monday links

Hoppy connections, diversity, and flying suds

Steven Pauwels of Boulevard Brewing sniffing hops at Segel Hop Ranch
Click to view on Instagram.

If you looked at my Instagram feed the past month you would see photo after photo of American brewers visiting hop farms in the Northwest, assessing this year’s crop and interacting with the people who grow those hops. This is a good thing, communication that was much less common not long ago.

In some cases, those brewers may have a contract to buy a certain amount of a certain variety of hops from that farm. Or they may be thinking about it.

That may also be a good thing, but not always.

Such was obvious the past two years when smoke from fires in the Northwest tainted many harvested hops. For instance, last year smoke settled into Oregon’s Willamette Valley about the time Crystal hops were ready to harvest. One grower delayed harvest, waiting for the smoke to clear. It did not. The hops were harvested and a brewer who had a contract to buy them rejected them (the farmer agreed they smelled unpleasantly of smoke).

In this case, Indie Hops, a broker who would have processed those baled hops into pellets, was able to supply that customer (and others) with Crystal from previous crop inventory.

All that to explain why I paused when I read that English hop growers charting a new path could mean a new generation could be “dealing directly with breweries, bypassing the hop merchants who have been a key element of hop-buying in this country for generations. It’s a shift that has the potential to revolutionise the perception of English hops, in this country and further afield.”

Goodness gracious, these are not easy times for English hop growers. They deserve better. Stronger relationships with brewers, which may or may not include direct sales, would surely help. So will English-specific varieties that excite brewers, and drinkers, as much as New World hops from the United States and down under. And hop merchant Charles Faram has been the leader in breeding those sorts of varieties. The merchant-grower relationship can also be a valuable one.

I should add that “charting a new path” is a lovely story.

“Life changed when a neighbour invited (Will Kirby) to a hop harvest. ‘I just fell in love with the buzz, and the smell,” he says. “There’s something about hops that really grabs you.’”

My kind of guy.

A few other stories from last week you might want to read:

Diversity
Other voices, other rooms: “You can get lost in the amount of podcast content that is out there about beer. However, like the larger industry, voices of women, people of color, and LBGTQ folks are often underrepresented in the podcast universe.” 11 podcasts changing that.

You talkin’ to me? A second Black-owned brewery opened Saturday in Chicago. “Funkytown is a brand meant to reflect the perspective of its Black owners. The label on (the) flagship pale ale is a riff on an iconic ’90s-era hip-hop album. . . . Expect most everything else of Funkytown’s to follow the ethos. Beer names and labels will reflect the founders’ tastes in music (hip-hop and R&B), often with a 1990s vibe (‘the clothes, the music, the culture, the slang, the lack of digital technological pervasiveness,’ one owner said).”

Jamhal Johnson, co-owner of Moor’s Brewing, which opened earlier this year, said the theory he most often hears is that cost drives Black people from craft beer. He doesn’t buy it.

“I feel it’s never been marketed to that group in the right way. It’s always been marketed to, for lack of better term, beer nerds — a ‘You have to be part of the culture’ type thing. My idea is to create a craft beer brand and focus on marketing it to the people with imagery and messaging that resonates with that group.”

Outsider advantage
The “technical evolution of fine wine is being driven by those outside of the industry . . . Most of these people are wine outsiders – pioneers and agitators, passionate about wine but seeing it as an advantage that they are not part of the establishment. Between them, they have garnered hundreds of millions of investor dollars and venture-capital funding to turbocharge their growth.”

And the beer analogy would be?

Lead of the week
[Via New York Post]

LIVINGSTON MANOR, N.Y. — The suds are flying as a bitter battle brews between beermakers in this Catskills hamlet.

And . . .

But the yuppie imbibers have bumbled into an old-fashioned, small-town brew-haha, gossiped about at the barber and at bars, complete with alleged beer-trayals and backstabbing.

Always for pleasure (except when it’s not)

Crossing cultures, nostril news & grundy tanks

Good Monday morning. Let’s get to it.

Cross cultural
“In a bountiful society where fears of cultural difference nevertheless persist, food remains the least controversial,” Donna Gabbacia writes in “We Are What We Eat.” “As eaters, Americans have long embraced identities that are rooted in interaction and affiliation with other Americans of widely diverse backgrounds.

“The marketplace, and its consumer culture, may be a slim thread on which to build cross-cultural understanding. But given the depth of American fears about cultural diversity, it is better to have that thread than not.”

Are Mexican Lagers, or Mexican-style lagers if you prefer, building cross-cultural understanding? Or are they an opportunity neglected?

Before answering, read these two stories. They don’t treat this as a simple question. There’s a lot more going on than a single thought quoted from each, so don’t stop there.

One style for all
“The dichotomy of expecting certain things from Latinx brewers—like mole and spiced beers—and then admonishing them for not following a set of rules deemed necessary to be considered legitimate is a reality people who occupy any marginalized identity must endure.”

Tejano-Led Breweries Are Serving Up a Tex-Mex Craft Beer Revolution
Bobby Diaz sees Odd Muse “as an opportunity not only to build community, but create a better, more inclusive one. ‘Farmers Branch doesn’t really have a history of acceptance, so we’re trying to change that,’ he says. The Dallas suburb is best known in the state for 2006 housing ordinances designed to make renting a home as difficult as possible for undocumented immigrants, though the ordinances were never implemented and were ruled unconstitutional.”

Tuskafari
Last July, Josh Bernstein indicated he plans to write something about “the future of the American beer bar.” The Blue Tusk in Syracuse isn’t likely to be part of the story, because it closed this past weekend. “Where are we gonna go now?” said one of the regulars. “There’s other bars. But none of them are The Blue Tusk. Where are we gonna day drink, or night drink?” Will it be the Taphouse on Walton, which is moving into the same space? Or one of the bars Bernstein may be writing about soon?

Hops
Two paragraphs from this story about Bell’s Brewery, fresh hops and hop harvest and then you are on your own.

– From the author, “I might have even rubbed a few cones behind my ears as a form of beer fan perfume, so I smelled like Crystal hop magic the rest of the day.”

– “Honestly, we would totally fail at growing hops,” said (vice president of operations John) Mallett. “It’s hard and we’re not very good at it. Well, we’re ok at it.”

The buzz
This story focuses on non-alcoholic beer at the outset, but that is only the start. That should be apparent by the 11th paragraph, which includes this: “When I mentioned my upcoming visit to Athletic’s taproom to a friend, a psychiatrist who is a twenty-year veteran of A.A.’s twelve-step program, which he credits with saving his life, he replied, ‘Non-alcoholic beer is for non-alcoholics.’”

There are, however, a lot of details about NA, and in The New Yorker, which makes it a big deal. So it was necessary for some commenters to point out on Twitter they are growing tired of reading predictions that NA beers are going to become the next hard seltzer a big deal. The numbers suggest otherwise.

Which brings us to this question: What makes Germany different? NA beers have a market share of 7 percent there. There are now more than 700 different brands available nationwide. “The days are long gone when non-alcoholic beers were the default option for motorists,” says Holger Eichele, general manager of the German Brewers Association.

Sniff in stereo
“Many of us are not aware that one nostril actually perceives something different from the other.” Me included.

Always for pleasure
Who doesn’t love coming across grundy tanks in the wild? Spotted Saturday at Knotted Root Brewing in Nederland, Colorado, otherwise known as home to The Frozen Dead Guy.

Grundy Tanks at Knotted Root Brewing in Nederland CO. Who doesn't love grundy tanks?

Considering national tradition, robot brewing and terpenes

Hotel Luna Mystica, Taos, NMHotel Luna Mystica on Taos Mesa (west of Taos, NM)

A few stories I filed away to think about while driving here and there. Some provoke obvious questions.

Tradition
What role does national tradition play in discovering what to many drinkers is new? When does the new become tradition? Can tradition once lost become the new new?

Beer. Not beer
The sentence not to overlook in “The rise of hard seltzer echoes the 19th-century lager craze” is . . . “Hard seltzer, however, is not lager.” Meanwhile, is it too early to be documenting hard seltzer tradition?

Party on
Oh, and about the “appeal of alcoholic beverages that we are led to believe are better for us.” Drinking is still drinking. Witness the proliferation of party vehicles in Nashville, Tennessee. “We made the monster, and now we can’t control the monster. It’s the plot of every monster movie.” One that may be changing the city. “You can have a fun, entertaining, unique experience here. There’s nothing unique about downing 12 White Claws at 3 in the afternoon in 95-degree heat.”

Terpenes
First, passing this along without suggesting or endorsing anything. This research concludes the “entourage effect” is real and that “on their own, terpenes mimic the action of cannabinoids.” The terpenes in this study are humulene, geraniol, linalool, and pinene. All are present in hops, and the best way to load them into beer is via dry hopping.

Robot beer?
This sentence might make you shudder: “The win was an important milestone in that it’s the first time that a homebrewer used an automated beer brewing countertop appliance to help develop an award-winning recipe at the HomeBrew Competition.” The key phrase is help develop, because Christain Chandler used the countertop system to make multiple iterations of a basic recipe that was his creation, not the machine’s.

The business pages
For more than 30 years I’ve been reading stories in which brewers wonder when beer will gain the same respect — never specifying exactly what that means or who the respect is from — as wine. So it is interesting to see Mike Veseth ask, “What can wine learn from beer?”

Always for pleasure (or not)
Lisa Grimm finds Island’s Edge from Heineken “oddly thin, creamy head notwithstanding, and barely registers anything beyond roasty water – it’s less a stout and more the ghost of one.”

The Year of Craft Lager, v24.6

Craft Brewers Conference, lager panel
Lager
Doug Veliky writes that it has been a running joke since 2014 that the upcoming year would be “The Year of the Craft Lager.” More like since 1994.

But were this to come true, it would be a welcome change. “It may never be the ‘The Year of the Lager’ because you simply don’t convert an impactful enough percentage of cheap light lager drinkers to $11.99 four-packs in a single yea . . . I am very open to the idea of the 2020s being ‘The Decade of the Lager’ though.”

Plenty of brewers would like to see it happen. The picture at the top is two ballrooms full of attendees Friday for a panel discussion at the Craft Brewers Conference: “Let’s Talk Craft Lagers: Brewing on Low to High Tech Systems.”

TikTok taste test
Can a bunch of journalists tell the difference between Karbach’s new Love Street Light and Bud Light? A smaller Houston brewery takes a shot at the latest release from one owned by Anheuser-Busch.

Vessels I
A primer for how different vessels impact aromas, flavors, and textures in a wine. It would be great to read something similar related to beer. (If it is already out there, please send a link.)

Vessels II
An ode to drinking wine from cheap glassware:

“For me there’s an order of importance when it comes to enjoying wine: the company, the quality of the wine itself, the food and, somewhere near the bottom, is the glass. Unpretentious glasses say spontaneity, fun and pleasure while delicate expensive ones say oneupmanship, pedantry and general twattery. They are for the sort of people who say stemware instead of glass, or timepiece for watch. Don’t be a glass bore. Life’s too short.”

But clean, please. Clean is still important.

State of the industry
You’ll have to connect a few dots, but here is Bart Watson’s “State of the Industry” presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference:

Previewing the conference, Jonathan Shikes took the opportunity to examine eight topics facing craft beer right now.

Because it’s Labor Day, essential and other beer-related reading

Labor Day
Today’s Finger’s newsletter from David Infante, “How the Twin Cities became a hotbed for craft beverage unionizing,” is timely and essential reading.

Crushable
Surge (hard seltzer) variety packI still do not understand, but perhaps this will help you figure it out.

Is White Claw Surge crushable?

“‘You can make the argument that ‘crushable’ and ‘sessionable’ parallels with American binge-drinking culture,’ says Elle Holcomb, a Portland, Oregon–based winemaker and alcohol sales representative. But she stops short of this conclusion, offering that the initial intention of ‘crushable’ is less about indulgence than it is an accessory for socializing.”

Change
I don’t usually point to podcasts, but Yakima Chief Hops has started a new one called “Bigger Than Beer,” which each year will explore a new subject. The first topic is “Women+ in the Industry,” and the initial conversation with Tessa Schilaty and Tiffany Pitra from the YCH sensory lab is exceptional.

I visited the “Aroma Dome” week before last and wished I could have spent much longer talking with them. (Technically, we weren’t in the “dome” itself. Pitra was teaching YCH staff members to recognize the aroma of onion-garlic – a lamentable character that may arise in hops that otherwise tropical aromas. She had chopped up onion and garlic, and it smelled great in there although it would not have in beer. We stepped outside.)

Schilaty and Pitra are not necessarily thinking about hop aroma, about evaluating that aroma and understanding that aroma like everybody else. Take notice.

Find it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Neomexicanus
This story wild hops in New Mexico would not be nearly as much fun if I reported it. I’d treat it more like a teaching moment, and insist on adding more facts and more history. It is more enjoyable to read it as it is, and listen to Joe Ely sing Silver City.

Styles
Boak & Bailey nicely summarized the outbreak of posts about beer styles (fourth entry) last week. To that I will add (and pardon the internal link) this post from 2010 about something Fred Eckhardt published almost the same time Michael Jackson’s “World Beer Guide” came out.

Always for pleasure
A fresh hop seminar.