Stan Hieronymus

Session #76 roundup; #77 announced – IPA: What’s the Big Deal?

The SessionGlenn Humphries has posted the roundup for Session #76: Compulsion. Thirty takes on the same topic; excellent reading.

And Justin Mann has announced the plan for #77 on July 5. The topic is “IPA: What’s the Big Deal?”

I’m just wondering, why all the hype? What is it about an IPA that makes craft beer enthusiasts (CBE) go wild?

He wonders about still more, but then it seems like just about everybody has something to say about IPA these days (currently recommending The Myth of the Authentic IPA at Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog). The Session #77, open to all bloggers, is July 5.

Would you like to drink a beer with these people?

Of course you would.

I posted this “I am A homebrewer” video back in 2010, long before I had any idea I’d end up in Zywiec last year judging beers made by some of these Polish brewers, and meeting a lot of people with names harder to pronounce than Hieronymus. I’m headed back to Festiwal Birofilia this week and excited about trying more beers brewed both in homes and a growing number of small breweries.

Also looking forward to seeing several others — Bruno Reinders, Andreas Richter, Conrad Seidl, Don Jeffrey, and Ian Hornsey — who are traveling some distance, if not quite 5,000 miles, to drink these beers and eat enough to gain about a pound a day.

The Session #76: Walking away from compulsion

The SessionGlenn Humphries at beer is your friend hosts The Session #76 this month. The topic is “compulsion” and you’ll find links to other posts at beer is your friend. On the whole, more thoughtful than my efforts here, because I confess to being at a loss.

Correctly or not, I tend to link compulsion with obsessive behavior. That can include collecting — tracking down card number 156 to fill out a set of baseball cards, finding that last penny that completes that once empty book you got for your birthday. So, given my lack of coherent thought and (honestly) time, I’m leaning on singer-songwriter Joe Ely to comment.

She collected
Chain letters, Irish setters, go-getters
She just needed more

She collected
Show-stoppers, window-shoppers, name droppers,
She just needed more
She just needed more

At first I hardly noticed
I thought she was just showing affection
But when her carpenter came
to measure me for a frame
I walked right out of her collection

– From “She Collected,” written and performed by Joe Ely

New Zealand hop production below expectations

Looks like New Zealand hops, which include several particularly popular varieties, won’t be any easier to get this year. The industry’s 2013 crop report (remember it is fall there and hops have already been harvested) indicates production fell about 30 metric tons, or 4%, below expectations. The two most widely grown varieties, Wakatu and Nelson Sauvin, were “the most highly impacted by the unseasonal conditions.”

“The result was a little disappointing, especially in what is a buoyant market but the reality is things could have been much worse when you consider just how persistently dry the summer was,” said Doug Donelan, CEO of New Zealand Hops.

Farmers harvested about 600,000 pounds of Wakatu, 216,000 pounds of Nelson Sauvin, and 119,000 of Motueka, another emerging variety. Production of other high demand/low volume varieties such as Riwaka (13,000 pounds, most of which will stay in New Zealand) was considerably less.

For purposes of comparison, American farmers harvested more than 5 million pounds of Cascade hops in 2012, more than a million of Cluster, and even 722,000 of Citra, a variety farmers are expanding acreage of as fast as they can.

[The full report, courtesy of Charles Faram & Co.]