For the holidays — the familiar public ones, but also the 14th anniversary of the first entry in my actual Beer Diary — George and I sat down to talk about what’s changed, and what hasn’t, in the time since we last did one of these. We cover a little of the long arc of news, entry into and exit from the subculture of beer (or indeed anything else), the ageing of beer and of ourselves, the surprisingly fraught nature of not drinking, and keeping things in balance in this peculiar world.
A direct download is available here, if you need such a thing. And you can subscribe via iTunes or pretty much anything else if you’d like to be notified if ever we do one of these again…
— Show notes:
- (03.30) Beer of the [Arbitrary Time Period] #1: Liberty ‘Divine Wind’ — “a bloody lovely little boring old plain pale lager”, according to some schmo on the internet. We hereby join our comrades at the Ale Of A Time podcast in hoping that 2017 marks the end of Lager Anxiety.
- (17.00) George’s personal comics writers’ roster, for the record: Ellis, Gillen, DeConnick, Fraction, Vaughan, Brubaker and Hill.
- (17.30) My 2016, by the numbers.
- (19.00) I’ve previously written about the Fun Of Missing Out.
- (21.30) Super Mario Sunshine was on the GameCube, by the way.
- (26.00) Silence actually runs for 2h41m, but George says that’s still too long.
- (27.30) Beer of the [Arbitrary Time Period] #2: Renaissance ‘Tribute’ 2011 — a barleywine as old as this podcast, but not previously featured hereon.
- (32.00) Renaissance is in “administration”.
- (33.30) Here’s the story of Thomas Hardy’s Ale, reborn a few times over. The ‘Hopsmacker’ and ‘Czechmate’ beers / brands might count as a local example.
- (38.00) 8 Wired’s YouTube channel and Facebook video collection.
- (47.30) Obvious disclaimer: I am not a scientist. Nor am I your doctor. Do your own due diligence, etc., about these things.
- (50.30) Pete Brown on Dry January, from 2014.
- (57.00) Luke Robertson on mental health in the beer business.
- (1.04.00) Midstrength News! Garage Project’s Shandy (the Beer Diary x Bottleneck Shandy Taste Test is here), and fun sour things aplenty.
- (1.05.30) Recommendations: Saga (as we said earlier). Serial Griller (for burgers in the Coromandel). My likely Beer Of The Year: North End’s ‘Become The Ocean’. Zany Zeus icecreams and milkshakes really are worth the trip.
- (1.11.30) Carrying the local beer-podcasting torch: Ale Of A Time and Radio Brews News in Australia, plus The Bitter End, The NZ Brewer Podcast (apologies to John, not Jono, Oszajca for twice-mangling his name), Brew Hui, and The Beerhive here in New Zealand.
- (1.20.30) Cue the music: The Coconut Monkeyrocket’s ‘Shopping for Explosives’
Great to hear the defense of Dry January. I still twitch when I think back to the drubbing I got when I did Dry July way back in the day. And yes, I was even hit with the “you’re hurting the industry” argument. I mean, it’s possible that in my case that was true… 😉 re: moderation, I tend to moderate that.