Monday beer briefing: Isn’t always about the future?

05.20.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Administrative note: Another hiatus (and not the last of the summer) the next two weeks. This one you can blame, at least partially, on @Thirsty_Pilgrim. Briefings will return June 10.

1) Jeff Alworth wonders why more startups don’t use the Other Half/Great Notion model — “bright cans of hazy IPAs and pastry beers, the long lines of young people.” He concludes “brewers start them because they have a vision for the beer they want to make, not because they want to print money.”

I agree, but would another clause. These brewers do have a vision for what they want to create, but they also have enough of an ego to think that they are making beer that will appeal to an audience broad enough to support a thriving business. They may not want to print money, but many like ending up on something of a stage and more look forward to feeling money in their pockets.

2) Before helping establish a union at Anchor Brewing Company, Brace Belden volunteered to fight with Kurdish leftists in Syria. When he was younger, Belden said communism “was just another way to be bad.” Later, he began thinking more seriously about class consciousness, and today he is a firm believer in the Marxist notion of a global class war.

3) Josh Noel adds to what he already wrote in “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out” about the lack of transparency about where Anheuser-Busch products are brewed. I guess I should start to look the labels on bottles of Elysian Space Dust and see what they say whenever I visit stores these days, because when we were in Phoenix a few months ago we heard Four Peaks Brewing is now among the breweries making Space Dust.

4) If Carlsberg’s new lager is not the future of beer, and Martyn Cornell makes it pretty clear he doesn’t think so, what is? He suggests, “You don’t have to stare too deeply into a beer-filled crystal ball to predict that there will be a constant flow of launches of floral/fruity lagers.”

5) A rant, in German. Basically, “craft beer” is “totally overpriced and tastes of soap.” Google will translate it all for you. “Wäre Bier ein Kaiser, müsste man sagen, Craftbier ist nackt.”

6) Gaming Untappd.

7) Ever wonder why there was no Gary Vaynerchuk in beer?

8) Before there was Gary Vaynerchuk there was Robert Parker, and now he is retiring.

FROM TWITTER

Warning: You may get sucked in.

MORE LINKS

ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.

1 thought on “Monday beer briefing: Isn’t always about the future?”

  1. But it is very very important to remind ourselves that unlike any other time and place in all of brewing culture and history that this is not about money. That is the only way all this making of money makes sense.

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