Call it the six degrees of beer. Some days connections seem particularly easy to make.
What beer style would this be? “Yes, it’s true that a lot of rosés—too many, in fact—are insipid. Vacuous. Tasteless. As a category, it’s weak.” Despite the fact he writes for Wine Spectator, I think Matt Kramer asks really good questions. Like this one, respectfully edited, in his column about rosé wines.
“Allow me to take this one step further and ask: Do we now have too many wines [replace with the beverages of your choice] that demand involvement? Do you really want to listen only to symphonies? Is anything less than a symphonic blast of flavor and power somehow intrinsically lesser?”
Advice for the ‘extreme’ brewer?
“If you don’t have those moments where you go too far, then you’re probably not going far enough.” Vanity Fair profiles Andrew Mason, no that Andrew Mason but the founder of Groupon. Where do his ideas come from? He makes Sam Calagione look like he’s on center. How do you master the voice of the Groupon narrator? Lots in this long, long story so in case you don’t make it to the end, the final quote: “I love the idea of dying doing something that nobody cares about. I think that’s a cool idea.”
Mad Dog in the Fog remodeled?
I’m not sure how I feel about this. SF Weekly put the Dog among San Francisco’s “Top Five British Pubs” makes the list but notes “The recent remodel is controversial; it’s less of a dive.” That might not be good. And calling a pub in SF “British” is a little like calling a beer brewed in the U.S. “Belgian,” but that’s a different conversation.
Who do you trust?
Mike Veseth — author of the excellent book, Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, The Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists,” that I need to review — reports from the meetings of the American Association of Wine Economists in Bolzano, Italy. More proof that wine judges at major competitions are not very consistent. What do you think a similar study related to beer judging would show? And would it matter? Because Veseth provides a bottom line: “The research presented in Bolzano suggests that there are limits to how much we do trust and how much we should trust wine critics and judges. The power of critics to shape the world of wine may be overstated or, as Andrew Jefford notes in the current issue of Decanter, simply over-generalized. ‘Opinion-formers are highly significant — for a tiny segment of the wine-drinking population.’ he writes. ‘They remain irrelevant for most drinkers.'”
Blogging tip of the week
If blogging is to be a conversation then readers need to be able to comment. Insisting that comments be approved kills the conversation. Yes, spammers will show up, and as smart at Akismet is, occasionally they’ll sneak a comment through (in June that happened 25 times here, while Akismet shot down 45,351 attempts). But those are usually on old, seldom visited posts and pretty easy to spot; a lot easier that checking every few minutes to see if there is a new comment that needs approving. Rather than picking on anybody in particular I’ll also add it seems particularly strange to broadcast a question via Twitter, then ask readers to jump through assorted hoops to leave a comment and see that comment languish for minutes, hours, days. End of conversation.
I have no idea why multiple beer writers have fallen for the writings of Matt Kramer recently. But the argument “You haven’t tasted the good stuff” doesn’t hold water, if you _have_ tasted the good stuff and found it still tastes like the insipid stuff. More to the point of what you highlit: people can say sometimes they don’t want to be deeply involved with a wine or beer, and so therefore they drink rose (or golden ale or…). But then the next time they want to bash supermarket wine or macrobrews for their simplicity and lack of flavour/depth/complexity, they should keep in mind that they’re on record as saying that’s not intrinsically a bad thing.
Bill – This is probably off topic. I’ve been reading Kramer for years. Really the only thing in WS regularly worth reading (so I grab it on the newsstand, peruse his column and move on), because he questions the “accepted truth.” I don’t necessarily always agree with his conclusions . . . By making some of his writing free at its site (unlike before) the WS has probably broadened his audience. Of course, Oregonians have been reading him for years.
I’m that Andrew Mason too Stan. I just keep working to stay grounded.
The thought occurred to me that the Andrew Mason who wishes he were working at 3 Floyds might have invented Dark Lord Day if somebody had not beaten him to it.
“More proof that wine judges at major competitions are not very consistent. What do you think a similar study related to beer judging would show?”
I don’t know what a controlled study would show, but I do remember when Odell IPA won gold at GABF and then at WBC also.
Matt – You’d think it means something when a beer consistently succeeds in “blind” judging, particularly in a category as competitive as IPA. Before GABF in 2009, I wrote about the challenges of winning back to back. Then Firestone Walker Union Jack won for the second year in a row. Even more stunning, Union Jack and Russian River Blind Pig both medaled in 2008 and 2009, which hardly seems random.
Bill — I’ll go “on record” as saying I enjoy a well-made light ale or light lager, but don’t believe BM or C really fall into that category. That is not to say that I believe *every* micro-brewed beer of subtlety is good just because.
Steve, I’m not saying that it’s all good. But I think you know as well as I do that some folks use the same reasons to praise certain beers that they use to bash others. And (not that it matters here) in the world of wine criticism, Matt Kramer and Eric Asimov do the same thing. If you use the same terms to reject what you don’t like and to praise what you like, folks should think twice about taking you seriously.
“I’m not saying that it’s all good.”
Didn’t mean to say you were Bill, just qualifying that I wasn’t “one of those” BMC bashers — drank my share prior to the Micro Boom® and have moved on, but I don’t believe each and every microbrew is manna from heaven.
S.