monday links

What is beer? A discussion to be continued into 2023

Ancient brewing

That Was The Beer Week That Was will be on hiatus next week. It will be Boxing Day and you should have better things to do than hang out here. This last list of 2022 links is sort of a special edition, suggested by Alan McLeod. Look for something similar Thursday from Alan. Sunday, Boak & Bailey posted their list of “20 substantial pieces of beer writing from 2022 that, looking back, we especially liked.”

As I breezed through a year of Monday links to pick out three (a number suggested by Alan) I resisted this and settled on one that reads like a fairy tale and two I keep coming back to.

Feb. 10: New Belgium’s ‘spiritual side’: After unexpected 30 years, longest-tenured employee to retire

March 10: ‘It Just Wasn’t Getting Any Better’ — How Sexism, Assault Pushed One Woman Out of the Beer Industry

Nov. 21: What is Beer? No, seriously

You could not make up the first story. It is about a good life earned. It is about how terrific it is to be part of what many call the craft brewing business.

The second story is one that should have been told long before it was. Did this happen because a halo has been hung over what many call the craft brewing business? Consider this from Pete Brown, who also wrote the third story, in “Craft: An Argument:” “(Craft) isn’t just about the things we make; it’s about the kind of people we are. And for this, we get to an unspoken assumption we may be reluctant to admit even to ourselves; we believe that makers and buyers of craft products are morally superior to other people.”

Lately, I’ve been having the “What is beer?” discussion with several brewers. No, not about the court case focused on if hard seltzer is beer, or even about beers like Amalgam Boysenberry Reduction (described here by Joe Stange). Because in the 1980s the pioneers in what many call craft brewing drew inspiration primarily from beers of European origin. That excluded a lot of beers.

Heading to dinner after the first full day of Ales Through the Ages we were still talking about Travis Rupp’s presentation. We discussed if a beer made with cassava roots and without any grains should be called “beer.” I’m on team cassava, so was happy this is finally being considered.

When we look back on 2022, or earlier, what we are really looking for is clues about what beer will be like in 2023 and going forward, right? Beer has long been shaped by what we know about its history, by our culture, and even by what we choose to call beer.

That doesn’t stop now.

You might also enjoy

– ‘Treated like a chump’: Wild Beer Co’s collapse leaves bitter taste for backers

– He’Brew-maker Shmaltz Brewing relaunches with rabbi-to-be at helm

– The Culture War Has Come to Craft Brewing. Time to Pick a Side.

– Exploring Mexican Craft Beer

– A list. (I contributed to this one.)

– Another list.

– And one more.

TWTBWTW: Beer dreams & history lessons

Frankenmuth Christmas POS

Take away the golden moonbeam
Take away the tinsel sky
What at night seemed oh so scenic
May be cynic by and by

The first time I met a friend’s wife, a few minutes into a conversation that was bouncing about randomly and at a quickening pace, he said, “Don’t worry, his brain is hyperlinked.”

I mention that because the first story linked to here posted last month, not last week, and I’m going to totally spoil the ending by quoting it verbatim. And note the second time I read it I put on the soundtrack to The Fantasticks and fast forwarded to “This Plum is Too Ripe.” The four lines at the top come from the song.

So here is “You Can Go Homebrew Again,” and the final paragraph:

“While just about everyone that has brewed more than one batch of homebrew dreams of opening their own brewery, just about every brewery owner dreams of just being able to brew with the freedoms and joy of homebrewing.”

The holiday spirit fills our house at the moment. We drove 160 miles round trip yesterday to cut a tree in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest. Doesn’t look like a farm tree, but it is a great tree. That’s an explanation why brevity rules here this week, and likely the week after, and surely the week after and the week after.

Ingredients
– Early history of hops. As is expected from Lars Garshol, a thorough and well documented examination of the use of hops in beer. I’ll comment more in Hop Queries later this month, but for now. . . He mentions the 1970 discovery of a boat in the Kent region of England that was carrying a cargo of hops almost 1,100 years ago. In a 23-page paper that resulted, botanist D. Gay Wilson offers quite a bit about what was known about hops in beer at the time as well as a proper bit of skepticism about some attempts at history. I quoted this bit of wisdom from Wilson in “For the Love of Hops” and in several presentations since: “Beer is a popular subject, and the literature abounds in unsupported statements, misleading or inaccurate quotations, and inadequate references.”

– S. eubayanus found alive and well and living in Ireland.

Hard times
– In Chicago. “I think, unfortunately, in the short term, this is going to get worse. I think this challenge is here for the foreseeable future.”

– In the UK. There may still be a demand for interesting beer, but smaller brewers are being shut out from the market they created.

– In the US. Shoppers are beginning to spend cautiously just as rising input costs push up beer prices.

‘Tis the season
– What could be more true to the spirit of Christmas than standing in a crowded pub and singing Christmas carols?

– A brewery for winter.

– A list.

Obituaries
– Ray McNeill, via All About Beer and via The Commons.

– Martin Morse Wooster.

Wine
– Terroir.

– Wrapping up this That Was The Beer Week That Was with a little fun, because “Nothing says, ‘Merry Christmas!’ like wine-sodden guests hurling a bladed wood-cutting implement across the yard or garland-festooned living room.”

TWTBWTW: What counts as innovation in beer?

Brewing tools -- from a different era

 

This.

I wish the thread (if you click about you’ll find a few more replies) had grown into a larger conversation, one that discussed what counts as innovation in beer.

I don’t know how Voodoo Ranger Juice Force IPA is produced, that is if the brewers at New Belgium have come up with a new magic process for pumping flavor into beer. But I do know that they were way ahead of the curve a dozen years ago. Which is why then-brewmaster Peter Bouckaert sat in on a panel about dry hopping at the 2010 Craft Brewers Conference. “If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I’d be on a dry-hopping panel I think you all would have been laughing,” he said at the time.

How and how brewers hop beer has changed more than a little bit during the twenty-first century. Does simply using more hops qualify as innovation? How about changing when in the process the hops are added?

And what about the form of hops that brewers use? The latest Hop Queries has a bit about SubZero Hop Kief from Freestyle Hops in New Zealand. SubZero is produced by New River Distilling in North Carolina. I wrote about New River four-plus years ago for Good Beer Hunting, should you be interested.

The process is innovative, but also . . . oh, that name. It speaks to brewers, and they are Freestyle’s customers. In “Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies Breakthrough Brands,” the authors write, “A cultural innovation is a brand that delivers an innovative cultural expression.” Freestyle is marketing a better mousetrap — that is signaling that its hops are better than the competition’s — but visit their website to see they are signaling something beyond that.

(The same may be written about several hop growers; making connections is just as important for them as making connections with drinkers is for brewers.)

Back to New Belgium and Voodoo Ranger. The authors of “Cultural Strategy” (published in 2012) present “Fat Tire Beer: Crossing the Cultural Chasm” as a case study in Chapter 11. New Belgium had hired them as consultants in 2003. That was a while ago, when Fat Tire accounted for a ridiculous percentage of sales and Sunshine White and 1554 were second and third.

It is a fascinating chapter that reveals much about the thinking of niche breweries in the aughts, concluding:

“Crossing the cultural chasm requires moving from a marketplace dominated by insider customers, who often hold considerable expertise in the category to what we call follower customers, who simply want an accessible way to tap into a valued cultural expression that the product can credibly represent.”

Fat Tire is still important to New Belgium — here in Colorado many of the trucks that distributors use to deliver beer advertise the beer — but the Voodoo Ranger family does the heavy lifting. Perhaps somebody needs to write a book about re-innovation.

More That Was The Beer Week That Was . . .

After the meme
“I never imagined being the C.E. muthafucking-O owner of a brewery, but here I am. If I can do it, anyone can.”

B minus
“BrewDog is no longer a Certified B Corp. B Lab does not comment on companies that are no longer in the B Corp community. I’m afraid I cannot share any further information.”

Hops
– Use them or lose them. That’s the conclusion of this love letter to English hops.

– A list.

– I’m confused. The headline says two decades ago, but the story states, correctly, that a great (and short-lived) hop shortage began in 2007. The headline contends that Boston Beer “saved craft brewers from a catastrophic hop shortage.” Certainly, Boston Beer deserves credit for offering 20,000 pounds of hops to other small breweries at a very fair price. But the story also links to still another story that reveals Sierra Nevada sold 150,000 pounds “without much fanfare.”

Pubs
– I wonder if there are pubs at the end of the mysterious once a month train line and how one would get back if I got on it?

– The Samuel Smith empire.

– Informal neighborhood gathering places.

TWTBWTW: Horses at a brewery

Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NM

On tap at Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NMEx Novo Brewing in Corrales, NM, has horse parking. The stucco building in the distance is the brewery tasting room.

(As an aside, it also has a diverse choice of beers on tap.)

Just down the road, a sign in front of Village Mercantile Home and Farm Store this past weekend informed those driving by that it was Small Business Saturday, created to benefit local merchants the day after Black Friday. The Mercantile sells a lot of horse feed and serves the community in which we once lived quite well. Ex Novo has quickly become a family (and horse) friendly gathering spot and also serves the village well.

That’s simply an observation occasionally worth considering when viewing this week’s suggested reading. Speaking of which, Alan McLeod titled his latest beer link-o-rama “The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks” and I can’t figure out why. There was plenty to read, plenty to think about, plenty of serious things to think about seriously. Instead, I offer this as a much lazier effort:

– Buying beer and beer merchandise is not going to have the world.

– Don’t sleep on Gale’s Prize Old Ale. Martyn Cornell brought a bottle to share at Ales Through the Ages. I tasted about an ounce and I endorse his recommendation.

– Holiday ales. “Since Twitter is dying, perhaps we can get back to commenting on blogs. I invite you to discuss your favorite winter beers.”

– If you are paying a premium for flavor and “craft” why shouldn’t NA beer cost as much? (That’s me asking the question after reading the story.)

– Remember when beer weeks were special? “San Diego’s brewers have come too far to let San Diego Beer Week become just another week in San Diego beer.”

– Brewing Local, redux. Small world. This was a topic of The Session more than 10 years ago. And, yes, I wrote an entire book centered on the topic. One that shows up in this hip hop video.

TWTBWTW: Tree beers & other reasons to ask what is beer

Best of show beers Copa Baja

What on tap at El Sume in Mexicali

Welcome to MLX Beerfest in Mexicali

Yes, there is a lot of IPA out there, but as the photo at the top illustrates there were beers of many colors on the best of show table last week at Copa Baja in Mexicali, Mexico. And 17 of the 24 beers on tap at El Sume (where the bottle list is also pretty dang impressive) were not IPAs. The third photo? Well, welcome to the MLX Beerfest that followed two days of competition in Mexicali, Mexico.

Another busy week, so another quick list of reading suggestions:

What is beer? No seriously. Pete Brown wrapped up is keynote at Ales Through the Ages by quoting Hilary Mantel: “History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organizing our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.” This post is more fodder for that conversation.

Strictly speaking. During the final session of Ales Through the Ages, in which some presenters took questions from attendees, the topic of beer styles came up. And how we should view them at a time when, as Brown wrote on Instagram, “The very definition of beer is highly debatable.” Pretty good timing that Em Sauter posed a similar question – “Do Strictly Defined Beer Styles Still Have Value in the Modern Craft Landscape?” – one day later.

Birch trees that soon will provide water for beer at Scratch Brewing

Liquid assets. Speaking of beers made with alternative water sources, I am reminded of “single tree beers” from Scratch Brewing in southern Illinois. The photo above was taken in the woods outside Ava, Illinois. Those are birch trees and the sap in the buckets ended up in a beer Scratch made in 2015. That’s the first year the brewery took all tree beers to the Great American Beer Festival.

In a place. I write often about “from a place,” but that is only part of the place story. As always, I wonder how what Jeff Alworth writes about might change the beer in our glasses and the places we might choose to gather to socialize over beer.

The Costco indicator. “This time around the Costco gurus looked hard at their customer base … and blinked. They decided to pass on a fee increase, which could mean a lot of things but might mean that they believe even their affluent member base is feeling the economic heat. And that’s not good news for wine, since these are the customers driving the U.S. market these days.” What might this mean for beer?

Corn in Chocolate City. “As the city has changed [in recent years] then the beer culture [has come to] reflect the newcomers.”

And from Twitter: