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From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar, when the dawn begins to crack. It’s all part of our autumn almanac.

There’s been some interesting reading around the blogoshire and beyond in the last week. Here are our picks.
This is yet another*fantastic post from Lars Marius Garshol, who’s been Alan Lomaxing his way through Norway’s farmhouse brewing culture:
He buys Finnish 6-row barley at a local store, and prefers that because of the higher starch content compared to Norwegian barley… During drying the sprouts and the hairlike roots are burned to a cinder, and these must be cleaned off afterwards to avoid giving the beer an unpleasant burnt flavour….*To remove these he uses a machine built by a local guy, who builds them out of chicken wire and the driveworks of old washing machines.
→ On a related note, and completing the circle of love (and thus defeating the Daleks or something?) here’s something Stan Hieronymus wrote at least partly in response to a post of ours:
I’ve*been building a bit of a list of what might be called “indigenous beers.” You can help improve it and in return you might win a book… To win, add a beer to this list. Or provide meaningful details about one of the beers already here. Or add something to the “What the heck is indigenous?” conversation.
→ The team at*Belgian Smaak hosted the last session on the topic of ‘My First Belgian’ and have put together a thoughtful round-up of all the entries here.
→ Pete Brissenden, a young feller who has worked at both Meantime and Camden breweries, has revived *his blog in the last week. This piece on why pubs are like bananas is thought-provoking and funny:*“I didn’t include those in this post because I*couldn’t*work out how to*liken them to a banana. Sorry.”
→ Suzy, who has previously worked for Wetherspoon, ponders whether the chain’s new enthusiasm for craft beer will tempt her into the*pubs.
→ There’s been another trademark dispute with regard to which lots of people with no special insight or legal training have VERY STRONG OPINIONS! The key bits of information are blog posts by Camden of London and Redwell of Norwich.
The*Good Beer Guide is out and reports that the number of breweries has increased yet again to 1,285. (Link is to PDF.) People who have been confidently forecasting a catastrophic end to the boom for several years must be getting*antsy.
This post about ‘Beer Before BrewDog’at Ed’s Beer Site prompted some good discussion (as well as some of the usual axe-grinding).
→ Tom Unwin’s Dad is Trevor Unwin, quoted on p45 of*Brew Britannia. We have one other issue of*What’s Brewing, the short-lived CAMRA glossy magazine, and would love to get our hands on this beauty:
@BoakandBailey Dad's been clearing the attic out – found this artifact among others pic.twitter.com/B99tT3fSpW
— Tom Unwin (@TomUnwinBrewer) September 12, 2014
Rampant Egotism

→ We’re going to start with what, for us, is big news: every other Saturday, starting today, we’re going to have a square (it’s not a column…) in the*Guardian Guide. It’s a good job we’ve been*in training because it’s 150 words (edited to 114 this week) — not a great deal of space to make a point, let alone wax lyrical.
Knut Albert reviewed Brew Britannia and highlighted that*it’s a book with some reading in it, not one full of pictures; and that it’s also just the right size to read on the bus. Thanks, Knut!
News, Nuggets & Longreads 13/09/2014


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