Bag of Brew

I love beer. Over the years I've had a steady relationship with ale, and in the last few years I've begun to learn about the complexities of our national drink. It's a fascinating subject with a 6000 year old history.

Fermented malted grains and water. It's that simple, or was for a long time. Then in the 1500s hops came into play, and things got more complex. Fermented malt drinks are quite sweet, but hops add a bitterness, as well as being a preservative. The unhopped drink was ale, the hopped drink was known as beer.

Leap forward to the 1970s, and beer/ale in the UK was decidedly crap. Watery ales and weak fizzy mass produced piss from Australia and Europe everywhere. CAMRA was established in 1971. Jumping forward through the days of Banks Bitter in 3l bottles from the supermarket, past the innovation of the widget and the irish cream flow beers, and we reach the last decade... CAMRA was a large factor in keeping real ale alive during the 70s, but it has also created an image of real ale as the drink of the patched cardigan wearing beardy man with attitudes to match. Whilst that image might still be a little close to home for some of CAMRA, it certainly isn't true of the ale industry which is now led by the bright young things, the craftys, the rebel brewers creating living products that are gaining in mainstream appeal.

There's still a place for a brewer that focuses on brewing for the tweed wearing old boy whose every sentence is a critique of how the best ales have been ruined by change of some kind,  but that market may well be in decline.

The youngsters have it. The methods are traditional. The ingredients are (mostly) traditional. But the flavours and drinkers are more varied than ever before. You only need to walk your supermarket's beer aisle to see what has happened in the last few years. The ale section used to be a sad affair. John Smiths bitter, John Smiths bitter with widget, Irish foamy stuff, Bishops Finger or other novelty named thing, Guinness... possibly another well known beer - Tetley, or Boddingtons... The rest of the aisle was Bud, Stella, XXXX, Fosters, Carling, Heineken, Carlsberg etc etc... In a few short years those roles have reversed. The lagers are still there, but now there is a much finer range and those mass produced options are very much the bottom of the heap. On top of those is the range of german and belgian beers, more flavourful drinks brewed with lager yeast. But the bulk of the aisle - real ale. Stouts and Porters to choose from, more golden ales than I can name, and best of all, a huge range of mid strength mid colour ales from across the nation.

Microbreweries are taking on the big boys and the big boys are copying the micro trend and producing interesting smaller run beers pushing the flavour envelope. Glorious high hopped beers, sour beers, and historical beers... The choice is fantastic.

Pubs are in decline though. I'm not going to get into that here, although these stats shine a very bright light on what is happening. There are nearly twice as many breweries in the UK today (2015) as there were in 2000, whilst the pub stock has declined by getting on for twenty percent.

More choice in beer, less choice in venue to drink it.

Again I am supporting the Rochford Beer Festival this year. Great people, best free entry festival in the country, and my favourite week of the year bar none. But last year was my last as a CAMRA member. You see I just can't bring myself to care whether a beer is naturally carbonated through secondary fermentation in the storage container or pointed with co2. The ongoing nit picking about what craft beer is, griping about Wetherspoons. I can't sort an openly sexist organisation who've put some press releases out that could be followed by a Sid James laugh.

Beer is our national drink. I like drinking it, I like making it, and I admire others that do. But it's just a drink. A beverage. If you like it, it's good. If you don't like it, it's probably still good, just not to your taste. And it doesn't matter.

Still, "talking about drinking is like dancing about football." See you in the pub.

Resisting the online world

"It's futile resisting change. I lived through the arrival of the internet. I remember the excitement when 28.8 bumped to 33.3 and later 56... I remember going to make a cup of tea waiting for a download manager to handle a tetchy 5mb download. CompuServe and aol portals. Telnet, MUD, bulletin boards, chat rooms. ICQ. netmeeting.

The days before Google. The days before "social" media. The days before slacktivism. I loved it. I love tech. Building pcs, rooting phones. Amazing. Online gaming, so sociable compared with gaming alone.

But at the risk of sounding like the middle aged dad that I am .. I hate it now.

The world grows ever more stupid. Why learn it when you can Google it? The matrix memory implant doesn't seem so far fetched.

The ability to regurgitate information as if you thought it, repeating without novel thought or true understanding, is distilled by the retweet button.

Twitter. Widens your field of communication massively. But in the realms of contrived comment the impression we have of the writer is a false one. It is the way they have chosen to present. En mass this is hyper reality in the extreme. A world populated by characters as if written by screen writers who wanted it to be very clear what the key features of each personality are.

Dungeons and Dragons where those playing aren't as aware that they're playing a character, but still feel slightly safe from consequence.

For the socially isolated Twitter is the chat room. For the empathetic apathetic slacktivism feels like activity.

But it's hyper real. Yet it begins to change our reality. We learn from discourse on Twitter. We change our behavior based on what we learn. Therefore Twitter changes our behaviour in the real world.

I don't mean we see more people rudely tweeting at the dining table, although we do. I mean that we encounter discussion on Twitter that might change the way we feel about, for example, discussing sexuality with our children. This changes our children's learning, which changes their lives. This can be positive or negative and happens from any source of learning, but Twitter is hyper real. A volatile source."

I wrote the above in 2015. 

In 2017 I look around and the hyper real environment doesn't excite me. It just makes me sad.

Journalists replaced by Twitter, where anyone with no consideration of their own objectivity or bias can tell stories.

Pretend Facebook families humble bragging about any old crap. People trying to live up to impossible ideals creating hyper real society.

A landscape where the UnitedStates has a president who communicates in 140 character droppings. 

Of course there are huge positives with a world with open communications, shared knowledge etc... 

But at what ugly cost.

Towards global thinking.

The recent elections in Europe embarrass me. In so many ways we have come so far. We are remarkable. But when we are pressured by circumstance we have let ourselves down, and old instincts have beaten our reason.

Nationalism; them and us; blame the tribe next door; be wary of those that aren't exactly like us. It's all just so ludicrously small.

We live on a planet where we are one of 8.7 million species, all of which we share an ancestor with at some point in our history. Our species, Homo Sapien, has its origins about 200,000 years ago in south west africa. That's all of us alive today. We're all the same. At that point, everyone of our species was exactly like us. We all share a great great great....etc ancestor who lived somewhere around the Namibia/Angola coastal border. 

Around 125,000 years ago our ancestors had expanded to the Middle East. From there, about 50,000 years ago they spread east into South Asia. By 43,000 years ago they had reached Europe, and 40,000 years ago they arrived in Australia. East Asia was reached around 30,000 years ago. Around the same time they may have reached North America, although this is disputed and it could have been as late as 14,000 years ago. The Polynesian islands were reached from Taiwan around 5,200 years ago. (Please forgive this very rough summary of dates!)

It was only 10,000 years ago, with a move towards warmer consistent weather and the development of agriculture, that we stopped being nomadic hunter gatherers. (interestingly in those societies there was often much greater social and economic equality and often sexual parity, than we know today!)

And so from the travelling tribes settling came the farmsteads, and from the farmsteads came the towns. From the towns came the trade routes etc etc But still it was hundreds of years before we thought of ourselves as from any given "nation". Arguably, most of the nations in Europe have only developed in the last 700-800 years. (based on most definitions "of nation state")

Only in our most recent history have we had nations to be nationalistic about! On the other side of the political borders of our nations, are the very same people who prior to that time had similar journeys, similar histories. "They" are not different from us. They are us!   

Perhaps one might better argue that nations are like clubs. Clubs that can compete against each other at sporting events. Clubs that have taken along their own refreshments and resent it when people from other clubs want one of their sandwiches. Clubs that get protective of their pork pies. Members of other clubs, coming over here, eating our salad. Perhaps if you've paid your club's subs to fund that picnic you might resent a member of a different club taking a pickled onion from your jar. But if you turned away a hungry competitor with a "Sorry, this picnic blanket is full" would you feel proud of yourself?

What would it be like if we got some perspective on what's important? How would it be if we stop expecting our politicians to be drawn into arguments and debates about the petty and pointless - just because it makes quick copy to sell papers? If we vote entertainers into roles of state, we shouldn't be surprised when they turn out to be clowns.

In the early 90s Carl Sagan said "The old appeals to racial, sexual, religious chauvinism to rabid nationalist fervour are beginning not to work, a new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognises that an organism at war with itself is doomed." 

If I had to be the one to tell Carl about the recent election results in Europe I would do so mumbling, looking at my shoes, ashamed of what has happened. 

The real threats to us do not come from nations, towns or picnic blankets. They are threats that can only be dealt with as a species. Climate change will only be controlled by global consensus and action, not the childish tit for tat of nations run by the childish soundbite mongers pandering to the press which in turn panders to the stupid so as to sell adverts. Impact events will only be averted by a global effort to fund and build a system for detection, interception and movement of threats. How can decisions of that magnitude be taken whilst the biggest effective unit we have is the nation state? The threat of self destruction, of nuclear war; of a rogue state releasing chaos through some sort of bio weapon or even bio or nuclear accident... these things seem less likely in the world today than in Sagan's time but the threats remain, and again, they are either threats caused by the nation states, or threats that would be best dealt with by units bigger than the nation state. 

Communications and business have now outgrown the nation state, and it becomes increasingly more futile to try and frame discussion of one in the context of the other. Human's greatest achievements in recent years always cross national boundaries, be it disease control, the space station and exploration, or the power and speed of social media to bring local issues to a global audience.  

Consider then a Human Council. One decision making body, responsible for all citizens of Earth. Protecting world resources, and working to ensure distribution of those resources as needed for the benefit of the majority, not those who happen to be born near them. Making decisions in the interest of all citizens of the planet. The idea seems so alien to us who've grown up in tribes/nations. How would "our" economy work? What would happen to currency exchange? How long would the queues at Disney Land be!? But these are all problems of transition. The transition from a world formed of tribes to a world of just one combined tribe. Think how one big tribe would look, and what would and wouldn't be possible then!  

The transition from a planet divided into nations, to a planet united as one species looking forward is a very tough thing to envisage. In today's short termist inward looking, border conscious climate, few politicians would be prepared to state their ultimate aim is to dissolve independent nation states into a single world Human Council. Yet, long term, our survival as a species seems to me to be dependent on the population getting behind just such an idea and requiring the governments of our nations to consciously take every possible step towards their own succession. 

Just because the transition seems impossibly difficult to navigate, doesn't mean we shouldn't start to travel. I wonder how that journey will look; how long the journey will take, and how long it will be before we set sail. 






  











































  

Alternative Therapies

I'll admit it. I know a couple of quacks. I also know a number of people who use them. I've mostly thought "each to their own", or the more cynical "it's a mug tax", but I've supported their businesses and vouched for their character. I don't believe these are snake oil peddlers, they believe in their product. They are honest.

Except, then I follow the logic... And it becomes uncomfortable.

Start with the premise that a therapy or product either has a physiological effect or it doesn't.

If it doesn't work we have two outcomes. the therapist either wrongly believes that it does work, in the face of failing treatments; or they know it doesn't work and are deliberately peddling snake oil.

(So we conclude they are either a little dim, or a fraudster.)

If the treatment does have an effect we have two outcomes. Either the therapist sees it has an effect and looks to behave in a safe manner by testing the safety of the treatment, or they treat with no consideration for side effect or negative outcomes.

(So we conclude they are a professional, or reckless.)

And this is where I have become uncomfortable. Let's say a therapy seems to work but we don't know how. We see a physiological response. We need to know it cannot damage! If you honestly believe that pushing pressure points on my feet might affect my liver function, you need to know that it can't stop my lungs working surely? Otherwise you're dangerously reckless. Manipulate my scalp... Feed me dilutions... Stick a candle in my ear... If you think it can change my body, you need to know it can't change it in a negative way before you risk peddling it.

The only way you can be comfortable that your untested therapy won't kill someone is if you know that it's theatre. If you know that it's theatre, you're peddling snake oil. Deliberately selling placebo.

Someone with integrity who genuinely believes in a therapy would only give it if it were tested as safe; and if it were tested as safe and effective, it's therapy... Not alternative.

So the only conclusion I reach is that the person giving untested "alternative" therapies is either selling snake oil knowing it's snake oil or recklessly giving an untested therapy without caring enough to consider unknown side effects.

Given I like the various individuals I know in this field, I think I'd prefer it if I knew they were deliberate snake oil peddlers, rather than deliberately reckless.

Football vs Cricket, Long vs Short Game

There's an argument that cricket is the slow game, played over days, more nuanced. Football is more immediate.


But I think it's flawed.


YES those points are true if you assess the game as from start to finishing whistle. 


BUT that's not really what supporters are about. 


90mins of football is just one over in cricket to the fan of the football league. 


To them the game is played with every transfer of a player, every sore throat that stops someone training, every morale sapping tabloid scandal. Football is the longer game! The bit on the pitch is just the busiest bit.

The Referees a Banker

At school the boy studies hard. No one is surprised when he gets his a-levels and goes to Uni. When he gets his degree the grunt job at the bank seems a natural progression. Good money for a graduate too. Every one is pleased for him.


Learning and working hard - leads to a series of promotions and sideways moves, climbing the corporate rungs. Responsible for ever more people on the lower rungs, and the upkeep of ever grander titles. Eventually, the top echelons are his. 


The 50yr old schoolboy runs the show. 


Continual learning, continual growth, and some hard work... make him responsible for thousands of people... generating huge profits. The boy's done good! 


His responsibilities command a huge salary, and a huge bonus when growth is achieved.


But the public don't like it. We all have an idea "what we're worth". We won't seek earnings beyond that. If you're earning £30K and you see a job ad for £60K you don't even look to see if you could do the job! AND WE STRUGGLE TO ACCEPT THAT OTHERS SEEM TO BE WORTH MORE because they aim higher. 


You can scapegoat the banks as the cause of the downturn, but that's just naive. 


You can criticise the internal mechanisms of a finance system you barely understand just because the numbers seem so much bigger than your perceived personal worth. 


You can strip someone of a title.. 


You can bring the pressure of the masses to make it hard for a successful person to earn well.


But will you ask the tough questions? If a knighthood was given undeservedly who screwed up? The recipient or the teams of people who got "services to banking" that wrong? 


It all looks very ugly to me. "Isn't the boy working hard and doing well for himself?" transitions into "how can anyone be worth that much?" and we don't notice the point of change. 


Envy, jealousy, and the need to claw others backwards in the mistaken idea that the action of pulling them backwards somehow propels us forward. 


When it's done, when the finger pointing is over, the scapegoats sacrificed... Where are you? 


Still in the same shitty job, moaning about bigger bills and tiny pay rises... Expecting more and more for the same task. Mistaking longevity for added value. Watching those lottery numbers. Sharing the opinions you read in the paper during the first coffee break of the day. 


Whilst we focus on the easy populist noise, we change nothing at all. Sad. Ugly. Dangerous.

Arrogance, Religion, and Respect.

So let's get something straight. You can be a Nobel laureate and if you're religious I'm still going to think you're weak minded. A view that has had me labelled as arrogant recently. As if my feeling like that implies I consider myself superior. Which is not the case more than it is. You see, I can admire someone for one reason, yet be sickened by another. I can admire a nurse for their compassion but be sickened by their racism for example. Complexity is not a vice. So I can think you're an idiot for crediting your successes to something divine, whilst admiring those successes none the less. But being called an arrogant athiest made me think. Is there anything more arrogant than someone with faith? To dismiss the knowledge of generations of thinkers, just on the basis of something you learned to believe?