musing

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.23.14 & 6.30.14

OK, it’s Wednesday, not Monday, but I have some catching up to do.

First, a quick combination from print. In the July issue of Beer Advocate magazine Andy Crouch writes “We are unquestionably in the Age of IPA” and suggests that there is “some hazard in letting a single style define craft beer so completely.” I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, in part because of what he hits on at the end. Flavor is driving escalating sales of beers with flavor. That reads a little simplistic, I know, but the point is we’re talking about new flavors, not just hop aromas and flavors. Meanwhile, Josh Bernstein writes about the evolution of IPA in Imbibe magazine (linked because it is online, but you might want to buy the magazine to get the nice timeline that accompanies the story).

Now, two weeks worth of links and a minimum of musing.

Is Sam Adams Too Big to Be Craft Beer? I missed the press release while we were in Poland, but apparently Tony Magee of Lagunitas is now in charge of determining what constitutes “craft beer.” From the article: “Magee said that Sam Adams has ‘so little to do with what beer is doing today.’ In other words, Sam Adams may have once been craft, but its size and lack of innovation mean it can no longer qualify.” Enos Sarris, who wrote the article, apparently agrees, concluding, “It started a craft beer revolution, and then craft beer’s evolution passed it by.” Musing: Bullshit. [Via FiveThirtyEight]

When Craft Beer Becomes a Commodity and Big Brewers Making Specialty Beer: Lessons from MillerCoors. A combination from Jeff Alworth meant to be read in combination. Musing: Sierra Nevada Brewing will make more than one million barrels (as much as the entire “craft” segment minus contract-brewed Samuel Adams and Pete’s Wicked Ales just 20 years ago) this year. Friday night at The Second City in Chicago I expect to have a hard choice to make between drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and locally brewed Half Acre Daisy Cutter Pale Ale. They are not interchangeable. [Via Beervana]

Is Sierra Nevada Overvalued? The Curious Case of the “Boring” Beer. Musing: See above. [Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]

Style from Adrian Tierney-Jones provokes What Are the Elements of Style? from Alan McLeod. Musing: Strunk and White would be proud. [Via A Good Beer Blog]

Rising Hops Prices Make Craft Brewers Jumpy and The real value of hops. The first one is behind a firewall, so if the link doesn’t work be creative. The second provides perspective. Musing: Things are just starting to get interesting. [Via Wall Street Journal and Brewer’s Guardian]

Your Favorite Local Brewery is Not Selling Out. Musing: I expected more after seeing the headline, but the comments add another layer of persepctive. [Via The Full Pint]

Blind Tasting: Unreliable but Necessary. “That is one of the most useful features of blind tasting: to be disturbed. To ask yourself, do I really like what I like? Or do I like it because I think I should?” Musing: I drink plenty of beer “blind” because I judge beer, and I usually don’t end up knowing what those beers were. I find myself less interested these days in learning what I might in a blind tasting than I will seeing, and learning about, just what I am drinking. [Via Palate Press]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.16.14

Ten vital commandments for localism in beer. The list itself is from 2012, so start with the preface.

[Via The Potable Curmudgeon]

Local ingredients, but not so local drinkers. Belgian brewer André Janssens grows his own barley and some of his own hops. But he ships 90 percent of his beer to America. How do you think these first two links fit together?

[Via Larsblog]

If You Want To Know What’s In Your Beer… I tweeted once on the way to the National Homebrewers Conference and once from the conference (a picture with a fictional caption some people seem to have believed), an indication that I’m not all that good a social media, and — the point here — a reminder how insular such events can be. Thus when I briefly noticed considerable fuss related to the latest blathering from the Beer Food Babe I shrugged. It’s amazing how one of Jeff Carlson’s sublime ciders can change your perspective.

But as I was catching up with my feeds on Sunday I was struck with the questions Alan McLeod raises. Transparency is good, be it brewery operators revealing what’s in the beer they sell and how they make it or or others who may have a vested interest selling, boosting, writing about, litigating for or against, whatever. Ever since Frank Prial at the New York Times let Jack McAuliffe say that he his made his beer without preservatives and other chemicals that Big Brewers employed smaller (and not so small anymore) breweries have benefited from the notion the beer they sell is more pure. In a sense, lack of transparency on the part of larger breweries makes this easier. When Anheuser-Busch — or Yuengling or Boston Beer or Lagunitas — details all the ingredients they use and all the chemicals (and things like chemicals) that are involved in the process of growing ingredients, brewing beer and so on (it is quite the list) then it is easier to ask the brewer at your local just which of those were also involved in the production of your beer.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

[Via A Good Beer Blog]

Evangelise Jolly. Adrian Tierny-Jones writes, “It’s your sacred duty to evangelise about beer, someone said to me recently, drunk of course, both of us drunk …” A sacred duty to evangelise about beer? Quite a question. Adrian has quite an answer.

[Via Called To The Bar]

If we were starting a new blog tomorrow. Each Saturday, Boak & Bailey post a variety of links, often longer reads, that may even overlap with the ones I’ve collected (thus “scooping” my Monday links). This weeks’s examples address the current state of beer blogging, at the end offering a bit of advice. Don’t skip straight to the finish — read the links along the way.

[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.09.14

Can You Taste An Old Growth Forest In This Beer? Adventures with Eric Steen of Beers Made By Walking. I’d answer the question in the headline, “Yes, if you’ve tasted it before.” I’m goofy enough that were I doing this I’d want to spend the summer tasting the same “parts” over and over, mixing and matching, learning which work together, which suit my taste.

[Via Oregon Public Radio]

Do We Owe a Debt to the Regionals? Do breweries deserve to be supported just because they managed to remain in business when others were closing? This isn’t exactly the question Boak & Bailey are asking — “real ale” is involved, CAMRA, a smaller country — but that’s the question their post had me asking myself.

[Via Boak & Bailey]

You won’t believe this one weird trick they used to fly beer to the D-Day troops in Normandy. As all dispatches from Martyn Cornell, thoroughly fascinating.

[Via Zythophile]

Bill’s UK Adventure: American Craft Beer Across the Pond. I’m not sure I believe Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing visited five towns in the UK, top to bottom, over nine hectic days (while his family grew frustrated and his lawn turns into a jungle) just so we could read about it. But he writes, “… really, I did. You’d only be reading this if a) you are interested in beer and its future, or b) you live vicariously through the internet.”

[Via Victory Brewing]

Could Rising Costs Mean the End of Craft Beer Brewers? Just to answer the question in the headline: “No.”

[Via Entrepreneur]

That’s Ron Pattinson, above, having a beer at In de Wildeman in Amsterdam, where he lives but hardly seems to have time to drink these days. He’s returning to North America for another whirlwind tour, beginning Sunday in Toronto.

I’m not sure he appreciates what he is in for once the National Homebrewers Conference begins in Grand Rapids. First official event will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Perrin Brewing Company. But the real fun is likely to come at Club Night and the Beer City Social Club late each night.

I already know about one homebrewed Grodziskie we should get a chance to taste Wednesday at Perrin.

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.02.14

What does it mean for a beer to be local? Jeff Baker on what’s involved in putting local ingredients in local beers in Vermont. Although I’m a fan of using local grains, hops, fruit, whatever, I continue to think that the people who make beer (and, in a way, even the drinkers) are an essential ingredient in making a beer local.

[Via Burlington Free Press]

Strange Brews: The Genes of Craft Beer. Hope you read to the finish of this New York Times article and this from a yeast geneticist: “Until recently, the brewing industry has been remarkably resistant to using the techniques of genetics and molecular biology to improve their brewing strains.” I’m all for better beer through science. (Quick aside: It’s a lot easier to write for brewers when there’s science to back up statements, particularly when those statements contradict what’s been written before.) But it’s good to be a little be wary of science, or at least scientists (and maybe brewery owners/bean counters) who don’t appreciate the bit of alchemy involved in brewing.

[Via The New York Times]

O’Fallon Brewery, Urban Chestnut aiming to take their beer global. But not exactly global in the same way as another St. Louis brewery. However, O’Fallon is shipping a bit of beer to Italy and company president Jim Gorczyca hopes exports becomes a bigger part of the brewery’s business when its new facility is up and running). And why did an Italian distributor contact O’Fallon? Because he’d heard of O’Fallon Pumpkin Beer.

Following the call, O’Fallon Brewery shipped beer samples to Italy and then signed an agreement to export six-pack glass bottles affixed with an extra label listing the beer’s ingredients in Italian, and the Italian word for beer: birra. Each label was painstakingly affixed by hand.

[Via St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

Would You Pay $1,000 Once to Get Free Beer for Life? This is a real question. Just one more reason to visit Minneapolis (and pay for the beer). That is all.

[Via Atlantic Media]

Bottoms up! Brew pub Paulaner celebrates relaunch. It opened just last November and closed in March, redesigned and with a new menu. It would seem if you think the German beer culture is portable that it is best if you understand that culture.

[Via Crain’s New York Business]