Monday beer briefing: Guardian of the Citra, climate change & influencers

06.17.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING

1) All shook up: When craft beer goes mainstream.
2) The Economics of ‘Craft-on-Craft’ Acquisitions.
3) Oregon’s craft brewers have a problem: ‘There’s just too much beer out there.’
4) The beer industry is not dying.
5) Wine Consumption Probably Won’t Return to Normal.
In #1, Pete Brown writes, “In one sense, craft is simply the latest stage in the ongoing, permanent state of evolution in beer, of consumer education and rising expectations.” Change is constant in any business, and beer is not immune. Sometimes consumers benefit and other times they do not. And so drinkers may spend a certain amount of time guessing about the future, reading stories intended for those in the business. With that in mind, note that both #4 and #5 cite a survey that states “Americans spend about 1% of income on alcohol, no matter the age.” Don’t expect to find exactly the same conclusions.

6) The Most Delicious Foods Will Fall Victim to Climate Change.
Cutting directly to this scary scenario: “The main way that most people on Planet Earth are going to experience climate change is through its impact on food. . . But it was Jerry Hatfield, who’s a USDA scientist, who said to me that the broadest disruption caused by climate change will be in food systems, because there will be very region-specific impacts: from droughts, from flooding, from intolerable heat. There will be uninhabitable regions of the earth, and the global food system is completely integrated.” Pair this with the following story.

7) We Drink Basically The Same Wine As Ancient Romans — And That’s Not So Great.
According to a new study, many of the most popular wine varietals sold today are extremely genetically similar to the wines that ancient Romans drank — and may have existed for thousands of years longer. That’s not as true of the plants (barley and hops) that provide much of the flaver of beer, and that could be a positive. The “not so great” part of this NPR report points to the potential impact of climate change and ever-evolving pests when plants lack genetic diversity.

8) Farmhouse ale festival, now what?
Why bother? Lars Garshol writes, “For me a key point in spreading the word about farmhouse ale has been to convince people in the brewing regions that their brewing tradition is something to be proud of,” and, “The festival has turned out to have another function as well: it’s pretty much the only way for outsiders to taste these beers, to participate in a brewing session, and to actually meet the brewers. And you can’t really understand farmhouse ale if you’ve never tasted it. It’s also important for the Norwegian commercial brewers who want to play with kveik and traditional methods, because here they can learn first-hand how to approach it.”

9) Under the influencer.
@ThePourFool reacted to this story by tweeting, “The only REAL ‘beer influencer’ is what’s in your glass. TRY, HARD, not to mistake youth and perkiness for ‘influence’. You can create your stratum of beer trendiness all you like but don’t imagine that that stratum is the sum total of beer.” I think that misses on the point. Beth Demmon, who wrote the story, tweeted, “There’s the role of body positivity, sex positivity, and even influential experts who use social media to engage, but choose not to show their bodies because of safety, privacy, or whatever reason. There’s even the inherent sexism in the word ‘influencer’ skewing towards women while terms like ‘content creator’ are reserved for men.” She’d like to write more about influencers, and I hope somebody pays her to do it. Because, let’s be honest, it isn’t only what’s in the glass.

FROM TWITTER

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