Can a brewery be good for a community? Last week the Smyrna, Georgia, city council voted to sell green space near the community center so a brewery can go there.
Economic Development Director Andrea Worthy pointed to the revitalization of the downtown area as the main reason for supporting the vote. Smyrna is within the inner ring of the Atlanta metropolitan area. “It’s different than a restaurant, it’s different than a coffee shop,” Worthy said. “It’s really a community gathering place that invites a lot of other visitors to downtown. It serves as a community center where folks can meet up, [it] increases foot traffic for other businesses downtown.”
“A Breakdown Of Smyrna’s Controversial Decision To Sell Public Land To A Private Brewery” is a long form (more than 3,000 words) account of how and why the deal was made.
FOR READING OUT LOUD
Just in time for Burns Night, Martyn Cornell has discovered a poem written in the form known as “Burns stanza,” an ode to “Gude Stout Ale.”
CREAM BEER
Alan McLeod returns to a favorite topic, cream beer, tying it to immigration, which included brewers with contemporary skills.
As a silly aside, here’s one of several suggestions why cream ale was called cream ale. In 1837, a dialogue called “The Beer Trial” in the Journal of the American Temperance Union drew attention to charges that brewers in Albany sold adulterated ale. It refers specifically to Albany Cream Ale, and a fellow named James, who was spotted drinking the beer by a friend, says, “I asked why they called it Cream Ale, and they said it was because the foam looked yellow, like cream.”
ICONIC
– Thanks for the (UK) memories.
– Crowd sourced. Quite a list follows the question posed by Don Tse on Twitter. One thought after reading through suggestions is that you should know how to spell the name of a brand before calling it iconic.
THE OTHER SHOE
– Three, or more, Connecticut breweries have closed or soon will.
– Marin Brewing Company shutting down after almost 33 years. Marin opened in 1989 and won four medals at the Great American Beer Festival, three the next year and four the following year. The brewpub also laid claim to being the “first and best brewery on the internet.”
ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE
Can a brewery be good for a community? 2021 by the numbers at Allagash Brewing.
Not silly at all. But who knew that in 1837 cream was yellow or that beer foam was either. As good an explanation as any I’ve seen!