Stan Hieronymus

Monday beer links: The changing writing game

BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 06.04.18

Beer in the Shadow of War.
This is a lovely story you would have expected to read in print at All About Beer magazine, but AABM has discontinued its print edition for at least the rest of 2018. Daria and I first wrote for the magazine in 1993, contributing pretty regularly (including the travel column for seven years) until recently. But the news is also saddening because print and pixels feel different.

Talking ‘craft beer sellouts’ with the guy who wrote the book on them.
Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business has raced to the No. 1 spot among beer books at Amazon and posts about it have filled by rss feed (I don’t think author Josh Noel can keep up with them.) John Holl writes that with the release of this book “the writing game will change. I firmly believe that folks will look differently at how beer should be covered.” You might want to advance directly to Go and read the book, but before or after Kate Bernot’s interview covers new territory.

Ten years ago next week InBev submitted its first formal offer to acquire Anheuser-Busch. Little more than a month later the deal was done. Not quite three years later ABI acquired Goose Island. There are dots to be connected, and Barrel-Aged Stout makes that easier.

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Session #136: How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm?

The topic for The Session #136 today is Farmhouse Brewing. This is excerpted from the fourth chapter of Brewing Local, so was written n 2016.

Piney River Brewing

Brian Durham was listening to National Public Radio on his drive to work one morning when he heard a report about preserving Pawpaw French, a disappearing dialect in the Ozarks. “I thought, ‘That’s it. We’re getting some pawpaws, we’re buying some French (saison) yeast,'” he said. Piney River Brewing was going to brew Paw Paw French Saison.

Joleen and Brian DurhamPiney River is located on a farm five winding miles outside of Bucyrus, Missouri, because Brian and Joleen Durham live on the farm. They bought their house in 1997 and the rest of the 80 acres they live on five years later. They raise beef cattle on the property, but were too busy with the brewery in 2015 to get around to selling any. They feed spent grain to the cattle and a sign on the long gravel driveway leading to the brewery warns, “Caution, cows may be drunk on mash.”

They are not afraid of wordplay. When they renovated a 75-year-old barn that became their brewery tasting room they christened it the “BARn.” Each of the beers has a name that connects it to the Ozarks, and a story to back it up. Float Trip Ale, which won a gold medal in the 2014 World Beer CupSM American-Style Wheat Beer category, is the most obvious example. It makes perfect sense to those who frequent the Ozarks, but not necessarily to residents of New York or Los Angeles. Their description: “A float trip is the quintessential Ozark experience. A canoe, kayak, raft or tube and a pristine spring-fed Missouri stream creates a lasting memory of our wild and beautiful outdoors. Our hand-crafted blonde ale is the perfect accompaniment to your day on the river or to simply bring back float trip memories.”

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Best beer awards ceremony. Ever.

Find a good DJ. Book an indignante band. Invite Argentine brewers. Provide beer. This will happen.

It will be electric.

This short low quality video shot with my phone at Cerveceria Nuevo Mundo in Lima, Peru, just after the final awards for Copa Latinoamericana de Cervezas Artesanales 2018 were handed out does not begin to capture how vibrant (or deafening) it was.

Copa Latinoamericana de Cervesas 2018 winners

There was beer on tap, but most attendees grabbed bottles (some iced down, others not) left over from judging. Sometimes you won the lottery, sometimes you did not. But there was always that beat in the background, provided by the DJ or band before, during and after the awards. And an occasional outbreak of dancing. Those who attended the Craft Brewers Conference in Denver in 2014 might remember how the Argentines took over the front of dance floor during a Funky Meters concert sponsored by Lagunitas Brewing. Those are mostly, but not entirely, Argentine heads bobbing up and down in the video.

During the day some people talked about when the awards ceremony would begin, others about the starting time for the party. The people who used the word party understood what was coming.

Ales Through the Ages II

Sorry, this event has been canceled.

Some of the world’s brightest beer scholars and I will be returning to Colonial Williamsburg for another round of Ales Through the Ages. The last one was terrific (read Martyn Cornell’s recap) and the next one is Oct. 19-21.

My brochure arrived yesterday.

Ales Through the Ages, Colonial Williamsburg
Here’s the speaker lineup (there are also receptions and speakers roundtables Saturday and and Sunday):

FRIDAY, October 19
5:15 p.m. – Keynote presentation. Pete Brown.

SATURDAY, October 20
9 a.m. – From Caelia to Celctic Brews & Brigid to Benedict: Beer Beyond Roman Rule. Travis Rupp.
9:45 a.m. – The Sexual Habits of Hops: How They Changed Beer, and Changed It Again. Stan Hieronymus.
(Pardon the whining, but I also followed Travis last year. This is a lousy position. He is an engaging speaker who actually knows what he is talking about.)
11 a.m. – British Fungus: Brettanomyces in British Brewing. Ron Pattinson.

2 p.m. – Messing About with Old Ale & Beer. Marc Meltonville.
2:45 p.m. – Pale Ale Before IPA: The Birth of a Legend. Martyn Cornell.
4 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

SUNDAY, October 21
9 a.m. – Gruit: Back to the Future of Brewing? Butch Heilshorn.
9:45 a.m. – Molasses Beer, Hops and the Enslaved: Brewing in 18th Century Virginia. Frank Clark and Lee Graves.
11 a.m. – Albany Ale: 400 Years of Brewing in New York’s Hudson Valley. Craig Gravina.
2 p.m. – The Nobel Failure: How Vermont’s Period of Prohibition Shape the Present Culture and Landscape. Adam Krakowski.
3:15 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

What is wrong with this picture?

Nuevo Mundo Draft Bar, Lima, Peru

Jennifer Talley judging beer in PeruWhy do so many beers on the menu board at the Nuevo Mondo Draft Bar in Lima, Peru, contain 6.1% alcohol by volume? Yes, that is a 6.1% Berliner Weisse on the board and elsewhere I drank a 6.1% beer called “Kolsch.”

Because in Peru breweries pay less tax on alcoholic beverages (not just beer) with 6.1% abv to 12% abv than they do on those with less than 6%. As you know, in the rest of the world beverages with more alcohol are generally taxed at a higher rate.

Which might be why Jennifer Talley, author of Session Beers, began her presentation at Copa Latinoamericana de Cervezas Artesanales wondering out loud why she had been invited to judge and speak.