A brewery is under construction.
The first hops crop is in.
Just make sure your muffler is in good repair before tackling the last 13 miles of road on the way to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert northwest of Abiquiu, New Mexico.
musing
Monday morning (mostly) beer reading
From a story I wrote for the current issue of Beer Connoisseur magazine: “Boston Beer Co. and Pete’s Brewing Co. together sold about 1.3 million barrels of beer in 1995, almost of it brewed under contract. Not long after the two companies went public their combined market capitalization reached about $570 million. At the time Coors – since merged with Molson and affiliated with Miller Brewing – brewed 20 million barrels of beer, owned its own breweries and had a market cap of $725 million. Maybe the math didn’t make sense, but everybody wanted a piece of the craft beer action.”
Within a few years “craft” beers sales went from soaring 70 percent per year to flat and we were told — incorrectly, of course &3151; it was all a fad. No small brewery operator wants to revisit the late 1990s.
– “On the younger end of the diametric, online critics are perhaps guilty extending the long tail of hipsterdom into impenetrably esoteric ends, allowing no gateway for the ignorant or uninitiated to fully enjoy a piece of music writing without feeling like they’re being talked down to.”
– “The author is expected to not only justify the album’s existence, but to justify the need to write about it in the first place. Is it any wonder then that such an intensely personal (and often defensive) writing tends to veer towards positivism?”
The ‘better’ question is the wrong beer question
If I live to be 200 I’m pretty sure I’ll still be thinking bad ideas I’ve never suggested before.
For example, the one that I would ask brewers at the Great American Beer Festival this question: “Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than the Europeans have for generations?” (If you’ve forgotten, here’s the background.)
It came with a guarantee the answers would be boring. Like anybody was going to say, “Sure, I make six beers better than anything from Cantillon” or “The guys from Schneider were begging us not to ship beer to Germany.” I went to sleep last Thursday (GABF Day One) painfully aware of what a dufus I am.
Two conversations Friday reminded me I really need to pay more attention to this blog’s mission statement.
The second was between a festival attendee and Southampton Publick House brewmaster Phil Markowski, who was signing copies of his Farmhouse Ales at the time. The man asked something about if Americans brewers now “broke more rules” than Belgian brewers.
“Go to any booth and you’ll see rules broken,” Markowski said. “If somebody can do it and it tastes good then that’s fine.”
The first came earlier in the day when I asked Anders Kissmeyer, former brewmaster at the Nørrebro Brewery in Denmark and now technical editor of the Scandinavian Brewers’ Review, the “better” question.
“The question about which is better is ridiculous,” he said. “As long as people are working at making better beer, that’s what matters.” Because, most time at least, the result is improved beer.
Kissmeyer isn’t shy about praising the spirit of experimentation in United States. “The Americans are not only giving the English and the Germans and the Czechs a kick in the ass, but also the Belgians,” he said.
So Kissmeyer set me straight and then provided context. Markowski offered more context and Garrett Oliver, signing The Brewmaster’s Bible at an adjoining table still more when he leaned over and said, “The Europeans don’t understand that we have an idea of what’s going on everywhere.”
Kissmeyer does because he ventures to the United States somewhat regularly. Oliver does because he goes everywhere. They are better qualified than most to talk about “better” and they know better than to waste the time.
Thanks, Anders. We’ll see if I can stick the the mission statement written nearly six years ago.
See you in Houston for Dixie Cup
If you aren’t going to be in Houston Oct. 14-16 for Dixie Cup XXVII you can quit reading here.
If you are going to be there I hope we get a chance to meet, probably to talk about beer. Although I do carry around family and trip pictures and will spring them without provocation.
I’ll be speaking Saturday morning, briefly about “The rhythm of the brewery,” and answering whatever questions from attendees who might happen to be awake at the beginning of the third day of a beer drinking marathon.
Hope to see you at the opening reception Thursday or judging or at the Fred Tasting (led by Ray Daniels) or just hanging out.