Phil Cook

I'm sure a lot of it is fans grabbing relics to keep. And some will be speculating on flipping things later. It'll be interesting to try and see how much of it winds up on eBay next week. Someone's got a $500 bid in on twenty-two boxes of Rogue-branded tap handles made out of skateboard trucks.

The mash paddle (Lot #207, the one mounted on the wall with the commemorative plaque) is up to $110 USD.

Current bid on Lot #187 — Neon "Rogue" sign *works intermittently — $240 USD

News, nuggets and longreads 7 March 2026: The Lonely Londoners Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got pub influencers, brewery sales and buzzers. We usually start these round-ups with an item or two of beer...

GOOD MORNING! Here's the latest edition of news, nuggets and longreads, with a bit on BrewDog, and several links that connect with and echo each other in pleasing ways on influencers and gentrification. 🍻🍺

boakandbailey.com/2026/03/news...

(Clearly some part of my brain was trying to distract me from all the other thoughts of the inexorability of endings.)

Actual auction items:

12 pallets clear glass bottles
11 high top chairs
10 custom display racks
9 boxes of body boards
8 assorted tables
7 assorted aseptic purees
6 assorted crab pots
5 WO-OD BARRELS
4 boxes of plastic cups
3 life rings
2 pallet jacks
and a Rogue neon sign (works intermittently)

Des de Moor obituary Other lives: Cabaret club entrepreneur, singer and performer who also wrote extensively about real ale

Obituary for Des de Moor now online at the Guardian

www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/m...

The "unknown capacity fermentation tanks" in the Rogue catalogue made me wonder why on Earth the liquidator doesn't engage former staff members to do even a basic sanity-check and quick pass over organising things.

Going Rogue, going… gone This weekend, the earlthy remains of Rogue Ales (1988-2025) will be auctioned off, having been divvied up into nearly a thousand occasionally baffling lots. Like a few other breweries, my experienc…

New post up on Beer Diary — a look through the occasionally grim and sometimes baffling catalogue of the upcoming Rogue Ales liquidation auction inspired some thoughts on the precarious cultural history of "craft beer" in volatile times.

So much will be said about all this in the coming days, but IMO the biggest takeaway is that James Watt and Martin Dickie each pocketed more than the price BrewDog was eventually sold for, while 500 hardworking staff are now out of a job & 220k equity punks don't get a dime.

Absolute charlatans.

Results from our State of IPA Survey are here The first round of results are in from our State of IPA survey. With over 1,000 responses so far, this is what we are hearing from the craft beer consumer.

I've been running an IPA survey for the last few weeks. Here are the results based on the first 1,000-ish responses. Interesting to see what people think about craft beer's most popular style these days. What they do/don't like, what they want, etc. washingtonbeerblog.com/results-from...

4-panel comic. (1) [Person with white hat talking to another person.] PERSON 1 with white hat: As Sherlock Holmes said, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (2) PERSON 2: What about the possibility that you forgot to eliminate a possibility? Or that you eliminated one incorrectly? Both of those remain, too. (3) PERSON 1: You’re being pedantic. It’s just a general rule for deduction. PERSON 2: But it’s a *bad rule*. (4) PERSON 2: How often have you thought, “I can’t find this thing, and I’ve searched the whole house. The only place I haven’t looked is the car, so it *must* be there.” PERSON 2: ...And then it’s never in the car. PERSON 1: *It’s never in the car!*

Eliminating the Impossible

xkcd.com/3210/

there's a Lego Batman game coming so they re-created the Jack Nicholson Joker scene in the museum with Prince's Partyman... let's see how they did

David Bailey's Just Beer Things #30 — The Best Beer — Pellicle *** We’re able to support contributors like David thanks to the support of our Patreon subscribers. If you enjoy the work we publish on Pellicle, week in, week out, then consider joining them by ...

Oh what a pure and beautiful joy the best beer is. Tag yourself. We are ALL OF THEM. @bathedailey

www.pelliclemag.com/home/2026/2/...

Deep Inside My Heart — Hopleaf, Chicago’s Beer Bar — Pellicle 33 years after it stopped airing, Cheers still embodies the ideal of the neighbourhood bar for many Americans. The place where everybody knows your name has become such a shorthand for this imagin...

*Urge to visit Chicago intensifies*

@davidnilsenbeer.bsky.social takes us to the warm, comforting banquets of Hopleaf for a much appreciated dose of beer-related escapism.

Deep Inside My Heart — Hopleaf, Chicago’s Beer Bar — Pellicle share.google/Fu0ifJYuLbl8...

Crafty Crawls: Melbourne's Metro Tunnel Part II Like the sun when Superman flies around the world really fast, in Part II of our Melbourne Metro Tunnel Crawl, we’re heading from west to east. If you missed the first instalment, you’ll find it here,...

Last week, we travelled from Parkville to West Footscray on Melbourne's new Metro Tunnel to take in the best beer venues by the stations.

Now we head east, via State Library, Town Hall and Anzac to explore the craft beer bars, pubs and breweries on the Cranbourne and East Pakenham line.

Crafty Crawls: Melbourne's Metro Tunnel Part 1 There’s never been a better time to be a craft beer gunzel in Melbourne. The Metro Tunnel is now fully operational and with it, there’s a new way to explore the city’s craft beer haunts via train. Sur...

Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel has been fully operational since the start of this month and, while it might not have been designed with this in mind, it’s made visiting some of the city’s top beer haunts easier than ever.

Join us for Part 1 of a new Crafty Crawl as we go from Parkville to Kingsville.

Absolutely adore this *kind* of website, as well as this one specifically. I found the ones I associate most with my siblings (the yellow water-resistant Sanyo WR-66 and the slightly-fancier MGR-908 with the digital tuner) pretty quickly. Weirdly can't recall my own as readily. Amazing gadgets.

The pub as an outpost of home Travelling for work recently I found myself profoundly grateful for the existence of the pub – somewhere not my lonely hotel room, not the office, an outpost of home. My job burns a lot of social ener...

BLOG POST: Ray writes about feeling the benefit of the homeliness of the pub when you're away from home. 🍺🍻

boakandbailey.com/2026/02/the-...

Math gets well beyond me when you try to do addition or multiplication with already-infinite numbers.

We've had a lot of this lately in New Zealand and Australia; breweries going through administration or liquidation only to wind up back in the hands of the people that steered them into the ditch.

If it's in the wider interest that the company keeps going, let someone — anyone! — else run it.

With rumors of a possible 'rescue' of Brewdog by its founder, figurehead, and fount of fiasco James Watt — I just don't think it's too radical to say we shouldn't allow ex-directors to re-take control of failed companies.

As the beer-buyer for a liquor store, I won't stock anything with "AI" labels. It's a bit of a bummer turning down some beers that I know are great, but they're not worth it. Gotta draw a line — literally and figuratively I guess.

Love a non-Reinheitsgebot-compliant puzzle. (That f-word was a bit of an outlier and let-down, though!)

The 17 Things That Changed Beer in the Past Two Decades — Beervana In the first celebratory post of my 20 years blogging, I offer a list of the 17 most transformational developments in beer in the past two decades. Which items made the list: Glitter beer? Brut IPA? T...

In the first celebratory post of my 20 years blogging, I offer a list of the 17 most transformational developments in beer in the past two decades. Which items made the list: Glitter beer? Brut IPA? The vortex bottle? I offer the definitive answers.

Well, I'm not sure it's worth trying to put preferences aside in a survey about preferences, for starters.

But in any case, I disagree. Appearance, flavour, and texture are related, sure, but I don't think there's a necessary connection like you're suggesting.

Survey question asks: "Do you appreciate bitterness in your IPA? Considering most IPAs you encounter these days..." Options are: "I wish they were more bitter. A lot more bitter." "I wish they were more bitter, within reason. Balanced." "I think IPAs these days are perfectly bitter." "Too many are already too bitter. I do not want my IPA to have any bitterness." And "I don't understand the question or I have no opinion." I've selected the final statement.

I just like different things at different times and don't have any weird hangups about how beer "should" be! So this one tripped me up, too.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the survey, I should stress; I'm curious to see how it's answered by folks who are less literal and prone to overthinking.

I didn't notice the "select four" part of this question until after I'd happily ticked everything but the weird textural one.

The State of IPA in 2026 This survey is for people who drinking IPA, whether they drink it often or occasionally. IT IS NOT for IPA haters. If your opinion is hardcore anti-IPA, it's not for you. Please only take the quiz o...

Resharing this. The survey is still live. Help me find out what people want from an IPA in 2026. Simple, quick survey about your thoughts on the State of IPA. I'll follow up with a story about the results. forms.gle/RpxhtUqM6bhH...

Beautiful stuff. As a lifelong bartender myself, a lot of this is very familiar, even as the details differ. (I also always wondered about teaching, though.)

I remember reading 'Bullshit Jobs' and loving it, but realising I'd basically never worked one — but so, so many of my regulars clearly did.