Monday beer links: Archiving done right, labeling not so much

BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 12.10.18

I missed Monday links, and I hope you did as well, so here are a few.

Boak & Bailey recently explained how they choose what to put in their Saturday lineup. In the interest of transparency, my rules are pretty arbitrary. I include links here to stories I think you should enjoy reading, either because the writing is terrific or the ideas within merit thinking about, or both. I also include links to stories I simply want to comment on.

Archiving Craft Beer Blogs.
Archive-It (a subscription service of the Internet Archive) is providing an in-kind grant, 100GB of storage to archive beer blogs using their tools. Erin Lawrimore, university archivist at UNC Greensboro and manager of the Well Crafted NC project, explains the Beer Bloggers Archive will focus on craft beer blogs that examine the US craft beer industry.

She wrote, “We’re focusing on those with a national scope, but we’re also likely going to include some with regional scopes as well. Essentially, this is a way to ensure that the content of these blogs is preserved, even if the blogs close. It seems like we’ve lost a number of them already, sadly. So hopefully this can capture the information online now before it goes away! Also, we’re interested in active blogs as well as those that are no longer active but still have a publicly-available web presence.”

Having recently updated the links here I can testify to how many blogs have disappeared or have not be updated in years. Suggest blogs to include using the Google Form or questions to crafted at uncg.edu. Don’t be shy. I provided information for Appellation Beer. You’ll have to nominate your own.

“Illusion of choice” is no mirage.
Founders Turns to Another Mahou-Invested Brewery to Produce All Day IPA.
First to the second link. I am wondering how Founders All Day IPA brewed in Colorado will be labeled, and if it will matter. But mostly how it will be labeled, because I am a hardass on the “where was this beer brewed?” front. Meaning I would be happier if Sierra Nevada Brewing specified if a beer was made in California or North Carolina.

As the headline would suggest, Josh Noel’s story focuses on “illusion of choice” but it includes a cry for truth in labeling. Have you looked closely at bottles of olive oil recently? “Italian” on the label may simply means it was packaged in Italy. It may have come from more than a half dozen countries.

You don’t have to care if you can remember if MillerCoors or A-B InBev owns Goose Island Beer, and it doesn’t have to matter to you if either does. You don’t have to care if the bottle of Goose Island beer in the grocery store was made in New York or Colorado or Chicago (chances are it wasn’t Chicago). Proper labeling matters as long as it matters to someone. Coincidentally this past week, I was checking something else in a Beer Travelers newsletter from 1996 when I came across this diary-type entry from a trip to and from the Midwest to the East Coast.

Ephrata, Pa., April 19
The walls of Wahtney’s Inn are fieldstones, and some of the floor and ceiling are from when an inn was first built here in 1767. Meanwhile, there’s a computer terminal in the middle of the bar so patrons can cruise the internet. It’s new and not working today. The bar has Blue Moon White on tap, and after the bartender draws a pint for a customer, we ask her if she knows which brewery produces the beer. She’s stunned to find out this is a Coors product; because of political reasons, she doesn’t drink Coors. “Thank goodness I’ve only had a small taste,” she says, thanking us for the information. Next time somebody tells you that truth in labeling doesn’t make a difference, remember her.

So what IS the difference between a pub and a bar?
In which Martyn Cornell also reminds us pub/bar has a different meaning in the US than the UK.
       The pub as we know it today is essentially of 19th century origins, born of a four-way mating between the alehouse (strictly for locals and regulars; mostly working class; mostly rural/semi-rural, or backstreet urban; most likely to have started as somebody’s private home), the gin palace (strictly urban; showy; for both locals and strangers, working class and middle class; most likely to have been deliberately built as an outlet for drinking by a developer or entrepreneur), the tavern (High Street urban; middle class; food-oriented; original uses varying from drinking outlets attached to religious establishments to cookshops to wine retailers) and the inn (rural or urban; on a main road; mostly for travellers and occasional visitors; food important; origins in farmhouses, if rural, and private homes, if urban).

MORE BEER

– Where is Canada’s Beer Style?
        This looks like a job for Jeff Alworth.

– I Wanna See You Out That Door — Three Atlanta Beer Bars Stop Pouring Scofflaw
        “It isn’t fair to force small business owners to make these moral decisions on a (seemingly) monthly basis because of a brewery’s flawed internal culture.”

– Five tips for marketing your craft beer business for sale
        So much for passion.

WRITING (AND WINE)

– 2018 Wine Writer Survey.
        Two-thirds of those who primarily write for their own blog or publication earn 10% or less of their annual income from wine writing.

– My advice for aspiring explainer journalists.
        “The most important thing for anyone writing about any subject — and I really can’t stress this enough — is knowing what the fuck you’re talking about.”

– Why is most travel writing so bad?
        “Is travel like (some) sex, namely that you can’t write about it because it is viscerally exciting in a ‘you had to be there’ way?”

FROM TWITTER

Hey if you’re one of the employees that got laid off by A-B InBev today, you got a beer on us waiting @2ndshiftbrewing

— Libby Crider (@libman37) December 7, 2018

MORE LINKS

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