A briefer beer briefing: ‘True Craft’ dead & Celis brewery apparently as well

07.01.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Alan McLeod found plenty interesting to write about last week, but Boak & Bailey not so much. I am in the latter camp. Brevity today will be followed by silence next week, because beginning Wednesday I’ll be bouncing between cities in Brazil.

1) The $100 million question.
A San Diego Union-Tribune reader asks what happened to the Stone Brewing Company program called “True Craft” and Peter Rowe answers. “True Craft sounded too ambitious to be true, and that proved to be the case. Reached while traveling in Europe this week, Greg Koch confirmed that True Craft is dead. ‘That hasn’t been active for some months,’ Koch said. ‘It was an idea that never came to fruition.’”


2) I love this cartoon from Em Sauter, but I wouldn’t be a proper hop geek if I didn’t point out that “old man” is a bit confusing here because only female hop plants produce cones. It also happens that Fuggle is a parent of Cascade, . . . and Citra is 25% Fuggle. There’s a whole family dynamic.

3) Celis brewery to be sold in auction.
Back in 2005, I wrote a story for All About Beer Magazine’s 25th anniversary about 25 beer sites across 25 years. One of those was Aus-Tex Printing and Mailing. They were certainly surprised the day a few years earlier when I knocked on the door to confirm that was the first site of a defunct Celis Brewery in Austin. Now it seems there is another.

4) Craft Beer is an Effective if Unexpected Ambassador in the U.S. Foreign Service.
“American craft breweries can assist with what is known as soft power in the diplomatic world, part of which can come from an appreciation for a country’s culture.” So the next question is: In what way does craft beer represent American culture?

5) There’s a beer patent for that.
I would have linked to this story had I not written it, so consider this: “It didn’t help that, during the time period in question, those seeking patents were generally perceived as charlatans rather than serious inventors. Inventors were more likely to keep their creations secret within their firms or guilds.”

WINE

6) The Benefits of Learning with a Wine Aroma Kit.
A short read, with a powerful closing message that “to crack open my aroma kit is always a humbling reminder that there’s always more to learn and rediscover about wine.”

MORE LINKS

ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.

1 thought on “A briefer beer briefing: ‘True Craft’ dead & Celis brewery apparently as well”

  1. “So the next question is: In what way does craft beer represent American culture?”

    I don’t think there’s much more to it than people liking craft beer and aspiring to drink it/make it for themselves. It’s like blue jeans and rock and roll. I don’t think it goes any deeper than that—you could argue that craft beer says something about how the U.S. tends to forget its traditions and reinvent them, neglecting history for better or worse, blah blah blah, but I don’t think most people think about it that way. They just like the beer, they think it is “cool” in a way that other cultural exports like bagels are not, and so they seek it out and try to brew it themselves.

    In terms of “soft power,” I think this is pretty minor, but I do think people find it harder to hate people whose culture they admire. So hazy IPAs may end up getting us all killed (kidding, kidding).

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