96 barrels, or just under 76 pints a day. If that sounds a great quantity of beer, the average number of male farm workers per farm in Hertfordshire in 1851 was 13. Let’s guess that Heathcote was, as a substantial landowner, employing twice the average, that gives him 26 workers. That’s three pints per day per man, which sounds perfectly reasonable for the time.


Ale casks piled in a pub yard.

Whenever someone suggests raising the price of cask ale as a way to save it Tandleman is on hand to argue: “No.” This time, his post is in response to an opinion piece by Georgina Young, head brewer at St. Austell. He writes:

You have to get the quality right, and really there is a fat chance of that given that there is a wide and diverse range of outlets for cask beer, from the specialist supplier to the lone dusty handpump sporting a Doom Bar pumpclip. You have token cask beers, indifferent cellar keeping, differences between brewery outlets and those of pub companies and more. In the diverse pub market we have, you can’t simply wish premiumisation upon it, bump up the price, and hope people will cough up… Already in some specialist outlets that premium does apply, and it applies for the simple reason of trust. People will pay more for the certainty, especially if quality is poor elsewhere.  The other point that should not be forgotten, is that cask beer is a live product. Usually in premium situations, you price an object higher, but sell less at a greater margin. But pesky old cask doesn’t lend itself to this arrangement. It goes off if you keep it hanging around.

One thing that struck us, though, is the suggestion that “the existing consumer base for cask conditioned beer often values its affordability and accessibility”. Our suspicion is that the existing customer base for cask ale has shifted, or has already substantially shifted, to those who can afford to waste a fiver on the odd duff pint.


BrewDog bar sign.

Glynn Davis at Beer Insider has some sharp insight into what’s going on with the global superclass of craft brewers as represented by Mikkeller (which just sold a 20% stake to Carlsberg) and BrewDog:

The strategy since BrewDog received a £213m investment from private equity firm TSG (in exchange for a 23% stake) in 2017 has been all about top-line growth, and the business has failed to make a profit since that date. As part of the deal, TSG received an 18% compounding coupon that has so far earned it a total of more than £600m, which BrewDog now owes. This payment will be made when the brewery is either bought in a trade sale or undertakes an initial public offering… The fact BrewDog is now talking about profits represents a change in the narrative that could be the precursor to TSG initiating a course of action that, seven years into its investment, will enable it to take out some money out for its investors… The craft brewing revolution has long since passed its honeymoon period… But it could be the poster child of the sector, BrewDog, that potentially takes things on to the divorce stage for the industry and craft beer drinkers.

The Mikkeller news did surprise us because we’d totally missed it. Perhaps that’s because, frankly, we’ve never particularly cared about Mikkeller (disappointing beers brewed under contract) but maybe also because we’re not using Twitter. Was it the hot topic for a day or two over there, as it would have been in, say, 2016?


A green-painted pub with lettering in gold: "J. McNeill, select bar, music shop, ales, beers, wines, established 1834".
SOURCE: Lisa Grimm/Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs.

We quite fancy the look of J. McNeill’s as presented by Lisa Grimm at Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs. It’s interesting that Ireland is so dominated by a single brand, Guinness, that a pub with a different stout, Beamish, seems positively rebellious:

As is the case for countless Dublin pubs – indeed, for countless pubs across Ireland – J. McNeill’s Pub purports to be quite a different business, at least partially; in this instance, a music shop… Indeed, J. McNeill’s did begin life as a musical instrument shop, back in 1834, albeit a few doors further down Capel Street, though the music business moved out of Dublin a good 20 years ago, and J McNeill’s has been ‘just a pub’ ever since… But it retains a strong musical tradition, from the instruments in the window to the nightly-ish trad sessions in the main bar, and the wealth of photographs of well-known musicians throughout the pub. While the entrance and front bar are rather small, the pubs winds its way back in slightly eccentric fashion, with a series of not-quite-snugs (you may decide for yourself whether our seating area pictured here, with your own fair author deep under the stairs, counts as a snug) to a cozy back room with another fireplace…


The sign on the Brasserie de la Senne brewery

You might take Eoghan Walsh’s evocative list of his favourite food and drink in Brussels as a to-do list for your next visit to Belgium. But it’s more like a poem than a city guide, and perhaps a more accurate reflection of the culture for that:

Fried plantains and Guinness at Le Vieux Mila

A little bowl of malted barley to chew on at Moeder Lambic

The window nook at Le Coq with a cold €2 Stella

A meringuey half litre of Zenne Pils down the back of the Brasserie de la Senne taproom

A zingy bottle of Zinnebir on the terrace at Bar Eliza (RIP), on a Friday after the school run 

Pre-match weeknight beers upstairs at BBP Port Sud after they’ve finished brewing 

Cask-poured Stouterik from a tankard at Gist

A quiet Orval in the hotel bar of the Esperance


Finally, from Instagram, Nat Ainscough has been photographing pubs again…

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

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 3 February 2024: Poker Face

Every Saturday we compile the best reading about beer and pubs from the past week. This time we’ve got porter, pubs, and personal taste.

First, some news: Steve Dunkley is organising a Historic Brewing Conference to take place in Manchester on 5 and 6 August 2024. Speakers announced so far include Gary Gillman, Lars Marius Garshol, Laura Hadland and Pete Brown. There are also plans for a bar selling recreations of historic beers. Two-day tickets will cost £70. Follow Steve or HistoricBrewCon on your favourite social media platform to find out when they’re available.


The exterior of a large pub at night. The sign reads 'Fishponds Tap'.
The Fishponds Tap in Bristol, which is listed in the book Desi Pubs.

This week’s meatiest read is an academic paper called ‘A pub for England: Race and class in the time of the nation’ by Amit Singh, Sivamohan Valluvan, and James Kneale, originally published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

It was brought to our attention by David Jesudason, to whose book Desi Pubs it seems to be a response. Its 11,000 words of Academic-ese (“concomitant”, “searching conceptualisation”, and so on) are not easy to digest. But the effort is worth it.

The main argument, as we read it, is that most writing about pubs ignores the question of race altogether, shoring up the idea that pubs ‘belong’ to white working class culture. But the Desi pub points the way to a different, more inclusive, more complex idea of what pubs can be:

The UK Government’s apparent neglect of the pub has largely been represented in terms of heavy-handed and uncaring state intervention into private businesses, in the form of high and increasing levels of duty on alcoholic drinks, particularly beer; the 2007 smoking ban; and the pandemic lockdowns of 2020–2021. These characterisations of this threat evoke a particular kind of pub, one relying on income from drink rather than food, on smokers, and on the ‘regular’ patron deprived by lockdown of a ‘second home’. And as we have surveyed in the previous section, almost all such interventions, whether right or left, remain insufficiently critical of the ethnonationalist assumptions integral to these ideas of loss, or have even enthusiastically embraced them.


Handmade wooden labels for Ideal Day beer.
SOURCE: Pellicle/Lily Waite.

Last year we went to Vessel in Plymouth where proprietor Sam Congdon talked enthusiastically about Ideal Day, a farmhouse brewery just over the border in Cornwall. We made half a plan to visit, but couldn’t make it. We also made a note to find out more and maybe write something at some point. Now, for Pellicle, Lily Waite has saved us the trouble, with an in-depth profile of brewery founders Nia Rylance and James Rylance, late of Beavertown, Redchurch and Harbour:

Ideal Day is one of a number of businesses that make up Crocadon Farm, perched on Cornwall’s southeastern border with Devon, just north of the town of Saltash at the mouth of the Tamar Valley. A self-styled “agrotourism retreat,” Crocadon is a farm-restaurant founded by chef and farmer Dan Cox… What James is doing is, to some degree, antithetical to how he brewed toward the end of many, if not all, of his previous brewing roles. None of Ideal Day’s beers are particularly to or of a style—very deliberately so. They are, until the imminent launch of Field Beer in bottles, only available in keg, sent out individually, with a hand-finished and stamped keg badge cut down from whatever nearby tree recently fell. They taste of James and Nia’s intent, of railing very, very gently against homogeneity and mass-production. 


Mild taste-off: multiple milds in plastic beakers.

At Tempest in a Tankard Franz Hofer has been looking inward in an attempt to understand his own taste in beer. It’s an attempt to get closer to being objective by being transparent about his prejudices and preferences:

It’s a sunny autumn afternoon and I’ve just arrived in the Oberpfalz, home of Zoigl. I immediately become part of a tableau with Zoigl in the picture, but one that’s also much more than just about the beer. The frame around the tableau encompasses the lively squares and ornate churches, the cobblestone streets that cradle those wonderful Zoigl taverns, the meadows and rolling hills, the colour of the leaves against the sky, the fragrance of the forest as I wander from town to town in search of my next Zoigl… Does all of this cultural stuff make the beer taste “better”? It’s a question I’ve grappled with for years. But the question misses the mark. Instead, it’s more a question of remaining attentive to how these cultural frameworks – from the Wirtshaus and the beer garden to the communal brewhouse and the coolship – have shaped both the beer of a given region and my own taste in beer. Context does matter. And it’s what mitigates against our tendency to reduce beer to a mere object to be evaluated, rated, and scored.


The carpet at the Imperial, Exeter.

For Time Out Fred Garratt-Stanley has been investigating what it means for communities when the Wetherspoon closes. It’s interesting to read as on-the-ground reporting, with quotes from Wetherspoon customers, and as an analysis of the market, highlighting the rise of the Craft Union chain in particular:

It’s true that Craft Union — an affordable pub company that has expanded significantly in recent years — appears to be benefiting from the demise of Spoons. Across the UK, the chain’s emphasis on cheap drinks, community events and a homely atmosphere for regulars has allowed them to scoop up a fair chunk of Wetherspoons’ lost trade… Despite the important role the chain plays as a meeting point for communities – particularly working-class communities – many Spoons pubs struggle to foster lasting emotional attachments with punters. The formulaic, transactional nature of the chain means that when Wetherspoons shut, it may be a blow, but locals will soon start searching for alternatives.


One of our favourite types of blog post – a staple in the early days of beer blogging – is an earnest review of a can from a corner shop. The Beer Nut, with his tendency to try any beer he encounters and judge it fairly, has sniffed out a decent Baltic porter that we’ll be looking for in our local Eastern European supermarkets:

Volfas Engelman Baltic Porter, then, is 6% ABV and the can tells us it’s in “limited supply”. Also that it’s 25 IBU, which strikes me as a little low, even if the scale is largely meaningless. Nevertheless, it pours a handsome dark brown with a modest and mangeable off-white head. The aroma gives gentle caramel and the promise of some herbal liquorice hops. Everything is in order there, then. A lager-clean texture follows, and there’s a surprise in the flavour…


Finally, from Instagram, a pub in the urban landscape on a sunny day… ah, remember sunshine?

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

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 27 January 2024: Dead Beat

It’s Saturday morning which means another round-up of good reading about beer, brewing and pubs, from the Baltic to Bermondsey.

First, a couple of bits of news:

  • Steve Holt, owner of Kirkstall Brewery, has stepped into rescue North Brewing: “The move will ensure North’s future, including its Springwell Brewery and Taproom, as well as the North Taproom sites in Leeds and Manchester. The transaction does not include the North Taproom in Birmingham, which will close.”
  • Carlsberg Marston has decided to shut down the last example of Burton union brewing equipment still in use, in Burton upon Trent. Ian Webster has more background at The Beertonian: “[The] various incarnations of Marston’s have been proud of their Union Room, calling it the ‘Cathedral of Brewing.’ In 1991 their commitment expanded with the installation of more Unions. ‘No Burton Union. No Pedigree. End of.’ Not my words but those on marstonsbrewery.co.uk”

An alleyway leading into a courtyard with shops and cafes.
Neal’s Yard by Martina Jorden on Unsplash.

For The Guardian Jonathan Nunn has written about Nicholas Saunders, founder of Neal’s Yard Dairy and various other ventures in the UK. It’s not about beer, though The Kernel does get a mention, but about the complexity behind the idea of ‘artisanal’ foodie culture:

Passersby assumed it was all a posh hippy commune, and in some sense they were correct. For all its democratic impulse, many workers in the warehouse either had the title “Honourable” before their names, had been to the same public school as Saunders… Some resented the increase in “straight” customers that the Yard’s success was attracting. In 1977, when a Daily Telegraph article flooded the Yard with people from the home counties desperate for bargain basement coffee, Saunders temporarily shut it down. He may have distrusted the “freaks”, but Saunders also realised that if too many “straights” came then the Yard’s alternative atmosphere could not be maintained. Days later, an irritated customer came by to harangue Saunders with his thoughts on the matter: “So you stopped selling coffee because you were too successful? How British. How disgustingly British.”

Nunn also observes that graduates of Neal’s Yard and associated businesses dominate the UK artisanal food and drink scene even today. Until very recently (like, this week) Bristol had a specialist beer and cheese shop run by former Neal’s Yard people, via Bermondsey.

His final observation is a depressing one: when you try to create an alternative, it seems to either get co-opted (taken over by Holland & Barrett) or becomes part of the engine of gentrification:

“At times [the British food scene’s] institutions bring to mind Saunders’s criticism of the shops he was once trying to put out of business: meeting places for the in-group, expensive, making ordinary people feel like intruders.”


Illustration: a pub door spilling light.

In the latest edition of her newsletter, The Gulp, Katie Mather asks: “When I say I want to go to the pub, what do I mean?”

I want to be chatted to when I go to the bar to choose from a good selection of beer, and feel like the people who work here are looked after and enjoy being there. I love a real fire, but controversially, it’s not a dealbreaker. I do, however, award huge bonus points for hauntings, witch marks, and fascinating or gory local history that can be linked to the pub—however tentatively. Points are deducted for tourism-baiting, although I’m not too harsh on this right now. It’s a difficult industry out there. Beautiful views from the windows are a tick. Funny or interesting regulars are a tick. Classic bar snacks are a massive tick—pickled eggs, butties wrapped in clingfilm, or pies from a local butchers’ shop all tot the points right up.


Historic red brick buildings around the market square of a German city.
The main square in Stralsund, Germany, by Samuel Svec on Unsplash.

For Pellicle Will Hawkes provides a detailed profile of Störtebeker Braumanufaktur in Stralsund, Germany, which also acts a vehicle to explain the history of brewing in the DDR, and German attitudes to experimental beer:

It was once Stralsunder, founded in 1827, but its modern story begins in February 1990 amidst the wreckage of the former DDR… At the time East Germany breweries were in high demand—or some of them were. Export brands such as Radeberger and Lübzer, which had the best equipment and ingredients East Germany could afford, had an excellent reputation, and were quickly snaffled when the Treuhand—the organisation established to sell off state-owned East German companies—put them up for sale in 1990… Stralsunder was different. Having paid 1 million Deutschmarks (about £815,000 in modern pounds Sterling), [new owners] the Nordmanns were confronted with dozens of suppliers demanding back payment, coal-powered brewery equipment in terrible shape, lagering cellars not cold enough to do their job, and a supply chain in ruins coughing up awful ingredients.


Converted warehouses in Bermondsey.

Let’s stick with Will Hawkes: the December edition of his excellent newsletter is now free to read online and includes what amounts to an oral history of the London brewing scene in the 2010s. That’s a period that’s starting to feel like history, and in need of documentation. Will highlights various instances of people learning the ropes in London then shooting off around the UK, and the world, to found their own breweries:

“The brewers in East London were a tight bunch. There was zero competition, everyone was super open to sharing ideas and excitement about beers. Friday after work in the Cock Tavern you couldn’t move for brewers! I still brew like those early days at the Kernel: I make quite different styles now, but they are made in the same spirit.”


The Lower Turk's Head, Manchester.

We’ve already linked to this in a full-on response post earlier in the week but, for completeness, do check out Ross Cummins on his top 5 Manchester pints (at the moment):

Now herein lies the first problem with this list. Holt’s Black is not available in every Holt’s pub in Manchester City centre. On a previous occasion I had tried to get Dave to try a pint of the black stuff in The Hare & Hounds and Lower Turks Head, both of which serve Holt’s beer (the latter being an actual Holt’s pub, and the former just serving Holt’s Bitter it seems). Yet neither had Black on draft… See I had first tried Black only a few months ago at The Ostrich in Prestwich, thanks to Cafe Beermoth‘s very own bar manager, Big Cal. He had harped on about it a few times, and so when I got the chance I tried it, and loved it. It became my go to at my local, The Cleveland, another Holt’s pub just down the round from my house. Thus I had assumed every Holt’s pub did it. Unfortunately not.


Finally, from Liam K on BlueSky

A screengrab of a social media post by BeerFoodTravel.BSky.Social showing O'Hara's Leann Folláin stout blended with Saison Dupont: “I'm doing a bit more blending tonight, top league stuff…”

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

Categories
News

News, nuggets and longreads 20 January 2024: Wintermute

Here are all the blog posts and articles we bookmarked in the past week, from cosy pubs in Dublin to chilly ones in Manchester.

First, some news. North Brewing of Leeds has appointed administrators and is looking for “additional investment” to stay afloat. This is significant because North Bar, from which North Brewing is a spin-off, was arguably the UK’s first craft beer bar (see Brew Britannia for more on that). Its expansion into brewing and multiple bars was very much a sign of the craft beer boom of the 2000s and 2010s. And that it is struggling in 2024 perhaps confirms that boom is well and truly over.


The exterior of the Ivy House, a grand-looking pub advertising food and brunches.
SOURCE: Lisa Grimm/weirdodublinpubs.com

It’s exciting to see that Lisa Grimm’s Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs has broken free from her blog onto its own website at weirdodublinpubs.com. The first post on the new site is about The Ivy House in Drumcondra:

The Ivy House is in a lovely three-storey building (with the date ‘1809’ above the pediment…we’ll get back to that), so it’s quite a substantial place, but it could easily be argued that it’s two pubs in one. Although most visual interest is drawn by the frontage, the smaller, one-storey structure to the side could almost be overlooked, were it not for the arresting image of an older man – one Patrick Carthy, formerly of Carthy’s Bar, painted on the wall, and this part of the business is still known by his name… the Carthy’s Bar side of The Ivy House… has an entirely separate entrance around the corner, complete with its own frontage. And, once inside, it’s quite the contrast from the other side of The Ivy House – it’s every bit the old-man-pub…


Lager illustration.

How long is long enough when it comes to lagering? For Craft Beer & Brewing Michael Stein explores the myths, the rules-of-thumb and the facts of the matter:

While four to six months was proudly advertised as a great deal of time in 1904, two to three months seems like a long time today. It might even feel like forever… In recent years, as more small breweries have dabbled in lager, many have been mentioning the lagering times on their packaging or social media. After all, if it’s expensive to keep beer in tanks for that long, you might as well get some marketing benefit out of it… Back in 1907, Christian Heurich Brewing in Washington, D.C., was advertising two beers, Maerzen and Senate, as being six to 10 months old. Heurich, however, was a large brewery with a massive footprint, able to produce 200,000 barrels a year.


A bottle of Corona Mega with a wrinkled brown label next to two jars of golden beer, a wedge of lime and a bottle of hot sauce.

Like Jeff Alworth we’re always fascinated by the strange beers you sometimes find in unexpected places. For us, it’s things like Bass Mild in a social club in Penzance. For Jeff it’s an off-brand bottle of Corona lager in a Mexican restaurant:

En Route to Oceanside, an unincorporated town of 361, we stopped in Tillamook for dinner, selecting a Mexican restaurant I will not name in case it is on the fringes of an international beer-smuggling ring. Our server, who also seemed to be the owner, offered us a choice of one beer: Corona. He gestured at a cooler, but instead of seeing the familiar blue and white, it was filled with 1.2 liter bombers with labels the color of a paper bag. I write about beer for a living, and I spend a fair amount of time in Mexican restaurants, and I have never seen a bottle like that. Mystified, I asked about it, and he told us (paraphrasing here), “That’s the kind we get in Mexico.” He said it encouragingly, as if inviting me to sample a local delicacy.


Black Sheep pump clips on the bar of a Yorkshire pub.

What is Breal Capital’s gameplan as it snaps up one troubled UK brewery after another? At Beer Insider Glynn Davis offers some insight with his business journalist hat on:

Beyond the tap rooms of the breweries it has bought there appears to be only modest tied profitable sales for Breal. It closed three of the four Black Sheep pubs having deemed them unviable. It has suggested that its brewing sales team across the UK can expand the market for the breweries in its ever-expanding portfolio. This is fair enough but it’s a tough market out there as the acquired breweries know all too well… What Breal can also tap into is its growing presence in the restaurant and bars sector as it is also on a mission to hoover up distressed assets in this area. It has so far bought Vinoteca, D&D London and a couple of bars that it has brought into its growing Andrea chain.


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

Visiting one outer Bristol pub before Christmas we took note of a chill in the air and damp on the seats. Now Tandleman has similar observations from Manchester:

Yesterday in Manchester, two out of the three pubs I was in… were actually cold.  So cold in one that my wife refused to allow a further drink, as she was perishing. In this case, it was not helped by a door at the rear to the courtyard that was left open by smokers as they nipped in and out. With a door at the other end admitting customers, it made for an icy through draught from the sub-zero temperatures outside. While the radiators were feebly doing their best, it was a losing battle, and in any case they didn’t seem to be that hot anyway. Our earlier experience in a very large venue wasn’t much better, though they did have a huge space to heat, nor was the small restaurant where we tried to enjoy a meal. I’d call that a trend.

There’s a sharp observation from the Pub Curmudgeon in the comments, too, that “the tendency to remove small rooms and convert pubs into one large single space has stored up a problem for the future”. See also: private houses.


Finally, from Mastodon

User Veedems posts:

While I don’t love that Pabst beer is owned by a Russian company now, I do love that they’ve stuck to their key selling points.

What kind of beer is it? 

Pabst: Who cares? It’s 90 cents a can. 

Yeah but how many carbs does it have?

Pabst: enough to charge 90 cents a can. 

What kind of flavor notes should I expect? 

Pabst: You should expect to give us a dollar and we’ll give you 10 cents back.

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