There’s enough op-ed in several of these posts I’ll mostly forego musing this week.
EVIL EMPIRE (UNLESS IT’S NOT) RELATED
Killing Craft? AB InBev Blocks Sale of South African Hops to American Craft Brewers.
[Via Craft Beer & Brewing]
AB InBev is Coming for All Your Hops, Unless They Aren’t.
[Via This is Why I’m Drunk]
I will be in South Africa in July. Although we won’t be near the hop growing region I hope to talk to some farmers, because I haven’t seen a report in which somebody does. After all, they are central to the story. (Added May 16: Lucy Corne reports from South Africa for All About Beer.)
What could have a larger impact in the United States than the amount of hops that might be imported from South Africa is if AB InBev were to share details about breeding these new varieties. Hops are day-length dependent, so (highly simplified version) plants won’t yield as large a crop the closer they grow to the equator. South African farmers use supplemental lighting to simulate longer days when growing older varieties, but SAB Farms (now owned by AB InBev) developed varieties that are day-length neutral. The South African fields are located at 34° latitude, about the same as North Carolina. There’s plenty of interest in local hops in North Carolina, but day length has been one of the larger obstacles. It might be rude to ask SAB Farms to send North Carolina farmers Southern Passion or African Queen rhizomes, but perhaps there is other information (or even breeding stock) to share.
The Balancing of Core and Craft.
[Via Good Beer Hunting]
How Beer Became a Moral Issue.
[Via Beervana]
Bars and packies got free equipment to push Budweiser, state says.
[Via Boston Globe]
WORDS FOR THE REST OF US
To survive, craft beer brewers turn to cocktails, coffee and … bicycles.
[Via MarketWatch]
How Cantillon Became the Unicorn Wine of Beers.
[Via PUNCH]
Brewing As A Far Earlier Step Than Community.
[Via a Good Beer Blog]
LOCAL
The Loss of Local Preference as Observed in 1966.
[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]
East End Brewing’s Exclusive “Illustration Ale” Returns.
[Via Good Food Pittsburgh]
CULTURAL CROSSOVER
How TV Became Respectable Without Getting Better.
Had this been posted before The Session #123 I certainly would have cited it then. Perhaps you can think of another topic that is “endlessly obsessed over and speculated on.”
The Sopranos debuted at almost the same moment that the World Wide Web started reaching into the majority of homes, creating an explosion of websites that demanded content directed at a class of office workers who needed something to read to distract them from their white collar drudgery.
And so an army of recappers and critics were called from the digital ether to ceaselessly whisper a constant consolation for the future that never came. After a century of intense economic productivity, you still don’t have space colonies or even shorter work-weeks, but hey, you do have your couch and your Seamless and hundreds of hours of streamable, premium television at your fingertips.
And these new TV shows are not only to be watched, but to be endlessly obsessed over and speculated on: plot puzzles and opaque character motivations offer endless opportunity for fans to take to the web and start theorizing. [Via Current Affairs]
WINE
The Dogpatch winery that is making synthetic wine.
In which the question is asked, Do we need synthetic wine? The company that wants to sell you synthetic wine has nine employees, eight are chemists. The ninth is a sommelier. “Terroir and science are not mutually exclusive,” he says. [Via San Francisco Chronicle]
FROM TWITTER
@Jeremy_Danner It's like there's two types of beer news these days. Real beer news. And beer writer news. Only one of them is interesting to read about.
— Jonathan Surratt (@beerinator) May 12, 2017
I always thought that neomexicanus hops would do well in South Africa and they could turn off all of those lights. 😉