monday links

And now this . . .

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I’d say the big three things are: Keep the staff, as long as they’re good people and they’ve been there that long—they probably really love the bar and that’s the hardest thing to get staff members to do. Everybody that works for us [at Blue Lagoon] worked for the bar beforehand, we didn’t lose anybody. Be price sensitive—if you’re gonna take over a bar like this and you know you’re gonna bring new people in, use that money to keep the prices lower for the people who have been there for so long. And really try and focus on the origins of the bar and make the bar feel like it’s from that period.”

                    — Bobby Heugel
From How to Save a Dive Bar — Without Ruining It (Heugel prefers the term neighborhood bar)

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LEAD OF THE WEEK

In 1744, The Mermaid Inn was teeming with open secrets. Bands of rowdy, weather-beaten, sea-faring men would tumble in late at night, rest their pistols on the table, and wait for their tankards to be filled to the brim. Risk-averse regulars would swiftly filter out, wending their way home down cobbled streets while the notorious new arrivals settled in for the long haul.

There were no last orders for this lot—the Hawkhurst Gang was untouchable. They’d bent the town of Rye to their will through fear and force, becoming one of England’s most notorious ring of smugglers. Even if only a fraction of the stories about Arthur Gray and his butchers were true, that was enough to keep most people at arm’s length.

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We’ve been in the Midwest the last few days, doing some of our favorite Midwest things, including a visit today to Scratch Brewing.

I recommend you spend a little time with the roundup of Session #145 contributions. And otherwise, pardon the brevity.

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Tom McCormick, who operated McCormick Beverage Co. from 1984-1994, posted this price list from 1990 on Facebook. I’d include a link but it appears that is not shareable.

$18.25 for a case (24 bottles) of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale seems like quite a deal. Except McCormick was a distributor, and this was 1990. These were the prices that retailers paid. Consumers paid more.

Next, take inflation into account. That’s $44.55 in 2025 dollars. And in these parts a consumer can by a 12-pack for SNPA for $19.95, obviously less than $22.28 (which, remember, is the price before markup). Obviously, beer has not kept up with inflation. That is kind of good for drinkers. For brewers, not so much.

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NEWSWORTHY (AND DISAPPOINTING)

Sapporo-Stone Brewing Spent Over $100K Busting Its Union. There’s a lot to absorb here. One important takeaway is that “money spent to bust a union is money well spent,” at least if the business is focused on maximizing profits.

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The Smithsonian has a story about the Irish Pub Company (link below). We visited Fado, the first pub it built, in Atlanta not long after it opened in 1996, and we were not surprised last September to see that not all pubs in Ireland look like that. Witness Dick Mac’s in Dingle.

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This link is not beer related, but it seems appropriate because the topic Friday for The Session #145 is “Critique, not Criticism.” Rolling Stone TV critic saw all of Season Two of Severance before the first of us saw the first episode and raved about it. After it concluded last week, he expressed reservations.

“Then a strange thing happened: as I began writing recaps of each episode, particularly in the season’s second half, I found myself dwelling far more on those hiccups than on the exciting/surprising/funny/distinct parts I’d so highly praised in early January. It got to the point where, in recent weeks, I was wondering exactly why I had been so positive in the first place. A little of this is an occupational hazard of doing weekly recaps, where the more you dig into a series, the harder it is to ignore flaws that may have whizzed by on initial viewing.”

In his post announcing Friday’s topic, Matt Curtis wrote, “When it comes to restaurant, wine, or whisky writing there is an expectation for the writer to levy fair criticism because it’s already established that this is the done thing.” The same is true of movies, TV, theater, books, brands of cereal, and so on. And the more time a critic spends with what is being reviewed the easier it is to spot flaws. Remember New Rule #3, but don’t overlook the total experience. At least that will be my goal Friday.

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

When I walk into a near-empty Persevere on a drizzly Leith weekday, its vastness swallows me up like a whale.

Moments later, when I gingerly take my pint of Newbarns Pale Ale to the table and sit in one of the half-boothed banquettes, a feeling of tranquility comes over me. My initial fear of being gulped up by a sea monster, like Ahab or Pinocchio, abates. Instead it feels like I’m resting in a Victorian barque’s cabin, navigating the doldrums.

I glance at paintings that look weathered for centuries and the clutter of barrelled seating and wonder how a pub this size can be so vast, yet so cosy. How can a one-roomed pub segregate my feelings in this way? It’s not exactly an off-kilter liminal space, more like a hidden building in a drowned town.

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Remember what it was like to buy beer at a brewery five years ago? This was taken during an April 2020 shopping trip to Halfway Crooks in Atlanta

A couple of weeks ago, Ted Gioai wrote about The State of the Culture, 2025 and that the first rule is’ “The culture always changes first. And then everything else adapts to it.” Keep that in mind during the suggested reading first up today.

This Bud’s not for you. Wednesday, Dave Infante dedicated almost a thousand words to express his dismay with an op-ed piece in the New York Times that served to promote the recently published “Last Call for Bud Light,” as well as whatever author Anson Fericks is doing to make money these days. Spoiler alert, Infante concludes, “In service of his political project, Frericks blamed the wrong bogeyman for ABI’s woes.”

I did not read the op-ed, but I am willing to agree because I have read (skimmed) the book. I was one of six books, now four, that I had on hold waiting from them to move from “on order” to “in processing” to “ready.” It arrived two days before another book, and it didn’t take me too many pages to realize I would rather be reading the second one.

Were I to write about it for The Session #145 — Critique not Criticism — in the spirit of what Matt Curtis has asked for, I would forego the easy criticism to focus on something that isn’t there. (Beyond an index. I don’t think you can call a non-fiction book without an index a real book.)

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Before pointing to interesting beer reading for the week March 3-9, a quick follow up to my journey last week along parts of the Gulf of Mexico. I saw the sign pictured above while heading in Cedar Key, Florida.

Matthew Curtis will be hosting The Session #145 on March 28, and the topic is “Critique not Criticism.” He explains:

“The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.”

This reminded me that the most commented on post ever here, by far, was almost 17 years ago when I cited a quote from Kenneth Tynan that, “A critic’s job, nine-tenths of it, is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.”

To that, in the midst of the lengthy discussion, I added another from Tynan: “A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.”

There are certainly parallel examples to be found around beer, and I look forward to reading them March 28.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“It’s very frustrating because it’s hard enough running a small business when your supply chain is intact. But when you have these ridiculous disruptions in the supply chain, it just causes chaos.”

                    — Bill Butcher, Port City Brewing owner
From Alexandria brewery owner worries about Trump administration-imposed tariffs

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KICKER OF THE WEEK

Possessing our entwined starter was much more viable than visiting a cemetery, placing a stone on a stone; here Joe could respond to me. Oh, I understand enough about sourdough science to know that very little of Joe’s original culture existed in the starter. But it didn’t matter. There was a little bit of his DNA in there—enough to make me believe that Joe was back, carrying my original starter on his shoulders, returning after hours in the fields during a blizzard. In a way. Not in the way I wanted, but in a way.

From Life, Death, and Sourtdough, and by Alice Feiring

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LIST OF THE WEEK

10 Female-Owned Breweries That Are Changing Beer. In 2021, the Brewer’s Association reported that 41.4 percent of breweries are owned by at least one woman. So this list could be a lot longer.

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