I have to admit that I was a bit caught off guard by the news. Time was you could actually write blog posts about stats. Eight years ago, I used to collect data like this because back in Web 2.0 well before social media you really had no clue how many people were out there. Then came along aggregators and then social media. Somewhere I have a version of this on MySpace... in German for some reason. And then life was good. Google Reader and Twitter trace the arc of my emotional well being. Until the first leg of that security blanket was kicked out, news so shocking that Ancient Mariner kottke.org posted, white knuckled barely hiding his inner angst:

You may have heard by now that Google is shutting down Google Reader, their RSS reading service. It'll be gone by July 4. Fortunately you can export your subscriptions and use another service...here are some suggestions from Matt Haughey and Gizmodo. Or you can wait for Digg's reader. If you want to forego RSS readers altogether but still want to keep up with kottke.org without having to visit the site regularly, try following kottke.org on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.

You can smell the fear. I saw it coming, you know. I once thought aggregators would kill blogging. And then wondered how they would kill RSS. Apparently now they are they 8-track of technology... or at least Google thinks so. I have set up Feedly on my home computer but I liked how I could check into Google Reader from anywhere. Maybe it does. I hate having to figure out new things at my age.

I also liked, more to the point, how I got a number generated for my care of Google Reader. Today it says I have 22,364 readers. I assume that some are bots and that some gave up reading years ago and, if statistics are to be believed, 17 of the Readers died before the Obama administration came in. But where will I find that comfort now? How will you read this once Google goes "click... voot" and the servers get sent to help run a social services office in Peru? Should I care? What does blogging without aggregation generated stats look like?

Time to bring back RSBS.

There was an article posted today at NPR which provides a reasonable summary article on recent issues related to good beer. The best bit, spoiler, was the last bit:

In the bar, customer Rordam says even if he's sampled some upscale micro brews at $6, $7 or $8 a pint, those prices might eventually force him to go back down the ladder. "After I've had like three or four microbrews, I'll think 'wow that was $25 [or] $30, I should probably get a Bud Light now because this is getting ridiculous,'" he says.

I have pointed out more than a few times that it is a shame there isn't a good beer consumer's organization in the US like there are in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere with the goal of balancing brewers' business interests. Along with the recent insults to intelligence, mockable unnecessaries and boggling PR based customer relations, this may be a new way that US craft kills itself - communally pricing itself out of the marketplace. More than the fifteen to twenty dollar bomber at the good beer store, the $8 pint may well be the sign of the end times.

Are the echo chambers of the Craft Brewers Conference and Brewers Association causing this inflationary race? Is the message try it because you can? Sometimes I wonder if the equivalent of a major league sport's strike would purge the market of the seeming entitlement to what appear to be ten percent annual price hikes. What could cause that? The prospect of a perfectly acceptable and similar products like this sort of thing at a better price certainly appears to be the best bet. Something structural could wake the consumer up, too - like when Sam Adams gets bought out by Miller or Sierra Nevada by some tyrant's nationalized state brewery. My personal hope would be a split between small actual micro brewers and national mid-sized brewers who more and more ride on the coat tails of the small, pretending they are what they are not while also controlling the discourse. That would be just fun.

Does NPR's generic good beer customer Rordan care? Hard to say. Seems like he has 25 to 30 bucks to burn. The ten buck pint might be his tipping point. He might be running out of wiggle room. He might be getting ideas.

This is a difficult date on the calendar for me. Like in many places, the Irish, lapsed or otherwise, and their fellow travelers in small town eastern Ontario have gathered and tightly packed themselves into traditional bars like the Douglas Tavern or the Tweedsmuir drinking macro lager dyed green and/or Guinness and/or whatever else is going. But I am not of them. Scots me. These celebrations can get quite elaborate and have been mentioned in our national Parliament. They seem to rival the... err... passion seen in the larger urban St. Paddy's events in US centers like Syracuse where it lasts so long it forms its own season. The day seems to serve the need for a New Year's Eve party ten weeks after that hammering of the brain cells - and one with less of the pretense, more of the getting pickled for being legitimately pickled sake.

I say legitimately as these descendants of the Irish in this part of North America embrace themselves and the generations before them through this ritual. Me? It's been tea and water for me today. A Saturday even. I am being sensible, see. Sensible. Four years ago, I called for the embracing of March 17th by the fans of good beer. Things may have changed. From the Twitter feeds and Google news items floating by good beer fans seem to be rejecting rejection. And some craft brewers are getting into the day. Beaus, as Bryan recently noted, has a seasonal beer out now called Strong Patrick. Are there others? Why not? If ever there was a reason to brew a seasonal beer it is in response to a season focused on beer. One problem, however, is that craft beer has somewhat abandoned standard Irish stout. As Andy noted last fall, it was the least competitive category at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival. Imperial Irish reds are all very fine in their way but why not make an Irish dry stout for when the Irish are dry? I might even join in.

Happy was I - on the last stop in Quebec on return trip except maybe for the half tank of gas because it was 1.41 a liter - to realize that not only did I already have bags full of good stuff from Marché Atwater but, after getting the squeak causing curds, to also realize that La Fromagerie Atwater has a corner or rather an alcove behind the cash register down a few steps that has over 100 sorts of Quebec craft beer. This was one of them. Action photos of the shopping opportunity below.

Don't think I have had any of the beers from Microbrasserie Du Lac Saint-Jean before. According to this handy pdf of all their beers this is apparently their imperial stout. The pdf says Rang Dix it is 9.7% but the handwritten label says 10.8... or rather 10,8% this being Quebec. It pours an inky blacky-brown with a thick lacing mocha head. It gives off aromas of espresso, dark chocolate as well as maybe a touch of port.

Very attractive. In the mouth, fortunately this is one of the cream sort of imperial stouts rather one of those ash tray meets squid ink concoctions going around these days. Licorice and a bit of burn but only in the middle after dark then milk chocolate waves. A fitting tightening drying hoppy note in the finish. A lovely beer. $7.49 Canadian for 500 ml. Highly rated by a low number of BAers.

You forget what you have sometimes. At a new bistro slash pub we decided to hit tonight, they had Fin Du Monde on tap and seeing as they had it, well, I had it. NYK-S was the place, just a few blocks from our hotel on Sherbrooke. We called ahead to see if they were able to take a family with kids and, with a rough two language discussion over the noise on the other end, established that they were welcome if they were not jerks. When we got there, we found a small very busy 40 to 50 seat bar brimming with of the sounds of The Smiths and clacking plates. It is excellent being in the era of one's own youth's nostalgia. Comforting. Gonna hate when The Smashing Pumpkins come around again in a few years.

The first round was calamari with a spiced mayo. Good. I had a chunk of cod over salad as the others took on fresh made burgers, lamb sausage and also a mushroom pasta. Best of all, we were placed in the one booth at the back of the bar where you got a good view of the action without the six year old's challenges becoming someone else's. Good pub food with an appreciation that good service can assist making sure things go smooth. Recommended all along with one of the best values in triples going.

Also recommended were the ice ciders opened before and after the meal. I dropped into the SAQ's flagship store over on on Rue St. Catherines and found two bottles from the 2009, each with a somewhat minimalist name. Neige. Pinnacle. These were the recommended selections in the regular product area. I also picked up an oaked take on iced cider that I may leave in the stash for a few years. What do you get with this drink? An intense sweet apple flavour with a sharp acidity along side hints of the wood, autumn and the best pie you have ever imagined. Recommended with fine cheese and fois gras, I am taking them in with the third period of the Bruins and Penguins game. Entirely appropriate.

We just got home before the anarchists came by to say hello. Well timed all around. Hope all goes well for the capitalist glass further on downtown. We'll see tomorrow.

So far, a day and a half of wandering around Canada's coolest downtown. Walking up and over and around an iced hill. Shopping with family. Forced marches in search of tea and Converse. I am struck how there is such availability of what I want to call table beer. A perfectly good jug of decent ale that adds but does not distract. Something that is easy drinking and balanced. But then I read this entirely backhanded inversion of a beer review and I get confused:

...basically the same hue as that very cheap, very terrible rose wine that makes your teeth ache... the first sip is a pleasant surprise: this beer has a decidedly dry, hoppy character, rounded out by a touch of fruitiness. It's a great drink for anyone who finds IPAs punishingly bitter, as I often do — the grape must adds a complexity and gentle sweetness that smooth out some of an IPA's sharp corners, transforming it into something reminiscent of a Belgian trippel. It's easy drinking and balanced.

With reviews like that, who needs condemnations? Yet "easy drinking and balanced" has its place. The milder beer. The less annoying beer. There must be a name for these. Table beer? Dinner ales? These sorts of names have been used before for the beer you want when the beer you are told you should like fails. I have had too many failures recently. The beer from the brand new gypsy brewer that turns out to be a contract brewer who lacks confidence to the degree everything is about the weird added ingredient or that's just a muddle of three hops pushed into a space that would barely fit two. They make no sense. Beers of Annoyance. BOAs. That's what they are.

What is the opposite of a BOA? The beer you wished your friends who lack all pretense would stock their fridge with? There has to be a better name than that. Sure we would all say "easy drinking and balanced" but there has to be a better way to describe them than that.

Did I mention that I was tickled to get my copy of Alcohol and its Role in the Evolution of Human Society by Ian S. Hornsey last week? Oh, I did. One of the great truths of this mortal coil is how chronology must be obeyed. And I was particularly ticked to realize that since my last Hornsey, the two Unger books were published which means in this new book Hornsey references Unger. Which, in terms of beer history, is something like when Lemieux worked with Jagr. Or, say, when peanut butter aligned jam for those of you sadly not Canadian. Anyway, the effect is fabulous and particularly cogent for purposes of both Albany Ale but also pale ale. See, Hornsey writes on page 182:

In his excellent expose on brewing in Holland over the years, Richard Unger says that, from the earliest of records, it seems that beer could be made from any grain - with oats, wheat, rye and barley being the main components. Wheat was invariably the most expensive and barley was the cheapest, but prices would vary with availability.

Last October, Craig summarized where we are at in understanding the scale of brewing in Albany in the 1600s. And, as I wrote about five weeks ago, the finest of the beer they were drinking at the time was a strong wheat beer and that this way of brewing may have continued for much of the time leading to the American Revolution in the mid-1770s before the Hessian fly had its way. Throughout that period, the Hudson Valley concentrated on the growing of grain.¹ and around Albany the focus was on wheat. The first export of grain back to the homeland was shipped in 1626.² Hornsey notes that there was a shift in wheat based beer in Holland to barley based beer in the mid-1600s but he also quotes Unger quoting a Portuguese sea captain from the 1500s named Monzo Vasquez³ who...

...said Dutch brewers used wheat, barley or oats and rye. He maintained that beer made with wheat was light and clear and served directly from fermentation vats, without it having to be put into barrels first. Beer made with barley, the captain claimed, was "good but cheaper" and had "less of a head"...

Hornsey goes on to confirm that late medieval conditions that led to the grain use control laws in the 1400s and 1500s often reserving wheat to bakers but also notes that the laws applied to general application versions and that the rich preserved their own right to lighter, finer wheat beers. All of which leads to an interesting consideration of the conditions existing in the Hudson Valley from the beginning of Dutch colonization to the Revolutionary era. Unlike their cousins back in Europe, they are wallowing in the finest of grains, wheat. After all, who grows a lesser product as a cash crop when the finest thrives? And, when there is an overwhelming surplus, why would you ship out all of your premium crop and ship in a lesser grain to make your beer? You wouldn't. They didn't. It all reminds me of the depression era song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" one verse of which goes:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
You never change your socks
And little streams of alkyhol
Come trickling down the rocks
O the shacks all have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And ginger ale too
And you can paddle
All around it in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

Back in the day, back in the Hudson, these nearly masterless men who farmed the land as a breadbasket for their homeland and then the other American colonies, had the opportunity to brew the beer that only the elites got to drink back in Europe. And that they did. One other thing. Remember what makes for the finest palest malts at the time and throughout their centuries past: wheat-straw. They would have had plenty of that, too. Like living next to a lake of stew when you think of it.

¹The Dutch American Farm by D.S. Cohen, at page 111.
² Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York by Oliver A Rink, at page 87.
³ Which is, amazingly, also my private name for myself. That is the Hudson on its side up there in 1687, by the way. Right is north, left is south.

One of the nicer changes in the way the provincial good beer trade works is that bottles from beyond the west side of Toronto now show up here in government stores beyond the east side. Grand River Brewing's Russian Gun Imperial Stout is one of the best aspects of this internal free trade. It's named after a Crimean War cannon in the town square, oddly described as a reward for local support of the English troops at a time when Upper Canada was participating part of the British empire. These things happen. We, too, have Napoleonic-era cannon in our city.

As you can see from the label, itself reminiscent of Warsaw Pack 1979 styling, the beer is flavoured. One of the great things in our land is that bit of government truth in labeling. Add things to the beer? It becomes flavoured beer by law - which, in this case, alerts me to the molasses and spice. The beer has that lush licorice that I like in an imperial stout with a nod of smoky depth care of the molasses, itself a memory of empire. The spices are thankfully offered with a pretty light touch. If I were to guess, a tiny nod to cloves and a touch more nutmeg. But do I know? Nope. It gives off a rich blackest bready aroma and, to mix senses, casts the most attractive fine mocha cream rim and froth. A thick beer, almost sticky, it has one characteristic I enjoy more than all the rest. It lets you know it is fundamentally a drink made with grain. Dark malts loaded with hints of date, fig, sugars, rum and even char mutter of an earlier time. A stout to stand firm by the side of a good port in any engagement with aged cheddar.

At 8.5%, this beer offers great value at $4.95. Underestimated by the BAers.

That is Alcohol and its Role in the Evolution of Human Society by Ian S. Hornsey. I had no idea. In a work of beer writing that is still trying to find its way, seeking to evolve from fanboy gushing or trade focused boosterism or underdeveloped efforts at business journalism, Hornsey's 2004 book A History of Beer and Brewing stands where few others do as a successful description of the broad scope beer and western society. So, it was a gigglefest when I put his name in the the hands of Lord Good to find out that there was this 2012 publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry exactly one credit card charge and international cross-Atlantic postal service away from me. Joy.

The index alone is enough to make you faint. The Taxonomy and Genetics of the Common Oat are described at pages 273 to 277. The Drunken Monkey hypothesis is described over five pages in the 540s. Interesting to note that, like the stylings of beer, I learn from page 164 that wheat classifications too have suffered from excessive splitting. And now, on page 223 to 224 I have a description of eight classes of sake. Excellent.

This is not really a review. It's more like a plea for understanding. If you care about beer and don't have the works of Horsey - and Unger for that matter - by your Laz-e-boy in the basement, you have a treats unimaginable awaiting. It may be a matter of $300 to have four or five of these sorts of books delivered but they form a strong shield against the woop and warp of propositions that may be posed these buffeting times. And they are a great natural source of footnotes.