monday links

The observation that made me laugh most loudly last week:

Tom Brewer of ABinBev is “clearly very dedicated to his job. I would even say passionate if that wasn’t something that only craft brewers are capable of feeling.”

– From Ed’s Beer Site.

And as long as I am here . . . the kids in breweries story is back. Or maybe it never went away. We’ll see if I can successfully share a link. This is a version where brewery owners are considering banning children.

“These owners cited instances of children throwing rocks or running around unsupervised, staff being forced to act as babysitters, and even one occasion when a parent pulled out a travel potty for a toddler to use in front of other guests.”

Father’s Day beer: Cannonball Creek Project Alpha LXXV

There was plenty of interesting (new to me, even) reading last week, but I am sticking with my plan not to reenter the That Was The Beer Week That Was business.

However, this is a little different. On Thursday my beer RSS feed began filling with links to articles at Randy Mosher’s website, remodeled, in part, I think, to support his upcoming book, “Your Tasting Brain.” Mosher has added articles going back almost 20 years to his archives. Something for everyone.

The news Sunday that Martyn Cornell has died was a gut punch. Friends filled Bluesky with small stories, including links to many of his blog posts. Rereading one of my favorites — “In which I give more badly written beer history a good kicking” — I couldn’t help but smile for a moment. It was a sentence after sentence takedown, and should have made any writer happy to have Martyn not review their work.

JUST WONDERING

ABI’s Years of Craft Strategy Whiplash Are Catching Up With It details Anheuser-Busch InBev’s failures over the years to sell enough beer that customers would rather drink than the ones their closer-to-home breweries back. In the story, Dave Infante mentions “big craft” (which he puts in quotation marks). If I read it correctly, I think he means “craft-like” (my quotation marks) beer from breweries that do not meet the Brewers Association’s definition of craft brewery.

Which I think is different than the big craft Alan McLeod has been referring to for at least a dozen years (scroll to page 7). McLeod might correct me, but he has been referring to breweries such at Sierra Nevada (1.1 million barrels produced in 2024), and perhaps even ones such as Fiddlehead Brewing (108,143 barrels).

This raises several questions. ABI big craft, after all, is made up of breweries that used to qualify to be members of the Brewers Association. How is Goose Island pre-2011 different than Goose Island today? Do they have more in common with ABI or Fiddlehead? More important to me, personally, as a brewery visitor, does Sierra Nevada have more in common with the ABI group as a group or with Liquid Mechanics Brewing (1,369 barrels) in Lafayette, Colorado, where I had a terrific Helles Friday afternoon?

Forty years ago, Vince Cottone, a beer columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who contributed to numerous publications, first used the phrases craft-brewing scene, craft brewery and craft brewing in the manner they are thought of today.

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It is Memorial Day in America, so get outdoors, drink a beer if you want. If you missed these posts last week, read them Tuesday.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Me, if I have a SNPA (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) in front of me, I am really only concerned with the taste of the thing in front of me, not whether it has hit the bullseye on the shifting dart board of style.”

                    — Alan McLeod

From Your Beery News Notes For The Start Of The Last Month Of Spring. Context follows.

We’re as Confused as You Are.

and

Is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale an ESB?

Alan McLeod’s quote comes from his reaction to these stories about Sierra Nevada Pale Ale winning gold medal in the ESB category at the World Beer Cup. I cited it at Bluesky, adding, “Let these be the last of many words.” So even though I have thoughts, I will honor what I wrote. Instead, consider this photo from a conference in Ecuador in 2022. Here, Gordon Strong, president emeritus of the Beer Judge Certification Program, answers the question, “Why beer styles?” Be sure to notice what guidelines are not.

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY

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I may have exceeded my monthly quota for words last week, so showing more restraint . . .

Cask. This is a story about cask Ale’s bid for UNESCO cultural heritage status, but within there is a “hey, did you see this?” fact. “For all the headlines about American-inspired craft beer, about four times more traditional cask ale is served in the UK.”

The ink link. Jeff Alworth writes, “Credible, accurate journalism may not seem like an essential component to healthy beer culture, but I suspect it plays a bigger role than we imagine.” The importance seems obvious to me, although, granted, I am biased. I’d also suggest we should not overlook the role “brewspapers” — such as Celebrator, Ale Street News, and the Brewing News family — played in the growth of regional beer cultures.

In the woods at the edge of the city. “The bucolic setting is one thing, but what makes the Kugler Alm special is its place in the history of beer garden beverages. This beer garden is, by many accounts, where the Radler was invented. (For those who don’t yet know what a Radler is, it’s a mix of beer and lemon-lime soda—à la Sprite— that’s meant to quench your thirst without getting you too shlamboozeled. The word itself means cyclist.)”

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