Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - News, Nuggets & Longreads 05/09/2015
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Here’s our pick of the most interesting, entertaining or eye-opening beer-related reading of the last week.
→ Ron Pattinson’s series of posts on beer in the DDR (he has family connections with the former East Germany) continues to fascinate. This piece on state mandated beer styles is great, not least because it reveals restrictions on how beers could be marketed:
Fantasy names, which suggest a higher quality, such as:*Edel, Doppel (with the exception of Doppel-Karamelbier), Extra, Exquisit, das Feinste, aus bestem Malz und Hopfen bereitet, are not allowed.
→ This fill-in-the-blanks announcement of a hip new bar by Max Chanowitz (via*Marina O’Loughlin, via*@Christopher_R) is funny, but also depressing:
I’m talking about the one opening up in [historical building] in [up-and-coming neighborhood]. If you haven’t heard the buzz on [local news site] or [social media place], it’s time to crawl out from under that rock, because it sounds like it’s going to be [hyperbole].
→ Phil at*Oh Good Ale*did some investigating, and asked some pointed questions, when Brewhive got in touch about samples of their beers:
I was starting to get the impression of people who knew a hell of a lot about retailing food and drink, and were thinking quite deeply about how to make a success of this particular venture, but who didn’t actually have any background in beer or brewing.
→ For the London*Evening Standard, Ben Norum proposed an alternative to the Bermondsey Beer Mile: a five mile ‘Hackney Brewery Trail’.
→ The editors of the Good Pub Guide (that’s the non-CAMRA one you pay to be listed in) usually hang the launch of a new edition on a controversy. This time, it’s children in pubs, as reported in the*Guardian and elsewhere.
→ We feel obliged to link to Jay Brooks’ heartfelt response to the*Eater piece on booze in cartoons*to make up for linking to it the other week:
Many of the cartoons she refers to in her article pre-date television and many more were originally aired before a film, and later repackaged for Saturday morning television. The earliest cartoon series, from Disney, Fleischer, Warner Brothers, MGM, Lantz, Van Beuren, Terrytown and others, were created to run before a feature-length film, along with a newsreel. They were made for every movie, not just children’s movies and as such could include subject-matter that today we might consider inappropriate for kids.
→ Another reminder that beer (as Zak Avery has pointed out) isn’t all tasting and fireworks, and that everything isn’t smiles and hugs behind the scenes:
This industry (at least in the UK) is known for some folk stretching payment terms, but sheesh, we're owed 24% of everything we've invoiced.
— Cloudwater Brew Co (@cloudwaterbrew)
August 31, 2015
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