Stan Hieronymus

Monday beer links: All that glitters isn’t hops

BEER AND WINE LINKS 03.26.18

Essential oils in hops
Something’s Brewing in the Lab: Beer Without Hops.
Industrial brewing yeast engineered for the production of primary flavor determinants in hopped beer.
I’ve written a bit about this in the next Hop Queries newsletter (which goes out Tuesday), so just three quick points. First, we’re not talking hopsless beer. The full report (second link) has the details. Second, the researchers have focused on two key compounds (linalool and geraniol), but hops contain more 500 compounds and scientists have not identified what (if anything) they all add to aroma and flavor. It is one thing to create a “hoppy” flavor. It is another to replicate Citra (not that folks aren’t trying; Hop Queries also digs into blending research this month). Third, genetically modified yeast.

Glitter Beer: The Full Report.
Glitter Beer Sparkles as Spring’s Craft Beer Trend.
Those who said “this too shall pass” about juicy/hazy IPAs may want to brace themselves. Jeff Alworth gives it the full Beer Bible treatment. A lot more details, for instance, about glitter here than sahti in his book, which allows for considerable comment about the food safety factor. This is not to suggest that breweries are adding anything that will harm you, but it reminds me that far too many brewers are casual about filing the proper government paperwork when a beer will only be sold on draft. They are legally required to obtain formula approval when adding any ingredient that is not on the TTB approved list. Some I have talked to think it is necessary only when seeking label approval for packaged beer.

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Monday beer links: Hamm’s, beer goggles & gardens

BEER AND WINE LINKS 03.19.18

30 of the (Best?) Cheap Macro Lagers, Blind-Tasted and Ranked.
Long ago, pitching an editor to keep his own Pocket Guide to Beer series alive, Michael Jackson characterized James Robertson’s books (such as the Great American Beer Book, published only a year after Jackson’s World Guide to Beer) as derivative, which I think was unfair. His “great experiment” included very organized tastings that drew from a diverse group whose members scored beers on specific criteria. And they used the full spectrum when evaluating beers, so flipping through one of Robertson’s books with scores and finding a beer that received a 17 is more common than one that received 92.

Originally, 90 was the highest score possible (if all six tasters gave a beer 15), but Robertson later converted the numbers to a 100-point scale because, well, that’s the American way. The Beer-Taster’s Log included more than 6,000 tasting notes — remember that in 1995 there about 800 breweries in the United States, compared to more than 6,000 today. It is a fascinating resource, and not only because it rates four different vintages of Harley-Davidson Heavy Beer (27 in 1993, a great disappointment compared to 53 in 1990).

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Monday beer links: What would a lifestyle brewer look like?

BEER AND WINE LINKS 03.12.18

WINE

Rich People Are Ruining Wine.
“Lifestyle vintners.”

What would a lifestyle brewer look like? (Beyond the beard.)

BACK TO BEER

Brew Dog was at the center of the story of the week (or stories of the week or stories of the weeks; hard to keep track). Head over to A Good Beer Blog or Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog for complete converage. More would be overkill.

Closed, Thanks for the Memories — An Argument for Historical Preservation.
First a disclaimer. I sleep with an archivist. (In fact, the opportunity for her to work at a presidential library is why we moved to Atlanta.) Now another disclaimer. I wrote this in Brewing Local: “The earliest complete description of steam beer production is from 1898, and until a diary is found by the great-great-grandchild of a mid-nineteenth-century Bay Area brewer, it won’t be clear how the process evolved during the previous 50 years.” As somebody who wants to write about such stuff the lack of information pisses me off.

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Monday beer links: Sexism in beer & the workplace & history

BEER AND WINE LINKS 03.05.18

1) Sexism in Beer: Introduction
2) Sexism in Beer: The Experiences of Women
3) Sexism in Beer: A Brewer’s Perspective
4) Sexism in Beer: What You Can Do
5) The Reddit discussion.
6) Brewery apologises after consent joke causes uproar.
7) A message from Greg Koch.
8) Women, You’re Not The Problem — Our Sexist Workplace Culture Is.
Pardon the amount of links, enough that I will refer to them by number. I want to make it easier for you to read each of the four parts of Beervana’s excellent collection of stories related to sexism in beer (1-4). No. 5 links to the discussion that followed at Reddit. I am certain there were others, but this one nicely illustrates that people “get it” at different levels, including not at all. And while Stone’s Twitter misstep (6-7) is pretty much a poster child for not getting it, the result (putting a woman in charge of the Twitter account) represents genuine progress.

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Monday beer links: Because we ask a lot of this drink

BEER AND WINE LINKS 02.26.18

At the end of his mid-week collection of beery links and thoughts Thursday Alan McLeod mentioned “this finite set of stories” that he, Boak & Bailey and I choose from each week. It is one reason I am always excited to see Saturday and Sunday posts, because I get the first chance to comment on them. Conversely, I might delete as story I saved earlier in the week because I expect you to read AGBB and B&B every week and I am already redundant enough.

Keg delivery at Market Porter in London
But some stories deserve to be pointed to time and time again, such as Misogynistic Beer Imagery: Aesthetic, Narratives, Contexts, so we’ll start there. And some kindle a memory. In this case it was casks being delivered at Market Porter in London, which is central to a story about a time when more people visited a pub at the beginning of the day.

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