Some Monday beer links that just read better

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 6.20.16

Why Czech lager is just better.
Joe Stange has written a love letter to Czech pale lager. It is wonderful and were I a Czech pale lager and he followed this up with a proposal of marriage I would accept. I cannot argue with much in it, but I do have a problem getting past Exhibit No. 1 — that “It just tastes better” — which also became the headline for the post.

I read this Saturday morning, sitting on our back patio after a bit of yard work and before the sun reminded me it was summer in the city (cut The Lovin’ Spoonful). The evening before we walked three short blocks to have dinner at Manchester Public House. The first beer I drank was Katy from 2nd Shift Brewing, currently made several miles west of St. Louis, but soon to be produced 1.3 miles up the road from MPH. The second beer I had was Odinson from Modern Brewery, a few hundred yards more along the road.

I would be delighted if MPH were to offer a fresh Czech lager on tap — OK, that’s a fantasy — but it wouldn’t taste any better to me than those two local beers did Friday evening. [Via DRAFT]

Crafty Beer Girls.
A report from the front, with more reports if you dive into their blog. [Via Salt Lake City Weekly]

Beer and (industry) loathing with Stone Brewing’s Greg Koch.
Koch’s answers to Jason Notte’s questions are not always straightforward, so put your translating and thinking caps on. And there’s also this. I’m a fan of beer and music analogies, but sometimes I’m not sure how well they work.

As we move through this, there are going to be some people who are thrilled with our decisions, and there are going to be some people who are going to want us to not change. They’re going to want us to come out with our second album again … and then again … and then again. And we don’t want to come out with our second album again. We want to come out with new albums and make new music …”

[Via MarketWatch]

World’s oldest beer brought back to life, scientists claim.
Scientists claim? What is this, skepticism? This story popped up everywhere last week, and this was the most in depth version. It seems brewers/scientists are attempting to take history recreations to a new level these days. And I’m not sure how we might measure if they are succeeding. [Via Catalyst, ABC Australia]

Soured: Craft Beer’s Misplaced Obsession With Bugs and How to Deal With It.
Josh Weikert’s rant was provoked by beers he tasted during Homebrew Con, both from homebrewers and commercial breweries. I didn’t seek out sours during Homebrew Con, so I can’t comment on their quality there. He wrote: “The sour beer I’m drinking these days isn’t good. When sours were much more rare in the marketplace, I’d say that three out of four were definitely worth a try, and even that fourth was usually good-but-not-what-I-wanted.” My experience past and present has been different. When sours were less abundant there were still plenty that would take the enamel off your teeth. While there are still too many of those a larger percentage of brewers have figured out what they are doing. There are still plenty of examples of poorly made beers, but that is because there as so many more overall. [Via Beer Simple]

WINE & OTHER THINGS WITH BEER IMPLICATIONS

The 2016 MW examination papers.
If you write about wine there are a year’s worth of blog topics here. And I agree that Question A1 on Theory Paper 5 is a great one: “‘The consumer’s limited knowledge is a blessing for the wine industry.’ Discuss.” [Via Jancis Robinson]

Delusion at the Gastropub.
[Via The Baffler]
The Fed Is Worried About Worker Productivity.
[Via FiveThirtyEight]
From the Baffler: “Viewing our foodie status as a badge of honor makes sense only if we’re prioritizing food advocacy—from promoting sustainable farming practices to reducing food waste to embracing and popularizing more sustainable crops to making healthy food more affordable to the poor—over our indulgence in wildly expensive plates of exotic fare.”

I’ve been repeating something Left Hand Brewing co-founder Eric Wallace once said for almost 20 years ago: “The large brewers are not tooled to do what we do. They’ll have to build less-than-efficient breweries to make beer like we do.” I like this idea. But sometimes I remember there’s a downside to inefficiency. It wouldn’t be much of a world if we rewarded only the efficient, but there’s the quality of my life, the quality of your life, and the quality of the life of the guy down the road to be considered.

FROM TWITTER

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