monday links

The first link.

Leads to this paragraph:

Starting twenty years ago, just after the Association of Brewers merged with the Brewers’ Association of America to create the BA, Craft beer went on a tear. Each year brought stories of growth, and naturally the BA touted that success. It was a seductively potent story. Craft beer is growing. It validated everything breweries and the BA were doing. Because of the message’s potency, it became part of craft beer’s brand. In an overall beer industry of flat or declining sales, one segment sparkles with success. Over time, growth became a bigger and bigger part of the messaging strategy. (No shade: there’s not a comms pro alive who wouldn’t jump on the story of 10% growth.)

The second link.

Leads to this thread, which begins by Maureen Ogle asking, “What is the most notable/significant event in U.S. beer in the past decade?”

The third (gift) link.

You don’t have time this morning to read “But What If We’re Wrong? — Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past,” but this review adds context to ongoing discussions.

The link. I apologize if you find this behind a paywall. I thought the post was supposed to be, but it opened for me . . .

The paragraph:

The point about snobbishness is fair. Sure, there are a few people in there with early morning pints. And the clientele does tend to be older. But the reason you notice the older punters is that in some cities Wetherspoon’s are the only pubs where you do see them. When I lived in a part of north London where most pubs sold high-margin craft beer to affluent customers (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing either, unless every pub does it), Spoon’s was also the only pub where the posties, teachers and students drank; and perhaps more tellingly, the only place where you saw people of colour in numbers that reflected their part in the community.

The link.

The paragraph:

Despite this, there is a vibrant independent and modern beer scene in the county–if you want a DIPA, you’ll be able to find one. Locals may want cheaper, more trad beers on the whole, but the thousands of visitors coming in from the cities boosted a desire for stronger, weirder beers, which Matt (Clarke) and his peers were only too happy to accommodate. Making both styles ensures locals aren’t priced out of the pub while visitors get the beers they’d expect to see back home.

Locals aren’t priced out. Added for emphasis.

The link.

The paragraph:

How can a working journalist afford to buy a bar? “It’s not a fun story,” (Dave) Zirin told me. “My mom passed away and left me a small summer place. I could have kept it and had a place in the summer, or I could have sold it and had a retirement fund, or I could have sold it and bought a bar. I bought a bar.”