Greg Koch = Jerry Lee Lewis or Lindsay Lohan?

Midweek catching up (from various blogs and press releases):

  • Stone Brewing beers arrived in Missouri this week and you’d think there was a royal wedding about. Stone co-founder Greg Koch was signing bottles and such yesterday in Kansas City and makes a similar splash in St. Louis tomorrow.

    Leading to this fabulous sentence from the KC Beer Blog: “If you’re not aware of Greg Koch, you will be. He’s the Jerry Lee Lewis to Sam Calagione’s Pat Boone, or for a more current reference, he’s Lindsay Lohan to Calagione’s Raven Symone.”

  • Vanberg and Dewulf will begin importing a beer called Monk’s Stout from Brasserie Dupont later this year. It seems Dupont also brewed this beer in the 1950s. Which explains why we came across this case in the window of a Brussels beer shop in 2008:

    DuPont Monk's Stout

  • Alan’s question of the week: Why Is Britain Creating Beer Blogging Celebrities? As he writes, and we’ve witnessed here, discussions about beer writing often may help cure insomnia. But give it a look anyway.
  • The publican as writer. Where does such a being fit in? I have printed copies of the newsletter Roger Baylor used to assemble squirreled away somewhere, from the days when beer writing intended to satisfy your soul came via postal carrier instead of an rss feed. He notes he’s founder of Rich O’s Public House at the top of his blog, The Potable Curmudgeon, but now he also runs a brewery.

    So that’s the background. And here’s a bit of what he had to write in “Avery joins flight from Indiana; Publican yawns.”

    You could hear the sounds of furtive sourcing as shelves emptied of valuable brands. The wails of lamentation kept me awake at night as craft beer fans weaned on the tender mercies of Beer Advocate and Rate Beer vented their despair.

    They should have been asking: Should one’s go-to beer come from another time zone?

    And: Your forefathers had it far tougher, whiner.

    Me? I shrugged, yawned and filled a growler of fresh local beer.

    There’s more, of course, because he has to guide his story to its closing lines: “Just remember: I used to walk ten miles in waist-deep snow just to score a six-pack of Sierra. Your troubles are miniscule by comparison.”

  • Was I snoozing when this was was announced? Stone Brewing has a page where you can report “out of code” beer, that is beer that isn’t as fresh a Stone’s brewers would like it to be when you drink it. Most of the regular beers should be consumed within 90 days.
  • 9 thoughts on “Greg Koch = Jerry Lee Lewis or Lindsay Lohan?”

    1. He’s the Jerry Lee Lewis to Sam Calagione’s Pat Boone?

      Don’t know that I’d ever equate Sam to Pat Boone, but wouldn’t the better comparison be the Little Richard to Pat Boone? Ya know, that whole Tutti Frutti* debacle? 😉

      *Oh no, I probably just gave Sam another idea… you owe me Sam!

    2. The folks at the brewery said that they haven’t announced it to consumers yet because the backend isn’t functional. Seems strange they would go tell distributors if that were true though. And it’s a step in the right direction but ultimately fruitless as a web page and not a mobile app.

    3. You know what I’d equate them with? Those guys waving “Pizza five bucks” signs at road corners. You have no idea whether the pizza is good or is good value but you sure know there’s pizza over there.

    4. “Steve, you might be dating yourself.”

      More so than the KC Beer Blog author? 😉

      I just like good nostalgia!

    5. “Should one’s go-to beer come from another time zone?”

      That’s a great line. no doubt about it, but it’s complicated in AZ.

      Arizona doesn’t recognize Daylight Savings so sometimes we share the same time as Denver and other times (as right now) we share the same time as San Diego.

      It mirrors the beer that we get (and consume a great deal of).

    6. olllllo — Heck, that’s even more complicated in Indiana, given that it currently has Central Daylight Time, Eastern Daylight Time, and Eastern Standard Time depending on where you are in the state. I guess two out of the three are technically the same time. I don’t agree with the line, but I understand where it would be in the best interests of a brewer at a small brewery to assert its truth!

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