musing

WEDNESDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 08.12.15

Holiday officially over. Jet lag hanging on.

The 2015 NAGBW Awards Now Open.
I don’t know what category I will be judging this year, but I would really appreciate it if there are some well written, interesting entries. I read an awful lot of stuff during the course of a year (even more than ends up here) that should be entered and isn’t. [Via North American Guild of Beer Writers]

On ethics and beer descriptions.
A quick followup to last week’s discussion about beer ethics: Andy Crouch elaborates in the August issue of Beer Advocate magazine. Can’t give you a link, so look for it in print or grab a digital copy. But in the “Let’s be realistic” department I will note that more people care about “Romancing the Beer.” Jeff Alworth writes, “I read a fair amount about beer, and by my lights, the art of beer descriptions is in full flower.” In fact, All About Beer magazine has recently increased the number of beers it describes and I haven’t seen any letters to the editor calling for more stories about ethics. In this space, the best read post this year will “Words to describe the beer you are tasting” and it was written more than seven years ago. (In addition, full credit should go to Merchant du Vin.) The second best read post will likely be about hops, as well as the third. I doubt anything related to ethics is in the top twenty. [Via All About Beer and Beer Advocate]

A Visit to Rochefort brewery.
There’s a bit of news in this report — that Rochefort has begun using Aramis hops. What do they taste and smell like? Oskar Blues Brewery fairly recently added Aramis to the recipe for Mama’s Little Yella Pils. [Via Ed’s Beer Site]

Is Sam Adams too big to succeed in the craft world?
“Brewpubs, for example, are ‘creating a bigger wave of competition,’ [Jim] Koch said. ‘If you have a successful social hall or bar as part of your brewery, you can be profitable at fairly small volumes.’ He said he doesn’t see that trend abating because not only is it profitable, but drinkers like it.” [Via Fortune]

Who Was Joseph Coppinger, Early 1800s US Beer Geek?
“The trouble with finding an old text in isolation like the one I wrote about yesterday is establishing some context. Without it, you are at the whim of the person’s claim to fame as opposed to his or her place.” [Via A Good Beer Blog]

Fun With Numbers: Sums and Sommeliers Edition.
On Cicerones, Sommeliers, and The Cult of The “Expert”
I’m of the opinion that the Cicerone program is good for beer drinkers, but I must also disclose Ray Daniels and I have been friends since before you had to put on sun glasses if you happened to gaze at our unhatted heads. Nonetheless, Jordan St. John has assembled some interesting numbers (supplemented in the comments) that led me to wonder why nobody has added the “How many Cicernones is too many Cicerones?” to the “How many brewers is too many breweries?” question. [Via St.John’s Wort and The Pour Fool]

Fred Eckhardt died yesterday. No matter how many descriptions you read in the next few days of what a generous man, just plain generous, he was I doubt any will do him justice. More accurately, I’ve typed and deleted enough attempts I know they won’t came from me.

So I recommend you pull “The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution” off the shelf and read the six pages Tom Acitelli devoted to him. Then see what treasures All About Beer posts from its archives (this is a good one to start with).

Added Tuesday afternoon: “The late Fred Eckhardt: ‘He was the cosmic giggle of craft beer'”

Related: “Bottled beers types and categories (1977).”

The Session #102: “The Landscape of Beer” inspired quite a range of interesting looking posts. To be honest, I’m jet lagged and struggling to catch up, so I kept clicking links and Pocketing posts — but I intend to get to them soon.

Meanwhile, host Allen Huerta writes, “A commonly occurring theme between a number of post is the realization of a higher level of quality that is needed for new, and existing, craft breweries to strive.”

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 08.03.15

We are on holiday (as opposed to a “beercation”) so here are links to a few stories posted by early last Friday morning. In addition, this will be the only announcement that Monday Beer Links will be totally on holiday next week. I’m sure glad Boak & Bailey promised to be back first of August.

Critical Drinking — #lookatmyjunket
[Via Good Beer Hunting]
Full Disclosure, False Dichotomy.
[Via Literature & Libation]
For the record, I am certain that neither Michael Kiser nor Oliver Gray has sold his soul to AB InBev and that they each genuinely feel their integrity has been unfairly questioned. But their protests are so long and so earnest I half expected them to lapse into iambic pentameter.

Up front I’ll admit I come from a different era. About the same time I learned about the importance of journalistic independence I perfected the ability to read type cast in metal upside down and backwards, and that did not turn out to be an essential life skill. Curiously, it seems to me the value of the former should be particularly easy for fans of what’s called craft beer to understand, because independence is on its cornerstone (it’s also part of the official definition, but that’s coincidental). Transparency and disclosure are only part of a process that begins with questioning yourself — about your motives, your biases, and anything else you don’t care to admit — long before readers get around to it.

Fair or not, readers’ low expectations come with the territory. Consider a few sentences from Leonard Shecter’s “The Jocks” (written in 1970): “No matter what has gone before, I question the necessity for bribing a sportswriter. George Weiss, recently retired president of the New York Mets, once put it this way: ‘To hell with newspapersmen. You can buy them with a steak.’ This might be overstatement. Sports reporters who like their jobs so much have a tendency to want to please the management of the sport organizations.” Unfortunately, “You can buy them with a beer” has quite a ring to it.

Related: A (beer) critic’s job? Demolishing the bad? From more than 8 years ago.

Are Alabama’s breweries making a profit? ‘It depends.’
“I don’t know that anybody in the state owns a yacht based on their brewery.” [Via AL.com]

Creating a ‘Beer From Here’.
A fad or a trend? You know where I stand. [Via All About Beer]

A Farewell to First Drafts.
Eric Gorski is one of the voices who has made First Drafts an essential source of accurate information about brewing in Colorado. Moving on, he departs with a particularly lovely anecdote. [Via The Denver Post}

Guest blog: Craft beer? The bubble has burst.
I’m generally a defender of hops, but I still had to laugh at this: “But like a prog rock band with an excellent drummer, the hopping turned into a 15 minute drum solo.” [Via Stonch’s Beer Blog]

Who drinks what?

Google will translate the story for you, but the illustration is what interests me. See, “craft” is now a style. [Via PressePortal, h/T Joe Stange]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 07.27.15

So this happened during the Beer Bloggers Conference in North Carolina:

Keep Calm & Drink A Beer? http://t.co/1tL1WSLbSW pic.twitter.com/OzIR07qupY

— heybrewtiful (@heybrewtiful) July 24, 2015

I may have missed other posts that resulted (feel free to send links) from representatives of AB InBev pouring Budweiser at the conference, but here’s some Monday morning POV.

The Antagony of Anheuser-Busch.
[Via Literature & Libation}
Thoughts On Rage {Against the Machine}
[Via heybrewtiful]
After I read the top post, I dropped Oliver Gray a DM asking what year he was born. I was mostly curious how much older he is than breweries that started, for instance, in 1988. In answering (1985) he added, with a smile, “Why, am I out of touch already?” Beer shift is constant, and this turn that began with the revival of Anchor Steam now stretches across generations. So two more posts that seem related.

Am I post-craft?
[Via It’s Just the Beer Talking]
The Craft Beer Cycle, Bookended by HMHB and Gilbert & Sullivan.
[Via weird beer girl]
Speaking at a conference last week, troublemaker Malcom Gladwell pointed to the difference between generational and developmental changes in people’s behavior. Developmental changes are part of everyone’s life cycle, while generational changes deeply affect one generation. Jeff Pickthall (first post) is talking about his own relationship with beer, but it is nonetheless interesting to consider the concept of “post-craft” with the one of “postmodern” Joe Stange put forth a few weeks earlier. And to throw in Lisa Grimm’s thoughts (and graphic she created), which are also about personal journeys but within the context of beer itself changing.

Gladwell asked the audience at his talk “to consider whether Snapchat is generational or developmental. Is it going to affect culture deeply, or is it just another way to communicate and gossip when we’re 17?” I’m not sure if there is a direct comparison to beer, or perhaps to specific beers (IPA, pumpkin, whatever), but something to think about.

In the future, everybody will be a sommelier for 15 minutes.
Or a Cicerone. [Via Steve Heimoff]

Beer Around the World Is Getting Boozier and Boozier.
“More global beer drinkers now view high ABV as a key quality indicator, inspired by the success of craft beer in the US – and increasingly globally over the past two years,” said Jonny Forsyth, Global Drinks Analyst at Mintel. “The craft beer phenomenon has made high strength beer acceptable for consumers. And not just acceptable, but trendy and sophisticated.” [Via FWx]

22 session IPAs ranked!
[Via Chicago Tribune]
Blind-Tasting and Ranking 90 of the Best “Session” Beers (under 5% ABV).
[Via Paste]
21 Session IPAs, Ranked.
[Via Deadspin]
Lists.