5.26.25 beer links: Calibrating, ticking on TikTok & murk

It is Memorial Day in America, so get outdoors, drink a beer if you want. If you missed these posts last week, read them Tuesday.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Me, if I have a SNPA (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) in front of me, I am really only concerned with the taste of the thing in front of me, not whether it has hit the bullseye on the shifting dart board of style.”

                    — Alan McLeod

From Your Beery News Notes For The Start Of The Last Month Of Spring. Context follows.

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We’re as Confused as You Are.

and

Is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale an ESB?

Alan McLeod’s quote comes from his reaction to these stories about Sierra Nevada Pale Ale winning gold medal in the ESB category at the World Beer Cup. I cited it at Bluesky, adding, “Let these be the last of many words.” So even though I have thoughts, I will honor what I wrote. Instead, consider this photo from a conference in Ecuador in 2022. Here, Gordon Strong, president emeritus of the Beer Judge Certification Program, answers the question, “Why beer styles?” Be sure to notice what guidelines are not.

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YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY

Upp Liquids from Tonya Cornett & former 10 Barrel innovation brewers. Best news of the week. Cornett has won zillions of GABF and World Beer Cup medals, and last year won all three medals in the WBC German-style sour beer category. She was laid-off from her role as innovation and R & D head of Bend Brewing last September. “We love variety and a constantly rotating line-up,” Cornett said, talking about what to expect from Upp Liquids. “We have always incorporated food and cocktail inspired elements into our beverages. We will offer a wide variety of beer styles including sours, of course.”

Exploring Belfast’s Burgeoning Beer Scene. For instance, “A tune from Talking Heads is blasting and I’m feeling buoyant, glugging away at this refreshing pint; mellow and gentle with a pang of grapefruit bitters on the finish. Surely any visitor would consider this a great find, a vibrant wee hideaway making interesting beers, OOO is definitely adding something to the boozy tapestry of the city centre.”

Ticking on TikTok. Who knew? This seems like another iteration of what’s been going on for however long. Certainly in 2016, when there was this, “They’re like an assembly line. When other people are drinking and chatting at a bar or wherever, they have beers lined up with their laptops out. Each taking notes and passing the beer onto the next rater.”

“Pils, please.” – the power of the calibration lager. In their monthly newsletter, cataloging at Substack, Boak & Bailey advocate for starting a session with a calibration lager. “Lager is as close as we get to ‘plain’ or ‘vanilla’ (meaning plain) in beer. It’s like a sheet of white paper you use to set the white balance on a camera. It’s how we synchronise our taste buds.” I don’t know if this means I am being contrary, but when I order a lager I expect it not to be plain.

Making space for new faces. “We didn’t want to just post a black square on Instagram and have that be enough. There were a lot of things that were feeling extremely performative at the time. But this felt like something that could have a lasting impact within craft beer in North Carolina. . . . And on the flip side, by bringing in more people of color who are interested in craft beer as employees, suddenly your customers start looking different.”

How do you like your murk? Three beers and this conclusion from The Beer Nut, “Maybe I just don’t have a taste for the fancier sort of haze, but it seems telling that the one made for a discount supermarket tasted better, to me, than the premium examples sold in the pub.”