Not-Monday beer links: You happy now, Alan?

NOT-MONDAY BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING, 12.23.16

Monday I wrote that regular Monday beer links would be taking the next two Mondays off. That remains true, but after Alan McLeod complained and because there’s some good stuff you should be reading, a few it’s-not-Monday links before we head over the Mississippi River and through the wood (yes, I am aware it is a Thanksgiving poem) … If you still need a link fix tomorrow (Saturday) morning try Boak & Bailey’s News, Nuggets & Longreads. Happy holidays.

Father and son bond over beer at all 73 Iowa craft breweries.
This is a road movie waiting to be made. [Via Des Moines Register]

The Beer in Review.
More than 20 brewers, beer directors, and industry folks in and around Washington, D.C., chat on a variety of topics. Their beer recommendations are not what interest me. Instead, take time to read what they have to say about trends, good and bad, current and perhaps for the future. For one thing, crowlers get tagged as both positive and negative. Same with Northeast IPAs. No surprise, I was particularly drawn to this from Mike Van Hall from Stillwater Artisinal: “There is a misperception that it is easy to get rich by opening a brewery and that drives business models to shoot too big. In a crowding market, that is the setup for failure for most. But when done right, a small operation can support a couple families and allow for some great experimentation. You don’t need to be big to succeed in the beer world.” [Via BYT]

Rare Bourbon County Stout’s new release raises question: How rare can it be?
[Via Chicago Tribune]
Critical Drinking — “That’s ‘Cus It’s So Rare, Dawg”
[Via Good Beer Hunting]
My comments are about the contents of the first story. The second popped on my radar as I was putting the ribbon on this list. A lot there to think about, but, hey, that sleigh’s not going to pack itself. So lets cut right to what Jason Notte has to say in Link #1: “If a beer brewed by automated machinery in a brewery roughly the size of a city block can be craft, that BCS varietal can definitely be ‘rare.'” Debating the use of the word “rare” reminds me of a similar argument about other definitions. Instead, I draw your attention to an idea I’ve heard and read so often it seems as if it is becoming the small brewers’ monomyth: “The small (breweries) are more about building a bond with the consumer. The big ones are mostly after money for the most part.” I’m a fan of small businesses (see above) whose owners choose to keep them small and that build bonds in their community, but it’s not necessary to turn that into a hero’s journey.

Trend Watching: 2016 Hop Production and the Rise of Citra.
[Via This Is Why I Am Drunk]
Craft beer sales slip coincides with record US hop revenue.
[Via Financial Times]
Hop Growers of America sent out a press release this week with the USDA’s final tally on the 2016 hop harvest in the American Northwest. No real surprises — acreage was up, pounds produced were up, prices were and are up, and so on. Pretty pro-active by HGA, explaining in as simple a way as possible — me, I’d take several paragraphs — why prices are going up. For the press release, Blake Crosby of Crosby Farms said, “The line between under and oversupply is a fine one, and it’s not good for anyone – growers and brewers – if it is crossed. People can tend to forget this is an agricultural product that only comes once a year, and a specialty one at that, which requires much planning and preparation.”

Elaborating on the themes from his “Hop Week” Bryan Roth digs into the numbers (first link). In the second link, although the Financial Times uses the word “coincides” in the headline (so it is a coincidence, right?) the implication is clear. And, “Hop experts are urging caution about further expansion of production.” Expect to hear more of this chatter, in the coming months. Unless, of course, you lead a normal life where nobody ever talks about hop varieties. But if you do find yourself in one of those conversatiions you can say, “It may be expensive but there are 23,529 pounds of Citra available on Lupulin Exchange right now.”

Earlier this month, Troy Casey of Casey Brewing and Blending gave this hornet’s nest a poke while answering questions for the Denver Post’s Beer In Review series. His craft beer trend to watch in 2017? “Breweries contracting for hops based on growth they’re never going to see this year. There will be a major hop surplus when these breweries start to dump their hops on the open market. The smaller breweries like us will have no problem getting these designer hops in 2017.”

WINE (AND MORE BEER)

The ill-health of wine writing.
Beer Advocate magazine celebrated 10 years in print this month. “Many thought it was insane for a 10-year-old web-based company to launch a magazine at a time when print publications were already on the decline thanks to digital publishing changing how we digest our daily content,” brothers Jason and Todd Alström write. Kind of makes you wonder why it worked, particularly since All About Beer has also flourished in the past decade and the two have been joined by several other beer and drinks magazines. In The Revenge of Analog author Davis Sax argues that, “Analog solves all kinds of problems that are albatrosses to digital publishers–engagement, stickiness, discovery, etc.–and, if the order of inventiions were shomehow reversed, print could easily be represented as the truly disruptive technology.”

Steven Watson, who runs an independent magazine subscription service, suggests the rise of blogging also played a role. “People blogged, and they grew up with blog and writing as a form of self-expression. Now, those same people want to be in print, so their ideas are legitimate,” he says. Look, I’m somebody who started in print when letters we first cast into lead before they could be printed, and I don’t find that where it appears is what makes an idea more or less legitimate. Nonetheless, I’ll let Sax have the last word. “The permanence of paper conferred another level of credibility that just wasn’t achievable online,” he writes.

But back to Beer Advocate, the brothers write they felt “readers deserved an honest, monthly publication with a fresh approach and new voices. Today, with well over 4,500 breweries in America alone, our conviction remains stronger than ever and is reinforced by a concerning lack of integrity that now plagues beer journalism. (See Beer Smack in issue #112.)”

So consider that context when you read what Jamie Goode, who is responsible for some of most authoritative wine writing around, has to say about the state of wine journalism. “In the meantime, my job is to work hard and make myself indispensable. I have to do such a good job that I’m in demand and there are enough paying gigs to make a living,” he writes. “But I also have to encourage those with budget to do the right thing and support good writers. Otherwise in desperation these writers will end up having to compromise and conflict their interests, or else they’ll just leave wine communication altogether.” [Via jamie goode’s wine blog]

FROM TWITTER

And YouTube, because it makes people laugh (and I am a bit flattered).

I want a @StanHieronymus for Christmas
(Video)https://t.co/dXmSrFYJzc

— WNY Brews (@WNYBrews) December 20, 2016