musing

Craft brewers, artisans, fake brewers – you can’t tell them apart without a scorecard

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 05.12.14

As Craft Beer Starts Gushing, Its Essence Gets Watered Down. When NPR speaks, people listen — and so my friends who live blissfully in a world where the question “What is craft beer?” is not debated every day email me the story. It is a reminder that in the real world “craft verus crafty” gets attention and a headline that contends “its essense gets watered down” becomes fact rather than a subject for discussion.

In the story — if you somehow managed to miss it — Dan Del Grande at Bison Organic Beer says he doesn’t think the Brewers Association should have changed its definition of “craft brewery” to include those that use adjuncts and and those that “make more than about 200,000 barrels of beer per year should not be recognized as craft.” (I added the boldface.) If you can’t get enough of the discussion about trade associations, who is on whose side, and the meaning of “craft” then head right on to the next link after this one.

Total aside, you have to smile when a beer geek conversation breaks out rather early on in the comments, beginning with brandon east writing, “Dude, what are you doing? Look to your right and get that four-pack of Bourbon County Brand Stout!”

[Via The Salt]

Brewers, Distillers Wrestling with Meaning of ‘Craft.’ A report from a panel discussion at the Craft Beverage Expo in San Jose last week, the panel including brewers, distillers and a winemaker. I’m not sure which of these words can get you in more trouble: traditional or practical.

So this from winemaker Alie Shaper and you can read the rest yourself: She said winemakers don’t use the “c word” but often refer to themselves as “artisanal” or “family-owned.” “An artisanal winery has a lead winemaker who is there to put personality in their production,” she said. “Maybe that is the real definition of craft. Some people want to stay smaller and some want to get bigger.”

[Via Brewbound]

Belgium’s craft brewers sound the alarm. The discussion here is about real brewers and “fake brewers” in Belgium, although rather obviously this impacts the idea of brewing as craft. A translation of an open letter from a group of Belgian brewers includes this rather shocking nugget:

“These days, thanks to a growing interest in beer at home and abroad, a new ‘brewery’ opens up in this country roughly every 15 days. We estimate that around 75% of these businesses are breweries in name only, and that no beer is actually produced by the businesses themselves.”

It’s complicated and worth your time to read the whole thing. Commenting on it at I might have a glass of beer, Rob Sterowski wrote, “It’ll be interesting to see whether beer geeks in the rest of the world pay any attention to the opinions of the brewers they claim to revere so much.”

Sorry, no link, but the second issue issue of Belgian Beer & Food, a new publication, includes an article by Joe Stange (“When is a Brewery Not a Brewery? And Does it Matter?”) that provides more context.

[Via Belgian Beer & Food]

What’s Oregon’s healthiest beer? Deschutes, Hopworks and other breweries seek an unusual title. And you thought “craft” was tough to define. [Via Portland Business Journal]

Ale brewing in the USA and Canada in 1907. With a pretty bold conclusion from Ron Pattinson: “The cross-fertilsation of ideas from British Ale brewing and Continental Lager brewing seems to be the defining feature of North American brewing.” [Via Shut Up About Barclay Perkins]

Friday beer: Why deny the obvious child?

Shock Top Pretzel Wheat tap handle

Last weekend at the St. Louis Microfest — which has been around since 1988, raising money for Lift for Life Gym and not at all self conscious about keeping the word micro in its name — a local brewery, Anheuser-Busch, showed up with one of the more intriguing beers poured.

Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat smells and tastes just like pretzels. You wouldn’t pair it with a pretzel because that would be redundant. You might buy one during the fifth inning on a muggy evening at the ballpark instead of hunting down a pretzel and a beer. Except that’s not really an option, at least right now, because A-B is offering it only at beer festivals this summer.

It’s one of those “how do they do this?” beers. If Short’s Brewing brought it to the Great American Beer Festival people would line up for it just like the do Key Lime Pie and PB&J.

Like other Shock Top beers, for instance Honeycrisp Apple Wheat or Lemon Shandy, Twisted Pretzel Wheat is not subtle. But beyond the obvious pretzel aroma and flavor it tastes like beer. Professional brewers at the festival I talked with about it were impressed, homebrewers not so much. Make of that what you will.

Craft beer as a luxury item

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 05.05.14

Taking my talents to the Right Bank. Roger Baylor is moving the blog he writes at Louisville Beer back to his own Blogspot blog. As he explains, “I don’t plan on behaving or writing any differently, although there is a strong suspicion that on my own home court, it will be easier to write just one true sentence.” He suggests this might be liberating, and given that he already says some of the darndest things about beer that is enticing.

Consequently, it’s time to go to the mattresses, find the next wave, and return to making the case for what I believe: Economic localization in beer, exploring more deeply what words like “craft” really should mean when it comes to beer, the instructive history of beer, and better beer education (as opposed to the current demand to be entertained).

[Via The Potable Curmudgeon]

The BMW of beer: Brewery crafts luxury approach. Brewery Ommegang CEO Simon Thorpe talks candidly about the business side of beer, specifically positioning Ommegang as a luxury beer. The brewery spends 40 percent more than average for packaging, for instance. But it’s not like they are trying to polish a turd (for the record, not a phrase he uses).

There must be truth and craftsmanship and honesty in the way that something is made. That’s critical to the way that people view luxury. You can’t market something into being authentic.

Yes, we all know authentic is an over-used marketing term, but that doesn’t make what he says any less true.

[Via CNBC]

Jared Rouben gives Chicago a first taste of Moody Tongue brewery. I’m sure you are going to seeing Moody Tongue beers described as innovative, so this is good to read.

We’re not doing experimental stuff here. Having the new things no one’s done doesn’t make the best beers. The best beers bring your ingredients together and find balance.

[Via Red Eye Chicago]

Will a barrel shortage hurt small distilleries and breweries? For some, it already has. The competition is on for both white oak used to make new barrels and for used barrels. Bourbon makers need new barrels, thus the oak. Whisky makers are competing with brewers for used barrels. [Via Insider Louisville]

‘Let Germany brew your beer’? Sorry, Bob, but we got this. This is the first column that Sam Calagione will be writing for Medium. In this one he takes exception to the Chrysler commercial that first appeared during the Super Bowl, the one in which Bob Dylan said, “So let Germany brew your beer. Let Switzerland make your watch. Let Asia assemble your phone. We will build your car.” I look forward to future installments, but I hope he won’t continue to dis Peter, Paul & Mary. [Via Medium]

Maker/drinker — Taylor Seidler, creative director at Beer Advocate magazine. The “inside baseball” link of the week. [Via Good Beer Hunting]

Bottles from 19th century German beer garden found at Bowery hotel site. A lot of history here. [Via DNAinfo New York]

Does Jim Koch’s ‘secret’ to drinking without getting drunk work?

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 04.28.14

How to drink without getting drunk – by drinking yeast? Will this work? An Esquire interview with Jim Koch of Boston Beer last week went viral when Koch revealed his secret to drinking all night and not getting drunk. “Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann’s dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable.”

Snopes.com followed up with “both sides of the story” investigation, but concluded, “For now, a definitive answer awaits empirical evidence gathered through properly controlled studies.”

So here’s an anecdotal contribution. Twenty years or so ago, Daria and I attended a fundraiser for a local (for us, at the time) Peoria musician who was ill and without health insurance. There were kegs of donated beer that sold for 25 cents a plastic cup, although in the spirit of the evening most of us contributed more. As we headed home, trying to remember the last time we drank filtered — the key word in the conversation — pale lagers, Daria remembered something written by Charlie Papazian suggesting craft beer was less likely to give you a hangover because it was unfiltered (hence, containing more yeast).

So when we got home we opened up packages of dry yeast, dumped them in glasses of water and choked them down. No hangovers in the morning, but of course that proved nothing. The only thing we really learned is how bad a cocktail dry yeast and water makes. Wish we’d known the yogurt trick.

[Via Snopes.com]

Colorado’s booming beer taprooms experience some growing pains. Wait, brewery taprooms and food trucks aren’t the greatest inventions ever? [Via The Denver Post]

‘Brew Dogs’ visit New Orleans to resurrect a ‘zombie beer’ “It’s just counterintuitive. I was always taught not to drink the bayou water.” [Via The Times Picayune]

Boulder’s Kettle and Stone Brewing to change name to avoid trademark fight. This is what happens when “craft” camaraderie and real world business reality meet. At the Craft Brewers Conference in Denver earlier this month Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head said his company spent more money last year defending its trademarks than it cost to open the brewery in 1995.[Via The Denver Post]

‘IPA’ beer abbreviation not as fun as one might think. A reminder that in the real world people (there’s that term again) still ask, “What the heck is an IPA?” [Via azcentral]

The word movement will be used

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way up front. This video was made to promote a bunch of businesses &#151 Illinois breweries and Chicago Craft Beer Week specifically. The word “movement” will once again be tossed around, but you don’t have equate some guy (mostly guys in this production) who hopes to earn a living making beer with Rosa Parks.

It’s a good look at what’s happening on the micro level.

The tagline for the video is “We Are Illinois Craft Beer – Celebrating Neighborhoods.” Toward the end, one of the brewers says, “I don’t think it is over until every beer on the shelf is from Illinois.” Of course, that’s not happening. Sometimes when people want beer from a place it is from the local place. Other times it is from exotic place or a place they have visited. Of course, other times they don’t give a hoot about place.