monday links

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.

Hotel 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.”

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.