Musing is not limited to Monday, so because I discovered this . . .
Goose Island Beer Company, like many others, asks visitors to confirm their age before entering its website, obviously not allowing those under 21.
However, upon close observation you’ll notice the pull-down menu also doesn’t present an option for those born before 1928.
Does this mean you shouldn’t drink Goose Island beer if you are older than 80?
The Ann Arbor News does a quick Q&A with Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin Ales: Serving humanity via better beer. Give Ron an opportunity to wax philosophic and he will.
Consider the last question: What makes a great beer?
That is a question that is impossible to answer because its entirely subjective. A really great beer is going to be different for every individual, and not only every individual, but every moment of your day and every day of your life because there are so many different flavors out there within different beers that go with so many different foods or different weather. There’s no answer to that question.
Nice answer.
Also got me wondering if flipping two words makes it a different question: What makes a beer great?
Too subtle? Perhaps. It could be the setting, a different sort of “moment” than Ron refers to, the pour, when the cask was broached, whatever.
All reasons that sometimes you drink a good-excellent-just fair beer and think “great,” and sometimes you pour a “great” beer and it isn’t.
Yep, one of the reasons we moved to New Mexico was because we love the hot food.
For us the annual Fiery Foods Festival in Albuquerque, which wrapped up today, is as exciting as the Oregon Brewers Festival.
I did come across a beer story today, which I’ll post Tuesday, beyond the obvious — that the specialty beers Anheuser-Busch is distributing, such as its own Shock Top Belgian Top (pictured), Redhook and Widmer, Hoegaarden and Leffe Blond, are the ones the distributor is bringing for drinkers to sample and to buy. Much higher profile than a few years ago.
But there’s also a chile pepper/hops analogy that’s been obvious since our first visit to Fiery Foods in 1994.
You’ve got a set of vendors selling insane products. Sunday that would be sauces so hot they’d burn away several layers of taste buds, leaving you in pain and unable to taste anything for days. At a beer festival that would be beers with crazy amount of hops.
You’ve got another set who totally avoid excess, and can be seen wagging their fingers.
Then there are the folks who talk about flavor and heat. Or flavor and bitterness. Bless ’em.
So soon, Stone beers and hot sauces. In the same bottle. Be here.
Today Don Russell compares the Miller Lite Brewers Collection to Kenny G.
I’ve previously written something similar about Coors Blue Moon White Ale and Peter, Paul & Mary.
The difference would be that I was arguing Peter Paul & Mary are authentic, and Don is making no such case for Kenny G. Just that his stuff sells. So a more parallel analogy would be to pick an “folk” artist similar to Miller Lite Wheat since the press material compares it to Blue Moon. Perhaps Trini “If I Had a Hammer” Lopez. (He’s in the Latin Music Hall of Fame, but what the heck was he doing singing Pete Seeger’s stuff?)
But that’s not the question of the day.
The question is what music genre does that leave for Anheuser-Busch’s Shock Top Belgian White?
Don Barkley, arguably the closest active link to America’s original microbrewery, is returning to small-scale brewing. The North Bay Business Journal has the scoop.
Visionaries from Mendocino County are looking to break down the walls between fine wine and craft beer in wine country. Don Barkley, a legend in U.S. craft brewing, left his post as master brewer at Ukiah-based Mendocino Brewing Co. in November and is preparing the inaugural releases this spring from a rare winery-brewery in south Napa.
Barkley worked for Jack McAuliffe in the 1970s at New Albion Brewing in Sonoma County shortly after McAuliffe started the first “built new” (it wasn’t really new) microbrewery. Last April when the Brewers Association honored the reclusive McAuliffe it was Barkley who accepted the award.
Barkley retired from Mendocino Brewing in November after nearly 25 years at the brewery. Mendocino acquired much of the new Albion equipment as well as the house yeast after New Albion closed.
He said he is looking forward to returning to smaller batch brewing, working in a 15-barrel brewhouse instead of with a 100-barrel system.
“Jack McAuliffe’s favorite comment was winemakers are poets and beer makers are industrialists,” Barkley said. “We’re going to see whether an industrialist can become a poet.”
This sounds like a discussion we’ve already had.