musing

A baker’s dozen of mostly beer links

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, MUSING 11.02.15

Things Fall Apart.
[Via All About Beer]
Why Do Breweries Sell Out? (Part One).
[Via St. John’s Wort]
Craft Brew Alliance and the Search for a New ‘Local’.
[Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]
Why beer mergers don’t really matter to drinkers.
[Via MarketWatch]
Yes, but…

I won’t repeat everything from this August post, only a bit: “Twenty years ago Boston Beer sales accounted for 25.1% of craft* sales and the 50 largest craft breweries for 77.5%. Ten years ago, Boston Beer’s share was 19.4% and the 50 largest sold 79.7% of craft. Last year, Boston Beer’s share was 13.2% and the 50 largest’s 68.1%.” The smallest breweries in America are holding their own. Granted, not every brewery owner is content to run a small business, and not every drinker cares about local, but apparently enough do.

* As defined by the Brewers Association at the time.

‘Beer Gets the Connoisseur Treatment’, 1968.
“There are some other interesting general observations: beer, the wine-taster noted, is fundamentally sweet-tasting, despite its reputation for bitterness. The tea-taster was surprised by the importance of ‘nose’ in beer having apparently never taken a moment to give it a sniff before Cyril Ray asked him to.” [Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

Top Brewery Road Trip, Routed Algorithmically.
Because there are things like genetic algorithms and the Google Maps API. [Via Flowing Data]

Reclaiming beer snobbery.
Some well made points, but you can’t simply type “a snob is not dogmatic” and have it be true. Sometimes it is not a word that needs to be rehabilitated but people exhibiting boorish behavior. [Via DRAFT Magazine]

Beer merger bets Africans will abandon home brew, switch to bottled beer as they grow richer.
The headline tells most a story that nicely outlines just why AB InBev is willing to pay so much to takeover SABMiller. [Via Associated Press]

Bread is broken.
The premise is pretty simple: Industrial production destroyed both the taste and the nutritional value of wheat, and Stephen Jones intends to fix that. It’s a magazine piece, long and worth the time. I wish I had been able to read it before I wrote “Brewing With Wheat.” Lots of interesting stuff worth stealing footnoting. [Via The New York Times]

‘Craft beer is still a big-city thing – that’s why I’m glad I live in London!’
John Keeling, head brewer at Fuller’s in London, begins a column for Craft Beer London. “Is it a golden age? Perhaps for London, but it isn’t when you’re out in the middle of the country and your local pub has just closed.” [Via Craft Beer London]

If video killed the radio star the internet is killing the writing star — Richard Siddle.
“Why would you think you need to know about wine in order to write about it, but not think you need to know how to write to make a living out of it?”
[Via Richard Siddle]

The Barry Smith interview: what is the nature of wine perception, and is wine flavour objective?
“Philosophers might be interested in whether liking was an intrinsic part of tasting. Is it that whenever you taste something, you can’t separate how it tastes from whether you like it. That is, if you like it, it would taste different from if you didn’t like it. As a philosopher I am interested in that separation. If you can’t separate them, how can you acquire a taste for something?” [Via jamie goode’s wine blog]

Equity for Punks Revisited.
“Equally, now that I have my own brewery, and BrewDog has grown beyond any projections even I would have believed, they are on the verge of being a multinational monolithic conglomerate they rail against. I’ve felt that there is now a tension between us that is barely tangible, but clearly we are viewed as a threat, rather than an ally.” [Via Hardknot Dave]

Beer & review links, including how to write a 1-star review

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 10.26.15

I’m not sure if this is a bit of cheat, pointing to my own Twitter feed, but I am — because there’s more here than a dispense gimmick. The beer is equally striking.

Returning for Another Sip of Terroir.
“Part I: Beer is not the expression of a single terroir, but rather, by the very nature of its ingredients and production processes, a mélange of terroirs” and “Part II: Even if we decide, ultimately, that terroir is a red herring for brewers, drinkers, and writers, the issue of craft beer and its relationship to place is still worthy of debate, as complex an issue as it is.” I continue to feel that using the word “terrior” gets in the way when trying to talk about “beer from a place.” This is something I care about a lot, but even I sometimes feel like walking away from the conversation because it is so dang complicated to sort out. [Via A Tempest in a Tankard]

Forget InBev. Here Are the Markets Where Local Beers Rule.
Local (or at least regional)? Yes. But you’ll notice there is something very similar about the beers mentioned. [Via BloombergBusiness]

Boring Brewing : Bland Brewpubs Are Invading.
“My point to this ongoing rant is that as a small brewery I think there’s two ways to fall in the ‘good’ category. First be really good at what you do … everything you brew can be a legit beer that is satisfying regardless of when or who is ordering the beer. The second way is to be independently creative and have every beer you make demonstrate your passion for brewing. In other words make me think about the beer in my glass.” [Via SommBeer]

Now You Can 3D Print Things Using Beer.
And within an answer to why you would want to. [Via From Quarks to Quasars]

A Simple Graph Explains the Complex Logic of the Big Beer Merger.
AB InBev’s takeover of SABMiller viewed through the lens of business rather than beer, so a brand can be distinctive even if a beer is not. [Via Harvard Business Review]

Message in a Bottle.
Or How to Write a 1-Star Review
A sommelier writes about a perfume book, but the payoff is the 1-star reviews. Like this one: “If you drive a Moscow taxi at night, this one’s for you.” Or this: “Powerfully cloying and nauseating. Trails for miles. Frightens horses. Gets worse.” [Via Tim Gaiser]

Beer links for tourists and health enthusiasts

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 10.12.15

Quick note: No Monday Beer Links next week.

Not Your Father’s Root Beer and its curious rise to national sensation.
Curious indeed. [Via Chicago Tribune]

Brew York, Brew York, what a wonderful town.
Over the water to the forgotten borough.
Girl, I wanna take you to a cheese bar.
It’s only rock ‘n’ roll but I like it.
A beer person does New York. “New York is weird for the first-time visitor. Because it’s so familiar from films and TV shows, it feels quite surreal to actually be there. I keep expecting to look out of the window and see Spider-Man fighting Dr Octopus on the flat roof of one of these Manhattan office blocks.” [Via I might have a glass of beer]

German Beer and Brewing Tradition – Following the Trail in Franconia.
A non-beer person does Franconia. [Via Borders of Adventure]

Ancient Beer Recipes Lead to Modern Health Remedies.
Just so you know, “Brewing Local” will not be full of ancient beer recipes — but I have a rooting interest in the topic because non-traditional ingredients may provide health benefits. Nonetheless, when touting such benefits it is best remember we’re still talking about an alcoholic beverage. [Via Newsweek]

But something this green must be good for us, right?

On price, on value.
“So the question for me comes down to what is the value others clearly see that I don’t? I can mock people for paying through the nose for beer or I can seek to understand why they do.” [Via Cooking Lager]

How Beer CSAs Are Changing the Way America Drinks.
There’s also Sketchbook in Evanston, Illinois, headquarters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. [Via Eater]

How big brewers destroyed pub culture.
“The curious thing is that the big brewery companies seem unable to realise the effect of their own actions and policies, of devouring one another until only a handful are left, of restricting drink manufacturers without tied estates access to sell their products, of creating strife among their own tenants, of closing local breweries and limiting choice.” [Via Shut Up About Barclay Perkins]