Monday beer links: Spotted Cow Grand Cru, making fun of homebrewers & ‘craft’ reality check

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 11.21.2016

Spotted Cow Grand Cru
In case you missed this, Alan McLeod. [Via Wisconsin State Journal]

20 Ways to Talk to Me About Your Home-Brewing Hobby.
In case you had forgotten An Open Letter to Beer Nerds. [Via McSwenney’s]

Things to Consider: People Don’t Know that Craft Beer Exists.
A lot of boldface, I know, but: “People don’t know about craft beer. Let me say this again in case I wasn’t clear, people do not know about craft beer.” Call it the other craft beer bubble. The one fans live inside. [Via Stouts and Stilettos]

What the Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer taught us.
“In an era of big beer snapping up small beer, I’m as convinced as ever that what’s in the glass is not the only thing that matters. Craft beer has been built on an intimate connection between brewery and consumer, and that continues to be the case.” Swap the word local in for craft and you have one of the reason I wrote “Brewing Local.” [Via Chicago Tribune]

Tasting—and reconsidering—America’s most popular beers.
And the winner is Bud Light
I’d say Budweiser got jobbed. [Via A.V. Club]

The new rustic.
Farmhouse beers? What does that mean? For further reading I suggest Understanding farmhouse ale. [Via DRAFT]

Resin. Pine. If a lion could speak.
Most curious, and I guess an indication of life experience. There are plenty of descriptions that got tossed about and I end up thinking, WTF? But resin and pine make perfect sense to me. Maybe it is because we just cut our Christmas tree this weekend. [Via Called to the Bar]

Pub room names.
Because otherwise how would we know the story behind a Four-Ale-Bar? [Via Shut Up About Barclay Perkins]

Is it morally wrong to drink an 89p bottle of good beer?
“Dear reader, how do I match the exceeding, and exceedingly cheap, pleasure I get from this beer with the guilt I wrestle to suppress, fearing that every bottle I buy pushes a Heriot-Watt graduate working for a small brewer utterly unable to compete on price with an 89p cracker closer to redundancy?” Why does it bother the “I only care about the quality of what’s in the glass” consumers when others take such things into account when they buy beer. [Via Zythophile]

The Importance of Genre in Music Illustrated as an Artist’s Palette.
How might this be relevant to beer styles? [Via Saving Country Music.]

AGRICULTURE

Interview with Peter A. Kopp.
Kopp is the author of “Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.” I’m writing a review of the book for a magazine, so I won’t be doing that here. However, anybody who wants to better understand the hop as an agricultural product and the role it can play within a farming culture will appreciate “Hoptopia.” More so if you have a connection to the Willamette Valley. [Via Oregon Hops & Brew Archives]

WINE

How identical are individual bottles of the same wine?
I’m not suggesting you do that with bottles in the same six-pack of fresh beer. But with bottles cellared a year or more, gotta be interesting, right? A horizontal tasting instead of a vertical tasting. [Via Vine Art]

In Pursuit of Balance wine group calls it quits with last tasting.
“As with any successful movement, the legacy of In Pursuit of Balance isn’t that this question has been answered. It’s that the question has been asked.” The question asked. Let’s drink to that. [Via San Fancisco Chronicle]

FROM TWITTER

9 thoughts on “Monday beer links: Spotted Cow Grand Cru, making fun of homebrewers & ‘craft’ reality check”

    • Alan, I read the description of it now. It sounds like an excellent beer, but I have no idea why anyone would call that a farmhouse ale. What’s farmhouse about it?

      To me, a beer is farmhouse ale if it’s brewed in the farmhouse tradition, which always means in the farmhouse tradition as it is or was in some specific place. This sounds like a normal craft beer. I guess maybe they use a yeast that at some point was used in farmhouse brewing (perhaps), but that’s not enough.

      Very good question, though.

      • Sorry for the silence! I was deep in the bowels of Toronto at a weeklong course on construction law. I agree entirely, Lars. The basic beer is excellent but reflects a tradition rooted in commercial 1800s brewing. Nothing farmhouse about it at all.

  2. Thanks for the link to my post on how bottles of the same wine can taste different. I have some 750 ml beers in the cellar and will have to see how it works for them, too.

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