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To make up for skipping a week (our trip to London got a bit hectic…) here’s a BUMPER SUMMER FUN EDITION*of our regular round-up of links and news.

→ Peter Swinburn, CEO of global brewing giant Molson Coors, gave a fascinating interview to Bloomberg. The headline is*‘Craft Breweries Massively Over-valued’, but we read it as an acknowledgement that ‘craft’ is more-or-less immune to corporate takeover: precisely those things consumers like about ‘craft’ are difficult to maintain at scale.
→*Michael Tonsmeire has shared a long extract about saisons from his new book*American Sour Beers: “An elementary recipe inspired by*Saison Dupont, the archetype of the style, could be comprised of only water, Pilsner malt, and Saaz hops, but many American brewers opt for something more complicated.”
→*The Guardian reports on German brewers’ attempts to prevent*‘fracking’ which they fear will pollute the pure water upon which their beer depends.
→ Last year, we got excited when we noticed ten-sided pint glasses in the trailer for the BBC drama series Peaky Blinders. (Yes, excited. Tragic.) Now, it seems the show, which returns in September, has inspired a vaguely historical Midlands-style mild from Sadler’s.
→ Since they closed their big brewery in Blackburn, there’s been anxiety among fans of Thwaites that this might signal the end for the Lancastrian brewer. They’ve now announced that a new site has been acquired. Phew!
→*Modern Farmer magazine reports on a booming ‘craft beer’ scene in Paris driven by the ‘eat less, eat better’ trend. (Via First We Feast.)
→ This piece about the mark-up on wine in restaurants seems to us to have resonances with the debate around the cost of ‘craft beer bars’, especially this point about knowledgeable staff: “A good sommelier will increase the guest’s pleasure…*If you’re getting divorced, do you Google it and do it yourself or do you pay a solicitor £300 an hour?”
→ Evan Rail’s new ebook,*Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest, turns out to be the first in a series, with entries from Stan Hieronymus and Joe Stange to follow. Interesting.
→ Lynn Pearson has written a book about brewery architecture for English Heritage.
→ And, finally, here’s another review of*Brew Britannia,*from*Richard ‘Edinburgh Beercast’ Taylor.
Actually, maybe that wasn’t as ‘bumper’ as we’d hoped — did we miss anything juicy?
News, Nuggets & Longreads 28/06/2014


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