As I mentioned last week, I am sharing some past submissions from the Yuletide Christmas Boxing Day Hanukka Kwanza New Years Eve and Hogmanay Beery Photo Contests that have been sitting in my email folders from all those years years gone by. This week a photo from 2012’s bare knuckle brawl sent in by Jeff Wayne of Tampa, FL. Not necessarily the prettiest image but that there is the leaky bung of a fermenting barrel aged chocolate stout, a celebration of a full range of browns. I like it. Just hope someone spooned up that excess chocolate.

Yes, here we are two weeks from the big day. The day I drink sherry at 8 am and have cake for breakfast. Excitement builds. Also building is Eoghan‘s Advent calendar of things seen in about the 19 communes of Brussels, including at the bewilderingly queter edges of the town:

The streets were so big, wide plains of asphalt, fringed by large standalone houses between was too much air. And the air too was different, smoky and rich but not in an oppressive, attack-your-throat sense, more luxurious. The topography too, big dips and vertiginous climbs with houses and apartment blocks ranged on their slopes, not at all like the slow and steady – but just as taxing – hills I’m more used to traversing in downtown Brussels. I didn’t even know if I was in Watermael or Boitsfort… The bar was, when I finally found it, comfortingly familiar. A Brussels that was recognisable to me however far from the centre I might have strayed, with beer in the fridges I knew and breweries on the taps I trusted. I was at last on terra firma…

Also out wandering, ATJ captured something of the essence of being ATJ in this passage from his travel diary this week:

The soundtrack on this late morning in a Bamberg pub is of laughter and calls and joy growls in the main bar, alongside the clatter and bang of cutlery and plates in the kitchen. The aroma of roast meat, intense in its intimacy, flits through the room, an escape from the kitchen, like a spirit from its long locked stronghold. I sense, or perhaps create, a Friday midday feeling, the joviality of the approaching weekend, though for me, having left home the previous Sunday and perambulated through Prague, nuzzled myself into Nuremberg’s hidden corners and currently based for a day in Bamberg, there is no conception of a weekend, time is just drifting by with the conscience of a cloud.

Not unlike Willie W., when one weighs the words. Anthony Gladman has also being weighing the situation, in this case for cask, and finds that something is lacking:

Cask ale’s slow drift away from relevance saddens me. I fear we seem set to lose it altogether, and shall be culturally diminished as a result. And the worst thing about it is this: the younger drinkers who choose not to drink cask ale are doing nothing wrong. It simply isn’t relevant to them. Nor is this their failing; it is the beer’s and the brewers’ and the pub landlords’. And perhaps partly also mine, as a drinks writer, for failing to make its case often enough, loudly enough, or persuasively enough.

Bingo. I have never understood writers complaining how folk don’t understand this thing or that. It is the job of the writer to make it compelling. Has cask suffered solely on that basis? Nope. But it hasn’t helped.

Well, conversely, this news either means it is no longer a fad or the shark has jumped on no-lo beer as, according to The Guardian, AB InBev is created the world’s largest alcohol-free brewing facility in Wales:

A “de-alcoholisation facility” sounds like somewhere to check in after a boozy Christmas, but in the new annexe of a brewery in south Wales they are extracting hangovers from beer. With demand for no-alcohol and low-alcohol (“nolo”) beer taking off in the UK, the hi-tech brewing apparatus enables the plant at Magor, which produces more than 1bn pints of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois a year, to make the increasingly popular teetotal versions too… The availability of alcohol-free beers on tap in pubs is expected to further normalise the choice.

We are assured that “the machine treats the beer very sensitively and delivers a fantastic taste”. Normally I would laugh, say things like “….riiiiight…” and move on but… I just had my first four pack of Guinness 0 and will definitely buy another. What happened? Maybe I got normalized. Try it with port. But no-lo’s not quite as socially acceptable everywhere as The Times notes this amongst its list of conversation topics you will be annoyed by at parties this holiday season:

At every party there are now soooo many men with soooo many helpful tips and advice on the great alcohol-free beers they know all about and which they are categorically not drinking tonight. For some reason it’s always the most sloshed blokes who have the most to say about sober alternatives. It’s like getting nutrition advice from the morbidly obese.

Don’t be the beer bore. Ever. Never one to be that, Alistair shared a happy memory of the time he helped brew, :

This Thursday is the 15th anniversary of the day I spent at Devils Backbone Basecamp brewing the first ever batch of Morana, a Czech style dark lager that I designed for them. I had spent the previous months diving into archives, emailing with multiple brewers, and beer experts, in various languages – English, German, Czech, and Slovak – to learn everything I could about a family of beers that at the time only consisted of about 5% of Czech beer production. Obviously, having only fairly recently decamped from Prague to Virginia, I was also relying on my own remembrances of beers that I had got a taste for in the last couple of years there, when I moved beyond the realms of Gambrinus, Staropramen, and Velkopopovivký Kozel.

Alistair says that the beer that was “the first authentic Czech style dark lager brewed in the modern American craft brewing industry” which is a decent claim to fame. Perhaps also decent was the stout presented to The Beer Nut whose analysis went deep into the dark:

Unsurprising given the froth, it’s quite fizzy: a little too much for the style, I think, giving it a thin and sharp quality that doesn’t suit strong stout. The rum element is present in the flavour, but subtle. I tend not to like rum-aged beers, finding the spirit cloyingly sweet, but that isn’t the case here. Instead, the barrels add more of that fruitcake or Christmas pudding quality I found in the aroma, as well as a rawer oaken sappiness. None of this overrules the base beer, which is a no-nonsense, properly bitter, grown-up stout: dark toast, a molasses sweet side and then a finish of punchy spinach and green cabbage leaf. The can says it’s 48 IBUs; it tastes like considerably more. This is quality stuff, and I’m always happy to find a modern stout that goes big without resorting to silliness. The fizz is its one flaw, and I found myself doing a lot of swirling to try and knock that out. It only reached an acceptable level of smoothness around the time I finished it.

I wish I had one flaw. Not quite indecent is the focus of this article on how to win back the disinterested youth of today:

“Because craft beer sales skew towards older consumers, it’s vital to keep nurturing the next generations of buyers. Gen Zers can be hard to reach and their sentiments are shifting but responding to their needs can help brewers grow share”… Gen Z prefers different drinking environments from older groups. Experiential bars and high-energy venues hold much higher appeal and may offer the strongest opportunity to introduce them to craft. While casual dining restaurants, neighbourhood bars and sports bars remain important to the wider craft drinker base, Gen Z is markedly less likely to visit taprooms and brew pubs, which limits the impact of traditional brewery-led spaces.”

That’s not good. Not only are they not interested in your product but it appears they have no interest in your product. Is there an issue with seeing to bring back the relationship? Even though the sins of the father haven’t been visited on the generation that followed? It all sounds like an earlier 1970s slow slow dance classic, perhaps a little Hall and Oates:

She’s gone (she’s gone)Oh I, oh I, I better learn how to face itShe’s gone (she’s gone)Oh I, oh I, I’d pay the devil to replace herShe’s gone (she’s gone), oh I**What went wrong?

Pay the devil indeed. Or the invoicing consultant offering solutions. Solutions… yup, that’s what they are. Conversely, being straight with what has really gone on is part of the story for Anaïs Lecoq this week in Pellicle who writes about the Franco-fascists fascination with wine:

Tradition is a lie. And it’s the same lie, fuelled by carefully curated storytelling, that the far-right is trying to feed us now. They wear black berets, big mustaches, and suspenders. They hang up French flags, and talk about meat and wine as the epitome of French food, not missing the opportunity to ridicule vegans and mock people who don’t drink alcohol. They’re terroir influencers, born out of the rise of conservatism and general backlash against social progress. What they’re doing has a name: gastronationalism, or culinary nationalism, which refers to the way food—its history, production and consumption—is used to promote nationalism and define national identity.

It does make sense in that wine requires landowners’ estates as much as beer requires peace. And serfs or their facsimile to do the work. A hotter bed for the old goosesteppers that other spots… perhaps. Next up… a palate clenser with some cheater quick notes:

Note #1: The practice of “faire chabrot” can easily be added to your Yuletide feast traditions; Note #2: A review of Martyn Cornell’s *Porter & Stout: A Complete History *by The Beer Nut; Note #3: “If there’s ever been a bellwether to the state of the crafts beer industry, it’s Mitch freaking Steele job hunting“; Note #4: Wine drinking as resistence; and Note #5: Beer drinking as obedience.

Back on the endtimes beat, Dave Infante neatly summarized the evidence he’s uncovered of a wobbly situation at Pabst:

…the company is quietly looking for a subletter to take over its headquarters in San Antonio. A listing I reviewed for the sleek space—into which Pabst just moved in 2023—was last updated just two days before the pink slips started flying this past Thursday. Between the layoffs, the listing, and a whole lot of reshuffling in Pabst’s c-suite (including the replacement of both chief executive and chief financial officers earlier this year, and the exit of a former chief sales officer just last month), former Pabst employees I spoke with fear the legacy firm might be on the brink.

Yikes. Somewhat relatedly, The Mirror in the UK ran an article on the cost of all aspects of the price of a UK pint and came to a curious conclusion:

Citing figures from the British Beer and Pub Association, Michael said this means pubs are making a total gross profit per pint of £3.69. However… “That’s before VAT, which is another 83 pence – and we have to factor in staff wages, which is another £1.17 per pint…” duty paid to the brewer equates to another 56 pence, as well as business rates of 35 pence, and employment tax for all pub staff at 29 pence…. pub overheads and utilities at 36 pence per pint, which leaves just 13 pence of net profit per pint sold – and this why around 30 pubs are closing every month.” As a percentage this profit equates to just 2.5 per cent.

I find these sorts of supposedly accurate breakdowns useless.* What wasn’t made clear is why pubs which make a 2.5% profit are closing. Is that why they close? Or unidentified expenses were left out or that level of income after expenses is not satisfactory. Which may be the case. But it wasn’t what was argued.** Time for something more compelling? You got it!

Note #6: HOT PICKLED PORTER!!!

Much more seriously, Boak and Bailey‘s footnotes last week pointed me to the newsletter from Jen Blair on influencers in beer and their choice of appearance:

A few months ago, I was at a beer festival talking with some people I had just met. At one point, one of the men in the group stated that he thinks it’s shameful when women post “provocative” beer photos on social media. Provocative is in quotes because it doesn’t take much for a woman who is simply existing to be denigrated based on her appearance. Another woman in the group and I made eye contact after his comment. This is not the first time someone has said something like this to me, but I am still surprised when it happens. I guess I shouldn’t be, but every time I think “…we’re still saying things like this? To women? About women?”

It’s an excellent piece and reminded me that (whether it is a question of presentation… or self-initiated claims to expertise… or offers of special savings for anyone one applying the one-time super secret code at their website) the only thing that matters is whether the writing has substance.

And finally, over the weekend we received the sad news of the passing of Peter Edwardson who wrote about beer as “The Pub Curmugeon” after a short illness. His last post included this characteristic passage, one that summarizes his approach to beer as well as his understanding of what made it a simple pleasure worth appreciating:

Alcohol content is a vital element in the flavour make-up of beer, adding body, warmth, richness and sweetness. Make anything more than a trivial tweak, and it will significantly change the character of the beer. It is one thing to specifically set out to brew a low-strength beer, but something entirely different to reduce the strength of an existing beer that was designed for a higher strength. You may not have thought much of Fosters even when it was 4%. But now it is 3.4%, a 15% strength reduction, it is not the same product and, I would suggest, an inferior one.

I checked my notes and see that in the last five years or so these weekly digests of the news in beer included well over forty references to “Mudgie”. The sad loss of a singular voice.

So a couple of serious notes to end the week. Hopefully happier news next time. It’s Christmas day the week after that on Thursday… whatever shall I do? As you consider that and send in recommendations, please also check out, Boak and Bailey on this and every Saturday and then sign up for their entertaining footnotes, too. Look out for Stan when he feels the urge (now that he’s “retired” from beery news posts) from Budapest or wherever – as he is getting active again. Then listen to a few of Lew’s podcasts and get your emailed issue of Episodes of my Pub Life by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the BritishBeerBreaks. Once a month, as noted, Will Hawkes issues his London Beer City newsletter and do sign up for Katie’s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring The Gulp, too. Ben’s Beer and Badword has returned from his break since April so you can embrace the sweary Mary! There is reading at The Glass which is going back to being a blog. Any more? We have Ontario’s own A Quick Beer and All About Beer is still offering a range of podcasts – and there’s also Mike Seay’s The Perfect Pour. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast! And there’s the Craft Beer Channel on Youtube. Check out the archives of the Beer Ladies Podcast.

*A variation is the trade writer who still believes sorta circa 2011 that everyone is one off-flavour seminar from connoisseurship, like Mr. B on LinkedIn this week: “…what you’re getting in up-front money or equipment ultimately pales beside the loss in credibility (especially for places which claim culinary, cocktail, or oenological expertise!), disappointed customers, and ultimately, lost sales. Taking placement fees for a percentage of your taps is one thing — although trust me, more than a few people are going to be able to spot them! — but turning over most or all of them speaks to laziness, desperation, or simple disinterest.” Why, then, do these places continue to operate as craft beer bars shut? Serving their customers’ demands? **Yet the math is right there – at 13p profit you would have to sell 500 pints an hour to clear £65. If that was your sole source of income. But then the article would be much shorter. Or is it that the ones at the bottom of the Bell curve no where near a 2.5% profit are the ones that close. Which is irrelevant to the analysis. But then, again, the article would be much shorter.