musing

Pop-up beer links

Monday beer links and musing remain on hiatus, but here are a few “just the links” that shouldn’t be overlooked.

– The Calamity of Cultural Confusion: Appropriation vs Appreciation.
and
– A Look At Cultural Appropriation Within The Hip-Hop Culture.

– In Trump era, breweries and bars wear politics on their sleeves.
and
– The Beer Politic.

– Lagunitas brews Newcastle Ale.
and
– Light Beer, Big Opportunity — Lagunitas Enters the Low-Cal Market.

– Brewer Lee Hedgmon Learned the Rules in Order to Break Them.
and
– Lee Hedgmon Oral History Interview.

– Just the Essentials — How Distilled Oils are Expanding the Impact of Hops.
and
– The Complex Case of Thiols.
Disclaimer: These are my stories. If hops interest you consider signing up for Hop Queries.

While waiting for numbers from @BrewersStats

If you take the time to work through all the comments that followed Andy Crouch’s suggestion (click on the bird) you might not make it back here, but go look anyway.

As happens on Twitter, different threads developed and more questions came up. Bart Watson will be answering some them soon with what has turned into an annual crunching of numbers. I’ll add the link here. Meanwhile, his reports from 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. Lots of fun stuff, including the fact that he calculates expected medals versus actual medals won based on the difficulty of categories entered.

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Pop-up beer (and drinks) links

Monday beer links and musing remains on hiatus, but here are a few “just the links” — because breweries are small businesses and what is written about wine is often true about beer.

– Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you? Here’s why that changed.
– What Millions of Retiring Small Business Owners Could Mean for Cities.
–America’s Newest Monastic Brewery Opens in Oregon.
– The wonder of the fresh hop: How Washington’s special autumn beer gets made.
– Fifth Hammer Brewer Chris Cuzme Would Take Orval and John Coltrane to a Desert Island.
– Metallica Talk Top-Secret Distilling Process Behind New ‘Blackened’ Whiskey.

Ales Through the Ages canceled

Ales Through the Ages in Colonial Williamsburg has been canceled.

Scheduled for Oct. 19-21 in Virginia, ticket sales by the end of August did not meet a level that would guarantee the event would be successful.

The program looked as strong as somebody interested in beer history could hope for, but it would appear I might be wrong. That those who had signed up to attend were notified almost two weeks ago and that little conversation followed beyond some exchanges on Twitter also suggests (taking a deep breath) an overall lack of interest in beer history.

On a personal level, I am disappointed because I enjoy the company of the speakers who were to be there. As important, it is a learning opportunity lost.

Community

Two men in a pubIn Monday’s links I pointed to one where Martyn Cornell wrote, “Let’s be clear. There is no ‘craft beer community’, any more than there is a ‘Stella Artois community’ or a ‘Nescafe community’ or a ‘sourdough bread community’.”

Boak & Bailey chose to disagree on Wednesday, writing “The Community Is Real, Even if You Don’t Go to the Meetings.”

I don’t have anything new to say, because the topic has come up more than once before (which is not to say the reminder Cornell started with is not worth the reminding). Three previous thoughts:

– There is a symbiotic relationship that develops when brewers care about what their friends will be drinking, and consumers take pride in consuming beer made by people they know. This occurs within a larger (but likely still small) community. Indeed, butchers, bakers and others whose job titles do not begin with b may develop the same relationships.

– The time Shaun Hill said, “I’m still trying to figure what the best way is to build community, or interact with the local area.” And I quoted Bowling Alone.

– It seems we had a rather lengthy discussion on this topic here nearly seven years ago, provoked, no surprise, by Alan McLeod. Do not be put off by the occasional snippy exchanges along the way, because the final comment from Jan Biega is worth your time.

(Just so you know, comments are turned off for that post, as they are for all older posts here, because they become magnets for spammers.)