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This is our pick of the most interesting and/or eye-opening beer- or pub-related reading from the last week.

→ Neil McDonald of*Home Brew Answers*suggests a recipe for ‘session stout’ which sounds like it ought to be ‘a thing’:
A full bodied lower ABV session beer? Balancing a beer like this can be a tricky thing, retaining the body in a beer is harder when you are putting less malt in but with a few simple tweaks and a little bit of thought about the recipe itself it is not all that difficult.

→ For the British Library Labs project Dr Katrina Navickas has put together a pub-heavy walking tour of Chartist London.
→ Ed has been digging in the*Journal of the Institute of Brewing again and came across a marvellous 1905 paper on ‘The Popular Type of Beer’*which includes a complaint about poor quality bottled beer, the result of a…
“short sighted and stupid policy to rest content with, or even to tolerate a characterless product which is not only far inferior to a naturally matured bottled beer, but in the majority of cases not even a credit to the present development of the non-deposit system”.
→ On a related theme, Ron Pattinson flags an observation from a brewer’s memoir which underlines why monopolies in brewing are bad news — because companies stop trying once they have one:
The same brewery senior management laid down the rules and the policy, and like all monopolies, became very efficient at control and very short of inspiration; any idea which for its implementation called for a change in routines, an upending of hitherto accepted philosophies, and a degree of risk, was treated with* suspicion and, usually, rejection.
→*Speaking of monopolies, this week’s brewery takeover news: AB-InBev’s is becoming more hostile in its attempts to swallow*SABMiller; while, at the same time, rumours are afoot that Diageo might sell their brewing operations to SABMiller,*according to the New York Post*(via @BeaumontDrinks). And, in Canada, Mill Street Brewing has been taken over by regional giant Labatt. (Is someone keeping count of 2015’s casualties?)
→ And, finally, via an entire chain of people ending with @thebeernut*here’s a splendid 10 minute film about the beer culture of Forchheim, Franconia, presented by*Ailine Liefeld for Vice‘s ‘Al-Ke-Holl’ series. (This attempt to embed might or might not work — if it doesn’t, try the link above.)

Quick Plug

We’re allowed to put*Gambrinus Waltz, our Kindle book about lager beer in Victorian and Edwardian London,*on sale for one week every few months so, right now, and for a couple of days only, it’s available for 99p. Snap it up!

News, Nuggets & Longreads 10/10/2015 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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