MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 01.12.15
Wasted: How the craft-beer movement abandoned Jim Koch (and his beloved Sam Adams).
Sam Adams and Why We Need To Stop Listening to Hipsters.
What’s the difference between craft beer snobs and Kopparberg drinkers?
BREAKING NEWS: Jim Koch talks shit on emerging breweries, gets the Heisman by a Hobo Lord.
The drift from the Pangaea of craft beer.
Andy Crouch’s profile of Jim Koch proved quite a way to start the year, didn’t it? His four thousand words were followed by maybe hundreds of thousands more. In blogs. On Twitter and Facebook. On discussions boards. So four of the more interesting followups are listed here. I have nothing to add. You are welcome.
The ghosts of brewing past, present and future.
Don’t know how many of all those words you waded through, but it might be time to rest your eyes with these lovely old photos. Extra credit for the succinct prose. [Via SC Times]
The Definitive ‘Best Beer of 2014′ List. Really. Kind of.
The Internet is a very good place when you can ask a question you are too lazy to answer yourself and somebody else is willing to do the work — apparently Bryan Roth enjoys this number crunching. I know this is not consistent with my feud with lists, but consistency is overrated. [Via This is Why I’m Drunk]
Is winemaking an art or science?
“Terroir has so far eluded science. But that may be about to change. And many places will be avidly watching this science. As climate change plays havoc with existing wine growing regions, new contenders to the wine industry – such as China – will stand to gain from demystifying the secrets of fine wine.” I love firm answers about why the [fill in the blank – grapes, hops, barley] grown here don’t taste like the [fill in the blank] grown there, but I’ve become comfortable with the idea that there is also something about place that is not so easily explained. [Via COSMOS]
This Beer Algorithm Will Select Your Next Glass.
I wrote this story, but even if I hadn’t I would have linked to it anyway. It’s going to be a battle for these guys to keep their database up to date with all the beers that are out there — in fact, they surely won’t. But their approach is what interests me. Analyzing beers using a liquid chromatography mass spectrometer eliminates a giant wild card — that people perceive odor compounds differently. That’s why you might suggest I’ll like such-and-such beer because of a orange marmalade aroma you smell, only to see me turn up my nose when all I smell is cat piss. [Via All About Beer]
How much are words worth?
Following up on The Session #95 (beer books) and the Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture conference almost a year ago in Kentucky with a reality check about the writing business. Here’s a numbing examination of what magazines pay for the words within them: “The total market for long form journalism in major magazines in America is approximately $3.6 million. To put it another way: the collective body of writers earned less than Butch Jones, a relatively unknown college football coach, earned in a single year.” [Via Scott Carney, h/T jimromenesko.com]
* Note: Scott Carney has followed up on that post with one called “Crowdsourcing Journalism Rates” and puts this database online.