Month: February 2016

The vernacular of vernacular brewing & other Monday beer links

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, MUSING 2.29.16

According To Me: How Brewing Cultures Develop.
“Scientific brewing represents a refusal. A refusal to accept what vernacular brewing teaches us.” If you Google “vernacular brewing” you get this post, which is kind of impressive on several levels. But you need to read the post to figure out just what Alan McLeod means. It is worth your time. I don’t agree that “scientific brewing” represents a refusal, but that is likely because I would define “scientific brewing” differently. I think part of scientific brewing should be understanding, and accepting, what vernacular brewing teaches us. [Via A Good Beer Blog]

Tenth Anniversary Blogging: All Beer is Local.
Local,       [Via Beervana]

Craft Beer Goes Hyperlocal With Plow-To-Pint Movement.
local,       [Via Zester Daily]

5 Beers From Across the Nation That Are Redefining Local.
and local.       [Via Civil Eats]

Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children?
“With beer becoming more popular, you become more accepting and guiding to those discovering good beer for the first time. But, alas, as good beer expands and becomes more inclusive, it will open doors to the Kids.” [Via Beer Compurgation]

Matt Kramer’s ivory tower and the ‘credentialization’ of wine culture in America.
[Via Do Bianci]
An Open Letter to Wine: Matt Kramer, Can You Hear Me Way Up There?
[Via William Whelan]
Unfortunately, you need to have a paper copy of Wine Spectator or really good eyes to read the article that started this, but it isn’t really necessary.

AND FROM TWITTER

ALSO THIS:

(Clink on the date to read the responses)

Monday beer links and memories of Miss Olde Forthingslosh

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, MUSING 2.22.16

Sensory expectations elicited by the sounds of opening the packaging and pouring a beverage.
Because Fred Eckhardt. [Via Flavour]

Fishdog River Brewing Co.’s Ultimate I.P.A.
I guess this is a riff on Dogfish Head’s Hoo Lawd, but the almost final line sounds like another brewery (or two). “And, remember, if you don’t like it, you’’re wrong.” [Via The New Yorker]

‘Saucy’ Beer Names.
They are relatively new — and a reminder not everything new in beer is necessarily better. After reading this I decided I should add a link that shows some Olde Frothingslosh labels, which in turn led me Marsha Phillips’ obituary. She was Miss Olde Frothingslosh and the guest of honor at the Beer Can Collectors of American national bicentennial convention in Philadelphia in 1976. [Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

THE BUSINES PAGES

Heineken is taking tips on how to sell beer from an American craft brewer.
I’m still struggling to imagine what a Heineken “Beer Circus” might look like. [Via Business Insider]

The Coming Distribution Wars.
I’m not sure much has changed since the 1999 Craft Brewers Conference in Phoenix whenn Brooklyn Brewery partner Tom Potter explained to brewers that distributors moved boxes. The implication was that brewers needed to take responsibility for selling their beer. [Via Beervana]

Are nanobreweries a good first step for North Carolina brewers?
And related to the previous story you have this: “If I had to do it all over again, hindsight 20/20, I really wouldn’t suggest people get into nanos and try to grow them organically. I don’t think there’s time left in the market now.” [Via The News & Observer]

WHAT WINE CAN TEACH US

The Neuroscience of Wine.
“The role that our senses play in our attraction to and appreciation of wine has been illuminated by generations of wine writers and critics. What has undeservedly received less attention is the brain, the hugely complex organ within which all that sensory information is processed and synthesized. We don’t just taste with our senses, we taste with our minds.”

If you’ve managed to stay awake during one of my presentations about hops and aroma you know I always say something along the lines that “Brewers* create odor compounds. Aroma becomes aroma in your brain.” *That’s brewers with a lot of help from yeast, of course. [Via Nautilus]

The seven key aromas of aged Bordeaux.
In the event you don’t want to take the time to click over, they are “undergrowth, truffle, toasted, spicy, liquorice, mint, fresh red- and blackberry fruints.” Undergrowth? [Via Decanter]

FROM TWITTER

Hops, hops, hops. 02.19.16

Craft Brewers Conference 2016 - Where to find the hops

This is the map I got when I did a search for hops and hops products at the 2016 Craft Brewers Conference trade show (called BrewExpo America). The point is there’s a lot going in with hops and I have some catching up to do, starting now.

– Southern hemisphere shortages ahead? This from Hop Products Australia:

On 8 December 2015 two storm cells collided close to our Victorian farm, Rostrevor Hop Gardens in the Ovens Valley. The Gardens experienced 65mm of rain and hail in just 15 minutes accompanied by very strong gusts of wind which significantly damaged the southern half of the farm and resulted in many plants losing their growing tips.

Over the past six weeks we’ve invested thousands of hours in re-training lateral arms to re-establish apical growing tips, essential for progressing proper growth stages in the plants. It is now clear that while some bines recovered quite well, others failed to grow any higher than approximately half their normal height.

As such, we now estimate the crop from Rostrevor Hop Gardens will be approximately 40 per cent below expected yield in 2016.

The main varieties affected are Galaxy, Vic Secret, Ella and Topaz, although the true impact will not be known until harvest is completed at the end of March.

– Earlier this week Bryan Roth dug into the numbers related to the most popular varieties. The Hop Growers of America annual report also includes news that farmers outside the Northwest states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho planted hops on 1,253 acres in 2015.

That might not seem like much — the total is less than Simcoe grew in 2015 — but that number was less than 100 only a few years ago. That’s more hops than all of Australia or all of New Zealand. So maybe the headline here should be “Hops, hops, local hops.” This story indicates the number of acres may still be understated, at least in Michigan. “It’s been really ridiculous in the last 24 months,” said Brian Tennis, who started rrowing hops on one acre 10 years ago. “The face of Michigan hops changed overnight. It makes your head spin.”

– A relatively mild winter is not necessarily good for those new hop growing regions.

– A hop described as wild was named the overall winner of the British Hop Awards 2015. There’s a lot of interest these days, although more often in America, in finding some wonderful aromatic hop growing in the wild. This hop, called Sussex, was not found in the wild but on an anchor wire next to a field growing a farm trial of another hop. It is wild in the sense it was an unplanned product of open pollination and in the ten years since it was discovered has obviously developed into a pretty good hop. According to a press release about the competition, “Sussex has earthy, grassy and minty flavour notes.”

– This tweet by Paul Corbett indicates English farmers harvested about 20,000 pounds of Jester last year. For perspective, that’s little more than a tenth of Jarrylo grown in Washington last year. Wait, haven’t heard of Jarrylo? Then that’s comparable to the Citra you’d get from 13 acres in Washington — and Washington farmers grew 2,335 acres in Citra in 2015.

– Circling back to that map at the top. Per usual, CBC will include an opportunity to try several new varieties, some of them experimental, in beer. I’m already planning to visit hops growers from France (Booth 951), who are bringing one one hop, and from Germany (Booth 2016), who are bringing two experimentals.

Session #109 topic announced: Porter

The SessionMark Lindner has announced the topic for The Session #109 will be Porter. Before you say “That’s so 2007” hear him out.

Possibilities include:

  • Contrast and/or compare two or more of the styles
  • Contrast and/or compare two or more beers within/across porter styles
  • The history and development of the style
  • Your love/hate relationship with any porter style
  • Baltic porter – ale or Lager or a mixed fermentation?
  • Is hopping the only difference between English and American styles?
  • Food pairings with your favorite porter or style of porter
  • Review the porter(s) you are using as a creative springboard
  • Construct a resource along the lines of Jay Brooks’ Typology style pages, see for example American Barley Wine or Bock.
  • Recipe and procedures for brewing your version of a great porter

“Porter” always conjures up thoughts of beer history, and unfortunately history misunderstood. And the thought further occurs to me that anybody who chooses to write about porter in the historic context may wish they first saw Martyn Cornell’s presentation at Ales Through the Ages next month: Industrialization in the British Brewing Industry 1720-1850: The Rise of the “Power-loom Brewers.”

Abbreviated Monday beer links

MONDAY BEER LINKS 2.15.16

Happy President’s Day. We left town early for a long weekend, but here are a few stories I saved earlier. I might get around to commenting on them, well, eventually.

The Reality of Being a Woman in the Beer Industry.
This is the “if you read only one story read this one” pick of the week. [Via All About Beer]

What Will Drive Beer in 2025? (Hint: Not Beer).
The “flawed” post of the day before is also worth your time. [Via Beervana]

Coffee beer 2.0: Brewers get serious about sourcing, treatment of beans.
“And it’s not just where the beans come from or how they’re roasted—the method by which a brewer brews, steeps or infuses a beer with beans changes its ultimate flavor profile. As a recent spat of brewer/roaster collaborations illuminates, carefully sourced and selected beans are the next frontier.” This would be more exciting if I liked coffee-flavored beers. [Via DRAFT]

The Beer Hot Stove: The Role of Rumors in Beer Media.
“Don’t worry about the reports of something that might happen. Read the analysis of the thing once it does happen. That’s where the heavy thinking is happening.” [Via BeerGraphs]

Beer’s incessant infighting only serves to hurt the industry.
“At the end of the day, it’s all beer. And if anyone could hold their temper long enough to stop insulting one another and start making it easier for drinkers in all states to enjoy what they’re brewing, they just might help everybody enjoy a beer the way Peyton Manning’s enjoying his Budweisers this week.” Sorry, I just ruined the ending. (And I apologize to linking to a story in which I appear.) [Via MarketWatch]

And from Twitter, a story idea