Somehow, Uwe Kalms occasionally managed to get a word in edgewise during an evening at Krossbar Bellavista in Santiago, Chile. They hosted judges and speakers for Copa Cervezas de América last week when they debuted their newest beer — you guessed it, an NEIPA.
Ron will be posting plenty of details about the trip, the competition, the conference, and whatever else crosses his mind. In an email exchange yesterday he said he had already written 5,000 words. Expect it to be entertaining.
First, thanks to Alan McLeod for getting into the Monday linking business while I was out of it.
How capitalism cornered the market on authenticity.
Christine Sismondo — who wrote the terrific book America Walks into a Bar — tosses some history at a few words in vogue these days, like traditional and authentic.
The call to return to ‘traditional values,’ which includes taking aim at women in the workforce and denying people access to abortion and assaults on same-sex marriage and transgender rights, among other things, is part of the same anti-modern impulse, albeit a fairly extreme expression. Then there’s the current religious revivalism; a nearly obsessive love of medieval fantasy books, films, television and games; an obsession with all things ‘craft’ and the never-ending quest to find the most authentic of everything, from travel destination to taco.
[Via The Washington Post]
What the Anchor Brewing deal means for craft beer.
[Via San Francisco Chronicle]
Anchors up and away.
[Via The Beer Hunter]
The first story I read about Japanese brewing company Sapporo buying Anchor Brewing is still the best I have found. I am waiting for one that polls regular Anchor drinkers or a new interview with Fritz Maytag. Instead, crazily enough, the best historic context (concise and linkable) resides within something Michael Jackson wrote almost 30 years ago.
You might have overlooked this bit of news yesterday from Molson Coors: “Molson Coors and Heineken announced today that MillerCoors later this year will start distributing, marketing and selling the Mexican import Sol in the United States.”
Shrug, be excited, whatever. For me this provdes an excuse to tell a Larry Bell story. And Larry Bell stories are the best kind of beer stories. It comes from 2009 and appears in Brewing with Wheat.
About five years after Bell began brewing a wheat beer called Solsun he discovered the cloudy summer seasonal had taken on a life beyond the glass. The sororities at Western Michigan, also in Kalamazoo, used the beer’s logo on 600 T-shirts for fall rush.
“I realized I better get some trademark protection,” Bell said. When he filed the papers Mexican brewing company Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, which brewed a beer called El Sol (the Sun), opposed the application. Since Moctezuma had been around since 1899 Bell’s lawyer suggested he could spend a million dollars fighting for the name and still lose. The good news was Moctezuma would let Bell keep the distinctive logo.
He picked Oberon as the new name in 1996 because, in part, it also has six letters and the label was easy to change. “Oberon was sort of goofy, had some connotations,” Bell said. “If you look at the Latin root it means they wander or go astray. That seemed appropriate.”
Additionally, when Bell was a sixth grader in Park Forest, Illinois, he played the part of Oberon, the fairy king, in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“I still have dinner with Queen Titania. She’s looking pretty good,” Bell said.
What timing, given that it’s National Beer Day, one of those holidays that certainly snuck up on me but I think is designed to celebrate American brewed beer. Yet the topic for The Session this month is “Views on imported beer” and host Christopher Barnes puts forth this question: “What place do imported beers (traditional European) have in a craft beer market?” (Drop by his blog for other answers.)
Barnes has eliminated the best selling imports by process of parenthesis, which simplifies the question of why consumers might choose traditional Europeans beers. The three best reasons that come to mind are: a) cachet, b) quality, and c) education. They are not exclusive.
Otherwise, I recommend reading a very long feature on Shelton Brothers beer importers in the April issue of Beer Advocate magazine. The beers they’ve brought to the United States certainly tick a, b and c.
*****
Just for fun, a quick quiz. What company first imported Duvel and when?
Whose Culture?
When I wrote about Cryo hops recently I began with an observation they might not be as big a deal as my Twitter feed would suggest. I was wrong. They are a big deal. Well, based on my Twitter feed the recent heated discussion about Zoiglhaus Zoigl-Kölsch is an even bigger deal. That’s because I follow too many of the folks expressing opinions, so I saw some of the same tweets maybe a dozen times. You can catch up by reading what Jeff Alworth wrote, and get an idea about the vigor of the discussion by continuing to the comments. Nonetheless, I’ll suggest not as many people care about this as will stand in line for the next release at Tree House Brewing.
I do not, however, think it is trivial. To go first to the bottom line, so you can skip the rest and get to the links, I am basically in agreement with John Duffy’s comment. No matter how much we might admire another culture if we think “the correct perspective for an American to have is an American perspective and that’s all that matters” we’ve taken a wrong turn.