musing

And other things I learned at Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture.

Let’s start with this tweet from Nathaniel Rivers.

Whoa! I just figured that out? If that was a complete thought somewhere in my head it was so subliminal that the beer intruders intent on hunting down and destroying every living cell in my brain had not found it yet. It took Mr. Rivers to connect the dots.

From my perspective this alone made the symposium a rip-roaring success. I learned something that might improve my writing. Some stories, like the business article I am supposed to be working on at this moment, fall outside the science-food continuum but if I am ever asked to talk about writing again I am claiming this idea as my own.

As I said at the outset of my presentation, when I get up in front of a bunch of hung over faces on a Saturday morning, a screen loaded with charts at my back, I’m usually talking to homebrewers about the length of a ferulic acid rest and resulting production of 4-vinyl guaicol. But, with full credit to Jeff Rice, I think this conference was unique beyond giving me something different to ramble on about. The discussion about beer and writing began at 10 in the morning, continued officially for seven hours and, not surprisingly, beyond. Yet somehow it didn’t spiral into navel gazing. Hallelujah (I have already used my quota for exclamation points in a post, that being one, or I would place one here).

I’ll leave it to others to provide a full recap, starting with a tweet (an explanation of the headline follows, along with an idea for a cage-rattling blog post).

Now some links:

– Craft writing recap. From organizer Jeff Rice. (From his Make Mine Potato blog)
– 5 valuable marketing insights from Craft Beer Writing conference.
– Not so simple a symposium. (From Roger Baylor)
– A brief review of the Craft Writing Seminar at UK. (From Gary Spedding)
– Writing about beer. (From Tom Streeter at Hoperatives.)
– “The Elephant in the Craft Beer Room.” (From Kevin Patterson, writing at LexBeerScene.com)
– Beer Nerds Unite Over Kentucky Craft Writing Symposium (From Hey, Brewtiful)
– On #craftwriting. (From James Schirmer at betajames)

What else did I learn?

– Somebody should write a book about Teri Fahrendorf.

– Nobody has written a down-and-dirty details-rich article about the refermentation program at Brooklyn Brewery. We need that story. OK, that might be me tilting a bit too far at the science end of the spectrum, but wait there’s more.

– My first stop in Lexington was Brewing and Distilling Analytic Services. Two hours flew by, cool stuff. Or at least to me. However that evening at Country Boy Brewing when I started to describe what I’d seen in detail I quickly remembered that some beer stories resonate better than others.

– Hanging out with Roger Baylor will poke, provoke and otherwise inspire your inner contrarian. Among the questions he asked Saturday that we didn’t back to, at least in the conversations I was part of: Are VIP sessions at beer festivals a good idea? Do they make beer less egalitarian?

– Country Boy Brewing does not have a corkscrew. And we probably could have sent somebody to the store to by one in the time it took us to break into a bottle from The Ale Apothecary that Teri brought.

This requires a bit of a back story. Originally, the weekend festivities were to begin Friday evening at Country Boy Brewing with a bottle share. That got changed to “sample a lot of Country Boy beers, eat some great food, and listen to music.” When Teri and I were talking about a week before I didn’t know about Plan B and mentioned the bottle share. She and I showed up with bottles from our respective neighborhoods (Oregon and St. Louis), and eventually got around to opening them.

Thing is The Ale Apothecary corks its bottles, like with wine corks, not the sort you can ease out with you thumbs. But we were in a brewery, how hard could it be to get a little beer out of a bottle? Harder than we expected. Country Boy brewer Nathan Coppage tracked down a deck screw and a pair of pliers. That’s him on the right. Scott Hand (of Alltech’s Lexington Brewing and Distilling) held the bottle. Don’t they look casual in the photo? That’s how it began, but soon bodies were twisting, arms were flying, and and a crowd was cheering them on. Saturday we talked about the role multimedia can play in “writing.” This was probably one of those video moments.

They persevered. We all drank a bit of the beer. It was good. And so is the story.

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 02.03.18

I’m not sure what I had in the way for expectations related to Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture, but they were in any event exceeded this weekend in Kentucky. More about that Wednesday. Spoiler alert: Some really excellent beer being brewed in Kentucky. So on to a few links …

– Bottle fight: Novelty v classic wines. Full confession, I crossed out the word “wines” to make it clear you could insert “beers.” From Jancis Robinson, “The desire for ever more obscure ferments seems to have also taken hold across the Atlantic. Experienced restaurant-going friends just back from southern California reported recently that they didn’t recognise anything on the wine lists of the smartest establishments.” Or as Teri Fahrendorf said Saturday at Craft Writing (more from there in a couple of days), the highest rated beers are the ones with the most alcohol, the most hops and “the ones nobody can get.” Reminding me of a T-shirt spotted at a beer festival a while back, “I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet.” [via Financial Times]

– CAMRA and the future. Trust me, you want to read any blog post that begins, “Tim Webb has set the cat among the pigeons.” [via Tandleman’s Beer Blog]

– Craft beer business bubbles up in South Florida. Wherever Evan Benn goes, it seems, craft breweries follow. [via Miami Herald]

– Shaun Hill. Your weekly Shaun Hill and Hill Farmstead Brewery fix. [Via Classic Kicks]

– We drank beer concentrate so you don’t have to. Hey, I’d take this review from Gizmodo over the average Consumer Reports analysis anytime. [via Gizmodo]

What if he tweeted? We’re not really going to spend much time talking about that Saturday in Lexington, but if everybody else has put as much thought into the process as Roger Baylor it’s going to be very interesting.

First, here is the schedule for “Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture.”

10:30-12:00
“What if Michael Jackson Blogged? Communicating About Beer in the 21st century”

Introduction: Kevin Patterson, The Beer Trappe
Stan Hieronymus: “So You Want to be a Beer Writer”
Julie Johnson: “When Your Beer News Arrived by Mail”
Teri Fahrendorf: “Creating a Community Out of Thin Air”

1:30-3:00
“Beer Knowledge”

Introduction: Daniel Harrison, Country Boy Brewing
Roger Baylor: “Everything You Know is Wrong”
Jeremy Cowan: “Founder and Owner of Shmaltz Brewing Company”
Mitch Steele: “The Top Ten Surprises From Researching Historical IPA Brewing”

3:30-5:00
Keynote

Introduction: Gary Spedding, Brewing and Distilling Analytical Services
Garrett Oliver: “Beer is People”

I will focus on writing about beer as an act of journalism. And as journalist one way to signal I am an unbiased observer is to refer to participants by their last name. However, in the runup to this event Baylor posted a thought provoking piece titled “Conformity, contrarianism and a craft writing symposium.” It was way too Roger to write anything other than go read what Roger has to say.

Craft beer is a state of mind … but whose? I have a slew of opinions about this, as rooted in a system of ideas, and I’m capable of sharing them in writing. What always can be counted upon to annoy me to the point of active resentment is when justifiable enthusiasm becomes irrational exuberance, then is enumerated and rendered doctrinal, after which perfectly sensible persons began advising against challenging the new prevailing orthodoxy – for instance, the familiar admonition against brewers even speaking aloud about a potential craft beer bubble, lest doing so might instigate a loss of faith, and the popping of a bubble that the very same commentators deny exists in the first place.

And then he moved on to Socrates.

A little curmudgeonly this week. Blame the weather.

– Hype, Backlash, and Hopslam. “Hopslam (nor any other rare beer de jeur) is not the sickness in our beer scene, it is merely a symptom. We have become a beer scene that talks openly about a return to craft beer enjoyment …. We talk a good game, but our actions (and our tweets) say differently.” [Via Charlotte Beer]

– Lagunitas addition adds depth to Chicago beer scene. “In some ways, sizes of craft breweries are irrelevant. The guys I talked to, whether they made 5,000 barrels a year or 100,000 barrels a year, they are looking for other breweries who will support the craft beer movement.”

In all fairness, there’s more to that thought. But, golly, sure this “get along and help each other” spirit has been a factor in more small breweries making better beer. But what brewers are really looking for is people who will buy their beer. Nothing wrong with that, but a fact. Otherwise they’d stick to being homebrewers. “Here, taste my beer. Great, right? Glad you enjoyed it.”

And later in the story Lagunitas owner Tony Magee says, “Some people say we’re in the beer business. I’d say we’re in the tribe building business. Tribes are built on shared stories.” Have you heard the one about how they’re not in the beer business?

[Via Chicago Sun-Times]

– The unexpected way beer is helping this California town get through a historic drought. “The recent installation of an innovative water treatment system at the Bear Republic Brewing Company, along with the ongoing construction of two local wells in part paid for by the company, could go a long way toward keeping Cloverdale afloat before it’s estimated to run out of water in a few months.” [via takepart]

– Has craft beer finally gone too far? Take our ‘quiz’. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole. [Via Atlantic Cities, where the tagline is “Place Matters” – bless ’em]

– Michigan-made malt worth the hefty price tag to local breweries and distilleries. But it’s not easy selling something for 80 cents a pound when out-of-state varieties go for 35 cents. [via MLive]