Month: May 2016

Monday beer links: Whose mid-life beer crisis is it, anyway?

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 5.09.16

The Session #111: Are you there Beer? It’s me, Oliver.
[Via Literature & Libation]
Session 111: You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.
[Via A Good Beer Blog]
Session #111: A Beer Mid-Life Crisis?
[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog}
Surviving a Beer Midlife Crisis — The Session #111.
[Via Good Beer Hunting]
The premise behind The Session is, or at least was, that the host recap the various posts, so I generally don’t point to them on Monday. But I’ll break with tradition because although I did not chime on Friday — a) I was in information collecting mode at the Craft Brewers Conference, and b) am more interested in writing about various aspects of beer and brewing than my relationship with beer — it is so interesting to read how those more generous about revealing their motivations think about their relationship with beer. In addition, Michael Kiser calls out what he refers to as “an old guard in craft beer.”

There are 6,000 active TTB licenses in the US right now, according to the BA. That means in the next couple of years, we could see 1-2k more breweries. Instead of applause, that line got a collective groan from an audience of craft brewers. For those people, more breweries means more competition, or noise, depending on how you look at it, that they have to fight through every day to sell their beer. And the assumption seems to be that these new people are either getting in to it for the wrong reasons (money) or they’re young and dumb and they’re going to screw everything up with low quality beer.

That sounds like a form of mid-life crisis to me. And fuck that.

I’ll be borrowing from these and other Session #111 posts when I speak at The Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference in July. Because writers should be as concerned about remaining relevant as companies/brands/brewers are.

Smithsonian Announces New Initiative To Document Brewing History.
This was announced at the Craft Brewers Conference. Brewers who won medals in the World Beer Cup competition might disagree, but it looks like the biggest news of the week to me. [Via Smithsonian]

Will Big Lager one day go the same way as Big Porter?
And a related question from Ron Pattinson: Why do beer styles disappear? [Via Zythophile]

America’s New Beer Test.
“In craft beer, you’re dealing with voters of the whole spectrum, from 21 until they’re cold. Our beer drinkers are left, right, Independent. Beer is the x-factor. People might not agree politically, but they can agree that this beer is great.”

When James Schirmer drew my attention to this via Twitter the headline said: “How Craft Beer Became the Budweiser of America.” That certainly could be taken to mean many different things. [Via Atlantic]

An American beer snob in Munich.
As you will see if you read the replies to Joe Stange’s tweet (“Confused sad American person goes to Munich in search of IPA”) some people didn’t think much of this story. [Via Boston Globe]

FROM TWITTER

Monday beer links: Millennials, hops, ‘True Craft’ & other delights

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 5.02.16

The big news of last week (at about the 17-minute mark) may well generate the same flood of comments that we used to see when Anheuser-Busch bought another brewer, but occurred Friday evening so I haven’t drowned yet. Expect the aftershocks related to “True Craft” to be felt at the Craft Brewers Conference this week in Philadelphia. By chance — or maybe it wasn’t chance, only he can tell us — Greg Koch, who is at the center of this news, is speaking Saturday at a North American Guild of Beer Writers symposium. Keep end up being a sort of press conference. Short term, I put a couple of items related to the announcement at the end, because expanding the Twitter links makes this post very long.

Is Moderate Drinking Even Moderately Good For Us?
Every comment I come up with seems to include a bad pun, so just read it (please). [Via National Geographic, h/T Maureen Ogle]

Millennials Love Craft Beer, But Will A Hops Shortage Leave Them Thirsty?
[Via Forbes ]
2016 Hop Stocks Report – looking forward to a great year for hops.
[Via Washington Beer Blog]
The Forbes story, or a version of it, keeps reappearing in my Twitter feed. Up to date information about the overall hop supply and indications that water rationing should be less of a problem in the Yakima Valley than last year suggest the sky is not falling. Of course, at this time last year it looked like 2015 production would be higher than it turned out to be. In addition, hard-to-get varieties are going to continue to be hard to get, probably for years. Brewers Supply Group has begun keeping a very current list of hops it has for sale at the moment (for instance, Huell Melon was on the list early in the week and gone on Friday). I plan to spend a lot more time this week in Philadelphia asking questions related to hops than I do talking about “True Craft.”

How to brew like an 18th century Virginian.
[Via Zythophile]
Who Will Debunk The Debunkers?
[Via FiveThirtyEight]
Martyn Cornell nicely summarizes the fun we all had during Ales Through the Ages in Williamsburg, Virginia. The last evening before we all headed home there was a certain amount of conversation about similar events in the future, and I’ve been involved in related email exchanges with still more people since. I’m not certain what might result. We are often tugged in multiple directions. I want to see more research like Travis Rupp is doing, but I also know an awful lot of energy is being expended refuting bad history. The second link here has no apparent tie to beer — don’t read to the end expecting some beer payoff. Instead, there is this: “Is there any way to escape this endless, maddening recursion? How might a skeptic keep his sanity? I had to know what Sutton thought. ‘I think the solution is to stay out of rabbit holes,’ he told me. Then he added, ‘Which is not particularly helpful advice.'” Beer can be one big ole rabbit hole.

Mrs Mullis on Types of Pub Customer, 1972.
This made me smile more than any other beer thing — OK, the possible exception would be of Martyn Cornell’s answer to a question I asked on Twitter — I read last week. [Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

‘Craft’ Beer Sabermetrics: the BCQ (Brewery Capacity Quotient).
Creative. [Via Yours In Good Fermentables]

Firm joins with iconic brewer to become a big player in craft beer business.
Warning: Includes a discussion of “exit windows.” Which leads us to the story of the week. [Via Boston Globe]

Greg Koch’s Answer to “Big Beer” is a New Platform Called “True Craft.“
To get you up the speed before you read … [Via Brewbound]

This Is Reasonable Proof That Big Craft Is Losing It.
… Alan McLeod’s take. [Via a Good Beer Blog]

FROM TWITTER (AND RELATED)

Click on “29 Apr” to expand and for complete context.

Second ‘Craft Writing’ conference Sept. 30

If you are interested in beer and writing, and maybe a little bourbon on the side, you might want to figure out a way to be in Lexington, Kentucky, the last day of September.

Organizer Jeff Rice has announced the University of Kentucky will host Craft Writing: Beer, the Digital and Craft Culture for a second time, and it is still free. Beyond the list of speakers, the web site is a little short information. However you can reserve a spot.

Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso of Evil Twin Brewing is the keynote speaker. Other speakers include Joe Tucker of Rate Beer, freelance writer Heather Vandenengel, All About Beer editor John Holl, Boulevard Brewing ambassador brewer Jeremy Danner, and Julia Herz, Brewers Association craft beer program director.

Craft Writing: Beer, the Digital and Craft Culture I was great fun back in February of 2014. I wrote about it here (links to other coverage included).