Blog Tracker
01-07-2018, 10:23
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/07/everything-we-wrote-in-june-2018-rats-beavers-kittens/)
June was hot and hectic, and yet somehow we managed 20 posts here and 13 over on the Patreon feed (https://www.patreon.com/boakandbailey/posts).There was also the usual barrage of Tweets (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey), bits and pieces on Instagram (https://instagram.com/boakandbailey/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/boakandbailey), and 1000+ words of exclusive stuff in the newsletter. (We don’t normally make those publicly viewable but this one is (https://tinyletter.com/boakandbailey/letters/june-2018-lager-beavertown-riots), if you want to see the kind of thing we write about.)
The month began, as they so often do, with a contribution to the Session, this time on the subject of farmhouse brewing (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/session-136-farmhouse-brewing-cheap-fast-fresh/). The fun thing about the Session is how often we think we have nothing to say but start typing anyway and… Oh, there’s a thing.
You can read a round-up of all the entries (http://brewinabedsit.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-session-136-roundup.html) at*Brewing in a Bedsitter.
The first of this month’s Pub Life posts records a conversation between bar staff on important philosophical questions: are zebras black with white stripes, or white with black (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/pub-life-shaving-the-zebra/)? (Do check out the hilariously (knowingly) literal comments on this post…)
Someone asked if we knew anything about ‘lanted ale’ — that is, beer pepped up with the addition of urine (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/qa-whats-the-story-of-lanted-ale/). Sounds disgusting, right? And maybe it would be if there was any evidence of it actually having ever happened.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/kings_head_bristol.jpg
The month’s big feature piece was our guide to drinking in Bristol (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/our-advice-on-beer-and-pubs-in-bristol/) which since posting we’ve been able to use to answer several queries on that subject by email. The feedback from Bristolians has so far been pretty positive — yes, everyone has their own preferences, and of course we omitted some people’s favourites, but we don’t seem to have utterly embarrassed ourselves.
Another slice of Pub Life: a man in a cat T-shirt connects with a woman eager to buy a kitten (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/pub-life-cat-people/).
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/hipsters.jpg
Oh, or maybe our Q&A with Davey Jones, creator of the Real Ale Twats strip for*Viz (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/davey-jones-the-man-behind-the-real-ale-twats/), was the big feature? It was certainly our most-read piece this month and, gratifyingly, was shared fairly widely beyond the beer world:
I’ve always been a fan of the band Half Man Half Biscuit and they had done a song called ‘CAMRA Man’ which made me want to draw a strip along those lines. It’s got lyrics like “Weekend vintage car show, Dr Who aficionado” and so on…
We had a little debate over some unintentionally cloudy ale in a pub (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/its-been-like-that-all-day/) and wrote it up as an example of the odd things that pub managers and publicans do sometimes driven by targets and margins.
For ‘Beer Day Britain’ we put together a found poem based on searching the Tweets of people we follow for the phrase “British beer” (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/british-beer/):
The Great British Beer Hunt —
Jester, Ernest, Olicana and Godiva
On a rail replacement bus.
Beer and queuing —
A British thing in a British stadium,
A beer at the British Museum.
When news of the Beavertown-Heineken deal broke our Twitter mentions went mad. We didn’t have much to say but thought it worth making some sort of… Ugh… statement, maybe (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/crossover-event-beavertown-heineken/)? It’s brief, anyway, and plays down our mystic powers of prediction, but got plenty of traffic despite protestations all round that people were bored of the topic.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cornish_saison.jpg
We really liked the Cornish Saison St Austell are brewing for Marks & Spencer (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/st-austell-cornish-saison-for-ms/).
(Via Twitter Roger Ryman, St Austell’s head brewer, confirmed (https://twitter.com/roger_ryman/status/1011731152628043777) that the can does put a limit on carbonation levels, and adds that the filtered clarity was at the request of the customer.)
By way of a break from thinking about Beavertown we spared a few words to reflect on the state of BrewDog’s brand in 2018 — no longer a sign of craft beer credibility but merely one of the usual cash-n-carry suspects (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/stella-doom-punk/).
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/wine_mmmm_aaahhh.jpg
Brut IPA is the current big buzz which got us thinking about how long people have been comparing beer to Champagne (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/ale-like-champagne/) (spoiler: for a long time) and why.
An indulgence — an exercising of the creative muscles: a couple of hundred words on the ways we play with our beer in the pub (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/drinking-and-the-spaces-between/), from wiping the sides of the glass to dipping fingers in the foam.
There’s a pub in Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel*Billy Liar — “an enormous drinking barracks (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/an-enormous-drinking-barracks-1959/)”, newly built, where people displaced from corner pubs in demolished slums drink mild beneath salvaged nick-nacks.
Those Patreon posts:*weekend beer reports 1 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-of-weekend-19237307), 2 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-beers-of-19362354), 3 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-of-weekends-19520280), 4 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-nuggets-19607667) | Reggie Perrin and the right wingness of real ale (https://www.patreon.com/posts/preparing-for-19259962)*| background notes on the Bristol pub guide (https://www.patreon.com/posts/finally-doing-19283120) | notes on pursuing reluctant interviewees (https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-blog-post-19404797) | our piece from*BEER (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-crawlers-19447589) on GBG pub crawlers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-crawlers-19447589) | how’s our driving? (https://www.patreon.com/posts/checking-in-19465288) | Pub Life: Morrismen (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-life-19588211) | a call for help with News Nuggets (https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-nuggets-19607667)*| advance notice of Tripel-Off beers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/tripel-off-list-19664583)*| Beavertown, Beaverex and the politics of breweries withdrawing (https://www.patreon.com/posts/beaverex-and-19681178) | poll: which Tripel is better, X or Y (https://www.patreon.com/posts/tripel-off-round-19776878)?
There were also several round-ups of news, nuggets and longreads:
2 June 2018 — Flanders, Erith, Easterly Road (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-for-2-june-2018-flanders-erith-easterly-road/)
9 June 2018 — Etiquette, Esters, Ethics (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-for-9-june-2018-etiquette-esters-ethics/)
16 June 2018 — Football, Motorbikes, Public Toilets (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-16-june-2018-football-motorbikes-public-toilets/)
23 June 2018 — Lager, Gas, Glass (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-23-june-2018-lager-gas-glass/)
30 June 2018 — Drunkards, Dill, Dilemmas (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-30-june-2018-drunkards-dill-dilemmas/)
If you’ve enjoyed some or all of that you can encourage us to keep it up by subscribing via Patreon, buying us a pint via Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/boakandbailey), or buying, rating or reviewing one of our books (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Boak/e/B00J5ATVMO/).
Everything We Wrote in June 2018: RATs, Beavers, Kittens (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/07/everything-we-wrote-in-june-2018-rats-beavers-kittens/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/07/everything-we-wrote-in-june-2018-rats-beavers-kittens/)
June was hot and hectic, and yet somehow we managed 20 posts here and 13 over on the Patreon feed (https://www.patreon.com/boakandbailey/posts).There was also the usual barrage of Tweets (https://twitter.com/BoakandBailey), bits and pieces on Instagram (https://instagram.com/boakandbailey/) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/boakandbailey), and 1000+ words of exclusive stuff in the newsletter. (We don’t normally make those publicly viewable but this one is (https://tinyletter.com/boakandbailey/letters/june-2018-lager-beavertown-riots), if you want to see the kind of thing we write about.)
The month began, as they so often do, with a contribution to the Session, this time on the subject of farmhouse brewing (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/session-136-farmhouse-brewing-cheap-fast-fresh/). The fun thing about the Session is how often we think we have nothing to say but start typing anyway and… Oh, there’s a thing.
You can read a round-up of all the entries (http://brewinabedsit.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-session-136-roundup.html) at*Brewing in a Bedsitter.
The first of this month’s Pub Life posts records a conversation between bar staff on important philosophical questions: are zebras black with white stripes, or white with black (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/pub-life-shaving-the-zebra/)? (Do check out the hilariously (knowingly) literal comments on this post…)
Someone asked if we knew anything about ‘lanted ale’ — that is, beer pepped up with the addition of urine (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/qa-whats-the-story-of-lanted-ale/). Sounds disgusting, right? And maybe it would be if there was any evidence of it actually having ever happened.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/kings_head_bristol.jpg
The month’s big feature piece was our guide to drinking in Bristol (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/our-advice-on-beer-and-pubs-in-bristol/) which since posting we’ve been able to use to answer several queries on that subject by email. The feedback from Bristolians has so far been pretty positive — yes, everyone has their own preferences, and of course we omitted some people’s favourites, but we don’t seem to have utterly embarrassed ourselves.
Another slice of Pub Life: a man in a cat T-shirt connects with a woman eager to buy a kitten (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/pub-life-cat-people/).
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/hipsters.jpg
Oh, or maybe our Q&A with Davey Jones, creator of the Real Ale Twats strip for*Viz (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/davey-jones-the-man-behind-the-real-ale-twats/), was the big feature? It was certainly our most-read piece this month and, gratifyingly, was shared fairly widely beyond the beer world:
I’ve always been a fan of the band Half Man Half Biscuit and they had done a song called ‘CAMRA Man’ which made me want to draw a strip along those lines. It’s got lyrics like “Weekend vintage car show, Dr Who aficionado” and so on…
We had a little debate over some unintentionally cloudy ale in a pub (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/its-been-like-that-all-day/) and wrote it up as an example of the odd things that pub managers and publicans do sometimes driven by targets and margins.
For ‘Beer Day Britain’ we put together a found poem based on searching the Tweets of people we follow for the phrase “British beer” (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/british-beer/):
The Great British Beer Hunt —
Jester, Ernest, Olicana and Godiva
On a rail replacement bus.
Beer and queuing —
A British thing in a British stadium,
A beer at the British Museum.
When news of the Beavertown-Heineken deal broke our Twitter mentions went mad. We didn’t have much to say but thought it worth making some sort of… Ugh… statement, maybe (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/crossover-event-beavertown-heineken/)? It’s brief, anyway, and plays down our mystic powers of prediction, but got plenty of traffic despite protestations all round that people were bored of the topic.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cornish_saison.jpg
We really liked the Cornish Saison St Austell are brewing for Marks & Spencer (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/st-austell-cornish-saison-for-ms/).
(Via Twitter Roger Ryman, St Austell’s head brewer, confirmed (https://twitter.com/roger_ryman/status/1011731152628043777) that the can does put a limit on carbonation levels, and adds that the filtered clarity was at the request of the customer.)
By way of a break from thinking about Beavertown we spared a few words to reflect on the state of BrewDog’s brand in 2018 — no longer a sign of craft beer credibility but merely one of the usual cash-n-carry suspects (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/stella-doom-punk/).
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/wine_mmmm_aaahhh.jpg
Brut IPA is the current big buzz which got us thinking about how long people have been comparing beer to Champagne (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/ale-like-champagne/) (spoiler: for a long time) and why.
An indulgence — an exercising of the creative muscles: a couple of hundred words on the ways we play with our beer in the pub (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/drinking-and-the-spaces-between/), from wiping the sides of the glass to dipping fingers in the foam.
There’s a pub in Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel*Billy Liar — “an enormous drinking barracks (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/an-enormous-drinking-barracks-1959/)”, newly built, where people displaced from corner pubs in demolished slums drink mild beneath salvaged nick-nacks.
Those Patreon posts:*weekend beer reports 1 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-of-weekend-19237307), 2 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-beers-of-19362354), 3 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-of-weekends-19520280), 4 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-nuggets-19607667) | Reggie Perrin and the right wingness of real ale (https://www.patreon.com/posts/preparing-for-19259962)*| background notes on the Bristol pub guide (https://www.patreon.com/posts/finally-doing-19283120) | notes on pursuing reluctant interviewees (https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-blog-post-19404797) | our piece from*BEER (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-crawlers-19447589) on GBG pub crawlers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-crawlers-19447589) | how’s our driving? (https://www.patreon.com/posts/checking-in-19465288) | Pub Life: Morrismen (https://www.patreon.com/posts/pub-life-19588211) | a call for help with News Nuggets (https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-nuggets-19607667)*| advance notice of Tripel-Off beers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/tripel-off-list-19664583)*| Beavertown, Beaverex and the politics of breweries withdrawing (https://www.patreon.com/posts/beaverex-and-19681178) | poll: which Tripel is better, X or Y (https://www.patreon.com/posts/tripel-off-round-19776878)?
There were also several round-ups of news, nuggets and longreads:
2 June 2018 — Flanders, Erith, Easterly Road (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-for-2-june-2018-flanders-erith-easterly-road/)
9 June 2018 — Etiquette, Esters, Ethics (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-for-9-june-2018-etiquette-esters-ethics/)
16 June 2018 — Football, Motorbikes, Public Toilets (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-16-june-2018-football-motorbikes-public-toilets/)
23 June 2018 — Lager, Gas, Glass (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-23-june-2018-lager-gas-glass/)
30 June 2018 — Drunkards, Dill, Dilemmas (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/news-nuggets-longreads-30-june-2018-drunkards-dill-dilemmas/)
If you’ve enjoyed some or all of that you can encourage us to keep it up by subscribing via Patreon, buying us a pint via Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/boakandbailey), or buying, rating or reviewing one of our books (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Boak/e/B00J5ATVMO/).
Everything We Wrote in June 2018: RATs, Beavers, Kittens (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/07/everything-we-wrote-in-june-2018-rats-beavers-kittens/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/07/everything-we-wrote-in-june-2018-rats-beavers-kittens/)