That’s Buckwheat Zydeco Jr., son of the late Buckwheat Zydeco (Stanley Dural), above, playing accordion, with his son on the frottoir at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Below, C.J. Chenier, son of the “King of Zydeco” Clifton Chenier, fronts a celebration honoring his father. That’s two more generations on the frottoir. Other members of the band included Marcia Ball (on the keyboard), David Hidalgo (in the background) and Sonny Landreth (not in the frame). A tribute album to Chenier will be released June 27, two days after what would have been his 100th birthday.
Now, let’s get to it . . .
LEAD OF THE WEEK
March’s second day this year was a Sunday. My brother and I walked the Sussex South Downs. Almost three months since midwinter, the freshly peeled air drenched the leafless woods and hills with pale light. Yellow crocuses quietly exploded in the grass; the first larks unspooled their ribbon of song above. At lunchtime, we dipped down to the Ram in Firle. We sat at a bare table in its dark, womb-like dining room with our beloved hatchlings: two pints of Harvey’s.
I have lived in a thorny, stone-strewn Mediterranean biotope for 15 years, and visitors to my home in France sometimes ask what I miss about the UK and its latitudes. Broad-leafed woodland, birdsong and the British landscape, for sure: its endless seasonal costume changes; its soothing sweetness; the quiet nourishment of its rises, falls and folds. And with it, at the end of the path, cask-conditioned ale. Glorious and tragic.
Glory first: if fine wine (Bourgogne, Barolo, Bordeaux, Napa: wines that cost hundreds of pounds a bottle) has an equivalent in the beer world, this is it. A great pint of real ale, served close to its brewery of origin, in perfect condition – only this fragile, complex, living brew can rival fine wine in terms of aromatic finesse and nuance, flavoury resource, textural wealth, fermentative subtlety, digestibility and overall sensual satisfaction. All other rivals (including bottled and canned versions of the same beer) fall weakly aside. Fine wine and great real ale are true peers. The price differential is staggering.
Tragedy next. No one acclaims this parity. Yes, Camra (Campaign for Real Ale) members have known forever about the glory of real ale – but few have easy access to fine wine, while the minds of most fine-wine lovers are closed to beer. There’s little palate crossover: the wine palate looks for fruity acidity, and most beer seems to have none (though its pH, in fact, varies from around 4 to 5.5); the beer palate is looking for the wealth that comes from fermented grain and the fragrant bitterness of hops, neither of which exist in wine.
From Only real ale can rival fine wine (And it’s a lot cheaper too). By Andrew Jeffords, a wine write who has also won awards for his beer writing. This posted the day after we landed in New Orleans, but I simply cannot resist passing it along.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We don’t need another f*cking style. We don’t need another variety of IPA. We don’t need another beer with some bullshit dropped in the mash tun. We need people to focus on what made this business great in the first place, which is really kick-ass, high-quality, fresh beer, delivered the way the customer wants it.”
— Neil Witte
From How Pouring Styles Became the Big Draw in Draft Beer. Which is totally relevant to the Lede of the Week and worth further consideration.
TALKIN’ ‘BOUT WHOSE GENERATION? AND WHOSE CULTURE?
The Millennial Canon Bracket last week at The Ringer included IPA.
I’m not sure where to start, but let’s try here: “In an effort to pin down exactly what the millennial experience was, we gathered as many generational artifacts as we could—people, places, music, movies, and TV shows, but also objects, trends, and behavioral tics—then narrowed them down to the most essential and threw them into this bracket.”
Skinny jeans was one of four No. 1 seeds. Donald Glover was a 14th seed. Never owning a home was a seventh seed. You get the idea. IPA was a 16th seed and lost in the first round to No. 1 The Obama “Hope” Poster. The poster reached the semifinals before losing to “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers, which AOL Instant Messenger defeated in the finals.
Before the first round voting, Alan Siegel wrote this about IPA: “For those who believe that craft beer should be punishing, not enjoyable. OK, I concede that I have a personal bias against India pale ales—they give me bitter-beer face–but I’m not going to apologize for making fun of my generation’s fetishization of it. There will always be something funny about bros who think that drinking beer with the same ABV as a cabernet will put hair on their chests.”
In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected President, Pale Ales still outsold IPA. Almost nobody had heard of Citra hops or talked about tropical flavors in beer. Haze was a flaw in anything but a wheat beer. A wild ride was about to begin. Growth has since stopped, which is not to say that people are not drinking IPAs made with Citra and hop wannabes that followed. You could argue that IPA, or the craft category of beer for that matter, has stood up better than the hope of 2008.
The Ringer spilled tens of thousands of words during the week on all things millennial, including a lot more attention for Four Loko than IPA. Included was an essay on The Eternal Cycle of Hating the Next Generation, but also this thought: “(A generation) is a cultural radar gun and not much more.”
There has been considerable hand-wringing because it appears the latest generation to come of drinking age, Generation Z, is not consuming alcohol at the same rate as previous generations. Is that true? Research by Bourcard Nesin indicates finding an answer is not that simple. Dave Infante’s interview last with with Nesin is worth your time, and in this case your money because a subscription is required.
The interview landed the same day as Evan Rail’s excellent story about how many smallish breweries have recognized that how beer is served may influence customer satisfaction. These breweries, and establishments serving their beers, are using pouring methods that have long been central to other cultures around the world.
The quote of the week is pulled from deep in that story and here is another, from Jenny Pfafflin at Dovetail Brewing in Chicago: “It’s a maturity, for lack of a better word, that is becoming part of American beer culture. It’s actually becoming culture.”
Two months ago I linked to a post from Ted Gioia in which he wrote, “The culture always changes first. And then everything else adapts to it.” That essay resulted in more words about the decline of American pop culture. And Gioia has commented further.
Had the first members of the new wave of small breweries been human they would have been Gen X, although breweries obviously relied on the Silent Generation and Boomers to buy their beer. We’ve since moved on to Millennials and Zoomers.
A lot of pop culture has happened along the way, and microbrewed/craft/independent beer has occasionally made an appearance. Each new generation has an opportunity to broaden the beer culture as well as making it more inclusive. That seems particularly important today.
UGH
It seems there are announcements every day about breweries closing (529 in 2024, which works out to much more than one a day), but these are landmark closings.
Assembly Brewing, 2019-2025. “Most six-year-old breweries haven’t been around long enough to be considered landmarks, but the moment George Johnson opened Assembly, it made history. Johnson, a Detroit native, was the first Black brewer to found an Oregon brewery, and that was a big deal in a city and state where racism was an overt part of the legal structure (there’s a reason Portland and Oregon are so White).”
Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, 2004-2025. One of those little breweries that could, winning eight Great American Beef Festival medals. “The folks there were making interesting styles of beer in North Carolina at a time when few others were. You could easily find it in stores across the state, but they truly were a local product. And for me, they turned a small, out-of-the-way spot into an exotic place. I remember driving out of Farmville (North Carolina), past the empty storefronts, the wide porches, and the open fields. There wasn’t much else to see.”
BITS OF PLEASURE
The Holy Trinity of Cheesy Beer Snacks. “In Lagerland, there exist 3 regional snacks that are distinctly cheesy and also fairly popular.” Recipes for Nakládaný hermelín, Obazda and Kochkäse.
Karmeliet on the Kust. Trains, pubs and beer. Spoiler alert, the conclusion: “Would I recommend Ostend and the Belgian Coast? Well, yes – the tram is fun – but I’d likely say go in summer when things are in full swing and a lot more lively. What about Tripel Karmeliet? It is certainly a well-made beer, but a bit hefty for swigging, though I should probably ask my friends about that.”
THE SESSION #147
A break from the real. Phil Cook will host the May gathering of The Session. He writes, “I’d like to take us out of the ‘real world’ for a moment to share the beers and pubs in art and fiction that have grabbed our attention, whether they were sublime, surprising, moving, amusing, somehow significant, or symbolic of something — or awkward and out of place, if you like.” Everybody is invited.
BECAUSE, BLUE SKY
Tired: pubs should display beer prices.
Wired: pubs should display a complete map of the premises including the location of toilets.
— Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray) (@boakandbailey.bsky.social) May 8, 2025 at 12:02 PM