monday links

TWTBWTW: Unions, ghost pubs & brewery cats

Retweeting Boak and Bailey’s tweet pointing to their weekly roundup of interesting writing about beer and pubs, I commented “In which I am reminded a ‘thing’ maybe still be a ‘thing’ after it has been written about so much it seems there is nothing ‘new’ to write. Case in point, this morning I learned the Bermondsey Beer Mile ‘is still a thing.'”

To which Alan McLeod replied: “Isn’t ‘a thing’ different from ‘still a thing’ in that to be ‘still a thing’ there needs to be a reasonable length of time when it really wasn’t a thing even if there are those who thought the thing was thoroughly thingy throughout.” That was probably more than I was prepared to think about before breakfast on Saturday (this is where I should insert a photo of my food, but I will not).

My comment, however, is something I had been thinking about since it was announced Scratch Brewing is a semi-finalist for a James Beard Award. In the first few years after Scratch began selling beer in 2013 there many, many stories about the brewery. It was, and is, a great story. But if (almost) everybody writes one time about a place all at once then pretty soon there are no new stories.

Scratch’s post about the awards had 725 likes on Instagram this morning, and a similar one on Facebook had 594 likes. To many people Scratch is still a thing, even if the story faucet is no longer running wide open.

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Beer union members on parade.

So you understand I might be biased, I think unions are on balance a good thing. I know they aren’t perfect but most of the “cons” on pro and cons lists are bullshit. I once worked for a newspaper in which members of the editorial department were not represented by a union. And I worked for one, both inside and outside of management, where they were. Not only was the second a better place to work, for both union members and those in management, but I think having the union in place made the newspaper better.

That said, here is a straight up news story from The Red&Black, the University of Georgia student newspaper:

“On Tuesday, a majority of employees from Creature Comforts Brewing Company filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for a secret ballot election for employees to vote to be represented by their newly formed union, the Brewing Union of Georgia, according to a press release from the union.

“BUG intends to become a fully independent union for breweries across the state. Various community leaders and union members delivered the letter requesting voluntary recognition on Jan. 13 to management requesting a response in three days, the release said. On Jan. 16, management said they would consider the request.

“Since the company did not immediately agree to recognition, BUG proceeded with filing for the election.”

Of course, it isn’t that simple. To understand what is going on you really need to be reading Fingers, Dave Infante’s Substack newsletter. Both his Wednesday report and a follow up (scroll down) on Saturday. Really, go do it now.

PorchDrinking has a “what does it all mean” story, and it includes a list of pros and cons (scroll about half way down). You could center an enthusiastic debate in a brewery taproom around any of the first five cons offered by Jon Hyman at the law firm Wickens Herzer Panza.

But No. 6 . . . wow.

“Nothing in the employer-employee relationship is supposed to be equal.”

Really?

Brewery cats. “Working cats” are not friendly or otherwise compatible with normal home life. A Kentucky Humane Society program finds homes for them, including at breweries. “At a lot of shelters that don’t have a working cats program, [these cats] wouldn’t be adoption candidates and they would probably be euthanized,” said the program manager.

Ghost pubs. In Brussels. If that doesn’t have your attention, the images are a product of a Praktica L and Kodak Portra 400 film.

An old story becomes a new story in Uruguay. This reads like an origin story that has been told thousands of times during the last 40 years in the United States. Things like this happen: “But only a few months before the scheduled shipment was supposed to arrive, the location they thought they had secured fell through. They were left with a fortune in state-of-the-art equipment about to be unloaded into the busy port with nowhere to go.”

And to be filed under wait-didn’t-these-breweries-just-open?, “they took inspiration from breweries like Grimm Artisanal Ales in Brooklyn, 2nd Shift Brewing in St. Louis, and Tripping Animals Brewing Co. in Miami.”

Requiem for Fat Tire. “As Fat Tire Moves On, I Miss the Old Belgium.”

The official beer of . . . World Axe Throwing League. The beer is Pabst and this is a real story.

Mic drop:

That was the beer week that was: Stories chosen by a human

This lovely essay from Eoghan Walsh is not about Fat Tire. That it arrived the same week so many were moved to comment on changes in Fat Tire was a coincidence. There is, in fact, much more to what Walsh writes than these three sentences, but, dang, they seem relevant to the Fat Tire conversation.

“A beer evolves in other ways too; the Zinnebir of 2022 is not the Zinnebir of 2002 because of innumerate conscious and unconscious decisions made in those 20 years. Brewers are constantly tweaking their beers, paddling furiously out of sight of the drinker to provide them the same – or better – experience every time. Over the course of 20 years a beer is pulled from its original template by incremental changes to brewing processes, new or different raw materials, or marketing decisions altering its colour, bitterness, or alcohol content.”

This week in AI news

– Atwater Brewing in Detroit has used ChatGPT to write a beer recipe, then brewed Artificial Intelligence IPA.

– If the commitment of beergeek to AI generated words and images wasn’t previously clear, it should be now that the site has been renamed beergeekAI. It is not a place to worry about the role AI will play in journalism (worth considering, but not in this context). It is a place to visit when you need a smile.

– Perhaps something similar is needed for wine drinkers, because otherwise this: “It wouldn’t surprise me if this has been going on for some time now. I’ve already written about straight-up plagarism in wine writing before, this just refines it. In most cases, given the paucity of sources used to plagiarize content for Instagram posts and the like (most copycat content is lazily purloined from a single website), a bot-written rehash will be both more balanced and more readable. But if we’re really honest, most wine writing is a recycling effort in the first place.”

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But what does the “new” Fat Tire taste like? For those who can’t wait until they sample it themselves there is this: “If the color and packaging had remained unchanged, I honestly wonder what percentage of the Fat Tire drinkers would have noticed the shift in flavors. I can fully believe that some less discerning tasters would have happily gone on drinking the brand without realizing that things had changed.”

As an aside, because I wrote a couple of stories about hops and sustainability last summer I learned that New Belgium was already using HBC 522 in Fat Tire. Beers evolve.

23 people to watch. “These are folks whose voices are changing craft beer for the better every day just by doing what they do best: brewing beer. And yes, many of them by nature are also actively championing safer, more-inclusive spaces in craft beer.”

Cannonball Creek Brewing

This is what success looks like. Cannonball Creek Brewing in Golden, Colorado, celebrated their 10th anniversary this past weekend. They brew about 750 barrels of beer a year. That’s not very much compared to a somewhat larger brewery in Golden, but enough to sustain a community business. They are better than pretty good at it what they do, winning a GABF medal every year since they opened. That’s not the only reason it was packed Friday night, although it’s a good place to start. Sunday they had a Piñata.

Elephant-friendly beer. If that headline won’t entice you to read this story I do not know what might.

The best hop waters. Many of these are more expensive than beer.

TWTBWTW: Being local versus being for locals

"Death of a Salesman" set

An interesting thought from Alister Reece.

“This also got me thinking about how so many of the beer styles we love and take for granted are a combination of location in a physical sense and locale in a population sense.”

I’m in the process of assembling a lengthy recap about what I’ve previously written “hop terroir” for the next issue of Hop Queries. Much of the research focuses on geographical differences, but there is more.

The first question asked here, back in 2005, was, “Does it matter where a particular beer, any beer, is brewed?” In thinking about this way too much in the years since, I’ve returned often to something Amy Trubek wrote in “The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.”

“This broader definition of terroir considers place as much as earth. According to this definition, the people involved in making wine, the winemaking tradition of a region, and the local philosophy of flavor are all part of terroir. Unlike the narrow view of terroir, this humanist point of view is not really quantifiable. Terroir speaks of nature and nature’s influence on flavor and quality, but here the human attributes we bring to ‘nature’ are cultural and sensual rather than objective and scientific.”

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– Changing colors. We were New York City last weekend (the photo at the top is the set for “Death of a Salesman”; they were pretty specific about the rule against taking photos during the play) when I read this story about how New Belgium is making over Fat Tire. Had we been at home in Colorado, perhaps I could have tracked down a can of the beer and provided drinking notes. I will put that on my to do list.

– The Meaning of Dry January. I was wrong last week when I typed the link I posted then would be the only one to a story about Dry January. Beer drinkers may choose to quote this, “One takeaway from my research is that lower-alcohol-content beverages are better. It’s easier in a social situation to drink and continue drinking and not worry about your consumption.” They should read the rest of the story.

– What are the elements that make a beer memorable? Context. Context. Context.

– The shelf turd abides. A “a vessel of ironic detachment.”

– You Were Never Going to Go to Noma Anyway. I spent too much time in the week reading about changes at Noma, the hyperlocal Copenhagen restaurant, blah blah blah. Because I’ve been reading too much about the place since I wrote “Brewing Local” and wondering about how fine dining, beer and inclusivity (or exclusivity) fit together. So I’d also recommend you take a look at “Noma and the Fizzle of Too-Fine Dining,” “Noma’s closing exposes the contradictions of fine dining,” and “How much does our food tell us about who we are?”

TWTBWTW: Low visibility for beer business 2023

How are things looking for beer in 2023?

I’m OK if posts related to “Dry January”™ don’t continue to arrive at the same pace as they have in the first week of the year. They start to get repetitious. I expect this will be the only one I link to, unless I spot one even more striking.

– DRY INFIDELITY: On having a beer break in January

“You don’t know the story behind somebody desiring a break from beer in January. It may be that they have concerns for their own drinking patterns. It may be for financial reasons, especially after the pressures and expense of Christmas. It may be for fitness reasons as there are plenty of calories in this stuff, despite what people argue. It may be for mental well-being to have a break from a known depressant.

“Or it may be for any other reason unbeknown to others. It is a personal choice and everybody has the right to make it.

“But I’m tired. And I’m bored. And I’m sick to death of the irresponsibility of people within this industry. I’m tired of the shaming and guilt tripping online by people in this beer bubble and community being far too flippant about the mild poison that they peddle.”

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– The pub with no internet. So that would mean no Untappd, right?

– Firestone Walker Wookey Jack and the State of Black IPA. I didn’t know you could write about the history of Black IPA without mentioning Greg Noonan.

– They Meet Up in Motels Across America…to Trade Old Beer Cans. This is not new, but it showed up in a collection of stories about collections. It reminded me to look and see of a story I wrote about “Beer Dave” for All About Beer is in their growing archives. It is, although my byline is not.

– 6 Beer Industry Trends to Watch in 2023. No. 6: “Taprooms Will Become Attractive Interactive Hubs.” Yes. Disc golf at Live Oak Brewing in Austin, Texas.

– Speaking of trends. The Wall Street Journal had two stories about beer this week. As the headlines (The Huge Number of Small Breweries Creates a Beer Glut and Beer Sales Drop as Consumers Balk at Higher Prices) suggest they were less than optimistic. The posts are behind a paywall, but there is an option. I read the print editions at my local library.

It’s Monday, it’s 2023 & people are still writing about beer

And so 2023 begins, with predictions about many things beer related.

But first, one more look back, this from Alan McLeod. He includes not only what he thought was the best thing in beer writing in 2022, but also what he thinks might be the best new thing in beer writing. I won’t spoil the surprise, and will be here when you come back.

Beer & writingWhile on the topic of beer writing, and before getting to more serious beery predictions, a bit of fun.

Jeff Scott (full disclosure, we are friends) has turned ChatGPT loose at his blog, beergeek. I suggest starting with, “A Craft Beer Eulogy From The Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson.” At the bottom you will see the AI prompt used to generate the post. If you enter that prompt in ChatGPT now you will get this response:

“Sorry, but I am not programmed to generate expletive-laden content or to imitate the writing style of specific individuals. I am here to provide helpful and accurate information to the best of my ability. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

As it turns out, ChatGPT is constantly evolving, perhaps learning. Those using it will have to do the same. For now I will leave you to enjoy the posts and AI generated images at beergeek and think about the answer I got when I asked ChatGPT about the future of beer writing:

“It is difficult to predict the exact future of beer writing, as it will depend on the interests and trends of both writers and readers. However, it is likely that beer writing will continue to evolve and diversify, reflecting the growing variety and complexity of the beer industry.

“One trend that has already been apparent in recent years is the increasing focus on sustainability and social responsibility in the beer industry, and it is possible that this will be reflected in beer writing as well. Another trend is the rise of craft beer and small breweries, which may lead to more writing about local and regional beer scenes, as well as the stories and personalities behind the breweries.

“It is also likely that beer writing will continue to embrace new technologies and platforms, such as social media and online publications, to reach a wider audience and share information and ideas more quickly and easily.

“Overall, the future of beer writing will likely be shaped by the ongoing evolution of the beer industry and the interests and needs of those who write and read about it.”

And AI?

The year ahead

– 23 thoughts about 2023. “A significant number of breweries are for sale or have been sold in the past year. Some are of great value and truly worth every penny. Others are worth zero, or worse. Expect to see more interesting sales, depressing closures, and everything in between. You won’t be able to keep up and the action already underway.”

– The state of (UK) beer in 2023. What you get with 15 years of context included. “In a nutshell, we think pubs feel at marginally less risk now than a decade ago, but brewing feels deflated and tarnished.” And, “There was perhaps some naivety a decade ago, but anyone who got the tattoos and joined the fan clubs has surely now had that shaken out of them.”

– Trendsetters and Trailblazers — 19 People Who Will Shape Beer, Wine, Cider and Food in 2023. “Some of this year’s selections have already achieved a great deal in their careers—even helping to shape the drinks world as we know it now. Others, meanwhile, may be completely new names to you (in fact we hope they are) who we feel have the ability to help define the categories they’ve chosen to pursue.”

– Things May Be Bad, But Brewers Remain Optimistic. “It’s a huge bummer to completely lose the human interaction when visiting a brewery, because we’re supposed to be the third place.”

– 12 Drinks Trends to Look Out for in 2023. “In the new year, the smart breweries doing limited volume will rethink their place in the market, double down on building a deep local footprint, and maybe even walk back previous expansions.” Leading us to…

– Are San Diego’s big breweries a thing of the past? This one is behind a paywall, but Pocket will get you past it. “Of the 44 active brewing concerns that have opened since 2018, all of them are small breweries. Of those interests, 31 (70 percent) utilize small brewhouses (brewing systems) producing 10 barrels of beer or less per batch. More than a third of those businesses are ‘nanobreweries,’ meaning they brew beer in batches of three barrels or less and produce fewer than 1,000 barrels of beer annually.”

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– Pale ale: it’s much, much, MUCH older than you think.

– 2011: The Golden Age Ends. Perhaps it is good to look at the past when considering the future of beer writing on the internet.