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19-08-2017, 10:35
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Here’s everything in beer and pubs that grabbed our attention in the past week, from breakfast boozing to totalitarianism. For*Vice*Angus Harrison asked a very good question that yields interesting answers: who exactly are the people you see drinking in Wetherspoon between breakfast time and lunch (https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kzzwnz/meeting-londons-morning-drinkers)? Knee-jerk assumption has it that they are tragic alcoholics living chaotic lives outside the rules of society but, of course…

You perhaps wouldn’t notice the pub was full of finished night-workers if you’d just walked in, but as soon as you know what to look for, it becomes obvious. The barman gestures to a table in the corner where six blokes in battered denim and dusty T-shirts sit hunched over pints. Upstairs, three journalists who have just left the news desk drink lagers before heading home for a sleep. In the smoking area out front, a member of Stansted’s lost luggage team tells me he often pops in around this time, on his way home from the airport.
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For*Eater*Lauren Michele Jackson writes on a subject that feels especially topical, this week of all weeks (https://www.eater.com/platform/amp/2017/8/17/16146164/the-whiteness-of-artisanal-food-craft-culture)*— the thoughtless, politically charged, overwhelming whiteness of ‘craft culture’ in food and drink:

Craft culture looks like white people. The founders, so many former lawyers or bankers or advertising execs, tend to be white, the front-facing staff in their custom denim aprons tend to be white, the clientele sipping $10 beers tends to be white… The character of craft culture, a special blend of bohemianism and capitalism, is not merely overwhelmingly white — a function of who generally has the wealth to start those microbreweries and old-school butcher shops, and to patronize them — it consistently engages in the erasure or exploitation of people of color whose intellectual and manual labor are often the foundation of the practices that transform so many of these small pleasures into something artful. A lie by omission may be a small one, but for a movement so vocally concerned with where things come from, the proprietors of craft culture often seem strangely uninterested in learning or conveying the stories of the people who first mastered those crafts.
(Via @robsterowski (http://twitter.com/robsterowski).)
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On a related note,*Alan McLeod at*A Better Beer Blog*AKA*A Good Beer Blog has been too preoccupied with the anxiety-inducing global political situation to write much about beer, until the two subjects came together in these notes on moments when fascism, communism and racism collide with our favourite drink (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/08/15/fascists-racists-pinkos-brewers-and/):

Earlier this year, Hungary witnessed a bit of a political controversy over the appearance of Heineken’s red star – which Hungarian law considers a totalitarian symbol… In 2016, a brewery in Bavaria was accused of offering a Nazi friendly lager named Grenzzaun Halbe, or Border Fence Half… Then there are the old boys who, you know, just say those sorts of things…
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For the US magazine*Draft*Zach Fowle*gives a substantial treatment to a subject we’ve previously prodded at here on the blog: why exactly do breweries fold when they fold (http://draftmag.com/this-is-why-my-brewery-shut-down/)? It’s hard to get people to talk about this because it’s so raw, even humiliating, but Fowle elicited some great frank responses:

For us, it was really a production restraint. It’s simple math. Overhead was too high for the amount of beer we could produce in the space we had. There were all kinds of things that were always limiting: pump space, floor space, combined with the big cost of the space, the people we work with, and we were also a shared facility hosting several other breweries. That was something we were really passionate about, but these breweries are taking 20 percent of the space but not paying 20 percent of the overhead. We were basically landlocked in a very expensive building… I learned in this process that whatever money you’re raising, double it. Maybe triple it.
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In the week following the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Great British Beer Festival there has been, as ever, much debate about whether it works in its current form.*Tandleman, who works there as a volunteer, says, broadly, ‘Yes’ (http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/how-was-gbbf-for-you.html):

A great atmosphere, beer quality has never been better, I met lots of people I knew on trade day and enjoyed talking to them, our bar was excellently staffed by old friends and new and I had a really good time.* It is just as important to enjoy yourself as a volunteer as it is as a customer. Us volunteers wouldn’t come back otherwise and then, simply, the show wouldn’t go on.
But in a comment on that same post retired beer blogger*John West*(@jwestjourno) provides a measured and typically eloquent counter-argument, suggesting that GBBF is*‘under-curated’ (http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/how-was-gbbf-for-you.html?showComment=1503120069765&m=1#c5247943152495624395). He reference*Benjamin Nunn*who on his own blog,*Ben Viveur, expressed his disappointment at the event (http://benviveur.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/has-gbbf-lost-its-g.html):

Normally, I’d put that down to mid-life-crisisism, post binge-drinking comedown and my generally bleak outlook on life. But a few conversations with other attendees seem to confirm a pretty widespread view that this really was the most lacklustre GBBF for some time… There are always a few folks (I hesitate to generalise but very often older people from other parts of the country) who whinge about the GBBF pricing. This year they have a point…
(Disclosure: we got free entry to this year’s GBBF because we were signing books and are frequently paid to write for CAMRA.)
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We feel no shame in including our own 4,000 word post on the rise of the lager lout in Britain in the 1980s (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/08/panic-on-the-streets-of-woking-rise-of-the-lager-lout/), which we stupidly posted last night when everyone was in the pub:

In 1988 the British government faced a now forgotten domestic crisis… Previously placid towns, villages and suburbs up and down the country were suddenly awash with mob violence – the kind of thing people expected in forsaken inner cities but which seemed newly terrifying as it spread to provincial market squares and high streets… In September 1988 at an informal press briefing John Patten MP, Minister for Home Affairs, pointed the finger: the chaos was a result of ‘the Saturday night lager cult’ and ‘lager louts’.
And, finally, here’s an illuminating nugget from*Joe Stange:

Via @HetStandaard (https://twitter.com/HetStandaard), a cool animated map of Belgian breweries opening since 2010 (most are tiny). https://t.co/pqPEI6BSAU pic.twitter.com/HcfPnZ4gdJ (https://t.co/HcfPnZ4gdJ)
— Joe Stange (@Thirsty_Pilgrim) August 16, 2017 (https://twitter.com/Thirsty_Pilgrim/status/897770316226756609)

News, Nuggets & Longreads 19 August 2017: Breakfast, Blackness, Beer Festivals (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/08/news-nuggets-longreads-19-august-2017-breakfast-blackness-beer-festivals/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)


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