MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 11.23.15
The Problem with “Craft”
[Via Beaumont Drinks]
What is an “honest” wine?
[Via Steve Heimoff]
The story of the week was “$1 Billion” or maybe just “B” — because the amount that Contellation Brands paid for Ballast Point Brewing was a bigger deal than another used-to-be-small brewery being acquired by a very large company. (Although whether a writer comments “x sells to y” or “x sells out to y” says as much about the commenter as the commentee.)
At All About Beer Jeff Alworth writes “fuller-flavor lagers and ales (what we used to call ‘craft beer’)” because in the magazine and at the website AAB favors letting the word beer stand on its own. I endorse that philosophy, but I also understand that “craft beer” can be a useful term, a point Stephen Beaumont makes quite well. Curiously, although we can blame the “C” word on America it is important to take a non-Americanized view of how it has become used elsewhere. Because he’s recently been to a lot more countries than you and I go ahead and trust Beaumont on this.
But as Steve Heimoff reminds us, semantics can be painful. I know what Ron Pattinson means when writes about honest beer, but I don’t want to start seeing the term used in just about any other context.
Golden Road Relationship Status: It’s Complicated (If you care).
Item 7. “Golden Road is pumping 25 million dollars into the city of Anaheim and will employ over 100 people.” Makes you think about the relationship between “local impact” and “local ownership.” [Via OCBeerBlog]
St. Louis Zoo proposes buying Grant’s Farm; Billy Busch makes competing offer.
Ulysses S. Grant, the Busch family, free beer, and a zoo. This story has it all. [Via St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
GEEK STUFF
Traditional malting in Morgedal.
[Via Larsblog]
Bright Brewer’s Yeast calls for beer ‘wish lists’ as it develops yeasts through selective breeding.
[Via Beverage Daily]
Watch an Electronic Tongue Taste Wine.
[Via Eater]
Sometimes when the “big picture” questions wear you down it is nice to curl up with a bit of technical stuff.
ON WRITING
Wine media and the internet: are we drowning in a sea of mediocrity?
[Via jamie goode’s wing blog]
Wine Needs Curmudgeons Now More Than Ever.
[Via Fermentation Wine Blog]
And to bring this week’s links full circle, Tom Wark writes: “Worrying about consolidation among the big wine brands makes no sense. And if you are a discerning wine drinker, you could care less. There are more wines and wine brands and wineries on the market today than ever before in the history of the world.”
