monday links

BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 08.06.18

– How to Screw Your Brewer: The Case of Toppling Goliath.
– What’s Yours is Mine and What’s Mine is Ours — When Yeast, Intellectual Property, and Marketing Collide.
What started as a story about non-compete agreements morphs into a discussion of non-disclosure agreements in the comments at Beervana (first link), and ultimately leads to one about creations of the mind. And Intellectual Property. And beer as art, and even the components of beer as art themselves. I need to come up with a CliffsNotes version of my thoughts on the topic of beer as art but haven’t. So although I’d prefer you buy a copy of Brewing Local this link should get you to the non-summary version (proceed from “The Hike to Hanging Lake”).

My Milk Sour Chocolate Tripe Tripel.
Before leaving the always onerous topic of beer as art, there is this. “What is authentic? What is craft? What is it that motivates the home-brewer, the home-baker, the home-writer and the home-lawyer to make the transition from this meditative silence of home to the noise and disruption of the market?”

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BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 07.30.18

Thoughts on deleting my Twitter archive.
This happens to come from a wine blog, which is not by coincidence (I subscribe to the Gray Report’s rss feed). But this is a truth that is relevant to all blogs and Twitter (a platform that has changed blogging): “It’s a less sociable world, and we’re all worse off for it. 2018 being what it is, even that statement is going to piss off some people. Even writing ‘piss off’ is going to piss off some people. To them, I say in the British sense, ‘piss off.'”

Walk on the Wild Side — How an Off-the-Grid Fermentation Revivalist is Changing Beer.
Would I link to this story if I hadn’t written it? Yes. So I am, without apologies. You can help me decide if makers of wild and sour beers should be labeled Post-Hansen or Pre-Hansen.

Freshly tapped: Allagash’s Little Brett.
A long, long read, but a story that is hard to put down (not sure how the print analogy works on a screen). This is not the primary point, but an important one from Jason Perkins, the guy in charge of brewing. “We could take classic ornery musician approach and say, ‘We make the kind of music we want to make, and we don’t care what other people think. And we certainly only make beers that we want to make, but we have so many beer ideas here. We’re not going to brew a beer that only appeals to a couple of people; it just doesn’t make sense.'”

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BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 07.23.18

We spent the weekend in Savannah on the Georgia coast — the city that Billy Sunday called the wickedest in the world. We had hoped to drink gin from a glass-sized bath tub at the American Prohibition Museum but it turned out they only serve it that way during evening hours. We did, however, spot a rare 1933 IPA bowl. Anyway, pardon the brevity this Monday and feel free to provide your own musing.

THE PAST

The Problem with Nostalgia.
“We don’t, as it happens, believe in the Good Old Days. Slops in the mild, buckets of sawdust and phlegm, and ladies only in the lounge, if at all? Fascinating, but hardly desirable.” Agreed, but there’s also this: “Nostalgia serves a crucial existential function. It brings to mind cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives.”

Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it.
Technology makes easier to imagine what was in place before 19th century streets and buildings “were rubbed from existence like timetravellers who murdered their grandfathers.”

What did 17th century food taste like?
“Fried eggs don’t change the course of history. But taste does change history.” Bonus: Contains a recipe for “Snaill water.”

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