This might be ‘beer terroir’

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.09.14

Can You Taste An Old Growth Forest In This Beer? Adventures with Eric Steen of Beers Made By Walking. I’d answer the question in the headline, “Yes, if you’ve tasted it before.” I’m goofy enough that were I doing this I’d want to spend the summer tasting the same “parts” over and over, mixing and matching, learning which work together, which suit my taste.

[Via Oregon Public Radio]

Do We Owe a Debt to the Regionals? Do breweries deserve to be supported just because they managed to remain in business when others were closing? This isn’t exactly the question Boak & Bailey are asking — “real ale” is involved, CAMRA, a smaller country — but that’s the question their post had me asking myself.

[Via Boak & Bailey]

You won’t believe this one weird trick they used to fly beer to the D-Day troops in Normandy. As all dispatches from Martyn Cornell, thoroughly fascinating.

[Via Zythophile]

Bill’s UK Adventure: American Craft Beer Across the Pond. I’m not sure I believe Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing visited five towns in the UK, top to bottom, over nine hectic days (while his family grew frustrated and his lawn turns into a jungle) just so we could read about it. But he writes, “… really, I did. You’d only be reading this if a) you are interested in beer and its future, or b) you live vicariously through the internet.”

[Via Victory Brewing]

Could Rising Costs Mean the End of Craft Beer Brewers? Just to answer the question in the headline: “No.”

[Via Entrepreneur]

4 thoughts on “This might be ‘beer terroir’”

  1. How do you define regional? I’d argue that we owe Sierra Nevada, Stone, Bell’s, Founders, Great Lakes, Victory, Ommegang, etc., a debt for making beer that’s tastier and more consistent than both larger and smaller shops. Chicago is booming with tiny breweries, and when they’re good, they’re pretty darned good, and when they’re bad, they’re horrid, and variance from bottle to bottle can be significant. As they tend to come in at a higher price point than the regionals, the economic gamble of trying again is pretty significant. To me, it’s interesting that the smaller breweries I trust the most in Chicago are the ones closest to becoming regional breweries: Revolution and Half Acre. I guess Metropolitan still fits squarely into the smaller category, and they’re consistently good.

    • Bill. In this case I was thinking about the regional breweries in business before Anchor or New Albion. August Schell, Straub, Huber (harder to account for since Minhaus bought the operation).

      • Then I guess the question becomes who the “we” are! I assume folks support Yuengling or Matt’s or Schell because they make good beer, not because they’re old. But I’m shut out of most of them — Huber/Minhas these days is only available in Chicago as the Berghoff brews, which are fine I guess, or Trader Joe’s labels, or contract brews. The other ones don’t deliver here. Maybe the group that bought the Heileman’s brewery counts, but all their products are post-Heileman.

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