Good reading for National Beer Day (04.07.25)

And now this . . .

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I’d say the big three things are: Keep the staff, as long as they’re good people and they’ve been there that long—they probably really love the bar and that’s the hardest thing to get staff members to do. Everybody that works for us [at Blue Lagoon] worked for the bar beforehand, we didn’t lose anybody. Be price sensitive—if you’re gonna take over a bar like this and you know you’re gonna bring new people in, use that money to keep the prices lower for the people who have been there for so long. And really try and focus on the origins of the bar and make the bar feel like it’s from that period.”

                    — Bobby Heugel
From How to Save a Dive Bar — Without Ruining It (Heugel prefers the term neighborhood bar)

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LEAD OF THE WEEK

In 1744, The Mermaid Inn was teeming with open secrets. Bands of rowdy, weather-beaten, sea-faring men would tumble in late at night, rest their pistols on the table, and wait for their tankards to be filled to the brim. Risk-averse regulars would swiftly filter out, wending their way home down cobbled streets while the notorious new arrivals settled in for the long haul.

There were no last orders for this lot—the Hawkhurst Gang was untouchable. They’d bent the town of Rye to their will through fear and force, becoming one of England’s most notorious ring of smugglers. Even if only a fraction of the stories about Arthur Gray and his butchers were true, that was enough to keep most people at arm’s length.

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A Colorado coconut collaboration

Mash tun at Our Mutual Friend Brewing in Denver, full of coconut

Jan Chodkowski from Our Mutual Friend and Cheluna brewmaster Tomas Barrios on the brewdeck at OMFThere will be 140 beer stories April 19 at Colorado’s Collaboration Fest. This is one of them. (In fact, a few others will follow, but sometimes a Naked City reference is hard to resist.)

Sweet, milky, tropical aromas of coconut came in waves last Friday (March 28) in the Our Mutual Friend brewhouse. There was a spike when OMF head brewer Jan Chodkowski added coconut flakes to the mash, and another when the vorlauf began, recirculating the wort. Of course, Chodkowski said, not much of that aroma would survive fermentation.

(That’s Chodkowski, in back, and Cheluna brewmaster Tomas Barrios on the OMF brewdeck at the right.)

Nonetheless, expect the collaboration between OMF and Cheluna Brewing poured at CollabFest to smell and taste tropical after more coconut flavoring is added post fermentation. Hops from Washington’s Yakima Valley (Azacca), New Zealand’s Nelson region (Nectaron), and Australia (Vic Secret) will provide passionfruit, pineapple and mango character.

Chodkowski’s three-year-old son gave the beer its name, Monkey Steps. At its heart, the beer is a hazy IPA, the haze coming from wheat, flaked oats, hops, and (of course) coconut. This is the second coconut collaboration between Cheluna and OMF. Last year, the breweries collaborated on another coconut beer, Cabo Lime Coconut Sour, but that was not for CollabFest.

More than 180 breweries collaborated to brew 140 beers for the festival, which is at the Westin Westminster (full details here, including ticket information). This was my “best beer festival” in 2024. Some of the collaborations were what you would expect — such as a West Coast IPA from hop specialists Comrade Brewing and New Mexico’s LaCumbre, one of 31 out-of-state breweries involved — and others a bit different.

There is, after all, a category labeled “weird.” For instance, Wild Provisions and Great Divide combined to make a whiskey barrel aged tmavé (Czech dark lager) called TmavYeti. It is a blend Yeti Imperial Stout and a Wild Provisions Tmavé and will be served as a milk pour (think “dark chocolate, coffee, foam”). And then there is Smooth Crimini-Ale from Old 121 and Lady Justice. It is a Mushroom West Coast IPA made with Amarillo and Columbus hops as well as Crimini and Porcini Mushrooms.

Many might call Cheluna’s collaboration with Oaxaca Brewing, a brewpub in Oaxaca, Mexico, weird. Red Tepache Sour is a beer version of tepache, a fermented pineapple drink that originated in pre-Columbian Mexico. Drinkers who visited Dos Luces on Broadway before it closed will remember the Pineapple Ginger Tepache, which was made with blue corn.

Cheluna founder Javier Perez calls the Cheluna-Oaxaca iteration the “idea of tepache,” with tartness playing against spices. “(Tepache) is just a really old, super old, wild fermentation drink,” he said. “And it’s essentially when you buy a pineapple and you chop off the rind, you throw the rind in a clay pot, maybe a few chunks of pineapple with it, but mostly it’s the rind, pack it down in there, throw in some cinnamon and cloves, and just let it sit. And it ferments just with the yeast on the rind.”

Cheluna and Oaxaca used packaged yeast, but still a pretty good story, right? Like the Naked City, CollabFest will have plenty more of them.

3.31.25 beer links: Fun and unfun reading; 1990 prices

We’ve been in the Midwest the last few days, doing some of our favorite Midwest things, including a visit today to Scratch Brewing.

I recommend you spend a little time with the roundup of Session #145 contributions. And otherwise, pardon the brevity.

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Tom McCormick, who operated McCormick Beverage Co. from 1984-1994, posted this price list from 1990 on Facebook. I’d include a link but it appears that is not shareable.

Craft beer distributor's price list from 1990

$18.25 for a case (24 bottles) of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale seems like quite a deal. Except McCormick was a distributor, and this was 1990. These were the prices that retailers paid. Consumers paid more.

Next, take inflation into account. That’s $44.55 in 2025 dollars. And in these parts a consumer can by a 12-pack for SNPA for $19.95, obviously less than $22.28 (which, remember, is the price before markup). Obviously, beer has not kept up with inflation. That is kind of good for drinkers. For brewers, not so much.

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NEWSWORTHY (AND DISAPPOINTING)

Sapporo-Stone Brewing Spent Over $100K Busting Its Union. There’s a lot to absorb here. One important takeaway is that “money spent to bust a union is money well spent,” at least if the business is focused on maximizing profits.

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The Session #145: What happens when breweries meet via instagram?

The Session logoWelcome to The Session #145. The topic is “Critique not Criticism.” Expect a roundup with links to other contributions Monday.

What happens when the founder of an internationally known brewery reaches out to a small Colorado brewery, writes that he’ll be in the neighborhood and suggests he’d like to see that brewery’s kit?

The short answer is Mad Colors, the beer to be “critiqued” here, eventually.

But there are questions to consider along the way, such as would this beer even have existed were it not for Instagram? Or when the brewer from Sweden arrives in town do you show him the laundry room where you own the brewing equipment or the place where the beers you sell are made? And how fresh do you really want your hazy IPA?

The cast in this story includes Omnipollo from Stockholm, Sweden, New Image Brewing in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, Lyric Brewing, and Garrett Oliver.

In 2017, Oliver said New England IPA (NEIPA) was the first beer style based around Instagram culture and based around social media. He also called it a fad, and told The Morning Advertiser, “(NEIPA) can be really tasty when it is well made, but it can’t even sit on a shelf for two weeks. It has no shelf life to it at all.”

Oliver has been right many more times in his life than he has been wrong, but in this case he was wrong about the shelf life of the style (still going strong) and the beers themselves (although not always, in the case of the latter).

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3.24.25 beer links: Crossword puzzles, chilling words & Magic Hat #9

Dick Mac's pub in Dingle, Ireland

The Smithsonian has a story about the Irish Pub Company (link below). We visited Fado, the first pub it built, in Atlanta not long after it opened in 1996, and we were not surprised last September to see that not all pubs in Ireland look like that. Witness Dick Mac’s in Dingle.

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This link is not beer related, but it seems appropriate because the topic Friday for The Session #145 is “Critique, not Criticism.” Rolling Stone TV critic saw all of Season Two of Severance before the first of us saw the first episode and raved about it. After it concluded last week, he expressed reservations.

“Then a strange thing happened: as I began writing recaps of each episode, particularly in the season’s second half, I found myself dwelling far more on those hiccups than on the exciting/surprising/funny/distinct parts I’d so highly praised in early January. It got to the point where, in recent weeks, I was wondering exactly why I had been so positive in the first place. A little of this is an occupational hazard of doing weekly recaps, where the more you dig into a series, the harder it is to ignore flaws that may have whizzed by on initial viewing.”

In his post announcing Friday’s topic, Matt Curtis wrote, “When it comes to restaurant, wine, or whisky writing there is an expectation for the writer to levy fair criticism because it’s already established that this is the done thing.” The same is true of movies, TV, theater, books, brands of cereal, and so on. And the more time a critic spends with what is being reviewed the easier it is to spot flaws. Remember New Rule #3, but don’t overlook the total experience. At least that will be my goal Friday.

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

When I walk into a near-empty Persevere on a drizzly Leith weekday, its vastness swallows me up like a whale.

Moments later, when I gingerly take my pint of Newbarns Pale Ale to the table and sit in one of the half-boothed banquettes, a feeling of tranquility comes over me. My initial fear of being gulped up by a sea monster, like Ahab or Pinocchio, abates. Instead it feels like I’m resting in a Victorian barque’s cabin, navigating the doldrums.

I glance at paintings that look weathered for centuries and the clutter of barrelled seating and wonder how a pub this size can be so vast, yet so cosy. How can a one-roomed pub segregate my feelings in this way? It’s not exactly an off-kilter liminal space, more like a hidden building in a drowned town.

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