Many, many breweries and events are showcased in Breweries Are Turning Up the Heat on Winter Beer, including Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois. The photo at the top is a very hot granite rock plunging into wort when a team from Jester King visited Scratch in August six-plus years ago.
This Imbibe story about winter activities. “To attract more customers to taprooms, festivals, and holiday markets, breweries are turning to longstanding European traditions that turn up the thermostat on beer drinking.”
Primitive Brewing’s Hotbier Fest, here in Colorado is not mentioned. It is Dec. 21, and here are details (scroll down a bit). The photo on the right was taken last year in Lafayette. Or checkout this video on Instagram to see exactly what happens when a hot poker meets beer.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The Lukr [side-pull] faucet comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong, we have three of them [on-site] and we use them all the time. But the faucet worship to me is kinda silly. It assists in foam breakout and makes for softer foam, and you should get one. But don’t worship these things, because they’re a tool, just like many other items in your brewery or bar arsenal. It’s only beer, folks.”
— Todd DiMatteo, Good Word Brewing
From What’s the Most Overrated Beer Trend?
LEDE OF THE WEEK
With summer in the rear view mirror and dry January less than two months away breweries and taprooms are falling off like fresh hop ales in the fall. The turning of the season means change, not all of it is bad news as much as it is metamorphosis of a saturated beer culture always looking to the next thing whether that’s a winter warmer or a non-alcoholic IPA. But while we were distracted by the latest triple double hazy release and brewery pop-up, a few Portland-area breweries and taprooms succumbed to their wounds.
— From Portland-Area Brewery Closures you may have missed
LISTS OF THE WEEK
Craft Beer & Brewing has posted its list of the Best 20 Beers in 2024, as well as several lists of reader favorites. “A year of focused tasting panels plus two full days of blind judging and lively discussion among our editorial panel culminated in [the Best 20] list.” Full disclosure, I’m part of the editorial panel and I participate in the tasting panels during the year. Fortunately, everybody else has great taste, so you aren’t stuck with my preferences. The magazine itself (subscription information) has even more lists, including 10 beers I particularly enjoyed.
FROM BLUESKY
Pilot Beer wrote: “A lot of people saying it’s just like Beer Twitter in 2013 over here which sounds great until you realise that means we’ve only got 5 years until brut IPA happens.”
That post and the following replies are testimony why Bluesky is a nicer place to spend time these days than “the other place.” That’s not the only reason I’ve locked down my account there (although I can’t fathom somebody wanting to pretend to be me), but it is a good one. I’ve scrubbed (well, I paid for software to do that) 16 years of tweets, replies and retweets that I’d rather not have AI putting to whatever use. I can’t guarantee that doing the same will make you smile as broadly as I am while I type this, but you might want to see.
YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY
– Elysian Brewing Closes Brewery & Taproom Amid Teamsters Union Dispute. A-B calls the move to shut down the production brewery a “right-sizing” for the company. The company does not mention the recently authorized strike by employees and Teamsters Union 117 members. Thank you, New School Beer.
– Timothy Taylor’s Landlord — A Polyptych of a Pint. These are the pints of Landlord I want to drink, as opposed to the perfectly dreadful one I had in Belfast in October. So terrible I did not finish it.
– Most Interesting Historic Figures With Whom to Enjoy a Beer. It would be churlish of me to complain about a list that include Hildegarde of Bingen. Instead, a blast from the past: 11 Fantasy Beer Dinners. From 2007, and nicely summarized by Martyn Cornell. (Contributors have) chosen a range of guests for which “eclectic” seems utterly inadequate as a description. They include Bernardo O’Higgins, the 19th century South American revolutionary; Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys; Robert Noonan, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; William Shakespeare (nominated by two people); Martin Luther; Michael “The Beer Hunter” Jackson (also nominated by two people); David Bowie; Socrates; Winston Churchill; Ernest Hemingway; and John McEnroe. And me.
– Strategic maneuvers: Veteran brewers up the game at Colorado Springs craft breweries. “Very rarely do people transition out of the military and go into brewing or wine-making, so I didn’t think they would take it seriously. But they did.”
– 5 Ways to Put the “Great” Back into the GABF. I, too, would like to see more breweries from far away (I live about 11 miles, as the drone, flies from the site of the festival), but those breweries will need to choose to participate. For more than 40 years, they have not. On the other hand, I am not for vetting the brewery list. It is not called the Great American Beer Invitational.
– BTS & Beer: An Unlikely Love Story. Given that beer isn’t endemic to South Korea, the beer-based drinks featured on a talk show by the country’s most famous cultural export (BTS) is a testament to the globalization of the beverage.