musing

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 03.09.15

Last week I promised to find links related to actually drinking beer. Plenty to choose from if you pay a bit of attention.

No Man Loves Life Like Him That’s Growing Old.
“The back room and bar were heaving when we arrived and squeezed into the hatched snug on the right as you enter. It gives you a kind of railway tunnel view of proceedings. There was a geriatric karaoke in full swing. At the far end an oldish guy on an electronic music box was squeezing out old time tunes accompanied by even older types giving it laldy on the microphone.” [Via Tandleman’s Beer Blog]

Changing tastes of IPA.
“But after sinking my first half pint of Beavertown’s uber-fresh Bloody ‘Ell on its launch day, something crystallised in my mind immediately. US IPAs are very sweet.” And, “The more I reflect on the beers I had in DC last month, the more I realised that the majority of them had so much of that sickly barley sugar flavour in the background, in some cases it was almost overwhelming the hops despite the beers being fresh.”

I’m not sure everybody would describe such beers as sweet, but myself I share the anti-crystal bias. And I think back to 2006 and Vinnie Cilurzo talking about when the Russian River Brewing production facility would come on line. He said that anybody who worked for him must “understand the beers are defined and have our signature. They must be bone dry – that can’t change. The new brewer suggests adding crystal, ‘You’re fired!'” That was before fruit-forward hops such as Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado hops were available. Alone they don’t have to make a beer sweet, but couple them with a bit too much crystal and a lack of firm bitterness and you get sweet. However, that’s only some American IPAs. Not La Cumbre Brewing Elevated IPA, Fat Heads Head Hunter, Firestone Walker Union Jack, Russian River Blind Pig, Schlafly AIPA, Half Acre Senit. The list of firmly bitter beers is pretty long. [Via Crema’s Beer Odyssey, h/T Boak & Bailey]

The beer that changed my life.
“The golden liquid was strangely bitter to my inexperienced palate, but there was a rich sweetness to it as well. The taste grew on me, litre by litre, until by the end of the trip I was a lager drinker. I remember carrying ten bottles home in my luggage.” [Via I might have a glass of beer]

Up and coming beer destinations?
Lars Marius Garshol picks Vilnius. “To most people, farmhouse ale is the same as saison and biere de garde. Two hours in Vilnius is enough to destroy that illusion for ever. Uniquely in the world, apart from Belgium, Lithuania has not just preserved its ancient farmhouse brewing culture, but managed to commercialize it. There are at least 15 breweries in Lithuania brewing beers that are either real farmhouse ale in the Lithuanian tradition, or to some degree commercialized versions of farmhouse ale.” [Via larsblog]

The Craft Beer Series.
“I’m stuck in two beer series right now: Bell’s Planetary series and Victory’s Moving Parts. When a new component of either series pops up on the shelf, I buy it. Neither series is wowing me in the way Lilyhammer did in the beginning of season 2 with its pop cultural references (Animal House, Godfather). Neither series has me wondering how it will all wrap up in the end as we debated Breaking Bad’s conclusion (we knew, though, that Walter White would go down in a glorious manner; we just didn’t know how). Still, I can’t quit the series. I’ve started it. I’m a part of it. I have to see it through.” [Make Mine Potato]

An Overflowing River Of New York Beer.
“I had 15 beers across 12 breweries in three different NY beer bars and one bottle shop. I had beers from big breweries, small breweries, new breweries and old(er) breweries.” {Via BeerGraphs]

Luck of the draw.
“Definitely a mixed bag, then. Proof that raffles are not the ideal way to source new beers.” [Via The Beer Nut]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 03.02.15

Organizing the links this week I figured out what was missing.

Making & selling beer

Inside The Ram Brewery.
Whoa! There’s a nanobrewery inside the Ram Brewery, the place where Young’s and Co, made beer 1831 and 2006. Here’s the tour: “We’re shown a set of cast iron grain hoppers, over a century old. These barley grains have sat in this chamber since the 1970s.” [Via Londonist, h/T Stonch]

Houston’s craft beer king opens up on staying relevant, the Sam Adams controversy and a greedy new wave.
A lengthy interview with Saint Arnold Brewing co-founder Brock Wagner delivers all that’s promised in the headline and more. Right up front, Wagner says, “We also don’t believe that our being here for 20 years is particularly relevant to the craft beer drinker.” I don’t know if it is a left brain/right brain thing, but he’s an MBA/homebrew enthusiast, so properly practical but with an appreciation for a business that makes it something beyond selling more beer than last year. [Via Culture Map]

Making diastatic brown malt.
This is Ed Wray’s contribution to Boak & Bailey’s call for #beerylongreads (the last round, for a while, at least). The others mostly appeal to a wider audience but I point to this one because it is authoritative. After I recommended Randy Mosher’s “Mastering Homebrew” I noticed a review at Amazon that concluded, “The advance brewer is likely to find a few things that s/he did not know but that can be found in web sources as well.” Not to come across as an author defending his turf (“You can’t trust what you read on the internet — buy the dang book”), but when you are following somebody else’s instructions on how to do something you really appreciate it when they are authoritative. Sorry, I don’t have a perfect way to sort out what is and is not. But this is. So there you have it. [Via Ed’s Beer Site]

Why Greene King doesn’t care that the haters hate its IPA.
A) This is how the beer market works. B) “A small rant directed at all those idiots who keep chuntering on about how Greene King IPA is ‘not an India Pale Ale’ and how IPA has to be ‘strong and strongly hopped’, so it would survive the long journey to the Indian sub continent, over 200 years ago. You don’t have a clue what you are talking about.” And C) 97 comments. [Via Zythophile]

Seminary students make beer-making part of daily work.
Brother Albert Marie Curtis, 21, is in charge of the brewing. “He learned from another brother for a year, then took over the operation himself. Since he’s nearing the end of his time at the seminary, he is now training two other brothers to brew.” [Via LaCrosse Tribune]

Growing beer

Michigan’s hops acres to double.
What does it mean when an investment group that typically invests in commercial real estate plan to start 400-acre hop farm? It’s happening in Michigan, which already had more acres of hops under trellis than any other state outside the hop-rich Northwest. “It’s all about economies of scale,” Jason Warren, president of the investment group, said. “If you’re going to do it in a meaningful way you have to set yourself up for this size of a farming operation.” Farmers in the Northwest do operate on a larger scale, but the approach for the revived hop industry elsewhere has been to follow the German model. There the average farm has 34 acres under trellis. [Via Traverse City Record-Eagle]

Brewer’s Choice, SMaSH Beers, and NY Agriculture.
In this case SMaSH stands for State Malt and State Hops. Here’s what the Farm Brewery license does: it that allows breweries to sell beer by the glass at their own facility and elsewhere, including farmers markets. To qualify for the permit at least 20 percent of the hops and 20 percent of all other ingredients a brewery uses must be grown or produced in New York State. That percentage increases to 60 percent in 2018 and 90 percent in 2024. Those are going to be tough numbers to reach. [Via BeerGraphs]

R.I.P. Acadian Farms & Brewery has Closed.
But you can own it for $275,000, one-barrel brewing system included. [Via The New School]

Writing about beer

“Click Bait!” Not Really Code For Good Beer Criticism.
And don’t miss the Pete Brown’s comment. Having watched this from a distance for several days I have concluded I have nothing to add. [Via a Good Beer Blog]