Blog Tracker
30-09-2023, 07:00
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2023/09/news-nuggets-and-longreads-30-september-2023-more-love/)
Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs we bookmarked in the past week, from sad hour to Bavarian beer halls.
But let’s start with some serious controversy: is it acceptable for a church to install beer pumps? Or for the vicar to pull pints while dressed in his vestments? Well, that’s what happened at St Ia the Virgin in St Ives, Cornwall, and, as The Church Times reports, some among the congregation weren’t happy (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/29-september/news/uk/objections-were-small-beer-says-pint-pulling-vicar). The Vicar, however, brushed it off:
“One congregant wrote a very strongly worded letter to Cornwall Live of his own accord. It wasn’t really reflective of the congregational view. We have just had a new coffee bar built by a local carpenter in a corner near the organ where we serve coffee on a Sunday, and at events during the week, and it also doubles up as an events bar.”
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/croatian_beer.jpgSOURCE: Courtney Iseman/Hugging the Bar.At Hugging the Bar Courtney Iseman has written about a phenomenon we’ve also experienced over the years: how exciting it feels to find (often mediocre) craft beer in places with little in the way of beer culture. Finding herself in Croatia where a drink called a ‘Hugo’ is all the rage, local beer becomes all the more interesting (https://huggingthebar.substack.com/p/106-the-thrill-of-craft-beer-in-places):
In Dubrovnik, Split, and Hvar in Croatia and in Kotor, Montenegro, as I sought out the two-or-three craft beer bars in town, it took me back to the American craft beer scene in, say, 2009. Think of your smaller, non-craft-beer-capital cities around then. There was maybe one brewery taproom, two or three brewpubs/beer bars/bottle shops? And some other bars and restaurants might have had one or two craft beers on tap, but it certainly wasn’t a guarantee, and plenty had no craft representation at all… What this fuels is more excitement at the places that do specialize in craft beer, more passion. There’s still a thrill of the hunt in this kind of craft beer environment, which is obviously long, long gone in the US, perhaps to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to breweries.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/sadness.jpgJames from The Last Drop Inn newsletter has written about the trend for ‘dynamic pricing’ or, as he calls it ‘Sad Hour’ (https://thelastdropinn.substack.com/p/sad-hour):
Stonegate has begun introducing ‘dynamic pricing’ at unspecified peak times, each and every week. Naturally, this raises more issues. And drinkers are, by and large, not happy about it… Common refrains from pubgoers echo the belief that increasing prices when you’re busiest does little to thank or reward your regular customers, and also seems like a disingenuous way to increase your profits: once you’ve had a few pints, you tend to stop looking at the price of the drink, so it’s a stealthy way to up your takings… Of course, Stonegate have themselves stated that they believe they are acting transparently and for the right reasons. And, to their credit, they appear to have at least placed notices in the affected establishments explaining that they are using dynamic pricing and why.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/kings_walden_brewery.jpgSOURCE: Martyn Cornell/Zythophile.At Zythophile Martyn Cornell has shared a fairly dense genealogical post about Frederick Fellowes who leveraged a family connection to Edward Coope (as in, Ind Coope) to train as a brewer in Burton. Among all the Victorian names and dates is an interesting account of a middling brewery (https://zythophile.co.uk/2023/09/23/a-short-history-of-the-kings-walden-brewery/) typical of those which populated Britain before World War I:
What appears to have happened is that Frederick Fellowes, now in his early 30s, his brother the Reverend Henry Fellowes and William Hinds had decided that the operation at the Fox could be the basis for Frederick setting up in business as a brewer in his own right. A surviving receipt from Thornewill and Warham of the Ironworks, Burton on Trent to Messers Hinds, Fellowes and Fellowes of the King’s Walden Brewery dated 21 June 1888 covered virtually everything necessary to start a brewery, from a malt mill through the mash tun (with sparger and false bottom) to the copper (with steam coil), the hop back and the refrigerator for cooling the hot wort. The total, including a vertical steam engine and boiler, came to £648/19/7d, plus carriage of £13/2/- and travelling expenses of £6/1/-, equivalent to around £80,000 today.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/shades_hartlepool.jpgA closed and boarded pub in Hartlepool.The Pub Curmudgeon has been maintaining a side blog called Closed Pubs for some years and this week it achieved its 1,000th entry, which he calls “a rather sad milestone” (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2023/09/not-so-grand.html):
The most common category seems to be the post-war estate-style pubs, which for a variety of reasons never seem to have really worked, something I wrote about here. Possibly the whole concept was flawed from the start, and arose more from town planners’ tidy minds than actual drinkers’ needs. It would not surprise me if fully half the purpose-built, stand-alone pubs constructed after the war are no longer trading, in some cases lasting less than twenty years… But the big inter-wars pubs, often built to much higher standards of design and construction, are in a sense the saddest. A prime example is The Beeches in Northfield, Birmingham, which resembles a magnificent Jacobean stately home. StreetView shows that it had been demolished by May 2011, and housing has now been built on the site.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/augustiner_braustuben.jpgSOURCE: Franz Hofer/Tempest in a Tankard.Fancy a trip to Munich? Franz Hofer of Tempest in a Tankard has written about the Augustiner Bräustuben (https://tempestinatankard.com/2023/09/25/the-augustiner-braustuben-from-barn-to-beerhall/) which he says is “one of the cheapest places in Munich” for a mug of Augustiner Helles:
It’s a classic beer hall with character to spare, more down-home than other beerhalls in the city… And no wonder it has a rustic feel. This lively and sometimes raucous drinking establishment occupies what was once the brewery’s stable for its dray horses. Transformed from barn to beerhall in the mid-1990s, the green cast-iron columns and orange-brick vaulted ceilings of the building recall both the shape of the stable and the industrial architecture of the nineteenth century. Post-equine touches such as the gleaming copper kettle repurposed as a bar leaves no doubt about what you should order once you find a seat… Speaking of seats, the benches rest on old beer barrels for that added touch of rough-hewn charm. While we’re still on the topic of seats, this is no place to be shy. The place is almost always packed, so chances are high you’ll be sharing space with someone who might become a new friend.
Finally, from the BBC Archive on YouTube, even more rural argy-bargy…
For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday (https://appellationbeer.com/blog/monday-beer-links-pleasure-and-business/) and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2023/09/28/the-first-tentatively-autumnal-beery-news-notes-for-2023/).
And though beer podcasts aren’t our thing, you might want to check out Emma Inch’s latest venture Same Again, a podcast about beer, pubs and mental health (https://sameagain.podbean.com/).
News, nuggets and longreads 30 September 2023: More Love (https://boakandbailey.com/2023/09/news-nuggets-and-longreads-30-september-2023-more-love/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2023/09/news-nuggets-and-longreads-30-september-2023-more-love/)
Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs we bookmarked in the past week, from sad hour to Bavarian beer halls.
But let’s start with some serious controversy: is it acceptable for a church to install beer pumps? Or for the vicar to pull pints while dressed in his vestments? Well, that’s what happened at St Ia the Virgin in St Ives, Cornwall, and, as The Church Times reports, some among the congregation weren’t happy (https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/29-september/news/uk/objections-were-small-beer-says-pint-pulling-vicar). The Vicar, however, brushed it off:
“One congregant wrote a very strongly worded letter to Cornwall Live of his own accord. It wasn’t really reflective of the congregational view. We have just had a new coffee bar built by a local carpenter in a corner near the organ where we serve coffee on a Sunday, and at events during the week, and it also doubles up as an events bar.”
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/croatian_beer.jpgSOURCE: Courtney Iseman/Hugging the Bar.At Hugging the Bar Courtney Iseman has written about a phenomenon we’ve also experienced over the years: how exciting it feels to find (often mediocre) craft beer in places with little in the way of beer culture. Finding herself in Croatia where a drink called a ‘Hugo’ is all the rage, local beer becomes all the more interesting (https://huggingthebar.substack.com/p/106-the-thrill-of-craft-beer-in-places):
In Dubrovnik, Split, and Hvar in Croatia and in Kotor, Montenegro, as I sought out the two-or-three craft beer bars in town, it took me back to the American craft beer scene in, say, 2009. Think of your smaller, non-craft-beer-capital cities around then. There was maybe one brewery taproom, two or three brewpubs/beer bars/bottle shops? And some other bars and restaurants might have had one or two craft beers on tap, but it certainly wasn’t a guarantee, and plenty had no craft representation at all… What this fuels is more excitement at the places that do specialize in craft beer, more passion. There’s still a thrill of the hunt in this kind of craft beer environment, which is obviously long, long gone in the US, perhaps to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to breweries.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/sadness.jpgJames from The Last Drop Inn newsletter has written about the trend for ‘dynamic pricing’ or, as he calls it ‘Sad Hour’ (https://thelastdropinn.substack.com/p/sad-hour):
Stonegate has begun introducing ‘dynamic pricing’ at unspecified peak times, each and every week. Naturally, this raises more issues. And drinkers are, by and large, not happy about it… Common refrains from pubgoers echo the belief that increasing prices when you’re busiest does little to thank or reward your regular customers, and also seems like a disingenuous way to increase your profits: once you’ve had a few pints, you tend to stop looking at the price of the drink, so it’s a stealthy way to up your takings… Of course, Stonegate have themselves stated that they believe they are acting transparently and for the right reasons. And, to their credit, they appear to have at least placed notices in the affected establishments explaining that they are using dynamic pricing and why.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/kings_walden_brewery.jpgSOURCE: Martyn Cornell/Zythophile.At Zythophile Martyn Cornell has shared a fairly dense genealogical post about Frederick Fellowes who leveraged a family connection to Edward Coope (as in, Ind Coope) to train as a brewer in Burton. Among all the Victorian names and dates is an interesting account of a middling brewery (https://zythophile.co.uk/2023/09/23/a-short-history-of-the-kings-walden-brewery/) typical of those which populated Britain before World War I:
What appears to have happened is that Frederick Fellowes, now in his early 30s, his brother the Reverend Henry Fellowes and William Hinds had decided that the operation at the Fox could be the basis for Frederick setting up in business as a brewer in his own right. A surviving receipt from Thornewill and Warham of the Ironworks, Burton on Trent to Messers Hinds, Fellowes and Fellowes of the King’s Walden Brewery dated 21 June 1888 covered virtually everything necessary to start a brewery, from a malt mill through the mash tun (with sparger and false bottom) to the copper (with steam coil), the hop back and the refrigerator for cooling the hot wort. The total, including a vertical steam engine and boiler, came to £648/19/7d, plus carriage of £13/2/- and travelling expenses of £6/1/-, equivalent to around £80,000 today.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/shades_hartlepool.jpgA closed and boarded pub in Hartlepool.The Pub Curmudgeon has been maintaining a side blog called Closed Pubs for some years and this week it achieved its 1,000th entry, which he calls “a rather sad milestone” (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2023/09/not-so-grand.html):
The most common category seems to be the post-war estate-style pubs, which for a variety of reasons never seem to have really worked, something I wrote about here. Possibly the whole concept was flawed from the start, and arose more from town planners’ tidy minds than actual drinkers’ needs. It would not surprise me if fully half the purpose-built, stand-alone pubs constructed after the war are no longer trading, in some cases lasting less than twenty years… But the big inter-wars pubs, often built to much higher standards of design and construction, are in a sense the saddest. A prime example is The Beeches in Northfield, Birmingham, which resembles a magnificent Jacobean stately home. StreetView shows that it had been demolished by May 2011, and housing has now been built on the site.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/augustiner_braustuben.jpgSOURCE: Franz Hofer/Tempest in a Tankard.Fancy a trip to Munich? Franz Hofer of Tempest in a Tankard has written about the Augustiner Bräustuben (https://tempestinatankard.com/2023/09/25/the-augustiner-braustuben-from-barn-to-beerhall/) which he says is “one of the cheapest places in Munich” for a mug of Augustiner Helles:
It’s a classic beer hall with character to spare, more down-home than other beerhalls in the city… And no wonder it has a rustic feel. This lively and sometimes raucous drinking establishment occupies what was once the brewery’s stable for its dray horses. Transformed from barn to beerhall in the mid-1990s, the green cast-iron columns and orange-brick vaulted ceilings of the building recall both the shape of the stable and the industrial architecture of the nineteenth century. Post-equine touches such as the gleaming copper kettle repurposed as a bar leaves no doubt about what you should order once you find a seat… Speaking of seats, the benches rest on old beer barrels for that added touch of rough-hewn charm. While we’re still on the topic of seats, this is no place to be shy. The place is almost always packed, so chances are high you’ll be sharing space with someone who might become a new friend.
Finally, from the BBC Archive on YouTube, even more rural argy-bargy…
For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday (https://appellationbeer.com/blog/monday-beer-links-pleasure-and-business/) and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2023/09/28/the-first-tentatively-autumnal-beery-news-notes-for-2023/).
And though beer podcasts aren’t our thing, you might want to check out Emma Inch’s latest venture Same Again, a podcast about beer, pubs and mental health (https://sameagain.podbean.com/).
News, nuggets and longreads 30 September 2023: More Love (https://boakandbailey.com/2023/09/news-nuggets-and-longreads-30-september-2023-more-love/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2023/09/news-nuggets-and-longreads-30-september-2023-more-love/)