You know if you know (at which brewery this request is posted)
Happy New Year. It seems, since last compiling links Dec. 18, that I missed many year-end wrap ups and predictions for 2024. Alan McLeod generously catalogued many of them. I thank him for making it easy to move forward with only a quick look at two posts related to looking backward and looking forward before going forward:
– If you didn’t share a recap video, did 2023 even happen?
– A New Year’s resolution for 2024: never tweet
I look at X once most days, which means I only see a sliver of what I might. Plenty of interesting people are still there, and I wish they’d move to Bluesky. I occasionally will retweet something to be polite, but I’m doing my best not to post. It is always tempting. A little experiment Dec. 20, when the National Hop Report came out, served as a reminder: I posted to Twitter, to Bluesky and to Facebook. Twitter easily drove the most traffic.
Two essential reads this week
– The Philosophy of the Farmer Brewers
Because these brewers only use ingredients sourced from their farm. “It is a volatile practice that leads to conflict, improvisation, and frustration in equal measure.”
– Anon, A Giant Monster Roams — Torrside Brewery in New Mills, Derbyshire
Yes, Alan McLeod and Boak & Bailey already pointed to this story, but I didn’t want you to miss this thought: “They still feel unique within the industry—a more playful side of brewing that is becoming increasingly rare.”
The, wow, ‘How did this happen?’ story of the week
– The Sad Spiral of Rockmill Brewery: How the Craft Beer Darling Ended up in Foreclosure
These ideas would seem to be related
– Reasons to Skip Dry January
– In 2024, How About “Pub January?”
As appealing as these “Pubs in AI” look, Pub January requires visiting physical pubs.
By the numbers
– Boak & Bailey share their Bristol spreadsheet.
– One Year and 389 Breweries Later.
I only read the headline
(I didn’t inhale)
– 9 Things You Should Know About Old Style Beer
The New Years Resolution post mostly of name calling and trashing folks, yes the substack thing I had seen. I have a tweet complaining about the algorithm 4 years ago and think it’s actually improved of late. I have noted people actually often stopped engaging on the platform around the time of that tweet, so I don’t think it’s anything new. I don’t expect much out of my X engagement, but that’s my leaning for all of social media these days, I finding a return to blogs.
The fragmentation is real, but I agree that for now X seems to be the place the largest percentage of information lands (with links to more).
But when I saw the kerfuffle around Other Half prices in Chicago I kept waiting for the “full story” of what happened. I didn’t see one.