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Weed is everywhere. Not only is it no longer edgy, it might even be borderline cheugy. But in states where cannabis is not yet legal—especially in the adult-use sense—we’re starting to see new, more creative products proliferate that skirt the boundaries of legality. 

The most recent fighter to join the stable is Delta 8 (also known as Δ-8-THC and D8), a cannabinoid percolating to mainstream-awareness status. Available as flower, vape concentrate, edibles, and in other forms, it’s popped up most frequently on the East Coast and in other states without legal adult use.

As Georgia Hemp Company co-owner Joe Salome explains via phone, “Scientifically, it’s one isomer different from Delta 9.” Delta-9-THC, he notes, is the psychoactive compound that’s federally illegal, and is the primary substance associated with “traditional weed.” Delta 8 is essentially a close cousin of THC—but there’s a key difference in how it’s produced. “[Delta 8 is] derived from hemp. It is a legal plant force,” Salome says. 

The spokesperson of CBD-testing collective Leafreport (and a naturopathic medicine provider), Dr. Zora DeGrandpre, offers more insight. “[Delta 8] occupies a legal ‘gray area’ [in the United States] currently as long as it is derived from hemp, and not from cannabis.” Essentially, what many customers buy as Delta-8-THC in flower form is a hunk of hemp flower doused in D8 concentrate. (This happens through a super speedy process of heating, cooling, then vaporizing the hemp called fractional distillation, which untangles the compound from the flower.)

“That gray area may not last very long, but, of course, time will tell,” DeGrandpre says. “Consumers should always be certain they are purchasing any hemp product from a reputable source, as opposed to producers who are more concerned with profit than purity, and should always check for independent [third-]party lab reports to ensure that the product they are buying does not contain contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, fungal and other toxins, and contaminating microbes.”

FLY HIGH

If all of this sounds complex, that’s because it is. The cannabis scene has a chronic issue with over-intellectualizing the plant, to the point where canna-curious consumers are more likely to tap out than start a slow trudge through the seemingly endless list of acronyms and scientific jargon. (This hesitancy can be further amplified by a singular personal experience gone awry; I don’t know many folks who graduated from a liberal arts school without an edibles nightmare tale. On the other hand, the Delta-9-THC in weed is already so much stronger than it was some decades ago, so older folks looking to jump back into toking might be a bit wary—and with good reason!)

And yet for consumers who are looking for a chemical escape in non-legal states, the opportunity offered by Delta 8, and the growing curiosity about its potential, may override the complicating factors.

“I’ve been smoking the flower and eating gummies pretty often since then … maybe five days of the week. It usually gives me the same sort of high as [more traditional THC], but just a little less intense.”

“I had heard lots of friends talk about it, but always forgot about it until I actually saw it in the store,” says musician and regular pot-doer Hunter Pinkstone of Athens, Georgia. Georgia is a state with very restrictive cannabis laws, allowing only fringe-case consumption for medicinal reasons. Even then, what’s legal for that tiny portion of Georgians contains remarkably low levels of THC. “The person helping me at the store was super cool and really vouched for the Delta 8 stuff, so I figured I’d try it. I’ve been smoking the flower and eating gummies pretty often since then … maybe five days of the week. It usually gives me the same sort of high as [more traditional THC], but just a little less intense.” Pinkstone also says he likes that with Delta 8, the high feeling seemed more temporary.

Dan (who asked to be identified only by his first name), a technology professional in Atlanta, Georgia, agrees. “I’ve seen [Delta 8] described as ‘weed light,’ and I think that’s the most accurate description,” he says. “I’ve [had] both indicas and sativas of Delta 8 … the indicas were honestly pretty tough to tell the difference from Delta 9. The sativas [yielded] definitely more a toned-down high that felt more like a strong buzz [rather] than a full intoxication.” (Note: Indica-dominant cannabis is characterized by a heavier body high, while sativa-dominant cannabis is more likely to yield cerebral effects, sometimes making its users feel paranoid. The best way to remember this is “indica” sounds like “in da couch,” which is where you’ll be if you ingest enough of it.)

Personally, I have very limited experiences with Delta 8. When visiting friends in Pittsburgh, I bought two gummies from a CBD shop, each containing 100mg of D8. I popped half of one and vomited, like, three times—but was it the gummy or was it the poached egg in the breakfast delivery I ordered? I tried a quarter the next time (about 25mg) and still experienced major stomach discomfort and … related issues. This is coming from someone who averages about a quarter- to half-ounce of Delta-9-THC flower a week. For context, the budtender at said shop said they popped a whole 100mg gummy for a great time. (One hundred milligrams of THC is considered about 10 times a normal “dose.”)

That said, I tore apart a D8 preroll procured from an Atlanta head shop that simmered just fine with my regular weed in the bong—it wasn’t profound enough to make a major impression on its own, but at least I didn’t ralph. Although it wasn’t a stomach-churning experience and yes, I did get high, I didn’t personally see the hype vs. my usual (illegal) porch-delivery service. Was I high from D8, or because of that dank-ass gas mixed in?

Another Atlantan, a public health professional who we can call M, reports similarly lackluster effects. They say they learned about Delta 8 from an email promotion and, after cashing in on the promotion for flower and gummies but feeling nothing, tried another approach. “A few weeks later, I thought I’d try a different delivery mechanism, and ordered some ‘high potency’ edibles—blame it on the TikTok gods—which took a million years to arrive and also had no effect whatsoever after several times, including on an empty stomach.” M says, on average, they smoke about a quarter-ounce of “traditional” weed a week.

With D8—like most cannabinoids, and weed in general—most evidence of its positives remains anecdotal. Until cannabis is federally legalized in the United States, we can’t go off much more than what other people tell us.

WHY BOTHER?

Those in non-legal states may have more reason to dabble with Delta 8. When I reached out to folks residing in states with adult-use legalities in place, however, I ran into a whole lot of confusion and indifference.

First I asked Daniel, a stoner bartender in Los Angeles, if he had ever tried the cannabinoid. “Once,” he texted back. I asked for his read on the experience: “Eh.”

“I don’t know much about it,” Los Angeles-based comic and noted cannabis meme-maker Rachel Wolfson said. “It does weird me out a little.”

“It’s just cool to see other people find ways to use the plant, which brings me hope we’ll eventually be able to get funding to continue to study it so that we can [take advantage of] more of the medicinal benefits … to me it’s encouraging. Even though I don’t know much about Delta 8, it’s still optimistic.”

Yet another Angeleno, who works professionally in the cannabis industry and didn’t want to be named, responded: “Wait, what’s Delta 8?” A poet friend in Seattle: “No, but I keep hearing about it.”

D8 might not be for the consumer with access to more full-spectrum, or “classic” weed. Still, that doesn’t mean it can’t play its part in the elevated, larger cannabis mission.

“It’s just cool to see other people find ways to use the plant, which brings me hope we’ll eventually be able to get funding to continue to study it so that we can [take advantage of] more of the medicinal benefits … to me it’s encouraging,” Wolfson told me. “Even though I don’t know much about Delta 8, it’s still optimistic.”

It’s true that exposing new consumers to potentially effective plant medicine could be net-positive. Think of how the introduction to and proliferation of the Impossible Burger exposed a new audience to how easy (and tasty) eating less meat can be; in theory, the new converts might be more open to exploring other vegetarian and vegan food options in future. Perhaps a law-wary canna-curious individual could begin with a solid experience with D8 and start to explore the wide world of dank from there.

DANGER DANGER

New products are always exciting to the adventurous consumer, stoners included. So although D8 has been celebrating a surge in popularity while cha-cha-ing around the gray space of federal legality, that also means there aren’t exactly safety hurdles Delta-8-THC flower, carts, or edibles have to clear to make it onto shelves. 

It’s worth being cautious: Potential risks run the gamut, starting from incorrect potency claims and going all the way up to possible hospitalization. A report Leafly obtained found dangerous heavy metals in a sample of Delta 8, including copper, lead, and nickel. Inhaling or swallowing copper can be poisonous, causing upper respiratory tract irritation. Ingesting lead is likely to wreak havoc on the kidneys and nervous system, sometimes leading to death.

As a result, some dispensaries in non-legal states, like Pure Ohio Wellness, halted sales of Delta 8 products completely as of June 16, despite their prior popularity. The Texas Legislature recently attempted to pass a House Bill that would ban the sale of Delta-8-THC (it flopped). New York is in the process of trying to pass a similar ban.

Salome says any D8 that Georgia Hemp Company puts up for sale has passed the various lab tests and evaluation processes the company has put in place for all its products, but he doesn’t offer specifics. The website’s FAQ page is similarly slippery, offering: “…it’s technically your responsibility to research the products you purchase and use.” He echoes this sentiment during our call. “So, how do customers know any product is safe that they’re buying? Whether it’s toothpaste, a steak, or whatever, I mean [customers determine safety] through their own research and brand reputation.”

He isn’t wrong, even if that logic feels evasive. Despite the death-threatening dangers of downing a pile of raw fish, sushi restaurants remain wildly popular. Consumers get to make the decision of whether the potential pay-off of ingesting anything is worth the potential risk(s).

And when was the last time you asked your dro hookup for testing certifications? Although there’s a low likelihood someone would lace your illegally acquired pot with another substance, there remains a risk—one we enthusiastically dismiss every time we fire up in a state with harsh green laws. (Even in legal states, how many people do you know who read the pages of fine print that come standard with their sativa-spiked tea bags?)

As DeGrandpre points out, side effects exist even with fully vetted cannabis. Generalized weed, she says, includes potential reactions like “increased appetite, dry mouth, diarrhea and, more seriously, increased short-term memory loss and a risk of exacerbating psychiatric disorders such as paranoia, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and depression.”

Yes, cannabis consumption (legal and not) can land you in the hospital for a bevy of reasons. Car accidents caused by driving under the influence—not unlike alcohol—are the most common. But what is more likely is a person whose pre-existing mental health conditions are further exacerbated by, quite frankly, getting too stoned. 

“Consumers should check the track record of the company selling any form of hemp or cannabis product,” DeGrandpre suggests for all weed-ish products. “Starting at a low dose and slowly increasing that dose until a specific health goal has been achieved” is a smart approach when toe-dipping in the field. I’ve heard this called “the haircut method”: If you start slowly, you can always make further tweaks—but you can’t reverse course after going all-in.

COMING BACK FOR MORE

Cannabis educator and industry consultant at Eminent Consulting, Emma Chasen, cites a recent study to explain why someone might choose Delta 8 over Delta 9, questions of legality aside. “When consuming Delta 8, patients have had much less psychotropic experiences compared to Delta 9,” Chasen says. “Despite having little intoxicating properties, Delta 8 exhibits therapeutic value especially as an antiemetic, analgesic, anxiolytic, and anti-inflammatory agent.” She adds that D8 could be a great alternative to D9 for a consumer worried about heavy psychotropic effects (thinking back to the trope-y anecdote of someone who slammed too many space brownies and ended up in the ER, convinced they were either dying or Jesus).

“When consuming Delta 8, patients have had much less psychotropic experiences compared to Delta 9. Despite having little intoxicating properties, Delta 8 exhibits therapeutic value especially as an antiemetic, analgesic, anxiolytic, and anti-inflammatory agent.”

Salome says D8 is likely to keep consumers coming back for more, as long as Delta-9-THC remains illegal and D8 remains in the gray area. “We’re in Georgia—you don’t have access [to legal] weed,” Salome says, adding that Delta 8 might save a stoner some coin. “You’re paying $40 to $50 for a[n illegal] vapor cartridge [of THC]. I’m selling [D8] for $25, again, knowing where [it] comes from … [plus, the product is] safe, tested, [and available in] multiple varieties.” Which is a good point: When buying any kind of weed-adjacent product in the illegal markets, your options are inherently limited, and you only “know” any product’s specifics based on whatever your source tells you.

However, it’s very likely most of the people giving Delta-8-THC a whirl are already very familiar with Delta-9-THC. If they want a more mellow high and live in a legal state with plenty of lower-THC strains available for purchase, they might not have a reason to try D8. And even if they do live in a state with restrictions, they likely already have a plug from whom they can shop. 

Ultimately, until Delta-8-THC is reclassified and regulated more in line with Delta-9-THC, people are just gonna have to go off their own research and decide for themselves if they want to keep popping the cannabinoid. 

M says that, after trying D8 and not finding the effects as enjoyable as D9, they’re unlikely to purchase again. Pinkstone says he’ll probably stick with normal weed, unless “the [illegal] dealers all dry up—as they do sometimes—or if I just wanted a more mellow [or] shorter high.” 

Dan also doesn’t consider himself a new convert to D8 in most scenarios, but is likely to reup at some point, simply for the convenience of skipping small talk and the logistical details of copping in a non-legal state. “I won’t shy away from more traditional weed, but there is something to be said for walking into a store, purchasing a cart or flower, and going on with my day,” he says. (I need to introduce him to my dealer.) “I am still undecided if I’ll keep using it long-term or just stick with traditional [weed], but it is nice to have it as an option for now.”

Me? I’m probably also good to pass on that kind of grass, at least when it comes to intentionally scouting it out. I know I’ll never have a D8 edible again. But I’m still not above opting out of the rotation should someone roll up with a Delta-8-THC fattie.

Words by Beca Grimm
Illustrations by Lan Truong

 

 

 

 

 

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Danny Meyer, founder of Shake Shack and Union Square Hospitality Group, is taking a hard line approach towards guests eating and drinking in their establishments. In-house guests will have to show proof of vaccination to get inside. 

Meyer made the announcement on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday afternoon. According to the interview, the mandate will apply to their full service restaurants in New York and Washington D.C.

“We’re following the lead of city, state, and federal government, and we’re going to do this ourselves…. Our full service restaurants in New York City and Washington D.C. to require that all staff members be vaccinated, and also to require guests that want to dine indoors show proof they have been vaccinated.” 

When pressed on whether there would be potential legal backlash from employees that don’t want to be forced to get vaccinated, or whether it will motivate employees to leave work, Meyer stated “If that’s the case, that would be sad. We really tried to lead with a carrot for many many months now. It’s been about 150 days that we’ve been truly encouraging people. A vast majority of the Union Square Hospitality Group have been vaccinated. 

The Group has given employees 8 hours of paid time off to go receive the vaccination, as well has holding open vaccinations in the restaurants. 

However, Meyer alluded to an unemployment ultimatum for the employees not vaccinated within the next 45 days – “We are going to give our employee 45 days. Hopefully this is the incentive [the dual vaccination requirement] to say, “Now I’m going to do it.”

Meyer also went on to say that a Covid-19 vaccination is inline with other hygienic restaurant precautions like gloves and hand washing. 

Shake Shack has not made a similar sweeping employee and customer vaccine mandate. Union Square Hospitality Group does not have control of the burger franchise. 

“The is the most logical thing I can think of,” Meyer added. 

This mandate comes as Covid-19 Delta variants infections are on the rise, seemingly for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. 

Union Square operates Anchovy Social, Blue Smoke, Caffe Marchio, Cedric’s At The Shed, Ci Saimo, Daily Provisions, Gramery Tavern, Intersect by Lexus, Loball, Mailino, Manhattan, Marta The Modern, and Porchlight, Tacocina, Union Square Cafe, and Vini E Fritti restaurants. 

The vaccination mandate goes into effect starting September 7th, 2021.

 

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By Grace Mehl, EAS Master Beekeeper

One thing leads to another. First, you buy a brew kit. Then you buy more ingredients, source specific ingredients, plant hops, buy barley from the organic farmer, or honey from the local beekeeper.

But, what if you become a beekeeper and could harvest your own, really local honey? What would that entail?

Just like brewing, many beekeepers start by buying a kit. The wise beekeeper begins by going to a class and buying a book. Because, just like brewing, sometimes the kit doesn’t include items you need and has other things that you will never use or is not the best quality. Taking a class first is an excellent way to figure out what you really need. A beekeeping class can be anywhere from $60–$300 and one day to a full year. Joining a local club is another good way to get knowledge. Clubs also provide real-time information and opportunities for additional education and gives you a network of people to ask questions. The Long Island Beekeepers Club has a website that you can visit to get more info on joining and buying everything from honey to queen bees at www.longislandbeekeepers.org. 

Once you have been through a beginner course in beekeeping, you need to buy equipment. You need a hive consisting of a bottom board, boxes with frames, an inner cover, an outer cover, and an entrance reducer. You need some tools, namely a smoker and fuel, hive tool, feeder, and bee brush. And, of course, you need personal protective equipment such as a bee suit or jacket with a veil and gloves. This equipment can cost anywhere from about $300 to $500 depending on quality, selection, and source. That’s for one colony of bees! It is recommended to start with two colonies, so you can compare and have resources in case something goes wrong like the queen gets accidentally killed by a not yet proficient beekeeper! So, add on another $200 for the second hive setup. That means about $500-$700 to get started. Going cheap usually doesn’t pay in the end; more equipment will be needed in the second year. So, don’t think you are done! Expect to spend another $300-$500 in the second year for additional boxes and frames.

Then, you need to get bees! That will run $170–$250 per colony. The best time to get your bees is in the Spring. You should order them in January or so, as they do sell out. If you get them later, sometimes it is more expensive, and your bees may not get as good a start as the early ones. This is because they naturally start building up in early Spring on the Spring nectar flow, which is from about April until July on Long Island. Later bees miss part of this, and sometimes they never catch up.

You can buy a package or a nucleus colony of Honey Bees. A package of bees ($150-$200) is usually about 3 pounds of bees in a plastic or wooden box with screen sides, having a queen in a small cage inside of it, and being fed with a can of sugar syrup during transport. A nucleus colony ($200-$250) is a small but complete colony of bees on frames of comb with bee brood (baby bees) and a laying queen that you install in your larger hive. Usually, these are produced a little later than packages and can get off to a running start as they have all stages of bees and some comb already built. These can get away from a new beekeeper as they grow quickly and may swarm before the beekeeper realizes what is happening. This is why package bees are recommended for new beekeepers. They see the whole progression of growth, and swarming is less likely.

By now, you are saying to yourself, “but, what about the honey”? Very few beginner beekeepers get honey the first year. That happens every once in a blue moon when the weather, bees, location, beekeeper, and lots of luck, all line up. If you get your bees through the first winter because you took a class and learned how to take care of them, you should get some honey the second year, with a larger harvest the third year. This is mainly because the bees have to make combs to store the honey. It takes about 7 pounds of honey for the bees to make a pound of wax. The bees produce wax in glands on the underside of their abdomens. All those boxes of frames you bought have to be filled with wax comb so the bees can raise more bees and store honey. They keep the honey for themselves, of course. Not for us. But, if we assist them and take care of them, they can store some “excess” honey by the second year that can be shared (unwillingly) with the beekeeper. You must leave about 60 pounds of honey on each hive for them to eat over winter here on Long Island. Otherwise, they don’t make it through the winter, and you have to buy more bees in Spring. Not really a beekeeper then, are you?

Now, if you are thinking, “this is expensive”! You are right. A wise beekeeper told me once, “the way to make a small fortune keeping bees is to start with a large fortune.” I remember when I harvested the first honey in my second year of beekeeping and looked at the jar of honey on the table and thought to myself, “that is the most expensive honey I have ever seen!” You’ve got to love bees to keep bees. If you don’t, maybe pay the beekeeper that does to get that local honey for your mead.

About the Author

Grace Mehl has been a homebrewer, a wine maker, a mead maker, and became a beekeeper after retiring from the U.S. Navy. She was certified as a Master Beekeeper in 2018 through the Eastern Apicultural Society. Currently the Education Director for the Long Island Beekeepers Club, Grace keeps 12 colonies of honey bees at her home apiary in Smithtown, NY.             

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(HOUSTON, TX) — Urban South – HTX is excited to introduce “Chromatic,” a new triple IPA beer series at its Houston brewery….
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“I’m from Burton-on-Trent,” said Emma on our first date, almost seven years ago, and I still remember the unexpected thrill of those words.

Burton-on-Trent. The most famous brewing town in Britain, and once the beer capital of the world. That simple sentence recalled all the history and lore I’d read about the place. I knew that the town’s geological and geographical location enabled its singular success. Burton was built upon layers of gypsum, and its hard, mineral-heavy water yielded exceptional Ales. Its water helped in another way, too. Though it is one of the most inland towns in England, miles from the sea, Burton has extensive canal and river connections that link it to the country’s major rivers and ports, and which gave it early access to the world.

The town’s first exports were dark Ales to the Baltic ports, but the fortune of Burton changed when it started to brew Pale Ales, including the beers that would become known as India Pale Ales. In 1822, the year Samuel Allsopp & Sons brewed its first beer for Indian export, Burton had five breweries, totaling some 10,000 barrels. By contrast, London’s brewers collectively made 1.5 million BBLs. But by the 1880s, following decades of remarkable growth (aided by the growing national railway network), Burton would be brewing twice the volume of London, and more beer than any other town or city in the world.

In its heyday, Burton was a bona fide “Beer Metropolis” which “has reached a point which has no parallel in the world,” wrote Alfred Barnard, a brewery historian, who described red-brick brewery buildings “as big as the Houses of Parliament.” 

That’s hardly hyperbole—the Victorian scale of its industry was awesome. Bass, then the world’s largest brewer, had three breweries in town, with 28 coppers, 24 teak mash tuns, and 5,000 4-BBL casks in its Burton Union fermentation system. It used 60 tons of hops a week, and brewed 1 million BBLs a year. Beyond Bass, the town had over 100 malthouses and 30 other breweries (seven of them made over 100,000 BBLs annually), employing over 8,000 people who could drink in more than 150 pubs. All of this was packed into little more than a square mile.

This past is beyond meaningful comprehension or analogy today, especially when you walk through its quiet town center and see what little remains. And yet, whenever I’m back in Burton with Emma, I feel more drawn in, my curiosity taking on definition and color like a Polaroid mid-shake. But as more of Burton is revealed to me, I’ve also come to realize how much the town is a place of memories, and that even those memories are now disappearing.

Today, Burton is a name that’s mostly spoken in the past tense. People don’t visit like they would Munich, Brussels, or Prague. Many locals have little knowledge or appreciation of its history, and most no longer have a family or emotional connection to Burton beer.

But there are still those who do. The Burton I want to know is the one remembered by the people who lived and worked there for their whole lives, while they’re still able to tell their stories.

A TOWN OF MEMORIES

“When we were younger, if you went anywhere and people said, ‘Where do you come from,’ if we said, ‘Burton-on-Trent,’ everybody said, ‘Ooh, that’s where the beer comes from.’ You don’t get that now. We’re not known for that now. It’s such a shame.”

That’s Irene. She’s one of 25 people on a social Zoom meet-up arranged by the Burton Albion Football Club Trust. Also on the call is Peter, an ex-brewer at Bass. There’s Linda, whose dad was a maltster at Truman’s—she remembers how his trouser turn-ups would be filled with malt every night. And then there’s Sue, who was a tour guide at Bass; her husband also brewed there. “It was great fun. It was absolutely wonderful,” she says.

“As little kiddies we used to go with a jug to the off-license and buy me grandad’s beer,” says Irene. “I didn’t like it but me sister used to be sipping it all the way home, and she’d be seven or eight.” For Carol, “Treat of the week was being taken to sit in a pub yard with pop and crisps [soda and potato chips] whilst parents were inside meeting friends and having a pint.”

Most of the group smile and laugh as they share their experiences growing up in Burton during the 1950s and 1960s. Though not Joyce, a nurse who moved to Burton from Ireland as a 17-year-old. She remembers the town’s distinct odor: “The smell was horrendous!”

In the mid 20th century, Burton’s air was a pungent reflection of the different factories in town. There was the almost-constant boiling of wort, with its sweet and hoppy aroma. Leftover brewers’ yeast was reduced down into Marmite, which has been made in Burton since 1902, producing a strong, savory smell. And there was Robirch, a meat pie factory with its own abattoir.

If smell is the sense most associated with memory, the town’s since-vanished odor still remains vivid among those who experienced it. “What a cacophony of blinking smells!” says Steve Topliss, former Ind Coope head brewer. “Gee whiz. I loved it, but the smells were unbelievable.”

The other prominent Burton memory is the railway crossings. With brewhouses, malthouses, cooperages, ale stores, depots, and more spread out around the town, breweries laid miles of private railways to transport goods between sites, and there were 32 level crossing gates to control the flow of traffic.

The brewery trains didn’t follow a timetable, and at any time the crossing gates could come down, meaning people were frequently late for school or work. “It was phenomenal,” says Steve Wellington, former head brewer at Worthington Brewery. “They used to say if there was a bank robbery in Burton, the police would ring the crossing keepers to close all the gates because there wasn’t a road out of Burton that didn’t have crossing gates.” That’s a story I’ve heard Emma’s dad tell before. He was only a boy when the railway lines disappeared, but it’s one of those tales that remains in the collective Burton memory.

A FEELING OF BELONGING

The breweries paternally provided for people in many ways, and had done so since the days when they were run by successive generations, by Messrs Bass, Allsopp, and Worthington. That practice generated a strong loyalty among the employees; you worked for the same brewery as your father, mother, uncle, or brother, a blood link being the only resume you needed. There was pride in that, the Burton residents tell me, a feeling of belonging, and it was instilled from a young age.

“Me dad worked at Basses. He were a mashman,” says Terry Elks, a Burton local whose first job after leaving school was at Bass. His mother worked at Worthington, and at the age of 13 he got a summer job there cleaning the workers’ break rooms and swilling down the union rooms.

“The following summer I were a hop lad,” he says; his job was to add the dry hop addition into full barrels of beer. “I used to have a great big barrow full of hops and a wooden bucket. I used to have to get a scoopful of hops, and then when they shouted [at] me, I had to take the hops to them and put a handful of hops in the barrel before they put the bung in.”

“As someone once said to me, ‘If beer drinking was an Olympic sport, we’d only ever have to wander down Burton High Street and you’d have an A team and a B team, no problem at all.’ People could really, really seriously drink beer. One of the key things to learn is that when you’re in a league that’s above your own, don’t try to compete. There were some guys who had hollow legs.”

Elks, as a 13-year-old, had a beer allowance of one pint a day (“I used to take mine home for me dad,” he says). Every worker had their allowance, usually a quart or a few pints daily, plus any extra they could get—and everyone knew a way of getting extra beer. The more manual the work, the more beer you received, with maltsters earning a few extra “sweat pints” if they worked in the kiln.

Drinking at work wasn’t only accepted—it was a given. Some people would have a few pints in the morning, and then a few more during the day, and even more after their shift. Teapots were filled with beer. Draymen would routinely have a pint at each pub they delivered beer to. Someone always knew which tank was filled with the Strong Ale. As legend has it, there was one bloke at Ind Coope who could supposedly drink a firkin—72 imperial pints—on a shift.

“As someone once said to me, ‘If beer drinking was an Olympic sport, we’d only ever have to wander down Burton High Street and you’d have an A team and a B team, no problem at all,” says Dr. Harry White, former director of quality at Bass. “People could really, really seriously drink beer. One of the key things to learn is that when you’re in a league that’s above your own, don’t try to compete. There were some guys who had hollow legs.”

Worthington brewed a weak beer for staff allowance, but Peter Smith, a Burton local who started working at Bass-Worthington in 1959 (the two breweries merged in 1927) and ended his career 40 years later as the malting manager, remembers how staff “used to steal beer all the way through the process. Some of the people came and clocked in at 6 o’clock in the morning and you never saw them for the whole day. They just went and slept, or drank. There were so many people employed that you didn’t miss the odd person. They just vanished and you’d find them asleep in the corner!”

Despite how commonplace heavy drinking was, no one I speak to recalls the town being full of drunks. “In my experience, not a huge number of people drank to excess,” says Topliss. In the 1970s, Ind Coope employees had a two-pint daily allowance, plus “people would have a social scoop, and steal the odd one.” Having hard laboring jobs which started early in the morning led to a moderation (of sorts).

Some of the most popular places to drink were the brewery sports and social clubs, which were big venues that put on entertainment every week. Beer businesses had their own teams, covering a wide range of sports or activities. Games were played between breweries and departments, which gave workers a chance to know more of their colleagues. Bass also held an annual Field Day where employees could enter flowers and vegetables into a competition and win cash prizes. They put on fireworks displays and barrel-rolling competitions. During Christmas there were parties, and all staff were given vouchers to redeem for a turkey at one of the town’s butchers (many also took home a case of the strong Winter Ale or Barley Wine). In the past, the breweries even arranged day trips for staff and their families to go to the seaside, traveling on a great fleet of trains. These town-wide, cross-brewery social experiences were once the heart of Burton’s social world.

HOW BEER PROVIDED

By the 1960s—as imminent changes were coming—the breweries were already considered Victorian anachronisms, old companies with old values, and with miserly and headmasterly directors who the laborers addressed as “Sir.”

Wellington recalls a memory of Lord Gretton, who was in charge of Bass’ ingredients. A laborer was walking across the brewery yard and the sole of his shoe was loose and flapping when he caught Gretton’s attention. “‘Come here my boy,’ and he said, ‘What’s the matter with your shoe?’” Wellington recalls. The young lad replied: “‘Yes Sir, yes my Lord, it’s come off.’” Gretton took a huge roll of money out of his pocket, “And this bloke thought, ‘Christ, he’s going to buy me some shoes!’ and [Gretton] took the elastic band off, gave it to him, and said, ‘Now wrap that around your shoe!’ That was the sort of bloke he was. He was as mean as anything.”

Then there was Jack Leachman, Bass’ production director. He had steel caps on his shoes, and if you heard the clacks, you went in the opposite direction. One day, the sparge arm broke on a mash tun. Two planks of wood were spread across it, and an engineer named Goodall crawled out along them. Without warning, the mash tun doors slammed shut behind Goodall and he heard people running away. He fell in the hot mash up to waist. “He was screaming when suddenly the doors opened to the mash tun,” says Wellington. “Leachman looked in and he said, ‘Ah, hello Goodall, are you all right?’ and he said, ‘Yes Mr. Leachman, I’m fine, Sir.’ Jack shut the door and walked off again. Click click click. That’s the sort of fear they had for him.” (Goodall was wearing thick overalls, and was fine despite the heat.)

But interactions like this would soon be a thing of the past. Advances in the breweries and the British beer industry in general had begun to accelerate through the 1960s, and they’d fundamentally change the town of Burton. 

In 1960, Bass employed close to 3,000 people. Over 500 of them were engineers, more than 300 worked in the cooperage and on cask cleaning, and over 200 transported goods. A wide range of other trades and professionals were also represented: “We had cobblers, we had tailors, we had wheelwrights, we had coffin makers for god’s sake,” says Wellington. There were tinsmiths, coppersmiths, plumbers, electricians, decorators, sign writers, stablemen for the horses, and even firefighters.

Any Burtonian not employed by a brewery likely worked in an ancillary industry, including brewery fabricators, wood suppliers and turners, independent cooperages and maltings, and beer mat printers. Beer provided for the whole town in one way or another, so when the changes came, they struck at the heart of Burton, its community, and its identity.

‘PEOPLE WERE PROUD’

It was the materials and the machinery, and the shift from wood to steel and to automation, which had the greatest overall impact. That change meant fewer laborers and skilled tradesmen were needed, fewer people were employed, and fewer people were connected to the breweries. Associated local industries lost their standing to national or international suppliers, and they had to adapt to avoid going out of business. Labor became rationalized to a monetary number instead of a person’s name; no longer were children taking over from parents, with educated recruits moving to Burton to take positions in the breweries. The family connections which created such strong links in the community were disappearing.

The most prominent role lost in the town was the coopers. The cooperages were once “an absolutely phenomenal sight,” says Wellington. Tens of thousands of wooden barrels were stacked up, hundreds of thousands were in circulation, and every one of them was built and repaired by hand. “There used to be hundreds of coopers. When stainless steel casks came, they all dispersed,” says Wellington. “These highly skilled people, who could make a waterproof wooden cask, and quite a lot of them were seen [doing other jobs]. What a shame.”

“There used to be hundreds of coopers. When stainless steel casks came, they all dispersed. These highly skilled people, who could make a waterproof wooden cask, and quite a lot of them were seen [doing other jobs]. What a shame.”

It was a quick demise, going from all-wood, to steel-lined wood, and then to just steel, within around five years. The breweries gained greater consistency with the beer, but that was of no consolation to the coopers. That paradigm shift prompts a question that speaks to Burton and the wider world: What happens when something isn’t needed anymore?

Burton is still a significant beer town, but through numerous consolidations, closures, and changes in ownership, just two big breweries remain today. The combined sites of Bass, Ind Coope, and Allsopp are now owned by Molson Coors Beverage Company, while down the road is Marston’s, now part of Carlsberg. All of the famous old names are gone.

The losses and the changes are hard to reconcile with the positive feelings and memories of people who knew the breweries well. From laborers to ex-directors, those I speak to have genuine affection for their time working in the local industry. Neil Jackson, an ex-Marston’s employee, holds forth for an hour as he recalls japes and scrapes from a 25-year career in the brewery.

“One morning they started the bottling line up and the first thing down the line was this guy, a well-known big drinker, fast asleep,” he laughs. Then there was the story of the naked forklift drivers. A car wrapped in clingfilm. An on-site wedding. A swoop bucket filled with discarded beer. Motorbike races. The joy and challenges of working on the Burton Union system (“To operate it is to love it,” he says). The way a disgruntled contractor, who had the job of putting up the large lettering outside the brewery, decided to hang the two S’s upside down.

Like most of the stories I’m told, these anecdotes evince camaraderie, which is a word I hear repeated by many. “It’s all about the people,” says Jackson. “Everybody knew everybody. It was like going to work with your brothers.” As Peter Smith says, “To some people, the breweries and their connections were their total life.”

“People were proud of the company they worked for,” says Topliss. “It was a family. When you were taken on by one of the breweries in the late ’60s, early ’70s, you were proud of that, and almost made in terms of your career.” As time went on, there was a “dilution of the culture and the feeling of belonging,” he says. “Unless you were there, it’s really hard to put across how strongly you felt about the brewing family. Now there isn’t that.”

BUILT ON BEER

I can’t tell if Burton is unlovely or just unloved. The 1960s and 1970s were decades of dust, as the old breweries were demolished. It certainly isn’t handsome now, with its mix of graying Victorian red bricks, ugly 1970s steel and glass, and characterless 2000s retail parks. 

This post-industrial working-class town hasn’t replaced its lost industry. The old sites of hard labor are now places of light recreation—a cinema, gym, chain restaurants, homeware stores, fashion outlets. There are minimal signs of gentrification, and today, Burton is a market town with just a few lonely stalls left. There are fewer than 20 pubs when once there were over 150.

And still I feel a certain nostalgia for Burton. Or maybe it’s more like a romanticized yearning for a past which was knocked down decades before I first visited the town. I walk by the old boozers, the boarded-up shops, and all around me are buildings and sites which were once something else, vestiges of the era when Burton thrived. It’s that ghostly something else which continues to fascinate me.

“The town was built on beer,” says Ian Webster, a Burton beer historian who’s written several books about the town. “The municipal buildings, churches, houses, they were built by the breweries.” The blueprint layout of the town comes from when the breweries were rapidly expanding, and everything else had to fit in around them. On a walk together, Webster helps me to orient myself in the town, and points out everything important that remains as well as what no longer exists.

We stroll down the High Street, where William Bass opened his brewery in 1777 on an unpaved road with no sewers, once equipped with stepping-stones to allow people to cross. Bass’ townhouse is still there, behind a rusted iron gate, the front steps worn with years of use, but years of disuse mean weeds are growing up through the cracks in the concrete. It’s a sad sign of how the past—and a really important, ground-zero part of it—is being ignored.

Bass’ neighbours were Worthington and Allsopp. The original Allsopp brewery land is where the Molson Coors head office is now situated. Beside it is open green space, which used to be where Thomas Salt & Co. and the Burton Brewery Company stood. One of the original water wells is still there, next to the leisure center.

One important site survived demolition: the old Bass water tower, built in 1866. It’s next to the Washlands, which was at the rear of all the breweries, a dense wall of factories and chimneys backing onto the River Trent. Today, it’s a pleasant green space where children play and people jog. It’s hard to lament that change.

The Bass water tower is opposite the library, which used to be Worthington’s maltings. A railway line ran from there past the Worthington Brewery and the brewery tap, which is now a pub called The Crossing. The railway line became a road, which passes by Home Bargains and roast chicken chain Nando’s. On the right is the retail complex which was Bass’ Middle Yard. In 1960 it stored 25,000 casks of Ale. Now it’s a parking lot for hundreds of cars.

Opposite KFC and the retail park is the vast Molson Coors brewery and depot, with banks of tall steel tanks. That’s next to the National Brewery Centre, home to a rich archive of Burton beer memorabilia, including a model of the town in the late 19th century, steam engines, a heritage brewery, and recreations of old pubs. It’s the best place to begin to understand Burton when it was Beer Town. Outside is an old Burton Union System, a handsome, aging relic in the shadow of the charmless vessels which replaced it.

Elsewhere, the Everards Brewery and Truman Brewery are now housing estates. The old Charrington Brewery is a budget sportswear store. Sainsbury’s supermarket is on Bass’ land. The shopping center is on Worthington Brewery’s land, and called Cooper’s Square—there’s a statue of a Burton cooper inside, a reminder of how important that trade was to the town.

The one significant old brewing site that remains in the center of town covers much of the old Bass, Ind Coope, and Allsopp breweries. It’s still one of Britain’s biggest breweries. Many of the old buildings, however, are unused, or no longer part of the brewery, like the impressive Allsopp building opposite the train station, which is now empty office space.

All around are silver fermenters, and through those pass some one billion pints a year, much of it Carling, Britain’s biggest-selling on-trade beer. And yet with all this brewing, I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to smell the sweet, hoppy wort aroma floating through the air.

‘A REALLY HEARTY DRINKING CULTURE’

At 70 years old, Steve Topliss continues to brew. His swansong to Burton beer is at The Roebuck pub in Draycott in the Clay, eight miles outside of Burton. His IPA is the kind of beer which made Burton famous: It’s 5% ABV, all fudgy malt and soft-bodied, with upfront sweetness drying down into a lasting, peppery bitterness, laced with marmalade-like English hops. Soon Topliss will pass the brewing down to his son-in-law.

There are other breweries around town making classic Burton Ales, like the 40-year-old Burton Bridge Brewery and the Tower Brewery, whose Imperial IPA is a local favorite. There’s also Burton Town Brewery, Gates Brewery, and Marston’s, whose Pedigree Ale is still made using the Burton Union System, and whose barrels are still maintained by a cooper, the last remaining in town.

Marston’s also brews the cask-only Draught Bass, and drinking a pint is still an iconic beer experience in Burton (even if the brand is now owned by AB InBev).

“We should be shouting from the rooftops about Burton-on-Trent. We should be having people coming in by the train-load to come and visit the town, and visit the breweries, and visit the National Brewery Centre. It’s got such a diverse selection of pubs which are built on very traditional values that go hand-in-hand with Burton: good beer, good company, well-run establishments, which are typically well-maintained.”

“If you’re going to drink good Bass, there’s no better place to drink it than Burton because if it’s not up to standard, people will tell you about it,” says Carl Stout, who, along with his wife Nicky, owns The Devonshire Arms, once the Ind Coope brewery tap. “There’s a really hearty drinking culture in Burton. Burton’s lost a lot of things, but it doesn’t seem to have lost its heart [and] the quality of the beer has to be absolutely spot-on.”

A pint of Bass. It’s such a simple bar call, and yet it comes with its great weight of history as the once-best-selling Ale in the world. I still feel excited when I order one.

The Draught Bass at The Devonshire is the best I’ve had in town. It’s served through a sparkler—a nozzle on the tap—to give it a thick, creamy foam. The distinctive color glows like a shiny penny. It has a Burton Ale’s malt richness and initial sweetness while being light and bitter, with a fruity yeast character that lifts it. Like all the world’s classic beers, it’s the most normal beer you can drink here, and yet it’s also the most important, the most loved and argued over; it’s a pint that’s always familiar and yet always a bit different, always engaging, forever reflecting some key element of the town. 

“We should be shouting from the rooftops about Burton-on-Trent,” says Stout. “We should be having people coming in by the train-load to come and visit the town, and visit the breweries, and visit the National Brewery Centre.” It’s the pubs which he holds in the highest regard: “It’s got such a diverse selection of pubs which are built on very traditional values that go hand-in-hand with Burton: good beer, good company, well-run establishments, which are typically well-maintained.” 

Around the corner from The Devonshire Arms is The Coopers Tavern, probably the most famous pub in Burton. “There’s history on every wall in here,” says Mandy Addis, the pub’s landlady. There’s history in every wall, too: It started out as the Bass brewer’s house before being used to store malt and then Imperial Stout. Bass’ coopers used to drink here, and it’s been a pub since 1858. It’s small, cozy, welcoming, and the distinctive feature is the taproom at the back, where four casks of Ale—always including Draught Bass—are lined up and poured via gravity instead of a handpull.

“People come from everywhere to drink Bass,” says Addis. “I’m in the middle of Burton, the brewery capital that was. It’s a proper drinkers’ pub, a talkers’ pub,” where you sit close to others and speak with them. It’s a pub where many stories have been shared over the decades. “If these walls could talk,” she says, her voice trailing off. 

I’M FROM BURTON-ON-TRENT

It was meeting Emma and regularly visiting Burton which gave me a new appreciation for the town, and a desire to know more about it, perhaps because I love beer and its place in social history, or perhaps as a connection to Emma and her family.

One of Emma’s grandfathers, as well as her great uncle, worked as plumbers at Truman’s. The other grandfather worked in the bottling hall for Ind Coope. Emma’s parents remember the employment options out of school as being a choice between making beer, pies, slippers, or biscuits. But neither ended up in the factories when they started their careers in the 1970s: Her dad first joined the navy and then the Burton fire service, and her mum the National Health Service. They were the first generation since the mid 1800s who were born in Burton and didn’t work in a brewery.

Emma’s grandfathers died before she was born, and she didn’t grow up with the breweries as any part of her life. “It’s been around me my whole life. Maybe it was so visible that I didn’t notice it,” she says. “The brewery is just these big buildings in the town you pass on the way to the shops. I don’t think I ever put together that Cooper’s Square meant the coopers.” It was just a place, a name; it meant nothing until it meant something. 

Maybe that’s the same for anyone in their hometown. I grew up in Chatham, Kent, a major naval port. We used to hang out at the dockyard and dockside, but I didn’t make the association with its history until I’d moved away from the town. Emma asked her friends what they remember growing up, and one said she just assumed every town had a brewery in the middle.

Emma and her friends didn’t drink beer, or go to the old pubs. “No way would I go in them. I’d feel like an outsider going in,” she says. “At 18 we weren’t going out to drink pints of brown beer like Bass. We had fluorescent-blue alcopops.” This is a cultural change that happened all across the country—I drank blue alcopops before I drank brown pints of Ale—but then most towns don’t have the unique legacy of Burton.

While Emma has known Burton for her whole life, she barely had a conscious awareness of beer growing up. “Burton’s this forgotten little town,” she says, meaning it’s neglected its own heritage. Unless something radical happens, the next generation, the kids growing up there now, will know even less about it or its storied history.

THE CENTER OF BREWING

The stories I’ve heard from the people who knew Burton have been familiar, and while I don’t recognize their content, I know their tone and affection: They are from the pub. They are stories repeated whenever old friends meet. They combine real life and the apocryphal, tales elevated—exaggerated—by pints of Ale, taking on new significance through the passing of time. That’s how the spirit, camaraderie, and old pride of Burton remain.

Those first-hand stories will soon disappear, and the warm memories will be replaced by cold facts: the biggest brewery, millions of barrels, India Pale Ale, Bass. Whenever someone repeats the words “IPA came from Burton,” it revives the narrative of the town, but there’s such a great distance from that myth to the reality that “Burton” is becoming a fictionalized idea.   

Steve Wellington brewed in Burton for almost 50 years, and I wonder how he reflects on his career. “I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed it so incredibly much. It’s been absolutely fabulous, and I wish I could exude that into other people in some way or other.” Wellington and all the others I spoke to—including many who didn’t even make it into this article—shared the same sentiment, and a longing to have others appreciate it the way they do.

“This is a world-famous town of brewing, so for god’s sake, try to think of things you can do that will make people interested in coming to Burton,” he says. “We have something very, very important and unique. It’s the center of the brewing industry in the United Kingdom. It’s famous all over the world. And we don’t say that.”

Words by Mark Dredge
Illustrations by Colette Holston

It’s still snowy and chilly in February for most of the country so we’re enjoying Dunkles Weissbier and Weizenbock styles, with their darker malt flavors and amped up alcohol. And, with warmer weather on the way (we hope…it is​ ​coming right?), sitting in an outdoor beer garden with a half-liter of Weissbier or crushing a tart Berliner Weisse or Gose in the hammock are just some of the things we’re looking forward to.

The OG Hazy Beer – With One Exception

With its fluffy white head, full body, light flavor, and signature haze, wheat is an ingredient that has been a part of beer since the beginning. Wheat was a staple of early civilizations and an important reason why humans progressed from a hunter/gatherer to an agrarian society. But wheat isn’t that great for brewing beer with. It’s sticky, glutenous, and high in proteins. This makes it really good for baking bread, but that stickiness can cause problems when trying to drain the wort away from the grains, especially since there is no husk to provide a natural filter like there is in barley. So normally, you will see wheat used as merely a percentage of the total grain bill needed to make beer.

The exception is Kristallweizen (“Crystal Wheat”) is simply a filtered Weissbier. The suspended yeast is filtered, leaving the beer much less hazy and nearly clear. Although Kristallweizens have been filtered, for the most part they maintain the typical flavor profile of traditional Weissbier. These are not commonly seen in America, as the filtering makes them less shelf-stable.

Wheat Beer For Every Season

Wheat beers are available in “dark and boozy” or “light and refreshing”.

Dunkelweizen (German for “dark wheat”) is the dark wheat beer of Bavaria. Like its lighter colored cousin, Weissbier, this beer is traditionally comprised of 50% wheat and 50% malted barley, and it is fermented with specialized Weissbier yeasts. The addition of Munich and/or Vienna malts is what distinguishes Dunkelweizens from Weissbiers. Aromas of caramel, bread crust, and rich malt complements the clove, bubblegum, banana, and vanilla character added by the yeast. Dunkelweizens have almost no hop presence and the beer is rich and malty, but not roasty like a Porter or Stout. Dunkelweizens are usually between 4.3% and 5.6% ABV.

Weizenbocks are strong wheat beers usually made with 60%-70% wheat and fermented with specialized Weissbier yeasts. Aromas of dark fruit, caramel, bread crust, and rich malt complements the clove, bubblegum, banana, and vanilla character added by the yeast. Weizenbocks have almost no hop presence, and the beer is rich and malty but not roasty like a Porter or Stout. Weizenbocks are usually between 6.5% and 8.0% ABV.

As Garrett Oliver writes in his book, ​The Brewmaster’s Table​, “The proteins in the wheat form an intractable haze, giving the beer a particular glow that gave rise to the term “white beer” (Oliver, 81). Unsurprisingly, this decree does not apply to the rest of the world, so there are many interpretations of this classic style. Germans utilize the term “Weissbier,” while people outside of Germany use the term, “Hefeweizen,” which literally means “yeast wheat” in German.

 

Weissbier is the classic wheat beer of Bavaria and one of Germany’s greatest and most distinctive beer styles. It’s traditionally comprised of 50% wheat and 50% malted barley and fermented with specialized Weissbier yeasts. Aromas of clove, bubblegum, banana, and vanilla characterize Weissbiers. This beer has almost no hop presence and is usually between 4.3% and 5.6% ABV.

Gose (pronounced “goh-zuh”) and Berliner Weisse have both seen recent revivals in the U.S. craft brewing scene. While both are German Wheat Ales that have been soured by Lactobacillus, they each have their own unique characteristics. Gose, which gets its name from the town in which it was first created, Goslar – is brewed with salt and coriander. Those flavors are subtle, and match the level of sourness in this highly refreshing beer.

 

Berliner Weisse expresses more acidity, but is even lower in alcohol (traditionally between 2.8% and 3.8% ABV) than Gose (4.2% to 4.8%). When served in bars and restaurants, Berliner Weisse is often served “mit schuss,”; literally “with a shot” of woodruff or raspberry syrup. American brewers have taken to short-cutting this step by making fruited variants in the brewery.

Why do we especially love a nice wheat beer on a warm day? Because these are darn refreshing beers! In the case of German wheat beers, spritzy carbonation and banana-like fruit esters are combined with a spicy kick from peppery phenols often reminiscent of clove. The fruit flavors, high carbonation, full body, and relatively mild ABV of 5.0% or so, make these beers delightful summer sippers. The German sour wheat styles use lactobacillus (for souring) and a hint of sea salt and coriander in the case of Gose.

Fruit Or No Fruit?!

The eternal debate on whether it’s okay to garnish a wheat beer with a slice of lemon or orange rages on! In Germany, it’s generally frowned upon though there is evidence from the 19th century of lemon use at Munich’s Hofbrauhaus. Scientifically, the oils from the citrus will diminish the pillow-​like head. But, there’s something to be said for how a slice of citrus really brings out those tropical fruit flavors of the beer and it certainly makes for a nice presentation. Most Beer Geeks will shun it, but there’s no right or wrong answer. Do what feels right!