Good article at OpenFile Halifax today touching on a few points of my old home town of Halifax's drinking history. Most neato of all is the click-able photo above of the 1948 version of the Sea Horse Tavern. The name of the place has continued in the underground bar that was my home away from home in undergrad days. The article has this great description of opening day for the Sea Horse:

In September of 1948, the Sea Horse Tavern, operated by the Carleton hotel, was the first tavern to open since Halifax’s 1916 prohibition, charging 25 cents for a pint of Maritime-brewed bottled beer and 30 cents for a pint of Central Canadian beer, the maximum price set by the province. By 10:20 am, 51 people had filed in to drink. “When the fridge doors were opened, they stayed open. Trucks were backing up to get the stuff in. The beer had no time to get cool, we were dragging the crates out this side so fast,” said ‘Yank’ Landry, Sea Horse manager, to the Mail-Star.

First of a three part series, the article also mentions that the town had issued 30 tavern licenses within the first 8 months of British settlement in 1749 - when the first wave of population numbered only 2,500.

I don't think I have ever seen the basic economics of running a bar actually hit a newspaper as a story. But here it is in New Zealand:

Wages, insurance, rent, rates, taxes, repairs and maintenance, cleaners, fixtures and fittings, heat, light and power, telephone, entertainment and security costs all need to be taken into account. "It's not a garage selling twist tops, we sell quality products. You have got to provide a convivial atmosphere and inviting environment. You have got to make it a place where people want to come," Mr Burleigh said. "Drinking at Peggy Gordon's is totally different to drinking in the garage at your home." Mr van Praagh said the hospitality industry was not a cash cow. "At the end of the day we are here to make a living but as you can see from the number of bars that shut down in town, it is not that easy," Mr van Praagh said.

I know NZ is something of an oddly different place but - heavens to Betsy - what would Mitt think about all this having to explain capitalism? The concerns arose out of a public debate on minimum pricing policy, more about how cheap supermarket beer is down there and just exactly who was "usually responsible for the majority of the trouble caused in town later at night."

Still, sad to see that Grumpy Mole went out of business.

Stan posted this four and a half minute video for Deschutes beer and I was surprised to find that I had an entirely different response to the thing than he did. I found it oddly creepy while he admitted he was "a sucker for these sorts of things." The strange thing I thought was how - for one of the first times that I can remember - I was maybe getting turned off about a beer I really liked. A brewery I liked. So, I thought I should think about that a bit more.

There is a good comparator. Stone. See, Jeff said certain things about Greg from Stone and Greg responded. In that response Greg from Stone set out all the things I dislike about his approach to thinking about beer - the boring narcissism, the ever present first person pronouns "I, me, mine". But he does not shake my interest in buying his beer because for the most part it is very good beer at a very good price. I can avoid Greg and the dumb grade 8 back of the glass gargoyle branding thing. It is good for me and Stone that things work out this way. I get to take what I like and pay for the pleasure.

My take on the Deschutes video is like that. Like Greg from Stone, it says a lot of things that may be good and reasonable things but does so in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Even though the vid's tone is entirely unlike a loud diatribe or self back slapping session it still leads me to think thoughts like this:

♦ There is something creepy in the voyeuristic decision to have the girl strip off her shirt and turn back for good measure. Or are we to think that sexism and beer can't touch craft breweries.
♦ There is something odd about the need to grab her off the street and the choice to include the banjo. I own two banjos but appreciate the have that creepy thing associated with them. Your average baritone ukelele or maybe a mandolin would have done the trick.
♦ There are no other people other than far way on that bridge by the pond. Is it intentionally surreal? Or is the message that good Deschutes beer best fits a post apocalyptic landscape. Did he see someone in the gas station and what did he do when he did? And what is the message that she reads at the bottom of a page. He wrote at the top. Is there some suggestion of misunderstanding?
♦ Building on that, there is a tone that is like something out of a movie by Bruce MacDonald or Don McKeller. Maybe it's that the bit of the US being filmed aligns with southern Canada, the setting looks less like wilderness to me and more like the landscape of Road Kill, the moment a bit like Last Night. I keep thinking she is going to off him. Solve her little problem once and for all. The message just fits into her master plan, creates opportunity.

So, I am thinking it is a Canadian thing maybe. Road trip movies often don't work out all that well up here. There's danger. There's bears in the woods, not just make believe empty campsites with no one out there out to the horizon. But, like Greg of Stone going on and on, it doesn't matter. The beer is still tasty and reasonably priced. Wish they were both in my town and not just something I can find on the road. If I really have to go on the road.

A bit of odd news out of Brazil as published in The Sydney Morning Herald as that nation prepares to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014:

''Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we're going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant, but that's something we won't negotiate,'' Valcke said on Thursday at the end of a visit to Brazil to meet the organising committee. He added that FIFA had repeatedly made it clear it wanted authorisation for beer sales in the stadiums, and stressed that Brazil was warned of that when it was chosen to host the 2014 World Cup. FIFA has an agreement with its sponsor, the US-based Anheuser-Busch brand Budweiser, and prohibiting beer sales would cut into the football organisation's revenues from the games. The sale of alcoholic drinks in sports arenas has been banned in Brazil since 2003, but a bill now making its way through Congress would create an exception, allowing beer to be sold in plastic cups at World Cup matches.

I know we are all supposed to be all "hooray for booze in every context" when we beer blog. The pressure to conform is heavy - as you no doubt have noted. But isn't there something quite disturbing about beer being foisted - nay, forced - upon a people who have decided that beer in a sporting event is not appropriate? It would be comforting I suppose to pretend that FIFA cares about the thirst of dipsomaniac soccer fans but of course they are going to get a cut of stadium sales but not sales in private establishments before or after the matches. Having attended enough league matches in Scotland in the 70s and 80s when the ban on booze was skirted by those later arrested fans who duct taping bottles of cheap sherry to their legs under wide leg jeans (quite the thing for a teen to witness) I am aware of the reasons for keeping booze out of the stadiums.

So FIFA is lining up on the side of lining its own pockets at the risk of public safety. Odd to see the makers of Bud still called "US-based" however. Surely, that Brazilian based brewer is lobbying its own as hard as FIFA. Rioters are, after all, good paying clients.

Just when you think collaborations make muddled beer... just when you couldn't wait for beer by committee to be the next big thing... we give you statistically averaged beer recipe formulation:

“We’re asking them as a group to help us design a beer,’’ Koch explained Friday. Through a special application on Facebook, Sam Adams fans will collectively produce a recipe. “The parameters are things like the color, the clarity, the mouth feel, the yeast, the malt, the hops, so there's almost 2,000 different outcomes. Imagine what a really great beer would taste like, and then slide each of those six scales to design the perfect beer, and we'll take the total of all those different beers and then we're going to brew it.’’

Yum. I am pretty sure that even in my darkest moments I haven't ever imagined this new odd PR trick as a way to truly master the making of dull beer. Taking social media add the power of averaging and, voila, dullness in a glass. And roll it out at SXSW just to make the thin veneer of hipster-ism seamless.

Neato! Crowd sourcing!!! The wide-leg jeans of this decade. Thanks for bringing it to brewing, Sam Adams. Can we stop associating this brewer with craft now?

It started innocently enough. Boak and Bailey repeated approvingly my comment that "surfing along with the flavours or things that cannot be controlled is the hallmark of an artisan." I had been thinking of Jeff's transcription of his interview with Jean Van Roy when I commented about hop oil being a cousin to Velveeta cheese. Makes sense, no?

What ensured was an interesting and odd line of tweets. And things took off in an interesting direction. I was quite surprised by the idealism that good beer can be pure and perfect. I always thought good things express many things including the work of time itself as well as the inevitability of human foible. Jeff shared an observation from John Keeling of Fuller's, that sometimes the relationship you have with a beer over time is like when friends get haircuts - "you recognize the person, but he's not identical." I like it. I believe good things display aspects of their goodness in different ways over time. No point in time is better as long as the goodness still is there.

But this means that there is an arc over time. Good beer taste one way young and another old. Both have their charms. And it means as the arc passes, there is a also width to the range of variables which may be displayed at any point in time as well as at the same point. All real food is like this. For me, Saison Dupont is a perfect example. Every time it seems different but still itself. Like someone you know with new stories to tell. Sure, I have changed and the context, too, but it's not just me. The beer that has morphed.

When industrial brewers - or, for that matter, any brewers who believes that beer should only taste as they conceive - demand our obedience we are being asked to believe. To believe there was a mythical big bang of flavour when it was truer and more perfect is to believe that you are not a participant in the process.

Value. Money. Opportunity. Knowledge. I got thinking about this when I read this from the beer columnist for the Star-Ledger about the wine columnist for the Star-Ledger:

I love reading John Foy's wine column in the Star-Ledger. His descriptions of the wines are quite evocative:

The 2004 and 2006 show the same pedigree of bright red color, and a plethora of aromas ranging from raspberry, cherry, cinnamon, white pepper, roses and black raisins. Both are medium bodied with delicious fruit emitting raspberry, cranberry and bitter cherry flavors with harmonious tannins. There is an undercurrent of vanilla in the aroma and flavor from the oak barrels that is pleasing because it is not obvious.

By the time I finish reading those descriptions, I'm ready to get out a corkscrew, a loaf of French bread and some brie. But then I read the price: 63 bucks. Yikes! It's back to beer for me.

Really? The article goes on to talk about the lack of objective truth about wine. What is it we value about thinking about drinks? Are the drinks tastier? Saturday afternoon, I finally took the advice on the back of the bottle and just poured ginger ale into my Pimms rather than making the full punch. I needed no Pimms pundit to tell me that. The bottle told me. There is, in fact, no result at all when you place pimmspundit.com into Google. Some guy called Pimm had the blog. Shame. Opportunity awaits to corner the market.

Or maybe its indirect value. Maybe it's that the language and the thoughts allow you to be or do something or hang out with those who are or do? I dunno. I have always suspected that there is value in increasing the value of beer to those who write about beer because it's always good to be the smart person in the room when it comes to things that cost more than other things. Show me the person who made it by being the expert on how kids play with sticks. Kids play with sticks. Sticks are free. Limited guru opportunity. Like Pimms in a way. Take stick. Throw or drag. Take Pimms. Add ginger ale or make punch.

The article implies the direction towards less is better. It seems to tie over-thinking and over-pricing. Could that be true?

I have been happily aging beer for years. The oldest beer I have is 18 years old. I have also been happily reading rules about aging beer for years. But it was only when reading this article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, which for the most part is pretty good, that I realized I don't really follow the supposed rules and have been happily doing so for years. Let's look at a few rules:

♦ Corked bottles need laying on their sides: I have caged cork bottles in the stash that are four and five years old and they all stand upright. In Let Me Tell You About Beer from last year, Melissa Cole suggests "cork-sealed bottles need to be laid down so the cork stays moist and maintains the seal." My feeling on the cork is that it is more of a source of risk of off flavours over time than lack of beer is a risk to the cork. Plus, unlike most wines, corks used in beer - like champagnes - are larger than the opening, are caged and subject to back pressure. These conditions keep these bottle sealed more than the wetness of the cork. I have never experienced the suggested problem.

♦ Dark coloured beer ages better than light ones: Never had any experience of a badly aged strong pale ale like a tripel or one of those nutty strong US craft beer anniversary ales. The article in the Poughkeepsie Journal states dark beers "will mellow in intensity" but pale strong beers do exactly the same thing under generally cool and dark conditions. Don't limit your experiments, that's my opinion.

♦ Beer has to be stored in a limited temperature range: In 2009's The Naked Pint from 2009, Perozzi and Beaune recommend investing in a dedicated wine fridge at the cost of $300 to $2,000 because beer should be aged between 50°F and 60°F. My house has a cold room under south-east facing steps. It has air circulation from the outside. It's about 7°F outside right now. I bet the stash experiences 15°F to 75°F over the course of a year. But it does so in a very slow cycle because the beer sits five feet underground. They are also kept boxed and piled to create a thermal mass that would further slow down temperature changes. While protecting the beer, this may actually also result in speed aging. Remember - you want the beer to undergo alteration over time. Why wait by putting the beer in cryogenic hibernation at huge expense?

♦ Don't age beer under a certain strength: Randy Mosher in Tasting Beer also from 2009 states conclusively "...beers with under 6 to 7 percent alcohol are never meant to age." Nothing in life is that certain. My philosophy is that beers at that level and less can shift pleasingly in flavour over time. It's just that they will do it faster. Where I am quite comfortable leaving a 10% beer for years, I'd comfortably leave certain lover strength beers like porters in storage to see if they pick up some tangs. And what about those beers that are spoiled from day one? Old gueuze and other lambics can easily be far closer to 5% than 10%. Again, try it out. See what happens.

That's my experience. Your results may differ and you may have something to add. My idea is that for the most part beer is pretty cheap stuff. Putting away a few wines like I do (in the same space) leads to a small collection with a couple of thousand bucks of investment. Beer? You can have a 200 bottle stash with maybe a third dedicated to long term aging for maybe half that cost. So take a chance. See what happens.

So, this is finally winter. Last night I had to buy more flashlights than ever before. Tonight, three massive jugs of alt snow and ice melty stuff. Think there was a polar bear on the label. A growley one. I need a beer to match.

Brasseurs du Temp is right across the river from Canada's capital in Ottawa. Or its part of it. Never understood our capital. Wow. The effect of the wheat at this concentration is like taking the grassiness from sauvignon blanc wine, ditching 90% of the fruity notes, adding some fig and a bit of date, throwing in a bitter barky twiggy thing. There are spices but they are like spices from a land you have never been. Cedar perhaps? Something like an evil changling of the love child of cinnamon and apple wood. Earthy with cloves. And old roses. I once had a massive rose bush that was about 8 feet high and 15 feet across. When they were just past there best, they gave of a musk like a great party that was well after midnight. There's a bit of that in here, too. Yet it is fresh and, for the style and strength, a lightness.

Gorgeous. BAers missed the point. Sometimes a beer doesn't taste like the beers you have already have had.