musing

Monday beer reading: Revolution, evolution & education

Craft beer openings and closings

This graph from a presentation at the recent American Hop Convention confirms that a small brewery closes almost every day somewhere in the United States. Last week, Black Narrows Brewing in Virginia used Facebook to announce it will be one of them, next Sunday will be its last day in business.

Alistair Reece writes that this is a loss for Virginia, and also points to a story he wrote for Pellicle.

It feels like it is a loss for all of us. I have had a couple of brief conversations with Black Narrows founder Josh Chapman and longer exchanges via email. Brewing beer that reflected the place it comes from seemed to come naturally to him. Black Narrows was on a short list of breweries I hope to visit, perhaps the coming summer, so I am selfishly sad. The possible good news is a hint from D.C. Beer that “Chapman probably isn’t done brewing on the Delmarva peninsula. Stay tuned . . .”

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First, two headlines. “Fight the Power — How Craft Malt Is Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex” and “This beer is so popular that brewers are sick of it” read like click bait.

The second is behind a paywall. I get the impression it goes back to a list of overrated beer styles, which was really a list of styles industry members apparently don’t like. I am reminded of the quote usually credited to Yogi Berra although he was not the first to say it: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

When Alan McLeod linked to the first, he added a footnote that, “The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostalgic and charming and all.” I signaled my agreement at Bluesky, leading him to add that we should remember that authors don’t write headlines.

I wrote what I had to about craft malting last June. Actually, I let Jeff Bloem at Murphy & Rude Malting Co., who provided malt to Black Narrows, lay the foundation. At the time I asked if craft maltsters are agents of change, without adding my opinion. I think they are, just as brewers like Josh Chapman are. But they aren’t taking down beer’s industrial complex any time soon.

A Creative Boom Led to Many IPA Busts
This was a subhead within a story in which Josh Bernstein confesses his book, “Complete IPA,” serves as “a half-finished time capsule filled with bright ideas gone dark.” I do not miss brut IPA, a “style” so short lived that it did not earn a capital B. I started to type “I do miss bracingly bitter,” but a) I admit there is a difference between bracing and abrasive, and b) to complain when I have no problem finding Russian River Blind Pig, Comrade Superpower and whatever Cannonball Creek is pouring with IPA in the name would be obnoxious.

How much beer did a 19th century farmer-brewer brew?
That’s not the only question Martyn Cornell has. “Given those figures, it is not surprising to find that a fair number of farmers who brewed for themselves and their workers did indeed cross over into commercial brewing,” he writes before posing his question. “What the figures are nationally for farmers becoming commercial brewers I don’t know . . . anyone want to do the research?”

Rogue’s slow, deliberate reinvention
Jeff Alworth points out that Rogue has a flagship beer that is older (at 32 years) than many of the drinkers it hopes to attract. In its early days, the personality of the brand reflected those of founder Jack Joyce and brewmaster John Maier. Now Rogue has a “tighter focus and more conventional approach to beer” and has “started making more accomplished, modern beer, including IPAs, which they had strangely never seriously pursued.” Strange indeed.

#YearOfTheLager
“No style trend in recent memory has unified the highly segmented US beer fan more (than Czech Lager),” Doug Veliky writes. Noteworthy is the fact this post is sponsored by Czechvar (Budvar in Czechia, but not called that here because Budweiser won that court battle). #YearOfTheLager comes with a downloadable guide, an online seminar and more.

This piggybacks with promotions begun in the mid-teens by the Czech government. The Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Ministry of Agriculture have organized a “Brewing Like Czechs Do” project for several years, working in partnership with Czech hop growers. Last month, Alworth wrote, “I’ve always wondered why Americans knew so little about Czech beer.” That’s changing.

Cartoons on an IPA can? Dover NH teens say frothy beer labels need to sober up
“I don’t like being targeted by the industry. I don’t like seeing my peers ruin their brains and their livers at like 14 and 15 because they’re binge drinking. It’s just a problem.”

On the other hand . . . recall Flying Dog won went to court to keep states from banning sales of its beer Raging Bitch or from including the words “Good Beer, No Shit” on its labels.

Monday beer reading: 3rd places & signs of the times

A quiet moment in a friendly pub

When blogs die: Before getting to some good reading, this. I just counted. I am subscribed to 198 rss feeds, most of them blogs. Most of them out of service. Some now gone for 10 years or so. But you never know when one might return to life. I was briefly excited Friday to see seven posts from one show up in my reader, the first from that blog since 2017. Briefly, because now the site has the tagline “As Essential as Beer, Focused on Sex.” I’m not going to include a link, because I don’t want to embarrass the (former) blogger who let their domain name registration expire, and you can find your own damn porn.

Also Friday, I was just finishing reading a post from Boak & Bailey — in which they asked “What is it about pubs that makes them particularly suitable for socialising and ‘hanging out’, compared to cafes and restaurants?” — when my feed reader delivered the bold assertion that, “Breweries Are Great Third Places. But We Deserve Even Better Ones.”

Later in the day, Stephanie Grant added to the conversation going in in my head with, “Crafting Community in Taprooms: A Dive into Third Spaces.” For those not familiar with Ray Oldenburg’s work that introduced so many to the concept of a third place, she includes his eight characteristics of a third place as outlined in “The Great Good Place.”

Oldenburg wrote another book, published almost 30 years after “The Great Good Place,” called, “The Joy of Tippling: A Salute to Bars, Taverns, and Pubs.” He was cautious about advocating for the use of alcohol.

“The joy of tippling,” he wrote, “the case for which I’m writing and advocating, is most often experienced among the regulars at neighborhood bars. There’s far more conversation than drinking there and it takes place among people from different walks of life who take pride in diversity. To see this all passing away, and too often to the delight of city governments, makes me wonder about the kind of society we are becoming.”

At VinePair, Dave Infante argues that, “The Platonic ideal of a craft brewery is a good third place, and we deserve better ones. We deserve public spaces where buying shit is an option, not an obligation; where alcohol and NA drinks (and other recreational drugs) can be enjoyed safely and socially; where the magic of the public commons, not logic of the market, dictates the terms of engagement.”

A fine idea, but at time in which libraries struggle to remain welcoming, while it is reasonable to keep demanding proper public spaces the wait to see this happen may be long. For the time being, privately owned establishments that minimize the obligation to “buy shit” (or the drink of your choice) and maximize being welcoming are our best option.

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Murky Waters: Distilling truth from fiction in the Faubourg Brewing debacle
A very long read to start off, but worth your time, and the reason that I made a contribution to support Louisiana Illuminator, part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Let’s hear it for nonprofit journalism (the kind that pays journalists). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Drew Hawkins, who reported on this story, has also written ones about the challenges Louisiana libraries face.

It is not just this gem of a truth: “If you’re a private equity investment firm looking to turn a major profit, craft beer isn’t as lucrative as it was a decade ago.”

The story holds the company Made By The Water, accountable for statement after statement that really needed to be challenged. They gutted Catawba Brewing, shut down Faubourg Brewing (formerly Dixie) in New Orleans, and even screwed over a reality TV star.

– Reinheitsgegot, from Bavarian oddity to German icon, 1906-1975
“Throughout the industrialised world, concepts of food ‘purity’ and ‘natural eating’ emerged in the late nineteenth century as life reformers, food scientists, businessmen and regulators eyed the potential harms of the modern food system, from meat-heavy diets to the increasingly adulterated and synthetic alternatives that occupied the growing space between food producers and consumers.” In fact, in the United States there was a battle over what might be called “pure beer.” [h/T Andreas Krennmair]

– How Guinness got women on board and left its lads-only image behind
“It’s not just a drink, it’s an experience. That famous strap-line, ‘good things come to those who wait,’ refers to the two-part pour needed to achieve that perfect creamy head on the beer. Just like when a cocktail is mixed in front of the guest, there is an element of performative theatre to its service.” Related: “How Guinness Led a Modern Nitro-Stout Takeover of Britain’s Pubs.”

– Notes on central European beer – A sign of the times?
“In the past, when I’ve encountered young craft beer markets, there’s a since of excitement and possibility. In this region, breweries are in triage and just trying to get back to normal economies. They’re excited about the beer, but anxious about the market and tired from the long slog.”

– Ideal Day Family Brewery on Crocadon Farm, Cornwall
I must echo Alan McLeod and Boak & Bailey pointing to this story. “All art is the journey back to the point at which your heart first opened.”

– 80+ Black-Owned Breweries to Support Across the Country
“Despite seeing some progress in initiatives over the last four years, such as the creation of the National Black Brewers Association, the fact remains that less than one percent of all craft breweries in the United States are Black-owned.”

– The New, Old Look American Lager
“Rhinegeist doesn’t use the term ‘craft’ on their Cincy Light packaging, but they do use the Brewers Association’s Craft Brewers seal and embrace the term in telling their broader story. Garage Beer, which exited the Braxton Brewing architecture, was given a fresh start and updated design with no real history or other other continuity to factor in. They went with the phrase ‘Small Batch Brewed’ which makes sense as a way to distance themselves from a powerhouse brand like Modelo, which sells at a similar price.’

– As market tightens, local breweries must find their niche
To bring chatter about third places full circle. “At Old Bust Head Brewery in Vint Hill on a recent Saturday, the taproom was lively. Lauren and Jared Fisher were there with their two young daughters playing Old Maid. They moved to the area four months ago from Florida. ‘We’re originally from New York, and I would go out to breweries with my girlfriends on Fridays,’ Lauren Fisher said. ‘Our neighbors recommended this place, so we came here with the girls. It feels a little bit like cheating. We get to have a little bit of fun, and they get to have fun.'”

Monday links: Beer kits, curation & 12-ounce pours

Chris Cuzme and friends at Fifth Hammer Brewing

A reminder: You will find more interesting reading and commentary from Alan McLeod and Boak & Bailey. Particularly this week, when “other links” are condensed because were are traveling. And still finding time to support #pubjanuary, listening to jazz in Long Island City, being dazzled by the selection at The Grand Delancey in Manhattan, noticing how few women there were in the very crowded Other Half taproom by Rockefeller Center, and reconnecting with the fabulous frites at Bold Monk in Philadelphia.

I was working my way through The Legend of the Selmer Mark VI last week when How to Ship a Brewery Around the World hit my radar. It is a story about Pete Brown, a Boston native brewing in London, buying the Russian River brewing kit and shipping it to London for use at Forest Road Brewing.

Shipping breweries long distances, particularly new ones, is hardly unusual. Nor is the way Brown and his father disassembled and reassembled the kit. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for these stories. For instance, few mash tuns are as well traveled as the five hectoliter one sitting on display at New Belgium Brewing in Colorado. Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan won their first Great American Beer Festival medal with the mash tun (and adjoining equipment, of course). Before it returned to the brewery in the early aughts to become a museum piece, Gordon Knight won medals with it at three different breweries.

To ask if magic is in the equipment or in the brewer requires that you accept there is more to brewing than engineering. So you might want to stop right here if you think it is silly that Brown found himself thinking, “It would be our own fault if we couldn’t kick magical beer out of this thing. It’s like having Jimi Hendrix’s guitar; if we play it right, it’ll do the right thing.”

As is typical for a The New Yorker story, The Legend of the Selmer Mark VI (which is, if you didn’t know, a saxophone) is part personal journey, part history, part how-this-is-made, and part philosophical. Early on, the author writes, “I know that how you feel affects how you play, and that if I want to get closer to what I hear in my head I just need to practice. But, in my weaker moments, I’ve wondered about the magic horn. What sound might it grant me, if I got my hands on one?”

Should you wonder what it looks like, that’s a Mark VI in Chris Cuzme’s hands in the photo at the top. The Fifth Hammer co-founder started playing saxophone when he was eight years old, and he was a professional musician long before he became an amateur brewer who would turn pro. He still plays a few gigs, and every Wednesday he gets together with a rotating cast of long-time friends in the “Brewside Lounge,” where the front portion of the Fifth Hammer brewhouse becomes an intimate jazz room.

Cuzme was excited to talk about the Mark VI story, and not just because it is another chapter in a catalog of instruments he owns. During conversations across six years, he’s thoughtfully answered my questions related to where creating music and beer intersect, including how learning, collaborations and improvisation impact the process.

“I’ve always thought the parallel is you can’t just pick up an instrument and play what your are hearing,” he said last year. “You have to learn the process of making a sound . . . and then, ideally, you are adjusting it so that it is a language where, in your head, you have a note and essentially you go back to that note and you play it. It’s happening instinctually.

“The same is happening with brewing, I think. I want this flavor. I know how to get there through process and experience.”

After the Wednesday session ended, Cuzme talked with a friend, Sean Nowell, who also plays a Mark VI, and who occasionally joined the foursome (which at times during the evening became a sixsome). Deep in a discussion about reeds, Nowell turned to an outsider and said, “Sorry if this is getting geeky.” It was no more, or less, geeky than listening to Fifth Hammer head brewer Mark McGurrin talk about the balance between isoamyl acetate and 4-vinyl guaiacol in the hefeweizen Cuzme would drink before the session began.

Nowell told Cuzme that he could hear him playing inside the brewery doors as he approached the building. “It sounded like you,” he said. That’s not as simple as it, well, sounds. Rereading the traveling brew kit story, I decided the thought Chris Almeida closes his saxophone essay with fits nicely. “The sound is how you feel about yourself,” he wrote.

A brewing kit, an instrument, they matter . . . but if there is magic, they are only part of it.

FYI, at the top, that’s TW Sample, Nathan Peck and Mark Bordenet playing with Cuzme last Wednesday in the “No ballad zone.”

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– Stop curating beer, start thinking beer. Roger Baylor at this best.
– Doug Veliky’s predictions for 2024. Yes to 12-ounce pours.
– Reflections on Erika Goedrich and the Craft Beer Cellar. In particular, read what Bill Butcher at Port City has to say about the power of an individual to drive change.
– Six things I’d like to see in South African craft beer in 2024. No to beers you end up watering your plants with.
– How Iowa’s Big Grove Brewery Defies the Odds. But well aware of the “New Glarus Effect.”
– What To Do About Beer Festivals. Set aside some time. This occupied a good chunk of a train ride from Manhattan to Philadelphia.
– E-Nose Sniffs Out Coffee Varieties Nearly Perfectly. There must be a related beer (or hops) application.

Dank. Dankitydankdankdank

Sierra Nevada Dank Little Thing
The subject line on an email from Sierra Nevada Brewing about the newest edition to its hazy IPA series reads, “Say high to our new Dank IPA.” Not “hello,” not “hi.”

And the headline atop the message within reads, “Stop & smell the hops. Wait, is that . . .”

Here is the entire message, with a couple more winks and nods, “For the latest Limited Edition in our Hazy IPA Series, we rolled up a mix of sticky, floral, and tropical hops into a Dank Little Thing. Amarillo, Chinook, and CTZ varieties help pack that resinous flavor, while botanical terpenes spark an aroma that fills a room. Stash it while you can because Dank Little Thing is only here through February 2024.”

Oh, those terpenes. Consider what Kate Bernot wrote about Seventh Son Pineapple Express in Craft Beer and Brewing. “Once you get a whiff of this beer, you understand why the brewery has to say explicitly that it contains no THC. This pineapple sour is brewed with cannabis terpenes that are, yes, pungent, but they’re also thoughtfully integrated with the fruit and acidity. There’s a pineapple-core earthiness that passes the baton directly to the minty terpenes before the two elements dance back and forth across the tongue. I’ve never tasted a beer like it.”

Humulus lupulus (hops) and cannabis are part of the larger Cannabaceae family. Many of the same botanical terpenes are found in both, as well as many others plants (for instance, basil and lavender, a few of many profiled in “Brewing Local”). That’s a topic for another Wednesday.

Right now, consider the name Sierra Nevada chose for this release. Not everybody agrees that “dank” is a proper hop aroma descriptor. But who doesn’t understand what it implies?

Dank has been part of the hop sensory lexicon at Yakima Chief Hops for years, explained YCH sensory and brewing research manager Tessa Schilaty.

“We define it as smelling like cannabis, which is on the ASBC lexicon under herbaceous. We wanted to avoid having the word cannabis appear on our product descriptions, as we do a lot of work internationally with countries where cannabis is both frowned upon and very illegal,” she wrote in an email.

“People use the word dank to describe a variety of aromas, but most of them appear elsewhere on our ballot, for example musty (which we have under earthy) or onion/garlic (which is its own category). It therefor made sense for us to use the word dank to define something which was not elsewhere represented on our ballot, and which is one of the common uses of the term by brewers.”

In contrast, there is the American Society of Brewing Chemistry list of terms to describe the aroma of hops. Included are 107 words. As Schilaty points out, cannabis is filed under herbaceous. Dank is not to be found.

That did not limit the team at Sierra Nevada in charge of new beer names.