Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got sandwiches, decoction, and battling pianists.

First, an obituary: John Hanscomb, editor of the first edition of the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide, has died at the age of 88. Roger Protz, who knew Hanscomb well, has written about him for What’s Brewing:

John, who lived in Croxley Green in Hertfordshire… worked as a page planner in the print and newspaper industry, a demanding job in the days of hot-metal printing… He was an active member of CAMRA from its early days and took up the challenge of producing a guide to pubs that sold what he called “proper beer” at a time when such keg beers as Watney’s Red Barrel, Worthington E and Double Diamond were being heavily promoted by national brewers… John recalled there weren’t many CAMRA branches at the time, and he spent a lot of the time on the road, often with his wife Rose… “I remember spending a whole evening in Henley-on-Thames visiting 10 or 12 Brakspear pubs. There wasn’t the breathalyser in those days and there was much less traffic on the roads.”

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Pete Brissenden has fond memories of the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich he’d eat while on shift as a teenage barman at The Shipwrights Arms in Hollowshore, Kent, and of the pub itself:

There was Sid, with his badly arthritic hands and wild hair, slowly sipping an ‘AB’, half bitter and half mild, whilst we talked about pruning apple trees and making cider. Bob “The Bike”, chuntering to anyone who’d listen about his classic BSA motorbikes. If nobody listened, he’d just carry on talking anyway, blissfully unaware. Later, he’d wobble home across the marshes on one of the aforementioned bikes. ‘Cash Only’ Mickey had long, sharp sideburns, a red neckerchief, a grey greatcoat and mischievous, twinkly blue eyes. A cross between Sean Bean’s Sharpe and a highwayman. Always scheming his next way to turn a profit, but mostly hiding from HMRC on his boat in the yard. There was the couple with their English Pointer, Harry, who’d curl up under the bar stools farting quietly but steadily. Trish, the town’s traffic warden, feared and revered in equal measure.

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At Craft Beer & Brewing John M. Verive has written about the importance of decoction in modern craft lager brewing:

There are two kinds of brewers in this world: those who think decoction is old tech made obsolete by modern equipment and well-modified malt, and those who hold this onerous process as a key to unlocking a nearly indescribable quality in the finished beer… In one camp are the pragmatic brewers, including renowned brewing scientist Charlie Bamforth. “I don’t understand why anybody in their right mind would want to be doing decoction mashing,” he once said on the podcast of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas… On the other side of the schism are the brewers who skeptics might view as romantic or quixotic… Sacred Profane in Biddeford, Maine, is a lager brewery that imports a variety of floor-malted Czech barley, which is famously less modified and therefore better suited for decoction mashing… Cofounder Michael Fava says he wants their beers to have the character of the Czech lagers they love, even if it means doing things the hard way. He and cofounder Brienne Allen designed their brewhouse for decoction because it’s the best way to honor the unique Haná barley malt they use. If you’re brewing Czech-style lagers but not practicing decoction, Fava says, “you’re lying to the consumer and yourself.”

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For Pellicle William Georgi has been talking to brewers about organic status, sustainability, and the difficulty of competing in a market where people say they want these things but won’t pay for them:

There’s no sign outside Ketelbroek Food Forest, but it’s not hard to find… I’ve come to this corner of the Netherlands to meet Mattias Terpstra, ex-owner of the now-defunct Nevel Wild Ales… Mattias founded Nevel with Vincent Gerritsen in 2016, in the nearby city of Nijmegen. They made wild beers with locally sourced, sustainable ingredients, many of which came from this food forest; some were even served in Michelin-starred restaurants across the Netherlands. In 2021, Nevel won Dutch Beer of the Year at the Dutch Beer Challenge. The winning beer, Meander, was a barrel-aged wild blonde beer made with rhubarb and blackcurrant leaf… “Our goal was to close the gap between nature and beer,” Mattias tells me. “Wild fermentation produces the kind of aromas you find in nature, which fermenting with one strain can’t mimic. By using local ingredients, I grew connections to farmers, their crops, and the natural system behind them.” … However, the values that made Nevel special would also prove to be its undoing. In August 2024, Mattias announced that Nevel would close the following year, as it was impossible to make ends meet.

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Martin Taylor doesn’t generally preach about the importance of pubs. Rather, he demonstrates their variety and wonder by posting about those he visits with a fondly critical eye. Inspired by something we wrote on BlueSky, however, he wrote this week about his belief that no other ‘third place’ can do what the pub does:

I didn’t really talk about “life” in my 2025 reviews, but clearly the death of your Mum is a key life event… [The picture on the order of service at the funeral] was taken at the Five Miles From Anywhere (No Hurry), an unfussy dining pub by the River Cam where I used to take Dad to give Mum a few hours respite (and vice versa). Mum liked the Five Miles too; she looks as happy there as she was anywhere in her last year… The night Mum died we felt the need to get away for a while before the real drama started, and ended up in Leighton Buzzard, near Mum’s birthplace, just being part of life…

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For photography website Macfilos Ian Beesley has written about his experiences photographing pubs in Yorkshire from the 1970s onward, when many were endangered and/or disappeared:

The Moulders Arms wasn’t the finest looking pub, but it stood proud and defiant as the surrounding streets were demolished… Winnie advertised in the local paper for [a piano player]. Two turned up: one called Gabriel “I ain’t no angel, but I play the piano like one” and a character called Freddy Fingers. They were both blind… They were invited to play six tunes each, then a decision would be made. Freddy hammered the keys first. When Gabriel started to play, it was obvious he was an accomplished pianist. Unfortunately, he had a weak bladder and had to go to the gents after three songs… Freddy, realising he wasn’t going to get the job, decided to sabotage Gabriel by sticking matchsticks between the keys. When Gabriel restarted, he realised what had happened, but was kicked off for not being able to play… Gabriel called Freddy out to have a fight, and we all followed, pints in hand, to watch two blind piano players have a scrap in the pub car park. While the logistics of this contest were being worked out, Winnie came tearing out of the pub, grabbed Gabriel and Freddy and told them never to step foot in her pub again… She then turned to me, “And what do you think you’re doing?” I was stood holding my Leica M6, “I was going to take some photos.” I replied. “That’s part of the problem: you’re stood there with your expensive camera, egging them on. You should know better. Give me that camera, you can have it back in a day or two, when. You better have a think about what you were doing.”… When I returned to get my Leica, there was no film in it. “What’s happened to my film?” I asked Winnie? “I threw it away.” she replied, “Nobody needs to see them sort of photographs. What were you going to do with them, put on a show, so your la-di-da friends in Leeds could laugh at us? That’s not who we are, that’s not how it is, just think about it.”

There’s a book of Beesley’s photographs with text by poet Ian McMillan and an accompanying exhibition at Salt Mills in Saltaire that runs until the end of 2026.

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Finally, from BlueSky…

This week's 2000AD has co-opted The Bridge Tavern in Newcastle for the ancient goddess of northern England.

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— The Beer Nut (@thebeernut.bsky.social) 15 January 2026 at 11:32

For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got trademarks, ironworks and brown sugar.

First, some news that might be of interest to British publicans: the not-for-profit organisation Pub is the Hub is offering grants of up to £6,000 to “pubs in rural, remote or deprived areas… who want to offer additional services and/or activities”. The examples it gives are a village store at The Duck in Stanhoe and a community cafe at The George, Bethersden. In a longer press release reproduced at Beer Today they also cite the example of The Halfway, Tal-Y-Coed, Wales, which used a grant to set up a marquee where meetings and classes are held.

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On a related note, for What’s Brewing, the newspaper of the Campaign for Real Ale, Laura Hadland argues that pubs should be treated as pieces of “community infrastructure”:

Shortly before Christmas, I read a letter to the editor of the Irish Times written by Dr Kathy McLoughlin… She decried the decline of the Irish rural pub and her words affected me profoundly… “When the pub shuts,” Dr McLoughlin wrote, “so too does the informal welfare system that has quietly operated for generations.” She goes on to say that if it is considered important to sustain rural Ireland, it will be necessary “to stop treating pubs solely as private businesses and start seeing them as pieces of community infrastructure”… I worked in museums and galleries for a decade and a half and not one of them made any significant money. Certainly not enough to be entirely self-sustaining. That doesn’t mean that they lack worth… As Dr McLoughlin wrote in her letter, “we should examine whether every rural resident is entitled to a local social hub within reasonable reach, in the same way they are entitled to broadband or public transport.”

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Various articles and posts have been written to mark the 150th anniversary of the registration of the Bass red triangle as Trademark No. 1 on 1 January 1876. The one that particularly grabbed our attention was by Gavin Blackmore for the blog of the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO):

London, 31 December, 1875. Midnight approaches. Outside a modest office, a queue forms – not for concert tickets or Boxing Day bargains, but for something far more valuable: a place in history… As the clock edges towards midnight, the Trade Marks Registration Act 1875 is about to come into force, allowing businesses to officially register and protect their brands for the very first time… Bass & Co. is determined to be first. Legend has it their representative camped outside through the freezing winter night, wrapped in blankets and clutching the company’s application papers, waiting for the doors of the new registration office to open… The clock strikes twelve. The doors swing open. Bass steps forward… Despite a scuffle in the hall with other eager company representatives, Bass secures trade marks 1, 2 and 3. Their iconic beer label, featuring a red triangle – becomes UK trade mark No. 1, securing its place at the very top of the register forever.

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For a blog associated with the Merthyr Tydfil & District Historical Society Brian Jones has written about the pubs and breweries of Merthyr, once the iron capital of the world. It reveals the part played by industrial manufacturers in the establishment and running of breweries in the 19th century:

From the mid 18th century there was a race to build new iron works and  four were established in Merthyr with others at Hirwaun, Tredegar, Rhymney and Blaenavon. Many  of the men and women worked in the open air, mining ironstone, limestone, clay and coal in adits and comparatively small drift mines. In the summer this proved to be thirsty work. Those in the iron works faced hot conditions all year round and sought drink in the many pubs  and publicans began to brew alcohol for their customers. The Brewers Arms and the Clarence Hotel in Dowlais were small scale brewers, however some iron companies saw the potential to make safe and consistent quality beers in substantial quantities. A classic example was the Rhymney Iron Company which morphed from the Union Iron Company in Rhymney Bridge, and the Bute Ironworks. In 1838 it was decided to build a brewery for its workers and a year later a Scotsman, Andrew Buchan, became the brewery manager. For some decades the beers were sold as Buchan’s beers brewed and bottled at the brewery in the centre of Rhymney.

(You might want to skip the section on how beer is made, though. Malted from hops!)

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For Craft Beer & Brewing Michael Stein makes the case for American Bock as a unique and interesting style of beer that has relatively little to do with German Bock, and was historically defined by the use of corn and dark brewing syrups:

Peoples Brewing of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, first brewed its American bock in 1914… Lee Reiherzer, author of The Breweries of Oshkosh: Their Rise and Fall… collected some oral history from a brewer at Peoples – a man named Wilhelm Kohlhoff, who brewed there from 1953 to 1968. In the unique case of Peoples Bock, the adjuncts were corn grits and brown sugar… When Kohlhoff started working at Peoples in 1953, Peoples Bock was in retirement. The brewery discontinued it from 1940 until 1959, when it made its glorious comeback. Some drinkers remember Peoples Bock as “strong,” though it was only about 1 percent ABV higher than Peoples Beer—the brewery’s flagship pale lager, which was about 4.5 percent ABV… “Oshkosh was crazy about Bock,” Kohlhoff says. “Everyone saw it as this high-powered beer – strong beer, you know. Dark is associated with strength. So, people would pre-order. … And I heard this from someone else who had worked there: When the Bock would come out, they would just all day long be selling it off that back dock of the brewery in cases, you know. It was an event.”

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The first Pellicle article of the year is by Courtney Iseman whose newsletter we’ve been reading and linking to frequently in these round-ups for several years. In her Pellicle piece she’s written about the craft breweries of New Orleans and what she argues is their uniquely collaborative nature:

The closeness of the New Orleans beer community extends beyond quality hangouts. Craft-beer-at-large hangs its hat on being collaborative, but the local scene here gives that identity new meaning. Connor cites Shawna coming to help bartend at Care Forgot during a mad Mardi Gras rush, as Care Forgot is on the parade route. Urban South lets Care Forgot use its lab, and Care Forgot, Ecology, and Courtyard, because of their equidistant locations, have dubbed themselves the ‘Beermuda Triangle’ and collaborate often… Ingredients are shared like neighbours borrowing cups of sugar, and because many of these breweries are small, they team up to access larger orders and share shipping costs. Before the pandemic, Brieux Carré and Parleaux co-purchased a canning line they’d shuttle back and forth between breweries in a trailer.

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Finally, from BlueSky, a neat summary of a complex issue…

I feel like a lot of analysis on the Death of Pubs overlooks or downplays the impact of the attacks on the finances of the working classes. There are much broader economic factors at play than taxes etc.

— Steve (@steveuntilnextyear.bsky.social) 8 January 2026 at 12:28

…which prompted a rare thread from us:

A short thread on The Death of Pubs inspired by that post from @steveuntilnextyear.bsky.social 1. One of our early blog posts, back in 2009, was about *why* people stopped going to the pubboakandbailey.com/2009/03/pubs…“Working class homes are nicer now than they were in the 60s and 70s…”

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— Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray) (@boakandbailey.bsky.social) 9 January 2026 at 08:20

For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.