monday links

07.29.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

1) Authenticity and automation.
2) We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Pack, Pt. 2 — How 15-Packs Changed the Game for AB InBev’s Craft Segment.
3) The Macro-ization of Craft.
4) Watch the Hands, Not the Cards — The Magic of Megabrew.
Deep into 1), Alan McLeod quotes a clothing blog and provides context for much that was written last week. Here’s where the words took me. McLeod follows Permanent Style’s riff on authenticity, heritage and craft with this thought: ”Interesting. Given most ‘craft’ beer is made on computerized set ups that manage much of the process automatically, the comparison may well be a useful one.

2) is one of four relevant posts at Good Beer Hunting last week (read them all). In 3), Jeff Alworth concludes something of a recap of those by writing, “More and more, customers are going to think of ‘craft beer’ as just beer, and expect to see it priced accordingly. And guess who’s positioned best to take advantage of that?”

When he posted those words on Twitter it led to conversations about price and access that are still going on (and include @agoodbeerblog). I added 4) to the conversation, but the smartest reply, I thought, was from Mike Kallenberger’s: “Or will craft split into quasi-macro and hyper-local (which will carry on some but not all craft values as we’ve known them)? Seven thousand+ breweries can’t all be macro-ized.”

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07.22.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

1) The Breweries Cooling And Heating Up For Summer.
We drove to Louisville this past weekend for GonzoFest and related exhibitions at two museums, but also traveled a bit of the Bourbon Trail along the way. We toured Willett Distillery, plenty impressive with eight barrel warehouses but dwarfed by nearby Heaven Hill Distillery. And then we drove by Jim Beam, which is simply massive, at first glance stunning in a similar way to coming around a bend of Interstate 55 in St. Louis and first seeing the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

Size and context matter. That’s clear in the second (but #1 here) of two stories analyzing beer sales during the first six months of 2019. Consider this: Dollar sales of the top 10 craft breweries in grocery, convenience and other chains stores tracked by the research firm IRI did not match Michelob Ultra’s revenue. And then this: there are more than 7,000 other breweries to consider and the off-premise accounts such as those IRI tracks only about 60 percent of craft beer sales. The Brewers Association is in the process of compiling results from a midyear survey of all its members and those numbers will make it easier to understand how they are doing in aggregate.

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07.15.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING

1) How Homebrewers Built New York.
I’m not sure I agree with this premise: “The recent explosion of new breweries in New York is totally consistent with what’s happening elsewhere—but homebrewers being at the center of things is not.” It’s pretty easy to find breweries with homebrew connections just about everywhere, clubs are often incubators and that’s not only in the United States. The club house for Cerva Serra in Caxias, Brazil, is downright amazing. There is a nano-size brewing system members can reserve, there are two large fermentation cellars (one for ales, one for lagers) and a roomy classroom area. I don’t mean that this isn’t an interesting story or to denigrate what has happened in New York. I wish I had not already left Homebrew Con a couple of weeks ago when Bitter & Esters was chosen homebrew Shop of the year by the American Homebrewers Association. The Brooklyn shop has certainly been at the center of whatever has happened in the five boroughs. That’s co-owner John LaPolla on the right, looking pretty happy about the award.

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07.01.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Alan McLeod found plenty interesting to write about last week, but Boak & Bailey not so much. I am in the latter camp. Brevity today will be followed by silence next week, because beginning Wednesday I’ll be bouncing between cities in Brazil.

1) The $100 million question.
A San Diego Union-Tribune reader asks what happened to the Stone Brewing Company program called “True Craft” and Peter Rowe answers. “True Craft sounded too ambitious to be true, and that proved to be the case. Reached while traveling in Europe this week, Greg Koch confirmed that True Craft is dead. ‘That hasn’t been active for some months,’ Koch said. ‘It was an idea that never came to fruition.’”

Poor Cascade, hanging out with Old Man Fuggle pic.twitter.com/f17A1oNeoN

— Em (@PintsandPanels) June 28, 2019

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06.24.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING

A one-word tweet from Ron Pattinson broke off into multiple paths last week. The first link takes you to Jeff Alworth’s statement that “Lager was an innovation.” Nobody seemed to dispute this. Would you agree? I’m not so sure, but settling the matter isn’t what interests me. Instead, reading The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players another question comes to mind. The nonconformists in the book are set on disrupting the process of player development, and changing process (say, the way a beer is made) may change what results (say, a particular beer). Is that how we got lager? In which case, how did a brewer come to think, “I was taught to do this, but I am going to do that?”

Anyway, a book that gets you thinking if you are a baseball fan. In reviewing it for The Atlantic, Jack Hamilton asks, “Would democratizing baseball greatness actually be good for baseball? Part of what makes baseball’s greatest players so memorable is how much better they are at playing the game than anyone else on the field. In important ways, the sport’s drama relies on inequality.”

1) Englewood Brews is here to prove craft beer is for Black people, too.
“Everyone says craft beer is for everybody, but you walk into these North Side taprooms and how many Black people do you see, frankly? Continuing to concentrate breweries on the North Side is missing out on a growing population that wants to enjoy good beer, too.” Just in case you think this seems abrupt, Sam Cooke wrote “Change is Gonna Come” in 1964.

2) Gulp // Cask ale comes to Brussels.
“Cask ale is also another way for local brewers to explore and innovate, beyond simply brewing new styles.” There’s that word again.

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