musing

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 08.28.17

After two and a half months of pretty constant travel I had to figure I was due to miss a connection, and it happened Friday — leaving me with too little sleep before a very long Saturday, and later in not exactly in a mood to appreciate even the best stories. In fact, some headlines in Feedly left me feeling like I was reading the Onion. (No links, because I saw no reason to actually read them.)

Where to Drink in 8 Cities With Horrible NFL Teams.
The 16 New Beers You Have to Try at the 2017 Minnesota State Fair.
How to Open a Beer Bottle With Pretty Much Anything.
A Beer for Every SummerSlam Star.
5 Beers to Drink After Viewing the Solar Eclipse With the Wrong Glasses, MY EYES, MY EYES, OH, MY SWEET BURNING EYES.

We now resume regular pogramming, somewhat abbreviated.

the role of race in craft beer.

To be clear, everyone has a right to voice their opinion on diversity in brewing, and in fact they should. But when the conversation is about black people, let’s ask the black people, no?

Watch the video (please). [Via alcohol by colume}

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MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 08.21.17

I spent the weekend talking about beer at various locations east of the East River in New York, and am headed a wee bit south of St. Louis today to watch the sun disappear. If it returns as scheduled I will be off to South Carolina before dawn tomorrow. Pardon the brevity.

The White Lies of Craft Culture.
Not a lot here about beer, but a lot here about beer.

Instead of living up to the vibrant, unique histories that food and drink have to offer, craft culture’s commitment to lifting itself away from its origins has made it monotonous and predictable. From product to product and industry to industry, artisanal quality seems to generate the same set of descriptions — small-batch, local, sustainable, vintage, heritage, farm-to-table, nose-to-tail, crop-to-cup — even though the point of consuming craft products is to enjoy something unique.

[Via Eater]

Can Craft Breweries Transform America’s Post-Industrial Neighborhoods?
[Via CityLab]
Death of the Backstreet Boozer’
[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]
A lot of differences between the US and the UK, but interesting to read these two in succession.

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MONDAY BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 08.14.17

Farmhouse ale festival 2016.
[Via Larsblog]
An Ounce at a Time — Are Festivals Fatigued?
[Via Good Beer Hunting]
Compare and contrast.

The best kind of beer festival, I’ve found, is where the drinking public is at least as interesting as the commercial brewers and the speakers. And this was definitely that kind of festival. For one thing, farmhouse brewers are not like modern home brewers. They are country people, not hipsters or IT professionals. And the beer enthusiasts who travelled to the festival were not your average beer drinkers, either.

Witchcraft, Alewives, and Economics.

While we may never truly know if alewives were accused of witchcraft simply because they were alewives, it is clear that women who brewed were perhaps particularly vulnerable to the witch-hunts.

[Via braciatrix]

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In the week between talking about the intricacies of brewing at Beer Boot Camp, first in Johannesburg and then in Cape Town, our traveling band of presenters had time for some sightseeing. Urban Soweto one day and definitely not urban Rietvlei Nature Reserve were equally stunning.

This isn’t the place for photos of shacks with TV dishes attached or white rhinoceroses. However, I thought about this picture of a rhino midden while I was catching up with what I had stashed in Pocket during the long trip home. From a distance I see a lot of marking of territory in beer. Beer brewing, beer drinking, beer writing, beer services.

Delightfully enough, it turns out that white rhinos are not simply marking territory. They “Use Poop Piles Like a Social Network.” I will leave it to you to make the beer analogy analogies. I’m packing for the next trip.