monday links

A few links to things you might have missed last week

– Should The Complicated Legacy of Worst Beer Blog and Craft beer’s “99% asshole-free” myth have made you wonder what the mythical Peter David sounds like you can listen to these two archived podcasts. a) Steal This Beer, March 30, 2020. b) Have You Tried The Hef? The Full Pint, Sept. 24, 2019.

– On Twitter, Em Sauter had a question. “Drawing craft beer heroes/pioneers today for the P&P book. Who are some of your craft beer heroes?” Good luck finding the bottom, let alone defining craft beer and pioneer.

– Finally: The Death of Keg.

– Pete Brown is is staring an online book club.

– Wine Influencers Inspire Strong Reactions.

Some best and otherwise Very Important Beers

American Brewer magazine 1999

Back in the day I yielded to temptation and posted lists. I also railed against them. So you might figure there is no reason to trust me.

But two lists (the second is really multiple lists) that showed up last week sent me to the files to dig out a couple from the days of print that I will share them here.

The headline on the first—The 25 Most Important American Beers of All Time—screams bring back a Jay Brooks takedown (another back-in-the-day thing in which Jay would dig deep, point after point, about something written). I commented in one Twitter thread, and otherwise have three questions.

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Covid neither neighborhood nor innovation friendly

Boak & Bailey’s news and nuggets Saturday served as a reminder that UK beer drinkers are stuck in a grim cycle. My Twitter and Instagram feeds, full of snaps of people gathered with friends (but not too many friends) at bars and brewery tasting rooms, suggest things are better here. Has the worst really past? There are reasons to believe it hasn’t.

Story No. 1 from the Wall Street Journal this past weekend: “McDonald’s, Chipotle and Domino’s Are Booming During Coronavirus While Your Neighborhood Restaurant Struggles.” The subhead: “A health crisis is creating a divide in the restaurant world. Big, well-capitalized chains are thriving while small independents struggle to keep their kitchens open.”

Story No. 2: “Covid Is Crushing Small Businesses. That’s Bad News for American Innovation.”

(These stories are behind the Journal’s paywall. I tracked them down in print, which is one more thing that’s not as easy as it was at the beginning of the year.)

Restaurants come and go. About 60,000 open in an average year, according to the National Restaurant Association, and 50,000 close. But this year it will be much worse. The association predicts 100,000 restaurants will close during 2020. Employment at restaurants and bars has dropped by 2.3 million jobs from a total of more than 12 million before the pandemic, according to the Labor Department.

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Defining farmhouse ale; reconsidering history

Lars Garshol, author of “Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing,” writes about “What counts as a farmhouse ale?”

It’s simple, but . . . “Farmhouse brewing is about the tradition, not the source of the ingredients.” He explains.

He also weighs in on the matter of whether saison was really a farmhouse product. Roel Mulder has suggested otherwise. Cutting a long story short, Garshol concludes saison is a style that belongs in the farmhouse family. But first, he makes two important points.

– “Farmers who grow grain will brew beer as long as it makes economic sense for them, and whether there is industry nearby won’t necessarily affect the economic logic at all.”

– Some facts can neither be proved as undeniable nor disproved.

This is as true of American brewing history as it is of farmers in the Hainaut region of Belgium making beer in spring for the harvest work. The history in the centuries after, or perhaps even before, the time Thomas Hariot describes brewing on Roanoke Island between 1584 and 1586 is incomplete.

Start with the thought there were a lot of farmers growing grain. Accept that there’s more about brewing in the Americas than has already been documented. Go.

Monday beer briefing: Provide your own commentary

09.30.19, BEER & FERMENTATION LINKS

Cedric Burnside, Wildwood Revival 2019We spent Friday through Sunday listening to live music at a delightful festival south of Athens (Georgia). It was terrific. Cedric Burnside, pictured above, was particularly excellent. Here are links to some excellent beer reading.

1) Ambitious Brew! Revised!
        Highly recommended. *****

2) Tracing the Origins of Beer Language, from Michael Jackson to Emojis.
        I’ll have more to say about this soon, perhaps Wednesday.

3) The Original Originals — In the Czech Republic, the Budweiser War Opens an Eastern Front

4) The Coziness of a Belgian Cafe.

5) Now Rising to the Top of the Beer World: Foam.

6) Start drinking up now, please.

7) Thirty Years of Beer at Pike Brewing.

8) Why Oh Why Is the Good Beer Guide Still Getting British Beer Styles So Totally, Shambolically Wrong?

9) German Court Says a Hangover Is an Illness.

WINE

10) The mysterious and not fully understandable wine defect popping up in natural wines: mouse.
        The beery companion: Cereal Killer — Why THP is Bad for Beer and What You Can Do About It.

MORE LINKS

ReadBeer, every day.
Daily newsletter: Inside Beer.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.