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January was both gloomy*and real-life*busy — not ideal blogging conditions — but we found time for a few posts.

→ The month kicked off with a short contribution to the 107th edition of The Session: are brewers our friends, and do we want them to be?*(The full session round-up is available at the Community Beer Works website.)
→ We reached a final decision on our favourite bottled mild. (There’s more on the meaning of bottled*mild from Joe Tindall*here.)
→ In the first of a new series of Notes & Queries type posts we looked into the history of the Falmouth Brewery Co. on behalf of Neil McDonald, which also led to…
→ A raw info dump of the names of Cornish brewers according to a 19th century trade directory. Someone might find it useful down the line — you never know.
→ We asked for your help in finding people who worked or drank in pre-fabricated pubs in the period after World War II. We got some amazing leads off this — thanks everyone! — but would still like more.

→ We pondered whether a certain type of traditional brewery remains endangered despite the general boom in brewery numbers of the last 40 years.
→ How many pubs does a community need? We reckon the answer is, as a bare minimum, two — one you go to, and one you don’t.
The Old Cellars, Tenterden, as drawn by Alan F. Turner.→ The last of the Batsford pub guides, D.B. Tubbs’s Kent Pubs from 1966,*got the highlighter treatment: ‘One of the regulars is a one-eyed swan named Nelson who lives down the road. It is quite respectable to see him, even after a long session.’
→ We flagged an interesting passage in an interesting book about Pakistani immigrants in Bradford pubs in the mid-1960s. (They were keen but, as we read it, weren’t made all that welcome.)
→ What became of a Great Yarmouth pub called Kitty Witches?
→ Boak had what might be her beer of the year at the Star Inn, Crowlas.
→*If you feel the romance of the mid-20th century pub, flat-roofed or otherwise, then you’ll want to add these nostalgic blogs to your reading list.
→ How was draught Guinness served in Britain up to the 1960s — cask, keg or something in-between? (There’s something of a companion piece by Gary Gilman here.)
→ We exchanged a few emails with Eddie Lofthouse, the boss at Cornwall’s Harbour Brewing, and stitched the results together into a kind-of-interview:*‘When we started we thought we knew quite a lot about beer and brewing. We quickly learned we knew pretty much nothing.’

→ In an attempt to liven up our palates we’ve asked the adventurous Dina to suggest some beers we ought to try; the first we tasted was Lindemans/Mikkeller Spontanbasil.
→ And we finished the month back on Guinness, gaining some sense of its reputation and status from a humorous 1959 article about the supposed magic of the Dublin-brewed stuff.
→ There were also the usual weekly links round-ups, a few bits and pieces on Facebook*(give us a Like), lots of Tweets*(follow us) and an email newsletter with info on our latest book project (sign up here).
The Month That Was: January 2016 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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