musing

Right or wrong, black or white
Cross the line you’re gonna pay
In the dawn before the light
Live and die by the shades of gray

– Robert Earl Keen

Do you care about beer writing ethics? Do think those the last three words even belong together in a sentence? Or do you figure we’re all here for the free beer and any free beer is a good beer?

Pete Brown writes today about “Blogging, ethics and payola – what is OK?”

A timely coincidence for some of us, because there is a move afoot to revive the North American Guild of Beer Writers. You can get a glimpse of this by following @nagbw on Twitter. And a glimpse is likely all you’d want. Lots of emails flying about, inside baseball beer communications¹ chatter, including about ethics.

For a taste, look at the longest lasting discussion to ever break out here. It started with a Kenneth Tynan quote — “A critic’s job, nine-tenths of it, is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.” It turned into a conversation about much more, again including ethics. I found it interesting (and participated) and since I’m paying for the rent here I guess that justifies it.

For me it’s a matter of trust. Ethics matter for the same reason getting the facts right matters.

But do those who don’t write about beer in print or cyberspace care?

¹“Communications” because typing bloggers/writers or writers/bloggers and discussing where they overlap leads to whole ‘nother conversation.

The goal is to identify the outlier and explain why it doesn’t belong on the list. There may be more than one answer, although I happen to have a specific one in mind.

a) Mission Street Pale Ale
b) Perennial Artisan Ales Hommel
d) Revolution Ales Anti-Hero IPA
d) Three Floyds Alpha King
e) LaCumbre Brewing Elevated IPA

In case you’ve forgotten: Round one ~ Round two ~ Round three ~ Round four.

Can you name the most influential (living¹) beer writer in the world? I couldn’t even begin to try.

But right now you could make an argument for Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver — given the attention being lavished on The Oxford Companion to Beer, the four-pound beer book that is a top seller at Amazon.

This is a monster with more than 1,100 entries and it fell to Oliver to decide what got on the beer ark and what didn’t.

“Oud bruin, come aboard. Gose, sorry too obscure.”

“Serebrianka, we wouldn’t turn away one of Cascade’s hop ancestors. Centennial? That’s a lovely letter of recommendation from Ralph Olson, but we only have room for 70 hop varieties.”

That’s influence.

However, Oliver nominated a different candidate for most influential last week at the Great American Beer Festival: Eric Asmimov of the New York Times, who writes regularly about wine and very occasionally beer. Oliver offered that opinion toward the end of a half hour discussion in the Brewers Studio Pavilion about “The Evolution of Beer Scholarship.” He was making a point about how differently publications of all sorts treat beer and wine.

Few newspapers feature regular coverage of beer (although there are many wine columnists). So while Asimov may write seldom about beer, he does so to a very large audience. There’s no denying his reach when he does delve into beer but he doesn’t speak with the same influential voice he uses when discussing wine. And he doesn’t do it often enough to wield the influence he obviously could.

Just to be clear, he could because he is a terrific and sensible writer. In fact, give his story about the Companion a read and stick around for the brilliant conclusion.

As beer programs like Eleven Madison’s and volumes like the “Oxford Companion” are partly an effort to portray beer in all its multifaceted glories, some fear that a consequence will be a rise in the same sort of anxieties and pretentiousness that plague and intimidate wine consumers.

I think this fear is overstated. Beer consumers are a far more confident lot than wine consumers. They’re at ease with beer, mostly because they’ve had a solid grounding in their subject, unlike wine consumers who’ve been brainwashed into believing they must be educated or taught how to “appreciate” wine before they can enjoy it. The “Oxford Companion” is simply a wonderful resource for what, even when it’s complex, unusual, unfamiliar or strikingly different, is still just beer, regardless of how it is dressed up.

Still just beer.

That echoes nicely about the room.

¹ In such conversations the word living is implied, because we expect commentary on current events, comparisons of things new. Realistically, four years after his death, Michael Jackson remains the most influential.

This morning, The Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton, Missouri, posted a message on its blog.

The Wine and Cheese Place will be starting Founders CBS Canadian Breakfast Stout Reservations around 8:15.

Since I am confident that it is arriving today and I have an allocation. I thought I would start the reservations process at 8:15. I would rather do this before we open and I am not interrupted with other things here.

Also, “We only have 24 bottles (well 23, we need to save one for us to beer geeks to drink at the store). 1 bottle per person.” Plus a little more. Use the link at the top to read it.

Here’s how it played out on Twitter:

 

8:12
tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc

8:15
CBS now (on sale)

8:16
I think the system is jamming, I cannot see orders

8:17
I think it is jamming

8:18
I think #CBS crashed our site, I cannot see anything either?

8:19
Looks like 12 orders got in, I am going turn it off and work out something for the 2nd case – let me try to fix this. sorry.

8:21
looks like 7 orders got in

8:27
Looks like 12 orders got in, I am going turn it off and work out something for the 2nd case – let me try to fix this. sorry.

8:30
I just stopped taking orders, it looks like all of a sudden a bunch came through. I will start confirming in order of received now and see.

8:37
Sorry it is taking so long, 12 confirmations done, working on the next 12

8:44
No, this means u are confirmed “Your order is waiting for an item to come back in stock. We will email you when it is back in stock. Thanks.

8:57
I sent out all the confirmations. Very sorry for the rough time. I knew it would be a nightmare and everybody would not be happy.

8:57
Before I turned CBS off online because of the crash, an extra 20 orders made it through.

8:58
@JustinTTravis I would think slim, but I will continue with the people next in line on the system.

8:59
Our system does not show the seconds of when the orders came through, but 26 orders came through at 8:28 alone.

Understand that at the same time Paul Hayden was dealing with the malfunctioning order system and trying to update customers via Twitter (because I follow many of the St. Louis beer obsessed their messages are also in my feed — Shep133 HOORAY! @TWCPBeer Now all I want is an AT&T iPhone 5 #CBSday.)

That was one stressful 45 minutes to sell 24 bottles of beer. And, in fact, the ending was a little sad.

8:51
So many people wanted @foundersbrewing #CBS that it crashed our order system for about 10 minutes. Crazy beer, I did not even save one 4 us.

An update: Comments worth reading continue to arrive at the blog.

You might recall that before heading off to Denver and the Great American Beer Festival, telling you about the 2011 Brewery Pick’em Contest I wrote: “And how can Sun King (Brewing) still be only a buck?”

Eight medals, four of them gold.¹ That’s more medals than any brewery has ever won at GABF. Thank goodness brewing partners Clay Robinson and Dave Colt got out of jail in time for the awards ceremony. (They weren’t really in jail, but apparently there was a scary moment involving open containers on the 16th Street Mall.)

Andy Crouch would like these guys, because it seemed like at least one of them was always in the Sun King booth — even early Saturday evening. (A bit of disclosure: Clay and I are cousins, but I probably wouldn’t be as inclined to stop by as often if the beer weren’t so good.)

Except for one other quick story I’ll leave the festival commentary to others, recommending:

– Pete Brown’s “Ten initial observations” (I’ll add a link if he has more). For him, GABF doesn’t sparkle as brightly has five years ago.

– Crouch’s “The GABF That Was And Wasn’t . . .” I agree that the 30th anniversary pavilion was a great addition (I went with Shell’s Deer Brand, corn and all). And despite my contrarian comment would like to be able to find more brewers next to their beer.

– Jeff Alworth’s list of seven. Because this was his first, and despite the face he he credits Blue Moon White and Shock Top with the popularity of wit beer, rather than Brewing With Wheat.

Finally, I think I would have found something brewer Shawn Kelso from Barley Brown’s Brew Pub as telling and smile producing even if my primary focus last weekend hadn’t been hops. Presenting a beer called Turmoil at a media luncheon he talked about its history before it won gold last year in the “American-Style India Black Ale” category, now called “American-Style Black Ale.”

Kelso spent six years looking for a category for it before the “black style” got its own in 2010, starting in 2004 when he entered his first batch as an Imperial Stout.

The judges commented it was “too over the top in hops.” Kelso told his story, then shrugged.

“I thought, well, I can live with that.”

¹ Plus they grabbed a third in the Alpha King Challenge.