monday links

In September, Dave Infante interviewed writer Burkhard Bilger about his 2008 story in the The New Yorker “that would change the direction of craft beer forever.” Friday, Alan McLeod hauled out a 2014 cover from the magazine and wrote, “On reflection, this cover of the New Yorker that I posted nine years ago today (when it was first published) celebrated the peak of craft. Before the haze craze, before the glitter, before the buyouts and before the bursting bubbles . . .”

Before asking a few questions about “peak of craft,” two quick asides. First, Jeff Alworth was not particularly impressed in 2008 by The New Yorker story. Second, we are long, long time New Yorker subscribers and ardent readers. However, having lived in the central and mountain time zones a very long time, I think it is important not to overstate the cultural sway of a publication operating more than 1,100 miles from the population center of the United States.

Back to “peak of craft.” What does that mean? Is that peak sales? Peak quality? Peak choice? Peak cultural sway? And if the peak has come and gone, how does post-peak beer compare to post-industrial, postmodern, and post-Fordist beer?

Can’t wait until Thursday to see if McLeod has answers at A Good Beer Blog.

More to talk about
Are Beer Festivals a Waste of Time and Money?
This is, in fact, already a conversation — between Doug Veliky and Chris McClellan — readers can join, and a few have (see the comments).

What price a pint?
Tabol Brewing in Richmond, Virginia, is selling pints for $3.50 in its taproom. Alistair Reese writes:

“I also love the fact that Tabol don’t shy away from the fact that beer is the everyman drink rather than a niche product for the upper middle classes. I realise every brewery is different, and for many where their primary outlet is a brewpub, dropping prices so dramatically might not be possible given the added overheads of being a restaurant. But where a brewery’s taproom is exactly that, a place to drink a brewery’s beer, in situ, as fresh as fresh could possibly be, without the additional logistical steps that drive up the price, then cheaper than draft or packaged retail should be the norm.”

This lead me to ask on Bluesky (I might have an available invite code if you are interested) if c***t beer really is the everyman drink or if it is, in fact, a niche product for the upper middle classes?

But how did everybody else rate them?
Untappd’s 13 Beers With the Most 5-Star Check-Ins of 2023
Hop Culture posted the list Friday, leaving me to wonder about the average assessments of these beers. Is it more impressive that King JJJuliusss has 2,382 5-star check-ins or an average rating of 4.70? If the lowest rating were 4.0 that still means there were 7 5-star check-ins for every 4-star. So, because I was curious, here are the 13 listed, with the number of 5-star check-ins followed by the average rating:

Pliny the Elder 9,057 (4.50)
Heady Topper 7,570 (4.53)
Westvleteren 12 4,167 (4.50)
Duvel 3,625 (3.73)
Zombie Dust 3,441 (4.24)
Focal Banger 2,761 (4.40)
King JJJuliusss 2,382 (4.70)
Spotted Cow 2,377 (3.89)
Weihensteophaner Hefeweissbier 2,337 (3.78)
King Julius 2,306 (4.62)
Orval 2,149 (3.69)
Samuel Adams Octoberfest 2,147 (3.61)
Pliny the Younger 2,085 (4.65)

That’s five beers at 3.89 or lower and eight at 4.24 or higher.

Question of the day
Why don’t more Texans drink Jester King beer?
Jester King only sells about 17% of its beer in Texas, the brewery’s home state, which is very big.

You might also enjoy
Given the number of entries I will forego descriptions/comments. Be brave, click away.

– The first queer/Women-of-color owned tabletop role-playing game brewery in Portland
– Mosaic Taphouse fuses LGBTQ, Filipino, Vietnamese, & Craft Beer Culture
– Impressions of Berlin: a tale of 5 pilsners
– A very biased guide to Berlin beer and pubs
– The right cheap beers for any occasion or activity
– The Future of Craft Beer
– Bathroom Essentials at Breweries Have Come a Long Way
– Japanese brewer fined for selling “imitation beer”

When you consider it, business stories focused on the fermented beverage made with malted grain and hops are almost always about The Future of Beer. That is capitalism in progress. In that sense, they are about pleasure; what may be available to drink, what we want to drink, how much it will cost us. There seem to have been an above average amount of such stories last week, but before listing them, a few just to read for pleasure itself.

Overthinking It: PB&J Mixtape
Actually, PB&J Mixtape isn’t a beer at all. It is “totally gluten-free (on a seltzer base) and made with real roasted peanuts.” Nonetheless, Jacob Berg writes, “The aroma transported me, Anton Ego-style, to a specific place and time. Boom, I’m a latchkey kid again, getting home and opening the crinkly plastic wrap on an after-school snack.” Definitely some overthinking going on here, including about Untappd ratings.

How a Chicago Brewery’s Staff Builds Authentic Connections with Latinx Communities
“Creating partnerships with Latino-owned businesses and having them come to Marz and be here has helped a lot. When I first started here, it was definitely a way more white-centric customer base, but I have seen a super huge increase in more Latinos coming here.” Marz is located in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood, which is roughly 55% Latino.

The Shirker’s Rest is “the silver bullet to the heart of” exclusion
Consider this a bit of foreshadowing to discussions about The Future of Beer, particularly the investigation (links in business section) into what the next generation is drinking. “In London you don’t get multi-generational spaces very often—apart from a Wetherspoons on a Friday night. When you get the mix right of the young, the old, the poor, the rich, then magical things are going to happen.” Related, a Q&A with David Jesudason, who wrote this article.

The Wonderful World of Women Brewers
People not males spotlighted at Shondaland. Which is great, although if you’ve been paying attention these are the “usual suspects.” There are a lot more women brewing beer who also deserve to be written about. Anyway, these names are likely new to most readers at Shondaland, and perhaps you, so this is a good thing. In it, Celeste Beatty speak a sad truth:

“There has been little change at all in terms of any significant increase in Black and brown home brewers, brands, and commercial operations. There is certainly a lot of discussion about diversity and plenty of culture incorporated in branding, but a lot of work [is] yet to be done.”

The business pages
Start with the Big Picture and that Despite ‘Sober’ Reputation, Gen Z’s Eclectic Tastes Are New Force Within Alcohol. Move on to Young Drinkers Won’t Settle for Beverages of the Past, and that this is not your father’s beer . . . or maybe any beer.

Meet people like Amanda Thomas, a 23-year-old junior copywriter in Seattle, who agrees that a person’s alcoholic beverage of choice signals something about them. “In general I feel like people my age are drinking for a personality. There’s a beer girl personality that’s pretty fun and I love meeting beer girls. But there’s also seltzer girls,” she says. “I’m a beer girl. It’s fun, it’s grungy.”

Boomers and maybe even members of younger generations may not think she has earned to the right to be taken seriously. I disagree.

In Seattle. Pike Brewing is ending their decades long in the First & Union Building attached to the Pike Place Public Market hall. The 34-year-old craft beer pioneer, Pike Brewing, moving to a state-of-the-art facility located in the SoDo neighborhood in January 2024 for beer production. The Pike Pub and Pike Fish Bar will continue to operate in their current locations. The photo at the top looks down on a bar at the pub.

Across the Atlantic. “American Craft Beer Sales — and Influence — Fizzle Out.” I’m not sure the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change. But there is no doubt “their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.”

In Vietnam. “Brewers get creative as economy loses fizz.” Reading this story I learned what “Khong say, khong ve” means.

In Texas. “They’ve been dropping like flies since last summer.”

Morning on a farm in Germany’s Hallertau region. They grow hops here, but also corn.

The most widely read beer related story last week was surely the one about a study published in the journal Nature detailing the impact of climate change on hops grown in Europe. No surprise, things are not looking great going forward. It seems as if every large publication in the country had a take on it. Jeff Alworth at Beervana summarized the study nicely.

I am all for anything that draws attention to what global warming is doing to the planet, although, quite honestly, there are more and larger disasters looming than the demise of certain hop varieties. Even the ones I love. But I do wish the authors had acknowledged there are more agronomically vigorous cultivars available. And that there are new ones on the way. Now is the time for brewers to consider using them. More of my thoughts in the most recent Hop Queries. The newsletter is archived here. You may subscribe here. It is free.

Speaking of hops
As well as writing about why wet-hopped IPAs went dry, Doug Veliky offers suggestions about how brewers outside the Northwest (where unkilned, or “wet,” hop beers continue to thrive) may make them more relevant.

He writes they can been good relationship builders. In fact, growers and brewers in several states have figured that out. In September, Billy Goat Hop Farm in Colorado hosted the second Southwest Freshfest. This past weekend, 14 breweries poured beers in Cincinnati that were made with fresh hops from six Ohio farms.

Pumpkins for pleasure
Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice. “Regrettably, it’s not uncommon for pumpkin beers (or really, pumpkin anything) to be mocked and feminised, written off as gross, girly, or both. And of course for a lot of people, it’s neither of those things—it’s just not to their taste. I have found, though, that there’s one consistent exception: ‘Not (Southern Tier) Pumking, though. Pumking is great.’”

The best of St. Louis. Noteworthy because Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale is, I am told, one of the best in the country. And 2nd Shift Brewing, which when we lived in St. Louis had pledged never to make a pumpkin beer, now brews one called When Pumpkins Fly.

You might also enjoy
Raw beer is having a moment. In New Zealand. “It was the best brew day ever. It was incredible. Hard work, but I loved it.”

19th century Bavarian beer halls in Berlin. “Some contemporary publications commented on this as a ‘Bier-Kulturkampf’ (beer culture war) between the classic Berlin beer culture of top-fermented white and brown beer and the newfangled Bavarian beers that made an impact on Berlin architecture.”

The allure of Guinness. According to the World Travel Awards, a gala that has annually celebrated the best of travel, tourism and hospitality since 1993, The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is the leading tourist attraction in Europe. Other nominees included Buckingham Palace in London, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the Acropolis of Athens.

The beer can as a canvas. “Is the chicken being hypnotized or is the chicken doing the hypnotizing? That’s the question.”

Your taste buds at 30,000 feet. Alaskan Airlines had created a blend intended to prove airlines coffee does not need to taste bad. “Taste buds react differently at high altitudes, and this blend was crafted with this in mind. Specifically, in an arid and pressurized environment, our palate’s ability to perceive nuance is diminished.” What might that mean for beer?

TikTok at its best. Jon May, a 25-year-old from Britain, plans to drink 10 pints of beer a day for 200 consecutive days. “On the one hand, you’re essentially killing your liver, and on the other, you’re doing something mildly impressive.”

Candice Ivory and her band rip it up at King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas

It’s time to harvest cotton in the Delta, and picking cotton looks much different than picking hops

Drive-By Truckers cast giant shadows at Overton Park Shell in Memphis

Happy Indigenous People’s day. Daria and I had a busy weekend out and about in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas. We got knocked to the ground by a car just walking (with the light) across a Memphis street, but otherwise had too good a time to be yammering on here. Pleasure was always top of mind, so starting there again this week.

A formula for pleasure. Search for the word wine. Replace it with beer.

Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thanks to @thebeernut for pointing to this story on X (just when you think you are out a gem like this suck you back in). In case you woke this morning thinking “Why cork bags?” Now you know.

Love hops? Love lager? Or if you woke up this morning wondering what defines a West Coast Pilsner, here you go.

Duff in the real world. That’s my Duff luggage tag. It is the second one I’ve owned. Not sure if the first one accidentally came off in transit or was stolen.

Is cask ale right wing, left wing, both, or neither? You can have the same discussion about “craft beer” in the US. In fact, Dave Infante has in his Substack. Ask a subscriber to forward you a copy, or subscribe yourself.

What comes after umami? Scholars have discovered evidence of a sixth basic taste. This is very early research and nobody is talking about the implications of what this might mean for understanding more about how we taste beer.

GABF streamed. The Beer Crunchers GABF Running Diary is much more coherent than I would have managed. “Go for the people, the conversations, the research, the inspiration, and the chance to get out of dodge and reset your mind a bit.”

The 10 oldest beers in America. Maybe.