Much of the best reading last week was on Friday, when The Session revival was pretty dang successful. Cheers to Alan McLeod for escorting the gathering into 2025. McLeod has gathered the links.

LEDE OF THE WEEK

The signs, both literal and metaphorical, were not great.

The former Sackville Lounge, which had a reputation as a mix of Old Man Pub and dive-y spot to meet somewhat strange and unusual people, had been closed since Covid. But rather than re-opening under that name, with its delightful neon sign (still there, at present), it gained a new identity – and much opprobrium.

The new signage now proclaims the pub to be Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale and Stout House (‘since 1914’), in the kind of font you’d normally find in plastic letters on a strip-mall Oirish Pub in, say, Arkansas.

From Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs: Biddy Mulligan’s

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Beer culture in France was drinking 250ml of a yellow liquid with bubbles in it. And then there’s Jean-François and Christian, coming with a warm flat beer, brown like manure.”

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First, don’t forget that Alan McLeod will host the first gathering of The Session since Dec. 12, 2018. Here’s everything you need to know to participate. And please do.

The most interesting story of the week, at least to me, is that American Homebrewers Association will operate autonomously from the Brewers Association. There are plenty of “what next?” questions. Some are answered at the AHA website.

Before the AHA and BA are severed, it is worth a few minutes to consider how important homebrewers were in establishing what became the Brewers Association. You could start with the timeline: The AHA was formed in 1978 (and announced in Zymurgy magazine), the Association of Brewers was organized to include the American Homebrewers Association and the Institute for Brewing and Fermentation Studies in 1983, and Association of Brewers and the Brewers Association of America merged to the Brewers Association in 1995.

That merger did not come easily. Steve Hindy provided details in The New Brewer magazine in 2006 and later in “The Craft Beer Revolution.” Negotiations went on for about two years, the meetings “intense and sometimes contentious.” Randy Mosher was on the BAA-AOB task force formed to consider the merger.

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Sean Franklin assessing beers (Seattle, 2006)

In the second paragraph of a profile of Roosters Brewery, Matthew Curtis establishes that Sean Franklin is one of the pioneers of modern British beer.

In the third, he writes, “Caught in a weird limbo that exists between Britain’s heritage-laden family brewers that can claim decades, if not centuries, of brewing tradition, and the slick, self-confident modern beer brands that emerged in earnest around 2010, Roosters is part of a small set of breweries that shares aspects of both camps, but doesn’t quite fit into either.”

This story examines what comes after the pioneer. By chance, the post and news that an announcement the inaugural group of inductees into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame will be streamed Feb. 15 reached me about the same time. More pioneers and more opportunities to consider what came next.

TASTING NOTE OF THE WEEK

“Who else would be making 90 Shilling? Open Gate’s is 6.8% ABV. This is a heavy fellow, dense with unfermented malt sugars, while also laced by bitterly vegetal hops: serious stuff. There’s a definite Highland Toffee element to the centre, and it’s enjoyably warming and chewable. On adjusting to the bitterness I found a more nuanced red-liquorice side to it. I’m no expert on what 90 Shilling is meant to taste like, either historically or whatever American homebrew culture has since turned it into, but this is quite a good beer, and was well suited to the cold and drizzly evening on which they served it to me.”

          — John Duffy, The Beer Nut
From Arthur’s Last Christmas

SUBHEAD OF THE WEEK

“Every drink takes five minutes off your life.” Maybe the thought scares you. Personally, I find comfort in it.

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Some good reading from the past week after a reminder that Alan McLeod will host “The toe in the water revival edition of The Session.” The topic is “What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?” Participation is welcomed.

LEDE OF THE WEEK

Alcohol research has a problem with pleasure. On the one hand, pleasure is a difficult phenomenon to research, at least from an epidemiological or clinical perspective. On the other, because of its predominating focus on harms, public health-oriented alcohol research and advocacy can appear to find pleasure problematic in the moral sense. Although most people drink because they enjoy it, much public health discourse downplays pleasure as either marginally significant or as a kind of misperception driven by external forces including marketing, custom, social norms and peer pressure.

From Taking pleasure seriously: Should alcohol research say more about fun?

This is something of a cheat. The link is to an academic paper (h/T Phil Mellows). There have been plenty of posts the past week related the surgeon general’s warning about alcohol and risk of cancer. Lots of good, bad and ugly. I am linking to none of them. There is no denying the negative impact alcohol has on your body. It is stupid to claim otherwise. The rest I leave to Mary-Chapin Carpenter.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“When I know I’m lighting the fire, that’s when I love to have (Leann Folláin). It’s a beer to savour and enjoy. I’ll make sure the doors are closed, that I’m not going to be disturbed. It’s something you want to spend a bit of time with.”

          — Ed Cahill, who runs Tully’s pub in Carlow town
From The Irish for Stout — O’Hara’s Leann Folláin and the Making of a Cult Classic

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Rule #1: Beer Is Almost Never About Beer. “The idea of having a beer comes with guilt, obligation, wonder, intellectual curiosity, respect for tradition, desire for novelty, camaraderie, budgetary concern, the potential to do someone a good turn, and the sheer joy of bouncing around the city like a pinball. The promise of an idle afternoon that might be wasted but isn’t frittered away. Hopefully people will be happy to see me.” To which I will add, it’s also OK if at least sometimes it is about beer.

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