musing

The future of beer writing? Yawn. The future of beer? More interesting

Mike Veseth, author of Wine Wars, has checked in with his thoughts on Andrew Jefford’s “The Wine Writer is Dead” that has attracted much attention from wine writers and bloggers. (The full speech is here, and Jamie Goode’s excellent commentary is also worth your time.)

Jefford gave his speech at meeting of European wine bloggers. That’s the context. I read Veseth because he often presents a “sideways” view, with economics often at the center of the conversation (his blog, after all, is called The Wine Economist).

I’m not really worried about whether wine writing is dead or alive. I’m more interested in wine reading, which I specifically do not define as reading about wine exclusively in paid (generally print) publications. Wine reading seems to be changing dramatically and that’s the more interesting trend. Unsurprisingly, I tend to think about this in economic terms.

Economists who study the economics of food choice believe that a key factor in the growing consumption of high fat fast food is cost — fast food is relatively cheap both in terms of money and time, which are strong economic incentives. Even when healthier food is available and consumers understand something about nutrition the economic incentives push and pull them into the drive-through lane on the margin.

I think the economics of readership (and wine readership) works the same way. I’m not saying that writing on the internet is the intellectual equivalent of “empty calories,” but the shift of readership from traditional print publications to electronic media is influenced by economic incentives (as well as other factors of course).

At this point my mind went another direction than Veseth’s essay, thinking instead about how the shift to online information consumption (which may include entertainment, and may or may not take the form of reading) might change beer, or if it makes a difference at all. By beer I mean something beyond measurable changes to what’s in my glass (those still matter) — my overall beer experience.

Quite obviously, it is now cheaper — ah, the economics — and easier to reach a larger audience (and the beer audience is becoming bigger still). One example of how that can provoke change: It’s pretty well understood that Über beers get the bulk of the attention at beer rating sites and therefore promote big beers. However, how much attention would Lew Bryson’s The Session Beer Project have received in an all-print world (OK, with a bit of usenet chatter thrown in)? So there’s one for small beers.

And yesterday there were a couple of hmmm moments. First, a report from Shanken News Daily about how “bars like to feature the newest brewery in town or the hottest brand fueled by social media” created a flurry of conversation on Twitter. Later, Charlie Papazian asked “Do you give a damn about who makes your beer?” and opened online voting on the topic. Of course, I care. That “where” matters (as ingredients, and human involvement, and a few other things) is pretty much the premise behind this blog.

But while I think that MillerCoors should make it clear to consumers that it owns and operates AC Golden Brewing within the confines of its giant Colorado brewery I’m as interested in the rest of the story about the beers being brewed there. Is somebody going to that? How? I haven’t seen it in print. Will I online?

I don’t expect you to share my lifelong fascination with what used to be called “print” or even how stories are told. Although I take particular joy in being able to use words to describe walking in an experimental hop yard with a plant breeder, I understand there’s every chance that photos, a bit of audio, even video might work better for many (OK, most) consumers. These new fangled devices provide the opportunity to create something like The Long Strange Trip Dock Ellis from ESPN.com. Go read. Feel free to insert you own expletive, as [expletive] wow.

The point is not the medium, of course, but the message. The best beer-related example I can point to is Evan Rail’s Beer Matters, which is clearly on message but lacks the Dock Ellis Treatment. It runs more than 6,000 words, longer than you’d ever read in a beer print journal.

It seems it could only exist in this new medium. Of course, the essay costs $1.99 to read. It always comes back to economics, doesn’t it?

But The Boss didn’t sing Happy Birthday to Boulevard

Boulevard beer flight at Flying Saucer in Kansas City

Orval and Boulevard Nommo DubbelSaturday we drove across the state of Missouri to Kansas City so we could see a(nother) Bruce Springsteen concert.

Also Saturday, although Boulevard Brewing didn’t make a big deal out of it, the brewery sort of wished itself a happy anniversary, birthday, whatever, with a tweet: Twenty-three years ago, our founder, John McDonald, tapped the first sold keg of Pale Ale. So it seemed appropriate that I start an afternoon of drinking and conversation at the Flying Saucer1 Draught Emporium with their Boulevard flight (Flying Saucer offers a variety of themed flights, each including five five-ounce pours). It was not my plan going in. I prefer full pours,2 and it’s not like I don’t already know these beers well. Boulevard has a significant presence in St. Louis and, after all, is brewed in Missouri. I choose to call it local although it is brewed 250 miles away. You are free to disagree. Anyway, very familiar beers. Hold that thought.

Springsteen went flat out for about three hours Saturday evening, rolling one song into another. He offered a mix of old, not so old, and new. What struck me, probably during “Death to My Hometown,” is how quickly the new songs can find a spot deep in my bones. Music does that. Not just Springsteen. My experience was the same at recent Joe Ely and James McMurtry concerts.

I would give up beer before I would give up music; it really is an in the bones thing. But there is much to be said for beer (witness the number of words here). And for familiar. When I smell Smokestack Tank 7 (lower left in the top photo) I know where things are going to lead, and I’m happy to follow. Tank 7 is one of those beers tickers chase. They first time I tasted it was like the first time I heard McMurtry’s “Choctaw Bingo.” Wow, give me that again.

If we still lived in New Mexico it’d be one of the beers I’d recommend when I get the occasional request for input from those looking for wow beers to list in magazine articles and books. However, it’s a local beer (for me), and it has become familiar. It’s not just the nuances I’ve come to know. I remember the quick smile on my brother’s face the first time he tasted it. I still try not to giggle when a server says there’s 15 minutes left of happy hour and Tank 7 is one of the choices.

Your regular beers may not be local. Heck, you might not have regular beers. But if they are local, you likely also understand something about they place they come from. You live there. For me, Boulevard’s beers are local not only because I can buy them easily here in St. Louis, but because we’ve spent a certain amount of time in Kansas City.

On Saturday that included an afternoon jawing primarily with Twitter star Jeremy Danner, who in real life is a brewer at Boulevard, and Cris Morgan, another Boulevard brewer, and his wife, Mary — but also several other innocent passersby Jeremy introduced me to.

Thus I should explain the second photo. The Morgans started with Orval. After they poured their beers, and perhaps establishing at the outset I can be short on couth, I asked to see one of the empty bottles, because, well, its Orval and you always wonder what kind of age it has on it. Both beers had been bottled on Nov. 17 last year. They were one year old to the day.

So what you’ve got it is a picture of two birthday beers (the Boulevard beer being Smokestack Nommo Dubbel).

*****

1 The hotel we stayed in was sold out, and it seemed as if every guest was going to the concert. One woman who checked in at the same time we did asked the clerk for directions to the Flying Monkey Draught Emporium.

2 See NEW BEER RULE #3: You must drink at least two servings of a beer before you pass judgment on it.

3 Certainly, there are many beers like that. Saturday I was struck by the Czech Pilsner at Gordon Biersch, conveniently next door to the Flying Saucer. This was the third Czech Pilsner I’ve had at a GB restaurant this year. The first two were excellent. This was better. A beer I’d love to become more familiar with.

Assorted beer links (including Xmas Photo Contest Rules)

Russian River Damnation at the Grand Canyon

– Alan McLeod has posted the rules for Xmas Photo Contest 2012 at A Good Beer Blog, always one of the highlights of the holiday season. He would like more photos of beer and snow, more of beer and babies. The contest begins Friday and runs through Dec. 7. (The photo at the top was taken several years ago at the Grand Canyon, and I think I’ve posted it here before, but I wanted something with beer and snow . . .)

– He’s proud to call himself a Cicerone. A what? When Ray Daniels got that MBA from Harvard he must have sensed he was destined to end up in the Wall Street Journal.

– “Katechismus des Praktischen Brauwesens,” 1880. Fig. 193, Handpichmaschine. Courtesy of Evan Rail.

– New brewing qualification launched for independent brewers (UK story).

– Great Divide adds two new seasonals, dumps Wild Raspberry Ale. There was once a time, hard to believe, that the Great Divide beer you spotted most often outside of Colorado was Wild Raspberry Ale.

Assorted beer links

– Localism + Beer.
Read it all for the complete thought. If you need more encouraging, consider this this snippet: “. . . beer is less a destination than a journey, and you make the road signs yourself.”

– Foaming at the mouth about craft beer.
This vitriol against this rant jammed my Twitter feed Saturday a.m. Perhaps I’m just paranoid, but my first thought was, “Do my friends think I sound like the people he is describing?”

– Beer geeks, let the guessing begin.
Greg Kitsock muses on the spices in Anchor Our Special Ale (Washington Post)

– Oskar Blues’ Dale Katechis talks about beer and brewing in North Carolina.

– The resurrection of Baderbräu, “Chicago first craft beer.”
Raising a few questions, like a) What was Chicago’s first “craft” beer? and b) Isn’t a little early to get nostalgic about beers first brewed in the 1980s?

– Cocktail blogging is dead.

Turns out I predicted homebrewing in White House

If you see these posts through a feed reader — as the majority of you do, in fact — then you won’t be aware that I’ve done some remodeling/reorganizing here. As part of the process, I’m working my way through old posts, cleaning up special characters (mostly dashes and quotation marks) that got turned into something that looks cyrillic because of some strange digital transformation.

During the course of this, and it is ongoing, I’ve come across a number of “cringe” posts. I really wrote that? I should have known better. (Hops, in particular.) A lot of things I’ve forgotten about, to be honest. Including what were intended to be silly predictions, posted at the outset of 2007.

But, hey, look at this one:

6. Barack (is there anything he can’t do?) Obama wins Homebrewer of the Year in the National Homebrew Competition and declares that if elected he will name Fred Eckhardt the nation’s first Craft Beer Czar.

Jan. 2, 2007. You can look it up.