musing

Drinking too fast? A few trivial beer links to slow that

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 05.11.15

In their weekly Saturday roundup of beer links, Boak & Bailey write, “It seems rather trivial to be thinking, reading and writing about beer in the week of a general election …” That’s dangerous thinking, because that might be true every week.

I am so fucking bored by the beer discourse of 2015.
Rants, bar fights and strip clubs. Maybe it’s time to become a wine drinker.
Pete Brown tweeted “Here’s a post which shows why you shouldn’t read social media after a nice evening’s drinking and then blog about it” and his rant lives up to it. Sentences liked this are to be treasured: “And the fucking definition of craft beer debate lumbers on like a zombie, eating the brains of talented people who could otherwise be writing something inspirational, or at least interesting.” A bit of disclosure — I’m quoted in the second link, but Roger Baylor has always expected more out of beer and expecting more of out beer is a concept that shouldn’t be forgotten. [Via Pete Brown and The Potable Curmudgeon]

Brew Talks Chicago: Defining What it Means to Be Small and Local.
This story doesn’t, to be honest. But it gives me an excuse to quote DH Harrison of Country Boy Brewing in Lexington. I was in Kentucky last week, learning a lot about how Kentucky Common was brewed a hundred years ago. The topic of local came up again and again. OK, some of that was my fault. However, I was talking to Daniel Sinkhorn at Country Boy about the challenges of brewing with local chestnuts while Harrison was engaged in a separate conversation and I heard him say, “I want to hire a county guy.” That’s how you stay local. [Via Brewbound}

As I commented on Twitter, things were a lot simpler when Mr. Golding named his hop.

Spiking Beer: As Intended, As Brewed?
If you follow Jeremy Danner on Twitter you will occasionally feel his pain when somebody runs a Boulevard beer through some sort of device to make it “better.” I agree on one level with Danner’s thoughts and what Oliver Gray writes about adultering beer, but I also remember that “craft beer” is part of what is referred to as “maker culture.” Consumers are the paying participants in what Colin Campbell describes as “craft consumption.” [Via Literature & Libation]

Drink beer too quickly? Opt for straight glasses, not curved.
In one experiment, those who had straight glasses were 60 per cent slower to consume alcoholic beverages than those drinking from curved glasses. In another, drinkers took more time to exmpty a curved glass with measurements of a quarter, half and three quarters marked on the side. But here’s my favorite line from the story: “The speed at which beer is drunk can have a direct effect on the level of intoxication experienced.” [Via The Telegraph].

Beer-fueled fight in Fairfax prompts officials to look at state farming law.
Shouldn’t the story address if the name of the proposed business — Loudmouth Brewery — was part of the problem? In an event, farm/brewery, lovely concept, but apparently not a slam dunk. [Via The Washington Post]

‘Bourbon Empire’ Reveals The Smoke And Mirrors Of American Whiskey.
“‘The term ‘craft’ is little more than an ambiguous buzzword,’ [Reid] Mitenbuler writes in a new book, Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America’s Whiskey. Behind all the craft buzz, Mitenbuler says, are actually just some ‘carefully cultivated myths’ created by an industry on a roll. According to Mitenbuler, many of the newer bourbon brands are actually just spinoffs of factory brands… But you’d never know, since they’re packaged to appear different, smaller and therefore more rare.” And you thought contract brewers took a few liberties. [Via the salt]

But, Stan, where are the feel-good beer links?

MONDAY BEER LINKS, AND SAD SHAKING OF THE HEAD, 05.04.15

Lake Louie’s Craft Beer Week event at strip club prompts brouhaha.
I suppose you could file this under “Will they ever learn?” Lake Louie owner/brewmaster Tom Porter actually said this: “If we take this all too seriously we’ll be in trouble. This is a fun, emerging new industry and I’ve seen it get to where there’s a lot of beer snobs out there.” I can only repeat what I wrote two weeks ago about this total lack of awareness when it comes to treating women as objects.

Last week the attention turned to boneheaded marketing for Bud Light. It’s astonishing how many people signed off on “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night” before it made it onto Bud Light labels. And stories that followed generated these tweetable facts:

– On the current management team, as listed on the company’s Web site, 13 of 14 members are men. Overall at the company, 17 percent of full-time, salaried Anheuser-Busch employees are women, a 2014 company report shows. That’s down from 29 percent in 2011.
– The slogan was among 140 different sayings printed on bottles as part of the brand’s “Up For Whatever” campaign. Most of them are trivial, like “the perfect beer for when you’re eating breakfast meats outside of breakfast hours.”
– Bud Light’s “buzz” score fell from 6 on Monday to zero as of Thursday morning, according to the YouGov BrandIndex, which measures daily brand consumer perception. The average score for domestic beers is currently 4. Among women, Bud Light fell from a 5 to -3.
– There were 45,600 tweets about Bud Light from 12 a.m. on April 28 through 12 p.m. on April 30, compared with 3,900 tweets during the same period the previous week.
– At last year’s “Whatever USA” event held in Crested Butte, Colo., about 37,000 pieces of content were created, including thousands of pieces of user-generated content shared over social media, reaching 15 million consumers.

Live by the social media sword, die by the social media sword. [Via The Cap Times & other outlets]

Over a Barrel: The Rising Cost for a Specialty Beer.
Reporter’s Notebook: Why I Wanted to Write About Barrels.
As Oliver Gray put it on Twitter, “Answering a ton of questions I’ve had about barrel-aging beer (some I didn’t even know I had).” And that was before the second of Bryan Roth’s two posts. I will only add a bit of math. A typical wine barrel holds 59 gallons, or about 629 12-ounce servings, while a typical bourbon barrel has a 53-gallon (565 12-ounce servings) capacity. Consider those numbers when you calculate what a $50 or $80 or $225 increase in barrel prices means for the single bottle you are buying. [Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]

So this tweet seems appropriate

Trouble brewing between Great Dane and Madison Craft Beer Week organizers.
Yikes, Lake Louie wasn’t the only one ruffling feathers during Madison Beer Week. In a story before the event organizer Jay Glazer said, “(Madison) has gone from being a fairly standard beer oriented market to a very adventurous beer market. When I first got here it was Great Dane and Capital and that was about it.” He went on to praise new, very small breweries for “doing such strange and creative things with beer that simply didn’t exist in 2006.” In a statement on its Facebook page, Great Dane wrote that this speaks “to the same unsettling trend in America’s craft beer movement, where breweries whose ‘raison d’être’ is to only make extreme beers, are shown more appreciation than those who take a more even-keeled approach.” [Via The Cap Times]

1) MillerCoors Slapped with Class Action Suit.
2) A Flood of Lawsuits, and Too Much Blue Moon Beer.
3) How Blue Moon made ‘craft beer’ meaningless.
4) Being Keith Villa.
5) Column: Blue Moon class action suit confuses the issues.
6) Blue Moon: Peter, Paul & Mary or Trini Lopez?

The first two links include the basic information about the class action suit that led to giggling in some quarters, astonishment in others, and that assures we will once again be drowning in the “what is craft?” discussion that will not die. In fact, in #5 Joe Stange writes, “Do we really need to have this conversation again?” … but dashes off a quick 1,197 words. I posted #6 almost eight years ago, and the topic was not at all new then. In addition, there is a missing link, a story that appeared in the March issue of All About Beer magazine that examines the origins and use of the term “craft beer” as it has evolved during the last 30 years in the United States. There were avenues I started down in researching the story — such as what elements of the Arts and Craft movement relate to “craft beer” — that could grenerate endless bar arguments. I understand how that works. I don’t know how many thousands words have been spilled here, but I suspect that none of them are new any more.

Put another way, I don’t have anything to add except a whimsical thought. Three years ago, when I visited Colorado for the interviews that resulted in #4, Villa said, “We don’t pay attention to those (craft) definitions.” But Pete Coors, chairman of MillerCoors, was not at all shy about talking about how angry the Brewers Association definition made him because he considered Blue Moon a craft beer. In #3, an interview conducted before the class action suited was filed but amazingly timely, Villa said, “I’ve always considered us a craft brewery from the day I started Blue Moon to even now and in the future.”

So what happens if this class action suit moves along? Could there come a time that MillerCoors and Blue Moon turn to an “absolute defence” (explaining they call Blue Moon a “craft beer” because think it is)? In which case it could be up to the court to decide what is “craft beer.” Like that would settle anything. [Via multiple sources]

Finally, another tweet that seems relevant

Russian River Brewing funk, then & now

OCTOBER 2006

Russian River, funky carboys (2006)

APRIL 2015 (Photo via The Verge)

Russian River Brewing, funky kegs

“Spoiled rotten: how breweries are trying to spot bad beer through DNA” is about a testing kit called the BrewPal that is designed to quickly identify specific types of Pediococcus and Lactobacillus bacteria that can quickly destroy a batch of beer. The story is full of science, but explained in a way that even I can understand.

One of the photos with the story, of a worker dosing beers with Russian River Brewing’s blend of funk that turns beers like Temptation and Supplication into what they are, made me think of the one at the top. It was taken at the Russian River brewpub in Santa Rosa in 2006, before the production brewery was built. Russian River co-founder Vinnie Cilurzo stashed his carboys full of funk in a corner of the tiny barrel room at the brewpub.

Notice the boombox on the left. Cilurzo said his father used to play Frank Sinatra in the winery where he, Vinnie, literally grew up. The son continued the music tradition, but his funk travels to the beat of a different drum.

Do tenets of capitalism make craft beer wars inevitable?

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 04.27.15

Why craft brewing is about to go to war with itself.
Does the modern American beer industry (and the culture attached to it) represent the leading edge of a new capitalism?
So it turns out Thrillist is not all click bait and listicles. Dave Infante dots his i’s and crosses his t’s in a relentless march to this conclusion: “In the end, the industry’s individuality and cohesion just doesn’t matter as much to many (I’d argue most) consumers as it does to some brewers. And as that becomes more apparent, more brewers — heavily armed with increased production and aggressive marketing bought with the help of outside cash — will make a play for the shelves and taps that are right in front of the mainstream consumer.” Hence war.

Craft Beer Productions vs. Capacity

I’ll throw in this chart from The 2015 State of the Industry presentation at the Craft Brewers Conference just to be provocative. Unused capacity is not good for pricing, and there seems to be more each year. However, that 12.4 million barrel difference between capacity and production in 2014 needs to be considered in context. Production was 64 percent of capacity in 2012 and two years later production exceeded 2012 capacity. In 2014, capacity was once again 64 percent of production. In addition, there is little doubt that 2015 production will exceed 2013 capacity.

That doesn’t invalidate Infante’s conclusion, but it does mean one potential concern isn’t, for now. So back to the question in hand, if his prediction is accurate how deep do the price cuts reach? Is the battle limited to the breweries Alan McLeod calls big craft? Infante mentions what he calls the noncombatants, those that stay small. If that includes all the microbreweries (producing less than 15,000 barrels) and brewpubs operating at the end of 2014, we’re talking 3,218 of the 3,418 breweries the Brewers Association defines as craft, or 94 percent. Now, some of those will grow past 15,000 barrels in 2015 and many others have similar aspirations, but you sense a larger number will feel the fall out if the pricing gloves come off.

But is it inevitable? That’s why the second link. Last January, Maureen Ogle wrote about the beer-related book she’d write if she were writing one (she is not). In that one she’d ask, “Does the modern American beer industry (and the culture attached to it) represent the leading edge of a new capitalism?” and “Is modern American brewing a new kind of ‘industry’? Or is it more of the same and that sameness will become apparent once the first two generations of modern brewers retire and/or sell their operations?” [Via Thrillist and Maureen Ogle]

Have we reached peak geek?
A short post from Ed Wray, related specifically to the UK and geeks as a source of funding for brewery expansion. However, Ray Bailey reminds us via a comment that non-geeks, even non-beer drinkers, see the growth in sales of what is generally referred to as craft beer presenting an investment opportunity. That’s because non-geeks are drinking these beers. A virtuous cycle or a game musical chairs? [Via Ed’s Beer Site]

Some CBC 2015 thoughts, questions, and takeaways.
As Jon Abernathy points out, sustainability was one of the themes the Craft Brewers Conference, and much of the post-conference discussion has focused on the “can growth be sustained?” aspect. Jon folds in the environmental component. [Via The Brew Site]

Dead or Alive: Are single-hopped beers still interesting?
Yes. Next question. [Via Chris Hall]

Types of UK Brewery.
Consider it a learning excercise. I’d like to see something analogous attempted on this side of the Atlantic, as long as it doesn’t result in a diagram printed on T-shirts. [Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

The Accidental Death of the Wine Writer.
“Rather than being the spur to further discourse, wine writing has become a quasi-professional end in itself, and thus is rarely adventurous, controversial, intellectually provocative or emotionally engaging.” Is beer writing any different? [Via Les Caves De Pyrene]

Tricking Women Into Drinking Beer : Lies Men Tell.
5 Reasons Why The Beer Wench Is Bad For Beer.
Dueling lists. [Via Thrillist and Northdown Taproom]