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From Licensed Victuallers*to Budweiser here’s all the beer-related reading that’s caught our attention in the past seven days.

→ For*the*Morning Advertiser Phil Mellows has written a fantastic piece answering a question that we’ve asked in the past: what on earth happened to the once mighty Licensed Victuallers’ Associations?
“We were the champions of licensees, we fought battles with brewers and we were always on the end of the telephone if members needed help or guidance,”*says former Norwich and Norfolk LVA chairman Mike Lorenz. “But five or six years ago, membership started falling away dramatically and events were poorly attended. Today, organisations like the BII (British Institute of Innkeeping) can offer more benefits. LVAs are not needed.”
→ For US magazine All About Beer*Heather Vandenengel writes about*‘The Reality of Being a Woman in the Beer Industry’. It’s a good read because the interviewees are not the Usual Suspects — production brewer*Irena Bierzynski’s comments are particularly interesting — but wouldn’t it be good to read more articles about women in beer that aren’t pointedly about Women in Beer?

→ Martyn Cornell has applied his great brain to the question of how to classify, and what to call, those pale’n’hoppy British beers that are a less than IPAs but more than golden ales.
→ Richard Coldwell reports on the new craft beer bar, The Turks Head, which sits in the back yard of Leeds’s legendary Whitelocks, an old-school real ale pub:
My main concern was that Whitelock’s would be overshadowed and eroded away before finally falling off the edge of the cliff like some flimsy holiday home on the East coast. Having visited The Turk’s Head, I no longer have any concerns and I think this venture is one of real progress and an asset to the ‘String of beads’ beer scene.
→ We’ve already linked to it once this week but here it is again for completeness: Alan McLeod liked the Budweiser Superbowl advertisement*because it*‘basically sums up everything about American brewing for the last four hundred years’. Another Canadian, Ben Johnson, is not so keen, however, and explains why in entertaining fashion:
I’ve intentionally not linked to either last year’s or this year’s video today so that I might avoid*contributing*to any web traffic that a marketing jagweed working on his personal development plan might include on a slide deck of analytics showing engagement leading to conversions and BLLLAAAARRFFF!…*Oh god, sorry. I used so many marketing buzzwords that I rage-vomited blood again (And yes, I typed the sound that I made as I did so).
→ Brewery takeover news: Japanese giant Asahi is buying*Peroni, Grolsch and London’s Meantime Brewing from SAB-Miller.
→ And, finally, here’s a novel approach to cooling your home brew:
Nature's wort chiller. #homebrew pic.twitter.com/m5WE0irlcJ
— Shelby Colgan (@shelbybrewsbeer) February 10, 2016
News, Nuggets & Longreads 13 Feb 2016 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Beer blogging since 2007, covering real ale, craft beer, pubs and British beer history.


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