musing

Before getting to posts mostly from the past week, a link from earlier in April, followed by a story from 2020.

The timing for “Have We Hunted the Beer Whale to Extinction?” could have been better, since Russian River Brewing is one of the breweries mentioned at the outset. The story April 17, not long after Russian River wrapped up the annual 14-day Pliny the Younger celebration. Here’s a typical daily report from Instagram:

“Day 7 Pliny the Younger has been another incredible day with a big turnout at both breweries and mostly nice weather! Wait times holding steady at 3-4 hours in Windsor and 2.5-3 hours in Santa Rosa. Running out of bottles most nights and sometimes draft, too!”

Yes, things have changed since 2017 or 2020, but it seems people — hunting something other than whales — will still wait in line for an experience . . . and the line may be part of the experience.

Speaking of which, the Punch story begins describing a line at Other Half Brewing on Feb. 8, 2020, about six weeks before taprooms across New York City shutdown at the start of the pandemic. That was the day after, as reported by the New York Post, a “craft beer hater” and White Claw lover had pulled a gun on “hop hipsters” standing in that same line.

“The guy was telling us we were a bunch of idiots waiting online for beer.”

Related, it would seem, there is this: David Bailey’s cartoon at Pellicle.

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On Thursday, Alan McLeod pointed to dispatches from the Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas (that’s Sphere above, the best thing about being in that soul-less city, other than the conference). So start there and also listen to the VinePair podcast, “Is Craft Beer’s Optimistic Tone Defensible or Delusional?”

I spent most of my time in the trade show, which included 750 vendors, primarily talking to people in the hops business. Of course, those on hand to talk about products new or old are duty bound to sound enthusiastic. But many were honest about how supply and demand are out of balance. For instance, “It’s not that we are doing a booming business, but we’re not losing business.”

In aggregate, Brewers Association members sold less beer in 2023 than 2022, but 44 percent sold more beer. Many others sold about the same amount of beer. Some breweries have business plans that don’t require ongoing growth. One size does not fit all. And sometimes is is realistic to be optimistic.

Twenty years ago, I wrote a story for The New Brewer about what brewers could learn from of “Trading Up: The New American Luxury” by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske. One of the premises of the book is that consumer spending is polarizing. In order to trade up in a category she really cares about, an avid cyclists might save money by trading down in some that don’t matter to her — such as her brand of toothpaste or beer. The authors labeled such consumers “rocketers.”

I asked Silverstein how brewers, as a group, could identify and group of rocketers and tap into their interests.

“In my opinion, it has never worked where an industry has banded together to make a premium product work,” he said (my emphasis). “Usually, it is an inventors or two with drive, energy, charisma, dedicated followers, who make it happen in a big where. That’s where you see the excitement and energy.”

Perhaps that answer provides perspective.

LEDE OF THE WEEK

“What is the distance between the scent of a rose and the odour of camphor? Are floral smells perpendicular to smoky ones? Is the geometry of ‘odour space’ Euclidean, following the rules about lines, shapes and angles that decorate countless high-school chalkboards? To many, these will seem like either unserious questions or, less charitably, meaningless ones. Geometry is logic made visible, after all; the business of drawing unassailable conclusions from clearly stated axioms. And odour is, let’s be honest, a bit too vague and vaporous for any of that. The folksy idea of smell as the blunted and structureless sense is at least as old as Plato, and I have to confess that, even as an olfactory researcher, I sometimes feel like I’m studying the Pluto of the sensory systems – a shadowy, out-there iceball on a weird orbit.”

— From “How to Make a Map of Smell”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The marketplace has pretty unanimously decided that it doesn’t need more variety.”

— Zack Kinney, a founder of Kings County Brewers Collective (KCBC), in “The New Economics of Craft Beer”

COUNTERPOINT

I agree when Jeff Alworth states that writing books is no way to making a living. I would not be comfortably retired if I relied on book writing income. However, it took only a week until a post at Slate, appropriately titled, “Yes, People Still Buy Books,” enumerated what a viral Substack post, “No one buys books,” got wrong.

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– How a Beer Baron’s House Became a Dynamic Washington, D.C., Museum.

– The danger of being a quite good brewery.

– Long Live the Sorcery — Brujos Brewing.

– Will the real Olympia Brewing Co. whistle please stand up?

– Beer as cars.

– Gayle Benson’s New Orleans brewing dream fades as Faubourg plant goes up for auction.

ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE

The post that made me smile the most while the lights were turned off here.

I’m the Draft List at This Brewery and No, You Can’t Have a Light Beer

“Sure, we made a ‘normal’ IPA once. But then we were like, why make a beer that’s enjoyable to drink when we could make a beer that’s not? So now we’re brewin’ with the craziest shit, dude, for real. I’m talkin’ ice cream sandwiches, In-N-Out cheeseburgers, grandma’s rigatoni. If it sounds like a mistake, we’re brewin’ it and we’re callin’ it something like, ‘I Bet You’ve Never Seen a Penguin Drive a Sportscar.'”

Administrative note: See you in May. An eclipse, the Craft Brewers Conference and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival will have us otherwise occupied this month.

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There is some heavy duty science in “Predicting and improving complex beer flavor through machine learning.” You might prefer one of many summaries posted last week, such as “Scientists turn to AI to make beer taste even better,” but you’ll be missing plenty of fun details.

I remain skeptical about AI beer recipes, but the information that Kevin Verstrepen’s laboratory at the University of Leuven shares could also be put to good use by humans.

Consider this: “Both approaches identified ethyl acetate as the most predictive parameter for beer appreciation. Ethyl acetate is the most abundant ester in beer with a typical ‘fruity’, ‘solvent’ and ‘alcoholic’ flavor, but is often considered less important than other esters like isoamyl acetate. The second most important parameter identified by SHAP is ethanol, the most abundant beer compound after water.”

Ah, yes. alcohol.

So plenty to read in the Nature Communications article, and a lot of sexy charts. Even more in the lab’s book, “Belgian Beer: Tasted and Tested” (Image below is from the book.) However, because it appears to me the database is drawn from that book, it seems that needs to be a lot bigger.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Beer at its best is a reflection of a golden field of barley, a reminder of the rich aroma of a hop garden. Scientists can argue endlessly about the merits of the man-made concoctions which go into much of today’s beer but the proof of the pint is in the drinking. . . . the best of British beer is produced from the gifts that nature gave us and by methods which have been proudly handed down over the centuries. The story of beer is a story of nature and of craftsmanship; a story of farmers and brewers who join forces to create beer naturally.”

— The quote, and the photo above, come from “Beer naturally,” called out in Real Ale as Folk Horror. I love the photos in that book so much I had forgotten there are also words.

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

In 1873, the manager of an ironworks in Söderfors, Sweden, was about to retire. When handing his responsibilities over to the next manager, he worried about one issue in particular: the future of a beer barrel.

This was not just any barrel, he explained in the letter to his successor. This was a barrel he had been given by the previous manager when he himself took over the ironworks half a century before, in 1820. In fact, he wrote, the barrel still contained beer from when it was first filled—in 1794.

What the retiring manager wanted was for his successor to continue taking care of this barrel. To do so, every other year, he needed to pull off half the barrel’s contents for drinking, then brew new beer to refill the barrel, and “well maintain it.”

Those three words were underlined in the letter, just to make it clear how strongly he felt about it. His desire was for this 79-year-old barrel to be passed on to coming managers of the ironworks “from each to each, into the remotest future.”

How far the manager got his wish is not known, but in 1952 the barrel—by then more than 150 years old—was still being maintained in Söderfors.

— From Hundraårig Öl: A Hundred Years (or More) in the Making.

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WHEN X AND THE BLOGOSPHERE MEET

– Cask Ale in the North, South, and Very Far West

Seen today in Preston. I think we can all agree with this. pic.twitter.com/7sanp2z5l4

— John Clarke (@Beer4John) March 30, 2024

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YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY

– Look out for those sneaky strong German beers. Strong in this case may mean 5.2% ABV beers. Wait until 2026, when the United States hosts the World Cup and those British drinkers encounter Double IPAs and pastry stouts.

– After 15 Years Upright Brewing still grooving and improvising to their own tempo. Upright Brewing founder Alex Ganum is a treat. And this true story about how he found the space for his brewery in Portland, Oregon, still seems hard to believe. “I was at Amnesia Brewing on Mississippi having a beer with a buddy and he said, ‘have you found a space for the brewery yet?’ I said no, and a woman was sitting at the table next to us who worked with the owner of the [Leftbank Building]. She overheard us and said, ‘oh you’re looking for a spot for the brewery? I work with this guy who is renovating this building,’”

– Pizzeria Paradiso Reconsidered. An OG.

1) Is there a craft beer bubble? Minnesota brewers say there’s room for everyone, but some taprooms face uncertainty

2) How Fair State Brewing Hit Bankruptcy, and How It Plans to Fight Through It

3) Craft Beer Has Been Flat for Eight Years, and Other Notes

4 What we’ve gained and what we’ve lost in a decade of British beer

The first story is behind a paywall, but I found a way around it and you may as well. If not, OK, because in the second, Fair State co-founder Evan Sallee does a better job of answering the question anyway:

“Even talking about a “craft beer bubble” has been a pet peeve of mine. Craft beer is not a bubble; bubbles are a special thing where prices are inflated, and disconnected from the underlying market. Whereas the growth of craft beer has been driven by a consumer demand revolution. There are a lot of breweries competing for limited consumers, but that does not a bubble make.”

The chart at the top draws on slightly different data than Jeff Alworth uses in No. 3. John I. Haas CEO Tom Davis shared it at the American Hop Convention. It tracks production from Brewers Association defined craft breweries plus brands once classified as craft that are now owned by large breweries. The pink on the right represents barrels of beer that would have been sold had sales simply gone flat in 2020, rather than declining, not completely recovering, then declining again. Obviously, that matters a lot to hop growers. When barrels aren’t brewed then hops aren’t used. In this case, about 20 million pounds of them.

Two thoughts. First, indeed, little difference between production in 2015 and 2023. Second, if you draw an arrow from the top of the bar at 2015 to 2019 it looks much different than an arrow drawn from the top of 2019 to 2023. Production might be the same, but something different is going on.

Finally, I haven’t seen figures that compare British craft production in 2015 and today, but Boak & Bailey’s then and now illustrates what happens over time. Additionally, it is a reminder of how beer blogging has changed. This is the sort of post that 10 years ago would have inspired more of the same.

What would you pick from 2014 to pair with thiolized yeast, with hop water, with 19.2-ounce cans?

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– How Does a Brewery Move Forward After a Racist Incident?
More out of the Twin Cities. “56 Brewing is still navigating the ramifications of the incident nearly three years on. (Their) story of moving forward with purpose and success in an unforgiving digital landscape is a sound roadmap after a devastating incident.”

– Does European beer have an American flavour?
If so, shouldn’t it be spelled “flavor?” Anyway, the premise: “Last year, through a combination of luck, obligation and planning, I managed to visit a random selection of bars and breweries in some of Western Europe’s major and major-ish cities (Copenhagen, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, and Glasgow). In and of themselves, they’re not particularly interesting; as a set, they arguably illustrate some different ways in which craft beer has landed in related but different cultures.”

– This Is Senne’s Valley
“I really dislike if your aroma and your body don’t combine together,” says Senne Eylenbosch, talking about blending. “If it’s too fruity in the nose, and it’s too slow-drinking in the body—because body is also one of the reasons that something is very slow drinking—it fights. It’s not good when the aroma is not in character together with the body.”

– Homebrew – Cheaper than the Pub?
Plenty of math in this post. “One thing though that is really clear to me from this little exercise is that ingredients are not the bulk of the cost of making the beer, it is a the people, equipment, and place to do so.”

This graph from a presentation at the recent American Hop Convention confirms that a small brewery closes almost every day somewhere in the United States. Last week, Black Narrows Brewing in Virginia used Facebook to announce it will be one of them, next Sunday will be its last day in business.

Alistair Reece writes that this is a loss for Virginia, and also points to a story he wrote for Pellicle.

It feels like it is a loss for all of us. I have had a couple of brief conversations with Black Narrows founder Josh Chapman and longer exchanges via email. Brewing beer that reflected the place it comes from seemed to come naturally to him. Black Narrows was on a short list of breweries I hope to visit, perhaps the coming summer, so I am selfishly sad. The possible good news is a hint from D.C. Beer that “Chapman probably isn’t done brewing on the Delmarva peninsula. Stay tuned . . .”

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First, two headlines. “Fight the Power — How Craft Malt Is Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex” and “This beer is so popular that brewers are sick of it” read like click bait.

The second is behind a paywall. I get the impression it goes back to a list of overrated beer styles, which was really a list of styles industry members apparently don’t like. I am reminded of the quote usually credited to Yogi Berra although he was not the first to say it: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

When Alan McLeod linked to the first, he added a footnote that, “The whole idea of craft beer is taking on industrial beer like it’s, you know, 2011 or so, is sweet and nostalgic and charming and all.” I signaled my agreement at Bluesky, leading him to add that we should remember that authors don’t write headlines.

I wrote what I had to about craft malting last June. Actually, I let Jeff Bloem at Murphy & Rude Malting Co., who provided malt to Black Narrows, lay the foundation. At the time I asked if craft maltsters are agents of change, without adding my opinion. I think they are, just as brewers like Josh Chapman are. But they aren’t taking down beer’s industrial complex any time soon.

A Creative Boom Led to Many IPA Busts
This was a subhead within a story in which Josh Bernstein confesses his book, “Complete IPA,” serves as “a half-finished time capsule filled with bright ideas gone dark.” I do not miss brut IPA, a “style” so short lived that it did not earn a capital B. I started to type “I do miss bracingly bitter,” but a) I admit there is a difference between bracing and abrasive, and b) to complain when I have no problem finding Russian River Blind Pig, Comrade Superpower and whatever Cannonball Creek is pouring with IPA in the name would be obnoxious.

How much beer did a 19th century farmer-brewer brew?
That’s not the only question Martyn Cornell has. “Given those figures, it is not surprising to find that a fair number of farmers who brewed for themselves and their workers did indeed cross over into commercial brewing,” he writes before posing his question. “What the figures are nationally for farmers becoming commercial brewers I don’t know . . . anyone want to do the research?”

Rogue’s slow, deliberate reinvention
Jeff Alworth points out that Rogue has a flagship beer that is older (at 32 years) than many of the drinkers it hopes to attract. In its early days, the personality of the brand reflected those of founder Jack Joyce and brewmaster John Maier. Now Rogue has a “tighter focus and more conventional approach to beer” and has “started making more accomplished, modern beer, including IPAs, which they had strangely never seriously pursued.” Strange indeed.

#YearOfTheLager
“No style trend in recent memory has unified the highly segmented US beer fan more (than Czech Lager),” Doug Veliky writes. Noteworthy is the fact this post is sponsored by Czechvar (Budvar in Czechia, but not called that here because Budweiser won that court battle). #YearOfTheLager comes with a downloadable guide, an online seminar and more.

This piggybacks with promotions begun in the mid-teens by the Czech government. The Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Ministry of Agriculture have organized a “Brewing Like Czechs Do” project for several years, working in partnership with Czech hop growers. Last month, Alworth wrote, “I’ve always wondered why Americans knew so little about Czech beer.” That’s changing.

Cartoons on an IPA can? Dover NH teens say frothy beer labels need to sober up
“I don’t like being targeted by the industry. I don’t like seeing my peers ruin their brains and their livers at like 14 and 15 because they’re binge drinking. It’s just a problem.”

On the other hand . . . recall Flying Dog won went to court to keep states from banning sales of its beer Raging Bitch or from including the words “Good Beer, No Shit” on its labels.

When blogs die: Before getting to some good reading, this. I just counted. I am subscribed to 198 rss feeds, most of them blogs. Most of them out of service. Some now gone for 10 years or so. But you never know when one might return to life. I was briefly excited Friday to see seven posts from one show up in my reader, the first from that blog since 2017. Briefly, because now the site has the tagline “As Essential as Beer, Focused on Sex.” I’m not going to include a link, because I don’t want to embarrass the (former) blogger who let their domain name registration expire, and you can find your own damn porn.

Also Friday, I was just finishing reading a post from Boak & Bailey — in which they asked “What is it about pubs that makes them particularly suitable for socialising and ‘hanging out’, compared to cafes and restaurants?” — when my feed reader delivered the bold assertion that, “Breweries Are Great Third Places. But We Deserve Even Better Ones.”

Later in the day, Stephanie Grant added to the conversation going in in my head with, “Crafting Community in Taprooms: A Dive into Third Spaces.” For those not familiar with Ray Oldenburg’s work that introduced so many to the concept of a third place, she includes his eight characteristics of a third place as outlined in “The Great Good Place.”

Oldenburg wrote another book, published almost 30 years after “The Great Good Place,” called, “The Joy of Tippling: A Salute to Bars, Taverns, and Pubs.” He was cautious about advocating for the use of alcohol.

“The joy of tippling,” he wrote, “the case for which I’m writing and advocating, is most often experienced among the regulars at neighborhood bars. There’s far more conversation than drinking there and it takes place among people from different walks of life who take pride in diversity. To see this all passing away, and too often to the delight of city governments, makes me wonder about the kind of society we are becoming.”

At VinePair, Dave Infante argues that, “The Platonic ideal of a craft brewery is a good third place, and we deserve better ones. We deserve public spaces where buying shit is an option, not an obligation; where alcohol and NA drinks (and other recreational drugs) can be enjoyed safely and socially; where the magic of the public commons, not logic of the market, dictates the terms of engagement.”

A fine idea, but at time in which libraries struggle to remain welcoming, while it is reasonable to keep demanding proper public spaces the wait to see this happen may be long. For the time being, privately owned establishments that minimize the obligation to “buy shit” (or the drink of your choice) and maximize being welcoming are our best option.

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Murky Waters: Distilling truth from fiction in the Faubourg Brewing debacle
A very long read to start off, but worth your time, and the reason that I made a contribution to support Louisiana Illuminator, part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Let’s hear it for nonprofit journalism (the kind that pays journalists). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Drew Hawkins, who reported on this story, has also written ones about the challenges Louisiana libraries face.

It is not just this gem of a truth: “If you’re a private equity investment firm looking to turn a major profit, craft beer isn’t as lucrative as it was a decade ago.”

The story holds the company Made By The Water, accountable for statement after statement that really needed to be challenged. They gutted Catawba Brewing, shut down Faubourg Brewing (formerly Dixie) in New Orleans, and even screwed over a reality TV star.

– Reinheitsgegot, from Bavarian oddity to German icon, 1906-1975
“Throughout the industrialised world, concepts of food ‘purity’ and ‘natural eating’ emerged in the late nineteenth century as life reformers, food scientists, businessmen and regulators eyed the potential harms of the modern food system, from meat-heavy diets to the increasingly adulterated and synthetic alternatives that occupied the growing space between food producers and consumers.” In fact, in the United States there was a battle over what might be called “pure beer.” [h/T Andreas Krennmair]

– How Guinness got women on board and left its lads-only image behind
“It’s not just a drink, it’s an experience. That famous strap-line, ‘good things come to those who wait,’ refers to the two-part pour needed to achieve that perfect creamy head on the beer. Just like when a cocktail is mixed in front of the guest, there is an element of performative theatre to its service.” Related: “How Guinness Led a Modern Nitro-Stout Takeover of Britain’s Pubs.”

– Notes on central European beer – A sign of the times?
“In the past, when I’ve encountered young craft beer markets, there’s a since of excitement and possibility. In this region, breweries are in triage and just trying to get back to normal economies. They’re excited about the beer, but anxious about the market and tired from the long slog.”

– Ideal Day Family Brewery on Crocadon Farm, Cornwall
I must echo Alan McLeod and Boak & Bailey pointing to this story. “All art is the journey back to the point at which your heart first opened.”

– 80+ Black-Owned Breweries to Support Across the Country
“Despite seeing some progress in initiatives over the last four years, such as the creation of the National Black Brewers Association, the fact remains that less than one percent of all craft breweries in the United States are Black-owned.”

– The New, Old Look American Lager
“Rhinegeist doesn’t use the term ‘craft’ on their Cincy Light packaging, but they do use the Brewers Association’s Craft Brewers seal and embrace the term in telling their broader story. Garage Beer, which exited the Braxton Brewing architecture, was given a fresh start and updated design with no real history or other other continuity to factor in. They went with the phrase ‘Small Batch Brewed’ which makes sense as a way to distance themselves from a powerhouse brand like Modelo, which sells at a similar price.’

– As market tightens, local breweries must find their niche
To bring chatter about third places full circle. “At Old Bust Head Brewery in Vint Hill on a recent Saturday, the taproom was lively. Lauren and Jared Fisher were there with their two young daughters playing Old Maid. They moved to the area four months ago from Florida. ‘We’re originally from New York, and I would go out to breweries with my girlfriends on Fridays,’ Lauren Fisher said. ‘Our neighbors recommended this place, so we came here with the girls. It feels a little bit like cheating. We get to have a little bit of fun, and they get to have fun.'”