TWTBWTW: Take that, ‘Judgment of Paris’

As you likely know, the big story in The Beer Week That Was was Sapporo giving up on Anchor Brewing. I have nothing to add, and you’ve probably read enough already (including the stories I would link to), so I will simply point to one about the property the brewer is sitting on.

Otherwise, here goes:

– Mike Royko’s 1973 Foreign Vs. Domestic Beers Test Will Be Restaged
A pretty good way to pass a summer Sunday afternoon in Chicago. Here are the results from 30 50 years ago.

Mike Royko's beer taste test 1973

– Kölsch Night in the Boonies
It’s a story about beer and community. Give it a read. My comment as only tangentially related to beer. First, I cringe when I see “boonies” in a headline, or story, for that matter. Fairbury is located along U.S. 24 in Illinois. I know this because I used to live along U.S. 24. I’ve been to Fairbury, and I’ve also been to Havana, which is located along another stretch of U.S. 24.

People who live in such smaller town don’t take kindly to having the places where they live described as the boonies. I was once hung in effigy in Havana because I wrote a story, one meant to praise the “big city” confidence their high school team played with, in which I rattled off the way others viewed small towns.

Anyway, Prairie Central High School is situated in Fairbury. It was formed in 1985, combining Fairbury-Cropsey High (a 1951 consolidation) and Chatsworth and Forrest-Strawn-Wing. Prairie Central’s sports teams are nicknamed the Hawks. Fairbury-Cropsey’s nickname has been the Tartars and F-S-W’s was the Eskimos. Two great nicknames wipe out in one consolidation. Consolidation is not only bad for brewing diversity.

– The death of the beer festival is jolting the craft brewing industry
Todd Alström posted a link to the story in a Beer Advocate forum and a discussion much more interesting than anything similar that would occur on Twitter (or Threads or, sadly, Mastodon) followed.

– How hazies changed West Coast IPAS
It feels like a humble brag to point a post that starts with an observation I made 14 years ago, but Jeff Alworth turns it into something more modern. “The freedom to be indifferent in these after-hazy days has gone. … A whole new generation of beer drinkers has come along with no memory of beer BH (before hazy).”

– Down on the Farmhouse
“Folks can come here, order a pawpaw beer, and then wander down to the orchard and read about pawpaws, look at pawpaws, while they’re drinking a beer,” says co-founder and brewer Todd Boera. “You know, that’s just kind of something that sticks with people and is meaningful. You can’t do that anywhere else.”

Wine specific, but beer related

– The latest alcohol advice ignores the value of pleasure
“A pleasure-agnostic approach to health advice is now in vogue even outside the domain of alcohol, and is filtering down to the general public with sometimes absurd results. Recently, a reader asked me: Is there any data on health benefits to orgasms? I am not aware of reliable data from randomized experiments suggesting that having more orgasms improves health. That isn’t the point of orgasms, anyway. The point of orgasms is that they are fun. We do not need to prove health benefits to want to have them.”

– Profit-Sharing is Taking Root in the Wine Industry
“Profit-sharing is still far from the norm in the wine industry — and agriculture, generally — a sector that is notoriously asset-heavy, cash-poor, and has long relied on a low-paid migrant workforce to turn a profit or just break even.”

The Beer Hunter & Fritz show

You’ve read the news. I do not think that Sapporo understood this about Anchor Brewing:

Fritz Maytag’s final words in video are, “I think when our brewers put the malt (from the barley field they just visited) into the mash tun they remember, ‘That’s the stuff, there it is.’ It gives our company something that’s hard to duplicate.”

Today, Jeff Alworth wrote:

“But [the beer industry] can’t continue as the same industry represented by Fritz Maytag’s wonderful, traditional, innovative, local, and independent little brewery if that brewery itself couldn’t survive.”

I disagree, because . . . limiting myself to five reasons, with apologies to thousands of other contenders . . . Scratch Brewing, Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery, Bow & Arrow Brewing, Primitive Beer, and Spaceway Brewing.

Wonderful. Check. Innovative. Check. Local. Check. Independent. Check. Traditional? Not if it gets in the way of making something delicious.

TWTBWTW: Quick, name 3 flagship beers that are thriving

Where have all the beer brands gone?

The lead gets right to the point: “The ground is shaking under some of the most important beer brands for a trio of California’s largest brewers.” The breweries are Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Firestone Walker Brewing Company, and 21st Amendment Brewery.

Why should this matter to us beer drinkers?

You will have to answer that yourselves. I am writing zero words rather than 1,000. Instead I will point you at Flagship February. (At least, I hope the link takes you to one of the pages in the Flagship February website and you can make your way around. Simply typing in flashipfebruary.com will not get you there. Nothing seems to be going right for flagship beers right now.)

You might also enjoy

Could an ancient, climate-friendly crop be the future of beer?
Fonio sounds too good to be true.

“Growing a pound of malted barley has a 327-gallon water footprint while a pound of wheat requires 219 gallons of water, and a pound of white rice requires 400 gallons of water.

“Meanwhile, fonio can thrive with just 600mm annual rainfall, and none of the irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers needed by other grains. Brewing with fonio follows the same process as making beer from other grains.”

In fact, this could be a problem: “Cleaning the sand out of fonio is a time-consuming, manual process that requires beating the grassy fonio paddy to release the grain, and using a lot of water to rinse out dirt and sand.”

Something to watch.

How Far Will Salmon Swim for a Craft Beer?
It appears that salmon prefer yeast trub to extract of shrimp, tincture of watercress, skin of steelhead, or bile of minnow. The beer connection aside, really fascinating stuff going on at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center.

The Inextinguishable Appeal of Draught Bass
Lyme Regis. 1994. As soon as we were checked in at the Angel, publican Ed Bignal took time to point out the sights, such as the Leper’s Well a block away. Lepers once lived along the Angel’s street, Mill Green, a narrow alley on which monks had led horsedrawn carts centuries ago.

First off, we went to the Volunteer because Bignal assured us the Bass would be in as good of condition as we could find anywhere. He did not lie. “Bass is a beer that lodges in the mind” was flat out true that day.

(Early in the evening, we saw him step from behind the bar and go outside to check a tire because one of his female customers was worried it was going flat. After dinner, the place was bustling. Patrons constantly paraded between the skittles alley out back and the back door to the pub, where they refilled their pints. When the skittles shut down, the singing began.)

Craft brewery boom in Switzerland draws to a close
“Boom draws to a close” means a period of hyper-growth has ended, not that the Swiss suddenly abandoned fancy beer. It is not surprising that 90 percent of all breweries are nano-breweries. They are “often run as a hobby.”

Pairing seasonal beer and seasonal produce
Not new, but it hit my feeder aggregator this week. Some specific suggestions: LAGER: Grilled corn-on-the-cob with chili and lime; WHEAT BEER: Watermelon and tomato salad; IPA: Pico de gallo and chips.

Gummies Beer
Tantalizes the taste buds. 19.2 ounces at a time.

House beers
“This latest iteration of house beers has proven successful because they’re not a novelty.”

Maggie Harrison’s War on Wine
Now, this is a tasting note. Something you’d expect to hear in “Drops of God.”

“First, it made me see colors: the inkiest indigos and the bluest blacks, streaked with fissures of silver. Then I pictured something lurching out of a cave on a moonless night during a thunderstorm, which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

Do the beers you drink make you see colors? Asking for a friend.

Monday beer links to accompany your fireworks

Thank you, craft breweries, for making my drinking problem seem like a neat hobby.

It’s Fourth of July Eve and we are spending the week in a dry town. Let’s get right to it.

The Problematic Culture of Overdrinking When You Work in Alcohol
“De-stigmatizing sobriety and addressing alcohol use disorder head on can be challenging, but will help our friends and colleagues before they reach their own depths. Resilience requires vulnerability, but it also gives us the chance to lift each other up.”

The Timeless Appeal of Drinking in Train Station Bars
“It might be a slightly smaller story in North America, but in the railway-prioritizing Old World, train station bars are much more common, in both upscale and dive incarnations.” A much smaller story in North America, I would say, sadly.

The 23 Best Cheap Domestic Beers, According to Brewers
In fact, it’s not just brewers, and if domestic=mainstream industrial then I made a mistake by choosing Lagerado from Odell. A lot of love here Coors Banquet (keep scrolling to get to the Rockies). I almost feel like a traitor to Colorado history, but I am sticking with Lagerado.

University of Wisconsin wouldn’t let J.J. Watt buy every graduate a beer when he was commencement speaker
“I was talking to the university and said this is what I want to do. Spotted Cow is the best beer in Wisconsin. It’s incredible. I want to put a Spotted Cow under every single seat in the stadium. I’ll pay for it all … but at the end of the commencement speech I’m gonna say ‘now to congratulate you, just reach under your seat and have a cold one on me.’”

Portland’s Best Breweries
“The difference between Portland’s 7th-best brewery and 17th-best is paper-thin. Indeed, if I wanted to establish Portland’s bona fides in terms of overall quality, I’d compare its second-ten best breweries up against any in the US. Portland is such a good beer town because the beer is so good across the city.”

The Return to the Classics: Talking Beer with Good Word and Schilling
Q: “Do you think there’s a tension between ‘the classics’ in terms of beer styles and experimentation and boundary pushing?”

A: “Yes and no. We have a deep respect and affinity for certain styles of lagerbier that we believe require no “boundary pushing.” A great Munich-style Helles or Dunkel, for example, should be beautiful symmetries of hops, malts, yeast and water. Anything else detracts from these styles, in our view.

“However, many modern German brewers aren’t opposed to playing around with dry hop schedules on a pilsner, for example. As we know, climate change in Europe (and elsewhere) is forcing a robust discussion on hop utilization. So there is progressivity and experimentation–’boundary pushing’–but we choose to do so as respectfully as possible and with a great deal of intentional, intra-team discussion. That said, you won’t see an adjunct-ed lager from Schilling. There’s a line we won’t cross.”

Homebrewing
– BRÜLOSOPHY Homebrew Survey
– Why homebrewing matters
The survey does not pretend to represent all homebrewers, but it makes you wonder how the hobby might find a wider audience. And about the crossroads Drew Beechum is referring to in the second link.

“Homebrewing is at a crossroads right now. Involvement is declining, homebrew shops and clubs see less interest. Every neighborhood has a brewery or two. Why bother spending 4-8 precious weekend hours making beer that I can buy down the street in a minute?

“I cannot implore you enough – get out there, show people the creativity and positivity brewing encourages (even if you’re grumpy like me) and for the love of all things beery – MAKE BEER, HAVE FUN, AND ENJOY THE PEOPLE!”

The challenge of recreating the past – in his case steam beer

As I mentioned Monday, Andreas Krennmair has posted a recipe for a turn-of-the-century steam beer, warning readers, “This recipe does not conform to the BJCP Style Guidelines for the California Common beer style, so don’t use this to brew beer and get bad marks for it at home-brewing competitions.”

How similar would it have tasted to a steam beer in the 1890s or one shortly after the beginning of the 20th century?

Man enjoying a steam beer, circa 1896First off, we don’t have much in the way of tasting notes. There was his from July of 1896, by a journalist assigned to write about being “A Prince for a Day in San Francisco on Two Bits” in The San Francisco Call. He put a glass of steam beer, which along with a choice of dishes and bread cost a nickel, at the center of his first meal.

“Upon the surface of amber-colored beer floated foam as evanescent and light as thistle down,” he wrote, without naming the brewery where it was made. “The receptacle holding the beer was as deep and as musical, as it was clinked against another, as a bell of Shandon ‘That sound so grand on the River Lee.’ Clearly through its translucent sides could be observed sparkling effervescence, the riotous ascent of sparkling globules which conferred, as a reward for patronage of a plebian beverage, a delightful tang, in which was all the lusty flavor of sun-kissed fields of bearded barley, waving and rustling in the wind.”

Second, every ingredient is a wild card, but yeast is the wildest of all. Presumably, yeast used to brew steam beer evolved from a lager strain. However, in 1911, while conducting tests as part of another project at the University of California, T. Brailsford Robinson discovered just how different steam beer yeast acquired from California Brewing in San Francisco was from lager strains.

“The yeast of the steam beer has accommodated itself to these conditions (warmer fermentation and the clarifier) to such an extent that it can no longer be employed for the preparation of lager beer, while lager-beer yeast may without difficulty be used for the manufacture of steam beer,” he wrote. “The cells of the typical steam-beer yeast are somewhat smaller than those of lager-beer yeast.”

Because things happen, like Prohibition, the strains that brewers used then were not passed down.

Fun aside

Over the years, there have been several suggestions about why steam beer was called by that name:

– What looked, and sounded, like steam was generated by the pressure generated in the kegs.

– Steam hung above rooftop vessels that initially cooled the beer.

– “Doctor Steam” (whose first name has been given variously as Frank, Heintz, or Charles) invented the process.

– German brewers would have been familiar with Dampfbier (“steam beer” in German), itself a hybrid.

– The first brewer to make it, according to his son, named it “mission steam beer, after the (California) missions.” (f