musing

Monday beer links: Yeast family tree, peaches and ‘selling out’

MONDAY BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING, 09.12.2016

Beer yeast is tame. Wine yeast is wild. Draw your own conclusions.
[Via The Washington Post]
Why we’re so good at making BEER: Study reveals how humans harnessed microbes to create the perfect drink.
[Via Daily Mail]
Domestication and Divergence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Beer Yeasts.
[Via Cell]
If you are feeling brave you may dive right into the third link (peer-reviewed academic/scientific research). Otherwise opt for the newspaper translations (first two). Quite honestly, this stuff if way above my paygrade. Fascinating, but I need serious handholding from people who know what they are talking about to write about it with any confidence. Chapter 6 of Brewing Local is about foraging for yeast, but is downright basic (written in a way I can understand) when it comes to wild versus domesticated. Nonethless, I would call The Washington Post headline oversimplification. You’ll also note that the researchers sequenced only Saccharomyces cerevisiae (top fermenting) strains, leaving Saccharomyces pastorianus for another paper — although it turns out (page 1398) that 10 of the S. cervevisiae strains were used to produce lager beers.

Analysis of farmhouse yeast (kveik).
And then there is the matter of non-industrial yeast strains.

Muri is identified as either lager yeast (Saccharomyces pastorianus) or its close relative Saccharomyces bayanus. That’s consistent with an earlier analysis White Labs had Accugenix do, but very surprising. How did lager yeast wind up in the innermost arm of Nordfjord, right up under the glacier? Did someone at some point get yeast from a lager brewery? Or is the story more complicated? S. bayanus and S. pastorianus are both cold-tolerant species. Do they live wild in Norway? It seems unlikely, but I’m not sure anyone has ever checked carefully enough to answer with a clear yes or no. (Note: this isn’t the first time lager yeast has shown up where it wasn’t supposed to be.)

[Via Larsblog]

The craft beer project that grew from Masumoto Family Farm’s peach trees.
“Hey, Stan, why isn’t this farmer in Brewing Local?” Sorry, no excuses, David “Mas” Masumoto should have been. [Via Los Angeles Times]

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Monday beer links: On holiday

NO BEER LINKS FOR LABOR DAY, 09.05.2016

20160905-bones

During just a bit of traveling we bought pie at The Norway Store, established in 1848 in Norway, Illinois. But we could have purchased these big bones. And there were 4-packs of Dogfish Head 60 and 90 Minute IPA in the cooler.

Monday beer links: Blithe ignorance, farewell IPA, hello Huddersfield

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING, 08.29.2016

THE END IS NEAR

Relationships Still Matter.
How is this for a warning? “Everybody now seems to hopefully say, ‘This time is different.’ From what I saw back then and what I see now, the only difference is people have more tatts. Even the beards are the same. And the blithe ignorance. They know what they know, but what they don’t know they assume doesn’t exist.” [Via Beer Business Daily]

IPA is doomed (well, sort of).
A ton of words here (literally, more than 2,000), rambling from time to time, or as Jon Urch writes, “subjective opinion backed up by minimal research and no meaningful data. This is train-of-thought stuff.” There are two questions that particularly interest me — and ones that can’t be answered definitively right now. a) Is it really necessary to use 5 pounds or more of hops per barrel (20 grams per liter) to provide the aroma and flavor currently in vogue? b) Are aroma/flavor stability and this aroma/flavor itself truly incompatible? These are questions I asked four years ago when I wrote For the Love of Hops (although the pounds per barrel weren’t quite as high and murk was not an essential ingredient in IPA). We still don’t have answers, but we are closer. I think there is every chance brewers will find a way to use smaller quantities of hops and to make beers with longer shelf lives without compromising flavor. We’ll see. [Via The drinking classes]

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But maybe we don’t

Great brewing insight from Mike Karnowski (author of Homebrew Beyond the Basics and flavormaster at ZEBULON Artisan Ales) a couple of weeks ago at Asheville:

“Twenty years ago we had everything figured out.”

He’s right. Pick up mid-1990s brewing text and it would appear all the big questions had been answered. But as the rest of Mike’s presentation illustrated that turned out not to be true.

Monday beer links: Dark secrets, dive bars (again), styles (again), bubbles (again)

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING, 08.22.2016

Yesterday Alan McLeod commented, “there is not much out there to read.” I cannot agree. Certainly many of the links that follow lead to topics already discussed at length, but that does not mean there is not new thinking or that there are not new things to think about.

definition of craft (beer)

How The Hipster Somms Could Get Away With Murder And How We Can Stop Them.
[Via Grape Collective]
When it comes to cocktails, is it time to kill the word craft?
[Via Charleston City Paper]
Last Friday I collected a bunch of headlines that use the term craft beer to illustrate people are not going to quit using the word no matter how useless some people find it. As frustrating and repetitive that some of the discussions can be (such as when we dig into various definitions of craft, like the entry from ORIGINS: A short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, shown above) maybe they are good because they have us talking about what is in the glass, and sometime more. Stuart Pigott’s amusing rant in Grape Collective may not seem directly related, but give it some thought.

You Can’t ‘Open’ a Dive Bar.
Yes, it was just a couple of weeks ago that the topic of dive bars came up. But here’s a view from a different angle. There’s this: “What are you going to do, open a brand-new bar with a busted urinal?” And plenty more. Including a question you might want to ask yourself. “(Owner Dave) Meinert describes the clientele of the 5 Point as prostitutes and politicians, drug dealers and Amazon employees: ‘A mix of people you don’t see at most places … a mix most places don’t try to appeal to.” When you are waxing romantic about dive bars consider if they are places you really want to hang out. [Via CityLab]

Death of a Brewery Salesman.
Just in case you’ve been thinking selling beer is a “dream job.” [Via DC Beer]

Craft Beer’s Dark Secrets, According to an Insider.
I abhor stories with anonymous sources, but this one that will get talked about. Many of the points are valid. That some are less valid does not invalidate the story. [Via Thrillist]

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