... or not. Saturday afternoon is the Dark Ages of the internet, after all. But here are some stories about things beery that could colour how you look at the world this weekend. How could I not share?
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Brian Stechschulte of San Fran has confirmed on Twitter that DRAFT magazine has agreed to pay for the photo of his which they poached and published. You will recall that BeerAdvocate nicked on of my shots but discussions that followed never included the weird wacko assertions from DRAFT that they had a right to lift and pocket the copyrighted works of others.
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Boston Beer has decided to use the hammer of the law against another brewer 1/20th of its size. Next time you hear their TV ads squeek on and on about the magical craft of brewing ask yourself why he also does not know about the corresponding code. Handle this in the locker room, Jim. It's not like you are actually going to have a trial, are you?
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In happier news, I am drinking my first Fuller's Past Masters XX Strong Ale as I type. While 49 weeks from release to the shelves of the world's biggest booze buyer is a great example of my LCBO love / hate. Most importantly, a big +1 to Ron who helped recreate this 1891 brew. It's got a gorgeous aroma of malt marmalade that explodes in the mouth on the first sip. Fabulous value at $3.75 for a 7.9% classic. And it does make you wonder what the hell a "XXXX" would have meant to the drinker of over 100 years ago.
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And even more interesting than that is what I am reading about in Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century. It is clear from the book that there was brewing in the early Newfoundland plantations of the early 1600s but also that there was a thriving drinks trade to the workers on this shore. These first "masterless men" lived without direct oversight in a massively lucrative trade that needed their existence. But before the plantations, there were generations of West Country English fishermen back into the mid-1500s who arrived in May and left in September, ships arriving throughout their annual stay to pick up salt cod to deliver to southern Europe. These men must have brewed ale as part of their daily routine. Just a guess so far but they must have packed a barrel or two of malt to get them through the summer.
There. The good, the bad and the ugly of today's news in beer. You decide which is which.
Comments
Gary Gillman - November 12, 2011 5:14 PM
On the Past Masters XX, since aging is part of the process, both initially in cask and via bottle-conditioning, the time elapsed since bottling may have improved it quite a bit. The label states it is good until the end of 2013 and I'd think it could go longer if well-stored.
Apart from the inherent high quality of this beer, the validity of such exercises is to show (me anyway) that many current craft beers are authentically 1800's-style ales. It shows too that many of them are wannabees, but the best of them stand up to this beer IMO albeit sometimes with different hop tastes.
Gary
Ethan - November 12, 2011 11:58 PM
Posts like these are my favorite, Alan. Donno why, but your breezy recap of things from so many domains beery... it is nice.
Alan - November 13, 2011 12:03 AM
I am just setting you up. Once the nano brewery is going, I am so free loadin'.
Steve - November 13, 2011 12:02 PM
$3.75 a steal! That's around half of what we have to pay and its brewed here!
Alan - November 13, 2011 12:06 PM
That is the love bit. The LCBO moves so much and buys in such volumes that it can get prices to an extraordinary level some times.
Sadly, only one of the six left. Shared one of the XX with a beer fan I met at a neighbour's party last night. Also had one of the stouts with a splash of Warre Warrior port just to see. All very yum.
dave - November 14, 2011 10:43 AM
For the Boston Beer/Anchor Steam news what "corresponding code" are you talking about? (The news itself is a bit old, with a few posts on beernews.org about the whole thing. Unfortunately the posts are not tagged with a single tag, but searching for boston beer, http://beernews.org/brewery/boston-beer-co/, brings up the posts, interspersed with other boston beer related news.)
Alan - November 14, 2011 11:27 AM
Well, if we are all buddy buddy members of the beer community hovering like electrons around the core of craft brewers, suing each other would be a basic violation of the unwritten code.
Gary Gillman - November 14, 2011 2:32 PM
Working back to your post on O'Hanlon's stout in 2007, it is said (taken from the label I think) that the addition of port was a bartender's morning-after trick. This makes sense to me but as part of a larger story. Rooting about in Google Books, I found at least three references to stout and port with the context clearly suggesting they be mixed (because e.g., sometimes the same article advised to use them separately).
Each source was either medical advice - these were the days when some doctors advised alcohol for ailments - or for nursing mothers. In other words, the context was medical/health matters, not one connected to purely social or entertainment practices. One can easily see how the combination became a "specific" (to keep with the 19th century context) against a sore head in the morning after.
My own theory is the drink is really an echo of entire butt beer or the best of it from the 1700's, because in that era, George Watkins amongst others wrote that good porter should have an elderberry note. Other writers spoke of a fruity or port-like or winy note.
With porter becoming less and less aged in the 1800's and perhaps the old "ethereal" (estery in part) notes faded and a way to recall the past was to add a dash of port to a glass of stout. Same thing with lager-and-lime, I think it was a way to recall the palate of top-fermented ale as lager started to take over. A lot of this can be unconscious, no pun intended.
Gary
Alan - November 14, 2011 3:16 PM
That's an interesting observation. The right combo is certainly tasty - but not all are.
Gary Gillman - November 14, 2011 7:53 PM
Agreed! Everything is in the blending, and proportions. Everything.
Gary