musing

Let’s say that you drink local beer because you think it is important to support locally produced products and further the environmentally correct thing to do.

So there’s every chance you expect the local brewery to use local products itself. But what if it is much cheaper for the contract mobile bottling company — which happens to be called “Green Bottling” — that packages the beer for the brewery to buy from China or Oklahoma than from a plant three miles away.

Kind of complicated, I know. You’ll find the discussion at the Oregon Economics Blog.

OK, time to be cantankerous.

One heck of a lot of people in the beer blogging and twittering world have linked to the “I Am a Craft Brewer” video, including (in the interest of full disclosure) me.

Looks like love.

So who in the beer blogging world is going to slice and dice this puppy like they did Beer Wars?

I’m doing my best not to get sucked back into the Beer Wars discussion. But I do want to point you to Harry Schuhmacher’s excellent “alternative view.” In it he mentions the late Henry King.

I first met King at Oldenburg Beer Camp in 1996 and was fascinated when he talked about “institutional memory.” Eight years later Jim Parker, then editor of New Brewer magazine, asked me to write a profile of King because — being perfectly honest — he was dying. A great assignment and a terrible one. King died in April of 2005.

Anyway, today I added “Henry King: Another king of beers” to the library. And I’m thinking again about the importance of institutional memory.

But not writing about Beer Wars, though I will suggest you read what Stephen Beaumont has to write about the idea “we’re all in this together.”

But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

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No Where in the Beer World? this week. I figured still another Texas brewery would be overkill.

But I did want to share this photo taken in Big Bend National Park. The sign caused us to pause for a moment. Then we remembered the road — which was just plain too nasty to continue on in the RV — led to hot springs. I’m sure lots of park visitors disregard the sign and “take a soak” with an alcoholic beverage in hand.

Oskar Blues Brewery, those can beer guys, have struck a deal with PASTE magazine to offer free music downloads.

And what in this blog’s Mission Statement would cause me to mention that here?

Not just that I like some of the musicians whose work is available this month (the list includes Harlem Shakes and The Deep Vibration, as well as Todd Snider, Marissa Nadler, Slaid Cleaves and John Doe) and look forward to sampling some others.

It’s that music is part of Oskar Blues’ DNA. Even before Marty Jones came on board as “lead singer/idea man” the brewpub in Lyons, Colorado, was an outstanding music venue. The small town north of Boulder hosts the Rocky Mountain Folks Fest and, no surprise, musicians are always looking for an excuse to head there.

The pub itself (above the basement music room) is decorated in basic Louisiana, beer and music (lots of Elvis). So when you talk about the “where” in Oskar Blues beers I think about this music. Would the beer be the same without the music connection? Perhaps. But why take a chance? (And, yes, I know that the bulk of brewing has moved to a larger facility in nearby Longmont.)

So the rest of the news: Advertisements in PASTE magazine will point readers to this Downlow’d Club site and promote Oskar Blues’ Dale’s Pale Ale. Starting in May, Oskar Blues will roll out special cans (more than five million of them) that promote the partnership.