musing

I hope this isn’t a mistake. The debate about whether “extreme beers” are good, bad or something between has been rehashed enough here and elsewhere. And when Pete Brown asked for reader input and suggested he might use those comments in a story he caught a certain amount of grief in the beer blogosphere.

But I can use your help. I’m working on a business story about “extreme beers” and their value (or lack thereof) to breweries. I’ll talk to brewers and brewery representatives about that. What I’d like to know is if the term “extreme beer” means something specific to real live beer drinkers. I’ve never heard a customer at a bar say, “I’d like an extreme beer, please.”

Certainly the term has become part of our beer vocabulary — check out Daniel Bradford’s post about the Extreme Beer Festival.

I decided to ask you because the discussion last week about beer prices turned out to be so interesting. I’d particularly like to hear from casual readers who haven’t necessarily joined the “extreme” discussion here or elsewhere. Leave a comment, or if you are feeling shy please use email.

The question, just to be clear, is what does the term “extreme beer” tell you about what’s in your glass?

I think this and this are related. Bravado is seldom becoming.

If you prefer to know more before you click the second is a brilliant post from Ron Pattinson about brewing innovation. (For the record, I don’t think innovation necessarily trumps tradition.)

Meanwhile . . . please, please don’t feel the need to go vote for the Best Beer City.

It seems that beer is no casual acquaintance of people who read this blog. So were I to conduct a poll — say how much money you send on beer — the results likely wouldn’t necessarily reflect the buying habits of the “average” beer drinker or even the casual “craft beer” drinker.

So it’s interesting to “eavesdrop” on comments posted about beer at a non-beer site.

Yesterday the Chicago Tribune published a story about two new microbreweries in the city. What seemed to get the most attention is that 6 packs of Half Acre beers cost $9. We’re not talking a knee jerk reaction about how that’s ridiculous, but a discussion. Check out the comments.

A bit of culture shock for Daria on Saturday.

We stopped at Parti-Pak Discount Liquors in Indianapolis, mostly to see what sort of beers make their way into Indiana and what they cost. Heard a guy behind the counter say they stocked 2,100 beers and that is easy to believe. Rather complete lines of plenty of Michigan breweries (Dark Horse, Founders, New Holland, Bell’s), for instance. Indiana beers, of course. Largest collection of Italian beers we’ve seen since we were in Oak Tree Liquors in South Plainfield, N.J.

More than once my uncle, Omar Robinson, pointed to rows of bottles from Germany or Belgium and said, “I can’t believe they ship all these beers that far.” But this post isn’t about his cultural shock #– maybe more down the road, since he’s involved with his son, Clay, in starting Sun King Brewing. Key words in their business plan: local and draft beer.

Back to what Daria saw. When you walk in there is a section of shelves with individual beers that have Rate Beer ratings below them. “Did you see that?” she asked when we left. “The top rows are all 100 beers and Rochefort (10) gets a 93.”

As promised yesterday, some things to think about when we are talking local.

You won’t see the word beer, but that doesn’t mean the lessons aren’t relevant.

First, this comes from a conversation back in Sitka, Alaska, last summer. A local (of course) and I began talking in a locally owned coffee shop and finished in the connected locally owned bookstore. He explained to me that the coffee shop used to be on the main street, but had to move when a T-shirt vendor offered to pay a higher rent. Thing is the T-shirt shop catering to tourists wasn’t locally owned and wouldn’t be open all year round.

This is when I learned that for every dollar spent at a locally owned business 45 cents stays in the community. For every dollar spent at a business owned by outsiders only 14 cents stays.

Second, a lesson from newspapers. You might recall I’m a newspaper junkie (or was, when you could buy more newspapers), and I found “The imperative of localism and local news” long . . . so I can appreciate your apprehension.

Here’s a takeaway. Newspaper readership began to decline long, long before the advent of the Internet. They quit serving the local community as they once had, not all at once but bit by bit. They quit being as local.

Not a good idea. Not for newspaper owners. Not for brewers.