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28-12-2016, 19:34
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This is a purely subjective list of the most illuminating, amusing or interesting beer- and pub-related blog posts and articles from the last 12 months, all of which we shared in our weekly news round-ups. Before we get to the links, though, here’s a bit of state-of-the-nation reflection.
First, it’s hard for us to agree that beer writing is dead, past its best, or otherwise in trouble. (As per Alan McLeod, here (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2016/12/10/hello-from-the-back-end-and-the-road/).) Seriously, if*you think 2008 was a golden age for beer blogging, go and read some beer blog posts from 2008 (not ours, please, we beg you) and clear your head. (Alan is right, though — there was more chat back then.)
Today, there are lots of beer blogs, many of them turning out pieces that, with barely an edit, could happily appear in print alongside the work of professional journalists.
Bloggers are challenging themselves, seeking out first hand information, interviewing brewers, raiding libraries and archives, and taking some lovely photographs as they go about it.
As it happens, the fun, informal, personal school of blogging that ruled almost decade ago is still with us too, but with new voices and perspectives, as long as you bother to keep your RSS feed up to date. (We recommend Feedly (http://feedly.com/).) If we don’t link to this kind of thing often it’s not because we don’t read or enjoy it — it’s because a single post in that style rarely has much meat on it. But*they*soon pile up to form an extended work expressing a particular world view or argument.*Look at Martin Taylor (https://retiredmartin.com/)*for example who takes us to pubs in the four corners of the country and brings them to life with a few observations and camera snaps, or Tandleman whose blog amounts to a rolling manifesto for cask ale quality (http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/).
If we have any wishes for the direction of beer writing and blogging in 2017 — not that it’s our place to attempt to direct the ship, obviously — they*would be:


Fewer reports of opening nights or product launches organised by PR agencies.
More blogging about actual BEER rather than the personalities of other bloggers.
But also more posts responding directly to other bloggers’ arguments, rather than dropping hints.
Fewer posts about how Town/Brewery/Event/Beer X is over-hyped.
But also fewer posts about Town/Brewery/Event/Beer X which has already been written about twelve times and, you know, probably*is over-hyped.
And, as the antidote, more posts profiling*towns/beers/breweries/events we should know about, but don’t.
Finally, let’s have*more writing about women in beer that isn’t about the issue of*Women in Beer, if you catch the distinction.

A final thought: there was a challenge implicit in this year’s BGBW Award’s announcement (http://beerguild.co.uk/guild-of-beer-writers-recognises-talent-with-annual-awards/) to the effect that too much beer writing is for other beer writers, or beer geeks, rather than reaching out to the interested outsider. That’s probably fair. We can’t promise to rise to it during 2017 — we’re not sure we know how to do anything other than nitpicking and obsessive these days — but we’ll certainly bear it in mind, even if it just means taking care not to assume knowledge on the part of our readers.
And if it’s your new year’s resolution to start a beer blog… do it! Here’s our advice (http://boakandbailey.com/2015/03/how-to-beer-blog/), for what it’s worth.
Now here are those sweet, sweet links we promised.
1. How to Start A Brewery https://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/elusive.jpg?resize=650%2C518
Andy Parker at Elusive Brewing took the time to write an account of the challenges of starting up a new brewery in a climate where people are fretting about market saturation and where cash melts away at every turn:
As a small brewery, your costs per barrel will be significantly higher than the big brewery in the area (and especially the regionals/nationals) so you’ll certainly have to work hard to establish a customer base. Of course, demand for ‘artisanal’ products with more flavour and a story behind them is partly what’s driven the ‘craft’ brewing boom in the UK, so it’s not all bad news. The best advice I got here was to absolutely focus on making the beer the best it can be. If your product is going to be more expensive than the brewery down the road it needs to be simply better, or more interesting, or have a local connection – something to make pubs want to buy it and drinkers want to drink it. If quality isn’t great, you might sell the first few batches but you can be certain those customers won’t come back for more.
Part I (http://www.graphedbeer.com/2016/01/so-you-wanna-open-brewery-part-i.html) | Part II (http://www.graphedbeer.com/2016/01/so-you-wanna-open-brewery-part-ii.html)
2. Living With An Alcoholic https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/david_goehring_drinker.jpg?resize=650%2C538Adapted from ‘Anonymous Drinker’ by David Goehring, from Flickr under Creative Commons (https://flic.kr/p/eeAY34). Mark Johnson‘s*post isn’t an easy read but there’s no denying its raw power and honesty — how do you have a healthy relationship with beer when your own father couldn’t (http://www.beercompurgation.co.uk/2016/02/ive-struggled-for-many-years-as-abeer.html)?
From legal drinking age I was attending beer festivals with my Dad or joining him and his friends for exploratory journeys to dig out pubs and cask beer wherever we could, often with the Good Beer Guide accompanying… These days out – and an unfortunate support of Huddersfield Town – were how me and my Dad bonded. It was all we had in common, but they happened to be two of the most important aspects of my life. The enjoyment I had from these days made me ignore and deny something I’d known to be true long before I was eighteen.
3. Screaming About*Home Brew https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/lars_feedback_650.jpg?resize=650%2C433
It’s hard to pick just one piece by Lars Marius Garshol who has once again written a slew of eye-opening, educational and often rather beautiful blog posts about farmhouse brewing. Our favourite, on balance, was this from February on the strange feedback rituals that accompany brewing in rural Norway (http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/344.html):
Some places, the visitors would make no comment on the beer while in the brewhouse. Late that night, leaving the brewhouse, they would stop on the way home and scream. The louder the screams, the better the beer. In some areas people had fixed places where they’d always stop to do the screaming. If the beer was poor the screaming would be half-hearted at best.
4. Cask Ale in the Chicago https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/chicago_cask.jpg?resize=650%2C434
This piece by Stephanie Byce*for*Good Beer Hunting really got us thinking: if a bunch of cool young Americans thing cask is where is at, isn’t it weird that our own cool young brewers seem so ambivalent (http://goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2016/3/14/getting-real-chicagos-present-tense-fine-ales)? It lodged in our minds and certainly influenced the way we thought about CAMRA’s Revitalisation project.
Present Tense’s vision comes straight from England—a brewhouse and taproom that serves each of their beers on cask. While there are several breweries that serve Cask Ales throughout Chicago and across the country, Thorpe and Jackson feel they lack the attention to detail that serving a proper pint deserves… ‘There is no one exclusively only doing cask ales [like] Present Tense,’ [John] Hannafan [Director of Education at Chicago’s Siebel Institute] continues. ‘There are some doing special casks for events or one-off specials, but not on the scale which Thomas [Thorpe] and Tyler [Jackson] are envisioning.’
5. Lager: Lost for Words https://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tropical_lager.jpg?resize=620%2C329
In a post that we’ve referred and linked to numerous times, because it gets to something essential,*Joe Tindall*reflects on why lager is so hard to write about (http://thefatalglassofbeer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/just-beer-struggling-for-words-to.html):
The complexity of a barrel-aged imperial stout means that tasting notes write themselves. Drinking one, there’s so much going on that you hardly have time to jot down one thought before another hits you. Lager is comparatively simple – this is a large part of its appeal, but it doesn’t make for great writing…*There are certain stock phrases and descriptors I keep going back to in my blundering attempts to describe the lager experience, of which crisp is probably the laziest. I know what I mean by it – a suggestion of freshness as well as refreshment, like biting into a juicy, crunchy apple. But in this context, the word has a whiff of corporate copy about it…
6.*The Science of Hazy Beer https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/hazy_beer.jpg?resize=650%2C650
Emma at*Crema’s Beer Odyssey is a scientist by profession so when she turned her substantial brain to the question of haze in beer the result was a weighty, lengthy, thoughtful post that truly seemed to be strive for*objectivity (http://cremasbeerodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-beautiful-cloudiness.html):
It began to seem that more often than not, where haze was absent so was the flavour that I was looking for in an IPA. Is there a connection between the level of haze and the hop flavour in a beer? Is there something missing from these filtered, totally clear beers? Is it yeast? Does filtering out all of the yeast also filter out some of the flavour? If hop flavour compounds bind to yeast in the beer and then get centrifuged and/or filtered out, are we losing some of that hop flavour along with the haze?
7.*Englishness Squared https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/beer_garden.jpg?resize=650%2C433
Alec Latham, in case you don’t subscribe to our email newsletter, was our Golden Pints blogger of the year. This post about early summer*in the pubs of St Albans is an exercise in prose style as much as anything (http://www.mostlyaboutbeer.co.uk/albion-the-last-days-of-may/) — we love how Alec*pushes himself to really*write — but is also acutely observed:
The beer garden represents a tunnel dug through my life. It started being excavated back when all the action happened under the picnic tables rather than above them. Those were the days of lime cordial, dandelion & burdock and the Topper, the Dandy or Beano. It runs under where I took my first sips of woody bitter when it needed to be ordered by my dad or uncle. .. Our iconic three-piece tables that come into their own in Summer see and hear everything. The wood absorbs more spirit than beer maturing in Glenlivet casks but it’s of a different kind: when folk get together around them, it’s like people getting into a rowing boat – the structure leans and rocks as bottoms plonk themselves in and the conversation and eye contact is intense.
8.*Champion of the World
https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/dany_prignon.jpg?resize=760%2C446
Breandán Kearney, the 2015 BGBW Beer Writer of the Year, continues to turn out in-depth brewery profiles that go beyond the obvious surface gloss. This piece on Dany Prignon of Brasserie Fantôme, published on his own website*Belgian Smaak (http://www.belgiansmaak.com/brasserie-fantome-dany-prignon/), is one of his very best, full of startling details:
Speaking with him face-to-face in anything other than French can be frustrating, yet online, he’s very active on social media websites with a surprisingly good grasp of English… And it’s odd that as the owner and production manager of a brewery, he doesn’t even drink beer. ‘I don’t like it,’ he says, as if this assertion were completely normal.‘I taste it, but I prefer soft drinks.’
9. Pride https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/bugatto_old_nick.jpg?resize=650%2C435By and © Dominic Bugatto via Torontoist/Flickr. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/bugatto/11482972913/) For*Torontoist*Robin LeBlanc*wrote movingly about gay pubs and Pride in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting (http://torontoist.com/2016/06/talking-pride-over-pints/):
For those not in the know, the Old Nick is a pub on Broadview and Danforth that has been around for yonks. It is proudly and unabashedly female-owned and queer friendly… Sitting beside me at the bar was a 69-year-old man named Tim…*Tim had the privilege of experiencing [Pride]*in its early days and didn’t go out to it as much anymore, but because of ‘what recently happened,’ he felt a sense of importance to attend this year’s festivities.
10. Drunken Archery https://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/HRC-drinking-games-4.jpg?resize=620%2C620Illustration by Owain Kirby. SOURCE: Hot Rum Cow. Used with permission. For*Hot Rum Cow magazine*Malcolm Triggs*wrote about bizarre, dangerous, bloody drinking games in history (http://www.hotrumcow.co.uk/the-history-of-drinking-games/?hvid=Md7df):
[One game from China] was an ancient variation of lawn darts, which, like kottabos, shared much in common with beer pong. Images of zodiacal animals were pinned to targets in a courtyard. If a player’s sign was hit, he would have to drink; if he missed, he’d have to take a drink. Rules were strict: one report even claims a player was killed for failing to comply, but this isn’t exactly hard to imagine considering the circumstances. ‘Play continued until no one could hold a bow,’ says Guillaume. ‘I can’t think of a worse combination.’

11. The Meaning of Hoppy https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/duvel_tripel_hop.jpg?resize=672%2C391
Joe Stange continues to write one interesting piece after another for*Draft Magazine. This piece on how Belgian brewers are responding to the idea that beers need to be*‘hoppy’ in the age of craft beer is particularly fascinating, and hopeful (http://draftmag.com/belgians-embrace-hops-their-own-way/):
[Hoppier] Belgian ales have not taken over the local cafes, although they are easier to find than before. And with a few exceptions they are not cynical imitations of foreign craft beer. Instead, they adopt ideas about bolder hopping and fold it into the Belgian scheme: intricate mash regimes, high attenuation, relatively expressive yeast, and refermentation in the bottle… So maybe you weren’t worried about it, but Belgian brewing culture isn’t in any immediate danger.
12. The Mancunian Candidate https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/manchester_gbh_matt.jpg?resize=650%2C434
Matt Curtis (from Lincoln, based in London) went to Manchester as an outsider but spoke to all the right people when he put together this comprehensive profile of the city for*Good Beer Hunting:
Manchester was once also home to the world famous Boddingtons Brewery—the straw pale and super bitter beer it used to produce typified the regional beer style… ‘That chimney really spoke to me of Manchester with the name proudly down the side,’ Peter Alexander says. Alexander’s been the chairman of CAMRA’s Rochdale, Bury and Oldham branch for more than twenty years. He’s also the deputy organizer of the Manchester Beer & Cider festival, CAMRA’s annual flagship event in the north. ‘Iconic is overused, but that was an icon if ever there was one.’
13.*Whatever Happened to the Porter Louts? https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/1792-chiswell-street-brewery.jpg?resize=650%2C516Whitbread Chiswell Street Brewery, 1792.
In a long post on his blog at Zythophile*Martyn Cornell does what he’s best at: using his knowledge of history to shine a light on the 21st Century scene. Specifically he asks,*‘Will Big Lager One Day Go the Way of Big Porter? (http://zythophile.co.uk/2016/05/08/will-big-lager-one-day-go-the-same-way-as-big-porter/)’
Until very recently lager was still increasing its share of the UK beer market, up from 67 per cent in 2002 to 74.8 per cent in 2014. Last year, however, saw the first dip since the early 1990s (when the growth of the ‘guest beer’ market after the Beer Orders of 1989 gave a brief boost to sales of bitter), albeit by less than 1 per cent, as ‘ale and bitter’ pushed up its share to 21.5 per cent of a falling overall market, down 4.7 per cent to 4.25 billion litres (or 25.97 million barrels, in old-style money). With a growing (though still tiny) proportion of even the lager market now ‘craft’, are we seeing Big Lager start to slide just the way every ‘big’ style has in the past?
* * * That’s it for the highest of the highlights but do check out our blog roll (right or below depending on how you’re viewing this page) and the News, Nuggets & Longreads archive (http://boakandbailey.com/tag/news-nuggets/), where you’ll find plenty more blogs, magazines and websites worth checking out.
The Best Beer Reading of 2016, Sez Us (http://boakandbailey.com/2016/12/the-best-beer-reading-of-2016-sez-us/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)


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