musing

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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Don’t these people understand the term ‘craft beer’ has no meaning?

And these are just the headlines.

– Beer on demand: Craft breweries like Piece, Half Acre start delivery service
– Bordeaux wine for craft beer drinkers
– What’s it like when your startup craft brewery gets bought by Anheuser-Busch?
– Hopsteiner picks its top hops for craft brewing professionals
– Hopping mad about craft beer
– Illegal Alcohol: Where to Drink Thai Craft Beer in Bangkok
– 10 California Craft Beers That Cost a Bundle on the Black Market

This is not an argument about the validity of whatever definition of “craft beer” you want to use. I find it generally easy to simply use the word beer myself. When I write a story for one of the Brewers Association publications (Zymurgy or New Brewer) I use the term because it is defined within that context of the magazine. I just wrote a sentence in a story for All About Beer magazine where it would have been easier to use the term than not. But I found a way not to, because that’s the AABM philosophy.

But, and you knew that was coming, as the headlines that took me litttletime to collect indicate the term must mean something to somebody (even though you can easily strike the word craft from most of them).

pH is the new IBU

Wicked Weed Funkatorium

This beer menu board at Wicked Weed Funkatorium in Asheville, N.C., should look familiar, but not quite the same. That number following the alcohol by volume is the pH, not the IBUs (International Bitterness Units) you see elsewhere. A useful bit of information for beer drinkers, one indicator of how sour a beer might taste.

What might the downside be? Brewers pushing pH levels lower just so they can (or maybe because they don’t know any better). Kinda like previous IBU wars. (See New Beer Rule #2.)

American Sour Beers author Michael Tonsmeire made the danger clear Saturday during the Asheville Homebrewers Conference when he made it clear he said brewing a beer with the lowest pH is like making an IPA with the most IBUs.