musing

RIP, Mothership Wit

Yesterday’s news, I guess, but I only saw this morning, courtesy of Twitter, that New Belgium is discontinuing Mothership Wit.

New Belgium discontinues Mothership Wit

(If you can’t see the image it says, “Based on declining sales, and making room in the portfolio for new beer, Mothership Wit is getting shelved.”)

In contrast, Blue Moon Belgian White and Shock Top Belgian White continue to outperform almost everything else in the MillerCoors and A-B InBev portfolios respectively. According to Symphony IRI, Blue Moon White climbed into the Top 15 brands in 2011, selling $88 million in supermarkets (by comparison, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale sold $52 million, Samuel Adams Boston Lager $47 million and New Belgium Fat Tire $33 million).

Blue Moon White was one of only two brands (Michelob Ultra was the other) in the top 15 to increase supermarket sales in 2011.

Session #62 announced: What Drives Beer Bloggers?

The SessionAngelo at Brewpublic has announced the topic for The Session #62: “What Drives Beer Bloggers?”

Yes, the obvious answer should be: A designated driver.

But let’s get right to the navel gazing.1

Your mission as a craft beverage blogger reading this post, should you choose to accept it, is to compose a post on the topic of “What Drives Beer Bloggers.” There are no rigid guidelines about how to write about this topic but we’d certainly love to hear about the history behind your blog, your purpose in creating it, its evolution, and/or what your goals in keeping it going.

The date is April 6. I might write about “10 things you might not know about Alan McLeod but I do because I read his blogs (plural).” Or maybe the 10 cleverest lines in the history of Appellation Beer. Except they’d all be comments, and what would that tell you about me?

More seriously, bloggers are an important part of a particular beer niche, one that sociologists will be studying for years to come. This should help them.

1 For the record, references to navel gazing may or may not be intended as snark. But it has become standard in some of the blogging places I hang out to use the phrase to remind ourselves to write about beer rather than, blush, ourselves.

Perfect pitch and beer aroma

I love analogies to music when it comes to describing some of life’s other pleasures. This happens to come from Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age and doesn’t mention beer, but you’ll get the point:

As any wine connoisseur can attest, aromas are often described in melodic terms as three distinct notes. In making perfume, top notes, middle notes and base notes are orchestrated like a symphony to tell a specific story in three movements. Top notes are the ingredients that create the first impression of the fragrance on the nose. They are the lightest and briefest of the fragrance on the nose. They are the lightest and briefest in duration, like high notes on a musical scale. In a well-designed fragrance, as top notes evaporate they harmoniously segue into the middle notes that comprise the main body, or second movement, of the fragrance. The middle notes evaporate at an even slower rate than the top notes, and also soften the usually stronger base notes. As the middle notes dissipate, the base notes linger like the finals strains of a cello concerto.

(Additionally, in The Secret of Scent, Luca Turin explains why odor molecules — and thus aroma — arrive in waves, repeating that the lightest are the first to arrive, heavier ones later.)

Before you stick your nose deep in your next beer and decide I’m an idiot, please note I’m not saying this works for every beer. Then the special ones wouldn’t be special, would they? As a general rule, beers you’d file under “less is more” seem to be the best candidates.

Session #61: ‘Local beer’ recapped

The SessionMatt at The Hoosier Beer Geek has recapped Session 61: What makes local beer better?

I am really happy with all of the writing this month. I tried to keep the question vague on purpose, and many people took it quite literally, while others took a completely different spin. This seems like a pretty divisive subject, but nothing that couldn’t be settled over a few pints.

I agree. Some really interesting points made. This was definitely a “Let’s order another round and talk about this some more” topic. Although I could see a conversation here or there, mostly there, ending in, “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

Session #61: Because it’s local, dammit

The SessionThis month host Matt Robinson asked us to write about “What makes local beer better?” for The Session 61. I found myself staring at his marching orders like a deer in headlights (or a thirsty drinker in front of 62 tap handles). Matt asked a series of questions that left me feeling as focused as his Twitter feed. And 852 words into answering each of them individually I realized I still hadn’t pointed out that we have a St. Louis ZIP and there are six breweries between our house and Anheuser-Busch, and the closest is Schalfly Bottleworks. It’s Schalfly’s production brewery, but the beer to drink right now is Amarillo Session Ale, available only at the attached restaurant/pub. In other words, only locally. 852 words? I’m sure you would have loved the technical discussion about volatile hop aromas, but I hit delete. Instead, one thought.

Beer is a sum of its parts, which include the humans who make the beer and the consumers who drink it. It’s not beer when the ingredients arrive on a truck, wherever that truck might have come from. It turns into beer locally. Magic.