What\u2019s up? For Everyday Drinking,<\/em> Sarah Sioli<\/a> wrote about an interesting problem with clinky drinky third spaces:<\/p>\n There\u2019s a paradox anyone who cares about wine, gastronomic culture, and cities will recognize. When I go out to eat and drink in Barcelona, I almost always have to choose between two things I love: the kind of bar that feels like home, and the kind of wine I actually want in my glass. In this city, those two things rarely live under the same roof. It\u2019s happening in many cities where bars are still part of daily life\u2026 And here\u2019s where the paradox lands\u2026 The wood has become stainless steel. The kitsch portraits are gone, replaced by minimalist reproductions and photo prints. The crowd has become the\u00a0modernillos\u2014Spanish for the \u201ccool kids.\u201d The waiter speaks English first These places are what the anthropologist Marc Aug\u00e9 called non-places\u2026\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Exactly! Non-places. Sounds a lot like those IKEA-inspired taproom. For an opposing view, Ron\u2019s thoughts on Canada\u2019s VIA rail service have conveyed valuable information.\u00a0 His trip into Quebec City<\/a> even more so:<\/p>\n Alexei has found a pub with a decent beer selection nearby:\u00a0Caf\u00e9 au Temps Perdu. We head there.\u00a0 There\u2019s a supermarket nearby. But we\u2019ll leave that for on the way back. Au Temps Perdu is a lively neighbourhood bar. We sit on the terrace. As the sun sets behind suburban houses. Dead relaxing, is how I would describe it. The air is still and the light golden. I get a Noctem Catnip IPA, the kids have cider. And some food: beef dumplings, fried calamari and poutine. The poutine is really good: rich and deeply savoury. It really does seem to be better in Quebec. The gravy is almost like brown sauce, in a very good way It\u2019s a lovely summer evening and customers drift in and out, the crowd becoming noticeably younger as time drifts on. I get an espresso martini for my second drink. What the hell, I\u2019m on holiday.<\/em><\/p>\n What else? Well, a lot of newspaper columns end up as higher forms of listicle \u2013 which is readonable given the general readership \u2013 but this column by Pete Brown in the Times of London<\/em> provided us with a very suscinct history of Italian Pilsners<\/a>:<\/p>\n In 1996 an Italian brewer called Agostino Arioli set up a new brewery, Birrificio Italiano, just outside Milan. He was a huge fan of the hoppy German Jever Pilsener, and wanted to brew a copy. It didn\u2019t work, so he tried the English practice of \u201cdry-hopping\u201d, where raw hop flowers or pellets are added to the beer after fermentation to intensify the fruity flavour. That didn\u2019t work either. But he had accidentally created a beer that he loved \u2014 he named it Tipopils (Italian for \u201ckind of pils\u201d). Exhibiting it at a brewing competition in Munich, he met Matt Brynildson, an American brewer who liked Tipopils so much he went straight back to Firestone Walker in California and made his own version.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Speaking of lagers, Boak and Bailey shared a bit of a study on the place of cask ale in an English heat wave \u2013 but included some thoughts of a nice colder lager<\/a>:<\/p>\n We think it\u2019s that lager has less going on or, rather, that its complexity is fairly subtle. In hot weather, what you want is water but\u00a0better, and a good lager can be like that. It won\u2019t make you chew on anything, or overwhelm your nasal apparatus before you\u2019ve even taken a gulp. It has enough bitterness to provide an invigorating bite but not so much that it takes even the slightest effort.\u00a0This is all perilously close to the language of beers that are \u2018drinkable\u2019 and \u2018refreshing\u2019 but in hot weather those qualities do become rather more appealing.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been told my own complexity is pretty subtle. (\u201cToo damn subtle!\u201d read the marginal notes on much of my marked school work.) Speaking of B+B, on their Patreon footnotes last weekend I commented on their thought<\/a> that once a beer becomes too<\/em> different it arguably ceases to be beer.<\/span> My comment<\/a> was that \u201cscotch taping non-beery things onto the category of \u201cbeer\u201d dilutes statistical certainty but it also conveys a lack of, what\u2026 authorship.<\/em>\u201d IE: if you make sometihng new, name it something new. The recent obituary of wine writer Matthew Jukes<\/a> pointed out an example of this:<\/p>\n Known in the trade as \u201cJukesy\u201d, he was adored by Australians because he did so much to champion their wines in his books, journalism and broadcasting\u2026 He also ventured successfully into business, responding to changing trends in alcohol consumption by creating a range of zero-alcohol drinks that could \u201creplace wine for a wine-savvy palate\u201d. His recipes were inspired by Haymaker\u2019s Punch, a cordial made by farmers in the 17th century using leftover fruit and vegetables steeped in vinegar. Soon his \u201cJukes Cordialities\u201d, having started in a kitchen under a Battersea railway arch, were winning orders from Michelin-starred restaurants around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n I mention this as it affirms a usefulness in taxonomy that the booze world largely ignores \u2013 giving each thing its own name. I might be more interested (errr\u2026 even slightly interested) in booze replacement fluids (BRFs) if they were called \u201ccordialities\u201d or, you know, anything other than the thing that they are not. For example and by way of illustration, consider this statement in a recent post at BMI<\/a>:<\/p>\n Notably, non-alc beer accelerated from week to week, up 15.7% for wk thru Aug 2 vs +14.7% in prior wk thru Jul 26, making it one of the only alc bev segments to do so\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n One day soon footware and car parts will also be included as \u201calc bev segments\u201d to further plump the stats.<\/p>\n Almost relatedly, in Pellicle<\/em><\/a> David J wrote about Stirchley Wines & Spirits of Birmingham, which in 1989 became one of those fabulous pre-\u201ccraft\u201d beer retailers, a now largely unsung foundation of the beer beer movement:<\/p>\n \u2026Krishan made sure not to overlook British breweries\u2014although he confesses he generally found the era\u2019s offerings quite samey\u2014and stocked outliers like Worthington White Shield and Samuel Smith before supermarkets had extensive beer ranges. He dealt directly with breweries like Shrewsbury\u2019s Salopian, in some cases before they were established, and was especially excited when new ones opened in Birmingham.\u00a0The key to Stirchley Wines\u2019 enduring success, though, was always offering a range of beers that appealed to all types of drinkers, whether they were interested in the modern, the traditional, or rare imports. Today, the locally brewed Batham\u2019s Best Bitter is the shop\u2019s single bestseller, but Birmingham\u2019s Attic Brew Co. is the most popular brewery.<\/em><\/p>\n And did you hear about the mid-1900s Belgian brewer who may have been doing better than the taxman was told? The Guardian<\/em><\/a> reports:<\/p>\n The hoard, which includes gold coins, nuggets and numbered bullion bars, was stashed in a bag in a bricked-in cellar wall beneath the grand villa originally built for the brewery\u2019s owner, Theophilus Van Assche, in the late 19th century.\u00a0Brewing on the site began in 1899 and ceased in 1970, and the listed property \u2013 the wrought-iron gates of which still bear the initials \u201cVA\u201d \u2013 is being completely renovated by the social welfare organisation CAW Oost-Vlaanderen to create new offices and housing.<\/em><\/p>\n Apparently, some of the ingots are marked in a way that indictes that it is no older than the 1960s<\/a> so it is not like it\u2019s Nazi gold. Less dramatic was another find<\/a>:<\/p>\n A woman has claimed a free pint of beer after finding a coin and a mysterious message hidden in the wall of her house.\u00a0The card, discovered by Ellie Mead in Bicester, Oxfordshire, revealed the cache was left there in 1971 by electrician David Judd, who promised \u201cone pint best beer if penny returned\u201d. A Facebook appeal traced his daughter, Helen Russell, who revealed he was now aged 92, living in Devon and happy to honour the offer.\u00a0She said: \u201cI do know that there are others all over the place but he won\u2019t tell me exactly where.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Speaking of odd things found at breweries, Will Hawkes on the twentieth annivesary of the end of Young\u2019s brewery in the latest edition of London Beer City<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Well, how many breweries are also menageries? Young\u2019s had not only 20-odd Dray Horses, but goats (cleverer than horses, SJY reasoned, they\u2019d notice a fire in the stables before the drays), donkeys (a pair, called Bonnie and Clyde, found emaciated and nurtured back to life), a Dorset Horn Ram (\u2018a living mascot\u2019), 17 geese, hens and peacocks.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Speaking of butting heads, here\u2019s an interesting angle on \u201cGulf War III, Trump Trips Trap\u201d and the news that the US Navy has been struggling to provide supplies to the ships, especially the USS Lincoln \u2013 as reported in the NYT<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n By tradition and Navy regulation, the commanding officer of a warship can request a \u201cbeer day\u201d for their crews when they have been at sea for 45 straight days or longer. Given the Lincoln\u2019s time at sea, the crew would have been eligible for five beer days already.\u00a0A spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which covers naval operations in region and would authorize beer days, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about whether any of the ships participating in the Iran war had requested them.<\/em><\/p>\n Apparently Wee Donnie didn\u2019t see fit to provide \u201ctoilets that work days\u201d so I would expect that beer was not high on the priority list. In the 1980s, my home of Halifax NS had periodic visits from the NATO fleet and you could go on board. I remember on a very large US ship a few crew laughing about how the other navies allowed booze on board. I remember on a very small Canadian ship a few crew laughing about how, during the war games out at see a few days before they sank the very large US ship.<\/p>\n Booze and war have also had an effect in Russia<\/a> with news laws coming in to deal with smuggling:<\/p>\n Under the new regulations, bringing just two bottles of premium vintage wine or high-end champagne without declaring them can trigger criminal penalties.\u00a0Illegal transport of high-value wine in personal luggage has remained common practice, with Federal Customs Service data showing attempted illegal alcohol imports reaching 413.5 million rubles ($4.5 million) last year, up from 266.7 million rubles ($2.9 million) the year prior\u2026 Former government economist Oleg Vyugin noted that due to complex transport routes and rising tariffs, \u201cEuropean wines in restaurants cost like an airplane wing,\u201d adding that \u201cif you want to drink good wine, you have to spend everything you earned over the last two months, or be an oligarch.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Pity the poor oligarchs. One last thing. How do you feel about subliminal A.I. text? Has anyone checked for that in beer writing? What am I talking about?!?!\u00a0 Here is a portion of a discussion<\/a> of\u00a0Elliott v. New York Bariatric Group<\/em> out of New York\u2019s\u00a0Judicial District of Ansonia\/Milford:<\/p>\n The concealed text was a command addressed to machines, set under the caption and repeated at the end of the document\u2026 The plaintiff was telling whatever model touched the document to make its output agree with him and to treat the clerk\u2019s prior ruling against him as an error that needed fixing in his favor. A second filing that same day, Docket Entry #178.00, carried an abbreviated version of the same hidden instruction. In the cybersecurity world this is called a prompt injection attack.<\/em><\/p>\n This was spotted care of\u00a0Brendan M. Palfreyman<\/a>, attorney in Syracuse NY who has a noted<\/a> focus on brewing law IP but has been sharing how A.I. is being applied in (and is offensive) to the courts. It\u2019s something like self-promoting search engine fodder. Could that tool defeat any integrity in beer rating sites, for example? Couldn\u2019t be worse than LinkedIn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As I figure out how to add subliminal messaging to this weekly update (buy Al toast!), please check out Boak and Bailey posting on\u00a0Saturday<\/a>\u00a0and adding to their fabulously entertaining footnotes week after week at\u00a0Patreon<\/a>. And do look out for more of Stan\u2019s \u201cOne Link, One Paragraph<\/a>\u201d format. \u00a0Then hunt out something in someone\u2019s archives! Leave oblique comments on someone\u2019s post from 2009!! Listen to a few of\u00a0Lew\u2019s podcasts<\/a>\u00a0and get your emailed issue of\u00a0Episodes of my Pub Life<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by David Jesudason on certain Fridays. And Phil Mellows is at the\u00a0BritishBeerBreaks<\/em><\/a>. Once a month, Will Hawkes issues his\u00a0London Beer City<\/em><\/a>\u00a0newsletter. Do sign up for Katie\u2019s wonderful self-governing totes autonomous website featuring\u00a0The Gulp<\/em><\/a>, too. \u00a0Ben\u2019s\u00a0Beer and Badword<\/a><\/em>\u00a0remains on pause but there is reading at\u00a0The Glass<\/a>\u00a0which is going back to being\u00a0a blog<\/a>. Any more? We have\u00a0Ontario\u2019s own\u00a0A Quick Beer<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0All About Beer<\/em>\u00a0is still offering a range of\u00a0podcasts<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and there\u2019s also Mike Seay\u2019s\u00a0The Perfect Pour<\/a>. Plus follow the venerable\u00a0Full Pint<\/em>\u00a0podcast<\/a>! And there\u2019s the\u00a0Craft Beer Channel<\/a>\u00a0on Youtube as well as the archives of the\u00a0Beer Ladies Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Say what you like. Beer is pretty good but, be honest, toast is the best. See that there? My yellow tomatoes on cream cheese mixed with my green onions, chives and basil. Pennies worth of seeds, just months of waiting. And watering. And weedeing. All for toast. I once even made cream cheese. Bought the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7042776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11784,191849,205173,12167,102378,99132,98514,109400,99108,156684,205174,97057],"tags":[10044,5427,3171,13054,3767,3124,1416,2902,1820,388,49222],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7042775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belgium","category-blogging-and-the-internet","category-craft-schismists","category-economics","category-england","category-france","category-italy","category-lager","category-russia","category-seasons-and-weather","category-ships-and-shipping","category-usa","tag-accurate","tag-august","tag-beer","tag-beery","tag-blog","tag-days","tag-good","tag-lazy","tag-news","tag-notes","tag-questionable"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/abetterbeerblog427.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/toast.jpg\")
<\/a>Say what you like. Beer is pretty good but, be honest, toast is the best. See that there? My yellow tomatoes on cream cheese mixed with my green onions, chives and basil. Pennies worth of seeds, just months of waiting. And watering. And weedeing. All for toast. I once even made cream cheese. Bought the equipment on line maybe 25 years ago. It was great. It was a couple of kilos worth, too. Never made it again. You think a beer hobby or home brewing is a hazard to your girlish figure? Cream cheese making laughs at home brewing.<\/p>\n<\/a>And here\u2019s a thumbnail illustrating an all too common sort of interaction in the beer discourse from over at LinkedIn<\/a>. I am playing with LinkedIn by posting pictures of my garden and my birdwatching instead of making up shit about my career path. Screw with the construct I say. Anyway, have a look. In response to a pretty light newbie 101 sort of infographic on Pilsners a certain Mr. M.D. Ferguson (apparently of the hops trade<\/a>) takes the time to write \u201ccompletely inaccurate on the hop part<\/em>\u201c\u2026 as if one looks to infographics for accuracy. Then someone called Dr. G. Spedding Phd<\/a> (apparently of a booze lab<\/a>) took the opportunity to redirect eyes\u2026 to an article HE<\/em> got published in a trade mag<\/a> a few months back about flavour wheels and not about distinctions among Pilsners. All of which conveys a disinforming disrespectful cocaphanic mess. None of which passed my mind\u2019s eye without hearing the voices of Beavis and Butthead.<\/p>\n
![Dr. G. Spedding Phd<\/a> (apparently of a](\"http:\/\/abetterbeerblog427.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_3376.jpeg\"){kind=link}