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A bit late because we didn’t get round to it before we went on holiday, here’s a round-up of everything we posted in August.

→ We started the month with a long piece on attempts by Watneys, Whitbread and other big British breweries to export the idea of the English pub to Continental Europe in the 1960s and 70s:
In the more sophisticated city centres, with their cosmopolitan populations, the cachet of drinking bitter seems to have had some success, particularly in Paris where there is a distinct preference for top-class beers.
→ Could*BrewDog brewing Arrogant Bastard in the UK turn into a more permanent arrangement? (James Watt of BrewDog: ‘No.’)
→ Though we’re still after a high resolution, full colour reproduction, we were pleased to find an image of one of Watney’s notorious 1970s ‘Red Revolution’ posters.
→ We tasted one last UK saison (Cheddar Ales Firewitch) then a few from elsewhere before finally rounding up our saison-tasting season and declaring an overall winner.
→ Having sweated over our long essay published at the end of June we knew it would go out of date immediately and so provided a ‘One Year On, One Month On’ update.
→ Here’s an out-take from the piece on Alastair Hook, Peter Haydon and Mark Dorber we wrote for*All About Beer.
→ Having snapped up a copy of*Which?*magazine’s 1960 report on the state of British beer we shared a summary of some of the key points. We’ve since sent a scan to Ron Pattinson who is analysing it in much greater detail — parts one and two are up now.
→*We came down off the fence, sort of, to concede that hazy beer might be a problem if it gives bad pubs another excuse for their poor beer: ‘It’s meant to be like that.’
→ A highly un-topical book review:*We Ran a Cornish Pub*came out in 1967 and offers a glimpse into the world of post-war pubs.
→ We weren’t blown away by the beer at the Hub, Truro, but we did enjoy the food, and it’s interesting to see the craft beer bar aesthetic spreading outside big cities.
→ Because it’s an obsession of ours, we were delighted to discover that Historic England has launched a project to catalogue and preserve post-war pubs. (Well, they say that — they’ve been a bit quiet since, perhaps overwhelmed by the response.)
→ In the 1970s CAMRA got everyone so excited about real ale that even British Rail got in on the act.
→ None of them quite deserving their own post, we gathered together assorted notes on the West Cornwall beer and pub scene.
→ In 1989, Ronny Fincham drowned in beer.
→*Does the UK have ‘must try’ regional speciality beers? If so, what are they?
→ We also posted a couple of picture posts — one of leaflets from Fuller’s and Young & Co in the 1970s, and another of promotional images for a car from the 1950s which feature Oxfordshire pubs*— as well as a couple of quotations offered without comment.
August 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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