MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 07.21.14
Guinness, Pilsner Urquell and the beer spectrum. Chris Hall writes, “On some imaginary sliding scale of corporateness and craftness, with Guinness at the corporate end, and a microbrewery that started yesterday at the craft end, Pilsner perhaps sits closer to, say, Sierra Nevada or Brooklyn Brewery.” In the comments section, the discussion is about Guinness and PU, rather than the question I think Alan McLeod would ask: Where do Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn Brewery sit on that scale?”
[Via The Beer Diary]
Part of a balanced diet. Inspired in part by a thought from the afformentioned Mr. McLeod, Boak & Bailey suggest components for a healthy beer market: a broad choice of good quality “normal” beers; some cheap-but-drinkable beers for those on a budget; and on the fringes, some weird stuff for special occasions and novelty-seekers. Much discussion follows.
[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]
“Are these beers not ultimately the wolf in sheep’s clothing?” “Craft versus crafty” — German style.
Via Berlin Craft Beer
What do we really taste when we drink wine? Or drink orange juice, or taste strawberries, or taste peaches, or drink beer? Lots to think about:
Expectations, argued the neuroscientists Lauren Atlas and Tor Wager in a recent review, can influence our experience in two interrelated ways. There is the conscious influence, or those things we are knowingly aware of: I’ve had this wine before and liked or hated it; I’ve been to this vineyard; I love this grape; the color reminds me of a wine I had earlier that was delicious. As our experience grows, so do our expectations. Every time we have a wine, we taste everything we know about it and other related wines. Then there are the unconscious factors: the weather is getting on our nerves, or our dining companion is; we’ve loved or hated this restaurant before; I’m mad at my boss over something he said this morning; the music is too loud, and the room is too cold. These can all affect taste, too, even though they are unrelated to the wine itself.
[Via The New Yorker]
“Genuineness will be the next crisis in craft brewing.” Several quotes from John Laffler (Off Color Brewing) showed up in my Twitter feed last week, including “Everybody else makes IPA, so why would we?” He had a lot to say in a two-part interview [Part I – Part II]. Not wandering down the slippery genuineness/authenticity slope today, and instead musing on just how much fun Laffler had saying sometimes outlandish things that ended up verbatim in print. So much for fact checking.
Witbier, for example, was a near-extinct beer in the 70s until Pierre Celis thought, ‘This beer tastes good, why isn’t anybody else making it?’ and started making Blue Moon. Now Hoegaarden makes how many millions of barrels a year?
[Via The Chicago Reader]
I might actually answer that question.
I didn’t know Pierre Celis “started making Blue Moon.” 😉
John also knows he didn’t – but apparently the reporter doesn’t.
It’s interesting — as an American, my perceptions aren’t that Guinness anchors the corporate end of the scale between corporate and micro. I have pretty much no conception of the European equivalents of what used to be “BMC” on the beer-rating sites.