musing

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 11.10.14

Remember all that stuff about the New Yorker cover? That is so October. If you follow the people I follow on Twitter and subscribe to the rss feeds that I do the news that AB InBev bought 10 Barrel Brewing in Oregon looked to be as big a deal as when InBev took over A-B. The Internet can fool you that way. It was a big ass local story, but how wide are the implicatons, really? How people reacted to the news might be as important down the road as the news itself. For instance, Jeff Rice has already used it as an opportunity to examine craft rhtetorics.

While we wait for an equally surprising “big” story this week, pig out on 10 Barrel:

– Making sense of Anheuser-Busch InBev buying 10 Barrel Brewing
– Why Anheuser-Busch’s Purchase of 10 Barrel – Brewing is bad for the industry
– The Short Life and Ugly Death of 10 Barrel Brewing
– Craft Rhetorics: the 10 Barrel Brewing Moment
– On Anheuser-Busch buying 10 Barrel
– Interview with 10 Barrel Brewing Founders and Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO of Craft Brands

Elitism, or something else? Millennials and the war on Big Beer. OK, this is why there’s such a fuss.
[Via CNBC]

The Soul of Beer. Jeff Alworth followed up on two posts he wrote about 10 Barrel with this one. There was at time the tagline here read “In search of the soul of beer” before I changed it to “Celebrating beer from a place.” I’m not sure that made my intentions any more clear, but it seemed like it at a time. Neither phrase lends itself to literal interpretation. In the era of the old tagline, I asked several brewers about the notion their beer might have soul. The best answer came from one who pointed out all energy must go somewhere, so a lot of what happens in a brewery ends up in the beer.
[Via Beervana]

There’s A Beer For That. When I was checking into a hotel last week I heard the words “Mosaic hops” coming from the television in the reception area and realized that a Guinness commercial was playing. It seems like just yesterday that we called that hop 369. Now it is part of television advertising, but I’ve managed to otherwise miss the commercial and probably will going forward. The roundabout point here is that I’ve seen numerous posts about the There’s a Beer for That campaign in England, but the advertisements are not part of my life and I’ve struggled to “get it.” This post put things in perspective for me. Your mileage may vary, but there’s a handy list of links at the bottom should you be interested.
[Via Total Ales]

It’s just good business. A reminder, from the Czech Republic.
[Via Pivni Filosof]

Perfect Parker Scores Keep On Coming. Is there similar score inflation going on in beer? This is a story about scores from critics, and in beer the scores of Internet rating sites carry more weight, but maybe this is a job for Bryan Roth.
[Via wine-searcher]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 11.03.14

Hinkle: Brewery deal comes with a hangover. Indeed, it is great news for Richmond, Va., that Stone Brewing Co. chose that city in which to locate a new brewery. It will create a bunch of jobs and pump money and a lot of excellent beer into the community. But it didn’t come free. Just to be clear, nothing against Stone. The company has proved time and time again in San Diego what a wonderful community member it is. But what if the city of Richmond had chosen to use those millions of dollars as seed money for local companies? If city government is going to suggest to its citizens that they should support local businesses then it seems to make sense they’d do the same.
[Via Richmond-Times Dispatch, h/T The Potable Curmudgeon]

Brooklyn Brewery Cofounder Steve Hindy Discusses South Florida’s Brewing Future. “One idea that Hindy put forth was that Miami has had a hard time in the past in becoming a craft beer mecca because of its status as an international city. He sees that in major metropolitan areas like New York and Los Angeles. People are seeking the best of everything, even if it’s just what they perceive as the best, no matter where it’s from. ‘Places like Vermont or Maine or Michigan or even Oregon are very loyal to their local product. International cities are not; [the people] want the best of everywhere. That’s a challenge for craft beer.'” If that is true, I wonder if citizens of those international cities understand the price they are paying.
[Via New Times]

Beer Industry Reacts to ‘The New Yorker’ Cover. I will continue not to write anything about this. I offer John Holl’s post as a public service because it is really a 13-headed monster (which you can read all at once if you drop it into Pocket first), and suggest you then turn to “Craft Beer Mocked on Cover of The New Yorker: Geeks Unsure If They Should Celebrate.” Although I am avoiding comment, I secretly wonder why every headline I read on this topic reminds me of something from The Onion.
[Via All About Beer and Hey, Brewtiful]

The Old House at Home. However, I will use all this fuss about The New Yorker to link to this story from 1940. It turned into the first chapter of Joseph Mitchell’s “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.” You can read the whole book as part of “Up in the Old Hotel.” A terrific anthology.
[Via The New Yorker]

Wine Critics Keep Semantic Arguments at Bay—Not So for Beer and Spirits.“The most fascinating battles to watch are the ‘Word Wars’. The battle over word use and semantics that are primarily playing out in the beer and distilling industries over the term ‘Craft’. And here his the kicker/conclusion: “If there were a Robert Parker of Beer or a Wine Spectator of Beer, the meaning of ‘craft’ would be far less important.” Curious idea.
[Via Fermentation, The Daily Wine Blog]

Meet the Twinkie-saving, beer-selling billionaire who has changed the way you eat. This profile of the Metropoulos family details, rather than explains, what the family did with Pabst, the brewing concern it is selling at considerable profit.
[Via the Washington Post]

And because beer is local. Reports from Portland, Maine, and Kansas City.

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 10.27.14

Just to mix it up, I thought about making all the links this week to Twitter. I changed my mind, but it certainly was curious on Friday to see this combination on my feed. Just be clear, Ed Wray’s came first and 47Hops surely didn’t see it before an almost simultaneous tweet.

Does shaming work on Twitter? I’m not sure, but Alchemist founder/brewer John Kimmich sure drew a lot of comments when he posted this photo and tweeted “$42 / four pack. WARM on the shelf. CJ’s Kegs Cases & more in Potsdam, NY. Shameful.”
[via Twitter]

Masculinity, Hipsters and the Miller High Life Man. Perhaps I need to add a little Pocket icon for longish posts you may want to save for later. This is one. Just plain entertaining, plus thoughtful consideration of the “enduring influence of the High Life Man message in the millennial era.”
[Via Punch]

Exploring Drinker Demographics: When Biology and Social Expectations Collide. Speaking of millennials … I posted a link to this story on Twitter, asking for feedback on this thought: “Craft beer is not only a beverage choice; it appears to be a lifestyle choice.” This was the most interesting and amusing thread that resulted. There actually may be a connection between the decision to purchase a particular beer and one to buy music on vinyl.
[This Is Why I’m Drunk]

Craftwork. This was one of many posts from The Beer Nut from Germany, and you can use the Blog Archive on the left of the posts for several other “must reads”™ from his trip. This one examines the “wave of foreign styles that’s destroying traditional German brewing.” Or not.
[Via The Beer Nut]

The Rumpkin Chase. “Even accomplishment means little, in the end, when we beer chase.” Yep.
[Via Make Mine Potato]

Bierquellenwanderweg. It might be enough to just tell you Stonch is back, but if not here’s the explanation: “I live in London. I quit law and became landlord of the Gunmakers Arms in Clerkenwell in 2009. In 2014 I re-opened the Finborough Arms, a Victorian pub in Earl’s Court that had been closed for some time. I started writing this in January 2007, but knocked it on the head exactly three years later. Now I want to do it again.”
[Via Stonch’s Beer Blog]

These requests from abroad, volume four: “May I ask you to send me one set of your beer labels?” Likewise, I’m not sure about the privacy thing, but the “What’s the rest of the story?” question is pretty compelling.
[Via The Potable Curmudgeon]

Top of the Hops. Adrian-Tierney Jones travels a Vermont beer trail. Sets the mood for the next gathering of The Session.
[Via Enterprise Magazine]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 10.20.14

How I pick the links to include here:

– Wednesday morning I received a press release about chef David Chang’s bit of silliness in GQ about “fancy beer.” Friday morning I received a press release about Garrett Oliver’s response, also in GQ. No need to bother with this pissing match. You’re not going to miss it.

– Tuesday morning, because I roll out of bed rather early, Dan Paquette’s Monday night into Tuesday morning rant was near the top of my Twitter feed. And the story sped ahead from there. The ratio of words to actual information was rather high and only by chance did Twitter point me to an interesting (though anonymous and unsubstantiated) post 10 pages into a Beer Advocate discussion. In my youth I was a newspaper city editor. I’m pretty sure that we could have found a way to report this as a local story. It would have taken both feet on the street time and some forensic accounting. When I see a proper story I’ll be sure to link to it. Waiting for that link.

– Although I suspect I’ll be waiting for that particular link a while, Saturday morning Zak Avery used the topic as a jumping off place for an entirely different discussion. Drop that one into Pocket.

Craft Beer in a Post-Craft World. One of Avery’s takeaways is “Beer isn’t going to get any better than it is now” (it appears three times in boldface). In part that’s because it is really good now. I understand what he means when he writes “the technology of craft beer – focusing on quality and flavour without cutting corners to maximise profits – has reached endgame.” But I don’t agree that it won’t get better.

As I type this I realize it could be an entire post, but I’ll try to be unusually concise. Granted, “good enough” and “better” are moving targets. But how do you know that something better won’t come along? I had conversations with people just two weeks ago in which they guaranteed me that Firestone Walker Pivo Pils was the best pilsner-type beer they’d ever tasted. And it hasn’t been in bottles two years.

This isn’t about a quest to find the best pale ale, the best weissbier, the best porter; or even a desire to always be tasting something new. Beer is food, and that means there are more than 3,000 (a lot more, given the freedom many breweries extend multiple brewers) beer chefs operating in the United States. I’m happy enough to think that I’ll never find commercially smoked brisket better than at Louie Mueller’s in Taylor, Texas, but there are times when I might enjoy brisket more someplace else. And I really like sitting in Louie Mueller’s (those are Mueller’s smoke-stained windows at the top).

Avery accurately describes “post-craft era” as a buzz-phrase. I like it. It drew me to his post (Boak & Bailey used the phrase “post-craft world” back in May, but I was in Brazil and missed it until now). In an email not long ago Vince Cottone, who gets credit for giving us the term “craft” brewery, wrote that he was disappointed the term “industrial brew” (which he wrote about at the same time 30 years ago) didn’t get any traction. I’ve been having conversations with brewers about post-industrial beer and post-industrial brewing and although they humor me there is the chance this is only something I’ve made up.

It works better if you don’t aim for a specific definition (sorta like “craft”). But the idea is that brewers at businesses interested in operating on various levels of scale now have the technology that resulted from the R&D very large brewing companies could afford. So we can have beer that is not designed for the broadest audience and shipped all over the face of the earth, but still “cleaner, more consistent, more reliable, less of a lottery.”

The discussion about good, better, best, fantastic, life changing, and so on is a different one. Avery has given us a lot to think about. Makes you wish we didn’t have to wait 112 days between posts. If only because this one also hit the on switch for Max Bahnson.
[Via Tasting the Pith]

So You Wanna be a Brewer? 20 Real Facts About Working in a Brewery. Since I might have hijacked Zak Avery’s idea to make my own point, here’s another reminder that brewing is a business.
[Via Queen City Drinks]

Farmhouse ales of Europe. “Farmhouse ale lives in many more places than people have been aware of.” Wow, what a list. Do we call these indigenous?
[Via Largsblog]

If Everyone Else Is A Beer Expert – Why Not Me? Proof that you can make a point in a lot less space and in a far more amusing way than me.
[Via A Good Beer Blog]

Could Budweiser be better than craft beer? When I posted this on Twitter complained they’d just wasted two minutes of their life reading it. Consider yourself warned.
[Via The Drinks Business]

The Uncritical Embrace of Craft Beer? Also got dissed for posting this link on Twitter. “Did you mean to make me lose that time?” It is long, and it is a topic already discussed at length, but something people are still figuring out. And relevant, I think, to The Session #90 Roundup.
[Via a Tempest in a Tankard]

Matt Van Wyk’s post about “Over Analysis Syndrome” almost nine years ago when he was still brewing at Flossmoor Station in Illinois remains just as true this morning. My brain might be wired funny, but I thought of it when reading what Michael Baumann wrote at Grantland.

Just when the sport has been studied and scrutinized and quantified to within an inch of solving it, something bizarre and beautiful, like these Royals, comes along.