Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - September 2015: The Month That Was

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More or less back on schedule, here’s everything we wrote in September 2015 in one handy round-up.

→ Brewers might not all be ‘passionate’ but they’re not all money-grubbing cynics either — most exist somewhere in-between, but tending towards the former over the latter.
→ We weren’t hugely impressed by Schneider’s Meine Porter Weisse, especially at £10 a bottle.
→ For the 103rd session we wrote about the dominance of middle class voices in beer writing.
→ We reviewed the new edition of Des de Moor’s*London’s Best Beer, Pubs & Bars:
If you live in London and like beer, you should certainly get a copy, but our tip would be to leave it at work so that, when friends or colleagues say, ‘I don’t mind where we go for a pint as long as it’s near*X’, you’ll always have a suggestion at hand.
→ We asked for our readers’ help in working out how many craft beer bars there are. We’ll be doing something with this information soon. (This got Matt at*When My Feet Go Through the Door wondering about the similarly vague concept of ‘the proper pub’.)
http://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/w...size=300%2C191The Aquarius AKA the Bluebell, Chelmsley, Birmingham, which now looks like this. → We posted a gallery of*1960s Watney’s pubs from matchbox covers*which prompted thoughts on post-war pubs from the Pub Curmudgeon.
→*Working on*Gambrinus Waltz we accumulated some odds-and-ends on lager beer in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester which we compiled here in the hope it might set someone else off to do more research.
→ Do you remember Colonel Pepper’s Lemon Ale launched by Whitbread in 1995? (Tandleman does and has the T-shirt to prove it.)
→ There was a pretty decent foreign list at the 1993 Great British Beer Festival, back before Belgo had proper graphic design, and when Pete’s Wicked Ale was the coolest US beer in town.
→ Serving ourself beer at a bar in Nice was great fun;*a neighbourhood brewery tap in Marseille was interesting; and the latter city’s two specialist beer bars were enjoyable in different ways.
→ When and why did Samuel Smith start buying up pubs in London? (Updated with a brief response from the brewery.)
→ The hottest taverns in Bristol in 1815 are mostly gone –demolished, blitzed or improved out of existence in the last 200 years.
http://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/w...size=300%2C140‘Fig. 1316 is a view of the inside of the counter, looking from the bar-room, in which k is a six-motion beer-machine to draw the beer and ale of different ages and qualities from the butts in the cellar. Beneath this machine… is a projecting tray, the bottom of which is formed of a grating, or of a pierced plate of pewter, the holes being about the eighth of an inch in diameter; over this the beer is drawn into the pots and the droppings are collected by this grating, and passed down, by means of a tube, to a vat in the cellar. This waste beer is taken back by the brewers, and an identical quantity of new beer given in exchange…’ → Mostly intending to flag its existence for others who take an interest in pub history and architecture, we shared some images from*J.C. Loudon’s*Encyclopaedia*of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture*published in 1846.
→ We also posted two links round-ups on 5 September and 26 September, with the latter also gathering recommendations we made on Twitter while we were away.
September 2015: The Month That Was from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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