You really should read the whole thing, which means sticking around for this paragraph.
“I am none the wiser as to what I, the beer drinker, am expected to expect from the use of a Burton union. These beers are both lovely, but very much in the way Thornbridge already operates. With luck, one of England’s many fine beer writers will be able to explain what difference the equipment actually makes to the product, beyond the press releases and collaborations.”
Feel seen?
Earlier this month at he Great American Beer Festival, Banded Oak Brewing collected a bronze medal in the Contemporary American-Style category with their Mexican lager. That may or may not seem appropriate, but that’s not what this short post is about. Banded Oak closed its doors in Denver in September, that is before the festival. They are moving to the suburbs and into a restaurant that is also a bowling establishment and a bike shop.
In a story posted before the brewery closed, founder Will Curtin said the brewing landscape has changed significantly over the years, and believes that the traditional “garage brewery” model may be waning.
“I think sort of the age of a garage brewery is sort of, if not gone, going,” he said.
I hope that’s not true, because when I read that I thought immediately of a conversation with the late Greg Noonan, the pioneering founder of the Vermont Pub and Brewery.
“When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant. You gotta keep getting the guys who say, ‘Cool, I can sell the beer I make. I can do it,’ ” he said.
Sadly, it does not name names, but promises “creative sour and fruited sours, wild and spontaneously fermented beers, classic wheat beers and a plethora of show-stopping IPAs. Audacious flavour combinations include blueberry crumble sour ale, peach lager made with real fruit and Bourbon Barrel-aged stout made with monster cookies, honey glazed coconut, a touch of peanut butter and candy-coated chocolates to tempt the tastebuds of even the most traditional beer drinker.”
After I paused to consider what it means to be a traditional beer drinker, I scanned at the list of 22 breweries and thought about how different some of them are from the others. On the whole, diversity is good. But Side Project Brewing squeezed in there between Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada just looks strange to me.
AleSmith Brewing Co
Allagash Brewing Co
Cigar City Brewing Co
Coldfire Brewing Co
DESTIHL Brewery
Fremont Brewing Co
Hinterland Brewery
Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers
Maui Brewing Co
Mother Road Brewing Co
Montauk Brewing Co
Other Half Brewing Co
Oskar Blues Brewery
Rogue Ales & Spirits
Samuel Adams
Side Project Brewing Co
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co
Sweetwater Brewing Co
Toppling Goliath Brewing Co
The Bold Mariner Brewing Co
The Virginia Beer Co
Urban Roots Brewery & Smokehouse
The headline — Costco Is Coming for Craft Beer — about store brand beers reads like click bait. The story itself, on the other hand, serves interested readers well. But . . . I can’t remember how many version of this I have read. It is a function of knowing that Mission Street Pale brewed by Firestone Walker and sold by Trader Joe’s won two gold medals and a silver at the Great American Beer Festival before purposefully hazy IPA existed.
Every few years there is a story about which Trader Joe’s beers are brewed at what breweries. (I’m pretty certain that shortly 2011, Firestone Walker quit brewing the Mission Street Pale and Trader Joe’s found another brewery to make the beer.)
And almost 10 years ago there was the “Is Walmart Looking to Dethrone Budweiser as King of Beers?” story.
That too many posts sound so familiar to me is one reason you won’t find a list of links here today, or on the Mondays that follow. Another is that a regular Monday posting does not sync the rhythm of life around here (or wherever we are). Random might work better.
That’s Marcin Ostajewski of Browar Grodziskie in line for breakfast at the 2024 Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas. In a little more than two weeks he and brewery president Krzysztof Panek will be talking about all things Grodziskie in Utrech, the Netherlands, during Carnivale Brettanomyces. The “yearly wild beer festival dedicated to deviant fermentation of all kind” is, in fact, about more than oddball fermentation.
The headline here hints of how diverse the talks will be, so I will leave you to explore the entire list on your own. These sorts of gatherings and exchanges of ideas are how beer culture avoids turning into the monoculture American beer seemed to be headed for in the 1970s.
One example, Aiden Jönsson’s examination of beer and the Gaia hypothesis: “Take a sip of beer and you will notice aromas and flavors that remind you of the world around you. Some of these play crucial roles in our physical environment by interacting with the atmosphere, oceans, and geology. We will explore some of the ways common compounds in beer reflect natural processes in our environment and climate, and how life could have evolved to use those compounds to regulate the environment to its benefit in Gaian ways.”
Bet you wish you could be there.