musing

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.15.15

Why Americans have such bad taste in beer.
The premise here about the blandification of American beer is not exactly new. Should you be tempted to fork over $40 to read the complete article this story cites I’d suggest instead buying Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. More detail, better told, and you can spend what you save on beer. [Via The Washington Post]

Should Northeast-Grown Hops Be Renamed? / Brewing an IPA with Century-Feral New York Wild Hops.
Among other things, Derek Dellinger asks “When is Cascade no longer Cascade?” Rather than renaming the hop, I’d suggest we recognize regional differences, which I’ve written about before. More interesting to me are his thoughts about brewing with hops found growing in the wild: “Hops that have absorbed the character of the land and made it their own. Truly unique, more-or-less native hops.” [Via Bear Flavored]

Retirement Home Residents Learn To Brew Beer.
What better way to stay young? [Via Hartford Courant]

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Miss ‘Leuven Innovation Beer Festival’: Brouwerij Hof Ten Dormaal’s Leuven Beer Festival at De Hoorn.
Putting the word innovation in the name of a festival immediately makes me nervous, but apparently they could also have called it the “Leuven Intimate Beer Festival.” [Via Belgian Smaak]

Charlotte’s craft beer boom lifts other businesses, too.
“The beauty of small manufacturing is its inefficiency. … (A craft brewery) has a much larger impact on its local economy because of its inefficiency.” [Via The Herald]

Take a hike. Have a beer. Life is perfect. Here’s where.
Pairing trailheads and brewpubs across Washington state. [Via Washington Times]

National Homebrew Competition Winners.
Unless you had a beer entered or know somebody who did or judged a lot of beers in the first round and are curious if any won medals then this list will not be of interest. However, I point you to Category 14: India Pale Ale (IPA). No surprise that it had the most entries, but some would attach meaning to the fact there were 666. [Via the American Homebrewers Association]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.08.15

I’m not sure how many bloggers ended up participating in The Session #100 on Friday, but every entry I’ve read has been above average interesting. And there were a couple other posts — the first three listed here — that seem related.

A full disclosure: the making of 1883 Lager.
Tiah Edmunson-Morton tackles the challenge of finding pre-Prohibition beer recipes (and brewing logs) to come up with a recipe for Hopworks Urban Brewery (and here’s their version of the story).
[Via Oregon Hops & Brewing Archives]

The three-threads mystery and the birth of porter: the answer is …
Martyn Cornell tackles “One of the biggest mysteries in the history of beer.” In the end he writes that not everybody will agree with conclusions. Same facts, different views. Something to remember when discussing beer history. An aside, it is the people who don’t pay attention to the facts that drive me bonkers. [Via Zythophile]

Lazarus beers: 6 brands that should be raised from the dead.
Don Russell talks about specific beers, not styles, and from more recent history. {Via Joe Sixpack]

Cans or bottles? Surprising results from two blind taste tests.
As the headline suggests, surprising results. They are a reminded blind taste tests are a valuable tool, but as humans we may not always taste things the same way. It makes me think that as well as tasting the same beer from a bottle as a can it would be interesting to do a similar test comparing two bottles from the same six pack. [Via Microbrewr]

Drink Parochial.
Miles Liebtag revisits the local/quality/diversity debate. It is even handed, but I don’t agree with his conclusion (there’s that “same facts, different views” thing): “Loyalty to your home is a beautiful thing, and in beer, art, music, literature and culture generally, like-minded people form enclaves that are specific to a place and foment wonderful bursts of creativity and innovation. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we’re talking just about culture. We’re talking about business.” Yes, you can’t overlook that brewing beer is a business. But we are talking about local culture. Local may change our appreciation of a beer. Most visits to the local pub are not for a blind beer tasting (or test, if you will). [Via BeerGraphs]

Does Oskar Blues Still Own Oskar Blues? Brewery Would Rather Focus on the Beer.
File this one under “bears watching.” [Via Westword]

How Big Lager Lost The Plot And Developed Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
And file this under sentences that make you think: “Premiumness in beer is not about this kind of cock-waving, and it never was. It’s about the premiumness of the experience the beer creates – the experience for which the beer is the catalyst, not the central focus.” There are times you don’t want a premium experience, or maybe I should say you want an experience you’ll enjoy and aren’t prepared to pay for premium. [Via Pete Brown]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 05.25.15

Cult breweries go global.
There’s this question from Joe Stange: “So, is BrewDog — which has branded itself ‘punk’ from the start — becoming the ‘McDonald’s of craft beer’?” and he quotes Tim Webb thusly, “Clever beer has outgrown its infancy and is becoming an attitudinally challenged adolescent.” A nice turn of phrase and I enjoy many of the beers I’m pretty sure Webb is talking about, but I’m still trying to decide how clever I want my beers. [Via DRAFT]

‘Craft’ beer’s pandemic of quality un-control?
Tom Cizauskas apologizes for “the breathless Buzzfeedy-ness of the title” of the post, but wants you to read it. In it he revisits the concern that when Brewers Association director Paul Gatza called out some brewers about the quality of beer he drank at a particular festival that it “could easily be read as an attack by big ‘craft’ on small ‘craft.'” A BA subcommittee since created the pyramid shown here (Gatza included it during the “state of the industry” presentation at the recent Craft Brewers Conference and it appeared in New Brewer, the publication for BA members earlier this year).

The pyramid reflects things that Alastair Pringle has been telling decision makers at smaller breweries concerned with quality for the last several years. Pringle worked at Anheuser-Busch for 25 years before retiring in 2009. He teaches microbiology at a small college outside of St. Louis and consults with several relatively small breweries. He advocates a practical approach to beer quality — which could be focused on process improvement and control or beer flavor and stability — telling brewers to identify the major factors they can control. They don’t need to be using the same checklist as MillerCoors if they aren’t planning to ship their beer all over the universe.

“That’s usually seven or eight things, rather than making it very, very complicated,” Pringle says. When he worked at Anheuser-Busch, then CEO August Busch III famously demanded one-page solutions, so that people in production could easily implement them. “You didn’t get anywhere at A-B giving complicated talks where you looked clever.” And there’s that word again. [Via Yours For Good Fermentables]

CAMRA and Lager: Eurofizz or Pure Beer?
In its 44 years of existence, the Campaign for Real Ale has had a more complicated relationship with lager than cries of “fizzy piss” from some members might have you believe. Complicated, indeed, and a longish read worth saving to Pocket. [Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

Twelve Years Spent A-Writing About Good Beer.
I’m stealing this from Alan McLeod for my business card: “My hobby is writing about beer. And it serves a purpose. It allows me to play out ideas related to standards touching on research, value, ethics, clarity and human weakness that I apply in my job and the rest of my life.” Except for the part about it being a hobby. Hobby and craft. Should we be talking about their relationship? [Via A Good Beer Blog}

Beer Money: How Industry Dollars Go to Work.
This is the first of eight posts from Bryan Roth (a series that is just wrapping up). He explains this goal is to “share a compilation of data sourced from public record for major beer companies and organizations who all play a role in shaping the politics of beer.” The series (links at the bottom of each post) examines both individual brewing companies and organizations. [Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]

Washington drought may threaten future of craft brewers.
Come down off the ledge. It isn’t quite that scary. In fact, “For the most part this year’s crop is okay, next year’s yet to be determined.” But down the road, less water, lower yields. [Via KOMONews]

Snake Charming and Herding Cats.
A day in the life of Tyler Nelson, who sells beer in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina for Green Flash Brewing Company. [Via Beer Connoisseur]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 05.18.15

1) Global giant in grab for Meantime.
2) Why Meantime sold up to SAB Miller – the inside story
3) Why SABMiller’s acquisition of Meantime is a good thing.
4) Meantime brewery: craft or industrial?
5) What Meantime means to us.
6) Raising the bar.
The most important story of the week, although it may not have been obvious on this side of the Atlantic. The first post includes the basic news. In the second, Martyn Cornell explains why it happened, and in the third Pete Brown suggests what it means. The fourth and fifth remind us there are thousands of small pictures as well as the Big Picture. The last word goes to Meantime founder Alastair Hook gets the last word (6).

Aside from my own musing, of course. Brown writes, “I don’t think there should be a huge gulf between craft and mainstream.” On one level, this seems to be happening in the United States. Large brewing companies are expanding their portfolios, either by making a wider range of beers or acquiring breweries that do. Newer breweries that want to grow bigger are paying plenty of attention to efficiency and consistency. What’s different than much of the twentieth century is there’s room for other breweries, ones purposely less efficient. There are myriad reasons, so I will leave it there.

New Belgium expressed interest in buying Elysian before Anheuser-Busch deal.
I missed this one a week ago Friday (these things happens on four-brewery days), but worth your time. Pair it with the next story. [Via Denver Post]

First Beverage Founder: Flood of Craft Deals Forthcoming.
“I think there could easily be 25 more transactions in the next 12 to 15 months,” says the CEO of an investment and advisory firm. “The business of craft beer is going to radically change.” [Via Brewbound]

Enough business. Some agriculture:

Definitely my favourite time of the year. Cider apples in blossom and Goldings hops climbing the strings. pic.twitter.com/bLsKmyBkP4

— Paul Corbett (@CharlesFaram) May 16, 2015

Here’s how much water it takes to make California’s craft beer.
Growing the barley and hops to make just one gallon of beer requires 590 gallons of water. [Via Quartz]

Local Grains: Farm To Bakery Bread Is Hot.
“Leaps forward in decentralizing the production of staple crops don’t register as significant, not yet. But the more that bakers seek local flour, and the more that farmers seek noncommodity marketing options, the more consumers will learn to understand and appreciate the small food mountains people are moving.” [Via Zester Daily]

Postscript

Musing here previously mentioned a story about the etymology of the term “craft beer” that I wrote for All About Beer [print version]. AABM has now posted it online.