Monday beer links: Diversity, blogs through the ages & GMO questions

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 12.12.2016

Is Craft Beer Still Too White?
[Via Vinepair]
Addressing Diversity in Beer: A Q&A with Julia Herz.
[Via This Is Why I Am Drunk]
Addressing Diversity in Beer: Seeking Action.
[Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]
Opinions about this filled my Twitter feed last week. Among suggestions was one that the Brewers Association provide scholarships to people who are not white males to attending brewing school. Nothing wrong with that idea. But the Brewers Association is, well, an association of brewing companies. One of the reasons that there are more local breweries is that they are part of communities, regularly making connections with people in those communities. Shouldn’t they reflect the, and pardon me for using this word, demographics of that community? Shouldn’t the members be allowed to hold them responsible to do that?

Hello From The Blog’s Back End – And The Road …
Alan McLeod nicely summarizes the phases beer blogging has been through, easier for him to do than most because he was there at the beginning. [Via A Good Beer Blog]

This Biohacker Wants to Spur a Genetic Engineering Revolution With Glowing Beer.
Creating glow-in-the-dark beer aside might seem like harmless fun, but genetically modified yeast? That’s a whole ‘nother serious topic. Back in 2014 The New York Times had this to say about a project to map the family tree of yeast. “‘Right now we have a few hundred genetically modified yeast strains patiently waiting in our laboratory’s freezer,’ said Jan Steensels, a microbiologist with the Belgian lab, ‘but most brewers and consumers don’t want anything to do with them.'” There are two sides of the GMO debate, and the discussion needs to be more serious than one about glow-in-the-dark beer. [Via Gizmodo]

Norwegian brewing processes
“The brewing was a tradition descending in unbroken line from the Stone Age to the present. There were lots of changes on the way, and these were transmitted from village to village. When you look at the resulting patterns on a map it’s obvious that the geography was tremendously important for what influences went where.” This raises questions about history we don’t know about elsewhere. Because, “The brewing processes used in farmhouse brewing are an unbelievable tangle of crazy madhat tricks. People seem to have used pretty much any process that could potentially lead to alcohol being produced from grain, and quite a few processes that I honestly had never imagined.” [Via Larsblog]

What’s in a name?
[Via Tandleman’s Beer Blog]
How a 12-year-old brewery is having to show it’s not too old to be down with the kids …
[Via Zythophile]
He’s right, and it isn’t just ESB that’s underappreciated by the supposed connoisseurs.
[Via Stonch’s Beer Blog}
Chatter from the UK, but surely the same could be said here in the US: “By constantly focussing on what’s new, many people who profess to appreciate beer more than the rest of us in fact rarely drink the best stuff.”

SOMMELIERS

The rise of the beer sommelier: Why it’s time to put beer on the same footing as wine.
[Via Big Hospitality]
American wine consumers still don’t care about what sommeliers like.
[Via The Gray Report]
Some obvious differences between America and the UK, and even more so between a sommelier program and Cicerone certification.

TERROIR

An international wine is fine, but I’d rather taste the place in Virginia.
[Via Washington Post]
Book Review: Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing.
[Via The Terroirist]
When I tweeted a link to the first link last week and pulled out a quote (“Terroir depends on us as consumers, because we have to recognize it”) I did not intend to include it here as well. But, then the review of still another book at need to read popped up, in which the author concludes that “in the end, terroir is a shibboleth that establishes an in-group in a world unto itself. This isn’t wine appreciation, and it certainly doesn’t reflect interest in the grapevine; it is more like wine snobbery.” Discussion about “beer terroir” is central to the first chapter of “Brewing Local” and because of the role microclimates may play in what a beer tastes like I don’t think this is an invention of snobbery.

FROM TWITTER