monday links

02.04.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

Don’t Save the Planet for the Planet. Do It for the Beer.
Beer is an agricultural product. This is a story about barley — and be warned, much of it about what A-B InBev is up to. But there’s a similar story to be told about hops. Dr. Eric Snodgrass, director of undergraduate studies for the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, talked about all things weather last month at the American Hop Convention. Growers and brewers in attendance walked away realizing that turbulent changes in weather that have affected hop production are not an anomaly. Drought and heat have devastated the crop in Germany and the Czech Republic two of the last three years. The Czech harvest of 4,200 metric tons in 2018 compared to 6,800 in 2017 has been labeled “catastrophic.” Farmers in the American Northwest have avoided similar results because they irrigate their fields. But drought and extreme heat will continue to threaten crops every year. Beer is an agricultural product.

We’ve Created a Monster — What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?
You guys are overthinking this.
I could have lumped the links that follow together, added more, and commented it depends where you are looking from and what direction you are looking in. Jeff Alworth used Conan O’Brien’s “tour” of the Samuel Adams pilot brewery (which has more than a million views on YouTube) to make that point about the “beer world’s insularity.”

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01.28.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

This happened. And there was plenty of reaction on Twitter.

For fuck's sake, @Fullers . What's the matter with you? #fullers #RT 🙁 🙁 https://t.co/A0DgLcveqN

— London Historians (@LondonHistorian) January 25, 2019

The disappointing thing about the Asahi/Fullers deal is that it's a further blow to vertical integration in British brewing, and in the long run will lead to a less diverse beer offer in pubs

— Pub Curmudgeon ?? (@oldmudgie) January 25, 2019

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!https://t.co/hYCOek2gW7

— Lew Bryson (@lewbryson) January 25, 2019

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01.21.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

Why does craft beer think it can save the earth?
Thanks to Will Hawkes for helping me think about a question that popped to mind read last week. He writes, “A sense of purpose is part of what defines ‘craft beer’: it’s a campaign as much as a drink.” And he concludes (spoiler alert), “Why does craft beer think it can save the earth? Because that’s the entire point of craft beer.”

Those are pretty high expectations. The question that came to mind last week is, Why do we have these expectations for this thing people call craft beer? And why should they be different for breweries than for bakeries or bookstores or car repair garages? Not the first time I’ve wondered, and I still don’t have an answer. The question was provoked by Bryan Roth’s long examination of workplace harassment in breweries. Once again, jumping to the conclusion.

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01.14.19

I put together a new bookcase last week, which led to a certain amount of moving books around, a dangerous process because I have plenty of new books to read, yet here I was with Tom Wicker’s On Press from 1978 in my hands, and already thinking about journalism in general when Alan McLeod referred to beer journalism as a rare bird.

I don’t seek out journalism in the support of beer when I choose what to post here on Monday (FYI, my arbitrary rules). As McLeod wrote, writing about beer may fall into many different categories. It is not always clear which intersect with journalism, so not to belabor the point here I’ll suggest NiemanLab’s “Predictions for Journalism 2019” if you don’t have a copy of On Press. And I offer three examples of stories that may or may not accomplish something that is essential, that is making the important interesting rather than simply searching for purely interesting.

The Male Gueuze — Cantillon, Cabaret, and Context.
Beer is only part of this story. The male gaze and the associated objectification of women are evident in much of our culture. From the difference in marketing campaigns directed towards the two most common genders to the representation of women and the female form across advertising and pop culture, there’s plenty of evidence to support (John) Berger’s theory.

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01.07.19

Tilting a glass sideways casts the liquid inside in a different light. Best not attempted with a full shaker pint.

Hop compound biotransformations.

I use the the diagram above* when I talk to brewers about research into biotransformations. This excellent story explains what is and is not understood about the process in plain English and in a way that is informative for both brewers who crave know more about what the heck is going on with these hops as well as drinkers, who may choose to know as much or as little as they like. Either way, Tom Shellhammer at Oregon State University provides important perspective. “I worry sometimes that what happens in the research world—it’s new, right? So there’s a new discovery, and the brewing community views it as the latest answer to everything. And people perseverate or maybe even fetishize [it],” he says.

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