Welcome to autumn. The burning of fossil fuels within my home has already begun. And the wearing of more layers. It\u2019s madness all this circling of the sun. A few days ago, it was too hot. Now\u2026 I wonder if it will be too hot ever again. I think deep thoughts like that from time to time because, as the poet<\/a> wrote, I am a sensitive man. So sensitive that I took a photo of the scene above when I came upon a can of Bud sitting quite upright by a familar path, looking out upon the waters. I am also, apparently, a student these days. Forty five years after starting the FYP program at Kings College (aka Bings Bollege), I signed up for the new mini version<\/a>. So I must be extra clever this week having studied Ajax<\/em><\/a> for minutes on end. Right? Well, we and the gods shall now have to see if anything actually sinks in.<\/p>\n What\u2019s up in beer news? First up: when<\/a> did the copper age end and the bronze age begin\u2026 in Bulgaria<\/a>? What ever the label, apparently there was wheat ale brewing 6,500 years ago in that corner of Europe:<\/p>\n \u00a0Bulgarian archaeologists found evidence that beer was produced at \u201cProvadia-Solnitsata\u201d (5600\u20134350 BC)-Europe\u2019s oldest salt-production and urban center.\u00a0This was announced by the leader of the archaeological works, Academician Vasil Nikolov, who presented the team\u2019s summer findings to journalists, BTA reported.\u00a0According to Nikolov, this likely represents the earliest production of the beverage in the region and possibly in all of Europe. He noted that botanist Elena Marinova contributed to the discovery. A broken vessel was found containing wheat that had sprouted in the manner required to produce malt. The vessel was discovered in a house that had burned down.<\/em><\/p>\n I know that Merryn<\/a> will be pleased with that sort of residual organics analysis. I like that the house burned down. Breweries were always burning down around here 240 years ago. Good sign.<\/p>\n Perhaps another good sign is how, as Jessica Mason<\/a> reports, it seems that the Canadian and US administations\u2019 mutual tariffs on aluminum products are having an important effect\u2026 though likely not the one the White House intended:<\/p>\n Southern Ontario\u2019s Caravan Bev Co\u2019s owner Shane Vear had also admitted that he also imports and distributes Chinese cans and since then his business has risen 30% since last year.\u00a0Vancouver Island\u2019s Strait & Narrow president Yuri Akeroyd told the publication that his company moved most of its can purchases to China over the past eight months and insisted that the decision was about \u201csurvival\u201d.\u00a0Akeroyd also stated that \u201ccost\u201d was not the only reason for the shift and added that following nearly two years of policy swings that buying from overseas felt \u201cless volatile\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n Import\u2026 get it?\u00a0 Fine. Well, there is someone<\/a> out there seeking to promote stability. You know the guy<\/a> working on the creation of cybermen or some other sort of robot army.<\/p>\n Speaking of laying waste, VinePair<\/em> published a great article by Aaron Goldfarb<\/a> on the regret and shame and bad feelings and waste of one\u2019s life you can feel when you have a cellar full of beer that was promised to age:<\/p>\n I was saving these beers for some special occasion. But plenty of special occasions came and went and I never drank them.\u00a0And there they sit: too worthless now to sell, too heavy to haul upstairs on a whim, too fraught to simply throw away because tossing them would mean admitting my wife was right a decade ago, when she kept asking why I needed to buy more beer when I already had so much.\u00a0I only had one choice, and Leslie\u2019s advice kept ringing in my head:\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019ve all passed their prime, and at this point you might as well just crack them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I think it was about ten years ago the I gave away most of the \u201cimportant\u201d beers I started aging about twent years ago. I probably have more down there in the cellar like my two panic bottles of Girardin Gueuze<\/a>. I don\u2019t even want to think what they are like given I bought them in the first term of the Obama administration.\u00a0 Another more serious sort of crime against booze was discussed by Jason Wilson<\/a> this week with a seriously hefty fine on the line:<\/p>\n On September 10th, the federal government announced that Southern Glazer\u2019s Wine & Spirits\u2014which controls about one third of all U.S. wine and spirits distribution\u2014agreed to pay $12.5 million in fines over bribery and false invoicing practices. Southern Glazer\u2019s entered into a \u201cnon-prosecution agreement\u201d with federal prosecutors for \u201cexecutives and employees funding and concealing improper payments and benefits to employees of alcohol retailers, including chain grocery stores in California and elsewhere.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Wilson shares the opinon that the fine is a \u201crounding error\u201d for the firm that takes in $26 billion USD a year and especially insufficient for an eight year long pattern of infraction. He calls for drinkers to rise up! As you think on that call to action, here\u2019s some notes! Here\u2019s some notes as you plan the revolution.<\/p>\n Note #1<\/a>: Matty C on some hop parlance. What else is going on? Well, David Nilsen<\/a> in CB&B has provided us with a helpful primer on the French hop industry:<\/p>\n When we think of French hops, we typically think of Strisselspalt, a delicate Noble-adjacent hop with fine herbal-floral aromas and restrained bittering. That classic variety took up most of the Alsace\u2019s 400 hectares under trellis until nearly 20 years ago, and most of that crop was contracted to Anheuser Busch. When InBev purchased the company in 2008, it also abruptly terminated the Strisselspalt contract. That not only meant an immediate loss of sales, but it also left the French hop industry with a visibility problem. Few brewers were familiar with French hops because Anheuser Busch had been using most of them. Yet the rhizomes for a possible future had already been planted. Hop France had begun a hop-breeding program in 2001 with the primary purpose of improving\u2014or replacing\u2014the bittering performance of Strisselspalt\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Frikkin Strisselspalt\u2026. just\u2026 don\u2019t ask. And from New Zealand, Kieran Haslett-Moore<\/a> has shared the idyllic story of a beer fest by a southern sea:<\/p>\n The sun is setting over the alps and is catching the clouds, setting them alight with glorious flaming reds set against the over ripe blue of the heavens. The spectacle is a Salvador Dali painting animated to reality. Beneath the spectacle of the natural world sits one from the realm of human endeavour. Cobbled streets of ornate Victorian white stone have weathered 150 years of southern ocean storms and Kiwi lust for the wrecking ball. Within two of the old buildings Bruxelles Oamaru is in full swing. It is like there is a portal from the sleepy southern town straight into the back streets of Brussels. Goblets of oaky spontaneous ale, various tart, fruited concoctions, lemon-flavoured blonde ales, saison and even a Belgian stout are drunk, discussed and enjoyed.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What a scene. It\u2019s like good beer was starting fresh all over again. Similar too was the report from Imran Rahman-Jones<\/a> who has been slumming by the Mediterranean:<\/p>\n I am writing this from the heel of Italy\u2019s boot, otherwise known as Puglia, where it\u2019s still shorts weather and the Nivea factor 50 continues to be sprayed every few hours. The Italian beer here has generally ranged from \u201cnot to my taste\u201d to \u201cobjectively poor\u201d, with a couple falling into the \u201cvery nice served ice-cold but make sure you get it finished before it starts tasting of anything\u201d category.\u00a0The supermarkets here seem to have as many German and Belgian beers on the shelves as Italian ones. It seems Italy has, like France, decided it should stick to doing what it does better than anyone else (wine), and happily imports the good beer from its European friends.<\/em><\/p>\n Blunt but now doubt accurate. And, to be fair, there is a place for the utility of a well placed \u201cvery nice served ice-cold but make sure you get it finished before it starts tasting of anything\u201d<\/em> beer. Similarly, there were some refreshingly simple business truths this week from ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/abetterbeerblog427.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/budpark.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cBud By The Bay<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n
Note #2<\/a>: \u201c\u20263.5% more than in the same period last year<\/em>\u2026\u201d
Note #3<\/a>: part beer shop, part radio station.
Note #4<\/a>: Lars has a new book \u2013 The Power of Beer!<\/em><\/p>\n