musing

To quote from the American Homebrewers Association website:

“Each year, your American Homebrewers Association (AHA) Governing Committee selects a recipient for the annual AHA Governing Committee Recognition Award. The award honors outstanding service to the community of homebrewers, and is announced during the National Homebrewers Conference.”

The 2015 recipient: Stan Hieronymus.

The award was handed out Saturday in San Diego. I wasn’t there. I agree, that seems somewhat rude. But Daria and I went to Washington, D.C., along with our daughter, Sierra, for “Colonial Inauguration” at George Washington University, where she’ll be a freshman in September.

I think I used the words flabbergasted and humbled in the brief video they asked me to make. I expect to remain in that state for some time.

Reuben Gray has posted the roundup for The Session #100: “Resurrecting Lost Beer Styles.”

I’ve already pointed to several of these, but one more thought from Sean at Beer Search Party:

“Not to block someone from attempting a historical beer resurrection, but an authentic California Steam beer would be hard to re-create too and that is in the not so distant past. A Goslar Gose would be a big task primarily because no one from that era could verify it’s accuracy.”

Is it Gose from Goslar or from Leipzig we are interested in? Efforts in Kentucky to revive their version of Common and in Poland to resurrect Grodziskie have focused on what those beers were like at the height of their popularity. Using the same criteria, the choice would be Gose from Leipzig. In the case of Steam, is it the mysterious beer that emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century or the beer as it was brewed when Anchor Brewing opened at the end of the century. At the outset, Steam likely was an all-malt beer, but by the 1890s it most commonly often would have been made with a good dose of corn.

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]