musing

“A critic’s job, nine-tenths of it, is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.”
                    – Kenneth Tynan

I tend to scribble things I come across — could be in a magazine, a book, on a menu — on scraps of paper. This one I’ve been carrying around on a breakfast receipt since last May. I’m still not sure what to do with the thought, but it’s time to put it somewhere so I can throw out the receipt. I’m filing it here.

There are a million amusing quotes about criticism, so I don’t know why I’ve kept this one around so long.

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.

(But also, to be clear, this not a call to arms. Here I can lean on H.L. Mencken, who said: “A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn’t like.”)

The Morning Advertiser reports that Coors has decided to close the visitor center, formerly known as the Bass Museum, at its Burton-upon-Trent brewery in order to save money.

The areas that will close include the Museum, The Brewery Tap, the Gift Shop and all meeting rooms. The White Shield micro-brewery will remain open. Discussions will continue with East Staffordshire Borough Council regarding the future of the Tourist Information Centre, which has its home at the CVC.

Keith Donald, business services director at Coors, explained: “We have tried everything to make the CVC viable (including a revamp last year and free entry to Burton residents). Despite this, visitor numbers have continued to fall and the subsidy needed has increased. It is important for Coors to build the long term future of its brand portfolio to safeguard its future and Burton’s future as the worlds’ brewing capital.”

Coors says the facility the facility costs the company £1 million a year, but this is just plain sad.

We’re talking Burton-upon-Trent and Bass. Doesn’t that matter any more?

Details from “Project Genome,” the study that revealed all about wine “image seekers,” help tie together last week’s posts about training robots to taste wine, coming up with a tasting vocabulary, and “discovery” in the marketplace.

Beer companies should be just as concerned about “overwhelmed” shoppers as winemakers — maybe more, because beer is supposed to be the friendly-no-pretenses product, right? And Project Genome found that nearly one in four (23%) of wine shoppers feel overwhelmed. As a result they buy less than their share (13%) of wine.

Constellation CEO Jose Frernandez offered his take on the results: “We’ve under-communicated to these [Overwhelmed] consumers. … If we do nothing, today’s Overwhelmed will be tomorrow’s Overwhelmed.”

He went on to suggest the fact that most people who work in the wine industry are Enthusiasts may account for the industry’s failure to understand Overwhelmed consumers. Enthusiasts account for 12% of buyers but buy 25% of the wine. They walk the walk, but they also talk the talk.

And maybe that’s not always the best thing.

I thought of this yesterday when a friend was over helping me fix our pinball machine. He likes to hang out when I brew beer, and that’s how he got started making his own wine. Nothing fancy, but good enough to win a couple of ribbons in the State Fair. He keeps Coors Light in the fridge at home, but something else is a welcome treat. I know that he enjoys a touch of diacetyl in some beers, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is as hoppy as he likes, that he thinks sour sucks (that could be a lambic or a badly packaged beer), and that Samuel Adams Cream Stout hits the spot.

So when I hand him a beer I don’t suggest he should be looking for tropical notes, toffee-like flavors or — heaven forbid — aromas of newly-mown lawn. I just hand him the beer. He likes it or he doesn’t.

This is hardly new. It has been happening in brewpubs for more than 25 years, in beer bars that offer sampling sizes, at beer festivals … communication in its most basic form.

– From the Omaha City Weekly: “Over the past year the quality of Omaha’s beer scene has improved greatly. While not every bar, restaurant and retail store has jumped on board a great deal have increased their selection of craft beer.” Did you really envision there would be a time we would be identifying the Belgian beer of Omaha? (It’s St Bernardus Abt 12, BTW.)

– That was some line Saturday at Port Brewing/Lost Abbey for the release for The Angel’s Share.

Welcome to the obligatory St. Patrick’s Day post.

(Not to be a curmudgeon — Ireland, Irish-Americans, Irish pubs in Ireland, Irish-inspired pubs in America, Irish beers, Irish-inspired beers, St. Patrick’s Day parades . . . are all good things. But do we really need a drinks company passing around petitions to make it a national holiday?)

Anyway, let’s get it out of the way comfortably before the main event. And by following a growing crowd writing about “green beer, no not that green beer, but the environmentally friendly stuff.”

Start with Slate’s “Eco-guide to responsible drinking,” a stunningly complex investigation of glass versus cans. It reminds me of The New Yorker’s look at carbon emmissions (“It’s easy to confuse morality and science.”) a few weeks ago. In the first case, there’s more to the equation than weight. In the latter, there’s more to a carbon footprint than coming up a label for everything you buy at the grocery store.

It’s far easier to understand what these three breweries are doing:

Long Trail Brewing in Vermont: They’ve even set up ECOBREW as a separate website. Serious stuff, from the heat recovery program to using biodegradable cups for outdoor events. Best factoid, though, is that most breweries use six gallons of water to produce one gallon of beer. Long Trail has that down to 2:1.

Mad River Brewing in California: Founder Bob Smith built the brewery in 1989 with recycled materials and has since earned multiple awards for its waste reduction programs. Mad River reuses 98% of its residuals and generates just one cubic yard of trash a month while producing about a quarter million gallons of beer annually. Damn good beer, too.

Eel River Brewing in California: The first certified organic brewery in the country. When the brewpub expanded in 2007, adding a production brewery in nearby Scotia the company took over an abandoned mill. The new brewery is 100% powered by biomass – “all the power used to brew the beer Scotia is produced from mill leftovers such as wood chips, bark, scrap lumber and clippings.”

For further reading track down the January 2008 issue of All About Beer magazine (before it gets recycled) for a comprehensive roundup from Jay Brooks.

Amazon is ready to start selling wine in the US, according to the Financial Times.

The company is looking to recruit a senior wine buyer, who would be responsible for “the acquisition of a massive new product selection” for its site.

According to Decanter, a UK-based wine publication, Amazon will work in partnership with wine.com.

FT reports how difficult it can be to sell wine online (and that it’s getting harder). The legal ramifications of selling beer would be the same, and the margins much more challenging. So don’t count on beer in the mix. (The cartoon above appeared in The New Yorker several years ago and usually is pinned to a corkboard beside my desk.)

Amazon declined to comment on its plans. It has said earlier it will add wine and beer to a pilot fresh grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh, that it is currently operating only in its home city of Seattle.

Further reading: Vinofictions ponders this from many angles, but mostly wine. You can connect the dots back to beer.