When is a beer not a beer? To my mind, when it's been chilled, pasteurised and shot full of gas mix amongst other things. Frankfurter Allgemeine have a somewhat longer article on the subject here which tracks the history of beer purity laws from the time of the ancient Babylonian Codex Hammurabi up to Germany's own famous Reinheitsgebot (Beer purity law) which has just celebrated its own 486th birthday.

That's alright Master Luke, I don't feel the need of lubrication just at present...Jean-Philippe Clerc, an engineering student at the University of Florida has invented a robot which will trundle along the bar top, taking the top off beer bottles for him. Now if they could only invent one which could pull pints without being distracted by the football...

Honey, I'm home... Well I'm back from my unexpected ABEND (Absent By Enforced Net Deprivation) after spending a week at our training centre which didn't run to any kind of Internet access - anyone would think we were a major computer company or something... OK then, a quick run through the references to see what's been happening in the world of beer and brewing while I've been away.

Wetherspoons to take Golden Kozel? According to this article by Roger Protz, JD Wetherspoons are considering adding the pale version of Kozel to the dark one which JDW have been selling for some time. Observant readers will also note that Mr Protz seems to be posting from a time warp as his new articles are dated 1902 :)

Brewing Industry International Awards 2002 This competition, which covers all types, styles and nationalities of beer, came to it's conclusion on Tuesday at the Guildhall in London. The full classified results can be found here, but the important (i.e. cask conditioned) ones are as follows:


Overall Champion - The Red MacGregor (Orkney)


2.5-3.8% ABV

Gold - Navvy by Oak Brewing Company (I thought they were now Phoenix)
Silver - Best Bitter by Hook Norton
Bronze - Deuchars IPA by Caledonian


3.9-4.5% ABV

Gold - Red MacGreggor by Orkney
Silver - SA by S.A. Brain
Bronze - Triple 'A' by Youngs


4.6 - 6.9% ABV

Gold - Wobbly Bob by Oak Brewing Company
Silver - Tom Paine by Harveys
Bronze - Old Bob by Ridleys

Chancellor kind to brewers and drinkers By and large, both producers and consumers of British Beer did OK out of yesterday's budget speech. As widely predicted the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, introduced measures to effectively half the duty paid by small breweries (those producing less than 100,000 gallons a year). The measures, which according to SIBA should affect around 350 breweries across the UK, come at the end of a campaing for sliding scales of duty for beer production which has been going on for nearly 20 years. The cut - which could amount to the equivalent of nearly 14p a pint - is unlikely to be passed on to the pubs, and we can be sure that none of it will find its way to us the consumers, but through additional spending on distribution and marketing it is likely to lead to continued or improved availability of beers from the independent breweries at a handpump near you.

The Chancellor also chose to freeze tax increases on beer (as well as wines and spirits) so we should see price stability at the (hand)pumps - but before you rejoice too much, remember that this is just maintaining an unacceptable status quo - every time you buy a pint 1/3 of the price is still going to the Government in tax.

Norwegian Beer Ban Lifted There'll be a glass or two lifted in Norway next week, after local councilors in Audnedal in West-Agder finally voted to overturn the area's long running ban on alcohol sales. Despite the fact that alcohol advertsising is still strictly controlled in Norway there has been a steady push towards liberalisation of the country's licensing laws, although with beer running at 3.50 (UKP) a glass it's still an expensive hobby.

Beer for Breakfast? In a high court ruling earlier today, licensee Martin Gough won the right to server beer to his customers while they watch early morning World Cup matches. The White Hart, in Bristol, will now be allowed to serve outside normal licensing hours under the "special event" rules. Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf told the court that clients watching soccer on television in a pub were participating in a special event within the meaning of the term. It is now expected that many other pubs across the country will also apply for extensions during the World Cup period.

Hi-tech Tegestology The BBC news site is carrying a story about a new beer mat which allows women to carry out a simple test to see if their drink has been spiked with a couple of the more common "date rape" drugs. You just put a couple of drips of your drink onto specially treated squares on the beer mat and they change colour if traces of GHB or Rohypnol are detected. The mats are currently under evaluation by a couple of UK police forces.

Drinking beer doesn't improve your sexual perfomance This should come as no suprise to anyone apart from the marketing droids at J.W. Lees who have got into trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency and Alcohol Concern over their "ribbed for extra satisfaction" beer glass ad. The ASA didn't believe the company's claims that "'ribbed' was just an amusing reference to the shape of the glass and Lees, who have been running a series of rather puerile ads based on the "John Willy" theme, have agreed not to repeat the advertisment.

Sex and beer is obviously in the news (OK so it was from Monday and I missed it) as landlord Kevin McArdle of Ye Olde Mail Coach in Conwy has taken the unusual step of barring a beer mat. The Welsh Assembly (or at least their Health Promotion team) have been distributing beermats with the slogan "Protect your prop forward! Use a condom for your protection" as part of a larger education campaign, but Mr McArdle believes the style of the promotion is unacceptable - "They're just over the top. If they took the picture off and had only the words, that would be better. We cater for families with children. We get little kids coming in here with their grannies. Not everybody's at it. It'll make a lot of people randy."

Success for real Budvar Czech brewers Budejovicky Budvar reported yesterday that North American sales of proper Budvar - sold in the US under the brand name of "Czechvar" - have been much higher than expected with 187,000 gallons sold in the U.S. and just under 10,000 gallons in Canada (compared to their original prediction of a total of about 66,000 gallons). The brewery, who have been in a long running battle with US giant Anheuser-Busch over the rights to use the name Budweiser (see this article or this one for more details), launched the beer into the US in November 2000.

When you're ready, mate... Trying to catch the eye of your average over-worked barman or barmaid could be a thing of the past if new technology from the Mitsubishi Corporation catches on. An article in New Scientist describes how a research team have created a glass with a special coating allowing a microchip embedded in the base of the glass to monitor the level of liquid in the glass. Then using a technology similar to that used in anti-shoplifting tags, it signals a sensor built into the table which can then pass the message that you're ready for a top-up on to the bar or to a mobile device carried by the staff.

So the battle against drink-driving is won? A new report suggests that this is far from the case, and that the explicit advertisments (blood, guts and carnage) are still failing to hit the target.An article in the Guardian suggests that unless there is a significant change of tone in future campaigns a hard core of young drink-drivers will continue to flout the rules. Equally worryingly research earlier this year suggested that a large number of under-30s still haven't got the message about what constitutes reasonable consumption - a quarter of those surveyed thought they could drink three to five pints of beer and still be below the limit! According to the Department of Transport, the next campaign will focus on the nice summer evening + country pub + drink/drive issue.

You can have any colour as long as it's black is the line famously ascribed to Henry Ford when he was queried about the colours of his cars. The British Government's plans to scrap the Beer Orders are likely to have a similar effect on the choice available to your average high street drinker as it yet-again shifts the power base in the industry away from the regionals and microbreweries towards the nationals and multinationals. The laughingly titled "Competition Minister" Melanie Johnson can now require that the Statutory Orders are laid at any time, which gives the breweries, licensees and pressure groups such as CAMRA just 42 days to come up with a response likely to turn the government from this course (which goes agains the advice of the Office of Fair Trading).


Hands up all those who think that these groups are going to win against the lobbying power and political clout of the likes of Interbrew, Carlsberg-Tetley and ScotCo who, if we include Coors, already account for 80% of all beer sold in the UK. See Roger Protz' article here for more analysis of why this is going to be a Bad Thing.

Nobody does it better sang Carly Simon, and if beer writer Stephen Beaumont is to be believed, that includes the way the British do pubs. In his 'In Praise of the Pub' article, he describes a March spent touring around the pubs of Britain (tough job, but someone has to do it) and comes to the conclusion that "You can visit a 'British pub' in New York, Toronto or Paris, but it will be an interpretation of the genuine article rather than the real thing. It will not have hundreds of years of history behind it; it will not boast a name related to some arcane event of centuries past; it will not have a decor that has developed - oh, so slowly - over the decades; and the odds are slim that it will serve a pint of real cask ale in perfect condition." I've had some wonderful beers abroad, and been in some excellent bars, but I'd tend to agree with him that "the pub" is a splendidly British phenomenon.

Borg Journalism John Hiler has written a great article here about blogging and its impact on traditional newsgathering. As part of his article, he quotes a Dan Gillmoor article outlining some key points of blog journalism.

• My readers know more than I do
• That is not a threat, but rather an opportunity
• We can use this together to create something between a seminar and a conversation, educating all of us
• Interactivity and communications technology -- in the form of e-mail, weblogs, discussion boards, websites and more -- make it happen

I've quoted those in full as the neatly make the point I emailed out to some of you last week - that the new media is an adjunct to the old, not a replacement for it. Be my eyes and ears, mail me those news items (I just don't have the time to keep hitting all the individual brewery and branch sites, much as I'd like to) and as Frank says, I'll keep spreading the news.

Obligatory Queen Mum story. (Hey - everyone else is doing them, so why not Bibendum?) Various news stories over the weekend have noted that over the 101 years the Queen mother was alive a pint of beer has gone up from 2s 1/2d (10.5p for our younger readers).

Japan evolves its own brand of scooper. Despite being better known for its wine or sake, Japan is in fact home to over 250 craft or micro-breweries but many are not available anywhere other than very locally to the brewery itself. This has led a number of Japan's beer afficionados to evolve the kind of single-minded obsessiveness that we thought was a particularly British trait (hello, Roy - Ed.) and start travelling all across the country tracking down new brews. This report in Asahi Shimbun has interviews with Japan's very own Super Scooper (although he's a bit of a lighweight by our standards).