monday links

The ceiling at Baumgartner’s Cheese store and Tavern in Monroe, Wisconsin, as seen from beside a glass of beer.

There was bad news for beer last week, and stories about the business and beer trends and all the usual stuff. You’ll find none of them here today. It is a holiday, Presidents’ Day (music courtesy of Loudon Wainwright III), so sticking to beer as one of life’s pleasures.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I would have to say wild and sour ales are overrated. First, they take way too much time to make — imagine how much good beer could have been made in the interim? Second, they’re kind of gross. Who really wants to drink something that smells like a goat barn? And third, they cost way too much. Think of all the good beer you could have bought with that $20 you spent on one bottle.”

                    — Jeffrey Stuffings, Jester King Brewery co-founder
From We Asked 16 Beer Professionals: What’s the Most Overrated Beer Style?

This was a listicle with many redeeming qualities. Granted, some of them are business related, but on the whole they made me smile. Jester King brought two beers to the Weldwerks Invitational nine days ago. Spon 3-Year-Blend, which is wild and sour and the sort of beer Jester King is known for, might have been the best beer in a room full of amazing beers (see below). So maybe Stuffings winked when he finished these six sentences above. The other beer they brought? Nelson Bliss, a hazy IPA. It is 2025, after all. Take the time for some of the other answers, particularly from Heather McReynolds and Gary Rogers.

LEDE OF THE WEEK

I can barely hear Chit speaking over the sound of the boat engine.

“I said, I used to drive, but this guy goes way faster!” Chit beams, his chiselled grin just visible in the moonlight reflecting off the Chao Phraya river as we traverse through the northern suburbs of Bangkok. It’s 10pm on a Sunday, we’re on a speedboat, and we’re not exactly sober.

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KICKER OF THE WEEK

It was so good that it made Jess switch from Titanic Plum Porter. It was so good that she didn’t even resent the inevitable day after headache. It was so good that, even with the headache, she co-wrote a blog post about it.

From Two decades in pursuit of perfect pints of ESB

PETE BROWN DOUBLEHEADER

– Tasting Notes: The Art and Science of Pairing Beer and Music. Pete Brown is busy promoting his next book, available in May or June, while he still writes it. The photo on the right was taken at a conference in South Africa in 2017, where I was talking about a) hops and b) brewing with local ingredients (they pay your way to South Africa, they keep you working). Brown was refining his pairing beer and music act. His presentation was a lot more fun than mine, and not only because it included drinking beer. He’s done plenty of research since and the book will include a “look at recent research that proves – yes, proves – that on top of all the contextual stuff, our brains have formed deep-seated relationships between what we taste and what we hear, and how changing background music can alter the flavour of your beer.” I’m looking forward to it, even if he doesn’t find a beer to pair with the music of John Moreland.

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Much of the best reading last week was on Friday, when The Session revival was pretty dang successful. Cheers to Alan McLeod for escorting the gathering into 2025. McLeod has gathered the links.

LEDE OF THE WEEK

The signs, both literal and metaphorical, were not great.

The former Sackville Lounge, which had a reputation as a mix of Old Man Pub and dive-y spot to meet somewhat strange and unusual people, had been closed since Covid. But rather than re-opening under that name, with its delightful neon sign (still there, at present), it gained a new identity – and much opprobrium.

The new signage now proclaims the pub to be Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale and Stout House (‘since 1914’), in the kind of font you’d normally find in plastic letters on a strip-mall Oirish Pub in, say, Arkansas.

From Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs: Biddy Mulligan’s

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Beer culture in France was drinking 250ml of a yellow liquid with bubbles in it. And then there’s Jean-François and Christian, coming with a warm flat beer, brown like manure.”

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First, don’t forget that Alan McLeod will host the first gathering of The Session since Dec. 12, 2018. Here’s everything you need to know to participate. And please do.

The most interesting story of the week, at least to me, is that American Homebrewers Association will operate autonomously from the Brewers Association. There are plenty of “what next?” questions. Some are answered at the AHA website.

Before the AHA and BA are severed, it is worth a few minutes to consider how important homebrewers were in establishing what became the Brewers Association. You could start with the timeline: The AHA was formed in 1978 (and announced in Zymurgy magazine), the Association of Brewers was organized to include the American Homebrewers Association and the Institute for Brewing and Fermentation Studies in 1983, and Association of Brewers and the Brewers Association of America merged to the Brewers Association in 1995.

That merger did not come easily. Steve Hindy provided details in The New Brewer magazine in 2006 and later in “The Craft Beer Revolution.” Negotiations went on for about two years, the meetings “intense and sometimes contentious.” Randy Mosher was on the BAA-AOB task force formed to consider the merger.

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Sean Franklin assessing beers (Seattle, 2006)

In the second paragraph of a profile of Roosters Brewery, Matthew Curtis establishes that Sean Franklin is one of the pioneers of modern British beer.

In the third, he writes, “Caught in a weird limbo that exists between Britain’s heritage-laden family brewers that can claim decades, if not centuries, of brewing tradition, and the slick, self-confident modern beer brands that emerged in earnest around 2010, Roosters is part of a small set of breweries that shares aspects of both camps, but doesn’t quite fit into either.”

This story examines what comes after the pioneer. By chance, the post and news that an announcement the inaugural group of inductees into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame will be streamed Feb. 15 reached me about the same time. More pioneers and more opportunities to consider what came next.

TASTING NOTE OF THE WEEK

“Who else would be making 90 Shilling? Open Gate’s is 6.8% ABV. This is a heavy fellow, dense with unfermented malt sugars, while also laced by bitterly vegetal hops: serious stuff. There’s a definite Highland Toffee element to the centre, and it’s enjoyably warming and chewable. On adjusting to the bitterness I found a more nuanced red-liquorice side to it. I’m no expert on what 90 Shilling is meant to taste like, either historically or whatever American homebrew culture has since turned it into, but this is quite a good beer, and was well suited to the cold and drizzly evening on which they served it to me.”

          — John Duffy, The Beer Nut
From Arthur’s Last Christmas

SUBHEAD OF THE WEEK

“Every drink takes five minutes off your life.” Maybe the thought scares you. Personally, I find comfort in it.

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