monday links

Monday beer links: Probably overthinking things . . .

Barrels at work
New Pete Brown posts are rare (the last before Friday was June 4), but these 1,300-plus words were worth waiting for. They aren’t all his words. He has mined comments from thet “sewers that run below the lines of Daily Mail articles” and, well, maybe I should back up.

CAMRA has asked its members to fill out a questionnaire.

Brown explains, “After years of being criticised for only being relevant to white middle-aged men, CAMRA is asking how it might broaden its audience from that base. After decades of women reporting that they are patronised, ignored ridiculed, harassed or even assaulted at beer events, CAMRA is asking people for their experiences, to gauge how serious the problem is and, if necessary (spoiler alert: it is) to do something about it.

“Speaking as an overweight, bearded, middle-aged real ale drinker, I’d say this is long overdue, and is to be welcomed.”

Not by those he cites.

Easy to read. Hard truths.

GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
The governor of Oregon ordered flags in the state be flown at half-staff to honor Austin Smith, a volunteer firefighter, who suffered critical injuries Thursday from an explosion while he was fighting a barn fire in his hometown of St. Paul, population 480. I know this because Friday multiple hop farms I follow on Twitter and Instagram sent their condolences. Smith, a sixth generation hop farmer, was manager of B&D Farms and also had plans to open a brewery.

The story I linked to does not mention hops or beer. Alan McLeod describes himself as “a beer community denier.” I don’t necessarily agree, but sometimes I would rather think about beer and community and their impact on each other than the fraternity of beer/brewing. This story is a reminder of what it means to serve a community.

NATIVE LAND
Each can of Native Land beer acknowledges the ancestral land the brewery that made the beer is located on. Here’s another reason that matters.

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

“Wherever there’s a row of railway arches, a brewery is inevitable.”

And so begins “Little Martha: a new stop in Bristol’s brewery quarter” from Boak & Bailey.

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MESSAGE IN A CAN
In this case one that contained Labatt Ice. “A phenomenon like craft beer, itself in constant evolution, is not the final arbiter of beer taste.”

NA
-Dry January in Germany.
-Dry January in Chicago.

ON HOLD
Flagship February.

STOP OVERTHINKING IT
The shape of your wine beer glass doesn’t really matter. Actually, it does, but not that much. And clean matters a lot more. The important message here is, “Stop overthinking it.”

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

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Monday beer links: On second thought . . .

John Duffy recently re-reviewed Molloy’s Last Night coffee and cocoa imperial stout, a beer he didn’t much care for the first time around.

This time he writes, “Looking back now at the original review, it’s not a million miles different: the same elements were there but that sourness was pushed much higher, at least in my perception of the beer at the time. I would like to think that there was something bacterially askew with that can, but it could easily be down to the same beer hitting differently on a different day. Your mileage may vary; mine certainly does.”

(T)he same beer may hit differently on a different day. Not a shocking statement, and a reminder there is a flip side; that the beer that was great last week, last month, last summer suddenly isn’t.

THE WHEELS KEEP TURNING
Cottrell Brewing opened in Connecticut in 1996, the year the number of US breweries swelled past 1,000. Victory Brewing, Stone Brewing, Firestone Walker and several others that would grow well beyond micro-size also opened in 1996. Cottrell was small, but not that small, producing 4,000 barrels in 2019, the year before the pandemic. More than 90 percent of the breweries in the country are smaller.

The brewery will be closing soon, not because of the pandemic but because their landlord is kicking them out and the hassle of moving isn’t worth it. But the brand name is going to one company and the brewing equipment to another.

. . . AND TURNING
Stone Brewing co-founder Greg Koch writes an ode to Marin Brewing.

THE EXCEPTION
It’s been, what?, more than a decade since the Brewers Association rolled out the fact that most Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery. But if they live next to Katahdin Brew Works, it is a long way to the next brewery, like 100 miles.

TWEET LIKE A MONK
A team of college professors and students is helping St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass. — home of the only Trappist brewery in the United States — launch a social media marketing plan for Spencer beers. “To be candid,” says Father Isaac, who oversees the brewery, “the monastic lifestyle doesn’t attract a lot of people who are skilled at (social media).” (Nice photos; take a look.)

PROHIBITION
How American Authors Helped Push an Agenda of “Temperance.” About the drunkard, a new character in American writing.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO COME AT THE KING
What’s it take to become the King of Bud? Ten years and 10,000 beers.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH
– Grammy-nominated Southern hip-hop group Nappy Roots opens Atlantucky on Friday.

– Beer Kulture and Athletic Brewing partner for the return of soul sour.

– Chicago’s Black-owned breweries unite for 6-week residency in the West Loop.

– San Antonio beer fans outraged as Black-owned local brewery snubbed in MLK library exhibit.

There should be plenty more, but that’s a start.

HISTORY
– The growler. But don’t forget Charlie Otto.

-Ask for a “glass of beer” in Ireland and you will receive a half pint. Why?

Monday beer links: A poem, iconic beers & sad farewells

Can a brewery be good for a community? Last week the Smyrna, Georgia, city council voted to sell green space near the community center so a brewery can go there.

Economic Development Director Andrea Worthy pointed to the revitalization of the downtown area as the main reason for supporting the vote. Smyrna is within the inner ring of the Atlanta metropolitan area. “It’s different than a restaurant, it’s different than a coffee shop,” Worthy said. “It’s really a community gathering place that invites a lot of other visitors to downtown. It serves as a community center where folks can meet up, [it] increases foot traffic for other businesses downtown.”

“A Breakdown Of Smyrna’s Controversial Decision To Sell Public Land To A Private Brewery” is a long form (more than 3,000 words) account of how and why the deal was made.

FOR READING OUT LOUD
Just in time for Burns Night, Martyn Cornell has discovered a poem written in the form known as “Burns stanza,” an ode to “Gude Stout Ale.”

CREAM BEER
Alan McLeod returns to a favorite topic, cream beer, tying it to immigration, which included brewers with contemporary skills.

As a silly aside, here’s one of several suggestions why cream ale was called cream ale. In 1837, a dialogue called “The Beer Trial” in the Journal of the American Temperance Union drew attention to charges that brewers in Albany sold adulterated ale. It refers specifically to Albany Cream Ale, and a fellow named James, who was spotted drinking the beer by a friend, says, “I asked why they called it Cream Ale, and they said it was because the foam looked yellow, like cream.”

ICONIC
– Thanks for the (UK) memories.

– Crowd sourced. Quite a list follows the question posed by Don Tse on Twitter. One thought after reading through suggestions is that you should know how to spell the name of a brand before calling it iconic.

THE OTHER SHOE
– Three, or more, Connecticut breweries have closed or soon will.

– Marin Brewing Company shutting down after almost 33 years. Marin opened in 1989 and won four medals at the Great American Beer Festival, three the next year and four the following year. The brewpub also laid claim to being the “first and best brewery on the internet.”

ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE
Can a brewery be good for a community? 2021 by the numbers at Allagash Brewing.

Monday. Beer links. Trends & lifestyles.

Still not commenting about the Monster Deal. Still can’t get away from navel gazing (final 3 links).

DRINKS FOR BETTY
Over the years patrons started buying drinks for Betty White in the case that she ever returned to Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

THEN CAME MARCH 2020
From the Zenne Valley.

TRENDS
A half dozen. Smoked lager?

LIFESTYLES
– Beer.
– Wine.

LIFESTYLES II
In that first link directly above, Jeff Alworth writes beer is “an everyman (everyperson?) drink.” I would argue craft beer is not. (Please settle for this for now.)

It is good marketing to portray it as a working person’s drink, calling on images of laborers enjoying beer at the end of a shift. Consider this evocative sentence: “There would be twenty or thirty men either sitting on a grass bank of leaning against a wooden fence drinking and chatting before working and when the morning shift came up from work, some of them would buy a drink and stand or sit in the lane before going home.” But when we buy into that nostalgia, it might be best to stop and consider what we are longing for.

CYMBOSPONDYLUS YOUNGORUM
First, a beer was named for a fossil. Later, a species was named for the maker of the beer.

AROMA & FLAVOR
A newish site (still in beta) called “Shepard: Discover the Best Books” asked me to contribute to their list of “best books.” They might have been expecting 5 beer books, but instead I suggested 5 about aroma and flavor. More about the picks Wednesday.

COUNTERPOINT
Jeff Alworth on the state of beer blogging and media. “Grandpa’s old blog may seem peripheral to the media world—though by my reading this couldn’t be more wrong.”

NO COMMENT(S)
A wonderful post from Beth Demmon about the evolution of her personal bucket list would seem to be the sort of blogging Alworth is defending. But there is no opportunity to comment. I guess you have to do that on Twitter.

AN ALTERNATIVE
Why create a subscription site? Because it gives value to writing. Despite this view that all things creative are done simply for passion, writing about wine has a cost whether that’s travel, research, books, education, or just one’s time.

ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE

Monday links: This week in stupid beer lists

Imagine a university within a single giant building. Once in a while you’d walk into a room and everything the lecturer said would be eloquent and new to you. But the longer you spent the less often that would be true. Still, you would see newcomers listening with rapt attention, because they’d never heard of foeders. There will always be newcomers.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE
Sorry, this in depth report from the Wall Street Journal about the “beer vs. liquor rivalry” is behind a paywall. It is an excellent story, with information new to me, but not really that much. If you’ve been following Good Beer Hunting Sightlines and other beer centric sites you already know most of this.

FEEL GOOD STORY OF THE WEEK
South Africa’s first black female brewery owner, Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, finds a market for her beers . . . in the UK. Here’s an interview with her (from 2019).

INDIE BEER
Could what last week was craft beer be indie beer this week? Steve Body thinks so. Sam Calagione began using the term in the early teens, but nobody seems to remember.

BEER BLOGOSPHERE
Yes. This is what happened to the beer blogosphere. Please read the thread.

Back in 2007, perhaps I would have linked to this story and written a post about what it means to be a “wild-derived” hop variety. Instead I pointed to it on Twitter with no explanation.

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