monday links

One link, one paragraph

The link.

The paragraph this week is actually a quote from within a listicle (you’ve been warned). It is one that may make saison lovers smile and wipe a tear from their eye at the same moment. Looking at you, @beervanana.

“There comes a time in every brewer’s career where they finally convince the brewery owners they should be allowed to brew a saison. They pour everything they have into it. They do deep research, talk to everyone they know who has brewed one, and end up crafting an incredibly drinkable and complex beer with real depth and nuance. And then it inevitably sits on that draft line for the next eight months until the bar manager convinces the aforementioned owners that they should dump the rest of it to make room for an overly spiced pumpkin beer.”

—Richie Tevlin, owner and brewmaster, Space Cadet Brewing Co., Philadelphia

One link, one paragraph

The link.

The paragraph:

“How often does a taproom really have any kind of personality? Even the best of them are usually rather blank, minimalist spaces. They tend to feel cold, literally and figuratively, with acres of whitewash, bare concrete, or bare brick.”

It appears I may regularly come across taprooms with personalities than Boak & Bailey, but I wouldn’t argue cookie cutter establishments aren’t abundant in the US.

Also, B&B tend to write short paragaphs and I try to stick to one. Their following words zero in on what I value in drinking establishments, that they are “run by human beings.” The others, without personality, I tend to forget. I acknowledge they exist, but I don’t have to think about them.

Finally, an unrelated note. No, I’m down participating in the Dry January celebration. Here’s a look at a few of the 76 beers I judged this weekend during the Colorado Brewers Cup competition:

Judging samples for Colorado Brewers Cup

One link, one paragraph

The link this week begins with sensory, but more after the paragraph.

The paragraph:

“In attempting to bridge the gap between digital and physical realms, Clarke et al.’s tech-besotted crew have stripped smell memory of the personal, the unique, and the magical. They offer up instead a software-driven algorithm housed in a Plexiglas box full of electronics and bug juice. They want to humanize technology but the more likely outcome is that they trivialize human experience.”

Reason A this matters: Avery Gilbert wrote “The Nose Knows” and more recently has been at the forefront of research related to cannabis aroma perception. And he’s right, smell memory is magical. Reason B: trivializing human experience essentially takes a hammer to the social aspect of beer.

One link, one paragraph

Call to Arms taproom, December 2022
Call to Arms decked out for holidays in 2022 (was just as dressed up for its final days)

The link.

The paragraph:

“You just have to say to Chris (Bell), ‘It wasn’t you, man,’” (Bill) Eye said. “‘You’re one of the smartest people in the industry. You make great beer. You picked a good neighborhood. I don’t know what else to tell you. You had a 10-year run. You did as well as people can do, and still, you ended up against it.’ That’s hard. It’s really hard to know that maybe it’s just not possible.”

If you walked to the Call to Arms taproom in Denver this month, you probably would have thought, “Wow, what a place.” But it closing tomorrow.

One link, one paragraph

The link.

The paragraph:

“It’s the paradox of a terroir that never really existed,” Sandrine (Goeyvaerts) adds. “You see all these images glorifying the terroir, saying that we need to return to peasant-style consumption, to eat like people used to… And then you’ve got guys stuffing themselves with foie gras, bone marrow, endless slabs of meat, and drinking Saint-Joseph. But we know that’s not how people in the countryside actually eat. Anyone who’s lived in rural areas knows that’s not everyday food.”

One point of order. I understand the role of headlines, but “Tradition is a Lie — French Wine’s Place in France’s Far-Right Gastronationalism” should not be taken to mean that tradition does not exist, or that a lie is automatically involved.