Monday beer links: Diversity, blogs through the ages & GMO questions

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 12.12.2016

Is Craft Beer Still Too White?
[Via Vinepair]
Addressing Diversity in Beer: A Q&A with Julia Herz.
[Via This Is Why I Am Drunk]
Addressing Diversity in Beer: Seeking Action.
[Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]
Opinions about this filled my Twitter feed last week. Among suggestions was one that the Brewers Association provide scholarships to people who are not white males to attending brewing school. Nothing wrong with that idea. But the Brewers Association is, well, an association of brewing companies. One of the reasons that there are more local breweries is that they are part of communities, regularly making connections with people in those communities. Shouldn’t they reflect the, and pardon me for using this word, demographics of that community? Shouldn’t the members be allowed to hold them responsible to do that?

Hello From The Blog’s Back End – And The Road …
Alan McLeod nicely summarizes the phases beer blogging has been through, easier for him to do than most because he was there at the beginning. [Via A Good Beer Blog]

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The Session #118 roundup

Muddy Waters, Delta Blues Museum, Clarksdale, Mississippi

The SessionI was not kidding Friday when I tweeted that The Session would give me a chance to post a picture of the cabin outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, that Muddy Waters left behind when he moved to Chicago. Here it is, preserved in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.

I might have been a bit giddy, but with good reason. You’ll recall marching orders for The 118th gathering of The Session went like this: If you could invite four people dead or alive to a beer dinner who would they be? What four beers would you serve?

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Monday beer links: Beer & weed, The Beer Monopoly, and ‘enter the chairs’

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 12.05.2016

Legal marijuana is affecting the beer industry’s memory.
Killer lead from Jason Notte: “Marijuana’s disruption of short-term memory apparently applies to the argument about its effects on the beer industry. Folks are still saying weed is bad for beer, but nobody seems to remember any of the evidence to the contrary.” And it is followed by a solid takedown of “this purple haze of half-truths” and a report from investment bank Cowen and Co. maintaining that legal marijuana is driving down beer sales. Notte concludes, “It isn’t marijuana harshing the beer industry’s mellow: It’s some harsh truths about where the industry is headed.” [Via MarketWatch]

London’s next beer revolution has begun.
[Via Craft Beer London]
Texas’ Deep Ellum Sells Stake to Storied Craft Breweries.
[Via Brewbound]
The Riddle of Scarcity in New England.
[Via All About Beer]
In the first story, Will Hawkes concludes, “The implications for independent London breweries are obvious. The advantage from being local only goes so far: those who will thrive over the next few years will do so because their beer is consistently good.” In the second, a Dallas brewery intent on growing apparently much larger, sells majority interest in the operation to an investment group. In the third, Jeff Alworth examines the choices breweries that brew passionately loved beers make related to producing and selling those beers. You may parse all this information differently. But it seems to me that stories about how many breweries is too many breweries overlook that a fundamental shift. Some owners — well, lots of them — have written a business plan based on ongoing growth. But the way some others measure success has changed, and there is room for plenty more local breweries whose founders have realistic expectations.

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Session #118: Who’s coming to dinner and what are we drinking?

The SessionWelcome to The Session #118. I’ll be the host today, inviting a few guests and picking some beers. As you may recall the theme is pretty simple:

If you could invite four people dead or alive to a beer dinner who would they be? What four beers would you serve?

We played this game here in a slightly different way almost exactly nine years ago. I think the results made for some interesting, even educational, reading, which is one of the reasons The Session has been around for 118 months, right? The choices certainly were diverse, with more musicians picked than brewers. Only three guests were invited to more than one dinner — Michael Jackson, William Shakespeare, and Martin Luther.

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Time in a bottle

Joe Stange wrote about Baltic Porter and Poland last week at DRAFT. Which is a good enough excuse to show you a few photos from the Zywiec Brewery in Zywiec and Bracki Browar Zamkowy in nearby Cieszyn, which is owned by the Zywiec group (and therefore Heineken, which owns Zywiec — got it?).

Near the end of a tour at Zywiec visitors may sample Zywiec Porter and see how malt used in the beer is roasted. Zywiec actually buys most of its roasted barley because the old way is not particularly effecient. And its porter is made in the much smaller Cieszyn brewery because production is modest — about 30,000 hectoliters (25,500 barrels) a year.

Malt roaster at Zywiec Brewery in Zywiec, Poland

Roasting malt at Zywiec Brewery in Poland

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