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25.01.2022 The Queen's Arms [aka Whitmore Hotel]: 1963 extension demolished to be replaced by Sparkke brewpub. 0riginal and 1912 structures seem to be substantially retained. (https://www.adelaidenow.com.au//b3613d42d02ee7efa9448c9fa1) What a great way to preserve South Australian pub heritage! (Just a pity about the proposed name!)

24.01.2022 Another great book to read between sips: John Holl's "Drink Beer, Think Beer" (http://johnholl.com/books/) Engaging and easy-reading, audacious in the range of topics it covers (from ingredients, to glassware and the gender issues in breweries and everything in-between, mostly the beer) and full of great insights such as this: "...we need more barleywines, four-ingredient pale ales, stouts without adjunct ingredients and tripels with traditional yeasts. We need them because t...hey are the foundation of beer and we need a strong base so that when experimentation happens, it builds upon rather than replaces the basics." My only major criticism is that it's very US-centric, almost exclusively so and could have done with maybe a separate chapter on the globalisation of the brewing/distribution industries. (Must check on the implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, TPP-11, on Australian-registered brewing businesses.) Anyway, highly recommended. Available on iBooks, Amazon and, presumably, in a good book store near you. See more

24.01.2022 The restoration of the north-eastern (Payenham Road) wall of The Maid and Magpie at Stepney moves ahead. Understand that the builders are numbering the bricks and stone blocks so that they can be re-layed as in the original wall. Due to reopen in November.

19.01.2022 Climate change and beer and it isn't good news A recent study on the likely effects of extreme weather events linked to carbon dioxide emissions (more frequent and severe droughts and heat waves) predicts that barley production will decrease between 3% and 17% over the twenty-first century. (Wei Xie et al, "Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat", Nature Plants, 15 October 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0263-1 [requires account])... According to the modelling used in this study, this will lead, in the best case scenario, to a 4% decrease in beer production/consumption and a 15% increase in price. The worst case scenario would see a 16% decrease in global beer consumption following extreme events and, on average, beer prices would double. And then there is hop production... Of course and especially in the worst case climate change/emissions scenario, the decrease in beer production will be the least of our problems.

17.01.2022 As many South Australian pubs are rebuilding after CoVid, it's perhaps timely to post a couple of previously unpublished photographs of additions to The Old Colonist Inn (now 'The Colonist' in Norwood) in about 1911. The pix were taken by J G Otto Tepper, an amazing polymath and amateur photographer using something like an early Box Brownie camera. For more, see the Liquid History website: http://www.liquidhistory.com.au

16.01.2022 The Government closed the pubs just over a month ago, we've lost at least the King's Head, possibly more to come, and many pub staff everywhere have probably lost their jobs. If you're wondering what happened to South Australian pubs during the so-called "Spanish 'Flu", 1918-1920, you might find some answers here: http://www.liquidhistory.com.au

15.01.2022 Save the Ed Castle! Rumours about the imminent demolition of the Edinburgh Castle Hotel appear to be a bit premature. Certainly it's up for sale, the license has been suspended and its facade only is 'protected' by local heritage listing (not that that means much), but the bulldozers have not yet moved in...so there's hope that someone can reinvent this grand old pub as a pub. And the Ed Castle is certainly worth reinventing: the pub boasts the longest continuous licence in S...outh Australia (181 years), it enjoys the biggest genuine beer garden with real trees in the CBD (probably a negative for any developer - too many uneconomic square metres) and it's catchment borders the booming north-west of Adelaide. So another Adelaide pub to keep an eye on - the third in as many weeks. And a reminder that, to my mind, the best way to protect our pubs is to use them, regularly and preferably frequently.

15.01.2022 How to save a heritage pub #1: convert it to a brewpub. The new and improved Whitmore Hotel (Whitmore Square, Adelaide) takes shape...slowly. The Whitmore and a few other similar 'developments' show that old pubs don't have to fall into disrepair and be demolished - or converted into a hospital - it just takes a bit of imagination.

11.01.2022 As often happens, a chance meeting in the front bar of the Austral Hotel in Rundle Street, Adelaide, with its owner led to a discussion about the early history of the pub. And it prompted some research on the beginnings of Cohen's Family Hotel as the Austral was known from 1880 to about 1885. This research is introduced on the Liquid History web site (www.liquidhistory.com.au). More importantly, I've also compiled a 'scrapbook' on Cohen's Family Hotel, "The Austral - the beginnings" which you can download freely here: http://www.liquidhistory.com.au//TheAustralHotel-thebeginn

10.01.2022 The Edinburgh Castle Hotel has been nominated for listing on the South Australian State Heritage Register, primarily on the grounds that it is South Australia’s first and therefore oldest continuously licensed pub. (https://www.environment.sa.gov.au//heritage-register-the-e) My recent research (http://www.liquidhistory.com.au) suggests that this is most likely not the case. The Edinburgh Castle and its supposed predecessor, Guthrie’s Hotel, were separate enterprises, in s...eparate buildings, on different allotments and, critically, licensed separately. There are many good reasons to preserve the Edinburgh Castle, especially as a working pub, and, I believe, there are some compelling reasons for its inclusion on the State Heritage Register. For example, the Ed Castle boasts one of the few, if not the only, genuine beer garden with a genuine shady tree in the City of Adelaide - certainly a rare, uncommon or endangered quality of cultural significance. However its assumed historical significance as the first pub is not, I believe, one of those reasons. But I’m happy to be proven wrong.

07.01.2022 For those who might be interested, I’ve just posted Searching for C. J. Dennis' pubs in Adelaide, an almost serious attempt to identify the pubs in Adelaide in which Australia’s Larrikin Laureate might have enjoyed a drink or two or three... We’ve found one definite Dennis pub - you’ll have to read the post - a handful of possibles and as many as 24 maybes; sadly only a few survive. It’s all very speculative but, I hope, provides an entertaining insight into Adelaide pubs at the turn of the twentieth century as well into the poet who gave us The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. http://www.liquidhistory.com.au

07.01.2022 The South Australian State Budget, 2018-19 (https://www.statebudget.sa.gov.au/#Budget_Papers) doesn’t include much useful information on the proposal for a new Women and Children’s Hospital on or near The Newmarket site. It does, however, allocate $5.3M over 4 years to plan and design a new Women’s and Children’s Hospital. A taskforce will develop a fully costed project plan for the government’s consideration The first listed priority for the government’s Women and Childr...en’s Health Network sub-program for 2018-19 defines this a bit further, to develop a fully costed plan to build the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital co-located with the Royal Adelaide Hospital, presumably employing the taskforce that was established in 2017-18. As we might expect in high-level documents like the State Budget Papers, there’s no detail on precisely who will be developing the plan and design, what the process might be and whether there will be opportunities for genuine consultation, especially about the fate of The Newmarket. However, even the agency statements from neither the Department for Health and Wellbeing nor the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, lack details on the funding and timing of the taskforce for such a high profile project. On the other hand, the Budget Papers do reveal that the upgrade to the existing Women and Children’s Hospital site - mostly to ensure the preservation of services - will cost about $64M and the project should be completed by June 2014. Which means that we might have to remain vigilant for the next six years!

07.01.2022 13000-year old pubs? Research published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports suggests that the semi-sedentary Natufian people of the Middle East brewed a form of beer from malted grains about 13,000 years ago. [https://www.sciencedirect.com//arti/pii/S2352409X18303468; access restricted] ... Which means, of course, that there must have been the equivalent of pubs for about the same length of time. So much more research to do!