Blog Tracker
06-10-2014, 15:22
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/10/month-september-2014/)
Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007 (http://boakandbailey.com)
A week into October, here’s a round-up of everything we posted in September 2014, with follow-up information here and there.→ We started the month by reflecting on BrewDog’s status: in our opinion, they are important,*even if they’re not always likeable (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/brewdog-are-the-big-dog/).
→ What did ‘winey’ mean to Victorian commentators on food and drink (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/old-beer-descriptors-winey/)?
→ For the 91st beer blogging session, we recalled learning about Belgian beer with draught Leffe in East London (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/session-91-first-belgian/). (The round-up of all the posts from this session is at Belgian Smaak (http://www.belgiansmaak.com/my-first-belgian/).)
→ We were so impressed with bottles of Sam Smith’s Taddy Porter (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/unlikely-wow-factor/)that it prompted an entire project: tasting British bottled porters (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/british-bottled-porters-part-1/) to decide which, if any, are better — Batch 1 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/porter-tasting-batch-1/)*(Fuller’s, Redemption, Meantime/M&S)* | Batch 2 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/porter-tasting-batch-2/)*(BrewDog, Five Points, Brew by Numbers).
→*100 words on hype and prejudice (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/100-words-hype-prejudice/): ‘I like*things.*You over-rate*things. They are fanboys.’
→ Do people really want to drink local beer, or are they actually after*native styles (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/native-or-local/)? (Partly in response, here’s Stan Hieronymus on indigenous beers (http://appellationbeer.com/blog/comment-about-indigenous-beer-win-a-book/).)
→ At long last, we have our hands on that*terrible, forbidden volume detailing the manufacture of Watney’s beers in the 1960s and 70s (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/kegronomicon/). The first fruits of our dissection are*this guidance for brewing your own clone of the fabled Red Barrel (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/brewing-red-barrel-watneys-keg/) as it was c.1966, and this piece on how to taste beer with complete objectivity (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/watneys-on-objective-tasting/).
→ The ongoing*‘crafting up’ of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/signs-times/) continues apace.*(The Devil’s Backbone IPA, it seems, is brewed at Banks’s in Wolverhampton (http://www.dbbrewingcompany.com/blog/post/Devils-Backbone-Debuts-in-the-United-Kingdom-with-American-IPA.aspx), though you’d struggle to find that out from the Spoons website (http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/drink/craft-beers).)
→ Some more time travel: in 1861, an anonymous author attempted to explain Belgian beer to British readers (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/wood-aged-belgian-brown-white-1861/); while, in 1944, a social commentator described the workings of the village inn (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/village-inn-1944/).
→ If a beer is rotten when served at the wrong temperature, how good can the underlying product actually be (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/sort-problem/)?
→ A detail in a leaked document from AB-InBev caught our eye (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/pretentious-complicated/): they think (perhaps rightly) that craft beer is off-putting to many consumers because it is complicated and pretentious, and see this as a gap in the market. This turned into a discussion about whether a beer’s back story ‘matters’, which, elsewhere (http://bensbeerblog.com/2014/10/03/when-it-comes-to-beer-taste-isnt-all-that-matters/), Stephen Beaumont has wisely answered thus:
When I’m reviewing a beer or a spirit, I don’t care where it comes from and rate everything on the same as-objective-as-possible scale…*[But] when I’m choosing where to spend my dollar ‘votes’ as a consumer, I consider several other factors besides.
→ Feeling moody about the state of beer writing, we put our glumness into words. Alan McLeod disagreed (http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2014/september/booktourtales), as did many others. (On good days, we don’t even agree with ourselves.)
→ There were also weekly links round-ups (http://boakandbailey.com/tag/news-nuggets/), some stray quotations (http://boakandbailey.com/type/quote/), a gallery of photos of brewing in Ireland c.1902 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/gallery-brewing-ireland-c-1902/),*a couple of*videos (http://boakandbailey.com/type/video/), things on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/boakandbailey), and a whole lot of Tweets (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey).
Whitbread Hop Festival, Kent, September 1948: Kenneth Horne (right) and Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch inspect the bines. pic.twitter.com/ezHxGBRFCa (http://t.co/ezHxGBRFCa)
— Boak and Bailey (@BoakandBailey) September 27, 2014 (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey/status/515829155200765953)
The Month That Was: September 2014 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/10/month-september-2014/)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/10/month-september-2014/)
Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007 (http://boakandbailey.com)
A week into October, here’s a round-up of everything we posted in September 2014, with follow-up information here and there.→ We started the month by reflecting on BrewDog’s status: in our opinion, they are important,*even if they’re not always likeable (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/brewdog-are-the-big-dog/).
→ What did ‘winey’ mean to Victorian commentators on food and drink (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/old-beer-descriptors-winey/)?
→ For the 91st beer blogging session, we recalled learning about Belgian beer with draught Leffe in East London (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/session-91-first-belgian/). (The round-up of all the posts from this session is at Belgian Smaak (http://www.belgiansmaak.com/my-first-belgian/).)
→ We were so impressed with bottles of Sam Smith’s Taddy Porter (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/unlikely-wow-factor/)that it prompted an entire project: tasting British bottled porters (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/british-bottled-porters-part-1/) to decide which, if any, are better — Batch 1 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/porter-tasting-batch-1/)*(Fuller’s, Redemption, Meantime/M&S)* | Batch 2 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/porter-tasting-batch-2/)*(BrewDog, Five Points, Brew by Numbers).
→*100 words on hype and prejudice (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/100-words-hype-prejudice/): ‘I like*things.*You over-rate*things. They are fanboys.’
→ Do people really want to drink local beer, or are they actually after*native styles (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/native-or-local/)? (Partly in response, here’s Stan Hieronymus on indigenous beers (http://appellationbeer.com/blog/comment-about-indigenous-beer-win-a-book/).)
→ At long last, we have our hands on that*terrible, forbidden volume detailing the manufacture of Watney’s beers in the 1960s and 70s (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/kegronomicon/). The first fruits of our dissection are*this guidance for brewing your own clone of the fabled Red Barrel (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/brewing-red-barrel-watneys-keg/) as it was c.1966, and this piece on how to taste beer with complete objectivity (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/watneys-on-objective-tasting/).
→ The ongoing*‘crafting up’ of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/signs-times/) continues apace.*(The Devil’s Backbone IPA, it seems, is brewed at Banks’s in Wolverhampton (http://www.dbbrewingcompany.com/blog/post/Devils-Backbone-Debuts-in-the-United-Kingdom-with-American-IPA.aspx), though you’d struggle to find that out from the Spoons website (http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/drink/craft-beers).)
→ Some more time travel: in 1861, an anonymous author attempted to explain Belgian beer to British readers (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/wood-aged-belgian-brown-white-1861/); while, in 1944, a social commentator described the workings of the village inn (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/village-inn-1944/).
→ If a beer is rotten when served at the wrong temperature, how good can the underlying product actually be (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/sort-problem/)?
→ A detail in a leaked document from AB-InBev caught our eye (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/pretentious-complicated/): they think (perhaps rightly) that craft beer is off-putting to many consumers because it is complicated and pretentious, and see this as a gap in the market. This turned into a discussion about whether a beer’s back story ‘matters’, which, elsewhere (http://bensbeerblog.com/2014/10/03/when-it-comes-to-beer-taste-isnt-all-that-matters/), Stephen Beaumont has wisely answered thus:
When I’m reviewing a beer or a spirit, I don’t care where it comes from and rate everything on the same as-objective-as-possible scale…*[But] when I’m choosing where to spend my dollar ‘votes’ as a consumer, I consider several other factors besides.
→ Feeling moody about the state of beer writing, we put our glumness into words. Alan McLeod disagreed (http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2014/september/booktourtales), as did many others. (On good days, we don’t even agree with ourselves.)
→ There were also weekly links round-ups (http://boakandbailey.com/tag/news-nuggets/), some stray quotations (http://boakandbailey.com/type/quote/), a gallery of photos of brewing in Ireland c.1902 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/09/gallery-brewing-ireland-c-1902/),*a couple of*videos (http://boakandbailey.com/type/video/), things on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/boakandbailey), and a whole lot of Tweets (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey).
Whitbread Hop Festival, Kent, September 1948: Kenneth Horne (right) and Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch inspect the bines. pic.twitter.com/ezHxGBRFCa (http://t.co/ezHxGBRFCa)
— Boak and Bailey (@BoakandBailey) September 27, 2014 (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey/status/515829155200765953)
The Month That Was: September 2014 (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/10/month-september-2014/)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2014/10/month-september-2014/)