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Here’s everything we posted in the last month — not a bad run, considering we spent a week on holiday*in the middle.

→ Proposed Public House —*As ‘new towns’ and Corbusier-inspired estates were built in the rubble and green field of post-War Britain, pubs were a focus of debate.
→*Notable Pubs #2: The Crooked House —*In Himley, just over the Staffordshire border near Dudley, is one of the weirdest pubs in Britain.
→*Sarah Warman: Influencer*—*Is there anyone talking or writing about beer with anything like the ability of Jamie Oliver or Delia Smith to mention a product and immediately cause it to sell out across the country? We reckon Sarah Warman might be the one to watch. (Literally.)
→ Brewery Numbers and Employment*—*The boom in the number of breweries in the UK has caused a buzz but isn’t the only important number: how many people are actually employed in making beer?
→ Session #100: The Return of Porter —*Because the 100th Session is a special occasion, and with the kind permission of our publishers, Aurum Press, we’ve decided to share a slightly edited extract from chapter four of our book Brew Britannia. (And*Reuben Gray’s round-up of all the session posts is here.)
→*The Talbot Arms, Settle*—*Situated off the High Street behind the market place the Talbot is visually striking: a wall of white with the pub’s name in huge black letters and an unusual sign of a white dog which looks both hip*and yet also strangely medieval.
→ Moor’s Bristol Takeover —*To break the journey back from Yorkshire to Cornwall, we stopped over in Bristol and spent an evening accidentally immersed in Moor Beer.
→ Trousered on Craft*—*Stumbling home the other night, we reached a conclusion: the biggest problem with ‘craft’ beer (def. 2) is that it gets us more drunk than ‘normal’ beer.
→ Doom Bar and the Question of Origin —*It’s official: thanks to Lucy Britner at Just Drinks we now know that Sharp’s Doom Bar — the bottled stuff, at least — has been being brewed outside Cornwall since 2013.
→*What do we Mean by Variety?*—*When we’re asked what we want from British beer culture we tend to say ‘Variety,’ but what exactly does that mean?
→*Ask for it by Name!*—*These days, it would seem odd to go into a pub and simply ask for ‘a pint of lager’ or a ‘half of bitter’ but that, we think, is a fairly recent development.
→ The Story Behind That Photograph —*You know the one: a hand wrapped around a grubby straight-sided pint glass, its contents (London Pride? John Smith’s?) being tipped into the mouth of an anonymous male drinker.
→*Beer Writing*Clichés*— We thought it might be a good idea to compile a list of beer writing clichés as part of our very occasional series of posts on writing style. (N.B. The most comments we’ve ever received on a single post.)
→*Saisons Pt. 8: The Last Two — One a gusher, the other a classy contender.
→*Beer Clarity, Ornamental Glass & Mirrors in the 1890s —*In her essay ‘Presenting the Perfect Pint: Drink and Visual Pleasure in Late Nineteenth-Century London’ Fiona Fisher argues that judging beer by its appearance was a product of a period when public houses were smartened up and glasses replaced tankards.
→*News, Nuggets and Longreads*6 June | 20 June*| 27 June
→*On Facebook we gave a short review of And Union’s Friday ‘Uber IPA’. (No login required.)
→ We Tweeted a load of stuff like this:
Young's brewery merchandise, 1992. #sportscasual. (FAO @AccidentalP) pic.twitter.com/HShxll6wBM
— Boak and Bailey (@BoakandBailey) June 30, 2015
→ And, finally, we also despatched c.1000 words of exclusive ‘stuff’ (notes on Bundobust in Leeds, for example) in our email newsletter — sign up here.
The Month That Was: June 2015 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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